Kishan Nagar
I woke up one afternoon and skipped to the balcony. The three children playing on the lawn below spotted two beady eyes spying on them through the cement railings. One of them, my sister, called out, “Rupu, come, join us!” But I felt shy about playing with the older girls although they were hardly a year older. At the age of three, one year is a whole lot more, a third of one’s entire life. I shook my head. Sister persisted, “We will jump up and down.” Then she started demonstrating what “jumping” meant. The other girls copied her, just like monkeys. I giggled and pointed a thin finger at them, “Mon-key!” Pushing my nose upward, I squeezed my eyes and blinked rapidly. That was my monkey-act, which was a big hit with Aunty. She always clapped and asked me to do it again. I was proud of my performance. Sister knew no such trick. It all came from observing monkeys keenly. I had seen them a few days back, a whole clan—mothers carrying young ones under their bellies, big males scratching their backs, some medium-sized ones striking poses. They trouped along our compound wall, their tales swinging like banyan tree roots. One of the larger monkeys started shaking a mango tree. And soon all of them were shaking the tree. Mangoes were falling like raindrops. The man next-door, whose tree was being attacked, ran with a broom in his hand, uttering words that made Mother laugh. Sister and I also laughed along with her, copying her just like monkeys. Then Mother controlled herself and ordered us, “Ei, no laughing at such profanity!”
My little head shook, “No.” “We will roll on the grass,” said Sister as if struck by a novel idea. The demonstration this time was so much fun the girls forgot their lone audience. Suddenly I saw, from my vantage point, Sister’s handkerchief falling from her frock pocket, and someone else’s thin hand snatching it and spiriting it away. I screamed, “Chor, chor, thief!” The girls got up from their rolling posture and started screaming “Chor chor,” including the one who was the thief. They ran all over the garden confusedly not bothering to find out what had been stolen. Was it possible they did not know what “chor” meant and thought it was just another game? I was rushing towards the stairs, forgetting my timidity, when I heard a voice from within the house, “Rupu, can you help me thread the needle?” That was Grandma. I was torn between helping Grandma and rescuing Sister’s handkerchief. I decided the thief could be dealt with later. Grandma said I was the “smart one” when I did it fast. It was a game we played. Every time I tried to outdo my personal records. I wet the thread with my tongue and frowned at the needle’s eye. Grandpa came in coughing. I frowned harder, ignoring him on purpose. I was angry with him for the incident that morning. We had just got a new bathtub and both of us sisters tried to get in it at the same time. Grandpa thought it would topple the tub, as it was made of plastic, and in adult terms, was a large shallow bucket. So he held me back and let Sister win the race. As I struggled in his wiry arms he said five minutes would be all I had to wait. Mother had taught us to count up to twenty, so five was acceptable. I started counting loudly to let Sister know when her time would be up. As I completed “five” I scrambled for the bathtub to collect my dues. Grandpa laughed out so loud I could see the lump of raw tobacco dancing on his tongue, “Five minutes, silly, not five counts!”
It was the morning the guests would be fed. Mother was busy in the kitchen. Grandma kept track of these auspicious days. She had not fed the poor for many years, and today, at her Bank Manager son-in-law’s house, she felt lucky. When they were well-off, Grandma always cooked an extra handful of rice and gave it to the poor, those who could not afford even a single meal a day. These people called her “Annapurna”, the goddess who feeds. The younger ones touched her feet, the elderly showered blessings on her. But despite all their blessings and her own kind deeds, fortune would turn its back on her. Her eldest daughter became widowed, joined a teacher’s training course and left her children with Grandma. Then Grandpa retired. The price of essential commodities started mounting inordinately. Later, Metal Box, a packaging company that made decorative boxes, would shut down. That was where her son, her son-in-law, her nephew, her widowed daughter’s son, in fact most men in her neighbourhood, worked. Grandpa was an overseer in the factory and had helped many people get jobs, many of whom were Bangladeshi refugees. Prolonged strikes in the Calcutta unit frustrated the owners. Maybe it was a relic of the British Raj that had to give way to the rising Tatas and Birlas and Godrejs of Independent India. For many people past their prime, Metal Box would remain the last employer, and for decades they would reminisce about this or that Oliver or William shahebs. Many families faced dire times, resorting to begging, hawked cheap wares, odd jobs, moved in with relatives, subsisted on less and less. Their sons dropped out of school and sought employment.
