Rebati

Author(s): Fakir Mohan Senapati, Kamalakanta and Leelavati Mohapatra

Source: Indian Literature , March - April 1996, Vol. 39, No. 2 (172), ACCENT ON ORIYA
SHORT STORY (March - April 1996), pp. 68-77
Published by: Sahitya Akademi

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 Rebatí
Fakir Mohan Senapati

PATPUR is adistrict
in the sleepy little village Away
of Cuttack. in Hariharpur pargana
at one end stood
Shyambandhu Mohanty's house: two rows of rooms,
front and back, an inner courtyard with a well dug in
its centre, a lean-to rice-husking shed, a vegetable patch
at the back and a garden in the front-yard. In the outer
room the visitors and farmers keen to pay up their taxes
congregated and made themselves comfortable. Shyam
bandhu Mohanty, the zamindar's accountant, was
responsible for collecting rent. His salary was two rupees
a month. He could raise a little more by correcting rent
receipts and land records: all told, he made nothing less
than four rupees a month. With this he could somehow
make both ends meet. Well, not just; no, to speak the
truth, he was quite comfortable. His family never
complained of lacking this or that. They had everything
they needed: two drumstick trees in the backyard,
besides a patch of spinach and vegetables; two cows,
which never went dry simultaneously, so that a little curd
and milk could always be found in the pails. Mohanty's
old mother made fuel-cakes from cow-dungs and husks,
so they hardly had to buy any firewood. The zamindar
had given him three and half acres of rent free land for
cultivation; and the produce was just about enough.
Shyambandhu was a straight-forward person, and the
tenants respected, even liked him. He went from door
to door and cajoled and coaxed them to pay up their
rent; he never demanded a paisa extra from anyone. He
stuck the four-finger-wide palmleaf receipts in the
underside thatch of their houses, although they did not
ask for any. He never let the zamindar's muscle man
cast his shadow in the village; he'd pump the fellow's
palm, fondle his chin and tuck two paise into the
waist-fold of his clothes for buying himself tobacco and
saw him off. In his own home Shyambandhu had four

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stomachs to feed—he himself and his wife, his old mother, and his
ten-year old daughter. The daughter's name was Rebati. In the
evenings Shyambandhu sat in his verandah and sang Krupasindhu
Badan and many more prayer-songs; at times he lit an oil lamp, put
it in a wooden stand and read aloud passages from the Bhagwat.
Rebati always sat next to him and listened with rapt attention, and
soon learnt a few by heart. Her melodious voice lent the songs more
appeal. People stopped by to listen to her. There was this ditty which
gave Shyambandhu the greatest joy; every evening he asked Rebati
to sing it and she obliged :

Whither shall I take my prayers, Lord,

If thou turnest a blind eye?
Surely shall I be finished.
Be it salvation or damnation,
To thee this life a dedication,
To thee, this soul laden.
Empty, empty, all the three worlds
When I am without thee
True refreshment when I thirst

Only thy love can be.

Two years back, in the course of his rural visit, the Deputy Inspec
tor of Schools had spent a night at Patpur. On the request of the
village elders he had written to the Inspector of Schools of Orissa
Division, and established an upper primary school in the village. The
government paid the teacher's salary which was four rupees a month.
This apart, every student paid him an anna every month. Basudev
the teacher, a young man of twenty, had passed the teachers' training
course at the Cuttack Normal School. Urbane and polite, he never
raised his head to look directly at anyone. Basudev—true to his name
in every sense—was a fine human being. Charming and hand
some—the indelible mark of a bottle's mouth on his forehead, perhaps
a legacy of his mother's treatment for diphtheria during childhood,
sought to enhance rather than mar his looks—he looked chiselled
out of a single block. An orphan from an early age, he had been
brought up by his uncle, and belonged to Shyambandhu's caste.
Occasionally, on a full-moon day or a Thursday, when cakes and
savouries were made at home, Shyambandhu, who had taken a fancy
to the young teacher, would call at the school: "Son Basu, come over
to our place in the evening, your auntie has invited you." A bond of
affection had naturally developed between them after these visits.
Even Rebati, filled with concern, would sometimes exclaim: "Ah, the
poor little Orphan! What does he eat, who looks after his food?" As

