Press Trust of India

Friday, August 24, 2007 (Patna)

Twelve more flood-related deaths were reported in Bihar on Friday, taking the toll to 432... Sources in the state disaster management department said 12 people had drowned in Muzaffarpur and Katihar since Thursday... Officials said over 18.5 million people in 9,213 villages of 20 districts were hit badly by the floods.

Ramakant's Pillow (A Short Story)

When the floods came, Ramakant was sleeping; his cherished pillow half under his head, an arm around it, as if protecting it.

Ramakant was extremely fond of his pillow. It was filled with the soft cotton of the Semal tree which he collected painstakingly from the fields around his house. Every year, he collected more of the cotton and his wife stuffed it into the pillow. The pillow grew by a few inches annually and Ramakant admired it as if it was a growing child. It had been a faithful companion, resting his tired head for hundreds of miles on his yearly migration to the city.

After the crop was harvested, Ramakant would board the train from Dhenaji, in Bihar, to Delhi, where he ran a ‘relay’ paan shop in partnership with his village buddies. When one of them had to go home, another arrived from the village to look after the paan shop and its finances. The most important thing was to protect the turf and to ensure that the regular patrons didn’t switch loyalties. While some customers would strike up a conversation as they waited for their change, and inquire about the families left behind in Bihar, for most, stopping at the paan shop was part of the daily habit. A habit that could easily change to stopping at another paan shop, a few metres this way or that way, if one wasn’t careful.

It was during one such train journey that Ramakant had first realised that pillows stored imaginings. He was not sure how they did it, but he was convinced that pillows collected dreams. Whenever he used someone else’s pillow he would be hounded by nightmares that closely matched the situation of that person. Sometimes he would dream about their wives, often naked, calling out to him with their arms outstretched. He would wake up with a start, troubled and guilt-ridden, light a bidi, and stare at the darkness that the train was tearing through. He didn’t share the details of these dreams with any of his friends, but he stopped sharing pillows.

There was no scientific basis for his belief – in fact, there was no scientific bone in Ramakant who had lived most of his life in Dhenaji, and had gone to the village school for only two years before the teacher’s unbridled thrashings had driven out all his urge for learning. But that is not to say that Ramakant had no education. He had picked up the Hindi alphabet and could read the newspaper that was pasted on the walls of the village panchayat. In fact he was an avid reader of the newspaper. One might even say a discerning reader. He walked two kilometers every morning to the panchayat office, brushing his teeth with a neem twig. Sometimes he would smile at the childhood memory of school friends asking each other, “How many kilometers did you brush today?” At the panchayat office he would stand munching the neem twig, mumbling or clucking his tongue, as he read the newspaper that was pasted on the wall.

 The slow, deliberate readings left Ramakant exhausted, but full of information. By and by, he had developed a deep distrust of journalists, for what he read in the newspapers often did not match with what he saw around him. He felt that the sophisticated folk failed to make the important connections. Once he had told a college student on a train about his theory regarding the pillow, hoping for some explanation, but he was affronted when the student, after having encouraged him with the story, burst out laughing. “It’s their education”, he thought to himself, “It comes in the way of belief.” He was not the kind who would say things till he was sure of them, or write things (if he ever learnt to write) in the twisted way of journalists he read in the newspapers. He had solid experience to back his pillow theory. 

Now, as he was dreaming a pleasant dream, with his arm around his pillow, he was woken up by his wife who was shaking him vigorously. The floods were upon them and the water was rising fast. Ramakant sat up with a start and rushed out, wading in knee-deep water. It was about four in the morning and there was commotion all around. As he waded out of the hut, he saw Nihor’s wife pushing a huge cooking pot ahead of her. The pot contained her two-year old daughter. He broke into laughter at the sight and shouted, “Be careful what you cook today!” and rushed back inside to gather his belongings.

 The water was already chest-high and seemed to be rising at a surprising rate. Following the example of Nihor’s wife, Ramakant sat his two sons, aged four and two, and one-year old daughter into buckets and pans while his wife quickly gathered her jewelry that consisted of a silver cummerbund and two sets of silver bracelets. She hoped that Seth Naval Kishore, the local bayaa (pawn shop owner) had had time to pack the villager’s belongings. Ramakant looked around the house but he couldn’t think of what to save; everything was already underwater anyway. As far as he could tell, the whole hut would soon be under water. Then he remembered his pillow. He swam in to retrieve his pillow, emerging with it grasped in his teeth, using his hands to paddle. He could see his wife and children ahead of him, at the mercy of the strong current. “Train linewa ke saathe saathe chal jahiyein!” (Go along the railway tracks!), he shouted, the pillow still clutched firmly in his teeth, muffling his instructions.

