JACK’S DIAMOND

It takes concentration of a master archer and a lot of calculated blows on the chisel to carve stones of hard granite to pieces of art. Though assisted by two apprentices, Shibanath Maharana, master craftsman felt physically exhausted by noon. He was perched atop the Baikunthanath temple of Kuinpur village since morning. His assistants were hammering at slabs of stone under shade of a tree near the temple. Shibanath had been hired by the villagers to carry out major repairs to the temple and he was at it since over a month with his two assistants.

It was a hot summer day and the unforgiving sun had made the situation worse. Shibanath climbed down the scaffolding and went to check the work his assistants were engaged in. The Priest of the temple called out for joining the mid-day arati and offering of Prasad before the deity. Once the Prasad was offered to the deity, it was given to a dozen servitors of the temple and also the craftsmen engaged in the restoration work.

The Priest came up to Shibanath and while serving the prasad asked “ Shibanath when are going to finish the work?”.

“Our job is almost finished, needs hardly a day or two more. This temple is made of solid granite and no other temple in the vicinity has similar kind of stone, though the temple is two hundred years old, but will last two hundred more, now that I have put my hands on it” Shibanath the master craftsman was also a known blabber mouth and always boasted about his skills.

“It all depends on will of God, you must have heard about the river dam project they are planning. If it happens that way, this temple and the village and the whole panchayat will be under 100 feet of water. To be gone forever, submerged under water.” The priest looked remorseful.

“Pujari ji, I do not think it would ever happen so. The last time I went to market I heard from the sarpanch that it needs lakhs and lakhs of rupees, thousands of men, trucks, and elephants to construct it. The British have left just three years back and have taken all money we had. Neither the Indian Government nor a poor state like Odisha has that amount of money and machinery to undertake the Hirakud dam project. So have faith on baba Baikunthanath. It is his will. We are only puppets in his hand” Shibanath said this and took a pinch of Prasad served in his plantain leaf, touched it to his forehead as a mark of reverence to god and put it in his mouth. He looked at his assistants and signaled them to start taking the Prasad.

The survey works for the dam was going on full swing. It was year 1950 and Hirakud dam was going to be world’s largest dam. It was primarily aimed at mitigating the recurring floods in the delta region and for the purpose hundreds of villages and lakhs of families were to be ousted from their own land. This was a mega project in a state where no construction work of even a minor scale had taken place since last two hundred years and people were clueless about what was going on around them. Initially people refused to believe that their villages would be submerged under hundreds of feet of water. Who are these people to foretell like that? Are they astrologers? How can they say that my village which is at such a high place that worst floods have not been able to touch the village will be submerged under hundred feet of water? Rubbish!!! They thought.

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Shibanath Maharana decided to take nap for half an hour and then resume his work. Despite the hot summer after noon the interior of mukhasala was cool. He spread his towel on the temple floor and lied down flat and soon was snoring peacefully. Normal people like you and me would have found it impossible to sleep due to constant sound of hammers hitting at chisels by the two assistants at work just near the temple. But to Shibanath it worked like hypnotism and only helped him lapse into a deep slumber.

Shibanath’s slumber was broken by sound of someone sobbing. He half opened his eyes and saw a man trying his best to control his emotions and narrate something to the priest. The priest was sitting with his back to Shibanath on the steps of the mukhasala of temple. A little far away the stranger was standing with folded hands two steps below the priest. Shibanath had never seen the man during his month long stay at the temple. “May be he has some family problem and has come to the priest to consult for some puja” Shibanath thought to himself and tried to catch few winks more before resuming his half finished work on top of the temple.

“This …..only ….misfortune to our family… a curse” the stranger could speak between bouts of sobbing. The stranger was speaking in a guarded tone as if not wishing anyone other than the priest to hear him. Shibanath could sleep no more. His ears became alert at anguish oozing infectiously from the stranger.He kept lying down but opened his eyes and trained his ears to listen to issues troubling the stranger. The regular “than” “than” sounds from two of his assistants made it difficult for him to hear the man clearly.

