Book Excerpt: A Crowd Gathered At Doyal’s House

Of course, no such gathering was supposed to take place at his house at this time. And why only today? No gathering was ever supposed to take place at Doyal Rajbongshi’s homestead. All the occasions on which people thronged anyone’s residence, like the rites and ceremonies associated with births, deaths, weddings, annaprasan ceremonies, religious and other events—it was not that all those were never held in this household; after all, some came about naturally, some rites and ceremonies had also to be undertaken for practical reasons, but these had neither grandeur nor any charm. Whether it was a birth or a death or some rite or ceremony – all were simply an obligation. A religious obligation. A scriptural obligation. After all, if one had to receive God’s mercy, all these duties ought to be performed. So where was the need for a crowd in any of that?  

Other than Doyal’s wife, Kalyani, and his three-headed, arthritic, elderly father, Sanatan Rajbongshi, no one else felt obliged in regard to any of these.  
But God had no mercy for Doyal, which was why none of his wife’s offspring survived. After her marriage, Kalyani delivered three baby boys in seven years. While two died in the labour room itself, Number Three learned to walk a bit late, and Kalyani walked four miles with her son in her arms to offer puja at the old Kali temple. The next day, while she was plastering the courtyard with mud, by the grace of Ma Kali, her two-year-old toddler, who had just learned to walk, scurried down into the ditch behind their house. When Kalyani finished the plastering, she went to the ditch with a bucket smeared with cow dung, picked her dead son up from the ditch, and then collapsed on the freshly plastered courtyard.     

It seemed that a few years later the same son again began to assert himself inside Kalyani’s womb. Stroking her belly and clutching her stony God’s feet in her mind, she implored, O Doyal, O Merciful, grant me a daughter this time, a wretched daughter. I’ll name her Wretch. Don’t ever look at her, O Doyal.  

And the Doyal at home felt her belly and declared, A boy, you’re going to deliver a boy this time too! Can’t you see your belly? It’s pointy like a hornet’s nest! Do you see any difference?   
Kalyani ran her hand over her belly and examined it. She thought, no, her belly felt rather squishy this time. Slightly different. She said that to Doyal too.     

But it seemed that Doyal wasn’t pleased at all with that. As if having sons who died in childbirth was better. Where on earth was the need to live on if it were a girl?     
So he replied somewhat impassively, So be it, boy-girl whatever may come, may God grant them a long life. And I tell you, don’t stomp around like that. Be careful. 
Stomp around! Could the household run at all unless Kalyani did the chores? 

Still, she was careful. She counted her steps while descending the stairs leading to the pond. Using mud, she sealed off the hole on the ground below the dheki, or paddy husker. There was no need to work the dheki now. 

Lokha the ox was growing heftier by the day, and try as he might, like a silly little boy, to affectionately approach Kalyani to lick her, she did not let him come near. She flung the fodder mixed with water from the bucket into the trough from afar. Snorting pshht, pshht, Lokha lowered his mouth into the feeding trough. Then raising his head, he stubbornly shook his head vigorously and splashed water all around like a breaching whale. 

Kalyani smirked and exclaimed, See how angry my boy is, you silly child, have you lost your senses? If I come near you, you’ll gore me in the belly while trying to lick me. And that’ll be the end of me. 

But Lokha’s obstinacy did not wane. Eventually, Kalyani had to pat his face and back. This sent a shimmering shiver across his henna-hued skin. And his eyes, like a woman’s, turned jet black and seemed to liquefy!     

So what if Lokha was mute? He had a pair of kohl-lined eyes, and the moment one saw them it seemed Kalyani had applied on them too the same kohl that she had extracted on the tip of a banana from the fire lit on a wick twirled in mustard oil, and applied to her sons’ eyes after they were born.  
Lokha had been with Doyal’s household for four years. When Haradhon Mistri had sold his forefather’s homestead to Abbas Shikder for next to nothing and left for India, he donated his three-month-old calf to Doyal. He had said, Dear Doyal, I couldn’t keep our ancestral homestead, but I’m leaving Lokha behind. Your wife’s boys don’t survive. Tell her to raise Lokha as her son.

