by Shona Patel
Silchar
16th May 1915
I went to see Moni yesterday. She did not smile or even appear to listen when I told her the story of the doll. She is fifteen years old now, almost a woman, but she is thin, underdeveloped and pale. Her eyes are a hard green like bottle glass and devoid of any expression. I have concluded there is nothing basically wrong with her intelligence; in some ways I would say she is above average. She still spends most of her time in religious rituals but now her interests include political thought, and she has been reading a lot of communist literature lately. I was relieved to see her interests have expanded beyond religion. It does not really matter if I agree with her political views or not, I simply see this as another avenue to communicate with her.
I was a little concerned when I learned she has joined a communist group and attends their meetings. My biggest worry is that she is young and mentally unsound and somebody could take advantage of her.
When I asked her about the group she lashed out and accused me of being a spy for the British government—I don’t know where she got that idea. She claimed her group members were true patriots fighting for the freedom of our country, unlike her own father, who pandered to our foreign leaders. Then she got up and stormed out of the room, leaving me wounded and close to tears. As I got up to leave, I noticed she had taken the Russian doll that was lying on the table beside her.
Dhaka
12th November 1915
Dear Dada,
I don’t know how to reach you. Chaya was uncertain about the date of your return from Calcutta. I write to you with disturbing news. Moni has run away.
Nobody knows where she is and nobody dares to find out. She ran away with Anirban Das, her tutor. I don’t know if you’ve met the man. He is at least twenty years older than Moni and the member of a secret militant group. The key members of this group are on the government watch list. They meet in secret and sometimes there are surprise police raids on their meetings. The villagers are sympathetic to their cause and warn them of approaching police by blowing conch horns from house to house in identifiable patterns. The members disband and throw their weapons into the courtyard of houses and the village women hide the guns under their saris till the coast is clear.
This group is wanted for several crimes against the British. I just found out they were behind the recent steamer hijacking on the river delta. The steamer loaded with tea and other cargo was looted and burned on its way to Calcutta. I am told the steamer belonged to the family of Samir Deb, your friend from Cambridge.
This was also the same group behind the killing of British officers at the recent jute mill massacre. I was deeply saddened to hear Willis Duff, the jute mill manager, was murdered. What a tragic irony to think he was the same young Scot who befriended you on your first journey to boarding school. You told me of Willis Duff when you taught me the card game Fish at our Silchar house—do you remember? You and didi were still not married back then.
I wondered if Moni knew about your association with Samir Deb and Willis Duff, but I have since concluded the two incidents and their links to you are purely coincidental. The agenda of this militant group is to attack anything and everything related to the British. The group members live in a commune and they smuggle arms illegally across the Burmese border. Their main plan is to organize an armed uprising against the British and overthrow the government by force.
Whether or not Moni is romantically involved with her tutor, I do not know. She was always secretive and I don’t think anybody knows what really went on in her head. Her tutor strongly influenced her political views, that much I am certain. I learned Moni had been going to the secret meetings for quite some time. People at Baba’s basha probably suspected this, and my religious cousin, Sabitri, might have even encouraged her involvement to some extent. Anirban Das is Sabitri’s first cousin.
You should not go looking for Moni, Dada. To do so would put her life in danger. The government has many spies and it would not surprise me if they are keeping a close watch on you. They know you are her father and you go frequently to meet her at Baba’s basha, so please be very careful.
It grieves me deeply to give you all this distressing news. If my gentle didi were alive today, she would weep to see what has become of her daughter and how Moni continues to hurt you despite your ceaseless efforts to win her heart.
With my respect and affections to you,
Mitra
CHAPTER
62
Moni’s militant group disappeared into the shadowy underworld. It was rumored they lived in the jungles, traveled with the water gypsies and moved from village to village, never staying in one place for long. Overnight a gypsy settlement would sprout like a clump of ragged mushrooms on a riverbank and just as abruptly they would be gone, leaving mysterious symbols on the sand and crabs to scuttle into the empty peg holes of their tents. Biren got sporadic news of their movements through the boatmen’s network.
Then, just as suddenly, there was no trace of them. Several months passed and there was still no news. Biren had almost given up his daughter for dead when Kanai brought news that Moni had been spotted in a village, deep down south in the Chittagong river delta.
She was married and lived under a different name: Behula Palit. Biren had not seen her for fourteen years. Moni would be twenty-nine years old now. Upon learning she was alive, he was determined to go and find her.
Biren grew a beard and dressed like a fisherman, and it was with great secrecy he made the boat journey alone to her village in the dead of night. At dawn, he disembarked at a small landing and took a rickshaw to the address given to him by Kanai.
