PANDIT RAMCHANDRA BHARADWAJ WAS a dignified man, with a thick mustache and oiled hair, disembarking from the first-class section of the Sunday-morning express along with the white businessmen, arriving in the desert heat dressed in a vest with jacket and tie. The man spoke with the accent of the Punjabi officers in the British Indian Army, or the civil servants who worked as engineers and accountants in district offices. Meeting him, Jivan was conscious of his own dungarees, his rough hands, of the shaky wagon in which they rattled home, the dust that covered them by arrival. Jivan addressed him as pandit-ji even though Jivan was his elder. RamChandra asked for a moment to refresh himself. With relief, Jivan showed him the bedroom in the Eggenberger house, which Kishen had swept clean the day before.

RamChandra emerged an hour later in a crisp and starched red cotton kurta and white churidar. He had fastened the collar on this simple dress with gold buttons and chain. Jivan had doubts about the man’s expected lecture, had hopes that he would not talk about revolution, but approved of this transformation; suddenly, Pandit RamChandra had become familiar.

The Indian men of the Imperial Valley arrived by early afternoon in a stream of wagons, on horseback, on buckboards, even in a gleaming Model T, the dust rising on the path to the Eggenberger farm. Under Jivan’s direction, Amarjeet told them to leave the vehicles in a fallow field in the back, where the gathering remained hidden from the road. The men arrived red-faced, with glistening skin, sweat-dampened shirts carrying the scent of physical exertion. Heat was trapped inside dastars and beards.

Amarjeet watered their horses while the guests stepped over crusted dirt, gathered under a large tent with open sides. They settled themselves on the rented wooden chairs that stood in long rows facing east. Behind them were tables with vessels of food, some of which Kishen and Ram had cooked, others that had been brought by the men themselves: bowls of lentils, fried vegetables, chicken curry, and goat korma.

More than two hundred men had come from the surrounding towns, and Jivan Singh knew them all. He had lent them farming implements, recommended them for loans, found them work. He had been their sardar and protector in an unfamiliar land. They greeted Kishen with humility, with palms pressed together, addressing her as chachi-ji, bringing her dishes to the tables and pouring water for other guests, things they would not have done in Punjab. It was not often that they gathered like this: all the countrymen living in older Calexico and younger Niland and all the fields and towns that lay in between.