Musicbox and Moonshine

TALES OF LOVE AND LIFE FROM BENGAL



An Anthology of Short Stories

Translated, Edited and Introduced by

Partha Banerjee

Brooklyn, New York


Draft Manuscript

(with preview draft translations)

May 10, 2009

_________________________

FOR PUBLISHERS, AGENTS AND INTERESTED OTHERS:

Musicbox and Moonshine is my unpublished collection of translated short stories written by celebrated Bengali authors from India and Bangladesh.

Having been born and raised in a strong literary and artistic environment in Bengal, and then lived in U.S. for two decades, I've had the unique privilege to master the cultures, traditions and nuances of both places. I know there's a vast audience out there craving to know more about the subcontinent and its cultural heritage, the audience being not just the literature-loving Americans, but also the new-generation South Asian diaspora with English as its first language. It's a huge readership.

In this collection, I’ve included sixteen stories and a foreword introducing to the Western audience the authors and their creations. The introduction familiarizes the readers, however briefly, with the literary, social and political cultures and history of Bengal, which is imperative to get the flavor and essence of the stories. Both in the foreword and through the footnotes included in the stories, I’ve provided simple explanations to orient the readers with the basic required concepts; at the same time, I’ve left the other terms, phrases and interpretations for the readers to surmise and appreciate. Words seemingly unknown to the Western reader are italicized, only if they’re described directly in the text; other such words and phrases are footnoted. A glossary of other terms could later be appended at the end of the manuscript, if necessary.

To highlight some of my strengths, I'm a New York City-based writer and first-generation immigrant-citizen from India. I'm also a Columbia University-trained journalist. For a number of years, I've been translating short stories of Bengali authors with hopes to find a U.S. publisher willing to put together an anthology. My initial market research tells me there is a near-total absence of such a collection.

Bengal is well known for its progressiveness and relentless strive for humanity; in spite of going through two centuries of colonialism, a forced, bloody partition and several wars causing pauperization of a prosperous civilization, Bengal has carried on with its unique and exemplary pursuit of race-, gender- and religious egalitarianism, moral uprightness and strive for justice; a great sense of humor has been an inseparable element of its lifestyle. Most importantly, love and compassion have always been a central theme in the Bengali psyche; and literature has manifested it.

The stories I’ve selected emphasize these attributes through portrayal of both urban and rural Bengal and their people. Based on my long familiarity with the U.S. and its erudite readership, I’m confident the anthology is bound to find a very appreciative audience.

Thank you very much for your kind consideration. I look forward to hear from you.

###


Letter from a Wife

Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore



Dear Husband and Your Lotus Feet:

We’ve been married for fifteen years, but I’ve never written you a letter. All these years, I’ve stayed close to you – you’ve heard me speaking and I’ve heard you; there has been no spare time to write.

Today I’ve come to visit the pilgrimage here by the ocean, and you’ve stayed back in your office. Your relationship with Calcutta[1] is like one between the snail and its shell. It’s fixed so deep on you that you haven’t ever applied for a leave of absence. The God of Fate has precisely had that plan; she’s approved my application.

I’m the middle bride in your family[2]. Today, after fifteen years, standing on the seashore I’ve come to realize that I have another relationship with my world and its god. That realization has given me courage to write this letter; it’s not really a letter from your middle bride.

The one who wrote my fate together with your family, the time when none other than him knew of it, in that childhood my brother and I fell ill with typhoid[3]. My little brother died, but I pulled through. All the girls in the village said, “It’s only because Mrinal is a woman she survived; men couldn’t get over with it no way.” Yama, the God of Death, is apt at stealing – he’s always keen on getting the precious.

I can’t seem to die. That’s exactly what I want to clarify in this letter.

I was only twelve when your uncle and cousin came to see me as a potential bride for you. We lived in a remote village; you could hear foxes howling even in daytime. From the train station, one would reach our village by riding seven miles in a horse cart followed by three miles in a hand-held carriage, that too on a mud trail. Did you all have a hard time doing it! On top of it was our frumpy country cooking, which your uncle wouldn’t spare to mock even today.

Your mother was desperate to complement the lack of beauty in the eldest bride with the next one. Otherwise, why’d you even take so much trouble to visit such a remote village? In Bangladesh, nobody would be in the lookout for malaria, jaundice and brides – they’d come voluntarily and would never want to go away.

My father’s heart pounced; my mother began praying to Goddess Durga. How would a country devotee please an urban god? The only hope was the bride’s beauty; but the bride herself would not brag about it, and it was up to the buyer to settle on her price. Women would never be rid of their humility even with all their virtues.

The fear and apprehension of my family, in fact of the entire village, bogged me down like a boulder on my chest. Strangers were inspecting a twelve-year-old girl that day using all the powerful searchlights of the world – I had no place to hide.

Music of melancholy played across the sky – I arrived at your home. Having thoroughly criticized all the flaws I had, the group of elderly women agreed that overall, I was pretty. Elder sister-in-law of course went somber. I wondered though what the real use of my beauty was in the first place. Beauty would be worthwhile had an ancient priest created it using soil of the Ganges[4]; because God had created it out of bliss, it had no value whatsoever in your world and its concept of virtue.

It didn’t take you much time to forget that I was beautiful. However, you frequently remembered that I had intelligence. That intelligence I had was so natural that in spite of going through your mundane, household grind, it still breathed. My mother was very worried about my intellect – for poor women, it could always be a problem. For her who must comply with all the restrictions would one day sure be out of luck if she also complied with reasoning. But what else could I do? God gave me way more intellect that a bride in your family would ever need – now whom could I return it? You kept calling me the know-all dame. Harsh words would always be the weapon of the inept; therefore, I forgave you.

None of you had ever known that I had another element with me outside of the household chores. I wrote poetry secretly. Whatever rubbish it was, your walls could not build there. That was my freedom; that was where I was I. You’d neither liked nor recognized whatever in me was beyond your familiar middle bride; you’d never known in fifteen long years that I was a poet.

Out of all the memories in your home the thing that would come first was the cowshed. The cows lived right next to the staircase to go up in the women’s interior of the house; they had no place to move about other than the small square out in front. There was a wooden bucket in the corner for their fodder. The servants had errands to do in the morning; the starving cows would frantically chew up on the edges of the empty buckets. I couldn’t bear it. I was a country girl – the two cows and their three calves were the most familiar things to me when I first came to live here. I’d feed them out of my own food when I was a new bride; after that, others began to make oblique remarks about my kindness to animals.

My little girl died right after birth. She’d even called me to come along with her. If she lived, she’d bring me all the truth and nobility; I’d be promoted to be a mother from a wife. I got the hurt of motherhood, but not the emancipation that would come with it.

I remembered how the English doctor was shocked to see the women’s interior and condition of the labor room, and scolded you. You had a small garden in front of the house; there was no lack of decorative furniture in your rooms either. Yet, the interior was like the flip side of a silk stitch quilt – it was drab, barren and ugly. Neither light nor air would enter in it freely, trash would keep piling up in the corner; the walls and floors would remain as grimy as ever. The doctor, however, made a mistake: he thought the horrible conditions actually made us sad and miserable. But it was just the opposite. Carelessness would often be like ashes: they’d keep the fire hidden inside but wouldn’t let others know about the heat. In a forever dishonorable situation, lack of care would not hurt that much. In fact, that’s why women would feel embarrassed to feel pain. I’d say: if your system was such that women must feel pain, then you’d better keep them in constant negligence; otherwise, pain would worsen amidst care.

However way you let me live my life, I never wanted to think that I was unhappy. Death came to the labor room to take me away, but I was not afraid. Life didn’t mean much; so I never feared for death. Only those would have trouble to die whose life was deep-rooted in affection and care. If the God of Death had pulled me, I’d come out easily just like a patch of grass. Bengali women would die often, and die regularly. But what would be so dignified about it? It’d be so easy for us that we’d actually be shy about it.

My little girl rose briefly in the sky like the evening star and then quickly set. I went back on my daily rituals and chores with the cattle. Life would just roll on ‘til the end; I wouldn’t need to write you this letter at all. However, wind sometimes would blow a small, insignificant seed and drop it in the cracks of an edifice to germinate; in the end, the concrete structure would split open because of it. A small grain of life flew from nowhere and dropped in the middle of our family establishment; the split started to grow ever since.

After her mother passed away and cousins began abusing her, Bindu, sister-in-law’s younger sibling, came to take shelter in our extended family. You all were visibly disturbed considering it to be a hassle. Stubborn like anything I was, seeing how much disturbed you’d all felt, I came by the side of this helpless girl with all my force. It was already too disgraceful to live with somebody else’s family against their will. How could I ignore her pain and suffering?

Then I noticed the situation of sister-in-law. She’d brought her over out of sheer desperation. But when she saw how unsupportive her husband was, she started acting as if Bindu was indeed a big trouble, and that she’d find no problem whatsoever to kick her out. Devoted to the husband she was, it would be impossible for her to show any sign of mercy to her own little, orphaned sister.

I felt pain to see her predicament. I saw that just to satisfy everybody, sister-in-law gave her the worst possible food and put her in to work as a maid. I was ashamed. She started to make it a point that finding Bindu to do household chores – big or small – was indeed a cheap deal – that she practically cost nothing.

In sister-in-law’s parents’ family, there was absolutely nothing to show off other than their so-called blue blood. You all knew how she was married off into your family literally by begging, praying and going through utter humiliation. She always considered her marriage into this family to be a horrible wrongdoing. Therefore, she’d always kept herself concealed, taking up as tiny a place as possible in the extreme interior.

However, her exemplary lifestyle put us in jeopardy. I could never humble myself that much in all imaginable ways. If I knew something was good, nobody could easily convince me that it was bad – and you found various instances of this.

I took Bindu in my room. Sis-in-law complained, “Middle Bride will spoil the poor man’s daughter to death.” She started complaining about me all around. But I knew for sure that she felt greatly relieved. Now the burden of crime came upon me. She was relieved to see that Bindu had finally found some care, some affection from me – things that she could never give her. She’d often hide Bindu’s real age to make her look younger. Actually, Bindu was so cumbersome and awkward that if she ever fell on the floor and broke her head, people would first tend to the floor before minding her. Hence, without the presence of her parents, there was nobody to arrange for her wedding; it was also impossible to find a brave man who’d come forward and take her as his bride.

