INKPOT - Chameli Memsaab : Nirode Choudhury

Translator: Siba K Gogoi

Bangles jingled. I looked around. I saw no one. After a while, a bawarchi put a liquor bottle and a glass before Berkley Sahab. He fetched me a cup of coffee. Berkley Sahab had already started drinking. I, too, started sipping my coffee but my mind was wondering where Chameli Memsaab was.

Berkley Sahab was gulping down one bottle after another. I was amazed at his drinking prowess. He was sitting, puffing on his pipe intermittently, immune to any external influence. Maybe he understood I was not feeling at home. He told me he was very happy that day because I was beside him talking and drinking coffee.

I felt embarrassed. So I didn’t object to him. But I couldn’t hold back my curiosity about him anymore. I simply said: “Why don’t you go back to England?”

“Shut up. Who are you to ask that question?” yelled Berkley Sahab, hurling a look of spite and hatred at me, just as a snake would spreads its hood immediately after being injured.

I bowed my head. Berkley Sahab, realising that he had reacted sharply, walked up to me and patted my shoulder, and asked me not to get him wrong.

I didn’t misunderstand him.

It was getting dark. I took leave of Berkley Sahab. When I was returning home, one thing was lingering on my mind: why is there so much disparity of human life? Someone gets everything in life, someone doesn’t get anything. The pain of not achieving what one wants can be deeply felt in the harshest moment of life. Someone experiences that moment, someone doesn’t. That moment did not come to Berkley Sahab either.

In the dead of night, Berkley Sahab told me of things about his life, things that were perhaps – or perhaps not – known to others in the tea estate. But I guess no one knew what I knew about him.

Berkley Sahab told me how he fell in love with a girl, called Chameli, working in the tea plantation, how his love for her deepened, and how he finally brought her to his bungalow. He didn’t hide anything about his feelings for her; he candidly asked Chameli’s father, Birbal Sardar, if he would allow him to take her to his bungalow. Birbal Sardar found no reason to disagree. Chameli of Line 2 became Memsaab. Chameli Memsaab.

Days went off well for Berkley Sahab and Chameli Memsaab. It was not long before a misfortune befell them. Berkley Sahab had a gnawing suspicion that Chameli was out of condition, which he initially chose to overlook, treating it as a simple thing. He let his physician friend know the matter the day he had come as a guest to the tea estate.

After examining Chameli, the doctor looked grave. “It’s a case of leprosy. Her body shows clear symptoms of the disease,” said the doctor. Berkley Sahab breathed a sigh of frustration. Chameli cried. Berkley Sahab couldn’t bear seeing her cry. He decided that Chameli would live separately. He had a house built to the east of the tea plantation. All the people on the tea estate came to know of this. Berkley Sahab arranged for her treatment but it yielded no result. After a few months, Chameli gave birth to a baby girl. That day Berkley Sahab, forgetting all his sorrow, smiled and so did Chameli. Then came a day when Chameli laughed until she wept. Berkley Sahab became very sad again. The growth of the hands and legs of the little girl was not in proportion to her age. She had not spoken a single word even after three years of her birth. The doctor said: “.....”

Berkley Sahab was overcome with grief. The worse was yet to come. 

He made a point of seeing Chameli every day but never stayed with her at night. That day, too, he went to Chameli. When he wanted to leave Chameli in the still of the night, she told him that she would probably never get well, for her entire body was becoming dysfunctional. She wished him to give her company as she felt something was going to happen to her that night.

Berkley Sahab didn’t stay back. He consoled her with deep love and then went away.

Chameli also left him. And she was gone.

Next morning there was a commotion on the tea estate. Berkley Sahab arrived at the scene. The body of Chameli was still hanging at the school. A green saree was wrapped around her neck. It was a ghastly sight. Flies were swarming all over the body and a stench pervaded the air around the school building.

Berkley Sahab told me those things impassively. After some time, he finished off the bottle and asked me to follow him into the inner part of his bungalow. It was a neatly ordered room with a bed in a corner. A mosquito net hung on the bed. As I was hesitant, he himself took me close to the bed. Pointing to the bed, he said: “Look, she’s sleeping.”

