Along Came Bonny Meghali Barua
PASSION
(This was published in the Melange of the Sentinel on 4th August, 2013)
It was a silent sight…an eerie silence engulfed the tall reeds by the little pond. Purnima sat alone, her serpentine body half-hidden among the tall reeds. The full moon gleamed in the sky……a bright round silver ball. The dark waters of the pond reflected the moon’s face, blurred and broken.
A slight breeze blew across; the reeds by the pond danced together swaying to greet the cold zephyr.
She was waiting for her husband, Bolen to return back home…… Purnima sat on her haunches smelling the fresh fragrance of the earth.
She kept glancing at the little broken mud -hut across the murky pond; she and her husband lived there. This was her small paradise…a tiny haven she has created with Bolen.
A small kerosene lamp burned brightly on the mud porch; golden streaks of light from the lamp were mating lazily with the silvery moonbeams. Purnima shivered slightly; the breeze was now becoming chilly.
As the frosty wind touched her body, sensuous in its touch, she pulled her oft-worn chador and draped it tightly over her shoulders. She tried to remember when she had last possessed a pair of new attire. It had been her dear father who had gifted the last pair of silk mekhala-chador to her, her only prized possession…..it was on the day she had attained womanhood. Her ecstatic parents had turned the most intimate turn of her life into a gala affair….hosting a communal celebration with the entire village in honour of her becoming a woman
I hope Bolen has not gone to visit that whore tonight, a sudden thought crossed her mind, her heart now suddenly cut.
No, he has promised…he will never go to her.
A melancholic smile now played on her lips; she has now put her heart at ease with her own buoying thoughts. Her eyelids dropped sleepily, it must be getting late she thought.
She laid down her tired body on the cold grass now, her warm, feverish body fused with the earthy grass smell. The tall reeds danced around her, invigorating her, alluring her senses. She looked at her hut drowsily.
She remembered the day she had run away with Bolen…..she was only fifteen. Now twelve years had gone by; but she still loved Bolen with the same passion she had for him when she was a mere child. She like any other girl in love had built a rosy dream complete with a rose garden but……..
A loquacious young girl, she was. Now a quiet little woman, on the beck and call of her alcoholic husband, her own realization revolted her senses, made her heart reel under an inexplicable, excruciating pain. Old hag! Bolen would sometimes scream at her. It has been days now since a syllable has escaped her lips….She was lonely, as lonely as anyone could be in this mirage called life.
Purnima sat up…..
A hazy remembrance of an old forgotten tune had fluttered in hesitantly into her mind…..a melodious song she would hum as a young girl.
She looked around her, reassured that no one was in her proximity, she broke into a lilting dulcet tune “Junakore rati…axomire mati…”
Silent tears broke out from her melancholic eyes; flashes of her mother stoking up the mud stove to prepare the night’s dinner darted across.
“Maa!” a hoarse whisper escaped; a fervent prayer to the wayfaring wind to carry her voice, her unspoken yearnings to her parent’s village.
It has been years since she had last seen them; her parents had been furious with her elopement and had promptly disowned her.
“You are dead to us…..do not show us your unlucky face ever again!” had screamed her father then.
Sighing to herself, Purnima hummed the melody listlessly, her fingers carelessly digging up the muddy ground.
“What if Bolen does not come home tonight?” a niggling doubt now creeped into her mind…..stealthily as the nightwalker in the fables. “He is so selfish!” Purnima was livid now.
Bolen had metamorphosed into a very different person as years passed on and as tiny creases had started to appear near her eyes.
“You are turning into an old witch!” would slur Bolen drunkenly. Some nights he would beat her up, kicking her stomach, “Die! You cannot even give me a son!” he would hit her snarling, the foul odour of liquor hanging on his breath. Purnima would run away whimpering in pain and hide among the welcoming reeds by the pond. She would pass the night trembling in fear that Bolen would come down looking for her but he never did.
The day next ,she would once more go back and resume her wifely duties; looking after and taking care of her man.
