The Onus of Ancestry

Arpita Mogford

Copyright © 2015 Arpita Mogford

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To all who were not spared Destiny's Mandate and bore it well

It was a time of conflict and confrontation. The world was yet again in the throes of war. Its echoes could be heard in the subcontinent. The Raj could have done without these sudden calls on national needs, new duties and distant concerns. After all there was enough to be done in India, where it was scarcely holding its own, cornered and humiliated by native arrogance and heavy burden of responsibilities. Pleasures were now fewer – friends seemed embarrassed to receive
farengis
informally, intellectual indulgences with the indigenous elite were often cut short by polite silence or tactful withdrawal, and even the nodding Madrassi bearers seemed less talkative and forthcoming, whilst serving gracefully the chicken curry and pilau with all its condiments on Sundays – the kitchens of saabs' households hummed with murmurs of native discontent.

The Raj was on its last legs, nearly through and distinctly unwanted – all its wiles spent, resistance fairly exhausted and the mounting nightmares of an impending bloodbath haunting its moments of insomnia. The warm indolence of colonialism had postponed its recognition of a new India – it had overlooked the need for patriotism and national love in young Indian hearts. Denied, love had changed to hatred, pleas to terrorism and dreams to sacrifices – a new India was emerging. Aparna lay on her hospital bed in South Calcutta wondering, as she became one of those millions of young who had just given birth, bringing another breath of life into an India of hope and uncertainty.

She was twenty, a widow, penniless in more senses than one. She suddenly felt a wild fear gripping her heart – fear of bringing a female child into her world of despair. What had she to offer to the newcomer out of her dreamless existence? Her head ached from thinking or perhaps from those sounds of distant drums and marching feet. Were they the Gurkhas marching stolidly to their doom on British orders? No – no – they were the people, the common folk, thousands of them celebrating Durga Puja – the one time in the year when Bengalis forgot to fight for their rights or weep for their sorrows. It was a time to live, to feast, to be happy.

She heard the temple bells ringing in the distance with some special spring and fervour. She remembered vaguely that it was Shashti, the sixth day of the Durga Puja, an auspicious day for most Bengalis and happy homecoming for the goddess. Would Durga help build a happy home for them too? A slim arrow of light pierced her desolate sky, a faint hope. A cool hand touched her forehead and a quiet voice spoke, “Parna, are you asleep my girl? What beautiful eyes you have – no, my pet, no tears today, only smiles. Look, look, who we have with us. Is she not lovely, so fair and petite, could do with more hair though… never mind, a good massage with olive oil will take care of that.”

“Ma, where is she? Let me hold her. Is she whole? Not strange or handicapped?”

“What a thing to say, Parna! After all she is mine and yours, yes, ours – we, who came from the dynasties of the moon and the sun.” Nirupama stood up to her full ‘zamindari' height and asked the nurse to show the child to the mother.

Aparna gazed wearily at the bundle, swathed in white in the arms of the young nurse. Nirupama peered into the little face as she asked, “What shall we call her, Parna?”

“Tori, a little canoe, linking this world and the next, where my heart lies.”

“No, no – she must remind us only of joy and hope undiluted, eternal hope – she will be Adwitiya. She will remain whole and undivided. She will be joined by more like her who will hold our country and people together as one… Yes, Adwitiya,” she repeated. “Dwita for short.”

Parna did not speak again, nor stir. Nirupama had won.

*

Nirupama always won. She was taught early that it was the only way to live. Being a Rajah's daughter and Dibendra's wife it would have been unseemly not to do so. If you ever lost, you did so with grace and dignity. She was concerned about Parna in this respect. She thought her daughter had the metle of the clan but needed more spirit.

