She was waiting for Pranab to join her. Since they were now engaged, it was his custom to drop by as often as he could, especially on Thursday evenings. He would usually burst through the door like a troubadour, his lips breaking into a mischievous grin and a song, “Aloka! Aloka!” that he’d composed himself. He wasn’t a particularly gifted singer, though that hardly mattered. Tonight, besides music, she had some news to share.
What could be delaying him? What could be more important than their music? It was past eight P.M.
The sting of Pranab’s absence gave rise to a feeling she’d tried to suppress lately: At times he seemed to be neglecting her. He’d forgotten to return her calls more than once in the last two weeks. Also, in their early courtship days he would bring her presents for no reason at all—a silver mirror, a papier-mâché box, a beaded handbag—but lately these little tokens of his affection had become less frequent. She didn’t need these objects, but cherished them as manifestations of his feelings for her. It embarrassed her to think how much she missed the warmth associated with those gifts. As if that wasn’t enough, the other day, as he accompanied her home from school, she’d detected a certain weariness in his walk, which she took as an indicator of his unsettled state of mind.
Now she searched for reasons. Might he be having second thoughts about getting married? Had her charm worn off? Then she looked skyward and beheld the luminescent full moon suspended above the horizon. The night brimmed with hope under its lambent glow, and she laughed away her apprehensions: Hesitancy before marriage was normal for a bachelor. That was it. Pranab was just suffering from a last-minute case of “bachelor’s nervous belly.”
Whoever had said love equated to suffering wasn’t wrong. Aloka heaved a sigh and let her fingers sense the vibration of the harmonium as she fingered it tentatively. In doing so, she went back to an early age. Her passion for singing and her unusual aptitude became evident to the family when, as a six-year-old, she could imitate an eminent radio singer like Kanika Bandopadhya. Grandma spared no time hiring a music teacher for her, saying that music was one of the sixty-four classic arts taken seriously in ancient India and its practice ought to be continued. She would cite the name of Vatsyayana, who prepared that list of arts in first century A.D. A more likely explanation of Grandma’s generosity might have been that the marriage potential of a girl in the present society improved if she could sing. In any case, Grandma made sure that Aloka, throughout her adolescence, was given extensive training, and it had paid off handsomely. These days, whenever friends and relatives gathered, Aloka was asked to perform. “Oh, Aloka, you must sing. Your voice is so soft. It fills our heart.” She liked to see the rapt faces around her as her sonorous voice evoked its magic, even in the farthest corner of the spacious drawing room. At the end of the performance they would applaud. She would find herself feeling cheerful and alert, cleansed inside.
Now she began to play the harmonium in earnest as she hummed a poignant Rabindrasangeet: Je ratre more duar gooli bhangle jhare. The night a storm broke through my door. That haunting song, composed by the late Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, always evoked delicate sentiments of adoration, pathos, fantasy, and patience in her. It represented her accidental meeting with Pranab several years ago and the dramatic alteration of her life that had ensued. Her throat swelled with longing.
She was still relishing the lyrical line when Pranab materialized out of the dusk. Stirred by his presence, she looked up. Her happiest moments came from being near him. Magnificent as always in his white kurta, he lowered himself to the jute mat in one smooth motion. What exquisite timing. Had he planned this? Of course he had. Gazing into his eyes, the refined Bengali sounds pleasuring her soul, she moved on to the second line and Pranab mingled his voice with hers: Jani naiko tumi elee amar ghare. I did not know you would be visiting me that same night.
She smelled the complex and mysterious aroma about him and also noted that his voice had unusual clarity. Soon the lyrics, the tune, and his presence took her to another realm, where judgment didn’t exist. As the final note died away, she smiled at him. “You were late and I was getting worried. But when I heard you sing I let all my worry go.”
He lowered his gaze as he tapped the mat with his fingers. “I got distracted with some last-minute details at work and it slipped my mind that it was Thursday. Please don’t think too harshly of me, priyatama.” He addressed her as his beloved using a poetic expression, and this dislodged her frustration.
