18

The time has come to leave this place. A powerful urge arose to see Bhanumati one last time. The Dhanjhari hills possess my mind like a beautiful dream… their forests… their moonlit nights…

I took Jugalprasad with me.

Jugalprasad was riding the tahsildar Sajjan Singh’s horse; no sooner had we crossed the boundary of our estate than he said, ‘Huzoor, this horse won’t do. On a forest path, the moment it picks up a trot, it’ll stumble and fall, and my leg will get lamed along with it. Let me go back and get another.’

I reassured him. Sajjan Singh was a fine horseman; he had ridden this very horse countless times to Purnea to oversee court cases. And Jugalprasad surely knew what kind of roads one had to take to get to Purnea.

We soon crossed the Karo river.

Then came the forest, forest and more forest—a beautiful, wondrous, dense and lonely forest! As I have said before, in this jungle the branches of the trees do not intertwine overhead—it is a forest of kend saplings, sal saplings, palash, mahua, kul—a land of reddish, stone-strewn soil, undulating and uneven. Here and there on the ground, the footprints of wild elephants. There were no people.

What a relief it was to breathe again after seeing the newly built, squalid, ugly shanties and slums of Lobtulia and the monotonous grey of ploughed fields. There is no other sylvan region like this anywhere around here.

By noon, I had passed the two wild villages on this path—Burudi and Kulpala. After that, the open jungle fell behind, and before me lay a dense forest of great trees. It was the end of Kartik, the air was cool—not a trace of heat remained.

In the distance, the Dhanjhari mountain range came into view, quite clearly defined.

I reached the estate office after evening. It belonged to the leaseholder of the biri-leaf forest that our state had won at auction.

The man was a Muslim, his home in the Shahabad district. His name was Abdul Wahed. He received me with great courtesy. ‘It’s good you arrived in the evening, Babuji,’ he said. ‘The jungle has become very dangerous with tigers.’

The night was desolate.

The wind sighed through the great trees.

After hearing what he said, I didn’t dare sit on the office verandah.

We were sitting inside, chatting with the window open, when suddenly some animal cried out in the woods. I asked Jugal, ‘What was that?’

Jugal said, ‘Oh, that’s nothing. A hurāl.’ Meaning, a wolf.

Once, in the dead of night, the laugh of a hyena was heard from the forest—to hear it suddenly is enough to make one’s blood run cold with fear. It sounds exactly like the laugh of a consumptive, now catching its breath, now bursting into a peal of laughter.

Setting out at dawn the next day, we reached Dobru Panna’s capital, Chakmakitola, by nine in the morning. How delighted Bhanumati was at my unexpected arrival! She couldn’t seem to contain her joy; it was spilling over from her face and eyes.

‘I was thinking of you only yesterday, Babuji. Why haven’t you come for so long?’

Bhanumati looked a little taller, and a bit thinner too. But her face had the same grace, her flawless form was unchanged.

‘Will you bathe in the spring? Shall I bring mahua oil, or mustard oil? Come and see what lovely water the spring has this year, after the rains!’

There was something else I had been observing—Bhanumati was exceptionally clean and tidy, quite unlike the ordinary Santhal girls; the simple beauty and tastefulness of her dress and grooming identified her as a girl from an aristocratic family.

The courtyard of the mud house on whose porch I sat was surrounded by large asan and arjun trees. A flock of green parrots was chattering in the branches of the asan tree in front. It was the beginning of Hemant; though the sun was high, the air was cool. Less than half a mile before me stood the Dhanjhari range. A path, like a parting in hair, snaked down the mountainside; far off in one direction, the hills of the Gaya district were visible, like blue clouds.

If only I could lease a biri-leaf forest and live forever in a cottage by a mountain spring in the sylvan shade of this quiet, secluded valley! Lobtulia was gone, but no one would destroy the forests of Bhanumati’s land. In this region, the soil is full of laterite and pyrite, and crops do not grow well—if they did, this forest would have vanished long ago. Of course, if a copper mine were discovered, that would be a different matter.

The chimneys of a copper factory, trolley lines, rows of coolie-slums, drains of filthy water, heaps of cinder raked from engines—shops, tea stalls, cheap cinemas showing Jawani Hawa, Sher Shamsher, Pranayer Jer (matinee three annas, reserve your seats early)—country liquor shops, tailor shops. A Homeo Pharmacy (Free treatment for poor patients). The Original and Authentic Adarsh Hindu Hotel.

The three o’clock whistle blew from the factory.

