Madhusudan remembered it was the day of the meeting of the Board of Directors. He felt ashamed, not to have prepared for it. The whole morning was wasted. He was astonished at this unthinkable lapse from his routine and against his nature.
40
AS SOON AS HER HUSBAND LEFT, KUMU GOT OFF THE BED AND SAT ON THE floor. Was her whole life to be spent like this—trying to swim across an endless ocean? Madhusudan was right. Their ways were totally different. This discord was the worst to bear. Was there a way out?
Suddenly she remembered something and started going down the stairs, to Motir-ma’s room. On the stairs, she met Shyamasundari coming up.
Where are you going? I was coming to you, Bou.’
‘Is there something you’d like to tell me?’
‘Nothing so important. I saw my brother-in-law in a temper. So I thought I should find out from you what the new hitch in his love affair was. Remember it is we alone who can give you the best advice on how to get along with him. So you are going to Motir-ma. Go, get it off your chest.’
Today it struck her that Madhusudan and Shyamasundari were both cast in the same mould, fashioned by the same potter. It is difficult to say how such a thought came to cross her mind. Not that she arrived at it after any analysis of their characters, nor did they look alike, but there was some resonance in their manners; they breathed the same air in their two worlds. When Shy ama approached to make friends with her, Kumu was repelled with the same loathing that she felt for Madhusudan.
Kumu entered their bedroom to find Nabin and his wife both trying to snatch a book. She was about to turn back, when Nabin said, ‘Please don’t go Boudi, we were about to go to you, with a complaint.’
‘What complaint?’
‘If you sit down I will tell you our sad story.’ So she sat down on the cot. Nabin said, ‘This is the height of torture! This lady has hidden my book!’
‘Why such a punishment for you?’
‘Plain envy! Because she herself cannot read English. I am all for female education but she is against the education of husbands as a class. She resents the growing gulf between my intelligence which is maturing, and her own. I tried my best to argue with her, by quoting the example of our great epic heroine Sita, who chose always to follow her husband. I plead with her not to block my way, even if I happen to leave her behind in the matter of learning and intelligence.’
‘Only Saraswati, the goddess of learning, can gauge your learning—but don’t boast about your intelligence in front of me,’ rejoined Motir-ma.
Kumu burst into a giggle watching Nabin make a face pretending to be in dire distress. This was the first time, in this house, that she laughed like this with an open heart. Her laughter sounded particularly sweet to Nabin. He said to himself, ‘From now on this is my mission. I must make our Bourani laugh.’
Still smiling, Kumu asked Motir-ma, ‘Dear sister, why have you hidden his book?’
‘Look Didi, do we have to have his tutor waiting for him in our bedroom? After a hard day’s work I come in to find a lamp burning and the great pundit at his lessons. The food gets cold but he pays no attention whatsoever.’
‘Is that right?’ Kumu asked Nabin.
‘Bourani, I am not such a saint as not to love food; but what I love better is her sweet urging. That is why I deliberately delay, study is just a pretence on my part.’
‘I can’t win the battle of words with him,’ said his wife.
‘And I admit defeat when she stops talking to me,’ said Nabin.
‘Does that happen too?’ Kumu asked.
‘May I then give one or two recent instances? They are etched on my mind with indelible tears.’
‘That’s enough. You don’t have to quote any instance. Now you better give me back my keys. See, he has hidden them,’ complained the wife.
‘I can’t go to the police against my own people, so the thief has to be punished by robbing her. First, you give me my book,’ said Nabin.
‘I won’t give it back to you. I shall give it to Didi.’ There was a basket of odds and ends of wool and silk pieces, in one corner of the room. Motir-ma picked from the bottom of this basket the second volume of a concise encyclopaedia in English, and put it on Kumu’s lap and said, ‘Take it to your room. Don’t give it to him. Let me see how he fights with you.’
Nabin took out the bunch of keys from the top of the mosquito curtain and gave it to Kumu with instructions not to part with it and added, ‘I too want to see how the person in question behaves with you.’
