Temsula

Ao

LABURNUM FOR MY HEAD

Stories
 Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Laburnum for My Head
Death of a Hunter
The Boy Who Sold an Airfield
The Letter
Three Women
A Simple Question
Sonny
Flight
Follow Penguin
Copyright
 PENGUIN BOOKS INDIA

LABURNUM FOR MY HEAD

TEMSULA AO is a professor at the department of English, and the dean of

School of Humanities and Education, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.
She is the author of eight books, including five books of poetry and a
collection of short stories, These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone,
published by Zubaan–Penguin (2006).
A member of the General Council of the Sahitya Akademi, she was awarded
the Padma Shree in 2007.
To all storytellers
Stories live in every heart; some get told, many others remain unheard—
stories about individual experiences made universal by imagination; stories
that are jokes, and sometimes prayers; and those that are not always a
figment of the mind but are, at times, confessions.
Because stories live in every heart, some get told, like the ones on these pages
…
 Laburnum for My Head

Every May, something extraordinary happens in the new cemetery of the

sleepy little town. Standing beyond the southernmost corner of the vast
expanse of the old cemetery—dotted with concrete vanities, both ornate and
simple—the humble Indian laburnum bush erupts in glory, with its blossoms
of yellow mellow beauty. The first time it happened, some years ago,
surprised visitors to the concrete memorials assumed that it was an accident
of nature. But each year as the bush grew taller and the blossoms more
plentiful, the phenomenon stood out as a magnificent incongruity, in the space
where man tries to cling to a make-believe permanence, wrenched from him
by death. His inheritors try to preserve his presence in concrete structures,
erected in his homage, vying to out-do each other in size and style. This
consecrated ground has thus become choked with the specimens of human
conceit. More recently, photographs of the dead have begun to adorn the
marble and granite headstones.
But nature has a way of upstaging even the hardest rock and granite
edifices fabricated by man. Weeds and obstinate bramble sprout from every
inch of soil uncovered by sand and cement. So every Easter week, the
community comes together to spruce up headstones and get rid of the
intruding natural growth. The names on individual gravesites are lovingly
wiped clean of dust and bird-shit by loved ones; occasional strangers read
them as incidental pastime.
But the laburnum bush will not or cannot reveal readily who or what lies
beneath its drooping branches during its annual show of yellow splendour.
That particular spot displays nothing that man has improvised; only nature,
who does not possess any script, abides there: she only owns the seasons. And
the seasons play out a pantomime of beauty and baldness on the tree standing
on the edge of the lifeless opulence, spread over the remains of the assorted
dead: rich and poor, young and old, and mourned and un-mourned. The
headstones in the old cemetery bear mute testimony to duties performed by
willing and unwilling offspring and relatives. The laburnum tree on the other
hand is alive and ever unchanging in its seasonal cycles: it is resplendent in
May; by summer-end the stalks holding its yellow blossoms turn into brown
pods; by winter it begins to look scraggly and shorn. Springtime brings back
pale green shoots and by May it is wearing its yellow wreaths again, to out-do
all the vainglorious specimens erected in marble and granite.
But the story is running ahead of itself and must be told from the
beginning. It all started with a woman named Lentina and her desire to have
some laburnum bushes in her garden. She had always admired these yellow
flowers for what she thought was their femininity; they were not brazen like
the gulmohars with their orange and dark pink blossoms. The way the
laburnum flowers hung their heads earthward appealed to her because she
attributed humility to the gesture. So she decided to grow a couple of these
trees in her own garden which, though not big, could accommodate them if
they were planted in the corners, without affecting the growth and health of
the other plants. She purchased saplings from a nursery and had them planted
at the edge of her boundary wall. She followed the instructions faithfully and
hoped that within two years, as the nursery man assured her, the bushes would
flower.
That first year, her new gardener pulled out the small saplings along with
the weeds growing around them. After loud recriminations, Lentina bought
some more saplings and this time, planted three of them in three corners of
the garden. She hoped that at least one of them would survive. But it was not
to be. One day she heard loud barking and cows mooing very close to her
compound. When she came out to investigate, she found that some stray cows
on being pursued by her neighbour’s dogs and finding her gate slightly ajar,
had rushed into her garden and were blissfully munching on the plants they
found there, including her precious laburnum saplings. She began to wonder
about these accidents in her garden ever since she had planted the laburnum
saplings. Nevertheless, she did not give up and the third year too, she planted
some more saplings of her favourite flowering tree. Almost miraculously they
survived the first few months and began to thrive.
Lentina was thrilled and could not wait to see them bear the magnificent
yellow blooms she so admired. But before her wish could come true, another
disaster struck. One day, a worker from the health department came while she
was out visiting a friend, and sprayed a deadly DDT concoction on the edges
of the garden. As ill luck would have it, it rained heavily that night flooding
the entire garden. Except the full-grown trees, all her flowers including the
laburnums, withered and died. Lentina was devastated and began to think that
her efforts at bringing the strange beauty into her garden would never be
successful. But whenever she saw these flowers in bloom, on highways and in
gardens, the intense yearning to have them closer home began to overpower
her. Her husband and children were convinced that she was developing an
unhealthy fetish for laburnum and began to talk openly about this in close
family gatherings. She could not understand their concern and was inwardly
hurt by their seeming insensitivity to beauty around them. But she never gave
up her hope of having a full-grown laburnum tree in her garden some day.
Lentina did not mention laburnum to any one any more; nor did she attempt
to plant the tree she so ardently admired and wished to have in her garden.
Meanwhile, her husband began to show signs of a strange disease and before
any proper diagnosis could be made, he passed away quietly one night in his
sleep. The funeral services were long and elaborate because the deceased was
a respected and prominent member of society. On the burial day, while the
hearse was about to leave for the cemetery, Lentina surprised everyone,
including herself, by announcing that she was going to accompany her
husband on his last journey. Usually it is men who take part in the last rites at
the gravesite and stay on to supervise the erection of the temporary fence
around the fresh grave. But when Lentina saw the group, including her sons
and her own brothers, stepping out of the house behind the hearse, some
impulse urged her to join them. Her words were met with silence, because no
one was prepared to voice dissent at such a moment. So the party departed,
and in the graveyard while the last prayers droned on, Lentina stood among
the assortment of headstones and began ruminating on man’s puny attempts to
defy death; as if erecting these memorials would bring the dead back to life.
Lentina decided that she did not want any such attempt at immortality
when her time came, and at that thought she experienced an epiphanic
sensation: why not have a laburnum tree planted on her grave, one which
would live on over her remains instead of a silly headstone? This way, even
her lifelong wish to have such a tree close to her would be fulfilled. In spite of
the sombre occasion, she began to smile but when a relative saw her, she
quickly went back to looking appropriately bereaved. But the sense of elation
she felt could not be hidden for long. So she looked around for her driver and
gesturing to him to follow her made her way home.
That night she could not sleep from excitement: it was as if a big problem
had solved itself; but how was she going to accomplish it? It was clear that
she could not confide in her relatives or children; so she had to find someone
who would understand her deep-seated longing for the yellow wonders. She
turned her attention to her servants: whom among them could she trust? Not
the cook or the gardener, they had families, and secrets in families are never
sacrosanct. Suddenly her mind turned to the driver who had been in their
employment for more years than she could remember. He was a widower. She
decided to make him her confidant. She would take him for a drive the next
day to the cemetery and would explain to him what she wanted for a
headstone when she died, and why. But there would be one condition: she had
to see the tree bloom during her lifetime. The driver’s name was Mapu but
every one called him Babu because Lentina’s grandson called him by that
name, unable to pronounce Mapu at first. The name stuck and Mapu good-
naturedly did not object even when the older people began calling him Babu.
The next morning, she sent for Babu and they took the road to the
cemetery. This in itself would not appear strange: a widow paying a visit to
the grave of her husband. But Lentina’s intention was different; she wanted to
survey the still-empty sites and to reserve a spot where she would be buried. It
had to be a spot which would not be disturbed in a long while and would not
pose any problem for others. When they reached the cemetery, instead of
heading towards her husband’s grave, Lentina marched to the extreme corners
of the ground, as if looking for a lost treasure. After what seemed to be an
arduous trek, she settled on a spot in the southernmost tip of the cemetery and
began to nod her head, as if she had found what she was looking for. Babu
was puzzled and was almost beginning to see what his young masters had said
about madam losing her mind. When she gestured to him to approach, he
went hesitantly. Motioning to him to walk faster, she pointed to the spot
where she was standing and said loudly, ‘This is my spot, I want to be buried
here when my time comes.’
Babu was taken aback and began to protest, ‘But madam, your place is
already earmarked beside my master!’
 ‘Nonsense, it can go to whichever son goes first. My place is here and you
are going to see that the Town Committee gives a written commitment on
this. But mind you, no one at home is to be told.’ She knew that Babu’s son-
in-law was a petty officer in that office. ‘Arrange it with your son-in-law. I’ll
pay whatever amount it costs. And also swear him to secrecy just as you are
going to do now. Will you keep my secret?’
Babu, seeing the fire and intensity in her eyes, answered, ‘Yes madam, I
will keep your secret and I will see to it that my son-in-law does the same.’
Lentina added, ‘He is not to tell even his wife.’ Babu nodded and said, ‘Yes
madam.’ Having made this momentous decision, she stretched her hand to
him and with her leaning on him, they made their way to the car parked
outside the gate and came home. The old woman looked exhausted and went
straight to bed. No one thought it strange, because the funeral activities had
taken a lot out of everyone and even the young women of the household were
looking forward to an early night. But lying in bed, Lentina was wide awake
and planning her next move: she wanted to plant a laburnum tree on her
gravesite while she was still alive to ensure that all this trouble of securing the
plot and keeping everything quiet had the desired results. She had to see the
tree bloom before she breathed her last. Even for this task she had to enlist the
help of her faithful Babu. But unfortunately it was almost winter and they had
to wait till the next spring.
In the meantime Babu began the preliminary discussions with his son-in-
law about reserving a plot in the cemetery. At first the young man was
puzzled; why was his father-in-law talking of such a morbid subject? Was he
suffering from some terminal disease that he had kept secret from his own
family? But he kept his thoughts to himself. From him Babu learnt that most
people wanted the front rows in the cemetery and there was always some
dispute or the other about such issues among the more prominent people of
the town. Babu’s request surprised his son-in-law because it was for the most
insignificant plot in the cemetery. He assured his father-in-law that as far as
the location went, he could foresee no trouble at all. But, he told him that
there had to be an official request; only then could the Committee take
appropriate action.
Babu informed his mistress about this and once again Lentina was faced
with a dilemma. Should she sign on the application form or devise another
ploy to keep the identity of the applicant secret? The latter seemed to be a
better idea but how was she going to achieve it? As she pondered, she
remembered a conversation she had with her husband long ago. They were
discussing the prospects of real estate and he had said, ‘If you want to gain
from investments in land, go for inconspicuous plots, but ones which have
future prospects. That way no one will pay attention when you buy it, and
when the town expands, your holdings will appreciate in value many times
over.’
Taking a cue from this, she abandoned her original idea of buying a plot in
the already-congested cemetery and went for another visit there the next day.
This time she invited Babu to walk with her around the perimeter of the wall,
and told him to examine the direction in which the cemetery would expand.
Babu at once caught on and asking her to rest a while did a quick survey of
the surrounding area and came to a conclusion. He helped her to the car and
after they were seated comfortably, he said, ‘Madam, the land adjoining the
southern boundary will be the best, though I do not fully understand why you
want to do this when a small plot of land would serve your purpose.’ She
looked at him with a glint in her eyes and replied, ‘Be patient Babu, time will
answer your question.’ With that enigmatic reply she dismissed him and they
drove home in silence.
Once again, Lentina withdrew to her bedroom and began to worry about
the prospects of acquiring the adjacent plot of land. The only person she could
rely upon to accomplish this was Babu; she decided to entrust him with the
job. But before she could talk to him, fate intervened and an opportunity
presented itself to her in the person of a man from a neighbouring village who
was the son of her late husband’s friend. The friend himself was dead and the
son, named Khalong, had been away at the time of her husband’s death. When
he heard about it he came to pay his condolences. Lentina noticed a certain
dejection in Khalong’s demeanour and when she pressed for a reason he
blurted out how bad his financial situation had become as a result of the
father’s prolonged illness and many hospitalizations outside the state. He
sighed, ‘If only I could sell our land! But unfortunately now that the cemetery
has expanded, people only laugh at me when I talk of selling our land
adjoining it. They even joke about it and say, turn it into another cemetery and
charge rent! Aunty, I do not know what is going to happen to us.’ The poor
man was on the verge of tears but Lentina, instead of sympathizing, appeared
to become excited about his outburst.
 After what he considered to be a period of rude silence, Lentina turned to
him and began to ask for the details of his land. Khalong thought that it was
simply her way of expressing concern. But what came next completely
floored him. ‘Will you sell that piece of land to me?’ she asked in an excited
manner. He could not answer immediately because he was debating with
himself whether it would be right to sell her a piece of unsuitable land just
because she felt sorry for him. It would amount to taking advantage of her
sympathy and would certainly be unethical. Reading his mind correctly, the
old woman said, in a gentle voice, ‘I know what you are thinking, but let me
assure you that it is not merely out of my concern for you that I am doing this.
I have a selfish motive. For quite some time now I have been looking for a
suitable plot where I want to be buried. And before you say anything, let me
add that I do not wish to be buried among the ridiculous stone monuments of
the big cemetery. I need a place where there will be nothing but beautiful trees
over my grave. So, tell me now, will you sell your land to me?’ Khalong was
convinced that Lentina meant business and uttered a feeble ‘Yes’. But the
woman was not done yet; she continued in the same serious tone, ‘Listen, I
will buy the land only on one condition: you are to tell nobody about the
transaction yet, not even your wife. If you agree to this condition, tell me how
much you want and come tomorrow with the documents and we will finalize
the deal.’
Khalong was so overcome by the unexpected turn of fortune that he stated
an amount beyond his expectation. He was even more shocked to hear her
say, ‘Ok, come tomorrow at eleven.’ He did not wait for any formal dismissal
after she gave her instructions, hurrying out of the house in a daze, still
wondering whether all that had transpired was actually real. Lentina knew
that had she bargained a bit, the price would have been reduced but she felt
that heaven’s gifts should be accepted without any murmur, and simply
proceeded to put together the amount needed for the next day’s transaction.
Once again she enlisted the help of Babu who was to be a witness to the deal.
When Babu reminded her about the negotiation with the Town Committee
and that he would have to explain the abrupt halt to his son-in-law, Lentina
smiled and told him, ‘Let him think that it was a wild scheme thought up by
someone going senile.’
As instructed by Lentina, Khalong came with the thumb-print of a relative
on a paper where the Agreement was inscribed. The deal was accomplished
without a hitch and Lentina became the proud owner of a plot of land right
next to the south wall of the old cemetery. Lentina ordered Babu to engage
some labourers to erect a temporary boundary fence. It was only when the
fence was almost complete that her sons came to know about their mother’s
‘crazy’ plan. They remonstrated with her, they sulked at having been left out
of the deliberations and even threatened to move out of the compound if their
mother treated them like rank outsiders; they were upset that a mere driver
had usurped their rightful place in her schemes. But even then, they were not
aware of the full extent of her designs for the new cemetery. She tried to
pacify them by saying that she did not want to burden them with tasks which
she and Babu were perfectly able to handle. The sons kept quiet but the elder
daughter-in-law wanted to assert herself and began to accuse Lentina of
putting too much trust in a servant and this, she said, amounted to insulting
them. Lentina, smarting from the unfairness of the charge, blurted out
something which she overheard during her husband’s funeral and had decided
to keep it a secret. It was an argument between the two daughters-in-law
about who was to pay for the funeral expenses. The elder one had said, ‘It is
not fair that we alone should bear the costs, you and your husband should pay
half of it.’ To this the younger one had replied, ‘How can I say anything? Tell
that husband of mine, if you feel like it. But I am not going to give a rupee
towards this unnecessary show.’ Everyone knew that the younger daughter-in-
law had money of her own and that gave her an edge over the other. She
continued, ‘And if you think that we are going to waste money on some
grandiose headstone for the old man, think again. Such pretensions this family
has!’
Lentina had kept this knowledge to herself and had resolved that she would
never divulge this to any one. But, being goaded into speech by interference
from her family on a matter she thought did not directly involve them, she
decided to speak out. She addressed the two ladies, ‘Why are you all worked
up about such a trivial matter? After all, I have not spent anyone else’s
money. And another thing: you need not worry about any headstone for me. I
want none.’ The two ladies were completely taken aback; they had assumed
that they were alone in the room when the altercation had taken place. The
deft and crafty manipulation of her knowledge helped Lentina put an end to
all opposition. When the husbands learnt how their mother ‘took care’ of their
wives, they merely chuckled and muttered, ‘That’s mother for you. Hope
you’ve learnt your lesson.’
News about Lentina’s acquisition of the plot of land adjacent to the
cemetery soon became public knowledge, and she knew that sooner than later
she would be visited by members of the Town Committee and the issue about
‘ownership’ would be raised, because all such grounds were to be only in the
custody of either the church or other religious organizations, with due
permission from the Committee. Anticipating their move, she had already
drawn up a legal document with the help of her nephew who had just started
practising law in the District Court. In the document she had declared that she
would donate the piece of land to the Town Committee, and not to the
Church, if, and only if, they gave a written undertaking that it would be
managed according to her terms:
1. The new plot of land could be dedicated as the new cemetery and
would be available to all on fulfilling the condition that only
flowering trees and not headstones would be erected on the
gravesites.
2. Lentina, as the Donor, should be the first to choose a plot for
herself.
3. Plots would be designated by Numbers only and records of names
against Plot Numbers would be maintained in the Committee
Register.
4. The terms were to be widely publicized and the Town Committee
would ensure that they were adhered to strictly.
As expected, the members came one day and were ushered into the big
drawing room where they seated themselves with obvious ceremony, stressing
their eminent status in society. Lentina greeted them amiably and expressed
surprise at their ‘official’ visit. The Chairman cleared his throat and began
first by expressing the Committee’s collective sympathy for the bereaved
family. Lentina replied in a befitting manner and inquired to what she owed
the honoured visit. The Chairman looked at his colleagues and launched into
his rehearsed speech about ownership of sacred grounds and what the Town’s
administrators had to say about it. Gently but firmly, Lentina interrupted him
and said, ‘Thank you Mr Chairman, I want to assure you that I am aware of
your responsibility regarding the matter and I have taken the initiative to seek
your cooperation by drawing up this legal document for your consideration.
Kindly discuss this with your colleagues and let me know as soon as possible
if the terms are acceptable to you.’
The Chairman gave her a sharp look but refrained from saying anything,
though it was clear to all that he resented being cut off in the middle of his
speech. He turned to an elderly Member and asked, ‘What do you say,
brother? Shall we discuss this here or take it back with us and discuss it in the
office?’ The other read the document and said in a voice more authoritative
than that of the Chairman, ‘We can do it here; it seems the terms are quite
simple. I see no harm in accepting them because the town is getting a
substantial plot of land, the need for which has long been felt. The kind lady
has indeed come to our rescue, she must be congratulated.’ After this
emphatic endorsement by an important Member, there was no need for further
discussion of the terms. Through another Deed drawn up a few days later, the
new cemetery with its unusual stipulations came into the possession of the
Town Committee. On the day the legal formalities were concluded, this time
in the presence of her sons and their wives, Lentina said, almost like an
afterthought, ‘By the way, can I choose my plot now?’ Every one in the room
was struck by the ingenuity of this seemingly innocuous request. It was as if
she were asking for a candy, and not for a place where she would eventually
be buried. The entire transaction was of a somewhat morbid nature but she
took the sting out of it by what she added next, ‘You see I want to plant
something there.’ No one could say anything to this and as the visitors
departed, the faint voice of the Chairman could be heard, ‘After all, she being
the Donor, it is only right that she should be given the first choice.’
Lentina and Babu made frequent visits to the new ground. Then one day
Babu drove up with the gardener carrying laburnum saplings which he
planted on the prepared ground. Lentina discontinued her visits to the
cemetery because she was beginning to feel a fatigue that comes after a
sustained effort and achieving a long-cherished dream. How that plot of land
came into her possession was still a mystery to her when all she had craved
for was a spot to be buried where a laburnum tree would bloom every May.
Ah, the laburnum tree! Would the saplings survive this time, she speculated?
Would they really bloom and would she live long enough to actually see the
trees with flower? Before one knew it, another May with laburnum blossoms
everywhere had come and gone. A small consolation for the frail woman was
that her plants out ‘there’ were doing fine. Babu, the ever-faithful friend, for
this is how she thought of him now, brought news about many things
including that of her treasured plants.
Once in a while she would tell Babu that she wanted to see them herself to
which he would say, ‘Soon madam, but not today.’ Her days were now
threatening to blur into dusk. Sometimes they would find her roaming in the
garden barefoot and without a shawl. That winter Lentina caught a bad cold
and fell seriously ill. Every one thought that she would not last the winter.
Even her doctor, usually a jolly person, began to show signs of strain after
every visit to her room. Only Babu remained calm and steadfast during the
crisis. When relatives and close friends were allowed brief visits, it was Babu
who stood guard outside the door to see that they did not stay too long.
Sometimes Lentina would pretend to be sleeping when noisy and nosy
relatives came to visit; Babu then had the perfect excuse to shoo them out
quickly. During the day Babu would disappear for some time and when he
returned, he would make straight for Lentina’s room. He would tiptoe in and
she would turn her eyes towards the door and as their eyes met he would give
a faint nod and withdraw. This was a message that he had just visited the trees
and that they were doing well. This seemed to provide her with the will to live
where food and medicines seemed to have failed.
To every one’s astonishment, Lentina survived the fierce winter and one
clear February morning she rang her bell peremptorily. The maid went in to
find her searching for her gown and bedroom slippers. She offered to bring
her tea to the room but Lentina ordered her to take her to the drawing room.
She sat by the fireside where her tea was brought and she sipped the hot brew
as though she were tasting it for the first time. From that day on, she began to
move about the house and resume her old routine of supervising the activities
in it. When her daughters-in-law visited, she was warm and amiable with
them; occasionally she would even give them pieces of jewellery: a ring, ear
tops and necklaces. The sons too, sensing a new spirit in their mother, began
to ask for her advice on business and family matters, something which had
never happened during the father’s lifetime. They were pleasantly surprised to
find how sharp her mind still was. They also discovered how uncannily like
their father she sounded sometimes! There was a visible easing of tension
among them and it became apparent that not only Lentina, but the entire
family, was heading towards a healing that was more than physical.
 That year, the year of Lentina’s recovery, something happened in the new
cemetery that only Babu saw; he kept the knowledge to himself. Of the two
laburnum trees planted on Lentina’s plot, one languished and died. But the
surviving one had flourished and, wonder of wonders, even produced a tiny
sprig bearing a few yellow blossoms. One could not see this from the road
because the plant was still small and the flowers sparse. But Babu frequently
visited the site and discovered the shy showing one fine May morning. He
was tempted to tell Lentina but decided against it because the excitement
might have been too much for her. And, if the plant did not develop as hoped
for, the disappointment might have a devastating effect on his mistress,
weakened by her recent illness. He was both happy and afraid: happy because
the long-cherished desire of his mistress to see a laburnum bloom had been
fulfilled; afraid, because he instinctively knew that as soon as Lentina laid
eyes on the blossoms next May, she would conclude that the right moment to
leave the world had arrived. Not that she would do anything drastic like
taking her own life, but she would let everything slide and simply bow out of
life, with a contented sigh.
But, for all his apprehensions about the future, Babu knew that he could not
hold back the force of nature that had accomplished the small miracle of the
first showing that May. By next year, the bush would be taller and the flowers
more plentiful; it would become visible to all who passed by that lonely road
to the new cemetery. He had to tell his mistress about this, but when? He
thought about it for many nights and finally decided that the best time would
be the next season’s flowering and hoped that she would be alive to hear the
good news from him. If Lentina now thought of him as her friend, Babu was
also beginning to re-assess his relationship with her. Till the time of her
husband’s death, though she had treated Babu with civility and kindness, she
had always maintained a discreet distance as befitting a master–servant
relationship. But she gradually broke down the barriers by showing her
dependence on him, first by only extracting ‘dutiful service’; then
imperceptibly as a friend; and finally a confidant. Outwardly, the protocol
demanded by their positions was never breached or altered, but it soon
became apparent to everybody how much Lentina relied on the old driver for
things she wanted done. And surprisingly, this was accepted by her sons and
their wives—it relieved them from the onerous duty of being on call for their
frail and aged mother. A strong-willed woman and her faithful servant were
thus drawn into an unusual bond of common humanity, based on trust and
loyalty.
By the time the new year came, Lentina showed signs of fatigue brought on
by old age. Her family watched her keenly all through the winter months and
she was never left alone. When March came and the weather became warmer,
she wanted to be taken out in the car. Her wish was at first just ignored but
when she refused to eat unless she was taken out for a ride, the family decided
to accede. And so a routine was established: twice a week, weather
permitting, Lentina would go out in the car accompanied by her maid. Lentina
did not object to this arrangement and came back from these outings a much
happier person. She ate well and some colour returned to her pale face. But
during these jaunts, she sat quietly, without uttering a word, and even when
Babu or the maid commented on something new or strange they had seen in
the town, she did not respond. On return, she would head straight to her room
and remain there until dinnertime.
And then another May was upon them and every one noticed a visible
change in Lentina; she wanted to go out more frequently. But the doctor put
his foot down and the twice-a-week routine continued. Seeing her agitation,
Babu approached her door one day and sought permission to speak. He
assured her that he was keeping a close watch on the plants and that he was
confident that they would bloom this season. He still did not tell her about
what had happened the previous year. He promised to give her reports on the
days she was forced to stay indoors. But during the outings now, the first
thing she wanted was to drive by the new cemetery, to see if the laburnum
trees were showing signs of producing flowers. She had seen other trees in
town with their gorgeous display of cascading yellow flowers. Her
disappointment was acute and after a few times, she refused to go out at all.
And then one day, late into the month, on his daily excursion to the
cemetery Babu discovered the miracle that they had been praying for: the
little laburnum tree was awash with buttery-yellow blossoms! The
unflappable driver gave a shout of joy and darted away, heading to his
mistress with the wonderful news. On his way, he rehearsed how he was
going to break the news to her. He cautioned himself that he should do it
gently, so that his dear mistress would not get too excited. When he reached
the house, he walked slowly to the lady’s room and knocked gently. To his
surprise, he heard a sharp command, ‘Come in Babu, I’ve been waiting for
you.’ He entered and started to speak but she cut him off, ‘I know what you
are going to tell me; I felt it in my bones.’ He saw that Lentina was dressed as
if for a grand occasion and standing by her side was the maid, also dressed.
The old lady fumbled for her walking stick and said impatiently, ‘Let’s go,
what are you waiting for?’
The bewildered driver and the slightly dazed maid followed the old lady
who suddenly seemed to have a spring in her walk, and proceeded on their
apparently routine outing. But only Lentina and Babu knew what this
phenomenon signified. Once they reached the site, Lentina withdrew into a
more sombre mood, as did Babu; only the maid exclaimed at the sight of the
luxuriant blossoms on so small a tree. Lentina gazed at the flowers for a long
time and sighing deeply, told Babu to drive to the Park, located about four
kilometres from the town and was the highest point from where the entire
town could be seen. It was a popular picnic spot and was full of people at
weekends. When they reached the peak they found that not many people were
around because it was a weekday. Choosing a quiet corner, Lentina and the
maid sat down to rest. The maid had packed some biscuits and a flask of tea,
which the three of them shared. After about half an hour they drove back
home. As she entered her room, Lentina turned to her maid and Babu and
shook their hands, murmuring, ‘Thank you and God bless you.’
Lentina stayed in her room for most of the week. She turned down
suggestions of any further outing and busied herself with tidying up her room
even refusing help from the maid. On the fifth day of this self-imposed
isolation, she called the maid and asked her to help her with her bath and to
dress her in her favourite outfit. Having done that, she ordered the maid to
bring her some food as she wanted an early dinner. The maid did as she was
told and bade her mistress an early goodnight before retiring to her own
quarters.
The next morning when she knocked on Lentina’s door with the morning
tea, there was no answer. She knocked again but only silence greeted her. She
entered the room and found Lentina stretched on the bed; she seemed to be
sleeping soundly. Putting the tray on the bed-side table, the maid said gently,
‘Madam, I’ve brought tea.’ She went and drew the curtains as usual but when
she came near the bed, she noticed a certain stiffness in the body and an
unusual palour on the old lady’s face. Distinctly alarmed, she went out and
urgently called the others, the sons, their wives and all the servants. They all
came rushing, except Babu, who stood near a post, crying like a baby. They
entered the room and the elder son bent closer to determine if his mother was
breathing. He straightened up with a sharply drawn breath and shook his
head. When the doctor came, he pronounced that Lentina, the mistress of the
house, had died in her sleep.
So ends the story of the un-dramatic life of an ordinary woman who
cherished one single passionate wish that a humble laburnum tree should
bloom once a year on her crown.
And every May, this extraordinary wish is fulfilled when the laburnum tree,
planted on her gravesite in the new cemetery of the sleepy little town, bursts
forth in all its glory of buttery-yellow splendour. And if you can tear your
eyes away from this display and survey the rest of the ground, you will notice
that in the entire expanse, there is not a single stone monument. Instead,
flowering bushes take root, blooming in their own seasons on the little
mounds dotting the landscape. Hibiscus, gardenia, bottle-brush, camellia,
oleander and croton bushes of all hues comprise the variety of flowering
plants, and at one or two spots you can see some jacaranda trees trying to
keep up with the others. A lone banyan and a few ashoka trees standing on the
far edges also seem to be doing quite well. And if you observe carefully, you
will be amazed to see that in the entire terrain, there is so far, only one
laburnum tree bedecked in its seasonal glory, standing tall over all the other
plants, flourishing in perfect co-existence, in an environment liberated from
all human pretensions to immortality.
So every May, something extraordinary.
 Death of a Hunter

