Legends of Pensam

by Mamang Dai

  ‘This is the joy of living,’ the thin and ancient village elders said, raising their bamboo tubes filled with rice beer. Jules nodded and Rakut chuckled with approval. ‘A house is lucky if its women make good apong. Before apong was invented, you know, life was very dull. Men sat around feeling bored; they had nothing to talk about, they did not hold councils or tell stories or laugh!’

  ‘And who invented the rice beer?’ one of the women in the corner murmured challengingly and laughed. ‘There is a story…’ Rakut began, but thinking the better of it, took a long swig from his sloshing mug instead, making everyone laugh and talk all at once.

  Now it was morning, and I heard the rain coming down in a hissing roar outside the longhouse. I was faint-hearted, dreading the return journey, the long bridge and the narrow, slippery road. When we were ready to set out, a village elder asked to accompany us till Pigo and both Jules and Rakut immediately agreed, though I wondered how we would all fit into the one vehicle once we had crossed the bridge.

  But we clambered in somehow. I was trapped in the back with Mona and the village elder on either side of me, but this was good, because looking out made me nervous. The red clay had been churned to a slippery morass. A small stream trickling down the mountainside had turned into a torrent of brown mud. Here there was no growth of any kind, only jagged grey debris, as if a hill had collapsed and scattered itself.

  ‘The river has risen, there is little of the road left. You won’t be able to get across. All the labourers have gone and the bulldozer has left!’ Voices of the few travellers we met lifted and were lost in the wind. I tried to jump out, thinking it would be safer to walk across this frightening field of rock and gravel.

  ‘Get in!’ the driver and the elder shouted at me. ‘Stay inside, we can make it!’

  And we did, in a furious churning and scraping of wheels in the slush and stones. Climbing out of the strange, sunken landscape, we spoke in muted whispers. Mona looked calm and Jules too was quiet. I felt my spirits lift. One hurdle over.

  At the next water point we stopped to have our lunch. When we unpacked our leaf packets, there was nothing except mountain rice. ‘What! They gave us only rice?’ said Rakut. The weather had defeated and thwarted everyone; we had left the village at a run, with the rain pelting down and the sky crackling with thunder and lightning. No one had had time to think. ‘What, only rice!’ The village elder promptly pulled out a packet of dried fish from his pocket. ‘Here,’ he said to me. ‘Let your friends try this.’ He also brought out a packet of salt and dried chillies. We took our packets to a stony patch in the shade of a big tree. Two girls who had been washing a pile of empty bottles in the stream next to it hurried away, leaving their load, and watched us with amusement from a distance. The village elder too stood a little apart by the side of the road, as if to keep watch, though I suspected that he did this because he thought there would not be enough food to go around. ‘I don’t feel like eating just now,’ he declined politely when Jules gestured and Rakut asked him to join us. We ate, standing in the rain, watched by the great mountains.

  ‘Ahem,’ the village elder coughed now, and placed a dried tree-rat before us. It was a great offering. Jules picked it up and turned it over and over, smiling and nodding to the man. The tree-rat is actually the red squirrel and a pair of these constitutes the traditional gift of betrothal in our hills. That is why most weddings take place in the winter months when the red squirrel can be easily trapped and its deep orange coat is at its glossiest. The moment the old man plonked the tree-rat down on the bonnet of the car, I felt some of my gloom and fear of the road and rocks disappearing. It was as if the land was speaking to me through this gesture of sharing: ‘This is your land. Whatever happens, there is nothing to fear.’

  When we had finished, the village elder came round to retrieve his salt and chilly powder. ‘I’ll take this, pity to waste it,’ he said, carefully curling up the leaf into a pouch. Jules shared the last of his cigarettes, giving out seven sticks each to Rakut and the old man, which they accepted and put away in the inner pockets of their green woven jackets.

  At the edge of Pigo, the village elder got off and walked away without ceremony and without a word into the cluster of tin-and-wood shops to our right. They have few words, these men of the remote villages. But I was secretly thrilled to see him striding proudly into the rain, puffing at one of the filtertipped white sticks.

