Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  Rangamati’s beauty reminded me of only one person again and again: Chandana. Chandana must have walked on that field, she must have sat beside that lake, she must have played under that tree as a child—that was all I could think. I wondered what games Chandana used to play when she was little. Did she ever play gollachhut?17 Even if she did not, life had played it with her. She was the one who had been tagged and flung out from the Chakma way of life in Rangamati into a Bengali household in an alien place. Was she happy? I badly wished to know the answer to that question. It seemed I had not seen her for a thousand years. The last we met it had been in R’s dilapidated house in Muhammadpur. She had come with her son, but at that time there had been nothing for me to welcome her with; I could not even take her out to lunch. Once I had visited her at her sister-in-law’s house in Dhaka and seen for myself how awkward and withdrawn Chandana was at home. She had a small room to herself and her infant son and seeing her I had refused to believe that she slept there with a man. This was Chandana, the same girl who could not stand the sight of a bare-chested man or see a man chewing food! And here I was supposed to believe she had become a loyal and devoted housewife? I could not shake off the thought that no matter in whose arms she was, she was not happy. I had kept wondering if she still wrote poems like she used to.

  HSS made plans of travelling to Kaptai from Rangamati. He was going to meet some of his admirers there and they wished to host us. I was not prepared for the trick he pulled after reaching Kaptai; he introduced me to his admirers as his daughter. They had never met his daughter so it was not hard convincing them. We were on a boat in the middle of the lake and he was sitting with his fans and answering their questions about his new book and what he was writing then. One of his devotees happened to be sitting beside me. Perhaps thinking that not talking to HSS’s daughter could be considered rude, the man smiled shyly at me and asked, ‘Is this your first time at Kaptai?’

  ‘Yes, the first time.’

  ‘Your house is in Gulshan, isn’t it?’

  I heard my own heart beating erratically and I turned towards the water pretending to have not heard his question. He asked again.

  ‘You must have read everything your father has ever written.’

  I looked at him. ‘Excuse me, what?’

  ‘I was saying, you must have read all of HSS’s works?’

  ‘Oh. Not all, I’ve read some.’

  I turned to stare at the water again, hoping against hope that the man would be dissuaded from asking any more questions by my intense interest in watching the lake. Unfortunately, another admirer joined the first to keep me company.

  ‘Are you returning to London soon?’

  Trembling helplessly on the inside, I steadfastly stared at the water, unable to think of any suitable answer to the question. It was as if I had not heard anything, that I was hard of hearing. HSS may have been a renowned author, he may have had all his faculties intact, but it still did not guarantee that his daughter had to have the same. For a moment I wished I could simply jump into the lake if that would have saved me from the questions.

  ‘What is your daughter’s name, HSS?’ someone asked.

  Smiling sweetly he replied, ‘Her name is Adwitiya.’

  ‘Such a beautiful name,’ the same voice said again.

  ‘I gave her the name.’

  HSS was looking at his Adwitiya fondly. He was looking at her sad eyes, at the tears threatening to gather in the corners. He saw all that but the smile on his face did not slip. He said over that smile, ‘Her mother calls her by another name. Why aren’t you talking, Adwitiya? Don’t you like it here?’

  Nodding to indicate that I did like it there—saying otherwise was not an option at the risk of ruining such a wonderful boat ride—I turned my gaze back to the water. At least no one noticed the tears.

  Frequently, HSS would unbutton his shirt to reveal a long scar from his throat to his belly, the result of a cardiac operation, and claim he was not of this world for much longer. This reminder of his mortality used to make me feel even more partial towards him. It was these feelings perhaps that had stopped me that day from calling my father’s bluff. It made me cautious while talking lest I addressed him wrong and spoiled the game. Had I been a better actress I would perhaps have been able to ask him that day, with a boat full of people as my captive audience, ‘Father, did you take your medicines after lunch?’

  HSS wrote plays; in fact, he had written quite a few for the People’s Theatre. Around that time he was translating Shakespeare’s plays, to be staged by an English theatre director. But HSS did not just write plays, he performed them in real life too. What else had that trip been but a staged play? He could have introduced me as someone who was like his daughter. Instead he had said I was his daughter. Not once had he been anxious that I might deny being his daughter! Nor had he been apprehensive about what could happen to his reputation should the truth come out. Despite being tempted repeatedly I did not tell a soul anything that day, I did not because I did not want to tarnish his reputation. I did not respect him any less than the others, then why did he have to put me under the spotlight and toy with me so? He had his own name, his own identity, while mine had to be hidden away! I could not address him formally, nor could I call him ‘HSS bhai’. The words would almost slip past my lips before I gulped them back down again, the words dissolving on my tongue and leaving it dry as parchment.

  After the boat ride and a visit to the Kaptai dam, HSS went on a long tour of the navy base, with the deaf and mute Adwitiya struggling in his wake. We had a dinner invitation at a naval officer’s house in the evening where, in front of the whole house, my new identity was reinforced—HSS’s daughter Adwitiya. When the naval officer addressed me formally HSS intervened swiftly, ‘Don’t be so formal with her! She isn’t even twenty-one yet. Are you twenty-one yet?’ Twenty-five years old when this was happening, I had lowered my head to count the toes on my feet, then the fingers on my hand, and then back again to my feet. By then HSS had begun drinking.

