One of the last sentinels from the golden era of Bengali literature, Syed Mustafa Siraj wrote effortlessly for both children and adults. His sheer versatility enabled him to craft riveting novels like ‘Neel Ghorer Nati’ and conjure the evergreen ornithologist-cum-investigator Colonel Niladri Sarkar. Renowned for his nuanced social commentary and vivid dissection of the relationship between man and nature, Siraj was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Puraskar for his magnum opus ‘Aleek Manush’ (The Mythical Man). A bohemian boy from rural Murshidabad who set out to be a musician, he ended up carving a place for himself in the fraternity of luminaries like Sunil Gangopadhyay and Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. He passed away in 2012. Despite being widely acclaimed, many of his works remain untranslated till date.
‘Bharat Varsha’ is one of his less celebrated but extremely powerful short stories. It found its place in the Bangla textbook meant for the students of the West Bengal Council for Higher Secondary Education at a time when communal serpents had raised their fangs through the cracks in our socio-political system. At present, our nation fundamentally stands divided, bringing back the disturbing memories of the early 1990s. In these dire times, ‘Bharat Varsha’ shines as a beacon of protest against communalism. In a lucid language, striking enough to pierce the hearts of students, Siraj paints what India ‘is’ and what it ‘should be’ with unabashed candour.
At the turn of the winding pitch road, there lies a small market. It stands as the gateway to a village surrounded by dense bamboo groves. There is no electricity. The fashionable outfits from Ahmedabad worn by the city-faring youngsters are the only vestiges of an urban civilization that exists far away from this place. Surprisingly, the market has electricity. It has three tea stalls, two confectioneries, three shops selling clothes, one outlet for stationeries, two convenience stores, and a warehouse. A husking machine[1] is flanked by a brick kiln nearby. People from all neighbouring villages congregate in the market. The din and bustle persist till 9 at night, after which the streets go empty. Few streetlights flicker as the dogs run around the road. The city-bound trucks honk once in a while, only for the silence to take back its place after they pass. Even the owl’s cries, sitting on the branches of the old banyan tree, fail to pierce through the eerie stillness.
It was wintertime. Freezing winds blew from the huge field north of the market. The gloomy cloud cover soon gave in to a light drizzle. In Rarh Bangla,[2] the winters are usually very chilly. Untimely rains make them more severe. The bhadralok[3] refer to this as poushe badla.[4] The chhotolok[5] call it daor. When accompanied by gusty winds, daor becomes fapi for the villagers. That day, the village witnessed fapi. The paddy had still not been cut in the faraway fields. The sudden rains might damage the crops majorly. The villagers lost their temper. The peasants flocked to one of the tea stalls. They waited for the bright sun to emerge, while cursing Allah and Bhogobaan. Tired of waiting, some of the younger peasants shouted helplessly, “There is no one up there, no one!”
When there is no one up there, anyone can do anything they want. Anger begets heated debates, which often lead to fights. And such debates do not have any set agenda – anything and everything is discussed. During such sudden deluges in winter, the clock stops ticking for the villagers. They all come together near the oven to heat themselves up. That is their only respite. With not much to do, they talk to each other on topics ranging from the matinee stars of Bombay, Indira Gandhi, MPs and MLAs to the rumoured local witch Sara Bauri. The tea-seller profits out of such discussions, selling one cup after another. His diary fills up with scribbled notes on unpaid sums. However, since it is the harvesting season, he is confident about obtaining his dues from the villagers.
On one such day came an old woman. Her unkempt white hair, hunched back, and soiled clothes repulsed the passer-byes. With a wrinkled and worn-out visage that carried the traces of the long years behind her, she wobbled up the road completely drenched. She asked for a cup of tea amidst the cacophony at the stall. Seeing her, everyone went silent. The crowd was soon abuzz with speculations as to how someone so frail had managed to survive on the road in this weather.
After slurping down the tea in a relaxed fashion, she looked at them, but did not say anything. Somebody asked her, “Oi buri,[6] where have you come from?”
