Ratu Didi

Scene 1 – Country Home, Dawn
 
The first light spills across a courtyard of soft grass,
damp with night’s breath.
Bare feet press into it, wiping away the dust
before stooping under a low doorway.
The hut is small, its clay walls warm from yesterday’s sun,
its air steeped in the smell of soil and river wind.
 
From beyond, the Padma calls—its broad waters
a silver ribbon in the pale dawn.
Steamers wait at the bank,
their iron chains sunk deep into the muddy char.
Fishermen’s hands knot and pull,
voices mingling with the low hum of water against wood.
 
A sudden rush—people clambering aboard,
their movements urgent but familiar.
And there, among them—Ratu Didi.
Her red-and-white sari, frayed at the hem, swings with each step.
She turns briefly, a flash of dark eyes and the curve of a smile.
Beside her—Raju, Dulal, Khant, Mukunda,
Bonhari, Ershad, Broj, Murari, Chapa, Jasmin—
a litany of names that even time cannot erase.
 
Scene 2 – The Green Horizon
 
Our land was worn, the skin of it cracked by hunger.
Yet green still touched the horizon like a promise.
The fields lay sliced by rivers and narrow canals;
farmers’ plots marked with barbed wire by landlords.
 
Our own home stood on the wild, unkept char of the Padma,
hemmed in by mango and jackfruit groves whose scents
were thick enough to taste in the air.
People ran through those muddy fields—
bare feet splashing through knee-deep earth,
half-pants torn, torsos bare,
skin shining with sweat and clay.
 
We too ran, always toward Aslam’s village—
Ratu Didi at my side.
She was the girl from the house next door,
older than me,
but in spirit one of the gang—
her laughter as unguarded as any boy’s,
her sari catching on the wind like a banner.
 
Scene 3 – Days of Childhood Freedom
 
Those were days painted in falling red evenings and golden dawns.
Her hand in mine, we crossed the green fields under a sky so blue
it seemed to sing.
Her dark skin would flush with a deep, quiet pride
as if joy itself had settled over her like sunlight.
 
We loved the earth—rolled in its wetness,
covered ourselves in mud until we could no longer tell
where skin ended and soil began.
Sometimes we even tasted it,
as if to bind ourselves to the land with each grain.
 
And then, without warning, we would dash to the river—
leap into the Padma’s cool, endless embrace.
Its waters wrapped around us,
the current lifting us in a dance older than memory.
Evening would fall, crimson and gold,
and as we walked home dripping,
I would think—
I am returning to myself,
carrying the deep, damp scent of the earth in my skin.
 
Scene 4 – The Storm of ’46
 
Now the light shifts.
The screen fills with smoke and wind.
 
It was the year the storm came to our village—
a storm of men, fire, and hunger.
We left our golden soil and came to Calcutta,
as so many do—
hearts left behind, searching all their lives for
what cannot be carried.
 
That night—
the night I cannot forget,
the night I have tried to forget—
I slept against my mother, my face hidden.
Father crouched in the corner,
shaking as his store of harvest,
the pride of his year,
burned outside in the dark.
 
Ashraf’s men came.
They dragged sixteen-year-old Ratu Didi from the house.
Her red-bordered sari flashed once in the lamplight,
then was gone into the roaring night.
 
I was too young to understand.
Now I know.
I know what it means for a young girl
to be taken in such a world.
And I know the silence
that follows such knowledge.
 
Scene 5 – After Partition
 
We had new soil,
but it never smelled the same.
We became tenants of survival,
borrowing the ground beneath our feet.
 
Temples fell.
The houses of kings turned to dust.
And they came again—
the ones who had chased us before—
now also searching for food, shelter,
and a corner of earth to sleep on.
 
In Marjina Bibi’s courtyard they gathered—
and in the rooms beside mine came
Aslam, Ramiz Mia, Sayra Begum, Gulshan, Mokbul, Salem, Abdul, Khalek—
faces from a past I had half-buried.
 
Scene 6 – Recognition
 
One day, I walked into Marjina’s yard.
She was there—veiled in black.
When she saw me, she trembled.
Her hands lifted the veil slowly,
and her eyes met mine—
dark, steady, unblinking.
 
I saw her.
The woman who had been a river beneath my heart,
running silent for years under the stone of time.
Ratu Didi.
 
Scene 7 – The Reunion
 
She stood there, tears breaking free,
and in each tear I saw again our muddy fields,
the Padma’s tide,
the blaze of evening suns over green land.
 
She was my unreachable dawn,
the dream of my boyhood that life had scattered.
We were two stories,
once joined, then torn apart—
now standing together in the same courtyard,
bound by memory and loss.
 
Final Shot
 
The camera pulls away.
We stand under a dull Kolkata sky,
two exiles of the same soil.
Her tears fall into the dust.
In their shimmer,
for a moment,
I smell the Padma again.