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On the damp land, the leeches have outnumbered the rice grains. The rice plants are entwined by scores of creeping weeds. Untouched by the sunshine, the ground is damp from deep down. In the scorching heat of Aghon, a tinge of warmth creeping into the land is not unnatural. A cold wave sends a shill down the bodies of the reapers. To make matters worse, there are the leeches. With the fear of the leeches at the back of the mind, both reap the harvest. As they reap, they look sideways.
A leech creeps all the way up to the calf of Koli like a pole measuring the length of ground. She feels a tickling sensation in her body. She searches and jumps---Oh! devoured!!
The shriek sends the same tickling sensation down the body of Dituloni who has been engrossed in reaping only a few yards away. Her fear doubles up ending in a cry: “Mandal! Mandal!”
Koli lifts up her clothes hesitatingly to look at her dry calf. The leech advances raising its trunk forward. Ohh! Hell! Hell! She cries out to Dituloni pleading: “Remove it. Remove it.”
Dituloni is busy searching her calf lifting up her bottom wear. Is there a leech on her body too like the trunk of an elephant! No. Relief.
Till then Koli’s cry pierced the heaven—“Remove! Remove!”
Now only Dituloni comes forward with the kachi in her hand. Koli lifts her clothes a notch up. Pouncing upon an opportunity, Dituloni places the kachi in front of the trunk raising leech’s mouth. The leech creeps up the kachi and she drops it out of fear. Down on ground the leech moves in another direction.
A drop of blood oozes out of Koli’s calf. She turns her head away. Cannot see blood—she would have giddiness. Dituloni takes out of her hachoti on her waist the lime-pot and rubbing a pinch of lime over the drop of blood gently she lays a paste of medicinal leaf there. Then only they look at each other.
Both their faces betray a sense of a bizarre mix of fear, agony, suspicion and victory like someone having a miraculous escape from a chasing tiger. Moments later, the entire picture vanishes like the fall of curtains on an unending sequence of events.
On the ground cleared out of the stubble, they sit roughly down, tired. Dituloni offers a piece of betel nut to Koli and herself tucks a piece into her mouth along with lime and tobacco. They talk. Nothing but leeches features in the talk. They laugh in the middle of their talk about Madnal Sashstra. The boisterous laughter brings water into their eyes. On the sprawling field the laughter vanishes into distance, even more—into the distant horizon. As if, the bunches of rice seedlings wake up from slumber, a familiar tune captivates the rice plants that dance to and fro, while a whistling sound floating around from some distance joins the spectacle! Both cut open a shaddock and eat it. The rice grains inhale, as though, the pungent smell of the shaddock!
With the sour stuff inside their mouth, they take some rest. The grains lend their ears; the creeping weeds, disinterested, make their mockery while the leeches await an opportune moment.
************
These days the leeches are disturbing Koli at night. This disturbance resembles a cold sensation on a warm bed in the month of Aghon. Something she doesn’t enjoy pondering over but cannot ignore also.
Form the early half of Kati, the daily routine of Koli is changing. After getting up from bed she sweeps the courtyard, releases the duck form the cage and goes to take bath. Bogi lays the tea pan over the fireplace and awaits Koli. After bath Koli takes tea and becomes ready to go the paddy field. Bogi offers a plate of hot rice along with milk. The paddy field is to bring daily wage. Once late for work, she has to bear admonition form the owners, which she does not like at all. Therefore she has to make haste in the morning.
This time around Bogi has not been out on the field for wage. Instead she has chosen to reap the harvest on the land, lent as adhiaar. It is Koli who has forbidden her to go for wage-earning; the former alone would earn the little on offer. On the other hand, Bogi has lost a few days over some bank-related issues. Some five hundred rupee-notes had been kept inside the edges of a gamocha in the old suitcase. This is the money accumulated on selling goats. It is Bogi , a matriculate quite a long time back, who carries out all chores ranging from marketing to performing transactions of the saved money in the bank account. Koli usually does not put her head into all this stuff. Bogi has suffered a great deal following the government verdict invalidating the old five hundred and thousand rupee notes. She has admonished herself many times. She would not have to queue up in the bank all day long like this if the money were spent for some worthy purpose. But what will happen? It is only when watching the advertisement of Dynalom on television at the house of Malati that she has chanced upon the idea that she could spend the saved money on purchasing the tinplates for her house. But back home, she forgets everything once busy with the kitchen work. Now she has got the treatment.
Back from the paddy field, Koli takes the bed at dusk fall. She gives rest to the aching waist. Bogi had sunned the mattresses on a pole facing the field. Koli feels good. She gets filled up with unbounded pleasure when on bed. The warmth embraces her, as though! The backache loses its sting from the warmth within. This is pleasure for Koli carried all the way from heaven by some unknown messenger!
Then the leeches make their way into her mind and disturb her.
An imaginary rabble of leeches starts crawling all over her body. Her soft body jerks up on an awkward sensation. A still body and blank mind wake up. An unheard cacophonous agony paces up and down the dark room. She inhales hastily and exhales cautiously. She discovers a difference between the worrying and frightening leeches of daytime and those in her imagination now making measured crawls over her body. Her body loses balance from excitement. That imbalance, as though, covers up the entire monotony of Koli’s world--the cough of her mother, the tunes of the bridal songs in the nasal voice of Bogi, or the calmness of the dusk in the month of Aghon!
