Chowringhee

by Mani Shankar Mukherji

  Hobbs returned to the present. ‘This was the Sohrabji I knew—he was doing business decently and profitably. He put his daughter into a good school outside Calcutta. I saw them at the zoo once, he had brought her with him. That’s as much as I know. I have no idea how he got from Dharmatala to Shahjahan.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Your manager doesn’t seem to have any intention of returning today. What’s up? He goes out very frequently these days. Is Sata Bose expected to run the place all by himself? Well,’ he said as he rose, ‘at least I got to meet Sohrabji—I’m happy about that.’

  When I met Sohrabji later at the bar, it was as if I was seeing him in a new light. He was a man of few words—yet I felt I had known him for ages. It was almost as if I had discovered a kindred spirit in the bar manager of Shahjahan. Just like me, he had come a long way, been through a lot, seen incredibly hard days. The head barman told me, ‘He’s a wizard, sir, has every cocktail at his fingertips. He knows so many different kinds of mixing.’

  You couldn’t get a toehold in the bar at this time of the day. Even the machines of business need oiling, and the most effective lubricant was whiskey. It was quite a sight—people pouring whiskey down their throats with complete concentration, their eyes closed in rapture, and then, like clockwork, calling for a refill. Sohrabji told me, ‘If you want to preserve a corpse put it into whiskey, and if you want to kill a living man, pour whiskey into him!’

  My acquaintance with Sohrabji gradually turned into friendship. I realized that he was not what one would call sharp, but he did have a keen desire to stay honest. Besides, he had an unshakeable faith in God.

  Every evening Sohrabji would stand in a corner of the bar and keep looking at the clock, waiting for the bar to close, for the wine lovers to remember that they had homes to return to. The customers would pay their bills, the barmen would rearrange the chairs, I would shut the cash box and do the accounts—and then we would be through.

  But even after all these years, Sohrabji seemed to be dogged by an inner conflict. And I found out more about that when I heard the last part of his story in his own words.

  ‘I am not educated, but I like those who study, who think. You know a lot; can you tell me why people drink?’ Sohrabji asked me one day.

  ‘Sata Bose thinks that cowards seek courage in liquor, the weak seek strength, the miserable seek happiness—but nobody finds anything but utter ruin.’

  ‘Hasn’t anyone said anything about people like us, who sell liquor? I’ll tell you my story, maybe you’ll understand. Maybe because I’m uneducated, I haven’t found the answer. I could have asked my daughter, she’s educated—but can anyone ask one’s daughter about things like this?’

  He loved his daughter very much. ‘You don’t know my daughter,’ he said. ‘You won’t get a girl as intelligent and knowledgeable as her. She’s beautiful too. She reads such thick books; she writes letters to me every day. I’d like to write to her, too, but I feel embarrassed, my spelling is all wrong. Of course, she says, don’t worry about all that, you must write long letters to me. She’s studying abroad now, you know.’ The daughter of an uneducated orphan—Sohrabji’s breast swelled with pride.

  Some great man has said that of all the loves in the world, the one of a father for his daughter is almost divine. I remember the exact words: ‘He beholds her both with and without regard to her sex.’ Behind our love for our wives lies lust, behind our love for our sons lies ambition, but our love for our daughters is free of all selfish motives. I saw the truth of the words in Sohrabji that day.

  It was also the day that I heard his sad tale.

  He had never allowed his wife or daughter to visit his bar. He would be home till nine in the morning, then leave with the groceries for the restaurant. Around noon his lunch would be sent from home. Once in the afternoon he would go back for a cup of tea. With evening the bar started to fill up. As night advanced, the problems increased. Closing the bar at ten-thirty was always difficult. Many customers refused to leave, others insisted that the bar be kept open till later. He was forced to tell them that the licence did not permit that, whereupon the customers would shower abuse and break glasses. He couldn’t stand it. For some of them he would call taxis or rickshaws—they were too drunk to go home safely on their own.