We’ll live in your memory through him. Who knows what Lokha surmised? On that very first day, he had nuzzled close to Kalyani’s belly and snorted.  

And over these last four years, it was observed that although Kalyani sometimes went through agonies of grief over her dead sons, she nonetheless sailed through life in Lokha’s company.  
Doyal routinely mended his net, added bamboo strips to the chnai fish trap, and using a metal wire, he tightened the flimsy straps on the pawlo wickerwork trap. But one rarely found the water bodies anymore where all this fishing gear could be used. The Beutha river had dried up ages ago and become a narrow creek. The canal skirting eight to ten nearby villages including Dashra was now merely a ditch except during the rainy season. Other than the large, paved pond at Shibnath’s house, there was no other pond in this village. But owing to the rapid expansion of the place of worship of the divine, Jowher Sadeki, this was now under the control of the devotees all year long. A few dried-up, scummy ditches were now the only recourse for the common folk of the village. And as for the remaining four or five Rajbongshi households in Jaila Para, whether they were ordinary folk or extraordinary ones, they did not fall into any class at all other than that of the ‘minority’. And so, they had to get all their work done in Asgar Mallik’s water hyacinth-laden pond at the bamboo grove. Even in his lifetime, Asgar Mallik was not much concerned about this hyacinth pond. None of his children ever lived in the village house. All of them were either city-dwellers or were overseas.

Rather, Asgar Mallik harboured sympathy for the handful of people in this tiny fisherfolk’s hamlet comprising five families, the five trump cards in the electoral calculations of Abbas Shikder, Chairman Moqaddes, and the leader Mintu. Poor fisherfolk! Even if there were no water bodies for them to cast their nets upon, a bit of water was after all needed to wash their pots and pans, and, at the end of the day, wasn’t some water also needed for their wives to bathe? So, let them use it. They were humans too. All were the one and only Allah’s creation. Or else, where would they go!      

Asgar Mallik’s children were all educated and well-established. After their father’s death, none of them really went to the village anymore. The house stayed padlocked. And so, if Doyal’s ox

Lokha was bathed in Asgar Mallik’s hyacinth pond, or if the diapers of Chhidam Rajbongshi’s last-and-nevermore baby boy were washed there, or if Aunty Molina’s flock of ducks stirred up the slime all day and muddied the pond, there was nothing anyone could say.    

However, Doyal, Chhidam, Kalipada, Nibaron, and Bhushan knew that although they could access the water, the sun, and the shade of the bamboo grove, and consume the greens from the jungle in the marshy lowland, they had to do that as if tethered to a peg. They ought not to step even an inch further. 

The beat of the dhol and mridangam drums, and the cymbals accompanying the dhap kirtan devotional songs – such bidʻah or heretical noises ought not to reach others’ ears. Let alone the sound of ululation. Lest that got their wives’ and daughters’ tongues cut off.   

In a corner of Sanatan’s homestead were Ma Lakshmi’s idol made of burnt clay and an old scroll painting of Kali, placed on a bundle of jute stalks and polythene. Come dawn and dusk, a couple of nayantara flowers could be laid there, and a few drops of water from the Kaliganga river sprinkled on them; no one came to tear away that image – wasn’t that a lot? Indeed, with Kalyani’s oil-water-sindoor offering to the plant, and with the light of her evening lamp, even the tulsi sapling spread its arms and danced gustily in the breeze in Jaila Para.       

Dugga, Dugga, Ma Durga, I prostrate before you, O Mother. O dear, Haradhon! O Porimol, where are you, my dear? What a fine fisherman Gouri’s father was, wasn’t he, Doyal? I wonder if they could marry off Gouri at last. O dear, that girl is a veritable golden idol! She didn’t even reach her youth! Listen, O Doyal’s wife, don’t you utter a word about having a daughter, my child, let there be sons, let them come and all die, even that’s fine. But there’s no need for girls to be born in the fisherfolk’s hamlet. 

