Even before dawn broke, the news that Chanda Bir was approaching the palace with Rongomala’s severed head arrived like a storm. Earlier, flocks of black crows had swarmed the skies, flying in from who knew where. Their caws echoed across the courthouse, and through the palace corridors and balconies and the orchard and the banks of the pond. The palace was in uproar. From the commotion, it didn’t seem as if it was a low-caste woman’s head that was arriving but a wildfire blazing across the
Roopsingh Plains, a fire that threatened to wipe out the entire Chowdhury dynasty. Raj Chandra Chowdhury lay unconscious in the outer house, still stoned from drinking bhang the evening before.
Everyone – men, women and children – was terrified. When he woke up and, with Rongomala’s decapitated head in hand, commenced upon a dance of destruction like Lord Shiva, who would stop him?
Heera dashi, the slave, darted though the palace searching for Phuleswari Rai in each wing. She stormed through the rooms, entering through one door and exiting through another. Her only misadventure was stumbling and falling over Mejo Thakurani’s hookah pipe, pulling down the whole contraption.
The stale tobacco water ruined her favourite fancy rug; however, the Thakurani barely had time to glance at it today. She was desperately seeking a hiding spot for Prafulla Kumar, her daughter Shunonda’s son and beloved of the household. There was no telling from which direction disaster would strike. Doomsday had come upon them – if they had been Muslims, they would have been chanting Ya nafsi, ya nafsi in Arabic. Where was Phuleswari Rai at this calamitous moment?
Phuleswari was sitting on her swing in the orchard, rocking herself while counting crows on her fingers. Crows cawed and shrieked as they soared overhead in the hundreds. The birds flailed their wings and squawked in the aviary, raising a grand furore.
Phuleswari couldn’t keep count. As soon as she made it to twenty, she lost track and had to begin all over again. ‘Didimoni, Didimoni!’ Heera’s sudden shouts broke through her preoccupation, ending her counting game.
‘Sister dear, sister dear!’ Heera stopped to breathe and said, ‘I’ve been searching every corner of the earth for you, and you’re sitting here?’ Just as Phuleswari poised herself to leap and grab her by the hair, Heera released the dreadful news like an arrow.
Rongomala’s severed head in the courthouse!
‘Come, you. The warrior Chanda Bir cut off her head and carried it here. Maharaja Rajendra Narayan’s decree has been fulfilled.’
Just then, they heard heavy footsteps trampling through the garden shrubbery. Who was fleeing through the backway? Wasn’t that Rajendra, Regent and uncle to the rightful king, followed by Chanda Bir? The flock of crows took to the air, following them while shrieking in chorus. In the blink of an eye, the palace emptied of crows.
Heera raced through the palace wings again and returned to tell Phuleswari that although Raj Chandra, the king, still lay snoring in the outer house, everyone else had latched their doors from the inside. Forget the hum of juicy gossip; there wasn’t the slightest sign of any of the slaves or servants. The cookhouse had been abandoned. The Brahmin cooks had run for shelter to the woods behind the pond. The Brahmin priest thought his head was on fire. His head, adorned with the holy tuft of hair at the back, was bobbing like a coconut shell in the pond facing the courthouse.
The queen mother, Shumitra, sat in her prayer room, chanting God’s name with her hands folded and her eyes shut. Hers was the only door that stood open.
Raj Chandra might excuse his mother, but would he show any consideration to his wife? Phuleswari was surely the prime culprit. Though Rongomala had not been granted the formal status of co-wife, she had been more than that.
When Raj Chandra would fail to find anyone else at hand, he would most certainly lash out at Phuleswari, the wife who wept day and night, the one driven insane after being spurned. Did this witless woman understand that? The last year seemed to have washed away Phuleswari’s intelligence and reason. In her present state, she was worse than a lunatic. The signs didn’t bode well to Heera, the slave. She dragged Phuleswari’s leaf-thin body to her room. For a moment, she considered latching the door from the inside and feigning sleep.
But what if Raj Chandra kicked it open? Before Phuleswari could get a grip on what was happening, she found herself a prisoner in her own bedchamber. Heera had padlocked the chain from the outside and fled with the keys.
‘You lowborn whore!’ Phuleswari cursed Heera as she hammered the locked door with her fists. ‘I just want one glimpse of Rongomala. Open up!’ As she wailed, tears scored her cheeks.
Of the two people who were supposed to respond to Phuleswari Rai’s plaintive cries, one, her mother-in-law, Ma Shumitra, was praying, ‘Thakur, Thakur!’ with her eyes shut tight; the other, her chief maid Heera, had vanished into the woods by the pond where she was currently besieged by venomous ants. Exhausted from crying, Phuleswari finally calmed down.
Was Rongomala really dead? Was she dreaming, or was this really true? That unfortunate girl had perished because of her fancy to have a lake cut in her name – an honour a lowborn woman couldn’t claim. What a horrible way to die! At Rajendra Narayan’s command, his ruthless bodyguard Chanda Bir had cut off her head.
What use was it to Phuleswari now that Rongi was dead? Phuleswari Rai was adrift like a clump of weeds in the waters of this world. The time to sink her roots had passed. Phuleswari wanted to weep again. She hadn’t been able to get a good look at the woman who had destroyed her life while she
had been alive.
Rongomala, that woman who had turned her into a grass widow. And now she wouldn’t even get to see her dead face. If seeing in dreams counted, though, and if her reflection in the water was indeed her true self – then Phuleswari had actually seen Rongomala about a year ago. Even now Rongomala’s laughter, one that could shatter dams, floated like the sound of weeping on the distant night winds.
Excerpted with permission from Beloved Rongomala, Shaheen Akhtar, translated from the Bengali by Shabnam Nadiya, eka.