by K R Meera
‘Chetu, hang him, please, please! Please hang her killer!’ Amodita shrieked in pain when she saw me.
Her wail reminded me of Jatindranath who had gone back to Alipore Jail from the hospital. He was to be hanged for having raped and murdered a little girl. Because Amolika’s corpse had been chopped to pieces, it had been cremated at the electric crematorium at Nimtala Ghat. They immersed her ashes in the Ganga. I stood on the steps of the Ghat while pyres burned on both sides. The smoke from the pyres spread everywhere like fog. A she-goat and two kids fed on the marigolds and stared at the pyres impassively. On the other side of the river, the factory chimneys emitted dark clouds of smoke. A passenger boat and another one decked for a marriage celebration passed us by. The waves lashed at those who were offering funeral oblations. Those who had already taken their holy dip in the Ganga crowded into the tea and snack shops all around. I moved to the pavilion built on the spot where Rabindranath Tagore had been cremated. The road, full of phlegm and cow dung and spit coloured with betel, was occupied by a steady stream of mourners, arriving and leaving. Amodita came up from the Ganga with wet clothes and hair, supported by someone.
‘Chetu, she’s gone, Chetu! Who’s left now to call me “Ma”?’ she wailed.
It reverberated all over the Ghat beyond Strand Road. I could respond only in two ways: either burst into tears or smile to myself. If only I could smile at her affectionately, I thought. Even if she had survived, Amodita’s daughter would not have called to her, for her little tongue had been cut off first. When her body was found, it lay in a corner as a small, ant-eaten piece of flesh. The doctors didn’t close her mouth fully, so she went forth from the world calling for her mother. Amodita and her wails disappeared into the slum behind the shops along with the ten-forty Prinsep Ghat train. The dust of seven decades had accumulated in the pavilion dedicated to Thakur’s memory and turned into dirt over time. An emaciated man in a towel black with filth lay there sleeping, a black dog with oozing warts all over its body next to him, panting, its tongue lolling out. The place was littered with large Durga statues, abandoned after last year’s puja. A sannyasi with a tangled beard and dreadlocks sat in front of Bihari Binod Mallick’s shop, puffing hard at a cigarette. When a strong wind deposited on my head some ash from a pyre, I turned to go home.
‘You don’t have any TV programmes now, my daughter?’ Gangadhar da, who was leaning on his wares—bamboo litters to carry corpses—and enjoying a bidi, asked me as I crossed the railway gate.
‘Dada, isn’t it better to wash one’s hands before one’s tummy becomes overfull?’
‘Ah, right, I agree,’ said he, drawing in the smoke. ‘But it was a pity it didn’t happen . . . you’d have been a star!’He smiled, seeing it happen in his mind’s eye.
‘Tell me truly—aren’t you scared even a bit, Chetu, to kill someone?’
I tried to smile.
‘If the fellow you kill is cremated here, that’s some business for me too!’
I smiled again. The hottest selling stuff, no doubt, is the death of other people. As I walked home, what I had told Gangadhar da stayed in my mind. There must a dash of salt in your food, a little bitterness as well, and you must wash your hands before your stomach is full—that was written by a woman, Khona, who was a poet and an astrologer. They say she was Varaha’s daughter-in-law; Thakuma claimed that she was Radharaman Mullick’s cousin, the daughter of his father’s sister.
‘That boy’s here!’ Ma, who was waiting with water pots at the tap near the lane towards the Port Trust workers’ quarters, hissed to me. ‘You have to take a decision, Chetu. It’s not good, these comings and goings of his.’
‘Let him come and go, Ma. So many have come, and how many more are yet to come . . . ’ I answered her irritatedly.
