Assamese Short Story ' UPROOTED "

Translated from Assamese by Madri Kakoti




The speed with which the long acquainted situations and the habitual stability of the mind was changing, Karuna Barua couldn’t even get the hold of it at first. Where did the little town start at first, from which point or centre had it spread, where were its boundaries and borders - none of these questions or queries had any particular or even a clear answer in Barua’s imagination. But one thing was certain, that in these ten years of his retirement, even during all the talks and discussions which took place in the walks he took with his comrades of yesteryears, in the mornings, and the friends of the ‘Ever-walking Club,’ the advent of this very change which was beginning to engulf their unknowingly known surrounding was never clear. It was not even clear during that particular period, on the particular day of the month when he would be busy with various ongoing discussions and talks while waiting for his turn to come in a queue, before a counter in the bank. Probably, none of them knew the change or its speed, not even him.

Nobody could help him either. The morn after the century old college building was stripped of its great magnificent wood and glass dome, the walk of the ‘Ever-walking Club’ was pretty slow. Tired and grieved, right in the morning, they all had wished for the train of progress to pass around the dome, without doing it any harm, through all the free and unoccupied land surrounding it. As if, everyone was filled with sorrow, remembering not their good old days in the college under that very dome, but seeing the one which had stood in the centre of the little town’s universe until the previous evening, like the ever alert guard and guardian, fallen, defeated.

Saikia had given the suggestion, “Shall we go and see it once?”
Barua had exclaimed, “No!”
What was left for them to see in the broken and tattered dome! It was usually Barua who had the last word. Even if someone had the wish to go and see it, none uttered anything. For sometime, all of them kept walking silently, uncertainly.

Finally, it was Barua who broke the silence, “Why don’t we go from that side - around the college? They have dismantled it only yesterday. Let’s go and see the broken dome for the last time!”

The silent little group kept standing by the side of the fallen and defeated structure for some time. As if, finally, Ulysses had fallen. As if, it was his unannounced but far elongated mourning of many minutes - speechless, wordless.

When it was time to return, suddenly Karuna Barua went near the structure. The whole body, with its spire and dome, and the wood and glass panes attached, was fallen, tilted and inclined to one side. The strong frame was still intact, unharmed; even the glass panes. As if the whole structure had just rolled over, and would remain just like that till the labourers came and broke it down to a million pieces. Barua stepped closer to the dome. Slowly and softly he touched its once high and proud spire. He stroked for some time the still-strong and unmoved wooden framework of the structure. Stroking for one last time the structure, from the spire to the fallen wooden dome on which it once stood, Barua suddenly walked away from it. He never looked back again at it.

Just after a few days, a huge concrete mansion took its place. Once, in its place, stood an ancient college -- with more than a century old dome, strong and made of the finest wood available in the country, decorated with bright and sparkling glass panes and a proud pointed spire -- a brown building which had in all the years of its existence churned out many generations of boys and girls…nobody remembered just how many. As if, it was just another of those numerous and rapid changes which nobody could catch hold of. As if, the change in the permanence of the situation had been taken over by yet another new change. As if, the present could now nudge the immediate past into the depths of memory; and as if, everybody forgot that here once stood an old college.

At the wink of an eye, the town’s broad and free ground sprouted many high windowed and tall-spired buildings. Nobody could even realize how fast the roads started being covered by numerous small shops, like the termite nests around an unused ruined building. Various shops now started blocking the old houses from view. Amidst the huge crowd which assembled in the day and the blinding light of the neon tubes in the night, one couldn’t -- or perhaps forgot to -- make out where exactly someone’s house stood. The once broad roads had now turned narrow. They were all the more narrowed by the numerous big and small cars either parked or moving with tremendous speed along them. From noon till evening, one couldn’t walk on the road.

In between all this mayhem, the walks and talks of Barua and his friends of the ‘Ever-walking Club’ continued somehow. The daily exchange of news, snippets and gossip went on, more or less in the same way. Sometimes, one or two of them were absent, and some of them could never come again to enquire about the various news, and give their share of the gossip or to give another bit of another news.