Bhanumati went out to hawk engine-cinder in the market, a basket on her head. ‘Co-a-l! Four paise a basket…’

Bhanumati came and stood before me with the oil. Everyone in her family came and greeted me with a namaskar, then stood in a circle. Bhanumati’s young uncle, Jagru, a youth, came whittling a branch and smiled at me. I was very fond of this boy. He had the looks of a Rajput; what beauty in that dark complexion! Seeing this young man and Bhanumati from their family, one couldn’t help but think that they were indeed from an aristocratic clan among a forest people.

I said, ‘Well, Jagru, how is the hunting?’

Jagru laughed and said, ‘I’ll feed you today, Babuji, don’t you worry. Tell me what you’ll have—porcupine, or green pigeon, or junglefowl?’

I came back after my bath. Bhanumati brought me her own mirror (the one I had sent for from Purnea for her that time) and a wooden comb to style my hair.

After the meal I was resting, the day was drawing to a close, when Bhanumati proposed—

‘Babuji, won’t you come? Won’t you climb the mountain? You love it so.’

Jugalprasad had been sleeping; when he woke up, we set out for a walk. With us were Bhanumati, her cousin—Jagru Panna’s middle brother’s daughter, about twelve years old—and Jugalprasad.

After walking half a mile, we reached the foot of the mountain.

Here, at the base of Dhanjhari, the forest scenery was so magnificent that one wanted to stand and gaze for a while. Whichever way I looked, there were great trees, vines, the rocky bed of a dried-up spring, and small and large heaps of rock scattered about. In the direction of Dhanjhari, the sky narrowed behind the forest and the mountain; ahead, a red laterite road rose through the dense jungle towards the other side of the mountain, the dry, hard soil everywhere, not a patch of wetness or dampness. Not a drop of water even in the bed of the spring.

As we pushed through the dense forest and climbed a little way up the mountain, a sweet fragrance filled my heart and soul. The scent was very familiar—at first I couldn’t place it, but then I looked and saw—I had not noticed before how many chhatim trees there were on Dhanjhari mountain—and now, in the first days of Hemant, the chhatim trees were in bloom, and this was their fragrance.

And what a lot of them! A forest of saptaparni, saptaparni and kelikadamba—not the kadamba flower tree, kelikadamba is a different species, a great tree of the forest with large leaves like teak, and wonderfully crooked branches.

Standing in the cool breeze of the Hemant afternoon, in a dense forest of blossoming wild saptaparni, looking at the healthy, blossoming, adolescent Bhanumati, I felt I was blessed with the company of a wood-goddess incarnate—a dark-skinned wood-goddess! A princess she is, after all. This forest region, this mountain, that Michi river, the valley of the Karo river, Dhanjhari on this side, the Nawada range on that—all this was once under the rule of a powerful dynasty, and she is a daughter of that dynasty. Today, in the climate of a different age, clashing with a different civilization, that dynasty is broken, poor, without influence—and so I see Bhanumati as a Santhal girl. The moment I see her, this tragic chapter of India’s unwritten history unfolds before my eyes.

And now this afternoon, mingling with the many other beautiful afternoons of my life, shone in a pageant of sweet memories—as sweet as a dream, and as unreal.

Bhanumati said, ‘Shall we go on? Won’t you climb higher?’

‘What a beautiful scent of flowers, wouldn’t you say? Won’t you sit here for a bit? Let’s watch the sun set—’

Bhanumati said with a smile, ‘As you wish, Babuji. If you say sit, we’ll sit. But won’t you put flowers on my grand-uncle’s grave? It was you who taught me, and I climb the mountain every day to offer flowers. There are so many flowers in the forest now.’

In the distance, the Michi river flowed north, turning at the foot of the mountain. The sun set behind the indistinct mountain range towards Nawada. At once, the mountain air grew colder. The scent of chhatim flowers grew stronger, and shadows deepened in the woods on the mountainside, in the forest-clad valley below, on the flank of the Gand-shaila range across the Michi.

Bhanumati plucked a bunch of chhatim flowers and tucked them into her hair knot. ‘Shall we sit, or climb, Babuji?’ she asked.

We began to climb again. Each of us held a branch of chhatim flowers. We went all the way to the top of the mountain. There was the ancient banyan tree and under it, the ancient royal tomb. Large stones, like those used for grinding spices, were scattered all around. On the grave of Raja Dobru Panna, Bhanumati and her sister Nichhani scattered flowers; Jugalprasad and I scattered flowers too.

Bhanumati was a child, of course, and as happy as a simple-hearted child. In the wheedling tone of a child, she said, ‘Let’s stand here for a bit, Babuji, shall we? It’s so lovely, isn’t it?’

