Or in Rains: The Circuit of Silence

By Sanatan Bhowal

This novel mixes the dregs of radical politics in Bengal with the tribal question of joining the mainstream. Set temporally against the backdrop of Naxalite Movement in Bengal and spatially against the backdrop of tea gardens in North Bengal, it is about the growing up of a tribal boy, Biru, with the mellowed-down, chastened ideas of a fugitive Naxalite. Biru grows up with a growing sense of difference all around him save the vision of sameness he is offered by Titli, his fellow student of superior caste.
The novel zeroes in on a cornered Naxalite who indulges in soul-searching in his blue diary and before disappearing forever, leaves Biru with his diary. Biru reads the diary periodically in search of stories but finds them only in their untold form. Tributaries to Birus stream of time are the stories of his grandgpas, the mornings of his mother, the anecdotal appearance of the European manager in the tales of his grandfather, the two headmasters separate tales, and of course the blue diary that in its replicate form links Biru with Titli.
What happens to Biru and Titli in the site of sameness? How would they meet in future?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Oct 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482857276

Sanatan Bhowal

Sanatan Bhowal was born in a small green village in a remote part of West Bengal, India, but not far off from the cluster of tea gardens and forests in the foothills of Dooars. He had his schooling and graduation from Alipurduar and post-graduation from North Bengal University. He loves to read and walk along the paths through the woods, listening to the occasional chirping and the murmuring sound of the meandering streams. He is the author of Lawrence and the Contemporary Thinkers: A Study in Correspondence (2015, Lambert Academic Publishing) and The Subaltern Speaks: An Adventure in Thought with Mahasweta’s Fiction on Tribal Life (Forthcoming, Orient Blackswan). This fiction is his first ever attempt at finding delight in writing.

Book preview

The footsteps of rains

I nnumerable drops from the heavens were losing their contours on the tubular truss that sheltered the insiders—the drops fell flat, lost their shape, flowed on the surface of the truss and dropped again, not in drops but in splash and ultimately flowed its lapping way into the nearby stream. Tiny drops of time, molecules of moments, seemed to be in flurry to make the night heavier with expectation of assemblage; some drops were reminiscences of those of the past and in their never-ending flow seemed to touch the source of time. The flow downward changed its shape, speed, direction by meeting, merging with and getting divided sometimes from other such innumerable flowlets that formed bigger flows, sometimes through the undulated canals and often running over the banks. Masses of moments were gathering in the unity of a space, separately forming blocks that together tended to form a huge immeasurable aggregation. Down on the ground the frequency of drops and their concentration on the quantity of space decided the transformation of flow into an overflow. The temporal spill was likewise determined by inadequacy of space. A drop splashed with many others and in its flat formlessness flowed over the surface. The deposit of time always threatened to devour all its parts, although it was only a threat.The accumulation and the rise of rainwater in the narrow outlets were facilitated by the surface of the sloping truss, letting the drops become bigger in their downward flow. The sound of drops falling on the shed entered into a concert with the sound of flow falling from the height of the shed on to the ground and in the silence in between these sounds and many others like of the lapping and lashing wind, the water flowed down, meandering, in such times of time’s being on top of the space. Moments and drops were on flow; time intersected space—filled its surface and in the process left interstices of jutting, unfilled tops, laying patterns of life. The boy, one of the insiders, lay awake on bed with his ears pricked, listening.

