The Oraon And The Divine Tree
A Novella By Ratan Lal Basu
[The printed version of the book under the Title “The Oraon and the Divine Tree”, (ISBN-9789380197852) is available with ABHIJAN PUBLISHERS, Kolkata, +91-33-22573187, M: +91-9874653611]
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
The Author
Chapter 1
I
The giant mango tree stood majestically, towering above the bushes, thickets and other trees in the marshy land that spread undulating between the Rosemary tea garden and the Baikunthapur forest. At noon the shadow of the tree like an enormous umbrella sheltered from the sweltering sun the thickets and bushes of akchhatti, dheki-fern, kukurshoka, datura and host of other herbs and wild plants. The burrows and ground holes sheltered variegated rodents, venomous vipers, mongooses, ichneumons, jackals, wild rabbits, foxes, porcupines, jungle cats, leopard cats and civets.
In winter the swamp glistened with multi-colored flowers embellishing the trees and creepers, and the orchids dangling merrily from the branches of the trees; the air was suffused with the fragrance of flowers and the ambience encompassing the land reverberated with chatters, squawks, clucks and screeches of migratory birds – black-naked cranes, teals, francolins, goosanders, partridges, ibis bills, fork-tails, wag- tails, red-stars, pelicans and innumerable small birds.
In summer, the marsh went alive with buzzing of fleas and insects, melodious songs of cuckoos, parakeets, popinjays; ear splitting caws of crows and shrill squawks of peacocks. While the large ripe mangoes hurtled down from the lofty branches, children, women and men from the tea garden and nearby villages jostled and hollered to collect the mangoes battering down the bushes at the bottom of the tree.
During the rains water stagnated in ditches; fishes swam merrily in the crystal water, golden-frogs played their monotonous love-songs; the cormorants and herons got busy with fishing and at night the water lilies greeted the moon that shone merrily in the clear sky or peeped through the slits of the clouds like a newly wed bashful bride.
In the deep forest to the north and north-west lived elephants, Bengal tigers, leopards, wild buffaloes, gaurs (Indian bison), dholes (wild dogs), monkeys, wild boars, antelopes, barking deer, musk deer, chital, king cobras and pythons. The wild animals except the elephants and monkeys lived in deep forest and rarely invaded the marsh, the tea garden or the villages.
Before the onset of monsoons at times, stormy winds lashed the glade mercilessly uprooting many trees but the giant tree fought off the demon heroically swaying its bushy head like a vast mace and not a single branch could be broken off by the cyclonic winds.
The monarch stood defiantly dwarfing all the trees around and could be visible from the nearest railway station at a distance of two miles. The giant tree was there from ages and from whence no body could tell. The oldest man, the nonagenarian Palisanju Roy had seen the tree the same during his childhood and the tea garden records mention the tree at the time of buying the land that included this marsh.
It was a strange tree, a rare and endangered species – the mangoes were large, round and ruddy around the stalk while ripe and the fragrance was enchanting. The local people – Rajbonshis of the villages around and the madeshia laborers of the tea gardens – had never seen such a mango tree elsewhere and it was mysterious to them how a mango tree was grown amidst the wild plants.
The mystery shrouding the colossal tree inspired local people to invent fantasy stories and myths and the local people held the mango tree sacred being planted by deities. Expert tree-climbers could climb the vast tree easily and pluck ripe mangoes, but they dared not incur displeasure of the deities by such inadvertence and therefore, everybody had to remain satisfied with the ripe mangoes offered to them by the tree itself. The marsh, rich in floral and faunal resources, contributed to the living of local people by providing firewood, pot-vegetables, herbs, fruits and small games. It had also become a part and parcel of the lives and culture of them in various ways and got inexorably associated with pleasures and pains of them.
Boys and girls of the locality used to collect offspring of birds like mainas, cuckoos, doves, shaliks, parrots and parakeets from the nests and bird-holes in the trees. Monkeys at times feasted on the ripe fruits of the trees and naughty urchins derived great fun from riling the monkeys by throwing blobs of earth and snippets of twigs at them and the enraged monkeys used to return back the stuffs and chase the boys unleashing menacing clenched teeth.
The dusty road, that separated the tea shrubs from the marsh, branched out into the small villages of the Rajbonshi peasants and paddy fields and winded through the forest toward Siliguri town. At the corner of the road close to the marsh were small temples, made by bamboo wattles and roofed with tin or straw, of various gods, goddesses and grotesque apparitions. The Ganesh temple was the largest and was roofed by corrugated tin on wooden structure. Local people used to keep large flat vessels of burnt earth full of haria in front of the temple. The liquor was an offering to the elephant-god Ganesh but virtually it was guzzled by the elephants which happened to cross over from the forests. It was a treat to watch the tipsy mastodons wobbling along after drinking the rice fermented liquor. It was not known who had first initiated this custom but everybody agreed that this was an act of myopic vision. These elephants, residing at the fringe of the forest, got addicted to haria in course of time and at times invaded the villages in quest of the liquor damaging houses and killing people.
