Shame: A Novel

by Taslima Nasrin

  Kiranmayee retorted in a voice just as loud, "Where will you go?"

  Maya combed her hair very fast. She said, "To Parul's house. If you've lost your will to live, I've got nothing to do with that. It seems Dada, too, won't go anywhere."

  "And what are you going to do with your name Nee- lanjana?" asked Sudhamay, raising his head. The memory of once identifying himself as Sirajuddin flashed across his mind.

  Maya said without faltering, "One can become a Muslim by chanting La Ilaha Illallahu Muhammadur Rasul- ullah. I'll do that. From now on, I'll be known as Fatima Begem."

  "Maya," Kiranmayee warned to put an end to her outpourings.

  Maya tilted her neck, looking straight at Kiranmayee, as if she had said nothing improper, and giving the impression instead of doing only what was natural. Her mother's sad face left Maya unmoved. Heaving a long sigh, Sudhamay looked first at Maya, then at Kiranmayee. Maya was fidgeting. A vibrant girl of twenty-one, she hadn't seen the country's partition in 1947. Nor had she been a witness to the communal riots of 1950 or '64 or the Liberation War of 1971. Since she had grown up, she had known Islam as the state religion and the way the members of the minority community, which included her family, tried to compromise with the society for their survival. She had seen the leaping flames of the 1990 disturbance. She was prepared to face any challenge to save her life. She didn't want to sacrifice herself in the fire of blind rage. The vacuousness of Sudhamay's gaze swept over Maya, making her invisible. No one called Maya stood before him. A sharp pain slowly spread waves of agony in his chest.

  Suranjan couldn't give up his craving for tea; he eventually ambled to the toilet. It would have been better if he could have a cup of tea even before brushing his teeth. No sound of Maya's movement could be heard. Did the girl go away on her own? Suranjan brushed his teeth, taking a long time. A strange dreadful silence, felt only prior to a death in the family, had gripped the house. It seemed like everyone was awaiting inevitable death from a lightning strike. With the craving for a cup of tea still burning in him, Suranjan moved into Sudhamay's room. Lifting his feet onto the bed, he sat in a comfortable position. "Where is Maya?" Nobody cared to reply to his question. Kiranmayee sat staring blankly near the window. She rose and went to the kitchen suddenly without uttering a single word. Lying on his back, Sudhamay was staring at the roof with utter unconcern. He changed his position to rest on his side. None perhaps felt the need to inform him of the news. Suranjan felt he was failing to discharge his duty at this critical time. He had failed to take his family members to a safe place, which was a must for him at this hour. Or he was not feeling like doing anything like that. Suranjan was aware of a romantic relationship between Maya and a Muslim youth named Jehangir. Given a chance, she would certainly go out on a date with him. Once she was away from home, she needn't look behind. Some Muslims liked to show their superficial concern for the Hindus when the riots broke out. Jehangir wouldn't be an exception to this rule. And Maya would feel obliged. What if Maya's feelings of gratitude led her to marry Jehangir, who was two lasses above her? But Suranjan feared Jehangir would never go to that extent. His almost certain marriage with Parvin was foiled at the last moment. It might be like that, he felt. His experience had taught him so. Parvin had asked for his conversion to Islam. But Suranjan's contention that neither of them need change religious identity was unacceptable to Parvin's family. Finally Parvin, through the haze of her tears, had to marry a Muslim businessman.

  Suranjan gazed blankly at the strip of verandah. It was a rented house with no courtyard or bare earth to walk or run on. Kiranmayee entered the room with a cup of tea. Accepting the teacup from his mother Suranjan uncon cernedly said, "December is nearing its end, yet we don't feel the pinch of winter. When I was a boy, I would drink the juice of date trees at this time."

  Emitting a deep sigh, Kiranmayee said, "How could you expect to have that juice in a rented house? We had to come here after selling for a song our house surrounded by plantations we planted ourselves."

