Miles and miles of swamps; vast stretches of sand, mudflats, and backwaters—none of this seemed to have fazed pre-eminent anthropologist Dr Batstone. He took a train, a jeep and a bullock cart before trudging over a mile on foot to finally arrive at our village in the middle of nowhere, in the back of beyond. A man who had lived all his life in western cities amid high-rises, Dr Batstone’s first wish when he touched down on Indian soil was to visit a truly primitive village. In those days, when we were still in school, the gulf between towns and villages hadn’t shrunk as much as now. The villages were yet to become the distorted shadows of towns. Huge red triangles, those ubiquitous symbols of the government’s family planning programme, the election slogans of political parties, advertisements of small-saving schemes or brands of cigarettes had not yet made their appearance on village walls; microphones hadn’t yet arrived. ‘Wonderful! Amazing!’
Sprawled in a wooden armchair on the veranda of our house, Dr Batstone erupted into delighted exclamations every five minutes: ‘Wonderful! Amazing!’ His sense of wonder and heightened feelings was understandable. Wasn’t it awe-inspiring to be able to survey, without interruption, the full horizon of the clear uncluttered sky to one’s heart’s content? To see a young cowherd boy controlling a large herd of perhaps a hundred head or more, across unending pastures? Watching the cattle following peaceably without breaking ranks, Dr Batstone experienced the same heady feeling he had while reading ‘The Pied Piper’ for the first time as a child.
Wasn’t it wonderful that ninety per cent of village folk could live in perfect harmony and happiness, without any regrets whatsoever, without ever having seen a train or a cinema! But more than anything else, it was the interview with Maku Mishra, the venerable headmaster of the village lower-primary school that stoked the distinguished visitor’s sense of wonder and awe. In all his forty years of imparting precious education to the village ragamuffins, Mishra hadn’t heard of Darwin, Marx, Freud, Einstein, or Bernard Shaw—not even one of the illustrious five!
That a white man would one day make a trip to our village was beyond the wildest imagination of the local inhabitants. Even Malika, the Book of Predictions, which had unerringly predicted the devastating mid-century cyclone, the sudden collapse of the local temple, and the emergence of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on the political firmament of India, had remained pointedly silent about this eventuality. No wonder, then, that at any given point of time about twenty or two-dozen villagers sat cross-legged around the visiting sahib, gaping and gawking. The sahib too caught on that the villagers meant no harm, that their behaviour was driven by simple curiosity. Bemused, he told me more than once with a smile: ‘Where else could I have experienced anything of this kind? If I’d known how to dance I’d have danced up a whirlwind to entertain these God’s good people sitting in front of me.’
As he was getting emotionally entangled in the lives of the villagers, he once asked me, out of the blue: ‘Well, my dear boy, do these people believe in ghosts and spirits?’ Over the days I had proven to be his most reliable interpreter. As soon as I translated his question for the benefit of the crowd, they all answered loudly in the negative, which made the sahib sit up straight. It was his turn to be amazed. After a long silence he turned to me: ‘You know something, babu! These people are more modern and progressive than my countrymen. Believe me, more than fifty per cent of our people believe in ghosts and spirits, whether they admit it or not. Just go on and ask these good people—do they believe in God?’ I translated his question. There was an uneasy silence. ‘What’s the matter—aren’t they sure?’ asked the sahib, trying to interpret their silence.
‘They’re having doubts, right?’ His voice was deep with respect. ‘Believe me, no matter how rational the people of my country may outwardly seem, they…’ Then there was an uproar as one villager after another began to respond excitedly: ‘Never trust ghosts or spirits, sahib! They’ve no conscience at all.’ ‘Would you believe it, sahib,’ said another. ‘My cousin—actually my father’s uncle’s son-in-law’s own nephew—what haven’t I done for him, beginning with sharing my pillow to doing his wedding shopping! What haven’t I done for the bastard! Who’d believe that once dead he’d zero in on me, of all the people in this village and beyond, to scare the living daylights out of! Who doesn’t know I footed half the expenses for his funeral rituals, which were observed in great style? Who doesn’t know I couldn’t stir out at night to my own backyard to piss or shit, until his spirit was properly appeased.’
