Swapnamoy Chakraborti
Translated from the Bangla by Reba Ranni Banerjee
Vultures
This was Bishtu Ghosh’s pond. Last month, all the fish in the pond had died and floated up. Someone’s mixed Folidol in the pond, everyone had whispered. Alomoni had heard from her Ma that such things happened when stars in the sky fell into ponds. Alomoni lifted the load off the top of her head and kept it by the pond-bank. The universe burned blazingly like coal embers; the earth had heated up like an iron griddle used for making ruti. Alomoni had walked for almost two kilometres, there was no strength left in her legs. ‘Wetting your legs a little at a time, make your way to where you wish’—Alomoni remembered the saying. So Alomoni climbed down to the pond, one with its own ghat, to wet her legs. Just as well, I’ll drink water too; as soon as I’ve wet my legs, splashed water on my eyes, my face, smoked a beedi, the exhaustion will melt away. Alomoni climbed into the water . . . Heyirrey—would’ve been done for if I’d slipped even a little and fallen. Like the hair on the head of her little one, her kochi, thick moss had accumulated on the steps.The fully pregnant Alomoni climbed into the water carefully. Everywhere, the scorching sun, ceaseless. The coconut trees trembled in the sun; there was not a soul around. Alomoni stood, lifting the saree very far up. Let the body cool. The water, too, was hot; even then, she felt rested. Grasshoppers sat in the shade of the water spinach-water clover thicket; chokhkuni fish nibble-tickled Alomoni’s thighs.
Alomoni’s husband Narayan—or Naran, as he was known locally—had thrust ten kilos of rice from the haat in Hatiyara on her head. ‘Off you go, sell it in Baguiati. Go carefully, don’t sell it for any less than three and a half rupees. If the police catch you, bend at their feet and howl. Get me four bundles of red-threaded beedi from Mahim’s shop on your way back.’
Hazari Samanta dealt in rice. Naran had worked as a labourer for him when a pond was dug on his land. In consideration of that offer of labour, Naran got rice on credit. If Alomoni made a profit of four annas per kilo, it would be two and a half rupees for ten kilos.
Going twice a week, Alomoni had been engaged in this trade for almost five months. The first time round, a day before she took the rice along, Naran hadrubbed the butt of the weight inside the whetstone for a long time; that wouldmake it a bit lighter. If he could save a fistful of rice from each pan by cheatingon the weight, then the cost of one person’s meal, once a day, could come out often kilos of rice. ‘Use your brains a little, woman. Here, like me,’ Naran had said, thumping his chest.
Alomoni did not take the pucca roads in fear of the police. Right across the field was the canal; she would walk along the canalside and go to Baguiati. The moment she looked at the side of the field, her eyes dazzled. ‘God, how the sunglares! . . . Dhurr, what’s in that! For one who chewed off the shaligram stone, what’s an elephant apple! This is nothing. I’ve crossed this path so many times when it was hottest during the month of Boisakh, and this is merely Bhadro after all!’
Spiked hemps pierced Alomoni’s feet; burrs had got stuck all over her saree. With a weight worth ten kilos on her head, she gasped for breath every once in a short while. The Hanuman in the scriptures had taken such a great leap carrying some mountain on his head. If only poor Alomoni could, then she would have reached the Baguiati bazaar in just a single leap!
Today, if there was a profit of two and a half rupees, Alomoni would hide away four annas. Once the baby was born, she’d feed it sugar-candy water. The earlier baby died at six months, could not endure the thin cooked-flour paste; loose motions started and didn’t stop. She stood in queues and fed him red-coloured medicine from the hospital—they didn’t let up; then, upon Paanchi’s advice, she fed him skunkvine leaves after scorching them with hot iron, had evil spirits cast out by a Muslim pir—they didn’t let up. Then, that winter, when after making him lie in the sun on the roof of the babu’s household, washing utensils and bathing, she went to Khoka, she saw her kochi smothered in shit and blood, with his eyes closed, and flies, like crowds at the Sealdah station, buzzing all around.
The father of that child was Kanai Dom. Kanai used to work in the huge hospital beside the canal bridge in Kolkata’s Belgachhia. The thought of Kanai still made Alomoni feel scared, made her heart shudder. Stroking Alomoni’s enlarged belly, Kanai had said, ‘The baby in your belly is upside down now, it has a fat tummy, its two arms are thin, its eyes haven’t opened yet.’ Pointing at her chest he’d say, ‘Alo, your “dhukpuki” machine is here—it beats right here. Below your bellybutton, here, your shit’s getting hoarded.’ And no sooner would he say that than Kanai Dom would giggle.