Bindu came to live with me with great trepidation as if I couldn’t tolerate her remotest touch. She thought she had no reason to live in this world; she’d avoid everyone and bypass all. In her father’s family, her cousins would never spare a little corner for her where nobody else could even leave unwanted items. In fact, unwanted items would easily find room in far and near corners of a home because people would forget them, but an unwanted woman would not find even a dump because first she was unwanted, and then, she could not be forgotten. Nobody could vouch that Bindu’s cousins were particularly wanted or needed in this world either. However, they did just fine.

So, when I brought Bindu into my room, she became very nervous. I felt very sad to see her fear. With great effort and affection I convinced her that she’d indeed have a little space in my quarters.

But my quarters were not my quarters alone. My task therefore didn’t turn out to be easy. Within a few days, she developed some red rashes on her body – they could be heat prickles or something similar. But you all said it was smallpox. Because it was none other than Bindu! An apprentice doctor from your neighborhood came and said, “Can’t tell without waiting for a couple more days.” But who’d wait at all? Bindu felt like dying out of embarrassment. I said, “Let it be smallpox. I’ll stay with her in that small labor room; you don’t need to do anything.” And then, when you were all furious with me, and Sis-in-law herself got terribly shaky and proposed to send her out to the hospital, her rashes disappeared. You said, “That smallpox must’ve buried inside the skin.” Sure, because it was none other than Bindu.

One of the big pluses of growing up in total lack of care was that it’d make you extremely strong. No illness could strike you, and all the roads to die would be totally closed off. The disease came to poke fun at her, but nothing else happened. But it was indeed clear that finding help for the most unwanted person in the world was the hardest thing to do. She needed the maximum protection; she had the maximum obstacles to it instead.

When Bindu finally broke her apprehensions about me, she grew yet another problem. She started loving me so much that even I was frightened. Did I ever see such an image of love in my entire life? Of course I read about it, but it would be between a man and a woman. The awareness that I was beautiful didn’t occur back to me in a very long time – now after so many years, this ugly girl brought that subject up. She wouldn’t stop looking at me. She said, “Sister, nobody else but me has ever looked at your face.” She’d be upset if I did my own hair. She’d find much pleasure to play with the volume of my hair. I’d never have any reasons to dress nicely unless there was a party outside. Now Bindu would make me irritated and dress me up every single day. She went wild with me.

There was not a single open space in your interior. There was a wild pome tree near the sewer by the northern fence. I knew it was spring when the tree showed bright-red budding leaves. In my quarter, I saw the uncared-for girl’s heart turning colorful; I knew there was spring in the world of hearts, and it came from the heavens, not from some dark alley.

Bindu made me annoyed with her deep care for me. Sometimes I’d be angry at her, still, through her affection, I saw a new me unfolding – something I’d never seen in life. It was a liberated me.

On this side, however, the fact that I was taking so much trouble for someone like Bindu was not well taken by you. Everybody would begrudge and bemoan about it. The day I lost my precious necklace, you’d never hesitated to declare that it was Bindu who’d done it. When the police came to search for suspected freedom activists[5], you’d all suspected that it was Bindu who had been the police spy. There was no other evidence for it: the only evidence was that it was Bindu.

Your maids would always object to do anything for her; she too would be frozen if someone volunteered to help. Naturally, my expenses went up: I employed a private maid. You didn’t like it at all. You were so upset to see the clothes I gave Bindu to wear that you stopped paying for my allowances. I started wearing cheap and coarse locally made clothes from the next day. I also asked Moti’s Ma not to come anymore to do my dishes. I’d feed my cow with the leftover rice and then do the dishes myself. You were not pleased to see it either. I could never grapple with the simple truth that it was always okay not to please me and it was never okay not to please you.

You got angrier and Bindu got older; even that very natural phenomenon disturbed you. The one thing I kept wondering about was why you hadn’t kicked her out by force. I knew deep inside that you actually feared me. At the end, because you couldn’t force her out yourselves, you sought help from the god of matrimony. Bindu’s groom was arranged. Sister-in-law said, “What a relief! Goddess Kali saved our family reputation.”

I didn’t know how the groom was; I just heard that he was good. Bindu fell at my feet and wept, “Sister, why’s there so much fuss about my marriage?”

I convinced her, “Bindu, don’t you worry – I hear that your man is nice.”

Bindu said, “Why’d a nice man choose someone as worthless as me?”

The groom’s family never even came to see Bindu before the wedding. Sister-in-law was greatly reassured by it.

But Bindu kept crying days in and out. I knew what pain she was bearing. I had fought hard to save Bindu, but could not have the courage to keep her from getting married. How in the world would I do it? What’d happen to her – a poor, dark woman – if I died? I was terrified to think about it.

Bindu said, “It’s still five days left before the wedding; couldn’t I die?”

I firmly rebuked her, but only God knew I’d actually feel a lot comfortable if she could die in a simple, straightforward way.

On the day before the ceremony, Bindu told her sister, “Sis, I’ll live in your cowshed, I’ll do anything you want me to do, but please don’t throw me out this way.”

Sister-in-law also was crying for a few days now, and today she cried too. But it was not merely a matter of heart; it was now a matter of social dictates. She said, “Don’t you know Bindi, a husband is the ultimate way for a woman to find happiness. And no one can stop you from being unhappy if that’s what is written for you[6].”

The truth was that there was no other way; Bindu must marry – whatever will be, will be.

I wanted the wedding to take place at ours. But you decided against it; you said it must be at the groom’s because it was their family tradition.

I realized that your family gods would never allow taking on the wedding expenses. So I remained silent. But none of you knew one thing: I secretly dressed Bindu up with some of my own jewelry. Maybe, Sister noticed it, but pretended not to. Please forgive her for this moral turpitude.

Before she left, Bindu embraced me and said, “So you really decided to give me up?”

I said, “No Bindi, whatever happens to you I’ll never give you up.”

Three days went by. In the morning, I went in to the tiny, thatched coal room to feed the lamb I saved from slaughter and hid. I found Bindu sitting there on the floor. She fell on my feet and wept silently.

Bindu’s husband was a mad man: a total lunatic.

“Are you telling the truth?”

“How can I tell such a lie to you, Sister? He’s insane. My father-in-law didn’t want this marriage to happen, but he was scared of my mother-in-law to death. He’d left for Kashi[7] just before the wedding. Mother-in-law insisted that her son be married.

I squatted down on the heap of coal. Often, a woman would find no mercy for another woman. She’d say, “She’s only a woman, after all. A man – crazy or not – is a man nonetheless.”

Bindu’s husband wouldn’t act like crazy all the time, but sometimes he’d go so out of control that they’d lock him up. He behaved nice on the wedding day, but because of the sleeplessness during the ceremony, etc., he went berserk the next morning. Bindu was eating rice from a brass plate; suddenly her husband yanked it and threw it out on the courtyard. Out of nowhere he thought that Bindu was Rani Rasmoni[8], the servant stole her gold platter, and put rice for her on his own brass plate. It made him mad. Bindu was petrified. On the third night, when the mother-in-law ordered her to sleep in the husband’s room, she was a nervous wreck. The mother-in-law was a very irate person; she’d be out of control in anger. She was crazy too, but not completely; that’s why she was ever more dreadful. Bindu had to enter the husband’s room. He was calm that day. But Bindu was stiff as wood in fear. When the husband slept, she somehow managed to escape; one didn’t need to write all the details of it.

I was burning in contempt and anger. I said, “This is a fraud marriage, not a real one. Bindu, you live here just like before; let me see who can take you out from here.”

You all said, “Bindu is lying.”

I said, “She’s never lied.”

You said, “How do you know?”

I said, “I know it for sure.”

You tried to scare me, “Bindu’s in-laws will go to court and we’ll all be in trouble.”

I said, “Wouldn’t the court understand that they tricked her into marrying a crazy man?”

You said, “So we have to fight a court case on it? What’s our problem?”

I said, “I’ll sell my ornaments and do whatever I can.”

You said, “Will you run up to the lawyer?[9]”

I couldn’t respond. I could bang my head hard on the wall, but nothing else.

Bindu’s elder brother-in-law came and raised hell. He’d threatened to go to the police.

I had no real power at all, but I simply couldn’t accept that I’d have to return the calf that fled from the slaughterhouse and came to me for its life. I said rather stubbornly, “Let him go to the police.”

Having said it, I thought this would be the perfect time to bring Bindu into my bedroom and lock her in. But I couldn’t find her anywhere. Finally I discovered that when I was arguing with you, Bindu went straight up to her brother-in-law and surrendered. She’d realized that her staying back in this house would put me in serious trouble.

The episode of running away worsened her misery. Her mother-in-law bickered that her son didn’t kill her or anything. She said, compared to many other abusive husbands, her son was like an angel.

My sister-in-law said, “She has bad luck; what can we do about it? After all, crazy or not, it’s her husband.”

You’d perhaps been thinking about the epic tale of the woman who’d brought her leper husband over to the prostitute. You men would never stop repeating this story – one of the most horrendous cowardice, and that’s why you’d never stop being angry about Bindu and her behavior so unacceptable to you. I was heartbroken about Bindu, but I was ashamed of you. I was only a village girl, and that too, given to people like you; how in the world did God slip in me so much power to reason? I could never put up with the bogus religious tales of yours.

I was certain that Bindu would never return. But I gave her my word that I’d never give up on her. My younger brother Sarat studied in a Calcutta college; you knew how enthusiastic he was about all kinds of volunteer work – be it fundraising for the flood-stricken or trapping the Plague moles. He’d actually failed exam because of spending too much time on philanthropy and no time to study. I called Sarat up and said, “You must do something so that I hear from Bindu. She’ll not dare to write me, and even if she does, the letter will never reach me.”

Of course, Sarat would be much happier if I’d told him instead to bring Bindu over by force or break her husband’s neck.

I was discussing it with him; at this time, you entered the room and said, “What problem have you caused now?”

I said, “The one and the only – I came to live here with your family – but it was your act, not mine.”

You asked, “You hide Bindu again?”

I said, “If she’d come, of course I’d have hidden her. But she’s not going to come, so don’t worry.”

Seeing Sarat, you grew even more suspicious. I knew how much you disapproved of Sarat visiting me. You were always worried that because Sarat was under the watch of the police, some day he’d be incriminated on a political crime and then all of you would be dragged into it. For that reason, even on Bhai Phota[10], I’d send the blessing over to him through attendants, but never invite him over.

