TRANSLATED FROM THE ASSAMESE BY DARADI PATAR

 

 

December, 1973 

Walking under the straw-knit bamboo archway, he entered Purna Sharma’s home. Purna Sharma sat in his rocking chair on the verandah of the old house reading the morning paper. He put it down when he heard someone coming through the gate, and saw that it was Sadek Dewani’s elder son who had arrived carrying loads on a shoulder pole. A well-built, able young man, adorable looking really, he thought. Although his real name was Rahim, Sharma lovingly called him “daangaar soli” treating him in fact like an elder son. And in turn, the boy addressed Sharma as “deuta,” and held him in as high a regard as a son would his own father. 

“Ah, daangaar soli, you are here. Come, come! Sharma pulled a bamboo stool closer for the boy to sit.” 

Rahim set the loads on the floor and bent forward to offer his greetings to Purna Sharma by touching his feet. “God keeps you in his good graces, son,” Sharma said as he placed his hand on Rahim’s head. 

It was Sharma’s father’s death anniversary the next Wednesday. Which is why he had asked Sadek Dewani to send some vegetables, milk, and other necessary items his way. Dewani was a man of his word and there wasn’t a time when he didn’t follow through on them. As the secretary of the Panchayat, for Purna Sharma, people like Dewani often came in handy in helping with certain critical situations. The Miyas in general listened to him. 

Sharma owned some ancestral land on the river’s chapori and Dewani had farmed on them a couple of times. Some of it, the river Brahmaputra has now taken within its folds while the rest was simply lying idle. For Sharma, buying milk wasn’t the same as the home-harvested gallons and so he had taken to rearing around twelve cows for dairy, all of which daangaar soli Rahim looked after. Rahim had a herd of his own on the chapori, and he took them grazing along with the ones that belonged to Purna Sharma, shifting between one chapori and the next. 

Rahim finished the tea offered by the lady of the house, Sharmani Aai, and rinsed out the glass before returning it. He couldn’t stay long as he’d left the herd in another’s care for only a short while. But curse his luck for just as he was taking his leave from Sharma, who else would it be if not Sharma’s impetuous younger son Karuna, who had to catch up to him. Karuna was a student in the ninth standard at Rongamati High School. “Wait, where are you fleeing to? You can leave once you’ve had food,” he said as he wrapped his arms tightly around Rahim, nearly squeezing the breath out of him. Rahim knew, once he had fallen into Karuna’s line of sight, there was no escaping him; his morning was done for. Age-wise Karuna was about twelve years his younger, but he addressed Rahim as he would a contemporary. Almost every Saturday after school, he would make an appearance at Rahim’s cattle pen under the pretext of checking in on the cows from Sharma’s household. He would share Rahim’s food and bed. “Why don’t you cook today,” he even said once, asking Rahim to prepare their food for a change, “would that be such a disaster?” Rahim had nearly lost his nerves that day. Karuna was the son of a ganak. If deuta were to find out, all hell would break loose. After enough persuasion, however, Rahim was successful in having the food prepared by Karuna which they both then ate. Thankfully, Karuna has been willfully cooking the shared meals in Rahim’s kitchen whenever he had visited ever since that day, much to Rahim’s relief and they’ve both been able to eat without any fuss.  There were several factors that drew Karuna to the chapori—for one he didn’t have to study, he could spend time climbing the Chinese dates, going fishing by the creek and he could also easily do the two things that he could never do at home—smoke bidis made of rolled tendu leaves and cuss out loud. 

Purna Sharma treated him like an elder son and he reciprocated that affection by thinking of Karuna as no less than a younger brother. It was only Sharma’s older son that Rahim didn’t cross paths with quite often. He studied at Mangaldai College and stayed away most of the time.  

Having finished his meal, Rahim quickly made his way to the chapori. Karuna even accompanied him and saw him off till the end of the neighborhood.  

Purna Sharma watched Rahim leave. How could anyone hold anything against these people? There were still some, however, who upon seeing them frequent Sharma’s home, didn’t refrain from throwing insults or calling them a family of Moimonshingia lovers. But in truth, they’d been nothing other than of help to him. 

But the number of Miyas in Majhili was increasing day by day. Even Rahim conveyed this same news at lunch today— “the herding area on the chapori is shrinking each day, deuta. Many Miyas from Barpeta have also been arriving here of late.” 

Purna Sharma returned to the rocking chair. During his childhood, the chaporis hardly had any Miyas dwelling on them. He had heard from his father then, starting from Kurua chapori, the Dhanbari, Kiring Bori, Phuhuratoli, Kirakara, Kurua Bagheswar, Dholpur, Baralekhaiti, Dhariakhaiti, Nangelichar, Gachbari, Bherpoti, Roumari, Bhokolikanda, Petua Chapori, Ghator Aag, Bongalpota, Medhi Chapori, Chereng Chapori, Baghpori, Monitari, Baandiya, Mowamari, till Puthimari, none of the chaporis had any Miyas on them. Many had their cow pens on the PGRs amongst these. Most of the Assamese folks from the Sipajhar, Rongamati, Hindughopa, Daanhee, and Chopaai Mouzas used to set up farms and carry out cultivation on them. Sharma recalls his father saying “the government has been settling hordes of Moimonshighiyas in certain areas. Even the PGRs are being released.” So, Moimonshinghias had planted their roots in the cholera-ravaged Assamese villages in places like Bechimari, Dalgaon, and Kharupetia, during that period itself. Some took the direct route while most others came through Nagaon crossing the mighty Brahmaputra to reach here.  

