Legends of Pensam

by Mamang Dai

  Hoxo’s father had initially opposed the recruitment and most people were on his side. Resentment had flared up against Rakut’s father, who, as the local interpreter for the British sahibs, had been instructed that at least three men from his village be sent to work on the road. However, in the end both the men had gone off together to represent their village, which even at that time had fewer young men than women. They were gone for three years. When they returned, Rakut’s father was wearing hunting boots and a camouflage outfit. The first thing he did on entering the village was to salute and smiling broadly, shout, ‘A! B! C!’ It was a happy day and the villagers turned out in a swarm to welcome them home. There was also great excitement about the baby in the basket, but Hoxo’s father said nothing. When the villagers asked Rakut’s father, he only said, ‘It is a child. There was great noise and fire in the sky and then our son fell to earth.’

  Even years later when those days were remembered, Rakut’s father would talk animatedly of the thunder of cargo trucks and bulldozers, the shouts of men and how the jungle burst into flame as the mountain tops were blown off and the labour force struggled to claw their way through the rubble and drag the wretched road across the mutilated hills.

  From what I had read in the library, I knew that this was the famous and mysterious Stillwell road that wound through Asia like a giant serpent, meandering more than a thousand miles across three countries. It started in Ledo in Assam, cut through our territory to the pass over the Patkoi hills into Myanmar, and then into the Chinese province of Yunan. The road followed the alignment of the ancient trails used by Marco Polo and Ghenghis Khan. It went up mountains, plunged into gorges and spanned ten rivers and hundreds of streams. No other road in the world had taken as high a toll of human lives as this one; it had been dubbed ‘a-man-a-mile road’.

  ‘You know, there is a wish-fulfilling stupa and a temple of the golden eye on this route,’ I told Mona. I even began to wonder if I could not get her to organize a trek into these lands, just so I could tag along. The road was still there, I knew, and it was not very far from where we lived. One only had to cross the big river and drive for a day to reach it. The road would take us past the Lake of No Return, where so many airmen had lost their lives flying the ‘Himalayan Hump’ during the war. It would take us over remote and serene pine mountains to the teeming cities of prosperity all across Southeast Asia.

  Hoxo, however, said that the road I was thinking about was now quite obsolete, it would take me nowhere. ‘It is a forgotten path. There is only jungle and mosquitoes,’ he said. ‘There are no villages. It is a no man’s land and the only people living there now are the men with guns.’ He meant the terrorist camps and roving bands of insurgents who were reported to be using this route as a safe corridor between India and Myanmar. I wondered how he knew all this. But Hoxo was like that. He never offered anything conclusive, but suddenly, like he had done now, he made you realize that he was aware of everything and thinking deeply about what you had said.

  I told Mona this. He was a mystery, I said, and sometimes I wished he would tell me things he knew and how he knew them. Where had he come from, for instance. Mona surprised me by saying, ‘But why should you want to understand everything? Stranger things have happened in the world. Let it be.’

  Jules arrived. He came in a hired jeep, marvelling at his own enterprise in having found this deep bowl of a place in the hills where a few lights glowed in the night like stray fireflies. It was in none of the maps he had consulted. But then, Jules knew his way around even in the jungles of the Amazon, from where he emerged with data to address conferences in the great cities of the West.

  He had brought tents and canned food with him, and he whisked Mona away to a patch of hard-packed white sand by the river. The best way to enjoy nature was to become part of it, he said. So I spent a couple of evenings with them in their camp. The driftwood fire was a small point of light in the darkness. We could not see the river but we heard it like a familiar and permanent song echoing in our heads. It was cool and still. Jules uncorked his special wine and we ate pâté and cheese and vinegary olives out of a can.

  ‘This is paradise,’ Jules said. ‘We should do this more often.’

  Mona stretched out and glowed by the fire.

  When we went into the village to meet Hoxo the following morning, Jules spoke about how important it was to work out grass-root strategies for forest management. He said he did not buy all the talk about innocent, guileless forest dwellers. He was concerned that we didn’t value what we had and that our people seemed too eager to sell out everything to anyone who came with a little money and with designs to decimate our forests.

  Hoxo then told us that once upon a time there had existed a green and virgin land under a gracious and just rule. The old chieftains received obeisance because they were akin to the gods. No one stole or killed and any man who could find his way into the compound of a chief’s dwelling was automatically protected from all danger. In a dispute the chiefs would look up to the sky, consult the sacred fire, speak to the spirits and there would be justice. Food was sown, harvested, stored and dispensed fairly. It was a clan. Fathers and sons followed in the footsteps of their ancestors.

  But the big trees were brought down. The spirits of our ancestors who dwelt in these high and secret places fell with the trees. They were homeless, and so they went away. And everything had changed since then. The canopy of shelter and tradition had fallen. The wind and the sun burned our faces. We saw a strange new glimmer in the distance. Our footsteps led us down unknown paths. We wanted more. Suddenly we knew more. There was more beyond our poor huts and cracked hearths where we once eased our dreams with murmured words and a good draft of home brew.