But I learned from you that Bindu had run away one more time, and her brother-in-law came to search for her again. I was very worried to hear it. The poor girl was so helpless, yet I had no way to help her.

Sarat rushed to find out. He returned in the evening and said, “Bindu left and went back to her cousins, but they were totally upset and brought her back to her in-laws right away. They still couldn’t accept that they had to take in financial loss for the trip.”

Your aunt came to your house on her way to the pilgrimage by the ocean. I said, “I’ll go with her too.”

Finding how pious I suddenly was made you so delighted that you didn’t object at all. You knew that if I stayed back in Calcutta at this time, I’d get involved with Bindu’s mess again. You had a lot of anxieties about me.

We were about to set out on Wednesday; all the arrangements had been done on Sunday. I called Sarat and said, “By any means, you must bring Bindu over on Wednesday and put her on my train.”

Sarat’s face brightened up. He said, “Never worry, Sis. I’ll put her on the train and ride along with you all the way; it’ll be a free ticket for me too to see the Jagannath temple[11].”

Sarat came back the same evening. My heart sank just to see him back. I asked, “What happened, Sarat? Couldn’t get to do it?”

He said, “No.”

I said, “So, you couldn’t get her to come?”

He said, “There’s no need for it. Last night, she put fire on her clothes and committed suicide. There was a boy in their house whom I made friends with; he said she’d left a last note for you, but they destroyed it.”

All right, so there was peace now after all.

The whole community got fired up at the news. They said, “It’s now become like a fashion to put fire on yourself.”

You said, “It was too much of a drama.” It might have been. Yet, one must also find out why the fun part of the drama always went over the saris of Bengali women and not dhotis[12] of fearless Bengali men.

Bindi was truly luckless. When she lived, she got no fame for her beauty or other virtues; when she died, she did it in such an outdated way that nobody found it to be unique and worthy of compliments. Even at death, she made people angry.

Sister-in-law hid in her room and wept. But there was an element of consolation in her weep. After all, Bindi was indeed saved by the death. It could’ve been much worse if she had lived.

I came to the pilgrimage. Bindu didn’t need to come anymore, but I did.

I never really had anything in your family that one could call unhappiness. I never had any lack of food or clothes there; and whatever your brother’s character was, I couldn’t call you a person of low morale. Even if you had problems with your character, I could’ve survived more or less okay, blaming the universal god instead of the husband god, following the footsteps of my faithful sister-in-law. I would not want to bring complaints against you – that’s not the reason I wrote you this letter.

But I’m never going to return to your home at twenty-seven Makhan Boral Lane. I’ve seen Bindu. I now understand what exactly the status of a woman is in this world. I don’t want to be any part of it.

I’ve also discovered that even though she is a woman, God has not given up on her. However much power you’ve possessed on her, it all has had its limits. She is way over beyond her mortal life. Your feet are never so long that you could trample her for eternity. Death is mightier than you. She is noble in death – there she’s not just a Bengali household bride, not just a sister of a couple of cousins, and not just a deprived wife of an insane husband. She’s infinite there.

The music of death touched me deeply, and hurt me intensely through her. I asked my God: why was the most trivial thing in the world the most difficult? Why was this insignificant bubble within the walls of this alley so much of an obstacle? Why couldn’t I overcome the barrier of this door even when your universe with its six seasons invited me so cordially? Why’d I have to perish in this darkness bit by bit when I had such a life and a world you’d offered me? Would it be possible that this mundane triviality of everyday life with its obstacles, taboos and clichés would win and your universe of freedom and bliss lose out?

The music of death went on playing however; where was the wall built by the mason, where was the fence you built with all your restrictions of earthly laws – how could they confine people eternally and humiliate them? There flies high the victory flag in the hand of death! Oh Dear Middle Bride, never fear! It would be just a matter of moments before you could molt your Middle Bride-ship.

I no longer fear your alleys. I have the blue ocean in front of me, and I have the monsoon clouds over my head.

You’d covered me up under the darkness of your habits. Bindu came briefly and looked at the real me through the small openings on that cover. That girl totally tore up the rag using her own death. I came out and saw in amazement that I was full of dignity and glory. He who appreciated my unappreciated beauty now kept looking at me with the whole sky. The Middle Bride now died.

Don’t you think I’m actually going to die. Never worry: I’m not going to play that cheap-old trick on you. Mirabai[13] was a woman like me, and her shackles were no less heavy, yet she didn’t have to die in order to live. Mirabai said in her song, “Let my father rid of me, let my mother give me up, and let all the others do it too, but Mira keeps hanging on. Oh Lord, let anything happen to her, but she won’t give up on you.” That hanging-on itself is the true way to life.

I shall live too. I have lived.

Shelter-Severed Yours,

Mrinal



###


Out of the Ordinary

Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay
(1894-1950)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibhutibhushan_Bandopadhyay



I was sitting in Dr. Sitanath’s office. The morning newspaper hadn’t yet arrived at this semi-rural town. Without the paper, the war gossip simply wouldn’t heat up. A few local gentlemen such as Nabin Mukhujje, Sasadhar Muhuri, Kenaram Mukhujje, Manmatha Mukhujje and Balai Dam just completed their early-hour shopping at the fresh-vegetable market; they’d now slowly gather at the doctor’s office and start talking politics. These men didn’t have a daily job to do – a few were retired government officers; the others lived on the wealth they inherited from their fathers. With ample time on hand, they’d frequently make predictions about Germany and Japan; their insider knowledge about the war and its strategies would far surpass those of Hitler, Churchill or Tojo. The mistakes Hitler had ever made, steps Churchill shouldn’t have taken, or what would’ve happened if Japan’s policies were a tad different – all of it would be regularly conferenced-in here.

At present, Kenaram Mukhujje was speaking. “Look here folks – this is where Hitler made the gravest error. What happened right after Dunkirk was that…”

Sasadhar Muhuri interrupted Kenaram’s enthusiasm, “Alright, stop it. The only thing you seem to know is Dunkirk, and nothing else. That wasn’t the problem at all. Actually, the problem was…”

In the middle of this excitement, a woman slowly arrived holding a man’s hand, and walked up the doctor’s office porch. The man could be anywhere between forty and fifty, or fifty-five; he was thin and wearing a short dhuti. The woman was not very young either, but surely much younger than the man – maybe thirty or thirty-two. She wore a sari patched in various places. It seemed there was a time when she was quite pretty, but now lean, probably due to starvation and malaria.

The woman stood at the corner of the porch and called, “Daktar-Babu?”

Dr. Sitanath looked at them with a gesture of apathy and said, “What do you want?”

The woman said, “Sir, you need to see him.”

Dr. Sitanath knew however terrible the sickness, the patients were not likely to generate much revenue. They were seriously impoverished, famine-struck. They didn’t have a decent piece of cloth to wear. The hair on their heads was dry and scruffy. There was no reason for the doctor to be cheerful about these two guests at his doorstep.

He kept smoking his pipe and asked, “What’s the trouble?”

The woman said, “What else, Sir. He’s had this fever for nearly two months now. And he got the shiver and chill too. His health is poor. I have no one else but him, Sir. Would you please see him Sir?” She now started weeping.

Dr. Sitanath said, “Come over here.”

He examined the patient briefly and said, “Hmm, I see. He’s got a bunch of stuff going. How long has he been like this?”

The man now feebly replied, “Daktar Babu, been like it for some time – for three or four months now. And this cough is not going nowhere.”

The woman raised her hand and said impatiently, “Okay, will you stop talking? God, how little you know! You’ve messed up my life … been sick for three months, eh?”

Then she turned around and said, “Don’t mind him, Sir. He don’t know nothing, he don’t mind his own life … never did. Let me explain…”

The way she described the man seemed like he was a poet, philosopher or sage, as if he was totally detached from the trivial worldly matters. Dr. Sitanath, however, didn’t show much empathy. He asked abruptly, “How long have you had gonorrhea?”

The man said, “Sir, it could be like four or five months. It was the time when…”

The woman clanged back again, “Oh, do you know it all! Shut up, will you? No Sir, he’s had it for two years now. This moron’s ruined my life. Oh what a mess I’m in now! Oh, I wish I was dead.”

Dr. Sitanath asked, “Where do you come from?”

She said, “Jhitkipota village, Sir. We are low-caste Hadi.”

“So you live in a Hadi village?”

“No Sir, we don’t live nowhere. I keep drifting with him from place to place, in search of his cure. He’s my wedded husband – I can’t get rid of him after all. For two years he’s been sick; can’t move about on his own. Tried so many treatments, done everything the village folks said, but couldn’t cure him. The man doesn’t get better, doesn’t eat well. Then I said, let me bring him over to the big doctor in town. Sir, please see him well, Sir, I got nobody else.”

So far, my role was that of an onlooker. I now asked, “What kind of work does your husband do?”

The woman clanged back again, “Work? Oh my, does the big man work! Oh yes, he’d work the day the sun rose west.”

The man was embarrassed. Softly, he said, “No Sir, I don’t work. I’m not strong enough to work. It’s her who husks rice and does midwifery to make ends meet. But it’s very hard for her, Sir, with the high prices and all.”

The woman said, “Won’t you stop? Sir, let me tell you. Does he know anything about hard or easy? Does he ever realize what it takes?”

The man was overwhelmed with gratitude. He continued in his soft voice, “By all means, Sir, what she says is true. She wouldn’t let me know anything; would do it all. I can’t work no more – it’s this crippled leg that’s in the way … look, Sir, this leg.”

The woman wiped tears with her sari, “That’s it. Don’t put that leg out to the gentlemen.”

I felt her sorrow. Strange that she’d be so kind and caring for this worthless, crippled man. I was surprised.

Dr. Sitanath said, “Didn’t you say you knew midwifery?”

The man replied, “Sir, she’s very good. Anywhere she goes, they’d give her some rice, a dhuti or sari, some little money – that’s how she pays for my treatment.”

The wife interrupted again, “Would you shut up? What d’ya know about it? Sir, midwifery used to be good business. Now you’ve built this hospital, and all the birthing women show up here. Nobody comes to us anymore. The only money I make is by husking rice. They’d give me one kilo for husking fifty kilos. But diseases have taken my health, and I’m not as strong as before. Husking is a very hard job, Sir, I get cramps in my legs every time I do it.”

