Leela's Book

by Alice Albinia

  The next morning, Pablo dozed off on the train, and when he woke, they were travelling through the open countryside. As far as the eye could see, there were date palms, ponds and fields dotted with peasants. Pablo, who had grown up in cities, had a fascination with the Indian countryside – he was pleased that it did not make him shudder – and he looked out at the women as they worked in the fields, carefully cutting, gathering, scraping the dry rice stalks into piles. The starch in their saris had long since worn away, but the women stood out in their splashes of yellow and orange, with their curved blouses, their collarbones and shoulder blades, even the occasional kneecap where the mud was deep, their hair knotted and oiled.

  The train pulled in to Bolpur just after nine. There was one platform, and, at the exit, countless cycle rickshaws, and a noisy clamour. Pablo chose a bicycle with a smart yellow hood, whose driver was young and looked strong. ‘Take me to the literature faculty,’ Pablo told the man. They drove through the town, past shops selling things found the length of India: shelves of soap in luminous green and pink packets, kilos of sugar weighed out and tied up in thin plastic bags, hanging khadi cotton school satchels, folded flowery saris. There was a row of metal trunk shops, a television-selling centre, an Internet point, a guesthouse. After a while, the shops thinned out into stalls, the stalls into fields, and here the rickshaw turned left, towards a sprawl of trees and houses and, in the distance, spacious playing fields. The rickshaw driver’s thick, muscular legs strained to reach them, over red, dusty paths, past yellowing hostels, under the branches of old, wide trees. ‘University campus,’ he explained, pointing right, and chanted: ‘Rabindra Bhavan, Kala Bhavan, Sangeet Bhavan, Central Office, Central Library, Chinee Bhavan, Mandir.’

  The driver stopped outside a large white building with a flight of wide steps, and Pablo, looking up, saw that he had been brought not to the literature faculty, but to the Central Library. Feeling in his pocket for his wallet, he opened it and took out the newspaper clipping of his article about the poem, with the picture of Meera Chaturvedi. Then he walked up the steps, pushed through the doors and presented himself to the two gentlemen at the desk.

  But they shook their heads when they were shown the clipping. They were too young to have known her, Pablo, thought; and he asked to be introduced to one of the older librarians. ‘It’s very important,’ he said, pulling out his press card.

  ‘We have reduced staff,’ one of the men protested. ‘It’s still the Puja holiday.’ But the other man got to his feet and moved off with some alacrity, and Pablo sat down to wait. He waited for a long time, and when the old librarian, a thin lady with glasses and a rough cotton sari, eventually arrived, she peered at the clipping and shook her head. ‘What did the person study?’

  ‘Literature,’ said Pablo.

  ‘Do you know who taught her?’

  ‘Ved Vyasa Chaturvedi.’

  ‘Oh, him.’ The librarian sniffed. ‘Wait a moment.’

  She took out her keys and opened the door into her office. ‘Come in,’ she said, speaking over her shoulder as she shuffled towards a big metal cupboard at the back of the room. ‘He had a year-photograph taken with all his students. It was a new fashion. For a while, all the teachers did it. I kept copies because the first year I was in it, too. He insisted.’ She was looking through the shelves of files. ‘Here it is.’ She picked out a stiff cardboard print, flicked away the dust, and handed it to Pablo. ‘I’m there at the bottom, on the far right.’

  Pablo looked at the photograph. It was black and white, taken on some steps, probably of the library. The librarian sat a little away from the group on a chair, a smile of alarm on her face. Ved Vyasa Chaturvedi sat at the front, in the middle, his lips pursed slightly. Leela was at the very back, staring straight into the camera, absolutely solemn. She wore her sari with the pallu pulled tightly round her bosom and tucked primly in at the waist. Next to her, holding a flower in her hands, her face radiant, was a girl with a cascade of long hair. ‘That’s her,’ Pablo said, pointing with his finger. ‘Meera, the woman Vyasa Chaturvedi married—’

  ‘If you say so.’ The librarian took the photograph out of his hands, slipped it back into the cupboard and shut the doors with a clang. ‘That’s all I can help you with,’ she said, ushering him out. ‘Vyasa Chaturvedi was a very popular teacher, but he only worked here for a year.’

