Binodini held up Asha’s chin and said, ‘Yes, my sister, it’s time for me to leave. Once, in the past, you had loved me—now, in times of joy, set aside a bit of that love for me, my friend—and forget everything else.’
Mahendra came and touched Binodini’s feet as he said, ‘Bouthan, forgive me.’ Two teardrops brimmed over the corners of his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
Binodini said, ‘You forgive me too, Thakurpo. May God grant you two eternal happiness.’
GHARE BAIRE
(Home and the World)
Bimala
OH MOTHER, TODAY I REMEMBER THE SINDOOR ON YOUR FOREHEAD, THE red-bordered sari you used to wear, and your eyes—calm, serene and deep. They touched my heart like the first rays of the sun. My life started out with that golden gift. What happened after that? Did the dark clouds come charging like brigands? Did they destroy the gift of light? And yet, that touch of the chaste dawn at the most important moment of one’s life may perhaps be clouded by disaster, but it can never be erased completely.
In our land, only the fair-skinned are considered beautiful. But the sky that radiates light is dark. My mother was dark-skinned; her glow came from her inner goodness. Her virtue could put the vanity of beauty to shame. They all said I looked like my mother. As a child, this was my quibble with the mirror. I felt my entire being had been wronged—the colour of my skin was not my own, it was someone else’s, a mistake from start to finish.
I was not beautiful. But I prayed to God with all my heart that, like my mother, I would be blessed with the gift of chastity. At the time of my marriage, the astrologer from my in-laws’ came to read my palm and said, ‘This girl has all the signs of good fortune and she will make a virtuous wife.’ All the women said, ‘Well, naturally. After all, isn’t Bimala the spitting image of her mother?’
I married into an aristocratic family. Their title could be traced back to the days of the Mughals. I had heard fairy tales as a child and created the image of a prince in my mind. An aristocratic prince: his body would be like chameli petals; his face would be shaped as a result of the long and fervent prayers that a young maiden offered to Lord Shiva. Those eyes, that nose! His slim, newly-emerged moustache would be as dark and delicate as the wings of a bumble bee.
When I saw my husband, he didn’t exactly match this description. Even his skin, I noticed, was just as dark as mine. It did take away some of my regret about my own lack of beauty, but a sigh escaped my lips as well. I could have lived with remorse for my own looks, if only I could have one glimpse of the prince of my dreams!
But perhaps it is best when beauty slips past the sentry of the eyes and secretly shows up in the heart. There, on the banks that are lapped with the swelling waves of reverence, beauty can come unadorned. In my childhood, I have seen how the glow of bhakti turns everything beautiful. Even as a child I felt the caress in my mother’s gracious, nurturing hands and the love from my mother’s heart that poured out and plunged into a sublime ocean of beauty when she carefully peeled the fruits for my father and arranged his meal on a white marble plate, when she kept aside the paan for him, wrapped in fine cloth sprinkled with keora water, and as she gently fanned him and kept the flies off his plate when he sat down to eat.
Didn’t the same strain of reverence run in me? It did. No debate, no deliberations over good or bad—it was just an inexorable strain! An entire lifetime spent playing it like a hymn in praise of the Lord Almighty in a corner of His temple—if that made sense, then that strain of melody heard in the early hours of my life had begun its work.
I remember, when I woke up at dawn and, very cautiously, touched my husband’s feet, the sindoor on my forehead seemed to shine brighter than ever. One day he woke up, laughed and asked, ‘What’s this, Bimal, what are you doing!’ I was so embarrassed. Perhaps he felt that I sought his blessings furtively. But no, oh no, it wasn’t for the blessings—it was the woman’s heart, where love itself seeks to worship.
The family I married into was very orthodox. Here, some rules were as old as the Mughals and some were even older, set by Manu and Parashar. But my husband was very modern in his outlook. He was the first in his family to be highly educated; he had earned an MA. Both his elder brothers died young from intemperance, they had no children. My husband did not drink and he was solemn by nature; this was unusual in this family and not everyone appreciated it. They thought such purity only suited those who were not blessed by the goddess of wealth. Only the expanses of the moon could contain blemishes with ease.
My husband’s parents had died a while ago. The household was run by his grandmother. My husband was the jewel in her crown, the apple of her eye. This was the reason he dared to transgress the bounds of conformity. So, when he appointed Miss Gilby as my companion and tutor, tongues started wagging at home and outside, and yet, my husband’s will won in the end.
At that time he had completed his BA and was studying for his MA. He had to stay in Calcutta for his classes in college. He wrote me a letter nearly every day. They were short and simple. That rounded, distinct writing from his hand stared back at me serenely.
I stored his letters in a sandalwood box. Every morning I picked some flowers from the garden and covered the box with them. By then my prince of the fairy tales had vanished like the moon on a sunny morning. The true prince of my heart had gained his rightful place. I was his princess and my place was beside him; but it was a greater joy to take my place at his feet.
