Mother of All Beings
Photo: Karan Madhok
Fiction: ‘The next week he, Paltu, joined the moulis. To gather honey, to pay off debts, to induce his mother to eat two meals again, to oil her hair, to soap her body, to close the door to their hut. For his father had gone, and would never return.’
With bated breath, Paltu Haldar waits for the exact moment for Dukkhe’s panic-stricken wail, praying to Bon Bibi to save him from the jaws of the tiger. The stage lit for Bon Bibi-r Palagaan is shaken a little by strong ocean winds, foretelling a storm, engulfing the marshy lowlands under water. The bulbs tied with wire to bamboo poles blink in confusion.
Just as the sage-turned man-eater Dokkhin Rai lunges from behind to clutch the crouching boy’s neck, Bon Bibi appears on stage in thundering glory. Below a cap, her hair is a braided plait, which performs a pendulum swing with the energy of a king Cobra. Legs apart, her pink plastic shoes shine below a gauzy sequined ghagra. She stands erect, listening to Dukkhe’s prayer, which is now a gasp. The pulverized tiger Dokkhin Rai falls on all fours as Bon Bibi orders her brother Shah Jongoli to beat up the man-eating tiger.
Shah Jongoli chases Dokkhin Rai off stage as Bon Bibi sails out from the opposite exit, followed by young Dukkhe, hands still clasped in prayer. Enter Pir Barkhan Ghazi, Dokkhin Rai’s friend, with seven tiger-masked actors in tow. Reverentially, they stand before the pir, who wears a cardboard tiara with a golden halo. Dokkhin Rai lurches onto the mud stage and falls at the pir’s feet, begging him to save him from Bon Bibi’s wrath. In a ringing voice, Ghazi advises Dokkhin Rai to seek forgiveness by calling her ‘mother’. They move in single formation to a corner of the stage, where Bon Bibi suddenly appears with Dukkhe.
While the chastened Dokkhin Rai slouches downcast, the pir intercedes on his behalf: “Good mother, grant me this wish. Don’t be angry with Dokkhin Rai. Pardon him.” The chastened tiger falls at the goddess’ feet, his cries of “Mother Mother” muffled in her ghagra.
Bon Bibi slowly moves center stage and sings ringingly to the audience: “I am the mother of all beings within these eighteen lowlands, the mother spirit of these waterways and mudflats, these islands and mangroves. Anyone who hails me as mother gets relief from all suffering. You must not cause injury to anyone who appeals to me while in danger.”
Dokkhin Rai, still on his knees, says in a voice filled with remorse, “Mother, listen to my vow. I shall never cause harm to anyone who appeals to you for protection.”
The audience rises, repeating Dokkhin Rai’s vow in murmurs of appreciation. But now, he is up in a flash, arguing with the audience that if humans are given a free reign, there will be no forest left. To ensure that Dokkhin Rai and his tigers stop being a threat to humans, humans must stop being a threat to tigers and other animals. A silence falls on the audience and the players.
The stage lit for Bon Bibi-r Palagaan is shaken a little by strong ocean winds, foretelling a storm, engulfing the marshy lowlands under water. The bulbs tied with wire to bamboo poles blink in confusion.
Center stage, Bon Bibi seats herself on a wooden slab, asks Dukkhe and the audience to repeat a promise after her: “I will enter the forest with a pobitro mon—pure heart—and khali hath—empty-handed—taking from it only as much as I need. We must live in harmony – both humans and animals, for we are all brothers.” She suggests that Dukkhe return to his village on the back of a crocodile. When he shakes with fear at mention of a crocodile, she takes him in her lap and begins to row, as if the wooden slab is a boat. She calls him her son and says she will provide for him enough wealth so he never has to work in the forest again.
Paltu’s mother says under her breath, “Whoever had such good fortune to be called a son by Bon Bibi herself.”
*
A loud thunderclap is followed by a blackout, a wire sizzling in the darkness. The audience rises hurriedly before the anticipated storm. Ruma takes her younger son Dhiman by his hand, as Paltu skips after them, staring at the lightning bolts that chase each other in the sky. The hut is still dry as Paltu helps his mother push the cots to the edges, where the thatch won’t leak. The deluge may half submerge their island by the morning, the marshy lowland covered by river waters mingled with the sea: a grey salty sheet of ripples their surroundings. Water was their death. Water was their life. It gave them livelihood: fish and crabs, prawn and shrimps, snails and prawn seeds, and wood, thatch and honey.
Paltu shivered in his cot. Narrow tidal waterways led to the heart of the mangrove forests where the best honeycombs hung. Nectar gathered in loads from the khalsi flower by the largest, most aggressive of bees from the Himalayas. In the heart of tiger territory where the forests were so thick, one could not see beyond a couple of metres ahead. Low hanging trees and mangrove branches pressed down; the mangrove roots so sharp that they spiked up like knives from the mudflats.