A girl, as innocent as a flower, was sleeping, a girl who will never live like a human being; hers is a living death. On hearing the jingle of bangles I turned my head. The ayah was coming. Perhaps, she had woken up from deep sleep. She saluted her master. I looked at the face of the girl through the tiny holes in the mosquito net. I wanted to see on her face the face of Chameli who I had never seen but only heard about. While I was gazing at the girl, Berkley Sahab said: “I’m just waiting for her death. I’ll return to England once she is dead.” I looked at him as though I didn’t understand what he said. “She must die, my boy ... must die,” said Berkley Sahab. His voice later broke when he cried. I didn’t ask him anything again. Without turning back, I came out of the house. I didn’t have the courage to look back at Chameli Memsaab’s bungalow.

It was well into the night when I reached home. Pehideu and others were sleeping. After entering my house, I saw food was kept for me in a room. I silently washed my hands and face. I didn’t have any desire to eat. I drank a glass of water before lighting a cigarette. Niloy was snoring raucously. I opened the window. A light breeze wafted in. I again looked at the bungalow with the reddish tin roof. Lights were still on there. Perhaps Berkley Sahab was still there. Who knows how long he will stay like that. I went to bed leaving the window open. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Still, I’ll have to sleep. I’ll have to drift off to forget everything.

The eyes of my mind remained restless.

“Xon da, does man become a ghost after his death?” This is a question from Niloy. Pehideu feels “Berkley Sahab is a bad man, a man of bad character, and has earned a bad name.”

“She must die, my boy... must die...,” Berkley Sahab had said. The smell of green leaves of verdant tea bushes... Memsaab... Chameli... Chameli... Chameli...

Nirode Choudhury, one of the most well known Assamese writers, has written many stories. A number of his works like ‘Chameli Memsaab’ and ‘Banahanxa’ have been made into classic movies

INKPOT - Post-colonial Poems : Kamal Kumar Tanti

 
Translator: Manjeet Baruah

                         1

We, the guards of the Water Fairy

From the depths of the river

As we reached its bank

The last ship of the remorseless merchants

Laden with all the river had

Had sailed away, tearing through the darkness

The waters of the river flowed, over the stains

That stuck to the sands, like greasy

Blood stains

Like thick clots of dry blood

Thickening and growing, over the ages

The Water Fairy became

A woman alive

And she told us and our robbed wretched people, that

‘For long have we stayed silent. Silent witness

To the suffering and suffering of justice long denied.

But today we have got back

Our mind and our strength

Our conscience

And our speech.’

We are guards of the Water Fairy

Alert guards of her water country

History is on our side now.

           2

At dawn, one day

The Old Spirit of the old tree

In the middle of the muddy pool

Stood standing next to the lotus bloom.

His lonely mind in flight, to the

Expanse of the field of the plants of rice

From the field of the plants of rice

Had come carried then, screams of neighing

Of horses of war

And had come carried then, a loud load of music

Of their victorious masters

…and the last cry of a

Dying aged man

Famine struck the people

And famished people famished towards death

They remained no longer human

For human became inhuman

Days passed, and passed into the forgotten

Nights passed, and passed into the past

The Old Spirit of the old tree

His mind took flight, again

To the expanse of the field

Of the plants of rice

At dusk, one day, in the village

The old and the wise

Saw the lifeless corpse of the Old Spirit

In the naked field of the

Plants of rice

Nearby were footprints and hoof marks

Of men and their animals

                            3

When the birds cried in the blue hills

When the fields of paddy dripped, dripped in blood

The hills and its forests, and its birds cried

People’s hearts burst of pale blood

And the day when the termites sang in the woods

And sang and screamed –

And the ships of the merchants waded upstream

Then the tiny boats and their wounded boatmen

All sank, sank deeper, all boats, and river, and blood and men

Scared, shrunk, the poor countrymen

They lost their speech, they lost their courage

And dawned then the dawn of the eternal night

Of the war for power between those brown and white

On the last day of the war, the crows gasped –

Water, water, water, water –

The riders of the horses pushed, pushed the brown

To one end of the black iron chains

And the other end of the heavy chains were tied

To the hoofs of the horses of the fair

People crawling in front of death

Crawling in the mud of life, growing roots

And metamorphosing into ghosts of glory

Chained around necks, alive in slavery

                                                                the ghosts of glory

                   4

A gust of the Windy wind

And swept away were dust of the road, old waste of the fields

But there remained beside the ancient pond

Seated our Old Man

A windful of memory held in his restless thoughts

We too were ruminating, studying

… Of lives perished long ago

… Of time that perished long ago.

