Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  Father did not know the real reason behind the yellow piece about me in Sugandha. He did not know that such magazines wrote salacious gossip to boost sales. If he wanted to know about my life he should have asked me directly. Surely the good people of Sugandha did not know more about my private affairs than I did. I was terribly angry with him and in my lonely prison there was nothing I could do but quake with useless rage. The room had been mine once, but locked inside, it began to resemble a coffin to me. I was surprised to find how much of a screaming, stomping child I could be instead of the strong and self-assured woman I was. I had been flying so Father had caught me and put me in a cage to teach me a lesson. Since he was my father he was convinced he had the right to do whatever he pleased. I languished in my prison and wondered how much longer I would have to tolerate his rule over my life, his cruelty and his stupidity. Can debts owed to parents only be repaid at death? Did I not have the right to chart the course of my own life? Gradually my last reserve crumbled and left me feeling the most helpless I had ever been in my entire life. So many people used to read my writings and tell me how brave I was, how my words provided courage to numerous women. If only they could have witnessed for themselves how powerless I was, how vulnerable, in chains that someone else had put on me.

  Abakash—a part of my soul, an archive of my most precious memories, my beloved—had turned into hell, and so I fled. One morning Mother had just brought me breakfast. All of a sudden, hearing Sufi screaming and the sound of clattering utensils, she ran to the kitchen with the door left ajar behind her. There was no one posted in the drawing room, Father was not home and Dada was in the pharmacy. I ran out of the house in the same sari I was in. I took a circuitous route, the sort no one would have expected me to take; I could not take the main road for fear of rousing suspicions. Neither did I wish to turn around and find someone chasing after me to drag me by my hair back to my prison.

  What I wanted the most was a rickshaw, and when I did manage to get one I asked the man to take me towards Sutiakhali House via the road behind Abakash which none of us usually frequented. I knew if anyone had run after me then they would either go towards Serpurkur Paar or Golpukur Paar. As the rickshaw crossed Sutiakhali to take the road adjacent to Rajbari School I directed the man to take me to the bus stand for Tangail. There was a possibility Father would head straight to the bus stand for Dhaka on hearing about my daring escape. Except the local ones there were no other buses at the stand. I immediately boarded one of the buses but it did very little to ease the pounding in my chest. It was not completely safe since a local bus would stop at every bus stand on its way to Tangail. I could have waited for the express bus that went directly to Tangail, but waiting alone at the bus stand would not have been the wisest thing to do. Besides, I could not be sure when the express bus would make an appearance. Father could turn up any moment after failing to find me at the bus stop for Dhaka, or someone might recognize me and send him word. That was the reason I had avoided taking the train too.

  Inside the flimsy tin can that was the local bus, I sat and fiercely wished for us to leave the city behind as fast as possible. Unable to stay still, my eyes strayed to the window time and again; the pounding in my heart had not stopped. When the bus finally set off not a soul could have known about the terrible war raging inside me. The bus found its usual route—people getting off and new people getting on, the conductor beating on the tin side with his palms to signal the driver accordingly. Being a girl I was not allowed to sit in any of the normal seats. I was ushered to the ‘exclusive’ seat beside the driver, right by the scalding hot engine. There was no place to put my feet so I had to fold them up to my chest and sit still. It took nearly eight hours to reach Tangail. Once there I got off and went in search of buses bound for Dhaka.

  By the time I reached Dhaka it was almost eleven in the night. There were no relatives whom I considered family any more; I wanted to get away from all of them. They had declared me an outcast. I did not wish to see them and neither did I wish for my presence to cause them discomfort. I was hungry and I knew if I went to a restaurant they would also let me use their phone. More than the food I was anxious about who I could ask for a place to stay. Unable to think for too long, once I did get to that phone I dialled the first number that came to my mind.

  MM was astounded by what I told him. I learnt from him that he had called the hospital asking about me and they had informed him that I was on leave. How could I describe to him what sort of leave I had been on! The only thing I could do was to ask him if I could stay the night at his place. He agreed at once, and even came to pick me up on his motorcycle to take me back to his place. I was given the extra bed meant for guests in their drawing room. I cannot recall how the entire next day passed, except for the fact that I slept for what seemed like an eternity. I could have slept more, should have slept the entire week given the ordeal I had been through, but MM came with fresh news the day after. His mother was not very happy that an unknown woman was staying in the house without reason because it could potentially become fodder for gossip. If MM and I were to get married then my stay at their house would make sense. That very day a man arrived with a heavy green book, which MM spread out in front of me for a signature. Again someone wanted my signature! Like a complete halfwit I signed the document sealing my fate.

