#6: Marked by Shadow and Light

Marked by Shadow and Light 

Turbulent Waters and Sunlit Ponds

[This posting is, of course, long overdue. And as it turns out, this will be the last segment from 2015. In reality, not in dates. We are into January, 2016 already. But this segment was pretty much completed in December, 2015. GM]

It has been difficult for me to navigate my tiny but hopeful tugboat through currents—cruel and kind, fierce and tender—with some kind of a vision linking past and future ports of call. It has been almost impossible for me to steer the boat for some time now, in turbulent waters, close to the whirlpool of stupefying, nihilistic violence, often bred inside diabolical convictions and executed by various agents of the State, and by fanatics, thugs, and even disgruntled individuals. A malignant faith without humanity always seems to end up in Hiroshima, Dachau, Agent Orange, Rwanda, Gaza, Surat and other “killing fields”.

In a sense, therefore, I ought to address this remorseless phenomenon before I recommence my voyage, basing my hope on historical dimensions and patterns that have emerged in the last decades. Or at least revisit connections between erstwhile colonies of European powers and their respective “mother countries”. You know, South Asia and England, North Africa and France, and so on. On the other hand, I want to be a storyteller and not a social scientist, and so for the present I am content to roam inside an ambiguous zone.

For example, after the recent Paris killings, I watched some TV reporting that included a well-known clip from the classic film Casablanca. In this scene, a young French woman, while desperately trying to leave town, also happens to lead the regulars of Rick’s café in singing “La Marseillaise”, drowning out the German colonel and his people who had started singing their anthem of the era, “Deutchland uber alles”. 

“Vive la France!”—the clip ends with that spirited applause—symbolic of freedom from German occupation.  

Now, I have seen Casablanca numerous times over the years, and like many others remember the cool one-liners, romance between Bergman and Bogart, and “As Time Goes By”—a catchy tune made even more popular by the BBC TV series with that title. And like many others, I never thought about the implication of that clip from Rick’s café until this time around when the newscaster proclaimed the feel-good power of the French anthem with its roots in Bastille Day—an assertion of freedom against all tyranny. This time, it suddenly occurred to me that there was an implied lesson in what we just witnessed. That in the battle between two successive occupiers of Morocco, only the first one—France the colonizer, had legitimacy. Morocco was a part of “Free France” and the Germans had no business curtailing that freedom. And, and… the poor Moroccans didn’t have anything to say about any of this! Any extrapolation to the present would require many steps of course, but surely it can be done. Perhaps we’ll see that in another context.

For now, I’ll go back to where I had started this piece, back in last August, with a timely (I think) reflection of American History connections. Then I ‘ll conclude this posting with memories of two more women I knew from my childhood, but who are no longer with us. They are the golden voiced Suchitra Mitra, and my aunt Tripti Mitra, actor and much more.

For my next segment (and I promise to get to it quickly) I’ll dock the tugboat at a jetty embracing tranquil waters and take a walk to a lotus pond. There I’ll jot down some stories about the great one—Satyen Bose (Jethu to me). I have been told by well-wishing friends that if I don’t write these down, some of the stories will perish with me. I can’t let that happen—partly because New Year’s Day is Satyen Bose’s birthday. For me, this refueling and replenishing stop, so to speak, will be a cheerful break before the tugboat chugs again.

Part One

I

          We remember that the earthquake of last April was a cataclysmic event that destroyed parts of Nepal, bits of Bihar, Tibet and Chengdu, and was felt across the sub-continent. At that time, I was gathering my thoughts about this piece, but paused for a number of reasons. One was hearing about complaints from American tourists who wanted the earthquake business to be fixed rapidly so that they could make their trip to Nepal. Tickets had been bought, hotels had been booked, their itinerary was in hand—and they had taken time off from jobs and meetings and even from their children. Apparently, the tour organizers in India had assured them that one week’s delay would be the max. The would-be-tourists to Nepal had been promised they wouldn’t have to settle for some other place like Thailand, or Vietnam. This was just a short-term inconvenience.

So I paused a little to consider such promises. Another recess came when I learned about dispensable Sherpas whose lives were never as important as mountain climbers who paid for their services. I paused again to recall that as a youngster I had heard Tenzing Norgay the iconic Sherpa was the first to reach Mt. Everest’s summit, but he let Edmund Hillary have the honor. Thus, one pause led to another while disasters of one sort or another continued, including police violence against Black Americans. Then there was the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina—the killing of nine Black worshippers in their own church by a hateful, white supremacist. This was followed by America’s pre-occupation with the Confederate flag—its meaning, its place within history and tradition.  In such circumstances it would be wise, I thought, to recall a few details from the Americanization of America.

Searching through stuff, and trying to be true to my initial resolution to be a storyteller—at least in the main, I didn’t want to delve into the causes and consequences of America’s bloodiest war—its Civil War of the 1860s. Many stories were written by candlelight then, right next to thundering canons and dismembered warriors. The questions that loom large for me in the present discussion are: what indeed were the separatists—the Confederate States—fighting for? What is this “tradition” which many Southerners are clamoring to uphold in 2015? Why would anyone wish to fly high the Confederate flag today? So I looked again at a speech Alexander H. Stephens, the vice-president of the Confederacy gave in the state of Georgia, in 1861, explaining the Southern cause. Here’s some of it verbatim, along with some summation:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. [Thomas] Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. 

Stephens goes on to argue that Jefferson and his friends did not fully grasp the eternal truth upon which the institution of slavery was founded. They were ambivalent about slavery because they knew the institution was unavoidable and even intrinsic to the formation of American democracy. Thus the first American Constitution guaranteed its existence and these founders were themselves slave-owners. On the other hand, the Jefferson crowd thought the enslavement of Africans may be morally, socially, even politically indefensible. So, they surmised—more wished than reasoned—that “somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away.” They dared not incorporate this view in the constitution which did guarantee the rights of slave-owners because of the “common sentiment of the day”. But the ideas of Jefferson and company “were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the ‘storm came and the wind blew.’ ” What then was the Confederate solution?

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. [my emphasis] This our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. [my emphasis] This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics … They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just—but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails …

          This truth, with which the South is armed, is unique also because it is the truth of a natural order, and not the unfortunate subjugation of one class of people of the same race by another that has been previously found in human history. “With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place.” This is part of God’s plan whatever his reason may be. “It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of his ordinances, or to question them. For his own purposes, he has made one race to differ from another, as he has made ‘one star to differ from another star in glory.’ ” Therefore, concludes Stephens, the Confederate cause is just and, in the end, must triumph.

