Chittagong Summer of 1930

by Manoshi Bhattacharya

  But the loss of that chain resulted in a ruckus in the Gupta household. It had set Ananda’s father off on a roaring rampage. He swore to get to the bottom of it and if need be, drag the information out of the clairvoyant Taracharan sadhu. Debu panicked and ran to meet Master-da.

  ‘Should I plead with Taracharan Baba not to give away our secret?’

  But Phutu, who was there that day, put an immediate perspective to the whole thing. ‘If you go to the sadhu baba, it will be a virtual confession. Do you really think that the man, despite all his pretensions, will be able to resist the temptation to show off his great powers?’

  As it happened, Taracharan Baba gave Ananda and Debu’s father such a long-winded explanation that the affair of the chain died a natural death. The agony that the boys had gone through reminded Ananta of the times he had helped himself to his father’s almirah. But the most difficult episode had been the one he had used to encourage Rajat with.

  It had been in the months following the Paraikora dacoity. Ananta had not returned to school. He insisted on being sent to Kolkata to the college in which Ganesh studied. Ganesh had applied on his behalf and within weeks had sent a congratulatory telegram. Ananta had secured a seat in the Bengal Technical Institution. Master-da and Nirmal-da had not been happy. You think I am going to study like a good boy? I will meet Julu-da and discuss how to begin more work, he had assured them. Be a good boy, study, don’t let me down, Ma had said repeatedly. Baba had warned him to stay away from the political parties. A part of him had been quite convinced. But once in Kolkata, the studies had turned out to be fairly boring. Student life hadn’t proved particularly enjoyable, but with Julu-da, Ganesh and Jashoda Ranjan Pal the days had been pleasant enough. He learned the ways of smugglers, was introduced to Anukul Mukherji – Anukul-da and some of the old-time revolutionary dadas – Bipin Bihari Ganguli, Jyotish Ghose and Bhupen Dutt. The biplobi dadas read copiously and propagated the material amongst the youngsters but except for Anukul-da, the rest maintained an air of mystery and secrecy.

  Within a few months of his reaching Kolkata, Santosh-da’s group had gone into action. They had become a bit desperate and had not taken the precautions observed at Paraikora. One after another, several places had been looted – Kona, Ultodanga Post Office, an oil company, Shankharitola Post Office and a couple of other places. The police had swung into action and arrested Santosh-da and his group. One Nityananda Gopal had turned witness for the prosecution, driving several people into hiding. Among them had been Julu-da’s contacts Deben De (Khoka) and Gopi Nath Saha, named in conjunction with murder. They had turned out to be young boys, no older than him or Ganesh. Helping them go into hiding had been exciting; spending time with them in the underground thrilling. Meanwhile, the case had begun at Alipur with Jatindra Mohan Sengupta defending the accused. But at the helm of police affairs had been Sir Charles Tegart, an old India hand who had returned recently from England. Soon the elderly revolutionary dadas had been pushed into hiding. The government, it had been decided, needed to be punished for harassing revolutionaries. Ananta had volunteered to go on a fund-collecting mission to Chattogram.

  He had reached home the very next day. After the pampering and cosseting the turn of the inevitable question came: how did you get home before the term got over? Pat had come the answer: the syllabus had been finished. What was the point in staying on and incurring hostel charges? Though Ma had looked ready to burst with pride, Baba had not been quite convinced. Wait. Didi had shot him a smouldering look that vaporized any chance of an argument. She helped Baba with the business and was in charge of the money. He would have to wait. Baba was due to leave home soon, for he was negotiating for Dada’s wedding. He eventually left one day to meet the prospective bride’s parents. By that time Ganesh had come home, as college had closed.

  That day Didi had opened all seven locks on the steel almirah and Ananta had picked up two cloth bags and packed them into Didi’s leather suitcase. There had been no time to count the money but he had known that it was approximately Rs 3,000/-. His cycle had been right outside and it had taken him no time at all to disappear from sight. Ambika-da had been waiting at the designated spot to take charge of the money and leave for Kolkata. For the rest of the day Ananta kept himself well hidden and had made his way that evening to the European Paltan Maidan where Dada and Premananda were waiting to update him on what had happened at home after his disappearance. Pishemoshai was very angry and wanted to inform the police but had been stopped by Ma’s tears. A telegram had been sent to Baba to return immediately but he had not been told what had happened. Didi had enjoyed the situation the most; abusing Ananta and inventing frightening little details.It had been good to have Dada and Didi on his side. Baba had been livid and the memory still had the power to reduce him to a contrite little boy. He had decided he would catch the next train and board it at Bhatiari and not Chattogram to avoid being caught by Baba. But the next morning he had found Premananda waiting for him at the station with news: Pishemoshai and Ganesh had just boarded that very train, at Chattogram. Ganesh had been pretending to help Pishemoshai look for him.

