chests in the gesture of pranam; sons and daughters do the same to their parents and elders, younger relations to older, and the men embrace each other three times in quick succession. The sweets are distributed and the stricken looks resulting from Baishakhi’s intransigence two days ago – it is difficult to estimate where the genuine strickenness ends and its self-conscious enactment begins – are relaxed enough to allow the usual bijaya practices to proceed.
Purba, on the one evening she is suffered to come to the grand living room on the first floor and mingle relatively freely, so that everyone else can have the desirably short-lived luxury of playing One Big Happy Family, is, in reality, on menial duty, as always; she stands in a corner and hands out plates of sweets, clears away empty cups and saucers, refills glasses with water, even though there is a small fleet of servants to do these chores. For once, Charubala does not bark at her, but files away, for later use, the fact that she gives two pantuas each to Sona and Kalyani when she knows she is not supposed to give them more than one. Charubala chooses to ignore that it is Supratik who insists that Purba gives extra sweets to her children; she does not have to, thinks Charubala, just because someone is persistently asking her to do it, does she? Purba could have been equally obstinate in not giving in. A hot flash of irritation blooms inside the old woman, but now is not the time. She cannot even have the satisfaction of baring her teeth at Sona and Kalyani; Supratik is teaching them a game that involves paper and pen and they are absolutely rapt. It will have to wait.
On the morning after, a few minutes into her matutinal duties in the prayer room, Sandhya discovers the following note in a sealed envelope at the foot of the statuette of the goddess Lakshmi:
Ma, I feel exhausted with consuming, with taking and grabbing and using. I am so bloated that I feel I cannot breathe any more. I am leaving to find some air, some place where I shall be able to purge myself, push back against the life given me and make my own. I feel I live in a borrowed house. It’s time to find my own. Trying to discover my whereabouts won’t get you anywhere, so save that energy; you might find you need it for something else. I’ll write periodically to let you know I’m alive. Forgive me. Yours, Supratik.
II
I left the city to work with landless peasants, the sharecroppers, wage-labourers and impoverished tenants who were the backbone of our movement. My job was to go to the villages and organise them into armed struggle.
That was the only way – to seize power, one field, one village, one district at a time. 1 ) Formation of armed squads in every village; 2 ) collection of arms by seizing them from class enemies and the police; 3 ) seizure of crops and arrangements for hiding them; 4 ) constant propagation of the politics of armed struggle – these were our aims, outlined by Chairman Mao first and then Charu Mazumdar. We went to indigent agricultural areas where feudalism was still the order of the day, where the exploitation of farmers by jotedaars and moneylenders and landowners was at its inhuman worst. Along the Bengal–Bihar–Orissa borderlands this feudalism was supplemented by the plight of the tribal peoples whose ancient lands had been taken from them and who had been reduced to a form of slavery. Or else they had run away into the forests, hoping for some kind of life in hiding.
Of the people I knew, three groups went to the Gopiballabhpur area in south Medinipur, near the border with Orissa; another two, where Purulia edged into Bihar. I formed a group with Samir and Dhiren. Samir, from Naktala, was a Part II Bengali Honours student at Bangabashi, a budding poet and short-story writer, also reputed to be the brightest student his department had seen in the last twenty-five years. He had got record marks in his Part I exams last year. How he had pulled off that
Purba, on the one evening she is suffered to come to the grand living room on the first floor and mingle relatively freely, so that everyone else can have the desirably short-lived luxury of playing One Big Happy Family, is, in reality, on menial duty, as always; she stands in a corner and hands out plates of sweets, clears away empty cups and saucers, refills glasses with water, even though there is a small fleet of servants to do these chores. For once, Charubala does not bark at her, but files away, for later use, the fact that she gives two pantuas each to Sona and Kalyani when she knows she is not supposed to give them more than one. Charubala chooses to ignore that it is Supratik who insists that Purba gives extra sweets to her children; she does not have to, thinks Charubala, just because someone is persistently asking her to do it, does she? Purba could have been equally obstinate in not giving in. A hot flash of irritation blooms inside the old woman, but now is not the time. She cannot even have the satisfaction of baring her teeth at Sona and Kalyani; Supratik is teaching them a game that involves paper and pen and they are absolutely rapt. It will have to wait.
On the morning after, a few minutes into her matutinal duties in the prayer room, Sandhya discovers the following note in a sealed envelope at the foot of the statuette of the goddess Lakshmi:
Ma, I feel exhausted with consuming, with taking and grabbing and using. I am so bloated that I feel I cannot breathe any more. I am leaving to find some air, some place where I shall be able to purge myself, push back against the life given me and make my own. I feel I live in a borrowed house. It’s time to find my own. Trying to discover my whereabouts won’t get you anywhere, so save that energy; you might find you need it for something else. I’ll write periodically to let you know I’m alive. Forgive me. Yours, Supratik.
II
I left the city to work with landless peasants, the sharecroppers, wage-labourers and impoverished tenants who were the backbone of our movement. My job was to go to the villages and organise them into armed struggle.
That was the only way – to seize power, one field, one village, one district at a time. 1 ) Formation of armed squads in every village; 2 ) collection of arms by seizing them from class enemies and the police; 3 ) seizure of crops and arrangements for hiding them; 4 ) constant propagation of the politics of armed struggle – these were our aims, outlined by Chairman Mao first and then Charu Mazumdar. We went to indigent agricultural areas where feudalism was still the order of the day, where the exploitation of farmers by jotedaars and moneylenders and landowners was at its inhuman worst. Along the Bengal–Bihar–Orissa borderlands this feudalism was supplemented by the plight of the tribal peoples whose ancient lands had been taken from them and who had been reduced to a form of slavery. Or else they had run away into the forests, hoping for some kind of life in hiding.
Of the people I knew, three groups went to the Gopiballabhpur area in south Medinipur, near the border with Orissa; another two, where Purulia edged into Bihar. I formed a group with Samir and Dhiren. Samir, from Naktala, was a Part II Bengali Honours student at Bangabashi, a budding poet and short-story writer, also reputed to be the brightest student his department had seen in the last twenty-five years. He had got record marks in his Part I exams last year. How he had pulled off that
Similar Books