To me the Metal Box was a beautiful tray Mother brought out when she served tea to distinguished guests. A battle scene in miniature was painted on it—elephants and horses, men with banners and bugles. I could spend hours immersed in that painting, believing myself to be a soldier. There was another Metal Box reminder at home—a lacquered box where Mother kept her ribbons and clips. This too was ornate, with flowers and creepers, laced around a pair of elegant deer.
Once Grandma made fritters for the country fair and Grandpa sold them. But fairs were rare in a society struggling to survive. Feeding the poor was abandoned. Feeding members of the family was hard enough. They uprooted the flowering bushes and planted papaya, pumpkins, brinjals. Grandma’s excellent cuisine could disguise the lack of fish and meat, but when her sister stretched out a helping hand she grabbed it. For several years my mother and her cousin sister spent their summer holidays at this affluent aunt’s house. Fate had been much kinder to the aunt. Her engineer husband owned a soap factory. They lived two thousand kilometres away, in South India, in a city called Pondicherry. This far-off, ex-French colony, where the natives spoke a strange language, had another attraction. It was the ashram of Sri Aurobindo, around which gathered a community of people from all over India, and Bengalis most of all, since Sri Aurobindo was not only a freedom fighter from Bengal, but was also revered as a rishi.
Mother and her cousin were inside the ashram building with their aunt once, when this lady accosted a young man. The aunt was a hawk among humans. Her whole body curved around the back like a hawk intent on studying its prey. Even when she closed her eyes and seemed to pray, her practical instincts were on the prowl. She kept a close watch on the movement of young Bengali men and shortlisted the ones belonging to her caste. The last one to bite her bait came up to her and wished her a good morning. The lady had done her homework and was not going to let this fish get away.
The man was not supposed to be in Pondicherry that summer. He had planned a trip to the Andaman Islands with a friend who fell ill at the eleventh hour. So trimming his plans a little, he set off on a solo South India trip. And of course Pondicherry is a tourist’s stop. But did he know it would become a destination some years later? Sri Aurobindo’s vision appealed to his energetic demeanour, he met mentors who showered spiritual advice on him, he saw a closely-knit community and lots of smiling faces. Naturally he felt at home. Having performed his father’s last rites recently, and having no memories of his mother, deceased since he was a child, he was ill-equipped “to wheel his own cart”, or so the perspicacious aunt surmised. In brief, between the time he had removed his sandals and had washed his hands, he was betrothed. The aunt, to her credit, gave him two choices.
“Which of my nieces would you like?”
Cursorily, he locked eyes with each girl, and nodded at one, “This one.” She was the fairer of the two. Then he went to pray and if he was gripped by panic, it was too late. That is how my parents were married a few months after the incident at the ashram.
After my bathtub frolic, I ran to the veranda. The guests would be fed there. A mother and son sat on the ground on square mats. Their plates were still empty. I had never seen strangers in the house being fed. And what strangers too! They were wearing soiled clothes and their eyes were small, maybe from walking on sun-scorched dusty roads, or from crying too much. Mother scooped out steaming white rice and piled them on each plate. Then as she picked up the bowl of fish curry I saw the man had already started eating. He was stuffing the warm rice in his mouth and chewing away. I pointed at him and laughed, “Look, he is eating bland rice!” Grandma cupped her hand over my mouth and whispered in my ears, “Shh.”
It would take me many years to understand why she had hushed me that day, what it meant not to know where your next meal will come from, what it feels not to be able to feed your children; the terror, the pain, the shame that is hunger. And I would return to this moment again and again and ask to be pardoned. Ask of the hungry man who sat in my parent’s house and ate bland rice. Did he remember the lucky girl’s insolence? Did he pardon her? I find him in every street of my country, and I beg him to forgive me, forgive my wealth, my well-fed stomach, my opportunities, the blessings which I know not how to share. The memory never tires of taunting me, “So where is Annapurna? Did she die with Grandma?”
