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1.

There are two ways to reach Ghatakpukur. One is through the stoppage having the doctor’s chambers which is basically a one-room with a mud roof, a small veranda in front. There was a time when that small veranda could barely contain the patients thronging for treatment. Doctor Pratap Karar, Homeopath, used to sit inside at his wobbly table and chair. Putting a drop of medicine in a bottle of milk sugar, he used to treat people from seven villages. The people would swear that he was Dhanwantari incarnate. The famed physician disappeared one morning. What remained of him were the rickety table and chair, his box of medicines, an oily mattress on his bed, underneath which lay a stove and a few greasy pots and pans, his dhoti and towel lay hanging in the rope. Everything was in its usual place, everything but the man. Someone said that he had made his way to the Himalayas after a vision in his dreams, someone else said that he had left in a hurry after some bad news from his family. The people of the seven villages felt Doctor Pratap’s absence for a few days, and then found themselves a new doctor. But his house stayed the same, denuded with time but clinging to its structure. With time the bus stoppage came to be known as the doctor’s chambers.

The second way is through the Ghatakpukur stand. The roads bifurcate from this point- one leads to Raidighi and the other moves towards Kakdwip. The place is always bustling - three or four sweet shops, a few stalls of chops and fritters, shops selling fertilizers, a tailoring shop, and the Panchayat chief’s nephew, Naru, had recently opened a television repair shop. A makeshift stall selling rolls and chowmein can be seen in the evenings, its name “Ghatakpukur Roll Corner” proudly scrawled on one of its sides.

One needs to walk back a little distance from this stand to reach Ghatakpukur village. The Doctor’s Chambers stop, however, leads one straight to the village through the shady path beneath the trees. The pond with the ducks lies on one side, the village bank a few steps ahead, and finally one reaches the local market, the nerve centre of the village. The village blooms around this spot like the petals of a lotus.

There is a third way to enter the village, a path that lies between the doctor’s chambers and the Ghatakpukur stand. The buses don’t stop there. If they had, the stoppage would probably have been called the Kaurapara stop. No respected denizen of the village had ever been seen traversing that way. Just as the houses at one point of time had a separate entrance for the toilet cleaners, this way functions similarly - untouched and forsaken by the genteel. The residents of the locality share a similar fate. The wise men of the village say that the inhabitants were previously the palanquin bearers for the local landlords, called the Kahar community. The name Kaura comes from the word Kahar. These palanquin bearers were apparently of such low caste that they could not possibly be included in the mainstream village life. Yet if they shunned their duties, the pace of the venerated society would be hindered, the gentlefolk would not be able to reach their offices and courts, nor could they participate in festivals and ceremonies. Even their share of good karma through the complete immersion of the palanquins in the Ganges was courtesy of the Kahars. No one would use that path unless in dire need. It is in this place that Phullara Kaura grew up like a green vine snake. This is her story.

2.

Phullara returned home one day after collecting a good amount of cow dung to find her mother Sanaka sitting at the door and opening her hair from its bun. Her mother would often leave her hair in troublesome knots when tying her hair with a thin rope. So, she sometimes used torn borders of her saree to tie her hair. A piece of red saree border in her mother’s hair that day seemed somewhat out of place to Phullara. Her mother’s mid-hair parting was a stark white. It had almost been two months since her father Dukhe passed away. It was not a normal death; he had been murdered.

Dukhe Kaura didn’t have a stable job. Although sometimes he would carry stuff at Nitya Saha’s cement shop, yet mostly he was really not fit for work. He would loll around in Pancha’s local alcohol shop or be found at Monica or Kanika’s house, where people would sit regularly with booze. But that was not important. Dukhe was a very good singer. His rendition of Goshtagopal Das’s devotional songs would move even the sinners to tears. Sagar would play the hollow stalk of the lotus to his songs. Meanwhile Monica and Kanika, who had dared to open their business in the heart of this respectable village, would serve alcohol, chaat and laughter, their sarees escaping their shoulders ever so often.

