Odia literature is characterised by a profound tradition of classic narratives, with notable examples such as Fakir Mohan Senapati’s timeless Chha Mana Atha Guntha[1]. This literary corpus is further enhanced by an array of mythological and folk narratives that hold significant importance in the cultural legacy of Odisha.
These narratives persist through time because they reflect universal human experiences, encompassing themes such as land, power, family, and morality, all while being intricately linked to the historical context and cultural identity of the region. They serve not only as stories but also as reflections of society, having been shaped and refined over the years.
Readers are consistently attracted to these literary works for reasons similar to those that draw us to the writings of Shakespeare or the epic narrative of the Mahabharata: their themes are enduring, and the insights they provide remain pertinent. Similarly, publishers and curators, even at the national level, often revisit these classic tales, a trend that is entirely justifiable.
However, it is the transition to contemporary matters that strikes a significant chord. Odia literature has been progressing, albeit perhaps not as prominently or visibly as certain other Indian literary landscapes. Modern voices are addressing current issues—urban isolation, the influence of technology, caste relations, and environmental deterioration. The change is evident, yet it remains less pronounced than it has the potential to be.
What accounts for this? There may be multiple reasons.
The literary tradition of Odisha is profoundly embedded in its heritage. Classic literature is not only revered and taught but frequently eclipses modern works. Both publishers and readers exhibit a conservative inclination, preferring established texts. This trend is not unique to Odia literature; for example, Tolstoy remains a central figure in Russian literary discourse. As a result, this inclination obstructs the acknowledgment of new authors.
Modern Odia literature faces considerable challenges in its distribution. In contrast to Bengali or Tamil literature, which benefits from larger urban readerships and established translation networks, Odia books often struggle to reach broader audiences.
While digital platforms are making significant strides in this domain, the overall development is still sluggish. Without a strong market, numerous authors may opt to concentrate on more conventional themes that are viewed as more commercially viable.
The demographic composition of Odisha is primarily rural, where numerous readers find a stronger connection with stories that delve into village life or ethical dilemmas, as opposed to genres like cyberpunk or themes focused on existential angst. Although there are urban Odia authors, their readership is frequently limited in range. As a result, contemporary themes may seem alien to those who maintain a deep bond with traditional cultural settings.
The literary language of Odia typically possesses a formal tone, significantly influenced by its classical roots. This can lead to a conflict with modern terminology and global themes, posing challenges for writers who wish to innovate without jeopardising their connection to the audience. In contrast, languages such as Hindi and Malayalam readily incorporate colloquial expressions, which thrive in contemporary literature.
Nonetheless, modern Odia literature is dynamic and progressing. Short story writers are exploring a variety of topics including religion, science fiction, feminism, leftist ideologies, and climate change. Prominent authors such as Sarojini Sahu, Satya Mishra, Rabi Swain, Sadananda Tripathy, Jyoti Nanda, Bhima Prusty, Janaki Ballabh Mohapatra, Ajaya Swain, Biraja Mohapatra, Sujata Mohapatra and young writers like Debabrata Das are actively investigating these contemporary themes. Publications like Kadambini, Rebati, and Katha are offering platforms for these creative narratives.
Despite this, the main obstacle remains the need to improve visibility. Social media and over-the-top (OTT) platforms have the potential to revolutionise this landscape—just picture an Odia adaptation of Black Mirror[2]!
There is an immediate need for greater investment in Odia storytelling to effectively bridge the gap between traditional and modern narratives.
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[1] Six acres and a Third, a novel by Fakir Mohan Senapati(1843-1918) published in 1902
[2]Black Mirror is a British dystopian science fiction television anthology series that started in 2011 and is still on the run.
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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
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Title:One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam
Author: Devabrata Das (translated from Assamese by multiple translators)
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
1. A Night with Arpita
(‘Arpitar Erati’ translated by Meenaxi Barkotoki)
The side berth was created by lowering the back rests of the two single seats along the aisle of the compartment. Crouching in one corner of that berth, chin in her hands, eyes looking out of the window, could the expression on her face be called disinterest, or was it heartache? On the other hand, she had not the slightest curiosity about what was going on inside the compartment. Drawing the free end of her sari tightly around the upper half of her body, she had withdrawn even her feet into the cavity created by her sari. Her presence in the compartment seemed more like an absence. She seemed completely oblivious and unaware of her surroundings; her look betrayed a sense of resignation. Or perhaps of surrender.
