BY P. S. N. SARMA

Over the parched fields cracked and caked in the drought and strewn with dead shoots of paddy, over dried ponds and withering shrubberies and topes where, in the wake of frailer vegetation, even the sturdy mango and casuarina were giving up the struggle against the monstrous season, over the sun-burnt roofs of the hovels in the Washermen’s Quarter, night spread its fell black shadow. The heat was stifling and the air as still as the half-naked men and women who lay breathing it in huddles of several on cots and mats and the naked earth outside their homes. Only swarms of mosquitoes kept up a sickly trill in the cow-sheds, and under the eaves and around the sleepers’ ears; no doubt, the mosquitoes were mourning the marshes which the sun had scorched out of existence.

The river which ran round Shodapet had dried up. The bridge which spanned it above the Washermen’s Quarter, and the washermen’s stones which dotted its bed, were its only relics. Black misery crouched in the washermen’s homes. The spectre of famine stalked across their thresholds, scattering death and disease in its trail. Some of the washermen had fled from its approach to a neighbouring village further up the stream where there was said to be a spring of some sort, though nobody knew it for a fact. Others, young men mostly, had left for the city in search of work at the mills and factories. Those who remained suffered hardships the like of which the oldest of them could not remember. They slept now–not the quiet sleep of contentment, but the restless sleep of care and hunger and sickness and exhaustion.

There was a well in the centre of the Washermen’s Quarter. Though it was scarcely four in the morning and nobody was astir, the well presented a sad picture of the drought. At the mouth of the well were arranged in a circle not less than a hundred pots of mud and brass and copper, of various shapes and sizes. They had been left there overnight by the washermen’s wives who would come hurrying at the first cock-crow to fill them up at the well. But cock-crow generally brought only bickerings. The well was drying up day by day, and though there was a scramble for places at the well-side every morning, and the women fought and flung vile abuse at one another, the earth refused to open up its choked springs.

A young woman stole forth from one of the brooding hovels, and peering cautiously to right and left in the furtive manner of one contemplating a misdeed, she made her way gingerly to the well. She was the first to arrive. She felt a little satisfaction at the thought. But as she let go the bucket, her heart almost came into her mouth, for the old and rusty pulley very nearly gave her away by squealing indiscreetly. Disappointment awaited her efforts; the bucket fetched scarcely half its bulk of water, and even that little was dark and thick with mud. She filled up one pot with the unwholesome liquid, telling her-self it would clear on standing, then a second and a third. She was releasing the bucket to draw a fourth potful when she heard the sound of footsteps near her followed by a growl. Turning round she saw Dhanam, an elderly woman whom she dreaded as the owner of the most filthy tongue in the Washermen’s Quarter.

The elder woman put down her pot vehemently, snorting with rage at having been forestalled. She snatched the bucket from the girl without so much as a word, and sent it in squealing and grating. But the bucket struck hard the earth in mockery and would not sink. When she hauled it up she found some stones, half a coconut shell, mud, but no water in it.

"You black-faced devil, you have been at the well since midnight, haven’t you? What are other folks to do if the like of you dry up the well before cock-crow?" she hissed.

"I have hardly drawn two potfuls, auntie," the younger girl began apologetically, but the other cut her short, shouting:

"Two potfuls, and your pots are the size of your fat belly! Two potfuls is more than I could get in the last week."

"My brother is ill, and asked for some water to drink, auntie. You know yesterday I went home with my pots empty, and it was the same thing the day before. One must live, auntie. I am not to blame if the well has run dry. It hasn’t rained for a year and more. What can anybody do?"

"How can it rain with devils like you sneaking around to steal water at midnight? They burnt the monster¹. It would have been better if they had burnt the likes of you."

"The likes of me may be sinners, but why shouldn’t it rain for the likes of you?"

"None of your lip, impudent slut! You can talk indeed. You come of bad stock. Your mother could talk anybody crazy, and your father can steal better than anybody else in Shodapet. He is gone to the city to steal, isn’t he? Why don’t you also go there, you can do something else for a living, and leave folks here in peace? The pert hussy! She steals the water, and now she starts talking. It is just like the mean, shameless, thieving lot you are."

"We are not a thieving lot. Nobody stole anything from you, And as for talking, ask anybody in Shodapet who has got the fouler tongue of us two."

By now, Dhanam had worked herself into a fury. It was not the girl’s "lip" that infuriated her, but the sight of the pot full of water poised at the girl’s waist. She pounced on the girl in a fit of jealousy, seized the pot, and threw it down on the pavement where it broke to a thousand fragments.

Lesser things than a broken pot have caused broken heads among the poor.

