“The five pir saints of the river, Badar, Badar!”
The boatmen put up the sails of seven boats from the mahajan’s godown of garan wood at Shyamganj as soon as the tide ebbed in the river Hooghly. The mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of thirty men stood wiping their eyes and kept gazing till the boats disappeared at the river bend of Naldanri.
Arjun Kayal was from the Sundarbans; solidly built, as if hewn from a rock. His eyes were round like marbles and bloodshot. He arrived three days ago to fetch the boats. He was the sedo, the guide to Sagar Island and the forests. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather – that is, all his forefathers – had spent their lives battling tigers, cultivating forests, acting as guides to the mangrove dealers, or guiding the boatmen of the main river. His great-grandfather was no mean robber. A convicted murderer, he had been sentenced to life at the beginning of British rule. The government had packed him off to the Sundarbans with a bunch of labourers sent to clear the forested islands by luring him with release. They did this with many others. Who would otherwise come here to give up their lives to the tigers! The released prisoners quenched the fire in their blood making friends with the beasts. Did you think settlements formed in the Sundarbans out of the blue? Did the wild ferocity in the blood of the settlers of the Sundarbans come from nothing?
“We belong to a line of robbers, murderers and criminals”, said Arjun Kayal, “This jungle is our mother. We tame her by worshipping her. When my father, sedo Ahir Kayal, entered the forest after invoking the goddess, tigers would fall at his feet like tame little cats!”
Everyone listened to Arjun Kayal. Torab Rafadan, the mahajan, smirked as he leaned against some pillows on a mattress inside the covering of the boat, a cigarette in his hand. Next to him was his cash box. An all-wave radioset. A double rifle. A box of cartridges. A five-celled flashlight. A few dry batteries. Lalu Khansama’s cooking area was on the other side – utensils, rice, lentils, flour, spices, coal, pot of tamarind, two earthen barrels of fresh water kept in the hold. Buckets, saws, choppers, and what not!
The sedo offered his prayers to the mighty Dakshin Rai, the protector of the Sundarbans. Then he worshipped Badar Ghazi and Maslandari Pir of Ghoramara Island with his votive offerings. Meanwhile, Torab Rafadan met with the coast guards at their office. He had to show them the forest permit. And his gun license. Everyone knew and respected Torab. The mahajan spent a few packs of cigarettes too on them.
The coast guards said, “Don’t chop the trees in the conserved area, and don’t kill the animals there. Share with us some honey, deer meat, and turtle eggs as you leave. How many of your men are going this time? Give us their names and addresses. Thirty men? On six large boats? And another small boat too? These boats can hold goods weighing a few thousand tonnes! Be careful now, Torab saheb, don’t lose another couple of your men like the last time. The tigers are a nuisance this year as well. In which part of the forest are you going to cut down the garan trees this time? Is it on the island between the rivers Gosaba and Harinbhanga? Alright, we’ll row over and pay a visit one night. Will you cook some deer for us?”
Torab Rafadan caressed his beard and smiled. He was a man of money. He owned a two-storeyed brick house. He had nearly seventy acres of land in his own name, and in the names of his wife and children. He had two guns, and owned a perfume shop at Hogg Market in Calcutta. The perfumery was managed by his elder son, a college dropout. His second son was at university, and his two daughters went to college. He had a godown of rice and timber, with two husking machines. He was worth a few lakhs. High-ranking government officials, police inspectors, even ministers knew him. Even with all this prosperity, he had not quit the rather difficult business of dealing in mangrove timber, which had first brought him fortune. After all, all that he had inherited from his father was a tin hut and a boat. He’d been going into the forests twice a year for two decades now. In all these years, tigers, snakes, crocodiles or cholera caused by drinking saline water had killed about twenty-five men of his fleet. Torab was unaffected by these events. These voyages and such indulgence of the forest had become his addiction. He’d killed many tigers with his gun. The fiercest of the sedos and the baulis, who collected honey from the deep forest, feared and respected him. Torab spoke very little. Solemn, as moneyed men should be.
