Without, Within
NM came and took away the packets of Nirbashito Bahire Ontore that had been lying with me to send to the distributors of Khabarer Kagaj; they were going to take charge of the sales, much to my relief. It was all good paying for the printing and binding of one’s own book, it could ensure a first-class publication but all of that amounted to nothing without a suitable distributor. This was something I had learnt the hard way, effectively curing me of ever wanting to handle this on my own. Besides, I found out later that the book had sold well at the book fair and if it had reached the stands on time it would probably have sold even more. I received a confidential piece of news from the poet Mohammed Sadiq, who was a bureaucrat too, about a ploy in motion in the upper echelons to ban the book. The accusation: the poem ‘Niyati’ (Fate) had been deemed obscene. All the poems of the collection were from the time when my relationship with R had been in its last stages. The poem in question was about his behaviour on one such occasion.
Every night an impotent man comes to my bed.
He kisses,
My eyes
Lips
My chin,
And he grabs my breasts,
He suckles.
My thirsty skin, on edge,
Begs and whimpers for the sea.
His fingers pass through my curls
Leaving fire in their wake
And I am a ball of fire he plays with,
While my body cries,
For this man’s body to break and get bent
And rivers emerge therein.
The winter full moon hangs on the sky.
Lying peacefully in her lap,
He sets me on flames
And as I burn,
The impotent man turns over and sleeps.
Parched,
I prod the still sleeping man
And I cry for a drop of water.
When the poem had been published in Robbar (Sunday) the magazine had not been banned. So I could not fathom why they wished to ban the book! Who had the last word in what was obscene and what was not? To me the poem was not offensive at all! SHA advised, ‘You should expunge that “he suckles” bit.’ Why? Because that bit about suckling a woman’s breasts was too offensive? Ha! The same SHA who had tried every trick in the book to do the same to me was trying to explain lewdness to me! I could not find a single reason why I should remove that line—to me it seemed essential in underlining the notion of a person’s skin craving another’s touch. Of course my male friends were not happy with my logic even though most of them were always fantasizing about every woman they knew, imagining grabbing and sucking on their breasts, lying in wait to turn the fantasy into reality with someone they could succeed in hoodwinking. Take Mozammel for instance. Such a handsome and talented man! He was younger than me and used to call me ‘aapa’. He had been seeing a very pretty girl for a few years and they were about to get married. One night, having managed to find me alone, Mozammel tried to get fresh with me! Thankfully I managed to settle the matter rather quickly!
Another poem from the collection, ‘Dudhraj Kabi’ (The Ophidian Poet), also caused some stir. People whispered that the poet was in fact R. Irrespective of whom it refers to, the first and primary concern about a poem should be how it works as a poem, nothing else! People always pale in comparison to words. It did not matter if I had written the poem with R in mind. What mattered to me was the poem.
I should have just gotten a dog instead.
Even foxes can be tamed,
And I have raised a poet with milk and bananas—
It bit me
Before turning tail and slithering away.
In reply R wrote a poem of his own—
Yes, you better get a dog.
To spend your profound time playing fetch,
Or perhaps a cat,
Yes, a cat would be best.
You never saw what was good and pure,
But now you have found the best thing for you,
Yes my darling, get a dog or a cat.
Pigs could work just as well,
Given the mutual love for filth,
I see how nothing makes you happier.
Yes, that’s the perfect watering hole for you,
With your water and your kind of dirt,
With no fear of getting your hair wet,
It’s the perfect place for your kind of games.
There, in the murky depths,
You will be properly invisible!
You could even go fishing,
And find your kind of catch in the mud!
Let your habits grow roots instead,
Waste no more time on trifle dreams,
Silly little sickness such as they are—
Yes, you better get a dog, and a cat.
Dogs are faithful, cats are pampered,
Where else will you find such perfect harmony?
