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Interview

“Words became my dwelling place”

A conversation with Neeman Sobhan

Neeman Sobhan: A Global Nomad?

Neeman Sobhan, born in the West Pakistan of Pre-1971, continues a citizen of both her cultural home, Bangladesh, and her adopted home, Italy. Her journey took her to US for five years but the majority of times she has lived in Italy – from 1978. What does that make her?

She writes of her compatriots by culture – Bangladeshis — but living often in foreign locales. Her non-fiction, An Abiding City, gives us glimpses of Rome. These musings were written for Daily Star and then made into a book in 2002. Her short stories talk often of the conflicting cultures and the commonality of human emotions that stretch across borders. And yet after living in Rome for 47 years – the longest she has lived in any country – her dilemma as she tells us in this interview – is that she doesn’t know where she belongs, though her heart tugs her towards Bangladesh as she grows older. In this candid interview, Neeman Sobhan shares her life, her dreams and her aspirations.

Where were you born? And where did you grow up? 

I was born in Pakistan, rather in the undivided Pakistan of pre-1971: the strange land we had inherited from our grandparents’ and parents’ generation when British colonial India was partitioned in 1947 down the Radcliffe line, creating an entity of two wings positioned a thousand miles apart on either side of India! The eastern wing, or East Pakistan was formerly East Bengal, and my cultural roots are in this part of the region because I come from a Bengali Muslim family. But I was born not there but in West Pakistan, which is culturally and linguistically distinct from Bengal, comprising the regions of Western Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and the NWFP (North-West Frontier Provinces, bordering Afghanistan), where the official language is Urdu.

So, my birthplace was the cantonment town of Bannu in the NWFP, (now KPK or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).

Perhaps my life as the eternal migrant, living outside expected geographical boundaries started right there, at birth. 

My father’s government job meant being posted in both wings of Pakistan. So, I grew up all over West Pakistan, and in Dhaka, whenever he was posted back to East Pakistan. Much of my childhood and girlhood were spent in Karachi (Sindh), Multan and Kharian (Punjab) and Quetta (Balochistan).

How many years did you spend in Pakistan?

The total number of years I spent in undivided Pakistan (West Pakistan, now Pakistan, and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) is about two decades, or one year short of twenty years. From my birth in 1954, my growing years, till I left the newly independent Bangladesh in 1973 when I got married and came to the US at the age of nineteen.

What are your memories about your childhood in West Pakistan? I have read your piece where you mention your interactions with fruit pickers in Quetta. Tell us some more about your childhood back there. 

I have wonderful memories of growing up in West Pakistan, in Karachi, Multan and Kharian of the late 50’s and early 60’s (despite the era of Martial Law under Field Marshall Ayub Khan, and later his military-controlled civilian government). However, the political environment is invisible and irrelevant to a child’s memories that center around family, school and playmates, till he reaches the teen years and becomes aware of the world of adults. Since, my father’ job entailed us going back and forth between West and East Pakistan, by the time we arrived in Quetta in late 1967, it ended up being my father’s last posting, because by then Ayub Khan’s regime was tottering under protests in both wings of Pakistan; and by the time (I should say in the nick of time) we left for Dhaka, it was already the turbulent year of 1970, which turned Pakistan upside down with General Yahya Khan becoming the new Marshall Law administrator. When we returned to Dhaka, it was the beginning of the end for Pakistan, with preparations for the first democratic general elections, and the blood soaked nine months war of independence for Bangladesh about to be staged.

But as a child, growing up in a Pakistan that was till then my own country, what remains in my treasure trove of memories are only the joys of everyday life, and the friendships (with those whom I never saw again, except one school friend from Quetta with whom I reunited in our middle age in Toronto, Canada!)

Also precious are the road trips with my five siblings and our adventurous mother, as we always accompanied our father on his official tours, across the length and breadth of West Pakistan.

But if I start to recount all my precious memories, I will need to write a thick memoir. And that is exactly what I have been doing over the years: jotting down my recollections of my past in Pakistan, for my book, a novel that is a cross between fact and fiction. The happy parts are all true, but the sad ones relating to the war that my generation underwent in 1971 as teenagers is best dealt with from the distance of fiction.

What I can offer is a kaleidoscopic view of some random memories: the red colonial brick residence of my family in the 60’s in Multan, one of the hottest cities of Punjab, known for its aandhi — dust storms — that would suddenly blow into the courtyard of the inner garden in the middle of the night as my sister and I slept on charpoys laid out in the cool lawn under a starlit sky, and being bundled up in our parents’ arms and rushed indoors; tasting the sweetest plums left to chill in bowls of ice; being cycled to school by the turbaned chowkidar weaving us through colourful bazars to the Parsi run ‘Madam Chahla’s Kindergarten School’ or on horse drawn tanga (carriages); learning to write Urdu calligraphic letters on the wooden takhta (board) with weed Qalam(pens) and a freshly mixed ink from dawaat (ink pots); and to balance this, my mother helping us to write letters in Bengali to grandparents back in East Pakistan on sky-blue letter pads, our tongues lolling as pencils tried to control the Brahmic alphabet-spiders from escaping the page.

In Karachi, returning home on foot from school with friends under a darkening sky that turned out to be swarms of locusts. Learning later that these grain eating insects were harmful only to crops not humans (and Sindhis actually eat them like fried chicken wings) does not take away the thrill of our adventure filled with exaggerated, bloodcurdling shrieks to vie with the screen victims of Hitchcock’s The Birds, viewed later as adults in some US campus. Picnics and camel rides on the seabeaches of Clifton, Sandspit, or Paradise Point. Near our home, standing along Drigh Road (the colonial name later changed to Shahrah-e-Faisal after King Faisal of Arabia, I later heard) waving at the motorcade of Queen Elizabeth II passing by with Ayub Khan beside her in a convertible with its roof down. That was in the 60’s. Later in 1970, embarking with my family on the elegant HMV Shams passenger ship at Karachi port for our memorable week long journey back to Dhaka across the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, with a port of call at Colombo in what was still Ceylon, to disembark at Chittagong port, not knowing then that we were waving goodbye not just to the Karachi of our childhood but a part of our own country that would soon become the ‘enemy’ through its marauding army.

But I reset my memories and bring back the beauty and innocence of childhood with images of my family’s first sight of snowfall in Quetta, the garden silently filling with pristine layers of snowflakes piling into a cloudy kingdom under the freshly tufted pine trees, as we sipped hot sweet ‘kahwa’ tea, and cracked piles of the best chilgoza pine-nuts and dried fruits from Kabul. And since Quetta was our last home in Pakistan, I leave my reminiscences here.

In Front of their home
With full family in the snow
In Quetta: Photos provided by Neeman Sobhan

There are so many ways to enter the past. Photographs in albums discolor after a time, but words keep our lived lives protected and intact to be accessible to the next generation. I hope my novel-memoir will provide this.

How many countries have you lived in? Where do you feel you belong — Bangladesh, Pakistan, US or Italy — since you have lived in all four countries? Do you see yourself a migrant to one country or do you see yourself torn between many? 

I have indeed lived in four countries, for varying lengths of time. In the sense of belonging, each country and stage of my life has left its unique impact. But I have still not figured out where I belong.

Although I lived in Pakistan and Bangladesh from birth till I was nineteen, these were the formative years of my life, and I feel they have coloured who I am fundamentally. The culture and languages of the subcontinent is fundamental to me as a human being. Also, having shared my parent’s experience of being almost foreigners and expats in their own country, trying to speak Urdu to create a Bengali lifestyle at home in a culturally diverse world of Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis or Pathans, I know it made them (and us as a family), different from our compatriots in East Pakistan who never left their region and had only superficial understanding of the West Pakistanis. My introduction to a migrant’s life and its homesickness started there, observing my parents’ life.

When I moved to the US after my marriage in 1973, it was to follow my husband Iqbal, to the Washington-Maryland area, where he had moved earlier as a PhD student after giving up, in 1971, his position in the Pakistani central government where he was an officer of the CSP (Civil Service of Pakistan) cadre. These were the days of being newly married and setting up our first home, albeit in a tiny student’s apartment, because more than as a home maker, I spent 5 years attending the University of Maryland as an undergraduate and then a graduate student. We thought our future might be here in the US, he working as an economist for a UN agency, and I teaching at a university. A classic version of the upwardly mobile American immigrant life.

But before we settled down, we decided to pursue a short adventure, and Iqbal and I came to Italy in 1978, from the US, on a short-term assignment with FAO, a Rome based agency of the UN. The mutual decision was to move here, temporarily! We would keep our options open for returning to the US if we did not like our life in Italy.

Well, that never happened! And given the fact that since then, we have spent the last 47 years in Italy, the Italian phase of my life is the longest period I have ever spent in any country in the last 71 years!

Meanwhile, we slowly disengaged ourselves from the US and it was clear that if we had to choose between two countries as our final homes, it would be between Bangladesh, our original home country, and Italy our adopted home.

Still, living away from ones’ original land, whether as an expatriate or an immigrant, is never easy. Immigrants from the subcontinent to anglophone countries like the US, UK, Canada, Australia etc, do not face the hurdles that migrants to Italy do in mastering the Italian language. I am still constantly trying to improve my language skills. Plus, there is the daily struggle to create a new identity of cultural fusion within the dominant and pervasive culture of a foreign land

So, in all these years, though I love Italy and my Roman home, I do not feel completely Italian even if my lifestyle incorporates much of the Italian way of life. For example, after a week of eating too much pasta and Mediterranean cuisine my husband and I yearn for and indulge in our Bengali comfort food. Although I enjoy the freedom and casual elegance of Italian clothes, I look forward to occasions to drape a sari, feeling my personality transform subtly, softly.

Yet, I cannot conceive of choosing one lifestyle over the other. The liberty to veer between different ways to live one’s life is the gift of living between two or more worlds.

The only incurable malaise, though, is the chronic nostalgia, especially during festivals and special occasions. For example, when Eid falls on a weekday, and one has to organise the celebration a few days later over a weekend, it takes away the spontaneous joy of connecting with one’s community, forcing one instead to spend the actual day as if it were an ordinary one. I miss breaking my fasts during the month of Ramadan with friends and family over the elaborate Iftar parties with special food back in Dhaka or celebrating Pohela Boishakh (Bengali new year) or Ekushey February (21st February, mother language day) in an Italian world that carries on with its everyday business, unaware of your homesickness for your Bengali world. Over the years, when my sons were in school, I made extra efforts for. But you know you cannot celebrate in authentic ways.

Of course, these are minor matters. And I am aware that by virtue of the fact that I have dual nationality (I’m both an Italian citizen, and a Bangladeshi), I cannot consider myself a true and brave immigrant — someone who leaves his familiar world and migrates  to another land because he has no other options nor the means to return; rather, I feel lucky to be an ex-patriate and a circumstantial migrant — someone who chooses to make a foreign country her home, with the luxury of being able to revisit her original land, and, perhaps, move back one day.

Meanwhile, I feel equally at home in Italy and in Bangladesh because we are lucky to be able to make annual trips to Dhaka in winter.

Whether I am considered by others to be an Italo-Bangladeshi or a Bangladeshi-Italian, I consider myself to be a writer without borders, a global citizen. I feel, I belong everywhere. My home is wherever I am, wherever my husband and my family are. My roots are not in any soil, but in relationships.

I often quote a line by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz. “Words became my dwelling place.” It resonates with me because for me often, it is neither a tract of land, nor even people, but language, literature and my own writings that are my true sanctuary, my homeland. I feel blessed to have the gift of expressing myself in words and shaping my world through language. My home is etched on the written or printed page. My books are my country. It’s a safe world without borders and limits.

Maybe it’s the conceit of a writer and a migrant, nomadic soul, but I think our inner worlds are more substantial than our external ones.                

When I read your writing, I find a world where differences do not seem to exist among people in terms of nationality, economic classes, race or religion. Is it not far removed from the realities of the world we see around us? How do you reconcile the different worlds? 

I believe and trust in our common humanity, not the narrowness of nationality, race or religion. Nationality particularly is limiting, dependent on land, and boundaries that can shift due to physical or political exigencies. Nationality by conferring membership also necessarily excludes on the basis of manmade criteria, while humanity is boundless, all encompassing, and inclusive, based on shared natural, biological, and spiritual traits. 

In my case, I consider the whole world my family. I say this not just as idealistic hyperbole and wishful thinking, but from the fact that I have a multi-cultural, multi-racial family. Only my husband and I are a homogenous unit being Bengali Muslims by origin, but both my sons are married outside our culture, race and religion. One of my daughters in law is Chinese, the other has an English-French father and a Thai mother. So, through my grandchildren, who are a veritable cocktail, yet my flesh and blood, I am related to so many races. How can I bear malice to any people on the globe? The whole world is my tribe, my backyard, where we share festivals and food and rituals and languages. We celebrate unity in diversity.                 

Kindness and caring for others are values I hold dear in myself and others. I believe in sharing my good fortune with others, and in peaceful co-existence with my neighbours, wherever I live. I believe in living with responsibility as a good citizen wherever I find myself. And so far, the world that I see around me, perhaps narrow, is peopled with those who invariably reflect my own sense of fraternity. Maybe I am foolish, but I believe in the essential goodness of humanity, and I have rarely been disappointed. Of course, there are exceptions and negative encounters, but then something else happens that restores ones faith.        

Love is more powerful than hate and generates goodness and cooperation. Change can happen at the micro level if more people spread awareness where needed. Peace can snowball and conquer violence. The human will is a potent spiritual tool. As is the power of the word, of language.       

Literature is about connections, communications, bridges. It can bring the experiences and worlds of others from the margins of silence and unspoken, unexpressed thoughts and emotions into the centre of our attention. It brings people who live in the periphery within our compassionate gaze. Language is one of the most effective tools for healing and building trust. Responsible writers can persuasively break down barriers and make the world a safe home and haven for everyone, every creature.

You have a book of essays on Rome, short stories and poems set in Rome. Yet you call yourself a Bangladeshi writer. You have in my perception written more of Rome than Bangladesh. So which place moves your muse? 

Any place on God’s beautiful earth can move my muse. Still, the perception is not completely accurate that I have written more of Rome than Bangladesh. It is true that many of my columns, short fiction or poems are set in Rome, but they are not necessarily just about Italy and Italians. In fact, my columns and poems were written from the perspective of a global citizen, who celebrates whichever place she finds herself in.

Poetry, in any case, is never just about any place or thing, but a point of departure. It always goes beyond the visual and the immediate and transcends the particular to the philosophical. The sight of a Roman ruin may jumpstart the poem, but what lifts it into the stratosphere of meaningful poetry is the universal, the human. For example, even when my poem speaks of a certain balcony in Verona, the protagonist is not a girl called Juliet but the innocence of first love, in any city, in any era.

My book of short stories, even when located in Rome, actually concern characters that are mostly Bangladeshi. In fact, it is my fiction that makes me a Bangladeshi writer, because my stories are ways for me to preserve my memories of the Bengali world of my past and an ephemeral present. I write to root myself. I often feel that I should write more about the new Italians, the Bangladeshi immigrants generation, rather than the expats of my generation, but my writing stubbornly follows its own compass.

