‘He did not seem too interested,’ he sighed and said in response.
‘Let’s see if I can make him agree on the condition that I will give him more of my books to publish. He’s a good guy. I will explain to him that your book too will do well. It’s not as if you are any less popular. Everyone is reciting your poems all the time. Publishers don’t just look for sales. Sometimes they do want to publish good literature, even if it does not fly off the shelves immediately. Khoka is not as commerce-driven as most other publishers. If not right away he will surely come around.’ After he was a bit soothed we walked a bit further and took two rickshaws to our respective destinations.
The night I had sought refuge at my landlord’s to flee from MM’s wrath, the landlord’s wife Parul, shivering in fear alongside me, had asked me many questions. How did MM and I get together, why, and so on. I was unable to answer a single one of them and kept staring blankly at the white wall of the room instead. Even after Parul offered me the bed in the living room reserved for their guests, I spent the rest of the night staring at the wall. I could not sleep a wink; all I could do was reflect on what was happening to me. Was I losing the ability to talk? Why was I not resisting? Why was I not being able to cry? Had I turned to stone so that even in anguish I could not scream? Why was I not breaking down the walls closing in on me and abusing the people who were responsible for it?
All I could think of was Bakuli. Was I becoming like her? Had the shock rendered me speechless? It seemed to me that I had been mute for far longer, ever since that fateful day when Father had destroyed my happy little life at Armanitola and shattered my spine in the process. I could not accuse anyone neither could I have a conversation with myself. My voice was choked from fear and shame; I had failed myself again and again as if that was my only lot. Society was not allowing me to live my life on my own terms and I too had seemingly given up my strength, courage, pride and anger. The walls were gradually trying to crush me. Something in my head wanted out, it was going to burst out if I didn’t let it. I kept telling myself over and over again—this time think about yourself, say what you wish to and don’t sacrifice your happiness for the sake of someone else’s. Take care of yourself, find love for yourself and end this cycle of self-inflicted misery! The blank white wall had a pair of eyes on it that were watching me while closing in on me from all four sides. I was tossing and turning on the bed, twisting my head as if in a daze, and muttering to myself, ‘Bakuli, please say something. Bakuli, please talk . . .’
I finally spoke when the fitful night had been dispelled by the first light of dawn. I told Parul that I was leaving and I was only going to come back if they made MM leave. Parul tried telling me to sort it out with him, that men were going to be men and I should not take an irrational emotional decision. I firmly refused to entertain the suggestion and informed her that for the first time in my life at least this one decision I had not taken emotionally.
I left the troubles of Shantibag behind and took refuge at Pakhi’s house. She set up a room for me in her apartment, complete with a writing table for my work. I would come back to her place from the hospital and spend the rest of the time chatting with her; I was more interested in hearing about people’s lives than writing anyway. We had originally met when Pakhi had come over to the house in Shantibag one day as an admirer keen on meeting me. Since then our interactions had gradually developed into a great friendship. A divorcee herself, Pakhi used to live alone in an apartment on the tenth floor. Her ex-husband was in America. She was very beautiful and always so well turned out that it was nearly impossible to tell how old she was. Somewhat a mother, a lot like a sister, she candidly shared many of her life’s stories with me.
She had a daughter who was married and lived somewhere in the Arab world while Pakhi lived on her own in Dhaka. She did not work, just did some occasional sewing and embroidery work that she tried to supply to shops that were interested. While still married, her husband had bought a house in her name in Pallabi in Dhaka. After the divorce she had sold the house, bought a smaller apartment, and put the rest of the money in the bank. Her strength of will that enabled her to live alone was what had first amazed me. Much to my astonishment she confessed to have drawn that strength from my writing, something I had never even considered possible!
Pakhi’s older sister came to Dhaka from Kustia and she too turned out to be an equally avid reader of my work. In fact, when we first met she could not believe her eyes. When she was finally convinced and overcame her initial surprise, she gave me a tight, long hug. Justifiably I could only react to such limitless admiration with awkward bafflement. Perhaps from my writing they had all built up a particular image of me in their heads: terribly brave, completely intolerant of men and ready to bust balls. Thus, meeting me in person was probably equally surprising and managed to reduce some of their exaggerated expectations. Would they have fainted had they known how I had endured domestic violence day in and day out?
Pakhi was an ardent admirer of mine but even in her house my sense of abandonment did not lessen. Neither did Pakhi offer me her shelter indefinitely, or even till I had made my own arrangements. Besides, I did not wish to take advantage of her generosity, so my time under her roof soon came to an end. I had many friends in Dhaka, many more relatives, or at least people I could go to for help. I also knew that not one of them would be too pleased to see me. Practically homeless after leaving Pakhi’s house, I decided to put up at a hotel.