Sanatan, who looked three-headed as he squatted with his head tucked between his knees, muttered away to himself and wound the yarn around the weaving shuttle. Even Sanatan did not know what he would do with the yarn. Yet there was something called ingrained habit. Kalyani heard Sanatan but did not pay that any heed. 

She was set on convincing her womb every day that it wasn't a son but definitely a girl that was inside. She kneaded her belly, swollen like a dome, as if she wanted to make it squishy like a lump of muddy slime. She examined her navel closely. It stuck out like a cowrie shell. She wished she could stick it back inside. A squishy round belly and a sunken navel were the signs of a girl. Meanwhile, Lokha was growing hefty. Safeguarding her belly, Kalyani prepared the fodder with oilcake and straw for Lokha. He chomped noisily on a mouthful of fodder, gulped it down, and at once looked for Kalyani. If she was not close by, he let out a stubborn moo like a hooting bandit and nudged the trough with his head.   \

Kalyani came running back. Lokha at once poured and splashed out all the water in his mouth on both sides. The babe inside her belly, who was curled up with folded knees like the Bangla letter ‘দ’, daw, also began to kick wildly. As if an invisible battle had broken out between the creature inside and the one outside.   
Kalyani harboured a kind of suspicion that Lokha and her son were linked by a conspiracy of fate.  Lokha suddenly felt like an enemy. Wasn’t it Lokha’s cowshed she had washed and cleaned and just proceeded to the courtyard with the cow dung when her toddler had scampered down into the ditch and drowned? And here he was now raising a ruckus like a bandit!  
Let Sanatan bend down to toss the grass, leaves, or whatever for Lokha. Kalyani merely picked up and carried away the dung. She made pies of the dung and affixed them onto the fence of the house to dry. 

Sometimes Sanatan’s entire day was spent looking for grass. Where would he find so much grass? Or even water hyacinth for that matter? Why on earth would anyone grow hyacinths in the ponds and lay them out for him? Sometimes when Doyal set off for faraway places looking for ponds, he netted and brought back water hyacinths. But that only happened occasionally. Besides, what was really the point of fattening the ox by feeding it an elephant’s stash? After all, Doyal did not have any cultivable land to till with a plough and an ox. If a cow was fed this fodder, the returns would come from her udder.   

Hey Doyal, listen to me, sell the hulking ox, and buy a cow, my boy. Your wife will deliver soon. You’ll need the milk. If I could drink a little milk mixed with medicinal swarna sindoor ground in the gallipot, my phlegm would also abate.  

Doyal had at first snapped at his father when he heard him. 

Why, just because he’s old can’t he collect a little grass for the ox? Would he just twiddle his thumbs then?  Kalyani restrained her husband.  What a neem-leaf-like bitter mouth you have, oh dear. Dads are Gods! And you disobey him?   Is there any use obeying him? 

Of course, there was! Doyal had not forgotten about Haradhon at all for even a single day in these years. There was only one mute creature in the household, how much really would he eat? If his three sons had been around, wouldn’t they have had some dudh-bhaat, or a bit of sweet-as-sugar chini champa bananas, and prasad made with wetted alo-rice? After all, it was just a matter of a few leaves and grasses, and straws and husk. Hadn’t Haradhon been a dear friend?         

So? Didn’t Kalyani treat Haradhon’s ox like her own son? She certainly did. He had been her only recourse these four long years. 

But right now, at least some thought and attention ought to be given to the one in the womb too. From the time of our forefathers, raising cows has been like worshipping Ma Bhagabati. And now the net is nothing but an adornment, hanging on the pole. Do as Baba-Thakur says and sell the ox to buy a cow. It’ll be useful.     

As Kalyani spoke, Sanatan voiced another apprehension. Unless the ox was sold while there was still time, one would find that one day, before you knew it, someone or some people might have uprooted the posts of their run-down cowshed and carried off Lokha. Who would Doyal turn to then?     

