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!’