He was appalled to see the abject state of her neighborhood. Biren’s village in Sylhet was poor but clean. You could see the pride of ownership in the freshly swept courtyards, the holy basil thriving by the stoop and a plump chicken or two pecking in the yard. In this village there was a sense of vagrancy and desperation in the scummy ponds, broken-down wells and cows with bony hips that walked crookedly down the riverbed. Even dressed in a simple lungi and white tunic, Biren felt conspicuously rich among the emaciated, gaunt-eyed people he passed. His heart filled with sorrow to think his beloved Moni lived in such abject poverty when he was ready to give her the world.
He arrived at the address to find a small thatched hut with a crooked tree with pelican-beak-shaped flowers. The door and windows were shuttered. Biren knocked several times but nobody answered. He walked around to the mud courtyard at the back of the house. There was a clump of banana trees in one corner and behind that a small lily pond. On a tired-looking clothesline strung between two sugar palms, a faded green blouse, white sari petticoats and small items belonging to a child were drying. The clothes were still damp, indicating somebody had pegged them recently, but there were no other signs of life.
It had to be the wrong house, Biren concluded. He saw a small tea shop across the road and walked over to it. Two men wearing lungis and dirty vests sat on the bench outside chatting. The tea shop man eyed Biren warily. Biren ordered a tumbler of tea and a bidi.
“Does Behula Palit live here?” he asked casually. “A girl with green eyes?”
The tea shop man looked at him suspiciously. “Are you from the police?” he asked.
Biren laughed. “Do I look like the police?” He lit his bidi from the smoldering rope and took a puff. “No, I am from her grandfather’s village in Barisal. I was passing by. Her aunt asked me to give her some money.”
The tea shop man relaxed. “Yes, she lives here,” he said.
“I knocked on the door several times but I don’t think she is home.”
“She has gone to the temple,” said one of the other men. “Behula is a little cracked in the head. The religious type.”
“Does her husband live with her?”
“Oh, he is hardly around,” said
the tea shop man. “He comes to the village once in a while. He is fond of the child. He takes her for a walk to the river.”
“Behula...has a child?” Biren could hardly contain his surprise.
“Yes, a little girl, around three years old. Her father brings her to the tea shop when he is here. Her name is Layla.”
Biren’s hands trembled as he smoked his bidi. Overcome with joy at being a grandfather, he was simultaneously deeply worried. A small child inside a shuttered house with a mentally unbalanced mother. A great feeling of helplessness overwhelmed him.
He glanced around the tea shop. The walls were plastered with pictures of Hindu gods, and a stick of incense burned on a small altar. The tea shop owner seemed like a god-fearing man. Hopefully he could be trusted with the money.
“Her aunt Sabitri has sent her some money,” he said, taking some notes out from his kurta pocket. “Can you please give it to her? Tell her it is for the child.”
It was the only way he could get Moni to accept the money, Biren figured. He did not care as long as he could help her and her child in some way. His heart ached when he recalled the desolate courtyard and the shabby clothes hanging on the clothesline.
He had a granddaughter! Her name was Layla. Would he ever get to see her? It was a delicate situation. He could jeopardize his relationship with Moni even further if he was not careful, and God only knew what she might do. But at least she was alive and well. Biren decided he would send money periodically through Kanai and ask him to leave it with the tea shop man and say it was from Sabitri. That is the only way he could reach out to her for now.
CHAPTER
63
Biren was unable to sleep for weeks. Finding Moni had churned up memories of the past and forced him to examine buried regrets. When he looked back, he saw life had set him on a carefully plotted course, and in all the years he had given to the service of others, he had sacrificed his own loved ones along the way: Estelle, Maya, Moni—all were gone. Now, when he was ready to give of himself, there was nobody to give to.
Only Shibani remained. Shibani, now totally blind, still lived with Nitin in Chandanagore. Lately she talked about retiring to an ashram to live out her last days.
The criminal case that dragged on for eleven years finally came to an end. Chaya’s father and three other men were sentenced to forty years in jail, and the eight men who had acted as their accomplices received varying sentences.
Had it all been worthwhile? There was no clear answer. Given his driving need at that time, he was not sure he could have done anything differently. Yet when he looked back, all his achievements felt diminished given what he had lost.
* * *
Biren never saw Moni again.
A month after his visit to her village she drowned herself in the lily pond behind her house. Biren was in Europe on a lecture tour and difficult to trace. Mitra’s letter followed him from Austria to France and reached him three months later in Leipzig, Germany. He was sitting in a coffeehouse when he opened Mitra’s letter. The news made his hands shake uncontrollably, and his cup of coffee fell with a clatter, soiling the white tablecloth.
“Oh, was ist denn hier passiert?” cried the German waitress.
She ran up to clean the mess. When she glanced at the Indian man she was shocked to see the tears streaming down his handsome face. By the time she returned with fresh coffee, he had left the money on the table and gone.
Biren cut his lecture tour short and returned to India.
