Translation: Classic Stories of Rabindranath Tagore

Translator: Lopamudra Banerjee

Monihara (Tale of the Lost Jewels)

 

My boat was moored to an almost worn out, dilapidated river bank that day. The sun had set for some time when the backdrop of this story was created.

The boatman, a devout Muslim, was reading his namaaz (prayers) on the roof of the boat. His prayers spelt in solitude seemed like a painting etched in the sprawling canvas of the western sky from time to time. It seemed like innumerable shades and hues spilled over the placid, still river bodies, gradually turning dark from light, steel gray from golden, melting from one tinge of colour to another as an effortless transformation.

Sitting all alone in the evening at the ghaat (river bank) lacerated with the roots of ashwatha trees, in front of a huge decrepit palatial mansion with broken windows and a fragile verandah, as I was listening to the crickets chirping, the parched corners of my eyes were about to get moist. Just then, my whole body and being was startled to hear a human voice approaching me.

“Where are you coming from, Mister?” I was asked.

I looked around to discover a thin, frail man, perhaps neglected by his Goddess of destiny to a great extent. In my observation, he looked like most hapless servants of the British raj in Bangladesh who seemed to hold on to their unkempt, unreformed appearances. For his attire, he wore a thin dhoti and a shabby, oily, loose shirt with the buttons untied; in fact, looking at him, it seemed like he had returned from his workplace just a while ago, and depriving himself of his evening snack, he had come to taste the essence of the evening air at the wretched bank of the river.

The stranger took a seat beside the stairs. I replied: “I am coming from Ranchi.”

“Well, what do you do there?”

“I have my own business.”

“What kind of business?” He asked again.

“The business of consumer goods, including myrobalan (a tree/fruit), silk cocoon, and wood.”

“What’s your name?”

I paused a bit, and told him a name; however, it was not my own name.

However, this didn’t seem to quench the man’s curiosity. He asked me again, in newfound zeal: “What brings you here?”

“Change of air!” I replied, nonchalantly.

The man looked at me with an air of disbelief and surprise, and said: “Listen, Mister, for the past six years, I’ve been tasting the air of this place along with fifteen grains of quinine on an average daily, with no positive results so far!”

I replied: “But you have to admit, one will get to experience significant change of air here, when compared to Ranchi!”

He said: “Yes, that’s quite a significant change, indeed…. But, where will you stay here?”

I pointed towards the decrepit mansion over the riverbank and said: “That one will be my home.” 

I suppose the man doubted now that I had discovered some hidden treasure in the haunted house I pointed towards. However, I remained mum and chose not to argue about the matter. And he, on his part, started to narrate an incident related to the accursed house in great details, an incident that happened fifteen years back.

The man worked as a teacher in a local school in town. In his frail, malady-stricken face, beneath his huge, bald head, his large eyes seemed to shine excessively bright, situated within their own sockets. Looking at him, I was reminded of the ancient mariner, a character created by English poet Coleridge in one of his iconic poems.

Meanwhile, the boatman had finished reading his ‘namaz’ and was concentrating on cooking dinner for the night. As the last rays of the setting sun at dusk melted into the horizon, the dark, abandoned mansion situated over the river bank stood silent, as if a ghost of its illustrious past.

The school teacher went on narrating his story.

‘Almost ten years before I arrived in this village, a man named Phanibhushan Saha used to live in this mansion. By the sheer stroke of luck, he had inherited the huge property and the business originally owned by his uncle, Durgamohan Saha, who wasn’t blessed with a son of his own. Phanibhushan, however, was bitten by the bug of modernism. He had received English education and would converse in pure, unadulterated English whenever he entered inside the Sahib’s office, with his shoes on. Moreover, he had grown a beard, for which there was little to no possibility of him being promoted by the Sahib merchant. At the very first glance, he looked like a representative of the ‘young Bengal’.

At home, his wife was a beautiful woman. Hence, blessed with both college education and a beautiful wife, the traditional, orthodox ways of life had no place in his domestic life. The assistant surgeon was called home as soon as any of them got a disease, however big or small. Their prosperity grew by the day, and gradually it reflected on their clothes, their lifestyle et al.

Mister, I assume you are a married man yourself, hence, you must be knowing the female sex usually loves ripe mangoes, hot chilies and a stern husband. The wretched man who is deprived of the love of his own wife isn’t necessarily ugly or poor, he is meek, undemanding, worthy of a strong voice.

