by Baby Halder
On the way he met a farmer who was scraping at the earth with his hands. The jackal asked why he was using his hands, and the farmer replied that he had nothing else. “I have this spade,” said the jackal. “I can give it to you, but you will have to give me something in exchange.” The farmer took the spade and said to the jackal, “I have nothing to give you. All I have is this staff that I use for grazing the cows. Would you like it?”
“Why not?” said that jackal. “I’ll take it.”
Halfway through the story my cousin said, “It’s getting late. Let’s go to sleep now—we’ll hear the rest of the story tomorrow.” I asked if she would remember the story so far, and she said yes. Then both of us went off to sleep. We woke late in the morning to a scolding from Aunt, who told us off for oversleeping, and warned us to sleep on time that night and not to spend our time chatting. But that night, no sooner had Aunt left us than my cousin said, “Okay, now tell me the rest of the story, but make sure you whisper so she does not get to know that we are awake.” I asked her if she remembered where we had left off, that the jackal was about to take the farmer’s stick in exchange for his spade? “Yes, yes,” she replied. “Now get on with the rest.” So I said, “All right, so listen…”
The jackal took the staff and went on his way. A short distance later, what does he see but a peasant using his bare hands to chase a cow away! So he asked, “Brother, what are you doing?”
The peasant said, “This cow is eating up all my grain, so I am trying to make it run away.”
“But how can you do that with your bare hands?” the jackal asked. “I have this staff…would you like to take it?”
“Why not? I’ll take it.”
So the jackal gave it to him. “Will you give me something in exchange?”
“But what if the staff breaks?” said the peasant.
“Well, what if it does? At least it will have been put to good use.”
The peasant said, “But I have nothing to give you…except, wait. I have this small shovel.”
“All right,” said the jackal, “give me whatever you have.” And so saying, he took the shovel and went on his way.
A little further along, he met another farmer who was digging mud with kitchen tongs. When the jackal saw him he asked, “Is this all you could find to dig with?” The farmer replied that he had nothing else. So the jackal said, “I can give you this shovel if you like.”
“Okay, give it to me,” replied the farmer, “but what if it breaks?”
And once again the jackal said, “Well, so what? At least it will have been put to good use.”
When the farmer began digging, the shovel broke into two pieces.
“Hey, Brother, why have you broken my shovel?” said the jackal. “Now you’ll have to give me a new one or give me something else in exchange.”
The farmer said, “You may have lost your shovel, but other than these tongs I have nothing to give you. Please take these if you wish.”
The jackal took the tongs and headed off again. Suddenly he felt hungry. In the distance he spied a house and headed toward it. He saw a woman sitting by the stove, stirring rice with a stick. “Sister, what are you doing?” asked the jackal. “I am very hungry. Please give me some of that rice you are cooking.” The woman turned to her husband: “Just look at this jackal! The food isn’t even ready yet and he wants to eat!”
“She is right,” the jackal told the man, “but what can I do? I’m dying of hunger.”
“Well, just have a little patience,” the wife replied, “the food is nearly done.”
Then the jackal and the man and woman all sat down to eat together. After they’d finished, the jackal said, “I have eaten so well, but I have nothing to give you other than this small thing.” The husband asked to see what it was, so the jackal showed him the tongs, saying, “This is no use to you, but it might come in use for your wife.” The woman took the tongs happily.
“You’ve got something useful,” said the jackal, “but what about me? Do you mean to send me away empty-handed?” To this the woman replied, “My husband has a drum…would you like to take that?” The jackal said, “All right, give me that.” He took the drum and left, and he was happy that in the end he had found something he wanted.
All along the way he beat the drum and sang:
I went to eat aubergines and I left behind my ear,
in exchange for the ear I got a spade,
tak duma dum dum dum dum,
in exchange for the spade, I got a stick,
tak duma dum dum dum dum,
in exchange for the stick, I got a shovel,
tak duma dum dum dum dum,
in exchange for the shovel, I got some tongs,
tak duma dum dum dum dum,
in exchange for the tongs, I got a drum,
tak dum dum dudum dudum.
