The Girl Who Became a Bird

I FIRST HEARD THE STORY OF ‘THE GIRL WHO Became a Bird’ at a story-telling session in the village of Rngai in North Khasi Hills. Bah Binong, it was, who told us the story. He spoke after another elder had finished his story, ‘The Peacock and the Sun’. He said, “With due permission from Ñi Rang, our moderator, I would like to venture an answer to Klew’s questions with a story of my own. In Bah Kar’s story, Klew, the peacock, had asked, ‘What is behind this uncalled-for and undeserved abuse? Man does not fear me as he fears Um La, the tiger. Why would he want to harm creatures who are not even a threat to him? Why would he want to harm creatures who would only enhance the beauty of this world? Is his portion wisdom or madness?’ Let me tell you a tale to prove that man’s natural instinct is to harm those he does not consider his own, even though they may pose no threat to him. And his harmfulness is not limited to animals. It is like a runaway fire, consuming everything in its wake, including humans.”

The stories, let me clarify, revolved around man’s destructiveness—how man is the deadliest enemy of all things on earth.

Bah Binong said the story began with a girl named Kyntiap Mon, who lived thousands of years ago “in this very village”.

Kyntiap was the only daughter of Sawiah and his wife, Reh. Kyntiap was a lovely girl, quiet, gentle and sweet-natured. Her father doted on her. He was a prosperous landowner with paddy fields and orchards everywhere. He also kept a large stock of cattle, goats, chickens and pigs. His inspiration for all this hard work was his beloved daughter. He wanted her to have a life of ease and prosper­ity should anything happen to him. He loved her so much that he never even allowed his wife to raise her voice against her own daughter. And yet, despite this overflow­ing fatherly love, Kyntiap remained unspoiled. Pride and arrogance were simply foreign to her nature.

But when she was about ten, her father died following a sudden illness. Before he died, he sent for her and said, “Khun baieit eh jong nga, my most beloved daughter, I’m about to go to the house of God. He has seen fit to break my sai hukum, my thread of life and take me away. I have pleaded with him day and night to spare me for your sake, but this illness is too severe; I will not recover. Today I’m a completely broken man: my heart is cut to shreds by the thousand worries that stab at it. You see, my dearest Kyntiap, I cannot bear to leave you behind. My dream was to see you grow into a beautiful heiress and to get you married to a fine young man who would love and worship you as I do. I’m full of vague presentiments about your life; I don’t know why. Your mother is here, but still, I worry: what if the world mistreats you and is hard on you? Oh, khun baieit, I absolutely cannot bear that thought!”

“But what to do, my little darling? It’s the will of God. He gives, and he takes. We just have to be strong and endure. I have left you all the wealth and property, but you are too young. For now, your mother will look after them. Once you are of marriageable age, everything will come to you, apart from what I have left your mother so she too can lead a comfortable life. Be the good, sweet girl you have always been. Obey your mother in all things. But above all, never forget that though I will be gone in the flesh, I will always be with you in the spirit. In the house of God, I will look after you and plead with God for you. I will ask him always to be kind to you. Take heart from that, my princess, soul of my soul, and be strong.”

Having uttered these words, he began praying quietly, stroking the girl’s head gently as she sat sobbing by the bedside, her head on his chest, her arms around him. And that was how he went with prayers on his lips and his hand clinging to his beloved daughter.

Kyntiap was inconsolable for days. She just sat sobbing in a corner, refusing to eat and drink. As her father had doted on her, she too doted on him. Now, with him gone, she simply did not want to live any more. However, her mother and her relatives forcefully put food in her mouth and coaxed her to swallow a few mouthfuls now and then, while reminding her all the time about how her father had wanted her to be strong. Slowly and slowly, Kyntiap regained her strength and the will to live with the help of her many relatives, who were still thronging the house, helping the family with the many chores needed to bring life back to normal.

For a time, Kyntiap led an almost happy life. She played with her friends and her many animals: dogs, chickens and goats, with whom she seemed to have a close affinity. She surprised everyone with her uncanny power to com­municate with them. The moment she uttered the call, “Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku,” every one of them came flocking to her. The animals were a source of great consolation. Only in the evenings, especially at sundown, did she miss her father very much, for it was at that time that he used to return home, greeting her loudly and picking her up in his arms when she came running to him.

