The scythe

The marshland of Sunderbans is quite popular throughout the nation. The landscape is infested with tigers as well. The mud houses Lined inside the village seemed like a sea of people, waiting to meet their loved ones. The forest was infested with creatures of all kinds. The tigers were the kings, however. The tigresses? They were queens of the jungle. But they were not plenty though. They were the queens of their regions, ruling like Sundari. The tigress was the ruler of the forest. She had control over whatever happened in the village. The first female village chief she was, after all.

Sundari was the chieftain’s daughter, and that too the only one at that. Sundari’s father, Rukdeo, had trained his daughter like a boy. Had he not wished for a son after all? However, God had granted him a daughter. He looked at her like the son he never had. It was the first half of the eighteenth century. The country was still in the clutches of the British invaders. All of the nation was being brought under control. The Munda tribe needed an heir after all. Rukdeo Munda had been a brave warrior in his prime. No one could defeat him when it came to lathi.

Surprisingly, his daughter had inherited this skill of his. At the early age of two, in times when women were hardly allowed to learn the art of wielding a lathi, Sundari had learnt the craft quite quickly. Her father also proceeded to teach his daughter how to wield a lathi, when she should have been learning how to cook. The women of the village suggested him to teach his daughter household chores. Otherwise, who would wed her? Fifteen years later, Sundari was now a dashing, brazen eighteen-year-old.

Her brown skin would glow in the bright sunlight, the light reflecting on her sharp countenance. Sundari was not what you would typically classify as beautiful. Her almond-shaped eyes were beautiful, yet fierce. There was a cold, calm fire in her eyes. The girl had beautiful features, with a sharp nose and breasts heavy with the pride of being the only warrior woman in the village. Her black hair reached her shoulders. The sleek hairline was everything the girls in the village could die for. Sundari had learnt a little bit of English, with whatever she could hear from the interaction between the English supervisor, Captain Dickinson and his footmen.

Robert Dickinson was a man of taste. Primarily in antiques and administration. Dickinson had moved into a lavish mansion in the east of the village, Ulihatu. He was a connoisseur of everything related to art and also liked to inflict pain upon the inhabitants of the region. He would flog them with his cane upon the slightest inconvenience. In 1875, the uproar of the Sepoy Mutiny crashed across the shores of the village in a tiny corner of undivided Bengal too. Sundari had taken the course of the revolution into her flowery yet strong arms.

They fought back with their arrows, fighting head-to-head against the British invaders. The East India Company wanted to send over the Munda men to clear the forest areas. The areas would later serve as the grounds for factories and industries. The picture of Industrial England was getting reflected in the colonies now. Sundari stood with a scythe in her hand, fighting against the invaders.

The fight ended in her death at the hands of the bullets. The other soldiers were blown away by the canons of the Britishers. Women were dragged through the dusty roads, their tattered cloth pieces sticking to the road’s dust. They were plundered after the defeat of the Shundas, while their land got captured.

The battleground had turned red from all the fighting and conflict. The remaining people were transferred from the land to a newly demarcated plot of land. Camps had been set up, where the devastated men and women were enslaved. Women were impregnated forcibly, and the children born out of the forced union were kept forcibly with the forces of Britishers. The mothers were separated from their children. In such an instance, Sundari had stabbed herself to death in order to avoid being violated by the Britishers.

As she lay in a pool of blood , she whispered , ‘ I won!’…

~Riddhima Sen~

Writer’s Introduction : Riddhima Sen is currently pursuing a Masters degree in comparative literature at Jadavpur University . She has self published twenty three solo books and has participated in thirty three anthologies so far .