SHERMAN’S HOUSE
Dr. Misra confirmed that the patient will die within ten days. The news spread across the village like a wild fire. People from far and near made a beeline to Sherman’s house from early hour of day to late night. They queued before Sherman’s gate to have a last look at the dying man. The house was abuzz with the noise of people’s constant coming and going. A shade of tarpaulin was readily made for the shelter of the well wishers. It was at the backwoods of the big white house. A mango grove and a big pond kept the makeshift shade cool and cozy.
Sherman was a respectable man. He managed till date to keep fifty acres of land. He married twice. When the first wife Sakina failed to give him a boy, people pleaded him to marry again. And thus he married Jarina who is not as beautiful as Sakina. She was black, tall and healthy, and much younger and, gave Sherman five sons. His sons were all established. They lived in different cities. They came home to see the face of their father for the last time. Costly cars lined before the gate, and children in expensive clothes ran here and there like butterflies. The neighbours were all peasants and poor. And to them Sherman’s house had of late been a great fountain of joy.
Villagers ceased working at fields for days. They passed time at Sherman’s instead. Some brought fresh ripe fruits; some brought fresh vegetables, some milk, fish and meat. They did it willingly. Such respect Sherman had in the village Khalatpur.
Peasants were in general not allowed to enter into the interior of the house. If someone wanted to meet Sherman, he would have to wait at his designated chamber. Only the respectable and wealthy people had an occasional entry. But now the door was open to all. Known, unknown faces swarmed and circled the dying bed. In the early hours people were thin. But as the sun shone bright, the crowd thickened. The four sides of the bed were designated for four kinds of people. At the head side sat Sakina and Jarina, both weeping and reciting the verses from the Quran. The leg side was reserved for the sons and their wives. And two other sides, the left reserved for the village women and the right for the village men. Incense sticks were repeatedly burning and dying in a distant corner, and the ash smeared the floor round the incense vase.
“Sherman once was a sher (tiger). He shot bisons, rhinos, elephants in the Kahardinga forest at dead of night. He never shot birds, deer and other lowly animals, and he hated company. Alone he roamed and killed wild beasts. He killed not for money but to challenge the animals to cower him. Such charismatic figure he was. Tall and black with chiseled body and sharp black eyes, hair hung to his broad shoulders, a cut mark on the left cheek he was a man to be feared. People usually shunned him. He was a great wrestler and a great swimmer too. And in matters of quarrels what he said was right. Nobody dared to disagree,” narrated an old peasant who smoked and coughed and spat, sitting on haunches at the side of Sherman’s pond. His face was shrunk, and body wizened. The day was hot, and air stopped blowing. The old man with the end of his napkin wiped the beads of sweat from his face. And he now began to whir it around his bald head.
So the people like ants made a beeline, and were coming in and going out of the white house day and night. Peasants stopped harvesting, and their women, stopped cooking, and the children were running merrily in and around Sherman’s house. Sherman’s health, meantime, deteriorated day by day. His sons lost hope. Famous city doctors failed. People told them to call fakirs, yogis, and so they were called. They came and nursed Sherman with their water, oil, and other liquids for three days. They messaged the patient, murmured mantras for hours, and gave special neem-bath. The patient felt good in the morning. He could talk, drink a cup of juice, and sleep for an hour or two. But as the sun reclines in the west, the pain gripped him again. And so one day the fakirs and yogis also lost hope. They took rewards and left. And people taunted them as fake fakirs and yogis.
Sherman had no fever, no breathing problem. His heart beat was normal. But he could neither sit nor lie for five minutes at a stretch. His sons always sat beside him, and made him sit and lie at fixed intervals. When he sat, he groaned in pain, and his elder son made him lie. And when he lay he moaned again, and his youngest son made him sit. For ten days thus Sherman suffered. And at dead of night when people thinned, and his sons and wives took a nap, Sherman himself did this rhythmic gymnastics of sitting and lying with the help of two iron chains tied to a bamboo pole from the ceiling. The killer pain made Sherman cowed, and he groaned but never wept. Nobody had seen a drop of tear in his eyes. They were dry as Sahara desert. Thus he lived ten days in excruciating agony.
