Noagaon in the soul

I carry Noagaon in my soul. In my walks, wherever I happen to be, at seminars I address at home and abroad, and walking down the streets of foreign cities, it is Noagaon that throbs in the innermost recesses of my being. The reason is simple: Noagaon is the small, sleepy village where the voices of my ancestors speak to me. It is the hamlet where I am in communion with the generations of my clan that came before mine. It is home.

There is a light that shines about Noagaon, around the memories which rush in every time I go there. Or even when I am away from it. That sound I hear still, Father calling out to my grandmother, his mother — 'Maa' — as soon as he reached the pathway, the raised ground, beside the pond leading to the thatched hut that was the family home. The mother, my grandmother, heard the voice of her surviving son and rushed forth to gather him in her bosom, too excited to tell him she had been waiting for him.

I watched it, me no more than six years old, marvelling at this reunion of mother and child. There are other memories that come alive in the mind — or is it in the heart? — those which are redolent of Bogi, the woman who worked the dheki to the accompaniment of her endless conversation. Not much was known of Bogi, except that there was her brother somewhere in Noagaon. 

Bogi went to the city once and came back mesmerised by the sights she came across there. Grandmother, busy trying to light a fire in the ancient mud stove, was regaled by Bogi's tale of all the lamps she saw in the city, street lights really, and wondering who put so much kerosene in all of them all over town. That was naïve Bogi.

Such tales I carry in my heart. Such images I hold in the gleam of my ageing eyes — of Grandfather amused at my fear-driven discovery of a pair of owls looking down at me from the heights of the coconut palm. Nothing to be afraid of, he said, and then went on to educate me on the Bengali term for owl. Pnecha, he said. 

Grandfather prayed and read the Quran all day, and the whole village regarded him with respect, coming to him for paani-porha when someone in the family fell ill. He prescribed treatment, where necessary, with herbs and leaves whose magical power to heal only he knew about. When Grandfather prayed, the ripples in the pond played before him. Everyone who passed that way sought his blessings before moving on. Grandfather was 113 years old when he passed away.

In Noagaon sleep those of the clan we once were happy to be with, for they gave the village its verve through the vibrancy in them. Fazlu Kaka treated the ailing with homeopathy even as he spent time at the village post office near the mosque. And the mosque, by the way, came up around the time, perhaps a little before or a little after, the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. It is yet there, a living testament to time. Many have prayed in it and then gone to their graves. Many find Allah in it every Friday, every evening. 

Fazlu Kaka's daughters, my cousins, were not fated to live long. All but one went to their graves in a tragedy reminiscent of all the sad stories I have had cause to internalise through my readings of literature. There are other cousins who share that cemetery space with them. It is to these graves that I make my way, and I hear the laughter which punctuated the air in Noagaon when they lived. 

And I stand, bowed in silent prayer before the graves of my parents, surrounded as the graves are by those of uncles and aunts who were in the springtime of youth when we were children. On summer nights the fireflies dance in that cemetery; and when the monsoon clouds part at midnight, the moon sprinkles its brilliance all across the silence of all those graves.

Noagaon then moves into a different sort of beauty. Long ago, in the era when floods submerged the land — and this was before fertilisers came into the picture — my Rashed Kaka taught me how to catch all the koi fish and all the puti machh swimming into the pond from the fields of jute and rice. 'Here, hold this gamchha like this', he said, 'right where the fish slide into the pond. They will slide into your gamchha.' 

It was a discovery for me. With all that treasure of koi and puti in my gamchha, I ran home, boasting to Mother of the feat I had accomplished. She fried some of the fish and cooked the rest. The family had a feast that evening — Grandfather, Mother, my sister, and brothers. Father was away in the city. Grandmother was in her grave.

Noagaon resonates in the soul as I wait for a bus in a cold, wind-blown foreign city. I think of the earring my little sister Baby lost as she bathed in the pond. I imagine my brother Fayek cheerfully moving around the village, fraternising with everyone along the way. I do not forget the tears shed by Nadeem, my youngest sibling, moments after Mother was buried in Noagaon on an October day. I hear Makhan dada, my lively cousin, regale us with stories in lunar light beside the pond near the jaam gaachh that is not there anymore. Our laughter at his sense of humour could be heard all across Noagaon. 

Haider and Muktadir, nephews close in age to us, enjoyed, as all of us did, that session. Haider and Muktadir, brothers, died years ago. I try imagining them in their graves. Have they really been reduced to dust? I think of a cousin who spent hours in the pond because she loved it. A time came when she died. Rasek and I made boats from banana barks in the rain and had them float in the pond.  

In Noagaon we were — and are — middle class. Our faith in God is unwavering. Everyone prays at the appointed hour and every Friday is a moment when male members of the family come together at the mosque. In Noagaon are heard peals of laughter which once reverberated through every home. 

When my cousin Nazneen Apa got married, a wedding gate made of banana plants, with the word 'Well-come' prepared in pulses and glue and strung between the two trees, welcomed the bridegroom, all properly holding his handkerchief to his mouth — that was what men getting married did in those days. 

I told a cousin that 'Well-come' had been wrongly spelt. He looked worried for a few seconds and then said, 'Not to worry. How many among us will know that the spelling is wrong?' He was right. No one noticed.

My brother Shopan gets busy as soon as we arrive in Noagaon. He gets in touch with cousin Zahed at his medicine shop in Shomajkalyan market. Villagers engage in conversation over glasses of tea — in the village cups are strangers — with him when he walks down to the market. At home, my sister Baby and sister-in-law Bithi take charge of all that needs doing. My nieces and nephew are happy to bask in the freedom that Noagaon offers after all those stultifying days in the city.

In Noagaon, birds wake us up at dawn with their ceaseless chirping. Deep in the night, the distant howls of jackals can be heard in our huts. When a hen swiftly gathers her chicks under her wings, we know a predator eagle is around. Ducks go for a morning waddle before taking a plunge in the water. Fish are caught in the pond, creating waves of happiness in the clan and among the neighbours. It is a celebration.

Noagaon is where the clan goes back, for it is home when the heart is driven by the urge for a rediscovery of roots. We walk along the dusty — and muddy in the monsoon — paths, the same paths where our ancestors left their footprints through the ages. And we know we are the inheritors of a rich and humble heritage. Not all of us were born in Noagaon, but all of us will one day be buried in Noagaon.

This is the thought that assails us as we sip tea at Abu's shop. A few feet away, our ancestors, descendants of Syed Ahmad Baksh, sleep at the end of lifetimes of journeys undertaken in piety and humility and genteel poverty. The sun, meanwhile, makes ready to set in the west — across the fields of mustard, beyond homes from where the aroma of food cooked on mud stoves gently stirs the senses.

Noagaon is in my soul. It is the music we play every day. It is our claim on the past, our hold on the present, and our promise of the future. And we imbibe khejurer rosh or drink maathha, depending on the season.

Syed Badrul Ahsan writes short stories, is a political analyst and reviews books