McCluskieganj

by Vikas Kumar Jha

  32

  At a Dead End

  Death claims all. It’s man’s ultimate fate, and yet it signifies a sense of freedom. Mankind has always faced and will always face it. Ranchi Munda had established this settlement a few hundred years ago and the town came to bear his name in the years to come. For the Bihar government, it signified the seat of southern power, but no one seemed to be aware of the undercurrent of tumult.

  Neelmani had rightly predicted that the procession from

  McCluskieganj would reach its destination by sunrise. All those present were completely exhausted and Mr Mendez said, ‘No one will listen to us without the backing of political power and pressure. We must get in touch with Major William in Delhi and Mr Brown in Patna.’ Mr Miller agreed wholeheartedly, ‘Robin’s arrest has been plotted by the local politicians and the criminal nexus of contractors.’ Liza McGowan once again broke down and said, ‘I don’t think I’ll see him again.’ Mrs Tomalin urged her to have faith in God. Neelmani, with unshakeable faith said, ‘Telephone whomsoever you wish, but get Robin released. We will not return without him.’ Then many of them, headed by Mr Mendez, went off to the telephone booth, but as luck would have it, Major William was out of town. As for Mr Brown, Mr Mendez remembered that he did not keep a phone. He also tried to call Mr Rozario, but he too was out. The failure of the mission was apparent on their faces and the crowd knew it the moment they saw them.

  But Neelmani had risen to the occasion, inspiring all around. ‘So what, what difference does that make? We have come here to fight our cause on our own strength.’ Her confidence and zeal gave even Dennis a lease of hope. He patted her and said, ‘Like father, like daughter.’

  The processionists reached the office of the police chief although he himself was not there. They started sloganeering. Even the old ladies, Mrs Thripthorpe, Mrs Tomalin and Miss Bonner, sitting on the floor of the drive, were lending their voice, weak and shaky as they were. ‘Down with police brutality. Condemn them, condemn them … They are all partners in crime. Shame, shame, shame, shame…’ Now it was the turn of the Adivasi youth. ‘Robin Babu must be released or death for the Ranchi police.’

  At 12 noon, the police chief arrived. He got down from the jeep at the gate itself. The crowd surrounded him. The old ladies, not to be left behind, joined the fray. Judy tried her level best to prevent her mother, Mrs Thripthorpe, from going, but she refused to budge from the crowd. ‘We have been subjected to unnecessary harassment; never have the residents of

  McCluskieganj faced police high-handedness.’ Then Mr Mendez said, ‘SP Sahib, these are Robin McGowan’s parents. They arrived only yesterday from Hong Kong to participate in the foundation day celebration of McCluskieganj. Robin had gone to the airport to receive his parents who were visiting after many years—and this is the welcome they get!’ The SP answered, ‘My sympathies are entirely with you, but Robin McGowan has been arrested for a very serious offence, namely, supporting terrorists and militants. He is a foreign agent who is supplying arms and money to militants. The Jharkhand Freedom Front MP and its secretary Duti Bhagat have said so in writing.’ The SP was excited yet restrained. ‘So will you not release Robin Babu?’ Neelmani screamed. The superintendent of police asked, ‘Who are you?’ ‘Neelmani, Neelmani Oraon is my name. Anything else you want to know?’ Neelmani’s anger had reached a flashpoint. ‘O, so you are Neelmani? I have heard a lot about you lately. I have heard that you are leading a little revolution in your village under this Robin’s guidance. I’ve made a mistake, you too should have been arrested with Robin,’ said the SP in vicious rage.

  Neelmani moved forward, as did the Adivasi youth. ‘Have me arrested then, what more can you do?’ shouted Neelmani. The sloganeering resumed. ‘Down with police atrocities, death to the Ranchi police.’ The SP quickly walked away to his office, but signalled to the policemen around to lathi-charge the processionists. Within minutes, the place turned into a battlefield. They beat the innocent people mercilessly. Not even Mrs Thripthorpe, Mrs Tomalin and Miss Bonner were spared. The former fell in a heap. Neelmani received injuries on her head. To save Mr Miller from blows, Danny and Jennifer came forward and took the blows on themselves. Mrs Thripthorpe remained on the ground, unconscious. As blow after blow fell on Neelmani, Kitty ran and fell on her covering her, taking the blows herself. It was only on the order of the SP that the lathi charge stopped.