Kanai’s hands were like humongous caterpillars, there was the stench of booze on his breath. Pressing his ear against her belly, Kanai would say, ‘Let me see, let me see, if my son’s heartbeat can be heard.’ Alomoni would coil in terror, wouldn’t utter a sound.
Kanai was a dom at the hospital. He’d dismember the dead, steal the bones and keep them at home, and selling them to the ladies and gentlemen in need of bodies—what was left of them—he’d drink alcohol. There was not a shred of revulsion on him. Good god—one day, he’d brought along a lump of pale flesh and wagging it had said to Alomoni, ‘Look, look, this is the birth machine. It is from this that we come out. What you have inside your belly is the same that even English-speaking chicks wearing watches and glasses have in theirs.’ When Alomoni covered her face out of fright, Kanai broke into a cackle.
Alomoni was terrified of the man. He frequented whorehouses too, thrashed Alomoni from time to time. Alo didn’t feel like keeping house for the man; yet, like the pitcher lying in the corner of a room, she remained quiet. Still, despite everything, at least he gives me food to eat.
Alomoni walked on the dirt road by the canal. There was a slight breeze; here and there, on the edges of the canal, sat cranes. Alomoni felt somewhat queasy; it would do to rest some. There was no shade from the trees close by. What could she do? Alomoni kept walking—her breath fell heavily. Who’s tied the cow here? Have they no sense, pray? There is hardly any grass this side, the cow is pulling and tugging to wrench out the bamboo posts. It will go far where there’s green, there’s food.
Alomoni and her family had had to leave their village almost three years ago. Back then, there were floods in Sandeshkhali; river waters broke into the village like wildfire. Then, once the floods stopped, there was no food: all of the elephant yam rotted; the banana trees, papaya trees—nothing—remained; spread all over the field were only water hyacinths, bound as though by blood. Alomoni’s parents used to work as farmhands on another’s land. Alomoni and her siblings would look for and bring over water spinach, stems of white water-lilies, elephant yam. Last year, while plucking taro roots, a snake killed Alomoni’s elder brother by the ditch. So, Alomoni used to feel very scared; she would not touch the thickets unless she poked them with the tip of a bamboo stick.
After the floods, there was no work for farmhands, no means to an income whatsoever. Some from the village had found work in Mogorahaat due to the road construction; Alomoni’s father too had gone in search of work. But he had such a severe bout of asthma that time that the road construction officials didn’t give him the job. So, alongside Haradhon’s parents, Alomoni’s parents too came to Kolkata with their entire family, carrying a palm mat, bonti, two plates and a cloth-bundle. Because the bamboo machan and the black grindstone slab for foot-cleaning were heavy, they couldn’t bring those along. That was the first time Alomoni boarded a train. They hadn’t bought tickets. Haradhon’s father had come to Kolkata earlier too. He worked at the jute go-down by the canal, they lived under the canal bridge. They headed there. How strange! The place under the bridge was packed with people at the time; there were people even inside the thick, fat pipes. In the end, they set up their home on the opposite end of one of the pipes. It used to be most amusing: on one side of a pipe a family, on the other, another family—not even a sack could be hung in the middle. The pipe was made of iron—neither could a nail be dug into it nor could a hole be made in it. If one spoke inside the pipe, there would be a booming sound—gomm-gomm. What if the pipe went off rolling, Alo had wondered as she was about to sleep on the first day.
Alomoni’s mother had found work in the home of a babu. Alomoni, too, used to step out to work with her mother. And Alo’s father’s asthma kept getting worse, he was no good for any job. Sitting by the canal, he’d make brooms tying strings around thin strips of coconut fronds; there was a wage of eight annas for tying a hundred brooms. And he’d get Alo’s baby-brother to poop, put him to sleep.
