Susanthi Bodra will spend an entire week at the Sambhalpur Rozgaar Kendra. She could spend an entire month, if she wished to. Susanthi has no mother waiting for her, worrying about her little girl child’s safety when she is far away from home in Sambhalpur, a town which the people of Bochagora know as popular, but unknown territory.
Domrudoru Baiga is worried. His nine-year-old ears have been hearing rumours about the Rozgaar Kendra. The trade which his intelligent friend Susanthi will learn, is not meant for girls from respectable homes, say the rumour specialists of Bochagora. Domrudoru has seen nine Vishwakarma festivals over nine Septembers, and knows a thing or two about respectable trades.
What is so vile about the trade Susanthi Bodra will learn at the Sambhalpur Rozgaar Kendra? Will Domrudoru’s friend turn a thief by trade?
There is a thief in Naren Nayak’s dream. Armed with a lathi and masked with a black cloth over his mouth and nose, leaving only his eyes and forehead naked to view, the thief is making his way into Naren’s hutment by the backyard connected to the rest of the forest range. The hutment is dark, except for the shine of a nose ring. It is the lone gold jewel in Naren’s hutment. The gold for the nose ring has been sieved from the wet, red soil by Parbothi’s brother.
Parbothi is a proud lady of the Mankadia tribe, and wears this jewel all the time. This nose ring is testimony that she is Naren’s ardhangini. Parbothi, as Naren’s wife, shares his dream of a home that will not slip away from their hands. The homes of the Gonds, Santals, Mankadias, Mundas and Juang tribes of Keonjhar too, must not slip away.
Nominta Debury’s home is a hutment with a backyard. It quacks with ducks and sways with vegetables, mostly green. This backyard must not slip away from the hands of her mother and father, and the rest of her family. Nominta is not an ardhangini as yet. But she is already a brave nari, a bahadur lady who will learn a trade at the Sambhalpur Rozgaar Kendra. She will then earn to keep her home from slipping away and merging into the dense forests to be swallowed by bulldozers, and then, annexed by ministers for their private use.
Jhumur Jhumur
Jhumur Jhumur
Nariyon ka jhonda
Sada uporo re
Let the flag, which catapults the woman and places her amidst the celestial stars in the firmament, better still above the firmament alongside the gods, always fly high.
I feel the firmament beneath my feet slipping away. Have I forgotten my place? After all, I am a woman. I am fired by love for a man who seems to have forgotten me. I am unhindered by compromise. I have chosen to be a mother. The mother of his gorgeous baby. This baby, a true treasure.
***
When Minnal first became a mother, she was still a child. When the child she birthed died, she wept with joy.
When her mother-in-law learnt of her joy, she took her to the hamlet’s most powerful and feared man, the Maha Yogi, and beseeched him to remove the rakshasi which had made a home in a prime part of her daughter-in-law’s body – the womb. In a tearing hurry to drive the devil out of Minnal’s womb and back to its place on the Neem tree, the Maha Yogi plucked a chicken feather out of his “not-washed-for- at-least-twenty-years-pungent-with-grime-and-sweat- matted” grey hair, and rubbed it over his forehead.
He then grunted to Minnal’s mother-in-law, and instructed her to soak the veebhooti-smeared chicken feather into a bowl of freshly drawn blood. This was sacred blood drawn from a pregnant goat, and the flow of red more powerful when touched by the chicken feather. The confluence of the chicken feather and the goat’s blood was potent, the Maha Yogi had said. “It is certain to remove the rakshasi from your irate daughter-in-law’s womb.” In turn, Minnal’s mother-in-law fed the potion to the not-quite-fourteen- year-old girl with the “possessed” womb.
The Lesser Known Goddess
could be stirred
by neither ee
nor Maha Yogi.
So when her mother-in-law forced her to swallow the potion,
Minnal,
she, held the semi fluid in her mouth
until she reached the age-old Mango tree
under which the anti-godman sat
and spat the potion straight into his face.
The blood so wholesomely red was visible for all his disciples to see...
