‘Hey brother, why is the water heavy like steel?’
Like Steel! Although Dibakar Dewan doesn’t say anything, he is surprised by what the young tourist has said. Last week, another tourist bathing in the lake said that the water was like oil. Who would say that! Just another idiot like this one.
‘The air in the lake is somewhat strange. Or is it the water?’
Dibakar controls his exasperation for the sake of his job, explaining to himself, ‘People perhaps go mad with excitement when they come for a touristy trip and turn into stupids. They say meaningless things. They laugh. They scream. They waddle like newly hatched ducklings. They kick, they jump, they unnecessarily boast about themselves.’
These are Dibakar Dewan’s experiences of tourists after working for a month as a boatman.
He collects the polythene covered life jackets and floating tubes tucked under the ceiling of the boat. He slowly takes them out of the clear polythene bags. Is the young man standing in waist deep water waiting for an answer? Or for the life jacket?
‘Steel can be sharp,’ Dibakar ruminates. He throws an orange tube and a life jacket towards the young man. ‘Go to hell! This life jacket can’t save you from sharp steel.’
The curse slipped out of his mouth, just like the curses of Grandma! No, it didn’t come out of Dibakar’s mouth, but it certainly came into his mind. While the young man’s friends have nearly reached the red soil of the other bank, the young man in the life jacket is still dog paddling on this side in the shallow water. Yesterday, he said his name: ‘Nayan; Eyes; Organs of sight.’
What does he think? That Dibakar doesn’t know the meaning of the word Nayan! ‘You tell me, what is the meaning of Dibakar?’
The boat is owned by Bengalis. A new job for Dibakar. He couldn’t ask the young man outright for the meaning of Dibakar, so he is annoyed with himself. However, Nayan is unpretentious, like a child among this group of six. The humblest one.
Is his perception of Nayan changing? From hard to soft, then even softer! Grandma was worried that this attitude might develop in Dibakar if he worked on a tourist boat. She has reservations about even calling it a lake. She calls it a dam. How can her grandson be the boatman on a luxury tourist boat in the dam that drowned their home, lands, gardens, everything!
‘Hunger! Because of hunger!’ Grandma wept seeing Dibakar slapping his tummy, holding up his shirt. She also wept thinking of her father and siblings who were forced to cross the border to take refuge in the Lushai Hills after losing everything in the waters of the dam. They moved from camp to camp. The government of that country didn’t allow them to live in the Lushai Hills.
They were sent to NEFA,1 some 700 miles away from the Lushai Hills. Walking most of the way, it took them more than a year to reach. It was physical stress and a sad heart that killed Grandma’s father on that journey. There was no funeral ceremony for him. He was put on a pyre near the road by some volunteers from that land. Grandma’s five-year-old niece didn’t even get a pyre. She was laid down in a shallow grave. Dying like insects on the way, they finally arrived in a country that had no resemblance to the land they were from. Freezing cold, rocks and more rocks, rain and forest. Wild elephants and Indian bison from the forests came gushing down in the flood waters. One heavy downpour, flowing from the mountains made the river ferocious, flooding everything.
Are Nayan and his friends aware of all this? If they are, they may think they are just stories made up by hill people. The history of the lake is all made up. The lake is only for leisure and enjoyment.
And, why not! Dibakar also often gets confused. The lake, with its surrounding landscape, is picturesque. The lake water is pristine green, and the sky a blue dome above. There are many colourful birds and a myriad chirping sounds. The mountains on the horizon create lines like waves. Sitting in his boat, seeing the burning red fires of the jum2 on the distant mountains at night, enthrals Dibakar, saddens him.
The anchored boat suddenly rocks gently. The breeze creates small waves in the lake. A light breeze. A clear sky. Dibakar, turning up his wrist, checks the time.
The boat will be at this spot for at least two more hours. Picking up the timber ladder he lets it down onto a muddy landing. Resting his straight back on the bow of the boat, his gaze is fixed on the water. What a green enchanting liquid! It should have been blood red. It is the source of bloodshed in the Hills. For Grandma it is the lake of tears – tears dissolving in the water, creating the fierce waves of the lake.