I asked, “Who else do you have in your family?”

“Yama,” she said tersely.

“Didn’t you say you were a Hadi?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“How’d you come from Jhitkipota? Wasn’t it quite far?”

“We came on a boat, Sir.”

“You have a boat?”

“It’s the boat of Ratan, a kind boatman from our village. We gave him small money –whatever we could. He brought us here.”

“Do you plough your land?”

“No Sir, we have no land, no ploughs, not even a real place to live. We have a straw-thatched hut, broken. Couldn’t live in it next monsoon without some straw laid on the roof.”

It was lunchtime for me; I had to come home. Since then, however, I’d find the couple returning to the doctor every few days. The woman would beg Dr. Sitanath to lower the cost of the medicine, or ask him questions about her husband’s prognosis. It was apparent she couldn’t meet the expenses either for the treatment or for the commute. Life was getting harder each day.

I asked Dr. Sitanath, “What do you think? Is he going to pull through?”

He smiled, “I doubt it. He has other ailments too. He’s practically emaciated. I’m doing my best, that’s all.”

We of course didn’t discuss it in their presence.

About a month later, I saw them again. The woman was even leaner – it seemed she’d now need treatment too. Perhaps she was also fasting in order to save up for the husband. Her sari now had more patches than before.

When they were done with the visit and about to leave, I called her, “Come here, listen.”

“What, Sir?”

“Can you do midwifery now?”

She smiled, “That’s what my job is, Sir. I sure can.”

I brought them over to show my house: I’d need a midwife in a couple of weeks. Along the way, she kept requesting, “Sir, please find me a job, Sir. I can’t find money for his treatment no more. Even a little bottle of medicine costs so much … a rupee, rupee and a half … find me something Sir, anything … I’ll work for small money … my charges are less than other midwives, I’ll do more than they will … wash clothes, do dishes … look after the newborn … please, Sir.”

I said, “Here, this is my house. They’d need someone in about eight or nine days. Let me introduce you to the women in the house. Can you ask him to wait under this tree?...Yes, you sit here under the tree, wait for a while, okay?”

I brought her in and introduced her. But people in my family didn’t like her much. Of course their excuse was that she was nothing but an untrained, country midwife and didn’t have enough knowledge, etc. However, I suspected that the real reason was that she was a nice-looking woman and that it was me who brought her along.

A few days later I saw her again, waiting with her husband on the doctor’s porch. “Any good news, Sir?” She asked.

“Er, no, I’m sorry. It’s that they’d already found another midwife named Kamala.” It was a lie, of course.

“That’s alright, Sir. Can you find me another one?”

“We’ll see. I know of another place … will check with them.”

“Please see to it. May His mercy be upon you. In Chaitanya Charitamrita[14], the Lord said…”

Now, to hear this out of a low-caste Hadi woman was quite astounding. Greatly surprised, I asked, “You’ve read Chaitanya Charitamrita? Do you know how to read?”

The man said, “She’s quite educated, Sir.”

“You have that book at home?”

“Yes, Sir, she’d read it to me every night. She’d read it and cry.”

The woman protested in her usual acerbic tone, “Don’t you have to tell the whole story. Shut up now. No Sir, don’t mind him. I read it a little in the evening. Do I ever have the fortune to understand God’s words?”

“Where’d you go to school?”

The husband said, “Sir, she’d studied at her uncles’ village. They were big pork traders. Were rich too. Now they’re all gone … dead and everything … that’s why she’s in such a dire strait, ended up with someone like me.”

“Which school did you go to?”

Knowing her husband couldn’t answer this rather complicated question, she replied, “Upper Primary School, Sir.”

“Did you graduate?”

“Yes. I came to this town only for the final exam.”

The husband looked at his wife with great admiration. He said, “Sir, she got eskolasi there.” Amazing, I thought, she’d even earned a scholarship!

The wife chided him, “Will you stop?”

The man was carried away with emotion. “Sir, she couldn’t study after we were married. Her uncles died off too. With her qualities … she and me … it’s like pearl necklace on a monkey, Sir. It’s all her fate and nothing else. Instead of me taking care of her, it’s she who looks after me, feeds me. She’s the one who finds money to bring me to the doctor. Now she doesn’t earn much or get enough to eat. Says she’d eat well when I’m cured.”

The women retorted again with the usual sting.

I said, “Why, he’s only being nice to you. Why are you so cross?”

Shyly, she replied, “Sir, it’s not proper to mention it to strangers.”

“It’s alright. I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

“Sir, please find me a job.”

“I’ll try. Just wait a few days. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Without a job, it’s so very hard, Sir. I can’t take the husking no more. I must husk fifty kilos to get enough rice for the two of us. And it’s only the food. We have no clothes to wear.” She pointed at her torn sari. “Will get another piece of cloth if I find some midwifery.”

After that, I didn’t see them for quite some time. Couldn’t find anything for her either. It seemed it was not up my alley to locate pregnant women around town.

***

The Great Famine of 1942 had begun at this time. The price of rice shot up like wildfire. Hordes of hungry, starving men, women and children from near and far thronged into our little town. They had bowls, pots and pans in their hands; they were begging for the watery starch people drained out of the boiled rice. Gradually, even the starch became precious. No ordinary families had tons of starch – whatever little they had, it’d be distributed among the early-birds. The late arrivals would return empty-handed. People started dying a few at a time. The town’s affluent Kundus and Dams started charity-feeding one hundred people a day; but it was scant help to the enormous number of half-naked, starved and confused that needed much more. On top of it, throngs of refugees started pouring from Tripura; because of their strange accent, they’d find no sympathy – people would ruthlessly drive them off.

In this catastrophe, I saw countless people going completely destroyed. Often I’d think about the poor woman who husked rice to find treatment for the husband. She’d rent a boat and bring him over to the town doctor. She’d even talk about Chaitanya Charitamrita. I hadn’t seen them for a long time. I asked Dr. Sitanath; he hadn’t seen them either. He said, “How could they show up, brother? Couldn’t even pay for the pills … still owe me a few rupees, you know.”

I’d almost forgotten about them.

Toward the end of the monsoon, our district relief committee opened a new charity kitchen. Everyday, hundreds of people came to eat the khichudi[15] cooked and distributed there. There one day, I spotted her. She was carrying a bowl of khichudi over to somewhere.

I called her and said, “What are you up to?”

She was embarrassed to see me. “Well, I mean…”

“Where’s your husband?”

“He’s sitting over there in the back of the post office. He can’t walk anymore.”

“Let me go see him.”

I went to see him just to satisfy my curiosity. Once there, however, I realized that I would’ve missed something if I hadn’t come. It was extremely rare to witness something like it.

In the back of the old post office where the government had built a makeshift cholera center, the woman’s husband lay on a worn-out rag under a bat tree. His shrunken body was practically level with the rag. The woman sat there and fed him the khichudi. It was mid-day. People were passing by – some saw them, some didn’t. After feeding him, the woman went to the cholera center’s tube-well, pumped water, soaked up the end of her sari, walked back and wrung the water slowly into the man’s mouth. The man swallowed two drips of water and said, “A little more.”

She walked back to the tube-well, soaked the end of her sari again, came back and squeezed the water into his mouth. I’d never seen anything like it.

I asked, “Why do you bring the water that way?”

She lifted her left hand to wipe sweat off her forehead. Then she said, “Don’t have no pots or pans. No other way to bring water.”

“What about the bowl?”

She picked up the bowl and showed me. “He couldn’t eat it all,” she said. “Still got a bit of khichudi left. He’ll have it at night. Wouldn’t eat much these days.”

She then put the bowl away, came back to me and said, “It’s so very hard, Sir. Could you find me some work please? Just a little bit of rice will do … I’ll work for less…”

That was the last time I saw her.




###



Salt Water

Syed Mujtaba Ali
(1904-1974)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syed_Mujtaba_Ali



It was the good-old Goalanda-Chandpur steam ship. I knew the liner for the past thirty years. Even with my eyes closed, I could reach for and find the water tap, the tea stand, and the poultry cages. Yet, I was not a sailor– only an irregular passenger.

Over these thirty years, everything else had changed except for this small group of mail-dispatch steamers. They made a few little redesigning here and there on the deck or in the cabins, but the smell of all the vessels stayed just about the same. It was a kind of wet, a sort of grimy feeling, and then the thick, garlicy odor of chicken curry cooked on board, an all-pervasive smell. I’d often thought that maybe the ship itself was a humongous chicken, and they were cooking its curry within its own cavity. One could easily find the stench at Chandpur, Goalanda or Narayanganj[16] – any of the regular stops. Indeed, these ships were living, visible mementos of the old times; the only thing that noticeably differed was a sparser group of passengers.

I took my afternoon meal, lay down on a deck chair and looked at the distant horizon. Poetry never came to me: I’d be hard-pressed to find beauty until Rabi Thakur[17] made me appreciate it. I therefore liked the music box more than the moonshine. I was about to bring over my portable gramophone, when a mangled literary magazine, like an unescorted woman, caught my eyes. Well, I thought, what the heck even if a stranger me had flirted with her for a little while – would it really annoy her lawful companion?

In the magazine, a new young writer nicknamed The Bystander wrote a compelling story about steamship drudgers who worked like dogs. Wow, I said to myself, this guy got to be talented – how could he describe so much in such a meticulous way? How did he manage to dig out so much? Boy, it’s a big scoop…a pure scandal! As far as my writing talents, even putting together a leave application letter would be daunting. The stuff this guy wrote though…was it true? It was massive injustice; why didn’t the laborers fight back against it? But pooh…these naïve idiots would fight against the cunning, powerful British merchants?[18] That’d be absurd.

My eyes fell on the Second Officer of the ship – they called him the Mate. He’d probably had a day off. Wearing his silk lungi, cotton shirt and embroidered Islamic taz, he was taking a leisurely deck stroll. He glanced at me a few times too. Well, I thought, why not ask this fella how much of the Bystander story was for real and how much was hot-air fluff.

I cleared my throat a little loudly and asked him, “Hello Mr. Mate Sir, I hope the boat ain’t doin’ late.”

The man quickly walked up to me and wrung his hands, “Oh Sir, please don’t call me Sir, Sir. I haven’t seen you more than a couple of times, but I know your dad and your brothers. All of them have been kind and generous to me, Sir.”

