(a)

After the long summer vacations, I returned a week late to a university made calm and lush by the recent monsoons. The hostel boundaries of trees and creepers had come closer in a tight embrace; the narrow pathway that led through the garden to the temple had disappeared. From the tree branches, heavy with affection and sympathy, you could make good your bicycle escape only by bowing your head. The sharp smell of the trees, the sharp green and the sun in a clean, clear sky dried me up for a while. The third year students had left, but some first year boys were seen in their lobby peeking around hesitantly. It became difficult to tolerate a certain wind of nothingness that blew tenderly by the trees in the hostel, hidden as it was by the ever-growing forest.

The hostel had not yet awakened, stretching and yawning, from the sleep of the summer vacations. The boys were told to go and play in the neighbouring fields rather than loll around on the lawns. So, when I returned from my classes to zero hostel, all I heard was the sound of saws on trees or the sound of saw-teeth being sharpened. Sometimes, I could hear, wafting from a great distance, the sound of peacock calls. Those calls, however, after the ceaseless lust of the monsoons, seemed like the tired, trivial complaints of a couple, six months after their marriage. From the hostel roof, all that could be seen was the painted scene of a world swollen with banana-leaf green. Even so, the evening bells of the temple or the indistinct morning sound of Brahmin boys memorising their Sanskrit slokas easily passed through my world and flapflapped quickly to that thick banana-leaf green universe. Perhaps there was no reason for me to go to the temple any longer, but Sunday evenings hardly ever paid heed to explanations. Evening tea in the dirty sheds at the sidelanes of the temple was a tempting destiny. I was consumed by a hunger for friendship and meeting other Assamese students was a fascinating game for me. When I lost my mobile phone, I had also lost all my contact numbers; moreover, during the summer vacations, the hostel had changed the room numbers of all the students and finding an old friend became a difficult task. Even then, I was successful in seeking out my old Fine Arts friend, Basumatary. He decided to come along with me to locate the new Assamese student in the neighbouring hostel.

By basing our conclusions on the evidence of a wet gamusa on the clothesline, we found out another old friend, Pegu. He, too, set out with us to trace the newly arrived Assamese student. Just when we were about to give up and return after a long, clueless hunt, we saw an Aronai set out to dry on the top floor. The three of us looked at each other and then jostled up the flight of steps to the open doorway of the upstairs room.

Madan Bodo, home in Pasighat. We talked like old friends. I asked him, “Do you eat pork?” Immediately afterwards, we made a plan to meet a second time. Basumatary was given the responsibility of organising everything.

That same night, Jugal Das came over. He had got a job at the Food Corporation of India. I caught hold of him: “See, there are still some jobs you can get without paying bribes. Look at the Central Government jobs, for instance. The thing is, you have to struggle for it. Buy the Employment News. You’ll receive news about vacancies.” He went off to meet Okid and Yom from Arunachal. They spoke beautiful Assamese. I often went to sit with them.

But these incidents were like the blowing of hot loo one day and moist mousumi the next. They never happened simultaneously. The branches that were cut had left behind on the trees signs like white flesh. I felt a chill in me.

(b)

Sometimes, suddenly, I met some people and felt like my whole world was reflected on their faces, but the burst of intimacy in my behaviour was shrugged off indifferently by them. Once, I was looking with intense attention at some clouds being blown away by a cold wind. I thought a huge shower was on the way. I turned around. On the steps above me, the chowkidar was also looking at the irregular mass of clouds.

“Yes, the wind will blow them away.”

“They will fly away and explode into rain when they see fields of crops.”

The man was looking at the bunch of clouds with a calm concentration and perhaps his words were meant only for himself. His words “fields of crops” were so clear and bewitching that the rest of his words fell powerlessly on my ears. With a vast pain I discovered in the bright eyes hidden beneath a mass of white hair and beard, the cluster of clouds.

Someone shouted out, “Gupta ji, won’t you strike the gong?” He hurried up the staircase. In his hand hung the gong mallet.

The wind whipped and threw the colourful flowers to the grass. Does the flower ever think that someday he will drop unobserved from the fast clasp of the branches? He will leave, one by one, pride, abundance, arrogance, the pleasures of life behind and drop down to the world of dust and the firm immobility of hills. He will fall flat on his face on the very roots that had kept him alive. What a strange and wonderful event. A couple of drops of aloof rain touched the grass and left.

Even though the gong had been struck a long time ago, the chowkidar did not come back. Through zero corridor, I walked towards my classroom. The corridor echoed with the voices of the professors who had come in through the closed doors of the classroom. At that moment, I saw the chowkidar. Controlling his white hair with one hand, holding a pile of files in the other, he was walking head bent with the same old concentration. As he passed me by, I told him, “Do you know, it rained a bit?”

He did not say anything; did not even raise his head. As usual, his thoughts had gone off to roost within himself. Apart from his white hair and his stack of files, he had nothing else left to control. With a violent arrogance I walked past him and never talked to him ever again. His own world must have allowed him to immerse himself in the shelter of the words “fields of crops”. It was only much later, while discussing the UP Land Reform Act, that I came to know about the land systems in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and got to know about the plight of immigrant workers. I was repentant then and tried hard to remember if I sacrificed the chance to fathom the depths of the blazing cloud cluster of the chowkidar’s eyes. I could not remember exactly, but I felt a mild distress inside myself. A very mild distress.