Now, if you ask me why such a thing happened, I have thought quite at length about the matter. One who doesn’t cultivate or practice his own faculties and his own instincts is never happy in his life. Since the day the discrimination between man and woman became apparent, women have been trying to educate themselves in the art of charming and subjugating restless, truant men in many ways. But what can be said about the wives of men who subjugate themselves on their own? Those poor wives are considered worthless; the mighty weapons that they had inherited from their grandmothers who had sharpened those weapons for thousand, million years, the fiery arrows and the serpent-noose that they had acquired become utterly futile for those women.

Women, with the natural instinct of charming, hypnotizing their men, want to usurp the affection of the men by virtue of their own feminine power, However, if the husband doesn’t give her the space or the opportunity to do that, we assume that the husband is a wretched soul and the wife is even more unfortunate.

Trained in the bounties of modern civilization and the education it entails, the modern man has somehow lost his natural gift of barbarism that the Almighty had blessed him with, loosening the bond of marital relationships along the way. Phanibhushan happened to be one of those men, emerging from the machinery of modern civilization as a good-natured human. Hence, he was unsuccessful in both his business pursuits and his marital life. 

As for his wife Monimalika, she received all her husband’s affection without even trying, expensive Dhakai saris without shedding tears and exquisite jewelry like the ‘bajubandha’ without her invincible feminine drama. With all these acquisitions over the years, her female nature and her ability to love became passive, lethargic—she would only receive all the bounties, and never cared about giving back. Her foolish, innocent husband was under the impression that giving love and affection was the only way to receive the same in exchange. So wrong of him to assume that! As a result of his assumption, his wife took him as a relentless machine supplying her endless Dhakai saris and jewelry; and the machine was so high-functioning that she never even needed to fill it with fuel to keep it working.

Phanibhushan’s birthplace was a village named Phulbere, but his place of business was here. For the demands of his work, he had to spend most of his time in this town. His mother didn’t live in his ancestral home in Phulbere, but he had his paternal aunt and his other relatives there. But Phanibhushan didn’t marry his exquisite, beautiful wife and bring her home for the benefit of his relatives and his extended family members. By that logic, he estranged his wife from his other family members and brought her to this mansion to live with her in isolation. However, little did he understand that in this act of estranging her from his family members and keeping her close to himself, he wouldn’t necessarily get more of her love.

Monimalika was a fiercely private, reticent woman, and never mingled with her female neighbors much. She was never seen to feed the brahmins on the occasion of any religious ritual, or give any extra paisa as alms to the Vaishnavi beggar woman, an occasional visitor at the house. Nothing was ever wasted in her hands; except her husband’s affection, she had accumulated every single thing in the earth with great care. Strangely enough, she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t let an iota of her own graceful youth and beauty be wasted inadvertently. People who saw her would comment that when she was twenty-four, she looked like a raw, sprightly fourteen-year-old teenager girl. Perhaps this flawless beauty was a characteristic of females whose hearts were ice-cold, whose bosoms never heaved with the pangs and sufferings of love. Perhaps they were the ones to remain fresh and young for a prolonged time; with their miserly display of love, they were able to fulfil their interior and exterior lives.

Immensely fresh and beautiful like a creeper tree endowed with lush leaves, Monimalika was barren, childless by the sheer will of the Almighty. In other words, the Almighty didn’t give her any human gift which she would learn to cherish or value more than her expensive jewelry locked away in her iron vault, which, like the new sun’s rays in a luscious spring morning, would melt away the chunk of ice of her heart with its tender warmth and shower over the household a fountain of unconditioned love.

But Monimalika was an expert in all her domestic chores, hence never felt the need to have a bevy of servants to manage her housework in the mansion. She couldn’t tolerate the thought that strangers from outside would perform the household duties that she herself was perfectly capable of, and take salaries from such work. She had no human concerns for anybody, and also no affection for anybody; she just worked mechanically and accumulated what she thought were her ‘treasures’, and in doing all of this, she never felt any grief, any remorse whatsoever. With all her might, she reigned amid plentiful health, unwavering peace and boundless wealth acquired over the years.

For most husbands in this world, such a scenario is rare, priceless. Just as we humans usually forget about the existence of our waists in our bodies unless there is tremendous pain in the area, the reminder of the existence of your wife as the shelter of your home, as a compulsive act of love can be called the ‘waist pain of domestic life’! As for women, boundless devotion for their husbands can be called a glorious act, but for men, such an act is not a favorable one, according to my opinion.

