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Chapter 6
For Spring and Jennifer, who try to keep me honest.
Anupa arranged the last slice of melon, and surveyed the large trays of cut fruit in front of her in satisfaction. She was helping Mrs. Chatterjee with the arrangements for the Satya Narayan Puja they were having as part of the griha-prabesh, or house-warming ceremony, and had assumed a large part of the responsibility of seeing to the prasad * which would be offered to the deity and then subsequently served to the guests. Anupa was used to assuming practically the entire responsibility for the Puja, which had been formerly held in their house every purnima +, and as she made the shinny **, mixing in the milk and bananas to the flour, her mind went back to what was now in retrospect the most vivid memory of that discontinued ritual, the almost wordless introduction to Pradip that it had brought about. She wondered idly whether he liked shinny at all; at the time she had assumed that he must be very fond of it, but it occurred to her now that it might have been the only plausible excuse for him to approach her with. And he certainly had acknowledged that interest when they were more closely acquainted.
She smoothed out the last lumps in the shinny, then picked up one of the trays of fruit and headed over in direction of the living room, where Mrs. Chatterjee was seeing to the arrangement of the puja supplies.
"Anupa, you're done with the prasad already! Come, Pradip, do you see what a helpful girl she is? And you take an hour to get the flowers and sweets, and you come back with so few! Now what are you standing around there for? Go on, take that heavy tray from her!"
Anupa tried to conceal her surprise at finding Pradip there as he came up to her to relieve her of her burden. She had never known him to be of a religious turn, and not seeing him when she had first come down, she had assumed that he had chosen to absent himself for the day. Neither of them met the other's eye, as for a second longer than necessary, they each held on to the tray. Then Anupa, embarrassed, quickly removed her hands and turned away.
"No, no, Anupa, you stay here. Let him carry those things here. What are boys good for, anyway? Come, will you help me with the alpona ++? Don't be so surprised! Pradip's told me how talented you are at it, and if you can get that brother of mine to look at any alpona for long enough to know, then you must be extraordinary. I've made the paste already, and I started over here, but I never was very good at these things."
As she painted arabesques on the floor, Anupa was intensely conscious of Pradip silently coming and going, putting down tray after tray of fruit and the sweets that he had just fetched, as well as the bowl of shinny, and the flowers. He was careful not to get in the way of her alpona as it dried, and as he and his sister started to put out the rugs for people to sit on as they watched the puja, it was he was scrupulous in seeing to it that none of her designs were concealed from view, and went as far as to leave room so that people would not be obliged to step on them.
It was not long before the admiral joined them, wearing his dhoti *** and poité +++, for he himself would be conducting the puja. They started shortly thereafter, as the first guests started to arrive, leaving Pradip in charge of welcoming people as they came, as Mrs. Chatterjee and Anupa turned their attention to the puja itself. Anupa was amused to find that it was his wife who was conversant with all the details of the puja, and prompted him at every turn. As he started reading through the familiar mantra in his soothing voice, Anupa, usually an attentive devotee, found her mind drifting, and despite herself, she was thinking back again to the circumstances of her first aborted relationship with Pradip. Though in her mind she referred to it easily as a relationship today, she thought with some regret that she had never come out and admitted as much at the time, even though she had certainly reciprocated his interest. It surprised her even now that she had exerted herself at all to find out anything about him, slight though her information had been. She had ascertained his identity as the brother of the purut, and she knew he was in college at the time. It was not until their accidental meeting in College Street that she had learnt any more about him. After that they had become increasingly close, and although they never had classes together, they had met frequently at Dilkhusha Cabin, or Nizam or Aminia for a rich snack, biriyani, or rezala or chaap or kabab rolls; he had introduced her to all the Calcutta mughlai food that she had never encountered under her father's auspices. He had taken her to Chinatown, a vibrant community whose existence she had never suspected -- her father, in the sort of grand gesture he frequently affected, never tired of telling people how he had patriotically disavowed Chinese food ever since the war, but in fact he had never even prior to it frequented the many excellent restaurants. They had taken walks in the Maidan, and the Botanical Gardens, although their favourite location had probably been the parks of Victoria Memorial, which they generally frequented on the days on which the building itself was closed to tourists, and hence the gardens were relatively isolated. But when they had time for none of this, which was quite frequently, since Anupa was very much accountable for her movements at home, they took equal pleasure in the short stroll down the ever-crowded College Street, peeking in every so often into one or another of the myriad bookshops and publishing houses lining it. He had talked of Marx, and Russell, and Chairman Mao; she, of Goethe, and Ibsen, and Eliot; he, of Hindi movies, and Voice of America; she, of Bengali theatre and Rabindra Sangit; he, of his ambition to leave the stifling confines of Calcutta and to explore the brave new world outside; she, of her sorrow at witnessing the degeneration of a culture no longer relevant into a suffocating mausoleum; he, of John Wayne, she, of Satyajit Ray. They were young and idealistic, and if they couldn't change the world they certainly knew how to set about it. And in all of this, they talked of each other only rarely. There was very little that needed to be said. Pradip was the less reticent of the two, which is not to say that he importuned her with passionate speeches that would have embarrassed him no less than her, but rather, that in a casual unstudied manner he let her know exactly where she fit in to his expectations. And she did not take offence at his assumption; they were both equally conscious of what became incumbent on them by keeping company as they did. Pradip's circle of friends had been ragging on him since the very first day that he had burst into their habitual adda late, and dramatically declaimed to them the account of his fortuitous encounter with Anupa. Pradip took it in good spirit, his own intentions being completely in keeping with their implications, and if Anupa was a little embarrassed at their exaggerated gallantry towards their boudi, she was nevertheless flattered and amused. And thus it had continued -- the happiest year of Anupa's life. Not that she had ever had anything to be discontented about in her situation, but for once she had felt as though she counted for something, quite apart from who her father was, and the burden of dignity she had to bear as his eldest daughter. Now she was just a succession of roles -- Bhattacharya Madam to her students at college, ever-compliant and competent Anupa when anything needed to be done at home, Mira's unmarried sister, and doting aunt to her boys, to her father, a disappointment he strove to ignore. Even Mrs. Chaudhuri saw her not for herself but as the image of her mother. It had been so long since even she had asked herself what she really wanted. But there had been a time when she had known what it was, and she had never told him.
She had never thought it necessary, never imagined that their pleasant association need come to a conclusion. But events had overtaken them both, and rituals that had taken on for her every appearance of permanence had been revealed to be a fleeting interlude. Even now she did not know how word had gotten back to her family, and she had no idea what the report had implied. It had been Mrs. Chaudhuri who had broken the news to her, and though Anupa felt certain that she had divined the truth of the matter and realized where Anupa's wishes lay, she had chosen to refer to it as a piece of malicious gossip that was upsetting her father terribly, and needed immediately to be refuted. She could not have chosen a more effective tack had she been scheming to get Anupa to fall in with her wishes. Had she accused her of unwarranted intimacy Anupa would have confessed her feelings for Pradip to her friend, if not to him directly, but when Mrs. Chaudhuri treated the matter as an impropriety she could not be capable of, and counseled her to be particularly attentive to such slander, she had been disarmed completely. She had felt like a fool, listening to Mrs. Chaudhuri's motherly warnings and being made to feel as though she would be letting everyone down were she to confess any such attachment, yet not quite believing that her feelings had led her astray. Her father had not been so temperate, and had Mrs. Chaudhuri not intervened, Anupa really believed that she might have openly defied him. But with Mrs. Chaudhuri coming gently to her defence, assuring him continually that the Anupa she knew and loved could have been guilty of no such indiscretion, that all she had been guilty of on her side had been the failure to rebuff improper advances she had interpreted as nothing more than friendship. Anupa was never given any opportunity to speak for herself, but she was spoken at endlessly, and all the purported ridiculousness of forming an attachment at such a tender age (for Anupa was then not twenty) and with such disregard to family and prospects was driven home to her through sheer repetition if not through the merit of the argument.
Had the matter ended there it would have been painful enough to face Pradip's disappointment and no means of alleviating it with her father's admonitions ringing in her ears. But he had not let it rest at that. He had demanded a hearing, and in all fairness, and in consideration of her own feelings, she had not denied it. She remembered that conversation with Pradip, just days before he was to graduate. For once he had made no small talk, nor any attempt to tease her -- he had sat her down, solemnly, across from him, and put into words what they had both long assumed, what she had never articulated to her family. He had assured her that his intentions were honest; that he wanted to marry her; that it was a suitable match from considerations of caste, if not of prominence or fortune; that the prospects for a student of his calibre were always excellent and that he was ambitious enough to be able to make the most of them (for confidence in his own abilities was something Pradip had never wanted in); that most importantly, he loved her, and that she would never want for anything if he could help it. He had finished by declaring his intention to speak with her father. And she -- at such a time when so much might have been said, she had simply whispered her consent. What must he have thought of her, she wondered now, for having willfully thrown him to the lions. At a time when she could have been in no doubt of his reception, when so much might have been gained by counselling him to wait to realize the potential that neither of them had ever doubted in before approaching her father to demand consent for a wedding that would have been premature by any standards, she had not said a word to deter him from his willful scheme. And if this offence had been forgivable she had erred still further, in never explicitly assuring him of her attachment. What he had endured at her father's hand had never been revealed to her from either end, but knowing what she herself had suffered through she could easily infer. His presumption, and the ineligibility of his situation had doubtless been thrown in his face, as well as the supposed brilliance of her prospects in other quarters. But she doubted that this had been all, because after all of this, she felt that even with his pride he might have come back to her. No, there had to have been more to it than that; he had obviously been told in no uncertain terms that any return of his presumptions that he had claimed to perceive had been imagined, and that she had denied any involvement. And while this was untrue, Anupa in all conscience could not deny that she had essentially implied as much by holding her silence.
She had never seen Pradip after that day. She had learnt later that he had left Calcutta soon after his exams. She had not been able to resist going up to Presidency and looking up his scores when they came out. He had received one of the only first classes in economics that year, even in the elite company of Presidencians. Later she had learnt from mutual acquaintances that he had gone on to the Delhi School of Economics for his Masters. His friends had apparently assumed that his choice had been dictated by nothing other than academic considerations, and had treated her as though nothing had changed between them. Certainly the school had an unparalleled reputation in the field, but she alone had known that there was other reasons behind his choice. Eventually she had lost sight of his friends, who had been several years ahead of her in college. She had heard nothing of Pradip in years. She had always imagined that he would have gone abroad for a Ph.D., but evidently he had chosen to enter the Civil Service instead.
