Mice from Heaven

No one know where the mice come from but, everyone knows it is a bad omen when they come in hordes. The elders have a peculiar ways of interpreting the omen saying the gods are angry and they throw mice from the sky, which the educated young ones shrugged off as a shapeless joke. However, the mice are found froze to death even on top of the thatch roofs making the 'mice raining story' a little credible, some of the elders would often argue that the mice indeed rain down from heaven else why should they be found on the thatch roofs and tree branches. Mice lay dead everywhere, in the fields, on the road, and sometimes even at the doorsteps.  In the village, mice were always known for their medicinal qualities, and it was no surprise when most the villagers went around collecting the carcasses, roasting them and storing them on top of the hearths as meat supply. When the army of dead mice invaded the village, everyone started talking about delayed rain, unwanted post cultivation rain, and bad harvest. The fear of the unknown gripped the village as no one knew what extra unwanted things the year is going to bring to them.

As predicted, the rains were delayed, however, cultivation of the fields were done on time as most of the paddy fields are well irrigated by the perennial river water. The much delayed rain finally came and it continued to rain day and night. None of the elders recalled that kind of angry rain and the young people were just shocked having never seen such downpour. The incessant rains reinforced the elder’s theory about gods’ anger; some even

murmured the name of gods worshipped by their forefathers, which they have almost forgotten after embracing Christianity. The village pastor narrated the story of Noah and his Ark to the congregation on Sunday, six days since the rain started and suggested that they all should confess and have a mass prayer. The church was suddenly filled with loud sound of prayer, which for a while subdued the sound of raindrops hitting on the tinned roof. The rain didn’t stop. Paddy fields on the river bank were washed away, and two wooden bridges used for crossing over to the fields on the other side of the river were carried away. After two weeks of incessant rain, the sun showed up as if it had never rained. It appeared like the rain and the sun were teasing the villagers. With the sun, things came back to normal. The villagers were now busy trying their best to repair the damages caused by the devastating rain. The menfolk were busy repairing the blown away roofs, restoring the washed away barricades on the catchment area of the fields, and the women were busy re-planting the damaged crops. It was like re-living the busy cultivation month. Sundays were only the days when even the laziest among the villagers manage to get some rest. One Sunday, after  the Morning Service at the Church, the village Pastor, on the request of the village chief, called for the village elders’ meeting at the Panchayat hall. During the meeting, the chief informed the gathering that the village people need to help the brothers from the jungle in shifting their base. Two young lads from the jungles had come to see the chief the previous evening. He was briefed that they are shifting their base further into Myanmar territory to ensure Indian Army find it hard to penetrate. The help for shifting would mean each family providing one labor each for ferrying goods from the old to the new location on rotational basis. The two lads also told the chief that he would be informed about the time and thus to notify the villagers to be ready. No one could argue or raise their concerns against the diktats of the jungle lads in this village.

There was no voice heard after the meeting, only the hisses of some helpless sighs. At their homes, all their family members sat around the fire waiting for them to come back and brief them the minutes of the meeting. When they told their families about the task in hand, the womenfolks complained and the younger ones were angry, but only in vain. It somewhere dawned that the elders were right about god’s anger on them. Already the mice and the rains had shown signs of the impending doom; the new task only doubled their misery. Secrecy of the task was of prime importance and it should under no circumstance reach the the Indian Army camp. If the news about the villagers helping the underground reaches the Army, all the village men will be stripped and caned by the army. On the other hand, refusing to help the brothers in the jungle would mean betrayal against their own community. It was under such situations that the village elders compared their lives with that of a hunter stranded between a wounded wild boar and an angered grisly. The call for shifting the camp came as suddenly as the rain. According to the arrangement, the village has to provide five porters everyday to ferry goods from the old camp to the new one. The villagers will have to leave home at midnight to dodge the watchful and suspicious eye of the Indian Army. Moreover, they were not allowed to carry torches to find their way which would attract the unnecessary attention of the Army camp sentries, which was just two kilometers from the village. Each group of five villagers thus went on rotational basis at night and comes back at midnight of the following day dogged tired because of the long journey and the hard labor.