In such a situation, where even the sternest mendicants have lost their will, Dukhe was no comparison! He wasn’t being able to decide who he liked more - Monica or Kanika. So engrossed was Dukhe in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed Sagar, his accompanying musician, beginning to consider him his rival. Sagar had been coming to that house much before Dukhe, and he was as skilled in playing those two women as he was in playing his instrument. Sagar could not accept it when the women, intoxicated by Dukhe’s voice, wanted to be played by someone other than him.

Dukhe and Sagar would often travel to other villages and put up impromptu shows. That time they had gone to a village called Katagachi at the invitation of Katagachi Traders Association. Sagar returned alone from there. Dukhe had seemingly gone somewhere from there without telling anyone. A few days later Dukhe’s body surfaced from a nearby canal. Sanaka returned home without filing a police complaint. Sagar was not only from an upper caste but was also a distant relative of the panchayat chief. She wiped her tears away and made her way home.

Her mother’s uncannily white hair parting brought back the trauma of those terrible days to Phullara’s mind - her father’s bloated body that was recovered from the water was unrecognizable. The postmortem report had vanished as well. But Phullara knew that Sagar had killed his father with a knife. People’s mouths are not as easily shut as that of the police. She had learnt this fact while collecting drinking water at the school tubewell, amidst the crowd of village women and maids gathered there in the mornings and evenings.

No matter how early she reached, Phullara knew that she would be the last to get water. She was used to this since her childhood. She didn’t understand it when she was younger. She had obstinately tried to stand in front of the other women once. They had pushed her away. She fell on the husks and very narrowly escaped getting an injury on her head, however, her clay pot disintegrated. Her mother had calmly explained to young Phullara while treating the scrapes on her head with the juice of the marigold leaves that the lines for upper caste women were separate from theirs and that they would not be able to get drinking water if they touched the upper caste women. Phullara found it difficult to comprehend how her touch could pollute the waters of the government tap. She hadn’t dropped out of school yet, the place where they served rice gruel, where they had to pray loudly - “let my life be touched by the sparks of the pure fire”. She would feel a strange pain in her chest while singing this song. She used to think that the fire mentioned in those lines lay latent in the pages of the book. Only the one who had touched this purifying flame was flawless. The politics of water didn’t touch that individual. Although she couldn’t attend the school for long, Phullara didn’t forget that song.

After some time, she didn’t get upset in collecting water after everyone was done. She had made peace with this norm. This was her fate because she was born to Dukhe Kaura in Kaurapara. What she couldn’t accept was the untimely demise of her father. The image of her father’s swollen body, enveloped in weeds and algae haunted her mind relentlessly.

Sanaka was finished freeing her hair from its ties. She looked at Phullara and said, “There’s a packet of shampoo in the room, wash your hair well today. Wear the blue saree given by your aunt in the evening.”

Phullara was taken aback. That was her mother’s only good saree. She had never allowed Phullara to wear it so far lest it tore. She had not even given her the saree to wear for the festivities at the Harisabha where all the village girls would come in their finery. What was special today? She didn’t ask her mother anything though. Her mother was easily annoyed after her father’s death. She was quick to anger especially because she worked hard as a maid in many of the village homes.

Phullara kept the cowdung in the courtyard, washed her hands and wiped them clean with the cloth tied to her waist. She entered the room to take the shampoo sachet. It was a small, dark and dingy room devoid of sunlight in the daytime. A mirror hung in one of its walls. Phullara tried to look at herself in its old and grimy glass.

3.

Many girls in this village were married off early, much before they reached the legal age for the act, and not just among the poor and low caste people, this was the norm even among the rich and the upper caste. People rushed to arrange a wedding when a suitable groom was available. Even if the board examinations came knocking at the bride’s door. Phullara wasn’t even a student, and bereft of a father at that. No one was surprised when her marriage was arranged at such a young age. They were of course amazed when they learnt where the groom’s family was from. A well-known proverb states that good fortune is simply a matter of chance. She was going straight to Bombay! The tinsel town! The city where Katrina Kaif, Salman Khan and Sharukh Khan walked the streets, where one might chance upon Big B when walking the sea promenades in the morning. And that is where Phullara Kaura’s marital home will be!