And singing away, he made his way home.
By the time I got to the end of the story, I was quite sleepy and I nodded off. Sometime later, I awoke and I don’t know why, but at that moment, a memory powerfully came back to me of the ten-paise coin my mother had pressed into my palm the day she had left home. One day my aunt took that coin from me and threw it away. After that, I searched high and low for it, but it was nowhere to be found. I was just thinking about this and wondering what my aunt had done to the only thing my mother had left me to remember her by when I was startled to hear a slight noise. I looked to see what it was and found that my cousin was talking in whispers with someone outside the room. Then it seemed as if she went somewhere. After a while she came back and quietly lay down next to me. I looked toward the window to see how late it was when I saw a boy standing there. He shone his torch into our room, and I quickly closed my eyes lest he should see.
After that, I couldn’t get to sleep at all. In the morning, I wondered if I should tell Aunt what had happened during the night, but then I felt scared. I thought, What if she says something to me instead? What would I do? After a lot of thought, I decided to stay silent. But I was dying to tell someone: that secret kept flapping around inside me! In the end, when I just couldn’t keep it in any longer, I told the whole story to two sisters, Sandhya and Ratna, who lived next door to my aunt. They advised me not to speak of this to anyone. “She’s your aunt’s daughter,” they said, “and she will not say anything to her, but she may just turn around and accuse you of something. You’d better be careful. She knows you have no one to speak up for you and take your side.”
After what happened that night, I felt very depressed and I increasingly felt the need to go away, at least for a short while. When I told my aunt this, she asked me where I wanted to go. I said, “Maybe to my sister’s home? Just for a couple of days?”
“But what if your Baba comes to pick you up when you’re not here? What will I say to him?”
“What’s the problem? He can just as easily collect me from his elder daughter’s home, can’t he?”
So then she asked her son to take me to my sister’s house.
When I arrived and my Didi saw me, she began to cry. She kept saying that she had no mother, she had no one and none of us cared for her. I realized she was not happy in her marriage, but I put that thought out of my head and took her little baby into my arms. Didi told the child, “Look, this is your aunt.” We had heard that Didi had had a little boy, but Baba had not gone to see her after the child’s birth and he had not allowed us to do so, either. “If Ma had been around, she would have dropped everything and come to see me and her grandchild,” she said.
Didi and I were talking when her husband came back. He gave a shout of joy when he saw me. “Oh, Sister-in-law! I thought you had forgotten all about us!” His voice brought the rest of the household out, and in no time at all we were laughing and crying and talking all at once.
I spent a whole month with my Didi and the time passed very well. Didi’s brother-in-law would take me out every evening to show me something or the other. Didi kept asking me why I went out eve
ry day. “If Baba hears about this, he will not be happy.” But no one paid any heed to what she said. Her brother-in-law laughed and joked and teased me all the time. He used to spend a lot of time with me. In fact, he would keep talking to me and following me even when I was going off to sleep with his mother. Sometimes I would get quite fed up with him and he would reduce me to tears. But whenever that happened my Didi was always kind to me, and she would call me to her. Didi was round and plump—a bit like my father—and there were times when my cousins would tease her, call her “elephant” and try to make her angry. But even her brother-in-law had to stop teasing me when she told him off.
The days passed pleasantly in laughter and jokes with Didi’s husband and her brother-in-law. I spent my time with her child, bathing him, talking to Didi about Ma and all our memories of old times spent in our home. Before I knew it, nearly a month had passed, and one day I heard that Baba, my new Ma, and my brother had come, and they were staying with my aunt. They’d come to have a bit of a break but also to fetch me. Didi sent a message that they must come to her home, that she considered our new Ma like our real mother so Baba should not hesitate to bring her with him. Two or three days after this message was sent, Baba brought everyone with him and came to Didi’s home. Her husband and everyone at their home were extremely hospitable and they made them welcome. Of course many people whispered things about our new Ma, but the others decided there was no point in paying attention to such things and they just ignored them.
