2025-09-23, 11:15 AM
Around him, some of the others were speaking in whispers, their throats too dry for anything else. If Modhun listened hard, he could hear the scraping of the chokidars’ boots on the deck above.
Modhun blinked, but that did not disrupt the blackness. It was so thick he could feel it pressing against him—an insistent, liquid, touch. The air reeked of damp and salt and human waste.
Someone grabbed his arm. “Do you have any food?” asked a woman.
“If I did,” said Modhun, “why would I give you any?”
“Not me. My daughter.” The woman took his hand and placed it on the girl’s smooth, skinny shoulder. “She needs to eat.”
Modhun recoiled. Scrambling over random knees and shoulders, he found a corner to explore the folds of his kurta, fingering the hidden seams that held his money. He did not care what the chokidars asked for, he would pay it.
Five minutes later, he was on the deck of the Hesperus for the first time since leaving Calcutta. The moonlight streaming through the mast painted pale wedges and swathes in the shadows. Four other men who had paid for the privilege of clean air were dispersed near the rails, ignoring him. Their eyes all said, “Keep away.” Modhun sympathized. He made his way forward.
Above were the sails, propped up by the wind like dead things, making flat sounds. Below was the ocean, water so black that the moonlight only made it seem blacker still. Modhun turned away from it, suddenly dizzy.
A figure near the bow drew his gaze. The man’s brown skin and white dhoti marked him as a fellow coolie, but he stood with his feet wide, looking to the horizon as if he were lord and captain. Curious, Modhun approached him.
“You’re not allowed here,” said the man. “Coolies are to stay near the hatch.” His voice carried a sense of control which defied his place in the ship’s indentured cargo.
“You’re here,” said Modhun.
“This costs extra.”
“So? You think I can’t pay? You think I’m just another destitute hill coolie?”
“Not everything is paid for with money.”
Up close, the man seemed regal. His hair was long and free. He was a full head taller than Modhun, with big shoulders and a strong neck. His forehead was wide, giving a sense of great intelligence and his eyes seemed to be constantly considering and ordering the world. Small gold hoops in his ears were the only soft touch in his appearance.
“So how come you get to be here?” Modhun asked.
“One of the sahibs in charge of the ship—the one always polishing his sword. He lets me come here if I give him some of what I have in my pants.”
“What?”
“He likes to suck my cock,” the man said simply.
The idea stunned Modhun. For a sahib to engage in such acts seemed to contravene the laws of the universe. The shock must have showed on his face, for the man asked, “Is my language too blunt for you young one?”
“No. I’m no child.”
The man took Modhun’s face in a firm hand and looked close at him. “Hnh,” he said to himself. “A few hairs on their chins and they think they’re men.” After he let Modhun go, he asked, “Does the idea of two men together surprise you?”
“Hardly. I’ve sucked more than my fair share of cock. No one’s ever making me do that again, let me tell you!”
“Is that why you’re throwing your life away and crossing the Kala Pani? To secure fortune and power?”
”I’m just looking for something better,” said Modhun. “Isn’t that why you’re here? Or are you one of those that they kidnapped?”
“No. I’m here because Garrison Commander Plunkett decided that he didn’t want to make a martyr of me. By sending me to Demerara he can erase me from existence without upsetting my followers.”
“Followers?” asked Modhun, on guard. “Are you a holy man?”
“My name is Akash Lall. I’m a bandit. Or at least they call me a bandit.”
“Oh.” Modhun relaxed. “You’re political.
“Yes. The people in my village suffer terr—”
“Please,” said Modhun, holding up his hand. “I’m sure you and your followers had wonderful reasons for breaking into people’s homes and stealing their money and ravishing their daughters. That doesn’t matter to me.”
“Human misery is not—”
“The only human misery I’m concerned about is my own. When I—”
The ship’s bell rang out. Modhun would have to go back below now, unless he felt like bribing the next watch. Akash Lall did not seem concerned about them.
Once in the hold again, Modhun’s mind kept picturing Akash Lall standing on the bow with a sahib kneeling before him. A trembling warmth flushed Modhun’s thighs. He fought his thoughts down. Better by far for him to sleep and leave this cursed vessel behind. He would seek new images in his dreams, visions of his new life to come. Visions which had guided him out of The Golden Temple and which promised him deliverance.
