BHULAN KAANDA THE AMNESIA TUBER

SANJEEV BUXY | TRANSLATORS: K S RAM & UMA RAM

No.8, 3rd Cross Street,CIT Colony, Mylapore, Chennai, Tamil Nadu-600004 Copyright © Sanjeev Buxy, Translators: K S Ram & Uma Ram All Rights Reserved. ISBN 978-1-64983-069-2 This book has been published with all efforts taken to make the material error-free after the consent of the author. However, the author and the publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. While every effort has been made to avoid any mistake or omission, this publication is being sold on the condition and understanding that neither the author nor the publishers or printers would be liable in any manner to any person by reason of any mistake or omission in this publication or for any action taken or omitted to be taken or advice rendered or accepted on the basis of this work. For any defect in printing or binding the publishers will be liable only to replace the defective copy by another copy of this work then available.

Dedicated to the Rustic Forest-tribes of Chhattisgarh

Cover Design by Prof Sant Kumar Shrivastava Gwalior

Contents 1. Chapter 1

1

2. Chapter 2

7

3. Chapter 3

20

4. Chapter 4

22

5. Chapter 5

34

6. Chapter 6

55

7. Chapter 7

79

8. Chapter 8

89

9. Chapter 9

102

10. Chapter 10

104

11. Chapter 11

106

12. Chapter 12

111

13. Chapter 13

116

14. Chapter 14

120

15. Chapter 15

133

Glossary

139

v

Bhulan Kaanda that is, the amnesia tuber, is found in the forests of Chhattisgarh. If someone accidentally steps upon it, he instantly lapses into amnesia. He can then see only forests and wilderness all around; he can see no path ahead. He keeps going round and round, making no real headway. If some villager happens to pass that way, on seeing the hapless victim he figures out that this is the effect of Bhulan. He approaches the victim and touches him, and instantly the amnesia vanishes and everything is clear once again. This is not a yarn; it is a fact. It sounds strange but this weird tuber exists in the forests of Chhattisgarh. The villages and forests here abound in such bizarre truths.

vii

CHAPTER ONE

‘Just set out, and you will see village every where. The towns here, they contain a village… you will feel you are in a village. But this also is true, the village within the town is gradually fading away, Saab!’ … Saying this, Badku suddenly fell silent. He was given to smiling after every sentence, an artless habit. ‘Badku is right,’ remarked the Kotwar, ‘Whatever may happen, the village is so ingrained here, it is in the very water and air; how can that ever change, Saab?’ ‘Yes’, agreed Badku, and now he smiled. ‘This village thing, Saab, is lodged here firmly in the mental character of everybody. Call it naïve, Saab, or call it simple, or rustic. Abuse them, and they will take it, whack them and they will suffer it, they remain the same in joy and suffering.’ Badku smiled. ‘Wow, you seem smart, and you talk well.’ The Inspector interjected and signaled to the Kotwar with his eyes that it was time they left. The Kotwar was waiting for the signal. Instantly he stepped out. Badku continued his homily even as he set a faggot to the fire, ‘Tell me, if I am speaking wrong. Come here and in a day, nay, in a moment you will recognize that Chhattisgarh is different from all other places … what to say of the Dadariya here, the Suva, the Pandvani, and the folk 1

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here and the trees and herbs.’ How did Badku know that what was here was not elsewhere? It happened that he had a distant nephew, who once invited him saying, ‘Come’, and Badku simply followed him. This nephew was P.A. to a Minister in Bhopal. So, it chanced that Badku traveled to Bhopal, and the people there who spoke with him remarked, ‘You are a sweet cow!’ ‘Am I a cow, Saab? This is simply the way we in Chhattisgarh are.’ Whenever he retorted thus, the people covered their face with their hands and laughed. ‘What is the name of your village, Badku?’ ‘Neeche Gaon, the lower village.’ ‘What sort of a name is that for a village?’ ‘It has another name, but we call it the Neeche Gaon, the Lower Village.’ ‘What is this ‘Lower Village’? ‘It is Lower Village if it is lower, and Upper Village, Upar Gaon, if it is higher, what else.’ They all indulged with Badku thus, and commented, ‘You are right, Badku, Chhattisgarh is truly different!’ ‘Neeche Gaon! Is this any name to keep?’ The Inspector asked the Kotwar who was riding on the pillion of his motorbike. ‘The name in the records is Bhakmunda, Saab, but nobody calls it that.’ ‘If nobody was to call it so, why was that name given at all? Surely there was no compulsion?’ The words of the Inspector made the Kotwar shudder, as though he was being blamed for the name! ‘The forbears named it so, Saab, who knows why; but if they named it so it should be called so, Saab.’ ‘How did the Lower Village emerge, what lies above?

