Ruhiton was answerable to no one but himself. The answer flashed at the corners of his eyes like sparks of lightning. He heard the guards answer the officer in Hindi, ‘He was planning to escape, sir.’
Ruhiton knew it was useless to protest. Why protest anyway, and to whom? He did not feel the slightest inclination. He wouldn’t make another fatal error like asking for news about Chunilal village. Maybe the guards weren’t lying. They may well have come to this absurd conclusion. They couldn’t have imagined that anyone in chains could stand up the way he had.
The officer was no longer speaking light-heartedly. His voice was anxious, astonished. ‘That’s Ruhiton Kurmi for you. It’s not for nothing that people call him the terror of the Terai. Right, Mr Nag?’
‘Dangerous, sir. Terrific,’ Mr Nag responded in English.
Ruhiton could not understand the meaning of the words. Diba babu, Binod Roy, Khelu babu and the rest of them would often use this tone for a particular word—‘historical’. Ruhiton had heard it so many times he had memorized it. It must have meant something momentous, just like Behula’s song when Lakhindar was bitten by a snake. But Ruhiton had never grasped its meaning. He had never understood whether it signalled fear, rage, or exuberance.
Chapter Seven
THE ENTRANCE INTO the jail for under-trial prisoners was followed by a passage as narrow as a lane. To the left was the gate leading to the women’s jail. Their voices floated across the locked gate. Ruhiton observed the large field that came next. A reservoir with steps leading down to the water lay at its head. Two-storeyed wards were situated on the other three sides. There were windows as large as doors on both floors, with thick iron bars on them. A prisoner or two could be seen there, looking at Ruhiton. Curiosity was writ large in their eyes.
Naturally. Old prisoners were always curious when they saw a new prisoner being brought across the field, flanked by two guards. Who was it? What was he here for? Of course, it was a different class of convicts that wondered about this. Pickpockets, thieves, robbers, murderers, thieves, rapists, and other kinds of criminals. He too had been charged with murder, robbery, arson, conspiring to overturn the state, and all kinds of other crimes. But he was different. He did not consider himself a criminal. When people like him saw a new prisoner being brought in, the first question that occurred to them was, which party? Or was the new entrant a floater? A spy, in everyday parlance. Just like a grass-coloured bloodsucking leech lurking in the fields. Or was he one of us?
Ruhiton was no longer in chains. He was walking between two warders, his limbs free. The morning sun was not very hot yet. There was a light breeze, but he couldn’t make out where it came from—the south or the east. Dappled by the sunlight, the water trembled under the breeze. To the right of the reservoir stood a large tree with fluttering leaves. They glimmered under the sun. He should have been enjoying the weather. But Ruhiton was still feeling a chill. His skin was prickling as it does during a fever. But he ignored it as always.
The building with a porch near the tree looked as though it might be the jail office. The gate was located that way too. Ruhiton couldn’t remember, however, whether he had been brought in that way on a sunny morning two days ago and taken to a building in a different section of the jail. All he was aware of was that the jail was in Calcutta. The incidents that had taken place earlier had left him battered and bruised. But it was not the pain in his nose, face, chest, and stomach from the guards’ beating which was unbearable. Overcome by agony and disgrace, he resorted to self-flagellation—why did he have to ask the officer about Chunilal village?
Even that morning two days ago, when he had realized that he had been brought to Calcutta, he had not known the specific destination. Or whether he had been brought to Calcutta for a specific reason. But the chains had been removed that same morning in the jail office. Ah! The luxury of being able to stand up straight without chains on his hands and feet! ‘How about a cigarette, Ruhiton?’ the same officer had asked him.
No matter how deep his anguish and anger, he had calmly shaken his head in refusal. Without repeating the offer, the officer had said regretfully, ‘ We were bringing you here quite peacefully. I was happy. Perhaps we shall never meet again. Not perhaps, let’s assume we shall not. But why did you have to do something like this when we got into Calcutta. It’s all madness where you people are concerned. It’s been madness all the time.’