Phullara’s friends teased her, “Heard that you are marrying Shahrukh Khan!”

Although she knew it was a joke, yet Phullara’s heart fluttered uneasily in her chest. She was really getting married and moving to Bombay of all places! She wouldn’t have to collect cow dung from the fields, wouldn’t have to hold her clothes together with a safety pin. Could that be an end to her patchwork existence? Even though he was no Shahrukh khan, her intended was rumoured to be a prosperous land-owner. She wouldn’t have to worry about her next meal. The people in her village were insufferable, never coming to her aid with a plate of rice, always ready to malign her at the slightest issue. The women in Kaurapara as well the upper caste families where her mother worked, could be heard whispering, “How was this marriage arranged so suddenly? She is sending her daughter so far away to an unknown place. Now-a-days, many girls are being trafficked in the name of marriage. Lord knows what the girls are made to do!”

Phullara laughed at the thought that Dhaladadu, a grandfather figure would traffic her. After all, he was the only one who had supported them to the best of his ability following her father’s death. Dhaladadu was her mother’s distant uncle. He worked as a security guard at a flat in Bombay. It was he who had brought the marriage alliance. The groom’s house was located a little farther from the city of Bombay, in a village called Vitthalpura. The groom was an older man she had heard. One of his maternal uncles who stayed in Kolkata had come to see Phullara, the day her mother had asked her to wear the blue saree and look presentable. The maternal uncle was called Bhagvan Das. Twisting his elaborate moustache, Bhagvan Das had asked Phullara, “How far do you need to go to fetch drinking water, child?”

Although surprised at the nature of the question, Phullara answered him properly. Her answer seemed to please Bhagvan Das. She wondered why had the fact of her standing in the water line for an hour or two pleased him. Perhaps he wanted to gauge her patience, her capability. After that Bhagvan Das blessed her with a silver coin, a supari and a saree having pretty threadwork and left shortly thereafter.

Sanaka received the good news within a few days while working at Nitya Saha’s house. They had liked Phullara. But the groom wouldn’t be able to leave behind his land and property and come marry her in her village. Phullara would have to go to him and Bhagvan Das would be the one to take her there.

Sanaka wasn’t affected by the wagging tongues in her village but the prospect of her daughter’s impending marriage unsettled her. She wondered if she was pushing her daughter towards an uncertain future, so far away, to an unknown place, with an unfamiliar tongue. She would have felt reassured if the marriage rites had taken place in front of her eyes. How could she calmly give away her young daughter to this fellow Bhagvan Das, whom she had seen just one day? He could sense the hesitation and fear in her voice over the telephone, “Don’t worry, child. I am not going to sell your daughter to a brothel. I will take her directly to her wedding. And your uncle will be there as well.”

Bhagvan Das had come to take Phullara away on the appointed date. While packing her things in an old cloth bag given away by Nitya Saha’s wife, Phullara discovered that her mother had kept the blue saree among her things. She had not realized until then that marriage meant leaving her mother behind and going far away from her. The blue saree made this forgotten pain concrete. She fell onto her bed suffused with tears.

4.

People usually find it difficult to sleep in a new place. But Phullara fell asleep as soon as her frame touched the bed on reaching Vitthalpura. She hadn’t slept at all in the two-day train journey. The pain of leaving her mother was throbbing like a boil in her chest. She was also wary of the strange man who accompanied her on this journey, feeling that she would be preyed upon by hungry hyenas at any moment.

But her heart felt lighter when she saw Dhaladadu on getting off the train. Dhaladadu would not be able to accompany her that day but said he would definitely attend her marriage. She reached Vitthalpura in the evening after changing two buses on the way.

The entire village was seeped in darkness by the time she deboarded the bus. Sometimes the glow from a lantern or two would illuminate spots of darkness. This village did not have electricity yet. A few minutes on the dirt road from the bus stop led to her in-law’s place. A man had come to receive them with a lantern. A few rooms surrounded the courtyard. She couldn’t understand the layout properly in the poor light of the lantern. As soon as they entered a group of children ran towards them. Phullara could discern just one word from their cries, “Panibai, Panibai!”

