Ratna Bharali Talukdar
Nonke-Khagrabari was awake in our consciousness.
Travelling to Nonke-Khagrabari was like a dream. Everybody wished to go to Nonke-Khagrabari... waited in the room where the inner line permit was to be issued. People were sort of advised against going to Nonke-Khagrabari, apprehending that the huge gathering of people will confuse everyone there. And the permit, too, could be availed only after several days of wait. All those whom we had diffidently asked if we had lost our way, spoke in one voice – ‘No, you haven’t, you’re right on track; go by the river bank, to the right of the thicket, walk down the embankment, beside the reeds charred to ashes, in the dry sands left behind by the dead stream. That’s where is Nonke-Khagrabari ..... Go ahead girl, don’t be afraid.’
Many a truth moved around at Nonke-Khagrabari holding hand in hand. The appearance of that truth was extremely cluttered, awfully fragmented and grotesque. Sometimes we felt, truth itself lost its way at Nonke-Khagrabari. And when truth itself has lost direction, wouldn’t those who come to Nonke-Khagrabari be perplexed, too? That was what had happened in reality. At Nonke-Khagrabari, one truth was placed on another and the present form of truth camouflaged the previous one. Like the way those gigantic excavators carried off sand to pile up a new layer on the river mound, and the present layer buried the earlier state of the river sand. The past truth could not lay its real appearance bare, no matter how painstakingly hard it tried. Even the new layer of sand that was carried off by the excavator and stacked up on the river bank, was covered and rows and rows of tents were set up on it. It was as if the people who donated those tents and the uniform-clad volunteers that they supplied to set them up, the things they apparently said at Nonke-Khagrabari, or the stuff that had to be told, and the donated tents – all became prominent as the residue of all the truths put together.
To us, Nonke-Khagrabari looked all decked up. From afar, the small blue tents of Nonke-Khagrabari looked like little hillocks. At Nonke-Khagrabari, smoke of hot rice billowed from under the tents. The mouths of newly installed tubewells were yet to become smooth. The latrines, built with rows of plastic tarpaulin, were at the corners of the tents. The latrines were still new, so no foul smell emanated from there. Donated relief materials and clothes lay in huge heaps at Nonke-Khagrabari. Even foreign fruits were sent in there. Carbine-wielding jawans in plaid fatigue patrolled in a line at Nonke-Khagrabari, with their boots making the characteristic sounds. The erect barrels of their carbines spoke the language of security. The doctors at Nonke-Khagrabari kept pace with the time on their watches while supervising the camps, even as the Anganwadi workers gave them updates on the pregnant and lactating mothers.
At Nonke-Khagrabari, the heavily pregnant women were taken to hospital in 108 ambulances in an elaborate arrangement. Right in front of Nonke-Khagrabari stood a mobile medical van – where even surgery could be conducted. As their own clothes had been reduced to ashes, the dresses they were now seen wearing were all new. One could even hear the rustling sounds made by the starch-washed clothes worn by the people moving around at Nonke-Khagrabari. The children were moving restlessly, like fidgety spiders on swamp water. Hot rice was served on new, clean steel plates at Nonke-Khagrabari. Those who had just arrived at Nonke-Khagrabari, said in appreciation: So beautiful, so neat; this Nonke-Khagrabari is beyond our imagination, wonderful! .... What’s lacking at Nonke-Khagrabari? ............. It was extended up to the distance the eyes could see, the limit to which the world of consciousness was stretched. They readied their notebooks, still or movie cameras, laptops or i-pads.
At Nonke-Khagrabari, illusory narrations clouded the inner vision; piercing through the elaboration, if one listened carefully by opening the inner eye, a shrill heartrending tune came floating from under the bustling tents. That is where those who lived under the tents were slithering. It felt as if the real truth escaped many fragmented, disjointed and ruthless events and rested against their dirty bodies. They lived under the tents at Nonke-Khagrabari like rats.
