Dreaming of Folk Art
Graphite on paper. 10.25 x 13.5 inches, plus frame
The Honey Tiger
Bangladesh From: The Honeyhunter by Karthika Nair, Berlin 2014, edited by Iris Maaß
In the land of eighteen tides on the Bay of Bengal, where three rivers meet - the Padma, the Meghna and the Jamuna - there lies a mangrove forest. It is so mysterious and wondrous that it is called Sundarban. Sundarban means forest of beauty. And deep in this mangrove forest, there once lived a thousand and one thousand thousand, perhaps even a zillion honeybees.
Over these thousand and thousand and maybe even a zillion honeybees ruled the queen of all queen bees of all hives. She had big black eyes and pale gold wings. Her name was Bonbibi. When she flapped her wings, it was like the wind in the trees and the lapping of the waves, like the moon around the earth, like the train of stars in the sky. It was thanks to her and her beehives that the flowers bloomed and the fruits ripened. She made sure that life on earth continued.
During the day, the bees gathered nectar and carried pollen from one flower to the next. They built honeycombs and filled them with honey: delicious, golden honey - liquid light, some people said to it. Light that you could drink in big gulps. What a joy!
Imagine that: wild honey running down the tree trunk like a little stream of sunshine dripping down to the forest floor. All the animals lapped it up, including the birds.
The kingfisher with the bright blue plumage that looked like a fluttering piece of sky. The flying fox that flew from one tree to the next. The monitor lizard that seemed to be descended directly from the dinosaurs.
The golden deer. The little black ants. The prickly porcupine. The wild boar.
They all climbed the trees, came flying in from the air, or scurried across the forest floor toward the honey dripping from the top of the full honeycomb.
Even the crocodile sang with excitement when it got a chital or a monkey between its teeth that tasted so deliciously of honey!
And even the earth itself loved honey and sucked it up.
And then there was Whom-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Named, who loved honey so much that he would have preferred to keep it all to himself. Least of all he could stand the people who harvested the wild honey. Now you want to know who Whom-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Named was, but I cannot tell you. He was the king of the south, the protector of the forest and the ruler over the demons. When you say his name aloud, he appears. Then almost no one can help you.
However, someone liked honey even better than he did. A little boy named Shonu. He had short black hair and a black ribbon with a small amulet on it around his neck. This was supposed to protect him - from the leopards, the cheeky warthogs, and the raging waves and the many dangers that lurked there in the forest.
Shonu lived on a floating island made up of all that the three rivers carry with them on their way to the sea. These islands emerge from the water, and then they disappear again when the weather changes, the tide, the rain monsoon, and the seasons. The people who live on a floating island have to move every time their islands are flooded. And so it was with Shonu and his family. His mother raised shrimp and Shonu's father was a honey collector. In the summer, he collected honey and beeswax in the forest. In this season, the supreme queen bee Bonbibi allows people to harvest honey. The bees have already built their homes, raised their young and carried pollen from one flower to the next.
Little Shonu was especially fond of honey and would have loved to lick honey morning, noon and night. But his family was poor and so it was barely enough for three meals a day. Even in the months when his father collected honey, they could not keep any of it for themselves. They had to sell the honey to earn money for rice and vegetables. Because his father loved Shonu very much, the little boy was allowed to lick the spoon with which his father filled the honey into small jars. Shonu was allowed to lick all the honey that was still on the spoon. And the father always made sure that as much honey as possible remained on the spoon.
When the father could collect neither honey nor beeswax, he taught Shonu how to count and read at home or mended the thatched roof, while the mother bred shrimps, which were also sold at the market. So they made ends meet, even if their lives were sometimes a little shaky like the palm thatch hut in which they lived. Shonu was content. He played by the river and helped his parents.
Little Shonu and the animals of the Sundarban licking honey as Bonbibi, the queen of the bees watches over
Graphite on paper, 8 x 10 inches
Shonu and his family, starving and grieving the loss of their home and livestock due to hurricaines, and floods.
Graphite on paper, 8 x 10 inches
Then came a year when everything was upside down. The seasons were mixed up. Normally, one season followed the other, always nicely in time...But this year, nothing was right anymore and there was a huge confusion.
In spring, furious hurricanes swept across the land, destroying huts and boats, washing away cows, people, and chickens. The fish went into hiding. What remained was disease, hunger and death. Wind and rain raged in the forest, uprooting trees, and many animals drowned. The floating islands of Shonu and his family and many neighbors were washed away.
The tide came constantly and flooded everything with salt water: some days it was difficult to find sweet drinking water. The shrimp farm was washed away by the sea just like everything else. Soon there were no more freshwater fish in the rivers.