This was not the end of misery for the village. As nothing can really be hidden under the sun or moon, after two weeks, the Army came to know about the unusual movements. The villagers were not sure whether someone from the village informed the army or the vigilant sentries came to know about the movements. One night, the army laid a trap and the five people who were going out of the village carrying huge bamboo baskets were rounded up. They were taken to the Army camp and locked up. The oldest in the group warned the others they should not tell the truth even if they were tortured. He also suggested that they should feign ignorance of Hindi if they were interrogated. Everyone in the group was beaten up. But when they were asked where they were going at midnight all of them acted as if they don't understand what they are being asked. In the morning the village Chief and clan elders were summoned to the Army camp and were interrogated. Every one of them was beaten up and was ordered to report to the Army camp every day for two weeks. None in the group however, spilled the reason for leaving the village at midnight with big baskets. They were ignorant that the army already knew the reason from its various informants. The commander of the camp then imposed night curfews in the whole village and threatened that whoever leaves the village at night would be shot. Thus, ended the villagers’ trips to the jungle. When porters were not sent for three days, the men from the jungle came to the village to know the reason for disobeying their diktat. On being told the reason, they suggested that the porters then be sent during day in a group of two, three and four alternately. The village elders were advised to ask the porters to act as if they are going for hunting. The bamboo baskets should be hidden in the jungle. The shifting of camp which lasted for almost a month got over finally using all cunningness to dodge the hawk-eyed army.

From then on, the village became a transit point for the underground people coming from other camps and were going to the new headquarter. The villagers dutifully provided the jungle lads with food, shelter and the warmest of blankets whenever they halted in the village. However, the army would somehow get a sniff of the halts in the village and the village elders would be summoned to the army camp. The village elders were threatened with dire consequences. Very often, they were lashed with cane sticks as punishment. The halts of the jungle lads and the summons by the army became somewhat like an unwanted ritual for the villagers; something they couldn’t wish away. On one such occasion, ten men from the jungle came to the village and told the village chief that they intend to spend the night in the village as they were too tired to march on. For security reasons, they decided to use the village recreation hall to put up for the night instead of staying at the village chief’s house. They were fed and blankets were collected from the village and dropped at the recreation hall for the soldiers to rest.The night dragged on slowly with more darkness adding up every passing hour .

The village Chief had a very uneasy feeling that whole night and was unable to doze off fearing something could go wrong. The night seemed unusually longer and he kept waking up the whole night. He had just started to drift off to sleep when the first cock crowed announcing the dawn. He slowly got up from his bed with the thought of making some tea for himself. It was then that the village suddenly woke up to the thunders of gunfire. The firing continued for about an hour and there were also sounds of loud explosions every now and then. When the firing finally stopped, the village was filled with Indian Army jawans dragging out everyone from home. Some people who sleep like dead and were not woken by the sounds of gunfire were kicked and woken. Everyone in the village was ordered to assemble at the village ground adjacent to the recreation hall where the militants were housed the previous night. When all the villagers were gathered at the ground, men were separated from the women and children. The the village chief and the pastor were called to identify all the men.

Five lifeless, badly mutilated bodies were unceremoniously dragged out from the recreation hall and were kicked to add to the insult of being dead. That fateful day, the villagers were forced to go hungry as no one was allowed to budge from the ground. No one came to their rescue. The men folk were ordered to strip down to their inner wears and women and children were ordered not to make any sound or even cry. They were made to sit on the still damp ground the whole day. Much to their relief, the Superintendent of Police with his escort arrived in the evening, talked to the commander of the army and finally told the villagers to go home. By then ten children have fainted due to hunger, fifteen men badly tortured. The village chief and the pastor were also beaten. The elder brother of Ningkhan who was with the underground was beaten to death.

The villagers later came to know that someone from the village tipped off the army about the presence of underground activists in the village. Later, it was rumored that the person on sentry duty dozed off due to fatigue from the long march and didn't see the army rounding them up and ran off on hearing the first gunshot. It was also rumored that the person who was on sentry duty was given capital punishment. Five people from the jungle were slaughtered that night in the gun battle. Four others managed to escape after breaking open the wooden wall on the rear side of the hall. The casualty on the side of the army if any was never made known. The village chief and the village elders were forced to report to the army camp everyday for one month. The army also conducted frequent frisking and checking in the village for about two weeks after the incident. As for the recreation hall, it became a wasted structure as most of the wooden planks on the walls were blown off and the few left were full of bullet holes; the tin roof too suffered the same fate. Later, only the village kids are going to use it for playing the game of underground and Indian army on moonlit nights.

