6 PADMABATI OF THE OCEANS Unfreedom and belonging in Syed Alaol’s Padmabati Swati Moitra 1 In an episode titled ‘Pirates, or the Harmads’ in Nurunneha and the Tale of the Grave (henceforth, Nurunneha), a ballad from eastern Bengal, pirates terrorise the humble villagers of Rangdia in the Noakhali-Chittagong coast of present-day Bangladesh. The so-called ballads of eastern Bengal were likely composed in the seventeenth- eighteenth centuries. They were compiled by folklorists such as Dineshchandra Sen in the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries as the purbabanga geetikas (ballads of eastern Bengal). These ballads often “followed the lives of a varied collection of anti-heroes and anti-heroines such as sailors, soldiers, tribal headmen, merchants, landlords, gypsies, mendicants, fishermen, robbers and women” and engaged with the “economic life” of the people (Roy, 2011: 122). In Nurunneha, the fearsome pirates indulge in unscrupulous looting and marauding while the terrified boatmen tremble: At Ujantek’s turn, o, at Ujantek’s turn, Dread pirates lie in wait for the sailors’ return. As merchants come home from foreign shores, The merchant flags on their masts do soar. Then Harmads pounce, from their spot nearby, Their fast-moving ships like birds do fly! (Sen, 1932: 114) 2 Not only do the pirates drown the boats and abduct the sailors, but they also raid Rangdia, loot the villagers, and abduct the eponymous Nurunneha herself. ‘Harmad’, a term used to refer to Portuguese sailors, is used interchangeably with ‘pirates’ (jaladashyu) in the ballad. In another ballad titled Nasar Malum, Magh or Arakanese pirates visit the humble home of the peasant Gafur, to look for riches left behind while fleeing the Mughals (see Sen, 1930: 32). Nasar, the protagonist, is DOI: 10.4324/9781003300939-9