A Day in the Life of Mangal Taram: Select stories of Anita Agnihotri

By Anita Agnihotri

Mangal Taram, a Gond tribal boy, is a beat forest guard in the dense and mysterious forest of Central India, spread at the foothills of the Maikal mountain range. While he observes, watches, and keeps record of the wild life, flora, and fauna of the all-encompassing forest, his mind is trapped in inexplicable fear and anxiety.

At Batasia loop in Darjeeling, a young hill girl Hema, lost in the childhood memories of a middle-aged man resurfaces and transforms his life irreversibly.

A possessive lover and a ruthless husband treasures his first love, in the brick and mortar cage of his ancestral house.

Anita Agnihotri’s stories traverse a wide range of human emotions, discovers the myriad complexities of relationships, and also takes the reader through a journey into the dynamics of an Indian reality, where the unheard voices still wait to be deciphered by a sensitive writer. A Day in the Life of Mangal Taram is a careful selection of 14 stories out of over 200 short stories written by Anita Agnihotri spanning over three decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Niyogi
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9789385285967

Book preview

Sunder Patua

Sunder Maharana takes down the mirror he was holding in his hands and looks up at the bright blue colour of the distant sky. What a riot of beautiful flowers, white as shell, against the deep blue canvas! The day, mesmerized by the magic of the yellow sun, is stretching and turning, like some beloved one.

One can’t see the wanderings of the river, Bhargavi, from here, or its ochre-coloured water trembling at the mere hint of the shadow of kingfishers in flight. There is little water in the river these days. It has been drying up from Lord knows when. That’s why one can’t hear even a splash. The goods train carrying coal has left the little station at Malatipatpur. Its whistle ripped through the universe twice. Its thin black smoke made a tumble in the sky.

Inside the tiled hut, one can see, in the play of light and shade, the wall clock is about to strike 12. Who cares if Sunder Patua (patua meaning a painter of patas) keeps on sitting like this, not wanting to get up at all? The tip of his nose is burning in the heat-haze. The white automobile has made its way into the narrow, beaten mud-track raising a cloud of dust. The car must be on the busy highway now, passing by stretches of plucked, bare rice fields, leaving behind the level crossing. It will never ever make its way back here again.

That wild girl! How like a tornado she had appeared as if from nowhere, and left him with a bunch of depressing thoughts, like Champak flowers shedding from a shaken bough on a monsoon day. Such a mad girl! She had said, ‘Come with me in this car…’ And what else had she said for which Sunder had rushed and fetched an old, tarnished mirror from his room? Had looked at his reflection, thoroughly scrutinizing every bit of his face. She had moved her fingers up and down his pinched, unshaven cheeks, as if with a black crayon, and said, ‘O dear, you’ve become so thin!’ A mild scent from her body hovered in his nose, eyes, and cheeks. How thin he had become indeed! As if the girl had seen Sunder so many times before.

That was why, Sunder, taking off his specs, was looking at himself in the mirror, after a long time. Hazy eyes, lined with dark rings, sunken unshaven cheeks giving off dirt. Curly hair falling on his shoulders like long silver wires. His forehead has become as wide as an open meadow and his lips look bundled-up and helpless without teeth. His complexion was always excellent. But he couldn’t get hold of any oil to rub onto his body, hands, and feet. She had asked if he had no hair oil. How could she gather from that one faded, black and white photograph that he had seen better days? How would she know that at Janakpur, his home, with Birpur to its right and Malatipatpur to its left, people from 10 villages of the locality had showered flowers on him out of love and respect? How his reputation had spread far and wide, crossing national boundaries. How his fame had led him to travel distant places: London, Germany, and Indonesia… Where hadn’t he been?