Sherman was dying, and people were reliving. Bereft of his wives and sons, the people, especially the distant relatives who came from far off places to shed tears at his death had a hay day. At one corner of the mango grove arrangements were made for cooking for the guests. Cooks were hired, and huge cauldrons were on the flames for day and night. Batches after batches dined dal, rice and potato, and they were not in hurry to leave Sherman’s house. Men ate, and smoked under the mango trees at noon, and in the evening they circled the big pond. The wind blew they felt drowsy. They wallowed on the dry leaves and gossiped about the day’s highlights.
Women quarreled and abused each other for their children. The children cried and complained, and their mothers followed them in harsh tongues. They felt angry, and rushed to their men wallowing by the edges of the pond, and urged them to go home in the next morning. Morning came, and they forgot all. They as usual drank glasses of tea, gobbled dozens of bread, ate pots of rice, and gulped gallons of water. And the children like monkeys were chattering, quarreling, beating and crying all the time. They were found to be swinging in the branches, swimming in the pond, catching grasshoppers and butterflies, and pelting dogs and birds and frogs.
There was a long verandah stuck to the big house. From early morning to night peasants sat, smoked, and gossiped there. But at summer noon it was too hot to be occupied, and the peasants made some alternative arrangement for passing the day. They then sat under the shade of a tall kadam tree. And it was the month of late June. The tree was in full bloom, and the scent wafted the entire place. For ten days rolls of wailing were occasionally heard from Sherman’s house. Whenever a new visitor came, the women already thronged at the sides of Sherman’s death bed began crying louder. With the mothers children also cried. This wailed for five minutes or so, and then the newcomer wiped her tears and soon began gossiping with other known or unknown faces. She forgot Sherman and all, and joined in the gossips and juicy rumours of unwed pregnant girl, elopement, theft, etc.
So the days were passing. Peasants ate and slept at Sherman’s house. The beautiful white house turned into a festive place. Villagers sighed and mourned for Sherman. Some close friends of Sherman shared anecdotes of his life, and the peasants from distant villages quietly surrounded the bed. This storytelling usually took place at night, when the heat was gone, and the wind blew, and the stars shone, and the children slept. People crowded around the teller and they smoked and pined for Sherman. At outward he looked a tough man, masculine, brave, and grave. But his heart was soft. He helped the poor peasants, and the peasants loved him. He never did wrong to anybody in his life.
“Why did he take home Jarina, a young girl of barely fourteen of Abalpara?” asked a peasant, lean and pale with a scary face.
“Who asked, who asked this?” The storyteller made a survey of the faces of his listeners hanging a hurricane in his hand. Most of them were dozing, and he could not mark the face. All were silent. And he continued, “Don’t ask, only hear. Sherman was a king to us. And a king could do no wrong. Why Jarina alone? If he wished he could have married all the girls of our villages. But had he done this? And do you really know why he married Jarina. She was unmarried and was pregnant. The boy who spoilt the girl, oh, what his name, ah, Mujahid fled to Kerala, and never came back. And Sherman, our king, saved the girl and bestowed honour on her. We should be grateful to him.”
The peasants gaped and yawned, and said nothing. And the peasant who asked, lay sticking to the soil straight
The night was dead, and the mosaic of stars canopied it. No birds sang; no insects whirred. The water of the pond was lapping still, sparkled by the shooting stars. People lay everywhere, some snoring, few dreaming, and throwing hands and legs spasmodically, and rest lay as if they were lifeless. Occasionally from distant fields foxes yelped, and dogs of Sherman retorted them by barking and whining.
