She had lost track of time. The letter had reached ten days ago and the messenger had returned with Rabindranath’s reply. Yet she kept asking the same question, adding from time to time, ‘Why is he taking so long in coming?’ And once she said, ‘He’ll be here today. I feel it in my bones.’ But her instinct failed her. Her husband did not come. And after that day she stopped asking.
Rabindranath kept in constant touch with Rathi and received reports of his wife’s condition. It was obvious that she wasn’t getting any better. The Bolpur doctors were unable to diagnose her problem and the homeopathic medicines he had sent weren’t helping either. There was only one thing to be done now. She had to be brought from Shantiniketan and treated by the doctors here. He decided to send for her brother, Nagendra, and entrust him with the responsibility of bringing his sick sister and her children.
On the train journey from Bolpur to Kolkata, Mrinalini revived a little. Raising herself on one elbow she scanned the rushing landscape with eager eyes and a little smile on her lips. ‘Look, Sami,’ she called out to her younger son, ‘the paddy stalks are bending over with golden grain. What a harvest the peasants will reap this year! Can you see the fields beyond? The square patches of dark, velvety green? Those are pea greens; they make the most delicious chachhari. I used to wander about in the fields when I was a little girl in Phooltala, and pick the softest, tenderest leaves. Do you remember the fritters Ma used to make with pea shoots, Nagu?’ She turned to her brother. ‘I’ve never eaten such crunchy, mouth-watering fritters like Ma used to make! Oh! look, look. That pond there is covered with lotus. Such huge white flowers! You can hardly see the water. When is Saraswati Puja, Nagu? Be sure to offer some white lotus to Ma Saraswati.’ A few minutes later, her strength ebbed away and she sank back on her pillow.
The party reached Jorasanko in the late afternoon and Mrinalini was taken straight to her new home – Lal Bari. Rabindranath wasn’t there to receive her, he had an important meeting with his publisher, but he came a couple of hours later. She lay covered by a kantha, her back to the door, her eyes looking out of the window into the garden where her children were playing. ‘Chhuti!’ he called out on entering but she neither moved nor spoke. ‘Baap re!’ he exclaimed, dropping down into the chair that stood by her bed. ‘It’s hot! How do you feel, Chhuti?’ Mrinalini did not turn her head. She only inclined it a little. ‘I’m glad,’ Rabindranath said. ‘You had us all so worried. Me and the children. But the worst is over now. I’ve asked a couple of doctors to take a look at you. They’ll have you out of your bed in a jiffy.’
He picked up the palm-leaf fan that lay by her pillow and started waving it over her but she put out her and took it from him. ‘It’s not so hot,’ she murmured.
Her husband smiled. ‘Are you angry with me, Chhuti?’ He waited for an answer, but nothing forthcoming, he added, ‘If you aren’t why are you lying with your back to me?’ Leaning forward, he took his wife’s fevered body in his hands and turned it gently over. And then… he got a shock. Her strong, sturdy frame and full square face had wasted away so greatly, he hardly recognized her. She was only jutting bones and sagging skin. How had this happened? And when? He had seen her just over a month ago. He looked deep into her eyes and saw death lurking in the shadows. His blood froze with fear and he gulped painfully. Again and again he gulped but the hard knot in his throat would not budge. Making a supreme effort, he exclaimed in a loud, unnaturally hearty voice, ‘Well, thank God you’re here at last! Now we can all have some peace. Do you know Satyen is coming home? I sent him a hundred pounds last month. He should be here in a few weeks. We’ll celebrate the phool sajya as soon as he comes. What do you say? I’ll send for Beli and Sarat and we’ll all be together again. In our own house… our own new house.’ But Mrinalini neither spoke nor smiled. She gazed at her husband for a while, then turned over on her side and closed her eyes.
Doctors came and went. The disease was diagnosed as some form of blood poisoning which had been left untreated for a long time and was gradually corroding her organs, one by one. They did all they could. They prescribed medicinal wines and tonics and insisted on her consuming vast quantities of nourishing food for, in her present emaciated state, she had no strength left to fight. But how was one to feed her? She lay on her bed, day and night, in a deathlike stupor, responding to no one, oblivious of everything that went on around her.
