Oh My Love!
The sky brimmed with sunlight. A narrow footpath split the field. From dry rat-holes snakes slid out and sank into the pond. It did not feel like spring at all. A vicious heat turned my head to bees. I was returning after looking upon the corpse of Kanta Halui. There are more in this village. They are dropping one after another. Some fifty starved have already gone. Another thirty or so are next to dead—half-dead from hunger and thirst. Kanta Halui’s age lay somewhere between sixty and seventy—impossible to tell exactly. The very first day I came here I had seen him: the old man searching for something in the pond of Matichak. My friend Partha is the officer at the B.D.O. office. Born and bred Calcutta boy. A job so far from home has made him home-sick and house-bound. I had run to this back-of-beyond for a few days to stand guard over his loneliness. From the moment I arrived I began to grasp a face of my country I had never seen before; and had Partha not summoned me, perhaps I...