BY NAVDEEP SINGH
Copyright is held by the author.
I OFTEN quarrelled with Dadi, my grandmother, that we should sell our old 355 Escort tractor and buy a smaller Mahindra tractor. Dada, my grandfather, was a neutral figure. When I talked to him alone, he agreed with me. When Dadi talked to him, he agreed with her. And in case we were both present, he sided with Dadi. “This tractor has a poorer mileage than all the tractors in the world. It burns as much fuel as a plane,” I kept telling my grandparents. Moreover, we didn’t use it to cultivate land but to transport cattle dung from our house to our farm and jawar or barley grass for the cattle from farm to house.
This tractor was so old that whenever we used it for cultivation, one or the other part went out of order. We had to repair it every time we had to do anything worth note with it. “Getting cultivation done on rent basis is cheaper than working with this tractor,” I said every time we took the tractor out of our shed and joined cultivators behind it. But no, neither Dadi nor Dada would listen to me. They never listen to me when it came to selling the tractor. Instead, they borrowed an Eicher tractor, which needed a lot less fuel, from Chacha for cultivation or got the work done on rent.
The old tractor was never on self-start. Every year we had to buy a new battery. But the battery never last beyond six months. Then we would resort to other means of getting the tractor started, such as pushing it. In the summertime, two men could do it but in the wintertime, it was even harder. At least five to six men had to push tractor for it to start. It was a routine ritual. Five to six men bowing their heads and pushing it in the street. At times we had to wait for another tractor passing by to help us start it. It was joined behind the tractor and only then it was pulled to start. I would be boiling my blood sitting in the seat, looking at the drama unfold, as the people, mostly Jatts, sitting idly on the chowk around a fire spectated.
Other times, when we had enough time, we would start the day by lighting a fire underneath the tractor, and pouring boiling hot water in the radiator. At times, we would get lucky and it would start in the first round of the pushing. At times it took as many as four rounds. At times it would only start with the intervention of another tractor. A bond of the machines.
Whenever I raised my voice about selling the tractor, my grandparents would start telling me stories about this tractor. “When we bought this tractor, two escorts had come to the village on the same day. The other was bought by the then Sarpanch of the village —”
“I know,” I interrupted the story. “I have listened to this story 3,600 times. Besides, they sold the tractor and bought a Mahindra. Even the Seths have kept one Eicher and one Mahindra. Only the Jatts keep these big tractors.”
“They sold it because they couldn’t afford it.” Dadi wouldn’t come to the point.
“As if we can? We have sold half of our land. I don’t think we have made much progress. And I don’t think we have the means to keep squandering money over a machine which doesn’t return its worth. We cannot even afford its battery.” I often lost patience with Dadi.
“It’s not that we can’t afford it. It’s because the batteries don’t last on this tractor,” explained Dadi.
“That’s what I’m saying. That’s why I’m begging you to replace it with a smaller, more efficient tractor,” I would persist.
“You are just like your grandfather. Always talking about selling things. ‘Sell this Buffalo, sell this cow, sell this tractor.’ That is not a good omen. You’ll only be happy when everything is sold. No one is selling this tractor as long as I’m alive. Do whatever you want to it after my death. Leave work if you can’t do it. I’ll ask someone else.” Dadi would get emotional and I would resign.
Besides, we didn’t have all the tools needed in agriculture. We were always one short. Or, in fact, we only had one or two — the cultivators and a spray tank. The rest — trolley, disc ploughs, border blades, leveller and rotavator — we had to borrow.
This one Sunday, Dadi asked me to cultivate our one acre and a quarter to prepare it for sowing jawar for our cattle.
We didn’t get Chacha’s tractor because he had to cultivate his own land. We couldn’t risk asking someone to do it on rent any longer as the kinnow orchid in the land was filled with fruit and these rented cultivator operators didn’t bother taking any extra care to save kinnows. They would barge into the trees carelessly and break branches leaden with fruit. We couldn’t put off the work until tomorrow either because I had to go to college. “OK, we can wait for tomorrow. I won’t go to college. It’s OK if I take one day off,” I suggested.
“No. No need to take a day off from college.” Dadi didn’t like the idea of taking days off from college. “Your Chacha used to do that, your father used to that, taking days off from college to work in the farm. Look where they are now. You put the cultivators behind the escort.”
“It would take double the fuel,” I told.
“It’s all right. What can we do now? If we delayed it a day or two, the crop would be delayed a fortnight.”
I went to the shop of the Seths and bought seeds. “Uncle, give me jawar seed for one and a quarter acre.”
“How will you provide water for one acre and a quarter? We hardly have enough water to provide for the kinnows.” the Seth asked with concern. Although he already knew the answer to his question as he was well aware of the ways my Dadi ran our farm and that we sowed jawar or barley for cattle on large scale. In fact, more than anyone else in the village who didn’t sell it. So, I only smiled and said, “You know how it goes.”
I took the bags of seed, “Dadi will come for the payment.”
I went back and I asked my grandmother, “Where is the five-litre can? I am going to the patrol pump for fuel.”
“What do you need the can for? Why don’t you take the tractor?” she would ask.
“Because it’s not worth it. It would burn at least one hundred rupees worth of fuel just on its trip to the patrol pump,” I reply dryly.
I took the five-litre can and rode on a cycle to the patrol pump.