So we asked our Old Man

What is life: … ‘Momentary water slipping off yam leaf’

And what is history: … ‘Tales of rich and famous

                                      … Of people and country bought and sold’

                                           … ‘Of minds and thoughts no longer one’s own

                                                   … Of wasted shorter routes to being bought and sold’.

We asked him again

Who are we?

‘Nothing and nothing yam leaves, crushed beneath their white feet’

‘Muddy waters under stomping hoofs, left behind in the path of riders’

‘Startled souls in fear, at the very ringing of a gunshot’

Then who are you?

We asked again our Old Man

‘I am History: of two lost centuries

Of centuries lost in the time of the colonial

Of centuries lost in the time of the colonized’

INKPOT - Poetry by Nitoo Das

Seven, eight-bodied

(Written for the idiom: “ga xatkhon-aathkhon”)

My language (the language

I refuse to speak) knows well

how to be happy.

My language (the language

my ma writes in) multiplies

bodies into numbers. Seven, eight,

nine, ten. They burst

and repeat themselves

in vast laughter.

My language (the language

I have forgotten) fragments

faces into grins. It shows teeth. Bodies

shout, shriek, skip and turn

into mirrored crows’ feet of glee.

My language (the language

I mime when in pain) doubles you over.

It makes you clutch stomachs, seven

or eight stomachs in tears of delight.

It throws back heads, strains throats.

Yes, seven or eight throats.

My language (the language

I visit only in poems) pleases enough

to slam shut eyes. Shakes bodies

like aging leaves and

infects everything around it.

 

The voiceless velar fricative

I am the x in oxomiya,

xenduriya xondhiya,

xonjiboni. Very few can

voice me.

Stamped different, marked

minority, marked unspeakable,

I survive in small pockets

of the world.

An airiness invades

me like an unknown quality.

I am a secret

between lovers. I am an articulated silence

shaky with lust. I am singularity

of sound. I am a nation’s

difficult past. I am bound

and sung by rules of the tongue.

INKPOT - Small state, big hearts : Uddipana Goswami

We flew from Delhi to Calcutta over Bangladesh and into Mizoram in a small plane that navigated its way through the clouds between large mountains and finally landed in a small airport – the Lengpui airport, 32 km from the Mizoram capital Aizawl. Lengpui reminded me of other smaller airports I had seen, boutique airports, in the numerous islands of Thailand or the Maldives. Except that Mizoram is no island, it is a highland state – the word Mizo in fact means ‘highlander’ – and Lengpui would not have been built so small if the Mizos could find a larger area of flat ground to build an airport in.

In fact, apart from the size of their airport and indeed, the size of their state, there is nothing small about the Mizos, neither in their hearts nor in their history. The story of the formation of the state of Mizoram has been one of a long struggle against a huge dose of neglect and repression, and the immediate provocation was a large scale famine or mautam caused by bamboo flowering in the 1950s and 1960s to which the state government – till 1987, Mizoram was a part of Assam – as well as the government of India were largely apathetic. So the Mizo National Front (MNF) began its long insurgent battle for the rights of the Mizo people, in the course of which the social fabric of Mizo life was totally changed by village regrouping schemes undertaken by the unsympathetic government, and a large number of people were killed in military repression and aerial bombings – one of the darkest chapters in the history of ‘post’-colonial India. We got a glimpse of what Mizo community life must have been once upon a time when we visited Reiek, the model Mizo village constructed by the government as a tourist attraction. When we went there, an 80 km drive from Aizawl, we were the only tourists that day. I was glad because it gave us the opportunity to soak in the peace of the environment, a peace that had once been so cruelly shattered amidst bombs and gunfire. It has been a while now of course since the gunfire has fallen silent, and a peace accord was signed between the rebels and the government. This accord proved to be one of the most successful peace initiatives, one that has worked in such a big way and lasted for so long. Today, the state of Mizoram has many claims to fame, not the least of which is with regard to its human resources – Mizoram has one of the largest numbers of literate people in India. But literate or not, the people of Mizoram also have very big hearts. They are very hospitable and friendly, and so long as you respect their individuality, they are always willing to welcome you into their midst.

