Rajmahal

by Kamalini Sengupta

  In the meantime, this was a crazed period Surjeet Shona and Martin went through, with all the signs of a great love affair, yet fatally marred by Surjeet Shona’s fear. And she wondered briefly that first time, at the bizarre fact that Martin’s scent was already there on the dust cover of the sofa on which they lay. The next time, and later, she would forget this fact, thus canceling the cautionary effect it might have had, yet underlining her fear.

  The Rajmahal knew of these goings-on, easily given away when Martin’s hand wandered over Surjeet Shona at brief meetings, or when they whispered about the next tryst, or when others, including the servants, gossiped about them. It allowed the ghosts some inklings too, trying to inure them, to allow Surjeet Shona her freedom without interfering emanations. It was not this which troubled the house, but the sensing of a rival. Where were the lovers trysting, within the walls of what house? It sometimes heard the whisperings between them about “the house on Ronaldshay Road.” But where was Ronaldshay Road, and what other house could be worthy of this conjunction of the Rajmahal’s pedigreed inhabitants? It wasn’t to know the house on Ronaldshay Road belonged simply to friends who had left the keys with the Stracheys, and Martin had used it before for the same purpose.

  Nothing could stop the blinding affair between Jack and Myrna Strachey’s son Martin, and Surjeet Shona, direct descendant of the Sardar Bahadur and Raja Sheetanath. Their frenzy would reach new heights each time they betrayed the Rajmahal by using the Ronaldshay Road house. And forgetting the original, Martin and Surjeet Shona invented their own Kama Sutra, sometimes twisting an ankle and pulling a hamstring, as they knotted themselves into intricate configurations. It was magic for them, any thought of any moment of which would make Surjeet Shona’s breasts overflow, so that little Gurdeep never wanted for his mother’s milk and would grow into a buxom lad with no pretensions to spirituality. They were completely unaware that from the very first night, the gardener and his entire family who lived in the outhouses of the Ronaldshay Road house and guarded it, would desperately batten on the windows, peering into the gloom and trying to figure out the activities of Martin and his latest paramour. Surjeet Shona knew she was inviting outrage by her scandalous behavior, but she didn’t waste time agonizing over it. Even when her mother threatened to come back after hearing rumors.

  There was controversy over the affair between the Rajmahal and its ghosts. The Rajmahal favored an unconditional happiness for its inhabitants, without too much interference by tradition. Most of the ghosts, on the other hand, belonged to the most hidebound vintage of that tradition.

  “It’s shocking, a disgrace!” they whispered. “She’s not observing the smallest of the requirements, just look at her!”

  “It’s the Sikh business, the crossing with Sikh blood,” sniffed Raja Sheetanath’s mother’s ghost. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Though they recognized that Surjeet Shona was half Sikh and therefore not expected to rise to full Bengali refinements, they expected at least some circumspection in her situation. But they shut up when they felt the constricting disapproval of the Rajmahal. “Hushshsh!” the Rajmahal seemed to scold. “How can you be so prudish when she has gone through such pain?”

  When the Sardar Bahadur’s wife, Inderjeet Kaur’s ghost sometimes drifted over from Amritsar to see how “Fifth Rung” was doing, the house ghosts would simmer down. The Sardar Bahadur was too remote an ancestor to try to understand a modern woman, but Inderjeet Kaur’s ghost urged Surjeet Shona to be happy and live her life without reservation. The late widow couldn’t forgive herself for her useless fidelity to the Sardar Bahadur.

  It was a middle-aged man, Proshanto Mojumdar, who precipitated the dousing of the fire of that lust. The Mojumdars, who lived just above her apartment, had known Surjeet Shona from her childhood, when they had voyaged aboard the same liner to Europe. Surjeet Shona was struck by a feeling of recall when she saw the mirrored bedroom of the Mojumdars’ apartment. “It looks so familiar,” she said. “I think I saw something like it in a film, or...

  “It was the Hong Kong, my dear,” said Mohini Mojumdar. “The lounge of the Hong Kong. Don’t you remember? That’s why we chose this apartment, wasn’t it Pro?”

  Proshanto Mojumdar remembered perfectly their honeymoon on board the Hong Kong. But at the moment, he didn’t want to dwell on unpromising marital mementos in front of the young beauty. His face had taken on the bright yet foolish expression easily recognized by his wife. Proshanto’s idea, “brilliant only to himself,” thought Mohini, was to invite all the younger generation of the Rajmahal to a lengthy entertainment lasting the whole day. “Everyone’s here,” he said. “All the young people are visiting the Rajmahal. They must be bored.”

  But as Surjeet Shona grew more engrossed in herself and her biological processes, Proshanto Mojumdar fell out of infatuation with her. After her delivery, the temporary loosening of her figure and the imagined aroma of milk militated against his sensibilities, the opposite reaction to Martin’s. The outing was shelved. But some time later Proshanto was feverishly involved in organizing a river picnic. “There’s that English girl. A fetching girl, most fetching. She must be bored . . . ” He was referring to Antonia, the current girlfriend of the landlord’s middle son, Mumtaz Mallik.