Her ordeal had not ended here. The incident had left her father with a paranoia to see his daughter well married before his family name was sullied by the claims of any other presumptuous suitor, and Anupa had been subjected to a painful series of meetings with prospective bridegrooms and their families. To her relief very few of those who had shown any further interest had suited her father's exacting standards of consequence, and Mrs. Chaudhuri, thinking Anupa too young to marry and anticipating a brilliant match in years to come, had managed to dissuade him from finalizing matters anywhere. The reason for this was simple: the families of true breeding and education that he invited would not marry their eligible sons to a child of nineteen, while the rest, of wealth and consequence but little quality, were disappointed that her pedigree was not accompanied by a suitable dowry. Her father's interest in the matter had thankfully proved short-lived, and the fading memory of the incident combined with his growing conviction that Anupa's charms were insufficient to attract a bride-groom worthy of the connection had seen to it that she was left to her own devices.
She had been studying for her M.A. when the proposal from Chandan's family had come. Anupa, who knew him slightly at college, had been as surprised as anyone in her family, but it had been Mrs. Chaudhuri who had adroitly maneuvred matters such that Anupa was left in peace, overtly so that her studies might not be interrupted at such a crucial point, and because Chandan was less than a year older than she, and Mira, far less academically oriented, and not a particular favourite of Mrs. Chaudhuri's, became the first to wed. Mrs. Chaudhuri, she knew, had always kept her eye open for an eligible match for Anupa, but her standards were more exacting still, since they encompassed all of Anupa's concerns of compatibility as well as all her father's attention to family, and Chandan, though good enough for Mira, had not passed muster for her older sister. She had never suggested any prospective suitor, although Anupa knew that she had never given up. Even now, Anupa was far from being too old to marry; her situation was atypical only in that her family seemed utterly unconcerned about making any match at all.
As the mantras drew to a close, and the principal object of her musings himself came and took a seat for the anjali ****, Anupa guiltily abandoned her train of thought and turned her attention back to the present. She helped Mrs. Chatterjee hand out the flowers to everyone, noting that the Mukherjees, Chandan, Mira, and Lata as well as the old couple, were among the small crowd that had gathered in the room, as was Mrs. Chaudhuri. Her father and Ila, living upstairs, were conspicuous in their absence. Then the first set of prayers began, and as they ended, Anupa was amused to note that Pradip still threw his flowers as one might a projectile and succeeded in having his be the closest to the deity, and was still more amused to catch his sister's glare of remonstrance as the flowers were handed out again. Her disapproval did little to deter him the two following times, and by the time they prayed for the last time, Anupa could tell that Pradip had it coming that evening.
What she did not foresee was the admiral's retribution. Though he had had no part in his wife's rebukes, Anupa knew by the look on his face as he took the water for the Shantir Jol ++++ that Pradip would not go unpunished. And by the time he was done sprinkling those gathered with the blessed water, Pradip was practically drenched. Anupa could barely hold in her laughter, and she could tell by their faces that Chandan and Lata were in a similar condition. Watching them all, Anupa suddenly felt a pang that she could have no part in such amicable family relations. If she had not seen how demanding her father was in his role as producer in his theatre, she could not honestly have said that he had any sensibilities at all, and she and Ila had not had a real conversation in years.
When the puja ended, Anupa helped Mrs. Chatterjee serve the prasad to the guests, who finally had the opportunity to mingle. Anupa, who knew no one there but her hosts and the Mukherjees, was comfortable observing the party. Mira appeared to be teasing Lata about Pradip, and Anupa thought the younger girl was taking it rather well. She wondered whether she was in love with Pradip already, and would not have been surprised if that were the case. Chandan was engaged with the admiral and several other of the gentlemen there in a somewhat heated discussion of politics in Bengal. Pradip, she noticed, was not one of that party. Unconsciously, her eyes sought him out, and found that he was, like her, somewhat aloof. He did like shinny, she realized absently, seeing what a big serving he was working his way through. Then he noticeably stiffened, and she wondered what had provoked that reaction as he relaxed once again in a pose of studied disinterest. At the other end of the room, her father had entered, bringing with him a stranger. Anupa knew that he had expected a guest, but she had not expected him to bring him to this party. He regally made his way towards the admiral, and abruptly interrupting the conversation, made the introduction.
Anupa, at the other end of the room, was not particularly mindful, but when she finished dispensing the last of the prasad, and made her way over to the Mukherjees, Lata addressed her in a pointed whisper.
"Anupa di, did you know your father was going to be bringing Soumendra Chakraborty? Oh, this is so exciting! Do you think if I ask him he'll write me an autograph?"
Her father smiled indulgently.
"See what you've done, Anupa? Under your influence the girl is absolutely crazy about literature. And this Soumendra Chakraborty, why, we hear about him night and day! The girl's read everything he's published, and she drags your mashima and me to every play he directs!"
"Oh, but he's incredible! Anupa di, tell them! After all, you're the one who introduced me to his work!"
Anupa nodded, smiling. She turned back to look at the man with renewed curiosity, noting that he had managed to attract the attention of most of the party. In the last several months, Soumendra Chakraborty had attracted considerable notice among the Calcutta intelligentsia. He was lately returned from London, where he had studied for the bar, but he did not practice in Calcutta. He had to his credit several very insightful translations of some of Anupa's favourite modern plays into Bengali, and it was in this capacity that he had first come to her notice. Since coming to Calcutta, he had involved himself more directly in the theater as a director, in which capacity he had won some acclaim. He had, moreover, recently published an original play about the partition of Bengal, which had earned rave reviews, and had won the Sahitya Academy award. His appearance was distinctive, as much for his unusual height and patrician features as for the immaculate care he took with his dress. Anupa knew that in public appearances he eschewed western attire, but was somewhat surprised to note that the practice carried over to private life. He was wearing an immaculately starched dhoti and elaborately embroidered kurta, with gold buttons of extraordinary delicacy, and even her habitually well-groomed father seemed a little shabby in comparison. Anupa had not known that her father was at all interested in his style of theatre, and was pleasantly surprised to discover the connection. She wondered whether he would be putting on the first production of his play at her father's theatre, and she was more than a little eager to make his acquaintance.
Her musings were interrupted as her father and Soumendra -- all of Calcutta knew him by his first name, as was often the case for her favourite sons -- came in their direction, and her father, in his usual dismissive manner, made the introduction.
"My daughter, Mira, and her in-laws, Soumendra Babu. You met her husband earlier, and this is his sister. And this is my eldest, Anupa."
"Namaskar. Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Mukherjee, Mrs. Mukherjee, Miss Mukherjee. And of course, Dr. Bhattacharya."
The Mukherjees responded as politeness dictated, acknowledging his celebrity, and were gratified to find that he engaged them in small talk for some time. Anupa, for her part, relatively silent. She was a little startled at his manner of address -- it seemed unlikely that her father had made the necessary disclosure, and she wondered what other possible source he might have had. It was Lata's suddenly bursting into the conversation that gave her her answer.
"Soumendra Babu, could I have your autograph please? Oh, how I wish I had one of your books here with me, that I might have you write in it for me!"
"It would be my pleasure, Miss Mukherjee," he responded, as Anupa made her suggestion.
"Lata, if you will wait a minute I will bring you my copy of Mr. Chakraborty's play, for him to autograph for you."
"Anupa di, you think of everything! That would be perfectly lovely!"
As Anupa turned to leave she was interrupted by Soumendra himself.
"In that case, Dr. Bhattacharya, I hope you will not think it too presumptuous of me if I were to bring you another copy of the play, to replace the one you're giving Miss Mukherjee so kindly."
"Thank you," she said, still surprised at his attentiveness.
"Should I bring it here, or to college?" He smiled, noting her astonishment. "Don't be so surprised. I'm teaching a class at Bethune myself this year, and I've heard a lot about the Dr. Bhattacharya who normally teaches the modern drama curriculum. Of course, when I met your father, I had to ask him if there was any connection. I must admit, I was extremely impressed from what I heard. You're going to be a tough act to follow!"
"Yes, Anupa di is a wonderful professor," said Lata, loyally, still excited to be part of the conversation at all, "Why, it was she who introduced me to your translations in the first place!"
"Indeed? I should be honoured to have your opinion of them, if you would be so kind."
Anupa only nodded, as Lata continued.
"Why, we are doing your Chidya Khana as the play at this year's annual fete!"
"At Bethune? Why, perhaps I might get involved in the production myself, if you young people wouldn't mind my interference."
"Why yes, of course! We were going to ask Anupa di to help us out a little, but it would be beyond anything we had hoped for if you could advise us!"
"Perhaps we might both help you a little, then," replied he, evidently trying to smooth over Lata's unintended slight. Anupa marvelled that it had been years since she had met anyone who would even have caught the reflection, much less attempted to remedy it. She could not deny that she was pleased at his attentiveness, and for the first time in years it occurred to her to wonder if there was anything more to it than that. A little surprised that such a thing had even occurred to her, she excused herself, ostensibly to retrieve the book for Lata, but more to clear her thoughts. As she left the room she could not help but notice Pradip standing alone in a nearby corner, looking thoroughly out-classed in his still-wet shirt, and glowering as he took in the over-heard conversation.
Notes :* prasad -- food offerings to the deity during puja, subsequently distributed among devotees.
+ purnima -- full moon. A Satya Narayan Puja must be held on one.
** shinny -- one of the items of prasad in a bengali Satya Narayan Puja. If a mixture of raw flour, bananas, milk and sugar does not sound appetizing, think cake dough. It's delicious!
++ alpona -- designs drawn on the ground in rice paste. Part of traditional bengali decoration in a puja, although similar traditions exist throughout India.
*** dhoti -- traditional male item of clothing. Essentially a long piece of cloth wrapped around to conceal lower body, often with elaborate pleats.
+++ poité -- Brahman's sacred thread.
**** anjali -- part of puja where the purut leads prayers while people take flowers in their hands, and throw the flowers at the idol when the prayers end. This is done three times, and then there is a final prayer without flowers.
++++ Shantir Jol -- part of puja where holy water is sprinkled on the people assembled by the purut.
***** Chidya Khana -- literally bird house. Word used for Zoo. In this case, I use it as a title for a translation of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. I don't know if such a translation exists, although I think it very likely, and I don't know what title it would actually bear.
Some relevant information is already contained in the notes for previous chapters.