“What happened? Why are you carrying fuel in the can?” an acquaintance, who was at the patrol pump on a tractor, asked.
“For the tractor. I thought it would only save one round worth in the farm,” I replied knowing there was no need for any explanation.
“Why don’t you change the tractor?” the man who poured fuel in the can remarked.
I would only sigh and tell him to go talk to Dadi. He didn’t say anything further.
The tractor has no colour. It used to be white, it still is. But that’s not a colour. That’s the remains of the colour. The dullest possible shade of white. The mudguards are welded and patched in several places. There’s no hood. There’s no battery. The seat is as hard as wood, with all the cushioning corroded away.
I came back and couldn’t find the funnel. I had to pour it with the can spilling diesel all over the tractor.
Luckily, it’s summers and I had to call only two people to get it started. But with no hood over the tractor, I would burn in the heat. It was already 10 in the morning.
“You’re late. You should have started earlier. Look where the sun has gone,” Dadi would keep nudging me.
“I am late because you didn’t tell me yesterday. I would have made the preparations in advance. Now I’ll have to arrange everything in time. I don’t know where I’ll get the leveller from.” I was already tired and I hadn’t even got the tractor started.
“Where would you find one?” asked Dadi.
“I’ll see if there’s one at the farm of the Seths,” I told her.
I found while joining the cultivators behind the tractor that one pin in the side links of the tractor was missing. And I had brought the wrong top-link. I had to go home again.
“You’ve come back?” Dadi’s glare questioned me. I understood without her having to utter any words. “I took the wrong top-link, and one pin is missing.”
“Don’t waste time looking for one. Nothing that’s lost can be found in this house,” Dadi said sitting in the outer verandah. “Buy one from Sajjan on your way back.”
I bought two pins from Sajjan on my way back. By the time I joined the cultivators and entered the land I was to cultivate, it was already a quarter to 11.
When I reached the farm of the Seths to get the leveller after cultivating the land, I didn’t see one lying around. I kept the tractor engine on and climbed down to find if there was anyone there who I could ask about its whereabouts. I found the mali (gardener) who didn’t know where it was and suggested I called their farmhand Raju. I called Raju and he told me it was at their other farm close to the village water-works building. It was not good news. It was quite far from our place, around two kilometres. And a voice rang in my head, “that’s what you saved the fuel for!”
I thought I should ask someone else hoping I could find one nearer than that. I parked the tractor on a hillock, so I wouldn’t need to call anyone to push it to start it again. I would just use the momentum of the descent. I went to Lakha’s house, a Jat household. We had always had cordial relations with them. They used to borrow farming equipment from us. Now, they had all the equipment and we had to borrow from them. But we maintained smooth relations. They never refused us. So, I knocked on their door. Their old lady invited me in and asked what I wanted.
“We don’t bring the leveller home anymore. You know the damage these concrete roads do to it,” their old man replied.
I didn’t know what to make of his reply. Were they refusing our request or what? Then he started again, “But you can go to our farm and borrow it for your use and then leave it back at the farm.”
That was not at all feasible. Their farm was even farther than the farm of the Seths. How could I who didn’t even take the tractor to the patrol pump so he could save diesel, make it to their farm and back again? I abandoned the idea.
I made one or two more calls but to no avail. So, I was left with no other choice but to go to the Seths farm. I started the tractor and drove towards the village water-works building. When I reached there, I found no leveller at the place Raju had told me it would be. I called Raju again.
“I left it there myself. Where could it go? Let me ask Gopal. I’ll call you back.”
I waited and waited with the engine of the tractor on. With every passing second, with every drop of fuel, my blood burned. But unlike fuel, there was no smoke.
After waiting for some five minutes, I called again. He was still busy talking to someone. I waited another three minutes and called again.
“I asked Gopal. He didn’t know either. He would call Kali and let me know. I’d call you back.” This was getting unbearable. The sun was right over my head. Heat was getting the better of me. I hadn’t eaten yet and was starving. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then I found a tree nearby and parked the tractor in the shade. With every minute my fear grew. The Seths have bought land in all the corners of the village. The leveller could be anywhere; it could be as far as 10 kilometres away from here on the other side of the village.
A sudden thirst caught me by the neck. I got off the tractor, leaving the engine on, and walked towards the water-works building to drink water at the handpump there. With every step, all my family history flashed past my eyes. It was as if I was approaching the old glorious days of the times of the great Grandfather. The days when we had everything we needed. The days of which I had heard a lot about but never saw. The days when we scattered on the farms cow-dung fertilizer by trucks. The days when all the Jatts who had become landowners now, ate at his farmhouse.
The phone vibrated sending me back to the present from the sublime past. “It is lying at the Ballu’s farm,” Raju told.
“Where is that?” I asked almost expecting it to be so far that I would abandon the idea of levelling the field and leave it as it was.
“Right behind the patrol pump,” he responded.
I was on the verge of tears. An unbearable pain shot through my inner being. I beat my hands hard on the steering wheel. Now, my hands pained me as much as my inner-being. The equilibrium refreshed me.
The road to the patrol pump passed before my house. I stopped on my way, had lunch and took more money from Dadi for more fuel.
***
Navdeep Singh is a PhD Research Scholar, at the Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh. He has published a Punjabi Dalit short story in English translation in the journal Indian Literature as a co-translator. He is currently translating selected Punjabi Dalit Writings into English.