Regarding my book of essays, my original columns for the Daily Star were written about many other cities I travelled to, including Dhaka and places in Bangladesh, and encounters with people in various countries not just Italy. Constrained to select columns from two decades of weekly writing, for a slim volume to be published, I narrowed the field of topics to Italy and Rome. But I had many essays and travel pieces concerning China, Russia, Vietnam, Egypt, Brazil, Spain, Netherlands and many other European cities and Asian capitals. In the end, a handful of columns about Italy became my book An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome.

However, in the preface I said: “I must remind that the scope of the book, as suggested in the title, is ‘Ruminations FROM Rome’ not ‘Ruminations ON Rome’ with a tacit emphasis on ‘from’ because the writing relates to matters not just concerning ROME but also encompasses reflections of a more general kind. This is a collection of writings from a columnist who, within her journey through the Eternal City, also attempts to share with her readers her passage through life. I wish my fellow travellers a smooth sojourn into my abiding city, the one WITHIN and WITHOUT.”

I know that had I not lived in Rome but, say, Timbuctoo, I would find something to inspire me to write about. Of course, I am privileged to have lived in Rome and Italy, but nature is beautiful everywhere, in its own way, and there are other civilisations with rich cultures, histories, arts, cuisines, poetry and philosophy that can inspire the sensitive observer and writer.

My elder son lives in Jakarta, my younger son in Bangkok and in all the years of visiting them, I am blown away by the culture and beauty of the Indonesian and Thai worlds, and I have a notebook full of unwritten essays. And there is still so much of the world I have not seen, yet every part of this wondrous earth including my backyard is a chapter in the book of human knowledge. So, had I never left Bangladesh I would still have written. Perhaps “Doodlings from Dhaka!”

What inspires you to write?        

Many things. A face at a window, a whiff of a familiar perfume, an overheard conversation, a memory, a sublime view…. anything can set the creative machine running. Plus, if I’m angry or sad or joyous or confused, I write. It could become a poem, fiction, or a column.

The writer in me is my inner twin that defines my essential self. I am a contented wife of 52 years of marriage, a mother of two sons, and a grandmother of four grandsons (aged 8-7-6-5). These roles give me joy and help me grow as a human being. But my writer-self continues on its solitary journey of self-actualisation. 

Yet, I write not just for myself, I write to communicate with others. I write to transmit the nuances of my Bengali culture and its complex history to my non-Bengali and foreign readers and students, but more importantly to my own sons, born and brought up in Italy, and my grandchildren, whose mothers (my daughters-in-law) are from multi-cultural backgrounds, one a Chinese, and the other a combination of English, French and Thai. I write also for the younger generation of Bengalis, born or raised abroad, who understand and even speak Bangla, but often cannot read the language, yet are curious about their parents’ world and their own cultural heritage.

What started you on your writerly journey? When did you start writing? 

I have always written. As an adolescent, I wrote mostly poetry, and also kept a journal, which I enjoyed reading later. It created out of my own life a story, in which I was a character enacting my every day. It clarified my life for me. Interpreted my emotions, explained my fears and joys, reinforced my hopes and desires. Writing about myself helped me grow. 

My columnist avatar is connected to this kind of self-referral writing, but in real life it emerged by accident when I was invited to write by the editor of the Daily Star. The act of producing a weekly column was a learning experience, teaching me creative discipline and the ability to marshal my life experiences for an audience. I learnt to sift the relevant from the irrelevant and to edit reality. What better training for fiction writing? For almost two decades my experience as a columnist was invaluable to my writer’s identity.

Soon I concentrated on fiction, especially short stories that were published in various anthologies edited by others in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. I now realised that while column writing was about my life in the present tense and about the daily world around me, my fiction could finally involve the past. The result was my collection of short stories: Piazza Bangladesh.

Ironically, it was my book of poems, Calligraphy of Wet Leaves that was the last to be published.

Your short stories were recently translated to Italian. Have you found acceptance in Rome as a writer? Or do you have a stronger reader base in Bangladesh? Please elaborate. 

Without a doubt, as an anglophone writer, my reader base is better not just in Bangladesh, but wherever there is an English readership. However, books today are sold not in bookshops but online, so these days readers live not in particular cities or countries but in cyberspace.      

But living in Italy as a writer of English has not been easy. The problem in Italy is that English is still a foreign and not a global language, so very few people read books in the original English. Every important or best-selling writer is read in translation. This is unlike the Indian subcontinent where most educated people, apart from reading in their mother tongues, read books, magazines and newspapers in English as well.   

This is why I was thrilled to finally have at least one of my books translated into Italian, and published by the well-known publishing house, Armando Curcio, who have made my book available at all the important Italian bookstore chains, like Mondadori or Feltrinelli. Also, through reviews and social media promotion by agents and friends, and exposure through book events and literary festivals in Rome, including a well-known book festival in Lucca, it has gained a fair readership.

That’s all I wish for all my books, for all my writing, that they be read. For me, writing or being published is not about earning money or fame but about reaching readers. In that sense, I am so happy that now finally, most of my Italian friends and colleagues understand this important aspect of my life.

 You were teaching too in Rome? Tell us a bit about your experience. Have you taught elsewhere. Are the cultures similar or different in the academic circles of different countries? 

I taught Bengali and English for almost a decade at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the University of Rome, La Sapienza., till I retired, and it was an enriching experience.

I studied for a year at the University of Dhaka before I got married and came to the US in 1973, where I continued my studies at the University of Maryland, earning my B.A in Comparative Literature and M.A in English Literature. I mention this because these experiences gave me the basis to compare the academic cultures in the Bangladeshi, American and Italian contexts.

I discovered more in common between the Bangladeshi and Italian academic worlds, especially regarding the deferential attitudes of students towards their teachers. In Italy, a teacher is always an object of reverence. In contrast, I recall my shock at the casual relationships in the American context, with students smoking in front of their teachers, or stretching their leg over the desk, shoes facing the professor. Of course, there was positivity in the informality and camaraderie too, between student and teacher. But with our eastern upbringing we cannot disregard our traditional veneration of the Guru and Master by the pupil.

In Italy it was rewarding for me to have received respect as a ‘Professoressa’ while teaching, and even now whenever I meet my old students. However, some of the negative aspects of the academic world in Italy linked to the political policies that affect the way old institutions are run, cause students to take longer to graduate than at universities in the UK or US for example.

Are you planning more books? What’s on the card next? 

I have a novel in the pipeline, a fusion of fiction and memoir, that has been in gestation for more than a decade. Provisionally titled ‘The Hidden Names of Things’, it’s about Bangladesh, an interweaving of personal and national history. It’s almost done, and I hope to be looking for a publisher for it soon. Perhaps, it has taken so long to write it because over the years while the human story did not change much, the political history of the country, which is still evolving through political crises kept shifting its goal posts, impacting the plot.

Most of my writings illustrate, consciously or inadvertently, my belief that as against political history our shared humanity provides the most satisfying themes for literature.

To share my stories with a readership beyond the anglophone one, my collection of stories ‘Piazza Bangladesh’ was translated into Italian and published recently in Italy, as ‘Cuore a Metà’ (A Heart in Half) which underlines the dilemma of modern-day global citizens pulled between two worlds, or multiple homes.

Meanwhile, my short stories, poems and columns will be translated into Bengali to be published in Dhaka, hopefully, in time for the famous book fair in February, Ekushey Boimela. Then my journey as an itinerant Italian-Bangladeshi writer will come full circle and return home.

(This online interview is by Mitali Chakravarty)

Click here to read an excerpt from An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome

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Stories

Nico returns to Burgaz

By Paul Mirabile

Burgaz: From Public Domain

Nico hurried off the steamer at Burgaz Island, oblivious of the swarming passengers disembarking and embarking. How long had it been since he had stepped foot on the island of his grandfather’s birth: twelve … thirteen years ? He made a bee-line for the central plaza. There he still stood, Saït Faïk, ever so thoughtful, leaning against that eternal tree. Nico approached the Turkish poet –Grandpa would have been so delighted to be here with us again. I’m sure he would have asked you about the talking seaweed and weeping mussels, Nico mused.

Vasiliki had passed away six years ago, a natural death, probably in his sleep. The old fisherman had asked Nico to have him buried between his wife, Nefeli, and daughter, Myrto, which he dutifully accomplished. Since the adolescent was the sole inheritor, he sold his grandfather’s little house for a good price, which permitted him to live comfortably in Athens while completing his university studies. Indeed, because he was parentless, and because his grades in grammar school were excellent, Nico had qualified for a scholarship. The ambitious student, thus, enjoyed financial ease to continue studying several more years for his doctorate. He excelled in Greek language and literature, French and English philology, in European History. At nights he read and spoke Turkish with several Turkish friends, for the vision of returning to Burgaz stole upon him like those perfumed nights on Burgaz with his grandfather as they contemplated the star-studded sky. That seemed so long ago …

Once his doctoral thesis defended, Nico left Greece and set off for Burgaz, off on an adventure. Poetry had been a major part of his thesis, and he had written quite a few poems, contributing to the university Literary Club’s weekly journal. Some of his poems and short stories caught the eye of an editor in Athens who had them published in a widespread monthly magazine. Soon he was invited to poetry readings and story-telling jousts, and because of these eventful evenings his circle of readers widened like concentric ripples in a pool of water after a rock had been thrown in …

The young poet left Athens not knowing exactly what Destiny held for him … nor what drove him so powerfully to return to the island. Was it because of his love for his grandfather ? His fascination for Saït Faïk? Or both? Saïk’s provided him with inexhaustible inspiration. Perhaps, too, it was the mystery of Burgaz of which his grandfather had so oftentimes spoke. Yes. It might have been that.

The horse-drawn carriage pulled up in front of the long flight of stairs to Zorba’s ‘humble’ home. Nico paid and began to ascend the worn-out mossy steps. Nothing had changed as the fretted gable slowly loomed in front of him. The perfumed scent of azaleas, roses, honeysuckles and pomegranate stirred distant memories. He had written to Zorba about his project to spend some time on Burgaz, and the good merchant, although away for several months in the United States on business, insisted that the young poet stay as long as he wished in his ‘humble’ home. He would be greeted and well-fed by his trusty maid, Zelda.

On hearing carriage bells Zelda rushed out, waiting for the ascending Nico arms akimbo. He dropped his knapsack, shoulder-bag and hugged the good woman. Speaking Greek had been her wont when Nico accompanied his grandfather years ago, but now, since the young man had decided to sojourn in Burgaz, she spoke to him in Turkish. Zelda was pleasantly surprised to hear him reply quite readily in Turkish. In fact, Zelda would prove an excellent tutor for Nico. Her grammar was excellent and her accent easy to understand.

So, after a solid diner, exhausted after a long day of travelling, Nico once again trudged up the steps of the floating stairway, the tinkling sound of the fountain below tickling his ears, opened the door to the room he knew so well with its frescoed ceiling of Greek heroes and large bay window looking out upon the darkened forests and the Marmara Sea. He washed and before drifting off to sleep, read a few chapters from Homer’s Odeyssus, which he always carried with him when ‘on the road’, and several paragraphs from Saït Faïk’s Son Kuşlar (Last Birds), underlining the words he couldn’t understand.

Up early the next morning, Zelda had prepared a breakfast of black olives, goat’s cheese, hard-boiled eggs, bread, butter, rose jam and black tea. She had gone to the local market (it was Tuesday) and would not be back before eleven.

Dressed lightly — the weather was very warm,  Nico sauntered down the same long and winding path through the wooded slope that led to the stony beach, hoping Abi Din Bey would still be serving grilled-cheese sandwiches, and spouting poetry for his customers. How the brisk island breeze of the sea swept away the cobs of lingering doubt in Nico’s mind as he descended — doubts that had tortured him because his grandfather would no longer be at his side, physically. Yet, when he stepped upon the beach these doubts evaporated. Vasiliki was there and would always be there. He spotted several fishing boats out at sea. Had Nico built a new boat with the help of his grandfather? Indeed he had. It was the biggest and most beautiful of all his boats! Much bigger than the Nefeli which was still in route towards China. But this wonderful boat would not be launched into the leaden seas: it lay housed in a small museum in Hydra where it can be admired by both the young and the old. In fact, Nico even won an award for that marvellous construction. He had named her Myrto in memory of his grandfather’s daughter. The tombstone engraver, on Nico’s behest, carved the silhouette of his boat on Vasiliki’s gravestone.

Abi Din Bey’s welcoming gate had been sealed! The homely front gardens lay desolate, the trees devoid of fruit, clusters of weed and couch grass grew wild. The poet’s house, albeit perfectly intact, exhaled an odour of negligence. Nico stared at this bleak scene, his heart growing heavy. It had never occurred to him that Abi Din Bey would not come rushing out to greet him. That this solitary man was mortal like all other human beings … like his grandfather. He felt like a child who believes his or her parents immortal out of love for them.

From behind a middle-aged man walked  up to him: “Abi Din died about ten or eleven years ago,” he began in a soft voice in broken Turkish. “He has no inheritors, so his house stands derelict and abandoned.”

Nico, snapped out of his despondency, eyed the stranger with mixed emotions. “What of his poetry?”

“Abi Din’s life of a poet held absolutely no interest for most who prefer to live in a cloud of unknowing. Abi Din Bey wrote some excellent poems, but alas no one had ears to listen to them.”

“We listened to them,” remonstrated Nico, though rather lamely.

“I know you did, you and your grandfather, Vasiliki.”

Nico reeled back as if struck by a blow. “How do you know … Who are you?”

“Oh, who I am makes no difference to anyone. But if you insist. I am the pilgrim of the heart, I voyage throughout the world admiring its marvels, an idler preaching the blessings of uselessness. Abi Din was one of those marvels, one of those brilliantly elevated idlers.” With those words, the stranger turned to leave.

Nico caught him by an arm: “Sir, where is the old man who piled up stones on the beach ? I haven’t seen him.”

“Nor will you ever see him again. Gone too, and some say that he recited several passages from Saït Faïk’s Son Kuşlar on his dying breath. Have you read Saït Faïk?”

Overcome by all these converging threads of some hidden or latent fabric beyond his grasp or comprehension, Nico could only stutter: “Well … yes … in fact…”

The other interrupted: “Listen, if you want to pay respects towards Abi Din and Saït, you should buy his house. It’s not very expensive.”

“But you …” The unnamed pilgrim put up a hand.

“I have no possessions. That is my first life principle. I idle my way through countries, people and books like a phantom. You buy it, my friend. Buy it before either Time brings about its ruin or the Burgaz municipality its demolition. For now, there are no plans to do either. It’s a mystery why that quaint house has not caught the eye of some eager artist.”  And he gave Nico a wink.

“Mystery?” A sudden bout of remorse paralysed Nico. Had his grandfather not spoken of a mystery on Burgaz?

“Yes, mystery! Isn’t that why you’ve returned?” With that last question left unanswered by a flummoxed Nico, the pilgrim strolled away along the beach, chanting some sea-faring tune.

