The Onus of Ancestry (4 page)

Dwita's birth was not considered a common event by the family – was she not born on Shashti, the sixth day of Durga's homecoming? Was she also not the sacred trust of Monmotho, a trust that was up to Nirupama and Parna to keep? To them she was the family heirloom, Monmotho's command and charge. Dwita never found out to what extent each felt responsible for her survival, intact and untainted. But she knew she was ‘special', not to be allowed out of sight and hearing.

In addition to all the existing family's constant supervision, not to speak of the three pairs of vigilant eyes of Bhushan, Ramu and Dhiru, Maheshwari was engaged to take care of Dwita's further needs. She was small, sturdy and middle-aged with a pair of eyes that equalled six. She was from Santhal Parganahs, as she had declared on arrival, and since then could never speak with any greater certainty of the whereabouts of her village, called Madhuban. It seemed to be somewhere near Asansol, but embedded in the midst of the Santhal Hills, also not far from where her uncle often bought
Mihidana
, the famous sweetmeat of Burdwan. No one ever quite discovered it in the end, but little Dwita's world became studded with stories from Maheshwari's mysterious Madhuban.

Maheshwari had no surviving relatives who were particularly concerned about her, as she had been left an orphan at birth, was brought up by an aunt who married her off at twelve to a boy of fourteen, and became a widow at thirteen having lost her young husband in a cholera epidemic. Maheshwari continued to live in the village as long as her aunt was alive and then left Madhuban for ever – she thought she was about twenty then.

Maheshwari also spoke with affection and nostalgia of her life in the household of a Dadababu and a Boudi whose sons were Barababu and Chhotababu. Dadababu was seemingly a
zamindar
, a hereditary landowner, of some consequence who owned houses all over Benaras, Allahabad and Calcutta and she appeared to have occupied most of them. According to Dwita's calculations Maheshwari should have spent nearly a quarter century of her life with this family. Then she left them suddenly, Maheshwari never told them why.

Nirupama decided not to probe her about her past. After all, she had spent a long time with the family and if she had decided to leave them after so many years there must have been good reasons behind the desertion – they might be too painful to be exposed to public scrutiny. She took to Maheshwari on their first meeting – the country woman's open face, honest and forthright manners and her somewhat direct, rustic way of speaking endeared her to Nirupama. The same could not be said of Parna, who was not so sure of her and whose curiosity had made her ask, “Why did you leave Dadababu and his family, Maheshwari? Would you leave my Dwita as well?” She had never received an answer to that, nor a promise of everlasting loyalty. But Maheshwari would never leave Dwita, nor did she ever allow anyone to come between them.

Dwita never objected to Maheshwari's absolute possession of her. Without being taught, she had made up her mind to christen the three women in her life on the basis of her inclination and ability to pronounce their names. Hence Nirupama had become ‘ma', Parna ‘Puma' and Maheshwari ‘Mahama'. In due course Parna became ma, as she had registered a protest in being down-graded, while Nirupama assumed the new name of ‘Dima'. These never changed again.

A year after Dwita's birth Parna resumed her work with various magazines and taught at home remedial students sent by her old school. Rai Bahadur often came to visit them, but he never brought Bonolata with him. He suggested once that he should make out a small endowment to his granddaughter, but Parna had refused it outright. Parna was superstitious and had privately come to believe that Bonolata had put a curse on Monmotho's life until he had ceased to breathe. She was not going to allow similar curses to fall on Dwita's head. Rai Bahadur had not repeated his offer. He restricted his generosity to occasional shopping expeditions, when he felt free to buy Dwita what he wished or fancied, whether it was of any use or not. He had once bought her a pair of high-heeled, black patent court shoes, very chic and attractive, but totally unsuited to the size or needs of a seven-year-old. In fact that was the last time she had been out shopping with him, as three months later he had died of an aggressive lung cancer. No one could have looked happier in death. Rai Bahadur Hirendranath Roy Chowdhury was truly glad to escape his world, which had been held together by the social and matrimonial ties of hypocrisy and Bonolata – a world he no longer understood or cared for.

