Of Protection, and other things

Tonight, I want to tell a story. I was never much of a storyteller, but tonight's the night for foolishness. There's a wind outside that tells tales of wet land, wet air, wet water. It says that there's going to be a back-breaking summer, a summer that'll suck the moisture out of your innards and leave you dry as a mummy. It's a tease, this rain.

I digress. I was going to tell a story. That I will. Before I tell the story, however, I want a betel leaf, with the spices well wrapped up inside and ready to be ripped apart by idle digestive juices fermenting inside a stomach kept fasting too often. Why do I require this betel leaf? Because, in order to set the precise mood for the story, one must chew on a betel leaf, like the lady in it.

I digress. The desired paan cannot be procured. So I shall proceed without it.


Once upon a time, a hundred or more years ago, bandits attacked a well-off household in a small village in Medinipur district of Bengal. This was no uncommon occurrence in that day and time. The defence of the house, however, was a different tale altogether.

The ground floor of the house was inhabited by a family of tenants, while the landlord and his family occupied the floor above. One evening, when the master of the house was home, the tenants' son ran upstairs to say that villagers had brought news of a gang of robbers approaching the neighbourhood. It was said that they had set their eyes on the affluent household.

Chaos broke out. The men of the house were in a tizzy. Amidst loud cries of "Dakat!", the mistress of the household quietly hatched a plan. She undid her long, dark, heavy hair. She chewed several paan's in succession. She lined her feet with alta. Then she picked up a sword - the kind with the curved head called a daa in Bengali - and took up her position at the head of the stairs.

The bandits arrived. They broke through the door, ran across the uthon, and began to rush up the stairs with cries of "Jai Maa Kali!". Then their chief, who was at the head of the band, stopped dead in his tracks.

There she stood, at the head of the stairs, her long hair billowing out around her; her large kohl-lined eyes open wide; her tongue, reddened with the juice of betel leaves, hanging out; her hand, holding the daa, raised menacingly. There she stood, and the chieftain trembled like a little boy caught loafing by his schoolmaster. "Tham! Maa darshan diyechhen! Uni nije eder rokkha korchhen!"

The band went down on their knees before the woman. Raising fearful eyes, the chief joined his hands in obeisance, and said, "Maa, bhul hoyechhe, amra jachhi." And that was the end of that.


This story was told by my grandmother. She had heard it from her aunt as a young girl. The lady in question was an ancestress of ours - possibly a great-aunt or a great-grandmother of hers.

Why, you ask, did I tell this story? Because it smells of the rain, that promises to protect, yet..
And yet, it will not. For we all know that it is summer, and that the parched earth of old Bengal will swoon; and that the rain, with its early promises of protection, will betray like the mother's womb betrays the child by pushing it forth into the world: but it will come. It will come one day, like the dark-haired, red-tongued, wide-eyed woman from the story, and protect her sorry children with her sword-the one that cuts the grain like a sickle from the stalks of the green fields where our home once lay.