#
The land is flat and green—wild with life and loud with heat. Dark water pours through its veins. Modhun is glad for the heat in Demerara. It comforts him, his bones still shivering from the ship’s icy passage through the far south.
He is pleased that Akash Lall is sent with him to the same estate. The young girl, Kavita, and her mother are with them too. The woman has married on the ship, taking a new, higher-caste, husband to replace the one whose death sent her seeking into this land. No one remarks on the difference in the couple’s status; they have crossed the Kala Pani, the Black Water, and such distinctions no longer have meaning. There are only four other women in their estate’s group of seventy and those are soon ‘married’ as well. Not surprisingly, Akash Lall secures a wife.
The women are to cook and clean for all the men of the estate. The school for the children will be built soon, the overseer tells them. The coolies all live in the former slave quarters of the now-emancipated blacks—a dozen shacks made of ragged board, into which they crowd. It is almost like being back on the ship again.
The work starts immediately, though everyone is weak from the voyage. During slavery, new arrivals were given three years of light work to become acclimatized. Since the coolies’ contracts will last only five years, however, the planters give no such concessions to them. Sunrise to sundown they are in amidst the sugar cane, slashing at waist-high weeds. Modhun is ill almost immediately, the adjustment too severe. There is no respite for him. The overseer lets him know that unless he collapses he has to work. Three other coolies who insist that they are not well enough to work are placed in stocks. One is whipped. All are fined a full week’s pay.
Within a month, Modhun recovers and settles in. This is not the kind of labor that a person can love, or even become accustomed to, but he knows now that it will not break him and that knowledge strengthens his broadening back and straightens his spine after every day spent folded over, hacking and tearing.
#
By the end of the first fortnight on the ship, everyone had a cough—all except the mighty Akash Lall. Modhun was thankful the journey was near its end, for the strain of the crowded hold was becoming too much.
During the day, when enough light leaked in, Modhun would admire Akash Lall from a distance. The man was always in conversation, often smiling, moving about the hold among the coolies, greeting many of them by name. To Modhun, he seemed like a tiger given human shape. His muscles and movements told of restrained strength. Whenever he felt these thoughts bubbling, Modhun would will himself to look away. That part of his life was over. Never again, he had sworn. But his resolve never held and soon he would be back to nourishing his eyes with the golden-brown image of Akash Lall. Something about the man sparked the animal cravings at the back of Modhun’s brain.
The second time Modhun went on deck, he found Akash Lall on the bow again, smoking a cigarette.
“And what did you have to offer the sword-polishing sahib to get tobacco?” asked Modhun.
Akash Lall said nothing. Modhun joined him in watching the horizon. Then, suddenly, the big man was whispering in his ear.
“I know your secret.”
Had Modhun been that obvious with his gazes? “H-how can—”
“I know thieves,” said Akash Lall. “You’re a thief. I’ve seen it in your eyes.” He smirked, then added, “I’ve seen it in your dhoti.” With that, he grabbed at Modhun’s crotch, producing a metallic jingling as he pressed the hardness there.
One fear gave way to another for Modhun. Had Akash Lall simply guessed that any valuables Modhun had hidden would be there, or did he actually know of the necklace of silver skulls that Modhun had stolen in Benares? “So you want a share of it?” Modhun asked. “Or are you planning to take it all from me?”
“There is no honor in stealing from such as you.”
“You think you’re better than me?” Modhun shouted. “You think that kind of thing matters where we’re going?” He pointed at the sea ahead. “This is the Kala Pani. It erases everything. The past won’t matter anymore. Laws, crimes, caste, loyalty, honor. None of it is worth an ounce of goat dung! When we reach this new place, we all start equal.”
Akash Lall simply took a puff of his cigarette. “You’re right,” he said. “This water is going to wash away everything we left behind in Bengal, but remember this: Where we’re going I will have no reason to fight, so no one will name me criminal, but you will always be a thief.”
“I took nothing that I was not entitled to,” said Modhun. “Nothing that I had not already paid the price for.”
“So it was simply fair trade, I suppose?”
“Were your crimes any different?”
“Of course they were different. I was fighting for freedom, for our rights.”
“Freedom from what? The British? They’re the best thing to ever happen to us.”
“The East India Company does nothing but take and bully.”
That started an argument that remained unfinished when Modhun went below deck an hour later.
