Years later, Neelkamal Mukhopadhyay, who had made considerable effort to trace his runaway son, came to know that he was living under the protection of the Rais of Dakshindihi. Undertaking the long journey from Krishnanagar, he arrived at his destination with the intention of thanking his son’s benefactor and taking the boy home. But, on arriving in Dakshindihi, he was informed that Abhayacharan had married the master’s daughter and was living in the house as a ghar jamai.
The Rais were Pirali Brahmins, hated and stigmatized by the Kulins. What Neelkamal had feared most had come to pass. This was a trick the wily Piralis had been playing for centuries – luring Kulin youths with promises of wealth and education, marrying them to their sisters and daughters, and keeping them as live-in sons-in-law.
Reeling under the insult, Neelkamal went back the way he had come. But, before he went, he tore his sacred thread in full view of the villagers and cursed his son. ‘May your line perish!’ he cried, tears pouring from his eyes. ‘May no one live to bear your name.’
That night, Abhayacharan said to his wife, ‘Guru Thakur was here this morning. He said it was time we arranged a marriage for Genu.’ Nistarini raised the wick of the lamp and looked up. She was a plump pretty woman in her early twenties, easygoing and indolent. She had seen hard times when her husband had suddenly decided to leave her father’s protection and strike out on his own. She had supported his resolve and worked her fingers to the bone. But now she left all the housework to her sister-in-law and allowed her husband to have his way in everything. It was so much easier. However, she always made it a point to contradict him first and agree with him afterwards.
‘A marriage for Genu!’ she exclaimed. ‘But she’s only seven. She’s dropped only one milk tooth.’
‘I wish to wed her in December.’ Abhayacharan ignored the implications inherent in the presence or absence of Genu’s milk teeth. ‘To give her away in a gouri-daan. The gods rain blessings on the parents of a gouri.’ He forbore to mention that the rained blessings fell on the father. That the mother received her share only by proxy.
‘A good idea!’ Nistarini agreed at once. ‘But can you find a boy so soon? After all, Genu is not pretty like I was. She has neither my features nor my colouring. She’s the image of her pishi – your sister. Thin! Oh so thin!’
‘You should feed her better.’
‘Don’t I? I give her… let me see – a big bowl of milk with her muri in the mornings. And mohanbhog whenever she asks for it. A broth of strengthening singi or magur fish with her rice in the afternoon. And in the evening I—’
‘We’ll find a boy for her – never fear,’ Abhayacharan stemmed the flow adroitly. ‘She’ll make a brilliant match – so her horoscope says. She has all the planets on her side.’
‘Does she?’ Nistarini shook her head mournfully. ‘I doubt it. If she’s so lucky why doesn’t she have a brother? Seven years and no one has followed her to claim my womb. No son to carry your name forward.’ Nistarini sniffed and touched the edge of her sari to her eyes.
‘You always go off the track.’ Abhayacharan lost his temper. ‘Are we discussing our daughter’s marriage or mooning over unborn sons?’
‘Discussing our daughter’s marriage of course,’ Nistarini agreed at once. Then, suddenly remembering, she added, ‘Soi Ma was telling me that the Tagore family of Kolkata is looking for a bride for one of their sons. They’ve sent a serving woman with the family barber to find a suitable Pirali girl from these parts. They are in Dakshindihi now but will come to Narendrapur in a few days.’
‘Which Tagore family? The Pathuriaghata Tagore or the Jorasanko Tagore?’
‘That I can’t say. But the boy, I hear, is sixteen years old. They must be looking for an older girl. At least nine or ten. Our Genu is too young.’
‘Nine years is a good age difference,’ Abhayacharan said firmly. ‘Tell your Soi Ma to let us know as soon as the woman comes to our village. I’d like her to see my daughter.’
‘But the Thakurs, Soi Ma says, are very wealthy. They have mansions in Kolkata and many estates. They’ll want a rich zamindar’s daughter for their son. Why should they even look at Genu? Besides, she isn’t even pretty.’
‘Let me know as soon as the woman comes.’ Abhayacharan turned over on his side and went to sleep.