  When they arrived at the bar the next day, though, they would smile and greet one another, asking after each other. But gradually the atmosphere changed. Sohrabji was sorely tempted to say, have a few and go home, your womenfolk are waiting for you. But he didn’t dare.

  One day his daughter said, ‘I want to go to the bar with you.’

  ‘No dear, you cannot. I have lots of work there, I’m always busy.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong with my going there?’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent, dear, I’m telling you, you shouldn’t.’

  His daughter was growing up, blooming like a flower with the beauty of spring—intelligent, educated, and yet simple. She knew nothing about life. So many times she had said, ‘I’m also going into business like you, Father.’

  ‘No, my dear,’ he would say hastily, alarmed. ‘You’re going to be a professor, a great scholar. People all over the world will marvel at how much the uneducated fellow’s daughter knows.’

  Everything was arranged for her to go abroad. He couldn’t imagine getting by all those years without her, but what could he do? He thought about the day when she would return as Dr Sohrabji and the papers would carry her photograph.

  But something happened to his daughter a few days before her departure.

  There was chaos at Sohrabji’s bar that night. One of the customers was lying on the floor, foaming at the mouth, a few were creating a ruckus, having had one too many, others were sitting sullenly around with their glasses, saying, ‘One more peg, bearer.’

  The bearer said, ‘The bill for this peg, sir. What can we do, sir, it’s the excise rule—bills to be made out for each peg, and to be settled immediately.’

  The bearers couldn’t manage by themselves, so Sohrabji was forced to lend a hand. He went up to one of the tables and asked, ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Pure whiskey, so it burns everything as it goes down the throat.’

  Suddenly there was a hush followed by a murmur around the bar. A new arrival.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Sohrabji said as he looked up. With a shock he realized it was his daughter.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he forced the words out.

  She had come to give her father a surprise. She wanted to take him back home with her. After all, in a few days she’d be gone for a long time.

  The young woman had never seen so many dishevelled men in various stages of drunken stupor. On seeing her, the peg measure in Sohrabji’s hand jerked and quite a lot of liquor spilled on the table. The man who was lying on the floor rose and shouted, ‘I want a large peg too.’

  The girl’s face clouded over. In a whisper she said, ‘Aren’t you coming with me, Father?’

  Her father came out on to the road with her, holding her hand, trembling. ‘Go home,’ he croaked. ‘I can’t close the bar yet, they’ll smash everything.’

  When he got home, he found his daughter had gone to bed.

  The next day he was afraid to meet her. He had been found out. The day of her departure was fast approaching, but she remained aloof, despondent. She hadn’t quite recovered from the sight of her father in the bar. Sohrabji wanted to put his arms around her and say, ‘Why are you worrying about all this, my dear? Just carry on with your studies—you’ll do so well.’ But he could say nothing.

  Early on the morning of her departure, when the mother was still asleep, the father entered his daughter’s room quietly. ‘Is there something you want to say?’ he asked her. ‘You look as though you do.’

  Her lips quivered. She said, ‘I’m frightened, Father. Those people I saw in your bar the other night—their mothers and sisters and wives and daughters must be weeping. Will they ever forgive us?’

 
He had never thought of it that way. What can I do? he was about to say. How is it my fault? I don’t drag them to my bar—I do business honestly. But he couldn’t speak.

  His daughter left for Bombay on a train, and then for England on a ship. But Sohrabji was trapped. All he could see was his daughter’s sad face, and the question in her eyes: Will they forgive you, Father?

  He was stricken by an inner conflict. He tried to persuade himself that he was not to blame. Do I ask you to order so many pegs? Why don’t you leave after one? What can I do—if I don’t serve it to you, you’ll go to some other bar. But his daughter still seemed to be questioning him. He said to himself, their wives and daughters can always stop them, what can I do? I’m a simple seller of liquor, how can it all be my fault?