          I dwell on this discourse some because the theory of “natural slavery” goes back to Aristotle, and was closely involved in the Spanish conquest of indigenous peoples of the Americas. The difference in the United States was that from the outset the slave labor force of the plantations came from Africa, while the indigenous people—the natives— (referred to as savages in the Declaration of Independence) were by and large uprooted, relocated and exterminated. Secondly, Jefferson and friends were themselves slave owners, and as such it is not clear at all that they agreed that slavery was unnatural. Unfortunate perhaps, but not decisively unnatural. These men may have wished that as an institution, slavery would eventually wither away, but not necessarily because slaves and their masters were of the same species.  Anyone who thinks otherwise should consult Jefferson’s only book Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1784.  

          Here I’ll note a few points Jefferson makes as he considers the difference the two races, whites and blacks. Obviously, the first notable difference is skin color. White is better than black because it is nuanced, while black is monotonous. “Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable to the eternal monotony, which reigns in countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race?” [my emphasis] He speculates too: “The circumstance of superior beauty is thought worthy of attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs and other domestic animals; why not in that of man?” Would it not be reasonable then to conclude that Jefferson had several children with his slave mistress Sally Hemmings—as a personal breeding experiment?

          It is not apparent to me that discussion of slavery in America consistently notes the “double oppression” of enslaved women. That their lot included a range of sexual exploitation by their masters would be an understatement. As property, these women couldn’t legally say yes or no to the demands of the master. This absolute power over their existence does not allow them to be subjects—in mind or body. Every encounter is “consensual” by definition—from seduction and coercion to multiple rapes and other forms of violence. 

          Naturally, many slave women gave birth to children fathered by their masters. This phenomenon—predatory sexual practice of slave masters that led to mulatto children, was lamented by Mary Chestnut, wife of a wealthy South Carolina slave holder in her journal on March 18, 1861—three days before Alexander Stephens gave the speech I have cited here. Chestnut was a loyal Southerner, and her condemnation of slavery was driven more by her regret about the moral degeneration of slaveholders than the destruction of slave lives. She muses: “I wonder if it be a sin to think slavery a curse to any land...  Who thinks any worse of a Negro or mulatto woman for being a thing we can’t name?  God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system and wrong and iniquity...  Like the patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think … Alas for the men!  No worse than men everywhere, but the lower their mistresses, the more degraded they must be.” 

          Back to Jefferson the intellectual. He proceeds to compare whites and blacks along the faculties of memory, reason and imagination [my emphasis]. “In memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one [black] could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigation of Euclid...” I suppose TJ had found a number of Euclideans among the “unenlightened” white farmers and laborers of his time! And, to no one's surprise, “in imagination they [blacks] are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” Blacks produce no art or artifacts compared to, for example, American Indians, but Jefferson acknowledges that “in music they are more generally gifted than whites, with accurate ears for tune and time. But that does not mean they will ever produce intricate melody or “complicated harmony.” And finally, “misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.” Earlier Jefferson had argued that “their griefs are transient,” and “in general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection.” 

          In conclusion, Jefferson advances “as a suspicion only [my emphasis], that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” Once again, he urges us to look at nature out there: “it is not against experience to suppose, that difference species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications.”

          If we now revisit the “natural slavery” contention of Stephens, what seems to remain as a decisive heritage in America is not only the conflict between ideas upholding freedom and ideologies defending enslavement, but a more persistent yet less articulated conflict between the absolute conviction of Mr. Stephens and others under the Confederate flag, and the “suspicion” expressed by Mr. Jefferson and internalized by millions of white Americans of successive generations. All the way through the Civil Rights movement, the Obama presidency, the Charleston massacre and its aftermath, militarization of the police, accepted hate speech of presidential candidates, life without hope in the prison system, and I'm afraid, on and on for many years to come. [I have referred to the story of European colonization of the world, and in this context the profits from the slave trade was a significant factor.]

II

          It is quite puzzling to immigrants who try to understand what is the true nature of “American Exceptionalism” then, a concept and an attribute which make even President Barrack Obama proud. On the surface, the reference is to the original experiment of the 18^th century—an experiment that was no doubt the founding of an expatriate yet expansionist regime that waged a war of independence against the English monarchy well before the French Revolution. On the other hand, this experiment began with the import of African slaves and a calculated genocide of the indigenous population. How does one reconcile the contradiction which, as I have stated, remains part and parcel of contemporary American life?

          Even though the following analysis by the social theorist and political activist Cornel West is lengthy, this is the only answer that makes sense to me as I reflect on my fifty plus years in this country, looking back at my personal history and also different kinds of investigations I have undertaken. The following quotations are from West’s book Democracy Matters and I’ll divide them into two sections, reversing the order in which these appear in the text:

The fundamental paradox of American democracy in particular [my emphasis] is that it gallantly emerged as a fragile democratic experiment over and against an oppressive British empire—and aided by the French and Dutch empires—even while harboring its own imperial visions of westward expansion, with more than 20 percent of its population consisting of enslaved Africans.  In short, we are a democracy of rebels who nonetheless re-created in our own new nation many of the oppressions we had rebelled against.  The Declaration of Independence, principally written by the thirty-three year-old revolutionary Thomas Jefferson – who himself embodied this paradox, being both a courageous freedom fighter against British imperialism and a cowardly aristocratic slaveholder of hundreds of Africans in his beloved Virginia—offers telling testament of this complex and contradictory character of the American democratic experiment.

The reference in the Declaration to indigenous peoples as “Savages” worth of American expansionist domination for an “empire of liberty” further reveals this contradiction.  In listing the colonies’ charges against British oppression, Jefferson sounds this theme in his last charge: “He [the British oppressor] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

          West discusses the uniqueness of the American experience because he has noted that all “democratic experiments” have succeeded at the cost of eliminating from this success, groups or classes of people. But in this instance what Stephens defined as the unique configuration, namely the institution of slavery (my observation) and more (role of the only superpower today)—has remained ingrained in the body politic. Here’s how West puts it:

The American democratic is unique in human history not because we are God’s chosen people to lead the world, nor because we are always a force of good in the world, but because of our refusal to acknowledge the deeply racist and imperial roots of our democratic project. We are exceptional because of our denial of the antidemocratic foundation stones of American democracy. No other democratic nation revels so blatantly in such self-deceptive innocence, such self-paralyzing reluctance to confront the night-side of its own history. This sentimental flight from history—or adolescent escape from painful truths about ourselves means that even as we grow old, grow big, and grow powerful, we have yet to grow up. To confront the role of race and empire is to grapple with what we would like to avoid, but we avoid that confrontation at the risk of our democratic maturation. To delve into our legacy of race and empire is to unleash our often-untapped democratic energies of Socratic questioning, prophetic witness and tragicomic hope.