I am educated. I am acquainted with this day and age in today’s language. The words I speak now sound inordinately poetic even to my own ears. If I had never known today’s world, I would have found my thoughts and feelings of those bygone days quite commonplace—I’d have thought, just as my being a woman was a fact, it’s equally natural that a woman would turn her love into devotion. I wouldn’t waste a moment’s thought on whether there was any extraordinary kind of poetic beauty in this sentiment or not.
But from those days of my childhood to this day of my youth, I seem to have traversed an entire age. Thoughts, once as natural as breath, have to be constructed as poetic craft. The impassioned poets of today sing loud praises about the incredible beauty in a wife’s chastity and a widow’s celibacy. It is evident that truth and beauty have parted ways at this juncture of life. So then, can Truth be salvaged only under the guise of beauty?
All women don’t think the same way. But this I know for certain—I have that element of my mother in me, the urge to revere. Today, when it is no longer considered natural by society, it is clear to me that it is an innate quality in me.
But woe for my Fate, my husband didn’t wish to give me an opportunity to revere him.That was his generosity of spirit: at the holy place, the greedy priest grapples to get worshipped because he doesn’t deserve it rightfully. In this world, only the weak demand reverence from their wives as their due. It shames both the worshipper and the worshipped.
But why this abundance of luxury for my benefit? It was as if his affection overflowed and flooded my banks, with maids and material things and creature comforts. How was I to push through all this and find a gap to offer myself up to him? I needed ways to offer more than to take. Love is, after all, reclusive by nature. It will blossom profusely and carelessly on the dust by the roadside. But it can’t bloom in all its glory, trapped in a ceramic pot in a sitting room.
My husband couldn’t violate all the orthodox rules and customary regulations of the inner chambers of the house. It wasn’t possible for me to meet him freely in the mornings or at any odd hour of the day. I knew exactly when he would come in; so we would never meet casually, for no rhyme or reason. Our meeting was like a poem: it came with its own meter and its own rhythm. After the day’s work, I freshened up, tied my hair carefully, dotted my forehead with sindoor, wore a freshly creased sari, collected my scattered mind and body from all its domestic concerns and offered myself on a golden tray at a special time to a special person. The time was little, but in itself it was boundless
.
My husband always claimed that men and women have equal rights over one another and hence their love is also on an equal footing. I have never argued with him on this. But my heart says that devotion doesn’t stop people from being equals. It tries to equalize people by elevating them. Hence, the pleasure of becoming equal is ever-present in it and it never turns into a thing of indifference. On the tray of love, devotion is like the light of the lamp in the ritual of worship—it falls the same way upon the worshipper and the worshipped. Today I know for sure that a woman’s love is sanctified only through her own veneration—or else it’s worth nothing. When the lamp of our love glows, the flame rises upwards and only the burnt-up oil remains at the bottom.
Dearest, it is your greatness that you refused my invocation, but it would have been best if you’d accepted it. You have loved me by adorning me, by educating me, by granting me what my heart desired and even what it did not desire, your love did not take time out to blink and I have seen the stolen sighs you have spent over your love for me. You have loved my body as if it was a parijata flower from the heavens, my soul you have loved as if it was your good fortune. This makes me proud; I feel that it is the wealth of my attributes that have thus drawn you to me. It makes me feel like the rightful occupant of the queen’s throne—I sit here and demand homage. The demands increase constantly and can never be met. ‘I have the power to conquer a man’—does this thought alone bring joy to a woman or for that matter, is it even good for her? Her salvation lies in the act of setting adrift such thoughts on the currents of reverence. Shiva came to Annapurna in a beggar’s guise; but if she hadn’t done penance for him, would she have succeeded in thus enduring his empyrean powers?
I can remember how many people used to burn in the slow fire of envy at my good fortune. It was something that warranted envy all right—I came by it as a bonus, without deserving it. But luck doesn’t last long. One has to pay the price or Fate does not put up with it. The price of good fortune has to be paid over years, every day and only then can ownership claims be staked. God is quite capable of granting it to us, but we have to receive it on our own merit. Sometimes we are not blessed enough to live with what has been bestowed upon us.
Many a girl’s father sighed at my good fortune. It was the talk of many households all over town: how I didn’t deserve to be married into this family, since I have no great beauty or qualities to boast of. My grandmother-in-law and mother-in-law were known for their extraordinary beauty. My sisters-in-law were also confirmed beauties. Gradually, when misfortune befell both of them, my grandmother-in-law vowed that she wouldn’t look for a beautiful girl for her youngest and favourite grandson. I was able to enter this house solely on the merits of the ‘good omens’ in my charts.
In this house, amidst such profusion of wealth, very few wives had received the true status and respect that was due to them. But apparently that was the rule; hence, even when all the tears of their life sank beneath the froth of liquor and the tinkle of the courtesans’ anklets, they still clung to the pride of being a daughter-in-law of this aristocratic household and managed to keep their heads afloat. Yet, my husband never touched liquor and did not go around depleting his humane qualities seeking female flesh at the doorsteps of the houses of sin; was this, in any way, to my credit? Did Fate gift me with any special charms to control the restless, wild spirits of a man? No, it was pure good fortune and nothing else. In the case of my sisters-in-law, was Fate suddenly so ruthless that every word in store for them turned into warped expressions? Long before nightfall, all the lamps of their joyous lives were extinguished and the flames of their youth continued to burn in vain, through the night in empty ballrooms. No music—just pain.
