Short Story: Discovering the Perished Homeland

In this short story, Humayun Malik aims to depict political and social injustice in the post-colonial context of the Indo-Pak-Bangla subcontinent.

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What’s your name?

Prokriti.

Prokriti means nature. Is her name really Prokriti? He can’t overcome the confusion, but her appearance and behavior say it’s appropriate.

She is young, which indicates she was born after their eviction.

She may be recognized by her father’s identity. Then he asks, What’s your father’s name?

Jibanananda Das.

Ha! The namesake of our great poet! If you were the daughter of the poet Jibanananda… how interesting would it be!

What! What are you saying! I…

My favorite poet, perhaps you too know, as Yeats is the poet of nature in English literature, he is the same to our people. So, to know about him is of infinite interest to me!

Oh, I’m Prokriti: daughter of the poet Jibanananda Das!

But as far as he knows, one of the most significant poets of Bengali literature, Jibanananda Das, has only a daughter, named Manjushree. It’s impossible she is so young, even if she is still alive, now she must be an aged woman with wrinkled skin.

Today, he is facing such occurrences as if he has been possessed by a ghost! A little while ago, when he came to the bank of the previously known river, fatigued from a long journey, he saw an ugly witch, lying on the river’s side, after swallowing the lively current. He accepted the matter when he was forwarding himself to his village and trampling the sand—thirty years apart, such a river’s death is not impossible. After burning the body of a beloved one in the crematorium, people come back to their domestic life, compromising with the grief related to the dead, and the same happens to Arup—with such feelings, he reaches a tar road.

Then he gets very hungry. At this time, a restaurant is also seen.

He enters the restaurant and sits at a table.

Bird’s kabab is our best item, the waiter informs Arup, and then asks, which bird do you like?

He becomes so annoyed that he exits the restaurant quickly.

Psychic… some people comment behind, must have absconded from any Drug Addiction Treatment Center.

Then, while walking, at a stage, he notices this young woman of extraordinary beauty. Was she following him?

But Jibanananda Das! Is there really a local poet with the same name as the famous poet?

Oh, I’ve walked a long way—by this time I’m supposed to reach my own village!

He asks Prokriti, Do you know the village Kestopur!

I think I heard the name, but… She’s confused.

Not a single known tree has been seen so far! There are rows of acacia and eucalyptus with rapidly growing trees on both sides of the road under the care of the Forest and Environment Department. He notices a paralyzed old beggar under the tree—I can ask him, as he’s so senior, his range of information may be wider.

Where’s the village Kestopur?

As the man raised his blurred eyes, his youthfulness popped over Arup’s consciousness. He was a professional stick-fighter and also a folk singer three decades ago when Arup was here. He answers, There’s no village named Kestopur here!

But…

This is Islampur.

But he can remember there was no place called Islampur in this locality—Sofiganj existed. Kestopur was a village in Sofiganj union. Probably the political and communal miscreants have changed the name according to their intention, and, by this time, it’s also erased from the man’s memory. On the way, he saw many new mosques and also heard much azan, but no temple, no bell of worship!

But this confusion—Jibanananda Das’s daughter! There was no man with the surname Das in Kestopur. Varman, Shil, Singh—all the houses of those castes, the inhabitants are bright in his memory. And the real situation is that by this time, it’s impossible for people like Jibanananda Das to immigrate here.

A little while ago, on the bank of the dead river, Arup was overwhelmed by nostalgia, lost in the feeling of a poem by Jibanananda,

Hey River, what are you talking about through your waves? / You are that little girl of mine;/ As far as I go—you follow me crawling…

As if that little girl is now young Prokriti!

The matter might be that Prokriti engages herself in a joke when she finds a passerby who seems indifferent and chaotic to her.

She is walking beside him.

