Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  The two days I went to the book fair I mostly stayed at the Vidyaprakash stall. Even when I wanted to take a stroll, or go to the tea vendor and have tea, I could not. Not that I could sit at the stall the entire day either; I went back home on both days after a couple of hours. Despite that, I still went and that was all that mattered, even though I could not stop my apprehensions from rearing their ugly heads time and again. Khoka remained visibly on edge the entire time but the joy of our minor victory was evident on his face too. Fazlul Alam was there, pacing a safe distance away from us, both anxious and elated. The members of the organizing committee threw censorious glances my way whenever they saw me, unable to stomach the living embodiment of trouble that I had become for them. Who knew what they had suspected would happen at the fair because of my presence? Had they thought someone would set something on fire? At least if the men had dragged me away to some place remote instead and set me on fire it would have gone a long way in allaying their fears. There were very few of my books left in the fair, most having been confiscated or burnt in the public bonfire by the members of the Suppression Committee. Anyone manning a stall which still had some copies left had hidden them away under their tables out of sight. Like every other year there was a poetry recital programme organized by the Bangla Academy. The previous year I had been invited to participate but this time I was not welcome there either.

  While conspiracies were afoot to cast me aside and crush me, many readers came to the fair only to catch a glimpse of me. Some approached me with their eyes wide with wonder and said, ‘If only we could touch you once and see for ourselves!’ Some broke down in tears while speaking about how my books were not merely words but glimpses of life itself. ‘You have said what I have always wanted to say but couldn’t,’ some said. Mothers came with their daughters to make the girls touch my feet in respect. People from far and near, Sylhet, Chattagram, Rajshahi, Bagura and so on, came to the book fair in Dhaka with one objective: to meet me in person, or at least catch a glimpse of me from a distance.

  Their love, as well as their hatred, made me cry.

  Euphoria

  There was usually a steady stream of well-wishers at the Shantibag house. Like many others, Raka and Altaf first came to me as admirers and stayed on as friends. Both were aficionados of Rabindrasangeet while Altaf himself was a poet. They had married at a later age and were living a carefree childless life. They had both been married before too and had children from their previous relationships, but other than meeting the children once or twice a year they did not have too many other parental duties. Thus, even after a ten-to-five job, both of them had ample time to spare, especially in the evenings. So they frequently came over to my house and the place would echo with poems and songs of Rabindranath.

  One such evening, amidst a haze of Rabindrasangeet I suggested we visit Santiniketan for the annual Basanta Utsab.31 Despite being such ardent admirers of Rabindranath, Raka and Altaf had never been to Santiniketan and jumped at the suggestion. Besides, thanks to my publishers who were keeping my pockets full, I did not even have to borrow money from anyone this time. Within two days Raka and Altaf were packed and ready, an extra 2000 taka over and above our estimated expenses safely tucked away with them.

  As the leader of the expedition I had the most important jobs. I approached Bilal Chowdhury, the editor of the Indian embassy’s magazine Bharat Bichitra, for three Indian visas. He had published my poems in the magazine before and used to ask me for new work every time we met. And we did meet quite often; especially while staying at Armanitola whenever I used to head to his office and wile my time away listening to his stories. Even during the bad times at Shantibag I often visited the Bharat Bichitra office. Chowdhury loved addas and had a treasure trove of stories which he used to unload on anyone he took a shine to—stories of the old literary circles and small humorous personal anecdotes of many renowned authors of Calcutta which he presented with his own characteristic wit and flourish. Oh, such stories he used to tell! Having lived in Calcutta for so long he knew many of the well-known writers of the city and hearing him talk about the mad, the stupid, the generous, and the miserable, and about the roads and streets and bylanes of the city, it often seemed to me as if I had been transported there. Chowdhury was a poet too but his greatest gift was his storytelling, an ability that made him the life of any party. He was a very solitary man, kind-hearted to a fault, very welcoming, decidedly unfazed and too much of a poet.