  Sipping the tea, Suranjan could visualize date tree tappers bringing down pitchers of juice as excitement ran high in him and Maya. Clouds of steam would come out of his mouth if he talked during those winter days. Where could he find that playground, orchards of mango, blackberry, jackfruit, guava, betel nut, coconut? Sudhamay would say, "This is the seat of your ancestors, you will never leave this place."

  But finally, Sudhamay was compelled to sell the house. When Maya was a child of six, she failed to return home from her school. She couldn't be traced anywhere in the town, neither in the houses of relatives nor any other who knew her. The whole family suffered from nerve-racking tension. Suranjan guessed that some knife-carrying youths who spent their time in idle talk near the gate of Edward School must have carried her off. Maya came back alone after two days. She couldn't throw any light on who her kidnappers were and from where they had abducted her. She behaved abnormally for two full months afterward. Her sleep was disturbed by sudden spasms of shock. She would feel scared even at the look of any person. During the night, stones were pelted at the house. Anonymous letters came with the threat that kidnappers would have to be paid ransom to stop them from repeating the act. Sudhamay went to the police station to lodge a formal com plaint. But the police showed no interest beyond noting down the names of suspects. The mischief-makers would pluck the fruits from the orchard and flowers from the garden, trample the vegetable patches whenever they felt like it. No one could restrain them. Referring the matter to the locals was hardly of any help. They just pleaded their inability to do anything to stop this torment. There had been no change in the situation as the same trend persisted. Suranjan, aided by a few friends, made an attempt to put a stop to these intrusions. But for the disapproval of Sudhamay, they might have succeeded. He decided to seek out a transfer from Mymensingh by selling the house. A protracted litigation also prompted him to go in for the sale. Shaukat All, a next-door neighbor, had been constantly trying to dispossess him of his property with faked documents. A prolonged court case to thwart this attempt left Sudhamay totally exhausted and bitter. Suranjan wasn't in favor of selling the house outright. He was then a college student, full of life. He had just been elected a member of the student union; he could have soundly thrashed those ruffians quite easily. But Sudhamay became frantic to sell the property. He would be better leaving this place for Dhaka. His medical practice in this town was said to have taken a downward plunge. He spent his time at the Swad- eshy bazar medical stores idle most of the time, examining only an occasional patient who invariably was a poor Hindu and too badly off to pay his consultation charges. Sudhamay's restiveness kept Suranjan from putting pressure on him. He could still recall their sprawling house built over two-thirds of an acre. The day Sudhamay sold his house, which could fetch him at least a million takas, to Raisuddin for one-fifth of its worth, he told Kiranmayee, "Now, get ready, start packing up things." Kiranmayee cried inconsolably. Suranjan was incredulous, unable to think they were indeed leaving the house for good. He was not inclined to give up the playgrounds familiar from his childhood, the great river Brahamputra, his friends. Maya, whose misfortune had goaded Sudhamay to make this drastic decision, was equally unwilling to bid adieu to the house. In protest, she said, "I won't leave Sufia," her schoolmate who lived nearby. The two of them played with their dolls and toy pots and pans. She, too, became very much involved with Maya. But Sudhamay stayed firm although his roots in the place were the deepest. He said, "I want to live in peace with my children in the remaining days of my life."

  But was it secure anywhere? Suranjan knew how illusory his father's hopes for peace were. In the city of Dhaka, where Sudhamay heaved a sigh of relief after his arrival and which was the capital of a free country, he had to change into pyjamas from his long-accustomed dhoti. Suranjan could understand his father's intense agony even through the wall of his silence. An insurmountable barrier had always been there in front of them which neither he nor his father could get over. />
  Suranjan was jolted out of reverie, spun around the sunlit verandah by the shouts from an approaching procession. Suranjan trained his ears as Sudhamay and Kiranmayee did the same, to grasp what the processionists were shouting about. Suranjan noticed Kiranmayee closing the windows. But even through the dosed window, the message spread by the processionists marching past their house along the road was unmistakable: catch a Hindu or two for your breakfast and dinner. Suranjan found his fa ther shivering. Kiranmayee stood still with her back to the window. Suranjan recalled identical slogans shouted during the 1990 violence. They wanted Hindus for breakfast, meaning their total extermination. If Suranjan came in their way, they would gobble him up. Who else could these people be other than the local boys like Jabbar, Ramjan, Alamgir, Kabir or Abedin? They were his friends, just like younger brothers. He would talk with them any time, sometimes about local problems, and they would arrive at a solution in a collective decision. Yet the same people, on this beautiful morning of December 7, were keen on having Suranjan for their breakfast.