  The warning had come in the nick of time. He had taken a later train and had soon been back at the Taltola hideout with Gopi and Khoka. Ganesh had returned after the holidays and filled him in. He had accompanied Pishemoshai till the Chandpur station where he had bumped into Baba. Baba had been shocked to see them. Having calmed his fears and after assuring him that no one in the family was ill or dying, he had broken the news as gently as possible. Baba had had just one thing to say before he turned his face to the window: I consider Ananta dead; I’ll will all my property to Nand Lal.

  A lump still formed in Ananta’s throat at the thought of what had happened that day. It was not being cut out of the will that hurt so much but the fact that he was so misunderstood. But all that was now long past. All fathers forgave eventually.

  Rajat had come in with more jewellery. ‘What is this, Rajat?’ Ananta asked.

  He laughed. ‘I said to Ma … look I am not coming back alive. You will never get a chance to give your son’s bride all this jewellery.’

  Ananta stared at the boy quietly. ‘And what is Mashima wearing now?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No,’ he said shaking his head. Pulling out a necklace from the jumbled pile he handed it back.

  ‘We cannot strip our mothers bare.’

  SIX

  ANANDA PRASAD GUPTA

  Ananda snuggled deep into the covers. Ananta-da was back. He had been waiting for him, for he wanted to introduce a couple of boys he believed to be competent. But Ananta-da would have to test them first. The entrance examination had many hilarious stories that went with it. There was the one about Rajen Das … not the one who was injured in the Nagarkhana Hill battle with Master-da and Ambika-da. This one was as old as Master-da and used to constantly harangue the group saying they talked too much and did too little. Ananta-da’s words drifted into Ananda’s sleepy mind:

  We decided to test him. Over a tightly wrapped dhuti I put on a lungi. I rolled up the sleeves of a white shirt and wore a black waistcoat secured by one button so that I could remove it in a second. Then, once I pasted a beard and moustache on, I could not recognize myself in the mirror … I looked like a goonda. My neighbourhood was too civilized to be frequented by hoodlums, so we made use of the empty plot beside our house. It was a large plot, nearly five bighas, with a footpath that ran through it and served as a short cut to our house. I went and crouched on my haunches waiting for Rajen Das. Ambika-da was to send him down that way at 9 p.m. While I waited, I debated on all the possible outcomes: would Rajen attack me; would he come at me screaming; would he run away; or would he faint? I was ready for all eventualities. But what if he attacked me? Would I hit him back? He was after all a colleague. I was busy deliberating on the issues when I spotted him walking jauntily towards me. I saw him look at me. He slowed down. I rose and took a step towards him. He stopped. I walked up to h
im and gave him a nudge. He fell down. He remained rooted to the spot unable to scream, run or attack me and there I was struggling to hold onto the laughter that threatened to break out. I walked away quickly. Ambika-da was waiting impatiently on the verandah of the National High School. We were both busy laughing when we saw my dada, Rajen Das and a manservant from our house walking towards us. They all had sticks and the servant also carried a lantern. The funny bit was that my dada knew about the test but he was playing along. I looked at them in surprise. “Dada? Where are you going with lathis and lanterns?” Rajen was very agitated. “Do you know what happened? I was attacked by how many? Three! Three goondas. I fell down hurt. They ran off towards the east.”

  Ananta-da and Ambika-da had been all-concern. This cannot be permitted, Ananta-da had growled, Why even women use that path! Ananda drew the covers over his head. The story always brought on a fit of giggles. There had been others like Nobeen who had burst into fits of screaming and had brought all the neighbours running. Fortunately, Ananta-da had been able to dash behind a bush, tear off the disguise and rush back, pretending to be a well-wisher. Some men who had been sent to pounce on people walking along lonely stretches and rob them of their possessions had come back with the realization that they were not cut out for such work. They would help the revolution but from the wings.

