FS: Book 1 – Chapter 1
Year 1923. In the forgotten distant village of Bengal called Panchra, the 9 year old girl was busy trying to build a little boat with a piece of paper she tore off her father’s notebook. Her parents had named her ‘Kalo’ (meaning black) when she was born, and the reason was obvious. She was born with the darkest complexion among all the siblings. Kalo was the 5th child of the 12 kids her parents had, and the eldest among the daughters. Her father was a well-to-do peasant, a hard-working and family-oriented man of 45 (approximately). Her mother was a good wife, and a loving mother. When she arranged lunch for the children, she got out a huge plate the size of a table almost, and served food for all 12 in that plate. Food was simple – rice, fish, and cooked vegetables. The children never complained. They were happy to sit around the plate together in a circle and gobble off steaming food that hardly had a variation in taste.
Kalo never lacked playmates all day. She liked making little mud toys, her tongue sticking out from the corner of her mouth in concentration. Sometimes she would pretend to cook with dry leaves and dirt, and serve it to her siblings who were younger to her and looked up to her with admiration. Kalo would run to the acres of rice fields and collect fresh water shrimps in the cotton towel she carried with her, or sneak into the garden to pick up mangoes that fell off the trees. Her little saree often served as a bag for carrying home all her collections of the day. Water lilies attracted her in particular. And then there were tiny molluscs to collect in coconut leaves that had got stuck to the leaf falling in the pond from the previous day. The pond, the rice fields, the mango gardens – everything was owned by Kalo’s father, and naturally gave her an unrestricted access. Back at home there was a cow shed and a farm for ducks and hens, behind which patches of land where different vegetables grew. Kalo often helped her mother to milk the cow, and weed the flower bed.
One summer morning, when Kalo was splashing in the pond watching intently how the water she was spraying out of her mouth made a huge curve above her head before falling on the water surface, her khurima (paternal uncle’s wife) came running to the edge of the pond. ‘Kalo where have you been? Your father is looking for you for so long. Run along!’, she panted clutching her stomach. Kalo swam ashore and began running back home barefooted. She was dripping all over, but she was more concerned and scared of making her father angry. Her father and mother were waiting at the door for her. ‘Is this the time to play?’, her father growled. ‘We have found a groom for you Kalo, you have to learn a lot before your wedding’, her mother added coldly.
Kalo did not have much idea about what a wedding or marriage was. Except that she knew it would mean she would have to wear a red saree, there would be a special (rather like a lament) music playing, people from near and far would come to eat at their house, and then she would be sent into exile to an unknown land from where she would never return. Isn’t that what had happened to Nila, and Mona, and Puti? She didn’t think they did anything wrong, but they were punished nevertheless. And now it was her turn. She would lose all her friends. She would not be allowed to play anymore. She would be separated from her brothers and sisters and mother and father. Her eyes filled with tears but that didn’t melt anyone’s heart.
The next few days flew by in a blur. Before she could realize, Kalo was getting married to Jogen – a handsome man of 27. Jogen was a resident of the village Nabaghat, the 2nd son of the village proprietor Anadi Rai. This was his second marriage. His previous wife had died of Tuberculosis a year and half back, leaving behind a one year old son. Jogen was a decent man, sincere, reserved and mature. He owned a grocery shop, the only big one in the whole village. He sat there all morning, and later he went to the temple across his shop and spent the rest of his evening there.
It was a scary world for Kalo when she entered her in-laws place for the first time. The house was huge, entirely made of mud bricks. Her husband was a private man. He hardly conversed with Kalo, and mostly depended on her mother-in-law to look after her. Kalo was treated with kindness by her mother-in-law but even she seemed to be a woman of few words. Every night before she went to sleep beside her mother-in-law, she saw the stranger she got married to walk into his room in silence for dinner and sleep. And early in the morning she saw him again, getting ready to go to his shop with food for the day packed by his mother. Once or twice he had told Kalo things like ‘Make yourself comfortable here’ and ‘If you feel hungry ask mother to make you something’. But that was all. He didn’t wait for her answer, she didn’t give any. Mostly she nodded obediently, or slid behind her mother-in-law cautiously.