I was thinking—this is the last time! I will not come here again. I will not see this burial place on the mountaintop, this forest region, again. This is my final farewell to the blossoming saptaparni on the peak of Dhanjhari, to Bhanumati. After a long six-year exile in the forest, I will return to the city of Calcutta—but as the day of departure draws near, why am I clinging to them all the more?

I felt an urge to tell Bhanumati, to know what she would say when she heard I would not be coming back. But what was the point of speaking words of empty affection and endearment to this simple forest girl?

As evening fell, I caught another new fragrance. There were plenty of shiuli trees in the surrounding woods. With the fading of the light, the thick scent of shiuli blossoms sweetened the evening air. There was no chhatim forest here—for that one had to go further down. Already, fireflies had begun to glow in the branches of the trees. How fresh, sweet, and life-giving the air was! Could one’s lifespan fail to increase if one enjoyed this air morning and evening? I did not want to go down—but there was the fear of wild animals, and besides, Bhanumati was with me. Jugalprasad was probably thinking what new kinds of plants he could take from this jungle to plant elsewhere. I saw that his whole attention was fixed on the flowers of new creepers and leaves, on plants with attractive foliage; he had no eyes for anything else. Jugalprasad was mad, indeed, but his was a madness of a particular kind.

They say Nur Jahan brought the chinar tree from Persia and planted it in Kashmir. Nur Jahan is no more, but the whole of Kashmir is covered with beautiful chinar trees. Jugalprasad will die, but a hundred years from now, in the waters of the Saraswati lake, the blooming spider lily will still spread its fragrance on the Hemant air, or in some forest thicket the swan-shaped blue flowers of the wild hansa-lata will sway—and no one will ever need to say that it was Jugalprasad who first introduced them into the jungles of the Narha plains!

Bhanumati said, ‘To the left, that’s the Tandbaro tree—do you recognize it?’

I couldn’t make out the tree of Tandbaro, the kind deity and protector of wild buffaloes, in the darkness. There was no moon in the sky; it was a night of the dark fortnight.

We had come down a long way. Now, the chhatim forest again. What a sweet, intoxicating scent!

I said to Bhanumati, ‘Let’s sit here for a bit.’

Later, as we descended through the forest path in the darkness, I thought: Lobtulia is gone, Narha and Fulkia Baihar are gone—but the mountains of Mahalikharup remain, the forests of Bhanumati’s Dhanjhari hills remain. A time may come in this country when people will see no forests—only cultivated fields and jute mills, the chimneys of cotton mills will meet the eye; then they will come to this secluded forest province, as people go on a pilgrimage. For the sake of those people of unborn days, may this forest remain untouched.

That night, sitting and talking with Jagru Panna and his elder brother, I heard a great deal about their affairs. The moneylender’s debt was still not paid off; they had had to buy two buffaloes on loan, for they couldn’t manage without them. The Marwari moneylender from Gaya who used to come and buy their ghee hadn’t been around for three or four months. Nearly half a maund of ghee was stored in the house, but there were no buyers.

Bhanumati came and sat on one side of the porch. Jugalprasad was an inveterate tea-drinker; I knew he had brought tea and sugar with him. But I also knew that shyness prevented him from asking for hot water. I said, ‘Bhanumati, would it be possible to get some water heated for tea?’

Princess Bhanumati had never made tea. The custom of drinking tea did not exist here. I explained the quantity of water to her, and she brought it, heated, in an earthen pot. Her younger sister brought some stone bowls. I urged Bhanumumati to have some tea, but she refused. Jagru Panna, after finishing a bowl of tea from a small stone vessel, asked for some more.

After tea, everyone else got up and left, but Bhanumati stayed. She said to me, ‘How many days will you stay now, Babuji? You’ve come after such a long time this time. I won’t let you leave tomorrow. Come, I’ll take you to the Jhati spring tomorrow. The jungle is even more fearsome there. There are many wild elephants in that direction. You’ll see lots of peacocks too. It’s a wonderful place. There’s nowhere else like it in the world.’

I had a great desire to know how big Bhanumati’s world was. I said, ‘Bhanumati, have you ever seen a city?’

‘No, Babuji.’

‘Can you name a couple of cities?’

‘Gaya, Munger, Patna.’

‘Haven’t you heard of Calcutta?’

‘Yes, Babuji.’

‘Do you know which way it is?’

‘How would I know, Babuji?’

‘Do you know the name of the country we live in?’

‘We live in the Gaya district.’

‘Have you heard the name of Bharatvarsha?’