Needless to say, I was quite taken by his modesty. I asked, “Where do you come from? Do you have time to sit down and chat a little, or you’re perhaps too busy?”

Right away, he squatted down on the deck with a thud.

I said, “Oh brother, why, bring a stool or something…you don’t need to sit on…” I didn’t finish my sentence and he didn’t bring a stool either[19]. Then we had a talk. He was a fellow Bengali Mussalman[20]; so we of course talked about our lives, our common pleasures and sorrows. Finally, I took the opportunity to read him the entire Bystander story. He listened to it with great attention, so much so that it seemed he was following his Mullah’s sermon at the mosque.

Then he sighed a very long sigh, put his right hand on the forehead in reverence to the Almighty and said, “Sir, you mentioned lack of justice; but then, where do you find justice in this world? Those who have the most from Allah are the biggest promoters of injustice, right? Then, who knows what kind of justice Allah has provided for whom?...Did you know our Samiruddi who lived in Mirika for many years and became rich?”

The word Mirika, or America, helped me remember the name. “Wasn’t he from the Chauthali area or some place like that?”

The sailor said, “He was from my village Dhalaichara, Sir. The money he made overseas was…like very few people could make that kind of big money. We both went to the Kolkata Khidirpur Dock and signed up together to work aboard.”

I asked, “What happened to him? I don’t quite know the whole story.”

He said, “Listen Sir…

The story you just read to me about injustice on ship laborers was all valid and true. However, nobody can describe the extent of the suffering one goes through here especially when they start working…nobody would know how hellish it is if had he not done it himself. The guy who stands next to the boiler for hours and dumps coal into it – have you ever seen how his whole body sweats? And here upstairs on this same ship with both ends wide open, with sweet breeze blowing across from the river Padma. At the same time, in that cavity, in the engine room, it’s dark, all the doors are shut tight, and no air can enter. Nobody can imagine how big that boiler room is for these ten or twelve thousand-ton steamships, and how terribly hot it is. Children of the rivers, free spirits we are – suddenly, one fine morning, we discover ourselves thrown into a hell full of huge, black, oily machines and iron shafts.

The first few months, everybody simply passes out. They pull them out on the deck and douse them under the water tap. After they regain consciousness, they feed them with lumps of salt; all the salt from the body comes out with the sweat – without the force-feeding, they’d die.

Or, you see someone dumping coal into the boiler quite normally; then suddenly, he drops everything, shoots out and runs up the stairs to jump overboard. He’s lost his head in the intolerable heat. Sir, we sailors call this Emokh.”

I asked, “Is this the same as the English word Amuck? But then people running amuck might try to kill someone!”

The sailor said, “Yes Sir, they do. If you want to stop him at that time, he’d grab anything he can find and kill you.” After a little pause, he said, “Well Sir, we’ve all had this bout once or twice and others have calmed us down by dumping cold water on us. But Samiruddi never ever had this problem – that’s how strong he was. Did you ever see him Sir? He was as slim as an eel, but his body was as tough as the turtle shell. We had a giant-like Chinese chef – Samiruddi could lift him with two hands and throw him down on the floor with the blink of an eye. His leopard-like strength came from doing gymnastics in the country with bamboo poles. But the reason he never fainted in the boiler room is not because of his physical strength but rather his mental toughness; he had determination that he would make money by any means, and that he wouldn’t faint or fall sick, ever.”

The sailor continued the story of his voyage, “After going through hell for the first few weeks, we finally reached the city of Culum.”

I asked, “Where’s Culum?”

He said, “Sir, in Bengali it’s called Lanka.”

I said, “I see, it’s Colombo.”

“Indeed, Sir. Our accent is not as refined as yours. We call it Culum City. They let us get off for a while, but kept a close eye on us, the first-time workers. Samuriddi however didn’t even get off. He said, ‘Getting down would mean unnecessary spending.’ And he was right: sailors off the ship blow money like crazy. Those who never saw a five-taka[21] bill in his entire life now have fifteen or twenty in their hand. He wants to buy a crow!

At the port, we ate to our heart’s content: especially vegetables. We don’t see that stuff much on the ship – it’s practically non-existent, you know.

Then we sailed from Culum to Adun.”

I knew he meant Port of Eden.

“From there, we crossed the Red Sea over to Suso’s Khadi – on both sides was nothing but the desert and piles and piles of sand, and in the middle there was this narrow canal.”

the way he described it. I realized Suso’s Khadi was the Suez Canal.

“Then we went on to Pursoi where the Khadi ended. It was a swell port city. We got off to have vegetable salads. The veterans slipped out to commit sin.”

I noticed that the sailor knew about the famous red light district of Port Said. By that time, I sort of got a hang of how English and other foreign terms were transcribed in his Sylheti[22] dialect. I’d realized he was now talking about Marseilles or Hamburg. I also noticed that he’d mastered the names of the ports directly from French or German, and was using the original pronunciations, unlike in the distorted English way we call them.

The sailor said, “All the cargo was disembarked at Hambur. We reloaded the ship there, and crossing over the big ocean, arrived at the port of Nu-Awk – in the Mirikin country.

But they wouldn’t let anybody – either a first-timer or a veteran – get off at Nu-Awk; they were too strict. And why not? Mirikin country is the land of gold. Even idiots like us could easily make five to seven hundred there. People with a darker skin color – much darker than us – make even more. If they ever let us disembark, all would take a flight and disperse around the country, like a swarm of bees, to make money. That would hurt Mirikans a lot. So, they kept us tight on the ship.

Just before we dropped anchor at the port of Nu-Awk, Samiruddi got a bad stomach flu. All of us had often faked illness to avoid work, but because Samiruddi never did it, upon any excuses, ever, the doctor let him take off of work, and rest.

The evening the ship arrived at Nu-Awk, Samiruddi called me over, asked me to swear to Allah, and whispered that he had a plan to escape. He explained it to me.

You wouldn’t believe Sir how greatly he’d crafted it. He’d already bought from Kolkata’s flea market a nice-looking blue suit, shirt, tie, shoes and socks. I only helped him to get a large, brass soup pan. When it was dark, Samiruddi put on his swimming trunks and climbed down into the ocean away from the shore side. He put all his clothes and a towel in the pan. He’d push the pan through the water with his chest and drift half a mile away from the crowd to get on shore. Once he was there, he’d wipe off, sink the pan and swimming trunks, and walk merrily into the city. A friend from Sylhet would wait there for him; he’d already sent him a message from Hambur. Until the cops gave up on chasing him, he’d just hide there for a few days, shave his beard and go to a place far from Nu-Awk, a place where Sylhetis lived and made money. He’d of course run the risk of being caught on the shore, but once he managed to put on his suit and dissolve into the street, nobody could think of him anyone but an ordinary reveler.

The plan worked out, Sir. They started looking for him the next morning. By the time, the bird flew out of his cage and hid into the woods. There was no trace of him. It was like, maybe the cops could catch the bird back from the woods, but not Samiruddi from the wilderness of the big city.”

The sailor stopped for a while and left for his Zohr prayers[23]. He returned quickly and resumed it without any further ado, “After that Sir, I spent a full seven years on the ship. A few times I landed at Kolkata’s Khidirpur, but never got an opportunity to go home. There was no reason for me to go home either: my parents were dead, and I hadn’t married at that time…so nobody to visit, really. I always sent money to my dad when he was alive; he spent his last few years happily. Peace Be Upon Him, Sir, the old woman still cried for me. Well Sir, someone like me who’s never distressed by the vast ocean salt water couldn’t be distressed by a few drops of tears, could he?”

Of course, he said that, but then I saw a few drops of salt water moistening his eyes.
He continued, “Anyway, what I learned from people over the years was that Samiruddi had made loads of money; I heard that he’d often sent money back home, but that he’d settled in the Mirikin country and would not return. To be honest, I never questioned his decision because who’d know where the Almighty found food for us?

Then, one day at work, I slipped on an oil spill in the bathroom and broke my ankle. I had to leave my cargo-ship job, came back home and then got a job on this dispatch steamer. Then, a few days later, I was getting ready to wash up for the early-morning prayer – when I was stunned to see Samiruddi sitting on the deck. Wow! I ran up to him, gave him a big hug and said, “Oh Allah, Samiruddi, my brother, you’re here!” In an instant, I remembered how much I’d loved him and cared for him.

But I was even more stunned to see that he didn’t even respond. He sat there just like a piece of wood and stared blankly at the sea. I said, “I never heard you got back. And now where are you headed bro – Kolkata? Why? Didn’t you like to be back home?”

But he didn’t say a thing. He sat there still and silent, like a fakir, a saint. He kept looking at the ocean, as if he didn’t even see me.

I knew something was wrong. However, I decided not to pry. I brought him to my cabin and put a variety of food on the table: fried eggs, paratha[24] and all -- food that he always loved to eat. But he wouldn’t even touch it. Yet, very slowly, like a mother feeding her stubborn child, I put some food in his mouth.

That afternoon, I didn’t let him get off at Goalanda: I remembered how he’d escaped and disappeared in Nu-Awk.

Samiruddi opened up late at night, and that too, rather abruptly.”

The Mate paused, maybe, to catch a breath, or for some other reason. I didn’t push him either. Then he said, “Sir, I don’t know how I can describe his hurt and sorrow in the best possible way. I still remember how he told me his story in the darkness of my cabin that night. His words pierced through the dark and hit me hard, even though he didn’t speak for long.

In seven years, Samiruddi had sent more than twenty thousand to his brother at home. I don’t even know how much twenty thousand is; I’ve never seen it in my life…”

I interrupted, “Neither have I.”

“There you go, Sir, so you know how many lives it takes to make that kind of money…

He first sent five hundred and wrote his brother to get the family house out of mortgage. Then he sent about two thousand to buy the wasteland next to the house; then a lot more to dig a lake out of the wasteland, and gradually even more to build in the village an urban-style, brick-walled, tile-roofed house, and in the back a pond only for women. He sent money to purchase cows, barns, rice fields, warehouses and so on, and finally, five thousand to build a cement-made mosque in front of the lake.

For seven years, Samiruddi labored in Mirika two or three shifts a day, doing multiple jobs like an animal. The money he made was all clean, uncorrupt; the money he spent on himself was pittance – even panhandlers in Mirika can afford more than that.

All the money he made, he poured in to build the house, to buy the land. He thought just like the people in Mirika who lived in their own house and ploughed their own land, he’d do the same once he went back to his poor village in Bangladesh.

