The Ferryman

 

1.

Sandy Valley. A small village at the foothills of a large mountain line in Southeast Asia. It would be a very beautiful place for a romanticized traveler, thanks to its serenity, calmness and the wild lovely flowers all around the windy walkways in the remotest setting off the illusive city life. The festive mood of nature continues from the end of the prolonged winter to the spring with the blooming colors in a jubilant mood. And it is the time when the hardships begin for the poor bread earners still clinging on to the place they were born and brought up in. This is the only place on earth they have ever known of from the stories of their ancestors, from the struggles they take on, from the happy moments they share together, from their hardships and sweats, from the indispensable bond they are tied to nature, from every single breath to taste the life. But the limited living resources could allow only a few hundreds of people to cling on to living with the minimal modern facilities a man would ever expect in the beginning of the 19th century.

 

The ferryman was waiting to kick off his first ride in the dawn. The eastern sky had hardly started lighting the earth with the first rays of the Sun. The river named Sandy was looking a little more rougher today with the incessant sound of flowing waters and breaking waves in a clash with the wind and currents. The passengers grew more worried but the rider looked nonchalant. He knows the turns, depth and the current of the river almost like his own palm. And for the countless number of times he has saved people, mostly kids and women, falling in the water from boats and trapped in the powerful currents. He could swim like a dolphin above the water or under it; amidst the deep current or in the crashing waves. But Madhu was worried too behind his apathetic look for entirely a different reason. The water level of Sandy River this year wasn’t increasing like it normally does during this part of the season. He knows the rhythm and the cycle of the water better than anyone else and anything else around him. He has witnessed the slow changes of its course, forcing people living near the bank to relocate. He has witnessed the river in its devastating mood, flooding the entire village which would eventually help the lands to grow more fertile and the landlords to reserve water for irrigation. But, there must be something wrong with the river this year. The clouds are not staying longer and the monsoon rains are not lasting longer either.

 

2.

The ferryman is known to all as Madhu, a shortened one from Madhushanka, without any middle or surname. He could hardly remember the time since when he started ferrying people to cross the river as the helper to his mentor and guardian who once provided shelter to a drifting kid and eventually started treating him like his own son. With his mentor, who he called papa, having passed away, he shouldered the responsibility of both the boat and the river which becomes nearly non-existent during the dry season with little or no water at all. But the scenario gets changed dramatically at the beginning of the long awaited monsoon. The darkening clouds engulfing the entire village and the chimes of sad gloomy sky bring back hopes and dreams to the villagers. The small river with the minimal flow suddenly becomes wild, windy and wavy and impassable without the expertise of a highly skilled rider like that of Madhu. And it’s the season when the rider becomes busy all through the day and night. And this is the season the villagers become busy with their own livelihoods: the farmers, the day-laborers, the fisherman and a couple of masons and carpenters all come out together off their naturally enforced long vacation. This is the season when the villagers start ploughing their fertile lands whose fertility entirely depends on the rains and the sediments distributed by the overflowing river.

 

Madhu worships the Sandy River as the only goddess he feels deep down his heart. The river was the closest companion in his troubled childhood days. The river is now the only means of his livelihood and he just can’t imagine of any other way to earn. When the river gets dried and the reasons to cross the knee deep water level get even more drier, he still keeps coming to his small boat tied to a tall tree on the bank. He spends hours watching people crossing the river on foot or the fishermen trying hard to catch fishes in the near dead flow of water.

 

In all these years Madhu has garnered the trust of the villagers who depend on each other for their respective livelihoods. People need to cross the river to get to the huge hut on the other side of the river, near the age-old railway station with only one train still keeping the locality alive to the other part of the world. But, the fresh vegetables, milk, butter, honey and other crops are the other things that make traders commute to this hut. And sometimes the vendors themselves cross the river for gaining the better margin, risking a little of their lives on the river; banking a huge trust onto the ferryman.  

 

The entire economic activities of Sandy Valley center around a few landlords of the village. While amassing their wealth with every passing year, they create the maximum job resources for the day laborers and other people in general and they have got their own houseboats, locally known as bojras, to make their precious lives more secured on the wild river. They often cross the river to catch up with the train to meet their relatives in the town. Life gives them the luxury to live a dual life: one in the village with the countrymen and with the hardships attuning to nature and the other is somehow like a vacation home in the town to spend the dry season.  They have got their kids educated in the town though, who, just like the opposite, spend their study breaks in the village. And ironical enough, Madhu’s little luxury depends on those kids and their pleasure trips on the river. When someone among them accidentally fall off their houseboats, and which happens regularly, Madhu instantaneously jumps off his boat and save them from being drowned in the helical flow or rip currents. And in such cases the tips from the landlords are always good.

