by Mamang Dai
‘Just write it! Duan can carry it to the minister.’
‘How do you know?’ Issam had shouted quite loudly. ‘How do you know he will? See, he promised us water and nothing has been done. Where is the water? The labourers are drinking it all up! I mean…Duan is our own boy, but after all, he can’t do everything!’
‘Hai!’ another voice had said, and then someone else had disagreed, and for the first time in the village voices had been raised in dissent. The elders and young men had begun to argue.
‘Where is the electricity?’
‘He has promised us electricity, we’ll get it.’
‘Yes, but the contract has gone to others!’
‘Hai! Who in the village is going to get anything of the contract?’
‘No one!’
‘But we will get the electricity!’
‘But why give the contract to others?’
‘Why! Why!’
‘What is this?’ Suddenly the voice of Luda had silenced everyone. ‘We are all involved. Listen! What is wrong with everyone? We have sown grain together and we have reaped harvests, and we have survived. Now stop sowing poison! Let us present our case. We will hear what Duan has to say.’
Then, to defuse the situation, he had pressed the young men on errands here and there, tapping with his stick all the time. ‘Lucky I didn’t leave this in the granary,’ he thought, looking at it now. It was an old stick that had been a spearhead once, with a decorated shaft worn smooth with use. It was ancestral property. Every village elder possessed one and it was an indispensable prop in any kebang because it was believed to be imbued with special powers to aid the oratory of the speaker.
It was afternoon when a line of three vehicles arrived in a splatter of mud and came to a halt in the school ground just outside Mayum’s home. The village children came running, leaping over the stones and yelling at the top of their voices. The car doors swung open and everyone stopped, waiting. Some boys they had never seen before jumped out and began to string up wires connected to a megaphone.
Mayum heard Duan’s voice. She came out onto her veranda. ‘My dear Mothers! Fathers! My brothers and sisters!’ The voice crackled and hissed but it was his voice, raised a little now. She strained to catch every word and stayed very still.
‘I have come because you called me. I have come because I am concerned. This is my home. I was born here. These stones, these mountains, this dust, this earth, it is in my blood. All of you, all of us, must work together to bring progress to our village, our beautiful village!’
Old Luda began to nod and clap, sticking his head up and looking around at everyone.
‘A terrible thing has happened.’ Duan said. ‘Such a thing has never happened before, I know, but there is the law and we will see that justice is done. We will leave no stone unturned to solve this case.’
‘All my jewels have gone!’ someone cried out.
‘It must be the labourers!’ someone else called out.
‘Who else?’
‘The road builders.’
‘I say the road is a bad thing!’
‘Soon they will kill us!’
‘Hai, hai! Don’t utter such words.’
‘But all my jewels are gone!’
From her veranda, Mayum looked across at Duan. She saw his face, serious and attentive. Everyone knew he was a good man, but as Luda had said so many times, honesty and goodness were of no use in the world Duan had entered. To get things done a person had to use stealth and patience, like setting a trap. ‘You must know your prey. And who is your prey? Why, us! The people, of course! You have to lure us like fish, like deer. You have to use words sweet like oiled wood. Oh ho! ho!’ Luda often said, ‘The ways of the wily grow like a vine.’ Mayum wanted to argue with him, but he was a village elder and she seethed quietly. On such days, she feared for Duan and wished she knew how to shield him from so much bitterness.
Now Duan was saying that the electric poles had already reached the village. The workmen would follow to set them up, and department engineers would be arriving to supervise the work. Then there would be telephone lines as well. But before that he would personally carry their letter to the minister in the capital and see that the thieves were caught and punished.
When the discussion ended and a line of young women dressed in their brightest clothes and necklaces of silver began the welcome dance, Mayum turned her back on the spectacle and went into the house. Behind her, the women clapped their hands and chanted:
Welcome, welcome
Within the circle of these hills, brothers!
Let us live together.
In the shelter of these hills, sisters!
Let us live together.
Far below the village a group of young men stood in the shade of the big trees. Any passer-by would have easily identified them as the sons of one family or another, but everyone who would recognize them was at the meeting. The young men were talking about the theft of the jewels and their faces were hard and set.
Larik, son of Togla, was the most animated. ‘He has no idea about the situation,’ he said, referring to Duan. ‘He thinks if we wait and be patient the government will reward us. Reward us with what? This one terrible road is all they have managed for us in fifty years! And what does it bring us? Outsiders. Thieves. Disease. Will this road bring us good health? A new school? Look at the one we have now. The first school built in the region—but has anyone showed any interest? Wait, they say all the time. Everything takes time, they say. But I tell you, I have seen the roads in the capital and they are worse than the one they are building here. If they cannot tidy up there what guarantee do we have that they will give us anything good here, especially when they don’t know or bother to find out who we are and how we live!’
Larik was speaking with such anger and urgency that his friends were spellbound. Everything he said was true. Every day they saw their village elders fading before their eyes. They were turning into shrivelled stick-men who sat at home all day sipping rice beer and wasting away. The old days of war and valour had vanished. They had surrendered ancestral lands to the government and now the road and the things that came with it seemed to be strangling them and threatening to steal their identity like a thief creeping into their villages and fields.
