There’s Gunpowder in the Air by Manoranjan Byapari

Author:Manoranjan Byapari [Byapari, Manoranjan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9789387894440
Publisher: Eka
Published: 2018-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

It is the deep of night. Darkness clings to the jail everywhere. The gong at the gate has just sounded the hour. But still Ashutosh Mandol cannot sleep. His blood is coursing through his veins in anticipation. Not much longer. This unbearably black night will end soon. The message has come from friends outside through secret channels. We’re ready. If you have made adequate preparations, inform us of the day and time and the details of your plan.

The letters that come from the outside world go to the cells via Ward No. 7. From there to Ward No. 10. They are written in code. Other prisoners are unable to decipher them. An audacious plan is being drafted through the messages exchanged in the letters. Unless there is a debacle of some kind, it won’t be long before an event that will shock the nation takes place.

The friends outside are desperate now. They are determined to free their comrades from the iron precincts of the jail. The letters hold their vow. No matter if the obstacles are insurmountable, we will let loose a river of blood if we can. They’re capable of doing it, too. The entire country knows that they’re pouring the hot bubbling blood in their veins into mills and factories, streets and bylanes, police stations and jails. They have refused to accept defeat.

Because of the strict surveillance of Naxals in the jail, it is impossible to gather all the comrades together to chalk out the plan. The enemy will be warned. So conversations take place between individuals only. Only after two people have agreed on an aspect of the plan is a third brought in to pass it on to a fourth.

But informing everyone of every detail of the plan is not the practice. This is revolutionary prudence. There may be a spy around. If there are supporters of Naxals among the guards, the other kind may exist too. So every individual knows only as much as he must know. Each one is supposed to fulfill the responsibility allotted to him with unquestioning loyalty. The entire plan will be at the fingertips of just three or four leaders, so that even if some parts are leaked, the whole thing will not fall apart.

Ashu Mandol belongs to a family which farms on a medium-sized plot of land. Thanks to farmland measuring some three acres, no one in the family has ever starved. He was a very bright student in school, always topping his class. His father had wanted him to go to college and be a doctor, but the son gave it all up to devote himself to fulfilling his dream of organising a peasants’ revolution. Father and son had a bitter row over this. ‘I’m a farmer myself,’ Abhiram Mandol had said. ‘I am no less aware than you of the suffering of farmers in the villages. You’re mistaken if you think you know more than anyone else just because you’ve read two pages of a book. I fought in the Tebhaga uprising, I have faced untold suffering.

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