Stillness marked their hardened facial expressions ... Their fear to speak far exceeded their fear to cry. They froze like blocks of ice in a bag of fish. The salt of their eyes were soaked up by the sand – like it soaked the blood of Nonke-Khagrabari. ............ Did the steam of hot rice rush through their veins, or a few bullets of the killing machine... nobody dared to pose these questions to them at Nonke-Khagrabari.
Right. The river turned red at Nonke-Khagrabari. As if the river was spread from blood to blood, from blood to blood existed its stream, or a dried-up stream it left behind. The strong currents of that blood-red river, whose name was Nonke-Khagrabari, flowed through the conscious and the subconscious mind. It came along the bloody route, devoured the brains and the ability to feel. The things uttered by all who came down and reached Nonke-Khagrabari, or the stuff they had to speak of, were about blood or related stuff. The surge of bloodstream flowed into the conversations like strong currents of a river in spate. The people of Nonke-Khagrabari turned blood-red in rage, and in grief they instantly turned morose like clots of dying blood. Those who cannot travel to Nonke-Khagrabari, or those who do not wish to come to that place, would find it hard to believe that even the roadside grass died under the streams of saline blood. ........ Rains hadn’t bathed Nonke-Khagrabari for days together. For days no tree of Nonke-Khagrabari had borne any fruit. The barbet hadn’t cried out. The springtime flowers too had not blossomed. And Nonke-Khagrabari was alive in the midst of this extreme crisis. Nonke-Khagrabari was staying alive through the undercurrents of a flowing, abstract Saraswati. Nonke-Khagrabari was alive in their consciousness. As if they started collecting life-giving food and water in that place. This was what Nonke-Khagrabari was like. The Nonke-Khagrabari that everyone was anxious to come to and have a feel of it.
They said – Nonke-Khagrabari was the cruellest killing field of humanity. A place where fully developed babies from pregnant mothers’ wombs were torn apart and flung away, their tender flower-like hearts were pulled out – that’s what Nonke-Khagrabari was. Or, could there be anything crueller than that? Nonke-Khagrabari was the cruellest name for terror and suffering. It looked like they were not lying. Others whispered – ‘This is a blatant lie. A travesty of truth. There has been no instance of such incidents, even when Nonke-Khagrabari had been razed to ashes. No such instance at all. They had some vested interest in importing this bizarre narrative...’ It felt as if they too were not lying. At Nonke-Khagrabari, everyone spoke of everything with equal conviction.
Those who were still alive at Nonke-Khagrabari smelt foul like rotten blood. Those who had already perished and whose badly decomposed, inflated bodies came floating on the river like crocodiles after several days, were, however, not stinking like blood. They turned black as the blood died out. The living ones, whose bodies stank like dead blood, rushed to identify them as their kin – this one is his body, that one is hers and those are the children. Ah-ah! .... Even the children were not spared. The poor things jumped into the river in great panic while fleeing the gunmen’s weapons. They might have even forgotten to move their arms and legs in fear, despite knowing how to swim. Yes, yes. This might as well have happened ... the ones who had just arrived at Nonke-Khagrabari speculated in this way. Night time conversation. Alas, whosoever had the time to enquire about who lost their lives at Nonke-Khagrabari, and how? The moon died at Nonke-Khagrabari that night. It was hiding in the pitch dark emptiness. On the night of the dying moon, they ran for their lives under whatever little light they got from the tiny stars, glow worms and the bullets fired from the gunmen’s arms. While running they reached the river and must have jumped into it. Yes, yes, they must’ve died like this.
This is how they all speculated.
As the bodies remained in water for days at Nonke-Khagrabari, they swelled up like crocodiles. As if a little poke would make a lump of flesh fall off the body! When mounted ashore, their bodies smelt like rotten fish in scorching sun. With their faces covered with cloths, they flung the bodies into the security van in order to be marked as dead. The village, deserted by those escaping the bullets, lit up in flames and was soon reduced to ashes. Charred to ashes were the cattle tied to the cowshed, the goats inside the bamboo enclosure. The stench of the charred livestock got mixed with that of the burnt bodies and it hung in the air for days at Nonke-Khagrabari.