AFTER A WHILE AT DIDI’S PLACE, BABA TOOK ME BACK TO Aunt’s house. Everyone was sorry to see me go—I’d been feeling sad ever since I had heard that he was coming to take us away, but there were tears even in Baba’s eyes as we left. As she came out of the house, Didi was also crying, and she kept saying that whatever had to happen with her had already happened, but now her sister should not suffer the same fate.
When we got to Aunt’s house, I heard that her daughter was to get married in some eight or ten days. This was the same girl to whom I had recounted the tale of the jackal and the farmer and then she had run out to meet the boy I’d seen at the window. I was happy to hear that she was to get married, but I was also a bit upset to hear that Baba had not taken enough time off from his workplace to be able to stay for the wedding, and that he also wanted to take me back with him—in fact, he’d come all the way to fetch me. My aunt realized what I was thinking and said to Baba, “If it’s not possible for you to stay on, at least leave this poor motherless girl with me here.” But Baba had made up his mind and refused to budge. Frustrated, my aunt suggested that at least he should meet my elder uncle before he left. Just when it seemed Baba might relent, our new mother interrupted and said they could not afford to delay. Having said that, they turned and left me and my brother in the room and went away.
Aunt was angry with Baba, and no sooner had he and my stepmother stepped out than she began to tell us all sorts of tales about him: things that we had not heard before and would not, even in our wildest imaginings, have thought. But they did not seem to be things said in anger. She told us that Baba had always been plump and round; that even as a child, he used to eat a lot, and because of this everyone called him Nadu Gopal, although his real name was Upendranath. He had not studied much but he had managed to get a good job. And this he got in the strangest way. One day he was working in the courtyard outside his home when an army van passed by. The people inside saw this healthy, well-built man and they called out to him and asked him to get into the van. Soon after that, people heard that he had joined the army. When my uncle heard this he was downcast: he felt he had lost his right arm, and did not know how he would manage. In those days everyone was afraid of army jobs because they were said to turn good men into rogues and this is why my grandmother was so angry when my father, his father, and one of their friends turned up at her house to see the woman who was to become our mother. But then, if it had not been fated that our mother, Ganga, would marry Upendranath, our father, how would it have happened?
Baba liked Ganga the moment he saw her. One day he turned up alone at her house to see her. He learned that she had gone to the village pond to bathe. When he managed to find the pond, he found that Ganga had finished her bath and was on her way back. She got really nervous when she saw him and quickly hid herself somewhere—she’d heard that military men were very violent and that they beat up women. Anyway, he did not manage to meet her that time, nor on several successive visits. Ganga’s mother would get very irritated at his persistence. “This fellow just will not leave my daughter alone. He’s determined to take her away,” she said. And of course she was right.
Very soon things began moving, an auspicious time was fixed, and the marriage took place. Upendranath spent two or three months with his bride and then returned to his job. He wrote to his wife once a month, and he came home when my Didi was born. When he arrived, my grandmother put the child in his arms, saying: “She looks just like you.” Baba started to laugh, at which my mother made a face and said sourly, “Look at the way he’s laughing! He’s so happy that he’s got a daughter, and he’s come running all this way. He’s finally remembered that he has a home and a wife.” My grandmother tried to tell Ma to be quiet: “He’s come home after such a long time,” she said, “and instead of making him welcome, all you can think of is reproaching him!”
But Baba said, “No, Ma, you be quiet. Let her say what she wants to.”
“And why should I not speak?” retorted my mother. “This is the first time he’s come back since we got married. If his job was so precious to him, why did he get married in the first place?” At this, everyone—my grandmother, my uncle, and everyone—burst out laughing. Baba was smiling and soon Ma also broke into a smile. My aunt teased Baba: “Brother, you’d better go and console your wife!”