“Do not worry Pandu, calm down, tell me what you want, I am sure Baba Baikuntheswar will ease all your worries” the priest tried to comfort the stranger whose name was Pandu.

“Last …. my father ……died” Pandu said.

“Yes we all know that, all have to die some day, I will, so will you, that’s the way it happens in God’s scheme of things, you have to reconcile and life must go on, Pandu” The priest tried to sound philosophical and apply some balm at his aggrieved jajamana.

“ I wish it was like that ….. ji, it is not like …. is not as simple …. we …… cursed” Pandu blurted out before relapsing to another episode of sobbing.

“curse, did you say curse??? Why are you saying so???” the priest wished to know from Pandu.

“My father … working…… Nijam……. a diamond……” Pandu went on in a low tone.

The priest was speechless for a moment and then said “Pandu, we know that your father had left village before Independence when you were a young boy. We often got to hear that he was working as a chaprasi at some king’s palace in a far off foreign land. And he had come back to village after independence.”

Shibanath was fully awake now but he chooses to lye down and overhears the discussion. It sounded so full of suspense.

“Pandu, come to me and sit near me” the priest called Pandu. Pandu obliged and sat near the priest and now Shibanath coud see both of them clearly and hear them clearly even if the hammers hitting the chisels made a din.

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Then somber faced Pandu narrated the incidents by which his family came to possess a diamond:-

The king had a vast collection of diamonds in the palace and he treated those diamonds like they were mounds of clay. He treated them as paperweights, toes of shoes, to break open nuts. Pandu’s father was a trusted aid to the palace officials and was working in the innermost circle of the palace, always around the king for taking orders. Once a gorra sahib named Jack from England came to see the King and presented him a big diamond. The king took it in his hand casually and looked at it indignantly, tossing it in his hand few times. His expression changed and in a fit of rage, tossed the diamond through the window. He gave Jack a tongue lashing threatening to call the palace guards to put him in jail. Jack was begging excuse of the king and promised to replace the small one with some specific bigger diamond and hurriedly left the palace fearing the wrath of the king. Pandu’s father was the only one around the king at that time and he had immediately leaned out of the window to see where the diamond landed in the garden. After his duty at the palace was over, he came out of the security area and retrieved the diamond from the garden and kept it with him as he felt he was not stealing from the King, he was merely taking away something thrown by the king. In any case the king treated those diamonds like they were dirt. Soon after the event India got independence and the king was embroiled with issues of annexing to India. Pandu left the job at the palace and came back to his village as he was suddenly afflicted with some strange infections.

Since last two years after his father’s return, they have been facing misfortune one after another till his father breathed his last. Pandu’s father called all family members and declared about the diamond and revealed to them that the diamond must be a cursed one and that is why Jack the gorra sahib had so unceremoniously fled from the King without even bothering to look for the thrown diamond. Pandu’s father advised Pandu to donate it to Baikuntheswar temple.

Pandu was surprised to see the diamond handed to him by his father and kept it with him. He had no time to brood over what to do with the diamond as his father was slowly sinking into coma. It was only after death of his father and funeral rituals over that Pandu got time to take out the diamond and check it leisurely. He was immediately over powered by the sparkling beauty and was in a dilemma. Should he follow his father’s advice and hand over the diamond to the temple, or to use it wisely to change their fortune by selling it to some wealthy jeweler in Sambalpur, largest town and district head quarter about 3 hours by walk from his village?

He had temporarily forgotten that his father said it to be a cursed diamond. And he was to learn it in a bitter twist of events. He set out early in the morning and was on village Main Street when the ferocious ox of Baikuntheswar temple charged at him without any provocation and lifted him high up in air and he landed with a thud after making two somersaults in air. He suffered a bad sprain in the back. The Ox had vanished from the place no sooner then he stood up. Taking this as a bad omen, Pandu limped back home, writhing in pain and remained in bed for over a week before recovering. Even during this week also something or other always bothered their family. It was then that he recalled his father’s dying words that the diamond might be a cursed one. He decided to hand it over to temple the first thing in the morning. That night he slept well.

