1
“Summer is
the best time in these parts, isn’t it, Sir? Just look around us, it is now
6:30 p.m.; and the sunlight hasn’t yet vanished. Although the sun has already
set, yet myriads of colours in the sky are just a feast for your eyes,” said
Dhiren.
Dhiren and
I were enjoying the gentle evening breeze at a tea stall run by him, sitting by
the riverside.
Dhiren continued,
“If it were the winter, oh my God, by now this place would have been plunged under
total darkness. A biting chillness creeping up from the river bed would have
swept the place with dense fog for company. People would be shivering even
wearing shirts, sweaters and wrappers to keep themselves warm. Covering themselves up to the head, everyone
would have been seated in front of the fire lit from the twigs and logs of
trees. None would dare sit outdoors by the riverside… What do you say, Sir,
would anyone dare venture out of their homes during the winter months at this
hour?”
Dhiren had a
habit of talking in a sing-song voice to only a handful of people who cared to
listen to him. There is a philosophical touch and a colourful approach to his
speech even while he talks about the most mundane things in life. This tea
stall owned by Dhiren is a place where I regularly drop in to have a few cups
of tea in the evenings when I have nothing much to do in particular. He offers
me a wooden bench by the rocky bank of the river; I enjoy a glass of tea made with
plenty of milk and sugar and listen to Dhiren and his mutterings. I listen to
the gentle waves lapping against the river bank. There is a burning-ghat on the
left bank of the river, down to river bed; where the cremators sing in chorus chanting
the name of the Lord Hari (Bolo Hari,
Hari Bol: Bolo Hari, Hari Bol)... While they mourn the death of their near
and dear ones, I get transported to another nameless world immersed in my own
thoughts. Amidst such surroundings, I enjoy a great feeling of eternal bliss.
Dhiren says, “All these chants originate from the nectar of life.”
While Dhiren
talks to me, his face is a picture of umpteen smiles. And when he smiles, his
eyes shrink and twinkle and the wrinkles of his face disappear momentarily to
radiate boundless joy and happiness.
Apart from his philosophical chatter and candid smiles, Dhiren possessed
a golden heart filled with love and kindness. There was a girl who lived with
him, her name was Phooli. She was barely
fourteen years old. Fair complexioned with large deep-set eyes, she was quite
smart and had an ever-smiling face like Dhiren. She usually helped her father doing
lots of odd jobs in the tea stall and whenever I came here and if there were
very few customers around, she allowed her father to sit with me and chat. Phooli knew that her father enjoyed a
heart to heart talk with me; who else was there as a good listener like me?
Although Dhiren was known to the world as her father, but actually he
was not the biological father of Phooli.
There is an amazing story behind how Phooli
grew up as Dhiren’s daughter. It was Dhiren himself who had told me this
secret; I had been utterly taken aback to learn this secret and thereafter my
respect for Dhiren only increased manifold with time. I am narrating the story verbatim,
exactly what Dhiren had told me a few years ago:
“From early morning that day during the monsoon, it was raining cats
and dogs, punctuated by roars of intermittent lightning and howling thunderstorms
demonstrating the fury of nature. The tinned
roof of this tea stall threatened to fly off at any moment under the turbulent
storm, while the bamboo frames supporting the roof were screeching in unison. With
no customers in sight on such a hapless day, I had not earned a single penny and
I really started to fear for my life as I was trapped in such a hopeless
situation. I decided to down the shutters of the stall as the fire in the
earthen oven had by then already been extinguished due to incessant rainfall
and dampness in the air. I had not tried to set fire to the oven again. I guess
such was the will of the Lord Radhamadhab. When you feel disturbed, you need
friends around you. No friends, no companion, no neighbours, even there were no
customers throughout the day. I was eagerly waiting for someone to drop in at
the tea stall so that I could share my problems with him. A customer is after
all a companion also; am I right, Sir? I kept the kerosene stove ready and in
case a customer came to the tea stall, I would prepare a hot cup of tea and chat
with him for some time. But no one came along.
