Jaya Mitra’s “The Darkness of the Moon”

Image Courtesy: Alexander Andrews, Unsplash

My feet don’t seem to move. But there seems to be no other option but for them to move. The purpose of the feet is to work, Lacchmaniya knows that, yet how much farther? How much can human feet possibly walk? Did anyone know that specific math? At least Lacchmaniya isn’t aware. The ones who were supposed to know also don’t have the clear picture perhaps. They have to know so many other things! In her forty-two-year-old life, Lacchmaniya too has had to know, comprehend and learn so much but now, when its almost dusk, she cannot recall anything aside from her desire to sit somewhere.

Not just her, the fifty or sixty people walking alongside her also feel that they will not be able to set another foot. They have been walking for seven or eight days now, possibly more, they have lost count. And how many more steps will lead them to their homes in their village in Bihar? They have small shanties wherein to rest their heads at the end of a day adjacent to the rail tracks of the Borivali Rail station. They are called chawls here. they have been laying down roots there for many days, after much trials and tribulations. The people there have dropped from various locations. Each one of them had a family, a recent past burdening their backs. They have lost their land in the village; they have had to sell the land in face of a famine. Someone’s home is ruined by the death of a family member or because they have been left behind. Somebody else had come with his beloved to try his luck in the city. A few from Lacchmaniya and Bulaki’s village are there with them. The doleful past, that they want to forget even in dreams, the heavy burden of it scalds their chests and minds like hot iron.

Their small village in one corner of the dam on the banks of the Kosi river in Bihar was called Parariya. No one in this world knew about them. They also didn’t know how the world beyond the village looked, what went on beyond its boundaries. They have never addressed the river by its name, always venerated it as Kosi Maiya, the mother Kosi. It would flood almost every year, ripping apart their homesteads but they would live amidst that penury. They worked as laborers in the fields of the bigger farmers. They would live out their days somehow, growing little crops in the fertile flooded silt for three years, foraging food in the village bushes, creepers, rivers, ponds; feeding their one or two goats and cows a fistful of grass. They weren’t rich but they weren’t discontented either. Their lives followed the human pattern of marriages, births and deaths, festivals and worship. Each one of these events occurred in between the winter and the summer, in the months of Falgun and Jaistha. And in the months from Ashar leading up to the Kartik, the Kosi would flood and then there would be mud. They couldn’t go anywhere. And where else could they go, aside from their own village they just had the neighboring Sitapura and Akhlani as the furthest reaches to their world. But twenty years back something came to pass which perhaps even God had not scripted in their fates. They would sometimes listen to talks of a pucca road construction near their village. That year, as soon as it was the month of Chaitra, hoards of people, a few dressed in coats and hats, khakee-clad policemen pooled into their village with chains and measuring tapes to measure the road. The people in the village bustled about in the hopes that this time they would definitely see a pucca road. Now that the measuring tapes were here. How would they know of the hurdles in the project because of the dispute between the zamindar and the government officials regarding the measurement! A police chowki was set up in the village outskirts. The Babus had also taken out their guns. Apparently, the government was encroaching their fertile land for the road. The villagers were at the crosshairs of these two powerful factions. There was an uproar the entire day after which the people retired to their homes at dusk. Hai re! men from the police intruded into their homes at midnight and beat the menfolk and violated all the women, everyone from the fourteen-year-old maiden Maankumari to the sixty-year-old Dhaniya’s mother, no one was saved. How terrible was it, oh god! How could someone wearing the skin of a human behave so monstrously? She can neither recall the events of that night properly nor forget them entirely, she won’t be able to in this lifetime. But was that night the end of it? Somehow the news regarding the events of the night had travelled beyond the village and reached the cities where people didn’t care enough to know about such villagers. People swooped in on their village like vultures in a wasteland. All through the livelong day. With notebooks, mics and cameras. Men came, as did women. None of them sympathized. They only wanted to know who had done what, who were violated, wanted to take their pictures. As if it was a fair! As if their pain, their fear wasn’t enough, they had to be taken to the market, print their photographs. Finally, they said that they would have to stay there, that the police would come again. They would take the police’s statement. They would have to state which police did what crime, that they would note it all down. The police again! And they would have to repeat the same things in front of them! They had no other way but to flee. Taking their children in their arms, breaking their mud stoves, gathering whatever they had in bundles on their heads, the small group left quietly like thieves in the darkness of night. They had to forsake their ancestral home and venture into an unknown world, with their shame and fear in tow, a world of which they knew nothing. Since then they have been walking. From Nirmalli to Muzzafarpur, from there to Bhagalpur, Patna, and from there to long stretches of road. sometimes walking, sometimes laying at the side of the roads like beggars on the city footpaths. No one understood their tongue nor did they understand anyone’s. Most people consider them tramps. They don’t know of their land and village, of the homes they left behind. Putting up with that ignorance, they tried to find work, some of which they knew, some that they didn’t. the farther they went, the more they saw people like them trying to find work here and there. As they got to know them better, they realized that they had emptied villages to come look for work in the cities. The only work was construction work. Preparing the mixture, carrying the bricks, laying the brickwork. Or it was the work of tarring the roads, pushing the drum of pitch and mending the roads in the heat of the afternoon. Or chipping stones and laying them on the rail tracks. They would get money at the end of the day but that would come after turning their blood to water with hard work and listening to the contractor swear the entire day. By the time they had reached Borivali, close to Mumbai, Lacchmaniya’s six-year-old son had turned fourteen, their hands and feet scarred with blisters from roaming various lands. They have come to know of so much in that time! Man built so many things, ate so varied, dressed so differently, lived in such a variety of houses. When they thought about their home and village that they had left behind, it all seemed like a dream to them now. They had seen things of greater fear than the one that had driven them away from their home! Man hacking away at other men, burning large houses and stores, and standing right in front were people, eating, walking past. Their days had also gone by like that—sometimes hiding away like a rat, at other times earning enough with a day-long labor to have two flatbreads at the end of the day with their son.