Saikia always brought new information. This morning, it was yet another piece of news, this time about the bank. When all of them were in service, none of them thought much about the bank; it didn’t have any specialty at that time. It was just like another office, to keep money and withdraw it regularly. Even their monthly salaries didn’t come from it. The cashier took their salaries and kept it on their respective tables, or they themselves went and took it from him with a small signature on a salary roll, over a red revenue stamp. But now, after their retirement, the meaning and position of this big building of the city was very much different and special, for each of them in his life. In their homes, their children had taken up almost all the duties and responsibilities of the ageing parents into their own hands. As if it was time to relieve their fathers. But, even after the duties had been handed over, of the ones that were left, this job of coming to the bank on a particular day every month was something none of them wanted to hand over so soon. They wanted to hang on to this work, till a time it was still possible for them, and no one ever wanted to stay back home on this day of the month. The body would begin tickling with excitement from the end of the previous month itself, the mind was preoccupied with this very thought that next week carried with it the day when one had to go to the bank…day after tomorrow…tomorrow…today! This counting of days started way before the actual event …sometimes even a fortnight before it. And on D-day, one would go out, right in the morning, after taking a good long bath and carefully securing the cheque-book and the pass book, to stand in the queue before that counter at the bank.

During this very uneventful - yet eventfully gravid - time of standing in the queue till the cashier arrived or till their turn came, many of them kept on searching and combing the crowd for yet another of the acquainted faces. Conversations kept on in full swing with someone standing at the end of the line or in another queue with expert and adept hand gestures and body language. And with those standing nearby, the subjects usually moved around themselves, their homes, sons, daughters, grand children and several other topics, including desh-duniya, the fallen dome, the tall high-windowed buildings, the narrowing roads…

While talking about this and that, almost all of them kept on the look out for those who had not yet come today. They wondered if, without their knowledge or without telling others, anyone of them had decided never to come again! Yadav Sharma used to come always at nine thirty. It is one o’clock now, then why hasn’t he come yet? Last time, Tarun Saikia had sent his son to collect his pension, but now what? Had the documents and necessary papers been transferred to Mahanta’s wife now …?

Karuna Barua’s job at the bank almost always finished at about eleven in the morning. Dutta sitting at the counter would always give him the money with the delighted smile he so beautifully flashed on almost everyone. He knows many of the pensioners by now. This is probably his permanent counter; they have seen him for many years now. He calls them by their surnames. He can do the necessary work with the required speed and accuracy combined together. Taking the pass book, the cheque, then checking the withdrawals, scribbling some number here and there and then, suddenly as if some teacher was correcting a student’s exercise, marking it with a tick mark, and finally, counting the money with the crisp sound so familiar to them and handing it over to them…while carrying out these many tasks at once, he could also quite casually enquire from the person in front of him about his well being, right from how his health was to how were his sons, daughters, grandchildren, everyone. He was like a multi tasking machine, they would think. Then suddenly all of them would nullify the thought immediately, no, not a machine. Well, actually, people used to give Dutta these bits and pieces of information themselves. Dutta also received these snippets with equal eagerness
as he did the passbooks and the cheque books. Sometimes when Dutta was not there, a tall man used to sit in his place. Perhaps his name is Talukdar. He is quite sober. He didn’t talk much. Perhaps he found the numbers of the pass books and the cheque books jumping out at him more interesting than the people standing alive in front of him.

Sometimes it was a girl who sat there, perhaps one who had recently got into the job. She had lovely long hair and a beautiful round face. A girl who could be the daughter or the grand daughter to many standing in the queue of pensioners. She had a beautiful smile always playing on her lips, which would form the words with equal beauty, when asked something. And when she counted the money, her fingers would talk with the wind, and she would pass on the money with so much care as if the money was made of cotton balls.

