Translator: Lopamudra Banerjee
Postmaster
It was a small, inconsequential village
named Ulapur where the postmaster had to come, right after joining his first
job. There was a ‘neel kuthi’ (indigo building) nearby, hence the master of
that ‘kuthi’ had established this new post office after a lot of toil and
personal arrangements.
The postmaster of our story happens to be
the proverbial son of Calcutta. His mental situation upon reaching this remote
village quickly became like that of a fish, forcefully uprooted from his
habitual den, the water, to the land. His ‘office’ was situated in the darkness
of a small outhouse with a roof or shed made up of eight parts; in the vicinity
there was a pond full of moss, and the dense jungle that surrounded the entire
area. The steward and the other employees of the ‘kuthi’ didn’t have the leisure
to mingle with him, and besides, it seemed none of them were actually suitable
to mingle with any urban gentleman like the postmaster.
It was also true that a person from
Calcutta didn’t know how to mingle with the rustic environment. In unfamiliar
surroundings, it was customary for him to either appear insolent or
embarrassed, which naturally hindered his befriending local villagers. And that
made passing time all the more difficult for him. Most of the days, his work
was less, and he had much time at his disposal. From time to time, he tried his
hand at crafting poems. In those poems, his expressions were such that it felt
all his days were spent in indolent glee, witnessing the trembling dance of the
leaves of the trees and the clouds lined in the sky. However, the Almighty
knew, if only a giant from the Arabian Nights would suddenly appear and within
the stroke of the night, cut off all the trees with their branches and leaves
and replace them with city streets, if only a row of palatial buildings would
obstruct the clouds in the sky from human sight, the half-dead man would be
healed, and spring back to life yet again.
With the meagre salary that he received,
the postmaster had to cook his own food for most of the days. A young orphaned
girl from the village was hired to do his household chores, and in lieu of her
work, she could eat her meals at his house.
The girl’s name was Ratan. The girl was all of twelve or thirteen. The
possibility of her being married off was somewhat bleak, considering her
circumstances.
In the evenings, the heavy smoke swirled
from the cattle house of the village, crickets chirped from the bushes, and one
could hear from afar the drunk baul singers singing in their
high-pitched voices with khol-kartal, their musical accompaniments. In
those evenings, seated alone in the dark verandah, looking intently the
trembling trees, the poet’s wistful heart would tremble too. Amid such
surroundings, the postmaster would ignite a dim lamp in the corner of his room
and call out: “Ratan!”
Seated at the door, Ratan herself would
wait every evening for this call, but she wouldn’t come to her master at one
single call. After a while, she would come to him and ask: “Babu, why are you
call me?”
Postmaster: “What are you doing?”
Ratan: “I will have to light up the chula
(hearth) now—in the kitchen—"
Postmaster: “You can do your kitchen work
after some time. Prepare the hookah for me now.”
Without further delay, Ratan entered the
room, her both cheeks swelling as she passed air into the bowl, holding the
tobacco and cinder. Her master took the bowl from her hands and asked quickly:
“Ratan, tell me, do you remember your mother still?”
It was a long story—Ratan remembered some
of it, and some of it had sunk into oblivion. In fact, more than her mother,
her father had doted on her; hence she remembered her father a bit. He would
return home in the evenings after a lot of drudgery—a couple of those evenings
were etched in her heart as vividly as paintings on a canvas. Recollecting
those memories, Ratan sat on the ground, near the postmaster’s feet. In that
instant, she also remembered that she had a little brother. Many days ago, on a
monsoon day, both of them were playing by the village creek. She recollected
how they had pretended to catch the fishes, with a
broken twig from a tree acting as the
bait…In fact, more than other significant happenings in her life, this memory
emerged in her consciousness.
Most of the days, such recollections of
memories in their chit chat sessions extended till the nights, and the
postmaster wouldn’t feel like cooking anymore. Some leftover food
remained from the morning, and Ratan would light up the hearth to make some
rotis. This would suffice for the dinner of both Ratan and her master for those
nights.
Some evenings, seated on the wooden
bedstead in his office room situated in a corner of the big outhouse, the
postmaster too talked about his family, his near and dear ones—his younger
brother, his mother and his elder sister, the ones whose memories made his
heart ache in his silent, lonely life in exile. The words, the details of his
memories which sprang up in his mind always, which he could never bring himself
to utter in front of his colleagues, the stewards of the ‘neel kuthi’, but
which he could share effortlessly with this uneducated, rustic little girl.
This conversation went on day after day, and as a result, the girl, Ratan,
during her daily talks, started referring to the family members of her master
as ‘Ma (mother)’, ‘Didi (elder sister)’, ‘Dada (elder brother)’ and so on, as
if she had known them forever. It seemed that the images of these unseen people
were etched in the canvas of the heart of the little girl with the prowess of
her own imagination.
