The Counting Sisters and Other Stories

Amar Kanwar

I 
The Counting Sisters
    There are six women who work together and one woman who works on her own. The six call them themselves The Counting Sisters. The one alone is known as The One Alone. The six women are of different ages, from thirty five to seventy years old. They are good friends and look after each other. What is common between them is that they are all ‘twice displaced’ – meaning they have been forcibly removed from their lands twice, once by the government and once by corporations. Each of them has a similar story. They once lived by the forest on the hill slope. The government built a dam, the forest was submerged, and they had to shift.

    They were given land adjacent to the reservoir. They began farming again and lived there for almost ten years before they were evicted again – this time for the factory. A new ‘in between’ piece of land was found near the main highway and an ‘illegal’ village was reconstructed. Farmers became migrants and a squatter village, a smaller copy of the original, slowly laid roots for the second time in four decades. It has a total population of about 60 people including children. It has three lanes with neat but small mud houses. The six women now live in the same lane. 

    The Counting Sisters sing very well. They rarely sing together though. It is said that when they do sing together the clouds converge over them. Everyone in the shadow of this momentary twilight cannot but weep as they sing. This weeping often becomes a rhythm to their song. The sisters are mourners. They are called all over the state to sing whenever there is a death. They usually go alone. It’s only when there is a massacre do they all travel to the location and sing together. Almost as a rule, before they sing, before they go to the homes and families of the dead, they go to the scene of the killing first and stay there for a short while. 

    The Counting Sisters look just like anyone else. They cook, farm, and go to the market just like others. Perhaps the oldest and the youngest are a bit odd. The oldest one has a quirky sense of humour. Often when she sees a child in a village she suddenly bends down low to the ground and imitates a charging animal and chases the child. Children get terrified and run from her in panic. Then she collapses on the ground in a fit of laughter. The children get perplexed and then intrigued. They like to follow her around, but at a safe distance. The youngest of The Counting Sisters has a habit of taking a stick and drawing in the mud when she talks. Like some people gesticulate with their hands while talking, she makes lines and marks as if illustrating her words as she talks. When she goes away she often leaves a map of her words in the dust, near where her feet were. 

    The Counting Sisters keep a count of every person killed or disappeared. They keep a track of every name, address, date and photograph. They have become known all over the state, as people come to them whenever there is a killing or a disappearance. They seem to have a huge invisible web of networks. They even know the wives and mothers of policemen. People keep giving them information now they also come for advice. Over time they have become experts in calculating compensations, rate of bank interests and all such complicated financial transactions. They know the moneylenders, the value of land, price of the ore and the margins of profit. Most of the time of course, they sing. They sing for the dead and of the dead. The Counting Sisters have several notebooks. There is a notebook for every village and different notebooks for nomads and single wanderers. They don’t write page by page but column by column. Each column is for a family or a person, each column is side by side. Each column travels horizontally across the pages. If a book ends, the column continues on to the next book.

II 
The One Alone 
    The One Alone is quite silent and does not talk much. She looks just like everyone else though if you look carefully you’ll see she has very strong arms and shoulders. She has a bad temper and a powerful memory. If The Counting Sisters count the dead, she counts the living. Maybe it is more accurate to say that she wanders, collecting her witnesses. Each witness presents her with a testimony, which she memorises completely and never forgets. She is special because she knows many languages, even those without scripts, without words. She also understands languages that are not spoken. Which is why she collects testimonies that you would normally never find. She seems full of sorrow but once you get to know her she isn’t always so sad. She will tell you that a powerful memory like hers has many uses but quite a few problems as well. Some things never leave her mind and trouble her forever. But then she can also remember flowers. She knows which flower grows where. Which is why Kedar, her mother’s brother, who is just a few years older than her, is always asking for her. 

III 
Kedar 
    Kedar is a farmer. His shoulders are a bit inclined to the side, and he has a darkness about him that is hard to understand or forget. Every conversation that he has with you is constructed like a map. You begin on the outside and once you are inside the route is slowly defined. The brick from the temple wall had fallen. It was a sign of catastrophe. He turns most conversations in one particular direction. Repeatedly he announces the end of the world, though without despondence or melodrama. His descriptions are stunningly accurate and intense. His bare body burnt to the core under the sun, the darkness of his skin is neither black nor brown. His endless whisper lists the reasons for the disaster. 

