Saugata Chakraborty

Shantilal Biswas, a man with the grace of a bull let loose in a porcelain shop, found himself facing a predicament that could rival a Big Bazaar billing counter queue on a Wednesday. An invitation – actually, more of a summons disguised as an invitation – had landed on his desk, demanding his presence in the obscure village of Muchipara. Now, Shantilal was no stranger to obscure villages; his auditing job required him to visit places where chickens crossed the road with more purpose and dignity than humans. But Muchipara was something else entirely.

“Muchipara,” he’d mumbled to himself, rummaging through his dusty atlas for any hint of this godforsaken place. “Is that even in Bengal? Or have they exiled me to Odisha now?”

As it turned out, Muchipara lurked somewhere in the hinterlands of Bengal, a place where, it seemed, electricity arrived on festival days and mobile network coverage was a rumor peddled by optimistic telecom companies. The purpose of his visit? A benevolent society founded by some long-dead zamindar had misplaced some funds (several lakhs worth, as the whispers went), and Shantilal, bless his pedantic soul, was deemed the only accountant trustworthy enough to unearth them.

“As if I don’t have enough troubles chasing vanishing paise in Calcutta” he grumbled, tucking his prized tiffin carrier and a thermos of scalding chai into his worn briefcase.

The journey was an unmitigated disaster. First, there was the train. Not one of those sleek air-conditioned carriages that Shantilal favored on official trips, but an ancient relic that coughed, wheezed, and threatened to derail at every bend. Squashed between a snoring goat herder and a woman with suspiciously pungent pickles, he endured a symphony of snores, bleats, and stomach rumbles. Then came the bus – a ramshackle contraption that defied all known laws of physics and seemed intent on catapulting its passengers into the nearest paddy field.

By the time he reached Muchipara, Shantilal was resembling a less-than-pleased thundercloud. The village was small, the kind where the arrival of a stranger was akin to a solar eclipse. Children peered at him from behind mud walls, dogs barked with alarming enthusiasm, and ancient grandmothers paused their gossip sessions to assess the new spectacle.

He was led to the ancestral home of the zamindar, now converted into the society’s headquarters – a rambling mansion with peeling paint, cobweb-festooned ceilings, and a faint aroma that Shantilal could only attribute to a possible bat infestation. He was greeted by a committee of village elders who seemed to speak a dialect of Bengali only distantly related to the one Shantilal knew. After much bowing, gesticulating, and liberal sprinkling of broken Hindi, he was shown to his room.

It was a chamber of horrors. The bed resembled a medieval torture device, the single window was protected by a rusty mosquito net that looked like it had survived a war, and the solitary lightbulb flickered with a menace that suggested an imminent demise. Shantilal, never known for his stoicism, felt a surge of panic that was not entirely due to the potential insect onslaught.

“Where is the attached bathroom?” he’d demanded, aghast. He had the bladder the size of a pea and was accustomed to civilized plumbing.

More gesticulating, more broken Hindi, and then a revelation that made him want to hop right back on the death-trap bus and return to Calcutta. The bathroom facilities involved a brisk walk to a nearby pond and the dubious privacy of a strategically placed bush. Shantilal’s urban sensibilities reeled in horror.

Dinner was an experience designed to test both his fortitude and his intestines. Curries of unidentifiable ingredients blazed a fiery trail through his system, making him acutely aware of the lack of indoor plumbing. And as the mosquito legions launched their nightly offensive, he discovered that, horror of horrors, he’d forgotten his mosquito coil. Shantilal retired to his torture-bed, slapping ineffectually at the buzzing hordes and cursing the day he’d decided to become an accountant.

The next morning, armed with his ledgers, a fistful of antacids, and grim determination, Shantilal plunged into the investigation. The society’s accounts were a nightmare that would send lesser accountants into paroxysms of despair. Ledgers were missing, receipts were written on scraps of what may have once been banana leaves, and the concept of financial organization seemed as foreign to the committee members as quantum physics.

As days turned into a bewildered blur, Shantilal developed a survival routine. He learned to navigate the treacherous pond-and-bush situation with the steely focus of a commando. He discovered that liberal doses of fiery tea could temporarily quell the volcanic rumblings in his stomach, although their effect on his bladder was questionable. Most importantly, he developed an unlikely friendship with the village postman, a spindly man named Haripada with a fondness for cryptic proverbs and even more cryptic paan stains.

Haripada, bemused by this flustered city-dweller, became Shantilal’s lifeline. He translated the committee’s indecipherable Bengali into something Shantilal could grapple with, procured life-saving mosquito coils, and even introduced him to the culinary salvation that was dim-bhaja (simple, fluffy egg omelets). Turns out, Muchipara had its own strange charms.

Still, the investigation was an uphill battle against both the committee’s chaotic bookkeeping and Shantilal’s rapidly fraying temper.

“Where is the entry for the year the school roof was built?” he’d bellowed, his usually meek voice rising in exasperation one morning. “There must have been a bill from the contractor!”

The committee members blinked, shuffling their feet uneasily. One of them coughed and finally ventured, “Sir, that year, there was a good monsoon. The bamboo for the roof… it grew in our own forest…”

Shantilal stared. “And the labour?”

“Our villagers, Sir. They built it. Community effort.”

Community effort, indeed. His accountant’s heart wept at the blatant disregard for financial protocols. How was he supposed to track expenses that seemingly materialized out of thin air?

One sweltering afternoon, frustration drove him out of the musty mansion and into the village. Shantilal, normally a creature averse to any exertion more strenuous than flipping ledger pages, found himself wandering. Children, finally accustomed to his strange presence, giggled and chased him, trying to poke his generous belly. Beneath a banyan tree, a group of women washed clothes in the pond, their laughter pealing through the air. In a sun-drenched courtyard, an ancient man sat, weaving an impossibly intricate bamboo basket.

And then he saw the school.

It was a small, brick structure, sturdy and modest. Children’s voices drifted out of the open windows, a mishmash of recitation and barely contained chatter. Suddenly, Shantilal understood. The missing ledgers, the seemingly vanished funds – they weren’t lost due to corruption or even incompetence. They were here – in the bricks of the school, the laughter of the children, the intricate weave of the old man’s basket. Muchipara’s currency wasn’t just rupees; it was in bamboo from their forests, in the labour of their hands, in the very fabric of their community.

The revelation hit him with the force of one of Muchipara’s fiery curries. Of course! The problem wasn’t a lack of accountability, it was his way of measuring it.

Back in the mansion-turned-office, Shantilal laid out his new plan. There would still be ledgers, of course. He was an accountant, not a revolutionary. But alongside the entries for building materials and contractor fees, there would be columns for the number of bamboo poles harvested, the donated man-hours, the value of the home-grown vegetables that fed the workers. His ledgers wouldn’t just track money; they would track the heart and soul of Muchipara.

The committee members were hesitant at first. Such a system was unheard of! But Shantilal, emboldened by a newfound respect (and possibly a touch of fondness) for this off-kilter village, persisted. Slowly, meticulously, he translated community spirit into numbers and columns.

(‘Mostly Mundane’ is my upcoming book on the exploits of Shantilal. This story predates all other featuring in the book and is not included. If you find this one to be agreeable to your taste, please let me know on WhatsApp @ +919870071069).