When Nico came to his senses he literally jumped for joy. he would buy Abi Din’s house, settle on Burgaz and pursue his artistic life simply, wholeheartedly. He could become a resident of Turkey merely by depositing enough money in the Osmanlı Bankası[1]. The anonymous figure of the pilgrim had since vanished into a haze of blue. Nico ran up the winding path to Zorba’s home, where Zelda had been preparing lunch. Excitedly he explained his project. She thought it a smashing idea, and promised to help him with the paper work. They ate, had their coffee, and at two o’clock walked to the crossroads, hailed a carriage and rode to the Town Hall, a majestic, white-washed villa near the centre of town.

On the way, Nico asked Zelda whether or not she knew of a middle-aged man who walked about the island, idling his way here and there. Zelda giggled: “Oh yes, him. The Turks call him Mister başı boş [2]and the Greeks tempelis[3].”

“But he’s far from empty-headed,” remonstrated Nico.

“I’m sure he isn’t, that’s why I call him ‘aylak‘.”

“I don’t know the word.”

“Someone who idles about without any definite destination.” Nico nodded, puzzled none the less at these attributes of a person who seemed quite ‘full-headed’ to him …

The irksome formalities to purchase Abi Din’s house would fill a book. Suffice it to report that in two weeks the house belonged to Nico, once he had deposited enough money in the bank, and of course, bought the house in cash …

Although Nico now spent most of his time in his acquired house, he always ate lunch with Zelda at Zorba’s house, and sometimes dinner. It must be recorded here that Nico was better versed in writing stories than in culinary skills.

Every morning after breakfasting, Nico would roam the hilltops of Burgaz sauntering cheerfully along the dirt paths, jotting down in his little notebook details that caught his eye or thoughts that scudded across his mind. The island air intoxicated him as he conjured up characters and events for future stories or poems.

On Sundays, Nico would attend services at St John’s Greek cathedral, there mingling with the small community members who had taken a liking to this young man, calling him their ‘island writer’! He became a novelty for the islanders, who invited him dine or to read his creations. Meanwhile, several of Nico’s short stories and poems were being published in Athens by his editor and were read by the Greek community in Burgaz. Nico even attempted to write poems and stories in Turkish which Zelda not only corrected, but suggested a more fitting word or subtle syntax structure.

Once a month, Nico took the steamer to Heybeliada, or in Greek, Chalki[4], the third of the four Princess Islands where he was fortunate enough to consult the books at the library of the massive Greek Theological Centre, opened in 1844 for seminarists but closed by the Turkish authorities in 1971. Although prohibited, Nico’s reputation, which had spread to all the islands, allowed him to study at the library, the second largest religious library in the western world, several million tomes behind the Vatican’s. The young artist even managed to work two days a week there. How he managed that remains a mystery.

Once or twice a month, accompanied by Zelda, Nico would go to Büyükada (Big Island) called ‘Prinkipo’ in Greek because it is the largest island of the four, and stroll along a tarred road to contemplate the largest wooden building in Europe, a former Greek orphanage, built by the French in 1898. The Greeks bought it and children who had lost their parents were lodged here until its forced closing in 1964. This eerie-looking structure remained intact. Surrounded by high barb-wire fencing and guarded by savage dogs, no one could enter it. Every time Nico stood before this ominous edifice, he thought of his grandfather who had salvaged him from such a parentless fate. Perhaps, the children here were well taken care of…

One day as Nico sauntered along one of the myriad paths in the wooded hills of Burgaz he came face to face with the idling pilgrim. So delighted was Nico to meet this eccentric character that he began to pour out all the good news that had occurred to him since their last encounter many months ago. The other smiled kindly: “No need to repeat what many have already told me,” he stated indifferently. “Nothing on Burgaz goes unnoticed, especially novelties such as yourself. I wouldn’t want to puff up your pride, but some have considered you as a new Saït Faïk.”

Nico stared at the pilgrim disconcertedly. “I can assure you, my dear friend, that you have made quite a reputation for yourself on Burgaz. And who knows, you may be able to solve the mystery of which your grandfather so often spoke.” Baffled, Nico remained speechless. The other took his arm and they strolled together downwards into the sinking sun.

Nico could not contain his surprise: “How could you know about …”

“About Vasiliki’s mystery? Ah, that would entail hours of explanation, Nico. For now let us discuss your writings, for the intention behind those writings may have given you the key to unlock the mystery.”

The pilgrim paused sniffing the pine- and spruce-scented air. “You know, many writers have lost touch with reality, or have been completely overwhelmed by it. They seem incapable of telling a story, transmitting the joys and sorrows of their characters whose traits lie deep in their own hearts, imprisoned like birds in a cage, fluttering frantically, unable to express the Truth of what lies beneath the masks and costumes. Saït Faïk, Edgar Poe, Dino Buzzati[5], Guy de Maupassant[6], Somerset Maugham, Katherine Mansfield all drew their inspiration from fragments of a separate reality, the glints of a deflected flood of light, the shards of a broken vase to disclose the experiences of their characters, to bestow upon their readers the amalgamated emotions that flew freely from their hearts. Their stories and poems are not talk-of-the-day productions. They were derived from the unlocking of the cage, the flight outwards into the battlefield between joy and sorrow. You would think that their eyes were turned both inwards and outwards at the same time. There is something powerful, even sacred, if I may use that word, in their narrated experiences, which does not necessarily entail the use of I, nor does it insinuate a ‘message’ to be harnassed or brought into line by the opinionated or bigoted. The syntax rhythms and word combinations expose  the élan or the coming and going between the inward and the outward regard … I discern in your regard that inward and outward alternating vision, the aura that enhaloes your stories and poems. But mind you, this is only an idler’s perception.”

“What do you mean by aura?” Nico, crimsoning under the weight of so many complex compliments, managed to ask, almost out of breath.

“The halo of tradition that all sincere writing bears,” came the succinct reply. “A poem or a short-story, as in your case, bears an aura familiar to the reader, yet whose tale and expression of this tale transports him or her to strange, unfamiliar places. This is especially noticeable in your Turkish writings, an uncanny concoction of familiarity and eeriness. Perhaps it’s due to Zelda’s mixed origins.”

Nico stopped in his tracks, a blank look on his face. “Yes, Zelda, who, when we cross paths, addresses me as the ‘aylak‘. Her father was a remarkable writer and professor of philosophy in Greece and in Turkey. She inherited much of his wisdom as well as her mother’s strong character.” Nico stood stunned by this revelation.

“Zelda is only …”

“Only what, my friend ? Zorba’s maid or servant ? Ah ! I see you haven’t delved deep enough into the hearts of those who are very close to you. I’ve noted, too, that you have never written one line or verse about your deceased grandfather.”

Nico, stung to the quick by the very truth of that remark, bowed his head. He felt a surging wave of shame, and on this billowing wave rode an undulating image of a squealing seal that he and his grandfather had admired on their fishing adventure — an image gradually over-shadowed by another, more fuzzy, the stiffening body of a seagull on a pebbly shore near the mouth of a cavern.

The mild voice of his companion brought back these troubling scenes: “When all is said and done you will surely open wider the cage and let fly the encaged birds towards brighter poetic heights. Heights that perhaps you have yet to imagine.” With those comforting but enigmatic words the pilgrim turned to leave. He halted and asked: “Tell me, have you been to Granada?”

“Granada, Spain? No I haven’t, why?”

“You look like someone I met there.” The idler disappeared downwards into the crimson glint of sunset.

Nico ran back to Zorba’s house, undecided whether to speak to Zelda about her family. He never dreamed of broaching the subject to her as she herself had never bought up.

When the young writer had lumbered up those mossy steps he found Zelda seated on an armchair in the corner of the dining room, a shadow of gloom etched on her face. Her eyes were red. Wordlessly, she handed him a letter. It was written in faulty Greek, addressed to Zelda from an associate of Zorba’s in New York. A moment later Nico looked at Zelda with deep compassion. Zorba had died of a heart attack. His body would be sent to Burgaz for burial, accompanied by several of his associates who intended to buy his house.

“What will happen to me?” were Zelda’s first strained words. “I refuse to live in the same house with strangers even if they are Zorba’s associates.”

“Have you any family, Zelda? Anywhere to go? Anyone to help you financially?” She nodded in the negative to all these questions.

Nico sat down beside her: “Listen Zelda, come live with me, it’s a bit cramped, but at least you will have a roof over your head, food on the table, and a good friend who will always be at your side.”

Zelda dried her eyes and stared at Nico in embarrassment.

“I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said faintly.

“Exactly!” responded Nico excitedly. “You shall be the mother I hardly ever knew, in the same way that the presence of Abi Din in his house has been the father I hardly ever knew. How my grandfather would rejoice at that family reunion, however surreal, if I may say so.” Zelda smiled.

And with that acquiescing smile the two orphaned destinies appeared to converge into one …  

[1]        The biggest bank of Turkey at the time of Nico’s arrival specializing in international transactions. (Ottoman Bank).

[2] Empty-headed

[3] Lazy bones

[4]        ‘Chalki’ in Greek means ‘copper’. The Ancient and Byzantine Greeks excavated copper on this island.

[5]        Italian short-story writer ‘(1906-1972).

[6]        French short-story writer.(1850-1893)

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Review

Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy

Author: Madhurima Vidyarthi

Publisher: Niyogi Books

The nomenclature ‘historical fiction’ is sometimes quite confusing for the reader who keeps on wondering how much of the novel is real history and how much of it is the figment of the author’s imagination. Beginning in 1686, and set in the later part of Aurangzeb’s reign, this work of historical fiction named Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy charts the turbulent history of an insignificant hutment in the inhospitable swamps of Sutanati in Bengal that becomes one man’s unyielding obsession. This man is no other than Job Charnock whom we all claim to be the original founder of the city of Calcutta.

Bengal during that period was the richest subah of the Mughal Empire and the centre of trade. The English were granted a toehold in Hugli when Shah Jahan ousted the Portuguese in 1632 and made it a royal port. Since then, they had been worrying Shaista Khan, the current nawab at Dhaka, to give them permission to erect a fort at the mouth of the river but the wily old nawab did not agree and dismissed their petitions repeatedly. This was a period of extreme flux when the European powers like the Dutch, the Danes, the French and the English were all playing out age-old rivalries in new battlefields, aided and abetted by individual interests and local conflicts. This is when Sir Joshua Child was at the helm of East India Company’s affairs in London throughout the 1680s and his plans were brought to fruition in faraway Bengal by William Hedges and then Job Charnock.

Of the earliest champions of the British Empire, none was as fanatic or single-minded as Job Charnock. He evinced no wish for private trade or personal gain, and unlike many of his contemporaries who returned to England as wealthy ‘nabobs’, he lived and died here as a man of modest means. His life’s work was only to identify the most strategic location on the river and secure it for his masters.

Sutanati, with its natural defences and proximity to the sea, appealed to his native shrewdness and he applied himself in relentless pursuit.  The story of this novel begins in Hugli in 1686, on the first day of the monsoon, when a poor potter, Gobardhan, and his wife, Indu, find it difficult to make ends meet and their life is centred around their young son Jadu. In the guise of Gobardhan relating bedtime stories to his son, the novelist very tactfully gives us the earlier historical background of the place. He tells us how during his great-great-grandfather’s time, two hundred years ago, Saptagram was the greatest city in the country, the greatest port in the Mughal Empire where ships and boats came from all over the world. Later the Portuguese bought land and built a fort at Golghat, but the Mughals grew jealous of them and finally attacked Hugli and ousted them from there.

Coming down to the present time, Jadu is twelve years old when his parents are burnt to death in front of his eyes as they were innocent bystanders in the struggle for power between the East India Company and the Nawab of Bengal. By a quirk of fate, Jadu is rescued by his father’s Mussalman friend, Ilyas, who is really protective of the boy and acts as a substitute father figure. But soon Ilyas leaves for Dhaka on a diplomatic mission and thrusts the young boy in the hands of a trusted Portuguese sailor and captain called D’ Mello. Since then, Jadu is drawn into the whirlwind of events that follow. He spends a lot of time on the river, and from December 1686 to February 1687, stays at Sutanati. Then, he moves from Sutanati to Hijli, and back to Sutanati up to March 1689, till at last he stands face to face with the architect of his misfortune — Job Charnock himself.

The rest of the tale hovers around how Jadu becomes one of his most trusted aides and though Charnock’s grand dreams did not come to fruition during his lifetime. When he died in 1693, the place was still a clutch of mud and timber dwellings still awaiting the nawab’s parwana[1] to build and fortify the new settlement. The English finally managed to acquire the zamindari rights to Sutanati, Kolkata and Gobindopur in November 1698, when the area had become quite lucrative by then.

In exploring the how, but more importantly the reason for this coming into being, the story then speaks of the motivations of the great and good and the helplessness of the not so great, all of whom in their own way contributed little nuggets of history to the city’s birth.  The novel is also filled with common folk, both local natives as well as foreigners, who watch unheeded while destinies are shaped by the whims of rulers. Interwoven with verifiable historical events and many notable characters from history, the novel therefore is above all primarily the story of an innocent boy Jadu who navigates the different circumstances he is thrust in and emerges victorious and hopeful in the end. As the narrative continues, he also moves from innocence to maturity. Through his eyes we are given to read about a wide range of characters who form the general backdrop of the story.

In the ‘Author’s Note’ at the end of the novel, Madhurima Vidyarthi categorically states that this is not a history book, but she has strung together imaginary events over a skeleton of fact, based on the sum of information available. She states, “While trying to adhere to accepted chronology, the temptation to exercise creative license is often too great to be overcome”. The most significant character in this perspective is Job Charnock’s wife, who has been the subject of much research and her treatment in the Company records is typical of the time. But though a lot of information is available about Charnock’s daughters repeatedly in letters, Company documents, baptismal registers, and headstones, their mother is conspicuous by her absence. This is where the author applies her ‘creative license’ and makes Mrs. Charnock’s interactions with Jadu reveal his coming of age, and with her death, he symbolically reaches manhood. Vidyarthi also clarifies that several characters in the novel like Jadu, his parents, Ilyas, Manuel, Madhu kaka and Thomas Woods are also imaginary, and they represent the nameless, faceless masses during that period and therefore provide a ‘slice of life’ that make up history. All in all, this deft mingling of fact and fiction makes this almost 400-page novel a page-turner, ready to be devoured as fast as possible.

[1] Written permission

Somdatta Mandal is a critic, translator and a former Professor of English, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.

