4
Love’s
Bannerol and the Priest
The Muslim watchman was born at a nondescript
village in the southern part of undivided Bengal
decade-and-a-half before the independence and the fateful partition. His birth
place was an erratically laid out fertile land by the rivers depositing Himalayan
dust after a long, long journey. It was a land of rice fields, dotted with
mango, coconut, banana orchards and gardens---the vast alluvial plain, the handiwork
of many mighty rivers like Bhagirathi and its tributaries; full of deltaic
marshes, swamps and bogs; washed by a high monsoon rainfall over the freshly laid out sediments.
It was in this State, credited with
tomes of such important historical facts, our watchman fellow was born. Creaky
chatter of cultural and religious exclusivism had slowly and slowly started to
brews its tumult. However the common man on the street was still unaware of the
weepishly regressive guffaw of such absolutism, the mother of full fledged
communalism. So, communal carnage, two-nation theory, though just a decade
away, hadn’t yet disturbed the whole-some Bengalese cultural cuisine. Paddy,
inland fishing, coconut and jute coir-working, handicrafts and emerging
industrial centres in their infancy in Calcutta Howrah
His father did any type of labour as
the situation or opportunity put forth. He was their only child, whose worn-off
and almost suffering appearance brought more and more intensity in their
parentage. He sat nearby without slightest trace of hip-hopping childhood
curiously watching his parents planting paddy seedlings, harvesting the same
ripened crop, making jute bags or mattresses. Unplayful melancholy always
seemed to fend off a child’s merry-making rainbow from him. Seeing him thus the
couple laughed sometimes saying he was a stoic in the previous birth, whose
meditative trance had barged even into his next birth.
Their small hamlet situated along a
tributary or distributary of one of the rivers criss-crossing the deltaic Bengal had its usual big grey area of stifling natural
troubles. The damp, humid and rain soaked terrain frequently came under the
sweeping storm of water born diseases like jaundice, gastroenteritis,
amocbiasis and diarrhea. The last one had struck, almost fatally, the already
weak infant nearing his first birthday, leaving his health in shambles. They
stretched every sinew of their filiality to save the only precious addition to
their small family. Always shooing away, through their love and care, the death
cooking up a conspiracy to snatch away their child, they did all they could to
conceive another child, so that their insecurities could be shared by another
little lamp shining inside their home in all its sheen and glory. But, as the fate’s stage-managing would have
it he was not destined to share parental affection with other siblings. He
remained their only child, growing up very slowly and precariously.
The weak child remained on the anvil
of malarial bouts almost every rainy season. His parent’s anxiety and
insecurity came in added installment on each new birthday of the star of their
eyes. Still, the boy with his frail clasp to life, with his little Muslim tarboosh
over his small head was the tango of their hearts.
According to the five fundamental
Islamic tenets a Muslim must/should: first, hail the unity of God and surrender
to the Prophethood of Muhammad; second, offer prayers five times in a day,
Friday afternoon’s in a mosque; third, as a sacred act give helping alms to the
unfortunate fellow human beings; fourth, during the month of Ramzan,
fast every day from dawn to dusk; fifth, must try within his means to pay a
pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during the lifetime.
As for the first and the second, their
faith in the Almighty had grown to be more close grained since the birth of
their child for whose life the poor couple invoked His mercy; what to talk of
five times a day, they did it whenever his pitiful face poked a sorrowful
grimace. Third injunction was perhaps not decreed for them. The next seemed to
be nothing short of a crest jewel for the poor family; as at least by the grace
of Prophet’s fasting, crimpling ration of the house got some decelerating
brakes during the holy month. The last one, even considering the
infinitesimally long rope of ‘variegated resources’, was beyond even the wildest
of their dreams.
The village mosque was years old. It
smiled solemnly with its moss greenish dark walls. Dome stood sulkingly as if
in clamminess to the older times. The pigeons flappering grubbily inside its
vaulted interior sent out a gabbling echo. Plaster worn-out here and there
showed bluish-red small bricks. Broken window arches and haggardly hanging
minarets at four corners made the whole look of it as if it was in a sort of hallowed
ancient chasm with its dim religious charm. It had the typical inventious heterogeneity
of Bengali architecture groomed from the Sultanate period. Bengal at the centrifugal
periphery of the Mughals; many local Muslim dynasties; medieval Sufism;
Chaitnya’s primordially drenched keertans---so many twirling blithe historical facts which still seemed to
suffuse a distinct Bengali fragrance during this last phase of colonialism.
The mosque was the only educative
point to name in its capacity as the maktab, Muslim elementary system of
education wherein the maulvi taught Urdu and Bengali syllables,
alphabets and numerals in communion with sacred Quranic principles. Classes
were held for just two or three days in a week. Shorn of any childish
twittle-twattle, sitting absently before the teacher was the easiest thing for
the boy. Teaching with preaching being a hassle free thing for the children as
the idealistic serious injunctions were out of the imaginative sphere of their
softly scintillating little hearts. The boy carried an odd pal of seriousness
around him and by the look of it only he seemed to smell the importance of holy
words. It is however another matter that the inanimate statue like face ogling
without batting an eyelid at the maulvi’s face was in fact lost in the gutergooing pigeons above in the
alcoves, niches and cornices; without looking at them, just lost in the ominous
noisy aura without thinking or feeling anything. Others meanwhile passed their
time in suppressed giggles and faddish, naughty manoeuvres completely invisible
to the cocking maulvi.
