By Binodan Dev Sarma
He sat on the side of the road wrapped in a thick woollen shawl to beat the early morning chill. Only a pockmarked, wrinkled face, cracked toes and fingers of a huge laborious feet peeped out of the shawl. His lips were chapped and dirty red imparted by the continuous chewing of kwai, a local concoction of betel nut, leaves and lime. The tips of his grizzly mehndi coloured moustache underlining the flaring broad nostrils were stained with the same colour. His eyes, half closed but definitely not sleepy, were trained at a small wooden shack on the other side of the road. The area was isolated except for a few stray dogs and other early risers. Few hours later the road and area would be teeming with the regular lazy bustle of the hill town. Padum Bahadur liked to avoid this rush. He preferred to stick to his routine of lazing in personal or professional life as the chowkidar at the local Government Telecommunication office. The only aberration in the routine was the mornings.
For the last ten years he has been punctual, almost superstitious about waking up early. “Dreams are best remembered and interpreted in the morning,” the words of Madan Babu, a local seer and dream interpreter, who spent most of the time under the influence of ganja were firmly registered in his conscience. Padum had met Madan Babu ten years ago. It was also the first time he had a dream interpreted.
“Sel roti and cauliflower, ” he had responded when Madan had asked him what it was that he could recollect vividly from the last night’s dream.
“Sel roti?” Madan retorted curiously, unaware that it was a Nepali bread made of rice flour in a doughnut shape, an absolute delicacy and a must cuisine during the festival of Dashain. The festival had just passed and Padum’s fondness for the bread was evident with it appearing almost recurrently in some way or the other in the dreams. Ever since his early migration along with his family and a host of others from Nepal to this small hilly town of Shillong, the fondness for the cuisine had only grown, partly as nostalgia and more because of the lack of it in this part of the Indian province. Things had changed a lot though in the past few years with the influx of more migrant Nepali people, some from other parts of India and others from across the border. The traditional festivals were celebrated with greater gusto. And to Padum’s delight almost every festival would have the sel roti being prepared. It was the cauliflower that had him confused. Not that he disliked the vegetable but it held no particular relevance to his life, except perhaps the fact that he had recently planted a few saplings at the professor’s residence where he worked part time as a gardener.
Madan cleared his throat to reiterate his confusion about the sel roti and Padum had quickly drawn the shape of a sel roti on the ash filled ground to elucidate the shape of the bread. As an interpreter of dreams, shapes mattered more to Madan. Sequence or patterns of dreams had only correlated relevance for the interpretation that the devotees came to Madan for.
After a quick ponder, Madan closed his eyes, took a deep drag from his chillum. It was rumoured among the devotees that the chillum had never been snuffed out, bearing a blessing from Lord Shiva himself. Though Madan never claimed it himself, he did nothing to clear the doubt either. It helped his cause better.
“Zero and eight,” Madan blurted out after an eerie silence, almost shocking Padam. There was no one else in the room. Dreams and their interpretations are a private affair, an ethic set by Madan Babu himself, which no one dared to oppose. He continued his drag from the chillum, blowing thin refined nauseating but strangely sweet smelling smoke into Padam’s face, indicating the session was over and he could leave after donating the customary ‘burom,’ the Khasi word for respect. Dropping a two rupee note Padum took off. He never understood how the numbers were interpreted but he placed his bet on the number eight.
Ten years ago Padum had won his first gamble of teer, sixty rupees. Instantly a bond of faith and testimony for Madan’s prophetic prowess was established. That year onwards he diligently woke up early and travelled all the way to the Shiv Mandir located at the heart of Bada Bazar. In the temple grounds Madan’s followers had built him a small shack much to the dislike of the temple committee and local priests but no one complained. Madan and his prophetic skill was a great foil to the growing tribal-non tribal tension in the region. Many of his followers were the local Khasi fortune seekers queuing outside his shack from early morning waiting patiently for the Baba to allow an audience. Madan knew this and acknowledged it to a universal truth. Faith and fortune are both blind.