  Soon the day came for Mona and Jules to leave. We went into Duyang from Gurdum to say goodbye. Everyone gathered around again, this time to give the visitors a great traditional send off with baskets of food and meat. Jules was wearing a woven half jacket and had a bag stuffed with notebooks and photos. Mona had wrapped herself in a bright shawl gifted by Hoxo’s mother. And there they stood—laughing and taking pictures with the whole village.

  Now that the visitors were leaving, I heard the group of women plucking up courage and whispering loudly amongst themselves, hoping they would be heard.

  ‘Aiee! Aie, where did they meet each other? Are they Breetees migluns?’

  I tried to explain as best as I could how the two were born in lands separated by a sea and half a continent, and how they had come together in an airport.

  ‘What about their marriage? How do they celebrate their marriages?’

  ‘What will you do with these things?’ Rakut shouted at them. ‘Will you write them down? It’s the same everywhere. They shake the bed just like us!’

  The women laughed. Rakut laughed. We all stood there nodding and laughing, enjoying ourselves. Then Jules pulled Mona by the hand and they both waved brightly, looking like they had absorbed some new joy in the clear sunlight which bathed my village that day.

  ‘You who travel, may you not tire on the way!’ shouted Hoxo and Losi.

  ‘Hai, hai!’ echoed the matchless Rakut.

  And I felt happy for them, and for the village and all the men and women in it, for the elders and even the snotty-nosed kids who ran after the car hooting and howling like a pack of young wolves.

  daughters of the village

  We descend

  From solitude and miracles

  the words of women

  A line of women moving up a steep slope. The pace is steady, slow. In the fading light no toil is visible, and they appear to climb smoothly towards the ridge-top flat and peaceful above them.

  They have been in the forest all morning, cutting wood, cracking dry bamboo and piling stray branches seasoned by sun and rain into stacks to be carried back to the village. This is a daily necessity. The work is hard, but scouring the forest the women could at least stop, stretch, talk to each other. Now the unforgiving hill permits no speech. Every muscle, every trembling cell of the body is concentrated on the effort to tackle the gradient. One step after another they move, silent, with no other thought than to reach the top where they will tear the heavy baskets off their backs for a while and wait, bent and panting, for their bursting hearts to quieten, slowly, slowly, before tackling the last incline to the village gate.

  Arsi thought she would never be able to lift her head again. Her shoulder muscles would remain fixed forever in a stoop, her hands clutching at the belt of cane bruising her head and strapping her down. She could not turn around; so tautly held were head, jawbone, ligaments, veins, that her neck might snap if she tried. She almost wept with the strain.

  ‘Hai! Why? Why do we have to kill ourselves like this? Is this a life? Is this all there is? How can it be!’

  A dry, stinging pain rose in her throat and spread to the roof of her mouth. Sweat dripped down her face and she felt she was losing her vision. But she would not stop, not yet, and rose blindly, climbing, forcing energy and will to obey out of long habit and practice.

  The stony road led directly to Yabgo, the first of the hamlets of the Duyang group of villages clustered together in the middle of cane thickets and clumps of bamboo. Other meandering paths linked the older villages of Yelen, Sirum and the original village of D
uyang. The villages ran into each other and only a tree, a rock or a narrow stream cutting across the path marked the loose boundaries. Great boulders lay everywhere. In between, one walked on gravel and dust. In the dry months this dust swivelled around and scattered itself in a fine powder that darkened the faces of the villagers and made them curse the place. The dry wind filled the chicken coops with dust and threw thorny twigs and insect wings into the feeding troughs.

  Once, Arsi had tried to make a flower garden, but she had struck rock everywhere. Chicken feathers and some dry mud flew up as she struggled and scraped, trying different spots, but there was no soil and no moisture.

  ‘Is this a place to live?’ she had asked. ‘Why did our forefathers choose this place? Surely we are outcasts dumped in this bone and knuckle part of the world!’

  ‘What can one say to that!’ Mamo Dumi had replied. ‘This is our world.’

  When it wasn’t dry, it rained without end. The sky growled and crackled. The days were soaked and the nights drenched. In this season when women split the bamboo, green snakes slid out into the kitchen fire. Where did they come from, the women would wonder. By what magic did the eggs hatch and the long, green adults grow within the hollow of the bamboo stem?

