ARUNDHATI SANYAL

A Name for a Life

ARUNDHATI SANYAL

I had met her in my adolescent years in Durgapur. She would be a frequent visitor to our home on Mirabai Lane. I still remember her tall, statuesque silhouette on our verandah on dusky summer evenings.  She would be impeccably clad in a white “kora” saree with a pencil-thin border of black or navy blue, her hair in a low bun that touched the nape of her tall neck where it met her broad shoulders clad in a boat-necked blouse, her only other accessory that I distinctly recall would be a raven-black handbag with an oblong and rectangular shape with firm circular straps that would remain strung around her elbow. Now that I think about it I never saw her without the handbag. There was a firm erect posture to her figure that remained unchanged when she sat down; my mother would reminisce about how the nuns in her college in Shillong possessed similar stance.  There was a distinct sense of respect that she commanded and received at our home; maybe, I remember this because of Ma’s hushed demeanor when Mrs Saudamini Ghoshal (for that was her name) would visit us.

Much later I would come to know why there was such a hushed tone of awe and homage around Mrs Ghoshal at our home.  I knew later that she would come to get the paperwork for her appointment as primary school teacher in one of the elementary schoolsrun by the steel plant township that we lived in.  Her story and her past intrigued me because she was so different from the people we lived with in our small township where a woman’s identity particularly was predictably recognizable through her husband and his work position in the steel plant.  Here, on the other hand, there was no such predictor; Mrs Ghoshal was indeed a free agent; her story unconnected to the expected pattern had an independence that was quite attractive to my adolescent years.

II

Narayanganj in present day Bangladesh had always been a bastion of the erstwhile Hindu population that later found its way to West Bengal and India.  Saudamini’s story began in Narayanganj where she lived a happy, uneventful life with her husband and two children. Bimalendu Ghoshal worked as an assistant manager in Mahalakshmi Jute Mills, one of the earliest jute enterprises in the town.  He had married Saudamini and settled into a fairly predictable life of regular work at the mill and the nurturing of two young children, a boy, Sadhan, and a baby girl, little Shinjon. However, this was not to last. The mid-60s had proved fairly stable in post-independent East Pakistan.  However, this changed drastically with the rise of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Pakistani politics and the inevitable conflict with West Pakistan and the “Rajakars” (the West Pakistani expatriates in Bangladesh) who began to organize pogroms aimed at the intelligentsia, mostlyBengali Hindus at first and then spread to liberal, educated Muslim Bengalis. 

In one such fracas in the early spring of 1968, the Ghoshals were caught up and forced out of their home into a huge open ground next to the banks of the Sitalalakshkhi River where a large number of Hindus had converged to seek refuge from the organized persecution and violence.  However, this proved to be a death trap for most; in the melee that ensued the Ghoshal saga turned tragic in the worst possible way. The family separated with the husband falling victim to stab wounds that he succumbed to.  The children were with their mother who now faced the toughest moment of her life – a moment that extended to several days of fear, grief, and harrowing witnessing of the torture of her son. 

III

Sadhan was thirteen when he experienced this brutality.  I pick up the story at the point when Saudamini distraught, terrified, and convinced that she has lost her severely injured son arrives at the General Hospital with a paltry police protection with her children.  By this time, the paranoia is complete among Hindus with rumors raging that that no hospital in Narayanganj is safe as the majority population is determined to continue those with the pogrom. 

In fact, this is her argument to the nursing staff trying to take Sadhan to the emergency room and admit him.  Saudamini is adamant that he would be poisoned by the staff there.  The altercation continues until a middle aged gentleman in white coat comes in and introduces himself by the name of Dr. Bhowmick,  a general practitioner attached to the hospital. The word she used later to describe him was “Soumya” (literally a combination of grace, dignity, and erudition in Bengali).  He immediately took charge of the situation and firmly, but gently took Sadhan under his care and into the examination room. 

What followed was a week to ten days of prolonged struggle to save the young boy’s life with Dr. Bhowmick assuming the role of both practitioner and mediator between the distraught and paranoid mother and the predominantly Muslim caregivers in the staff.  At every step of each surgical treatment for the injured child, he had to convince the mother that all intentions were indeed to treat him and not otherwise.  Based purely on her instincts of being under the care of a Hindu doctor, she allowed the treatment to continue.  She did question his Hindu background, asking for his full name, his father’s name, his ancestral home and its whereabouts, all to establish his genuine credentials as a fellow-Hindu.  Diligently, he told her he was Abhilash Bhowmick, son of Ananta Bhowmick, of Sandikona Gram, Netrokona sub-division of Mymensingh district.Satisfied with these responses to her queries, the mother completely gave into his persuasions and thus Sadhan’s series of surgeries ensued which eventually helped him survive his injuries. 