Chapter 7
If Anupa had expected a visit from Soumendra within the next day or so, to deliver the promised copy of his play, she had not necessarily expected that it would be accompanied by a handsomely worded invitation to lunch which she found herself unable to decline, nor that it would be followed up by a series of encounters, some apparently accidental, others unabashedly intentional. For a visiting professor who had undertaken the responsibility for only one class, and a celebrity besides, Soumendra proved to be surprisingly conscientious in his duties, and he continued as well his visits to her home, where she learnt eventually that her father's theatre would be undertaking the maiden production of Soumendra's play. Soumendra himself would be directing, and Anupa's father had undertaken the production. He had acknowledged to her that the play's structure presented some problems of stageability; he had envisioned it as such quite deliberately, knowing that with the right technical support he would be able to overcome them, but a great many producers had proven reluctant to trust Soumendra himself with the direction, a certain reputation for overambitious finickiness having preceded him, and this was the reason that a play so well received at its publication had had to wait so long to be produced on stage. But Anupa's father, apparently, had made no such objection, nor suggested any simplifying adaptation; he had recognised the dramatic force of the work as it stood, and had granted Soumendra full authorial discretion as to its staging.
It will be evident from this disclosure that there subsisted between Anupa and Soumendra all the freedom of conversation of friends and confidants, and such, for the most part, was indeed the case. Anupa had not known many other people who could draw her out as well as could Soumendra. His conversation betrayed a broad education, as well as the intelligence to temper what others had thought with his own opinions; in addition to this it was witty, and moreover he possessed, when he chose to exercise it, that rare ability to bring out the best in those with whom he interacted. This indeed was part of the secret of his wonderful relations with the press; interviewers left him subtly flattered as to their own talents. In Anupa's father, dismissed by most of his contemporaries as an old fogy living in a romanticised past, he had played on that spark of pride to incite him to renewed enthusiasm and vigour, and as for Anupa herself, his manners, an odd combination of flattery and frankness, managed to overcome her barriers of shyness and self-restraint, and she responded to him in a like manner, betraying as much good breeding and wit as he himself did at his best. He had approached her initially with exaggerated flattery, enjoying the fact that the element of surprise was all on his side, but he had been surprised to find that her abilities did in fact live up to the mark to which he had exaggerated them, and that, beyond this, she was thoroughly unassuming, and sweet tempered. These discoveries he had made at their initial lunch date, where his persistence and her own curiosity about him had overcome her habitual reserve. Since then, he had approached her frequently; initially he had sought her opinion solely on curricular issues but more and more he no longer needed this excuse, and perhaps they were beginning to make the transition from the general topics of mutual interest to them to more personal issues. The transition was a slow one notwithstanding their ease of conversation. Anupa had never really confided her heart in anyone, and her intimacy with Soumendra had grown so suddenly that she regarded it still as a novelty, and it had yet to occur to her that he might at all interest himself in her history. And as for Soumendra, although he was no introvert, he had learnt the lesson of keeping his own counsel, and if he considered Anupa as the person to whom he might someday unburden himself then he did not judge that that time was yet arrived. But if experience was not exchanged then opinion was, and the latter, being shaped by the former, is a pretty fair guide of it. Anupa and Soumendra, at this point, were probably closer than either of them realised, and if their conversation was mostly limited to indifferent topics, then the information exchanged by the means of it was not as indifferent as they might have supposed.
Anupa's life at this time acquired a more variegated tenor than it had had in years. In addition to her responsibilities at home and at college, she had, at Soumendra's urging, taken on a significant role in the production of Chidya Khana at the college, for which rehearsals were now in full swing. Lata, though a recent graduate of the college, was actively involved in its alumni organisation, and had undertaken the lead role. Soumendra himself, as he had promised, had become quite closely involved with the production. Anupa had come to look upon him as her primary resource, and here as well their friendship flourished. In addition, and again through Soumendra's intervention, Anupa did something she had never done before, and began to get involved with her father's theatre company. With such a staunch ally to constantly lend her support and praise it was almost inevitable that even her father began to see her in a very different light. He began to seek her opinions in matters in which he had never occurred to him before that she might have an opinion, let alone one that could possibly influence his actions. Ila was the only one irked by this apparent transfer of her father's favour, and she reacted to it by overcoming her own aloofness and also involving herself in theatrical circles. Despite her best attempts, she could not establish a particular intimacy with Soumendra himself, but other members of the theatrical troupe who were to enact the play were not too particular to reject the intervention of the producer's sophisticated and elegant daughter, and if they were more welcoming of Anupa's more low keyed overtures, they took care not to make this apparent to her younger sister.
Nor did Anupa's new interests draw her away from her old friends. Mrs. Chaudhuri was delighted at the new developments, and made no secret of her ambitions from Anupa. Soumendra's work she was of course familiar with, and in addition, through family connections she was able to ascertain a good deal of more personal information. It was she who conveyed to Anupa the veritable details of a romantic legend relating to Soumendra that was current in Calcutta. Anupa had often heard the theory, which was given credence by some statements that Soumendra himself had made, that he had left London to get over a romantic attachment which had ended in acrimony, and there was much speculation about the 'white lady' in Soumendra's past, and about the circumstances of their separation. Mrs. Chaudhuri informed Anupa that there had in fact been such a young lady whom Soumendra had met at University, but that the cultural differences had been too many to overcome, and that the girl, unwilling to countenance the possibility of his ultimate return to his own country, had left him to marry someone of her own background. This had all occurred more than a year earlier, and it was Mrs. Chaudhuri's view that it had all been for the best, for it had helped Soumendra realise the value of his own cultural heritage, from whence had sprung his best original work. She was of the opinion that this attachment was simply to be regarded as a juvenile error of judgment, which he must by now have completely overcome. What he needed now was a girl of his own background who was able to understand and complement his intellectual bent, and such a girl was Anupa. Having come to this conclusion, she did not forward her intentions with broad embarrassing hints or any active machinations. She did make Anupa aware of her aspirations, but this she did in private, and for the rest, she was quite satisfied to let nature take its course, and observed with pleasure the burgeoning friendship which in her view could not fail to develop into a warmer sentiment. For Anupa's part, she had not sought the confidence, but neither was she overly perturbed at Mrs. Chaudhuri's easy assumption. Whether or not she saw or desired a similar potential in the relationship even she could not have stated with any certainty, but she was far from allowing such a suspicion from hampering the growth of a friendship that was becoming important to her.
With her relations, the Mukherjees, she had daily contact through Lata, and she continued to visit their home in North Calcutta as often as she was able. Mira's elder son Sujoy had just started school at Chandan's alma mater, St. Xavier's, and his apparently astonishing precocity was the object of his entire family's doting attention. Lata, apart from undertaking a starring role in the play, had thrown herself whole-heartedly into the organisation of the Puja fete at Bethune College on behalf of the alumni committee. About her marriage Anupa would often hear vague plans, but although a tentative agreement had been reached, and neither family was looking elsewhere, were nowhere near finalising dates or venues, and the wedding was certainly at least a year away.
Pradip had returned to Bombay shortly after the Satya Narayan Puja at his sister's new home, and Anupa heard from Mrs. Chatterjee that he was settling in quite well into his new position, which was not directly in a government department but was rather on the board of a public sector corporation in charge of implementing a World Bank funded urban management project in the metropolis. Anupa knew him well enough to realise that a semi-autonomous position of this nature was well suited to Pradip, who had little aptitude for currying favour with his nominal superiors, especially when he found himself unable to respect them, and she had heard him speak in scathing terms of the small-time politicians who had attempted to interfere with his jurisdiction as District Magistrate. She was not surprised to learn that he had now thrown himself into his work, and had no immediate thoughts of taking a further break. Mrs. Chatterjee, who had hoped to finalise matters as soon as possible, was sorry to report that thoughts of marriage appeared to be the last thing on her wayward brother's mind, especially since he had seemed to be so taken with Lata when he had been in Calcutta. She was in hopes of persuading him to take a short break from work over Durga Puja, so that she might once again take things into her own hands. But though Pradip himself remained absent, the two families of prospective in-laws continued to associate quite closely. Easy going and liberal minded as they each were, they got along very amiably together. The Chatterjees continued to be quite charmed with Lata, whom they proclaimed a lovely girl, and if they never quite reached with her the close intimacy they enjoyed with their young friend Anupa, they hardly expected everyone to have her depth and sensitivity. That Anupa might ever be more to them than a friend had never occurred to them, and they were united with Mrs. Chaudhuri in wishing a happy conclusion to the growing attachment they perceived between her and Soumendra.
Chapter 8
Stepping up to the net, Pradip shook hands with his partner ruefully as they headed in together to the clubhouse. After a quick shower, necessary after the exertion of tennis on so warm and humid a day, they settled down with cold drinks on the verandah by the stadium, where the club cricketers in their smart white uniforms were taking advantage of the last hours of daylight to polish their game.
"I see all those years in the district did nothing to improve your tennis."
"How could it? Everyone always lost to the Collector as a matter of course. But I see that didn't hurt your game too much."
"You forget, I was posted in Pune *, Pradip. The collector is hardly the biggest fish there. Believe me, I had my share of stiff competition. Besides, I hardly needed the practice to beat you."
"You just keep thinking that, Siddhu, and one of these days I'll show you."
"We'll see about that."
Laughing, more at the perseverance with which the subject always came up between them than at the actual comments, they dropped the subject. Their friendly rivalry at tennis had started almost from their first acquaintance, at the Academy in Mussourie +. Unlike cricket, which on the subcontinent has been completely democratized, or even badminton, tennis has never adapted itself to meet the needs of children who scrounge for room to play on street corners with makeshift equipment. Its relatively stringent requirements of equipment and space make it financially prohibitive for the mass of people, and consequently it retains its upper class associations. Pradip, though familiar with the sport, had never had the opportunity to play until he joined the service. Siddharth Kelkar, familiarly known as Siddhu, who came from a blue blooded Pune family, had played it all his life and had been a University Blue. Pradip had played him on a sort of dare, and attempting to use his wrist in the manner to which he was habituated as a table tennis player, had come very near to injuring himself. But the two had struck up a lively friendship in the process, and under his tutelage Pradip had made rapid progress in the sport during the year they spent together at the Academy. Their friendship had been cemented when both of them had applied for and been selected for Siddhu's native Maharashtra as their cadre in the service. Siddhu, of course, had wished to remain close to home, and in Pradip's case, smarting as he had been at the time at the rejection he had received at the hands of Anupa's father, he had had as his motivation as much the distance between Calcutta and Bombay as the prestige associated with the cadre of the most industrialised state in the country and the one containing its most prominent metropolis.