However, it was still the Assamese who had their farms set up on the chaporis and were carrying out cultivation there. But since the last few years, the number of Miyas on them has grown exponentially. When asked, they identified themselves as people from Barpeta, Bahari, Senga, or Baghbar. A few of them would even show papers that corroborated their story. Some have bought chapori lands off the hands of native Assamese merchant folks while others have settled on them by simply annexing whatever land was available. 

At this rate, there’ll be no land left on the riverbanks at all. 

The shadows of the betelnuts in Purna Sharma’s front yard were starting to elongate. With his back reclined on the rocking chair, Sharma tried to close his eyes for a bit. 

 

December, 1998 

The boys have always had quite the fondness for Majhili. It was an eagerness borne of the frequent trips to their maternal uncle’s house, the unusual stories that they’d heard from their mother, and the post-annual exam tours to Majhili that they often took. Of course, the piquant cause behind the older boy Baapa’s profound fervor for Majhili was the book called Prithibir Morom, or “Love of the World,” which he had already finished reading. He found it lying on Dhaneshda’s table one day and brought it home, after which he had gobbled up its pages filled with Kaanaai and Keng’s story. Once he had read in extensive detail about the trees and running vines, animals and birds, ponds, and hollows, he simply placed himself in Kanaai’s shoes and roamed through the creeks of Majhili, its vast pulse fields and sugarcane patches, the corn greens, the pied cuckoo, and the flocks of wild tiyas. He wandered along the sounds of the buffalo bells ting-a-linging off bullock carts, the verses of the Gunamala resonating through his grandfather’s voice and an unfamiliar whistle drifting through the night, in the meandering lanes of his mind. His imagination was often further fueled by his mother’s stories. His mother and her sister both grew up in Barmajhili. Though his uncles no longer had possession of that family land there. The grounds of their family home where they had once grown up were now all occupied by Miyas. 

“Ma, it’s amazing to stay in Majhili, isn’t it?” a bemused Baapa asks his mother, stepping out of Kanaai’s skin and becoming Baapa once more. 

“This Majhili is nothing compared to Barmajhili,” his mother replies. Where her father’s family now farmed was much closer, they didn’t even have to go into Barmajhili to get there. It fell within the tari of the Kacharijheria people. After mortgaging their Barmajhili land to Ahmed Miya with the intention of securing a job for their elder brother, her aged father now farmed on the land of a Kacharijheria shopkeeper from this tari on adhi basis. 

And after all that, in the end, they were left with no land and no job, for there wasn’t one to begin with. A sigh escapes Baapa’s mother. What Barmajhili was and what it had become. 

 “I once had a friend, pretty as a peach that one,” Baapa’s mother says, looking at him. She would never forget to mention her Nepali friend whenever Majhili came up in their conversations. And she was by no means an ordinary friend. Their friendship had been fully sealed in rituals completed by their parents. Frequent visits were exchanged between the two families back then. Her friend’s family owned a cow pen in Majhili and she has lost count of how many times her companion had fed her homemade curd and honey. 

 “Is your friend still there though, Ma? How come they never visit us?”—Baapa, who enjoyed having relatives and guests over, asks his mother. 

“No, I haven’t heard from them ever since I was married off. Wonder where they’d gone!” 

Baapa’s mother sighed again. After marriage, her relationship with her friend started to fizzle out. About a year later, she found out upon enquiring that the entire Nepali tari had moved away from Barmajhili and toward Orang.  

His mother’s cluelessness about her friend’s current whereabouts dampened Baapa’s spirits. 

“Why do people go elsewhere, Ma? Why won’t they stay in the same place?” he asked. 

His mother was rattled, because even she didn’t have the kind of knowledge that could answer such a question. “Well…it could be for any number of reasons,” she says, struggling to find an appropriate response. “Before the Nepalis, the Namoshudras who lived near us went away too.” 

   This response from his mother only added to Baapa’s confusion. Even if he couldn’t fully explain it, at least he understood something of the word “Nepali.” At least he knew that it had some relation with the country called Nepal and that Nepalis were not Assamese people like them. But this was the first time he was hearing the word “Namoshudra.” 

 “What’s ‘Namoshudra’ again?” 

 “Erm…they’re…people too. Bengali speaking people.” 

 “And why were those people in your Majhili?” 

 “Uh, they just were. And later they moved to another place. Those abandoned lands are full of Miyas now.” 

Although their conversation was taking a different turn, Baapa’s actual focus was still on obtaining his mother’s approval to go to Majhili. He was already done with his eighth standard final exams. This was the time for pressing harvested sugarcanes in Majhili and his father was asked over during every harvest and extraction. It happened just around the time when they’d finished harvesting their paddy here. So, it’s an opportunity for Baapa and his family to take a trip to Majhili. But getting his mother’s approval isn’t always the easiest thing to do. His younger brother Kon could visit Majhili frequently with his mother or the others because he was still a child. But they wouldn’t take Baapa along. Between studies, his cultural endeavors with Moina Parijat, and scholarship exams, he had a lot going on. To his relief, however, he wouldn’t have to worry about the scholarship exams this year onwards. On top of that he had, right after the monsoons, heard his parents discussing that this time they were storing haystacks in Majhili. It was a joint venture run by several families of their suba. The cost came down considerably when it was bought in bulk beforehand. Otherwise buying it later, a bunch at a time costs a lot more. And then there was also the cost of hiring carts for transport. Aah! If only he could somehow tag along this time. Baapa’s thought-train picks up speed. He’d chaw on sugarcanes until his teeth hurt, paddle through the waters of the creeks, feast his eyes on rows and rows of silk cotton trees and the sizable red flowers blooming on their bare branches and, and this time he would without fail take a ride in a bullock cart. 