Listen, Mister, is it a man’s job to keep measuring with a pair of scales, how much love from our wives we received, how much shortage of love we experienced from them? Let the wife do her own job at home, and let me be busy with my own job, that to me, is the way a household works, however gross it might sound. The Almighty hasn’t gifted a man with the subtle sensibility to judge the delicate expressions amid unspoken words, the lacuna hidden amid articulate words, the unuttered hints and suggestions amid clearly defined statements. There was no need to gift him with such a faculty either. However, the women folk keep measuring the symptoms of love, lovelessness, enmity of their men when they exhibit those in the slightest degree. It is generally part of their obsession to extract the real intention behind the words spoken, simply because the love of their men is the strength of their life, the capital of their business of life. The women meticulously follow the direction of the wind and turn the sail accordingly, only then the boat of life will float in the river, they know that well. This is the reason why the Almighty has blessed the women folk with the device to measure love, kept it dangling in their hearts.

However, the men folk have forcefully obtained what the Almighty hadn’t gifted them naturally, competing with the divine power, and given this rare device in the hands of the common men without exercising any discretion. What is the fault of the Almighty in this, after all? He had created man and women in different molds, but the modern civilization is rejecting that discrimination. Today, the barriers, the gap between the masculine and feminine is getting blurred, hence it signals the end of peace and discipline within the household. Now, before the marriage rituals, the bride and the groom both have their hearts fluttering in anxiety, for they don’t know for sure whether the man or the woman is being married off.

Perhaps you are getting annoyed, Mister! Living alone in this secluded small town, completely estranged from my wife, the many profound theories of our domestic world keep churning in my mind—and those are not to be shared or disclosed to my students. I just shared with you while talking in the broader context, please consider my words carefully.

So, it can be said, in Phanibhushan’s domestic life, though there was no dearth of salt in cooking or no caustic lime in his beetle leaves to cause discomfort, he would always feel an arduous pain, an unknown trouble brewing in his heart. His wife had no fault apparently, or no significant follies, still he had no peace in his heart. He would strive to fill up the vacuum in her heart with expensive pearls and diamonds, but those ended up only in the iron vault, while the lacuna in his heart remained. His uncle Durgamohan didn’t understand the subtleties of love, and didn’t give him such abundant wealth of love, but he received it plentiful from his aunt. I tell you, if one wants to be a businessman, he cannot be a new Bengali Babu, and if one wants to be a husband, he has to be a man first. Don’t ever doubt these facts!

At this instant, a herd of foxes started to howl from the nearby hedges, interrupting the seamless flow of the teacher’s narrative for a few minutes. It seemed that in such a dark assembly of the two men, the playful, witty foxes were bursting in spurts of loud laughter, whether as a result of listening to the domestic theory explained by the schoolteacher, or as a result of witnessing the modern civilization-stricken demeanour of Phanibhushan. Once their emotional outbursts subsided and the surroundings became overpowered with silence yet again, the teacher, in the pitch-dark evening, narrated his story yet again, rolling his big, bright eyes in continued enthusiasm—

Once, in Phanibhushan’s complex and multi-dimensional business, there was a sudden, unprecedented setback. It is quite difficult for a man as removed from business pursuits as myself to understand or explain the situation with any clarity. But the bottom-line was—suddenly there was a situation in which he found it difficult to maintain his credit in the business market. If he could obtain a sum of one-and-a-half lakh rupees from somewhere, if this sum would appear in the market like a sudden bolt of lightning, he would surely pass the period of crisis in a moment’s time, and his business would take flight again.

However, there was no opportunity to obtain that amount of money. If it would be rumored that he was intending to get a loan from a local Mahajan, he had the apprehension that his business would be affected badly. Hence, he tried obtaining loans from unknown, unfamiliar sources where he would have to keep a pawn to get the money. The easiest pawn, he knew, was any kind of jewelry, which would expedite the loan along with its formalities; he believed it would quickly and easily solve his crisis.

Phanibhushan went to his wife for help. It is important to remember here that he couldn’t approach his wife as easily as other husbands could. Unfortunately, his love for his wife was strong and invincible, just like the love of the hero of an epic for the heroine; one had to tread very cautiously in that kind of love, and words escaped the lips sparingly. The attraction of such love was akin to the attraction between the sun and the earth, with a big distance in between both.

But in spite of such phenomenal love, if the circumstances are compelling enough, even the epic hero would have to broach the topic of the pawn and the hand-note to his lady-love. Wouldn’t it jeopardize the tune and rhythm of his love, wouldn’t it let his words slip from his tongue? Yes, amid the flow of mundane words, wayward emotions and the agony of love would emerge, uninvited. Hence, poor Phanibhushan couldn’t spell his words clearly to his wife: “Please, I’m in dire need of money, can you give me some of your jewelry?”