Last night too they had a big brawl over Nilima, the seventeen year old cowherd’s daughter; Bolen had started to live with her sometime back.
Purnima has seen the girl; ‘She is beautiful!,’ Purnima admitted grudgingly. The dark-complexioned girl looked happy as she sat among her friends watching the annual Bhaona at the Naamghar last year. Purnima could not help but throw furtive glances at the young girl.
Now Purnima sat alone, desolate by the pond. She stared at the dark mysterious pond; the water deep down seemed turbulent and troubled beneath the calm, still surface……just like her.
She stretched her legs lazily.
The dark waters beckoned her….Purnima felt that the pond was her only ally…the pond was a part of her being , of her tumultuous emotions. She dipped her toes in the murky waters gingerly.
A mad desire to wade in the cold water overcame her. She quickly slid down into the tepid waters.
She felt a sense of peace, an aura of profound happiness enveloped her…
It was early morning. The pond scintillated in bright colours; golden nugget-like bits of light reflected from its glittering waters.
Two little boys walked toward the pond, their steps uncertain.
“Oi! If my mother catches me here she will thrash me……Let’s go back!” beseeched the thinner one.
“Ha! Ha! Coward! Come on! You have to fulfil your promise… Go, touch the water and come back!” the other one taunted, a trace of malice lingering in his tone.
The thinner boy gulped nervously, “People say that this is an evil place” he whined. “Go!” goaded the other one, his eyes wide open and expectant.
The thinner boy took a few steps cautiously, his terrified eyes darting to and fro. As he reached the pond’s edge, he shivered slightly……the pond looked more sinister at close quarters.
“Oi! Lora hot! You boys!” shouted a dhoti-clad man all of a sudden.
Seeing the man approaching their way, the two boys ran away in terror; two tiny figures scampering away drawing a dusty trail behind them.
The man shook his head angrily, “Rascals! If I see you here again I will make sure that your mother gives you a sound beating” he shouted at the two receding figures.
“Dekhise! Eman Bodmas!” he exclaimed to his companion.
“Isn’t this the spot?…..” the companion’s voice trailed off.
The two men looked towards the pond. The pond looked dazzlingly beautiful…..it was at its glistening best at that early hour of the day.
“Yes, last year there was this terrible incident. Bolen, the man who used to live in that hut” the dhoti-clad man pointed towards the derelict mud-hut, “had come home one night, drunk as usual. He had a tussle with his wife. That vile man ….He was not in his senses…He was in such an inebriated state that when he beat her up like a beast, he broke her spine in several pieces. The neighbours say that Bolen had been seeing some other woman. The wife, poor woman, as she lay whimpering on the floor Bolen chopped her body with a dao……That evil fellow! She was still alive when he cut her body and chopped it into small pieces….. He then threw the pieces in the pond.”
The companion shook his head sadly; he had heard the story before but it never failed to shock him.
“Tch! Tch!” the dhoti clad man exclaimed. He continued, “What I have heard is that Bolen has run away. I hope someday the police catch him. What a tragedy! At sundown unfailingly Bolen’s neighbour always lights a lamp in front of the cursed hut. They say that there is something very eerie about that place. People passing by the pond at night have heard a woman singing a song, they say.”
He threw a covert glance towards the pond, “I do not believe in such nonsense!” he said a trifle loudly.
“Bola! Let’s go”; the two men walked silently; their minds conjuring up ghastly images of the crime.
Purnima stood silently by the tall Krishnasura tree; she had been watching the two men whispering between themselves for a long time. Not a single word of the conversation had been audible to her. After the last fight, she has had difficulty in hearing……..all she can hear now are the whispers of the wind.
Shaking her head vigorously “The rascal must have busted my eardrums….” she thought.
She looked back towards her hut, “Bolen did not come home last night” she thought sadly “He will come home tonight…..I will wait for him”.
The invisible figure treaded back towards the mud-hut, a melancholic tune escaping from her parched dry lips.