A new chapter of my life commenced at the hotel in Gulistan—eating in restaurants, spending the entire day at Mitford and returning to the hotel at night only to sleep. The hotel too was not an easy place to get used to. Most such cheap hotels in the busier and more congested parts of the city were not the kind of place a man would usually take his family to. Even the manager of the hotel I was in had been flabbergasted, to say the least, on seeing me. It was Khoka again who had come to my rescue. There had been so many people around me during the good times, but not one of them was to be found when the going got tough. During one of the lowest moments of my life only Khoka had been there beside me like a brother, a father and a friend. Not once did he try to take advantage of my sorry situation, like so many others had before.
He took the manager of the hotel aside and chatted him up. ‘Don’t we all have our sisters and mothers, hey! We have to look out for each other, don’t we? She’s a doctor, you know, works at Mitford. Till we sort out the living arrangements she has no choice but to stay at a hotel.’ The manager had thankfully been convinced enough to let me take up a room. In fact, he even went so far as to keep an eye out for me henceforth, to make sure no one ever turned up to cause any trouble. Despite all the precaution, inside the room I was still spending sleepless nights. Anyone could have just kicked down the door and entered the room. Since the hotel was populated primarily by drunkards and scoundrels there was no way I could be at peace. Fortunately, this itinerant life came to end when I received word from my landlord at Shantibag that they had served MM a notice and evicted him from the house. It was only after returning to the Shantibag house that I finally breathed a sigh of relief—I could try and build another life for myself, just like I had done at the old house in Armanitola.
The first night back, I fell into a peaceful sleep on the floor of the empty house. Just as silently, even without me realizing it, the self-confidence that I had lost had come back. I was no longer weighed down by the feeling that I was a wretched, despised creature, the lowest of the low.
The One I Yearn for, Night and Day
A sim Saha called me one afternoon with the news that R was ill and had been admitted to Holy Family Hospital, cabin number 231. Without wasting a moment I took a rickshaw and rushed to see him. R loved tuberoses and I bought some from a flower vendor near the main gate of the hospital. Walking up to the nurses’ room I requested a nurse to send word to 231 about me. Not everyone was allowed inside, so I wanted to enter only if R was feeling up to it. I was also not sure if I was g
oing to be allowed, since there was a possibility that there were other people in the cabin who would rather not have me there. The nurse told me to simply go up without bothering to wait but I insisted on the permission. I was certain that whether someone liked it or not R would not turn me away and I was soon proven right. In the cabin three of his sisters were already there, but I hardly exchanged a word with any of them. As I walked up to the bed and stood by him, he asked me to sit. Let alone being able to smell the tuberoses, he had tubes running into his nostrils. Keeping the flowers on the table I pulled a chair near his head and asked, ‘What has happened?’
‘The doctors are saying it’s an ulcer.’ He did not move his head, only his eyes indicated that he was trying to look around. His face was pale.
‘A stomach ulcer is not something very severe. You will get well soon.’
‘I will?’
‘Of course! Nearly 80 per cent of the population gets stomach ulcers. It’s not even a proper disease.’ With a half-smirk I continued, ‘Do you know how you look with those tubes in your nose?’ I was stroking his hair softly with my right hand, the left on his chest. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘It does quite a bit.’
‘Don’t worry. You will get well very soon.’
‘Who knows! Maybe this is it.’
‘Don’t say such things.’
In a faint voice he told me about all the people who had come to see him, the writers and poets, and all that they had said to him. He also told me about Shimul.
‘She was here today. She just sat there quietly, her face glum.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe looking at me made her sad. She didn’t say.’
‘When are the two of you tying the knot?’
‘Let’s see, if I get well . . .’
‘Of course you will get well.’
His face had lit up at the mention of Shimul and I could see how much he was in love with her. He continued. ‘She was sitting far away. I asked her to come closer but she didn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘She is angry. She is angry that I’m ill.’
‘That’s great. She’ll make you toe the line then.’
His face was alight with joy and I tried to pull a smile on mine too. As if it was not hurting me one bit to have to give him up to someone else. R and I never spoke about my personal life. Whatever he knew he had probably heard from someone else. Neither did he ask me if I was living with someone, or how I was for that matter. He spoke about himself, about his relationship, his poetry, his disease and his happiness.
‘Have you written anything about Shimul, a new poem perhaps?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded weakly.
‘Do you have it here?’
‘Here! In the hospital!’ He gave me a feeble smile.
‘Why not! Isn’t your notebook of poems always with you wherever you go?’
‘Oh, that’s another thing. Another reason why I can’t wait to get out of this place.’
‘Calm down. Get well first and then you can go home. The doctor will give you some medicines to have before and after meals. Have those regularly. If you go out keep an antacid with you at all times and have it whenever you think you are uncomfortable.’
‘The doctor tells me I have high blood pressure.’
‘High blood pressure? Really! Why would you have high blood pressure at this age? Did the doctor check properly?’
‘He told me.’
‘Then you have to be even more careful. Has he given you medicines for it?’
‘Yes, he has.’
‘What did he say? To keep drinking and smoking like before?’
