Freedom Song

by Amit Chaudhuri

  He had read the book on afternoons much like this one many years ago, lying on his stomach and flicking the pages. The story he liked the best was the one about Swami Vivekananda, who was once an ordinary man called Narendranath Dutta. Narendranath wanted a simple answer to a question he had asked men of several religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism—and the question was: have you seen God? Only Ramakrishna said, ‘Yes: yes, I have seen Ma Kali!’ Testing Ramakrishna, Narendranath placed a picture of Kali under his mattress, and the saint leapt up in agony as if he had been burnt. Ramakrishna, seeing Narendranath was a great disciple, gave him the name Vivekananda, and Vivekananda, journeying to America, homeless in Chicago, and then put up by a kindly old lady, brought glory to India by addressing the Parliament of World Religions with his speech: ‘Brothers and sisters of America . . .’ For a long time after, Bhaskar remembered every detail of this story, and he seemed to be there with Vivekananda when he was Narendranath and wandering from temple to church, and he entered the strange world where, with Narendranath, he met Ramakrishna, and he was there with Ramakrishna as well, when he sat in a trance and saw Kali before him, appearing little by little, her blue skin, the pink of her tongue, the black of her hair, and then becoming whole, and he came back to the real world with a little of the smoke and incense and terror still upon him. Through those days, as he walked from one room to the other in the afternoon, or came out from the toilet, he wondered if it was possible to see Saraswati or Durga or any divinity by chance, for a minute, for no reason. Then, one day, he asked an older, fifteen-year-old cousin who lived in North Calcutta, ‘What would happen if you saw a god? Is it possible?’ ‘A god?’ said the cousin. ‘Yes, like Kali or Durga. Does it ever happen?’ The cousin’s face became suddenly sad. ‘Yes it does,’ he said. ‘But those who see a god invariably die.’

  In Bhaskar’s mother’s handbag lay two photographs in a white envelope. There they lay, removed from the sunlight, unless they were taken out and subjected to curious scrutiny. One was a girl from Jodhpur Park, twenty-four years old, in a printed sari, with a small smile on her face, her body in profile, and the other was in black and white, from Dum Dum, with studio lighting falling on her hair. Although her features were not perfect, it was the first girl for whom Bhaskar’s mother had a slight preference, and had let enter into her heart a tiny emotion, a small attachment, though it could not really be called emotion or attachment for these are things you feel for people you know. Perhaps it was because her face had a patience and tolerance, and her personality a seriousness that was emphasized, rather than diminished, by that small smile, the gaily printed sari denoting a kind of openness—but these were things she said to no one, not even to herself. The photographs were really for Bhaskar to look at, though he never did so properly, but glanced at them for a moment and put them away, as if they hurt his eyes. Then they had been carefully and judiciously considered by Piyu, and laughingly and embarrassedly gazed at by Bhaskar’s father, and very seriously, and not without excitement, looked at by Puti, and now they lay in the handbag again, two ordinary objects that had unexpectedly entered their lives, two paper-thin cards, called photographs, with human faces upon them.

