Arjun - Bengali Novel PDF

The bestselling Bengali novel of oppression and revenge in- Ealcutta’s refugee community a | put Sunil high among present day. writers... he isi a very v...

The bestselling Bengali novel of oppression and revenge in- Ealcutta’s refugee community a | put Sunil high among present day. writers... he isi a very visual writer...and there is a lyricism too...’ SATYAJI rRAY.  PENGUIN BOOKS ARJUN Sunil Gangopadhyay was born in Faridpur, Bangladesh, in 1934 and educated at Calcutta University. While still a student he founded a poetry magazine and has devoted himself to writing prose and poetry ever since. In 1963 he participated in the International Writers Workshop Prog- ram at Iowa State University. His first novel Atmaprakash was published in 1966. Two of his novels The Adversary and Days and Nights in the Forest have been filmed by Satyajit Ray and his most recent novel Those Times was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award. Sunil Gangopadhyay lives in Calcutta where he edits the poetry section of Desh magazine. He is married and has one son. Chitrita Banerji-Abdullah was born in 1947 and was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, and Harvard University. She has worked for various development agencies as well as for a publishing firm in America. She has translated Bengali short stories into English for literary magazines and the BBC. She lives at present in Calcutta.  Translator’s Preface It is always difficult to convey the nuances and flavour of an original work in a translation. This becomes doubly difficult when there is a transition between two such widely disparate languages as Bengali and English. Added to this, there is the difficulty of depicting a South Asian culture in a western language without an imbalance, either in accuracy or in immediacy. Arjun, however, has an additional dimension which is obvious to the average Bengali reader (or for that matter, the average Indian reader), but which needs to be explained briefly to the western reader. In its basic outline, this book is based on the main story of the Indian epic, the Mahabharata. In fact, the name of the protagonist in the novel, Arjun, is the same as that of one character—perhaps the most heroic one—in the epic. The Mahabharata follows the fortunes of the five Pandava brothers who, being fatherless, are cheated of their rightful inheritance by their wicked and powerful cousins, the Kauravas. After many years of hardship, many escapes from death and several abortive attempts at peaceful negotiations for their share of the kingdom the Pandavas, with their followers and allies, finally meet the mighty Kauravas in war, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Their one great asset, apart from their heroism, fortitude and virtue, is the friendship between Arjun and Krishna, one of the incarnations of Vishnu, the second of the Hindu Trinity. It is because of this friendship that Krishna decides to drive Arjun’s chariot in battle for him. However, when Arjun does come on to the field and sees his Own cousins: as well as many former friends and relatives arrayed in battle against him, he is totally unmanned—not out of fear, for Arjun has proved himself to be fearless; but because of infinite sadness and revulsion at the thought of slaughtering all these people. How can a kingdom be worth it? He is so overcome, that he drops all his weapons and sits down 9 in the chariot, refusing to fight. That is when Krishna speaks to him about his duty as a warrior in a magnificent combination of exhortation, entreaty and command as well as a profound analysis of religion and ethics (which has become known as the Bhagavad Gita). Finally Arjun realizes that he must sacrifice personal feelings of attachment and compunction, take hold of himself and fight to the best of his ability as a warrior—because this is a just cause. And so, after great acts of individual heroism on both sides, the battle of Kurukshetra does end in victory for Arjun and his brothers, a victory for right and justice. But in a novel about the struggle for survival in the twentieth century, no god can be invoked to come down and lead the hero to a glorious victory. Nor are the issues of conflict of epic proportions. Nevertheless, the latter-day Arjun does find his destiny in a way similar to that of his namesake. After vain attempts at settlement through rational discussion, though without giving up one’s basic rights, this Arjun also leads his followers into battle. The sight of familiar faces among the enemy debilitates and emasculates him too for a time. But the wanton killing of a pet dog brings home the futility of expecting fair play or kindness from people whose greed for possession is overwhelming. So Arjun, the man of intellect and of peace, is roused to become the fearless, rage-filled, larger- than-life hero who will fight, and fight to win. I would like to thank Abu Abdullah, F.K. Ghuznavi, and Lawrence Lifschultz for their encouragement and moral sup- port during the period when Arjun was being translated. Chitrita Banerji-Abdullah Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986 10 Take a good look at that girl. You cannot see her very clearly, of course, since it is much too dark. The electricity has just gone off in their house, in the whole neighbourhood. But she just keeps on sitting with her books in the faint hope that the lights will come back on. She is about twenty-one, her long hair hanging down ina braid. Look, it is becoming easier to see things in the dark now. The pale glow of a growing moon filters through the open window. There are no chairs or tables in the room. She has been working on her bed with books and papers scattered all around her. She occasionally bites her pen, an old habit with her. Irritated by the continuing darkness, she steps down from the bed and goes over to the window. She does not have much beauty, but of health she has a fair share. A light brown complexion. Not having had to go out all day, her sari is draped casually around her. Her name... | From the next room, her mother calls, ‘Labi, where is the candle?’ You don’t like this name, Labi, do you? Her parents, her grandfather, even her neighbours, call her Labi. In college, however, she is known as Labonya.* Her BA finals are only seventeen days away; discontent mars the symmetry of her eyebrows at the defection of the power supply. It is about eight-thirty in the evening. In the Dum Dum area where Labonya lives, such power cuts are quite frequent, their duration completely uncertain. Yet * Labonya: an approximate English equivalent of the word is ‘grace’. 11 how unjust. There has been no storm today to fell a tree and pull out the electric wires. Of course, it is also a fact that even a year ago, Labonya’s house did not have a power connection. But within that time, the lanterns and oil lamps all seem to have disappeared. A general hullabaloo was heard as soon as the power went off—everybody starting to speak at the same time. But now it is deathly quiet. In the weak, pallid moonlight, a poor adversary to the darkness, the whole neighbour- hood seems colourless, lifeless. As if it is waiting to come back to life at the touch of a magic wand. সং In her cramped little room, Labonya continued to fret with unease and irritation. A mynah thrashing about in its cage was what she reminded one of. One could not call Labonya beautiful, but she had a fine pair of eyes. When she was unhappy, or when she concentrated on some thought, her eyes acquired a darkness and a depth, and her face was illuminated with a touch of grace. Most people could never see this. But her father had been able to perceive it, which was why he had called her Labonya. But the girl was too headstrong. Anger, rather than sorrow, was her dominant passion. Her conduct at most times did not fit in with the softness of her formal name. Then she was no longer Labonya, just plain Labi. Her mother enquired a couple more times about the candle. But Labonya did not answer. She brought her braided hair over in front and started to twine it round and round her finger. Her mother, not hearing her daughter answer, stopped asking. Labonya only re- sponded when she felt like it. To ask too often would only make her lash out in a temper. Even though there was no fan in the room, sudden darkness always made you feel the heat more. Labonya sensed beads of sweat appearing on her forehead. Shortly after her mother’s voice stopped Labonya herself started looking for the candle. There was no particular likelihood of the candle being in the room, and that too under the bed; but Labonya crawled under, just 12 the same. She was alone in the room, it would not matter much if her clothes got into immodest disarray. It was even darker under the bed. She had failed in her finals last year. At this moment all she was thinking of was that she had to pass this year, just had to. And yet, the lights kept going off, time and again. She let out an exclamation of disgust at not being able to find the candle after all. In this room now, there was this girl all by herself, a girl who had health rather than beauty, who badly wanted to pass her exams—throbbing with irritation. She simply could not bear the darkness. Labonya walked over and stood by the window again. Her braid was pulled forward, her fingers habitually twining in it. Naturally enough, the darkness was lighter outside. There was electricity in all the houses on the other side of the street. The two neighbourhoods faced each other, one dark, the other illuminated. There was a frame for the climbing gourd plant, and a grapefruit tree in front of the house. Labonya saw her grandfather, Nishinath, going out towards the road, leaning on her eleven-year-old brother Naru’s shoulder. Did the old man have.to go out now, just when there was a power cut? He stumbled once, on a brick lying on the ground. Labonya’s eyes moved in another direction. Two shadowy figures had appeared. She made them out soon enough. At first, they seemed like two flying sparks of fire, for both of them lighted cigarettes. Then she saw the hands, the face, the rest of the body. Sukhen and Dibya. The two stopped suddenly. Usually, a natural instinct would make them both look at Labonya’s window at least once. She moved aside a little, so as to avoid meeting their eyes, and drew her sari more carefully over herself. Let us leave her standing there for the present and look at these two young men. Sukhen was about thirty-two, but did not look more than twenty-two or twenty-three, with his thin, wiry body. He did not have much of a beard either. A few more years of youthful- ness were left to him. He sang well, but he also worked in a bakery—a point he made quite often to his other unemployed friends. 13  Dibya had once been runner-up in the junior group of the All Bengal Wrestling Competition. He had not won the title because he hadn’t learnt all the tricks of his art properly. But, in a contest of sheer physical strength, all the other competitors would have been as mere children to him. He was not built like the usual wrestler, either. There was not an ounce of superfluous fat on his body. His complexion was fair, his height a respectable five-foot-eleven inches. Had there not been a hardness to his features, he could well have been considered hand- some. In childhood and in boyhood, when the softness had still lingered in his face, that beautifully fashioned body of his had made him look like a cherub. The two of them, Sukhen and Dibya, flung their cigarette butts away at the same time. ‘Three times a week’, said Sukhen, ‘the power has to go off. How long does one put up with this?’ “Yes,’ said Dibya, ‘they are all out to get us these days.’ This piece of land, where the colony had grown, was elevated quite a bit from the level of the main road. At the time it had been the country house of some wealthy landlord or zamindar* from Calcutta. The whole area of three-and-a-half bighas* had been enclosed by a brick wall then—but now there were large gaps in the wall. In the centre was a single storeyed building with three huge rooms. Once all the rooms had been illuminated by chandeliers and the central hall had had a large piano; its walls had been embellished with paintings of nude European women and in the old days the house had been popularly known as the natchghar or dance hall. Next to it was a medium-sized pond, its banks reinforced with brick and concrete on two sides. Now this piece of property had become a forcibly occupied colony. Thirty-four families had staked out their territories and raised homesteads. Until a short time ago, the foundations had been of earth, the walls made from bamboo matting or tin, the roof made of tiles. One was not allowed to raise a structure on a proper “For an explanation of untranslated Bengali terms, see glossary on page 205 14 brick foundation unless one had acquired legal rights to the land. But after having waited for so many years, those who could manage it, had raised brick buildings— some of them even dismantling the boundary wall to utilize the bricks. Only two of the families had been granted the privilege of occupying one-and-a-half rooms each of the dance hall. Lanterns, lamps or candles were being lit in many of the houses now. The neighbourhood suffered frequent visitations from thieves—and this kind of darkness created ideal conditions for them. So the main doors of all the houses were locked. The power could remain cut off all night. It had happened before. Sukhen and Dibya were patrolling the entire colony. It was their job at times like this—not that anybody had entrusted them with this duty. It was something they had taken upon themselves. It was natural for a person like Dibya, with his unbounded physical courage, to assure everybody of protection. Having walked all around the pond, they were approaching the clump of lychee trees, when they heard a rustling on dry leaves in the thick, sooty darkness under the branches. One could still come across an occasional snake here. When the colony had first been founded, lots of cobras and other snakes had had to be killed. In the pre-colony days, the owner and his guests would come down only two or three times a year to have a good time. So the snakes had had plenty of opportunity to multiply. The presence of so many people now had not made all of them disappear though—some tenacious ones refused to give up their holes. In spite of Calcutta’s proximity, the abundance of trees made the place look somewhat like a village. The owner of the country house had at one time planted many different kinds of trees all around his property. Seventy or so coconut trees had survived making the people of the colony self-sufficient in coconuts. Some even sold them. Dibya tried to follow the rustling of the snake. If it happened to be one of the water snakes that often came out during the monsoon, then there was nothing to fear. He wished he had a stick or something handy to beat the 15 pile of leaves. Most of the colony people had picked up the Calcutta dialect by now, but they also retained their own East Bengal dialects. Among themselves, they freely mixed the two, as Dibya and Sukhen were doing now. ‘Why didn’t you bring your torch?’ asked Dibya. ‘No batteries,’ said Sukhen. ‘What’s the point of keeping a torch if you don’t have batteries?’ ‘Well, why don’t you buy me some? You still owe me two rupees, you know.’ ‘Look, when I pay you back, I shall do so with interest, okay?’ Walking up to the nearest house, Dibya called out, ‘Are you home, Uncle Basu?’ A thin, metallic female voice answered from within. ‘No, he is not. He hasn’t come home from work yet.’ ‘Better be careful when you step outside, a snake just passed by here.’ An East Bengali does not throw a fit at the mere mention of a snake. A dry affirmative came from the house. But two thin children rushed up to the window with eager questions. ‘Dibyada, where did you see the snake? Where is it?’ ‘Never you mind. Just don’t go near the pond without a light.’ The children began to feel quite excited. Everyone knew what Dibya was like. Tonight, if the lights came back, or tomorrow, he would start preparations for a snake hunt. That would be fun. The two young men walked by Labonya’s house but were disappointed at not seeing her at the window. Then they saw her grandfather and Naru. ‘Where are you off to, Naru?’ asked Dibya. ‘To the shop.’ ‘What kind of fish are you having for dinner tonight?’ ‘No fish, we are going to have meat,’ said Naru and started laughing boisterously. ‘Tell your mother,’ said Dibya, ‘that Sukhen and I will drop in today and taste her cooking.’ ‘Sure,’ said Grandfather Nishi heartily, ‘you must 16 definitely come over. Naru’s mother is cooking the tree-goat today.’ Tree-goat, in Bengali, means the green jackfruit. Eggplants and chillies had been planted in the little space in front of the house. The eggplants had a shining healthy look, but the chillies were not hot enough yet. A grapefruit tree had already been there from the old days. A small bamboo platform had been built under- neath the tree by the settlers, and the old man spent most of his days sitting there. As we know, having got hold of Naru, Grandfather Nishi had been going towards the shops, leaning on the boy’s shoulder. The sudden uproar made him stop in his tracks. ‘What is it, Naru?’ he asked. ‘Why are they shouting?’ ‘Oh, that’s only because the lights have gone off again.’ The grandfather smiled to himself a little. Every time he heard about the lights going off, he smiled. Of course no one could see this smile in the dark—or who knows what they would have thought. This was a smile the old man enjoyed by himself. He was blind. Thirty-eight years ago, he had lost his sight completely. He had had his last look at the world even before his youth was over. Naru was his only means of locomotion. Many people in these circumstances would think, ‘What a relief if the old man died. As long as he lives he suffers himself, and makes other people suffer.’ But Labonya’s family did not think that way. They all looked after the grandfather’s comforts. One of the many reasons behind this was the fact that for several years now, he had been receiving a monthly stipend of seventy-five rupees from the government, as a perse- cuted political worker. Who would gain from his death except the government? Naru received ten paise daily from his grandfather. No other boy of his age in the colony had such an income. So he let the old man lean on his shoulder as often as was needed. Naru’s father had started a laundry in the neighbour- i, hood. After an initial period of turmoil and uncertainty, the business seemed to have found its feet. Before the laundry, he had had a grocery shop which had been a total loss—not a single client from the colony had paid for goods they had bought on credit. The laundry was a success simply because there was no customer from the colony. It was the people from the numbered houses opposite who came to have their clothes washed. Be- sides, having clothes washed on credit is not considered as much a natural right as buying on credit from a grocer’s! The local dhobis had been contracted to wash the clothes. On rare occasions, when there was an urgent order to deliver within twenty four-hours, Labonya’s mother had washed a few clothes at home for the laundry. Because of this, Labonya had sometimes been called a washerman’s daughter during a quarrel. Their actual surname was Dasgupta. The old man was in considerable pain after stumbling on the brick on the road. When you were old, even the slightest pain seemed to linger in the body. He snapped at Naru irritably. ‘Damn it boy, I may be blind, but have you lost your eyes too? Why couldn’t you tell me there was a brick lying here?’ ‘Come on grandfather, I told you about it yesterday.’ ‘Well, can’t you remove it?’ ‘No, it is sunk into the earth.’ Naru’s grandfather squatted down on the road himself to remove the brick. He groped about and found it, but his efforts to prise it away were futile. He obviously did not have the strength to remove obstacles in his path anymore. Another outburst of shouting in the distance got him quickly to his feet. Naru pulled urgently at his arm. ‘Quick, grandfather, do come along.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘A taxi has hit a rickshaw.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Just in front of our shop.’ ‘Did anyone get hurt? Who was in the rickshaw?’ 18  ‘Why don’t you come along quickly, so we can find out.’ ‘Naru, do you think anybody will beat up the taxi driver? Who is that shouting so loudly?’ The old man’s hand slipped from Naru’s shoulder, reducing him to a helpless flailing of limbs. The boy had run forward by himself in his excitement—but then he came running back and dragged the old man along with him. Somehow he managed to deposit his grandfather safely in their shop and rushed off to the scene of the disaster. A taxi had grazed the wheel of a cycle-rickshaw in an attempt to avoid it. But the impact, slight as it was, had been enough to upset the rickshaw’s balance and tilt it towards an open ditch close by. It had not overturned completely, of course, but one of the two lady passengers had tumbled to the ground. She had not been hurt, but her clothes were smeared with mud. Many shadowy shapes had already gathered in the darkness. An incident like this served at least to break the monotony of the dark. Sukhen was shouting at the top of his voice and Dibya had already got a firm grip on the shoulder of the Punjabi taxi driver. The man was huge, but everyone knew quite well that at the slightest show of intransigence Dibya would split his head open. Besides, once Dibya got started, everybody else would be quite happy to assist him. Nothing could be more fun than many people beating up one person—the guilt could not be assigned to anyone in particular. The problem with the driver was that he was aggres- sive—instead of being humble and apologetic, he was loudly pitching the blame on the rickshaw puller, who had refused to give way to the taxi in spite of repeated honking. But he who has been hurt cannot be the culprit. From the faceless crowd in the darkness there started building up a louder tempo of violence against the taxi driver. Dibya balled his powerful fist under the bewil- dered gaze of the man and spoke in ominous tones. ‘Still being perverse, are you?’ At this point, the manager of the local plywood factory, another Punjabi called Kewal Singh, intervened. Coming up to Dibya, he placed a placatory hand on his shoulder. 19  ‘Why are you beating up this poor fellow, Dibubabu?’ he asked.‘I saw him honking for dear life.’ Dibya turned towards Kewal Singh with a smile. He had become quite friendly with the man. ‘Is this someone you know, Kewal Singh?’ There was a murmur in the crowd: ‘These Punjabis! They always keep together. Let one turbaned head get into trouble, and the others will come rushing to his help.’ The three passengers inside the taxi continued sitting motionless. Their faces were as expressionless as con- crete walls. If things started looking more dangerous, they would open the doors of the cab and melt into the crowd. That was the way things were. Dibya smiled again at Kewal Singh. Did the man really think that he would kill this driver or what? Undue punishment for a small offence was not something Dibya cared for. Had even one of the two passengers in the rickshaw been killed, had they even broken their limbs, then, yes, then the taxi driver would have no right to live. But for a tumble into the ditch and some mud splashed on to their clothes—for this the man just had to apologize, perhaps accept a slap or two. সং Naru’s father, Biswanath, had been turning over the pages of an old receipt book with great concentration all this time. A candle burned on the table in front of him. ‘Have they started fighting?’ asked the grandfather. ‘People seem to beat each other up for no reason these days. What’s going on?’ ‘We don’t have to know anything about it,’ said Biswanath in a totally uninvolved voice. ‘If the police come and ask us, we can speak the truth—that we didn’t see or hear anything.’ There was always an expression of subdued grievance on Biswanath’s face. He felt that too many people had cheated him. Not that he wanted to extract revenge, but he did not wish to be embroiled in the affairs of anybody either. His only aim in life was to keep his laundry 20  business going. A number of hungry people in his home had to be provided for, and that was his 17781 reason for living. He had not lifted his eyes once to look towards the mélee in the darkness outside. The candle flame trembled in the wind, and the old man kept staring at it, as if he saw the light itself— though the darkness inside him did not receive the slightest ray of light. After a short silence he spoke again. ‘Haven’t the lights come back on yet?’ ‘No.’ The grandfather did not smile this time. ‘Why do they have power cuts every day?’ he asked anxiously. ‘What are they up to?’ ‘Only they know anything about that.’ ‘Labi has her exams to take. How can she study in this darkness?’ Biswanath was jolted into further unpleasant aware- ness. This seemed the latest way the world wanted to ruin him. Even the electricity supply was out to get him, by cutting off the power every night. One of his sons, born just after Labonya, had died. Had he lived, he would have turned eighteen now, and perhaps been able to help his father. Labonya had failed in one subject last year. If she passed this year, she could perhaps get a teaching job in some school—and the family would have increased resources at its command. Biswanath could never think of letting his daughter work anywhere except in a school. And he did not have the money to marry her off just yet. ‘Didn’t they light a lantern or something at home?’ he asked his father. As if the old man would know. A man who could not even sense the rising of the sun was not likely to know about lanterns. Biswanath wanted to send Naru home immediately with some candles. The lights were not likely to come back that night, and Labonya must study. But more than one shout failed to bring any response from Naru. He was engrossed in the drama of the rickshaw and the taxi. Dibya’s voice could be heard even from inside the shop. Unable to contain her impatience at home, Labonya had finally walked out of the house. She too could hear the brawling at the end of the road, but she did not go in 21 that direction. None of the menfolk were at home now—they had all joined the shadowy crowd in the darkness. But Labonya knew that one man would not be found there. She stumbled at the same place where her grandfather had tripped before. She was not blind like him, but it was very dark now. She too had known about the brick, but had just been too preoccupied to notice it. In a fit of petulance, she kicked the brick again with her hurt foot, in much the same way as a little boy hits the ground on which he has fallen. Within the colony Labonya usually walked barefoot. She possessed only one pair of sandals which she wore to college. By now, she could see quite well in the dark. She could also hear the susurration of dry leaves in motion under the lychee trees. That meant the snake was still moving about there. Labonya started stamping heavily on the ground and making loud noises to scare the snake away. No snake ever attacked human beings gratuitously. There was no one near the pond either, one could only see the crystalline depths of dark water. In the faint moonlight, you could also see the floating water lilies at the northern edge of the pond. Often the women would come and collect them for cooking, while the lentil soup boiled on their stoves. Yet they never seemed to die out. Labonya skirted the pond and came to one side of the dance hall. A verandah leading off the front steps and one large room had been partitioned off with a neat, woven fence. Labonya walked up the steps and called out, ‘Pishima, Rangapishima!’ There was no answer. Of course, Labonya had not expected any. She knew very well that Pishima went over to the neighbouring colony this time every evening to listen to readings from the Hindu epics. Haran Thakur’s rendering of the Ramayana was something that no widow in their locality could resist. But still Labonya had to call for Pishima. It was a rule of etiquette to call out the name of a senior person in the house you were visiting. Labonya took a few more steps towards the door. This time she called, ‘Arjunda.’ 22  But again, there was no answer. Labonya pushed the door open and entered the room, At first she could hardly make anything out. Then as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she saw someone near the window, slumped forward with his head on the table. The posture somehow seemed discordantly ugly. Perhaps he was fast asleep—but it was only eight o’clock. Labonya came nearer, put a hand on his shoulder and called again, ‘Arjunda.’ She felt something sticky on her palm and looked again, more closely, at the tall body of the young man half-lying across a table. She knew then it was blood that she had got on her palm and she screamed. ‘Jethima, please come in here, quick. Jethima, Haran- da, Boudi, please—” With the arrival of people and lights from the next room one could see the enormous wound that stretched across the head and shoulders of the young man. All over his body and scattered on the floor were congealed masses of blood. A crowbar lay on the floor. The man’s old dog was to be seen moving restlessly around the room. Occasionally he would lick some blood off the floor—his master’s blood. The fitful light of lanterns, a few frightened and anxious faces, the severely wounded body of an unconscious young man as it gradually slumps from the chair on to the floor, and a dog tasting blood—this is the scene before us. 23  II My name is Arjun Raychoudhury. My father was the late Khitimohan Raychoudhury. My elder brother’s name was Shomnath and my mother—no, one should never utter one’s mother’s name. A mother’s name is just that, Mother. That is what we were taught in our childhood. There is a big birthmark on my right palm. Once, I found a caterpillar on my desk. I put it inside a bottle to see if it would turn into a butterfly eventually. My mother cannot switch off the lights before going to bed. She is scared to walk the distance from the switch to the bed in total darkness. I cannot stand the smell of mustard oil. Once I was nearly drowned, I was only about thirteen then and once I saved a girl from drowning. See, I remember everything. My name is Arjun Raychoudhury. I am twenty-five years old, perhaps twenty-six. I finished my MSc exams about two-and-a-half years ago. I live in Dum Dum, in the Deshpran colony. Our house is called the dance hall. Three lizards live in my room. One of them is a really strange creature, black and white stripes all over. I smoke very little. And yet Shukla presented me with a lighter—now, where can I have kept it, where? I hope nobody is rummaging around in my desk, among my books. [7209 is water, 9215 oxygen, 093 is ozone. The weight of one hydrogen atom is equal to one-sixteenth the weight of an oxygen atom; one-twelfth the weight of the carbon twelve atom is the standard... I remember everything. I shall survive. I wasn’t born to die so easily. This is a hospital bed, it is right next to the wall. I can touch it if I 24 just stretch my arm out a little. But both my arms are pinioned with leather straps. Why have they done this to me? Have I done something wrong, committed some crime? What can be the meaning of all this? Can they imprison people in hospitals? But then, why do I think I am a prisoner? Of course, it is true that I am feeling very weak. I certainly cannot break out of these bonds. This seems to be a huge ward. There must be at least twenty-five or thirty patients in here. I wonder if that nurse has rubber wheels fixed under her feet. Otherwise how can she walk with that silent, gliding motion, just like waves seen in a film? Which hospital is this anyway, R.G. Kar, or the Medical College Hospital? No, I shall definitely survive. The wound is in my head, but even then it is not something to worry about. Almost everyone has to break his head some time. What I was really afraid of was that I would lose my memory. The day before yesterday, when I came to, everything seemed very hazy. I could not remember anything; even my name kept slipping away from me. But that must have been because of weakness. My name is Arjun Raychoudhury, my name is Arjun Raychoudhury. See, I remember perfectly. Even now. I can’t afford to lose my memory. I have to finish writing my thesis. Besides, what on earth’s the use of living like a vegetable? Oh no, I remember, remember everything. * ‘Do you remember what happened? Anything suspi- cious that you may have noticed, any strange people?’ ‘No, I can’t recall anything of that sort. I was sitting by the window, when the lights suddenly went out. Some- body must have hit me from outside, perhaps they threw some heavy instrument at me—and I passed out im- mediately.’ ‘You are sure you did not see anybody?’ ‘Quite sure.’ ‘Didn’t you hear anything, people talking or something like that?’ ‘No, nothing of that kind. But I remember hearing a 25 metallic clang, it sounded like somebody breaking a huge chain to pieces.’ ‘Chain?’ ‘Yes, it all seems like a dream. Just before I lost consciousness, I heard two things very distinctly. One, this chain-breaking sound, and then what seemed like suppressed weeping—which is impossible of course. Who could be weeping? My mother was not at home. But my dog does make these whimpering sounds at times— which could, I suppose, sound like somebody crying. But breaking a chain...’ ‘Oh, that’s easy to explain. There wasn’t any chain around. But the culprit left a crowbar behind. You must have heard that falling and striking the floor. Must say, you are really lucky to be alive.’ ‘Well, why should I die?’ ‘Nobody wants to die you know, and yet lots of people are dying every day. Anyway, I don’t want to tire you out by talking. Just tell me if you suspect anyone.’ ‘No... I don’t suspect anyone.’ ‘Can’t you think of anybody who has a grudge against you, someone who wants settle a score with you?’ ‘No, I trust everybody I know. I have no reason to suspect them.’ ‘Haven't you had an argument with anybody in the last few days?’ ‘No.’ ‘Er, how about women?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘What I mean is, young men like you often become rivals over one girl. And that can easily lead to...’ “Ha, I see what you mean. No, you can rest assured that nothing like that has ever happened.’ ‘Think carefully. Did your girlfriend ever become involved with another person who could have...’ ‘There is nothing to think about.’ ‘Have you recently quit one party to join another?’ ‘I was never a member of any party. I just didn’t have the time.’ ‘Oh come on. Do you expect me to believe that a young man of your generation does not have time for politics?’ 26  ‘I told you. I just didn’t have the time.’ ‘Listen brother. Young people always find time to work for their parties. It is other things that they don’t have the time for.’ ‘We had problems just in surviving. If we went in for political activities we would have starved.’ ‘Nonsense. Tell me the truth now. You have nothing to fear, you know. It will help us to investigate this case. These days most crimes can be traced back to inter- party clashes.’ ‘I have nothing more to say.’ 71] come by again later. See if you can remember anything by then.’ But I do remember everything. My head still hurts, abominably, unbearably. But I do feel happiness of a kind, now that I am sure I have my memory intact. My mother must be crying her heart out. Won’t they let her come and visit me? I am the only child after all. I mean now, now that my brother is dead. In a way, it is good that he is dead; if he had been alive, he would have suffered even more. My brother used to be an extraordinarily gentle person, and very, very simple. Everyone thought he was crazy and they used to make fun of him, calling him a lunatic. That’s what really drove him round the bend. He never did anybody any harm, just used to wander around by himself, sometimes talking to himself, sometimes to birds and animals—but what is wrong with that? And yet, people simply wouldn’t let him remain sane. I remember one day, in front of Uncle Biswanath’s laundry—no, he did not have a laundry then, it was his grocery store—a group of boys tormenting my poor brother. They sur- rounded him and pulled all his clothes off—I couldn’t check my tears at the sight of him, so pitiful, so helpless. But I could do nothing. Children can be so hard to control, even their elders were standing around grin- ning, instead of trying to stop them. Of course it is hard to stop children when they get carried away by the 27 exhilaration of a particularly cruel sport. And one can be terribly cruel in childhood. Didn’t I myself find pleasure in pulling the wings off dragonflies? My mother used to weep for my brother. After all, what else does a poor widow have but her tears? And when my brother really went mad, I could do nothing to provide for his treatment. Only rich people should lose their sanity, for it is an expensive disease. And I—I was getting a monthly scholarship of thirty rupees in those days, plus another eighty from tutoring two students. My brother always made a fuss if there was no fish with his rice; and yet how often could I get fish for him? Not to speak of proper medicines. My poor mother did her best of course. Herbal medicines, charms, amulets—nothing was left untried. Towards the end, my brother would keep saying to me, ‘Let’s go back home. Don’t you know, India and Pakistan have become one country again? Gandhi has fixed everything, he’s managed to patch up all our differences.’ Gandhi had been assassinated fourteen years ago. I can still see that scene vividly. My brother standing before me, his face half-hidden by a beard, his hair matted and tangled from not having bathed for days, his eyes glittering. There was a rolled up newspaper in his hand and he was shouting at me with intense faith. ‘Arjun, how can you not have seen this? Look, it’s in the headlines here, that India and Pakistan have been re-united. Gandhi has done it all—he’s even made Jinnah and Nehru embrace each other. Do let’s go back home. Let’s not stay in this horrible place any longer.’ Strange that it should have been the same paper he was showing me, that carried headlines about the communal riots. Yes, I am really a selfish person. Even now, whenever I think of my brother it is fear I feel more than sorrow. Doesn’t insanity tend to run in the family? Grandfather Nishi says that my father wasn’t quite normal either. In his youth he would often go away from home for three or four months at a time. And when he came back, you couldn’t get a word out of him as to what he’d been doing. We came to know later that he had a tendency to seek out 28 all the holy men or sadhus that he heard of. He felt he had something to find out from him. In the end, of course, he had to give up this search. The tentacles of the family and of various attachments had imprisoned him. But the knowledge of his past had left this core of fear in me—would I too show signs of abnormality, would I too go insane? For what then would become of my mother? Especially with the kind of head injury that I have now—but no, nothing has happened to my mind. I remember everything perfectly. সৎ ‘Who is it? Oh, it is you Shukla. When did you come in? How did you get to hear about me? In the newspaper? Surely not. I can’t imagine the papers wanting to write about me. I am not even involved in politics. Have you come with your brother? Oh, of course, you couldn’t have. He is giving a seminar in Allahabad, isn’t he? So who did you come with?’ ‘Arjunda, do you recognize me?’ ‘Recognize you? Sure I do. Why shouldn’t I?’ ‘Well go on, tell me who I am.’ ‘You are Shukla. Why do you ask me these silly questions’ ‘Okay, I won’t ask them again. Do please keep quiet though. The doctors say you shouldn’t speak at all. Why, what are you doing? You mustn’t try to get up. No, I insist, you must lie still, absolutely still.’ ‘All right then, tell me who you came with.’ ‘Why do you keep asking that over and over again? Can’t I have come by myself?’ ‘You can, I’m sure. But I have never seen you go anywhere alone before.’ ‘How do you feel?’ ‘I think I am almost well by now. But tell me, do you know why they have tied my arms down?’ ‘Because you kept trying to scratch your head all the time you were running a temperature.’ ‘Of all the stupid things to do. How can they expect me not to scratch myself when I feel like it?’ 29  ‘It’s dangerous to touch that wound. It can become infected. Besides...’ ‘But Shukla, you have no idea how uncomfortable it is, if your head is itching all over and you can’t scratch it. One feels as if nothing else in the world matters. As if one could give anything just for the privilege of scratch- ing oneself. Please, Shukla dear, do tell them to untie my arms for a while.’ ‘Why on earth should they listen to me?’ ‘Of course they will. Your father is such a well-known doctor. He must carry a lot of weight round here. And many of the doctors here probably know you well too. Otherwise they wouldn’t have let you visit me now, would they, when it’s not visiting hours? Do be an angel, and tell them.’ “But I can’t possibly ask them to do something like that!’ ‘Well then, since there aren’t any nurses around now, why don’t you untie my bandage and scratch my head a little?’ ‘I can’t do that. Shall I try scratching from the top?’ ‘How can you scratch me over the bandage? It’s no good, unless you actually touch the skin.’ ‘Well, let me just stroke your head then.’ ‘I can’t feel a thing. Why have they covered up my whole head like this? I can’t feel your touch.’ ‘Do you know how many stitches the doctors had to put in? Eleven! It’s a wonder you are still alive.’ ‘There you go again. Why shouldn’t I be alive? It’s not that easy to die.’ “You are talking too much. I have to go now.’ ‘Please don’t. Stay just a little bit longer. You didn’t come with anybody else, did you? Or have Probal or Akhtar come with you? I suppose they must have. You never go anywhere alone. What a piece of luck really, breaking my head like this. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had you sitting with me for such a long time. One can never get you alone. And yet, the trouble is, now that I do have you to myself, I can’t think of things to say. Iam not much good at thinking up nice things to say, you know...’ ‘Well who wants you to make pretty speeches? Can’t 30 you just lie there quietly?’ ‘But Shukla, I know that there’s something important I want to say to you. Only, I can’t think of a way to say it.’ ‘That’s all right. You can lie here and think about it. I’ll come by again tomorrow and you can tell me then. I have to go now.’ ‘No, please, stay a little longer. It is so tedious to have to lie in bed day after day.’ ‘But look Arjunda, the nurse is coming this way now. And she had given me permission to stay with you for five minutes only.’ “You smell lovely. It must be a very expensive perfume. Was it a gift from someone?’ ‘Of course, it was. Can’t you guess who?’ ‘Akhtar or Barun. Could even be Ranajoy. Not Probal, I think. Who was it?’ ‘I won’t tell you.’ “Whoever it was, you did well to wear it. In a hospital it makes you feel really good to smell such nice perfume. Actually, I think the nurses should also wear good perfume. That would cheer up the patients every time they came close to them. But all you get here is the smell of antiseptics, night and day.’ ‘I really must go now, Arjunda. And listen, your mother’s all right, you know. I asked after her.’ ‘Stay a little more, do please. Let me inhale your perfume some more.’ ‘Come on Arjunda, don’t be so childish now. I’ve never seen you act this way before.’ ‘Yes, but I am a sick person now. People regress into childhood when they are in a hospital. Have you ever been in one?’ ‘Only once, at birth.’ ‘Right, that’s why you have not been silly and childish ever since you were born. You are much too intelligent and cruel.’ ‘That’s enough. The nurse will come and scream at me any minute. I must go.’ ‘Aren’t you going to scratch my head a little?’ ‘No, you have bugs crawling inside that head of yours. Plain scratching won’t do you any good.’ 31  If only I had got to know Shukla and her brother Abanish earlier, I might have been able to do something for my brother. Abanishda’s father is a very well-known doctor. I’m sure he would have made some arrange- ments for my brother if I had requested him. But I was in my first year at college when my brother died. And I only met Abanishda when I got to the university. He was one of our professors, and even now he is an adviser on my research. Knowing how poor I was, he found two students for me to tutor. He also asked me to tutor his sister, but Shukla refused. Nothing, she declared, would induce her. to take tutelage from such a juvenile instruc- tor. Just as well, of course. I don’t think I could have felt easy with Abanishda and his family, if I had had a financial arrangement with them. But my poor brother, I just keep thinking about him. When I first gained consciousness at the hospital, and felt that my mind was a blank, I was really scared that I had lost my memory. What if I had become like him? He went mad slowly, in front of my eyes. He was such a simple fellow, my brother, with occasional whims. So often have I seen him sitting on the balcony, absorbed in watching the comings and goings of ants. And as for the shalik birds, he had frequent conversations with them. The dog, of course, was his constant companion. Can one really call this insanity? The big pond in our colony had hardly any fish left in it. But my brother would sit there for hours, holding his line with infinite patience in the hot summer sun. There used to be a white stork too, near the pond, which stood on one leg with a patience matching my brother’s. I had been a good marksman from childhood. I could throw stones accurately at trees in order to get the fruits. I even made a bow and arrow out of pieces of split bamboo, and riddled the banana trees with holes. And once, it so happened, I killed that stork with a slingshot. My brother was very upset about it. For quite a few days he moped around, as if he had lost an old friend. He didn’t scold me though. He never said a word in anger to anyone. Dibya, I remember, once hit him. Of course, Dibya has always been particularly headstrong and perverse. Why 32 else would anyone want to beat up a simple, inoffensive fellow like my brother? The poor fellow never got involved in the doings of others, nor did he ever hurt anyone’s feelings. But Dibya had been convinced that he was only pretending to be abnormal, so that he would not have to do any work. A good thrashing, Dibya had seemed to think, was the best cure for that kind of malingering madness. But, as I have said before, my brother was not really a raving lunatic. He was only a bit simple, slightly whimsical, and very, very harmless. Most people cannot understand this sort of person. They think everybody should be violently and acutely moti- vated by self interest. Whoever deviates from this norm, must be mad. So they really drove him mad with a vengeance. They forced him to take a job at the Ghughudanga factory. But how could my poor brother possibly work as a factory labourer? The forcible transition from open fields and wide-flowing rivers to this dingy urban life had been bad enough for him. I would go and attend