I am not sure, may be just to test my patience, Lord Radhamadhab made my
ordeal much shorter on that day as compared to other days. Under the dark
clouds and stormy winds with heavy showers, the day ended abruptly and darkness
engulfed the surrounding much before the evening was supposed to arrive. I downed the shutter of my tea stall and moved
to the adjacent room which served as my bedroom. You may not believe it, but Mother
Nature was in full fury. It seemed that more than a hundred demons had connived
to uproot my stall to wreak havoc and they possessed the might of a crazy herd
of elephants. Yes, spectacular lightning bolts lit up
the skies in the night and as a thunderstorm made its way across my head for
reasons best known to Mother Nature and my Lord Radhamadhab.
I couldn’t predict the exact time of the storm that night as I had no wristwatch.
I lit the kerosene stove and I started cooking rice to go with a vegetarian
dish. The flame of the stove kept its head down because of the storm brewing
outside as gusts of wind rushed into the room through the holes and gaps of the
tinned shed. However, after some time the rice started boiling. Have you
noticed, Sir, when rice grains are boiling inside the vessel – they talk to
each other? They talk about hunger; they talk about happiness and they talk about
love. When you are absolutely hungry, what else other than food can vie for
your stomach, tell me, Sir? I really can
follow the conversations and smell the aroma of the rice grains. I was
listening to their conversation sitting on my cot and was watching the
trembling blue flames of my stove. In my heart resided the Lord Radhamadhab and
His never-ending miracles. I sat watching; on one side there was the
devastating fury of Mother Nature as if to destroy my stall and on the other
side, the food had been prepared for me to renew my struggle for survival within
the four tinned walls of my crumbling stall.
Isn’t that the greatest puzzle of Lord Radhamadab, Sir?
Suddenly I heard a faint sound on the door from outside. At first I didn’t
understand; I thought it was a sound of the wind rattling against the door.
After a while I listened carefully, I heard the feeble voice of a woman, which
said, ‘Is there any one inside? Please open the door for once, please.’ And with it there was the sound of the door
shaking strongly. I thought that I had been hallucinating. During that terrible
night who would come to my door and that too, a woman? I was really scared to
death. I thought that it might be some evil spirit; I had heard that it comes knocking
at your door, especially on such nights when Mother Nature’s fury is at its
worst. Again I thought that if it had indeed come and if it had so wished, it
could have easily entered into my room in spite of the feeble door, because,
the door was just too weak to keep an evil spirit from entering the room. Lord Radhamadhab came to my rescue me at last,
helped me listen to my conscience. I opened the door. A woman entered the room
along with gusty wind and heavy showers. I just saw her for a moment and
everything in the room became invisible, as the only kerosene lamp had been
extinguished with the wind.
After downing the shutter and searching for the match box, I lit the
lamp again and with the darkness gone, I had a glimpse of the woman once again.
She was totally drenched by the rain; she wore a sari which was soaking wet and
mud plastered on it. Lying on the floor, she looked awful; she was screaming in
agony and under her feet, water and blood were flowing freely on the floor. The
pregnant woman was about give birth to a baby. I ran across the room. I put
down my rice pot and put a tumbler of water to boil on the stove. I was wondering
about whom to approach for help and what I should do now. I waited for the
water to boil, when I heard the cry of a baby. What a powerful wail that was! There
was the roaring storm and rain lashing on the tinned walls, but when the
newborn baby wailed, it clearly stood out from the rest. It was the scream of a
new life, can anything suppress it, Sir?
I had never married and I have never
had a family of my own. I was just passing through one of most enjoyable
moments of my life with the blessings of Lord Radhamadhab, but now I was
burdened with a troublesome baby at last! Who else can play such a game with
life other than Lord Radhamadhab, tell me, Sir?
On an impulse, I picked up the baby; it was a girl and then I cut off the
umbilical cord and separated it from mother. Then I cleaned the baby with hot
water and wrapped it with a clean cloth. So far I hadn’t noticed the condition
of the mother. When I tried to hand over the baby to her, I felt that she was
in a very critical condition. She tried to extend her hands to take the baby,
but in vain. Her eyes were fixed on me, brimming
with tears. There was a blissful smile on her pale lips. The pupils were
dilated as she tried to look at her baby and she couldn’t keep her eyes open any
longer. Within a few moments, her heart had stopped beating and she lay
motionless in death.