Take for instance, our friend Pu Sailo, director of information and public relations of Mizoram, who invited us to the state and provided us with every form of hospitality we could wish for. Or consider his colleagues, Tetei and Mina, who have become such good friends, and who also helped plan our trip and showed us around Aizawl, giving us the insights which a first-timer like me could never otherwise have acquired. With them we went bargaining at the many markets of Aizawl with their variety of foreign goods, or sight-seeing in the late evening – night falls very early in Mizoram, and the city shuts down pretty early too – to the view point from where you could see the lights twinkling in the chain of hills that make up the city. Walking around the city, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the early evening, we could feel how fresh the air was and experience the thrill of walking on the undulating hilly streets. However, whenever travelling in a car, I couldn’t help but scramble to hold on to whatever I could get a hold of, because the curves are too sharp and the roads so steep that I felt it was a wonder gravity didn’t taken its toll on our vehicle and send it, with us in its belly, sliding downhill, off the cliff and into the deep gorges below.

In the city itself, just opposite the street vendor from where I bought so many additions to my DVD collection of Korean movies, I saw the Assam Rifles headquarters. On the boundary wall was inscribed ‘Assam Rifles: Friends of the Hill People’. Mizoram is one of the few states of the Northeast where the paramilitary force can now perhaps claim to be friendly. However, I did also remember the atrocities being committed by the same force in the neighbouring states, for instance in Assam and Manipur, where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 has given it sweeping powers to kill at will, and it exercises that power indiscriminately killing civilians as well unarmed or arrested insurgents. In Manipur, the same force actually claims to be the ‘custodian’ of the people. The Mizos have experienced their share of state and military repression, and today, if they are a proud people, it is because they have fought for every right they now enjoy. Indeed, the Mizoram government website proudly proclaims on its homepage:

Mizoram is our homeland

It is not given or gotten as a gift

It is not acquired by privilege

Or potential contracts

It is not bought with gold or held by the force

No, it is made with us the sweat of the brow

It is the historic creation

And the collective enterprise of a people

Bodily, spiritual and moral

Over a span of generations.

Unlike many other states of the Northeast where there are constant complaints about outsiders – illegal migrants from neighbouring countries and non-locals from other parts of India – coming in to usurp the economic activities and livelihood options of the people of the state, the voices of discontent in Mizoram are relatively muted. For one, many of the illegal migrants to Mizoram come from nearby Burma, and they are ethnically allied to the Mizo tribes. Although there are sporadic complaints of anti-social activities and criminal conduct by these migrants, opposition to them is yet to reach the fever pitch anti-migrant oppositions have assumed in Assam or Manipur, where even ethnic cleansing exercises have been known to have occurred. The number of migrants who come from elsewhere in India is somewhat checked by the Inner Line Permit system, although in many cases this system has proved to exist in name alone. But what I found most admirable about the Mizos is the fierce pride with which they guard their language – anybody who does business in Mizoram has of necessity to learn the Mizo language. Their second option is to be able to communicate with the Mizos in English. Those who cannot communicate in English, have to be at least familiar with that pidgin form of Hindi which is so prevalent in most parts of the Northeast and is entirely different from the Hindi spoken in Northern India. Since I did not know much Mizo beyond a few basic words, I unleashed my Northeastern Hindi wherever English wouldn’t work, and tried to pick up a few phrases from the book my new found friend – nay soul sister – Thari gave me. “Chiangnu” she called me, which means something akin to a soul sister in Mizo and Pu Ruata explained to me that it was a privilege to be accepted into the close knit Mizo community so intimately. I was touched.

