Jorasanko

by Aruna Chakravarti

  Though Swarna was Jyotirindra’s favourite sister, Kadambari had never felt very comfortable with her. Like Jnanada, Swarna tended to monopolize her husband and keep her out of their conversation. Kadambari also knew that the two disapproved of her and that Satyendra agreed with them. Jyoti deserved far better, they felt, and had brought a number of proposals from wealthy, sophisticated families. But Debendranath had turned them down. They were neither Pirali nor Brahmo and he wouldn’t compromise his principles. For some reason, Swarna, even more than Jnanada, held this against Kadambari and was quite cold and distant with her. Still, Kadambari welcomed her sister-in-law, helped her to settle in and tried to draw her children to her. But here she found herself up against a wall.

  Swarna’s children, like her mother’s before her, were starved of her love. She kept them at a distance, believing her duty to be done as soon as the act of giving birth was over. After that the wet nurses and maids could take over. In this, she was a marked contrast to Jnanadanandini who was an anxious and overprotective mother. Swarna, despite her admiration for the latter, saw herself in a different light. She wasn’t only a wife, mother and homemaker like her sister-in-law; she was a writer first and everything else afterwards.

  Every morning, after her bath and breakfast, Swarna sat down to write at a table by the window overlooking the terrace, and did not leave it till the evening shadows gathered and the children of the house came up to play. This was the only time of the day that she saw her children. Or, rather, she didn’t see them for she was still writing. It was they who saw her. From afar. A woman of surpassing beauty with a face as flawless as though moulded in wax. And, like a wax face, it was impeccably regular, exquisitely delicate and totally without expression.

  Hiranmayi and Jyotsnanath were beautiful like their mother and, hence, Sarada Sundari’s favourites. Sarada had a number of grandchildren but she was very selective about the ones she wanted to pet and pamper. And this she did unselfconsciously and unashamedly. She sent for Swarna’s two older ones often, kissed and caressed them and popped sweets into their mouths. In turn, they became very fond of their grandmother particularly Hiranmayi who spent many hours with her, running about her rooms, prattling, and playing with the dolls that had once belonged to her aunt Barnakumari.

  The youngest, Sarala, was not as pretty as her siblings. She was darker and had masses of thick unruly hair that fell over her eyes and brow, giving her face a perpetual scowl. This child was left, by both mother and grandmother, to the tender mercies of her maid Mangala who was a loving but capricious guardian. She fought with the other servants and bullied the best toys and sweets out of them for her own charge. But she slapped her and pinched her mercilessly whenever the whim took her. Little Sarala often went around with the mark of Mangala’s hard bony hand on her cheek and her tiny arms spotted with bruises. But no one in the house, least of all her parents, noticed them or demanded an explanation from Mangala.

  Once, Hiranmayi, who liked to play the bossy older sister, got hold of a pair of scissors. ‘Your hair is too long and falls all over your eyes,’ she told Sarala. ‘I’m going to cut it off.’ Sarala screamed and tried to run away but this turned into a game. The other children laughed and jeered and held her down while Hiranmayi snipped away at the thick resistant locks till they were all gone. Sarala rose from her scattered hair, looking like a shorn Medusa, and went weeping to her parents. But they, without bothering to hear her out or make any other enquiries, scolded her severely and punished her by stopping her evening outings with her parents and siblings for a whole week. The real culprit, Hiranmayi, went out each evening, all dolled up, cocking a snook at her little sister who had to stay at home.

  Kadambari saw all this and it shocked and pained her. But she stood too much in awe of her sister-in-law to protest or teach her her duty. She tried to reach out to the child but, for some strange reason, Sarala avoided her. She felt more secure with her tormenter Mangala and followed her like a shadow.

  The evening jaunts, mostly drives in the park, were initiated by Jnanadanandini who came to Jorasanko, with her husband and children, soon after Swarna’s arrival. Swarna was the only one who emulated her. It took a lot of courage. There was simmering discontent among the older women and the younger ones sniggered and passed comments. Snatches of whispered conversation containing phrases like biliti mem and laat saheb er bibi were constantly coming to their ears. But nothing daunted them, especially Jnanada, and when the other children of the house were taken along too, the whispers died down.

