1. The Prey, the Jungle and the Dry Earth
It was the day of the Tuesday bazaar. The red pebbled earth was wet from the night’s drizzle. Drops of water still trickled from the Sagwan leaves. The makeshift shops sprang up with the help of blue polythene tied up to make a sort of a cover. The big red ants were drawing a brown line with alacrity in their busy crawling along the thick tree trunk. Then as suddenly they would disappear in the crumbling dusty earth of the mole. You could even be rewarded with the amazing sight of a crazy helter skelter jig if they inadvertently crawled up somebody’s leg.
Mangru Topno, Shibu Kujur, Balu, Birsa all of them were busy, engrossed, They would hunt small fishes, mushrooms, tubers and crabs after the bazaar was over. Cook it later over the wood fire in the jungle. Then make merry over a swig of hadia, the local rice wine. But first they had to earn some money.
Mangru waits with a skipping heart, the flute tied to a slim cloth on his waist. Itwaria and Fultusia covering their mouths with their palms giggle merrily, shyly as they turn around and look back seeking the boys all the time. The Burunsh flower stuck in the coils of their hair begins to flutter loosely above their ears. The thick silver anklets encircling their dark ankles are like lightening flashes in grey clouds. Mangru’s teeth also shine in the smile like a blaze in the night.
The crowd in the bazaar swells. On the ground are spread the bounties, woven baskets, ropes, hemp trays of various shapes, bamboo brooms, tassels, conch and shell necklaces, herbs and wild spices, bunches of leafy spinaches tied with thin twigs, wild plants and eatable stems, fried crawlies and brown ants in leaf bowls, rustic local sweets in thick syrup smattered with dead drowned ants, cheap watches, colorful sunglasses, printed nylon cloth and god knows what else. The pastor of the village church, Father John Ekka, taking care not to get his white robe soiled, passes by. It was last Sunday when during the baptism of Maria Kujur’s child, the infant had bathed the holy pastor with his water. He had almost dropped the child with distaste. Where was his humanity and compassion for mankind then? The group of women snigger at him as he passes.
The sound buzzes, moves here and there, meanders through the sheds, hovers a little bit for a while, sharp and shrill in the bargains, bickering in the intoxicated swigs of the local cheap wine, provoking and hiding in the smothered laughter, then in the dying embers of a long tiring day, defeated and flickering, restlessly shivering like the dying blaze of a candle wick being put out.
As the night descends sluggishly, everything winds up. The flames of the campfire reveals the signs of the rectangular impressions of the discarded shops on the ground, the scraps of paper fluttering in the breeze, the used clay bowls and the leaf plates strewn around. The jingle of the coins, the fresh crackle of the rupee notes pervade the air. Some faces are tired, sad and lost, the cracked soles dusty with the jungle clay, the rubber slippers and the desolate meandering lonely pathways lost and sometimes suddenly found in the silence of the forest.
The magic of the forest has vanished. It has been lost forever in all truthfulness. The forest does not offer anything now. The water holes have dried up, the granite stones throw fire, the animals have hidden themselves somewhere in the deep. It has been times immemorial since a hunt was made. The arrows and spears are now mere toys of some bygone age. Singbonga the Sun God is also angry, upset, and so rains fire at them. Mundas, Kharias, Oraons all of them look up at the sky and the sky throws rain, the water rains down drop by drop. The dark of the night piles up layers after layers on the day. so much so that nothing is visible now, not even your own hands. The young men of the village gulp and breathe in the darkness, the desolation, all day long and all night long. There is nothing else left for them to do. So dark it is that they cannot even see the dreams. Even if Mangru plays the flute, still the dreams drown in the darkness.
The small shed of the makeshift shops shrink every Tuesday when the bazaar sets up. The gunny bags of potatoes and onions loaded on the city bound trucks also sees a few boys, with their legs hanging out from the back of the floor of the truck, the small particles of red earth of their land still preserved under the skin of their nails. Sometimes, one or two girls too, hiding the tattoos on their wrists and foreheads, to work as maids, cleaning utensils and tidying up homes in the town. The forest of the villages has truly disappeared, vanished. Now the big city, the entire city is a forest where it is the man who hunts and it is the man who is the hunted.
