Original by SHATADAL MITRA
Translated by BISHNUPRIYA CHOWDHURI
Piece appears below in English. Click here to read the original in Bengali.
Translator’s Note
I believe what makes stories great is their ability to surprise and hearten their readers simultaneously. The tale of Khanandihi, which revolves around a quintessential Bengal village as it lives through generations of transformation— social, economic, and ethical—does so with an unparalleled efficacy that deserves a global readership. The narrative defies linearity, both in its language and in its structure. As a result, past and present run interwoven into each other, endowing even the smallest characters with a cosmic expanse and scope. The text resists rushed reading—its layers of long, winding sentences and subtle subtextual nuances unlock only when savored.
While you continue to follow the human characters in the story, the village begins to whisper into your ears, acquiring as much personality and depth as the other characters. It grows beyond a geographic location, becoming multiple time-capsules, voices, and ancestral spirits—swallowing up and blending into the myths of the mother goddess and Khana, the mysterious prophet woman from eighth-century Bengal.
Bengali narrative has a sprawling style where sentences start in medias res and are often chain-linked to create the tempo of the old family raconteurs and sourceless chatter of villagers huddling under dusk-laden Bengal banyans. Old lore-filled adages in the form of verses interject the story, much like they hover over Khanyadi. The rationale for such a complex (and debatably dated) rhetorical and stylistic choice lies in the way existence and time are perceived in a world where history, reality, hope, and the future inhabit a great interconnected circle. Therefore, stylistically, this text can be a treat for readers looking to explore foreign waters. At its core, it celebrates the endless cycle of life, the power of stories to form communal memories, tend bruises, and forge bonds between people.
1
…And then the darkness of the evening splashed and congealed further. The crescent of the moon peeked for a moment, nudging the nocturnal sky again. Whether or not the wind moved, whether or not the paddies trembled to this aberration, the black, unmoving waters of Lake Yamuna crumbled softly at its shore. Only moments before, beguiling whispers slipped through the winds’ fingers to caress the waters of Yamuna! “Aye, come now! Come on!” The wind chortled, and otherworldly flames pirouetted over the deep tenebrous heart of the lake —near, here, there. No one had ever seen them except for the Khanyadi-folks who saw, certainly.
They have always known those lights. Our kind-hearted Hara— Haradhan Roy, the sole heir to Khanyadi’s Shibaprasad Roy—mumbled, crossing the field ridges, “Ah Ranga maa, you again? Shoo! Go away…be off now!”
Shibu Morol yanked the teetering darkness to stand straight and spoke from behind, “Ram-ram-ram-ram! Lord save us! Chhotobabu, once the harvest is in, why not go off to Gaya and carry out our old lady’s overdue final rites?… And you there, Katta-maa, does this suit you? We too have our children and families…Ram-ram-ram-ram. Lord, be with us!” But his words were uttered probably for the sake of it. It wasn’t on Shibu to convince the man, who lit a beedi as if to restore his spoiled lull of inebriation. Shibu faltered, dazed for a second by the brief conflagration of the small flame at the tip of the matchstick. So, Hara, without even caring to look back, had to say,
“Take it easy, Kaka. Watch those goddamn steps… don’t forget the offspring of the Goddess of the snakes. It’s their time–this season, remember!”
“Dhur, dhur! You think they are sticking around after all that bug-poison you’ve dumped in the fields, wiping out all the snails, clams, frogs, fish, and shrimp? Why on earth will Lata show up here without a hope of prey?”
Shibu Morol was drunk but in control of his senses just enough not to utter the word “snake” and replaced it with “Lata”—vine, as they should be referred to after sundown. The incarnate darkness seemed to find shape under the weight of his steps. The wind rustled. The newly erupted seeds called out from the field, “aye-aye, aye-aye!” “Come now—come on.” Soon, they’d conceive, so they let the dew soak their open bosoms. So, the cry, “Aye—aye,” grew louder—the water laughed out, swamp-fires flickered here and there—over the marshes. Before dying out, the flames compelled the two men to look up front, where they imagined the path to the village to be, where the clumpy darkness from either side spilled into each other. That’s the way leading to the village. The truant chiaroscuro of the waterbody flustered the darkness so much that the trail seemed to disappear, and words erupted. “She was one holy woman, our Katta maa, our lady. Like I said, you, Chhotobabu, go visit Gaya… the paddies look good this time—won’t be a shortage like last year.”