It should be noted that Cornel West is a religious person who pursues what he calls the prophetic tradition in Christianity and discusses the implications at length in this book. As far as “American exceptionalism” is concerned, I’ll leave analytical tools here and return to storytelling.

III

Other than deranged demagogues and frightened fundamentalists, I have rarely encountered people here who think they live “exceptional” lives, or the lives of God’s chosen people. What I have found among the often-invoked 99% of the population over the years are some recurrent trends and honest sentiments : confusion and uncertainty all mixed up with fear and objectification of "the other". Here are some examples.

At one time, I used to teach quite a bit in a couple of community colleges—America’s two year institutions where the working poor, first generation college students, mothers returning to classrooms after raising children, soldiers scarred by their experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, often found themselves in the same classroom. Advanced writing, world cultures, or consumerism could be the course. Most of the time I would ask them a simple question by way of introduction: “How many of you think you have a chance to be the president of the United States? Please raise your hand.”

In ten odd years, no one ever did. I would proceed then to other elected officials with a similar question. Same answer—that is, no hands. Once, one of the mothers said she might run for the local school board, or her local government—because in her home town she may have a chance of doing something about education of the children and healthcare for the elderly. All in all, it was clear these students knew that procedural democracy wasn’t real democracy and without spending huge amounts of money there’s no political power for anyone. No one in my classes opposed free education, free healthcare— and everyone would welcome libraries and clinics in their neighborhood. The mothers wished they could have got paid maternity leave, then they wouldn’t have to quit their jobs and struggle now to re-enter the work force—a better chance with a couple of years of college.

At the same time, those mostly white students, expressed (obliquely for the most part) a deep suspicion of Blacks and Latinos and Asians. They didn’t know exactly how they would be living out their own history in the twenty-first century, but probably in some kind of conflict with those others, especially in countries whose names they only recently learned—like Iraq. Their language betrayed the connection Cornel West notes: they would refer to “those people” quite a bit and didn’t hesitate, for example, to call Iraqis “sand niggers.” (I just heard a journalist say that Donald Trump has enormous support among white men—men with and without college degrees.)

The consumerist ethos that my students had internalized well drove them to desire many commodities—stuff—they couldn’t afford, but one common thread surprised me. Most of them either possessed or would like to possess firearms. I remember one young man saying, “I would rather own a Ferrari and have my personal military assault-rifle than run for office—even for a seat in the state assembly.” He really liked sports cars and guns, disliked Mexicans and despised politicians. His friends nodded their concurrence. One of them added he didn’t give a damn about climate change or future of the Amazon.

“What’s all that bullshit got to do with my life here?”

“All right. Suppose it could be proved, with reasonable but not absolute certainty—like researchers often say, that today’s unchecked carbon emission will put your great grandchildren in jeopardy—from birth, then what would you say?” I was the teacher with intelligent questions.

“I’d say I’ll drive what I want, eat what I want… you know, ‘cause I’m American and that’s what we do.”

“But I’m not talking about poor kids in some slum in Brazil. I’m saying your descendants… your own family may have children born with deformities in another eighty or hundred years.”

“Even if there’s trouble down the line, I won’t be around. Or you. So why should we get all in a fuss about it? Actually, no one really believes in this global warming crap. It’s all a gimmick to make us drive stupid, tinsy cars.” 

His Ferrari friend cheered him on. Only mothers with small children were not sure what to believe. Too many people in their lives have lied without remorse.

Being the only superpower today has no doubt fueled the assumption of being number one in everything, including the culture of indulgence and instant gratification—as those students insisted. This arrogance of exceptionalism, however, comes with deep-seated anxiety, internalized at an early age. So let me turn to another group.

In the last few years, I’ve taught, off and on, some writing, storytelling and acting classes to middle-school students—eleven to fourteen year olds in grades five to eight. In acting classes, we worked on intonation and projection with love and hate statements, often with examples of food.

“Tell everyone what’s your favorite food, and what you dislike most. Perhaps you are forced to eat stuff because ‘it is good for you’, eh? Be convincing without screaming,” I’d ask.

Most of the time students laughed and giggled a lot, and the food list, on both sides, was surprising and even exotic on occasion. One time it turned out that many in the class loved Chinese food. While they were discussing specific dishes with gusto—perfect for the exercise—a voice rose above other voices—out of the blue.

“I hate the Chinese!”

This was a seventh grader talking. Others paused and I intervened, steering the discussion into what kind of people they may like or dislike and why. Most of those students didn’t want to go there. Perhaps they were not sure they wanted to open up to an Indian instructor. The Chinese hater said he knew the Chinese were “out to get us” because they wanted to be number one. Then America would no longer be the greatest.

In the same school on another occasion, I had asked students in a writing class to first share their answer, orally, to a question I was going to pose and then write down their thoughts with more details and other ideas if they had more to say. My question was:

“If you are given the chance to visit just one place in the world, all expenses paid, where would you choose to go and why? The place can be a city or a country, or some other location.”

This time Paris was chosen by a few, London and Vienna and Poland and Italy by others, partly because of ancestral roots and partly because of what they had imbibed in the course of growing up. When her turn came to state her choice, one of the girls from an immigrant Russian family spoke.     

“I want to go to Thailand.” Naturally, everyone was curious and someone asked, “Why Thailand of all places?”

“Because they are all Buddhists there”, she replied. 

I thought it was a good thing to be interested in Buddhism at her age. And she continued.

“People from my church are missionaries and some of them have been to Thailand. They love that country, and many of those Buddhists have become Christians. So I want to go and see how I can be of help.”

Not what I expected, to be sure. Then I realized that this student came from a group of Russian families in Central Pennsylvania belonging to a fundamentalist sect of the Orthodox Church. Their children are not allowed to celebrate Halloween, or indulge in any Pagan delights of Christmas—like trees decorated with ornaments. But I didn’t know that they sent off missionaries to Thailand to make Christians of those misguided Buddhists. 

For me, the sum total of such experience simply brings to light what Cornel West has theorized about. A religiosity flanked by xenophobia on one side and racism on the other is hard to escape in American life. It is worth taking a second look at American writers who struggle to demystify these phenomena—as poets, novelists, historians. But more than that—observations by “visitors” that penetrate obscure corners and transparent hourglasses of a conceived “exceptionalism” is worth a thorough re-examination. Not only in the classic by Alexis de Tocqueville of old, Democracy in America, but also in more recent works like Franz Kafka’s “third novel” Amerika, Federico Garcia Lorca’s A Poet in New York, or Jean-Paul Sartre’s commentary on American individualism and conformity in Literary and Philosophical Essays.  

