Sea Dreaming

Ramsagar is the largest man-made lake in Bangladesh

 I

They’re slightly odd, those human choices: we’ll survey the scene in front of us much more readily than we’ll cast our minds inwards; we’ll champion the future while neglecting the history which cooked it; we’ll focus on the upwards achievements more than those of the downwards variety. Yes, in the human sphere most often it’s the sky which rules the ground.

We know the first person on the moon for example – conspiracy theories aside – but not the one who reached the greatest ocean depth and resurfaced to tell of the ride. We know the planets – can name several of the stars and Everest, but hardly the trenches where the seafloor falls away just as remarkably. While we’ve barely discovered the fish and life forms of the great depths, is what I’m saying, we’re pondering if there’s bacterial life on Mars. We tend to look up.

Architects and engineers are hardly free from the fever: forever they conspire to construct taller towers to support longer spires. We celebrate that. We reproduce pencil-tall building images – now on Instagram, once on postcards. But which building has the deepest basement? Which tree has the deepest roots?

Yet in Dinajpur there’s a series of impressive constructions of the downwards type to challenge the human predilection for heights. The grandest of them all lies in village Tejpur.

The start of evening catches Ramsagar tank in Dinajpur, Bangladesh.

II

The rhesus macaque at Ramsagar.

It’s slightly odd, there’s a monkey in that tree and you’d hardly expect to see him here. Friend says, “Maybe he escaped from his cage?” I say, “Maybe he’s a rhesus macaque?” But the Assam macaque looks similar and come to think of it, maybe he’s a she? But for the picnickers to enjoy there’s a half-zoo over the long mound of grass-covered tailings to the right, so friend’s cage-escape theory holds some merit.

To the left is a large rectangle of water. Yes, you’ve guessed it: we’ve reached Ramsagar. It’s the most famous of Dinajpur’s seven historical tanks and the largest manmade lake in Bangladesh. It has a water surface area of 77.90 acres – not to be sneezed at. Certainly those who dug it out by hand couldn’t have taken it lightly. “Nobody knows its depth,” friend says.

As I understand it, convention is that a monkey on a branch doesn’t look inward in quite the contemplative way a human can. They may be better attuned than us to hunger, exhaustion or thirst. Convention is that a monkey, regardless of location, can’t be expected to think in any historical way – which is not to say he doesn’t know where he was on the day before yesterday.

Yet there’s one thing that monkey does: in equal measure he looks all around. You can watch him as he shifts attention from further up the branch to across the water, from the treetop to the ground.

Would the human perspective be altered if we spent greater hours climbing trees? Would the imagination of “progress” be aimed equally at downward feats?

The water of Ramsagar still lives up to its crystal-clear reputation.

  

III

There’s a sign which says the water body was excavated by the local king Raja Ramnath in the mid-eighteenth century; though I have doubts that monarchs personally spent much time with a shovel in hand. It’d be interesting to know how many hundreds or thousands of people were involved in Ramsagar’s excavation.

The sign says construction continued for five years – presumably at its peak during winter months and resting for the monsoon, if contemporary pond construction methods are anything to go by. And when it was finally done, the tank that by the mid-twentieth century was renowned for fishing, boating and picnics, it took the name Ramsagar – the Sea of Ram.

Of course this “Ram” refers to Raja Ramnath while the “sagar” is most commonly attributed to its impressive size. But couldn’t it be, just as easily, that the “sea” title reflects the sweat and effort of the workers having dug the entirety of seventy-seven plus acres… enough to make the tailing-hillock to hide the half-zoo from which the monkey escaped his cage?

Surely if you’d been involved in digging out even one acre by hand you’d be calling the result a “sea” too. Matasagar, Anandasagar, Suksagar… all seven tanks are “seas.”

And then, when it was finally complete, did Raja Ramnath say, “Okay, that’s one down and only another six to go?” I’m taking the liberty to assume Ramsagar came first – but being the largest it might rather have come last.

But what was it exactly that induced him to consider such a flurry of downwards construction? He had a palace. He completed Kantaji Temple. It’s not as if he had an aversion to buildings. The answer is simple: water. People needed clean, pure drinking water.