The hunting season was on and the hunter was oiling his much-used gun. He
was quietly humming a tuneless song, the reason for the suppressed giggles
coming from the adjacent shed where his daughter and niece were husking
paddy. As the giggles grew louder, he became aware that the girls were
laughing at his efforts at singing. So he began to sing even louder and when
he faltered at a particularly high note, all three of them burst out in
unrestrained guffaws; the girls even let go of the husking pestle, spilling the
half-husked paddy on to the mud floor. Almost immediately the chickens
hovering outside the shed flocked in, cackling in glee to peck at the fallen
grain. When the girls caught their breath, the niece called out, ‘Why are you
so happy, uncle? Is there a big animal waiting for you?’
The hunter took a deep breath and replied, ‘Who knows? Maybe the big
boar who has been eating our best paddy these past years will make an
appearance soon. I am giving my gun a thorough cleaning so that this time I
do not miss his heart.’
For the last five seasons, the hunter called Imchanok had been after this
particularly vicious boar which had been devastating the rice paddies of the
village and in his field; the animal chose to feast in the areas where he had
planted the best variety of rice. When it happened for two consecutive years,
his wife suggested that they change the site and accordingly they planted this
variety on the western ridge of their vast field. But to no avail; the cussed
boar somehow located that very portion to feast on. The animal, sighted by
the villagers on several occasions, was reported to be of enormous
proportions, had a lumbering gait, and two yellowish tusks curling backwards,
almost touching his hump. Not only that, he seemed to have an equally
vicious nature. He ate what he could and trampled over a wide area as if to
inflict the maximum damage on the paddy. Strangely, Imchanok had so far
not even had a fleeting glimpse of this notorious animal, though it was on his
paddy that the most damage was done. Many a night during the cold winter he
had kept vigil, waiting for the boar to come to his paddy, but it seemed the
animal sensed his presence from a distance and went on to other fields. As he
thought of the prospect of felling this animal, whom by now he considered to
be his enemy, his hands flew up and down the barrel with the greased-cloth,
removing the slightest sign of earlier firings. Even the butt of the gun shone
with the newly applied coat of varnish. He then stood the gun on the side of
the barn and went inside to check the cartridges. He had recently bought a full
packet and had lent only two of them to his closest friend, in return for which
he had received a whole hind-leg of a sambar which his friend had shot.
Having satisfied himself that he was ready for the big encounter, he came out
to fetch the sun-warmed gun, took it inside, wrapped it in its special cloth and
shoved it into the top of the wooden almirah in his bedroom.
That evening when his wife, Tangchetla, came home from the field, she
found him in a very jovial mood holding forth amongst the regular visitors,
sitting beside a roaring fire sipping black tea. Gauging their mood she
instantly knew that the reason could be nothing less than another sighting of
the dreaded boar. This animal had begun to haunt the waking moments of all
the menfolk during the harvest season; whose field would be the next site of
this marauder’s devastation, everyone wondered. This was now the sixth year
and with every passing year they were becoming more desperate, as there
seemed to be no one, not even a famous hunter like Imchanok, who could rid
them of this menace. For Imchanok, it had become a personal contest,
between two strong-willed beings.
Imchanok’s fame as a skilled hunter had grown over the years. He was a
teacher in the village Lower Primary School but that identity had long been
eclipsed by that of the hunter. In this capacity he had also received a reward
from the government when a rogue elephant had to be shot after it had
destroyed several acres of farmland, many homesteads and trampled a number
of people to death. There were other hunters in his village and neighbouring
ones too, but every single one of them had declined the offer from the
government. In fact they had all said that if there was any hunter who could
match the cunning of the rogue elephant and kill him, it was Imchanok. So
when the offer came to him, it was more in the nature of an order. The Deputy
Commissioner sent a Dobhashi with an elephant-shooting rifle and
ammunition. They told Imchanok that he could ask for any assistance from
the Village Council for the hunt; he was given seven days to accomplish the
task.
This was a most extraordinary situation, one for which Imchanok was
totally unprepared. It was one thing to choose when, where, and what to hunt
but quite another to be faced with the real challenge. Inwardly he began to
fume and say to himself, ‘What do these sahibs know about the jungle? Do
they think that the elephant will be waiting at a convenient place for me to go
and shoot him? Don’t they know how intelligent these animals are, that they
can almost think like human beings? And the area that they can cover when
they decide to run?’
But it was an order from the government and he had to comply. Somewhere
along the communication process there was even a faint hint of threat: that
those who refused to cooperate in this matter might find their hunting licences
suspended or even revoked! The other consideration was his reputation as top
hunter of the region. Either way, he found himself committed to a hunt that
presented itself in such a strange way. So he enlisted the assistance of his
most trusted hunting partners and sent them out on a reconnaissance mission
to the areas where the rampages had taken place. When they returned with
their findings, they held what can be termed as a war council. They debated
long into the night and after a few hours’ sleep towards the morning, resumed
their discussion to give a final shape to their plan. All the members of this
group, being skilled trekkers in the jungle, and knowledgeable in the habits of
wild animals, chose a spot in the thick valley to set a trap for the big animal.
They knew that because of sentries being posted at strategic points around the
cultivated areas, the elephant had gone back to foraging in the deep jungle.
The spot they chose was one that had not been visited by it yet. It took the
seven men most of the day to dig a hole wide and deep enough to hold a full-
grown bull elephant. Next, they carefully camouflaged the hole with branches
and leaves brought from a different area.
Retreating to their vantage point, they ate cold rice and drank black tea to
await the animal’s visit. The first night ended but there was no sign of the
animal. Towards the evening of the second day, it began to rain and the
hunters hurriedly covered their weapons to keep the rain out of the barrels.
Besides the official elephant-hunting rifle, three others had carried their
double-barrelled guns as additional precaution; there could be other
dangerous animals too. But Imchanok was praying that no other animal would
appear to upset their carefully-laid-down plan. The second night dragged on;
the hunters were wet, hungry and terribly afraid. Only Imchanok seemed
unperturbed; he was taking imaginary aims with the gunsight, inwardly
wishing that he had had an opportunity to test his aim with this unaccustomed
weapon, which was in his hand for the first time. But he had enough
confidence in his own skill as a marksman and prayed that there would be no
distraction at the crucial moment. As the night progressed, the jungle grew
quieter and quieter. Even the watchers became less alert and appeared to be in
the grip of that great stillness that only a dark slumbering jungle can induce.
Imchanok was fully awake; he sensed the weariness in his companions and let
them doze for a few precious moments before nudging the nearest one awake
with a gentle kick to his side. As the chain of similar kicks went round,
everyone sat up and tried to adjust his vision in the eerie darkness that seemed
to have swallowed up the lush green jungle. They waited, each lost in his
thoughts. Then came the time in the dying night when you think that day is
breaking but cannot see anything except darkness though the daybreak is so
clear in your mind. This sensation came first to Imchanok and he silently
shifted his body-weight from left to right. The one next to him caught this
movement and did the same; then the next and the next until every single man
held his position as if freshly energized by this slightest of movements.
The first signal that there was other life in the jungle came from the frantic
flutter of a wild fowl perched on a tall tree some distance away. The hunters
tensed up in their positions and waited. The ensuing silence somehow
depressed them; another day would go unrewarded. Then all at once the
jungle echoed with the wild cries of monkeys perched on every conceivable
tree; they were truly frightened of something. In the distance the faint swirling
of mist could be seen dispersing in the retreating darkness, ushering the break
of day. The screeching went on for some time before the hunters realized that
there was another sound in the general din. At first it sounded like the yell of
bigger monkeys, but when Imchanok listened carefully, he stood up in his
place and hissed to the others, ‘He is here.’ Quietly each hunter went to his
assigned position and once again stood still like a statue behind the covers
erected earlier. Imchanok had the highest vantage point, and holding his rifle
at the ready, he waited there to face this unfamiliar adversary.
The elephant took his own time straying to the appointed area. He seemed
completely at ease, breaking a twig here and peeling a bark there as though
eager to taste everything that came his way. Several times he stopped in an
open space to have a dust bath, but the earth was still moist from the night; he
stomped on the earth in mild irritation. He was still quite a way off and except
Imchanok, the others were either too scared to look, or were unable to have a
clear view of the elephant’s morning meanderings. At one stage the elephant
seemed to stand still, as if in deep concentration; from the distance Imchanok
saw this and became alarmed. Had he by any chance detected some tell-tale
signs of their activities? If so, the animal might run away in fright or worse
still, might even try to take revenge by charging at the hunters. But as he
continued to watch the animal which appeared huge even from this distance,
he heard a low growl which grew in volume until the animal expelled his
body-waste, delicately side-stepped the lump and proceeded to demolish more
bushes and branches on his way. Imchanok had seen elephant dung before in
the jungle and he remembered how the huge lumps would emit a foul smell in
the early morning sun.
In the brightening light of the morning the elephant looked calm and
serene, happily devouring the young plants and tall grass in his vicinity. He
appeared to be in no hurry; he even tried lying down once but got up
immediately. He flapped his enormous ears and began enjoying a dust bath
now that the loose earth had dried up, scooping it up with his trunk and
blowing it all over his flanks. From his position, Imchanok watched his antics
with growing concern, the distance between him and the animal being beyond
the range of his gun. Besides, the trap-hole that they had dug was too far
away. When the elephant was shot, they hoped, he would head for the area
where the hole was and would be trapped there. Then the final shot could be
fired to his skull through the eyes which every hunter knew was the only shot
that could kill an elephant. So another waiting game began.
By now it was full daylight and the other hunters too could see the animal
from their various vantage points. The initial terror of the unknown was
relieved by the spectacle they witnessed. Confident that at that distance they
would not be visible to their prey, they began to watch him in silent
fascination. But not for long, because the increasing heat of the day was
beginning to tell on the elephant’s behaviour and he started to blow his trunk
in distress. He rushed headlong into the jungle in search of a shady spot and
moved towards the clump of bushes carefully arranged near the hole by the
hunters earlier. But before entering the spot which seemed to offer some
shade, he stood still in his tracks, darting glances in all directions. He was
now close enough for Imchanok to attempt a shot. But the hunter was not sure
if the others had already moved to their secondary positions of safety, chosen
earlier for just such a moment. The elephant sensed danger and tried to
retreat, but his huge body moved sluggishly. The slow turning of his head was
all that Imchanok needed. Taking careful aim, he fired twice in rapid
succession into what he hoped were his eyes. The first shot caught the animal
full face, stunning him. He turned around and that is how the second bullet
entered his brain through the ears and lodged there. Imchanok loaded again
and fired two more times. At least one of the two bullets must have hit him
because the animal seemed to totter.
Imchanok watched in awe and terrified fascination the slow careening of
the dying animal as he tried to keep his balance and still move away. But the
bullets had surely found their mark because the huge animal toppled over
with a last ear-splitting roar from his trunk. He did not fall into the hole as
they had planned but was killed anyway. Later, Imcha brushed aside the
praises for his shooting skill and claimed that it was only through divine
intervention that he was able to fire at the precise moment when he did. A
moment earlier or later, and the bullets would have simply glanced off the
thick hide, merely enraging the rogue and putting all of them in mortal
danger.
When it was considered safe enough to approach the site, all of them stood
in a circle and watched from a safe distance as the life-force oozed out of the
huge creature, till the last great heave and the eventual stillness of the huge
carcass. As he watched this mysterious process, Imchanok happened to look
into the unblinking, unseeing eye of his adversary, lying there so helpless,
divested of his menacing power for destruction. Was it his imagination? He
would wonder forever because he thought he saw tears in those beady eyes
and something else: it was as though the dying animal were trying to convey
some message to his destroyer which remained frozen in time; this was to
haunt Imchanok for a very long time. The experienced hunter had never once
in his hunting career thought of the animals that he shot as anything but
legitimate bounty. Killing the elephant however was something else.
Previously, he, the hunter had been in control all the time and chosen what
and when to kill; but it was not so with the huge elephant lying dead before
them. The prey had been ‘allotted’ to him. The sense of accomplishment that
he used to enjoy after every kill was missing. True, there was no doubt in his
mind that killing the elephant was the only way of ensuring safety for
innocent villagers and their fields. But why did it have to be he who was
placed, in this particular instance, at the centre of the eternal contest between
man and animal for dominion over the land?
Imchanok the hunter became even more famous after this episode; he was
given a cash award and offered a fine gun. He accepted the money which he
shared with his hunting partners but refused to accept the gun, saying that he
already had a gun and one gun was enough for any hunter. The administrators
were puzzled by his refusal but did not press him any further. What they
failed to understand was that Imchanok did not want to be obliged to them
beyond accepting payment for services rendered. He had resolved in his mind
that never again would he undertake any such task, government order or
otherwise. If he took the gun from the government, he surmised, he would
forfeit his freedom of choice.
Whatever his private thoughts about this incident, Imcha’s present worry
was the havoc caused by the old boar. The depredation of cultivated fields
was a recurrent disaster for the villagers; but not on the scale of this particular
animal’s savagery. He remembered one harvest season a long time ago when a
pack of monkeys used to eat his grain at the half-way hut on the outskirts of
the village. Before there were motorable roads, villagers used to shift the
harvested paddy to such half-way huts from where the women and even
children would carry the grain to the barns in the village. Since the trek from
the fields in the valley was steep these halfway houses reduced not only the
distance but also spared them the arduous uphill climb. In this manner,
transportation of the harvest was made easy for them. But these huts became
the favourite foraging spots for the monkeys because they were not afraid of
the women and children who were the only ones to be found there. Not only
would the animals eat and spoil the grain, they would often try to intimidate
them by baring their fangs and shrieking loudly; sometimes they actually
attacked the helpless women and children. There was one particularly vicious
male in the group which appropriated Imchanok’s half-way hut, and it became
dangerous for the womenfolk to try to take the grain out when this group was
feeding there. When this was reported to him, he devised a plan to shoot the
male in order to scare away the other monkeys.
 He allowed the monkeys to feel free and unafraid to feed there by stopping
his wife and her party from going there for two days. On the third day he went
there at the crack of dawn armed with his trusted gun, and hid himself in a
corner of the hut. As expected, the group of monkeys led by the cocky male
came after daybreak to feast there. After scattering noisily over the mound of
paddy they began their daily ritual of not only eating the same but the babies
in the group even started throwing the grain at one another in play, so
uncannily like human children. Imchanok was distracted by this spectacle for
a while. But when he looked at the huge male, he saw that the monkey had
become aware of his presence and had begun to call out in distressed tones,
trying to herd them out of the hut. At the same time he was feigning attacks
on Imchanok who had by now come out of hiding. Since he was not
concerned with the other members, Imchanok took careful aim at the leader
and pulled the trigger. But the monkey was quick in dodging the bullet which
hit him only on his fat flank. Even then he did not yield; he stood there until
his entire group had managed to get out of the hut through the single door.
Only then did he try to get away. But the injury to his flank was serious and
he became immobile on the spot where he had stood to protect his family.
When Imchanok took aim once again, the monkey raised his arms as though
in surrender or supplication, and slowly covered his eyes even as the hunter
released the fatal shot to his heart. With a groan he toppled over on the ground
and lay there motionless. After making sure that the animal was truly dead,
Imchanok went to the village and sent his nephews to bring the carcass home.
There was much rejoicing in his family; not only because the menace of the
monkeys seemed to have been taken care of, but also because there would be
plenty of meat for them for many days. The carcass of the monkey was placed
in the front courtyard for all to see. It was kept in a sitting position, its head
propped up by a bamboo from behind and in this position it looked truly
human! One of the nephews, a prankster by disposition, found a hat from
somewhere and put it on the animal’s head; someone else brought a cigarette
and put it in its mouth. The crowning glory of this circus was a pair of
goggles and this was ceremoniously placed above its flat nose. The dressing-
up being complete, Imchanok was called out of the house, and when he saw
the transformed monkey, something burst in him. He advanced to the sitting
monkey and began to slap it alternately on each cheek, cursing it all the time.
With the first slap, the cigarette fell out of the monkey’s mouth; with the next,
the pair of goggles, which was sitting precariously anyway. After a few more
slaps the monkey toppled over once more, this time with his legs and
forepaws all pointing skywards, stiff, in death. The out-stretched arms seemed
to parody its dying moments when it had seemed to be supplicating before his
executioner. Imchanok advanced to the grimacing animal and shouted, ‘So,
you wanted to destroy me by stealing my paddy, did you? Look at you now.
You scared and bullied my womenfolk; where are yours now? Another male
will take them over while I cut you up and feed my people with your flesh.’
The earlier mood of noisy merry-making now gave way to one of
astonished silence at the vehemence of Imchanok’s railing. This alerted
Tangchetla that something was amiss and she too came out of the house.
When she saw her husband’s face, she quickly grabbed his hand and pulled
him into the house. By the time the monkey was skinned, gutted and cut into
pieces, some communication must have passed between husband and wife
because when a nephew came into the kitchen looking for Tangchetla’s
biggest pot that had been used on earlier occasions like this, she flatly refused
to give it saying, ‘You can use the big karhai where the pig-feed is cooked.
No utensil from my kitchen will be used for this meat.’ The nephew, though
surprised by this, was in a hurry to cook the meat; so he had to make do with
the karhai. The unusual outburst from Imchanok, and his wife’s strange
refusal to lend their biggest pot however, could not dampen the spirit of
celebration among his friends and relatives. They continued drinking and
eating the meat late into the night. Tangchetla refused to allow any of the
meat to be brought into her kitchen and told the eldest nephew to distribute all
the remaining meat to relatives and neighbours, adding that it was her
husband’s instructions.
Imchanok then did a strange thing. He instructed his wife not to pick up
any more grain from the hut where the monkey had been killed. She protested
saying there were at least twenty to thirty basketfuls, how could they afford to
lose so much? But her husband was adamant: he would not contaminate his
main barn by bringing in paddy soiled by a pack of monkeys and tainted with
the blood of the leader. So the half-way hut was abandoned with all the grain
inside, on which birds and animals feasted for many days. Though the site on
which the hut stood was most ideal, no other villager ever built another hut
there. Within a year or two the hut disintegrated and was swept away by the
summer rains. But villagers still identify the spot where it had stood as
Imchanok’s bend because it was located at a turning of the jungle path.
The passage of years and the exigencies of a hard life in the village dulled
this hunter’s sporadic qualms about hunting. Though the spectre of the
‘supplicating’ monkey troubled his mind for quite some time, he went back to
his old way of thinking of hunting as a necessary supplement to gathering
food for an increasingly large family. And now once again, an extraordinary
situation had presented itself in the form of this rampaging boar to challenge
Imchanok as a provider for and protector of his family’s very existence. Of
late he was also beginning to feel his age; he was no longer as fearless or
agile in the forests anymore. So he had started taking a younger person, either
a nephew or a friend’s son, to accompany him on hunting trips. Also, he
would spend more time in preparation for such forays into the jungle. As the
boar’s depredations increased in frequency and scale, Imchanok decided to go
first on a reconnaissance trip to the devastated areas which included his own
ripened fields. For this trip, he asked his favourite nephew to accompany him
and they set out one early winter morning for the rice fields in the valley.
Imchanok decided that they would not take the usual path but take a detour
through a more densely forested area. He told his nephew that he was trying
out an idea about the haunts of this very cunning animal which had become
the bane of all the villagers. They walked in single file, the old hunter leading
the way. His experienced eyes detected some disturbances in the shrubbery
around but he did not lay too much significance on that and they marched on.
The winter sun that day seemed to radiate a lot of heat and as midday
approached Imchanok called for a halt and, choosing a shady spot, the two of
them sat down for a much-needed rest. They ate their noon meal at leisure and
the nephew went to a nearby stream to collect water in a freshly-cut bamboo
container. He was gone for quite some time; in the meantime Imchanok dozed
off. When he woke up, his nephew was patiently waiting with the water for
his uncle. After washing his face and taking a refreshing drink, they resumed
their journey.
As they neared a patch of thick forest reputed to be haunted the nephew
was visibly scared. His uncle laughed off his apprehension and started to sing
a song. Before he could complete a line, they heard a commotion and the
young man turned on his heels and ran back the way they had come. The old
hunter was rooted to the spot: the spectacle before him was indescribable. He
thought it looked like a boar but no earthly boar could be this big or so black.
The animal seemed to tower over everything around him, so huge did he
appear. But Imchanok knew that if he were to escape, he had to stun or kill
the creature with his first shot. With the instinct of the skilled hunter that he
was, he aimed at the head and squeezed the trigger more as an act of self-
defence than with the intent to kill. Luckily for Imchanok, the bullet seemed
to have found its target because the animal took one gigantic leap and
plummeted into the dark forest. There was stillness after that. Mindful of the
danger of facing a wounded animal, he carefully retreated the way they had
come in the morning wondering what had happened to his nephew. As he
retraced his steps, he kept looking back, expecting at any moment to see the
huge animal charging at him. But each time, he was relieved to see that there
was nothing behind him.
The sun was dipping on the horizon and Imchanok was beginning to feel a
little cold, from the cooling day as well as from the release of intense tension.
At the next bend he found his nephew, huddled on his haunches and
shivering. He looked wordlessly at his uncle and managed a sheepish grin.
The older man lifted him up and made him walk in front, unlike the order
when they had set out from the village. Contrary to their easy banter of the
morning, the two now walked on silently all the way to the village. When
they reached Imchanok’s house, they found a lot of people waiting for their
return, wanting to know if they had seen any sign of the beast. Neither of
them responded to their queries at first; but eventually Imchanok spoke: ‘I
think I have shot the boar.’ At this the entire group burst into shouts of joy and
relief. They began to ask all sorts of questions, to which the hunter only said,
‘I have never seen anything like this before in my life and I don’t want to
have anything to do with it.’
‘But you have to show us where you shot it; otherwise how can we go
looking for the carcass?’ Imchanok kept quiet and when pressed further, he
simply told them, ‘Tomorrow is another day and let’s wait for what it brings
to us.’
The next morning the village sentries brought news that there was no sign
of the boar or even the lesser ones in the paddy fields throughout the night.
This was interpreted as confirmation of the killing of this menace and the
villagers once more requested Imchanok to give them directions so that they
could organize the search party to collect the carcass. Being convinced that
the boar was indeed dead, he told them the direction that he and his nephew
had taken the previous day. The villagers were taken by surprise, and an elder
asked, ‘But what prompted you to take this route? Didn’t you know that it
goes directly through the haunted forest?’
Imchanok replied, ‘Yes, but something inside me kept urging me to follow
that path. And in fact the boar will be found right at the entrance to the forest.’
When asked if he too was going to accompany them, Imchanok replied, ‘My
job is done; I want to rest for a long time.’
So a party of twenty able-bodied young men was formed to go in search of
the carcass of the boar and haul it home. Before setting out, they decided that
because of its bulk the animal would be slaughtered in such a way as to make
four loads, each load to be carried by four men. The rest would then relieve
them in turns so that there would always be four men as lookouts. The group,
armed with daos, spears and a gun marched out of the village with much
joking and laughing in anticipation of the big feast that would take place after
their return from the successful search. They reached the general area in
pretty good time because the anticipation of bringing home such a prize had
put a spring to their gait. They set out in groups of five in different directions.
The men going towards the entry to the forest detected what they thought was
dried blood on twigs; a little further off, they discovered a spot where the tall
grass was flattened in a peculiar manner. They surmised that the boar had
fallen on that spot but beyond this there was no other indication to show
where the wounded animal had vanished. Unable to detect any more tell-tale
signs, they came back to the designated location to meet with the other parties
who were already there with similar stories. Though the countryside was
dotted with tantalizing bits of dried blood, there were no other promising
leads to launch another foray into the jungle. They returned to the village a
dejected lot.
The search for the boar’s carcass was carried on for two more days,
covering a vast area but with the same result: no sign of that monster, dead or
alive, anywhere. In the meantime a strange phenomenon was unfolding:
Imchanok, the famed hunter who had never been known to suffer from any
serious illness, took to bed complaining of severe headaches. He lay there
listless and did not allow any visitors into his room. Even his own children
were kept out; the only person who administered to him was his wife. His
paddy was harvested by relatives and well-wishers and brought home.
 Only Tangchetla knew what went on at night. Imchanok, the fearless
hunter, would shriek out in his sleep crying, ‘Look at him, he is as big as a
barn and as black as charcoal.’ Then he would begin to whimper in
Tangchetla’s arms, ‘I am afraid, woman, he is going to come after me.’ It took
all her cajoling and consoling to coax him into sleep. This strange
phenomenon was further complicated by Imchanok’s refusal to eat anything.
After several nights of this, out of desperation she suggested to him that they
should go to the exact spot from where he had fired his gun and ask for
forgiveness from the creature so that Imchanok’s nightmares would end. At
first Imchanok was sceptical and dismissed her advice as ‘woman-talk’. But
she continued to nag him throughout the day and even threatened to tell his
father about his strange dreams. He still hesitated for another week and the
nightmares continued. After a particularly trying experience, Imchanok turned
to his wife and said, ‘Let’s do it.’
So the next morning, husband and wife set out from the village, much to
the surprise of friends and relatives. The man looked calm and composed with
no sign of any illness, either on his face or in his demeanour. The most
surprising thing was that for the first time in his life the hunter was without
his gun. The couple looked as though they were going out for a stroll. When
they were nearing the area, Imchanok became visibly tense but Tangchetla
pretended not to notice and choosing a shady spot lay out their mid-day meal
on the ground. Imchanok began to eat the simple food with relish and
declared that his wife’s cooking never tasted as good as this in the house.
After finishing his meal, Imchanok told his wife that he was going to the
stream for a drink. Not wishing to let him go alone in his present state of
mind, she followed him after a short while. When she reached the bank, she
saw her husband standing in the stream holding something to his breast. She
called out and asked him what he was doing. He did not seem to hear her at
first. She called out his name once again and asked him what he had in his
hand. This time he turned slowly towards her and held up a boar’s tooth, the
aged bone washed clean by the stream, shining like ivory. Wordlessly he
pointed to a nearby clump of bushes where tufts of black fur lay strewn
among what appeared to be the bones of a huge animal. On their way back,
Imchanok stood on the very spot from where he had fired the fatal shot and
did a strange thing. He tore out a tuft of his hair and blew it towards the
haunted forest, and without a backward glance retraced his steps towards the
village. Tangchetla followed him, full of awe and wonder at the mystery
surrounding the killing of this beast. And that night, for the first time since the
boar hunt, Imchanok slept like a baby in his wife’s embrace.
Though his nightmares vanished, Imchanok was gripped by the mystery of
the bizarre closure of the boar’s killing. The couple decided not to say
anything about the discovery of the tooth and bones and they resumed their
normal activities as if nothing untoward had happened. But Imchanok’s mind
went back constantly to the day that he had stood in the stream holding the
boar’s tooth and how, before leaving the forest, some inner urge had
compelled him to enact the strange ritual. But the most acute of those
recollections was how he had felt a new sensation, as if a new power was
surging within him. Outwardly he behaved as if nothing extraordinary had
happened; but inwardly he began to question the failure of expert trekkers to
locate the carcass of such a big animal which had not strayed far from where
he was shot. And why was it left for him, the hunter, to discover the remains?
He pondered over this for many days and inexorably all his earlier qualms
after killing the elephant and the monkey returned to haunt him anew. He
became listless and morose; some days he would sit by himself and re-live the
life of Imchanok the hunter and his earlier sense of pride about his skill and
reputation as a famous hunter, would be replaced by shame and regret.
Tangchetla noticed this but kept her counsel, taking solace in the fact that
Imchanok’s gun was securely wrapped in the same bundle since the boar hunt.
One day when he was alone in the house, he took out his gun from its sack,
and dismantled it. The next morning, Tangchetla watched as her husband dug
a hole in the backyard humming a tuneless song. And in that gaping wound of
the earth he buried the boar’s tooth, the dismantled gun and Imchanok the
hunter.
 The Boy Who Sold an Airfield