“I see it in your eyes, amaar priya.” She, too, became poetic. “You’re preoccupied, but I’m delighted you finally made it. Something has just come up. I have to be away for six weeks in Kalimpong, and I wanted to see you before I left. Kabita’s wedding is set for the end of next month. You do remember my cousin-sister Kabita, don’t you? Much as I don’t want to leave you or my teaching, it’s something I have to do.”
She expected a protest at not being consulted on this decision. Instead he accepted the news with little other than a trace of sadness around the eyes. “Will you call me often?” he asked, after a time.
“You can be sure I’ll keep the Kalimpong telephone operators fully engaged, my darling. And of course you’re invited to the wedding. You’ll have a chance to see what a Gupta wedding is like—a preview of our own, though ours will be far more elaborate.”
A formal wedding? A large affair? How many guests? He didn’t ask any of the expected questions, but rather he appeared thoughtful in a way that disturbed her. She observed his profile, etching it mentally as if it were a treasure, then snuggled up and kissed him, to make their parting memorable, to carry his taste with her, and to leave her scent with him.
His lips felt oddly cold and stiff. But then, he’d been preoccupied all evening. Preoccupied with exactly what, she couldn’t be sure.
eight
Nina felt the age in her legs as she strained to drag herself up from the lawn chair beneath the solemn gaze of the Kanchenjunga Range. It took all the strength in her arms pushing on a walnut cane to lift the decrepit body that had spread with age like an overfilled rice sack. Gone was the slim-hipped young woman her husband Bimal had once named Nitya Kumari, the Eternal Nymph. Well, having just attained the age of seventy-three, Nina didn’t feel eternal anymore.
She was drifting toward the drawing room when she overheard some conversation from the kitchen. Normally the servants whispered or worked silently. They must have assumed Nina was still out on the lawn.
“Sujata-di’s breakfast is still sitting over there,” said the cook, speaking to the maidservant. “Maybe you should go wake her up.”
The maidservant cackled. “Sujata-di needs to sleep. She has a busy day ahead. She’ll meet Pranab-babu in the afternoon.”
“You mean … ?”
“My aunt sees them together in the tea field all the time.”
Nina could picture the devious glances they were exchanging. She cleared her throat in an exaggerated manner. At the sound, the servants lapsed into silence.
In the drawing room, the implication burning in her, Nina sorted a year’s worth of Monorama magazines in a basket. For the past several weeks, save for Nina’s company, Sujata and Pranab had been left alone. With Nina’s consent, Aloka had gone to Kalimpong to assist in Kabita’s prewedding preparations. From the turmeric ceremony to the “auspicious night,” a traditional Bengali wedding included nearly fifty mandatory rituals that required involvement of relatives for months on end. Aloka, who possessed tremendous organizational skills, could instruct the relatives or the hired help if a single detail was missing. In the two years since her parents’ accidental death in an airplane crash, Kabita had drawn close to the Guptas, particularly to Aloka, who was therefore entrusted with the wedding arrangements. Her selfless act of devotion to a relative had separated Aloka from Pranab for the first time.
Nina had believed the two would experience biraha. Ancient Indian literature was imbued with the concept of exquisite pining for one’s love that made
the next encounter that much more passionate and meaningful. Nina had fancied biraha might even be good for the young lovers.
Come to think of it, Nina had noticed Pranab’s untoward interest in her granddaughter Sujata—last week, as a matter of fact. Nina was passing by a doorway when she got a glimpse of Pranab leaning toward Sujata. Seated in a chair, she was looking up at him, a crystalline light on her face. Did Nina detect a desire in Sujata’s eyes? Try as she might, Nina couldn’t imagine that Pranab would prefer Sujata to Aloka.
At first Nina pretended they were just friends. She put the matter “in the trunk,” preferring not to find out more. She overlooked it when Sujata slipped out of the house that same afternoon, insisting she had an errand to run, only to slink back many hours later. Eyes averted and cheeks febrile, she went straight to her room, where she stayed the remainder of that evening.