‘Sahib,’ said yet another. ‘You’re a foreigner. You shouldn’t believe in the ghosts and spirits of our country. They’re so nasty that given half a chance they’ll twist the neck of the exorcist who tries to keep them on a leash.’ ‘Of course,’ added a fourth, ‘there are kind and helpful spirits too—nobody can deny that. As a child I’ve seen the Languli Baba with my own eyes.’ Turning to me, he pleaded: ‘Explain to the sahib who Languli Baba is, will you? The great naked seer. When I saw him he was already over two hundred years old.’ The villager turned to the white man and went on excitedly: ‘The circumstances of his auspicious birth are shrouded in mystery. There was once a great epidemic of cholera sweeping the land. His mother, then pregnant with him, was taken for dead and hauled off to the cremation grounds by her relations. It was there the holy man tumbled out of his mother’s womb. He lay there crying helplessly for one whole night and a day before another group of mourners reached the cremation grounds. They picked him up from between his dead mother’s legs. Tell us, sahib, who looked after the mahatma during those crucial twenty-four hours?’
The compulsively argumentative villager who had asked the question inched closer to the white man and offered the answer himself. ‘The spirits and ghosts, of course. No wonder the mahatma neither wore clothes nor spoke to a living being. Whenever an intense desire for conversation came over him he’d hold parleys only with those invisible souls. ‘As to your question about believing in God, sahib—is he some kind of a moneylender and we his debtors, or vice versa, that the question of trusting or not would arise at all? He created everything and put us at the heart of it. Now, he might choose to get rid of us, or then again he might decide to keep us…’ The way the crowd nodded it seemed everyone wholeheartedly agreed with him. I translated as best I could. The sahib listened intently and leaned back in the armchair. ‘Fabulous!’ he gurgled. ‘Amazing!’
‘Sahib,’ said another villager. ‘Do you see the cremation grounds beyond the river? That was where the great naked baba was born. If you have no faith in us, or if you disbelieve us even the tiniest bit, you can go there and check it out for yourself.’ As soon as the river was mentioned, the sahib sat bolt upright once again. ‘I don’t need hot water for my bath tomorrow. The river seems clean enough. So tomorrow I’ll bathe in the river. I only hope there aren’t any crocodiles.’ I didn’t know many things about the village since I’d been away most of the time, so I asked the villagers about crocodiles. They seemed mighty insulted and protested vociferously. ‘Young man, you may be well educated because you’ve been up to a lot of school learning, but more than anyone you should know crocodiles live in water and not on the top of mountains. Has a crocodile ever harmed a single person from this village? As long as the crocodile’s wife is alive and in our midst…’
The villagers all pointed their fingers in a particular direction. I had no intention of making a full and faithful translation of all they’d said. So I simply allayed the sahib’s fears: there was absolutely no reason to worry about crocodiles. But, in the meantime, the white man had become quite eager to follow the entire conversation. The pointed fingers had piqued his curiosity too.
‘Dr Batstone,’ I tried to paraphrase. ‘The tales are quite ridiculous for one thing. By now you must have realized that these villagers are rather simple-minded, inclined to believe anything and everything they get to hear. Anyway, it all goes back a long time. There lived a poor couple by the river. They had only one child, a daughter. She was married off when she was three years old, became a widow at the age of five, and after that lived with her parents. ‘The child grew into a beautiful young woman. One day, when she went to the river to bathe, the villagers saw her being dragged into the deep waters by a crocodile. They thought that was the end of her. But miracle of miracles, she resurfaced ten years later. By then her father was long dead and her mother nearing her end, and their small hut on the river bank dilapidated and ready to cave in.