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the visits grew regular, with Basu dropping in practically every even
ing, she waited at the door to announce his arrival. As soon as she
spotted him from a distance she'd announce to her father: "Here
comes Basubhai, here he comes!" She'd then sit down beside him
and sing the whole string of prayer-songs she knew. To Basu's ears,
the song were ever new.
One day, as they chatted of this and that, Shyambandhu learnt
from Basu that there was a school at Cuttack where girls could study
and learn crafts too; and instantly the desire to give Rebati an educa
tion welled up in his heart. When he confided this to Basu, the young
teacher, who had already begun to look upon him as a father, said:"I
was about to make this suggestion myself." Rebati listened to the
whole conversation and rushed inside. "I'm going to study," she
announced excitedly to her mother and grandmother. "I'm going to
learn to read books." Her mother smiled and said, "Go ahead." But
her grandmother's reaction was sharp: "What good will it do? How
does book-learning help a girl? It's enough if you learnt cooking,
baking, churning butter and painting walls with rice-paste."
That night, when Shyambandhu sat down to dinner bn a low
mango-wood stool with Rebati beside him, the old lady sat in front,
restive and itching to speak her mind: "Pour some more rice on his
plate, daughter; give him a second helping of dal; bring a pinch of
salt" and so on. Then she brought up the topic: "Hey, Shyam! Is
Rebi going to study? What's in study? What good is it for a girl?"
"Never mind, Ma," said Shyambandhu, "let her study if she wants
to. Haven't you heard that Jhankar Pattanaik's daughters can read
the Bhagawat and the Vaidehisha Vilas?"
Rebati was furious with her grandmother. "You silly old hag!"
she said. And turning to her father she begged, "Father, I want to
study."
"Of course you will," said Shyambandhu.
The matter was left at that.
Next afternoon Basu brought Rebati a copy of Sitanathbabu's
First Lessons. She was so overjoyed that she leafed through the book
from cover to cover. The pictures of elephants, horses, cows et al
thrilled her. Kings could be happy to own elephants and horses,
others may perhaps derive pleasure from riding them, but for Rebati
it was enough to gaze at their pictures. She could hardly wait to show
them to her mother and grandmother.
The grandmother did not hide her irritation. "Take that silly
thing away," she said.
"Silly you!" retorted Rebati.

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 The auspicious day of Sri Panchami dawned. Rebati took an
early bath, put on new clothes and flitted in and out of the house,
waiting impatiently for Basu. The usual pomp associated with this
occasion for commencement of learning was played down out of fear
of the grandmother. Six hours into the morning Basu arrived and
taught her the alphabets: a, aa, e, ee, u, oo ....
The lessons went on. Basu never missed an evening. In two years
time Rebati studied a great deal. All the rhymes of Madhu Rao were
at the tip of her tongue and she could reel them off without faltering.
At dinner one night, Shyambandhu said to her mother, as if to
round off a discussion they were long having, "Well, Ma, what do
you think of it?"
"Nothing could be better," said the old lady. "But have you found
out his caste?"

"What else was I trying to find out? He may be poor but he

comes of a good pedigree. And a pucca Karan to boot."
"Good. Caste comes before wealth. But will he agree to settle
down here?"

"Why not? After all, the only relative he has are the uncle and
auntie? He may not like to go back with them."
What Rebati made out of it she only knew, but a change came
over her. She became coy with Basu. She blushed and smiled for no
reason, refused to read her lessons aloud and answered in brief
grunts. As soon as the day's lessons were over she ran inside the
house, struggling to muffle her giggles. In the evening she hung
around the front door, as if waiting for somebody—the grandmother
was riled with her for that but when Basu came, she hid herself. It
took Basu quite an effort before she presented herself.
Sri Panchami followed one after another, and two years went
over. Providence's designs are strange and inscrutable; no two days
pass alike for anybody. One fine Phalgun day, like a bolt from the
blue, struck the epidemic of cholera. Early in the morning the news
of Shyambandhu going down with cholera crackled around the vil
lage. In the countryside, the immediate response to such news is to
shut tightly all doors and windows of the house and keep out of the
path of the demonic deity of cholera, as if the evil old hag was out
with her basket and broom to sweep heads. Shyambandhu's wife and
mother, driven by worry and anxiety, were soon out of their minds.
Rebati ran in and out of the house, crying for help. When Basu got
the news, he hurried from the school and, without fear or thought
for his own life, sat at the bedside, massaging Shyambandhu's hands
and legs, and forcing drops of water between his parched lips.