The students of all grades sat
together. So, in between those talimi moments (purported for the elder
children), the younger ones were given cramming lessons of Urdu alphabets.
However, such engrossed parroting chorus could be heard for too little a time
to leave any firm and lasting imprint on the children’s fleeting memories. For
the rest of the time only pigeons seemed to squabble over the alphabets inside
the mosque. At such an impressionable age learning has to be continuous and
somewhat repetitive with the effectivity of a playful newton force so as to
leave a permanent imprint upon the unblemished and clear surfaces inside their
curious minds. As did the invention of movable types by Johann Gutenberg,
stamping the printed word’s fundamental axiom with a million newton force upon
the weepishly regressive face of illiteracy; upon muckraking medieval dogma;
upon guttural, poorly pathetic oratory with its limitations and gossipy spool
of tricksteries. Joyous and firm synergy of tip... tip... tap... tap... click...
click carried with it an air of liberation, of revivalism, of renaissance.
Without any fault of theirs, children
in the maktab learnt almost nothing of Urdu. Self-obsessive air of
vanity about the ragged, stagnated and moot system was too trivial to do any
justice with the great literary corpulence lurking from the Urdu’s huge coffers.
Urdu being the crest-jewel of poetics
with its vocabulary, idioms and literary traditions almost touches the primal
song of softest of emotional hearts. Its grammatical structure based on Western
Suraseni Apabhramsa allowing it to draw heavily from Central Asian, Turkish and
Persian sources. Its genesis in Allaudin Khalji’s military camps, bazars,
monasteries, salons, court rejoicings gave it enough pathos and softly
suffering pangs. As naturally it grew to be an ample companion to the heart’s
multi-hued outpourings. Ghazals and nazms of Mirza Galib, in
their profound mystical mystery stretched it to the extent of moksha or
liberation. Devotionally drenched medieval Bhakti saints took Godly sips
from its big bowl which contained the emotional pinnacle of the human heart and
the mind’s linguistic reach.
Unfortunately, inside the maktab
carelessly inane introduction to the alphabets, now and then, was nothing but a
slap in the face of this great and lively language, which was dangerously
growing old for want of lively fresh breath.
The boy who seemed sagely in his sworn
silence, by the look of it, envisaged the nearest possible talent or
prospect—if left alone in his own world with only Urdu as an accomplice without
any disturbance—for a new whiff into the literary panorama of Urdu : Who knows
in masnavi, in ghazal, gasida, marsia, rekhti or in nazm?
But unrelenting fate as well as supine society very rarely allows the most
potent seed in a human being to burst out in its full blossom. Harsh realities
snuggle around the most fitting seed burying it deeper and deeper with each
passing day. And most of us with our ordinary fortunes grow-up to be the helpless
human beings without the protective courageous company of that specialty buried
deep beneath time’s sludge.
He too was to grow up in a similar fashion.
And the traditional Urdu poetry which reached its pinnacle under the Delhi School
Then one year before freedom, when
communal tumult as well as the hasty urge for freedom were at their combined
peaks, something happened which unfailingly happens to all human hearts, at
least once in lifetime. His sleeping senses of yore got a sweet tug as cupid
struck him confirming that he in fact was a human being. At the age of fourteen
he went crazy for a girl from the same hamlet. His senses so meek and unresisting
were almost awefully infatuated under this surrendering soft pining stupefaction.
His senses by consenting to the heart’s
murmur could infringe upon any one of the sacred doctrines about women. Also,
if according to Koran, nikah becomes valid only when the bride nods in
affirmative to the groom, then his infatuation too was valid, at least in the
eyes of God, provided her heart too beat the same way. Whether it did or not he
wasn’t sure or hopeful about his luck.
If forms of divorce, remedies for
widowhood, of remarriage, of sexuality, of property and inheritance laws
(regarding women) were originally treated favourably, or at least equal to the
men by an unbiased Prophet, then why did the sub-continental Islam threw an
opaque light on the straight lines in the pages of Quran, making the reality
look the other way? He was thus in store for a few kicks in his weak ribs and a
few slaps to his beloved if she chose to be one.
Twanging bumps inside his rejuvenated
heart ordered his sense of sight to be interested in seeing just her. She was
of his age. Religious conservatism and all the taboos left aside, most fatal
fact was that she was the daughter of village strongman, under whose patronage
his father worked and almost cringed whenever he saw his employer.
Mustering up all his courage along his
spines, he’d ogle at her whenever he got a chance to visit her home. She was of
average looks. But to him she was an angel from the jannat, in its full
opulent beatitude.
“Is my father still at work?” he’d
stammer out shyly and abashedly to the queen of his dreams standing before him.
“Mother needs him at home for some work,” he almost choked due to his
love-lornness.
The girl somewhat blushed. Infatuation
was oozing from his face. She saw it. The emotions’ vastitude was too
overbearing for him to hide it. The girls have more control over a gay heart’s
joyous symptomaticity. She quickly dispelled the blithe blush; then almost
teasing him said with a serious, effeminate and uncaring voice, “For what work?”