No one could say when the young boy became a fixture in the transit camp of
American soldiers, stationed in make-shift buildings on the perimeter of the
barely functional airfield, after the Great War was over. These soldiers were
part of the contingents who had fought in the Indo-Burma sector and were
now engaged in the task of facilitating the shipment of odds and ends left over
from the war effort, including settling of accounts with all the local
contractors and suppliers. The camp was situated in a town called Jorhat in
Assam, and the boy must have come from the hills adjoining the state because
he did not look like a local boy.
He was a young tribal boy who had run away from his home and had been
doing menial jobs in households in the plains of Assam for a number of years.
He was in the third house where he was beginning to show signs of settling
down as a domestic servant. His father learnt about his whereabouts after a
lapse of eight months and the following winter he came down from the hills
and began searching for him. When he eventually located him, the son
refused to go back. The father tried to persuade him saying his mother was
heart-broken and had become quite ill. Reference to his mother did not make
him change his mind. Instead, the boy looked belligerently at his father and
said, ‘Why don’t you beat her up for this too?’ The father cringed before the
son’s retort and without saying another word left the house where his son was
working. It was only then that his employer understood why the young boy
had left home and village to live the life of a servant in strange households.
The boy, whose name was Pokenmong, was around twelve when he left
home and had grown taller in the course of the last three years; he was
moving from house to house looking for any kind of work that would buy him
two square meals a day. His present employer, a railway lineman named Jiten
Das, having realized why Pokenmong had run away from home, began to
treat him with more kindness after the father’s visit. Once in a while, he
would take the boy with him to the railway crossing and sometimes would
allow him to wave the green flag when the all-clear was signalled to an
approaching train. The boy was thrilled and begged to be taken to the little
signal hut more often. Slowly, a new warmth began to grow in their
relationship and almost spontaneously Pokenmong started calling Jiten
‘Baba’. When he said it the first time, it went unnoticed by Jiten and everyone
else. It was only when the wife heard and commented on it that Jiten realized
that prior to this, the boy had never used any particular word to address either
him or his wife. Jiten’s two children were at first angry that anyone other than
themselves should call their father Baba. The parents however kept quiet and
eventually they too stopped grumbling.
Pokenmong was no longer restless like before. He worked hard at splitting
sufficient firewood to last many days, kept all the water containers full at all
times and rid the kitchen garden of weeds and pests. He even managed to
bring some flower seedlings, the ones that the neighbours threw out of their
gardens as surplus, and lovingly planted them in front of their house. Jiten’s
little cottage soon assumed the look of a very cosy home unlike earlier when
the entire compound seemed to have been overtaken by weeds and general
neglect. The flowers in the front garden, though only ordinary varieties like
hibiscus, marigold and sunflowers, gave the house a festive look when they
bloomed in their season. Pokenmong also repaired the bamboo fencing, re-
plastered the mud walls and pestered Jiten to buy lime to whitewash them. He
was reluctant at first but when the children also supported Pokenmong’s idea,
he gave in and one day he came home in a rickshaw carrying a tin full of
lime. On a Sunday all four of them, Jiten, Pokenmong and the two children,
Sunita and Babul, mixed the lime with water adding some blue powder used
on white clothes, and began to paint the entire house, inside and out, with the
magic mixture. Not to be outdone in enthusiasm, Jiten’s wife, Senehi, decided
to cook ‘pulao’ and chicken curry for lunch in honour of the occasion. Every
one was in a terrific mood and the painting job was done by lunchtime. After
a brief nap Jiten changed into his uniform and seeing this, without waiting for
the usual nod, Pokenmong also put on a clean shirt.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ Jiten asked Pokenmong, who only
smiled and began to comb his hair.
 ‘Same place as you are,’ he answered and without waiting for any rejoinder
marched ahead in a determined manner. Jiten had lately noticed a certain
cockiness in the boy and decided to speak to him in private regarding his
behaviour.
That day, as they awaited the arrival and passage of the goods train, a long
line of vehicles began to form behind the closed gate of the crossing. There
were at least fifty trucks laden with men and materials and they were all white
soldiers, some singing and some talking loudly in a strange language. Unable
to contain his curiosity, Pokenmong slid past the barrier and approached the
first vehicle. Jiten, intent on the signal post did not notice what the boy had
done. Waving the green flag from his observation tower, he waited for the
long train to go out of his sight and began to shout for Pokenmong to open the
barrier gate on his side. But the boy was nowhere in sight even after Jiten
opened his side of the gate. Cursing the boy under his breath he walked over
and opened the barrier. The long line of vehicles with the foreign soldiers
whirred past him and in one of the trucks he saw Pokenmong’s grinning face
trying to say something to him. But the truck was travelling too fast and he
did not hear anything. The only thing he remembered was the happy face of
his domestic servant now moving on to another sphere. That was the last he
saw or heard about this boy, who had once called him ‘Baba’, until the
morning when Babul came home shouting and waving a newspaper, ‘Baba,
Baba, see what is written here.’ Jiten read the name but could not connect it to
the smiling face that had whizzed past the crossing on that day when he had
felt as if he had indeed lost a son.
The ‘foreign’ soldiers were Americans who had come to set up camp in the
perimeter of the barely functional airfield to oversee the final evacuation of
men and materials from the last allied command-post of the Indo-Burma
campaign. Through gestures and a smattering of a few English words,
Pokenmong had managed a ride with them. He had no idea what he was going
to do when they reached the destination. All that he knew was that he had to
find out what these ‘white’ people were like, if they were at all like ordinary
people or were a species apart from anything he knew. As his initial curiosity
wore off, it started getting dark and he did not know the way back to Jiten’s
house. He hung around for some time and hid behind some barrels to settle
for the night. One of the night patrols heard a sound and shone his light on the
frightened boy who crouched and turned himself into a ball, whimpering. He
dragged the boy from his hiding place and brought him inside the camp.
Sensing that he might be hungry the soldier made him a corned-beef
sandwich and throwing a blanket at him went out. At first the boy was
reluctant to try the strange-looking meal in his hand but being terribly hungry,
he took a small tentative bite and found that he liked it! He finished it in no
time and was soon fast asleep, wrapped in the smelly blanket.
The next morning, he told the first soldier he met that he wanted to work
for the ‘sahibs’. He was taken to the camp commander who asked him, ‘What
is your name?’
He replied, ‘My name Pokenmong. I Naga.’
‘What do you want?’ To this he could not say anything. Again he was
asked, ‘What do you want?’ The commander was getting exasperated and his
first instinct was to boot him out of the camp. But he saw that the strange boy
was trying to say something. So he asked again, ‘What do you want?’
Pokenmong looked at the white man and began to march, shouting, ‘left,
right, left, right’. The commander burst out laughing and instructed his
adjutant to assign to him whatever menial work needed to be done in the
camp. Pokenmong did whatever he was assigned to do: stacking empty
cartons, sweeping the paths, peeling potatoes, washing dishes, wiping tables.
He did not require to be told twice; it was as if he was trying to prove to them
that he was needed by them. It was the same tactic that he had used when he
was working in the other households. When he left a place, it was because he
wanted to and not because he was turned out. Seeing these white men had
opened a whole new world to the homeless boy and he wanted to stay with
them to learn more. When evening came no one thought of turning him out of
the camp. Instead, the cook took him behind the kitchen and gave him a plate
full of beef stew and bread. Later on, Pokenmong washed the pots and pans
while the cook sprawled in a chair and smoked.
Within a few days, the commander forgot that he had actually wanted the
boy out of the camp at all; he seemed so indispensable. Any errand to be
done, it was, ‘Call Pok-what?’ They found it difficult to pronounce the full
name and made it into Porky. Shoes needed to be polished, call Porky; vests
needed to be washed, tell Porky. The camp rang out with come here Porky, go
there Porky, run Porky and where are you Porky? Within a month,
Pokenmong picked up the basic words and even some of the choice words
which he often used without really understanding the meanings, to the delight
of the camp for whom he had become something of a mascot. Pokenmong
responded to his new name quite readily, but something was bothering him.
He began to think: why should he do all the work all over the camp? And
should he not ask for wages? But before he did that, he had to be ‘needed’ at
one single place all the time, and must have a regular kind of assignment.
So he started to hang around the commander’s hut; sweeping the
surroundings immaculately, then picking up bricks from all over the camp to
lay a neat little foot-path for the commander from his hut to the field office,
some hundred meters away. This done, he began to scour the adjoining fields
looking for plants and planted them around the hut. The commander was
impressed by the boy’s initiative and decided to make him an assistant to his
orderly. Pokenmong’s plan was working and soon if any one wanted his
services, they had to ask the commander’s orderly first. He was a fast learner
and by watching the other man constantly, he learnt to tidy up the hut, polish
the commander’s shoes just the way he liked them and was always at his door
anticipating the big man’s commands. Instead of being at the beck and call of
every one in the camp, he became the commander’s Man Friday and how he
enjoyed his changed status! He even thought of asking to be paid a regular
wage.
A year had already gone by since that day when Pokenmong decided to
hitch his fortune to the strangers in those huge trucks. Since then, he had
learnt more of their language and their mannerisms. He learnt to say hi, good
morning, goodnight, but good afternoon was always his weak point. Another
thing which fascinated him was the machine the commander spoke to in his
hut; every day after he went to his office, Pokenmong would look all over the
thing to find out who or what was hiding inside the strange-looking
instrument.
On Sundays, the commander would be gone for most part of the day and it
was then that Pokenmong would venture outside the camp area and
investigate what lay beyond. During one such outing, he stumbled on a small
village of about twenty-odd houses where some farmers lived with their
families. The villagers were suspicious at first, but when they learnt that the
boy worked for the ‘sahibs’ in the airfield, they became very curious. They
plied him with all kinds of questions: what the strange-looking men ate, how
they treated him, were they really human beings? Pokenmong laughed at the
questions and told them that the sahibs were ‘just like us’ and were in fact
very good to him. He told them that he was the assistant to the ‘burra sahib’
and that he could enter his hut any time he wanted! The villagers were
amazed at this boy’s good fortune to be living and eating with the ‘gora
sahibs’. He was immediately taken to the gaonburah’s house where he was
once again quizzed by the elders. The villagers were living in anxiety given
the proximity of the white men’s camp; they did not know that the Great War
was over. They were so jittery that whenever they heard the planes they all
ran into the nearby jungles. Pokenmong assured them that they need not do
that any more as the planes were merely transporting men and materials from
the area and that very soon the whole camp would be gone. They listened to
him attentively and requested him to come the next Sunday too with more
news. The gaonburah’s wife cooked a delicious meal and after what seemed
like ages, Pokenmong had rice, daal and meat curry, which for a moment
reminded him of Jiten’s household. But he soon dismissed the thought and he
began to think of what would happen to him after the white soldiers left the
country. He realized that he had to plan for his own survival once again.
During the whole of the ensuing week, Pokenmong was distracted by his
worry about the future and went about the camp like one who did not know
where he was. The commander noticed this and called him one evening into
his tent and began to question him as best as he could; though the young man
had become fairly conversant with English, he lacked the vocabulary for any
serious talk. The commander asked him,
‘What is wrong, Porky? You sick?’
‘No sahib, no sick here,’ pointing to his body, ‘but sick here,’ holding his
head.
‘Why Porky, why?’
‘You go, all go, and Porky no go. Porky go where? Porky no house, no
village, no mommy, no daddy. You my daddy, after Jiten baba. But Jiten baba
angry, Porky run away. Porky mad, mad.’ And he began to whimper like a
wounded animal.
The white man was perplexed at this turn of events. He had hardly thought
of Porky as capable of thinking about the future. Sure he liked the boy and
admitted that it was very convenient to have him around the camp but beyond
that, he did not spare a moment’s thought to the future of the boy who had
become a fixture in his camp. Try as he would, he could not find words to
console the distraught boy, so he merely patted him and said, ‘We’ll talk
tomorrow, Porky. Goodnight.’ Porky had learnt that ‘goodnight’ was a signal
for dismissal and so with bowed head he went out of the tent towards his own
quarters that he shared with the other menial staff.
He waited for a summons from the commander every evening, but in vain.
So on Saturday night, he went to the commander’s hut and knocked on the
door. There was a gruff ‘Come in’ and when he saw Porky, he looked
surprised. But he simply motioned for him to sit on a stool and continued
writing. Porky waited and after what seemed like hours, the commander
turned to him and began to speak, ‘Look Porky, we are all going back to
America in three days’ time but we cannot take you with us. That’s it boy,
Porky no can go with sahib, do you understand?’ Porky nodded, all the time
looking at the white man as though at an apparition. The commander
continued, ‘See, I have written here that whatever we leave behind will be
yours: clothes, shoes, utensils, furniture, food, tents, tires and even a jeep in
running condition. Do you understand? But Porky no go with Americans.’
Porky nodded again, this time with a new brightness in his eyes. The
commander then called the boy towards him and gave him a bundle of notes,
Indian currency which had become useless to them. By now Porky was
definitely excited and he tried to execute a salute as he often saw the soldiers
do. The white man seemed pleased that he had pacified Porky and somewhat
eased his own conscience. Pokenmong’s career as a camp-hanger was thus
terminated by the piece of paper that he held in his hand; it made him the
inheritor of the abandoned camp in an almost defunct airfield.
So the remnants of the foreign fighting forces loaded their pride and glory
in war-weary aircraft and left the desolate camp to a bewildered youth with a
sheet of paper carrying the insignia of the conquerors telling him that he was
now lord and master of the vacant space and the debris that littered it.
Pokenmong moped around the camp for two whole days, did not keep his
appointment with the villagers and stared at the paper, trying to make out
what the scribbling meant. He ignored the left-over gifts, the food rotted, and
suddenly the camp was swamped by hordes of ants, rats and raucous crows
which materialized out of nowhere. In the evenings, jackals who had
previously been kept at bay by the soldiers’ guns, emboldened by the silence
in the camp, roamed freely.
 On the third day, Pokenmong woke up with a new resolve: he would go to
see the gaonburah and try to strike a deal with the villagers; he would sell
them all the things left by the Americans. But in order to convince them, he
had to put up a very strong case why they should buy the property from him,
the new owner. So he began to inspect the camp and commit to memory the
more valuable items. He counted the number of beds, chairs, tables and
kitchen utensils. Next came the footwear, usable blankets, shirts, sweaters;
even odd things like photo-frames, mirrors, magazines and bags and suitcases
of various sizes and shapes. All these, he knew, would be of instant interest to
the villagers. Next, he thought about the jeep; he knew there was a man in the
village who was handyman to a truck driver in the town and might be
interested in the vehicle.
While he was mentally totting up this inventory, he began to doubt if the
simple villagers would be interested in a pile of used goods left by some
strangers. They might even reject the entire idea. The more he thought about
this possibility, the more disturbed he became. But he was not willing to give
up yet; he had to find a way to make some capital out of his stint with the
Americans. He asked himself, what does an ordinary farmer value most? And
the answer came to him instinctively: the land! He remembered now how his
father used to talk and dream about owning more land to cultivate, and he
understood that it was this frustration which had made him so ill-tempered.
He believed that no farmer would scoff at an offer of land, to be had so easily.
So he decided to play this card: he would sell the entire air-field and as a
bonus, would give them everything else in it, including the jeep. It would be
the biggest attraction for the villagers! He was jubilant; he believed that he
had found the best argument to convince them. He lost no time and after a
bath and a meal put together from some tins, he made for the village. It did
not bother him that it was almost evening.
When he reached the village, the menfolk had just returned from their
fields. After the preliminary pleasantries, he made for the gaonburah’s cottage
where he unfurled the precious document given to him by the commander and
explained to the assembled farmers what he had in mind. At first the villagers
were non-committal; some even went to the extent of doubting the veracity of
Pokenmong’s claim about what was written in the piece of paper. But the
gaonburah’s son who was studying in class VII in the town happened to be
there and he was asked to read and translate the writing. Though he was not
yet proficient in English, he did not want embarrass himself and looked for
the word ‘airfield’ which would lend credence to his translation. To his
delight and Pokenmong’s relief, he found the word in three places in the
document and assured the farmers that Pokenmong was telling the truth.
So the villagers went into a serious huddle and after long deliberation,
decided to buy the airfield collectively and divide it later. They were not
enthusiastic about the other stuff but Pokenmong said that they could have it
anyway and left it at that. They argued late into the night regarding the cost of
the land; the gaonburah said Pokenmong was asking an exorbitant amount; he
replied that they were getting a good bargain, what with the land being
adjacent to their village and not very far from the main road. They negotiated
through the impromptu dinner prepared by the gaonburah’s wife and endless
cups of black tea. Towards the wee hours of the morning when the first cock
crowed, the gaonburah quoted a sum to which, after some show of hesitation,
Pokenmong agreed. Inwardly he too, was crowing because he was getting Rs
500 for a piece of land which did not really belong to him and which he
believed he would never see again. The entire group then slept for a few hours
and at daybreak the others went to their own homes while the gaonburah
counted out the money from the village fund. Pokenmong was served a hearty
breakfast of flattened rice with jaggery and a steaming cup of tea with milk
and sugar. He pocketed the money and went out of the house into the
unknown once again.
Trouble started when the villagers began to divide the land and started
digging up the field. For a week or so their activities went unnoticed but one
day an official-looking man appeared at the gaonburah’s house and began
asking questions. He was shown the piece of paper written by the camp
commander and told that they had bought the airfield from a boy called
Pokenmong. He asked, ‘Where is he?’ No one had the answer; they had not
bothered to ask him where he was from or where he was going. When the
official read the document he began to laugh and told the villagers that they
were really and truly a bunch of idiots because the airfield had never belonged
to this person who sold had it. All that the villagers could do was hang their
heads in shame and regret and curse the boy who had sold them an airfield.
 The Letter