#
Within a year, eight of them are dead. Sores, fevers, dysentery: Disease finds the coolies easy prey. A dozen are in the sick house. There is a doctor, but he offers little treatment except a place on the floor of a shed built for seven. To miss work, even for sickness, is to lose pay and feel the whip. Modhun has twice escaped the lash by bribing Jacobs, the overseer.
Beatings are given out for the least offense. Zaman and Paltu get five strokes each for laughing while they worked. The two run away with the next full moon. They will walk all the way back to Bengal if they have to, they tell the others. The decomposed bodies of two unknown men are found not long after, in a canal fifty miles to the east.
Naturally, it is Akash Lall who organizes the coolies’ first protest. They steal two boats and cross to the estate on the other side of the river. When the police come, Akash offers their terms: They will not go back until Jacobs is removed. So resolutely does he argue, and so skillfully keep the coolies from breaking ranks, that their demand is met.
Things change only slightly, however. No one bothers even asking about the long-promised school anymore. The sick house remains a horror. Modhun sees the inside only once and it is enough. The smell of putrid flesh and the moans of men too delirious to recognize their coming death make him vomit on the bare floor where they lie.
He reacts much the same when Kavita is found unconscious in the horse paddock, naked and bleeding from between her legs. The girl never manages to speak and dies from her injuries soon after.
#
A month on the ship! They should have arrived in Demerara twice over already. The chokidars told them only that they were almost there.
Modhan made a third trip topside. He and Akash Lall never spoke to each other in the hold, but when they met at the bow they greeted each other.
“Has your sahib told you how much longer we are to endure this misery?” Modhun asked.
“He has better uses for his mouth than speaking to me. Maybe if you—”
“My mouth is for talking. There’s something I want your opinion on.”
Akash Lall grunted.
“I...I’m having dreams,” said Modhun. “More like visions. I see this place we’re going. I see what is going to happen to us.
“Do we make it back home?”
“I can’t tell. The closer we get, the more I see, but it’s still not clear.
“What do you see, then?” asked Akash Lall.
“I see the work. It’s hard. Very hard. I see us suffering and living like prisoners. I see you and me—”
“Yes?”
“We change,” said Modhun, handpicking each word. “We grow.”
“How do you know these are true visions, anyway?”
“Because I’ve always had them. That’s how I ended up at the temple in Benares. When I was a boy, I could find lost animals and money and tell when the rain would fall. I was declared a holy child. All the attention and the wonder got to be too much, though. I started making false predictions and they gave up on me soon after, made me into just another servant, but I never lost the talent.”
“So why do you need my help?” asked Akash Lall.
“Because— It’s like this: about a year ago I started having dreams about a statue of Kali at the temple. It’s made of black marble and uglier than your mother. The fifty-one skulls in its necklace are made of silver, with rubies for eyes. These dreams showed me where to find tools so I could prise the necklace off without making a sound. They showed me how to smuggle it past the guards. They showed me the road to Calcutta—who would help me and where danger waited.
“And the whole time I could hear whispering in my head, telling me that the necklace was mine by right, telling me of all the riches and power I would find if I would just have the courage to take what was so easily taken. That voice was like a snake’s tongue tickling my ear. It was the voice of Kali herself. I’m sure of it.”
“Kali is no goddess to play games with,” said Akash Lall. “She holds dominion over time and reality. She has no sense of boundaries and she delights in playing tricks.”
“It was no trick. She showed me this ship while I was still a hundred miles from Calcutta!”
“This ship?”
“Yes. Right down to the patches on the sails and the writing on the bow. She was right about everything, only now...”
“Now what?”
“Now I see things in store for me that make me think it is a trick after all.”
“I have no experience with such things,” said Akash Lall. “Maybe the priests at—”
“Priests!” Modhun scraped the word off his tongue. “Saddhus and Yogis and Gurus and Swamis—scoundrels all! I lived in The Golden Temple for thirteen years. I know priests. They do nothing but chant words at the people and pretend to be enlightened. Always touching what doesn’t belong to them. Frauds. Liars.”
Akash Lall smiled. “Sounds like a good place for a thief,” he said. “You should have stayed.”
“No. I’ll not be like them.”
“What makes you think you aren’t already?”
Instead of answering, Modhun said, “You have such disdain for me. I keep wondering why you let me stay here. I mean, you could call your pet sahib and have me thrown below, but you don’t.”
