Freedom Song (3 page)

‘Hey, you,’ he said.

The two figures stirred as if they had been immersed in something, lifting their heads like cats raising their whiskers from a bowl of milk.

‘What?’ said Jochna, altering her voice to a surprising hardness and volume, for she, among the two, was unafraid of his bully and bravado.

Nando softened.

‘What?’ he returned.

‘What are you saying?’ said Jochna.

‘No, I was only saying—have you washed the pans?’

‘Can’t you see?’ She might have been addressing a hectoring child.

Nando didn’t mind this scolding. As if something had suddenly occurred to him, he turned back to the kitchen. Poor man, he had probably just wanted to have a few words before going in and smoking his bidi by himself in the servant’s room—because he never slept during the day. But the girls kept him out of their afternoon world, to which they had already returned, their sides and shoulders pressed against the carpet till they hurt, their breasts rising and falling lightly. They let no one encroach upon their territory between the sofa and the centre table; if someone did, they got up, flustered and serious. And Nando could not make
normal conversation. He either flirted with Uma, standing beside her by the kitchen basin and brushing his shoulder against hers, or they quarrelled loudly, or made fun of each other in small, irritating, uncharitable ways. With Jochna he dared nothing at all, because she bore his daughter’s name, and was just as short with him as his daughter was; in fact he tried to please her whenever he could; but, in that frail demonic body with red eyes and tobacco-stained hands, there also existed a genuine paternal soft spot for Jochna. This was known and accepted in the household.

While these people rested at home, Khuku’s husband sat in an office on the outskirts of the city. It was an old company, once reputable and British owned, called Little’s, and it produced sweets and chocolates. There was a time when its oval tin—Little’s Magic Assortment—was available in every shop in Calcutta, and its toffees and lozenges in cellophane wrappers stored in jars in every cigarette shop. The company had changed hands several times, until now it was owned by the state government, and, after having made losses for many years, was named a ‘sick unit’. Its loyal machines still produced, poignantly, myriads of perfectly shaped toffees, but that organ of the company that was responsible for distribution had for long been lying numb and dysfunctional, so that the toffees never quite reached the retailer’s shelves. Years of labour problems had sapped the factory and its adjoining offices of impetus, but ever
since the Communist Party came to power, the atmosphere had changed to a benign, co-operative inactivity, with a cheerful trade unionism replacing the tensions of the past, the representatives of the chocolate company now also representing the government and the party, and the whole thing becoming a relaxed, ungrudging family affair. This kind of company was not rare in the ‘public sector’; in fact, brave little bands of men held out in such islands everywhere; but Khuku’s husband, before retiring, had worked in a successful private company, where every department whirred and ticked from nine to five thirty like clockwork, and he and his colleagues had only heard of the renegade lives of the ‘public sector’ companies from the outside. They were spoken of as backward but colourful tribes with a time-tested culture of tea-drinking, gossip, and procrastination, who had stoutly defended, for many years, their modes of communion and exchange from being taken over by an alien ‘work ethic’. Little did he know, then, that, in his days of retirement, he too would end up here. It was, in a sense, a relaxing place to be in, like withdrawing to some outpost that was cut off from the larger movements of the world. The factory was tucked away in a lane on the outskirts, not far from an important and congested junction on the main road, where no one would have expected it, hidden behind stone walls and a huge rusting gate that opened reluctantly to outsiders. Once, the two-storeyed
buildings made of red brick, with long continuous corridors and verandas, with arches that were meant to give shelter from the tropical heat, would have been impressive and even grand. Now it was like a hostel; cups of tea travelled from room to room, and bearers ran back and forth in the verandas. There was a perpetual air of murmuring intrigue, the only sign of life, until the doors and windows were shut in the evening.

Yet the employees were, in their own way, simple and good-hearted. And though Khuku’s husband was only an adviser, they treated him with a bit of extra respect and sometimes as if he ran the place. ‘Put it back on the rails, sir,’ they said, ‘we need people like you. What a state the company’s in!’ And Khuku’s husband came home and told Khuku these stories, his eyes shining, and felt young again. And Khuku told her brother in Vidyasagar Road, ‘He’ll put the company right.’ Khuku’s brother, in a kind of infatuated haze, said, ‘Little’s—Little’s will be all right again.’ For many days after, he would not let Piyu or his brother’s children touch Cadbury, and go out himself in search of Little’s chocolates. His relationship would become temporarily strained with the keeper of the local shop, Pick and Choose, who was always doing his accounts on a scrap of paper and was not very concerned about human beings. ‘What, sir, you don’t keep Little’s toffee—
we
ate it when
we
were young.
You
must have eaten it as well. No, this shop is not
what it used to be,’ he would conclude, shaking his head. ‘What can we do, Bhola babu?’ the shopkeeper would say. ‘They don’t
send
us the chocolates,’ as if he were speaking of a powerful but heartless family.