Struggling with his imperious heart he
managed to say, “Mother wants some money...she’s going to bazaar.”
She was now sure of his
spellboundedness, so with a flattering pride said unabashedly, “Going to bazaar.
For what?” her tone changing to ‘caring a littlest fig about him’ as if to keep
him on the track.
That sounded somewhat assuring to his reddish
buzzing numb ears, “For purchasing rice, salt, and...” he stopped with a faint
smile caressing her feet.
In Indian sub-continental societies
love thrives on faintest of gestures and almost invisible chaste symptomatic
guesstimates. Mystical murmur of pining hearts goes on ripening, blossoming
with changing seasons, when only nature in its full candour seems a sharer of
all the pain. That is why nature is such a hallowed subject in the ‘love part’
of the folk-lore here in this part of the world.
To share his agony, on a certain day,
he decided to go to the fishing pond of the girl’s father; as if to quench his
love thirst by watching at least some part of her world. His heart was beating
with wildest of curious imaginations about what she was doing at that time. The
pond was about a kilometre away from the village. But the intervening landscape
baroquely dotted with bushes and trees over the uneven surface increased the
perception of distance as well as the loneliness of the path. Its dull
vestigial aura seemed to pleasantly sulk like his heart.
“If I meet her coming from the other
side,” he once again lost himself in dreamy thoughts.
A tart sensation sauntered across the
pores of his darkish skin.
“Here in this loneliness, will she
smile at me or not....”
Inside the heart of his hearts he’d a
faint glimpse of a tiny flower inside her secretive heart which threw a
romantic raylet piercing through her make-believe coquettishness which on the
surface of it seemed to naughtily chide, saying ‘she didn’t care a rap about
him’.
“Not only smile, she will even speak
out her love for me. Without caring for the world as no one is around,” a sweet
wave swayed across his body.
He looked around to confirm the
unblemished solitude of the place. The thought of she speaking of her love for him,
gave his overworking heart the biggest and most ingenious thump of his life.
Contemplating heart’s zealotry like
this he reached a place from where a portion of the pond’s water became visible
to his eyes. But what he saw there made his heart beat still faster, thus
beating the previous record.
“Was it she!” his throbbing self wasn’t
sure.
His courage gave in and he stopped.
How to face her here in this loneliness? He kicked himself for this cowardly
indiscretion which pushed forward his hesitant legs.
“What if she is really there? My
father would be there as well as hers. And suppose she’s alone. If someone
comes after I reach there,” his heart sank and legs prompted his afraid self to
show a clean pair of heels from the scene.
Under the spate of such purple
thoughts and emotions he moved forward. Pond’s vision went on increasing
towards its full size.
“It’d be far better to face her here
than at her doorstep,” he braved himself up.
The pond was mostly visible to him
now. But nobody came into his view. Suddenly, to a mighty hiccup of his heart,
there in a far corner, which until then had been left out of his eye-shot, was
standing the pearl of his heart in a boat, chirpily upbeat with an oar in her
hand.
His starlet had rowed haphazardly, as
zig-zagly as his love thoughts and—as if to spring a surprise—evaded that
portion of the pond which fell within his increasing eye-shot. Full view,
however, undid all his overwhelming doubts. In hush-hush silence and
soul-stirring solitude opportunity had gifted some precious moments of togetherness.
“Where have the fathers gone?” the
question gave him a realistic nudge, spoiling the charm fancy’s feather-touch
somewhat.
She, in all her girlish spirits, was
playfully balancing herself in the small boat which slippingly shook at the
subtlest of wayward push from her nimble heels. She seemed more of a
ropewalking acrobatic girl dodging the crisis with the oar. This pleasing dissonance
between girl and boat showed her newness to the adventure. Her chirpy balance
and oarwork made the boat swerve and circle around in its watery histrionics.
She let out the feministic laughing cries of fear, adventure and surprising
mirth in all their joyous synergy of body, mind and spirit. Completely unaware
of the onlooker she was enjoying each and every moment in rapturous harmony as
if to redeem all the losses which the Islamic women suffered in their role as
the bonded servitors in society.
The breeze played around her faded
blue ankle-length kirtle, flapping it around her maturing legs. Upcoming curve
around her bottom excited him for the fraction of a second with almost a
feather-touch of sexuality as he gloated over it. But love at this age is
beyond lust. Heart’s vastitude is too suffusing for the growing up sexuality.
And the pleasurable proximity of that excitement was gone even without him
having an inkling of it. The Bengali Muslim damsel, lurking between girlhood
and womanhood, in the boat, among the fish jumping above the water surface
occasionally, stood with her slenderest of sexual charm like a mythical
mermaid, half woman and half fish. God knows how many virginally fresh young
loves have been inspired by the woman and the distinctness hallowed around
them, leaving ever memorable and inspiring impressions, which affect and mould
whole of lives.
If Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt,
infatuated Julius Caesar and Mark Antony with her beauty, bravish charm,
scintillating skills and scholarship; if great poets and philosophers sang and marveled
at her physical, emotional and almost mythological secretness inside her heart,
then this girl in a boat with fish flopping around in the water was undoubtedly
capable of leaving an indelible, everlasting imprint on a virgin heart fallen
in love for the first time.