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Review

…My Heart Wanders Wailing with the Restless Wind…

Book Review by Meenakshi Malhotra

Title: Shabnam

Author: Syed Mujtaba Ali

Translator from Bengali: Nazes Afroz

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

Shabnam (1960) by Syed Mujtaba Ali is a love story that is set in the third decade of the 20th century. ‘Shabnam’ in Persian means a ‘dewdrop’. The polyglot scholar Mujtaba Ali’s love story becomes a vehicle for articulating the profundities of life which extends beyond the plot and the telling just like that of his teacher, Rabindranath Tagore. To quote the words of another reviewer: “His novel can be compared to a dewdrop which assumes rainbow hues during sunrise as it encompasses not only the passionate cross-cultural romance of Shabnam and the young Bengali lecturer, Majnun, but also shades of humanity, love, compassion set against the uncertainties generated by ruthless political upheavals.” Sweeping in scope, set against the backdrop of the Afghan Civil War (1928-29) and beyond, the novel narrates an epic love story. That this has recently been translated by a former BBC editor stationed in Afghanistan, Nazes Afroz, and published for a wider readership, emphasises its relevance in the current context, where regressive curtailment of human rights and liberties are evident on a daily basis.

Shabnam is a young, upper class and educated Afghan woman, fluent in French and Persian. As we learn in the course of the narrative, she is daring and apparently fearless. She is proud of her Turkish heritage as she invokes it while introducing herself: “You know I’m a Turkish woman. Even Badshah Amanullah has Turkish blood. Amanullah’s father, the martyred Habibullah, realised how much power a Turkish woman—his wife, Amanullah’s mother—held. She checkmated him with her tricks. Amanullah wasn’t even supposed to be the king, but he became one because of his mother.” Given the current context, with its attack on womens’ freedom, it is perhaps difficult to imagine that a woman like Shabnam or anyone with a similar persona or voice could be found at all. She seems at times to inhabit the rarefied realms of her author’s imagination, beyond the earthly realm.

Shabnam’s knowledge of history and the world is extensive. She actively chooses and decides about her surroundings and her own life, which is more than what many women can do in today’s Afghanistan. Characters like Shabnam are also the result of the varied travels of the author Mujitaba Ali, who traveled and taught in five countries. On the power wielded by women, Shabnam offers a rejoinder to her lover/narrator: “In your own country, did Noor Jahan not control Jahangir? Mumtaz—so many others. How much knowledge do people have of the power of Turkish women inside a harem?”

The novel has a tripartite structure. In the first part, is the dramatic meeting of the narrator, Majnun, with the striking and unconventional Shabnam at a ball given by Amanullah Khan, the sovereign of Afghanistan from 1919 to 1929. The novel’s narrative is dialogic in nature and the introduction and subsequent exchanges of the protagonists  are peppered with wit and poetry. The first part concludes with the two of them acknowledging their love for each other.

In the second part of this novel,we witness more developments in their relationship. Shabnam assumes an agential role and makes a decision to marry Majnun secretly with only their attendants looking on. And then later, this decision receives a legitimate sanction since a wedding is organised for them by her father, who does not know they are already married. Despite the xenophobic approach in those times of many Afghans (and other South Asian communities) against marrying their daughters to foreigners, her family decides to marry Shabnam to Majnun as they wanted her out of conflict-ridden Afghanistan and in a safer zone. Her father hopes she will go off to India with her husband. This seems unexpectedly progressive in the Afghanistan of  almost a century ago. But instead, in the third part, she is abducted by the marauding hordes while her beloved attempts to organise their return from Afghanistan.

The last part continues with Majnun’s quest for his beloved. His endeavour leads him to travel, hallucinate and drives him almost insane, reminiscent of the Majnun of Laila-Majnun fame, a doomed union that resonates in and forms a motif in the narrator/lover’s repeated conversations with Shabnam. At the end of the novel, Majnun ascends the physical realm of love. He says: “Now after losing all my senses, I turn into a single being free of all impurities. This being is beyond all senses—yet all the senses converge there… There is Shabnam, there is Shabnam, there is Shabnam.”

The novel concludes with the realisation that “there is no end” (tamam na shud). This feeling seems to echo the idea of  “na hanyate hanyamane sarire”(“It does not die”) in Sanskrit signifying that love is eternal, even beyond the material realm. Both the luminosity and fragility of love is represented in the novel.

Mujtaba Ali’s wide and varied experience is in evidence at several points in the novel, as is his wit and satiric sense, some of which filters through to his created characters.   This can be experienced in the dialogues and descriptions even in its translated form. In order to conceal her identity from the marching and rustic hordes, Shabnam comes to visit her beloved in a burqa. She argues that it is not a symbol of oppression but a self-chosen disguise: “Because I can go about in it without any trouble. The ignorant Europeans think it was an imposition by men to keep women hidden. But it was an invention by women—for their own benefit. I sometimes wear it as the men in this land still haven’t learned how to look at women. How much can I hide behind the net in the hat?”

A valuable addition to the rich corpus of travel writing in Bangla Literature, the book remained unknown to the world outside Bengal despite its excellence as there were no translations. In 2015, Afroz had translated and published this book as In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan. It was subsequently shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award. That translations can provide a bridge across cultures is eminently clear from this work, which gives us a tantalising glimpse of a culture beyond our own and encourages us, the readers, to recognise that true love transcends borders or boundaries and that the language of true love is the same everywhere.

The novel’s title, Shabnam, is a natural choice, as the intelligent, courageous and beautiful Shabnam is the emotional centre of the novel. To describe her ineffable charm, we could draw upon Mujtaba’s teacher’s words, in Gitanjali (Song Offerings by Tagore):

She who ever had remained in the 
depth of my being, in the twilight of 
gleams and of glimpses…

 …  Words have wooed yet failed to win 
her; persuasion has stretched to her its 
eager arms in vain.

Song 66, Gitanjali by Tagore

Majnun, the narrator lover is left, in Tagore’s words: “gazing on the faraway gloom of the sky, and my heart wanders wailing with the restless wind.” Romance by its very nature, is fleeting and  transient and romantic love in its literary avatars/depictions acquires a bitter-sweetness when its founded on loss and longing. So it is with Shabnam.

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Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is an Associate Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition  to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory.  Her most recent publication is The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.

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Musings

Just Another Day?

By Farouk Gulsara

Photo Courtesy: Farouk Gulsara

The Sun rears its orangey hue over the horizon. Yet another new day dawns. The Sun does not know it is starting a new horizon. It performs its preordained duty, firing nuclear fusion reactions on its surface. It is the round Earth that revolves around the Sun. The Earth does not know a new day has begun. It just revolves counterclockwise on its axis. It has multiple new dawns at its manufactured latitudes. It neither knows where it started nor its point of reference. A series of celestial accidents brought it to be with its speed and its faithful lunar companion.

The day does not know it is a new day. Wednesday does not know it is Wednesday. It is merely an agreed arrangement for convenience. There is nothing specific about Wednesday or, for that matter, any day. It can rain, shine, snow, or be a non-discrete day. Good or bad things can happen, just like any other day. It is daylight, and night befalls before another day.

Earthlings have been miscalculating their calendars anyway. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar. They realised they had miscalculated the solar cycle and had to remove ten days from the Julian calendars to be in sync with a complete revolution. It took the world three centuries to agree on a single calendar. Imagine the ensuing pandemonium. Sweden had to add two leap days to correct their miscalculations. Imagine finding headstones bearing dates like February 30 or 31 as death dates! So, going back, today’s Wednesday could have been a Saturday in the old Julian calendar.

Different cultures view the beginning of the calendar year at various times, depending on whether they follow a solar, lunar, or lunisolar calculation. The Chinese, who follow a lunar system, celebrate theirs in late January or early February, allowing for leap years. The Persians start theirs, Nowruz, on the summer solstice. The Indians and their Southeast Asian counterparts usher it in April with a water festival, prayers and much merriment. Not to forget the Cambodian despotic leader who established Year 0 on 17th April 1975 to whitewash their glorious past, much like the French Year Zero of the 1789 Bastille Day.

In essence, it is just another day. Just as Paul McCartney described in his song, ‘Another Day‘, one merely slips into shoes on the first day of the calendar and follows the same old routine. That is sad. So, to break the monotony, we attach importance to these days. We start a new ledger or a new school term in some countries. In Malaysia, our school term used to begin on the first Monday of January until COVID-19 befuddled everything. The Education Ministry had to close the schools and postpone examinations. The public examinations used to be done at the end of the year those days. Now, nobody knows when the term begins and when the examinations are written.

Many seize the opportunity to use the new year as leverage to get their lives in order. In the post-inebriation hangover following Christmas and New Year’s Eve, one would vow to become a teetotaller. The resurgence of gym memberships can be observed again. The days into the New Year would see new, eager, wannabe Jane Fondas, who would be MIA by mid-January, often seen arguing at the front desk for a refund.

Life is a continuum; it is not compartmentalised. Though it is good to use the birth of a new year as a fulcrum to springboard oneself to greater heights, any day is a good day to start. All it requires is determination and focus. However, it is easier said than done, and the motivational push varies from person to person. Elements that break the will and opinionated naysayers are aplenty.

Anyway, life will be boring if there are no days to look forward to— no birthdays to shower love, no Christmas to bond, no Harvest Festivals to show gratitude to the forces of Nature, and no New Year’s to make new resolutions for the umpteenth time and break them once again. This makes the world go on. There is always something to look forward to.

Photo Courtesy: Farouk Gulsara

Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.

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Interview Review

‘Looking to the Future with New Eyes’ with Mineke Schipper

A brief review of Mineke Schipper’s Widows: A Global History (Speaking Tiger Books, 2024) and a conversation with the author

Mineke Schipper. Photo Courtesy: Christiaan Krouwel
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
—Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (1950)

This is one of the dedications that precedes the narrative of Mineke Schipper’s non-fiction, Widows: A Global History. Her description of misapprehensions and the darkness around widowhood, as well as the actions that have been taken and suggestions on how more can be done to heal, weave a narrative for a more equitable society.

Starting with mythological treatment of widows, the book plunges into an in-depth discussion, not just with case studies but also with a social critique of the way these women are perceived and treated around the world, their need to heal from grief or a sense of devastation caused by their spouse’s death, concluding with stories that reflect the resilience of some of those who have overcome the odds of being repulsed. It is a book that inspires hope… hope for a world where despite all stories of misogyny covered in media, there are narratives that showcase both the human spirit and humanity where the ostracised are moving towards being integrated as a part of a functional social sphere.

Schipper, best known for her work on comparative literature mythologies and intercultural studies, navigates through multiple cultures over time and geographies to leave a lingering imprint on readers. She writes: “In Book V of his Histories, Herodotus (485-425/420 BCE) described life among the Thracians: Each man has many wives, and at his death there is both great rivalry among his wives and eager contention on their friends’ part to prove which wife was best loved by her husband. She to whom the honour is adjudged is praised by men and women alike and then slain over the tomb by her nearest of kin. After the slaying she is buried with the husband.” And yet she tells us of the dark past of Europe, “A Polish text asserts with great certainty that, after the burning of the body of her husband, ‘every wife allowed herself to be beheaded and went with him into death’.” She tells us stories of wife burning, killing and dark customs of yore across the world that seem like horror stories, including satis in India. The “motivation” is often greed of relatives or customs born of patriarchal insecurities. She contends, “wherever desperate poverty reigns, widows are at an increased risk.”

She argues: “The story is much the same everywhere; widows who are well educated know what rights they have or are able to find the right authorities to approach with their questions, while women with little or no education continue to suffer from malevolent practices.”

She has covered the stories that reflect the need for the welfare of widows, of how early marriages lead to widowhood even in today’s world ( “ Every year around twelve million girls under the age of eighteen get married, one in five of all marriages.”), of social customs like dowry, which can be usurped by a widow’s spouse’s family, of steps that are being taken and changes that need to be instituted for this group of women often regarded in the past and even in some places, in the present, as witches. In fact, she has written of such ‘witch villages’ in Africa, which have been developed to help widows who have been treated badly and turned away from their homes. Such stories, she tells us prevail all over the world, including India, where widows are sent or go to Varanasi.

She asserts that despite these efforts, “there is often still a significant gap between declarations of gender equality and their day-to-day enforcement and application.” She ends with case studies of four women: “Christine de Pisan, Tao Huabi, Laila Soueif and Marta Alicia Benavente examples of widows who dared to fully throw themselves into a new life following the death of their husbands.” And with infinite wisdom adds: “We cannot change history, but we can look to the past with new knowledge and to the future with new eyes.” She concludes with a profound observation: “Time does not heal sorrow, but out of the centuries-old ashes, grief, strict commandments and prohibitions, new prospects can also rise. The fact that every person’s life is finite makes every day unique and precious. The same goes for widows.”

In this interview Mineke Schipper (née Wilhelmina Janneke Josepha de Leeuw), an award-winning writer from Netherlands, tells us what started her on her journey to uncover the stories of this group of people.

What got you interested in widows as a group from around the world? Why would you pick this particular group only for a whole book?

Yes, whence this topic? The widow had been a tiny part of Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet. Women in Proverbs From Around the World (Yale UP 2004), an earlier book I wrote about proverbs referring to women’s lives, from girl babies to brides, wives and co-wives, mothers and mothers-in-law, grandmothers and old women. It was a long and breathtaking study about more than 15,000 proverbs, collected over many years, apparently widely appreciated and translated with two relatively recent editions published in India, in English and in Marathi. For those interested: the complete collected material is accessible and searchable at www.womeninproverbsworldwide.org, including proverbs about widows. That small but striking section about widows had made me curious, but other books, as it goes, pushed ahead, before I came back to them. In January 2020, I had to look up something in that book about proverbs, and the pages about widows looked so weird that I proposed the widow as my new topic to my Dutch publisher who responded enthusiastically.

You have written of so many cultures and in-depth. How long did it take you to collect material for this book and put it together?

All over I found obvious warnings and distrust viz a viz a woman whose husband dies. Interestingly, a widow was associated with death—and a widower was not. Take heed, suitor, when you replace the dead husband in the widow’s conjugal bed! Better not! Was it the fear that she had killed him? Or the creepy thought that the dead man’s hovering ghost was still hanging around? A widow was supposed to mourn intensely over her husband, preferably the rest of her life. In the meantime, proverbial messages openly expressed the widower’s happiness at the news of his wife’s death: ‘Grief for a dead wife lasts to the door’ (all over Europe) or ‘A wife’s death renews the marriage’ (Arabic). I came across well-known names—such as Confucius, Herodotus, Boniface, and Ibn Battuta—and lesser-known names of early travellers, historians, and philosophers with their commentaries on widows, compulsory or non-mandatory prolonged mourning, voluntary or prescribed chastity, and a surprisingly common choice of suicide as the best option for her. Amazingly many widows obediently followed their husbands to death. In all continents, monuments and documents witness how women joined dead men—buried or burnt alive, hanged, strangled or beheaded, drowned, stabbed or shot. A preference for strangling was inspired by the idea that the victim would enter the next world ‘intact’. So, from the narrow diving board of no more than a few dozen proverbs I plunged into the hidden history of widowhood for about three years.

How do women perpetrate the victimisation of widows? Would you say that widows as a group are more victimised against than other groups of women?

Conceptions about women as interchangeable objects were widespread. If a woman was ‘no longer of use’, a man would need to get a new one, much as you would do with a broken watch, rifle, knife or whip. A man cannot or will not do without a wife, but what about when the tables are turned? The need to present women without husbands as inept and dependent must have been great. A widow managing all by herself was rather met with obvious disapproval. Widowhood has traditionally been associated with emptiness. In Sanskrit, the word vidhua means ‘destitute’, and the Latin viduata (‘made destitute, emptied’) is the root of the word for widow in many European languages, including Witwe (German), veuve (French) and weduwe (Dutch).

