The Epidemic

The man stood near the small platform. His entire face covered with a white beard and moustache, and his eyes, barely visible. A dirty, colourless robe on his back. A pair of odd-looking army boots on his feet. As though he had been standing there since the beginning of time.

Dark green and muddy blue brown mountains stretched ahead. An undulating skyline as far as the eyes could see. Here, the earth too, appeared timeless.

Holding the binoculars, my eyes looked for Manikapur’s Sabujgram in the dense green expanse. I knew it would be difficult to find it from the great height I was at. Still, I knew for a fact it was somewhere around here. Hidden beneath the lotus leaves was bottomless water—streams gurgled through the rocks, tea gardens stacked one after the other, the hills enshrouded in a beguiling green carpet, herds of snowy white sheep grazed on their slopes – this was home to hardworking people; their hopes, happiness, grievances, arguments, and everything else.

But was Sabujgram indeed like this? Or was it just a figment of my imagination? I could not say. I only knew the name of the village.

I had heard about Manikapur. I lived in a city, and curating news from every corner of the country was my job. The first time I heard about Sabujgram was many years ago, from an old piece of news. I was still very young when the incident took place. The fact is that Sabujgram is not considered newsworthy – therefore, one cannot find it anymore ever since the incident took place. That is the reason I found myself here. I had been looking for Sabujgram – desperately – for many days. The shoes on my feet had worn out as I trudged through the mud, rocks, and water for months. My shoulders ached constantly from hauling around a heavy backpack. The black shadows under my eyes had become permanent fixtures due to the uncertainty of shelter and my next meal. My clothes had become very loose; I could feel it.

It was from a piece of old news that I found out about the two communities that lived in Manikapur – the Ankhis and Nayans. In the beginning, they coexisted harmoniously; but soon, they split along the lines of religion – a fissure appeared. But was this division created by the outsiders? It was hard to say. The Ankhis harvested tea; and the Nayans, rice. The Ankhis reared sheep; and the Nayans, cows. In the meantime, they constantly clashed with each other. Disputes about borders and religion, squabbles about farmlands and water. Every new development in Manikapur invited a fresh round of disagreements. Fights, fights, and some more fights.

It was the usual – another conflict had begun with no resolution in sight.

I had arrived here with great difficulty. The trek to the top of the hill was not an easy one. I had been told that the northeast of the summit offered a view of Sabujgram, in addition to Haritgram and Dhanigram. For now, however, I could not see anything, save a dense green cover that seemed to stretch into eternity.

Slowly, I made my way forward. I took off my bag and put it near the platform.

The old man looked at me.

‘Can you show me the way to Sabujgram?’ I asked.

The man did not respond; instead, he continued to look at me mutely as he had been doing all this while as though he had always known I would ask him this question. Standing right here. At exactly this time.

And that was why he was waiting for me.

‘Why?’ he finally replied.

‘I look for news; and when I find something, I tell everyone. I’ve come from a faraway city.’

‘No one knows about Sabujgram. No one wants to know anything about it…’

‘But I do. I know about the Ankhis and Nayans too. The battles they fought. That terrible day. But since then, the villages… They…’

The words stumbled out of my mouth before the old man even had a chance to say anything.

‘It takes two days by train. There’s a train change after the first day. I packed my bag and stood at the door early on the third day. It was drizzling when the train arrived at Sabujgram. Not a soul in sight. The tiny platform was run over with wilderness – damp plants and leaves everywhere. The train did not stop. It whizzed past in a matter of seconds.  The dilapidated platforms and the name boards hidden behind creepers and weeds of Haritgram and Dhanigram stations too rushed past me. The train did not stop there either.’

‘I have been on the search for a long time. I have stayed at inns and in the homes of strangers. I have looked for routes—but, after a point, the road is cut off by barbed wire. The king’s men are on guard – one can’t go past them even if one wants to. I got the news from a faraway place. If only I could reach the summit…But no one is…’ My words scattered in the wind like pollen from a wildflower. The sun shone bright in the sky – a cloud passing by cast a shadow on the ground below.

‘Do you know why the communities were called so? Why they were named after eyes?’ I asked.

