Shining Hero by Sara Banerji Page A

sitting with his shrivelled legs stretched before him, leaning against a tree that had been robbed of all its branchesand now consisted of only a single trunk pointing into the sky like a finger of accusation.
    ‘The other students are in the fields teaching the local people how to use hand grenades,’ the man told them. He had no teeth and his words were blurred. ‘There, that is them returning now.’ He pointed a wavering finger to the furthest horizon, and Shivarani made out through air that wobbled with heat, a group approaching, dark against the brightness of the fields. For a moment she thought she saw a man that was darker and taller than the rest but it was only a trick of the light. He was not among them.
    Local men carrying bows and arrows, and a few with modern rifles accompanied the students as they arrived in the village at last. ‘You look half starved and what has happened to your faces?’ asked Shivarani, shocked.
    The young men and women smiled mournfully. ‘Wait till you’ve been here a week. Once you’ve had three goes of dysentery and been bitten all over at night by mosquitoes and in the day by lice you will be looking just like us.’
    ‘For two months we have been helping the peasants seize cattle and rice from the jotedars and grab land for redistribution,’ they told Shivarani and Malti as they led them through the village. ‘We have raided the jotedars’ homes and offices, threatened them into giving up the title deeds to the land. At last justice is being done. The rich are being forced to be fair to the landless.’
    ‘And the police have done nothing to stop you?’ asked Shivarani.
    ‘Not till this morning,’ she was told.
    The police had been in a quandary. Whereas they were sympathetic to the cause of the peasants, indeed many of them had families in the village of Naxalbari, the jotedars were rich and ruthless and the law was being broken. So on the previous day the police had been forced into action and a jeep was sent into Naxalbari to put down the violence.
    ‘There was a battle and we won,’ the students cried jubilantly.
    ‘You mean the police just gave in and went away?’
    ‘We killed one of the policemen and then they realised that they were beaten.’ The students laughed, punched each other triumphantly and danced about, mimicking the events of the day before.
    That night Shivarani lay awake for ages and it was not only because of the iron-hard of the mud floor or the endless buzz and bite of insects. The killing of the policeman had been, she felt sure, a terrible turning point. Police attitudes always changed in an instant once one of their own was killed.
    She woke next morning before the sun had risen. The others lay sprawled around her. What fools, she thought, to be sleeping so calmly as if that was the end of the matter. She rose and with the heavy cloud of anxiety still pressing on her, walked through the still dark village to the small scummy doba at the further end. The sun was rising as she reached there and a blue mist of early-morning fires hung like a pashmina shawl over the fields. A man was walking, visible from the waist up, through an invisible field. A koel called. Macaque monkeys woke, yawning and scratching, on the roofs of huts and lower branches. She walked slowly towards the pond, glad that the grey dust was hidden, relieved to be away from the others. Perhaps after all they were right, and nothing more would happen.
    She was bending over the green water when a voice behind her said, ‘Shivarani?’ She straightened, water dripping from her face and there stood Bhima. He wore a check lungi and a vest. She could see the dark hair under his armpits. He had not shaved and the newly risen sun glowed in the short black stubble. She stared at him for a long moment before the realisation came to her that she was only half dressed. Her petticoat was crumpled because she had slept in it, and her hair had not been combed since yesterday. Hastily she