One monsoon day, in a cloudless noon, the
warm wind was blowing softly; there was an earthen smell emanating from the
blades of the grasses, drenched in the sun’s rays, and from the trees in the
vicinity. It felt as if the warm, inviting smell of the weary earth was
usurping the senses. Somewhere near, a bird in all its desperation was singing
its melancholy refrain, as if presenting its melodic complaint, its plea to the
majestic court of Mother Nature throughout the noon. The postmaster was sitting
idle that noon. It was quite a feast to the eyes—the soft, rain-drenched dance,
the swishing and swaying of the trees, the vestiges of the defeated rain in the
form of the broken clouds glittering with sunlight. He was looking at it all
intently, and thinking to himself, if only he would have someone close amid
such beautiful, heartwarming times, if only some human image would stay close
to his soul, to have all his affection. Gradually, he started thinking that
perhaps the bird was trying to harp upon such sentiments, such inherent truth
in its refrain. In his thoughts, the quaint murmur of the leaves of the trees
in this silent noon devoid of human voices hinted at the same truth. Nobody
would believe, or even know, but deep within the pensive heart of a sub-postmaster
working in this tiny, unknown village, such thoughts ran haywire amid this
calm, quiescent midday hour.
The postmaster heaved a sigh and called
out: “Ratan, come here!”
Ratan was sitting at the guava orchard,
spreading her legs in a relaxed manner, and consuming raw guavas. Upon hearing
her master’s voice, she ran to him immediately. Breathless, panting, she
queried: “Dada babu, were you calling me?”
The postmaster replied: “From now on,
I’ll teach you to read and write, by and by.”
Just as he said, he acted upon his words.
The whole noon, he taught her the first two Bengali letters of the
‘swaravarna’,‘A’ and ‘Aa’. With an incredible feat of teaching that he
accomplished every single day, he taught her the ‘juktakshar’, complex mixed
letters of the Bengali alphabet within a few days’ time.
It was the month of Sravan in the
Bengali calendar, and it rained incessantly that whole month. All the creeks,
the marshes and the drains of the village overflowed with water. All through
the day and night, the croaking of the frogs intermingled with the sound of the
rain. The streets of the village became waterlogged, and commuting by land was
almost impossible for the villagers. They had to take boat rides to visit the
market for their daily needs.
One early morning, it was raining
heavily. The student of the postmaster was waiting at the door since long, but
unlike the other days, she wasn’t summoned by her master. After a prolonged
wait, she herself went up to him slowly, along with her small satchel of books.
She saw her master lying on his small cot, and assuming that he was having
rest, she was preparing to leave him, to go outside silently.
Suddenly, she heard him call her,
‘Ratan!’ She went back to him promptly and asked, “Dada babu, were you
sleeping?”
In a weary, distressed voice, he replied:
“I am not feeling well today—can you touch my forehead and check my
temperature?”
The poor soul of the postmaster,
afflicted with sickness and his prolonged exile in the friendless, remote
village, ardently longed for a person to nurse him back to health. He
remembered the tender touch of a female hand on his hot, searing forehead. In
the excruciating anguish of his estrangement with his family, in the
indescribable pain of his ailment, he longed for the company of his loving
mother and his elder sister; he imagined they were there by his side. However,
his ardent wish in this faraway land did not go in vain entirely this time. The
young girl Ratan soon transformed herself from a young, uninitiated village
girl to a responsible, loving mother, filled with tender love and care. She
called the Baidya (village doctor), made him swallow medicines from time
to time, and remained awake night after night, tending to him. She cooked food
for the patient, and made sure to ask him a hundred times: “Dada babu, are you
feeling any better?”
After a long time, the postmaster left
his bed with his frail body and started venturing outside. In his mind, he was
determined to discontinue his service in the village. He was desperate to get a
transfer from this area. In all urgency, he wrote an application letter to the
authorities in Calcutta for getting transferred, mentioning his hard life and
the lack of hygiene in his current workplace.
Relieved from her caregiver duties for
now, Ratan went back to her old habitual place near the door, and waited for
the master to call her like before. But unlike the previous times, the call
didn’t come, and she grew impatient. Sometimes, she peeped inside the room and
witnessed him sitting on a stool, or lying on his bed in an unmindful
demeanour. In fact, when Ratan was eagerly waiting to be summoned, her master
with his anxious mind, was waiting for the reply of his transfer application.
The girl, on her part, sat outside the door and recapitulated her old lessons
taught by her master a thousand times. She was apprehensive, lest she would
forget all the mixed letters of the alphabet she learnt after much toil, if the
master called her suddenly one day.
Finally, after waiting patiently for a
week, she was called one evening. With a palpitating heart, Ratan entered her
master’s room and asked: “Dada Babu, did you call me?”
The postmaster said to her: “Ratan, I am
leaving tomorrow.”
Ratan: “Where are you going, Dada Babu?”
Postmaster: “I am going back home.”
Ratan: “When are you coming back?”
