Complete text of Radio Bhangadesh by Saikat Chakraborty
Radio
Bhangadesh
On a 21st of
February, nineteen years nine months and twenty-six days
before he
laughed again, Majhi Rowman, a boatman from the broken country of
Bhangadesh,
stopped laughing. On that day, Bhangadeshis who wanted to speak were
asked to shut
up and those who didn’t were shot. And on that evening, his wife unable to
bear the
tyranny of a silencing ruler in her heart and the pain of a screaming child in
her
uterus,
died during child-birth. Sundari Rowman was born.
For nineteen years, Majhi rowed
across the sprawling
dissected
Bhangadesh diagonally, while the muscles of his lips twitched with an aching
desire to
stretch. For nineteen years, Sundari reminded Majhi what she had cost him. His
laughter.
And for nineteen years, men died from destinies and women from child-births,
shiuli
flowers bloomed and withered, mangrove forests infringed into the sea and
Sundari
grew up,
sometimes by inches and sometimes by millimeters, while holding the silence of
her
country in her eyes.
Nineteen years later, the silence
expanded suddenly and shapelessly, popped out
of her
eyes and disintegrated with the sounds of breaking glasses. Majhi laughed
again.
Many years ago, before the
Bombarians took over Bhangadesh, it used be a
country
where love was still practiced and where people spoke fearlessly in the
language
of Bhanga.
Muscular men pleaded floating clouds to bring them news of their darlings.
God and
the Mother God made love for thirteen seasons continuously without taking a
gasp,
drinking water or conceiving. And then for nineteen continuous years, the
Bombarians
separated everything from everything – the possible from impossibles,
history
from memories and people from people. People who wanted to speak in Bhanga
were asked
to shut up and those who didn’t were shot.
And through the nineteen years
following Sundari’s mother death, Majhi’s world
slowly
became a sphere with a hollow within. Every trajectory on its surface traced a
circle
with a gap inside. His life and his days became circular, without a beginning
without an
end. People and events could enter anywhere and leave anywhere. It didn’t
matter.
But he continued to row the boat
across Bhanganadi because he promised to.
Every time
as Majhi and Sundari’s mother made love, between gasps she would extract
vows from
him about times ahead. “Promise me, no matter what
happens, you would not
give
up. You would hold on.” Bhangadesh was flooded every monsoon and
following the
floods,
the river reeked of death. The smell made Majhi sick. He had fever, his teeth
clattered
and he hallucinated of deserts and cactuses. But he held on and rowed the boat
everyday.
He never laughed, never loved, never married again and never gave up. He
only sang,
everyday.
Sundari accompanied Majhi everyday,
almost everyday, on the boat. Because she
reminded
Majhi of her mother. The same wavy hair, the same long eyelashes and the
same large
eyes. And on days that she didn’t, Majhi had tortured dreams at night, in
which
Sundari’s mother appeared in the brown sari that she was wearing on that
February
evening,
with its anchal fluttering in an unknown breeze. She used to laugh at the
geometry
of Majhi’s world, one without a beginning without an end, and would leave
unobtrusively.
Majhi never told Sundari about his dreams, but asked her to accompany
him
everyday.
Sundari was blissfully unaware of
the fact that she was being used as an
instrument
to shoo away bad dreams. Blissfully, because it was during her everyday
boattrips that she learnt to first understand and then speak another language.
It was the
language
that Majhi spoke when he rowed – the language of his spherical world.
Structureless,
it spoke of beginnings at the ends of sentences, and of ends everywhere
else. It
was free from the practical tyrannies that other languages impose – syntax,
meaning,
words and silences. It was the language of his songs. His music was his flight
path –
from public ordinances and private grief. And as Sundari grew up, these songs
became her
toys. She would stop at the komal rishabh of Asavari
for
hours, examining its
flatness
and its foam like ephemerality and then glide through madhyam
as
if it is of adult
interest.
She would brush her voice over komal nishad repeatedly
like brushing her
fingers
over a secret mole, shivering at the pleasure and then kick komal
gandhar aside
like an
empty coconut shell and whistle away. Her toys were rustic toys that taught her
nothing
about anything. Neither about public ordinances nor about private grief.