It was on the banks of the canal that she’d met Kanai Dom. That day, Alomoni’s saree was drying on the pipe; it was held down by bricks so that it wouldn’t be swept away in a gust of wind. Mother and daughter were boiling spinach, onions, and dead crabs from the banks of the canal in a pot. Alomoni didn’t even realize when the man had arrived by the pipes with a group of followers to smoke ganja like every day, or when he had in a trice picked up the bricks holding down the saree and made them into a stool to sit on. When, owing to a sudden, short burst of wind, the saree, which had been put out to dry, tumbled and fell headlong on the road, then saying ‘Heiirey’, Alomoni darted. By then a lorry, smeared in mud, had squashed the saree flat. When she pounced on the tangled-in-a-lump cloth, as though it were her own baby that had been run over, and was about to rub her hands over the mud splatters like she was wiping off blood, she saw that all of it had torn. Then, when holding the lump of cloth tightly against her chest she howled in lament, ‘Ma-go, ki holo go’, two vultures flew away from the top of the bridge. Afterwards, seeing the man seated, holding both his legs, on a column of bricks under the banyan tree, she understood who had removed the bricks. Then, out of an unbearable anger, fury and loathing towards him, she ran in his direction, like a dust-storm risen all of a sudden, and cursed, ‘You son of a bas- tard! Why did you remove my bricks? Die! Die! Son of a wretch—look, you’ve torn my saree, look, you! Die vomiting blood, die right now! You die right here!’
‘Stop! Don’t shout and make me lose my temper. I will straighten you out. Fix the cloth over your breasts first.’ By then, the whole of Alomoni’s family had gathered.
Kanai Dom had then said, ‘No need for this fight between us. Will give another saree tomorrow. That’s it.’
Kanai had given Alomoni a bright orange ‘dourey’ saree—one with horizontal stripes.
Did Alo know then, that it was a dead woman’s saree?
Alo had felt very happy having got the saree. In the one she had earlier, there were at least six knots to cover the holes. This had not torn at all. The next day, wearing the saree when she looked at her own reflection in the glass window of the shoe shop, Alo wanted to caress it herself; she wished that man caught one glimpse of her in that moment. So Alomoni was loitering the area around the hospital. But no sooner did she see the man approaching while smoking a beedi than Alomoni scurried back to her own camp.
Kanai Dom’s wife had run away almost six months ago. He had disclosed all the details to Alomoni’s mother; even said that he’d taken a liking to Alomoni.
A few days right after Alo went off to Kanai Dom’s permanently, Alo’s father died. They had arranged to admit him to the hospital, sure, but once someone’s time is up, not even Brahma’s maker can do anything. So Alomoni had not shed as many tears. Besides, with burning in a crematorium there would be trouble with money, so Kanu Dom had said that he would have the father’s corpse destroyed at the hospital itself, there would be nothing to worry about; that is why Alo’s mother had come back after rubbing off the sindoor, sprinkling canal water on her husband’s body and joining her palms together in a last farewell. The water from the canal—it was Ganga herself. Why, the canal was after all Ganga’s offspring.
By that time, Alo was with child. Some days later, Kanai Dom brought home a heap of bones. To have these things in the room of a pregnant woman boded ill—Alo had tried a lot to make him understand. Kanai had said, ‘Wait for just seven more days, I will sell all of it.’ One day, a chap arrived and, paying fifty rupees in cash, bought all the bones and took them away! That day, buying goat meat and bringing it home, Kanai said, ‘Eat up—my son should be healthy. Eat up good.’
Did Alomoni know then that all of those bones were her father’s? That she was consuming healthy food from selling off her father’s bones?
Immediately after the birth of the little one, her kochi, heaven knows what a fatal disease caught hold of Alomoni. She kept growing thinner, breast milk almost stopped coming; while detangling matted clumps on her scalp, black hair, like dry, rotten water-hyacinth, would come off. Disease from the rotting of the umbilical cord, Ma had said; every day, all the time, she felt dizzy, as if a tram were running twenty-four hours inside her head. Kanai Dom would no longer get what he wanted in Alomoni’s dead-rat-like body. One day, in a fit of anger, Alomoni kicked him; Kanai Dom thrashed her badly, and that very night, turned Alomoni out. Taking her babe-in-arms along, she went back to her mother. Two days later, Alo and Alo’s mother, clutching Kanai’s feet, begged and pleaded with him no end. Kanai said, ‘This bugger doesn’t need such a cunt. If I fling a dime, I’ll find many pussies.’
