A small village, atop a hillock in the foothills of a great mountain. Green tea leaves line the fields as far one can see. The year is 1919. Neutered  whispers of Jallianwala Bagh can be heard in the smoke rooms of the Indian National Congress.
The birth of a thunderstorm in the monsoon season, unheralded, short-lived, evanescent. The leaves shiver in the gust of the winds; the storm is near, the good earth quivers beneath the fulminating thunder of the sky above. The clouds brew into a viscous knot, swirling and twirling, grey clouds twisting. Suddenly all stops. The master sky painter takes a breath, and looks at his landscape. For a moment the relentless cawing of the crows arrest, the rustling of the tea leaves, the constant shuttling of the women folk, all stop. A riveting silence. The master sky painter picks up his brush and with bold, dark lines rips across his landscape. A torrent falls upon the once green hillocks, now turned into verdigris by the shifting of the shade. An inundation, for a moment, all the frogs and toads and stags and does and gnus and cows and crows, they all rejoice in the monsoon rain. The tea leaves oscillate like little pendulums. Then suddenly, the master painter picks up his brush. The painting is over: the Sky-painter is bored. And the tea leaves go back to normal again.
A courier of the local zamindar rides on a black mare. He gallops through the tea fields. Imagine a small, scruffy-looking man, with a scar, received from the kick of a mare, dividing his lip into two halves. The courier slings a Lee-Enfield around his shoulder. He reaches a small hut, the roof tiled with bricks, and the walls held strong by mud and reed. He calls out to the man of the house:
“Shudra, open your door.”
The tenant farmer obliges.
“The tax ledger says you have a daughter of fourteen?”
“Yes, huzoor.”
The courier began to stroll around the floor of the hut, curling his black moustache.
“The king, may he reign a thousand years, is having the festivities of his twelfth birthday. As your daughter is of age, she must be sent to the palace within a fortnight.”
“Huzoor?”
“That is all.” Mounting his mare, the courier added, “Resume your slaving.”
As the courier leaves, the wife sits silently, and stares on.
It is the day before the first monsoon. The heat breaks sweat on the backs of the women folk, shuttling between the house and the field. The heat of midday rises into the air; the sky is calm. Storm clouds brew silently in the blue sky, slight rumblings from the heavens. Children frolic in the tea fields. A small hog-deer grazes on tealeaves alone in the distance. From afar, a leopard lurks in the tealeaves. The sky begins to rumble, as small droplets of rainfall from the heavens. The small hog-deer, unsociable and timid, carries its head low, focusing on the tealeaves, slowly grinding away the green. A muscle in the leopard’s leg twitches, extending ever so far. The taught leopard then breaks into a furious pursuit, in the distance the hog-deer sees the commotion and picks up its head. A bit of thunder, and then a flash of lightning. The pitter-patter of the rain intensifies, and the children return to their huts. The storm clouds brew, viscously in the sky. Then silence, a total calm. The hog deer runs with its tail upright, runs for its existence, its life. But to no avail, the leopard is a mighty beast. And the leopard pounces on the small, infant hog-deer. Far away, a small clan of hog-deer watch as one of their young is yet again torn apart, entrails flailing out. The storm clouds recede, and briefly, the timid sun pokes out its head, and lets the sky know of its arrival. The sun sets to form a watercolor sky, the layers melting together. The purple and the orange mixing into a beautiful mélange. Then darkness, the glory of the day pushed aside by the absence of light. At dawn, a pale sun rises. At dawn, the tenant farmer packs his mule, and heads for the zamindar’s estate. 
The tenant farmer rides his mules for the entire morn resting for only small water breaks near the ponds of water that have collected by yesterday’s storm. As he enters the small town, he turns his mule away from the shrines devoted to Lakshmi, and instead veers through the muddied, overflowing sewage water. He averts his eyes from the Brahmin priests in saffron as they pass him by. Near mid-day, he reaches the estate. A black gate adorned with gold lace lions, inscribed by the long forgotten motto: “acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt”. The farmer heaves open the gates, and walks towards the zamindar’s dwelling where the boy king is towered by his paternal uncle. The tenant farmer, bows his head, and fixes his eyes towards his feet.