    When Kedar lost his land to the sponge iron factory his family was compensated with another plot of land in another district. It didn’t farm as well but the brothers and their families moved and resettled. Kedar somehow could not start life again. He returned in a few years. He took a job as a manual worker in the sponge iron factory. It was the same factory that had displaced him. His old village, now non-existent lay within the premises of the factory. White boundary walls expanded in concentric circles. The factory had acquired far more land than it needed. Kedar’s new job was to carry factory waste from one point to another, everyday. His real skill though, was in his knowledge of the flowers of plants, the barks of trees and the leaves of secret herbs. He had leaves that if chewed could make sugar taste like saw dust, the juice of flower petals that could cure blindness and bark paste that could heal lower back pain. That tree, which he knew as a child, was just outside the factory wall. He had an injury in his lower back while working in the factory. The sap from the tree still eased the pain. 

    Everyone inside the factory was ill or had an injury. All the supervisors and officers were ill. Their wives were ill too. In a few months he began to heal them with his local herbs and medicines. An unspoken deal with the officers emerged. He got a salary as a manual worker, his attendance was marked everyday but he was set free to wander in the small patch of forest that still survived. But he often needed The One Alone and her powerful memory. She was not always easy to find. She would be gone for months, wandering, collecting, listening. It was obvious that she was searching for something.

IV 
The Fluorescent Meadow 
    There is a hill with a dense forest all around its slopes. From a distance it looks like any old hill but on top the hill flattens into a plateau. It is very strange how a hill could look curved from a distance but become flat from up close. The flatness of the top is intriguing. At times it is perfectly flat like a table, and then it slopes down as if in a large spiral. As the incline increases the horizon disappears and it’s only the sky and the flat ground of the hilltop that seem to exist. 

    On top of the hill, but in the centre of its plateau is a huge depression filled with grass. At night the grass glows like a fluorescent meadow. The brightness of the glow increases as the wind becomes still. There is a track that goes up this hill. At the point where the track begins to slope upwards is a colony of anthills. The anthills are so high that they look like trees. Whenever you go near the anthills you can smell rice cooking. The smell of the rice cooking is so strong that you can almost hear the water boiling. Almost every day the aroma seems different as if the variety of rice were changing. In the centre of the anthills, by the side of the track is an old man who lives alone in a little house. He is the watchman of the track, the eternal protector. His eyes are sharp and mesmerising. It is said that his eyes can see equally well at night as in the daylight.

V 
The Man and the Newspaper 
    There is a man with a newspaper who keeps walking and reading. Down the bridge and across the fields, past the tree, by the seashore, near the temple and then back on the main road again. He always keeps walking and reading, from one city to the other, cutting through districts, flood plains and hill ranges. Nobody has seen him stop. He walks and reads the newspaper. He takes short comfortable steps as he weaves through stones, grass, traffic and even crowds. 

    He never sits down, never stops walking and never stops reading. He reads every corner of the paper and never looks up. Everyone has seen him but almost no one has spoken to him, they don’t know why he walks, why he never looks up and why he keeps reading the same newspaper over and over again.

VI 
Time
    There are twins who talk in the strangest of ways. They are the youngest in a large family and are obviously respected for their unique ability. They seem like two trains traveling at great speed on the same track but coming at each other from opposite directions. One talks of the past and comes forward in time, the other describes the future and retreats towards the present. They talk simultaneously and if they agree they may even come with you for a day or two. You can take the twins to any location of your choice. To the port entrance, where six thousand trucks filled with ore are parked every day. To float quietly in a boat, above a submerged forest. To the sofa, in the reception hall of the judge’s chambers. To a bank. To the gate of a police station.


VII 
The Boys, the Girl and the Teacher
    There is a trade unionist’s son who doesn’t want to join the trade union and there is a policeman’s son who doesn’t want to become a policeman. The trade unionist’s son loves his motorcycle and cleans it very carefully before he goes for a ride and after he returns from a ride. The policeman’s son loves mobile phones. Somehow he gets a new one every two months. Both are friends, both are exceptionally intelligent and are waiting for the right opportunity. 