  Reaching Dhaka, Sudhamay came straightaway to Tantibazar where one of his cousins resided. His brother, Asit Ranjan, found a small house for him and said hesitantly, "Sudhamay, you come from an affluent family. Will you be able to stay in a rented house?" Sudhamay replied, "Why not, aren't other people living in such houses?"

  "That's true, but you haven't been in need since your birth. And why, first of all, have you sold your house? Maya is just a small girl, not at all an eye-catching woman. I don't think anything would've happened to her. We sent our daughter Utpala to Calcutta. She couldn't go to the college here because of constant kidnapping threats from the local boys. We were really scared. Now she is in her maternal uncle's house in the Tiljala area in Calcutta. We feel scared as our daughters grow up, my brother."

  Sudhamay couldn't brush off Asit Ranjan's warnings. Well, there would certainly be anxious moments. But the parents of Muslim girls were not immune from such apprehension. A Muslim girl student of Sudhamay was nearly stripped by some ruffians, who were also Muslims. So Sudhamay sought to comfort himself with the argument that it was not a question of Muslims torturing the Hindus. The powerful people have done almost the same to the weak all along. The women, being weak, were easy targets of torture for the mighty men. Asit Ranjan had sent both his daughters away to Calcutta. He was quite well off from the earnings of his gold shop at Islam Bazar. He had an old double-storeyed house over whose repair he didn't bother much. He didn't feel enthused to construct a new house either. One day he advised Sudhamay, "Brother, better to save money than to spend it. Remit the money that you have received from the sale of your property if you can. My relatives there will find suitable land for you."

  Sudhamay asked, "What do you mean by'there'?"

  Asit Ranjan replied softly, "Why, in Calcutta. I have also bought some land."

  This time Sudhamay's voice rose in anger: "That means you will earn from this land to spend there. You can easily be branded as a traitor."

  Asit Ranjan was taken aback by Sudhamay's outburst. He had never heard any Hindu speak in such a way. Most of them were keen on saving the money they earned instead of recklessly spending it here. The situation was so uncertain, it was difficult to predict what was going to happen next. What guarantee was there that any bid to put down roots here wouldn't be defeated?

  Sudhamay occasionally brooded over why he didn't feel any remorse over leaving his Mymensingh home. The trouble over Maya was not altogether unanticipated. Both communities might suffer from such incidents of kidnapping. Did he suffer from insecurity in his own house? He would pose the question to himself without letting anyone know. In the small, cramped house at Tantibazar, Sudhamay thought again and again about why he left his home to stay in an utterly unknown area. Was he trying to hide himself? Why did he feel like a refugee despite having his own home? Or was he overcome by the fear of losing the court case that lingered over the fake document of his neighbor Shaukat? How galling it was, he thought, to lose a case that had to do with one's own home. But if he looked at the whole thing positively, it was obviously wise to have left the place with self-respect intact instead of fleeing after losing the case. Sudhamay had seen his first cousin lose possession of his own house in similar circumstances. The poor man had his house in the Akur Takur area at Tangail. His next-door neighbor, Jamir Munshi, wanted to extend his land by a single yard. The case dragged on in the court for five years, only to be decided in favor of Jamir Munshi at the end. Tarapada Ghosal, after breaking all his ties with this land, had finally migrated to India. Had he sold out his possessions at home because of the fear that his property would ultimately slip from his grasp like Tarapada Ghosal's? That might have been it. It had to be conceded, however, that Sudhamay had lost much of his former stature and importance. His friends were deserting him. Given an opportunity, a Hindu family would rush for it to get out of the country. Quite a few died. Sudhamay had to carry the bodies of the dead along with others every now and then, shouting the funeral chant Bol hori, hori bol. The living were always in a depressed state of mind, as if their existence had become totally devoid of any purpose. Talking with them, Sudhamay, too, suffered from the fear of being crushed by a giant in the dead of night very soon. India was everyone's dream; they schemed secretly to somehow cross the border. Hearing their whispers, Sudhamay had retorted, "When the Liberation War broke out, you bolted for India. When the country became free, you returned, marching like heroes. Now every now and then, you try to rush back there if anyone just gives you a mild poke. All of you are cowards."