 

3.

Apart from the river, the only other entity Madhu ever cares for is his wife, Banalota, whom he lovingly calls Buno. The affluent villagers or the traders making good profits would often give him good tips. And on such a day he would always think of two things: buying some jewelry like ear rings, nose pins or whatever fancy items were available in the hut near the station and drinking a whole bottle of a locally brewed cheap ram before getting back home. Other than riding the boat and swimming in the river, his entire life was dependent on his wife, be it the financial affairs, managing fresh vegetables or other everyday essentials like storing crops for the dry season. She never scolds him for being so late or for his occasional drinking habit but for being so bold to brave the wildness of the fuming river and so reckless to dive deep into the current so as to save the drowning people. But he is always ready with his smile and his answer: the river is his mother and a mother can’t kill his own child. She keeps waiting without having dinner for his husband to come home and it also hurts her to serve the food cold. Madhu never minds having a cold meal, though. Furthermore, he loves the way his beloved wife scolds him. He thinks himself a really lucky person to have such a beautiful, lovely and caring wife, who had to give up her gypsy life and her River Gypsy family to settle down with Madhu.

 

As Madhu was afraid of, the river was behaving differently this season. Instead of overflowing the banks, the water level started decreasing. The monsoon had somehow got derailed without triggering sufficient rain everyone was waiting for. And a village entirely dependent on one crop season after the monsoon rain finds it really hard to believe. They can’t remember such an instance to have ever happened to a place under the lap of nature with all its blessings for the people who never demanded too much from life.

The prolonged dry season after just a short break resumed. The villagers, most of them belonging to the working class, found it hard to cope up without jobs in the farming lands. The helps from the landlords began to drain out. The bond among the villagers began to fall apart. The common woes appeared to hit the clans in different ways. And the age old stories of famine started to cause panic among the people. With the small savings dried out and without the options left to seek help, the families began to flee in the darkness into an abyss of uncertainty, leaving behind their moments of joy, sorrows, hopes and beliefs and probably their souls deeply attached to the place. The melancholic tune started dominating the entire community with the increasing emptiness in the literal sense with the increasing number of abandoned homes every single morning.

 

4.

Days kept passing by without bringing any change to the fate of the people. The number of people had been reduced to half now.

 

Madhu never thought of leaving the river, and the small home close to its bank. But his wife, Buno, finally somehow managed to persuade him to leave their loving home and try their luck somewhere else like the other villagers. The stock of flattened rice and puffed rice has been reduced to the bottom layer even after extreme rationing. The stock of rice is nearly finished too. They took their minimal belongings and the rest of the dried food in a small bag with the diminishing hope of coming back home again. But the current priority is to manage somehow some job to be able to buy at least a square meal a day anywhere far or farther.

 

They left home in a shattered mind and in silence with tears rolling down their faces. In all these years they have lived so far, they never set themselves apart from their motherly river. Nor could they do it now. Instead of crossing the river to catch up with the trail to the town, they kept walking along the river with the hope of a better locality somewhere down there. 

 

Their village is naturally bordered by the small hills on two sides and a jungle on the West and the other one being covered by the river line. They choose the Western way where the river line meets the long forest. They kept passing through the muddy ways along the river bank like flowing on in an infinite silence without any trace of locality. The hilly tracks full of small bushes on the infertile soils keep acres of land uninhabited by the people solely dependent on agriculture. There are a few families who would go deep into the forest to collect honey in groups, but that was seasonal too. And they too never live anywhere near the forest line, though no species of ferocious animals was heard to be seen in the woods full of sal trees.

Their progress towards the uncertain destination was getting slower with every passing hour in nearly unfed stomachs. There was the source of water all along the way as the river was still flowing like a rivulet. But the dry foods can hardly provide the energy to walk through the untrodden ways full of downward slopes and small hills. Green coconuts or ripen guavas or sometimes bananas from the naturally grown trees helped them a lot on their painstaking journey. But these sorts of natural sources were getting lighter too as they were getting closer to the forest line.