  ‘Your daughter doesn’t talk a lot, does she?’

  ‘You’re right. She talks very little. I don’t know where she gets it. Where do you get it from? From Mymensingh?’ HSS winked at me as he finished. None of the others knew anything about Mymensingh.

  The wife of the naval officer had put in a lot of care into her appearance for the evening. Smiling gratefully at HSS, she approached us for a photograph. The other people in the house wanted photos too, even the neighbours did, and HSS made me sit beside him for each one.

  ‘Does your daughter write too?’ inquired the naval officer’s wife.

  ‘Yes, she does. Very beautiful poems she writes. Why don’t you read out one of your poems for them, Adwitiya!’

  I shook my head in refusal immediately.

  ‘So naughty! She’s very naughty!’ HSS laughed, slapping me on the back.

  Everyone present confessed that they had previously seen HSS on television. Even while sitting down for the lavish dinner that is what they continued to talk about—who had seen him when and in which show. Only one person proudly declared that he had read a book too, Adidiganta Nagna Padadwani (Barefoot Across Eternity). The name astounded me, especially because it was not HSS’s work at all, it was a book by Shamsur Rahman! Not once did HSS protest and rectify the error that it was not his work! Instead he looked at me once, winked, and it seemed as if the entire thing was all too amusing for him. Perhaps that too was a side effect of ‘not being of this world for too long’; it made one susceptible to finding joy at making others dance to their tunes. His joy was short-lived though, what with the urgent bathroom runs he had to make throughout the evening. When I finally went to the bathroom after dinner I immediately figured out the reason for his frequent visits. The entire place was covered in vomit, the sink was overflowing and the drainage system too was entirely clogged. Not that HSS was sick and unconscious somewhere. He was still holding court, that same old smile fixed on his lips, a smile whose
secrets I could never interpret.

  At the Kaptai guest house, HSS had ultimately booked one room—primarily to save money and also because it would not have been odd for a daughter to share a room with her father. Despite it being a big room, with two beds on either side, I was petrified about sleeping there that night. HSS was drunk out of his senses by then and I had no wish to spend the night in the same room as him. At least if I could have slept in the corridor outside, or even on a mat spread out under the tree, I would have been more at peace. Instead, pretending as if he had not touched alcohol that evening and as if I was his daughter for real and everything was not a lie, I used my own imaginary excuses as a shield to bolster my courage. Entering the room I headed straight for the bed and the blanket on it, which I proceeded to cover myself with from head to toe. As odd as that was in the heat, there was nothing else I could have done that night. To me the blanket was the only thing that could have protected me like a force shield from any untoward incidents. So I held on to its edges for dear life, afraid that any moment a bandit would barge in and attack. My own heartbeat was making a din in my ear, anxious that soon Khelaram would be in the room looking for Sharifa’s bed.

  ‘Are you asleep?’

  I did not answer. Instead I pretended to be asleep; a sleeping person would be spared from answering questions. Lying still on the bed like a dead log, I pretended to have not heard his query. Stealthily parting the covers in the darkness—as if it had moved while turning—I peered out from underneath to see him walking about in the room. Why was he walking about? Why was he not going to bed? What did he want? Did he have ulterior motives in bringing me so far away from Dhaka? Despite there being empty rooms in the guest house and even after the naval officer had offered to book separate rooms for us, he had booked one single room and introduced me as his daughter for no apparent reason. The entire night all I did was listen to my own heartbeat and hear the sounds of HSS, awake, walking about and mumbling to himself. A girl from the suburbs such as I could not fathom what was real and what was not in how this renowned author from Dhaka behaved that night.

  The next morning we drove to the airport and took our flight back to Dhaka. He did not take the baby taxi to his house, afraid that his wife or someone else would see us together and there would be talk that he had been away cavorting with a younger woman. He got off near Gulshan and I took the taxi to Nayapaltan. Nearing my house I heaved a sigh of relief, the kind an amateur actress would have after finally being allowed to get off the stage. All he wished to do was avoid gossip and so the only recourse left for him was to keep doing what he was doing in secrecy. It was possible that he had been angry with me that day because he had not gotten from me what he had probably hoped for. Perhaps he had been angry with himself too for having spent so much money on the trip in vain. Like how in his novel Babar Ali had only managed to seduce his girlfriend after much subterfuge and after taking her from one corner of the country to the other. Did his own creation Babar Ali live somewhere within him? For the first time I felt it was definitely possible that it was so. On our way back he barely spoke a word. He was beginning to resemble someone I barely knew, as if he had only heard my name or heard about me but we had not yet met formally. Was it because he had not succeeded in having his way with me? Or had he been thinking about his writing? Or was it because he had been reluctant to let his co-passengers in the flight know that he had been away on vacation with a younger woman he was not related to? At least in my behaviour there had been no sign that I was struggling to trust him, or that I was suspicious about his motives. Pretending to not understand a gesture was something I could do well, especially in the middle of uncomfortable situations. When men pretend to know more than they actually do it can get very sticky if women do not counter this by pretending they do not know things. Since intuition has always been a stronger trait in women, they find it easier to sense looming danger. I mention women in plural here because later I got to know very similar things from Yasmin. She too had managed to ignore many an illicit offer simply by pretending to not understand the pass made at her in the first place.