When he had come last time, Karuna Barua had brought a bar of chocolate in his pocket. Taking the money from her through the small window at the counter, he had slipped in the huge chocolate bar into her hands. She had almost rolled over the chair in laughter and shyness. And the long column behind him had only laughed with full happiness, so had the nearby counters and the numerous people in the various columns standing in the bank. She had quite prettily slipped her soft hand through the small window into Karuna Barua’s hand and given him a handshake. She couldn’t speak anything with the laughter playing on her face, not even ‘thank you’ came out properly. But still, all of them enjoyed the happiness in those very incomplete and unclear words she uttered. The bank had vibrated with the sound of mirth that day!

Karuna Barua doesn’t leave the bank immediately after taking his pension. There is one place in the bank, a visit to which is most mandatory on his list, after taking the pension. That is a place shaped like bench, a kind of seating arrangement for the customers in the bank. Acquaintances and other known people already keep the place occupied before he can come and take his seat, like the mighty Achilles coming into the battle field of Troy. The reel of conversations is formally let loose after the arrival of Barua. And slowly and steadily, other soldiers join in with their acquainted faces and little talks of this and that. Barua greets almost all of them and almost all of them greet him back. The whole situation is as if each one of them wants to know how is the other, and what turn their life was taking.

The time spent while sitting and talking on the bench seemed to be like the period of certain unexplained and unexpectedly fulfilling happiness for Barua and his old soul mates. It was a kind of unwritten rule, a condition determined before a long time and which everybody followed without any question and of course, happily, that they don’t have any sorrow. They don’t know the evil sorceress called Grief. Even if somebody had something to feel sorry about or some grudge or even some deep sorrow; that was forgotten on this long bench like a forgotten and buried hero, or tossed for the time being into the river that flowed nearby. That’s why, here, on this bench one didn’t have any
sorrow, any grief, anything to cry about…neither here nor anywhere around it. If at all one found anything here, it was happiness, clear and transparent happiness. In the old wrinkled faces, bald or grey haired heads, and the still twinkling eyes hidden behind the thick spectacles…everywhere there was simply happiness. Every month, new people were added to their amazing happiness, and the talks went on in the same way, in the place where days didn’t ferment but bloomed into months and years.

Then, at one time, it is one or one thirty. Slowly, they rise, one by one. With one long uneventful month lying before them, all of them take each other’s leave with the hope of seeing each other again on this very eventful day.

Nobody could understand what Saikia was talking about. Like the falling of the college dome, many changes had started occurring in their surrounding incessantly and rudely without giving anyone any premonition, sometimes unnoticed, sometimes unwanted and almost always, unwelcome and uninvited. Things have been changing so fast that the change that happened just yesterday is old and forgotten today. The present has become so powerful that it has erased all the footprints of the past in the sands of time and leveled it down with concrete. That here once stood a huge dome, how did it look like, what was the wood used for its frame, how were its bright and beautiful glass panes, who remembers it now very clearly and minutely? The tall scrapers and buildings springing up from the ground continuously and rapidly have made people forget that once in their place swayed the big and blooming gardens, the broad fields where the horizon was redefined again and again and the little homes of the people where there used to be courtyards filled with the blades of the greenest grass. Barua often tries to find out the line which divided the time past and the time present, carefully. Maybe, that’s why, Karuna Barua could tell that there was still more to come, soon.

Saikia says that there would be no need to sit on the bench in the bank anymore. ‘Now, without even entering the bank, without crowding the interiors, we would be able to take out our pension money, and yes, in less than a minute. The bank has taken care of that.’

Hazarika replied almost irritated and a bit cross, ‘What rubbish? Pension in one minute? And that too, without even entering the bank. If the Bank is thinking of any brokers and such stuff, then I am changing my bank as soon as possible. And who will give the pension to so many people without any hindrance in less than a minute?’

Everybody was silent for some time. The answer came soon enough. A machine. They are putting up a machine for the job. A cubicle with a small sized, square machine. It would be that very machine where you could enter, press some buttons and get your pension money, or as a matter of fact any deposited money in…less than a minute! The bank is giving away forms at the moment. People are being shown how to open the door to the machine, where to insert the card which looked more like a biscuit, which buttons to press for which function, where the money would come and rest, and finally how to come out of the cubicle by pressing yet another button. They were also being instructed on the need to keep the card safe, and the number with which they operate the account a secret and unknown to anybody, etc.

