Lajja

by Taslima Nasrin

  Part Twelve

  One

  Suronjon finally got out of bed at ten o’clock in the morning. He was in the veranda, brushing his teeth, when he heard Khadem Ali’s son, Ashraf, talking to Kironmoyee.

  ‘Mashima,’ said Ashraf, ‘yesterday evening, our Putu saw a young woman like Maya, dead, floating below the bridge in Gendaria.’

  Suronjon felt that his arm holding the toothbrush had turned to stone. His body felt as if it had just received an electric shock. He did not hear any sounds of crying from the house. There was stunned silence. It was as if the slightest whisper would reverberate in the air. It felt as though no one but he had lived in this house for a thousand years. He could see that the city was yet to wake up properly from the previous evening’s revelry. He stood there holding his toothbrush. Hyder was passing by on the road. He stopped when he saw Suronjon because Suronjon had seen him and so it was only polite to acknowledge him.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Hyder as he walked slowly towards Suronjon.

  ‘I am well,’ replied Suronjon.

  After this, it would have been logical to ask about Maya but Hyder did not.

  ‘Yesterday, the Shibir people broke the plaque about the mass graves that was in the Zoha Hall of Rajshahi University,’ said Hyder, leaning against the railings.

  ‘Mass graves? What does that mean?’ asked Suronjon as he spat out a glob of toothpaste.

  ‘You don’t know about the mass graves?’ a startled Hyder asked Suronjon.

  Suronjon shook his head. He did not know.

  Hyder felt insulted and his face darkened. He could not understand why Suronjon, who was a leader of the Awareness Centre of the Liberation War, was saying that he had no idea about the mass graves. The Shibir people had broken the memorial plaque of the mass graves. So let them. They had many weapons and were using them. Was it possible to stop them now? Gradually they would destroy all the memorials to the Liberation like Aporajeyo Bangla (Indefatigable Bengal), Shoparjito Shadhinota (The Liberation We Won Ourselves), Shabash Bangladesh (Bravo Bangladesh!) and the Muktijoddha Memorial in Joydebpur. Who was going to prevent all this? There would be one or two rallies and meetings. Some progressive political groups would shout slogans like ‘End the politics of the Jamaat-Shibir Youth Command!’ That would be it. What would it lead do? ‘It will lead to zilch,’ thought Suronjon to himself.

  Hyder stood there quietly, with his head lowered. ‘I guess you know,’ said Hyder, ‘Parveen is here now. She’s divorced.’

  Suronjon listened but did not say anything in exchange. He was not particularly upset by Parveen’s divorce. In fact, he thought that it was funny and served them right. They had not let her marry a Hindu and chose a Muslim groom instead. What good had that done? In his mind, he imagined that he was raping Parveen. Raping someone early in the morning, soon after brushing one’s teeth, was not so delectable. However, the thought of rape had its attractions.

  Sudhamoy was able to sit up now. He put a pillow behind his back and started listening to the sounds in the noiseless house. Sudhamoy recalled that it was Maya amongst all of them who had had the strongest desire to stay alive. If he had not had this misfortune, Maya would not have had to come back from Parul’s and nor would she be missing! Apparently, someone had found her floating under a bridge. But who would go to identify the corpse? Sudhamoy knew that no one would go because all of them wanted to believe that Maya would certainly return some day. If the body under the bridge was Maya’s then they could no longer cherish the hope that Maya would perhaps be back that day, the next day or the day after, or even after one year, or five years. There are some hopes that help people carry on. After all, there are so few things worth living for that one should not let go of one’s dearest wishes and hopes, however small. After a long time, he reached out to Suronjon and asked him to sit next to him.

  ‘I feel embarrassed to live with the doors and windows shut,’ Sudhamoy said in a broken voice.

  ‘You feel embarrassed? I feel angry.’

  ‘I worry greatly about you.’

  Sudhamoy wanted to gently touch his son’s back with his left hand.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You return home very late. Horipodo was here yesterday—apparently things are very bad in Bhola. Thousands of people are sitting out in the open, they have no homes. Girls and women are being raped.’

  ‘Is this something new?’