She had removed her coarse, big and broad
head-cloth (which usually covered almost the whole of her upper body) and
dumped it by her side as if in disgust over its veily weight. Her narrow shoulders,
long arms and the upcoming breasts covered under a full-sleeved kurti made her appear more charming than
she really was.
“How I wish if I were there in the
boat with her. Holding her hands...” he sighed. “And then suddenly a fish flop
up, frightening her to fall in my embrace!” a sweet sensation caressed his
genital area, as the growing seed of virility sprouted forth its little sapling.
During these dreamy moments, the girl
during one of her swirling sweet manoeuvres caught a glimpse of the love-dazed
boy, worshipping her with his ogles. Shyly she stopped her learning efforts at
rowing. The boat meanwhile continued to circle around under her feministic
inertia. Conscious of the fact that she was now looking at him, he blushed bashfully
and was almost flabbergasted. His heart pounded with such ferocity that a toad
jumped into the water from the corner of the pond as if the vibrations struck
him. Emotional convulsions almost brought him at the brink of entailing the
frog into the water with a bang.
If the feministic pinpointing
impression, particularly smile, streaked inside the creative insight of Leonardo
da Vinci and metamorphosed into the ever-active mythological smile of Mona Lisa,
then this mermaid of the boy too thunder-bolted an everlasting impression
inside his empty heart of yore. Love painted itself on a spotless canvas. Even
if the time had the swiping potential to wipe away all sand dunes from the
desert, it must’ve felt helpless before this painted oasis inside his barren heart;
the ever defying traces of subconscious impression from the chaste, subsurface
world of love: the girl, the fish inside the pond’s murky water, boating,
pisciculture. Such everlasting and unmiffed colourisation of the heart with its
vaticinal aura becomes a life force; the only purpose of being on earth. And
small scalps like him never let such divine impressions slip away as a mere transient
casualty, rather these are stored in a secret niche inside the immortal crate.
He didn’t know what to say to the girl
whom he was thinking about day and night for the last four or five months. She
looked somewhat embarrassed of the way she was playing. He, meanwhile, was
perpetually failing in his efforts to force out a word. His heart’d leaped
inside the pond, twisting and tossing around the boat and a pal of utter dysphonia
enclouded him. Subtly blunt hesitation glued to his tongue preventing love’s
first syllable to come out; the first word of real consequence and affectivity.
Steamrolled under this physical and emotional muteness, he stood with his five
senses intermixed in such a way that he only perceived a big, buzzing and
vacuous zero.
She was standing in the middle of the
boat with her legs somewhat apart along its width to keep it in balance. As
only natural happenings can break such deadlocks of love, of minds, of hearts
she suddenly lost the balance thanks to some uneven force born of either the left
or right foot. The small boat shook violently with the propensity of dislodging
her off the deck. She let out a cry.
“T...Ta...Take care!” momentary time’s
snooty chaos broke his muteness. “Don’t move. Stand still in the middle.”
Regaining her composure, she stood
motionless. The oar dropped over to one side balancing the wood. The boat now
moved obliquely in his direction. Finding her so harmless, so innocent like an
astonished fish, caring boyhood surfaced over his placid heart, making him
somewhat bold. She stood so beautiful, so helpless. Care for her erupted inside
his heart.
“I’ll row it properly for you, if you
like,” he blushed more than the girl.
She couldn’t say anything. Teasing
chirpiness which came so naturally to her when he came to her house was nowhere
to be seen. She was conscious of the loneliness as well as the small raylet emanating
from the secretive chamber of her heart.
“Actually I came to see my father.
Where’s he?” he tried to calm down his love-lynched, shaking limbs as he softly
stepped into the boat beside her.
With her ‘I don’t care about you’
naughty gesticulation she shrank away, very cautiously though, fearing a fall
and sat at the other end of the boat. Pointed end of the gunwale was topped by
a triangular sitting board. Sitting on this, she looked in the other direction.
“Came for money to purchase ration,”
she said coming to her normal ease.
Much to his huge comfort she’d
straightway jested making a face. It was his standard query whenever he came to
face her.
“Oh no! Not this time,” he said shyly
easing himself at the other end handling the oar. “I just felt eager to help
him with his work today. But where’s he
now?” Once again he fell back to his punch line.
By the look of it he seemed more
womanish of the two. His heart’s coweringly babbling buoyancy was too much.
“But all say that your parents never
get you to work,” she said flatly.
Though she said it in full innocence,
still it seemed a bit taunty. He felt himself quite low when she mentioned the
common fact known to all the villagers.
“It’s been like this since my birth.
They never want me to do anything for them,” he said ruefully.
To an extent his loving fancy dithered
from its earlier exciting flights. He pondered over his idlehood, temporarily
forgetting about his haunted heart. He wasn’t rowing the boat. It just wafted
away into the pond, guided by little waves. They didn’t look at each other, nor
said anything after the unromantic drift of their conversation. Gliding over
the wavelets the wood reached midway into the pond. They were looking in
different directions. He to the right and she to the left. Water beneath their
eyebeams, in all its versatility, seemed eager to proclaim its oneness,
regardless of the eyes casting looks in different directions. This silence gave
enough time to their hearts to exactly ponder over what they thought and felt
about each other.