But it seemed that even that little happiness would not be allowed to her. Merely six months after Sawiah’s death, Kyntiap’s mother married again. And because she had not waited for the mandatory one year, all her paternal, and most of her maternal, relations began avoiding her like an outcast. But that only worked to the detriment of the little girl, who was now at the mercy of her stepfather, who hated her with a bitter, sadistic hatred.

Reh’s new husband, Lwen, was ten years younger than her. As his name suggested, he was a good-for-nothing who spent his time lazing around the patas and drinking dens of the village. But as Sawiah had doted on his daugh­ter, Reh now doted on her husband. She treated him more like her son and denied him nothing.

When Lwen learnt that most of the family’s wealth and property belonged to Kyntiap and that she could not be de­prived of them since her paternal relations were also made joint guardians with Reh, his hatred for her multiplied a hundredfold. Every day, he plotted and schemed, devising means to make her life a constant misery. And he thorough­ly poisoned Reh’s mind against her. One day, for instance, he said, “Look, Reh, how can you be happy with what Sawiah and his relatives had done to you? How can a little slip of a girl inherit all the wealth while her mother becomes her dependent? Isn’t this a topsy-turvy kind of scheme? Why would they do this? Your husband and his relatives must have hated you. If they hated you, why should you not hate them back? Why should you respect their arrangement? Just imagine what will happen when she grows up and gets married. Where will you be? She may take care of you, but where will I be? If you love me and don’t want me to end up in a pigsty, we must do something about it.”

“But what can we do, Wen?” Reh said helplessly. “I already explained how things stand, try to understand, will you, ieit, my love?”

“Do you really love me?” Lwen whispered fiercely.

“Of course I do! You know that I do!”

“See, Reh, rather than be kicked out by this bastard later when I become too old to do anything, I would prefer to leave now when I’m still young—”

“Hush, ieit, why do you say a thing like that?”

“Why do I say a thing like that?” Lwen demanded hotly. “Who am I to her? Nothing! And she hates me. I tell you, she hates me with all her cruel little heart! And all because of what? Because I happen to love you!”

“Okay, okay; I understand, but don’t say you will leave me. How will I carry on without you?”

“If you do what I say, I will not leave. Now, let me ask you,

if Kyntiap dies, who gets all this wealth?”

“Are you planning to have her killed, ieit? God, but what if we are discovered? They will hang us!”

“Hold on! Just answer me first.”

“Me, of course. There’s no one else.

But tell me, what are you planning to do, ieit?

Let’s not do anything foolish, okay, ieit?”

“I’m not stupid. We will not kill or have her killed, not right away, anyhow. Instead of that, we will be patient. We will let hardship and torment and mis­ery kill her for us. That way, no one can accuse us of murder. What do you think?”

Reh pinched his face lovingly and said, “I was afraid you would propose murder. Murder would certainly land us in trouble, ieit. But you are so clever, my Wen! God, I have never been fond of Kyntiap, you know? It was Sawiah’s fault for treating her like a queen and ignoring me totally. And all because he thought I was having an affair with someone—”

“Were you?” Lwen demanded suspiciously.

“Of course not! Just because I married you before the end of the mourning period, because I love you so madly, you think I’m that kind of woman? But he thought I was. The suspicious brute! And since then, he had been transferring all his love to his precious daughter, even giving her every­thing. Imagine that! You are right, Wen; it’s not natural.”

“Of course it’s not! Let’s do that, then. Hardship, tor­ment and misery. At the most, people will accuse us of cruelty, but not murder.”

Kyntiap’s only moments of peace were when she took the goats to water and later when she went to sleep with them in their shed. She even used to talk to them

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That was when Kyntiap’s troubles really started. She found herself suddenly reduced to the status of a horribly treated slave. She was thrown out of the house and made to live with the goats in the shed. Lwen got Reh to dismiss the housemaids and made Kyntiap do all the work. Though so young, all the menial work around the household fell to her. From dawn to late at night, she spent all her time washing utensils, sweeping and scrubbing floors, washing clothes, fetching water from the spring, feeding and water­ing the animals, and running all sorts of errands for Lwen.

In between all of these, she had to endure severe daily beatings. Lwen, for instance, beat her at the slightest excuse.