Shibu huffed, and likely at its effect, the darkness, inspissate, rolled from one hour to the next. “Kah!” shrieked a lonely crow, just once, but Shibu got the chills— “Now what in god’s name is up with this crow?! Who knows what news awaits…Chotobabu… tell me what time it is… if the cry coincided with the thirtieth hour, per the almanac, that’d be the worst…”
Such words unleashed fear and shadows that swallowed the pathway into the village. Ghosts of oblivion roamed, and our two travelers were inescapably lost…
2
…and right then, all the married women ululated, ripping through the stillness of the night. The covey of sleepy pigeons nestled in the wooden planks under the tin shed woke up startled. The birds took to the air, some circling, some cooing.
“Jai Tara!” Gurudev Ramanath Shastri’s voice boomed as he emerged from his meditation. The yajna had ended. The priest, the guru, and the worshippers, all stooped in obeisance— few genuflecting, few stretched out face-down in absolute pranam, howling—“Maa, Maa go! Oh Mother Mine!” Within each one of them, writhing in the strongholds of samsara, a void ached—a longing raged. They all had something to seek from the goddess. That was the reason for the puja, those offerings at her feet. The night shivered at this effort. It made Kusum Kumari, driven out of the house by her in-laws, throw herself at the pedestal, reaching for the rubicund right foot of the goddess. Mother Dakshina Kali, always stanced forward on her right —”Maa—Maa go, take heed now, oh mother!” she cried. Startling everybody, she grabbed the feet, pressing them against her chest. “Baba, bless me with a son, all will be lost otherwise—I will be done for.” That was what she wanted to say, or what the tall and handsome Guru, a man with arms as lean as the sal tree and his visions extending deep and far, seemed to have heard.
Still, there could be chasms and splits between what was said and heard, as the woman was fresh in her twenties in those days. In those days, they wore no chemise, especially on such auspicious nights of puja when all she wrapped herself in was the seemly sari made of fine bark-fiber, leaving Gurudev with no option but to blurt out, “so be it!” She gave birth to her son the next year. Even though the local bolan songs and flippant folk rhymes indicated otherwise, the god-fearing soul of the village credited this miracle to the divine Mother’s grace—“Jai Maa! All victory to the Mother!” This was the same Mother who had snatched away the only other male offspring from the second wife of Kalicharan Roy, the eldest of Khanyadi’s zamindar Shivaprasad Ray. The child died suddenly of Tadka fever—Meningitis in today’s medical terms. The time coincided with Kusumkumari’s conception. Hence, the lake rippled with a million waves, the stars and the planets put up many a play. Kalicharan found his lost son anew in this infant—that’s why he was named Haradhan—the lost treasure—the one who most certainly belonged to the Roy family and its blood. The sun and the moon stood as witnesses, as did the Yamuna and all the people from the five villages, who testified that Kusumkumari was undoubtedly the first wife of Kalicharan.
And so the ceaseless undulation on the water set the wind atremble; the blades of the paddies swayed lustily, because they too were keen to conceive. The stars and the planets picked up on the hint and drew their games anew. The disembodied laughed out—“Aye-Aye.” “Come now, come on!” the flame answered, leaping from the body of the lake. It took to the streets— strolling, rushing, calling out—“Aye!” The village folks tried to find a way in that spectral luminescence. A few tumtumi lamps rocked gently in some hands. Conversations when they took shape went something like this—
“Paddies look good this year
Don’t you say…there’s always the bugs …
Rice, is never enough, still
Why won’t the price go up , you tell me
If there is a well, there’s no stopping the bugs, be sure of that, I tell you
Aa molo ja! Can’t you keep your mouth shut now, you idiots! Let’s first look where the two went right, it’s been a while since the eight o’clock train departed…”
Circumnavigating the lake, they arrived at the trail of the Thakuran River. There stood the lone Arjuna tree. As soon as it shifted to the side of the bank to settle down, the shore crumbled on the other side with a loud splash into the water. The slumbering foliage, likely oblivious to the commotion, swayed mildly, if at all. They never knew about the light that went up straight from the tree into the sky. The wind from the lake invaded here too, the cackling of the mysterious blue light could be heard from here too—swinging, roaming, calling out—“Aye!”
