Of Beautiful, Brave People, and a River

The star-studded sky looked on with a thousand eyes the river seemed asleep in the embrace of the two forest covered banks, her face pressed in the stretch of white sand Kuber would sleep on the palm mat next to him, ma would be in a half-lying position. She would be caressing his body and hair with her hands, and Kuber would say, &lsquoMa, Ma, please tell me once again the story of what happened when Hirakud was built.&rsquo

It was a narrative of people&rsquos heartbreak, the story of the distress people felt by having to find refuge in other villages. There were many such chronicles about Hirakud. Ma did not want to recall those harsh truths to her child. &lsquoListen to what happened after the floods came,&rsquo she would say instead. &lsquoAll the houses were makeshift village homes here. People were going away slowly with their window frames, fuelwood, cows, ducks and hens in bullock carts and lorries. All other creatures, even dogs and cats, stay close to human beings as do cows and goats. They understand the joys and the sorrows, the bad and the good, the scarcity and shortages of their households, but the birds in the sky do not keep so much track of day-to-day life. Early every morning, they fly away towards the dense sal and segun forests of Chhoto and Boro Dungri.

There are so many other trees there &ndash arjun, tamarind, shirish, acacia &hellip The birds carry food in their beaks and come back home. In the nests they have built in the hollows of trees and on branches are the eggs they have laid. And there are newborn chicks who have not found their voice yet and if you open their beaks, you will see bright red gaping mouths.

&lsquoWhat happened one fine day was &hellip&rsquo

&lsquoHmm, tell me.&rsquo Kuber was saying this indeed, but his eyelids were closing with sleep. Ma was deliberately stretching the end of the story, so that Kuber would fall asleep listening. On certain days, what he was listening to at the time that he had not fallen into deep sleep remained in Kuber&rsquos mind. One day, the birds had flown off like every other day, leaving their chicks and eggs in their nests. The sun was just about rising crowds of people, carts and bullocks were standing next to the newly constructed sluice gates of the dam. The birds had not noticed anything &ndash otherwise they would have seen that the last people had evacuated, emptying the entire village, pukka buildings, huts, granaries and local markets. The bulls in the last bullock cart piled with luggage were going towards an unknown habitat after crossing the frontier of the water.

Towards twilight, when the birds were on their way home, Hirakud was a sea of unlimited water with gently swaying blue waves. The water had been released after morning. The water from the river had come through the sluice gate and filled the heart of the biggest dam in the country. The birds then became directionless. Their familiar villages and trees were all under water. Their distress calls sounded like wailing. They flailed their wings and were trying to look for those branches where they used to sit after a bout of flying. Their resting places had all gone deep under water. So the birds flew in circles over the water. Who could say on which tree lay their unhatched eggs, and the fledglings that had not yet learnt to fly

&lsquoBou, have you seen those birds fly&rsquo Kuber used to call his mother &lsquoBou&rsquo according to the tradition of the region. Ma was the Bou, the daughter-in-law of the father-in-law and mother-in-law. Therefore she was also the &lsquoBou&rsquo of the child who might have just learnt to speak.

&lsquoYes, of course, haven&rsquot I The beating of their wings, the long-drawn-out calls like weeping I can&rsquot ever forget, my child, their circling over the water, looking for their eggs and their fledglings.&rsquo Hearing this, at some point Kuber would fall asleep the beating of the birds&rsquo wings and their cries would get drowned within his sleep. When the morning sunshine would spread all over the room, he would hear the bird calls lying in bed. These were different birds. These birds were calling in the joy of the sunrise. Among these, were there any of the eggs that had been swept away, or any of the fledglings that had got lost Were these the new generations of those unfortunate birds, who had located different trees, hollows, roofs and Shiv temples all over again The borders of ma&rsquos saris with the tie-and-die patterns of Sambalpur, their elephants, fish, flowers and creepers, the caress of ma&rsquos hands while putting him to sleep, the birds, trees and stories of the woods created many images, dreams and verses within Kuber.

Author&rsquos Note
Mahanadi is a long novel, woven around the fascinating and voluminous river Mahanadi which emerges from the plateau of Sihawa in Chhattisgarh and travels through the hills, forests and coastal plains of Odisha till it meets the Bay of Bengal in Jagatsinghpur near Paradeep. The Hirakud Dam on the river, one of the largest in the country, brought water for farming in the adjoining area of Sambalpur but also displaced thousands of people because of its submergence. Lives that got separated in the process could never come together again. Deviating from the usual format of a novel, the narrative moves along with the river and connects the reader to new terrain and new people, the farmers, artisans, weavers who have come to settle near the river, their life stories and the local history and myths. The beauty of the hills, forests and of the river forms the background of the human sufferings, and joys and festivities which have come alive through the intricate details of the narration. I have visited the villages in the catchment area several times, meeting people whose memories form part of the novel again and again. The novel has taken around five years to be written and is the fulfilment of a dream that I cherished for over a decade. Written originally in Bengali, the novel has been translated by Dr Nivedita Sen in a most authentic style, preserving the colors, sounds and human characteristics and a most delightful Translator&rsquos note which introduces the readers to the book.