On both sides of the path, high-yielding paddy fields are waving in the wind, as if two giant green scorpions are going parallel to them. The bitter feeling aroused from this scene awakens an intense thirst for the natural paddy fields of Vaishali, Basmati, and Pankhiraj. It’s autumn, when the golden tender glow of all those paddies is supposed to be overleaping the horizon. It was understood that viewing those paddies or corn, the heart would beat with harmonic rhythm; such an environment has been abolished forever.

There’s no fragrance of burf or screw pine flower, or any wildflower. The dense bush forest had perished, and its wild animals died.

Arup looks for birds—black drongo, wagtail, mavis, even an egret with white or gray wings. Not even a gallinule, wild dove, or nightingale sang in a familiar voice. There’s also no flight of colorful butterflies, the finest insect.

What are you looking for? The voice of Prokriti startles him.

Arup looks at her—Katkin, horseradish, nyctanthes flower’s amazing autumn, in screw pine, itchy tree, bablah forest’s darkness, the fascinating dalliances of fireflies, the soft and dense rhythm of folk songs kirtan, jari, jatra, panchalietc, the glories of folk heroine Behula, Shankhamala, Kankavati, Chandramala—a great creator has created this young woman with the extracts of those features and beauties! Overwhelmed or fascinated, he then wants to know even from her, Am I looking for you!

Me! I’ve already told you, I’m Prokriti, the daughter…

There may be someone here who writes poems about nature. The local people affectionately call him Jibanananda Das. And this Das calls his daughter Prokriti, which means nature. But where’s such a nature that anyone may name his daughter Prokriti, as to express his deep, endless love? That nature’s place is now only in the verses of our well-known poet Jibanananda Das. The people have destroyed his images of beauty for their own interest.

It seems to Arup, she was not a woman who conceived him; once upon a time the nature had conceived him. Then, he was growing up by drinking the blue of the sky, the song of the birds, and the green of the endless field-forests. But on stage, a conspiracy ripped him from their placenta.

Is Prakriti a relief in such a kind of situation?

Excuse me, Prokriti again draws the attention of the indifferent traveler, Who are you? Where are you from?

Now what’s his identity? In the last thirty years, he has realized that there’s no greater crisis than an identity crisis. What answer can he give her? He’s nothing more than a shelterless cry. After almost three decades, no one will be able to recognize him, especially those who have occupied their habitat and arable land with such a sense of security. He has come here to find his sister and to see his birthplace. Arup’s belief has not been proved wrong. Not even the folk singer could recognize him.

As he couldn’t recognize him, he answered his question and then begged him. If he could recognize him, he would become nostalgic and brag about the lost days. But looking at his eyes and face, it seems that various problems, including poverty and illness, have swallowed all his emotions.

However, Arup is really unknown to this young girl. But she didn’t ignore him and did not suppress the emerging curiosity.

Am I a Rohingya refugee? Palestinian…

I’m a Cuban refugee, chased by the cruel people of…

These types of answers may apparently be acceptable. But then the consecutive answer-question-answer may arise.

But seeing such homeless people, and feeling the pains of all the refugees in the world, he realised how much he has wept no one knows—yet his suffering is his very own.

Prokriti, I don’t know why… it may be my self-deception. In this disguise, I am hiding from you also that I’m the person who, after losing everything, survived only with life from the omnivorous flame of selfishness. It was 1965. As soon as the Pak-India war started, the unscrupulous people spread communal hatred.

The first fire in the area was in fisherman’s locality. Before the fire broke out that evening, Arup’s father had called fisherman Kanai to fish in their pond.

After fishing, Kanai stood in front of his father with a shoal fish. The old man was exhausted by the cold water. He begged, I fish day and night, but I can’t feed my family such a fish. Would you please give it to me for them?’His father knew that even if the man got the fish, he wouldn’t be able to let it eat his family members. He’ll sell it on the way and add the sale money to the full day’s earnings. And with this money, he will buy low- quality flour. It’s impossible even by that to extinguish the fire of hunger of his full family.

