The Onus of Ancestry

by Arpita Mogford

  Nirupama often felt that her house was a refuge for the unloved and the destitute of this world – people like Monmotho and McMohan, Bhushan, Ramu and Dhiru who had nowhere else to go.

  She was also aware that Parna virtually worshipped Monmotho, while his love for the girl visibly grew each day. Parna was about to emerge as a graduate of the Calcutta University. She worked for various magazines in her spare time and taught art during weekends. She had grown into a quiet, stubborn girl, very solemn and single-minded. Monmotho was an established civil engineer who was then working for his father’s company.

  If Monmotho were to propose to Parna in the near future, Nirupama was fairly certain her daughter would accept. Would she herself welcome it? Surely she would – but there was something that niggled her, an intuitive concern, almost a foreboding.

  CHAPTER II

  It was Parna’s birthday. She had invited a few of her friends and Monmotho. Parna stood in front of her mirror, checking her face for the last time. Her large liquid eyes stared back at her. She adjusted her hair and bent down to put the finishing touches to the pleats on her lemon French chiffon saree, which was her mother’s present on her birthday. She suddenly felt warm familiar palms in her eyes. “Monoda, you are quite impossible, you have now spoilt my kajal!”

  She took his hands and turned round to meet Monmotho. But today it was different. Monmotho was not flippant or playful as usual. He put his hands into his ‘punjabi’ pocket and drew out a diamond ring – a large solitaire set in its own splendour, raised high, the platinum base studded with numerous little diamonds spreading a starry lustre – it was exquisite.

  “This is my mother’s Parna, I would like you to wear it. I – I love you Parna, I have loved you for a long, long time.” He finished rather breathlessly.

  Parna looked at him with absolute wonder and complete amazement. Her eyes were wide with disbelief. “Do you really?” She looked away quickly, suddenly feeling shy in front of a man she had known most of her life. “How confusing, everything has to change now – what can I call you suddenly – we have known each other all our lives –”

  “I know – so what about Ogo Shuncho, like so many other good Bengali girls address their husbands, or perhaps–”

  “But we are not married as yet, not even engaged,” she rebuked him gently. “You have not even put the ring on my finger.”

  Monmotho burst out laughing and embraced her, slowly drawing her towards him and said, while sliding the ring onto her finger, “But Parna, you have not said anything – whether you love me or accept me–”

  “You have given me so much – what can I say in return that will sound right or even match my feelings for you?”

  Monmotho was visibly moved.

  “Call me just Mono. My demands are few, Parna, but they are not modest. I need love, I want love, lots of love – undying and passionate. I also need your lifelong promise never to leave me.”

  “That is not asking too much of a person who has loved me for most of her conscious existence – and may I know why should I ever wish to leave you? It is for you to promise that. I have heard that you have many girl friends.”

  “Oh, yes, hundreds of them. I practise my art on them, so that when I come to you I am perfect–”

  Nirupama’s voice interrupted their bantering.

  “Parna, your friends are here, where are you, my girl? Why is Monmotho late today?”

  “Monmotho is never late, Didimoni – in fact he is always early. I have been here for ages helping Parna to choose her jewellery. She is such a slow dresser, honestly. Parna, hurry up – see I said your friends would be here soon.” He went on in this vein, mocking and teasing her, whilst Parna tried to compose herself to face her mother, but the light in her eyes betrayed her.

  *

  A few weeks later Monmotho appeared one afternoon, looking tired and dishevelled, and far from composed.

  “I am very sorry to come in looking like this, but I was so – so upset, Didimoni – she, you know who, Mrs Bonolata Roy Chowdhury, well all right, I mean my mother, she – she had the nerve to tell me if I were late for lunch every day I should find my food elsewhere. Here I was, working for her and my father as much as for myself. She–” Monmotho choked on his words and then continued, “I really came to say that Parna and I should get married soon – there is no need to delay further. Do not look so surprised Didimoni – surely you know by now about our feelings for each other – we are in love, we wish to marry, hence why delay?”

  “Monmotho, I am no fool and I had guessed some time ago, but we must still talk about it together, sensibly and calmly, there is so much to discuss, my boy. You are agitated and famished, why do you not cool down a little, have something to eat and Parna should be back soon.”