While he remained lost in thought, one of those days his mother actually rolled together a half pant and a t-shirt that he wore at home, and shoving them both into a cloth bag she proceeded to hang it on the handle of his father’s old bicycle. Baapa could barely conceal his excitement.  

From his seat on the cycle’s carrier, legs hanging on either side he watched the sky moving backward. At some point, the gravel road ended. After a while, the mud road disappeared too, giving way to a silted path. Suddenly the landscape ahead widened. There! The platoons of common reed and whistling pines began to fall into their view. The chatter of birds he had never heard in his own village came floating towards them and…aah! there…he could see a larger creek. His father asked Baapa to get off the bicycle and once his feet were on the ground, the man folded up the borders of his dhoti, placed his sandals on the carrier and lifted the bicycle up on his shoulder. Baapa too grabbed his sandals and began walking through the clear water, following close behind his father. Toward the deeper end of the creek, a herd of buffalos were being bathed by a milkman. Baapa gazed at this vista with bemused eyes, frozen in place. Ah, this! This is why Barmajhili would keep beckoning to him. His father’s voice pulled him back to reality— “Come, why won’t you? Or do you plan to spend the rest of the day standing in water, sticking out of it like a bamboo pole.” 

Once out of water, they were immediately greeted by a succession of jujube trees on the other bank. Baapa began picking up the fallen round jujube fruits like someone starved of them for ages, stuffing them into his shirt and pant pockets until they looked ready to be ripped. “Come now,” his father said, “you can eat as much of them as you want these next few days.” 

Anticipating their arrival, his grandfather was ready with their meals. Immediately after finishing his food, Bappa’s father headed to the sugarcane patches while his grandfather went to the pulse fields but not before cautioning Baapa to not go to the creeks alone. His eyes followed his grandfather along the path that led to the pulse fields. After some distance, his grandfather stopped and he along with Baapa’s aunt and a few other women from the village began ripping the pulse crops underneath the silk cotton trees. Bappa made his way to the sugarcane patches. Even before they’d arrived, two of his uncles and a few others whom he didn’t recognize, were already harvesting the long, ripened sugarcane stalks.  

He ate so much of the reddish and tan sugarcanes that by lunchtime he was barely hungry anymore. But he still had to push a couple of morsels down his throat upon the insistence of his aunt. 

The Aghun sun was gradually making its descent in the west sky.  Before long, it would take refuge behind the creek for the night. His aunt returned from the pulse fields before faces could no longer be told apart. Accompanied by three girls and a woman who had arrived earlier in the day to help with the harvesting, his aunt started toward the village with brisk steps. She even planted a kiss on Bappa’s cheek before she left. A little later his father began preparing for his journey back as well. He had chopped up several sugarcane stalks to a considerably short length and tied them in a bundle to the top tube of his cycle while Baapa’s grandfather brought him a huge sack filled with veggies freshly plucked from their backyard. He was sad to see his father leaving but right at that moment, the sight of a bullock cart approaching his grandfather’s house, chiming its buffalo bells, lifted his mood once again. It was making its way toward them from near the bank of the creek. Baapa had always felt an unnamed attraction and affection toward the belled bullock carts.  Excited, he rushed toward it. A stranger sitting sideways with a bidi tucked between his lips was coaching the wagon. The man was dark-skinned, wore a lungi, and had a thin floaty beard covering his jaws and chin—one of those Miyas he heard his mother talk about and he often met at the weekly bazaar himself. Bappa felt a slight unease. But surprisingly for him, the man stopped the cart, unloading a white sack as he stepped down and made his way toward his grandfather’s house. Surprising him further, the man proceeded to hand the sack over to Baapa’s father— “Here kurma. If you’d been here a couple of days earlier, you would have gotten better veggies than these.” Even though the man spoke Assamese, Baapa detected a subtle shift in his accent. 

  So, this stranger was familiar to his father after all. While coming to see his father off, Baapa could no longer keep his curiosity in check. “Who was that man, father?” he asked. “The one who brought you the veggies?” “Just some Miya from Majhili,” his father responded with casual indifference. Bappa wasn’t in the least satisfied by this response, so he pressed on— “then why has he brought us veggies?” 

 “No reason in particular, he just has good terms with your grandfather,” his father hopped onto his bicycle as he uttered those words. 

After his father left, Bappa headed straight to the sugarcane patches. The extraction plant had been set up just two houses past his grandfather’s and there under a few temporary sheds, his uncles along with a couple others were readying large iron basins for processing the extracted juice. Two of them were putting stalks into the grinder while another was hoot-hooting the buffaloes away. He recognized the one chasing the buffaloes, he was the man he met earlier, the one who had brought the veggies for his father. 

At night, he and his grandfather slept side by side. Unlike his village, people in Majhili didn’t stay awake late into the night. His grandfather fell asleep right after they had crawled into bed. He felt that nights in Majhili were somewhat different. He could hear someone whistling at a distance and the clinking sound of a bullock cart, floating through the night. Back home, he would hear the engines of trucks rumbling along the highway which made him upset for some reason. But today, the floating sound of the cart-bell gave him a nameless comfort. The images painted by the words of the books he read came alive. An indistinct murmur could be heard, pouring in through the night from the direction of the sugarcane plantation along with the sweet fragrance of under-process sugarcane juice. He was suddenly reminded of his mother as she would often talk of these things while describing the essence of Majhili. Perhaps the Barmajhili that his mother grew up in was just like this. Full of fragrances.  

He woke up at the wee hours of the day to the tunes of his grandfather’s Padas. This was one of his grandfather’s specialties—singing the entire Gunamala in a distinctive tune and rhythm every day at the crack of dawn. It was beyond him how his grandfather could remember so many Padas at once when having to learn even a mere ten to twelve lines by heart would always make Baapa taut with anxiety. After the Padas ended, he asked his grandfather, “Pitei, where is the Barmajhili that Ma keeps telling us about?” 