Darkness and light seemed to have entered into a relation through the mediation of the rains or perhaps drops of water had seeped through the darkness, loosening the mass and melting it incessantly in a vicious downpour. The night was certainly not bright with light, yet it had a luminosity created by the fast-melting clouds and the obstructed light of the moon. The rain had a light of its own, one of the two men under one umbrella thought and he was happy for the first time in the last one week because he realized that it was a new idea. Did we need a new idea in times of confusion to cling desperately on to, he thought at the back of his head, the desperation always demanded more than what a new idea could give and that’s the reason why it fell through. The heavy downpour overhead did not only get them closest to one another but also reminded them of the difficulty implied in such closeness. They were almost totally drenched and their dress had specks of mud splattered all over their body. In their seven minute walk they slipped thrice, not both of them together, but one once and the other twice, stepped on holes on the muddy road twice and one of them lost a slipper at the time of saving himself from an imminent fall. They were wading through the overflow without a word exchanged between them—one of them held the stick of the umbrella while the other held his companion by the shoulder. The other hands of both of them were holding the slippers. Their steps were almost synchronized, yet the force of weighty shower, that prompted them to keep pace with efforts, was evident in their too often faltering steps on the uncertain ground. The grassy road with lots of holes made the walk difficult, sometimes one of them had to step knowingly on a depression full of sticky mud, balancing his head with that of his fellow walker under one umbrella, for the straight road was eaten into and thus broken into fragments by rainwater, leaving at places almost no space for two persons to walk side by side. They also made mutual sacrifices. When the man holding the stick of the umbrella found the other stepping compulsively on a hole and he could neither step down to match the fallen height of the other nor leave any room up on the grass for him, he tilted the umbrella on the fallen head, letting his own partly exposed to the drops from the sky. When got separated by the lack of evenness on the road, the other quickly recovered the former state of togetherness the moment he got a foothold on the grass and made amends for the sacrifice of his fellow by putting his hand again on his shoulders. He also offered to hold the slippers of the umbrella holder, for his other hand was empty now as he had thrown the remaining one from the pair after having lost the other in the thick mud. He carried the isolated one for some time and then realizing the worthlessness of such preservation, sacrificed the other. The efforts of saving their heads from getting wet and bodies from getting battered by the drops brought them close under one umbrella, but they could save none; the old umbrella could not give them full protection. At last they were so drenched thoroughly that they could as well go without that umbrella. Still they held fast on to it, for neither of them wanted to recognize its uselessness. It was only under the umbrella, they thought perhaps, that they could have a space for any real walk together.

