“They were in the orchard. Hands bound behind their backs with rope, they were all kneeling in a neat row facing the river, first the men, then the women. At the end of the row was a girl. Her hands were not bound; she was so slight and so pale that she looked sickly. There were at least a dozen people standing around, carrying rifles and stripper clips, dressed in green fatigues. One of them stepped forward and began speaking.
'It is a heinous crime to take this land away from the hands that till it, from the ones who toil in it and whose toil you reap. For this crime, and the crimes you have committed against the people of Izumi for all these long years, you and your family, are hereby sentenced to death. This is the verdict of the people’s court.'”
That’s a passage from the first chapter of Ruthvika Rao’s novel The Fertile Earth. The second chapter begins in 1955, fifteen years before the executions. It revolves around the children in two families in Irumi: Vijaya and Sree (daughters of the landowner) and Krishna and Ranga (sons of a widowed servant in the landowner's household.)
One day, the children decide to go hunting for a tiger that the landowner has been tracking. Young Sree slips off a cliff and, although she survives, is sickly the rest of her life. The older brother Ranga is blamed and whipped unmercifully by the landowner. Ranga bides his time, serving, until as an adult he leaves and joins a Marxist movement bent on making cruel landowners pay.
The book jacket says this book “is a vast, ambitious debut that is equal parts historical, political, and human, with the enduring ties of love and family loyalty at its heart.”
If you’re interested in reading a novel about the struggle between classes in 20th century India, then you must read The Fertile Earth by Ruthvika Rao.
