‘Binoybabu should not have consented like this, just to keep my request!’ her heart protested in torment. ‘Request! Why must he keep my request? Does he think he’s being civil, keeping my request? As if I’m dying to receive this bit of civility from him!’
But was it any use making such tall claims now? She had indeed importuned Binoy continuously, to drag him into the theatre troupe. How could she be angry with Binoy for conceding her request out of sheer politeness? Lalita was overcome with contempt and shame at her own behaviour, emotions acute beyond all reason. On any other day, she would have gone to Sucharita at this moment of inner turmoil. But today she didn’t go to her, and why her eyes overflowed with tears that choked her heart, she herself could not fathom.
The next morning, Sudhir had brought Labanya a bouquet. In the bouquet, a pair of ready-to-bloom Basra rosebuds grew on a single stem. Lalita extracted the stem from the bouquet.
‘What are you doing?’ Labanya demanded.
‘It hurts me to see fine blossoms tied into a bundle with a mass of common flowers and leaves,’ Lalita told her. ‘It is barbaric to forcibly bind everything into a single category, like that.’
With these words, Lalita untied all the flowers and arranged them separately in different parts of the room, reserving only the pair of roses, which she took away.
‘Didi, where did you get those flowers?’ asked Satish, running up to her.
‘Won’t you visit your friend today?’ Lalita inquired, without answering his question.
Satish had forgotten about Binoy all this while, but at the mention of his name, he jumped up.
‘Yes, I will.’ He declared, impatient to leave at once.
‘What do you do there?’ asked Lalita, restraining him.
‘We chat,’ answered Satish, briefly.
‘He gives you so many pictures, why don’t you ever give him anything?’
Binoy would cut out all sorts of pictures for Satish, from English papers and other such sources. Satish had begun pasting the pictures into a notebook. He was now so obsessed with filling up the pages that even when he saw a proper book, he would long to cut out pictures from it. He had suffered many reprimands from his sisters on account of this greed.
Today, suddenly confronted with the awareness that acts of kindness must be reciprocated, he became very worried. It was not easy to renounce his attachment to any of the personal belongings stored in his broken tin trunk.
‘Never mind,’ laughed Lalita, seeing Satish’s anxious expression. She pinched his cheek. ‘You needn’t get so worried. Just give him this pair of roses.’
He brightened at such an easy solution to his problem. Carrying the twin rosebuds, he set off at once to repay the debt of friendship. On the way, he ran into Binoy.
‘Binoybabu! Binoybabu!’ called Satish from a distance, rushing up to him with the flowers concealed under his clothing. ‘Guess what I’ve brought for you!’
When Binoy admitted defeat, Satish produced the flowers.
‘Oh, how wonderful!’ exclaimed Binoy. ‘But, Satishbabu, these don’t belong to you, after all. I hope I won’t end up in police custody for harbouring stolen goods?’
Satish was suddenly doubtful whether he could actually describe the flowers as his own property.
‘No! Wah, Lalitadidi asked me to give them to you, after all,’ he disclosed, after some thought.
The matter ended there, and Binoy dispatched Satish with the assurance that he would come by that evening.
Binoy was unable to forget his pain at Lalita’s barbed comments the previous night. As he rarely rubbed anyone the wrong way, he never expected such a sharp onslaught from anybody. Before this, he had merely regarded Lalita as Sucharita’s follower. But for some time now, Binoy’s feelings for Lalita had resembled the plight of a goaded elephant unable to ignore his keeper, the mahout, even for an instant. It had become Binoy’s chief concern to determine how to find peace by pleasing Lalita ever so slightly. When he returned to his lodgings in the evening, Lalita’s sarcastic, piercing remarks would resonate in his mind, one by one, keeping him awake.