“It’s quite a long way from here. Why do you ask?” 

“No reason but what happened to the land you had there?” 

“After the movement, Miyas occupied some of it, and the rest, your uncle gave in mortgage,” his grandfather sighed. 

“Which movement Pitei?” Baapa was curious. It was the first time he was hearing of this “movement.” 

“A movement for chasing Miyas away. The Miyas had killed Jagannath Sharma’s brother by trapping him in a fish net.” 

Baapa’s interest was further piqued by this information. He knew who Jagannath Sharma was. A minister. It was a name he had been hearing since the time he was only a suckling, and one he still occasionally heard on the radio or from people’s mouths. The man had even visited their neighborhood for meetings during the elections. But this was the first time he was hearing of Jagannath Sharma’s brother. However, before he could fish out a question from the many that were beginning to swarm in his head, his grandfather’s feet were already on the ground beside the bed and he left to start his day.  

Only as they sat with their morning plate of rice and curry did Baapa finally get a chance to talk about his long-awaited plan— “Pitei, where can I find a cart ride here?” 

 “Oh, but there are no cow-carts here,” his grandfather responded without much thought. 

For the next three days, Baapa listened to the songs of Majhili’s pied cuckoos on its bright noons until his heart was full, bathed in the creek with his uncles, went on boat rides a couple of times, took in the unusually fresh and occasionally bizarre aromas of all manner of cereals and vegetables, saw the legions of red flowers blooming on rows and rows of tall, silk cotton trees, and watched the green corn fields and the flocking tiyas until his eyes hurt. Sunk within the intoxicating scent of a sweet sizzling liquid that hung in the air of the processing plant, his tongue savored the divine taste of Nisila, wholly relishing the flavors of the jaggery-coated bagasse delight. Oh, what bliss! And on the afternoon before the day he left for home, his grandfather unexpectedly pointed to a bull-cart standing in front of the gate and said, “Go on, take a ride in it.” 

  Baapa’s heart swelled with joy. There’s the bull-cart, standing right ahead and…and that’s…the Miya…that he has been seeing around here the past couple of days, sitting on it! He hesitated for a moment “Who else is going?” 

“No need to be scared. He is family. Call him mama.” 

His grandfather reassured him. The man looked at Baapa with a smile and said— “you have nothing to fear bhaagin, Monu dada is a dear friend.” 

Once he had climbed onto the cart, the man whipped the bulls forward, and almost immediately along the rhythm of the cart’s movement, its bells started tinkling. And Baapa’s heart resonated with them in its full spirit. The bull cart slowly made its way down the bank of the wide creek. A herd of cattle coming from the opposite direction passed them by, turning the ghat white with dust in an instant. A few birds that were swimming here and there fled, beating their wings as the cart started moving through the water. He looked back and saw the retiring sun, round like a golden plate probably prompting people to enter their kitchens to prepare the last meal of the day, the herd which had passed them moments ago making its way through the bank—he couldn’t believe that Majhili held so much beauty within itself. Baapa was euphoric. He held onto the edge of the cart and closed his eyes. 

Since his return from Majhili, Baapa had been lost in his thoughts. His mind it seemed was still hopping through the dust-laden lanes of Majhili. Many nights, he had dreamt of that last afternoon of roaming through Majhili in a bull-cart. His mother had been pestered with questions about Majhili. He had even asked her repeatedly about “the movement for chasing Miyas” which he had heard of for the first time from his grandfather. His mother told him several stories, a few he remembered better than the rest—Jagannath Sharma’s brother had gone to Majhili to carry out the movement, armed, and when the Miyas came chasing after him, he had jumped into the creek. The Miyas then threw a clap net over him and after he got stuck in it, they had hacked him to pieces…! While the movement was still picking pace, the CRPF had once shown up at their doorstep looking for Jagannath. Jagannath was in the kitchen, eating, and his sister-in-law was tending to him. The man had then draped his sister-in-law’s mekhela-saador and slipped out of the house under the pretense of throwing their wastewater out. He even made a passing remark as he left— “Oh, why are these dogs here?” The CRPs caught no wind of it. Bappa’s mother told him another one. Someone from his uncle’s village had gotten lost. The others who went with him had been returned for quite a while and it was already night. The Miyas were hot on his tail so, what he did was pick up a woman’s dead body lying nearby and hid himself under it. The Miyas thought it to be a dead body and didn’t check twice. But Baapa was most surprised when he learnt that his own father too had stepped up to join in that movement and he had carried an old, heavy pike with him. During those days, whenever they heard the sound of a vehicle at night, the men of the neighborhood would simply make a dash for the fields fearing that it belonged to the CRPF. On one such occasion, it so happened that Rameswar from the same village who worked as a driver in the army came back in an army vehicle at around eight at night. It was then mistaken for a CRPF vehicle and caused quite the panic. The men had all fled in whichever direction their legs took them. Baapa listened to the stories, awed by their incredibility. 

Just before Magh Bihu, Baapa’s father had to once again take a trip to Majhili, this time to gather hay. But everyone in Baapa’s village too had their hands full, with preparations for the Bhelaghar being underway. When it came to Magh Bihu, Baapa barely ever had his feet on the ground—the Bhelaghar bustling with urgency; cut, hollow bamboo stalks readied for baking pithas from battered rice powder; the merry air of Uruka; and the biggest attraction of all being the weeklong games and cultural programs organized by the youth association. He took part in the one-act play as he did every year and as usual won prizes for memory test, sit-stand, and extempore. Before these sweet sensations could fizzle out, tinkling its bells through the mist, a bull-cart loaded with hay arrived from Majhili at their gate. Baapa held his breath as he rushed toward it. He saw that of the two people sitting on it, one was the Miya he knew. “Mama!” the word automatically escaped Baapa’s lips in that moment of cheer joy.  

