“It is hard work. Right now, cotton is still experimental here. But together you could bring in a large crop next season.”

“You are flattering me,” Ram said, then, clearing his throat, unsure of his boldness, he asked, “Bhai-ji? Why don’t you join?”

“I know nothing about cotton. In Ludhiana, we do not grow it. But for you—it is different. You come from a canal colony. You know cotton. You know the desert. You know how to flood a field correctly.”

Ram heard his own intake of breath. “Karak does not know about farming in a canal district?” Ram said.

“Not at all. We use well water.” Jivan snorted. “We pray for rain.” He still was not looking at Ram. “In my first season, I did not irrigate correctly. The front ten acres had too much water and the back ten too little. I did not level the field properly. Twice I burned the soil, because I watered when the plant was not high enough to keep the moisture under the desert sun. What does Karak know of irrigation? He joined the army at sixteen years old. It’s true that I have been teaching him. But your knowledge of cotton, your knowledge of irrigation”—Jivan’s eyes finally met his—“is very valuable.”

“I have a wife,” Ram said.

“I was in the same situation as you. But see what I accomplished here,” he said, without pride. “Kishen Kaur came to join me. That was good.”

Ram felt a wave of perspiration. So many things possible and impossible at the same time. He had not expected this. “I have a home, bhai-ji. I want to go back.”

HE HAD KNOWN PADMA since they were children. Not only when their families had shifted to the colony near the River Chenab after the British enticed them to move, but before that, in Jullundur District, where his uncle had five small patches of land near River Sutlej. His uncle and her father had served in the army together. They had been friends. At Vaisakhi and Diwali, when their villages would go to the riverbank to celebrate, the families would set up camp next to each other. Their mothers and the other women, the children from both families, sat together in that throng of people, while the men settled themselves apart. That was his earliest memory of Padma. She was a baby when he was a child. In the confusion and noise of the festival, he would fetch things to help her mother: fruit for the baby, or her sling, or rice mixed with buttermilk. He would make faces to stop her from crying. The boys were free to go from the women’s camp to the men’s circle. But Ram preferred his mother. Not that he didn’t play kabaddi at the edge of the water, or take part in the wrestling matches, or run in the footraces with Ishwar and his other cousins. He did those things too.