The Witch’s Mirror and Other Stories

By Ratan Lal Basu

This book contains eleven short stories. They delineate various aspects of human life and society. The aspects covered by these stories include mystery, adventure, love, frustration, pathos, political crime, terrorist activities, philanthropy, friendship, alienation and lust for life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kautilya
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215314326

Ratan Lal Basu

ADDRESS: KOLKATAPh. D. in EconomicsProfession: Retired from 1st January, 2009 from the post of Reader in Economics and Teacher-in-Charge, Bhairab Ganguly College, Kolkata, India

Book preview

The Witch's Mirror

I

The storm raged through the village and demolished many houses including the hut of the old woman, allegedly a witch. It was at the farthest corner of the village where the bushy field slopes gently down to the small stream. Everybody in the village was relieved as the awe- inspiring woman was killed by natural hazard. Police came; her body was removed after clearing the debris and cremated at the sandy bank of the river. The villagers set fire on the crumbled house and it was gutted in a few minutes. All belongings of the deceased woman were now gutted by fire and the owner of the land on which the hut was erected, hired a priest to do the rituals to sanctify the plot so that no ominous effects of the soul of the woman alleged to be a witch remains. Villagers were now happy that the hidden menace of the witch was gone, but many felt morose as she had never done any harm to anybody and there was no proof that she was a witch; furthermore she used to help the villagers with her herbal medication. The village, however, reverberated with gossips about the deceased witch and her death brought some new topic to spend their idle time on in their monotonous rustic life. The tea stall gossips which had so far remained confined to the monotonous day- to-day living and back biting of the persons absent now swung to a livelier arena and stories were fabricated about the activities of the alleged witch.

The old woman had come to this village about twenty five years ago and nobody could tell exactly where she had come from. She mentioned the name of a village more than two hundred kilometers from here and none of the villagers most of whom rarely went beyond the local rural town, ten kilometers away, had ever heard of that village. She was noticed first by some cultivators while she was picking up herbs from the bushes at the river bank. She was then around sixty, lean and famished out of hunger. They asked where she had come from as they had never seen her before in this locality. At this she wept and gave account of her miserable life.

Her husband was a middle farmer with several acres of agricultural land and a mango garden at a village two hundred kilometers from here. She inherited the property after her husband’s untimely death and after his marriage of her son and daughter-in-law entreated her for transferring the property in the name of her son. The candid widow, being unaware of their nasty design, did the same and thereafter they started misbehaving with her. It became so intolerable that she had left home and started traveling randomly. She had learnt herbal treatment and could barely manage to get her food by providing treatment and selling herbs. But she could not earn enough to manage two meals a day and therefore she roaming from village to village in quest of livelihood and shelter.

The son of a cultivator was suffering from cough and cold and he promptly took her to his house and the boy was fully cured in no time after she administered her herbal medicine. The news reached the ears of a well to do farmer and he requested her to treat the asthmatic problem of his daughter. She stayed in his house and in a fortnight the girl was cured considerably belying the verdict of the urban allopathic doctors that this type of asthma is incurable. The farmer gave her a plot of land and built a hut for her at his own cost. Thereafter she started living there and helping rural people by her herbal treatment. In return the poor villagers used to provide her food and clothing and she had very little demand besides the bare subsistence.

One evening a few villagers returning form the haat in the village at the other side of the river in the evening saw her uttering mantras before a mirror and thereafter the rumor spread that she is a witch. In fact, they were not sure she was uttering mantras and some of them said that she was just looking at her own image intently at the mirror, but the rumor gradually got inflating from mouth to mouth and the ojha of the village, who had some grudge against the woman as since her arrival nobody approached him for treatment, made a fuss of the matter and declared that she must be a witch and she should be driven out of the village. The villagers were divided over the issue, but those who were against him could not express their opinion openly. They too had some fear about the woman because of the fabricated rumors.

However, the sacred mission of the ojha did not come to fruition. Some young boys of the village were influenced by the communist leaders of the town and they were advised to make the rural people free from superstitions which had been at the root of their poverty and sufferings according to them. So these boys immediately informed the leaders about the design of the ojha. Some leaders came to the village and delivered lecture at a public meeting emphasizing that the superstitions about witchcraft is baseless and then warned the ojha that if he does not eschew his way, they would get him arrested by the police. The fear of police silenced the ojha and the woman remained in the village. The villagers had confidence that whatever she is she would never do any harm to them and on the contrary they would always be benefited by her herbal treatment. Still people had some hidden fear in their mind and nobody went to her hut alone or after evening.

A few days after cremation of the woman, Tapu, a fourteen year old son of a poor peasant was returning alone from the field to bring from home a sickle. On his way home, across the field on which the hut of the woman was situated, he noticed a glitter in the mud and getting close he saw a beautiful oval mirror gilded with a white metal. He picked up the mirror and washed it clean in a nearby ditch. He thought it had something to do with the deceased woman and could somehow escape the notice of the villagers. He had listened seriously to the lectures of the communists and was convinced of the falsity of the concept of witch and other superstitions. He knew that he would have to hide this mirror at some secret place so that it is not detected by the villagers and destroyed. Upon reaching home he at first went to the back of their house and hid the mirror in a thick bush of ferns. That night, when everybody in the house fell asleep, he sneaked out and started watching his face in the mirror. It was a full moon night and his face appeared charming to him. Thereafter the mirror became a source of his secret pleasure and every day, the boy sneaked out of their house and went to the bush and looked at his image in the mirror with amazement. He got immense pleasure by making grimaces and all sorts of gestures at his image in the mirror and it occurred to him that with a little bit trimming he would look more handsome than the landlord’s son of his age.

The stories about the witch continued in evening gossips in tea stalls. Many of the villagers started fabricating stories about some mischievous activities of the witch. They, however, admitted that the woman loved the people of this village as they had given her shelter and therefore never did any harm to them but did mischievous activities in other villages.

Madhab Roy, a shopkeeper and one of the best story tellers in the village, stared his story by saying that what he was going to say now was from authentic source. He had gone to visit a relative at a distant village. A relative of a school teacher at that village lived in the village from where the witch had come. The witch was preparing herself to revenge the misdeeds of her son and daughter in law and their accomplices. One full moon night she reached the village and told his son and daughter in law that she would not live long and she would hand over her hidden gold to them. At this the eyes of his son and daughter in law glistened in greed and they welcomed her into the house and begged apology for their misbehavior because of inadvertence of young age. The witch smiled and told them that a mother always forgives her children. Then she brought out the mirror packed in a paper and fastened with string and told them that her gold was inside the packet. Thereafter the son and his wife opened the packet and their vision instantly fell into