During the building of the dam, the water level rose high and then retreated. It happened a number of times. Even then, people didn’t understand the danger. But dogs howled in despair. At night, wild animals cried in fear from the deep forests. Flocks of birds flew, restlessly chirping curses. One day, the water rose and stayed up. It swelled up and up. Dark clouds crowded the sky. No breeze, body-burning heat. A strange pause in the atmosphere. The ceaseless sound of a tumult of approaching water. Then came a rain that shook homes and farm buildings. Grandma and her family realised that the unforgiving day had arrived. Non-stop rain poured from above. Water rose quickly from below. The hard rain and the rising water seemed to be closing the gap between the heavens and the earth.
‘Everything is drowning, oh Bhagaban, we all are drowning.’ Grandma took refuge in a boat, leaving her drowning home in tears which have never stopped since.
His homeless grandmother helped his grandfather to clear a section of forest, grow food, and build a stilt shed. Their land was deep in the forest where the sun couldn’t touch the ground. Sunlight fell obliquely, trapped on the dense foliage of the treetops. Tigers roamed the ground at night. There was always talk that someone had been taken by a tiger, or someone had been hit by the slingshot of a ghost. The tigers eventually stopped, but not the slings of the ghosts.
Dibakar looks at a far hill, where a flag flutters high above a row of ochre-coloured tents. A speedboat races towards the hill. It is white and sparkles like fire in the sunlight, rupturing the water into fierce waves at its tail. ‘Fire is not possible in water, so it’s safe,’ thinks Dibakar. Otherwise each sparkle of the sun’s rays could have broken into wildfires. It is this unrevealed fire in the water that has been kept alive as an eternal flame in his heart by his octogenarian grandmother. It ignites with double strength when he comes to the lake. But what can he do if not work as a tourist boatman. He doesn’t have a good enough education to work in an office.
Moving his eyes from the tents on the hill, Dibakar sees Nayan pulling the orange tube over his head, abandoning his life jacket. He is floating, holding the tube with two hands. A colourful butterfly is dancing above his face. He is enjoying it. But he is unaware that he is gradually floating towards deep water.
‘Hey, Hey, Hey!’ Dibakar shouts from the prow of the boat to warn Nayan. ‘What the hell is it with the other five fools,’ Dibakar thinks, irritated. They are jumping up and down in the shallow muddy water on the other side, they could have done that on this side. All six of them could have done it together. Why would they go across! They have to show off their swimming skills to the one who doesn’t know how to swim, to demonstrate that they can and he can’t! And they are friends! No sympathy for the friend, no responsibility, although these college kids seem to be two to four years older than Nayan.
‘Hey, Hey, Hey!’ Dibakar calls again. He calls once, twice. There may have been a response if he had called him by his name, Nayan. ‘Am I a friend of these Bangalyas? Dibakar asks himself. I am just a boatman. I bring them to the lake. I return them to the town’s landing dock.’
After a little while, Nayan returns to his senses. Seeing Nayan, with the tube, approaching the bank, Dibakar steps onto the boat’s ladder. Crossing the warm sand bank in bare feet, he walks towards grassy land.
In this huge lake, where was Grandma’s village that took a day and a night to drown? Maybe it didn’t drown fully. At the easing of the heavy downpour, Grandma and the villagers looked back from their fleet of boats. Wiping her eyes with the end of her khadi, she looked back again and again. She saw her half-drowned home for the last time just before the boat took a turn at the point. The house seemed like a man in waist-deep water, waving goodbye.
‘Grandma’s home was on top of a hill,’ thinks Dibakar climbing the hill with a walking stick, shaped from a tree branch. All the hilltops from that time are now small islands floating in the lake. Some of them are inhabited and some are not. It is in search of Grandma’s home that Dibakar anchors his tourist boat at different uninhabited islands on each of his outings.
But how to recognise Grandma’s home after fifty long years? Huge mud houses dissolve like salt in the water. There was a pair of mango trees at the front of the house compound. They bore fruit for three months of the year. It was not only one or two jamun trees, lines of Jamun trees surrounding the large house kept watch like sentries. In summer, Grandma and her friends played games with shells under those trees. ‘Throw each dice with a mouth full of ripe jamuns that have fallen from the trees.’ Young girls laughed with their purple mouths saying, ‘Or, walk under the Jamun trees with bare feet.’ Anklets sporting purple feet. Life was colourful and full of dreams.