There was a scream now, a patter of feet, a babel of voices, and in a few minutes the well-side which had been still as a graveyard was agog with threats and counter-threats. The injured girl set up a wail over the broken pot and the spilt water which would not stop. She called on the gods to witness her grief. In the absence of the gods, her husband responded to her wail. He caught the old woman by her neck and threatened to dispatch her on the spot. The old woman’s son thrust him aside and challenged him to fight it out in single combat if he had any man's blood in his veins. The men flew at each other’s throats, and the whole village joined in the melee either as combatants or as peace-makers. When men are in want and distress, nerves are high-strung, tongues are unleashed, and tempers go out of control. In this brawl, the men gave themselves up to the purely physical sensation of the skirmish without stopping to ascertain who the offender was, or what the offence, or whether a trial of strength was at all called for. While the men fought with their fists, the women began a battle of tongues which was certainly the viler of the two. Children yelled, frightened out of their senses; even dogs and donkeys woke up from their peaceful slumbers and contributed to the scuffle.

Dhanam’s son knocked Kanaka’s husband down. A spurt of blood appeared on the fallen man’s face, at which there were renewed shouts and screams. Cries of "He has done it," "Hold him tight, don’t leave him off," "Murder," "Send for the police, somebody," rent the air.

Suddenly a streak of forked lightning cut the inky blackness, and struck the men and women dumb for a second. A great crash of thunder followed the lightning. The dark brooding trees in the Washermen’s Quarter stirred, heaved deep sighs, then swayed their mighty branches wildly in a dance of ecstasy. The wind which began as a low moan hissed through the frail roofs of the huts in the Washermen’s Quarter, and almost tore the habitations off the ground. The darkness deepened as large, black clouds rolled across the heavens, crashing and sparking in bursts of thunder and flashes of fire. The men stopped quarrelling and gathered in knots to watch the clouds careering across the sky, while a single hope surged up in their minds, which they dared not express to one another, Rain!

The air became chill all of a sudden, and huge drops of rain pattered to the earth.

"Rain!"

The magic word sped from lip to lip. Scarcely had it gone the rounds, when the monsoon was upon them in full blast. The wind raved about them, and great clouds exploded above them emptying themselves in torrents of rain. The trees received the rain-drops with outstretched arms and shrieks of triumph, the parched earth devoured them greedily, rapidly, thirsting for more and receiving them, and in a few minutes the cracks and fissures closed beneath vast sheets of water. The men looked at one another, unable to believe the miracle that was happening before their eyes or the deliverance that seemed at hand. They ran hither and thither, shouting, gesticulating, mad and merry as little children. They bared their bosoms to the rain, caught the rain-drops on their faces and bodies, for it was good to see and hear and feel the rain after so many months of the drought.

Presently a low rumbling noise rose above all the other sounds of the storm. The men listened to it, tense with excitement. "I know the sound. It is the Kodayar," said an old man. There was a rush towards the river. What they saw at the water-course swept them off their feet. Torrents of water came rushing down the distant hills, tearing the banks of the river and carrying everything before them.

For three hours the downpour went on without a break, and then it rained continually for three days.

On the fourth, the sun reappeared in all the glory of a new birth, and the riverside bustled with new life. Blue trails of smoke arose from fires on the river-bank. The air was thick with vigorous voices, splashes of water and the loud, irregular, reverberating thud of clothes beaten against chunks of stone. Men and women could be seen as little specks of colour moving hither and thither under the bridge, carrying bundles of linen to the waterside, fixing up lines between tall poles, and hanging the clothes out to dry on them.

"It is good to see the Kodayar full again, brother," said Dhanam’s son to Kanaka’s husband, helping him lift a load of linen off a donkey.

"And to have something to do again, brother," said the other. There was a bandage over his left eye, but neither of them referred to it.

Women must work as well as men at the Washermen’s Quarter. Kanaka, attending to her share of labour at the stone, stopped to gasp for breath. She was tired. By her side lay two bundles of linen to be disposed of for the day.

She heard a kind voice behind her.

"Why have you stopped, daughter? You are tired, I see. Here, let me help you a bit. I have finished my work for the morning. You should not strain yourself overmuch in your state. You are three months gone, eh?"

The girl had turned round blushing. It was Dhanam who was speaking to her.

She made way for the elder woman, and they fell into a chat.

The wind whispered to the trees on the river-bank, soft ripplets lashed the pebbly shore, a heron honked from somewhere, men and women jested and laughed as they went on with their work, and the thud of clothes beaten against granite slabs filled the air with echoes.

What wonder that, in the midst of that lively return of life to its normal round, the two women should have forgotten the episode of the broken pot?