PENGUIN BOOKS
IT RAINED ALL NIGHT
Buddhadeva Bose (1908–74) was one of the most versatile Bengali writers of the twentieth century. Editor-publisher of the revolutionary poetry magazine Kavita, he was a lecturer at various colleges in India and abroad and set up the department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
The author of over 200 titles, his works include the novels Tithidore and Moner Moto Meye, the collections of poems Damoyanti and Morche Pora Pereker Gan and the short-story collection Bhashao Amar Bhela.
Bose received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967 for his verse play Tapaswi o Tarangini, was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1970 and posthumously received the Rabindra Puraskar in 1974 for Swagato Biday.
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Clinton B. Seely is a prominent scholar of the Bengali language and literature. He is Emeritus Professor of Bengali at the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
He has written a biography of the Bengali poet Jibanananda Das and has translated Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s Meghnadbadh Kavya into English. His other works include Barisal and Beyond: Essays on Bangla Literature, Grace and Mercy in Her Wild Hair: Selected Poems to the Mother Goddess and the edited volumes, Women, Politics, and Literature in Bengal and Bengal Studies: A Collection of Essays.
Seely has received, among several other academic and literary awards, the ‘Ashoke Kumar Sarkar Memorial’ Ananda Prize in 1993 and the Dinesh Chandra Sen Research Society’s ‘4th Annual Award for Excellence in Research in Bengali Literature’ in 1999.
it rained all night
buddhadeva bose
translated from the bengali by
clinton b. seely
PENGUIN BOOKS
translator’s note
That my name, and my name alone, appears on the title page as the translator is somewhat misleading. I worked closely, though at a long distance, with the author himself. He was in Kolkata at that time; I in Chicago. I have written an account of that epistolary back-and-forth in an article, ‘Translating Rat Bhore Brishti: Reliving through Letters’, part of a special Buddhadeva Bose issue of the journal Boidagdha (May 1999), guest edited by his younger daughter, Damayanti Basu Singh, known to her family and close friends as Rumi. Buddhadeva’s letters to me with respect to the translation spanned the years 1971–73. The very next year, quite unexpectedly, he died at home, then only in his mid-sixties. During 1969 and much of 1970, I lived in Kolkata. It was Buddhadeva’s home in south Kolkata that became my home away from home. His wife, Protiva Bose, herself a well-known fiction writer, welcomed me warmly, as did both their sons, Pappa, my coeval, and their two married daughters, Rumi and her elder sister, Mimi. Mimi’s husband, Jyotirmoy Datta, had been one of my inspiring teachers while in graduate school at the University of Chicago. It was during my nearly two-year academic research sojourn in Kolkata, a time of considerable political unrest there, that a ne’er-do-well, self-styled mastan or neighborhood tough, brought a court case against Buddhadeva and this particular novel, It Rained All Night, on the grounds that it was obscene. I had returned to Chicago by the time the verdict came down—a conviction. Jyoti wrote about it in the Evergreen Review (July 1971): ‘The Bengali poet Buddhadeva Bose was convicted on December 19, 1970 of obscenity... The trying judge not only heaped indignity after indignity upon the sixtythree-year-old writer—such as making him stand in a wire cage, ordering a search for the confiscation and destruction of all copies of his printed book, and destruction of the manuscript— but also refused him leave to appeal. Bose’s book has been banned and his life is in danger.’ This particular chapter of Buddhadeva’s life story had a satisfyingly happy ending. The conviction, upon appeal, was overturned in Kolkata’s High Court. From a much grander perspective and more importantly, during the gala public celebration of his 100th birthday at the end of November 2008, in recognition of a lifetime of literary achievement by one of India’s finest writers, first and foremost in Bangla but also in English, the Government of India issued a Buddhadeva Bose commemorative 500p postage stamp. I had the honour and considerable good fortune to have known this man and, specifically with respect to the translation of It Rained All Night, to have worked with him. No less appreciated, I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy the very nurturing support of his entire family.
Clinton B. Seely
one
It’s over—it happened—there’s nothing more to say. I, Maloti Mukherji, someone’s wife, and someone’s mother—I did it. Did it with Jayanto. Jayanto wanted me, and I him. Perhaps Nayonangshu thinks we did it before, but no—tonight was the first time. Tonight—four hours ago. On this bed. Where I’m now lying.
