1940s Life in the Country
Born to a family of traditional farmers, it was typical of telling stories after dinner almost on a daily basis. He had lived in the country, far far away from the comforts of the city and its hustles and bustles. In the name of infrastructures of development, there was a trail that led the country to the nearest town which would not take longer than three days' walk.
Most grains and other annual supplies were grown in the fields, however, the villagers had to walk to the town to fetch salt, matchsticks, and kerosene for the lamps to light all the cruel 365 nights. But kerosene was a luxury supply and only few could afford it through these long nights, the rest mostly used the dry pinewood sticks, diyalo, to temporarily drive the darkness away.
A square meal a day was possible at festivals like Christmas and New Year, let alone the posh uniforms, shiny squeaking shoes, sleek air-tight tiffin boxes, new expensive bags, and in there the colorful printed books and other stationery for schools. All they did during the day was a number of odd jobs like fetching water, feed the cattle, plow the fields and sow the seeds, fetch dry wood from the forest for fire, collect eatable greens fiddlehead, niuro wild taro leaves, jaluka, wild asparagus, kurilo/badelo, catch small catfish from the canals made to irrigate the paddy fields, cook food for the family members and even for the workers, khetala, during the sowing seasons like June to August and harvesting season between September and December. These country kids never knew what child rights or human rights were nor did they know the reason why they were doing what they were doing. Life was still full of joys and as they did not know the binary opposite of the word. All were busy and lost in their own little world.
The houses of the countrymen were sparsely located as most of the farmers had reserved huge plots of land surrounding their homes for cultivation. However, the irony lied in the stark fact that most could not feed themselves comfortably enough. The glaring reason was the conventional method of cultivation and lack of communication with the changing world outside.
Rarely did the countrymen realize that the land they had been residing in and using as a means for their livelihood for the last 100 years belonged to many tribal people who lived in the city now. The only condition that the tribals allowed the countrymen to use their land was to supply half of the main grain (paddy) they produced to their landlords and pay a negligible rent for the land irrespective of the area and the use of the forest resources. It was indeed like an ideal world for these countrymen as for the last 100 years, they had no complaints against anything or anybody in or out of the country.
In the mid-1980s however, kismet had something different in store for the countrymen. The poor innocent villagers were busy preparing for the plantation season of corn to be soon followed by paddy, their staple crop, while in the city the tribals were busy canvassing for election. One of the agendas the local political affiliate, brought that year was the ethnic deportation of the country community that had been living there even long before the creation of the state. This was a powerful political agenda to occupy the majority of seats in the following February assembly election. The ruling national party, however, had understood the tribal sentiment provoked by the local party, remained absolutely apathetic to the inhuman treatment of the victim community only to not lose the local support in the next election. The saga of torture and atrocity against this credulous community by the local party cadres had started in July 1986 and lasted as far as November 1988, until a year and nine months after the February assembly election.
The innocent community was out and out aghast and so much tormented that most would shiver and burst into tears while narrating their harrowing experiences. At the beginning of 1986 in March, some of the villagers had been hinted about the impending human-induced disaster, but their long life and the deep-rooted attachment to the soil did prevent them from breaking their faith and peacefully continued their life as for the past 100 years.
Shaking the foundation of their faith came the ethnic deportation atrocity across the countries in the state when a group of the local political affiliate looted the farm animals in broad daylight, burnt down the cowshed, the thatched hut of the family, and forced them to abandon the place for good at gunpoint. It did not take long for this incident to ink over the pages of local and national print media but hardly did anyone took it seriously. Soon these barbaric atrocities spread across the villages like locusts would destroy crops in swarms.
Imperceptibly a couple of months went by but the countrymen would neither seek for public security nor stop preparing the plantation of paddy for the harvest to come in six months then. The clever among the credulous however managed to sell their cattle and grains at an unimaginably sliced price and abandoned the villages to their ancestral homeland. Following their path, some tried to make a forlorn attempt to abandon the villages. Their attachment to the land and the love of animals did not easily allow them freedom from undergoing these untold miseries and barbaric treatments.
Each day with the sunset, these families in fear would go to hide in the dense tropical rainforest. They would try their best to stifle the cries of the babies and the young children, to not allow the obscurantists to hear and follow them in the forest to further torture or even take their lives---only if these little tots understood the situation. Spending the night in the sweltering heat amidst the mosquitoes and gnat bites was as painful as lying on the nettle leaves for months, the mental pain for the adults was inexplicable. Incidents like tarantula sting, snake bites, and vampire attacks became the daily life experiences for these groups of hapless homeless for nearly four weeks. It is said that there is always some light at the end of the tunnel, but this light never appeared for this credulous crowd...
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Read the next part, Dev's Destiny in Danger, to know what happens to the village boy and these people from July 1987 until November 1988.