While they had been in their respective districts, the two had been able to see each other relatively rarely. Pradeep had not been surprised when Siddhu, whose undoubtedly impressive abilities were assisted by prominent connections both in the state civil service and in its legislature, had blazed a trail through some of the plummiest junior postings in the state, crowned by the collectorship of Pune. For his part, as an alien from across the country and thus subject to a certain degree of mistrust, he had had to start out with postings in the outlying reaches of the states. A further handicap had been the language barrier, but this he had rapidly overcome, and now his Marathi was as fluent and idiomatic as that of most native speakers. He had made the best of the posts he had found himself in and had attracted some attention, becoming at the same time as Siddhu collector a full year before the rest of his batchmates, albeit in a less prominent district. Now, each had their first posting in Bombay itself, and were already well on their way to picking up the suspended threads of their friendship in a renewed close intercourse.
Following Siddhu's eye, Pradip turned to see the silhouette of a bowler taking his run-up against the background of the setting sun.
"Look at the spin he puts on that ball. Gets the off-stump from that angle every single time. I've never seen anything like it for consistency. He took three wickets against Baroda last season. I wouldn't be surprised if he were chosen for the New Zealand tour **."
"He's too predictable. He should mix up the balls a little bit, to keep them guessing. And besides, what we really need is a fast bowler. There are too many spin bowlers on the team as it is."
"That's a factor of the climate, and the diet of Indian athletes, for that matter. Do you really expect a rice-eating mostly vegetarian people from a tropical country to produce the sort of athlete raised on hunks of meat and potatoes?"
"That's a ridiculous argument and you know it. If you're going for sheer brawn then India's produced plenty of weight-lifters and wrestlers. And besides, fast bowling is more a matter of control than physical strength anyway."
"He did it again. Control is definitely not the problem here. And an off-spinner is definitely an asset. There certainly isn't anyone of that calibre on the national team."
"What's his batting like? Our biggest problem is that the tail always collapses like a house of cards after the first few batsmen have fallen, and the few quality batsmen we do have always leave themselves open by going for too much."
"Oh, he's steady enough as a batsman. Nothing special, but you can count on him for a solid twenty runs or so."
"That's against first class bowlers. He hasn't faced many bowlers of international calibre, and certainly hasn't had much exposure to world-class pace bowling."
"You're just a sceptic. You'll see, he'll make the team sooner than you think."
"Oh, I have no doubt about that. Maharashtra players always do."
"Don't start on that again. You just say that because Bengali cricketers don't make the cut. ++"
"I'll have you know that Bengal did quite well this season."
"Yeah, that's because there're maybe two Bengalis on the entire team. There was one guy I used to know in Pune, who used to try out for the Maharashtra team year after year. Never made it. Now just the other day I ran into his father, and guess what he told me? He's playing for Bengal now. That's your team."
"What about the North Indian teams then? There are plenty of quality players there. You needn't bother denying that Maharashtra profits from being right before the selection committee's eyes."
"They prove themselves on the national team. You can't deny that."
"The success of a few truly talented players has paved the way for a lot of mediocre ones to get on the team."
"Well, I'm glad you admit that much, or I'd have to call you blind. To the true talent of Maharashtra, then!"
"You can drink to that. I'll drink to the future of Bengali cricket."
"If you drink to a bengali cricketer you're drinking to the exception that proves the rule."
"Snigger all you want. Whatever happens to the national team, you watch out for me in the match on Sunday. At cricket at least I'm more than a match for you!"
"We'll see about that!"
"I was wondering what you guys had gotten upto, and here you are sitting merrily with your drinks! Why, we should have gone home more than an hour ago!"
Siddhu's wife, Anjali, who had been playing bridge with some of the other women in the card room, had come up to them abruptly, without them noticing.
"I'm sorry, Anjali, it's all my fault. Your husband probably hadn't anticipated that I'd take him to four sets today. You're welcome to drag him home now."
Anjali, smiling, had taken a seat next to her husband.
"No, finish up your drinks, at any rate. There's no need to hurry now. I called home and asked the maid to prepare dinner, so you'll get to eat her version of patar bhaji *** again. That'll teach you, if nothing else."
"Anjali, you forget the kind of food we get in the district. Siddhu could probably survive on your maid's patar bhaji for the rest of his life."
"Speak for yourself, Pradip. You don't know the kind of bawarchi Siddhu's mother had found for him in Pune. I was quite scared of the man, myself, but the food melted in your mouth. I would have offered him a fortune to come here with us, but the man wouldn't think of leaving Pune."
"On the bright side, Anju, if I can survive on your cooking, the maid's isn't going to kill me."
"No, but I will! Pradip, can you believe this man?"
"I only put up with him because you do."
"Liar! Do you flatter all your friend's wives like that?"
"Alright, that's it. Pradip, I'm afraid I'll have to keep my wife locked away until you're no longer a public menace!"
"You must be ashamed of me or something, always wanting to lock me away like that! Why don't you just find your friend a wife of his own?"
"I'm afraid, my dear, that that's easier said than done. You see before you a man of high standards. This is a man who threw away the opportunity to be Mr. Radha Kumari! +++"
"As if!"
"No, it's true. Look at him. Look at that coy smile of his. You should really have more faith in me, Anju. Two years ago, he got a proposal from some of Radha Kumari's people, saying that she would be retiring from films soon, and if he were interested, they would arrange a wedding within the year."
"Pradip, I'm impressed! So how come you're still a bachelor?"
"Surely you're joking, Anjali! You can't expect me to marry a woman like that! And besides, you should know that it isn't that uncommon. Why, Siddhu had a couple of offers from film stars himself! I think he married you in self-defence."
"Don't mind him, Anju. He's just trying to turn you against me. And besides, you should be flattered that I chose you instead!"
"The good fortune is all yours. A woman like that would have had you dancing on your tiptoes for the rest of your life. So what happened after that, Pradip? I haven't seen a new Radha Kumari film in a while."
"She knew she was getting over the hill, of course. That's why she wanted to settle down respectably, with Pradip's good name, and her money. I think she ended up marrying some NRI doctor."
"You never did tell me about your offers, Siddhu."
"That, my love, is for me to know, and for you to find out."
"Well, we should head on home. What are you doing tonight, Pradip?"
"Me? I'll just head on home, I suppose, and feast on omlettes and toast. I still haven't had the time to find a real cook."
"Why don't you come back with us? It's just patar bhaji, I'm afraid, but it's better than omlette and toast."
"Thanks, Anjali, but no. I don't want to wear out my welcome too soon. And I make a pretty good omlette, if I do say so myself."
"You ought to; it's the only thing you know how to make!"
"So says the man who's never raised a finger in a kitchen in all his life!"
"Hey, I was smart enough to marry a wife who was smart enough to hire a maid. That is good management - delegating responsibility."
"I delegate responsibility. I make the omlette, and the toaster makes the toast."
"You two can keep delegating responsibility all night, but I'm responsible for taking you home before that patar bhaji gets cold and nasty."
"You're the smart one, Pradip. The bachelor life is where it's at. See what I have to look forward to for the rest of my days - cold and nasty patar bhaji."
"If you don't go home soon, all you'll have to look forward to will be a very angry wife. Good night, Anjali. I'll help you drag him to the car if need be."
"Thanks, Pradip. I might have to take you up on that sometime. Good night!"
"Et tu, Brute! Stabbing a friend in the back like that. Alright, I surrender. Lead on, Anju. Let's see what you've got."
Pradip smiled to himself as the two of them went off towards their car, laughing and chaffing each other. Although he had been present at their wedding in Pune almost two years before, he had only really gotten to know Anjali recently, since they had all come to Bombay. Siddhu had surprised him by docilely submitting to his mother's choice of a bride, and Pradip had been privately sceptical that such a wife would be capable of dealing with his friend's idiosyncrasies. But now, knowing her better, he considered them a perfect match. Anjali, he thought, had an extremely sensible head on her shoulders, and a sense of humour well able to keep up with her husband's. And it was obvious that behind their good-natured banter was a solid mutual understanding. He had to admit that, seeing them together, he experienced the occasional twinge of jealousy. His thoughts turned to what Anjali had just been saying, what his sister had been saying for years. And suddenly he was disgusted at the thought of toast and omlette for dinner once again.
He started up his engine, and leaving the gates of the club, turned on a whim towards Marine Drive, instead of heading straight home. Long before coming to Bombay, this palm tree lined boulevard running along the coast of the Arabian Sea had formed a part of his fantasies. The Queen's Necklace ****, he had heard it called, and at this time of night, with the illuminated street lights following the curve of the bay, it was a wonderfully evocative image. And the other end of the bay, where the road curved in towards Kemp's Corner, the broad sidewalk opened up onto a small beach which was still crowded at this time of night with the snack vendors doing a brisk business. At this end, the sidewalk was some ten feet higher than sea level, so that there was a slight cliff, culminating in a rocky pier separating two bays. Pradip parked his car, and stepping out, drew in the salty tang of the sea air. Monsoon was almost here already, and the moon was partly obscured by the gathering clouds. Out in the distance, he could see the strings of lights outlining the ships that drifted in and out of sight. Here there were fewer people, especially after dark at this time of year, but there was still the occasional vendor, trying to sell the last of his wares before calling it a night. Pradip felt around in his pocket for some change, and bought a paper cone of warm salted peanuts. He walked on towards Nariman Point, a name referring both specifically to the pier and more generally to the area in general, which was probably the most important commercial district of Bombay.Nariman, Pradip knew, from his researches into urban planning in Bombay, had been a vociferous opponent of the land reclamation projects in Bombay, and with the irony typical of urban management, the entire region that bore his name had been reclaimed from the sea by the very process he had condemned. As he watched the waves lap against the rock and the cement tripods still prominently visible along the coastline, he reflected that the sea had by no means surrendered easily. Bombay's monsoons were always especially hard on these reclamed tracts of land, and buildings shoddily constructed could easily collapse in the force of the gales. Still, addresses like Cuffe Parade, a peninsula of high rise apartment buildings visible in the distance, would always remain highly sought after, with their premium South Bombay location. Pradip's own apartment, government quarters that he never could have afforded otherwise on his salary, lay in the same general direction.
Turning back towards Marine Drive, Pradip gazed absently toward the Governor's mansion, well past the beach where the coast line again headed upwards into a rocky cliff. Someday, perhaps, to crown a long and distinguished career. It was ambitious, certainly, but not wholely ridiculous. He had come a long way already, for the son of a clerk in Writer's Building who had decided that his son would be one of the Babus from whom he took his orders. Thinking of Calcutta again, he blinked, and then tried to bring an image of Lata to his mind. He remembered her perfectly, shyly arranging and rearranging the folds of her sari, looking away demurely as she haltingly answered his questions. She had never seemed to quite lose her hesitation in talking to him, but surely that was perfectly natural under the circumstances. Try as he might, he had been conscious of a curious embarrassment himself, an embarrassment that had never been present with...