Nonetheless there have always been plenty of widows who have lived wonderfully independent lives, but this is not the image seared into the public consciousness. The notion that a woman is unable to live her own life after the death of her husband is an amazingly deep-rooted one. The Japanese word for widow (mibōjin) literally means ‘she who has not yet died’, that is, a widow is simply sitting in Death’s waiting room for her own time to come. Interestingly, the status of widower on the other hand was usually so short-lived and temporary that some languages even lack a word for it all together!

What makes widows more vulnerable than others?

Every widow has her own story, but social systems play an important role. In traditions where goods, land and property are inherited through the mother’s family line with matrilocality, a groom comes to live with his bride’s family, although this often ended up working out slightly differently as men were not best pleased with this living arrangement, so in reality there would be negotiation. However, over the centuries patrilineal systems, lineage and inheritance significantly became the dominant system. According to the patrilocal rules, a man had to remain ‘at home’, a system which to this day obliges countless brides to move in with their parents-in-law, an environment foreign to them. They are forced to comply with the demands and expectations of their family-in-law, while the husbands remain comfortable in the familiar surroundings they grew up in, with major consequences for the lives of women who become widows. This patrilocal living situation has often resulted in greater inequality between marital partners and harsh rules for widows, often preventing a wife from any material heritage after her husband’s death. According to the work of evolutionary psychologists, married women who live with or in close contact with their matrilineal family run a significantly lower risk of violence in the form of (physical) abuse, rape and exploitation than those who move in with their husband’s family. This is all the more true for a widow with a distrustful family-in-law who accuse her of killing her husband, a danger that is greatest in areas where poverty reigns.

At a point you have said, “The Aryan period, which preceded later negative social developments, saw a differently structured society in which there was more space for women: to a certain extent women had religious autonomy, they were entitled to education at all levels (with some even becoming celebrated authors), they participated in public life and also held important positions… However, by the year 200 AD, their position had considerably worsened.” Do you have any idea why their condition worsened in India? What were the ‘negative social developments’ you mention?

In matters of religion the woman was increasingly dependent on the services of her husband or of priests, possibly also on her sons or male relatives, to carry out the rituals she required. Simultaneously she became largely excluded from all types of formalised education. This lasting effect can be seen even today in the global difference in the rate of female and male literacy. The negative stance towards women in India dates back to Brahmin commentaries of ancient Vedic texts, which referred to women as lesser humans; widows subsequently occupied an even lower rung on the social ladder and were forced to work hard towards their religious salvation through extreme asceticism. One example: ‘At her pleasure [after the death of her husband], let her emaciate her body by living only on pure flowers, roots of vegetables and fruits. She must not even mention the name of any other men after her husband has died.’ (Manusmriti Kamam 5/160) Patriarchal relations have developed gradually in different parts of the world and at different times, but not everywhere in the same rigorous forms.

In the Abron-Kulango culture in the northeast of his native Côte d’Ivoire, you have told us “[B]oth widows and widowers were required to accompany their spouse to the next world” but eventually due to societal realisations, such practices stopped. Do you think this can happen in other cultures too. Have you seen it happen in other cultures?

As far as I know, such practices do not exist anywhere anymore. The most problematic obstacle for the rights of widow’s in less-well off regions is the unfortunate combination of illiteracy, fear of witchcraft and covetous in-laws, particularly during periods of mourning and grief. The good news is that even in the most unexpected places initiatives are emerging to help inform women in rural areas of their equality before the law. Self-aware widows become inspiring role models; conscious of their rights, they share their knowledge with others so that more of their fellow widows can find the right legal aid when injustice rears its head.

Would you hold as culprit people who enforce the death of widows? Would you address these people too as criminals in today’s context? Please elaborate.

It wouldn’t help much to do this! Marriage is still frequently presented as the utmost peak that a woman can achieve during her life. From this supposed top spot married women often still look at single and widowed women in a new light—with pity, contempt, suspicion or even hostility: they are out to seduce your own husband! When death comes calling, not only men’s but also women’s negative feelings easily bubble up from the morass of fear at the dreaded prospect of becoming a widow. Over the centuries such reactions towards widows have become part of the constrictive hierarchy meant to keep so many women in their place.

Can sati be justified [1](even though they are deemed illegal as is suicide) by saying the widow immolated herself willingly? Please explain.

The social pressure on widows must have been immense, but we are living now and no longer in the past. It is true that in poorer regions far out of the reach of cities, countless numbers of widows still have to traverse a long road towards a humane and dignified existence. However, instead of justifying the willingness to immolate herself as her own choice, it is better to insist on the positive news that, after the loss of their partner, today not only men but also women have the right to stay alive and further explore their own talents and new possibilities.

You have told us dowry started as a European custom. Is it still a custom there as it is in parts of South Asia, even if deemed illegal? Was it brought into Asia by Aryans/colonials or a part of the culture earlier itself?

The dowry is the gift that the bride’s family would contribute to the couple’s new home. Even though colonisation may have reinforced this ancient custom, but in many communities, it was already a custom and still is in many parts of the world. In Europe it stayed on until the late nineteenth century. In cultures where the bride provided a dowry, the death of a wife would bring benefits to a widower, as a new wife with a new dowry would enrich his home with new assets such as silver tableware, jewellery, bed linen and other valuables. For centuries, among Christians, divorce was forbidden, and from the perspective of widowers the prospect of a second chance provoked a sense of euphoria, as expressed in quite some sayings where his sadness does not go beyond the front door. Across Europe such messages confirm a husband’s profit of his wife’s death: ‘Dead wives and live sheep make a man rich.’ (French; UK English). However, most widows were denied such liberating feelings or didn’t experience any profit from the change. Often, they did not even allow themselves to get over her loss and indulge in any new freedom. They usually were subject to the paralysing fear of other people’s gossip.

In many places a widow who remarried would even lose entitlement to her own dowry or other input she had contributed to her marriage. Many women who remarried felt unable to invoke any right they had on the property of their deceased husband. Little wonder, therefore, that widows were heavily discouraged from remarrying, for example in China. The use of far-reaching laws still re-enforced the highly recommended chaste and sexless existence of widows after the death of her husband. Of course, the considerable number of child marriages in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia easily robbed child widows from the legal rights wherever they had. According to the World Widows Report, the situation for widows with children is still exceptionally alarming in many parts of the world. Daughters, in particular, remain a huge problem in traditions where women have to contribute a dowry when daughters get married. For this reason alone, poorer parents have a preference for sons: they are more likely to inherit from their father’s family, while their widowed mother can expect little.

Has the condition of widows across the world improved over time? Please elaborate.

Over the centuries far too many widows have been convinced that their only future was conditioned by their dead husband. In my book there are examples from different areas of courageous widows who changed their own lives. Looking around in one’s own neighbourhood, there are always exemplary models of independent widows who do not let themselves be deterred by the doom of whatever prejudiced people think or say.

All emancipation starts with the opportunity to acquire knowledge, but if we are to believe what tradition tells us, women had little need for that, based on an assumption that knowledge did nothing to encourage and promote female obedience, and even less for virtue. ‘Knowledge goes before virtue for men, virtue before knowledge for women’ is an old saying in Europe, while a Chinese saying also agrees that a woman without knowledge is already doing very well. The fact that this message has had such a wide-ranging effect can be seen in the vast difference in levels of education and training among boys and girls in global education statistics.

What did a man look out for when it came to finding a wife? In order to facilitate control over women, various warnings have been passed down to men. One such proverb found the world over clearly expresses this sentiment: ‘Never marry a woman with big feet.’ It comes from the Sena language in Malawi and Mozambique. In China, India and other parts of the world, I came across literal iterations of this proverb. In spite of geographic or cultural distances and differences, this saying reflects a widespread consensus: hierarchy in male-female relations seemed to be essential, and someone had to be in charge. Should he become the main breadwinner for the duration of their married life, his wife will be even more dependent on him.

Significantly the big feet metaphor points to male fear of female talents and power. Hardly surprising therefore that becoming a widow was the worst possible catastrophe for women. Worldwide the solidarity between wives and widows is growing and literacy support within local communities as well, while the former unwavering prejudices against widows are shrinking, and more and more widows with big feet do manage. The old anti-widow stronghold of local prejudice is slowly but surely crumbling into ruins. We cannot change history, but widows can look to the past with new knowledge and into the future with new eyes and new hope.

Thank you Mineke for your time and book.

Click here to read an excerpt from Widows

[1] https://theprint.in/ground-reports/sati-economy-still-roars-in-rajasthan-youtube-as-jaipur-court-closes-roop-kanwar-case/2331357/

(This review/interview has been written/ conducted by Mitali Chakravarty.)

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Stories

Hotel du Commerce

By Paul Mirabile

Paris 1970s. From Public Domain

In 1974, the modest, starless Hotel du Commerce, at 14, Rue[1] Sainte Geneviève, in Paris became my home for over six months, and its owner, Madame Marie, my adopted mother.

A young, aspiring journalist, I was sent to Paris by the editor of a worthless monthly magazine in Palermo, Sicily, to write an article on the monuments of Paris. I took up my long residence at the Hotel du Commerce for two reasons: it was very cheap — that is, ten francs a day — and conveniently located in the centre of the city, only a ten minute walk to the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Madame Marie, ninety kilos of joy and laughter, rented me a room on the fifth floor (without a lift) with two other residents: Caban across from me and Paco at the end of the corridor. The rooms had neither attached toilets – there was one for each floor — nor showers (none). Like all residents and tourists, we washed from the washbasin in our rooms. My little window looked out on to the red-tiled rooftop of a Russian bookshop.

To tell the truth I never wrote that article on the monuments of Paris. What a boring subject! On the other hand, my stay at Madame Marie’s hotel afforded me enough material to write a book — a sketch of her and her residents, their trades, joys and sorrows … their  uncelebrated destinies. My editor would have probably sacked me for this ‘breach of contract’, but as luck would have it, his magazine went out of business before my return to Palermo.

I shall never know why Madame Marie took such a liking to me. Everyday, she would invite me for coffee and a chat. We would even watch television in the evenings in her sitting-room which separated the tiny kitchen from the reception. From there she kept an alert eye on the comings and goings of everyone. She was a jolly old woman, and this, despite the loss of her husband at an early age, and the terrible events that occurred in her hotel during the Algerian war in the fifties and sixties[2]. She was indeed fat, but quick-witted with plenty of pluck. She had rolls of flesh rumbling under her eye-catching flower-dotted red robe.

“You know, I was a young girl during the Second World War. I hid some French Resistance fighters in my parents’ house in the Alps. The Germans who hunted down the French fighters couldn’t scare me with their rifles and threats. I sent them packing whenever they pounded at our door!” she would repeat proudly when I was alone with her. When her husband died, she was left on her own to manage the hotel, and in the 50’s that was no asset. Deserters, police informers, merciless OAS members[3] and their equally ruthless adversaries, the FNL[4]  all came and went causing rows, arrests, even murders. The plucky Madame Marie handled it all with her sang-froid and flair for compromise.

“My sixth-sense got me through that lot,” she would laugh, her jowls shaking. By the 1970’s, however, things had calmed down in Paris. The lodgers were mostly Japanese and American tourists with a sprinkling of North Europeans. No more brawls, police raids or murders. Madame Marie spoke no foreign language but she understood everything that she needed to understand. She had hired an old woman to clean the rooms. The sprightly widow had learned how to say in English, after having knocked on the lodger’s door at eight in the morning: “You stay or you go?” It was enough to get her point across.

Madame Marie disliked the police. She flared at their scent even before they stepped through the front door in incognito on the trail of someone except on one occasion. I shall let her narrate that exceptional episode: “How that flic[5] fooled me I’ll never forget. Dressed like a hippy, long hair, a torn knapsack, he took a room in the courtyard. He spent two weeks here and never said a word. He got in no later than eight o’clock at night. I thought he played the guitar on the metro[6] for money. Then one day, dozens of police stormed through the front door into the courtyard. I was in the sitting-room and rushed out the back door of the kitchen to see what all the hullabaloo was about. The door of one of my clients was wide open, a young bloke who used to play the guitar on the metro; he had been handcuffed by the ‘hippy’ and was being walked out. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a film. When everything settled down, a police officer came over to me and politely explained that my lodger was a notorious drug-dealer and had been under surveillance for weeks by the ‘hippy’. He apologised for the inconvenience and paid the rent for both the dealer (who hadn’t paid me) and the hippy-policeman.” Madame Marie sighed. “He’s the only flic who ever fooled me.” And she laughed her usual jolly laugh.

She got up to make some more coffee for at that moment Caban and Bebert came in for a chat, both a bit tipsy from their usual drinking bouts before, during and after work. Then Bebette made her appearance, the prostitute to whom Madame Marie ‘lent’ one of the courtyard rooms every now and then to exercise her profession. Madame Marie had no moral qualms about such professions. Everyone had to earn a living … Close behind sailed in an elderly woman whose name I no longer recall. Madame Marie considered the woman to be her best friend. She would sit in front of the television and shout insults at the politicians whom she disliked, much to the displeasure of the others, especially Bebert, who would shower her with mocking abuse. When things got too rowdy Madame Marie would shout them all down or threaten to turn them out if they didn’t settle down.

Madame Marie was at times brusque but fair. She liked Caban, the former butcher and now factory worker hailing from southern France, shy and lonely, drunk by mid-morning. He had been living in Hotel du Commerce since the late sixties. She was fond too, of Bebert, the chimney-sweep, a small, taciturn, melancholic chap straight out of Dicken’s David Copperfield, drunk before ten in the morning. He constantly coughed. His clothes were impregnated with soot and cigarette smoke. Bebert hardly spoke at the table, smoking like a chimney, drinking his coffee whilst Caban smiled and winced at the others’ ridiculous jokes and jibes. Day after day and night after night that sitting-room typified for me – and for the others, I suppose — a sanctuary of friendship and convivial exchange. Oftentimes, I read myself into a page of Balzac’s novel Le Père Goriot [7].

The other two residents rarely joined at that cheery table. One of them, Bolot, stayed in a room in the courtyard. He was a former German soldier who joined the French Foreign Legion after his capture during World War II. The other was called Paco, a Republican Spaniard, who escaped Franco’s persecutions after the Spanish Civil War[8].

I got to know them all, save Bebert. We had no time to get really acquainted. “Poor Bebert,” Madame Marie would sigh. One evening as we sat watching a film Bebert knocked at her kitchen door, then staggered in towards us, blood streaming from his mouth, drenching his night-shirt. His face was ghost white. He kept murmuring, “Madame Marie … Madame Marie,” through clenched, blood-filled teeth. The chimney-sweep appeared lost in a daze. Madame Marie quickly took him by the shoulders, laid him on the sofa then trotted off to get the police. They arrived quickly (the station was two doors away). An ambulance shortly followed. Bebert was placed carefully on a stretcher and carried out.