When I went into the house after a bath I could hear his voice. My legs were still for a moment. My eyes were drawn to Ramu da’s empty cot. To the wavering flame in the lamp that stood at its head. I sat cross-legged on the floor with a handwritten draft Mano da had given me to correct. It was a chapter from his autobiography, the chapter about the Emergency. Feeling uneasy at the very first sentence, ‘When Siddhartha Shankar Ray returned from Delhi . . . ’ I put away the manuscript. Khona filled my memory. My ancestor’s sister and her husband gave her away to Anacharya who lived in Barasat, who adopted her as his daughter. She became a great scholar under Anacharya’s training. Varaha, who was one of the jewels of Chandra Gupta Vikramaditya’s court when it had just seven jewels, made a mistake when he cast his own son Mihira’s horoscope. Though his lifespan was a hundred years, because of a mistake in calculating the birth time it appeared that the boy would live only for ten years. Fearing the pain of losing a child after having raised him for ten years, Varaha put the baby into a bamboo basket and set him afloat on the river. The tribal people of Barasat found the baby; they raised it and the child grew to become a great scholar in astronomy. Soon, Mihira met Khona and, impressed by her scholarship, he married her. Once he was convinced that he had mastered everything that was worth learning, he set out for the royal court with his wife. The tribal people sent a guide along to help them get past the jungle; they also entrusted them with palm-leaf manuscripts. The guide was instructed to test Mihira’s knowledge on the way; if he failed, the guide was to give him the manuscripts so that he could study further. But if he passed, he was to bring them back. They saw a pregnant cow on the way. The guide asked, what will be the colour of its calf? Mihira calculated the position of the stars and said: brown. Khona predicted: white. They waited till it delivered. The cow gave birth to a white calf. They continued their journey and soon came upon a man who was gravely ill. What is his ailment, asked the guide. A stroke, Mihira concluded after his calculations. He’s been bitten by a snake with a red mark on its hood, said Khona. Her answer was the right one. They went further and met a Brahmin on the road. Tell me, how many children he has, the guide demanded. Four, said Mihira. Six, said Khona. She won this time too.
‘These manuscripts are for you. There is much more that you need to grasp in your studies.’
The tribal guide bid them goodbye after handing over the manuscripts to Mihira. If one’s scholarship isn’t complete even after so many years of hard work, what’s the use of looking at some more palm leaves, asked Mihira, sorely irritated. In a fit of anger, he threw them into the Ganga. Khona jumped into the river and saved some, but the rest floated away. King Vikramaditya was hunting in the forest on the other bank of the river. Mihira went to see the king who, impressed by Mihira’s scholarship, appointed him as his court scholar. When he saw Mihira, Varaha recognized the son he had abandoned in the river.
‘There’s nothing we can do about this. It is a battle between those who are for the death penalty and those who oppose it.’
Sanjeev Kumar Mitra was talking, munching something in between. I got up, displeased. He didn’t seem to remember that a death had occurred in this house just a few days back.
‘Raje raje juddho hoye ulughagraar praan jaaye . . . Haven’t you heard, Sanju babu? When kings fight, it is the ulu bamboo that loses lives. Ah, Babu, what do you think? Should these fellows be killed, or should they be worshipped in captivity? How much money do we need to feed them in jail? Can’t we save on that if a good many were hanged?’ Father guffawed.
‘Ask Chetna that question, Phani da. She’s the one who speaks against the death penalty the most!’
‘The sireless bitch! Let her raise her voice against me and I shall cut out her tongue!’
At that, I went up to the door. Standing on the doorstep, I smiled at Father. ‘When did you come?’ he asked, lighting the cigarette between his lips. Sanjeev Kumar’s face grew hard, but I ignored it and gifted him with a broad smile.
‘Chetna’s been brimming over with joy for the past couple of days! What’s up?’ he said, taking off his spectacles, wiping them, addressing no one in particular.
‘Happiness fills me . . . ’
I beamed now.
‘What’s happened that has made you so happy?’ His forehead furrowed.
‘The hangman delights in death.’ I laughed aloud.
Suspicion clouded his face.