How did it happen? Easy. In fact I don’t know why it didn’t happen before—I’m surprised at my self-restraint, at Jayanto’s patience. Jayanto came by at about nine in the evening. It began to rain immediately after, and it rained so hard that our little lane was under water in half an hour. Ten, ten-thirty—and the rain wouldn’t stop. Angshu had gone to Beleghata to see his dying aunt. Bunni was at my mother’s. Durgamoni was in the pantry asleep on her mat. I bolted the door of the flat and came into the bedroom—to check whether anything was getting wet from the splatter of rain. ‘I’m out of cigarettes, maybe there’s a pack in Nayonangshu’s drawer,’ Jayanto said as he walked into the bedroom behind me. I was kneeling down going through the drawer when Jayanto put his arm around my waist from behind. I turned my head and gazed up at him. ‘Then you don’t want cigarettes?’
He pressed his mouth to my ear, ‘Lotan!’
Taking his hand in mine, I closed the bedroom door and turned off the lights. And that’s how it happened.
I feel good, incredibly good right now. I realize I didn’t do right to keep it suppressed so long.
My body was filled with delight, and I had fallen off to sleep. Then suddenly my eyes opened—the lights were on, and I was looking at Nayonangshu standing there silently in his wet clothes.
‘You’re back?’ I said.
‘Yes—do you know where my pajamas are?’
‘They’re in the left-hand drawer,’ I said as I shut my eyes again. I felt listless, didn’t want to get up.
Angshu said, ‘It was hardly wise to leave the front door open so late at night. There’s no one home but you and Durgamoni and you’re both sound asleep—that’s just inviting thieves.’
‘Was the door open?’
Nayonangshu went into the bathroom to change his clothes. All of a sudden I noticed my blouse lying on his bed, and here I was in just a sari loosely draped around me. I sprang to my feet and put on my blouse. Then I tied my sari properly, combed my hair, and quickly put a little powder on my face. In the mirror Maloti looked no different than on any other day. Yet it’s astonishing—the mistakes people make. I didn’t forget to shut the door before we made love (then love is not so reckless and wild after all!), but after Jayanto had gone, I’d left the bedroom door and also the front door wide open. I didn’t even remember to put on some clothes before I fell asleep. I wonder if Nayonangshu noticed anything. Let him—a married woman can go to sleep in her own bedroom any way she wants to.
As we sat down to eat, Angshu asked, ‘Why’d you wait so long without eating?’
‘It’s late, is it?’
‘Twelve o’clock. You could have eaten earlier.’
It surprised me to hear it was midnight. Somehow I’d lost all sense of time from the moment Jayanto had arrived. Had I known it was so late I certainly would have been worried about Angshu. As he came into the room I’d have said, ‘What happened? Why so late? I was beginning to get really worried.’
Glancing over at Angshu, I felt that h
e wanted to hear something like that from me even now. So I said, ‘Why are you so late?’
‘For heaven’s sake, where were you all this time! Didn’t you notice it’s been pouring—Beleghata’s turned into a Ganga. I walked to Sealdah and then took a rickshaw up to Joragirja before I could get a taxi.’ He spoke with such self-satisfaction, Nayonangshu, as if he’d just returned from slaying a tiger in the Sundarbans. I remember how he’d started shouting when he spotted a scorpion in the bathroom a few days ago, how he’d then found a stick somewhere and cautiously, from a safe distance, hit the little critter. And he even came in and told me, ‘I killed it.’ I had replied without looking at him, ‘You did a brave thing.’ (Like four years ago when Bunni had said, ‘Ma, Ma, listen—there was a crow sitting on the window sill and I have chased it away!’) Sometimes he seems such a child to me, like some little boy. How do you think it feels for a mature young woman to have a child for a husband? What would Jayanto have done in that situation? He’d have squashed it under his sandal and not uttered a word about it.
As he was mixing his rice with chicken curry, Nayonangshu said, ‘I’ve told you many times—don’t wait for me. Have your dinner at a decent hour.’