We never saw Bebert again nor had any news of him. Madame Marie presumed that he had died of a haemorrhage from too much smoking, drinking and chimney soot. She had his room cleaned and fumigated. His belongings amounted to a pair of torn slippers, two shirts and trousers and two used razor blades. On the other hand, she gasped at the hundreds of empty packs of cigarettes. Bebert’s world had been compressed into a nebulous routine of cigarette and alcohol fumes and chimney soot. A bleak, Dickensian world to say the least.

Poor Bebert. He had been living at Hotel du Commerce for eleven years. A fellow without a family, friends … known to no one. He practiced a trade that was gradually dying out. No one ever asked for him at the reception — never a phone call. He was the unknown toiler whose burial stone carries no name because he had no money for a headstone. He was probably buried in the fosse commune[9].

Caban, whom I knew much better than Bebert, fared no better. His salary flowed away upon the torrent of fumes of cigarettes and drink, or as Madame Marie put it coarsely: “He pissed it all against a wall!” Too much gambling, too. So his wife left him, after that, his sixteen-year-old daughter. They were never to be heard from again. Caban was soft-spoken, very shy. Quite frankly, I never saw Caban sober, except at six in the morning before catching the bus to work at the wine-bottling factory. He had asked the foreman, Mister Tomas, to have me hired on for the summer since many of the workers had gone off on holiday. In the café whilst waiting for the morning bus, he began his inglorious day with coffee and a few shots of cognac. He continued his indulging all through the working day on the first floor of the factory where he drank the last dregs of wine from the bottles that were to be washed. By five o’clock he was completely sloshed! Mister Tomas kept him on out of pity. Besides, Caban was inoffensive. Madame Marie even told me he had saved a girl from drowning in the Seine River in Paris. But let Madame Marie tell this very true tale: “He was walking along the banks of the Seine after work when he heard the screams and splashings below him. Caban was a strong swimmer at that time, so he took off his shoes, dived in and grabbed the girl in the water. In a few minutes he had brought her back to the banks safe and sound where a crowd of people had gathered, applauding him. The young girl cried and cried but was unhurt. And you know, her father was the owner of the France-Soir daily newspaper. So, to thank Caban, he gave him a certain sum of money and offered him the France-Soir freeeveryday for the rest of his life. All he had to do was give his name at the news-stands.”

“Does Caban read the France-Soir? I never see him reading a newspaper,” I asked naively.

She laughed. “No, Caban never reads. He never had much instruction.”

I became quite friendly with Caban since we worked together at the factory, although he would constantly upbraid me for not joining him in his ritualised morning concoction. I insisted that I never drink. He would snicker and shrug his bony shoulders. “All men drink!” he slurred. That of course was a subject of conjecture which, and this goes without saying, I never pursued with him.

One day whilst I translated for Madame Marie at the reception, I mentioned that I hadn’t seen Caban for more than a week. Neither had she. Mister Tomas had telephoned, too. Caban never missed a day at work … never. She told me to go upstairs and knock at his door. Which I did for several minutes. Silence. When I returned without news of him she immediately dawdled out to the police station. She was back in no time with two policemen. I accompanied them upstairs. They pounded at the door then kicked it open. There knelt Caban over his bed, his face black as coal. The stench in his room made us gag. I hurried down to tell Madame Marie. And as we stood in the reception, the ambulance arrived and four men, escorted by the police, placed Caban’s frail, limp body into a plastic bag and dragged it down the steps, one by one : thump … thump … thump …  Madame Marie started to cry. I covered my ears …

Poor Caban had been dead for over a week, due no doubt to a blood clot of the brain. Madame Marie never forgot those thumps on the flight of stairs. Nothing was said of his death in the newspapers, even in the tabloids. Like Bebert, he succumbed to a companionless death, without flowers or prayers. Without sorrow or tears … He too was probably buried in a fosse commune. He had no bank account. The police found six Francs in his pocket … Six more than in Bebert’s …

Paco, the Spanish refugee, had been living in Hotel du Commerce for seven years. His lack of good French isolated him from the Paris scene, so he took refuge in the clusters of Hispanic scenes that peppered the Parisian streets, especially the taverns where flamenco music could be heard on Rue Moufftard, only a fifteen-minute walk from our hotel.

Since I speak Spanish quite well, I had on many occasions accompanied Paco to these musical haunts of his, where the paella was copious, the sangria flowed like water, the music, if not excellent, loud enough to forget one’s trials and tribulations of the day. Above all, it was cheap …

Paco drank heavily, rum and coke or sangria, but never behaved uncivilly. His deep, black eyes bore into mine whenever he spoke of his luckless past: “My older brother was killed in the war against Franco. I escaped via the Pyrenees leaving behind my parents. Since 1940, I’ve been living in France, working in factories or in the fields. And you know, I still don’t have my French papers. I have no identity! I can’t go back to Spain because of Franco[10], so I must stay here unloading lorries at the Halle Market or washing dishes in grotty gargotes [11].” Paco clapped to the sound of tapping feet and to the rhythmic chords of a furious guitar. “Every now and then I repair the toilets at the hotel which are constantly clogged up.” He snapped his fingers, ordered tapas[12], spoke to his friends in the language of his parents.

The fiery Spaniard would introduce me to his Spanish artist friends, all of them sullen, sad figures whose love of Spain had evaporated into hazy fumes of sangria, nostalgia, gaudy flamenco music, tasteless tapas and brief love affairs. As to Paco, he appeared to be a loner, an ill-starred chap lost in a huge city of lost souls, of crowds so busy that their business took no heed of such a shadowy figure, fugitive and fleeting, drifting from tapas to tapas, sangria to sangria.

Paco hated Paris, but it proved the only place for a stateless refugee to avoid police roundups. For Paco, Hotel du Commerce symbolised a haven for marginals, the homeless and stateless. “Madame Marie is my guardian angel,” he would croak. “My very fat guardian angel” as he clapped and stamped to the riotous music. “The police will never find me … never!” he boasted raising his glass to Madame Marie’s health.

He was wrong. One hot September week, Paco couldn’t be found in the hotel. Madame Marie suspected foul play. Two days later the police arrived, informing her that a certain Paco Fuentes had been apprehended without papers. He had been extradited to his country of origin. His belongings? He had none, like Bebert and Caban. The little he did possess were thrown into a bag and out into a rubbish bin. Poor Paco — would he ever find his parents?

On my many jaunts through Spain, after Franco’s death, I tried to locate Paco Fuentes, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack as the expression goes. Here, however, I must thank the excellent Spaniard, for it was he who introduced me to the world of flamenco.

Bolot kept very much to himself. Unlike the other residents he never drank nor smoked. You didn’t want to muck about with Bolot — a massive fellow, indeed. But then again who would muck about with a former French Foreign Legion soldier?

Yet, Bolot’s aloofness and reserved demeanour attracted many people to him. He had that sort of winning smile, and since he spoke very good French, albeit with a heavy German accent, he befriended those who came into contact with him. Moreover, he shared a passion for stamp-collecting. That was Bolot’s raison d’être[13]! His collection had become very well known to both specialists and amateurs. I would accompany him to the Flea Market on Sundays and there he would trade stamps with the best of stamp-collectors. Stamps from the Soviet Union, China, India, Cuba, several African states, Turkey and Libya. Bolot didn’t need the money, his pension as a soldier was comfortable enough. He simply enjoyed the thrills.

One day as we strolled back to the metro as he towered above me, Bolot acknowledged his good luck: “I volunteered for the army at seventeen, an enthusiastic patriot. Was captured by the French after two days of combat and given a choice: prison or the Foreign Legion. I chose the second, changed my nationality and name.”

“What was your German name?” He smiled but left the question unanswered.

“So I fought for the French. A traitor to my homeland. Call me what you like, I couldn’t sit out the war in a prison for years and years. You know, I never went back to Germany. When I quit the Legion I received my pension and came straight to Paris, the City of Lights.”

“To do what?”

“To sell stamps!” Bolot laughed. “No, I worked as a mechanic in factories until retiring.”

I got to know Bolot as well as Caban since all three of us worked at the same wine-bottling factory in the summer of 1974. He left earlier than me because of a fight between him and an obnoxious individual who abhorred Germans, even though Bolot had acquired French nationality long ago. Bolot refused to fight him, despite the other’s punches, which the former Legionnaire dodged or blocked with considerable ease. If Bolot had really fought, he would have killed him. Mister Tomas broke up the squabble, sacked the young rowdy on the spot and apologised to Bolot. Bolot exercised the noble art of self-restraint.

When I left for grape-picking at the end of September, then on to Italy and Sicily, it was Bolot who helped me repair the broken spokes of my bicycle. Outside Hotel du Commerce, Madame Marie and Bolot wished me the best of luck, inviting me back whenever it suited me. There would always be a spare room for me she insisted. I cycled out of Paris in the direction of Burgundy. I had spent six months at Hotel du Commerce …

After a month of grape-picking I returned to Palermo only to discover that the magazine had failed due to lack of interest … and funds. Relieved, I went to Madrid to begin a career as a flamenco guitarist. Time passed quickly. Or as Madame Marie would philosophically say: “It’s not time that passes but us!”  Exhausted from so much playing in studios and taverns, I decided to take a break and travel to France and visit Hotel du Commerce.

It was under new ownership. The manager, an Italian, informed me that Madame Marie had died years ago from dementia after a spell in a nursing home. How everything had changed: the reception room had been refurbished and Madame Marie’s Balzacian sitting-room had become a dining-room for guests. The once starless hotel had become a three-star hotel.

I stayed two nights and paid sixty euros a night! In the seventies, I paid the equivalent of one and a half euros! True, all the rooms had been painted in bright, cheery colours, fitted out with toilets and showers. But sixty euros? Besides, I like a hotel that is lived in, not just slept in …

With the death of Madame Marie, a whole era had come to a close. Hotel du Commerce had decidedly conformed to the standards of kitsch. There were no more residents, only tourists. All the single rooms on the fifth floor had become large rooms suitable for modern travelling couples. Gone were the days and nights round Madame Marie’s convivial table, her coffees and conversation. Those colourful figures who had imprinted their existence there, whose joys and sorrows had been shared by Madame Marie and myself, no longer painted those refurbished walls simply because the epoch ignored the very existence of such figures.

Indeed, who during those two nights reminisced the glittering epoch of Madame Marie’s Hotel du Commerce? Who even imagined her singular story and those of her likeable, touching residents? No one. No one, perhaps, except me, who vouched to safeguard those memories. Memories of the anonymous whose faces will never be seen on photos, nor names ever printed in books.

[1]        ‘Street’.

[2]        1954-1962.

[3]        ‘Secret Army Organisation’ founded in 1954 that fought against those forces who wished to prevent the independance of Algeria.

[4]        ‘The National Liberation Front’, also founded in 1954 whose militants fought for the independance of Algeria.

[5]        Jargon in French for ‘policeman.

[6]        ‘Underground’ or ‘subway’.

[7]        ‘Father Goriot’ written in 1834. Translated into English by Ellen Marriage.

[8]        1936-1939.

[9]        ‘Communal grave’.

[10]      General Francesco Franco died in 1975, and with his death, King Juan Carlos proclamed Spain a democratic nation.

[11]      French jargon for ‘cheap, unsavoury restaurants’.

[12]      Spanish appetisers.

[13] French: Reason for being

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Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Categories
Conversation

Peregrinations of a Diplomat’s Wife

Ratnottama Sengupta converses with Reba Som

Reba Som

“If Washington goes to Dhaka, there’s a chance that Paris might make it to Stockholm. And of course Moscow would be moved to Geneva!?”

Sounds like gibberish? But this is a piece of the speculative conversation on transfers and postings that is regular in the drawing rooms of embassies and consulates, Dr Reba Som found out on her very first posting after her marriage with Himachal Som.

Both were Presidency graduates pursuing higher careers — he in Foreign Service, she on the threshold of a doctorate. But life as the wife of an ambassador wasn’t only about glamour postings, fancy holidays and brush with celebrities. It was a mixed bag of blessings, as the woman who had grown up in Kolkata with a grounding in Tagore’s music would soon conclude. For, there were the dark clouds of life away from ageing parents and school going children; from the comfort of familiar food and mastered language; from developing your potential and crafting your own identity in the world out there.

In recent years we have read accounts of retired ambassadors and career diplomats’ experiences in diplomatic life. In her memoirs, Hop, Skip and Jump; Peregrinations of a Diplomat’s Wife, Dr Som’s is a woman’s voice, abounding in stories and observations about how the spouses keep a brave front in alien surroundings to hold up the best image of her country. In this conversation, she voices outmore about her encounters with racism, with political emergencies and exigencies. In short, about her lessons in a borderless world of multicoloured humanity.

You went to Brazil (1972), then to Denmark (1974), then Delhi (1976), Pakistan (1978), New York (1981), Dhaka (1984), then Ottawa (1991), Laos (1994), Italy (2002). Please share your gleanings from these lands.

The roller coaster ride was a saga of discovery. Travelling across expanses of the planet earth that we had seen only on the pages of geography books and atlases was a great learning experience. I gained an understanding of diverse cultures, imbibed social customs, became proficient in languages, and was exposed to exotic cuisines. At the same time I faced homesickness. Each posting entailed the challenge of uprooting oneself, finding schools for children, and reinventing oneself every time.

A large part of this life was in the years that had no mobile phones, no video calls, no social media, no internet communication. What did you thrive on?

Continents and hemispheres away from home, the only link with family and friends then was the diplomatic bag. The weekly mail service ferried across oceans by the ministry in Delhi contained letters and parcels from home. We were asked to judiciously use the weight allowed to bring spices, tea, condiments, clothing and other necessities. It became a ritual to write long letters and send them weekly by the diplomatic bag to Delhi from where they would be posted to respective destinations throughout India.

Along with letters would come bundles of magazines and newspapers. These brought us news of home from which we were truly cut off. With no television or internet or phone calls, we were in the dark about all news, be it political, social or entertainment. Every week on the bag day we waited anxiously to receive the newspapers – and the letters, which had instructions, news, recipes, advice, gossip. All of these were crucial for nurturing our souls.

One telegram from my father in 1973 carried the cryptic message: ‘Reba, solitary First class.’ These were the MA results of Calcutta University which were out after a delay of two years.

I was most taken up by the understated humour of some of your encounters in your memoir. Please recount some of them.

On our very first posting, to Brazil, not only our unaccompanied baggage but also our accompanied baggage did not arrive. Eventually when the lost luggage showed up, Himachal’s ceremonial bandhgala[1]was steeped brown — in the colour of the gur[2] my mother had lovingly packed in!

In Brazil, we found the people to be fun loving but too flamboyant. They made tall claims that their institutions were the biggest in the world. But reality often proved the claims to be hollow. Such was the Presidential bid to make the tallest flag pole in the world in Brazil’s new capital, Brasilia. A very tall flag mast was indeed built but the huge flag atop it was torn to shreds since the engineers had not factored in the wind speed at that height. Brazilians mirthfully called it the President’s erection!

