> Creative > Short Story
Ever since anyone could remember, Gerela has been dealing in molasses. At the Saturday market in Amguri, the Tuesday market next to the Nak kata pond and even at the end of the road leading out of the village. All varieties of molasses, in tins, light and sticky molasses, whatever one looks for, Gerela has it in his fare. Gerela is the supplier of treacle at Bajou’s wife Memoni’s moonshine distillation unit. After shutting shop for the day, he would make a beeline to Memoni’s place after buying a few chickpeas from Pipiramoni’s shop. It’s known that Memoni’s moonshine is really potent. She marinates the treacle for a whole week before putting it in the still. She never makes do by adding urea or some tablet to ferment it in a day or two like others. Gerela would never try it at any other joint. Bajou was his sole companion at his drinking session worth some fifty rupees for the stuff and some five rupees for the chickpeas. When the chickpeas are all eaten up, Bajou gets from his kitchen a pinch of salt, an inch of ginger, a bhut jolokia or some fried pig guts. They would jabber on till late. Bajou would sometimes walk Gerela to his house if he was more than mellow and tottering.
Both of them share all confidences with each other, like their five rupee-worth chickpeas. His wife Champa these days doesn’t allow him near after he comes back from his drinking bout. She recoils even at his fond touch at this hour. Pushes him away when he tries to kiss her saying he was stinking. “Look at her, the one who cannot stand the smell of moonshine, she cannot stand the smell on her husband yet her father can hardly walk drowned in the same stuff”, he grumbles. She would readily retort, “Having had your fill of the piss that Memoni serves you, just stay put there, don’t come home. Our daughter has come of age, has that ever entered your mind? I’ll leave all these and go away one day, I warn you”. Gerela doesn’t give a damn either, he boasts “go if you will, I’ll get another one”. He has his doubts though for while he is out selling molasses, some other male must be taking a chance with her. However, Gerela sleeps with ease knowing that their daughter is not loud and wicked as her mother. If his daughter wished for anything, Gerela would leave no stone unturned in trying to get it for her. If she had better opportunities, she would have made a name for herself - Gerela never failed to mention this to people whenever he got a chance. For her tuloni biya, Gerela had borrowed a sum of ten thousand rupees from Gandhal on interest. Wherever he would come across him on the streets, Gandhal would always remind Gerela of the sum with his gestures even today. Last bohag, giving some account of the interest calculated, he took three lumps of molasses from Gerela. “That bloody Gandhal – he’ll meet an untimely death one day” – Gerela would curse him. Gandhal’s younger brother on the other hand, took fifty bamboos from Gerela to cultivate beans by the banks of the river and has failed to pay him for those till today. Gerela knew that had it not been for their middle brother Bubul’s wood cutting mill and his slight influence over the village, Gandhal and his lot wouldn’t have been treated even as pet dogs. Bubul, nowadays, goes around with the Janata Party.
Bajou’s woes were no less. His wife’s moonshine business wasn’t doing well at all. Nowadays it seems everyone had developed a taste for the “laal” alcohol. Only a few wayward ones like them believed that it was better to have the local moonshine than gulp that foreign alcohol – better for health and the pocket too. They have started selling laal at Dehkon’s grocery store at the end of the road. You will always find a few good-for-nothings there; they’d sit at the verandah of the store and talk late into the night. They’d talk about the daughters and daughters-in-law of the village – whose daughter-in-law can be found lying down with Bubul in the thickets doing the deed, who while crouching under whose window, heard the bed shake; whose younger daughter’s belly is swelling up and how the mother despite her best attempts couldn’t find out the culprit – such talk. Since they started selling alcohol at Dehkon’s shop, Memoni’s moonshine business has taken a hit. A few days back, the cops came and took away their containers, broke their fireplace and even took five thousand rupees from them leaving Bajou penniless. It left Bajou with absolutely nothing after buying the containers again and rebuilding the fireplace.
Gulping down the last swig left in the tall steel glass, Gerela closed his eyes and grimaced. Put his tongue on the roof his mouth, he made a sound and took a pinch of salt kept on a piece of paper on the floor and put it on the tip of his tongue – ah! He got a stool that was kept against the post of the large thick-walled clumping bamboo in the middle of the room and putting it on top of the stool he was sitting on; and having made his seat taller, he leaned back on the wall. It was a newly made wicker wall, unpolished with twigs still sticking out. Although they dug into his back, Gerela did not sit up straight. The light from the kerosene lamp, which was made in a flat bottle of the laal alcohol, streaked out through the gaps of the knotted wall. People walking outside too could tell that there was someone sitting inside.