His brother back in his village kept writing him letters that he’d been taking care of everything and things were sure being built one at a time. Finally, the day Samiruddi learned that the mosque had been completed, he left Nu-Awk to return home. Samiruddi was a highly skilled worker by now and with the recommendation from his previous employers, easily got a job on the ship. He disembarked at Kolkata in the evening and went straight to the rail station. He spent the night at the station platform, and the next day, took the Chittagong mail train to Sylhet. At three o’clock early morning, the train arrived at the local station in Sylhet. Without waiting for a minute, he started walking to their village Dhalaichara: he’d reach there around sunrise. He’d have to walk across a rice field just before his village could be seen.

At the crack of dawn, Samiruddi walked across the rice field.

His brother had written about a tall tower of the newly built mosque. Samiruddi had an Egyptian engineer friend in Mirika who did the architecture for him; he drew the design based on a famous mosque in Egypt. You would see the tower from far, just the way they’d see it on the Egyptian desert.

But Samiruddi was baffled not to see the tower. Then he walked some more toward the village and found neither the new lake, nor the brick house. Everything remained just the about same as ever before.”

I stopped the Mate and asked in great surprise, “What you talkin’ about…what was the matter?”

It seemed the sailor didn’t even hear me. He carried on, as if in a daze, “Nothing – none whatsoever. It was the same-old, rundown straw hut – it was even older now. The day Samiruddi left home, the hut had four poles to prop it up; now it had six. Could it be that brother had built the house and all in another locality? Well, in that case, wouldn’t he ever write him about it?

At this time, he ran into Basit Mullah, an elderly man and village priest. He recognized Samiruddi, ran up to him and took him in his arms.

First though, he didn’t want to divulge anything. Then, at Samiruddi’s insistence, he broke the news right there in the middle of the field. The brother blew away all the money. In the beginning, he did it at nearby towns – Sylhet, Maulavi Bazar – then in Kolkata…spent it all on gambling, cheap women, and what not.”

I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. I said, “What in the world are you talking about, Mate? It must’ve been too much of a shock for him. But tell me, why didn’t someone from the village write him about what was going on?”

The sailor said, “How’d they know why and how much of the money was coming in the first place? The brother kept telling them that Samiruddi had made millions in Mirika and sent just a small fragment for him to have fun. He didn’t even show Samiruddi’s letters to anyone else, and even though Samiruddi himself was illiterate and had someone else read and write for him, he’d sent his brother to school. Still, Basit Mullah and some other village elders were worried to see the brother throwing so much money away, and did advise him to build a house or buy some land. But the brother said Samiruddi got married in Mirika and would never return. Even if he did, he’d bring another million and put three houses up together in a matter of weeks.”

I said, “Oh my God, that is so evil!”

The sailor said, “Listen, Sir. Samiruddi didn’t set foot in the village. He slowly got up, and walked back to the train station. The Mullah must have requested him not to leave, but he wouldn’t listen. He said he was going to go back to his own country now.

The Kolkata train would come at night; he’d wait the entire day at the station. Meanwhile, Mullah and a few other men found the wretched brother and dragged him down to him. The brother sobbed and wept, fell to his feet and sought thousand apologies. Mullah said, “Son, if you want to go back to Mirika, that’s up to you; we’d understand. But please stay back for a few days before you left.”

I asked, “How did that shameless criminal come to see him in the first place?”

The sailor said, “I had the same question. But Sir, do you know what Samiruddi did? He didn’t slap or kick his brother or yelled at him or nothing. He simply said that he would not return to the village, and asked the village elderly not to insist.

It was the next morning I saw him, like I said before, on this ship. He sat there still, like a ghost…like a clay puppet they sell at the country fair.”

The sailor took a deep breath and said, “Samiruddi told me the entire story in a few minutes. But in the end, he muttered a few words I didn’t quite understand. What he said in effect was that the street beggar dreamed that he’d suddenly found riches, only to wake up the next morning in his own old, real world of rags. He said, ‘I sent money home to buy property, to become a rich man. Where am I going to be, now that the future I dreamed of is shattered?’ That was the last time I saw him.”

The Mate stopped. If it were a fiction instead of a true story, I probably would’ve stopped too. But because it’s not a fiction, I must write the rest of it. Or, it wouldn’t be fair to anyone.

The Mate said, “It’s been so many years, but seems it was just the other night Samiruddi sat here, telling me his heart-wrenching tale.

But you mentioned justice, Sir. Can you please tell me where to find it?

Samiruddi went back to Mirika, and in ten years made another thirty thousand. This time, he wouldn’t send the money to anyone; he kept it in a bank. Finally, one day, he set out to return home, but couldn’t make it: he died on the ship. The news of his death reached his village, and because Samiruddi had no other direct relations, the money eventually came back to his brother. He blew it again.

Justice, Sir? Where is it?”


###

Ahididi’s Friends

Leela Majumdar
(1908-2007)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leela_Majumdar



When Ahididi’s[1] husband got pension after retirement and moved his family out into the middle of nowhere by a newly-opened handicrafts school, and became its near-zero-pay principal, some called him crazy, some called him stupid, and the majority said, ‘This is exactly what someone like him would do!’ Although, his family was none other than Ahididi and her wrinkled-old mother-in-law.

Of course it wasn’t completely in the middle of nowhere, for it was perhaps once a bustling city. A small river fell into the great Ganges; once upon a time, it was a great port, and really a trade center where huge cargo ships dropped anchors. Vestiges of the docks were still visible. A while ago, while cleaning out the remains, a few brave boys hired by the rural development commission came across a few rusty, old anchors and human skeletons, and ran for their lives.

Ahididi’s brother-in-law Dharani said there must have been hundreds of sunken ships in that spot. He said if the government had opened a cleaning commission for the old docks instead of the handicrafts school, there would have been three times as many jobs available, and everyone could get rich off of the buried treasure. Although Ahididi’s husband Suren Babu[2] instantly waved away the idea, she actually went ahead to check the place out and was deeply disappointed. The water in the dried up rivers would rarely become knee-deep even in the monsoon, and the bottom of the river was hard as a layer of brick.

It was late by the time Ahididi got back. Her old mother-in-law was cranky as usual, the milkman came and left after finding no one at home, there was nobody to go get fish at the market, and on top of that, the clay stove’s flame went out.

It took Ahididi about four days to get settled. The area had a lot of ruins and remains. Owners reconstructed some of the structures to make them habitable. A few houses had completely collapsed, leaving nothing but brick piles and perfect habitats for snakes. The rest of the houses were counting days. Considering this, the neighborhood folks were surprisingly calm about their surroundings.

There were big mango and jackfruit trees all over the place that bore no fruits, presumably because nobody took care of them. There were also huge ponds, the muck of which was never thrown out; there were more frogs than fish there. An ancient stone Vishnu temple with Lord Vishnu and Goddess Laxmi adorned in flint lay in the village. With no priest, the villagers were the ones that came twice a day with holy water and flowers. Supposedly, this was a ritzy neighborhood of the sea merchants before. Therefore, hidden treasure would not have been a surprise.

Even if the mornings didn’t look so bad, after sunset the place looked terribly desolate; plus it was pitch black all around. Back there on the alleys of Kolkata, they’d be able to distinctly hear the neighbors talking. The houses were so close to each other that even burglars couldn’t sneak in. As soon as the daytime noise died down, the nighttime clatter would begin – it would only be a little quiet for two hours, maybe, from two to four, early in the morning. Around here, it was practically midnight immediately after sunset.

Suren Babu hadn’t asked around about the house before renting it; he brought his family over without checking it out. There were no other families nearby: it was in the midst of a bunch of deserted buildings and an ancient mango grove. This house itself was now only a fraction of what it used to be; the rest of it was in tatters. However, they’d repaired this one section well. It seemed like it was perhaps a portion of the interior of a rich trader’s mansion.

On the south, there were three adjacent rooms with marble floor, with a bathroom in the corner. On the east side was the kitchen with an attached pantry. You wouldn’t even need a separate pantry: nobody would come and steal even if you’d left everything out, unlocked. Contrarily, in Kolkata, they had to put a net over the window bars, or thieves would swipe even an old towel. And here, she’d forgotten a brass urn out in the open; in the morning, she discovered that instead of losing it, she’d actually gained a little: fully ripe, juicy, flavored limes had dropped from the top of the lime tree directly into the urn.

The kitchen had a wide porch in front, followed by a cemented courtyard. The yard had a well, a lime tree, a stick-legume tree, a Bel tree, and across from the kitchen was a rundown barn. It may well be that the last time cows were milked in there was fifty or sixty years ago. Everyday now, the milkmaid brought Ahididi two kilos of pure, thick, creamy milk in the morning and half a kilo in the afternoon. The cranky mother-in-law wouldn’t step into the kitchen these days; it was actually a blessing. She’d drink a bowl of freshly-boiled milk twice a day, which would be separately saved. The milk for the tea would also be put away. The rest of it would be left on simmering heat; it’d form a half inch-thick cream on top.

The cream was gold-colored, with cracks and crevasses on it like the surface of the moon. At night, Ahididi peeled it off carefully, sprinkled large-grain cane sugar on it, and folded it away. Mother-in-law ate a small chunk, Suren Babu got to eat some of it, an occasional visitor got a bite, and Ahididi tasted a little. The kitchen door had a push-on chain on top; the school authorities have put new nets on the windows to prevent cats from leaping in. The cream stays intact and wholesome inside the kitchen.

There’s normally a few fish cooked for lunch. For dinner, Ahididi made a stir-fried curry and fried a few pieces of triangular bread. The cooking didn’t take any more than an hour.

Today, the wife of the school’s factory foreman paid an afternoon visit. She said, “Oh my, aren’t you scared, sister? Didn’t you see the big gaping hole on the barn wall? A couple of young kids or even a slim man can easily slip in through it. And you leave all your milk and cream and pots and pans scattered around just like that with no locks or nothing, and catch the radio play in the other room! I can’t believe it!”

Ahididi and her husband thought she was being ridiculous. However, at night, she went into the kitchen with the lantern and discovered that someone had ripped a piece of the cream, spilled milk on the floor, and wiped their little fingers on the newly painted wall. She decided not to mention it to anybody; only sliced the cream off of the ripped side, and put sugar on the rest of it. She started to ferment a stone bowl of yogurt using the leftover milk, and covered up the rest with the stone grinder slab on top. She stored some milk separately in a can to make tea. The incident was discomforting.