Yes, he did ask her, though very faintly; there was no force or conviction in his words. When his wife Monimalika didn’t say anything in reply and stood with a stern, emotionless face, he received a cruel blow, but didn’t hurt her, in spite of his own rude shock. He didn’t possess an iota of savageness, which was a mark of masculinity in society. Under such circumstances, when it was quite natural to snatch any object from his wife, he suppressed the anguish, the agitation he felt in the core of his heart.  Even under dire situations, he wouldn’t let the force of his masculinity enter his sacred space of love. If anybody reprimanded him or scolded him for taking such a stance, he would argue on subtle ethical grounds. ‘If I have zero credit in the market for any unfair judgement, I have no right to plunder the market. Similarly, if my wife chooses to disbelieve me and thus, doesn’t give me her jewelry on her own, I have no right to snatch it all from her by force.’ He would say. Muscle power was only suited for the battlefield, he believed. Tell me, did the Almighty create men as these generous, mighty, magnanimous entities just to cope with such logical arguments? Does he have any scope or opportunity whatsoever to sit, relax and feel his finer sensibilities with all their subtleties? No, it doesn’t even suit his nature!

Anyway, Phanibhushan, in his pride of a magnanimous heart, didn’t touch his greatest asset, the jewels of his wife and went away to Calcutta to acquire money through other means.

It is often said that in domestic life, the wife knows the husband ten times better than the husband knows the wife. But what if the husband has some very subtle traits in his character? In that case, all of it doesn’t seem to appear in the wife’s lens. As for our Phanibhushan, his wife didn’t seem to understand his subtle nature.

Her mental world, like most of the women of her ilk, consisted of some ancient instincts and intuitions dominated by age-old prejudices, hence, men belonging to the new era of thoughts and expressions like her husband was beyond her understanding. These men were of a different league, who were gradually evolving, turning out to be as mysterious as women. Generally, the men they knew could fit themselves into boxes of definition—for example, some were barbaric, some were idiotic, some were blind. But men like Phanibhushan wouldn’t fit in any of those boxes. 

As a result, Monimalika had to call in one of her advisories for suggestion. She had a distant relative from her maiden village whom she called ‘brother,’ a man who used to work at the ‘kuthi’ (office) of her husband under one of his stewards. By virtue of his work or his demeanour alone, the man couldn’t secure a good position, but by virtue of his old association or relation with her, the man would collect his monthly salary and also, sometimes, more than his salary. 

Monimalika called for him and explained their current crisis. Then she asked him: ‘’What advice can you offer?’’ 

The man nodded his head like a wise soul, which indicated that the situation wasn’t favorable, according to his understanding. ‘’Babu wouldn’t be able to collect the money from anywhere…as much as I think, your jewelry will be needed for this crisis in the end!’’ 

As much as Monimalika knew about human nature, she began to gather that it was quite possible, and also that it was apt for the situation. Her anxiety grew manifold with time. She was a childless woman, blessed with a husband, but she didn’t feel his existence in the core of her heart. She trembled to think, to imagine that the precious jewels which were her only assets nurtured with tender love, which were growing in her vault every year just like her own offspring, which were not just symbols, but real treasures which she held close to her bosom, wore in her neck, her head, would be plunged into the unfathomable abyss of her husband’s business within a moment’s time. Imagining this, her whole body froze in unspeakable terror. 

She asked: ‘What is the remedy?’ 

Madhusudan, her relative suggested: ‘’Take all your jewelry with you and leave now, leave for your parents’ home.’’

In his mind, as he spoke, he figured out the way in which most of the precious jewels would become his for the rest of his life. 

As for Manimalika, she agreed to his proposal immediately. 

One evening, towards the end of the Bengali month of Ashadh, a boat was moored to this river bank. In the pitch-dark before dawn, as the sleepless frogs created an uproar with their consistent croaking, Monimalika set foot on the boat, covered in a big shawl from head to toe. 

Madhusudan crept up from inside the boat and said: ‘Give the box of jewels to me!’ 

Moni replied: ‘We will do that later, first, open the boat for me.’ 

The boat opened for her, and she entered inside. The boat started sailing in the rapid current of the river. 

For the entire night, Monimalika had worn all of her jewels in her body one by one; there was no vacant space, starting from her head to her feet. She had the tension and anxiety of losing her precious box of jewels if she had carried the jewels with her inside the box. But she knew that if she traveled all the way, wearing those jewels in her body secretly, nobody would get them without killing her. 

Madhusudan, on the other hand, was puzzled when he discovered the box of jewels were not with Moni. He wasn’t clever enough to assume that under the visage of the big shawl, her precious jewels were dozing off, along with her own body and being. As for Moni, she didn’t understand her husband, but she made no mistake in recognizing the true nature of Madhusudan. 