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Shibanath now could see the excited priest ask Pandu “So that brings you to me? Let me see the diamond.”

Pandu opened his turban and took out a shiny object and handed over it to the priest. Then he prostrated on floor of mukhasala in direction of the deity crying out in anguish, Jay Baba Baikuntheswar, please save me and my family baba, I have been punished by ….”

Shibanath was least interested to hear what Pandu was crying out before the deity. His attention was now focused on the priest who moved out from top of the steps he was sitting on and standing up he held the diamond against the sun. Shibanath’s eyes were blinded by the flash of the reflected sun rays, it was falling everywhere on the floor , on the roof , on the wall of the mukhasala and it was a myriad magical pattern of colors that played out on all surfaces as the priest rotated the diamond in his hand. The kaleidoscopic display of colors mesmerized Shibanath. So was probably the priest. “My god, it is huge” Shibanath thought to himself seeing the size of the diamond.

Shibanath tried to read the priest’s mind. What might the priest be thinking? The priest looked everywhere including Shibanath who was still in his sleeping position. The two assistants were still at their chisel and hammer music on the granite. The priest quickly rolled up the diamond in his towel and came back to his top of the step he was sitting on. He called out at Pandu, but Pandu was not there. Pandu was nowhere to be seen as far as one could see. The priest looked closely at Shibanath to check if he was sound asleep and Shibanath could see a hint of satisfaction on face of the priest.

Shibanath woke up and stretched his legs and arms without looking at the priest. He took care not to show any hint on his face that he had seen everything and heard everything that priest and Pandu had exchanged.

He casually asked the priest “Pandit ji, did I sleep for a bit longer today? I must hurry up else my work will not be finished”

The priest was a different man now, not like the one he had seen him to be during last months or so of his stay.

“You are a hard working craftsman and must take proper rest whenever you get a chance. There still is time for the sun to set, be happy and carry on your work” The priest said.

Deafening cry of someone screaming in terror shattered their indulgent talk.

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The priest looked in direction of his quarter just behind the temple and scampered towards it. Shibanath and his two assistants were too startled by the alarming tone and they too ran to the priest’s house. They found the priest and his wife standing few steps apart, eyes wide in terror, trembling and looking at a retreating black snake into the bushes. All of them stood like statues for a while and then the priest moved to his wife and tried comforting her as she seemed like breaking down in trauma. Shibanath too was numbed by this sudden developments and he was watching the priest eager to hear about the cursed diamond that was in his possession.

The priest ran back to the temple followed by Shibanath His assistants had gone back to their work. For them the incident was absolutely normal as women usually reacted disproportionately at seeing snakes.

The priest went into the garbha griha of the temple and prostrated before the deity mumbling indecipherable mantras holding the diamond clutched in his fist. He remained in his prostrated condition for a long time and as he got up from the floor, Shibanath moved away and sat in a corner of the mukhasala.

When the priest came out from the sanctum sanctorum he was holding a small packet wrapped in red cloth. He was looking around and saw Shibanath sitting in the corner. He called Shibanath.

“Shibanath !!! Here, hold this” the priest told Shibanath and thrust into his palms a fistful of leaves of tulasi and bael taken from the offerings made to the deity. Shibanath obliged as he could sense a change in persona of the priest whose eyes looked red, face expressionless and free of any anxiety, worry, happiness and remorse.

“Shibanath, Baba Baikuntheswar is witnessing us and promise me in his name that you will never ever speak to anyone that you have either seen, heard or going to do now to anyone, including your assistants, including your family, promise to me Shibanath” There was some strange force in the priest’s voice and Shibanath had no reason, no option not to agree to proposal of the priest, even though he could vaguely apprehend the strange change in behavior of the priest.

“I promise in name of Baikuntheswar” Shibanath joined his hands in prayer looking at the deity in the temple holding the tulasi and bael leaves within his palms.

