Hallibol! Hollibol!

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This is a story I gathered long, long ago, which waited to be given a shape. It not only says about the endemic poverty of village folks half a century ago, but it also has something amusing covering a grief story. Happy reading. 

Oh yes, I'll post the Hindi version of the story shortly.

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Hallibol! Hollibol!

It’s been half a century, but the smell of that day still drifts in my mind, like smoke from a forgotten fire.

One morning, a weaver’s family arrived in our village — the father bent under the weight of a wooden loom, the mother with a bundle of clothes, and two children skipping behind like loose threads. Why they left their old home, I never knew. But I guessed: when you have no land, and your trade needs money for thread, colour, and those sharp-smelling chemicals for finishing cloth, one bad season can push you out into the road.

In our village, nobody had brick houses then. We lived behind mud walls and thatched roofs, with wide verandas open to the world. That’s where the weaver’s family settled — under someone’s veranda, their kitchen under the bare sky. You could see their meals as easily as you could see the moon — boiled rice, wild green leaves, a pinch of salt, a bit of chilli, and a squeeze of tamarind.

Then came the day of the goat. An occasion of a feast in the village. In those days, meat wasn’t weighed and wrapped in paper. It came in palm-leaf packets — one packet for every paying family. When everyone had taken theirs, some scrap was left over. Someone thought of the weaver’s family and handed them a packet, free.

Inside was mostly gut — coiled, slippery, glistening — with barely a scrap of flesh clinging to it. But when they dropped it in the pot, the magic began. The water hissed, the steam curled upward, and the barest whiff of meat filled the air like a festival.

That was when the children started. Barefoot in the dust, they jumped and twirled, clapping to a beat only they could hear, chanting their brand-new poem:

Hallibol! Hollibol!

What a beautiful smell!

Hallibol! Hollibol!

Oh, the gods can tell!

They did not know what they chanted was the name of God—Hari Bol meaning chant the name of God, sang it over and over, like a village drum at a tribal wedding, laughing until they fell over. To them, it was a royal banquet.

I laughed too, because how could I not? Their joy was a thing of light. But inside, a knot formed. I wanted their song to be about a better feast, a bigger world — not about a few scraps of gut that smelled like hope.

Still, the chant rings in me even now, after fifty years:

Hallibol! Hollibol! — the music of hunger dressed up as happiness.

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By

Ananta Narayan Nanda

Bhubaneswar

07-08-2025

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