Red wine. Rotwein. Elixir of love in city territory. Tonight, his goblet of wine touches everybody’s but mine. My goblet is shattered. The shards pierce my heart. My heart beats for his baby. I gulp down the pain trapped in my bubbly, and return home to her slender frame.
Home beckons Nelli. Riding in the closed jeep with Amrit, deep green sloping gardens of export variety tea waiting to be pruned, race past, blurring, merging into golden paddy fields which beckon Nelli.
Paddy is seldom cultivated between Nagaon and Nemati Ghat in Jorhat. It is cultivated in Nelli’s hamlet, on the highway between Gulbarga District and her hometown Kithapur when the monsoons are friendly. During one monsoon shower, Nelli made the paddy field by her hutment her kingdom, and called herself the Princess of Kithapur.
Her entourage, which had not changed factions yet, walked in front of Nelli with flowers from the Lantana shrubs lining the edges of the paddy fields. Nelli wore a crown of flaming orange and glowing yellow Lantana flowers to match the floral carpet her entourage strewed along her walking path.
Walking at breakneck pace, Inspector General Bawa looks placid despite the blood rush.
Inspector General Tuffwinder Singh Bawa is of pure blood
And an irrevocable will
To trace every fine needle
In the haystack of evidence.
There are two inferences so far, and Inspector General Bawa has made them both. According to one evidence in the haystack, there is a brand-new recruit to the Maoxal faction. As per another evidence in the land records, the Centre is swarming with criminals.
Inspector General Bawa is a smart and meticulous officer. He works in tandem with a Special Task Force.
Holy men are always smooth, they lead by muted force. In Swami Vishnu Prem Anand’s mind, Eclectic Disciples, all men in sacred thread trained to military perfection, march in tandem with the psychedelic Vedic chants of the Vaishnav Ashram. These Eclectic Disciples, nine of them in all, tell Swami Prem Anand exactly what is going on, and where.
Well
This much I will tell.
Beware of Swami Vishnu Prem Anand!
***
Beware of the Minister’s wife.
It is imperative for Thiru Venkataraman to visit the prophetic Vishnu Temple in the little hamlet off the highway serenading big town Mayavaram. His money-wise wife will not take a ‘no’ from her husband—the interfering snakes Rahu and Kethu are playing havoc, wreaking tsunamis in Venkataraman’s planetary charts, they are destroying her man’s career. All the bad karma visiting their fate is a matter of supreme blunder, disrespect to the God of Gods by her husband, the man they call the Minister of Accounting Affairs. Bah!
Aandavan is in agreement with Venkataraman’s wife. He seconds her thoughts that the God of Gods must be appeased.
By the way, the Uncrowned Head, yes, Sri Prasad Bharathi is no lesser than the god of Ggds.
Asha Paharia is not concerned about how god will judge her. She is ready to meet the khaki-wearing strangers who have promised friendship. Their khaki attire is a few shades darker than that of Inspector General Bawa.
Shades
Shadows
Khaki
People
With lands
Now without
Melt into the Dalma Ranges
By night.
Tonight, Asha is leaving home to earn her family daal and bhath, she melts into the thickness of the Dalma Ranges with the khaki-clad strangers who beckon her into their hidden world.
En route to Samphalpur, Susanthi Bodra closes her eyes and travels to a distant day in the future. She is distanced from her home by khaki-clad strangers. She is a prisoner. Susanthi will not allow distance to dictate her future. She will define her own future.
The future is not quite here.
Opening her eyes, back in the present, Susanthi realises she has not seen her father’s dead body. Nor have the elders of Bochagora. Nor have the Panchayat Mukhiyas. Definitely not the knowledgeable members of the Bal Panchayat.
Members of minority communities...
Strange
And not so strange
Village Panchayats
Bal Panchayats
Herds of elephants
Shoals of fish
Schools of sheep
Flurry of birds
Dancing mayouros
Dead mayouros
All whisper a secret from the jungles beyond the highway Into which Susanthi migrates
From her window seat
In the closed jeep.
Suddenly, Susanthi is in the future. The future brings
her eye-to-eye with human flesh and emotions that have been dead to her for nearly three years.