‘The girl looked after her mother as well as she could, but wasn’t able to save her. When she passed away a few days later, the girl could do nothing but cry her heart out, alone in that ramshackle hut. Two days later, an old male crocodile was bludgeoned to death as it was trying to climb up the embankment behind the hut. The girl kept on crying, without uttering a word. God alone knows how a strange, jumbled story began to do the rounds of the village: after being dragged away by the crocodile the girl had lived with him as his wife all these years, and her poor husband had lost his life while trying to do what any good son-in-law would have done—look up his wife when she was visiting her parents.
‘In the course of time the young woman became old. She’s still alive and well, pushing ninety, and is referred to as Mrs Crocodile by everyone. It’s firmly believed that, in deference to her, the entire tribe of crocodiles living in the river has not harmed the villagers. In response, the villagers have taken to providing the old woman with her morning and evening meals.’ ‘Wonderful!’ the sahib exclaimed. ‘Amazing. Fantastic. But where did she live those ten years she was gone from the village?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really does. Because the villagers simply swallowed a story as outlandish as this they never felt the need to cross-check it with the old woman.’
‘My dear boy,’ the sahib begged. ‘Let’s get the story of those ten years of her life. I’ll regret it if I leave without knowing.’ The moonrise was some hours away; it was still very dark. I switched on the flashlight and walked in front, the sahib following behind. On the way to the old woman’s hut he stumbled twice: first over a silent and self-effacing pye-dog, then over a perambulating turtle, perhaps out on a village visit. Each time he just barely managed to avoid falling. But every experience, good or bad, thrilled him no end. The old woman was sitting by herself, her chin on her knees, beside a lamp burning weakly in her hut. She gave us a warm smile when we entered. The sahib and I poured into her stone bowl the milk, rice and mashed bananas we’d brought with us as offerings. She rewarded us with another beaming smile.
‘Grandmother,’ I began. ‘We’re here to ask you a few questions. This gentleman you see with me—he’s a true sahib from beyond the seven seas. It’s his deepest wish to hear your story from your mouth.’ Not a hint of surprise or hesitation flickered across her wrinkled, weather-beaten face. She seemed to have been expecting our visit. ‘Son, I’ll tell you the story of a wandering prince and a fairy princess,’ she promptly began. ‘No, Grandmother, not just any old story. He wants your story, the story of your life. You must know everyone refers to you as Mrs Crocodile. That’s plain rubbish. But it’s also a matter of record you went missing for ten long years. Where were you all those years, where did you live and how? What did you do? Tell us about it.’
The old woman’s hearing didn’t seem impaired. Neither did she slur when she began to speak, even though she had not a tooth left in her mouth. And what a raconteur she turned out to be. After every three or four sentences, I had to stop her so I could translate word for word for the sahib. He told me not to leave out a single syllable. ‘No sooner did I step into the water than a crocodile dragged me off into the deepest part of the river. God knows how deep it was, probably seven cubits or more. I don’t know how…but when I…’ ‘No embroidery, Grandmother, just give us the hard facts. How did you escape from the jaws of the crocodile? Where did you end up when he set you free? How did life treat you…?’
All these questions didn’t seem to make any impact on the old woman. She went on unperturbed: ‘Son, when I regained consciousness I found myself under water seven cubits deep, with a large male crocodile in front of me, contemplating me with unblinking eyes. As he stared at me, God knows what happened, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him either…’ ‘Grandmother, if you don’t remember how you escaped from the jaws of the crocodile, at least tell us how you lived afterwards and where…’ ‘Son, did I ever try to escape from the crocodile’s den? I told you I found it impossible to avert my eyes from him. There, in the deep waters there was no sun, no moon; it was neither day nor night. I don’t know how many days or years passed.’
