India, 1951

Oh Lord how long wilt thou keep me waiting by the side of my door will down us suffer me to enter and cast off my burden this is India a land ancient and rich in tradition a land rich in contrast and variety a world of many races languages and castes a place of slow changes to this city on the holy river counties Hindus of India bring their hopes and sorrows and offer them to the gods Muslims of India whole other place is holy and carry to them the burdens and joys of life answering the call to prayer they follow the laws of the Quran laws differ from those of the Hindu creed there are many religions and races in India but whether sunburned Bengali or light-skinned Raja Sikh or Muslim they all carry India Feraud on their faces and as varied as her children is the face of Mother India at the North Towers the top of the world the chain of the Himalayas with cloud covered and windswept peak and from the mountains rocky backbone flow the rivers the Indus River the Ganges and the Brahmaputra to mention just the larger and where there is water from rivers or wells there is life and where water fails there is desert millions of acres of desert in the heart of the crowded subcontinent farther south the highlands of India drive a wedge into the Indian Ocean almost to the equator and all over this vast subcontinent cities of sprung large ports and many towns more than 70 with over a hundred thousand inhabitants but eighty percent of the people of the subcontinent are peasants who live in villages 400 million of them cut up into two nations the Union of India and Pakistan speaking dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects divided by religion Hindu Muslim Christian Sikh Buddhist each praying to his old gods whether low caste Hindu or Gypsy whether merchants from Gujarat or Sikh from sin whether Christian missionary or and Hyderabad whether living in India or Pakistan they are people born of the same soil people deeply religious whose early activities reflect an intimate bond with their gods it is morning in the home of dawn do a peasant he has wakened his God with an offering to keep him working at his side to bring blessing to his field and his crop to his house and his wife Durga the mother of his children and the keeper of his health Durga is India dondoers India and their home and children are India immutable India always the same seven days a week year in and year out the oxen or Donders faithful companions at work the oxen the wooden plough and his son Honda lucky veto can go to school he is the one member of the household who will know how to read soon his mother never had that chance married at 13 she never has changed the routine of her work Don do never went to school he followed his father to the field from the day he began to walk Durga followed her mother in the household chores as soon as she could walk this is the land that Don dus ancestors worked as tenants and now dhondu owns it five acres in all five acres to feed a family come on good oxen pull the plow and dig in deep to bring out the seeds of Don do sweat as you've done for thousands of years without rest for the man without rest for the soil yielding fruit twice a year twice a year or not at all as pleases God come on good oxen turn the wheel and pull up the precious water water that carries life across the fields water mixed with sweat to moisten the furrows that will bear the wheat and wheat means food for Dondo food and income it takes a third of a good harvest to feed the family another third to pay the taxes the rest to pay the debts and usually nothing remains to provide for tomorrow all this Don do thinks as he follows the oxen along the familiar furrows of his field from the distance he hears the squeaking of the waterwheel and he listens to the reassuring murmuring as it trickles down the irrigation ditches toward his fields for in one way Don dews village is lucky it has good water wells and irrigation ditches while hundred edges have none agricultural stations offer some help and hope they teach the villagers how to use better tools and seeds but most peasants have no money to buy seeds or tools no money and often not even hope like these neighbors of Don dews their land is small their fields are shallow and scattered their families large they cannot even afford oxen to pull the plow so they work to land with hens come on good oxen make the furrow deep we need the grain for food for all of us for taxes lots of grain for Texas and grain to pay the store teachers and grain for the offerings and grain plot on good oxen plot on good people in field and house here Durga dawn dues wife cleans and plasters the hearth with clay and cow dung if there were more women household Durga would remain in the kitchen and would not leave there until the food has been served to the men other women of the household would clean the yard carry the water and do the washing but Durga is alone therefore she must go to the village well herself and do the washing in the village square on the way she meets other women always busy performing their never-ending household chores the village well is an important place it is here that they hear about the coming and going of villages the births and deaths among neighbors about weddings and separations and while words are exchanged hands do the work for in India many hands are needed to do the work many hands each doing a chore many hands of the village to keep the village going it is mealtime the food is almost ready but on ploughing day dawn - and Pandu won't come home to him she'll take the food to the field the meal is the only rest for the man since daybreak their first escape