Bimala kept her eyes closed and didn’t say a word.
I said, ‘If I keep you here like this, my life will turn into iron shackles. That’s hardly likely to bring me any joy.’
She was silent.
I said, ‘I speak the truth, here and now—I release you. If I can be nothing else to you, at least I won’t be the handcuffs on your wrists.’
I walked away towards the house. No, this wasn’t my magnanimity and hardly my indifference. It’s just that if I didn’t let go, I wouldn’t be free myself. The garland of my heart could not be a burden on it forever. I only pray to the Omnipotent One, that if He doesn’t give me any joy, or only saddle me with grief, I would take it all, but never should he keep me shackled, bound and tied. Trying to hold onto the lie as a Truth was like strangling your own self. Please, spare me from killing myself thus.
I came into the living room and found Chandranathbabu sitting there. My heart was swelling with emotion at that point. The moment I spotted him, I burst out saying, ‘Professor, freedom is man’s greatest possession. Nothing else can compare, nothing at all.’
He was surprised at this excited outburst. He just stared at me.
I said, ‘Books don’t tell you anything. I have read in the shastras that desires bind you; it binds itself and also others. But they were empty words. The day I truly let the bird fly from the cage, I felt that the bird has really left me and not the other way round. When I keep something chained, I am actually chained by my own desires, stronger than iron shackles. I tell you, this is the Truth people fail to understand. Everyone thinks the cure lies elsewhere; nowhere, nowhere else—just set your desires free.’
Chandranathbabu said, ‘We think that freedom lies in getting in your hands whatever you have wished for. But in reality, freedom comes from giving up within yourself whatever you have desired.’
I said, ‘Professor, if you put it in mere words it sounds so bald, like a moral. But when I get even a glimpse of it, I feel this is the elixir of life. This is what the gods drink, and conquer death forever. We fail to perceive beauty until we set it free. If I claim that it was Buddha who conquered the world and not Alexander, it sounds like a lie. When will I be able to sing these words? When will these truths of the universe leap out of printed textbooks and flow like the eternal spring of Truth?’
Suddenly, I remembered that the professor had been gone some days and I didn’t know where he had been. A trifle embarrassed, I asked, ‘Where did you go?’
He said, ‘To Panchu’s house.’
‘Panchu’s house? You were there all these days?’
‘Yes. I figured I would talk to the woman who is posing as his aunt. She was surprised to see me at first. This was unexpected behaviour from a gentleman. But then I stayed on. So finally, she began to feel a little ashamed. I told her, “Ma , you won’t be able to insult me and send me away. And if I stay, so does Panchu. I won’t allow him and his motherless children to be thrown out into the streets.” For two days she heard me quietly, neither concurring nor disagreeing. Eventually, today I found her packing her bags. She said, “We will go to Vrindavan; give us some money.” I know she won’t go to Vrindavan, but she’ll have to be given a big amount as a sendoff. So I have come to you.’
‘Certainly, I’ll give whatever is needed.’
‘The old lady isn’t all bad. Panchu wouldn’t let her touch the water jug and always kicked up a ruckus if she so much as walked into the room; but when she heard that I don’t mind eating food cooked by her, she took very good care of me. She’s a good cook. The little respect that Panchu had for me, vanished altogether. Earlier he thought I was at least a simple man. But now he believes the reason I ate food cooked by this woman was simply to manipulate her. Manipulation may have its place in life—but to compromise your caste over it? If I could have outwitted her as a false witness, he may have understood. Anyway, I’ll have to stand guard over Panchu’s house for a while even after the old woman leaves, or Harish Kundu may cook up more mischief, I believe he has said to his subjects, “I got him a fake aunt and he has gone one up on me and got himself a fake father. Let’s see how his father saves his skin.’”
I said, ‘His skin may or may not be saved. But if we even lose our lives fighting these various traps these people are designing for our countrymen, in the shape of religion, society, business, etc., I would be a happy man.’