“There, over there!” the village folks exclaimed. The two unmoored humans mumbled,
“Is that you Ranga ma? Come here, come now.”
“Katta ma was the true goddess of our Khanyadi village.”
Such chronicles added another layer to the name and reputation of Khanyadi. The ghosts of silence possessed the village folks. The ones who always hankered for fame, now turned homebound even though their feet did not seem to touch the ground, and it was as if their heads brushed against the sky and the insipid tumtumi flickers seeped from the cracks of their moving feet and scribbled maya—a tale of miracle and love on the soil.“Khanyadi, Khanyadi, Khana…” That which was history also belonged to the myths of infinity—to the Puranas.
3
And thus, everyone knows the name of Khanyadi; those who don’t, the fault lies with them. There, words effervesce and blossom perennially. Words, as we all know, are nothing but hints. So incidents occur, as they did in the past, as they will forever. This is the realm of history. Even though, in the cataract-crippled eyes of the present, it may not appear so, since it has not been written down, but the wise know. They know the history of the land of Bharat has been entirely oral—a tale that acquired layers of silt and shades with each narrator and listener, but the basin remains the same. So, Khanyadi has every right to thrive in history, to keep history alive because it is born there every day, like how it did just then, in that deepening night of the crescent moon as Hara, or Haradhan, by the blessings of his Ranga maa, addressed as “Katta maa” by the others, did not have his neck twisted in some unknown corner of the cremation ground, and instead was on his way home with the village folks, who called out in unison,
“Our Katta ma keeps Hara under her watch always… see how she protects him at every turn!”
“Because of Hara, we, our village of Khanyadi, live on!”
And it is true that incidents that will sneak into the chapters of history shall occur in Khanyadi. If you wish to talk about the name, you must know that, unlike other high-caste Brahmin and middle-caste Kayet folks, the Roys of Khanyadi never claimed their ancestry from the northern state of Kannauj. The story goes that they have always been the lords of the lands. The story also goes where the chronology fails, where time gets all foggy, but the rumors persist. Because of that, there exist words that make everything circle back all the way to the “historical” fact that Shibaprasad Roy, starting out with just two bighas of land, went on to secure a hundred bighas for himself in a single lifetime. All of that, of course, is as true as the sun and the moon. Rumors also claim that he never evicted anybody to build his empire. The prodigal lizard clicks away in time with such a declaration, testifying to the veracity of such a statement—“Thik-thik-thik!” But we shall come back to the lizard later. Right now, let us stay with the matter of zamindari and its essential part: the taxes—khajna. Back in those days, they’d come here to pay their khajna from all the surrounding villages. Hence the name Khajna-dihi—molded as Khanyadi on the folk tongue. But one must remember, it is only the landscape that Khanyadi is obligated to mark, not time. It could be the rule of King Shashanka from the seventh century, or the Nawabs from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Khanyadi’s history cannot be bothered with “when.” And as everybody already knows, with time infinite, flowing ceaselessly, the lizard clicks. Whenever the conversation comes to time immemorial—“tick-tok-tick,” clicks the lizard. And in that chronicle, floats the raft—always, in the present.
The raft had once washed ashore on this inconspicuous bank of the river Thakran. The bank was right at the lip of the house, as this lake was nothing but the old flow-way, the bend that circled today’s Khanyadi like a hansuli necklace. The eastward river turned north to go around the village before flowing south and then eastward again. The ebb and flow, the saline murmurs of the sea in her waters—as the boats and the ships floated in and out of that small, almost non-port. So, no one really noticed when that small raft arrived. But the moment it touched the bank, the slumbering village folks got to know of it in their sleep. A soft light bloomed at the heart of the night, and with it, rolled a few words—“you do look familiar… Are you Mihir… the long lost son of our chief priest, Acharjee Moshai?”
