The Beak of the Green Parrot, Submerged in the River

WE HAD BEEN sent to a remote schoolhouse on official duty. I arrived with my staff just before evening. We asked the watchman to open the rooms and began to assess each one to see which might fit our needs.

One room was already occupied by soldiers who had arrived before us. They were stationed here on duty, like us. The next day, this was to be a polling station and votes would be cast.

The school was a bit removed from the village. Its newly constructed building was hidden in deep green shadow among the dense trees, with carefully arranged flower beds and sharply cut flat grass in front. Its walls, doors, and windows were painted with a new layer of crimson paint. A strange mist emerged out of the deep shadows, covering the whole place, as if somebody had placed crimson toffee on deep green paper, and it had begun to melt.

That night the school’s watchman told us that the white men of the World Bank had come here once. The place seemed so beautiful to them that they recently arranged for the reconstruction of the school. The old school building was there, alongside the new one, but it had become dilapidated. The doors and windows had disappeared, and there were so many holes in the roof that it too was almost gone. The new school had three big rooms and one small room for a headmaster. The watchman didn’t have the key for the headmaster’s room. Of the three remaining rooms, one was already occupied by the soldiers. So we had to make do with the remaining two. We had to be on duty at seven the next morning, after spending the night there.

I met him in front of the military men’s room. His other colleagues were out and about, while he stood at full alert at the door in his uniform. I shook hands with him with a laugh and peeped inside the room. “Have a look,” he said. I was interested in his company. Why not? We were there together through tomorrow; anyway, shared work creates a kind of relationship among people. Maybe things seemed like that to him, too, because he returned the warmth of my greeting. There were four beds in the room. The bed sheets were neatly arranged over them, and new blankets had been folded and left on the ends. The careful habits of soldiers, driven deep into their very being.

There was a profound cold in that place, born of the deepening winter months of Poh and early Magh, the thick trees, and the lack of people. The cold passed directly through from one’s feet. We sat on the beds in front of each other. I took out a packet of cigarettes and offered him one. He took the cigarette, looked down, and smiled like a child. Then he suddenly gazed at the door and a shadow of fear crossed his face. He began to light the cigarette, but then looked at me and a wave of shame seemed to pass through him. He stood up all at once and said: “I’m on duty, I’ll smoke it later. I am on guard now. We can’t leave the arms unguarded.” I stood up with him.

And so it was that I met the first of the four military men who had come on duty with us.

My offer of a cigarette, and his not smoking it but keeping it for later, created a secret bond between us that continued till the end. Later he told me that while on duty, soldiers are not allowed to accept the offer of cigarettes from non-military men or from strangers.

The other three military men returned soon. One of them was the Havaldar, a non-commissioned junior officer, and he was in charge. The Havaldar too was a good man. When he needed to, he acted the proper officer, but he was also fond of gossip. In addition to the four soldiers, there were four of us; more were supposed to arrive early in the morning. We arranged chairs and tables according to our requirements and sent a message to the village headman, or Lambardar, to arrange for food and provisions for our stay that night. We arranged our papers and other work until late. Our job was to begin early in the morning, and we all were tense. During elections and the casting of ballots, who knows how many envelopes would have to be filled. After the voting finished, there would be no time to do anything, so all the paperwork had to be prepared in advance.

When I finished my work after midnight and was finally going to sleep, I heard a sweet voice singing from soldier’s room:

The water of Ghallapur bungalow, plunging from the waterfall,

I swear, you have never left my mind

The beak of the green parrot sank deep into the river

The one who guarantees happiness has left in a time of grief.

Perhaps someone had been singing earlier, but I hadn’t noticed it because I was so absorbed in my work. Or maybe the singing seemed suddenly louder in the deep stillness of the night. Sometimes the sound was loud and melodic, and at other times it slowed into a dirge, as if somebody were wailing in grief. I stood up. Drawing a shawl around me, I came out and stood on the verandah. Because of the tension of the coming day’s work, sleep wasn’t reaching out to me. The fog spread everywhere, and the trees dripped with moisture. There was one bulb shining on the verandah and it seemed to tremble with the cold. I suddenly remembered a saying I had heard somewhere, that military men weep at night. Perhaps I had heard it from mother in my childhood. The voice in song returned. The soldiers’ room was right in front of me, and the song was clear:

In the smoke of the cars,

My fate has been burned;

you can pick through my remains, my love.