In the morning, she went back to check out the barn. Inside, it had nothing but some sundry materials for home repair. But the wall indeed had a hole. Suren Babu arranged to fix it right away. A little later, the fisherwoman showed up and sold at a very low price a whole bunch of freshly caught silver shad. Ahididi deep-fried all the fish in mustard oil, made a spicy curry with half of it, and saved the other half in a container hanging from the kitchen ceiling. In the evening though, she found that the container had tumbled and was almost empty, with the fish scattered all over the floor. Ahididi was stunned.

She looked at the barn. The other side of the shed didn’t have a wall; it only had a low, bamboo fence. Suddenly, in the darkness, she felt as if a number of little heads was lurking and lurching to make room for a better view.

Ahididi’s heart pounded. Oh, thank you Lord, so there were indeed children to be found in this desolate place. Back in Kolkata, there were no kids nearby; the house was bereft. Ahididi’s own sons and daughters had grown up and moved out. Mother-in-law despised children. Nobody would ever come to their place, nobody would ever want to hear stories, or ask for goodies. It was a God-forsaken home.

Ahididi raised her voice, “Who’s it that steals my fish and drinks my milk?” First there was some pushing and pulling, and then it was all quiet.

Ahididi said, “Come out here. I’ll give you pink fluffy candy, fried fenugreek. I’ll read you fairy tales too.”

Slowly but surely, the little souls scaled the bamboo fence and appeared out of the darkness. It was eight or ten very thin children, practically naked, with undone, dry hair. They exposed their white teeth and giggled.

Ahididi opened her candy box and said, “Come over here and put your hands out.” At once, ten dirty palms extended. Ahididi put one candy and a pinch of fried fenugreek on each of them and asked the one in front, “What’s your name, kiddo?”

The boy said in a nasal voice, “Bangesh.”

“So is this your gang? Listen to me – don’t touch the food at all, okay? Touching would spoil old Grandma’s special meal[3]. Next time, come to me: I’ll always have something for you.”

Bangesh asked, “What will you have?”

“Why, for you I’ll have rice puffs and lozenzes, I’ll give you paan, I’ll give you salty little wafers, cookies, potato and coconut curry, and crispy-fried baby shrimp. But make sure you don’t grab anything on your own, alright?”

The deal was made.

Ahididi brought the kerosene stove over, started to size up flour dough, and said, “Now you eat first and then sit down over there. I’ll tell you a story of the island mermaids.”

All of them rushed forward and squatted on the cemented yard. Ahididi said, “Way back when there was a naughty boy named Ramesh. He didn’t have his mother; he only had a stepmother.”

Bangesh interrupted, “It was Bangesh, not Ramesh.”

Ahididi said, “Okay, fine – it was Bangesh. The stepmother wouldn’t have anything for him to eat or wear. She’d make him work from sunrise to sunset. The poor kid didn’t have a place in the house to sleep; he’d sleep with the goats in the barn…”

She continued her story and the boys continued to come up closer. She finished frying the bread and cooking the curry, and the story ended too. At first, there was a little envy, elbowing and moaning for the best seat; in the end, however, it was total quiet.

Ahididi was done, “…Then, a bleeding, groaning, panting and weeping Bangesh slammed hard on the banks of the sea. Suddenly, the scrawny old woman’s boat came ashore. And lo and behold, bright light started radiating from the old dem’s body and she transformed into a beautiful mermaid. Bangesh cried out, ‘Ma, Ma!’ and jumped in her lap. The boat sailed away, away to the island of fairies, for good.”

The children moved up close to Ahididi almost touching her with their knees, and crammed in a huddle. Ahididi put out the stove, boxed up the food and said, “Alright my sweet little champs, now it’s time to feed the old Grandma. Come again tomorrow, okay? I’ll make tiny-winy stick snacks and tell you the story of the dung-picker who turned into a queen.”

She pushed in the kitchen door lock and turned back, only to find the children were all vanished in an instant.

The food burglary had stopped from that day. Further, Ahididi wasn’t alone anymore. She had no more after-dark worries. No thieves, goblins or bad people would be able to sneak by those brats. Bangesh sucked on the dried mango pulp and said, “Nobody can slink past us, Ma.”

That night, Ahididi finished her new story and said, “So, tell me why you boys are so stick-thin. Where in the world do you all live?” Bangesh pointed his finger to the ancient grove and said, “We come from w-a-y over there.” Ahididi said, “And what’s with them: how come they don’t speak?” All of them had a major snort together. Bangesh said, “They’re shy, Ma. They’re the boys with no tongues.” Ahididi snapped, “Heck no, kiddo. In Bangla, someone with no tongue means the one who speaks too much, don’t you know? Well, tomorrow I’m planning to make some palm-candy fruitcakes and soft palm cream. Are you interested?”

The entire gang was extremely pleased to hear the plan. Ahididi was pleased too. She knew the poor, unfortunate children must’ve starved all their lives, must’ve lived in leaf-made huts in the woods, and their poor parents must’ve been desperate and abusive too. Oh Good Lord, make them happy.

About four months passed by. The authorities built a new teachers’ housing quarter next to the school building. Ahididi however wasn’t quite ready to move out. She said, “Oh no, is it ever possible to move in the middle of the winter, and that too, before the Paus-Parvan[4]? We’ll wait until after the festival.”

She’d grown great affection for the kids; it was them that made her past few months happy and content. She knew they would not want to come to the newly built quarter. She didn’t know how to break the news to them. They must be heartbroken; after all, who’d now give food to those starved little rascals?

On the day of Paus-Parvan, Ahididi made sweet cheese wafers, cream-cheese balls, coconut cakes and sweet milk churn, and served the family and neighbors a delicious meal. Suren Babu’s colleagues were in high praise. Mother-in-law didn’t care about her dietary restrictions: she ate three wafers and a whole bowl of milk churn. After everybody had left, and Suren Babu went off to play cards at Mukanda’s, Ahididi went out to the porch and called out, “Hey you kiddos, where are you all? Come quick.” In an instant, the ten little brats appeared with a wide grin on their faces. Ahididi fed them to her heart’s content. But first, she poured water to wash their hands.

After the feast was over, Ahididi made each a paan and said, “So, do you know we’re leaving?”

Bangesh said, “Yeah.”

“Won’t you come to our new house?”

All vigorously shook their heads to say no.

Ahididi said, “I’ll be sad.” She wiped tears with her sari. All sobbed and wept a little through their noses. Then Bangesh said, “We won’t be around anymore, Ma, we’re leavin’ too.”

“Where’ll you go? Come back to me anytime, okay?”

The little faces glowed in delight. Ahididi put the kitchen lock up and returned; again, all of them had disappeared in a second. It felt though as if it was the last time she’d seen them. She was very sad.

The next morning, Ahididi arranged for all the household items to be boxed up and moved, put mother-in-law and Suren Babu on a cycle rickshaw, and lied to her husband for the first time in her life. She said, “You go on. I need to pay up the milkmaid; will be back soon.”

She went back to check out the yard, the barn and the area around the trees. The bamboo fence had been repaired, but they’d scale it with no trouble. Ahididi went into the mango grove and walked quite a distance through it, but couldn’t find signs of a hut or slum of any kind. Finally, she gave up seeing them one last time, and took a rickshaw back to the new quarter.

Two months later, their younger son-in-law got transferred to South India, and the couple left the grandchildren with Ahididi for a long time. Then one day, the milkmaid suddenly brought it up, “Now that you’ve moved here, I can say it. We just didn’t know Ma how in the world you’d all lived in that haunted house for so long. The villagers never go there: they’re so scared of the boys with no tongues. Didn’t you ever notice anything strange?”

Ahididi froze. Mother-in-law asked, “What’re you talking about, girl? What in the world do you mean by no tongues? We’ve never seen anything strange back there, have we, Bouma[5]? Who are they?”

The milkmaid replied. “Oh Mother, didn’t you ever know? The old ruins once belonged to a rich merchant. Long time ago, the day after the Paus-Parvan feast, a bunch of poor, hungry kids from the cowherds’ village scrambled at the palace to find some leftover cakes, and threw quite a big fuss. The merchant was so cruel that he ordered his men to cut off the boys’ tongues. The oldest one got away…Well, that itself happened some two hundred years ago. We the poor village folks still tell tales about it.

They say, since those days, mango trees in the groves had stopped growing buds, and they never bore fruits…but you know what, Ma? Just this morning, for the first time ever, the trees showed signs of sprouting. Isn’t that a miracle? I must take your leave now, Ma. This is very auspicious for us. Today, we shall offer special prayers to our gods.”


________

[1] Didi means an elder sister.
[2] Synonymous with Mr. or Sir.
[3] Traditional Hindu widows, strictly vegetarian, would not eat food touched by a stranger.
[4] Middle-of-winter post-harvest, traditional ceremony in Bengal.
[5] Parents-in-law would call their daughters-in-law Bouma; it literally means the bride mother.

###


[1] Now known as Kolkata. Was the capital of pre-partition British India until 1911.
[2] Extended family where all the brothers and their wives share the same home.
[3] Typhoid was practically incurable in those times.
[4] Soil from the banks of holy Ganges is used to make Hindu idols at the time of worship.
[5] Anti-British revolutionaries.
[6] Fate and destiny are Hindu beliefs.
[7] Local name for Varanasi, Hindu holy pilgrim in India.
[8] Rani Rasmoni was a rich, noble and philanthropic nineteenth-century landowner. She was a primary disciple and benefactor of Sri Ramakrishna, the divine guru.
[9] In feudal, affluent Indian families, a married woman would be in the interior and not come out on her own to meet strangers; going out of the house to visit the lawyer would be unthinkable.
[10] Indian ritual where sisters invite brothers for a treat and bless them for their long lives.
[11] Famous religious site.
[12] Dhoti is a long piece of white cloth – a traditional grab for Bengali men.
[13] Mirabai was a sixteenth-century queen of Rajasthan known for her devotional verses dedicated to Lord Krishna.
[14] Religious text depicting life and work of Sri Chaitanya, the Krishna reincarnate.
[15] Mixture of rice and lentils cooked together, with or without vegetables.
[16] Port cities now in Bangladesh.
[17] Nobel Laureate poet and author Rabindranath Tagore.
[18] In pre-partition, undivided Bengal – a then-British colony – the shipping companies were owned by English owners. On-board laborers were brutally repressed.
[19] Traditionally, younger people would not sit at the same level with the elderly or someone respectable.
[20] South Asian synonym for Muslim.
[21] Bengali currency: now official currency of Bangladesh. Indian West Bengalis still call the Indian Rupee a Taka.
[22] Sylhet is an eastern district in East Bengal, now Bangladesh.
[23] Devout Muslims offer prayers five times a day.
[24] Fried hand-made flour bread.

