THE CROSSING

FROM THE NOTE BOOK (2)

This name I have not forgotten till today. Mir Hussein. Those were the days of 1948-49. Many a night he rowed me across Surma. From Baithakhali side of the river to Mallikpur. Deep in the night in some one’s boat stolen for a few hours. My crossing over, he would with care and secrecy take the boat to its proper place. He was not that capable to manage the theft of a boat. Of course, he was given to stealing. Small thefts. Driven by poverty and hunger he stole paddy or some such things from the houses of rich peasants. He did not own any land. He worked in other people’s land on daily payment basis. Payment was mostly in kind, paddy. In those days cash transactions were very scarce. So, naturally, ploughing, transplanting, watering (in Buro paddy growing plots), harvesting, winnowing, drying and storing the paddy in mud plastered bamboo storages, these kept him honestly occupied. These over, people like Mir Hussein had no work, therefore, no earning.

Mir Hussein is probably not alive now. Probably, he was a little older than I. Ebony black, wiry and well-muscled man. This was the first living thief in my life, who was telling me stories of small thefts, while rowing across flooded Surma on a dark heavily clouded night.

Later in life I had seen hundreds if not thousands of thieves, dacoits and convicted armed robbers. One rape accused was transferred to district jail along with me under an escort of three armed policemen. Same escort for two means a sort of cost-cutting. This man had been committed to district session’s court for the seriousness of his offence. If the court decided against him he would have to serve a minimum term of five years of rigorous imprisonment. It was an upstream long steamer journey. Any company, a policeman or even some one accused of an offence was welcome. For a long while the rape accused was trying to convince me that he was in a frame-up. Who knew? It could be that he was telling the truth. In an abject rural ambience more than half a century ago such things used to happen. Being in a family of lawyers I heard bits of conspiratorial talks among the clients. If other things did not stand, a rape or a molestation charge could be slapped. We grew up a little precocious naturally. Women were even available to testify. In those days standard they were handsomely paid. No stigma sticks permanently. A few of them, if they had wished, could be rehabilitated, married even, and, could raise a family. Time is the greatest healer. And the people who engaged them were quite powerful, socially and economically.

To the district jail were brought political prisoners from other smaller custodies. There used to be a period of one month’s isolation, jokingly described by us as baptism. I was kept in one of the thirteen cells, which were called hospital cells because these were in the jail hospital compound. Ten of these were occupied by hopeless and dangerous mentally deranged patients, quite a few of them with a history of manslaughter. Only three of us, two dacoits and me were normal people, who were kept in other three cells. Other ten cells were always locked up except when the occupants were given some food and washed. Nights in the cells enclosure were horrible with nonstop yelling, shouting and other noises pouring out from cells containing the insane. As a matter of fact, they were continuously making terrific din. We three were allowed to be out for a few hours, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. We three non-lunatics were otherwise friendly, used to talk among ourselves about our lives and various things.

These dacoits were quite professional people and if occasion demanded they could become fiercely cruel. One from Barisal district was the senior. One day he showed his trick. He took his right palm near his mouth and threw out from an artificially created cavity in his throat a few pieces of gold and precious stones, smiled, and swallowed back again. These jail birds used these to bribe warders and even officials for various advantages, even in procuring help for escape. I do not know whether nowadays these throat cavity treasuries are still prevalent because political and financial connections make quite a few criminals inside jails very powerful. Often a comfortable prison life for a period serves for them the purpose of a perfect refuge.

Another character I perfectly remember -- an extremely cruel and powerfully built convict hailing from the Chakma tribe of Chittagong Hill Tract who had been assigned with the task of washing the deranged occupants with the aid of a high-pressure hose pipe. His favourite pastime was to press the nozzle of the hose into the mouths or noses of those poor insane to the point of suffocating them to death. The popular idea was that a mad man never caught cold; if one could be made to catch a cold, he would be sane once again. This was a revoltingly cruel sight and there happened to be quite a few spectators, a number of warders among them. One day I spontaneously protested and from the look of that Chakma convict I was perfectly convinced that if at any time he could lay his hands on me it would be my bloody end!

The aggregate of these fragments of experiences led me over from usual ordinariness to the vast open meadow of unusual extraordinariness.

RICH BLEND

FROM THE NOTE BOOK
Bangladesh Rifles headquarters is at Pilkhana, Dhaka, where the recent mutiny and gruesome killings took place. It is also close to Dhanmandi. Whole of Eastern Bengal, now Bangladesh, together with a part of Indian state of Assam , whole of present day West Bengal, Orissa and a part of present day Bihar constituted Sube Bangla of the Mughal Empire. Roughly , a suba was like a later day British administrative province. Mughals initially placed a subedar in these subas for administration, military affairs and revenue collection. Subedars generally were from the army. In the time of Mughal’s decay these administrators were described as Nawabs and Sube Bangla’s capital was at Murshidabad. These Nawabs started betraying increasing independence when they realized that the Delhi emperor’s grip is weakening. Another Nawabi domain sprang up in Dhaka after Murshidabad started declining after the Battle of Plassey, 1757.