Kumu turned the pages of the book and asked, ‘Is this the kind of book he is fond of?’
‘There is no book he does not like.The other day I found him engrossed in a book on rearing of cows.’
‘That was not meant for tending to my own health, so there is nothing for me to be ashamed about.’
‘Didi, do you have something to say to me? Just say so and I shall order this garrulous fellow out of this room.’
‘No, there is no need for that. My Dada is coming in a day or two.’
Nabin said, ‘Yes, he is coming tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Kumu was surprised at the news. She sat quiet for a while, let out a deep sigh and asked, ‘How do I meet him?’
Motir-ma asked, ‘Haven’t you asked your husband?’
Kumu shook her head.
‘Won’t you ask him once?’
Kumu remained silent. It was very hard to talk to Madhusudan about her brother. Her husband seemed to be always charged and ready to insult her brother. She had great hesitation to cause the slightest provocation.
Nabin was pained to see the expression on her face. He said, ‘Don’t worry, Boudi. We shall take care of it. You don’t have to say anything.’
From his childhood Nabin was frightened of his big brother, but the advent of his Boudi seemed to have cured him of it.
After Kumu left, Motir-ma asked Nabin, ‘Have you thought of any way? The other night when your brother called us to his bedroom and humiliated himself before his wife, in front of us, I knew things would be difficult from then on. In fact, now he turns his face away whenever he runs into you.’
‘He has realized that he has lost. Out of a sheer whim, he had emptied his purse and paid in advance for something he has not got yet. Now he can’t stand us because we were witnesses to his stupid deal.’
Motir-ma said, ‘That may be so, but this rage against Bipradas Babu is like an obsession with him. It is increasing day by day. What a nasty affair!’
Nabin said, ‘That is one way of expressing his admiration for Kumu’s brother. This type of person flays in public the very person they know in their heart of hearts to be superior to them. Some say that the demon-king Ravana had immense respect for Rama, and that is why he offered him salutation with his ten pairs of hands. I can tell you, it won’t be easy at all for Bourani to meet her brother.’
‘That won’t do. You have to find a way out.’
‘Well. I have just thought of one.’
‘Please tell me.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘I feel shy.’
‘Even with me?’
‘Specially, with you.’
‘Let me hear the reason at least.’
‘It involves cheating my brother.You better not hear about it.’
‘I have not the slightest qualm about cheating for someone I love.’
‘Oh, so you have practiced it on me?’
‘Where else can I get such an easy victim?’ she taunted.
‘Right, my ladyship, I give a blank charter to cheat me whenever you wish to.’
‘Why do you sound so happy about it?’
‘Shall I be frank? God has endowed you women with many ways of deception. But He has topped them all with a touch of honey; and it is this honeyed deception that we call maya—the great illusion.’
‘Then the best thing is to avoid it.’
‘Good heavens! What will we be left with in this w
orld without illusion? Let the goddesses continue to deceive the fools, cloud their visions, besot their minds and do what they like with them.’
The conversation that followed was utterly useless and has nothing to do whatever with our story.
41
FOR THE FIRST TIME MADHUSUDAN DID NOT GET HIS WAY AT THE BOARD meeting. Till now none of his proposals or arrangements had ever been questioned. His immense self-confidence matched the confidence his colleagues had in him. Relying on this he always did his homework in advance before putting forth any proposal to the Board for approval. This time, in furtherance of his indigo business, he was trying to buy the lease for one property, from an old indigo factory owner. Some expenses were also incurred. Everything was ready, only for the stamps to be affixed on the sale—the deed had to be procured and the final payment had to be made. The prospective employees had been promised their jobs. And now this hurdle had come up.
Recently, lobbying was on for a relation’s son-in-law, for the post of a treasurer which had fallen vacant in that factory. Madhusudan, who never came to the rescue of the incompetent, paid no heed to all this. This matter which was buried underground had suddenly germinated and sprouted as opposition against him.