Sir, can anyone question the decision of Lord Radhamadhab? Although I had been desperately looking for someone
to talk to, yet I wasn’t prepared for an untoward event like this. I didn’t
know where she lived, or where she came from. Neither did I know her, nor did she
know me. But she had left for another world leaving behind her daughter in my
hands. I was a very poor man struggling hard to eke out a living for myself. I
led a simple life by the grace of Lord Radhamadhab. So you can jolly well
imagine my dilemma when I was left alone holding this newborn girl in my trembling
hands. Agreed that nothing ominous would
happen tonight itself, but from tomorrow morning this newborn baby girl could spell
trouble for me. My neighbours and the police would constantly pester me about
how I came upon her all of a sudden; none of them would believe me when I tell
them the whole truth. When I was racking my brains about how to find a way out
of this peculiar problem, the newborn girl made some incoherent sounds as she
was wrapped in a bundle of cloth. What she said I couldn’t decipher, for who
can understand the words of a newborn baby except the mother? I looked at her
face and she was staring at me with her innocent eyes. I didn’t know what was
there in that innocent face. I guess the baby trusted me. She was totally dependent
on me as there was no one else whom she could turn to. What does a newly born
baby expect, staring at the face of a man? It is only the desire to be alive. I
loved staring at her face; I embraced her very tightly to my heart. Her little
heart was beating against my heart. I thanked Lord Radhamadhab… O Lord, you
have tied me up to this unknown little life by a bond of deep love and affection!
There were lots of procedures, questions and harassments which awaited
me from the next day morning onwards. But everything calmed down and subsided
within a month or so. The girl has grown up in my custody at this very tea
stall. Till today no one has come to me in search of her; neither anyone
claiming to become her foster mother, nor any of her relatives. I don’t know to
this day where her mother came from, or who her father was. But a very close bond
developed between the two of us in no time. Sir, don’t you think that Lord
Radhamadhab has been kind enough to shower me with His blessings?”
I had no answer to what Dhiren asked me. But as I observed Phooli very closely I was more than convinced
that she was a very sincere and gentle girl. She skillfully managed all the tasks
assigned to her at the tea stall with ease, and, in addition, she took very
good care of Dhiren, who was more than a father to her. In her eyes I found, deep love and care for
her father and for the little world around the humble tea stall.
2
I could not keep In touch with Dhiren and his daughter Phooli for long as I had been
transferred to another far off town from where they lived. On my return to the
place after a promotion in my job and almost a gap of five years, I found a lot
of changes had happened. With the passage of time every place undergoes a big
change; its population grows, development happens and accordingly the original
place seems unfamiliar. Development often changes the inherent character of a
place, both physical and moral.
Dhiren and his daughter had been totally blanked
out from my mind. They flashed back in my mind once again after I returned to
handle the new responsibilities of my job. One evening, as I was taking a stroll
by the river bank, I tried locating Dhiren’s tea stall. To my utter surprise, I
couldn’t trace it. Plenty of shops and stalls were vying for my attention, but
Dhiren’s tea stall had simply vanished into the blue. When I enquired about
Dhiren and Phooli, no one seemed to
have an answer. A tall
man who stood at the entrance of a stall selling lottery tickets looked
me in the eye suspiciously and asked me who I was and how I knew Dhiren and her
daughter and this and that…. I am a harmless person by nature, so I left the
place without replying to him. I went towards the burning-ghat that stood by
the northwest direction of the river. It had changed drastically; a newly built
temple of Goddess Kali with a staircase and a few other structures which
greeted me were completely new to me. I thought that Dhiren’s ramshackle tea stall
was not strong enough to withstand the test of time and the power of new age.
So, I returned with a heavy heart and forgot about Dhiren and Phooli altogether.
One day I skipped going to the office due to a minor bout cold and
fever and had stayed put at my rented house. When I was resting in bed in the
afternoon, a voice pleaded, ‘I beg for a few coins in the name of Lord
Radhamadhab; can you help me?’ This voice was very familiar to me; it was none
other than Dhiren’s. I ran to the balcony, and saw that Dhiren was waiting very
hesitantly at my doorstep on the ground floor.
I called out to him, saying, ‘You are Dhiren, right?’
He lifted his face and looked at me, I could not understand whether he had
recognized me or not.