After the dam was built, government officials came and marked the large trees. Mango, jamun, nut, river ebony, jackfruit. Then they came to cut them. Fallen trees all around. Saw dust, big tree trunks. Trees that had been planted by grandparents and their ancestors. They had been grown with care. Holding back tears, with a lump in her throat, Grandma said, ‘They were rolling like healthy children on the ground ... trees, so you can’t hear them cry.’ They were cut down to make safe passages for the boats and launches to ply.
Trees were cut down, compensation was paid…
all large trees were cut down…
‘All large trees were cut down!’ Dibakar feels a sudden tightness in his throat, although he verbalised it like reading from a times table. His sight is now fixed like glue on a line of jamun trees. What are they? A line of hundred-year-old jamun trees are weeping down towards the lake from the slope of this island mound. Crows are pecking on jamuns. Like children they are throwing purple jamuns on the red sand and green water of the lake. It is a heavenly sight. A heart-stealing sight. Dibakar hurriedly runs down the slope. He puts some jamun from the ground in his mouth and says, like Grandma, ‘Or, walk under the Jamun trees with bare feet.’ ‘Our grandparents and their ancestors planted the trees, so the jamun are delicious.’ Dibakar doesn’t weep like Grandma when he says it. Instead, he climbs the slope with his smiling purple mouth. He anticipates soon seeing the twin mango trees. It is the end of the month of Ashar, the first month of the rainy season, after the month of Jyastha, the last month of summer. Grandma said it bore fruit for three months. It doesn’t matter if there is no fruit, he will find the house.
Dibakar approaches, walking through the bush, using the walking stick he made. The intoxicating scent of foliage. Lost in excitement, Dibakar doesn’t realise that he is not the first visitor to the island. He is climbing up, following a walking path made by others. He passes pineapple and guava orchards on the way which were not planted by his grandparents some fifty years ago. It does not register that this land has been illegally grabbed by others. He sees only a pair of mango trees, which are changing their shape as he gradually ascends and descends, following contours of the land. They disappear like smoke again and again. It makes him more determined. The line of jamun trees make him greedy. Otherwise he wouldn’t be pursuing the pair of mango trees.
Suddenly, losing the walking path, he finds himself in difficulty. There are branches and vines obstructing his way. Timber logs are jammed against each other. If he had a sharp tagol or a spade, like those of his grandparents, he could have easily gone into the mysterious, goosebump-triggering dark forest where tigers roar at night.
As the path gradually clears, Dibakar ascends the hill, running and jumping. Arriving at the top, he breathes lungfuls of air. A fragrance hangs in the air – is it the mahogany flower? Or lime? He walks around the hilltop a number of times without finding the pair of mango trees. But he is happy to see a blood fruit tree, bowing down with the weight of ripe fruit. He is surprised that grandma forgot to mention such a gorgeous tree! Such beautiful fruit! He eats the fruit assuming that the tree belonged to his grandparents. He sucks its seed, turning his tongue red. With his mouth and teeth as red as blood, he feels like laughing maniacally to make others scared, as he did in his childhood. But who can he scare? This island has only birds and perhaps some squirrels.
As the sun inclines towards the west, long shadows cast by the trees cover the hill. The birds’ ominous calls and the creepy cries of insects hidden in the grass make Dibakar fearful. Does he have to return to the boat without seeing the pair of mango trees? The boat! Is there a space for the tourist boat in his reminiscences? It seems like the anchored passenger boat of his next life, of which there is only an inkling now. Breaking into his thoughts, a distant noise comes from below. ‘Nayan ... Nayan...’ is he imagining those screams? Or is he hearing it right?
Dibakar climbs the tallest tree with a feline nimbleness. His blood freezes when he looks down. So many things have happened in this short space of time. Five black heads on the bank near the boat look like five spots of ink. The bright orange tube and the life jacket are floating like two drops of blood. Those tourists must have shouted to get help from the people in the ochre tents.
A fleet of white speedboats approach, like fierce arrows. They are nearing the bank. Dibakar’s anchored boat rocks crazily with the angry waves made by the speedboats. Anchored in the sandy soil, the boat could lose its mooring at any moment. But Dibakar disguises himself like a monkey, half swinging from a tree branch. He seems not at all surprised to see the rescuers climbing the hill like a row of ants instead of jumping in the water to help.