Having positioned myself in the compartment, the sense of resignation that was evident in her demeanour attracted me to her the very first time that I looked at her attentively. I told myself that if I wrote a story someday on the girl, I would name her Arpita (the one who offers herself). Arpita what? Ganguly or Acharya, Roy or Majumdar? Because on hearing the Hindi strewn with Bengali words spoken by the girl’s father, (who had complained animatedly to the waiter about the stale fish served for the meal) I was certain that the girl was not an Assamese disguised in a sari, she was actually Bengali. Regardless of whether she was Assamese or Bengali, she was just a girl, a more or less pretty girl, and she was presently in another world, completely oblivious to her surroundings. Her entire being was concentrated on a point in the darkness of the world outside the compartment, a point that could easily be defined as infinity. Her absentminded beauty aroused my curiosity. Puffing at my Charminar cigarette I kept staring at her from my middle berth in the three-tiered compartment. Just then Kiran returned from the bathroom and broke my reverie. ‘What is this? Why are you already in bed? You don’t mean to go to bed so early, do you?’
This story is actually the story of Arpita and me. I am the protagonist, Arpita the heroine. Apart from the two of us, there is no need for anyone else in this story. The problem, however, is that in order to be able to describe the chain of events, the inclusion of some redundant characters becomes necessary; their presence in the story is not essential but without them it is difficult to narrate what happened. Among those extras, unnecessary characters actually, one is my friend Kiran Debnath. We work in the same office and it is on official work that both of us are travelling by train to another city. We had to travel at very short notice, so we had no reserved train seats; hence the second unnecessary character, Krishna, became necessary. Krishna lives in our neighbourhood. A young man barely out of his teens, he had recently joined the NF Railway as Travelling Ticket Inspector, in short TTI. The moment I saw him at the train station, I was relieved; we wouldn’t have to travel in the crowded, unreserved compartment after all. Since Krishna was there, with his help we would get at least two sitting seats for ourselves. But luckily there was not a huge rush that day and after doing the rounds, Krishna arranged two sleeping berths in a three-tier compartment for us. The sleeper charges for a night are five rupees fifty paise each, so eleven rupees in all. I gave him three five-rupee notes. He forgot to return the change. A little while after the train started, another uniformed ticket checker came and wrote out our reservation slips. The fourth unnecessary character in this story is Arpita’s father, who, after finishing the long and animated argument with the waiter about the stale fish served for dinner, turned his attention to his daughter. She was still staring out of the window. He told her to lie down and go to sleep, and gave her other sundry bits of advice, all of which were met with monosyllabic answers. He then climbed onto the upper berth, above his daughter. In a little while, his snoring proved that he was fast asleep. This is the last time I will mention these unnecessary characters, except for Kiran.
I told Kiran that we had a lot to do the next day. We would have to go through all the documents and records of our branch office in the town we were travelling to. It was not clear whether we would have any free time at all. So instead of sitting up chatting till late in the night, since we had secured two sleeping berths, it might be wiser to go to sleep. Like a good boy, Kiran agreed immediately and went to sleep in the berth below me. To tell the truth, I was not at all sleepy. If I had wanted to or if we were somewhere else, I would have easily chatted with Kiran for an hour or two. But at that moment, in that situation, the single-minded desire to enjoy the distracted attractiveness of a beautiful girl made me give up the wish to chat with Kiran.
Arpita sat immersed in herself on the rattling train, on that otherwise still night, ignoring the silent presence of the many other passengers sleeping in the compartment. No exam results had been declared recently. Then why was Arpita so unwaveringly distracted and sad? Was her pain intensely personal? For instance, had some sly lover cheated her and gone away, after having made a thousand promises of many-hued rainbows and eternal love? Or was there some complication in her recent wedding proposal? Had the partner that her parents chose for her, seen and approved of her but demanded a huge dowry, which made it completely impossible for her to leave her parents’ home? What could it be? What was her real story?
(Extracted from One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam by Devabrata Das, Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025.)
About the Book:
In ‘A Night with Arpita’, a beautiful young girl in a train compartment captures the imagination of the writer—but he is unable to fathom the reason for her melancholy until it is too late. In ‘Ananta with His Seema’, three apparently disconnected incidents take place on a railway platform. Descriptions of the incidents are interspersed with passages from a letter written by Ananta’s friend, that lays bare his helplessness in the face of injustice and the loss of his youthful ideals.