Sundari entered her womanhood
without being married and Majhi, the father of
an aging
daughter, was worried. He prayed to the gods everyday. But the Father God and
the Mother
Goddess would be tired after the long night, the Dark God would be playing
the flute
for his human lover, the Fair Goddess would be at her daily riyaaz
and
the Son
Gods would
be busy with themselves. Tired, he decided to take his daughter’s destiny in
his own
oar-marked hands. He chose young men with broad shoulders and without police
records
and asked Sundari to test their youthfulness. Sundari who inherited her
mother’s
reserves
of gaspless energy examined them night after night and tossed them away like
sucked
mango pulps. On the mornings that followed those nights, her voice cracked like
the summer
river and her Asavaris lost their asavariness. Their
flatness, their moleness,
their
glide-throughness, their whistle-awayness. But she still sang and she still
shivered
with
pleasure. And then she would tuck the anchal of her sari tightly around her
waist, tie
her hair
as a large knot on her head and leave with Majhi to row the boat. She disliked
untucked
anchal and flowing hair. Nice things, sad things and poetical things did not
touch her
anymore. She would row the boat with tucked anchal and tied hair,
concentrating
on the plunge of the oars, the splash of the water and on Majhi’s voice that
dimmed all
memories. Of public ordinances and of private grief. She never looked at the
sky or the
horizon, when she rowed. She was a woman without a sky without a horizon.
But when
she laughed, the air smelt of shiuli flowers. And when she sang, it rained.
Sundari and Majhi sang songs in
Bhanga about the land and king and entertained
their
passengers:
‘In the
The customs were peculiar.
The king, for instance, advocates
Gilded frames of chocolates.
The queen, who seldom goes to bed
Straps the pillow round her head.
The courtiers – or so I’m told –
Turn cartwheels when they have a cold;
…The King’s old aunt – an
autocrat –
Hits pumpkins with her cricket
bat
While Uncle loves to dance
Mazurkas
Wearing garlands strung with
hookaha.
All of this, though mighty queer,
Is natural in Bombaria.’*[1]
The songs of Majhi and Sundari
flooded the whole of Bhangadesh. Bhangadeshis
requested
Yeah Yeah Con, the king of Bombaria for a radio station of their own – Radio
Bhangadesh
they
wanted to call it – where they could broadcast these songs. In Bhanga.
The king
dismissed saying that radio stations were meant for broadcasting bigger things.
Wars.
Bloods. Floods. Attacks. Revenges. Ends. Not small ones. Like the sadness
between
two rains. Or the search for a personal sunshine. Or a journey in which a dried
shiuli
leaf is crumpled.
So musicals were made out of these
songs and performed in the port city of
to earn
relief-funds for flood victims. Housewives hummed them while frying ilish fish
in
the
kitchen. Lovers abandoned the Love Songs of the Dark God and sang
these songs as
duets when
they were tired of each other. And mothers sang these songs when they put
their
children to sleep. In the children’s dreams, these songs became worlds, worlds
where
fantastic things happened, where farmers ate chocolates, played cricket and
listened
to the radio in their native language.
But on one early morning, sounds of
guns broke the children’s fantastic dreams.
They woke
up to find that the
sisters
and grandmas were dragged out of their homes and raped. Fathers and brothers
and
grandpas who protested were shot inside their mouths, who watched were shot
between
their legs and who slept were shot in their hearts. Blood from the hearts, from
inside the
mouths and from between the legs, oozed out profusely in thinly flowing
streams
which merged with each other and dripped into river Bhanganadi coloring it red.
What
remained was burnt.
However, when Majhi woke up in
the morning he found his world intact. His was
a small
world though, which contained Sundari, their boat and an aching desire to sing.
It
is easy to
keep small worlds intact. The early morning rays filtered in through the leaves
and
demanded a Bilawal, an early
morning raga. Majhi sang, with his morning voice
ascending
and then descending on all the seven swaras,
exploring dhaivat and gandhar
like an
ocean. Sundari woke up towards the end during the tihai, and when he finished,
they left.
Sundari and Majhi rowed their boat
across Bhanganadi to get passengers from the
other side
of the river. Their early-morning passengers consisted of chicken-sellers and
vegetable-sellers
who carried baskets on their heads, bahurupiahs who colored
themselves
to earn money, and eunuchs who wore gold bangles and silver earrings and
searched
for new-born babies. On that morning when they dragged their boat to the river,
Sundari
noticed the redness of the waters of Bhanganadi and ignored it as one of those
colors of
the sky that the river often reflects. Unlike the other days, the birds did not
chirp, the
doels the koels or even the bulbuls. Only the ripples caused by the boat
stirred
the shaluk
flowers on the water. The smell of smoking guns and charred flesh in the air
entered
her breath and clouded her intestines with an uncanny premonition. The smell
urged her
not to row today, to go back. The smell tried to steal her destiny. But she
remained a
practical woman in a practical world, ready to combat all thefts with knotted
hair and
tucked anchals. She tied her anchal tightly around her waist, pulled out the
oar
that was
stuck in the mud and started pushing the boat with the oar away from the banks.
Majhi
steered in the front, she rowed at the back.
