Age of Frenzy

by Mahabaleshwar Sail

  The practice continued through the years.

  Padre Paulo Colaso and Shef Camil Ribeir had not been on talking terms for the last three days. The priest would keep insulting the shef and call him a coward. He threatened to request the Archbishop and the viceroy to divest the shef of his duties because of the delay in converting Adolshi into a completely Christian village. Fed up of his taunts and jibes, the shef finally retorted, ‘Wait and see if I don’t burn their religion in the Holiye fire … I will bring them all to you, and line them up to be baptized.’

  The shef summoned Daba Devli, who was now known as Andrew Denes, to the camp on the day before the festival. ‘I have a job for you. If you do it, you will get a whole bhaat of land which the Raigali Brahmins have abandoned,’ he said.

  ‘Just say what you want me to do, hodda mansha.’

  ‘I have to convert all of Adolshi to Christianity in one night,’ the shef said.

  ‘Yes, big man, you must.’

  ‘I want you to fetch a black calf, about the size of a goat. You must cut off its head and throw the carcass into the Holiye fire. The head must be tossed beneath the banyan tree. I’ll handle everything after that. No one will know that you are involved,’ he said.

  ‘But that’s a sin, hodda mansha, a very grave sin!’ Daba was aghast.

  ‘You have to do this. For me. For Christianity.’

  ‘I’m a Christian, sir. The villagers won’t let me get near the fire,’ Daba’s voice was trembling now.

  ‘Your younger brother, Jogi Devli, hasn’t become a Christian yet. Get him to do this, or both of you will suffer. Let me know when the calf’s carcass has been thrown into the fire. You can be the chief of the village after that.’

  Daba, who was now named Andrew Denes, stared at the shef, bewildered. Then he walked away. Dusk had fallen by that time, so instead of going home, he went straight to Jogi’s shack which was in a secluded spot. ‘Come outside, my brother, listen to me.’

  ‘That wretched shef has put us in a difficult spot. He wants us to cut off the head of a black calf and throw the carcass into the Holiye fire. He’ll take away our land and drive us out of the village, or maybe he’ll slit our throats, if we don’t obey. If the villagers eat the calf’s flesh, they’ll become outcastes and he can take them to church and have them baptized. No one will know that we are involved. Everything must be done in the dark. We must ensure that the calf’s head remains under the banyan tree,’ he said.

  It took some time for the message to sink in, but when it did, Jogi leapt up in anger. ‘How dare you? Do what they want of you and enjoy what they give. Leave me out of this!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I need your help. I’m a Christian. I can’t approach the Holiye fire,’ Daba wailed.

  Jogi stared into the darkness for a long while.

  ‘Dado, I have a plan. They want a calf’s head. How will they know what animal has been charred in the fire? When it gets dark, we’ll take Sonu Gurav’s black calf to the Sinteri slope and cut its head off. We’ll throw the body down that slope and put the head under the banyan as they ordered, and then take away one of the goat heads that is already there. We won’t commit a sin and the job will be done,’ Jogi suggested.

  ‘What if someone sees the calf’s carcass on that hill slope?’

  ‘Do you think the jackals and wild dogs will let it be? They’ll strip off the flesh in one night.’

  ‘You’ll have to manage all this. You’ll be going to the Holiye celebration.’

  ‘When I take the calf’s head to the banyan tree you go to the soldier’s camp and tell them that everything has been done as planned. Just tell them not to take our names. It’s not right to kill a calf … but that sin will be on their heads,’ Jogi declared.

  The brothers went back to their homes, but neither man could sleep that night as the lowing of a calf seemed to resound in their ears.

  The next evening the two of them entered Sonu’s cowshed as soon as it got dark. The calf was huddled beside its mother. As soon as they laid their hands on it, it lowed so they quickly bound its mouth and carried it away. The cow lunged towards them with her horns lowered, but she was tied to a stake. She mooed loudly, but the piteous sound was drowned in the loud music being played around the festival fire. Jogi passed the knife to his brother and held the calf’s head firmly. ‘You are a Christian and the cow is not a holy animal for people of your faith. You may kill it and eat its flesh, so you cut off its head,’ he said. Daba lifted the knife with both hands and brought it down forcefully. They could still hear the piteous mooing of the cow in her shed.