Dwita's conscious acquaintance with the outside world began at age three, when she was sent to Mrs Bolton's Nursery School on Elgin Road. She went in Bhushan's car, accompanied by Mahama. Sometimes Nirupama joined them for a breath of fresh air.

Parna was now working for a publishing company. The post was initially offered to her by Meenakshi's father – Brojen Halder. Meenakshi was one of her remedial students from Ascension School. Parna began as an administrative assistant at the Superior Publishing Company, but she hoped to be groomed to become a sales representative as the company had indicated at her interview. She worked hard, leaving home early and returning late; as time passed Dwita saw little of her except on holidays when they were both at home. Somehow this did not matter to her too much as school was fun and home was all care and indulgence. Dima always waited to welcome her, peering anxiously through the bedroom window, half-visible through the networked leaves and branches of the leaning jackfruit trees. Dhiru would always be ready with his incredibly good stories. But Mahama always seemed to drag her away at undesirable moments for a wash or a shower, and further discussions were not permitted until she was cleaned of school dust and grime. Mahama would run after her with her slippers, but she loved being barefoot. It was so cool to walk barefoot and sit on bare floors. “Dima, no table lunch today, tell Mahama,” she would plead with her grandmother, “I will sit on these steps and you sit on that
mora
. You feed me today and tell me all about the naughty girls from that big school where you worked before.” Dima would comply whilst Dwita ate her
luchi
,
begun bhaja
and tomato chutney. Dima knew which were her favourites, though Ma always objected to her eating fried food – she said it was bad for the liver.

Dwita's afternoons were very busy. She had to speak to all her dolls, change their clothes, feed them in between her exchanges with Mahama who usually snored away on a cool bamboo mat beside her. Dima called her occasionally from her bed where she read or slept lightly, taking her siesta, “Dwita, my pet, why are you silent? What are you up to now? I think I can hear you near the medicine chest…” Her guess would be right. Dwita was fascinated by all those coloured syrups and mixtures, pills and capsules in the chest in the boxroom. She was sure that her children could do with some – poor Molly had a bad cough. She was about to decide how best to reach it as the chest was fixed to the wall at a considerable height when Dima would intervene – then she would return to her corner soundlessly and resume her seat on the embroidered mat. She wanted to sit on the tiled floor, it was so much cooler, though she would remember Mahama's warnings on chilled bottoms, insect bites and the like – they always worried so much. She blamed it on their age.

Ma returned from work tired and unsmiling, but in the course of the evening she relaxed and looked happier. Dwita often returned from the park to find Ma looking into her school bag or making her a new doll's dress for one of her thirty-odd children. It all depended on Ma's moods. She found Dima and Mahama much easier, but Ma made her a little ill-at-ease. One never knew for certain how Ma felt on a particular day.

Dwita also noticed that Dima was concerned about Ma's timely return from work. They often spoke of strange things like bombs and mortars, of people running away or people dying of gunfire. She also heard sounds of marching feet outside and was asked not to peep. Ramu would say “Gurkhas!” in a hushed voice and they then shut all doors and windows. The windows had newspapers and black cloths stuck on them – Dhiru said that they did this to black out lights inside the house. Some nights they all trooped downstairs to the drawing room or the dining room and spread their bedding on the floor. She slept under the dining table though she really wanted to sleep on the top. Those days were very exciting for her, but the grown-ups did not seem to find them so.

Little did Dwita know then that the whole world was on the brink of disaster and holocaust. Brothers fought brothers, enemies were made and unmade without conscience or scruple, and the insane ambition of one man and the immorality of a few others were leading the human race to damnation and senseless destruction. She did not know that this would tear the world apart, nor that in her own country, in her immediate surroundings, the seeds of separation had been sown and were about to erupt. Her own small world, peaceful and uninterrupted so far, would come apart, would be invaded, and her friends would die or disappear. She was not old enough to understand whether what she beheld was a spasm of catharsis, expiation for the sins of a few, or a nemesis for the uncalculated errors of an entire civilisation.

