As the River Flows by Ranjit Biswas

Author:Ranjit Biswas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mother

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ARUPA PATANGIA KALITA

A thin reed wall stood sandwiched between the coop for the poultry and the ramshackle cot made of bamboo planks that served as a bed for ‘dim-witted’ Pomila. The birds’ droppings often passed through the gaps in the wall and got ensconced under her bed. Though she swept the floor with the broom made of betel-nut leaves, Pomila couldn’t reach much beyond, and a white layer of mildew had formed in those places. No wonder the hut bore a perpetually mouldy odour. A few feet away from her bed was an earthen stove. Next to it was a wooden plank that held a few containers and cooking utensils. To the right of the stove were two pitchers for water, one made of brass and the other from clay. Some sticks of firewood were piled near the stove.

Pomila’s son Mohan slept in the room at the entrance to the hut. Actually, it was just a shed that somehow managed to accommodate his cot. The year before, a luxurious creeper of gourd had climbed up on the roof of the shed. The weight of the gourds and of people who tried to climb up to collect them had damaged the roof considerably. The wall too was in a dilapidated condition. Their black mongrel made good use of the gaping holes in the wall to enter and exit at will, and in the process widened them more. The dog slept under Mohan’s cot and made a dash outside through a hole whenever he wished.

A few of Pomila’s chickens were weary of staying in the coop and had made a habit of spending the night on the branches of the papaya tree nearby. Suddenly, two cocks on the papaya branch crowed restlessly. Pomila jumped up from her bed at the unexpected sound. As always, she opened the door and peeped out. Outside, it was a grey world where light and shadows merged. For the imbecile woman, the world had been like this for quite some time now. In that opaque world, some black objects moved around; she walked gingerly amidst them, taking care not to collide with any. By the time she returned from her morning ablutions, it was daybreak. The grey things around her took on a lighter tone too. She spread out some rice grains on a dala, a big plate made of cane, and began cleaning them of the chaff. As if on cue, the ducks and chickens collected around her. She shooed them away but it took only a few moments for them to congregate again. A couple of them even ventured to peck at the dala. But for Mohan coming in, she would have continued doing the same thing – shooing off the birds and cleaning the rice – the whole day.

Mohan drove the ducks away, lit the stove and put the saucepan on it to boil rice with water. He took away the dala from his mother’s hand and put the grains in a cane khorahi and said to her, ‘Hurry up with the cooking.

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