‘Did you hurt yourself, Ruhiton bhai?’ Khelu Chowdhury put his arms around Ruhiton on the first flight of stairs.
Some people lower down on the stairs also extended their arms towards him to prevent him from falling. Ruhiton had not noticed the first step. He had not been looking at the floor, actually. Had he even been looking at anything inside the ward? His eyes had not been trained on anything in the real world. The faces of two boys named Budhua and Karma, which he had last seen seven years ago, had swum up before his eyes. They had now appeared before him as young men.
‘No, I’m not hurt,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t notice the step. The room is dark.’
But there was an agony of regret in his heart. Why had he remembered his sons? This happened to him so often these days. He was reminded of his home, his wife, his children all the time, in different ways. He was Ruhiton Kurmi. Why should he have these weaknesses? Could someone who had staked everything in his life for the revolution possibly have a past? Or memories? Why could he not accept such an inevitability?
‘Here, let me help you,’ Khelu Chowdhury said. ‘But it’s not all that dark here.’ He looked at the other prisoners behind Ruhiton with a frown, his eyes surprised.
Khelu Chowdhury’s surprise was reflected in the eyes of the other prisoners too. But that was momentary. It was possible to miss one’s step in an unfamiliar place.
The steps were far more clearly visible to Ruhiton now. They rose in a straight line, without curves. He was unable to hear Khelu Chowdhury’s last statement. Nor could he quite make out what the people behind him were saying. He could only hear things said in his immediate vicinity. It was best if he could watch their faces and lips while listening.
There was only one reason for all this. Ruhiton knew it very well. Little things had shown him that his ears were no longer as sharp as before. Once upon a time he could hear a dry leaf falling in the depths of the forest. He could hear a footstep far away the way a snake does, from faint vibrations in the earth. He could identify an unknown voice wafting in on the wind from the distance. He used to be as alert as a bird at night.
After his capture, the random beating he had received at the hands of the police during interrogation had probably damaged one of his eardrums. Just as he thrust his lower abdomen out a little while walking because a bone near his anus had cracked. There was pressure on the cracked bone if he tried to stand straight when he walked. It hurt. There was pain even if he walked with his abdomen thrust out. But much less. But he could still hear many sounds that were as faint as that of a dry leaf dropping in a forest. At other times, he could turn stone deaf. Especially when it came to those whom he didn’t want to listen to.
The ward upstairs was much brighter. The field and the reservoir were visible through the barred windows, as large as doors. The sunbeams hadn’t yet slanted enough to enter through the windows. They would as soon as the sun rose a little higher in the sky on the east. There would be more light everywhere in the room. The trees and the jail office on the other side of the tank could all be seen through the windows. There were large barred windows on the opposite wall too. The courtyard of the ward lay in that direction—the courtyard which Ruhiton had crossed with the others to come up into the ward. The presence of a few trees dimmed the light slightly. Still, there was much more light on the first floor.
Two rows of iron bedsteads were laid out for prisoners along the length of the ward. There was nothing between the rows. Blankets were laid out on the bedsteads. Khelu Chowdhury made Ruhiton sit down on his own bed.
A young prisoner had carried his tin trunk upstairs. ‘Where should I put Comrade Ruhiton Kurmi’s trunk, Khelu da?’ he asked.
‘Where will Comrade sleep?’ asked another before the reply could come.
‘Right here in our ward,’ Khelu Chowdhury said. ‘Since they’ve sent Ruhiton bhai here, they’ll send a bed for him too. His bed will be placed wherever all of you want. Put the trunk somewhere for now.’
Ruhiton’s eyes met the prisoners’, which shone with curiosity and expectation.
‘Each of us will want comrade Ruhiton Kurmi’s bed to be next to his,’ one of them said.
Everyone laughed. Ruhiton Kurmi’s heart overflowed with happiness and pride. ‘We’ll stay together, all of us,’ he exclaimed. ‘This room is for all of us.’
‘That’s right,’ many of them spoke up exuberantly. Meanwhile everyone had sat down on two of the iron bedsteads, crowded against one another, contorting their bodies, leaning towards Ruhiton.
‘Oh, how long it has been, Ruhiton bhai.’
