A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee

Author:Neel Mukherjee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

IV

1: Axe

The first image that came to her when she thought of that day was the way the blood had arced and sprayed as they threw her brother’s right hand into the surrounding bushes. Her eyes had followed the flying curve of the drops of blood as the severed hand flew into the bushes and disappeared. What else did she notice? That blood on green leaves in the shadow was not red but black. And even on the green that had the sun on it, the blood was also black until you looked carefully, very carefully, and then it would appear to be red, but only if you already knew that it was blood and, therefore, red, not black. Milly remembered all this.

This was when she was little, before she was called Milly, before the conversion. She was still called Manglu then, because she was born on a Tuesday. And her eldest brother, the one whose hand they cut off, was born on a Wednesday and so called Budhuwa. They had come into their hut and dragged him out. There were six of them and it was winter, their faces covered in shawls and woollen hats. Budhuwa didn’t shout or cry. They took an axe from the corner where all the farming implements and tools were kept – the sickles, the ploughshares, the tangi, the chherkha. The lohar had visited recently and sharpened the tools of all the families in their tiny village. He had sat outside in the courtyard around which all the homes were built – he was not allowed to enter any of them – and sharpened scores of these tools and knives on a whetting stone and on the pedal-driven sharpener that was ingeniously connected to his rusty bicycle. The more furiously he pedalled, the more generous the spray of orange sparks from the sharpening edge against which he held each tool. The children all gathered round to watch the fireworks; so exciting they had been. The lohar brought his own glass for water and a plate for his food. Someone gave him roti and pickles for lunch, all of which he ate quickly, wiping his plate clean. Milly, transfixed, like all the other children, by the presence of this magician who could send such short-lived flowers of fire flying at will, remembered that he had sharpened their family’s axe right after he had finished his food.

This was the axe that the men grabbed that afternoon. Four of them came in and got hold of Budhuwa and pulled him out. There were two more outside. They must have already been to the rice fields to look for him and knew that he was at home. It was terror that had silenced Budhuwa, she understood now, not courage. The only person crying was their mother, crying and falling at the feet of each of the men, saying over and over and over, ‘Please let him go, he’s my son, please, I’m falling at your feet, please spare him, let him go.

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