Commandant John and his wife Thari, and Pu Ruata and his family all made us feel extremely welcome, and in the dry state of Mizoram, we could never leave their places till we had drunk all the alcohol they offered us, or we would be offending their hospitality. And every time we met them, we would have to shake off their generous offer to spend the rest of our visit with them. We had to move on as we had decided to go see Champhai, a few kilometres from the Burma border. Unfortunately, our trip there was a disaster, with the roads being in a sad state due to continuous heavy rains and by the time we reached the Champhai tourist lodge, we were too exhausted to go any further to the border. The lodge itself was lovely but the rains prevented us from exploring the area around. Exhausting as it was, the highlight of the journey back and forth remained for us the two plain meals of boiled rice, green leaves, bamboo shoots and excellent pork – something Mizoram produces in plenty – at a small homely roadside hotel our driver introduced us to.

When we left Mizoram, we brought back with us a lot of bamboo shoots and smoked pork. I am crazy about the pork from that place; it is as fresh and tasty as pork from the Northeast – where it is the staple of many communities – can get. Little wonder that,because  from what I hear, many Mizos love their pigs so much they feed them cod liver oil to keep them healthy. We also brought back so many lovely memories with us, but what we did leave behind was a prayer that the rest of the Northeast should also experience the peace that Mizoram has earned for itself.

(Source: Muse India, Issue 25)

INKPOT - One Page Mahabharata and A Tale of Cities : Smriti Kumar Sinha

One-Page Mahabharata

THE otherwise sky-high, royal, gorgeous and long-living banyan tree was now a laughing stock. Its challenge was to reach the TV on the stand. Thanks to those who had cut its roots to size

SUNDAY morning. Cleansing his spectacles with a soft cloth, Narendra sat in front of the television in the drawing room.

“Has it started?” His wife, Surabala, asked him from the kitchen.

“No.”

Surabala was busy preparing breakfast. With the serial about to start, she was in a tearing hurry.

“Hasn’t it started yet?” She repeated.

“No, not yet. I will call you. The background music will let you know,” said Narendra.

At the very moment, a scooter stopped in front of their gate. Narendra peeped through the window.

“Hey, do you hear me? Sunanda and Surendra have arrived!” He rushed to open the door. “What a pleasant surprise! Welcome, welcome. I hardly believed that you would come,” said Narendra.

Surabala, on the other hand, poured two more cups of water in the kettle. In haste, she made a couple of omelettes too.

“Has it started?” Surendra too questioned as he set foot in the verandah.

“About to. We too are waiting,” said Narendra.

While Surendra sat in the drawing room, Sunanda went straight to the kitchen to meet Surabala. After a while, the two women came out with tea and snacks to the drawing room.

“Have you lost your way and landed up here?” Surabala took a dig at Surendra.

Surendra smiled and replied: “Oh no, not like that. We have been planning, you know. It’s to have a glimpse of your newly-built house and, while at it, to enjoy The Mahabharata serial together.”

“It’s nice that you have come,” said Narendra.

“Maybe the birth of Krishna will be screened today.”

“How can that be? In the last episode, just the fourth child was born, while Krishna was the eighth.”

Sunanda, on the other hand, had her eyes on the bonsai banyan tree near the TV. She studied it keenly and said: “Where have you brought this bonsai from?”

“From the horticulture firm at Zoo Road.”

“Beautiful! With its prop roots hanging down, it looks like the old gigantic one near the Mahabhairab temple.”

They all burst into laughter. The otherwise sky-high, royal, gorgeous and long-living banyan tree was now a laughing stock. Its challenge was to reach the TV on the stand. Thanks to those who had cut its roots to size.