In a very mild tone, almost to the
extent of a whisper, she said at last, “Abbu and your father have gone
to the town to bring a new fishing net and fish seed.”
Her understanding eyes were now fixed
at his almost sulking face. His features weren’t so bad. But permanently tragic
grimace masked over them made him look broodingly piteous. Yes, she cared for
him. The boy had his own kind of sorrowful charm, at least for a girl of his
age. His piteousness and ill health didn’t seem to be on the side of vulgarity
or bad appearance. He seemed to be a prince from a gerontocratic state where
all subjects were too serious as if none of them had seen a childhood, and he had
been by mischance exiled to this clacking and gruffly gesticulatory world.
“At what time they’ll be returning?”
he asked still disheartened.
Initial throbbing impulse of his heart
had been reined in by the reflection over his passive part in a human society.
But she wanted him to recall his heart’s wave-storm.
“Unmnn...I don’t know, but abbu
was saying he’s some more work in the town. A meeting with a baabu I
think,” she softened the corners of her lips letting a faint encouraging smile
hover around there.
Supportive ledging in her voice broke
his reverie anchored in the water. He turned his face in her direction and looked
apishly into her eyes. Proclaiming oracle lurked there. Her smile seemed to
graft up the sorrow penitently layered over his face with her love.
“It may take them till evening,” he
seemed in control of his heart as well as mind at last.
A love-talk with presence of mind! How
difficult it may get! But thanks to her, she was easing him on the right track.
“Ooomn...as if you know the real value
of time,” she teased in her normal way.
He smiled away the naughty pun. “You
were rowing the boat wonderfully,” he gave a smiling soft retort.
She smiled a bit embarrassed. “As if
you can make me learn to row it properly,” she made a face, half blushing.
“I’ll if you ask me,” he shyly
whispered becoming possessive about her, with almost the sweetest satisfaction
of his life.
“Why’ll you take the trouble of
getting me learn this,” she said trying to keep her butterflying secret of
which she was proud.
Perhaps, sub-continental girls cherish
this dodging secret—which occasionally shines over the crazy lover’s heart,
leaving it in a pal of gloom for rest of the time—more than the love itself.
With a naughty secretness, they make the best out of this process itself. But,
unfortunately, by the time they are over with this hide-and-seek and surrender
to love’s full blossom, it’s too late. Love in such situations just tries to
make the best of a bargain. After all, if it knows beforehand its conviction
and eventual kiss of the gibbet, then it prefers to fissure out slowly, slowly
as a romantic springlet which almost immortalises the lovers’ Indian
sub-continental folklore. And the whole world knows, history proves this, that
this love is the greatest on earth. It is like a lotus sprouting above the
muddy, sordid surliness. The ever smiling, fundamentally chaste love unfazed by
the sneering fault-finders; the purest white light, immortally burning with the
oil of so many lost-loves, softly asking the misanthropic paranoids to sheathe
the bloody sword; love in its divine cloister incessantly immersed in a yajna
throwing so many broken hearts into the sacred fire as the oblations to keep it
going, and the rising warmth ever trying to fight away the worldly cynicism.
He’d not been able to express why he
should take the trouble of getting her learn boating.
“What if somebody sees you with me in
this boat,” she said testily, putting up a dilemma.
In affirmation of inherent fears and
suspicions on the path of love, he almost shivered. The consequences scurried over
his mind for a moment.
“Abbu’ll kill you and beat me
mercilessly if not kill me altogether,” warned the girl, getting her share of
fear.
He remained silent looking the other
way.
“Afraid of my father!” she pouted
followed by a twisting narrowness of lips which indicated feminine defiant
spirit for the protection of her love.
There was an imbroglio. Their hearts had
been caught in a net. Imbued in the same colour, both wanted to say the same
thing, ‘I love you.’ But it was the most difficult thing to do. They wanted it
through a mysterious symbol which the other might not take as an openly
proclaiming consent to love. Two hearts; two nonconsenting halves of a single
love being taken on a singular journey by a boat, while the forecasting angels
looking uneasily, for the world was no sea where a boat could carry two hearts
for ever.
He was rowing the boat in a big circle
in the middle of the pond.
“What if my father comes?” she
cautioned again.
“At the most he’ll kill me,” much to
her pleasure, this time he spoke boldly with an unwavering voice.
“And me too,” she mimicked playfully with
a hidden confidence, as hidden as her liking for the boy.
This newfound possibility of sharing
her father’s fist-work seemed to energise his hands and he rowed as quickly as
he could. She giggled girlishly, looking at him fixedly. He diverted his eyes after
short spells, as if her love smitten look was too shiny.
He stopped rowing to give some rest to
his aching muscles totally new to such a tiresome work.
“Are you tired? Now, give me the oar I’ll
try to do it,” the other half of his heart sweetly proposed to bear his burden.
Suppressing his breathlessness, he
protested as the male companion ought to do when in company of a lady. “Oh no!
I’d just stopped to look around. I’ll continue with it,” he assured her.
“The fish have grown quite large now,”
he noticed a big, noisy splash in the pond.
