The Spirit of Ratnapur, Part 2

Be sure to read Part 1 first.

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Rahmat’s voice turned Shubir’s mind from Maya to the present moment. “What does all the fuss of the world mean after death? Think of that man lying on the bench; he has no care for warmth or comfort, no care whether he is guarded or not. His body may be stolen or eaten up, but it is we who care, not he.”

“Yes, we want to sleep and dream in comfort, and wake up and dream and shed sweat, tears, and blood for those dreams.”

Rahmat did not respond further with words, as he was thinking of the dreams and tears of his own life. He had been married for eighteen years, happily, and sometimes not so happily. The unhappy periods started, many would say, because of his once wandering eye.

In the middle years of his marriage, his attention fixated on a buxom belle who had worked in Dhaka as a maid. She had learned from movies how to put on lipstick and kajol like a movie star. Her kajol-drawn eyes caught Rahmat’s roving eyes and he contemplated leaving Ratnapur and his family to go live in Dhaka with that woman.

But that relationship crumbled as fast as it had started when the woman went off to Dhaka without telling Rahmat – along with the money that she had been taking from him, supposedly, to build their life in the big city. She taught Rahmat a good lesson which ensured the stability of the rest of his married life.

Since then, Rahmat stayed faithful to his wife and family, and his life at Ratnapur. On some occasions, he was transferred to nearby places for his job. But he had always been a Ratnapur resident, returning home every night, or two or three nights a week, depending on the distance from his workplace.

But sometimes, Rahmat wondered how his life would have turned out if he had actually gone to Dhaka with that woman. This is what he was wondering just then.

To his companion, he said aloud, “You know Shubir, there was a time when I considered leaving Ratnapur and going to Dhaka. I had seen Dhaka then, and I have seen Dhaka since then. It has changed so much. I don’t think I like what I see there. Too much noise, too many cars and people, just too much going on. I feel quite lost when I go there.”

“The capital of Bangladesh; everyone wants to go there.”

“Our Ratnapur has not changed much in many years. The same schools, the same small police station, the same little train station, the bazaar is pretty much as it was before.”

“But there is a college now,” Shubir noted.

“Yes, now there is. But I don’t know how much they study in that college, the students are always up to something else.” The college students had been showing increasing signs of political volatility, and as part of Ratnapura police, Rahmat had to deal with these factors often, and so, was not too pleased with them. 

“And we still have only one person with a Master’s degree in this village?” The subject of Ratnapur’s unchanging stability as opposed to Dhaka’s unpredictability pulled them from their private thoughts back into common concerns they could talk about.    

“Yes, and unfortunately, that only man with a Master’s degree is also a madman. In the year of the liberation war,” began Rahmat with the air of knowing things of long ago. “Khokon Master came from Dhaka with a Master’s degree, and he still is the only man in the village with such high qualifications.”

“Didn’t he start a new high school?”

“Yes, he did; and he was doing a good job of running it until his misfortune took over. Khokon Master was always a very wise young man, even when he was just a school student.”

“To think that fighting in the liberation war should make him mad, of all people. There were others who fought and came back, safe and sane.”

“But there were many others, who fought and never came back, or came back maimed.”

“I was too young to join the Mukti Bahini and go to war against the Pakistani aggressors.” Shubir said thoughtfully. “To think they could kill millions of people in a place they claimed as their own.”

“I was old enough, but too scared to go. We fled from village to village for those nine months. So many were killed, even those who did not fight the Pakistani army. People say the army captured Khokon Master and tortured him horribly. They wanted information about secret guerilla camps, and he would not talk, so they tortured him until he went mad. I wonder what made them spare his life, when they killed so many.”

“It’s sad to see a man once so respectable and learned, wandering aimlessly in tattered clothes, living on other people’s morsels.”

“His whole family was killed because he joined the freedom fighters. I feel so blessed to have survived the war with all my family members. We are Hindus, and Hindus were specially targeted.”

“Every Bangali was targeted, not just Hindus. How do you think three million people were killed? They would have killed us all if the war had not ended in nine months.”

Rahmat and Shubir talked like this about many things, for what seemed like hours. Yet the night remained as dark as before and their watches maintained that it was only two in the morning. They eventually got tired of talking and sitting up and thinking of their respective lives. Each dozed off without the other’s notice.

At some point, however, they both came out of their catnaps and began talking to each other again.

“What are you thinking about, Shubir?”

“I have been thinking about so many things tonight. It is not often that you get the quietness of the whole night to contemplate.”

“Perhaps dawn’s not too far away. I can’t wait to hand over the body, go home, and get some sleep.”

Shubir looked at his watch and said, “It’s a few hours away, still.”

“Hai Allah!”

Shubir stood up to stretch his body. While doing so, his eyes caught sight of something. “Look!” They both stared in the direction of the window of the tin shed. Through the small, open window, they saw a small red glimmer where the dead body was. It looked like the light of a burning cigarette.

“Is that somebody smoking a cigarette?” Shubir whispered.

“But there’s nobody there. The dead body could not be–”

“Do you think the murderer came back? Why would he – how could he dare?”

“What do we do?”

“Let’s make a run for it. Whether it’s a murderer or a ghost, it’s bad for us either way.”

“Why would the murderer come back here? Why would the shala come into our hands – the hands of the police?”

“Is it – is it something supernatural then?”

Rahmat looked at Shubir with unbelieving, terror-filled eyes. Then he looked at his watch: It was still only a few minutes past three. Darkness would linger for hours more. “Let’s be calm and observe the light for a while.”