There was a loop-hole too. The owner of the property was the nephew-in-law of a distant aunt of Madhusudan’s. When she came importuning for the sale, to him, he calculated and found the deal attractive, the price was reasonable and the profit margin was good. There was also the additional reputation of being seen as a great patron of the family. And now the person whose unworthy son-in-law was being deprived of the job was busy exposing Madhusudan’s nepotism and carrying tales to the right quarters. He had also taken upon himself to start a whispering campaign about Madhusudan taking a secret cut on all transactions of his company.
Most people do not demand any proof for such false accusations, because the strongest evidence in support of such a possibility is their own innermost greed. It was easy to poison the minds of the people because of Madhusudan’s burgeoning prosperity and his insufferable reputation for integrity of character. These greedy people were greatly relieved to learn that even Madhusudan had his secret weaknesses; they were only too eager to do likewise, only they lacked the opportunity.
Madhusudan had given his word to the owner, and he was not the type to go back on his word just because there was a risk of losing money. So he decided to buy the property himself and was determined to prove to the company what a bargain they had missed.
It was late when he came back home. Madhusudan had blind faith in his own good luck, but today he feared that perhaps destiny was pushing the train of his life from one track to another. This first jolt at the Board Meeting gave him a shock. He leaned back in an easy chair in his office room and began to coil his own black thoughts with the dark smoke swirling out of his hookah.
Nabin came in to announce that someone had come from Bipradas for an audience with him. Madhusudan barked, ‘Tell him to go. I have no time for him now.’
Nabin could guess from his brother’s mood that something had gone awry at the Board Meeting today, and that his mind was weak and distracted at the moment.
Weakness by nature is ungenerous and the self-pride of the weak assumes the mask of merciless cruelty. Nabin had not the slightest doubt that his brother’s wounded pride would want to hit Kumu hard. But Nabin was determined to shield her from this blow. The little hesitation he had so far disappeared completely. After a little while he came back to find his brother going through the address book. As soon as he came in Madhusudan asked him rudely, ‘What now? Have you come as the advocate of your Bipradas Babu?’
‘No, Dada, you need have no fears on that count. Their man got such a rebuke that he will never enter this house, even if you personally send for him.’
Madhusudan could not stand this yet-to-be-faced effrontery either. He said, ‘If I move my little finger he will come and fall at my feet. What did he come for?’
‘Just to tell you that Bipradas Babu has postponed his trip to Calcutta by a couple of days. He will come as soon as he feels a little better.’
‘All right. I am in no hurry either.’
‘I want a couple of hours’ leave tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
‘You will be angry if I tell you.’
‘I will be angrier if you do not tell me,’ said Madhusudan in his typical fashion.
‘An astrologer from Kumbhakonam is here. I want my fortune told.’
Madhusudan’s heart missed a beat. He felt like running to the astrologer that very instant. But pretending to be supremely unconcerned, he scolded Nabin, ‘Do you really believe in all this?’
‘Not normally, but whenever I am scared I do.’
‘What are you scared about?’
Nabin did not answer. He started scratching his head.
‘Tell me who is it that you are scared of?’
‘I am not afraid of anyone in this world except you Dada, and I am ill at ease watching you these last few days.’
It always gave Madhusudan great pleasure to know that the rest of the world was in mortal fear of him. He kept looking at Nabin and puffed at his hookah gravely, in silence, savouring his own importance.
Nabin said, ‘So I want to know clearly what my stars wish to do with me and when will they let me off.’
Madhusudan said, ‘An atheist like you, who does not believe in anything, has at last . . .’
‘If I believed in God, I would not trust my stars; those who do not listen to a doctor readily accept the quack,’ replied Nabin.
The more Madhusudan was getting interested in probing his own fortune, the more he tried to assume a caustic tone. He said, ‘Is this what all your education has taught you, you monkey? You believe whatever anyone tells you!’