In the eponymous story, life imitates art with a disastrous twist. A young couple treks up a hillside to recreate for themselves the experience of two characters in a love story set in idyllic Shillong. But the beauty of the pine shrouded hills is marred by extremist violence and their climb to the top of the hill has an unforeseen, macabre end.
Each of the eighteen stories, translated by multiple translators, in this collection provides an insight into life in an area of conflict, told with irony and ingenuity. Regarded as a torchbearer of post-modernism in Assamese literature, Das is often a character in his stories, blurring the distinction between writer and narrator and, often, between fiction and reality, leaving readers to construct their own endings. This first English translation of his work is a valuable addition to the pantheon of India’s regional literature.
About the Author
Devabrata Das is considered to be a torchbearer of post-modernism in Assamese literature, following in the footsteps of other great Assamese writers such as Saurav Kumar Chaliha and Bhabendra Nath Saikia. With more than twenty-five bestselling books to his credit in a career spanning more than four decades, his repertoire ranges from fiction to non-fiction, and from screenplays to reviews and critical essays. He received the Sahityarathi Lakshminath Bezbarua Award in 2018, the Sahitya Sanskriti Award of the literary organization Eka Ebong Koekjan in 2010, and the Tagore Literature Award of the Sahitya Akademi in 2011.
About the Translator
Meenaxi Barkotoki is a mathematician turned anthropologist by profession. An avid translator from Assamese into English, her most recent work includes a couple of novels, notably a children’s novel by Arupa Patangia Kalita titled Taniya (Puffin Classics, 2022). Her translations have appeared in newspapers and periodicals as well as in prestigious compilations like The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India (OUP, 2011) and in Asomiya Handpicked Fictions (Katha, 2003). She also writes short stories, travel pieces and current interest articles, and her work has been published in newspapers, journals and magazines. She is a Founding Member of the North East Writers’ Forum.
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Shyam Benegal (1934-2024)Street art: Shyam Benegal From Public Domain
“If I enjoy the film I have made, then I am quite certain viewers will too. And what business do I have to burden viewers with what I myself do not enjoy?”
–Shyam Benegal (in an interaction with Ratnottama Sengupta)
Art is not elitist. Nor is artistic experience one that only the elite can enjoy. The world’s greatest art has been accessible to all mankind. Taj Mahal was erected in memory of Mumtaz Mahal but it is for the world to access and admire. The cave paintings at Ajanta propagated a certain philosophy but thousands of years later too they mesmerise one and all. And, anyone who goes to Tanjore temple experiences its magnificence. Cinema too is capable of providing such universal experience. What is more, it is possible to provide such an experience without distorting or oversimplifying an idea.
Shyam Benegal (1934-2024) had dinned this belief into me when I interviewed with him for the first time — in Bombay of 1980. Seven years before that he had proved it to the world with his debut film, Ankur (The Seedling, 1974). It had announced itself to cineastes through its nomination for the Golden Bear at the 24th Berlin Film Festival and had gone on to win three National Awards. In the wake of stylised trendsetters like Bhuvan Shome (directed by Mrinal Sen, 1969), Uski Roti (Others’ Bread, directed by Mani Kaul, 1969) and Maya Darpan (Illusory Mirror, directed by Kumar Shahani, 1972), everyone expected Ankur to be another “arty” film. In other words, “pretentious”, “pseudo intellectual”, even “boring”. Far from refusing to peter out of theatres due to lack of footfalls, the Rs 5-lakh budget film went on to garner millions because it engaged audiences of every shade and strata. And it was hailed as marking a new beginning in Indian cinema that had roots in the narrative tradition of earlier masters such as Bimal Roy and Benegal’s own cousin, Guru Dutt.
No, Ankur was not a fluke, Nishant (Night’s End, 1975) had proven. Once again, Benegal had set his film in Telengana, that part of Andhra Pradesh which had seen him grow up with his siblings in the household of his father whose livelihood came from a photo studio. “Alwal was a semi-rural semi-urban area, so I had seen both sides of a feudal society coming to grips with modernity setting in,” Benegal had explained to me.