Then, after some time, the voice slowed and turned again into a kind of wail.

We were completely overwhelmed with our work the next day. There wasn’t a minute to exchange a word with anyone. There was so much fog in the morning that the staff who came from outside arrived late, and it took some time to set things right and get everyone in order. By seven o’clock, the officers began to make themselves felt. The casting of votes didn’t start on time, so we and the soldiers were reprimanded by the higher-ups: the soldiers were reprimanded by the military officers and we by our own. It was a separate matter entirely that not a single voter had turned out to cast a vote in the cold. I was in charge of the civilian staff, so I was lost in my work the whole day. Once in a while I came across him, but I rushed past. He complained: “You can’t even look in my direction today. Very busy.”

We were finally free around seven or eight o’clock that night. The official truck was supposed to pick us up, but it didn’t arrive on time. We were exhausted from waiting. Winter was at its peak, and the cold climbed up slowly from below. There was so much fog that water dripped from the trees as if it were raining.

In the end we entreated the watchman to bring something from the village to burn. After casting the vote, the whole village had disappeared as if they had lost all interest in us. The Havaldar went with the watchman and brought back a sack of dried cow dung cakes and everything we needed to make tea. The watchman also gathered wood from here and there, and soon we were sitting in the courtyard before a roaring fire. All of us were dead tired. God bless that watchman who kept serving us tea. It helped us to bear cold. The Havaldar started telling tales of his service in military. The remaining three military men would look carefully at the Havaldar before speaking, as if they were shy of speaking before him. Perhaps they were forbidden to mix too much with civilians.

Otherwise they were quite open with each other and would tease each other by calling each other “sentry.” It seemed to be some kind of joke among them. One of us would doze off from time to time from exhaustion and then, when the circle of tea would pass, would try to force our eyes open and listen to the conversation. The others would laugh out loud at watching the distorted faces struggling to listen.

I asked, “Who was singing that song last night? I want to hear it again.” All three military men looked at the Havaldar and smiled, as if sharing a secret. Perhaps the Havaldar was fond of chatting, because he said: “Tell your story, Sahib; we can hear the song later on.”

One of the soldiers came forward quickly and started to speak: “Okay, I’ll tell you my story.” Before beginning, he looked at the Havaldar; he too was now ready to listen. He loosened his uniform so that the time could pass in comfort. We had all done our duty. We were exhausted, but we were also relaxed.

The soldier’s eyes shone in the flames of fire, and he began to move his dry, cracked lips.

“A new sentry entered our unit. He cried all night long. Maybe he always did that, we thought. Who knows? No one could figure out what the crying was all about. His officers were shocked. There was a lot of guesswork, trying to come up with an answer. But how? No one had a clue. If the officers asked him to take a leave from the army, he would say no. When he was asked if he needed money, he would refuse that too. If he was asked whether he was forced by his father to join the army, he would not respond. Then the officers gave me the task of figuring it out. We lived in the same barracks.

“So it was my job to stick to him and conduct my investigation. The officers said that if I could figure out the cause of his sickness, I would be rewarded with one month’s salary and one month’s leave. You know, we army men long for home all the time. It is a tough job, being far away. I was supposed to find the truth within ten days and make my report to the officers.

“Almost nine days passed, and I still had no clue, not even an inkling. I stayed awake all night, spying on him. Wherever he would go, I would tag along. I tried to trap him into talking about it, but he wouldn’t give up anything.

“It was on the last day that I received a letter addressed to me. I opened it and read it, but I couldn’t make head or tail of it. It was a strange letter and it wasn’t signed. It was written in red ink. I read it again and again. Finally, I showed it to the new sentry. He had been lying with his face down into the bed. When he saw the letter, he began to kiss it and then suddenly to weep. He said: ‘This is my mine! This is my letter! I had given your name because I couldn’t receive a letter in my own name.’ I begged him again to tell me what it was all about and finally he unfolded the whole thing before me.

“‘I love a girl and she also loves me,’ he told me. ‘This is her letter. She used to write to me in my other unit through another person, but I couldn’t get her letters here until now. We both want to get married but our parents won’t allow it. Then my father had me enlisted in the army. Now she writes to me in blood, and I do the same.’

