First Light

by Sunil Gangopadhyay

  ‘Which one was it?’

  ‘The Didi who plays Morjina in Ali Baba. Nayanmoni Didi. She cried “Stop! Stop!” How could I disobey her?’

  Amarendra dismissed Rahmat and began pacing up and down the room wondering what to do. His rules were strict but everyone obeyed them to the letter. Everyone—with the exception of Nayanmoni. She made light of them with such feckless charm that he felt powerless before her. And he couldn’t take any punitive action against her either. She didn’t care for money and even the prospect of losing her job didn’t frighten her. It was he who couldn’t afford to lose her. Yet he had to find some way of controlling her or else the others would follow her example and pandemonium would set in.

  Amarendra called out to a servant and bade him fetch Nayanmoni, Kusum Kumari and Sarojini. Then, when they entered the room, he fixed a penetrating glance on each one’s face, turn by turn, and questioned sternly: ‘Why did you stop the carriage and get down at Kolutola?’ Kusum Kumari and Sarojini quailed before that glance and nudged Nayanmoni who answered calmly, ‘There’s a trinket shop in Kolutola with the loveliest of stuff. We stopped to buy some bangles. They’ll go well with the costumes in Ali Baba.’

  ‘If you needed bangles why didn’t you tell Baral Babu? He’s in charge of the costumes.’

  ‘Baral Babu has no taste. He chooses the most lurid colours.’ ‘You claim to know better than the dresser? I’ve told you several times that you’re not to stop the carriage and show yourselves to the public. You even kept the windows open. Why?’

  ‘It was very hot and stuffy in the carriage. We were feeling suffocated.’

  ‘How many minutes does it take to get to the theatre? Don’t you have a bit of endurance? Anyway, take care to keep the windows closed in future and—’

  ‘Why?’ Nayanmoni interrupted sharply. ‘Are we in purdah?’ Then, breaking into a fit of giggles, she added, ‘We’re not daughters-in-law of a Bene household that we must keep our faces hidden from the sun and the moon.’

  ‘Stop laughing,’ Amarendra ordered sternly. ‘Take care to obey my rules in future.’

  ‘These rules were not included in the contract.’

  ‘What of it? Everything cannot be put down in black and white. What I’m doing is for the good of the theatre and—’

  ‘How can it harm the theatre if you allow a little fresh air to blow on our faces?’

  ‘The public sees you on the stage in gorgeous costumes and make-up. The glamour will wear off if you appear before them as you really are. “She’s no prettier than our wives and sisters,” the men will tell themselves. The awe will go out of their eyes and the theatre will lose its appeal.’

  ‘Do people come to see us only for our looks? Don’t they come to see our acting? You play the hero’s role. But you move about freely in the streets without make-up.’

  ‘It’s different for men. I don’t want any more argument Nayan. You’ll have to travel with the shutters closed and the door shut. That’s final.’

  Nayanmoni turned to the others. ‘Do you find such a rule acceptable?’ Sarojini and Kusum Kumari looked down at their feet not daring to reply. Nayanmoni drew herself to her full height. Looking Amarendra Datta straight in the eyes, she said, ‘I can’t travel in a closed carriage. I feel choked. From tomorrow I shall hire a carriage for myself.’ Amarendra was so taken aback at this flagrant breach of discipline that he opened his mouth to speak but no words came. ‘People don’t recognize us without our make-up,’ Nayanmoni went on blandly. ‘No one bothers to cast a glance on us.’ Amarendra Datta was too shocked to reply.

  A couple of days later Nayanmoni arrived around eleven o’ clock in the morning to find the stage set for a special rehearsal. All the lights were burning and on a special chair, in one corner, a gentleman sat obviously waiting to see it. Nayanmoni stared at the stranger unable to tear her eyes from his face. She had never seen a handsomer man or one more stately. The heroes with whom she worked were as nothing compared to him. He was a man in his prime, about thirty-six or thirty-seven years of age, tall and well-built with a broad chest and strong muscular limbs. Thick silky black hair fell in wavy locks to his shoulders and covered his cheeks and chin. His eyes were large and lustrous and his fingers long and slender like on artist’s. He wore a finely puckered dhuti and an immaculately white muslin kurta as soft as down. His feet in black velvet slippers seemed carved out of ivory. From the way Amar Datta hovered around him Nayanmoni realized that he was a very important person.

