Freedom Song

by Amit Chaudhuri

  When Mini woke up, she reached out for her spectacles. For without them she suffered a temporary darkening of vision.

  And then she saw her sister. There was Shantidi, already awake, wandering about on the balcony.

  Although Shantidi was better now, and her mild fracture had healed, she had changed to a new, intractable sort of introspection and stubbornness. She would not leave the house.

  ‘What’s the matter,’ asked Mini finally, ‘isn’t it tiresome for you to stay here all day? Why don’t you start going out a little?’

  Shantidi laughed. She shook her head.

  ‘There are things you don’t know,’ she said. ‘There’s a reason I don’t go out.’

  ‘And what is the reason?’ asked Mini.

  ‘You are too trusting, Mini. There are people with their eye on the flat.’

  ‘On our flat?’ asked Mini, incredulous but nevertheless agitated, her heart beating, with a logic of its own, a little faster. (For over the last two months she’d understood that they could just barely make do on about three thousand rupees a month, but fell short if there were emergencies or accidents. And for the first time the idea came to her of them living in an old age home and that it might be the best future they’d have.)

  Shantidi shook her head solemnly. Outside, there was the high-pitched call of a bird that seemed unused to these surroundings.

  ‘Not only our flat—any flat! If the corporation thinks any flat has been left empty, they will take it over and sell it. And there are people over here in the building who are ready to buy another flat to add to their own property. You know that families keep growing,’ she gestured around her. ‘Besides, there are people living here who have connections with the corporation—what if they go and tell someone?’ She spoke with great, knowledgeable practicality, as she always had.

  For many years they’d had no one but each other, and sometimes when they spoke they just became two voices, speaking to each other for the sake of speaking, and when they were silent their surroundings became audible.

  And Mini wondered where she’d got all her information—she who had almost broken her leg and had not stirred out of her home for more than a month. She’s beginning to have delusions now, sitting here with almost nothing to do, she thought; this is a new development, she concluded interestedly.

  ‘Who told you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve heard—’ Then, as if to redeem this generality and strengthen her case, she said, ‘Mrs Roy told me as well.’ And suddenly she looked alone.

  There was something in Mini’s presence, even as she stood there, small and silent, that imparted peace. It emanated and touched those who were around her.

  ‘But you can go out for a few hours. No one will take possession of the flat if you’re away for a short while.’

  ‘Oh no no! You can’t say!’ said Shantidi. ‘These corporation people are capable of anything! And they keep track! They might knock on the door when both of us are away, and say, “Write it down, this flat is empty.”’

  There was a by-lane off Central Avenue, on the corner of which there was a shop that dealt in osteopathic aids and implements, part of it facing the main road. Some of these implements were curved and bent fluently, so that they looked like limbs themselves, on the verge of moving, except that they were sturdy and shone, metallic. It was strange the way you might not have seen the shop for years and then one fine day you noticed it. But when someone at school mentioned it to Mini she already knew the place. She thought she might look in and consider buying a special stick of some sort. For actually the pain, which had disappeared almost, was gradually coming back.

  And now Bhaskar wore his white bridegroom’s topor; and Bhola first wore his own dhoti and then tied one around his son. But Bhaskar’s heart fluttered in secret as if he was nervous before a performance even as outwardly he managed to appear uniformly either bored or harried; and he had the merest premonition of coming happiness, so natural a state that he would already be unable to remember any other that had preceded it.

  All that month Piyu, at her study table, had read for her tests beneath the light of the table lamp.

  The frightening and exhilarated sound of ululation rose over the other sounds in Vidyasagar Road; it disturbed some of the children rapt in their textbooks in the other houses. A wedding was not unusual in the evening though it might be unexpected at that time of year. And it reminded one of other things which the city usually kept secret. People on balconies watched as a car came to pick up Bhaskar; darkness had settled on almost everything; a small group of relatives formed temporarily outside the gates of the house, deterring passers-by. They were patiently waiting for Bhaskar; he’d gone to the toilet; they noted that it was twenty-five minutes to the auspicious moment, the lagna, and hoped he wouldn’t be long . . . but here he was! Then they got into the car; Bhola, his heart in his mouth, and other relatives would follow in their cars through Vidyasagar Road and Ashutosh Mukherjee Road.

  It was a little after sunset that it had begun; now it was, to all purposes, night, but a stream of commerce and transactions between human beings continued in aggregations of localities, oblivious to everything else. Some people had come all the way from Shyambazar and Paikpara, with children who had their heads stuck out of the car window most of the way and had to have their hair combed before they got out. Later, there would be people eating at the tables whom no one recognized.

  The slow but by now palpable approach of Bhaskar’s car set into motion a small, winglike flutter of panic among the waiting children, cries of ‘Here’s the bridegroom!’, and much tripping on the folds of the unfamiliar garments they were enveloped in. Once more that unearthly ululation was heard, like nothing issuing from the voices of humans. In Sandhya’s father’s heart, as he walked forth swiftly, there was a stirring, like a stab of pain, for his motherless daughter. And in Vidyasagar Road, Bhaskar’s mother, who would arrive later, sat alone with herself as company, become a shadow in the house she’d come to so many years ago.

