Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  The Muslim fundamentalists of Calcutta were not to be left behind. Articles attacking me were regularly appearing in journals like Saptahik Kalam and Mijaan. They were not too keen on the women’s liberation issue and taking forward the example of nature one of them wrote that man was like the sun while woman was like the moon.

  Allah has granted women gentleness and has bestowed toughness on men. It is in the perfect harmony of the two that society and the family realize their truest and most beautiful potential. If the two are in antagonism it produces discord, unrest, impiety. The Taslimas of the world are against the holy union of man and woman, they crave antagonism, and as a result there is chaos every step of the way. It is easy to write with one’s guns trained at the fundamentalists but it is not as easy to maintain an untainted character and an exemplary moral code like them. The fundamentalists are inspired by the philosophy of Islam while the rationalists are driven solely by their nature.

  Whatever they wrote against me in Calcutta, their counterparts in Bangladesh proudly reprinted the same in their papers.

  People were reading my columns outside India too and the debate raged on outside the country as well. Writer Golam Murshid came down from London with his video camera to interview me. Shafeeq Ahmed and his wife also lived in London, both well versed in literary and cultural artefacts, and they came to meet me as soon as they reached the country. Meghna from Boston came to meet me during her trip to Bangladesh and left behind loads and loads of love. There I was, love on one side, hate on the other, both terribly effective in moving me deeply, but neither had the power to overwhelm me. It was as if I had fashioned my own self to gradually internalize or be free of both emotions. Be it love or hate, such reactions never failed to disconcert me.

  A girl from Tangail came to see me once. She was a college graduate and wished to study further in the university but her family was against it. So she ran away from home and came to me as if I was her last recourse, as if I knew what to do next. Because she liked reading my writing she had been slapped around and verbally abused at home but that had failed to change her mind in any way. She boldly declared that there was no one greater in her life than me—not her parents, not her siblings, nor her relatives. To her even Allah, if He existed, was not as significant.

  Not just the young, older people too came to meet me, and women, irrespective of their age—from fifteen to seventy-five—profession or class, found their way to my door at some point or the other. They came to tell me about their lives, showing me numerous colours and sides to human grief in the process, and many also came to draw strength and support from me. I was never confident in my ability to provide such support and aid, and while many were turned away from my door empty-handed, there were as many who refused to leave. What did they gain from staying back? This was a question that always baffled me.

  A girl called Nahid, a law student at university, came to see me. Once the conversation dried up and it was time for her go I realized she did not wish to leave at all. Even though she did leave ultimately she was back again to see me in a few days. Another girl, Jhunu, a political activist, came to my house, had tea and biscuits, but showed no signs of leaving even after a while. All she wanted was to touch me once and see for herself that it was truly me. Mitun and Neepa, two smart and beautiful girls studying in the Viqarunnisa School, were regular visitors to my Shantibag house. Mamun and Anu, a young needy couple, were frequent visitors too. Anu worked as a saleswoman in a shop while Mamun did not have a job. One day I wrote a letter to the editor of Bhorer Kagaj for Mamun recommending a job for the unfortunate boy in their papers. I had read some of the letters Mamun had written and sensed his writing skills. In the end Mamun did get that job at Bhorer Kagaj. My life went on as usual, with Mitford, my home, my writing, evening addas and my admirers. Since I was never particularly enamoured of living a guru’s life most of my admirers eventually turned into my friends, or even family, and the gates to my house always remained open for them.

  The one major repercussion of the public debate was that the very sight of a fez cap was enough to strike terror in my soul. Their posturing in public convinced me that they were going to gobble me up alive if only they could manage to get their hands on me. But surprising things did not stop happening entirely. One day a bearded man in a lungi and a kurta simply barged into my house; someone had probably left the door open on their way out or in. We were all sitting and chatting in my bedroom. Spying a stranger entering my room I was so scared that for a moment I could not even scream out loud. What did the man want? Why was he in my home? Looking at my petrified face the man said, ‘Don’t be afraid. I have not come here with any evil intentions. I just wanted to see you once. I have always wanted to see you. Today, I finally feel gratified.’

  The unwelcome guest was soon shown out of the house. He had crept into my home like a cat simply to see me once!

  Go as You Like

  Was I ever truly in love, or was it only the idea of love that I had dragged around with me? I began asking myself this strange question over and over again. What had my old relationship with R been? When I sat down to list the number of reasons why it could be called love, and the number of reasons why it could not be, I discovered that although I had been deeply attracted to R and I had never turned from him despite his many misdeeds, none of it had anything to do with love. It had been something else, something that comprised loneliness, a desire to love and the idea of love itself. I had learnt the codes of social behaviour expected of people in love and merely replicated them. They had been received responses, none of them entirely my own.