  Ananda glanced across at his dada. He was already fast asleep. But Baba and Ma weren’t. And Baba was distinctly agitated. Snatches of their conversation wafted across.

  ‘He asked me why I let them neglect their studies. Tell me, have they been visiting Ganesh Ghosh?’ Baba was saying.

  Ananda pricked up his ears.

  ‘Sharada Babu seemed quite certain.’

  Sharada Babu? Was Baba talking of Police Inspector Sharada Kumar Bhattacharya?

  ‘Who else had been summoned?’

  ‘Well, Nandi Babu was there. One of his sons has walked out of his home and now the nephew. Up to no good. And Jaitra Mohan Das. He was there receiving a warning to keep an eye over that nephew of his – that Haripada Mahajan.’

  Ma made some soothing noises.

  ‘Khoka will be sitting for his IA finals. Should he not be studying? Why is he constantly wandering about?’

  There was a long and heavy silence. Ananda strained to hear more. Nothing. They had stopped talking.

  Ma entered the room, her figure silhouetted against the dark.

  She moved gently to avoid waking them. She was bending over Dada’s head. Her hands patted the pillow back in shape. A book? Ma had tucked a book beneath his pillow. When had she taken to borrowing Dada’s books? Did he not know that it had gone missing? It was then that he realized. Ma was in the habit of reading the material they had been secreting in.

  SURESH DE

  It was a long walk to the seashore. Ram Krishna-da started on a story:

  My beard, in those days, was long. Really long … not like Robi Thakur’s1 … something like the one shown in the Kuntala hair oil advertisement. I went with a group of friends one day just as we are going today, to bathe in the sea. We reached the shore and jhoop-jhoop, one after the other we jumped in. My friends were all the cautious kind and toop-toop they clambered out of the water as soon as they surfaced. They busied themselves collecting shells on the shore. But I did nothing of the sort. I took a deep breath, dived in once again and swam under water past Kutubdiya and Cox’s Bazar to the southernmost island in the Bay of Bengal. But there I was faced with a problem, for I found I could not surface. The reason was the millions of prawns that clung to my beard. Within their territory they become extremely powerful. They waggled their antennae at me dragging me down as I struggled to rise. My beautifully oiled and carefully nurtured beard was in danger and I could not declare war upon them. My ahimsa policy had turned them into little British administrators. They dragged me swiftly through the blue-green waters until we were in the Indian Ocean. I was dragged past Lord Ram’s bridge, the ones the monkeys helped him build to get to the island kingdom of Lanka and I was in the Arabian Sea. I was allowed a glimpse of the sky as I swept past the Karachi harbour but the smoke from the British ships had turned it dark and gloomy. Past Basra, grazing my back along the coast of Aden I found myself pulled into the Lohit Sagar.2 Then across the Bhumadhya Sagar,3 until I was in the English Channel. By now the prawns had grown exhausted. They had not eaten nor rested since the beginning of the journey. They slowed down and surfaced near the city of London. No sooner had they done so, some Englishmen spotted them. Sadly for the prawns, these people had returned only recently from a trip to India and had developed a taste for fine dining. Mouths watering, jaws slavering, they came by the droves: young men and old, pretty young things and crones. They leapt into the waters for the kill. So intent were they in gathering all the prawns they could find that they ripped out my lovely long beard. It has never grown back again.

  Ram Krishna-da finished his tale and another lad started one of his own.

  Suresh had expected to see great waves, hear the ocean’s roar but the waters of the Bay of Bengal were a flat calm. They spent the day splashing and playing until they had worked up a magnificent appetite.

  Ram Krishna-da opened a bundle tied with cloth. He extracted an earthenware pot of curds, a bunch of ripe bananas, some khoi. He mixed it all together and crumbled a handful of sandesh over the top. There were several banana leaves that had been brought along and on these they ladled out the phalar. It was cool and refreshing. The afternoon wore on and their companions left one by one. In the end Suresh was left behind alone with Ram Krishna-da.