Every morning after Father went to work, Mother sat us down on the floor and opened a book full of pictures. She uttered sounds pointing at the illustrations – “Monkey, mango, parrot, cat”. We repeated after her. Then she just pointed at the pictures and we uttered the corresponding sounds. I watched Mother’s tresses swing as she rocked back and forth. She urged us to nod emphatically as if the words needed a mechanical push to be spoken. Eventually I learnt this swinging was a means for parents to be sure the kid had not fallen asleep while studying. That was the custom of the day. But what was not so customary was this —a Bengali mother teaching English in a village in Orissa. But Sister was already five years old and had not yet seen the inside of a school. Every morning we saw a trickle of children walking past our house, dangling jute bags on their backs, heavy with slate and chalk. They were going to the only school the village had, where I heard the schoolmaster beat them mercilessly. Besides, he taught in Oriya. So Mother got a textbook full of coloured pictures from the big city, Kolkata, when Father got transferred.
As the parents watched the village children in tattered clothes and battered sandal-less feet returning from school, they shook their heads. Some of the kids were seen helping their parents stock vegetables on rugs on market day. Could their daughters have classmates whose parents, struggling with food, clothing and shelter, consider education a luxury? The city folk knew education was food-clothing-shelter-and-more, all bundled up together. Even when their fortune fell, Mother’s father still sent her to college. Father had to start working in his late teens, but he attended Night College to get his Commerce degree. So if some sacrifice was called for, they would make it. The girls would get a top-class education. They thought of the ashram school in Pondicherry. It was hard to get admission there, but the ambiance was that of a garden where flowers could bloom and birds sing. That is where the children would be educated, if such was their good fortune. And if the resourceful aunt in Pondicherry cooperated.
The family had visited the ashram almost every year and had seen more of the school every time. It had facilities for all-round growth, rare in India, or anywhere else in the world in the 1970s —courts for hockey, basketball, football. A swimming pool, an athletics ground, a gymnasium, dancing and singing classes, embroidery, pottery, carpentry…everything they had never had a chance to learn. But there was a hitch. It was a small school that only accepted children of Sri Aurobindo’s devotees, since the whole system of education was founded upon his teachings. It is not easy to define what a devotee is, but I have to try since one may interpret it in a way which is not intended here. The community formed by those who accepted Sri Aurobindo as their spiritual master was called “ashram”, but it wasn’t a conventional one. There was no dress code, no rules for vegetarianism, no rituals. People could still worship Kali or Krishna or Allah or Christ. It also admitted married couples and children. So how does one prove one is a follower of a certain path when that path has no markers? In most cases there is no need for it. Sri Aurobindo passed away in 1950, but he has copious writings guiding spiritual aspirants. Each one can pave his own way independently. But for logistical purposes the school had to think of a practical method to restrict admission. So although the parents were devotees, they needed the aunt’s recommendation on the application form.
The aunt cooperated.
Father’s sister’s family came in like a bouquet and settled on the furniture to be waited upon. Mother buzzed around them dutifully. “Aren’t there good schools in Kolkata?” demanded Aunty. “The children will not learn their own culture.” She meant Bengali culture. South India was another part of the world, almost a foreign country with a foreign culture. North Indians called the people “Madrasi” although the Madras Presidency set up by the British had given way to four distinct states thirty years ago and Madras State too had been renamed Tamil Nadu a few years back. “Madras” remained as the name of a single city. I snuggled up to Aunty and inhaled the scents that floated out of her. She was a vision of beauty with fragrant hair oil and creams—a different one for body and face. And her bright saris felt so soft and cool to my touch! In contrast, Mother was coarse, a lightning of action, too fast to spread her fragrance, that is, if she had the time to apply these cosmetics at all. In their turn the newly-wed uncles came, sang a few songs, strolled along the river and snuggled back to the metropolis. Father was always the most adventurous of them all.
I picked up a photograph where Sister was seated on the ground, holding a biscuit. Beside her stood an Alsatian dog, towering over her head.
I was impressed, “Wow, weren’t you scared?” The girls who came to play with Sister ran for their lives when they saw a stray dog pass by.
Sister clucked her tongue, “Of course not. That is just Jacky. Don’t you remember?”
“No, I was not there.”
“Sure, you were. And you too were not scared. That was in Sambalpur. Jackie lived next-door.”
My earliest memories were of Kishan Nagar, the place where Father was given the task of setting up a bank. Back then in 1977 it was a village. Before that we were in Sambalpur, a proper town, also in Orissa. He would be promoted from officer to manager if he agreed to live in a village. Yes, he would. He loved challenges and had done it before, when he left his hometown, Kolkata. He was not one to cling to his roots and let an opportunity pass. And besides he felt pretty confident about his Oriya skills. He conjugated Bengali verbs using Oriya grammar rules and for proper names pronounced Bengali nouns with an Oriya accent. After every sentence he added the colloquial “paura?” which can pass off as “isn’t it?” All his hearer had to do was nod “Yes.” But Bengali and Oriya are sister languages so neither party would feel punished if the other stuck to his native tongue.