  ‘Maybe it just happens, like in a dream,’ Yayo said one evening.

  ‘How can it? There must be a way, a reason,’ Mimum chimed in. And at the end of a day of unrelenting rain, when the firewood burned badly and filled the kitchen with smoke, this was more than Arsi could bear. ‘Reason! Reason! What reason?’ she yelled. ‘By what reason are we here with the rain and the mud and the fungus, can you tell me that?’

  ‘Well, what to do? We’re here and that’s it. Where will we go?’ Mimum said and narrowed her eyes. ‘Besides, it’s festival time, and we’re not dying of unhappiness.’

  ‘Who cares!’ Arsi snapped. ‘Of course we are unhappy. I am unhappy. Unhappy, unhappy, unhappy!’

  She tapped the bamboo tongs on the floor with every word and then delivered a delicate thwack on the soft belly of the dog curled up near her.

  ‘Out! Out! Look at him, he’s the only one who’s happy, sleeping all the time.’

  The dog leaped up and looked at her with indignant eyes.

  ‘Out, Botum, out!’ she said now, laughing, and turned to me. ‘What sort of place is this? You are lucky you went away. Why do you keep coming back?’

  Then she said, ‘In my next life I shall be born a bird.’

  ‘And do what?’ Mimum laughed.

  ‘Oh, so many things. Sing, fly. Live properly, for instance. Speak English.’

  Now old Me-me, who had been quiet all this while, said sharply, ‘Hah! Listen to this bird! You should be careful. If a woman becomes too clever no one will marry her.’

  Me-me had not changed in all the years I had known her. She had also said this when my late mother sent me to college.

  ‘You waste your life thinking useless things,’ she was telling Arsi now. ‘What is the use? And where is the time to think, tell me. In this one life it is enough work just trying to keep body and soul together. You must marry. A woman’s marriage beads and the obligations she fulfils as wife and mother are the true measure of her worth.’

  Arsi snorted and smacked a piece of burning wood with the tongs, causing a small explosion of sparks in the hearth.

  Once, she had thoughts of finishing school and joining college in the city. But this had ended when her father died. Now she said to me, ‘I’ll go away to Gurdum. Sirsiri knows a boy there who has a shop. She’s spoken to my mother. I’ll say yes. Sirsiri is a witch, but I’ve seen the boy. He’ll do.’

  While their men held court and negotiated interminable cases in daily meetings of the village council, the older women like Me-me sat in the sun and talked. They were bold, hardworking, forthright. They shot out words like angry arrows, straight to the point.

  I remember the year I came back to live in the village after my mother died. It was an act of penance for having moved too far away from her. That year, I often sat with these women who had grown up with my mother, drawing comfort from their talk even when they spoke of sad things.

  I remember Dumi.

  ‘A woman’s lot is a woman’s lot!’ she had said, and Yayo and Me-me had agreed: ‘Hai! This is it!’

  It was a still, muggy day in late summer. Sitting skinny legged on the veranda, Dumi laughed and spat. She had been ill for months. ‘So how does one keep body and soul together?’

  ‘Hah!’ said Yayo.

  ‘What to say! Who knows?’ said Me-me.

  We were all locked in our secret thoughts. It was a subject to tread lightly, especially with Dumi asking the question. Everyone knew things were not so good between husband and wife. Dumi the wise, the hardworking, the patient one, was fighting for her life.

  ‘After all these years, when the children are grown, he decides to take another wife. Has he no shame?’

  ‘They are like that,’ Yayo said.

  ‘It is almost time to die and he thinks about marrying again!’ Dumi’s heart was torn with rage. She screwed up her eyes and clasped her legs, gazing about her bitterly. The time to weep was gone.

  ‘Day and night, day and night he sneaks around. After I bore him children, sons! And look! Oh sun! Oh moon! Look at this feeble man and see what he is doing!’

  ‘Hush!’ Yayo said, trying to shield her. ‘Don’t talk about it so much. Silence. Hush!’

  ‘I call on you father sun! Brother sun! Mother and sister sun, let him be ruined! Fire on his head!’

