Durga

On normal days Durga would be chastised and beaten, because the chappati was undercooked or  just because she didn’t satisfactorily scrub floors. Her mother kept an eye on her and for her dahej a  sum of 5000 rupees was set aside, the product of blood, sweat and tears. I suppose the one thing  that kept them going was that Durga was just 12 now. There would be time before the nuptials and  her family was devout. Maybe the gods would take pity on them? 

Nobody stopped to ask what Durga wanted. After all, she was the daughter of the house. Surely, she  would want the name of the house to be held up. The family she was being married to was affluent.  A middle-class gentleman with a salary of 250 rupees per month! This could take Durga’s family into  coveted circles. Durga’s mother could reminisce about her daughter, who would see the majesty of  

Kolkata. She did not get to see the outside of this village. If that meant that for a few months she  went without food, so be it. That is what the Almighty wanted for her and what sort of a mother  would she be if she stood in the way of her child’s future? 

Durga’s chores were over and she went to play. She loved playing in the forest. However, the  villagers had warned her time and again that the forests were full of spirits. Durga didn’t care. She  thought the spirits were friendly and no spirit seemed to hurt her. Amit was her favourite spirit. He  was a boy, about her age but only in appearance. Amit’s astral projection was tens of thousands of  years old. A boy at first sight, a powerful spirit if seen via second sight. They were friends. The first  time she had met Amit, she thought he was lost in the forest and tried to make him come with her  to her village, but somehow Amit could not. He then explained that he was bound to the forest, and  should a mortal girl fall in love with him, her soul too would be bound to the forest. 

Like all other places, the forest had rules. Humanity was viewed with a skeptical glance. When Durga  first got lost, the trees whispered and some of them even tried to bar her way. But a girl on the run  from an angry mother is a resourceful girl and so she climbed over the wooden barricades nimbly  and went deeper in, casually picking up a custard apple. It was just as she was going to bite into it  that Amit appeared and told her to drop it. Food eaten in the forest was a contract. A piece of the  forest is in you, thus meaning you protect the forest and the forest protects you. 

But what is it that the forest needed protection from? If the tales Amit told her were true, when the  forest was in danger the trees would converse with great “Ha’s” and “Hooms” and protect it. Where  had Amit learnt of this? He had gone deeper. He had found the Clearing. 

*** 

Durga’s mother was especially harsh on her today. She called her idiotic and unfit to be married and  a blot on her ancestry. Today, more than ever, she needed the forest. She needed Amit. She didn’t  care if going deeper in meant she would not be able to come back, if eating fruit would mean she  would become ectoplasm- neither of this world nor that- in limbo.  

And so, (for don’t most of these tales have a moment like this?), she got out of bed in the night and  ran to the forest’s edge. Amit materialized and Durga told him everything and that she would like to  be one with the forest. She wanted to be bound to the forest just as Amit was. She wanted to  renounce her human side, become Hollow.  

But Amit was distant. The one person who had always calmed her down and supported her, told her  to go back home. He told her he had been 12 years old for millennia. He had seen his mother and  father die with nobody to take care of them. They couldn’t even see him or wipe away his tears. The  ghosts took him in and they raised him. They say “Dead men tell no tales” But these ghosts had told  him stories of wars and of famine and taught him history. Amit only looked 12. His body was young,  but his mind was very old. 

He told Durga that people in her state worship a Goddess whose name she shares. They spend  obscene amounts of money on the razzmatazz and yet are backward, preparing a child to be married  off before even puberty hits. He spat on the ground in disgust. 

“Durga, you can’t stay here”, he said. 

Durga hesitated. She knew that a very drunk father was awaiting her at home and an even angrier  mother who had been beaten black and blue by her father would now take it out on her, for such 

were the wrought iron chains of matrimony were they not? Amit was the only boy, (or should he be  termed a ghost?) who treated her as if she was a human being, with thoughts and emotions and  needs. To her family, she was a burden. She had heard her mother lament many a time- “Eta ke toh  amay biye diye dite hobe. O aar ki korbe? Ki kore ami eke jonmo dilam?” (I shall have to get her  married off. What good is she for? Why did I give birth to her?) 