The serving woman deputed by Sarada Sundari, the mistress of the Tagore mansion of Jorasanko to find a suitable bride for her second son, arrived the following week and the first house she visited was Abhayacharan’s. Her appearance caused quite a flutter, not only in the house but the entire village. Women and children swarmed into the yard, Nistarini’s Soi Ma pushing and elbowing her way to the front as befitted one who had arranged it all. The great lady herself, the one who would see the girl and deliver her verdict, sat in state, legs spread out before her, on the mat Genu’s aunt had hurriedly unrolled for her. That she worked for a wealthy family was obvious from the mounds of flesh she carried on her person and the fine black-bordered sari and thick gold chain she wore. Massaging her cracked, ungainly feet with loving hands, she entertained her audience with an account of the houses she had visited, the royal treatment she had received, the girls she had liked somewhat, the girls she had rejected outright. The Tagores were a great family and their boys very handsome, she repeated over and over again, while her eyes held a clear warning. The girl had better be good looking or else…
Genu was brought to her at godhuli, the hour between sunset and nightfall considered appropriate for bride viewings for the light then, though clear, is soft and velvety and sheds a golden glow over the skin. Wrapped in several folds of a red and gold sari, with her mother’s jewels hanging loose and crooked from her thin neck and arms, she was led by her aunt to the woman who would decide her fate. Genu had been warned that a great lady had arrived from Kolkata to see her and she had to be on her best behaviour. She had imagined a wondrous beauty like the duo rani of her aunt’s fairy tales with a face like a lotus, a skin that gleamed like gold; one who dropped rubies from her lips when she smiled and pearls from her eyes when she wept. Instead, she saw an enormously fat woman, black as coal, with arms like bolsters and cheeks bulging with paan. Genu burst into a giggle, displaying a row of pearly white teeth with a gap in the middle. The woman smiled and beckoned. ‘Come, Ma,’ she said, patting the mat. ‘Come and sit by me.’
Turning the girl’s face this way and that, Pyari Dasi inspected its contours carefully. Next she unbound her hair and checked its length and texture. Then, after examining her back and the little hands and alta-lined feet, she commanded, ‘Let me see you walk.’ The feat accomplished, she drew the child into her ample lap and turned to Nistarini. ‘Your daughter may not have inherited your looks,’ she said, ‘but she has promise of another kind. Infinite promise. She’ll be rated as a great beauty some day.’ Turning a yard full of women into statues, she opened the bundle she had brought with her and took out a large wooden box. ‘See what Ginni Ma has sent for you, child,’ she said, lifting the lid. Two large dolls nestled side by side – one a cloth and clay Indian doll in a striped sari and nose drop and the other a mem putul made of gutta percha – a magnificent creation in hoop skirts, satin shoes and a cunning little hat with a feather in it.
‘Are they for me?’ Genu cried out in amazement.
‘There’s more.’ The box had two compartments one on top of another. In the lower space, Genu found a treasure trove. Everything that would delight a little girl’s heart was there. Miniature kitchen sets in stone and brass from Kashi, brightly coloured clay fruits from Krishnanagar, a clutch of glass bangles, loops of ribbon, bead necklaces and a tiny key ring with real keys hanging from it.
‘The master’s eldest daughter, our bado didimoni, chose the presents and packed the box with her own hands. Do you like them, child?’
Genu was too overwhelmed to reply but her glowing eyes spoke volumes. Now the woman rummaged in her bundle and brought out a piece of paper. ‘This has Karta Babu’s name and address in i
t,’ she said, handing it to Nistarini. ‘Tell your husband to write to him.’
She sat with the women for an hour after that, regaling them with stories of the great house in which she worked, the high position she held in it and the respect she commanded. They heard about her mother who had chosen the present mistress and been her khaas dasi ever since she had come into the house as a six-year-old bride. Sarada Sundari, she said, was rightly named, for she had a complexion as fair and luminous as autumn light. All her children had her colouring. Her beauty had been so great even at the age of six that it had tempted her paternal uncle to run off with her, secretly, to Kolkata, where Dwarkanath Tagore, he had heard, was looking for a beautiful girl for his eldest son. The girl’s mother had been bathing in the village pond when the news was brought to her. Rushing home to find her daughter gone, she had thrown herself under the shaddock tree in the yard and rolled in the dust, weeping bitterly. Broken by her brother-in-law’s treachery and the loss of her daughter, she had wept herself blind and died shortly afterwards.
A mournful cry rose from the women assembled in the yard. The little girls, shocked by the cruel tale they had just heard, crept closer to their mothers. But Genu, immersed in her newly acquired treasures, hadn’t heard a word.