The day’s episode of the Mahabharata started. The room wore a mantle of silence. At first, a recap of the last episode was telecast… Daibaki gave birth to her fourth baby in captivity. She was making efforts not to let the guards on duty in the prison know of the newborn. However, a spying guard came to know of the infant and passed the message to King Kangs late at night. The day’s episode started… A beam of light from the dawning sun illuminated a corner of the prison cell. Daibaki, who had to pass a sleepless night, was taken aback by the light. Bewitched by the newborn, Vasudeva, on the other hand, kept looking at the baby in bewilderment. A restless Daibaki was on a desperate lookout for a safe hideout, but to no avail. The guards were about to reach her cell. She was crestfallen when she thought of the fate of her baby when her brother Kangs would…

“Let’s do something. It’s morning. Where to hide the baby?” Daibaki said, and brought Vasudeva back to his senses. He kept looking at her and the newborn. Raising his chained hands up, a helpless Vasudeva kept praying at the beam of sunlight. The oracle went that the eighth son of Daibaki would be their saviour. Oracles always come true, but it’s all the same to parents, whether first or eighth. “Oh God! What an ordeal is this!” Vasudeva rued, and kept gazing at the sky, a piece of which could be seen through the small hole.

“King of Kings, His Highness, King of Mathura, Maharaj Kangs is c-o-m-i-n-g…” an alert sounded by a royal guard. A frenetic Daibaki kept running from one corner to the other to hide the baby. Her chained legs were bleeding profusely. At last she lay on her side and started lactating the baby. She pretended to be oblivious to Kangs, who entered the room and said: “Daibaki, hand over the baby.”

“Baby? What baby? There isn’t any.”

“Don’t hide it. I came with a confirmed tip-off.”

“I’m bowing down to you, spare the life of an innocent infant,” she said. Kangs was bewildered, looking at his most affectionate sister. But he soon came to his senses, and thought: “That can’t be. For my life, the death of Daibaki’s babies is a must. Defending oneself is no sin.” He laughed in her face and took away the infant from her lap, raised it up and smashed it against the wall. Fresh blood kept dripping down the wall…

A commercial break followed. The TV’s volume was low. Pin-drop silence enveloped the drawing room. Only the tic-tac, tic-tac… monotone of the wall-clock continued.

“Detestable!” Sunanda broke the silence indignantly.

“No character in the Mahabharata is as sadistic as that of Kangs,” Surabala remarked.

A commercial advertisement was playing on the screen. Silently the ad showed the preparation of tasty chocolates by the milk collected cooperatively by the women of Gujarat. A success story! The ad, however, failed to accommodate the tale of the calves, deprived of mothers’ milk. 

“A sadist, you know,” taking a piece of the omelette, Narendra continued, “It’s the height of cruelty. For the sake of his own life, so many innocents were slaughtered. Horrible! The director has done the job well, symbolically showing the patches of blood on the wall…a balanced shot.”

“Wait, wait. The omelette is delicious. The taste isn’t like that of firm eggs,” said Sunanda.

“Yeah, we have reared a pair of local fowls. You know, it’s a must for our protein deficiency,” said Surabala.

The commercial break was over. The serial resumed. The fade-in on the screen was the prison of Kangs. Bereaved and wailing Daibaki was slowly losing her senses. A helpless Vasudeva was sprinkling water on her eyes, and kept on massaging her head as a solace. Thus the Mahabharata episode of the day ended there. But a lively discussion on the character, Kangs, continued, till Surendra and Sunanda got up to depart.

“Why have you got up? Let’s have lunch together,” Narendra proposed."

“No, not today. We will, some other day. We have an appointment with the doctor today. Why don’t you hold a feast? We expect such a treat as you have completed your house,” said Surendra.

“It’s great. We will hold one on a holiday,” Narendra said.

“Wait, wait. In the doctor’s chamber too, we will be kept on waiting. Let’s have a look at the newly-built house. We too have a plan to erect one,” said Sunanda.

“It’s our pleasure to show you around.” Narendra and Surabala led the guests to the dining room, the kitchen, bedrooms, the in-house mandir ‒ one by one. The bamboo basket in front of the images of conjugal Radha-Krishna was full of freshly plucked flowers. Half-bloomed or about-to-bloom flowers hanging from their necks reeked off the mundamala with chopped-off baby heads! What was dazzling on the cheeks? Tears? All of them bowed down together.