Nina shifted her thighs in her drawing room seat in disquietude. Was an affair a possibility? Would Pranab, Aloka’s beloved, the very future of this household, take the enormous gamble of an illicit tryst with Sujata, risking the combined wrath of his own family and that of the influential Guptas? What would compel him to walk through that fire?
Nina turned on the table lamp. The click, followed by the flooding of light, triggered further clarification. Although Sujata lacked her sister’s beauty and poise, she was endowed with intellect and a concealed inner resilience. Obviously, Pranab, a scholar by nature and training and perceptive as well, had scoped that out sooner than anyone. Sujata, much harder to know than Aloka, had been a challenge. And Pranab craved a challenge. Besides, both Pranab and Sujata had an allegiance to tea, the mystical beverage that inspired deification. Sujata and Pranab bowed at the same altar.
How could Nina determine this for sure? She dreamed up an excuse to ring Pranab. “Now that Aloka is away, what are you doing with yourself?”
“I’ve been helping set up the music for a stage drama, Chitrangada,” he replied. “It was staged last night, mostly with the children of the tea workers. You should have seen the pride on their faces when they finished. Would you agree with me, Thakurma, that folk theater should be preserved?”
His voice was ecstatic, too much so for a mere show. Might this be the cozy afterglow of a budding romance?
“Of course I do, Pranab. I just didn’t realize that you were so interested in folk theater. But then, you’re into so many things. By the way, would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow night? It’ll be just Sujata and I. A relative is specially flying in a big cut of rui fish from Calcutta for us. Have you had a good rui lately?”
“It’d be a pleasure to see you. And rui is my big weakness.”
The following evening, in a dining room fairly swirling with music and the scent of food, Nina scrutinized Sujata and Pranab with new sharp eyes behind a facade of jovial hospitality. They took seats at opposite ends of the table and except for a perfunctory greeting didn’t speak to each other directly, but Nina could tell they were acutely alert to each other’s presence. When one shifted slightly in the chair, the other turned in that direction. Pranab began the conversation by describing his ride on the speedy Bajaj scooter he’d borrowed from his cousin for the night, a thrilled expression displaying on his face. Soon he fell grave. Nina asked him about his mother’s health and he again talked at length, but gave away little about his own days.
At Nina’s signal, the servant laid platters of food before them. Sujata didn’t touch her beloved rumali roti, but Pranab’s appetite seemed unaffected by the discord hanging in the air. “Ah, rumali roti,” he exclaimed. “Smooth as a silk handkerchief—so appropriately named.”
He reached out with his long arm for the delicate flat bread, tore one in half, offered Sujata a piece, and put the other half on his plate. Sharing food in that manner was never done, Nina bore in mind, except among close relations.
In no time, Pranab devoured the whole stack of bread with zest, along with a big piece of rui fish, as though he hadn’t eaten in days. “Khub tel,” he murmured, praising the fish as being oily and, therefore, flavorful.
In colloquial Bengali, khub tel also meant an energetic person. Nina now directed her attention to her granddaughter. At the other end of the table, Sujata, perhaps aware of the scrutiny, avoided Nina’s eyes, and picked at her food. Nina noticed, too, that both Sujata and Pranab drank endless cups of tea. Their obvious intimacy was centered around tea. But Nina wasn’t deceived, not for a minute.
By the time Pranab had taken his leave, Nina had concluded that the situation was already beyond repair. These two reckless children had committed an egregious breach of the social mores that governed behavior in this society, heedless of the price they would inevitably pay. Such was the intensity of the passion that fueled their liaison. Nina well comprehended the frailties of human nature, but that was scant consolation for her grief at the tragedy that was about to befall her granddaughters.
She couldn’t fall asleep that night. Lying in bed, she conjured up images of Sujata and Pranab departing hand in hand, their eyes full of ecstasy, while Aloka huddled shrunken in a corner of the house, sobbing. To be sure, Aloka, her once-erect carriage crumpled with grief, her golden voice reduced to a lifeless monotone, would make a show of getting on with her life. Marriage proposals would eventually come and she would probably be persuaded to accept one. But Nina shuddered to think that Aloka would cease being a shining presence; that she might never sing again.