The priest handed him the small bundle and said “Take this bundle and don’t open it, don’t even try to feel what is inside for it is none of your business to know what is inside it, this is a holy object that needs to rest at a holy abode, the task as wished by Sri Baikumtheswar in bestowed

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upon you Shibanath, put it inside the hole of the lion idol on the “Beki” of the temple, then seal it with the strongest concoction of cement that you can make, so that no one is able to know of its existence, no amount of rain should dislodge it from its place of rest, it is a holy command on you”

“I will do so Pandit ji” Shibanath said.

Shibanath the tied the small bundle in his waist, asked his assistants to make cement of lime and gur and other additives in specific measures. He found the priest standing on top of the steps keeping an eye on Shibanath, scrutinizing his moves. His eyes were glowing with a strange energy, almost similar to the flash of the diamonds when it was held up against the sun, at least that how Shibanath felt. When the cement was made, Shibanath took pieces of stone slabs and climbed the temple through the scaffoldings. When he reached at the top, he looked down and found the priest still looking at him standing at a vantage point of the premises.

The “Beki” of the temple is similar to the neck of human beings. In the utkaliya temple architecture, it has four lions looking at four different directions placed on the manifold. Shibanath choose the lion statue that looked at the horizon with a gaping mouth with a crevice big enough to hold the bundle and also to hold a sealing stone slab. Shibanath was tempted to do exactly what the priest had forbidden but his past experience of one hour was too terrifying and he refrained from trying to feel it or to open it and see it. More over the priest was intently watching his every move. And finally what dissuaded him was the vow he had just taken.

Shibanath put the bundle inside the mouth of the lion and made a solid job of sealing it, as master craftsman, that was what he was specialist at, that was why he was sought after, and that’s what made these villagers of a remote place in Sambalpur district to seek him out from a distant land of Ganjam.

That night, as Shibanath woke up from bed and came out of his small cottage within the temple premises to attend call of nature, he found the priest sitting in padmasan and chanting some mantras. But he soon saw Shibanath and followed Shibanath as he went out of the temple and then came back into the temple. The priest kept his chanting on and motioned Shibanath to move into his cottage.

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Next morning the local Sarpanch visited the temple along with some villagers. A meeting was held in the premises and they stopped Shibanath from any further work. The meeting was about a declaration by the Government that the villages along with several hundred others are to be submerged as the much talked about dam across river Mahanadi will submerge these places. What was the point in undertaking repair of the temple if it has to be abandoned in a few days, or at best a year?

There was a murmur of dissenting voices among the villagers and one of them asked “Sarapnch babu, we have been hearing this thing about Hirakud dam since many days, is it final?”

Before the Sarpanch could answers his question, there was one more voice “ Sarpanch ji, how can the government be so cruel to drive us away from our ancestor’s land, why should we be made the scapegoat? I don’t want this dam”

And a third villager who had tied his colorful handloom towel on his head, vented his frustration in an agitated tone “Mahanadi is our mother and we the villagers, we the people of Samablpur are its children, it has never put us in danger, on the other hand it has made our lands fertile, why should the dam be built here? Dibakar Bhai, as Sarpanch, please go and speak to the Government, let them do it anywhere else and not here”

And still one more wise sounding man stood up and silenced others, speaking at loudest of his voice “I hear that they will take the current out from the water and only then let the water flow to farm lands. You please tell me, will it be able to nurture the crops as it used to before? If you remove the cream from milk, will it give you strength? Is the Government under impression that we villagers are idiots and know nothing” the wise villager was huffing and puffing and gasping for breath after making this profound statement.

The Sarpanch folded his hands and said “my dear uncles, brothers, sons, friends, I am no different from you. I am as attached to this land as any of you. This land is our mother… our fathers, grand fathers, great grand fathers walked on this land, played on this land, toiled at the land, lived happily, enjoying abundantly blessings of god, this land is our identity, our roots ….i have played on banks of Mahanadi as a child, spent enchanting evenings late into midnight in a moonlit night reflecting on vast expanses of it’s water……..” The voice of Sarpanch was choked with emotion and he could barely speak a word. Shaking his head side to side, all he could do was to fall flat on the ground and kiss the ground, rolling on it, crying, smearing the mud all over his body, and screaming loudly “my motherland, my motherland”.