‘Yes, tell me the story of your arrest first,’ Ruhiton said. ‘As far I knew you were at Padam’s set-up, north of Shanilal the landowner’s house. We had met about an hour earlier, right? And after that? I’ve heard many different stories about you over the years. Some said you had escaped. Some said you’d been captured. Others said you’d been shot dead. And still others said you’d been hanged. There was no way of knowing what was true. I hadn’t imagined for a moment I’d see you here. Now tell me the details, will you?’
‘Why, didn’t Padam say anything?’ Khelu Chowdhury asked with a smile.
‘Oh no, that’s where the problem is,’ Ruhiton said. ‘When they brought Padam in half dead, I thought that since they had been to his set-up in the forest, possibly no one was alive. I had heard gunshots from that direction. From Padam I heard Santosh had been shot dead before his eyes. And that you had fought bitterly with a loaded gun. Padam didn’t see which way you went.’
Khelu Chowdhury’s expression tightened. His forehead creased. The smile on his face was of anger and scorn. ‘How would he have seen me,’ he answered. ‘If I could have, I’d have told all of you to run. I had seen from Padam’s set-up that they had surrounded us. They had blocked all the roads with jeeps and trucks. They outnumbered us by a mile, each of their guns had bayonets on them, and obviously they had flashlights for hunting at night in the forests. The headlights from trucks and jeeps had turned the whole place as bright as day. In that light I saw them swarming all over the place. I saw Ruknuddin Chowdhury the landowner among them, he was talking to the bigwigs. I don’t know who else was there. There was no doubt that the details of our hideouts were on their fingertips. We would not have been able to fight our way out of there. Besides, many of us were missing. Several people had gone to headquarters that day, remember?’
Ruhiton’s eyes were fixed on Khelu Chowdhury. But his gaze seemed to go beyond Khelu Chowdhury. Nor was his mind in the jail. His heart had travelled to a night seven years ago in the forest below the Mirik Police Station. Still, he nodded at once in response to Khelu Chowdhury’s question, saying, ‘Hmm, hmm.’
‘I think they had information too,’ Khelu Chowdhury said. ‘That’s why they surrounded us overnight and ambushed us suddenly. I saw that there was no option but to fight my way out of there. I told Padam this. He paid no attention, he couldn’t be controlled. I escaped in the direction of the Tukariajhar jungle. After spending the night there, I crossed the Mechi and set off for Morang in Nepal early the next morning. That’s where they captured me.’
Ruhiton’s enormous eyelids had no lashes to speak of. His bloodshot eyes grew redder in surprise. ‘You were captured in Morang?’ he asked. ‘Inside Nepal?’
‘Yes, inside Nepal.’ Khelu Chowdhury smiled. His smile was like a curve in a red-hot iron rod. ‘I had thought I couldn’t be captured easily if I went into Nepal. I had planned to return after a few days. But I was captured when I reached Morang. I was having a cup of tea at a roadside shack in the evening. Suddenly someone called me from the back, Khelu da, you here! I didn’t have the chance to turn. I didn’t even see the people who pounced on me. There was a blow to my head. I couldn’t even pull out the gun at my waist before I fainted. Knocked out. Then…’ Khelu Chowdhury didn’t finish what he was saying.
Ruhiton still appeared distracted. The others listened with blazing eyes, as though they were trapped in an incredi
ble dream. Nobody said a word. Only one of them said through clenched teeth, ‘Betrayal!’
‘No doubt about that,’ Khelu Chowdhury said, his smile much more relaxed now. ‘Tell us about yourself, Ruhiton bhai,’ he continued. ‘But let me introduce everyone to you before that.’ He proceeded to point to each of the prisoners and announce their names.
Ruhiton looked at everyone in turn. It was impossible to look at his eyes for any length of time. Because they had no lashes, his eyelids looked like livid sores. Even his eyebrows had lost most of their hair. They were barely there and the skin was cracked. There was hardly any hair on his head. The thick bush of hair from seven years ago was gone. But like before, even the sparse hair that emerged from his scalp was of shoulder length. The skin on his face seemed thicker than usual. His nostrils were dilated, with a bulbous red swelling on the tip of his nose. The bridge of the nose had subsided, as though it were broken. His earlobes were unnaturally thick too, as were the edges of his ears. There were still two thick little sticks running through his pierced ears, however. His chin and forehead sported round red blisters.