  Though everything Jnanadanandini did invited criticism, one of her actions pleased and excited the women of the abarodh. She had lately become interested in photography and had taken lessons from an Englishman called Bourne Shepherd. One day she sent for him with a commission to take photographs of all the women of Jorasanko. Sarada resisted, at first, but after a little persuasion, rose from her bed and allowed her maids to drape on her a purple Varanasi silk, closely woven with slanting slats of pure gold – a sari she hadn’t worn in twenty years. But, overriding the objections of the younger women, she insisted on wrapping over it a jamawar shawl.

  One morning, a few months later, Sarada stood before her iron chest, looking for an aigrette she had worn as a little girl and which she wished to give to Hiranmayi, when the latter stole up behind her, gave her sari a violent pull and shrieked ‘Hoo-o-o-o’. It was a game the two played often with Sarada pretending to be very frightened and crying ‘Arre Arre! What’s this? Bhoot! Bhoot!’ But this time, Sarada, intent on her search, was truly startled and the tug at her sari threw her off balance. The chest shook with the sudden movement, and the heavy iron lid fell on her hand, squashing one finger to a pulp. Sarada screamed, not in pretended terror but in real pain, and the women of the house came running to her. All the home remedies were tried. Hot and cold compresses, applications of lime and turmeric and dabs of iodine from the bottle Kadambari ran and fetched from her room. But nothing helped. The pain was so intense that Sarada, who had borne the travails of childbirth year after year without uttering a sound, now wept like a child.

  When the news reached the baar mahal, her sons came rushing to her. ‘We must send for Dr Haldar immediately,’ Hemendranath said. ‘And we must inform Babamoshai.’

  But Sarada shook her head. ‘There’s no need to inform your father,’ she said. ‘He has just started on his journey and would not like to turn back. And I don’t want a doctor. Send for the kobiraj.’ The kobiraj came. Makar-a-dhwaj, considered the elixir of life, was administered along with other draughts and potions. Poultices were applied according to his specifications. But everything was ineffective. Sarada developed a high fever, and the pain spread over the next few days, from her hand up her whole arm, reaching the shoulder. The kobiraj, seeing that his treatment wasn’t working, suggested that they send for their family physician, Dr Neelmadhav Haldar. But neither Dr Haldar nor the other allopaths and homeopaths, who came and went, could do anything that was of the slightest help. Sarada’s fever rose higher. The hand swelled and stank and the arm went numb except, from time to time, when it felt as though it was being jabbed with red-hot needles. She became so weak her head swam whenever she opened her eyes, And, worst of all, she started retching and vomiting and refusing food.

  Now, an alarmed Hemendranath sent for Dr Mahendralal Sarkar. Mahendralal was Satyendranath’s friend from Presidency College and had visited the house in Jorasanko often in his student days. He had been a solemn youth, plump and brown as an owl, and so studious – his friends had teased him and nicknamed him Egghead. However, all the hard work of the past was raking in dividends now. He was the most reputed native doctor of the city and charged sixteen rupees a visit. He was also the roughest tongued. People feared him but sent for him, all the same, for it was rumoured that he was the celestial physician, Dhanwantari, in human form and could bring the dead to life.

  Sarada, for all her agony, hadn’t given up the rules of the abarodh and insisted on treatment witho
ut a proper examination. She lay in bed, face hidden by her ghumta, while her sons and maids described her symptoms and answered the doctors’ questions. If any of them insisted on seeing the hand, it was held out through a discreet opening in the mosquito net.

  But Mahendralal laughed uproariously at this arrangement. ‘From what I hear, you’ve got your hand in a fine state of gangrene, Ma!’ he said, in a booming voice, before even looking at it. ‘You’ll need an operation. And it will be performed in the Medical College by an English surgeon. What will you do then? Will you carry your mosquito net to the operation theatre?’ Commanding the maid to remove the offending article, he took Sarada’s hand gently in his. A hand that had once been as white and delicate as a lily was now a swollen, shapeless mass of purple flesh. ‘Tck! Tck!’ Mahendralal clicked his tongue. Turning to Hemendranath, he said caustically, ‘You and your brothers have sent her halfway to the burning ghat already. Why did you give me a call now? You could have waited a few more days and invited me to the shraddha.’ Ignoring Hemendra’s scowl of anger and embarrassment, he added, ‘Fix an appointment with Dr Partridge at once. Your mother will need a grafting operation. And, oh yes, make arrangements for a donor.’