Inside the house, the two walkers through the rains arrived at, everybody was fast asleep, absorbing to the full the quiet created by the sound of drops. The man did his duty in the day and was lulled to sleep in the embrace of his wife who also slept after her day’s hard work of looking after the little ones and doing daily chores of duty. They were in their early thirties; into the married life for twelve years, they learnt how to accommodate parental love in the fold of their mutual passion. Their eldest son had been sent to school last year. He was the nest of their dream since the man had been told by the school teacher that the boy was different from the rest of the boys. The nascent dream slept whole day long like the life of their forefathers lost in their present, adopted form; it apprehensively came to the fore to the couple before their sleep. They exchanged one or two words of hope, filled the words with pre-speech silence. Their dream child had been learning alphabets, forming words and writing sentences in fragments to their increasing delight for the last one year. In the damp darkness of the room on the extreme left of the bed where the two little ones and the parents were sleeping, the boy was lying awake, listening to the sound of drops falling on the corrugated sheets. All his drops of blood in their droplessness flew gently on through his whole body reacting to the damp ones from the heavens. The drops interacted, commingled and corresponded with one another with the darkness somewhere—between the warm and the wet—somewhere in him. He was feeling the drops in his blood and the occasional gushes of wind that carried along the heaviness in each of their lashing sweep and leaving a momentary respite sometimes. He was also feeling the flow running and getting bigger through accumulation, along the nullahs that crisscrossed the whole area of the garden. The pit-a-pat of drops was lulling him to sleep but his excitement fought off sleepiness—the excitement of seeing all the nullahs filled up with drops, the sound of the current and the fall with a deep splash. He was musing over the adventure he did have last year with the other boys by sailing in a boat like floater made of banana plants in the stretch where the three nullahs met. The three flows from the three different directions reached there and suddenly they lost their aim and direction, and after a few circular movements, forming a few more eddies and whirls and ripples they almost forgot to flow and fell stagnant. In the fourth direction in which their propensity was to flow out there was only a narrow outlet that too could flow out only to a water body of almost equal height. The accumulated water remained flowless there for the whole dropping season leaving the whole stretch for the frolic of the little ones. But only for a few initial days of the season the depth of water allowed anything like boat to saunter unimpeded. The bed of the stretch was full of ups and downs. As the season wore itself off, the level of water sank down and as a result the base, ridden with various plants, started peeping out and the boys were forced to call it a day. This stretch was also a source of another fun for the boys. In the afternoon on holidays they sometimes went out with their angles to the stretch to catch fish. They prepared their baits with a lot of care almost ritualistically. They used to fry the flour dry with a pinch of salt and spice dust mixed with it, and doused the mixture in adequate quantity of hot water to make it a sticky lump for using it in broken bits as baits sticking to the hook. They sometimes used the larvae found in beehives only when they could find one and succeeded in plundering and ransacking its wriggling contents. He enjoyed thoroughly the expedition last year with his playmates. Dipuda led the team one afternoon to the edge of the plantation by the side of the stream. The hedges were overgrown around the bush of some not so tall wild trees and there was no sign of any trodden path into the bush. It was time for monsoon to draw its curtain; the path that had been before the onset of monsoon was now covered with thick grass. Yet the leader who had expertise in such matters could find out the way without much difficulty following size and shape of the grass. It was Budhua who spotted the hive while cutting grass for the cattle of Barobabu. The group consisted of five children of his age save the leader. They first made a fire under the hive on the branch of the shed tree ten feet high from the ground. All of them were carrying the lungi of their elders from the house without letting them know with which they wrapped themselves up to fend off the onslaught of the bees. Gradually the fire started sending up smoke and correspondingly the bees were coming out in great numbers. It went on for quite some time and when at last the fire died, the bees were not coming out any more and surprisingly they were returning one after another. The leader realized that their method did not work. He was at a loss for one minute or two, thinking how to make the second effective attempt. And then he broke his silence and turning to the boy he said, You go to your house and bring the piece of bamboo, hurry up. To his inquisitive look Dipuda threw a rebuking glance, ‘it is lying at the corner of your courtyard.’ The boy ran fast—faster than he did ever do for getting recognition from the leader. Dipuda congratulated him only after finishing his work. The hive was at last brought down after driving away all the bees by holding the fire two feet to the bottom of the hive. Some dry sticks packed with dry leaves were bound tight with green climbers from the nearby bush and fitted to the tip of the bamboo pole. Dipuda set fire to it from his match box and said, ‘this is why I always keep a match box in my pocket’. The imagination of the boy, Biru, caught the straight pole once in his early boyhood to stir the sky with it; he remembered the futile attempt and laughed to himself. Dipu knew that the others knew the real reason for his keeping a matchbox and it was a matter of very little importance to him. He did never encourage the little ones to do the mistake he had done by developing the habit of smoking. He used to smoke bidi behind their back. You are a very good boy complimented the leader. It was not as much the compliment as the opportunity and tacit assurance for permanent membership of the group that gave him much joy that night.

The boy lying sleepless on the side of the bed at midnight, was listening to the sound of drops falling on the shed overhead and was feeling the sounds filling up the spaces of his sport. The room was dark. The nasal sound of his father in sleep almost sunk in the sound of rains. It was a night of dream and the prospect of fulfillment.

The boy could not hear first the knock on the door as the deafening sound of downpour engaged all his attention. The knock on the wooden planks of the door got more and more desperate and insistent, the iron-rings on the door fitted for locking the door from outside were shaken violently, thudding, and the voice got louder all the more. The boy was first frightened, his spell of absorption was broken, and he moved close to his father and shook him. The father first reacted with an indistinct blabbering and then dismissively turning his body to the other side, got up at last, flabbergasted, with a jerk. His eyes had a confused expression and it took sometime to get the confusion boiled down to queries. When told of the knockings and the voice calling outside, he got down and went to the door to open it. But he halted, trying to understand the goings-on by listening to the sound.

It’s me, open the door, Sujan?

Who is it, Barobabu? Sujan hardly waited for an answer, for he knew the voice. He took up the lantern hung from one of the wooden pillars of the house on a nail, screwed up the piston-like device clockwise to make the light bigger and brighter and opened the door. Inside, the mother woke up and after the fear being over, she came to the door with the son, curious to know. All of them saw the two men standing almost totally drenched. The bearded man was standing just on the stone of the veranda in his grey tea shirt and off-white trousers but Barobabu was unusually in his lungi. Before anybody could ask anything, Barobabu said, Sujan, come close to me and beckoned him to the corner of the verandah. For quite sometime he whispered into the ears of Sujan to which the latter only nodded in approval of acceptance. The boy could only hear one word from that whisper urgent.