“It’s boredom, I suppose,” said Akash Lall. “The rest of them, they’re nothing but hill coolies. They know crops and they know herds and nothing else. You at least have something to say.”
#
Modhun blinked, but that did not disrupt the blackness. It was so thick he could feel it pressing against him—an insistent, liquid, touch. The air reeked of damp and salt and human waste.
Someone grabbed his arm. “Do you have any food?” asked a woman.
“If I did,” said Modhun, “why would I give you any?”
“Not me. My daughter.” The woman took his hand and placed it on the girl’s smooth, skinny shoulder. “She needs to eat.”
Modhun recoiled. Scrambling over random knees and shoulders, he found a corner to explore the folds of his kurta, fingering the hidden seams that held his money. He did not care what the chokidars asked for, he would pay it.
Five minutes later, he was on the deck of the Hesperus for the first time since leaving Calcutta. The moonlight streaming through the mast painted pale wedges and swathes in the shadows. Four other men who had paid for the privilege of clean air were dispersed near the rails, ignoring him. Their eyes all said, “Keep away.” Modhun sympathized. He made his way forward.
Above were the sails, propped up by the wind like dead things, making flat sounds. Below was the ocean, water so black that the moonlight only made it seem blacker still. Modhun turned away from it, suddenly dizzy.
A figure near the bow drew his gaze. The man’s brown skin and white dhoti marked him as a fellow coolie, but he stood with his feet wide, looking to the horizon as if he were lord and captain. Curious, Modhun approached him.
“You’re not allowed here,” said the man. “Coolies are to stay near the hatch.” His voice carried a sense of control which defied his place in the ship’s indentured cargo.
“You’re here,” said Modhun.
“This costs extra.”
“So? You think I can’t pay? You think I’m just another destitute hill coolie?”
“Not everything is paid for with money.”
Up close, the man seemed regal. His hair was long and free. He was a full head taller than Modhun, with big shoulders and a strong neck. His forehead was wide, giving a sense of great intelligence and his eyes seemed to be constantly considering and ordering the world. Small gold hoops in his ears were the only soft touch in his appearance.
“So how come you get to be here?” Modhun asked.
“One of the sahibs in charge of the ship—the one always polishing his sword. He lets me come here if I give him some of what I have in my pants.”
“What?”
“He likes to suck my cock,” the man said simply.
The idea stunned Modhun. For a sahib to engage in such acts seemed to contravene the laws of the universe. The shock must have showed on his face, for the man asked, “Is my language too blunt for you young one?”
“No. I’m no child.”
The man took Modhun’s face in a firm hand and looked close at him. “Hnh,” he said to himself. “A few hairs on their chins and they think they’re men.” After he let Modhun go, he asked, “Does the idea of two men together surprise you?”
“Hardly. I’ve sucked more than my fair share of cock. No one’s ever making me do that again, let me tell you!”
“Is that why you’re throwing your life away and crossing the Kala Pani? To secure fortune and power?”
”I’m just looking for something better,” said Modhun. “Isn’t that why you’re here? Or are you one of those that they kidnapped?”
“No. I’m here because Garrison Commander Plunkett decided that he didn’t want to make a martyr of me. By sending me to Demerara he can erase me from existence without upsetting my followers.”
“Followers?” asked Modhun, on guard. “Are you a holy man?”
“My name is Akash Lall. I’m a bandit. Or at least they call me a bandit.”
“Oh.” Modhun relaxed. “You’re political.
“Yes. The people in my village suffer terr—”
“Please,” said Modhun, holding up his hand. “I’m sure you and your followers had wonderful reasons for breaking into people’s homes and stealing their money and ravishing their daughters. That doesn’t matter to me.”
“Human misery is not—”
“The only human misery I’m concerned about is my own. When I—”
The ship’s bell rang out. Modhun would have to go back below now, unless he felt like bribing the next watch. Akash Lall did not seem concerned about them.
Once in the hold again, Modhun’s mind kept picturing Akash Lall standing on the bow with a sahib kneeling before him. A trembling warmth flushed Modhun’s thighs. He fought his thoughts down. Better by far for him to sleep and leave this cursed vessel behind. He would seek new images in his dreams, visions of his new life to come. Visions which had guided him out of The Golden Temple and which promised him deliverance.
#
The land is flat and green—wild with life and loud with heat. Dark water pours through its veins. Modhun is glad for the heat in Demerara. It comforts him, his bones still shivering from the ship’s icy passage through the far south.