Bimala
IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE SO MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN ONE LIFETIME. I FEEL I HAVE lived seven times over, as if a thousand years have lapsed in these few months. Time was galloping so fast that I scarcely felt it moving. That day I got a jolt and came to my senses.
When I went to speak to my husband about abolishing foreign goods from our markets, I knew we’d have an argument. But I somehow believed that I would have no need of dissembling dissent. There was magic in the very air around me. The fact that an immense ocean of maleness like Sandip came and crashed at my feet like waves, when I had not called out to him, was proof of the fact that this magic existed. And the other day I saw Amulya—young and simple as the tender bamboo reed—come and stand before me, gradually a colour emerging from within him like the river at dawn. That day, a glance at Amulya’s face told me just how impressed the goddess could be when she looked upon her devotee. Thus, I had already seen how my magic wand worked.
So, that day, I went to my husband like a bolt of lightning, heading an army of clouds with immense faith in my powers. But what happened? In all of these nine years, I had never seen such indifference in his eyes. It was like the desert sky without a drop of moisture, draining all colour from the object it chanced to look upon. I’d have been happier if he had at least shown some anger. I couldn’t touch him anywhere. I felt I was a lie, a dream: and when the dream ended, I was just the dark night.
All these years I had envied my beautiful sisters-in-law their beauty. I knew in my heart that Fate had deprived me of powers and all my power lay in my husband’s love for me. Today, I had drained the cup of power to the dregs and I was inebriated. Suddenly, the cup fell to the ground and shattered. How was I to live?
Quickly, I sat down to tie up my hair. Shame. Oh the shame. As I walked passed Mejorani’s room, she called out, ‘Hey there, little princess, the topknot is leaping out over your head; is your head still in the right place?’
The other day, my husband told me so easily in the garden: I release you. Is it so simple: giving release or being released? Is freedom tangible? It’s empty. Like the fish, I had always swum in the waters of love. All of a sudden if I am held up to the sky and told, here is your freedom, I cannot survive.
Today, when I came into my bedroom, I found mere furniture—racks, mirrors, bed. The heart was missing. There was only release, freedom, emptiness. The water had dried up, exposing the rocks and pebbles. No love, just furniture.
When I was so badly hit by doubts about where exactly Truth resided in this world for me, I ran into Sandip again. As the heart slammed into another heart, the fires burned the same as before. Where was the lie? This was Truth brimming over. These people walking around, talking, laughing, Bororani counting her beads, Mejorani laughing with her maids, singing songs—the awakening within me was a far greater Truth than all of this.
Sandip said, ‘I need fifty thousand.’
My drunken soul sang out, ‘That’s nothing. I’ll get it for you.’ It didn’t matter how, and from where. Here I was, rising above everything from the depths of nothing in a matter of seconds. Just like that, things would happen with just one gesture. I can, I can, I can. No doubts about it.
So I walked away. But then I looked around me—where was the money? Where was that magic tree showering currency? Why did the world shame the heart so? But I had to have the money. By hook or by crook—there was no shame in it. Crime stalked guilt. True power was exempt from all fault. The thief steals, but the victorious king loots. I began to look into where the treasury was, who guarded the money and whose hands it came into. At night I
stood on the veranda gazing fixedly at the office room. How was I to snatch away fifty thousand from within these iron bars? I had no mercy. If a spell could make the guards of the room drop dead in that instant, I would have rushed in like a crazed soul. Within the heart of this family’s queen, a gang of robbers, rapiers in hand, began to dance before their goddess, begging for a boon. But the world remained silent, the guards changed every few hours and the clock chimed every hour—the huge mansion slept on, fearless and undaunted.
Finally, one day, I called Amulya. I said, ‘The country needs money. Won’t you be able to get it from the treasurer somehow?’
His chest swelled with pride and he said, ‘Why not?’
Alas, I too had spoken thus to Sandip, ‘Why not?’ Amulya’s confidence didn’t give me the slightest hope.
I asked, ‘Tell me what you’ll do?’