Postmaster: “Ah, I’ll never come back
here.”
Ratan couldn’t ask anything further. Her
master himself, however, explained to her that he had applied for a transfer,
but the application was rejected. Hence, as a last recourse, he had to resign
from his job to go back home. After this, both remained silent for a long time.
The lamp in the room flickered and blazed for quite some time, and in one
corner of the room, the rainwater kept trickling over an earthen pot, defying
the brittle roof of the building.
After a while, Ratan slowly exited from
the room and went to the kitchen to make rotis for the night. It goes without
saying that she couldn’t make them as promptly as she did always. Perhaps a
multitude of thoughts was running haywire in her head. When the postmaster had
finished his dinner, the girl came up to him and asked: “Dada Babu, can’t you
take me along with you to your home?”
The postmaster replied, laughing: “How is
that possible?” Of course, as he spoke, he didn’t feel the need to explain to
the girl why at all it was an impossible proposition.
For the entire night, as the little girl
slept, dreamt and remained awake, her master’s words, ‘how is that possible?’
his ringing laughter reverberated in her ears, her consciousness.
At dawn, the postmaster woke up and
discovered that the water for his bath was ready. Every morning, he used to
bathe in the water already prepared for him, just like he did as a usual ritual
back at home. Last night, the girl didn’t ask him when he would leave in the
morning, but lest he needs his bath water in the morning, Ratan went down the
river at night and got the water for her master in a bucket. After the master
was finished with his bath, Ratan was summoned. She entered the room silently
and stared at her master’s face, wordless, waiting for his final orders.
He said to her in a calm, affectionate
voice: “Ratan, I will have a talk about you with the man who is joining in my
place…You will see, he will tend to you and care for you just the way I did;
you don’t have to worry that I’m gone.”
The words he uttered were undoubtedly
drenched with tender love, springing from his empathetic heart, but who would
understand the depth of a feminine heart? Ratan had silently tolerated the
reprimanding words of her master on many occasions, but such tender words
uttered by him became hard to bear. With her heart overflowing with emotions,
she wept and protested: “No, no, you don’t have to say anything to anyone; I—I
don’t want to stay here.”
The postmaster, on his part, was
astonished to see such strong outburst of emotions in the girl’s behavior,
which he didn’t experience before.
When the new postmaster joined work, the
old one explained all his necessary duties and was about to leave for his
journey back home. Upon leaving, he called Ratan and said to her: “Ratan,
listen, I—I couldn’t give you anything while I was here. Today, while leaving,
I want to give you some money…this will sustain you for a few days.”
Saying this, he fished out the whole
amount of his salary for the month from the pocket of his shirt, leaving a bit
of money for his commute back home. But the girl fell on the ground and in a
frantic gesture, wrapped her arms around his legs and cried: “Dada Babu, I beg
at your feet—You don’t have to give me anything! I beg at your feet—nobody ever
has to think of me!” She ran away from the scene, her heart brimming with
unbridled emotions.
Witnessing such an astonishing scene, the
old postmaster heaved a sigh and took his carpet bag in his arms, his umbrella
in one of his shoulders. Thereafter, he thrusted two of his luggage, tin boxes
marked with white and blue lines on the head of the porter, and slowly
proceeded to ride the boat.
Once he got on the boat and it started
sailing, he felt the river swelling up with the rainwaters; it seemed to him
that the water body was overwhelmed with the tears of the earth. In his own
heart too, he felt an intense, overwhelming pain, an anguish that usurped his
senses, and the sad image of an ordinary, rustic little girl was being
manifested as an enormous, wordless grief, covering his entire universe. Once,
just once, he wished with all his heart, ‘let me return, let me bring the poor,
orphaned little girl deprived of the affectionate lap of this world along with
me!’ However, at that moment, the sail of the boat had caught the wind; and the
tidal waves of the monsoon were at their strongest. They had already crossed
the territory of the village and came close to the crematorium situated at the
shores. At that instant, a theory occurred in his pensive heart carried away by
the winds and the flowing river: ‘In this human life, there are so many
separations, so many deaths, so many tragedies. What’s the point of returning?
Nobody is indispensable, after all!”
Only, in Ratan’s heart, no such theory
emerged. For days, she kept roaming around the precincts of the post office
building with teary eyes. Perhaps, a faint, flickering light of hope still
lived within her, that Dada Babu might return to the village. It was an
invisible thread of attachment that bound her to the place, and hindered her
from going far away. Ah, the foolish human heart! The follies of the heart do
not go away, the diktats of logic enter the brain after much delay. The foolish
heart, disproving the strongest proof, embraces false hopes with its arms,
sheltering those hopes in its bosom with all its might. Finally, the foolish
heart flees, severing its umbilical cord, absorbing all its blood; and then,
the senses are regained, and ironically, the heart becomes restless to get
trapped in the web of mistakes all over again.
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.