A street dog ambled towards Padum. Freeing his arms he shooed away the scrawny mongrel and shifted his position. The shack would open only at eight. There was still some time. For Padum the routine was simple. Once it opened, he would walk to it, spend a minute in some idle chit chat with Bah Deng and then place his bets on the numbers twenty four for first round and thirteen for the second. Twenty four was his own interpretation of last night’s dream. It was two years after Madan Babu’s death that Padum had taken on himself to attempt interpreting his or even other’s dreams. He was not a great success but nothing deterred the enthusiasm. Addiction has always been a better lawyer than conscience and realisation. Besides, Padum hardly treated his gambling as an addiction. It was more of a contest between him and fate. Dreams were his arsenal in this contest. Last night he had dreamt of his one legged cousin and himself trying to light a fire to bake sweet potatoes. Fire symbolised the number four, as he was once explained by Madan. To arrive at a possible winning number everything else had to be correlated and factored. For a start he tried to interpret the presence of his cousin. The cousin was a distant relative but stayed with Padum. He had lost his leg to a roadside accident. He had earlier worked as a labourer but these days spent most of his time drinking and abusing his wife and child. Much he thought of his cousin he could not interpret a relevance to a number that he could be convinced with. Defeated of any other relevance he finally interpreted two and four as the best combination. He chose to combine them and bet on number twenty four in the first round where the stake was twenty rupees more than the second round. The other number, thirteen for the second round, was a random choice.
When he first arrived in Shillong the local gamble intrigued them. In Nepal gambling in the Casinos was only for the tourists although the locals had invented their own games of bets. When Padum and his friends came to know of teer they were easily drawn and addicted to it. The game and its rules seemed simple. The name was derived from the ancient sport of archery popular in the region. No one knew how the sport became associated with gambling but the fortune seekers of the town thank the day that it did. A gambler can place bets on two rounds of numbers before 3 pm after which the counters closed awaiting the results. One’s fortune then hinges upon the skill of archery. Late afternoon two groups of archers will assemble at a local ground and compete. Each group will shoot eighteen hundred and twelve hundred arrows each at a target in a matter of two rounds respectively. The arrows of the group that wins either round are counted and the last two digits of the number of arrows on target are declared as the respective winning numbers of the first and second round of the gamble for the day. Padum has witnessed this spectacle a number of times. In the initial days when he was getting hooked to gambling, he would bunk his duty and assemble at the grounds with anticipation and excitement. Over time and some twenty four hundred rupees of win later, his interest shifted to the bigger bet of winning a forecast. A forecast is a jackpot if a gambler predicts the winning numbers of both the rounds of the game. The stakes these days were as high as four thousand four hundred and forty four rupees. In the past ten years a forecast has always eluded him. In his quest to arrive at the winning combination of a forecast had even resorted to opium before sleeping. He had overheard from stray conversations of like minded gamblers that opium accentuates the possibility of dreams. After a whole year of failed effort Padum doubted the theory. Before Madan’s death Padum described his dreams with greater vividness hoping that the seer would predict the winning combination of both rounds. It never happened. Secretly he had started to doubt Madan also but never spoke about it to anyone.
At ten minutes to eight Padum was off for his gardening duties at the professor’s residence. He was not a great gardener but they liked him for the odd errands he would run for them. Two small chits with the number twenty four and thirteen were folded and neatly placed inside a goatskin pouch in the pocket of his brown khaki knee length shorts. The purse was a gift from a relative who had come from Nepal. He was superstitious about putting the tickets in this purse ever since the year he had won the first rounds for two continuous days. Stranger still was the fact that the numbers he had placed his bets on were not even derived from any dream. After a few weeks of pondering and luckless gambling he had declared the two continuous days of luck to the goat skin pouch where he had kept the tickets. He boldly told everyone that the goat that was skinned for the leather was a sacrificial goat for Goddess Durga and obviously bore the blessing of the Goddess herself. The pouch was as important as Madan for Padum, hence.