There was an uneasy quiet in the village: the underground extortionists had
come and gone and along with them the hard-earned cash the villagers had
earned by digging the first alignment for a motorable road to their village. It
was a work that had been assigned to them by the Border Roads Organization,
after much lobbying and often acrimonious negotiations. The BRO had at first
refused to out-source work to the villagers saying that they had enough
manpower to dig the alignment by themselves. The villagers had countered by
saying that since the road was being constructed through their land, as
landowners they had to be involved in demarcating the route which,
otherwise, might encroach on the territory of the neighbouring village, and
which in turn might lead to unnecessary complications. The contract was
eventually awarded to them and they completed the work two days ahead of
time. All those engaged in the work had different plans about spending the
cash. A few of them wanted to put tin roofs on their houses; some had already
entered into negotiations to buy pairs of bulls to plough their fields. One man
had actually taken some planks from a neighbour on credit to repair his floor
and was going to pay him off after he received his wages from the BRO.
What the villagers did not reckon with was the efficiency of the
underground intelligence network.
On the very day that they were paid, some strangers entered their village at
dusk. They ordered the frightened villagers to take them to the headman’s
house where they stated their demand. They read out the names of the
villagers involved in the work and found one man was missing from the
group. He was the same man who had bought the timber and was busy cutting
it to size to repair the rotten floorboards. He was hauled in before the visitors
who berated him soundly for ignoring their summons. The villagers sensed
immediately that their plans for utilizing the hard-earned cash would come to
nothing because they knew that these fierce-looking goons from the forest had
come to the village at night with only one purpose: to rob them in the name of
the underground government. Resisting them was of no use: they carried guns
and the consequences of any conflict would only mean retaliation.
Such acts of blatant extortion from the so-called ‘national workers’ was not
a new thing for the simple villagers. What amazed them was the timing of
their arrival and the accuracy of their information. They even had records of
how much each labourer had received from the BRO! Now, in the presence of
the headman they began to read out how much each man had to pay them as
‘tax’. With hatred in their hearts and murder in their eyes the men started to
count the amounts due from each and placed them in front of the headman.
But one man was counting his money again and again. When he had done it
several times he began to appeal to the leader, saying that he had to pay off
his debt to the timber trader and if he gave them his due, he would not be able
to send any money to his son who was to appear in the final examination of
the year and needed to pay the examination fee within the week. He promised
to pay them soon but requested that he be excused from the present
reckoning; otherwise his son would not be able to sit for the examination.
This man had worked for fewer days because of his wife’s illness and hence
was paid the least amount. He even tried to explain this to the leader. But
before he could complete the appeal, one of the extortionists shot out from the
stool he was sitting on and hit the poor man with the butt of his rifle, ‘What
examination, what fees? Don’t you know what sacrifices we have made in our
fight against the government? And how we are suffering in the forest? Are
you saying that we should not collect taxes so that your sons can give
examinations and become big “babus” in the Indian government to rule over
us?’
Even as he uttered the word ‘Indian’ his face seemed to distort with naked
rage, like a fierce animal at the sight of an adversary. With the quickness born
out of living in hostile surroundings, the headman pulled the fallen man aside,
otherwise murder would have taken place at the very next moment. He also
took the money from the injured villager and gave it to the still-angry man,
asking him to leave immediately. Though the leader acted like he was
offended by the tone of the headman, he complied because on many occasions
he had been saved from the army patrolling parties by this man’s advance
warnings about their movements.
 After the departure of the unwanted guests, the men began to administer
first aid to the injured man. His face was already swelling, and his mouth and
nose were bleeding. After cleaning him up as best as they could, they carried
him to the village ‘compounder’(pharmacist) who gave him some pills to stop
the bleeding and told him to rest for a few days. In the meantime, the
headman realizing the plight of this unfortunate man, lent him some money
which was sent to his son studying in a nearby town, to take care of his
examination needs. Though the immediate danger was avoided, the villagers
were apprehensive about the presence of underground elements in the vicinity
of their village. Lately, news had filtered in about the rogue elements in the
movement who had taken to harassing simple villagers and townsfolk alike by
‘collecting taxes’ in the name of the underground government and using the
money to feed their drug and drinking habits. There were even stories of how
such characters were ‘punished’ by their superiors: with their hands and feet
tied, they were shot in the head at point-blank range. What happened to these
renegades was of little consequence to the villagers who knew that they had to
contend with not only these different types of underground elements but also
with government agents and the Indian army.
The people of this village were generally known to be docile, trying their
best to avoid conflict with both the overground and the underground
governments. They were also on fairly good terms with the army personnel
who came to their village occasionally to buy vegetables, rice and other farm
produce. But this incident seemed to have revived a somnolent rage in their
minds. In groups of twos and threes they began to discuss their grievances
over a number of days. At home, in fields and in forests their minds were
filled with resentment and anger at the injustice inflicted on them over the
years by the various players in Nagaland’s murky politics, plunging Naga
society into anarchy. As though driven by a hidden force, they converged on
the headman’s house one evening and began a heated discussion. The elderly
were more cautious and urged restraint. But the younger ones spoke for action
against these forces and asked for retaliation, at whoever henceforth treated
them with disrespect and tried to ‘steal’ from them. The debate continued till
the wee hours and the voice of the elders was drowned in the strong current of
anger and resentment of the young. The village council finally resolved that
they would cease to pay any ‘tax’ to the underground, would refuse to do
‘free’ labour for the government, and would discourage the army visits by
refusing to sell any of their produce to them. This decision seemed to appease
the anger of the youth and, with the first cock’s crow, the assembly dispersed
to their respective homes. Till the end however, the elders cautioned the youth
not to initiate any unprovoked hostility.
In spite of the resumption of apparent normalcy in the village, the story of
the assault on the hapless man evoked strong reactions even from the women.
In private they called their menfolk ‘women’ and taunted them by indirect
remarks and bawdy songs about their emasculation. The men could do
nothing about this because in their hearts they acknowledged the fact that they
had indeed been cowed down for a very long time. But these emotional
upheavals were soon overshadowed by everyday realities and the village once
again returned to its placid ordinariness.
The calm however was not to last long because when they least expected it,
the inevitable happened.
It presented itself in the form of an armed man in the village asking for
directions to the headman’s house. The old woman who was thus accosted
stood rooted to the spot. She had just come out of her son’s house where she
had gone to give a special dish that she had cooked for an ailing grandchild.
Though old and seemingly out of touch with the current events of the village,
she had lived in ‘grouping zones’ during the peak of the insurgency
movement and survived beatings at the hands of the army. She had also seen
the tortured victims, the so-called ‘sympathizers’ of the underground forces,
and lived through the trauma in the wake of her husband’s abduction and
eventual killing by the underground on charges of being an informer and
‘guide’ of the Indian army. But this moment was epiphanic because, in spite
of the camouflage uniform and scraggly beard, she recognized the man as one
of the abductors of her husband. Squinting her eyes to pretend
nearsightedness and keeping her voice as calm as possible she gave him
directions, not to the house of the headman but to that of one of the members
of the younger group.
After he left, she retraced her steps to her son’s house to inform him of
what she had done. He in turn grabbed his shawl and dao and sprinted to his
friend’s house in order to collect the group. Then a group of seven men was
seen marching towards the house where the stranger was confronting the
owner, brandishing his gun and threatening him that if he did not collect a
certain amount of money as ‘emergency tax’ imposed by the underground
army he would kill him and his family and any one who opposed him. Even
as he finished saying this, he became aware of the group of villagers who
surrounded him. Though he had the gun, he became terribly worried. Trying
to put up a brave front, he challenged the newcomers, ‘Who are you and why
have you come here like this?’
At this, one of the group who was simply called Long Legs because of his
height, countered his question with, ‘We should be asking you that,’ and so
saying tried to advance towards him. The stranger, by now thoroughly
frightened by the menace surrounding him, fired his gun. But luckily the
bullet only whizzed past one of the villagers and no one was injured. The
sound of gunfire in the meantime brought many other villagers out of their
homes, at first very cautiously, but when word spread that there was only one
underground man they all made for the house in front of which the fracas was
in progress. Seeing so many able-bodied men surrounding him, the man tried
to run away but his way was blocked by the human wall. No one knew for
sure who started the beating but it continued mercilessly for several minutes
until the man lost consciousness and slumped on the ground in a bloody heap.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, the rest of the villagers deserted the
scene leaving the young activists with the injured man, inert and bleeding
profusely.
The owner of the house was by now almost incoherent with fear about the
consequences of this incident and begged the group to remove the body as far
away from his house as possible. Long Legs, the obvious leader of the group,
instructed the others to lift the man. Telling them to follow him, he led them
away from the village into a jungle path leading towards a ravine which was
believed to be haunted by the ghost of a man who had fallen from a tree and
dashed to his death on the stones below. It would soon be dark and the others
protested that it was unsafe for them to venture into this unholy area. But he
kept going, using his dao to clear the shrubbery on the trail. After much
disgruntled huffing and puffing, the men reached a high point of the hillock
with their burden.
Dumping the still-breathing man unceremoniously, the men sprawled on a
clearing to rest awhile. They first made a bonfire in the middle with the dry
wood and twigs lying nearby. It was obvious to every man what should
happen to the inert body, but the question uppermost in everybody’s mind
was: how would it be done and what should they do afterwards? Long Legs
himself seemed to be pondering on the question: he was pacing around the
body, his eyes riveted to the ground. Sensing that any delay would only cause
more difficulties for them, he called the others together and asked them the
one question: should they leave the man to die where he was or should they
hurl him down the cliff? The answer was unanimous: throw him down the
cliff. Then what about his gun? That too, they replied. As the men were going
to execute their decision, Long Legs cried out, ‘Stop, let us at least find out
who he actually was.’ Once again the men let go of the body; he started
rummaging through the pockets of the stranger and pulled out a few sodden
notes of small denominations, a tattered ID with almost illegible writing and a
letter addressed to a postbox of a nearby town. Having emptied the pockets,
once again the men lifted the bloody heap which was once a man and to a
collective count of three, hurled it to its final resting place. His gun too, was
tossed after him. This done, the men sat down once again as Long Legs
examined each scrap of paper. He counted the notes and found that the man
had exactly forty-nine rupees. The ID was unreadable, so was another piece
of paper which also seemed to have been a letter once. Then he began reading
the letter with the postbox number: As he continued reading, his face began to
change and he slumped to the ground as though struck by something heavy.
His mates, however, physically tired and drained of emotions, failed to
observe the sudden change in Long Legs’s demeanour. The gathering dusk
also helped. The entire group seemed to be in some kind of stupor.
Long Legs was the first to recover; he picked up all the contents from the
dead man’s pocket and threw them into the dying fire. As the group watched
the paper-pile disappear in the smoke, each of them felt as if a huge burden
had been lifted from his shoulders. After taking an oath that they would never
reveal what had happened to the stranger, they began walking towards the
village in the gathering darkness with the help of torches made of bamboo and
reeds.
The letter was Long Legs’s personal cross as long as he lived. Though he
had never been a good student he remembered every word of it, the letter
from the dead man’s son, begging the father to send his exam fees.
 Three Women