The oar in her hand brings songs in
her throat, songs in Bhanga that clouded her
mind like
smoke creating the same aching desire to sing. She knew that anything can
happen if
she sings. She tried to imagine what can happen. River Bhanganadi will turn
crimson
red. She shall die of injuries or shame. Majhi would be shot. Their boat would
float
emptily on corpses and shaluk flowers. Sixty million Bhangadeshis would be
relieved
from the painful desire to sing. They would sing.
She decided to sing. Rules, bans,
threats and fears turned into smoke as she sang.
And an
uncertain feeling – like the one of soaking oneself in the first monsoon rain
or
walking on
the razor edge between everything and nothing – crystallized into two small
beads of
glass that hung around her lower eyelashes, almost ready to melt.
But before they could melt, three
men landed from three parachutes on the boat.
They were people she had seen on newspapers – Yeah Yeah Con the king of
Bombaria,
his cousin
Tick Yeah Con and their fat buttocked general, General All Butt. Yeah Yeah
Con put
his index finger perpendicularly on his lips, indicating Sundari to shut up. ‘Chup
maagi
chup’, he said. A thick index finger stuck out of her familiar
morning and asked
her to
stop the song – the song that was her river her boat her rain her toy. Once
again,
bigger
things intruded into smaller ones. The Outside intruded into the inside. Ends
intruded
into journeys. Public ordinances intruded into private pleasures. National
silences
intruded into personal ones. As a result, the silence that Sundari has holding
in
her eyes
for nineteen years expanded suddenly and shapelessly. It grew so much out of
proportions
that her eyelids could no longer hold it. It popped out of her eyes carrying
with it
the two melting beads of glass. She continued to sing though. Her song became
her river
her boat her rain her toy. Her breath. Her bones. Her Language.
‘Chup
maagi chup’ – he asked her again to shut up, and when she did not, he
lunged at
her anchal that was tied around her waist. The anchal untied and rippled in the
breeze
like a wave pregnant with greater damages. He then untied her hair, and with
untucked
anchal and untied hair, Sundari looked like the kind of woman she never
wanted to
be. Yeah Yeah Con drank off the two melting glass beads from her cheeks and
kissed her
like a lizard with a long tongue. He started exploring her body like an ancient
relic,
excavating with an archeological desire every exploding nerve in search of
hidden
treasure.
Tick Yeah Con and All Butt stood behind waiting for their turns. Majhi watched
his small
world lose its intactness as The Outside entered its inside, skinned it off and
chewed it
dry like a sugarcane stick. Majhi, the man with a promise to never give up, to
hold on no
matter what happens, used his oar to steer the boat to a familiar whirlpool,
where it
overturned.
General All Butt sank like a brick
before his legs got entangled in the underwater
roots of
the shaluk plants. Majhi and Sundari swam under the water till a school of
ilish
fish
intersected them. They had to surface and when they did, they saw that Yeah
Yeah
Con and
Tick Yeah Con were swimming in the opposite direction. Sundari and Majhi
swam to
the other shore. The river was broad, shallow and endless. Untucked anchal,
undone
hair, Sundari swam against the current. Wanting to sing swam against being
asked to
shut up. A voice that can summon the rains swam against ‘Chup
maagi chup’.
The
repressed fragrance of the shaluk flowers, the intense pungency of the
waterhyacinths, the occasional slimy touch of the ilish fish and the
clandestine pleasures of a journey without an end took over Sundari. Nice things,
sad things and poetical things
touched
her wet skin leaving goose bumps.
When they reached the other shore,
they found that it was ravaged too. The trees
and the
huts burnt as one yellow mass. And the river spilled into the land like a
bleeding
vein. The
yellowness jumped into the river eating the boats anchored at the banks and the
corpses
floating on the water. Leaping yellow ate dripping red. Only the shaluk flowers
floated on
the middle of the river. Large black ants crawled aimlessly on its white waxy
petals and
circled hurriedly inside the fragrant hollow of the flowers. Public turmoil was
mirrored
by private confusion. And private torment was tossed into the yellowness
outside
and charred into a public resolve. A resolve to live.
Majhi and Sundari swam to the shore
with the resolve securely held in their
clenched
fists. They walked straight towards Zan Rowman’s house. Zan Rowman was
Majhi’s
friend and a boatman too, but one who faced the world with comedy. He told
jokes
about inequality and injustice and ate his own bitterness with laughter like
karela
soup
spiked with coconut milk. His wife Kalika Zany was of Sundari’s age and was her
competitor,
because she too could sing with a voice that summoned the clouds. When
they
reached Zan’s house, they found that the courtyard was filled with dead bodies
and
slippery
with blood. Though the sun shone and the breeze blew, the blood neither dried
nor
evaporated. It floated liquidly on the ground on which Majhi slipped and fell.
As he
stood up,
he found Zan’s body behind the well. He noticed that the bullet has hit him on
the right
shoulder and he could still feel his pulse-beat. He shouted to Sundari, ‘
achhe.