Here, in Borivali, a metro rail track was supposed to be constructed, a large storage space for things and the construction of these had been ongoing for two or three years. Still, Lacchmaniya and Bulaki were somehow pulling through their disheveled domicile, protecting their young son Deshkumar from the harshness of a life on the streets. So many families had fallen apart, the husband and wife straying in different directions. Who really cared enough to ask about these broken people? They roamed from one contractor to the next, from one place to another. Her only solace lay in the fact that she had these two people in her life.

Her days were passing, just like they had passed all these years. But things became awry in the middle! A strange sickness made everyone mad. Cold, cough, fever—these were ordinary things, who had the time to worry about these things? They had to work from dawn till dusk to fend for three square meals per day. To arrange for the rent of their shanty. Even if they had fever, if they didn’t venture out, they wouldn’t have money that day. Who was sicker than one hungry? One had cold, cough, fever, choked throat and breathing troubles. The T.V showed and spoke about only these things in the evening. Everyone saw and said that this happened all the time. That the television people would keep saying something of this sort, otherwise why would people watch it! Who knew that the television reports would bring such a deadly chaos in their lives! Things were problematic at the workplace since February. They would have to cover their faces and noses and even then, there was difficulty getting work. The contractor was late in paying their weekly wages. Apparently, he wasn’t getting the money from the authorities. Tomorrow, not today, day after, not tomorrow… on the other hand, there was something wrong with the stores in the marketplace. One couldn’t walk properly due to the cars lining up the streets in front of shops, people filling large packets with things they bought. They filled their cars with food, wholesale items, booze, cottonwool, some medicine to wipe your hands with… and the prices had escalated in the shops from which they themselves bought stuff. Patel said so himself— ‘don’t bargain, just take what you’re getting. A terrible sickness is spreading. Long back, during my grandfather’s time, there was a plague in Mumbai. People would die on the streets with no one to cremate them, or weep for them. Things will again take that similar turn’.

How much more would they have to fear? Where did they have the money to buy and store away necessities? They were daily-wage earners, buying one or two wholesale items with their weekly wages. They hadn’t received that week’s payment properly yet, there was no work for them either. Even the contractor was scared. The television only broadcasted the news of that illness. Cover your faces with cloth, wash your hands, stay inside your homes. How would these people follow such instructions when they had no means of getting food without getting out of their homes? The money that they had was finished in no time at all.  It was all that they spoke about, even within themselves—what would happen next? They had come so far, just for a little money, what would they eat if they didn’t even have that money?

At last, five of them decided that they would return, get back to their own place where even if there wasn’t a house left for them anymore, they still had their village, where many of them still had old parents. Even those who were as unfortunate as Lacchmaniya, who let alone have a house of their own, didn’t even have land enough to place their feet and call their own, wanted to travel back from this foreign land. Even if they had to beg there, they preferred to stay at their own village. A place they knew, their very own neighborhood. They could certainly find some work there! They had heard that if they could somehow manage to reach Mumbai from Borivali, they would be able to get a train back. And when, after a lot of problems, they finally managed to reach Mumbai, they found out that the trains wouldn’t run, that trains, cars and buses had stopped plying. People had to stay where they were otherwise the disease would spread. Hai re! stay? Where could they have stayed? What would they eat! What would they feed their children? And how long could they themselves go without food? And since then they started walking, walking for seven or eight days now. And what is even more surprising is that so many others are walking the roads like them! Where have all these people been! So many people have been away from their homes and villages in this distant land for their stomachs! Then, who stays in the places they have left behind? Their homes lay so far away, none of them had walked in one go while coming here, stopping in places whenever they got work. Moving from one contractor’s team in one place to another’s team in some other place. Even if it was really crowded, teeming with people, they could always board a train or sometimes a truck. They had worked on so many of these roads, laying tar and concrete, so many of these roads! The roads on which buses ply, trucks ply, the rich travel inside their cars. Worked on rail lines as well. laying stones on tracks, pulling out grass and weeds by hand. But they are now crossing these very roads on foot. Those who have small children, walk with their children in their arms, a few rode on their father’s shoulders. They carry whatever little precious they possess in their homesteads tied in bundles in their hands or heads. The rest of the objects in their homes here, objects dearly acquired, with their labor, assembled with such hope—someone’s own T.V, own bed, an almirah, utensils, two blankets—how soft! Dear things bought off a hawker—they have had to leave everything behind, sell things one by one with whatever price they got. How could they have brought those along!

