Short Story
Conjugal Relations*
artwork by amina
This is a story set against the background of the Tebhaga movement and demonstrates the breaking upo f traditional patters of human relationships at a time of crisis. A jotedar is a small landlord, often on his way to becoming a capitalist-farmer. Gagan is obviously a sharecropper, tilling Bhupati's land on lease. One of the slogans of the Tebhaga movement was 'Take the harvest to your own yard'. Once the harvest was taken to the landlord's yard for measurement , there was no guarantee that a sharecropper would get his just share. Again Gagan brings down the thin, lithe strip of cane; he hits harder. The skin tenuously covering Sohagi's frail back is rough and blister-infected. It breaks, and blood comes out at several places. He is so drunk with cruelty that he shakes in fury, his teeth clatter against one another, the world turns hazy before his reddened eyes. Harder he would strike, harder. It is a kind of catharsis he is after, he does not care whether Sohagi will survive the lashing, he is going to teach her the proper lesson…make her feel the power of a bread-earning husband. Gagan has gone about it methodically. He has torn away from her body the tattered sari Sohagi was wearing, and used it to fasten her firmly to one of the poles holding up the roof, her face turned towards the pole to make beating easier. There is however a slight disadvantage in this arrangement; since he is not able to see Sohagi's face, the sense of total satisfaction eludes him; he can only hear her wail. Each time the wailing tends to grow feeble, Gagan strikes even more sharply against Sohagi's rump, drawing blood, so that there is an instant revival of its original pitch. Then he moves to the other side to take a look at her face. By now, however, Sohagi has turned her head and gripped the pole with her teeth; her crying is increasingly muffled, there is only a nondescript groan coming out of her throat. The partial view of Sohagi's dazed face contorted with fear and pain rouses Gagan's fury once more. He slaps her furiously with his hardened peasant's palm. "Have you learnt your lesson, you slut? Would you steal my food again?" Then a fantastic thing happens. Sohagi does not beg forgiveness, she does not whimper, she does not swear upon her life not to eat her husband's share of the rice in future. Instead she stops groaning and shouts back, frenzy making her voice hoarse: "Of course I will, I will eat up your rice a hundred times, a thousand times; I will murder you and eat up your food." This declaration of defiance takes Gagan aback. "What! You would, would you?" "Yes, yes, I will. Why shan't I eat? If there is no rice, I will cut you into pieces with a chopper, fry you and eat you up!" Such is the extent of Sohagi's hunger then? Such is her defiance! If no rice is to be had, she would even chop up the husband and eat his flesh! Following her declaration, though, Sohagi bursts out wailing once more. So far, her legs had supported her. Now abruptly, she lets her body go limp against the bamboo pole which starts cracking ominously. Gagan sees little point in continuing the charade, and unfastens her. Without even attempting to cover herself up, Sohagi immediately collapses on the floor and lies face downward. The morning sun had reached through the chinks in the walls made of split bamboo into the shady privacy of the hut. It was like nature sending a friendly message in her eager joy, right in the midst of an intensely sorrowful scene. Gagan had mounted guard on his little plot of land throughout the night. As daylight broke, he resumed reaping the paddy, while intermittently looking in the direction of the village road. He had not eaten a morsel since the previous afternoon, his body was taut with hunger, the sickle was almost limp in his had; he mechanically continued to chop at the paddy plants in the hope that Sohagi would arrive any moment with his share of the boiled rice. The morning advanced, the sun came up, there was no trace of Sohagi. Anger welling up inside Gagan had made him dizzy. He trekked home to find out what the matter was, leaving his sickle with Dinu. It was good luck for both them that he had not brought the sickle along. In the height of his anger, he might have used the sickle to slice Sohagi's throat. That throat through which his share of rice had passed. A pervading sense of ennui grips Gagan. The anger, the hurt, the lust for brutality maddening him begins to die down. His head swims. An unspeakable sorrow, like a lump, moves up from his chest to his throat; he would feel relieved if he could burst into loud weeping. What is he going to do? Fill his belly with some water and return to the field? Can he work? That would have to be found out once he started working. In any case, he has to return