Enough of these dignitaries for now. I want to recall meeting a Canadian engineer of Jamaican origin working in Toronto—many years ago. We were small-chatting about stuff like American and Canadian currencies, living in expensive cities like Toronto and Boston, Gavaskar and Lara, and weather patterns in Kingston and Kolkata. Then he said something I have never forgotten.

“You know, I’ve been recruited… and as a matter of fact offered a job or two… by American companies... Better salaries too. But me and the missus, every time we imagine moving to the U.S.—we kinda shudder.”

“How so?” As someone living in the States, I was obviously curious.

“One comfort—you may say a source of inner peace—for Canadians is that we don’t have to prove to anyone we are number one in anything… Perhaps in ice hockey, but not anything that matters… like the world’s largest houses and largest cars… and the largest army. Plus, we have no anxiety about our kids’ education or our healthcare. Too many problems and too much uncertainty in America.”

“You are right about that… especially the cost of going to college. But in your kind of a job you’d probably have an excellent healthcare package.”

“Maybe… but we can’t get rid of that uncertainty inside us, you know.” He paused and added one more thought. “There’s racism in both countries of course, but I felt it was different over there. In the U.S. descendants of slaves seem to be reminded every day that that’s what they are. We haven’t had that feeling here in Canada… even when we have faced some bad shit!”

I never saw the guy again and I have forgotten his name, but I’ll always remember him as a fan of Courtney Walsh and Sunil Gavaskar, and a man content in Canada.

IV

One more American adventure story to end this part. This is the tale of Banerjee of Los Angeles. Here we find slapped together the art of American hustle (itself a combination of ingenuity and disingenuity, initiative and deception), religious preoccupation—and even a curious glimpse of Hollywood. I remember that season well because it was the beginning of the year when Oscar nominations were to be released by the Academy of Fine Arts in Hollywood. That year the Indian submission for nomination in the category of best foreign language film was Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (মহানগর—The Big City), and I found myself suddenly in the middle of its screening for Academy members. And that’s when and how I met Banerjee.

No one knows how Mahanagar would have fared against Frederico Fellini’s 8½ which won the Oscar, or Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water which didn’t, but the main reason for a missed nomination didn’t have anything to do with the quality of India’s contribution. Or it did in a different way I believe. Because this is what happened.

My friend Robin Prasad and I had gone up from La Jolla to Los Angeles to meet some of his friends who were grad students at UCLA. I forget their names, but the principal character in their Westwood apartment I’ll call Sudip who was a research assistant in the chemistry department. Banerjee lived in that flat but didn’t seem to have anything to do with the university. No sooner than we arrived and introductions were made, Sudip informed us that there would be no time for adda or cooking goat meat because a big scandal (কেলেঙ্কারী) was brewing around Mahanagar which was to be screened the following morning for Academy members who would then vote for or against its Oscar nomination.

“This is how the stupid Indian bureaucracy works. The fuckers sent a copy of the movie without any subtitles. Can you imagine that? So now I am supposed to fix the problem within 24 hours.” Sudip blustered.

“Don’t fuss over your own importance,” Banerjee cut in. He was a slim tallish man—a bit older than the rest of us. “We need to find a plan to minimize the damage. You San Diego people can help too. The truth is some guy in the Academy realized the film was in Bengali. And this guy knew another guy and so on… until they found us.” Banerjee’s words were mellow and yet convincing.

“This is what I suggest.” Sudip wasn’t about to relinquish his helm it seemed. “We have to leave in about half an hour to view the film at a special showing… so let’s all go and put down our thoughts on paper, come back and see what we can do.”

“We need to be clearer than that,” said Banerjee. “Sudip, you focus on the dialogue as if you were going to be dubbing it for the audience. Nikhil can help with that.” He turned toward me and said, “How ‘bout you and me both write our own story line—synopsis if you will—and compare them later?”

I agreed, thinking that Robin must have told his friends that I happened to know some of the film people in Kolkata and probably that I was bilingual in a way Robin wasn’t. Then we proceeded to discuss the next 24 hours.

Well, we watched the film a couple of times with many pauses, courtesy of the Academy, in some small studio and we took copious notes, starting with names of cast and crew and identity of the characters. We returned to the apartment where Banerjee and I collaborated on a more or less satisfactory version of the narrative. We didn’t think any of the voting members would work through the actual script even if the whole thing was translated into English. They needed to keep their focus on visual matters—on the drama screened, not read. Then came the hardest part.

It is almost funny to think that back then we couldn’t even imagine trying to add English subtitles to a Bengali movie through computers. (There were no personal computers of course!) The existing technology was completely out of our domain and we didn’t know anyone who did subtitles. But we did know pen and paper, electric typewriters and copying machines in halls of academia. So we worked through the evening and a good bit of the night typing, proofreading, copying, collating—with some joy in getting all this done, but also with a sense of shame: we feared that “the big city”, along with us, may be laughed out of the auditorium. Only Sudip was very upbeat and cooperative because he would be doing a soft voiceover commentary during the screening of Mahanagar—the next best thing to dubbing, Banerjee had thought. And it may have been Banerjee again, who had offered Sudip his role.

In the morning, we arrived early for the screening because the Academy had to go with Mahanagar first, and for good reason. There were two other films to be screened that day—the Polanski film and a Japanese movie about twin girls from Kyoto. Those were subtitled of course and needed no added technology for getting the plot. I remember noticing Jack Lemon and Cornel Wilde in the lobby, then we distributed the synopsis to attendees. It occurred to me too that Banerjee was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly Mahanagar came on the screen.

Sudip did his speaking calmly and pleasantly, but the whole setup was amateurish and unconvincing. I was pretty sure there would be no nomination for Satyajit Ray this time around, and I must confess that after watching the film three times in quick succession I thought it to be a rather average rendition of an urban middle-class family under duress. “Not ready for prime time”—in spite of Madhabi and Anil being in the cast. Who knew them in Hollywood anyway? Eventually, we returned to the apartment exhausted, but not dissatisfied—even a little proud as I remember. We didn’t think anyone else could have done a better job in a 24-hour slot, given the circumstances. At some point I asked Sudip, “What happened to Banerjee?”

“He must have had church duty somewhere earlier today—that’s why he wasn’t at the screening.” Sudip giggled. There was an inside joke somewhere.

“What d’you mean? Is Banerjee Christian?” Robin asked.

“Let me tell the Banerjee story, please.” Nikhil (not his real name either) responded.

