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The encounter

‘That won’t do ma’am! You’ve to beat the duster against the table to make them stop!” Raka turned to see…

The encounter

‘That won’t do ma’am! You’ve to beat the duster against the table to make them stop!” Raka turned to see a roly-poly girl among the famished faces that hollered, chattered and danced about the classroom. A boy busy practising aerobics holding two blades of a defunct ceiling fan landed on his desk with a thud. A Santhali boy had been tugging at the plait of a Brahmin girl.

Raka paced up and down the room, a wooden ruler in hand, attempting to discipline, or rather pacify, the students of Class VIII B of Binpur High School where pandemonium had broken loose. The Assistant Headmaster’s timely intervention saved the situation. He yelled at them and slapped two or three quite hard. The culprits winced and scurried back to their seats.

Then he called Raka outside. With the forefinger of his left hand in his left nostril, he reminded her that it had been over a month, yet she was unable to manage her class. Then he plodded along the corridor still picking his nose ardently as if a goldmine lay there, yet to be excavated.

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It was at the sound of the bell that Malati Soren, the plump girl came up to her. She wanted to be excused. Raka ambled towards the teachers’ room. Three male teachers had been playing cards. One of the senior teachers, who was in a lungi, his excuse being he was one of the hostel inmates, had been puffing at a bidi by the window at the farthest corner of the room.

City-bred Raka, the teacher of English, with her sense of propriety and decorum, was rendered a misfit in this rural ambience. She slumped into the only high back leather couch of the room beside the Geography teacher, Nilima Madam. The woman had been snitching on the Assistant Headmaster. Raka casually faked interest in her talk while browsing over a book for her next class.

Half an hour or so had elapsed when she had an uncanny feeling of being watched. She looked about the staff room but there was none. From the corner of her eye she sneaked a look at the window at her extreme left. To her chagrin, there was the clerk, the only tribal employee of this school eyeing her up with queer eyes.

Exasperated, Raka turned to her neighbour the Geography teacher to report the event. Then she perceived what the clerk had been ogling at. Nilima Di, in her mid-forties was busy gossiping, but her aged assets were on display — her bulging tummy as the woman had tied her petticoat way below her navel and one of her gourd like dangling breasts protruding out from one side of her pallu. “Your letter of DI approval Madam!” said the clerk now standing at the door with an envelope in his hand.

Then Raka saw Malati creeping along the corridor and pass Vivek from behind. “Malati!” called Raka nonplussed. “Where have you been so long?” she demanded. “I called her to verify the spellings of her name and that of her father for the office register,” Vivek spoke for her. “But she missed one class Vivek, the second period!” Vivek did not answer. He handed Raka the envelope and walked off.

Raka looked at him doubtfully and then glanced at Malati. She was shivering and perspiring profusely. With quivering lips she apologised for being late. Raka smelled a rat. “What’s the matter Malati?” she asked. But there was no reply.

Raka was certain that the office chap had done something to this Santhali girl. She was about to interrogate further and simultaneously lecture Malati on “indecent touch” when there was a thundering explosion from somewhere near the Police Lines. “Another bomb blast!” exclaimed someone. “No not in this period of cease fire”, thought Raka.

***

In her two years of marriage Raka had formed some vague conception of the political scenario of Binpur from her policeman husband. She had learnt that a banned insurgent Naxalite group had been causing anarchy and political unrest. Prakash Singh, Raka’s husband and the SI of Binpur-II, considered this war against his government. He assisted the CRPF and the Special Task Force of Kolkata police to combat terrorism and thereby quelled the uproar.

Raka was now jittery and worried for her husband. She rang Prakash up twice in vain. She could not go to her next class. She sat on a chair in the teachers’ room nibbling at her nails. Consoling gestures and sympathetic assurances of her colleagues failed to comfort her.

Vivek came in with two cups of tea and two biscuits perhaps from the local bakery. He offered Raka a cup of tea and a biscuit. The chap tried to strike a conversation with Raka. But Prakash’s young wife longed to hear her husband’s voice.

Vivek seemingly tried to help Raka tide over the discomfiting period of long waiting. Dunking biscuit in the brown milk tea, Vivek spoke fervently about Binpur, the place, the meadows, the hilly landscape flecked with dense forests. He waxed eloquently about the people, the tribes, the agro based Santhals, Bhumij, Munda, Kora. With rapt attention Raka listened to him. Vivek further informed her that he had graduated from a college in Warangal. His father, the local quack, wanted him to settle there. Thus, this job was procured for a sum of four lakh rupees from the school management committee. The son of the soil was home.

Prakash called at 1.30 pm during the school recess. “Don’t worry dear! Some minx of a girl enticed Gopal havildar into a delicious chitchat and offered him a basket of snails. There was a shell.” The line went off before Raka could enquire after Gopal Murmu, the constable.

Prakash’s phone call had done away with her blues. During the school recess, she decided to stretch her legs and get some air in the field. Some girls were playing kabaddi, three tribal boys were fighting over one cricket bat brought by the son of the local Panchayet Pradhan. Malati lay on the grass facing the sky. She looked fraught to a frazzle. Two girls sitting beside her were inspecting the contents of a basket. Raka walked up to the group and stooped to have a look into the basket. “Apple snails; we eat them.”

The voice gave Raka such a start! Raka turned to find Vivek standing arms akimbo just behind her. Malati had got up by then. She took the basket and walked in the direction of the hostel. Raka lost her patience and blurted out, “Don’t you have anything to do in office? Leave the girl alone!”