from the scorching Sun soon Dorgan leaves her men with their work and returns to the village the village where neighbors work and share and live and work the Weaver of the cast of Weaver's and the brick maker of the cast of brick makers cutting and drying the clay and the street sweeper and untouchable without caste and the water carrier killing his goat skin with water another untouchable without caste Untouchables live on the outskirts of the village in mud huts it is there that Pandu dhondu son is going now to buy leather from the tenor who was also an untouchable because he handles the skins of dead animals only yesterday all Untouchables were considered unclean now they are supposed to be equal to other Hindus that is the new law but traditions are hard to break Pandu are the Questor peasants and the tenor belonging to no caste at all are in an age of changes changes that are still in the making but regardless of equality prescribed by law each caste goes on providing employment and shelter only for its own while all castes together form the Hindu society of the village working side-by-side accepting life which never changes that is Hinduism the village butcher Ali is a Muslim and Muslims have no caste distinctions he and his fellow believers live in the same villages with Hindus sometimes tolerated other times phonetically pursued because they kill cow eat their meat meat of cows that are sacred to the Hindu Ali and his Muslim neighbors could leave India and move to Pakistan in the north they would not be persecuted in Pakistan but these people do not go for there's no more land nor easier living in Pakistan whose plow was broken down he needs help from the village blacksmith the blade needs sharpening the blacksmith is an important man he gets his share of the crowd for his services and his services are only available to the people of the village the blacksmith the son of a blacksmith and the father of a blacksmith Durga has left the house to go shopping to look around weighing in her mind the honors and rupees of a meager budget how much can she spared almost everything Dora and her neighbors need they make themselves but there are some goods that have to be purchased with money there is salt to be purchased salt that comes from faraway mines and spices from the islands of Indonesia and needles from Jamshed poor are maybe from America or England and pots and pans made with Indian hands and imported machines for India has not yet sufficiently developed her own industries but most important for Georgia and other housewives are the cotton goods cotton Goods spun by Indian hands on machines that come from across the world this piece would make a fine sorry who knows maybe dawn whose brother worked on it in the mill in the town nearby Dontos brother attends the spindles together with other men from nearby villages they all are farmers and sons of farmers their hands still show calluses from handling the plow here are the dyers giving the cotton cloth the required colouring they come probably from within walking distance of the mill but now they are workers in industry some of them with union cards many of them with confused allegiances but all of them slowly becoming industrial workers in a complex society they left the overcrowded villages and made more room for the remained every factory in India is a small vent which relieves the heavy pressure on the land and every mine absorbs manpower from the land every coal pit every quarry wherever wealth is extracted from under the soil and the soil at India is rich deep under its surface with coal iron mica manganese chromium magnesite oil and as more mines are opened more men will move away from the crowded fields in the hot Sun the sons of peasants turned to mining and get their daily bread out of the soil of India meager bread nevertheless bread for survival meager bread until the tools become better and more abundant in factories in mines and on the fields the season of merciless dust and hate has come whether miner or farmer man or animal they all serve they suffer and fear they fear and wait and wait and watch they watch the clouds and check the sky for the rains to come to come in time to drench the soil and bless the seeds and give them bread will the rain come in time will the wells fill up again will the ditches flow with the precious water from the city and from agricultural stations men come to speak to the villagers the village listens to the men from outside but their thoughts are centered on the rain on the rain and the harvest that will bring if it comes in time and the misery that will leave it awake if it comes too late they all look to the east from where the clouds are beginning to stream in land from the moist sea welcome is the music of the Thunder that carries the message of rain and welcome is the flash of lightning that reveals the clouds and welcome is the torrent that falls upon the thirsty land and people ate your handle blacksmith and boards new plough stock your shops merchants with better things for all the rain has come blow your tiny torch audison build your castle silversmith hammer your silver worker your silken threads carpet maker loom your belt weaver keep alive the patterns of India's ancient arts the rain has come and brought us new hopes hopes of a better tomorrow with more schools to drench the thirst for knowledge with education helping to break the shackles of caste and Prejudice with new tools helping to increase the yield of the land with a prayer fulfilled and the song of come true glory to the motherland richly water blessed with bounty nestling in the cool shade of a war covered with the grain of crops