(This article is part of our special series 'Rethinking Bangladesh'. You can read the editorial note to the series here.)
Jhonaki's obsession with the hippos started after her parents' deaths. It was as if grief didn't want to enter her body, so it gently stepped aside and made way for obsession to settle instead.
If she wasn't playing tag with us at the abandoned, moss-ridden neel kuthi the day her parents died, she would have died too. Her father had not been able to sell his crops in the market for close to seven months. The land where he grew his crops had turned infertile. No one really knew why. The plots beside that land, however, were flourishing. The landowner blamed his poor farming techniques for the long spell of loss. The family was living off of borrowed money from the landowner. They could have sought their relatives' help if the relatives themselves were rich enough. Looking to the landlords, as everyone here knows, is like hanging yourself from the banyan's highest branch. When the landowner's kindness ran out and he threatened to chase the family out of the village, her father turned to his useless sickle. And hacked her mother to death. Then slashed his own throat.
We realized Jhonaki wasn't normal when relatives and friends of the two were simmering with sorrow but not a single tear rolled out of her eyes. Instead, she emptily stared at the bodies lying in pools of dark blood on the earthen floor, walked towards the big mound of hay beneath the neem tree where the one-eared hippo was snoozing, settled herself cosily against its wet belly, and like a baby in its mother's embrace, fell asleep.