  That night, Hemendra sent a telegram, in his eldest brother Dwijendranath’s name, to Dalhousie where their father was staying. It had a long text and contained details of Sarada’s condition and a fervent plea to him to come home before the operation. But Debendranath did not come…

  Jyotirindranath came rushing back from Shilaidaha as soon as the news reached him. ‘How is Ma?’ he asked Kadambari the moment he entered his apartments.

  ‘Not well.’ Kadambari shook her head. ‘The surgeon is going to cut off a portion of her hand. He says it has gone septic and, if the operation is delayed, the whole arm will rot away. He’ll attach another piece of flesh which will grow and gradually become part of her hand.’

  ‘Where is the flesh to come from?’

  ‘He said that, ideally, it should come from her own body. But she’s too weak to sustain two operations. She’ll need a donor.’

  ‘I’ll be the donor.’

  ‘It’s all arranged. Sejo Thakur will give a piece of flesh from his upper arm.’

  Jyotirindra bathed and changed his sweaty travel-stained clothes for fresh ones before going, first to his brother’s, then to his mother’s room. He was shocked to see her condition. It was only a few weeks since he had left Jorasanko, but in that short time, her vast body had shrunk to half its size and her skin hung in folds from her neck and arms. There were marks of tears on her cheeks. Jyotirindra sat on the bed beside her and put a hand on her brow. It was burning with fever. Sarada opened her eyes at his touch and smiled at her son. ‘Silly boy,’ she said, the words coming thick and slurred from her throat, ‘why do you cry?’

  Jyotirindra took off his glasses, misted over with tears, and wiped them on his dhuti. ‘You’ll be well soon, Ma,’ he said, his voice trembling a little. ‘It’s a minor surgery and Dr Partridge is very eminent. He has many degrees. He’s an MD and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons…’

  ‘He may have a hundred degrees,’ Sarada muttered sullenly. ‘But why should I let him use his knives on me? The time has come for me to go. I feel it in my bones. But Hemendra won’t listen. He insists that I have the operation.’

  ‘Sejo dada is right. Of course you must have the operation.’

  ‘To be touched by a firingee in the sunset of my life! To suffer the indignity of going to a hospital and receiving water from the hands of lower castes! Your father would never have allowed it.’

  Jyotirindra bit his lip.

  ‘All I want,’ Sarada continued, ‘is to take the dust of my husband’s feet and die in my own bed. In the house he brought me to. In which I’ve lived since I was a child.’

  ‘Why do you talk of dying? You’ll be with us another twenty years. Cheer up, Ma. Another telegram has gone to Babamoshai. He’ll be here soon.’

  Sarada sighed and closed her eyes. Tears gathered in the sunken sockets and trickled down her cheeks.

  Leaving his mother’s room, Jyotirindra came to his own to see Kadambari kneeling on the floor, his portmanteau open before her. She was sorting through his clothes some of which lay in neat piles on the bed and some scattered around her. She had taken out the pictures he had painted and was examining them closely. They were rural scenes, mostly riverscapes, interspersed with a few human figures. Jyotirindra dropped down beside her and picked up a sketch.

  ‘Do you know who this is?’ he asked his wife.

  ‘No.’ Kadambari peered at the drawing. It was that of a man in a loose robe and hair swept up in a knot on top of his head. His face was badly pitted and one eye was shrunk and shut. He held an ektara in his hands. ‘He looks like a baul,’ she said.

  ‘He is the famous Lalan Fakir. He has an akhra in Chheurhia village, which falls within our estates. Do you know how old he is?’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘A hundred.’

  ‘Jah! No one lives to be a hundred.’