Weakened and traumatized, the family consisting of the mother and the two children returned home to more grievous news that their husband and father had fallen prey to violence and had died.  The extended family from India reached out desperately to make arrangements for bringing in these three survivors and as it so happened, one of her younger brothers was employed in Durgapur Steel plant and within a year they were united and Saudamini came to live in our township. 

Her narrative was so tragic and fraught with the unspeakable pressure of violence that it seemed to overwhelm the survival and spirit of resilience that the three also demonstrated.  Sadhan and Shinjon grew up to become quite successful and lead happy, ordinary lives like the rest of us.  However, the narrative does have a “coda” that for me always seemed to possess the most powerful twist.  Months after Sadhan’s release from the hospital, Saudaminihad re-visited the office of Dr. Bhowmick to give thanks for his support. She had been told there was no Dr. Bhowmick employed by the hospital.  The familiar doctor’s office had the nameplate of an Anis Bhuiyan who had been the attending physician for quite a while.  The nursing staff explained that it was Dr. Bhuiyan who had assumed a Hindu name and identity if that allowed the mother regain her confidence and allow her child to be treated. The staff had been forbidden to reveal the truth as long as the patient remained in the hospital.  And all this because he was confident that, if treated, the child could indeed survive.  In the midst of raging inhumanity a quiet professional had taken a decision that his identity was interchangeable as long as it restored life and health to his patient. His name, his ancestry in return for the opportunity to save a life.

MITRA GHOSH CHATTOPADHYAY

ANCESTRY

MITRA GHOSH CHATTOPADHYAY

MY GRANDPARENTS AND THE JOINT FAMILY

The place called Dhakuria, where my grandparents (Harendranath and Surobala Chatterjee) and my parents (Birendra and Rani Chatterjee) lived, is in South Calcutta. Most of our relatives from the paternal side live there still today. My grandparents originally lived in a village called ‘Bechgaon’ in Dhaka , which was in India before the partition (1947) of India and East Pakistan, but became a part of Bangladesh when Bangladesh was separated again from Pakistan in 1971. My grandparents moved to India, more precisely to Dhakuria, with the whole extended family, leaving all their lands and properties behind in East Pakistan (at that time).

My grandfather Harendranath did not come to Calcutta at once. Long before his final departure from his birth land and long before the partition took place, he bought a huge piece of land in Dhakuria and started to move his big family there gradually. Probably for him, his final departure from Dhaka was in 1948, when he died.

According to his plan, an enormous three storied building with very special architecture was constructed on that land. It had many balconies and, besides the main terraced roof on the top, there were three more open terraces at different levels. There was a huge piece of land in front of the house where we played in the shades of huge trees like Mango, Black berry (Kalo Jam), Tamarind, Siris, Coconut, Bel, Kamranga, Folsa, Sobeda, Jamrul, Amra.as I remember. In that open area, among the trees, there also stood three or four cottage like quarters where caretakers of our grandparents lived. One cottage, in the corner of the garden, belonged to ‘Thakuma’(grandma). Our grandfather gifted it to his wife thinking of a time in future, in his absence, when she might have to live there independently. But, Thakuma did not stay there ever; she gave rented out all the quarters. Later, after our grandfather passed away, it became the source of her steady income to contribute to the family. I never saw my grandfather. He died (might be in 1948) long before I was born. He owned a tea garden in North-East hilly region of West Bengal (Tripura) which was sold or given to Thakuma’s brother after my grandfather died, as far as I know. There were two old cars and one horse during his lifetime. Harendranath Chatterjee made a lot of contributions to the society; he created opportunities for education and jobs for women. He was the founder of many girls’ school in Calcutta.

I love to remember our big house with its very special architecture where quite a huge number of people spanning three generations lived happily. I am talking about the late fifties and early sixties. Our family consisted of my grandmother (the head of the family), my father and uncles (financial providers and common guardians), my mother and aunts (home administrators) and of course we, the cousins - friends and carefree playmates, happy and enthusiastic children. We are five brothers and sisters with a gap of two years in between siblings. I am the youngest. The order is like this: one sister followed by two brothers, then two sisters.

On long vacations, twice in a calendar year, my Pishis (aunts from paternal side) came to our house with their children from different parts of West Bengal and India.  Then our children’s team became appreciably voluminous and strong and we kept busy almost the entire day playing in our front yard and the attached piece of land, on the roof terraces, in Thakuma’s bed room. We performed drama, dance, chorus, reading and recitation using the roof terraces and wide verandahs in the house as our stages.