Madhusudan left a letter with the steward, notifying him that he was going with the mistress of the house, escorting her to her parents’ home. The old steward was working since the time when Phanibhushan’s father was alive. In all his annoyance and agitation, he drafted a letter for his master with all wrong Bengali spellings. In spite of the flaws in the Bengali language and the glaring spelling errors, in the letter, he was capable enough to express that it wasn’t manly enough to indulge one’s wife to this extent.

Upon receiving the letter, Phanibhushan understood the intent of his wife Monimalika. He was immensely hurt whenever he thought to himself, ‘In spite of my terrible financial and personal loss, I didn’t touch my wife’s jewelry, but instead, strived to obtain money from other sources with all my might. However, my wife is still doubtful about my honesty. Even after so many years, she didn’t recognize my true self!’

Phanibhushan was supposed to be mad in anger at the terrible injustice meted out to him, but he only seemed to be mildly offended. You know, the Almighty has inserted the power of a thunderbolt in the hearts of men, if that thunderbolt doesn’t ignite in all its fierceness at any injustice meted out to himself or to others, fie on that man! Men, as part of their inherent nature, will exhibit their wrath like a forest fire at the slightest pretext, and women will shed their tears like the cloudburst in the month of shravan, wasn’t that designed by the Almighty? But that doesn’t apply everywhere these days.

Phanibhushan addressed his sinful wife and muttered to himself: “If this is your verdict, your judgment about me, then let it be! But let me still do my duties towards you as a husband.” He should have been born five or six centuries later when the world would perhaps be governed by spiritual power. But mistakenly, he was born in the nineteenth century with modern, futuristic vision and was married to a lady with ancient values and sensibilities. According to the Hindu shastra (scriptures), this mismatch is considered to have fatal consequences. Phanibhushan didn’t write a word as his message to his wife and silently swore to himself not to mention any of these grievances to her. What a terrible penal law he set for himself!

Ten days after this had happened, Phanibhushan came back to the mansion after obtaining the money he needed. As he came back home, and was out of his financial crisis, he had thought that his wife had also returned home after depositing all her precious jewels in the safe haven of her parental home. He stepped inside the house and went up to the door of their bedroom with quite a victorious spirit, imagining how ashamed and repentant his wife Moni would be, seeing a totally transformed husband, successful in his financial mission.

However, he discovered that the door was bolted. After a lot of effort, he broke open the lock and entered the room to find it completely empty. He saw the iron vault at one corner of the room, which was open, with no sign of the box of jewels. His heart palpitated with a rude blow! At that instant, it seemed that there was no objective in his domestic life, and that both his love life and his business pursuits were useless, futile. Oh, poor domesticated souls, don’t we dedicate our lives to the cage of our homes, but then we discover that the bird has left the cage, unbeknownst to us? Then why do we prepare to embellish our lives with the blood oozing from our hearts and the pearl necklace of our tears? For some moments, he looked at the empty cage of his home that he had wrapped up with all his life, all his fervour. Then, he kicked at it with his silent spirit of rebellion and threw it far away.

Phanibhushan was reluctant to enquire about his missing wife’s whereabouts. He thought that she would return to him on her own eventually, if she had the intention to return. One day, the old Brahmin steward, his employee came to him and said: “It would serve no purpose if we just sit and wait…We must look for the mistress, isn’t it our duty?”

He took upon himself the task to send people to Monimalika’s parents’ home and look for her. Soon, the news came from there that neither Moni, nor Madhusudan had reached the village till then.

It sparked a new wave of search and investigation. People ran to all the river banks they knew, asking a series of questions. The police were informed, and kept searching for Madhusudan, who became the prime suspect now. Nobody could find out which boat took them away, who the boatman was, which route they took so many days ago.

After a considerable period of futile investigations, one evening, Phanibhushan lost all hopes and entered his abandoned bedroom. It was the day of janmasthami, the auspicious day of Lord Krishna’s birth in the month of August, and it was raining incessantly. There was a huge fair at one end of the village which was a part of the festivities, and as a part of the fair, there was a jatra (rustic theater) performance for the public. The music from the jatra performance mingled with the sound of the continual raindrops and echoed in his ears faintly. Phanibhushan was so unmindful the whole time that he didn’t even respond to, or acknowledge his surroundings—the loosely bolted door that was almost hanging over the window as he sat in the dark, the strong gust of wind and the rain sprinkling around, the songs that were part of the jatra entering the room.