The next afternoon, Sujata disappeared again for hours. When she returned, her eyes danced and her hips swayed. She didn’t speak with anyone.
Enough.
Nina realized she must intercede for the sake of the family. As always in times of trouble, she reacted with calm decisiveness. First, she called the maidservant and warned her to keep silent in the Sujata matter or risk losing her position and being driven out of town. Trembling in fear, the maidservant begged for forgiveness and backed out of the room. Then Nina called her son, Bir, at his office and ordered him to come home at once. She devised ways of breaking the news to her son so he wouldn’t overreact. She wanted to reach a peaceful solution for all. Within half an hour Bir knocked at Nina’s door.
Nina ushered him in and asked him to be seated. An ominous silence reigned as she divulged the Sujata-Pranab liaison and the gossip it had generated.
“And I was so ecstatic to have my youngest daughter back.” Bir’s face was carved with sorrow. “She doesn’t make any sounds when she’s in the house. But I can always tell when she’s around. Still, she has disappointed me. So, it’s true,” Bir exclaimed. “There have been whispers about her and Pranab walking together in the fields for some time. The workers are beginning to talk.”
“It’s more than just whispers. If I’m right, we’re on the edge of a catastrophe. Everything is at risk. Aloka’s marriage, the family honor, even your ability to run the tea estate, my son.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to believe that they meet secretly at Senchal Lake for hours at a time. What if the young fool gets pregnant?”
“Ki lajja!” What shame. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Nina erupted. “That badmas. I have never fully trusted him. We must put an end to this at once. We must send Sujata away.”
“Yes, immediately.”
“But just for a short while,” Nina equivocated. “Until Aloka and Pranab get married.” Then she recoiled at the expression on her son’s face. He was radiating anger and hate through his yellowish red eyes.
“No, Mother. Sujata will leave for good.” Bir’s voice was controlled but filled with menace. “She has already likely destroyed her sister’s marriage prospects. I will not let her destroy our family fortune as well.”
Nina grasped what her son was implying: Family reputation and family income were synonymous. When one went, the other vanished, too. The Gupta brand name was prominently displayed on every citreous green box of tea the estate produced. When people purchased Gupta tea, they took home a respected dynasty’s tradition
, they drank, as it were, an elixir of success.
“I have heard rumors that,” Bir said in a voice rising with anger, “the two are conspiring to turn the tea workers against me. Now I must give them credence. How do you think I feel? My own daughter betraying me? You know why she’s doing this, don’t you?”
Still mystified over the matter, Nina wanted to hear her son’s explanation. She looked up.
“She’s crazy about him, so crazy that she has completely lost her senses. She’s going against her family who brought her up, gave her an education, even invited her back in when she lost her job. I didn’t think she was ever capable of such madness.”
Bir wiped perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief, Nina sat frozen. She silently agreed with her son. A tree-creeper tapped the bark of a conifer outside the window. Even that delicate sound alarmed her.
“What will happen if the workers go on strike for any length of time?” Bir continued. “I’ll have to shut down the factory. We could lose everything we have.” He paused, frowning. “I’m puzzled as to why the rascal is causing this damage. He had a secure future with the estate. And if he marries Aloka, he’ll run the entire operation someday. But no! He chose instead to betray Aloka and me. He has lost his head over Sujata. I have to separate them.”
“Perhaps,” Nina ventured, “Sujata could be sent to Patna for a while. We have relatives there to look after her.”
“No!” Bir shot back. “They’ll only find a way to meet. We’ll send her to Canada. I have contacts in the government. I can easily arrange for her immigration papers. Pranab won’t be able to follow her. He’ll need lots of money for the passage, which I’m sure he doesn’t have—he has to support his folks. And he can’t get a passport just like that. He has no connections.”
Canada, cold and snowy for so much of the year, sounded like an exile. “Does Sujata have to travel that far?” Nina asked.
Darjeeling Page 6