  In a very short span of time he had become a brother and a friend rolled into one. He had told me about Girindra Shekhar Basu’s book Laal Kaalo (The Red and the Black), one of the greatest books of children’s literature ever written. His voice heavy with regret, he had rued how the book was no longer available and no publisher was ready to bring out a new edition. Hearing an outline of the plot from him I had expressed my wish to read the book and he showed me his own tattered copy. I had borrowed it from him and was so impressed that I had decided then and there to take up the responsibility of getting a new edition of the book published.

  I had gone to Khoka with the proposal and he had not turned me down. I proofread the book and had Chowdhury write an introduction, which he kept postponing and took an inordinate amount of time to hand over in the end. Seeing the coloured images of the ants in the book Khoka did wonder if it was necessary to print the photographs too but I had insisted that in a book meant primarily for children images were a must. In the end Khoka had relented and reprinted the book with photos and all. It was a job well done and the end result had given me immense satisfaction, much more than my own books had ever managed to. My own publications usually brought on a severe attack of nerves that managed to spoil any sense of joy whatsoever. The moment I would catch hold of a book I usually started flipping through the pages to find errors and tabulate the number of such errors on various pages. The more the number, the greater would be my unhappiness. I was certain of one thing: regardless of anything else I could never write if I was unhappy.

  On hearing that we wished to attend the Basanta Utsab in Santiniketan, Chowdhury narrated to us a vivid description of the festival of colours as he had witnessed it many years ago. He also requested me to take a copy of Laal Kaalo for Sripantha who was going to put a notice about the book in the Kolkatar Korcha supplement of Anandabazar Patrika. He gave me the writer Sripantha’s name and address: Nikhil Sarkar, alias Sripantha, Anandabazar Patrika, 6 Prafulla Sarkar Street. He also asked me to meet Indranath Majumdar—Chowdhury kept mentioning how he was a remarkable person—who owned a bookshop called Subarnarekha in Santiniketan. I gave him my word that I would meet both of them.

  The three of us reached Calcutta in high spirits and the first person I contacted was Soumitra Mitra of the Information Centre of West Bengal. SHA had once told me that in Calcutta Mitra’s reach was nearly godlike. He could solve any complex problem in the blink of an eye. Mitra helped us find accommodation in the government guest house on Kyd Street. Not for free, but definitely for a daily food and lodging expense that was nearly a quarter of what we would have had to pay in a hotel.

  While explaining to him the reason for our visit we discovered that he too was headed towards Santiniketan with his own group for the Basanta Utsab; he arranged for both the groups to travel together. Our ride was in a magnificent coach of the Shantiniketan Express, with curtains on the windows, cushioned seats and beautifully carved wooden furniture. I had never known that train compartments could be so beautiful; I was informed that it was the same compartment once used by Rabindranath himself whenever he used to travel between Bolpur and Calcutta. I could scarcely contain my wonder at such an astounding revelation and Tagore’s aura remained a pervasive presence around us throughout the journey.

  Mitra’s team comprised Ashesh, Mona and the danseuse Rekha Maitra. Ashesh and Mona were closer to my age while Rekha was a little older. In our team Altaf was the shy, meditative and unfazed type while Raka was more proactive, intelligent, brave and cautious. Raka was from Raj
shahi and a smart speaker while Altaf walked slowly, could never stand straight, spoke softly and as little as possible, although when he did speak, he usually had many interesting things to say. Both of them were older than me by nearly a decade, although age was hardly a concern in such matters; people with vast differences in age frequently end up becoming close friends.

  I had thought the seven of us were going to have a great time travelling to Santiniketan together but somehow in the end we split into two groups through no conscious choice of our own: the bangals32 on one side and the ghotis on the other. The three of us, the clueless bangals, had no choice but to sit and watch the ghotis at their raucous best. Besides, it was not easy for us bangals to get used to ghoti ways immediately. After getting off at Dumdum we did try getting rid of our accents, shifting to more ghoti-centric vowels than our traditional ones, but the tongue usually has its own story to tell and even without us noticing the vowels would get interchanged while speaking. With our accents, our lack of knowledge about the ways of the big city and our provincial tendencies, chances were slim that we could ever fit in with the ultra-modern Calcuttans reared in a cosmopolitan city. Everything from our stiffness to our hesitation became fodder for amusement for our bangal co-passengers. As opening our mouths meant becoming a laughing stock it seemed best to keep quiet, or even if we had to talk, to keep the conversation restricted among the three of us.