  The whole crowd was in a state of shock. They had been badly beaten. Then coming to his senses, Dennis took Mrs Thripthorpe, Judy, Kitty and Neelmani to the same nursing home where he had admitted Saamu Munda the day before. He instructed the rest of the crowd to hire some five or six taxis and return to McCluskieganj. He asked Liza, ‘Do you have money on you? See that you all eat something on the way. Take special care of Mrs Tomalin and Miss Bonner.’

  The doctor at the nursing home shook his head negatively when he saw Mrs Thripthorpe. ‘Brain haemorrhage. She has very little chances of surviving.’ Judy broke into tears. She, Kitty and Neelmani received first aid. Then Neelmani went to Saamu Chacha and told him everything. He had stabilized somewhat by then and said, ‘We will have to fight this out on legal grounds.’

  Judy had such a frightened look on her face, so woebegone, like a caged animal that is defenceless. Danny tried to console her as did Neelmani. Mrs Thripthorpe had passed away. The nursing home did not want to keep her any more, so the group put the corpse on a stretcher in an ambulance, and together they all left for McCluskieganj. Near Dr Goswami’s house, Dennis saw Mr Mendez making his way along the road in the darkness. He was carrying a torch. Seeing him, Dennis had the ambulance stopped. Mr Mendez was taken aback for a moment. Then he asked about Mrs Thripthorpe, ‘Is she behind?’ Little did he realize that the ambulance was actually carrying her body. Mr Mendez went to the rear of the ambulance and, flashing his torch, he saw what he saw. Then he broke down inconsolably. ‘What new curse has befallen us, oh God,’ he said. Then Mr Mendez related the tragedy that had struck Miss Bonner. She had had a severe paralytic stroke, her whole right side was paralysed. Being heavily built had added to her problem. Her stomach too had swollen up as she was not being able to pass urine. By then they had reached Mrs Thripthorpe’s house. Captain Mendonca was at the gate. Dennis said, ‘Take care of Judy.’ Judy’s sons were aghast at what they heard. They too wept bitterly. Dennis asked Kitty to stay back. He said, ‘Tomorrow morning we’ll get the coffin ready. The body will be all right since the weather is cool tonight.’ Then he asked Neelmani if he should walk her to her house. She refused to leave his side, ‘I will stay with you, Dennis Chacha.’ After this, together they went off to Miss Bonner’s house. She was lying in bed surrounded by the entire community—Ilona, Kathleen Harrigan, Danny and Jennifer, Amit Ghosh, Mr Gibson, Noel Gordon and his son Bobby—all of them were there. Dr Goswami was trying to insert a catheter; her stomach was bloated.

  Finally that night, under the supervision and care of Dr Goswami, Miss Bonner finally passed urine. Then Dennis suggested to all those present, ‘Why don’t we take Miss Bonner to Ranchi?’ Dr Goswami fully concurred. ‘If she stays in the nursing home for a few weeks, she will definitely improve.’ ‘Moreover we have the advantage of an ambulance here,’ Dennis said, asking Neelmani to call the ambulance to the door. They got ready to take Miss Bonner to the ambulance. Liza and Kathleen Harrigan quickly changed Miss Bonner’s soiled clothes. Then they heaved her on to the stretcher and subsequently into the ambulance.

  Dennis said, ‘Liza, Danny and Neelmani will go with me to Ranchi and remain there with Miss Bonner. I’ll come back as soon as possible. Please get the coffin ready for Thripthorpe Aunty, but don’t start the funeral rituals until I return. Yes, please also go and look up Judy, Kitty is there with her.’ The ambulance sped away.

  33

  Pall of Gloom

  A week had passed since Gibrail was released from Tihar. He looked frail, but his family was delirious with joy. Majeed set his heart on getting him married the moment he found a
suitable girl, because life must go on.

  Majeed took his son to visit Robin in Ranchi’s Birsa Munda Jail and Robin, with his inimitable humour, said, ‘See, when you were in jail, I came to visit you; now I am in jail, and you have come to look me up. Nothing is guaranteed in life because vicissitude is its essence.’ ‘You’ll be out this month itself, I have no doubt,’ said Majeed.

  It was the beginning of winter and the weather with its touch of chill was wonderful. The fields were swathed in dew. The ripened paddy crop looks gorgeous in the morning light as did the many ponds and forests of trees around. Though it had many impressive buildings and markets, Ranchi still remained a glorified village.