One villager followed him and fell flat on the muddy ground, then another and then all started rolling & wailing like children. The priest was no different; he was embracing a pillar of the temple and was crying in loudest voice. Shibanath was moved to tears as he often had heard similar heart wrenching stories of displacement from his own village elders when a minor river dam was constructed at Rasulkonda , his native land.

The tragic spectacle could have gone for a much longer time but for appearance of revenue officials in a jeep. A loud speaker atop the jeep was blaring some announcement that became louder and louder till all villagers took notice of it and stopped in their act. The revenue officials in the jeep stopped at the temple and seeing the Sarpanch, they called him. The loud speaker kept blaring “Villagers of Kuinpur, the government is constructing Hirakud dam and your village will be submerged. The land has been acquired by the district administration. Suitable compensation shall be given to you on surrendering your land records. The Government will also make alternative arrangement to settle you all in new safe place……..”

The local official from the block said “Sarpanch babu, please prepare your people to come to revenue office with all their documents and submit for verification. We will be making list and paying compensation against documents of all lands we acquire, the Government is also providing many facilities that you shall know in coming days.

“We do not any of any of that compensation. We are not going to sell out mother land, no, not at any cost. Go away and make your dam anywhere else. Why in our village? “Many villagers protested before the revenue officials venting their anger and frustration at the unwelcome project.

“Sarpanch babu, please explain to your people…” the officials quickly left the place seeing the mood of the crowd.

After the revenue officials left the place and the villagers left one by one, Shibanath went to the Sarpanch and requested him to clear his dues for the works already done. The priest too supported him and asked the Sarpanch to make full payment even for the portions not completed as stopping the work was not the fault of Shibanath. The Sarpanch left the place promising to make the payment by the noon and left the place.

Shibanath left the village at crack of dawn next day. He had to take a long ride home, first by small sized boat to Subarnapur, and then change to a bigger sized passenger ferry to Cuttack and thereafter by train to his native district.

Although his journey, he was constantly thinking of the diamond, the Jack’s Diamond as Pandu had called it, its massive size, the flash of light, the sparkle, the kaleidoscopic patterns it made on temple roof and walls and how he came to hold the diamond in his hand, a diamond in his hand!!! It looked so implausible. He looked at his hands, the same hands that held a big diamond. He would have been lost in his thought but the memory of a black snake retreating into a bush with the priest’s wife’s eyes wide in terror spoiled the exhilarating remembrance. He decided not to think about the episode anymore and focus on his next assignment of restoring a dilapidated temple in Koraput. But the nagging thought of forgetting the diamond made him take out his note book where he kept measurements of works done by him. He drew a sketch of the temple, its location on banks of the river, the distance from nearby land marks, time taken to travel. Shibanath did all this discretely when his assistants were not around.

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Oceanic Sports Institute of Goa was wore a festive look that day. It was the last day of the millennium and the stage was set up to felicitate successful SCUBA divers trained by the institute. A bollywood superstar was on stage calling out names of trained amateur scuba drivers and the last one on the list was the champion of the year. The announcement of name and introduction accompanied by loud music and applauded by the audience reverberated through the walls and ceiling of the huge auditorium.

“Now we present our medal to the highest scorer of the SCUBA diving Sri Romya Ranjan Maharana, a Mechanical Engineer from Jharsuguda. Romya is working in a steel plant there and apart from being a mechanical engineer he is an avid sculpture trained by none other than his legendary award winning father Shibanath Maharana. We are happy to honor him as best SCUBA diver of the institute. The auditorium was vibrating with applause of the audience.

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Romya looked at the ground passing below from his flight and it was just passing over the Hirakud dam. The Hirakud dam always was a passionate subject for him. His late father often told him fascinating stories of the longest dam of the world which displaced a large number of people, submerged a vast region where once existed many prosperous and thriving villages which had a rich cultural history of arts, architecture , handlooms. Hundreds of temples were also submerged by waters of catchment.

