Photo Credit – Pinterest ranjanapradhan709
Untimely rain clouds hung low on an overcast sky with a severe persistence. Like a locked grip of strong fingers on one’s throat, it sucked out air from the lungs and stilled the air with a deathly quiet. The trees stood still, the clouds looked on with an unsure haze, even the ants seemed to hurry to enter their mud holes with an uncanny haste. A sinister sense of evil hugged the earth with its macabre appeal. Fearful, yet strangely inviting.
The one sole survivor that early morning of Mahalaya, in the ultra narrow lane, one amongst countless others in Kumartuli, was Ashesh. His shop with makeshift overhead cover and clumsy corners stacked with unfinished small idols, tools, brushes and half-filled paint cans, seemed to breathe into that nondescript corner of Kumartulli, a whiff of oxygen. It was alive, while the entire neighbourhood crawled under sheets or behind closed doors to keep away the dark dank sinister weather and in remembrance of an event in the long past. Ashesh was the only living human daring the menacing sky. And his idol. For each time fear and immeasurable sadness gripped his heart, he remembered his Baba. He used to say to a ten year old “You are timeless. Your work is timeless. None can destroy you.” The smallest movement of his limbs in those wee hours seemed like the only proof of the living in a world as still as a rock.
This was a small akchalaar Thakur pottered for a Barir Pujo in Kolkata, a Pujo known for its heritage and rich history. The rich and the famous came from far and wide for Darshan. The idol was almost complete, with last minute brush strokes pending. And Chokkhu Daan would happen in a short while.
Ashesh bent down to give the brush some rest. And took out a clean piece of cloth from his worn pocket to wipe his heavy framed glass. Absentmindedly, he looked up at the dark grey still sky. And in that fraction of a second, the sky split up in a thread of light from east to west. Like a thin wire of binding the sky across the horizon, it lent an eerie glow in a lane veiled in a dark mood of dread. A tight knot gripped Ashesh’s heart; a sorrow, long buried in the sands of time, dared resurface. While Ashesh’s eyes looked on at the stillness of the sky and the lightning, the vast projector of life seemed to unfold a scene from fifty years ago.
He was in this same place with his Baba on the morning of Mahalaya. The sky was as menacing as today, almost like an evil curse waiting to be unleashed. The deathly quiet that early morning, the untimely rain clouds, lent this narrow lane of Kumartuli an unnatural quiet, just like today. Ashesh was transposed to that dawn…a girl, no more than five or six, running down a dark lane, the first of the strong winds blowing her hair. Durga was on her way to her father’s shed, eager to place her tiny fingers on the unfinished idol and feel the power. The bright saree stored neatly away in a box attracted her like an iron to a magnet. She would shut her eyes and gently move her lithe fingers across Ma Durga’s face and arms. In those moments, little Durga felt like a Goddess herself. Power infused in her little body, as if passing silently from the Goddess to her. And when her father performed the final Chokkhudaan, she would be transformed in a stupor.
Ashesh’s eyes wore a vacant look. Almost as if transposed in time, he could see Durga running towards the shed, eager to meet his father and brother, breathlessly waiting to witness the last strokes of the Goddess’s eyes being drawn. That dawn, while the tiny radio in the shed belted out Mahalaya in its love and fury, infused with a charm which gives goosebumps, Durga halted suddenly a few metres from the shed and froze. Ma Durga’s freshly drawn eyes stared at her, fixated on the innocent gaze of the child. The sky lit up in a lightning, and time froze. In those nano seconds, the clay idol, infused in fresh power and raw glory, perhaps found her match in a little girl. And the sky was the witness to this divine moment. The boy of ten watched this spectre with his father, transfixed and awed, unable to flex a limb or move an eyelid. As he watched his sister rooted to her spot, with her eyes lit up and a divine glow on her face, little Durga seemed like an extension of Ma Durga. The man and the boy helplessly watched as the strike of lightning cast its final act with a harshness, unmatched. Just like after five days of worship and glory, the divine power floats away in the timeless ocean, little Durga’s body, in a few seconds, turned to ashes. Before the her father and brother and the benevolent freshly awakened eyes of the Goddess.
Ashesh put on his glasses. The lightning had passed, making a crack in the dark sky. Heavens above peeped through. As Durga’s eyes laughed at her brother, as if saying ‘Abar dekha hobe, Dada’, Ashesh, the timeless worshipper, the artist and the once-brother to a little girl, took up his new brush, sought blessings from the Deity and began Chokkhudaan.
One Response
“Chokkhu Daan” masterfully envelops readers in the haunting ambiance of Kumartuli lane amidst a thunderstorm.
Through the protagonist Ashesh’s memories, the tragic tale of his loving sister’s sad demise during Chokkhudaan is skillfully woven into the narrative. . . leaving the reader with a sense of haunting beauty. . Choke jol eshee galo amar makes it compelled read!
A well-written and poignant story Chokkhudaan seamlessly intertwines with the narrative and very touching story
Hugs & love to you Gargee😘