 

After two days of laborious journey on foot with little rest and diminishing hope, Madhu was lying prostrate under a tree, looking at nowhere in a blank pair of eyes, thinking how his beautiful world was shattering into pieces. The logic wanted him to change the course and cross the river to get somewhere near the town like many other migrants. It was just before twilight when his eyes suddenly fell onto a long line of ants desperately moving in a row.  And his eyes got wet with the glow of a suddenly rekindled hope. Living all these years near water, studying nature, the movement of airs, the humidity and the heat of the Sun, the movement of the birds and clouds and the sky all through his life from childhood, he knows it’s the time. He immediately sprang up and asked his wife to get ready for the journey back home. Though a little confused at first, Buno didn’t argue with his husband as she knew very well what his husband was made of. If he thinks that the rain is coming back, it will definitely come in full vigor. Within hours there were chimes all along the sky with shrouding heavy clouds all above them. And then the downpour begins. 

 

5.

It took them less than a day to get back home amidst incessant rain. The river was already swelling up with wild roars while flowing like thousands of wild horses in a race. It was just the afternoon with the shadow of the night all set to sweep over the gloomy sky. Without taking any rest and wasting any time, Madhu left home to do a little repairing job of the boat, promising the worried Buno to return home in just an hour. The entire atmosphere of the village seemed to have changed in just three days. The torrential rain along with the lightning, the frightening and howling sound of the wind like that of a nor’wester, and the dangerous and all-engulfing look of the river were ringing the bell to declare an upcoming disaster. Madhu’s home was the nearest one from the river which was already flowing above the bank with millions of tons of water joining in.

Madhu was nearly running to get back home, sensing the flash flood. But the water level rising above his knee in just minutes forced him to swim back home for half a mile. He was so concerned about his wife alone in the home due to the screams of people from the neighboring homes. Many other people like them seemed to have come back home but may be just to face the far graver danger. They were searching for their dear ones yet to get back home. By the time Madhu reached home, the water level had reached almost waist high and Buno was standing on their bed which had gone under water. Both of them felt really relieved to see each other safe. But just for a moment. Suddenly a scream of a woman asking for help for her drowning child made Madhu take a reflex action like he used to do for drowning people in the river. He swam towards the sound like a sailfish while scanning the water covered area in the dwindling light from the sinking Sun. And the kid was lucky this time. Madhu brought him back to the tearful mother and swam back home at the same speed. Swimming can hardly make him tired.

 

The water level was still rising without giving any hint to go down soon. So Madhu decided to leave home yet again for the second time in three days. He took Buno on his back and asked her to hold him tight. He was planning to cross the drowned area to take shelter on the hilly parts of the village, nearly one kilometer off his home. But it was quite difficult to swim towards the right direction. In the already darkened afternoon the water logged land was hard to differentiate from the actual river. But Madhu is a water guy with full sense of the depth and current and obviously the courage. Swimming for hours has never been a problem for him. Even while carrying someone on his back. He was smoothly moving towards the light from the houses of the landlords. They live on the upper side of the village.

 

But there is one thing like helical flow in the calm looking surface and Madhu somehow fell into one in darkness and suddenly felt an enormous power pulling him deep down the water. He felt like something was fastening him tightly to a rope, draining out all his energy. He was pulled back into the main flow of the river and into a rip current which was still tying him tightly to keep him into the spiraling flow down the surface. And suddenly with the oxygen level going down to zero his lung was striving hard for the open air; his back felt so heavy. Buno was holding her throats more strongly under the water and he immediately started struggling to free himself from the weighing burden falling heavier every single second. Fresh air was all he was looking for. With a last attempt to breathe he put together all his energy and squeezed the throat of the burden real hard. In a few seconds the burden loosened and he set himself free from the current to float above the surface.

 

He was getting back to his senses with a few long breaths in the open air. Amidst darkness, and water and the waves he started feeling life once again after the near-death experience for the first in his life and still it was in the water where he feels the most comfortable. But with more oxygen flowing in his veins and the brain, he started feeling one more thing; a salty taste of tears rolling down his eyes. He started realizing what he had done. Without thinking anything else and with a prolonged sigh of disbelief and a blurred out groan, he finally surrendered himself to his river mother and to the flow of the deep current and started searching desperately for something he always thought more valuable to him than his own life. Under the dark deep water he was losing the last light of his conscience with the last ray of hope getting dimmer. The last thing he could remember was the feel of a cloth in his quivering fingers of the right hand.

 

Hours went by and the all engulfing darkness was getting weakened with a soft light emerging on the eastern sky. The flash flood was gone along with the howling winds and the roaring waves. The river was calm and so was the weather. And so were two bodies on the boat of Madhu: still breathing.

(The story is written in the shadow of Bengali short story entitled “Tarinee Majhi”, by prominent Bengali novelist Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay.)

 

©Atique R.