“Go ahead,” Sudip laughed. “I’ll get us some beer.” And then Nikhil began his folk tale.

“First of all I have no idea what his first name is, or if he has one. He gets his mail in some post-box. Everyone calls him Banerjee and we don’t pry. When I first came to UCLA, he was no longer a student. Used to be in architectural engineering, but flunked out I was told. I don’t know how that happened because he’s very sharp—although he told me once his destiny lies in the theatre.” Nikhil scratched his head.

“I can see that—and yes, he’s very sharp and observant too. Reads people well,” I said, and Robin agreed.

“He lives with us, pays his share of rent and other expenses. But we don’t press him for anything else because after all he’s now in this country as an illegal… his visa has long expired and the man has to survive somehow if he wishes to stay in this country. And in any case he couldn’t get a job outside with a student visa.”

“All that is true, plus Banerjee is kind of a mentor—an older brother to us. We like that he is here. I don’t mind that he gets on my case now and then. Go on.” Sudip concurred. He wasn’t really a rival for the chief’s position.

“Anyhow, Banerjee told us that while wandering around Los Angeles one day, he has an epiphany—a revelation of sorts, in front of a church belonging to Presbyterians. So he goes in and sits in a pew, his head bent down in reverence. After a while someone in authority approaches him—it is the Minister. ‘What can I do for you my son? You appear distressed.’ And that’s when lightning strikes.”

“You are being a little too dramatic, aren’t you?” Sudip intervened. Perhaps he thought he could tell a better tale.

“No, this is exactly how Banerjee put it to me. So he looks up at the Minister and says, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve bothered you. I just came in to pray. You see, I’m a Presbyterian from India—out of work at the moment, trying to figure out what to do.’ Of course, the Minister wants to help, but Banerjee is a proud Presbyterian and wants no charity. He has a more creative suggestion. He says, ‘If I could talk to your congregation about how the Church is doing in India, then I wouldn’t mind a small donation for the effort.’ ‘You’re right, a speaker’s fee would be exactly the right thing’—the Minister is delighted. He would call Banerjee when he had a date. All this happened before he moved in here.”

“Wait a minute. I never heard of any Presbyterians in India. Where are their churches?” Robin didn’t think this could work.

“Banerjee didn’t have a clue either. Like I said, he was struck by an idea whose time had come. You know, the light bulb thing. So he goes to the UCLA library and spends several days reading up on Presbyterians—develops a story line which even includes persecution of the faithful. He’s a good talker who still believes that he’ll become a professional actor one day. So he does his thing at the church and earns—yes, earns—a few hundred dollars and a couple of patrons willing to find him a job. How he managed to ward off such kindness he didn’t say. But now he has a grand scheme. He locates churches of different denominations, scattered over the greater Los Angeles and starts repeating his speaker act. Are there Baptists or Methodists in India? I don’t know, but Banerjee never fails to bring good tidings to his congregations—and that’s what matters, don’t you think?”

“Fantastic!” I was really impressed. Robin was fascinated, and Sudip was eager to finish the story.  

“So… what Nikhil is saying is that armed with hours of research at the library, Banerjee takes turns to become a poor Baptist, Methodist and… and what not from India, temporarily out of luck and needing a little help. He has left the Catholic Church alone because there are quite a few of those churches in India and Banerjee could be exposed as a deceiver. When he first moved in with us, it was because we had been looking for another roommate. He always seems to have some money and pays his share of rent and utilities dutifully—without fail. Of course, we didn’t know how he made a living… until almost a year later.”

“Yes, that’s when he sat at this table—right in that chair you are sitting now, and told me the story of his sudden revelation. I suppose because I am the youngest here.” Nikhil was happy to be the ‘kid brother’ to a great hustler.

“So where did the man disappear today? After doing all that work for this morning’s screening.” I remained curious.

“Let me see,” Nikhil answered as he walked over to their large monthly calendar in the hallway. “Banerjee… is green ink. He has written ‘sermon in Santa Monica, dash, lunch, dash, dinner w R?’ So I don’t see him coming back soon.”

“Too bad,” said Robin the marine biologist. “I have to get back to my lab before too long.”

“Me too”, I added. “And it’s more than a two-hour drive to UCSD. Please tell Banerjee we missed him today, and I have a couple of questions for him. How does he keep it straight? I mean, his particular Christian identity? Also, where has he made the most money? Which church?”

“Banerjee is quite secretive about such things… I think too that he has met a special girl through his church business. I hope you aren’t thinking of trying…”  Sudip was cautious. Banerjee had become their team leader—sort of. And he must be protected.

“Are you kidding? We don’t have the man’s courage… or serenity. Or his friendly face. A good man you have here. You are lucky.” Robin walked toward the door and I followed.

On the way back to La Jolla, we nodded our assent quite a bit as we discussed our trip to L.A. In America someone with Banerjee’s instinct and quick wit could survive with flair—comfortably tip-toeing along the margin of civil society. Hustling his way to professional theatre maybe, or even to Hollywood. (Banerjee's hustle wouldn't be possible today in that exact form because of the internet and a plethora of information about all "churches", but I'm sure other Banerjees are at work in other ways.)

While recalling this unique immigrant evolution, I suddenly remembered another kind of learning—another reflection on immigrant beginnings—and a good ending for this section of my own reflections.

Here is Gary Soto’s poem then, titled 

“Mexicans Begin Jogging”.

At the factory I worked

In the fleck of rubber, under the press

Of an oven yellow with flame,

Until the border patrol opened

Their vans and my boss waved for

us to run.

“Over the fence, Soto,” he shouted,

And I shouted that I was an American.

“No time for lies,” he said, and passes

A dollar in my palm, hurrying me

Through the back door.

Since I was on his time, I ran

And became the wag to a short tail of Mexicans—

Ran past the amazed crowds that lined

The street and blurred like photographs, in rain.

I ran from that industrial road to the soft

Houses where people paled at the turn of an autumn sky.

What could I do but yell vivas

To baseball, milkshakes, and the sociologists

Who would clock me

As I jog into the next century

On the power of a great, silly grin.

There’s a little post-script to this story. I never saw Banerjee again and so I didn’t get answers to the questions I had left for him in Los Angeles. Once in a while I have wondered where Banerjee may be pacing back and forth in his old age. At a beachside resort? An old folks home? A federal prison? A theatre workshop? Or could it be he’s simply resting inside a Christian coffin? I lost track of Robin Prasad too—my marine biologist mate whose brother was a mathematician and whose father used to be the station master of Darjeeling.