But of course I’m not suggesting that the escapee macaque appreciates any of that.

Ramsagar was constructed in the mid-eighteenth century by local king, Raja Ramnath of Dinajpur.

IV

Nowadays Ramsagar is a National Park, an oasis for Dinajpuris and people from beyond. The fresh air, with water yet clear enough to easily spot a hand-sized crab, Ramsagar is for family and friends; the snack stalls and tea stalls are straight ahead don’t worry, just up there by the tank’s far end. 

If you take the time to soak in the scene it’s quite the place to be inspiring – for while the parkland beauty must keep us looking out, the serenity is enduring enough to coax a looking-in. And while the future is, as always, ever beckoning, you’ll forget that, at last, to consider the magnificent achievement of the past. In that place the upwards focus of many-a-where holds no sway, not against the downwards accomplishment of Raja Ramnath’s day.

Yes, at Ramsagar it’s the ground that rules the sky, capturing indeed its very reflection. Over chotpoti and a cup of tea you’ll realise that they’re slightly odd, those usual choices of human perception.

And if you’ve travelled up from Dhaka in this day and age, you’re surely as delighted as that monkey who escaped his cage. So then: What’s the tallest building in Dinajpur town? The answer: “Who cares? Look not up, but down.”

Ramsagar: a wonder construction of the "downwards" variety.

The Spirit of Madhabkunda

Madhabkunda waterfall, Barlekha, Moulvibazar.

Madhabkunda Falls.

“Shhh! There need be silence,” she says, “A white chicken will meet its death.”

If there is any kind of water-spirit lingering beneath Barlekha’s renowned Madhabkunda waterfall in Moulvibazar District, what kind of spirit would she be? The gentle falls and cool, dark pool certainly look like a place where a spirit might dwell.

Perhaps she’s benign and helpful, a sort of Bengali pari related to the ones people talk of that sometimes clean the house during the night. Perhaps she’s mischievous like a prai of the old Khasi belief. Prais make people sick. Do you think the Madhabkunda spirit might dance mystically to the rhythm of water falling, in secret, long after the crowds have gone home – under the wild, full moon’s charms?

Such a spirit would know things. Ancient local knowledge tells, for example, that where lightning touches the ground from stormy sky the earth reached is tainted. To the words of a reem, in an old Khasi ceremony, a sacrifice is needed to heal such a place. “A white chicken will meet its death,” she says.

In Madhbob Kundo Punjee, the Khasi village across the stream adjacent to the falls, the villagers can vaguely speak of it. But they’ve forgotten their old ritual’s words. They’re 50-50 Catholic Presbyterian now.

The gate to Madhabkunda Eco-park.

“Roll up! Roll up!” she says. “Get your clothes, plastic dolls, toys, chip packets and chanachur! Stock up on cold drinks or bottled water – my waterfall’s charms might make you thirsty. Fried snacks can satisfy, souvenirs bring joy!” The spirit of Madhabkunda is not shy of modernity.

The pathway to the falls.

She allows the bonanza bazaar noise before the gate. She knows the worth of a waterfall to city-dwellers in a flat and crowded land. She values marketing, surely.

And the buses and the hired CNGs duly arrive, carting tourists in from the highway through the sculpted rounded landscape of tea garden hills – families, college winter picnicians, elderly, young, everyone... The spirit of Madhabkunda spies as passengers queue along bus aisles in anticipation of that first step into the air of the car park. “Let them eat and shop on their way to the ticket window,” she says. Let beauty, as it does, attract all comers.

She’s allowed them a pointed, triangular gateway of red brick – with iron gates to be locked each evening. Across the gateway is written in Bengali “Forest Division. Madhabkunda Eco Park.” The ticket collector sits on a stool just inside.

The spirit of Madhabkunda is hardly an environmental zealot unaware of the need for paved paths, metal railings and revenue. She must be of the spirit type to hear the rattle of currency in the prefix “eco”. The spirit consumes the convenience of rotundas and cafes – she calculates the contribution of painted stork statues. This spirit has seen the rise of this country’s middle class joy seeker – and she’s joined them.

A kitchen in Madhab Kundo Punjee.