There was no road suitable for cars in Janakpur even 15 years ago. The cars of the sahibs would go over the bridge and take a left turn. There was a rusty yellow board stuck at the level crossing. On it was written ‘Bhargavi’, as the station bore the river’s name. It was a station for passenger trains. The jingling mail train would never stop there. A slightly high and uneven mud-track ran parallel to the river current. The path was flanked on one side by the river, by low-lying villages on the other. Mud huts, shaded coconut palm trees, babool, neem, and oak trees gave the village a hackneyed, poverty-stricken appearance. Further on, where the road was more navigable, cars and jeeps would halt, throwing up quantities of dust; they had to. People would get down and start walking, holding handkerchiefs to their noses.

People had walked like this till at least 15 years ago. Now cash money wafts here in the wind. The panchayat speeches ring loud and clear. The road, well-fed and shapely, pushes its way into the village at one end and comes out from the other. As the road prospers, the river shrinks. The waters of the river, Bhargavi, don’t dance to the rhythm of a restless maiden, its blue painterly rocks don’t sparkle anymore. When the monsoon comes to an end, the river becomes the skeleton of a canal.

Even so, could Lisa have descended on Sunder Rana’s doorsteps had it not been for the road? Fresh like some bean-vine revived by rain water, she had stood there, wearing a light woollen blouse and blue jeans, hands on her waist, looking at him intently.

Hadn’t her mother, Judith, stood in front of him exactly like this four decades ago?

‘Sunder, there you are! I’m exhausted walking this far, looking for you. See…how dirty my feet have become…I can’t

walk anymore.’

‘Uncle, o uncle!’

Sanju calls him.

Sunder raises his misty eyes. The girl has trudged all the way from the other village. Perspiration hangs on her cheeks and neck even in the winter sun. Tinkling of bangles made of glass and brass washed in gold. She holds the tiffin box in one hand, carries plates and bowls with the other. She’s the daughter of Badal Maharana, Sunder’s elder brother, who left this world and embraced the next, a month ago. Sanju came to her father’s house and drowned herself in tears. The shadow of grief is getting lifted slowly. Badal’s son, Anil, has started to talk about dividing the property, without raising his voice. The girl will leave for her in-laws’ next week. Her mother-in-law is an asthma patient, and her husband is a primary school teacher, who must have got his fingers burned while cooking in his wife’s absence.

Sunder’s world will become even more empty and meaningless, once Sanju leaves. His wife refuses to feed him—doesn’t ask him to come and eat. Sanju is pained by the villager’s quizzical smile at all this. That’s why she cooks and brings food to him herself, walking the long distance every afternoon. She won’t take no for an answer. At night there’s only flattened rice and milk or puffed rice and jaggery for him. On many days he falls asleep without eating anything.

‘O Uncle…the rice has become as cold as ice! See how he laughs, like a lunatic! He has gone crazy, really!’

‘Ha ha ha!’ Old Sunder laughs to the distraction, all by himself.

But, yes, he remembers now… A 40-year-old picture appears bright and resplendent in his mind’s eye.

‘You must do what I say. You’re obliged to.’

Judith is ticking him off, waving her extremely fair index finger at him. She’s annoyed. Her thin, deep-pink lips are quivering. Any minute, tears may gush out of her eyes; she’s so angry!

Youthful Sunder, with shoulder-length wavy black hair and his naked torso wrapped in a handloom dhoti, is looking at the girl, who has one hand laid carelessly on the bosom, the other holding on to the pillars supporting the roof. He looks at her with a flicker of a carefree smile around his eyes.

Why should Sunder bother to paint? Pata painting needs too much attention, fine for women. His father, Gunadhar Maharana, had threatened to break the bamboo rod on his back, in case he decided to attempt it. Sunder was not scared. He is a well-established bricklayer now. The masons of the village earn 5 to 10 rupees a day. His nights are reserved for the opera party: flute, drums, cymbals, and village tomtoms. The entire village eats out of his hands. He goes from place to place singing songs from the opera, as it was that time of the year

(November-December). Villagers sit awake all night beside their hazak lamps. Their wives and daughters gaze at him from behind the thin bamboo partition, opening wide their big black eyes. Wild clappings, money, medals…what fun! He feels as if he’s riding the waves. Why should he paint, stooping on the floor, resting his chin on his knees?

