Chanchala

The last train to Sheoraphulli had left, its trail of dark smoke still visible in the dim Southern skies. Father and sons settled on the platform for the night, hoping it wouldn’t rain. The brothers, their stomachs churning with hunger, slept dreamlessly. But their father couldn’t sleep. He thought of the goodbyes he should have said but didn’t want to. And he thought of last times—the last time he saw his Shyama Sundari, the scent of jasmine in her jet-black hair, and the look in her eyes … her wistful honey brown eyes, as if she knew that night was their last; and of course, the last time he rode Chanchala.

As a little boy, Bhabani Prasad had always dreamt of owning a horse—a big beautiful stallion like the one his father rode, strong and ripped, black and white—one that could carry him into unknown lands, win him a thousand wars. But when he was about eight or nine, his mother, the poor widow of a rich zamindar was thrown out of her husband’s home along with her three children.

His dreams dimmed as he left the bustling Dacca with his mother carrying his infant sisters and settled in a little village outside Singur in the old and forgotten house of his maternal grandfather who had left behind no other children. He joined his mother in reviving their barren lands into cultivable paddy fields and went to the village school. As a young man, he studied medicine in Calcutta before returning to his little village where he established his medical practice for over ten years during which he married off his sisters, wed Shyama Sundari and birthed six children, the seventh on the way.

Bhabani Daktar (‘daktar’ being the Bengali accent for ‘doctor’), as he was dearly known amongst the villagers, thought he had forgotten all about horses until one day when he met Miya Saheb, the horse-seller from the next village, whose brother had a displaced shoulder having fallen off one of the horses from their stable.

After fixing Abul Miya’s shoulder, during which he let out a scream like an angry bull, and putting his arm in a cloth sling, Bhabani Daktar asked Miya Saheb with a little hesitation in his tone, “How much for one of your new-born horses?” He knew that with the little he earned—eight or less annas on some days from the patients who could pay for his time and medicines, no money at all on other days from the patients who were so poor that they needed free medicines, and a small fortune from the paddy fields that went into feeding his large family—he couldn’t afford a grown horse. He had hoped that one day, when the horse would be big and strong, he could ride him to villages far and wide and earn a little more.

Miya Saheb stared at him with his big bulging eyes. “Daktar Babu!” he exclaimed in a high-pitched voice. “What on earth are you saying? You don’t need to buy a horse! I will give you a horse! Come to my stable, I will show you my potential stallions, and I will give you whichever one you like.”

But Bhabani Prasad Ray was a proud man.

One of the mares in Miya Saheb’s stables had, in the month before, given birth to a little girl with wobbly knees, one which he had trouble selling because everyone who came looking wanted boys that would grow into powerful stallions. Miya Saheb, afraid of the burden she would inevitably become, would have given her away for free to any poor soul who would have her, but he could not fathom burdening the beloved Bhabani Daktar with her. Reluctantly, and in exchange for a token price, Miya Saheb relieved himself of his burden, and Bhabani Prasad walked home with his little companion—Chanchala. Shyama Sundari didn’t fret over how they would feed another mouth, instead, as the little horse frolicked around the yard, she giggled as if she was a girl again.

Bhabani Prasad wanted to name Chanchala after her deep chestnut coat, but Shyama Sundari, through a mouthful of betel leaf as she caressed her little head had called her Chanchala instead, ‘chanchal’ being Bengali for ‘restless’ and ‘chanchala’ meaning ‘restless girl’. In three years, with a little love and care along with healthy meals—assorted mix of grass and shredded hay, saag, wet chickpeas, and lots of fresh water—Chanchala had grown into an enviable mare with a rich coat.

When Bhabani Daktar was to ride to faraway villages and even to the towns lining the Hooghly River to treat the British and the occasional French from Chandannagore, Chanchala clicked her horseshoes on the stable floor, shook her coal-black mane, and galloped like the north wind. These rides were little adventures across kutcha and pucca roads winding through coconut and betel nut palms, mango orchards, forests, and lush paddy fields. Sometimes, it even involved jumping over lonely railroads. On wet days and nights, Chanchala would walk or break into a daring little trot while he held a large umbrella over their heads. Bhabani Daktar would birth babies, set bones, save lives, and he would pine over the few that slipped through his fingers, but Chanchala would neigh those souls a sanguine farewell before whisking him back to his Shyama Sundari and their eleven offspring.

Meanwhile, a few local Englishmen from the Imperial Police had developed one rule for ‘doctory’—do not treat the native with Western medicine, for they deserve to die. It was no law, merely a rule to tickle the fancies of their brute souls.

“It is because they know they will have to leave soon,” Bhabani Prasad told his wife one evening, matter-of-factly, referring to the inevitable and fast-approaching purge of the British Raj, a news that had travelled through excited whispers all the way from Calcutta. However, unwilling to run headlong into trouble he steered clear of these men the best he could, veering Chanchala towards paths they did not know existed. And when he could not avoid them, he simply tipped his hat and said, “Gentlemen, you know I treat no native. I even dress like you, do I not?” The Englishmen would falter and let him trot off but kept their eyes peeled. The ‘good-for-nothing’ Indians were crying for their freedom louder than ever, and there were whispers of turning tides. Suddenly, lashing the occasional native seemed too little a contribution on their end to keep the British flag flying high on these humid and mosquito-laden hellish lands. They wanted more, they wanted vengeance, and this man that supposedly emulated them was bound to slip up, they firmly believed.