It took a long time for the villagers to recover from the shock and horror of the torture they went through. However, they had no other choice but to try and restore normalcy with the arrival of the harvest season. The unwanted post cultivation rain had already wrecked their crops and they feared if the harvest would last through the following year. To add to their woes, it again started raining like never before just when everyone was planning dates for the harvests. The paddy fields were getting overripe, but the rain won't stop to let them harvest the meager produce of the year. One morning when most of the villagers were still indoors because of the downpour, they heard a loud explosion which they thought could be thunderclap, but it was soon followed by continuous gunfire. The horror of the torture meted out by the Army was still fresh in everyone's mind. The sound of the gun fires were coming from the army camp and no one was sure what could be happening. The firing continued for about half an hour and none among the villagers dared to venture out. The elders told the young ones to lay flat on the ground lest some stray bullets hit them. When the firing stopped and everything was silent again except for the rain sound, the villagers stepped out of their doors to assess the situation. They saw smoke rising from some buildings inside the army camp. Some of them went nearer to the camp out of sheer curiosity to know what was happening. It was then that they discovered hell was unleashed upon them. They saw more than three dozen of the people from the jungle marching down from the army camp each one with three or more guns slung down from their shoulders.

The army camp has been ransacked and all the guns and ammunition in the camp armory looted. All the army personnel including the commanding officer who survived the attack were herded inside the buildings in the camp and locked in. When the men from the jungle saw the scared villagers, they told them to run away if they could before reinforcements arrive. The underground people went back to the jungle feeling victorious for having ransacked the army camp in lesser time than they estimated and for having avenged the death of their comrades. By this time the rain has subsided as though it was waiting for the army camp to be ransacked. The villagers ran back to the village and directly went to the chief's house to discuss what they should do. Some suggested the whole village should run away. But, where else would they go leaving their homes and the ripe fields? Some suggested all the men should run to the neighboring villages as they know the army jawans are going to vent their anger mainly on the men folk. Others opposed the idea of leaving the women and children. In the end the elders suggested that no one should run away from the village but, bear together whatever comes. If the army comes to know that some villagers were missing, the consequence could be worse than expected, countered some of the elders. Thus it was decided that no one should leave but stay to bear the wrath of the army. As someone needs to inform the district administration and police of what has happened in the village, it was decided that the village peon should walk to the district headquarters to inform the authorities. The district headquarter is about 40 kilometers from the village. Thus, the peon started for the district headquarters while the villagers went home to await their fate like helpless animals caught in a trap.

Three and half hours after the attack, the village was filled with army vehicles, army mules and heavily armed army jawans. The jawans from the ransacked camp joined the re-enforcement group in the village. The major, who was the commanding officer of the ransacked camp and who survived the attack briefed the commanding officer of the reinforcement group about what happened. The colonel who now is commanding the whole group assembled the jawans and shouted out his orders. Till this time, the villagers were huddled inside their houses scared like never before. The army spread out, some guarded the exit points from the village and majority of them got busy dragging out the villagers from their houses. Beating started right at the doorsteps. The whole village was made to assemble at the village playground. Every man in the village was beaten up badly. The village chief was shot dead and the secretary was beaten to death. The cows and buffaloes broke out of their sheds due to hunger and strayed away into the fields trampling the ripe crops. It was only at night that the villagers were allowed to go home and sleep for a short while. At dawn they were forcefully woken again and made to gather at the village ground. The army combed every house for the looted arms ignoring the fact that they were now in the hands of underground people deep in the jungle. The gathering at the village ground continued for a week with beating and torturing of the men folk happening all the way.

The district administration, police officers and civil society leaders were allowed to enter the village only after a weeklong torture. By then, five villagers including the village chief and secretary were dead, ten houses torched to ashes and almost all the granaries in the village either destroyed or burned down. This was how the army gave a tit for tat; not to the ones who provoked their anger, but to those innocent people who in some ways look like the men from the jungle. The granaries are gone and they will get near to nothing from the fields that have been taken care by the untended cattle. Though the pain due to the beating and sorrow of losing innocent lives were in everyone's tormented mind for the moment, their thoughts were tickled every now and then at the horror of going hungry the following year. For that particular tumultuous and disastrous year, the villagers were not able to comprehend who to blame; the mice that came in hordes signaling a bad year, their brothers in the jungle who were fighting for liberation or the Indian army who turn into unreasonable monsters at times of trouble.

No one in the village who survived the horror of that 'mice raining year' had forgotten the details of the torture and suffering unleashed on them. And for those who were born later, every year during Christmas the village joker educates them. On Christmas nights when the whole village is gathered in the newly constructed recreation hall, the joker takes the stage and imitate groaning and crying sounds of some people when they were beaten by the army, which he spices up to make them sound really funny. He curses mice in the name the gods of their ancestors. He nicknamed his village as ‘mice raining village’ and called his fellow villagers ‘descendants of mice from heaven.’ During those nights the roar of laughter could be heard even from the hilltop where the army camp used to be long time ago. Thus the village joker never failed to make the villagers laugh to their hearts’ content at the jokes derived from pain and lost.