They discussed how important it was for the ones that were still alive to tag the bodies as dead at Nonke-Khagrabari. Look, they said, some families at Nonke-Khagrabari had lost as many as three members. It’s tragic, indeed. But, the state and the Central governments have talked about offering at least three and a half lakh rupees separately to the kin of every deceased person, after post-mortem is conducted and the bodies tagged as dead. Leave alone the compensation against the destroyed houses, or the relief materials donated for the victims. In the ethnic riots at least one person from each family has died! Think of the total amount of money. Nonke-Khagrabari would be rich. Flush with money would be the people of Nonke-Khagrabari. They burst into laughter. Their eyes lit up. Looking around like thieves they said very carefully – We ourselves have heard how the families of the dying bullet-ridden victims prayed to Allah to snuff out the victims’ lives.
It felt as if they were not speaking, they were rather releasing poisonous gas into the restive pores of excitement, stifling the gloomy air of Nonke-Khagrabari. Shut up, please shut up. Another cried out plugging his ears. What good would such things do to Nonke-Khagrabari? I have trod many a Nonke-Khagrabari in my life, but none has one become flush with money. Rather, some parents had to sell even their daughters away for a night, to eke out a meal. And so many other terrible happenings .......
He blurted out in the face of the one who spoke before him.
It was difficult to ascertain which speech made by these people was more powerful, going by the gloomy environment at Nonke-Khagrabari. When the second speaker burst out, the image of the young widow Meherun Nessa came to his mind. After the river had eaten away her house and land on the Alopati char, Meherun Nessa became the third begum of Samaad Ali of Nonke-Khagrabari. When she arrived at his house, she saw the children of the man old enough to be her uncle. In a house that was teeming with the children of the first two begums, Meherun Nessa lived like a thorn in their flesh. After fathering three children with Meherun Nessa, one day Samaad Ali too passed away. Ali’s 13-bigha land was divided among the eight children of his first two begums. And living as an outcast, she struggled to survive with her three little children. During the ethnic clash of Nonke-Khagrabari, two of her minor sons jumped into the river while trying to escape the bullets. Clutching her third child on to her chest, she, too, jumped into the river and while she was trying to swim with one hand, the toddler slipped out of the other hand and drowned in the water. Meherun Nessa lost consciousness after that. She was found by people the following day, lying unconscious on the sands of the river bank, without a shred of clothes. Someone covered her naked body with his own lungi and carried her off to a tent. During the past few days, one by one, the lifeless bodies of her three children surfaced in the water like crocodiles. After post-mortem, their names were included in the list of the dead. Following the loss of her children, the talk of how much ex gratia would Meherun Nessa get from the government hung in the air of Nonke-Khagrabari. By this time, the children of Samaad Ali’s first two wives too arrived in the scene and acted as if they wanted to protect her. They identified the children’s bodies and had to speak on Meherun Nessa’s behalf. Under the blue tent, widow Meherun Nessa almost forgot how to cry and kept losing her consciousness frequently.
A seasoned lawyer too came to Nonke-Khagrabari. From the judicial arena, he wanted to shift to the world of politics. While coming towards Nonke-Khagrabari, he had randomly heard of 10-year-old Rubeya Khatun. The wise lawyer had thought that at Nonke-Khagrabari itself, he would announce his decision to take up the responsibility of Rubeya’s education. If he could publicise his decision through news media on bearing the educational cost of a little brave girl of the riot-ravaged Nonke-Khagrabari, his road towards the political arena would be fairly smooth. It was an exciting thought for the veteran advocate and as soon as he arrived at Nonke-Khagrabari, he yelled out: ‘Where is little Rubeya? Take me to her please!’ He was then taken to Rubeya. At that time, Rubeya was telling a gathering of people carrying a movie camera, as to how she had heard the onrushing rat-a-tat sounds as soon as she had finished her night’s meal. How she had witnessed panic-stricken people of the village running helter-skelter. How she too had decided to run and jumped into the river. She went on recalling how bullets had been fired into the river, too, brightening up the waters. How she had made random dips into the water and kept on swimming, and slept in the sand when she finally reached the river bank....... “Someone brought me here. Here everyone has given me food to eat, clothes to wear. Here I have got biscuits, too. It’s good to be here. But my younger brother and father were shot dead. My mother and I have survived.” Little Rubeya went on saying all this in an organized way. There was not a single drop of tear in her eyes. The prudent advocate was now repenting, watching her innocent flower-like face. .... ‘I’ve made a mistake. I have erred somewhere. This decision of mine, to enter politics piggybacking little Rubeya, who saved her life in the middle of gunfight by jumping into the river, under the faint low of stars,’ he told himself. Through the eyes of Rubeya, the image of a new Nonke-Khagrabari came to his mind. He changed his decision. He indeed took the responsibility of Rubeya’s education. But nobody had any inkling of it, barring Rubeya’s ammijan. The wise lawyer later fought a successful legal battle in the court on the issue of human rights violations at Nonke-Khagrabari.