‘Come into the house, I want to talk with you,’ I said as I ran
downstairs and asked, ‘Why you are standing outside, do come in. Don’t you
recognize me?’
‘Yes, Sir, yes I do,’ Dhiren
said.
‘Why are you begging in this way?
What happened to your tea stall? Where is your daughter, Phooli now? Do you know that I went to the riverbank in search of
your tea stall? No one could say
anything about you.’
Noticing my eagerness and curiosity, Dhiren smiled at me. But this
smile was not the one of the Dhiren I had known in those days. It was pale and gloomy.
Dhiren said, ‘It’s a long story, Sir. If you care to listen, I will
come again in the evening to tell the whole story.’
‘Well, you must come,’ I said eagerly.
I noticed his body language, it was that of a vanquished man. He turned
his back to me while going out of the doorway and said, ‘Will you not give me some
money, Sir?’
A few years ago, he was the owner of a tea stall. I was a bit annoyed with
his request, but I offered him ten rupees. In reply he said, ‘Thank you, in the
name of Lord Radhamadhab.’
3
‘You had gone in search of my tea stall, Sir? How did you find the
place? I haven’t gone there for a long time. The people out there threaten me
and beat me whenever I go there. Whenever I am there, I remember every single
incident that happened there,’ Dhiren said.
Dhiren continued, ‘Fear can make you feel helpless. You may not realize
it, but you become spineless. You may continue to do all the work as you did earlier,
but the tremor of fear will always echo in your heart. You can’t enjoy your
life, if you are in fear. A few people scared us by threatening us and I cowered
in their presence. They used to come to
our tea stall and I soon realized that Phooli
was their target of lust. They passed lewd comments at her, we ignored them
initially. Thereafter, they started groping her and uttered such obscenities
which I can’t repeat to you as her father. One day when I protested vehemently,
they abused us and told me that I had been pretending to be her father, but
actually I wanted to... I can’t utter those words to you, Sir. They took pleasure at our humiliations,
especially when they noticed our frightened faces. There were lot of customers
at the tea stall other than those beasts, but they remained silent as if they
had not heard or seen anything. From that day onwards, we started to live in
mortal fear, thinking that our days were numbered.
I had the impression that Mother Nature knew no mercy when it came to
destruction. But, I was utterly wrong, Sir. The havoc wreaked on man by man is
something that belittles the destruction by Mother Nature. Nature’s fury can destroy
houses and lives; but it never insults and humiliates you. But, a group of
beastly men can do that to you. That’s why nature’s fury can nowhere be
compared to the barbarous side of human perversion.
Then what we had feared for quite a few days finally happened on a
tragic night...
‘Holi’ had arrived announcing the arrival of spring in our small town. Every year, the festival is marked with increasing splendour as
people smear each other in colours of every hue and sprinkle each other with
coloured water
Everyone was enjoying the festival, while we had shut the shop earlier
than usual in the evening and remained confined to our room in fear. We had
finished our frugal dinner and also gone to bed earlier than usual. It was during the night; I can’t tell you the
exact time, five of those hooligans staggered into the room by breaking the
door open with crowbars. Every one of them was dead drunk. With a show of their
drunken lust, they lifted Phooli on
their shoulders to take her out of the room. I tried to protect her, but they thrashed
me mercilessly. It was a dreadful pounding; neither could I resist, nor could I
bear it for long and I lost consciousness.
When I came back to my senses again, everything around
me was calm and quiet. Sir, do you know my first thought after I came back to my
senses? I imagined that nothing had happened; it was a simple nightmare. Doesn’t
the mind of a destroyed man act in a peculiar way, Sir? Sitting on the floor,
observing the condition of the stall, I realized that it was not a nightmare at
all. Everything in the stall had been smashed to pieces and the whole place was
in a chaos. Where was Phooli? As soon
as the thought came to my mind, a chill shivered down my spine. My mind went blank
as I stood up ignoring the unbearable pain. At one corner of the tea stall, Phooli’s motionless body lay on two
benches put together. She had been lying totally unclothed with her legs
spread-eagled. An utterly unbearable sight for me; I quickly covered her with her
sari, held her close to my chest. Her heart was beating faintly; I felt her feeble
heartbeat close to my heart.