Laha pahil dharti losot ge *
Thol thole tahekaan
Sekate dhati rohor ena
Losot haawet laagit ponkhi raja
Hoye mai benaw ket
Ona hadar hoye tege rohor ena
In the beginning the earth was a swamp
Then when did it dry up so?
That the earth should dry up
So the bird king made the breeze
And blew it to dry the earth
* (This vision of the Santhals of the physical nature of the world is found in a don song rendered at the manjhithan on the last day of the Karam festival.)
2. Today’s Columbus
The railway platform is bathed in deserted silence. Just outside the shed there is lone tree that sways slowly in the hot afternoon breeze. The leaves of the tree, enclosed within a barricade of red brick web with its topmost level painted in a white band; fall with a sad resonant music on the earth. By evening the ground below will be covered with its shed leaves
The old brown dog lays its head on its paws and observes the tree with large forlorn eyes. Then sighing deeply drops his head and closes his eyes. When the train arrives he will become alert. Then his energy will be something to watch for. Maybe a passenger will throw a dry stale piece of bread through the train window slats or may be even a crumbly nankhatai.
Behind the goods train a thick column of water flows uninterrupted with a roar from the overhead pipe. In the corner there is a wooden kiosk. There are jars of colored drops, candies, lemon chews and biscuits in a row. A hoard of stubborn flies hovers maddeningly over the jars and in a moment after they are swatted, they flock back. The old shopkeeper is napping routinely and sometimes out of habit flits his duster to remove the flies in a habitual reflex action. When the three forty passenger arrives he will also be jogged out of his inertia. But in the meantime there is lot of time before the train arrives. A few sporadic passengers with their feet up are napping on the only bench that the station can boast off. Away from them a woman stands alone. A child is tied to her back with the help of a yellow markin cloth. The child, seven eight months old, clings like a bat to his mother. In the stance of the woman there is restlessness, apprehension, nervousness and anxiety.
Hers wrists are tattooed with flowers and bang in the centre of it, in an illegible lettering a name Bhaua Kachchap. And Bhaua Kachchap is there standing right next to her, in his new terylene shirt, in his oil slicked hair and in the bag slung from his shoulders. Clutched in his sweaty hands is the same flute that he had played to woo Jhumki in the previous ind. When the unripe mahua was distilled, when the rice was cured to make a brew, when tipsy he had sung while dancing madly the whole night, when Jhumki with the Burunsh flower in her hair had swayed like a wild creeper along with the beat of his flute in a sensuous trance. During sarhul,wearing a red bordered sari falling to the knees, the girls had held the boys by the waist and had fallen into rhythmic dance, like a wave in the ocean, falling and rising in a tide, like a serpent dragon galloping wild in the jungle
The night spent at the ghotul with friends, boys and girls when the jungle too was a friend when the night was a heady fragrance. Now the jungle is no more a friend nor is the village. There is no ind. now, no sarhul, no fish in the pond, no fruits on the trees. The fields are barren and the jungle escapes and hides, the black stone earth cracks and the earth spawns fire
The pink trunk is adorned with woven green creepers and flowers brought with money hoarded since long. Jhumki and Bhaua’s entire possessions are in it. Jhumki continuously feels it with her feet for assurance. That the tin trunk is hers and that it is safely near her. She turns her gaze towards Bhaua, looks at him lovingly, her tall sweet looking Bhaua. The child’s tiny soft hands fiddle with her hair in sleep, his sweet raw milk smell, his innocent fragrance, his soft warm weight on her back.
Which train will Jhumki and Bhaua catch who knows, but they will catch a train for sure, today itself. They have left the village on an unknown journey of exploration. They are today’s Columbus.
3. The Trapped Bird
Where are you going lassie, all dressed up?
Going to see a film, Bobby
Saguniya smiles coquettishly, the edge of her floral nylon sari is tucked tight at the waist and her smooth dark shining skin flashes in the light, just like the virtual shadow shining like a mirror on the dark bitumen in the sun. Birwa, tall slender, sleek like oil on water, broad chested and long legged, laughs, laughs and laughs.