  ‘Is there anybody else who might remember anything?’ Pablo asked.

  ‘Try the Public Relations Officer,’ she said. ‘Or go and ask at Vidya Bhavan, the humanities faculty. It’s a five-minute walk away. The Puja holiday for the academics is still on but the admin are here.’

  The Public Relations Officer was an affable man who worked in a building that resembled a cottage, with a gate and a flower garden and a desk with a large photograph of Gandhi and Tagore hanging above it. He ordered Pablo a fine Darjeeling tea, and spoke with enthusiasm of the university and its teachers and alumni but he had nothing to tell Pablo about Meera Bose. Twenty years ago was a very long time, he pointed out; the only people who might know were the academic staff. He doubted that there was anybody who had been here as long as twenty years. He opened his hands wide to show that he knew nothing and repeated what the library staff had said. ‘But they won’t return to full teaching until next week,’ he sighed, ‘after the last puja is over.’

  Pablo, too, sighed as he walked outside, and down the lane that led into the middle of the campus, under Santiniketan’s large peepul trees and into the pleasant, dappled shade. Vidya Bhavan was a long low yellow-painted building. By now it was nearing midday and most of the staff had left for the weekend. Pablo stood in the doorway, trying to explain his problem to the remaining Section Officer, holding up the clipping and feeling hopeless. ‘What is her name?’ the man asked. ‘And her father’s name?’ But he shook his head when Pablo answered. ‘Better that you come back the day after tomorrow,’ the Section Officer said. ‘Then we will allocate the concerned official to your problem. Actually,’ he added, ‘the day after is the Diwali holiday. Please return on Friday, when the clerical staff will be sure to see to your enquiry.’

  Pablo was walking out to the road again, when the Section Officer cycled past. ‘Go and ask at Central Office,’ the man called. ‘They stay till five on Tuesdays. Maybe they can pull out examination records for you.’

  Pablo stood on the road where six workers with cloths wrapped around their heads were ladling red grit onto the path from a lorry. He felt annoyed with these people for not cooperating with his investigation. Not that they would be able to tell him anything useful – for what was he looking for, anyway? That was the problem: he didn’t really know. Yes, he could go to Central Office. He could also go and check for records of Meera at the girls’ hostels; but perhaps what he needed most was some refreshment.

  ‘Tea?’ he said to the rickshaw driver, and the young man nodded. The student canteen was still closed for the holiday, but the rickshaw driver knew of a teashop nearby which was run by a Santiniketan old-timer: the same family, three generations since the era of Tagore.

  It was lunchtime now, and the teashop, when they got to it, was almost empty. Pablo and the rickshaw driver sat down beside the window and gave their order to a waiter.

  The waiter was an old man: thin and slow and haggard like so many working men in India. But he was of just the right age, Pablo reflected, and when he brought over their order, and put down the tray on the table, Pablo asked him, ‘Have you always worked here?’

  The man nodded, and asked, in his turn, ‘Are you here on business of some kind?’

  Pablo hesitated before answering, and it was the rickshaw driver who spoke, looking up from slurping his tea and saying something quickly in Bengali.

  ‘So you are looking for somebody?’ the waiter said, and Pablo nodded. ‘For a woman?’

  Pablo nodded again, and pulled out the clipping of Meera.

  The man took it from him and studied it carefully. Pablo could tell nothing from
the expression on his face but when he handed the clipping back, the waiter said, ‘Never seen her before in my life.’

  Pablo was beginning to feel very foolish. And what kind of scoop was this anyway? His editor wouldn’t sanction yet another story on this twenty-year-dead poet, even if her daughter was a highly desirable individual whom the journalist in question was sleeping with. How was he going to explain himself back in Delhi? It was lack of sleep that gave him these pompous notions of himself; they always disappeared once he had some food inside him, leaving a faint, shameful residue in the mind. He took out his notebook, and with his pen, drew a dark, ominous line through the words that he had written at the top of a new page just this morning on the train: Leela and Meera Bose. Mystery of the poet Lalita. Santiniketan?