In her quiet, exclusive home, Raj was no longer a popular word. It was bandied about in the evenings when Dima's friends visited them, particularly Uncle Bimal, grandfather's old friend who used to tell her a lot of stories about him. They said that the
firengis
would have to go or more blood would flow. They said that some of them were already leaving and others would soon follow – they were afraid of the Indian youth who were now laying down their precious lives uncaringly to see the
firengis
out. They could not possibly continue to run an empire with corpses for ammunition and hatred for support. Aparna would sometimes ask, “But Ma, is all this bloodshed and sacrifice of Young India worth the cause? Who will be left in the end to fly the flag?”

Nirupama would always retort, “Why, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and so many others.” Uncle Bimal would then interject, “If all of them perish in this fire, their ghosts will survive – we shall find others among our millions, but we shall not permit one profligate of the Raj to enter the sacred precincts of our country or our administration. We shall live with our own failures, our own deficiencies and learn from our own mistakes – but we are not going to be dominated by aliens a minute longer than necessary. Foreign greed and foreign power must leave us. Freedom at all costs – can you not see that, Nirupama?”

Those evenings were long and exciting, even if somewhat disconcerting and well beyond Dwita's total comprehension. She also managed to get a cup of tea out of Dhirubhai's kitchen with Mahama's connivance. Ma did not normally allow her to drink tea, though it flowed freely in their house. She could have sweets such as
sandesh
, or
rashogollah
made out of
notun gur
which were deliciously fragrant, she even got an occasional samosa, but tea? That was different business altogether. Ma would say, “Tea is bad for little girls, have a mug of cocoa instead.” She really hated milk and the smell of cocoa reminded her of those chocolate-coated calcium tablets, which she had to chew regularly to have good teeth.

*

In later years when Dwita remembered the events of 1947 she would try to blot them out, but the nightmares remained in the deep recesses of her memory, monstrous and indelible. She remembered with horror the trails of blood that flowed with the rainwater; the bodies that floated in the monsoon floods and got stuck in hydrants and at people's doorsteps; wild screams from the throats of victims perishing in this carnage; the sky a vivid red with the fire of burning homes and estates; fanatical and inhuman shrieks of ‘Allah-ho-Akbar!' mingling with ‘Bandemataram!' and ‘Hindustan Zindabad!' She remembered them all. She also remembered the faces of their sweeper Kaushalya's boys, their ears cut off by Muslim knives; the horror in little Munia's eyes as she saw her father Iftikar's throat slit in revenge for Hindu deaths. They had all lived together until then – what could have happened to change things? No one had any real answers. Jinnah's dream of an independent Pakistan blessed by Islam and the Koran had turned into a nightmare. Gandhi's efforts to keep India united had failed in the face of the Raj's duplicity and Jinnah's ambition. Cruelty and bloodshed were everywhere. Dwita's generation had lived to see a dual holocaust – the irreparable loss of lives and human dignity in the Second World War and the unforgettable, unpardonable murder of human conscience in the sub-continent thereafter.

Peace had returned to the world, so they had declared – but for how long? Brother had betrayed brother, the tryst of co-existence had been tampered with, the ultimate sacrilege of murder and assault had been committed, seeds of mistrust had been sown.

Dwita celebrated with others the emergence of a free India on 15 August 1947. The saffron, green and white sail of rebirth and regeneration flew full mast. A man called Mountbatten had bowed out ceremoniously on behalf of the Raj and colonialism, and the multitude of liberated men lay at Mother India's feet worshipping her, forgetting their past crimes and present sorrows. Their tears of bereavement mingled with the now dominant tears of joy and freedom.

India was independent; people breathed deeply, inhaling the unpolluted air of precious ownership. The smell of death and decay would be blown away in the wake of new life and ambition, new feelings and friendships. Long live India –
Bharat Zindabad
– 15 August 1947! Dwita mouthed it proudly, along with those others celebrating in the streets of Calcutta. It was wonderful to be alive, even if still too young – to be alive at the dawn of free India.

The days of awakening and growing up had begun for Dwita.

*