“Huzoor, you have sent for my daughter, in order for you to seek pleasure for the festivities of your birthday. Yet I cannot allow it, on the grounds of my creed. My daughter is but fourteen. She must remain chaste until marriage.”
The uncle spits.
“What audacity! The shudra speaks of creed.”
“Please sire, spare my daughter. As is the tradition of the Ved…”
The uncle breaks out into a furious rage and hurls a wine jug towards the shudra. Suddenly, he becomes cool. He sits on his throne and begins to curl his moustache.
“Very well, O shudra. As you are the greatest champion of our creed, the utmost preserver of our culture, you shall bear the burden of your audacity.”
The tenant farmer bares his chest, and boldly declares, “Whip me to death; I shan’t ever lose my creed.”
“Sentries, take him away.”
A feeble sun shines in the east. Clouds cloak the sun once more, and in the distance, the slight grumblings of the incoming storm begin. Soon the grumblings get louder, they begin to shake the ground, the Earth quivering at the commands of the sky. The Sky Painter is bored no more, and he drives his brush filled with grays and dark blues and black over the tender yellows and orange and light blue. Thunder roars, the animals bow down to the skies, take shelter in the woods. Lightning strikes and the massive oak, that has stood for centuries, is cut down and falls violently on the ground. The sky painter throws streaks of white lightning into the sky, and draws viscous black clouds, swirling up above like milk in tea. The tea leaves lighten suddenly, perhaps sensing the coming of the deluge. Mothers rush their frolicking children into their huts. Then silence. Everything becomes still. The sky painter steps back before he lays another stroke. He steps back and holds a bucket of blue. For a moment, he becomes lost, daydreaming in the world of his own creation. For a moment, there is calm.
The whips fall hard on the tenant farmer’s bare back. Lash after lash, stroke after stroke. The sentries take turns whipping and beating the man. His skin is black and blue from the bruising, the fabric of his skin cracked from the vicious teeth of the jute. The sentries gleefully pour salt all across the cracks. He screams in agony, and cries “O bhagvan.” The uncle, the man who shall never be king, laughs at his misery. The sentries tie him up and cast him down the steps of the palace, each step crunching his bones. But the tenant farmer refuses to yield crying, “God is great.” His howls towards the heavens are greeted with thundering laughter.
A deluge pours from the stars. The sky painter, in a mad stupor, splashes shades of blue and grey all across the painting. The tenant farmer’s welts sear as water singes his skin. He farmer raises his arms pleading for mercy from the heavens. Pleading for the gods to rid him of his misery. “I am your son, I am in pain, can you not see O Great God?” Thunder reverberates across the heavens, the star dance mockingly across the Milky Way. The tenant farmer breaks out into hysteria, laughing at his own misfortune. A colonial dam collapses as the flood gates burst open. The tenant farmer drowns, his lungs pulverized by the rushing currents. On the first day of the monsoon season, a flood engulfs the small tea village. Huts are swept away.
Slowly, the men and women build first the zamindar’s estate, and then rebuild their own huts. They tie together thatches, and assemble mud for their walls. The tenant farmer’s daughter, bored from village life, runs away from her family, runs far away from the tea village atop the mountains, runs towards the city lights. Many years go by. Fireworks celebrate a new birth of freedom. The bloodshed of the Partition does not reach the tea village, atop a hillock in the foothills of a great mountain. Only stories arrive, stories of tens of thousands of corpses filling caravans of trains. One day, the village’s golden boy returns from the city; twenty years after leaving as a young boy. He stops by to talk to the tenant farmers wife. He tells the wife, the mother, of her daughter’s wild life in the city. He tells of how she lived her last days as a prostitute by the side of the slums, and how she finally succumbed to syphilis. “Imagine, what her father would have thought”, he says cursorily. The mother can only sit silently, sip her Earl Grey Darjeeling tea, and stare on into the sea of green tea leaves.