Spreading a jute mat on the floor, Bajou sat on it cross-legged and then slowly poured some of the moonshine into his steel glass. Memoni got a kettle of water from inside and put it next to the paper that contained the salt. There was a dent on one side of the kettle. Gerela recognised it immediately as a sign of domestic strife but he didn’t ask them anything. While bending down to put some finely cut ginger near the salt, Memoni’s saador could not keep her breasts, like round lumps of jaggery, covered. Gerela, with his steel glass at his lips, looked at her breasts in the half-light of the lamp with the corner of his eye. This would often happen and Gerela despite wanting to, could not take his eyes off her breasts, always. After his intoxication would wane, Gerela suspected if she always did this on purpose. Gerela took his glass near the lamp and swirling its contents, asked – “Isn’t the moonshine a little cloudy today?”
Looking at the contents of the glass in the light of the lamp, Bajou said, “Because I had kept a lot of wood chopped, she built a huge fire under the stuff, it sure will become cloudy with the singed dreg, how many times do I tell her to keep the flame low”. Bajou, in a strange manner threw the last sip left in the glass towards a corner of the room and asked Gerela – “What task have they given you at the Raas”?
“They haven’t given me anything yet. I probably will have to make tea as always. I never get to see the Raas you know, only the rehearsals. I always have to make tea at the back, sleepily”
Memoni shouted from within – “Dehkon and the others had come today to collect money for the Raas, sent them away with fifty bucks.”
Gerela shouted back – “Bring the paper here, I haven’t yet seen this year’s list.” Memoni rummaged about on the table on the verandah and brought the piece of paper to Gerela.
He took it in his hand and looked it over, back and front. Bringing the lamp closer, he started reading very slowly, “lighting of the lamps, by Señor Binoy Kalita..”
Lifting the curtain on the door upwards and peeping into the room, Memoni said, “Please check if my name’s there too”. Neither of them paid any attention to her words.
“Let me check if our names are there” – Bajou snatched the paper away and in the light of the lamp, scanned the page for their names for a long time. “There it is, look, in the food department – Gerela Sut” – putting his finger on his name showed it to Gerela.
“But wait, where’s my name?”
“Look closely, it’ll be there for sure”, said Gerela.
“Oh yes, got it, as a member. Bajou Bora, there - see”. Bajou pointed at his name.
‘Raas’ deliberations continued till the early hours of the morning. Standing up on the floor Gerela presented Kamsa’s dialogue: Kalketu, swish your keen sword...’. Bojou tied a bamboo stick to his waist as Kalketu and swinging it laughed out loud. As their clamour rose to a crescendo Memoni shouted at them to shut up. She reminded them again that she was running out of yeast. She asked Gerela to get her some creeping fern from near the bridge if they wanted their hooch. She asked her husband to get some wild pepper from Maisena’s house. He would better collect the poison fern and the bitter tobacco from the raised barrier in their yard as she was loath to do it. ‘Do that in the morning itself’.
Early in the morning, before even the oldie with his basket around his waist had gone to steal pebbles from near the newly built road and before the government water pipe started leaking thin streams of water like dog piss; Bhanu and Nabinani got into a violent squabble at the end of the road. Chasing her with a bamboo broom, she came and stopped near the hand pump. Bhanu too, pulling up her mekhela to her knees, chased after her like a hawk. Nabinani screamed from one side of the road, “Come out, you harlot!” Bhanu, holding on to the post of her gate from the other end of the road screamed at the top of her voice in response – “Why don’t you get here, you whore!” Gerela was cycling to the Amguri market when the molasses he was carrying in the carrier of the cycle tied by a tube slanted to one side in the midst of this screaming contest between the two. He stopped his cycle and pulled it to the side of the road, rearranged the pots of molasses on the carrier, and in the process, listened in on the squabble.
Nearly popping a vein on her throat, Bhanu screamed “Go make your son the child Krishna, you be Jashoda and ask your husband to be Nanda – you think I don’t know how many times you invited Bayen bura to your place for tea and sweets? Only then could you have your son dance as Krishna. Don’t think we are unaware of your deviousness. Your son is as stiff as a board, from where does he even seem like Krishna? Let these guys come this time to collect money, I’ll whip them with my mekhela”
Nabinani wasn’t one to take things lying down either – “Oi, I’ll knock your teeth out with one slap, you better watch your words. She’s all riled up because our son is going to be Krishna. The whole world knows your son can’t even utter a single world, what’s the point of having a good-looking face? You had kept that man from the committee at your place, didn’t you? What came of it now? We know all about your ways too”.