Over the past seven years Ruhiton had mastered one skill particularly well. Being deaf. Not hearing, and not answering, no matter what anyone said or asked. There was no choice. Even the morning before last he had tried not to let the officer’s words penetrate too deeply. Instead, he had chided himself even more for having begun to think that this man was different from the others. He had nothing to say in reply. If he had to respond, he would have no choice but to shower him with filthy abuse. He knew perfectly well that the outcome would not have been pleasant. But hadn’t it ever occurred to the man to recall how he had responded to Ruhiton’s question about Chunilal village? People like him probably didn’t want to consider what such a response might have done to Ruhiton. Instead, he had accused Ruhiton of madness.
But yes, what else could Ruhiton’s eruption in the jeep be described as? Suffering and anguish were a sort of madness too.
Although Ruhiton wasn’t listening, the officer uttered a stream of homilies as he smoked. In the midst of this someone in the office was writing, and asking the officer questions. The man was answering them too.
But Ruhiton hadn’t been made to suffer long. Having got his orders, a warder had appeared to free him from his chains and take him inside. He had taken Ruhiton beyond the boundary of the area for under-trial prisoners into the walled compound of another building. There was a space with a canopy over the heads of under-trial prisoners, with iron bars all around it. The space was huge.
Ruhiton did not know at the time that this was where under-trial prisoners were kept in custody. Even at that early hour several of the under-trial prisoners had been brought outside to clear their bowels. There was little scope for privacy in such matters inside a jail. With broad belts in their hands or strapped around their waists, the warder and some mates patrolled the place. There was the stench of urine and faeces everywhere. Some of the prisoners had even called out to Ruhiton, taunting him with questions like ‘And who are you so early in the morning, darling?’ A few of them had gesticulated with their penises. Ruhiton had glanced at the warders flanking him. They had not looked at those men.
Ruhiton had remained indifferent. He did have a few moments of anxiety over whether he was going to be housed with these prisoners. And the officer’s words had kept ringing in his ears, ‘Perhaps we won’t meet again.’ It could be interpreted in different ways. Ruhiton had neither known nor wondered why this had registered with him. Whatever the man’s reasons might have been, Ruhiton had hoped that they would never meet again. Even if it meant his being hanged in a cell in Calcutta.
Red roses had bloomed in the walled courtyard to which the two warders had brought him. The yard could almost have been called a garden. Not just roses, there were also other flowering plants. Ruhiton could not identify these flowers. Maybe they were jasmines. Two of the prisoners were working in the garden. They had looked at Ruhiton with surprise and curiosity. A warder was stationed before the door set in the wall. He had opened the door. There were two more warders inside. Ruhiton had felt as though he were entering the bungalow of a junior officer at a tea estate. A couple of structures, which seemed to be a kitchen and a bathroom, were situated on either side of the yard. One had appeared to be a bathroom because next to it, water had been streaming from a pipe leading out of a tank. A two-storeyed house was situated on one side of the courtyard.
Only later had Ruhiton realized that it wasn’t a house at all. There were no houses inside jails. The only house was the jailer’s quarters. The place he had been taken to was a secluded prison ward. There were ten secure cells on the two floors. One of
the two warders with Ruhiton had carried a bunch of keys. He had been pushed into a cell in the farthest corner of the ground floor and the door locked behind him. The arrangements had been made already. An iron bedstead with a blanket on it, and a commode in a corner. In another corner was a pitcher of water and a glass. There was even a bucket of water and an aluminium pan by the commode. Ruhiton had no idea of the plans made for him. He had quickly stretched out on the iron bedstead.
Afterwards—he did not know how much time had passed—he had been woken by the sound of the iron gate to the cell being opened. A chance to lie down flat, freed of his chains, after three days, had actually made him drift off. Opening his eyes and turning his head, he saw two men in the spacious cell. One of them was in khaki uniform, a cap on his head, a baton in his hand, and in dark glasses. The other was in plain clothes, dressed in a shirt and trousers. He was the one who came closer and said in Hindi, ‘Namaste. Where have you been wounded?’