Friends and relatives came from far and near to see her, for she was popular with everybody. Her children, little Meera in particular, stood outside her door and called out to her timidly. But she neither spoke nor moved her head. Jnanadanandini came every day. She had consulted with the doctors and taken charge of the patient’s diet. She brought strengthening broths, stewed fruits and jellies and sat, hour after hour, coaxing the sick woman to eat just a little. But Mrinalini, who had feared and respected her sister-in-law all her life, didn’t even look at her now. At times, as though exasperated by Jnanada’s insistence, she would swallow a few spoonfuls of whatever she was trying to feed her. Then, her duty done, she turned over again and closed her eyes.
Once, only once, did Mrinalini show a spark of her old self. And that was the day her father-in-law came to see her. The Maharshi was eighty-six now, and very old and frail. His vast body had shrunk under his fraying jobba, and his face, once heavy-jowled and rubicund, looked shrivelled and white. Swaying and shuffling a little he came and sat on the chair placed by the sick woman’s bed. For the first time since her illness, Mrinalini turned of her own accord and tried to sit up. ‘Na Ma.’ The old man placed a twitching hand on her head. ‘You must take your rest. I’ve only come to say a prayer for you.’ Then, in a weak quavering voice, he began chanting some verses from the Gita: Vasamsi jeernani yatha vihaya / Navani grhnati naro’ parani / Tatha sharirani vihaya jeernanyanyani / Samyati navani dehi. As a man casting off a worn garment dons a new one, so the embodied, casting off a worn body, enters into another that is new.
The high, slightly nasal, voice rose higher and the sparse, white beard quivered as the Maharshi prayed to the Almighty to ensure an untroubled passage into the other world for his daughter-in-law. His supplication over, he rose and, placing both hands on Mrinalini’s head, murmured, ‘May our All-merciful Param Pita be with you on your last journey, my daughter. Into his hands I commend your spirit.’ As he moved towards the door, a faint sweet voice, a voice almost forgotten, floated into the ears of all those who stood in the room, ‘Give me the dust of your feet, Babamoshai.’
Mrinalini died two days later. It was after midnight and Rabindranath was sitting by her bedside, waving a palm-leaf fan over her, when she turned suddenly and looked deep into his eyes.
‘What is it, Chhuti?’ he leaned over her, his heart thumping violently. ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’
The eyes gazed at him. Then a mist fell over them. A shudder passed over her frame and she was gone.
In half an hour the room was full of women. Mrinalini had died a sadhaba. She had left a husband and two healthy sons and, as such, was entitled to a glorious last journey. Her sisters-in-law from No. 5 and No. 6 crowded around her, weeping bitterly and vying with each other to put sindoor in her parting and alta on her feet. Rabindranath stared at them, wordlessly, then rising slowly, walked out of the room. He paced up and down the gallery for a while, then climbed the stairs to the roof.
He had seen something in Mrinalini’s eyes, an expression that lacerated his soul. But he didn’t know what it was. Was it anger? Sorrow? Bewilderment? Or was it… could it be forgiveness? Thoughts crept in and out of his head. Thoughts that had lain dormant within him for a long, long time but were now bent on asserting themselves. They clawed and nibbled at his brain like stubborn mice and wouldn’t be dislodged. He hadn’t been a good husband. He hadn’t given Mrinalini the time and attention that was her due because… because he hadn’t thought it necessary. He had seen sorrow and disappointment in her eyes often enough, but had chosen to disregard them. Even in her last
illness, the one that eventually killed her, he hadn’t gone to her. She had waited for him, day after day, and he hadn’t gone. And she! She had given him everything she had to give. She had kept nothing back.
