In the name of Mid-Week Summer Holiday

I don’t know what kind of summers you have been living in but the summers I have been living in the range from humid hot to dry and scorching summer heat. I would have loved a mild summer but Bengal doesn’t have a mild summer as far as I know in twenty years of my experience. With my daily excursions to my workplace where I work till evening and sometimes late night as an accountant trying to match the endless balance sheet day after day and accounting for the money spent by each company employee on the excel sheet. What has my life become- a life of monotony I would often say this to everyone. In the past year, I wished I had applied for many holidays my acquaintances, not that I cared much about the idea of having money problems if I go on a holiday, it’s just that ‘I had no one to go with’ With my parents aging well they were traveling in other corners of the country, neither did I have any siblings to go out for this plan. Next to that, I studied in Delhi, since I was in grade 5, having nearly no friends except for the occasional exchanges with the guard standing at the door to the guard standing at the society gate and few smiles passed across the office cabinets I didn’t usher any ‘friends’ as such. With July, there is a slight change in the weather which is approaching, there are rains mixed with the summer breeze and the autumn soon going to approach within a month more, I wanted to travel. While having a cup of water because I can’t drink coffee which gives me anxiety I heard two of my colleagues discuss the movie called The motorcycle diaries, that night when I went back to the same apartment that I had rented, I watched the movie till 2 in the morning just before the graveyard, I fell asleep before the screen showing the end credits. In my sleep, I dreamt of Che Guevara in the form of Gael Garcia Bernal who played the protagonist. If my readers haven’t seen the motorcycle diaries they should see the film, the idea of the film was when Che tried to search himself through these travelogues. I dreamt of riding the same country roads trying to understand people, but the faces looked oddly similar as they were the faces of those whom I already knew, I couldn’t read the signs on the board, while I crashed in the water with my alarm buzzing in my head. I felt I was losing my sense of touch when I woke up as I felt that crash was very much real and I was probably not fully awake. While I tried to pull myself together the surrounding stopped making sense. As I looked around I found two young men looking at me while I lay flat on the road beside the 18^-floor apartment gate I live in. They helped me back to my apartment, the wall clock ticked to 10 in the morning, my office starts at 9 in the morning, it takes me a 45minute car ride to reach to the gate and then stand for the security check and then log in to the biometric system they had installed. Having calculated the required time I decided to stay put and drop the human resource about the sick leave that I thought I would require for the day. The very next day I dropped another which I applied after a year for a week's holiday which was passed after a few phone calls to my head who knew the track record of my performance, having me tell her about my mental state must have worked out. I packed my bag that morning and not knowing where I should travel to, I reached the bus depot where busses to places which I have read in the newspaper, with a single bus to the district of Purulia, which was ‘no’ from my father’s side who said that the district is prone to Naxal attacks and I should listen to him, while I asked the man sitting at the counter about the travel information on the sites to visit and he detested about Purulia being the tourist site as I expected, still, I fetched out about the information of traveling to the far away to the hills of Ayodhya, which is a haven to hideout from the army, police for those who have raised their arms against the state. I sat on the bus 243 which was going to depart at 13:00 hours and reach Purulia district at 1:00 the next day. I slept well on the bus; with what I carried was a simple backpack and foldable tent and deodorant and lighter, a pack of weed which I did get. The journey took between in the forests and areas which were unknown to human existence in the city of Kolkata. The journey made uphill and downhill transitions quickly. I spotted two others who boarded the bus with me; the three of us unaware of each other’s lives. I read a book once called The Land of Naked people it was about people who were unaware of the modernization of the human civilization. The bus was near to the state of desolation but the government must have decided to punish everyone who picks up arms with the worst infrastructure present ever and to take away all the resources present at their disposal. The hot summer noon where everyone in the bus palpitated and few slept with white handkerchiefs over their faces. While few as immune to the scenery outside still preferred to look outside as a means of shifting outside the zone of drowsiness and boredom. The bus made a pit stop at a few districts namely Bardhaman, Durgapur, and Raniganjh the bus was to drive straight to Purulia. As I would learn later, one of whom I spotted was a newspaper journalist, the other was a painter and me an accountant. Everyone had a purpose to travel except me, what was my reason, is my elitist attitude of traveling every summer raised this feeling in me? Or that I wished to search for myself as Che does in the movie? Or I want to feel something again?