He tried again to form a clear visual picture, but it would not coalesce from all his impressions. She hadn't been shy at all with anyone else. She had chatted away quite comfortably with his sister, and indeed she had been curiously animated when Anupa entered the conversation. He permitted himself to think of her in this context, as someone who would probably move in the same broad family sphere as himself. It was clear that the younger girl looked up to Anupa with an endearing sort of awe. And it was not simply the family connection; she had been a student under Anupa at Bethune College. He could easily imagine Anupa as a teacher, inspiring such a feeling in a girl of sensibility. In her quiet way her enthusiasm, and more than just enthusiasm, her dedication, and fascination even, was infectious even to someone who knew nothing of her actual subject. One was always lucky to find such a teacher, and too often students were too preoccupied with their own concerns to be able to appreciate their value. But if Lata was any indication then Anupa was not so undermined. He found himself thinking quite warmly of her. His sister was right; Anjali and Siddhu were right. It was about time he got married. He liked Lata, and she had seemed to like him. The rest would come in time. It always did.
Cultural notes :
* Pune - pronounced Puné. Formerly anglicised to Poona. The second largest city in Maharashtra, and probably the sixth largest in India after the five metropolises. It is the cultural capital of the state in a way that the cosmopolitan Bombay has never really been.
+ Mussourie - a hillstation in the lower Himalayas. I realize the word hillstation doesn't really exist in an American context. It's a relatively small town on a mountain frequently used as a vacation retreat, although they can be small town sized and definitely have local populations. The Civil Service Academy is in Mussourie.
**the New Zealand tour - I've kept the time frame of this story vague. I'm picturing it in the late eighties or early nineties, but there's no reason why it couldn't be contemporary. And I certainly haven't done the research into India's cricket playing schedule, so I picked a cricketing nation at random. Incidentally, since I've been isolated from cricket for the last five years, it's quite possible that this discussion is horrendously wrong. I don't know why it's really there; it sort of wrote itself in, mainly because the club I'm visualizing is the Cricket Club of India.
++ Incidentally, there is currently a very good Bengali batsman, Saurabh Ganguly, on the national team.
***patar bhaji - a Maharashtrian potato preparation. It's not bad, and I'm sure there are people who love it, but it's usually very ordinary home food.
+++ Radha Kumari - invented name for an Indian starlet. This phenomenon of movie stars wanting to marry civil servants is apparently not uncommon. My grandmother and mother both proudly tell the story of how my father got such an offer (before he was married, of course), and I know other friends of my Dad to whom the same happened. I don't actually know anyone who accepted the offer.
**** The Queen's Necklace - I don't actually know which queen, although I would guess that it's Victoria, Empress of India. Bombay was part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry, but I don't think Marine Drive existed in anything like it's present form back then. It originally started out as seven islands, but the space between them has all been filled up, and more added. I think now it's one big island separated from the mainland by a narrow stream. I don't know if I've succeeded in giving some idea of the geography, but basically it's a series of bays curving around, if that makes sense. Pradip right now is standing at the cusp of two of them.
Chapter 9
"Anupa di, what did you think of that? Do you think I put in enough feeling into the scene? It's a simply marvellous moment. I do want to do some kind of justice to such a powerful scene. What did you think?"
"You're putting a lot of emotion into it, Lata, maybe a little too much. Look at the lines again. Think about the character. Do you think that she is letting it all out?"
"Anupa's right, Lata. I think you need a little bit more restraint. You don't have to exaggerate your feelings to convey them to the audience. You do have a very expressive face. And besides, I should hope that some of those emotions come through in the dialogue."
"Of course, Soumendra Babu, how can you say such a thing? The dialogue is absolutely impeccable, so inspiring. I just wasn't sure how to get so much feeling across to the audience, I mean, there's just so much going on on so many different levels, here, but I see what you're saying, of course; it is more powerful when you hold something back. You know, I've done quite a few of these plays here for annual days, and reunions, and things like that, but this is the first time I've felt like I'm in a real production. We're so greatful for the time you're taking with us here, especially with your class, and your real play, and everything."
"It's sweet of you to put it like that, Lata, but don't sell yourself short. Just because you aren't professionals doesn't mean that this isn't a real production. And it's Anupa you should be thanking. She's the one who's put in all the hard work with you all, and she still finds time to come help me over at the Banga Mancha.*"
"Of course Anupa di's been absolutely marvellous, but she knows how much we appreciate her help around here, don't you, Anupa di? It's so splendid of you, especially since we are going to be taking Presidency on with this fete."
"Soumendra, it's bad enough with you always trying to flatter me, don't get Lata started too! I'm not doing anything I don't enjoy."
"Just because you enjoy it doesn't mean that we can't appreciate your efforts, Anupa."
"That's enough!"
Anupa pretended to be scolding him, but he could see her smiling.
"Are you going to rehearse here much longer, Anupa? There's something I wanted to discuss with you."
"No, I think we're about done for the day. Thanks for coming, everybody. And tomorrow's rehearsal is from two to four."
The various students and alumni who were acting or doing tech work for the production dispersed slowly, splintering into small groups. Most of them stopped by to say a few words to Anupa and Soumendra, sometimes asking for advice or bringing something to their attention, but mostly just to express their appreciation and to say goodbye in person. The novelty of working with a celebrity like Soumendra had begun to wear off for most of them, although there were certainly still those who gawked at him with unmitigated awe. Soumendra for his part bore the attention as gracefully as possible.
The two of them stood by as everyone else gradually left. Lata joined them after locking up the premises, which was her responsibility, as one of the chairs of the alumni committee in charge of the Reunion. Soumendra escorted both of them to his car.
"Thanks so much for the lift, Soumendra Babu. Ma will be very relieved. She doesn't like me taking buses and trams around the city. It's no use telling her that she shouldn't worry, I'm a college graduate, for heaven's sake. But no, for her I'm still her little girl."
"Well, Lata, I know you had very good teachers in the English department at Bethune, but I wonder how much the curriculum had to say about public transportation in Calcutta."
"It's funny you should say that, Soumendra Babu, considering that everything I know about public transportation in this city I learnt from Anupa di. In fact, when I first started out at Bethune, she would stop by our house every day to pick me up. Only when my parents figured out that she was adding an hour to her commute did they allow her to stop, and then for the longest time they sent Chandan with me, until he complained that it was completely out of his way. So then I used to go by myself, but it was just College and back; they would go nuts if I ever so much as mentioned going over to a friend's place or something. And so I started telling them that Anupa di was helping me with my homework in the library."
"Lata! That was very naughty of you! Now I see why Mashima kept asking me why you had so much homework; I kept telling her that you must have been really struggling with your classes, since I only ever assigned reading."
"Anupa di, I know you're just joking. I know that's not what you told Ma, because otherwise she would have figured out that little trick very early on."
"You're right, that's not what I told your mother, but that is why I assigned extra research assignments to you. I figured you ought to spend at least some of that time in the library."
"Anupa di!"
"Well, what are you complaining of? The last time we talked about this you were raving about some of the authors I had you look up."
"That's true. In fact Anupa di got me started on some of your translations, Soumendra Babu. We were reading Ibsen and Chekov in English in her class, and she told me that you had translated them into Bengali from the original, and that I might find shades of difference in meaning because the language affects the idea."
"And did you?"
She laughed.
"I think that might have been lost on me. Despite all my teachers' best efforts close reading and semantics are not my strong point. But there was an altogether different sort of poetry about it. I do not know anything about Norwegian or Russian, so I don't know whether it was in the original or whether it was you, but it just had a really powerful sort of emotional impact. And I've read your own play, and it has that same effect. And I do think part of it is in the language, and the cultural tradition. In fact, I've discussed this with Anupa di, and if I do Masters work I think it'll be in Bengali and not English, or maybe in both, but studying in a different language does open up a whole different dimension. It was reading your plays that helped me see that. I still don't understand it properly, but I'd like to."
"Well, Lata, I don't know how well I understand it myself. But let me tell you a little story. About five years ago I wrote my first play. It's true. I know you've never read it, or even heard of it. I sent it to about twenty different publishers in London, and it was rejected by all of them. I wrote two more, and they met the same fate. I don't think this was necessarily because they were in English. I've spoken English fluently all my life, and I'm good at languages. I picked up good French and Russian quickly, and I learnt Norwegian specifically to read Ibsen in the original. I'd written perfectly good papers in University; I was writing legal briefs all the time; I even had publications in journals. But somehow my fiction was not genuine. That's when I turned to translating. I did some into English, but usually there were already good translations available, and I turned more and more to Bengali. And that's when I discovered, even with other people's words, that I could have a really authentic way of saying things. By the time I wrote my own play, it wasn't guesswork any more. I knew I had it right, and that I was saying something original, that deserved to be heard. I just needed to find the right language to express myself in. It's like Joseph Conrad, who said he would never have written if he hadn't written in English. For me, it was my mother tongue."
"Wow, I had no idea you had to struggle so much to find yourself. I always assumed that with someone so gifted, you must have found your voice immediately."
"That's very rare, Lata. I'm certainly no genius. I started out like everyone else, imitating, doing what had been done before. It takes time before you figure out how to make your way through everything that other people have said better than you will ever be able to say, and find out what you have to say that's worth saying."
"You can be as modest as you want to, Soumendra Babu, but you will never be able to convince me that someone who is able to find that thing worth saying, and such an elegant way of saying it, isn't already a genius."
He laughed.
"Well, I suppose all geniuses don't have to be equal. And, genius or not, I'm certainly smart enough not to disavow such a pretty compliment. But, Lata, neither you nor I are qualified enough to form informed opinions on the subject. Why don't we ask our Doctor of Philosophy in Literature right here?"
"Oh, no! I'm staying out of this one. I can't do instantaneous IQ scans, but I know perfectly well exactly what will give you a swollen head, Soumendra!"
"At any rate, Anupa, you have the comfort of knowing that it won't be you."
"Surely, Anupa di, if anyone can stand to have a bit of a swollen head, it's Soumendra Babu! He has so much to be proud of."
"You and I, Lata, will have the uphill task of trying to convince her of that."
"Surely you know she's just teasing, Soumendra Babu. She's as big a fan of yours as I am."
"That, Lata, I hardly think is possible."
"Oh, here we are already! The next left, into the little lane, and it's Number 22. Thanks so much, Soumendra Babu, for the ride, and... everything."