From the day these incidents happened at Nonke-Khagrabari, Nonke-Khagrabari made inroads into every household. Its essence spread from the furniture to the cooking bowl in the kitchen. A Nonke-Khagrabari seeped into the impermeable capital of food, sleep and lovemaking. The newspapers turned into Nonke-Khagrabari; the magazines turned into Nonke-Khagrabari. The television screens became Nonke-Khagrabari. The computer screens, individual blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the websites too turned into Nonke-Khagrabari. Even new blogs and websites were opened in the name of Nonke-Khagrabari. The followers filled up pages of social networking sites with the outpouring of anguish. Nonke-Khagrabari became so aggressive, so powerful that the elders changed the TV channels fearing it might have a psychological impact on the juniors. For the children’s entertainment they uploaded online games in the computers. But this couldn’t erase the memories of Nonke-Khagrabari from their minds. Nonke-Khagrabari came floating the moment they closed their eyes. Journalists were exhausted reporting on the flowing bloodstreams, crushed flesh and the rows of dead bodies laid on the river bank, and Nonke-Khagrabari gripped their minds in such a way that they stopped eating and lost consciousness on the road talking about Nonke-Khagrabari alone. And when they regained their senses, they started howling like hysterical patients on the way ... “I’ll go insane, I’ll lose my mind after seeing this situation of Nonke-Khagrabari!... Spare me, for Allah’s sake, by the grace of God!” The police took them away as eyewitnesses to all these incidents at Nonke-Khagrabari. “How come you’ve got information of things that we ourselves haven’t got any clue about?” – in this way, the police subjected them to mental torture with indiscriminate questioning. Finally they had to be sent for psychiatric treatment and there too, they flung their arms and legs and cried out in barely audible voices: “Nonke-Khagrabari! Nonke-Khagrabari!” Some people mistook their cries as a hymn, some others as zindabad. Many of them became schizophrenic. A Nonke-Khagrabari stayed imprinted in their brains. They walked around in that Nonke-Khagrabari.
This was what was Nonke-Khagrabari. Nonke-Khagrabari was spread from the solitariness to the solitariness. From the deserted to the deserted loomed its shadow. Everyone said – ‘To hell with this agonizing Nonke-Khagrabari. It should be destroyed completely. This barren, infertile Nonke-Khagrabari should be finished.’ Only the proprietors of media houses were praying to God – ‘A-ha, long live! Long live Nonke-Khagrabari. Long live this place, rising from the graves of the dead, fire and devastation.’
The poets and the writers too arrived at the scene. They went there desperately looking for some literary inspiration to describe Nonke-Khagrabari in pristine vocabulary. And so generous was Nonke-Khagrabari that a poetic composition, a theme for a story, or a base for a novel fell into their hands like the glow of a simple prayer, coming through the fog looming over the deluge of darkness. They discovered Nonke-Khagrabari anew. Their hearts were filled. The research students came to drill the soil of Nonke-Khagrabari for new studies. Nonke-Khagrabari is terrorism, oppression or repression? – lost in amazement, they asked this to Nonke-Khagrabari itself.