Thus passed nine days and nine nights. Sherman lay bedsore. People prayed for his recovery. Maulvis recited the holy book, and the incense at the lone corner was burning and dying days after days. Women were never tired wailing sitting by his side. His wives and sons looked harried and mad. They forgot to bath, have food or sleep. Peasant women looked at Sherman’s wives and sons with pity and they cried for them. They sighed, mourned, and cried, and cried. If children cried for going home, they rebuked them, and offered some rupees to buy candy. They were so happy. Men at times went home quickly to give fodder to cows or goats or buffaloes or scattered grains to hens and pigeons. And soon they returned at Sherman’s.
After long summer days of scorching heat and humidity, came the night of heavy downpour. For months the sun burnt and glowed, and not a cloud sailed in the dark blue sky. People from the wee hours readied for another hot day. Ponds and marshes dry. And the river was lean, and lost its youthful buoyancy. The columns of dust smoked the air. Peasants worked at fields in the early morning and late evening. They passed the noon under the shade of some big trees in some gardens, or lay almost naked on the mud floors of their huts.
From the afternoon dark clouds, rushing suddenly from nowhere darkened the sky. First came the dust storm. It made people almost blind. Streets and fields were empty. People rushed towards huts. The wind rushed, many tin sheds were damaged. Some tin pieces flung far, trees broken. Then the spate of the storm slowed, and lighting flashed, and clouds burst and growled, and roared and howled. Rain began to pour, and it continued whole night. Water filled the hungry bellies of water bodies, frogs croaked, and crickets sang incessantly. Yellowed golden frogs were suddenly everywhere, and they croaked, and croaked. It filled the fresh air. At Sherman’s house people huddled around his bed. The front yard and the mango grove and the pond were under knee-deep water. People enjoyed the first shower of the monsoon. The peasants were happy as their wait for the rain was over, and they could now begin ploughing fields for planting paddy seedlings
The rain didn’t stop. It seemed that there was ah hole in the sky over Sherman’s house. Children slept wherever they found an empty space, and the men and women were all dozing. The night was dark, but Sherman’s house was lit with a dozen of emergency lanterns. The light fell on the faces of the rugged crowd.
Suddenly a loud roll of wailing broke the stillness of the night. Sherman was convulsing. He tried to breath, and the dry blue veins of his neck were coming out of the slackened skin. His eye balls became large and wide, as if they were coming out of the deep eye hole. His body twisted and cheeks hollowed. He became lifeless.
The dogs crooned long, and the foxes began squeaking in the bamboo bush. Sherman’s wives and sons were crying and berating breasts, shaking heads up and down like mad women. They clutched the dead body. And Sherman’s was lying peacefully with his eyes wide open. The drowsy villagers hearing the piteous roll of mourning jumped to their feet. And soon they joined Sherman’s family. They wailed and wailed. When their eyes got dried and their voice choked, they whined.
The morning was cool and calm. Children slept like log. The sun was rising slowly. The street was empty. The trees wore a festive look, leaves washed. A group of peasants at the verandah of Sherman’s house sat on haunches, and quietly smoked. Four shovels they brought. The corpse was being laid in the middle of the yard, and it would be washed by the eldest son. People lined for a last glimpse of Sherman’s face. Coffin was readied and it was taken to the burial ground by his sons, some five kilometer distance. Rows of men followed the coffin through the barren fields, and thickets. Sakina and Jarina beat their breasts, and threw hands at every side. They tried to run after the coffin. Women of all ages circled them, and clutched them hard.
Half an hour later the coffin and the crowd entered into the burial ground. In a corner of the cemetery crows quarreled and cawed on the branches of a kadam tree. It bore clusters of flowers, and the branches hung low with the burden of its scented flowers.
Two years passed. A caretaker looked after Sherman’s house for some months. But the watchman at a moonlit night saw Sherman cheerfully rocking by his side. He swooned and turned mad that night. The big white house now stood empty. It was covered with leafy undergrowth. An eerie silence shrouded it. Children feared and men and women shunned its shadow.