1823–1846
I
The pandits were nonplussed. They had heard that Digambari was a woman of great force of character and strength of mind. But this was not something they had expected to be called upon to debate.
Dwarkanath had left the mansion built by his grandfather Neelmoni Tagore and moved with his family into the larger, grander one he had constructed adjacent to it. Though the two houses were looked upon as one and the inmates had free access to both, with the aid of a common passage, the new house had a distinctive character. It came to be known as Baithak Khana Bari owing to the lavish entertainments it saw. Here, Dwarkanath devised the most elegant balls and banquets for his British and native counterparts in which the serving of meat, the free flow of wine and other liquor, and the diversions provided by singing and dancing girls became necessary adjuncts.
Digambari was deeply offended by what she considered irreligious behaviour, under her own roof, yet borne it with stoic fortitude. But, when Dwarkanath began imbibing these practices in his own life, when he started drinking and eating all manner of flesh and fowl, she took a decision. Sending for all the erudite pandits of the city she stood behind the shutters that separated the women’s wing from that of the men, and, in a voice as compelling as a bell, asked a question: Where does a woman’s duty lie? In cleaving to her husband even if he has parted ways with dharma? Or in rejecting him?
This was, indeed, a dilemma. Serving a husband was a woman’s foremost duty according to the Shastras. But, in touching a mlechha, a Hindu was liable to lose caste. What advice should they give her? To be a good wife or a good Hindu? Were not the two synonymous?
After conferring for several hours they gave her their decision. She should, they pronounced solemnly, continue to serve her husband, for was not a husband a woman’s highest lord and master? She must take care of his needs, down to the finest detail, but she should save herself from the pollution of his touch. She should share his life, in all its aspects, but not his bed.
Digambari heard their mandate and made it her own. Her husband, leonine personality though he was, respected and feared her as he did no other man or woman. Meekly accepting her decision, he moved out of her apartments and shifted his entertainments to his opulent newly constructed villa in Belgachhia. Gradually, he started living there for long periods with an entourage of servants, maids and khansamas. Digambari saw to his comforts, as she had always done, but a chance touch spelled a purification bath for her – be it any time of the day or night. And, thus, she found herself trying to cope with the strangest of situations. She was a wife yet not a wife. As a chaste Hindu woman she was required to revere her husband as a God. Yet she had to treat him like an outcaste.
Dwarkanath, who had never had much respect for the priesthood, hardened his stance against them. Though he allowed Digambari to have her way, his heart swelled with pain and indignation against her, for obeying them so blindly and implicitly. As the years passed, she grew more and more cautious in her interactions with him. Her periods of jap and prayer grew longer, her baths more frequent, and her lifestyle, austere as it already was, became harsh to the point of asceticism. Husband and wife were now lodged in two opposite camps and, both being strong and unyielding, they set their feet firmly on divergent paths. Dwarkanath started withdrawing, physically and mentally, from the house in Jorasanko which his wife had rendered too holy for his comfort and threw himself, heart and soul, into his work. The inspection of his estates, his factories and shipyards kept him out of Kolkata for long periods, but when in the city he was determined to enjoy its pleasures to the full. Dwarkanath’s days were spent in hard, all-absorbing work; his evenings in every kind of luxury and indulgence.
Digambari neither complained about Dwarkanath’s absence from the house nor upbraided him for it. Whenever he was there and enquired after her, he was told she was in the puja room. He knew why. Driven by an urge to atone for her husband’s sins, she had chosen a life of severe penance for herself. The thought saddened him. Her withdrawal from all the joys of life, her frugal meals and many fasts, her interminable hours of prayer, going on till late into the night, took their toll. She aged prematurely and her great beauty faded. Her skin, once clear and luminous as moonlight, turned pale and lifeless. There were blue shadows under her eyes now and her receding hairline had turned her forehead into a broad expanse on which the round of sindoor sat like an aberration. She looked, and the thought filled him with desolation, more like a widow than a wife. But it stung him too. ‘Let her treat me like a pariah if that gives her comfort,’ he thought angrily, ‘but why is she torturing herself? To make me feel guilty? If so, she doesn’t know her husband. I have done no wrong and I shall feel no guilt.’
