Short fiction: An Assamese folktale offers hope and relief in times of widespread crisis

The plantain leaves were shivering in the wind. The women were seated around a dying fire. Their outstretched arms were warm, but their backs were starting to feel the chill. They knew they would soon have to get up. They knew they would soon have to go home. When they got home, they would each one of them push open their bamboo doors. The doors would creak on the hinges and they would pray the sound did not wake up their husbands and children. Then, in the dark, they would grope around till they found their beds of hay. As they lay down to wait for the morning, their bones would groan and creak too, but nobody would hear a sound.

Tonight was the night of the Kite but the Kite had not come. They had waited a long time, holding the fire responsible. The fire had kept their bodies warm, and warm bodies can sometimes feel hope. But the night had kept crawling over their skins threatening to seep in. Then feebly, from the distance, they had heard the khong xinga ringing. They had known then that the Kite would not come. They had been told she would be dead when that angry horn pipe rang. The happy pipe, the rong xinga, had turned to dust a long time back. Nobody had played its happy tune after the Kite’s daughter died.

The Kite had a daughter once. She taught her how to laugh and talk, cook and clean, weave and sew, dance and sing, harvest and husk, hide and show. The perfect woman.

A man passing by under their tree one day found a strand of her hair on his shoulder. The Kite’s daughter was combing her hair. He looked up and said he wanted to marry her. She played her rong xinga then and the Kite gave her her blessings.

After marriage, he took the Kite’s daughter to his forest. It was across the border from the motherland.

The king of the motherland was a despot. He had a pack of wild dogs called the Rang Kukur.

The Kite’s son-in-law was a rebel. The king’s dogs chased him and his band of rebels and they took refuge in the forest. Other rebels from other lands had also taken refuge in the forest. It was in a no-man’s land. Every man who was a rebel could live there. Every man who lived there, though, had to be an animal. The leader of the hill tribe, for instance, was a tiger-man. He said he would devour anybody who stood in the way of his people. The one leading the plain tribe was a lion who wore a ruby around his neck. He promised that after the war was over, he would pave the roads of his village with gold. The Kite’s son-in-law led the people of the valley. He was a python.

When the Kite’s daughter reached the forest, the women were all living there. They knew her husband was a python.

He had devoured his first wife in that form. The first wife’s mother was a cat. When on their wedding night the husband had turned into the big snake, the cat’s daughter had called out, “Mother, my toes, they are a-tingling.”

The cat was in the motherland, dreaming of fish bones and warm milk. She sang back, “Daughter, those are jewels a-dangling.”

The girl sang out again, “Mother, my hand tingles.”

The cat crooned, “Daughter, he gives you bangles.”

By the time the tingling reached her forehead, the cat’s daughter had entered the belly of the beast.

On her first night, when the Kite’s daughter sang out to her mother in the same way, the bird was alert, waiting for news from her daughter. When she heard her daughter’s voice, she started flying. She reached in time to pull her out of the python’s mouth. Her legs were covered in its digestive juices. In the morning, the python became a man and cried remorsefully. The Kite left.

The next night, the Kite was out hunting. When she heard her daughter sing out, she spread her long wings. She reached in time to pull her out of the python’s mouth. She was covered up to her waist in its digestive juices. In the morning, the python became a man and again cried remorsefully. The Kite asked her daughter to leave. The girl stayed.

The night after that, there was a strong wind blowing. The Kite could barely hear what her daughter sang, but she took flight anyway. The wind kept pushing her back. She persisted. She reached in the morning but her daughter was dead. She played the khong xinga then, loud and shrill. And she turned to leave.

The sound of the khong xinga must have reached the motherland, for just then, the Rang Kukur howled. They were there, just across the border, ready to attack. The men prepared to run. The women were afraid. They stopped the Kite from leaving, told her about their sin. “We didn’t speak,” they said and spoke now.

The Kite told them to meet her by the plantain grove.

“I will come to you, any night, every night, wherever you are, whenever the plantain leaf shivers in the night wind,” she said and left.

The old bird had kept her promise. Even though the rebels were on the run, even though they travelled from one no-man’s land to another, the Kite came to see the women wherever there was a plantain grove, every night the leaves shivered in the wind. And she taught them what she did not teach her daughter. She taught them how to grow feathers. She taught them how to fly. She taught them how to grow beaks and talons. She taught them how to rip and tear. And scratch and shriek and prey. She taught them how to evade the wild dogs that were on their scent still. She taught them how to master the wind.

Excerpted with permission from the title story in The Women Who Would Not Die: Stories, Uddipana Goswami, Speaking Tiger Books.