  And when Bhaskar saw the priests, he was startled and mystified. For he had forgotten the sacredness of the enterprise, the pact with ancestry, caste, and divinity which the two priests would make on his behalf. And they would evidently be his wayfarers and guides for the next hour or so.

  Both of the priests were touchingly and shabbily self-conscious on the occasion, as a recently married couple might be caught waking up at home. One of them had hair that was oiled and combed back; and the other one, when he opened his mouth, revealed he had a couple of teeth missing.

  ‘I’ll take the Gold Spot!’

  ‘Would you like a Gold Spot, Uncle?’

  ‘Bring one here!’

  The children were fighting to serve soft drinks.

  ‘It’s not quite a bourgeois affair, is it?’

  ‘I suppose not. What can you say about weddings though—our mothers and fathers did it the same way.’

  ‘Our parents did a lot of things that . . . ask that boy for a Gold Spot.’

  Two Party members, in somewhat loud clothes, unusually happy, talking above the music, were inhaling the perfume of sandalwood in smoke and exploring the territory.

  He had to look at Sandhya and she at him; the division—a white cloth—was removed. His relatives were teasing him and he had begun to be irritable; he remembered that one meeting they had had, and that he had not dared to look at her properly then, and this seemed to him almost a continuation of that very meeting. ‘Ei, look at him,’ cried her cousins; and she did finally, and smiled, as if at a private thought.

  After an hour they both got up at the priest’s command to walk seven times around the fire. When he sat down again, he thought he would open a conversation and say, ‘It’s hot, isn’t it?’ but did not. When Mohit and Sameer and his cousin Arnab approached him to speak to him, as if he had been smuggled into another world but could still communicate in monosyllables with this one, he answered over the droning of the priests with a casual smile
and murmur. His nostrils were full of smoke and, now and then, the smell of sandalwood. She seemed quite stoic and self-assured, wiping away the perspiration from her forehead. It was a moment of great loneliness for them, as they sat there, not understanding the mantras; what seemed to be boredom in them was actually an odd, vacant melancholy; but, meanwhile, the photographers craned over each other, bumping into relatives, while the flash-bulbs went off.

  They had been asked to repeat their own names; their parents’ names; each other’s names; they had been wished well, in a Sanskrit they did not understand, and a happy married life by Tradition, in the person of these priests. Then one of the priests said, ‘It’s finished,’ to Bhaskar as he rose, surreptitiously, as if imparting a bit of taboo information before leaving. For they had been asked by Bhola to complete the rituals as quickly as they could and had managed to abbreviate a few things and skim guilelessly over others (and dilate a few stanzas, since they were being paid by the hour) and they had finished in just under two hours. The wedding was over, and, though no one appeared to have noticed and they themselves were almost ignorant of it, the two—the young man, who evidently had a backache, and the young woman—were now married. They were at a loss as to what to do now; they had the puzzled air of people who’d just knocked on a door and were on the verge of turning round without having heard a reply from within.

  But it was difficult to come to terms with how ordinary it was. The new dhoti was already crumpled; and Bhaskar was wearing his kurta again, shyly.

  A bed had been made for them, and complex garlands and tassels of flowers, painstakingly created, hung on all sides around it to enclose the two, at some future moment, in privacy. When they would go, eventually, to Vidyasagar Road, this bed would go with them and climb lightly up all the stairs to Bhaskar’s room.

  And after another three days, when Bhaskar had brought his bride to his house and promised, at a ceremony, to provide her with food and clothes for the rest of her life, he grew drowsy; he had spent three days eating.

  In the evening, Sandhya took off her wedding sari and went into the bathroom—an interval passed in which her absence was not noticed—and she emerged wearing a red cotton sari, her hair wet. She folded the Benarasi she had been wearing and asked Bhaskar’s mother, ‘Where should I keep this?’

  They were in the large room on the second floor, where Bhaskar used to sleep alone. That night they sat on the bed, with gifts on every side.

  She seemed reticent.

  ‘That light is so bare,’ she said, pointing to a light attached to the wall, ‘it should have a lamp-shade.’ He looked at the light.

  ‘Were you tired today?’ he asked without sincerity.

  ‘No—were you?’ she asked, folding handkerchiefs that had been received as a gift.

  ‘Not really,’ he said, suppressing a yawn. ‘Though I am feeling a little sleepy.’ They spoke as if they’d known each other for years, while Vidyasagar Road unfolded before them, invisibly, as if it had never changed. He immediately regretted saying this, because he wanted to talk to her; but his eyes were red and tired.

  Later, he went and changed into his kurta and pyjamas and returned and lay upon the bed. Sandhya came out of the bathroom wearing a nightie, tying her hair into a plait. Her shadow hovered upon the wall, trying to find its home here.

  ‘Where does Piyu sleep?’ she asked thoughtfully.

  ‘Downstairs,’ he replied.