This time they had to sail the fleet from Frazerganj without considering the tides. The boats sailed along the bank, tossed about like the fragile skins of plantain flowers by the vicious roar of the sea. Towering columns of black clouds appeared in the sky, signs of the approaching monsoon. To these men, life was but a speck of dust in the background of the infinite sea. How helpless were they before sublime nature!
The mahajan showed everyone their location by pointing at a map of the 24 Parganas district. They also kept an eye on the compass.
At dusk, the fleet anchored at the river bend, deep inside the forest. The river was narrow, yet the current of the tide was immense, with a continuous splashing sound of the waves crashing against the boats.
Pan-paira, bats, shamuk khol, manik-jor, jol dahuk flew through the forests as dusk approached. The jungle resonated with bird calls. The kalbaishakhi storm was followed by heavy rain. The green forest grew shadowy and was gradually engulfed in darkness. Innumerable crocodiles of different sizes lay on the riverbank. Snakes cut through the water like blades.
The rain stopped after a while. The darkness was deep. The new recruits hugged each other, shivering and groaning in fear. What if a snake or a crocodile climbed up the stern?
Lights shone dimly in the boats. The waves roared incessantly. They had to wrap up in blankets even on a Baishakh night. Torab Rafadan had loaded his double rifle with cartridges and was now writing in his account book. Baghdad radio station was airing a poignant reading of the holy Qur’an in a melodious voice. All the sleeping men had sharp swords, spears, lances and scythes lying beside them. Thirty men in six boats were sleeping, entrusting their lives to the mahajan’s gun and his bravery. Everyone was exhausted by the week’s labour. If ever the wise and seasoned mahajan nodded off, then the morning attendance would show one man less on the team.
Arjun Kayal said, “You know, Torab, all these bastards lying on the boat are asleep. Sher Ali is slumbering with his mouth wide open! Wasn’t his mother crying her heart out? The scrawny boy of sixteen that he is! The tiger took his father last year. And yet the boy is fast asleep! This is what hunger does to you.”
Arjun Kayal addressed everyone with the familiar “tui”. This was common to the people of the Sundarbans. Arjun was Muslim.
Rafadan flashed his five-celled torch. Trees stood deeply enmeshed in the jungle. The vines were thick; prickly bushes and shrubs of fanimansha, hental, harkoch, tekantal, banjhama, lankashirey, mansha, bajbaran, pan-shiuli, jaldumur, myaramara, seyankul and baichi everywhere. Rabbits, white and soft like cows’ ears, ran away hopping, scared by the light. A few ran into the water in bewilderment. Crocodiles slapped their tails on the damp sand bank, as if in agony from the sharp fins of aar-tyangra piercing their jaws.
The sounds of the Sundarbans at midnight were terrible. The sound of the crashing waves, the deep bass tune of the crickets all over the forest, occasional screeches of jungle fowl, the call of jackals and civet cats, the twittering of birds, the shrieks of monkeys, the roar of tigers, the clacking of monitor lizards, the distant howl of an attacked animal – it was terrifying, bloodcurdling altogether! It was impossible to perfectly describe everything in the forests here; the grass, vines, trees, beasts, insects, snakes, crocodiles, mud, roots, thorns, water, fishes, sky, clouds, tides, diseases, climate – it needed a few years’ labour, and would fill up more pages than the Mahabharata. The creator of this unwritten epic was the supreme Lord Himself, who had endowed the Sundarbans – the “beautiful forests” – with beauty and terror! How could a person cherish this horrific beauty with his limited senses! How much did the mahajan know even with his twenty years of experience! Even to him this endless forest was ever new! Ever fierce and turbulent!
Excerpted with permission from ‘The Merchant of Sagar Island’, Abdul Jabbar, translated by Sarmistha Dutta Gupta and Shambhobi Ghosh in Stayed Back, Stayed On: Short Stories by Bengali Muslim Writers, edited by Epsita Halder, Orient Black Swan.