  ‘The man’s a living miracle. He’s completely unlettered. Yet he composes songs so rich in poetry and of such complex philosophy that learned men take a while to understand them. And you know what? When he was sixteen he was struck with smallpox while on a pilgrimage to Puri. His fellow travellers thought he was dead and threw his body in the Ganga. A Muslim woman saved him and nursed him back to health. And he has lived to be a hundred years old!’

  ‘Why was a Muslim fakir going on a pilgrimage to Puri?’

  ‘He was born a Hindu but was cast out by his family and community because he had lived among Muslims and eaten with them. Have you ever thought, Natun Bou, of how unpredictable life is? Lalan was left for dead and he’s been alive for a century. Ma was telling me, just now, that she wants to die before being touched by a firingee. But who knows what destiny has in store for her! She may live to be a hundred if the operation is performed. She may die tomorrow if it isn’t.’

  Kadambari nodded. Bringing her palms together she touched them to her forehead. ‘May God grant Ma a hundred years,’ she said. ‘To be touched by a Muslim or a firingee… what difference does it make? Life is a gift from God. No one must throw it away.’ Her voice was solemn and thoughtful. Suddenly it changed; became bright and eager. ‘Did you hear him sing? Did Robi? Where did you see him? How did you manage to paint him?’

  ‘Easy. Easy.’ Jyotirindra laughed. ‘I’ll tell you the whole story. When I came to know that Lalan Mian lived on our estates I sent a message inviting him to the Kuthi bari. He thought Babamoshai had sent for him to chastise him and make him pay up his taxes. When he saw me he exclaimed, “Arre! I had heard our zamindar was an elderly man of portly frame and stern aspect. But I behold, before my eyes, Ma Durga’s Kartik! A youth slender and beautiful with a voice like a bell. Do you sing, Rajamoshai?” “I’m no Rajamoshai,” I said. “I’m the zamindar’s fifth son. I do sing a little, but my intention in sending for you was to hear you. And paint a portrait of yours, perhaps, if you have no objection.” Without a word, he picked up his ektara and sang, song after song, in a voice so rich and booming that a crowd collected in a few minutes. I sent a servant to fetch Robi who was out on a ramble by the river. But he was not to be found. After Lalan put away his ektara, I brought out my paints and easel and painted this portrait.’

  ‘Do you remember anything he sang?’

  ‘Most of his songs are in a dialect quite difficult to follow. The ideas are also rather abstruse. There were only one or two that I could understand fully. I tried to hum them along with him.’ Clearing his throat Jyotirindra sang: Jaat gelo jaat gelo bole…

  What a queer factory of sounds this is!

  Churning out a chorus of ‘I’ve lost my caste, I’ve lost my caste!’

  Would you like to tell me, friend?

  What caste were you when you were born?

  What caste you’ll claim when you’re a corpse?

  ‘There w
as some more but I don’t remember it.’

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ Kadambari’s eyes shone. ‘You must sing this song to Ma. It will make her feel better about being touched by a firingee. It’s such a pity Robi couldn’t hear Lalan Fakir. Is it possible to get the songs copied? I would like to read them.’

  ‘Lalan can’t read or write. He’s an inspired singer and sings only when the muse is on him. No one has kept a record, except in the last few years when a disciple started taking down the songs as they emerged from his lips. The man accompanied him to the Kuthi bari.’

  ‘Can’t we get hold of the man and request him to let us copy the songs?’

  ‘I doubt it. Lalan Mian’s disciples are very possessive. But I’ll try when I’m there next.’

  Sarada had her operation, an excruciatingly painful one, performed without anaesthesia. The doctors said it was successful, which was true, for the fever left her in a few days and the pain in her arm subsided. Weeks later, when the bandages were removed, the swelling had gone but the colour of the hand had changed. It was a greenish yellow with brown streaks and patches. It also looked somewhat deformed and had lost its flexibility. But though she was free from pain, Sarada’s spirits remained low. She wept often and wished for death. Her children tried to cheer her up in all the ways they knew but nothing seemed to work. She, who had loved good food, cards and gossip, lost interest in all three. She lay on her bed, hour after hour, staring at the beams on the ceiling, rejecting every diversion she was offered. Even when her favourite grandchild Hiranmayi came to her, she smiled vaguely and had nothing to say.