***
After dropping Lata off, Soumendra and Anupa headed for Banga Mancha, her father's theatre, where rehearsals for Soumendra's play were still in progress. Unlike the Bethune College production, which was still a month away, this play was opening within the week, and there were still some issues that Soumendra was grappling with. As the two of them snuck in to the theatre, the play's pivotal scene was in progress. Under the influence of his child bride, the liberal landlord with a Western education was coming to realise that in his preoccupation with national and international culture and politics, he had allowed the peasants on his own estate to suffer the worst consequences of the famine that was ravaging the country. In subsequent acts, he would be transformed from an intellectual aesthete into a grassroots activist, who would nevertheless find himself powerless in the face of the ethnic tensions released in the wake of the Partition of Bengal along religious lines.+ Soumendra had always felt that the transformation, though internally consistent with the manner in which he had conceived his character, came across as overly melodramatic, and the impression was very much strengthened now that he could see it play out before him on stage. He had requested Anupa's input particularly with reference to this particular scene, and now he saw that she was watching the actors very intently. As the scene came to a close he turned to speak to her, but she motioned back to the stage, where the actors were turning to Soumendra for direction.
"Could we see it through to the finish? I'd like to have a better visual impression before we discuss this. And besides, I'd like to see you in action for once. It's almost always you crashing in on my rehearsals. I don't come here nearly as often."
"Very well, then."
He left her sitting and climbed on to the stage with the actors, giving them some feedback, but for the most part taking them through the performance relatively rapidly for Anupa's sake. The rest of the play took about another hour, and when they were done, the actors came up to Anupa and chatted with her for a bit before taking their break. Most of them were seasoned professionals who had often worked at the Banga Mancha before, but this was the first production in which they had seen Anupa take any active interest. Like so many of her friends and her family, they appeared to believe that the reason for this was the particular relationship between her and the playwright in question, and she wondered casually why she was doing so little to discourage the assumption, and whether or not she was beginning to assume the same. What Soumendra himself thought of the matter she did not know. He could not have been oblivious to the numerous hints that people dropped, but at least in her hearing he had never said anything to commit himself one way or the other, nor had he ever brought up the subject with her. His reticence as such was not what bothered Anupa. She herself had hardly been forward enough to raise the subject. What did bother her were the assumptions that this silence rendered inevitable. As someone who had lost one of the most meaningful relationships she had ever formed by allowing everything to rest upon such assumptions, Anupa was unwilling to make the same mistake twice. But, as of now, she still did not know where she wanted matters to stand with Soumendra.
For the first time in years she felt as though there was someone who took notice of her her, and this alone would have excited Anupa's gratitude. But Soumendra was so much more. He stimulated her and challenged her in a way that only books and articles and papers had been able to for so many years. He defered to her judgment, and listened to her in a way that she knew few others did. He was able to make her laugh out loud. He flattered her egregiously, and then, just the fact that he appeared interested was making so many people regard her in quite a different light. And she would have had to have been blind not to notice what a dashing figure he cut. Only the fact that he never seemed to take himself particularly seriously prevented her from succumbing to same kind of hero-worship which seemed to have overtaken Lata. She liked him; she admired him; she admitted to finding him attractive. And when she wasn't with him, she did spend a great deal of time thinking about him.
Only, well, she never seemed to be able to think only about him. There was always Pradip. She had never supposed up until now that she had gotten over him, but now finally when there was every reason for that to have happened, it seemed that she thought about him more than ever. Rarely was it ever conscious, for she had long schooled herself in avoiding those thoughts which could only bring her more pain. But when she did think of Soumendra the comparisons were on an almost instinctive level. She was surprised to find that she really had internalized Pradip as a standard against which she judged all other men. It was just that until now she had never met a man who had interested her enough to invoke the standard. And admittedly Pradip was a strange benchmark to use in thinking about Soumendra. Both men were intelligent, penetrative, in their own ways, and to her, extremely interesting, but there the similarities ended. Their personalities could not have been more different. Pradip was introspective, much like Anupa herself. He was ambitious, and self-confident, but for the most part, silently so. He did not care to impress anyone, and he did not suffer fools lightly. He was capable of great loyalty, but it took a great deal before he could call anyone a friend. Soumendra, on the other hand, was every inch the showman. He combined dignity and affability in such a manner that he could hardly fail to impress, and he was a master of the subtle flattery of convincing those he interacted with that he was just as interested in them as they were in him. In fact, Anupa could rarely think of people interacting with him without putting it to herself in terms of an audience. And it seemed to her that she had good reason to believe that at least with her Soumendra was being perfectly genuine, and in fact, from his perspective there would have been little sense in prolonguing the acquaintance had he not been truly interested in her. And that perhaps was the most flattering thing of all. But a relationship cannot be based on the subtle impression of being flattered, or even on the most solid of friendships, and Anupa had to ask herself whether or not there was anything more there. The fact that she had not yet even determined to her satisfaction whether or not he wanted anything to be there was one of the many reasons why she continued to hold her own tongue.
The actors and the technical crew had mostly cleared out by the time Soumendra returned to Anupa's side, and together they went to a little South Indian place to chat over a snack.** Settling into one of the cramped booths at the bustling fast food joint, they ordered paper dosas and sambar from the scuffed and rather shabby looking menus. The waiter returned with their order almost instantaneously, which was unsurprising, considering the rapid turnover at this hour. Anupa, as always, was a little overwhelmed at the size of her dosa, a cylindrically rolled crispy pancake of fermented rice paste about a foot in diameter, but Soumendra was making quick work of dispatching his own.
"The sambar here is excellent," he commented between mouthfuls, "it has the right texture, and I for one appreciate the fact that it doesn't have chunks of brinjal swimming in it."
"I thought it was supposed to have the brinjal."
"It depends on the particular recipe whether or not they put it, but I don't think it's ever supposed to float about in huge tasteless blobs."
"Well, I rather like the taste of brinjals, but the sambar here is quite good. How did you discover this place?"
"One of the stage managers at your father's theatre suggested it. I was ranting about the mughlai snack culture of Calcutta, which is so unhealthy on any sort of a regular basis, and he said that there was a real boom in Udipi snacks even here. Of course most of the bigger places are very standardized, but he said that this one was relatively authentic. Of course, it helps that it's close to the theatre. I think the actors come here quite a bit."
"You must have been spending a lot of time with them."
"I've had to, of course, but actually not as much as I would have liked. Of course, I'm actively involved in a lot of other things right now, which I really haven't been when I've directed anything before. Which brings me to the point of this. What did you think?"
"You mean the point of this wasn't quality snack time?"
"Oh, come on, Anupa! I know you hate criticizing anything, but I'd far rather you gave me feedback than that the critics tore me to shreds."
"The critics won't tear you to shreds. The play was extremely well received, and the production is quite sound."
"The play is also premiering a year after it was published, which is already an unnatural situation, and besides, I'm shooting for something a little more than a sound production."
"Well, I don't know. I know it's the core of your play, but there's something about that whole transformation thing that doesn't seem to be fully worked out. It struck me when I was reading it, too, but especially on stage it seemed like too much happening too fast."
"Well, I don't want to get defensive, because I know there is a problem here, but the fact is that I am drawing on a lot of different things.++ And feel free to interrupt me anytime because I know none of this is new to you, but there's the Western intellectual tradition, of course, which again is complicated, because there's the Christian tradition, and then the more liberal Enlightenment stream, civil liberties, the rights of man and all that, and then the Romantic reaction and then eventually Marxism and Utilitarianism and that set of ideas coming out of the Industrial Revolution, and this is all feeding the intellectual climate in Bengal, where of course people are coming out of Presidency College, or Oxbridge, for that matter, and absorbing all of these things, and you have people like Michael Madhusudhan Dutta. But then all of that is interacting with this patriotic rhetoric coming out of the Revolt of 1857. And to complicate things even further you have the rediscovery, or what I'd argue is even a sort of reinvention of the Indian intellectual tradition, out of the work of people like Maxmuller to begin with, but then with the Brahmo Samaj, and the Theosophical Society, and then eventually people like Vivekananda. And I'm trying to get all of these things into one character, and I'm trying to understand how he changes as he assimilates all of these influences, and it's so difficult to do, because these things don't just go away; they're all cluttering my head too, and much more besides, and I'm not sure how to reconcile them in me, let alone here. And a big part of what I'm trying to get at is that so much of this is unresolved, and then there's the Hamlet dilemma of how long you wrestle with all of these issues, and when you're justified to act. And I just don't know if any of that is getting across, especially when you also throw things like emotion into the mix."
"Well, actually, I don't think that's where the problem is, and I think that's one of the reasons that the play is quite effective on paper, is that you're drawing upon something that isn't radically new. All of these things were out there, and maybe in that climate they were newer and a more exciting than they might seem like today, but for all intents and purposes they're still out there, and it's not resolved, and if we've learnt anything from modernism, without even getting post-modern, it's that resolution isn't necessary or even necessarily possible. In fact if there's any big difference in the intellectual climate, and of course this is grossly oversimplified, but it's that this optimism, and this expectation that there is this clear-cut resolution out there, well, we know now that it's not really valid. And I think what you're getting at is that the fundamental tragedy of what was undoubtedly a cultural if not philosophical renaissance was that this whole optimism from which it was generated wasn't really justifiable, and that there was something great and wonderful, but not necessarily coherent, and there were the cracks that you could fall through. But anyway, coming back to your play, I think that part of it comes together by the end, and of course everything isn't really explicit, but I don't think it needs to be, because I think you're capturing the ethos quite effectively. My problem with it is actually the way you're navigating him through the pieces of this thing. That whole words of wisdom in the mouth of the child, who in this case just happens to be the bride thing is, I don't want to say contrived but..."
"But you just did. I mean, I know I'm playing with a lot of conventions there. Of course, there's the whole Romantic construction of the child as the voice of nature going into it, and then of course there's the purifying influence of the loved object, but the way I was thinking about it all of that stereotypical stuff is sufficiently complicated by the fact that you don't come out knowing whether what she said was purifying, or more noble, or whether it was in fact poison in his ear, to return to Hamlet."
"See, even that is not exactly what I'm talking about, though. I simply meant from a dramatic point of view, how convincing is it? I guess, firstly, that I don't see that conversation getting as far as it does, considering that they've basically spoken in what, monosyllables, upto that point, but then even that he listens to it, and internalizes all that. I mean, he's coming from a set of ideas that he finds exciting, and that he's basically comfortable with, which in this case is that whole Western tradition that you were talking about earlier. And then she hits him with what are really, when you get down to it, some extremely simplistic and idealised notions, and even if he is momentarily stumped by the fact that they don't quite come together with the way he sees the world, I can't see him not reverting back to his own way of thought after maybe reflecting for a bit, which you have to admit that many of his contemporaries did do. I just don't see that unless there is some internal doubt already there, which maybe she's just verbalizing, that he can just change like that."