Amit cut in sharply- “Do you know what it is like to be 12 years old forever? No aging, immortality,  watching your loved ones die, knowing you’ve broken their hearts and nothing can be done about it  now? Do you know what it’s like to never be able to eat cooked food or drink from a stream of  running water? I can never leave this forest. I am cursed to wander it and survive. I do not know  when my servitude will end, if it will end. I was just hungry and I ate the food of the forest. And now  I am not hungry anymore. I am not ANYTHING anymore This forest is all I’ll ever know now, because  one day I took a bite out of a fruit because I was hungry and I did not listen. Do you know how much  I envy your normal life? You can go where you want to go and harsh as she is, you can eat your  mother’s cooking! You don’t have to let memories of yourself being haunted or feeling guilty trouble  you. You can be free!  

“GO. HOME! You still have one. I don’t. I never will again” 

Durga was running away as fast as she could. She had never seen Amit so livid. It scared her. She  knew she could make a perfect chappati if she wanted. Maybe even a good fish dish. 

Amit turned back and went into the forest. He took one last look at Durga’s receding figure and  thought of his mother. Batting aside a branch in his way he went deep inside the trees, to wait for  the next Durga to tell him his immortality was not a curse. 

*** 

Aparna was sitting still but her mind was wandering. She was very excited. It was 1925 and she was  going to her mother, Durga’s ancestral village. She was also going to the UK to study medicine and  this meant the world to her. 

She started thinking about what her mother had told her about the ghost in the forest outside the  village. Amit, she had said his name was. Was he real? Aparna had grown up hearing about him and  how he would comfort Durga when her maternal grandmother was being harsh to her and forcing  her to run away.  

She wondered, a series of “what ifs”? What if her mother had not been married off at the age of 13  (in the year 1902) and instead had been educated? She had learnt in history that such a concept was  not only alien but otherworldly in those times. She cast her mind further back and for the first time  felt a little sliver of sorrow for her maternal grandmother. After all, she never got that chance either.  

What if her father had not decided to fight both his parents and in-laws and refused to let his wife  not have education and got her educated, and ipso facto decided the same when Aparna came along  (after her mother had turned 18) and had also educated her? 

Aparna’s train had left Howrah and was almost at her station. She adjusted her saree and prepared  to get off. Her mother had told her that she would have to take a tonga to the village from the  station and had made only one request, that she break a coconut at the temple in the village. Aparna  had rolled her eyes but she would do it.  

Upon getting into the tonga, Aparna started wondering again. Her schooling had started in 1913 and  she had hated doing maths. Her father had had quite an uphill battle teaching her but he didn’t give  up. When she was 13, her interest in Biology was sparked off and she had started doing well in  Chemistry as well. After a few years, prior to her appearing for the Matriculation exam, her principal had called her parents into the office and strongly suggested she be sent to study medicine abroad.  

Aparna had reached the village and was walking through it on her way to the forest. She took a  fistful of dirt from the ground and let it fall through her fingers. This was the soil of her origin. She 

would remember. She saw the forest up ahead and felt a nervousness in her. Was Amit real? It was  time for the litmus test. 

*** 

Amit felt something in the air. A familiar presence, and yet not entirely known. Who was this? He  started to walk to the edge of the forest. He saw a human figure approaching and stood behind a  tree, letting it approach.  

It was a young woman. She was clad in a green saree and he suddenly felt a shockwave of qi. The  woman stopped a little distance from him and called out in a slightly stuttering voice, “Amit?” 

Amit revealed himself. He had realized who this woman was. The next Durga was here. “I am Amit”, he said.  

The woman’s eyes widened. “So, you are real! My mother was not making you up. Do you know who  I am? My name is Aparna.” 

“Yes. I know who you are. Your mother was Durga. She was my friend.” 

*** 

Durga sat with Aparna and heard the whole story. She felt tears come to her eyes. Her friend was  still there and had blessed her daughter. Tomorrow, Aparna would leave, and perhaps come back  years later. Of course, there would be letters, but it wouldn’t be the same.  

She chanted a shlok and told her daughter to get some sleep. She went to her husband and told him  what had happened, what Aparna had told her. Her husband, never a believer in the paranormal,  merely chuckled and smoked his pipe. 

*** 

Somewhere in a forest on the outskirts of a village, a boy ran in. He was hungry. He found some fruit  on the ground and bit into it. The boy felt himself change.  

After aeons, Amit knew peace.

-Ashesh Mitra