In the wall, a pair of portraits of the goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati were hanging, over the rack of clothes, a ‘gamchha’ and a towel hung together, along with two cotton saris of his wife that looked fresh and recently worn. In one corner of the room, just over the three-legged table, in a brass container, the beetle leaves lay, dried up. Monimalika had dressed and embellished those leaves with her own hands before leaving. Inside the glass almirah, there were myriad other objects, including the Chinese dolls that Moni had a fancy for since her childhood, perfume containers, colored glass decanters, fancy cards, sea shells, and also empty soap boxes which she had gathered with great care and attention. The fancy, round-shaped kerosene lamp which she would dress and prepare, and then ignite as her everyday ritual, was visible in a nook in this very room, pale and burnt out, as if a final, wordless witness to her last days in the mansion. It was unimaginable that the heartless woman who went far, far away, leaving her love nest barren, empty, had left so many vestiges, so much history, so many imprints of her heart over the lifeless objects in the house. 

Come, Monimalika, come, dearest one, ignite your own lamp, illuminate your own room, come close to the mirror and wear your own favorite sari that who have pleated and left behind. All your cherished possessions are waiting for your presence, your touch, your tender care! Nobody expects anything from you, you just need to be here amongst us and with your immortal youth and your unvanquished beauty and rejuvenate this heavy mass of inanimate objects lying scattered around the house…With their wordless moans, their silent screams, they have turned the home into a crematorium, can’t you hear? 

In the wee hours of the night, the songs of the jatra performances and the incessant sound of raindrops subsided. Phanibhushan sat transfixed near the window for hours, unfazed by the happenings around him. In the impenetrable darkness outside the window, he felt as if there was a colossal door in front of him, leading to the kingdom of Yama, the God of death. He felt that if he would wait and sob here, something that had been lost eternally would come back to him for once. In the dark canvas of death, it seemed there was an imprint of a lost gold on a stubborn piece of stone.

Just then, he felt the sound of someone knocking at the door, and the sound mingled with the rhythmic sound of jewels, and it seemed like the sound was emerging from the nearby river bank. In his mind, the river bodies and the dark night converged. With his enthused eyes, Phanibhushan pushed through the night and attempted to protrude the darkness around. In spite of his heart, swelling with indescribable emotions and his eager vision, he couldn’t see anything. The more his eagerness to see something augmented, the more the darkness around him amplified, and the world around him transformed into a shadow. In the darkness of the night, Mother Nature had perhaps seen the presence of an uninvited guest at the door of her own kingdom of death, and so, she had swiftly pulled a curtain over the scene.

The intoxicating sound gradually seemed to move from the highest stairs of the river bank and proceeded towards the mansion. The watchman had closed the main door as he had gone to see the jatra performance for the entire night. There were persistent knocking sounds at the closed door, and it seemed like a heavy, solid object had been thrust on the door along with the sound of jewels. Phanibhushan couldn’t wait in the room any longer. Crossing the dark, unlit rooms, he climbed down the stairs frantically and emerged near the closed main door, which was bolted from outside. He shook the door with his two hands and with all the force he could muster. In the friction that was caused and the sound that came from it, he was startled and became fully awake and conscious of his surroundings. It was then that he realized that he had come all the way till downstairs in a sleepy state. His whole body was sweating profusely, his hands and feet were ice-cold, and his heart was quivering, like a lamp that was about to die out. When his dream-like state subsided, he noticed that there was no significant sound outside, except the continual sound of the raindrops. He could also hear the early morning melodies of the young jatra performers, merging with the raindrops seamlessly.

Though it all was a dream, but it was in such close proximity and appeared so real and visceral, it seemed to Phanibhushan that he missed seeing the fruition of his incredible dreams and aspirations for just a wee bit. It seemed that the sounds of the rain, mingling with the melodious music of Bhairavi told in his ears— “This wakeful state that you are experiencing now is really a dream; the world around you is a big lie!”

The very next day, the jatra performers had a repeated show, and the watchman was on leave. Phanibhushan, on his part, ordered him to open the door to the main entrance for the entire night. The watchman, in reply, had warned him against the idea, since there were so many people from other towns coming to be part of the fair, and it could be dangerous, he said. But Phanibhushan remained adamant. Then he said: “In that case, let me stay awake for the night and watch over the house.” But his master was unrelenting. “No, no, you have to go and watch the jatra show tonight”—he instructed. The watchman couldn’t help express his astonishment.

The next day, Phanibhushan put out the light in the entire house and came to his bedroom, and then sat near the window with a wistful, pensive manner. The sky was pregnant with clouds and all around him, he could feel the eerie silence of waiting, waiting for the homecoming of someone. The cacophony of the continual croaking of the frogs and the loud noise of the jatra music couldn’t break the web of his silence. On the other hand, it added a weird, unfathomable nuance to his consciousness.

