Sitaram
Sitaram was born on September 23, 1630 in a small settlement in the Narmada valley, in what is now Madhya Pradesh. Mughal officers claimed revenue from the countryside through village headmen and record-keepers, but daily authority sat closer: elders, caste councils, the men who controlled irrigation turns, and the landholders whose groves and grazing patches framed village boundaries. Sitaram’s family spoke the local Hindi dialect and kept a household form of Hindu practice. Each morning his mother, Lakshmi, set a clay lamp by the wall-niche shrine and placed a pinch of grain and a dab of ghee before the image and a small stone kept for the village deity; on festival days she added marigolds and a little sweetened milk.
He arrived as the third child in a house that already held his father Bhairav, his elder brother Ramdas, his older sister Ganga, and Bhairav’s mother Durgabai. The home was part of a joint compound where Bhairav’s two younger brothers and their wives shared tools, cattle, and grain storage, though each family kept separate cooking fires. Ganga died in 1631, before Sitaram formed clear memories of her, but her absence stayed present in how Lakshmi checked a child’s forehead after the rains and how she tightened the thread amulet at Sitaram’s neck. After Sitaram came more children. Kanhaiya was born in 1632 and died within days. Mohan arrived in 1634 and lasted less than a month. Shivram, born in 1636, lived a full year before fever took him in 1637. Funerals came quickly and quietly for infants. For Durgabai, who ran the women hard and kept a sharp eye on stored grain, a child’s death meant more offerings and more caution with water.
Sitaram grew into a small, wiry boy who moved in close to the adults. He took well to routine. In the cool season he carried cow-dung cakes to dry on the wall and learned to stack them so air could move through. When the first rains came, he walked the field edges with Bhairav, pressing down soft places in the bunds with his heel. Ramdas, two years older, treated him as a shadow that needed pushing. He made Sitaram bring the rope for the plough, fetch a lost peg, count out seed by the wooden measure. If Sitaram hesitated, Ramdas snapped at him. When Sitaram did it right, Ramdas gave a brief nod and moved on.
Durgabai died in 1644. Sitaram was old enough to remember the courtyard full of relatives, the smell of clarified butter and smoke, and the way the men spoke in lowered voices. His father took the body to the river with other men. Lakshmi’s offerings that week were spare: a lamp at dusk, water in a brass lota, a little rice set aside. After that funeral Sitaram began to flinch at coughs that lasted more than a day, and he watched the monsoon season with a careful, tense attention.
By his early teens he worked like an adult on many days. He drove bullocks to the field at dawn and liked the first quiet stretch before others arrived. He avoided speaking at the weekly haat unless he had to. When an elder asked him a question, his mind filled with possible wrong answers and his tongue slowed; he glanced at Ramdas to speak for him. It brought scolding at home—Bhairav wanted a son who could bargain and argue—but Sitaram still preferred tasks with clear steps: cutting fodder, cleaning the ploughshare, measuring grain into a basket.
At seventeen he went with a small group to a seasonal fair and stayed out late near the edge of the camp. There he met another young man from a neighboring hamlet, and they had a brief, secret sexual encounter behind a line of carts. The next morning Sitaram kept his eyes down and spoke little on the road back. For weeks he watched who looked at him in the village and wondered who knew. No one confronted him, but the fear stayed and shaped how he moved through crowds.
In 1654 he married Rukmini, brought into his household with bangles and a small bundle of clothes. She learned Lakshmi’s shrine routine and added her own order to the kitchen space, keeping lentils in one earthen jar and oil in another. Sitaram treated her with steady courtesy but without desire. He rose before sunrise, washed at the well, and took a moment at the shrine while Rukmini lit the lamp. They shared a bed when the household expected it, and children came. He did not tell jokes easily, but he liked hearing Ramdas tease others, and sometimes he smiled into his cup of thin buttermilk when a neighbor was mocked for boasting.
Soon after the marriage he met Kallu, a man from another village, at the weekly market. Kallu sold cotton bolls from a neighboring district and lingered at the river ghat on days when pilgrims came. The first time they walked together along the water, Sitaram’s hands shook. Kallu noticed and said nothing, only waited. They met in short, planned moments after that, behind the cotton stalls or at the ghat’s edge where thick tamarind trees blocked the view from the road. Sitaram watched the paths before and after. Each meeting eased something in him and tightened something else. Rukmini complained once that he spoke to her like an elder to a child. He answered with chores done early and grain measured carefully, not with warmth.
Their first child, Ramcharan, was born in 1656. The boy grew quickly, and Sitaram took him on short trips to the fields once he could walk without stumbling. A daughter, Sita, was born in 1659 and died the same day. Lakshmi burned incense and placed a small ball of cooked rice at the shrine, then went back to work.