Aunt would have told us more stories, but just then Baba came back. I think he had been getting our things together. He told my aunt that we would all go to our elder uncle’s house and then carry on home from there. We then said good-bye to her and left.
WE SPENT A DAY AT MY UNCLE’S HOME. HE SEEMED QUITE worried about Didi, and said to my Baba, “You’ve sent her off to another home, but you have not bothered to keep track of whether she is happy or not. That poor girl, she must think she has no one at all: no mother, and a father who does not even seem to care about her anymore. At least go and see her once.” Baba said he had just been to see her. At this, Uncle was quiet, then he pointed to me and said, “Don’t make the same mistake with her. Make sure you check out the people you will marry her to.” Baba looked at him, but I don’t think he really heard what Uncle was saying.
That night, Uncle’s elder daughter, my cousin, insisted that Baba tell us a story. Baba was a real storehouse of stories, so he began one for us, and before we knew it, half the night had gone. While we were listening, I kept thinking how lucky Uncle’s daughters were! Five daughters, born one after the other as their parents each time tried for a boy, and yet Uncle had given them so much love. And he loved us the same way. I also liked my uncle very much. My grandfather had died while I was still a child, but I had heard people say that my uncle was tall and fair like him—just like my cousin, the long-awaited boy, who came after his five sisters.
When we said good-bye to Uncle, he seemed well and healthy, but just a few days later we heard that he had been take ill. Baba and Ma went to see him, and when they returned they brought him back with them. One night Baba and Ma were talking and we heard them say that when they had gone to see Uncle, they had found him asleep. To Baba, he looked just like our grandfather at that moment and Baba began to cry when he saw him. Uncle woke up and said, “Don’t cry, it’s good you have come. I don’t think I’m going to last much longer now. Somehow I have managed to marry off my one daughter but these little ones will now be your responsibility.” Baba said, “Nothing is going to happen to you. I have come to take you home with me.”
Baba brought Uncle back to Durgapur with him and took hi
m to the company hospital to have him looked at. When he was a little better, Uncle’s son, Shiv, came to our home to see his father. Uncle told him that he was feeling better but there was no guaranteeing how things would be in the future. Shiv then asked him to come back home, but Baba refused, saying that he would not let him go until he was satisfied that Uncle was fully recovered. Uncle would also have preferred that, but Shiv whispered something to him that seemed to change his mind. Uncle told Baba that since Shiv was insisting, it would be better for him to go. “Come on, son,” he said to Shiv, “let’s go.”
Baba said, “Brother, since you are being treated here, wouldn’t it be better to wait until your treatment is complete?” But Uncle was not willing to listen. Had it been anyone but Uncle, they, too, would not have wanted to stay with us, for it did not remain a secret for long that Ma was very upset over all the expense of Uncle’s illness: she had talked about it loudly in the kitchen one day when Shiv was sitting outside and could hear everything.
Uncle left. One night, some days after this, I got up from bed to go to the bathroom. On my way out of the house, I saw Baba standing by himself in the dark. I asked him softly, “What’s wrong, Baba?” He started to say something and then stopped. “Nothing. Nothing at all,” he said, and he drew me gently toward him. I could see that there were tears in his eyes. Perhaps it was the dark that hid his tears from my stepmother, but she could not have mistaken who was standing with Baba outside. I couldn’t understand why she did not come out, but just watched us through a crack in the door. After that night, Baba and Ma had many fights about me—so many that the whole house became full of tension, and I heard them say that the sooner I was married off, the better. Because of the tense atmosphere at home, Baba began to keep his distance from me, and I likewise avoided him. Did my stepmother really think that I, a twelve-year-old child, could have such an abnormal relationship with her father that his wife needed to be worried about it? To me, this was unimaginable, but that was precisely what my stepmother thought and that made things extremely difficult for me. I was so embarrassed by the whole thing that I found it difficult even to talk to the neighbors.