Prologue
A young man is hovering near the doorway of a humble cottage in a village.
He can hear the happy chatter of several women who had assisted at the
birth. Some of them leave after a while, greeting him with broad grins. Only
three women, standing near the bed, are left. He wants to see the baby but
their backs obstruct his view; he can only wait. These three women, though
distinctly different, are linked through a mysterious bond that transcends mere
blood ties.
Martha’s Story
I am Martha and this is my story, of how I am different and not really so at the
same time. When I was a little girl living with my mother and grandmother in
a village in the hills, the other children used to call me ‘coolie’ and laugh at
my dark complexion and strange features. After play I would come home and
sometimes ask my grandmother why the other children called me ‘coolie’.
She used to shrug her shoulders and say, ‘Just ignore them, they are jealous
because you can run faster and throw the sticks higher.’ I would be pacified
and would soon forget what had happened at play. Grandmother’s explanation
helped me to endure their taunts.
Something else was different about me: my hair. It was thick and curly and
because of this lice loved my head. No matter how hard my mother and
grandmother tried to catch them with their bare hands and kill them between
their thumbnails, they kept crawling all over my head, which itched all the
time. It became so bad one summer that they got hold of a pair of scissors and
chopped off my hair. You should have seen the number of lice that crept out
of the shorn hair and dotted the floor. My mother poured hot water on the lot
and swept them off the floor and into the fire, hair and all. My, how the fire
cackled that time!
 The taunts of the boys and girls began once again when I was enrolled in
school. They did not want to sit near me or play with me. Every time I stood
up to ask for permission to go out, they would giggle. Sometimes even the
teacher could not control their behaviour and that added to their amusement.
But I was tough even then and I wanted to show them that I was smarter than
all of them, and I learnt my lessons well: I was attentive in class and the
teacher began to notice my progress. I remember very clearly what she told
my mother when I was in class III, ‘Medemla, this child of yours is very
clever. One day she will become someone.’ My mother only smiled but I kept
wondering what she meant by ‘someone’? By the time I was in class IV, some
girls became quite friendly with me and I was very happy to have them as my
friends. But the word ‘coolie’ had stuck in my mind and one day I asked
them, ‘Why do you all call me “coolie”?’ They looked at each other and
turned their faces away. After some whispering among them, the one called
Chubala said, ‘Don’t you know that you do not belong to our village and that
Medemla is not your real mother? Haven’t you ever wondered why you look
so different from us? You speak just like we do but it is not your language.
Our mothers have always known this and they told us.’
I felt as if I had fallen into a dark hole. I did not know what to say, so I ran
all the way home and sat on my small bed. When grandmother peeped in to
see if I was all right, I blurted out in an angry voice, ‘Tell me, who is my real
mother?’ She was caught unawares and withdrew hurriedly. But I would not
let her go so easily. I followed her and shouted the question to her once again.
She did not look at me but sat on a low stool by the fireside with her head
bent low. I stood near her for a while and, looking at that dejected figure, I felt
a terrible loneliness. If this woman was not my grandmother and her daughter
was not my real mother, whom did I have to call my own? Where did I belong
and who were my people? And how did I become my mother’s daughter and
this old woman’s granddaughter? With these thoughts, the sense of loneliness
only grew stronger. So I inched my way to where grandmother was sitting and
squatted near her. I always liked to smell her: the peculiar odour of her body
was so different from all other scents. She smelt like the earth after rain or the
smoke from burning wood and sometimes even like crushed leaves. I smelled
these when she used to carry me on her back with the help of a cloth, tying
the ends firmly across her chest so that I would not fall off. When I laid my
head on her back, her warm body smell had a soothing effect on me and even
though I might have been crying before, the contact with her body always put
me at ease. How secure I used to feel then! At other times, whenever I got a
sniff of these smells, I knew that grandmother was near and that I need not be
afraid of anything. But sitting close to her that day, instead of the usual sense
of security and comfort, I became afraid because, being different, I might be
sent off to some place where I actually belonged. The fear of the truth that I
was different from my grandmother and her daughter who was my mother
was beginning to gnaw at my heart like the black lice of my childhood which
had made my life so miserable. And this time I was not sure whether my
mother and grandmother would help me get rid of this misery.
All that I thought of sitting next to my grandmother was that I did not want
to be different because I did not feel any different from them or all the others
in the village. At that moment I wanted to scrape off my dark skin and
rearrange my strange features. I wanted to look like them because I always
felt, thought and spoke like them. Grandmother continued sitting silently and
I was growing restless with fear thinking that I would be sent back to my
‘real’ people and would never see my mother, grandmother or my new
friends. I did not want to be sent away, I wanted to be in this village, with all
the familiar faces, speaking the same language, going to the same school and
doing everything together.
In the meantime it was getting dark and mother had not returned from her
work in the government dispensary. And I was beginning to feel hungry. I
looked at my grandmother to see what she was doing. She had closed her eyes
and was mumbling some words under her breath, almost oblivious of my
presence there. After what seemed like a long time, she got up slowly and
said to herself, ‘It’s time to feed the pigs and chickens.’ Once again I was
plunged into despair, interpreting this as her way of dismissing me. But I sat
on and decided that no matter what they, my mother and grandmother, did, I
would resist being sent away and would insist that I belonged with them and
that I was not in any way different from them. Thinking about what to say to
mother when she came home, I found myself becoming angry and resentful
towards these two older women who had withheld the truth from me, even
though I admitted that they had shown only love and concern for me all this
time. But I kept on asking myself: why had they not told me the truth?
Medemla’s History
I am Martha’s mother but the real story of my life began long before her birth,
on the day I received that terrible letter from Imsutemjen, my long-time
fiancé, telling me that he could not marry me because his father was
vehemently opposed to the idea. I still cannot describe the feeling of rejection
and betrayal that seemed to incinerate me, reducing me to nothingness. I
began to wonder if there was anything peculiar or different in me that repelled
his father. It took the better part of a year for me to come out of the depression
which set in. Only because of the heavy workload as a resident nurse in the
hospital where I trained that I was able to outwardly maintain some
semblance of normalcy. My father was terribly hurt by this unexpected turn
and came to see me. But my mother simply sent word through him that I
should consider myself fortunate in not marrying such a man. Though there
were good proposals after the break-up, I rejected every single one without a
qualm, much to the consternation of my parents. They were shocked that I
would do such a thing, especially in a case or two where they had tentatively
given their consent to the boys’ parents. When it became apparent to
everyone, my parents included, that I was determined to remain single, they
simply left me alone.
And then Martha came into my life as though ordained by some unknown
powers. I happened to be the staff nurse in the maternity ward and had to
oversee every delivery. Generally, people have the habit of coming to
hospitals as a last resort when all home remedies fail and quacks wash their
hands off, citing God’s will. We were able to help save many such cases in
our ward but there was the occasional failure where a patient died through
totally unforeseen causes. Martha’s mother was such a case. When she was
brought to us she had lost much blood and was near collapse. If the baby was
not delivered soon, we were afraid that both mother and child would die. But
the husband would not consent to a Caesarean section; so the failing woman
had to be given inductive drips and was made to exert some more to push the
baby out. Luckily, the delivery was accomplished and the healthy baby began
to squeal the moment she was born. Then disaster struck: the mother went
into convulsions and before the doctor could be summoned, she died.
I have never felt such a sense of failure as I did that day. No matter how
much I tried to convince myself that it was a hopeless case from the very
beginning, I somehow felt personally responsible for the tragedy; that in the
joy of delivering a living child we had somehow neglected to detect the tell-
tale signs of some serious problem in the woman’s weakened body. When the
husband heard the news, he broke down and cried like a baby. But when he
learned that the child was a girl, his entire demeanour changed. He stood up
in a rage and railed against the nurses, the hospital and above all against a
cruel God who had denied him a son. When he was asked what he was going
to do about the baby girl, he shot back, ‘What will I do with another girl? Do
whatever you want; I don’t want to see her ever, she who has killed my wife.’
This is how Martha became a ward of the hospital and an addition to the
group of abandoned children who would either be adopted or brought up by
the Mission. The name Martha was given to her by one of the nurses after the
father disowned her. From the very beginning there was something about this
baby who had caused so much anguish to people on her entry into the world.
For some inexplicable reason I became attached to her from those early days
and when she started to coo and smile, my heart was captured by the serenity
and beauty of her smile. Even after I was shifted from that ward, I used to
visit her every day before going home. She began to recognize me and would
cry when I left. It was as if some unseen hand was forging a bond between my
lonely self and this abandoned child and inwardly, I began to dread the day
when some childless couple would adopt and take her away from my life.
That is how I began to examine the possibility of adopting her myself.
At first it seemed like a preposterous idea, even to me! Imagine a single
unmarried woman, still completing the obligatory internship in the hospital,
unsure of future placement either in this very hospital or elsewhere, daring to
think of adopting an orphan girl. But above all these practicalities stood the
hurdle of genetic and cultural disparity. I was an Ao-Naga, of medium height,
fair complexion and still young at twenty-six. And Martha? Dark as a bat,
with distinctly aboriginal features and a head of thick curly hair already
showing signs of an Afro! I was all too aware of these obstacles but strangely,
they only reinforced my desire to take this child and make her my daughter.
I then decided to write to mother asking her if she would look after this
child I was planning to adopt until I fulfilled my obligation to the hospital. In
my letter, I gave only the barest details about Martha, wilfully omitting the
physical description, only highlighting the mother’s tragic death and the
father’s blunt and harsh refusal even to look at his own flesh and blood. I was
not very optimistic about my mother’s response because I did mention the
fact that Martha’s parents belonged to the tea tribe. It was nearly a month
before mother replied saying that if such a step would make me happy, she
was willing to take the child to the village and look after her until I found a
regular job.
I was ecstatic over this positive response and went immediately to the
Nursing Superintendent with my proposal. She listened in silence and
dismissed me with a curt reply, ‘Think over it seriously and come back in a
week’s time.’ I was terribly disappointed and also confused; these people who
always taught us about loving the unfortunate, ugly and sick people of the
world seemed to disapprove of my wish to adopt an abandoned child. But I
would not give up and went to her earlier than she had suggested. I told her
about the arrangement with my mother for looking after the child until I
finished my stint in the hospital. This time, the Super was ready with the
terms: if I insisted on adopting Martha, she told me, I would have to leave my
job immediately and would get no letter of reference from the hospital. I was
stunned! They were going to punish me for doing something which they
always preached. If they thought that this would sway my decision about
adopting Martha, they were sadly mistaken. It only made me more adamant in
my resolve. I told the Super that I still wanted to go through with the adoption
and not only that, they should pay me for the number of days that I had
already worked that month.
From a fellow nurse I came to know that some people from my village who
had come to visit a relative in the hospital were leaving in a few days’ time
and I arranged to leave with Martha in their group. It was indeed a fortuitous
coincidence because the fag end of the journey to our village after getting off
the train would be on foot. And these kind people took turns in carrying the
little baby on their backs when I became too tired to go any further. And so I
stepped into my father’s house with a baby on my back while a fellow
traveller carried my few belongings into the cottage.
The first reaction of my parents on seeing Martha was one of shock,
disbelief and even of open disgust. But after a good night’s sleep when they
saw her in daylight and the child bestowed her first smile on them, they were
completely mesmerized: they simply gawked at her and their faces broke into
genuinely happy smiles. They clamoured to hold her but the child was
reluctant to go to them at first. It was mother who succeeded in making
friends with Martha within the first week and she started to carry her on her
back wherever she went. Her trips to the fields became less frequent and after
a while stopped altogether. If father remonstrated, she would reply curtly,
‘What, you’re going to baby-sit her when I am away in the field?’ He had no
answer to this and with the ease born out of organizing household affairs,
mother established the routine that continued until Martha was enrolled in
school in her fifth year. She was a good student and sailed through every
exam with excellent marks and I secretly began to dream of sending her to
medical college to become a doctor. But I had reckoned without the
independent spirit which she exhibited from the earliest days.
When I came home that day exhausted from a difficult delivery case, I
found them, my daughter Martha and my mother, sitting sullenly silent and
strangely, away from each other. They had not lighted the lamp nor started the
evening meal. Their silence was catching; I too sat down near them without
saying anything. It was mother who uttered the first words, ‘Medemla, tell
your daughter whether you are her real mother or not.’ I looked at this young
girl whom I called daughter and began to tell her the history of her birth and
subsequent adoption and asked her in the end, ‘So now, don’t you think that I
am your mother though in a different way?’ My daughter, with all her
intelligence could not articulate her response to such an adult question and my
mother chided me for creating more confusion in her mind. She started to say
something and this time I stopped her, ‘Let her give an answer which will be
the answer to her own question.’ Martha stood up, as though she were in
school and coming closer to us said in a clear voice, ‘Mother, I may look
different from you or grandmother or from all others in the village but I feel
no difference in my heart.’ She could not continue and broke down in sobs. I
went closer and embracing her, said, ‘Just as you feel, I am your real mother.
Do you understand?’ She nodded through her tears and I could see that there
were tears in my mother’s eyes also as she put her arms around us.
The three of them just stood there for quite some time; a strange trio, as
though enacting a ritualistic affirmation of the power of mother-love to mesh
the insecurity of innocence in the magic of an emotionally enlarged truth.
Lipoktula’s Secret
My name is Lipoktula and I am Martha’s grandmother. You may wonder why
I do not begin by saying ‘I am Medemla’s mother.’ It is because my role as
grandmother to this alien child is not encumbered with any sense of guilt or
fear whereas my role as Medemla’s mother was. Our life was difficult, our
sole resources were what we grew in our fields and that was not much. The
additional income came through my weaving and my husband’s wages as a
daily labourer in odd places after our harvests were over. Even then we could
not meet with the deadlines for paying fees, and the older boys sometimes
could not sit for exams. In disgust both of them ran away and joined the
Assam Rifles, after studying only up to class VI. Medemla’s case was
different; she was very good in studies and there was no problem about her
fees because the boys used to send us money regularly. She went on to do her
matric exam and then decided to go to nursing school. She was a good girl;
obedient, humble and not at all flighty like some of her age-set. I was
confident that one day she would make an excellent wife and a good mother.
Little did I know how her future would be blighted by the secret of my past.
The nightmare started the day I received a letter from Medemla telling me
of her friendship with a boy from our village who was studying to be an
engineer in the same town where she was undergoing training. She went on to
say that she had fallen in love with this boy named Imsutemjen, son of
Merensashi, a council member of our village, and informed us that they were
planning to get married in the winter. The boy’s father would soon approach
her father and formally ask for her hand. I felt as if a bolt of lightning from
the sky had struck me and I collapsed in a heap on the floor. Luckily I was
alone at home that day when the letter was brought and I decided to destroy it
immediately. I threw it into the fireplace and saw it crumple into a black mass
and mingle with the ashes. I realized that my dark secret had at last raised its
ugly head and was about to destroy two families and along with it, my
daughter’s happiness. This marriage had to be stopped. But how? What could
I say to Medemla or even to the boy? And above all, could I ask my husband
to refuse permission without citing a convincing reason? The only person who
could break up this relationship was the boy’s father.
I thought of this the whole night and decided that I had to confront the man
who was responsible for making me carry this secret in my heart for all these
years. You see, Merensashi had raped me many years ago and Medemla is his
child. It happened like this. His field adjoined ours and one day when my
husband was away on a road construction job, he came in while I was eating
the mid-day meal, claiming that he had stumbled and may have sprained his
ankle. I finished my food hurriedly and boiled water to give him hot
fomentation for his injured foot, though I noticed that he was looking at me in
that certain way that a man does when he is sexually interested in a woman.
All the same, I finished my task and was about to go back to my field, when
he stretched out his hand as though to thank me and pulled me to the ground. I
did try to ward him off but he was like an enraged bull and his passion was
brutal. When he was done, he held on to me and would not let go of my body
lying almost naked next to him. He tried to say something and I began to
collect my clothes in order to slip out and make for the village. But no,
something stirred in him and he pinned me to the ground and took me once
more.
When he rolled off me the second time, visibly spent, I grabbed my clothes
and sprinted out of the hut and made a detour to the stream to wash myself
thoroughly. It was when I was squatting in the water to wash out what he had
poured into me that I realized what had happened to me. Though I started to
blame the man, there was a recurrent question in my mind: why had I not
resisted more vigorously, screamed or even scratched his face when he was
groping for my sex? I could not explain my own conduct. But the fact
remained that it had happened, not only once but twice in the space of half an
hour, and here I was sitting in water like a fool to wash it off! And I began to
condemn myself. I sat in the water for a long time as though to wash away the
sense of shame and guilt now overtaking me. It was only when I felt numb
due to the cold that I came out, dried myself, dressed and made for home, a
thoroughly confused and broken woman. For many days I remained at home,
pretending to be sick, and did not stir out of the house. Then I missed my
period and soon realized that I was pregnant. The burden on my soul was
becoming unbearable, and in the second month, I went to my mother and
blurted out the truth to her. She chided me for not running away immediately
but all the same, was absolutely heartbroken at my plight, and we both cried
hard and long. In the end she said to me, ‘You know, it is always wise for a
woman to keep a part of the self all to herself and sometimes she has to
choose between telling the truth which destroys, and living with a lie which
may remain a secret forever. I cannot say anything more because it is only
you who can make the choice.’ That day I made a momentous decision: I
would remain silent.
It never occurred to me not to have the baby and Medemla was born, to the
delight of my husband who had always longed for a daughter. I admit I was
terrified at times but hoped that no one would ever come to know the truth
about this child’s true parentage. She would always belong in our family.
When Medemla was about a year old, my mother took a long intense look at
her and whispered, almost to herself, ‘Thank god, she does not look too
different from her brothers.’
But she was different from them, and, I had to think long and hard about
the terrifying spectre of an incestuous marriage. I realized that the onus was
entirely on me to prevent it at all costs even though it would mean destroying
my own daughter’s prospects of happiness in the process. I agonized over the
pain that my daughter would feel if the marriage was called off. But there was
no earthly way of avoiding this seeming act of cruelty against my own child
which must be carried out in order to avert the curse of incest. Hurting her
just this once was, in my mind, far better than seeing her in an incestuous
marriage forever. ‘No one would know’ had worked once to cover my guilt
from my husband. But if I took refuge in this now, it would mean committing
a graver crime not only against my own flesh and blood but also against a
society where such marriages are banned; in ancient times the penalty was
death. The first time I had acted out of fear of the truth which would have
ruined two families. But now I was going to build a defence on the truth
because of a different kind of fear: the fear that my daughter would be
condemned to live in an incestuous marriage.
I had to work out a strategy through which I could privately urge the boy’s
father to oppose the marriage. So the next Sunday when Merensashi walked
out of the church, I stepped in beside him as though two churchgoers were
walking back home side by side, quite by accident. At a point where there
was no one near, I quickly informed him of his son’s intent to marry Medemla
and told him that if he did not stop it, I would publicly announce that he had
fathered Medemla that day in the hut and that his blood ran in her veins. He
was not convinced at first that she was his child, so I told him, ‘She has a
birthmark below her left collar-bone, just like yours. Besides, I should know
when she was conceived.’ Saying what I had to say, I walked away.
I do not know exactly what happened but soon after this, Imsutemjen wrote
a curt letter to Medemla breaking off the engagement, and the rest is her
history.
Martha
Mother wanted me to become a doctor: it would mean that I had to be away
from the village for many, many years to complete my studies. I did not want
to be away for so long from the village where now I felt I truly belonged.
Every one treated me as an equal and nobody mentioned the word ‘coolie’ in
my presence any more. Besides, I had fallen in love with my classmate Apok
and we planned to marry when we finished our eighth class. We were secretly
meeting every weekend in grandmother’s barn mainly to talk, but the
intimacy of being together away from anybody’s gaze emboldened us and
before we realized what we were doing we started to make love. Though he
was gentle and kind, I cried a little the first time because he hurt me there. I
had some initial misgivings about what we were doing, but Apok’s gentle
ardour overwhelmed me each time and soon I began to look forward to these
exciting encounters. I was going to tell my mother soon about our
relationship, but before I could do that, something happened: I became
pregnant. When I told her, she turned to me with an ashen face and said,
‘Martha, Martha, what have you done? Why couldn’t you have waited? I was
going to arrange a grand wedding for you. Instead, you have brought shame
upon the family by becoming pregnant before the wedding. There will not be
a proper wedding now, only a small gathering of relatives and the Pastor to
formalize your marriage to Apok.’ I looked at her pained expression and
wondered: how could one describe the responses of a woman’s body to the
touch of a man she loved to such a person as my mother, who had never felt
the demanding power of such love? And harder still, convince her that once
you’ve tasted love like that, there was no stopping?
Medemla
I am both shocked and amazed at what has happened to Martha. In a way I am
glad that my father is not here to face this; he died suddenly when Martha was
in her fourth class. Now that everything is out in the open, these two
youngsters have become inseparable and openly display their love and desire
for each other. I keep asking myself: what is it that pulls a man and woman
together and makes them so irresistible to one another? Why did I never feel
that way with Imsu? And when I think back to the time after Imsutemjen’s
rejection of me, I realize that whatever sense of dejection and abandonment I
had felt at that time, it was somehow not personal or intimate; but more like
the disruption of an order of things that ought to happen in a woman’s life.
And after this debacle, I decided that I would have nothing to do with any
man, ever. This has often led me to ask myself: Am I abnormal or just a
different kind of woman?
Lipoktula
Medemla came to tell me about Martha’s pregnancy and ask me what should
be done. I told her that we should now formalize their relationship as soon as
possible. And then she did a strange thing. In the middle of our planning for
the home ceremony, she blurted out, ‘Mother, I don’t understand why they
had to do it before marriage. Could they not have waited? What is it that
drove them to it? I can tell you now that I never felt like that with Imsu even
when we were alone.’ How could I explain to her why the law of attraction
between a man and a woman could not apply to them, and why she had not
felt that way with Imsu? Even an old woman like me still remembers and
understands the inevitable force that draws a man and a woman towards one
another. Since she had never entertained any other man’s overtures, Medemla
would never experience the impulse that draws a man and a woman into that
kind of intimacy.
Though I have told you that I was raped by Merensashi long ago, even
now, when I recall the encounter, I remember, much more than my sense of
outrage, the absurd power of his sex in overcoming my initial protest. Just as
my mother did, I too have asked myself many times why I had not run out the
moment I understood what this intentions were that day. But each time, I only
recall how contagious the crazed passion of the man was and how an
inexplicable reaction of my body turned my feeble resistance to participatory
submission.
Epilogue
‘Push!’ they urge her, and she tries one more time to heave but nothing
happens. Her scream rings out in the night and Apok comes rushing in, only
to be pushed back outside. ‘Stay there,’ is the command, adding, ‘if you can’t
bear to hear her cry, go far away.’ But he hangs around; the labour has been
going on for almost twelve hours and even Medemla the experienced nurse is
despairing: would it be a tragedy for Martha also? There is a short lull in
between the pains and Martha asks for some water, but before she can gulp
down the first mouthful, a massive wave of pain overtakes her body, making
her almost arch convex from the cot. The growl she emits is like nothing these
women who have participated in many deliveries, have ever heard, and as the
last hiss leaves her throat, one of them shouts, ‘I see the head, one more push,
baby, just once more.’ Martha hears her and with an ultimate effort gives
another push and the baby slithers out of her exhausted body. The baby’s wet
and slimy contours as it surges through the passage produces such a sensuous
effect on Martha that she will always remember it as more sublime than the
transient ecstasies of sex.
The new mother slumps on her bed totally spent, while the other women
busy themselves with the rituals following a birth. When the child is brought
to her, Martha looks at it with awe, and thinks with a deep sadness of her
mother who has never experienced the pleasurable pains of motherhood. The
grandmother is watching Martha all throughout and gives her a knowing
wink. She picks up the baby and holds it out to Medemla. The new mother
turns to look at the two women as they encircle her child in their arms. She
thinks, they too, are mothers in their own ways and now she has joined their
ranks. The mother and the grandmother come to the bed where she is resting
and ceremoniously lay the baby next to her, in a ritualistic acknowledgement
of her motherhood.
Apok, the new father, who is watching the activities of the women from the
doorway, now comes forward, directing his gaze towards the bed in order to
have a closer look at his just-born son. But his vision is obstructed by the
daunting circle of the women, these three different kinds of mothers, standing
as though mesmerized by the miracle of new life. He is reluctant to break the
spell and, feeling like an intruder in a sacred ceremony, slips out unobserved.
 A Simple Question

