The night had set in early that day. It
almost always did.
Tucked away in an obscure countryside
in Bengal, Keshavpur was a small semi-rural set-up. A beaten down railway
station, two old rails cutting across the seemingly endless paddy fields
en-marked in inadequately small plots by short embankments of wet mud, 20 odd
families in their thatched huts, and the forest department area-an inspection
bungalow, 2 quarters and a check post on the rugged road which marked the end
of habitation and led to that narrow trail snaking into the forests and up the
jutting hills.
“And it is not even 8!” Aditya
marvelled at how time cunningly tuned in to the demands of nature. He had
arrived at Keshavpur in the morning, on a department jeep along with a local
boy, Prosanto, a driver cum helper in the Inspection Bungalow. He had been
putting off this inspection for months. Ultimately running out of excuses, he
finally had to take the 10 hour trip to the place.
***
On the verandah, by the light of a
flickering hurricane lamp, Aditya savoured the silence of the night. The rains
had just subsided and the smell of wet earth was pouring into the air. The
constant chirping of the crickets was broken only by an occasional raucous horn
from one of the bull frogs in the compound. He took a light and smoked away.
A dimmed brightness came from one of
the quarters. The bedroom in all probability. Faint, broken sounds of a sweet lullaby
floated on into Aditya’s ears.
“A Lovely voice...” In the stillness
of the night, Aditya had forgotten how thoughts uncontrollably turn into words.
“That is Sanyal Didi, Aditya Babu..”
Aditya’s nightly reverie was broken by Prosanto’s contribution to the
happenings. “Mrs. Neha Sanyal”.
“They live all alone here?”
“Yes. Mahesh Babu is the in-charge of
the four check posts around this area. It’s been a year since he came here.
They married around four months back. The child is from her previous marriage.”
“She was married before?” His
interest stirred, Aditya felt the lullaby-voice coming in more clearly now.
“Yes. She was expecting at the time
when her former husband was convicted of a murder. He got into bad company,
they said. Since he had no family, she went to live with her parents in Belampur.
Two years later, her father too died. She had no option but to remarry, for the
sake of her newborn and her ailing mother”
Prosanto’s matter-of-fact narration
of Mrs. Neha’s story, added more poignancy to the night. For a change, Aditya
began to sense, how, in the midst of such commonplace circumstances, there was
always something that was distanced from normal. Something that could take hold
of someone’s life by its wings, and put it on an entirely different course.
Tired of his musings, he decided to sleep.
Around midnight, Aditya’s subconscious
was on a roll. Tonight, it was a car with him on the wheel. He was fleeing from
someone he didn’t know. Downhill, swerving dangerously around the tight corners
and finally the cliff emerged out of nowhere. He missed like every time.
Falling into the unfathomable depths of the gorge, he felt his insides rising.
The silence of the midnight was disturbed by a scream.
**
Aditya woke up with a start, even
before he made it to the bottom of the fall. He heard the shrill cries of a
woman, interspersed with the crying of a baby.
“Someone has broken into the other
house, Aditya Babu!” Prosanto came running out to the porch.
“We must call the nearby chowki! Get
me that telephone!” After 3 failed attempts, Aditya was explaining to a
reluctant sleepy havildar the events of the night in Keshavpur.
His attention now on the house, he
realized the sounds were coming in more muffled tones now. Something inside of
him, perhaps an irrational pity for Mrs. Neha, willed him to go and save her.
He wasted no more time. Groping in the darkness, and cursing the erratic power
supply, he took the poker from the kitchen and slowly stole up to the house.
The sounds were now coming from the
front room. Nobody heard the click as the door slowly opened and Aditya’s
shadow entered.
“Please
go! Please leave us alone! I beg of you!”
“But Neha...”
Nobody got to hear anything more than
those last two words. Aditya flung his full might on to the burly form on his
right. It fell with a thud. More shadows entered the room now, perhaps of the
policemen from the chowki. Two of them carelessly picked up the man lying on
the floor and dragged him to their jeep. Aditya almost began to revel in
self-pride.
For some reason though, Mrs. Neha’s
screams never stopped.
**
On the doorstep of that little house,
Aditya stumbled over a broken chappal. Bending down to throw away the last
dirty remnant of the intruder, he noticed a little toy in the corner, behind
the door hinges. And a hand written note, stuck on it by some cheap glue.
“Neha...Hope you are well... Perhaps I may never get to meet you again, so I
took a chance at an escape...2 years now and they still do not believe that I
did not commit the murder. Not that it matters anymore. They now say I am dying
of some disease. I am tired of these games now.... How is the baby?... Will you
please give this to her? ...Who knows when we’ll meet again....
Time stretched out in long guilty
painful moments as Aditya dragged himself to the Inspection Bungalow, the note
caressed in his fist. Mrs. Neha’s sobs continued to pound the night. Even the
crickets and the frogs gave their music a miss.
Except a content Prosanto, still
proud at his master’s bravery, nobody slept that night in that small corner of
Keshavpur.
-Palash
August 2012, Lumding