‘We deserve better,’ Larik was saying. ‘We deserve more than words.’
The group stood talking for a long time, then climbed up and joined the meeting. They stood behind the line of children and women.
‘Where have you been all this time?’ Luda jumped at them.
‘We were down by the river.’
‘What! You are the ones who should be helping Duan. It’s a lot of work, all this business of governments and ministers.’
‘We are ready to assist,’ Larik said tersely.
Mayum prodded the fire and pretended to be very busy. Duan had stepped into their house to call on her father.
‘Give the young man a drink!’ her father said.
She poured the rice beer. She carried the mug to Duan and saw his old smile as he accepted her preparation.
‘There is so much work to be done,’ she heard him telling her father. ‘You must keep the youth together. Don’t let them take the path of violence.’
‘It is not in our tradition to be violent,’ her father said.
‘No, I know. But in the town they say our village is the most intractable of the lot. They say we don’t want to help ourselves. That we only know how to protest, hah! hah! But wait, another few years and we will be a model village. Once there is transport and communication everything will open up and then we will see what potential we have. I have said I will take up this case and I will move heaven and earth to get to the bottom of it, but no one must take the law into their own hands.’
The old man laughed. ‘You take care,’ he said. ‘You know, your father was a great orator. Your clan root is “oratory”, and I will tell you this: words are important. You can change a man’s thoughts by the
use of the right words. I know, I know, where you live they think we only sit around the fire and talk, but this is our business. Words can solve riddles and transform a life. Our village is very old and patient, don’t worry.’
Duan nodded. Then they were both silent as they stood together drinking their beer. The house creaked with the weight of people and Duan said, ‘I have to go, otherwise we will miss the ferry.’
He looked at Mayum. ‘I will return with the jewels!’ he said, his eyes bright with hope and laughter.
The village was fighting a grim battle. A stubborn pride wrapped around the young men like a dark cloak that kept them screened from the rest of the world. They did not welcome strangers. They did not want to join hands with the government. We are not seekers of fortune, they said. We are not seekers of words. We are not seekers of a new identity. Leave us alone.
One day, with the big clouds spread over the village, the young men travelled swiftly, slipping over the mud, traversing the hills through the old trail that was the original path before the road was roughly aligned to follow it. They crossed the high fields of opium poppy and cut across the debris of shale and rock, following the red stream. They forked out by the red pool and scrambled up the steepest path of fern and haunted trees. Now they could see the dark silhouette of the labourers’ bamboo shacks and the bulk of the bulldozer pinioned against the mountain wall. It was threatening to rain like a storm, and they redoubled their efforts.
Larik had planned carefully, like a master strategist who had fought many battles before and led his men to victory. This time, too, they would not lose. A tin can with a small plastic hose doused the road with the fumes of burning. A blue flame hissed and spread rapidly in a rippling line of waves racing towards the drums of coal tar and the sleeping shacks. Larik signalled, and the busy shadows vanished before the first cries of alarm went up.
High above the road a monstrous overhang of rock began to move and crack. A fissure appeared in the earth that thrust up the roots of the old tree as it heaved and swayed. The tree made an indescribable sound as it fell, and Larik thought, ‘The old tree is weeping.’ It hurtled down the mountain but before it hit the road Larik and his group had disappeared into the night.
The restless village was the focus of attention again.
‘The culprits! Who has done such a thing?’
Luda and his circle tried to restore order. They looked carefully for an exchanged look, a secret smile, a careless word. They could gather nothing. The only answer they could give when the wireless message finally arrived asking them for a report on the situation was that they would call a kebang again, before anything else.
‘What, another meeting! How many meetings are we going to have?’
‘Don’t worry, it’s just acting,’ Issam said dryly.
Not so long ago the kebang was the shining institution of these villages that solved all disputes and dispensed justice. Under the shade of the trees a group of men would assemble carrying their well-worn sticks and they would all be men recognized for their knowledge and honesty, their courage and their powers of oratory. Sometimes a case could drag on for years and even carry over into the next generation. Yet there was always a council of men to take over and assemble again under the trees to distil words, explore human psychology, and weigh and measure right against wrong in a long exercise of logic and compassion.
But things had changed now, and though Kebangs still functioned in many villages as traditional judiciary systems, they were losing their powers and giving way to the modern legal system, and all its failings.
Mayum thought of how the news must have reached Duan and what he must be thinking. He must be feeling let down, she thought. Despite the setbacks and false promises of so many years, despite his longing to live well and to achieve something, she knew that there was in him the will to do good. He would be hurt.
Words. Yes, there were words for prayer and invocation, for blessings, and words for negotiation and healing, but what words would there be now to say to him?
She wondered about Larik. She had seen him at the water point splashing water on his face and head. They too had known each other all their lives, but this time he had not acknowledged her. Instead, he had continued to wash and splash. Then he had looked at her silently and walked away, swinging his hands vigorously to shake off the water.
‘What is happening now?’ she thought.