***
Sridhar Haider D’Vaz needs a break – he takes off on an artistic sojourn, and sees eye-to-eye with the leopards of Keonjhar. Among their leap is the Kalarpatra Bagha. He is the majestic leopard of the same region, and has the same agility as a human. In fact, he is human.
How did D’Vaz come eye-to-eye with the Kalarpatra Bagha in the first place?
When he first visited Keonjhar fifteen years ago, Naren Nayak, the young school teacher who taught the children of three hamlets, led the visiting artist D’Vaz into the forests of Manipura. The school teacher scaled the depth of these forests, walking across the slim tributaries of River Shammakoi, trekking over the lower, gently inclining peaks of the Kanjipani Mountains on his fours, plunging into the jungle’s darkness, and following the Kalarpatra’s footsteps to a patch of land where the sun lit the handsome leopard’s human features.
Years later, when D’Vaz received his award, the accolades spoke of how the leopard resembled a young man. The artist par repute had created an image which seemed to overtly merge the undefined line between man and animal.
There is an animal in every man. Susanthi’s father has turned into an animal. His small, piercing eyes are bloodshot. He wears a shotgun harnessed by a green-yellow odhni. This odhni draped Susanthi’s mother on her wedding night. It was the only sheer length of nylon material which draped her womb on the day Susanthi’s brother Tilka was born. Nine years later, her mother wore the same odhni on the day she heard that Susanthi’s father was gone. Susanthi has since, remained strong. Very strong.
Or, is she?
Am I strong?
My weakness is my strength.
What is the purpose of being strong when all that you care for is gone?
I care for his baby. She is not gone. I am strong.
Susanthi remains strong.
The closed jeep stops on the highway by a thicket in view of a cluster of Mahua trees. Susanthi leaps out of the vehicle and wanders into the jungle to answer nature’s call. As she sits behind the Lantana shrub which is bursting unawares into pleasant blisters of purple flowers, a leopard springs. Or so Susanthi thinks, until her gaze wanders into the piercing eyes of a man she knows from the day she was born. Susanthi stares into her father’s eyes – she is unable to answer nature’s call. Her father lowers his shotgun, and unveils his mouth and upper nose. Susanthi lets out a near shriek which has risen from her stomach but stops short at her throat.
Silence!
Susanthi Bodra knows better than to yell out loud when she meets a khaki-clad man who masks his face and carries a shotgun. It does not matter that the man behind the mask was her father once. A man remains a father until he becomes dead to his family.
Susanthi Bodra does not have a family to go back home to.
She returns to the closed jeep to seek solace in her new family – the volunteers of YUPAP are her foster parents for the duration of her journey and thereafter, during their stay at the Sambhalpur Rozgaar Kendra. This is the duration of ‘suitably arranged family bonding’ that the Panchayat Mukhiya and her foster parents in Bochagora have specified for Susanthi.
How will Susanthi tell her foster parents that she is feeling uneasy because she has not been able to answer nature’s call? Irrespective of one’s gender, journeys must be broken at the beckoning of nature’s call.
Both vehicles, one ferrying Susanthi Bodra and the other Nominta Debury, are on the same highway. Minutes after Susanthi has fled the patch of land aound the Lantana shrub, Nominta’s foster parents, Urmila and Manohar Mahapatra tell the driver to pull their closed jeep to a side. Nominta springs out of the vehicle, and hops her way into the jungle to answer nature’s call. As she sits by the same Lantana shrubs, most of its leaves hidden by clusters of adolescent purple flowers, a Kalarpatra Bagha appears. Or so Nominta Debury feels, until the leopard begins to resemble a lean-framed man with a shotgun harnessed by a sheer odhni.
As the man leans forward to grasp her, Nominta lets out a “highway-din-ripping” shriek, which has risen from her stomach and escaped through her mouth within a matter of three seconds. Nominta’s mouth remains wide open under the firm grasp of the odhni. The lean man has cupped her mouth with the odhni to muffle her might-have-been-loud-enough-to-be-heard shriek.
Excerpted with permission from Hunger’s Daughters, Nirmala Govindarajan, Om Books.
