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Harihar Ray’s ancestor, Bishnuram Ray, was one of a few Brahmin householders settled in the village in days gone by, gifted parcels of rent-free land by the Chowdhurys, the ancient and wealthy landed family of Jasra-Bishnupur.

British rule had not yet taken firm root in the land. The travel routes were fraught with peril, teeming with Thugs, thyangares, river pirates, and the like. These bands of dacoits were generally men of the Goala, Bagdi, or Bauri castes. They were immensely strong—and highly skilled in the use of the lathi and the short spear. The remnants of temples to Dakat-Kali, established by these men in the secluded corners of many a village, can still be found today. By day, they would pose as honest folk; at night, after offering puja to Kali, they would set out to plunder households in distant villages. In those times, many a prosperous householder also amassed wealth through dacoity. And anyone who knows the history of old Bengal knows this as well: that the foundational wealth of many a zamindar and well-to-do family in this land was built upon just such plundered riches, hoarded by their ancestors.

Biru Ray, the son of Bishnuram Ray, had just such an infamous reputation. He kept a gang of paid thyangares under his command. Their haunt was by an old, large pond known as Thakurdjhi’s Pond, set in the middle of the vast, horizon-spanning field of Sonadanga, beside the unmetalled road that runs north of Nischindipur village, coming from Chuadanga on its way to Taki via Nababganj. There, under a colossal banyan tree by the pond, they would lie in wait, and when an innocent traveller passed, they would murder him and steal all he possessed. The thyangares’ method was a peculiar one. They would first strike a traveller on the head with a lathi, killing him before they even searched his person for money—and after the killing, it was not unheard of to discover that the slain man did not have so much as a quarter-pice on him. Shoving the corpse into the pond, the thyangares, hoping to make up for their wasted labour with their next victim, would return with innocent faces to the shade of the tree by the water’s edge. In that vast field to the north of the village, the banyan tree still stands; a relatively low-lying area by the road is still called Thakurdjhi’s Pond. The pond itself is barely recognizable, having silted up almost completely—but even today, when farmers plough that low ground to sow their paddy, a human skull will occasionally turn up on the blade of a plough.

The story goes that an elderly Brahmin from the eastern districts, accompanied by his young son, was returning to his own country in the Sripur-Taki region from the area around Kaliganj. It was the end of the month of Kartik; the Brahmin had been abroad to raise money for his daughter’s wedding and had some cash and belongings with him. After cooking and eating at the wayside inn in Haridaspur market, they set out again a little after noon, intending to spend the night at the inn in Nababganj market, five krosh ahead. They were not unaware of the dangers of the road, but they had somehow misjudged the time—the days in Kartik are short, and long before they reached Nababganj market, seeing the sun beginning to sink while they were still in the middle of Sonadanga field, they began to walk at a brisk pace. But as they neared Thakurdjhi’s Pond, they fell into the hands of the thyangares.

The dacoits landed a single blow of the lathi on the Brahmin’s head; crying out in terror, he fled from the road and ran into the open field, his son scrambling after him. But one an old man, the other a boy—how long could they hope to outrun the thyangares? In moments, the pursuers caught up and surrounded their prey. The helpless Brahmin is said to have proposed that they could kill him, he did not mind, but they must spare his son’s life—he was the only son of the line, the family name would perish, the ancestral offerings cease. As it happened, Biru Ray himself was said to have been among the gang that day. Recognizing him as a Brahmin, the terrified old man fell at his feet, pleading and begging him to at least spare his son—but the simple Brahmin did not understand that his own anxieties about the cessation of his ancestral rites were hardly a matter of concern for another; indeed, letting them go would pose a very different kind of risk to the gang of thyangares. And so, in the evening’s gloom, having arranged for the bodies of the ill-fated father and son to be buried together in the cold waters of Thakurdjhi’s Pond, amidst the duckweed and shyamaghash reeds, Biru Ray went home.

Not long after this, exactly one year later, during the time of the Puja. The Bengali year was 1238. Biru Ray was returning with his family from his father-in-law’s house in Haludbere by boat. After crossing the great salt-water channel below Nakipur and entering the Madhumati, two days’ tide would then bring them to the Ichamati near Dakshin Sripur. From there, it was another four days’ journey to their own village.

After rowing all day, the boat docked at the ghat in Taki in the late afternoon. They had a Puja at home. After buying provisions for the Puja at Taki market and spending the night there, they set off for their village at dawn. Two days later, towards evening, they moored the boat by a desolate char at the confluence of the Dhabalchita canal and the Ichamati, to wait for the tide and prepare a meal. It was a large sandbank, with nothing but clumps of kash grass here and there. The boatmen had started a fire in one spot, Biru Ray’s wife in another. Everyone was in high spirits; they would reach their village in just two days. And, of course, there was the joy of the approaching Puja.

The moon had risen. The water of the salt-water channel gleamed. In the gusting wind, a flurry of kash blossoms swirled, seeming to merge the sky, the moonlight, and the water of the confluence into one. Suddenly, hearing a sound, one or two of the boatmen stood up from their cooking and peered around. A rustling and scuffling from behind a clump of kash grass; a terrified voice that cried out in a muffled shriek and was instantly silenced. The curious boatmen had barely passed the screen of grass to see what was happening when something plunged from the char into the water with an immense splash. That side of the sandbank was deserted—no one saw a thing.

Before they could even grasp what had happened, the rest of the crew rushed to the spot. Hearing the commotion, Biru Ray came, his servant came. Biru Ray’s only son had been on the boat—where was he? It turned out that, seeing the meal would be delayed, he had gone out for a walk on the moonlit char a little while earlier. The boatmen’s faces went pale; from their experience of these salt-water channels, they understood at once: a large crocodile had been lying in wait on the sand, hidden among the kash. It had taken Biru Ray’s son from the land.

After that, of course, what was to be, was. The boat’s poles were brought out, a search was conducted here and there; they cast off and scoured the mid-river until deep into the night—and then came the weeping, the flailing of hands and feet. It was as if an unseen judge, on this desolate char on the Ichamati, had now delivered his verdict on the incident that had taken place at this very time last year in the field by Thakurdjhi’s Pond. The fool Biru Ray learned the hard way that the sentence of that invisible tribunal of Dharma cannot be cheated by the shyamaghash reeds of Thakurdjhi’s Pond; even in darkness, it finds its path.

Upon returning home, Biru Ray did not live much longer. Thus began a strange affliction in his family line. Although his own line died out, his brother’s line continued. But the eldest son of the family would never survive; he would die of some illness or other before reaching adulthood. Everyone said that a Brahmin’s curse—a Brahma-shap—had entered the family. Harihar Ray’s mother, on a pilgrimage to Tarakeswar, wept before a sannyasi and received an amulet from him. Whether by the power of the amulet, or because the curse, after two generations, had simply evaporated like camphor, Harihar, at his advanced age, was still alive.