  Hoxo was calm as he said this. He agreed with Jules about what was happening, but life, he said, had its own pace. Everything, good and bad, was inevitable. ‘We need courage and faith in the face of change. That is all we can do.’

  Jules shook his head. But he was thinking.

  Out of the corner of my eye now, I saw Rakut making his way towards us. A crowd had gathered to meet Jules, as they always did to meet any newcomer. The village kids ran back and forth brandishing their catapults and making meaningless sounds just to attract attention. Rakut was walking up with his sideways gait and swinging one arm vigorously while the other was clasped stiffly to his side.

  ‘Hmm, ahem!’ he said, and pulled out a bottle of rum from under his arm. Then he said, ‘Hello brother! Hello friend!’ He said this to everyone, of course, and the women and widows and aging crones all laughed. Jules laughed too. He was relaxed and friendly. He shared the rum with Rakut and Hoxo and ate everything that was offered to him.

  ‘I think Jules is a hit,’ I said to Mona.

  ‘Oh, him! He can get on with anyone. Send him anywhere and he’ll be at home. He’s like that,’ she laughed, in love with him all over again.

  The sun had set and all the stars were out, drawing anyone who would look up into dizzying thoughts of infinity and the permanence of things. Watching Hoxo and Rakut talking to Jules, I felt that they, too, would get on with anyone, no matter where in the world you put them. They were like that.

  songs of the rhapsodist

  On the velvet road they go

  The red birds of summer circling the earth

  travel the road

  I never made it to the wish-fulfilling stupa. Jules was in a hurry to get back to the city. And now that he was with her, so was Mona. Besides, there was much in our own group of villages that seemed to interest Jules greatly. He asked Hoxo and Rakut for places that he should visit.

  Rakut said, ‘There is one place you must take your friends to. The village where the migluns had gone.’ He had an ancient kinship with the village, he added, and he could accompany us there.

  The village where the migluns had gone. This, of course, was a figure of speech.

  The early decades of the 20th century were times of great upheaval, when even our remote
hills were opened up to the world. In 1911, a British political officer set out from the plains of Assam on a mission to explore the course of the river Siang flowing through the territory of the Adis. Noel Williamson was well known in the region, with twenty years of experience in dealing with the tribes in the hill tracts of the country. This time, however, his tour ended in tragedy. An angry Adi struck him down in the village of Komsing. Other men of his tribe joined him and then there was a massacre.

  No one is quite sure what provoked the attack. Some recorded evidence suggests a communication gap: the tribe feared that Williamson would bring troops to destroy its villages. Another version says that the white sahib had insulted a man who later followed him to Komsing and killed him. There are also accounts that tell of a scandal some years before this attack—a story of seduction and romance between a local woman and another white man following the course of the river. He had made her reckless, and fearless like a hawk, and the tribe had meted out terrible punishment in retaliation. Perhaps it was the memory of this event that was the cause. Everything is conjecture.

  What is certain is that besides Williamson and his friend, a tea-garden doctor named Dr Gregorson, forty-seven sepoys and coolies were also killed. Only three men survived to tell the tale.

  News of the massacre sent shockwaves across colonial India and resulted in the punitive expedition of 1912, which became known as the Abor Expeditionary Field Force. It was a fearsome column that hacked its way through the chaos of virgin forest to capture the culprits and send them away to prison in the Andaman Islands. A memorial stone to Williamson was unveiled in Komsing, where it stands to this day overlooking the village longhouse. The villagers still look after the stone, just as the British had instructed.

  It was an arduous climb to reach Komsing, Rakut said, and that the village headman, an old and pensive man, believed that maybe it was because of the massacre that they were still without a road.

  On the day of the journey, the first rains pelted down and changed the landscape right before our eyes. We started out at the crack of dawn, driving through the mist and shadows and water. We passed Pigo town, through a terrific din of hard rain on tin roofs. We crossed rivers and streams. We crossed mountains of mud and slid across purple slush that made the car slip and slide frighteningly. When we reached the long bridge, Rakut signalled for us to alight. From here we would have to walk. We looked across at the dense canopy of trees and wondered where the path was that would lead us to the village.

  Jules carried his camera wrapped in plastic and Rakut lugged our bags. He looked at my shoes and rubbed his hands together and laughed. It was not the best footwear for the hills, yes, but I said I would manage. I clung to the hard knots of cane as the bridge swayed wildly and threatened to overturn and spill us into the river. In my other hand I held up the green plantain leaf that Rakut had fashioned into umbrellas for Mona and me. This is the longest foot bridge across a river, and here, if you look down too long, you can feel the mighty Siang trying to pull you in by its very silence.

  Rakut led the way and in the panting haze of rain-soaked clothes, streaming faces and trembling muscles we crossed the bridge and began the long trek uphill. Halfway up to the village gate we met a group of children marching back from school. They carried bright umbrellas and school books under their arms and watched us with interest. ‘Hey!’ Rakut shouted. ‘Who is your teacher?’ They said a name. ‘Hah! I knew it. He’s still around, is he, the old goat!’ The children laughed and stood to one side pressed against the trees to let us pass.