This was indeed something to think about. Things like that were supposed to happen frequently to people like Doyal. He was extracting sap from the gaab fruit, pouring two pitchers of water into an earthen pot, and then mixing the water with the fruit that had been crushed in the mortar. Shaking the water off his hands, he looked closely at the ox.  
You’re right, it’s indeed become plump. Tell me, how much might it fetch? 

As Kalyani turned to look at Lokha, she seemed to shudder. He was glaring at her like a bandit! The babe in her womb moved. Dugga, Dugga! She had to carry the bump for about four more months in all. After that, if God looked kindly at her, Kalyani would deliver and attain deliverance. Stay in there, kid, hang on to your mother’s cord like an obedient child for a few more days, my precious. Kalyani ran her hand carefully over her belly.       

The tulsi plant in a corner of Doyal’s courtyard, that had spread its branches like a peacock displaying its plumage over the pedestal plastered with cow-dung slurry, was now kind of drooping. Beneath it lay Kalyani in a foetal position, like the Bangla letter ‘দ’, daw.  

Gored by Lokha, Kalyani at once collapsed on the earth and convulsed; pressing her legs onto her stomach, she gave a tremendous squeeze. As if willing herself to deliver. Under the pressure, the tender foetus squished and seemed to dissolve inside her womb. Did the baby bleed less in any way than Lokha did?  

Aunty Molina and Chhidam’s wife from Jaila Para pulled Kalyani out of the pool of blood and muddy slime and dragged her to a spot beside the tulsi pedestal.  Kalyani seemed to have crammed all her strength into her legs. They could not be straightened even with force. Blood had coagulated like cream over curd in the gaps between the muddy slime over the rammed spot near the earthen gaab-crushing pot. Blood mixed with blood. People stood around and gazed at that blood.       

It was a government holiday today. Preparations for Eid were taking place everywhere except for Jaila Para. Cows and goats were being slaughtered in courtyards, house precincts, and on the roadside. Crowds of people thronged to watch it. The real pleasure of Qurbani Eid was watching cows and wethers being slaughtered. All that was needed was to tie their four legs with a rope and thrust them onto the ground while holding their head firmly; how the creatures under the moulobi’s knife cast a single glance through their watery eyes! And soon after that, meat was promptly laid out in heaps and rows. People were not supposed to even think about any activity today other than eating meat.      

It was a three-day government holiday. Offices, courts, and departmental stores were all shut. Everywhere people had returned to their respective homes to celebrate Eid. 

Yet just see how the journalists from who knows where arrived at Doyal’s house like cats that had sniffed fish. Each of them had two or three cameras of different kinds with them. It was as if they were going to wash away today with their flood of photographs not just Doyal's house but the entire village itself. Just a couple of days later, the newspapers would be full of pictures of just Dashra village and this Doyal Rajbongshi’s house, don’t you think so? One would surmise that most of the photos would be of Doyal’s wife, Kalyani. Just see how many photos of her they are taking! How lucky this wretched, childless fisherman, Doyal is, isn't he! Have any of his bloody forefathers ever been photographed? 

Aunty Molina had carefully put back the ghomta over Kalyani’s head, who was lying foetus-like beside the tulsi pedestal. After all, a ghomta drawn over the head safeguarded a woman’s dharma. Now let them take as many photos as they could. 

Oh dear, but his wife never went astray. Kalyani never stepped beyond the courtyard of the house and its surroundings, not even to go to Alauddi’s shop on the canal side. She raised ducks and hens, prepared relishes and boris and made sun-dried mango pickles and dried teet-puti fish—that’s all. And there was her Lokha. All she thought about was Lokha. What should the day’s fodder for Lokha be? She went from this person to that person’s house asking for some rice starch water, the water the rice had been washed with, vegetable peels, and so on so that she could keep the feeding trough constantly full. Actually, Lokha was Kalyani’s very life! 

Kisher, How so! You’re saying just the opposite. Actually, it was Kalyani who was Lokha’s life! Or else, at the moment his life was about to be taken, why would he run back to Kalyani, past three compounds, with his throat slit open, to bury his face in her bosom?  

The blood of whoever witnessed this horrifying scene, from wherever they were, turned icy.  