“Yes, it’s been sometime since the net
was cast. It was to be done two weeks ago, but the old net was bitten by rats.
That’s why abbu is in the town today,” she giggled.
Suddenly, a soli fish, small
and shiningly agile, too luxuriously agile in fact, splurged out of water.
Hitting the wood’s border it flipped into the boat. Its silvery incandescence
dancingly struggled in two inches of water inside the boat.
The girl let out a cry of excitement.
She had many things in common with the awfully acrobating fish. She saw her
slippery, small shiny replica. Her eyes glowed as if out of wonder after
suddenly witnessing her grayish-dark complexion turn to a silvery, agile glow.
She stood up and clapped out of scintillating sensation. Her small breasts curious
and eager to bob out against the cloth, thin slender back and all those things
which’d already envisioned a womanness about them danced in a secret harmony
with her fish replica. The fish in a tizzy seemed to struggle for a new crack
of dawn for Islamic women after centuries of dusking squib. Its hypnotic twitch
and twirls seemed to symbolise a torn and tattered revolt against numerous
Koranic misinterpretations concerning women. As a sojourning, rejoicing
memorabilia of Islamic women’s liberty and empowerment the girl seemed to
jingle amidst those ancient chains. Her diminutive lover watched this glimpse
of freedom which was inexplicably surrealistic yet so far away in the future. A
lavish sensation sprawled across his mind’s aisle. How beautiful the Islamic
woman seemed when on an equal footing with man; when a genuine womanish smile
attired her face instead of thumping pain resulting from medieval sly digs at
her. Flip-flapping soli and the joyous girl spellbindingly raced across
his empty, indoctrinated mind as well as heart. The rendezvous impresario
danced with its humanistic doctrines. For the appeasement of which God? We don’t
know.
He adored her, in all her mirthing
fish continuum, with his worshipping looks. She appeared so compassionate,
lovely, gracious and worshipable like the Virgin Mary or any other Hindu
Goddess. This’s what the true love does. All those inhibitions and enslaving
misinterpretations inside this human being born as a Muslim were nipped in the
bud by a small strike by the enlightened scythe of the true spirit of a true
religion. There was a look of marvelous ease and satisfied peace on his face; to
the extent that he looked like a true sage of an authentic religion; a primal
revisionist who could recall all the original Prophetic injunctions, putting
aside the dusting hadis, thus allowing the Prophet’s true sheen to
glimmer not just for his followers but for the humanity at large.
He was thus sitting on the tiny hull
of the boat in a trance over his love spraying around like the fish. The boat
meanwhile jerked slowly from one side to another as if in a stark admonition
that this love’s glimpse of epic proportions could be as momentous as the life
of little soli if thrown at the shore. The fish could gaspingly survive
in the shallow water inside the boat. Same was about their togetherness. It
could hope only to survive as long as those floaty moments clandestinely stole
out precious seconds for them.
The flapping, flirtatious love-crave
imprinted immortal vestigials on his crystal clear conscience, where his barren
past had left no mark: forever shining marks (in their infancy) of liberal
romanticism, pure humanism, religionless soul apostled by the girl and the
fish. It was such a lofty milestone in his life, almost the peak point of his
body, mind and spirit’s creative synergy. It seemed as if his uncheckered past
was waiting for this lofty phrase, for this lofty proverbial light whose gleam
and voice would fade into the dimness of his old days.
Lost in a dream they’d spoken a few
words. But the number of words can’t and shouldn’t be made to count the amount
of love.
Defining moments of life are after all
just moments. They suddenly crop up in all their fledgling luxury and then
taper off in a hurry, almost tragically.
“Shabeena! What’re you doing there?”
her father shrieked from the shore sending down soaring repercussions across
the pond’s water.
For a moment even the soli fish
shuddered under the impact of this hell raising voice. His single sentence gushed
so much fire that he off-balanced everything. Like the perplexed round eyes of
a fish fearing death she turned her head in that direction, then a littlest
eye-contact with the boy and then again faced the inevitable eventuality, expressionless
like a lifeless statue.
“In Jahannum’s name, why’re
there? I’ll kill you. Come ashore!” he barked clenching his fists and grinding teeth.
The Prophet’s dearest child was his daughter
Fatima, love for whom inspired Him to say filially that those who showed
special favours to their girl child, they willn’t be touched by the fire of
hell. Alas! These words had no meaning for the girl’s father, who was shrieking
out fire to burn her.
Devastated by the hopeless situation
she was on the verge of fainting for a moment, but then like the ever suffering
Muslim woman regained her senses to bear the burnt without letting out faintest
of whisper.
“You bastard, bring the boat to the
shore, or I’ll drown you right there!” he directed his life-threatening voice at
the boy.
Dumbfounded the lover stared at his
beloved with a pleading look of what to do.
“Father’ll kill you,” she declared
completely dead-white, forgetting her own fate.
He thought of an escape by jumping
into the water. But he’d a realistic assessment of his swimming prowess. Knew
it too well that by the time he’d struggle out of any corner, the monster will
be there waiting like a deadly butcher. Under the deafening spell of an
excruciating fear he once again looked at her. Life had vanished from her face.