Ankur had touched upon several ills of the feudal system: class difference, caste inequity, sexual exploitation of women, of the physically challenged, and even alcoholism among the poor. It had a sequence of thrashing, and it closed with the indication of violent protest. Almost all these themes would flower into independent saplings in Benegal’s subsequent films. Because the important thing for him, as he once said to BBC, was that “post-Independence India was changing its feudal character to the kind of society we wanted to create. Industrialisation at one level, creation of the middle class at another level, and disappearance of the regressive values of the feudal life.”
At that time, when I was yet to step out of my teens, I was deeply impacted by the oppressive ‘liberty’ of the caste person who thought he had a right over the lowborn woman. The empowerment of women was a theme Benegal felt strongly about. “The idea had started during the national movement with Gandhi, who first talked about women having equal responsibility,” pointed out the director of The Making of a Mahatma (1996). “They have to become aware of their strength and empower themselves because 50 percent of your population comprises of women.”
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From the birth of a new nation to the birth of a nation, Benegal constantly grappled with these themes. With “the whole business of tradition and modernity,” to borrow his words. “In an ancient society like India where so much of tradition is still valued and revered, when will we get rid of the dubious virtues?” he wondered.
Benegal functioned with a sensibility that was native to the length and breadth of the land that was his canvas. “As long as one functions with one’s sensibility, it will resonate with every person of that sensibility,” he maintained.
To me the most endearing trait of a Benegal film is the simplicity of its narrative. His incidents came out of life, his characters were from his surroundings. And his unfolding, though devoid of gimmick, was not bereft of drama nor of violence. He learnt to steer clear of artifices while making ad films where, “because you have to make your point in one minute, you tend to fall back on gimmick.”
Clarity of purpose and simplicity of narration were the two rails that never let his script go off into a meander of ultra mystical or complex metaphors. Magic realism? Hyper realism? High pitched melodrama? Benegal had need for none of these ploys. “The most complex of ideas have a simple way of projecting themselves,” he’d say. That, and not its reverse, was the most valid mantra of his life.
Why did the Phalke or the Padma Bhushan awards like simple story telling? “Because I like to involve people, and that happens when there is a dramatic juxtaposition of characters.” The use of drama did not in any way dilute the significance of his subject — be it casteism (Samar, Conflict, 1999), women’s empowerment (Bhumika, Role, 1977), portrayal of the principles of national heroes (Making of the Mahatma), or the struggle to wrest power from an oppressor (Junoon, The Obsession, 1978). Be it in feudal Telengana (Nishant), in a Borgadar’s Bengal (Arohan, The Ascent, 1982), an industrial Bombay (Kalyug, The Age of Vice, 1981), in Bose’s Burma (The Forgotten Hero, 2005), or Mujib’s Bangla (Mujib: The Making of a Nation, 2023).
In the process he dispelled the notion that showing our reality in cinema cannot engross or entertain. In fact, he questioned the very definition of the word ‘Entertainment’. “If a serious talk or a news holds you spellbound, isn’t that also entertainment?” he had asked me.
So, in order to engage the viewers, Benegal plunged into problems and miseries of the marginalised Indian: the milkman (Manthan, The Churning, 1976) and the weaver (Susman, The Essence, 1978), the untouchable (Samar) and the glamorous (Bhumika), the royals (Zubeidaa, 2001) and the entertainer (Sardari Begum, 1996), the middle class households where women are mere birthing machines (Hari Bhari, 2000), or the illiterate voters of Sajjanpur (Welcome to Sajjanpur, 2008).
Through all these voters, men and women, landlords and servants, on the banks of Katha Sagar (A Sea of Stories, 1986, TV series) or in the arid Birbhum or in the Mandi (Market Place, 1983) of flesh, Benegal made spectators of us. “Even a road accident turns us into spectators, some mute, some aggressive, some caring,” he’d pointed out. “What is it we want to experience when we rush to the window when we hear a car screeching to a half?” he’d asked. “Why is an unanticipated death — or murder — part of the entertainment formula? Because the adrenaline rush, the excitement in these exorcises our fears,” he had explained.
But Benegal’s wasn’t a conventional definition of entertainment. Nor did he decry the use of violence in mainstream cinema. “Indeed, it helps society because viewers find vicarious release from the stress that builds up in the tension filled life in urban societies.” As for his own films rooted in the remote pockets away from the metros? “Sometimes we need to use force because some social problems have got so deeply entrenched,” he was unabashed about violence in his films. “Change in certain situations can come only from the use of violence. But be careful never to lose your moral compass,” he immediately warned me. “Violence cannot be indiscriminately justified nor universalised. And in no circumstance should it be glamourised.”