In the wee hours of the night, both the frogs and the boys of the jatra group went silent all of a sudden, and another layer of darkness shrouded him, apart from the pitch-dark of the night. It was perhaps time now; he thought to himself.

Just like the previous day, there were sounds of knocking, combined with the ringing sounds of a women’s anklets, coming from the nearby river bank, but Phanibhushan didn’t pay heed to it. He feared that if he did, in his impatient desire and restlessness, all his attempts would be thwarted. He feared that if he did, the relentless flow of his emotions would overwhelm his senses. With all his might, he strived to control his mind; he sat, transfixed, like a wooden statue.

The ringing sound of the anklets seemed to emerge from the river bank and gradually started to enter through the door to the main entrance of the mansion. He could hear the sound circling around the stairs of the ‘andar mahal’ (inner quarters) and proceeding upstairs. Phanibhushan couldn’t control himself any longer; his bosom heaved like a small, fragile boat in the face of a turbulent storm, he felt as if he would stop breathing at that very instant. The ringing sound now proceeded further from the rounded stairs and started entering the bedroom through the verandah. Finally, after approaching through the door to the bedroom, just before crossing the threshold, the ringing sound and the knocking that accompanied it, stopped suddenly.

Phanibhushan couldn’t control himself any longer. Within a single moment, his emotions flared up and reached their crescendo. With a lightning speed, he lifted his body from the stool where he sat and shouted: “Moni!”

Startled with a sudden consciousness, he noticed that the sound of his restless cry was being echoed in the window panes of the room. Outside, the cacophony of the frogs croaking and the exhausted voices of the jatra performers were still being heard.

Phanibhushan hurt his forehead with his own hands in terrible despair.

The next day, the fair was over, and the small merchants and the jatra performers went away to their respective places. Phanibhushan ordered yet again—nobody should remain in the mansion after the evening time, he wanted to be left alone. Listening to his orders, his servants said that their master was involved in some kind of spiritual practices, following some tantrik rituals. The entire day, Phanibhushan fasted with full resolve.

Like the previous two days, in the evening, he came to sit near the window of his bedroom in the empty mansion. The sky was cloudless, and the stars seemed to shine resplendent amid the unadulterated air. There was still some time for the krishna paksha phase of the moon, the dark lunar fortnight. Since the fair was already over, there were hardly any boats in the river. Moreover, the entire village seemed to be in deep slumber, exhausted from the festivities that lasted for two long days.

Phanibhushan sat in the stool as usual, lifting his head upwards in an attempt to look above at the stars. He contemplated on his young days, when he was nineteen and studying in a college in Calcutta, when he would lie down in a bed of grass during the evenings by the side of the ‘gol dighi’, the round-shaped lake and gaze at those eternally shining stars, placing his head on his hands. In those wistful days, he reminisced the memories of his in-laws’ house situated in yet another river bank, he remembered his dear teenager wife Moni in one of the forgotten rooms of the house, her tender, bright face. The pangs of separation in those days were so sweet, he thought to himself. The gleaming light of the stars, their twinkling rhythms that he witnessed back in those days were perfectly in sync with the beats of his young, romantic heart—in unison, they played a beautiful melodious tune of spring. The same stars today, after so many years, seemed to inscribe with a fiery pen in the sky, the lines of a mesmerizing sloka, ‘sansaroyahamateeba bichitrah” (The domestic world is indeed a strange, strange place). 

Gradually, all the stars in the sky vanished on their own, and their place, thick darkness descended from the sky. The twin darknesses from the sky and the earth converged like the upper and lower eyelashes of a human. Today, Phanibhushan waited with a calm, tranquil mind. He knew for sure, his goal would achieve fruition today. He knew that death would reveal its mystery today to the hermit, the Yogi in waiting.

Like the previous night, the haunting, eerie sound proceeded from the water bodies to the stairs of the river bank. Phanibhushan sat in a meditative posture, shutting both his eyes in a silent resolve. The sound crossed the threshold now and seeped inside the dark bedroom. He noticed the sound stopping at familiar places inside the room—the rack where the saris remained folded, the nook where the kerosene lamp stood, the corner of the three-legged table where the beetle leaf dried up in its container, the almirah filled with miscellaneous items. Finally, the sound traveled to where Phanibhushan was sitting, and stopped very close to him.