The boy saw the effect of or the word ‘urgent’ itself in the half an hour that followed the departure of Barobabu. The father busied himself and the mother in removing the two wooden boxes and the tin-trunk containing the spare and special items of dress, utensils, and the valuables from the reserved bed utilized generally for the guests from the in-laws. The boxes were heavy with various utensils like a tea-set, two iron frying pans, one big sauce pan, a number of ladles of various size and shape, dishes and bowls and tumblers of steel—things the new couple were presented with on the occasion of their bridal feast ten years back. The trunk had lost much of its original colour, the picture of flowers stood spattered from the stems but somehow they retained their freshness with faded leaves surrounding them. The mother helped the father, holding one side of each of the loads suffering a shift all of which were ultimately pushed under the bed in the main bed room of the family. The man’s May I help you look did not convert into any verbal offer. He looked attentively at the boy and the shifting activity alternately. Feeling no real qualm for causing such disturbance, he tried to exchange a smile with the boy with no insistence; he did not turn his look from the lowered face of the boy expressing reluctance, waiting for another glance from him. The looks met again and the boy confused about what to do to avoid an invasion of look, left the room as if to help the parents. The man smiled to himself. He could feel the curious look licking him from perhaps a difficult angle in the dimly lit room—he was there seeing without being seen. In every give and take or interaction, the man thought, there was initially a response, deep down, of not having it at all. The desire for something recognized a lack and that lack was lacking or in the form of being formed in the boy at present, he thought.

There was no opportunity for any interaction with the boy that night. The man politely turned down the offer of food, even of a cup of tea. The boy could not but ask his father when he returned to the bed after hanging the dimmed lantern in its place:

Who is the man, papa?

He is from the place known as Calcutta, dear.

The image of Calcutta, of a big city dotted with big buildings and many streets with cars and buses and trams, the image he formed doubtfully from the account of it by Dipuda, appeared hazily in his mind and disappeared.

But why has he come here to sleep with us?

It’s a big query. The father himself did not know the answer. He was feeling no less invaded in his privacy by the intruder. He reacted only at the behest of his sense of duty. Barobabu told him to keep the man’s stay here as a secret from everybody, even from his fellow workers in the factory office. The man would stay here for a few days, he was a close relative of Barobabu but because of certain reasons, Barobabu could not keep him in his house. The reasons belonged to and meant for the vast area of insouciant consciousness which people like Barobabu always used as dumping ground and Sujans nourished with selfless, carefree care. Barobabu reminded him while leaving that he should take care that neither his wife nor his child would say anything about the man to anybody. The curiosity of the boy therefore disconcerted him, although he knew that both his wife and boy had a fair amount of insouciance which would put their curiosity paid without any explanation. He knew that his wife was also pricking her ears to know things about the man. He said, Barobabu told me that we must not say anything to anybody about the man. The boy insisted, Why, papa? The father did not know how to silence them; he decided to tell them all he knew with an added warning to honour the prohibitions. That worked and generated silence. Barobabu departed with a sense of temporary relief—he knew Sujan’s loyalty; the man was happy with a relatively safe shelter—he quite understood the people he was to spend the night with; Sujan went to sleep with the satisfaction of satisfying Barobabu and the boy with a stretch of his imagination—why did people from a better place come to such a place as theirs?—why did Barobabu not keep his relative in his house?—why did that man come at a night of such heavy downpour? How would Dipuda take it? These questions kept the boy awake for sometime and then in his state of semi-sleep he saw or heard the footsteps of rains drenching the face of the earth, submerging it and drowning it ultimately. The rains outside broke open the net of the boy’s imagination and continued to fill the space, touching its uppermost ceiling.