Despite being deeply hurt by his poem I could not help but wish I knew how R was, what he was doing, if he was well! Whenever I travelled from Mymensingh to Dhaka this wish would often lead me to Asim Saha’s Ityadi to speak at length with Saha and Nirmalendu Goon and learn if R was still in Mongla or if he was busy with Shimul. Was his leg okay? Was he walking properly again? I was told he was, but with effort. I listened to them, careful not to show too much concern, even if on the inside my heart would be about to burst with more questions. Did he think about me or ask about me? Not that I could ask such questions or even sigh in response any more! When a marriage ends, couples often turn bitter enemies. Not once had I imagined that R and I would ever be enemies. I had forgiven even the friends who had tried to take advantage of my broken marriage and seduce me, only because I had no desire to destroy friendships.
NM had published a few advertisements for Nirbashito Bahire Ontore in the newspapers. A few days later he informed me that his distributors had sent him word that the book was doing well. I was so happy to hear the news, so moved by NM’s generosity, that I could not ask him about the proceeds of the sales. Around the same time I witnessed yet another instance of his broad-mindedness. I had not told anyone about my trip to Calcutta with MHI. However, despite finding out about it from somewhere, NM did not make a single sly comment about it to me.
After returning from Calcutta, SHA had inquired with faux innocence, ‘How was India?’ and I had answered in the same way, ‘It was great.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Oh, so many places! I met Atashi too. Such a lovely girl!’
Immediately there had been another innocent question, ‘I hope the nights with MHI in Astor were good!’
I confess the directness had caught me off guard. SHA had somehow found out, presumably from Atashi. As soon as he had heard about Calcutta he had given me Atashi’s address and asked me to meet and tell her I was his friend. I had met the poet Subhash Mukhopadhyay’s daughter Atashi and ended up having a lovely time with her. In fact I had developed lovely equations with everyone in their household, including the renowned poet himself. I had not gone to their house alone—MHI had been with me. SHA could have said it differently but he had chosen to use the information as a sting. That was how SHA was; he could hurt someone without batting an eyelid. NM was not like that at all. Rather, one day he casually informed me he had found out about MHI’s visit to Calcutta from the latter’s wife after we had left. He had simply made the connections and deduced we had gone together.
Could I have gone alone? Yes, I could have. Wherever I visited in India I could have easily done so alone. It’s just that I would not have loved it as much. There were so many things I did not like doing alone and going somewhere by myself was right there at the top of the list. Yasmin used to get angry and say, ‘It’s your friend, you go! Why drag me along?’ I used to drag her with me to visit R when he would come down to Mymensingh. If Yasmin was not there I would take Suhrid. R used to get angry and ask me why I could not come alone. Of course I could have! I was going to college and returning home on my own all
the time. It was just that I preferred going with someone, someone close to me.
Not even a month had passed after my visit to Calcutta when NM suddenly suggested we go there again. ‘Let’s go to Calcutta for seven days.’ He refused to tell me why. When I insisted he informed me there was some business work regarding the magazine that he had to attend to. He was going to be busy with his own work and I would be free to do as I pleased and go where I wished to. I did not need to be asked twice! Besides, Mymensingh was becoming intolerable without Suhrid and Yasmin. In the house I felt like a corpse, like a crushing loneliness was waiting to rip me apart. My work could have given me some respite. However, since that too was a life of indolence the feelings of despair were only intensifying. So we set off for Calcutta. Before leaving I had to make sure to pack some beef for Subhash Mukhopadhyay. Last time he had expressed a wish to eat beef and I had promised to get some for him during my next visit.
The first thing we did as soon as we reached Calcutta was to go to the information centre to meet Soumitra Mitra so he could arrange two rooms for us in a government guest house on Hungerford Street. Stashing our luggage in the rooms we set off to follow our itinerary, with a young boy named Siddhartha Sinha in tow. Siddhartha was a member of Soumitra’s poetry group, Abrittilok, a true disciple of the latter and a talented reciter himself. Besides, he had another connection with NM—he was the Calcutta correspondent for Khabarer Kagaj and it was his duty to collect new work from writers and send it to Dhaka. He was to be our guide. Our first stop—to take the beef to Subhash Mukhopadhyay. Suffice it to say Mukhopadhyay was in shock that I had actually gotten him the Eid special sacrificial beef from Bangladesh that he had wanted. Elated, he called his wife Geeta to come and see the gift. He was determined to eat beef and had Geeta cook the meat for him the same day.
