‘I’ll rest easy only after I’ve boarded that ship…I’m going to have a glass of champagne…then sleep…’
He was looking forward to it, the luxury of lounging about…reading…watching the waters, lunches and dinners, hearing the band play in the evenings…he’d soon get restless, though, with all that rest, and be rearing to get to work again. Now, if Ramola was with him, the hours would fly, even the long days on board.
He’d not been much of a husband these last months, seeing her mostly at work in the studio, and getting home often after she’d eaten dinner by herself and was getting ready for bed. When did they last dine out, just the two of them, he wondered? Was it at the Great Eastern, the day they had had the Swadeshi strike and had to stop work? Ramola had always protested when he got too preoccupied with work, but this time around she hadn’t complained.
He was almost ashamed, thinking of it. He’d get her a present to make up for it. Perhaps that brooch that she had admired. He could stop by the shop on Park Street, on his way back. She had stayed home that morning. He too would be on his way by lunchtime. Anil had stopped by the house early, as he was finishing his tea in the drawing room. ‘Some last things, Shankar Da…at the studio…’ he’d said. Though what more he couldn’t imagine. He’d gone over everything with Anil, in the minutest of details. A little bit tense, he imagined, hadn’t sat down even. Well, he had Ramola to go to…while he was gone.
Mirabai was coming along nicely. And for that he had Ramola to thank. While he had spent his days working on the Miracle deal, she’d supervised costumes, coordinated the rehearsals and eased the director’s job for him.
Would she turn director someday, he wondered. Direction was still a man’s job, but then Ramola was a torchbearer. She had entered the pictures when only the lowest class of women went about in the studios and dignified film acting.
‘I’ll have to plant it in her head…’ he smiled to himself. He had shielded her from the business side of things and she had been glad for it. ‘You be the big star,’ he would tell her lovingly. She was a determined woman, but in their business there were all kinds, and not all of them gentlemen, or women, for that matter.
‘Don’t work up any trouble for yourself while I’m gone. Think it all over, speak to Anil…think of me…’ he had whispered as he had hugged her under the sheets that morning.
He took another sip of his tea but it tasted bitter. Why was Anil taking so long? Didn’t he say half past eleven… or was it twelve? He wanted something cold to drink. He felt the sweat on his brow and loosened his tie. His palms were moist and the tea cup nearly slipped from his hand as he placed it back on the saucer.
He raised himself to increase the speed of the fan but felt a tautness on one side and sat down again. Had to be the late breakfast of luchi-aludam he had ordered at the studio. He needed a lemonade to ease it. He picked up the phone on his desk to ring the canteen, but found himself trying to call the house.
***
Almost as if it was destined, Ramola thought. ‘You live for Bharat Talkies, and you’re going to die there someday,’ she had told him angrily when he had missed meals and worked late. How was she to tell that he would take her at her words?
By the time Sailen Kaka had arrived it was only the matter of getting the death certificate. The studio’s staff was gathered outside his office, everyone struck into a state of mute disbelief.
It was all so very strange. Why would Shankar suffer a heart attack? There had never been anything wrong with his heart. She had decided to come to the studio after Shankar left home that morning, though she’d said she would be home that day. Lunch at the Grand, she had planned on the spur of the moment. She was going to surprise him. They were having his favourite lobster buffet, she’d seen in it the morning papers and booked two places. She was already out when they had called the house…on her way to the studio. Anil had found him… slumped at his desk next to the telephone, the receiver laid down beside him. He’d stayed at the door for some moments calling out to Shankar before moving up to the desk to touch his arm. He had died so silently…even the bearer who sat on duty outside the office had not known.
‘Shouldn’t we keep the body another day, madam, for people to pay their respects,’ Anil had said.
‘No. No waiting, I don’t want a tamasha,’ had been her retort.