The boy woke up late in the next morning. The first thing he did was to pry into the room where the stranger slept last night and to his surprise he found the man not there. He left nothing except the wet trousers and the shirt spread on a jute rope for drying and an empty poly-bag folded under the pillow he slept on. The boy went to his mother. The mother understood him and said, He left early in the morning. Where to, mom? The mother who was taciturn by nature said, I don’t know. Does the father know anything? the boy was pressing for an answer. I don’t know, she repeated without any sense of irritation. Her knowledge dipped like water heron that came out of water for breathing and swam for a while but ultimately took a long flight for the unknown bamboo bush in the horizon. The father arrived a little while later and to the boy’s query he mumbled out the information that the man got up early and got his mother up from bed to make him a cup of tea and left before the sunlight came out.

The morning drawled on, spreading sunlight all over the strip of field facing the cottages with rain-drenched grasses glistening on the small mounds and over the logged water that covered almost the whole area. The vast stretch of the garden wore a very enticing look; the soft leaflets of light green commingled with the deep green surrounding them, jostled and raised their heads, breaking the flat pattern in the process. It’s time the leaf-pluckers entered the garden in groups. They were late because of heavy downpour last night. The boy tried to finish his breakfast of flattened rice and jaggery hurriedly but he could not. Chewing puffed rice was better, he thought and grumbled. The more he tried to finish it quickly, the more he was irritated with himself, with the bowl and its content, and of course with his father for his wrong choice of food. The conscious hurry could be applied only in quickly filling the mouth with the food and its sweetening companion but not in gulping down. Neither was the mouth quickly secreting in showers to soften down the dry food, nor was chewing of any help. Jaggery was finished before half of the main item was grappled with, making chewing all the more dilatory. The boy gave up and at last he solved the problem by putting the left-over into the pocket of his shorts and ran.

He went running and stopped in front of his friend’s house shouting out Binda, B-i-n-da where are you? Binda came out with his sister following him. The muddy spots on his shirt and specks of wet dirt in his hands were proofs of outing which he already had and it hurt the boy. Binda took him to his house and showed his treasure of some ten to twelve green mangoes which he collected from under the huge tree at the farthest corner of the officers’ quarters early in the morning. Binda offered him one big mango from his prize possession. The boy first refused but took it at last. Mangoes were always cherished in their green as much as the pitter-patter on the tin shed in the dead of night and the rainwater filling the field, the nullahs and above all, the pond that always gave them a rollicking space in the whole monsoon. The boy forgot all about his being ignored by his friend, he took a bite at it and screamed at the sourness of it and spit it in horror. The boy took the next bite rather slowly and scratched the skin off with his teeth, spit it and again slowly began to munch the bite. He then asked for salt from his friend. The question of relishing it through an elaborate preparation with bits of green chili and home-made mustard sauce stolen by Dipuda from their kitchen, and of course with lemon leaves, involved and demanded time and a suitable mood, and now he had neither of these. He could almost see the pond full to the brim and had no time to waste. With some salt in a piece of paper in one hand and the already eaten-into green piece of a mango in the other he ran for the spot, Binda could hardly keep pace with him. He did not listen to Binda’s request to slow down, but stopped for a while to adjust; but Binda did not stop and as a result he visited the water body earlier.

When did you go there in the morning? he asked Binda after compromising with his speed.

I can’t tell you exactly, it could be 5 or 5.30 a.m. Binda’s uncertainty was nearest to actuality, the boy guessed, as Binda had an uncanny sense of time, developed because there was no watch or clock in their house.

How did you manage to get up so early?

It’s my mother who woke me up and she in turn was up by the nudging of Tulu. The narrow way was only sparsely spattered with footsteps on grass and the mud. Some sparrows flew past them not very high, chirping perhaps a note of urgency.

Did you go to the bush? Did the rains not affect the nest of the blue bird?

Binda did not answer as his attention was drawn to the herons standing tiptoed on the ridge close to the running flow of rainwater. The ditches on both sides of their path were in spate. The herons were on the other side of the flow. Binda on all a sudden picked up a light piece of wet square-shaped wood and instantly threw at the herons. The herons were taken by surprise and flew away only when the object flew past them creating an undesired trajectory in the air and widely missing the target. Binda sounded annoyed, Got away this time, you lucky… The herons having escaped the attempt on life—an escape from being brought down as food while in search of it—flew to another possible spot of the assemblage of small fishes.