  Since I had been to Santiniketan before I was the undeclared guide of our group and took Raka and Altaf on my expert tour of the most iconic places connected to Rabindranath. We roamed around Tagore’s house in Santiniketan and visited the famous mango orchard. Mitra was in charge of the arrangements for our stay. Four rooms were allotted in the guest house for us to share—Raka and Altaf in one, Mona and Ashesh in another, me and Rekha Maitra in the third, and Mitra in the last.

  The next morning I woke up to the strains of ‘O re grihabasi’33 and found my heart swelling with joy almost immediately. Getting out of bed with a leap I quickly put on a yellow sari. Raka was already dressed and raring to go but the ghotis were still asleep. They had been drinking till late on the rooftop of the guest house so it was expected they would oversleep, but for us bangals who wanted to leave no aspect of the Basanta Utsab undiscovered the wait was excruciating. I began pacing the porch of the guest house impatiently. Finally, after much effort, we managed to wake Mitra up. Even the little time it took for him to take a shower, change and have breakfast was unbearable! Once out on the streets the festivities swept us up in their tide in no time. Girls in yellow saris busy celebrating Basanta Utsab, makeshift stages all over the place from where someone or the other was singing Rabindrasangeet or reciting poetry, Tagore’s dance dramas being enacted somewhere—it was impossible to decide which direction I wanted to run in first. So many people were singing on the streets, putting colour on each other, and my eyes did not miss even a single one of them.

  I had never experienced spring so intimately before, never felt its wildness excite me so much, never been so in love with the earth, its light and its wind, and its people as well. People were allowing others to put colour on them without a thought. The grounds, the mango orchard, Kala Bhavan, Sangeet Bhavan—every nook and corner was reverberating with music and there was a swing in each and every person’s step. Santiniketan always had a smell of its own and on that particular day the heady aroma reached right into my soul, immersing me in colours and Rabindranath. It was an incredible sensation to feel the presence of Tagore so closely, my senses colouring me in the brightest of hues.

  I was not used to playing with colours. Even though I did not venture to put colour on anyone, completely unknown people did sprinkle colour on me. On any other day I would have been livid but on that day I let them do it. There were numerous other poets around me, all similarly engrossed in the revelries, even Sunil Gangopadhyay. At some point I had got separated from Altaf and Raka in the crowd. However, I was not alone at all and many people came up to talk to me on their own and wonderful new connections were forged. That night at the musical programme I met three young poets: Sharif, Goutam Ghosh Dastidar and Chaitali Chattopadhyay. Years ago I used to publish Chaitali’s poems in Senjuti. Till late in the night we roamed around Santiniketan in rickshaws. We even went to the banks of the Kopai to sit and soak in the magnificent full-moon night; living in Dhaka one never got to know when it was the full moon. In Bolpur, miles away from Dhaka, I seemed to have rediscovered my childhood.

  While Sharif, Gautam, his girlfriend Urmila and I were doing the rounds of Santiniketan, Mitra had gone to visit the Tarapith temple with his group. It amazed me to discover that he was such a devout believer, primarily because I had assumed for some reason that none of my friends in Calcutta were. Not that you could not visit a holy site without believing in the divine. There were so many temples and mosques I had visited simply to witness the inner workings of such places. Besides, one could never tell for sure why and with what purpose a person went to a place of worship. Who knew what secrets lay hidden in people’s hearts! Even in Dhaka I used to frequently discover, to my utter dismay, people I knew to reveal immense faith in organized religion. A powerful poet like Al Mahmud was an acutely religious man. Panna Kaiser, renowned for her tireless movement against authoritarianism, was a regular and devout reader of the Quran. Scholar Muntasir Mamun visited the mosque every Friday for Jumu’ah prayers.