2

SANJEEV BUXY, TRANSLATORS: K S RAM & UMA RAM

‘The place we are going to lies above. This place you are seeing around was once a dense forest. It was infested with wild beasts. One shuddered to come here. It was so thick, that five o’clock, and it was dark. There were sal trees; what you see now here and there, are of that period. Babu went up and built a hut and began to live there. Down below there were just some four to eight families. Since then, this has been called the Neeche Gaon.’ ‘Was he a Government clerk?’ ‘No Saab, people just called him Babu-Babu.’ ‘But the place we are going to is Navagaon, right? Or is that also known as Upar Gaon, Upper Village?’ The Inspector queried. ‘It is called Navagaon.’ ‘This Navagaon thing is a disease, wherever you go you see a Navagaon. If you can find no better name, call it Navagaon’, the Inspector said this with a raised voice. ‘The full name is Babu Navagaon, Saab. Say just ‘Babu’ and people will know you mean Navagaon. What will you understand if I say ‘Sahibin’, Saab? You can never guess that this too is the name of a village! But it is in fact so, Sahibin is a village, they cultivate mustard there. The full name is Sahibin Kacchar, but all call it just Sahibin.’ ‘Now tell me how on earth it got that name, Sahibin!’ the Inspector had only to turn back toward the Kotwar and he began his tale.’ ‘What happened, Saab, an English Saab and his Sahibin (Madam) came to roam in the forests. Suddenly a huge teak tree disturbed by the storm and rain fell on the Sahibin. The tree had only to fall and the Sahibin departed to be the Lord’s dear one, then and there. To this day that tree is lying just where it fell. It is so huge, nobody can move it. Ever since then, people began to call that place Sahibin 3

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Kachhar. Later, the village came to be called Sahibin Kachhar.… Don’t go that way, Saab, there’s Bhulan, the Amnesia Tuber,’ the Kotwar cautioned the Inspector. ‘Now what is this Bhulan? What strange things the jungle has!’ The Kotwar began to answer the Inspector’s query. ‘This Bhulan, Saab, is an incredible thing. No one from the city believes in this rustic stuff. They dismiss reports about it as a yarn, but, Saab, see, there’s Bhulan here in truth. That spot there, the Bhulan tuber is there. Should one step upon it, he is sure to forget his path. He sees only forest all around. He just can’t see any path. He keeps going around and round.’ ‘If he falls into amnesia once, is there any antidote or will the amnesia last for life?’ ‘Sure, there’s a remedy, Saab. The forest has everything you need. When a shepherd or a villager passes this way, he guesses from the look of things that the person is a victim of Bhulan, so he goes and holds him by the hand. Just this, and lo! The amnesia fades and the path clears once again.’ ‘…’ The Inspector was silent. ‘Is it not wonderful, Saab, the magic of the forest and village?’ The Kotwar spoke after a pause. ‘This is sheer bullshit’, the Inspector declared. The Kotwar responded, ‘Saab, you are refusing to believe. Do you know a marriage procession of this very village was trapped just here? Umpteen times other-village passers-by happen to touch the Bhulan and then they go astray…. The villagers just do not pass that way, they carefully skirt it.’ The Inspector was perplexed by these bizarre tales of the forest. He had no choice but to accept them. Otherwise the Kotwar might challenge him, saying, okay, if you do not believe in it, come, touch and test it for yourself. 4