  Not for a moment did I pause to consider the significance of the signature. Why did I sign? Because I was angry with Father and I had nowhere to go either. So many years later when I reflect on that moment I cannot help but berate myself for signing that piece of paper that day. I might have been angry with Father but was it really necessary to take such a step? I could have channelled that rage into proving to him once and for all that I had the guts and means to live the sort of independent life I wanted. I did not have a place to go to so I should have looked for one! There were no hostels for doctors but I could have eaten humble pie and sought refuge with a relative. I could have even tolerated Geeta’s misbehaviour and gone to Chotda’s house, or found a place on the floor at Boromama’s. It would have only been for a night! I could have waited for Khoka to find me another place. Why did I call MM instead of him? Khoka’s shop had been closed and I did not have his personal number, but I could have waited till the next morning and called him for help!

  Had I lost all faith in myself? Had I secretly begun to regret my husbandless life? Perhaps I was overcome by a sudden desire to marry and have children like most other women! Had I fallen for MM? No, how could I have loved someone I had known for perhaps two days! Was it because I simply wanted a man, to feel a man’s touch and the heat of his body, something I could get only through a simple signature? Perhaps I had not realized how much I was craving such a touch, to feel complete after spending so much time pitying and deriding myself, a broken cretin baser than even insects. So I guess it did not matter to me who I was with, given how I was unsure if life amounted to anything at all. The signature was imperative for us to be able to stay in the same house and sleep on the same bed. Obviously, men and women sleep together without signatures all the time. But men are not judged for it while for women it becomes a grievous sin. Such a transgression earns women monikers like slut, whore, hussy and demon. It was after sleeping with MM that I understood that a signature was hardly a barrier to intimacy between two people. As expected, the signature failed to provide me the security of marriage I had hoped for. MM’s new congenial persona began to show cracks before long, to reveal the old MM who was still Kabita’s ex-husband. The desolate husband would sit and cry for her, weep pitifully on hearing the news of her impending marriage and I could sense my life getting more tangled with every passing day. All I wanted was to turn time back to when MM and Kabita used to be together and happy and very much in love.

  No one at the hospital was too surprised by my spell of absence and I soon found out why. The day Father had abducted me from Armanitola he had apparently sent a letter to the department with a request for leave. From the hospital
I finally managed to contact Khoka and learnt that he had found another house for me in Shantibag. The landlord had been told that Khoka’s sister was going to rent the place, a doctor who was going to live alone. The landlord, an educated gentleman, had agreed without fuss. MM was also looking for other places nearby, preferably a big one where his relatives too could move in. Since I was quite impressed by the Shantibag house I convinced MM to give up his search and move in there with me. In that pretty two-storey house the two of us embarked on our new adventure.

  I would leave for Mitford early in the morning. MM and I would not run into each other the entire day; he usually left after me and returned late in the night. When he returned he was either already drunk, or had a bottle of alcohol with him so he could be. If not the entire bottle then he finished at least half, and while drinking he wrote editorials for Bichitra. MM was a fast writer, no corrections were required, no pausing to think of a suitable turn of phrase. Alcohol did wonders to his mind and whatever he wrote, he wrote well. If he had tried he could have written beautiful stories but despite having started on it, for some unknown reason he never got around to finishing it.

  One day, during his usual routine of drinking and writing, he asked me to stop contributing columns for Purbabhash. Taken aback, I could not find any credible reason why he wanted me to do so all of a sudden. Gradually, certain recurring criticisms from his end—a certain article was not good enough or I should avoid a particular journal—convinced me that MM was deliberately trying to tear me down so he could maintain control over me. Perhaps outsiders were lucky enough to meet the sober MM because I could only ever get an audience with the drunk one. He had to drink every night without fail and he would not listen to any of my protests when he did. Roaring drunk, he usually came to bed a little before dawn. Except for sex there was no other perceivable relationship between us. Not that the sex could have been taken lightly, given how unfailingly regular it became for us every night. The one bit of information I had not been privy to, and which I soon found out, was MM’s long-term relationship with a rich married woman. The house in Iskaton where MM lived was apparently her property. They had broken up for some time and it was around then that MM and I had gotten close. But the break-up did not last long and MM soon resumed his relationship with her. Consequently, the drinking too continued unabated every night and he did not waste time slipping back to his old self. If only I had known earlier that when he used to call me at the hospital at night it was usually because he was drunk beyond measure by then and that I was just one of the many calls he made in such a state. Instead, I had built up an image of a passionate and sensitive man in my head! Alas, the vagaries of an alcoholic! He would be laughing his head off one moment and screaming his lungs out the next. He would get angry and curse at me like a sailor or take off his belt and beat me black and blue. None of this had any reason for happening, it happened because he wanted to do these things.