The British and even independent Pakistan couldn’t give even a single shoal to Kanai. That evening, while Kanai is returning home, he sees their fishermen’s settlements are on fire. Among the fire, there’s sky-cracking howl of fisher-women and their children. Arup’s father—atheist Abinash Dutt, an active supporter of the leftist working people’s revolt of the forties, gazing at the fisher’s burning locality that night said in a helpless voice, ‘Who that can do such a thing to devour the ancestral abode of poor like Kanai, for them there should have really a day of judgement in afterlife, and then hell like this cruel fire festival.’

Two days later, those of Gauss Pardhani’s rioters set fire to their house too. They kill his parents and kidnap his young sister, Pushpa. When the fire of their homestead touches the sky, Arup somehow reaches the last frontier of Kestopur with his child and teenage brothers.

Then I ran with my brothers from one place to another, carrying the pain of Pushpa. At last, we were able to settle in Burdwan.

That place never felt like home. It always seems like a refugee camp, and reminds me that I’m in exile. In a refugee camp, my parents’ killing, my sister’s raping, the fire of our homestead in which my mother’s ‘Nakshi Kantha’–classic hand embroidery, grandfather’s pic, basil tree, etc.–these haunt me all the time, and I’m in hell.

Pity me—Aha, when I left my land, if I could bring a little soil-water-herb from my homestead! For to adore, to float in tears! That absolute, rare treasure could no longer be found in this exile. Then my eyes are filled with tears while I read Jibanananda’s poems of nature. Soon, I found solace in those words:

My sweet East Bengal, its river-field-bird-nature-habitat’s ownership only has changed, not destroyed. Nothing became a rare fossil in the ruins. They all still have survived, as it were—which never to be fade.

Now I’ve realized, I’m that unfortunate one who lost his homeland not once but twice and in two ways. Within the two, the second loss, that of losing my father and mother, is beyond restoration, because in this phase it has been devastated by abnormal devolution.

Since meeting him, due to his behavior, Prokriti must wonder, ‘How whimsical the stranger is!’

Does your father still write poems? Arup wants to know if it is possible or not for her father to write poems in such an environment.

They’ve cut down all the big trees.

All these tall trees had nurtured my soul;

The smell of bloody wood inside my body;

In my mind the emptiness like the city

and the civilization;

—Dad is writing this poem now.

Until hearing the poem, Arup had assumed there was a balladist or folk poet in this locality of the same name. But now this line of the famous poet Jibanananda Das, who died in 1954, further mires the created maze. Arup believes his mysterious accidental death is a suicide, because, in his urban life in Kolkata, he was suffering from nostalgia and depression for the nature of East Bengal, which he had to leave.

Now, it is not like that the discontent soul of the poet is wandering here in any form!

Which is your home?’ Arup wants to know, If I want to meet your father—

Home! My father lives there…

Not a house, the target of Prokriti’s forefinger penetrates the brick chimney, saw mill, factory, etc. However, a crowded slum is also seen.

Was their home in the estate too?

What an odd place! Neither the city nor the village—an unplanned, de-based state! As if a curse has engulfed everything.

But… Arup says, where’s the way to get there!

Though it will be hard for you to find a way, says Prokriti, yet I request you to go. Dad is very lonely now. How emotional he would be to have you, you won’t be able to imagine!

But… Arup is almost shocked, ‘Would you not go?’

How! I’m assassinated. They not only assassinated me but also concealed my body. They didn’t realize that nothing is useless, not whimsical! All are parts of their existence.

Then is Prokriti his lost sister!

Do you know Pushpa? Arup asks.

No. But I heard, long ago, a young girl named Pushpa was gang raped continuously for years, and eventually, she committed suicide.

Arup lay down on the ground in agony.

