Naukadubi: The Boatwreck

Chapter 3

When Ramesh reached home, what caught his sight first was the elaborate flower decorations that had ornamented his ancestral house. And then, he discovered that a bride and a wedding date had been finalized for him.

"Baba? What is all these? A marriage without my consent? Never!'
Ramesh had paced inside his room, and had locked the door hoping to severe his ties with all who could think of betraying him like this.

At a time when Brajamohan had not been well-off, his childhood friend Ishan, an advocate, had helped him improve his prospects. Ishan died young, and it emerged that he had no savings, only debt. His widow found herself and her young daughter sinking into poverty. This daughter was now of marriageable age, and it was with her that Brajamohan had arranged Ramesh's marriage. Some of Ramesh's well-wishers had objected on the grounds that she was not very pretty, dark, thin, and illiterate too, but Brajamohan had told them in his characteristic grave voice, 'I don't understand these things very well - a human being is not a mere flower or butterfly, appearance is not the most important thing. If the girl turns out to be as chaste and faithful as her mother, Ramesh should consider it his good fortune.'

Ramesh's face, needless to say, had fallen on hearing the news. He wandered about despondently. None of the methods that occurred to him to runaway seemed feasible. Eventually shedding his hesitation with great effort, he told his father,
"This marriage is impossible, I have committed myself elsewhere."

Brajamohan was surprised, but asked his son plainly, "Indeed! Are you engaged?"

"No, not exactly, but-

"Has everything been finalized with the girl's family?"

"Not what you'd call finalized-" Ramesh had turned his eyes away, trying the figure the best possible words to convince his father.

"It has not, then?" Brajamohan sat down on the bed, "In that case, since you have been silent all this while, all you have to do is to continue being silent.'

Ramesh couldn't conjure an immediate answer, and after a pause, Ramesh said, "It would be wrong of me to accept another woman as my wife."

"Not doing so might prove a greater wrongdoing." Brajamohan argued.
"Is that girl pretty?"

"Pretty, and well educated", Ramesh spoke softly, "and sings very well too, you won't dislike her Baba!"

Brajamohan let out a sigh.
"What do you understand about my likes and dislikes, I thought I had raised you above these superficial attributes." He paused, "Is that girl immersed into the darkness of poverty? Fatherless?"

"No."

"Will she have to commit suicide if you won't marry her?"

"No!" Ramesh looked up.

"This girl will probably have to." Brajamohan exhaled. "Her poor widow mother has arranged everything with her last resort, if you don't marry her now, she along with her daughter will have no way but to jump into the river." Brajamohan looked at his son's face once, expectantly, before leaving the room with a heavy heart.

Ramesh could argue no more, and at that moment, all he could do was to pray for some divine intervention to save him from his moral disaster.

"Hey Bhagaban...! Why me? Why is my life such a dilemma?"
Ramesh had sank down on the floor, her heart flooding with boundless emotions, generating from the helplessness that he felt with his entire being.

According to the almanac, an inauspicious period of one year was supposed to follow the wedding date, when no ceremonies were allowed. Ramesh hoped that if he could somehow prevent the wedding from taking place on the appointed date, he would gain a year's respite.

The prospective bride resided in a village called Shimulghata with her mouth. And, to reach the bride's home, they would have to take a boat ride. It was not a short distance and involved a passage through two or three narrow as well as wide rivers - the journey would take at least three or four days. Making sufficient allowance for unforeseen circumstances, Brajamohan set off on an auspicious day a week in advance.

With a favourable wind all the way, it took less than three full days to reach Shimulghata. The wedding was four days away.

Brajamohan had, in fact, wanted to arrive a few days early. His son's future mother-in-law lived like a pauper. Brajamohan had long harboured the wish to have her shift to his own village and to ensure a comfortable life for her, thus paying back his debt to his friend. But, he had not considered it proper to make this proposal in the absence of any kinship. Now he could use the occasion of the wedding to persuade her. She had only one daughter in the whole wide world - she could not refuse the opportunity to live nearby and play the role of a mother to her motherless son-in-law.

"Let people say what they will," the widow had declared.
"I belong wherever my daughter and son-in-law choose to live."

Having arrived a few days before the wedding, Brajamohan busied himself with arrangements to resettle his son's mother-in-law. He wanted everyone to travel back together after the wedding. He had brought along some of his female relatives for this purpose as well.

Ramesh was heartbroken!

To his utter dismay no god's chose to intervene in his life to save him from this menacing disaster, and within a few days what Ramesh thought to be a blink of an eye, the final day arrived.

The nearer the time came, the angrier he grew. And, at twilight, when the ambience was filled with ulludhoni and conches, Ramesh sat quietly in the groom's seat, not repeating a single sacred word during the wedding. He had shut his eyes during the shubhodrishti ritual where the bride and the groom were to look at each other for the first time, he suffered the traditional good-natured nuisances of the evening after the ceremonies in submissive silence, he spent the first night in bed with his back to his bride, and at the nascent dawn he left the room silenty.

Two days had past in a busy clamour, but it felt meaningless to Ramesh, and on the day of his Boubhaat, they had finally set off to return back to his own village.

The women left on one boat, the old people on another, and the groom and bride, and the rest on a third. On another boat, a group of musicians struck up the opening notes of different ragas without caring for the appropriate hour at which they were traditionally sung.

Ramesh had thrown a careless glance at the new bride sitting beside him, her red saree was drawn up her head, pulled down to her neck.
Ramesh felt his heart wretch and stomach churn.

"Are you feeling sick son?" A man had asked.

"No." Ramesh nodded.

It was unbearably hot all day. The sky was cloudless and everything seemed shrouded in a pallid hue. The trees on the banks stood grey, their leaves still. The boatmen pulling on the oars were soaked with perspiration. Before the darkness intensified in the evening, they said, "Let's moor the boats for the night. We won't be able to stop after this for a long time."
But Brajamohan-babu did not want to slow down.
"We cannot stop here," he said.
"There will be moonlight in the first half of the night, we can get to Baluhata before we stop. There's extra money in it for all of you."

The boats went on. An empty expanse of lowland stretched out on one side, while the bank was high, though broken in parts, on the other. The moon rose through the haze, but it was as blurred as a drunkard's vision.

Suddenly, although there were neither clouds in the sky nor any other sign of doom, a roar was heard. Looking at the horizon behind them, they discovered a gigantic but invisible force sweeping up branches and twigs, leaving a column of dust in its path as it rushed towards them at breakneck speed. As cries of alarm rose in the air, no one could say with certainty what happened the very next moment. The tornado destroyed everything that stood in its way, leaving not even a single sign pointing to the fate of the boats under its onslaught.

"Babaaa...." Ramesh heard his own voice fading away under the gigantic waves, and that was the last thing he remembered.