Part Two

I

When thinking about the absence of people whose presence in our world had elevated our lives, at first we may remember the last time we saw them, whether or not that particular encounter was uplifting. I am no exception here. And in my life these “last encounters” have been quite varied. In talking about “luminous women” in previous segments I didn’t follow this path because women like my mother Shanti, her friends Lotika Sen and Pranati Dey, the incomparable Suhasini Ganguly had come into and then out of my life in a continuous stream. But it was different with Suchitra Mitra—the golden voiced.

A couple of years ago, I stumbled onto a “musical biography” video of Suchitra with many stories about her life in her own words. I recognized the venue for this videography at once. It was her apartment on the tenth floor of the high rise “Swastik” on Gariahat Road which I had visited on a few occasions. The connection was somewhat serendipitous because my sister lived on the sixth floor of the building and after my parents moved back to Kolkata from Allahabad, I visited Suchitra with them, and one time by myself. That must have been 1990 or 1992.

What struck me right away was the combination of utter candor and abiding affection with which she greeted me.

“You wouldn’t have come to see me if Arun-Babu and Shanti-di hadn’t brought you along and your sister didn’t live nearby. But you are here, and tell me what you’re doing.”

I explained some things about my life, but she was really interested in going way way back when I was a child and we used to stroll on the streets of Bhabanipur and Kalighat singing our way through those mornings. Those journeys were called প্রভাত ফেরি (probhat-pheri). One route was south on Harish Mukherjee Road, then across a patch of Hazra Road, again south on our street—Sadananda Road and back to our house for a rest stop. Rather long singing treks, those were—and people stopped or came outdoor to hear the singing. Loud and passionate chorus on the streets of South Calcutta.

“I remember that you couldn’t walk the whole way—I guess you were what, four or five—and someone had to carry you once in a while. I do remember carrying you on my shoulders one time— and you shaking your head as we sang. You really liked the rhythm of the fiery Rabindranath songs…বাঁধ ভেঙে দাও, বাঁধ ভেঙে দাও, বাঁধ ভেঙে দাও, ভা... ঙো (smash the dam… smash it).” She sang the opening bars.

“Some of that I too remember. The other one I liked to sing was also catchy… আগুন জ্বালো, আগুন জ্বালো (light the fire, light the fire).” We laughed over some tea and biscuits.

As I have written before, our Sadananda Road house was full of people known and unknown to me. Among regular visitors were the “three Mukherjee sisters” as they were called by some: Sujata, Supriya and Suchitra. Suchitra Mukherjee was the youngest of the three and was about the same age as my aunt Tripti. Sujata and Supriya were friends of my mother. In trying find out more about those two later on, I have discovered nothing. In Suchitra’s musical biography she mentions she had two older sisters, but I don’t recall anything more informative. Like other comets in my childhood sky they simply vanished. The other matter that is seldom if ever mentioned is that her “Mitra” last name came from being married to Dhruba Mitra who happened to be another stalwart in the Communist Party in Bengal when they got married. Perhaps those who admire Suchitra only as one with a singular voice rendering Rabindranath songs, feel uncomfortable about such connections.

On this score some demystification is needed. Almost all cultural activity I witnessed as a young boy—the IPTA, the anti-fascist writers and artists’ association, those morning sing-outs in the streets of Kolkata, or music at public meetings and marches—had a direct link to the Communist Party of India of that period. As I remember, there was nothing unusual about Suchitra Mitra or Hemanta Mukherjee singing in our living room adda one day, and at a political rally the next. In his memoirs, within a segment on Debabrata (“George”) Biswas, the versatile Khaled Choudhury writes, “In our adda of [anti-fascist] writers and artists at 46 Dharmatala Street, Suchitra (Mitra) used to come and sing. At that time only a handful of people sang Rabindranath songs. George-da used his resonant voice to lead us in IPTA tunes. We also sang Batuk-da’s (Jyotirindra Moitra) ‘Nabajibaner Gaan’ [New Life Songs]—as well as some Hindi and Urdu songs.”   

I understand the need today to protect careers and enjoy the comfort of revisionist history generally, but there is no need to “expunge” from the public domain that which inspired the public in the first place. On such matters, I always seem to end up saying, I know what I know. In the documentary to which I referred, Suchitra was very objective and respectful about her separation from “my husband” at a personal level and talked about their son, who would be about ten years younger than me, and it is possible I had seen him as a youngster back then. But I don’t remember from the video Suchitra discussing anything about the political dimension of her youth. I have been told she has a daughter who lives in America, but I have never met her.

“So Gogol, you did your undergraduate and post-graduate education in Kolkata… that’s what your sister and Shanti-di had said.” She resumed our chat.

“That’s true.”

“Then how come I never got to see you in those years?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure whether you’d remember me, and you were an icon—the diva of Rabindrasangeet. You were busy with recitals and running your school. I just…”

“If I was able to remember the time we shared as I’m looking at you now, don’t you think I would have remembered you thirty years ago?”

“You’re right. But I have one defense I have to make.” I was a bit embarrassed of course. “When I was a student here, I heard you sing many times—and in different places.”

“I’m glad we stayed connected then.”

“Of all those recitals—I suppose that would have been between in the late fifties and early sixties—there are two I still remember vividly. One was sponsored by the Medical College students, in a more or less intimate setting. My med college friends and I sat on folding chairs, quite close to the small stage where you sat and sang. As though we could touch you with our fingertips while listening to you. The other was exactly the opposite, at Calcutta University… in our Darbhanga Building hall—I think the law students organized that one. We were all part of the Student Federation lot.”

“I think I remember that one. But what do you mean by ‘exactly the opposite’?”

“Okay, you were in the middle of the hall with your harmonium and there was a mic of course and sound equipment. You seemed like a sunlit island surrounded by a sea of enchanted students. Standing room only would be an understatement. I myself was sitting on a large table with my friends—close to an exit.”

“Are you sure it was like that?”

“Yes I am. You captivated our hearts and minds for sure, but in a way you too were a captive of sorts—of our delight and admiration. The last song you sang that day—and it may have been a request—was এ কী গভীর বাণী... (what is this profound utterance…) Well, the sound still echoes in my heart.”

“Thank you Gogol for that. Yes, that’s a favorite song of mine.”

After that we didn’t say much else, and it is possible other visitors came and the conversation went to other places. I don’t remember.

We are privileged, in the age of You Tube, to be able to enjoy Suchitra Mitra’s songs—that magic of her weighted sound—at will. I discovered I still have an audio cassette of Rabindranath’s Chandalika (not very good recording) directed by Santosh Sengupta where Suchitra is Prakriti the untouchable and Hemanta is Ananda the Buddhist monk. Somehow it still works for me.

