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Authors: Neel Mukherjee

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BOOK: The Lives of Others
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Armed with comb,
Ultorath
and a small stainless-steel bowl of mango pickle, Baishakhi stealthily runs up the stairs to the roof terrace. Lunch is just over, so most of the household is getting ready to go to bed for a light snooze. She is fairly certain that no one has seen her coming up here. Still on tiptoe, she makes her way to the west side of the prayer room; here she is sheltered from the eyes of any casual visitor to the terrace – someone coming up to hang out the washing, or clean out the prayer room. They would have to know she is up here to find her. She positions herself so that her back catches the October afternoon sun, loosens her still-damp hair and settles down with
Ultorath
in front of her. It is nearly three o’clock and her mind is very far from reading. It is almost time for Shobhon Datta, who lives next door, to come out onto his roof for his sneaky post-lunch cigarette. This is what Baishakhi has been really waiting for: the book, the bowl of pickle, even her comb and damp hair are just props in a pre-emptive drama of deception. If anyone finds her sitting here, with Shobhon on his terrace, the suspicion that she is romantically entangled with him will alight instantly on her. The props will then give her performance of wide-eyed innocence some credence.

Without this deception, perpetrated by daughters and inevitably discovered by parents, aunts, servants and neighbours, played out, it would seem, since the very beginnings of family and society, the entire fabric of Bengali family life would be marred by a huge hole. There are ‘arranged marriages’ – the real, respectable, acceptable form of union between a man and a woman – decided by parents and families,
not
by the people getting married, and sanctioned by centuries of tradition and practice that say the daughter is her father’s property, to dispose of as he sees fit. A marriage is a social transaction; individuals come into it later, if at all. And then there are ‘love marriages’, where two people conduct their romance with the furtiveness of a shameful, sinful act, then take their hearts in their hands and decide to break the news to their families. They are transgressive, discordant, with all the desirability of the ruptures and havoc that a cyclone creates. They are also forbidden, and such a huge force of morality is brought to bear against them that they are practically irresistible. Baishakhi has taken the first steps in sowing the storm.

Shobhon, twenty, reluctant BCom student at City College, only son of the Datta family, which has made money recently in the catering business; Shobhon, who wears his hair long, wears a gold chain around his neck, has a reputation of being a Romeo, and leaves his shirt unbuttoned nearly down to his stomach so that the chain can be seen nestling in his chest hair like an iridescent snake in dark grass, duly emerges on the terrace of the Datta house. Baishakhi, who has been staring unblinkingly at the green-painted wooden door through which Shobhon will make his entrance, instantly looks down and pretends to be so deeply absorbed in her novel that she is oblivious to the sound of the door, to his appearance a mere fifteen or twenty feet away. Shobhon, a seasoned player, pretends too that he has come to the terrace merely to have a smoke away from the eyes of the elders in his house. The acts of lighting his Capstan Gold, of cupping the match in his hand to shield it from the breeze, of flinging the spent match away all seem to be done with a slight excess of movement, more than the actions themselves demand. He starts walking up and down the terrace, Baishakhi still apparently unnoticed. Baishakhi, breath held, blood pounding in her ears, eyes fixed unmovingly on the meaningless black scrawl of letters on the page, can hear his footsteps pacing back and forth. And then, without any prelude or warning, he comes over to the side of his terrace that she is facing, places his elbows on the parapet, leans forward and whispers, ‘Ashtami evening, eight o’clock, behind the puja pandal.’

Baishakhi jumps out of her skin at this sudden violation of the tacit rules of the game. On no account are they supposed to look at each other in public, let alone speak. She stares at him, then gathers her wits about her and hisses, ‘What
are
you doing? Someone will see us. Don’t stand on this side of the roof.’

He answers back, still whispering, ‘Who will see us? If anyone appears on your roof, I’ll see them before you do, I’ll move away immediately. They’ll never know.’

‘We can be seen from Mala-mashi’s roof, from Namita-di’s, Sunil-mama’s . . . If they look up, they'll see you. Please, please don’t stand here.’

‘How will you love, if you fear so much?’ Shobhon asks, neatly inverting the opening line of a popular Hindi film song. He is given to such smart wit at moments of great risk. As a result, Baishakhi finds him almost unbearably attractive. She colours furiously at the word ‘love’, floating so openly, so publicly, between them – a secret thought suddenly embodied and exposed by being spoken aloud – and cannot find a way to answer him.