In a while, Arup realizes there’s no Prokriti—beside him, behind—nowhere. The irrepressible attraction that has dragged him so far, it seems someone has cut off its placenta. As sometimes in nightmares he sweeps away in an indomitable stream of tears for the loss of his sister, parents, people of the homeland, and the soil-jungle-crops like unearthly riches, now he feels the same.

Nevertheless, he tirelessly searches for his birthplace and Pushpa or Prokriti.

In the meantime, it’s evening—the assassin-like darkness is becoming more and more critical.

The monstrous sound of the engine is all around—the eardrum is unable to bear it. It’s difficult to say whether still here the fire-flies fly, the cricket drones, or nightbirds’ sing! Ignoring the rules of sustainable human development, several deep tube wells are competing as if to exploit all of the groundwater. Everything in the capture of the strong smell of fertilizer, burnt diesel, pesticides, etc., as if all are waiting for death.

Searching through this situation, he gets no hint of his targets. Then he thinks, I’ve nothing to do here but to meet Jibanananda.

Arup searches the house of the poet.

He entered the crowded slum. Many are asked, but no one here is familiar with the name of the poet.

There’s a strange man with cancer in that room, finally, an old woman exhausted from working in the factory said, go and see, is the man your poet, or…

Arup knocks on the door and waits. A so-called black Bengalee with a simple smiling face wearing a dhoti-punjabi will stand in front of him, looking just like the poet is in his famous, familiar photo. But there’s no response. As soon as he pushes the door, the door opens widely.

A middle-aged man is lying on the floor.

When the poet hears the sound of someone entering the room, through the keen sufferings of pain, he turns his body.

The light from the road post wafts through the door, exposing the ulcer over his body. The poet who manifested human aesthetics in our fishes, like silver flatfish, olive barb, and pomfret, with the image of our folk and fairy tales, has he absorbed their unidentified ulcer of the epidemic in his own body! Also, the burnings of the brick kilns, mills—all the curses which are imposed on his beloved nature! With those curses now in his cancer-ridden body, the ruthless death is waiting for his soul!

Who are you? The poet asks feebly.

Once upon a time, I was born and lived here.

Which place is that?

My village has been abolished not only from history but also from geography. Arup thinks this answer, but only manages to say, I can’t recognize now.

The same happened to me, the poet moans in a pitiful voice, I too lost my daughter!

Oh! And I couldn’t find out my kidnapped sister.

Then why have you come to me?

Only to meet you.

From where did you hear about me?

From Prokriti.

My daughter!

Yeah.

Prokriti… He sat up with great excitement and calls, Manjushree…

Getting no response, he asks, Where’s she?

She hasn’t come, Arup informs she disappeared from the way we were coming.

To go out, the disoriented man rushes, and he gets obstructed by the wall, not at the door. He calls seriously, Manju…

Yet he is desperate to reach her as if he is in a state of sleep paralysis.

I want to see my daughter once, he burst into tears, once only.

I think it’s not possible, Arup says.

Jibanananda strikes his head on the wall—consecutively.

To stop it, Arup grabbed him.

Blood is dripping from the forehead of the poet and is spreading over both of their bodies.

You are blessed; your youth got her. As a result, somehow you still see her today. No one nowadays gets her. Even me! I’m so unfortunate, their cruel hands have uprooted my inner eyes too—I can’t get her even in my dream. It’s also very unfortunate that you’ll never find your sister.

Note: In this fiction, quotation marks are not used for dialogue.

Author’s Bio

Humayun Malik’s writings have appeared in international anthologies and literary magazines, including Ariel Chart, Nixes Mate Review, Kelp Journal, Down in the Dirt magazine, and Shoegaze Literary. He has 25 released books. In his fiction, he seeks to introduce a novel approach that synthesizes symbolic arrangement, magic realism, and surrealism. He aims to craft an engaging yet meaningful story that challenges anarchy, hegemony, violence, exploitation, and injustice from a postmodern perspective. He began his career as a journalist, then worked as a government officer and a part-time teacher at universities; currently, he is a lawyer.