Meanwhile, Khuku’s husband had discovered that, in spite of their good intentions, the employees, after making their supportive and rallying statements, went back first thing to a convivial round of tea in the canteen. So he resorted to saying, ‘Do it at once!’ or ‘I want some order in this place!’ till he knew better. A few weeks later, he met, at last, the Managing Director. The Managing Director had joined the company three months ago, but since he was a state civil servant as well, he naturally could not spend all his time here—he was merely a stop-gap before a full-time man came along. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Purakayastha,’ he said to Khuku’s husband. ‘I’ve heard so much about you—we are very fortunate, very fortunate. We need your skills, sir. Tell me—are you happy with your office?’ A new room had been refurnished specially for him, with a filing cabinet, a telephone, and a window that looked out over the wall into the lane. ‘Oh yes, you shouldn’t have gone through the trouble,’ said Khuku’s husband. ‘No
trouble,
no trouble at all! In fact, you’re the one that’s going through the trouble,’ he said, waving around him. ‘No, no,’ said Khuku’s husband. ‘In fact, Mr Sengupta, I would like to have a talk with you.’ He smiled and looked
seriously at the other. ‘Definitely, Mr Purakayastha. We are very keen to hear what you have to say. Definitely.’ Yet the Managing Director—a relatively young man—spoke like one who would not be around for long, for all Managing Directors used this company as a kind of airport lounge, from where they went on to somewhere else, never to be seen again. And so it was the eager tea-drinking employees that Khuku’s husband spent most afternoons with.

‘R
eally? Are you sure?’ It was morning again. Khuku was speaking to Mohit’s mother, Puti, in their familiar East Bengali dialect.

‘Mohit told me yesterday.’

Khuku laughed, disarmed by the picture that composed itself before her eyes—Bhaskar marching down the street early in the morning, brandishing newspapers.

‘What will he do next?’ she said.

‘He should get married before he does anything.’

‘I hear they’re trying to find a girl.’

‘It won’t be easy.’

‘Oh, it won’t be easy, will it?’ she asked.

She cradled the receiver and curled her toes; her feet were up on the divan.

‘Mashi, how can it be easy?’ cried Puti. Her voice came agitated but musical on the ear-piece. ‘You know how long Arun took to find a wife.’

‘Yes, Arun,’ agreed Khuku. ‘But Arun is so . . . short.’

‘Arun is short but Bhaskar is dark,’ said Puti. ‘And tell me, which father will give away his daughter to a boy who has Party connections?’

‘Which father will?’ echoed Khuku. ‘It’s Bhola’s fault. Though he’s a good-looking boy in his way. I used to call him “Black Beauty” when he was younger.’

‘Leave your “Black Beauty”,’ said Puti. ‘“Black Beauty” won’t help him when his father-in-law finds he sells
Ganashakti.’

Later, Khuku put her feet in her slippers and walked to the dining-table. Mini was wrapped in a shawl, and Khuku’s husband was wearing a dark blue slip-over upon a shirt whose sleeves were rolled up above his wrists.

‘It’s cold,’ said Khuku, pulling her shawl tightly around her shoulders.

Both hers and Mini’s hair were tied in buns at the back; both had wavy hair, but Khuku’s was crowded with curls, with not an inch of straightness to be found anywhere, only skips and jumps and leaps.

‘Yes,’ said Mini. ‘Ever since yesterday.’

‘You should wear your full-sleeve pullover,’ said Khuku to her husband.

‘Where is it?’ he asked, a little crossly but dreamily.

‘Can’t you find anything? Mini,’ she said, ‘he really can’t do anything for himself, and, God forbid, if I die before he does. . .’

Mini smiled at her friend.