Both my sisters-in-law pretended that they didn’t think much of my husband’s masculinity. To think that he steered this great vessel of life solely with the help of the lone sail of his wife’s anchal! I have had to bear so many jibes from them, off and on, as if I had stolen my husband’s affections, as if I was full of artifice and pretence—the insolent, modern, fashionable woman. My husband dressed me up in contemporary fashions and they would burn in envy when they saw those colourful jackets, saris, blouses, petticoats and all the other accessories. ‘Such elaborate adorning when there isn’t even any beauty to speak of! It is shameful how you have gone and decked your body up like it’s a novelty shop!’
My husband was well aware of all this. But his heart brimmed over with sympathy for women. He would always advise me, ‘Don’ t be upset.’ I remember, once I had said to him, ‘Women’s minds are very crooked, very narrow.’ He had replied, ‘Just like the feet of Chinese women which are crooked and narrow. The entire society has squashed our women’s minds from all sides and made them narrow and crooked. Fate gambles with their lives—their lives depend on the turn of the dice; do they have any powers of their own?’
My sisters-in-law always got whatever they demanded from their brother-in-law. He never stopped to think whether their demands were valid. I fumed silently when I noticed that they didn’t feel a shred of gratitude. So much so, that my eldest sister-in-law—who spouted piety so freely with her holier-than-thou chants, pujas, vows and fasts, that there wasn’t even an ounce left for her soul—would often quote her brother, a lawyer, that if she were to take her case to the court then my husband . . . oh, it was a lot of rubbish that she’d say! I promised my husband that under no circumstances would I ever retort to anything that either of them said. Hence my misery lay heavier on my shoulders. I felt there was a limit to forbearance and if that limit was crossed it almost made one less of a man. But he said, ‘The law or society has not supported my sisters-in-law; it was a great humiliation for them to have to beg and ask for what they once knew to be rightfully theirs, by virtue of their husbands’ legacy. To add to that one shouldn’t ask for gratitude—how can one get kicked around and also have to shell out a tip for it?’ Shall I be honest with you? I often felt that my husband ought to have been more audacious, enough for him to be a little less compassionate.
My second sister-in-law was of a different kind. She was younger and didn’t have any saintly pretences. On the contrary, her comments and gestures often carried lewd suggestions. The comings and goings of the young maids she’d hired were questionable to say the least. Nobody, however, raised eyebrows as these things were supposedly customary in this house. I knew that my sister-in-law hated the fact that I was fortunate enough to have a husband who didn’t have a vice. Hence, she would find several ways to waylay her brother-in-law. I am ashamed to admit that, even with a husband such as mine, I sometimes felt the slightest twinge of fear. The very air in this place was murky and even the clearest objects appeared distorted. On some days, my second sister-in-law would cook and invite her brother-in-law affectionately. I often wished desperately that he would make some excuse and refuse the invitation. She was wrong to try to trap him, and why should this wrong go unpunished? But instead, when he smiled and accepted the invitation each and every time, a niggling doubt troubled me—it was entirely my fault, but feelings wouldn’t heed reason—I felt this indicated the inherent flightiness in men. At these times, however busy I was otherwise, I would find an excuse to go and sit in my sister-in-law’s room. She would laugh and exclaim to my husband, ‘My goodness, Chhotorani won’t let you out of her sight at all—she’s the strictest of guards. I must say, even in our heyday, we had never learnt how to guard so carefully.’
My husband could only see their misery and never the flaws. Once I said, ‘Fine, let’s assume that the fault lies entirely with society; but why do they deserve so much pity? It’s all right for people to deal with a little misfortune sometimes.’ But he was impossible. Instead of arguing, he just smiled a little. Perhaps he knew about the occasional pangs of doubt I suffered. The main object of my anger was neither society nor anyone else, it was just that—oh well, I won’t go into that.
One day he sat me down and explained, ‘All these criticisms that they direct at
you—if they really thought that you were so blameworthy, would it upset them so much?’
‘Then why this unfair resentment?’
‘I don’t know if you can call it unfair. There is a grain of truth embedded in envy; it is this: whatever brings happiness should ideally be received by every individual.’
‘Then one should quarrel with one’s Fate, not take it out on me.’
‘But Fate isn’t close at hand.’
‘So then they can just go ahead and take whatever they want—you would never deprive them. Let them wear sari-jacket-jewellery-socks and shoes; if they want a memsahib to tutor them, she comes here already, and even if they want to remarry, you have the resources to be able to cross every barrier just like Vidyasagar did.’
‘That is precisely the problem—it isn’t always possible to hand them whatever their heart desires.’
‘Is that any reason to go on playing such coy games, as if whatever one hasn’t got is actually a bad thing so that when someone else gets it, one burns up in envy?’