“Why do you care, morons?” said the woman in disgust.
The motley gathering burst out laughing. “Such a daring woman! Roaming about in such heavy rains like a charged-up pony!”, they remarked.
She went furious. “Your forefathers were ponies! Beware, don’t say all this rubbish. I might be from anywhere. Why should anyone care?”
The men did not stop. Someone asked her again. Contorting her already shrivelled face, she replied, “In your heads, you scoundrels.” She then paid for her tea and set out amidst the howling wind.
Everyone shouted, “This old hag will surely die.” She shouted back with equal ferocity, “Die, you good-for-nothing buffoons, along with your useless clans.”
To everyone’s bewilderment, she hovered along the muddy tracks to the great banyan tree. The ground beneath the tree was soaking in mud. She found a small alcove where she could settle down. Looking at her, they understood that she was used to living under the shades of trees.
Some said, “She should have gone to Barowaritola[7] instead. She won’t survive.” After this remark, many started putting forward their own bits on the concerning issue, making the local market livelier in contrast to the gloom outside.
The local soothsayer once said that the poushe badla would last for five days if it starts on a Tuesday. This time, nobody kept track of how many days the rains went on for. Once the clouds dispersed, the sky basked in the glory of a much-welcome sunshine. While going to the market, people discovered the old woman, sprawled beneath the tree, with no sign of life. She, as predicted by many, had fallen to the wrath of nature.
Joga, the teaseller, cried, “Seems like the buri is dead.”
“If local mongrels and jackals get a whiff of this stench, they’ll start eating the corpse”, said a concerned villager. Soon, more people gathered around her body. They found that her forehead had gone ice cold. They checked her pulse to declare that her caustic life force, which took them by surprise, had indeed vanished into thin air.
Someone amongst them informed the dutiful watchman who refused to contact the nearby police station. With the air of a great man wise beyond his years, he said, “We shouldn’t bother the police with a lowly beggar who died in the storm. The station is almost five miles away and by the time they arrive, this body would decompose beyond recognition. Don’t you see how much it has swollen?”
“Then what do we do, Chowkidaar da?”
“Get something to carry her off to the river. The current will certainly determine her fate.”
Abiding by the watchman’s instructions, the rotting corpse was put on a flimsy bamboo stretcher and was dumped by the dried-up riverbed, two miles away. The buri’s lifeless body lay unmoving under the scorching sun, with her face bereft of any traces of misery or glee. While returning to their shops, the villagers placed their discerning gaze upon the horizon, wondering when the band of hungry vultures would swoop in.
The morning passed and so did the afternoon. Shopkeepers and customers ventured towards the market after their mandatory post-lunch nap. All of a sudden, they noticed a band of people walking towards them with a stretcher on their shoulders. The Mohammedans from the neighbouring area were carrying the grotesque corpse while reciting prayers in Arabic. People who had dumped her were mostly Hindus. They asked angrily, “What is the matter?” “She is a Muslim by faith,” came the reply.
“Do you have any proof?”
The wily Maulvi stepped forward and declared, “After the fajr[8] today, when I was going to the bus stand, I saw her dying. I clearly heard her reciting the kalma.[9] I had not paid much attention since I was in a hurry. When I returned from the district court in the evening, you imbeciles had already dumped her in the river. Shame on me if I let that happen! We have decided to bury her.”
While such a boisterous claim from a man of religious authority was not countered immediately, Mr Bhattacharya, the Brahmin who had just alighted from the bus joined the fray. He vociferously objected, “I had taken the same bus as the Maulvi. I clearly heard her chant Lord Hari’s[10] name.”
Nokori, the barber, immediately jumped to his support. He said, “Yesterday, I arrived under the tree to start my work. I saw the buri and realized that it was impossible for me to sit there. She was chanting to herself ‘Hari Bol, Hari Bol’.”
Fazlu Sheikh angrily protested, saying, “She was reciting La Ilaha Illallah.[11] I heard it with my own ears.”