  Jogi tossed the calf’s body down the slope and wrapped the head in a piece of cloth. With a thudding heart he made his way to the banyan tree. The moon hadn’t risen yet so it was dark at that spot. Jogi left the calf’s head in the undergrowth near the Naas stone.

  He stood there quietly for a while. Four or five goats were tethered on one side. People were trickling in slowly and joining the large crowd that had already gathered around the pile of logs and branches that would soon be set alight. Some new converts were also present to claim a share in the meat curry since they were residents of the village.

  As the moon rose above the horizon, the troupe of dancers and other village youths began to prance around the pile of wood as the musicians played loudly. The Mirashi picked up a flaming palm frond and began to circle the pile of wood, chanting invocation verses. He lowered the frond on to the dry twigs and leaves which caught fire instantly. The leaping flames cast a bright light all around. Jogi quietly melted into the throng as Daba slipped away to the soldier’s camp.

  People danced exuberantly as though their shackles had suddenly been unbound. Those who had vowed to sacrifice goats to appease the Holiye Naas cut off the animals’ heads and tossed the carcasses, along with some coconuts, into the blazing fire. Only the heads lay strewn beneath the tree. Since this was going to be the last time that the festival would be celebrated, there was some amount of confusion and people lost count of the number of animals sacrificed.

  Jogi Devli bustled about busily, dragging the roasted carcasses out of the fire, helping others cook the meat curry. By the time the moon was high up in the sky, the curry in the large earthen pot was ready to be distributed amongst the villagers. It was decreed that the curry should be consumed right there and not taken to their homes. Members of all communities and caste groups in the village, except the Brahmins, milled about the bonfire. People ate their fill and started walking back to their homes.

  The Nayaks who were returning to Shirvaddo followed a track that took them behind the soldiers’ camp. They heard someone whistle softly and a tall figure shrouded in black clothes, loomed up from amongst the bushes.

  ‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’ the men cried.

  ‘So, you Nayaks have eaten the meat of cows, have you?’

  ‘What! Cow flesh?’

  ‘Didn’t you see the head under the banyan? A calf, as high as a man’s waist. The calf from Sonu Gurav’s shed. Daba Devli chopped off its head and his brother tossed the body into the Holiye fire.’

  The Nayaks were aghast.

  ‘The calf was roasted in the fire along with the goats. Now it will moo in your bellies!’ The shadowy figure melted into the bushes.

  The men froze in their tracks. Their stomachs churned and the contents threatened to spill out of their mouths. Shef Camil Ribeir’s plan to make Daba and Jogi into scapegoats had succeeded.

  The group of thirty or forty men were blinded by rage. They brandished poles and stakes as though possessed. A few of them started to retch. ‘Deva, we have been tricked into eating what we shouldn’t have. We are impure. We have polluted the Holiye Naas. We shall not spare Daba Devli or his brother. We’ll burn them alive,’ they screamed as they rushed back to look for Daba and Jogi.

  ‘Is Jogi Devli there? That demon has tricked us into eating cow flesh. He’s made us impure!’

  ‘He polluted the prasad!’

  ‘We w
on’t let him escape!’

  ‘See if there’s a calf head under the tree,’ someone yelled.

  Jogi Devli had picked up the extra goat head and vanished from the scene. The fire was dying and the embers were settling into a pile of ash. Dugga Mhar, as in previous years, was piling the goat heads in his basket when he realized that one of them was that of a calf. He sank to the ground in shock.

  Not finding Jogi at the site of the fire, the enraged mob veered off towards Daba’s shack. The news flashed through the village and in minutes, men from the different settlements ran out to join the mob.

  Some of them peeped into Sonu Gurav’s cowshed on the way. Though Sonu insisted that he had tied the cow and the calf in the shed at dusk, the calf was nowhere in sight.

  ‘It is in your bellies. Why are you calling out to it?’ Kushta Nayak screamed.

  Blood seemed to descend into their eyes, rendering them blind. ‘Come out, Daba! We’ll cut you into pieces, set fire to your hut,’ they threatened.

  Daba latched the door and shrank into a corner, terrified. His wife and children began to cry in fear. His paralysed mother heard everything, but not a sound escaped her throat.

