Returning Home: 1972

Star Illustration

'Didi!'

Are these tears in Madan's eyes?

'Yes.' Jaya busies herself in counting out the money for the rickshawallah. Aside from Madan, a scattered group of onlookers had turned out to greet Jaya. Though Keshtho the compounder's children hadn't come. Nor had the compounder or his wife. On the right-hand side, the four-storied building that housed the fourth-class employees was deathly silent. Jaya's eyes light on Taju at the small shop out in front. The other shop is shut. Evening is still a long way off, and so it isn't time yet for the bells to peal deafeningly in the temple next door. The temple itself looks deserted, as if the sounds of conch shells or bells had never emanated from there. Jaya goes through the open gate and walks on the straight path set in green. It does not take more than a half a minute to get to the front steps. Today it does. Jaya sees that the green is not in the slightest undimmed. In fact, freed from a spectacle-eyed scrutiny and the care of Modhu mali , the trees are extra green. The hasnahena bush on the left is now bigger. The hasnahena's scent this close is oppressive to Jaya. The room which is near to the bush is the one in whose open window she had stood on many a night and counted the lights going out one by one in the men's hostels in front. On those silent, lonely nights the hasnahena's scent would spread throughout the whole house. Jaya knew how overpowering and relentless the smell could beespecially on sleepless nights. Right in front of the house, where on both sides jasmine flowered during the rainy season, now grow roses. Red. The beli tree on the right is still there. The shefali tree in the distance looks larger.

Jaya had heard that Kalyan Babu had been appointed head clerk. He now steps through the gate and comes forward with a busy air.

'I'm sorry, I'm a little late.' He steps on the front verandah and begins to unlock the front door. 'I came earlier. I went to get the key. I hope you weren't waiting here long? You have come from such a long way off.'

'No.'

The key to the house is still in Jaya's bag. Though the key with which Kalyan Babu is opening the door is not the same key. Nowadays nobody keeps the old key anymore. It has been locked away in an iron safe at the office.

Madan now makes a scene. As soon as Jaya enters the house he grabs her right hand and hangs on it. Then, swinging from it like a monkey, the old man starts to sob like a boy, 'Didi, that house you left behind, what has become of it.'

Madan's crying is not something new for Jaya. He knows how to be dramatic. Back then, whenever it would be time depart and Jaya would tell him to care of the house, tears would invariably well up in his eyes. The same thing had happened when they had left the house for the last time. It hadn't been irritating then. In Madan this mix of part provincial, part simpleton, part affection, part calculation hadn't been too annoying. But today it is, which is why Jaya sharply commands him, 'Stop it.'

Madan at first is taken aback. Then lets go of Jaya's arm and starts to wipe his eyes with his lungi.

The house inside feels unchanged. The same old sitting room. Three cane chairs on the right-hand side with the small square table in the center. On top of the table are three newspapersone English, two Bengali. On the left is the heavy old wooden table. An easy chair, on which he would sit cross-legged as if in a mantra-trance when there was nothing else to read or write. Would murmur something to himself with his eyes closed and face skyward. Once in while a few Sanskrit words would escape his lips: 'Ai shahossho poromagoti, ai shahossho poromashompod.' On the table is a pen, an ink bottle, a red-and-blue pencil, blotting paper and a few blank pages. He had sat in this chair, dipped pen in the ink, perhaps dried with the blotting paper, had mailed that last letter to Jaya, and by the time she got it, he was already gone.

Inside the inner room on the wall opposite the door was that full-length photograph. The name beneath, and beneath the name the date.

Looking into the corner of the room Jaya is suddenly startled. 'This was not here,' she exclaims, pointing a finger at a stone bust on top of a small three-legged table, its face more familiar to her than her own, a face that she is seeing everywhere in this house, laughing, forever laughing.

'There was not even one good photo of him, so the university ordered this bust,' Kalyan Babu said. Jaya is forced to remain silent. Because she had forgotten one large truth: When she had left the house it had been a zooand a museum. A zoo because here its inhabitants while wearing a human face yet had to act like non-humans, like animals at a zoo. Just like the monkeys there had to perform in order to get a banana or some gram lentils, so too in this house amid this greenery in order to keep the heart beating, in order to live, one had to listen to Tagore songs on the radio by strangling its voice and pressing it close to the ears. Just as out of fear of losing the banana, the caged monkeys would overdo their act, so too out of caution, they would overdo it. When even that caution failed, the house became an object to be gazed at, a museum. She remembers that once in a while leading such a life would be loathsome to her, as if she were being forced to choke off all her senses with her own hand. Today, she realizes that it had been necessary. Since despite all hope, support, strength and integrity, just because the heart did stop, everything came to an end for him.

Jaya goes across the sitting room to the inner room. This is the dining room. Eight chairs and a long dining table. Even though three persons were supposed to eat at this table, yet on most days there would be more. And therefore all eight chairs would issue invitations for people to seat themselves comfortably.