I answered, ‘I don’t like to eat alone.’ It’s true—I wasn’t making it up—it doesn’t matter how late it is, I can’t eat without Nayonangshu. It’s a habit of mine—maybe you’d call it a custom—when I was little I used to see my mother waiting for my father, maybe it comes from that.
Angshu stopped eating for a moment to ask, ‘Did anyone come by?’
I replied without any hesitation, ‘Jayanto—Jayanto babu came at about nine o’clock. He waited around quite a while for you.’ (What a bother—having to use the formal, honorific ‘babu’ as a term of address for Jayanto.)
‘Why for me?’
‘Well, something to do with his magazine.’
‘Why didn’t you have him wait?’ asked Nayonangshu, looking into my eyes.
I didn’t flinch but looked straight back and said, ‘What a thing to say! Does anyone wait around till midnight for someone! And even if I tell him to, why should he—doesn’t he have a wife and family?’
Then Nayonangshu asked, ‘How’d he go in this rain?’ to which I could easily have retorted, ‘How should I know?’ But I didn’t. Instead, I managed to smile and say, ‘You know what kind of person Jayanto babu is—all that rain doesn’t bother him.’
Angshu too put on a broad smile. ‘You’re right. Remember Bunni’s birthday—because of that kalbaishakhi thundershower the trams and buses couldn’t run, Russa Road was completely underwater, and Jayanto babu walked from Tollygunge through all that. Unbelievable!’
I didn’t reply to his comment, for Nayonangshu knew very well I hadn’t forgotten that evening—there are a few things which one cannot forget. That day I understood well that Jayanto had not sloshed through three miles of flooded streets because of Bunni, nor because of Nayonangshu—it was because of me, he had come for me. And Angshu had figured that out also—he’s not stupid. From the very beginning he’d figured out what was happening or was going to happen. There’s hardly a husband in the whole world who isn’t acutely sensitive to that!
After he’d finished eating and had lit up a cigarette, I asked, ‘By the way, how’s your aunt?’
‘It’s almost over—a matter of days maybe.’
‘Is she unconscious?’
‘Not at all, she’s quite conscious, even says a word or two now and then, sucks on a strip of cloth soaked in Ganga water and stares at people.’
‘Could she recognize you?’
‘Of course she could.’
‘Why didn’t you take me along?’ I blurted out.
‘I asked you if you wanted to go—but you didn’t.’
‘Why didn’t you insist—I hadn’t realized it was like this, I mean, just a matter of time.’
Nayonangshu gave me a quick glance, then replied, ‘You go tomorrow if you want to—nothing’s going to happen this instant. She’s not ill—just very old—it’s like an old tree, well, just dying.’ After that we didn’t say anything more, simply went in and lay down, on our separate beds.
Two beds almost side by side, a small room. If we stretched out our hands, they’d touch, we were that close. If Nayonangshu fell asleep and I was still awake, I could hear him breathing. Tomorrow I’ll rearrange the room. It’s just not healthy for the beds to be so close together. Who likes to hear the heavy breathing of someone else who’s asleep? Or shall I move my bed into Bunni’s room? It’s smaller but then again it catches the southern breeze. I really don’t like to be under an electric fan all the time. Your head feels all jammed up in the morning. This room is definitely stifling. Now the rains have let up just a little and it’s already hot again. And the drone of that fan, like some insect buzzing around your head. We’re both wide awake, and each of us knows the other hasn’t gone to sleep yet—in the same room, the same darkness, two vigilant spiders spinning their webs. Two big fat spiders, eyes glowing like fire, one’s web touching, getting entangled in the other’s, filling the entire room. It’s not raining at the moment, yet I still hear rain, rain upon some hazy bluish tunnel whose roof cracks as the drops ooze through and trickle down. The oppressive heat shatters the darkness under my eyelids as yellow and red spots appear. No one knows where that tunnel ends. I’m suffocating. You think I’m afraid? Then you don’t know Maloti!