He is pleased that Akash Lall is sent with him to the same estate. The young girl, Kavita, and her mother are with them too. The woman has married on the ship, taking a new, higher-caste, husband to replace the one whose death sent her seeking into this land. No one remarks on the difference in the couple’s status; they have crossed the Kala Pani, the Black Water, and such distinctions no longer have meaning. There are only four other women in their estate’s group of seventy and those are soon ‘married’ as well. Not surprisingly, Akash Lall secures a wife.
The women are to cook and clean for all the men of the estate. The school for the children will be built soon, the overseer tells them. The coolies all live in the former slave quarters of the now-emancipated blacks—a dozen shacks made of ragged board, into which they crowd. It is almost like being back on the ship again.
The work starts immediately, though everyone is weak from the voyage. During slavery, new arrivals were given three years of light work to become acclimatized. Since the coolies’ contracts will last only five years, however, the planters give no such concessions to them. Sunrise to sundown they are in amidst the sugar cane, slashing at waist-high weeds. Modhun is ill almost immediately, the adjustment too severe. There is no respite for him. The overseer lets him know that unless he collapses he has to work. Three other coolies who insist that they are not well enough to work are placed in stocks. One is whipped. All are fined a full week’s pay.
Within a month, Modhun recovers and settles in. This is not the kind of labor that a person can love, or even become accustomed to, but he knows now that it will not break him and that knowledge strengthens his broadening back and straightens his spine after every day spent folded over, hacking and tearing.
#
By the end of the first fortnight on the ship, everyone had a cough—all except the mighty Akash Lall. Modhun was thankful the journey was near its end, for the strain of the crowded hold was becoming too much.
During the day, when enough light leaked in, Modhun would admire Akash Lall from a distance. The man was always in conversation, often smiling, moving about the hold among the coolies, greeting many of them by name. To Modhun, he seemed like a tiger given human shape. His muscles and movements told of restrained strength. Whenever he felt these thoughts bubbling, Modhun would will himself to look away. That part of his life was over. Never again, he had sworn. But his resolve never held and soon he would be back to nourishing his eyes with the golden-brown image of Akash Lall. Something about the man sparked the animal cravings at the back of Modhun’s brain.
The second time Modhun went on deck, he found Akash Lall on the bow again, smoking a cigarette.
“And what did you have to offer the sword-polishing sahib to get tobacco?” asked Modhun.
Akash Lall said nothing. Modhun joined him in watching the horizon. Then, suddenly, the big man was whispering in his ear.
“I know your secret.”
Had Modhun been that obvious with his gazes? “H-how can—”
“I know thieves,” said Akash Lall. “You’re a thief. I’ve seen it in your eyes.” He smirked, then added, “I’ve seen it in your dhoti.” With that, he grabbed at Modhun’s crotch, producing a metallic jingling as he pressed the hardness there.
One fear gave way to another for Modhun. Had Akash Lall simply guessed that any valuables Modhun had hidden would be there, or did he actually know of the necklace of silver skulls that Modhun had stolen in Benares? “So you want a share of it?” Modhun asked. “Or are you planning to take it all from me?”
“There is no honor in stealing from such as you.”
“You think you’re better than me?” Modhun shouted. “You think that kind of thing matters where we’re going?” He pointed at the sea ahead. “This is the Kala Pani. It erases everything. The past won’t matter anymore. Laws, crimes, caste, loyalty, honor. None of it is worth an ounce of goat dung! When we reach this new place, we all start equal.”
Akash Lall simply took a puff of his cigarette. “You’re right,” he said. “This water is going to wash away everything we left behind in Bengal, but remember this: Where we’re going I will have no reason to fight, so no one will name me criminal, but you will always be a thief.”
“I took nothing that I was not entitled to,” said Modhun. “Nothing that I had not already paid the price for.”
“So it was simply fair trade, I suppose?”
“Were your crimes any different?”
“Of course they were different. I was fighting for freedom, for our rights.”
“Freedom from what? The British? They’re the best thing to ever happen to us.”
“The East India Company does nothing but take and bully.”
That started an argument that remained unfinished when Modhun went below deck an hour later.
#
Within a year, eight of them are dead. Sores, fevers, dysentery: Disease finds the coolies easy prey. A dozen are in the sick house. There is a doctor, but he offers little treatment except a place on the floor of a shed built for seven. To miss work, even for sickness, is to lose pay and feel the whip. Modhun has twice escaped the lash by bribing Jacobs, the overseer.