He began to lay out such outlandish plans that they were only fit for the monthly magazines and nothing else.
I said, ‘No Amulya, don’t be so naive.’
He said, ‘Fine, I’ll bribe the guards.’
‘Where is the money for that?’
He replied nonchalantly, ‘I’ll loot the market.’
I said, ‘There’s no need for that, I have my jewels and that will do.’
Amulya said, ‘But the treasurer can’t be bribed. There’s a simpler plan.’
I asked, ‘What?’
‘You don’t have to hear that. It’s very simple.’
‘Tell me still.’
First he fished out a small edition of the Gita from his shirt pocket, kept it on the table and then placed a pistol on it; he didn’t say anything.
Oh my God—he didn’t blink twice before contemplating the murder of our old treasurer. His face was so cherubic that it was hard to imagine him even harming a fly; but appearances are so deceptive. The fact of the matter was, that the old treasurer wasn’t real to him—in his place there was a blankness: it held no life, no pain, just a sloka, ‘Na hanyatey hanyamane sharirey’. The soul does not die, only the body does.
I exclaimed, ‘No, Amulya. Our treasurer has a wife, children, he is—’
‘Where in this country would you find a man who doesn’t have a wife and children? Look here, what we call mercy is only a kind of self-indulgence: so that our weak minds are not hurt, we refrain from hurting others. This is the depth of cowardice.’
Sandip’s words coming from the lips of this child sent a chill down my spine. He is a so raw, so young, he should still believe that goodness exists. Poor thing, this was his time to live, time to grow. The mother in me awakened. For me, there was neither good nor evil—there was only death in alluring shapes; but when this eighteen-year-old could so easily decide that killing an innocent old man was the right thing, I shuddered in terror. When I realized that he had no sense of sin, the sin hidden in his words took a fierce shape before my eyes, as if the sins of the ‘father’ were visiting the child.
As I looked at those large, ingenuous eyes, brimming with faith and fervour, my heart wept. He was on his way to hell—who could save him? Why wasn’t my country taking the form of a true mother and drawing this boy to her bosom? Why didn’t she tell him, ‘Do not lose yourself in the process of saving me’?
I know that the greatest powers on earth have reached their summit only by selling their soul to the devil; but the mother stands alone, only to lock horns with this very devil. The mother doesn’t want results, however glorious; she only wants to save. Today my heart cried out to reach out and draw this boy into safety.
Just a few minutes ago I had asked him to steal. Now whatever I said to the contrary, he was bound to laugh it off as female weakness. That is something they give in to only when it entertains or ruins the world.
I said to Amulya, ‘Go on, you don’t have to do anything. It’s my job to get the money.’
When he was at the door, I called him back and said, ‘Amulya, I am your elder sister. I bless you and pray that God keeps you safe and sound.’ He was taken aback at these words of mine. But then he bent low and touched my feet. When he stood up, his eyes were moist.
‘Dear brother, I am headed for disaster; let me take on all your troubles—let me never plant fresh thorns on your path.’ I said to him, ‘You’ll have to gift your pistol to me.’
‘What will you do with it, Didi?’
‘I’ll practise death.’
‘That’s what is needed—women too have to die and kill.’ Amulya handed me the pistol.
Amulya’s youthful face and the glow on it left a trail in my heart like the first streak of light at dawn. I held the pistol to my heart and said, ‘This here is my last resort to salvation, a gift from a brother to his sister.’
The window in the heart that guarded the tender spot of maternal feelings flew open just this once. I thought it would stay open from now on. But good always loses out. The lover-woman came and obstructed the mother’s way to liberation. The next day I ran into Sandip again. A crazy madness gripped my heart and began its wild dance all over again. But what was all this—was this my true self? Never. Never before had I set my eyes upon this brazen, this audacious self. The snake charmer came suddenly and unwrapped this snake within me. But this snake had never been within me—it was brought by the snake charmer himself. The devil seemed to have me in his thrall. Whatever I did now, was not my doing, but all his.