  “He’s off again,” thought Mohini Mojumdar.

  Proshanto had stylish invitation cards engraved. “Mr. and Mrs. Proshanto Kumar Mojumdar have the pleasure of inviting x to a riverine excursion and lunch on board the Brahmaputra, followed by dinner and dancing at the 300 Club, 10:30 a.m. at Prinsep Ghat, Sunday . . . ”

  The guests showed a concerted social zealotry in the outing. While caviar on thin rounds of buttered bread was served on silver platters, Arnie Aratoon mixed genteel Pim’s Number one, its pale amber lightened with lemonade and decorated with delectable slices of orange and mint leaves, pastel colors bobbing with ice and elegance. As the Brahmaputra moved onto the broader stretches of the Hooghly, Antonia was seen with Martin, kissing behind a capstan. It was a kiss which achieved an undeserved resonance, because the Brahmaputra couldn’t provide it privacy. Surjeet Shona stumbled on them while evading the especially tipsy Arny Aratoon, with Proshanto Mojumdar in bleeding Madras shorts bringing up the rear. She felt stabs of a nightmare at being forced to view so closely that sensual betrayal, and the triumphant gleam of Antonia’s green eyes framed in satanic red hair. This was followed by confusion when she faced Martin’s shrugs and innocent wide-eyed look. Mumtaz, up on the bridge, would have had the clearest view of his girlfriend’s brazenness. He watched the romantic, erotic group breaking up to disperse on the main deck, while Martin’s mother, Myrna Strachey, lay blissfully at peace, in scanty white shorts and pink halter top, sunning herself on a deck chair. And then they watched a passing barge piled high with bales of jute with its men standing up tall to get a better view of the naked mem. Mumtaz came down and joined Surjeet Shona, both tight faced. But Antonia was made of stern stuff, her giggling and flirting creating a frivolous whirlwind around the permissive Martin. The saving moment came at the end as they were steaming back, and the sun was about to set. The party was assembled on the main deck, and Mohini and Proshanto Mojumdar spontaneously began to sing. They sang an asexual Tagore song about sentiments deeply embedded in Bengal’s country and river life.

  Proshanto was looking at Mohini’s glowing face with such admiration, and both were singing in such mellifluous cadences as if they had always been meant to sing together, that the earlier farcical happenings seemed inconceivable.

  Ah at last the flood has come to swell the dry river

  Cast off, cast off and call “Victory oh Mother!”

  Hey boatman, boatman, where are you boatman

  Call out now with all your soul

  Come all together take the oars

  All together take the oars

  Loosen all the strings and ropes

  Oh friend day after day your debt kept growing

  No buying no selling not a cowry in ha
nd

  Day after day went by moored to the dock

  How will you even show your face?

  Hey open up and hoist the sail

  Open up and hoist the sail

  Life or death what will be will be

  Ah at last the flood has come . . .

  Most couldn’t understand the words but the folk tune and lilt were catchy and sad at the same time. Tears came to Maudie Jessop, then a willowy wispy forty-five, Myrna Strachey stopped adjusting her halter neck, Petrov was composed in the lotus posture with his eyes closed, and the others were humming and tapping their feet. Arny Aratoon, wearing his riding gear out of sheer force of habit, leaned forward over his jodhpured knees to hide his emotions, though everyone could see his bald head turning red in sharp contrast to his very white fringe of hair.

  Surjeet Shona couldn’t distance herself from Martin, and after an initial struggle found herself tightly clasping and unclasping hands with him under the table. She snatched her hand away when Antonia pulled a chair up close on the other side of Martin and placed her sandaled foot against his leg. Feeling hot and cold at the same time, Surjeet Shona was jolted when she caught Mumtaz Mallik’s eyes looking directly into hers. She wondered if the song had lifted him from his misery.

  The launch had cut its engines and by their sides drifted the evening tide of the brown river, dealing watery slaps to the hull, shades of sand and mud eddying and making whorly patterns just below the surface. On the far bank tiny-looking palm trees and buildings were sharply etched, black on the paling twilight sky. A country boat, with its big hooded thatch, showed barely visible in the gloom, its boatman effortlessly swaying and swinging his oar in the silted-up shallowing river. His melodic tenor voice floated to them across the river, as sharp and clear as the etched palm trees, rising above and below and around Mohini and Proshanto Mojumdar’s song and weaving itself in like a master craftsman’s jamdani sari. Both melodies were in the same rag and the boatman’s song was of the river too. It was a blessed passage.

  2

  Surjeet Shona Moves On

  SURJEET SHONA TOOK THE BREAK WITH MARTIN STAUNCHLY. IT PASSED her by and left her calm. She felt the demented but therapeutic interim after Gurdeep’s death must have been provided by God, in whom she simply believed. And she carried on with her interrupted mourning in the room of the Guru Granth Sahib. There she sat, with the bhaiji softly reciting, the tears bathing her cheeks and her little son on her lap, crooning him to sleep, often falling asleep herself on the cushioned ground. Absorbed in consolidating herself and her child, she stayed away from others. With time Surjeet Shona normalized, taking to riding again. Later, she accepted a job offered by Jack Strachey. The work was undemanding and involved administering a small section at Sharp’s, but it filled up Surjeet Shona’s time.

