Dr. Panda's Voice

As I wait for the return bus to Baripada, my home town, the large hoarding of some opera party on the other side of the road catches my attention. In the past ten days or so I have found enough time to watch it. Had it not been there, I think the long waiting would have been dull and boaring. Some sort of bond developed between us. As our association grew I pondered over its meaning which I did not know then. I went deeper and deeper into its meaning, the message the characters might have depicted and a lot more.
"SID MENA SRIMATI, GOCHHAY MENA MALATI", the name of the drama, being in the local Santali language, apart from being obscure, generated some mystery and wonder too. I felt there is always a joy that goes with ignorance. Probably because it offers one with plenty of opportunities to imagine. As for its meaning, my imagination suggested and then rejected a number of options. I kept some of them reserved for further examination. Yet I kept wondering what it could mean.
The commercial value of such advertisements obviously lie in the power of the title to appeal to one's imagination. In the interior tribal dominated villages where such operas are staged, people are mostly illiterate without much interaction with the world outside their villages. Though lately things have started changing fast, yet these village people are essentially a secluded lot with a world of their own. I was going there to teach the children of these villages, of innocence, of imaginative exellence.
But the under-current of human feeling, the ability to go deep into one's heart, the sense of understanding hidden behind these seemingly ignorant faces come to the fore once the right cord is struk. One such occasion is coming of these opera parties. First, words go around about the advent of a thing they have learnt to love without an actual encounter. This is the time of waiting which allows them to find a workable shape of the yet to be enacted drama. They gether as much vital prior information about the story which simply comes pouring in. Children yet to enter into their teen, the young we are for each others, poor labourers tired after years of hard work and old men preparing to bid good-bye must have their own version of the interpretation of the title of the drama.
But I firmly believe that they all have one thing in common there runs a pathos alongside the jubilation which would make them burst into tears. As if something so beautiful, so close, so reachable has gone too far away to be beyond their reach. My feeling could be due to my own disturbed state.
The two lines,'SID MENA SRIMATI' and 'GOCHHAY MENA MALATI' written closely one below the other have the same closeness as that of their meaning. It symbolises the closeness of human hearts irrespective of all differences that inspires imagination.
I guessed the two leading characters in the play, Srimati and Malati must have represented two halves of one heart that only unconditional love can bind together. They represent two voices arising deep from the sanctum sanctorum of two temples to combine into one god, the god of love, the god of heart, the god of friendship, the god of oneness to proclaim the victory of love.
The ordinary looking public must have known it well in advance or how else to explain people thronging in to watch it enacted live? In fact as I imagine they just don't go, they long to go. They just don't see it, they see it with suspended breath, with intense speculation. I imagine they know what the story is going to unfold into.
I imagine the two voices getting distant and more distant from each other until they are heard only like a gentle sob. In her seclusion Malati must be sobbing in a fading voice,"sid mena Srimati" and repeating it over and over again interspersed with sobbing that makes one's heart throb. In the same vain the pathos in Srimati's wailing is carried to your heart,"gochhay mena Malati, gochhay mena Malati----".
There was a tree covered with beautiful flowers. Srimati had climbed up the tree to pluck flowers. The blooming flowers decorated her. In the eyes of Malati she was beauty personified. She looked more beautiful than ever. Malati urged her to collect more and more. Malati spread a piece of cloth tied at one end to her waist. Malati was dancing. There was a rythm in her steps. She collected the flowers with great care because they were the sign of love that Srimati was showering on her. It was Malati to collect.
The fun should have continued for ever. But it was not to be. Their hope was dashed, their dreams shattered. Somehow someday somebody had played a cruel trick.
I don't know what happened in the end. Probably I will never know. I have left the school for good. A long story has come to an abrupt end. I will no more be waiting there under the scorching sun for the bus back home. I will miss my students as much as Malati missed Srimati.