At the health sub-centre, the doctor examined Heramba and declared him dead. Moushumi, who was in critical condition, was sent to Vidyasagar Hospital for treatment.
As soon as news of Heramba's death reached the police station, the sub-inspector rushed to the health sub-centre. After completing the necessary investigations, he sent Heramba Naskar's dead body for an autopsy. After a few days, the report reached the police. The report confirmed that Heramba Naskar had died after being assaulted with a sharp weapon. Severe bleeding from multiple wounds was the cause of death.
Jatadhari Naskar was charged with murdering his own brother, Heramba Naskar, with a cleaver, under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. The responsibility for undertaking the detailed investigation for this murder case was entrusted to Sub-inspector K.K. Goswami of Bishnupur police station.
During questioning, the accused, Jatadhari Naskar, made the following confession to the police: Sir, I used to respect Dada immensely because of the incomparable sacrifices Dada made on behalf of his younger brothers after Baba's death. Dada raised me almost with a father's love. But the day beautiful Moushumi-boudi broke the walls of self-respect and shame and jumped into my arms, I forgot all about the relationship of respect and became mired in my love for Boudi. Every other night, Boudi would silently slip away from Dada's side and come to my room. Soon I began to think of Moushumi not as my sister-in-law but as my wife. I would burn to death in flames of jealousy when I saw her lying next to Dada. I felt as though I had a legal right over Moushumi. I tossed and turned restlessly on the nights she did not come to me. That's how Manasi was born. Even though legally my elder brother is Manasi's father, I know she is my child. A few months before Manasi's birth, Boudi stopped coming to my room. After that she did come, but only now and then, not regularly. This made me angry. Actually, although I loved Boudi with my heart and soul, Boudi did not love me. She had used me, like a trump card, to wipe out the ignominy of being labelled barren. The day Dada told me to go back to the village, I became even more furious within. Dada quarrelled with Boudi and began sleeping in the verandah. I realized he had found out about my secret relationship with Boudi. And that provided me with the reason. I bought a cleaver from the market and kept it hidden in my room. At night, I finished off Dada with the cleaver. But I had no plan to attack Boudi. Why would I do that? I did whatever I did only to get her. But when Boudi started screaming and tried to stop me, I simply lost my head in a fit of rage.
The confession was made into a tape-recorder. There were pauses in-between and scattered sighs and the sound of breathing. A summary was transcribed in the form of a statement. The incidents after this are brief. The sub-inspector prepared the case papers and submitted a charge-sheet against Jatadhari to the court. Jatadhari's mother fixed a lawyer. On the advice of the lawyer, Jatadhari completely denied the confessional statement he had made at the police station. Standing in court, he denied all the charges levelled against him and claimed that he was innocent. The police had framed a false case against him. He said it was probably some enemy of Heramba, bent on revenge, who had entered the house and killed him. On hearing Boudi's screams, he had rushed there and tried to save his brother. But the attacker ran away as soon as he saw him, and disappeared into the darkness. As he was escaping, he threw away the blood-smeared cleaver. His own fingerprints might have got onto the cleaver during the scuffle, but he was actually innocent.
On the advice of the lawyer, the forensic and fingerprint reports were arranged in his favour with the help of some money. The lawyer took care of everything. Moushumi too issued a statement from the hospital: Jatadhari did not murder his brother. Some people in the vegetable market held a grudge against Heramba, one of them had committed the murder. She did not want the domestic scandal to spread. Besides, by being killed, Heramba had saved her in a way. Jatadhari's mother thought, I've lost one son, what's the point of sending the other one to the gallows? She too testified that her younger son could never murder his elder brother. Someone from outside had committed the murder out of jealousy. Consequently, the case of murder against Jatadhari could not stand.
On 10 September 1988, for lack of evidence, the sessions judge in Alipore ordered the release, without any charges, of Jatadhari Naskar, the accused in the case of murdering his own brother and attempting to murder his sister-in-law. Moushumi too returned home in about a week's time, after receiving proper treatment from the doctors.