Ekhono pran achhe. There is life. Still
there is life.’
Two hours later Zan Rowman woke up
to life with just two memories – that of
Kalika
screaming and her menstrual blood dripping on their courtyard as they dragged
her by her
hair, and that of a white shaluk flower floating on a red river. It took him
two
more days
to recover the rest of his memories. Even when he did, he was uncertain and
searched
for more lost memories inside sacks of rice and in the mangrove forest close to
the river.
He accused Yeah Yeah Con, Tick Yeah Con and All Butt for stealing his
memories
and called them itihaas-chorer dal, a group
of history-stealers. At moments
when the
search for more memories frustrated him, he clenched his fist, holding inside
it
a resolve
– a resolve to recover lost memories.
And also two hours later Sundari
found Kalika’s body near the river. She was dying from kisses that charred her
like tongues of fire, from embraces that crumpled her
like a dry
leaf and from torture that urged her to abandon the language of Bhanga. But
she did
not. She locked her teeth, clenched her fists, shut her senses and refused to
die.
When she
returned to her senses and the colors returned to her skies, she found herself
with
blood, an untucked anchal and untied hair. She swore in the name of Ma Kali to
avenge
blood with blood and not to tie her greasy hair till she shampooed it with Yeah
Yeah Con’s
blood. ‘Soiracharider kalo haath bhenge debo, gnuriye debo’, she said,
resolving
first to break the black hands of the oppressors and then to crush the broken
hands.
Women who have been asked to shut up
and women wanting to shampoo their
hairs
joined men with lost memories and men with crushed worlds and decided not to
tolerate
the king of Bombaria any more. They clenched their fists and joined them to
form the Mushti
Bahini, a guerrilla organization that aimed at fighting the might of
Bombaria
with their fists. “Shobai raja amader ei mushti
rajatye. All are kings in the rule
of
our fists” was their slogan. Mushti Bahini attacked Bombarian camps at
night and
killed
Bombarian soldiers. And during the day, they ignored the monsoon rains as
seasonal
destinies and traveled on boats to the deep villages singing songs in Bhanga
about
their today, yesterday and tomorrow. Their songs were like sunshine that
dragged
people out
of their homes, planted lilting tunes in their heads and instilled images of a
tomorrow
in their eyes. Their fists became iron fists each clenching an individual
resolve
and they
joined the Mushti Bahini. Daughters mothers and aunts, sons fathers and uncles
sang
during the day and killed during the night.
Radio Bombaria announced a reward of
hundred thousand takas on the fists of
Majhi and
Zan. Other mushti jodhyas were worth
a thousand takas a fist. But two things
saved the
Mushti Bahini. Their songs entered the heads of Bhangadeshis through their
breath and
swam in their minds like silverfish eating away every Mir Zafarish thought of
greed and
betrayal. And to the mushti jodhyas, the
wife’s
body. They knew every forest every canal every hillock and every valley, they
have
explored them completely, are tired of their lack of surprises and could guide
themselves
to every peak through inaccessible terrains. They knew where to plant the
explosives,
when to launch a guerrilla attack and how.
But the Bombarian soldiers outnumbered
the mushti jodhyas. And exiled far from
Bombaria
and from their wives, sisters and mistresses, their hungry bodies burned like
ulcerated
guts. As the wild injured country of Bhangadesh was recovering its colors after
the
floods, the Bombarians unleashed a second attack of shooting and rape. They
killed
boys in
football grounds, raped women at river banks, shot men in rice fields and
dumped
the
corpses in River Bhanganadi. The Mushti Bahini kept peeping from behind the
bushes
waiting for an opportunity to retaliate. An injured land emptied its wounds on
a
crimson
colored river. And the river emptied its load of corpses, torn anchals, crushed
worlds and
lost memories into an ocean, the
floated
defiantly on a crimson colored river.
The Southwest Monsoon current
entered the
crimson
waters to the shores of the neighboring country of Ballot, where the temple of
the Mother
Goddess Ma Durga was situated at the beach city of
took bath
in the holy waters of the Bay, wiping their sins off their bodies, their faces
turned
red. So the Ma asked them, “What’s the matter, my dear? Why are you all
redfaced?” The devotees said, “Ma, our
faces speak of what the Bhangadeshis are enduring in silence. Ma, be kind Ma.
Open your third eye to the plight of your sons.”
But Ma kept her third eye closed
till October came. Till the clouds floated like
beaten
heaps of cotton. Till kash flowers whitened the fields like a muslin bedspread.