Who was this person? Did they call the new bride by that name? A woman showed her the place where she could wash her hands and feet. She had a stern face and a bony visage. Phullara tried to grasp what the woman said to her through her clenched teeth. The woman told her that this was a drought-prone area, not green like Bengal, so she would have to be careful in her use of water.

Although she had to stand in a line to get drinking water for hours in her village Ghatakpukur, it was for a different reason. There was an abundance of water in her village. She used to bathe and frolic in the pond behind her house, the one with the ducks. How would she bathe using one or two small water pots? It wouldn’t even soak her skin. She didn’t mind eating the hard chapatis at night with the distasteful vegetable curry, but she couldn’t come to terms with the lack of water.

She was asked to sleep beside an old woman at night. Back in her village the older women used to wear white or light-coloured sarees but this woman was wearing a bright green saree. But she wasn’t a bad person. Lying down, the old woman was stroking her back gently and mumbling something. At one point the woman’s hand rested on her waist. She pinched her waist repeatedly trying to ascertain something. Phullara tried to move the old woman’s hand away and fell into a deep sleep without realizing it. She awoke with a start past midnight at the sound of someone weeping. The old woman wasn’t beside her in the bed either. The sound of girls crying and the shouts of a man wafted inside the room from somewhere. Phullara drifted back to sleep while hearing the sounds outside.

She woke up from sleep the next day with a push from a stern hand. That angry-looking woman was shoving her.

“How will you fetch water if you sleep so late?”

Someone said nearby, “Ah! But that’s not today. First let the marriage be formalized.”

“Oh, leave your marriage! If I don’t pull her up by her braids today, she will develop a habit of sleeping late.”

Another woman laughed loudly, “Now, what happiness will the bed provide her? After all, you occupy that space!”

The angry woman walked away at these words. The other women surrounding her bed urged, “Come on, get up fast. It’s your wedding day after all.”

Phullara’s heart missed a beat. “The marriage is today? Dhaladadu had told me it was three days later.”

“Now will they keep another maid to fetch water in these three days?”

Phullara had been hearing the word “pani” ever since her arrival. Her mind seemed to be filled with water. She was about to fall getting off the bed. The women cried out in unison, “Alas! How will such a thin girl become a panibai? Why did Bhagvan uncle bring such a girl?”

One of the women said, “No one was willing from the villages nearby. Bhagvan uncle said that Bengali girls are obedient, and this one doesn’t have a father.”

Phullara’s head didn’t stop swimming even while sitting for the wedding rituals. Panibai! What did panibai imply? Was the new bride called panibai in this province? She couldn’t spot Bhagvan uncle in any corner. She wanted to ask him to call her mother. Her mother didn’t even know that her daughter was being married off while she was sweeping the floors of Nitya Saha’s house.

So occupied was Phullara in her thoughts that she didn’t realize when the groom had reached the wedding arbor. She was made aware of his presence by the cries of the children, ‘the groom is here’. She saw in front of her a broad, stout figured man, his face covered as is the custom in this part of the country. Phullara’s heart lit up in a sliver of hope, all her fear, doubt, insult, hunger would wash away with his presence. The Shahrukh Khan of her own imagination was standing in front of her with a garland in his hand. Somebody shouted, “Kishanlal show your face.” The groom removed his customary face cover. Phullara’s nose was immediately assailed by a rotting smell, one that resembled her father’s dead corpse when it was lifted out of the water. But in reality, there was surely no such smell. The women all around were throwing fragrant flowers at her, Kishanlal was also wearing a strong perfume, then where did she get this smell? Actually, a certain kind of smell emanated from the bodies of old men, from their flaccid skin, their loose teeth, their insides reeking of the rot set from living many years in this world. The man who was dressed as a groom in front of her was no less than seventy years old. The man was looking at Phullara with unfeeling eyes, and Phullara’s sixteen-year-old, green-vine-snake-like body was revolted at the sight. This was her Shahrukh Khan! She fell unconscious to the floor.