  There was an air of excitement as we reached the village. They had prepared the moshup, the village longhouse, for our rest. They had lit a big fire in anticipation of our stay and for the long night of stories, when myth and memory would be reborn in the song of the ponung dancers.

  They have not slept for many nights. If they close their eyes for a minute, if their souls stray, if they miss a step, then the journey will be over before its time and they will return to the present overwhelmed with a sorrow that will haunt them to an early death. The man who leads them is dressed in a woman’s ga-le and wears the dumling, an intricate hair ornament that swings with the rhythm of his chanting. He is the miri, the shaman and the rhapsodist.

  Tonight, the dancers have arrived at the crucial point in the narration of their history where they will ‘travel the road’.

  A man, running through the forest.

  He was following the narrow trail, running barefoot and bare bodied. Now and then he lurched to the right or the left, keeping to some hidden path that would take him to his destination faster. He crashed through the undergrowth and sped down a hill. Then he was running on flat land, then rising up again, and his breath was like that of a horse, whistling through his nostrils. This was all he could hear, his breath in his body like a hot wind that would suddenly fill every pore and vein to bursting and blow him away in an explosion of blood and bitter darkness.

  He reached the village after midnight. The longhouse was ablaze with the hearths of every clan burning brightly. The faces of his kinsmen turned to him as he stood panting by the door.

  ‘They have crossed the river!’

  Now the women dancing the story move their hands in unison and clap softly.

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘They are camped by the ridge.’

  Those other men who had crossed the river were officers and their soldiers. An enormous mountain blocked their view of the world. But they had to struggle ahead. They were armed with guns and they led a line of porters who carried food and weapons and helped the force hack its way deeper and deeper into the jungle.

  Softly, softly, they must follow this terrible journey.

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘They have reached the Aing Alek.’

  The force had reached the great forest of bamboo that surrounded the foot of the hill on which the village was perched.

  A white man had been killed. A sahib who had come to the village bearing gifts. And now the soldiers were trampling the sad, disquieted hills and hunting the killer with all the might of the universe. Everyone knew it was the fault of the cowardly men who accompanied the officer. They had laughed in the face of the poor villager and said that he was a wild beast eaten up with disease who would never receive the attention or sympathy of the white officer. Why should anybody insult a man who was not looking for sympathy? Why should anybody look at a man with disgust when he was a man of the land and the other was a visitor trying to conquer the villages with lies and bags of gifts? Why should anybody who had spat on a man’s face live? It was only a matter of time before the migluns learned that all men were not afraid of guns and loud voices.

  All night the men in the longhouse stayed awake and waited.

  All night, in the camp below, the officers planned and instructed their troops.

  (One officer wrote in his notebook: ‘The forest is like an animal. It breathes all around us and we never know when it will suddenly rise up like a green snake out of the decaying vegetation or descend on us like a mantle of bats reeking of blood and venom. The trees are enormous and sinister. They stand all around us and you can feel them looking down and waiting. One fears to move. The pile of rotting leaves and clumps of fern are hideous traps, and yesterday the stakes that fly out from there injured three of our native men. Their feet have been slashed open and they are screaming that they will die because these fire-hardened bamboo panjees are sharpened like blades and the points are dipped in poison. It is a terrible war and I wish I had never come to record such terror and suffering.’)

  It was not yet light when a long shout echoed off the escarpment. A sound like thunder roared over the soldiers’ heads and a hail of stones and rocks crashed down on the bamboo grove from the village. The bamboos exploded in a burst of white dust as their stems cracked open and snapped into jagged splinters that could gut a man like a knife. The soldiers began scrambling up the rocky path. The stones slid under their feet a
nd they grabbed desperately at roots and creepers.

  The path was steep and treacherous, but the determined men were already halfway up to the village when the roosters turned their perplexed eyes towards a still invisible sun.

  The sun had once cursed mankind: ‘Every morning, when I rise, someone in the world will die.’

  Now the dancers sway and moan.

  When the soldiers marched into the village, the waiting men rose and stepped out to meet them. It was bitterly cold. The men of the village were wrapped in their white homespun and emerged out of the mist like silent, sorrowing spectres.

  They saw the weariness etched on each other’s faces. Where had they come from, each wondered of the other.

  (Before the assault on the hill, one young soldier had remembered that it was almost Christmas day. Across the ocean he heard the city of his birth tinkling with music and gazed at the lights arched above the shops from where people hurried home to fulfil the dreams of their children. It was snowing in his city. Here, the ice glistened like steel and flashed on the village from the tips of the mountains. Here, even the town across the river from where they had launched their boats was so far away. The jungle cloaked everything, the twisted ropes of creepers and giant trees entangled in insidious embrace. Sometimes they had needed dynamite to clear the way. What world was this, and why was he here?)

  An officer spoke an order. A gun blazed into the sky behind him.

  The dancers are still, and hold their breath. The stone ramparts are poised to fall in an avalanche of boulders.