Fiction
December 2014
Golden Needle in the Weaver Bird's Nest
by Arupa Patangia Kalita
If one can disentangle a weaver bird’s nest, one will find a golden needle that can sew and mend anything, but there’s a small condition: not a single thread must break in the process. Since no one has met the challenge successfully yet, the needle remains elusive. Perhaps the secret lies in building the nest with people as threads, perhaps in the harmony of all men. SYNOPSIS Banamali Chaudhury is a revenue collector or mouzadar of the British Raj in a small town dominated by Bodo people. A tall, handsome, aspiring brown sahib swearing by the British Crown, the philandering pseudo-royal would have women brought to his haveli in a palanquin to quench his lust. One day, he sets his eyes upon a beautiful girl of lower caste and wishes to marry her. But unknowingly, he ends up marrying a plain looking but well-educated girl, Santipriya. Realising his mistake, Banamali searches for the other girl and marries her too. Mistreatment and depression make Santipriya age quickly, but she gives birth to a pair of male twins, Chandranath and Priyanath. The twins grow up to be the antithesis of their father; they seek India’s freedom and join the Gandhian movement. Dismayed, their father disinherits them from his estate. The boys take shelter in a school house and continue their studies from there until their father dies. The elder becomes a lawyer in the big city and Priyanath takes up the reins of the estate that his debauch father has reduced to shambles. But Priyanath starts working for the people and gets involved in community activities. He sires a son and names him Alok. Alok is talented and an idealist. He studies in Delhi and gets a scholarship to pursue higher studies abroad. Defying pressures from his extended family, Alok decides not to leave his father and takes up a job as teacher in a local college. Difficult days have descended upon Assam; a secessionist movement erupts under a terrorist organisation. Every year, a family from neighbouring Bhutan would visit Priyanath’s home. Traditionally, many households here have such families visiting them from the Himalayan kingdom; the same family wouldvisit them every year. But this is soon going to stop – terrorists kill the entire family camping with Priyanath. Only a small boy survives and Priyanath takes him as his own.Just as Assam’s secessionist movement was losing steam, another armed struggle begins in this region, entailing the demand for a separate state. The extortionist militants demand money from Priyanath who refuses to comply. Out of revenge they barge into Alok’s college one day and gun him down. The now ageing Priyanath hears about a child born in the paddy fields. Riots had broken out between the Bodo and Muslim people. But in the midst of the fight, a woman collapsed. Nobody knew whether she was Hindu or Muslim, but the rioting stopped and everyone gathered around her. A lady known as Ammi Jan delivered the baby. When Priyanath heard this story, he sent his Bhutanese foster boy to fetch the mother and child. Looking at the innocent eyes of the one who had stopped the riots, Priyanath gives her something close to his heart – a gold chain that once belonged to his own child Alok. The novel carries fifty interwoven stories centred around the plot. The discreet narrative captures the socio-economic background of a tribal belt of Assam, an easternmost Indian frontier, bordering Bhutan. The novel traces the historical status of women and the calculated destruction of lush green nature along with its flora and fauna, rivers and hills. It is rich in the use of myths, tales and description of the different cultural layers of this quaint region. It traces some endangered institutions like an elephant training centre, along with its colourful folk beliefs and customs. It touches elements like the advent of Christianity in the place. An epic novel with its treatment of time and space across a century, it gives meaningful shape to a welter of facts, speculations and elements of popular imagination.