After Suchitra Mitra left us in 2011, we put on the home page of the Arun Mitra website, the poem my father had written about her. Here it is again:

“সুচিত্রার গান” 

অরুণ মিত্র

এই ঘরে রবীন্দ্রসঙ্গীত

এই কন্ঠে শব্দধ্বনি ডানা মেলে

পার হয়ে যায় বাহারবাতি ফুল সাজ চার দেয়াল

দৃপ্ত ঝাপটায় হাওয়া টলায়

আবার নীলে নীলে ভেসে চলে,

এই কন্ঠে শব্দধ্বনি মানুষ পৃথিবী ঋতু নিয়ে

প্রাণসূত্রে দিনরাতকে বাঁধে

তারায় তারায় দীপ্ত শিখা জ্বালায়

আকাশভরা সূর্যতারার মাঝখানে

কী যে বিস্ময় জাগায়

আর কী যে ভালোবাসা সোনার বাংলার ধুলোমাটির ছোঁয়ায়

ময়নাপাড়ার মাঠে কালো হরিণচোখের মায়ায় জড়ায়

কখনো অগ্নিবাণে কখনো ঝরঝর বরিষণে

কখনো ঝড়ের মেঘে কখনো আলোয় আলোয়

বাঁচার মুহূর্তগুলোকে রূপেরূপান্তরে ফোটায়

এই কন্ঠে শব্দধ্বনি কোথায় পৌঁছয়,

যেখানে কাছে দূরে হৃদয়তাপে বাতাস কাঁপে

যেখানে আকাশ মিলিয়ে যায় মহাশূন্যের নীলসবুজে।

এই কন্ঠ সুচিত্রা মিত্র।

আমি ঘরের মধ্যে গান শুনি,

ঘর? কই ঘর?

আমি তো এক অনন্ত ভূবনে।

“Suchitra Singing”

Arun Mitra

In this room Rabindranath’s songs

In this voice wordsounds spread wings

crossing chandeliers flower vases four walls

brilliant gusts shake the air

then again float across from blue to blue

In this voice wordsounds own people seasons the earth

tie night and day with a heartstring

ignite all stars with glowing flames

in a sky full of sun and stars

what a surprise awakens

and what love touches the dust and soil

of a golden Bengal

in MoinapaRa fields embracing dark deer eyes

sometimes in a firestorm sometimes in blinding rain

sometimes in storm clouds sometimes in sunlight

reshaping every living moment

wordsounds of this voice how far do they reach,

far and near where the air trembles in heartwarming

where the sky vanishes in the bluegreen universe

This voice is Suchitra Mitra.

I listen to her in my room

Room? What room?

I am now in an infinite world.

II

Of all the people I have wanted to write about, I have the greatest difficulty in putting words together to explain how I feel about my aunt Tripti Mitra. For one thing, a number of people have expressed their feelings about her, based on their lifelong connection with Tripti the person. In one of his books, my father has a couple of segments about her—with memories ranging from the first day she walked into our house—a shy adolescent wearing a dress, and then standing up to recite Rabindranath’s “Ashesh” [Endless] like a spring uncoiled… all the way to the day she died in 1989. Another series of memories I find in Khaled Choudhury’s recollections, based of course on his personal connection to Tripti from their days in the IPTA, the staging of my Bijan uncle’s Nabanna [see the first segment of this series], through the ups and downs of the theatre group Bohurupee, and her solo performance in Aparajita. His final words: “A nation has to wait for eons to witness this kind of talent”. Whenever I remember my aunt framed by the language of these two dear people, an unstoppable churning begins within me and I can’t stop my tears from flowing—in sorrow, but also in anger.

Both these memoirs recall how her life ended in considerable suffering, and death was a kind of liberation. Like a couple of her sisters, she died before her time, defeated by incurable cancer. That is the main source for my sorrow—that’s how I saw her when I visited her a few months before her death. My anger, which had been brewing for some time, was no doubt augmented during the same visit. There was my precious aunt, who was also the inimitable Tripti Mitra, resting on a sofa with not another human being in sight or in sound.

I remember the place was a second floor apartment near the Lansdowne Market, or perhaps it was a two-floor residence—rented for Tripti by her daughter. I also remember the space to be very white—almost a funeral white with not too much furniture—where that “shy teenager” seemed to be sitting, holding my hand, but in truth this was a woman discarded without love. She said she was sorry she wouldn’t be able to go to my niece’s wedding.

“As you see, I am too sick to go places—even though she’s getting married in Ballygunge.”

“Yes, on Gariahat Road—not far from their flat. You don’t have to be sorry for anything.” Then we changed the subject and she asked about my family.

“How’s Joy and Kinjal. What are they doing now?”

I talked a bit about life in America, but it wasn’t much fun. She did brighten up a bit when I told her that Joy has always proclaimed that other than my parents, the one person among my relatives who was the kindest friend to her was my “chhoTo-mashi”.

“I told Joy that’s because more than being my mother’s sister, she has always been an older friend to me. Just as well, because Joy still remains confused about the relationship. How is it that being the fifth daughter in the queue—with four sisters younger than you, you would be my ‘little or youngest’ mashi?”

That made her laugh. Then after a while, a very nice woman—her caregiver—brought her lunch and she moved to a dining table. I sat with her and had some snacks while she ate. We talked some more, but I don’t remember about what. Then her caregiver hinted that it was nap time, and I took my leave. 

“You really look well today… and cheerful as always.” I said as I started down the stairs. And I’ll come back after this wedding business is over… before I go back to America.” But I knew that my promise was a lie. I could never return to those surroundings devoid of warmth or dignity and remain silent about my true feelings. And that would have been hurtful to my best aunt.

Everyone in Kolkata (and rest of the world) has known about Tripti Mitra’s personal wounds, causes for her private suffering. In addition to the loss of coherence in her personal theatre, I believe she was the object of envy as far as some people were concerned because they too would have “to wait for eons to witness” my aunt’s talent—and that was above and beyond their own capabilities and certainly beyond their lifetime. In the end, isolating her and keeping her hostage to a terminal illness was the best solution.

(By sheer chance, I just came across a fairly recent [May, 2015] article by Priyanka Dasgupta in the Times of India, City, Kolkata, titled, Tripti Mitra's Memories Fade Away in Neglect in Kolkata. Priyanka begins thus: “It won't be surprising if all awards of legendary actor Tripti Mitra, including her Padma Shri and Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, are stolen from the Tripti Mitra Smaran [memorial] museum. It is a stroke of luck that no miscreant has as yet broken into the dilapidated building in Park Circus Corporation market that houses these national treasures.” Enough said for now.)

