The Flower of Forgiveness

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"I saw the Sikattar (secretary) who sits in her chair."

I laughed then; I could not help it, for I felt convinced that no other words could have expressed the whole incident more truthfully.

"I went to London, O Protector of the Poor!" continued the stranger softly, "because I wanted, to get back the land. The Presence knows we Jâts cannot live without our land."

Involuntarily his eyes turned to a neighbouring field, where a couple of plough bullocks were slowly scoring the levels into feeble furrows, whilst the ploughman--just such a man as the one before me--held his hookah in one hand, his goad in the other.

"So you did not get the land after all? How was that?" God knows I was not always so ready of access to the native (as the departmental pastorals put it), but then one does not meet a Jât who has been to Hyde Park every day.

"Perhaps if it had not been a Sikattar," replied the low soft voice--"perhaps if it had been the great Queen herself--" Here the plough bullocks he was watching turned too sharply, and his hand closed mechanically on the stick he held between his knees, as if he were responsible for the mistake. "If the Presence has not heard it all before, I will tell it why Dewa Râm the Jât went to London."

I give the story in his own words, for mine might fail to transmit the perfection of his patience.

"The land was my father's, and my father's father from Mahratta times. In those days no one could sell the land or prevent the sons from following the father's plough. To begin with, no one wanted to sell good land, and then they could not if they would. That was before the great Sirkâr--life and prosperity be with it always--came to lift the hearts of the poor and set their heads high. There was much land, and on some of it in olden days a mortgage had been put. The Presence will know the kind of mortgage, where for a hundred rupees or so of loan another man is allowed to till the soil worth thousands. Only if it is wanted back, then the owner returns the hundred rupees. That is all. It is done when a family is small and has too much land to till properly. So the village accountant's people held the land because they were relations by marriage. It was in my father's time that the great Sirkâr came, and we began paying the dues to it instead of to the Maharajah. Then, when my father fell into evil ways because of drugs, my mother took her sons--we were twins, Sewa Râm and I--if the Presence pleases, back to her people far away beyond Amritsar. For she was of a high, proud family, and when the hemp gets into a man's head he does unclean things. So my father was alone, and the accountant made him do as he liked, bribing him with drugs. That was how it happened, as the Presence will doubtless perceive. So when my father neglected his own land, the accountant's people cultivated it for him and gave him what was due. My mother heard of this, but she said nothing, because we were but little lads, and the land could not run away--it was better that it should be tilled than left to rack and ruin. At last my father died, but they sent no word to Amritsar, because the great Sirkâr was coming to count the village, and make a map of it with all the holdings of the proper shape, and all the fields coloured green. If the Protector of the Poor will forgive his dust-like slave, he will remember that fields are not green always, and so likewise the holdings are not always right, no matter how carefully they are put on the map. There was the old mortgage, a man who lied tilling the soil, and no one to come to the Sirkâr and say, 'Here is the hundred rupees, give us back the land and write it in our names,' because, as I have said, Sewa Râm and I were away beyond Amritsar, and our mother thought the land could not run away. It was no wonder the Sirkâr was deceived, no wonder at all, but when we came to claim the land even our names were not on the list. They had written the wrong thing because the mortgage had been foreclosed, and there were no heirs. After this one judge--may he become the Lât Sahib--said he would put it right, but the accountant was rich and made it into an appeal. The Presence knows what an appeal is, doubtless, and how, when a little thing like this--just a mistake in a map--gets up amongst the pleaders and the Sikattars, it is sometimes too small for them to see. It would have been different if the Sirkâr had seen two big noisy boys when it counted the village. Then Sewa Râm was set free from the prison of life, and I was alone; for the Presence knows a Jât cannot marry without land, or have sons when there is no plough to keep the furrow of existence straight. So I sold my mother's jewels and went to show the great Queen herself that my father really had a son. Thus I came to 'Ide Park in London city, and saw the Sikattar."

"Then you did not succeed?"

"The Presence knows that the vizier is not as the badshah. He was very kind, sending me back by ship P. and O. And writing! God knows how many letters he wrote, and he bade me wait. That is two years gone, so I am waiting still."