Excerpt from ‘Spirit Nights’

Easterine Kire

The darkness continued. But after Tola’s dirge singing, it 
was as though a cloud had been lifted from people’s minds. 
They were still trapped inside their homes but they were making 
the effort to think brightly. For the first time, a sense of 
excitement had been generated at what they would find after 
the darkness. In the past weeks, they had not dared think beyond 
that, so desperate were they. But now there was a shift in the 
atmosphere, and it was difficult not to feel the hope that Tola’s 
song had resurrected in them. 

Surely the end of the darkness would be like waking up 
to the world on the day of the creator-deity when he was 
seen crossing from mountain to mountain carrying the fierce 
animals on his shoulders. They remembered being told how 
their ancestor, newly born, had laughed and laughed at the 
sight of the two elephants squirming and bellowing as the creator 
held them in the crook of his arm and made his way into 
the deep woods. Would things look the same or would they 
find another earth in its place? Would they still find trees for 
there had been no trees until he stubbed out holes in the first 
earth and spat into them, and the Needlewood trees sprang 
up first, but they were so swiftly overtaken by the native oaks, 
so much so that the elephant grass had to stop their profligate 
growth and allot them their rightful places. Surely everything 
would look very different. It would certainly feel much 
altered. Would they get the old sun back? Or would it be a 
new sun? Like the first sun and the first moon that the creator 
had moulded in the palm of his hand and flung into the dark, 
formless skies? 

Surely on the day the sun returned, they would all sing 
together the song of the creator-deity that they were taught from 
childhood, for everyone knew how to sing it: 

Mountain maker 
Mountain maker 
It was your hand 
Your mighty hand 
That set down the mountains 
Over the plainlands 
Your mighty hand 
That placed the rocks and trees 
On the mountain slopes 
And the short wild grass 
Over the treeless heights 
Mountain maker 
Mountain maker 
Fathering the skies 
Mothering the rivers 
And the fields in the valleys 
Mountain maker mountain maker 
We give you all glory 
Shambulee Shambulee Shambulee. 

It was a song sung by grown-ups, but the children loved to 
join in at the refrain, their little voices calling out Shambulee, 
Shambulee, long after the song was over. 

They could all see for themselves that it had already begun. 
Every now and then people checked what they had said. If a 
complaint was voiced, the speaker was heard apologising a few 
moments later. The inner darkness is being dispelled, Tola was heard 
saying with a small smile. Though she never left the house, her 
spirit could sense the repentance that was sweeping across the 
village, house by house, soul by soul. 

Early on in the dark time, the headman had started to beat 
a gong every morning to announce a new day. It was used as 
the signal to light the fire and prepare meals. As they entered 
the third week, people became more cautious with their food 
stores. Meals were cut down to one a day that they ate in the 
afternoon hours. If they felt hungry after that, they snacked on 
boiled lentils and maize. Most families had killed and eaten their 
chickens as the dark time began. They now debated on whether 
it was time to take out the food of war, millet. Some families 
alternated millet with rice. This was a sort of war, after all, they 
argued. Even if they were not being attacked by enemy warriors 
with spears and daos, the constant onslaught of darkness and 
spiritual warfare was fraught with tension not very different from 
physical battles. 

Their movements had become very restricted. It was a drastic 
change from the active lives they had always led. No more 
getting up early to get ready for the field. No back-breaking 
digging and planting and weeding. No carrying back firewood 
and pumpkins and tapioca, or any of the other vegetables they 
had planted in their jhum fields. The leisurely life was so different 
from what they had visualised it to be. They fretted to be 
outdoors again. Their bodies groaned at the forced sedentary 
life under their roofs. Their beloved homes had become their 
prisons. But there was nothing to be done. They had to learn 
the lesson of waiting. And they learned it best as they applied 
themselves to waiting actively. It was as the seer of Mvüphri 
had said, waiting must be accompanied by an attitude of seeking and 
receiving wisdom. Although they were not fully aware of it, that 
was what the people were beginning to do.