On the other side, Bogi finishes her cooking. A series of tunes of bridal songs rendered from a voice shattered by an unfulfilled dream of sitting under a marriage shed also comes to an end. Yes, Bogi may also have cherished a dream. A pure dream. Can’t Koli’s sister have a dream? Can’t the heart harbour a dream just because the head is shorn of hair? The same dream Koli had cherished or still cherishes. The train of their dreams has kept running. But it has not found a stop---to give some rest to life. Thus, one fully set sun and the other half set render the house so intriguingly dark that all dreams turn into ashes.
Nowadays, Bogi hangs the piece of hair-cloth on the cloth stand--perhaps because time has run out. She realises that it is no use hiding a worn-out dream under a false veil. Perhaps the fungus devouring the hair is sitting idly, shorn of all colours of life.
Bogi wakes up Koli amidst darkness for dinner. Is she sleeping at all to be waken up? Have the leeches allowed her to sleep? Crawling bit by bit they are rather peeping at her worn-out body. The body is measuring her mind perhaps. The mind also is very surprising. Silent always, it says so many things, nay babbles things unheard by one and all.
The paddy field in the month of Aghon is cleaned up by the fog. The rice plants turn into stubble and the stubble into ashes. The ashes mix up with the soil a momentary tale of leeches—secret or open.
Koli’s waist takes a beating as she bends down to assemble the ukhuwa rice with a korona. Her pain gets overshadowed by the whistling sound of the cough of her mother. The health of the woman is deteriorating day by day. Ailments on one hand and Koli’s advancing age on the other are the worries. She knows that her mother’s hope centering round Bogi has long vanished. But she perhaps still nurtures a hope that the fading lamp would be brightened up by somebody at the end. Her mother perhaps conjures up a dream of a son-in law at an idle moment of silence. Her days being numbered, the wish floats around that the last drop of water on her deathbed falls from the hands of her son-in-law.
Hopes also have an invisible boundary. One who hopes perhaps sees that colourless line. But he has long exceeded that boundary. Does one ever return from afar to a place which one had handed to the algae and explored one’s fortune elsewhere? The distance of the mind is the real one. Else, where is he staying beyond the known land? Provoked by his wife, he has raised his house just on the edge of their boundary. At a distance from where the sound of a drop of water is audible, does he not hear the whistling cough of his mother? Even at this age, her mother clearly hears the babble of the grandson, the laughter of the daughter in law and his voice becoming indistinct gradually.
His parents had high expectations about their house resonating with his babble that it would turn into mature talk one day, and he would snatch away the burden from his father’s shoulders bragging about his unmatched achievements. Good that his father has not survived to see all this. Did his father not toil day and night crafting japis to enable him to pass His BA? And his elder sisters turned their back at school with his future in mind. Suruj turned out, grew up bit by bit and the cloud-covered Suruj of the noon disappeared into a distant land beyond the snows leaving a veil of despair behind on the other side.
Suruj! Why was he christened so?
The names of the girls were given as per the colour of their skin—Koli and Bogi. But the name Suruj? The ash-coloured boy could have been named Koliya also!!
Their mother ponders over all this with the ukhuwa Solpona rice spread out in front on a peaceful afternoon. She thinks it over and over and unknowingly picks up a grain to see whether it has dried or not. They have dried up thoroughly. They have been sunned twice in the scorching heat. Not a single tree is there around the courtyard to provide any shade. It has been so since their father was alive. He liked the sun-clad courtyard. He used to be engrossed in bamboo craft in the sunshine during winter. The daughters provided him with red tea at this time while the boy went to school.
And today at this same courtyard two dry, lacklustre bodies are embracing the biting cold silently—as a stroke of destiny. Don’t they want some shade to provide some relief to the sun-burnt bodies? After coming back from the harvest; after spreading out the rice in the sun; after leaving the fireplace; after rising from the tatsaal, don’t they crave for some shade?? Oh, what a life these girls have lived! There is no shade---not even the shadow of their brother! Only the sun there is, and the accompanying heat. And also the solitary mother they have, who has been burnt by their growing pain. Who knows when one meets one’s day!
Her chest aches as she ponders deep over all this. This is a pain that accompanies age and worries. As if, it awakens her cough. The endless series of coughing makes her fall on the ground.
Maloti’s mother, coming in search of the ugha and chereki kept on the courtyard by Bogi for her weaving work, finds that the woman is no more.
Shouldn’t the woman have even waited for the shadow-like girls to return who went out in the morning after putting in place the previous day’s harvest? The woman has gone forever leaving two shadows behind in this scorching heat.
They return from the city like birds to their nests. Only the tree is no more! It remains fallen on ground, uprooted. Perhaps their father who loved the sun-clad courtyard has uprooted the only tree that was growing silently! And the sunshine laughs, teeth exposed. Even in the afternoon also, its long teeth remain exposed.
Two shadows are there. Unattended even by kinsmen, they remain fallen on the courtyard like two pieces of fire-wood. By their side remains a bag from where has protruded a white winter scarf, some medicines for cough and....An unseen darkness stays back inside the bag like a long silence in the courtyard filled with sounds. There lies in front an unwritten black and white story.
Notes:
Apurbajyoti Hazarika, a writer and translator teaches English in the Departent of English, Majuli College, Majuli .
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