The Quest for Eternal Life and a Large, Black Python

Away from daylight. Kudum cave, Whykeong, Teknaf.

A home in Harikhola village, Whykeong.

There once was a powerful Buddhist seer who lived in Myanmar, when it was called Burma in the time of the British. He was a simple fellow, anyone would say, except that with his eyes he could see the whole world at a time; but he was old, his power would soon be gone from the world. It was a pending reality that concerned him.

Seers have, of course, their own reasons for doing things; it’s not for ordinary folk to question why he decided to embark upon a journey precisely when he did. What we do know, what people say, is that his destination was the expansive estate of the landlord of Whykeong, nowadays in the north of Cox’s Bazar’s Teknaf upazila.

Harikhola Buddhist temple founded in 1903.

Pagoda rooftops in Harikhola.

More specifically the seer sought to visit a cave in the hilly terrain of the Teknaf Peninsula where, he had seen, there lived a porimei, a creature not dissimilar to a fairy.

Today that cave is called Kudum Cave and it lies within the Teknaf Game Reserve beyond the historical Chakma village of Harikhola with its 270 families.

Village pagoda.

One imagines Forest Beat Officer Abul Kalam, 43, was pleased for the company when he agreed to go with our small party to find the cave. He’s usually posted to remote Raykong Beat where he stays alone, at night, in the hills. “Twelve nights ago,” he says as a look of grave concern spreads across his face, “nine elephants came close to the bungalow.” I ask if it’s scary to stay alone in an isolated forest location and he says it is.

Drought stricken countryside.

In any case, in the British era the landlord, who was a Rakhine, presided over a great area of forest which is now the game reserve. He had six hundred buffaloes that he let run free.

Relaxing on the serang in Harikhola village.

Every year the landlord would order his cowboys to fetch some buffaloes from the forest, and it so happened that long before the seer arrived from Myanmar, one cowboy stumbled upon that cave and moreover, saw the porimei at its entrance.

Kudum Cave entrance.

“Son of man, come here!” said the porimei, “I have something to discuss.” The porimei then offered the cowboy a mohor, a gold medallion, on the promise that he wouldn’t tell anyone he had seen her there. The cowboy accepted the medallion and, returning to the landlord’s house, spoke nothing of the encounter.

It’s unclear how long it must’ve taken the cowboy to reach Harikhola from the main area of Whykeong Bazar but these days it’s a thirty-minute CNG ride through picturesque countryside.

Moni Sowpun Chakma, 37, entering Kudum cave near his village.

Village Buddhas.

It’s an attractive village with several Buddhist temples, called kyangs, including one dating from 1903 which features a large wooden bell and a monk from Myanmar who’s asleep after lunch. According to Moni Sowpun Chakma, 37, a villager who’s been working as a guide for the last decade, 1903 is probably when the first seven families arrived to settle, pursuing traditional slash-and-burn jhum agriculture. Many of their descendants still reside in Harikhola.

Pagoda.

Across the road from the kyang is a raised wooden platform called a serang, the perfect spot to rest out of the sun as long as one can climb onto it, up a log with basic ladder-like notches. Further inside the village on the crests of minor hills are several attractive ching ghar, pagodas.

A ching ghar, Harikhola.

Village Buddha image.

After consulting Birandan, 52, current headman of Harikhola, Chakma is ready to lead us on the twenty minute walk to the cave.

Many years back when the seer arrived in the area after crossing the Naf River he made his way to the landlord’s residence where he would stay as a guest. He took the opportunity to ask the landlord about the cave and the porimei he had seen with his powerful eyes; but the landlord said he knew nothing of either. The cowboy stayed silent.

However, on the following morning the cowboy relented, probably feeling it his duty to speak in good faith to his landlord’s guest or out of fear of the seer’s power; thus as the seer was taking his morning bath he confessed that he knew the cave and had seen the porimei as well. The seer asked the cowboy to accompany him to the spot.

Along the track to the cave. Forest bounty collected.

The track to the cave traces muddy overgrown gullies with high clay hills rising on either side. There’s a bit of jumping over streams required to get there and in front of its entry is a small pool that continues inside, to chest height depending on rainfall, into what presents itself as an endless tunnel.