Vikramaditya invited Khona to his court, claiming that he desired the company of good human beings. On the previous day, he had asked a question about the number of stars in the sky. None among the nine jewels of his court could answer. At home, looking at her husband and father-in-law who were helpless, defeated by the king’s query, Khona laughed aloud. What an easy question! She then proclaimed: according to her, the number of stars in the sky was 100 x 1022. The next day, Varaha bragged in court, what a question, even the women in my house can answer it! The king was astonished. He went to Varaha’s home incognito and met Khona. She was no beauty, but her great scholarship made such an impression on him that he began to constantly desire her company. She was invited to his court as the tenth jewel.
‘I’ve come to talk of the marriage. I’m not interested in prolonging this.’
I—smiling, lost in my thoughts of Khona—hurtled down suddenly from the stars to the earth.
‘You will not marry me,’ I said, still smiling. ‘That’s not your real aim.’
Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s face burned up.
Father took the cigarette off his lips and looked at me. I looked at both at them with an even more joyful expression.
‘In your eyes I am the daughter of a beggarly chap who has no qualms about finishing off a man once in ten or fifteen years for a measly sum of a hundred and fifty rupees a month. Your eye is on the market, Babu, I know that very well.’
‘What market?’ He went pale.
I laughed again merrily.
‘Like my family has knowledge of the different ways in which a human being may be killed, you have inherited the knowledge of the different ways in which a woman may be sold!’
Sanjeev Kumar Mitra leapt up. ‘What do you mean?’ he rasped.
Father kept looking at us in turn, not making any sense of our conversation. ‘Sanju babu, has something happened that I do not know of?’ Father’s eyes reddened.
‘Nothing!’ He rubbed his palms together, deeply flustered.
‘Tell us, Chetu,’ Father said, angry now.
I kept smiling at Sanjeev Kumar Mitra, and that made him very uneasy indeed.
‘Baba, please return Sanjeev babu’s bangles and ring. I don’t wish to be his wife.’
‘Why then did you give me hope, Chetna? Why did you let me kiss you? Why did you come to my bedroom?’ he attacked, knowing well that such questions would be hard for me to handle in Father’s presence.
Father threw away his cigarette, jumped up and caught me by my hair.
‘You bitch! Out to ruin the family name? I’ll kill you . . . ’
I was thrown but I turned towards him, still smiling.
‘Have you included Niharika’s name among the four hundred and fifty-one, Baba?’
He let go of my hair.
‘If you haven’t yet, then count me and Ramu da as well, and it will be four hundred and fifty-four!’
Father burned with anger and sheer agitation. I coolly set right the wet hair that he had disturbed, raised my smiling eyes to both of them once again. Father was very troubled. I went back to my room and sat down on Thakuma’s cot. I looked at Ramu da’s empty bed and smiled again. Father followed me there, pulled me up and slapped me hard repeatedly on both cheeks with the back of his right hand.
‘You rotting corpse, you don’t know how to keep your tongue! I’ll pull it out of your head!’
‘Better to chop it off . . . that’s easier, Baba.’
I was still smiling. My eyes had welled, my cheeks were aflame, but when I tried to smile broadly, the pain vanished. Father looked daggers at me. I remembered Khona’s line: The sorrows of the one who owns bullocks but does not till the soil never end. She was the first woman poet of Bengal. Mihira became jealous when Vikramaditya’s eyes filled with longing for her. To secure her presence in court, the king set difficult mathematical problems about the land’s slope and the moon’s mass. Varaha and Mihira realized that if she found the answers to the king’s questions, Khona’s fame would spread throughout the world; they felt that it was better to commit suicide than to be known as a woman’s husband or father-in-law. When Khona set out for the palace in the morning, Mihira knocked her down. He hanged her on the beam of the house with a noose. In agony, she thrust out her tongue. Varaha tore out her tongue, and Mihira let the king know that she had failed to find the answers and therefore had cut off her own tongue out of sorrow. The king could not love Khona without her tongue. She couldn’t live without it, either. She died, bleeding from her wound. The son who Varaha predicted would survive only ten years lived to a hundred. When Khona died, he was just twenty-five. He did not dare look at the stars after that. For the seven and a half decades that remained of his life, he dwelled in a closed room.
