THE RICHEST MAN in Contentment, Awnnoda Roy, had recently found himself in a bit of a fix. Officers of the Land Survey had set up camp on the fields just north of his neighbourhood, determined to re-evaluate the legal ownerships of Contentment’s lands. Had it just been the surveyors, Awnnoda Roy might have managed to keep his holdings secure. But this time, senior officials had accompanied the field team and set up a base office on the banks of the river. They had also brought along a number of junior enforcement officials. It was a big production, and it showed that they meant business.

Almost all the gentlemen of the village owned some parcels of lands—fruit of their ancestors’ machinations and labour. But for the last couple of generations, the gentlemen of the brahmin neighbourhood had lived in placid, slothful unproductivity. The boats of their lives had been dragged out of the ebb and flow of life’s currents, and buried securely into the silt of their inheritance. The stagnant water of the shores was all they were capable of navigating. The sudden arrival of surveyors had naturally alarmed this change-averse, comfortably corrupt coterie. After all, who knew? Maybe Ram had appropriated some of Shyam’s land as his own at some point, and Jodu may have been paying taxes on ten acres of land when he actually owned twelve. Not that it was anyone’s business. This survey nonsense would dig up these wholly unnecessary details, and disrupt the cosy, comfortable lives that these families had made for themselves.

Awnnoda Roy was worried about these problems as well, but his true troubles were of a slightly different nature, and somewhat more severe. One of his cousins had left Contentment several years ago and settled permanently in the west. As a consequence, Awnnoda Roy had been enjoying the undisputed ownership of his mango and jackfruit orchards all these years, as well as the income from his cousin’s share of the land. He had planned to quietly transfer all that property—or at least some of it—to his own name during the next survey. His cousin lived too far away to keep track of local surveys, and by the time word reached him, if it ever did, it would have been too late. But people could never mind their own business, and some busybody had written to his cousin, warning him that he was about to be cheated out of his inheritance. As a result, his cousin’s eldest son, Neeren, had arrived ten days ago to supervise the survey on their share of the property.

Not only did this crush Awnnoda Roy’s dreams of legally owning the land he already considered his own, it had thrown up a host of other problems as well. First, the rooms that belonged to his cousin were the best rooms in their common ancestral home. Awnnoda Roy had occupied them as soon as his cousin had left Contentment, and had been using them with impunity for the last twenty years. Now that his cousin’s boy was here, he’d had to relinquish that cherished control. On top of that, the boy Neeren was a fashionable young college student with wastefully modern ways. He used one room for sleeping and another as his study—forcing Awnnoda to move heavy trunks, tall stacks of paperwork and myriad other things down the stairs from the first floor to the ground floor. It didn’t end there; one of his cousin’s rooms on the ground floor was being used as a storeroom to house cheap wooden beams from the Palit neighbourhood. Now he had been informed that he would have to vacate that room as well.

Late afternoon was just turning into evening that day. Awnnoda Roy was not yet done for the day, for he still had several assembled debtors to deal with. However, men of the village had already begun to assemble in his temple courtyard for their usual rounds of evening dice and chitchat, and he wanted to be done as quickly as possible.

A young woman had been sitting on the ground beside the courtyard with her little boy, her head covered with the loose end of her sari. She was clearly poor, likely a farmhand’s wife. Watching the other debtors leave one by one, she finally stood up, thinking her turn had finally come.

Awnnoda Roy peered at her through his glasses. ‘Who’re you? What do you want?’

The woman began untying a knot at the end of the sari.

‘I’ve managed some money . . . it was very hard,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Take it and release the barn key, master. Such hardships we’re going through, I can’t describe . . .’

Awnnoda Roy’s expression brightened.

‘Hori!’ he called out to his junior accountant. ‘Take the money from her and count it. Then check the date in the notebook and calculate the interest once more to see how much is left.’

The young woman took the money out of the knot and put it down in front of Horihor. He counted the amount. ‘Five rupees?’ he asked the woman.

‘That’s fine,’ said Awnnoda Roy. ‘Take it and make a note.’ Then he turned to the woman. ‘What about the rest of the money?’

‘Take that for now, master. I’ll pay the rest later. I’ll work hard to raise the money. Release my barn key against these five rupees for now . . . let me feed my little Mato. Of course, our home is leaking, but I thought, let me save my starving child first. I can leave the repairs for later . . .’

The woman was speaking as if the barn key were already in her hands. Alas, she didn’t know what stuff Awnnoda Roy was made of. Even before she could finish, Awnnoda Roy exploded.

‘Listen to this hag’s demands! Forty rupees—that’s how much you owe me, with interest. “Take five rupees and unlock my barn!” The nerve of you lower-caste people, honestly. Go