‘Judith, my darling, be calm…take it easy.’ David, Judith’s husband, rushes to her, getting down from the jeep.

David is a young engineer. He has been given the job of designing a spillway of a huge dam in the north. The husband and wife mingle wonderfully with the people of this country. They have got immersed in the rainbow-coloured folk culture of the place, have attended concerts dedicated to devotional songs and ceremonies associated with the immersion of Goddess Durga. The moors and customs of England have simply vanished into thin air. But at times, David becomes frustrated trying to control his wayward wife. Who knows, if she will not pounce upon someone, like a tigress of the Sunderbans! This was not their country; India was no longer subordinate. Hardly was the agony of foreign shackles over, that the fierce desire to become an independent power seized and engulfed the entire nation.

Many people of the villages are still illiterate, debilitated by malnutrition and disease…so many lives, village after village, plunged in darkness. Yet flags proclaiming the glory of handicrafts fly high on the minarets of arrogant urban centres.

India’s prime minister is investing big money in laying the foundation of a great civilization. But hadn’t David seen how easily the police of this independent nation go after those people who live by their land? He notices it all, while designing the dam in his head and correcting it. He goes on like this day and night.

Judith runs to the seaside in the south, at every given opportunity. She seems to love the plains, the blue waves, and the groves of coconut and palm trees. She may be found in a fishermen’s village at times, at others in a narrow lane of the town, looking with awe and admiration at goddesses being carved out of soap stones. Everyone loves her. But David is apprehensive that in her enthusiasm, she may trample over someone’s sensibility. He is stiff with fear. Suppose someone mistakes the tyranny of her love for the haughtiness of the British drunk with power? Then David’s shame would know no bounds.

Now that Judith has got into her head, she’ll make Sunder paint patas. She only knows if the patas can be sent to faraway places…the power of Sunder’s brush strokes and line drawings; another example of her tyrannous ways. Sunder says that he has no time. He doesn’t like to paint. They fight, they argue over it.

It was the mid ’50s then. And Sunder Maharana was in his youth. Rot had not set in the once prosperous village of Janakpur. Though one couldn’t make that out at a glance, like the sal tree that stands boasting the might of its trunk while it gets bored into by woodworm. A tiny little village it was with no Brahmins living there; only 20 farmers’ families, 4 weavers’, and 5–10 families of milkmen. There were, besides, 10 households of banya (traders) and 30 households of pata painters, the Maharanas. The Brahmin, washerman, and barber came from the next village. All over the place were coconut, date, mango, and jackfruit trees; the unpaved road wound its way in the midst of their shade. Rows of houses stood on either side. That was Janakpur. The two families of untouchables lived far to the north. In the middle of the village were three temples—Radhamohan, Gopi Nath, and Gramdebi Bhuasunir.

No outsider standing on the Chanderpur bridge could possibly realize why Janakpur was different from those 10 other villages. Janakpur was the painters’ paradise. From times long past, more than 400 years ago, the pata painters of the place have silently applied their magic brush to the cloth canvas.

The flag flew high on top of Nilmadhab temple in the 14th century. The gods had to be worshipped in 36 different ways: one was art. Sunder’s grandfather, Bhim Rana, would say that the practice of the art of pata was established through an act promulgated by Raja Anangadeb in AD 1190. Nilmadhab was not yet an important shrine. But just think—a group of men quietly painting away trees and flowers on house doors and peacocks on the pillars of the chariot, since that time! As also two mighty black eyes of Arupratan (Vishnu), a truncated arm, or simply old fashioned playing cards made out of paper pulp.

