a portrait of sirsiri of gurdum

Far away and much further downriver, closer to the plains of Assam, the old establishment of Kerang had swept up from the check post in the foothills and climbed haphazardly across the hills to the settlement of Gurdum.

Gurdum was new, and oddly perpendicular in shape. It crept halfway up the mountain and spread out in all directions. Small plots were divided into sectors, and new buildings clung to the roadside and protruded over empty space hanging over clefts and ravines.

The town was permanently awash in debris. Plastic floated across the hills, clung to riverbanks, perched on trees. Broken glass and discarded packaging scarred the bald slopes closest to the town. Workmen sucked on wet bidis and chipped away at the mountainside. Their women stood by and looked askance with dark, savage eyes. A row of labour sheds hung on to the hillside and here they lived, loved, bathed naked on the roadside, fought bitterly, and sometimes murdered each other. With their labour the new settlements were straining to expand against the rocky earth and rearing upwards, challenging the broken land and the falling mountains. The last row of lights reached midway up the mountains. Beyond this it was black as night.

Sirsiri lived in the top row of houses in Gurdum, and her sweeping glance passed like a compass over all that lay below her.

There was the single steep, slithering road that linked all the sectors and markets of the place. There was the bank and post office intersection. A few identical grocery stores were scattered here and there, and the road itself was worth only a few kilometres and was bereft of traffic signals or street lamps.

One could pass the whole day staring out of the window. By five o’clock, sometimes, the clouds would lift and the steep fall of the mountain would be visible. At such times the small town would appear to sway and lift with the force of the wind that would begin to build up from the northern side. This was also the hour that Sirsiri would feel the pull of an addiction that seemed to have hit everyone in Gurdum. If the phone rang at this time it meant someone was calling to say, ‘Come over. Are you ready?’

Playing cards had become the grandest pastime and Sirsiri was the keenest gambler among a group of women who played as hard as the men. Some card groups played for days and nights, deserting their homes, offices and shops, even their small children. They were elated by their victories, bruised by serious losses, and they moved from house to house, the incorrigible regulars boasting about how much they had lost rather than about how much they had won. Serious drinking was expected on these occasions. Cars came and went. Some players fell asleep, then roused themselves to play again, refreshed by more drink and cigarettes. At these times it seemed the human brain functioned at an extraordinary plane. Men bragged that their minds were clear and razor sharp, despite the claustrophobic air and dim lights, the heavy haze of cigarette smoke and the lack of food, sleep and any sense of time. It was an addiction that heightened speech, laughter, and feelings of friendship. It veered minds towards nostalgia, philosophy and, more often than not, spiteful gossip and shocking disclosures.

‘Do you know,’ said Sirsiri, ‘I saw Kalum the other day, driving that new woman teacher.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I think there’s something going on.’

‘What!’

‘The way he was driving, saying something to her and the way she was smiling…I thought the car might run off the road!’

‘Hai, come on! He must have been just giving her a lift.’

‘Hah! I can tell about these things. I have a feeling.’ And Sirsiri declared her hand of winning cards with a flourish.

Sirsiri had a narrow, swarthy face and restless, glinting eyes. She moved like a fly alighting swiftly and then darting off. She always left a place with a high, shrill laugh. When she wanted to be friendly she moved close to a person and shaped her lips into a half smile that was meant to suggest eagerness and concern. ‘We never see you, where have you been hiding?’ she would say. Or, ‘Hai, you have been travelling? How lucky! I am the only one rotting here!’ Then she would laugh and dart a meaningful look at her husband Pesso, a quiet man originally from Duyang, who smiled stoically at all her jibes.

Some fifteen-twenty years ago Sirsiri had come to Duyang as a young bride from a distant village. People said she had sung songs on the radio and that it was at the new, tiny Radio Station in Pigo that the young Pesso riding in on a bicycle to deliver mail had first set eyes on her. Soon old man Pator was spreading the happy news that a great singer was going to become a daughter-in-law of the village, and Sirsiri had been welcomed with great honour. Her husband Pesso was a good man. He owned plenty of land near the river and he was also employed in the government office. This raised his status in the eyes of all the people of Duyang. However, this had not impressed Sirsiri. She had other dreams, and no matter where she was, she always wanted to be elsewhere. She was unhappy even after Pesso sold his land in the village and moved to Gurdum for good. After the birth of two daughters and a son the shy young girl turned into a brisk, talkative woman and as the years rolled on and the children grew up, the Pesso household began to show signs of greater and greater strain.

Pesso never understood why she was always in such a temper. In their house, voices rose and fell at odd angles. They flew across the rooms, bounced off the walls and crashed from the ceiling. There were shrill voices and chanting voices uncoiling in a litany of complaints. Sometimes, lost strains of hidden music broke through, but this was rare. Usually, voices whispered urgently, pattered, shrieked and raged and swiped at objects and beings. Then silence rose like a dense wave that twisted meaning and context.

Talk. Talk. Talk. Sirsiri talked everything to death. Words rolled out of her mouth like a long tongue of vengeance. Her talk antagonized well-wishers and drove away visitors. In the end, it even drove Pesso out of the house. ‘What did I say?’ the poor man had muttered as he slipped out one day and stayed away for two days. Soon, this became a pattern and sometimes he would be gone for several weeks. He hardly realized that the root of the endless words lashing at the world was his very silence, and his lack of words to say to the woman he had married.

Sirsiri’s complaints were loudest in the long season of rain. She cursed the sky and the mountains and her frustration grew as the rain poured down in sheets day after day.

When the rains stopped, the day sweated vapour and lethargy. Men ceased to think and sometimes, in a fit of madness, they rushed into the forest to hack away at the undergrowth and hunt with brutal instinct, killing three deer in one night. Others escaped to the big river, throwing their nets into the summer flood while their women waited, worn out at home. The men trampled the forest and shouted at the wind. They cut into the earth, removed the trees, ravaged the soft soil and wept in their dreams, not knowing for what or whom they mourned. The earth trembled under the burden of heat and rain. All the talk was about earthquakes.

‘If one ever came, the place would go,’ they said.

At night Sirsiri left her clothes just so, draped over a chair to be able to grab them and run out in an emergency. She dreamt of mudslides, and started at the sound of the late-night lorries. She made sure the candle was within reach, and aware that nothing bothered her husband, she worried about their investment in the shape of a concrete building now being raised in a steep place above the road. What if the road broke? What if the pillars collapsed? Everyone knew that workmen used sub-standard material all the time! She imagined the mountains folding and saw the tangled roots of trees upturned to the sky. She saw rivers of mud and the rising dust of fallen buildings and heard herself wailing in fear and frustration.

Oh! What a place! Cursed, ill-chosen, disturbed! A little clearing in the forest full of stones and rain! When everywhere else, cities were rising overnight like columns of light into the sky! Sirsiri was bitter and bored and nothing consoled her.