"So how would you do it?"
"Well, there're actually two scenarios that I can envision. One is like I just said, if there are already some things that are causing some internal doubts - maybe just seeing some of what's going on around him and not being so completely oblivious, and then when you have the scene with her he almost provokes it, and she just puts into words what he's already thinking. The other is slightly more out there, but I think it's workable, and that's to put the debate inside his head, and maybe set out the terms a bit more clearly, but basically then his stage character would represent his old ideas, which are being challenged, and he would be personifying this conflicting set of ideas in her, because she, as this ignorant thirteen year old child is so far removed from his whole universe, and yet she's inextricably tied to him, and then the whole thing isn't a dialogue at all but, you know, some kind of divided monologue representing his thought process."
"But basically, you're challenging the fact that she could have a real causal effect on him?"
"Yes, I think regardless of whether she's right, it's over-romanticized to say that she could just make him change like that, or at least that she could do it like that in one conversation, rather than maybe a cumulative acquaintance, in which he gradually observes the terms on which she functions, and then compares back to himself, and that, of course, is just difficult to handle logistically in a play."
"But, well, I'm not disagreeing with you on this, but just to play devil's advocate for a moment, isn't that inferring some kind of chauvinistic behaviour on his part?"
"Not necessarily chauvinistic. I don't know how far I would buy into any philosophy of life posited to me by a virtual stranger with whom I was thrown together by circumstance. Maybe after I had gotten to know the person, and understood something about where he or she was coming from it would carry some weight, but from a child who's seen nothing of the world, I doubt it."
"Have you ever been in love, Anupa?"
"That's a rather abrupt change of subject, I have to say."
"No, it's not. It happens to be extremely pertinent to our present discussion. I don't think you're accounting for the influence that that might have upon the way he thinks."
"Well, you certainly haven't succeeded in conveying to me that he's in love with her - well, I mean, it's obvious at the end, of course, but the natural assumption is that it was after he began to take notice of her, which happens for the first time in this particular conversation. He just met her for the first time at their wedding, a wedding which you go to some lengths to suggest that he tried to oppose."
"He did marry her."
"Only under duress."
"Perhaps, but I'm not convinced that for all the liberal ideas he espouses, he's not relieved to have his mind made up for him at the end of it, and I did make him up, after all, so my opinion must count for something. But whichever way you look at it, he's an honourable man, and she's the only woman he's allowed to think about for the rest of his life."
"It does not follow that he has to fall in love with her. Do you have any idea how old fashioned that idea sounds? You would shock so many of your fans!"
"However it sounds, I do think it is sound, given that the two people in question aren't fundamentally incompatible, which in this case they are not."
"But she's a child!"
"She's old enough to be his wife. But leave the play aside for a minute. I think you're evading the question I asked you a minute ago. Have you ever been in love?"
"I... I mean, of course. I haven't gotten this far without having survived the requisite number of infatuations."
"You mean you have gotten this far without any regrets in that sphere? You're splendidly over everyone you ever thought you loved, and you're quite convinced that it's all for the better? That would be remarkable."
Anupa was silent.
"Look, I'm not trying to pry. I certainly don't want to name names or dredge up past history in any shape or form. But surely we can discuss hypothetical situations drawing on previous experience without feeling awkward about it. I just wanted to know how you go about falling in love. Everything you've said about it seems so very cerebral."
"Well, I suppose I am cerebral about it. I certainly could never love a stupid man, and that certainly isn't obvious just by looking at someone. It takes time."
"Well, I don't think that I've ever fallen in love with a stupid woman, and yet to be perrfectly honest about it I repeatedly fall in love at first sight. I've tried rationalizing my way about it, and of course there's a different intensity of feeling when you actually do know someone, but I have to assert that it is quite possible not to be taking all these important factors of compatibility into account in falling in love. Don't you keep making excuses around the person's behaviour, excuses sometimes that in the cold light of day seem ridiculous, and you congratulate yourself on being well out of it?"
"Other than asserting in a rather roundabout manner that you must have immaculate taste I don't quite see what you're getting at. Is there a physical aspect to falling in love?-well, of course there is. Does it take a great deal more than the physical before it can be called love?-for me, at least, I know that the answer to that is yes. I'm not sure if I do believe in love at first sight."
"I'm not sure that I believe in any other kind of love, with the caveat, as Maugham put it, that one may often look at a person without seeing anything. Where it goes from there is another question altogether, but if there isn't that little rush of hormonal anticipation then I don't know that anything can ever come of it."
"It seems to me that you're brushing a good deal under the rug with that caveat. Of course you might be able to identify the moment when you realize that you're in love, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the moment when it happens. In fact, delayed realization is fairly typical, I would think. Look at Pride and Prejudice."
"No, I'm not talking about the moment when you realize that you're in love. I'm talking about the moment when you first look with interest, and it isn't necessarily just provoked visually, either; in fact, it's probably more likely to be a statement or an action that catches you. And the whole thing might die away if that interest isn't sustained, and it's quite possibly on such an instinctive level that you might not even remember that you ever considered anything. I would think that it's typically some time after that that you admit to yourself that you're even beginning to fall in love. And to return to your example, I would think Pride and Prejudice backs me up on this extremely well. With Darcy, it's obviously the moment he realizes that Elizabeth hasn't been snubbed by him, and in fact is quite happy to snub him back, and with her, she even admits that it's when she first sees his beautiful grounds at Pemberley."
"She's just kidding! If you take that literally then he isn't even there at the time."
"He doesn't need to be. The way I look at it, the first spark of interest is when he enters the Assembly Rooms, and ten thousand a year goes across the room. She could hardly fail to notice him then - she's probably never met anyone that eligible, shall we say, in her life before, and given that she ends up with him it's unlikely that she finds him repulsive at first sight. But with his subsequent behaviour that spark dies a hasty death, probably without her admitting to herself that she was ever anything more than curious. But by the time of the Pemberley trip, she doesn't need to be looking anymore. It's the report of his actions, and of his personality, that's relevant. She's already feeling something very like regret before she even meets him there, or suspects that he's taken what she says to heart. Beginning to accept him as she thinks he is goes a long way to show that she's started to fall for him. When she finds that he's even better than she thought he was, that keeps her thinking about him. And besides, there has to be something very attractive just in knowing that a person is in love with you."
"I don't know about that. You sound dangerously as though you're positing some kind of subconscious attraction theory on Lizzy's part. The 'Of all this I might have been mistress' is pretty forcefully contradicted by the thought that she would have lost her aunt and uncle forever. I'm reluctant to imagine that she's thinking along those lines until Jane Austen says she is, and even at that point it's almost a power dynamic of inducing him to admit his regard. She doesn't know she's in love until she thinks she's lost him. That I can identify with. It's very difficult to know that you're in love, and even more so to do something about it. And it's essentially the same sort of thing with Darcy, who is 'in the middle before he knew that he had begun.' All this talk of sparks and rushes glosses over that and takes it down to an instinctive level that I'm not comfortable with."
"Well, surely in a post-Freudian world you're not saying that there isn't such a thing as the unconscious."
"No, of course not, but I don't think I can say that it's love if two people are completely unable to relate to each other on a conscious basis."
"All I'm saying is that it isn't some sort of checklist - eight out of ten - this must be love. There's some kind of organic connection before any of the other stuff falls into place. Can you really say that you haven't ever just looked at someone and felt like this was it, whether or not the events went on to justify that feeling?"
"I suppose I can't, but you see, in retrospect, I don't know if that was what was so important. There's a host of other feelings that seem to signify so much more, like knowing that what you say won't sound ridiculous or childish, that you will be listened to with interest, and that you will be interested in your turn. There's always something new to be said, or done, and even if there isn't, then it's just as nice to do something over again. It's comfortable, and it makes sense in your head, and you can see your whole life in front of you. It's a continuity, and the whole of it is so special that it seems almost silly to want to pin it down to some sparks in the beginning, because it doesn't even seem important that this wasn't in your life once, becaues it is now."
"That sounds like requited love, Anupa. Is it a story you've ever told?"
"It's not the most exciting story, and I didn't intend to tell you half of it. Girl meets boy; word gets back to father; boy leaves unceremoniously and is never heard of again just about covers it."
"That was silly of him. You were worth more of a fight than that."
"I'm not so sure of that, Soumendra. Can we please drop the subject?"
"Of course, Anupa, I'm sorry. I never intended to bully you into telling me all that, but I was thinking of telling you a story, and it's only fair now that I do. I dare say you've heard bits and pieces of it already, but it's not a story I've ever told anyone."
"Soumendra, you really don't have to."
"But I'm going to. It's not to burden you with my confessions, but I have a feeling it's important that I tell you this. You see, I'm rather in the same boat myself, except that I'm not sure I'm over anything just yet. You must have heard that I left London in order to recover from a disappointment? Well, I suppose that is true, in a manner of speaking. I should start by saying that this whole thing will probably sound desperately immature, and in all honesty, it is. I could talk all day about cultural constructions of beauty, and about how we really have no say in whom we're attracted to, or obessed with, for that matter. And in the sort of environment in which I grew up, I don't suppose I stood a chance. I've been a europhile for as long as I can remember, and it wasn't just the books, it was an entire way of life. You know the drill. I wanted it all. And somewhere out there, barely acknowledged for a long time, was that mystique around the white woman. Not that I actually knew any Indian women either, outside of my family. I went to a boys' school, of course, and we didn't exactly spend a lot of time with girls. We fantasized out of magazines, and the magazines were coming from England and America.
"I went to Oxford with all of these ideas intact. Everything I did was part of a concerted attempt to assimilate. I tried to do all those things I'd read about. Rugby, debating societies, the boat race - some of it, obviously, was more effective than the rest. And I kept up my interest in continental culture as well. I traveled as much as I could, I went to the theatre when I could afford it, and read as avidly as I ever had. I never associated with the Indian community there; I saw them as an unwelcome link to something I was trying to leave behind me. And I suppose I was fairly desperate in searching for that final sign of legitimacy, an English girlfriend. But although I found one or two girls out there looking for an exotic fling, I couldn't find anyone who would take me seriously.