The small mattress on the right is missingwhere Madan used to sleep. Because towards the end Madan had left this house. Now he had been re-employed to look after the house. Where there remained none to give him orders or scold him. Just officials who would come once in a while to check if everything was okay. Jaya goes to the verandah on the left. Facing it are two bedrooms side by side. A bathroom to the right. The bed is still made in the left bedroom, its mosquito net drawn up above. A phone on the side table, which does not work. A box of toothpicks on the side of the table. Parallel to the bed stands a clothes rack. A few dhutis, punjabis, shoes. A black sherwani hangs at the end. On this side some clothes are strewn in the glass almirah. On the other side a huge wooden wardrobe whose doors would always hang open halfway. Just like today. On the upper rack a pair of spectacles, watch, one pen and pictures of Ramkrishna-Vivekananda-Sarodadevi bound in a single frame. Only paper on the other racks, sheaves and sheaves of it. The two trunks beneath the bed are still there. Inside them are all the important papers, writing, the product of a complete yet unfinished life.

Jaya enters the bedroom on the right. Sees that the long bench used to increase the width of the bed is still there. The steel cabinet is shut. Jaya still has a set of keys for it. Three pictures on top of the cabinet. Three of them, who once called this their home, who were not connected to each other at birth, but came from different parts at different times to create a complete family. Above the door hangs a china plate with the twentythird Psalm from the Bible engraved on it. On the dressing table among the bric-a-brac, the box containing the vermilion daub catches Jaya's eye. Her mother had given it to her on her wedding. Though Jaya has given up wearing it, even though her husband is alive by her side, the dressing table reminds her that once she used to put it on.

Jaya goes to the third bedroom on the opposite side, between the dining room and the verandah. On many a night it had been occupied by relatives, friends, too numerous to count. Near the end, Jaya's younger brother had lived here for many days. Some of his things lay scattered around. It was in this room that was the repository of the household's entire collection of newspapers and books. If one looked out the window one could see everything that went on inside the temple next door. On the left, in the small open space inside the boundary wall, is the kul tree with its profusion of berries hanging red and green. But today the more intrepid neighbourhood boys aren't gathered beneath it. There used to be so many guavas in the guava tree. Perhaps, Jaya thinks to herself, it isn't the season for guavas now.

She has to go across the dining room again to enter the inner courtyard. She opens the glass almirah in which the china was kept and discovers that most of the expensive pieces are missing. She closes it and walks towards the courtyard. The locked kitchen on the right catches her eye. From this kitchen on myriad afternoons and evenings Madan, swinging crookedly, had brought steaming tea in slightly stained teacups for all those sitting in the outer room. A sip of it while listening to life's tales told by a mystic had been heaven on earth! During a large part of her stay in this house Jaya had had no companion except him. Especially on evenings when Moti, Duli, Guno, Atahar or Manju had not dropped by. Jaya and he, the house's last two residents, each with a cup of tea in their hands, would sit down inside on the cane chairs or on the steps of the verandah outside. There would be stars above. Maybe the moon, or maybe not. They would talk. So much to talk about! Jaya would talk, he would listen. Then he would talk, and Jaya would listen. Jaya's talk invariably centred around a small mofusshil town, her mother, father, brothers and sisters---she would forget he was her father's age, would forget that if one were to judge the relationship by any worldly yardstick that he was nothing to her. There was never any problem too small not to be shared, about which advice could not be solicited: Marital discord, the decline of her father's health, the anxiety over her wayward younger brother, preparations for the coming examinations, hopes and wishes about the bright future ahead. Nothing was left untouched. Jaya would forget who he was. Would forget about the need for friends. To her all that existed at that moment was a gentle, profoundly wise being, a rishi, a human beingfather, mother, brother, sister, friend, teacher all rolled into one. Jaya never felt the need for anything else. She would listen, uncomprehendingly at times, and remain doubtful, uncertain about many things, yet would feel initiated into the world of ideas about the uplift of the common manmantras about their betterment. Would accept the concept that a third way was needed which would integrate materialism and idealism into a single vision, a new life. Jaya remembers a time she had been listening closelyhe had said 'I am going to bury nationalism. Love and friendship is what is needed to unite mankind as one nation. That is the only way to achieve universal brotherhood.' Jaya would sit with her head lowered. She hadn't seen Buddha, hadn't seen Gandhi. But would feel she had witnessed Gandhi's and Buddha's selflessness and ahimsa in one person, who despite being older in years was nonetheless ahead of all others in his modernity, in his freedom from superstition and ignorance.

By the time she steps outside the house, it is dusk. Jaya notes that, among the line of sheora trees lining the garden's edge, two have died. She hadn't noticed it before. Kalyan Babu says while pointing at the beaten path down below, 'Even a few days back there were bloodstains there. Before they went away, they left behind the signs of their sin here.'