Ruhiton had noticed the doctor’s tube, used to examine the chest, hanging round his neck. He spoke with a smile, like a well-bred person. Why had he used Hindi? Polite behaviour was expected, but it instantly raised his hackles. And what wound had he been talking about? ‘I haven’t been wounded,’ Ruhiton had answered in his dialect, sitting up.
The dialect had slipped out. He could speak Bengali just like Diba Bagchi or Khelu Chowdhury. In his own area he was used to speaking in the regional dialect of the Rajvanshis and in Nepali. The dialect of the Kurmi Mahatos of Dhalbhumgarh was also not unknown to him.
The doctor had leaned over to examine his face. ‘Yes, I can see dry blood here on the mouth near the nose. Let me put some ointment there,’ he had said. Placing a hand on Ruhiton’s shoulder, and running the other one over his chest, he had asked, ‘You weren’t hurt anywhere on this part of the body, were you?’
‘No, I haven’t been hurt anywhere,’ Ruhiton had answered. He had realized that the doctor was there because he had been beaten up by the guards inside the jeep. But he had no aches or pains to speak of. ‘If you like, you can arrange for me to have a bath,’ he had continued. ‘And a hot cup of tea.’
‘But you’re all flushed,’ the doctor had replied with a frown. ‘You seem to have a fever. Is a bath a good idea?’ He had looked at the man in uniform, as though seeking permission.
‘I often have a temperature,’ Ruhiton had answered. ‘I haven’t had a bath for three days. I must have one today.’
The doctor had looked sharply at Ruhiton for a few moments. Then he had turned away to say something in English to the man in the uniform with the cap and dark glasses and baton. The man in the uniform had listened to the doctor, nodding. He had said something, too, in a deep voice. The doctor had turned back to Ruhiton and told him, indicating the man in the uniform, ‘This is the jail superintendent. He’s here to see y… er… you.’ He had started with the familiar ‘tumi’ for ‘you’, before quickly correcting it to the formal ‘aapni’.
Ruhiton had glanced at the jail superintendent. He wasn’t sure whether the superintendent had smiled, or whether it was just his dark glasses that had flashed. He had said something in English to the doctor. The man had a voice as deep as a frog’s. He looked formidable too.
The doctor had laughed, saying, ‘It really is amazing,’ in Bengali. Then he had beckoned to someone outside the cell. A man in prisoner’s garb had entered with a box. It was clear from his striped pyjamas and the cap on his head that he probably worked in the jail hospital. Putting the box on Ruhiton’s bed, the doctor had opened the lid. Uncapping a vial, he had soaked a pinch of cotton wool in some strong-smelling substance and dabbed it on Ruhiton’s face, near his nose.
‘I told you I haven’t been hurt,’ Ruhiton had responded at once, averting his head.
‘There’s a bloodstain. Let me wipe it off,’ the doctor had said.
‘It’ll be washed off automatically when I have a bath,’ Ruhiton had countered.
The doctor had had to give up. He had spoken again in English to the jail superintendent. Then, handing over the box to the prisoner, he had left with the superintendent.
Ruhiton had not had an uncomfortable time in the cell for the next two days. After the doctor and superintendent had left, the warder had taken him outside for a bath. They had given him a hot cup of tea in the passage outside the cell. On both days, his meal had been served in the same passage.
This morning too, he had woken up with the certainty that he would be kept in a secluded cell like this. But now the warders were taking him somewhere else under fresh orders. He had already been informed that he was being transferred to another ward. Ruhiton had not bathed yesterday. Today, despite the chill, he hadn’t been able to resist a quick bath. Now he was actually feeling better in this open field with the sunlight and the breeze. People were moving about in the porch of the ward over to the right of the reservoir, in the shade of the tree. They were obviously busy. A couple of warders, along with some prisoners, were scattered across the field.