  It was possible that HSS had had no ulterior motives for taking me with him. It was possible he had taken me with him just as a kind gesture. However, introducing me as his daughter was something I could not accept. He did not have to hide my true identity. I might not have been a famous poet like him but I had my own name, my own self. I might not have been a poet but I still wrote poetry. So what had been the reason for the charade? It was not as if he had been having a scandalous extramarital love affair with me!

  Once, while visiting us in Mymensingh, HSS had called Shamsur Rahman from our house somewhat unnecessarily. After a few initial polite questions asking after his health, HSS had informed Rahman that he was travelling away from Dhaka. He had asked Rahman to guess where he was and when Rahman failed to guess correctly, HSS had smugly informed the former that he was only 120 miles from Dhaka and surrounded by beautiful women. Done passing on this news he had looked at me and smiled. ‘I hope you heard, I did not tell him where I am or under whose roof.’ I had failed to grasp why that had to be a secret.

  ‘You could have said you are in my house.’

  ‘What are you saying! Everyone in Dhaka will get to know!’

  ‘So? Why is that a problem?’

  He had only laughed mysteriously at that. I still don’t know why he had lied on the phone that day. He had regaled me with stories of the many women Shamsur Rahman had had affairs with and while telling me these stories I had seen his jaws tighten; it had convinced me that he was secretly envious of Rahman. Envy had him in its grasp; all he wished for was to be as big a poet as Shamsur Rahman and acquire the adulation of as many female admirers. He loved the word too—envy! Once, while on a trip to the flooded Brahmaputra plains, he had pointed to a tree on a tiny stump of land and said, ‘Do you know what that tree is called? It’s called Envy.’ Strangled by his own jealousies he had told me about his doomed love affair with his sister-in-law who had grown up in his house. They had been in love, or so he told me, and their relationship had progressed as far as a relationship could go. Later, the sister-in-law had met a young wastrel and eloped. HSS had been unable to process the fact that she had left him. He had confessed that he often visited the sister-in-law and bought her everything she might require to take care of a family. He had gone on about how deeply she had hurt him by going ahead with this marriage, how she had left him completely alone.

  I could never fathom why he had chosen to reveal such details of his personal life to me. Sometimes it seemed he was very lonely, that he had no one whom he could talk to about his joys and sorrows. It made me feel sorry for him. I could also not shake off the thought that perhaps authors were inherently like that: they told as many engrossing stories as they wrote and fact had very little to do with those. HSS had once told me a story from his childhood. Once as a boy he had entered his house through the back door and told everyone that there was a huge dog at the front gate. Of course there had been no such thing, but he had said it nonetheless. There had been no reason, neither had he wanted to scare anyone—he had said it because he wanted to.

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Yes, just like that.’

  Perhaps that had been the first hint as to his future vocation as a writer. HSS lied quite frequently, often without any particular reason, perhaps because to him life had always been like a short story. Regardless of what he believed, or what tales he told, I must confess that he used to speak beautifully and his stories were always amazing. I have always been in awe of this quality in him.

  ~

  HSS was greeted with a grand reception at Abakash only once, when he had come to Mymensingh for a programme organized by Shokal Kabita Parisad. I had made arrangements for his stay at Abakash without previously considering how Father was going to react to the news—he was going to scream the house down, or perhaps he was going to throw HSS out summarily. Admittedly it had been a risk.
I had set Mother the task of convincing him that HSS was one of the foremost authors and intellectuals in the country and so he had to refrain from behaving like an animal with the man. Dada was asked to praise HSS in front of Father as much as possible. The objective was to convince Father to allow us to host HSS at Abakash for two days. In the end Father had consented and we immediately set ourselves to preparing the house for the visit. Every conceivable sort of exotic item of food was bought from the market and the kitchen almost became a warzone. My room was cleaned and set up nicely for the esteemed guest. Let alone misbehaving, Father had put on his suit to sit and have dinner with HSS and for two days, instead of coming home and shouting as was his usual routine, he had done his best to behave like a civilized human being.

  The second time, however, we were not so lucky and it was all because of Chotda. The feeling of gratitude everyone had been nurturing ever since HSS’s first visit was brutally dispelled by him when he snidely remarked to Father, ‘The whole of Dhaka knows this HSS’s shenanigans. He has quite the colourful reputation with women. That rat bastard.’ Almost immediately HSS was declared persona non grata at Abakash. Nevertheless, it was not as if he stopped coming to Mymensingh after that. He visited again and stayed at the guest quarters of the Circuit House. He used to tell me about his travels all over the country—that travel broadened the horizons of experience and that one needed to study people because there was nothing more fascinating than them. How people talked, how they laughed or cried, how they got embarrassed or felt fear—everything was an object of study. I remember sitting near his feet and listening to him philosophize with awe.