This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach by Yashpal Read Free Book Online Page B

struggle for a rupee’s worth of sugar; but there was no way out. The war was over, but prices kept on rising. Cloth prices were no different. Masterji was still making do with the same old striped cloth jacket that he had when Puri was sent to prison. Shalwars that his mother, Usha and Tara wore had been patched and mended repeatedly. His mother and sisters cared for their street clothes more than they cared for their skin. Puri could see that the blue striped khaki trousers his younger brother wore had once belonged to the neighbour’s son. When Ratan grew out of them, his mother had quietly given them to Bhagwanti.
    The ration allotment was for eleven yards of cloth per person every three months. Wheat was two-and-a-half seers per rupee. It could be had at three-and-a-half seers for a rupee at the ration shop, but that meant an hour and a half of standing in the queue. Memories of twenty seers of wheat and one seer of ghee for a rupee only eight years before seemed like details of history from the time of the Mughal emperor Akbar.
    Postal worker Birumal’s mother was going through the gali below Puri’s house one morning with half a lauki in her hand when Bhagwanti called out to her from her window, ‘Sister, how much did that cost you?’
    Jaidev could hear the craving in his mother’s voice. Birumal’s mother replied, ‘Six annas a seer, sister. Six paisas for a seer used to be too much for this lowly gourd. Sister, we have been cooking daal every day for such a long time. Felt like having a vegetable for a change.’
    Jaidev remembered a woman from a nearby village hawking her produce the previous evening in the gali, ‘Ghee for sale! Home-made ghee from our own buffalo.’
    Several gali women asked the price, but who could buy ghee at four rupees a seer?
    The woman was annoyed, ‘You just ask the price, no one buys anything. I used to sell as much as ten seers of ghee in these galis. What kind of people live here now!’
    Sardar Khushal Singh’s wife, Kartaro, said from her window, ‘The ghee-eating days are over. Now one has to buy small amounts of ghee only whenthe doctor prescribes it. The smell of ghee is enough for us now, sister.’
    Jaidev knew that families of Birumal, the insurance company clerk Tikaram, and Khushal Singh were facing hard times. Only two days before, Tikaram’s wife had been asking Tara to sew pajama trousers for her young boy out of her husband’s old and torn pair. Khushal Singh was fond of starched turbans of fine coloured muslin; his turban was now mostly in tatters.
    The worst of the lot was the old Brahmin woman Purandei. This poor illiterate widow worked as a chaperone for girl students of the Aryaputri Pathshala in Sheesha Moti Bazaar. Both her father’s and her husband’s families were well-to-do. But after she became a widow, her husband’s elder brother took over her side of the house and threw her out. She moved to Lahore from her hometown because she felt ashamed to work for a living in the midst of her community. Her daughter Sita, almost a young woman at fifteen, was in the eighth grade at school. The enlightened, socially responsible management of the school, even in those hard times, paid Purandei only twenty rupees a month. She could, if she had to, eat just dry bread in her house, but she needed clothes to cover herself, and more so her young daughter.
    Doctor Prabhu Dayal’s wife Pushpa said to Bhagwanti one day when they were alone, ‘I am not very friendly with Purandei and Sita. I’m new to this gali, and they won’t be comfortable with me. The shalwar Sita had on was so torn that she was crying over it. She couldn’t go to school today for that reason. I have a shalwar that I’ve worn only twice, it is of a good material. It doesn’t fit me any more, but it will fit her. Don’t tell her it’s from me, no one will know. That girl is pretty. If a match is found for her, the poor widow will have one less worry.’
    A narrower gali branched off