7

Four or five years had passed since Indir Thakrun’s death. It was the end of the month of Magh, and the winter chill was still sharp. Down a narrow dirt path hemmed in on both sides by thickets, a few men of Nischindipur were heading to the fields outside the village to see the nilkantha bird on the afternoon of Saraswati Puja.

One of the men in the group called out, “I say, Hari, have you leased out Bhushano the milkman’s banana grove again?”

To look at the man thus addressed, one would not have recognized the Harihar Ray of ten years ago. Now he was a middle-aged man, a householder through and through, a father of children. Harihar went about the village collecting rent, seeking out the households of his ancestral disciples to carry on his priestly duties, haggling with farmhands in the market over the price of ridge gourds and pointed gourds. He bore no resemblance to the free-spirited, footloose young wanderer of before. Gradually, that life in the west had grown distant—watching sunsets over distant hills from the wide ramparts of Chunar Fort, spending a night in a forest of bay leaves on the road to Kedar, plucking sour oranges to eat from the garden of Shah Qasim Suleimani’s dargah, the Alakananda, that celestial river, clear and brilliant as a stream of molten silver, glacial and cold, the Rana’s palace by the water’s edge at Dashashwamedh Ghat—it all came back to him in fragments, like a dream seen long, long ago.

Harihar, about to make an affirmative reply, turned and called out, “Where has that boy got to again? O Khoka! Khoka-a-a!”

From behind a bend in the path, a bright-faced, beautiful boy of six or seven, slender of build, came running to catch up with the group. “Fallen behind again already?” Harihar said. “Come on, keep up.”

“What was that in the woods, Baba? With the big ears?” the boy asked.

Harihar paid no attention to the question and began plotting a fishing expedition with Nabin Palit.

Harihar’s son, his voice full of eagerness, asked again, “What was that running into the woods, Baba? With the big ears?”

“How should I know, my boy?” Harihar said. “I can’t keep up with your questions. You’ve been at it ever since we left—what’s this, what’s that… Did I see what went into the woods? Come on now, walk ahead.”

At his father’s words, the boy walked on ahead.

Nabin Palit said, “Actually, Hari, if we’re going to fish, we should go over to Boynshar Bil one day. Nepal Parui from the east-para is casting his nets, and they say he’s pulling in one and a half, two maunds every day—not a fish under five seers! I heard that one day, just before dawn, right in the middle of the bil, in the deepest water, there was a strange shnaa-shnaa sound, exactly like the cry of a heifer—you understand?” Everyone moved closer, their eyes fixed on Nabin Palit’s face. “It’s an ancient bil, the water is fathomless, you’ve seen how in the middle it’s as black as ground shiuli flowers, a jungle of lotus stalks. Some say it’s a monster boal fish, others say a yakshi. Until it was light, my friend, they all sat there in the boat, shivering and trembling.”

The story was just getting good when Harihar’s son, in a transport of excitement, pointed to a clump of ulukhar grass nearby and ran towards it, shouting, “There it goes, Baba! Look, Baba! There it went, Baba! The big ears! There!”

His father called out from behind him, “No, no, no! Thorns, thorns, thorns!” Then he hurried over and seized the boy’s hand. “Ah, you’re becoming a real nuisance, I see. I forbid you a hundred times and you won’t listen to a single thing. This is exactly why I didn’t want to bring you.”

The boy, his face bright with excitement and wonder, looked up at his father and asked, “What was it, Baba?”

“How should I know what it was!” said Harihar. “It must have been a pig or something. Now come on, walk right down the middle of the path.”

“Not a pig, Baba, it was tiny!” He bent down to show how high off the ground the creature had been.

“Come, come—yes, I understand, you don’t have to show me—come on, now!”

“Oh, that was a rabbit, Khoka,” said Nabin Palit. “A rabbit. There are rabbits here in the tall grass, that’s all.”

The boy had seen a picture of a rabbit under the letter ‘Kha’ in his primer, but he had never imagined that one could exist in living form, leaping and fleeing just like that, or that it could be seen with one’s own eyes.

A rabbit! A living one! Leaping away right before your eyes—not a picture, not a glass figurine—a real, true rabbit with its ears pricked up! In a thicket of common shrubs and bainchi bushes just like these! How such a thing could be possible on this mortal earth, made of water and soil, was something the boy could in no way fathom.

Leaving the narrow, wooded path, they all came out into an open field. By the river, behind a screen of acacia and jiol trees, one could see a large, kiln-like structure—the ruins of the boiling-house of an old indigo factory. In the days of the indigo trade, this village, Nischindipur, had been the head factory of the Bengal Indigo Concern. The manager of the Nischindipur factory, John Larmor, had ruled over the fourteen factories of the region with formidable authority. Now the factory’s broken vats, its boiling-house, the sahib’s bungalow, and the office had been reduced to jungle-choked piles of brick. The name of the all-powerful Larmor Sahib, a name that once made the tiger and the cow in this region drink from the same ghat, was now unknown to all but one or two of the most ancient villagers.

The thickets in the field were a tangle of ulukhar grass, wild morning glory, golden shower trees, and jujube bushes. Creepers of morning glory had thrown a canopy of large green leaves over the tops of all the thickets, creating a cool shade within. Small goat’s-foot creepers, thorntree climbers, and blue butterfly-pea flowers bloomed, their faces lifted to the sunlight. In the shadows of the waning afternoon, there was the verdant green of the gentle woodland, the calls of birds, and all around, nature’s riches, scattered with a generous hand—a bounty bestowed from a king’s treasury, with no hint of poverty, no trace of middle-class meanness. In the enchantment of day’s end, the field, the river, the forest were all suffused with magic.