The previous time when I had visited him he had enthusiastically welcomed me, cooked baticharchari18 for me, shown me around Calcutta and taken me to the Grand Hotel for the Ananda Puraskar where Sunil Gangopadhyay and Sailesh Kumar Bandopadhyay were felicitated. Hearing our plans of visiting Delhi, Agra and Kashmir he had been less than pleased and advised us, ‘What do you want to see there? Come with me. We will go to Tangra, Budge Budge.’ Surprised by these names I had asked him, ‘What is there to see in Tangra and Budge Budge!’ He had smiled and replied, ‘People.’ At that moment I had found myself hard-pressed to recognize the cheerful public persona he used to maintain, the man who was always up to no good with his family and who could easily be the life of a party fuelled only by baticharchari and a glass of rum. His everyday sins may have been too many to count but no matter how much they piled up nothing could obscure the innate greatness of such a man. When the true Subhash Mukhopadhyay emerged from beneath the trappings it was impossible to do anything but revere the man.
NM had a surprise in store for me after we left Subhash Mukhopadhyay’s house. He took me to the offices of Anandabazar Patrika and Desh on 6 Prafulla Sarkar Street. He was scheduled to meet Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sanjib Chattopadhyay, Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay and Sankarlal Bhattacharya to request them to contribute to his weekly. The opportunity to encounter so many renowned litterateurs was to me akin to visiting a place of worship and being given a chance to meet my deities in person. I had formed an image of them in my head from their writings. When one meets a person one has always imagined it happens quite often that the real and the imagined do not always compare favourably. The small defects can be easily forgiven, like I could forgive Sirshendu’s bright pink socks matched with a pair of staid black sandals. Instead, I found myself engrossed in his reminiscences of Mymensingh. Back in Dhaka I was an avid reader of Desh and I firmly believed it was the best literary journal in Bengali. So I was shocked to realize that I was sitting in the room from where Desh was published, talking to the same people who were the editors of the magazine, who regularly wrote for it and whose writings I had voraciously consumed since I was little.
Sitting behind a pile of papers, Sunil Gangopadhyay graciously spoke to us at length despite his busy schedule. Sanjib Chattopadhyay was famous for his humorous stories but in person he would hardly ever be seen smiling, although NM did not hesitate for a moment before asking him to write a column for Khabarer Kagaj. We also went to meet the poet Nirendranath Chakraborty who I had last run into in Dhaka. He shared his office with Gourkishor Ghosh who was so gracious, as if we were old acquaintances, that I was deeply moved. I also noticed that those who were originally from East Bengal, who had had to migrate to West Bengal after the partition, were decidedly warm and friendly when meeting someone from Bangladesh. Perhaps we reminded them of a life they had been forced to leave behind and they could not help but talk about their old house, the gardens around it, their village or their town, or ask how the Brahmaputra or the Meghna looked. We met Sankarlal Bhattacharya at the Sananda office and he took us to the roof and spoke to us about what he was reading and writing and the ideas he was grappling with. Everywhere I was the mute listener, it was impossible for me to be anything more.
Soumitra Mitra took us around to many places. We had lunch at the famous poetry reciter Debdulal Bandyopadhyay’s house, a grand affair with numerous preparations of fish. NM had asked Debdulal for a column too. If possible he would have even asked Jyoti Basu to write for his journal! Soumitra also took us to the poet Shakti Chattopadhyay’s house. We reached and were greeted by a shirtless Shakti waiting for us in his drawing room. We ended up having a lengthy conversation while being plied with food. I knew Shakti from before; he had visited Abakash with his wife and son. He showed us a small room on the first floor and told me to come and stay there when I visited next. He had gotten the room made especially for spending time with friends. Shakti had a reputation of being apathetic, so much so that he would often misplace his own poems, but NM barely flinched before asking him to write for Khabarer Kagaj! Shakti too agreed instantly and even gave his word to get it done by the week after.
