অটোয়া, সোমবার ১৩ অক্টোবর, ২০২৫
A Story by Dr. Saleem Rahman

Bobbing Water Pitchers of the Water-Carrying Young Women 
- by Dr. Saleem Rahman

Nigun found the bobbing water pitchers stacked upon the heads of water-carrying young women one of the loveliest sources of amusement that the village of Akiara had to offer. It was a small village in Rangamati, Chittagong. Bangladesh had come into being when Nigun was only eight years old. His dad was a jute farmer working under an arrangement of share-cropping with the local thakur, Sri Chundaran, whom everyone deferentially called Chandar, a man of average height and above-average intelligence, who could get to the bottom of something in a few minutes. His wife was simply known as Stree Ji, as if she had no name of her own. Nigun learned much to his surprise that this was true of almost all women who lived in that close-knit community. His own sister was just choti (or minor), although she was two years older than him. 

“Why are we so unfair to women in our village?” he once asked his mom. 

“If your dad hears you talking like this, he’ll get upset with me, not with you.” 

Nigun thought he’d discuss this with his sister, Choti, at an appropriate time. 

Choti was not regularly asked by the family to be a part of the water-carrying group, because her father was something of an artisan and had built a small water reservoir at home. But he didn’t have the money needed to cement it from inside, so he used wooden planks instead. Nigun rarely went to the town of Kangna, located about twenty kilometers away from his village. He would be accompanying his uncle on such occasions, and it was usually an eye-opening trip. Nigun was going through a period of those tender awakenings that distinguish a boy’s identity and his inborn feelings for the opposite gender. 

One thing that caught his eye was the water-carrying young women — girls, really — who seemed to have this uncanny ability and skill to stack up water containers of different sizes on their heads. Some of them placed a cloth-made disc, head-saving placemat called Innu, that reduces the weighty thrust of water on their heads. He marveled at their sense of balance and the skill to slightly sway right or left, as needed, when any of them happened to run an Acacia thorn through her tender sole. With a little dainty shriek, she’d bend the injured sole upward towards her back and, while still walking, remove the thorn so neatly. It always surprised Nigum. 

“How do they do that? Who taught them the skill?” He could never figure it out. 

One day a newly recruited water-carrying girl had a thorn-in-the-sole experience. She panicked, but Nigum was passing by and he hurried to her rescue. He shed his bashfulness for that moment of crisis, for the girl who was probably not older than him. He found his front teeth acting like a tweezer and only a single drop of blood oozed out. It tasted somewhat salty. He withdrew his mouth from her foot and did not even hear her grateful utterance of “Dhanyabad”, or, thanks. 

One day, his sister Choti had to do the water-carrying chore, and mom asked him to accompany her as a chaperon. 

“This could be a unique opportunity for me to study the mysterious balance phenomenon,” he thought. “It would be too personal to ask anyone of them,” he mused. 

So, he strategically placed himself at the end of this water-carrying caravan, where he could observe without himself being observed. 

“Why is your brother falling behind all of us? Is he too shy, or what?” some of them teased Choti. 

He couldn’t hear what his sister’s reply was because of the distance between them, but he felt his earlobes tingle and he reddened to his roots. He felt that it was an indirect jibe at his maleness. He would have remained reticent, if asked directly by any of those water girls whose humble dresses were colorful, yet not at all revealing. They all had a kind of pony-tail that had glittering objects embedded in it with a glassy shine, and colorful strands kneaded into those long wagging tails. Their walking movement exhibited the feline grace of favoring alternate legs that caused an undulating movement of their well-rounded behinds. It was like watching a badminton match from the stands: right, left, right, left. Oblivious of their surroundings, they were chatting in a light banter and occasionally tittering in a series of honeyed notes that captivated Nigum’s heart. He clearly didn’t want this caravan to come to an end. 

“Niggu!” his sister Choti’s playful voice jolted him out of a sort of reverie, and he responded to her with exaggerated attention. 

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, more as a comment than a question directed at him. 

He knew enough about her demeanor not to respond. Choti and he had to part ways with her giggling companions as they had just reached their home. Nigum just followed her quietly into the house and ruminated about the arcane awakenings of an unfamiliar nature within his physical being. The bobbing pony-tails, the side-to-side brushing of the tail ends on their posterior as their weighted-down walk produced rhythmic ripples in their steps. All this was causing him a sudden bout of insomnia. He was hoping he would eventually fall asleep, but then Choti came to him with a mischief in her eyes.

“So, what made you decide to fall back at the end of the group?”, Choti asked him teasingly. 

He had to improvise, “I was the odd one in the bevy of your mates. I felt I didn’t belong there.” 

He tried to be matter of fact and somewhat evasive. But she was ahead of the line of thinking Nigum was grappling with. She was persistent in teasing out his pleasantly perturbed state of mind. 

“If mom asks you again to chaperon me, what would you say?” she asked him. 

“When would that be?” he inadvertently revealed his innermost longing for it. 

“What was it about this experience that intrigued you the most?” she was persistent in unraveling his calmly constructed façade. 

“Choti, please! No more of these questions, okay?” he was almost ready to capitulate to her inquisitiveness. 

Choti, on the other hand, heard his entreaties with an affectionate tweak and let out a gentle laugh that had a silver ring to it. In her mirthful moment of ecstatic delight, she had finally uncovered the human side of her kid brother. 

Dr. Saleem Rahman
Ottawa.