Peace in Chandauli

For one last time, Janaki sang Purushotam’s favourite aalaap before stepping into the pyre with him … theirs became a memoir of everlasting love, immortalized on the ghats of the river. The fire embraced them, spewing ash and embers into the sky.

The bugles and trumpets at Chandauli stopped as the Udon chief announced that he had decided to ‘make peace’. Young Manick’s face fell. His stable and his horses no longer belonged to him. His father’s reputation was tarnished. The old man was now labeled a traitor who would be hung to death at dawn. Patluram woke up to a world without friends. They had become prisoners of war. Samaira was homeless, for her little piece of land was now occupied by the Udon army. Ahmad was rendered disabled and disfigured for life. The Udon men had taken away his wife and daughter. Old woman Kashibai continued to mind her own business … turning the pottery wheel monotonously as her house was being burnt to ashes by a delighted mob. From a hiding place in the forest, a displaced and orphaned Afsaana saw the Busara family wearing her clothes and living in what was earlier her house. “He slept peacefully, one last time”, brave little Kanhaiya’s mother wept to the broken walls.

Peace for the Chandauli tribe meant passivity … to live as a wallflower and witness their own life become a spectacle. It was about gathering the leftover pieces as the oppressors looted everything the tribe owned.

The peace they had embraced was a result of not fighting the battles that mattered the most.

As the sky turned dark, the streets of Chandauli echoed an eerie silence, the drumbeat of death … of voice and dreams, of freedom and smiles, of health and livelihood, of wealth and prosperity, of love and belonging. Just like love, there were different kinds of death, and every one of them led to peace, of the everlasting kind.