  ‘Come out, Daba! Or we’ll burn the hut with all of you inside.’ They kicked at the door and the walls and tugged at the thatch on the roof. ‘Come out, Daba, or you’ll roast like that calf!’

  Daba staggered out of the door. ‘I didn’t throw the calf into the fire … Forgive me…’ he pleaded, but the mob began to rain blows on him.

  They punched and kicked him, turning a deaf ear to his pleas. His wife appeared at the door. The agitated mob dragged her out. They tore off her clothes. The poor woman ran into the darkness to hide her nakedness. Some people dragged Daba’s children and tossed them, like bits of wood, on to a pile of stones. Daba continued to mutter disjointed words ‘Shef Ribeir … Jogi … Sinteri slope…’ but his strength was ebbing away rapidly.

  They tossed Daba’s battered body into the shack, latched the door from the outside and set the shack alight. Someone uprooted the wooden cross in his courtyard and tossed it into the blaze.

  The fifty or sixty men who made up that half-crazed mob then rushed in search of Jogi Devli, but the door of his shack was wide open and Jogi and his wife were nowhere in sight.

  ‘If Jogi Devli is seen in this village again, we’ll cut off his legs,’ someone shouted as the mob smashed the earthen pots and dragged a mattress into the courtyard and set fire to it. The blood that had rushed into their brains seemed to be draining now. They were beginning to tire. The bamboo poles in Daba’s hut exploded in the heat and two human bodies were reduced to embers as the fire raged on.

  Soon a crowd had gathered on the ground in front of the temple. As an enraged mob engaged in a furious dance of hatred, they had not recognized each other, but now, in the clear moonlight, they saw each other’s faces and came back to their senses. The man was one of our own!

  The silence of a cremation ground seemed to settle about the temple. The oil lamp in the sanctum seemed to be burning in some remote recess and the idol of Lord Ramnath appeared like a faint shadow. The lamp would go out and the shadow would disappear forever. Bands of ghosts would dance in the darkness. This was the last day in the life of this deity, who had existed since time immemorial!

  A sense of fear and unease spread through people’s hearts as they stared at the deity in the temple. Why did we embark on this senseless dance, why did we set Daba’s hut alight? We are powerless and cannot save the deity or the temple from being destroyed, why did we do this then? Instead of rushing to the soldier’s camp with sticks and poles in our hands, why did we rush to Daba’s house? Wretched cowards that we are, what difference does it make whether we remain Hindus or Christians!

  Not one soldier stepped out of the camp though they were aware of the night-long mayhem in the village in which two people had lost their lives. Nothing was achieved through Daba’s death, they said to themselves. It was a Hindu, Jogi Devli, who made them eat cow flesh!

  The next morning however, some soldiers on horseback with swords in their hands rode through the village. ‘You have killed two people. You have thrown a cross, the emblem of Christianity, into the fire. Do you know how grave a crime you have committed by burning a Christian to death? The King of Portugal will send forces to punish you!’

  Of the twenty-six Nayak households in Shirvaddo, five had already converted to Christianity while three families were out of the village. When Murari Nayak heard that the soldiers were making their rounds, he took his family and fled into the forest. The soldiers dragged all the men and youths above sixteen years of age from the Nayak community as well as those from the other castes, out of their homes. The soldiers paid no attention to those who claimed they had not left their homes the previous night. They were all equally guilty and would be locked up in jail in Goapattana.

  Shef Ribeir was wearing trousers and a long shirt, boots that came up to his knees, and a broad belt with a sword clipped on to it. Beside him was Padre Colaso. Though he too was tall, his narrow waist and sunken chest made it look as though he was stooping forward. His eyes, however, were so sharp that his gaze seemed to pierce whoever it rested upon.

  The priest ordered the soldiers to bind the villagers’ hands and feet. If anyone resisted, the soldiers whipped them with the supple, leather-enforced canes. There were a hundred and eight men and youths bound together in a long chain.

  ‘You have burnt two persons to death, one of them was a Christian. You have destroyed the cross at his door. You will rot in jail for the rest of your lives. Constable Remet Noronha has gone to Goapattana for more troops. You will be dragged all the way there with your hands and legs tied,’ the shef declared.