He looked up at the sky. It was November. That short, elusive season of Hemanta when the firmament is cloaked in mist and the stars seem remote and unreal. That mist fell on his heart now, heavy as stone. Why did it hurt so much? He had never known pain such as this. No, not even when Natun Bouthan died. Then he had felt… what had he felt? He realized, with a shock, that he had felt nothing. Nothing at all. No grief, no sorrow. Only a blank bewilderment. But now the cold gray skeins of pain and guilt closed about his heart, winding tighter and tighter, threatening to choke the very passage of his blood. What would he do without Mrinalini? How would he live? He realized, for the first time, that she was his rock, his anchor. And she had been so for as long as he could remember. Natun Bouthan was only a dream. A beautiful, intangible dream. And because she was a dream she had lived on and on…
A touch on the shoulder made him turn around. Jnanadanandini stood before him. ‘Robi,’ she began. The hand that lay on his shoulder trembled a little and a tiny vein throbbed in one temple but her voice was steady. ‘I have sent Meera and Sami to the house in Store Road. They will stay there for the present. They are too young to see their mother’s last rites.’ Rabindranath stared at her. The proud, haughty lines had fallen away from her face and it looked ravaged with grief. Her head, bowed under the stars, was a sheath of silver. She’s aged, he thought in amazement, I’ve never seen her look so old. And I saw her only yesterday…
Suddenly, her face started working and a paroxysm of sobs, long pent-up, burst out of her. ‘I loved her, Robi,’ she whispered. ‘I was hard with her in the beginning. But that was for her own good. I brought her to this house and I had to make her worthy of you. But I loved her…’
‘You don’t have to explain anything, Mejo Bouthan.’
Jnanada raised her head and looked at him. Her face was streaming with tears. ‘I’m a hard woman, Robi,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘More so with the ones I love. And I loved her… no less than I love Bibi. She was a good girl.’
Silence fell between them. The minutes passed. Then Jnanada wiped her tears and said in an everyday voice. ‘Life won’t be easy without her, Robi. She was your strength though you never knew it. Yet you must go on living… and writing. The world has yet to see your best. And you won’t be alone. I promise you that. I shall be there for you as long as I live.’
Rabindranath nodded. And suddenly a thought came to him: Women like Mrinalini and Mejo Bouthan are the salt of the earth. Without them we cannot survive. The realization came as a shock, for no two women could be more unlike. His lips twisted a little. I’ve written so many stories and created so many women, he thought ruefully, I’ve fleshed them and breathed life into them. I thought I knew all there was to know. Yet… the ones I’ve lived with I never knew. There was so much that was hidden from me.
Turning to Jnanadanandini, he said, ‘You have always been there for me, Mejo Bouthan. For each one of us. You’ve loved us and made us your own since…’
‘Since?’ Jnanada looked up. Her face, tilted to the sky, was eager, curious.
‘Since the day you came to this house – a brown-faced, gap-toothed, troublesome little bride of seven.’
Jnanada threw back her head and laughed. The tears, still streaming from her eyes, laughed with her. Putting up a hand, she wiped them away and said, ‘We must go down now, Robi. There’s a great deal that needs to be done.’
About the Author
Aruna Chakravarti is a retired administrator, academic, creative writer, and translator. Prominent among her ten published books are her translations of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s Srikanta, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Those Days and First Light, and a volume of short stories by fourteen contemporary writers of Bengal. Her first novel, The Inheritors, was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2004. Secret Spaces, an anthology of her own short stories, was published to critical acclaim in 2010. She has contributed widely to national and international journals. She is the recipient of several awards. Among them are the Vaitalik Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Sarat Puraskar.
Author’s Note
It is said that towards the end of the fifteenth century, a Brahmin youth from Piralya village in Jessore fell in love with a Muslim girl, converted to Islam and married her. His name, in the new faith, was Mahmud Tahir but he came to be known as Piralyaee, meaning ‘of Piralya’. In a few years, thanks to the incentives Islam offers its converts and his own initiative, he became the owner of a wealthy pargana named Chengutia and his name found an adequate equivalent in Pir Ali. Having been hounded out of his native village by his family and community, he took a deep delight in robbing Brahmins of their caste and was on the constant lookout for victims.
One day in the month of Ramzan, on a particularly hot and sultry afternoon, Pir Ali’s dewans, two brothers who went by the names of Jaidev and Kamdev, saw him sniffing a lemon and asked him the reason for it.
‘I am observing roza,’ Pir Ali replied with the proud pomposity of the new convert. ‘It allays the thirst a little.’
‘Sarbanash!’ the high-caste Brahmins cried out in one voice. ‘Don’t you know that smelling is half eating? It is written in our shastras. Your roza is no longer valid, Wazir Saheb.’
‘Is that so?’ Pir Ali’s voice sounded mournful but his eyes gleamed with mischief.