As the water rose higher and higher, Shonu and his family had to move three times in two months, rowing a boat to a new island. They built huts, dismantled them again, repacked and unpacked their few belongings. The mother raised new shrimp, which also washed away again.
Over and over and over again.
Then spring was over, but summer came way too soon and was roaring hot. The little vegetable garden behind their new hut was covered with dust. Under the blazing hot fireball of the sun, the plants withered. One by one they withered, green turning to brown and gray.
Soon they had hardly anything to eat. On good days, they had a small fish, a few vegetables, and rice or pita bread. But it was dry flatbread: they had no ghee to make the dough tender and juicy. On very bad days, when there was no fish at all for the mother to catch and cook, they had rice with chili sauce for breakfast and only water all the rest of the day. Then they went to bed early and hoped that the next day would be better.
Then Shonu closed his eyes and imagined that each sip of water was actually a delicious spoonful of honey. But dreams do not fill the belly.
"Why don't we just take the boat to the forest and get honey?" asked Shonu his father every day.
The father sighed each time and gave the same answer each time:
"Not today, Shonu, the bees haven't finished building their combs yet. Summer came too early this year. The bees must now prepare the hive for their young queens. We must not disturb them in this process. We must wait until they give us the honey."
The mother also explained it to him, "Your father is right. If we take the honey now, then the pact between Bonbibi and Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Named will be broken. Then there will be no peace and no one will be safe, not in the forest, not in the villages. They say that the loggers cut down too many trees last year. That is why the hurricanes were so terrible. The-whose-name-shall-not-benamed is furious."
Bonbibi, you must know, is the protector of the Sundarban. She came from a distant land long ago and fought the Lord of the South to defeat him and his army of goblins, ghosts and spirits. And she succeeded. After long days and nights of bloody battle, Bonbibi defeated Dakkhin Rai.
Now I have said the name of the Whom-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Named, but because in the same breath I have also said the name of Bonbibi, we are safe.
But he was not dead. Bonbibi understood that Dakkhin Rai loved the forest more than anything. He was cruel, but only because people invaded his forest to chop down the trees, plunder the hives and kill the animals that lived there. And that is why she did not kill him.
But he had to promise that he would not harm anyone who had respect for the forest and its inhabitants. Just like the parents of Shonu.
Hungry Shonu stealing the honey before its ready to harvest, as the furious Royal Bengal tiger god Dakkhin Rai and Bonbibi watch with contempt
Graphite on paper, 8 x 10 inches
But Shonu was so terribly hungry that he soon stopped thinking about his parents' warnings. The much too hot, early summer did not want to end. The days were as long as weeks and the nights seemed endless. Shonu's stomach ached with hunger. Soon he had only the thought of honey in his head.
One morning, the hunger for honey had spread from his belly to his chest, his neck his legs, his head and his heart. It crawled around inside him like a thousand red ants and Shonu could not stand it anymore. He ran down to the river and hid in the boat of a woodcutter under the planks. There he lay very still and waited for the woodcutter to cast off. Soon he fell asleep and the rocking of the boat appeased his hunger.
When he awoke, the sky was green; not blue, but green and brown, a sky of leaves and branches and with a swaying, rolling land beneath. He saw colors flash and disappear. A buzzing filled the air, louder than the chatter of cormorants and herons. It was the music of bees, the buzzing of zillions of busy workers.
Shonu followed his hearing and tiptoed through the forest with one hand on his amulet without stepping on dry twigs or anything that looked like a sleeping crocodile.
Louder and louder, the humming became, until it sounded like a whole symphony orchestra. Shonu entered the kingdom of hives: black-golden clouds that looked like mountains, castles, crowns, roses, towers - upside down, sideways, upside down they hung from branches, grew out of hills, hid in caves.
Each honeycomb was enveloped in the buzz of a zillion bees, gathering and building and working. Everyone was too busy to notice the starving little boy whose eyes were getting bigger and bigger, whose mouth was watering and whose stomach was hanging down to his knees. Already all the warnings of his father, all the stories of his mother were forgotten.
Shonu pounced on the honeycombs, tearing off large chunks and completely upsetting the workers. He ran to the nearest tree, climbed up the trunk, broke off pieces of a honeycomb, squeezed it out like a sponge and let the honey rain into his mouth.
The bees buzzed and buzzed with anger and fear, pouncing on him and wanting to sting him. Until he was swollen thick and blue. But their stings could not harm Shonu. His magic amulet protected him. Shonu drank and ran, ran and drank from one hive to the next.
Then a soft golden voice rang out from the forest: "Not now, child, not yet. The combs are still full of little bees, they will perish." But did Shonu stop? Did he hear the voice? No. He drank and ran, ran and drank, and kept doing it until the bee goddess with the golden voice became angry.
