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A modern epic
By Subhamay Ray | May 1, 2008
A re-reading of Satinath Bhaduri’s Dhonrai Charit Manas (1949-51) is akin to bringing the vision of a mercurial kaleidoscope before our eyes. The novel has a marvellous narrative structure. It has a swift narrative style so rich in events that the alluvial shoal of personal experiences never rise above the flood-streams. The magnificence of the narrative that consists of numerous small incidents and characters thus creates a canvas of such colourful and varied richness that the reader is unaware when along this fluid path a huge mass of quantity is transformed into quality and is elevated into the realm of sublimity.
Although the hero of the novel is a common man from an east Bihar village, the narrative style derives inspiration from Ram Charit Manas which in its turn was the retelling in Hindi by the saint-poet Tulsidas of the epic story of Rama, the mythical king of Ramayana. Yet in Bhaduri’s novel the protagonist Dhonrai belongs to a backward caste. He comes from a group of people whose occupation is the thatching of roofs and the digging of wells. When Dhonrai was a child his father died and when his mother wanted to remarry, she left him with the village holy man. When this man grows and leaves his village and goes into exile, Bhaduri sends off his hero into an epic journey, not the one taken by the mythical Rama for his kingdom, but a journey of discovery of his identity and that of the emerging nation.
Whenever Dhonrai’s life becomes somewhat tolerable, a blinding storm comes and everything is in a mess again. He has noticed this pattern repeatedly in his life. This is lord Ramchandra’s way of managing the kingdom of the mind.
Thus nothing in the outside world or in the realm of the mind is static. Everything is in a fluid state, ever-shifting, and this movement is the essence of the novel. A perfect image of this ever-occurring drift and change in the novel is the relocation of migrant labourers. In Bhaduri’s words:
In the autumnal months the income of the male members of the Tatma community becomes uncertain. They have very few huts to build and thatch in this season and work to clean the wells are yet to begin. That is why in this season, when rice is harvested, the Tatma females migrate to other places. They return around the end of the winter month of Poush. Most of them go to the east – to the Mayesi, Jamaur, Rutba police station areas. Income is more in those places for they are near the land of Bengal. But although income is more, the water isn’t healthy and they suffer from malaria. Moreover in those regions a large number of Muslims live. It is difficult to live in that ’land of jute and water’ keeping intact your own faith and customs. That is why on most of the years the Tatma females migrate to the west — to Kamaldaha, Barhari, Dhokradhara areas. There the water helps in digestion, they can digest half a kilo of sattu (dry, ground pulses) in half an hour. But how hungry do they feel and that’s a problem! But the residents there are good people. They don’t want to employ a woman labourer who eats less. They call her ’sick and fragile woman’ of the east. “She can’t digest, how will she work!” But labourers are less in demand in the west. So crossing the Ganges, Goshi and Koshi rivers, travelling over the Munger and Bhagalpur districts, thousands of female labourers come here during the harvesting season. The Tatma males can’t work as hard as the females….
So, in the harvesting season, except the females of the landlord Mahato’s family and Dukhia’s old mother, you won’t find a single woman in Tatma-tuli (Tatma’s village). Thus, in the months of Agrahayan and Poush all the household chores will be done by the Tatma men. The habits of drinking and hemp-smoking thrive at this time in the neighbourhoods. When the ‘rice-harvesters’ return after one and a half months, the wife of the Mahato (head of the village) will provide them with a list of the activities of men during their absence. The women are then the owners of freshly-brought rice; for the time being, they are the lords of the universe. In each household, quarrels and disputes become quite captivating. For these two months the head of the family bows down and flatters their women. That’s why the girls of Tatma-tuli say: ‘Sometimes the cart is drawn by the boat and then the boat is borne by the cart. If the men are kings for ten months, even the women are empresses for the remaining two.’
This modern epic, so intricately crafted by a master artist, is worthy of a revisit.
Topics: Translations from Bengali |