It was at such a time that the incident occurred.
A labourer named Badriman Sarma was murdered.
Sarma had been working in the mines as a casual worker for a long time. In fact, he was not even fired the last time when many casual workers were fired. As he knew how to read the almanac, he was like a priest in the basti and people consulted him to divine the heavenly bodies. He never stopped complaining about being forced by fate to work in the mines.
‘I am a Brahmin, I should have been able to keep myself busy with puja, worship and the study of the scriptures. Without being able to do my real duties, I have to do all this dirty work only for this sinful empty belly,’ he would often say.
No one among the labourers was bothered by this kind of talk. The middle-aged amicable man, who lived alone, was in fact, liked by everyone. He only had one major weakness. He used to drink. He would never behave drunkenly, but from his smile and walk, one could easily surmise that Sharmaji had had a good session somewhere.
‘Sharmaji, you must have had a good puja engagement today, eh?’ the neighbours would ask.
After the trouble started, even after the mines were closed, he moved about from one basti to another to perform pujas and to look for the home-brewed drink. Dil Bahadur even told him one day, ‘The times are very bad, Sarmaji. You shouldn’t move around from basti to basti at night.’
‘Dil Bahadur bhai, when someone’s time comes, who can hold him back? I will stay in this world only as long as Pasupati Nath Ji keeps me here. And Dil Bahadur bhai, what’s wrong with dying? Anyway, we are dying a little bit every day.’
‘If you are dead, it’s done and over. But what if you are injured? Have to stay confined in bed?’
Badriman Sarma went out that night like on other nights. Perhaps he went to some basti seeking homemade brew. Nobody knew that he did not return home at night. When, like on the other days, the workers went to the pithead, no one noticed that Badriman Sarma was not among them.
When they were returning by noon from the closed mine, a young boy came running with the news.
The moment they heard the news, everybody ran straight to the place reported by the boy. Badriman Sarma lay face down in the deep ditch by the side of the road that went up from the trijunction. Somebody had smashed his skull to a pulp. Nearby, there was a large, blood-stained piece of rock.
They had smashed Sharmaji’s head with a rock.
The labourers stood stunned.
Dil Bahadur sat down near Sharma’s body and started crying loudly.
After this incident, a strange, menacing silence descended over the basti. The silence of terror. Even the small children stopped coming out to the road to play. Adults stopped going around much.
The police party, which had come to investigate the killing, didn’t bother to visit the basti after they had lifted and taken away the dead body. After the post-mortem, Badriman Sarma’s body was burned by the police in the burning grounds of Shillong. Krishna Bahadur performed the last rites under the guidance of a Brahmin priest from Shillong.
The old man had no one to call his own in the whole world.
*
Three more families left the Basti and went away. They didn’t tell anyone before leaving. For the sake of security, they shifted to a Nepali-inhabited area in Shillong.
‘They could have at least told us before they left. Would we have stopped them?’ Dil Bahadur asked of his companions. They were sitting near a fire of dying embers of coal.
‘Who would inform whom, eh? And what good would it do?’
Then another two families left. They went directly to Guwahati, outside the state.
The inhabitants of the basti started disappearing like camphor going up in smoke.
Within one month of the closure of the mines, only six families with a total of 28 souls, and Lalan Baba, looking after the bungalow of the owner, remained. The boy who was with Lalan Baba also ran away. In the midst of the ominous gloom, the incident of Baba’s boy running away provided some light-hearted mirth in the basti.
‘Unable to tolerate the old man’s troubles, one fine morning, he held his bums with his hands and ran off to the forest. And once he was gone, he never returned.’ Someone jokingly commented near the fire one evening.
Everyone laughed uproariously.
‘Ah, you people talk rubbish,’ Dil Bahadur scolded.
One day, Ramprasad did not go to the pithead with the other workers. It had become a regular habit of all the workers. Nowadays, they didn’t go exactly at the starting time of the work day, but a little late, around nine or nine-thirty in the morning. They didn’t go near the pithead, but would sit near a tree some distance away, and after some time return home, before noon. Then, each man entered his own world of loneliness and worry. In the evening, some of them would gather before Ramprasad’s house to talk by the bonfire outside.
That day, not going towards the pithead, Ramprasad went to Lalan Baba’s place. When he reached there, he found that Lalan Baba was sitting nearly naked, wearing only a loin cloth, and smoking cannabis in a chillum on the back veranda of the bungalow. Ramprasad could smell the pungent scent of cannabis from quite far.
‘Baba?’ he called out.
‘Who? Ramprasad? Come, come. Would you have a few puffs?’
‘Baba, I have come for your advice. Tell us what to do now. The mine has been closed for more than a month now. There is no pay. Whatever little savings we had are fast disappearing. What will we eat after a few days? What shall we feed our children? The condition is really bad…’
Lalan Baba took a long puff and like a holy man said loudly, ‘Bom, bom, bom.’
Ramprasad was alarmed when he looked at Baba. Rolling his eyes upward, what was he doing? Did he hear his words?
‘Baba?’ He called out again.
‘Speak Ramprasad, speak. Baba is listening to you.
‘When will they open the mine? Whether they will open it at all is not certain. One can’t wait like this forever. The manager is not to be seen. He left after closing the mines and hasn’t returned.’
‘The scoundrel!’ Baba suddenly roared. ‘He has taken that slut Soni along with him.’
‘Baba, tell us what we should do now.’
‘Bom. Bom. What are you thinking?’
‘One has to do something. I am thinking one thing. One of my cousins lives in Shillong. He is a gardener in the police saheb’s bungalow. It’s a government job. He stays alone; he doesn’t have his family with him. There is a small quarter behind the police saheb’s bungalow. He looks after the cows. I am thinking about going there. At least, my wife and the kids will be safe there. I will work for daily wages somewhere. At least, we will be able to survive. Here, if the mine is closed, one is sure to die. And the disturbances have only increased…’
‘Go, go there,’ Lalan Baba said loudly, like it was an order. Then he had some quick puffs of the chillum and closed his eyes, as if deep in meditation.
Ramprasad touched Lalan Baba’s feet and took his leave.
On his way back he kept thinking, ah, why did I touch Lalan Baba’s feet? Was it because he was sitting there without clothes like a naked sadhu and smoking bhang? Ah…’
In the evening, he spoke about his talk with Lalan to the people who assembled around the fire before his house.
The moment he spoke about it, Shanti and Krishna Bahadur’s mother, who were sitting just inside the door, started sobbing loudly.
Everyone discussed the matter and ultimately all decided to leave the basti. What was the point of only one family staying back?
It was decided that two families would move to Guwahati and the rest would go to Shillong like Ramprasad and try to get shelter with some relative or other. They would take shelter with people whom they knew. They would be safer in the city than in this isolated forest area.
They would keep track. From time to time, someone would return and try to find out when the mines would open. And of course, they would return when they got their jobs back. Surely, Lalan Baba wouldn’t leave the place. They would all inform Lalan Baba before they left.
Three days after that decision was taken, the six families gathered their meagre belongings and readied to leave the basti. They informed Lalan Baba and started walking by the forest path to the main road to catch the buses to their destinations.
Shanti bowed her head before the holy tulsi plant, then put the chains and padlock to the house. She pulled at the lock to see if it was locked properly. A deep sigh came out of Ramprasad’s chest. Would they get to see this house again, would they ever return…
(Dead God by Dhruba Jyoti Borah)
Poignant narrative.