###

First Love

By

Rashid Karim

(1925-)


Translated by Partha Banerjee



It was August the seventh, nineteen forty-one. I was a tenth grade student. Had spent the whole day at home, doing nothing. Was it a holiday? Can’t remember now. But it wasn’t unusual that the school was in session, yet I was home, or maybe, watching a movie at the local theater – in fact, it was quite regular. Quite a few times I’d miss school for ten or fifteen days in a row, and then get a VIP treatment from my classmates when I’d finally return. My family members for a number of generations had been good students; some were exceptional. Therefore, I didn’t know how they’d accepted my total apathy and indiscretion. I could only guess. The school was more than three miles away; my mother knew about some hazards of the daily commute, and imagined some more. She’d made up a theory about it: her son was passing exams with good grades, so why push him to travel to school everyday endangering his life?

Anyway, this story is not about my school life. Let me come to the core of the matter.

That day, I lay on bed in my favorite second-floor room, read a book all through the morning and almost half of the afternoon, of course with a nice-little lunch break. Then I thought: heck, that was no good to waste an entire day of my life; it would be a much better use watching a matinee movie instead. The curious reader might want to know what the book was that I was reading. I couldn’t remember for sure, but a Sarat Chandra novel would be the best possible candidate. Back in those days, one couldn’t separate me from my Sarat Chandra. Still, I decided to put him down and went out – perhaps because it was a book I’d read several times over, and got tired of it.

Back then, to want to watch a movie and to be able to actually do it were two different things. Often, to make it happen, I’d have to pick a couple of pockets of my family members.

There was a theater hall in Central Calcutta called Rupam. It used to be a popular theater for students. It was popular not because of its aristocracy, but rather because of the lack of it. The new releases already shown for months at first-rate theaters would much later be found at run-down halls such as Rupam. Therefore, the tickets were cheaper here; students would find it easier to go even with their shallow pockets, with a little mandatory indulgence from family members.

I showed up on the street in front of Rupam fifteen minutes before the show. I guess I was a little unmindful. The things that would be common for show time seemed to bemissing. Still, I couldn’t quite figure it out. The big movie posters were hanging on the walls as usual. It was perhaps one of those tear-jerker Bangla movies that was running – the Court Dancer or Royal Actress or something of that sort. It was quite crowded, yet it was not exactly the same, usual movie-going crowd. I went up the stairs to buy my tickets, and then realized that there was no way I could do it: thebig iron gate was locked. Someone hung a cardboard sign on it – itsaid, “The theater is closed today due to the passing of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore”…or an announcement along that line.

So, Tagore is dead?

Then I realized that everyone was talking about the great poet. Everyone wassad and glum. People were crossing over the busy street speaking about him. Even the bubbly Oriya pan vendor who probably never heard about Tagore was acting differently, as if he knew a calamity had occurred; he knew it’d gripped the entire population of Calcutta.

I said to myself, ‘So, what do I do now? All the other theaters must be closed too.’ Of course, there was news for some time that the poet was gravely ill. Some even said that newspapers had already made up their special obituaries in anticipation of the inevitable. It must be true; otherwise how could the papers always manage to put out their special issues immediately after the fact?

I was now deeply saddened at the news; but honestly, it was not particularly for his death. I was sad because I’d missed the movie. Tagore could’ve died tomorrow; why did he choose to die today when it was so important for me to see the film? At that time, I had not read any Tagore other than a few of his poems such as Two Acres of Land, Abracadabra, The Awakening of the Waterfalls, or Shah-Jehan. My school teachers and family members would rank those to be his best poems. Even that Oriya pan vendor would say the same only if he could read Bangla. Much later, however, my esteemed professor Abu Syed Ayub had completely transformed my views about the poet. Back in those days though, I had a special preference for Two Acres of Land, especially those lines that started with, “Salutations to Thee, my beloved beautiful Motherland.” But publicly, I’d always say Shah-Jehan was his best poem – the primary reason was that Emperor Shah-Jehan was a Mussalman .

At that age, however, Sarat Chandra was indeed the one who’d intoxicated me.

Ididn’t know when I started walking again. I walked toward the Calcutta University building on College Street; everyone walked that way. They said that Tagore’s funeral procession was coming that way. By that time, the overarching gloom had touched me too. Like the pan vendor, I now also knew a major disaster had happened.

I stood on the steps of the University building. Thousands of people gathered there.The sidewalks on College Street, Harrison Road, streets to North Calcutta all were filled with people and more people. On balconies and windows of buildings on both sides, women stood with flowers and hand-made garlands. Many wept; some cried out loud. I now understood the magnitude of the event. I’d heard Tagore songs many times; words of some of those songs now came back to me, and haunted me. I got a lump in my throat.

The procession with the poet’s body was coming late. Everyone eagerly waited to see the poet one last time; to most of them, it was probably the first time too. I couldn’t imagine how they’d be able to see him in the midst of this huge sea of people.

Somebody shouted from the top of the stairs, “It’s coming, it’s coming!” Somebody else said, “It’s only the Films Division people on a truck.” Another man announced that a group of famous Tagore singers were riding a separate truck, the group being led by Pankaj Mallick, et al. I remembered the song I’d heard many times on the radio,

“When my footsteps are no longer found here...”

The procession with the poet’s body on a beautifully decorated truck passedon, with thousands of people mourning, wailing, and paying their last respect for the great man. Where did they hold the funeral – at which crematorium? I never remembered those small details. All crematoriums would really be the same, in my opinion.

For the next few days, weeks and months, it was Tagore and Tagore only all over, as if the sun or the moon was missing from the Calcutta sky. There was no other conversation in the city – on trams and buses, in the papers, in living rooms, at the share market, even at the tobacco shops, everyone talked about Tagore – his poetry, songs, art, politics, and all.

It was also the time when the World War waged on. It was dark in the evening: lights would be cut off. We were scared. Everyone was mentally prepared for an inevitable bombing on the city. Sandbags lined up on the streets, lights were turned out, and posters said ‘walls have ears too’, ‘own your own electricity’, etc. However, we didn’t see any major bombing on the city. We had bombs dropped on Calcutta only once ortwice – it didn’t damage much. People would make fun of Japanese bombs: unlike today, Japanese products back in those days didn’t carry much reputation.

My Abba had retired. He’d noticed that I was quite sad and depressed for some time. He’d of course never read any Tagore either. He didn’t even know much Bangla; he’d only speak a little. Infact, in our family, my parents were both Urdu-speaking. My brothers and I were the first to learn Bangla.

We sat to have dinner. He knew my blues had something to do with the death of the poet.

Abba was eating with us. He said, “Was Tagore a great poet?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Greater than Iqbal? ”

I’d never read any Iqbal.

Still, I confirmed, “Yes.”

Abba then asked, “Have you read any Iqbal?”

I had to confess. With great hesitation, I said, “No.”

“Then how do you know Tagore was greater than Iqbal?”

What could I say? I kept mum.

I’d given up Urdu and picked up on Bangla; therefore my father and I would mostly speak in English.

Butmy story is not really about Tagore either. Even though it’s based on him…or rather, his death…it’s actually a trivial incident…perhaps quite insignificant. The real story is somewhere else.

The big memorial meeting for Tagore was held at the Town Hall…was it at Town Hall? The president of the meeting was the famous historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar…or was it him? These were historical facts, and one must not misstate them. But in terms of my story, even those glaring errors would not make much of a difference.

The meeting location was incredibly crowded; moreover, the heat and humidity were unbearable. There was not an inch of space where I could sit or stand. Hundreds of people got denied access and went back to stand on the street. There was perhaps a wooden partition outside the auditorium. I barely stood next to it. There was a swing door nearby; police officers had camped there. Nobody would be allowed to get past the door to enter the hall. I’d never seen so many celebrities in my life. Somebody said Kazi Nazrul Islam and Fazlul Haq were also there . But in that enormous crowd, I couldn’t make them out. A group of girls were working as volunteers. Even in that suffocating condition, I was absorbing it all.

A young woman volunteer showed up. She wore a black, sleeveless silk blouse. An aura of aristocracy emanated off her body, her manners,even the way she walked and talked. And how did she look? “Stunningly beautiful” must be used only for someone like her; no one should use that word more than once in a thousand years.

I no longer remembered Tagore. I stood on this small corner of the wooden partition, like a beggar. I knew I would not be able to enter. The beautiful young woman was very busy. She was greeting someone, moving someone else, and making room to sit others. The special guests spoke with her too.

She looked at me a couple of times. She glanced at me for a moment even in the midst of her very hectic job. Was she curious about me? There were so many other men standing in this little corner; they were all handsome and well-dressed. She didn’t look at them. She looked at me…yes, maybe only for a moment. But she still did it alright. Why? Was it possible that she actually cared about me?

The meeting was about to begin. It became even noisier. Now she was coming up toward this wooden partition. Now I could see her clearly. She was sweating. She looked so beautiful even with her sweat! How old was she –- eighteen, nineteen? She was a little older than me.

The crowd was pushing hard against the partition like crazy to get in.
She now came and stood there. No, she wouldn’t let anyone slip in. Some people showed their invitation cards. Still, no luck for them…it was too late. There were no more seats available at all. Some guests were angry; some started an argument. But she would not be swayed. The police officers were obediently following her instructions. Slowly but surely, the raucous crowd gave up, and grudgingly dispersed.

I still stood there. For an instant, there was nobody else near the swing door.

She now opened the door.

She now said, “Come on in…come, quick.”

Who was she calling – me? I couldn’t believe it!

“Quick, now. More people will be here any moment.”

I still stood there. Did she finally hold my hand and drag me in? Well, perhaps not.

Then she dissolved into the crowd, never to be seen again.

I couldn’t tell who you were, girl. But I shall never forget you. You came to me, and called me in.


###