  Robin was at leisure to think and ponder and weigh the many moments of life that he had treasured after coming to

  McCluskieganj. He likened his stay in the jail to the feelings he had had as a naughty boy in school. He remembered how sometimes when he and other children did not complete their homework, the teacher would punish them by holding them back after school hours. As most of the boys went home, they felt like rats in a trap. Then Liza would come to his rescue. Robin would smile to himself at that memory. His parents had visited him once in the jail. Liza had cried and cried and Dennis had said, ‘There’ll be no Christmas celebration in the village this year.’

  During those six weeks, Robin interacted with other prisoners. At first, they were reticent to become friends with him because of his anti-national antecedents. But gradually they realized that he had been falsely implicated. His good nature won their sympathies. Robin came to understand the absurdity of the Indian penal system. Most of these incarcerated people were hardly criminals; they were more like petty thieves, who were languishing for years and years, emaciated and sick with no relief. There was one who had stolen a bicycle, and another who had stolen a buffalo. Neither had the means to pay for their bail. And so they remained prisoners for life. What kind of justice was that? Robin often wondered. Atoning forever for a small failing. And he, what was he atoning for?

  Often at night, through the chilly quietness, Robin could hear Dhaani Munda, the buffalo thief, sing, ‘What sense does our birth make, even God has forgotten us, that is why I pray that he doesn’t send me back to this wretched earth.’

  Then he would keep falling in and out of sleep, dreaming and waking in fits and starts. He missed Neelmani all the time. ‘We prisoners are the wretched rags that time helps to stitch and keep together, time is the master mender who stitches each day to the other.’ Over and over again, the investigating officers would question Robin on his links with the underworld, the Jharkhand separatists and the MCC. Robin would remain mute as always. His silence was worse than the lock that hung on the door of his cell. ‘If you tell us frankly about your links, you may even be set free but otherwise…’ the officers would say. But Robin, all he would give as answer was, ‘One day you’ll know the truth about me. I’ll be happy, SP Sahib, if I, an ordinary boy, could die in Ward No.5, where the great Birsa Munda breathed his last. To save his people, he gave his life. The greatest achievement of a human being lies in giving, but today’s leaders only believe in taking.’ Robin’s voice trailed and the inquiry team left him talking to himself. In the last few months, the entire country seemed opposed to the members of the Jharkhand Freedom Front or Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, whom they regarded as the damad, that is son-in-law, of the government mainly because of the special status they enjoyed. The opposition had led a no-confidence motion against the incumbent government for the third time in parliament, but the prime minister was confident of getting the vote of confidence in favour of the bill for the new state. The opposition knew that it was the members of the Front, who would support the resolution and get it passed.

  Meanwhile, the happenings in McCluskieganj after Robin’s arrest began to unfold as Liza related to him, everything from the time he got arrested to how the police had lathi-charged the processionists and killed Mrs Thripthorpe, how Neelmani and Jennifer had received blows, how poor Miss Bonner had suffered a massive stroke from which she would probably never recover.

  Robin thought that his suffering in jail was nothing in comparison to what so many innocent, almost saintly people had suffered for him. He knew that his father had not left a single stone unturned for his release. Dennis, along with Major William, Mr Brown and Mr Rozario had established contact with both Patna and Delhi. Major William had, in fact, had quite a verbal spat in the lobby of the parliament with one of the MPs of the Jharkand Freedom Front. This latter had referred to Robin as a foreign agent. Major William had shouted, ‘It’s your fellows who are selling the country, you bloody brokers!’

  Then Dennis and Liza said something that made Robin really happy. ‘We plan to settle here, son. Liza will go back to Hong Kong for a short while to shut home and close down our business. Then she’ll come back and we’ll stay in McCluskieganj for all times.’

  This was as far as Robin was concerned. But the suffering of the Adivasis continued. Early one morning, the van from the Kanke Mental Asylum reached McCluskieganj. Leaving the van at the station, Pranav Chacha went searching for Neelmani and her mother to give the horrible news of Bahadur Oraon’s death. The two women were beside themselves with grief, they wailed and wailed. ‘Bahadur Oraon,’ said Pranav Chacha, ‘died of a massive heart attack. He couldn’t take the news of Robin’s arrest. It had shattered him completely.’

