B I B L I O : A P R I L - J U N E 2 0 1 7 24 HANSDA SOWVENDRA SHEKHAR To Surju, With Love By Jaiwanti Dimri Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad, 2017, 104 pp., Rs 295 ISBN 978-93-86296-98-6 A Memsaab and me F I C T I O N ● ● ● ● s Jaiwanti Dimri herself says in the Introduction to this book, her English translation of her Hindi novella, Surjoo Ke Naam: “To Surju, With Love is not a verbatim translation of the Hindi novella; transcreation would better describe this endeavor.” According to the blurb on the back cover: “…this is the story of Sukurmani, a young woman who migrates to Bhutan with her four-year-old son, Surju, in search of livelihood, stability and peace. A Dumka tribal from Jharkhand, the one constant in her life is change as she crosses many borders.” I am a Santhal tribal living in Pakur, a place about 70 kilometres from Dumka, the second capital of the state of Jharkhand, in central India, so the words ‘Dumka’, ‘tribal’ and ‘Jharkhand’ immediately grabbed my attention. I am yet to figure out what ‘Dumka tribal’ means, but more on that later, because To Surju, With Love is more than just a study of identities. The actual text of the novella spans exactly 98 pages, but there are many worlds within this slim paperback. Written in the third person, we see the lives of Sukurmani and her son, Surju, through the eyes of Memsaab, an academic working in Bhutan. Sukurmani works as a domestic help in the bungalow allotted to Memsaab. At the beginning of the novella, the pronoun ‘her’, used for both Memsaab as well as Sukurmani, somewhat obfuscates the narrative. Perhaps this was deliberate, to draw a parallel between the characters of Memsaab and Sukurmani, two women inhabiting two different worlds. Memsaab has a nationality. She is an Indian citizen with a passport to prove it. She is educated and teaching at a college in Bhutan where the Government of India is helping to build the country’s infrastructure. Sukurmani does not have a nationality — or, rather, she does not have the necessary documents to prove her nationality. She is an Indian who moved to Bhutan from Mejguri in bordering Assam; however, as Memsaab finds out, Sukurmani’s roots were in Dumka in Jharkhand. Her name, too, isn’t her own. The name given to her at birth was Hujunmoi but she had changed it to Sukurmani, the name of her dead sister, which she entered in the register of India’s Border Roads Organisation, to be allowed to work as an unskilled labourer in Bhutan. As we walk into the lives of both women, we realise how much the intertwining of both characters was necessary. At one point, the author makes the similarity between the two women explicit: Memsaab, too, had ventured out to this land on her own and was put in a vulnerable position. Despite the obvious differences in the nature and quality of work, and the hierarchy, the challenges one confronts as a single woman are more or less identical. And in another passage, Dimri eloquently conveys the unmoored quality of lives of immigrant workers: All the vehicles had one or the other wheel missing, somewhere the front wheel, elsewhere the back one. Where all the wheels were intact, the main body would be missing or broken. Nonetheless, the vehicle of life moved on, even if not speedily or steadily. It is these people with fractured families and broken human ties who were building the dams and bridges between two nations, sometimes as the roads on which trucks and lorries carried goods from this side of the border to the other. As for the road, it always remained silent, never budging an inch from its place. Sukurmani lives the “fractured” or “broken” life like many other illegal immigrant workers. Her father lives far away in Assam, her husband was killed due to “himsa”, her sister was married and died at childbirth after “[getting] himsa”, and Sukurmani adopts her sister’s name and a fake identity in order to work so that she and her son might survive. The lives of immigrant women labourers are often beset with exploitation. Sukurmani is sexually abused twice — in both instances she had trusted the perpetrators who had promised her a better life. The first man was someone from Bihar.“That ssala Bihari! He tell me nicely, you are single, I also single, so let us live together. I can have proper food, you and Surju too can have proper food; so I go stay with him.” The second man was a Muslim, working as a carpenter in Drukshiring, who took on a fake Hindu identity to entice Sukurmani. Even after he abandons Sukurmani after impreg- nating her, she is hopeful that he will return for her. ‘He does not take any luggage, Memsaab.’ If not for her, at least he might come back for his things… ‘Memsaab, he comes if a boy is born,’ Sukurmani said more to reassure herself than her Memsaab. Dimri’s mentioning the commun- ities to which these two exploiters belonged is important. In areas around Dumka, whether in Jharkhand or the neighbouring Birbhum district in West Bengal, the sexual exploitation of Santhal women by non-Adivasi Bihari and Muslim men is quite rampant. Madhusree Mukerjee writes in her review of Sonia Faleiro’s reportage, 13 Men, based on the Birbhum gangrape of January 2014: Khaleque [the married, older Muslim man in a relationship with a younger Santhal woman] was not only twice Baby’s [the Santhal woman in question] age, he was also her employer – a detail that 13 Men neglects to mention. He is a mason, and Baby served as his helper. Given the obvious power imbalance in such a relationship, what [Faleiro] portrays as a valiant love reaching across social boundaries may have less to do with romance and more to do with misuse of this position. (http://himalmag.com/13-men- sonia-faleiro-book-review/) Despite her troubles, Sukurmani is hopeful for a better life. Memsaab, though, sees her as “a taciturn, self- effacing woman [who] just stood, her gaze fixed on the ground, wiping her hands on her saree, with Surju holding on to her tightly”, a woman who, with “many qualifiers attached to her womanhood: Dumka, tribal, poor, Darraga native, illegal migrant, wage earner, young, widow, single mother, pregnant”, does not have a place in the “larger plans and policies of nation states”. While Memsaab feared for Surju’s future – “Surju may one day enlist himself in the secret forces of the Bodos or the ULFA who had their camps in Bhutan’s forests” – Sukurmani was assured of finding “free schooling, free food and medical care” for Surju, herself, and her Muslim lover’s child in her womb from a “Bathar” – a Christian Brother – and his wife. Two terms in this novella intrigued me: ‘himsa’ and ‘Dumka tribal’. Sukurmani’s sister and husband were killed by “himsa”. This could either mean ‘violence’ or ‘jealousy’. ‘Hingsa’, in the local Bengali spoken in villages in and around Santhal Pargana, means jealousy, and jealousy often leads to violent behaviour. Hence, Sukurmani’s sister and husband might have fallen victim to violence born of jealousy. We are never really told. Next, ‘Dumka tribal’. “Memsaab, we people are Dumka,” Sukurmani tells Memsaab. We are also told, “Sukurmani was not a Bodo, but a Dumka from Jharkhand.” Dumka is a place, but there is no community called Dumka in Jharkhand. Perhaps, Sukurmani is a Santhal from Dumka. Sukurmani’s father is named Sarju Tutu. This ‘Tutu’ is, perhaps, ‘Tudu’, a common surname among the Santhals. Sukurmani’s real name, ‘Hujunmoi’, too, sounds like a corruption of the Santhal name, ‘Hudingmai’, meaning ‘the younger or youngest daughter’. According to the novella, Sukurmani speaks a language called Dumka. I haven’t heard of a language called Dumka, not even a dialect. Perhaps, Dimri erred in getting the community of Sukurmani wrong. Hence, Memsaab’s fear that Surju might join a Bodo secret force is unfounded, as Santhals in Assam are being killed by Bodo insurgents. It is unlikely that a Bodo secret force would allow a Santhal man in its ranks. Yet, Dimri might not be entirely wrong. Migration often changes people’s stories and histories. Sukurmani’s father Sarju Tutu – or Tudu – could have told people in Assam that he was a Santhal from Dumka, but it was only the name ‘Dumka’ that became his identity and even his language. Santhal and Santhali had no meaning anymore in Sarju Tutu’s new life in a new, faraway place. Listening to Memsaab worry about Sukurmani having multiple male sexual partners, one of her colleagues, Mrs. Mitra, tells her: “There is no need for you to worry about her. Dumka women do not have such inhibitions about their sexuality; they exult in it. Their point of view on sex differs from that of yours or mine.” This assertion of one’s identity and power among the Santhal women of Santhal Pargana is also mentioned in Nitya Rao’s book, Good Women Do Not Inherit Land: Politics of Land and Gender in India (Social Science Press, New Delhi, 2008 and 2012): “Women [of Santhal Pargana, of which Dumka is a part] pride themselves on retaining their own maiden names, a mark of their independent identity.” To Surju, With Love may be a slim book, but it raises questions on a range of issues — on migration, identity, gender, class, sexual exploitation, contract work and many more. Even though Dimri leaves some questions unanswered, her story demands, and deserves, our attention. n