Our grandma, the only person of her generation living in the house in my childhood, was the in charge of the entire household. She was a woman of pleasant but commanding personality. She was the regular visitor to our reading sessions, drama and other activities. She called my sister Keya (two years older than me) and I as ‘twin sisters’ as we always kept together. When we, all the children of the house, played in the front yard; she sat on the landing of the front staircase and watched us, enjoying our games and always stayed till we finished playing and returned to our respective rooms. She went to the nearby lake for morning walks - sometimes we, the girls, accompanied her. Later, many times I went to the waterfront with my parents and friends. I still go for a walk around that lake when I am in Calcutta and those days come back to me like a dream. Of my many memories of that time, another one is ‘Thakuma’s Sinduk’ (grandmother's treasure chest). On some occasions, Thakuma would extract money from a chest to pay the cook (we called him ‘Thakur’) for grocery. The chest was built into the wall of her bed room. It had old fashioned, golden colored, decorative and heavy doors and handles. It appeared to us so mysterious; we were forever curious to peep inside it and whispered about the possibility of gem stones and invaluable jewelry hidden inside. But, to our disappointment, it turned out to be absolutely empty, when she passed away and the chest was kept open.

Another childhood memory makes me laugh! On the first floor of our house, there were three adjacent wash rooms at the extreme end of the open terrace. Just behind the washrooms, there was a big tree. At night, when the blowing wind shook the branches of the tree, I imagined ghosts sitting there, moving their arms and legs. Most of my cousins, even my youngest uncle, never went to the washroom alone!  At night, I ran to and fro through the terrace keeping my eyes half closed and never told anybody that I was also afraid of ghosts.

In the first floor of our house, there was a common big kitchen with huge earthen stoves of different heights. We didn’t have cooking gas at that time, so, coal was used. There was ‘Thakur’- the head cook with his assistant Rameswar and a maid who worked in the kitchen . My mother and four aunts, in turn, joined in cooking and serving our meals. We sat on the floor of grandma’s room, as big as a hall, on rectangular pieces of painted wood called ‘piri’ or nicely stitched rectangular pieces of cloths called ‘ason'. Later, when we grew older, there was renovation and modification in the old building to make space for kitchens and washrooms for each family. We got separate gas connections in every kitchen. The cook and his assistant retired and went back to their families in Orissa. The maid stayed on with grandmother. Our mothers started cooking in their kitchens and ‘Thakuma’ also cooked for herself.  It became fun for us to help them in cooking and thereby we learned many Bengali recipes for our everyday meal and snacks.

My mother      

My mother’s name is Rani- which means Queen. She was the second sister amongst seven siblings, all women.  She got married to my father (Birendra Chattopadhyay, the second son of my grandmother) when she was sixteen and passed the ‘School Final’ Exam. She was beautiful. Her eyes were dark and bright. She carried an empathetic smile. Yes, her eyes also smiled along with her whole face. She used to wear Shari, common for most of the Bengali women living in West Bengal. She looked pretty with Shari around her slim, proportionate body. What was really admired by all was her long dark black hair which when kept loose, hung beyond her waist and hip, almost touching her knees.  Most of the time, especially while working in the kitchen, she used to make a ‘khopa’ to manage her long hair. A ‘Khopa’ is when the hair is tied up into a bun, made in different fashions and styles, fixed behind the head with special clips while the common and quick practice to make a bun is simply snaking the hair around itself and securing it there with a knot that didn't tangle the hair, but held it in place nonetheless; quite a tricky technique.

In the afternoon the youngest two, Keya and I, used to play with our mother’s long open hair falling to the floor from the pillow when she took an afternoon nap after a late lunch and long day’s work of a big joint -family.  Our eldest sister and elder brothers were in schools during the afternoon; but we two were too young to go to school at that time.

If I travel all along down the memory lane , the first thing I can see is a baby girl riding a warm, soft,  well fragranced living vehicle moving busily upstairs and downstairs of a three storied building, in order to work and chat with my aunts and grandmother. So, my memory traveled back to the time when I was in my mother’s lap.  Being the youngest of the five siblings; I always kept very close to her, following her around the house, especially when Keya also started to go to school. In the afternoon, when she lay down on a mat to rest or read newspapers and magazines or for a short nap, I also slept by her. I became the witness of her peace and happiness when, lying on the mat, she told me stories and when she read books and poetry for herself. She read all the poems written by her husband, my father, Birendra Chattopadhyay, a poet. I was also the sole witness when she was sad, wept and wiped her face wet with tears with her  ‘anchal’ - the loose end of the shari hung over her left shoulder. I was young and only managed to sit very close to her and wept with her, sharing her sadness. I still have no idea what the source of her sorrow was, but can now guess the reasons to be the pain a woman, a wife and a mother bears in the running even a happy family. I wish to write more, on other occasions, about my mother and a complete book on my father Birendra Chattopadhyay, as I saw them.