When she regained consciousness, Phullara saw the old woman sprinkling her face with water droplets. She felt comforted at the touch of water. She missed her mother. When she started crying helplessly, the old woman tried to assuage her hurt, “You are wasting your time crying over the age and appearance of the groom. It’s just a formality, it’s a marriage in name only, so is the husband. Your real husband is that.” The old woman pointed at something. Phullara followed her finger to a large brass pitcher in the corner of the room. It was constructed a little differently than she was used to in her village, but she could understand from a glimpse how heavy it was. She would have to be as sturdy as an ox to fetch water in that pitcher. Suddenly a few images and sounds travelled through her mind, the old woman feeling her waist last night, the thin Bengali, panibai! Was she the panibai then?

Her body heaved in spasms of tears. The old woman caressed her head and her frame, “Silly girl! Are you still thinking about the groom’s age? Don’t worry he will never take you to his bed. For that Ashabai is there, his legally wedded wife. But there is no telling when or how a man’s desire might awaken. A few years back, on a rainy night, when Ashabai had left for her parent’s house for a child’s marriage, he summoned me to his room. How could I have said no? Even though I am a panibai, I am still his wife. He hasn’t got rid of me because he has acquired a taste for my body. He has kept me around even though I cannot fetch water any more. But I have seen so many panibai come and go.”

Phullara stopped crying and stared at the old woman in amazement. This woman was also Kishanlal’s wife!

The old woman continued, “Actually you know what the thing is? This is a dry land. It is not easy to get water here. One has to cross two-three villages to get water. If you leave early in the morning, you will only return around three or four in the evening. If the housewife leaves to fetch water, how will the work of the household get done, cooking, bringing up the children? That is why they need Panibai. They don’t have to pay you because you are married into the household, you have to suffice with the lentil soup and flatbreads twice daily. Kishanlal is infamous, his wife is ill-tempered as well, that is why no one from around here wants to be a panibai for this household. They had beaten one of them to….” The old woman stopped midsentence. Putting her chin to her knees, Phullara tried to unearth something from that deafening silence, something like water perhaps. Who knew that the eyes dried like the land in this arid place?

5.

A few small hillocks lay in the distance. Phullara saw the orange ball of light slowly descend from the western hill. The sun was setting. She was really late. The women there could walk with the pitchers on their heads. She was still not used to the practice. She carried the pitcher in the hollow of her chest. She found it impossible to carry such a heavy pitcher initially. She had once dropped a pitcher full of water after carrying it to the very doorstep. Ashabai had beaten her a lot that day. She did not get her dinner that day. She couldn’t get up the next day nor could she fetch water since her entire body throbbed in pain. Since that day Ashabai did not beat her but her cruel words were enough, hitting her skin like whiplash.

Kishanlal, who was supposedly her husband, didn’t say anything. He just followed her with his eyes, sitting on a chaupai in the courtyard. His stare made Phullara’s skin crawl, especially because she knew that Ashabai’s eyes caught that stare as well. She found it difficult to bear the burden cast by these two sets of eyes.

She usually returned in the hot afternoons the other days, in the blazing sun. That particular day the sun had already set. It was comparatively easier for her therefore. She was not being able to carry the pitcher on her waist as usual because of her monthly cycle. She would soon have to habituate herself to carry the pitcher like the local women.

Although the sun was not there in the sky any longer, Phullara searched for the shade of a tree in order to rest her tired body. Trees and their shade took her to Bengal, its rivers and her mother. She had somehow managed to call her mother on the day of her marriage begging Bhagvan uncle. Since then days and months have passed without a word from her mother. Kishanlal had a mobile phone that hung from his neck all the time. If he ever sought her body on some rainy night and even if she managed to get the mobile phone within her reach, she would not be able to contact her mother. Her mother didn’t have a personal phone. She could only call her mother in the morning when she worked at someone’s house. She couldn’t find any market on her way to fetch water from where she could access a phone booth and call her mother. She didn’t have any money because the panibai were just fed and not given any wages. But she had a last memory from her father, a tiny silver nose stud shaped like a flower. If she ever found a phone booth, she would give away that nose stud and call her mother, imploring her mother to send Dhaladadu and take her away from that place.