His mother prepared pigeon curry under the rice pedal shed. By the time they’d finished their meals and the cart started to head back, it was about ten at night. They lit the handlamp that they were carrying with them. Having guessed his sons’ thoughts, Baapa’s father lifted him and his brother up to the cart. After riding in it for a little bit, they both got down. “So long, Baapa. Come visit Majhili again “Mama” said before leaving. 

The vehicle started moving again, this time without Baapa and his brother. Baapa’s eyes followed the faint yellow glow of the handlamp until it became one with the mist. He felt as if the sound of the bell was pushing deeper into the thickening fog as it moved further away, its gradually fading tinkle lingering within Bappa’s heart for quite some time after it could no longer be heard.  

 

January, 2019 

Fourteen! 

Fourteen people from the same family were murdered and it was done by the supposedly “calm and composed,” so-called “warm-hearted” Assamese folks.  

Several members of that family were interviewed.  

The young professor leaned into the chair and closed his eyes. He was tired but there was no sleep in his eyes. All he had was an unease in his nerves, a feeling of shock, a cold breeze slowly building a whirlwind in his chest. 

He had conducted several interviews among the Assamese people from the other side by now. But why would anyone willingly step forward and confess to their crime? Only a retired teacher whom he knew personally had told him once, “All I can say is that those aren’t the best memories for one to have.” But he saw that the interviews had one thing in common. Almost eighty percent of the people have mentioned the merciless killing of ex-minister Jagannath Sharma’s brother (nobody actually knew his name) in their conversations. Some even went a step further and said, “He was killed but not before he took out a few himself and we are proud of him.” Even today he had asked each and every person that he interviewed on the chapori, about Jagannath Sharma’s brother—there was none that knew him. So far, he had come across only one person who knew the man and his family well enough to exchange visits but he had no clue how Jagannath’s brother had met his end. This surprised him. The story was such common knowledge amongst the Assamese people and yet no one on the chapori knew of it. There was still one more day left for interviews though. Tomorrow. Something might come into the light then. He had not been able to catch up with a few on the chapori for interviews, most of the people from Barpeta particularly were traveling downstream for one thing or the other. For some, it was a matter of their own NRC-listing while for someone else, it was a relative who had committed suicide upon failing to get their name on the NRC list. Yet another had a relative in a detention camp. On this chapori, however, such an incident has not occurred. Most of them had successfully had their names registered, with errors appearing only in some of the surnames or simply in their spellings.  

Outside, the cold was settling in undisturbed silence. His eyes drifted to the bottle of rum standing on the floor. The two students who had accompanied him here for video recording had already finished half of it and went to the next tari to sleep. On the cot nearby, Nabakanta’s snores were gaining pitch. Nabakanta was the youngest son of his mother’s paternal uncle. The man had been toiling quite a bit these last couple of days. But it was only because of him that this exploration of the chapori had been possible. When the interviews of all parties concerned have been recorded, only then can a complete, objectivistic, verbal history be obtained. He saw that Nabakanta had several contacts on the chapori. He had lived here for many years, farming around his place and teaching in a school that he himself had set up. But once TET was put in place, TET-qualified teachers were appointed to the school that Nabakanta had built from scratch and he was forced to step down as a matter of course. His borrowing money from Mazid Miya for various requirements had also led to the accumulation of quite an amount in loan and so Mazid now farmed on the very piece of land that once belonged to him. His brothers too had sold out their respective shares of land to Miyas long back. The plot where they were presently staying belonged to a spinster from Nabakanta’s village. Counting her, only three Assamese families were now permanently settled here. The woman cooked midday meals at the school Naba left behind. The land she owned was farmed on by Amzaad who lived next door. When Naba had told her that he would be visiting with his nephew for some work and staying the night, she was rather pleased. It had been a while since she visited her home in the village. So, entrusting the two does and the newly born heifer calf to Naba, she left for her village today.  

He went and lied down on his back next to Nabakanta. He felt weary but there was still no sleep in his eyes. These past few days, he had been living in a different world and a different time. It baffled him to think that the murders of 15th February, 1983, were committed solely based on rumors and unbarred emotions. Even the actions of the administration were pitifully weak. Before getting into this project, he had done the required homework as best as he could. He had looked for the history of migration in the State Archives and read about the reactions given by the Assamese people regarding migration from the third, fourth, and fifth decades of the twentieth century, in the newspapers and magazines published during those times, page by page. From the minuscule resources he found on the killings of ’83 on this chapori and all the people he talked to; he could guess that there was a consolidated power at work behind the execution of this genocide. Many pointed toward Jagannath Sharma’s “Sweccha Sewak Vahini.” It had come to his knowledge that several secret meetings were held during that time at the initiative of this group. In fact, until the day before he had been able to collect quite a bit of astonishing facts in relation to ’83. A while back, someone from the neighborhood was leveling the bushes in their compound using the old billhook in the house. The man working the grounds looked at his father and said about the billhook, “What kind of a dao is this, there’s no edge on it at all. You should consider getting a new one.” 

 “How much longer could it have held out anyway? It has already lived through its best years since ’83’s movement when it was forged.” 

The professor was there on the verandah reading a book on crusades, the words that came out of his aged father’s mouth stunned him. Even that old knife lying around in their house was made during the chaos of ’83? Unbelievable! 