(c)

The Puja vacations were fast approaching and suddenly one day I discovered that I was alone in the hostel. I stood for hours together in the corridors of zero hostel. I either threw biscuits at the two bitches or sat with my finger on my computer mouse and burnt my eyes out till the very last night. On one such day, Roshan Yadav came with a portion of laughter to my room; he spread an old newspaper on my bed and opened his tiffin-box. That delicious smell mixed with the metallic sounds of the tiffin-box turned my arrogance precious. “Couldn’t you tell me you were rotting here on your own? Couldn’t you have called me at least? Fool!”

Sattu parathas dripping with ghee, gajar halva, and what are these greens? Are they mustard greens or radish greens? The tiffin bowl made me neglect the dust-ridden hostel room in Benaras, reminded me of the backyard of my village home and took me back to a day when I was sulkily sitting with a bunch of radish greens in front of me. Ma was having her periods. Deuta decided it was my turn to cook; he picked a bunch of greens from the kitchen garden, entrusted them to me and left for his office. Vitamin D. I was sitting with the terrifying punishment of cooking the unappetising greens in front of me.

Just then, Hekeri Aita–stoop-backed grandma–arrived. With great love, Aita chopped the greens and put them in front of me. She did not find it easy to cook on the gas table. She went to the backyard with the fireplace and lit a fire. She rubbed and washed the greens and said, “See if the bitterness remains.” Then she put the cooking pot on the fire, dropped a garlic pip into the mustard oil and taught me how to make the dish. The taste built a home on my tongue and has not left it till today. After returning from work, Deuta took the first lump of rice into his mouth and said, “Today’s greens taste exactly like Bouti used to make them.” Ma pressed her lips together and smiled. The radish greens took my father back to his mother and they took me back to Hekeri Aita.

When was the last time I saw this old woman who blanched everything around her with her white mekhela sador? I was the last in the queue for the auspicious early morning Bhagavat journey. The sudden, recent death of her sons had created chaos in her home and she stood in its compound, leaning on her walking stick. Her eyes, blinded by age a long time back, were looking unseeingly at something. Perhaps I am still a bit of restless matter for her. However, I can see the webbed pain of her eyes clearing in a primitive maternal love.

“O, your mother never comes to visit me. I also cannot go. Your sister’s getting married; couldn’t you inform me?”

My heart, clasped tightly in the old woman’s dry handed grip, started to shake and shudder. Did her sons also jerk and shake like this when they were hanged? There, that is her life’s savings. Two widowed daughters-in-law, five granddaughters, one grandson.

Did she go? Did my mother go to meet that old woman? Perhaps she did go. Ma did go to sit for a while with her before crying and wailing all the way down the road to pick up the bride’s water from the village pond by the Namghar. A pond from which nobody ever picked up even a bucketful of water nowadays. The wedding arrangements had not yet been completed then. I do not know why Ma went to visit her, what she received there that day, but when she had come from the city as a young bride and had set foot in her village home, this old woman had treated her with a mother’s love. Was it right of Ma to settle accounts of love by visiting her like this? Was it enough?

I once dreamt of this old woman. She took a bowl of kheer from my hands and smiled at me with infinite affection and with a gamusa I wiped a drop of milk from the folds of her chin. The wonder of that dream did not bewilder me; it, in fact, left me sad. Maybe, even rueful. I did not have any other name for my selfishness.

(d)

I had gone to Assam after a long, long time. No, even then I could not meet that old woman. Instead, I went to meet my great-grandmother and in front of the fire in her fireplace, I spread my cold, stiff body. From Bou I heard about her grand-daughter–my mother’s girlhood stories; just as Hekeri Aita used to tell us stories about Ma’s youth. I thought in amazement: did our selves, our identities move such distances? My world had not sprouted there. Suddenly I remembered this great-grandmother’s daughter, my mother’s grandmother, sitting in my sister’s wedding pandal and sobbing away in a little corner. Yes, we were hidden somewhere in those tears. Just like in some part of Bou’s blessings, we became free and spread ourselves wide.

(e)

But Truth was an entirely different word. From beneath that blessing, I came out to a herded world. My co-passenger looked at my newspaper and said, “I guess, this is revolution.” With his moist eyes, I looked outside the bus window. Ma, Grandmother, Bou, Hekeri Aita. Maybe another old woman’s picture entered the bus through the window. She was worried about the families in the dense forests of Bhutan. She was worried about the boys. No, I’m not sad about the “ducks and the pigeons”. I’m not making a display of my agitation. That was why not even one word about what the white-haired woman said about the dying of people like ducks and pigeons on Rajpath appeared in the newspapers. Was this my world?

Ma told me, “Have a good journey. Your classes must have started. You have seen the situation here.” When I left Ma, the wind made me shiver. “I’ll go away, Ma. What about you? What will you do?”

