Nokhodorpon

Munmun gently closed her eyes. She wanted to sniff the soft breeze that kissed her chubby cheeks and tugged at her pixie-cut hair. She had always imagined breezes to actually have been tiny fairies that ran and played about with little, shy kids. She wanted to drift away with them. The moment the breeze stopped, she looked down at the bowl on her lap that contained an odd and irresistible mixture of raw mango slices, mustard oil, salt and grated green chilli. She was sitting on the steps of the veranda, of her cottage, that looked out onto an extensive backyard. She had been wistfully enjoying her stolen delight and watching her older brother Gautam’s half-witted struggle at the pond. The house was primarily built of wood and had asbestos roofing. It was a typical light-weight building standing strong on a raised platform as those constructed on earthquake prone areas. It populated the world of a village in Assam, a north-eastern State in India, in the 1970s. 

Every house in the village had a pond in their backyard and Moon’s residence had a big one. Though each dwelling had a pond, some kitchen crops sowed here and there in patches, and barns, usually with hens, ducks and cows, two cottages weren’t far apart. No barriers existed between two backyards and doors were open all day. Plump green pumpkins would be left under the bed to ripen and tea would be made of fresh cow’s milk. Fish were cultured in the pond. When the kal-boishakhi storm hit, Magur fish clambered out of the pond on to mucky ground, while their yellower pond-mates, the Koi fish climbed up trees to shelter themselves. 

Munmun had been staring at the huge mango tree that guarded their pond. She, as everybody else, loved it when storms came. Last night had been a torrential downpour and this morning the pond looked like a reservoir of raw mangoes at the mercy of Gautam, who was all delight and excitement, trying to pry some out with a long bamboo stick. She had been watching him, scowling slightly with the force of her thoughts about him. He was a bully to her. She had been sitting on the same step, leaning against a pole, when he had rushed out to get at the mangoes first. That was half an hour ago. She had wished he’d slip on the wet moss and soggy ground and rip his pants. But that hadn’t been granted. 

While these thoughts were running in her head, a classmate of hers, the only one who was as small as she, was sprinting through fields and backyards. Without warning, he appeared on the scene and rushed past like the West Wind shoving Gautam into the pond, bamboo stick with him. 

Gobra, as he had been named with love, was unrivalled in his position as the imp of the village. He was the only one who had ever dared tease the headmistress of the village school, and on rare occasions even succeeded. 

“He he he!” Gobra laughed, pausing to jerk his hand at the gasping Gautam several times and following it with a loud tongue roll; the biggest insult. In the instant that followed, he vanished. 

“Oi!” Munmun yelled to his behind as it disappeared from view. She sprung up and before she knew it, she was following him like a guided missile. Gautam would be okay. The pond wasn’t too deep anyway and Dad was around. The figure in the fleeting glimpse she caught, when she flew by, had seemed to be doing a good job flailing about. But why was Gobra in such a hurry to go that way? The whole village, as far as he was concerned, was the other way. 

He promptly entered their headmistress’s house which stood grand and overbearing a few blocks away from her own, and went over to the courtyard at the back. She followed, elbowing her way past the many legs that had gathered there. The centre of the ground was occupied by a piri facing a dark, old man of large build. She knew him. He was the village gunin, Notoborda. He earned a living by coming to the rescue when burglaries happened. Once he had undertaken the complex and strenuous ritual of bati-chalan after the failure of a nokhodorpon. The bati-chalan had been successful and the bati had embarked on a pilgrimage in the quest of the pilferer, finally lodging itself on the “supposed” crook’s ankle with surprisingly adhesive tenacity. At least that is the version which went down as folklore; nobody had actually seen the bati amble down the streets. But then, how a man of his stature worked was beyond the common understanding. Such laborious tasks, as his occupation demanded, had thinned his hair to two silver-white tufts above his ear and his poita which had split into its component threads, meandered through a jungle of hair of various sizes and shades on his broad, black chest before, finally, spreading itself out over his paunch. 

The man was sitting on a saffron mat and wore only a white dhuti to cover his most precious parts. He was periodically dipping, removing and peering at a paint-brush in a small clay pot that stood solitary on the floor between the bench and his gruff form. 

“I came. I reached. I am here.” Gobra panted as he took his place on one end of the bench. “Hmm”, grunted Notoborda without raising his focused eyes. He had been trying to get the crowd to attend to his enlightening speech for a while, but they had rudely continued their crucial gossip. 

Just then their headmistress came busily in from somewhere inside the house through a door that Munmun faced and before a second ran out the whole courtyard was all eyes and ears and no mouth. The headmistress was a tall, middle aged woman of a formidable disposition. The only two expressions anyone had ever seen on her were the immovable sternness, which she adorned as a regular ornament, and the extra-sweet smile on those rare occasions when she flaunted her yellow and black, betel nut juice eaten teeth in order to placate someone of significance. She headed the small village school, but was equally the head teacher to all the pupils’ parents. The whole village, including the elderly, teemed with fear and respect for the headmistress. Even so, they had gathered here not only to share in the delights of such meetings, which were undoubtedly many, but to satiate their burning curiosity: who was the gallant who had stolen whatever it was that was missing? 