 “Did you have it made in Kolazaar?’ he looked at his father and asked. He had been hearing plenty about the place called Kolazaar from various individuals, these past days. Apparently, it was there that a father-son duo had earned themselves a fortune by doing tons of blacksmith’s work right before things started unraveling on the riverbank. In addition to making billhooks and machetes, they also forged Singimoori arrows. They even melted down the metal plates attached to electric poles with the words “Khatra” on them, to indicate danger and re-shaped them into arrows.  

After all that, how could anyone claim that those killings weren’t organized. Even the national media at the time called it “organized violence.” The same story also talked about the death of Jagannath Sharma’s brother. He checked the news saved on his android once more. The story published on 31st March, 1983 read: 

“AASU members in Sipajhar, however, let slip that Jagannath Sharma’s brother had gone with a sten gun to ‘rescue’ some ‘kidnapped’ Assamese from the immigrant villages. 

Implicit was the fact that he had killed, but the mourners were anxious to point out that the immigrants had, after his ammunition ran out, cast a fishing net over him and hacked him to death with daos (machetes).” 

Sleep was taking its own sweet time to make an appearance; what arrived in its place instead was an endless string of stories. Rahim Ali sprang up in bed. 

It was something that had not happened to him for many years and yet it happened again today. For a very long time, even until after his nikah to Saberah, he had spent countless nights without any sleep. Poor Saberah hadn’t figured it out initially. They would go to bed as usual after dinner and she’d fall asleep. Until one night, she woke up with a start and found that her husband was missing from beside her on the bed. Her heart had skipped a beat.  

Rahim was crouched near the stack of tin chests.  

“Ya Allah! Whatever on earth are you doing here?” Saberah shrieks in dismay. 

With his hands resting on a trunk, Rahim broke down.  

In the last eight years, countless nights of holding onto that trunk had progressed into dawns and ended with a rooster’s cries. Back then, the trunk had been on the bed. Rahim’s heart was in fragments like storm-torn banana leaves and within it, the bells of the bullock cart full of vegetables leaving for the market as early as midnight kept ringing, and like hands slashed by sugarcane leaves, it oozed blood. His insides would crumble over and over, as if swept away by immense waves crashing against them, the cries, the chaos, weighing on his mind. He would see headless, limbless, melting female bodies making their way downstream through the reddened creek. And slowly and unwittingly, Rahim’s mind would escape into a slumber. The name Sadek Dewani needed no introduction. Be it the chapori, the market, or a government office, everyone was familiar with it. His father arrived here many years before the people who settled during the time of Sadulla Saheb. He had reached Darrang via Nagaon crossing the Brahmaputra there and then making his way through one chapori to the next. The land from Dhariakhaiti, Sadek Dewani, had bought it from Lakkhi Mahajan of Kacharijhar paying 1500 rupees in cash. There were hardly any Miyas in this place then. The majority of the Barpeta Miyas arrived around ’76–’77. 

There was no one here who didn’t know Dewani. His popularity also led to his closeness to the Panchayat secretary Purnakanta Sharma. He had a cow pen alongside his farmlands on the chapori, looked after by his elder son Rahim. And there was always one thing or the other for which Rahim had to make regular attendance to Purna Sharma’s household.  

Karuna, Sharma’s younger son, visited the chapori often. He was still in high school and came almost every Saturday night. The following Sunday the two of them would take the cows grazing, crossing one creek after another and there wouldn’t be a single jujube tree on their banks that Karuna wouldn’t climb up to.  

A shiver ran through Rahim Ali’s body as Karuna’s face flashed in his memory.  

And Sadek Dewani, his father? The man whose arm a Singimuri arrow had pierced through. By some miracle, they were all somehow staying afloat on the lively creek on that fateful day, surrounded by screams, painful cries, and chaos. And in the midst of those chaos…no, he couldn’t…. Rahim Ali’s breath shortened with the recollections each time. Dhariakhaiti, where the chaos had unfolded then was now sitting deep inside the water of the Brahmaputra. Until now, Rahim had had to move places at least four to five times in this area alone. His brothers too were all scattered here and there. If they tried to settle elsewhere in order to escape the pitiless river, many of the Assamese folks would label them “Bangladeshi.” Wherever Rahim went, he had carried with him that one trunk, dragging it around as his only property.  

Except, this trunk was a blazing fire that kept burning him.  

After the unrest, Rahim had started growing his beard and mostly remained detached from the real world. When some time had passed, upon the insistence of family and the few people around him, he married Saberah and as a father of three children, Rahim’s life gradually returned to normal.  

Even so, that old searing pain he knew he would carry with him until his death. The same pain that boy once again dredged up to the surface today. Naba mastar from Baralekhaiti had brought him along. The two others with them handled a camera while the boy badgered him about the chaos of ’83. Rahim had even brought them home, showed them the trunk and they took photos of the death certificates issued by the Civil Hospital in Mongoldoi, with their camera.  

Rahim tossed and turned in bed. 

 

The professor recalled the image of Rahim Ali showing the contents of the trunk to them. Sigh, the man himself couldn’t read, couldn’t even tell one paper from the other but he still had the death certificates of his wife and son preserved with great care. He had in fact asked them to locate the death certificates from among a pile of documents. 

Pouring some of the lukewarm water from the flask nearby, he made himself a strong peg of rum. He was eager to listen once more to the words that came from Rahim Ali’s mouth and opened his laptop. The video began playing while he took small sips from his glass— 

“Tell me your name and age.” 

“My name is Rahim Ali and I have just entered 72.”  

“Were you born here?” 

“Yes, this is my birthplace and my father’s. I was born on Nangeli char.” 

“Where were you during the unrest of ’83?” 

