আয়নার সামনে, বুদ্ধদেব গুহ/ Before the Mirror, Buddhadev Guha

I remember, it was the full moon night on which Lakshmi is worshipped. It was already quite cold in the forests and mountains that surrounded the little known town of Titirjhuma in Uttar Pradesh. I was travelling back to Kolkata on my holiday.

In those days I had to travel twelve miles by bullock cart to catch the train from Lathiyalia station.

I had started in the afternoon in order to be on time for the night train. With me was Mr. Chauhan. We had spread blankets on some straw inside the cart and were chatting to each other as we journeyed.

The full moon was shining brightly all around us. The unsealed road meant that the cart wheels and the bullocks’ hooves raised dust but it did not fly about as it was weighed down by the seasonal dew. There were fields of kitari and bajra on either side and in the distance were the Vindhya ranges, like an even wall along the horizon.

The various odours of dust, dew, moonlight, the beasts, the straw and the dew drenched crops around us had amalgamated into an unusual mixture of perfumes that filled the air.

In time we reached Tundu. The driver of the cart now took the way to the right. We got to the Titirjhuma plain at the foothills of the mountains. On one side lay the ranges and on the other were the Butbutia national forests.

Rajinder Singh was sitting at the back of the cart. He had a country blanket draped lightly about him. I still remember the colour. It had large black squares on a white background. Above the blanket, the soft unctuous moonlight fell on his angular but thoughtful face. He seemed to be thinking of something as he looked at the trees we were leaving behind, the vast moonlit plain around us and the distant mountains.

A white owl of the type said to be favoured by Lakshmi flew up from a bushy Acacia on the roadside and circled our moving cart in silence for a long time before flying back to the same tree.

Suddenly Rajinder spoke up, almost as if to himself, without looking at me, ‘How beautiful is our country, is it not? This country is very beautiful. If only we, all of the people living here could be like this country?’

I remained silent for some time before asking, ‘What do you mean by as beautiful as the country?’

He said, ‘I do not mean physically beautiful; if we could be all together beautiful, like humans are meant to be.’

‘What do you mean like humans? We are all humans. Aren’t we?’

Rajinder now looked at me, saying, ‘Where? Where are the humans in the country? The ones who deserve to be known? All of us, most of us are merely made in the human shape. Some rank blood, some water, a little fatty substance, some skin and bones – just a pile of junk in human shape. How many humans do you think there are in the midst of this multitude of people?’

The cart was approaching a culvert.

Suddenly the cart man said in a frightened voice, ‘There are some people sitting on the culvert with their faces masked from view. I think they may be robbers.’

The plains of Titirjhuma are infamous for robberies. There was not much they would be able to steal from me, although I had some clothes in my suitcase along with a little money that I had saved over the past year; that would be lost if they did.

The terrified driver stopped the cart.

Rajinder asked him angrily, ‘Why did you stop the cart?’

In answer the man said, his voice quavering, ‘Master.’

Rajinder used a profanity at him and said, ‘What is your fear? You have nothing on the inside or on the outside – what do you fear robbers for, you fool!’

He then said, ‘Keep driving. Take it right in front of them and stop. I will show them, they don’t know I am in this cart.’

The cart had almost reached the culvert by now. It is not as if I was completely unafraid, but it is hard to feel afraid when Rajinder is with you.

The cart came to a sudden halt. The men all stood up when they saw we had stopped.

Each of them was six feet tall. I suppose no one in the region was less than six feet tall as a rule. They all wore their dhotis tied on tightly, locally woven shirts and heavy wraps. On their feet were steel shod pointed shoes. Each of them carried thick staves as tall as them.

Rajinder threw a question at them in his sombre but sharp voice, ‘Who are you all?’

They all laughed at this.

On that moonlit field at Titirjhuma, with their heads covered they all looked ghostly.

They laughed and answered, ‘Your father!’

Rajinder spoke in a tone of unconcerned hatred, ‘You are all dogs! That is what you are.’ He then described their sisters with a particularly stinging local insult and said, ‘If you want to get out of this alive, let us pass. Or else you will be shot.’

The men did not move. They stood on the road as before. The bullocks looked at them with unblinking stares as they chewed the cud.

Rajinder stayed seated as he was, and without getting excited or moving in the slightest spoke again, ‘I never repeat myself twice, let us pass, you sons of dogs –'

Suddenly something happened to the men, much as a school of fish underwater, they moved as one and began to walk off silently towards the jungle of Butbutia in the moonlight.

I heard one of them say in hushed tones of respect, ‘Chauhan!’ Another one answered, ‘Let us go quickly! Today we have managed to escape death!’