II
While the tea garden was established during the 1870s, the tree was still there. William Flintwood, the founder, owned a large farmhouse near London. Mary, his young beautiful wife, whom he called Rose-Mary because of her beauty, died of tuberculosis in 1870. This frustrated the young landlord who wanted to leave England forever and get engaged in some business in a far off country so that he could forget the painful memories of his demised wife.
Bill contacted a broker cum business consultant at the latter’s office downtown. The broker told Bill that tea plantation in India had bright prospects and insisted that the baron buy tea garden land in India and venture into plantation business.
‘I don’t know how to buy such land,’ Bill said.
The broker smiled affably and said, ‘No problem sir. I’ve already got a lease for tea garden land from the Government of India. Now I’m in financial straits and cannot afford the initial investment needed to plant the bushes and found the factory. Furthermore, I’m to run this office here. I may sell the lease to you if you’re interested.’
‘Sure if the papers are okay.’
‘I’ll hand over all papers to your lawyer sir.’
‘Then call on my house next morning. Here’s my address. But I’m to sell my estate first.’
‘I’ll find the right buyer for you.’
The broker helped Bill sell out the large estate at a good price and only a part of the proceeds was needed to buy the tea garden land at the Cachar district of Assam in India. Bill requested a friend, the manager of a tea estate of Williamson Magor & Company in Assam, to enquire into the condition of the tea-garden land. The reply came and reading the first line, “No such land exists in reality” Bill got extremely agitated and without reading the rest of the mail he took out his car and rushed downtown to the office of the broker but was utterly dismayed to find the office closed and a notice dangling from the shutter “To Let.” He went upstairs and met the owner of the premises and the m
an told Bill that his tenant had left leaving a note that he was closing down the office and the owner, therefore may let it out to somebody else. ‘I’d already taken two month’s advance from him and he was paying monthly rent regularly. So there is no financial loss to me. Some tenants are like this, there are honest ones though. I was cheated once and since then I’ve taken the policy to let out premises only after taking two months’ rent in advance.’ The man said with a shrewd smile.
In utter desperation Bill rushed to the nearest police station and was morbidly disappointed to learn that this man had a bad police record and now it was not possible for the police to hunt down the culprit as he had already absconded abroad bamboozling many innocent persons like Bill. The police officer commented gravely that it was inadvertent on the part of an educated baron like Bill to give away money to an unknown person. All the way home he pondered hard and could not make out how the cheat could manage to furnish the correct papers. ‘Anyway still I’ve the rest of the money and I can do good business with it, but henceforth I ought to be cautious’, he said to himself. Upon returning home he started reading the mail of his friend from Assam more closely and his hope returned as he ran through the rest of the mail. ‘You, however, need not worry. Our company had similar experience. It is a gross irregularity on the part of the land department of the India Government to grant tea estate lands to brokers without verifying whether the land exists in reality or not. So, if you pressurize, the land department, to cover up the irregularities, would grant you any vacant land you choose for the desired tea garden. You better take trouble to come over here and I’ll help you.’
‘There is still hope’, Bill thought. He right away booked seat in a liner for Bombay and, after long tedious journey in sea and from Bombay to Assam by several slow moving trains, he was almost exhausted when he arrived at his friend’s quarter. He was compelled to take a few days’ rest in the friend’s quarter and thereafter his friend accompanied him to the Collector’s office. A Scotch official with upturned moustache and affable manners suggested Bill to claim land near Siliguri of northern Bengal to the west of the Chawai River adjacent to the Baikunthapur forest. The soil of the grassy undulating land was, the official emphasized, appropriate for cultivation of Camellia-Assamica and the land could be well irrigated by channels dug from the large horse-shoe lake left by the change of course of the river. But he would have to go to Calcutta first and meet higher officials of the Land Department. So Bill hurried to Calcutta carrying the letter of the official at Assam and the Land Department at Calcutta immediately accepted Bill’s proposal. With official papers he journeyed to Siliguri from where the local officials accompanied him on elephant to the land he had proposed. Over and above the thousand acres of high land, the government also granted him the adjacent marshy land bounded by the horse-shoe lake and the dense forest.
It took a few years to prepare the land, plant tea saplings and found the factory. The estate was named after William’s wife ‘Rosemary’ and production started by mid 1880s. It was highly profitable, but Bill did not find any peace of mind. So he sold the garden to a managing agency house, donated all his money to a poor-fund and left for Tibet with a Lama in quest of peace.