Nirupama had been widowed at twenty-nine. Niru, as her father Rajah Rajnarain affectionately called her, was her parents' only child. Her mother had died young and her father had remained a widower, devoting all his attention and care to her. She was brought up like the son he had never had, as he often feared that if he should lose his life to one of his many enemies, Niru would have to cope on her own. Though he had friends in high places some of them had grown less friendly and more aloof, disapproving of his proximity to the British, his several English habits and above all his Brahmo Samaj leanings. They often said he was ‘westernised', a convenient word coined to include all those who had been overseas and had picked up odd habits like Scotch whisky, roast beef, Havana cigars and the English language. Niru's upbringing did nothing to quell their doubts. She read, rode and danced, played beautifully on the
esraj
, sang sweetly at friends' gatherings and above all was not married off in her early teens. She was also a convert to Brahmo Samaj, like her father.

Her father Rajnarain often wondered about Niru's future – the difficult prospect of finding a suitable husband who would understand her and appreciate her individualistic upbringing worried him. In the end he had found his answer in Dibendra, the lion of the Chowdhurys of Birendrapur in East Bengal. Dibendra was a man of few words and fewer conventions. He had tired of his family home and maternal stipulations of conservative behaviour and firm codes of conduct, and had left his country at seventeen as a stowaway in an ocean liner, bound for the strange shores of the West. He had worked for his living and educated himself at his own expense. He had travelled extensively, then spent some time at an American University of California working for his PhD. He finally returned to India after over seventeen years' absence. Rajnarain liked what he saw of him. Dibendra had drive and fire, he was also unbending and fearless. Niru, he knew, was no angel of docility, she would need a strong man to love and respect.

It had been an arranged marriage. Dibendra met Nirupama in the formality of a victorian drawing-room, darkened by wine velvet curtains, under the artificial lights of Belgian chandeliers and candelabras. Dibendra had approved of her and Nirupama consented to her father's obvious wishes. Although Rajnarain had given her all the freedom she had ever asked for, she knew that in the end being her father's daughter meant she had to marry a man of his choosing. In her culture marriage was the cause of love, not a consequence.

Nirupama had been married off to Dibendra at twenty-four. As is often the case, she had liked her husband to begin with, then grew to love him through the years – but it had not been easy. Theirs had started as a marriage of two families and turned ultimately to a union of individuals. His strength, both physical and spiritual was formidable, his convictions quite unshakable, his demands on her were few but clear and inflexible. She tried to fight him at first, but realised that Dibendra could only be won with love and affection and above all laughter.

Soon after the wedding Dibendra had taken his wife to his family home. She met her mother-in-law for the first time, a tall, slim woman, erect and proud, a true matriarch who ran Birendrapur single-handed. She had not come to the wedding, but had stayed behind in order to welcome the bride to her new home. Nirupama had liked Dibendra's family home. It reminded her of her own in Hiren Mitra Lane in central Calcutta – large sprawling rooms, encircled by the privacy of laced balconies, inner courtyards and meandering corridors – the mysteries of
andar mahal
the inner sanctum of respected Bengali women. Dibendra of course, hated the self-imposed constraints of traditional living. He left Birendrapur hurriedly with his wife, to return to Calcutta.

Dibendra joined the university and they moved into a three-storied house, spacious and unattractive, quite near her own home. Her father fell ill and died rather suddenly, leaving most of his wealth to the Brahmo Samaj Trust. Nirupama was left with a small endowment and all the family jewels. In his last testament Rajnarain had written,“Brahmo Samaj is our only salvation from our superstitious, ritual-ridden existence, hence I feel I ought to support it. I leave very little to Nirupama. She has more than I can ever give her – she has Dibendra.”

Nirupama was not unhappy with the settlement. She could rely on Dibendra to support her. She too had great hopes of the survival of the Brahmo Samaj. She went to the Brahma Mandir temple regularly, often sang with the choir or played the
esraj
. Dibendra himself was not a Brahmo, but had never stopped her from being one or made light of Nirupama's spiritual needs. She herself had never quite understood the need for dichotomy in the Brahmo Samaj, the division into Shadharan and Naba Bidhan, or appreciated the necessity of split approaches to the same ideals. Hence she mostly frequented the Shammilani Samaj, which being a consortium of all liberal Brahmos was more open and comforting. As she grew older, she felt increasingly that pointless dissent led one nowhere – constant strife was bad for the soul, wearing and self-destructive.