Till
the smell
of shiuli flowers made farmers and boatmen tipsy. Till it was Durga Puja. It is
Durga Puja
when Ma Durga, the Durgotinashini form of Parvati, the Killer-of-Plights, the
Shooter-of-Troubles,
comes to Bhangadesh from the mountains of Kailash. Sometimes in
elephants
promising harvest, sometimes in boats bringing floods, sometimes in horses
threatening
famines. This year she landed on Bhangadesh from a parachute with her son,
promising
freedom. Majhi welcomed them in front of a cheering crowd, first in Bhanga,
“Bondhugan,
come, let us endear the Goddess as our Mother. Our Shooter-of-Troubles,
our
Killer-of-Plights. Endear Godie. And also
the Son of Godie,” and then in Sanskrit, the
ancient
language of prayers, weddings and funerals, “Ja Debi Sharbabhuteshu
Shaktirupena
Sansthasya. Namotashmoi Namotashmoi Namo Namaho. Endear
Godie,
You
who are in Every Form, You whom we Behold in the form of Shakti, the vanquisher
of
Evil, our Prostrations to You.”
Endear Godie, the Empress of Ballot,
a woman who has neatly divided her hair
and her
world into alternate black and white pleats, addressed the people of Bhangadesh
by
reciting Tagore:
‘Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high,
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments by narrow domestic
walls;
Into that heaven of freedom, my
Father,
Let my country awake.’
Inspired
by her promises of unbroken worlds, fearless minds, high-held heads and a
tomorrow
full of sunshine, the audience shouted, first in Bombarian language, “Endear
Godie
Zindabad, Yeah Yeah Con Murdabad”, and then in Sanskrit, “Jayom
dehi, Jasho
dehi,
Hrasho dehi. Give us Victory, Give us Glory, Destroy our Enemies.”
And sitting on the podium, Son of
Godie scratched his baldness frequently and
wondered
as how to awaken this huge population, as how to break narrow domestic
walls.
Vasectomy – it suddenly occurred to him – is the only way to repair an injured
civilization,
the only way to a small and happy nation. He had a dream – parents of two
children
shall hold their heads high and declare to the Free-World: ‘Hum Do, Hamare
Do. We
Two, Ours Two.’
He then looked gingerly at Sundari,
who sat in a corner with her anchal covering
her
shoulders and her arms strung around her knees. She appeared darker than she
was,
charred
both by heat and destiny. She thought about other things and thought wildly. Of
the world
that is old enough to die. Of tyranny that is fearless. Of freedom that slept.
And
then she
stared at The Outside and stared defiantly. At a ship on the Bay. At a cloud on
the blue.
At a white on the crimson. At a woman on the boat. And as Son of Godie stared
at
Sundari, he shelved his vasectomy plans and decided to explore her defiance –
the
inside of
its inside and the outside of its outside.
The news of Endear’s arrival in
Bhangadesh propagated overnight, and at
pm on the
next day Tick Yeah Con informed General Niyechhi, the commander of the
Bombarian
army in Bhangadesh: “Total war imminent. Redeploy
forces in accordance
operational
tasks. Consider areas of tactical, strategic and political importance.” At
pm Radio
Bombaria interrupted its regular program to broadcast a message by the King.
It was a
long speech interspersed by religious texts, pleas for harmony and integrity
and
punctuated
by silent pauses in which one could hear Yeah Yeah Con inhaling deeply like
an asthma
patient. The Bhangadeshis listened to the speech with anticipation and in the
silence of
the pauses, they read their fates. After the speech, Yeah Yeah Con sent an
urgent
message for ‘Your Imperial Majesty’s Gracious
Consideration’ expressing the
need for
gunboats.
In the evening, Endear Godie enacted
a play ‘Mahishashur-mardini Durga’ in the
port city
of
her with
ten hands and ten weapons so that she can kill Asur, the demon. The Asur who
has been
blessed by Brahma could only be killed by a woman. Endear Godie played the
role of
Durga. She came breezing into the stage on a horse. She had only two hands
though, and
with a sword in one hand and guns and bullets on the shoulders, she left the
other hand
free so that she could bestow her blessings to the Bhangadeshis. ‘Bolo
Endear
Mai
ki Jai, Ballot Mata ki Jai. Hail Mother Endear, Hail Mother Ballot,’ shouted
the
Bhangadeshis
to receive blessings. In the end, Ma Durga by the sorcery of her third eye,
the one
placed vertically on the forehead, recognized the Mahishashur, the demon
disguised
as a bull and pierced his chest with the tip of her sword till he bled like the
river. In
his blood the Bhangadeshis saw their victory and in sharp edge of Endear’s
sword,
they saw the disintegration of Yeah Yeah Con’s stubble moustache into small
thick
strands of hair that could cause dysentery if allowed to contaminate their fish
curries.
(His moustache actually disintegrated two days after Sundari found her Final
Happiness
and one day before she lost it again.)