Imdongla woke up that morning with an uneasy feeling; she was sure she’d
had a bad dream but could not remember what it was about. During her
morning chores she tried to recollect it but without success; so she turned to
her husband and told him of her foreboding, ‘Listen, I’ve had a very weird
dream, something bad will happen today. So don’t shoot your mouth off like
you always do and stay at home only.’ He simply grunted at her and muttered,
‘You and your dreams!’ But Imdongla insisted, ‘Just be careful, today is not a
good day,’ and left for the far-off field.
Imdongla was barely literate, able to read the Bible and the Hymn book
only. But, she was otherwise a worldly-wise woman, knowledgeable about the
history and politics of the village. She had grown up in a household where
discussions about these were daily fare because her father was a gaonburah.
Her husband, Tekaba, was also a gaonburah, and they had four healthy
children. The gaonburahs were appointed by the government from the major
clans as their agents to help maintain order in the village, and were issued a
kind of uniform: red and black jackets and red blankets as symbols of their
status. They worked in tandem with the traditional village council, also
founded on the principle of clan representation. Set up during the British
days, the system continued even after India gained independence.
If, during peacetime these elders enjoyed a privileged status, they became
the most vulnerable ones when hostilities broke out between the Nagas and
the Indian state. On the one hand, they were held responsible by the
government if any young men from their villages were reported to have
joined the rebel forces; on the other, the underground forces ordered them to
identify young men representing each clan to join their army, failing which
they threatened to burn down the village granaries. The forced ‘conscription’
was soon followed by ‘demands’ for material support like money, grain and
livestock. Though the gaonburahs were supposed to inform the government
about the activities of the rebels, they were under tremendous pressure from
the underground forces because every move they made was monitored from
close quarters. There were instances when certain elders suspected of being
‘with’ the government had been summarily executed. For the gaonburahs it
was an extremely untenable situation.
The demand for ‘taxes’, as they were termed by the underground, started
innocuously enough. The very first time it was Re 1 collected from every
household to pay for the travel expenses of the rebel leader going to foreign
lands to plead for Naga independence from India. At that time, Imdongla,
though reluctant to part with hard-earned cash, however small the
denomination, gave in without much protest. But as the years went by, the
demands grew, and reluctance or protest was met with by severe beatings, not
only of the person involved but of the gaonburahs and the elders as well.
Several times it was Imdongla’s presence of mind which had saved Tekaba
from being beaten. Once the collectors had gathered in front of her house, and
were berating a villager for bringing less rice than he was supposed to and
asking him why he had dared disobey the command. The petrified villager
could not say anything in his own defence. Imdongla was watching the
unfolding scenario from the house. Then the leader turned to her husband
Tekaba and said, ‘What do you have to say about this?’ At this point
Imdongla decided that if she did not intervene both the men would be beaten
mercilessly. Dashing inside, she grabbed a basket of freshly husked rice and
came out shouting, ‘Hey, Toshi, why don’t you tell this man that I could not
return this rice to you this morning as promised. Remember you lent it to my
son for the age-set feast? Here it is.’ So saying she set the basket on the
ground and turned to the collector, ‘You can see, brother, this is more than
what he has to give, please take the lot and go, otherwise you will be caught
in the rain.’ The sky was indeed turning dark with rain-clouds. The man
looked at her for some time, gestured to his soldiers to gather the rice and left
the village at a running pace, leaving both her husband and the villager
dumbstruck.
Very soon the entire land was gripped by terror unleashed both by the
underground forces as well government soldiers. Within a couple of years of
the commencement of hostilities, the army had established camps in strategic
villages with regular patrols mounted every day for the safe passage of more
soldiers into the interior of the land. Even in their village, an army camp was
built on a hillock. Ironically, it was Tekaba and the elders of the council who
accompanied the Deputy Commissioner of Mokokchung to officially hand
over the prime site for the soldiers to set up their camp. As soon as the
soldiers moved into their camp, a new sense of foreboding settled on the
village. Whichever village allowed the setting up of army camp became prime
suspects in the eyes of the underground and, as a form of punishment, were
taxed double the amount. Resisting the coming of the army on the other hand
was not an option because then the government itself would initiate measures
to punish the un-cooperative village: all able-bodied men would be forced to
work (without wages or food) in government projects like levelling a hillock
to build a football field or clearing up to two hundred metres on both sides of
the highway so that the underground soldiers would not be able to ambush
army convoys, a regular occurrence. Villagers who persistently resisted the
setting up of army camps would be forced out of their villages; their houses
and granaries would be burnt and they would be relocated along with other
recalcitrant villagers in a ‘grouping’ zone and kept in fenced-in areas, not
allowed to cultivate their fields, their movements monitored and under
constant surveillance.
The situation was steadily growing worse: from the meagre harvest the
villagers had to meet with the demands of the belligerent ‘collectors’ of the
underground. Now the taxes were in all three forms; rice, livestock and
money. Sometimes all three would be demanded at the same time. Imdongla
could see the effects of the terrible pressure on her husband; his hair had
turned white, his face was gaunt with hunger and apprehension, and his eyes
had a furtive look. He spoke little and tossed on his hard bed by the fireside
all night. He even thought of resigning but Imdongla pointed out that if he so
much as mentioned it to anyone the government would suspect him of being a
sympathizer of the rebels and arrest him. Besides, she pointed out, everyone
would call him a coward; how would he like that?
The double tax of rice from the underground brothers came during a
particularly bad year; they had already collected the tax from the first harvest
in August and now demanded another one from the winter crop. After the
earlier lot had been paid, the army chaps led by a fierce-looking Havildar had
come around asking all sorts of questions. The villagers pleaded ignorance
and got away lightly with only some choice words from the leader. The
second demand coming so close after the first put the elders in a quandary.
They met in Tekaba’s house and debated long into the night. Imdongla
forcefully butted in to advise resisting the so-and-so’s from the jungle. Tekaba
tried to hush her, ‘Keep quiet, woman, you know nothing.’ At this she flared
up, ‘Know nothing? Well, who saved you the last time when you stood there
like a statue about to wet your loin cloth? Just think how our daughter will
feed her children if they take away what’s left after paying their debt to the
uncle!’ And turning to the other men she continued, ‘And you venerable
elders, where is your wisdom? Your courage? Can’t some of you go to the
jungle and talk to the leaders? Plead with them? Haven’t we always given
them what they wanted? Ask them for time; instead of rice offer them some
pigs and chickens. We can do without meat but we cannot live without rice.
Don’t you see what’s happening to our children and women?’
The day on which she could not remember the bad dream of the previous
night, Imdongla walked to the field thinking about the debate: she was sure
that her dream had something to do with this. She resolved to tell her daughter
to repay only half of what they owed so that after paying their due to the
underground they would have enough rice for themselves to last till January;
then her husband could look for work on the road-building projects or even in
the army camp where they constantly needed labourers to mend fences or
carry loads from the big trucks which brought supplies for them regularly. But
when she reached home in the evening she was told that a group of soldiers
had come and dragged all the elders including her husband to the army camp
on charges of giving supplies to the underground. It was a cold night and to
her surprise she saw that her husband’s red blanket was lying in a corner.
Knowing how susceptible he was to cold, she grabbed it along with his red
and black jacket and started for the army camp. When she was leaving, her
daughter came out of the inner room and said, ‘The army man pulled it off
father’s shoulder saying that he did not deserve to wear it because he was
supporting the jungle men.’
Imdongla walked resolutely towards the camp with the warm clothing
bundled into a tight packet. When she reached the gate the sentry would not
allow her in but she began to shout at him in her dialect pointing to the
captain’s hut and saying, ‘Sahib, sahib.’ The sentry gave in to her insistent
muttering and thinking that she might be an informer, let her through. When
she entered the hut there seemed to be no one around but she heard voices
from a room beyond a partially open door. She peeped in and saw an
enclosure of bamboo stakes where all the elders were being held captive.
Only her husband was in a separate enclosure. As soon as she spotted him,
she threw the blanket and jacket through the opening between the stakes. She
was so quick that by the time the captain realized what was happening,
Tekaba had put on the jacket and wrapped himself in the blanket. The captain
turned to his soldiers and started to shout at them asking who had let this mad
woman into the camp. He made as if to open Tekaba’s cell but Imdongla
jumped in between him and the make-shift lock-up, talking rapidly. The
captain turned to someone in the shadows and asked him to interpret what she
was saying. He told the captain that she had come to take her husband home
and would not leave without him.
The captain saw that short of shooting her, there was no other way of
getting rid of her. She sat in front of Tekaba’s enclosure and when the captain
approached her, she stood up and made as if to take off her waist cloth which
he knew was the ultimate insult a Naga woman could hurl at a man signifying
his emasculation. He turned round and went out of the room. Imdongla again
squatted on the earthen floor and pulled out her metal pipe with a bamboo
nozzle and filled it with home-grown tobacco. She saw a box of matches on
the captain’s table and crossed over to snatch it. She lit her pipe and dragging
on it deeply, sat down to continue her vigil, tucking the matchbox in the folds
of her supeti. She then stationed herself at Tekaba’s cage-door. She had
concluded that as long as she was there the soldiers would not dare beat up
her husband and the other elders.
Outside, the captain was mulling over the other things the interpreter had
told him. Imdongla had said, ‘Look at them; aren’t they like your own
fathers? How would you feel if your fathers were punished for acting out of
fear? Fear of you Indian soldiers and fear of the mongrels of the jungle.’ But
what affected him most was one single question that Imdongla had repeatedly
asked: ‘What do you want from us?’ For the first time in his tenure in these
hills, this apparently simple village woman had made him see the impossible
situation faced by the villagers. Abruptly he turned to his adjutant and told
him to release Tekaba and escort the couple beyond the perimeter of the
camp. He however decided to keep the others overnight as a face-saving ploy
for the army.
After the couple left, he felt restless and wanted a smoke to calm his
nerves. He began looking for the matchbox he had kept on the table and
which Imdongla had earlier appropriated. The captain was puzzled at first but
suddenly remembered seeing the old woman smoking her pipe and concluded
that she had stolen his matchbox and was freshly perturbed. The petty
thievery which would normally have been ignored, once again reminded him
how a coarse and illiterate village woman had managed to unsettle his
military confidence by challenging the validity of his own presence in this
alien terrain.
 Sonny