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Heramba Naskar Moushumi Naskar Jatadhari Naskar, 1989
Radioactive Waste
Q: Who offered the bride? And who was it that accepted her?
A: Kama, the God of Love, offered her, and Kama accepted her. Kama is the provider, and Kama the receiver. Oh Kama, this commodity (girl) is yours alone.
—Vajasneyi Samhita, 7/48 (Hymn to Kama)
Thirty-year-old Sushma, all of sixty-three kilos, was showing off her body in an extremely intimate way to Ajoy, while his father's long-bearded picture hung in Ajoy's room. It was afternoon, the sun's full blast outside, unwavering, and from the flat next door, music from the transistor radio floated in: Oh mind, what's with you, oh love… There was no discernable mark on the bright red silk petticoat and if one wanted to go to the bathroom one had to cross about two-and-a-half arm-lengths of light and that place was apparently unpleasant for them. Pity, for it had taken so long to prepare – Ajoy's house had to be empty (that is to say, his brother and sister-in-law's Sunday-afternoon cinema and the servant boy sent off somewhere for some cock and bull reason); Sushma had to take the day off; Ajoy ought not have any work in the afternoon –and they had been longing for this secret encounter for days and nights on end, wondering when it would materialize. But in fact the meeting didn't take place. Sushma had modelled up heavily and put on a lot of perfume and Ajoy was finding it difficult to breathe – because Sushma was thirty years old; because there was really nothing else remaining; because 'I came to your garden to pluck flowers'. The urge to sing out a stanza from the national song had to be suppressed. Perhaps the candle was alight, a soft glow at the head of its long flame, Sushma made appreciative motions with her hand, although she lay flat like a gluttonous beast, paler than the candle; if one rubbed a finger rapidly on her flesh, the smell of gunpowder emanated from it. Like a heavily pregnant woman, Sushma, all of sixty-three kilos, was having trouble breathing, there was a faint moustache beneath her nose, her tummy, entrusted by custom, a waxing moon bereft of a current stream to glide along. Which was why Ajoy had frowned at the nectar and walked towards the bathroom, tying his pajama. Instead, he turned around and lit a cigarette. And there was Sushma and her candle. Crossing the despised little loop of light, he heard the sound of country bombs exploding outside –the old problem had cropped up again in the neighbourhood.
There is a fantastic story in Ethiopian folklore about the ascent of man from demon. On the banks of the river Meng lived an ogre called Chiang, his lips, like a hunter bird's, were long and beak-like, his body was covered in porcupine-like spikes, there were two immense wings on his back, although the lower part of his body was like a man's. Chiang was king of all the creatures on the riverside. One day when the waters of the Meng were in swollen turmoil, he saw another huge ogre, his face horse-like, with big scales on his body and four long thin legs, carrying a mouthful of water in his massive, cavern-like mouth but spilling it everywhere, and on the southern bank of the river, standing on top of the hill, was a ravishingly beautiful girl, her lovely form like moonlight springing out from behind clouds. As soon as he saw the girl, Chiang forgot all about the temporal world and ran to receive that beauty, with his arms outstretched. But when he went closer, the beauty vanished with a soft smile, and then, in despair and rage, with trembling fury, Chiang leapt upon the horse-faced ogre, he tore and bit him to shreds. After he had killed the ogre, he heard a divine voice from the sky: You shall cross the threshold to become man from demon; you shall drive away wild animals from your habitation; you shall abando
n stone and make weapons of iron. Until that moment, Chiang did not know he was an ogre, nor what it was like to be man. At the outset he thought about getting married, through this custom he thought he could learn all about being human.