#

Sabujgram

‘Sabujgram used to belong to the Nayans,’ the old man began. ‘Abha, Prabha, and Kiran – the three friends, named after the rays of the sun, lived together in the same village. Abha and Prabha were sisters; and they ran a small corner shop with their mother. Their mornings were spent at school. If a customer turned up in the afternoons while their mother was asleep, Abha would elbow Prabha to attend to the customer. At which, Prabha would elbow Abha in return.

“Get up. How much can you sleep?”

“I woke up twice yesterday – and once when someone came to buy cumin.”

“Who was it?”

“Who? As if you don’t know.”

‘Prabha’s young face resembled a jasmine in bloom and her impish smile was like a blinding ray of sunlight. On the other hand, Abha turned red with anger. Her forehead – skin as smooth as glass – was now etched with lines of fury.

“Talking shit again?”

“Hee hee! Ratan’s face turned glum when he saw me.”

“Just you wait!”

‘The sisters chased each other through the house and the verandah. Their mother lost her cool and scolded them soundly. One of the sisters turned sullen and walked towards the pond, while the other returned to the counter at the shop. It was usually dark outside by the time their father came home.’

‘Their village was like a sparkling gemstone nestled inside the green mountains.

The mountains began at the end of the village. Only pineapples were grown there. In fact, most villagers were pineapple farmers – the fruit was famous all over the country. The prickly skin, the sweet and sour flesh, the golden juice. The fruit of their labour.

‘Their friend Kiran had started working on a farm. She would often miss school. Everyone in her family worked on pineapple farms. In the evening, the three girls would sit in a docked dinghy and dip their feet in the ice-cold river. The winter evenings went by chatting in front of the sisters’ shop. The night would roll in; and like fireflies in the dark, their chatter illuminated the sky briefly before it melted into the darkness. Candied mangoes, gooseberry, and pineapples fuelled conversations that continued till one of them was called home. The sisters would go to Kiran’s house, and sometimes Kiran would go to theirs. Working on the farms had darkened Kiran’s arms – the sisters’ mother would lovingly rub the girl’s skin with herbal concoctions, blowing her warm breath on it till it dried. Kiran’s sister would gently comb and braid the trio’s hair. They were as lovely as sunflowers. Their days consisted of helping with household chores, doing their lessons (or sometimes not doing them), singing songs, looking after the domestic animals, being coddled by the village elders, and talking sweetly to the boys.

‘Meanwhile, the fights between the Ankhis and Nayans got worse with each passing day. The Ankhi villages shared their borders with the neighbouring country. Arms and ammunition were smuggled through illegal routes, and so were drugs that controlled people. The Ankhis cultivated these intoxicating herbs. They were exported to different countries, money flowed in, and a part of it ended up in the king’s treasury. That was why the king turned a blind eye to all the infighting in Manikapur. So did the ministers, as well as the rest of the council.

The Ankhis needed more land—ideally, hilly terrain. Therefore, using their unrestrained powers, they slowly encroached on the Nayans’ holdings. The villages fell to the Ankhis one after another. The Nayans got into fights trying to stop them. Terror spread like the demon king sprouting his ten heads in anger. Endless money and weapons fueled this violence. It could not be stopped easily. The Nayans were nothing in comparison, their resistance barely made any impact. This was how, one day, the terror arrived at Sabujgram’s door – a village hidden in the folds of the mountains.’

‘Didn’t the Nayans know about it?’ I asked.

‘They did… But not entirely. Their villages were surrounded by mountains. News from the outside world rarely reached them. Moreover, these were poor people, their days went by trying to put food on their tables.’

‘All of a sudden, everything came to a standstill. The forest in front of us, the trees in the valleys that were reaching for the skies – everything was silent. A cloud floated in from nowhere and engulfed the sun.