Was it just people? Had anyone in Allah’s world, any bit of earth, any tree or creeper, bird or marsh in any direction, east, west, north and south of Dashra village ever witnessed such a scene? No, they hadn’t.   

So many cows and goats with coats of different colours had grazed the farmlands, fields, and precincts of the houses in this village. Bloated their bellies chomping grass and leaves, and then sat here and there, chewing cud. Calves nuzzled cows’ udders as they fed. What a lovely scene! But had anyone in this village ever seen anything like an ox running amok across field and farmland with his throat slit, raining blood, and his moos piercing the very soil? 

Areh bolod! Bolod na, kaw Lokha! Hey stupid ox! Don't call him that, call him Lokha! Did Doyal’s wife consider him a beast? He made her forget her unbearable grief over her sons. Oh, the ways in which Lokha showed her affection! He nuzzled her, licked her all over, and if she wasn’t around, he left the fodder and just whimpered.     

Casting his teary eyes all around, Sanatan spoke. He listened to others. The journalists, the policemen, and the curious crowd, all learned about the whole affair from Sanatan. Who else was there now but Sanatan to narrate this? Doyal didn’t even stir ever since he collapsed on the ground, quite a while ago, upon returning to the house after watching the entire process of Lokha’s slaughtering. Chhidam and his wife were now trying to bring him back to his senses. Well, wasn’t Kalyani the one who advised Doyal to sell the ox and buy a cow? 

Yes, she certainly did. It was Sanatan who brought it up one day in the course of a conversation. Lokha was getting bigger by the day. Wanted more and more food. If he’s not pulling the plough, nor drawing a cart, what’s the point of keeping him? Doyal ought to buy a cow instead.  

Although Doyal felt a tug of emotion at first, he later accepted the reality. 

A buyer suddenly arrived at their place two days ago. And that buyer happened to be Abbas Shikder, the money lender, a powerful man in the village. He was accompanied by his cowherd, Moitya. When Moitya tried to force open Lokha’s mouth to determine his age, the ox bellowed thunderously and bit his hand. And that made Abbas Shikder guffaw. Landing two hefty thumps on Lokha’s flank, he had remarked, He’s told you so sweetly whether he’s grown teeth. You better brush your own teeth now, Moitya. It’s at least a maund of meat for sure.  

As it happened Kalyani emerged from the house into the courtyard just then and she shrieked.  

Oh no! oh no! I am ruined, who’s come to take my Lokha away! Where have you gone, my love? O Baba, what are they doing here? Please tell them to leave. We’re not selling Lokha!

What was Sanatan to do? As he sat at the doorstep, fidgeting with the torn net, he called out to Doyal feebly.   

Doyal was not at home then. And what difference would it make even if he were? Was it within his powers to keep the ox in the cowshed once Shikder had laid his eyes on it? It didn’t matter whether Doyal wanted to sell his ox or not. Shikder had chosen it for Qurbani and that was that. It was unheard of for Shikder to fancy something and not be able to take it to his home. Be it a cow or that wife of Doyal, they were all the same. Just as they untied the rope from the peg and were dragging Lokha away, Doyal arrived with a bundle of grass and leaves. Moitya snatched that bundle of grass and put it on his head, but when he began tugging at Lokha’s rope again, the ox jerked back to go and stand beside Doyal. Shikder then instructed Doyal to deliver the ox to his house. He would pay a fair price.      

But Doyal had never discussed selling his ox with Shikder shaheb. He hadn’t mentioned this to anyone as yet. 

Be that as it may, the ox had already been fancied. The cows for Qurbani in the marketplace had all been fed on alcohol. In the process of fattening the cattle, they turned even their bones into flaccid meat by feeding them potatoes, and jaggery mixed with alcohol. That beef was tasteless. Doyal’s ox was succulent. Absolutely juicy. 