Now, in this terrible heat of the Baisakh, they have been walking since morning, rest during the intense afternoons and walk again at night. They cannot walk the pucca roads at all times. Most roads don’t have trees, no shade, no water. Their chests burn dry. They prefer to move ahead by the train tracks, stopping for shade under a tree or beside a water body in severely hot afternoons. Today, crossing many miles after Nasik, they stopped at a place called Eklahare in the afternoon. The people there offered them dal-roti, and a laddu each. People were distributing such things in a few places. The government doesn’t give a thing but there are a few good people still in this world—serving food in makeshift alms-houses, serving khichri, or dal-roti. Otherwise they would have perished from hunger long back. Once they had egg curry and rice. Today, at this place, they were given four flatbreads each. Many of them ate one or two roti with dal and laddu, and kept some to have the next day. But they have run out of steam and walking any further seems really difficult. They just crossed a vast river using the rail bridge. The bridge cannot usually be accessed but there are no trains running at present. There was such a deep river gorge beneath them. Made them clutch for breath. But they keep walking, leaving all that behind. Walking on, darkness descended on them. A large moon rose in the sky, alighting the path ahead. Although the rail lines are visible, they’re not fit to be walked upon, the stone chips were piercing through their feet. The group keeps plodding through the lands alongside the rail tracks. There are no humans nearby, not even their shadows! Can humans put up with so much! The children aren’t being able to walk any more. The soles of their feet burn as if scorched, a burn that seems to scorch their heads.

The moon moved along the sky and it is now two at night. They reach a large pond beside an open field. The water is still. Lacchmaniya, Dulari, Fekiya, with their chests bursting in thirst, lay flat on its banks. They take water in their palms and drink, splash some on their heads. The cool moonbeams, this vast waterbody, shades of trees—why was their home taken away, for what sin? Whatever it was, it was their own home and hearth, created with hard work, dearer to them than their very lives, their small homestead. Alas! For what crime are they having to cross such distances today, walking like stray animals, mile after mile, men, women and children alike! Their new homes also lay broken behind that they had built with money from their blood and sweat. Where are they headed now? Semati’s daughter, Muriya’s leg fall inside a ditch while crossing the grassy plot near the waters. The young girl falls flat on her face and starts crying. But does she cry just because she has fallen? Is it not the pain of walking towards the livelong day greater uncertainty, losing everything they had, leaving it all behind? Salt water pools in everyone’s eyes. They roll and weep. The medicine woman, who knows medicines and messages, is called old because of her knowledge. She comes up and inspects the wound for any breakage. But Muriya doesn’t stop wailing. She keeps saying, “I have been walking uselessly; I don’t want to walk anymore.” But can she be left behind just because she says she cannot walk any further? Finally, the men declare that all of them should rest there tonight. Perhaps they will be able to walk better if they get the night’s rest. Or else they would have to tie a stick around her leg and take her to the nearest town.

One cannot just sleep in an unknown field amidst the grass. The rail lines are clearly visible. It was level ground, albeit with stones, what can be done about that now! The more time the decision takes, the more sleep and exhaustion crowds their bodies, and they scatter thereabouts and fall asleep.

The train came an hour after this. Gushing through in full speed. The wheels wanted to shriek the people awake, dragging itself as if not wanting to move ahead but they had no rule to stop either. Trains weren’t supposed to run along those lines but someone higher up in authority had the brilliant notion of testing the lines. If goods train, carrying necessities, could be operated on those lines. The rail lines weren’t meant for sleeping, why were those people sleeping? The flatbread pieces that lay strewn away from the bundles that housed them, the pieces that lay painted in blood, looked black. The clotted blood would obviously turn black in the morning. The scattered dead bodies wouldn’t have to travel anywhere. The ones who remain still wait to walk.

Published in Flaming Flowers, Vol.2, pp 113-123, ISBN: 9788-1971-522-0-7, January 2025

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