  And then Martin brought his bride, Gwendolyn, to the Rajmahal. Surjeet Shona caught a glimpse of her in the lobby. “She’s not at all as I expected,” was her first thought. She wondered at Martin’s choice of this scholarly looking woman, with the blonde plait haloing her head, the Madonna likeness spoiled by a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. Gwendolyn’s petite rounded figure was such a contrast to herself, big-boned, tall, large-breasted and to the disrupter of her brief bliss, Antonia, a medium-sized redhead, that it seemed much in this world was inexplicable. When she recalled the passion of her affair with Martin she was pleased at feeling little emotion. But the small hairs at the back of her neck stood on end at the very thought of Martin’s particular persona of shaving cream and sweat, and she felt vulnerable and reluctant to meet him. Arnie Aratoon, the other instigator of her dread, had packed up and left, to bemuse the populace of his new home in rural England with his dated Rolls, his shooting stick, and his stable of horses.

  When Martin and Gwendolyn neared the end of their long visit, Surjeet Shona forced herself into a joint outing. “I must do this,” she thought. “I can’t keep hiding.” As Petrov’s acolyte she often went visiting with him and this time it was to introduce Martin to Professor Shanto Bose, Petrov’s Bengali “brother.” Surjeet Shona found herself in a state of uneasy anticipation at the challenge of meeting the young Stracheys, but Martin came alone. “After Neel Dorpon all Gwen wants is to get away from this country and everyone in it . . . ” Martin apologized. “I’ve tried clubs, parties, plays, palaces . . . But nothing moves her. So, no more Calcutta for her.”

  “Back to the known . . . ” said Petrov.

  Face to face at last with Martin, Surjeet Shona hid her uneasiness. “It’s almost as if he’s forgotten,” she thought noting his lack of embarrassment. “Oh it’s definitely over . . . ”

  She was right. Promiscuous as he had been so far, Martin’s current lover took up his complete attention, surgically cauterizing the past. To him it was perfectly legitimate a sexual encounter should lay the base for a platonic and warm future friendship. His disinterest in Surjeet Shona didn’t occupy him for an instant.

  “What a careless boy he is,” thought Petrov, as always keenly observant.

  Martin’s object was to penetrate this Calcutta, a Calcutta nonexistent to his parents. It would help him gain insight for his specialized researches into colonial Bengal. “He would become like my Russian guru if he stayed on,” thought Surjeet Shona.

  The Bose drawing room, comfortably familiar to Surjeet Shona, had a musty-sweet aroma from the books lining its walls and mounting to the ceiling. Martin’s sensitive nose quivered in response to the pests and molds infesting them and he exploded in a sneeze.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I must be allergic to something!”

  “Like your wife is to us,” thought Surjeet Shona.

  Another sneeze set him rocking on his seat and Petrov and the professor burst into childish laughter. Martin discovered his seat was an unstable stack of king-sized books disguised with a coverlet.

  “Good god,” he said worriedly looking around at the mottled books. “Why did you let me sit on these? And what are they? I’ve missed so much!” He changed his seat.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t worry,” said Petrov. “There’s too much. And these books are mostly in Bengali. Do you know Bengali?”

  “Er, ektu ektu,” said Martin in such a heavy accent that his claim was instantly thrown into doubt. Surjeet Shona giggled.

  “Your Bengali isn’t too good either,” said Martin, and sneezed again.

  “And the relevant books may not suit your conclusions,” added the professor dryly.

  “Come come,” said Martin. “You a professor and making assumptions about my ‘conclusions’!”

  “I apologize,” beamed the professor. “You must enlighten me of course.”

  “I’d rather listen to you!”

  “Sergie-da is the expert.”

  “I know, I know. I’ve wasted my time here. Too much dancing at Prince’s.”

  Surjeet Shona saw Petrov flinching and glancing at the professor.

  “Intellectual snobbery,” she thought. She understood very well that such haunts were irrelevant to the professor. He belonged away from and above that world.

  “How is old Prince’s, eh?” said the professor suddenly. He looked blandly at Petrov. And Petrov stared hard back at him. Surjeet Shona suppressed another giggle.

  “Oh super!” exclaimed Martin, noticing nothing of these exchanges. “That’s the only part my wife likes in Calcutta.”

  “So you will come back, but without your wife?”

  “My parents are here, my interests . . . ” and in a burst of empathy, “Gwen simply can’t take any of it. The city, the people, and my parents. My mother can be a bit trying you know.”

  “They quarrel, your wife and mother?” Petrov persisted.

  “They don’t quarrel, but there’s this awful chilliness when they’re together. Gwen can’t stand Mother’s rudeness to the servants. She hates it when they don’t answer her back.”

  “But they mind,” Surjeet Shona couldn’t help saying.

  “You were brutal in
your time, you British,” said Petrov. “Beating up employees, showering vile abuse, flogging them and kicking them . . . ”