Whether they saw Mihir remains irrelevant—an un-question at best. The truth is, his father, the legendary ancient astrologer Varaha-thakur, calculated that this son was destined to live for a day, which is why, and for no other reason at all, he placed the infant in a copper vessel and released it to the waters to save himself the worldly attachment of affection! Now, how did the cosmic calculations of the great Acharya prove all wrong? Such highly pertinent inquiries, too, held no relevance to the village-folks. Mihir’s missus Khana, the princess of the Sinhala Kingdom, had questioned, aloud—
“What calculations you wrought,
Dear father-in-law, not taking into account his birth planet…”
As everyone knows, the river Thakran flowed here; the sea stretched out beyond, and there, on the other side of the waters, sat the kingdom of Sinhala. So it was only believable that the copper vessel washed ashore on the land known as Lanka in the Ramayana, or Sinhala, as described by the Vijaya Simha.
This is how it has always been and will continue to be as long as our prodigal lizard agrees—“thik-thik-thik.” So here in Khanyadi, people still cried in obeisance—“Oh hail, Mother Khana!” Khanyadi believed in her heart that it was a righteous namesake, righteous because it was an indisputable progeny of the legendary truth-sayer Khana and because, in its name, is blended the word khanan—digging. It is with that, they’d unearth bits of pottery and bricks, even that copper vessel from the mound beside the house with ponds at the north-east of the village just a few days back… Of course, the few days could have been a couple of years, a decade, or even a couple of centuries, because Time is, as we all know, ceaseless. And so, our lady Khana lived on here in this village forever with the sky, the winds, lights, and the shadows as together they conjured maya—endless illusions—
“Rodey Dhan, Chhayay Pan
Aamey dhan, Tetuley Baan”
[Paddies in the sunshine, beetle under shade
Paddy follows mango, flood follows tamarind]
Etcetera, etcetera, and the prodigal lizard clicks, every so often, in the oddest hours of truth—“thik-thik-thik.”
4
The way the lizard clicked—after the frenzied cyclone abated, leaving the earth quiet. Oh, how menacing was the storm—out to destroy the world that very night. Just one night—fear struck even Sarojbasini Dasi, the new widow of the late Rampada Roy. As the howling cyclone swallowed the world outside, the world indoors too had turned eerie in the quivering light of the feeble kerosene-fed tumtumi lamp.
Aha, that same meek tumtumi lamp, the one Ramapada would swing cheerfully and pretend to be the station master in charge of passing the last train, calling out “La ghata, La ghata.” Saroj caressed her mildly swollen belly with an unmindful affection. She was in her third month with the child. The moment the living dream of her late husband pulled a soft smile on her face, it was wrought with worry as a branch from the adjacent mango tree crashed violently over the tin shed of her room. Clouds rumbled, and thunder struck menacingly. Frightened and anxious, she caressed her womb again—worried how to keep this small life alive against all such odds. Then it started pouring. The jingling over the tin roof conjured a world of its own, a world wreaking havoc at the edge of Saroj’s consciousness as the tin roof threatened to give in at any moment. Water dripped down the ceiling joints, so she curled up in one corner of the room, trying to call upon prayers to the divine mothers Kali and Durga and the god of the rain and waters, Lord Varun.
But to tell you the truth, it was probably not the most earnest. There was knocking on her door every few moments that distracted her. She worried and wondered, “Who could that be?” Then, in the second phase of the night, the knock was indeed followed by a voice, “Chhoto Bou, open the door, it’s me!”
Bawt-thakur! Her elder brother-in-law…Again?
She cowered further into herself but pulled out the sickle from under the pile of rags and clenched it with all her might. She would kill that beast today if something went wrong—the lightning shocked the darkness of that room, flashing her eyes. The heavens snarled …in any case, it won’t take her an instant to finish herself, she thought. Her eyes welled, the rains thickened in empathy, as she put her hands over her belly once more.
The fragile life, as though a figment of her late husband’s dream, warmed up her cold hands then. Warmth coursed through the rest of her body, her benumbed consciousness. She must live to keep his bloodline alive. It is with this conviction that she uttered, “If I have so far kept my honor intact, I swear to the name of my unborn son, I shall claim his dues, I will.”
Well, those might not have been the exact words, but you do get the tone, don’t you? The lizard, too, clicked—“thik, thik”—“why not, why not?” And her fingers tightened around the handle of that sickle. And that was the image that flashed onto the darkness and likely in the eyes of that Bawt-thakur, as the lightning invaded the room and Saroj’s welling eyes.