classes in college, but all the time I would keep seeing the same picture in front of my eyes—my brother wandering about the streets in tat- tered clothes and dragging the dog along with him, while the boys ran after him, throwing stones. No, I haven’t lost my memory the way he did. I remember—only too well. A raised path between fields, paddy on one side and jute on the other. Small canals had been dug through the fields and almost met the path. Cane grew on the banks. We boys would go there to eat the ripe cane fruit. One particular cane bush had a couple of crested bulbuls nesting in it—the kind we called the foreign bulbuls. I remember once bringing home a couple of bluish bulbul eggs in the vain hope of hatching them. I wonder if the bulbuls still nest in that cane bush. I left my country at the age of eleven. Yes, my country. I cannot remember the time of partition very well. But my earliest memories do go back to an awareness of belonging to Pakistan. My father’s generation spent time lamenting the glories of the past. But I never saw the slightest-sign of any such glory. All I could see was us 33 boys being constantly warned—against going too far alone, against having any kind of fight with the Muslim boys at school. School was three miles from home, a daily walk for us. But the monsoon submerged every- thing in water. Boats were the only answer then. We could not afford our own boat. So I would start early from home and wait under the big banyan tree by the river—in case a boat happened by and could ferry me over. Some days, of course, there would be no boats. Then the only thing to do was to undress behind the banyan tree, wrap your books up in your clothes, hold the bundle over your head with one hand, and swim across. Abanishda was convulsed with laughter when he heard this story. Later he asked me, ‘But weren’t you ashamed to take your clothes off in public like that, a big boy of eleven?’ Certainly not. What was there to be ashamed of? Once I got to the other side, I would stand for a few minutes drying myself in the sun. Many people must have seen me then. Going to school used to be an addiction for me. Shukla once asked me, ‘How could you swim such a long distance when you were only a boy? Who taught you to swim?’ What a silly thing to ask! As if somebody had to teach East Bengali boys to swim. In a country of rivers the humans learned to swim from childhood, as effor- tlessly as the waterbugs. No, shame came to me in Calcutta, at the age of seventeen. Usually I never went out of the house on the morning of Holi. But on that particular occasion, I remember having to go out in the afternoon. A group of non-Bengalis drenched me with their coloured dyes. At that time I possessed only that one shirt, and I had nothing else to wear to college the next day. My brother had by then become quite unbalanced, and wandered about the streets. My mother shed tears in her sad solitude at not being able to give us two meals a day. So there was never any question of buying another shirt for myself. And I was stubborn too. I went along to Presidency College wearing that multicoloured shirt. But I could not bear the derisive smirks of my fellow students—tears of rage and shame blurred my sight. 34 Haranda later took pity on me and gave me an old shirt of his the next day. I was always the top of my class in the village school. Many of the boys were both resentful and envious of me because of this. But, really, I never felt I was a hero simply because I could outstrip the others in school work. My father had taken my brother out of school because he had failed twice in Class VIII. This was the fear that spurred me on. I worked frantically for fear of being made to leave school, and succeeded in learning all our lessons by heart. Besides, as we were perpetually poor, we couldn’t ever manage to pay our way through any school or college. So I had to do well enough to get free schooling all along. Up to Class III, I used to go to the Board School, which was free anyway. And in high school, I got a free studentship, because I was the first boy in my class. Indeed, it became a habit with me, coming first in class. The headmaster of our school was a man called Amjad Ali. He was well-known and respected throughout the whole sub-division. I was one of his favourites. But his son, Yaqub, hated me with a passion. He was a couple of years older, and frequently found reasons to beat me up. But I could never understand the reason for such hatred. I remember having two possessions which were ex- tremely precious to me. One was a red and blue pencil and the other a silver harmonica. The pencil was red at one end and blue at the other. In the obscure village where I lived, such things were rare indeed. Conscious that it would be short-lived, I seldom used the pencil— only to underline the very important passages in my textbooks. As for the harmonica, nobody was ever allowed to touch it but myself. I feel so ashamed now to think that I did not even allow my brother to play it. A neighbour of ours, who had become an uncle by adoption, used to work in the navy. He would come home every two years, and bring back marvellous gifts. We used to call him Navy Uncle. The harmonica and the pencil were both brought back by him. Both carried the inscription, ‘Made in Germany’, and they had been bought in Germany too. 35  Looking back now, I can see that I really was a spoilt little brat, the kind that is favoured by the teachers in school and pampered by family and neighbours. The boys in my class sometimes sneered at me because of this. But what could I have done? The elders would never scold me even if I had been up to mischief. Some other unfortunate boy was usually punished. All my good results in class won me this total indulgence. But I really could not help it, you know. A couple of careful readings and everything would be imprinted on my brain. I had no option but to be top of my class. We were poor when we lived in the village. But our mother never let her two boys feel any deprivation. The * neighours too did their best to help us. Often they would invite my brother and myself over for delectable meals. All this attention resulted in my becoming extraordinari- ly thin-skinned. If, by chance, anybody did speak rough- ly to me, I would be absolutely crushed. Our uncle in the navy would always bring back nice presents whenever he came home. But I only remember the pencil and harmonica. I was returning home from school one day, when the pencil fell out of my hand. Yaqub picked it up and said, ‘Let me have this pencil.’ I tried to snatch it away from him, saying, ‘No, no...’ But Yaqub raised his hand out of my reach and said, ‘If you won’t give it to me, I won’t let you have it either.’ He was stronger than I. I simply could not manage to get it away from him. He was laughing as he walked away from me. I told my father about it when I reached home. But he did not give it much importance. ‘It’s only a pencil after all. Why can’t he have it?’ I complained bitterly to all our neighbours. But everybody came up with the same response, that I should keep quiet about it instead of making a big thing of it. Amjad Ali was not only the headmaster of the school, he was also the President of the Union Board. People somehow took it for granted that his son could behave like a thug whenever he wished to. After all, in the old days, nobody had had the nerve to stand up to the sons of the zamindars and the landlords. Who would have 36 dreamt of denying them something that they demanded? People like Amjad Ali and his family were present-day landlords. All our relatives and neighbours would look at one another with sad regret and say, ‘Only ten years ago, they wouldn’t even dare look us straight in the eye when speaking to us. But just look at the way things are now! This is the kind of independence Gandhi has brought us. To be the slaves of fear in our own land!’ My father glanced at my face, still hurting with resentment, and said, ‘Never mind son. Forget about that pencil. I’ll get you another.’ False consolation, as it happened. He was never able to buy me another red and blue pencil. Children have an intense and direct sense of right and wrong. Adults often pretend not to notice a violation of what is right just as often as they are unable to recognize what is right. My elders did not attach any importance to my sorrow over losing that pencil, but I could never forget it. I found it perfectly understandable that in itself, one boy taking away a bit of pencil from another in school would not seem anything but trivial to an adult. But in my case, they were definitely perturbed enough to discuss it at length. And yet, they never did anything to retrieve that pencil. That meant that the taking away of a pencil symbolized many other kinds of deprivation to them. But I was not to realize those implications at that age. All that I experienced was the frequent tearfulness of hurt, bewilderment and the ever-present sense of loss because of the red and blue pencil, so evocative of strange, mysterious lands. In many other ways, my childhood was rather a deprived one. There was a man who used to sell long, stick-like candy in front of our school. I never had the money to buy one. The Laskar boys used to make a point of showing their candy to me when they ate it. Yaqub, Bashir and some other boys used to play with Royal brand marbles. I never managed to buy one. My brother used to get a kind of grapefruit as a ball for me to play with. Showkat’s uncle once bought him a green T-shirt with a zipper from Dacca. He looked really good in it. But I had to wear unfashionable shirts sewn at home by 37 my mother. I had only two valuable possessions—the harmonica and that red and blue pencil. Why should Yaqub get hold of those? I don’t know to how many people I told my story of woe—but no one bothered to do anything. One day the headmaster happened to be taking our English class. I was sitting there, despondent. Whenever he took our classes, I was the last one asked to answer a question. I was only asked when everybody else had failed to answer. That day it was the spelling of the word rhinoceros that had stymied the boys. The headmaster looked at me and said, ‘Come Arjun, you must tell them what it is.’ I hunched my shoulders, and said, ‘I don’t know.’ Every boy in class knew as well as the headmaster that the word was nothing to me. Why, I never made a mistake even in spelling words like conscience or hygiene. The headmaster stared at me in amazement. ‘Can’t spell this word. Why don’t you try?’ ‘No, I won’t.’ He walked up to me, pushed my chin up with one finger and said sternly, ‘Why? Why won’t you answer me?’ Normally we were petrified of the headmaster. Whenever he was angry the victim would receive a caning. But at that particular moment, I felt no fear. The desperation born of childish hurt is desperate indeed. Everybody at home had warned me not to breath a single word about that pencil. But I could not help saying in a heated voice, ‘Why should Yaqub take away my pencil?’ Emotion slurred my words, and the whole question was so irrelevant, that the headmaster at first had trouble understanding me. He frowned at me and asked, ‘Pencil? What pencil are you talking about?’ Jagannath, who sat next to me, had been pulling at my shirt all the time to stop me from saying any more. Yaqub, after all, was feared by everybody. But I just went ahead, saying, ‘I am not going to study in this school anymore.’ ‘Why not?’ asked the headmaster. “Yaqub has taken my pencil.’ 38  Amjad Ali brooded in silence for a while over that one. Then he called Yaqub over to the blackboard. Yaqub stood there, looking at me with an evil, red gleam in his eyes. In front of a roomful of boys, Amjad Ali announced, ‘This boy is not only a thief but a liar. He lied to me at home. It is more of a sin to lie than to steal. He should be punished. Arjun, you come up here and box his ears.’ Boxing Yaqub’s ears was not something I particularly cared for. All I wanted was to have my pencil back. But Amjad Ali forced me to do it—I somehow made myself just touch Yaqub’s ears. But the consequences of this act were to make things more difficult. The whole village hummed with the news. In 1955 it was a terrible matter for a Hindu boy to box the ears of a Muslim boy. For several days our family quaked with fear. Mr. Amjad Ali is a person whom I remember very well. There was another thing he said some other day, which I have not forgotten. It was sometime after the pencil incident. Amjad Ali happened to be the kind of person who deplored the stupidity of the insane rage building up between the two countries (India and Pakis- tan). It is true that a faulty social system had allowed the Hindus to exploit the Muslims of East Bengal (now Bangladesh). But Amjad Ali clearly said he was not in favour of making the helpless people of a later age pay the price of that oppression. Political ignorance and obstinacy had led to the splitting of one country into two, each of which had one religion as its majority. But to oppress the minority in any country seemed churlish to him. However, in those days of feverish lunacy, people like him did not command popular attention. Later, of course, the people of East Bengal changed a lot. They realized that you could not rule a country in the name of religion. People of the same religion could exploit each other just as much, fight as bitterly over the conflict of interests. And when that realization came, it was people like Amjad Ali who stepped forward to reconstruct East Bengal. But in 1954 or 1955, the prevalent atmosphere was not so healthy. Heavy press- ure was being exerted to make an Islamic military state 39 out of East Bengal. And people like Amjad Ali belonged to a very small, sane minority. After that last incident in school, I was walking home one day when Yaqub, along with four or five other boys, waylaid me and took away my pencil, my harmonica and my books. They also told me that if I reported this to Amjad Ali again, then my parents would find my body in the jute fields. All those boys boxed my ears so hard that they turned red. They also took care to inform me that it was a great pleasure for them to treat a Brahmin’s son in this fashion. Then they knocked me down and went off, one of them playing my harmonica. The enclave where our house was, used to be called Puranbari (literally, ‘old house’)—a neighbourhood con- sisting of seven or eight families. When all the elders of Puranbari heard of this incident, they decided that I was not to be sent to school for a month. They also told me never to talk about this to anybody. It is quite easy to force a little boy of eleven to stay at home. Amjad Ali was considered a decent person. But one of his brothers was a big shot in the Muslim League. Everybody in the village went in terror of him. And at that time, the Muslim League had tremendous power in East Bengal. That was the party which had brought about Pakistan— naturally enough, their word was law. It was hard to find any man there, Hindu or Muslim, who was not scared of the bigwigs in the party. Our community members had been so overcome with terror, that they did not even have the guts to ask for fair play. The partition of India meant many losses for many people. Some lost their lives, some everything they possessed. So if I say that I lost my pencil and that harmonica, it can sound surprisingly inconsequential. But you see, those were my only cherished possessions. Along with them, I lost the red and blue and silver dreams of my childhood. All the private places where I used to play my harmonica—beside the pond, in the bamboo groves, next to the cane bushes—all these places later bore witness to outbursts of weeping. I had never seen a riot in my village. Riots never do happen in villages, they are usually entirely urban 40 happenings. For in a village everyone knows everyone else. After all, it is difficult to kill a person you know. So on the whole, we had had an amicable relationship with the Muslims in our village. Apart from the Muslims, there was a substantial number of untouchables in our village too. At one time it was forbidden for us caste Hindus to set foot in their enclave. When untouchable persons came to our house, they would stand outside in the courtyard and talk. If they even happened to lean against the wall, we would have to throw away our drinking water; the slightest bodily contact with them meant a change of clothes. And yet, now, we were desperately trying to establish a common identity of Hindu-ness with them, so that they could swell our ranks. The village elders started treating them with deference. Any time an incident of terror was reported, these old men would whisper among themselves, ‘The untouchables will side with us, they have to side with us.’ But though we had never had to witness a riot in our own village, we could not avoid hearing about riots in nearby Narayanganj, or even Dacca. And every time that happened, a pall of fear would descend on us. The ultimate terror was to hear of a riot in India. And it was this terror that was so unbearable. Day and night there was only one apprehensive expectation—when will it come, when will somebody attack us? On such days, even the boys would stop playing, the women wouldn’t quarrel with one another, the old men would not gossip about other people—a lowering cloud would settle on each and every face. Occasionally, I still see that phenomenon today. If there is a communal riot in Gujarat, the faces of the Muslim population in Calcutta bear the mark of anxiety. After all, it takes only one madman to light a fire, the flames of which can spread ravenously in untold directions. The Muslims in our village, who had had an education, often commented in front of us that there were many more incidents of riots in Hindustan (India) than in Pakistan, even though Hindustan prided itself on being a secular state. True, there was no way of refuting this. But inwardly we would ask, whose fault is it? Who stands 41 to gain by provoking such riots? In those days, nobody in Pakistan used the names Bharat or India. It was always Hindustan. Yet no country called Hindustan exists any more on the map of the world. However, though we did not have riots in the village, burglaries and hold-ups were steadily on the increase. Not just at night either, but during the day as well. It was never any use to go io the police. If the person you suspected of theft, or even had seen committing the crime, happened to be a Muslim, you could never mention his name. For then the officer in charge of the police station would loudly declare it to be an attempt to vilify the Muslims. If we were so scared of crimes, then why didn’t we go to Hindustan? Nobody was forcing us to stay. By that time, many non-Bengali Muslims from Bihar and the other western states of India had migrated to East Bengal. It was mostly they who were given jobs as guards and policemen, and their hatred of the Hindus was extreme. Gradually we started noticing how one Hindu house after another became empty. Those among us who were relatively better off, or those who had relatives in India, would just pack up and leave for India. Their prepara- tions were so secret that not even their neighbours would get wind of it. Any land they possessed, they would sell at ridiculous prices. Homesteads were left unsold, for sentimental reasons. I remember the Banerji house—a huge magnificent mansion. The only concrete building in our village, three storeys high. An iron gate in front. Now, that house is surrounded by encroaching weeds and bushes, the lair of jackals and civet cats. These cats, which were small replicas of tigers, would sit in the wilderness at night and scream. We children would often playfully shout at them, ‘Cheap or dear’. The response sounded an approx- imation of “dear” so we felt that even those wretched animals could foretell the coming inflation. In my limited childhood experience, the Banerji man- sion symbolized the ultimate expression of wcalth and magnificence. And everyone referred to it as the Banerji House. Ganapati Banerji’s handsome, educated sons 42  held jobs in different places—Calcutta, Bombay, even London. But the elderly Ganapati had stayed on in East Bengal with all his other relatives, dependents and hangers-on. He had a rifle with which he fired blanks, anytime there was a furore in the village. And what a variety of fruit grew in their orchard—different kinds of mangoes, lychees, seven or eight types of guava and countless others. We would stand outside the gates and gaze at them. For we were forbidden to enter. One night, a few of us did dare to sneak in, but the huge dogs gave us the chase of our lives. So nobody had a clue as to why the powerful Banerjis eventually had to leave the village. The story went that the District Magistrate had insulted Ganapati Banerji, and hurt his feelings irrevocably. After all, ever since the days of the British Raj, magistrates, sub-divisional officers and superintendents of police had stayed at the Banerji House whenever they came to the village. And the one or two days of their stay was always made into an important occasion. The very best food would be pro- cured for them. It was considered a great honour to be able to house the magistrate or superintendent of police. And many of them had accepted the hospitality of the Banerjis. But now, a magistrate could summon Ganapati Banerji to his court and insult him in public! I do not know how much of their land the Banerjis managed to sell. But the house was not disposed of. All the furniture—even the iron gates and doors and win- dows—was left behind for the taking, and those dis- appeared soon enough. Inexorably, the wilderness took over, so that even in broad daylight the sight of the house made you shiver. Rumour had it that Ganapati Banerji’s father’s ghost had come to haunt the house he himself had built. He could be seen wandering about the place every evening. My brother and I did enter the house one afternoon. It had been his idea. ‘Come 7605 go and get some mangoes,’ he had said to me. As we. went, I remembered an incident which had happened when I was much younger. The Banerjis were 43 celebrating a religious festival with extraordinary splen- dour. Lights in the garden, decorations of flowers and paper chains. Relatives from different places had come for the occasion. How beautiful their clothes were! And the women—fair-skinned and beautiful like the images of goddesses, the sound of their laughter like sweet unfamiliar music. I stood outside those iron gates with my face pressing against the bars and looked and looked. I can still see myself as I was then, bare-bodied, a thin boy dressed only in a pair of shorts, gazing wide-eyed on a fairy-tale world where there was only happiness and plenty. Then my father came up behind me, put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘What are you doing here? You should not stand here like this, son. They’ll think you are a beggar boy.’ My brother and I wandered around the deserted, desolate house for a long time. Occasionally my flesh would creep, for I thought I could hear deep sighs. My brother went on picking up derelict objects—a broken pair of glasses, an empty jar of face cream. He looked as if he was expecting to stumble on hidden treasure any minute. Then we came to a huge mango tree. The fruit was longish in shape, parrot green in colour. Sweet as honey too. Thick jungle growth surrounded the tree. But when we came close, we saw four or five people squatting on the ground, engaged in some secret activ- ity. We were immediately terrified. One of them was Rajjab Sheikh. He glared at us and said, ‘Look at these Brahmin brats, snooping around here. Get lost.’ We seemed to be getting more than our fair share of insults just because we were Brahmins. After the Banerjis, it was the Duttas’ turn to leave. The family used to have quite a prosperous grocery store in the main market. They also owned extensive agricultu- ral land. Their house was next to the canal; on the other side lived the Muslim peasants. I remember that year there were a lot of dying fish floating on the surface of the canal. We knew that if you put carbolic soap in the pond, the fish would die. Enemies often did that to you. But why on earth should fish be dying off in the canal? Many people thought that the fish had been poisoned, 44 and one should not eat them. But the poor cannot afford the luxury of being finicky over such things. The poor don’t die that easily anyway. ১০ we spent one whole morning and afternoon splashing around in the waters of the canal. One by one, the fish kept on floating up to the surface, very weak, sometimes turning up on their stomachs. But they were hard to get hold of. As soon as we touched them, they would slip out and surface again further off. But eventually I did manage to get a five-pound carp. And as for my brother, he really caught quite a few, of different kinds. In the end, he even got a fishbone stuck in his hand. All this fishing made us very tired. So we went over to the Dutta house, to ask for a drink of water. The servant, Purandar, brought us water in a shining bell metal jug. But when the old grandmother noticed it, she told him off very sharply. Apparently, one should never give children water by itself. It is supposed to bring bad luck to the house. So she sent Amaladi to us with some pressed coconut sweets. I’ll never forget the magic of that taste. After that, we boys used to turn up at that house with or without reason, just to drink some water. Every time Amaladi would give us those same sweets. So we started referring to the house among ourselves as ‘the sweet house’. Mr. Dutta had four daughters; no sons, not even sons-in-law. Amaladi had been widowed two years after her wedding and had come back to her father’s home. She had a very quiet and serene nature; her face was like the stiil, quiet waters of a pond in the afternoon. Nobody had ever heard her raise her voice. If there was a severe illness in any house, Amaladi would be summoned to nurse the patient. Efforts were being made at that time to find a husband for the next sister, Kamaladi. In those days, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find eligible bridegrooms for Hindu girls in Pakistan. There are some women who show strog maternal tendencies, even from their childhood. They are born to be mothers, in motherhood lies their happiness. When we saw Amaladi she was only twenty-two or twenty-three. 45 But she never behaved with us like an elder sister, she was more like a mother. And yet, she had been widowed at twenty, so her promise of maternity was doomed to remain unfulfilled. That was why she always made a point of feeding the little boys in the village, whenever she saw them. While we ate, she would look at us with deep, lingering tenderness. Seven-year-old Abbas from the fishermen’s community had lost his mother. He would spend practically all his time with Amaladi. I still remember there was not a breath of scandal about Amaladi. It is fairly easy to spread ugly gossip about a healthy young widow. But whenever we went near Amaladi, we seemed to sense an emanation of purity, somewhat like the haloes painted around the heads of gods and goddesses. And she was always so concerned about our well-being—which one of us had got up from the sickbed, which one had lost weight, nothing went unnoticed. Amaladi had not had much education. Often she would say to me, ‘Arjun, you’d better work hard in school. Then you will have to come and tell me all about the many strange countries of the world.’ Though Amaladi was a widow, she still managed to remind me of the picture of a woman saint in my school-books. I am sure she understood quite well why we went to her house so often to ask for a drink of water. But she never showed an unwelcoming face. The amazing thing was that the sweets were always prepared in that house. Every day. We never had to have water by itself. Amaladi would just look at us, and say, ‘Come and sit down children. You must be thirsty. Have a bit of a sweet first.’ And those wonderful sweets, made of thickened milk and coconut, redolent of camphor. The taste still lingers in my mouth. Altaf, the postmaster’s son, was a great friend of mine. He and I spent quite a few afternoons talking to Amaladi. We were about ten, but she never made us feel unimpor- tant because of our age. Her younger sister, Kamaladi, was a more aggressive person. She once told me off very sharply because we had taken a lime from one of their trees, the kind of lime 46 that has a strong fragrance. But Amaladi happened to come by and said, ‘How can you scold them like that just for picking one lime? How can you? That tree is loaded with limes. What can we possibly do with all of them?’ Then she herself picked some limes and stuffed them into our pockets, Altaf’s and mine. I don’t know why I suddenly thought of Amaladi today. It would have been better not to. The jute fields stretched over several miles, the plants as high as a man, some even higher. I have never seen such jute fields anywhere in West Bengal. We boys used to play quite often in those wide, green fields of jute. Not only was it easy for us children to hide there, but even grown men could disappear from sight if they sat down among the jute plants. If you chased thieves, they would inevitably make for the jute fields to escape. It was in one of those fields that a group of boys discovered Amaladi’s body. I wasn’t there with them, but my brother was. Her throat had been cut, there were innumerable stab wounds all over her body, and not a shred of clothing on her. After ravishing her they could not be content with just killing her, they had wanted to hack her to pieces. There are some people in this world who cannot bear the existence of anything beautiful. Beauty for them is inevitably for destruction. In those days there was nothing I could imagine that was more beautiful than Amaladi. Perhaps it is because I was not an actual witness to the discovery in the jute fields, that it brings such horror to my mind. I still can’t get over it. Everybody in the village shed tears for Amaladi. My brother came running home from the jute fields and passed out as soon as he set foot in our courtyard. That was when he started having those occasional fainting spells. Dear Amaladi, I have read many books, learnt many things now, but it is too late to tell you any stories. Fifteen days after this, the Duttas left East Bengal. A group of Bihari refugees had come and settled in Madaripur. Sometimes they would come into our village and glare at us with the red lust of blood in their eyes. 47 Everyone blamed them secretly for this incident. Not that our police did anything about it. Mr. Dutta took his wife and daughters away with him. But his parents, the old grandmother and grandfather, stayed on. The old people wanted to die in their ancestral home. Sometimes, when I went down to the canal, I would see grandfather watering his vegetable plots, and grandmother sitting on the porch, waiting with empty eyes for the advent of death. Whenever I saw them, I felt my mouth going dry. But I never went into that house again to ask for a drink of water. And so it went. One by one, the Sarkars, the Mitras, the Rays—all left the village. Like pawns being removed from a chessboard. But we were very poor, we had no other place to go to. My father still believed that India and Pakistan would become one again. All those who had left the village would return, and everything would be splendidly com- plete again. Relatives and family members working in faraway places like Calcutta, Delhi or Bombay would come home for the annual Puja festival. Muslim friends and peasants would also come, invited to the Puja feast. The drums and cymbals would once again deafen the ears as the devotional ritual of the arati was carried out. My father went around declaring, ‘The saint Arabindo has said that we don’t have to wait much longer. Unity will come by 1957. Hindus and Muslims will embrace each other as brothers, and the past will be past. In the future, we shall remain brothers.’ My father was a teacher in the government school. He had the habit of lapsing into English phrases quite frequently. I still remember, his monthly salary was thirty-two rupees, and even that was not paid regularly. When the first wave of the exodus took place, many of the elder Muslims in the village came to us and expressed their regrets. Some of them we called brother or uncle. They would say, ‘Why do you all have to leave? We have no bitterness between ourselves. We will stay together in friendship and harmony. And as long as we are around, we won’t allow anybody to lay a finger on you. But if you let yourselves be terrorized into leaving, 48 then those bastards will only entrench themselves even more firmly.’ And some of these old men shed tears as they spoke. But the problem was that it was never possible to identify ‘those bastards’. On the whole, we had been on amicable terms with the Muslims in our village. Occa- sionally, one or two people would glare at us or ridicule us. But by and large, the innocence of ordinary villagers resists mutation. Even among the boys in my school there was not much antagonism. True, I had had a problem with the Head’s son, but that could happen anywhere. And my brother had many Muslim friends. Whenever I went to Altaf’s house, his family always received me with affection. Yet there was a creeping awareness of fear among us, as if we were criminals of some sort. If we received injustice, we accepted it without expecting redress. Our position was like that of a servant suspected of theft. Even if he is innocent, he has no way of asserting that. He has to submit to being beaten up, and often has to lose his job. The misconceptions of a few ignorant leaders turned millions of people into servants. I wonder how much of this extraordinary irresponsibility will be recorded in history. Not that I myself was old enough to grasp the implications of all this at that time. But later I realized that even after the creation of Pakistan, the Muslims of East Bengal continued to be deprived; the promise of happiness and prosperity was not realized. It is true that once the competition with the Hindus was eradicated, Bengali Muslims had a greater chance to receive educa- tion, they had access to many more jobs, and slowly there was the emergence of a middle class among them. But they still remained the victims of economic exploita- tion at the hands of the West Pakistanis. The Bengali Muslims never managed to acquire power; the West Pakistanis continued to play the part of foreign over- lords. So in absolute terms, it would not be a mistake to say that within the framework of Pakistan, East Bengal never achieved freedom. Two fragments of land with a thousand sundering miles between them—the only con- 49 necting link being Islam. It took them a long time to realize how absurd the link was. The holders of power in Pakistan had no proper adherence to Islam. In their manner, life-style, food and habits, they aped the British. Islam was only used by them as a peg on which to hang their anti-India dogmas or their hatred of Hindus. When the Hindus in East Bengal stopped selling their land, the situation changed even more. Even ordinary villagers started feeling greedy. For if the Hindus could be frightened into leaving without selling their property, then their land could be taken possession of. Most of the Muslim peasants were extremely poor; they had hardly ever had a good meal. How long could you expect them to suppress the desire to acquire free land? It was not their fault—the fault lay with those who had created the reason for such needs. Non-Bengali Muslims also tried to fan the flame of this