  Sudhamay's bold stand distanced his friends like Jatin Debnath, Tushar Kar and Khagesh Kiran from him. No more did they speak their minds to him. Sudhamay felt all the more isolated. In his own home town, the rift in his relationship with Muslim friends like Shakur, Faisal, Majid and Guffar, too, was widening. His impromptu visits to their houses were discouraged on some pretext or other. Some would say, "Please wait in the drawing room. Meanwhile, I shall pray my Namaz." Others would say, "You have come today. But there is Milad in my house today." When the one-time leftists sought refuge in religion, now that they were getting older, Sudhamay felt increasingly lonely. The gradual erosion in the rational sense, intelligence and conscience in his own town hurt him deeply. That was why he wanted to escape from his beloved town, but not from the country, before a gloomy death triumphed over the dreams he still held frantically to.

  Suranjan, at the beginning, would argue over this compulsive stay in the tiny rented house after leaving their mansion. Later, he, too, became used to living here. By that time, he had enrolled at the university. He had a new circle of friends. And he, too, learned to love the place. He had become involved in politics. He was called away to attend meetings and processions every now and then. Kiranmayee was opposed to the sale of the house. During the night she shed tears for what had happened to the scaffold covered by the broad bean creepers she had grown. The guavas they grew in their orchards were the largest in the locality. Who knew what was the condition of the coconut trees? Did the present owners apply brine water at their roots any more? Such thoughts brought no less anguish to Sudhamay.

  Opting for a transfer to Dhaka, Sudhamay deluded himself into believing that perhaps something could be done to get his long-deserved promotion in the medical service. He had been to the Health Ministry, sometimes waiting there interminably before a petty clerk, or at most an assistant personal secretary, and never receiving any direct reply to his frantic queries regarding the movement of his personal file. Mostly he had to be content with a perfunctory "the matter is being looked into" sort of reply. Some of them would say, "Doctor, I have been feeling pain in my left chest, my daughter has an upset stomach. Why don't you prescribe something for us?" Sudhamay was more than eager to oblige them by readily scribbling prescriptions on his printed pads. But his fervent appeal, "Shall I get what I'm hoping for?" would invariably bring forth replies like "Do you think the matter rests in our hands?"


  Sudhamay would later come to know of the promotions being given to his juniors. Before his eyes, in blatant violation of his rightful claim, Dr. Karimuddin and Dr. Yakub Molla were promoted to associate professors and they started functioning in that capacity. Sudhamay succeeded only in wearing out the soles of his shoes with his pointless walking exercises to solicit petty officials. They constantly warded him off with various petty excuses like, "Please come tomorrow, your file will be moved to the secretary's table today"; "not today as there's a meeting, better come to morrow"; "The minister is out of the country, come next month," and so on. Hearing such excuses again and again, Sudhamay realized that he, in fact, faced a bleak future. Following this wild goose chase after the elusive promotion for a year and a half, he eventually found out that the fortunate ones could make it easily even if they were incompetent. As he was nearing his retirement, he hoped for the post of associate professor, but without actually demanding it, since he was a rightful claimant. Yet his juniors overtook him.