  The women stirred uneasily. It was a big thing to invoke the sun and moon. Words have magic, and powerful words have powerful magic. We knew, in these villages, that the men slept peacefully with no blame to touch them. The laws of birth, life and death were fixed and unchangeable. And despite everything women always prayed: ‘Let no harm come to our men.’

  The last blaze of summer brought rain. It rained like it would never stop. And when it stopped, the sun burned more brightly, as if to make up for lost time. Cicadas screamed. Huge green locusts thumped against the bamboo and perched on our belongings. Dumi cursed so hard her words seemed to poison the air and make us all fall ill.

  At night, she lay rigid by the fire and stared unblinkingly at the insect wings and strands of dust dangling from the smoke-blackened bamboo poles of the roof. Her old bag hung from one of the poles. ‘Give it to me,’ she would say.

  We would sit around her and not know what to say. When one of us gave her the net bag, she dug her bony hands into it and brought out her old tin. She fumbled with trembling fingers to break off a bit of opium from the tightly rolled wad. She carried it to her mouth and chewed on it slowly, pushing away all gestures of help with a hard, flat stare. A strange cry would escape her lips now and then, as if some glimmer of the true depth and expanse of life had passed before her eyes. Then she would sigh and hold her breath.

  Dumi died that March. We kept the fires burning all night in the ritual wake for the dead, but there was no warmth.

  ‘If life is not happy then what to do?’ the women said.

  Old man Pator, the oldest man in the village, came to mourn Dumi’s passing. His bones cracked as he sat by her to weep.

  ‘You should have gone with her,’ one of the women cried.

  ‘I am waiting to go with you!’ the old man replied, blinking back his tears and laughing loudly.

  Arsi, who was a little girl then, was squatting beside me, and she said, ‘Why is life so sad when it is so short?’

  The empty month rattled over the stony roads. An interior storm seemed to darken our houses, sucking away energy, hope, and dreams. In the evenings fireflies beamed out of corners and glowed silently around the jackfruit trees. It was a deceptive and deranging season. We carried water. We pounded grain. We gasped and died climbing up the steep hill carrying firewood. We trudged to the fields and smeared the young shoots of paddy with rice paste.

  ‘Grant us blessings. Give us food. Oh!
Great mother! Protect us!’

  It seemed to me that for so little we prayed too long.

  I chafed under the weight of daily routine. I decided it was a mistake to cling on to my past in a village I had outgrown years ago. I decided I should be practical; I should leave.

  But the pull of the old stones would not ease. That was the year I decided to settle in Gurdum town. It was the best kind of compromise—half a day’s journey by road from the village where my mother was buried; yet far enough to still hope for a life of my own.

  a homecoming

  We were sitting by the big window. My friend was saying, ‘We may not have got everything we want, but we’ve learnt things. Life has taught us, hasn’t it? Life is like an egg.’

  It was a placid evening, pale and still. The hill closest to us was more grey than green and the stray bird we saw was listless in flight. I remember her wild hair, and the dark eyes frayed with fine lines and bruised with blue eye shadow. She was laughing and cursing.

  ‘So what! Never mind. Destiny works both ways. Soon everything will be all right and we’ll settle down to a happy ending, eh?’

  We were meeting after twelve years, and in my mother’s old house we were celebrating our reunion with wine and gossip. Whatever the years had given or taken away, on that evening we both felt as if nothing had changed. We were still two girls of the Duyang villages, standing at the same crossroads where we had parted once with such buoyant hope and daring. The intervening years had surprised us; we heard about each other’s lives from a great distance and wondered at the roads we travelled. Now, sitting together, face to face, back where we began, we shared one single, stark fact that wiped away all our years apart. The men we had loved had not loved us back.

  I, of course, had cut loose. I could not bear to give up the original image and I could not change myself. Somewhere, I would find sweetness and light again. I returned to my old home, to my widowed mother who hadn’t been able to hold me back. She did not ask any questions, and I tried to show her, in few words and a determined stillness, that I was coping, I was all right. In fact, I had adjusted so well in just a month that my friend’s visit was like an encroachment that upset my peace.