Nibaran Bagdi, the former dacoit notorious for his temper, shouted at the top of his voice: “All lies!”
Karim Farazi, the devout haji,[12] had once served as a bodyguard to some local zamindar. He refused to back down and roared back, “Beware!”
An apparently uneventful day collapsed into the frenzy of a communal brawl. Soon, warring factions started trying to take over the rickety stretcher. Tensions started spreading like wildfire. The shutters of the shops in the market were dropped, scaring innocent commoners away. A lot of people came running from the villages, carrying deadly weapons.
The stretcher carrying the lifeless body was lying on the pitch road. The crowd bifurcated into two distinct factions, standing on both sides of the corpse. Brandishing their swords and pikes, they started hurling obscenities fuelled by the war cries of Allah hu Akbar and Joy Maa Kali. The Mullah urged his followers to resort to violence in the name of jihad, while Mr. Bhattacharya retorted by asking the Hindus to start slaughtering the Mohammedan infidels.
Stuck in the middle of these bloodthirsty defenders of faith, the government watchman, in his ridiculous blue outfit, meekly brandished a stick in a desperate attempt to stop the imminent clash. He tried to tell something to the antagonistic groups, but nobody paid any heed to him. When the Muslim group came a bit further to attack, he hit the stick on the ground saying “Beware!” When the Hindu group took a step forward, he shouted in a similar tenor, “Steer clear!” It was certain that he could not have prevented a terrible riot for very long. In a crazed frenzy, he soon started hitting the ground vigorously with the stick.
Suddenly, something happened which shocked all of them. The corpse was shivering! It was trying to sit up on the stretcher. A nascent silence crept in, hushing the crescendo of bloodlust. The armed men on both sides were watching her with rapt attention. The watchman was shaken to his core.
The woman finally got up. She looked at the two crowds. Her face slowly contorted out of vile contempt. She started laughing hysterically.
The bamboozled watchman exclaimed, “Burima! You didn’t die!”
“Die! Die! You bunch of headless idiots. Die alongside your shameless clans.”
The crowd, motionless and numb from the shock, stared at her in sheer disbelief. “Burima, are you a Hindu or a Muslim?”, a shaky voice asked from the far end of the crowd.
With the last bit of bile and venom she could muster, she replied, “Have you bastards lost your eyesight too? Can’t you see who I am? You blood-hungry, godforsaken savages! Leave while there’s time still, or I’ll pluck out all your eyeballs one by one!”
Ignoring the collective gasp of fear, the fuming woman looked away and gathered her scanty belongings. Shakily, she passed right through the crowd as they stepped aside hurriedly to make way for her. Amidst the enchanting hues of the setting sun, she gradually faded from their vision, never to be seen again.
Saukarya Samad is an MA student of History at the University of Delhi.
[1] A machine used to unhusk oilseeds like sunflower, peanuts etc. for extracting cooking oil.
[2] A toponym for the western part of Bengal, which stretches from the Chhotanagpur Plateau in the west to the deltaic region in the east. It is less fertile and dry, characterized by a rugged terrain and ubiquitous red soil.
[3] The urban, mobile classes in Bengal, who were usually affluent, educated, and disproportionately influential in politics and society.
[4] The wintry drizzle. ‘Poush’ is the ninth month in the Bangla calendar, and the first month of winter proper. ‘Badla’ is a corruption of the Bangla word ‘Badol’, meaning clouds.
[5] Poor and/or lower-caste village folks.
[6] Colloquial Bangla expression for an ‘old woman’.
[7] The place for celebratory gatherings and important meetings for the entire village, usually under a giant banyan tree.
[8] The early morning prayer of the Muslims.
[9] The six holy phrases recited by Muslims in prayer. They are taken in part from the Hadith.
[10] Another name for Lord Vishnu.
[11] The first kalma of Islam, which translates to “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
[12] One who had gone on the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca, called Haj.
Lokayata 