Eleven families, nearly eighty people, lived in a rectangle, about thirty-five feet long and nine feet wide. They were all Hindus. That was the rule: people of different religions avoided cohabiting in the same compound, where the slightest difference in custom could assume major proportions. How could it be conceivable for a Muslim family to grill a piece of beef on their chula immediately next door to the devotee of a religion that declared the cow as sacred? The reverse was true for pork. In a society where religious practices were endowed with such importance, it was better to forestall any potential conflicts. Every hour of every day was the opportunity for some form of festival or celebration. Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, and Christians seemed to compete with each other in their imagination and fervor. Aside from the major religious
festivals, the births and the marriages, all kinds of other commemorative celebrations kept the compounds in a perpetual state of excitement. One day it might be a girl's first period that was being celebrated; the next, all the girls who were due to be married might be paying tribute to the lingam of the god Shiva, to ask him for a husband as good as he. At some other time a prospective mother would be celebrating the first month of her pregnancy, or then again a huge puja might be made, complete with Brahmin, musicians, and banquet to glorify the moment when a baby received his first mouthful of rice from the hands of his father.
The ceremony that was in full swing when Stephan Kovalski arrived at his new dwelling was no less astonishing. Assembled behind the well, some fifteen women were singing canticles at the top of their voices. Metal dishes placed before them overflowed with offerings: mounds of rice grains, bananas, flower petals, incense sticks. Noticing the surprise of his new tenant, the head man explained: "They are imploring Sitola to save little Onima."
The child had caught chicken pox and Sitola is the goddess of variola. All the occupants of the compound joined in the puja. They had embarked on a three-day fast. After, no one would eat either eggs or meat—insofar as they ate them anyway—or any other food that wasn't boiled, until the child was better. None of the women would wash or hang out her linen on pain of annoying the deity. Thus there was no bara khana* to celebrate Stephan Kovalski's arrival, but the warmth of his reception compensated for the absence of the traditional celebratory meal. All the other residents of the compound waited for the new arrival with garlands of flowers. Shanta and the neighboring women had decorated the threshold and floor of his room with rangoli, the magnificent geometric compositions designed to bring good fortune. In the middle of them, Kovalski read a message of welcome from his brothers in the City of Joy. It was a sentence quoted from the great Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, "You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is
* Banquet.
blessed." He made his entrance escorted by many of the neighbors from his former home. Old Surya, little Sabia's mother, the coal man from across the way, Nasir, Mehboub's eldest son, most of the adults and children from the alleyway where he had spent the last hard years were there, weeping freely. Although distances in the slum were only small, their Big Brother Stephan might just as well have been leaving for another planet. It was perhaps Sabia's mother who gave the most articulate expression to the grief they all felt: "Before you go away, give us your blessing, Big Brother Stephan. In a way, from now on we shall all be orphans."
The priest raised his hand and slowly made the sign of the cross over their heads, repeating softly in an undertone the words of the Beatitudes, "Blessed are you, for you are the children of my Father, you are the light of the world."
Then he made his way to "the hanged man's room" to put down his knapsack and his rolled mat made out of rice straw.
"Is that all you own?" asked one woman, surprised.
He intimated that this was the case. Immediately one of his neighbors appeared with a stool, another brought him some cooking utensils, a third wanted to give him his charpoy but this Kovalski declined. He wanted to continue living as one of the poorest of the poor. From this point of view his new lodgings were the perfect answer to his wishes. During the fifteen months that no one had lived there, a colony of rats had settled in. Small ones, fat ones, enormous males with tails one foot long, baby rats that emitted strident cries—there were dozens of them. They infested the framework, ran down the walls, ferreted in all the corners. Their droppings covered the floor. Nothing seemed to daunt them. By some miracle, they had survived the heat and the latest storm appeared only to have decupled their energy. In the "hanged man's room," they were the masters. The new resident's first move was to claim from them a piece of the wall, by hanging up his picture of the Sacred Shroud, and also a piece of floor space on which to sit in his meditation position and thank
the Lord for having granted him this new opportunity for love and for sharing.
