For the fourth day in a row, Seth Patel Singh had kept Balesar working until four. Even the traces of a smile had left his face. He’d gone quiet and didn’t want to be at the farm anymore. He stood there alone, staring into the distance.
He hadn’t reprimanded the workers at all. Usually, they’d get an earful even if they were working. The workers took advantage of Balesar’s inattention. They did very little and tried to leave early. A couple of them at first, but soon everyone wanted to go home. Otherwise, it would be 4:30 before Balesar let them go.
Something had changed in Balesar when he emerged as the leader of the farmhands and the landowner appointed him manager, making him responsible for squeezing work out of them. Balesar was a domineering boss. He knew how to get them to work. Nobody lazed around for long under his watch. Then, one day, things came back around. Patel Singh began to hand him a list of chores at the crack of dawn. It was his turn to be put under pressure.
He wanted to check off everything on the list as soon as possible and steal a moment to see Gulabiya. To apologize and make up. But he hadn’t made a dent in the workload. Whenever a worker asked permission to leave, he’d wordlessly gesture his assent. Chamru, a farmhand, observed this from a distance with great interest. Chamru was a large man with an inky complexion and a thick upper lip that sat a bit too high on his face, so that his mouth resembled a tiger’s snout. His nose wasn’t very prominent, but it was hypermobile, constantly going up and down his face.
Chamru’s nose twitched. He brought his hands to his sides, took out the comb tucked into his lungi, and continued to monitor Balesar closely. Balesar was completely unaware of this. Chamru raised his hand, holding the comb up to the sky, and then, with a stylish flick of the wrist, brought it downward and ran it through his hair.
Chamru had always been bold. Whenever he felt like leaving, he just walked by Balesar, combing his hair, and Balesar never said a word. Today, rather than strolling out, he decided to go to Balesar and conduct an inquiry first. “Balesar, why the long face? Did something happen at home?” His voice dripped with malice.
The few workers who hadn’t yet left turned to look at Balesar—he did seem sad. But why?
Nobody comprehended the storm raging within him.
Balesar didn’t respond except to say, “You guys go collect your wages from the maalik.” Immediately afterward, he set off for home.
A few people tried to talk to him on the way, but he didn’t look back. One of them was Sohan Kaka, a distant relative of his who also worked on the farm. Usually, Balesar would be thrilled to see him. He’d tease Kaka, “Looks like there was an extra helping of love in the fish today, eh Kaka? Your face is glowing from within,” and Kaka would feign anger, then burst out laughing. But he did not tease Kaka today. He didn’t even turn around when Kaka called out his name.
Kaka was worried about Balesar. Why did he not talk to him? Why did he not tease him?
According to village tradition, Balesar’s relationship with Kaka’s wife was that of nephew and aunt, but she was close to him in age, so they weren’t bound by formality. He’d often grab her by the wrist and taunt her about how he’d caught Kaka in the theater last night. She tried to grab his arm today, but he shook her off and walked ahead. He didn’t even want people to look at him.
Balesar got to his house and lay down on the mat; more precisely, he threw himself to the ground and landed with a wham. It was routine for him to light a diya or an incense stick as soon as he got home, but not today. Today, when he looked at the incense, he was reminded of the day a few months ago when he’d fought with Singh for keeping him at the farms till late.
***
He didn’t like having to work long after the other laborers had gone home, but Singh always found an excuse to keep him. So that day, he’d just gotten up and left. He’d decided that he wasn’t going to work for him anymore. The other laborers tried to reason with him, saying that he was being unreasonable and foolish—What will you do if not this? If the boss fires us, what will we do? It had fallen on deaf ears. Balesar knew that having two hands was enough for a working man in this world.
He quit the farm and decided to sit at home for a few days, but the very next day, the maalik came to beseech him to return. He said, “You know that you’re the most honest and the hardest worker I have. You also know that all my farms depend on you. You manage the farms from now on. You look after them.” From then on, he was the manager.
He wouldn’t have accepted that position if it weren’t for the fact that quitting the farm meant he wouldn’t see Gulabiya as often. Nobody understood what happened to him when he couldn’t see her. This was something only they knew—him and Gulabiya, his Gulabo.
That day, Gulabo wafted, dreamlike, through the shabby wooden door of his hut. Is this real? If Gulabiya hadn’t covered his eyes with her hands, he would have continued to look at her for an eternity.
She broke the silence. “I hear you’re manager now? Is this how the high and mighty live? The sheets are on the clothesline, and Manager Babu is on a straw mat on the floor. The stink from the next alley fills your room, and the incense sticks lie in a corner.” She continued to ramble about this and that as she lit an incense stick and put it in a recess in the wall. “I came with Poobari Chachi. She went to meet Kamli Mai, and I snuck out. I’m going to leave now.” And then, as if whisked away in the wind, she was gone.
***
Like a dream, this memory played in his head on a loop.
He blinked. It was dawn.
He hadn’t slept all night. Thanks to Singh’s constant bullying, he felt less like a manager and more like a bonded laborer. He decided he wasn’t going to be bound anymore.
Color returned to his cheeks as he made this decision. It was as if a weight was lifted from his head. For days now, he’d been carrying a mountain around. Just like that, it was gone. Now, his head felt light as a feather. The same house that had been closing in on him for a week now smelled of jasmine, no . . . no . . . it smelled of roses. In this room that smelled of roses, he thought of his rose—Gulabo. He spread his hands across the sheets as if she were sitting there. She made this bed. This is such a wonderful bed. He didn’t just run his fingers over the sheets; he traced them across Gulabiya’s hands—the same hands she’d used to make the bed.
Outside, the birds grew louder. Balesar wrapped the sheets around him. He didn’t want them to get dirty. That was a likely possibility. All day, the wind came from Kosi carrying the sand and dirt and dumped it straight into the house. In a few hours, this entire house would become Kosi Ma’s bed. He started to hum as he got up. Das Kabir jatan se odhi, jas ke tas dhar dini chadaria. He wore it with great care, and put it back as it was.
He wasn’t going to let the sheets get dirty. Was his love even true if he did? He hung them on the clothesline, but that didn’t feel right. Then he tried the hook on the wall where his shirt hung. He put on the shirt and hung the sheets. Then he left the house, the birds, and the wind behind, and went toward Kosi.
He carefully opened the bamboo gate in front of his house and thought he should get to Kosi before sunrise. Ever since becoming Seth Patel Singh’s manager, his life had been so limited. He looked at the birds, now visible in the faint sunlight flying in the sky, and thought that he, too, was like a bird—free.
From Gulabiya. Copyright © Abha Purbey. Translation copyright © 2025 by Shivangi Pandey and Tejaswi Rawal. Published in partnership with the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation. All rights reserved.