NM had another surprise in store for me—a dinner invitation at Sunil Gangopadhyay’s house. I had met him twice before that in Dhaka. The first time had been at a poetry recital by Swarasruti where he had attended as the chief guest. Mozammel Babu, SHA, MHI and I were chatting on the British Council grounds when we had spied him nearby, surrounded by his admirers and in the middle of giving autographs to the numerous fans approaching him. Mozammel had quipped, ‘He is giving everyone his autograph, what if we go and give him our autographs instead!’ It was a funny suggestion and we had all laughed, though none of us had the guts to go and do it. Mozammel had looked at me. ‘Let’s go, aapa! We will give our autographs to Sunilda!’ Not one to lose out on a chance at tomfoolery I had gone along with the harebrained plan. We had approached Sunil and when he had looked at us expecting to see an extended notebook or a piece of paper, Babu had blurted out, ‘Sunilda, we are here to give you our autographs.’ While I tried hiding my flaming face, Sunil had not missed a beat. Instead of getting uncomfortable he had smiled congenially and replied, ‘But I don’t have paper.’ We had gotten paper and the two of us signed it and one of Bengal’s biggest poets and novelists had neatly folded the tattered sheet and carefully put it in his pocket. After getting together with our friends, everyone had pounced on us to tell them what had happened. The second meeting had only been a passing encounter and we had not really spoken much.
On this particular occasion it did not seem to me that Sunil remembered the incident about the autograph and I did not dare remind him of it. A grand party had been organized at his residence in Mandevilla Gardens. His wife Swati was a soft-spoken beautiful woman. Soumitra too had brought along his beautiful wife Moonmoon. Both Swati and Moonmoon were nonchalantly drinking alcohol. I had never seen women drink before and since my own capacity was restricted to softer drinks I was happily nursing my glass of Limca. At some point in the evening a collective conspiracy resulted in the addition of a few drops of fiery bitterness in my soft drink. I could feel a slight dizziness coming on after a few s
ips which soon turned to a pleasant buzz as everyone started to sing. They were all singing their own songs, set to their own tunes, while Sunil seemed determined to finish all the songs in Gitabitan over the course of the night.
As the party rolled on till midnight I could not help but reflect on the last time I had been in Calcutta. MHI had felt ashamed to bring me to Sunil’s house along with him while NM had not thought twice about it. Thanks to him I had met Sunil personally and even got to know him as a friend. This feeling of happiness enveloped me over the next few days. A few days later I received an invitation to recite poetry alongside famous poets like Sunil, Shakti Chattopadhyay and Sankha Ghosh in a programme organized by Soumitra’s Abrittilok. I styled my hair beautifully with jasmine blossoms and, in the presence of these and many other luminaries of the literary world, went on the stage, swallowed my apprehensions and recited my poem. Was I grateful? Yes, I was. People have dreams that reach for the sky; mine had never even dared to reach for that stage!
Siddhartha informed me that NM had given him a few copies of my book to put up for sale at Papyrus Books on College Street. A small advertisement for the book had also been arranged in Desh. I could not ask if any sales had happened at Papyrus, embarrassed that they would say not a single copy had been sold. While there was no end to my awkwardness, HH had once told me that I had a fair bit of pride. When the book was published HH had spoken to his own publisher Najmul Haque of Anindya Prakashani about it. Haque had been hesitant at first and when he had finally relented, albeit not wholeheartedly, I had surprised everyone by refusing to give the book to Anindya and declaring that I was going to publish it myself. After Haque’s departure HH had told me that he liked my pride. Why should I have given my book to someone who had not been sure about it in the first place? What is a person without a little bit of pride and self-respect?
~
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