I thought better of interrupting the old woman once again. Not only did she herself believe her own yarn, but the sahib seemed to hang on to her every word. In the dim light of the lamp I watched our shadows fluttering on the wall. I continued to translate, but now with a certain detachment. Sometimes, when the sound of a boat pushing off the bank reached us, the old woman would pause, as if the call of the river had revived old memories. The old woman spoke for an hour and a half, recounting the tale of a young woman setting up home with a crocodile in the awe-inspiring depths of the river eighteen miles from the village. During the first few days she hadn’t the slightest desire to live with him and had every intention of running away at the first opportunity. But when she came up from the deep and began to float on the water, she found herself turned into a crocodile. When had her husband worked this magic on her? When he was dragging her to his underwater lair, or when he sat staring into her eyes? She felt utterly miserable and began to cry. The crocodile did everything he could to divert her and keep her amused, but she couldn’t—and wouldn’t—forget her past life.
So her husband finally gave in: ‘All right. Listen carefully to this mantra and learn it by heart. If you recite it you’ll be able to return to your former self whenever you wish. But only not when I’m around, because, you see, no matter how hard I might try to hold back the counter-mantra—and keep you in the form of a crocodile—it’ll slip out of my mouth.’ That day as he was preparing to leave his lair for his constitutional, the poor crocodile couldn’t help shedding tears. ‘I know you’ll be gone by the time I return,’ he said. ‘But take care not to recite the mantra midstream—you’ll turn into a human being and drown immediately. Make sure you’re safely ashore before you say the mantra.’
When he returned home in the evening he found her still there. Needless to add, he was thrilled. The young woman didn’t leave the next day, nor the day after. Weeks and months passed. The crocodile couple began to swim together, delighting in each other’s company, roaming far and wide, from one bathing ghat to another. Once they travelled from their river to another and stopped close to a shrine. She said to her partner: ‘Husband, you stay in the water. I’m going to crawl up the bank, assume my human form, and go have a darshan of the deity.’ He agreed. After this, she went on to visit a large number of temples and shrines. She’d swim to the riverbank at night, say her mantra, assume her human form and spend the whole day in pilgrimage, and at night jump back into the river, where her husband would be waiting to transform her back. But during all this time she took great care to stay away from her own village; she had this fear that, once there, she might not feel like going back to her husband.
After ten years had passed she was seized with a deep desire to look up her parents and, with her husband’s consent, returned to her village for a day. What she saw there filled her with dismay. The old way of life had been completely destroyed. Her father was dead and her mother lay dying; in fact, the old lady would die inside of a couple of days. Those two days were all the time she got to spend with her mother. She remained in the deserted hut brooding about her life, her parents, and their love for her, and yet another day passed. Meanwhile her husband’s patience was running out and he was beginning to panic. He wanted to find out what had happened to her, and so he came out of the water. While he was trying to climb up the bank he was spotted and clubbed to death.
Sixty years had passed since then. The old woman had continued to live by the river, all alone. A pack of jackals began to howl in front of the old woman’s hut. The sahib started. As we took leave of her, she gave us a big smile. The moon had risen. The smoke swirling up from the thatched roofs of the village homes made the moon look bluer and softer than ever. We walked back in silence. The sahib, wrapped in his thoughts, stumbled twice: first over the turtle—this time it was journeying back to the river—and then over the dog, who remained as silent and motionless as before. He stopped on the riverbank.
‘How far from here is the deepest part of the river she spoke of? Is it upstream or down?’ ‘What deepest part?’ ‘The deep waters in which the crocodile couple lived.’ ‘Wonderful! Amazing!’ I laughed. The two words the sahib was so fond of had involuntarily slipped out of my mouth. Dr Batstone became grave. We walked back to the village in total silence. Some years later I received a letter from Dr Batstone. ‘Even now, when I think of the time I spent in your village, I feel I metamorphosed into some other being for the entire duration of that night the old woman told us her story—just as she herself had once changed into a crocodile. And I treasure the sensation of my metamorphosis as true and real.’
(Extracted with permission from The Greatest Odia Stories Ever Told; Aleph Book Company, 2019)
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