Days of rolling weeds and nights of fireflies

By Shyamadas Mallick

A hundred years ago, a boy and his companion are left in the dark and dense wilderness. The drought animals refuse to move but despite all that their owners do. Are they jinxed? Soon, the face of the danger is revealed. The unveiling reveals what Kali never expected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Feb 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9789352065691

Book preview

past.

Days of Rolling Weeds and Nights of Fireflies

Ihad first met Kali when I was in service. Not in the army, the Civil Services. I do not know why being in the army is called being in the services. Are all the others non-services or disservices? I do not ask you this question, though. It was Kali who did. I am weak in English and I do not know the mystery of the language, its spellings and pronunciations. At school, I opted to stand up on the bench rather than to solve these linguistic enigmas, but Kali was determined to carry on till his lemonade matched my vodka. I knew he was in a government that he preferred to call a Government of the Hummingbirds, in which he was a whistle – not a blower, but a holder. He promised to elaborate on the subject, but not before he was allowed to continue his story from the beginning. He said he was a systematic person, meaning that he was chronological. He couldn’t help but say it in order, and not say before what had happened after.

We had halted at a hill station, not by option but compulsion. The flight which took us to the remotest corner of eastern India, a 26-seater aircraft, Fokker Friendship, had cancelled all its flights due to a nagging fog. It was more embracing than a Bollywood hero who untiringly pursued his lady love. Congratulations to them – I mean, to the heroes. And perhaps even to the heroines, nowadays, for their perseverance to pursue. I have no perseverance to stir out. And Kali is on the verge of retirement. I cannot stir out, because I am in the threatened list not of the biologists’ or botanists but of the separatists’, whose demand for a separate state. I have termed not feasible territorially and constitutionally, in my confidential report, which by dint of its character and nature, came out in the newspaper, like an otherwise best clad model, sponsoring bikini.

So, to cut it short, we rejected the official offer to travel by road for 10 to 12 hours through a fog-ridden hilly terrain infested with terrorists. There was snow on the road and a chill in the air. So listening to Kali with drinks in the official circuit, house, well stocked with our choicest eatables seemed to be a reasonably smart bureaucratic decision for which the Government would be exempted from paying any compensation or consider a posthumous award for gallantry. We decided not to submit bills for our daily allowance for these days of our compulsory halts, in order to allow some rest to the much harassed assistants consulting the Government orders, TA rules and so-called standing orders, which would be invariably missing from the files while deciding on our dues. I may again remind you that I am weak at expressions. And therefore, would like to narrate the story of Kali in his own words, and maybe in the style of a British bureaucrat sending a typewritten double-margined report on his colonial jurisdiction, embellished with corrections, made with white correction fluid by the steno cum – typist, who could hardly pay for eye glasses under the regime.

You know, everybody thinks that all ages are the same. Nothing is the same: not even you! Every day, you change. Every sunset and every sunrise is unique. If you take a colour photograph of every sunrise and sunset, you will find different combinations. This is the world and we want to stabilise it with a sense of standardisation. The British standardised administration all over their Empire. Their empire became the biggest one, but not the everlasting one. The Romans, the Mughals, and the Turks – all of them did the same thing, but nothing lasted forever.

I started my journey of life in Colonial India where my father had been a government officer. So without reference to him and the British, I cannot proceed, just as you cannot proceed by putting the cart before the horse. I owe a considerable portion of this story to my father and the people of that period, because they were born in the beginning of the last century, in a terrain still called Jangal Mahal (forest territory) in West Bengal. It was land that adjoined the rocky and hilly terrain. It was a part of the then Bihar and was considered thus by cartographers and politicians alike.

My father was an adventurous type. There was no education centre that offered anything beyond primary education in his village, Laubari, which had only 300 souls at that time. Most of them were directly or indirectly connected with cultivation during the Monsoon, which happened only once in a year. Besides agriculture, they had to depend on the forest, which practically darkened the entire village from all sides. If you had to go to a neighbouring village, you had to cross the woods. The forest produced furniture and building materials for homes, fodder for animals, and fuel for cooking and game for hunting. They were real forests, dense and deep not like these modern day concoctions, feeble imitations nurtured by the Forest Department. The forests contained Mahua trees, considered sacred by the tribal villagers not only for the shade it offered and its solemn shape but also its utility, which was multifarious. It would yield from its yellow sweet flowers one of the finest liqueurs, tasting as I have heard, like a cocktail of wine and brandy. It also offered nutritious food supplements for animals, oil from fruits, and fodder for animals and excellent hardwood for ox-cart wheels. But today, if you want to see a really old Mahua tree, you might have to walk miles and miles before you can come across one, thanks to the nationalisation of forests!