Having tied up and rearranging the molasses again, Gerela got on his cycle. It was an old cycle with the tires giving up, it would slip and wobble on muddy roads. Pedalling too emitted a strange cacophony as the wheels turned. It was also rusty in many places and the bell didn’t ring, it barely croaked. Even the lock didn’t work; one could manage to somehow keep it on to throw dust in some possible thief’s eyes. But then again, who would even bother stealing that cycle? One could leave it anywhere without worry. Gerela needs to buy a new cycle soon, even Champa didn’t have a new set of clothes. She tells him every day that she wants a saador with a green border and a long sleeved yellow blouse too. The daughter wanted a pink churidaar like the one Pipiramoni’s daughter wears – he must get that for her today, somehow. His household witnessed many battles in the past with this talk about clothes. The clothes at the Saturday market were a little cheap he had heard and the variety there was endless. It was only the money that never seemed to be enough. He calculated in his head – he could easily manage it if he didn’t have moonshine for a week. Such misery all for that moonshine, anyway.
The moment Champa got hold of the shopping bag, her anger knew no bounds. And then, the war - both prizefighters. When the fight continued with a break for quite a few days, Champa went to stay at her mother’s for a couple of days. She went for good. “I shall never return” – was the message that came from her after a week. After they received the news, a few people gathered at Gerela’s. Everyone gave him their own words of advice. A couple of weeks later, another piece of news arrived – Champa had run away with the thief Soliya! And then the wise ones had a lot of wise words to say. Somebody said – Soliya stole a blouse of hers from her clotheshorse and took it to the Bapdhon the quack along with one of his vest and got them knotted together and did some magic and then took her away. Another said, if the husband is drunk all the time, the wife’s heart will slip to another. Yet another would say – “what did the poor girl get to eat at his place, what did she even get to wear? –; while somebody lamented at the fact that they felt sorry for their daughter, the poor thing! Soliya was way younger than Champa, Gerela thought it over – seeing the spry young man the wily one’s blood already boiled with desire . After Champa’s departure, Gerela would frequent Memoni’s den even more. The fifty buck worth of moonshine turned into a hundred.
Gerela Sut’s happiness had come to an end.
Even if people said that or considered him to be an unshackled cow, only he knew that a home without a wife was like a cowshed. His daughter had grown up with so much love that she hadn’t learnt how to do a single thing, stepping into the kitchen was unthinkable. Bajou would often tell him – “get another one when there’s time”. Gerela stood firm that he would not enter into that mess again. That hussy decided to leave right, well, I’ll show her what Gerela Sut is made of. I am not one to back down! Saying this, he was puffing his chest out with pride when he saw that Bajou was looking like a plucked chicken. Memoni’s moonshine business, that had just begun to bud back to life again, was torn down. A carload of policemen came in the afternoon and took away everything – the three pots, the container where the treacle is marinated, a whole tin of the treacle, money – everything. This blow, however, did break Bajou’s back. Getting a bottle of the laal from Dehkon’s shop, both of them sat in Bajou’s verandah. Having a taste of it after a long time, both of them kept on dwelling on whatever they uttered.
From inside the crossbeam Minia and Lala just manged to roll a huge Maifak log towards the saw when Bojou and Gerela reached the saw mill on that creaking bicycle. While opening the Lal drink last evening they had considered earning some money by carrying logs like lala and Minia at Bubul’s mill. Leaning the cycle precariously at a post of the gate they presented themselves before Bubul. Bubul came straight to the point and said that Minia and lala were more than enough for the job and that fewer logs came those days. He, however didn’t quite disappoint them....
Amidst the thunder, lightning and rain, a few people gathered at the club. The winds forced open the nails on the roof of the club and many of the tin sheets on top startled rattling loudly. The doors at the club had broken down ages ago! Nowadays whenever it started raining, all the cows and goats would run inside the club for shelter. At nights, the goats would sleep on the two benches there. The unrestrained cows considered the club their shed and would shit everywhere, the whole place was full of dung. While it was raining, Lala and Minia cleaned up inside. Cleaning the benches of goat shit, they let the people sit on them. They even managed to get a few chairs drenched in the rain.
Everyone waited for the rain to stop. Bajou and Gerela too arrived at the club, huddled under the same umbrella. After a while, the rain abated. After the rains stopped, the great leader of the “Indigenous Party” Binoy Kalita made his way to the club carefully stepping through the waters looking at the potholes. A few of them were surprised to see him there. A few more people gathered at the club after this. Once there were about twenty odd people at the club, the meeting began. First, Binoy Kalita was felicitated with a gamosa and was welcomed to the meeting and to the party. Lala clicked pictures while Minia adorned him with the gamosa. Kalita spoke a couple of lines about race and land after which Bubul took over the proceedings, “we are very happy today that Binay Kalita has joined our party. Under his leadership, a few others too are joining our party today (oi, give them each a gamosa). Today, joining our Janata Party are – Señor Gerela Sut, Señor Bajou Bora, Señor –”
Navigations 
Quick Contact
Subscribe Us
Quick Mail