Surrendered to fate she nodded passively. Like a calf going to the butcher
house he tried his trembling hands at the oar. Numerous uncertainties as well
as certainties waited at the shore. First stroke took the boat in opposite
direction. An idea struck, as it always does when one is fearful for life. Why
not race ahead in the same direction? And then run into wilderness with his
first and perhaps last impression of love. But his untrained hands and already
stiff, weak muscles ruled out the adventure beforehand. Fully aware of
confirmed inevitability, she helped him row the boat in the direction of her
father. In all meekness she had picked up a bamboo lying inside the boat. She
was learning to row; learning to face the loveless hard reality.
Watching them meekly coming to him the
man kept mum. He seemed more dangerous without his bellicosing verbosity, for
it was a like a lull preceding a ferocious storm. He seemed to be gearing up
the spurs of his murderous angst.
“Will he beat you?” he whispered
penitentially for getting her in this trouble.
“He’ll kill me,” she said stonily. “And
me too,” he united their love’s futile fate.
In the raging gripeness of his fury,
her father watched the wood approaching him. His chewing looks not able to
discern whom to prey upon first, he, she or the whole boat itself. His
bursting, swooned mind was gearing-up to give most vengeful orders to his thick
fists, which clenched involuntarily.
The boy’s eyes caught upon the little soli,
still dancing as a symbol of their love. He stretched forward to get his hand
at the jolly creature as if to exclude it from their doomed dark fate; save the
moments of his immortalised love; the symbol of his love. He tried to catch it
but it slipped away. He tried two, three times but failed. She was watching silently.
Then without thinking or feeling anything, prompted by a mysterious sensation,
she stepped forward, stretching out her hand to help him.
Her father gruffed volcanically and
catapulted vulgarest of an obscenity he could manage.
Their joint effort caught the slippery
fish. His fingers and hers webbing around the shiny fish. With a swash they
threw it into the larger freedom of water; like an oblation at the altar of
their love; liberating those moments of togetherness; freeing away the
indelible impression of fresh, virgin love; away from anyone’s reach.
As the boat neared the shore, the man
lunged into waist deep water. All his cursing anger fell firstly on the girl.
Holding her hair he shook her violently as if to fear her life away. After a
few hard hits at her back and slaps at her soft cheeks he grabbed the main
culprit. Pulling him off the boat he pinched him down underwater; his facial
convulsions showing that he might even drown the poor boy. He then propped the
boy up, who gasped for life. After an exhaustive watery session, during which
both water and the child bore the punishment, he dragged him on to the land to
bestow punishment upon earth for its own share of the crime. His kicks danced
macaberously. At least for the moment, saving her life the girl ran towards
home to get her due share in the confines of the house. After venting out his
full fury the strong man left him like a dead wood and hurriedly set out for
his house to drag her out of her mother’s meek grasp and give her what she still
owed for her crime.
All ye social researchers, who’ve guts
to analyse the comprehensivity of violence against women may start cudgeling up
your brains about what might’ve happened to the poor girl.
As per thy psycho-analytical theory,
accruing feelings and emotions during a female child’s upbringing in such
societies make her almost passive to biases and tortures. Her response to
violence is a stereotypical sheepishness. Taking heart by this argument, we
shouldn’t loose hope. She would definitely come out alive.
According to social learning theory,
she and her father in their respective roles of ‘mutely helpless’ and ‘boiling
aggressive’ just played their normal and expected roles. The socialisation
processes as well as the family relationships are such that the aforesaid roles
become almost sacred, inviolable definitions of the two genders.
And as the all powerful patriarch of
the socio-political critique, his subjugative and unflappable hold to avoid any
misdemeanours on her part didn’t count as violence. Rather it was the duty of a
worried father.
As the victimised child valiantly
survives in a survival theory, she did survive. Batterings and victimisations
at physical, emotional and psychological levels hadn’t stalled her suddenly. It’d
all evolved, since her early childhood, in perfect harmony with the cycle
theory of domestic violence. Her bearing power of victimisation had been
growing with her.
Her little lovely adventure in the
boat made her family jump-start to the conclusion that she was bursting with
youth and desire. Fearing lest her raging passion might hatch an adulterous
conspiracy, they deemed it fit to get her married off. So, she was to be married
as soon as they could manage it.
He was left with a symbol of his love
in the form of a small soli fish and the girl traversing amidst the
wavelets inside his heart. With passage of time its grandiosity was to remain
the only leading light of his heart. Duty for his love would mature to such an
extent, enough to wake him up at nights hearing the flapping fish near the
shore and by decoding their mysterious signals he could estimate wind
direction, temperature and salinity of the water.
His parents knew that the strongman’s
heart had become an ever-active volcano now, which will continue to pour lava
over them. So with the prized possession of their parenthood they left the
place and took shelter in a filthy hovel in Calcutta
Hard facts of life were too tortuous
for his soberly calm heart lit by a single starlet. Destiny’s propensity is
always to put us in shoes we haven’t ever worn. Just as a small personal
hurricane whiffed away his beloved, a greater tornado awaited numerous combined
fates. India Punjab
and Bengal . The tissues of two wholesome
socio-cultural entities were torn apart to suit the changed nationhoods: inking
of a ghastly deal; like the cosmic cricket’s one ball chance or mischance; so
many fates decided by one single rash shot. Eleven million Hindu, Muslim and
Sikhs were uprooted from their ancestral homes. One million got perished while seeking
refuge in a new nation.