‘Lalita despises me as Gora’s shadow, thinking I lack substance of my own, but that is utterly untrue!’ He would mentally accumulate all sorts of counter-arguments. But all these arguments were of no use to him, for Lalita had never explicitly charged him with this accusation. In fact, she had not given him a chance to debate the issue at all. Binoy had so many arguments to answer her with, but because he could not articulate them, his inward resentment grew even more intense. Ultimately, seeing no pleasure on Lalita’s countenance even after he acknowledged defeat, he felt extremely restless when he came back home. ‘Am I really so despicable?’ he began to wonder. So, when he learnt from Satish that it was Lalita who had sent the flowers, he felt exhilarated. He thought Lalita had given him the roses as a token of reconciliation because she was pleased at his agreeing to participate in the performance.
‘Let’s leave these flowers at home,’ he thought, at first. Then he reconsidered: ‘No, let me purify them with the touch of Ma’s feet, because these flowers are a peace offering.’
When Binoy arrived at Poreshbabu’s that evening, Satish was reading his school homework aloud to Lalita.
‘Red is the colour of war,’ said Binoy to Lalita. ‘So the flowers of truce should have been white.’
Lalita gazed at him in incomprehension. Binoy drew a bunch of white oleanders from beneath the folds of his chador, and held them out to her.
‘Lovely though your flowers might be,’ he declared, ‘they still retain shades of anger. These flowers of mine can’t match them in beauty, but they present themselves to you humbly, in the white hue of peace.’
‘My flowers? What are you referring to?’ asked Lalita, flushing to the roots of her ears.
‘I must have misunderstood, then,’ said Binoy, rather taken aback. ‘Satishbabu, did you deliver the right flowers to the right person?’
‘Why, Lalitadidi asked me to present them, didn’t she?’ Satish protested loudly.
‘Who did she want them given to?’ Binoy asked him.
‘To you.’
‘I’ve never seen someone so stupid!’ exclaimed Lalita, reddening. She rapped Satish on the shoulder. ‘Didn’t you want to offer flowers to Binoybabu in return for those pictures?’
‘Yes, that’s true, but wasn’t it you who suggested I give them to him?’ asked Satish, stupefied.
In trying to argue with Satish, Lalita found herself entangled even more securely in a web of words. Binoy clearly understood that the flowers were indeed sent by Lalita, but she had intended the gift to be anonymous.
‘I relinquish all claims to your flowers,’ he said, ‘But that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the flowers I’ve brought. On the auspicious occasion of our reconciliation, these flowers …’
‘What is our quarrel about, and how is it resolved, for that matter?’ asked Lalita, shaking her head.
‘Is the whole thing an illusion then, from beginning to end? The quarrel, the flowers, the reconciliation, is everything a lie? Is this merely a case of mistaking an oyster shell for silver, or is the oyster itself an illusion? What about that proposal regarding a performance at the magistrate saheb’s?’
‘That’s no illusion,’ said Lalita. ‘But why quarrel about it? Why do you imagine that I have stirred up a great dispute just to make you agree to this performance, or that I am gratified at your consent? If you consider acting a sin, why should you agree to it simply at someone else’s urging?’
With these words, Lalita left the room. Things had turned out completely contrary to her expectations. Today, Lalita had resolved that she would concede victory to Binoy, and persuade him to withdraw from the performance. But the way the topic was broached, and the way it developed, the outcome was exactly the opposite. Binoy thought Lalita still chafed with the desire to retaliate against his prolonged reluctance to perform. He felt she could not overcome her indignation b
ecause Binoy had accepted defeat only outwardly, remaining inwardly negative about the idea. He was full of anguish that the matter had hurt Lalita so deeply. Privately, he resolved never to discuss the matter even in jest, and to perform his promised task with such skill and dedication that nobody could accuse him of indifference.
That morning, in the seclusion of her bedroom, Sucharita had been struggling since dawn to read an English religious text called Imitations of Christ. She had not taken up her other routine chores. At times, when her mind wandered from the book, the words on the page seemed to her mere shadows; but the very next moment, angry with herself, she would forcibly concentrate on her book, refusing to give up. Presently, hearing voices from afar, she sensed Binoybabu’s arrival. She gave a start, at once feeling the urge to put her book aside and move to the outer room. Then annoyed at her own restlessness, she sank back onto the chowki and took up her book. She tried to block her ears as she read, to shut out all sounds.