  ‘Who’s he?’ Nayanmoni whispered to Kusum Kumari.

  ‘He’s the writer of the play we’re rehearsing today. He has come to see the rehearsal.’

  The information startled Nayanmoni. Girish Ghosh was the acknowledged master playwright of Calcutta. The other, lesser, ones hovered in his shadow. No one bothered about them. Who was this man and why was he getting so much importance? Then one of the actors whispered in her ear that the man was not only a playwright and a talented actor and singer, he was also a renowned poet and a scion of the Thakurs of Jorasanko. His name was Rabindranath. He had written the play Raja o Rani and had come to see the rehearsal prior to giving his consent to its performance. On hearing that the man was an actor Nayanmoni was seized with a strange longing. She wished she could act opposite him even if it was only once in her whole life.

  The rehearsal commenced. Rabindranath sat in silence, his dark clear gaze fixed on the actors and actresses. He didn’t interrupt even once though the cast was making more mistakes than usual. It was part of the family etiquette of the Thakurs to speak only when spoken to. Amar Datta waited in vain, for some response. Then, fidgeting a little, he asked nervously, ‘What do you think of it Rabindra Babu?’ Now Rabindra moved slightly in his chair. ‘The prose lines are being rendered very well. But the poetry—’ He cleared his throat and added somewhat hesitantly, ‘The emphasis is in the wrong place, at times.’

  ‘I know,’ Amarendra hastened to agree. ‘The trouble is that the cast is used to the blank verse of Michael and the Bhanga Payar of Girish Ghosh. The metrical system you use is new to them.’

  ‘It isn’t difficult to pick up. Take these lines for instance. You spoke them like this:

  ‘Eshechho pashani?

  Daya hoyechhe ki moné?

  ‘Now if you were to intone them like this—

  ‘Eshechho pashani?

  Daya—

  Hoyechhe ki moné?

  ‘The emphasis should fall on the word daya. There should be a gap of six syllables after that and the rhyme scheme will be maintained.’ Then, rising from his chair, he addressed Nayanmoni: ‘Rani Sumitra! Do this scene with me. Let’s begin from Aramé royéchhé tara.’

  Nayanmoni’s desire to act with Rabindranath was partially fulfilled. It was only for a few moments but the impact on her was profound. His voice, deep and resonant, rang in her ears for hours afterwards. The touch of his hand on her shoulder made the blood pound in her breast and set her senses quivering every time she remembered it. It was as though she had felt a man’s touch for the first time in her life.

  ‘You are quite good,’ Rabindra told her at the end of the scene. ‘Your pronunciation is perfect.’ Nayanmoni stooped to touch his feet. Taking her chin he raised her face gently to his and asked, ‘Have I seen you before? Your face is familiar.’ Nayanmoni shook her head. A puzzled frown appeared on the poet’s face. ‘Why is it that I feel I’ve seen you? Not once … several times … something to do with a play. Ah yes! It was in Cuttack. Have you ever acted in one of my plays? In Cuttack?’ Nayanmoni shook her head again. ‘It was someone else then,’ Rabindra murmured almost to himself. ‘A group of amateurs put up my Balmiki Pratibha some years ago in Cuttack. There was a girl in the cast called Mohilamoni. Very bright and talented. She looked a lot like you. Her profile in particular. Do you have a sister in Cuttack? Or a cousin?’

  ‘No.’ Nayanmoni found her voice at last. ‘I have no family in Cuttack.’ Then, lowering her head, she murmured to herself much as R
abindranath had done a few moments ago. ‘I have no one—anywhere. I am alone. Quite alone.’

