By Nilankur Das
She always remembered the last time she celebrated Christmas, as if the memory itself refused to dissolve into the blur of other nights, as if the cold air of Jharkhand had been preserved in her chest, ready to rise each December when in Goa the Mendonca family draped lights over their balcony and set out cakes heavy with rum and nuts, and she found herself not in the tiled kitchen scrubbing brass or carrying trays but on that hillock far away, with the banyan tree looming and the chapel glowing under the moon, and she felt at once the warmth of belonging and the sharp sting of loss, and perhaps it was foolish to think one could separate them, for memory insists on carrying both, refusing to let joy march without grief at its side.
Their village had its shape on that hillock, the old banyan spread like a guardian, its roots gripping stone, its branches hanging low as if to embrace the people beneath, and beside it stood the chapel, white once but now patched with cracks, the cross tilted yet upright, and together they made a scene almost too beautiful, like something drawn for postcards, though no postcard could hold the smell of damp earth or the strange chorus of cicadas, nor could it reveal the unease that always lingered, the knowledge that soldiers might come at any hour, rifles and orders in their hands. Beauty there was fragile, beauty was always on the edge of being broken.
On Christmas Eve the villagers gathered, thirty-five perhaps, men, women, children clutching shawls, elders seated at a distance, and they lit a bonfire that sent sparks into the night, and the cold that had pressed so hard on their bones gave way to warmth that flushed their cheeks. The drums began, the dhol and the mandar, and the jhumur dance uncoiled, hands linked, shoulders swaying, feet stamping, couplets rising into the sky, teasing, longing, enduring verses, the voices of the people braided into a single current that circled the fire. The moon shone like a blessing, silver over the banyan leaves, and for a little while it felt as if the world might permit them this one night of celebration.
But that afternoon they had seen convoys passing, trucks draped in tarpaulin, soldiers clutching rifles, faces hard as stone, heading into the jungle to flush out Maoists, only three kilometres away, the crack of gunfire sometimes carried on the wind. The villagers had lived long enough between two hungers, the Maoists demanding food, sons, silence, and the soldiers demanding loyalty, obedience, silence as well, that fear had become a second skin, but even so, each sight of uniforms unsettled them, and though they danced they could not forget.
She was younger then, not yet tied to the Mendonca family in Gogol, where now her hands are never idle, dogs barking, toddler wailing, the brass that never seems to shine enough, the kitchen that demands scrubbing twice a day, especially in December when the family’s guests fly in from London and Dubai and Melbourne, and she doubles her work, indispensable they call her, as though that word could replace the life she lost. She has not been home in five years, not for Christmas, not for Sarhul or Karma, not even for harvest, because the journey costs more than she owns, not just in money but in the debt that binds her, the handler from Raipur who took a fee to place her here, fifty percent interest clamped like a shackle, and so her only way home is through memory.
That night the villagers had prepared with what little they had, sweets from rice flour and jaggery, hair braided with ribbons, bamboo flutes carried by the old men, and they had decided that they would celebrate, for to not celebrate would be to admit that fear had triumphed. But even celebration is fragile, and during the singing, while the fire popped and the couplets rose, two boys, barely men, slipped into the chapel, Maoists on the run, faces streaked with soot, eyes pleading, and the priest, Father Daniel, stiffened, knowing the cost of shelter, knowing that soldiers would punish them all if the boys were found, but also knowing that to cast them out was to condemn them. A quick word passed among the elders, a nod from the priest, and they chose silence, they chose protection, they chose the risk.
The soldiers came as expected, boots sinking in mud, rifles glinting under the moon. They carried orders in their ears and fatigue in their bones, men who had left wives behind, children growing without them, mothers praying each night for their safety, and here in the belly of the jungle they were told to hunt shadows, Maoists who laid booby traps and vanished into trees, and so every villager seemed suspect, every fire a signal, every song a disguise. They walked in not as men but as suspicion given flesh.