He opened his eyes and saw that the splendor of the young moon of Dashami had entered the room, and to his utter shock, a skeleton came and stood right in front of the stool where he sat. The skeleton was wearing rings in all of its eight fingers, the ratan chakra, a precious ornament in its palms, bangles in all its chambers, exquisite bajubandha in its arms, a kanthi or necklace in its neck, and a sinthi, an ornament in its head parting. From its head to toe, in all its bones, the skeleton was dressed in resplendent gold and diamond jewelry. What was more striking, the ornaments, though entirely loose fitting, were not slipping from the skeleton’s body. However, the most terrifying part was the presence of its two lively eyes in its bony face— its black pupils, long, dense eyelashes, and the bright, unwavering, resolute glance of those eyes. Eighteen years back, Phanibhushan had witnessed the beauty of those two large, black, seductive eyes in a brightly lit assembly, amid the melodious musical aalaap of ‘sahana’, a classical raga at the time of the Subha Drishti rituals during the auspicious evening of his marriage. He now witnessed those same set of eyes today, in an evening in the month of shravana amid the moonlight of the krishna paksha dashami eve. At the sight of those haunting eyes, the blood in his entire body froze. With all his might, he tried to shut both his eyes and evade their glance, but he failed. Like the eyes of a dead man, his eyes kept staring at those eyes, without winking for even once.

The skeleton fixed its gaze at Phanibhushan’s startled face and then lifted its right hand and called him with the silent gesture of its fingers. In the bones of its four fingers, four diamond rings shone bright.

Foolishly enough, Phanibhushan stood up, as if like a puppet following the orders of those fingers. The skeleton started walking towards the door, emanating a hard, metallic sound created by the collision of its bones and the jewelry. Phanibhushan followed it like a spellbound doll. Together, they crossed the verandah, revolved around the dark, circular stairs and with all the haunting sounds that the skeleton created, they both proceeded downstairs. They crossed the verandah downstairs and entered the dark entrance to the main door where nobody was watching over. Crossing it, they ventured out to the road leading to the garden, covered with chips of bricks that rattled with the rhythm of the bones of the skeleton. The faint moonlight that had ushered in the garden, obstructed by the thick branches of the trees, knew no route of escape. The two entities followed the shadowy way, haunted by the sensuous smell of the monsoon and the swarming herd of glow-worms and came to the river bank.

The bejeweled skeleton touched the stairs of the river bank one by one, with a quiet, unrevolutionary demeanour, with a straight, steady motion.  The river was in its full current, customary of the monsoon season, and over it, a thin, long streak of moonlight shone in its splendor.

The skeleton descended in the river, and Phanibhushan followed. But as soon as he touched the water bodies, his trance-like state diminished, and he came back to his senses. He felt that he had no human to show him the way, to guide him, only the still trees at the other side of the river that stood like silent sentinels, and the piece of the moon that stared at them astonished from up above. Frenzied, shivering, Phanibhushan, with his staggering footsteps, fell into the mad current of the river. Though he knew how to swim, his nerves didn’t remain within his control. He remained in his dream-like state, on the verge of waking up for just a moment or two, and in the very next instant, was immersed in unfathomable sleep.

Ending his long story, the schoolteacher paused for a few moments. With this sudden pause, it was clearly understood that everyone else in the world apart from himself was shrouded in silent stillness. For a long time, I didn’t speak a single word and he too couldn’t gauge my facial expressions in the darkness of the night.

Then he asked me: “Didn’t you believe in the story I just narrated?”

I asked him instead: “Do you yourself believe in it, tell me?”

He replied: “No! And I’ll present you with all the reasons and logic which will explain why.  Firstly, Mother Nature is not a novelist by any means, she has her hands full anyway…”

I said: “Secondly, my name is Sri Phanibhushan Saha!”

The schoolteacher didn’t seem to be ashamed or embarrassed in the least after listening to this. He said: “Ah, I had assumed this all along, and I was right, wasn’t I? How let me ask you, what was your wife’s name?”

“Nrityakali,” I replied.

***

 

Translator bio: Lopamudra Banerjee is an author, poet, translator, editor with several books and anthologies in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She has received the Journey Awards (First Place category winner) for her memoir ‘Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant’s Wayward Journey,’ the International Reuel Prize for Poetry (2017) and other honors for her literary works. Recently, her poetry collection in collaboration with Priscilla Rice ‘We Are What We Are’ has been a winner at New York Book Festival 2024. Her latest translation ‘The Bard and his Sister-in-law,’ a biographical novel on Tagore and Jorasanko Thakurbari has received critical acclaim in the media and has also received Honorary Mention at Paris Book Festival 2024 and New England Book Festival 2024.

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Setu, December 2024