WALLS
Lal Chakraborty

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21Ân ®gh˦u¡l£, 2003

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Part I: Chapter 4    

Our village was pretty large. The houses were situated in four clusters. One cluster was in the center. Important people like Banya lived in this cluster. Two clusters were on the east and west of the central one. On three sides of the village were the fields. The North side was woody. A stream also ran through those woods. The manor was situated in the Northern cluster beside the woods.  

Our walls had started on the southern side and proceeded to engulf the three clusters other than the northern one. The single straight-line characteristic of the wall was lost quite some time now and a mesh of walls had taken its place. The Northern cluster remained outside this mesh. The King did not take part in this new growing madness. As a result, he soon found himself quite alone. Even his daughter had betrayed him. It was known by everyone that the princess visited Banya every night in his room. They would hear her voice, her sobs, as I did, and his humble refusal. The King, as reported by many, would pace up and down his huge residence alone murmuring obscenity at the walls. When I visited the manor for the third time of my life, I found him very much sociable.  

I had gone to see the Princess at the bidding of Banya. I had a letter that needed to be delivered to her in person. After I came out of her room, I saw the King. He was drinking alone in the same table where I had previously seen him. He seemed to remember my face and asked me to sit down. I sat down after lots of hesitation. He even poured a glass for me and asked me to join him. After I had a sip or two he asked me about the wall. He asked me about Banya and what his share of the wall was. He asked me about length of the wall and what it encircled. When he heard that the village pub was surrounded by the walls in such a zigzag fashion that you needed to solve the maze problem to get to it, he laughed.  

"So you made it impossible for people without brains to reach the pub. Oh what a good thing to do. I am sure Banya has never had his drink over there."  

When I left the King, I was a little sad. He looked so weak and fragile. All his people were gone. Only a few old men who were too old to start a new life remained. I went back to see him often.  

After Banya occupied the first room, there was a scramble for rooms and lucky few were able to make one quickly for them. But making a room required help from many and was also time consuming. These people one day started claiming portions of the wall for themselves with the idea that someday in the future they would build a room using that part of the wall.  

Parisan was one of the first to make this claim. One day he took a chalk and wrote, across a good twenty feet, the words - ‘Reserved for Parisan" and sat their guarding the writing on his wall. What followed after that was sheer madness. Every person rose up to claim their portion of the wall and since the stretch of walls was not sufficient for everyone, a great deal of commotion ensued. There were fistfights and even spilling of blood. At the end of the day some returned home after losing a battle for possession and others with a sense of achievement.    

Groups were formed between friends so that they could guard and protect the property. People watched in turns afraid that if they vacated the place, then, next morning, the writing on the wall might change.  

Banya had kept himself totally out of this fight. He had had his room before everyone else and he showed little interest in acquiring anyone else's.

"The snake is just waiting for an opportunity and then he will strike straight in the eyes of the unsuspecting", Miro loved pictorial imaginative description of dull reality and she turned out to be correct.  

Banya one night went to the house of Parisan. I never knew what he discussed with the boy but the next morning I saw the writing on Parisan’s wall had changed. "Reserved for Banya."

This repeated over and over again until Banya without any confrontation had acquired half the stretch of the walls. What was more, he even had others guard his property with as much zeal as they guarded their own.