At this juncture, Lalita came into her room.
‘Tell me, what’s the matter with you?’ Sucharita asked, glancing at her face.
‘Nothing at all!’ insisted Lalita, vigorously shaking her head.
‘Where were you?’
‘Binoybabu is here. I think he wants to chat with you.’
Today, Sucharita could not bring herself to ask if anyone else had accompanied Binoybabu. Had there been another visitor, surely Lalita would have mentioned him, but still, Sucharita could not rest content. Giving up her attempts at self-restraint, she went towards the outer chamber to do her duty by their visitor.
‘Won’t you come?’ she asked Lalita.
‘Go ahead, I’ll join you later,’ replied Lalita rather impatiently.
Entering the outer room, Sucharita found Binoy chatting with Satish.
‘Baba has gone out,’ said Sucharita. ‘He’ll be back soon. Ma has taken Labanya and Leela to Mastermoshai’s house to help them memorize a poem for that show of ours; but Lalita simply refused to go. Ma has asked us to keep you here when you arrive; today, you will be tested.’
‘Are you not involved in all this?’ Binoy asked her.
‘If everyone became an actor, who on earth would the spectators be?’
Borodasundari excluded Sucharita from such matters, as far as possible. This time, too, Sucharita had not been called upon to display her talents.
On other days, Sucharita and Binoy were never at a loss for words when they met. But today, there were such obstacles on both sides that all their efforts at conversation failed. Sucharita had vowed not to mention Gora. Binoy also could not bring up Gora’s name easily, as before. He found it difficult to speak of Gora, imagining that Lalita, and perhaps everyone else in this house, regarded him as Gora’s minor satellite.
It had often happened before that Binoy arrived first and Gora joined them later. Imagining that the same might happen today, Sucharita remained restless and alert. She was afraid that Gora might come, yet also tormented by the fear that he may not arrive. After exchanging a few desultory remarks with Binoy, Sucharita found no option but to take up Satish’s notebook and discuss it with him. She annoyed Satish, finding fault sometimes with his arrangement of pictures. Highly agitated, Satish began to argue loudly. And Binoy, humiliated and aggrieved at the sight of the rejected oleander-bunch on the table, began to think, ‘Lalita should have accepted these flowers of mine, out of civility, if nothing else.’
Startled by a sudden footfall, Sucharita turned around to see Haranbabu entering the room. Because she had started so visibly, she blushed.
‘Why, isn’t your Gourbabu here?’ asked Haranbabu, taking his place on a chowki.
‘Why, do you have some need of him?’ asked Binoy, annoyed at Haranbabu’s needless query.
‘You’re not often seen without him,’ observed Haranbabu. ‘That is why I ask.’
Binoy was privately incensed. Lest his anger become apparent, he answered curtly: ‘He is not in Kolkata.’
‘Has he gone on a preaching tour?’ asked Haran.
Binoy’s fury increased. He made no reply. Sucharita also rose and left the room without a word. Haranbabu rushed after her, but could not catch up.
‘Sucharita, I have something to tell you,’ he called from a distance.
‘I’m not well today,’ she replied. As she spoke, the bar slammed down on her bedroom door.
Borodasundari now arrived, and summoned Binoy to another room to rehearse his lines for the show. Not long after, the flowers suddenly vanished from the table. That night, Lalita did not appear at Borodasundari’s rehearsal, and Sucharita also stayed up very late, gazing out at the darkness of the night, the Imitations of Christ lying folded on her lap, the lamp in her room turned to face the corner. Like a mirage, a strange, exquisite land seemed to arise before her eyes, a terrain somehow utterly divorced from everything she had seen and known until now. Hence the lights burning at the windows there frightened her with their remote mysteriousness, like a garland of stars in the dark night sky. Yet, she felt, ‘My life is insignificant, all my long-held certitudes riddled with doubt, my regular daily activities utterly meaningless. Perhaps, in that other place, I shall gain complete knowledge, perform deeds that are noble, and make my life worthwhile. Who has brought me to the unknown gateway of that exquisite, unfamiliar, terrifying land? Why does my heart tremble so? Why are my feet frozen immobile when they try to advance?’