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 After three hours had passed, Shyambandhu stared wildly and
stammered weakly to Basu: "Take care of the family." Basu could
not control his tears. The women sobbed. Rebati wailed and rolled
on the floor. Shyambandhu passed away in the evening.
What arrangements for cremation could the two grief-stricken
women and a greenhorn like Basu make? Bana Sethi, the villag
washerman, a veteran of fifty or sixty cremations, saved the day for
them. He turned up with a towel around his waist; an axe hung from
his shoulder. As Bana saw it, if your time was up you'd have to g
today or tomorrow, but why miss a pair of new clothes when ther
was a chance now? Shyambandhu's was the only Karan family in th
village; help was neither expected nor coming; the two women an
Basudev had to carry the dead body to the cremation ground and
perform the last rites.
The morning star was shining in the eastern sky by the time they
finished. No sooner had they got home than Rebati's mother wen
down with cholera. By mid-day the news of her death was all over
the village.
Time flows, it waits for none: on somebody it bestows regal
umbrella besides a palanquin; on another, whiplashes added to the
burden of fetters. No matter what, time never stands still; it passes
Three months had passed since Shyambandhu's demise. The zamin
dar had expropriated Shyambandhu's cows, because the accountant
had apparently not deposited the last rent collection. But this wa
hard to believe, for Shyambandhu had always regarded it as sacred
and did not rest in peace until he had deposited in the zamindar's
treasury every paisa of the collection. The truth was that the zamindar
had for long cast his eyes on these cows. He also withdrew the thre
and half acres of land he had given to Shyambandhu. The farm
hand, having nothing to do there now, left on the full-moon day o
Dola. The team of bullocks had already been sold off for seventeen
and half rupees; with what remained of the sum after meeting the
funeral expenses, the grandmother and Rebati had hung on for a
month. In the month following they began to pawn; a brass bowl one
day, a plate next.
Basu visited them every evening and stayed with them till bed
time. He offered them money, but they wouldn't touch it. Once or
twice he pressed some on them, but the money lay idle on the shelf
He was given no choice but to accept the couple of paisa the ol
woman produced every eight or ten days to buy them provisions.
The house was falling apart, the straw roof had worn thin, but try
as he might Basu couldn't get it re-thatched; the bales of hay he had

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bought with two. rupees of his own money rotted in the backyard.
The grandmother no longer wailed day and night, she now con
fined it to the evenings. But she put so much of herself into it that
she was left slumped on the floor for the night. Rebati, convulsing
with sobs, would lie down there next to her The grandmother's vision
had dimmed and she had a wild look about her. She had cut down
on crying and taken to reviling Rebati with curses and abuses. Th
girl was at the root of all her misery and misfortune, her educatio
had caused it all—first her son died, then her daughter-in-law; the
bullocks were sold; the farm hand left; the cows were taken away b
the zamindar; and now her eyes were bad. Rebati was the evil eye
the helUdevil, the ill-omen.
The moment the curses started flying thick and fast, Rebati would
shrink away from her grandmother ánd hide herself in a corner o
the house or backyard, tears streaming down her cheeks.
The grandmother held Basu equally to blame: were it not for
his willingness to teach the girl, the girl wouldn't have gone and
taught herself. But she could not take Basu to task because sh
couldn't do without him. The zamindar sought many clarification
and almost every second day a messenger came asking for this account
or that, and Basu alone could fish them out from the clutter of papers
Shyambandhu had left behind. Yet, at Basu's back the old woman
sometimes gave vent to her feelings.
Rebati was no longer the light of the house. Gone were the days
when she mourned loudly. Nobody heard her voice, nobody saw he
out of doors. Her large brooding eyes, awash with silent tears, looked
like blue lilies in water. Her heart and mind broken, day and nigh
were alike to her. The sun brought her no light, the night no darknes
The world was an aching void. The thoughts of her parents possesse
her, their images hung before her glazed eyes. She couldn't bring
herself to believe that they were truly dead and gone. Hunger no
longer stirred her stomach, nor slumber her eyes. She went throug
the pretence of eating only out of fear of the grandmother; now thin
and emaciated, her skin hung loose on her bones, and she coul
barely raise herself off the floor on which she lay day and night. The
only time she revived a bit was when Basudev visited them. She'd s
up and fasten her eyes on him, and lower her eyes with a sigh onl
when their glances met. But the next moment she'd feverishly star
at him again. For those brief hours of the day when he was around
Basu completely possessed her eyes, mind and heart.
Five months, by a rough count, passed. On a hot Jaistha Saturday,
Basu knocked on their door at noon. Never before had he ever called
at such an ungodly hour. The grandmother was full of forebodings