And at Denmark. we were surprised by a sudden news of our posting to Mozambique. We had long realised that we were mere players on the chessboard of postings – we could be shunted off across continents at the whims of the powers that be. By the same token, a couple of phone calls by the newly arrived ambassador undid the mischief. We were happy to unpack and settle down again. The only guilt I felt was when I met the owner of Anthony Berg chocolates: I had in no time demolished the entire carton of chocolates he had sent as farewell gift!

You are among the few I know who have mothered in different continents. So how different is it to become a mother away from India?

I always felt that the best way to get to know certain nuances of a country’s cultural tradition was to have babies in them. My elder son, Vishnu was born in Copenhagen and Abhishek, the younger one, in New York — and my experiences each time couldn’t be more different.

In Copenhagen, a social democrat country, hospital visits for full term pregnant women were fixed on a certain day of the week. On the preceding day they had to collect their urine in a jerry can and present it for lab examination. I was confounded and not a little embarrassed to meet other mothers-to-be, swinging their jerry cans like designer bags without fail on the appointed day. I learnt only later that, from the urine examination doctors would note the condition of the placenta and not unnecessarily rush patients into childbirth with caesarean and surgical intervention!

In NY, on the day of my discharge, the hospital staff were highly excited because Elizabeth Taylor had come in for one of her facelifts. I could not forgive them their magnificent obsession when, along with a goodbye hamper, they wheeled in a bassinet with a different baby. On my protestation the nurse rudely shouted, “Can’t you read… the tag says Som Junior?” Shocked by the implication I said, I could not only read but also see! And it was not my child. While everyone was looking on in disbelief another nurse wheeled in my little one. The babies had their diapers changed and were put back in the wrong bassinet.

Years later, we discovered in an informal meeting with an American ambassador that Abhishek was indeed an American citizen. Because, at the time of the child’s birth Himachal was posted not to the embassy in Washington but to the consulate in New York. Only consulate children were given the privilege. This discovery, rechecked by State Department Records, gave our son the US passport. It was a windfall as Abhishek went on to graduate summa cum laude from a prestigious management school in the US and enter Wall Street as an investment banker.

I must also share another truth about birthing away from India. Before Vishnu’s birth, my parents had come to Copenhagen. When I was discharged from the hospital I received their care and being fed Ma’s cuisine was the best gift I could have. So, when phone calls came from hospital, followed by visits enquiring about my state of depression, I was totally confused. I realised how many mothers suffered from postpartum depression in a society bereft of nurturing family care.

How could you master languages as removed as Portuguese from Lao and Italian from Urdu? Is a flair for languages the key to this proficiency or the training imparted before each posting?

 I enjoy learning languages. My stint at learning French at Ramakrishna Mission Golpark stood me in good stead in grasping Portuguese in Brazil, French in Ottawa and Italian in Rome — all Latin languages. But there was also the hazard of mixing up some phrases and words, so similar yet so different! Like Bon Appetit in French and Bueno Appetito in Italian. Or Amor in Portuguese; amore in Italian and amour in French.

Sometimes though, I accidentally learnt how language travels. My mother had packed in many petticoats to match with my saris but without their cord. We went to a store that promised to hold all we need but all my sign language did not bring what I needed. “Phita is obviously not available here,” I told Himachal, preparing to leave. Suddenly the storekeeper perked up. ‘Fita, si senhora!” he said and produced bundles of cord.

In due time I found out that janala, kedara and chabi – Bengali for window, chair and keys – had travelled from India to become janela, cadeira and chavi.

What did Dhaka mean to one raised in West Bengal – per se the Ghoti-Bangal[3]divide, your roots  or the cultural side with Firoza Begum and Nazrul Geeti?

Dhaka was a great posting in so many ways. It was a hop, skip and jump away from my home town Kolkata, with the same language and culture and yet was a foreign posting with foreign allowances!

As you know, there’s a subtle cultural difference in East and West Bengal. Both speak Bengali but in East Bengal, it’s a colloquial rustic dialect while West Bengal speaks its refined cultural form. This formed the infamous ‘Ghoti-Bangal’ divide: Urban Calcuttans looked askance at their country cousins from the East.

The difference extended to the palate. East Bengalis flavoured their dishes with more chillies and West Bengalis, with a pinch of sugar. For the fish loving people, the two iconic symbols are Hilsa and Prawns, for East and West. Emotions soared high in Kolkata when the supporters of the football teams, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, clashed, after intensely fought matches that spurred deadly arguments and bets.

Given this background, Himachal created a minor storm by announcing to his parents from Chinsurah, Hooghly in West Bengal that he would marry a girl whose parents were from Dhaka and Faridpur in East Bengal.  Ghoti-Bangal feud remained the subject of much friendly banter between Himachal and me until we were posted in Dhaka. There, in a diplomatic turnaround, Himachal played down his Ghoti background to announce that his mother’s family was from Chittagong and he was born in the principal’s bungalow in Daulatpur, Khulna, where his grandfather was posted.

To give a bit of Himachal’s family background: Dr Pramod Kumar Biswas, the first Indian doctorate in Agricultural Sciences from Hokkaido University in Japan, had settled in Dhaka as principal of the Agricultural College. His charming daughter Kana won the heart of Dr Rabindranath Som, a veterinarian who weathered the predictable Ghoti Bangal storm to win her hand in marriage. 

When my parents Jyotsnamay and Manashi Ray visited us, we couldn’t visit Patishwar in Rajshahi district, where my maternal grandfather Atul Sen had worked with Rabindranath Tagore before he was arrested for revolutionary activities with Anushilan Samiti, and exiled to Kutubdia, an isolated island in the Bay of Bengal. As a headmaster, he had given shelter to Jatirindranath Mukherji, popularly known as Bagha Jatin[4].

It was a breezy day when my octogenarian father revisited Faridpur Zilla School. The colonial bungalow had acquired a fresh coat of terracotta paint. Finding his way to the headmaster’s room, he announced with a lump in his throat that history had been rewritten, boundaries redefined and new national identities forged since 1923, the year he had matriculated.

The headmaster, delving through yellowing files, fished out the matriculation results for that year. My father’s face was that of an excited school boy impatient to show off his prowess: “Look at my maths marks! Oh yes, my English scores were a trifle lower than expected because I had a touch of fever, but look at Jasimuddin’s marks in English! Thank God, he passed it.” We looked around in hushed surprise. This isn’t The Jasimuddin, the beloved poet of Bangladesh? “But of course,” my father responded. “Jasim’s weakness in English was my strength!”

Dhaka was also personally fulfilling as my doctoral studies, which I had carried across three continents, found fruition at last! On another front, I met with success in gaining the confidence and blessings of Firoza Begum, the legendary exponent of Nazrul Geeti.

The songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam were a great favourite of my father. He often hummed those made famous by Firoza Begum. Since I had trained in Tagore songs from age five, I never aspired to master the distinctly different style of rendition. A chance encounter with the golden voice revived this desire. Firoza Begum bluntly refused. When I persisted, she wanted to hear me sing a few Tagore songs.

One morning I mounted three flights of steps, harmonium on my driver’s shoulder, to enter her flat with apprehension. At her bidding, I sang four songs of Tagore. She heard me without any comment, then she asked why I hadn’t been singing for Bangladesh television. My relief was palpable! I had passed her test.

Over the next two years, my weekly classes with her extended well beyond the music lessons to serious discussions on life itself and the meaning of religion. What began as a guru-shishya[5]relationship, transcended to deep friendship. She declined any remuneration and dearly wished that I should cut a disc. This wish of hers came true only when Debojyoti Mishra heard me and decided to record my Nazrul-songs for Times Music in 2016.

Food is perhaps the first face of culture. So please share with us some of your culinary adventures. Or should I say ‘fishy’ stories?

Adventures? I could talk about the chapli kebabs in Pakistan, or about putting samosas in Bake Sales. I could tell you about making rasgullas from powder milk. I could even tell you about our gardener in Laos who merrily collected every scorpion and caterpillar that came his way, “for snacks,” he told me. But let me focus on fish.

The very first party I hosted at home in Brazil led me to seek substitutes for Indian ingredients. Fish of course had to be on the menu, mustard fish at that. I had already learnt from the Brazilian ambassador in Delhi that surubim, being boneless, was the most suited for curries. So surubim it was for months until the day I had to go to the fishmongers – and found it was a monster of a whale!

In Pakistan, traversing the arid countryside of Sind, the train would stop at stations where fillets of pala were being shallow fried on large skillets. Savouring its delicate flavour we went into a discussion on the merits of pala versus hilsa. Both have a shiny silver body with thin bones, both swim upstream against current. The taste of hilsa steam-cooked in mustard sauce is a super delight in both Dhaka and Kolkata. There of course the discussions are on the merits of the hilsa from Padma and Ganga respectively.

In Laos I once called the plumber to ease the draining of the bathtub since the pipe had got clogged. He arrived with a live fish in a plastic bag and promptly emptied it into the pipe. It would eat through the slush as it travelled through the pipe, he assured me!

Post retirement, Himachal settled to honing his culinary skills. Cooking, which he had started in Ottawa, became his lasting hobby. He would shop for fish in C R Park or INA Market[6]. He would pore over cookbooks and plot innovative recipes. “Cooking,” he was quoted in Outlook magazine, “is art thought out with palate.” And his piece de resistance was the salmon baked whole.

Which was your most cherished, or striking, brush with celebrities in world history?

At one of the finest dinners in Copenhagen I found myself seated next to a countess. She invited me to visit her since she lived in the neighbourhood. The next day a liveried man arrived to escort us to an imposing manor house. We were welcomed with sherry and we had to select a card from a silver salver with the name of our partner for the dinner. I was escorted by a handsome young man who floored me when we exchanged names. He was the descendent of Count Leo Tolstoy!

Another memorable encounter was with a person straight out of the history books. I was strolling in a forested park outside Copenhagen. I noticed with a shock that I was looking into a glass topped coffin. The aristocratic face inside had an aquiline nose and a goatee that lent a refinement to the visage that still sported a faint smile. The starched lace collar was held in place by a jewelled button that showed impeccable taste. But the elegant hands tapered off to skeletal fingers, and the feet too had become skeletal.

The plaque at the bottom of the coffin informed us that this was James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, with whom Mary, Queen of Scots had fallen in love. It was a fatal attraction since both were married. But soon her husband, Lord Darnley, the father of her son James, the future king of Scotland and England, was mysteriously burnt down in a manor, and Bothwell was granted a divorce. However, their marriage incensed Catholic Europe, so Mary gave herself up to buy the release of Bothwell, who fled to Denmark.

‘Whoever marries your mother is your father’: this dictum defines the acceptance of whatever political dispensation you are forced to live with, at home or abroad. So how did you cope with a turmoil like Emergency or antagonism in Islamabad? 

We had returned to Delhi in the midst of Emergency. We felt some relief to see trains running on time and punctuality being maintained in government offices. Corrupt officers were being hauled up and over-population being addressed. But the atmosphere was sombre and conversations hushed. The deep scar left by the Emergency saw Indira Gandhi being swept out of power the following year.

In Islamabad tension had mounted when I arrived over the imminent execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto[7]. Our residence had become the favourite watering hole for Indian and international journalists who knew Himachal from his Delhi days. Animated discussions over drinks were followed by quick despatches typed out on my rickety typewriter. Unending speculations on the unfolding drama had kept us on tenterhooks. Then one morning in April 1979, the phone rang to say, “It’s done.” [8]

How did Italy change your life?

Italy was easily the best posting of my life in embassies, not only because of its rich history. There I found Italian artists painting inspired by Tagore’s lyrics, and singers like Francesca Cassio singing Alain Danielou’s translations. What made them take it on? The question led me to rediscover Tagore.

My singing of Rabindra Sangeet also found recognition in Rome. My first CD album was released there. I was in many concerts. It was so fulfilling when my translation of Tagore’s lyrics into English found appreciation. Tagore himself believed that his songs were ‘real songs’ with emotions that speak to all people. I began translation in earnest. And that led me to write Rabindranath Tagore: The Singer and his Song (Penguin 2009). The book, with my translation of 50 Tagore songs, was considered very useful to many performing artistes who could understand and represent Tagore better in their art forms.

Please tell us about growing up with Tagore.

Like many girls in Kolkata I began learning Rabindra Sangeet from the age of five. Over the years the songs grew on me. The unique lyrics conveying a gamut of emotions spoke to me when I was far away on postings abroad. I continued my practice of the music through the years and felt vindicated when I got the opportunity to perform to appreciative audiences abroad and back in India.

Why did you work on his songs rather than his poems or stories?

There’s something compelling about Tagore songs. Remember that Gitanjali, which won him the Nobel, was a collection of ‘Song Offerings.’ Songs had given Tagore the strength to ride over the tragedies that had beset his life. They not only helped him express his grief over the deaths and suicides in his family, they were also his mode of expressing his frustration over the political situation that obtained then. And he felt his songs would help others too. “You can forget me but not my songs,” he had written.

Did you ever feel the need to jazz up the songs for Western audiences?

Tagore’s songs are like the Ardhanariswar[9] – the lyrics and the music are inseparable. The copyright restrictions that prevailed after this death did not allow translations. And that was a handicap since his music cannot be appreciated without comprehending his lyrics which are an expression of his creative thoughts.

I would say his songs have near-perfect balance between evocative lyrics, matching melody and rhythmic structure. And the incredible variety of his musical oeuvre touches every emotion felt by any human soul, without jazzing up.

Tagore’s songs are the national anthem of India and Bangladesh, and have also inspired that of Sri Lanka. But will his internationalism hold up with the change of order indicated by the recent developments on the subcontinent?

Tagore was known to be anti-nationalistic. He believed no man-made divisions can keep people segregated. He did not agree with the Western concept of ‘nation,’ he was an internationalist who accepted the ideals of democracy – ‘aamra sabai raja’[10], of gender equality – ‘aami naari, aami mohiyoshi’[11]; indeed, in equality of humans. What he wrote in lucid Bengali suited every mood. Georges Clemenceau, who was the Prime Minister of France for a second time from 1917 to 1920, had turned to Gitanjali when he heard that World War I had broken out. Even today people can relate to what he wrote.

How did all the hop skip and jump shape the feminist within Reba Som?

The wives of Foreign Service officers are often seen as decorative extensions of their spouses. People only saw the glamour we enjoyed on postings abroad, not the heartbreaks and disappointments we battled. Despite their qualifications the wives were not allowed to work abroad. Instead they had to be perfect hostesses: clad in colourful Kanjeevarams they had to prepare mounds of samosas and gulab jamuns.

But there was little recognition, appreciation or compensation by the Ministry of External Affairs of all the hard work and struggle they put in. To settle down in different postings in rapid succession. To host representational parties where they had to conjure Indian delicacies with improvised ingredients. To raise disgruntled children on paltry allowances.

Once, as the Editor of our in-house magazine, I had floated a questionnaire to all the missions abroad asking about the changing perceptions of the Foreign Service wives. That had opened a Pandora’s Box. Eventually in response to our requests the Ministry relaxed service conditions and allowed the wives to work abroad if they had the professional qualifications and received the host country’s permission. This was a veritable coup!