Busloads of people came in a procession to Nonke-Khagrabari. The roads and lanes of Nonke-Khagrabari, its grass and trees, swamps and rivers, which had never seen so many people together, trembled in fear. The people, whose dirty backs the truth leaned against, were pulled out of rat holes and brought to the meeting ground. They were pulled out from under the blue tents, down whose throats the smoking hot rice didn’t want to slip through because the smell of their charred kin clamped their gullets. When the visitors came to Nonke-Khagrabari in a procession in buses decked up with flags and festoons, carried loads of donated relief materials to shout at the top of their voices via loudspeakers at Nonke-Khagrabari, declared to launch jihad to fight for their rights, and roared about taking up arms to launch a revolution if necessary – those inside rat holes shuddered in confusion. Do these people want to see the birth pangs of another Nonke-Khagrabari – those languishing in rat holes wondered. As the actual truth resided in them, they knew that Nonke-Khagrabari was in fact the cruel outcome of such a futile armed revolution.......they murmured among themselves – what’s point in instigating the weakened lot?
You keep quiet! You won’t understand how painful it is to be born in a country as a minority community? – one thundered in indignation. A new Nonke-Khagrabari had a clash, a psychological conflict, with the older one. In the conscience of the old Nonke-Khagrabari, living life was all that it had summed up – country, minority or jihad were ideas alien to it. True, many a truth moved around at Nonke-Khagrabari holding hand in hand, and Nonke-Khagrabari tried to stand up and be in control in the midst of all this.
Everyone saw Nonke-Khagrabari. Yet no one saw its complete appearance. Someone wanted to see it in the form of an assassin. Someone else came to visit it as a place of pilgrimage of humanity. Someone else realised, after arriving at Nonke-Khagrabari, that it was nothing but an impregnable burial place; because their nostrils were blocked by the smoke emanating from the gun barrels, by the smell of charred people and animals. Others found it to be a heaven of absolute freedom, and began to dream of breaking free. The custodians of peace dreamt of getting promotion at workplace taking the credit of rebuilding Nonke-Khagrabari. They saw Nonke-Khagrabari in whichever form they wanted to see it. And Nonke-Khagrabari appeared before them in that form itself. A surreal Nonke-Khagrabari revealed itself, glowing in sunrays, from the miasma to the reality, and a real shape of Nonke-Khagrabari became abstract and moved from reality into the veil of obscurity.
In the middle of all this, the fragmented, disjointed shape of Nonke-Khagrabari and its hidden shadowy greenroom seemed to keep everyone’s at their wit’s end. They said a lot of stuff. They said, the colour of blood is red and that’s the identity of blood. But at Nonke-Khagrabari, blood donned a dreadful identity – blood turned a killer. Of course, someone also said that it was the blood of Muslims. But is it a new thing – they themselves asked. Not too long ago – on the other bank of the same river were seen the blood of the others – the Bodos and the Adivasis. Like this river, another river that flowed into the Brahmaputra once ushered in the blood of the Garos and the Rabhas. A hill river, overcoming many a gorge and rocky ravine, brought the blood of the Karbis, Kukis, Mhars and Dimasas. The clotted blood of their community forefathers, foremothers and ancient totem came floating with the dead bodies. That blood turned the river red – they said.
Only those who knew these things about blood had the courage to come to Nonke-Khagrabari. They came to Nonke-Khagrabari as if they were intoxicated. Nonke-Khagrabari attracted them to its soil. Only those who had the task of revealing the identity of blood were feared by everyone. Like a glassful of sweetened refreshing drink, they tested blood with their tongues, felt its taste – because they said only the taste varies from blood to blood; the colour, smell and touch are all similar! Those who just arrived at Nonke-Khagrabari, they forgot to eat and drink while narrating all this in anger and grief. They assumed that Nonke-Khagrabari has become one with the history of all these bloods, has merged into it. Nonke-Khagrabari has no other existence. Someone from among them wanted to say – who knows, maybe a Nonke-Khagrabari lay buried even in the capes of ancient rivers like Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Sutlej, Irawati, Nile and our own Brahmaputra. They knew, these were all words of consolation. But did they really know, that Nonke-Khagrabari herself might have acquired an aura through such feelings?