greed. I don’t know much about the people in the cities who had political interests. But this I can say, that I had never before seen antagonism between ordinary villagers on the grounds of religion. It was the non-Bengali outsiders who came in and tried to foment disputes and disaffection. Gradually the empty houses were occupied. Muslim refugees from Madaripur came in one day and took over several of them. The Banerji mansion was once again filled with people. The Sengupta house near the market was taken by a man called Rafiqul Alam and his family, who had acquired it legally. Mr. Alam, a lawyer, had had a house in a village near Hooghly which he had managed to exchange with the Senguptas. So Mr. Alam had not had to suffer any loss. Yet, as soon as he came, he started provoking communal antagonism everywhere. Islam was totally endangered in Hindustan, he said; the Muslims hardly dared to set foot in the streets, the Hindus immediately mowed them down; even the police would fire on Muslims as soon as they saw them. Radio Pakistan was also doing its bit through propaganda. A lot of people in the village had managed to acquire cheap American radio sets. And if you listened to Radio Pakistan broadcasts at the time, you thought that India was only a land of bestiality, where aggression 50 was the law. My father and his friends were so terrified of these broadcasts and their possible repercussions, that they called a meeting under the big banyan tree in our village. The conduct of Hindus in India was severely condemned and even a resolution was passed. But such measures were like attempts to stem the influx of flood by bailing out the onrushing water. You see, I remember everything, not the slightest detail has escaped me, my memory has not lapsed at all. I am lying in a hospital bed in Calcutta. Shukla came and visited me a while back. Haranda, Sukhen, Dibya and some others came in the morning. Apparently, Labonya and her father Biswanath had come to see me yesterday in the afternoon, but I had been asleep. The whole of my head is covered with bandages, my arms are strapped to the bed. But my head itches in a most unbearable fashion. Nurse, why don’t you take off this bandage and scratch my head a little? I shall be grateful forever. When my father died, I did not have to shave my head as is the usual custom. In fact, we were unable to carry out the proper rituals for him. On the eighth day after his death, our house caught fire. We still don’t know whether anyone set fire to it deliberately or whether it was just an accident. The foundations were earth, not concrete, the walls made of tin and the roof thatched with hay. Not a scrap of cement or iron anywhere. The whole thing was structured round bamboo poles tied with coir ropes. The slightest spark could ignite it like a matchbox. My father died of apoplexy. He just went to bed one night and never woke up again. Before this, he had had occasional bouts of asthama, but otherwise he had been in good health. I suppose it was the accumulated toll of poverty, anxiety and fear which caused his death. As I’ve said earlier, in the days before I was born, or even when I was a baby, my father would leave home and just disappear from time to time. There would be no word from him for three or four months. But of late, he had not 51 been able to do that. For that would have meant the loss of his teaching job, and starvation for his family. But it is always true that a man who is strongly drawn by the world outside, cannot survive long in captivity at home. Perhaps that is why my father left home forever. Some of the villagers helped us out with money, and we did make arrangements for observing the rituals of the dead. But the fire came before the eleventh day. Even on the day after the fire, we tried to reconstruct our domesticity in the middle of destruction. You are not supposed to leave your home during the period of mourning. So that following night, my mother boiled us some rice and vegetables in an earthenware pot. But that same night several other houses in the village burned down. Dawn saw us leave the village in separate little groups. The grapefruit tree had escaped the touch of fire. It was loaded with fruit. We left it behind. My brother and I carried two bundles slung from our shoulders. Our mother held our hands firmly. A few steps brought us near Jiban Chakrabarty’s famous lime orchard. Now the place had become a wilderness. The fragrant lime trees and the gardenia trees had encroached on each other’s preserves. I remember the overpowering, intoxicating smell that used to come to my nostrils in the evenings, whenever I happened to walk past the orchard. Clusters of fire-flies would illuminate the darkness. Could even heaven look more beautiful? Jiban Chakrabarty used to get very angry everytime you plucked a lime from his trees. He would run after you with upraised sandal in hand. Often in the mornings, when our mother gave us last night’s soaked rice for breakfast; my brother and I would run to tear some leaves from the lime trees. As soon as you squeezed those leaves, and mixed them with the rice, they gave off a most wonderful flavour. Can I ever forget the smell of those lime leaves? We went along the raised path beside the narrow canal. On one side were the jute fields, on the other the rice fields. At the edge of the canal, a cane grove housed the nest of bulbuls. I had an impulse to run forward and pluck some ripe cane fruit. But I didn’t. It was in those 52 jute fields that Amaladi’s dismembered body had been discovered. I was afraid to go there. A little further on, where the road curved, you could see the big banyan tree. At one time this used to be the site where the goddess Kali was worshipped. Wandering gypsies came and pitched their tents here too. During the day, we would come here quite often to play, but at night the place gave me the shivers. There was a deep hole in the massive trunk of the banyan tree. But I had never had the courage to peer inside. We all knew that it housed a shankhachur snake, a kind of cobra. Once we had seen a pair of eyes glittering in the darkness of the hole—probably a polecat or a civet cat—but we had pretended it was a real tiger. The village cremation ground was also near the banyan tree. It was only a few days ago that we had cremated my father here. Nobody in the village had died in the last few days. So the remains of our dead, bits and pieces of burnt wood and shards from broken pots—all lay undisturbed. My mother said, ‘Don’t look that way, don’t turn your head. Come along, walk fast.’ She had not even had the time to mourn our father. At that point, her only preoccupation was how to save us. So we walked past the banyan tree. After cremating your father, you were supposed to break a pot and walk away from the cremation ground without looking back. We too were leaving our cremation ground behind, never to look back again. It was not quite daylight. The village was still asleep, the peasants had not come to work in the fields. We left behind the temple of Shiva, the betelnut grove, the big pond—the same pond where I had learnt to swim. The road sloped considerably near the settlement of the untouchables. During the monsoon, rainwater would accumulate here until it blended with the waters of the canal. We had to swim across this place when going to school. Thank God it was not the monsoon now. Ganapati Banerji’s house was now full of people, all the weeds and bushes cleared. No doubt his father’s ghost had also ceased haunting the place. But even in that house not a soul stirred. We walked past, unobserved. But there was one person whom we could not escape. 53 Our headmaster Amjad Ali would get up every day at the crack of dawn and stroll down to the canal while brushing his teeth with a twig broken from a neem tree. A habit of many years. Suddenly we came face to face with him. The headmaster stopped short in his tracks. His face looked melancholy. After a short silence he spoke to us. ‘So you all have decided to leave too?’ We were speechless. My mother was frightened. Everything frightened her now. Her grip on our hands tightened. The headmaster spoke to me. ‘Arjun, your exams are only one month away. Will you go away without taking them?’ What could I say in reply? Tears choked my voice, I could hardly look at him. Amjad Ali came forward a few steps and said in a tone of entreaty, ‘Please don’t go. I myself shall write to the District Board and get funds sanctioned to rebuild your house.’ I don’t know whether it was anger or hurt that was uppermost, but our mother suddenly spoke with sup- pressed violence. ‘Don’t speak to him, don’t say a word. Quick, start walking. Don’t keep on standing here.’ She pulled us by the hand. Probably her words reached the headmaster’s ears. We moved forward a few steps. My brother only turned his head and said, ‘Goodbye sir, we must go.’ Sadly the headmaster said, ‘Don’t talk about going, say you will be back.’ It was probably out of habit that he said that. It was customary not to speak of going at the time of departure, you were supposed to talk about coming back. But we would never be able to come back again. Those after- noons spent catching fish in the submerged rice fields, the fragrance of lime leaves in the rice, the call of chameleons from the banyan tree, swimming across to school, shivering with fear of the supernatural, climbing the date palm trees to steal the tapped, accumulated juice, accepting sweets from Amaladi, encountering a chameleon underneath a tree—my native land consisted of all this and so many other images. And I left it behind. 54  We walked eleven miles to Madaripur. Other groups had come and joined us along the way. Riots had started in Narayanganj, in reprisal against riots in Titagarh near Calcutta. So thousands of helpless people were coming into Madaripur. We had never seen Titagarh, nor had we ever been to Narayanganj; we did not know the people who were killing or being killed in those places. But we had to leave our homes because of them. The river Ariyal Khan flows past Madaripur, its swift current as potent as its name. Before this, I had come only once to the banks of the Ariyal Khan. I was with my father who had come to buy some hilsa fish. I was about five years old. All the fishermen and boatmen took me in their arms and petted me. That was the hilsa season. There were countless vessels midstream, all catching fish. The markets were awash with hilsa. My father bought a three pound fish for two annas. The fishermen gave us a tiny hilsa for free. ‘Fry this one whole and give it to the little gentleman, sir’ they said to my father. Now when we came to that same river bank, we had to wait for the steamer, for thirty-six hours we had to sit there. The first steamer did not have room for us. So we slept in the open fields on the river bank. We satisfied our hunger by chewing on flattened, dried rice. After all, we were Brahmins; custom forbade us from cooking in such surroundings, open to possible contamination by other castes. Actually, we did have some rice and foodstuff with us to cook. And, of course, we forgot all such dictates of custom and ritual within a few days. There were so many people waiting for the steamer, and yet there was hardly any noise, any rush. One and all, they sat there in a mute daze, staring at the river. Waiting for the steamer. I remember my eyes began to hurt from the intensity of staring. To be quite honest, I was still too young, at the age of eleven, to be over- whelmed by the tragedy of leaving my country. There was also an element of excitement, the lure of going to some strange and distant land. So the lack of food and having to sleep in an open field did not make me suffer too much. ; The river Ariyal Khan has no associations of holiness 35 like the Ganges. On the contrary, the recurrence of floods which often disastrously change the course of the river, as well as the frequent incursions by