As they strolled through the field, Nabin Palit began telling a story of how profitable it had been for him one year to cultivate yam beans on the northern part of this very field. Someone else mentioned hearing that the bricks from the factory were to be sold, and that Moti Da of Nababganj was negotiating a price. The mention of Moti Da led to a discussion of how the man had risen from humble beginnings to become wealthy. From there the conversation drifted to the high cost of living in the present day, the fire that had burned down the Kundus’ warehouse in Asaru’s market, and the wedding date set for the daughter of the village’s own Dinu Ganguli, as various necessary bits of news were exchanged.

Harihar’s son said, “Where is the nilkantha bird, Baba?”

“We’ll see it now; it’ll come and sit on the acacia trees any moment.”

The boy tilted his face up and began scanning the tops of all the nearby acacia trees. Ripe jujubes, or kul, hung from the low bushes scattered about the field, and the boy stared at them with wide, covetous eyes. He tried to pick some several times but was stopped by his father’s scolding. Could kul really grow on such small trees? The kul tree in their neighborhood was so tall that even if he wanted to, he could never manage it. He couldn’t even lift the heavy hooking-pole, though he gripped it with both hands. He found that eating forbidden things in secret was a difficult business. His mother would get word and come and drag him home, saying, “Oh, what am I to do! You’ve become such a naughty boy! You just got over a fever the other day and here you are, prowling under the kul tree! I turn my back for a second, and when I look again, you’re gone from the house! How many have you eaten? Let me see your mouth, let me see!”

“I didn’t eat any, Ma,” he would say. “There aren’t any on the ground. You think I can pick them?”

Then he would bring his rosy face very close to his mother’s and open his mouth wide. His mother would inspect it carefully, then, kissing his beautiful face which smelled faintly of fresh butter, she would say, “Don’t you ever eat them, Khoka! Wait till you’re well. I’ll gather the kul and make achar and put it away in a jar for you—you can eat it in the months of Baisakh and Jaistha. But don’t you ever eat them in secret again—promise?”

“You were talking about the factory,” Harihar said. “There, Khoka, look. That’s the sahibs’ factory, see?”

Where the factory of a bygone era lay sprawled across a great stretch of the riverbank like the skeleton of some colossal, savage beast from a prehistoric age, the lonely winter afternoon, a symbol of time’s ceaseless motion, slowly spread its grey mantle over it.

Some distance from the factory grounds lay the grave of an infant son of the factory-owner, Larmor, abandoned and overgrown with jungle. Besides this, not a single trace of the Bengal Indigo Concern’s vast head factory remained standing intact upon the earth. If one drew near, one could still read the inscription on the age-darkened stone tablet:

Here lies Edwin Lermor, The only son of John & Mrs. Lermor, Born May 13, 1853, Died April 27, 1860.

Among the other plants, a wild golden shower tree had grown up and spread its branches and leaves over the grave, casting a shade upon it. In the months of Chaitra and Baisakh, when a strong wind blew from the mouth of the Arai-Banki river, its clusters of yellow blossoms would shower flowers in profusion, all day and all night, upon the ruined grave of the forgotten foreign child. Though all men had forgotten, the trees and plants of the forest had not forgotten the child.

The boy was looking all around him in amazement. In his six years of life, this was the first time he had ever come so far from home. Until now, Nera’s house, the area in front of his own house, at most Ranudidi’s house—this had been the boundary of his world. Only on certain days, when he went with his mother to bathe at their neighborhood ghat, he would gaze at the factory’s ruined boiling-house, dimly visible from the bathing spot, and point, saying, “Ma, is the factory over there?” He had heard about the factory fields from his father, his sister, and so many other people in the village, but today was the first time he had ever come here! Beyond this field, was that where the fairytale kingdom his mother spoke of began? Where, in the land of Siam-Lanka, under the tree of the bengama-bengami birds, the banished prince lay sleeping alone through the night with his sword by his side? No people lived over there; this was the very edge of the world. From here on began the land of the impossible, the country of the unknown.

On the way back home, he stretched out his hand to pluck a cluster of brightly colored fruit from a low bush by the path. His father cried, “Hey, hey, don’t touch that, don’t touch it! That’s alkushi, alkushi! What is it with you, my boy! You’re such a torment! I’m telling you, I’m never taking you anywhere again. Your hand would have been blistering and itching in a second. I keep telling you to walk in the middle of the path, but you simply won’t listen!”

“It would itch, Baba? Why?”

“It’s poison, poison! Does anyone touch alkushi, my boy? The fine hairs will prick you and it’ll burn like fire in a moment—and then you’ll start screaming.”

Harihar walked through the village with his son and entered his house through the back door. At the sound of the khirki door opening, Sarbajaya came outside and said, “It’s so late! And you took him with you without even a shawl or anything to put on him!”

“Ah, he was such a nuisance!” said Harihar. “He runs here, he runs there, I can’t keep an eye on him—he even tries to grab a handful of alkushi pods.” Then, looking at his son, he said, “You wanted to see the factory fields, the factory fields—well? Are you satisfied now that you’ve seen them?”