Phullara spotted a Simul tree in the distance. Red fleshy flowers covered the tree. Simul flowers! That meant it was spring! The month of Baisakh would come in a few days later, festivities would start at their Harishabha, the girls in her locality would be in their finery, having fun, and she would be deprived of it all. Everyone would know she is Shahrukh Khan’s….

Phullara’s heart skipped a beat looking at the colour of the Simul flowers. If the spring was here, the rains would be here soon. Ashabai was pregnant, the old woman, Jashomati had told her. She would probably leave for her parents’ place in the monsoon. What if desire stirred in Kishanlal’s heart at that time? What if he wanted to consume her youthful, green, water-like body from Bengal? There was nothing wrong with the act according to Jashomati because she was Kishanlal’s wedded wife, he had a claim to her body. But she would never be able to enter the house or share his bed like Ashabai. Maybe it was better for her to acquiesce to Kishanlal’s wishes. Perhaps he wouldn’t get rid of her when she was old like Jashomati and wouldn’t be able to fetch water. Surely the memory of her body would prevent him from throwing her out of his house. She would have to wander the streets begging for meals otherwise.

Phullara wondered if she would have to fetch water all her life for a family that wasn’t her own. She would never be able to claim more than two drinks of the water she had fetched. She would grow as old as Jashomati just fetching water. And she would have to beg in her old age unless she agreed to Kishanlal’s desire on some rainy night?

The very thought scared her. The red colour of the Simul flower looked like a warning sign to her. How far was the monsoon from spring? She would have to flee. Immediately. Before she ran, she drank water to her fill from the pitcher she was carrying. She then kicked the pitcher away. The water fell to the parched earth and disappeared in a moment.

6.

Inspector Ghosle had been observing the girl for quite some time. The girl was dressed like a Marathi wife, but she had a youthful face shaped like a betel-leaf, a gentle mannerism that implied she was a Bengali. He had rescued a handful of Bengali girls from an infamous Marathi brothel just moments ago. Two representatives from the Kolkata police department had come to take them home. He was speaking to them in a low voice…

After deboarding at the Howrah station, the television cameras almost pounced at the girls. Everyone immediately covered their faces with their dupattas or the corners of their saree. A girl was spotted sitting pensively in a corner. She replied to all the questions from the reporters with a single word ‘panibai’.

7.

Phullara had returned to the school tap in her village to collect water like she used to before her marriage. But she could perceive that things had changed. She stood habitually at the end of the water line but she hadn’t evoked whispers among the women earlier, they hadn’t stared at her this way or pinch each other. Many of them saw on television what had passed at the Howrah station the other day. There was a rumour that she had been rescued from a brothel in Mumbai. That hadn’t changed her life much, she and her mother had lived in Kaurapara half-fed before and things were still the same. Her mother hadn’t lost her work either, rather she had gained an ounce of grudging respect because her daughter’s face was seen on the television screen. Everyone told Sanaka, “We had warned you before, but you didn’t listen.”

A good thing out of the whole episode was that a group of women from Kolkata wearing nice clothes came in an expensive car just to talk to her. They had arranged for her to be a part of some woman-centered self-help group in Kolkata. She would be able to earn some money alongside learning some work.

Thinking that everyone had taken water, Phullara was about to put the mouth of her plastic bottle at the tap. She didn’t notice that the second wife of the Ghosh family still had one bottle left to fill. The wife exclaimed harshly, “Die girl, Die! I will have to bathe again in this odd time of the day if I touch you in any way. As it is you belong to the Kaura household, God knows what else you have created in your journeys to Delhi and Bombay!”

Phullara’s eyes filled with tears although she was used to such words. Only a few months back, Ashabai and her children would wait with bated breath for the water she would get. Kishanlal would fill his cup with water and would let out a satisfactory sigh on drinking it. Jashomati would reassure Phullara when she would cry for her mother at home, “Giving water to the thirsty is a noble task. Not anyone can be a panibai.” The same water had become impure at her touch in the space of a few months!

Endnotes:

Dhanwantari: a mythical physician to the Hindu gods
Chaat: an Indian savoury snack
Chaupai: a bed made out of wood and ropes, used in rural areas, usually in courtyards