In Kishan Nagar, the bank was on the ground floor and we stayed above. This meant Father had the world’s easiest commute. The sloping roof was made of bamboo and sheltered a colony of rats. These creatures felt no pangs in jumping down on the floor and helping themselves to the kitchen. We had to get a cat. Soon the fellows foolhardy enough to scale all the way down were dealt with. I can’t remember a time we did not have pets, in the plural mostly, sometimes a mix of cats and dog and toads and fish. Never birds in cages as we liked our critters to roam free. Mother wanted a monkey, because apparently two girls were not enough. However, monkeys did not care to be domesticated, and the cats objected vehemently.
Aunty scowled, “Leaving Kolkata, staying in a village where you couldn’t get food even if you had the money, not a single cinema hall, sending the children to some never-never land just for education, that too, both are girls! And packing your young wife along with them! Can she bring them up all alone? And who will cook for you?” Father said he hoped to get transferred to Pondicherry soon. He could rough it out for a while with the Bengali cook called Gaur who had worked for them when the babies were born. “Don’t you remember how well he cooks?” Aunty wasn’t satisfied. She loved the escape our house represented—escape from work, that is. If she turned up for another vacation surely Gaur would plan his escape.
Sister started throwing tantrums. She needed to be in school and play with children of her own age. One day she escaped to the riverbank in a fit of rage, and had to be rescued after she gave everybody a hearty chase. I locked myself in the bathroom imitating the adults and thereafter could not operate the latch. The carpenter had to be called in to unscrew the door to get me out. Father took us up the hill on his new scooter. On the way down we crashed into a bush. Nobody had a scratch on them; we just had a load of sand all over us. We dusted ourselves and were as good as new, the scooter included. But when Father made us promise to keep it a secret from Mother, we panicked. I started crying and cried right up into Mother’s arms. Sister felt generous towards the girl who had been scolded for stealing the handkerchief. She beckoned to her, dangling something that looked like a glistening maroon brooch. When the eager girl approached she was gifted a dead cockroach, whereupon she squealed and bounded down the stairs. That provided us with a memory of Kishan Nagar we could repeat for years to come. But Father planned a more tangible memoir. One day, Sister and I took turns posing before a three-legged contraption. A bedcover was used as a backdrop. I was terrified when the stranger in front of me hid his face inside a black cloth. Would he emerge green with red fangs? Was he going to throw something at me now? I could scarcely hold back my tears, which the photo had dutifully captured.
Then it was all over. The green and brown village panorama was folded in a traveller’s bag and reality was ready to fade into a memory. No more would Father honk as he returned on his scooter from the vegetable market. No more would little feet tumble down to grab the bags before Mother appeared. No more would Mother apply a dash of lipstick to watch a late night street play while the girls slept, not aware that Mother and Father were going out while Grandma kept watch. Father would miss the little hands clutching his balding head while unsteady feet stamped on his lap. Every morning before he left for work there would not be a stampede to reach the pieces of potatoes he left on his plate especially for them. The bathtub would be abandoned; the neighbourhood children become strangers to the house.
The wife was busy advising the cook about her husband’s food habits as a ploy to hold back her tears. He nodded “yes” to all, for he had heard those same words several times. The father asked the girls to be obedient, polite, et cetera, but they were not listening. They were too excited to feel pangs of separation. Their playmates had gathered to watch the spectacle, having bunked class for a good reason. The suitcases were interesting, but the “hold-all” was an extraterrestrial beast. They poked their little heads in its crevices and called out their discoveries, “Pillow, pressure cooker, torch, sandals.” The “hold-all”, faithful to its name, held all. It was a mattress wrapped around a cavity. Innumerable buckles strapped it down from all sides. A whole household could be stuffed in its belly, if one were willing to carry its weight.
Then the bus arrived and halted in a cloud of dust. Things and people were loaded. The man kissed his daughters on their heads. He patted his wife’s shoulders as she let her tears fall. Then he was on the road looking at them through the window. The bus growled, belched out some black smoke, blotted the woman’s forlorn face and went chasing its own star.