How could Doyal really deliver Kalyani’s beloved ox to someone else’s house once Kalyani sat down with her legs splayed and began wailing? Holding his palms together in supplication, Doyal only mumbled to Shikder, If you want to take Lokha, take him, but don’t slaughter him, sir. The wife treats him like a son. Don’t break her heart. 
Areh koy ki, What nonsense! The bloody son of a fisherman has not only himself become a cow by living with one, he’s made his wife a cow too! You stupid cow, cows are born to feed us meat. So if I don’t slaughter it, shall I worship it instead? 

In the evening, after Moitya, the cowherd, Shikder, and his young son Ismail had left, tugging and dragging Lokha away, Kalyani collapsed in the courtyard, and sobbed convulsively. She banged her forehead against Lokha’s tethering pole till it bled. She emitted a single refrain, What have I done, oh no, oh no, what have I done! I’m a sinner; I’ve murdered my Lokha.    

It was Qurbani Eid two days after Lokha was taken away. In those two days, Kalyani never left her bed of dirt. No bathing or eating; no hair oil or water. At one point, seeing that rice hadn’t been cooked, Sanatan got livid, flung out the pots and pans noisily, and swore at Kalyani. So, she fancies becoming a damned sinner by keeping her husband and father-in-law hungry and killing the baby in the belly as well by starving herself! 

On the day of Eid, Kalyani was in tears since morning. Sitting at the doorstep, she was flooded with so many memories of Lokha. His kohl-lined eyes, the lilting bellow meant only for Kalyani, and all his mischief ... How playfully he butted Kalyani’s belly, O you poor feeding tray, this poor fodder, who’ll drink you now? And who’ll drink water and spray that out at Kalyani feigning anger? 

When the sun was directly above the thatched roof, Doyal chewed on a handful of chira, drank some water, slung the net over his shoulder, and set out. Sanatan soaked another handful of chira as if in slow motion. He plucked a couple of seeded bananas from a wooded clump beside the cowshed and ran those again and again on a bamboo grater to make a paste.  His daughter-in-law had lost her mind grieving for the ox, but after all, that wouldn’t calm his hunger.      

That was when Chhidam’s eldest son arrived and, like a moron, conveyed the news, Shikder’s men had taken Lokha to the mosque for slaughtering. Apparently, his tears, black like gaab-sap, were coursing down his face.     

Hearing the news, Kalyani rushed to the cowshed and flung herself down. She clung to the fodder trough and began to shriek like ritual wailers.  

In the course of these two and a half days, the people of Jaila Para had become indifferent to Kalyani’s grief for her bovine son. One ought to follow the norms of the place one lives in. When they thrust the throat of a ram into the yoke to separate its head from its body with a single blow, that ram too had been tended by someone, hadn’t it? There’d certainly be love and affection for the animal one had reared. But weeping and wailing over the creatures sacrificed to Allah-Khoda-Bhagavan wasn’t enjoined either.    

That’s why Kalyani trembled in the throes of agony all by herself today. Nobody left their household chores and dropped by Doyal’s courtyard. Sanatan got down to shaping a fishing rod for a patna-hook. And Doyal had gone out looking for fish as usual.     

Suddenly there was a commotion, ‘Hey! Catch it! Move aside!’ Before Sanatan could strain his ears to fathom what was happening, some boy from the hamlet apparently came and said,

Lokha’s escaped. He couldn’t be slaughtered. Lokha toppled the knife-wielding moulobi, tore the tethering rope, and raced across the fields. 
Kalyani rose, in her dishevelled state, from the cowshed floor, O Lokha, my dear!  A hue and cry! A clamour!

Lokha arrived like a raging storm and threw himself over Kalyani. Kalyani was thrown to the courtyard, where she lay together with Lokha. Blood bubbled out of Lokha’s slit throat. And Kalyani clutched her belly and groaned as she curled up into a bundle.  

It didn’t take long for her convulsions to cease. 

Lokha continued to convulse. The moulobi had only been able to make the first of the two-and-a-half-gashes on his throat. As if possessed with an ogre-like strength, Lokha laid the moulobi flat with a single jerk, gored and severely injured the two cowherds holding the rope fastening his feet, and began to sprint. Despite his slit throat, he ran right back to his own place. His own people. 