And what did they see? Villagers dancing, a fire leaping, drums echoing, voices raised. Something inside them recoiled. How could there be laughter here, while comrades died in ambushes? How could there be song, when their own Christmas would be no more than a tin plate of cold rice in some camp? Rage swelled, born not just from cruelty but from envy, from exhaustion, from the gnawing sense that joy was forbidden to them and therefore should be forbidden to others too.
The villagers lined up, men on one side, women on the other, children clutching mothers’ saris, the priest standing in his threadbare cassock, speaking gently that this was Christmas, only prayer, only bread, only song, but his voice trembled, for he knew words are brittle when rifles are lifted. Two truths clashed beneath the same moon: the soldiers believing that without ruthless search they would never return alive to their families, the villagers believing that without this one fragile rebellion of celebration they would cease to be human at all.
The search began with impatience, vessels overturned, baskets kicked aside, rifle barrels pushing into shadows. Soldiers muttered curses, these villagers feasted while they starved, they sang while soldiers marched sleepless, and bitterness spread. Then came the shout, two figures on the chapel roof, dragged down in terror. Fury descended. The boys were beaten first, not only because they were fugitives but because they embodied every dread the soldiers carried, the mines, the bullets from unseen trees. In striking them, the soldiers struck at their own fear.
Then came the villagers’ turn, men forced to their knees, rifle butts cracking against backs, batons thudding on shoulders, women shoved aside, not beaten as hard but made to feel the weight of being watched, eyes crawling, and the priest trying to speak only to be drowned out by curses. The fire still burned, mocking in its brightness, and the moon looked on without pity.
When the fury ebbed, when the boots stepped back, silence fell, but it was not silence at all—it was the sound of pain swallowed, of villagers bent but not broken, of soldiers panting as if beaten themselves, for rage drains even those who wield it. They smashed vessels, scattered food, trampled sweets, tipped pots of rice, as if to erase joy itself. And yet some soldiers turned their faces when they saw the old woman fall, some gripped their rifles to steady trembling, because even in their anger they knew tomorrow one of their own might lie bleeding under banyan shade, and who would care for them then?
The villagers gathered what remained. Women soothed children, shawls wrapped tight, murmuring songs that carried not hope but endurance. Men stood again, because to stand was already defiance. The priest whispered prayers not in Latin but in their tongue, words that were less shield than thread, keeping them together. The soldiers marched away, and if any looked back they would have seen the villagers feeding the fire, refusing to let it die. Christmas, bruised and broken, still smouldered.
Years later in Goa, she polished brass until her arms ached, rose at dawn to mop tiles, carried the toddler on her hip, listened to dogs barking, indispensable they called her, though her life was borrowed, bought at fifty percent interest. Her parents were gone, her brother far away, her debt a chain. Yet each December as she strung the Mendoncas’ balcony with lights, she saw the hillock rise in her mind, the banyan glow under the moon, the fire leap, and her people dancing, hands linked though their shoulders were bruised, voices rising though their throats were raw, and she knew then that the spirit of that night had not been beaten out of them, nor out of her.
For what is Christmas, if not the stubborn insistence that even in the coldest night, even with boots thudding and rifles raised, even when vessels are smashed and bones bruised, people will still gather, still sing, still feed the fire. And so the duality remained, as it always does, the soldiers’ boots in the mud and the villagers’ bare feet in the dust, rifles lifted and drums silenced, blows falling and fire burning, two truths locked together under the same December moon. And perhaps that is the real spirit of Christmas in Jharkhand, not peace as the world imagines it, but the refusal to surrender humanity, the dance continuing even after the beating ends.
She always remembered the last time she celebrated Christmas.
Nilankur curates provoking programs at the Museum of Goa. He is a columnist for O’Heraldo writing on pressing social and cultural issues. His latest fiction work appears in the anthology The Brave New World of Goan Writing & Art 2025.
Banner image by Jacob Braun downloaded from Unsplash.com