Jaya goes near to it. Looks down as if searching the area very carefully for something. Doesn't find it. She remembers what her mother had said once. Jaya's father had died after she went abroad and she therefore hadn't seen her mother as a widow, and would still think of her with the vermilion streak firmly in the part of her hair. But now for the first time, looking down at the beaten path in front of the house, she saw her mother's wide forehead absent the red mark which the killers had rubbed off. Jaya knows her father is not alive anymore, but oh, if only she could see once more that red sidhur on her mother's forehead!

'If you have any ideas about the preservation of the house, please do let us know. We'll take your comments into due consideration.'

Jaya turns to look. A stranger's face. It has been with us this whole time. As soon as she looks, he laughs and caresses a brass nameplate on a

verandah pillar. On it she can make out 'National Preservation'. Along with some other words. The man then is saying 'I have been told to ask you this question.'

Jaya again looks at the lonely old house. Sees afresh the redbrick building. Then says, 'Change the red to white.'

'What?' the gentleman in front of her reacted as if he had seen a snake. 'This is a radical proposal. If we change it this much we won't be able to call it preservation.'

Jaya feels like laughing. 'What do you want to preserve? The memory of the man who lived in this house, or a 150-year-old structure that looks like a jailhouse? If I could, I would have painted these red houses gold. But that's impossible. So if you can, make it white.'

Jaya does not stand there any longer. The pit of her stomach has begun to hurt. Four-and-a-half years back on an autumn evening Jaya had first entered this house in the guise of a new wife. Nobody was there to greet her at the doorway with conch shells or rice-winnowing fans. The only one who could have stood there had accepted her as a daughter-in-law without waiting for the formal occasion, just as he had accepted her husband twelve years back. Yet this old house had issued such an warm invitation that Jaya from the very first had felt as if it was her own. She had veiled her head with the sari only once, because her second father had lowered it with his own hands. Not as a wife, but as a daughter had Jaya lived three years in this house. She had forsaken the company of a newly married husband and lived here for three long years, angering him a few times in the process. Today from this house, in whose every atom were the heaped memories of her happiest and most fulfilling time, the house where the god of her ideals had spent his best years, Jaya now turns away after completing an inspection of its premises.

After closing the door Kalyan Babu walks towards the gate behind Jaya. Madan has been silent ever since. Though looking at his expression she thinks it would have been better to have let him cry. Walking, it seems to her as if somebody is calling out to her from behind. Turning around, she stares disbelievingly at the figure of the man; she can't believe he is actually living. Jaya had heard that no-one in the house had been spared, not a soul. So Panna was alive!

Panna used to live in the small room opposite the kitchen. A distant relative, he had grown to be a close member of the household. Quiet, shy Panna, who never looked anyone in the face while he talked. Who had lived here, and had worked at a small job somewhere. Panna, who even with his skinny frame would nevertheless uncomplainingly fast for the full thirty days. She remembers one time she had praised his fried Iftar delicacies. After that, every Ramzan month somebody would leave a plate of Iftar food in a dish outside her room. When asked about it, Panna would shyly turn his face away.

Joya sees Panna tug on two slender ropes attached to a huge pole and pluck something out of the sky. Then skims down the drainpipe to the ground and stands before her. Tiny beads of sweat on his forehead. His lips trembleuncontrollably. Panna's thin line of moustache is now fairly full. He seems to be excited. Looks straight into Jaya's eyes.

'Want to say something, Panna?'

After a few moments more of wordless trembling, the words spill out 'Mami, you left saying we had to watch the house. We did watch over the house. Just couldn't save the man. But we did bring something new to this house, something that you hadn't left us with.'

Even though the words are heartfelt, they had sounded a tiny bit practiced. Jaya knows that Panna had been desperate to say them. He now looks far more at peace.

Panna places a bundle in Jaya's hands. A folded piece of dark green cloth. Mutely, inexpressively, she opens it. Sees that it isn't completely green, but also has red and gold. Reminds her of her childhood. A local or national, or even world map would set her off searching for her own locale and address. Jaya sits down and stretches out the cloth tautly on the ground. Feels her adult eyes become an infant's in searching for their moffusshil home, searching for her mother, brothers, sisters, aunt---amid the green fortress with its gold embroidery within the red circle. But no. Can't find them. Having crossed the golden land, swum across the red sea and trekked through the green forest, they have made a green home for themselves whose address is not on the piece of cloth that Panna has given her.

The above is a translation of the Bangla short story Ghoray Phera: Bahattur in Husne Ara Shahed (ed) Muktijoddhar Shotogolpo Globe Library Private Ltd., February 2001. Purobi Basu works at BRAC, Dhaka. Khademul Islam is literary editor, The Daily Star.