That year, this quiet, introverted man wept when he saw how ill my grandmother was. In all the years that he visited us, that was the only time when he stayed the night. He sat down to eat with us after she fell asleep. “I would take Ammajan to her house if I could, even if it was for a day,” he told us. “It’s the people who live inside four walls, Bhaijan, who make a home in them. I know what it is like to leave one’s home behind…”

I think that was the only occasion when I heard our father say anything on the matter. “Some people cut up the country to suit their own interests, and hundreds of thousands of lives were destroyed. We were happy together in our own land, even if we did fight sometimes, none of us wanted to leave home to settle down in a strange place, among strange people. Those people fanned the fire to roast their chicken, and we were destroyed, and you too. The leaders sat down to talk to each other before they split the country, did they ask any of us even once?”

We had never heard him talking like that. “Let that be, let’s not talk about it now,” Ma said softly.

Grandmother died about a month after Faizuddin Sahib left. After that he came only once. He sat alone on the terrace stairs for a long time, quietly, holding his head in his hands. He had brought a lot of pictures with him this time, pictures of the house in Daulatpur, the streets, the college, the chemist’s shop at a crossing near the house. He left them all with my mother. He said he would come again, but he never did. Vigil on the border became stricter after the war, or so we heard. On the streets, they talked of Pakistani soldiers. People suddenly became fiercely patriotic, like once before during the Indo-Chinese war. One could not even mention Chinese ink or ‘chine-badam’ without being suspected of treachery. I have always noticed that people become curiously belligerent when they go through these patriotic phases. In ’64 too, enthusiastic young men waylaid tramps on the road and harassed them, in Bombay Johnny Walker almost lost his living.

Then came the food movement of ’66. I was out of college by then, but my heart was still with the Students’ Front. Dada had a job with Senralley, he had moved to his quarters with his wife. Tanima was insisting that I tell my parents about our relationship, she wanted to tell her own parents because they were trying to arrange a match for her. She had told them that she would not meet prospective grooms if they came to see her. So of course now she wanted to tell them about us too.

In the middle of all this, there was the first United Front ministry in ’66. Oh, the excitement of those days! It seemed as if all problems were about to end, Calcutta looked like Red Square to us! Then of course, within months, the dreams broke down amid the infighting. A fresh set of problems again, we could not decide what was right and what was wrong. The leaders who had condemned certain actions for so long in meetings, rallies, processions, were now doing exactly the same things themselves, and getting away with it too, the protests slowly got muted and finally died away. It was all quite confusing. But of course, that was also the time when I was gradually moving away from my political involvement, getting more and more tied down by the demands of my personal life. Also, I was desperate for a job.

It was not as if they needed me to start working immediately at home. My mother’s brains and her hard work had seen to that, and in addition there was the rent from the two shop spaces that we had let out on the ground floor of the house. But then, there was no way Tanima and I could tell our families that we wanted to marry, unless I had a job. Afterwards, it was all fairly smooth once I landed a job with the LIC. Tanima belonged to the same caste that we did. Her family was better off than mine, but her father had four daughters. I was not an unsuitable match for her, and I had refused to accept dowry. My mother was with me in this, though my father raised some faint protests. Would we have to fund the reception ourselves? Well, my mother was very clear about that – “We have always provided our son with everything he needed, now are we supposed to ask the bride’s father to pay for the reception?” Of course, in those days, a lot of our friends thought like that. Marrying for dowry was thought to be old-fashioned.

There were some who accepted dowry on the sly, but they were careful to keep it secret, dowry was not something to boast about to friends. How did things change so much in just twenty-twenty-five years? The young boys at the office – when one of them gets married they all sit together to decide which brand of scooter would be most fuel-efficient, or which brand of steel cupboard has an extra locker. The dowry amount is “for parents to decide”. And most of the time people seem so irritable, always criticizing someone or the other, either their wives or their daughters-in-law, always talking about “us”, “our times”, about “when we were young”. They don’t seem to realize how much they too have changed, and they are not always pleased if you point it out to them. Like my old friend, Rathin. We went to college together, we started seeing our girlfriends around the same time, we started our working lives together. But he got married later than I did. Rathin’s family were upper caste Brahmins, whereas Seema’s were Sonar Bene. You cannot keep such things in mind when you fall in love, can you? Well, Rathin’s parents were not willing to accept it. Rathin became something of a hero for us, taking a stand against prejudices of caste and class. And now, would you believe it, it was the same Rathin who rejected a groom for his daughter because the horoscopes did not match, at the behest of his ‘guru’. So I asked him what horoscopes he had matched before his own wedding. He was furious, he accused me of trying to scoop out his family scandal. Scandal! Well, maybe. I went home and complained to Tanu, but she blamed me.

“He’s right. Do you think everyone is like you? You are getting on in years, but just look at you, you have no respect for religion, or for social norms.”

Tanu has changed also, and haven’t I too? Still, I can understand why she has changed. The pain of childlessness still gnaws away at her heart somewhere. In the first restless years of despair, she took to amulets, to numerous pleas and supplications to her gods, topped up with promises of offerings if her wish came true. Once or twice I tried reasoning with her. “Why these promises, Tanu? Does your god take bribes, then?” It only made her angry. Well, those difficult times are behind us now. Still, there is an empty space in her heart. The wound is only hidden, it has not healed. My mother never said anything, but my brother’s wife sometimes said unkind words to her. That strained her relations with my brother’s family, and also mine. I find that the older I get, I move closer and closer to Tanu, away from friends, from relatives. At least in my marriage I have a partner with whom I have worked out some sort of an understanding, with whom I share some sort of a relationship, even love.

So I try to make light of her words. “Why Tanu, when do I ever disobey the rules of your household? Aren’t they social norms too?”

“That’s different, but why won’t you do the things that everyone else does? Why do you always have to be different?”

“So what do you want me to do? Should I come home every evening and watch TV, instead of talking to you? Isn’t that what everyone does?”

That made Tanu laugh in spite of herself, but she didn’t yield an inch. “Come off it. Everyone asks me why we don’t go to a guru and take a mantra. It is not nice at all. Really, why can’t we do it?”

“Tanu, we have discussed this before. I have told that if you think that the person you accept as your guru is a better human being than anyone you know, if you think that will take you closer to your god, if you feel that you need someone to whom you want to unburden yourself, then go ahead. I do not have these needs, so I do not need a guru. And I won’t do this just because everyone else is doing it. That sort of thing should only be kept for the latest fashions in sarees or film stars.”

Tanu got up and left in a huff. Like many times before.

To be continued

A Bengali short story by Joya Mitra and translated by Sarbari Sinha.