~23~
Binoy came daily for rehearsals. Sucharita would glance at him once, then concentrate on the book in her hands or go away to her own room. Every day she suffered the frustration of seeing Binoy arrive unaccompanied, but she asked no questions. Yet, the longer this state of affairs continued, Sucharita’s heart grew ever more reproachful against Gora, with each passing day. As if, on that previous occasion, there had been an understanding that Gora was bound to visit them. Ultimately, learning that Gora had unaccountably gone away to some unknown place for a few days, Sucharita tried to dismiss the matter as a trifling piece of news, but it continued to pierce her heart. While performing her daily chores, she would suddenly remember it. When preoccupied, she would realize suddenly that it was this matter that she had secretly been thinking of.
After her discussion with Gora the other day, Sucharita had never expected him to vanish suddenly like this. Despite the great divide between Gora’s views and her own convictions, there had been no contrary currents of resistance in her heart that day. Whether she understood Gora’s opinions clearly it is hard to say, but she seemed to have arrived at a certain understanding of Gora as a human being. Whatever Gora’s views might be, they had not reduced his human stature, nor rendered him contemptible; rather, they had made his strength of character visible. This she had felt deeply, that day. She could never have tolerated such words from another person’s mouth; she would have been furious, regarded the person as a fool, and her mind would have felt a strong urge to mend his ways by teaching him a thing or two. But that day, with Gora, none of these things happened; combined with Gora’s nature, the sharpness of his intellect, the firmness of his unquestioning faith, and the penetrating force of his thunderous voice, his words had acquired a life and a reality of their own. Sucharita herself might not accept all these opinions, but if someone else embraced them like this with all his life and soul, there could be no cause to spurn him. In fact, it was even possible to respect him, beyond one’s own reservations. Such was the feeling that had completely overwhelmed Sucharita that day. This state of mind was entirely new to her. She was extremely impatient about differences of opinion; despite the example of Poreshbabu’s detached, steady, tranquil lifestyle, she regarded opinions in an exclusive light, because she had been surrounded by communalism since childhood. That day she had for the first time seen ideas in relation to human beings, sensing the mysterious presence of something alive and whole. She had forgotten that day, the divisive vision that saw human society in black and white alone, separating my side from yours. She had been able to
regard a person of different views as primarily a human being, so his opinions became secondary.
That day, Sucharita had felt that Gora had enjoyed his discussion with her. Was it merely the joy of expressing his own opinions? Did she contribute nothing to that joy? Perhaps not. Perhaps no human being had any value for Gora, perhaps he had moved far away from everyone else, absorbed in his own ideas and intentions. Perhaps human beings, to him, merely served as occasions for the application of his ideas.
Of late, Sucharita had been concentrating on her prayers. She seemed to be trying, harder than ever, to make Poreshbabu her refuge. One day, when Poreshbabu was reading alone in his room, Sucharita silently came in and joined him.
‘What is it, Radhé?’ asked Poreshbabu, placing his book on the table.
‘Nothing,’ she replied. She began to rearrange the books and papers on the table, although they were already arranged quite neatly.
‘Baba, why don’t you teach me as you used to before?’ she blurted out, after a while.
‘But my pupil has graduated from my school,’ Poreshbabu smiled affectionately. ‘Now you can grasp things by reading on your own.’
‘No, I can’t grasp anything,’ declared Sucharita. ‘I’ll read under your guidance, as before.’
‘Very well, I’ll tutor you from tomorrow,’ Poreshbabu consented.
‘Baba,’ resumed Sucharita suddenly after a short silence, ‘The other day, Binoybabu said a lot of things about caste discrimination. Why don’t you explain such matters to me?’
‘Ma, you know I have always encouraged all of you to try to think and understand things for yourselves, instead of merely making a habit of parroting my opinions or someone else’s. To offer advice on a subject before the question has formed properly in your mind is like offering food before you have developed an appetite: it only creates distaste and indigestion. Whenever you ask me a question, I’ll answer as best I can.’