‘I think I will have to quit this time.’
‘Yes, quit. Quit it all. Eat at regular intervals and you will never have to suffer from stomach trouble ever again.’
I gave him my word before leaving that I was going to visit him soon but I could not keep my promise. A few days later Yasmin and Milan came to stay at the Shantibag house. Milan had got a job in Dhaka and they had put up at his sister’s house in Basabo. I asked them to come and stay at my place instead. I had been living in exile, trying to scrub the ignominy of my previous marriage off my skin. I had not returned to Abakash and neither had I met or socialized with any of my relatives in the city. In response to an article I had written for Purbabhash someone had responded caustically, ‘A person missing an ear tries to walk on one side of the road to avoid being seen, someone missing both ears walks down the middle of the road since they have nothing to hide.’ True to the wise assessment I decided I was going to start walking down the middle of the road with both my ears missing. I was shameless, which is why I wrote shameless columns. The review was less a critique and more a hateful tirade against me. Since there was no end to these kinds of reactions I firmly resolved that I was going to do exactly what they were accusing me of—be shameless when negotiating their civilized world. Although the stigma of having married multiple times and facing threats to one’s reputation were compelling reasons for many women to hide their faces in shame and stay in the shadows, such entrenched and naturalized misogyny did nothing for me.
A few days later I was visiting Chotda’s house with Yasmin to meet Suhrid when I received an unexpected telephone call. A call for me at his house was indeed a rare occurrence and I had to make sure whether it was meant for me at all. It was meant for me all right—it was a call from Caroline Wright, an American poet who was in Bangladesh on a Fulbright scholarship to do research on Bengali women poets. My poems were among the ones she was studying and she had already translated some into English. I had met her twice at the Bangla Academy while she had been working on the translations with Muhammad Nurul Huda. I cannot say that I liked her too much; she had this annoying air about her as if she was a leading authority on the politics, socio-economic relations, literature and culture of Bangladesh after having lived there for only a short while.
Meanwhile, she had fallen in love with Syed Manjarul Islam, a university professor who had also assisted her with the translation. Caroline had an indomitable curiosity regarding other people’s private lives. How many times had I married, who had I married—she was overly enthusiastic about any and every personal detail. One would naturally assume that being a foreigner she would have been least interested in other people’s affairs. But I soon found out that she was more concerned about the poets themselves than their poetry, remarkably similar to the gossipy old crones from the fairy tales we were brought up on. Since she spoke beautiful Bengali, I had arranged for her to recite a poem at a programme that was to be televised. The channel had only asked me initially but I had convinced the producer to bring Caroline on board too. Caroline had been delighted. She had said glasses made her look unattractive and had taken them off before the shoot. It had made reading from the paper that much more difficult but she had stubbornly refused to put them back on. As a child I used to be fascinated with glasses, would stare into the sun at noon for hours, or poke myself in the eye wishing something would go wrong with them so that Father would be forced to take me to the optometrist and get me glasses.
Caroline’s voice drifted down the line as she spoke in her beautiful broken Bengali. ‘Do you know R has passed away?’
‘What did you say?’
‘R is dead.’
‘What rubbish. Why will he die?’
‘He passed away this morning.’
‘Don’t be crazy. I went and met him the other day at Holy Family. He was not so sick that he would die.’
‘But I heard he’s dead.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Someone did. A poet did.’
‘Who? Whoever it is, it’s a lie.’
‘But this poet won’t lie. Why don’t you check once?’
‘Listen, Caroline, maybe they said R was in the hospital and you misheard.’
‘I heard quite clearly that he was dead.’
‘Then whoever has informed you doesn’t know anything. They must have heard from
someone that R is sick and made that into something else. So many rumours keep floating around.’
‘Anyway, do find out if you can.’
There was no reason for me to believe Caroline’s news. Nevertheless, I immediately went to Holy Family with Yasmin. Not finding R in 231 I went up to a nurse who informed me that the concerned patient had been discharged the day before.
‘So he got well?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘Did he recover completely or did he refuse to stay any longer and simply walked out, pipes in nostrils and all?’
Clearly annoyed at my probing, the nurse snapped back, ‘Do doctors discharge patients unless they get well?’ She brought out his file for good measure and showed me the relevant part. ‘He got well, so the doctor let him go.’ Walking out of the hospital we hailed a rickshaw amidst my angry grumbling. ‘People simply have no limits. They say whatever they want to. R’s fine, he’s been discharged, he’s home. And these people are saying he’s died.’ I directed the rickshaw to take us towards Indira Road. ‘Why do you want to go to Indira Road?’ Yasmin asked. ‘I want to see for myself. I just want to confirm that he is safe at home. If he’s unwell the nurse would have said so.’ I was convinced that the news was not true but I remained distracted the rest of the way. Yasmin probed, ‘What are you so worried about? Nothing’s happened. It’s just a rumour.’
‘Yes, that’s what it is, a rumour.’
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