‘Have some oranges,’ said Khuku to Mini. ‘They’re sweet as sugar. Mritunjoy bought them yesterday from Park Circus, and do you know how much they cost—you won’t believe me—fourteen rupees a dozen.’

‘What are you saying?’ said Mini, looking up.

‘Yes—fourteen rupees a dozen! Who said Calcutta is not an expensive city? They say that Bombay is expensive, but I think Calcutta is no less.’ She said this as a complaint but a note of pride was audible in her voice.

‘Jochna!’ she cried. ‘Give Didimoni an orange! No, don’t give it, bring the bowl here, I’ll choose one myself.’ Jochna, with a mysterious smile on her face, held the bowl in her hands while Khuku delved in a hugely absorbed way into the oranges, turning them over, till she picked one and handed it to Jochna. ‘Give it to Didimoni,’ she said.

‘Give one to Shib,’ murmured Mini.

She looked at her husband, as if she had just noticed him.

‘Will you have one?’ she said.

He shook his head, never wasting a word if he didn’t have to. As Mini, with her small dark fingers, ripped the peel, the smell of orange suddenly burst upon the air.

‘Do you know what Puti told me?’ Khuku separated the portions of the orange, which came off with white threads hanging by their sides like bits of cobweb. Absent-mindedly she picked off some of the threads with her finger and put
a piece in her mouth. ‘Bhaskar sells
Ganashakti
in the morning. Mmm, it’s like sugar.’ She picked up another piece and sprinkled sweet white powder upon it. ‘The sweeter the better,’ she said. Such a sweet tooth had she that when she was a girl she would eat handfuls of sugar, crunching the large unrefined crystals happily with her molars, and no one would notice, for she was a lonely child who haunted the margins of her large family. Once she had eaten sweet homoeopathic pills till they had given her a stomach-ache, much to the disgust of her elder sister. What was normally called ‘food’ had held no appeal for her until she got married.

‘Ganashakti?’
said Khuku’s husband.

‘Yes,’ said Khuku, spitting out the pips into her cupped hands. ‘Mohit was there with him.’

Khuku’s husband shook his head, but said nothing.

‘There are many boys in my area,’ said Mini, putting a piece of orange in her mouth, ‘who get so involved they don’t do anything else for the rest of their lives. Many. Two boys, Anshuman Biswas and Partho Guha—good students at school—have even left their jobs.’ Khuku and Mini worked busily while talking, spitting out pips which were being heaped in torn pieces of the peel. They were enjoying the winter.

W
hen afternoon came to Vidyasagar Road, wet clothes—Piyu’s dresses, Bhaskar’s pyjamas and kurtas, even a few soggy towels—hung from a clothes-line which stretched from one side to another on the veranda of the first floor. The line, which had not been tightly drawn anyway, sagged with the pressure of the heavy wet clothes that dripped, from sleeves and trouser-ends, a curious grey water on to the floor, and, especially in the middle, one noticed the line curved downward, as if a smile were forming. To the people in the house, the clothes formed a screen or curtain which threw shadows and provided bewitching glimpses of the speedy criss-crosses of the grill, and through those criss-crosses bits of the balcony of the house opposite and the sky and the shajana tree, all of which surprised by still being there. The slow leaking of the drops of water from the clothes and their casual, flirtatious
flutter with every breeze would not have been noticed by the passer-by on the road, who, if he had looked beyond the remaining leaves on the shajana tree and the iron nerve-pattern of the grill, would have seen them suspended there stilly, like ghosts or patches of colour. Who had put them there? To know that, one would have had to be present at half-past two, when Haridasi, helped by Bhaskar’s mother, watched regally by Piyu, had hung up the clothes one by one, till the passer-by would have seen all the figures, including Piyu in the doorway, gradually consumed by the clothes that they were hanging up.

Winter came only once a year, and it changed the city. It gave its people, as they wore their sweaters and mufflers, a sense of having gone somewhere else, the slight sense of the wonder and dislocation of being in a foreign city. Even the everyday view from their own houses was a little strange. Smoke travelled everywhere, robbing the sunlight of its fire. Afternoon, with its gentle orange-yellow light, was the warmest time of day, though the wet clothes, assisted by a breeze, dried more slowly than in the summer. And as the orange light fell on the brickwork and the sides of the houses, it was easier to tell, from the flushed rose centre that now appeared on a terrace and now a parapet, that its origins lay in fire.