  ‘I can help you,’ said a voice, and Pablo looked up to see a chubby old man – or perhaps he was middle aged, it was difficult to tell – who was wearing a pair of glasses, an ingratiating grin and a long orange shirt, and carrying a newspaper, a banana, an umbrella, a notebook, a dictaphone and a pencil. Pablo could see at once that he was the neighbourhood busybody; Santiniketan must be full of them: people who hadn’t quite made a career out of disseminating knowledge, and so dispensed it for free to any innocent visitor who was unlucky enough to be passing.

  Before Pablo had time to shake him off, the man said, ‘She hasn’t been back here for over twenty years.’ He smiled again at the look of surprise on Pablo’s face, and then he said, ‘I remember her and her sister.’

  Pablo stared. Had he mentioned that he was looking for two sisters? He couldn’t remember.

  ‘They went to college here. They also spent some time at the Santhal Mission Hospital.’

  ‘The mission hospital?’ Pablo said, confused. ‘Were they ill?’

  ‘Oh no,’ the man said, with a self-satisfied smirk, ‘they weren’t ill.’ He looked towards the rickshaw driver and asked him something in Bengali. The young man grinned and said nothing.

  Pablo felt annoyed at this collusion. ‘What was wrong with them then?’ he said.

  The waiter picked up the empty tea glasses from the table and began to walk back towards the kitchen.

  ‘Nothing was wrong with them,’ said the man, jabbing his pencil in the air. ‘They were both sweet girls. You can go there easily and see for yourself.’

  ‘To the mission hospital?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the man said. ‘It’s easy to find. Even though it’s no longer in use there’s a chowkidar still and the chapel is kept clean for when the pastors are visiting. Take the road to Ilam Bazaar, three kilometres out, just before Sriniketan. It’s a house down a lane to your left. You’ll see the pond first, and then a grove of papaya trees. I’ll tell the boy how to find it.’

  ‘Will he manage, or should I call a taxi?’ Pablo said, but the man shook his head.

  ‘He’ll be able to take you.’ He gave the boy directions in Bengali. ‘Good luck,’ he said to Pablo as they left. ‘Come back here if you don’t find what you are looking for.’

  What a nation of know-alls, Pablo thought ungratefully as they set off. The road to Ilam Bazaar was narrow and quiet and Pablo sat upright on his seat as the young man bent his head and peddled. He still didn’t have a clear idea of what he would find at this hospital he was being taken to. He began to fret again about the wisdom of coming here in the first place. What if his editor wanted the finished lingam story by this evening? Meanwhile the rickshaw-wallah was swinging his vehicle left off the road, and glancing back, Pablo saw the pond the man had mentioned, and the papaya trees with their heavy green fruit. The path was very bumpy and Pablo soon called out to the man to stop peddling. He could see the iron gates of the hospital at the far end of the lane, which was shaded by large trees.

  Pablo shivered as he walked up the avenue. When he got to the gate at the end, he stood with one hand on the latch, reading the faded sign:

  Santhal Mission Hospital and Orphanage,

  Est. 1968 by the Methodist Church of Bengal District Synod (formerly Methodist Missionary Society of England).

  Medical Superintendent: Revd. (Dr) D. Ganguli.

  He pushed the gate open and walked up the red mud path. It had recently been swept and although the whitewash on the building was very old and stained by countless monsoons, and several of the windows were cracked and broken, the place hadn’t been completely abandoned. Somebody had collected fruit from the papaya trees – there was a big pile of it on a sheet next to the path. Pablo walked up the steps and rapped on the door. But there was no answer, and the door was locked. He put his face to the dusty glass and found himself looking down a long tiled hallway which was reminiscent of the schoolrooms of his childhood. Three doors led off the hallway with signs above them but he couldn’t make out the words.

  Pablo came down the steps and walked around the building, across an overgrown garden, to the yard at the back. The chapel that the old man had mentioned was at a little distance down a path lined by red flowerpots with nothing in them. The chowkidar was clearly living at the back here, in what was probably the old kitchen of the hospital. Pablo rapped on the door.

