unknown savior.
Mani Bhaumik lived in a village near Tamluk. His father, Bhaumik would write in an autobiography, was a former schoolteacher who had become a nationalist and therefore rarely dared to come home. Sometimes the police would show up instead, to search for the fugitive and to ransack the house. Once an officer smelling of sweat and cologne called Mani a “wog” and hit him in the face. But the eleven-year-old was fortified by the love of two remarkable old women.
One of them was Matongini Hazra, who lived alone in a nearby village. Married at twelve to an old man and widowed at eighteen, she
used to eke out a precarious living by husking rice. Many years earlier, when Mani was only a year old, his father had led a procession that had wound by Hazra’s hut, and she had run out to join it. Since that day she had been a freedom fighter and a friend of the family, and would sometimes bring the boy some pithe, or crepes with sweet fillings, that she had made.
One evening in September 1942 Hazra arrived with a plateful of pithe and, seating the boy on the doorstep, fed them to him by her own hand. Her eyes had a strange fire in them. She told him not to worry about his father, to trust in God, and to always do what he most fervently believed in. When he grew up he would live in a land that was free, even if there would still be a lot of struggle, because “nothing comes just because you want it . . . you have to fight for it. And you have to stay on the right path.” She blessed him and walked into the night. The next day, September 29, she died in a hail of bullets.
The other woman who profoundly affected Mani was his grandmother, Saroda Devi. After the famine began, the family started receiving mysterious bundles of food—millets, yas, kolai lentils. His father must be sending these, Mani presumed. Still the provisions were not enough for him, so his grandmother began to give him her portions. Each evening she would lie down, enervated, and stare “listlessly at the light coming through the cracks in the door,” wrote Bhaumik. “I knelt by her side and clasped her bony hand, sharing in her secret plot to make one life from two.” Someone must have told Mani’s father that the old woman was doing badly, for he managed to visit just before she died. Bhaumik went on to finish school and college, get a doctorate in physics, migrate to the United States, co-invent a laser used for corrective eye surgery, and live as a millionaire in Malibu, California. 5
“AFTER THE FLOOD we started a vegetable garden,” said Chitto Samonto. His family owned less than a half-acre of land, but because many of the local people had died or wandered away, fields all around now lay fallow. There the brothers sowed pumpkins, squash, and watermelons. In three months they started to get fruit, which they boiled and ate,
long before it could ripen. “Otherwise we had coconuts and some boiled kolai,” he said. These lentils, which when freshly picked resemble tiny green peas, are a valuable source of protein but contain few calories. “We would gulp everything down with water,” Samonto remembered. They also boiled and ate stems of yam, fleshy stems of vine, leaves and seeds of tamarind and other trees, seeds of grass, and stringy whole kolai plants, which were normally fed to cows. Occasionally they drank palm sugar mixed with water. Finding and processing food often took more energy than one could get out of eating it.
For much of that time the family had an extra mouth to feed. Chitto’s elder sister was married to a postal officer in Calcutta. But after her ten-year-old daughter had died of some illness, her husband had taken to abusing her, so her father had brought her back to Kalikakundu. Many of the poor were selling their land jawler damey —as cheap as water—in order to buy rice, so the husband then bought almost twenty acres in a village not far away. He carried a badge that kept him safe from the police, and
Mani Bhaumik lived in a village near Tamluk. His father, Bhaumik would write in an autobiography, was a former schoolteacher who had become a nationalist and therefore rarely dared to come home. Sometimes the police would show up instead, to search for the fugitive and to ransack the house. Once an officer smelling of sweat and cologne called Mani a “wog” and hit him in the face. But the eleven-year-old was fortified by the love of two remarkable old women.
One of them was Matongini Hazra, who lived alone in a nearby village. Married at twelve to an old man and widowed at eighteen, she
used to eke out a precarious living by husking rice. Many years earlier, when Mani was only a year old, his father had led a procession that had wound by Hazra’s hut, and she had run out to join it. Since that day she had been a freedom fighter and a friend of the family, and would sometimes bring the boy some pithe, or crepes with sweet fillings, that she had made.
One evening in September 1942 Hazra arrived with a plateful of pithe and, seating the boy on the doorstep, fed them to him by her own hand. Her eyes had a strange fire in them. She told him not to worry about his father, to trust in God, and to always do what he most fervently believed in. When he grew up he would live in a land that was free, even if there would still be a lot of struggle, because “nothing comes just because you want it . . . you have to fight for it. And you have to stay on the right path.” She blessed him and walked into the night. The next day, September 29, she died in a hail of bullets.
The other woman who profoundly affected Mani was his grandmother, Saroda Devi. After the famine began, the family started receiving mysterious bundles of food—millets, yas, kolai lentils. His father must be sending these, Mani presumed. Still the provisions were not enough for him, so his grandmother began to give him her portions. Each evening she would lie down, enervated, and stare “listlessly at the light coming through the cracks in the door,” wrote Bhaumik. “I knelt by her side and clasped her bony hand, sharing in her secret plot to make one life from two.” Someone must have told Mani’s father that the old woman was doing badly, for he managed to visit just before she died. Bhaumik went on to finish school and college, get a doctorate in physics, migrate to the United States, co-invent a laser used for corrective eye surgery, and live as a millionaire in Malibu, California. 5
“AFTER THE FLOOD we started a vegetable garden,” said Chitto Samonto. His family owned less than a half-acre of land, but because many of the local people had died or wandered away, fields all around now lay fallow. There the brothers sowed pumpkins, squash, and watermelons. In three months they started to get fruit, which they boiled and ate,
long before it could ripen. “Otherwise we had coconuts and some boiled kolai,” he said. These lentils, which when freshly picked resemble tiny green peas, are a valuable source of protein but contain few calories. “We would gulp everything down with water,” Samonto remembered. They also boiled and ate stems of yam, fleshy stems of vine, leaves and seeds of tamarind and other trees, seeds of grass, and stringy whole kolai plants, which were normally fed to cows. Occasionally they drank palm sugar mixed with water. Finding and processing food often took more energy than one could get out of eating it.
For much of that time the family had an extra mouth to feed. Chitto’s elder sister was married to a postal officer in Calcutta. But after her ten-year-old daughter had died of some illness, her husband had taken to abusing her, so her father had brought her back to Kalikakundu. Many of the poor were selling their land jawler damey —as cheap as water—in order to buy rice, so the husband then bought almost twenty acres in a village not far away. He carried a badge that kept him safe from the police, and
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