Notwithstanding all these political events, landmarks within the region with their Farsi, and in a reduced scale, Arabic nomenclatures stayed throughout centuries, through British imperial days and even today. So, the Pilkhana, the parking place of war elephants, Topkhana, the parking place of batteries of cannons, Baroodkhana, the magazine lingered on till today.

Thus , I used to wake up in a vacant shop at Kazir Bazaar, get out for toilet in a masonry rubble called Baroodkhana and take my showers under spilled water of a very big water supply tank at topkhana, little bothering about Barood or Top of bygone days. Then once again back to Mamu’s snacks-cum-tea stall for my daily chow of very greasy paratha and equally greasy khasi gosht, cooked last evening. Very stale and delicious. Then take out my rickety bicycle and out thanking the Kazi of some centuries back for ordering erection of this cluster of shops, one of which was providing shelter to an anti-state commie, marked prominently in police records. Neighbourhood people took me for a police spy and left me unbothered. Then I would be through Zindabazar via Bandarbazaar, leave the cycle somewhere and board a bus of pre-Second World War vintage of Chevrolet or Dodge make. This would clutter along and stop for half a minute before the Dargah of Peer Shah Zalal, and Muslims or Hindu drivers alike uttered their silent prayers. Then I would get down somewhere and get in on a gashti country boat tied to a pole at a river bank and row out for some place. Many years afterwards it dawned upon me gasht in Farsi meant patrols. Those boats were designed for police patrols in the riverine countryside.

I had no idea of Farsi but my grandfather had. He was a renowned mokhtar in that part of our district with a fairly good grip over Farsi. This was the language used abundantly blended with local languages or dialects in law courts and Hindu lawyers were quite familiar with Farsi, even its script. Life at that time surely had been a grandeur of rich blend.

ON BEING JUDGEMENTAL

While I was trying to understand the following something written by Arthur Miller somewhere sometime—“…He was disintegrating. You seem to be alive in those days was to feel certain communal passions which everybody on the left and all the artists felt….that the country had come to a halt, .so to speak. The powers that be are morally bankrupt. The only alternative was to the explosion of authority in the outside classes, the lower middle classes and the working class. They were going to restore honour to the human race. Odet’s career starts fundamentally in1935 it’s over by 1940---the years of the depression outcry. As soon as life got more ambiguous, which soon happened, his style seemed to be inappropriate……….” (Arthur Miller talking or writing about Gifford Odet), Dr. Rudrangshu Mukherjee popped up in his essay on Victor Kiernan in the Telegraph of 22nd February, 09. Beside Dr. Mukherjee’s elegant, rotund and pedantic English Arthur Miller appeared disheveled, rustic and scratchy. Most probably Arthur Miller was speaking. I could not form a fuller idea about Gifford Odet try as I might. It could be that Odet was an eminent actor in films in those days. I only vaguely remember certain comments on Odet by Satyajit Roy in a small book of his titled probably Our Cinema Their Cinema. It was written after his visit to US and Hollywood.

Gifford Odet is not the point. The point is why an impressive section of the generation under consideration became left or got attracted towards Marxism. That is what Arthur Miller tells us while discussing Gifford Odet. And that is what Dr. Mukherjee misses or glosses over. While discussing the life of Kiernan he seems to be discussing the activities of a few complicits in a folly. That is why inspire of his halting way of speaking Arthur Miller touches a cord in our hearts, hearts of foot soldiers dreaming about a revolution.

More significant is Arthur Miller’s use of the word ambiguous without wasting time to describe his own version about the situation. The temptation to describe a situation which, some people feel, in a straightforward manner sometimes make a description clumsier instead. There are certain events which become more eloquent when contradictions are displayed. Today, confronted with a bigger depression than 1929-30 certain assessments demand a reappraisal. My personal feeling was that this hunky dory offered by technology, gadgets, outsorucing, handsome salary etc.and the culture centering it is going to dominate throughout my life time. Therefore farewell to all those heavy stuff of serious music, .poetry, painting, pure physics, pure mathematics etc. Chances are that I may prove wrong. So much degeneration is not quite natural. Day of judgement can wait. As a historian Dr. Mukherjee can wait a little before discovering the causes. Classical explanations may not be dumped urgently.