The formal declaration of war by
Yeah Yeah allowed Endear Godie to attack the
Bombarians
without the cover of Mushti Bahini. During that night, she attacked
Touchgaon
and Karmatala along with the Mushti Bahini and destroyed the Bombarian
bases
there. And on the same night Son of Godie tossed in his bed feeling lighter.
His
limbs
started melting like hot wax and he dreamt of the crimson waters of Bhanganadi
on
which
Sundari’s brown eyes floated. He dreamt undreamable dreams. He dreamt of
brownness
floating on redness. He dreamt of an aching desire to sing floating on being
asked to
shut up. He dreamt of a voice that can summon the rains floating on ‘Chup
maagi
chup’. He dreamt of his tomorrow floating on today.
Unaware of her son’s undreamable
dreams, Endear Godie continued the attacks
on the
Bombarians with the support of the Mushti Bahini. In the next two days, the
Bombarians
lost Darshan, Thakurgaon, Komolpara and Akhira. Ballotiya forces also
continued
round the clock attacks on the capital city of
that the
army is holding out in some sectors and none of the losses of the important
cities
was
mentioned. General Niyechhi grieved, “I have never
harmed anyone. Why should
this
happen to me?”
Nothing much happened to him though.
Realizing that his army cannot hold out in
Dock for
more than a week, he immediately organized a military parade in the capital
city. At
the front of the parade was the general himself and marching behind him were
the best
soldiers of the Bombarian army – their noses in the air, arms swinging
rhythmically,
buttocks swaying grandly. On that day, the whole city forgot its bruises and
shattered
into laughter, gasping and almost choking itself to death. And at night, Son of
Godie
dreamt of Sundari’s eyes again. Her eyes appeared very large, so large that
they
could
accommodate another day and another world. They stared at him like a dewdrop
like a
morning like a language like a road. He stared back at them, and said “Sundari,
I
love your
eyes. I want to spend the rest of my life with you so that I can see at them
forever.”
A week passed by. Son of Godie kept
gazing at Sundari’s eyes both inside and
outside
his dreams, searching in them his finality, and Endear Godie, the Empress of
Ballot,
won battles like cricket matches, conquered cities like Emperors and sulked in
the
solitude
of her conquests. And whenever Son gazed at Sundari’s eyes, strange things
happened
to her. Something moved in her guts. Wildness clung to those eyes where once
silence
lived. The ship at the Bay, the cloud on the blue, the white on the crimson,
the
woman on
the boat, all came sailing to that wildness like exiled immigrants. To live in
it
fearlessly.
To further generations. His gaze was like Ginger
Tea.
It cleared her throat,
which was
choked by the three silencing words ‘Chup maagi chup’. Now she
could sing
with a
voice that summoned the rains even on the dry December evenings. Bhangadeshis
attributed
this unexpected rainfall to a thirty degrees rotation of the North-west Monsoon
winds. But
Sundari smiled surreptitiously at her own secret. She knew that it was the
gaze.
On one night as Endear Godie battled
the troops of General Niyechhi in the city
of
Jai-Shahar, Son of Godie’s dream was disturbed by mosquito bites. He had
forgotten
to bring
his repellent cream and the mosquitoes of Bhangadesh were like sparrows. He
could not
sleep any more and went to the riverside.
He found Sundari there but they did
not speak with each other because their
words
could tell no stories. Their bodies were pregnant with stories though. Stories
of
secret
loss, stories of a stone that wobbled and jumped on the river like a frog,
stories of a
fat-buttocked
general who sank amongst the shaluk flowers, stories of a silencing king
who had a
tiny thing, stories of sweat, grime and dust. Stories that leave goose bumps
when
carefully listened to but teach nothing about anything. The ancient stories
were
stored in
their memories like pickles, and the modern ones nested on their skin. They
first
drank each
other’s memories through the lips, ears and eyes. And when the older stories
were told,
their bodies took over in search of the newer ones. The quest of tales
inhabiting
the pores of each other’s skin unfolded an Asavari, an
ancient raga with five
notes on
the ascent and all seven on the descent. It was he who started the alaap, with
his
fingers
dancing like kash flowers on her breasts that were now beaten heaps of cotton.
Her breath
ascended from komal dhaivat to komal
nishad and then lingered on the komal
rishabh,
sometimes gliding from madhyam to shadaj. Molten
beads of glass collected on
her heaps
of cotton, which he drank like a thirsty child. His tongue was a madness
everywhere,
first on the defiance of her eyes, then on the crispness of her lips, in the
well
of her
navel, in the valley of her breasts, in the darkness of her wilderness. Under
its
warm
wetness, her pink softness turned into brown almonds with two breathtaking
peaks,
on whose
tips nice things, sad things and poetical things collected, waiting to be
touched.