  Meanwhile, Bhaskar went each day to the factory; at other times attended his Party meetings; but most enjoyed the numerous rehearsals in the evenings for plays that would be performed on streets and even in theatres. These one- or two-act compositions possessed solemn messages, each one a parable or political allegory set in medieval India, or in an unnamed land that was sufficiently fantastic, sufficiently unreal, the citizens of this twilit world enacting events that had taken place only recently—the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the fragmenting of the Soviet Union, and, lately, the violence done to Muslims by Hindus. These disparate images, that had colluded somehow in Arjun Dastidar’s head, were made material and brought alive in a small room with white walls in Tollygunge, with a 100-watt bulb shining from the ceiling. Like inquisitive and loyal visitors, the sound of trams clattering back and forth outside and the spun pink-white winter smoke surrounded the players in the room and listened to their every word and every recapitulation and revision. Tender, destitute noises, of a cat meowing, and maidservants chattering and laughing as they walked by, transfigured what was beyond the wall. To Bhaskar, as he tried on a costume, or cried out in literary Bengali, ‘Alas! What was my mistake?’ (for their plays were full of aggrieved shouts and excited exclamations), there came back his childhood world of intrigue and assassinations, courage and injustice, and so, utterly convinced, he clutched his breast with his hand and fell. For what was creation but a great theatre, with swarga, with its deities in every mansion, and blue akaash, born of God’s breath, and pataal, the deep, dark, crouching abyss below, perpetually exhaling spumes of dark smoke and protesting with many voices, and, in between, man, a tiny, wonderful, living creature, travelling in his frail craft, facing, astonished but fearless, the endless, dramatic vicissitudes of pataal and swarga? Who would remember him? Blood-curdling cries emanated from the room, followed by laughter.

  Confused moths wandered in from outside and settled, becoming invisible until you saw them, a small triangular patch on the wall. When they were disturbed for some inexplicable reason, they burst into life and floated hither and thither, casting shadows much larger than themselves. The wall was always full of the shadows of faces, of bodies, of the slope of shoulders, the liquid outlines of loose clothes, of shawls, of pyjamas, a play of pictures accompanying messages conveyed from one kingdom to another, and cunning murders being committed. And who were these shadows but Bhaskar, Samaresh, Sumanta, Nikhil, Dipen, robbed of their features and invested with a curious darkness and poignance, shadows where the bright white lime-painted wall became mysteriously blue? And the moths, when one noticed them, reminded one of the alleyways, of green shuttered windows with iron grilles behind them, and the perpetuity of habitation, where they lived with children, young men, fathers, mothers, resting on a wall next to a calendar with a picture of Shiv or Durga, or behind cupboards with piles of old shirts and saris, or distracting two boys as they sat down to study at their table. Such tranquillity they possessed—not a wall existed in Calcutta that would not give them repose!

  And now a link was sought to be made between one person and another, between Bhaskar and a girl, who had been growing up all the while in this city, secretly, while Bhaskar had been wearing half-pants, and buying Sportsweek and reading Mandrake comics, and going to Gariahat Market with Robida to buy a water bottle, and riding on trams, his shirt clinging to his back with sweat—someone, somewhere else, was growing up as well, in as random and unpredictable a way, in a little self-absorbed world of day-to-day desire. There were so many places it could have happened—in Mandeville Gardens, in one of the lanes that surrounded the South Point School; in a nook in Jadavpur; in the half-countryside, half-urban settlement of Tollygunge; in Jodhpur Park, past Dhakuria Bridge, by the daily swell of smoke and traffic. There she had grown up, dragging her feet in chappals, wandering indolently in the veranda, making friends with girls called Bapsi and Mintu. Now it was study time, and now it was evening, with the tube-light switched on, and, all through her growing up, the city, like a great arm, had protected her, and kept her hidden and nameless.

  Twice a week, they’d go to a nursing home in Dhakuria. It was a new place, built on a field that had once been empty. A by-lane of two-storeyed houses and trees led to it. Because the building itself was new, with a flat white façade that had red borders, it looked like a mirage, as all new things do in Calcutta. And then it had those tinted glass doors at the entrance that kept its interior a secret and imaged the world outside, and those new, flourishing money-plants on the porch that shone so, that they seemed to be made of plastic. Not to speak of the watchman in khaki, like a large ragged doll, the winter light falling on the stubble on his face.

  ‘Ma Sharada Devi nursing home,’ said Khuku to Mritunjoy, the driver.

  The words were enough
to please Mini. She was something of a devotee of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda; had long been one; not a formal one, but one who’d read their books, life stories, and sayings.

  ‘Who built the nursing home, re?’ asked Mini.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Khuku, who’d never had much interest in facts. She relied on instinct. ‘It’s a good, clean place,’ she said.