  In the middle of the night I was woken up by a sound in my room. Listening carefully I realized it was a male voice speaking to Rekha Maitra in a hushed tone. I could also hear a scuffling sound coming from the other bed in the room. Keeping my eyes shut I lay there unmoving, not willing to let anyone know that I was awake lest it disturb whatever they were doing. Eventually I sensed two people leaving the room. Getting up quietly I went to the door that had been left slightly ajar and locked it from the inside. Sleep was the farthest thing from my mind for the rest of the night and the only thing I could think of was how mysterious the world around us could be. Daylight managed to dispel some of the mystery, though, and the people too appeared more familiar, my new-found friends appearing even more dynamic.

  I met Sharif a number of times after returning to Calcutta. He had accepted me as a friend so instinctively that it almost seemed we had known each other for ages. Perhaps it was also because of the easy leap of faith my Calcutta friends could take to ‘tumi’, the Bengali informal ‘you’, a shift that enabled one to chart even a 200 kilometre distance in the blink of an eye. Sharif lived fairly close to Kyd Street, in a small room on the top floor of a multi-storey shopping complex where he worked as the security officer. One day we went out together to take a stroll round the Maidan. He took me to his brother’s house, a congested locality in Park Circus I had never visited before which showed me an entirely different side of Calcutta. Sharif was Muslim perhaps only by name. He told me tragic stories of the ignominies he and many of his relatives had to face because of their Muslim names.

  Syed Mustafa Siraj was a great writer but the way he had been exalted once was also how he had been pulled down to earth. For the leading publishing house of Bengal it did not matter who it was as long as they had one Muslim writer in their roster. So Syed Siraj had been replaced with Abul Bashar, who was being given the same royal treatment the former used to receive. Bashar’s novel Phoolbou too was being heavily publicized. Sharif told me that Bashar was being pulled up simply to replace Syed Siraj and if he did not fit the bill then he too was going to be replaced by someone new in no time. The authorities at the upper echelons of the publishing house were the ones in charge of deciding who were going to be the bright stars of the Bengali literary world and whose star had to be snuffed out.

  It was not difficult for me to sense the discontent pouring out of Sharif’s bleak admissions. I had been to renowned poet Shamser Anwar’s house once and had sensed his anger with the Hindu intelligentsia of West Bengal too. Neither the Hindu nor the Muslim authors of Calcutta were religious in any way and yet the
latter could not help but feel pushed to the margins by the clout enjoyed by their Hindu counterparts. And this attitude was not restricted to the world of literature, it pervaded the entire socio-cultural matrix. The majoritarian Hindus did not consider the Muslim minority as civilized people and Sharif’s descriptions could not help but remind me of the similar plight plaguing the Hindus of Bangladesh. In effect, the Muslims of India and the Hindus of Bangladesh had similar lives!

  To me it hardly mattered who was what. A newborn child has no religion. They are forced to adopt their parents’ religion as their own. In my understanding, centuries ago some stupid and nefarious people created religion because they were afraid of death and uncertainty and also to quench their thirst for power over others. That was how religion had spread from one creed to another, from one society to another, from one nation to another. Most do not accept religion of their own free will, it is forced on them by extraneous circumstances. Religion has caused wars and the death of millions over the years.

  In West Bengal some groups of Bengali Muslims claim they are Ashraf and not Atraf. The Atraf are lower castes while the former are upper-caste Muslims tracing their lineage to forefathers who had migrated from Central Asia. That is one reason why Ashraf Muslims usually try and speak in Urdu and Farsi. I have no shame in admitting that I am not an upper-caste Muslim; I am Atraf and at some point in history one of my forefathers or foremothers had converted to Islam to escape some tyrannical Hindu king or zamindar. Bengali is my language, my culture, and I am proud of my Bengali identity. Most people do not bother with history. If they had, communal tension, caste-based discrimination and violence would have ended long back. Haven’t we always been taught that humanity is the biggest truth, above all else? Two hundred years ago an uneducated seer like Lalan Fakir sang songs of humanity and denounced caste divisions, and people today who have graduated from colleges and universities are preoccupied with caste! It is indeed so strange! Are people not meant to march forward, towards the light? What joy does it bring them to regress and embrace darkness, stupidity and the lack of knowledge and awareness?