Every voice became an echo at Nonke-Khagrabari. Every voice hung in the sky of Nonke-Khagrabari. In the air of Nonke-Khagrabari. Floated on its water-borne leaves. Like the shrill cry of a cicada on a tranquil afternoon, it went into the womb as an excruciating tune. In the multi-layered empire of countless holes of light and darkness, it built the nests of weaver birds.
This was Nonke-Khagrabari. The non-cadastral Nonke-Khagrabari. The non-surveyed Khagrabari village. The ethnic riot-ravaged Nonke-Khagrabari relief camp of Basbari. Everyone was anxious to come here. They had to get down from car at the riverside. They walked from there, crossed a stream or two by small boats, walked again by breaking the thicket, and went by the side of growing reeds before arriving at Nonke-Khagrabari. They came in a team or individually. Even at that time, the rows of blue tents, pale and darkened due to exposure to sun and rain, looked like small hillocks in the sunlight. Those who were moving around looked like a line of ants. Now, their clothes no longer made the rustling sound as they walked. The smoke of hot rice did not annoy them anymore, because now people at Nonke-Khagrabari quarrelled even for cold, hardened rice. The doctors at the Nonke-Khagrabari relief camps were bored by the monotony. They went back to the cities. The women, who had the privilege of giving birth inside 108 ambulances, went on recalling the days like fragrant childhood tales. As soon as the hustle-bustle subsided, the security scene was reviewed and those wielding loaded carbines and wearing plaid uniforms, the ones who spoke the language of security, were shifted from Nonke-Khagrabari. The latrines, having been used for a while at Nonke-Khagrabari, were now stinking. During summer, blood dysentery assumed a deadly proportion and began to devour Nonke-Khagrabari. People were dying of blood dysentery and malaria, like they did due to bullets. Even a handcart became a priceless commodity for carrying off patients. No chaste jihad had touched Nonke-Khagrabari, contrary to what the others had declared. Those who had said that the riot-hit people of Nonke-Khagrabari would one day be flooded with money, launched various projects the moment they came out of Nonke-Khagrabari and managed to get foreign funding, and then, at seminars in the country and abroad, they delivered impassioned speeches on Nonke-Khagrabari, inducing a river of tears. By the same river came floating a shiny golden ship. Now, they themselves got flooded with money. And at Nonke-Khagrabari, everything returned to normal once again.
Nonke-Khagrabari was now enveloped by the darkness of a moonless night ...... Nonke-Khagrabari was staying alive in this way, like a poignant feeling of our history’s long journey. From a pallid page of the geography book, Nonke-Khagrabari came up to history’s fertile stream of consciousness.
That is why we are saying that travelling to Nonke-Khagrabari was like a dream. Everybody wished to come to Nonke-Khagrabari. Those who reached Nonke-Khagrabari after hours of walking, crossing the river and treading the dry sand of the dead stream, all of them realised their own inferiority in the face of the endless wretchedness of Nonke-Khagrabari. They all hoped, let this be the last Nonke-Khagrabari. Let not another Nonke-Khagrabari be born. Although Nonke-Khagrabari hadn’t been drenched in rain for days together, for days no tree had borne any fruit, or the barbet hadn’t let out a shrill cry – they still nurtured this hope. No matter how small the ability may be, hope too has some worth – they thought. Hope contains water, clouds form, and fall down as alluvial rain – they said.
Before the eyes of everybody, a Nonke-Khagrabari attained enormous proportions and trudged along towards the limitless horizon. It seemed as if they were rendered shrunken and frail by this sheer magnitude of Nonke-Khagrabari.
(Dedicated to all victims of endless ethnic clashes and communal clashes in Assam )
Published in 2014
Translated from Assamese by Debashish Bezbaruah)
Published in 2014
Translated from Assamese by Debashish Bezbaruah)
