Excerpt – Job Charnock and The Potter’s Boy By Madhurima Vidyarthi
Even supported by the tree, Gobardhan was shaking. The sudden assault had been unexpected, unimagined. Mukundo had offered him a smoke. He had been too lazy to ask for a light and had simply lain back while the flies buzzed about and bumped into each other. In the familiar torpor between sleeping and waking. Till suddenly, without warning, he had been jostled awake and thrust into a maelstrom, like a petrified five-year-old in a nightmare. Before he could understand, before he could think, the dust and noise had resolved itself into scrambling horsemen and shouting soldiers. Sitting up on his haunches, he had hoped they would pass but no! They had come at him brandishing sticks and spears and even using the horses as weapons. Snorting, neighing, screaming, the beasts had been forced into the crowd of traders, their eyes rolling, their nostrils flaring and their wicked hooves destroying the little peaceful world. Before Gobardhan could emerge from the blur, it was over. He had risen with some mad thought of protest, his arms stretched out in a futile gesture of defence. Immediately he had been felled. His last thoughts going down were of the rearing hooves above him.
If they trampled on his face, no one would be able to identify his corpse.
He came to himself with a shudder, tears streaming down his face. It seems he was to live. Too weak to lift his hands, he nevertheless lifted his eyes to heaven, in a silent prayer, “Thakur!
But who was this unknown young man who had dragged him to safety, then disappeared? All he had said was, ‘Wait, and Gobardhan’s battered body was more than willing to wait but the sun was dropping towards the horizon and soon it would be dark. He thought of the kos-long trek home and closed his eyes again.
‘Thakur! Give me strength. Indu would panic if he was late.
Slowly, painfully, he dragged himself upright on feet that refused to stand and hands that trembled on the tree trunk, reluctant to let go. He was alone, friendless, dying. Even his beloved pots had deserted him. Fanciful, near delirious, he laughed aloud. Traitors! They had fallen on him in hundreds of sharp wicked pieces and drawn blood!
‘Has it turned your head, my friend, all this nonsense?’ His saviour had returned leading a horse. ‘Come, it is getting dark, we must get you home.
Gobardhan had refused to budge. The solid trunk of the banyan was now his only friend in the world. Not this strange man, a Mussulman by his beard and dress, who had appeared out of nowhere. Who was he? Where had he come from? And why did he have a horse? How was he to trust a beast that had almost killed him moments ago? Gobardhan shook his head and stayed where he was.
Ilyas solved the problem by simply lifting up the potter as one would a child and throwing him onto the saddle. Gobardhan, too scared and too weak to resist and somewhere in his mind relieved, sat where he had been placed, clutching the beast by the mane. Ilyas touched him on the shoulder and asked, ‘Which way, my friend?’
Gobardhan peered this way and that, unable to get his bearings in the haze of the dusk. The only landmark was the banyan and it was the same as every other banyan that dotted the town.
“The town is that way, Ilyas said helpfully, pointing east, ‘Golghat and the fort and the foujdar’s palace-‘
“Then we go that way, Gobardhan pointed west, ‘as far from them as possible.
And in the shared laugh that followed, their friendship had been sealed.
Ilyas had chattered nonstop through that ride. As the evening grew darker, Gobardhan was grateful for that liquid laughing voice. Even the horrific beast that jogged along seemed a friend. After they had exchanged cursory introductions, Gobardhan asked the question uppermost in his mind: ‘What happened today?’