‘You know, the women of Manikapur, whether they were Nayan or Ankhi, roamed in the forests like free creatures – like the birds in the sky or fish in a bubbling brook. They looked after the house, raised children, hunted, farmed, cooked, and fought wars. They could do everything. Violating women, torturing them…perhaps these were common elsewhere in the kingdom, but the women in Manikapur were not familiar with such treatment. These things indeed happen, but for such things to happen here…

‘One quiet evening, Abha, Prabha and Kiran were chatting in the small space behind the shop. Suddenly, like predatory hawks, the Nayans swooped in, grabbed the girls, and made away with them. In front of the entire village, they clipped their wings little by little, tore into them feather by feather. They clawed, minced, and bit them into pieces.’

The old man’s throat choked up.

‘Their bloodied, bruised bodies were buried in the soil—they remained there forever. They became one with the earth, for eternity, and could not be seen anymore. An evening of ash descended on Sabujgram. The birds stopped cooing, the animals at home and in the forests turned into mute beasts. The humans somehow made the days go by. Everyone retreated into their homes before dusk could thicken into the night. Not a single lamp flickered in their homes.’

‘And then?’

A strangled sound escaped from his closed mouth.

#

Haritgram

‘The Ankhis used to live in Haritgram.

There too the women looked after their homes, reared children, took care of domestic animals, earned a living. Do you know what the women would make by decomposing leftover food, cow dung, and dead plants?’

‘What?’

‘Fertilisers. These fertilisers were used to grow an amazing variety of vegetables, flowers, and the best kind of rice. The rice that was harvested, was jet black in colour. It was believed that no illness could touch you if that rice was a part of your daily diet. Now imagine this – the men of the village, egged on by the king, decided to grow intoxicating herbs. The women were furious. Moreover, the men spent their days amassing weapons. They would gather in circles and whisper about who knew what. Thanks to their constant scheming, their eyes bulged and grew red with excitement. The poison became thicker every day.’

‘Didn’t the women of Haritgram know what was coming? Didn’t they say anything?’

‘Their anger, their suspicions of something poisonous brewing, were not enough to gauge just how terrifying the situation would become. Moreover, they knew the Nayans were their enemies. The king hated them too, hence, they were the worst kind of traitors. Fighting with them meant their men were not only fighting for the king, but for the good of the country. The greater good. They knew the king’s blessings were unconditionally with them.’

#

The Epidemic

‘That day, it seemed, the grandmothers, mothers, and daughters knew something ominous was coming towards them from across the mountains. The small girls, Munia, Doyel, and Tia, named after birds, were playing and picking vegetables when they noticed swarms of ants crawling out of the soil – like they did when the heavy rain refused to let up. Their aunts, Champa, Kunda, and Malati, all named after flowers, could hear the parrots squawking bitterly and the bovines in the shed groaning with pain. The grandmothers, Shukla and Krishna, named for the phases of the moon, stared at the sky in bewilderment. Why was the sky orange-black? Was it the day of an eclipse?

‘Their sons, fathers, and husbands – the Ankhi men—finally back from Sabujgram – looked charred. Like plants that had very slowly succumbed to a fire. All of them retreated into their homes, practically hiding themselves. The cat was out of the bag – at first, as furtive whispers and then, like fast-flowing noxious vomit. It accumulated on Sabujgram’s chest like a dark, murky, suffocating cloud of smoke. Krishna, Shukla, Champa, Kunda: everyone heard about it. They were numb. And then, in the yards in Haritgram, in the dark corners of the house, in ponds and farms, appeared the shells of lifeless women moving around, working. This went on for a few days. One morning, the village grandmothers, the Krishnas and the Shuklas, while busy working on the farms silently, stared into one another’s eyes without blinking. They abandoned their work, dusted the day’s grime from their bodies, and stood up. Everyone else, who was also working on the field, also stood up—ever so slowly. They began to walk together. It looked like the trees, whose roots were deeply entwined with the soil, had uprooted themselves and straightened their backs. They wanted nothing to do with the earth anymore.’

The old man fell silent. His head was shaking and his hands trembled gently. The wrinkled skin on his face quivered just so. The sun was just beginning to set over the horizon. He pawed at his robe as though he was looking for something. I kept sitting in silence.

A hawk circled many miles above my head.

‘What happened next? What did they do?’ I could not contain myself anymore.

‘Two days went by. Then something strange happened.