She had sat in Shankar’s chair till very late, until Anil and the other men returned from the ghat. In her first state of denial and defiance she had wanted to accompany them. But as the minutes had ticked by and disbelief had dissolved into a thudding ache, she had let Anil and the others at the studio take over.
There had been so much happening so suddenly, as they had started to take the body outside. ‘Ei, be careful, hold under the head, Subol, take the legs,’ someone had shouted to those carrying him out. Like on a busy film set, Ramola thought, with someone or the other always calling instructions, managing things.
As a girl she had been taught that decent women did not show their grief in public. In any case, she did not want to cry or even look at the body very much in the few hours before they took him away. Why do women cling to their dead husbands, she had pondered, as she sat alone after they’d left…as if desperately living their last moments together. She only found it unbearable to look at him that way, like he had fallen asleep in tiredness.
She looked at the bedroom clock through bleary eyes. It was almost two in the morning, already the day after Shankar’s death. She was still wearing her sari from that morning.
Was there anyone that she should send word to, she wondered. Her father had died some years before and her mother was a sick invalid confined to her bed in their family home. She did not have any brothers or sisters. The rest of her family she had almost broken with after she had married Shankar and entered the pictures.
Shankar’s own father was long dead. His elder brother had taken to petty fraud and Shankar had looked after his younger brother and sister till he left home at twenty-four and his world had been the studio and the people there. Still, perhaps it was better not having a family around her. It meant she had to say less…hear less… the sympathies and commiserations were unbearable, somehow.
Her thoughts went back to that afternoon…to Shankar in his very last moments. Who was he telephoning? Before he had fallen on his desk? What if she had been with him then? Could she have done something, called a doctor? Saved him? Why had she not heeded those telltale signs of sickness? He had died so very helpless, not even able to call out. She struggled to fight back her tears as she went through the motions of changing, washing and getting into bed, staring at the wall in front of her. Not looking at his side of the bed.
She remembered…there were observances. The duties of a widow, duties which people would expect even of the very modern Ramola Devi…the Hindu shradh ceremony. Would she wear white now…no jewellery…or hairstyles? She knew so little about what to do and what not. Should she be at home for some days? Should she go to the studio? Or, would that not be right?
It was funny, she thought later, how hunger and thirst and the bodily needs did not die completely even in moments of grief and anguish. Or, at least, she had felt the pangs of hunger as she watched the first rays of light filter in through the early morning mist.
‘What should I wear,’ she mused as she got out of bed. Like she did every morning. She bathed and chose a white and blue chiffon. She did not wear much of cotton, and her wardrobe really had nothing that was right for a widow.
She decided to go down for breakfast, instead of calling for it in her bedroom, like she did on most days. She needed to see the household staff. ‘I’m the master of the house now,’ she told herself. They’d been huddled together under the stairs when she had come in the night before and she had walked up to her room without a word to any of them. Perhaps Anil or one of the others from the studio had said a few words to them…explained things. Still, they shouldn’t think she was broken, it just wouldn’t do.
She had drained her teacup when the maid put her head in through the door. Anil Babu had come and was waiting in the drawing room. It was only half past seven. He’s not slept, Ramola sighed, as she pulled herself up. As she walked into the large sitting room, Anil looked almost surprised to see her. He had his legs stretched out before him, nearly reclining on the sofa, as if prepared for a long wait. Perhaps he did not expect her to see him so soon. Possibly, he was relieved to see her collected. He stood up, and they sat silently. Then he came to the business.
She would need to call a board meeting. And think about the future of Bharat Talkies. He was there, of course, she could depend on him, at all times. He had arranged to stay at night in the studio, till things were settled. So she needn’t worry too much. She had to rest, get well. He had instructed those at the studio, nobody was to bother her. Also better, he thought, to not receive too many people in the house at this time, not knowing who had what in mind. Shankar Da had explained everything to him, how he wanted things done when he was gone…should they close the studio for two or three days now, before they decided what they would do?