Chatting about the vastu of the house, they all stepped into the kitchen garden in the backyard. Narendra and Surabala briefed the guests with all the details of the house. Surendra and Sunanda were glued. The blueprint of a dream house seemed to flash in their eyes. Adjacent to the left corner of the boundary walls stood a small poultry shed. Its roof was of abandoned tin cans of mustard oil, embossed with the trade-mark, Tripti ‒ complete satisfaction! The walls were of wire mesh. A pair of snow-white fowls was inside.

Not one or two, but a brigade of four was approaching them. The scared hen in captivity became frenetic. She moved from corner to corner fluffing out her feathers, shedding many of them. She poked the cock and warned it of the impending danger. Finding no way out, the mother hen went round the just laid egg ‒ once, twice, many times, in quick succession. At last, she covered the egg with her bosom and started incubating it. Like every other day, the cock kept gazing up, with its beak pushed out through a grid of the mesh. He kept gazing at the fragment of the sky, looked like a rag of a denim, seen through the juncture of the two moss-covered walls. It gazed and kept waiting, maybe still with the faint hope of an oracle.

 

A Tale of Cities

 

YES, it’s a tale of cities, not of one or two. Take Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Guwahati…as a case study ‒ it’s the same basic storyline. From Google earth, let’s zoom in on any of the cities, say Guwahati…

It’s a sweltering noon. It’s the hustle and bustle of city life, with honking cars lined up. The road on the left leads one to Fancy Bazar. A billboard stands erect on the right. Rich in carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals ‒ reads the advertisement of a baby food. No substitute for breastfeeding, maxim of the WHO, written in a small font size, almost invisible. Oh no! What a stark contrast! A corpse, on the footpath! Could be of a mother. A baby is sucking its breasts, breathlessly. A bagging bowl is lying near, upside down. The crying baby is standing up. Limping… a baby boy. A mass of tangled and matted hair on its head.

Mercy coins keep falling from the pedestrians chatting over mobile phones and commuters busy surfing Internet ‒ broad band Wi-Fi. A digital divide! What else can they do? The kid starts walking over the coins, making thuds. The metallic sound stops. It looks at the other side ‒ a glimmer of hope. Crossing the main road!

The speeding cars break to a halt, with an awful screeching. Oh God! You’re really omnipresent. The kid has crossed the road. The swamping traffic has resumed free flow. The kid is craning his neck to have a better view of a green hoarding. A rhino is grazing in foliage of wild grasses in the Kaziranga National Park ‒ a tourism department’s ad with a tag on the top ‘Incredible India!’ Incredible indeed!

Limping a few steps further, the kid has stood in front of another hoarding. A few kids of his age are playing with colourful toys. ‘Kids’ Dreamland’, an English medium nursery school. A red missed ball is falling down. The kid on the footpath has forgot his stomachache, and extended his hand to catch it ‒ beyond his reach.

The crying baby is limping ahead, thumping against the roadside wall. Stopped! An eye-catching cartoon on the wall. A boy and a girl are playing see-saw sitting on a long and striped wood pencil! Written atop is ‘Let’s all go to school’… Sarba Shiksha Abhiyan… a government mission. The kid has rushed to catch the pencil ‒ a fake one!

It keeps limping till another poster ‒ gloomy orphan faces, matted hair. Tears dripping down their cheeks. Known faces? It has turned back and stood. On the backdrop, fellow faces and a tag ‒ UNICEF HELP. The kid is slowly extending his untutored hands.“Stop it. I’m here,” a street teen has rushed to the spot in a whirlwind. He has held the hand of the kid. A mobile phone in hand, his is a known face. A beggar-turned service provider through his mobile public call office for phoneless pedestrians. An innovation, thanks to Mahammad Yunus!

The kid bursts in hunger. The teen has taken him to a pilfered water pipe, offered him a palm-full. No, not a substitute. A solace? Relinquenched, the kid is clinging, a passionate hug in return ‒ an age-old bond of eMotion amidst eBusiness, eLearning and eGovernannce hoardings.