Somebody asked, ‘Then the old rules? Will they be gone? Will we never be able to take our money like we used to do earlier? Standing in front of the counter with the cheque books and pass books?’

‘We might be able to. But they have done this to probably decrease the crowd that gathers regularly, and to ensure that the transactions occur fast and accurately. They say that actually the system is for our benefit only.’

Karuna Barua didn’t ask anything. Even didn’t comment also. He just listened to everything carefully and imagined the little square machine.

With the card in his hand, Barua inserted it through the narrow slit near the door to that very machine he had imagined days ago. A blue light flashed on. He took the card out, and the door opened like magic. Something which he had practiced over and over with the bank official who had tried to teach them the act.

A minute later, everything was over. Karuna Barua had taken his monthly pension and now it was time to return. Taking the money in his hands, Karuna Barua fell into a dilemma. Whom was he going to thank? Whom to ask, ‘How are you my child?’ Who would now shake his hand by slipping one into his through the small window? Who would now ask him, ‘How are you sir? How is your health…?’

Suddenly Barua advanced a step towards the cold standing machine and put a hand on its hard body, and stroked it. Just like that, he kept his hand there for a few seconds. He unconsciously searched for a hand to shake, a hand to slip a chocolate into, a face to light up with a smile. He strained his ears for some kind of a human sound. Will there come, out of the hard floor beneath the machine, a Dutta’s, a Talukdar’s or anybody else’s voice loaded with the familiar yet happy question, ‘How are you today father? Fine I hope…’

The door behind him opened and another person came in, ‘Haven’t you finished yet?

Pocketing the money he peeped into the bank. Is there somebody inside? Strange! There is not one known face today! There was no one to call out to him like every other time and ask for his health.

It’s a long time till noon. He never comes out of his home to return so soon. Barua has lots of time to spare now.

Hesitatingly, Barua entered the bank and went near the familiar bench, there just might be someone familiar sitting there, one of his comrades and soul mates? Whatever had happened during these days, Barua could catch up with the news now only. The interior of the bank was suddenly decorated with rows and rows of cubicles of sparkling glass and nickel, and on every table is a little machine, and in front of the little machine’s colorful screen which was constantly flashing series of new and newer numbers, a human; separate and secluded from each one, private and secret in his own domain. No one knows the other, let alone knowing the numerous customers who now sprawled the bank’s floor which was now broad and open. Amidst all the newly placed red and little individual chairs, Barua could not find his very own wooden bench, the battlefield where he had defeated sorrow with his happy soldiers; that was now gone.

In the first week of the next month on that very date, Barua went out of his home at his usual time.

Just as the bank opened, he entered it without looking anywhere else and approached a particular counter. He then entered a queue in front of it without looking at anyone’s face, as if he didn’t know anyone or hadn’t noticed.

A young officer was distributing certain forms to all the people standing in queue in front of the various counters. Those very familiar forms which he had filled up probably a month earlier. He could hear snippets of the pep talk he was giving to the people listening to him, the usual and all too familiar phrases, ‘less than a minute’, ‘a biscuit shaped card’, ‘hassle free money withdrawals’ and many more. Barua tried his best to avoid those sounds and phrases for as long as possible.

He was determinedly looking into the ground as if it was so interesting at the moment, when the youngster, who probably knew him, addressed him directly, ‘Haven’t you got a card…?’
‘I have my child…’
‘Then?’
‘Actually I forgot it today…’ In a voice almost inaudible, Barua replied with an uneasy smile, ‘Couldn’t find it when I was about to come…’

And as he was speaking slowly and uneasily, Barua began to notice that just a few turns away from him was Hazarika, and further away was Saikia, all standing in the queue with the pass book and cheque book in hand.

With a simple and infinitely sweet smile on his face, Hazarika told Barua, ‘Actually, I also forgot it today. Can’t remember where I kept it…you know, old age…’