  But he simply wasn’t able to convince himself. The more he tried to rationalize, the more the question kept haunting him. He felt afraid. He started dreaming that the mothers and sisters, wives and daughters of all his customers were cursing him through their tears, that those curses had enveloped not just him but also his family, including his daughter.

  He almost went mad. Then in desperation, Sohrabji sold the bar. That same night he sat down to write to his daughter, ‘How is it my fault? If they come on their own to drink at my bar and destroy their families, how is it my fault?’

  Sohrabji thought he would put the proceeds of the sale in a bank and run his small family on it. But his troubles had only begun. The bank declared bankruptcy two days after he had deposited the cheque. Could it have been the outcome of the curses, the tears? he wondered. What would he do now? He had to pay for his daughter’s education. He needed a job, but who would give a job to an uneducated person?

  So it was back to a bar. He whispered to me, ‘I’m only an employee now. I am no longer responsible for anything. Even if someone puts a curse on the bar, surely it won’t affect me.’

  His eyes were closed. He was probably asking God, ‘Surely I’m doing nothing wrong by working here—I have a family to support too.’

  After a long silence, Sohrabji rose and headed home, carrying his turmoil-ridden heart with him.

  I was silent, overwhelmed once again by the discovery of yet another star in the firmament of my life.

  14

  Sometimes I think I am selfish. The joys and sorrows of those who have been part of my working life may have appealed to me, but why inflict them on the readers? And then again, it occurs to me that the Phokla Chattegees, Mrs Pakrashis and Mr Agarwallas of this world are not part of my world alone. Everyone should be acquainted with them.

  And what of the ebb and flow of everyday guests at the Shahjahan? I have not introduced them in my narration. I have only written about the people I got close to, those whose lives became interlinked with mine. From my vantage point I merely watched the stream of people flow past my wonderstruck eyes every day, without sharing that vista with readers. Tomorrow, some gifted soul might be able to do justice to that other scenario. Under the power of his or her pen, the voices of the many others in this hotel will possibly be rescued from the past and be served up to the present. From everything that is ugly and repulsive here an exquisite literary creation might be born.

  I told Bose-da one day, ‘It’s really incredible. I never even dreamt of being part of this hotel, and yet, now that I am, my soul, without my even realizing it, has mingled with Shahjahan and become one with it.’

  ‘You people believe in Western ideas—you have no faith in rebirth, or else I’d have said that I’ve been here many times before, I’ve come to know every room in this hotel over my past lives.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I was here too, perhaps I too had seen some sad-eyed Karabi Guha, perhaps met many more Connies and Sutherlands.’

  ‘And perhaps you should have met many more people, but didn’t,’ said Bose-da. ‘All I can tell you is that a lot of memorable moments spring to life before our very eyes. Only, we are far too absorbed in our work at the counter to take notice.’

  I must have looked puzzled by his remark. Laughing, he explained, ‘I think of eighteen sixty-seven sometimes. Not our hotel, a different one. But it must have taken place in front of some receptionist just like us. That receptionist, too, must have been absorbed in his register as we are, and, startled by the sound of footsteps, must have looked up to see a stranger standing there. No visitor like this had ever been seen at the hotel before. He was wearing a dhoti, had only a cloth wrapped around himself, the sacred thread visible under it, and red slippers on his feet. A native Brahmin who had lost his way and wandered in, he must have thought, or, one never knew, times were changing—maybe the Brahmin wanted to sit at the bar and strike up an acquaintance with French grapes!

  ‘The receptionist must have said good morning in his usual manner and must have been surprised by the Brahmin’s reply in flawless English. The receptionist, following tradition, would then have pushed forward the visitors’ slip. He must have glanced at the bold handwriting of the Brahmin and, even as the latter said, “I want to meet Mr Dutta,” answered, just as we do, “Oh, Mr Dutta! Our guest who’s just back from England? One moment please.”