  “I am here now, Ma. Who is here? Oh, Mono–” she stuttered in front of her mother. Then looking at his flushed face she continued anxiously, “Is anything wrong?”

  “Nothing at all. I am angry and hungry in one breath, so Didimoni is trying to calm me down. I came to ask you to marry me quickly – do not look so aghast – Didimoni knows all about it.”

  Nirupama remained silent – she was touched as always by Monmotho’s frank boyish manners. He had nothing mean or devious about him. He had Dibendra’s honesty without his unforgiving anger or intolerance. She turned towards Parna. “Have you heard him, Parna? Is this your idea as well? I only want you both to be happy. You have known each other long enough to know what you want or not to make a mistake.”

  Parna bowed her head and nodded. She did not say anything. “I am glad that you agree with me, Parna, or you would have had me at your doorstep every day. I cannot afford to eat at Antonio’s or Chungking’s restaurants all the time, nor will I ever be found eating at Rai Bahadur’s table from today.” He accepted the plate of delicacies Nirupama had placed before him and concentrated on demolishing it with some appetite.

  A month later Parna and Monmotho were married. It was conducted in style – after all it was Nirupama’s last and only act of extravagance and Rai Bahadur could not be seen doing any less for his only son. The only person who was displeased and sulked was Bonolata. But Rai Bahadur had learnt to ignore her tantrums. He just regretted that he would now have to find someone else to supervise her ‘tom-tom’ rides.

  *

  Monmotho and Parna had been found a comfortable little house by Rai Bahadur. He had tried hard to insist on both finding it and paying for it. Monmotho had been equally insistent that he would accept what he had found for them but was not going to let him pay for it. Rai Bahadur had no choice but to accept his son’s decision and knew well that Bonolata had a lot to do with Monmotho’s leaving home so soon after his marriage. He felt that lately Monmotho had grown distant, and rarely stepped into his office for informal exchanges. His visits were always concerning work and laden with formality.

  They were only married for about eight months before Parna found that she was pregnant. It was not an accident but had been planned deliberately to please Monmotho who desperately wished to become a father, to experience a love that he had rarely felt or received. Monmotho was conscious that Nirupama had put a lot into her daughter’s upbringing, but she had not entirely succeeded in instilling in her the ease and spontaneity of accepting or demonstrating physical love, nor explained to her the pleasures and implications of marital sex. Parna had arrived in his life awkward and ignorant and he had assumed the role of her teacher. He was not a philanderer, but he was certainly not inexperienced in these matters. Monmotho’s independent existence had made him into quite a man of the world. In Parna’s case he had shown a great deal of patience and understanding. When the moment had arrived, he did not regret his forbearance as they had surrendered to each other with passion and without restraint.

  However, Monmotho’s youthful nature had not altered with the responsibilities of marriage or at the prospect of imminent fatherhood. He still managed to perpetuate astonishing feats of adventure or misadve
nture whilst at home or travelling on work. Parna remembered the time when Monmotho had arrived, having driven all the way from Delhi, bedraggled and unshaven, but wearing a gold-bordered brand new dhoti and a Lucknowi kurta. She was amazed to see him, his bridegroom’s attire hardly went with his unkempt, travel-weary appearance. She was also surprised to find him in a dhoti, as he rarely wore one.

  “Do not look as though I am someone from another planet. You will never guess, Parna, what happened to me. You see, there was a short circuit in the car – I had not noticed it until I was aflame! I think I had been a little absent-minded, whilst driving...” He looked at her tentatively. “You do not approve – all right to cut a long story short, I lost my trousers near Samastipur. Then I fortunately met a Bijonbabu who owned a clothes shop in the local bazaar; what’s more unlike you, he liked me and took pity, hence presented me with all this wonderful attire.” He concluded running his hands down the embroidered front of the kurta.

  When Parna protested or complained about his careless behaviour he always laughed and dismissed it. Life was never a serious consideration for him – he sailed through it swiftly and lightly, unconcerned and without fear.