Love and sharing! These few square feet of communal courtyard were an ideal place for the realization of a program of that kind. Here people lived in a state of complete transparency. The slightest emotion, deed, or word was immediately seized, interpreted, and made the subject for comment. Such a promiscuous environment forced you to take special precautions. You had to learn to wash while holding the corner of your longhi between your teeth to conceal your nudity. You had to clean the bowl of the latrines in a particular fashion and walk without letting your gaze stray onto a woman engaged in urinating in the gutter. The shock really hit him that evening. Driven out of his room by the rats, Kovalski sought refuge under the little veranda outside his door, only to stumble across the several bodies that were already occupying it. During those blisteringly hot nights nearly everyone slept outside. Fortunately a low brick wall erected at the entrance to the compound protected it from the drains that overflowed into the alley. Kovalski created a space for himself between two sleepers. "There was so little room that I had to lie down head to foot alongside my neighbors, like sardines in a can."
He was to retain two memorable impressions of that first night. Neither of them related to his neighbors* snores, the cavalcade of beetles and bats across his face, the bouts of coughing and spitting to which the tuberculosis sufferers around him were subject, the barking of the pariah dogs at the rats, the vociferations of drunks trampling over sleeping bodies, the metallic clatter of buckets being brought back from the fountain by the womenfolk. The first indelible impression of that night was the crying of infants prey to nightmares. Their cries, intercut with snippets of sentences, made it possible to understand the terrifying visions that haunted the slumbers of those little Indian children. There was a strong preoccupation with tigers, spirits, and bhuts, or ghosts. "That was the first time I had heard a tiger actually referred to by its name," Kovalski was to say. "In India people always called it 'the big cat,' 'the great wild beast,' 'the great feline,' but never 'the
tiger,' for fear of attracting the attention of its spirit and thereby making it appear. It was a taboo that had been brought originally from the countryside where tigers still devoured more than three hundred people a year in Bengal alone. The threat of them haunted many a child. What mother of the City of Joy had not said to her offspring at some time or other, 'If you're not good, I'll call the big cat.'"
The second striking memory was of a "vociferous cock-a-doodle-doo sounding in my ears, from a cockerel at four-thirty in the morning, when I had only just gotten to sleep." Kovalski had not noticed the bird tied to a post of the veranda when he laid down the night before. It belonged to the occupants of the room next door. They were the only tenants he had not yet met, because apparently their activities frequently took them out of the compound. They had returned only late that night. Kovalski sat up and saw "four women sleeping head to foot, swathed in veils and multicolored saris." Remarking to himself that he had never seen such tall Indian women before, when he heard them speak, he was so surprised at their low gruff voices he thought perhaps he was dreaming. Finally he understood. His neighbors were eunuchs.
Max Loeb had just taken a cigar out of his box of Montecri
sto No. 3s and was about to light it when he heard something bombarding the roof of his room. It was the tenth night after his arrival. He had experienced tropical tornadoes before but never before had he witnessed quite such a downpour of rain. A fresh premonsoon storm had just hit Calcutta.
Max poured himself a double Scotch and waited. He did not have to wait long. The disaster began with a cataract between two tiles, then the rain began to penetrate from all sides. In seconds the room was transformed into a lake, the level of which rose with menacing rapidity. In the hovels nearby families were fighting to save their few possessions. People were shouting, calling to each other. At the first drops the American had piled onto his bed the canteen of medicines, his case of instruments, his personal effects, and the three boxes of milk powder that Kovalski had brought him to save babies suffering from the fourth-and fifth-degree of malnutrition. At the very top of the pyramid he placed what he called his "survival kit": three bottles of whiskey and three boxes of cigars. The deluge 362
was at its worst when Max heard a faint knocking at his door. Paddling up to his ankles, he went to open it and discovered in the beam of his torch, "the reassuring vision of a young girl dripping with rainwater. She was holding a large black umbrella her father was sending me." A few moments later the unemployed fellow from the hovel next door arrived with his arms loaded with bricks to raise the level of the low wall at the entrance and the daktar's bed and table. Solidarity in a slum was no empty word.