Let’s zoom in on, say…

 

Note: The story is especially dedicated to famous economist Prof. Mahammad Yunus, Nobel Laureate from Bangladesh, who changed the lives of street children and the poor of South-East Asia.

Smriti Kumar Sinha teaches at Tezpur University and has authored three anthologies of short-stories in Bishnupriya Manipuri.

INKPOT - Poems : Desmond L Kharmawphlang

SYMPHONY OF SORROW

                         I

In the trackless plains of folklore,

I read the story of how one lives backwards.

With parched hearts too full to understand,

we entered into the land itself,

we bled into its veins.

Here in Ri-Bhoi, we celebrate the ceremony of regret,

the symphony of sorrow.

                    II

Today, a song, light as lea,

soft as the melting dew of dawn

got picked by a vagrant breeze from the

sacred forest where Dising buries his heart.

It sang its way across the scorching plains

to protect itself because its tunes kissed life into trees,

into the humming heap of insects, into the soul

of a now stranger poet who is weeping in a faraway place.

The poet, crushed and lonely cried out his symphony of sorrow

to the winds and his tears fell on Dising’s forehead, furrowed with

toil and disease.

Dising cries because the poet-child of his was in pain

faraway in a city where even his dreams cannot reach.

Dising pleaded with the song to rescue the vagrant son birthed by

these Bhoi jungles.

The song settled on the pain-riven heart of the prodigal poet,

squeezed itself of sap and watered it with love.

The poet was able to sleep. The song, smiling gently, died

as only a sister can die for a brother

                 III

I met him the first time

when light rain fell against

the window of a hotel room

overlooking the Himalayas.

It was nineteen years ago,

many stories, much laughter

poetry of unknown hemispheres

exploding far above the satin

sky of Sikkim.

He retired as a school teacher

weathering the turbulence

of the movement in the hills of a Mao village

He wrote his best lines there,

torn between his love for  teaching

and returning to the turbulence

of the movement in the valley.

I met him again when light

rain fell against the window

of a room of the Regional Institute  of Medical Sciences.

He lay curled upon on the bed

breathing quietly while the daughter

watched over tubes pushing life into his feeble body.

Looking at me for a long time, the corners of his eyes

started to move, his lips trembled,

dentures almost falling off.

“I know you,

you have been there amidst the

ruins of my ancient mind

I remember your name because

I can still think and say

thermoflask”.

I wept a little for the poet who

made me laugh when nineteen

years ago I was searching for

losses among mountain streams faraway.

The daughter also wept

because I made him happy after a long time

of suffering the silence of chronicling the

windsong of his life.

                                                    IV

At the village plaza, I sat and waited for my poem to return home.

The face of the sky is beaten with exhaustion and the

jungle leans more precariously on the evening.

I carry a tired song day in, day out, and no matter how

lustily the cicadas click, I am out of tune.

The edges of this helpless season shatter and fall to the ground,

deserted by their own voices

The Umngi river washes the feet of these adopted hills with ghost-like silence.

Leaning on the bamboo gate of my hovel

I sill wait for my poem to return home.

They

They came for him one evening,

packed his bag and even carried it to the jeep parked

on the roadside, near the dry public water tap where oil containers line up,

marking space in a spaceless locality.

They offered him cigarettes calling him uncle as the jeep

sped away from the city in the throes of a dusk he was

not to see, as he told me, for some time.

The moon was already stripping off his gossamer robe ready

for his bath.

They plunged into the orchestra of night insects and followed

the moon as he swam the length of his misty pool.

They rested at dawn,

waiting for the fifty- four year old frame of their captive to revive.

It was not easy with gout beginning to torch flames in my friend's joints.

They called him teacher and urged him to lecture on the magic of myths

 to make blood sing about unity.

We are one, they said, and

our common history is inscribed in memory of stone.

My friend did his share of tutorials in the jungles

but he confessed that the practicals

were too exciting for his old bones.

When the month was over, they half carried him through the bamboo jungles.

He woke up by the side of

his gate.

The water tap was still dry, and the oil containers

still jostled for space on ground where

no space can be seen.