The slaughter of the poor creature, enfeebled even before all his blood could run out, was accomplished right in Doyal’s courtyard. This time there was no longer any need to tie him up. Shikder himself ran the knife to the chant of ‘Allahu Akbar’. The sooner the animal could be freed from suffering the better.   
Besides, one also had to think of Doyal’s wife. Notwithstanding anything, hadn’t she reared the ox like a son!   The quicker he was taken away from her sight the better. 
And as soon as he breathed his last, Shikder’s men took him away, slung on a pole. There was only a congealed pool of thick, viscous, blood, the colour of sindoor, that lay in the muddy slime on one side of the courtyard.  

Thauk, Let the bit of blood remain there. Wasn’t it Kalyani who had fed Lokha so that he had grown to become such a strapping ox?  As if he had ten pitchers of blood in his body! Just look, even after all the blood he shed, it doesn’t seem to end.   

And God is extremely merciful, my Doyal. Kalyani didn’t have to witness this terrible sight. She had departed for the abode of peace even before that. 

And the life in the womb? Alas, look at those whorls of blood. 

Look, all of you look, for what else is there to look at in Jaila Para? A spectacular, must-see, incident took place today. 

The crowd at Doyal’s house kept growing. There were various kinds of people. In time, a camera from a TV channel also arrived. It went round and round capturing the scene. Chairman Moqaddes had arrived at the spot. Everything became orderly. Laying a sympathetic arm over Doyal’s shoulder, Shikder proffered some red-and-white notes, like a hand of cards. After that came Chairman Shaheb’s speech, standing in front of a microphone. Both he and Shikder would jointly bear Doyal’s wife’s funerary expenses. The faces of the esteemed folk in festive attire looked wonderfully radiant on camera.    

Then, after a long time, an unprecedented scene unfolded in Dashra village. Kalyani’s funeral took place with full obsequies at Doyal Rajbongshi’s homestead. Kalyani was adorned with conch-shell bangles, sindoor, and the paste of red sandalwood. To the accompaniment of melodious ululation in female voices and men’s loud chants of ‘Horibol! Say the Lord’s name!’ Doyal’s wife’s pyre came alight in Asgar Mallik’s bamboo grove. After all, the bamboo grove was deserted anyway! Why on earth would there be any trouble with burning a pyre in this deserted place!    

Chairman Moqaddes and Abbas Shikder oversaw the whole affair. Of course, Doyal and Sanatan were also featured in the scenes captured on camera. But they were grief-stricken. They were sitting on their haunches, with their heads tucked between their knees. In the glow of the flames of the pyre, how their faces seemed to melt like in a watercolour painting! 
But one subject was in fact missing in these live tele-scenes. Lokha. 

Showing Lokha wasn’t possible. Because Lokha had already been butchered into pieces before the arrival of the TV camera. Also, various kinds of special news reports on Qurbani Eid, accompanied by visuals, were anyway being broadcast on TV. The flesh of the animals butchered into pieces could not really be distinguished there. 

(Jharna Rahman’s oeuvre includes Swarna Tarbari, Agnita, Perek, Pitaler Chand and Bhangte Thaka Bhugol, among others. A collection of her short stories has been translated into English and published as Dawn of the Waning Moon. In 2021, she received the Bangla Academy Sahitya Puroskar for her contribution to literature.

The story has. been transated by Shahroza Nahrin and V. Ramaswamy. Nahrin is currently pursuing a graduate degree at McGill University, Canada. Her translations include works by Shahidul Zahir and Anwara Syed Haq. V. Ramaswamy has translated Subimal Misra’s The Golden Gandhi Statue from America: Early Stories, Wild Animals Prohibited: Stories, Anti-Stories, and This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale: Two Anti-Novels, and Manoranjan Byapari’s novel The Runaway Boy. His translations of Adhir Biswas's Memories of Arrival: A Voice from the Margins, and of Shahidul Zahir’s Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas (co-translated with Shahroza Nahrin) were published in 2022.)