As he approached the iron gates of the bungalow he quickly checked the breast pockets of his shirt. He fished out two other gambling tickets with the numbers sixteen and thirty. He checked the date of the tickets. Satisfied, he put them back inside his pockets.
A thirteen year old answered the door. The professor’s youngest son shot a quizzing smile at Padum who patted his breast pocket indicating with a reassuring smile that the task was done. Their nexus was now a year and a few hundred rupees old.
“ Papa, Padum bhaiya is here,” the child shouted out. There was a joy in his voice as he darted back to his room. He thought of his last night’s dream. He could not remember. But he remembered the one dreamt a day before. It was a simple and sure one to bet on. Sixteen out of thirty is what he had scored in last month's Maths test. Even though he considered these marks to be a commendable effort, his father, the professor of Mathematics at the university had thought otherwise and did not spare the rod as far to make it clear. In between sobs and disgust for his father the child had decided that only a forecast was his ticket to freedom from tyranny. So for the last one month he had diligently slipped a five rupee note daily to Padum randomly choosing numbers to bet on a forecast. The many conversations with Padum had made one thing clear. He needed to dream of the winning numbers. So every night he silently prayed to God requesting an epiphany in his dreams. Though he dreamt regularly, whatever he could recollect of his dreams were not easily interpreted by Padum. Last week he had asked Padum to interpret the significance of an Atari, a recurring image of his dreams and it had left the Nepali completely flummoxed. It was only when his marks came back to haunt him in the dream he woke up excited. Later placing the five rupees in Padum’s hands he said, “Forecast for me this time on numbers sixteen and thirty.”
Their pact was simple. Padum had introduced the child to a wondrous world of luck. He was an easy bait. Strict parents, trivial pocket money, spendthrift friends and ambitious plans were all the perfect ingredients. He placed his bets on numbers suggested or interpreted by Padum. In exchange if he won Padum kept a commission and passed on the rest. His luck was never too good with numbers but Padum never let him lose hope. This time however, he was sure that the numbers were a winning bet. Dreams don’t lie or at least he was made to believe so by the experienced senior.
The results are declared every evening at around four. The child knew this but he dared not roam in the vicinity of any teer shop. If his father even got a whiff of it all dreams would come crashing. He would wait for Padum to tell him.
The next morning he woke up early, surprising his parents who mistook his dexterity for sincerity toward his studies. For a long while he kept doodling in his copy, patiently trying to memorise multiplication tables. The numbers made him even more impatient. “Padum should be in anytime now,” he kept thinking to himself.
At around seven am his mother asked him to get ready for school. There was still no sign of Padum till then. An hour later on the breakfast table his father quizzed him randomly from the multiplication tables. He got all the answers wrong promptly, leading his father to give him a speech on sincerity and setting examples of all the classmates he hated. His thoughts were on the forecast. Once he won it he would run away from home. He was not sure where but he was sure he would. Padum had still not arrived when breakfast was over. He was off to school with his father. He did not hear from Padum in the evening either except his father complaining and worrying about the poppy plants that the gardener was supposed to attend to.
He did not sleep well with mixed disturbing dreams. The following morning he woke up feeling despondent and angry with Padum. He had made up his mind that he would reprimand Padum when he arrived. At eight when he heard the doorbell he rushed to open it with a stern face. It was not Padum. There was some other person at the door asking for his father. Desolate with Padum’s absence again he called out to his father.
A while later at the breakfast table he heard the news from his father.
“Padum is dead.”
The child was stunned for a while as his father broke the news to the mother.
“He was murdered by some local goons,” the father continued, “ Apparently he had won a large amount in teer and had a tiff with them”
“Tsk, tsk,” his mother had exclaimed, applying jam over a slice of bread. “This habit of gambling, I tell you, leads to a fall only.”
“Hmm,” his father responded, taking the slice from her, “ What can you say? Fate and fortune are blind and people who believe in that path seem to have no dreams of hard work at all”
The child lowered his head, nibbled on his slice of bread, too confused and dazed to think.
By Binodan Dev Sarma
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