She’s watching too – she must be – as the kettle boils on an old wood-fired stove in a Khasi kitchen on the other side of things, a room in smoke-stained blue that feels like it belongs in the snowy, dark winter of some faded Taiwanese hill town.

In the punjee.

She’s listening I imagine, further uphill as I speak to Wanbor Longdohgiri, the 32-year-old Montri – the headman of his village. He’s been the Montri for two and a half years now. His older brother held the post for nine before he retired. Another villager was then elected but it didn’t work out. So they chose him. “It’s like the work of ten people,” he says.

Montri Wanbor’s life is filled with betel business and minor village concern now. There are no land disputes in Madhob Kundo Punjee and he’s yet to face anything major – but they’re hoping for that bridge across the river which their MP was talking about last year, because at the moment everything has to be hauled in by hand – stone-hopping across the stream.

“Take a raw chicken egg,” she says. “Put rice grains upon it and cut it open in a dash. Then let it fall on that leaf they call the sli lemet.” The Spirit of Madhabkunda must remember the old healing.

Montri Wanbor "looking wise".

“If my father was alive he could do it,” says Montri Wanbor. “From the way the egg falls on the leaf he could read the problem.” If it was a normal sickness the efforts of a traditional healer wouldn’t help... but if the sickness was caused by a prai...

I want him to smile for a photograph. She knows. He’s the Montri so I ask him to “look wise.” She hears. It causes laughter as he tries to imagine what a wise look might look like. The camera clicks. No doubt she’s laughing with us.

Madhabkunda waterfall is a Facebook star.

“Now concentrate!” she says. It’s not the only photography going on. In the late afternoon the young lads are lining up, finding space. Watch them perch on the slippery rocks that edge the waterfall’s pool. In best checked shirt one outstretches arms as if to hold the sky. In the glowing white purity of nearly-brand-name sneakers he falls slightly backward while tilting head and smiling, as if fashionably struck by lightning.

Facebook posing at Madhabkunda.

His friend’s smart phone captures each post-able “Been to Madhabkunda” still. The water spirit must welcome each electronic click – as her waterfall’s fame grows. 

Another one, another pose – he makes a half-crouch this time, a resting of the chin in photogenic contemplation upon the hand. Sunglasses are on. Then sunglasses have retreated to rest atop the head. They are here. They are here now, looking cool.

With thousands of faces in hundreds of thousands of poses the spirit of Madhabkunda must be a social media champion. Her waterfall, whose pose changes only periodically with rain, is a perennial super-liked Facebook star.

A house in the punjee.

And, just an aside, perhaps those lads are seeking young ladies with those poses; but perhaps in the waterfall background, unseen, she is already there.

Take care with your belongings – a group was hijacked along that short path that very afternoon. Don’t leave anything behind. Take care when swimming. Don’t swim. “Two to three drown in that river every year,” says Montri Wanbor, “but we Khasis always swim and it’s never happened to us.” Is the spirit of Madhabkunda one to immorally takes sides or is it that the locals understand better her river’s tricks?

The path to the falls at Madhabkunda.

Families are enjoying their leisure time in eco style: sitting, walking, wandering and talking. In the socialising is the rekindling of the bonds of human affection. A young couple are hoping to make memories, learning what to expect from days shared of which they yet hope there will be many. Babies are being carried – heads bobbing, eyes gazing. Grandparents take their time...  Bangladeshis all – the nation is carving out a better future. It’s an accessible, more upwardly mobile sort of a waterfall that she has. The Madhabkunda spirit is on the move.

Madhabkunda and the hint of a rainbow.

But what sort of spirit is she really? Is she a benevolent pari or a malevolent prai? She remembers the wilderness. She’s hostess of the Eco Park. She’s observed the future coming. Every day she watches crowds leaving. And just maybe she dances under the full moon. Ancient, modern, pleasure, accident, crime, ritual, photo, plastic doll souvenir and chanachur: in that busy place the water spirit bears witness to humanity, all.

With the fortune of a waterfall in a flat land as her treasure, she’s built herself half a rainbow – you can see it just above the pool. “Shhh! The future is on its way,” she says, “and it’s featured on Facebook.”

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: The Spirit of Madhabkunda