  ‘Of course, it is new. Have such things ever happened before? That’s the reason why I fear for you, Suronjon.’

  ‘You are afraid only for me? Is there no need to be afraid for you? Are you people not Hindus?’

  ‘What can they possibly do to us?’

  ‘They’ll cut off your head and float it in the Buriganga. You don’t yet know the people of this land—they snack on Hindus and make no allowances for the old or young.’

  Sudhamoy frowned in annoyance.

  ‘Are you not one of the people of this land?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I can no longer think of myself as one,’ said Suronjon. ‘I wish I could! But it is no longer possible. Earlier, Kajol da and the others would talk of discrimination and I would get annoyed with them. “Stop your useless discussions,” I’d say. “There’s so much to do in this country. Is there any point in wasting time talking about what’s happening to Hindus somewhere and how many are dying?” Gradually, I’ve realized that they are not wrong. And I’m not sure what’s happening to me. Baba, this is not how it was supposed to be,’ said Suronjon in a choked voice.

  Sudhamoy touched his son’s back gently.

  ‘People are on the streets,’ he said. ‘There are protests. There’s much writing in the newspapers. Intellectuals are writing every day.’

  ‘This will lead to nought,’ said Suronjon in an angry voice. ‘One group has entered the fray with weapons and there is no point in just shouting and gesticulating to oppose them. An axe has to be resisted with an axe. It is foolish to fight armed people without any weapons.’

  ‘Will we give up our ideals?’

  ‘What are ideals? Nonsensical stuff!’

  Sudhamoy’s hair had gone greyer in the past few days. His cheeks looked more sunken. He was half of what he used to be. Yet he did not lose heart.

  ‘People are still protesting against injustice and wrong-doing. Does every country have this kind of strength, where people exercise the right to protest?’

  Suronjon did not say anything more. He assumed that the People’s Republic of Bangladesh would soon change its name to the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh. The sharia law would reign in the land. He shuddered as he thought that women would be wearing burqas when they were out on the streets, the number of men with beards and in caps and kurtas would increase, instead of schools and colleges there would be an increase in the number of mosques and madrasas, and the Hindus would be silently decimated. Hindus were now expected to sit at home like frogs in the well. If they heard about movements or the sounds of rallies and protests, they were expected to bolt their doors and windows and remain indoors and away from the action because such things were now risky for them. Muslims could boldly shout slogans demanding this and that but not Hindus. A Muslim could loudly proclaim that Hindus were suffering injustice but it was not possible for Hindus to say so with equal fervour. They felt fear that assassins might come in the dark and cut their throats because they dared raise their voices. Muslims had declared Ahmed Sharif a traitor but had kept him alive; however, if Sudhamoy spoke out of line he was likely to be killed. Maulvis would certainly not tolerate aggressive Hindus but neither would progressive Muslims. Suronjon found it exceedingly amusing that progressive people had Hindu or Muslim names. He had always thought that he was a modern individual but these days he felt like he was a Hindu. Was he no longer the person he used to be? He had probably lost all that was good.

  Sudhamoy asked Suronjon to move closer.

/>   ‘Will we not be able to find Maya anywhere?’ he asked in a broken voice.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Kiron hasn’t slept a single night since then. She worries about you too. If something were to happen to you . . .’

  ‘If I die, I’m dead. So many people are dying.’

  ‘I can sit up a bit now. Kiron holds me and helps me walk to the toilet. I can’t treat patients before I recover fully. We haven’t paid the rent for two months. If you could get a job . . .’

  ‘I can’t be at another’s beck and call.’

  ‘We have our home to run . . . we no longer have our zamindari. We have lived with storehouses full of rice, ponds teeming with fish and our own cattle. You people haven’t seen much of that. I sold all our land in the village. If we’d had that we could’ve gone back, built a modest home and spent our last days there.’

  ‘Why are you talking like a fool?’ snapped Suronjon. ‘Do you think you’d stay alive in the village? The hitmen of the powers that be would have hit you on the head with sticks and grabbed everything.’

  ‘Why are you disbelieving everybody? Are there not even a handful of good people left in the country?’

  ‘No, there aren’t any.’

  ‘You are feeling unnecessarily hopeless.’