  Two months later, at the end of April, Calcutta was suffering from a bout of blistering and stifling humidity. These moments of enervating suffocation were occasionally torn apart by the searing, maniacal north-westerly storms of Baisakh. The loud crackling of thunder and the outbursts of psychedelic lightning deafened the ears and blinded the eyes with a relentless aggression. Parna was suffering under its spell and her present condition seemed to make it worse. Monmotho was travelling again – she was expecting him back that day and hoped he would make it before dark.

  He had returned before the pall of thunder and lightning struck again, but he had come back desperately ill, raging with fever and nausea. She had informed the Rai Bahadur and Nirupama, who both rushed in with their respective family doctors. She was very nervous and worried as she had never seen Monmotho ill before and he seemed unlike himself. His fever was rising all the time, he soon lost consciousness and only limped back to clarity in moments of delirium. The family physicians were unable to cope; specialists were summoned. Rai Bahadur was helpless and distraught – consultants and medicines came from far and near. All their efforts to control the fever were in vain, diagnosis was varied and confused. On the fifth day he stopped speaking altogether, even in delirium. On the tenth day, he opened his eyes, looked at Parna without a trace of recognition and muttered indistinctly, “The saffron robes are here, I must leave you now.” He closed his eyes and never opened them again.

  Nirupama watched Parna helplessly, reliving her memories of the past. Parna was beside herself with desperate, uncontrollable grief, grief of the lost and the hopeless. She clung to Monmotho’s inert body, crying her heart out. The doctors tried to administer sedatives, but she would have nothing to do with anyone or anything, not even her own mother.

  When the pall bearers came to take Monmotho’s body, she ran, chasing after them, fell down the stairs and fainted. Nirupama had then taken hold of her. At that moment her only thought was the second life within Parna and that it had to be saved at all cost. Monmotho had left them, but they were committed to the preservation of his unborn legacy.

  Monmotho had entered their lives like lightning and now he had disappeared irresponsibly and unexpectedly. Dibendra had done just the same. After this, men became less of a reality to her – they were merely ephemeral appearances or a transient presence, unreliable and impermanent in character and security. She had no faith in their existence or their fundamental assurances. She asked herself – who was God – was he male? He would be less reliable then.

  *

  Rai Bahadur tried to persuade Parna to come and live in their family home, knowing full well that Bonolata’s presence would make the offer quite unacceptable. He was himself unnerved by grief and guilt. He felt responsible for Monmotho’s death, though no one had thought of attributing any responsibility to him. Nirupama had felt inwardly that the medical drama conducted at his bedside could have been more sensible and coherent. The diagnostic games played by the conglomerate of consultants could have been avoided to some extent. These feelings were neither voiced in public, nor conveyed to him in any form or fashion. But Rai Bahadur continued to blame himself for everything, particularly for denying a home and love to his son as promised to his dead mother. He now wanted to make amends through Parna, and she of course would have none of it. She gave up her own home to live with her mother – this was primarily because she could not bear to live in the house where she and Monmotho had loved and dreamed together.

  Parna was not unaware of her own desperate situation – she knew that her husband had not provided for her, that he had not had the time. But Rai Bahadur never found out the extent of Parna’s destitution. Nirupama entirely approved of her daughter’s stand – of her stubborn pride and spirit of independence. However unworldly and impractical she was in the eyes of others, they were qualities she recognised and respected – she was her father’s daughter.

  Parna had stopped crying; though the tears always shone in the deep pools of her eyes, they hardly ever descended. She became remote, rarely smiled or spoke and was easily roused to anger. She carried her child quietly. No one knew that she was living with the horror of delivering a still-born or a handicapped child. She had not told anyone that when Monmotho was taken away by the pall-bearers she had seen him smile and his hallucination of saffron-clad men had recurred, the vision reflected in her eyes. They were strange illusions no doubt, and seemed incomprehensible in the light of his religious agnosticism. Going to Brahmamandir was a matter of filial duty or social diversion for him, as he often used to say.

  Finally the day came when she knew that her hours of waiting and speculating were over – she would soon find out the truth. Nirupama took her to the clinic, almost unconscious with pain: labour had begun. The pain grew even greater, rolling waves of it seemed to take her over – she sank into fathomless depths of pain until she knew no more. She only saw Monmotho, the same smiling face, the eyes twinkling with fun and laughter – he had extended his arms to hold her, but she was somehow unable to reach him – he was far, far away.