  Some doctor had recommended it to her when she’d needed a check-up (both check-ups and age had nudged Khuku, who felt so inwardly young, and surprised her into disbelief), and she had recommended it to Mini when she realized she required treatment. In her mind, the place had become associated with healing and a certain stage in her and Mini’s life, and afternoons when her husband was at work.

  Her husband at work—seventy years old, hair half grey; yet the five thousand rupees coming in per month from a ‘sick’ company was useful in all kinds of small ways. It needn’t remain sick, now that her husband was in it. But lately Shib had said, sombre in his sleeveless slip-over, ‘I don’t know why they’ve taken me.’ He’d shaken his head. ‘The government isn’t interested in putting money into the company. I don’t know if they expect me to perform some miracle and put it on the right course again.’ He was unlikely to make any miracles happen, presiding over in his active old age this company he’d known since childhood. ‘I’ve heard that there are some people who resent that money’s being diverted from a loss-making firm to pay my salary—so it’s best not have any expectations.’

  Here, at the entrance of the lane, was a sprawling rubbish-heap of an unimaginable colour—but the two women in the car wouldn’t notice it. Mini was wearing a white tangail sari with a slender green border, and a dark cardigan; bent forward slightly, she was a mixture of light and dark this afternoon. Many times Khuku had persuaded her to wear brighter colours, but she had always refused; not saying why, but on the unspoken grounds of her age, and being single; it was just a preference and a belief she had.

  Through traffic jams, bursts of exhaust fumes, a mad chorus of car horns, they’d come, passing the ‘boulevard’ in Gariahat, with its tinsel and Christmas caps hanging from the stalls, and its portraits of Ramakrishna and imitation Rembrandts, empty exercise books and jars of spices and generators; then the roundabout at Gol Park. Through all this they’d come.

  The nursing home rose before them like a mirage. All the doctors attending to Mini had come to know both of them well—and addressed them as ‘mashima’. There was Dr Sarkar and Dr Majumdar, both of them young enough to be Khuku’s sons; both most courteous, and attentive to Mini, saying, ‘Mashima, sit here,’ and, ‘Tell me, how is the problem now?’ Khuku remembered her son when she saw these two young doctors, and then she told them about him; and they seemed interested and always had five minutes to spare to have a relaxed chat with her. They’d got to know how Bablu was in America, doing a doctorate in economics, and how her husband was still working in a company. ‘That’s good,’ Dr Sarkar had said. ‘Men age quickly if they don’t work.’ Khuku had been pleased with this; she’d thought, Then it doesn’t matter that it’s not a good company, at least he’s doing a job. When they examined Mini, Khuku either sat in one of the chairs in the hall, or stood in the corridor outside which received weak sunshine from the frosted window on the door at its end, the door that opened onto a dusty space at the back where the cars were parked. She thought how strange life was, that she was here and Bablu was in America and her husband in the office, and that there was a clean nursing home in Calcutta with good doctors; she was full of wonder at how one person ended up in one place and someone else in quite another.