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when she opened the door.
"Grandma," said Basu- "The Deputy Inspector of Schools will
camp in the Hariharpur police station and take an oral test of the
students. AH the schools have been informed. I received the letter
today. Tomorrow morning I will have to start. I may be away for
five days."
Rebati stood behind the door. She felt her legs sink. She barely
could grip the door and stop herself from falling.
Basu bought them enough rice, oil, salt and brinjals for five days,
and bade them goodbye.
"Son," said the grandmother, with a sigh. "Don't walk about in
the sun for long. Take care of yourself. Do eat your meals on time."
Rebati could not take her eyes off him. Before she had dropped
her glances when their eyes had met, but today she stared unblink
ingly, unabashedly into his eyes. A change too had come over Basu.
So long he had contented himself with stolen glances, but today he
did not avert his eyes. They looked deep into each other.
The evening came. Darkness filled the house and the earth.
Rebati remained rooted to the ground, until the grandmother's pierc
ing screams jolted her to her senses. Basu had left a long time ago.
Rebati counted the days. On the sixth morning she even rushed
a couple of times to the front door, a place she had shunned since
her parents death. Six hours past that morning, when the schoolboys
arrived back from Hariharpur, the news of Basu's death spread. He
had succumbed to cholera under the big banyan tree on the outskirts
of Gopalpur on his return journey. The villagers mourned; the
women and children shed copious tears. "What a handsome fellow!"
said one. "So polite!" said another. "Never hurt a fly," remarked yet
another.
The grandmother cried so much that she choked. "Poor child!"
she repeated, between sobs, "you only brought it on yourself!" The
implication was that but for his foolhardiness to teach Rebati he would
not have died in his prime.
Rebati sank to the floor and lay there without a whine or whisper,
as the day wore on.
The grandmother woke up the following morning without Rebati
beside her and blew her top: "Hey, Rebati! Hey, Rebi! You fire, you
ashes!" She worked herself into a fine froth and the passers-by heard
these terrible words repeated throughout the morning. Blind and
angry, she groped her way over the entire house. When she finally
found the girl, a shock awaited her. Rebati, burning with a fever, was
unconscious. Worry and fear gnawed at the grandmother's heart.