  Ram Krishna-da hired a fishing boat … well, not exactly hire, as he paid to book their seats with a group of six fishermen. They were to go deep-sea fishing. They had taken sampans many times on the Karnaphuli and took great pride in their skills. But this was open sea. The fishermen took the name of Durga as they set the sampan afloat. Between the two boys they took turns at the tiller and the oar. The oars dipped, cutting through the silken waters and the boat surged ahead with an energy that seemed to seep through Suresh’s arms, flooding his body. Now land had been lost from sight. It was water all around. The fishermen dropped anchor. The nets were swung overhead and cast. When they were hauled back in they had changed from black to silver, and were pulsating with life. There was a steady staccato purring noise of the tails as tolai-lotia, rupchanda, prawns and phaisha flopped about on the floor of the boat. They had helped reel them in and though they had no claim on the catch, they felt a proprietary sense of pride. The fishermen were now in a hurry to get back in time for the evening market. They lifted the anchor and unfurled a large sail. With the wind behind them, they skimmed along. One man alone remained standing beside the tiller. ‘Guiding is a skill by itself,’ he said to the boys and offered them a turn at the tiller explaining the tricks used to keep the boat from capsizing. The setting sun painted the sky in the colour of the hibiscus and the sea reflected it faithfully. As Suresh jumped into the shallows a thought played on his mind: there was a purpose behind this seemingly playful jaunt.

  ‘Suresh, do you believe that there is a God? Some say it is all false.’

  It caught him off guard. ‘How can that be? Durga Puja, Kali Puja … people do all this because they believe.’

  ‘Many of these rituals have been created by clever people to fool the simple-minded.’

  ‘But a lie? How can a lie survive for ages?’

  Ram Krishna-da smiled. ‘Meet me tomorrow, before midnight, in the funeral grounds.’

  Meet him at the Maha-shashan bhumi? But how? Suresh was certain he was not scared. The real question was how would he leave the house at such an hour? Should he steal the keys from his mother? He couldn’t think of a solution. He went to bed that night hoping to have an answer by the time he awoke.

  Mahendra Choudhury was shaking him awake. It was pitch dark outside.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘You dolt! I came to share the roshogollas. I even threw a couple at your ve
randah but you were dead to the world. I had to climb up.’

  You climbed up two storeys?’

  ‘Up the electric lamp post and then swung across to your verandah. Come, time for celebrations. I have Rs 500/- for the revolution’s kitty … dacoity in my own home.’

  ANANTA LAL SINGH

  The French sahib had a big house in Kolkata surrounded by high walls and hedges. A new Studebaker stood parked outside. Ananta had been to see him several times with Anukul-da. Today the butler led them straight into the bedroom. The sahib was in bed with gout and did not stir from under the covers. The lady of the house sat ready to conduct the requisite business. She was not a bit like Ananta had expected. He had visualized her either as tall, gaunt and forbidding, or a sinuous mysterious beauty married to the elderly man. She turned out to be neither. As she rose to her feet, Ananta saw that she was tiny, very fat and very pink and as dimpled as a rosebud. Her honeycoloured hair was piled high on her head, and under her permanently arched eyebrows were eyes so green that they riveted his attention. She removed two very nice pistols out of an iron almirah. They had extra magazines and 200 cartridges each.

  ‘But we have bought no money today,’ said Anukul-da.

  ‘It does not matter,’ she said sweetly. ‘Have it sent later.’

  A wave of nervousness rose in Ananta’s throat. Was this a trap? But they got home safely that day.

  The BPCC elections were over and Subhas Bose had won by a narrow margin defeating J.M. Sengupta as Congress chief. Master-da, Ambika-da, Nirmal-da and Ganesh had gone back to Chattogram leaving politics in Kolkata in a murky state. The Opposition was crying foul and Motilal Nehru had ordered a detailed inquiry which concluded that September elections in Chittagong had not been free and fair. The BPCC elections thus remained technically incomplete. Frantic telegrams flew up and down urging haste in the re-election process in Chittagong. The BPCC elections had to be completed before the AICC meeting on 21 March 1930.4 Ever since he had been sentenced to four months in jail for the May fracas, Ananta had tried to spend as much time as possible in hiding. For him it was safer living with Anukul-da in Kolkata. The short money collection drives that he made to Chattogram were highly secret and few and far between. He dared not go back home, for it was most certainly being watched. He borrowed instead from a Kabuli-wallah. The hefty Pathans from Kabul who made moneylending their business charged Rs 100/- on every Rs 1,000/- and came personally to collect the principal amount in exactly a month’s time. An Irish sea captain, a tall big-built man, with coppery skin and deep-blue eyes had promised to bring weapons back from Europe by the end of the month.