"Then, a few months before I was supposed to graduate, I met Sarah. She was an indologist, and was utterly fascinated by all things Indian. She had studied Sanskrit, and I often felt like she knew more about India than I did. She took her subject very seriously, but she was sweet and funny, and just extremely endearing. And she was beautiful. I played on all my Indianness - I left volumes of Tagore lying around, and took her to the artsy cinemas to catch Satyajit Ray movies, and struggled through English translations of the Vedas and the Upanishads, just trying to keep up with her. Of course, this was running completely against the vision I had of myself, but I was surprised to find that Sarah was never dismissive of all my interests in the way that I secretly was of hers. She would listen to me as I rambled on about Ibsen and Chekov, but she never pretended to know more about them than she did. With a subject like indology, of course the only thing for her was to go on teach and research, and she remained in Oxford, working on her masters and D.Phil while I took the bar exam, and found my way into a modest law practice in London.
"My basic intentions had not changed. I still wanted to make my way in England. I had a job, and the next thing for me was to make good on my literary ambitions. I wrote almost incessantly in my spare time, and Sarah was extremely supportive, and she was always ready to proof-read and comment on anything I wrote, and from the very beginning, she kept telling me that it wasn't genuine. It wasn't as though I didn't take her suggestions. I varied the settings, the characters, the situations, but she always came back to the same thing - that I was always telling someone else's story, and that I ought to write about what I knew about. I don't know if it was reacting to what I had written, or if it was just the way I was taking the failure of everything I wrote, but she began to entertain doubts of whether or not I had anything genuine in me. She finally broke up with me after we had been seeing each other for more than five years. It must have been only the second or third time that she ever told me that she loved me. She wasn't at all verbally expressive like that. I must have said it to her several times every day. And she told me that I had never loved her. I'd just liked having her around, and having a steady girlfriend and the prospect of settling down into English normalcy. She told me that there was so much more to me than that, and that I would never find it if she stayed and gave me the option of the easy way out. I didn't believe a word of what she was saying. I was convinced that there had to be someone else, or that she was simply tired of my failure. What she had told me had to be some kind of excuse to throw me over gently. I made a great show of concealing my hurt, but if I had stopped to think about it, all I was actually feeling was resentment. But I didn't get it. She had thrown me over - whatever I was feeling, it had to be desolation and abandonment.
"Around this time I was also beginning to realize that I really didn't want to stick it out in litigation, and after so many failed plays, I was running out of options. I went back to the literature that I loved so much - modern drama - and I decided to make the best of my intelligent unoriginality, and try my hand at translation. I threw myself into it, and I managed to convince myself that I was throwing myself into my work to cure a broken heart. I was working on a new version of Ibsen, when one day, I was at a loss for how to express a particular sentence without losing all of its overtones in English, and it occurred to me that there was the perfect colloquial expression in Bengali. I came up with a workable solution in English and went on, but I realized that in my head I was actually going through doing two translations. I considered the matter from a strictly financial perspective, and I knew that there were many English translations of Ibsen floating around, and that I had no particular credibility in the field. I looked into the situation in Bengali, and I found that the versions out there were quite dated, and that many were in fact indirect translations from the English. And if I did well with the Ibsen, there would be a lot more material for me to choose from. So I changed gears and switched into Bengali instead. I don't need to tell you how it went over. I quit my job and went into writing full-time, and I soon realized that I was just about on top of the world. I wasn't desolate or heart-broken. I had thrown myself into my work because I was genuinely interested, and because for once I wasn't driven simply by my exaggerated expectations. And when I thought about it, I started to realize that Sarah had been right about a lot of things. I wasn't some second-class hack, but I had let myself become that in the search for this idealized vision that was essentially an adolescent holdover. And I wasn't in love with her, and never had been.
"For the first time I was really excited about what I was doing. I started to take a real interest in the Bengali canon, which I had dismissed in India to pursue English lit instead, and which I had only drawn upon in the U.K. to impress Sarah or others who took a condescending interest in exotic culture. And I found the literary legacy in which I could carve out a real niche for myself. I started working tentatively on a draft of this play, and it felt like it was my own. I wasn't constantly drawing these grandiose comparisons. Of course, it was drawing on a lot of sources, but it did that in a natural way, and not as a sort of effort to showcase my education. I felt like I was doing something valuable, and I tried to make it as authentic as I could.
"Well, anyway, that's probably more than you ever wanted to know about my life. I should also mention that notwithstanding Sarah, I have been in love many times, and obviously, nothing has ever come of it to date. But to get back to the play, I'm not making it up out of thin air, and I don't think what I'm trying to get at is so unreasonable. I think he is attracted to her from the very beginning, but consciously his enlightened mind rebels against the concept of marrying someone barely out of childhood who doesn't have any say in the matter. Which would explain why he ends up capitulating. And then he attempts to transmit his prejudices to this unschooled girl, and is cut to the quick to find that she actually has her own ideas. So he has to grapple with what she is saying, because it is a vindication of his own feelings - the woman he loves is an intelligent creature capable of a philosophy, and he owes it to himself to be able to reconcile himself to it, and to enable her to reconcile herself to his way of thinking. Of course, half of this happens off-stage, and it's so clear in my mind that it's quite possible that I don't see that it isn't coming through in the dialogue. That's where I need your help."
"Welll, it makes a whole lot more sense when you spell it out like that, but most of that was not evident from the play as I just saw it. I think it may be a little clearer from the character descriptions you provide in the print version, because I didn't have all the same questions back when I read it, but it's been a while, and when I saw it this afternoon, it was still powerful stuff, but it seemed a bit implausible. I do think the suggestions I made earlier still would help, though, despite the fact that he really is in love with her. What is more interesting, in either case, is his internal development, and that is much more evident by going into his head. The fact that she's gotten into his head like that goes quite far to show that he's falling in love."
"Thanks, I'll think about how that might work. Of course, it'll drive my crew crazy if I throw this at them at this point, but that's my fault for not having enlisted you earlier. I might demand that you stop by again some time before opening night. I'm rather nervous about the whole thing."
"Don't be. You've put a lot of effort into this, and I'm sure it will work out very well."
"Thanks. Maybe I'll have you stop by just to stroke my ego."
She smiled.
"You don't need an excuse. And Soumendra, thanks for telling me that story. I might have one for you sometime."
Cultural NotesContinued In Next Section* Banga Mancha - Anupa's father's theater. Literally, Banga is an adjective associated with Bengal, and Mancha means platform or stage. (pronounced BON-go MON-cho - it's that crazy bengali pronounciation)
+ The Bengal famine and the Partition of Bengal were I think roughly contemporary. I have a vague idea that the famine came first, in the 1890s, and then the Partition was about 1905. The Partition basically divided the British Indian province of Bengal into two (roughly modern West Bengal and Bangladesh) along religious lines, with all the attendant communal tensions, violence, etc. This was all part of the exploitative British strategy of 'divide and conquer,' and it provoked tensions between people who had coexisted often peacefully, although sometimes in an uneasy truce, for centuries. A million people died in the 'real' Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, but that was actually relatively peaceful on the Eastern front, possibly because it had already happened, in a sense. Of course that's oversimplified, and there were still huge riots in Calcutta, Dhaka, etc, and there's a big difference between separate provinces under the same government, and separate countries.
* South Indian food is really good, very different from northern cuisines, and almost entirely vegetarian. There are real south indian restaurants, but what's really popular in the rest of India, and increasingly in the States, is South Indian snack cuisine, also known as Udipi cuisine, because it actually comes from a specific region of that name. There are good places I know in Washington and Boston, and there must be others elsewhere, especially in technology heavy places, because South Indians, even among Indians, are stereotyped as math and science and computer science strong.
++ Without trying to write an intellectual history of Bengal, there's too much here for me to try to tackle individually, so I've stuck it under one long note. Here's a bit of background; I'm not sure how helpful it is. Bengalis have a way of considering themselves as India's cultural elite, which is a point of view which is at least somewhat defensible. It is definitely a very literary culture - many writers and readers, and a vibrant dramatic tradition, and even a film tradition (Satyajit Ray, most notably). And all of this does come from the cultural flowering that produced people like Tagore, most famously, although there were many others. Michael Madhusudhan Dutta was a poet who was totally subsumed in the European literary tradition; he converted to Christianity, and I think he lived and died with a mistress in Paris, but I could be making that up. And a lot of other rich Bengalis of the time would have been getting that same kind of education and upbringing. There was also a revived interest in the Hindu philosophical tradition that came from a lot of different places - Indians as well as foreigners. Maxmuller was a German guy who first translated a lot of Sankrit scriptures, and there were many others, studying Indian languages from a linguistics and a philosophical perspective. There were things like the Theosophical Society, founded by a woman called Annie Besant, and basically cultivating an interest in Indian culture and philosophy. In Bengal an important movement was the Brahmo Samaj, founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and he came up with a version of monotheistic Hinduism (well, actually my theory is that almost all Hindus are monotheists, but we won't get into that). There are still some Brahmos today, although they're a dying breed, if I can get away with a blanket statement like that. (If any of you have read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, you might remember that the Chatterjees were Brahmos.) At the same time, there was also a grass roots religious revival that was mysticism and faith oriented, with little or no philosophical backing. And then some of the Intellectuals got interested in this stuff. There was one man in particular, an educated skeptic who assimilated the simple teachings of a mystic called Ram Krishna Paramhamsa. He (the former skeptic) eventually adoped Swami Vivekananda and huge stir in Chicago in a conference of the World's major religions, and won a lot of followers and financiers in the States. He also founded the Ram Krishna Mission (completely unrelated to the Hare Krishnas), another attempt at making a sort of prosletyzing version of Hinduism, and they have missions around the world.
On a somewhat unrelated note, the first real organized resistance to British rule in India came in 1857. This is referred to as the Sepoy rebellion, because it was the soldiers enlisted by the East India Company who first revolted, provoked by rumours that bovine and porcine grease was used to make bullet cartridges that they had to bite off. Since Hindus do not eat beef and Muslims do not eat pork, the prospect of biting was universally offensive. The struggle was taken up by rulers of some of India's princely states that the British had either annexed or were attempting to annexe. The Revolt was eventually quelled, and led to the dissolution of the East India Company, and the beginning of the second British Empire in India, this time actually governed by the crown. (Victoria started calling herself Empress of India not too long afterward, although I read somewhere that she did so because the wife of her second son, the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, was giving herself airs at being the daughter of an Emperor when her mother-in-law was only a Queen, and claiming precedence over the bride of the heir to the throne, who was a rather humble princess. Here ends the unnecessary segue into European history.) Eventually, of course, the method that succeeded in India was not violence but organized non-violent resistance, but that's another story.