I have an idea, Binda said, his eyes glistening with the joy of hitting it, this spot, mark it and remember, must be a haunt of small fishes, the herons have an expert knowledge about the whereabouts of fishes.

So? The fishes here may be too small to be caught with fishing rods, the boy reasoned. They were walking side by side with the boy one step or so ahead of his companion. The sky overhead was clear and under it was the greenery filling the eyes of the onlooker—of the plants everywhere deeply related to the livelihood of all living in the of 10 km radius, of the trees nurturing them by providing necessary sheds and of the stray burgeoning of big trees of irregular variety—where many outlets of rainwater flowed unseen. Amidst the raising sound of the day the sound of the current of water could be heard. They were presently at the spot of their joy. A stretch of over some three acres of land was a beauty to them. The level of inlets from the northern side almost matched that of the only outlet in the south. That’s why the accumulation did not flow away, neither it was fully stagnant, leaving room for renewing of water although marginally. They were on the northern ridge inspecting the flowing in and the grasshoppers dangling on the tip of long grasses peeping out of the water. The grasshoppers were of various colours both in their body and in wings. They sat sometimes on a thin lanky stem causing it to bend dangerously on to the water and they were forced to dart desperately to another solid stem. The wise ones sat fixedly on the stouter stems. Many mole-hills and ant-hills all over the ridge jutted out their heads. On the rims of water were many faces of big frogs peeped out and occasionally turning on their cacophony. Two saplings of hyacinth kept moving in a circular way in one of the faces of the inlets under the pressure of water on one side and the resistance on the other by the pillar slab standing in the opposite direction and a branch of dry bamboo blocking its way diagonally. The boy tried to remove the stick standing in the way but was prevented by his friend.

Do you want to slip into the water right now?

A brisk wind was blowing. The boy did not answer but looked absorbedly at the soft foliage of the pair of hyacinths which were now sticking on to the stick. But he did not make any second attempt. Binda suggested a brilliant idea of catching the herons, using the device he saw last year in his maternal grandfather’s house—a very simple device, he explained with gusto, that could be made only of a bamboo framework fitted with a noose of thread. The bait fish, a lure, would be set in such a way that any pecking at it would result in getting the neck of the pecker noosed instantaneously. The boy was impressed. Can you make the device? We could try, the lack of enthusiasm in the voice dismissed the possibility of a fun, although the boy did not actually mean to catch a heron by the neck. He unconsciously caught his own neck and discarded the idea.

You did not say anything said the boy.

About what Binda responded nonchalantly.

But the boy would not let the topic drop. He reminded Binda,

I asked you whether you went into the jungle to see the nest in the morning. It was not a jungle but a groove of a number of big trees scattered over a strip of fallow land at the farthest corner of the garden with overgrown hedges and long grass underneath making it inaccessible to strangers. Binda did not answer directly. Instead he said,

Where do you think I had the mangoes from?

But you did not say that you went there? Why? Besides, you could have the mangoes from other trees such from the house of Pinki’s.

Do you mean to say that I am a fool? In the wee hours of the morning when nobody is up is it safe to go to the house of Pinki? I don’t want to get myself perforated fourteen times with such big needle, he showed his left palm by cutting it with the right almost fully.

Did you not feel any fear to go there all by yourself?

The pride of fearlessness flashed in his eyes but not with its usual glistening. Binda remained silent. Then after sometime he remarked,

Do you believe in ghosts, Biru, I myself don’t.

The boy, Biru, did not know exactly whether he believed.

I did not see any. How can I say about my belief?

But I saw one and still I do not believe.

When? where? whom? Biru would have spluttered out many such pointless questions such as the third one had not Binda stopped him by shutting his mouth forcibly.

Stop Binda said and his voice exuded commanding maturity, You will have to give me words not to tell it to anybody.

But you have not told me anything as yet.

Binda’s voice got all the wiser, You have not yet given me words.