The pata painters or artists were, of course, shudras by caste. But according to a decree of the Raja’s dewan, one of them was bestowed the honour of becoming a sevak. That day his head was wrapped in a silk turban. The Raja gave him a fistful of atap and four suparis. The painter offered half of the gift to the gods and kept the other half for himself, placing them on the platform of the tulsi tree at home. The people of the village brought him home amidst ringing of bells and ulus (auspicious sounds made by the women folk). And thus the descendents of the painter were all initiated into ‘prayer painting’. The patuas would lose themselves in devotion through art all the year round. For example, on a rainy full moon night, they would draw lotus petals on the ceremonial bath site. Then during the Rath yatra*, when it pours and the gods go off to sleep, they would paint the names of the deities Narayan, Balaram, and Bhuvaneshwari on a big cloth canvas so that the devotees don’t go back disappointed on seeing the temple door shut. They would paint erotic scenes on the chariot too—the palmyra ensign of Balabhadra, Subhadra’s crushed pride, and Jagannath’s philandering associates. Red-green, red-black, or red-yellow colours would burst into flames under the black sky. And what else would the artist paint?

* It is held in the month of July when the three images of Jagannath, Balaram, and Subhadra are brought out on the juggernaut and pulled through the streets by devotees. On that day, children are also seen pulling smaller versions of the juggernaut with the idols of the three deities. Balaram (also known as Balabhadra) is considered the 7th incarnation of Lord Vishnu, while Jagannath is considered to be the 8th, and Subhadra is their sister.

He would draw a cluster of red-blue flowers on the wheels of the chariot—on its pinnacle, a flower, and just above the wheel, a swan, apart from horses with riders fluttering flags of victory…and so celebrate the swinging season, the birth of Krishna, the immersion of Goddess Durga, Holi, and festivals of all kinds.

The monsoon gives place to autumn, winter, and spring. And the watery skirt of the brimming Bhargavi is reined in, making the yellow sand bank appear visibly sad.

Does the bee that sits drunk on the lotus flower know that its days would come to an end? Or that it can never escape the suffocating-sweet smell of the lotus’s pollen sack?

The days of the painters were also numbered from the beginning of the 20th century. In the place of temple service, they were given lands to grow some rice and dal, not enough to feed themselves. That’s why the painters opted for making patas for the tourists, painted images of Neelmadhab and Balabhadra temples. People from far off came and bought pictures of Subhadra Debi, or the chariot, to put them up in their houses as objects of worship.

But the day came when they were not allowed by law to sit on the roadside and display their wicker baskets full of patas. They were stopped from selling paintings to the travellers. All the patas were sent to the ‘House of Pata’—a big shop facing the temple. The shop was leased out after inviting tenders. The person who quoted the highest price became the owner of the shop and earned the right to sell the patas. The patuas lost whatever means they had to make profit. The leaseholder bought all their paintings at a wholesale price. Crafty businessman Ananda Mohanty came along and made their business go up in flames, like dry straw catching fire.

Ananda got the ownership of the ‘House of Pata’. Money brings power. In 10 years’ time, the farmer’s son, Ananda, got himself elevated to the mercantile Kayastha community. With one hand, he bought patas at a wholesale price, with the other, he sold them off at exorbitant sums. He became the village moneylender too. The patuas of the village lived in bondage to him. Men from other villages didn’t recognize the patuas as artists anymore, they only knew the leaseholder, the man who owns the patas. Ananda Mohanty lodged a case against the patuas with the ferocity of a monster chewing up human heads, to recover his unrealized loans. The patuas became destitutes with their houses and lands seized, one by one. How the traders vent their anger on art! That’s why a generation of patuas disgusted with their father’s destitution took to becoming labourers in the vinery of betel leaves in the forests, sang in the village operas, or became masons, like Sunder.

With all his beatings, his father, Gunadhar, couldn’t force Sunder to paint. In that, Judith was successful. The first pata, of thousand arms, which Sunder had painted, made Bishu Maharana green with envy. He spoke out, hiding his heart-burning, ‘If the patuas of Janakpur get busy with patas, who’s to water the vinery of betel leaves?’ Bishu knew that when Gunadhar would be no more, there would not be a single talent left in that place. It was then that the desire to paint sparked off in Sunder’s breast.

But suppose Judith had not appeared like a tornado, had not stood beside the starving patuas of Janakpur! Would the light kindled in Sunder’s soul have sparked off, burst into flames, and spread in lands near and far like wild fire?

‘O yes, dear shilpi, it would have,’