His body crouched in fear. As the son of a honey collector, he was a mouli. He belonged to a team of moulis his father was once a proud leader of, until the day that the rest of the moulis saw Paltu’s father attacked from behind by a massive tiger—ten feet tall as it lunged from its full height. The tiger threw him to the ground; stunned, his head bleeding from the fall, he was dragged away by the neck into the mangrove swamps, never to be seen again.
The next week he, Paltu, joined the moulis. To gather honey, to pay off debts, to induce his mother to eat two meals again, to oil her hair, to soap her body, to close the door to their hut. For his father had gone, and would never return.
As the rain lashed at their hut, the wind’s howls fell in rhythm with Dhiman’s whimpers. Through dense morning fog, Paltu glanced at his mother’s ghostly figure in white, standing apart from a group of women at the river bank. Her hair was uncombed as she clutched Dhiman by his shoulders. They had procured permits from the Forest Department and loans at exorbitant lending rates from mohajans.
His first expedition for collecting honey could take anywhere between 15 days to a month. He worked with the team to load the row boat with their minimal needs: a flower-garlanded earthen jar full of Ganga water to be replaced with honey; plastic jerry cans and aluminum vessels to collect and carry more; knives and axes to slice off bee hives; wooden clubs made from the sturdy garjan plant to ward off a tiger attack; mosquito nets and bedding; raw food, fuel, utensils, medicines and drinking water.
Each of the seven team members led by the chief mouli, Bishnu Mondal was careful not to step on the hull, which, garlanded, was ready for worship. Mondal’s wife drew Vishnu’s mace with thick red katha paste on a leaf and turned to offer it, along with flowers, creepers, seeds, and weeds at the shack-shrine of Bon Devi. A clay deity, she stood tall alongside her twin brother Shah Jongoli, both their right hands raised in blessing. A clay tiger, with a mouth and eye belligerently open but with a tail downcast, served as a close backdrop to the deities.
Paltu stared at the lean strong figure of the gunin, Girindra, who, like other shamans, was believed to receive his power from worshipping Bon Bibi, a power felt sufficient to overpower the tiger and other wild beasts. Girindra led the group in worship with the chant: “O Mother, Thou who lives in the forest, Thou the very incarnation of the forest, I am the meanest son of yours, I am totally ignorant. Mother, do not leave, Mother, you kept me safe inside your womb for ten months and ten days. Mother replace me there again. O Mother, pay heed to my words.”
Paltu felt the fevered tension in the chant, as if Girindra himself was unsure of what the goddess intended. The gunin studied the goddess from crown to toe and stared at her large left hand as it rested on her brother’s shoulder.
Abruptly, he turned to the team, guiding each member to bow to the hull before climbing the boat. There was a hushed silence. Sobs escaped the lips of women and children who stood by the banks of the rapid confluence of rivers that carried the boat swiftly into invisibility.
*
On the third day of rowing, Bishnu Mondal spotted a swarm of bees on the riverbank of a tributary. As the men turned the boat to row towards the forest from where the swarm had appeared, it vanished.
Stepping onto the mudflats strewn with the sharp aerial roots of mangroves, one of the youngest team members, Barik whispered, “The tiger mostly attacks on the river banks. From behind.”
Paltu shivered, his body bent low to avoid a twisted mangrove branch from pressing on his neck. Before the team could proceed further, Girindra gathered the men behind him. He stared into the forest, closed his eyes and murmured a chant. From a covered basket, he released a dozen chicks and pigeons as offering to Bon Bibi and to appease Dokkhin Rai’s hunger. Stepping aside, he glanced at Bishnu, who stood stock still, listening above the lapping of the wind-driven water for the sound of the bees. Each man, carrying a wooden club and equipment needed for the mahal, strode after him, into a forest that harboured sinister sounds and silences of both man and beast.
He belonged to a team of moulis his father was once a proud leader of, until the day that the rest of the moulis saw Paltu’s father attacked from behind by a massive tiger—ten feet tall as it lunged from its full height. The tiger threw him to the ground; stunned, his head bleeding from the fall, he was dragged away by the neck into the mangrove swamps, never to be seen again.
The men made their way through the thick leaves of the goran and gewa plants, the salt soil squelchy below their feet. A Forest Department wire net was mounted on tall bamboo sticks that ran through the forest to keep animals from entering villages. But it had been gaped and torn from frequent cyclones. A crocodile lay still as a flat knuckled rock in a fresh water pond in a clearing.
It took an hour for Bishnu to trace the sound of the bees to a keora tree some 18 metres high. Girindra prayed to Bon Bibi in a chant that seemed to Paltu like the humming of the bees. Some branches had to be hacked to get to the bee hive that hung from a high branch like a stacked conical bag buzzing with sound.