A few days later, Pir Ali invited all the officials of his estate to a mid-day meal. As was the custom, Muslims were seated in one room and Hindus in another, that too in designated rows, the Brahmins holding pride of place a little distance away from the rest. Large lotus leaves piled with the satwik aahar acceptable from Muslims – parched rice, curds, peeled bananas, mangoes and molasses – lay in front of them. Jaidev and Kamdev had just begun eating when a sudden commotion made them look up. A procession of cooks were streaming into the hall holding vessels full of beef curry in their hands. Within seconds the room was filled with the steam and aroma of succulent beef chunks. The Brahmins covered their noses and fled. But when Jaidev and Kamdev rose to do so, Pir Ali, who had followed the cooks into the hall, caught their wrists in an iron grip. ‘Arre, arre!’ he cried. ‘Why do you run away? Smelling is half eating – so your shastras say. Since you’ve lost caste already, you may as well finish the meal you’ve only half eaten.’
As was to be expected, the next step for the two brothers was sending for the mullah and being received among the faithful. But, by the same law that decrees that ‘smelling is half eating’ the conversion of one member of the family affects the rest. Jaidev and Kamdev’s brothers, Sukhdev and Ratidev, found themselves ostracized by the Hindus of the village. Their water became unacceptable and they came to be known as Pirali Brahmins. Unable to bear the petty persecutions of his life in the village, Ratidev disappeared one night and, in all probability, became a sadhu. But for Sukhdev there was no escape. He had a sister and a daughter of marriageable age and, as a Hindu male, he was committed to finding husbands for them at the appropriate time. But with the Pirali stigma upon him, how was he to find suitable grooms? Combing the villages of Jessore, he finally found two Brahmins ready to relieve him of his responsibility on payment of a substantial dower. They were Mangalananda Mukhopadhyay of Phoole for his sister and Jagannath Kushari, zamindar of Pithabhog, for his daughter.
Though the two men were enriched by this connection, the Pirali stigma fell on them too and they were to carry it for all time to come. This was the genesis of a tradition of luring Kulin youths with lucrative offers, marrying them to sisters and daughters, then keeping them as live-in sons-in-law, or ghar jamais, that became a distinguishing feature of the Pirali clan.
These first Piralis (the term got corrupted with repeated usage and became Pirili) worked hard and prospered. Over the next four centuries, using the same tactics, they branched out spreadi
ng shoots and tendrils, making inroads into the best families of Jessore and forming a network that went beyond it. The illustrious Thakur family of Kolkata, of which Dwarkanath was the jewel in the crown, traced its roots to Jagannath Kushari of Pithabhog.
How they came by their changed name is an interesting story. It happened through a curious coincidence. About three hundred and fifty years ago, two brothers, Sukhdev Kushari and Panchanan Kushari, arrived in the village of Gobindapur by the Adi Ganga which together with Sutanuti and Kolikata were providing the foundations of the new port city of the British. The unlettered fisher folk, who constituted the workforce, welcomed the twice-borns, offered them land and begged them to settle in their village. With the instinct for opportunity that characterized the Kusharis, indeed all Piralis, they quickly assessed the situation, won the confidence of the locals and became intermediaries between the workers and their employers. Brahmins being looked upon as next only to God, they were dignified by the lordly title of Thakur which the British, unable to articulate correctly, changed to Tagore.
With the passing of the years, the Tagores and their progeny became the first stevedores and contractors of the new city, supplying provisions to the foreign ships that sailed up the river, and holding contracts for nearly all the construction going on. Their fortunes were linked with the rising power of the British and swelled accordingly. Abandoning their humble dwelling in Gobindapur, they built a magnificent mansion in the fashionable Pathuriaghata area of Kolikata or Calcutta as the British pronounced it. But power and wealth brought sibling rivalry in its wake. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a family rift took place. Two brothers, Darpanarayan and Neelmoni, decided to part ways. The property and family deities got divided and, one stormy night, Neelmoni walked out of the mansion of Pathuriaghata, with the one lakh of rupees and the Lakshmi and Shalagramshila, stone symbol of Vishnu, which had fallen to his share. Buying land in the Jorasanko area of Kolkata, he built a fine mansion. And, over the years, the two branches of the family came to be known as the Pathuriaghata Tagores and the Jorasanko Tagores.
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