After about an hour the downpour eased up a little. The marvelous dream of taking refuge "in the luxury of a suite with a private bathroom in the Grand Hotel" had just crossed Max's mind when his door was shattered to pieces. Three figures burst in. Immediately two hands grabbed his shoulders and pushed him up against the wall. Max felt the point of a knife pricking him in the stomach. "A holdup," he thought. "That's all I needed."
"Milk!" snarled the big fellow with the broken nose who was threatening him with his knife, "Milk, quick!"
Max was determined not to play Buffalo Bill in the depths of this slum. He pointed to the three cartons of milk.
"Help yourself!"
Each thief grabbed a box and they ran off. As he went out of the door, the man with the broken nose turned around and announced in English, "Thank you! We'll be back!"
It had all happened so quickly that the American found himself wondering whether he had been dreaming. He made an attempt to put the planks from the door back in position but as he did a horrible smell brought him to a halt. Something wet touched his calf. He heard a gurgling sound and realized then that, swollen by the rain, the pestilential waters from the drains in the alley were in the process of overflowing into his room.
A night of horror thus began. There were no more matches, no torch, not a glass to be had. Everything had been submerged in the floodwater. What malevolent creature, Max wondered, had bitten him the day he had responded to Stephan Kovalski's appeal? He thought of Sylvia's velvety skin, of her breasts that tasted of peaches,
of the touching childlike air she had about her when she recited her poems. He looked at his watch. It was afternoon in Miami. The jasmine would be sweet-scented on the veranda and people would be listening to the lapping of the water against the boats on the canal.
At dawn, Bandona appeared in the frame of the dismembered door. It was difficult to read the expression on her face in the dim light of a flooded morning, but the young Assamese seemed very upset. Her small almond eyes were set, her features rigid.
"Max, Big Brother, come quickly. My mother is feeling very bad. She's bringing up blood."
A few moments later they were both wading up to the middle of their thighs in slime. Bandona proceeded with caution, sounding the ground beneath with a stick because some of the open sewers actually cut across the alley. Every now and then she wpuld stop to avoid the corpse of a dog or a rat, or to prevent Max from being splashed by the reckless floundering of children who were laughing and swimming about in the putrid floodwater. The surprising thing about it was that nowhere in this nightmare had life come to a halt. At one crossroad they encountered a comical little man in a turban, perched on the seat of a carrier tricycle. A dozen children, up to their chests and sometimes even their shoulders in water, were milling around him. The carrier tricycle was equipped with a cogwheel which rotated against a set of numbers. "Roll up, roll up, a grand lottery prize for ten paisas!"
"A grand lottery prize in this filth?" marveled Max. And why no* 9 Two biscuits and a piece of candy were a maharajah's reward for youngsters with empty stomachs.
Contrary to expectations, Bandona's mother was up on her feet. She was a small woman with a bun, all wizened like an elderly Chinese country woman. She was chatting and joking with the neighboring women who had squeezed themselves into her very clean and meticulous room. On the wall, behind the low ledge that served as a bed for her and her five children, there were two pictures of Buddhist wise men, their heads covered with yellow bonnets, and a photograph of the Dalai Lama. In front of these icons burned the flame of an oil lamp.
"Daktar, you shouldn't have gone to this trouble!" she protested. "I'm very well. The great God doesn't want me yet."
She ordered the American to sit down, and she served him tea and sweetmeats. Reassured, Bandona recovered her smile.
"All the same, I'd like to examine you," insisted Max.