  CHAPTER III

  Dwita’s birth was not considered a common event by the family – was she not born on Shashti, the sixth day of Durga’s homecoming? Was she also not the sacred trust of Monmotho, a trust that was up to Nirupama and Parna to keep? To them she was the family heirloom, Monmotho’s command and charge. Dwita never found out to what extent each felt responsible for her survival, intact and untainted. But she knew she was ‘special’, not to be allowed out of sight and hearing.

  In addition to all the existing family’s constant supervision, not to speak of the three pairs of vigilant eyes of Bhushan, Ramu and Dhiru, Maheshwari was engaged to take care of Dwita’s further needs. She was small, sturdy and middle-aged with a pair of eyes that equalled six. She was from Santhal Parganahs, as she had declared on arrival, and since then could never speak with any greater certainty of the whereabouts of her village, called Madhuban. It seemed to be somewhere near Asansol, but embedded in the midst of the Santhal Hills, also not far from where her uncle often bought Mihidana, the famous sweetmeat of Burdwan. No one ever quite discovered it in the end, but little Dwita’s world became studded with stories from Maheshwari’s mysterious Madhuban.

  Maheshwari had no surviving relatives who were particularly concerned about her, as she had been left an orphan at birth, was brought up by an aunt who married her off at twelve to a boy of fourteen, and became a widow at thirteen having lost her young husband in a cholera epidemic. Maheshwari continued to live in the village as long as her aunt was alive and then left Madhuban for ever – she thought she was about twenty then.

  Maheshwari also spoke with affection and nostalgia of her life in the household of a Dadababu and a Boudi whose sons were Barababu and Chhotababu. Dadababu was seemingly a zamindar,
a hereditary landowner, of some consequence who owned houses all over Benaras, Allahabad and Calcutta and she appeared to have occupied most of them. According to Dwita’s calculations Maheshwari should have spent nearly a quarter century of her life with this family. Then she left them suddenly, Maheshwari never told them why.

  Nirupama decided not to probe her about her past. After all, she had spent a long time with the family and if she had decided to leave them after so many years there must have been good reasons behind the desertion – they might be too painful to be exposed to public scrutiny. She took to Maheshwari on their first meeting – the country woman’s open face, honest and forthright manners and her somewhat direct, rustic way of speaking endeared her to Nirupama. The same could not be said of Parna, who was not so sure of her and whose curiosity had made her ask, “Why did you leave Dadababu and his family, Maheshwari? Would you leave my Dwita as well?” She had never received an answer to that, nor a promise of everlasting loyalty. But Maheshwari would never leave Dwita, nor did she ever allow anyone to come between them.

  Dwita never objected to Maheshwari’s absolute possession of her. Without being taught, she had made up her mind to christen the three women in her life on the basis of her inclination and ability to pronounce their names. Hence Nirupama had become ‘ma’, Parna ‘Puma’ and Maheshwari ‘Mahama’. In due course Parna became ma, as she had registered a protest in being down-graded, while Nirupama assumed the new name of ‘Dima’. These never changed again.

  A year after Dwita’s birth Parna resumed her work with various magazines and taught at home remedial students sent by her old school. Rai Bahadur often came to visit them, but he never brought Bonolata with him. He suggested once that he should make out a small endowment to his granddaughter, but Parna had refused it outright. Parna was superstitious and had privately come to believe that Bonolata had put a curse on Monmotho’s life until he had ceased to breathe. She was not going to allow similar curses to fall on Dwita’s head. Rai Bahadur had not repeated his offer. He restricted his generosity to occasional shopping expeditions, when he felt free to buy Dwita what he wished or fancied, whether it was of any use or not. He had once bought her a pair of high-heeled, black patent court shoes, very chic and attractive, but totally unsuited to the size or needs of a seven-year-old. In fact that was the last time she had been out shopping with him, as three months later he had died of an aggressive lung cancer. No one could have looked happier in death. Rai Bahadur Hirendranath Roy Chowdhury was truly glad to escape his world, which had been held together by the social and matrimonial ties of hypocrisy and Bonolata – a world he no longer understood or cared for.