“We were at Dhariakhaiti 2. We had been living there since 1957 when I was only 10 years old.” 

“So, tell us about the ’83 chaos.” 

“Well, what is there to say? It happened.” 

“I mean, on the afternoon of Monday, 14th February, when you heard that chaos had unfolded toward Dholpur, what was it that you were doing?” 

“Ah yes, toward night when we heard the sounds of the chaos and saw fire towards Dholpur, we were on duty.” 

“You mean you were on the lookout? How many of you were there?” 

“Yes, on the lookout. There were about four-five hundred of us. We were up until morning and after that, we went to our homes. Then at around 11.30, the other party arrived and it was all fire and blood.” He paused for a moment. “I should be dead too but the maalik kept me.” 

“And when did this party leave?” 

“Around 12.30–1:00.” 

“And they hacked your mother?” 

“Yes, we found the body the next day. They chopped it into three pieces.” 

“When did you find out?” 

“Much later. We were on the run the entire day. I had no clue that they’d hacked my wife, my sons. Only at around 11 in the night, I came to know about it on the char in the middle of the Brahmaputra where all the Miyas had gathered. Once I found out, I’d lost my senses completely. I was insane and my younger brothers had to tie me down on the coast.” 

“How long had you been married then?” 

“We married in 1976, had two boys. One was six and the other three.” 

“Did you find their bodies?” 

“No, they were killed and thrown into the river. My baba was also shot by a Singimuri arrow.” 

“What was his name?” 

“Saadek Ali. You are new here. But among the old people, everyone from Sipajhar to Mangaldoi knows who Sadek Dewani is. That day, at around 12 o’clock when I scouted from the bank of the creek, I found our father standing chin-deep in water, blood trickling from his neck. I went in and brought him ashore. Once we were out, I saw that an arrow had slashed through the skin on his neck. Two of them had gone through his right arm, one of which had now fallen off. The other was still stuck in place. My head was all over the place. I told him, ‘Baba, you stay calm. I am going to pull this one out’. And then I twisted the arrow and yanked it out. It was a Singimuri arrow. When I pulled the arrow, a white nerve had come out along with it but I pushed it back in with my finger.” 

“Do you know anything about Jagannath Sharma’s brother who was killed under a fish net?” 

“Let me tell you. We have lived with Assamese people since the day we were born. We had herds of cattle and pens all over the place. The Secretary of Panchayat in our area at the time was Jagannath Sharma’s father Purna Sharma. He had a few cows which he kept in our pen. He called me ‘daangar soli’ and treated me like an elder son too. And likewise, I called him ‘deuta’ as a son would his father. We had such regard for one another. Karuna Sharma was his son.” 

“Was he with the party?” 

“He was. We had slept on the same bed, eaten from the same pot once. He would cook and we would both eat. He never ate by my hand; I won’t lie about that. I could never make an apostate out of anyone when I had a faith of my own.” 

“And he brought a gun?” 

“Yes!” 

“You saw him killing people?” 

“I did. At least a dozen by my estimate.” 

“Right in front of your eyes?” 

“In front of my very eyes.” 

“Then how did he die? We’ve heard from some of the Assamese people that he was hacked down by machetes after they’d trapped him in a fish net. We even read it in the news.” 

“I wouldn’t know anything about it. With all the chaos, everyone was actually concerned about saving their own lives.” 

He stopped video-recording. The man had said a few other things. This was going to be quite an important document. A rooster could be heard crowing outside. Stepping out to relieve himself, he saw that everything was white, blanketed by a thick fog. Moments after he crawled into bed, the faint tinkling of a bell fell into his ears. Aah! the sound he has been dying to hear since yesterday, but these days there rarely were any carts on the chapori. At that moment, the sounds of several buffalo bells began resonating within him too. Padas from the Gunamala echoed in a wistful tune. The faces of his long-dead grandfather from whom he had first heard about Karuna Sharma (although not the man’s name at the time), his aunt who took her own life, his two uncles who left the village to be security guards in the city, all danced in front of his eyes. His mother, who had grown up in Barmajhili and narrated to him the juicy stories about the place, had died from a fatal ailment without proper treatment, even before he could land on his feet. Years later, he had unexpectedly discovered that the Chaulkhowa Chapori which had feasted upon the bloodbath of ’83, was the very Barmajhili that his mother, his uncles, and others from his village had narrated about. He felt a weight on his chest as the soft tinkling of the bull-bell tore through the fog and reached him. In between the drunkenness of rum and sleep, the dreamy afternoon buried deep under the bottomless pit of memories came alive in front of his eyes once again. An afternoon of his grandfather’s Miya coachman friend driving him around in his bull-cart, a dust-laden ghat, a herd of cows making their way back along the bank of a creek, and a retiring golden sun, all circle within him as he closes his eyes. That same man disappeared into a misty night, driving his handlamp-lit bull-cart through the fog. A hazy outline of a face and the tinkling of a bull-bell slowly start to pick up rhythm within him.  

In the morning, he woke up and saw that Nabakanta was talking to two Miyas who lived nearby.  

“You’re up? Wait, let me put the pot on for tea,” Nabakanta said and headed toward the furnace. While they sat sipping tea, his uncle Naba looked at him and said, “I forgot to tell you something yesterday. Rahim Miya used to be quite close to your grandfather. In the afternoon of the day before the massacre, Rahim had heard the Miyas discussing the possibility of a riot and right away asked your grandfather to take his cows home.” Since yesterday, he has heard many such stories about the Assamese and Miyas who lived together on the chapori helping each other in their times of peril. But his grandfather was on the chapori on 14th February too? He could have asked him so many things if he had been alive today.  