Just a few days after the baby’s death, Alomoni was married to Narayan. Naran was a resident of Hatiyara; he had arrived to dig earth at the time of widening the canal. Once they were married, they watched a film on a bioscope together one day. That day, on their way back, they ate alur-chop. Alomoni had fervently wished that Kanai Dom saw them once in that moment, relishing those potato fritters, that he saw whether just because Kanai Dom had thrown her out, she could get a husband or not! In Alomoni’s imagination, Kanai Dom was staring wide-eyed then and Alomoni was saying, ‘I’ll burn a wisp in your mouth!’
The earth-diggers had built shacks on the edge of the canal. Alomoni went to Naran’s shack, didn’t have to stay there for long. Within just about seven days, the task of digging the ground ended.
‘Let me go to the village now, Alo,’ Naran had said. ‘Once I buy a cooking pot, a cauldron, a mirror, a comb, I will take you along.’
To trust a man and to trust a viper! So, Alomoni had not wanted to leave Naran’s side.
Parting Alo’s hair fondly, Naran said, ‘Look, I loved you and married you, I won’t be able to live without you. I will come and get you, I swear. Just wait for about a month.’
A twinge shot through Alomoni’s belly. Felt somewhat like a spasm. Not far ahead was a peepul tree, merely twenty to twenty-five steps away. She would rest a bit there. Alomoni was certain that this pain wasn’t labour pain. From Poush to Bhadro—that’s eight months. She could definitely not be at more than eight months. Kochi is perhaps trying to turn on his side and sleep inside the belly, or playing a little—that’s surely why it will feel a bit that way. After this, Alomoni would no longer go to sell rice. Having arrived under the tree, Alomoni lay down placing her head on the sack of rice.
Such sorrow in the seagulls’ screams. Such sorrow in the fits of breeze. Such sorrow in the light of the sun bleeding through the chinks between the peepul’s leaves.
Alo’s son will be clever. Upon growing up, he will buy a gramophone. He will sleep placing a mattress on a bed. It was Alomoni’s great desire that like in the houses of the babus, she pushed into her mouth a whole rosogolla; her great desire that she ate flattened prawn fritters—the tails from the prawns remove—sprinkling on them powdered pepper, from a plate with a spoon; ah, how delightfully would the long, purple leaf of an onion enter the mouth. Only once khoka is born two months later, and twelve years on, once khoka grows up to be clever would . . . The stomach churned with pangs; in agony, she kept rubbing a leg in the dust, tore a clump of grass with her left hand. It’s not labour pain, is it, Alomoni suspected.
The husband didn’t know those details—despite wanting to tell him, she had not been able to out of acute shame. One night after Naran left for the village, a group of full pants-clad boys had dragged her out like a chicken is dragged out of a cage. She had seen the boys in the locality before. Not only Alomoni’s, but screams of a total of five to six young girls living inside the pipes could be heard. No sooner had Alomoni thrown a kick than, in the beam of the torch, the blade of a knife had glistened; Alomoni’s mother, brother, younger sister merely stood and watched. She did not know how much long after, but Alomoni could no longer smell the stench of alcohol; her body itched all over then, as though rubbed with nettle leaves, meaning, burnt from the sting of nail-scratches. Then, after returning from bathing in the filthy water of the canal, Alomoni had wailed bitterly. Alomoni had wanted to kick and smash everything—sky-constellations-stars-railway bridge-two-storey bus; like Sati from the shastras, she would throw into chaos heaven, hell, the whole of creation . . . Those wishes, wriggling like schools of fish during monsoon, brought forth only a flood of tears. That night, Alomoni had seen the police standing by in the front, chewing khaini. Before a man jumped on Alomoni, she had cried out to the police, ‘You’re the king’s men and still you won’t save us—’
In the morning, she heard that from the pipe next to hers, the police had taken Moyna behind the bridge.
The next day, Alomoni’s mother openly shared all the details with the matriarch of the babus’ house. Sought refuge for Alomoni for two nights at the babus’ place. Alomoni got shelter under the stairs leading to the roof.
On the second night itself, the vulture had come. That is, Kanai Dom; that is, a knife-in-hand goon; that is, panjabi-clad Chhoto Babu—vultures, all.
In the sky, the stars, the constellations, the moon, all emitted light suitably; on the ground floor, the Nepali darwaan was keeping watch suitably indeed. In Chhoto Babu’s mouth, there was no smell of booze; there was the smell of flowers, there was the smell of flowers in his hair; there wasn’t a knife in Chhoto Babu’s hands, there was money. Chhoto Babu didn’t shout, he had whispered, ‘Don’t speak a word. I’ll give you money.’