Bhanumati shook her head to say she had not. She had never been anywhere outside Chakmakitola. Where was Bharatvarsha?

After a moment she said, ‘My grand-uncle brought a she-buffalo that gave three seers of milk in the morning and three seers in the evening. We were better off then, Babuji. If you had come then, I would have fed you khoya every day. My grand-uncle used to make the khoya with his own hands. Such sweet khoya! Now we don’t get that kind of milk, so there’s no khoya. We had a lot of respect then, too.’

Then, raising a hand and sweeping it around, she said with pride, ‘Do you know, Babuji, this whole country was our kingdom. The whole world. The Gonds and Santhals you see in the forest, they are not our people. We are Raj-Gonds. They are our subjects, they accept us as their rulers.’

Her words made me sad, but also made me laugh. Even one whose family’s buffaloes are seized twice a day for a moneylender’s debt does not cease to take pride in her royal lineage.

I said, ‘I know, Bhanumati, what a great family you come from—’

Bhanumati said, ‘Then listen, Babuji, that buffalo of ours was taken by a tiger. The one my grand-uncle had brought.’

‘How?’

‘My grand-uncle had taken it to graze at the foot of this mountain and was sitting under a tree, when the tiger got it.’

I said, ‘Have you ever seen a tiger?’

Bhanumati raised her dark, paired eyebrows in a gesture of surprise and said, ‘Haven’t seen a tiger, Babuji! Come to Chakmakitola in the winter—tigers carry off cows and calves from the courtyards of our houses—’

Saying this, she called out, ‘Nichhani, Nichhani—listen—’

When her younger sister came, she said, ‘Nichhani, tell Babuji how last winter a tiger used to come into our courtyard every night. Jagru set a trap one day. It wasn’t caught.’

Then she said suddenly, ‘Oh, by the way, Babuji, will you read me a letter? A letter came from somewhere, but who was there to read it, so it’s just been lying there. Go, Nichhani, bring the letter, and call Jagru-kaka too—’

Nichhani couldn’t find the letter. So Bhanumati went herself and, after a long search, brought it out and handed it to me.

‘When did this come?’ I asked.

Bhanumati said, ‘About six or seven months ago, Babuji—I put it away to have you read it when you came. None of us can read. Oh Nichhani, go and call Jagru-kaka. The letter will be read—call everyone.’

In the light of Jugalprasad’s fire, I sat down to read the old, unread letter from six or seven months ago—the entire household gathered around me to hear it. The letter was written in Kaithi-Hindi—addressed to Raja Dobru Panna. A moneylender from Patna had written to ask Raja Dobru if there was a biri-leaf forest here—and if so, at what price the lease was being sold.

This letter had nothing to do with them—they had no biri-leaf forest under their control. Raja Dobru was a king in name only; if the letter-writer from Patna had known that outside his own house in Chakmakitola he did not own a single chhatak of land, he would certainly not have wasted the postage on a useless letter.

A little way off, on the other side of the porch, Jugalprasad was cooking. The light from his wood fire illuminated a part of the porch. Moonlight fell on half of the porch here, though it was only the third day of the dark fortnight—the moon had just cleared the screen of the Dhanjhari hills and become visible in the open sky. A little distance ahead was the crescent-shaped mountain range—the sounds and chatter of the children of Chakmakitola’s slum could be heard… How beautiful and wonderful this night spent in this wild village felt! What joy even Bhanumati’s trivial and ordinary stories brought! I remembered what Balbhadra had said that day about progress.

What does man want—progress or joy? What is the use of progress if there is no joy in it? I know of so many people who have made progress in life, it is true, but have lost their joy. With excessive indulgence, the keen edge of their sensibilities has been worn down, blunted—now nothing gives them much pleasure, life to them is monotonous, monochromatic, meaningless. The mind is paved with stone—no sap can enter.

If only I could have stayed here! I would have married Bhanumati. On the moonlit veranda of this earthen house, the simple forest maiden would tell her childish stories as she cooked—and I would sit and listen. And late at night, I would listen to the cry of the wolf in those woods, the trumpeting of wild elephants, the laughter of hyenas. Bhanumati may be dark, but you would never find a girl with such rounded, robust health in Bengal. And that fresh, simple heart of hers! So full of kindness, compassion, and affection—of which I had received so much proof… It is a pleasure to even think of it. What a beautiful dream! What good would progress do me? Let Balbhadra Sanyat go and find his progress. Let Rasbihari Singh find his.