As he sipped on his tea, something struck him. Finishing off the lukewarm liquid with a single gulp he got up, fetched the keys to his bike, and said to Nabakanta— “Come on, let’s take a ride to Rahim’s place.” 

Nabakanta could make no sense of this sudden urgency in his nephew’s words but went along with it anyway. At one point, Nabakanta asked him to stop the bike. Then pointing to a line of huts to their right he said, “Remember the Barmajhili that your mother told you about? This is it. We had a home here and this is where your mother grew up.” 

One by one, Nabakanta started narrating the names of all the people of the village, pointing to the places they had once occupied. He saw that all those places now had huts that belonged to Miyas.  

He felt an ache rising in his chest as the memories of his dead mother and some Nepali friend of hers whom he’d never met came flooding back to him. 

Once they reached Rahim’s house, his heart sank. Saberah Bano informed them that her husband wasn’t home. Once upon a time when Jagannath Sharma was a minister, about five hundred homeless families including her own brother were placed in Phuhuratoli. Some months back, the new government had carried out evictions there. Her sister-in-law was with child at the time and just the previous day, she had given birth to a stillborn baby in the camp itself. That is where Rahim was headed now. 

Oh? Does this mean that they had no chance of meeting Rahim Ali? The restlessness inside him was growing. Maybe they could somehow catch up to him at the ghat. He turned the bike around in the direction that led to the ghat and twisted its gears into a race with everything he had.  

Rahim Ali was already rowing away when Nabakanta screamed out at him from the bank— 

“Rahim bhai, turn around for a bit. We have something to ask you.”  

Rahim Ali brought the boat back toward the bank.  

“Were you close with Manuram of Baralekhaiti,” the professor asked without a moment’s delay. 

 “Yes, yes. He was a friend. The night before the massacre, when I heard our Miya brothers planning to set fire to Assamese houses, I immediately asked him to take his cows home. Later, after the chaos had subsided, he also kept checking on us regularly,” Rahim Ali replied while still standing on his boat. 

Aah, this revelation was too much for him to take in. 

But somehow, he pulled the reins on his surging emotions and said, “Mama, I am Manuram koka’s grandson Baapa. I used to come here when I was younger and you had taken me out for a ride in a bull-cart during one of those afternoons.” 

“Oh! You are the son of that boini from Dighirpaar?” Rahim’s face lit up with a smile. 

“You brought a cart full of hay to our house.” 

“Yes, of course I remember. It has been so many years. You were only a boy back then, weren’t you Baapa.” 

Baapa breathed a sigh of relief when Rahim addressed him in the exact same way, he did all those years back.  

 “I am running late but still; I would say two things before I leave. Naba hadn’t told me yesterday that you are Manu dada’s grandson.” 

 “Yes, please do tell.” 

Rahim Ali paused for a few moments, staring blankly toward the distance ahead. And then he spoke, 

 “You asked me yesterday about how Karuna Sharma had died, didn’t you? I didn’t say anything because of the cameras. And now I find that you are the grandson of my own friend. So, I am going to tell you.” 

He looked at Rahim Ali with apparent curiosity. 

 “Karuna had run out of bullets and I was a few feet away from him. But even without bullets, he tried to smack me on the head with the gun.” 

 “You?” Baapa’s voice went up a few notches while his eyes widened in surprise and disbelief. 

“Me,” Rahim Ali affirmed in a tone dripping with sorrow. “We shared the same bed, ate from the same pot! He cooked; I ate….! When he came at me like that, I thought I was dead for sure. I had no weapon on me, nothing but a carrying pole in my hand. When he rushed toward me with the gun lifted high above his head, I held the pole tightly with both hands and whacked him hard with it. The pole was quite big. So, the gun went flying off Karuna’s hands-on impact while he also lost his balance and landed on the ground. After he fell, I couldn’t wait around and watch who did what to him.” 

God! How unbelievably dramatic yet terribly heart-breaking a discovery this was. After a prolonged silence, he looked at a grief-stricken Rahim Ali and asked, 

“Were there other Miya people nearby?” 

“There were. One of them…Karuna had a watch on his left hand…the man…he couldn’t get it off Karuna’s hand. So, he chopped the hand off and took it away in a bag,” Rahim said, slowly collecting himself. 

“He took the whole hand?” 

“Yes, the whole hand.” 

“Who was he?” 

“He was one of us, a Miya, there’s no point in hiding it. I had never thought that Karuna would want to kill me.” 

Rahim Ali’s words left him speechless. Failing to find the right words, he asked— “Did you come across Purna Sharma ever again?” 

“Much, much later. At least after five years. Jagannath Sharma was a minister then. I went to their house. The people here tried to stop me. I said—if they kill me then let them…. I am dead anyway. But if only that could happen. All I found there was love. The first thing I did once I got there was touch his feet. He listened to all the history…the old man, and shed a few tears. But then he said to me— “if he hadn’t raised his gun at you, he could still be alive. Why did he have to try to kill you? You were both sons of this house and you are our daangar soli still.” 

Rahim Ali sighed. “I better leave. One of my brothers-in-law’s family has been evicted in Phuhuratoli. I’ll go and see how they are holding up.” 

Rahim Ali pushed his boat out into the waters once again.  

Baapa stood there, still as a statue watching Rahim Ali paddle away until he disappeared into a fold of the creek. 

 

Translated by Daradi Patar 

 

Written- 2019, Dibrugarh 

Special Thanks: Rahim Ali (72) 

Chaulkhowa, Nabakanta Deka (48), Kuworigaon, Hazarikapara, Darrang 

 

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Also, read Two Faces By Sarah Thomas, translated from The Malayalam by K.M Ajir Kutty and Published in The Antonym.

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