Munmun, like all the other children in the mob, hid herself further among the thicket of legs, only peeping out to see what was going on. A confusion of voices had been soaring in from above until now, as though they had travelled down to her ears through the many colours of
shareesxvi and dhutis that loomed over her. Snatches of conversation in different voices reached her ears. 

“A grave misfortune indeed...” 

“I wonder who did it...” 

“By the way was it ...” 

“Oh not to worry now ...” 

“Kaju boudi saw a crack in the door of the bedroom; apparently the almirah was found open in the morning...” 

And so the voices, some worried, some excited, some serious and some sarcastic, but all essentially anxious and curious, had gone on. 

“What else would you need Nataborda?” The headmistress’s firm tone, amplified by the natural microphone that those in her profession possessed, startled Munmun to turn her head towards the central proceedings. “This boy is of the Tula rashi you say?” He growled. “I’d like a girl of the same rashi here too, if possible, please.” The frown on his forehead, the manifestation of his bruised ego, still sat stubbornly between his brows. 

Gobra lost no time in shouting out “Miss! There!” while pointing exactly to where Moon was standing. She peered grimly in that direction. Her scarlet bindi danced on the wrinkled skin of her frown like a campfire while she squinted at one of the legs in the crowd. Why she took Gobra’s word so seriously that day remained a mystery. 

“Move aside a little Chandana boudi, will you please?” she asked of the lady whose shelter Munmun had been taking. 

Munmun timidly stepped out onto the open, her palms tightly squeezed into each other behind her, head awkwardly tilted so her chin touched her collarbone. She was wearing a plain purple frock that was falling off one of her shoulders and covering her ankles; it had been stitched big so that it’d last her till she grew up into a woman. “Yes Miss” her feeble voice managed to utter. 

“Are you a tula?” she almost scolded. 

Munmun kept staring at her headmistress’s broad hips. She was wearing a dark brown sharee and looked like the trunk of a large tree from where Munmun stood. 

“Yes, she is, Ma’am” came a gentlemanly reply. She hadn’t noticed when her brother had slipped in. Even dripping wet, he was a charm! Of course he was the model student in the school! Nevertheless, he had come to her rescue. And she had given him another reason to pick on her. 

“Alright then, sit down” was the curt instruction the trunk gave before it brusquely turned about and moved out. 

Munmun let out a sigh of relief and smiled at Gautam who looked down on her benevolently. “Sit down now sis”, he said while landing a sharp smack on Gobra’s buttock and lovingly pulling down the band that held her pony-tail together. Gobra could only puff up his cheeks, which had gone red with the pressure of hiding pain, to keep quiet. When she raised her head she realised the crowd had thickened two-fold. People appeared to have spilled into the house too. 

As she settled herself on the piri she became conscious of the whispers that echoed around her. 

“She ought to have called the police...” 

“Nah... He’s more expert than they and cheaper too!” 

“I wonder what he’ll see today...” 

A loud voice called out to another across the room. “Johorda, how are you?” “Arre Ranjitda! It is so good to see you!” They crushed each other’s palm in the name of shaking it and whacked each other’s backs before they bundled up their dhuti in their hands and made their way to a corner of the room. “Who could it be, do you think?” Johorda asked. He was one of the masters at the school. His colleague, Ranjitda, was a slightly sceptical man who had always found something fishy with the common opinions of the village people. “This gunin fellow is the one who plans these burglaries to earn money, I say!” he replied. Hearing the voice of a fellow cynic, Bholada joined in. “Yes, it is true! Last time a piece of paper from his notebook was found at the thief’s house”, he said gravely, pointing his index finger at the ceiling all the while. “Yes, and he was said to have visited the site of this crime the day before it happened! I have sources”, Ranjitda added, nodding authoritatively at Johorda. 

A rough “ahe...ahemm” from the gunin snapped Munmun back to the small jar that had been patiently waiting to moderate the proceedings from in between the saffron mat and the piri. She turned to meet the wide grin she had begun to feel was burning into her left cheek. Gobra sure had something twisted on his mind. “Hello” he said through his teeth. He looked like he had tried to eat glue. 

“Boy! Show me your thumbnails. Place them against each other like this.” He positioned the boy’s thumbs adjacent to each other so as to form a screen and slapped some thick black paint on them. Almost immediately it dried and formed a shiny coating. He blackened his own thumbnails too and placed them in line with Gobra’s. 

“Now, what do you see? Look carefully. The thief will show himself soon.” More than Gobra, Notoborda leaned in and so sharply glared at his nails through his spectacles that Munmun thought he’d disappear into them anytime now. 

“Nothing, uncle”, replied Gobra after what seemed like ten minutes. 

“You must concentrate, boy!” 

Another ten minutes dragged by in silence and he shook his head again. 

“Something, something; there must be something. Try harder boy.” 