One humid night in the middle of July, Bhabani Prasad lay in bed with his wife, reminiscing another July night many years ago, the night they wed—he, twenty and furious that his mother had tricked him into it, and she, fourteen and clueless who she was to spend seven lifetimes with. With every laughter, Shyama Sundari grew restless, clinging to his words, his memories, suddenly wistful of the look in his dark brown eyes, imagining them being pulled into a great distance, away from her, from where he was inaudible, unreachable, untouchable. And then, without warning, from outside the house, came the unmistakable call: “Daktar Babu! O, Daktar Babu!” It was a messenger boy who had sprinted from two villages away.

Chanchala and Bhabani Daktar rode the moonlit road. They followed the boy and made it to a labouring woman in time and within a couple of hours, he proudly placed a crying infant in the arms of her grandmother, and buoyant, they set for home.

Somewhere by the quiet paddy fields lined with sleeping bushes, when a menagerie of July clouds caged the moon, Chanchala whinnied, crashing into the ground, throwing her rider a few feet away. Before Bhabani Prasad could discover that she had tripped on a rope held taut across the path by men hiding in the bushes, a large wooden baton to the head had rendered him unconscious. Four Imperial Police Constables tied the hands and feet of the limp man as their Sergeant watched, a wry smile on his pale lips. They dragged him, piled him onto one of their large stallions, before mounting them and breaking into a run. Chanchala, bleeding from her front knees and a nasty gnash across her left shoulder, hobbled back to her feet and with a limp, she chased after the stallions as hard as she could, but they were bigger and faster. Chanchala ran hard, refusing to give up.

Where the kutcha road ended and the pucca road began, a Ford car which had been standing quietly in the night roared to life, casting a faint yellow light into the dark ahead. The men loaded Bhabani Prasad into the car. A cloud of dust and smoke blinded Chanchala. Confused, she still kept running, but when she could see again, the car, the stallions, the men, and her master were all gone, and all that remained was the fading roar of the motor audible from somewhere invisible.

She stood alone in deafening silence for what felt like hours, helpless, teardrops trickling down her shiny coat, while the moon quietly slipped out of the clouds. At daybreak, the brim of his hat caught between her teeth, she trotted home and dropped it before Shyama Sundari. Chanchala hung her head as though in shame and left the family wailing in horror…

Thirteen months.

A week after the British sailed and flew back to their homeland, Bhabani Prasad returned from his anonymous stay at Kalapani—broken, bony, and gaunt—to find his eldest and his youngest digging a grave behind the house, a stiff Chanchala lying by their side, so thin that her ribs appeared wrapped in her scarred and ragged coat.

“Baba!” exclaimed Subol Chandra, a young man.

And Sushil Chandra, a boy, stared at his father’s unrecognizable face, speechless.

“We found Chanchala like this in the stable this morning,” curtly explained his eldest and went back to the shovelling.

“The house is deserted,” Bhabani Prasad croaked quietly.

Subol Chandra continued moving earth in silence.

At dusk, he and his brother having patted down the final soil with rusty shovels, washed their dirty hands and sweaty faces from the pond. “You should know,” said Subol Chandra whilst scrubbing the earth off his elbows, “Ma is gone.” He then stood up, wiped the water off his face with his palms, and faced his father. Eye to eye with his old man, he said icily and through gritted teeth, “I hope your bravery was worth it.” And he turned away, his face contorted in disgust. Only the boy stood before his father.

The boy hesitated. “Ma spoke highly of you.”

Bhabani Prasad neither spoke nor looked at him.

“Over the last two days we had to move nearer to Kolikata for work, come let’s go to our new home,” he continued and tugged delicately on his father’s wrist, afraid it would crack, for little did he know of the horrors his father’s bones had learnt to endure.

A stick in one hand, a depleting oil lantern in another, Subol Chandra led the way to the railway station. When his brother was out of earshot, the boy said, as low as he could, “We wanted to sell Chanchala. She could’ve fetched good money, but no one wanted to buy her, and instead, they took one look at her and joked that Chanchala was not a fitting name because she wasn’t chanchal at all, and was instead a dying horse because she wouldn’t eat...” But Bhabani Prasad tuned out his son; he used to be a doctor, he could spot the physical effects of poison from a great distance, and he had already seen the froth lining Chanchala’s stiff and parted lips…

As the night grew deeper, a fever blanketed Bhabani Prasad, heavying his eyelids, and delirium gripped him tight in its ugly fingers. He whispered gratitudes as he laid under the stars in whom he had learnt from his mother to have faith, while clumps of clouds looked on as curious bystanders until Chanchala neighed fiercely into the bronzing horizon and carried the ecstatic Bhabani Daktar to his lovely Shyama Sundari while the first and last of their blood continued to sleep, oblivious.

Author's Note: Kalapani, meaning "Blackwater", is the name by which the Cellular Jail, a British colonial prison, in Andaman is popularly known. Read more about it here.