Jugalprasad asked if the food was ready, and if he should lay out the chauka for dinner. In Bhanumati’s household, hospitality was never wanting. Vegetables were hard to come by in these parts, and yet Jagru had somehow procured aubergines and potatoes. There was mashkalai dal, the meat of a game bird, the finest fresh buffalo ghee made right in their home, and milk. And Jugalprasad was an excellent cook.

Bhanumati, Jagru, Jagru’s elder brother, Nichhni—they were all to eat with us today; I had insisted. For they never got to eat a meal like this. I said, “Let them all sit together as well, a little way off. It will be easier for Jugalprasad to serve. Let us all eat together.”

They would not agree. They would not eat until after we had finished.

The next day, as I was about to leave, Bhanumati did something extraordinary.

She suddenly grabbed my hand and said, “I won’t let you go today, Babuji—”

I stared at her face, astonished. A pang of sadness went through me.

At her insistence, I could not set out in the morning—I took my leave after the midday meal.

Once again, the forest path, deeply shaded on both sides. It was as if Princess Bhanumati were standing by the path—not the girl, but a young woman, the Bhanumati I had never seen. Her eager gaze was fixed on the path, awaiting her lover’s return—perhaps he had gone hunting in the forest beyond the hills and would not be long. In my heart, I blessed the young woman. May the forest maiden’s secret tryst come to fruition, hidden away in the firefly-lit silence of the ancient chhatim groves on the Dhanjhari hills, veiled by a dusk of some strange and distant rhythm.

Within a week of returning to the estate office, I took my leave of everyone and departed from Lobtulia.

As I left, Raju Pande, Ganori, Jugalprasad, Asraphi Tindel, and the others crowded around my palanquin and walked alongside it all the way to Maharaj-tola, the new settlement at the edge of Lobtulia. Matuknath recited a Sanskrit benediction to bless me. Raju said, “Huzoor, when you leave, Lobtulia will become udas.”

I should mention, in passing, that in these parts the word udas is used very frequently and with great breadth of meaning. If roasted maize tastes bad, they say, “The roast tastes udas.” I cannot say for certain in what sense it was used in reference to me.

As I was taking my leave, one girl had been crying. She had been standing in the courtyard of the kachhari since morning. When my palanquin was lifted, I looked over and saw her weeping her heart out. The girl was Kunti.

Giving land to the destitute Kunti and helping her settle was one of the good deeds of my life as a manager. But I could do nothing for that forest girl, Manchi. Who knows who lured the unfortunate girl away, or where! If she were here today, I would give her land in her own name, without charging any selami.

Seeing Nake Chhadi’s house at the edge of Nara Baihar brought her back to my mind. Suratia was doing something outside the house; as soon as she saw my palanquin, she cried out, “Babuji, Babuji, please stop for a moment—”

Then she came running up to the palanquin. Chhania followed close behind.

“Babuji, where are you going?”

“To Bhagalpur. Where’s your father?”

“He’s gone to Jhallutola for wheat seed. When will you be back?”

“I won’t be coming back.”

“Pah! That’s a lie!…”

After crossing the boundary of Nara Baihar, I leaned out of the palanquin and looked back one last time.

Countless settlements, roofs crowded together, the chatter of people, the merry laughter and shouts of boys and girls, cattle and buffalo, granaries full of harvested crops. I had cleared the dense forest and, in the space of six or seven years, established this smiling, grain-filled community. That was what everyone was saying only yesterday—“Babuji, even we are amazed to see your work. What Nara and Lobtulia were, and what they have become!”

I kept thinking about that as we traveled on. What Nara and Lobtulia had been, and what they had become. From a distance, I offered a silent namaskar to the Mahalikhurup peaks fading into the horizon and to the forests of Mohanpura.

O, primal gods of the deep forest, forgive me. Farewell!…

A long time has passed since then—fifteen or sixteen years.

I was sitting under the almond tree, thinking of all this.

The day had drawn almost completely to a close.

The memory of the wild woodlands of Nara and Lobtulia, of that magnificent forest by Saraswati Lake—lands from an almost-forgotten past, destroyed at my own hands—still comes to me at times, like a dream, and fills my heart with that feeling of udas. And with that memory, I wonder: How is Kunti? How grown-up Suratia must be now. Does Matuknath’s tol still exist? What is Bhanumati doing in her rocky, forested land? Rakhal Babu’s wife, Dhruba, Giridharilal—who knows, after all these years, what state any of them are in!…

And sometimes I think of Manchi. Did a repentant Manchi ever return to her husband? Is she still plucking tea leaves on some tea estate in Assam!

It has been so long since I had any news of them.