And when
he touched it, it became an epicenter. Faults developed, sucking in war,
freedom,
loneliness and love like frightened animals and an earthquake ravaged every
nerve as
if it were a raw one. He proceeded to explore the nocturnal darkness of her
forest,
its triangular silence and its labyrinthine paths that takes one to the truth,
with his
slippery
agility. But she stopped him and instead took charge of his solitary
shaluk
flower.
He
was apprehensive of its silence and shyness, but under her caresses which
grew from
gentle to arrogant, it spoke and it bloomed. The conical bud at the end of the
stem
absorbed electricity and a lightning struck its head, setting his whole body
ablaze.
He heard
his own voice screaming but the fire turned everything into ashes – his
vasectomy
plans, memories of his dead father, the secret paste to cure baldness, and
images of
his tomorrow, yesterday and today. A dark treacherous tunnel opened its door
before
him. He tiptoed in, traveling sometimes miles together wanting to end the
journey
and
sometimes millimeter by millimeter eager to prolong it forever. Each moment of
the
journey was
a life in itself, complete with its quota of pleasures and pains, everything
and
nothing.
He did not know whether to die in pleasure or to live in pain. A simmering
river
threatened
to flood. But the image of an empty boat sailing through a thunderstorm
lingered
in his head and impregnated him with a selfish desire to walk forever on this
razor edge
between everything and nothing. To live as if he would never die. To walk as
if the
journey is endless.
Finally it exploded and inundated
everything, from the inside of her insides to the outside of her outsides.
Their breaths descended to komal dhaivat again but the floods swept away
everything – the desire to sing, the desire to hold heads high, the desire to mend
fragmented worlds. Only a final happiness – a thin, small one – remained.
The next morning whistled like a
doel and shiuli flowers made tired lovers tipsier.
Sundari
and Son slept on each other below a tree on the riverbank. Nakedness clothed nakedness
as sunshine filtered in through the leaves as yellow polygons. A Ballotiya air
force
pilot with the eye of a vulture spotted them from the sky and immediately
reported
to Endear
Godie through the wireless: “Madam, Dandi-1930 reporting. Madam, your Son
is sleeping
with
a Bhangadeshi woman, that Majhi’s daughter. In broad daylight. Bilkul
… chhee
chhee chhee…kya batau Madam? He has eaten the head of shame and sharam.
Madam,
over and out.” Endear Madam, who was busy fighting the troops of General
Niyechhi
in the city of
Having conquered Jai-Shahar, Endear
Godie sat on the edge of a milestone,
counting
how many more cities are left to conquer before Bhangadesh could be formally
liberated.
Wilderness spread miles around her. A brown leaf floated in the dry December
breeze,
inscribing an imaginary circle around her, a circle with a hollow within. Her
life
and her
days were also circular, without a beginning without an end. Anyone could enter
anywhere
and leave anywhere. Anyone, except Son.
She looked up at the sky above her
head – it was an evening blue that merged
effortlessly
with the Bay. A seagull pecked at the blue till it bled and left for the sea.
The
blood
reminded her of a few things – the dirty red mass that Son was when he was
born,
the first
time he learnt how to tell time, the first time she taught him how to spell ‘To-gether’, the
first sprouting above his lips, the first appearance of baldness, and the
twentyfive years of raising a fatherless child. His every puff is her breath.
His every thought is her skin. His every grin is her laughter. His every bruise
is her injury. His every step is her world, her circular world. Son’s wife –
her eyes softened now – would be a Lakshmi with fair skin, somebody whose pink
lips would stretch in an innocent smile, somebody who unlike her has not seen
enough of this world, at least not enough to be embittered, somebody whom she
would
choose. Not Sundari, not this woman whose skin is charred by destiny and who
has sucked men from two villages like mango pulps. “No”,
Endear
Godie, the Empress of Ballot, decided, “this marriage cannot take
place.”
Despite the growing menace of her
son’s inter-religious love marriage, she
performed
her duty as an Empress. Within the next two days she cleaned up the other
Bombarian
hideouts, including the capital city of
with her
son as soon as it was formally liberated. However, a disturbing image of
‘Sundari-and-Son
To-get-her’ ballooned in her head, bloated her face and made her scalp
itchy.
When she woke up on the morning of 16th of
December, she realized that she had
developed
a permanent itchiness of the scalp.
And on the same morning, Sundari
woke up with a broken dream. She was dreaming of herself doing her morning
chores in the river. She had joined her palms and
was
scooping out some water from the river, when she noticed a boat rowing down
Bhanganadi.