As Dibendra had accepted her religious beliefs, she had taught herself to live with his beliefs and pursuits. His personal haven was the top floor of the house, where he retired to live that part of his life which he practised or enjoyed alone. Nirupama did not grudge him his seclusion and even paid him occasional visits when invited, but always with brows knitted as she wove through a haze of whisky and cigars and other alien fragrances wafting out of Joseph's exclusive kitchen. But the strains of Beethoven and Brahms on Dibendra's piano would relax her instantly. Dibendra would often play a
baul
folk song or a
Tagore
piece to humour her.

These aspects of Dibendra's behaviour did not trouble her seriously – after all her own upbringing was far from conservative and her father had not exactly been a Hindu saint. But what confused her was Dibendra's brand of vehement, unforgiving anti-Raj patriotism. Her own father had been patriotic in a different sense. He had believed in the raising of a free spirit, in social reforms, in better education and in better opportunities. He had pursued these beliefs with cool candour and intellectual fervour with many of his British friends and associates. She had grown up under the combined care of Mridula, their old family maid and Miss Prunella Johnson, her versatile, tireless governess. Her school and college friends were both Indians and English. She could never separate Madeleine, Catherine or Nelly, from Protibha, Mrinalini or Sneha. She spent so many afternoons in their mixed company, drinking tea and chattering freely, oblivious of differences. Her father's few years in England had not bred the kind of bitterness that Dibendra had returned with – he had never seen the Raj as a malaise or a form of cancer eating into Indian thoughts and ways of life. He had accepted it as merely an inescapable historical event in his lifetime and taught himself to extract the best from it.

But to Dibendra who had spent so many years of his life in Europe and America, the Raj was a malignant growth, festering and poisonous – it was leading to the erosion of Indian honour and hope of honest survival. The Raj had outlived its use. Men who cared were no longer sent out – the ones who ventured came only to satisfy their greed and pursue their self-interest. They did not love India or Indians. They were fortune hunters who wished to stifle Indian initiative and were happy to sacrifice the soul of India to her fate and tragic bondage. These
firengis
were here to grab what they could and destroy what they could not carry – they did not come to build and share their lives with Indians. It was always ‘them' and ‘us', brown against white. They strangled what little was left of Indian unity, bred incurable differences and left as an unwanted legacy a half-bred illegitimate community, deprived and spurned by the England of their dreams and unable to accept the reality of being natives of India, a country beyond their ken. They kept their vigil of deprivation and dissolution in the darkness behind the Bentinck streets and Dharmtallas of Calcutta.

People like Dibendra felt they had to stop this overthrow of Indian dignity and self-esteem. They had to infiltrate the system to make Indians think again. He suddenly decided to join the Indian Education Service, then barred to all native Indians, qualified or not. He knew that it was going to be a battle, long and hard. If he made it in the end, Nirupama wondered if Dibendra could survive in a system where most Indians managed through lies, deceit and pandering. Dibendra, she knew, never lied, he was uncomfortably forthright and outspoken. She was afraid that he would lose his fight against the system and the regime. They would get him somehow as they usually did. Now they also had to think of Alpana and Aparna, their twin daughters who had been born after their first year of marriage.

These days Dibendra locked himself in his study for hours, writing and reading, and talking only to a few of his close friends like the Maharajah of Dholbazar and Professor Mahapatra. The Diwan of Dholbazar, who sometimes came with messages from the Maharajah did not look very happy to be the bearer of these missives. She knew that it was rumoured that the Diwan was in the pay of the Raj. Life was becoming far too complicated for Nirupama.

One Tuesday of March 1923, on a bright spring morning Dibendra rushed in waving a piece of paper in his hand. He looked excited and she could see the royal crest of the Raj on it. He had been offered entry into the Indian Education Service. He kept waving the paper and laughing, great guffaws of laughter, an unusual sound for Dibendra who almost never laughed loudly. But there was no joy in his outburst, only the dry mirthless sound of sarcasm and vain victory.

“Are you going to accept it?” she asked anxiously.

“Of course not – are you mad? Not any more. Who is going to do my work at the University? Would you like me to join the IES?”