I came back. I escaped because I was afraid of the sounds sitting on my roots; the sounds that crunched and munched my bones. I ignored the slurp-slurp feast of blood and escaped with my baggage in an empty bus. On the previous day, with their innocent faces lit by candle light, the children had come out on the streets. The barbaric pages of the newspaper shrunk with their protest; made us smaller, poorer. I escaped from the newspaper as well.

I reminded myself of that full afternoon when I had climbed the steps of Deopahar with my friend. My friend opened his diary and read his poems. Broken, rugged rocks, flying apsaras shook the branches of trees that ran down to the infinity of the foothills and turned my heart to ice. The thin, confused shapes of Magh-month tea bushes, coughing and destitute flowers turned black by the smoke of passing cars, the kisir-misir birdcalls and the dry smell of the earth. I asked my friend, “Do you feel like you’ve come here before?”

“How can I when I haven’t?” He then tilted his head and said, “Where are the Bhatghila trees? I’d read about them somewhere.”

We got up from there. We shook hands and said our goodbyes. We shook off the minute vestiges of our selves that we gave each other or received from each other and said our goodbyes. I do not know, though, if somewhere else, at this same moment, something else was drawn tight. We ought to meet one more time. We ought to ignore the dangers of these times and meet one more time. It is possible a bit of soil from my world was stuck on the soles of my friend’s feet.

But instead, here I am. Escaped.

(f)

The autowallah, about to lift my bag, asks, “Where is your home?”

“In Assam.” With a sigh I lowered my eyes.

“It’s a very sad incident, isn’t it?” He lessened my unease and lowered my bag.

My friends trampled noisily down the corridor. “Ka hua, Saikia? Bahut late kar diya.”

I dug inside my bag and took out the bundle of ladoos and pithas. That was all. There was nothing to dig inside my heart. My Tamil friend said, “Our third roommate had arrived.” I turned around and smiled. He looked into my eyes and smiled back. We were beginning to understand certain things. These assured, yet defeated me. I tried to hide the old newspaper from his eyes; the one I had used to wrap my sandals.

(g)

Just as I was about to gulp down the newspaper’s news-rumours of the relationships of various actors and actresses, the Gorakhpur riots started. The auspicious journey of Muharram turned into fire, smoke, curfew, blood and burst into flames. We warmed ourselves and made tea with the fire of the newspaper, rushed to our classrooms and listened to lectures on Article 21: right to life and personal liberty. I sat with my hand on the computer mouse till midnight or daily found new holes of opportunity to live my life.

On one such day, I went to meet my friends, Basumatary and Manik Bodo. “Do you want to go to Allahabad? Tomorrow is the day for the Magh Poornima bath. Let’s go see the crowds of the Ardh Kumbh.”

Basumatary had no time, Manik Bodo did have time, but, “See, there’s so much trouble going on in Assam right now. Will it be alright to go? You have nothing to fear, but they will recognise me as soon as they see me.”

For the first time in my life, I was ashamed of my “North Indian” face. But I did go. I tried to see into the flood of human beings by the Triveni Sangam – naked Naga sanyasis, tourists from all over, sadhus and thousands of devotees. I wondered what kind of sins these people were trying to wash by their dips in the river. When I fed grains to the seagulls and floated on my boat from the blue-grey Jamuna to the pale yellow of the Ganga and immersed my fingers in it, I realised I would not be able to wash away any of my sins here. After submerging myself in knee-length water, I understood this – all the sadness, illusions, sins of my life had not shifted even a bit. They had set up house within me.

The four of us were sitting by the roadside at our adda – Basumatary, Manik Bodo, Shekhar Pandey and I – just then a girl came and spoke to us in broken Assamese, “I don’t like it at all here. I’ll return to the North-East as soon as this course finishes. I’m speaking in Assamese after such a long time!” What’s her name? Nisha Tripathi. Doesn’t she know about what happened in Assam today? I rested my hand on Manik Bodo’s shoulder.

(h)

I received an SMS from an acquaintance: “First car bomb blast in Assam last night.”

All around me is a slow darkness. I shut my book on identity and violence. Even though I know it is meaningless, I write a letter to the editor of a newspaper and with shaky hands put it inside an envelope. I take my plate of puri-sabzi and rice and sit at my table. I lie down on my bed. I remember that summer vacation where hunger had turned the trees barren and left them with open wounds. I remember the brutal pages of the newspaper. I remember Nisha Tripathi. I remember the old chowkidar. In the maze of sleep, I start dreaming. I am kneeling in front of Hekeri Aita with the bowl of kheer in my hand. I am wiping away the drop of milk from her chin. I am sitting near the fireplace and looking intently at Bou dragging on her bidi. I am sitting amidst the flying apsaras of Deopahar with my friend and listening to him recite his poetry. I am awakened by the sounds of children mouthing prayers. Am I really awake?

I fumble about on my bed, in my soul. Am I really awake?

(As far as the eye could see, I was nowhere. A man was lying like ash in front of a futile wind with a stack of books and lots of impotent certificates. He had my face.)

(Translated from the Assamese by Nitoo Das.)