‘Don’t want money. Leave me, Babu, I am a married woman.’
Like a civilized man, Chhoto Babu had said softly, ‘Fuck that.’
Then, for a long time, Alomoni had not been able to see the light of the stars, the constellations, the moon. Last time round, she had been able to bathe in the water of the canal after pushing aside the shit floating on it; after Chhoto Babu left, she wasn’t even able to take a bath. In the end, as the darkness deepened, merely spitting lightly on the rolled-up-into-a-small-ball two-rupee note, she had thrust it into a knot she tied using the loose end of her saree.
* * *
Alomoni groaned in pain. Two people went past her; though almost about to call them out aloud, she didn’t, she clung on to the sack of rice. Then she thought it would be best to call them and she did, but because she could not cry out as loudly as she should have, they couldn’t hear her.
Little by little, the pain increased. It seemed to Alomoni that this must be labour pain, how could it happen in the eighth month? Was there a mistake in calculation then? Was it Chhoto Babu? Was it the police? Or was it the knife-in-hand goon—or was it . . . Swami-go, do forgive me . . .
It felt like she would be ripped in two halves in pain, the belly was bobbing like a bellow. Alomoni turned on her side once, then lay flat on her back; she felt a bit of relief once she bent both her legs from the knees onwards.
Alomoni remained lying, kept rubbing her heels against the parched ground. O god, bring over my husband just once. Grasshopper, o grasshopper, would you send my husband news once, grasshopper? My kochi is coming, khoka is coming. There’s no sorrow in the seagulls’ cries any more, there’s joy! There’s no sorrow in the suddenly-arisen dust-storm, there’s joy, joy! There’s joy in the yellow light bleeding through the chinks between the peepul’s leaves! Where does the evening malati bloom, oh yogini of hope? Where are you, Shibthakur? Come to my birthing hut under the peepul-shade. Where do you, the woman who runs the house, pound rice grains in the husking pedal? Come, oh come by just once.
Where do you stick dung-cakes on a wall, dhai ma? Come to your khoka. He who’ll come to pull out the cow’s bamboo-post once evening falls—do come to me just once.
Alomoni’s gaze fell on the vultures sitting on the dead branches of a tree; she started in a fright, sat up once. A hut was visible on the other side of the canal; Alomoni wanted to catch someone’s attention. One time she shouted, ‘Someone please come this way, won’t you?’
The breeze, stricken with longing, blazed with the smell of tear-fall.
Evening’s fallen, will no one come! Behula Ma, Savitri Ma, send someone, ma- go; vulture, brother mine, send someone over in hibthakur’s name, send some- one over, I beg you brother mine. Where does the water of the canal go? To the Ganga, or what? Where goes the breeze, where go the seagulls’ cries? Sigh! My khoka is coming—I will feed him sugar-candy water. On the pucca roads of Sandeshkhali, I have planted two sugar-palm fruit seeds. One generation sows the seeds, the next wipes the harvest clean. My khoka will eat once there’s sugar palm, my khoka will own a gramophone, khoka will offer doi-sandesh. O there is the thrumming of the dhak, as light is offered to Goddess Durga, coursing through my body, the clangour of the kansar-ghonta all over my body, all over me the sound of conches. Grasshopper, dear grasshopper, in Shibthakur’s name, go, won’t you, fly away just once and tell him . . .
Alomoni closed her eyes. Alomoni did not know that inside her body, in her veins and its many forked limbs, there was under way then—in a tangled awakening— a wondrous transformation. A transformation in harmony with a sitar’s chimes, echoing the song welcoming Goddess Durga to her mother’s home.
There was the torrent of milk in her breasts; with the unceasing gush of blood, maternal tenderness, affection, love billowed wavelike through her entire body. Bit by bit, a new being was forging ahead on the path of a magical tunnel. Who that child’s father was, there was no proper proof. Alomoni was its mother; owing to Alomoni’s toil, sweat, blood, pride, love, was its coming-to-life.
All of Alomoni was steeped in the pulsating beats of a dhak.
* * *
Striking the palms of her hands twice, Alomoni drove away the vultures seated atop the dead branches—‘Jah, dur jah—’
Swapnamoy Chakraborti is a renowned Bengali writer from Kolkata. His novel, Joler Upor Pani, won the Sahitya Akademi Award (2023).
Reba Ranni Banerjee is a translator, writer and editor based in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.