He slapped, punched and kicked her where it would hurt but would not show so much. Every day, he urged Reh to thrash her with a cane or nettles because she allegedly did not obey him when he asked her to do even the simplest things. Be­tween the thrashing, the hard work and the mental torture, Kyntiap was reduced to skin and bones. The worst part of it was the terror. She lived in constant terror of the cane and the nettles that either Reh or Lwen administered daily.

Her only moments of peace were when she took the goats to water and when later she went to sleep with them in their shed. She used to talk to them, saying, “Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku, oh, my dear friends, how my own mother has conspired against me. To my stepfather, she gives the milk rice, the butter rice, only the best food; to me, she gives only rice and salt. Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku, and look at these bruises and lacerations, dear friends; I hope Papa sees them too; I hope he pleads for me in the house of God.”

Hearing this, the goats would shed copious tears, make pitiful noises, and crowd around her, trying to console her by licking her face.

One day, while lamenting her fate to her animals, she was overheard by Lwen, who immediately reported it to Reh. Enraged by this pathetic attempt to expose her, Reh brought a bunch of stinging nettles and dipped them in an earthen basin. When Kyntiap returned with the goats, she and Lwen stripped her naked and tied her to a pole with a long rope. Then Reh took the nettles with both hands and thrashed Kyntiap with all the strength she could summon. When she grew tired, Lwen took over the beat­ing. The servants who witnessed the punishment were horrified. There they were, the mad parents, thrashing the poor girl like a washerwoman thrashing clothes on the washing stones by a stream. And there was the girl, howl­ing with terror, straining at the rope and jumping up and down, unable to bear the excruciating pain. But merciful­ly, as they took turns beating her like murderous maniacs, Kyntiap soon collapsed unconscious on the ground.

That night, Kyntiap could not sleep at all. Besides the throbbing, stinging pain, she also came down with a fever, making her tremble and shiver in her little cot as if shaken by some unseen hand. In her delirium, she called out to her father to come and release her from that agony and that unmitigated misery. Then, all of a sudden, as soon as she made that plea, she found herself reaching down to where she had hidden her treasure of green bird feathers, which she had collected while minding the goats in the hills and nearby woods. She did not know why, but she was always fascinated by them. She now took them out and laid them before her, inspecting them one by one with the help of a flambeau. There were a lot of them. How lovely they were! How inexplicably she was drawn to them! And then, as if directed by an unseen force, she started sticking them into her flesh. She was surprised not to feel any pain at all. Even the awful stinging that tormented her seemed to vanish the moment the feathers entered her flesh. Thrilled by the experience, she stuck more and more feathers into her body. By morning, she found herself transformed into a bird. “Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku,” she said to her friends, the goats and chickens, who were staring at her with happy faces. “Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku, goodbye, my dearest friends; I’m leaving this miserable place forever. May you be well!”

With that, she flew up to the highest tree in the yard and said, “Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku” as loud as she could. “Oh, Papa, this child-devouring black bear, this mother of mine, has deceived us both! She gives her lover, my stepfa­ther, only the tastiest food, the sweetest food; for me, only rice, salt and nettles. Oh, Papa, may you also see; may you also come to know their foul deed in the house of God!”

Everyone who heard this strange lament came run­ning to see what it was. They saw it was Kyntiap, looking like a big, green bird, perching on the highest branch of a chestnut tree, voicing her heartrending lament. In a flash, they understood everything. The poor girl who had been so cruelly tormented for so long had finally found release in this extraordinary metamorphosis.

Reh and Lwen were thoroughly embarrassed by the exposure. They coaxed her to come down, to come home and not to behave like a mad girl. But Kyntiap said, “Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku, oh, Mei, oh, Panah, yesterday you thrashed me with nettles as if I was a ragged quilt: my flesh crawled with blisters and ran with blood and bloody stripes. If you catch hold of me again, what else would you do? What fresh demonic torture would you devise? Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku, farewell, my little friends; from nowon, the soles of my feet will never touch the ground again, contaminated as it is by human cruelty.”

Bah Binong concluded his story by saying, “From then on, Kyntiap lived the life of a bird and became known as Langwarku because of how she had communicated with the animals. As you may see, the story of Kyntiap is the story of man’s pervasive harmfulness. No one is safe from him when he allows evil free rein in his heart.”

About The Author

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih is the author of the epic-length novel Funeral Nights and the forthcoming The Distaste of the Earth (Penguin)