Issam and Mumdi and all her friends were talking about the landslide that had smashed a chunk of the road and piled trees and shrubs over the burnt-out shacks. Another mystery was the theft of the electric poles. One pole had been fished out of the river, but all the rest were missing. If they were hidden in the forest it would take years to find them! Why had anyone done these things? Where would all this lead?
By the middle of the afternoon the storm crashed down on the village. A sound like the sea at night fell with such force that it rattled the stones and shook the fringed thatch of the longhouses. Everyone ran for cover. Yomin, the schoolteacher, bolted the doors with their rickety locks and ran for his house. No school. No lights. No students! His bag of books flapped against his legs as he ran. The heavy drops of rain landed on his head and ran down his face as he jumped on a boulder and almost lost his balance. What a place!
Then he stopped and laughed loudly when he saw Luda prancing around stiff-legged before him, waving his stick and dancing in the rain.
What a place indeed. Hadn’t it survived for so long? Wouldn’t it survive these winds of change as well? Yomin was sure, or perhaps he wasn’t. But everything seemed possible today in this little village as big as the world.
The news of the arson and theft spread like wildfire. It was carried on the wind, over the tops of tress and through the circling mist, alighting on the remotest of villages, disturbing the hearts of men and women. They had never heard anything like this before.
In the longhouse Larik and his friends sat around the fire and watched the flames. Nothing was finished yet; they would make sure it wasn’t. The lights flickered and the old petro-max hissed and spat as old Luda gurgled on his pipe drawing in the opium fumes and ate big chunks of mashed rice in between.
‘I had a dream,’ he declared.
Everyone turned to him. The old man was a bit of a shaman and an interpreter of dreams.
‘I dreamt,’ he said, ‘I was walking in an unknown land. It was full of rocks. Ahem! Not a single tree nor grass or leaves. It was very frightening. Only rocks and rocks. Then I saw big red flowers blooming on the rocks!’
‘Hai, you rogue. You are teasing us!’
‘No, no. I saw flowers growing on barren rock.’
‘Okay. So that was your dream?’
‘Yes. And it means we will grow old drinking drinks and die in a state of happiness. Hah, ha ha!’
Now the girls who had been preparing themselves in one corner began to emerge, tinkling with jewellery. They too seemed to be in a mood for teasing and began to sing:
Oh, what is the matter
With our brothers?
Why are they not wedded yet?
Oh, can anyone tell us
Why all the young beauties
Run away from them?
Is it because they have
Thorns on their hands?
The sound of singing and clapping began to fill the house. Everyone was nodding, staring at the girls and the fire. Larik was thinking, Yes, the bridge is breaking, but nothing is over yet. He knew all the dying villages still waited for a singular paradox to resolve itself: All the first officers and public leaders who had worked so hard to distinguish their home villages had somehow turned their backs on these very villages. They had retreated into work in distant places and when a relative approached them for a favour they avoided the case because it would seem like nepotism, and to have their integrity questioned was a thing most damning to this clan. So while the small circle of achievers struggled with correct administration and were praised for their honesty, the home
village itself was studiously ignored and granted no favours.
‘The bridge is broken,’ the boys would say metaphorically. In Larik’s mind the bridge was the long crossing that had made these men noted government servants and officers. Across this divide the officers surrounded themselves with papers and a new script and hardly looked up from their desks. If they did, sometimes, they might notice a slight stirring on the other side. There, the dead were being buried, but these men had no time to take leave and be present at the village in proper custom. The youth were caught agitating, and there was no time to sit with them through the days and nights and ease their frustration. Yes, the bridge was swaying and slowly tearing away. Land was being stolen. Forests were being cut and logs floated away down the river. New fences marked old territory and it seemed a curtain had fallen over the old villages. What was once sacred, the old sense of joy, was being lost.
Yet Larik knew they would never give up on their elders. Their ancestors had followed the river and staked their claim on both her left and right banks. Never mind, now, that a whole generation was fading. If only they remembered, someday they would bridge this gap. If there was laughter and singing, like this, like this, he thought, yes! Then one day, inevitably, a new bridge would be built again and there would be a new crossing.
a portrait of sirsiri of gurdum
Far away and much further downriver, closer to the plains of Assam, the old establishment of Kerang had swept up from the check post in the foothills and climbed haphazardly across the hills to the settlement of Gurdum.
Gurdum was new, and oddly perpendicular in shape. It crept halfway up the mountain and spread out in all directions. Small plots were divided into sectors, and new buildings clung to the roadside and protruded over empty space hanging over clefts and ravines.
The town was permanently awash in debris. Plastic floated across the hills, clung to riverbanks, perched on trees. Broken glass and discarded packaging scarred the bald slopes closest to the town. Workmen sucked on wet bidis and chipped away at the mountainside. Their women stood by and looked askance with dark, savage eyes. A row of labour sheds hung on to the hillside and here they lived, loved, bathed naked on the roadside, fought bitterly, and sometimes murdered each other. With their labour the new settlements were straining to expand against the rocky earth and rearing upwards, challenging the broken land and the falling mountains. The last row of lights reached midway up the mountains. Beyond this it was black as night.