  When they’d finished they headed back the same way, but going down the by-lane Khuku was always tempted to visit the house, in one of the lanes nearby in Jodhpur Park, her elder sister had lived in. Of course, her elder sister was dead; but her daughter, Puti—Khuku’s niece—and Manas, her son, were still there, living in different flats in the same house; as were her grandchildren, Khuku’s grand-nephews, Puti’s son, Mohit, and Manas’s, Sameer. Both were fond of Khuku, their ‘Didimoni’, but of the two it was the younger, Sameer, less hard-working and mindful of his studies than Mohit, who was the more openly demonstrative of his affection towards his grand-aunt, ready to melt in her arms, and who always had a kiss for her. Puti, too, after the death of her mother, had begun to see Khuku, her only aunt, in another light (although both sisters had been different in every way, including appearance, Puti’s mother fair skinned with fine thinning hair, and ten years older than her sister, almost everything about Khuku these days reminded Puti of her mother). She—whom Khuku had called, simply, Didi—had died just over a year ago of Parkinson’s disease. Her brain hadn’t been affected, thank God; but her movements had been reduced to a minimum until, finally, she hadn’t been able to get up from the bed without the help of nurses. At least she hadn’t suffered terribly; anyway, it had seemed to Khuku, there was nothing Didi had liked better than lying in bed with a magazine; and this it had been possible for her to do till a few months before she had died; in this sense, it had been a happy ending. When Khuku visited her, she’d find that Didi was still eager to take part in conversations. She’d open her mouth and form a few words to ask a question, and Khuku would have a clear view of her betel-stained upper teeth, which protruded slightly; and when the others gossiped, she’d listen, her eyes moving and registering surprise, disbelief, and amusement. Thank God she had had hired nurses always attending to her—not everyone had a rich son in America to pay for their medical expenses; she might have died much earlier had she not been so well looked after.

  Now and then, their voices could be heard; not the voices in which they spoke to Khuku, but those that they reserved for themselves. They did not bother to speak softly; there was no one else in the flat. It had not been so silent since the days of the curfew.

  Khuku often thought that three servants were too many to have in the house; there was only herself and Shib; and these three, for large stretches of time in the day, had nothing to do. Then they reigned like angels or demons without another habitation. They were itinerants, of course; three months later, they might not be here. Only Nando, even when he left, returned again and again.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  It was Uma. Nando had reached forward and transferred an egg from his plate to hers. The egg was more than an olive branch; it was a testimony of his intentions towards her. Love, or something like it, had possessed him.

  Uma had stopped eating; her right arm was poised in mid air.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’ she asked again. ‘You’re lucky I’m not going to throw the egg into that corner’—she gestured with her head—‘because I don’t want to dirty the kitchen and upset mashima. But I’ll tell mashima about you.’

  Nando stared at his plate. Of late their quarrels always came to these exchanges. Nando was allowed an extra egg daily by Khuku, not because of favouritism but because not long ago he’d been suffering from tuberculosis. He’d contracted it during a spell of unemployment—after being sacked by Khuku—which he’d spent at home, in a basti near Tollygunge, before a reconciliation brought him back to the job.

  During the curfew a month ago, all had been disorder and silence. Jochna, who was becoming increasingly pretty, had not been able to come to work for two days; there had been tension in her area and fear of violence. It was at such times that the sketchy unfencedness of their existence became palpable, that they must lead lives perpetually and nakedly open to duress. The Muslims had taken out a procession; at night, when usually an owl—Lakshmi’s ancient companion and carrier—hooted near the railway crossing, with a tremulous sense of something about to happen, Jochna and her family and other Hindus in the basti had been moved to a nearby Christian school, while the furious Muslims apparently congregated and went about shouting and protesting. So Jochna did not come to work for two days. Ordinarily this would have irritated Khuku, but this time the atmosphere, distant but
palpable, of strife precluded any response, unfortunately, except sympathy.

  Nando had spent most of his life in Calcutta; he had started out when he was a young man as an assistant to a cook in a sweet-shop. He could not read a single word in any alphabet. In his own home, this small swaggering man would behave like a patriarch and a pest, something between a monarch and hapless vermin, and was considered a nuisance by his wife and even beaten by his son when he drank. He had a grandson, not much shorter than him, who was his only well-wisher; but being at home wrecked his health. Not long after she had taken him back, Khuku had heard him coughing, and saw him lying about like a sack on the carpet, utterly tired. Dr Mitra, who lived nearby, had come down to take a look at this fatigued specimen, and had advised that a test be done, for TB. Apparently it was still widespread in the bastis and areas these people lived in. ‘The only difference is that it’s as curable as toothache today,’ said Dr Mitra. When Khuku had had his sputum tested, the bacillus had been found in it; but, as good as Dr Mitra’s word, he was cured now (that had happened two years ago).