  I had only read a few of R’s poems in the weekly journals. Then one day I had received a letter from him with the poems he had sent for Senjuti. I had answered his letter and we had kept in touch through letters. I had never seen him, known little about him, but I had fallen in love with him nonetheless. It was not as if R had been a terribly handsome man; in fact, the first time we met I was quite revolted. I loved his poetry, but then there were so many others whose poetry I admired too. In effect, I had fallen in love with the idea of being in love.

  Like when we were children, Chandana and I fell in love with the film actor Jafar Iqbal. We were attracted to his beauty. Obviously, there had to be something for one to get attracted—either looks or talent. But even that had not been love; it had been a youthful infatuation. We had managed to write to Jafar Iqbal and become friends with him. In fact, Jafar had proposed marriage to Chandana when he met her! For the longest time I had a secret dream that one day I was going to meet him in person too. While going to Chotda’s house in Dhaka one had to pass by Iqbal’s house on 5 Nayapaltan, but not once did I ever go in. Instead I hoped to miraculously run into him some day, somewhere. No, we never ran into each other. And we never will either. The most handsome leading man of the country suddenly died one morning at a terribly young age. There was no disease, no foul play. An apparently healthy man had simply died and the astonishing news had numbed me with shock. He had married a girl call Sonia but they never got along and Sonia had left him. Perhaps out of loneliness and despair Jafar Iqbal had drunk himself to death.

  ~

  When I started watching Hindi films I developed an intense crush on Amitabh Bachchan. I loved seeing him and Rekha in love; they looked so good together. I would imagine myself as Rekha and imagine Bachchan was professing his love to me. Of course I was not Rekha, I was me, and there were no handsome men waiting to love me. So all I could do was to wait for one to come along. Later, during my adolescent years, I wanted to be with the actor Afzal Hossain and that desire had never entirely gone away to be honest. Afzal was very handsome. A theatre actor, he was extremely popular both on television and on stage; he was a dramatist himself and wrote beautiful love stories. He also wrote novels that were published by Vidyaprakash and Khoka was instrumental in pushing Afzal to write.

  The first time I had met him was ten years ago at the book fair. He was so tall that his readymade trouser
s did not fit him and ended way above his heels, but he hardly seemed to care and was roaming about the fairground wearing them. R and Afzal knew each other and R had called him over for a quick chat. We met quite a few times after that but only in passing. Afzal was in a relationship with fellow theatre actor Subarna but the relationship did not last and she left him. In time he started an advertising company called Matra in Nayapaltan, just behind Chotda’s house, and I would pass by the place often on my way to my brother’s house.

  While I was still with R my infatuation with Afzal had stayed under check due to social mores and customs, but after R and I broke up there were innumerable instances when my obsession nearly made me barge into the Matra office and confess my undying love to him. I would stand in front of the mirror and imagine Afzal beside me, our combined beauty a thing to behold! Despite everything I could never enter Matra and neither could I ever tell him anything; each time when I wanted to I had to pull back the reins of my own desires.

  Many years ago two poets from Mymensingh, Shafiqul Islam Salim and Ataul Karim Shafeeq, had invited Afzal Hossain and MHI to Mahakali School in Mymensingh for a programme. At Salim and Shafeeq’s request I had gone to the event to read a short story from among the ones I had been writing for the women’s page of the magazine Sambad. The story I had chosen, ‘Madhabir Jiban Katha’ (Madhabi’s Story), written in the austere sadhu-bhasha dialect of Bengali, was the best of the bunch, and I was supposed to go up on stage almost at the end right before the invited guests. But the moment I was on stage something terrible had happened. The audience had started shouting as none of them wished to listen to me; unable to continue in the ensuing chaos I was forced to go off the stage after reading only a few lines. I never managed to find out why the crowd had gotten so annoyed—whether it was simply because they disliked me or because they had been more eager to listen to the special guests. Whatever it was, I did not have the guts to meet Afzal or MHI that night.

  After that incident whenever I felt the insane urge to barge into Matra and speak to Afzal I would remind myself of the embarrassing fiasco that had transpired. I had gone to Matra on only one occasion—not to meet Afzal but to see MHI. This was just before MHI and I were scheduled to go to India. MHI’s afternoons were usually spent at addas in Matra and he had asked me to meet him there. Afzal could have turned me away that day saying MHI was not there but instead he had welcomed me in and invited me to his office. We had tea and spoke at length about advertisements, plays and novels, and he had even gifted me a fat English novel. On my way out he had escorted me to the door and asked me to visit again. I was not expecting this sort of a welcome and for the rest of the day a balmy frisson of joy had kept me enveloped within its embrace.