That same devil came to me one day, blazing torch in hand, and said, ‘I am your country, I am your Sandip, you have nothing that matters more than me, Vande Mataram.’ I folded my hands and said, ‘You are my religion, you are my heaven, I will sacrifice my all for the love of you, Vande Mataram.’
You want five thousand? Fine, you shall have it. Tomorrow? I’ll bring it tomorrow. The scandalous insolence of the act will make that five thousand froth and foam, like heady liquor. Then there would be the inebriated dance. The motionless earth would sway beneath the feet, the eyes would burn with hidden fire, a fiery wind would blow past the ears and everything before my eyes would seem blurred; tottering, I shall stumble to my death; in a moment, the fire would extinguish, ashes would fly in the wind—nothing would be left.
I was totally at a loss as to where the money could come from. Then, the other day, in the throes of extreme excitement, I saw the money right before my eyes.
Every year, for the Durga Puja, my husband gifted his sisters-in-law three thousand rupees each. That money lay in the bank, gathering interest. This year too, the money had been gifted. But I knew that it hadn’t gone into the bank yet. I also knew where the money was. There was an iron chest in the ante-room adjoining my bedroom where I changed my clothes. The money was in that chest.
Every year my husband went to Calcutta to deposit this money in the bank there. But this year he couldn’t make the trip. This is why I believe in Fate. The country needed this money and that’s why it was still there. Who would dare to take this money to the bank? And would I dare not take this money? The death-goddess has reached out her begging bowl, she says I am hungry, feed me. I would bleed myself to death, for that five thousand rupees—oh Mother, the one who has lost this money hasn’t lost much. But you have drained me of all virtues.
So many times have I called Bororani and Mejorani thieves in my heart; they were looting my trusting husband, only taking money from him—this was my grievance. Many times have I told my husband that after their husbands’ death they had stolen many things that didn’t belong to them, He always held his peace and never answered me back. This irked me; I would say, ‘If you wish to donate, do so openly. Why would you allow them to steal?’ The Fates must have heard my allegations and smiled to themselves; today I was about to steal money belonging to my sisters-in-law.
At night my husband changed his clothes in that same ante-room. The keys to the chest were in his pocket. I took them and opened the chest. The slightest sound seemed loud enough to wake the whole world. A sudden chill stole over me, petrified me from head to toe, giving me the s
hivers.
Inside the chest, there was a drawer. I pulled it open and found that there were no notes, only guineas wrapped in paper. There was no time to count how many there were in each wrapping, how much I needed, etc. There were twenty in all and I piled them all into my anchal and tied the knot. It was no mean weight. The burden of guilt dragged me down to the earth. If they’d been wads of notes instead, I may have felt less guilty. This was all gold.
That night, when I had to enter my own room feeling like a thief, the room no longer seemed my own. I had the strongest claim on this room. But my fraud had made me forfeit it.
I muttered to myself, ‘Vande Mataram, Vande Mataram. Country, my motherland, my golden land—all this gold belongs to her and to nobody else.’
But in the dark of night the heart is weak. My husband slept in the next room. I closed my eyes and passed through his room. I went straight to the open terrace in the inner courtyard, placed that bundle of guilt under my heart and lay on the floor—the packets of coins hurt my soul. The silent night sat near my head, pointing fingers at me. I had failed to separate my home from the world. Today I have robbed my home, and therefore robbed the land; for this sin, my home was lost to me in the same instant that my land slipped away from me. Had I gone begging in order to serve the country, and even lost my life before completing my service, that incomplete service would have been accepted by God as obeisance. But theft was no worship—how would I hand this to my country? The boat would sink with the weight of this burden. Just because I was headed for death, I didn’t have to drag my motherland into the muck, did I?
There was no way of returning this money into the chest. I did not have the strength to go back into that room, open the chest and put the money back this very night. If I tried, I would surely faint at the threshold of my husband’s room. Now there was only the road ahead and no other.