WRITING ON THE WALL

: the art of counting and small talk. Angoori Devi, her toothless mother-in-law, blinks away tears as she tells you how her daughter-in-law was a matriculate ‘’more educated than even my son.’’
Though small, Nirmala’s shop flourished, with the villagers preferring to do their shopping at the Taayi’s who would not only greet them respectfully but would also not mind giving them goods on credit for as long as six months. “She adapted her business to the farming cycle and did well,’’ says Angrez.
So did her two sons, who would often lend her a helping hand. Villagers remember Pradeep as the more business-minded of the two. Though both the brothers had a similar birth defect on one of their feet that kept them away from the playground, Amit tried his hand at Cricket when he turned 15, becoming part of the local team. On the field he made an impression more for his spirit than the game. “He was very cheerful and never got into a fight with anyone,’’ recalls Sahib Singh, the young village sarpanch, who was a year junior to Pradeep in the local Government Senior High School and then at DAV College in Kurukshetra.
Studies did not interest Pradeep, or Shilla as the villagers call him, and soon after Class XI, he began to work as a commission agent. “It’s not an easy job, you take money from people on loan and then give it out at a higher interest,’’ explains Janak Raj Singla, one of his uncles.
Sahib Singh says though Pradeep may not have had much seed money, he could garner enough from the NRI cash-rich region where farmers are loath to keep their money in banks. Soon, the brothers became household names in neighbouring villages such as Talli Farm, home to a large number of NRIs from the Lobana community.
A couple of years ago, Pradeep did run into trouble with Brahm Prakash, a Jat who said he had been short-changed, but the panchayat sorted out the trouble amicably. Today Brahm Prakash is the first on the list of debtors the brothers left on the wall. “Our villagers trust the mahajans blindly, they are our any-time bankers,’’ says Sahib Singh.

The mass deaths have reopened the fissures between arhtiyas and farmers with a section of traders saying they would not lend money to farmers any longer. Calling Mam Chand a martyr to the cause of...

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