"Stop that right now! Otherwise Dakkhin Rai will come and protect my peoples!"
And no sooner had the Bee Goddess spoken his name than a roar resounded over the land. A roar that seemed to come from the belly of the earth itself: deep and raw and full of anger, hatred, and blood. The surface of the water shattered like glass and the animals froze. Shonu, who had barely noticed the queen bee’s outcry, heard that voice all too clearly.
Then other sounds were heard that frightened him even more: heavy footsteps that made the ground tremble, hot breath from which the leaves of the surrounding trees fell away, and a slowly louder hissing that sounded like the thunder of a thunderstorm. Shonu tumbled from the branch he was sitting on straight onto an anthill. But the ants were also petrified with fear and completely forgot to bite him on the butt.
With long strides towards him came Dakkhin Rai, the King of the South, the protector of the forest, ruler over the demons, The-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Named, in his favorite form: as a Royal Bengal tiger. His fur blazed orange like the sky at sunset, his stripes black as night. With every step, the tiger spread fear, his anger was powerful, death glittered in his eyes, and his mouth was as big as a cave and every tooth in it as sharp and pointed as a dagger.
Most creatures - like the ants on the anthill - are paralyzed with fear when they see a royal tiger. However, Shonu was a very special boy. He fled. He ran away as if he had wings on his feet and a jet engine on his back. Behind him, the earth shook under each step of the demon tiger. Faster and faster the little boy ran, until at last he saw the boat in which the woodcutter was about to cast off. But as he was about to leap over the last bit of swamp, he tripped over the board root of a Sundari tree and fell lengthwise onto the forest floor. He felt the hot, stinking breath of Dakkhin Rai on the back of his neck and the long, bristly whiskers on his ears. Full of panic, Shonu screamed with the last bit of air in his lungs, "Bonbibi, save me!"
Harmony is restored in the Sunbardan as Shonu is transformed into a hibiscus bush to serve the bees. Dakkhin Rai shakes water onto Shonu during a time of heat and drought, and Bonbibi smiles.
Graphite on paper, 8 x 10 inches
Time stopped. The earth stopped spinning and the sky became silent.
The hot, stinking breath disappeared from Shonu's neck and was replaced by a wave of cool scents: Jasmine and water lily, mixed with cinnamon and black pepper. It smelled funny, but much better than the stench of dried blood and hatred.
Then an impatient voice said, "That's enough, eating children won't do any good, Dakkhin Rai. You should know that by now. Shonu get up and come here."
Carefully, Shonu opened his eyes: first the left eye, then the right. Before he lifted a finger, he wanted to make sure that his head was not inside a tiger's dragon. With his right eye, he saw the river, some herons, and a pair of bare feet under a shimmering green sari.
When he lifted his face out of the mud, a black woman with a silver trident in her hand stood in front of him. That is why he opened his other eye all the way. There stood a second warrior woman wearing a red cloak and Persian slippers with a rolled toe. Her hair was covered with a long veil.
"Another one?" thought Shonu, "How many Bonbibis are there?"
He scrambled to his feet and as he stepped closer, both Bonbibis became one. Behind her, Dakkhin Rai paced back and forth, hissing and twitching his tail angrily.
When he saw Bonbibi bending over the boy, he roared, "The boy is mine, Bonbibi. He has broken the laws of the forest - and he must pay for it! You promised that all trespassers belong to me. I will crush his skull and drink his blood."
Bonbibi sighed, "Dakkhin Rai, I told you: he is still a child."
Dakkhin Rai roared even louder, "The bees whose homes he just destroyed are just children too, Bonbibi! Greedy are the little people, just like the big ones. Always they want more. I will crush his skull and drink his blood."
Bonbibi replied, "He wasn't greedy, he was hungry. He has hardly had anything to eat for many weeks. Do not be unfair. When you are hungry, you don't behave very well either."
Dakkhin Rai was too angry to listen properly. "Always these miserable people! It is their fault that we all have to go hungry! They chop down the trees on the coast. They take away the honey from the bees. They eat the young fish. And that's why there are no more fruits! That's why the rivers are empty! I will crush his skull and drink his blood!"
When Shonu heard this, his courage sank lower and lower until it was deep in the mud under the roots. He felt so ashamed that he hung his head as he thought of all the hives he had broken as thoughtlessly as the whirlwind had broken his home. He thought that he almost deserved to be eaten, even though he hoped very, very strongly that the tiger would not.
Bonbibi suddenly became huge, towered majestically above the tiger demon and spoke very sternly to him: "We all have to suffer, Dakkhin Rai: the animals, the plants, the people too. Eating this child does not turn back the clock and does not bring us back the old forest. But if he is willing to make amends for his actions, then there is still hope for the Sundarban, for the bees, for him, and for you too."