At 4 pm, the classes being over, Raka slung her bag on her shoulder. The murky sky, the mild breeze, the sound of rustling leaves mesmerised her. On her journey back home, she would often stray through unknown alleys on her scooty to feast her eyes on Nature’s bounty. Today she decided to take the by lane that ran along the periphery of the forest. The road was lined with tall woody sal trees.

Half way towards the crossroads Vivek’s motorcycle whizzed past her. There was Malati sitting astride the bike behind Vivek. Raka decided to risk being late to home for the sake of her student. She wouldn’t let that Ravana devour the child. She swerved her scooty and went after the motorcycle. The vehicle ahead gained momentum. Riding nonstop for half an hour she realised she had lost the track. She was some four or five kilometres inside the forest on a single track forest road.

It dawned on her that she had been impulsive, impetuous. She should have reported to the authorities concerned, or should have called someone instead of following them. She groped for her mobile in her bag.

A hand held hers and snatched away her bag. There were seven or eight men, spears in hand while some carried bows and arrows with feathers of gheroa (house sparrow). “Ma’am I forgot to tell you about us, Lodhas and Sawars. We are the hunting tribes.” Raka gazed at the Naxalites with trepidation. “We would hunt down anyone who would pillage this place.”

The group escorted Raka to a rundown country cottage. There were several men and women in the yard. The group was heterogeneous consisting of men from Orissa, Jharakhand, Bihar, Bengal and even some from the South. There were only a few Adivasis. It started raining. People huddled together under the shades, some sat on the gound on haunches.

Vivek and his men stood in the rain. Raka saw Malati leaning against a bamboo post. “There’s your student, the prime suspect of the explosion at Police Line, said Vivek.”

Raka understood it all. There was absolute silence, the only sound being that of the soft rain on the leaves and on the ground. An elderly man dressed in a military outfit came out of the cottage. In a firm voice he said something like Unikh sab kadeyak! (He has been arrested!) The crowd became clamorous. “Silence!” roared the elderly man. “An insider tipped them off!”What he said next was addressed to Raka. “There’s a mole among us. We need you to identify him.” Raka knew the meaning of a “mole” or a “covert”. But how would she identify him? She stared at him in dismay.

Vivek came forward. “Look at the faces of everyone here. Has anyone of these people been visiting your husband or any of his friends lately? Did you happen to see any of these men or women in the vicinity of your quarters or locality?” Volleyed with questions, Raka looked at the asphalt faces and began to cry. The face of the elderly man seemed to strike a distant chord but Raka could not say anything for certain. Malati came forward and gave her a stool to seat.

Vivek brought something in an earthen pot and gave it to her. “Drink it” he muttered. It was mohua. Raka had tasted it once with her husband when her mom-in-law had been away to her brother’s house. “Oh Prakash!” she sobbed. Then she emptied the terracotta tumbler down her throat in one go. “That would silence her till the morning,” said Vivek “and we would be gone by then”.

The aged man spoke up again. “She doesn’t know a thing. Go and drop her to her house.” Then he took out Raka’s debit card from her bag and made her write down her password in a piece of paper.

“Come on!” Vivek commanded. Raka followed him mutely. Drenched in the drizzle, Raka sat behind Vivek. “So they wouldn’t kill her after all!” she wondered. The Enfield screamed to a start. The mohuli in an empty stomach had begun to take its toll. “Please keep your hand on my shoulder ma’am for we would ride fast. As it is, we’re running short of time”. Raka gripped Vivek’s shoulder firmly and clung to his back. Vivek smiled.

The bumpy ride played havoc in Raka’s befuddled brain. She leered at the figure in front of her. The whiff of wilderness, the musk of wet earth blended with the tantalising scent of a man. She felt the blob between her legs trickle down her thigh. Vivek’s tempestuous passion bleared Prakash’s gracious, mellow sobriety.

Vivek dropped Raka at the gate by 6 o’clock in the evening. Provati Devi had known the office clerk. “Raka fainted on the stage during our cultural programme. We had to take her to the doctor. The doctor had given her some medicine that would make her sleep. She’ll be fine by tomorrow.” Vivek said all in one breath and disappeared. Provati took it all in; what vexed her was that the clerk mentioned Raka by her name. Provati Devi summoned Kamala, their maid. Together the twosome took the staggering woman to her bedroom. Provati Devi was deeply disturbed, for her damp and dizzy daughter-in-law reeked of country liquor.

It was past midnight when Prakash returned home worn out, weary yet relaxed. A look at his mother’s tell-tale face told it all. Prakash entered into the bedroom somewhat fidgety. Raka was sitting at the edge of the bed, occasionally ranting like a mad woman. What she spoke was unintelligible, gibberish.

Prakash wished to recount the details of the encounter to his wife. There had been a blood bath. She needed to know all that they had discussed in the debriefing session, that some of her school staff had been involved. He thanked God that his wife had not been kidnapped!

That bastard Vivek had been shot at the leg. Unfortunately he’s still at large, the rest are either dead or are languishing behind the bars.

He went up to his wife and touched her febrile forehead and then her hair. There was a bug. He examined her gold and diamond mangal sutra, there was another one.

Slowly he brought his mouth close to her ear and whispered what Raka would so love to hear: “Roll down thy tresses dear Rapunzel for thy Prince would enter thy castle!”

Raka looked at her husband distracted, her response slurred, “Not today dear, the communists are picketing.”

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