Ruhiton Kurmi’s appearance made it difficult to identify him at first. But then it didn’t take long to know who he was from the rest of his features. His complexion wasn’t very dark. It tended towards the fair. This had not been completely ruined yet.
After the introductions, the prisoners said in unison, ‘ We want to hear Comrade Ruhiton Kurmi’s story now.’
‘Yes, start with where they brought you here from,’ said Khelu Chowdhury. ‘Seven years’ stories to be told.’
‘I’ll tell you everything,’ said Ruhiton. ‘But tell me a few things before that. Are all of you exempt from labour here?’
Khelu Chowdhury and the rest looked at one another sombrely, as if none of them had the answer. Eventually Khelu Chowdhury himself replied, ‘You can never say for sure, Ruhiton bhai. From fasting to other things, a lot of effort has gone into this. One group of our people has been kept separately from us, somewhere in this same jail. We don’t get any news of them. They haven’t given us any physical labour for the past few months. But you never know when orders may be changed.’
‘Which means it’s the same system everywhere.’ Ruhiton shrugged. ‘And what about the foxes in the holes? Do they visit you?’
‘Not any more,’ a young man named Sukumar answered instead of Khelu Chowdhury. ‘Three or four of them used to, and the moment they ran into us, we’d have fights. Later on, however, we used to be more at the receiving end of the beatings.’
‘You can rest assured, Ruhiton bhai,’ Khelu Chowdhury said laughing, ‘the foxes are in their holes. They won’t visit the jail any more. They’re publishing newspapers to explain the party line on the revolution, and sharing votes between themselves. They will leave their holes to move into pigsties.’
Everyone laughed. ‘I see,’ said Ruhiton, ‘there’s nothing wrong with the party line.’ Everyone laughed again at the way he spoke. He continued without laughing, ‘And Diba babu? What news of him? I heard at a jail in Bihar that he had been captured.’
Everyone looked surprised, their eyes questioning. They glanced at Ruhiton Kurmi, and then exchanged glances with one another. ‘It happened just the other day,’ Khelu Chowdhury said with astonishment in his voice. ‘Diba Bagchi was captured, then he died. His heart failed, apparently. He didn’t have to serve time in prison like the rest of us.’ He sounded unmoved.
‘Diba babu’s gone?’ Ruhiton said, stricken. His enormous lashless, reddened eyes looked like festering sores. Everyone’s faces vanished, while Diba Bagchi’s face blazed before his eyes. His oldest revolutionary friend, the one who had shown him the dream of a new life. The dream whose fulfillment had seemed certain—a world in which even the blind would have regained their sight, the mute would have spoken, barren women would have given birth, the landless would have land of their own, labourers would have run the country! For the first time in his adult life, Ruhiton Kurmi experienced grief. He shut his eyes. Diba Bagchi’s face remained before him.
Chapter Ten
THREE NIGHTS LATER, one morning, Ruhiton suddenly stopped in his tracks near one of the walls of Ward No. 12. The sun was up. Many of the inhabitants of the ward were downstairs. Through the windows, the sunlight could be seen glistening on the green blades of grass in the field, on the water in the reservoir, on the leaves of the banyan tree in the distance. Like the world, the jail too had awakened. According to its own rules, in its own way.
The double-barred gates to the ward downstairs were locked at eight in the evening. Prisoners ate their dinner before that, under the canopy in the courtyard. The gates were locked after they were shepherded inside. The lights were put out in the ward. There were temporary toilet arrangements within the ward for the prisoners at night. The railing on the staircase went up all the way to touch the ceiling. There was also an iron gate at the bottom of the stairs. This too was locked after the prisoners had been packed off upstairs. Nobody remained in the ward downstairs, only the lights were kept burning. The eagle eye of the night patrol swept this empty ward too. The jail stayed awake all night, from one end to the other, to the stomping of boots, the sound of whistles, the slow shouting of the night patrol.
At dawn the gates were unlocked. That was when the prisoners used the toilets and bathrooms outside.