"It's not worth the trouble. I tell you again, Daktar, I am very well."
"Mother, the doctor has come especially from America," Bandona intervened.
The word "America" had a magical effect. But there was no question of having all the people leave the room. In a slum anything and everything is undertaken in public, even a medical examination.
Half an hour later Max laid his stethoscope down.
"Bandona, your mother is as sound as a rock," he affirmed in a comforting tone.
It was then that tragedy struck. The old woman was trying to stand up to pour some water into the teapot when a sudden fit of coughing took her breath away. She collapsed. A flow of blood issued from her mouth. Max rushed to help Bandona lift her onto the bed. As Bandona mopped up the blood, Max could tell by the movement of her lips that she was praying. The aged Assamese woman surveyed all the people around her. There was not a trace of fear in her expression, only total serenity. Max prepared a syringe containing a cardiac stimulant but he had no time to inject the needle. The old Assamese woman stiffened abruptly. She let out a sigh and it was all over.
A howl rang out through the room. It was Bandona. She was clasping her mother in her arms and sobbing. For a few minutes there was the heartrending sound of weeping, wailing, and lamentation. Women tore their faces with their nails, men beat their skulls with their fists. Distraught children imitated their parents. Other manifestations of grief rose from the compound and the neighboring alley. Then, just as suddenly as she had broken down, Bandona stood up again, dusted off her sari, and rearranged her braids. Dry-eyed and solemn-faced she took control of the situation.
4 'What I witnessed next was a riot of orders and injunctions," the American was to recount. "In the space of ten minutes that young woman had organized and arranged everything. She sent her brothers off to the four corners of Bengal on a mission to alert relatives, she dispatched neighbors and friends to the bazaar to buy what was necessary for the funeral: a bier—white according to Buddhist tradition—vermilion powder for the ritual decoration of the corpse, candles, incense, ghee, cotton khadi, and bunches of jasmine, marigolds, and lilies. To cover the cost of all this she had her two gold bracelets and her pendant taken to the Afghan usurer at the end of the alley to obtain a loan of a thousand rupees. To welcome, feed, and thank the dozens of relatives and friends who would come for the occasion, she arranged to buy a hundred pounds of rice, as much flour for chapatis, vegetables, sugar, spices, and oil. Finally she had a hundred rupees taken to the bonze at the pagoda in Howrah for him to come and recite Buddhist slokas and perform the appropriate rites."
> Three hours later everything was ready. Swathed in white cotton, Bandona's mother reclined on a litter embalmed with jasmine. Her feet and hands, duly streaked with vermilion, were visible, as was her face, from which death had wiped away nearly every wrinkle. She looked like an Egyptian mummy. All around her, dozens of incense sticks gave off the sweet scent of rosewood. Things went on very quickly. The bonze in his saffron robe pronounced prayers, striking a pair of cymbals as he did so. Then he anointed the deceased's forehead with ghee and camphor, and he sprinkled grains of rice over her body to facilitate the transmigration of her soul. Then four men belonging to the family took hold of the stretcher. When Bandona saw her mother leaving the hovel where they had both lived and struggled for so many years, she could no longer conceal her grief. Immediately the other women began to wail, sob, and moan once more. Already, however, the litter was receding into the flooded alleyway.
Only the men accompanied the deceased to their funeral pyres. They sang canticles with a syncopated rhythm to Ram, God, for in the absence of a specifically Buddhist place of cremation, Bandona's mother was going to be
burned according to Hindu ritual. It took the little procession an hour to wend its way to the funeral ghats on the banks of the Hooghly. The bearers set the litter down under a banyan tree while Bandona's eldest brother went to negotiate the hiring of a pyre and the services of a priest. When his mother was placed on one of the piles of wood, the Brahmin poured a few drops of Ganges water between her lips. Her eldest son then walked five times around her remains before plunging in a flaming torch. As the flames engulfed the pyre, there rose the sound of voices singing.
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