SANJEEV BUXY, TRANSLATORS: K S RAM & UMA RAM

That could be disastrous. He changed the topic. ‘This looks like a Hill Station.’ ‘The rocks here have granite, Saab. At some places they have turned round-shaped and they look pretty. We have been seeing these as they are since childhood. Just as they are. See there, how on the cliff there, sits another round rock that you would think must roll down any moment. But it has been sitting so for years now. One thing more wonderful than the other, you can see it all here, Saab.’ ‘This truly is beautiful! And so jet black you would assume somebody has freshly washed them.’ The Inspector was truly impressed by these sights. ‘Now that the forests have thinned out, the game too must have disappeared,’ he said. ‘You are right, Saab, with the forest gone, how can any game survive?’ He concurred. The Inspector understood the Kotwar’s subtle lexicon. ‘Beast’ (jaanwar) meant any wildlife; but (janawar) ‘wild animal’ referred only to the tiger. ‘Wow! This is wonderful! A school adjoining a hill. So close that you can touch the hill through the classroom window.’ ‘During break, the students do not sit in the veranda; they perch upon the rocks. Look there, Saab, the beautiful hill behind the hospital.’ The Inspector sighted a goat atop the highest peak of the hill. Such slender legs, how could the goat have made it up to the very top? He mused. The Kotwar knew that the Saab never relented in matters of official work. If he flared up, he just flared up, and then his tongue could lash out wildly. When the ‘Inspector-hood’ visited upon him, one wondered where the soft feel for woods and forests disappeared. 5

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As they approached the village, the Kotwar asked, ‘Where shall we sit to confer in Navagaon, Saab, in the chaura, courtyard, or in the chapel, gudi? ‘We shall sit in front of the gudi.’

6

CHAPTER TWO

The Inspector is un-fastening his belt even as he is looking at Hadma…. ‘Will you too recite what everybody has stated or do you know something else?’ He thinks unto himself: All these rogues are wrought of the same clay! His manner of un-fastening the belt was such that gave the impression that he meant to flash it in the air. It was so for this reason too that the un-fastening of the belt and address to Hadma happened simultaneously. The Kotwar had fetched a wooden string-cot from the house-behind and laid it for the Inspector to sit upon. This cot, it seemed, was not prepared for such a heavy weight. It squeaked with every movement of the Inspector’s body. The strings had not been pulled taut, and so the Inspector sat upon it in a sunken manner. This posture made the belt feel tighter. When the Inspector laid the un-fastened belt upon the cot, the gathering breathed easy. The Kotwar was whispering to everybody that whenever the Inspector meant to probe deeply, he first unfastened his belt. This done, he drinks a glass of water. The Kotwar knew this, he came and stood before the Inspector with a brass-tumbler full of water. ‘You have become pretty smart; why, I suppose you are not one with these villagers.’ 7

There is an accidental killing in a forest-tribal village in Chhattisgarh. The Police Inspector is on his way to investigate. The village-constable, riding on the pillion of the Inspector’s motorbike, suddenly cautions him to avoid a particular spot on the path where grows the Bhulan Kaanda, the tuber whose contact, he claims, induces instant amnesia and makes the victim confused regarding the right path, making him go around and round. The accidental killing throws up an existential conflict between the traditional village system of justice and the formal State court of law. The accused, as also the entire village, find themselves making several rounds to the court in the town to resolve a matter that they had smoothly resolved long back. The amnesia-inducing tuber becomes a metaphor for the institutions of the Government. The story, riveting as it unfolds, dramatizes a subject that has been rarely examined: the post-colonial discord in countries like India between the traditional structures of local governance and the State’s institutions, inherited from alien rulers of the past. Once you start reading the story, it is hard to put this book down. Later, it lingers in your mind raising important questions begging for answers. Bhulan Kaanda is bound to emerge as a unique novel in Hindi Literature. – Vishnu Khare

Sanjeev Buxy, (b.1952) is an acclaimed poet and fiction writer in Hindi. A former bureaucrat by profession, his first love has always been literature. He has published six collections of poems, two novels and two memoirs. But he is best known as the author of Bhulan Kaanda, first published in 2012, now made into a feature film that has won ten national and international awards. This novel won the prestigious Premchand Samman in 2012. He has also been honoured with Thakur Puran Singh Smriti Sutra Award and Hemachandracharya Sahitya Sri Alankaran. He lives in Raipur, Chhattisgarh. Uma Ram and K.S. Ram, write regularly for the Speaking Tree, The Times of India. Dr. Uma Ram retired as Professor and Head, Department of English, Government PG College, Jagdalpur (Bastar), in Chhattisgarh. K.S. Ram graduated from Karnatak University in 1974, winning the University Gold Medal for topping in English. He has translated Adi Shankarachaya’s Bhaja Govindam and Annapoorna Stotram (2016), and Kabir’s Dohas (2019), into English. He is author of Bastar and Miscellaneous Poems (2019). Uma and Ram have jointly authored Tribal Songs, Ballads and Oral Epics of Bastar (2012). They live in Bengaluru. Price 200