  Chapter XXI

  Sarala needed no one’s permission to leave the house these days. She had a carriage and coachman of her own and was free to come and go as she chose. The members of her family, including the maternal branch at Jorasanko, had resigned themselves to the idea that she would live life on her own terms. Never had such a dynamic, fiercely independent young woman been seen in their family or, indeed, in any of the families known to them. At the time, high-caste Hindu women still kept themselves discreetly within the confines of the house. They didn’t wear burqas like their Muslim counterparts but covered their faces with the ends of their saris at the sight of males other than fathers and brothers. Brahmo women enjoyed more freedom but still couldn’t dream of leaving the house without a male escort. Sarala’s mother was a Brahmo; her father a Hindu. She had inherited the enlightened, liberal outlook of her mother’s family but there was a great deal in the Hindu religion that met with her approval. She knew many eminent Hindus. Bankimchandra and Balgangadhar Tilak were her father’s friends. And she, herself, took quite a lively interest in the teachings of Swami Vivekananda.

  Sarala was twenty-five and still unwed. Her parents had searched high and low for a suitable son-in-law and brought scores of proposals. But Sarala rejected each one of them on one pretext or the other. Yet she had no intention of remaining a spinster. She made this announcement openly and quite often. She would marry but only the man who was worthy of her. But where was such a man? Exhausted with their efforts her patents gave up their search. Now it was up to her to find a husband for herself.

  But Sarala was not in a hurry to find a husband. She found a job instead. Taking up the post of Assistant Superintendent of Maharani Girl’s College, she travelled to distant Mysore, alone and unescorted—an unheard of thing in those days. She was charmed with her quarters, a small two-storeyed bungalow with wide verandas, standing in a neat garden stocked with flowers and some fine old fruit trees. Inside, the house was papered and furnished with elegance and taste. A cook, an ayah and a servant together with two sepoys at the gate made up the domestic staff.

  It hadn’t taken long for Sarala to settle down. She liked the work. The climate was excellent and she had made several good friends. Yet she had to return to Calcutta before the year was out. Here, as in Calcutta, young aspirants for her hand started buzzing around her like bees in a hive. Sarala was used to that and knew how to fend them off. But one night she had a frightening experience.

  It was the middle of summer and terribly hot. The ayah, who usually slept on the floor of Sarala’s bedroom, had moved her bedding to the stair landing in the hope of catching some cooler air. It was well after midnight and everyone was fast asleep. Even the sepoys at the gate had dozed off, their heads lolling on their breasts. Suddenly the ayah let out a bloodcurdling yell. Everyone came rushing to the scene including the sepoys who jumped up from their stools and bustled in with a great clatter of weapons. It took a few minutes to calm the woman down to the point when she could speak coherently. A man had come up the stairs, she said, and unable to see her in the dark, had stepped on her arm. She had woken up and screamed whereupon he had run and hidden himself in Sarala’s dressing room. While the sepoys looked at one another fearfully it was Sarala who acted. Quick as a flash she rushed to the door of the dressing room and bolted it from outside. The man, desperate at being trapped thus, smashed the glass panes of a window and leaped down to the garden below. But he couldn’t escape. He had injured himself in the fall and was easily captured. When the light was shone into his face it was discovered that he was no ordinary thief. He was the spoiled offspring of a very rich contractor and one of Sarala’s suitors. This incident shook Sarala out of her complacence. She had prided herself on her ability to keep her suitors at bay by laughing their proposals away. But what could she do if one of them was desperate enough to try to take her by force?

  Next day the news was splashed in all the local newspapers and within a day or two it had spread all over the country. Sarala had expected a sympathetic reaction from the journalists of Calcutta but didn’t get it. ‘What can you expect,’ the editor of Bangabasi wrote, ‘when a high-born young maiden is allowed to run wild? Where was the need for her to take up a job? That too so far away from her family and friends? It is nothing but a foolish aping of European ways for which she has been justifiably punished.’

  Sarala was incensed at this but also acutely embarrassed. Not only for herself but for her family. On hindsight she realized that she had acted in haste without considering the pros and cons. She didn’t need the money. Her father made her a generous allowance. She had a happy comfortable home and more freedom than any other girl of her age and situation. She had, really, no reason for taking up a job in the distant south. Now she had made a fool of herself and was the laughing stock of everyone who knew her. Left with no option but to return to Calcutta she began packing her bags. But her heart sank every time she thought of the snide remarks awaiting her. ‘Back so soon Sarala?’ She almost heard her friends and relations cry out in feigned surprise, ‘What happened?’