I walked out towards Bhavishyath. It was far, but I walked as if in a dream. When I reached the old mansion on which the banyan tree and many creepers grew, a taxi braked suddenly beside me. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra wanted me to get in. He was not someone I knew. The red stars etched on the broken-down wall behind me reflected in his smoky glasses, blood red. I wanted to laugh. The wall had begun to collapse. The green of the moss was spreading upon its red bricks. The stars had lost their shine. The moss had begun to creep over them too. I paid no attention and kept walking quickly. I was panting, but I would have liked to sing: ‘Twinkle, twinkle . . . ’
36
Radharaman’s son Devadutta, born to Chinmayi Devi, was a bandit who roamed the banks of the Ganga. Once he met an extraordinarily beautiful woman there and made her his bride. Her skin was like the blue lotus; her name, Utpalavarna. She had been married once before. Only after her first husband set off to trade in the land of Vanga did she realize that she was pregnant. His family cast doubts on her chastity, and she had to leave home full-bellied. She gave birth in the middle of a forest on her way to Vanga. Leaving the infant in a leafy bower, she went to seek water. When she returned, it was missing. Crying inconsolably, Utpalavarna sought it everywhere for many days. She did not have the courage to face her husband without their child and so decided to go to her natal home. It was then that my ancestor Devadutta stumbled on her and forcibly made her his bride. He was obsessed with her; she submitted fully. She became pregnant again and gave birth to a girl child. Devadutta constantly feared that he would lose her and became increasingly suspicious; he began to quarrel with her every day. One day, in the middle of one such row, he pushed her down while she was feeding her child. The child fell on the floor and was injured. Seeing the pool of blood, she feared that the baby had died. Wailing loudly, she ran out, determined to kill herself by jumping into the Ganga. But she fell unconscious and the river carried her further down the bank, where she was rescued by a young man. Seduced by her beauty, he too made her his wife; she had no choice. The years passed. One day, her husband brought home a lovely young girl, still in her teens. When she saw that her husband had married another, Utpalavarna felt shattered. She considered the girl her enemy for she was more youthful and beautiful and began to harass her in all possible ways. She cursed and beat her; even tried to kill her. One day, she caught the young girl by the hair and was about to dash her head on the wall when she noticed a large scar on the back of her head. ‘That mark was left when I fell off my mother’s lap and was wounded. Mother thought I was dead. She jumped into the river.’ The moment Utpalavarna realized that this girl was none other than her own daughter, the scales of ignorance fell off her inner eye, and she set off on a journey seeking the meaning of life, relationships and experiences.
Sanjeev Kumar Mitra had reached the Bhavishyath office before me and was waiting there. Sitting in hi
s presence, my mind too was tormented about the meaning of life, relationships and experiences. I pulled out one of the dust-covered manuscripts from the table and began to read it. It was a piece of paper with the heading, ‘Special Order of the Day on the Rumour of Surrender, 14 August 1945’. I wiped my neck and face with my dupatta and buried my face in that yellowed piece of paper. Gradually, I made out that it was a special order signed by Netaji Subhash Chanda Bose to the Indian National Army at Syonan.
‘I have something to discuss with you, Chetna.’
Noticing from the corner of my eye Sanjeev Kumar’s face flushed with either anger or shame, I continued reading.
Comrades, all sorts of wild rumours are afloat in Syonan and other places, one being that the hostilities have ceased. Most of these rumours are either false or highly exaggerated. Till this moment, fighting is going on at all fronts . . .
‘Chetna, this is no joke. Tell me, what terrible wrong have I done to you for you to treat me thus? Is it because I got you the fame and money you enjoy today? Or that I helped with your brother’s treatment? Or that I’m still exerting pressure on the government for your father?’