Photo credit: Smita Vakkadavath

An oblique sunbeam had mildly lit up the portico of the house. A dim glow reflecting from the red-bordered sari of my mother hanging on the rope spread in the room. I could smell the odour of juvenile memories in the hem of the sari from the stitched catchword Kolkata-300. It appeared that the enchanting juvenility with its reach memory of some previous life had embodied itself.

Kamal was then a fresher in Presidency College in Kolkata. To give a pleasant surprise to his Notun Bauthanⁱ he bought the sari for her with the money he received from his scholarship. It was customary to address the eldest sister-in-law as Bara Bauthan. However, Kamal who had been brought up by that Natun Bauthan with love and care, never allowed his Natun Bauthan to be old. The memory of the purple glow reflecting from the face of my mother sitting between my aunts flashed across my mind.  What I thought to be the light of pleasure during my juvenile days had turned into a shame of embarrassment in the closing chapter of my youth. For a joint middle class family, the price of one Kolkata-300 sari in place of three ordinary saris was certainly too heavy.

When my grandfather arranged marriage for his eldest son, Sarama, a young woman hailing from Kolkata appeared in the family as the eldest sister-in-law of Kamal. As soon as she stepped into her in-law’s house situated in a remote village, she discovered a child tugging to the hem of her gorgeous Banaras silk sari with a shy but ineffable smile. Sarama’s mother in law announced that the child, though four or five years of age, was no doubt the youngest master of the future days. Sarama took up the young brother-in-law in her arms. Instantly, the child-hero shaking off all his shyness concealed his face in the shoulder of his Natun Bauthan. 

There’s no dearth of members in the big Mukherjee family to verify the relation between the brother-in-law and his eldest sister-in-law. However, the city bred Sarama never cared for that scandal. As a result, the critics had to stop slandering. Sarama’s mother-in-law who gave birth to sixteen children got no chance of bringing up her youngest issue, Kamal. Nobody knows how the city-bred Sarama won over her mother-in-law. In her deathbed, she said to Sarama, ‘My dear daughter-in-law, I hand over to you all responsibilities of rearing up Kamal.’ Since that day, Kamal never felt absence of his mother. They surrounded themselves to such a bond of love that can hardly be defined. Yet that ideal relation of love didn’t culminate in a happy ending.

I can hardly recollect when I came with mother and Chotkaⁱⁱ to settle in Kolkata, bidding goodbye to our ancestral village home. I, too, stepped over the boundary line of youth while making a heap of phials one by one. Initially being highly optimistic, I bought number of books and placed them on the shelf opposite to the bed of Chotka in such a way that he could easily catch sight of it. However, Chotka hasn’t turned over a single page of that books even today.

Yet he was once a bookworm of storybooks. Mother used to tell story in the evenings to control her restless children. Chotka too, preyed by an irresistible charm of listening to her story would scuffle for our mother’s lap. Later, when he was admitted to Presidency College in Kolkata it seemed to us that he’d suddenly grown up. We missed him as our playmate. Chotka was the first to read in Kolkata in our family. That too was possible for the eagerness of Sarama. A sense of reverence grew in us beyond our knowledge. She always warned us not to disturb Chotka, while he was studying. After getting scholarship in the School Final Examination when Chotka came and bowed down to the feet of his Natun Bauthan with the mark-sheet in hand, the memory of the indescribable beauty of her face is still fresh in my memory. And right behind there was an indefinable thorn of jealousy of my juvenility pricking my memory. 

Because of the flawless arrangement of his Natun Bauthan, the only mud-built cool room would remain under the occupation of Chotka during the summer vacation. We were always curious about the college student and went to peep in that mud-built room on tiptoes. We’d very often discover Chotka lying on the cool floor with one corner of his pillow wet and a voluminous book on his chest. During our childhood there was a strange equation in our mental make-up that the books we read, lying on the floor was invariably a storybook while the books we read, sitting on a mat with our back straightened were none other than textbooks. Though the textbooks weren’t worthy of reading, the study of those books was essential to get rid of red ink mark obtained in the examination. However, during that period, we weren’t afraid in the least to ignore that red ink scratch. Children of the family were terribly afraid of our grandfather’s caning, although Kamal was excepted. He always stood first in the examinations because of the beneficial patronage of the biased teachers. Moreover, the ornamental hem of his Natun Bauthan was always placed on his head to protect him.

Each one of us gave himself the honour title of detective on the very day we discovered that, while reading stories the eyes of Chotka would be suffused with tears. Since we hadn’t yet obtained the passport of upgrading ourselves to read the books of the grown-ups, we couldn’t guess what kind of book it was. Still we didn’t waste any time to convey the news of Chotka’s misdeed to our mother. However, she ignored our painstaking discovery with a sweet smile that we hadn’t yet attained that maturity to understand. However, I can distinctly remember even today that an alien pain had pierced my heart then. Today I don’t find out in any nook of my heart in which tune that pain rang in my juvenile heart. While Chotka had been a student in the college, he got over all the academic examinations quite creditably, but failed miserably to overcome even the slightest hurdle of the real life.