    There is a young girl, the youngest of a very large family. The family is so large that they have forgotten her existence. For almost all of the first 12 years of her life she sat by the seashore watching the fishermen go out into the sea. She loves to swim and is an expert at floating. Since nobody ever notices her she is also quite oblivious of others. She slips into the sea everyday, swims up ahead and floats for hours, letting the waves take her where they want to. 

    There is a young teacher who went to school one day and realised to her horror that all the children had suddenly forgotten the alphabet. They looked uncomfortable, frozen and at a complete loss. They had their pens and pencils but just didn’t know how to write. 

VIII 
Somu
    Somu Nsn is very often so drunk that when he tries to talk, words do not come out of his mouth. Then he gets embarrassed and tries to speak again. Again words do not appear. He tries harder to talk but the effort slides into his arms. His arms rise up in the air and sway as if they were trying to say something. He is so drunk that his arms also do not obey him. Shoulder to elbow. Elbow to hand. All fly in different directions. He gets even more embarrassed and smiles for forgiveness. 

    When Somu Nsn’s land was taken, the company offered him Rupees One lakh seventy thousand in compensation. To take the money he had to go to a bank in another city. Then to a government office to get a paper signed before the compensation could be released. He had to pay a bribe to get the paper. The government clerk, while making his documents asked him his name. Somu replied Somu. The clerk said Give Your Full Name. Somu replied that Somu was his only name. The clerk said that this was not possible. He had to have a surname. Somu said he didn’t have a surname. The clerk said he couldn’t give him the paper unless he had a surname. Somu stared silently at the clerk. The clerk felt sorry for Somu and filled up the form and gave him a new surname. No Sur Name. So Somu became Somu Nsn. Somu Nsn paid the bribe, took the paper to the bank and got his compensation. Ever since then Somu Nsn drinks through the day, every day. 

IX 
Hands 
    The road runs parallel to the sea but the bridge clearly existed before the road. A man was standing chest deep in the water by the riverbank, continuously splashing water on his hands and body. His eyes were focused on his hands and on the water. He kept washing his hands all day, a continuous rhythmic desperate splashing. It was obvious that he was scared. His panic was like an anxious electric charge. People would stop and stare or whisper to each other as they walked by. What had he done? What had he seen? What was it that he had walked away from? What was it that he was to return to? Were there trees in his garden? Is everybody looking for him? Will he stop washing his hands when the sun sets? What was his name, where did he stay? Will he keep standing in the river, washing his hands, even in the dark, through the night? 

X 
Nidhan’s House 
    Occasionally The One Alone would go to meet Nidhan. Nidhan’s house was by the paddy fields, a little away from the village. It was here that she would rest and talk. It was here that she would sometimes leave behind the evidence of her memory’s eye.

XI 
The Song of The Counting Sisters 
    One day, early in the morning the police arrested The Counting Sisters. Is it a crime to mourn the dead? Is it a crime to count the disappeared? The sisters asked. The constables didn’t reply. They arrested them without a word and put them in a large prison filled with many people. No charge sheet was filed. The Counting Sisters were furious. They kept asking for an explanation but received nothing but silence in return. Since they were quite famous and loved by all, the other prisoners began to angrily question the jail officials. This made the policemen a bit nervous. As night fell the guards took up their usual positions, the prisoners were locked back in their cells, the courtyard was finally empty and the silence of the walls took over. When everyone was about to sleep, all of a sudden The Counting Sisters began to sing. They first sang about the sorrow of The One Alone, then about the man with the newspaper, the anthills and the old watchman, the life of the man in the water, then about the fisher folk and the farmers, about Nidhan’s house, about Kedar’s catastrophe and about the daily life of the people of Orissa. 

    They sang through the night and the next day and for days after until the news spread and people came from all over to listen to them even if it were through the prison walls and windows. It was indeed quite a sight, as hundreds of people sat all around the prison listening and weeping and waiting for The Counting Sisters to be free again.

Noted Film Maker Amar Kanwar shared the following stories with the audience at Lohia Academy in his 9th Ashok Babu Memorial Lecture on 10th January,2012.