Ramola was thinking of Mirabai. What would happen to it now? Who would direct it? So much of their efforts had gone into it. Should she now give up the whole thing? It was not just any picture, and it had stood on Shankar’s shoulders.
Her thoughts wandered back to Anil. He was going to see Avinash Mukherjee in a day or two, he was saying. Perhaps he had not heard yet. They needed to know what Miracle Pictures would do…now that Shankar Chattopadhyay was no longer making Mirabai.
PART 2
I
Ambarish Dev Burma studied himself in the long ornate mirror in his cluttered bedroom. He had draped his mother’s old pink Benarasi, his favourite, the one that she had worn at his rice ceremony. It was fading now, the threads bare in places, the zari had lost its sheen. What to do, he thought, fingering the elaborate karigari. He didn’t trust any of the servants with Ma’s things, and he couldn’t very well put it out to air himself, girl’s job that was. That imbecile sister of his had left with the best things, the rest had stayed in Ma’s cupboards, supposedly for the girl he would marry. Ma would do it all herself, putting the saris out to air on the sprawling chhat, her trusted Dinu scouring the folds for any poka, then lining the folds with neem leaves and little pouches of kalo jeera made with Ma’s old saris. Ma didn’t like the mothballs from the big shops, the smell choked her, she would say. And poisoned the fabrics. Destroyed them.
He was sad when she died. But it had been for the best. He grinned. What if she knew of the girls he then started bringing to the house? He had moved into her room, where she had spent her last days, moved in his things with hers, cluttering it up. But he liked it that way. She’d kept her saris in the big wooden almari, all neatly stacked, her jewellery in the hidden safe underneath the saris. What was left of it, anyhow, after she had dispatched the best pieces with that snotty girl. Her diamond necklace that his father had gifted her on the birth of a son, it rightfully belonged to him. But she’d given it to her. And the pakhi pendant that he had his heart set on, for as long as he could remember, that exquisite piece from Ma’s wedding…of rubies and emeralds and pearls, given by her dadu, her mother’s father.
Ma had always loved her better…comforted her… shielded that girl…from him. Didn’t she herself tell him to take care of her? Now you have a sister, she’d whispered through her tears as she had nursed her newborn girl staring up at Baba’s garlanded photograph. He’d tried, but Putu’s coming had spoilt things between them, him and Ma. And he had made that girl pay for it. Ma didn’t realize, until after Putu was two and her sobs poured out in words. What a pity Putu had not turned out deaf and dumb, like the mali’s little boy. He could have carried on then, and nobody the wiser. Her squeals had delighted him, as he dug his nails harder into her sides. He would pull her by her thin hair as she crawled along the marble floors, standing her up on those plump wobbly legs. Then let go and watch her fall, sometimes face down on the stone. And run to find his mother to the kitchen or kal-ghar, calling out that Putu had hurt herself again.
Still, it didn’t go out of hand until the day she really saw him, his mistake, not closing the door, thinking she would be longer taking her bath. Putu was on the mat by Ma’s four-poster bed, face down. He’d said he would take her eyes out if she moved or looked up. The landing had to be perfect, right in the middle of her, his feet straight on those round plump bottoms when he leaped from the bed. Putu yelled, but somehow he didn’t hear it. Ma was at the door, her long hair dripping water, wetting the front of her quickly wrapped sari, trickling down her breasts in snake-like patches.
Putu was packed off at fifteen with that donkey Ma chose for her. He had hoped she wouldn’t land a match, that burn on her right hand had discoloured and crumpled the flesh and it always showed, no matter what frills Ma stitched on to the ends of her long sleeved blouses. Ma had guarded Putu night and day, sometimes even taking her into the kal-ghar with her when she bathed. But even she was not good enough, he had found ways to get at Putu. One time he had gotten half her oily plait, smoothly chopping it off as she cowered against the wall. The other time, when Ma had gotten that dreadful pneumonia fever and had a coal fire in her room, and Putu would nurse her in the nights…it was the only time she’d fought back, even tried to hit him with those iron tongs she would use for the hot water as he had pulled her hand down on the coals. Ma had stirred at the sound of the scuffle and called her out frantically as Putu had screamed, but the room was dark except for the red of the burning coals, and she was too weak to stop it. And by then he had wanted Ma to know.