‘Don’t forget, eight on ashtami evening, behind the puja pandal,’ he repeats, debonairly blows out some smoke rings, blue and fragile, and leaves the terrace through the green wooden door.

Throughout lunch Chhaya has watched the movements and actions of everyone, like an undercover surveillance agent. Purnima has, as usual, eaten as much as a Bihari guard or a rickshaw-puller, almost up to her wrist in the mound of rice and dal and vegetables and fish curry; Baishakhi has, uncharacteristically, toyed with her food, her mind altogether far away; it seems that Arunima, monosyllabic but jumpy and lit up somewhat dangerously from within as if plotting grand arson or regicide, is following her older cousin into a private no-man’s territory too. It never crosses Chhaya’s mind that others could be thinking similar thoughts about her unnatural silence: where is her relentless carping, her flurry of barbs let loose at everyone, the measured drip of acid from her tongue?

Chhaya had started off being unusually animated, asking everyone, nicely for a change, what plans they had for the rest of the afternoon, whether anyone would be interested in joining her for a few rounds of Ludo afterwards. When she had established what everyone was going to be doing – no one was remotely interested in Ludo or snakes-and-ladders – she lapsed into silence and let the viscous plan move up and down in her mind like the meniscus of an exotic poison.

Malati, the maidservant, comes rushing upstairs from the kitchen just as lunch is ending and says excitedly to Purnima, ‘The knife-and-scissors sharpening man is going down the street now.’ Purnima gets up, energised and active, goes to the kitchen downstairs and orders, ‘Quick, quick, gather all the stuff, don’t forget the bonti. And all the scissors – all of them, they’re all blunt. Call Gagan, ask him to carry the stone mortar. Quick-quick, I don’t want to miss the sharpening man this time, he’s been quite elusive, we keep missing him. The sheel has lost its friction. Call Gagan, what are you waiting for? Here, I’ll take the rest downstairs, let me first wash my hands. Call out to the man to stop.’ And in a whirling vortex of activity, Purnima thud-thuds out, carrying a clattering, clinking armoury of assorted knives and scissors.

Now that the sudden frenzy has blown over, Chhaya can hear the raucous cry of the dharwala cycling down the street, his call so stylised over time that you have to know what it is in the first place in order to identify it as the knife-sharpening-man’s call. An opportunity sent by Ma Kali, she thinks, as she too rises from the table and announces calmly, ‘I’m going to wash my hands now, I’m done. Arunima, if you’re going to watch all this sharpening, don’t stare at the sparks for too long, you’ll go blind. I know you like watching it, but be careful.’

She leaves the table and goes to the sink in one corner of the room to wash her hands. Then she goes to her room one floor up, picks up a bottle of red nail polish and walks out again. Moving calmly and confidently, she takes the stairs down, back to the first floor, then goes to Purnima and Priyo’s room. New clothes are strewn on the bed lavishly. A quick look tells her that they are both Purnima’s and Baishakhi’s. She empties the bottle of nail polish on as many of the garments on the top layer as the small volume of cosmetic will allow. Then she returns upstairs to her room, the empty bottle held in her hand. The burn in her is still unassuaged.

A small fear begins to form: she has to dispose of the empty bottle; what if they find it in her room? She lets the fear grow to the point where the accusing bottle glows with reproach. She picks it up and, calmly again, makes her way up to the roof. She is going to fling it far onto someone else’s roof and run away from the terrace as soon as the deed is accomplished. When she reaches the top landing, before she can push open the door to the terrace, she hears Baishakhi’s unmistakable voice, ‘If they look up, they’ll see you. Please, please don’t stand here’, followed by something unintelligible in a man’s voice. She begins to turn back to escape downstairs, but some knowledge gives her pause. She stands still for a while and the embers of the burn inside her suddenly flare up into flames of unexpected joy.

Earlier that day, while Purba had been filling up a bucket from the tap in the corner of the courtyard, the maid, Malati, had surreptitiously given her some Vim, which she had smuggled from upstairs in a small newspaper pouch.

‘You do your washing-up here with ashes and charcoal, seeing that makes me feel small, I do their washing with Beem, so I bring some down. Hide it, hide it, if anyone finds out, I’ll be kicked out,’ she whispered to Purba, slipping her the packet of powder. Noticing Purba’s hesitancy and fear, Malati added, ‘Take, take, quickly.’ Both women looked upstairs with guilt and fear.

