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Darkness surrounded the hills of Malkangiri as Gurubari Sisa sat on the verandah of her mud-paved hut. The jungle just outdoor looked beautiful and scary.

The rain had begun to fall, in drizzles. Even as she was conversing with her grandchildren, a dark man with broad shoulders stepped in, calling for her son. She saw Raghunath Sisa, the eldest of four children, go out. She also watched her middle son and Raghunath’s wife leave.

None returned that night and fearful thoughts entered her mind. Matikhala village, located in Jodamba tehsil of Malkangiri district in Odisha, was under the attack of the Naxalites from time to time. The intervals had widened due to the deployment of Border Security Force (BSF) personnel, but the threats hadn’t vanished in 2017.

Gurubari slept with her grandchildren on the floor as the rain poured that whole night in the month of July. She would get weird dreams, walk to the verandah and stare at the trees swaying in the midst of strong winds. Her husband had died 16 years back due to an untreated intestinal pain.

Some distance away, Raghunath was tied with ropes and put in the corner room of a hut in Bejingi village as five men kept guard in the night. His wife and brother were put in another hut.

Hours before, his mobile phone was snatched and he was beaten up by eight men outside his village. The man who had come to fetch him from the house had said that Naxalites were wanting to talk to him. By the time they left the village, they were a group and they slapped him as they went along. “You are a police informer. You are revealing our hideout places. We won’t leave you,” they shouted wildly at him.

All the while, Raghunath, aged 40, was denying that he was an informer and would voluntarily take the blows only if he had worked against anyone. “I have no fear. If I have harmed anyone, you can hit me,” he told them.

None of these words convinced the Naxalites. Raghunath was working as a guard in a police station at Chitrakonda in Malkangiri district. He was paid a salary of Rs 1,000. On the other days when he had no duty, he would work as a labourer. 

Raghunath was given no food and got no sleep that night. Just after dawn the next day, he was taken to the neighbouring jungle in Mukudipali and beaten for more than an hour with wooden logs cut from the forest. The Naxalites told him not to visit a hospital even if he had to die. 

“If you go to any medical centre, we will see to it that you don’t return home,” they warned, before abandoning him.

In search of Raghunath, his wife and brother found him lying on the ground, writhing in great pain. Ramdas Sisa, the younger brother, put him on the motorcycle and took him home. He wasn’t taken to a hospital but his brother-in-law, who lived in a neighbouring village in Andhra Pradesh, sent injection and medicine, hidden inside a sack of rice. 

A month later, even as he was recuperating at home, the Naxalites were back. “Raghu bhai, you come with us for a meeting. Your people in the village are not good. Let your son and daughter join us,” they said. 

Raghunath declined to hand over his children to the Naxals. His daughter was studying in the 8th class and son in the 4th at Chitrakonda. The youngest daughter was in the 2nd class. “Why should they join the Naxal movement? It is because of you Naxals that there is no progress in this area. Your style of operations is akin to extortion,” he told them.

“If you be an informer, we will hit you again and you may not survive this time,” they threatened.

As he prepared to take the cattle out for grazing, he shouted back that he would never forget what they had done to him. “Why should I listen to you? I was never slapped by my parents,” he said. 

A couple of months passed calmly till the Naxalites descended on the village from the hills one evening, a cruel plan etched in their hearts. Seven of them started looking for Raghunath. Gurubari was sitting on the verandah but Raghunath was away. 

“Not finding him, they took out their anger that evening. The animals that we had were taken away – cows, bulls, goats and hens,” Gurubari recollects, pointing to the empty goat shed with wooden slated flooring. The cattle shed now has two cows who returned after escaping from the Naxalites, and their calves. 

The Naxalites took away not just animals but also every other thing that was worth anything – rice, finger millet, sarees, shirts and even mosquito nets and two umbrellas. 

“I never feared them. When they ordered me to leave my house, I asked them where would I live. They then let me be. But my eldest son left the village for good. He now lives far away,” said Gurubari, draped in a pink saree with sunflowers in full bloom on the border.

Fearing for his life, Raghunath’s wife told him to leave the village and find work elsewhere. He went to Lamtaput and worked as a labourer earning on an average Rs 7,000 a month. He would sometimes go to his village to see his mother and wife. A year later, he went to Kamra where his ancestors had settled before leaving for Matikhala. His wife joined him in 2021.

Life went on like this for five years until Gurubari was in acute pain one day and developed paralysis on the left side. She is still not able to walk and spends most of the day on the verandah where she saw her son being taken away by the Naxalites six and a half years back.

On the day we visited her, we found her sleeping on a faded mat, torn in places. She had an old quilt to cover herself as winter had set in in Matikhala. “Even at night, I sleep here on the floor of the verandah. The rooms are occupied by my grandchildren,” she says.

In the three-room hut, all her precious belongings are stored inside a rice sack. Her State Bank of India (SBI) passbook, Aadhaar card, old age pension card, health card – they are all there. The latest addition is a new saree a relative gave her.

There aren’t many things she talks about as she worries about her ill-health. One gets to hear about her earlier boat trips to Chitrakonda to collect her old age pension money of Rs 500 as a widow from the SBI branch. The Gurupriya Setu bridge wasn’t there those days and there was no road connecting her village. 

“It used to take two days as the last boat to return was at 2.30 in the afternoon. Without the bank (SBI), I couldn’t have collected the pension money,” she tells us, as she adjusts her gold nose rings, the last of the ornaments remaining with her. 

While narrating her earlier years when she was engaged in farming, she would suddenly return to that dreadful day when the Naxalites pounded blows on her son. She would feel sad that Raghunath has left the village for good and had to struggle outside for years as a labourer. Only a few months back, he has joined Jadam police station as a guard, she would tell us. His daughter, who was studying engineering, technology and diploma management in Khordha, died last year. 

Raghunath is still struggling. He gets paid Rs 1,800 for his duty in the police station and on most of the other days, he is free to do what he wants. He does labour work to supplement his income and also looks after the land at Kamra where he cultivates rice, potato and finger millet.

“Out of the eight men who hit me, five died due to firing from the BSF personnel. One is in the jail and the other two are yet to be caught,” Raghunath tells us. 

Gauribari, aged 70, has put on a saree and is seating on the verandah. She is excited that the day has arrived for her to get the old age pension of Rs 500. 

Ramdas has started the motorcycle and she is lifted and put on it with some difficulty. She has to travel a few km away from her village to the nearest point where internet connectivity is available. This exercise is carried out on the 15th of every month. 

Reaching the pension money to Gurubari is challenging for Burunda Pangi, SBI’s customer service person, as the internet signals are weak up in the hills. She has to leave SBI’s customer service point (CSP) in Jodamba early in the morning and travel to places where connectivity is available and the fingerprint authenticating machine can function. Villagers assemble in these centres to collect their pension money after the authenticating process is over. 

Pangi waits for Gurubari under the shade of a jackfruit tree some km away from her village. She has put the laptop on the seat of her husband’s motorcycle and the finger authenticating machine is squeezed in between. She holds a register and is surrounded by old men and women who have come to collect their pension money. 

Gurubari extends her index finger and the authenticating process is over. She collects the month’s pension money of Rs 500, pats Pangi on her back and leaves for her house.

“I use the pension money to buy hair oil, tooth brush, soap and tobacco for the month,” she says, a rare smile on her face, as we part from her.