  ‘Not unnecessarily.’

  ‘Your friends? All this time you studied communism with them, were part of movements, did so much together—aren’t they good?’

  ‘No, none of them. They’re all communal.’

  ‘I’m getting this feeling that you’re becoming somewhat communal too.’

  ‘Yes, true. This country is making me communal. I am not to blame.’

  ‘This country is making you communal?’ said Sudhamoy, in a voice filled with disbelief.

  ‘Yes, the country is doing it.’

  Suronjon emphasized the fact that it was the country. Sudhamoy went silent. Suronjon looked at all the broken things in the room. There were still shards of glass on the floor. Did they not hurt anyone’s feet? Even if they did not hurt their feet, they surely hurt their minds.

  Two

  Suronjon stayed in his room all day—lying in bed. He did not feel like going out anywhere. He did not even feel like talking to pass the time of day. Should he go and look under the bridge for Maya’s rotting, bloated body? No, he was not going anywhere today.

  In the late afternoon, Suronjon paced up and down the courtyard. He walked alone, pensively. Then he went to his room and brought all his books out to the courtyard. Kironmoyee thought that he was putting his books out in the sun because they were being attacked by pests. Das Kapital, the works of Lenin, Essays by Marx and Engels, Morgan, Gorki, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Jean Paul Sartre, Pavlov, Rabindranath, Manik Bandopadhyay, Nehru,

  Azad . . . he took all the thick volumes on sociology, economics, politics and history and tore out their pages and scattered them all over, then gathered them together and dropped a lit matchstick on them. The papers burst into flames exactly in the same way that militant Muslim fundamentalists get inflamed every time they see a Hindu. The courtyard was filled with black smoke. Kironmoyee came running because she smelt something burning.

  ‘Want to sit by the fire? Come,’ said Suronjon, smiling.

  ‘Have you gone mad?’ said Kironmoyee, faintly.

  ‘Yes, Ma. I was a good man for a long time. Now I am going mad. One can’t find peace unless one goes mad.’

  Kironmoyee stood by the door and watched the conflagration started by Suronjon. She was too stunned to even think that she could bring a bucket of water and throw it on the flames to douse them. Suronjon was hidden by the black smoke and Kironmoyee thought that it was not books that Suronjon was burning but himself.

  Sudhamoy pondered that the lively, intelligent young man, who often helped other people get rid of their troubles, was now in deep trouble himself. It was as if he had swallowed poison and was turning blue as the poison spread itself in his body. Suronjon had taken to lying wordlessly in bed most hours of the day, shouting and screaming with his friends, bringing women into his room at night and being abusive about Muslims; and now he was burning his books—Sudhamoy realized that Suronjon was deeply hurt and bewildered. His disappointment with his family, society and the state had created a blinding sense of inferiority and he was burning himself in those flames.

  Suronjon was happy looking at the fire. All over the country the homes of Hindus had burnt in such fires. Such raging flames. Was it only houses and temples that had been burnt? Were people’s minds not burning as well? Suronjon was no longer going to live by his father’s ideals. Sudhamoy had believed in the principles of left politics and Suronjon too had grown up with the same values. He no longer believed in those values. Many leftists had abused him as a ‘bastard infidel’. He had been subjected to that since school. During arguments with friends in school, they would swiftly taunt him as the ‘child of an infidel’. Suronjon’s eyes were smarting and he could feel tears pooling in them. He was not sure whether the tears were from pain or from the smoke of his burning ideals. Suronjon breathed easy when the burning was over. Whenever he had been lying in bed during the past few days and his eyes had flitted across those volumes, he’d felt that the ideals propounded in those books were eating away at his very core. He no longer believed in ideals and stuff. He wished that he could kick out the beliefs he had held so dear all his life. Why should he bear the burden of these principles when all most people do is only touch their lips to the cup of wisdom but not take it into their hearts and minds? Why should he bother with being the only believer?

  Suronjon wanted to sleep long and deep after his ritual of fire. But he could not sleep! He remembered Rotna. He had not seen her for a while now. He wondered how she was. He could read Rotna’s deep, black eyes—there was no need to talk. She was probably waiting for Suronjon to knock on her door. They could sit with cups of tea, exchange the stories of their lives and talk the night away. Suronjon decided that he would visit Rotna that evening.