  The man opened it himself, stepping outside when he saw Pablo and closing the door behind him. Without speaking he led Pablo away from his private quarters – as if he was ashamed of them; or maybe he didn’t want Pablo to see his wife – and down the path towards the chapel. It occurred to Pablo, as he followed him, that the man might think he had come here to pray.

  ‘I don’t want to go to the chapel,’ Pablo said suddenly in Hindi.

  The chowkidar stopped and looked back at him. He was wearing a long white shirt and a dhoti and his thick glasses had been mended with tape. ‘Why are you here then?’ he asked.

  Pablo took out the clipping of Meera. ‘I need to find out about this woman.’

  The man took it and held it away from himself in his cracked and lined fingers. Then he handed it back, and said, ‘Yes, she was here. She came at the end to be with her sister.’

  ‘The end of what?’ Pablo said.

  The man looked away into the distance. ‘She came here like all the rest,’ he said. ‘In those days the hospital had an orphanage. That was why she came here.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Pablo said. ‘And what then?’

  ‘Her sister had been here for a while and then, at the end, she came,’ the man went on. ‘And they both left soon afterwards.’

  Pablo felt confused. He took out his notepad. ‘Do you remember her name?’ he asked, the detective in him being thorough and cross-checking.

  The man seemed to consider the question for a very long time.

  ‘Well?’ Pablo asked at last.

  ‘I’ll ask my wife,’ the man said. ‘She worked with the nurses in those days. She will remember.’

  The chowkidar walked back down the path towards his quarters, and Pablo followed him, feeling puzzled. But he waited as the chowkidar went inside his house to fetch his wife, and when the woman was brought out, and he saw that she was slow and arthritic and shy, in a worn cotton sari patterned with large flowers, he smiled at her as kindly as he could, and held out the newspaper clipping.

  She barely glanced at it before handing it back. ‘I can’t remember her name,’ she said, ‘but her sister, who came here before that, she was called Leela. She stayed longer than the others and we all liked her best. This was a busy place then. But we never forgot Leela.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Pablo said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Leela.’ After a moment she asked, ‘Is she all right? Has anything happened to her?’

  ‘No,’ Pablo said, ‘everything is fine.’ He pressed a hundred-rupee note into her husband’s hand. ‘I would like to see inside the hospital. Can you show me?’

  The man hesitated a moment; but after fingering the note he disappeared it into one of the folds of cotton on his person, and without saying anything else, the husband and wife led Pablo round to the front of the hospital, under a big neem tree and up
the steps to the door, where the man took out a key from somewhere and fitted it into the padlock. The door was pushed open and Pablo stepped in after him.

  ‘They took the furniture and equipment away to the hospital at Bankura some years ago,’ the man was saying as Pablo looked around the shadowy place with its cobwebs and broken chairs piled haphazardly together at the back of the hall. He tried to imagine it clean and full of sunlight with busy doctors and Christian nurses in their stiff white caps.

  ‘Where did Leela sleep?’ Pablo called after the chowkidar.

  The old man stopped in front of one of the doors which led off the hall. ‘The babies were put in the children’s ward,’ he said.

  ‘But the unwed mothers,’ said his wife, ‘lived in a dormitory upstairs until their time came.’ She pointed to the sign above the door and Pablo saw that it read, Obstetrics.

  The chowkidar pushed the door open and Pablo and the woman followed him into a large empty room. ‘There were thirty beds in here,’ the man said. ‘My wife did all the cleaning with one other woman.’

  They walked across the room and their feet left marks in the dust. When they reached the high window at the end, Pablo looked up and saw the branches of the neem tree in the yard through the dirty glass.

  The man turned to him as he spoke. ‘We had a very good doctor, a Christian pastor, who delivered all the local women. Leela’s sister had a boy—’

  ‘She came here to give birth?’ Pablo interrupted.

  ‘Yes,’ the husband said, and he and his wife looked at Pablo in surprise. ‘That is why they came here.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Pablo said, feeling stupid in front of them.

  ‘She had a boy,’ the woman resumed.