Nowadays after bathing mother when our maid Manada goes to feed her, mother’s thin hands with prominently visible veins lie on her lap benumbed. Yet as soon as I open the lid of my illusive childhood, I can well visualise that plump and round hand with a morsel of rice, which is now a treasured memory of my insipid tongue. Mother would sit down to have her midday meal on the portico of the kitchen after serving meal to all the family members. Most of the time her high edged, bell metalled plate used to have the items like rice, fish and Ganesh’s dumpling, made of gram-powder. At the end of lunch in a big joint family, most of the times, vegetable curries are found short of requirement. Therefore, our servant would have to rush to Ganesh’s shop for fried dumpling. The midday meal taken to our fill hadn’t been digested till then. Despite that, we, the three daredevils, would sit around mother’s poor plate to have nectar like taste of a morsel of rice, a unique mixture of boiled rice and Ganesh’s dumpling that tasted extremely palatable because of mother’s magic touch. Chotka would stand a little distance away with a shy face. And that call of my mother sounds in my ears even today – ‘Why are you standing a far, my boon companion?’ So saying she’d stretch out her hand with a morsel of rice over our shoulders to feed Chotka. We, after having our share would rush out to play. At intervals, we’d notice Chotka to stare at mother’s plate with indifferent look from time to time. Yet that mother is even ignorant today about the ingredients of her midday meal.

My lazy flow of thought staring at the old Kolkata-300 sari during midday is severed. The groaning of my mother’s tearful voice from the dining room rent the air, ‘that female demon will gobble ravenously everything all by herself…she’ll leave nothing for my Kamal…I’ve failed, mother, to protect your Kamal…please take him to your bosom…that female demon will kill him…’ It’s a riddle to me how this bit of memory can last in the eroded memory cell of my mother. Again, during this lacerated outburst of mother the voice of Chotka will be in the air, ‘don’t cry Natun Bauthan, I want nothing…nothing…I don’t love her at all…not in the least.’ This is the only relation between Chotka and his Natun Bauthan today. Perhaps I am wrong in my estimation of their relation.

While feeding mother, maid Manada had to make a morsel of rice mixed with other items of cooked food for Chotka at first. If ever the contrary happened, there’d invariably be a pandemonium. Poor Manada! She is in deep waters with these two patients. Manada is no longer young now. She’d been a maid in the parental family of my mother and came with her during her marriage, thinking that her little mistress would have to suffer a lot in a rural setting. Although Sarama with the passage of time developed herself into a dominating mistress of that family, Manada could never go back to Kolkata again. Now she’d to shoulder the responsibility of looking after both mother and Chotka. One may naturally err at times if one is burdened with so many responsibilities. However, who is going to listen to that argument? So is the frequent recurrence of this dramatic scene.

I can distinctly recall that day still now. It was a Saturday. Since his return from the college, Chotka was unusually silent. He didn’t take anything during dinner instead only stirring the boiled rice with his fingers. And during that very inauspicious night Chotka fell ill with high fever accompanied with a delirium, ‘I want nothing…nothing…I don’t love her at all…not in the least…’ From the next day situation turned for the worse. We stood at the doorstep with dumb eyes, utterly confounded. Modern medical treatment followed Homeopathic treatment. It was true that his fever remitted after a week but his mental obsession remained as before. The medical treatment of rural practitioner having failed, a doctor from the city was called. However the condition of Chotka who was wilful by nature didn’t improve. He’d eat if he was served food. If not, he didn’t care. He had no complaints against anyone. Was it that he lost his mental equilibrium because of his severe allegation?

During my school days, I couldn’t analyse this mishap in its true perspective. Only the sight of the restless Chotka sitting on the bed all day long made my eyes blurred with tears. At times, he’d stand near window like a statue. He seemed to be thinking of something beyond my comprehension. Again, he’d loiter about in the room. Dipped in himself he’d recite English poems. He was unable to recognize anyone around him. Only when his Natun Bauthan came into his room he’d look at her once and mutter the same words, ‘I want nothing…nothing…I don’t love her at all…not in the least…’ Whom did he want to deny? His Natun Bauthan putting on her carefully preserved sari, Kolkata-300 would come and sit beside Kamal with an inordinate hope nested in her heart. However, from the opposite bank of his memory he did never peep even for once how all the hope and pride of his Natun Bauthan had come to nothing.

During his graduation, he took up English as his honours subject. The city bred Atasi was his classmate. They fell in love with each other unknowingly. However, their love didn’t end in happy union. While the rural young man was fully immersed in love, the city-bred young girl simply made a show of love for him. At last, as soon as the Part-1 examination was over Atasi stopped her game and left him alone. However, poor Kamal couldn’t sense it. The day on which Kamal received the invitation card of Atasi’s wedding was that inauspicious Saturday. Since the day of recovery of wedding card with tamarind stain from Kamal’s bag, his Natun Bauthan sat forever with a hardened face, holding it in her hand. It was difficult to understand whether it was an expression of sensitiveness and sorrow or anger and pain dabbed in her face. Sarama’s memory had started eroding by slow measure. Of course, the doctor had diagnosed her disease as a case of Alzheimer and Kamal’s disease as loss of mental equilibrium. Yet according to my reading, since Kamal being a mad in love dashed all her hopes to the ground, his Natun Bauthan wanted to discard all her memory as nightmare. Yet the memory of an elusive morsel of rice remained intact in some un-decaying brain cells of both.

 

i New sister-in-law, whose name in the story is Sarama.

ii The youngest uncle of the character ‘I’. Name of this uncle in the story is Kamal.