After making themselves respectable, Sushma and Ajoy chatted, they drank tea as if nothing had happened, as if an emergency had not occurred a short while ago. Sushma spoke about her life as a nurse. She spoke about the likelihood of becoming a matron at the hospital, every now and then she laughed and Ajoy dozed off to the sound of her laughter. The calamity of before had passed to a great extent. But once again there was the sound of bomb blasts outside, and a few screams. Ajoy went to the window. A boy slipped into the adjacent lane, a knife gleaming in his hand. The sun blazed down, some suspicious-looking boys stood in front of the house on the other side of the street, the neighbourhood was completely still. Ajoy shut the window as if no further disturbance from outside could touch them, and as he was about to get up to light a cigarette, there was another explosion. Their windows shook and rattled at the sound. Without lighting the cigarette, Ajoy looked at his father's picture on the wall, he saw Sushma's face, pale and anxious, which meant that Sushma had to leave because it was time for his brother and sister-in-law to return. But there was no way she could step out now. Stuck in the room, they became even more worried as they heard sporadic screams and blasts. A police van drove past. As if in a bid to secure their very existence, they carried on a few words of conversation. Those heaving moments of an hour ago were scattered like broken glass across the room, and as Ajoy went to clasp its last fragment in his fist, he saw blood trickling out of his hand. Standing in the room, he licked his wound. Brother and sister-in-law would be back any moment now, yet Sushma, that big fat girl, had not left. She felt ashamed to step outside now – to sum up the situation, everything was stuck. Ajoy stood in front of his father's picture, gnashing his teeth. The boy pulled his hair out in exasperation with his two hands. If only he could really tear out the coiffured head – even the life of a cockroach was better than this! Or an earthworm! A house-lizard! Fuck, how could someone live like this, with a man-eating tiger lurking inside one's chest? Could he?
Zoologists contend that procreation is the first and foremost characteristic of animals. Animal bodies come to an end with death. But by giving birth to a new life, animals uphold the process of procreation. In this way, a life creates a new life. This development of a new generation from the older one is called reproduction. There are a few organs in the body that are necessary for the purpose of reproduction. Through their union, reproductive function is established. The reproductive behaviour of all animals is not the same. Sushma's man Ajoy had spoken of cockroaches and earthworms. Let's consider the earthworm. The earthworm's reproductive organs are very strange. There's no male–female division among them, the earthworms that are male are also female, that is, in a single earthworm's body there are both male and female categories of reproductive organs. But an earthworm's eggs do not get fertilized with its own sperm. During union, an earthworm lowers its head beside another earthworm and raises its rear end towards the other one's rear end, and they conjoin lengthwise. In this way, sperm from the first earthworm's reproductive cavity enters the sperm sac of the second earthworm. Thus, despite possessing both sexes, earthworms fertilize their eggs not with their own sperm but with a second earthworm's sperm, and this is how they procreate.
As Ajoy and Sushma walked, they found a place where there was tree-shade. It was midday in the Maidan now, not a soul around, and they felt like ponds that had dried up under the summer sun. In nearby Chowringhee, they noticed a sixteen-storey building that had come up. Being in high spirits and because there was no one around, Ajoy refrained from calling her 'Sushma-di' and used her name instead. Sushma coquettishly said she'd sit on the grass and sat down near Ajoy's lap, lit Ajoy's cigarette for him, and played awhile with Ajoy's hand and fingers. 'We could have gone to the cinema at this time', etc – sundry talk like that, and so a few cigarette butts lay scattered around them. Time stopped momentarily, and soon the woman called Sushma told the boy called Ajoy about searching for a job. Then she could be independent, they could take a separate flat and be free of brother and sister-in-law. The boy understood what she was trying to get at and it made him feel sick, but there was a whiff of fragrance from a mahua grove and it was difficult to overcome such enticements. In Chowringhee a car braked suddenly with a loud screech and a few people ran in that direction. Ajoy thought, 'Another accident on earth at this moment.' Further reflection along these lines was probably getting dull because at this moment, somewhere or the other, there were more accidents taking place and there were too many people on earth, just too many. As he reflected in this vein, he narrated the thought to Sushma. We shall stay away from all these hassles: the boy lapped up the proposal from the girl and in the sun-bedecked Maidan, he arranged brick upon brick of four walls of their own around them. They laid the walls, became more and more distanced from Chowringhee, from the accident that had just taken place, and eventually even from the sun. No one can see us now, we can do as we please within these four brick walls, that talk, very immature talk, they talked about that, and whether it rained outside or was sunny, whether there was an accident or things were in general moving along sedately, all this did not matter a whit to them. The two of them, in that brick cage, considered themselves perfectly safe in that blazing Maidan and sought to spend their time to their hearts' delight, and exactly at that moment the bomb that dropped on Phnom Penh wobbled the brick cage erected by them, and for the first time they wondered: Is it really possible to be completely free of any distress, like this, all by oneself, solitary?
