Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

This sank in and seemed sensible. It would be foolish to fritter away time. The police were going to be here sooner rather than later, so why not take advantage of the lull?

Bipul said that the easiest home to raid would be of Bankim Barui because it was in the middle of Majgeria, whereas the really big landlords, the owners of hundreds of acres, didn’t live in the village proper. They had large, concrete homes in bigger villages or small towns in Binpur or elsewhere in the district, mostly in Jhargram. Those could be target projects for a later phase of the revolution, not now, Bipul added.

Crucially, there was his connection with Nitai. It was odd that although we didn’t speak about it, all of us knew that there was an inevitability about picking on Bankim. We went through so many planning sessions to settle on the most appropriate person to attack, but that choice had already been made for us by history.

So Bankim Barui it was. We knew he had about seventy-five bighas of land, most of which had been acquired by evicting farmers who had been poor tenants. He was up to all kinds of tricks: falsification of deeds of lease to facilitate his land-grab; being aggressive about letting the police loose on farmers who were protesting at his crimes and also slapping trumped-up charges against them. . The usual, then.

Bankim’s house was two-storeyed, built of brick and cement. There was a courtyard at the back; unenclosed land to its west; another, smaller tract of land enclosed by a woven-cane barrier to the south of the garden; a front door set in a box of a balcony, and a back door leading to the courtyard; about six rooms in total on both floors, not including kitchen and bathroom. There was also an outhouse in the south garden and two golas for grain storage. It was surrounded by five similar houses and about half a dozen much smaller affairs. Kanu and Anupam provided us with other vital pieces of local knowledge: Bankim lived there with his elderly mother, his uncle (late father’s brother), his wife, their three children (all under twelve or ten), two servants and his uncle’s son, who had a job in another village, Barashal, and visited frequently but was away at the moment.

We decided to strike around 2 a.m.

Shankar, Samir and I, faces covered, broke down the front door with a spear and a tangi. It gave after about six to eight blows, then we rammed it, all three of us, with our shoulders, and got in. The other four were stationed at the back door (we were certain that Bankim was going to try to use that route to escape). We heard the terrified screaming even before we entered. What if the cries for help brought people running, armed and ready to defend Bankim? Villagers were known for the closeness of neighbourly ties, unlike cities. Too late, it was too late to worry about that.

No one in the front room. We moved to the next one. An old man in a vest and a lungi was trying to hide under the bed. This, we assumed, was the uncle. A punch would kill him. We dragged him out by his feet and pushed him into the dark kitchen, but just as we were about to lock him inside we noticed a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, the servant, probably, cowering in a corner but with a lathi gripped in his hand. The screaming from upstairs, a chorus of women and children, was now in full swing. They were standing on the front verandah upstairs, shouting — Help! Help! Robbers! Robbers!

The servant boy couldn’t decide between trembling like a leaf and attacking us. I decided for him: I brought my tangi to his neck and said — Sit quietly here, one word or one move from you, your head will be rolling on the floor — and pushed him to the corner. Then I got out of the kitchen and fastened the chain on top of the door to the hook on the lintel post. I felt I’d done all this in the space between one inhalation and one exhalation. And there was an odd sensation: my heart was beating so hard and so fast that it seemed it had actually slowed down to those few beats in between that knocked against my chest. The rest I could not feel, but I knew they must be there.

We rushed into every room downstairs — three in total — and scanned every possible place that could be used for hiding: behind an almirah, under another bed, under a divan. Then we stormed upstairs. This was what I had been waiting for. The screaming people had barricaded themselves inside the front room, the one connected to the verandah. I had a feeling Bankim was hiding there too. We needed to get in there to shut them up. What if Bankim managed to climb down and escape from the front while we had our comrades waiting at the rear? We forced open the door — the screaming had stopped — after hacking it with tangis, then pushing a spear through the crack to make out what it was that they had pushed against it. The big bed. How on earth did Bankim’s wife and children manage it? Bankim must be in there. It would take some time to push it away, so we splintered the door to pieces and stepped on the bed to enter the room. No Bankim, or not obviously, but a boy of ten or so, a younger girl, their fat mother and an old woman, all squatting or crouching in the furthest corner, some squeaking, some frozen.

Samir shouted at them, much the same words that I had used in the kitchen downstairs. Bankim’s wife gave out a shriek, which she had the good sense to cut short, knowing that more screaming was not going to be doing her any favours. We ransacked the room. When Bankim’s wife refused to hand over the keys to the big almirah, Samir grabbed hold of the girl (more shrieking, ear-splitting this time), pulled out the hashua he had had Kanu tie around his waist with a gamchha and held it against her neck. The keys were produced before we could blink.

At this point a huge commotion began outside. It came from the back of the house, drowning out the racket the stray dogs were making at the front. I ordered Shankar and Samir to search the room and the verandah and ran to the back through two rooms, both empty. I couldn’t see what was happening in the dark, but there were shouts of — Beat the ***! Beat the ***! (unspeakable abuse, not for your ears) and there were far too many people. I couldn’t make out how many, but many more than the four from our squad. Before I could understand how foolish it was to make myself known (they could be paid guards, neighbours trying to fight us, people otherwise in the pay of or obliged to Bankim, even the police), I shouted — What’s going on down there? What’s happening?

Dhiren answered — Come down. We’ve caught the ***.

My head reeled. Who were all these people then? If our squad was under attack, how come Dhiren was in any position to reply? Wouldn’t he be fighting, or running away, hiding?

The action was happening in the courtyard, spilling out into the adjoining land. Two brands had been lit and in the meagre, flickering light of these, I began to discern what was going on. A tight circle of fourteen or sixteen men, all holding some kind of weapon, had surrounded Bankim, who was now a corpse. He looked like a bulging sack of grain that had fallen out of the back of a truck. There were two spears through him, one through his neck, another through his shoulder and upper chest.

— Shala was trying to escape around the back; poor *** didn’t know we were waiting for him in the dark. Trying to escape leaving the women and children to face the music. Didn’t have a chance, the dog. We didn’t even let him finish his miserable begging — Forgive me, forgive me, I’ve done a great wrong, it’ll never happen again, forgive me, I’m falling at your feet — but beat him down to the ground and then whack, whack, two javelins straight into him. All over.

Dhiren was at my side, saying — The noise brought other farmers over. They came to help us out. Look, they have lathis and tangis and spears. .