Dismantling the broken shutter of my shop, I came out in search of a vehicle
to shift Phooli to the hospital
immediately. It was the dead end of the night. There were several rickshaw vans
on the road, but the owners refused to carry us, noticing Phooli’s dreadful condition. Who would be willing to court trouble
now-a-days? At last, one of them agreed after I pleaded with him and he took
pity on me. When I moved Phooli to
the van, I couldn’t feel her pulse and then I noticed that both her hands were
broken. They were hanging on the sides, as if they didn’t belong to her!
The resident doctor on-duty and the nurses were fast asleep when Phooli was wheeled into the emergency
ward. They were groggy from sleep and were cursing us as we had rudely awakened
them from their slumber to attend to a victim. They felt her pulse and
announced her dead on arrival and advised me to wait for the doctors of the
morning shift to arrive who would guide me through the mandatory steps regarding
the case. I waited with Phooli’s dead
body. In the morning the doctors came.
They reported about the case to the local Police Station. Policemen reached the
hospital and recorded my statement after grilling me for more than three hours.
They took Phooli’s dead body for the
customary postmortem. After the postmortem, to get back the dead body of Phooli, I had to put my left thumb
impressions on so many documents; Oh God, the procedures are so complicated in
our country, right Sir? I cremated the body of Phooli at that burning-ghat and returned to my tea stall by the end
of the next night.
Thereafter, I had to visit the police station and attend the court
proceedings for hearings and the case dragged on for months, thus I started losing
most of my loyal customers who came to my tea stall but found that it was
closed most of the time. I passed the days in idle thoughts. It seemed often
that I heard the voice of Phooli
saying, “Father, here’s the money for four cups of tea.” I had lost my mental
balance for some time. Around that time,
those five culprits came to my stall one evening; they abused me, threatened
and beat me mercilessly once again. They said that if I ever disclosed their
names to the police, they would make sure that I am a dead man. On that very
evening I left the tea stall with a few ragged clothes and the money I had saved
with me at that time. I left the stall just the way it was.
I took shelter on one side of the railway station and started begging after
the money I had saved got exhausted. Now I am fine, Sir. I eat something if I
get alms, if I don’t get much, then I just starve for the day. Barely a few months ago while I was having
food at a roadside eatery, I watched the news on TV. A rally had been organized
by hundreds of gentlemen from the nearby town; it was a candlelight protest
march in tribute to a victim of gang-rape. From that day onwards, I buy one or
two candles by saving a part of the alms which I get. I light at least one
candle every night near my head before I go to sleep. I stare at the flame of
the candle. The flame looks exactly like my Phooli,
Sir; timid and helpless as the flame trembles in the breeze and shows signs of
getting extinguished by the wind. My
Phooli was also a victim of gang-rape and was killed by those beasts, wasn’t
Sir?
Lowering his head, Dhiren sat there silently for a while. He had lot of
queries, but he didn’t bother for the answers. Frankly speaking, what could I say
in reply to his questions? So far, no one was there to listen to him; he had
everything bottled up in his mind. After
narrating his woeful tale to me, he felt unburdened. He didn’t expect anything
from me, because he knew that I was a city-bred gentleman. He had been totally
dependent on Lord Radhamadhab throughout his life, but today he didn’t mention the
name even once. Today he chants the name of Lord Radhamadhab only when he begs
for alms! So, I how could I console him, when he himself has lost confidence on
Lord Radhamadhab? I, too remained seated lowering my head.
‘Goodbye,
Sir, it is getting late for you. But may I say something, Sir, before I leave
tonight?’ Asked Dhiren.
‘Yes,
certainly,’ I replied.
He
dug his hand into the bag hanging on his shoulders and took out a candle and said,
‘Sir, I bought one candle from the money you had given me in the morning. Will
you let me light this candle here? Phooli
may attain some peace of mind as she used to respect you a lot, Sir.’
I
let him have his way. Dhiren lit the candle and set it on the table close to my
bed and switched off all the other electric lights in the room.
‘Good night, Sir! Please allow me to leave,’ whispered
Dhiren.
Dhiren
walked out of the room but I remained seated in my candlelit drawing room basking
in its glory for quite some time. It was a night of silent candlelight protest
to me.
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