In 1969, Katasuichi Honda went from Japan to Vietnam accompanied by a photographer. On his return he penned his experience, and with the accompanying pictures his commentary appeared in the Japan Quarterlymagazine in 1969, in the April–June issue. He had seen the kind of war that went on in every village. He had seen the way an American soldier removed a pair of earrings from a dead woman guerilla, he had seen how, under the scorching sun of a summer noon, American soldiers used a cigarette lighter to set aflame thatched huts of harmless Vietnamese and then had a merry hoola-hooping dance party around the sacrificial bonfire. He had seen an American soldier cut off the ear of a dead Vietnamese fighter and stuff it into a plastic bag, and when he asked someone, What will the soldier do with an ear?, the answer was: Keep it as part of his collection, what else! The man added, He will dry it out first, and then take it home as a valuable souvenir. That's nothing, once I saw the liver being removed from the dead body of a Vietnamese guerilla. An American soldier who returned from active duty in Vietnam exposed another incident. The story first appeared in an American newspaper. At dawn on 16 March 1968, in the north-eastern region of South Vietnam, a group of American soldiers raided the village of Song-My, rounded up all the villagers – men, women, children and old people – lined them up in a particular place and shot them dead. According to the report, the number of those killed was anywhere between 109 and 567.
As they walked, they suddenly halted and began to think, and then thought about what they could think about. There was a cow lying around in the street, they could think about that, they could think about the mist wrapped around a lamp post somewhere, or they could think about how Sushma, fat old Sushma, would look when she became a matron. The wide asphalt road stretched on both sides, all along the roads were people, lights and frolic in their usual arrangement. One could pick it up and bite into it and suck or lick and taste it as and when needed. After a while the boy wanted to buy a balloon; the girl, flowers. They did not know what the difference between a balloon and flowers was and how much, and they argued animatedly for a while. In the end they bought neither flowers nor a balloon. Evening descended around them, a procession of a hundred-odd people, their arms powerful, their fists clenched tight as they walked under the lights of Chowringhee. He began to think that he too could be in that pro
cession, as one of them, and he felt the stubble of a few days on his face, this stubble, this rough stubble, how Sushma loved to run her cheek over it. Sushma came out of a daze to see a man a few feet away from them staring at her; as soon as she became aware he passed her by, grazing her right breast. Even though she wanted to react, Sushma couldn't say anything, times were bad now, the chap could be a petty goonda, how long did it take to whip out a knife? A string of bel flowers had been bought, it was thrown away on the road. Blood from Vietnam splashed down, it touched the boy and the girl, they went to wipe it away with a kerchief but couldn't because bloodstains are not easy to remove, they accrue, like a debt, over time. A sad-looking beggar girl in a dirty frock, her hair in knots, eagerly picked up the garland and inhaled its fragrance. Sometimes beggars love flowers. Why can't we admit it clearly, the boy began to wonder, but then he saw a sign in the barren field: Do not pluck flowers and destroy the beauty of the garden. The girl, whose name for the time being is Sushma, began to think absent-mindedly about a line from a book read long ago, about shame being a woman's ornament, and then realized she was climbing stairs and heading somewhere. Worrying about going alone and so on, she made an act of clasping his neck with her hands and saw that Ajoy's head, down to his neck, had come away in her hand. Ajoy said in affected rage, You ogress, you want to chew my head off, and as he said that he saw the kohl lining the girl's eyes, and various other things under the kohl, and bursting with desire to tell her all this, he began to plant kisses on her cheeks. At that moment, some spiders trapped prey in the waning moonlight and old man moon floated along on the flood waters.
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