Surprisingly, nothing of the night’s ravagery remained in the morning sky. The world sat composed and cool under a canopy of clouds. The snagged branches, fallen leaves, and ruffled hay on the shanties mumbled of the monstrous storm and the rains that followed. Words floated about among the people, too, including Alauddin, whom Saroj called Alaida. He, too, came over to check on his Lordship’s residence after the storm. They’ve been serving the Roy family as sharecroppers for generations. And the bond that sustained between the master and the subject was born from their shared, undeniable attachment to the crops—even though they were castes apart. “Aha rey, the plight of this young widow of late chhoto-katta!” thought Alaida.
This care, the unspoken maya must have given her the courage to call out, “Alaida, are you there? Get the cart ready. I am going to my parents.” Her utterance drew ripples in the calm air of that morning. Such a statement from a girl so naïve and quiet left even Alaida startled. Which attained some permanence when a shaft of sunshine glimmered on her words from behind the clouds that spread over Saroj’s eyes. So no one could utter a word except her mother-in-law, who said, “You cannot just go…one must check the right time and auspiciousness…if you care at all for the well-being of your family, that is…”
“I do care for the family, and my son, maa, which is why I must leave. Please bless me, so I can keep him alive. It’s a matter of a few years. I’ll be back. There is no reason why the son of the Roys should grow up in another household—Alaida, did you not hear…Get the cart, now.” Saroj’s words were sure and brief.
People stood crestfallen till the cart left the compound. The mother-in-law exploded right after, “Such audacity! Runs in her blood, surely from her family of Pandits! I told you all before, think before you accept a learned girl…it never goes well…now you see…how the words of this stupid woman proved true…such pride! That too of a bloody husband-eater! Go…I shall see what pleasure you get from that damned maiden home of yours!”
“Says she’ll be back! Did you hear that, maa?” Saroj’s elder brother-in-law finally braved out from indoors.
“Oh my! There you are, you bloody handful—waiting for a grab at your brother’s share, aren’t you? As long as I am alive, you’d better forget about it,” warned the old lady. Thus, somewhere, in secret, a soft filigree of affection was etched… This maya let the sun into the ravaged heart of the earthling. The clouds dispersed, and the sun smiled brightly, even though it dimmed again after a few moments, as a tuft of cloud tried to pull a shadow over its face. Ramhari chuckled, responding to his mother in his head, “How long do you think you’ll be around?” But his chuckle too was wiped away the next moment as the ominous crow cawed, from his side of the mansion—“kaha-kaha,” which sounded like, “haa haa” to his ears. An inexplicable fear left him trembling. The bird was probably facing north-east and lamented. Unknowingly, Ramhari’s left hand rose in the air, and his lips moved in a long sighing shush… “shoo…off…go!”
A bilingual writer, editor and translator, Bishnupriya Chowdhury was awarded the ALTA Emerging Translators’ Fellowship in 2025 and the Dhvani fellowship for translation in 2023. She translates long and short-form fiction, creative nonfiction, memoirs, and experimental-lyrical prose from Bengali to English. Her first translated novel, No One as Rano Biswas, was shortlisted for the Kala Literature Award 2024. She currently holds the position of Editor-in-Chief for The Antonym Collections, an independent publishing house dedicated to literary translation. She did her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida, USA. Bishnupriya lives in Pune with her humans, plants and books.
Shatadal Mitra (b. 1961) hails from Lavpur, Birbhum, and resides in Kolkata. A printing technician by profession, he is also the editor of Kathak, a literary magazine. A prolific writer, Mitra’s body of work spans poetry, short stories, and novels. His published poetry collections include Goriye Dilam Kotha, Likhi Nodijol, Munibaan, Pora Mrittika Harano Jonmo, Ratri Likhi Rodrer Aakhore, Bibhab Kobitaguchho, and Dhatrijol. His short story collections include Shaalgaachh/Atiloukik Akhyanguchho and Naren Bhandarir Jibonbrittantyo, Nishitala. He has also authored several novels, such as Maatir Durgo, Khanandihi, and Jeolbot othoba Neemjibon Kotha. Mitra’s literary contributions reflect a deep engagement with Bengali culture, history, and folklore, making him a distinctive voice in contemporary Bengali literature.