  ‘We didn’t do anything. We were in our houses with the doors shut,’ someone screamed.

  ‘Quiet! The crime couldn’t have been committed without your support. You didn’t stop the criminals, that is your crime. The whole village has to suffer now.’

  ‘Shef Ribeir, I can request the Archbishop to forgive them if they become Christians,’ Padre Colaso suggested. He turned to the villagers. ‘If you become Christians along with your wives and children, the Archbishop will be compassionate and request the viceroy to forgive you.’

  The men looked at each other.

  ‘Will you become Christians?’ the priest asked, yet again. The men stood in silence with bowed heads.

  ‘If you wanted to convert the whole village, why didn’t you just say so? Why did you make us eat calf flesh?’ Ventu Nayak asked.

  ‘We’ve been saying that for more than a year, Ventu Nayak. Padre Simao Peres said the same thing. Why didn’t you become Christians then?’

  No one spoke. Their spirit had broken when they realized that they had eaten the flesh of a calf. They knew that becoming Christian was inevitable, now. So they squatted down as though the strength had gone out of their legs.

  Gangu, Suba Telu’s son, who had fled into the forest before the soldiers arrived, was crouched behind a bush with his family, when he saw a fox run up the Sinteri slope. Soon a vulture swooped down below them. Gangu noticed a dark shape lying in the undergrowth. He made his way down the slope to see that it was a partially eaten carcass of a black calf with its head sliced off. Gangu had seen Sonu Gurav chasing this calf many a time. A wave of relief rushed through him for he had also eaten the meat curry the previous night.

  Gangu told his wife and children to go home and rushed towards the soldier’s camp. He saw the villagers ranged in a long row, but he didn’t realize that they were bound hand and foot.

  ‘Mamo, Sonu Gurav’s calf wasn’t roasted in the Holiye bonfire. It’s dead and the body lies on the Sinteri slope. Saw it with my own eyes! You haven’t eaten cow flesh! Someone cut off its head and tossed it under the banyan tree!’ he yelled as he ran towards them.

  Everyone was stunned for a few seconds and then they began to laugh, forgetting that they had been tied up. The shef ordered Gangu
to come up to him. Smacking him with his cane he said, ‘Is that true? Have you really seen that black calf?’

  ‘Yes, yes, hodda mansha,’ the youth whimpered.

  ‘Tie him up! Bind his hands and feet,’ the shef ordered and lapsed into a sullen silence. Obviously Daba Devli had tricked him. One couldn’t tell whether he was sorry or very angry, but his plan had succeeded, anyway.

  The villagers, however, were making a great noise and some were beginning to protest.

  ‘You force people to convert by treacherous means. What does one call such a religion?’ Babli screamed as the shef lashed out at him.

  The sun was high up in the sky and everyone was hungry and thirsty. The shef asked some soldiers to bring pots of water. The villagers had their hands tied behind their backs so the soldiers poured water into their mouths. Much of the water splashed on their bodies and trickled on to the ground.

  A Tenent accompanied by some more soldiers arrived late that evening. The shef, the priest and the Tenent spoke in low voices for a long while.

  ‘We haven’t eaten cow flesh. We’re still pure. We’re not outcastes,’ one of the villagers yelled.

  ‘That’s true. You haven’t eaten cow flesh. But you have burnt an innocent Christian and his mother to death. You have destroyed the holy cross. These are very grave crimes and each of you will be imprisoned for thirty or forty years. The Tenent has spoken to the Archbishop and the viceroy and begged for mercy on your behalf. If you will convert, along with your families, you may go free,’ the priest declared.

  The men were silent for a while.

  ‘I won’t become a Christian. I have done no wrong,’ Marto Nayak declared.

  ‘I didn’t step out of my house. I didn’t do anything wrong, so why should I become a Christian?’ Abu Mirashi protested.

  Ventu Nayak waited to see if anyone else would protest, but no one said a word. ‘Who has destroyed your manhood? What weights have buckled your spine? Why don’t you all come together and say you won’t convert?’ he shouted, but no one said anything. ‘I won’t become a Christian. I’ll rot in prison till I die, but I will not convert,’ he finally declared.