One evening when her mother-in-law was stitching a mat with a number of colorful threads, and Kalo was staring curiously at the artwork, her hands fidgeting with the corner of her saree; Jogen’s mother asked her ‘Are you happy Kalo?’. Kalo stared dumbly, not knowing what to say. She mouthed a ‘yes’ after a while. Perhaps her mother-in-law understood her feelings more than Kalo. She decided to share some history of Kalo’s husband, to help her understand more about the man she was supposedly living with. As the story progressed, Kalo’s eyes bulged in wonder and fear. She moved closer to her mother-in-law and began to imagine the stories come alive in the dim light of hurricane placed in front.
Three years back, so goes the story, Jogen had encountered an exceptional incident that changed his life forever. In a dream on a winter night, Jogen saw the fierce and dark Goddess Kalika appear. She had instructed Jogen to find her stone deity from the village cemetery and worship it every day of the year. No matter how unrealistic that sounded, Jogen knew he would follow the instructions he got in his dream. He confided the dream to his mother and his best friend Balai. Jogen’s mother, a religious lady through and through, believed in the dream but was scared for him. Balai believed in his friend, and agreed to accompany him to the cemetery and help him find the deity. The village cemetery was at the end of the village. Long back a grave famine had killed hundreds of people in Nabaghat. Hindus and Muslims were buried together back then. There was an associated burning ghat, but there were not many people left to carry out the burning rites of all the dead. People still believed the place was haunted. Legend says even this day inhuman cries can often be heard there on new moon nights.
Jogen and Balai had walked to the cemetery that day and built up a camp to last them till the work was finished. They got hold of three more labors to help them dig the grounds. The digging had began that very day. When the other villagers hear about Jogen, they tried to convince Jogen’s mother to discourage the boy from digging. ‘It is just a dream, it cannot be true’. ‘He will die in that place, it is full of unsatisfied dark spirits’. ‘That is a forbidden place, he is disturbing the ghosts of past who got unfinished business’. ‘For him we will all suffer now, the famine will resurface’. On and on they went, and Jogen’s mother simply cried and prayed to the Almighty. She knew she had no power to stop her son once he decided to do something.
For Jogen and others, it hadn’t been easy either. The place was indeed beyond human help. There was no residence in the vicinity. Thick forest surrounded the cemetery. Often at nights they would hear cries of foxes, and hyenas laughing. On one of the new moon nights they had spotted a man-eater. It was not a regular tiger, but way bigger and wilder than a regular cat. They had made a fire that day, lit up wooden logs and used their spades to drive away the beast. The beast had come for food and wasn’t leaving without any. It took them quite a fight before they succeeded in hurting it and scaring it back to the forest. It was an experience that would make Jogen shiver even years later.
They dug up the whole cemetery ground bit by bit over the days. There was a time they were hopeless about finding any deity at all. Nights were the worst. It was damp and cold inside the camp. And every minute they heard the slightest sound they mentally prepared themselves to be attacked by some wild animal. By the end of the first month of their digging, other villagers started coming to see what they were up to. They were still full of disbelief and thought Jogen went crazy. But they talked about it more, partly expecting some kind of miracle to happen in Nabaghat (where nothing ever happens).
After nearly two months from the time they started digging, one morning Jogen’s spade hit a hard rock. He hit it again but the rock did not break. However some of the mud around it flew, and Jogen could see it was a black rock shaped into something. He threw aside the spade, flopped on the ground and started to remove more mud from there with his hands. Balai and the labours had joined him by then. A 10 inches tall dark stone deity of Goddess Suryaleswari Kalika was discovered from the cemetery that day. The whole village had witnessed the miracle.