  She considered this silently. Entire childhoods had passed in this room, like a light going out, that she could only sense unclearly. He didn’t know what to do next. As she sat on the bed, he turned around again; he glanced at her narrow back, at the dark skin above the neck of her nightie, the colour of her shoulders. And he wondered why she had decided to marry him; it was probably some entirely trivial reason, something he should be able to imagine but couldn’t. Plausibly, almost touchingly, there might be no good reason: how mysterious the world was at every moment, the birth of love and generations. The nightie, starched cotton, was a pattern of pink flowers with white borders, almost like a curtain, probably made recently by some tailor or chosen from ten nighties that looked nearly the same at some shop; and when she lay down beside him, he scratched his arm and pretended to be tired. But he also felt the guilty, obtrusive stirring of desire; he kept it to himself, instinct or some genetically inherited knowledge instructing him that there was a decorum about these things he must observe. They still had a few of the ornamental marks that had been made along their faces and foreheads, which hadn’t come off with soap; Sandhya’s having been made by an aunt, widowed, forty-two years old, watched by her two twelve-year-old daughters (they were twins). But Sandhya had never known before now, the eve of her wedding, the minor artistic accomplishments this aunt, who lived on Vivekananda Road, possessed; actually, she did not know her very well; but she had, with a clove dipped repeatedly in sandalwood paste, made, with every tiny pin-prick impress, those subtle marks on her forehead. If there was one thing she would have liked to keep from that day it would have been these patterns.

  ‘I have to wake up early tomorrow,’ he muttered, waiting to see what she would say. But she didn’t protest; she had wavy hair; he saw that she had dark lips; the calm sound of the fan repeatedly filled the silence. ‘Are you missing home?’ he said, turning on his side and letting his hand fall near her shoulder; he had acquired a small belly, and she seemed thin in comparison to him. This morning, she had cried when leaving her house. ‘No, not really,’ she said, quite gravely, like a child who has had a new experience. It was strange; they’d spoken with each other at length two nights ago in the rented room in that house in which they’d been married; and they had forgotten, for the time being, what they had talked about and would almost have to be reacquainted with each other. Bhaskar switched off the light and they tried to fall asleep. He had not known before how shy he was with the opposite sex. It was an uncomfortable night; whenever a car passed through the lane, its headlights lit up the wall of the room, and towards dawn, a kitten mewed and sounded like a child crying. Each sound set the tympanum in the inner ear vibrating.

  Towards dawn he awoke and gazed unsurprised at her as she slept, her eyelids momentarily parted to reveal the blue-grey light in her eyeball. But she was not awake, and everywhere there were only the merest signs of life; the blue dawn; a reticent vibration from the tramline; the early insistent cry of a shalik; her breath; in each of these life resided on the edge of itself. Meanwhile the fan lulled them.

  When Bhaskar woke up again, he found she was not there. He was surrounded by the sound of crows and buses and rickshaws and the tube-well and schoolchildren, all things apparently in perpetual transit. Going down, he was startled to see that she had joined his parents and Piyu for breakfast in the room where they all ate.

  ‘Where should I put these?’

  Sandhya was holding a chain from which a golden locket hung. She held it, weightless, in her palm.

  ‘Let’s put this one back in its box,’ said Bhaskar’s mother. They bent forward like two conspirators. Light glinted and scattered.

  It was one of the things she had given her. Last month she had taken a bus and gone to the jeweller’s and had had a necklace and a pair of earrings ‘broken’ and converted into this longer, this more beautiful piece. And she felt a strange tenderness towards it that was not unconnected to loss, for what was once hers had become something else and someone else’s.

  Her youth lived on in the forms these jewels took. And whenever Bhaskar’s mother felt that familiar boredom coming on with a piece of jewellery, she would take the piece, like a child with a toy, to the jeweller who had first made it and describe in words the new design, and leave the piece with him as if she were lending it to him; and he would give it back to her made ‘new’ in five days. Sometimes, when the piece was not very old, one suffered a small loss, for the jeweller subtracted about a tenth of the gold as part of his fee.

  When she was young gold had been cheap, an
d she remembered those beloved thick bangles and that floral necklace she’d got when she was married.

  After Bhola had left his job and embarked upon his business, Bhaskar’s mother had been protective and uncompromising about one thing: her jewellery. She was wise; for it was instinct rather than experience that told her that once he started using her gold to cover his business losses, it would happen again and again. But it had to be admitted that he had never made such a request. And this disinterested emblem of beauty and desire, the soul’s continual yearning for celebration, so removed from the everyday, which would one day belong entirely to her children, to Piyu or to her sons’ wives, remained untouched.

  Two days later they stripped the bed of its floral covering; some of the flowers had dried and fallen to the floor, from where they were swept away by Haridasi. For Haridasi, Bhaskar’s wedding and the bride’s arrival had been events touched with wonder. It had certainly been the biggest change in the household since she’d come to work here. She had looked carefully at the bride, and thought she was graceful, if not beautiful. And the bride too had glanced at her once or twice.