Beatings are given out for the least offense. Zaman and Paltu get five strokes each for laughing while they worked. The two run away with the next full moon. They will walk all the way back to Bengal if they have to, they tell the others. The decomposed bodies of two unknown men are found not long after, in a canal fifty miles to the east.
Naturally, it is Akash Lall who organizes the coolies’ first protest. They steal two boats and cross to the estate on the other side of the river. When the police come, Akash offers their terms: They will not go back until Jacobs is removed. So resolutely does he argue, and so skillfully keep the coolies from breaking ranks, that their demand is met.
Things change only slightly, however. No one bothers even asking about the long-promised school anymore. The sick house remains a horror. Modhun sees the inside only once and it is enough. The smell of putrid flesh and the moans of men too delirious to recognize their coming death make him vomit on the bare floor where they lie.
He reacts much the same when Kavita is found unconscious in the horse paddock, naked and bleeding from between her legs. The girl never manages to speak and dies from her injuries soon after.
#
A month on the ship! They should have arrived in Demerara twice over already. The chokidars told them only that they were almost there.
Modhan made a third trip topside. He and Akash Lall never spoke to each other in the hold, but when they met at the bow they greeted each other.
“Has your sahib told you how much longer we are to endure this misery?” Modhun asked.
“He has better uses for his mouth than speaking to me. Maybe if you—”
“My mouth is for talking. There’s something I want your opinion on.”
Akash Lall grunted.
“I...I’m having dreams,” said Modhun. “More like visions. I see this place we’re going. I see what is going to happen to us.
“Do we make it back home?”
“I can’t tell. The closer we get, the more I see, but it’s still not clear.
“What do you see, then?” asked Akash Lall.
“I see the work. It’s hard. Very hard. I see us suffering and living like prisoners. I see you and me—”
“Yes?”
“We change,” said Modhun, handpicking each word. “We grow.”
“How do you know these are true visions, anyway?”
“Because I’ve always had them. That’s how I ended up at the temple in Benares. When I was a boy, I could find lost animals and money and tell when the rain would fall. I was declared a holy child. All the attention and the wonder got to be too much, though. I started making false predictions and they gave up on me soon after, made me into just another servant, but I never lost the talent.”
“So why do you need my help?” asked Akash Lall.
“Because— It’s like this: about a year ago I started having dreams about a statue of Kali at the temple. It’s made of black marble and uglier than your mother. The fifty-one skulls in its necklace are made of silver, with rubies for eyes. These dreams showed me where to find tools so I could prise the necklace off without making a sound. They showed me how to smuggle it past the guards. They showed me the road to Calcutta—who would help me and where danger waited.
“And the whole time I could hear whispering in my head, telling me that the necklace was mine by right, telling me of all the riches and power I would find if I would just have the courage to take what was so easily taken. That voice was like a snake’s tongue tickling my ear. It was the voice of Kali herself. I’m sure of it.”
“Kali is no goddess to play games with,” said Akash Lall. “She holds dominion over time and reality. She has no sense of boundaries and she delights in playing tricks.”
“It was no trick. She showed me this ship while I was still a hundred miles from Calcutta!”
“This ship?”
“Yes. Right down to the patches on the sails and the writing on the bow. She was right about everything, only now...”
“Now what?”
“Now I see things in store for me that make me think it is a trick after all.”
“I have no experience with such things,” said Akash Lall. “Maybe the priests at—”
“Priests!” Modhun scraped the word off his tongue. “Saddhus and Yogis and Gurus and Swamis—scoundrels all! I lived in The Golden Temple for thirteen years. I know priests. They do nothing but chant words at the people and pretend to be enlightened. Always touching what doesn’t belong to them. Frauds. Liars.”
Akash Lall smiled. “Sounds like a good place for a thief,” he said. “You should have stayed.”
“No. I’ll not be like them.”
“What makes you think you aren’t already?”
Instead of answering, Modhun said, “You have such disdain for me. I keep wondering why you let me stay here. I mean, you could call your pet sahib and have me thrown below, but you don’t.”
“It’s boredom, I suppose,” said Akash Lall. “The rest of them, they’re nothing but hill coolies. They know crops and they know herds and nothing else. You at least have something to say.”
#