  ‘So, is visiting only my responsibility?’ he planned to ask her. ‘Don’t you ever feel like visiting me?’

  Suronjon had this feeling that suddenly, on a pensive afternoon, Rotna would arrive at his house. She would be there to stay, saying, ‘I feel empty inside, Suronjon.’ It had been so long since anyone had kissed him. Parveen used to kiss him. She would wrap her arms around him and say, ‘You’re mine, mine, mine alone. I’m going to kiss you a hundred times today.’ They would move apart if Kironmoyee suddenly entered the room. But Parveen had chosen to marry a Muslim and lead a trouble-free life. Rotna would not have the same problem of community. He would put his battered life in her hands. As Suronjon was making plans to cleanse his body of all the grime and dust that it had gathered, wear a clean shirt and go see Rotna that evening, someone knocked on his door. He opened the door and found Rotna standing outside. She was all dressed up and looked good. She wore a bright sari and bangles that tinkled on her arms. She was smiling sweetly and her smile both surprised and overwhelmed Suronjon.

  ‘Come in, please,’ said Suronjon, welcoming her, and almost at once saw that there was a handsome man standing behind her.

  Where could Rotna sit? The room was a mess! However, he offered her the broken chair.

  ‘Guess whom I’ve brought along?’ asked Rotna, beaming.

  Suronjon had not met Rotna’s older brother and wondered whether it was he.

  ‘He’s Humayun, my husband,’ said Rotna with a laugh that sounded like tinkling bangles, without giving Suronjon much time to think.

  Suronjon felt a raging storm inside and it was as if the last tree left for him to cling to during the storm had also been uprooted. He had lost a large part of his life carelessly and had begun thinking of spending the rest of his life building a home and family with Rotna. But she had thought it best to survive in this terror-ridden country by
acquiring a Muslim husband. Suronjon’s face darkened with humiliation and anger. He was expected to sit in his poverty-ridden, messy room with Rotna and her handsome, possibly wealthy husband, talk with them in a friendly way, serve them tea, shake hands with him and invite them to come again whilst bidding them farewell. No, he was not going to do any of this. He did not feel up to such politeness.

  ‘I’m sorry but I have to leave just now for something important. I really can’t stop to talk,’ he said, much to the amazement of his visitors.

  ‘Sorry,’ murmured his guests and left swiftly, feeling greatly insulted.

  Suronjon banged the doors shut and stood with his back to them. He stood like that for a long time and came back to the present only when he heard Kironmoyee asking him a question.

  ‘Have you returned the money that you borrowed?’ she asked.

  The word ‘borrowed’ pierced Suronjon like a poisoned arrow. He stared at Kironmoyee’s anxious face but did not say anything.

  Suronjon felt suffocated. It felt like his room was an iron case and he was unable to unlock it and get out. He paced up and down the veranda but after a while, like the monsoon rains, a pall of sadness descended on him. Kironmoyee came silently and put a cup of tea on the table. Suronjon noticed it but did not reach out for the cup. He lay down for a bit, got up again and wondered whether he should go to the bridge. Every time he remembered the bridge he felt shaken and thought that his decomposed, lifeless body too would be found floating in the drain. Their house was silent like a stagnant pond. It was as if the three people in the house were moving silently like water beetles do on water and no one could hear the footsteps of the others.

  Kironmoyee suddenly broke the ghostly silence. Only a little while ago she had given Suronjon his tea and now without any visible cause she began to howl. The sharpness of her cries made Sudhamoy sit up, startled, and Suronjon went running to her. He found Kironmoyee crying with her head against the wall but did not dare to try and stop her. These tears were not likely to stop, they would flow, they had collected over many days and many nights and now the river of tears within her was brimming over and could not be dammed. Sudhamoy sat still with his head lowered. The despair that could be heard in Kironmoyee’s cries pierced Sudhamoy’s consciousness too. The cries did not stop. No one asked Kironmoyee why she was crying. It was as if both Sudhamoy and Suronjon knew why she was keening from the depths of her heart and did not need to ask.