Who Would There Be to Sit with Our Boy?

One of the largest and most impressive compounds in Dharmnagri had been built by three Dhimar brothers who farmed some twenty acres. By 1990, their father was perhaps in his nineties. He had become very frail, and he died while we were there. In his younger days, he had been a prosperous farmer. The land remained in his name until his death, but his sons had already been farming it separately in three equal portions for several years. When we first stayed in Dharmnagri, the old father, his three sons, and their wives and children all lived in kiln-brick houses built around a courtyard, at a time when most people in Dharmnagri were still living in single-storied and single-roomed thatched adobe houses. Inside the spacious courtyard, several milch animals would be stalled. Outside, the pillared veranda to the front of the complex, with yet more tethered cattle and equipment such as plows and the fodder chopper, stood in marked contrast to the houses round about. By 1990, the marriages of six of the old man’s grandsons and a growing generation of great grandchildren had impelled several of the couples to relocate to new homes on the outskirts of Dharmnagri, built on sites where their cattle byres had previously stood.