“Nobody knows how deep the cave goes,” says Chakma, and Kudum means ‘long’ in Chakma language. “They say it runs right through the hills to the Bay of Bengal.” Others say the cave, unique for being of clay-mud rather than stone, is 38 metres in length.

He explains that far inside is a high cavern with a platform that can be reached by ladder. He says it’s not advisable to go that far since a large, black python inhabits the platform, descending into the front of the cave to feed on the several fish species in the pool.

When the cowboy and the seer reached the cave, the seer told the cowboy to wait outside the entrance to catch the porimei that he would chase out. “How do I catch a porimei?” asked the cowboy; and the seer gave him two handfuls of sand to throw at her.

The forest path to the cave.

When we reach the cave I would happily wait outside too but Chakma is already taking off his shirt to go inside. Cautiously we wade into the darkness, torches in hand and with a polythene bag over my head on account of the hundreds of bats inside who relieve themselves like rain.

A local shop in the village centre.

With the entrance but a sliver of sunlight behind us Chakma asks if we wish to go further. “The water ends shortly,” he says, “But beyond that, somewhere is the python.” I am more concerned that the python might be beneath us, in the water, looking for fish. So we head back.

We didn’t see the porimei but the cowboy did. As it tried to escape the seer, it flew out of the cave and the cowboy as instructed threw the sand at it. When the sand hit, the porimei transformed into a great tiger and ran off into the forest, the seer in pursuit. “They say the porimei was killed at Colemamarang, some distance from here,” says Chakma, “There’s a rock which looks like a girl fallen over that people say is the porimei turned to stone.” The seer meanwhile took the porimei’s eyes for eating as her eyes could do the one very thing that his couldn’t: grant eternal life.

“Doesn’t the python in the cave scare you?” I ask Chakma as we walk back to the village.

“No, but the wild elephants do. It’s easy to encounter them along this track.”

The return.

Back at the ching ghar.

This article is published in The Daily Star, here: Wading into Mysterious Kudum Cave

Me at the cave.

Something Happened

Class 5 student Mosammad Dilara Khatun doesn't like to remember what happened last May.

Dilara, trying to explain what happened.

 

If you ask my judgement the adults spoke sincerely. However, it was when the children spoke, when terror overtook their faces and they were on the verge of tears… 

I wouldn’t have believed it… But in Dharmapur of Dinajpur’s Biral Upazila, surely enough, something happened…

To find any scrap of Bangladeshi countryside that’s unpleasing to the eye would be difficult. Dharmapur is particularly charming. The road winds alongside a brook, passing in and out of stands of sal – the archipelagic edges of the Dharmapur Forest that nudges the Indian border.

Being in the tea shop game, entrepreneur Shyama Barman can scarcely miss any goings on in Dharmapur. Her stall should win an award for its minimalist architecture. The mud stove is matched by neat, mud benches – a rarity nowadays; a strategically stretched cloth covers the sun’s glare and the open walls invite any breeze. Meanwhile the laidback lattice along one side serves to define the cosy space. It’s uncommon to find a tea stall as beautiful.

“Of course I was scared,” she says, remembering last May, “but the shop stayed open.”

It's unusual to find a tea stall as beautiful as Shyama Barman's.

The day is bright. Farmer Mohammed Anwar is, for the moment, Shyama’s customer – and her tea is equally award-worthy. “They went to school as usual,” he says, “Then suddenly they felt delirious. It was like that for about a month. It’s never happened before.”

Dharmapur Government Primary is not a hundred yards from Shyama’s stylish village enterprise. It’s an ordinary two-storey building – particularly clean and decorated with painted illustrations of English and Bangla letters, of fish and jackfruit, of portraits of Tagore and other inspirational folk. It has four teachers for the 300 students studying in classes one to five.

In front of the main gate is a small temple. It’s empty now. The gate is locked. Since May only the side gate is used.

“There are big trees in the forest,” offers Anwar as he finishes his tea. “People hardly go to the deepest places.” He speculates that the bhoot in question, the supernatural spirit believed to have haunted the school, may have lived in an old tree, as bhoots are often thought to do.

“Or it was living in the temple,” suggests Shyama.

Dharmapur Government Primary is clean and brightly painted. It's not at all spooky.

Principal Madhab Chandra Barman, 42.