  In the aftermath of the book fair incident and its fallout I ran into Afzal at Khoka’s, where both of us had been invited for dinner. I received a sudden call in the evening from Khoka; his wife was going to be cooking and I had to go over to his place for dinner. I simply picked out a sari and took a rickshaw to Khoka’s. When I entered his place I was decidedly dishevelled and quite homely since I had assumed I was the only one he had called over. But the biggest surprise was waiting for me in the form of Afzal and his wife! I learnt they had gotten married recently and hence he had brought her along. Despite this new development I found my fascination for him not dimming one bit; I only had to work harder through the evening to conceal it and try and have a normal, courteous conversation. I was not the old Taslima who had had to walk off stage because the public had shouted her off; I was a popular writer and an Ananda Puraskar winner. However, that evening for me was not about my pride—when a person you admire appears in front of you pride can be very difficult to cling on to.

  People who inhabit one’s dreams are best left right there. They get all ragged and filthy if one tries to reach for them. Rather, dreams ought to forever remain out of reach and thus stay pure and unsullied. That way one can bring one’s dreams out on occasion—like a kite one flies in the sky, for instance—without running the risk of losing one’s grasp on things. It is a safe way to be, to carefully protect the little joys against the tyranny of reality. It is the most certain way of making sure one’s dreams remain eternal. That is what I used to do with my desires, keep them away from all the sorrow and the pain, the darkness that overshadowed my life.

  Instead, I let myself get sullied. I slept with other men because bodies have their own demands that need to be fulfilled. The first person I had ever slept with was R, after him there was MHI, NM and MM. The games I had played with them were pleasurable to me, but at the end of the day it was still their pleasure that had been paramount. I had spent three nights in Calcutta with Sharif too in an odd fling. While we were both in Calcutta, one evening he had come over and told me the story of his life. The entire night we had spoken about his love affair, his marriage, the subsequent break-up, and how loneliness was slowly beginning to choke him to death. He had been drinking while speaking and sometime around dawn when the alcohol had run out he had turned to me. I did not turn him down, not because I could not say no, but because I did not see any reason in doing so. Sharif was not in love with me, he had only been making love to another upcoming poet.

  Of course the body is crucial, but it cannot be the last word when it comes to desire, can it? It is a little like playing the flute. Unless you are in love with the flute will it be possible to play it for long? Sharif was very happy with my Ananda Puraskar but I had also noticed a flicker of envy in his gaze. After the ceremony he had remarked how I had used the word ‘sexual’ too much in my speech; he had immediately clarified that it was not his own observation but something he had overheard people discuss. Unless he too had felt the same why had he made it a point to mention it to me?

  Sharif wished to keep sex confined to the secrecy of the night, and he was willing to approach a woman with his sad story to have her feel kindly towards him. He was willing to sleep with her but any mention of anything ‘sexual’ in public, even in a non-personal context, was anathema to him. Most Muslim ghotis hold a special place in their heart for the Muslim metropolis of Dhaka. On his trip to Dhaka, Sharif stayed at my place and though I could not accompany him, he went out to see the city on his own and to visit friends and acquaintances. None of his stories had the same effect on me any more, especially because I hardly had any time for them. He was staying at home, taking showers, eating and going out only to return late. Though there was nothing lacking in hospitality on my side, there was definitely a certain amount of coldness. If Sharif had assumed I was going to be as easily available as before then my firm refusal to resume a physical relationship dealt a hard blow to the notion. Because of my early shift at Mitford there was no way for me to know when he returned to go to sleep in Milan’s room, and throughout the day I had no time either. Calcutta and Dhaka were not the same places—in Calcutta I was usually on holiday while in Dhaka I had a clogged schedule.

  Besides, even though there were no men in my life that did not mean that I was going to find solace with just about anyone. My body was used to going without a man’s touch for years and I was steadfast in my decision to no longer compromise on my emotions for the sake of sex. Letting a few overeager sperms get me pregnant, only for NM to come and assume it was his responsibility and make him help me get an abortion—perhaps it would have been the perfect revenge on NM, but it would have done very little good for my body and heart. Sharif told me I had changed. It was true, I had changed a little; it was only fair that it should have happened since I had fallen for K by then.

  ~

  Even though I was convinced that I was never going to fall in love with someone again, nor was I going to link my life with another’s, I did end up getting involved with someone and that too quite deliberately. I had assumed I was going to spend the rest of my life with my family, my job, my literary and cultural engagements, and no man needed to be part of that. However, one fine day I met this startlingly beautiful young man who I could not st
op staring at, my eyes straying quite involuntarily to his wide frame again and again, to his big beautiful eyes, his aquiline nose, his rosy cheeks and his beguiling smile. The hungry glances that men usually cast at women—that was how I looked at K’s beauty.