  The first floor of the house had been partitioned into two halves; in one Shoma and her family lived. Shoma, in her early twenties, would come over often to chat with me. On nights when MM’s alcohol-induced rampage got out of hand, I often sought refuge with Shoma to save myself from the crazy man. Who knew what the senseless drunkard would do. One night MM came back home, dragged my sleeping form off the bed and began to beat me. There was no reason for this sudden outburst and none of my pleas and anguished queries seemed to make a difference. A series of slaps on my cheeks, a punch to my face that resulted in a bleeding eye, and soon he was choking me and I could not unclench his tightening fingers from my neck. Just as suddenly he let go and began to laugh hysterically. Still laughing, he dragged me by the hair and threw me out of the room, locking me out and forcing me to spend the rest of the night sitting on the stairs. The same scene played out again the next night. On the third night when he tried to drag my bleeding form back to the room for a second round I was forced to run to the landlord to save my life. I cannot recall another time in my life when I was as embarrassed, as helplessly trapped and struggling under the collective weight of shame, fear, disgust, anxiety and my brutally battered self-esteem. All I could do was berate myself. I had been alone before and I was still alone. The only difference was that earlier I did not have any superfluous troubles while with MM I was co-habiting with trouble personified.

  What had I done! Who had I chosen as my refuge! I had been enough for myself, I had never wanted for anything else. The more I thought about my actions the more I felt like sinking into the earth under the ignominy of it all. My self-loathing was telling me loud and clear that I had brought this upon myself; I had allowed myself repeatedly to be so debased and derided. What need did I have of a security blanket in the form of a husband? Why had I felt the need to conform to what society was telling me to do? It had led me into a quagmire populated by husbands, families and babies, and the more I tried extricating myself from its grasp the deeper I seemed to be sinking. The customs I had tried embracing because of social pressure were wrapped around my neck like a noose around cattle. All I had gained from it was a sham marriage.

  I realized I had slipped back into the old social conditioning despite having always actively resisted it. I also realized that whether I was married or not made no difference whatsoever—if there was going to be gossip and slander about me, there was no way for me to avoid it. So why endure one evil in order to avoid another? Not that this was a new realization. I had no illusions left regarding men, had lost them long ago. So why had I gone and done the same thing again? Why had I placed my trust in a man again? Why had I dreamt that this man would not hurt me like the others had? I was a foolish girl and I should have been aware that the only thing that ever changed was the nature of the pain inflicted. I should have known I could never depend on a man and neither could I expect that a man was going to make me happy. I had been married more than once, I had slept with more than one man—these stigmas were branded on to my skin so much so that a glance at me made people decide that I must be easy.

  Even R had come to that conclusion. I met R twice during this interval, the first time at Ityadi. While returning from Ityadi one night amidst torrential rain, we could not find a single rickshaw or a baby taxi. After waiting for a long time when we did manage to get hold of a baby taxi there was no choice for us but to share the ride; it was decided he would drop me off at Shantibag on the way to Indira Road. In the confines of the cab, with the storm raging outside, the half-drunk R wrapped his arm around my waist and murmured to me, ‘I want you.’ I asked him in what way and he simply raised his eyebrows in response. He only desired my body and on reaching that conclusion I stopped the car near Malibag and got off despite the steady downpour, hoping the rain would wash away my tears. With a suppressed sigh I said my goodbyes to R, silently reminding myself that I could have slept with him if I wanted to. I had wanted to in Armanitola, but I did not want to any more. Till date I had done what others wanted me to do. Going forward, I decided I only wanted to do things my way.

  The next time I met R was at Sakura. We had arranged to meet there to discuss the publication of R’s collected works. He wanted to compile all of his writings into one book and had asked me to help him out with the publication by arranging for him to speak to my publisher. Just because my books were doing well it did not mean my publisher was going to listen to all of my demands. I did approach Khoka with the proposal, telling him how keen R was about the collection, but Khoka informed me that being keen was not enough to get the book published. A publisher always had to consider the business aspect of such a deal first. If he did not want the collection I suggested he consider some of R’s political poems or even his love poems. This last offer was at least something Khoka was interested in pursuing. So I had arranged for them to meet at Sakura to talk it out.

  As R and Khoka sat discussing the former’s proposal for the collection, I could not help but repeat what I had said to R when he had first told me about it. ‘Why do you want a collected volume at al
l? Don’t people bring out collected works after authors have died?’ R, however, was adamant. Even after hours of discussion the deadlock could not be resolved. Khoka was firm that the publishing house was not interested in a collected volume. I tried explaining this to R. ‘Of course Vidyaprakash wants to publish your books. Just not the collected volume right away. Try something else.’ R was unyielding in his desire and so I persisted. ‘How strange! Are you dead that you want to do that? At least if you were old one had reason to consider. You are barely thirty-five! Why do you want a collected volume so early?’

  Unable to resolve the stalemate, Khoka left. As we were walking out of Sakura, R was clearly upset and seeing him so only served to trouble me further. The road and our endless journey was perhaps the perfect metaphor for our relationship as it had mutated from the domestic illusions we had once had. R still had difficulty walking and had to stop often to catch his breath. All I wanted was to take a rickshaw and set off on a ride through the city with him like we used to, or sit in the TSC grounds and talk in impromptu verse over tea and jhaalmuri. All I desired was to revisit the time when we were madly in love and to clear the slate of all the despair, hurt and devastation we had caused each other and the differences between us. Placing my hand on his, I looked into his sad mossy eyes and tried to reassure him. ‘Don’t worry. I will talk to Khoka again about the book.’