The villagers seldom bought anything from outside. They purchased logs and timber from the forest and shaped them with iron axes. They would prepare beams, pillars and planks, of doors and frames. I have seen such doors planks which were as thick as four or five inches. The ceilings were made of paddy straws set on bamboo lattice again, a result of axe work. Such all-purpose axes were not imported from outside, but made at the village smithy with hammers and tongs, imported from Great Britain.

Just before the First World War was about to start, my father Rajnath, left his native village of Laubari for a district town, about 80 miles away in Bihar, Dumka. A friend of his father’s used to work in the post office there. With a thick, bushy moustache and silver glossy hair, Babu Janardan was a respectable and amicable man. His wife, Sarala, was generally happy with only one cause for sadness. They had a daughter and no son. In those days, marriages used to be made in heaven just as now, but were negotiated by the relations of the prospective groom and bride! Solvent and respectable people, in order to allow some leverage to their girls, had modified the ways of negotiations. They used to host some students as guests at their household, approximately around their children’s ages, apparently to help them in their educational efforts but ultimately, to help themselves to find out suitable grooms for their daughters. Babu Janardan had both, respectability and solvency, and they had a daughter. He therefore qualified for taking guests. He invited two from Laubari. My father, Rajnath and Promod, both of whom had cleared the final in primary school and attained eligibility for entry at the English High School, had decided on going to Dumka, the headquarters of Jungle Mahal.

An 80 miles long journey may not seem difficult nowadays. But it was not so during the days of my father’s youth. There was virtually no road between the two places. A trail primarily made by the passing oxen carts through the wilderness linked the two and it was the shortest one available for journeying by carts.

My father and Promod had done well in the result. The head pundit, as they were called in those days, congratulated them on their success and bade them well. He blessed them to earn better results in high school. Babu Janardan’s letter of invitation had already reached their guardians. It was decided that both students would travel together in a cart through the jungle trail. In those times, Bengal, Bihar and a part of Orissa, came under one state of administration. Babu Janardan was posted in the Post and Telegraph Office in this part of the region, under His Majesty’s Service.

My grandfather Trilochan and Promod’s father Subodh personally knew each other. Babu Janardan was a resident of Narayanpur, a village only about four kros (about eight miles) away from Laubari.

Preparations for the great journey through the wild began. A pair of bullocks was selected from the best of grandpa’s stable. The journey time was expected to be for four to five days, up and down. The total fodder in the paddy straw was estimated to be three pans per bull. There were two seers of mustard oil cakes and five seers of rice bran. For themselves, they packed rice, lentils, potatoes, onions, salt, mustard oil, jaggery, puffed rice and powdered spices. Besides, they carried two water buckets made of tin, a rice pot big enough to cook for two, a hatchet to prepare firewood, a hurricane lantern, and a bottle of kerosene oil, a flintstone, an iron striker and some brown cotton.

The search for the right cart man began. After a long search, the name of Kado, a young and stout Santhal man was selected. On the way, there may be a few tribal hamlets where he could communicate with ease and credibility. This was essential, as getting lost in the wilderness was common even during the day. Besides, he was like his father Soho and had experience in journeying through the jungles, though on a separate and shorter route. Kado was also a good hunter. He could shoot a bird with ease, perched on a branch of a tree, say, thirty feet above, with his arrow by blowing through an assembly of bamboo pipes, which could collapse into one. He was also a good marksman in bow and arrow, both of which he carried with him. His father equipped him with two long bamboo sticks, one fitted with an iron spear in order to defend themselves for close quarter encounters, if any.

Loading the entire paddy straw was a problem. Soho suggested spreading the load over the bamboo floor of the cart and covering it with quilts and bedspreads so that the space for the passengers turned into a comfortable mattress. Oh yes, they fitted a bamboo-made cover over the cart. This was the best of the three that they had in the village. They had kept it reserved either for long journeys or for use by the ladies. For Trilochan, the village Moulis or the bamboo artisans had created this with split bamboo sticks of different thicknesses and designs, and painted them in vivid colours of red, blue, green and orange. In fact, Kado was so proud and impressed to see the cart mounted with such a cover that he said, Father, I will pass through the villages in such a fashion that the villagers would be awestruck!