After a short time a helicopter approaches, targeting the island. Dibakar didn’t know that there was a helipad on the hill with the ochre tents. It is no longer safe to stay in the tree, he thinks with certain clarity. Are the lower bushes safer than this? Dibakar remembers the difficult path he made through the obstructions of the bushes and vines. Despite the uncomfortable memory, he gets down from the tree to run in that direction.
Dibakar doesn’t know how long he has hidden behind a large wet tree trunk. He can’t figure out whether it is day or night. The light is like the time between day and night. Regaining his determination, he jumps up like a spring. He races down, following the slope of the hill. All around him, it is green and hazy, like looking into the water. And his body feels light, like being suspended in the water. He is floating down, pushing the heavy air. ‘It worked going down this way,’ thinks Dibakar happily, when his toes touch something soft, like mud. Then he can’t utter anything more, as bubbles come from his nose.
A big crowd. It is like a Buddha fair – people and more people. Looking for his Grandma, Dibakar instead finds his grandfather amidst the crowd. He has no trouble recognising him, although he died long before Dibakar was born. ‘Where is Grandma?’ asks Dibakar in a strange voice, bubbles still coming from his nose. ‘She has not arrived yet,’ Grandpa answers with an odd gesture, reminding Dibakar of a fish flapping its tail. Dibakar wonders whether all the people of the drowned village turned into fish in their next life! No, they haven’t turned into fish yet, but they have some fishy traits. He thinks, ‘no, no more, I must return.’ He backs up, one step after another.
As he takes the return path, Grandpa’s kind hand gently touches his shoulder. His hallong, the bamboo basket at his back, is full of goods from the bazar. Among them is Dibakar’s favourite dry fish, churi shutki. Its smell makes his mouth water. He brushes the corner of his mouth with his inner wrist, then stares at the palm of his hand. ‘Whose blood is this?’ Putting the hallong on the ground, his grandfather bends over to examine Dibakar. Dibakar is also surprised that there is blood in his mouth. He doesn’t know why. Suddenly he remembers he ate rogosco, blood fruit. Doesn’t its juice look like the raw blood of a fresh murder?
His grandfather listens to the story about eating rogosco with a fixed stare, resembling fish eyes. After a pause, Grandpa enquires in a soft voice like the exhaling of a deep breath, ‘Why is the front of your shirt soaked in blood?’ He moves behind and puts his hand on Dibakar’s back, ‘Here is blood too!’
‘Blood?’
‘Why, don’t you know?’ His grandfather’s hand is still on Dibakar’s back.
Dibakar thinks intently about something. With a sad smile he looks at his grandfather, ‘I know, Grandpa. I was looking for the pair of mango trees. So, I didn’t see who shot me.’
‘It was a ghost shot,’ says Grandpa in a cheery voice while hoisting the hallong onto his back. In one hand, he holds a walking stick, shaped from a tree branch. With the other hand he directs Dibakar, ‘Let’s go.’
Dibakar is at ease on the walk. A floating, weightless walk. But where are they going, Dibakar wants to know from his grandfather.
‘To our home, which took a day and a night to drown.’
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1 NEFA is the acronym for the North East Frontier Area, now called Arunachal Pradesh.
2 Jum is the traditional swidden agriculture undertaken on the slopes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
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This story was published in the original Bangla under the title ‘Chander Pahar’ in the Prothom Alo, Eid supplement, 2019
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Shaheen Akhtar is a notable Bangladeshi writer who won the Prothom Alo Best Book Award in 2004 for her novel Talaash, which was translated by Ella Dutta into English as The Search and published by Zubaan in 2011. Bengal Lights published the translation, by Shabnam Nadiya, of another novel Sokhi Rongomala (Beloved Rongomala) in 2018. For her literary contributions, Shaheen has received the prestigious Bangla Academy Award-2015. She writes both novels and short stories. Shaheen’s works have been translated into English, German, and Korean. Her latest novel Ashukhi Din is about the Bengal Partition.
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Kabita Chakma, from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh, is a tri-lingual author writing in Bangla, English and her native Chakma. Educated both in Bangladesh and Australia, she is formally trained as an architect and a researcher. She is now based in Sydney.