Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

‘Don’t forget Santhal women = beauty,’ Somnath interjected.

‘Do you have a huge family house like Somnath does?’ Shekhar asked. ‘Three cars? A fleet of servants?’

Ajit clenched his teeth. ‘Has the rum gone to your head?’

‘A wife? A son?’ Shekhar continued, following his own train of thought as if the aimless convivial chit-chat had turned into a monologue; his interlocutor had disappeared.

Ajit returned to his old tack. ‘Innocence belongs to these tribal people,’ he said. ‘They are closer to the pure state of mankind than we are, less corrupted, more noble.’

Somnath had only a small part of his mind on the increasingly drunken conversation of his two friends, participating absent-mindedly. He heard the splattering stream of one of them pissing against a bush, so loud in the surrounding stillness that it felt slightly obscene. He wanted to concentrate solely on the sound, which was no longer dispersed in the night air in intermittent shreds and patches, but was continuing louder, he felt, in his pumping heart.

The air was mazed again with that very rhythm the following afternoon. In the market place there was a sizeable crowd — where did so many people come from? — that seemed to swell as the afternoon deepened from white to gold. In a clearing at the edge of a field, where the human habitations gave way to open space, a circle of Santhal men and women, linked to each other with their arms across their neighbours on either side, expanded and contracted to the unerring rhythm of a drum, with the grace of a dream. On the red soil they formed at one moment a small ring, then, at another moment, obeying the syncopations of the drummer, a larger one. Somnath thought of a bud blooming into a day-long flower, then collapsing into a shrivelled prepuce at the beginning of nightfall. Expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. The men and women bowed as they moved inward, then lifted their heads up on the outward move. The effect, unfurling to the repetitive drumbeats, was hypnotic.

He wrenched his eyes off the collective harmony of the dance to search for his Santhal girl, but had trouble picking her out — all the women were wearing flowers in their hair. And then he saw her, an ebony figure of perfect grace and form, her skin strangely luminous in its contrast with the dark-red cloth that she had wrapped around herself, leaving so much of her legs and body unencumbered. The thuds in his heart outpaced the drumbeats. He followed the circumference of the dancing circle until he stood diagonally behind his girl at a distance of a few feet, part of a looser circle of the audience gathered to watch. Then, suddenly, the mesmeric hold broke, the harmonic duet between the drum and his heart snapped. An immense hunger seemed to be devouring him, a hunger exacerbated by all this nibbling away at the scene in front of him with only his eyes; he wanted a different kind of assuaging.

Someone was shaking him by his shoulder, offering him something. He turned around. It was Shekhar, holding out what looked like a pint-bottle.

‘They’re selling mahua,’ he said. ‘Have some. It’s killer stuff, not what I was expecting it to be.’

Somnath took a swig, swallowed and nearly choked. The liquor had a burning, laboratorial quality to it. It tasted of putrefaction. He grimaced and asked, ‘What were you expecting?’

‘Well, doesn’t the name lead you to believe it will be something fragrant and honeyed?’

‘ Fragrant and honeyed ,’ Somnath mimicked. ‘Man, you’ve been infected by Ajit’s poetry bug. Come on, give us another swig.’ It was a desperate attempt to swagger and fall into the comfortable macho camaraderie of their usual intercourse; he felt he had to keep his distracting, consuming hunger sheltered from the gaze of his friends.

The drumbeats stopped; the dance had ended. There were hundreds of people jostling and milling around. A man was selling tin whistles, another one pinwheels, yet another gaudily painted bamboo baskets. Somnath noticed at least two groups gambling. Ajit seemed to have been swallowed by the crowd. Somnath turned to Shekhar and said, ‘Do you think you can get me another bottle of mahua?’

‘Yes, no problem. They’re selling it in that shack over there.’

‘Why don’t you give me this bottle and you go get a new one? I’ll be right here. Here, take some money,’ Somnath said, pulling a few crumpled notes out of the pocket of his trousers. ‘Will you be able to find me? It’s so bloody crowded, people are eating each other’s heads. .’

‘Of course. But don’t you move from here, otherwise I’ll lose you,’ Shekhar said, handing Somnath the pint-bottle, still nearly half-full of the fiery liquid.

As soon as Shekhar’s back was turned Somnath wheeled round and lost himself in the crowd. He had to find her; this was not even a village, more like a hamlet; he could find her without any difficulty; she would still be with her tribespeople, for the dance had ended only a few minutes earlier. After a few restless minutes of pushing through the press of people, he discovered her, sitting with other Santhals. It took him some time to work out that they were getting drunk in a silent and focused way. That aimless mirth, the inexplicable, fluid joy, were all gone, yet the concentration seemed desultory. There was a core of hopelessness to it, even perhaps of despair.

Somnath stood beside her and said, ‘Ei, ei, are you listening?’ to draw her attention; he did not know her name and it embarrassed him.

She looked up, smiled sleepily and turned away, her attention engaged more by the bottle doing the rounds. In the final blaze of twilight the flower in her hair glowed. Soon it would be dark; he found the thought oddly comforting. Run through with that thought, indivisible from it, were the words he spoke next, almost in a whisper, to her, ‘Come with me, I’ve got more of the stuff with me, you don’t have to share with anyone.’

The man and the woman on either side of her turned round along with her. This time her smile had a little bit more interest in it. She tried to stand up, failed, leaned against the man, who continued to stare at Somnath. Somnath knelt down to be level with her.

She giggled and asked, ‘You give me liquor? Where is it? Show me!’

Somnath brandished the bottle and said, ‘There’s more.’

The staring man now said to Somnath, ‘You bring the liquor here, she won’t go with you.’

Somnath looked at him with contempt and said to the girl again, ‘Come.’

The man answered, ‘No, she won’t.’

Showing some spark for the first time, the girl let loose a shower of incomprehensible words to the man. He retorted with equal eloquence. This resulted in a veritable fusillade from her. Somnath watched with bemusement; even the seemingly heated exchange appeared to him to be oddly dotted with their habitual languor. Or was that the effect of the stuff they were drinking? A fair few of them seemed to be half-asleep, some swaying gently, others with their drooping heads nearly touching the earth. No one seemed to be paying much attention to this corner where a sudden display of energy was playing out. Except for the woman who was sitting on the other side of the girl. She called out to someone and said something that led to another woman, on the opposite arc of the circle, letting out a titter, then a few slurred words, and finally a giggle, before she fell back into the doziness that had taken over the group.

Then, surprising Somnath, the girl got up, teetered for a bit, steadied herself and said to him, ‘Let’s go. You buy me some liquor.’

Somnath leaped up and handed her his half-empty bottle. She took a swig, two swigs, passed the bottle back to him and in the same forward motion her upper body keeled towards him and fell against his chest. His free hand instinctively reached out to steady her. He held her elbow first, then her arm. Her warm skin was like an electric shock through his fingers. She disengaged herself, or maybe he foolishly encouraged her to do it; the contact was all over in a few seconds, but Somnath felt feverish from it. Was that moment of unbalanced lungeing a calculated move or was the unsteadiness an effect of the drinking? He would never know. She kept drifting in and out of a mild trance, not far removed from her slow, wakeful manner. This made it easy, even imperative, for Somnath to keep touching her so that she would not fall.