Curiously, Notoborda couldn’t see anything himself until Gobra began to see. The moving picture on Gobra’s nails was to reproduce itself real-time on his own nails, according to the ritual. 

The smell of pakodas drifted in. They were being handed out and passed around among the people as was a bowl of puffed rice and cucumbers. Munmun’s stomach began to snarl at her insides. She could clearly distinguish her brother crunching and chomping above her head. He was standing extraordinarily close to her, out of what intention she could not deduce. He was probably planning to prompt her when her turn to face the screen arrived. 

The hands of the clock turned lazily. Still, adamantly, Gobra refused to crack. Notoborda’s frown grew tighter as his back hurt harder. He was here on empty stomach. His fake rules made very real sufferings for him; it didn’t all come easy. 

“It’s night time and the thief has lost his lantern”, Gobra innocently insisted. 

“Trying to be funny, boy?” Notoborda snapped. 

The crowd had thinned by then. The busy women had gone back to their chores and those left accompanied the men in scratching their sweaty necks and scalps. The men also began helping themselves to bidi. Nobody wanted to miss the outcome unless they were obliged to. And Gobra continued to stay blank with exceptional grit. 

Sound and smell grew stronger as time passed. Everything and everybody was torturing her. Her brother continued to crunch at something that sounded tasty over her head. “Almost two hours gone”, she heard someone say through her buzzing head. “Now bati-chalan will have to be done. The thievery is surely a grave one” came another very pious female voice. 

Unable to bear any longer, Notoborda suddenly ordered, “Leave, boy. Your stars are not aligned today. Girl, show me your nails.” 

Munmun kept staring fixedly at her swinging knees, having joined the fairies in the wind by then. Gobra looked at her, amused. The gunin was in for it today. Moon would never be able to make up a story. 

“Girl!” Notoborda bawled. 

Munmun looked up with a start and kept staring blankly, her eyes dilated enough to look like spotted eggs. Somehow, involuntarily, Notoborda’s protruding nose hair had caught her attention. It was salt and pepper colour too. 

“Your nails!” he ordered. 

She involuntarily thrust her stubby hands forward. He grabbed them and pulled them closer to him. “Now tell me what you see” he said after he had dabbed on the black paint. 

Through the dried up and cracked paint she could see the reflection of all that was going on behind her. The crowd had rarefied considerably and the street was visible. The imbecile Gobra! Well, she would get this over with. 

But she couldn’t decide what to say. What if she said the wrong thing? She didn’t know what she was supposed to see. Nevertheless, eventually she gathered the will to speak. This waiting couldn’t go on any longer. 

“Uuummm... there’s something flying...” she began, “uh... flapping about”, she stuttered. She hadn’t been able to clearly articulate the sharee she saw flying with the wind in the neighbour’s backyard. She reddened. 

“Yes, yes, that is the paper which was stolen.” Notoborda affirmed hurriedly. 

He couldn’t resist the mouth watering aroma from the kitchen. 

Slightly surprised but assured of a verification of her story by this success, she gained the courage to go on; despite the distraction of Gobra’s intense gaping. 

“Now I see a man.... uh... only one slipper.” Nothing but the sharee showed itself to her. She had begun to repeat the deafening voice of the buzz in her mind. 

“Yes, yes, that is the thief.” He could hardly contain himself and say these words composedly. 

“Uh... not so tall... big stomach... he is wearing a white dhuti and genji... specs...” She continued to babble and stammer out whatever occurred to her. 

“And he has quite a bit of hair, some grey in between”, the gunin blurted. 

“Well... he seems to be getting smaller”, she went on. 

“Oh, oh, of course, hmm... he is sitting down. He is going to attend to nature’s call.” 

This dialogue shocked her so much out of her wits that the buzz in her head stopped for a minute. Gobra was, by now sitting with a disappointed scowl, awaiting the end of the ritual. He would have to get back his lost dignity in class now. Notoborda, however, was peering fixedly at his thumbnails. 

“He has finished. Follow him, follow him. Don’t lose sight of him.” 

“Umm... he is walking quickly... down a narrow road....” 

“...And into a small clay house with a straw roof!” 

“Uh... about ten huts or so after the last of the wooden cottages.” 

“Exactly! Great work girl! We have our thief everybody!” he announced, jumping at the chance of finishing, jubilant that such a perfect closure had been found so early. 

Notoborda was beside himself with elation, almost breaking into a caper. He would have squeezed the headmistress in a hug if he could when she came rushing out at the sound of his excited hollering. Munmun was still frozen in bewilderment at her own ability to weave a story. 

And as all good happy endings go, everybody was satisfied with their performance. Gobra was the first to dart out of the courtyard, snatching an armful of pakodas and cucumber on the way. Gautam, with a suspicious frown, dragged Munmun, who -- having been denied her pakoda -- was morosely eyeing Gobra, by his pinkie all the way home. Notoborda, to the great satisfaction of his hunger of being given importance, was invited to stay for lunch. Everybody else marched out chattering in groups, a new mystery to solve at their disposal.