Okay, I won’t tell it to anybody. He made a gesture of boyish swearing-in by touching his thumb with that of his friend. Then the friend started relating his experience of seeing a ghost in the morning.

He could hardly see things at a distance of fifteen to twenty metres when he went for the jungle early this morning. In the semi-darkness he almost groped his way through the bush of hedges, stepping too often on either ant-hills on high grounds or loose soil left wet by the rains last night. He was excited thinking of getting a handful of mangoes fallen from the storm-tossed branches of the tall mango tree at the farthest end of the groove. There were no signs of jackals nearby, no twittering of the birds or the screaming thick-billed myna to frighten him, fearing his approach would harm its chickens. No, he was not totally free from fear. The long grasses they made their way through by sporadic visits were all fallen in a state of confusion under the violence of storm making it very difficult even for a frequenter like him to find out the way. It was not the pre sunrise glow of the morning that guided him but the pale light of the moon. When at last he reached the spot, he found that he could hardly distinguish mangoes of his imaginary size from other such objects of the same size lying under the huge tree and as a result he was more often than not mistaking other objects like fallen leaves and pieces of broken twigs for mangoes. Flat leaves on the uneven ground could take on the shape of a mango in the dim light of the moon made dimmer by the shed of trees and bushes. He managed to collect ten mangoes of the edible size and then he decided to leave. He took off his shirt and put all the possession in it, tugged it into a pack and was ready to return. Then, at that instant of time, he saw the human figure at a distance of about two hundred metres in white pant and a whitish shirt—fast disappearing into the inaccessible bush. Petrified, he could not utter even a yell of fear. Soon the figure disappeared behind the thick bush.

The boy was listening attentively to the account of a confrontation with a ghost and now he spoke at length, Do you really think it was a ghost?

What else could it be?

The image was looking like a man?

Yes, but I did not see the face.

It could then be a thief as well.

Thieves never put on white dress during action at night. Besides, what is there to steal in the jungle where the grown-ups fear to go in broad daylight?

Binda spoke with confidence, leaving the boy with no desire to further contradict him. The site Binda spoke of was really a forbidden one for both the children and the adults for its wild character. Last year Biru’s father, after being informed of his mixing with Dipu and his team of little ones, cautioned him about the jungle and gave him an account of what happened two years back in the wilder area adjacent to it in greater detail. The story was of a tiger killing a calf from the cowshed of their locality in one evening; the bones of the calf along with that of a missing girl of ten were later on found in the wilder part of the jungle by an itinerant gatherer of fire-wood who ventured into that area by ignorance. Biru heard it hundred times in as many versions from the elders. The children of the locality were frightened by the elders to go even to the jungle—a warning which was challenged and broken by Dipu and his team of daredevils. They did not speak for long—Binda was running after dragon flies that were occasionally flying to the hedge on the ridges perhaps enticing them into a game ‘catch me if you can’. Every time Binda got near to achieving his target he was hopelessly defeated by the deftly elusive prankster that flew away to the tips of grasses in the water, drawing Binda everytime on to the precarious border of land and water. Binda realized the futility of his attempts and turned to Biru,

These flies are very playful and naughty.

They are also beautiful. Why do you always disturb them?

I don’t disturb them I want to catch them to play with them in a better way.

How?

By getting its tail knotted with a long thread at one end and the other end in my hand.

Do you call it playing?

Why are you so cross with me? Don’t you do the same?

Yes, often; but I also think that it is cruel.

You think you can be cruel whenever you want, but I can never do that.

Biru pacified him, I didn’t mean it. I really thought that they should not be so disturbed. Look at the water, the flies, and the ants. Isn’t it a beautiful sight? I wonder how they felt last night weathering the shower without any shed!

It’s too much, said Binda, don’t shed your tears over that.

On their way back to home Binda remembered,

Why did you ask me about my visit to the jungle?

Me? O yes. I was to ask you whether you saw the nest of the Myna hanging there in the branch of the peepul tree.

No, I didn’t. I did not try because I did not remember.

Before they parted Binda again reminded Biru not to share the experience of seeing a ghost with anybody. Biru nodded with insouciance. His