Padma Lalli, Gone

      The sky drained, signalling that it was time to go home, and so the girls got up. Around this time, Pappu and his friend also brushed the dust from their clothes. The two groups followed a similar route, exiting the fairground, ambling past the police chowki – outpost – and then entering the bazaar. But while the girls crossed over into Katra, the boys walked five minutes further to their hamlet.

      On the way, Padma and Lalli divided up the remainder of the day’s chores. Typically, they packed Manju off. ‘You sweep the courtyard,’ they ordered. Then they took to the fields with the seven goats the family owned.

      An age passed, or so it seemed to Manju, until finally boredom prompted her to seek out the older girls. She walked down the sloping path that led into the alleyway. There they were on their way back from the fields. They had one more job to do before they came in, they said. Offering a perfectly reasonable explanation – they had to tether the goats in their shelters – they insisted, ‘run along now.’ They assured her they would promptly follow.

      To Manju, it was obvious that the older girls were reluctant to return home. The fair had turned out to be a whole lot of nothing as far as she was concerned, no better than the hawkers at home, but she knew that for Padma and Lalli, it had been a day to remember.

      All through the evening the heat had leached out of the village and now the night air was perfumed and cool. The aroma of taro and soya coming to a boil on wood fires, the creak of a front door swinging shut, a mother’s call beckoning her children home – all signalled the day’s end.

      A crescent moon rose in the sky.

      Padma and Lalli finally walked through the courtyard. The two best friends who did everything together, now unclasped. Padma joined her stepmother, Sunita Devi, in the kitchen and started to roll out rotis, toasting the circular discs carefully over the fire with a pair of tongs. As Lalli went over to Siya Devi, a set of small solar panels filled one end of the courtyard with a watery grey light.

      Separated by the wall, the girls started to discuss the evening’s events. What a wonderful thing a mela was!

      It was too much for Sunita Devi who had thought it undignified for them to have gone at all. ‘Shut up!’ she roared. ‘Get on with the food.’

      Over the next hour, the women sweated over fires and laboured over small errands. The children brought down grass brooms, beating out the day’s dust from the courtyard. There was a button to thread, a broken slipper to twist into a knot, nits to comb out, wicker fans to wipe clean. The men were out, smoking beedis and talking among themselves.

      Sunita Devi was feeding the animals in her corner of the courtyard when her husband Jeevan Lal returned for dinner. Padma laid out a stack of rotis and the bottle gourd left over from lunch. Over in the next section of the house, the visitor from out of town, cousin Manju, had succumbed to the heat once more and was snoring peacefully on a charpoy.

      After dinner, Padma’s father rinsed his mouth and started for his animal shelter, which was perched on the edge of the fields. The shelter had high walls and a sturdy wooden door to protect his buffalo and calf. ‘Where there are animals,’ he always said, ‘there are thieves.’ There was also a charpoy in the shelter, so that he and his wife could keep an eye on things and still enjoy some privacy.

      Sunita Devi was at the handpump rubbing ash into a pile of dirty dishes. She’d join him soon, she promised. Their daughter Padma walked the few feet over to the end of the courtyard to catch up with those of her cousins who had skipped the fair to milk the buffaloes.

      Meanwhile in Jati, the Yadav men polished off the dal that Basanta had placed before them. Pappu’s father then left for their riverside plot to guard the watermelon harvest. His sons gathered their rolls of bedding and headed to their respective charpoys. The eldest went up to the terrace to await his wife and child. The second liked to sleep outside the house, on the main road – there was barely any foot traffic once the sun had set and the leaves of tall trees delivered silky breezes.

      As Jhalla Devi pottered about, her daughter-in-law finally sat down to her meal. When Pappu walked out of the house the women assumed he was going to see his cousin, who lived in a shack just down the road.

      In Katra, at this time, Padma complained loudly of a stomach ache. ‘I have to go to the toilet,’ she said. Lalli piped up from the centre of the courtyard. ‘Me too! I’ll come along.’

      Their mothers barely gave them a glance. It wasn’t very late, and there would be others in the fields taking a final squat for the night. Anyway, Padma had a phone.

      It was common knowledge that the girls would be half an hour, since they usually went to the set of family plots near the orchard. But thirty minutes passed and there was still no sign of them. ‘Where have they disappeared to,’ grumbled Sunita Devi.

      Her mother-in-law, who was particularly attuned to Padma’s welfare, hobbled to the door. ‘Padma,’ rasped the old woman. ‘Lalli!’

      At around 9.30 p.m., Pappu bounded into his cousin’s shack. The two were good friends and often chatted late into the night. Pappu sometimes used Raju’s phone to make calls and send text messages to girls he liked. They would fall asleep side by side.

      He was coming from the orchard, Pappu explained, where he’d been ‘to the latrine’. His stomach was off, he’d probably eaten too many spicy snacks at the fair.

      Raju commiserated. Would Pappu like some watermelon? They had enjoyed a bumper harvest and would take a lorry to Delhi to sell the lot. But for now, they could make a dent in this pile that stood six feet high, no one would notice. Pappu agreed, and the two young men devoured the juicy red fruit.

      ‘How was the fair?’ Raju asked.

      ‘I saw the girls,’ Pappu replied, munching loudly. ‘But they were with some others so we couldn’t chat.’