Many of the prisoners had gone downstairs after the gates had been unlocked in the morning. Ruhiton Kurmi stood near a wall of the ward. Two of the convicts were preparing to take his iron bedstead downstairs. Two other convicts had brought this bedstead upstairs for him in the same way four days ago. Surprised, he asked why it was being taken away. ‘Orders,’ came the reply.
Some of the other prisoners, including Khelu Chowdhury, stood on one side. Ruhiton looked on with his lashless, virulent red eyes. The convicts were now clearing away the other bedsteads so they could take away his. Ruhiton could not protest. His friends weren’t protesting either. This was the first such incident during the seven years he had spent in jail. His surprise was changing to anger. His anger was being replaced by despondence and trepidation. He watched, Khelu Chowdhury and the others watched, the convicts dragging the bedstead towards the staircase. Ruhiton asked them anxiously, as though he had suddenly remembered, ‘Where are you taking that?’
‘Downstairs,’ replied one of the convicts.
Ruhiton glanced at Khelu Chowdhury and the others again. What should he do? Should he protest? Should he attack the convicts—‘extras’ in jail parlance? All by himself? Was it possible to protest alone? When one’s companions remained inactive, uninvolved, unwilling? This was a new experience in Ruhiton Kurmi’s life. Everyone’s attitude towards him had suddenly changed. The warm welcome, the excitement and enthusiasm had disappeared. Ruhiton couldn’t recollect exactly when the smiles had been wiped off his friends’ faces. But their friendly expressions had changed at some point.
Was it on his first morning in this ward? When Ruhiton had clasped his hands on his chest, saying, ‘Oy ohey Diba babu’ in a soft, distressed, voice. He had not wept, his eyes had shed no tears. But his heart had cried out in grief. He had never grieved so much for anyone else in his life. He had been unable to speak for a long time.
But before he could say anything more, Khelu Chowdhury had said dispassionately, ‘What’s the use of mourning for Diba Bagchi?’
‘Mourning happens on its own, Khelu babu. No one forces you to mourn,’ Ruhiton had responded.
‘But what’s the use of this mourning, Ruhiton bhai? You knew very well that Diba Bagchi was Dinu Bagchi’s son.’
Ruhiton had looked at him in confusion. Khelu Chowdhury’s eyes were glittering with rage. Several other pairs of eyes were looking at him the same way. Ruhiton had wondered whether the world familiar to him all his life had been turned upside down. Why was he being told all over again that Diba babu was Dinu Bagchi’s son? Khelu babu had snarled when he had mentioned Diba babu’s name! Hadn’t they been b
osom friends? Hadn’t Diba babu been their leader?
‘Comrade Ruhiton Kurmi.’ Someone else, not Khelu Chowdhury, had spoken up. ‘Dibakar Bagchi was a hated landowner’s son. His children and wife are very rich, they’re living in great comfort. Dibakar Bagchi was a leader of the poorest of the poor. Now tell me, what kind of luxury are your children living in? Which landowners’ riches are they living off?’
This had had no effect on Ruhiton. Nor had his astonishment been dispelled. ‘But friends,’ he had said, ‘the whole world knows Diba babu was the son of a very big landowner. But he had distributed every last bit of his father’s land among ryots and sharecroppers. Hadn’t he?’
‘Whose land was it, who distributed it?’ a young man had asked sarcastically. ‘The land belonged to Dinu Bagchi. Did Diba babu hand over the ownership documents to the sharecroppers? Did his father grant him that right? It’s easy to distribute the entire world among the poorest of the poor verbally.’
‘How can there be documents for such distribution, Comrade?’ Ruhiton had asked in surprise. ‘Diba babu said so, and the sharecroppers occupied his father’s land after fighting for it!’
‘And as soon as they were forced to leave after losing the battle, the land was back with its original owner. The sharecroppers were beaten to death, and Dinu Bagchi is living a comfortable life. ‘
‘Is that Diba babu’s fault?’ Ruhiton had said. ‘Why put him on trial after his death?’
‘The question of a trial had not risen then, so there was no trial,’ Khelu Chowdhury had replied. ‘That’s how our party works, you won’t be absolved of guilt simply because you’re dead.’
Ruhiton hadn’t been able to contain his surprise. ‘But you accepted Diba babu as your leader, Khelu babu,’ he had said.
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