  By afternoon the Adivasis from all the nearby villages had arrived. Even Saamu Munda, weak and debilitated as he was, came. If Duti Bhagat had been in front of them at the time, they would have riddled him with arrows. Khushia Pahan commented on how he now stayed put in Ranchi out of fear.

  Neelmani, along with Dennis and Mr Mendez, accompanied Pranav Chacha back to Ranchi in the van. According to Oraon tradition, the body had to be cremated at Masna before sunset. All along, Dennis wept thinking of the past, thinking of what bad luck it was for him to lose both a mother-like

  Mrs Thripthorpe and a friend in Bahadur Oraon. The days of peace were over for McCluskieganj. Hearing of Bahadur Oraon’s death, the MCC zonal committee of Chhota Nagpur had called for an emergency meeting in which it was announced that Duti Bhagat would be hanged by a ‘people’s court’. It had further warned that should the MLAs and MPs of the region wish to visit their constituencies, they could do so only after taking permission from Commander Hembrom.

  34

  A Broad Smile

  The church of McCluskieganj, uncared for so long, had suddenly brightened and become cheerful once again. The reason: Captain Mendonca was finally getting married to Judy.

  Although McCluskieganj was very happy, there was no dearth of sarcasm—‘a seventy-year-old man is marrying a fifty-year-old woman’. Not to be left behind, Khusia Pahan remarked, ‘Whoever goes and gets married in Poos, the beginning of winter! Winter weddings always turn wintry.’

  But the old groom was beaming regardless, as much as any young groom would. Captain Clement Mendonca’s son had chided his father over his ridiculous venture and so had Judy’s elder son, Ashley.

  Despite a few discordant notes, still there was festivity all around. Judy smiled at herself in the mirror as if to say, ‘What an old bride’. And when Jennifer offered to dress her for the wedding, she asked, ‘How will you adorn an old woman like me?’ To this, Jennifer said, ‘But today you’re a new woman!’

  As Judy lay in bed on the morning of her wedding, thinking of her past, her first marriage, her mother and so on, there was a knock on the door. Opening it she found Captain Mendonca, who clasped her cheeks with his cold hands and said, ‘I thought I should start this memorable day by wishing you good morning!’ Judy who had never heard him hum before was surprised to hear him sing, ‘I love you for a thousand things, no matter what the world may say about me … But most of all I love you because you are you.’ Judy was speechless. She liked him for his sunburnt looks, his strength and manliness and, above all, his eyes that had the depth of a calm, blue sea. He had spent for
ty years on ship and he was not an Anglo-Indian. He was a native of Goa and, though he had opportunities aplenty to settle abroad, he did not, because he knew that in a foreign land, he would never be fully acceptable. ‘Your country and land are a different proposition,’ he used to say. His father and grandfather had a large cashew plantation in Goa. His father wanted him to become a doctor, but Clement was otherwise inclined. He found the sea fascinating. When his father saw that he was adamant, he just turned him out of the house. They were obviously a very hot-headed family, because Clement was happy to leave and join the navy.

  While on ship, he had docked in Calcutta, and there he met a lovely girl called Teresa, whom he married. He asked Teresa to write about their marriage to his father, but even that did not cut ice. Later when they had their son Glad, Teresa wrote to her father-in-law again, and this time the old man visited them in Calcutta and brought with him his family heirloom of gold for his grandson. So a rapprochement of some sort was made. Though estranged from his son, he was very happy to meet his grandson. Later ironically, Glad too became a captain in the navy.

  In the years that followed, Captain Mendonca, along with his wife and son, once visited Gumla in the Chhota Nagpur area. He liked it very much, and some friends advised him to look up McCluskieganj as well. He did so and fell in love with the place, its arboreal ambience, its caring people. Glad went crazy with a catapult made from the slim, forked branch of a guava tree, which incidentally is considered best for making catapults. This had been made by a local tribal. These catapults could be so deadly as to bring down birds and small animals with ease. Even air guns would pale before them. The Mendonca family had stayed with one Mrs Duggen as paying guests during this trip. The latter had noticed that the captain and his family had rather liked her cottage and McCluskieganj. When they were leaving, she took the captain’s Calcutta address and said, ‘How will it be if in the coming years, this house became yours?’ Captain Mendonca had laughed it off.