For a moment, all stood still as if seeing a beehive with giant bees for the first time. Then getting to work, some men gathered dried palm leaves and helped Bishnu prepare the bullen. The leaves were tied to a long stick at the end of which was a curved metal hook. Before lighting fire to the leaves, Bishnu instructed the men to slip into their sack cloths for the bees were aggressive. He tied a gamcha around his face and climbed carefully up to a branch from where he could study the hive.
Barik handed the chief the lit bullen. Bishnu waited for it to create enough smoke before raising it to the hive. As black smoke engulfed the hive, the bees fled in swarms in all directions. Girindra continued his chants, louder now than before. In between, he would stop to listen, to turn his head in all directions, to search, to sense, then continue to beseech. Uttam, a skeletal figure, climbed onto a branch below Bishnu’s holding a wide-mouthed aluminum vessel. Amid smoke and with face tightly covered save for the eyes, Bishnu’s metal hook sliced skillfully through the comb, cutting without hurting the parts of the colony that contained the queen bee and the larvae, so the colony could recover and grow again. All eyes were fixed on the wax combs as they dropped into Uttam’s outstretched aluminum vessel, dripping with honey.
The honey would later be filtered through a cloth, the wax comb and honey sold separately to the Forest Department or to the moneylender or in a village market, for there were debts to repay. Always debts to repay.
Bishnu climbed down, his face still wrapped in the gamcha. He surveyed the vessel and said with a smile, “About ten liters of honey. Good!” He looked up at Girindra with surprise for the gunin had not stopped chanting. The look they exchanged held tension, as Bishnu signaled for the men to leave the spot swiftly.
Paltu felt the grip loosen on his club as sweat poured out of his palms, ran down his legs. Did Dukkhe feel this fear before he met Dokkhin Rai or after?
The next hive took more than three hours to locate, deep in the forest. It hung from a sundri tree some 25 metres high. It was clearly visible, nestled more horizontally along two snaky branches. With a marshy swamp as surrounding, the men had to keep a look out for poisonous water snakes. Bishnu looked hard at a coiled creeper that hung at the end of a branch.
It moved, unwound itself and fell head down into the marsh, gliding through the water, disappearing into the mangrove bushes. A king cobra.
The honey would later be filtered through a cloth, the wax comb and honey sold separately to the Forest Department or to the moneylender or in a village market, for there were debts to repay. Always debts to repay.
Girindra’s wiry body tensed up. His chant became feverish. He saw the honey drip with the wax comb into the vessel with unseeing eyes. The tension moved like wild fire to the others. A bush stirred. A mongoose sprang out, its long tail twitching feverishly, its dark brown ears stretched back, quivering, as if it had just encountered the cobra, too.
Girindra raised his hand to stop operations. Through his chants, he turned to gaze at Paltu. Paltu had imagined the scenes in his mind's eye already: his father thrown to the ground by the tiger, seven feet long, five feet tall with claws that went an inch and a half deep, weighing 120 kilos. Barik had once suggested these figures which he had heard from a forest guard using a radio collar to measure the white beast’s dimensions. Paltu had envisioned his father hitting his head on the root of a tree, stunned and bleeding, and then dragged away by the neck in the tiger’s jaws.
He had heard his mother in a white sari. Hair splayed, she prayed, “Where art thou, O Mother Bon Bibi. The son of this unfortunate mother is in the heart of your forest. You, the savior of all the poor, will surely save my son. I put my son into your hands; protect him from the perils of the forest. Ma, Ma.”
Paltu heard Barik protest that they had gathered only 15 kilos of honey, enough only for one person to sell. Girindra and Bishnu wasted no time. They led their men through tree, marsh and bush, running, backtracking towards the river and the boat.
Girindra screamed out his chant that rang through the mangroves, “Mother, Mother replace me in your womb. Replace me there again. For ten months and ten days. O Mother pay heed to my words. O Ma.”
Paltu saw tiger eyes in every bush. Birds flew out of trees, screeching.
*
At night, Paltu lay in the boat beneath a mosquito net watching the stars. A crocodile swam past. The boat’s gentle rocking lulled him to sleep. He dreamt of Bon Bibi.
“You don’t have to ride on the crocodile,” she whispered, “I will take you home on my lap.”
He awoke with a tremble, looking for the stage that had been blacked out by the approaching storm. Instead, he saw a clear cloudless sky studded with stars.
***
Neera Kashyap has published a book of short stories for young adults, Daring to Dream (Rupa & Co.) and contributed to several prize-winning children’s anthologies. As a writer of poetry, haikai, short fiction and book reviews, her work has appeared in Indian Quarterly, Out of Print, RIC Journal, Guftugu, Teesta Review, Usawa Literary Review, Muse India, Kitaab, Setu, Mad in Asia, Spillwords, and Borderless. She published a short story in the anthology A Thief’s Funeral, and a collection is in the pipelines for publication with Niyogi Books. You can find her on Twitter: @NeeraK7 and Instagram: @neerakashyap.