His parents became just two unknown
numbers in the list of one million dead persons. His name didn’t figure in the
list of those who’d been sacrificed at the altar of a new Goddess called
religious nation-state. He watched all this with a resigned passivity. At
numerous instances incidental spin of the coin or the accidental throw of dice
fell in his favour and he survived. To the other side of the border a new
religiously spiced nationhood was up for grabs. Muslims from the Indian side of
Bengal were in for a heady rush to their
redefined motherland. But one needs something to take along to a new
destination. At least one runs to a safer place to save even the trivialest of
possessions. He hadn’t anything except a lotus light inside the farthest
corners of his heart, which no communalist could blow out. So he remained in India India
Now, he wasn’t related to anything.
Fisheries were the only occupation or worldly thing he could’ve related to. As
a poor labourer he worked in the fish farms. Netting, pulling, separation of
the fish, markets, boating, inspection of seeds all done in a lifeless,
mechanic proficiency but guided by a faint, murmuring crave emanating from the
only lively thing inside his heart, which stretched his engagedness in the job
to the extent of a mad craze, yet so silent, sober and stoic. Physical debility
is no opposition to such soul driven passions. Multi-hued reflections of life,
soul and spirit just danced at only one surface. Mastery in the field was
inevitable. But perfectly unassuming mastery—without being related to anything
else—fetches nothing except subsurface streaks of genius which are harnessed by
someone’s dexterity and social-skills, leaving the master just an unsung and
pauperised fortune maker. He was just of similar type as far as the fisheries
were concerned.
He worked in inland fisheries in West Bengal ; tasted the salinity along coastal Orissa; pulled
nets in fresh water of the Ganges in Bihar . With the independent march of India Delhi Bengal . After all it was the
land of sturdy villagers, the descendants of indefatigable Central Asian settlers,
who cleared mighty forests for agriculture about 3000 years ago. Simple,
straightforward without any urbane etiquettes rasping around their edges, these
hardworking people found it easier to grapple with bulls and buffaloes than
softer—or as the urbanites call them finer things of culture—things of life,
like say holding a slippery fish in hand or talking and behaving with a greater
role of mind than the heart. They were led by a rustic, simple, straightforward
heart’s instinct.
His arrival in the village, where the
conventional green revolution dictated agricultural activities predominated,
was an indication of diversifying modes of occupation being adopted by the
people in the struggling countryside. Mushroom farming and inland fisheries
were two emerging important factors which were providing some succour to the
countryside put at unease by the increasing needs of these changing times.
Efforts and guidance by the Fish
Farming Development Agency had given some hope to the educated unemployed
youths of the district. Almost all the villages in Sonipat district, thus, had
their village panchayat ponds leased out for pisciculture after an open
auction. The ponds were thus serving twin purposes of pisciculture and buffalo
wellowings.
Traditional beliefs about
vegetarianism were losing ground and commercial proposition seemed to prevail
over the conservatism and stigma springing up with a mere touch to meat.
District Fisheries Seed Farm situated
along the road to the eastern side of the village also provided some half
hearted incentives and vague clues about the blue revolution.
As an active player in the new scheme
of things, the watchman had been happily employed by the villager. There was
however another possible impact of his trivial, almost ionic addition to the
State, where a nationally emerging Hindu rightist party had become a tiny force
to reckon, with its new religio-political manifesto in coalition with an influential
state level party. The political party was trying to instigate the sons of the
soil to come out of their thousand-year-old repressive shell over a defensive,
coward core which bore numerous attacks from the North West
Back in his home State, the communist
monolith erected on the principles of socialism was getting some jolts from a resurgent
Congress as well as the rejuvenating Hindu pride. If someone heard the old
Bengali watchman whispering—provided he knew politics at all—that he was a
Congressman from inside but a Communist from outside, it shouldn’t have come as
a surprise. Congress was surviving in Bengal
inside some pathetic chamber fearing to come out in open against the Communist
musclemen and bullies ever ready to vanquish any anti-Communist sentiment. They’d
do anything like crop burning, thrashing, poisoning the pond to kill the seed
of any Congress related idea as well as any private initiative to reap
capitalistic profit. Of late however, the Communists were facing someone who
was not as submissive as a Congressman. Beholder of Hindu cultural pride, RSS,
had arrived in West Bengal . Its defiant khaki
clad workers were holding shakhas, or camps, around the state. Its
founder, K. Hedgewar had studied medicine in Calcutta
Inertia of this new religious connotation of
nationalism was spreading out to virgin lands. Watchman’s fellow Bengalese
could absorb it in their State as the transitory phase ruled out any sudden
social-shock. But far, far away from his home State, where the tsunami was
accumulating in the land of his emigration, there was every possibility of
being absorbed by a flood. While, for the political and ritualistic practitioners
of fundamentalism it was quite easy to ride the crest of this new tsunami. Here
in this part of the country where last of Muslim seeds had been pulled out
after the local battles at the time of independence, this iota of Muslimness
had every chance of being made a weed to achieve nationalism, patriotism,
religionhood or just to satisfy the plain greed of a selfish heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment