02 July,2009 09:34 AM IST | | Daipayan Halder
I was reading Wilbur Smith's Men of Men when I thought of Jyotirmoy Mondol. Smith's novel is set in 1890, in the wilderness of Rhodesia and is about men who fought for gold and land, for cattle and loot. And that shifty thing called honour. It's about men, raw and rugged, the kind that supposedly does it for women across ages.
Mondol, a non-descript, 40-something bank clerk, stays in Kolkata's lower middle class Kasba area and has a weakness for Old Monk and Atul Prasad songs. Separated from wife and daughter, he lives alone in a one-room rented accommodation and has few visitors. Those who get to meet him regularly neighbours and colleagues say he is stingy, arrogant and unsociable. So why did I think of Mondol while reading Smith's book?
Well, it's one of those stream of consciousness moments that take you by surprise. It was the title of the book really, Men of Men. Mondol has never fought for pride or honour. But in his own small way he fights societal injustices in areas not unlike Lalgarh, where tribals and naxals are waging a class war against the state.
Mondol is no ideologue, red, extreme red or otherwise. But he has spent the better part of his last 10 years taking leave (often unpaid) from office to work for the uplift of the Orao community of Purulia, home to habitual offenders, crow-eaters and other denotified tribes.
u00a0But ask Mondol about it and he will recoil. Press him some more and he will get offended. "Activism has become a dirty word," he once told me. "I go to Purulia for selfish reasons. It's a detox drive for me."
But I know Mondol's visits have been more than that. He had once saved an Orao woman from being branded a witch.
The plot was predictable. A year after marriage, Surajmani Mandi's husband had died an untimely death. Greedy relatives, wanting to usurp her property, had hired the services of an ojha (exorcist).
Mandi was promptly branded a witch and asked to leave the village. Mondol was there when all this was happening. Realising there was no time to start a movement, he had bribed the village headman. Mandi's problems were solved, at least for the time being.
u00a0"But what did you gain from it," I had asked. "I kind of fancied the woman, you know," Mondol had winked.
There are other Mondol stories. Bigger achievements that could have earned him some recognition, but didn't.
When we first became friends, I thought Mondol was a Tarinikhuro replicate (Tarinikhuro is that great teller of tales created by Satyajit Ray.)
I didn't know whether to believe him. But then Mondol did something which, much against his wish, got him a single column space in the inside page of a Kolkata daily.
He started a school for Purulia's tribal children.
I had called up Mondol a few days back. "How's the school's doing?" He sounded excited. "It's doing well. They are staging a play, all by themselves. I am hoping that the West Bengal government will give us funds to start a midday meal scheme. I have one more school in mind in the next village," he said. Man's man, anyone?