These days, for a long time now, Maloti has been avoiding her husband. Her husband wants her—and why shouldn’t he?—but she dislikes Nayonangshu’s stubby little fingers. She detests the smell of his breath. She shivers at the very thought of lying close to his body. Just to have his hand touch her makes her shudder. What can Maloti do? It’s like that involuntary ‘ooh!’ you give out when you’re pricked with a pin. She explains to her husband that she has developed a distaste for that sort of thing, she’s past that age, her daughter’s growing up now, and so on, and she tries to cool him off with such trumped-up excuses. But Maloti is only thirty-two, Nayonangshu thirty-seven, and their daughter a mere eight years old. Nayonangshu would get that hangdog look when he had to creep back into his own bed, and it makes Maloti dislike him all the more. That pathetic expression disgusts her. Actually he just isn’t aggressive, too much of a gentleman, a lot like the bourgeois he mocks and Jayanto hates. But I do like him when he dresses up, puts on a suit and goes off to office, or when he’s in his pajamas and a loose overshirt at home. He’s read a lot, is a fine conversationalist, good-looking, and above reproach in social etiquette. Girls can still fall for him (Aparna, at the office, is infatuated). I too fell in love with him when I was younger, and when I got married I thought I’d really scored a victory. But then ten years, twelve years went by, and after the first flush of youth had waned, he just seemed to become more of a child with each passing day. At least it seems that way to me—I can’t think of him any more as a husband, let alone a lover. It’s as though my body, independent of me, was angered by Nayonangshu. I grew thin, fell ill once—even that illness was probably simply a means to keep Nayonangshu away. Previously there had been a smouldering, inner rage. It was never clear to me why I was angry, but when I met Jayanto, all of a sudden I understood the reason.
After we married his aunt told me, ‘There’s no treasure quite like a husband, mind you.’ When I heard that from her I had to smile, for I’d heard she’d been widowed at thirteen (married at twelve). She hadn’t even had time to consider whether that thing called ‘husband’ was animal, vegetable or mineral. It was just a hollow word, a pale, soiled, rusted, paintpeeling, soot-caked concept—that’s what ‘husband’ was to her, yet how tremendously potent a term! For the first year after we were married, we stayed at Beleghata, in Nayonangshu’s ancestral home, and this old aunt had shown me a little extra special love. She always addressed me affectionately, and whenever she got me alone, she would, out of the blue, start singing her nephew’s praises: ‘You know, he got a medal for his good g
rades! He knows some sahibs, too, mind you!’ I had just discovered what it was to be a woman. I would gaze at her and wonder why this child-widow, this lifelong virgin, this hapless woman did not seem to be the least bit unhappy. Didn’t she think about her own life—how empty, how futile, how unfruitful it was? But honestly, I’ve seen very few people with such a pleasant disposition, so at peace with herself—eating one meal a day, fasting twice a month on ekadashi, suffering through the long fasts of Shivaratri and ambubachi. She has gone through these years just fine. And what a worker—no afternoon naps, preparing bori or mango achaar, and heavens, sewing such beautiful quilts, even with those old eyes. I’ve never seen her sitting idle. She never has a word of complaint. In fact, she doesn’t even seem to know that there could be any reason for her to complain—amazing! But if someone had drummed into her head, ‘Listen, lady, you should be unhappy, you’ve been deprived, you ought to rebel,’ then maybe her life would have been different. But goodness! Why am I thinking so much about the old lady? Oh, right, her illness, a matter of days now. I’ll go see her tomorrow. Didn’t go today for fear that Jayanto would have come by and found no one home, but tomorrow I’ll go for sure.
Becoming a wife and daughter-in-law made me very happy at first. After our wedding I tried to excel in my new role. I wanted to fit in with everybody in the Beleghata household, but Nayonangshu frustrated my efforts. He would say to me, ‘Why do you go into the kitchen when my mother does?’
‘Well, why shouldn’t I?’
‘That’s no answer at all. Tell me why you do it. There’s nothing for you to do in there, really.’
I was inwardly very pleased to hear this, for I thought Angshu wanted me near him all the time, so I replied a little coyly, ‘Because I want to—okay?’
‘Come on, that’s not the real reason. It looks good, that’s why you go. My sister-in-law does it, so you do too. You’re just trying to get on the good side of the family.’
It Rained All Night Page 1