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.