Zan Rowman was rowing it, Endear Godie was talking to him, and Son sat
at the
edge looking down, with his hands holding his head. The water slipped out of
Sundari’s
hands through the fingers and with it, her memories of the final happiness. She
woke up,
with the image of loss sticking to her eyelashes and with the realization that
worlds can
slip out through fingers in morning dreams and that nice things, sad things
and
poetical things can be squashed like tomatoes by anybody. Anybody with a strong
fist. She tied
her memory of the final happiness tightly at the edge of her anchal and ran
straight
to Son. He intertwined his fingers with hers and told her what the
warriorprincess
Chitrangada
had told Arjun at his moment of doubt, three thousand five hundred
years ago:
“Jadi parshey rakho morey shankatero pathey, Tabe tumi
chinibe morey. Aaj
shudhu
kori nibedan. If you keep me by your side during your trials, you shall know
me.
Today
I only offer myself to you.”
A few hours later, every Bhangadeshi
pressed a small transistor to his ears to listen to the play
‘Mahishashur-mardini Durga’ being relayed live all over Bhangadesh. In
Bhanga. The radio crackled out, “This is Radio Bhangadesh. We velcome
out audience phriends on behalph of Radio Bhangadesh. We begin our broadcast
with a Durga-stuti followed by Mahishashur-mardini Durga.” Majhi’s
voice filtered out of millions of small boxes like dawns demanding Bilawals, “O
Devi, You are the Controller of all forms, all things and all beings. Save us
from Fear. Prostrations to You, O Durga.” In the final act of The Play, Endear
Godie did what she had promised during the first enactment. She pinned Yeah
Yeah Con down with the tip of her sword and chopped off his moustache. It
disintegrated into small pieces which floated in the winter breeze and
contaminated fishcurries countrywide, spreading an epidemic of dysentery.
Bhangadesh was formally liberated.
And a few more hours later, Radio
Bhangadesh interrupted its song-and-drama programs to announce that Sundari
Rowman and Son of Godie have eloped. Rickshaw pullers and truck drivers have
spotted them on the road from Dock to Chatgaon. Endear
Godie, now
an angry insulted Mother, ordered the Ballotiya forces to find them at any
cost. Soldiers were deployed to guard the south-eastern frontiers of
Bhangadesh. Borders were being fenced with barbed wires. Radio Bhangadesh
promised to update its audience-friends with hourly information. A reward of
hundred thousand takas was announced on Son and Sundari. Ballotiya soldiers
dreamed of new houses and national bravery awards and Majhi retreated to his
old bunker of solitude and songs.
Sundari too had a small radio, which
she pressed to her ears to listen to the hourly news in Radio Bhangadesh, which
announced the wrath of the Mother Goddess and the Operations of the Ballotiya
forces. Once again, she saw how bigger things expanded and diffused into
smaller ones – the outside into the inside, ends into journeys, public
ordinances into private pleasures, everything into nothing. But this time she
has found her own flight path – the journey itself, the run. She ran, with her
fingers intertwined with
Son’s,
with the radio pressed to her ears. As the signals faded, their fingers
tightened.
They
decided to trick the Ballotiya soldiers, and ran not towards Chatgaon in the
southeast but towards Sell-It in the north east. They jumped across barbed
wires, swam across rivers, crossed valleys, mountains, borders, and crumpled
dried shiuli leaves on their way. As they ran, they slowly lost everything –
their songs, their high-held heads, their fragmented worlds, their language,
their radio signals. Even the memory of the final happiness slipped out of the
edge of Sundari’s anchal and disintegrated.
Only two things remained. One was
the image of a white shaluk flower floating on a crimson colored river – black
ants circling inside its fragrant hollow in search of nectar, ravages of a
tremor still fresh on its stem and images of torn anchals and choked voices
sticking to its waxy petals like insoluble nightmares. It
floated – staring defiantly at The Outside. And also Sundari’s
transistor remained – a small box containing the
memory of
lost signals, the memory of bigger things and the memory of public eyes staring
exasperatingly at them during their moments of final happiness and private
loss.
She felt their gaze on herself as
she ran. They all stood there – Endear Godie, Zan
Rowman,
Kalika Zany, Yeah Yeah Con, Mushti Bahini, Ballotiya soldiers, Tick Yeah Con
and General All Butt – staring at her, at the inside of her insides. They
watched everything with inhaled silence. They watched her ventricles gurgling
blood, her lungs puffing oxygen, her gall bladder secreting bile, her pinkness
turning into brown almonds under the kash-flowerlike touch of a stranger, his
endless journey into her, her simmer, his inundation. Their eyeballs popped out
of the sockets as they watched. She kept running though. She ran through the
night and out of Bhangadesh till an empty country and an empty day emerged
before her eyes.
And in his early morning dream,
Majhi also saw Sundari running. Her anchal untucked and rippling, her hair
untied and flowing. She reminded him of her mother.
Nineteen
years nine months and twenty-six days after he stopped laughing, Majhi laughed
again. But secretly. In his dreams.