A forgotten abyss…

In the midst of nowhere my scout freezes in commotion and sits on his haunches. He informs me of suspected movement on the other end of the river. We pull out a telescopic site. He points through the binoculars at some faint movement near a river-bend. We see about 4 women washing clothes by the bank of the river. We wait with baited breathe to ascertain their identity. In this uninhabited stretch of land, even a few ripples in the water feel like anomalies in a dream. We conclude it’s not them. But then who are they arrives the question. We tread that marshy land and approach the settlement. We find a hamlet of just three huts. The huts barely have walls — just makeshift thatched roofs. We see some children squatted in clusters like scattered marbles along with an adult. the children huddled around an open fire roasting wild seeds and some red ants. Smoke curled lazily, as if reluctant to leave. Our presence doesn't bother them. They are unhindered. They go about their business. Like still water that refuses to ripple when a stone lands. Or maybe it did make a difference, but fear froze their reactions. In the meanwhile my team cordons the hamlet observing the drill facing outwards. Me and Sr Officer initiate a conversation but to no avail. We try harder.
They don’t understand us. We don’t understand them.
So for a while we become two species miming across an invisible divide.
Two kinds of sadness looking at each other through glass. Both the languages get injured in this pursuit until the police representative from the state police is brought forth. He finds the tongue that connects both ends of this broken wire. He goes about asking them questions. They belong to the bhujia tribe. Originally, residents of some village they were displaced after a fight broke out within the communities. They were driven out in the dandakaranya like pebbles are thrown into a river. Nobody wanted them on their threshold.
So, in a land so forsaken that even Lord Rama’s feet may never have touched it, they set up camp like permanent outsiders.
Those who belong to no one end up anchoring themselves in places no one else will even bother to name.

How long have they been there? The constable asks them.
But I wondered — what is time to those who do not count it?

The answer is obvious. The man doesn’t know. Perhaps he does not know the unit to track the lapsed days. The Constable offers a digit. Asks them, “Maybe 2 years?” He doesn’t nod. What could two years mean to them? Only they can say. 

 We spot bows, arrows, slingshots — hunting gear — scattered nearby.
A fishing net made from wild bamboo lies tangled. They have no one. No work. They live off what they can forage from the forest.
Under the National Food Security Act, they’re entitled to monthly rations, which they collect from a relatively bigger nearby village.

I want to ask them what proof of identity they show when collecting the ration, but stop myself — it would feel like disadvantaging them of their last shred of dignity.

“How do you go to the other village?”
“Walk.”
“But the river is flooded.”
“Swim.”

“How far is it?”
“Far.”
“How far, exactly?”
The man looks into the undergrowth, where a spider wove a web with muscle memory.
“If we leave in the morning,” he says, “we reach by afternoon.”

Every answer is a plain Yes.

“Do bears come here?” — Yes.
“Tigers?” — Yes.
“Snakes?” — Yes.
“Do they bite?” — Yes.
“Do people die?” — Yes.

I spot the feet of a man sitting with the children.
His legs, from top to bottom, look like peeled bottle gourd — dried, layered, scabbed wounds.
We ask if he needs ointment.
“No” he says.

In the remaining two huts, we see 4–5 women — likely in their thirties and forties — half-naked, bare breasted.
Each woman is surrounded by children — 8 to 10 of them — lined up in increasing order of height.
Not one of these women seems to have had even a single year off in the last 8–10 years.
Behind each one, like ascending notes on a musical scale, stood children — aged in perfect intervals.
Like bar charts etched in time.
They had not had a year without childbirth.
Each year — a new child.
Their bodies are barely covered in thin, tattered sarees.
When a predator appears, a herd of deer freezes — these women, too, just stare at us blankly, without blinking.
The children hide behind them, sneaking curious glances at us.

Our team offers them what little snacks we have — biscuits, bhujia, candies.
The kids, like lifelong-beaten canines who still approach with their tails between their legs, come forward, sniffing the air.
They take the food and scamper back.

We tell the constable to let them know — if they ever need help, they can come to our camp.

As we leave, I say to my Sr Officer,
“Sir, what kind of life is this? There’s no purpose to it.”

He replies,
“Life has no purpose.
A cow, a buffalo, a flower, a sapling — none of them have a purpose.
Even your life has no purpose.
Someone assigned this task to you.
You turned it into your ‘purpose’ and came here.
In the 21st century, purpose is dictated by someone else.

We walk some distance.
I glance back at the huts.

To me, that scene looked like a broken verse from some forgotten scripture buried deep in the Dandakaranya forest…
A mute butterfly circling in the dark…
It has wings, but no sound.
There’s darkness, but no camouflage. The horror doesn’t scream — it whispers in absurdity, in forms, in silence, in stares, and in the uncanny ordinariness of despair.

Some villages are alive in government statistics.
But this settlement?
It doesn’t exist even there. Who caters to them? The answer is CRPF!