Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

The rhythm of life that I had had in Majgeria reasserted itself; the ancient, unchanging acts of ploughing and tilling and sowing and weeding and watching the paddy grow. I seemed to have exchanged one village for another. Memories of Kanu and Bijli could turn me still and silent for hours. I had no way of finding out what had happened to them, no means of helping them without endangering myself. Would we repeat our mistakes here too and expose this lot to the same fate? I couldn’t bear to think of it.

Almost as if in atonement, or in a desire to write a different kind of story with the new set of villagers, I tried to get to know Bir in the time available, that slow time between weeding and harvest. Unlike Bijli, Bir’s wife, Bela, sat with us as we talked and didn’t hurry away with our empty plates to begin the washing-up or continue to hide herself behind domestic duties. She didn’t come with us on the evenings when Bir, some other Santhal men and we ‘city boys’ went into the luxuriant, rustling forest in the dark, but in the hut she was an active participant in whatever conversation was struck up.

The Santhal men, Bir, Babu, Bimbadhar and others, came up with a plan that I began to see more and more as a kind of gift. It was the gift of protection. Individually and together, they suggested that they would protect us in the event of a police raid, smuggling us out if things got too bad, providing us with shelter in their own homes and, if that proved unfeasible or dangerous, arranging for our shelter in the homes of their trusted friends, in other villages nearby or, if it came down to it, in the jungle. They didn’t have a raft of set plans and strategies, and much of this emerged in conversation, through thinking aloud, with many crossings-out and reinstatements, but the upshot was this: the poor, landless farmers of Gidighati had decided to look out for us. The implications were enormous: instead of letting the status quo settle again over the surface of their lives, they had decided to be inspired by our teachings and actions. Armed rebellion it was going to be. They had made their choice.

Dhiren arrived, on a passing visit, halfway through the monsoon. It was from him that we heard of the formal establishment of the CPI(M-L) by Charu Mazumdar and Kanu Sanyal at the May Day rally in Calcutta Maidan. He wasn’t there, he had heard from someone else, but he recounted the story — the speeches, the torchlit procession, the songs, the slogans — as if he were talking of his own memories. The final news had taken nearly three months to reach us, although at Belpahari we had listened in on the ructions going on inside the AICCCR. Dhiren had come on other work: first, to give us the names of farmers in three neighbouring villages in whose homes we could stay should the need arise; and second, to bring us a pistol and a box of bullets. But I couldn’t help thinking about the celebrations marking the formation of the CPI(M-L) and, for a while, wished I had been in Calcutta then.

I realised I must have gone all quiet and distracted because of what Dhiren said, much later, when we went down, the Majgeria threesome, Samir, Dhiren and I, to the pond at the end of the day, for old times’ sake, to have a splash while it was raining. That same rattling, dissolving music on the green surface, changing to something so different just under it, and the shiny green shields of the banana leaves on the bank and scores of lush trees and plants I didn’t know the names of and wanted to ask my friend Dhiren, who had now become a visitor to these parts instead of a resident. . His appearance now, as a courier bringing news from elsewhere, unsettled me by the strength of how much I missed him.

— You mustn’t feel left out because you weren’t in Calcutta for the May Day rally, he said.

— No, no. . not really, it’s nothing.

— Listen to me: don’t you think it’s better to be in the thick of action than in city politics, which is all talk anyway? You got sick of all that, remember? You couldn’t wait to get out and do what you called ‘real work’ rather than ‘armchair politics’. Remember?

He was right about that.

— So why this backward glance now? Aren’t you happy here? Do you want to return home?

The word ‘home’ did the trick. I said — No, I don’t want to return home, but sometimes I think I’m missing out on the action. .

— But the action is all here, in these villages!

— I know, I know. It’s just a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side feeling, it’s a momentary weakness, it’ll pass. In fact it’s already gone, talking to you. Anyway, are you finding this vagabond’s life to your taste?

He made a face, then said — I keep telling myself that I’m the revolution’s eyes and ears. .

— Don’t forget legs, Samir quipped.

— Yes, the transport and communication service, true. But it needs to be done until safe corridors are established. The things I had to go through to bring you this one pistol. Often there are no safe houses on the way, so you have to take your chance. .

— And all this walking, hundreds of miles cumulatively, does it not tire you out? You look like a broomstick, Samir said.

— Sometimes. . sometimes I wish I could fall into a sleep from which I’d never wake up.

— That’s called death, stupid, Samir said.

— Yes, yes, but you know what I mean; a long, long, long uninterrupted rest.

— And would you go to Calcutta? How many times do you think that would be? I asked.

— Don’t know. I know I have to, at some point, but so far there hasn’t been an occasion.

He gave a pause, then asked — Why do you ask? Do you want something from there? Or do you want anything done while I’m there? Easily done, if we can get the timing right, because I don’t know when I’ll be in Majgeria again.

— No, no, just asking, nothing particular. .

Bir and his family had not always been so poor. He used to own a small plot of land, about two bighas, but he had been finding it increasingly impossible to grow enough on it and so, on the advice of one of the village officials, he decided to lease it to someone the official recommended. Bir, an illiterate man, had put his thumb impression on the lease deed. When the rent fell overdue and Bir called to collect it, he was told by the lessee that Bir had sold the land to him. The plot belonged to him, the lessee, now; the deed on which Bir had put the imprint of his thumb was a sale deed, not a deed of lease. The village official, it turned out, had been in cahoots with the lessee or, more likely, had been handsomely bribed. Bir Mandi’s plot had been sold to Nabin Sarkar for a sum of 1,500 rupees, less than one-fortieth of the value of his land.

Once again, no recourse to redress: the village official in question was the person through whom such complaints were made. When Bir started complaining, he was told to leave off if he valued the honour and life of his wife. Bir threatened to go to the police in Jhargram. The police said they couldn’t do anything because Bir had signed away his land. In any case, the police wouldn’t do a thing because Nabin Sarkar had the wherewithal to grease their palms, Bir didn’t. Two months after this, Bir’s hut was ransacked and destroyed by a group of men; he had been living, as he had always done, in the hut at the edge of his (now Nabin Sarkar’s) land. This time the police told him that he was on it illegally and, if he didn’t move out, or if he attempted to build again on the same spot, he would be thrown into jail. And who knew what could happen to his defenceless, protectorless family, they added, when he wasn’t around to look after them?

That was how he came to build the hut where we were now, in the poorest circle of Gidighati, almost where the treeline of the forest began.