“ Kosur pater jol jemon re
Jibon tol mol tol mol kore
oi moton norer deha
kun din dholiya pora jai re……”
(Life is like a drop of water on a leaf, the day it falls, it is all over…..)
It was a mesmerizingly stunning vista from the riverside. Sunset is slowly creeping down and was opulently fusing with the ‘moving’ waters of the Bor Nodi (the mighty Brahmaputra). It was a rich splash of orange and the lines emanating from the ‘randhoni beli’ (setting sun) was becoming more profuse and pronounced. It was as if one could scale the lines of orange in subsequence. Bisu hung in a trance at this ostentatious display of orange, the sun, the black silhouettes of the boats in the distance and the fishing nets hanging stubbornly down, the humongous sounds of the fishermen hurrying back home for the festivities and most of all the hypnotizing waters of the Brahmaputra, mysteriously playing at the foot of the soporific Hulukando hills across the river. The last chimes of the bells from the Dadan mandir came wafting down and it got suspended in this expanse. Sitting in a secluded alcove between too huge stones on the riverbank, Bisu had been hearing this since the time his father, the impregnable Hariya Mandal, the progenitor of the Koch kings, in lower Assam, brought him here when he was just a child. His brother Sisu was still in the womb of his ‘half mother’ and it was to him that his father bequeathed the legacy of the Koch tribe with a promise still nascent in his mind then. Back then he could not gauge the magnitude of his legacy, he was rather entrenched in the stories that his father narrated about the ‘bor nodi’, the hulukando and the sri tukreswari hills, his village Chikangram and his ancestors. Often a tinge of melancholy could be detected in his father’s voice and this perplexed him for he could never comprehend it.
But today it was different. There was a huge lump in his throat. His eyes look dazed and the stories ran like the lapping waters of the river in his mind. There was a breeze blowing down, but he was too impassive to let the wind tantalize through his body as it did earlier whenever he came here with Jirai or after a conquest. He looked down at this vista and knew that he was the master of this land but could never be the owner of it.
Little did his people know that this undaunted Koch king, Bisva Singh or Bisu, who washed apart all adversaries to establish the Koch hegemony over the Goalpara region of lower Assam by 1535, defeating the indigenous chiefs of Phulguri, Bijni and the imposing Bhuiyas of Ugir and Luki, building an empire extending from Karatoya in the west and Bor Nodi in the east, was a man of meager dispositions. He was a man tormented by his own demons, a man never humbled by any conquest, who was a passionate lover and the one who hated his ‘dah’. Insomnia invaded him and it was only in the niche of Bor Nodi that he could seek a ‘disparaged solace’. Jirai assailed his mind and his mother Hira perennially confronted his psyche. Only his mother knew the truth that he killed Jirai, the woman he loved he loved profusely, suspecting her of infidelity. A mother could not take this sin of her son and the ferocity of the truth was too voluminous for her and she too passed away after a few days. His father was long gone and his brother Sisu, who was never his close confidante was now far away in the Koch capital of Coochbehar. He was never the same man again. The roots of devastation gnawed inside him, his political expeditions had become indomitable but the cracks inside him had become too wide to hold it further and it was only a matter of ‘when’.
Nonchalantly he shook the sand off his feet, the dokhuwa lightly tied around his waist, was fluttering at the hem and his vest of a fine spun cotton was tightly pressed to his chest. He could hear the distant boisterous sounds of the youths dancing the ‘kharatal’ to the beats of the drum. When he was young he danced to the beats with Jirai- eyes interlocked, thighs brushing against each other and the smell of sweat flowing into each other. Everybody galled at their love. But who could have imagined their ominous fate of their love and their tribe then. The festivities of ‘Bisua’, the festival heralding the onset of spring continued with its usual fervor but yet the subdued atmosphere was too palpable to ignore. Probably the Koches now awaited their destiny of submission to the mighty Ahoms, who were now finally trespassing their way gallantly into Goalpara from north, the kingdom of Bisva Singh and would soon consume their village Chikangram, the mother of their destiny and the sanctum of their tribe. Their messiah, Bisu had crumbled and the metamorphosis had already taken place inside- he could not defend his people. Just like his tribesmen, he too became the destiny’s child and seeing his power dissipating from his body, waited for Fate to overpower him. The vendetta had taken root long ago and the Ahoms were now marching with rapacious hue. Bisu stayed away from the festivities of the village but decided to go later to set forth the rituals before the food was served.
The food was almost ready and everyone desperately waited for the king to come and preside over the rituals. Bheya, his friend and closest aide, sensing his absence among the cornucopia of faces, stealthily made his way down to the river bank where he knew Bisu would be sitting. It was dark and the only source of illumination was from the lamp that he carried and the brilliant glitter of moonlight on the river. He caught the shadow of Bisu reclining on the stone and quickly trudged his way through a motley of low bushes, stones and sand. Seeing Bheya approaching, Bisu stirred and he knew that it was time to go. Winter was far behind their back and spring slowly skulking towards them but the chill of the night still lingered. The laughter burst dimly from the courtyard mingled with the smell of ‘mati dal’ boiling over the earthen stoves. Bheya was taken aback by Bisu’s face. It was not the frothing face of a youth dappled with victory and pride. It was the pale face of an apparition of Bisu’s form. The ‘apparition’ smiled at him and mumbled something inaudibly. Bheya could not gauge anything of it. Suddenly he saw Bisu’s dah lying down on the sand and this was strange for he never let his dah lay on the sand. He knelt down to pick it up but when he got up there was no one. Bisu was not there. He called his name but there was no reply. He frantically looked around but Bisu was nowhere. He was too stunned to utter or shout for anyone to search for Bisu, their indomitable ‘king’.
The moonlight penetrated into the surface of the water. A footprint on the sand caught his attention. He lowered his lamp and saw that it was a trail and following it, he found that the footprints disappeared into the water, the Bor Nodi, the river of spirits. The wind blew again and it sent a tantalizing sensation through Bheya’s body.
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