“My job was done. I had figured it out. The next day, I told everything to the officers. They asked me what I could do. They said instead of going home, I should do something for my friend—they would give me the leave they had promised me. They also gave me the money. So I decided to go home later, and to do something for the sentry first. I went to his house and told his parents: ‘Your boy has fallen in love with a girl.’

“The parents said, ‘We know.’

“I said, ‘Then why don’t you let them get married?’

“They said that they had no objection, but the girl’s parents have to agree too, don’t they? The next day I went to the house of the girl’s parents and told them my whole story and asked for the hand of the girl for my friend. In the end they agreed. And so he got married.

“After getting married, my friend asked me if there was any thing he could do for me. ‘Do you have any problems?’ he asked. I said that actually, I had the same problem he had. I love a girl and her parents won’t allow us to marry. So he went to meet girl’s parents, just as I had done. But this girl’s mother would not relent. And that’s how it remains. Now we have both decided that we won’t get married at all. So far she has not married, and neither have I.”

His story was finished. While telling the story, he had not looked at the Havaldar even once. The Havaldar sat to one side, his face bent down. It seemed as if the other soldiers already knew the story, so it was only new for us. The story had silenced everyone as they sat listening. When it ended, a smile spread across some faces. Some who had been sitting uncomfortably tried to make some kind of joke out of it. The soldier got annoyed.

“How could any of you understand, if you haven’t truly loved another? There is no blood left in the cheeks of someone who is truly in love. He can’t feel hunger or thirst. Can’t eat, can’t sleep.” He spoke, looking me directly in the eye. I listened in silence.

One of the army men among them laughed and said: “Just look at his body. The name of that girl is written all over it.” One of the other soldiers forcibly uncovered his back; there was her name. Now everything was about him and his love story.

After a long pause, someone said: “Do you still hope to be together?”

He said: “We are. Separation is a kind of unification; to remember someone is to be with them.”

“If I were to abandon her memory, only then would I be apart from her. Recently we both were invited to a relative’s house. I gestured to her to come to one side, and so we met, and I stood with my arms around her for a few moments. Her mother saw us from a distance. Our parents got together and said: ‘Look at these two. How long has this game been going on?’ Now it has become impossible for us to meet.”

Someone asked: “What if the girl marries someone else?”

He said: “It is not possible. We will be together, if not now, then in in the future. We will live together or die alone. If we don’t meet in this world, we will meet in next.”

The truck that had been sent to fetch us finally came. Everyone ran towards it, forgetting the story. There was a huge rush. It must have been well past midnight. The truck was loaded with both soldiers and civilians.

The darkness was complete. People collided into each other. The back of the truck was filled with the election equipment and accessories. All the people crushed together in front of them. After a time, most people started to doze off. Whenever someone’s head would droop in sleep and hit another person’s face, or knock against the seat where another had found a perch, the other would wake up stuttering.

It reminded me of the black and white films of World War II soldiers returning tired and exhausted from the battlefront. The truck continued for such a long time in the black night. At last it stopped suddenly and there was a big commotion. This was where all the army men were supposed to get off. The journey for the rest of us had not yet ended.

Military trucks and jeeps stood outside in rows and the officers were giving instructions to the young men. The intense darkness surrounded us outside as well as inside. The truck was quite old, and its drivers were annoyed because they had been forced into doing this work for the government. The military men woke up and rushed to pass their bedding and other things quickly out of the truck. In the middle of the rush, the Havaldar appeared before me from somewhere to shake my hand and say good-bye.

I was sitting near the window, peering into the darkness. I was looking for him, the soldier who had told the story. I don’t know why. At last, the soldiers had unloaded all their luggage and the driver moved the truck forward slowly. One army man had lost his helmet and because of this he was climbing up and down from the truck repeatedly. If he couldn’t find his helmet, he would be punished. The poor man was exasperated, climbing on and off, again and again, his friends taunting him. At last he found his helmet—who knows how?—and the truck could move on.

Finally, I saw him. He was standing just a few steps from my window, looking towards me for who knows how long. His eyes were shining in the dark and there was a childlike smile on his face. Our eyes met and, for a moment, were one.