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She couldn't decide what to do, who to turn for help? Exasperated,
out of breath, and without hope, she observed tartly: "What medicine
can there be for an illness of your own making!" Rebati had brought
the fever on herself by her own folly in daring to study.
One, two, three, four, five days passed. Rebati remained glued
to the floor, her eyes and lips shut. On the sixth morning she let out
a whimper or two. The old woman ran her hand over Rebati's body.
It was cold to the touch, the fever had left. She called out to Rebati,
and the girl mumbled a reply, then demanded water, stared wildly
around and broke into an incoherent babble. One look and a country
doctor even could have quoted from his text: "Thirst, fever, deliriums;
of imminent collapse these are the symptoms." But the poor grand
mother was flooded with a sense of relief. Thank God, she thought,
the fever's left and the girl's able to speak two words, open her eyes,
ask for water. A little gruel is all she needs to rally her strength and
get on her feet.
"Don't get up," the grandmother said. "I'm going to cook you a
bit of food." She went out of the room and rummaged in vain among
the earthen pots and pans for a handful of rice. Her head clouded
with despair, she sat down with a sigh. If she had eyes to see she'd
have seen how the provisions bought for five days had already lasted
for ten.
But there was a flicker of hope in her yet. She picked up the
only object of any value left in the house—an old brass bowl with a
hole in the bottom—and set out for Hari Sa's store. The so-called
store in Hari's residence was in the middle of the village, and he kept
a paltry stock of rice, salt, cereals and oil to sell to travellers passing by
Hari saw the old woman with the bowl and caught on. But he
let her plead first. He then took the bowl and examined it minutel
turning it from side to side. "There's no rice," he said, handing
back. "Who's going to give you anything for a bowl like this?" O
course he had both the rice and the inclination to sell it, but gettin
the brass bowl for a song was his idea. The grandmother staggered
at his words, as if lightning had hit her. What would she do if sh
didn't get any rice, what'd she cook for Rebati, how'd the girl figh
her weakness? She sat there, still as a log, for hours, casting implorin
glances at the shopkeeper. The afternoon wore on. She had left th
sick girl aloné for a long time, and fear stirred her old heart. "Tim
I got back home," she said, picking up the bowl. "God knows wha
that girl of mine is doing."
"Never mind," said Hari grudgingly. "Give me the bowl. Let m
see if I can scrape a little something up for you." He gave her fou

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maans of rice, half a maan of cereals and a handful of salt. The old
grandmother hobbled back home, resting every four paces or so to
catch her breath. She hadn't even brushed her teeth since morning,
and her mind was in a funk.
She reached home with the hope that Rebati was better. She
would ask the girl to draw water from the well. The rice wouldn'
take long to cook. She called out to Rebati once, twice, three times,
but got no reply. Then she yelled at the top of her voice: "Hey
Rebati! Hey, Rebi! You fire, you ashes!"
By now Rebati was fast sinking. Her body, racked with spasms
of excruciating pain, had turned icy. She was thirsty, she sensed as
if her tongue was being sucked back into her throat. She found the
room hot and crawled out to the inner courtyard. Even that brough
her no relief. She rolled out to the verandah at the back and propped
herself against the wall. Dusk was falling. A breeze was blowing. A
bunch of banana hung from the banana tree which her father had
planted last year. The guava sapling her mother had planted two
years ago had grown to a goodly height and was covered with blos
soms. Rebati remembered how she had drawn water from the well
with a small jug and watered the sapling. It brought back a rush of
memories of her mother. Her head was in a whirl, her thoughts
jumbled, but the image of her mother clung to her vision. Night
descended. Darkness stole out from the boughs of the trees and
shrouded the garden. Rebati tilted her head back and watched the
sky. The lone evening star was gleaming brightly. She couldn't take
her eyes off it, and it grew and grew and grew, bigger and brighter;
it possessed the vhole sky, and behold! Her loving mother sat in the
heart of it, her face shining with love and kindness, arms extended
towards Rebati in an invitation to enter the nest. Rebati was over
whelmed. Two shafts of starlight pierced her eyes and trickled over
to her heart. Her breathing, heavy and laboured, rose and fell, brea
ing the stillness of the night. She wheezed, choked and cried out fo
her mother twice. Then the silence.

The grandmother crawled around the whole house, from the

living rooms to the courtyard to the rice-husking shed, but Rebati
was nowhere. Then it occurred to the old woman that with the fever
abating, the girl might be taking a stroll in the garden at the back.
"Hey Rebati!" she screamed, "Hey, Rebi! You fire, you ashes!" She
crawled onto the narrow verandah, which was only a hand in breadth
and two in height, and bumped smack into the girl. "Death to you"
she cried. "Sitting here, are you?" She wanted to shake Rebati up,
but she could sense something was amiss with the girl.

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 The old woman ran her hand over the whole length of the girl's
body and then held a finger close to the girl's nostrils. The night's
silence was momentarily broken by her eerie wail. Two bodies fell
from the verandah and thudded into the ground. That was the end
of line for Shyambandhu Mohanty. The last words which emanated
from his house were: "Hey, Rebati! Hey, Rebi! You fire, you ashes!"
□

Translated by Kamalakanta and leelavati Mohapatra

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