That same year Sitaram was beaten in a quarrel over irrigation. At the water turn a neighbor, Bansidhar, argued that Sitaram had taken more time than his share. Voices rose. Bansidhar and his brother struck Sitaram with fists and a lathi, leaving him bruised and limping. He did not go to the Mughal officials; instead Ramdas and a village elder forced an apology and a small payment in grain. After that Sitaram arrived early to water turns and carried himself with visible caution, letting others talk first.
Govind was born in 1662, and Kamla in 1665.
Lakshmi’s strength failed in her early fifties. She coughed through the cool season, lost weight, and died in 1662 before Kamla was born. Bhairav aged fast after her death. By 1663 he needed help rising, bathing, and eating. Sitaram and Rukmini fed him soft rice and watered milk and called Vaid Narottam for herbs and advice. Rukmini warmed oil for massage, and Sitaram carried his father to a shaded place in the courtyard during the hottest weeks. At night Sitaram lay awake, counting what grain remained and listening for his father’s breath, then scolded himself for the panic and got up before dawn anyway. Bhairav died in 1666.
Caregiving years ate savings. Ramcharan, now ten, walked the cattle to graze and carried water without being asked. Sitaram watched him work and felt relief that at least one child had grown past the dangerous early years. Cash demands did not stop. Revenue payments and market prices pulled on the household, and talk spread of road trouble to the south as conflict in the Deccan pushed riders and soldiers through. In 1664, with Ramdas distracted by his own growing family, Sitaram began cutting timber from a grove claimed by a local landholder and guarded on paper more than in practice. He went at dawn with a small axe, loaded branches onto a cart, and sold the wood at the haat as fuel. Once he took fallen branches from a boundary tree in another cultivator’s field. He repeated the cutting through 1667, stopping only when he heard that a guard had been beaten in another village for trying to enforce the grove’s claim.
In 1668 the monsoon failed badly. Grain thinned in the bins. Sitaram borrowed from Hiralal, a bania lender who sat in the market shade with weights and a ledger. Sitaram could not read what was written, so he listened to the spoken terms, asked Ramdas once for confirmation, then nodded and pressed his thumb to the paper. By 1669 he had mortgaged part of his holding and sold a pair of bullocks. Through 1670 the household ate millet gruel more often than wheat, and Rukmini stretched lentils with wild greens. Sitaram avoided Hiralal’s gaze at the haat and sent Govind, still a boy, to carry small loads to market so Sitaram would not have to speak. Through these years he still slipped away to meet Kallu when he could, timing visits around pilgrim days and market trips, though the meetings grew less frequent as debt and worry tightened around him.
In 1671 Sitaram suffered a serious accident while unloading a bullock cart after harvest. The cart shifted and pinned him, twisting his leg and hip. He could not walk properly for weeks. Ramdas and Govind managed the fields, and Rukmini handled the household. Vaid Narottam set a simple splint and gave bitter herbs. Sitaram lay in the shade, listening to the work he could not do, and forced himself to recite short prayers to Ram and to the household deity rather than spiral into panic.
Recovery came slowly, then turned into a stretch of improvement. From 1675 onward Sitaram saved whenever he could, buying back strength in practical pieces: a better yoke, a calf, then another animal.
Ramcharan had grown into a steady worker who could hold the plough handles straight and manage the bullocks without supervision. He caught a fever in 1676 that would not break. Sitaram sat with him through the nights, pressing wet cloth to his forehead and calling again for the vaid, but Ramcharan died at twenty. The loss left Sitaram short of labor and short of patience with his own worry. After the funeral the meetings with Kallu stopped; Sitaram no longer had the heart for secrecy or the strength for the risk. Govind, still a teenager, took on more work. Kamla, nearing marriageable age, became another pressure point; Sitaram counted what he could offer without losing the field.
He acquired an extra strip of land in 1678 when a neighbor needed quick cash. He showed up for boundary checks, stood quietly while others argued, and spoke only when asked, but when he did speak he kept his words plain and consistent. Elders began asking him to witness agreements and settle minor disputes, not because he enjoyed it, but because he did not exaggerate.
By 1680 Govind had set up his own household nearby, close enough to share labor but separate enough to keep grain stores distinct. Sitaram and Rukmini lived alone then, with Kamla visiting from her husband’s village after marriage.
A respiratory illness took Sitaram in August 1683. He coughed hard, produced phlegm, and could not keep strength through the day. Rukmini and Govind’s household brought warm water, herbs from the vaid, and clarified butter for small offerings at the shrine, but he died on August 20 at fifty-two. His body was carried to the Narmada and cremated on a wood pyre; his family offered water and sesame, and Rukmini placed a final lamp at the household niche that evening.