Whatever the reason was they gave me a headache to just think about them, as a child I used to hear colloquial stories about how the tribal groups and dacoits used to attack busses and trains and ransack everything and loot people on the bus, they were stories to me and stories to instill fear about few. The dark approached us soon and the cool breeze gave their way, relaxing my throbbing head I could tell the forest was growing deeper and deeper with each passing hour even in the darkness, I felt the calm for the first time since when? I have lost the count of the time anyway. The bus came at a sudden halt with few waking up suddenly from a slumber, few men in camouflage uniform, no not from the army or police they were somebody else. Who were they? Straining my eyes I tried to focus on them, I asked my co-passenger that who were they? They were hauled as the local heroes fighting with the government to protect their land and their existence. The struggle is long drawn. I soon realized what mess I have got myself into, the journalist soon started making notes which infuriated one of them who had stepped on to the bus to check on the passengers. After a thorough check of everyone’s faces, a bullet shot was fired distant but still very near. One of the passengers at the last corner seat said ‘They killed the bus driver, he was a collaborator with the police and was releasing the information’ my head bumped the cool summer breeze had stopped and the only sound I can hear is of crickets and those around me. I sat there with others for three more hours; it was now 21:00 hours. One of the many men walked up to me and pulled his gun right before my template another one stationed before the journalist and another one before the painter. We must have looked out of context. I walked straight to where they asked me to walk, followed by my two other companions. Nobody had the effort to question where were they taking us; will they shoot us because we aren’t there people?

We were walking along the treacherous path and the situation we were in, nobody knew our name nobody asked us questions. We were asked to walk, we walked for three hours straight when one of them stopped and decided that they should handcuff us. Handcuffed we walked in silence for more four hours slowly not trying to make any wrong move which may lead to our death, the painter squeaked and fell down, and asked for water, they pointed their guns. The dawn was slowly breaking out when I realized we were trekking all along the path of Ayodhya Hills. I had reached my destination and I had achieved the plan I had set out to be achieved. On the distant corner we could see the sky breaking its first-morning color a faint bluish-white. Slowly the guns were lowered down and another man, in the same uniform arrived and the men asked us to sit down, three of us sat on our knees and looked up to him, he looked kind, he ordered his men to unlock our handcuffs and asked us if we need water, he gave us water. By this time, the sky was bright orange, an early summer morning. ‘Tourists often don’t come here, with the government issuing official orders; people don’t always come to know the pain we suffer every day of our lives. It arouses suspicion with those who come’ He pointed at one his men ‘ His name is Bipin, he is a worker at the Communist Party of India (Marxist) he teaches at the local school on weekdays and often works here on weekends, his family was wiped out, its 2010 and yet no news must have reached out to you how his the family was gushed to nothing’ He cleared his throat and said ‘I am Sonjoy, I handle the operations at the eastern front’ We were expected to say our names and profession too at this point, the journalist squeaked Arka Chatterjee, the painter meekly said Sindhu Rai and then me Arya Gosh. He slowly asked us to follow him and trek upwards the hill, it was starting to get hot and not being habituated to this kind of activity one may get a heat stroke. Within two more hours when it was 8 in the morning and the sun was bright we reached the top.

Small houses covered in mud and thatched roofs with wall carvings and small children happy in their own little joyous world lay on the ground with their books. Sonjoy pointed at the furthest corner and said, ‘the area is rich coal, high amount of iron ore, gold, graphite, the government has already acquired most part of the land where they have sold it off to private stakeholders who are mining out the resources day and night, it used to be ours but now it’s theirs’ he rubbed his forehead and said ‘No wonder they said that the world is coming to an end in 2012, they control the resources and the government hands it over completely to the private stakeholders and when we deny moving from our land, try to stop the destruction of our resources we are killed, murdered and our women and young men raped, it may not reach out to the high official but this is the daily reality’ He sighed heavily and looked at the journalist ‘I am sure your newspaper won’t allow you to cover my story but if we trust you and if we can change how one looks at us we may change how others look at us, we have certainly forgotten how to live’ He pointed out his fingers and asked us to sit and asked us to eat something it is a long way down in the heavy sun. In the humbleness of their homes, they provided us with flat rice (muri) and some pickled mangoes. Sonjoy sat with us and said’ it’s not much we are happy in this and we hope this satisfies you too’ I didn’t have anything to eat for the past 17 hours now. We started our downhill journey with thick forests around, Sonjoy seemed to know which path to take and he strode down the path as soon as he can. He said that he will like to take a detour from here as he isn’t willing to stride down at these hours. He showed us the way down and he said that he arranged a jeep from the end of the forest till the Purulia bus depot. We looked at each other one last time and took a deep breath. 

We felt a sigh of relief. Heading down as fast we can, and mapping carefully the path we trotted down. Without speaking a word to each other, we knew what we had to, as a writer I must account for this journey, as Arka a journalist he must take this story as far he can and Sindhu trying his best to portray the pain as far his paintbrush can go. Within days of our return back to the city, the new headline read: High Commanding rebel leader captured and shot dead. Arka published his story with the heading ‘Is this what we are heading to our future’ it ran its due course within a week. Looking back at that week on most days I feel my hands would stop typing or the balance sheet I am trying to match they may fail me too. Is this an apparent question to ask to the state, ‘Was the state created to protect us or eliminate those who are undesirable?’