  But the train journey to Calcutta opened her eyes to several facts about her native Bengal that set her planning her future course of action. The programme she chalked out and implemented, on her arrival, was so strenuous and demanding that the unfortunate episode in Mysore soon became a distant memory. Observing the strong virile bodies of the Marathas and Rajputs, their powerful voices and hard facial contours, she couldn’t help comparing them to the malnourished Bengalis with their drooping eyes, emaciated limbs and bellies swollen with enlarged spleens. Even the peasants of the United Provinces and Bihar were sturdily built and capable of hard physical work. The Bengalis ate a poor diet, took little exercise and preferred to cultivate their brains rather than their bodies. In consequence they were weak and cowardly. But could the situation not be changed? Couldn’t Bengalis be taught the art of body building? Couldn’t they be encouraged to be fierce and warrior-like in temperament?

  As soon as Sarala reached Calcutta she took on the editorship of Bharati and set about renovating the journal with her usual dynamism. She solicited articles from renowned writers and contributed a fair number of her own. One of them was titled ‘The foreign sock versus the native knock’. In this article Sarala called upon the public to report instances in which they had seen their countrymen protesting against injustice and humiliation. ‘The British, soldiers and civilians alike,’ Sarala wrote, ‘insult and knock us about in trains and steamers, on the streets and in public places. And they molest our women in the presence of fathers, brothers and husbands. Our men swallow the insults and go home, fuming, to take it out on their wives. At most they lodge a complaint in the Kotwali. Can they not protest there and then?’ Sarala’s plea did not go unheeded. Reports started coming in of stray incidents in which natives had shot back. In Calcutta, a young man had tied an abusive, drunken gora by the wrists and dragged him to the police station. In Barisal a ryot had beaten up an Englishman for pushing his wife into a pond and also made him serve a sentence. In Jessore a college student had snatched the raised whip from the hand of a saheb and broken it to pieces before his eyes. Sarala’s heart lifted with triumph on reading these reports. Bengalis weren’t all weak and cowardly. There was hope for them, yet.

  Sarala realized that the need of the hour was to build up a youth force which would have the courage, strength and stamina to fight back when assaulted. This was the only way that the stigma of cowardice could be removed from the Bengali character. She decided to set up a network of akharas spanning the lanes and bylanes of Calcutta making a beginning in her own home. The Ghoshals had recently moved from Kashiabagan to a house in Circular Road which had a large tangled garden at the back with a pond in the middle. Here she set up her first akhara, employing a Muslim ustad called Murtaza to give the boys lessons in the art of attack and defence. Sarala made it a point to
oversee the lessons every evening, often taking part in them herself. Her presence was like a magnet which drew hundreds of young men to her. Some, of course, had little interest in body building and came for other reasons. Sarala discovered, to her horror, that many of the young men who flocked to her house each evening lived in worlds of their own and were completely oblivious of and indifferent to the needs of their country. All they wanted was to hover around her and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. But Sarala knew how to dampen their ardour and managed to bring a number of them around to a more responsible frame of mind. One of the first things she did was to hang a large map of India on one wall of the drawing room. Everyone who came in was made to stand in front of the map and fold his hands in reverence before proceeding to the back of the house. The second was to tie red bands on the wrists of the young men and make them swear an oath: ‘I solemnly pledge,’ she made them repeat after her, ‘that from this day onwards I shall serve my country with my heart and soul and body. I shall overcome all the hazards that lie in the path of preserving and cherishing the honour of my motherland. With this rakhi I seal my oath.’ Thus she inculcated a feeling of respect for the country in the group she had formed around her and which was rapidly gaining in numbers.

  One day a young man called Monilal Gangopadhayay came to her with a proposal. He belonged to a literary society which was to celebrate its Annual Day in a week or so. The members, it seemed, were keen on having Sarala as the chief guest. Sarala was surprised. A young woman presiding over a function that highlighted the activities of an all male club was an aberration. Besides, her contribution to literature was nothing compared to that of many others in the city. If at all they wanted a woman—wouldn’t her mother be a better candidate? But Monilal wouldn’t listen to a word of what she said. The members of his club wanted her and only her. And then, suddenly, an idea came to her head. She could use the forum to flag off a scheme she had been toying with for some months now. And that was to identify and launch a regional hero.