The water flows beneath the culvert, gurgling merrily. The shadow of the distant trees shrink and bur, tremble slowly as the leaves whisper and the darkness descends on the branches, on the trunk and in the roots deep inside the soil, on Birwa’s open fists, in his eyes. The jungle is now only dream captured inside closed eyes. The sort of dream which is forbidden to visit. Forbidden to view. it is then to return from this denseness to another, where pain is a naked wire along which the restless mind loiters. Long hours into the night, lying wide eyed on the cot, the eyes see the countless stars, so bright, shining, as a bright stone, as the night in the forest, as the tigers burning bright eyes, as the fins of the kewai fish flashing in the water. The heart cleaves like a tendu leaf. The village is lost, so are the homes and the people, all gone, the breath is gone, the links are gone, all all gone.
In the early morning in the dhaba, his fingers shrivel peeling a small mountain of boiled potatoes, so many that he feels himself turning into a big boiled potato himself. His fingers reek with the smell. The big pan is on the stove whole day long and the tea bubbles in it sending laden fumes up the ceiling. He sips noisily the tea which has been poured from a height into a foamy drink in the thick lined glass tumbler and enjoys the taste. The platform near the tap has a pile of dirty utensils, pots and pans. the flies hover over leftover food, and in the open drain flows along with dirty water, grains of rice, a discarded half eaten green chili, grains of black pepper, raw pieces of roti, a piece of coal and god knows what else.
Blackened with oil and fat the frying pan needs a strong hard hand to clean it everyday. So hard a hand, much harder than what he needed to chop wood in the forest, to walk barren callused feet on the sun burnt earth and on the rock spread ahead like a lazy black dragon. But even now is he not burning his skin? All day long his hands and feet all smoldering and afire? Just so that the utopian days come back? but will they? And for whom and for what? This village is now a village of old sick men, of lusting dissolute lumpen lads, of middle aged drunken men, intoxicated on country liquor, of bored blunt women, of arguing and empty stomach. Of barren empty land and hungry caved in bellies, of long useless idle afternoons, of wrinkled webbed cheeks and empty vacant stump of trees. But what is the use of pondering these. The sun takes a course along the day and one can bide the time by the pile of utensils pertaining to breakfast lunch and dinner. That is all that is left of a day for Birwa.
Saguniya would also be working as a day laborer. There is some ongoing work of a culvert on the canal. She would be carrying cement and stones, her feet sinking in the red soil and sand. Till the time her waist gets twisted, her walk will sway and her cheap anklet will flash in her ankles, she will save money and go for a movie, bobby and hum a sarhul song along with Birwa and laugh with such joy and merriment, till then. Who knows while peeling the potatoes till his nails hurt, Birwa will see a new dream and in that dream Sagunia walks coquettishly here and there, flashing a smile at him.
On her wrists are tattooed flowers, leaves and a snake. There are three tattoo dots bang in the centre of her forehead, also where her slanting eyes end and also on the ankles where the silver anklets rub against the feet. But Saguniya is embarrassed of the tattoos now, she wants to hide them, to erase the jungle from her. She wonders at the bright glamour of the city, so many variety of ribbons, clips, bangles, colors. Nail polish, ear rings and more. The fragrance of scent permeates every where, more sensuous and seductive than the night of the jungle. A little bit like that Pull babu who looks at her with his green eyes with a strange lust. Then Birwa’s black panther jungle eyes are lost from her. Sagunia flirts and laughs, her clothes get awry and she moves sensuously. The pull babu then lights up a beedi and smiles, the bird of the jungle is coming enchanted in his web on its own, it is not long now
Then Birwa will look askance. One more dream will fly away from his open palms. Sagunia understands this, knows this that is a vibrant multi color dream. But in reality? In reality the black bitumen sticks to their body, darker than the jungle. What of the pull babu, a new bridge will be constructed elsewhere. The wood is being cut down in all the forests. Where will the birds go? The trap is too wide. All of them bastards will be trapped, one by one. The pull babu laughs and the dhaba owner smirks. Birwa knows nothing and so does Sagunia, innocent in unawareness. But they will know one day, then?
Till that time the magic of the jungle vanishes pore by pore.