The railway track ran along the eastern edge of the village and, being on a raised embankment, it offered a thin strip of safety during floods. The previous year, the entire village had occupied the railway line, cooking, crapping and cursing for one whole week on Indian Railway property, till the waters had receded. After the initial shock of the floods, people had found some release in black humour and had joked about which compartment they were in. Those who had managed to save a larger part of their belongings and slept on a mattress or sheet were deemed to be in air-conditioned compartments, while others who slept on the wooden sleepers of the tracks were obviously in the lowly general compartments. But they all shared a common toilet – the vast expanse of flood waters on both sides of the tracks. On the third day, Air Force helicopters, in a peaceful demonstration of precision bombing, had started dropping ‘food bombs’ on the railway tracks. These bombs were not meant to explode, but some did, spilling the grains as children cheered.

But that was last year. This morning’s flood was fierce and had taken everyone by surprise. As Ramakant swam after his wife and three children, the weight of the wet pillow tired his jaw muscles. He could see that they would never be able to make it to the railway line. His wife’s saree had ballooned in the water and she was spinning like a top. The children went bobbing and bawling ahead of her in the temporary safety of their buckets and pans. Ramakant tried swimming towards his family as best as he could, but the current was too strong. His arms were tiring quickly and he was being swept away at a diagonal from his family. He was about to give up when he recognised the panchayat building looming ahead. He was surprised to find that he was swimming at the level of its roof. In a last ditch effort he paddled furiously towards the building but only managed to close the gap a little. As he glided past the building, two men standing on the corner of the roof stretched out to their fullest. They clutched at Ramakant as he went by. They managed to grab his pillow and reeled him in like a fish with bait stuck in its mouth. Ramakant was hauled on to the roof, saved literally by the skin of his teeth, and it was a full five minutes before he could unlock his jaw and release the pillow.

There were about twenty people on the roof and he recognised Seth Naval Kishore. There was commotion all around and he started shouting the name of his eldest son, “Babu, Baboooo...” To his amazement, he got an answering call from his wife.

“Tu kehar chi?” (Where are you?), he shouted towards the voice.

“Aha! Hum Pushpa ke chchat par chi. Bachcha hamra sath mein…sab theek chi. Tu kehar chi? (Listen, I’m on Pushpa’s roof. The kids are with me…everything’s alright. Where are you?), shouted his wife.

“Hum panchayat ke chchat par chi. Hamre saath Seth Nabal Kishore chi!”(On the panchayat roof. Listen, Seth Naval Kishore is with me!).

“Wo hamaar jevar bachcha lela ki?” (Did he save my jewelry?), she responded almost as a reflex.

“Na, Par hum apnaa jaan bachcha leli!”  (No. But I managed to save my life!), interjected a peeved Seth Naval Kishore.

“Aha, Sirhanna bachcha leli ka?” (Did you manage to save the pillow?), asked Ramakant’s devoted wife, ignoring Seth Naval Kishore.

“Arre, sirhanna hamaar jaan bachcha leli!” (Well, the pillow saved my life instead!), shouted back Ramakant.

“Badaa khaas sirhanna chi,” (It’s a special pillow), called out Ramakant’s wife.

“Hau” (Yes), agreed Ramakant.

As dawn broke, people were ferried across roofs on makeshift boats and families were re-united. The water level was still high and there was no sign of the railway track, or most of the village, for that matter. The panchayat’s roof, being the largest and sturdiest, accommodated the most number of families. A quick assessment of damage was undertaken. Everyone recounted the bodies they had seen floating. Someone reported seeing two boys on a buffalo that had gone sweeping by, but they seemed to be from another village. At final count, it seemed that one-third of the population was missing.

Everyone agreed that this had been the worst flood in living memory. Ramakant was quite certain that the answer lay in the newspaper reports, if only one could join the dots. Since the beginning of the monsoon he had been reading that most of the reservoirs in the country had been close to full within the first month of the rains. He was quite sure that the dams had released water without informing anyone. Everyone laughed at this preposterous thought and told Ramakant to keep his theories to himself.

Just then, a surge of water swept over the roof. Miraculously, everyone managed to cling on to something or someone. Some were saved by the raised parapet of the roof. The only person missing was Ramakant who had been standing on the ledge to address everyone. Right below where he had stood lay his pillow, full of his drenched dreams.