There was not much money in the household. Cash were not required generally. All essentials were available on barter. My grandmother, Nikunjabala, had some savings in an earthen pot in silver and copper. Taka, ana, paisa and pai. She was a very enterprising lady, looking after household affairs, cultivation, making payments to labourers, and overseeing the education of the children. But for her, my father would not have been sent for that far away to English school. They had a very large stable, where animals numbered more than 150 for which five stable boys (Bagal) were employed. They used to get their meals from the house hold kitchen and a small amount of rice per month. This did not satisfy them. They craved more work and more pay. My grandmother devised a way of giving them more work. She would never pay for nothing. She had enough rice in stock and employed them to dig a pond in exchange for rice. During the dry season, they would earn extra by digging up the earth and within a few years, a new pond was excavated. She named it Bagalgore. (Meaning the stable boys’ pond)

What about your grandfather? I intervened because I had nothing else to do. I needed my drink again. So I had to interrupt the flow of his story.

"Yes, his name was Ramsunder. He was a not a very worldly wise person. Everybody knew him to be man of music and songs. He had the flair for playing his harmonium well and for singing in unison. He could recite the Srikrishna Kirtan (hymns on Lord Krishna) in a melodious voice, and was a much sought after singer in neighbouring villages. My grandmother had to look after the entire household.

Now, my grandmother had almost spent all her savings in beautifying the bank of the pond. Still, in order to pay some amount to her grandson, Rajnath, she brought her cash box, which in reality was a red earthen pot with a lid. The cash pot did not contain many small coins. She gave Rajnath some coins and a lot of cowries which also counted as money in those days. This money, she said, might be necessary on the road to buy services for repairing a wheel in case it lost the iron girder around the wooden frame by heating up after a long run.

It was decided that the journey would start at the rise of the Vulko, the morning star. In those days, there were few or no clocks in the village. Everyone calculated the time based on the position of the stars at night and the sun at day. The rise of Vulko meant that the time was around 4:00 AM. All long journeys normally started at this point in time, to maintain coordination among travellers who might come from different places. Even thieves assembled at this star time to hold their discussions for their next exploits or to divide the booty. During the course of my service, I came across instances of such coordination of time by criminals.

Long before the actual journey, the cart had been selected and made ready. Kado had arrived at the designated time. My father, Rajnath, boarded the cart. Only Promod was due to come. It was past an hour since the rise of Vulko but there was no sign of Promod or his luggage. There was no way that he could be contacted except by one of us physically going to his house. That would be time consuming and boring. After more than an hour, a messenger brought us news.

Promod had not been allowed to travel through the forest terrain by his grandmother, who looked at it as being highly risky and requested that the journey by cart through this route be cancelled. She suggested the other circuitous route by the railways via Jasidih, which might be longer, but was safer. She requested my father to accompany Promod on the railway journey. My father did not agree. His argument was that Dumka ultimately was not connected by railways and a road journey could not be avoided from Jasidih onwards. Further, the road journey there through an unknown transporter might be more risky than the jungle itself. He was also not satisfied with the last minute cancellation of the decided route when all preparations had been made that way.

With the blessings of his grandmother, the eldest lady of the house, Rajnath left Laubari for the wild trail. There was no road as such but markings were made by carts passing by in the form of grooves sunk into -the red laterite soil, flanked on both sides by the dense growth of creepers hanging from ancient trees. In places, there was vegetation in the middle, which the cart would ride over.

It was obvious that not many carts passed along this trail. It was a difficult decision they had taken to reach Dumka, which was quite far away. By noon, they decided to stop by a small water hole at a clearing in an otherwise dense forest. The hole contained water, but not clear enough to be used for consumption. So Kado started digging in a dry sandy bed with the spear and within a few minutes, a hole was made and water started seeping into it from under. This water was clear and sweet and they stored it in two buckets, one for the animals and another for their own drinking and cooking needs. Kado, after feeding the cattle, prepared an oven with mud and sand and placed the cooking pot over it with water, rice and potatoes in it, to boil together. He brought dry twigs from the forest and made a fire with his flintstone, iron striker and the brown cotton which was locally called jarda suta

The forest was silent, except for a few rustles created by wild pigs and fowl here and there. Amid this overwhelming eerie silence, they were oddly only two human beings who were hoping to reach the nearest hamlet before the sunset, so as not to be targets of bigger wild beasts. Cooking and feeding took