All those girls…when he got to them he knew he had to be more careful. That was a lesson he learnt once Putu left. Ma might have let Putu stay on for a bit more if not for that night, and once she got better she marshalled all her resources to get her married off, like it was her war against him. Within a year Putu was gone. And Ma was not the same after she went. She talked less, moved less about the house. Like her life had ended. Like he was nothing, nobody. And he knew that she told Putu never to come back, after the one time that she’d come to visit with that imbecile boy, her head glowing with that awful red sindoor. Uglier than she’d ever been, with her blunt nose and placid stupid face. She looked like Baba…while he…he was a picture of Ma, him with his slender frame, high forehead and straight nose, his fair skin, and hair that would fall across his face. He looked gentle. It had been useful…with those other girls, one had to be tender with them at first…loving…love was like a drug for that lot, a nesha…they couldn’t ever get enough of it. You could get anything out of them, if they thought you loved them.
His thin lips spread in a smile as he folded up the Benarasi. Dirty, worm-eaten, puerile little things… one had had a rotten sore on the side of her stomach, scratched it with her dirty finger nails till it oozed pus and blood. What was her name, now…he couldn’t remember…but he remembered her face, those hungry eyes as she had waited in the audition room with some pimp. He’d picked her on the spot, to play the second lead he had said, and kept her. He’d changed his mind, he said afterwards…girl didn’t have the right expressions… who would dare to question him on that.
Though quite a stir there’d been, all that murmuring turning to silen
ce in front of him…he did rather enjoy it. That was one thing about the boss, now dead and gone. He had never interfered, never questioned. Not even when that Menoka did herself in. She’d gotten him there, sure as hell, he’d hardly have thought it…though…to be fair to him, he did put the angle in her head, sacrifice in the name of love. She had been drinking, crying. She wanted marriage. To give it all up. Like that wife in his Pativrata: The Good Wife. What was going to happen to that one, he wondered? With the boss gone, what would the great and good Ramola Devi do now? Stop his picture?
Widows in white…not always as hapless as one wanted them to be. Ma now, she should have let him take charge of things, after Baba. But no, she wanted it all her way. That did it in for that wretched Putu of hers. Ramola made him think of Ma…all that pride. When really they were no better than those little worms that would dance to his tunes. He hadn’t ever been able to get even with Ma. Only Putu. Ma had held her own, till the end. He’d again started having his nightly visions. Of strewn limbs and bloody faces. As he lay in bed at night thinking of Ma, he would feel a stirring in his bowels, which kept growing. He could see Putu and those other girls, their limbs severed from their bodies, battered faces and clumps of hair pulled out by the roots. He would turn over to bury his face in the pillow, for he could sometimes sense his mother watching him in the dark, from wherever she was, as more of the girls were battered unconscious by an invisible hand and he saw the blood stream from their noses and mouths.
Often he wanted to feel the broken bodies…made slippery by the blood on them. Ma hadn’t deserved him. She’d let him down. The likes of her, and Ramola Devi, they judged him. What for? For only having his way with the rotten likes of Menoka? Didn’t everyone around want the same out of those little tarts? Didn’t they all secretly envy him, for getting it all? All of them at the studio that went whispering behind his back. What about Baba? He’d had his way with Ma. She would plead with him saying their little boy would hear…and he had pretended to sleep as Ma had wept in pain. Still, she had cried for Baba, him that jumped from the roof of their Chowringhee estate house one fine morning, just like that, but not before he had planted that horror of a Putu in her.
Menoka has hanged herself Page 6