  ‘The receptionist couldn’t have known who the Brahmin was, or why he was there. Perhaps he was seeking some donation. Still, he asked him to take a seat. Other people, too, were waiting to meet the guest who had just arrived from England.

  ‘Coming down to the lounge, the guest shook hands with everyone else, but seeing the Brahmin, he embraced him and kissed him and, beside himself with joy, continued to hold him in a bear hug, kissing him and dancing all the while. The discomfited Brahmin could only keep muttering, “Let me go, let me go.”

  ‘As a receptionist, the mere thought of that scene, of Vidyasagar and Michael Madhusudan Dutta together, still makes my hair stand on end. Here at the Shahjahan, too, we must have been present at many dramatic moments, but didn’t notice them. How I envy that receptionist at Dutta’s hotel—he’s the only one we remember. Thousands of others have sunk into oblivion, just as we will.’

  I too followed Bose-da to that forgotten afternoon of the nineteenth century. I could see Vidyasagar and Michael Madhusudan Dutta in my mind’s eye. And I wondered whether the events that were taking place now would ever find a place in history books.

  ‘I read somewhere that there are two kinds of history,’ Bose-da said. ‘One is written in detail and turned into books, while the other stays unwritten forever. Everyone knows it, but nobody dares put it in words; we are probably witnessing events of the second version.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t, either. Someone once told me that the characters of history are real, and the events imagined. Whereas in novels and stories and plays, it is the characters who are imaginary, the events are real.’ I was about to disagree, but Bose-da himself did so before I could. ‘I don’t think that’s entirely true. But then it is equally true that not every truth of ordinary life is found in history books.’

  Just then the phone rang. Bose-da said, ‘Just when I was getting into the groove, lecturing like the head of the department of a university, God has to remind me that I’m only a humble receptionist at Shahjahan Hotel!’

  Into the phone he said, ‘Yes, this is Sata. Of course, rest assured, do come over.’

  ‘Who is it now?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone who owns a house in a fashionable neighbourhood right here in Calcutta, with plenty of spare rooms. Yet she wants to spend the night here, and for a night’s shelter she’s even willing to beg and plead with an ordinary hotel clerk,’ he said.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  Bose-da shook his head. ‘Hundreds of people would throng this hotel if they knew she was here. We all know her name.’

  Soon the phone rang again. As soon as I took the call a male voice asked, ‘Can I get a room tonight?’

  Bose-da took the phone from my hand. ‘May I know your name, please?’ he asked. Then, after a minute, he said, ‘S
orry, we’re full up.’

  I looked at him in surprise. We did have a few rooms available.

  Sometime later the woman ‘hundreds of people would throng this hotel for’ turned up at the counter. I hadn’t ever expected to meet her anywhere but on the silver screen. She was the brightest star of the film world, Sreelekha Devi. I’d seen many heart-stopping photographs of her in film magazines, but had heard of her only once in connection with a party here at the Shahjahan, where Phokla Chatterjee had thrown up all over this paragon of beauty. She had almost fainted in revulsion. Phokla had said in apology, ‘Please don’t mind, Sreelekha Devi—it was the new cocktail. Those buggers have named it “Filmstar”, but the thing looked good only from a distance. As soon as I tried one I threw up.’

  But Sreelekha Devi had refused to accept the apology. Declaring loudly that she would not go to any party where Phokla was present, she had walked off. Since then nobody has invited poor Phokla to film parties.

  Phokla had once or twice broached the matter with me. ‘What a fuss. We’re human, can’t we throw up occasionally? But Sreelekha Devi thinks I puked all over her deliberately. You know her, don’t you? Why don’t you explain to her?’ He was drunk. So I hadn’t bothered to respond. ‘All right,’ he had gone on. ‘My name is Phokla Chatterjee. One of these days I’m going to spit a mouthful of water on her face. Then all the powder will wash off and her real looks will be revealed. She won’t get another film after that.’