"I'm sorry, B-B-Bonbibi, Da-Da-Dakkhin Rai," stammered Shonu, who could hardly get a word out because of his excitement. "I'm w-really, really sorry that I broke the bee w-combs and stole the honey before it was ready. That was a g-g-great mistake on my part, and I can understand why Dakkhin Rai would want to a-a-at-eat me. But if I-i-i can somehow make it up to him, I want to. I promise."
Bonbibi smiled, and Shonu felt the ice cubes of fear melting in his throat. "Yes, there is something, Shonu. You took something the bees couldn't give away yet, something they still need themselves now. Now you must give something back to the bees so they can save their colonies. This will take a while, and it will not be easy. You'll have to stand on your feet for months, in the rain and wind and under the burning sun. You must not return home to your family until this terrible summer is over. Can you?"
Dakkhin Rai hissed and hissed, "But he must die for what he has done! That would only be just! I'll crush his skull and be his..."
"Dakkhin Rai, if you don't stop this right now, I'm going to be furious! Will it help the bees if you crush his skull and drink his blood? If you really want to do something for them, then stay here with the boy and protect him!"
Dakkhin Rai reluctantly very gradually stopped snarling.
Shonu thought that anything in the world would be better than being eaten by the tiger demon and followed Bonbibi who led him through the forest back to the realm of the honeybees.
There in the clearing amidst the bee colonies, she told him to stretch his arms up to the sky and promised to take him back home through the forest when the rainy season began. Then Bonbibi touched his feet and forehead with her silver trident, bent down and whispered to the earth.
Shonu watched ferns and earth swirl faster and faster in a circle around him until he was surrounded by a swirl of green and brown. His feet dug into the earth, deeper, farther, pushing pebbles out of the way in search of water, wrapping around rocks, and fiddly hair roots sprouting from them. It tickled a little. His legs grew together into a trunk and became heavy and hard; then his chest shot up, high above his head, which now sat near his belly, a slender wooden belly protected by bark...And the arms he was supposed to stretch toward the sky? They became branches, and from the branches grew twigs. On the branches grew hundreds and hundreds of elongated leaves with small teeth on the edge. At the end of each branch and twig grew a beautiful flower, shining like sunshine, with five petals, golden yellow at sunrise, orange at noon, and red in the evening, before withering and falling off.
Thus, Shonu became the hibiscus bush whose flowers bees loved the most. There they could always find nectar and make new honey from it. They repaired their combs and fed their young. To keep on blooming was hard work for Shonu, especially on the days when it did not rain. There were many such days that summer. Shonu's feet dug deeper and deeper into the ground in search of water. Over his slender trunk, he carried the water into the branches, and the leaves sparkled green, drinking in the sunlight to keep the flowers blooming.
But the effort was worth it. At first the bees were upset and wanted nothing to do with him, but they became more and more satisfied as the hives were repaired and the young ones grew big and strong. When they were on their way home in the evening, they would stop by Shonu's house and tell him stories. Wonderful stories of the things they had experienced and stories they had heard from their nurses. They also sang to Shonu and he accompanied them on his leaves and branches.
And one day it got hotter and hotter; the heat rolled over the land like a huge wave and the air was so dry that it could have been set on fire. From thirst, Shonu was all stiff and let his branches droop. Its blossoms hung limp and looked like dried blood. The leaves were withered and gray. Its roots were withering away. Shonu could barely keep his eyes, which lay deep in the slender trunk, open, and the bark was flaking off. His thoughts went round and round in circles.
Then, all at once, Dakkhin Rai appeared in the clearing, huge, proud, and haughty as ever. As he strode toward Shonu, thoughts raced through the little plant boy's head, "Do demon tigers eat wood? Does it hurt when he breaks my branches? Or bites me in my trunk?
What if he knocks me over? He could do that quite easily, couldn't he? But didn't he make his promise to Bonbibi?"
Dakkhin Rai stood in front of Shonu, looked at him briefly, and shook himself. He shook himself and shook himself. A great shower dripped on Shonu - sweet, cool drops of water from the three rivers fell on his leaves and flowers and buds and bark. The water wetted the earth and trickled down to Shonu's thirsty roots.
And not so far away, deep in the forest, Bonbibi smiled.
Iris Maaß is a storyteller living in Hannover, Germany. She collects bee stories and fairytales about bees from all over the world since many years. While insects and especially wild bees are vanishing from mother earth, it is with the fairytales she collected, that we can remember the deep connection we have with the bees from many different cultures. A collection of bee tales with Kat Kinnicks beautiful illustrations will be available in November 2024.
If you want to be notified, please write to iris.maass@gmx.de.
www.heilsames-erzaehlen.de