‘The man has a copy of the Bhrigu Samhita which chronicles the horoscopes of everyone born at any time in the past and will be reborn in future, all written in Sanskrit. You can’t question that surely. You can test it for yourself.’
‘God has taken care to create enough number of fools to feed those who live by fooling them.’
‘And he also creates clever people like you to save those fools. He is not only kind to the victors but is equally so to the victims. Why not try your sharp intelligence against the Bhrigu Samhita for once?’
‘All right, take me there tomorrow morning, let me check up on your Kumbhakonam trickster.’
‘But Dada, your disbelief is so strong that it may upset all his calculations. It is the general experience that trust begets trust. It must be the same with the stars. See the example of the foreigners, they don’t believe in stars, so the stars have no influence on their lives. I remember a particularly inauspicious conjunction of stars, when your English assistant won at the races. If it were me then, far from winning, the horse would have come and kicked me in my belly! Dada, please do not pitch your logic against that of the stars. Have a modicum of faith when you go there.’
Madhusudan went back to his hookah with a contented smile.
Next morning at seven, the two of them arrived at Venkat Shashtri’s house after negotiating the garbage in a narrow lane. It was a dark, dank room on the ground floor; the walls scarred with falling plaster looked like they were afflicted with some terrible skin disease. On the cot was spread an old dirty, torn cotton carpet and at one end some palm-leaf manuscripts lay scattered. A hand-painted picture of Shiva and Parvati hung on one wall. Nabin called aloud, ‘Shastrijee!’ A dark, short, thin man wrapped in a light cotton shawl entered. The front of his head was shaven, leaving a mop of hair at the back.
Nabin bowed to him with great reverence. The man’s appearance did not inspire an iota of respect in Madhusudan, but fearing that a fortune-teller might have some closeness with Destiny, he finished his half-hearted greeting. The Shastri ignored Madhusudan’s horoscope which Nabin placed before him, but asked to see his palm/instead. He took out a pen and ink from a wooden box and drew up some chart
. Then he looked at Madhusudan’s face and said, ‘Pancham Varga—the fifth group.’ Madhusudan could not follow him. So the astrologer recited the Bengali consonant groups, counting on his fingers, ‘Ka, cha, ta, twa, pa.’ Even then it remained obscure to Madhusudan. The astrologer went on ‘Pancham Varna—the fifth letter!’ Madhusudan waited patiently. The man reeled off, ‘Pa, pha, ba, bha, ma.’ All that Madhusudan concluded from this was that Bhrigumuni must have started the first chapter of his book with grammar. Then Venkat Shastri spoke, ‘Panchaksharam—five letters.’
Nabin suddenly woke up. He whispered into his brother’s ears, ‘I’ve got it, Dada.’
‘What did you follow?’
‘The fifth letter of the fifth group of consonants is “pa” and the fifth letter of that group is “ma” and then your name “Ma-dhu-su-da-n” is spelt with five letters. By a strange grace of your birth stars, there is a remarkable convergence of three fives!’
Madhusudan was stunned. Thousands of years before his parents named him, it was registered in Bhrigumuni’s log book What a stellar event! Then he listened dumbfounded to a summary of his own life, written in Sanskrit. The less he understood of the language, the more respectful he became towards Shastri and Bhrigumuni. Life was an embodiment of the words of the sages. He put his hand over his heart and felt that his whole body was like a manuscript compiled in some forest sanctum, with the help of suffixes, case-endings, inflexions and so on. The last words of the astrologer were to the effect that his immense wealth was in preparation of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth taking up abode in his house. Recently, she had arrived with the new bride. But he had to take extreme care that she was hurt in no way, because if that happened his fortune may be reversed.
Venkat Shastri added, ‘Such signs are already appearing. If the person born under these stars does not take heed even now, the danger may become imminent.’ Madhusudan was astounded. He remembered the news of his great profit on the day of his wedding, and now this defeat at the Board Meeting! Lakhmi’s advent was welcome, but the onus was awesome.
Tagore Omnibus, Volume 1 Page 66