to his land. The rest of the paddy has to be reaped, and hurriedly. Only a few hours are available to him. It would not take the jotedar Bhupati longer that that to return with his hoodlums, most of whom would be armed with staves or worse. The paddy must be removed to safety before they made their raid. He was prepared to lay down his life fighting the jotedar's henchmen. But why should he give his life in vain? He might die in peace only after the paddy, which would save lives permanently, was secure at home, not before that. Now, however, there is this additional problem. How can he leave his badly bruised wife behind? Suppose she jumps into the village pond? Suppose she hangs herself? Suppose she runs away in shame and anger and remorse wherever her eyes take her? For whom then is he taking all this trouble of reaping paddy? "Come on, Sohagi, let bygones be bygones; do get up!" Gagan says in an attitude of reconciliation, forgiving and forgetting Sohagi's faults as it were. Sohagi makes no move, shows no response. "I have to hurry back to the field, put on your sari. Let me lift up the door." Sohagi does not stir. Gagan tries again. "Come on, please give me a jug of water; let me drink it and leave; what else is to be done? I have, you know, work left in the field." Gagan finds himself in an awkwardly vulnerable position. There is no way of giving Sohagi time to cool down, there is a rush in everything. Suddenly time has become an important element in the lives of poor, inoffensive people like him. Hurry, hurry, pawn your pots and pans at an exorbitant rate and get some cash; hurry, hurry, use this cash to get some rice, otherwise life itself, that lovely bird, will escape the starved cage of the body. Hurry, hurry, to the field, keep your eyes open, be on watch and reap your harvest quickly even when vitality is ebbing and leaving you half-dead, otherwise the jotedar will come and take it away. Hurry, hurry, make amends to the wife you have beaten up, she might do something you will regret if the shame of a beating is added to her pain of starvation. It cannot be postponed for half-a-day. Nothing can wait. Can a man bear so much? Gagan says bitterly, "How does it matter, I am in any case done for, whether this way or that. I will not let go of my paddy, the rascal of a jotedar will come with the police and the hoodlums, my skull will be split into two by the blows of their staves. Or my heart will be pierced by the police bullet, I will in any case die. But why must you too kill me by torture?" Upon this Sohagi just slightly raises her face, then hides it again. Gagan pants stormily and goes on, "If that is what you wish, let your will be done. You cut me up with the chopper and eat my flesh. Why should I get killed in the field to be eaten up by the jackals and vultures? Instead, you fill your belly with my carcass." This makes Sohagi sit up straight. She blazes, "Enough is enough, hold your tongue. You have beaten me up every now and then, I stood that, but you are not going to get away with such gibberish. Stop it, I tell you." Both fall silent. An interlude. Sohagi fetches water in a tin mug. The jug or ghoti Gagan had talked of, from sheer habit, has long been sold off. He steps out of the door, obviously intending to return to the field when Sohagi speaks up once more, "I will come after a while with the rice." "But where will you get it?" "Oh, I will manage," announces Sohagi, with the same fire of rebellion in her eyes as when she had declared her intention of stealing her husband's food, of chopping him and eating him if there wasn't anything else. "I will get the rice by whatever means I can; I will borrow it, steal it, snatch it. The Nandis have tons and tons of rice stacked up, I will get some from them." Gagan shakes his head doubtfully, "They will never give you any rice." "They will not? If they will not, I will murder the bastards, I will chop their throats with the kitchen knife." The sliver of a ray of the sun lights up Sohagi's shriveled face; something burns in that face; a light of determination. The biting cold of early morning has now turned pleasant. Gagan looks into his wife's eyes anew, bemused and charmed. People can be heard stirring here and there. Leading along her bony cow on a rope, Katu Shaikh's wife stops short, allowing it to pick up bits of fresh straw lying on the road. She is looking in their direction. Gagan re-enters the hut, quietly asks Sohagi to come to him. He clasps one of her hands as she approaches him, and with a strange catch in his voice, as if asking forgiveness for sins and errors of a lifetime, says: "I tell you this, Sohagi, I shall never beat you again; whatever you do, never shall I raise a hand against you; I swear, if I ever hit you again…"
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