Dwarkanath’s life had reached its zenith. He had wealth and power such as most men only dream of. He could give his wife anything her heart desired. He could commission it from the ends of the earth if the need arose. But she wanted nothing from him. He tried his best not to think of her. But the past kept washing over him in waves. He remembered the time, a month after the wedding, when he had come into his apartments late at night to see his infant bride sitting on a mat, her back to the wall, head nodding on her chest.
‘Why! What are you doing on the floor?’ he exclaimed. ‘Why aren’t you asleep?’
Digambari rubbed her eyes and sat up. Her face puckered at the sight of her husband and she pushed out her lower lip, pink and moist as a pomegranate seed. ‘I can’t walk to the bed,’ she said, pointing to her feet; tiny milk white feet, freshly lined with alta.
‘But the alta dasi must have left you hours ago,’ he said, puzzled. ‘It has surely dried by now.’
‘It hasn’t, it hasn’t.’ Suddenly she burst into tears. ‘Pick me up and carry me to the bed,’ she cried out piteously, ‘or I’ll have to sit here all night.’
‘Sh… sh…!’ The fifteen-year-old bridegroom looked round him in alarm, ‘Someone will hear you. I’ll carry you. Did I say I wouldn’t?’ He had swept her up in his strong, young arms and laid her on the bed upon which she had turned over on her side and promptly gone to sleep.
Then there was the time when ten-year-old Digambari had taken off her anklets, at the dead of night, and tiptoed to the head of the stairs, where he stood waiting for her. How her eyes had sparkled! She had so much spirit then. Such a zest for life! Digambari at thirteen, beautiful and voluptuous as an apsara… they had spent a whole night together, once, on the roof. She had worn a midnight blue baluchari and her green beetle teep, between brows, arched and shapely as the wings of a bird in flight, had glittered in the moonlight. They had romped, hand in hand, up and down the vast terrace of the ancestral house. Later, he had sat with her head in his lap and he had sung to h
er. The fast-paced dhrupad songs he loved.
A year later: Digambari in the first flush of motherhood with Deba in her lap, gazing on her firstborn with wonder-laden eyes. They had had such a good life together! She had borne him five sons and even in the death of their second, the infant Narendra, she had clung to him, only him, for comfort. Not good spouses only, they had been good friends. Until she had put her trust in a bunch of scheming priests who had incited her against him…
Dwarkanath found the sight of Digambari, as she was these days, so painful that he preferred to cling to his memories of the past. He started doing another strange thing. Whenever the whim took him, he sent for the best and most expensive jewellers of the city, looked over their selections and picked out the finest pieces with the hawk-like eye for detail that he brought to bear on all his affairs. Dwarkanath had a highly aesthetic temperament and a near sensuous love of jewels. In his leisure hours, he would open the walnut case in which he kept them, pass his fingers over the flawless gems and imagine them on Digambari. The diamond collar on her long white neck, the armlets studded with Burmese rubies, each the size of a pigeon’s egg, on her exquisitely moulded arms, and the emerald and diamond tiara resting on the blue black mass of her hair.
One day, a week before his eldest son Debendranath’s wedding, Dwarkanath’s chaise and four came clattering up the drive of Baithak Khana Bari. Within minutes, he was seen striding impetuously down the gallery of the abarodh, the case of jewels tucked under his arm. Digambari heard of his arrival and came out of the puja room, the copper vessel of Ganga jal in her hand. Sprinkling a few drops on him, as was usual with her, she asked anxiously, ‘You here? At this hour? Is anything wrong?’
At the sound of her voice, all the fire went out of him. Dwarkanath Tagore, who had achieved the unachievable, whom even the British feared and respected, was stumped for words. He held the box out to her, a dumb-dog plea in his eyes. But Digambari recoiled from it as though it were a vile thing. ‘What is it?’ she asked, her voice sharp with suspicion, her brow wrinkling in distaste. Dwarkanath found his voice with an effort and he blurted out the first thing that came to his head. ‘For… for… our daughter-in-law,’ he mumbled. Digambari’s brow smoothened but she didn’t put out her hand. ‘Pyari’r Ma!’ she called out to one of her maids, ‘take the box from Kartamoshai and keep it in my room. Pour some Ganga jal on it first. And tell Hooli to prepare the silver albola with scented tobacco and take it to the men’s wing. Oh! Yes, and tell Manada Mashi to make some almond sherbet.’
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