He pieced together the information from different sources to learn what happened. It was raining that day, the tea shop man said, when he was alerted by a child’s screams. He went behind the house and found three-year-old Layla, dressed in a red sari and veil, tied to a banana tree, and Moni floating facedown in the lily pond.
In the weeks leading up to her death a holy sadhu had visited Moni’s house several times. The sadhu, who was a garrulous type, often stopped by the tea shop. He told the tea shop man that Moni was beside herself with anxiety and had pulled all her hair out. Her husband had been arrested and she was worried about her daughter, Layla, who had been born under the unlucky astrological sign of Manglik. Layla’s horoscope portended bad luck, and Moni’s aunt, who was a holy and good woman, had sent her money to do puja for the child. The sadhu advised Moni to marry her daughter to a banana tree in a religious ceremony. It was the only way to cross out the bad luck, he said.
It was just as well the tea shop man had had all this information. He was aware of the day the ritual was going to be performed. He saw the sadhu arrive in his ceremonial dress with his puja items. The sadhu spent a long time at Moni’s house. The tea shop man could hear the chanting and ringing of bells from across the road. When the ceremony was over the sadhu stopped by the tea shop for a cup of tea and mentioned the puja had gone well. Then he left. For a few hours all was quiet in the house. Then the tea shop man heard the sound of the child crying. It was a ceaseless wail and sounded a little odd. He went to investigate and found three-year old Layla tied to the banana tree and her mother drowned in the lily pond.
Mitra had arrived from Dhaka and taken Layla home with her.
After hearing the story, Biren recalled how a mysterious old tantrik on the riverbank had prophesized Moni would be claimed by water. Now, twenty-six years later, that prophecy had come true.
CHAPTER
64
Biren’s heart almost stopped the first time he saw Layla. She was four years old and living with Mitra, who was now married and a schoolteacher in Dhaka with a daughter of her own. Moon, her daughter, was exactly six months older than Layla.
Biren’s granddaughter stared at him solemnly with big gray-green eyes the color of river fog. Something ancient and familiar stirred deep within him. They were Maya’s eyes looking back at him. Layla’s resemblance to Maya was eerie, from her straight shining hair down to her delicate arched feet. When she brushed her hand across her forehead Biren noticed her hairline met at the center of her forehead in a widow’s peak, exactly like his late wife’s.
His first impulse had been to embrace her, but Layla shied away, her eyes becoming anxious.
“Give her time,” Mitra consoled him. “She only opened up to me after weeks. I just let her and Moon play together. If anybody can draw her out of her shell, it’s Moon.”
The girls were building a tower with used matchboxes. Moon, the bossy one, did all the building while Layla stood watching with somber eyes.
“I am still shocked at her uncanny resemblance to Maya,” Biren said.
“I would never have thought that the first day I saw her, Dada,” Mitra said. She covered her eyes and shook her head slowly. “I could hardly bear to look at her. Her hair was all knotted, her skin lumpy and red with ant bites. I shudder to think how long she had been left out in the rain. Every night she would wake up screaming. Only recently it has stopped. After Moni’s cremation I did not want to leave Layla in Baba’s basha so I brought her back with me to Dhaka.”
“I wish I was there, Mitra. You should never have had to go through this alone.”
“We tried our best to trace you. We sent a telegram to you in Calcutta, but I suppose you had already left for Europe.” Mitra was silent for a little while. “I dread to think how much Layla saw of her mother’s suicide. I cannot imagine how traumatic is must be for a child to see her mother drown in front of her eyes and not be able to go to her because she is tied to a tree. No child should have to go through what Layla has been through.”
Biren covered his eyes, his heart lacerated with pain. “The poor child, the poor child,” he cried in a strangled voice.
“Don’t feel bad, Dada,” Mitra said, putting her hand on Biren shoulder. “It could have been worse. We could have lost Layla, as well. I am greatly encouraged by her improvement. Every day she seems to get better. I have to thank
Moon for that. I try not to mollycoddle Layla. I don’t even reprimand Moon when she acts bossy with her. I let them work it out between themselves. It is an odd friendship. They are complete opposites. Moon is a rascal and Layla is soulful and sage-like. The wisdom of the universe is in Layla’s eyes.”
Biren remembered Maya’s peaceful eyes when she’d woken in the morning, and the luxurious way she’d raised her supple arms in a feline stretch. He had loved this soft, unhurried quality about her.
“Dadamoshai!” shouted little Moon. She skip-hopped up to Biren, her black curls bouncing, and tugged him by the hand. “Come and play.”
Layla stayed where she was. She watched them and twirled a strand of hair around her finger. Biren’s heart again skipped a beat. Maya had had exactly the same habit.
He got up from the chair and walked over to the matchboxes. “Shall we play a counting game?” he said. “Who is going to line up the matchboxes? All right, I will go first.” He pointed to the first matchbox. “One. Who’s next?”