In the school’s office, it’s teacher Mosammad Akhija Sultana who greets us. “The students used to relieve themselves at the side of the temple,” she soon explains. “We think something happened.”

The principal, who arrives shortly, is Madhab Chandra Barman, a youthful 42-year-old eager to share his experience. “It was early morning when it started,” he says, “There was a World Vision programme before school. I was at home getting ready when I got a message to come quickly. Within two minutes I was here.”

He found 11-year-old class 5 student Mosammad Dilara Khatun in a state. She was complaining someone was beating her on the cheeks. She said she’d seen an old man in white dhoti walking towards her, and after he sat beside her he started the beating. “She was in the classroom,” says principal Madhab, “Nobody was beating her.”

Like his father and grandfather, Toroni Barman dabbles in exorcisms.

Dilara was inconsolable. Not knowing what to do Madhab called 81-year-old Toroni Barman. In Dharmapur it’s dhoti-wearing Toroni who, like his father and grandfather before him, is known to specialise in exorcisms. “I’ve treated many,” Toroni says, “but never at a school.”

With a sprinkling of panipora holy water, with the smoke of incense and mantra recitation, Dilara’s state returned to normal, at least temporarily.

“The next day,” says the principal, “Rebekah was affected. Then Masuma. Then Rita. Then Lija. Then Firoz.” Over several days, eight class 5 students displayed the same symptoms. “They all saw the man in dhoti,” says the principal. “As he left them another saw his approach.”

Dharmapur Government Primary, Biral, Dinajpur.

Each day Toroni exorcised. Each day one student’s symptoms dissipated. Only Dilara would suffer, sporadically, throughout.

“Firoz is very strong,” the principal thinks to add. “When he was affected he was beating himself. He was shouting, ‘Somebody is beating me!’ Ten to twelve students with the teachers couldn’t control him.”

Sree Aapon Chandra Barman, 12, faced the bhoot last. His symptoms were different.

Then the principal lowers his voice – it’s as if he’s unsure whether to say the next part, for fear of its meeting disbelief. “It’s strange but when the girls were saying they were being beaten, afterwards we could see finger imprints on their cheeks.”

The principal called the Education Department. “There’s no such thing as a bhoot,” his seniors said. They sought to arrange a counsellor but the problem wouldn’t wait.

A bhoot is a creature of the air, says Toroni Barman.

“A bhoot is a creature of the air,” says Toroni. “It’s difficult to understand where they’ll go, where they move. There was a bhoot roaming here.”

On the last day of the anomalies it was Sree Aapon Chandra Barman who was affected – but his symptoms were different. In the first-floor classroom, quite suddenly he raised his hands behind his head in the shape of a cobra’s hood. He started swaying, snake-like.

Toroni was called. “What do you want?” he demanded of Aapon.

“The children are relieving themselves on me,” twelve-year-old Aapon replied. “It has to stop!” With these words Aapon ran to the balcony and, in front of all, he jumped!

Uninjured, Aapon ran across the yard to the main gate, to the temple outside – and beside it he fell down, losing consciousness.

This time Toroni exorcised not only Aapon but the entire school grounds. The front gate was locked. Nobody passed the temple anymore. Everything, finally, returned to normal.

Rumana Aktar Lija was one of the students who met the bhoot.

“The bhoot isn’t here now,” says Toroni. “It went somewhere – it’s difficult to say where. But I doubt it’ll return.”

As word spread most students had stopped attending school. “The area was in panic,” says Madhab. “Parents worried what might happen to their children. I had to go house to house to convince each family – it wasn’t easy – that the situation was normal again.”

Dilara, Lija, Aapon. I shouldn’t have asked, I shouldn’t have asked! One by one, as they recount what they can, fear takes hold. “I saw a man in dhoti…” says Lija. “He caught me and took me to the temple,” says Aapon, who doesn’t remember jumping. “He was slapping my cheeks,” says Dilara.

Mosammad Dilara Khatun with her father Mohammad Dulal.

Unlike the others, the bhoot also attacked Dilara at home. “We’ve always lived here,” says farmer Mohammad Dulal, her father. “We’ve never had a problem so when she first said there was an old man in the room I got angry. I didn’t believe her. But after some time… I saw her fear. It was real. She really was seeing something…”

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