I came home that fateful summer, out of a sense of filial duty, to spend a
month with my ageing parents. Another reason that helped me decide on this
journey was the apparent cessation of hostilities between the conflicting
forces, maintained by a fragile cease-fire agreement. But there remained the
bitter and violent rivalries among the different groups of freedom-fighters
which often resulted in senseless deaths of leaders and cadres alike, creating a
new sense of terror in the minds of the general public. The nagging
misgivings about these sporadic killings notwithstanding, I came to my home-
town, little knowing that the murky politics of a contested land would once
again rip apart my assiduously restructured life. I also knew that Sonny had
been living there with his wife and children since the declaration of general
amnesty, but I came nonetheless, convinced that I was ‘cured’ of Sonny.
After two weeks with family and friends, when I was beginning to relax for
the first time in many years, all hell broke loose and my world turned upside
down once again. It all started with an early morning call from my niece who
sobbed out the terrible news, ‘Aunty, Sonny was assassinated last night in his
home, they say by the J group.’ I held on to the phone for a while but without
saying a word put it down. Sonny, the man who dared the fates and tamed his
passion to follow a dream, gunned down in cold blood; Sonny who had once
told me, ‘Sweetheart, you don’t understand, this is something bigger than you
or me and everything else put together. This is my destiny.’ Was this then the
end of that colossal dream? Was it his destiny to die at the hands of fellow
dreamers?
I sat on the unmade bed, not daring to move or do anything lest I break into
tiny shards, so taut was I with my unutterable grief. My mother burst into the
room but when she saw my face she knew I’d heard and quietly withdrew,
almost on tiptoe. I continued my private wake in the semi-darkness of the
room, the undrawn curtains obstructing the sunlight of an otherwise bright
and sunny day of summer. But the darkness within my heart only deepened
with each passing moment.
‘Sonny dead’ was something incomprehensible; what I had cherished and
kept alive in my innermost being was the image of ‘Sonny alive’, the way I
had remembered him all these years: vibrant and so full of hope. If it had been
difficult to live a desolate life without him then, now I felt truly bereaved,
more than ever before, though he had been out of my life these last twelve
years. As I sat immobile on the bed, my mind went back to the period when
the spectre of his final commitment to the ‘cause’, as he called it, loomed
large like a dark cloud between us, though I never voiced my misgivings.
Only when I realized that he was bent on a course that was leading him
irrevocably away from my life, I told him, ‘As long as I know that you are
alive and well, I shall try to live with your absence.’ He understood what I
meant and after he vanished into his dream-world I received word through
various channels, information about his personal well-being. Then after about
two years, the messages became vague and far between. Sometimes only torn
pieces of newspapers appeared with circled letters of the alphabet carrying
some message. Many a time it would be so garbled that I could not make
anything out of it. But even this tenuous thread of connection between us
snapped in the fifth year, plunging me into an abyss of anger, bitterness and
resentment against the man who had come into my life in the prime of my
youth and uprooted me from my conventional moorings, carrying me to
heights of love and passion I had never thought existed, only to leave me
marooned on a stark landscape, all for an illusive dream.
As I sat on the bed and mourned the passing away of the man who had
continued to be such a vital presence in my spirit, I recalled our last night
together. By that time I knew that Sonny had finally committed himself and
was going to China with a batch of recruits for training and acquiring much-
needed arms from across the border. Neither of us uttered the dreaded word.
But ‘China’ now stood between us, like an impassable ridge of ice blinding
my vision with its brilliance and enormity and numbing my senses with its
inevitability. It threatened to eclipse the deep love we had shared for the last
three years. This night, we both knew, was going to hold the last precious
moments of our enchanted life and neither of us wanted it to be marred in any
way. When the new day dawned, we would be in different worlds and our
lives would never be the same again.
 A kind of unfamiliar restraint crept into our behaviour that surreal night as
though we were enacting a formal farewell. Our bodies’ responses remained
as ardent and intense as before but we experienced a fierce desperation in our
coming together as though we were fending off an unseen force that was
tearing us away from each other. When passion was done, we were gripped by
the unspoken terror of the truth floating in the silence. Wordlessly we clung
to, and lay in each other’s arms, but unlike other nights when such moments
only replenished our need for each other, this night we were lost in the maze
of thinking ‘China’; I, resenting it, and he, never acknowledging nor
apologizing for it though he must have sensed my fears in the urgency and
ferocity of my response to his tender lovemaking.
The memory of that night reminded me of the way I had sneaked out of his
life as though I were trying to prove that it was I and not he who was leaving
the other. As the first light of dawn appeared on the horizon, I got up quietly,
making sure that I did not disturb the gently snoring figure who was about to
embark on a journey away from me, I went out for a long walk in the woods
beyond the campus, creating a physical distance as a buffer against the
impending abandonment, and stayed there until I felt sure that he had left for
his ordained destination. When I came back to the cottage, it was filled with
his absence and I felt as though it too, was dead just as I felt at that moment.
A void settled in my heart as vast as the wide expanse of the woods I had just
left out there. Absentmindedly I noticed that he had drunk the coffee I had left
for him in the thermos. There was also a short note on the dresser which
simply said, ‘Sweetheart, this is not goodbye because you will forever be the
love of my life.’ In bitterness and frustration I tore it to pieces.
What neither of us had understood at that time was that Sonny was entering
a twilight zone in the struggle for freedom where one could not identify the
real enemy any more because the conflict was no longer only of armed
resistance against an identifiable adversary. It had now also become an
ideological battlefield within the resistance movement itself, posing new
dangers from fellow national workers supposedly pursuing a common goal.
And today Sonny had become a victim of his own convictions when the
assassins pumped bullets into a fellow fighter’s bosom.
Though Sonny had become a hero and intellectual ‘guru’ to the younger
generation of sympathizers, he had a tendency to alienate the senior leaders of
the movement by questioning their ideology and actions in public even before
he went ‘underground’. During those years when the world was avidly
following the careers of a revolutionary called Fidel Castro and his friend and
adviser Che Guevara, some of his admirers went to the extent of comparing
Sonny to the enigmatic Che, claiming that he was the real brain of the entire
movement. This certainly did not endear him to the powers within the
movement and from the moment he joined their ranks, he had to walk a tight-
rope in the multi-headed ideological minefield within.
When he quietly slipped away from my life into another sphere of
existence, I was plunged into an abyss of self-doubt and self-recrimination for
my obsessive love for a man who regarded his own nationalistic passion more
important than the love of a woman. After a while though, I resolved that I,
too, would seek a new environment where my work would help me to bear
the pain of his absence from my life. So I moved to a big city where, after
many months of hardship, I got a job with a national paper and began my
career as a journalist. It turned out to be a strategic position as far as links
with Sonny were concerned because stray bits of information about factional
tensions within the various groups due to ideological differences would
surface in journalistic circles now and then, which eventually reached my
desk at the bureau. I often wondered how Sonny was dealing with the
situation. Ever the impulsive and outspoken man that he was, I feared that
sooner or later, he would say or do something to bring down the wrath of the
bigger groups on himself or his family. But of one thing I was sure: Sonny
would stand by his principles, come what may.
In the seventh year of my life ‘after Sonny’, a fellow reporter showed me a
clipping from a foreign newspaper announcing the marriage of a ‘rebel’ leader
with one of the female cadres in his outfit; I thought to myself, it could be any
one of the so-called leaders. But the next sentence stunned me: it said that this
particular leader had abandoned the prospects of a bright future as a
constitutional lawyer to join the movement. And I knew that it could not be
anyone else other than Sonny! If I ever really hated the man I had loved so
much, it was at this moment. So enamoured was I with the idea of Sonny
being as faithful to me as I was to him, that it had not occurred to me that he
was now living in a totally different environment filled with the daily hazards
of living in primitive conditions, and at the same time coping with danger
from the superior forces of the government as well as threats from rival
groups.
 As I look back on that stage of my life I realize how extremely naive I was.
I had often argued with him that he was living in a dream ignoring the
realities of the world. I had even at times ridiculed his goal of achieving an
independent state, asking him where his treasury or his army was. He would
simply give me a cryptic smile, wink slyly and point to his head and say,
‘Here’. If he was a dreamer then I too was one because I was still so
immersed in the romantic haze of my first love that I completely failed to
comprehend the new realities of his life away from mine. And the devastating
news reminded me how far removed Sonny’s world was from mine, and how
changed he must have become with the compulsions of a totally new milieu.
But no amount of rationalization could blunt my acute sense of feeling
betrayed.
It was then that the façade of normalcy and conformity began to crack and I
lost my way. I took up with men at the slightest encouragement and spent two
stormy years of numerous flings. News of my profligacy reached home and
my elder brother came to take me back to ‘dry out’ as he put it. There was a
ragged bundle of letters at home among which were three from Sonny written
two years earlier. I was stunned when I read them. In the first one he wrote
about life on the run and the hardships faced by the group. The second one
was pathetic: almost incoherent, it spoke of his disillusionment, frustration
and suicidal tendencies due to not succeeding in his endeavours. And then an
uncharacteristic confession: he wrote one sentence which still rings in my
ears: ‘Sweetheart, there were often times when I felt grateful that you did not
try to stop me from going in, but now I wish you had.’ This was a different
Sonny from the one I knew and cherished: in a way it was a kind of
disillusionment for me too; the man whom I had thought so strong and even
infallible was human after all!
I did not open the last one for two days dreading its contents but curiosity
got the better of me and I slit open the dirty envelope. It was short; it simply
said ‘No matter what you hear or read, know that my love for you is the one
abiding truth of my life.’ It was then that I knew that he was indirectly
referring to his impending marriage. When we were together I used to be the
one to speak of love; he could never bring himself to express sentimental
feelings. But now he was speaking of his love for me virtually on the eve of
his marriage, and I realized the sad truth that his actions were now determined
by existential compulsions rather than personal feelings.
 Linking the memory of those words to the present grief, I finally wept the
inconsolable lament of the truly bereaved and cried until there were no more
tears to shed for the man I had lost twice, once to his idealism and now to
death. I recalled how, during those desert years of loneliness and aching, I had
longed to have one more glimpse of that handsome face which had enthralled
me, to hear the voice that seemed to caress me every time he uttered my
name, and to be gathered in the embrace of the powerful yet gentle arms. I
had felt so loved and sheltered then. And now all that was gone, and very
soon the man called Sonny would become, if at all, a mere mention in some
obscure history book.
As I sat on the bed and tried to absorb the fact of Sonny’s death, my mind
strayed to incongruous musings: what had happened to the bluish mole over
his right nipple? Was it still intact or had the bullets obliterated it? How does
the handsome face look in death? They must have dressed him in a suit by
now, I thought, as I looked at the wall clock and saw that it was half past
seven and again my mind went on to trivial details. What kind of shirt have
they put on his shattered chest? Did his wardrobe still contain the blue silk tie
I gave him for the Christmas of our last year together? I even began to smile,
remembering the boyish pleasure he had evinced when he saw my present.
That Christmas morning in the university chapel, when he turned up in a dark
navy blue suit with a pale blue shirt and wearing the tie I had given him, my
heart swelled with joy and pride: I thought no man on earth could look more
handsome than Sonny and I gloried in the fact that he was mine!
The morning was no longer quiet; sounds of daily routine intruded,
reminding me of where I was and what had happened. Earlier, one of my old
friends from school had called. I took the call the third time on mother’s
insistence. She wanted to know if I would attend the funeral the next day and
if I needed her with me. I muttered a curt ‘no’ and put the phone down. The
funeral! But who would be buried? I still could not comprehend the finality of
the word because in my mind Sonny would always be alive. But a funeral
would be held; what would they bury with the ravaged remains of the man
who once was the people’s hope for a new life? The many funerary gifts of
native shawls of course, also a few of his favourite possessions. And his
ideology, would it be buried with his remains? I could no longer think
coherently, and gradually a strange fusion of ‘Sonny alive’ and ‘Sonny dead’
began to take hold of my thinking, because I realized that only in death now,
had he become more real to me than ever before.
When I embarked on the journey home, I believed that I had finally
overcome the ‘Sonny phase’ of my life and that I had emerged a totally new
person from that ‘ordeal’ by love. But his death had demolished that façade
and exposed the truth of my love. Sonny had written that his love for me was
the one abiding truth of his life and now I tearfully acknowledged that the
same was true of my love for him. I had never really accepted his absence
from my life as final; but his death, this horrible death finally obliterated all
hope of ever seeing him again. Was that secret hope part of the reason which
brought me to my parents’ home?
As the morning wore on, a distant cousin who had lived with us since my
school days came to my room asking me if I wanted some breakfast. When I
shook my head she grinned! With the grin still on her face she said something
strange, ‘You should be glad that you did not marry Sonny.’ I was so taken
aback that I simply stared at her but when she turned to leave the room I
threw the heavy brush with which I was fiddling at her retreating back,
shouting ‘Get out!’ The brush landed on her head and she went out screaming
for my mother. The crude remark of this feather-brained woman took me back
to the period when Sonny and I were contemplating marriage after our studies
were completed. But those were also the exciting days of national fervour that
caught the imagination of all and sundry both in the rural and urban populace.
For the so-called educated elite of the towns, the success of the movement
meant setting up an independent country where the inequalities and injustices
of the repressive ‘occupation’ forces would be eliminated. Not only that, but
many lent their support with an eye to personal gains in the new set-up. But
for the rural people, it was simply seen as an opportunity to return to the
utopian state of self-rule before the alien rulers had come and overturned their
ancient way of life.
The call to armed rebellion was like heady wine at first. But the retaliatory
measures of the government forces blazed through the land like a wild fire,
turning villages into burnt-out heaps, and people into creatures herded into
concentration-camp-like grouping zones. Families were separated, women
were raped and killed, and the men were forced to see the humiliation before
they too, were either maimed for life or simply killed. These stories filtering
through the urban grapevine only added fuel to the anger and hostility
brewing in the minds of those pursuing higher education in various
institutions in different cities. It was this turn of events that overshadowed our
talk of marriage and I saw the gradual withdrawal of Sonny into a world quite
estranged from our idyllic cohabitation. Compared to the fire that burned in
his soul at that particular point of time, marriage must have seemed too trivial
a matter to be contemplated.
My troubled reminiscences were however rudely interrupted when the
cousin brought the morning papers. Sonny’s face dominated all the front
pages. I could not bear to look at the handsome face of Sonny so recently
dead; so, folding the paper to hide it, I hurriedly glanced at the text. They all
said more or less the same things. But one reporter had gone a step further: he
reported that a former ‘friend’ of the slain leader was also in town and he
wondered if she could throw more light on the reasons for this assassination!
A ‘friend’ of Sonny in public parlance, but I know that I was once branded a
‘fallen woman’ because I was living ‘in sin’ with him. I knew exactly what he
was aiming at: the kind of sensationalism that is created out of innuendos and
vague remarks, tricks that as a journalist I too, had employed to make a story
‘juicier’. This was however a new element which threatened to embroil me in
an untenable situation because of my association with Sonny more than a
decade ago.
Though I had not for a moment thought of attending the funeral, the
remarks in the paper crystallized my decision. It seemed to clear my thinking.
First of all, I said to myself, I cannot display the deep sorrow I felt at Sonny’s
death. So I took a leisurely bath, wore a bright dress and appeared at the
dining table for lunch. Mother averted her eyes, father simply nodded,
acknowledging my presence but the cousin gawked at me and was about to
say something when the front door opened and my brother and his wife
walked in. If they were surprised to see me so calm and composed, they did
their best not to show it. The meal went off well, with mother taking care to
send the feckless cousin on an errand to a neighbour’s house. Some visitors
came, among them my friends from university days. The atmosphere was
strained but I remained calm throughout. Somehow the afternoon wore off
and by about five the family was left alone.
Mother called my sister-in-law to the kitchen, and my brother said, ‘Let’s
go out for a walk.’ I was surprised, because after my ‘flirtatious binge’ some
years ago my puritanical brother always treated me as a ‘cured’ leper. But
sensing that he had something important to say, I followed him outside. When
we were out of sight from the house, he produced a thick envelope and
handed it to me without saying anything. I did not accept it immediately but
asked, ‘What is this?’ He looked at me steadily for a long time during which I
could almost see his face change from his earlier aversion to something
bordering on understanding. He came closer and embracing me, said in a
broken voice, ‘I should have given it to you much earlier; please forgive me if
you can.’ He walked away abruptly without a backward glance. Hugging the
envelope I continued to walk for some more time and came home as dusk was
enveloping everything around.
I went straight to my room and bolting the door, tore open the mysterious
packet. For the second time that day I felt that I was hit by lightning; inside
the envelope was a floppy and a short note from Sonny dated, it seemed,
centuries ago. I was stunned and it took me some time to open the letter and
read the message from the dead; it spoke of his anguish over a host of things,
among which he said the heaviest burden was his feeling of guilt towards me.
But the main issue was the floppy which, he wrote, was his testament about
the true state of the movement and he wanted me to publish it by any means. I
was somewhat disappointed and wished he had written a longer letter telling
me how much he still loved and missed me. But his words were terse as
always and I detected a note of urgency in the tone. I had to be content with
his last lines which said, ‘Sweetheart, forgive me for burdening you with this
dangerous task, but you are the only one I can trust.’ And he signed off ‘Yours
always and forever, Sonny.’ No words about love or longing, only the vague
‘forever’ which I hugged to myself, and I began to cry again.
My inner grief having been spent, I began to fling the most essential things
into an overnight bag because I decided to leave immediately, without even
telling my family. I tried several hiding places for the letter and the floppy, the
secret compartment at the bottom of the bag, a roll of toilet paper, but gave up
each idea. In the meantime I took out my return ticket which was still valid.
But the airport was three hours’ journey from my home. How was I going to
reach it on time unless I started very early in the morning? In desperation I
started to thumb through my tattered phone book. In a corner under T, I came
across the name of an old friend whom I had not seen for ages and who, I was
told, had started a transport business. With all my hope pinned on the
currency of his number, I called him. After a long time a child answered and
told me papa was out, gone to the dead man’s house. I waited for another hour
and called again and this time ‘papa’ answered. I warned him not to take my
name and said I needed his help to go to the airport the next morning. He was
hesitant at first saying that he had to attend Sonny’s funeral. But sensing the
urgency in my voice, he reluctantly agreed to arrange a taxi and asked me to
be at the second corner from my house at four in the morning. And as an
afterthought he asked me if anyone knew about my journey; when I said ‘Not
yet’, he said ‘Good, keep it that way,’ and disconnected.
I joined the family for dinner and tried to put up a nonchalant attitude all
throughout. I even stayed back to chat with my parents inquiring about their
health and other mundane things. After some time my father stood up saying
he was tired and said we should all get a good night’s rest. After he left,
mother hugged me goodnight and said an uncanny thing, ‘Whatever you do, I
will always understand.’ Her words ringing in my ears, I went to my room
and once again began to devise a foolproof hiding place for Sonny’s floppy.
Finally I hid it inside a packet of sanitary napkins which went into my hand
baggage. Next, the letter; I was determined to keep it safe because it was my
last link with Sonny. I tucked it carefully into my brassiere as I’d seen many
women do with money. I was ready. But I could not leave without saying
something to mother, so I wrote a brief note addressed to my parents; ‘Dear
Mom and Dad, please forgive me for sneaking away like this. But you know
it’s for the best.’
I did not sleep at all that night. The spectre of Sonny alive and Sonny dead
haunted me with grief, frustration, anger and remorse, so relentlessly that a
few times I almost choked on my suppressed screams. It also amazed me that
even after death Sonny was the force that was dictating my life, and the old
hatred I had felt on hearing of his marriage seemed once again to overwhelm
the enormous grief in my heart at his passing away. But these conflicting
moments were temporary and what settled in my mind eventually was the
void I had felt that day when he left me. If that void had somehow been made
bearable by hope, this time around I knew it was there to haunt me all my life.
Before sunrise, I crept out of the house with my small bags and walked to
the appointed place. The man was waiting; he had come only to say goodbye,
he said, because it was imperative that he be seen at Sonny’s funeral and so
had arranged another driver for me. We could hardly see each other clearly
but I knew instinctively that he too, was under some tension, which he was
trying to hide from me. When it was time for me to go, he gave me a hug and
whispered in my ear, ‘No matter what Sonny asked you to do, for God’s sake
and ours, don’t do it.’ And with a breezy ‘Take care’ he got into his car and
drove off. It was only after I was on my way that his words registered: how
did he know I had a missive from Sonny? My head began to spin with the
realization that we were all enmeshed in this terrible thing, some of us
through such insidious ways that it was impossible to determine any more
who was what. And there was mother, an innocuous housewife, yet with such
accurate perceptions about my anxiety! Was it only a woman’s intuition or
was some other network in operation? But most baffling was the behaviour of
the taxi owner who had been a close confidant of Sonny and had been
‘interrogated’ by the security forces several times. But each time he had been
let off, and it was rumoured that his recent business success was due to a
generous ‘loan’ from the government.
And the most amazing thing of all was that he had not once mentioned
Sonny’s death, only the public funeral! Why, I asked myself. The more I
pondered over these facts, the more convinced I became that Sonny’s
assassination was a well-calculated ‘hit’ of the underground power brokers
and that somehow this quiet business man was a vital link in the puzzle. I also
realized that I would never be totally free of this sinister web which had
claimed Sonny’s life because of the legacy he had left me. I could have
simply destroyed it but I went to my bank and hired a safe deposit box,
ostensibly to keep some jewellery that my mother had given me. I cannot
explain why I did that because I did not even try to find out what the floppy
contained. Only the letter, I keep next to my heart.
So the unread testament will lie there in its hiding place. When it is
reclaimed by my inheritors, they will uncover, at the bottom of the box filled
with junk jewellery, a mouldy, outdated floppy which no machine would ever
be able decipher. It is better that way. I am no longer affected by news from
home about the political aftermath of Sonny’s assassination; but the brutality
of his death still sears my heart as if the bullets had struck me too. And when
I heard that Sonny’s close confidant quietly went underground and became
the new leader of Sonny’s band of ‘freedom fighters’, I understood why
Sonny had written that he could trust only me. Was it because I was
apolitical? Or was he so confident of my love for him that even after so many
years and so many barriers between us he believed that I would still do his
bidding? I shall never know. In the meantime the convoluted politics of the
ravaged land continue in the self-diminishing moves and counter moves of a
people living in limbo. And I? I live on with the debris of a passionate
carnival because I had once loved a dream-chaser named Sonny.
 Flight