Flocks of pigeons flew overhead. All jails had pigeons. Ruhiton had come to this conclusion. He had seen pigeons at every jail he had stayed in. Why weren’t they afraid of jails? Guards were visible on the roof of the ward, and in the towers higher up. The pigeons were fearless, they were there too. Two pigeons were even perched on the canopy over the alarm bell, primping and bobbing their heads.
Ruhiton remembered wanting pigeons as pets when he was about twelve or thirteen. That was the time his father had left the tea estate in eastern Naxalbari to take up farming in the village. Some of Ruhiton’s earnings from the tea estate had already been deposited with his mother. On the occasion of Shivratri, there was a fair at Arish farm, near Ramdhan. His mother had bought him a pair of adult pigeons, male and female, along with four chicks, from the fair.
Ruhiton had built a coop for them with his own hands, using scraps of wood and tin gathered from the village and near the railway station. Many other people in the village, older than him, also had pigeons. They bred pigeons of different kinds—rollers, tumblers, tipplers—which could turn somersaults in the sky and perform other tricks. They raised mixed breeds, but the important ones were the pigeons they bred as hunting birds. Pigeons are not hunting birds by nature, but they could be trained in a way that turned them into cunning, prey-seeking hunters. These would mingle with flocks of pigeons owned by others and lure away the best among them. These pigeons were called hunting birds.
Ruhiton had dreamt of breeding hunting birds like these. Which was why he had learnt to insert his fingers into his mouth and emit piercing whistles. His partner in breeding these hunting pigeons was his younger brother Haratan.7 Haratan had also been named by his grandfather, after another suite of cards. After him, they had had four sisters in succession.
But Ruhiton’s dream had been throttled to death just six months later. Keeping pigeons was like the local saying: The ants will eat it on the ground, the wind will make it fly around. If the pigeons were housed on the floor, jackals would eat them up, if at a height, civets would. So he had chosen the porch, suspending their coop from the ceiling, beneath the bags of rice. They were visible from the courtyard only if you bent low. The jackals had no way of getting to the pigeons. Nor could the civet climb on the coop to open the barred door. As soon as evening fell, the pigeons had to be put away in their coop and covered.
But one morning, he had found the door to the coop open. Not a single pigeon could be seen. The chicks had been growing well. The female pigeon had laid two eggs. The eggs lay shattered in the straw. Ants were swarming all over the coop, having crawled down from the ceiling. They were there for the broken eggs.
How could such a disaster have happened? Ruhiton had felt tears welling up. A civet? But there had been no sign of one. Haratan had also begun to sob loudly. Ruhiton had strongly suspected a civet;, it couldn’t possibly have been a wildcat. A wildcat couldn’t have taken away all the pigeons. Besides, it would surely have left signs. But then he had also
realized that a civet couldn’t have opened the barred door to the coop so skilfully. Was it a thief, then? A thief’s handiwork!
Ruhiton’s mother had been pregnant at the time. She had been preparing to join his father in the field with her two daughters. Ruhiton and Haratan were also supposed to have been there. His mother had not taken this incident seriously, on the contrary, she had said, ‘If they’re gone, you can get new ones. I’ll buy you six new pigeons from the Tista Mai fair in December. Let’s go now, your father’s working all by himself. He must be finding it difficult, he’ll get angry.’
His mother’s behaviour had not seemed normal to Ruhiton. She had neither expressed unhappiness or regret, nor said anything to suggest she was upset about the missing pigeons. She hadn’t taken a single look at the coop. Hadn’t checked to see what had really happened.
Ruhiton had flung himself to the floor, rolling from the porch down to the courtyard. He had not sobbed like Haratan, he had screamed out curses and abuse. Hearing Ruhiton’s filthy expletives and terrible curses, his surprised mother had said fearfully, ‘You’re actually cursing your own father in this way?’
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