“It moves, just like a cigarette would, if it were between somebody’s fingers,” Shubir noted.

“Look carefully. It is actually between a person’s fingers.”

Shubir and Rahmat stared for a few moments.

“I can see the shape of a man lying on the bench,” Rahmat pointed.

“But the only man lying there was a dead man. Is he really dead or did we make a mistake?”

“If that man we put in the shed is not dead, then I’m not living,” Rahmat said.

“Look. The light keeps moving, and there’s the smell of smoke in the air.”

“That smells like a Star cigarette.”

“This is the spookiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Shubir shuttered.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, either. But we have got to handle this somehow.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“I have a shotgun. We have flashlights. We can, at least, see what it is that we are seeing.”

“O Bhogoban, help us! Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Allahu Akbar. Okay, here we go.”

Two powerful flashlights illuminated the area where the red light glimmered. A chalky, emaciated face stared at them with perceptible rage. At that instant, they both thought they saw the withered face of a ghost. But from that face came forth a commanding voice – a familiar one – that broke into a tirade.

“Turn out those lights! I go from place to place and give lectures. I am exhausted! Today, I taught poetry to Lalu, because he loves poems; and my little sister Asha, she likes to do mathematics, so I explained fractions to her. Now, after such a hard day’s work and no food, I find a whole cigarette and try to have a good smoke and rest a bit. And here you come shining your torches on me.”

“Khokon Master!” The pair outside uttered their surprise in near union.

“Yes, it’s me. Now go away! Let me rest in peace.”

“Do you come in here often?” Rahmat asked.

“Yes, I sleep here most nights unless I am held up somewhere for work. Why did you put somebody on my bed? I come here in the dark and feel that another man is sleeping in my bed. I pushed him out of the bed and threw him on the floor.”

“That’s a dead man, Khokon Master. That’s a dead body.”

Khokan Master laughed, disregarding the body nearby.

“So you’re still roaming the woods and teaching your brother Lalu and sister Asha, eh-heh?”

“Yes, and others, too. After the war, some students stopped coming to school. You won’t find them in their homes because they were burnt down. But, like wandering spirits, they roam the fields and woods, and they talk only to me. I like teaching them. They are good and attentive, and if I don’t teach them, they cry. You have not seen their tears and heard their cries.”

“Oh Khokon Master, if only you tried to be a little sane, you would have been alright,” Rahmat half-whispered.

“I would like to be sane. I would have liked to teach at the high school or the college. But they wouldn’t take me. They stay away from me and stare at me and whisper about me, just like you are doing. They want me to get rid of my old students, I suppose. But I can’t do that. They need me most. There is nobody else for them.”

“I think you’re hallucinating. Why can’t you forget the war and forget what happened in the war, and try to get on with your life?” Shubir spoke for the first time.

“Don’t try to teach me about hallucinations!” Khokan Master burst out angrily. “I can’t forget them. I can forget you; I can forget who you are and who you are.” 

Khokon Master pointed his fingers at each of them. “But I cannot forget them. Their bodies and their spirits have given us this free land. I cannot forget them. I will never forget them. Now go away and let me sleep.”

Saying this he picked up his cigarette, had a puff or two, turned his back to the two men and went to sleep.

“How do we tackle this problem now?” Shubir asked Rahmat.

“Actually, our problem is now solved. Khokon Master’s sleeping so close to the body that he’s guarding it. He’s doing more than half of our job for us. Let’s see if the dead body is doing okay.” 

Rahmat chuckled at his own ironic humor, and shone the flashlight on the body. There was a shawl spread out on the floor and the body was placed on it, as if somebody had put it there with great care.

“So you didn’t really throw the body carelessly, Khokon Master. You spread out your own shawl for the body to rest on it. This man loves the dead. He lives with the dead and sleeps with the dead.” Rahmat laughed again at the absurd thought of someone taking care of a dead stranger’s body. 

Rahmat and Shubir moved away from the window and settled down on their bench.

“You know,” said Shubir, “I think he feels guilty for not dying in the war when so many of his family and friends did. And the army must have tortured him so much that he feels like he visited death.” 

“Now we have a third man with us. Even though he is a mad man, he is another living man – to help guard,” Rahmat shrugged.

“I don’t think he is all that mad either. I mean, he’s mad, but he still has his knowledge. They should have let him teach at the school. He would probably have become normal with passing time. It was so wrong to isolate and deprive him. I think that made him more insane. We just accepted that he was a mad man and let him become madder, never questioning…”

“A school can’t really hire a mad man to teach young boys and girls. They can only have undeclared and undetected madmen on their staff.”

“You have a joke for every occasion, Rahmat Bhai.” Shubir shook his head.

“Just like you have a philosophy for every occasion.”

“Perhaps we can sleep now, since Khokon Master’s sleeping with the dead man. You say he’ll be a good guard?”

“Better than us. I think we can now doze off in peace for the rest of the night.”

“We talked about many things and many people tonight. Isn’t it a miracle that one person suddenly walks out of our conversations into the night and causes us alarm, but finally gives us some relief?”

Rahmat and Shubir chatted some more for a while and eventually fell into a deep and peaceful slumber. The night was still present with its distant stars and dim moon. Under that night sky in Ratnapur, four very different men – a young man and a middle-aged man and a mad man and a dead man finally had a brief moment of uninterrupted rest until the next sunrise.

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