Life began for me in the wide open spaces of a vast cabbage field, in fact, on
the underside of a big leaf near the passage-ways between the rows of plants,
which criss-crossed the entire length and breadth of the field. From the
minuscule speck of a seed left by the flitting mother, I slowly evolved into an
elongated green form, blending in perfectly with the big leaf.
One bright, sunny morning, there was a piercing shriek, heard along the
length and breadth of the field, ‘Eek, a caterpillar, a caterpillar!’ Then
murmurs of many different voices; the woman continued her shrieking. Was it
fear I heard in that voice, or was it disgust? I was not sure. Then, a little girl’s
voice, ‘Ugh! It’s so ugly.’
Another voice intruded, ‘Wow, look at him, isn’t he beautiful? Mother, can
I keep him? Please—I’ll put him in a shoebox in my room, he won’t disturb
anybody, I promise. And he will be my dragon.’ Silence all around, as though
everyone was holding their breath. I was beginning to panic; maybe this was
going to be my last day.
Then a man’s voice, all choked with emotion, ‘Yes Johnny, you may keep
him. Put your dragon-box on the dresser beside your bed. And remember, you
will be responsible for any consequence regarding this.’
‘Hurray! Thanks Father,’ the boy shouted. Someone snipped the leaf from
the base of the cabbage and handed it to the boy. He held it gingerly. As
Johnny entered his bedroom and proceeded to prepare this strange space for
my new life I felt as though I was being transported to another world.
Sounds of things being scattered, more rummaging and doors being
slammed. Finally, the little boy exclaimed, ‘Ah, here it is.’ I wondered what
he had found as he gingerly put me on a soft surface. As I continued
wondering, strange activities were taking place, papers being torn and cut.
‘H’m, this will do,’ Johnny muttered to himself at last.
Suddenly I was being lifted and lowered into some dark place. I looked up;
Johnny was gazing at me with a strange smile on his face, ‘Go to sleep,
dragon, I’ll see you in the morning.’ And total darkness, as he shut the lid.
At that instant, my former life of wide-open spaces and bright sunshine
vanished, and the new one of intermittent light and darkness began. Light,
when he opened the lid to peep at me, and then darkness again when he
lowered it. The periods between light and darkness were regular to begin
with, but as time went on, they became longer and longer. Sometimes days
would go by without a glimpse of light.
Then one evening, I heard footsteps approaching the bedroom where
Johnny was sleeping. These days, he slept most of the time, day or night. I
was beginning to think that he had lost interest in me. The footsteps entered
the room; I heard the swish of a woman’s dress, silk perhaps, and oh! the
faintest whiff of something strange I’d never smelled before. The parents
were talking in whispers, and then the father opened the lid of the box and I
saw a row of brilliant stars around the woman’s neck. The man said, ‘Look at
his dragon,’ and the woman stifled a heart-rending sob. ‘Hush,’ the man said,
‘you must be strong. He does not feel the pain now.’ The lid was dropped shut
and once again darkness enveloped me as the footsteps receded into the night.
Time became a blur for me. Strange sensations were taking place in my
body. I felt bogged down by some alien weight and was no longer the same
being that Johnny had so lovingly kept as his captive dragon in the darkness
of the limited space. I began to feel restless and longed for the open spaces of
my earlier life.
In the midst of all this confusion within me, one day, there was a big
commotion in the house. People running about and shouting, ‘Hurry up—
careful, mind the steps,’ and in the midst of all this, Johnny’s feeble voice, ‘I
want my dragon, I want my dragon.’ With a jerk, my universe of darkness was
lifted by rough, impatient hands and the next thing I knew, I was in a stranger
place, a room reeking of some very strong smells. I heard children crying and
even grown-up voices whimpering with pain and sadness. I do not know how
long we were there, I only know that Johnny was there too, because his
breathing was becoming hoarser by the day. Each time his parents came into
the room, the whispers of the other place were now replaced by anguished
sobs.
Then one afternoon, there was an unearthly sound, one resonating with
wild fear, from the mother, because the rattling sound was gone from
Johnny’s breath. The echo of that sound shivered through me and I thought
that something terrible had happened to him. But then a new calm returned as
the old rattle in Johnny’s throat started again. After a little while, I heard
Johnny’s feeble voice saying, ‘I want to see my dragon.’
Gently, the sister opened the lid and exclaimed, ‘Look, a butterfly, how
beautiful it is!’ Johnny strained to peer closer, gazed at me in disgust and
disbelief, and countered, ‘Beautiful? Dragon, what happened to you? You
look ugly.’ So saying, he slumped back and remained still.
Gingerly, I flapped my new-grown wings, took a tentative step on new-
found legs and with a flourish came out of my dark prison. I perched on the
window sill and looked around. Oh! It was bright and airy out there, beyond
the place where Johnny lay amidst rumpled clothes, the rattle in his throat
sounding harsh in the stillness as everyone seemed rooted to the floor.
Johnny’s sister made as if to catch me but I quickly shifted to a higher ledge.
At that instant I knew that I was ready to venture out into the space away
from the reach of Johnny’s world.
As I fluttered my wings for the final take-off, a tiny voice within me said,
‘Wait, what about Johnny? Are you going to leave him all alone?’ I hesitated
for the briefest while, but I knew I had to leave his dying universe. I looked at
his pale, grief-stricken face but my resolve was stronger than the appeal in his
eyes. As though propelled by an unknown force, I flapped my wings and was
soon fleeting away without a backward glance, the worm within me urging,
‘Fly, you are your own universe now, fly to your destiny.’
 THE BEGINNING

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This collection published 2009

Copyright © Temsula Ao, 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-143-06620-0
This digital edition published in 2015.
e-ISBN: 978-9-352-14161-6
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