My own act of rebellion was accepting the Directorship of the Tagore Centre ICCR Kolkata (2008-13) after we returned to Delhi on Himachal’s retirement. It became a challenge for me to try and get the Tagore Centre on the cultural map of Kolkata, proving to myself and my disbelieving family in Delhi that it was possible!

[1] Somewhat like a Chinese collared coat

[2] Molasses

[3] Ghoti – People from West Bengal state in India
Bangal – People from Bangladesh

[4] Bagha Jatin or Joyotinadranth Mukherjee (1879-1915) was a famous name in the Indian Independence struggle

[5] Teacher-student

[6] Markets in Delhi

[7] Zulfikar Ali Bhutto(1928-1979) was the fourth president of Pakistan and later he served as the Prime Minister too.

[8] Bhutto was executed on 4th April 1979

[9] Half man half woman

[10] We are all kings

[11] I am a woman, noble and great

Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of  The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award. 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Excerpt

Shabnam: A Novel by Syed Mujtaba Ali

Title: Shabnam

Author: Syed Mujtaba Ali

Translated from Bengali by Nazes Afroz

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

Badshah Amanullah was surely off his rocker. Or else why would he hold a ball-dance in an ultra-conservative country like Afghanistan? On the occasion of Independence Day, Afghanistan’s first ball-dance would be held.

We, the foreigners, were not that bothered. But there was a buzz of restlessness among the mullahs and their followers—the water carriers, tailors, grocers, and the servants. My servant, Abdur Rahman, while serving the morning tea, muttered, ‘Nothing is left of religious decency.’

I did not pay much heed to Abdur Rahman. I was no messiah like Krishna. The task of saving ‘religious decency’ had not been bestowed upon me.

‘Those hulking men will prance around the dance floor holding on to shameless women.’

I asked, ‘Where? In films?’

After that there was no stopping Abdur Rahman. The ancient Roman wild orgies would have sounded like child’s play compared to the juicy imageries of the upcoming dance event that he described. Finally, he concluded, ‘Then they switch off the lights at midnight. I don’t know what happens after that.’

I said, ‘What’s that to you, you mindless babbler?’

Abdur Rahman went mum. Whenever I called him a blathering prattler, he understood that his master was in a bad mood. I would use the Bengali slang word for it and being a seasoned man, though Abdur Rahman did not know the language, he would be able to read my mood.

I was out in the mild evening. Electric lamps lit up the bushes of Pagman. The tarmacked road was spotlessly clean. I was meandering absentmindedly, thinking it was the month of Bhadra and Sri Krishna’s birthday had been celebrated the previous day. My birthday too, according to Ma. It must be raining heavily in Sylhet, my home. Ma was possibly sitting in the north veranda. Her adoptive daughter Champa was massaging her feet and asking her, ‘When will young brother come home?’

The monsoon season is the most difficult one for me in this foreign land. There is no monsoon in Kabul, Kandahar, Jerusalem or Berlin. Meanwhile in Sylhet, Ma is flustered with the nonstop rain. Her wet sari refuses to dry; she is in a tizzy from the smoke of the wet wood of the oven. Even from here I can see the sudden pouring of rain and the sun that comes out after a while. There are glitters of happiness on the rose plants in the courtyard, the night jasmine at the corner of the kitchen, and on the leaves of the palm tree in the backyard.

There was no such verdant beauty here.

Look at that! I had lost my way. Nine at night. Not a soul on the street. Who could I ask for directions?

A band was playing dance numbers in the big mansion to the right.

Oh! This was the dance-hall as described by Abdur Rahman. The waiters and bearers of the building would surely be able to direct me to my hotel. I needed to go to the service doors at the back of the building.

I approached.

Right at that moment, a young woman marched out.

I first saw her forehead. It was like the three-day-old young moon. The only difference was the moon would be off-white—cream coloured—but her forehead was as white as the snow peaks of the Pagman mountains. You have not seen it? Then I would say it was like undiluted milk. You have not seen that either. Then I can say it was like the petals of the wild jasmine. No adulteration of it is possible as yet.

Her nose was like a tiny flute. How was it possible to have two holes in such a small flute? The tip of the nose was quivering. Her cheeks were as red as the ripe apples of Kabul; yet they were of a shade that made it abundantly clear it was not the work of any rouge. I could not figure out if her eyes were blue or green. She was adorned in a well-tailored gown and was wearing high-heeled shoes.

Like a princess she ordered, ‘Call Sardar Aurangzeb Khan’s motor.’

Attempting to say something, I fumbled.

She, by then, looked properly at me and figured out that I was not a servant of the hotel. She also understood that I was a foreigner. First, she spoke in French, ‘Je veux demand pardon, monsieur—forgive me—’ Then she said it in Farsi.

In my broken Farsi I said, ‘Let me look for the driver.’

She said, ‘Let’s go.’

Smart girl. She would be hardly eighteen or nineteen.

Before reaching the parking lot, she said, ‘No, our car isn’t here.’

‘Let me see if I can arrange another one,’ I said.

Raising her nose an inch or so, in rustic Farsi she said, ‘Everyone is peeping to see what debauchery is taking place inside. Where will you find a driver?’

I involuntarily exclaimed, ‘What debauchery?’

Turning around in a flash, the girl faced me and took my measure from head to toe. Then she said, ‘If you’re not in a hurry, walk me to my house.’

‘Sure, sure,’ I joined her.

The girl was sharp.

Soon she asked, ‘For how long have you been living in this country? Pardon—my French teacher has said one shouldn’t put such questions to a stranger.’

‘Mine too, but I don’t listen.’

Whirling around she faced me again and said, ‘Exactment—rightly said. If anyone asks, say I’m going with you, or say Daddy introduced me to you. And don’t you ask me any question like I’m a nobody. And I will not ask anything as if you have no country or no home. In our land not asking prying questions is akin to the height of rudeness.’

I replied, ‘Same in my land too.’

She quipped, ‘Which country?’

I said, ‘Isn’t it apparent that I’m an Indian?’

‘How come? Indians can’t speak French.’

I said, ‘As if the Kabulis can!’

She burst out laughing. It seemed in the fit of laughter she suddenly twisted her ankle. ‘Can’t walk any longer. I’m not used to walking in such high heels. Let’s go to the tennis court; there are benches there.’

Dense darkness. The electric lamps were glowing far away. We needed to reach the tennis court through a narrow path. I said, ‘Pardon,’ as I touched her arm inadvertently.

Her laughter had no limits. She said, ‘Your French is strange, so is your Farsi.’

My young ego was hurt. ‘Mademoiselle!’

‘My name is Shabnam.’

(Extracted from Shabnam by Syed Mujtaba Ali, translated by Nazes Afroz. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2024)

About the Book

Afghanistan in the 1920s. A country on the cusp of change. And somewhere in it, a young man and woman meet and fall in love.

Shabnam is an Afghan woman, as beautiful as she is intelligent. Majnun is an Indian man, working in the country as a teacher. Theirs is an unlikely love story, but it flowers nonetheless. Breaking the barriers of culture and language, the two souls meet. Shabnam is poetry personified—she knows the literary works of Farsi poets of different eras. Majnun is steeped in the language and thoughts of Bengal. Together, they find love in immortal words and in the wisdom of the ages.

As the country hurtles towards yet another cataclysmic change, and the ruling king flees into exile, Shabnam is in danger from those who covet her for her famous beauty. Can she save herself and her Indian lover and husband from them?

Shabnam has been hailed as one of the most beautiful love stories written in Bengali. Lyrical and tragic, this pathbreaking novel appears in English for the first time in an elegant translation by the translator of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s famous travelogue Deshe Bideshe (In a Land Far from Home).

About the Author

Born in 1904, Syed Mujtaba Ali was a prominent literary figure in Bengali literature. A polyglot, a scholar of Islamic studies and a traveller, Mujtaba Ali taught in Baroda and at Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan. Deshe Bideshe was his first published book (1948). By the time he died in 1974, he had more than two dozen books—fiction and non-fiction—to his credit.

About the Translator

A journalist for over four decades, Nazes Afroz has worked in both print and broadcasting in Kolkata and in London. He joined the BBC in London in 1998 and spent close to fifteen years with the organization. He has visited Afghanistan, Central Asia and West Asia regularly for over a decade. He currently writes in English and Bengali for various newspapers and magazines and is working on a number of photography projects.

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Categories
Musings

In the Grip of Violence

Ratnottama Sengupta muses on the ongoing wars and violence as acts of terror and gazes back to an incident in the past which resulted in a powerful Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat that she has translated here

The world is in the grip of violence, Rabindranath Tagore wrote on March 5, 1927, sitting in the abode of peace – Santiniketan. Full 97 years later, the world is still in the grip of violence?

It’s Gaza today. Ukraine yesterday. Afghanistan some days ago. Sri Lanka not so long ago. Sometimes it is Bosnia. At other times, it’s Vietnam. Lands far flung and near adorn themselves with blood-red mark of hatred. Religion. Self-seeking dictators. Communism. Global lust for power. No matter what is at stake, the pawn is an innocent life. Always. A woman. An elder. An unborn child…

Tagore wrote Hingshay unmatto prithibi [1]– “The world is in the grip of violence as a prayer to the Almighty. The delirium is leading to conflicts, cruel and ceaseless… Crooked is the world today, tangled its philosophy. No bond is sacred.” And the anguish of such a state of affairs? It led even the Eternal Bard of Bengal to pray for a new birth of ‘Him of Boundless Life.’ “Save them,” Tagore had prayed to the Serene, “raise your eternal voice of hope” so that “Love’s lotus, with its inexhaustible store of nectar” may open its petals in His light. In His immeasurable mercy. To wipe away all dark stains from the heart of the continents.

In vain he prayed.

“Forgive them!” Jesus said, for “They know not what they do!” And what did the soldiers do? They gambled for his clothes by throwing dice! (Luke 23:34)

Forgive them? “Have you forgiven those who vitiated the atmosphere and snuffed out light for innocent lives?” Tagore asked the Almighty, in ‘Proshno (Question)‘. Have you forgiven those who deal hate in the secret hours of night? Have you embraced with love those who murder the helpless in broad daylight under the cover of ideology? Don’t you wince when a pregnant Bilkis[2] is gang-raped? Why do you shed silent tears when elected rulers choke people’s voice with furtive use of power?

And like his Prayer, Tagore’s ‘Question’ too has remained unanswered. And dumb sit the messiahs when men with mistaken notion of mission kill, maim, mutilate hostages who become mere numbers in newspaper headlines – until a new dateline wipes it off our collective memory.  Thus, once again, the world was shaken by brutalities carried out in the name of God, in Dhaka’s elite neighbourhood, Gulshan.

On July 1, 2016, before the Cinderella hour struck, five militants entered the Holey Artisan Bakery with bombs, machetes, pistols, and opened fire on men and women, from Italy, Japan, India, Bangladesh. Sunrise. Sunset.. Sunrise… unsuccessfully the police tried to secure the hostages. An elite force of the Bangla Army had to raid to put an end to what BBC News described as “the deadliest Islamist attack in Bangladesh”. Meanwhile? The toll had risen to 29 lives, totaling 17 foreigners, three locals, two policemen, five gunmen, and two bakery staff who were trying to earn their daily bread!

Since Gulshan is home to many embassies and high commissions in the capital of the secular nation, the news stirred up the world in no time. And prayers poured in – over cellphones, on Facebook, television and newspapers too.  Prayers of wives for their husbands. Prayers of mothers for their sons. Prayers of a niece for her aunt. Prayers of American friends for their Indian batch mate. But once again, prayers went unanswered…

Among those who did not survive to tell the story was Simona Monti of Italy who worked in textiles. Then 33 years of age, Simona was soon to go to her home an hour away from Rome, to deliver the child she had nursed in her womb for five months. But Michelangelo too did not live to breathe in the world vitiated by hatred. When the news reached her brother, he prayed his Simona’s bloodshed would make this “a more just and brotherly world.”

His prayer, too, remains unanswered.

But poets and other men of conscience did not remain silent. Within days of the incident Tarik Sujat wrote Janmer aagei aami mrityu ke korechhi alingan  (Even before my birth I embraced death, July 6, 2016). No diatribe in his words, but the muted cry of an unborn being jolts us. That cry left me with a tear in one eye and fire in the other…

On my very first reading I was touched, I was moved, I fell silent. The pensive mood of the embryonic life turned me reflective. Anger, rage, fury was not the answer to hostility, loathing, abhorrence, I realised. So will you, as you go through the poem that was handed out in Magliano Sabino when Simona’s hometown prayed for her eternal rest.

I Embraced Death Before Birth 

Even before my birth I embraced death.
I have no nation, no speech,
No stock of my own.
No distinction between Holy-Unholy,
Sin and Virtue, Sacred or Cursed.
Having seen the ghastly face of life 
I've swallowed my last drop of tear...
My first breath did not pollute 
The environs of your earth.
My last breath was the first gift 
Of this planet to me!

Maa!
You were my only playhouse,
My school, and my coffin.
I had yet to open my eyes -
And still I saw 
The sharp nails of executioner
Ripping apart my naval cord.
My ears were yet to hear sound,
Still I could catch bells 
That summon lads to schools...
The obscure sound echoed 
Through churches, temples, 
And minarets of masjids
Until, slowly, it fell silent...

My first bed was my last.
My mother's womb was 
My only home 
In the unseen world.
On that nook too, darkness descended. 
Floating down the river of blood 
I groped for my umbilical cord 
To keep me afloat...
My tiny fingers, my soft palm
Could find nothing to clutch.

In that Dance of Death 
My unseeing eyes witnessed
Koran, Bible, Gita, Tripitak
Bobbing in receding blood.
In the achromatic gloom
Of my chamber 
I got no chance to learn 
A single mark of piety!

Still...
I embraced death before I was born. 
My mother's womb is my 
Grave, my coffin, my pyre.
The world of humans 
Is enveloped in fire -
A few droplets of my meagre body 
Does not quench its thirst!

(Translated from Tarik Sujat’s Bengali poem by Ratnottama Sengupta)

Why has this portrayal of a tormented soul found voice in French, German, Swedish, Italian, English…? Why has it been translated into 17 languages? In the answer blowing in the wind lies hope for mankind. For, the answer is: Not every man is created in the image of Lucifer.  That is why, when Giulia Benedetti learnt that she will never again see her aunt Nadia Benedetti, that “she will not talk, will not comment on fashion, will not sing together again…” she wrote on Facebook: “Do not forget. Do not lose her memory. Do not let crazy people massacre. Do not let them win…”

And I immerse my voice in the Bard’s to say: “Let life come to the souls that are dead…” And I pray, bring harmony, bring rhythm, bring melody in our lives, O Serene! Wipe away every dark cloud from the world yet to dawn!

[1] The world is crazed with greed

[2] Bilkis Bano was gangraped in 2002 https://thewire.in/rights/in-her-own-words-what-bilkis-bano-went-through-in-2002

Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of  The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award. 

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