He often heard a story from his father about village Kuinpur where a temple had a precious diamond hidden in a sculpture of a lion and how the diamond was a cursed one that spelled doom for all who wished to own it. He always believed the story to be an event blown out of proportion till his father handed him a sketch with graphic details of the village Kuinpur, the temple. His father was a master craftsman and had prepared a sketch which showed clearly a system of rivers and canals, the journey that his father took in multiple legs and on each occasion used boats of different sizes. But the map was not of much use now as all land marks were submerged under hundreds of feet of water.

Romya had always dismissed the story that the diamond was a cursed one. His father belonged to a generation where people believed in such superstitions. Now that his life was more or less settled and he had time to explore, he planned to make a try to retrieve the diamond. But he could not share this plans with anyone as he feared people may laugh at him for the seemingly cock n bull story, or they may back out due to the “Cursed Diamond” angle to it. So he planned to do it all alone. He had studied the map prepared by his father and had zeroed in on a specific location with it’s latitude and longitude coordinates. The other thing that he lacked was skill to dive under water and he had joined a scuba diving training institute in Goa which he had completed with flying colors.

Romya had hired a fishing boat from a villager on bank of the Hirakud catchment and made several trips deep into the huge reservoir using his GPS device. He spent about a year familiarizing with the skills needed to navigate in the reservoir and made several scuba diving trials in the waters. He had purchased an inflatable rubber boat with an OB motor to navigate quickly in the dam.

Finally he set out on a journey to accomplish his cherished mission to retrieve the Jack’s Diamond all alone. He sailed to the spot exactly over the village kuinpur using his GPS and once there, he switched off his OB motor, drop an anchor to hold the boat in place. He quickly changed to diving gear and strapped all equipment he needed for his underwater expedition.

Spalsh!!! He had hit the water falling backwards and slowly sink, sink deep into the water. His Scuba could take him only about 90 feet below the surface of water he had chosen the month of may as the water level was at its lowest. He had two tanks of oxygen to last for about 50 minutes under water.

After surveying the area for painfully long minutes, he could finally see the dark profile of a massive underwater structure and his heart beats increased as this moment was something he had spent all his childhood, his youth listening to, dreaming about and secretly wish to visit not bothering about the caution the story was always narrated to him with.

He quickly flapped his legs and closed in to the structure. Yes, this was the temple he was searching for. He could see the tell tale features of his father’s sketch matching to the temple and now all he had to do was to search the inside of mouth of the lions. There were four of them and he had to choose the one that faced east. He had to quickly finish his mission as he had been under water for about 30 minutes and now that he was running high on adrenaline and was straining to navigate around the temple, he was using more oxygen than normal.

He approached one of the lion and found its head missing. May be sixty years of being under water has started showing its effect on the decrepit temple, he thought. He quickly swirled around to the next lion and found it intact. He put his hand on inside of the mouth and found it to be hollow and round in shape. His father had told him that after putting the diamond inside the mouth his father had sealed the crevice with a slab of stone and it should be flat.

He quickly moved to the next lion and found a deposit of silt on it. He was now breathing heavily and his oxygen was running on lowest. He had to very quickly finish the job or abort the mission and quickly surface. His depth meter was showing about 70 feet under water and that needed about three minutes to go up. Did he have that much oxygen? He was not sure. Should he abort he mission this time and try one more? He was in a dilemma. But grabbing the jack’s diamond was just a few feet away and he decided to take a risk, a calculated one. He cleared the silt by swiping it with his hands. Something struck hius hand and he held it and tried to dislodge it.

“My god, what’s this ? “ Romya thought to himself. He could not believe what he was holding in his now, a skeleton crouching over the lion. The skull came off the body and slowly very slowly sunk to the floor of the dam out of sight. His heart was pounding, He was immobilized with gripping fear, was the curse real, can a curse really exist? Was Jack’s diamond really cursed? His mind was working in overload. His oxygen was quickly being overused. He had 70 feet to surface to safety, and he needed two seconds to travel every feet up.

What should he do now, one try at the mouth of the lion? Or one push upward using his paddle?

The fishermen who made regular rounds of the dam found an abandoned rubber dinghy floating on surface of Hirakud Dam.