The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

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November Is the Month of Migrations Come November, Santhal men, women and children walk down from their villages in the hills and the far-flung corners of the Santhal Pargana to the railway station in the district headquarters. These Santhals—villages, entire clans—make up long, snaking processions as they abandon their lands and farms to take the train to Namal, the Bardhaman district of West Bengal and the paddy fields there. In the month that these Santhal families will spend in Bardhaman, they will plant rice and other crops in farms owned by the zamindars of Bardhaman.

Twenty-year-old Talamai Kisku is among the fortythree people making this journey tonight. She, along with her parents and one of her two sisters. Most of her village— including her three brothers and one sister-in-law—has already left for Bardhaman.

Talamai is the second daughter in a family of three girls and three boys. Her name reflects a certain lack of imagination. She is the middle daughter—Tala: middle; mai: girl. Talamai’s family is Christian. One would have 39

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The Adivasi Will Not Dance

expected Talamai’s parents to be learned enough to think of a nice, creative name for their daughter. Yet, despite the promises of education the missionaries made, Talamai’s parents never got to see the inside of a school and neither did she. They either gathered coal or worked in the farms of Bardhaman.

Talamai walks away from her group. She has been attracted by a man. He is young, fair, a Diku, and a jawan of the Railway Protection Force. A bread pakora in hand, he has signalled her to approach, and has disappeared round a corner.

Talamai debates if she should follow, and decides to.

He is offering food, after all, and she is hungry. It is 10:30 p.m. and they still have about two hours before their train arrives.

‘Are you hungry?’ the jawan calls out as Talamai rounds the corner. ‘You need food?’ He is standing in front of the policemen’s quarters.

‘Yes,’ Talamai answers.

‘You need money?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Will you do some work for me?’

Talamai knows what work he is talking about. She has done it quite a few times by the Koyla Road, where many Santhal women and girls steal coal from trucks. She knows many girls who do that work with truck drivers and other men. And she knows that on their way to Namal, Santhal women do this work for food and money at the railway station, too.

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‘Yes,’ Talamai says, and follows the policeman into the dark, into a paved space behind the policemen’s rooms.

The work does not take much time. The policeman is prepared. He spreads a gamcha on the ground and takes off his trousers. He also has time to slip on a condom.

Talamai, too, does not have to undress fully. She just takes off her lungi and saya—she knows the routine. The policeman grabs her buttocks, raises them and, adjusting Talamai, penetrates her. Then he starts pumping, grunting as he heaves himself into her. Talamai lies quietly, observing the changing contours of the policeman’s face in the dim light. At times, the policeman grimaces. At times, he smiles.

Once, he says, ‘Saali, you Santhal women are made for this only. You are good!’ Talamai says nothing, does nothing.

At one point, the policeman squeezes her breasts out of her blouse. He bites them and sucks on her nipples. That hurts.

‘Don’t scream,’ the man pants. ‘Don’t speak a word. It won’t hurt.’

Talamai takes care not to scream, or even wince. She knows the routine. She has to do nothing, only spread her legs and lie quiet. She knows, everything is done by the man. She just lies—passive, unthinking, unblinking—as cold as the paved ground she can feel through the thin fabric of the gamcha; as still as an inert earthen bowl into which a dark cloud empties itself.

In less than ten minutes, the work is done.

The policeman heaves himself up and helps Talamai to

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her feet. He throws the used condom away and wears his clothes. Then he gives Talamai two pieces of cold bread pakora and a fifty-rupee note and walks away. She re-ties her saya and lungi, stuffs the fifty-rupee note into her blouse, eats both the bread pakoras, and walks back to her group.