I had intended to bring up some of Tripti's writings here, especially about how she coped with demands made by the different roles she played. In particular, I am very fascinated by her insightful comparison of three Rabindranath heroines she had taken on: Sudarshana in Raja (The King), Nandini in Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders), and Ela in Char Oddhay (Four Chapters). But I think I’ll save my wonderment for another time. In fact, that’ll also give me some room to write about moments from Tripti Mitra’s presence on stage that still haunt and rejuvenate me at the same time. For now, I’ll stay with her unforgettable compassion and affection with which she embraced my life.

As everyone who has gone through Calcutta University’s B.A./B.Sc. honors programs knows, in our days there used to be a “test” exam administered by individual colleges shortly before the real final exams. The test exams were like dress rehearsals and were supposed to be a measure of our ultimate success or failure. It so happened that just before my test exams, I fell quite ill—with continuing high fever and other symptoms of a viral attack—a variety of the “Asian flu” of the era. Along with a few other students, I used to live then at “Shanti Bhavan”—a house run by the Belgian scholar-priests, Fathers Fallon and Antoine. Obviously, there was no one there to care for me under the circumstances, but as soon as chhoTo-mashi heard about the situation, she said I ought to go and stay with her until I was better. And so I moved to Tripti and Shombhu Mitra’s flat at 11 A Nasiruddin Road for a couple of weeks. (I wrote about their plight during the riots of 1946 in the first post.)

That was a very interesting situation. You came up the steps to the second floor (same in Bengali and American terminology) and the apartment was to the left. Through the front door and then to the left was the room of many hues. By day it was a sitting room and by night it was a music room, theatre room and even a dining room if there were late night meals to be eaten. This was where all the Bohurupee plays germinated, where ideas found shape and structure, where rehearsals went on evening after evening. There was one balcony adjoining this room for side-chats and cigarettes. Evenings there reminded me a lot of my days and nights at Sadananda Road.

The next room, sort of behind the sitting room, is where chhoTo-mashi had got a bed for me. This too was a multi-purpose space as I recall, used for eating, sleeping, chatting and what not. There I lay much of the time with many quilts on me, occasionally hallucinating, or hearing sounds of elation and despair coming from that other room. (I have been trying to recall and to investigate a bit what play was being rehearsed by Bohurupee at that time—which would have been the winter of 1957-58—but I have not succeeded. In fact, I was appalled to find there was so little information about the group on line.)

Every evening, during breaks or at any time really, people from the “theatre room” came to ask me how I was doing. This was my aunt and uncle’s place and everyone in the group was an aunt or uncle to me. A couple of them, Shoven Majumdar and Mukti Goswami were in fact relatives. Shoven (Bchcha-mama) was Shanti and Tripti’s cousin (Satyendranath’s nephew) and Mukti (Itu-mashi) was their sister—the seventh daughter. But everyone was concerned about my health: Khaled, Amar, Kumar, Zakir, Arati, Amita, the two Samirs… and others whose names I cannot recall off hand. My cousin Shaoli, a little girl running around in a white dress sometimes, talked to me from a distance—not allowed to get too close under the circumstances.

During the day, Shombhu Mitra came and talked to me in his usual measured and reassuring way. He would get excited though if I asked about his dear bonsai trees. He was growing several of these miniatures in flower pots on another balcony. My aunt made sure I was eating properly and drinking lots of fluids, and saw to my sponge baths. I remember a doctor, perhaps more than one, prescribing stuff and telling me that this was a virulent virus. That the only way forward is to fight through it. And that’s what I did. My parents phoned from Allahabad once, telling me I was in good hands, but I don’t remember much else. I was up and around in about a couple of weeks, but in no shape to be even a casual student of physics, let alone ready to study for the B.Sc. exams. Given the system of exams of the time, I ended up losing a year of college, but that was a small price compared to recovering from that debilitating “virulent virus”—thanks to Tripti Mitra and all those who touched my forehead when I was burning with fever. 

While I lay in bed at Nasiruddin Road, there was one time when I suddenly leaped back to my childhood, when chhoTo-mashi lived with us. She was learning her lines from goshTHo-mama’s (Bijan-uncle) Nabanna. Tripti (Bhaduri then) was cast as Binodini and needed, of course, to memorize her lines. It was my good fortune that because I could read well at an early age, I became my aunt’s partner in this project. We would go to that third-floor room at Sadananda Road with the script and I would read the dialogue with her, impersonating whoever was in the scene with Binodini. I couldn’t remember the details except the scene where Binodini is struggling to get out of the clutches of “the bad guys”—shouting, “Let me go, let me go—I have to get out…”

Some time ago, as I was looking at the cast of characters on the opening night of Nabanna, and who played what role, I was able to remember bits and pieces of the performance. I was amazed to find on the printed page names of all those luminaries gathered on one stage in a singular moment in history. I felt too how lucky I had been (and still am) to have been in the audience that evening—October 24, 1944, in the middle of a raging global conflict as well. Fighting famine and fascism was one and the same struggle at that time. And the most obvious thing: the crucial role played by the IPTA, a people’s theatrical association, in the political and cultural history of Bengal and India.

About Tripti Mitra, I will always regret that I could not do anything to help her when she needed help most, but I did assist her a bit on her way to blossoming into a flower, when I was five years old. How many people can say that? 

As I was struggling to write about her, I began to realize that beside the danger of turbulent waters, my tugboat can become sightless and get stuck in mud and muck. It is hard to tell how deep the sediment is, or how widespread. But the boat will continue its journey, with a respite, but not silence—as I promised at the outset. 

In the end, let me return to the poet again. My father started a poem on the morning of the day Tripti died. He says that it just happened, perhaps as a premonition that was against the grain—because he and my mother were under the impression that my aunt was doing much better. "Why then these lines?", he writes.

ওই তো মুখের ওপর ফুলের রাশ

আর ঘুরন্ত হল্‌কা চারপাশে।

এমন শীতল ধারা ওই ফুল

এমন উপ্‌চোনো স্রোত ওই ফুল!

কথার রেশ ভাসছে আকাশে

কথা শুকিয়ে আসছে বাতাসে,

শেষ সম্মান এইবার,

নামো বর্ষা নামো।

There... a heap of flowers on the face

and a swirling gust all around.

Such a cool stream those flowers

Such an overflowing current those flowers

trails of words are floating in the sky

words are drying out in the breeze,

It is time for the final homage now

Come rain come.

____________________________________

That's it then for now.

Copyright: Ranadhir Mitra, January, 2016