‘Many generations of a family lived together in Haritgram. This family was the biggest and oldest of them all – you could call them the head family of the village. The women in the family ranged between the ages of four and eighty. They were very well respected and their guidance was sought in all kinds of matters. Feasts and celebrations were hosted at their house during festivals. Two men from the family had joined the entourage the other day, but ever since they had returned, they preferred to remain hidden inside their home.

‘It was morning. The women of the family poured out of the house. Their day started in the kitchen, yard, and pond. All of them were naked. Not a stitch of clothing on their bodies.’

‘What!’ My hands flew to my mouth.

‘Yes.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The men in the family were speechless. They looked on in silence as if they couldn’t find the strength to move. Then all of a sudden, they ran towards the women together.

The matriarch said calmly, “We tried very hard since morning, but we simply couldn’t cover our bodies.”’

‘What do you mean?’ I gulped uneasily.

‘The women told the men that no matter how hard they tried to cover themselves, an invisible force seemed to yank the clothes off their bodies.’

‘What happened next?’

‘The men shut the women in their rooms for the next few days. They tried to put clothes on their backs. But the same thing happened over and over again. How long could they keep the women locked up? How would the chores be done?’

‘And then?’

‘That was how they began to live. Meanwhile, it became impossible for the men of the family to live at home, so they began living elsewhere. But where would they go?’

‘Meaning?’

‘It was not just their home. This disease – the epidemic – had spread everywhere in their neighbourhood. And eventually, to every house in the village. The women slowly started to go to the farms, ponds, and fields again. Completely naked.’

‘What happened finally?’

‘What do you suppose? A council was set up. From the small children to the old women, everyone claimed that no matter how hard they tried or what they wore, the clothes would not stay on their bodies. Someone kept stripping them whenever they tried to cover themselves.’

‘How did the men react to this?’

The man let out a strange laugh.

‘The men? One of them who had torn into and ravaged the girls of Sabujgram, put a noose around his neck. Another disappeared into the hills without a trace. The fathers almost went blind looking at their naked young daughters. The men all but lost their sanity at the sight of the naked bodies of their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers. They decided to stand guard at the borders of the village so that no outsider could trespass or lay eyes on the unclad women. But you know what, like a seed being carried in a bird’s beak or by the water, the illness, the epidemic started to spread even wider – to every village of the Ankhis, and of the Nayans too. It spread like a weed on life-giving soil, like a slow-raging wildfire; it burned every happiness to ash. The news finally reached your king’s ears. It terrified him.’

‘The king was terrified?’

‘He was indeed. Not at first. But he sent over his troops when the epidemic started to spread.’

‘And what did the troops do?’

‘They couldn’t enter the villages at all! The Ankhi and Nayan men did not budge from the village boundaries. They did not let the troops get a glimpse of their women.

After this, the troops enclosed the villages in barbed wires so that no outsider could penetrate them, and no villager could escape. The villages were cut off from the rest of the world.

Since no one could enter Sabujgram or leave it, the world eventually forgot about its existence.’

The old man exhaled deeply as he finished speaking.

‘Is it true that something like this still happens there? I mean, does someone really snatch the clothes off the women’s bodies?’

‘How would I know? No one knows.’

I was silent. The man looked at me from the corner of his eyes, as though he was searching for answers too. The sunlight reflected in his pupils.

‘I know who doesn’t let them wear clothes. You know it too.’ I stood up. ‘I’ll go there. Show me the way.’

The man continued to stare at me.

‘You’re a young woman. If you go to the village then even you…’

‘I’m ready. I’ll go. If they let me share their stories with the rest of the world then I’ll visit them once again. Otherwise, I’ll think about what I can do.’

The old man held my hand and brought me to the mountain’s edge.

‘Go straight down this way and you’ll find a narrow path through the pine trees. After you’ve passed two streams, a forest will appear to your left. The road at the end of the forest leads to Sabujgram. Once you get there, you’ll find the way to Haritgram too.’

I looked at the expanse below me. His fingers pointed towards the green abyss.

‘You can’t see them from here, but the villages exist. Right where they always had. They have been purified. Go on, then.’