Touched by this gratuitous act of kindness from a servant, Purba’s eyes pricked with tears. But sentimentality was a luxury, she knew, and fear had the upper hand. She whispered, ‘Come into my room. If anyone sees you standing here talking to me, you’ll have a lot of questions to answer.’

The two women scuttled into Purba’s little room. ‘You’ll get into trouble one of these days,’ she said to Malati.

‘Only if I get caught. But I’m careful.’

‘Why take the risk? I manage fine with charcoal,’ Purba said, trying to keep her voice steady; she felt soft, malleable.

‘What can I say? We are servants, illiterate, poor people, it is not our place to open our mouths. But we too have eyes and ears, we can see and hear what goes on.’

Purba could only remain silent in the face of such empathy.

‘Do you think we don’t know that Boro-boüdi secretly sends down used clothes and other stuff for your son and daughter? They’re growing up on leftovers and bones, those two; they’ll come good one day, you mark my words. Those who suffer, win.’

At the mention of her children, Purba couldn’t restrain herself. She covered her mouth with her sari to hide her trembling chin, her twisting mouth.

The timing for doing the washing-up has been calculated by Purba with the utmost deliberation: late afternoon, when everyone upstairs will be deep into their siesta, so there is no chance of getting caught using Vim. She will have to be very quiet too; no clanging and clattering pots and pans that could wake up her mother-in-law.

While doing the washing-up, Purba hears a commotion break out upstairs. A few minutes of straining to listen – and it does not require much effort, for Purnima’s voice carries for miles – establishes the main facts: Baishakhi has spilled a bottle of nail polish and ruined three saris and two salwar-kameez sets. Alight with rage, Purnima has mercilessly thrashed her daughter. Everyone in the family is now assembled on the first floor to witness the show and contribute their two-anna worth of opinion.

Kalyani comes out of Purba’s room and listens, wide-eyed, thirstily soaking up the sounds of the circus upstairs until Purba shoos her away: ‘Go inside, someone will see you gaping and grinning.’

Perhaps Purba is only trying to protect her daughter from the knowledge of how many new items of clothing the people upstairs have received and given, a knowledge that will extinguish the joy her daughter is clearly deriving from the drama. For the three of them, a separate household really, have received only one set each, the obligatory one bought at the last minute, from cheap shops and hawkers in Gariahat: Sona, a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of trousers two sizes too big for him; Kalyani, a salwar-kameez set; and Purba, a block-printed cotton sari. They will shrink, their colours will run, they will look like floor-swabbing cloths after the first wash, then they will start falling apart at the seams; you can predict all this by taking one look at the garments.

Washing-up completed, Purba crosses over to her side of the courtyard and enters her room. She feels like a nap, but there are a hundred and one things to be done – darning the holey mosquito net alone will take up the rest of the afternoon. She decides instead to fold the dry washing and put it away.

‘Kalyani, why don’t you give me a hand with folding the big things?’ she asks her daughter.

When all the folding is done, Purba starts putting the clothes away in the small wooden cupboard that houses practically all her earthly belongings. In it, tucked carefully under a bedsheet so that it does not stick out egregiously, is a flat parcel wrapped in paper and string. What is it? she thinks; how did it get here? She takes it out and, in her impatience to open it, knots up the string, so she lifts it up and holds it to her mouth to cut the string with her teeth. A piece of paper flutters to the floor. She picks it up and reads the austere note that does not give much away:
Didn’t have enough money to buy you a puja sari, forgive me, but here’s something for Sona and Kalyani
. She opens the package with trembling hands, barely able to swallow the growing lump in her throat. Inside it are a shirt and a pair of short trousers for Sona and a frock for Kalyani. She turns to face the cupboard, pushing her head inside, pretending to be busy sorting clothes, to hide her wet face from her daughter.

From seven o’clock on ashtami morning, the priest has been conducting half-hourly public prayer sessions at the pandal. The PA system, which has been rigged up for the loud dispersal of music day and night from the two ends of the road and from the pandal through the five days of puja (a mandatory practice, this), is used for the purpose of worship only on this day. Flocks of residents, all got up in the finest of their new clothes, go in family groups or with friends and neighbours to congregate in orderly rows inside the pandal, face the stage where the statues of the goddess and her children stand looking at them and, led by the priest’s chanting, repeat the Sanskrit slokas and throw tufts of flowers to the deities in worship. Those who cannot go, such as the infirm Prafullanath, sit on their balconies and hear the priest’s voice, intoning the verses, issue from the PA system and feel comforted and consoled.

BOOK: The Lives of Others
11.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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