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So human impulses, and social well-being were his prime concern. The constant interaction between an individual and his or her milieu; suffering inequities, and standing up against exploitation — we gained insight into these when we sat in darkened auditoriums to watch Arohan, Sardari Begum, Mammo (1994), Well Done Abba…(2010)
Socio-economic. Socio-political. Socio-legal. No label of genre could own Shyam Benegal. Because? “That will restrict my own thinking. How can I keep pace with the galloping changes that come with the ticking of centuries? And when the march of science unleashes computers and cellular phones, Internet and digital filmmaking?”
But what prompted his choice of subject every time he sat down to work on a script — with Shama Zaidi or Girish Karnad, Satyadev Dubey or Khalid Mohamed[1]? “There’s an electic streak in me that will not let me go where I’ve been before or do what I’ve done before,” Benegal was clear. So historical patterns to saw him go from The Making of a Mahatma on Gandhi, the advocate of non-violence, to Bose, The Forgotten Hero who escaped home incarceration and travelled through Himalayan hurdles and joined the Japanese to fight the British colonisers of India. From the Junoon of the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, to Bharat Ek Khoj (India, a Search, 1988 TV serial) exploring the roots of India. From my Samvidhan (2010, TV mini-series), the formulation of the Constitution that is the firm foundation of the nation he mapped through his films, to Mujib on the birth of Bangladesh.
This refusal to be contained in a box had seen Benegal go from making promotional ads to documentaries on Steel Authority of India and Artificial Insemination in Animal Husbandry, on Nehru and Satyajit Ray. Benegal’s refusal to be boxed and labelled saw him make
Manthan and Hari Bhari — two prime examples of turning a documentary subject into a feature film. Why, his varied interest saw him making a documentary that mapped the course of a raga which originated with Mallikarjun Mansur hearing a leaking tap in the kitchenette of a friend in Bombay – and went on to capture the spirit of the financial capital!
What explains the prolificity of the man who celebrated his 90th birthday on December 16 and bade goodbye a week later? His indomitable and indefatigable spirit.
Unusual Concerts: The documentary on Mallikarjun Mansur (1910-1992) and Bombay
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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A conversation with VR Devika, author of Muthulakshmi Reddy: A Trailblazer in Surgery and Women’s Rights, Niyogi Books.
“Education, Freedom and Responsibility bring out the best from the individual and race. This will apply to all men and women irrespective of caste, creed or colour.”
—Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy, Muthulakshmi Reddy:A Trailblazer in Surgery and Women’s Rights
Muthulakshmi Reddy: A Trailblazer in Surgery and Women’s Rights by VR Devika is a biography of a woman who shouted out to demand reforms among devdasis ( women who had been ‘married’ to lifelong service of a deity or a temple) and prostitutes in the nineteenth-twentieth century. The biographer, V R Devika, is a storyteller, educationist and Gandhi scholar.
Muthulakshmi Reddy (1886-1968) was born to a devdasi mother and transcended the system that had deteriorated from when a devadasi was considered ‘auspicious’ as she would never be widowed or married, and she could maintain her status quo, the book informs, adding a historic perspective to this ‘norm’. By Reddy’s times, these women had been reduced to become mistresses to rich men. In ancient times, before malpractices set in, a princess is said to have opted to become a devdasi. The decline started in the sixteenth century when devdasis were transferred from temple to temple.
The narrative is simple and straightforward but what stands out is the value of the content, the strength of the woman who could speak up boldly and demand reforms — even have some of them instituted. She spoke out for reforms with searing words. The author quotes from many of her speeches.
“Muthulakshmi used strong language to explain her position on the Devadasi question. ‘Of all the laws, rules and regulations which down the centuries have helped to place women in a position of inferiority, none has been so very powerful in creating in the minds of men and people a sentiment of scorn and contempt for women as the degrading idea of the double standard of morals.’
“She thundered, ‘From this double standard that has sprung that worst attack on women’s dignity, that safety valve theory that a certain number of women should exist, should sacrifice their self-respect, their honour, their comforts, their health and happiness to satisfy the lust of the other sex. At the present day, the continuance of such a doctrine and of the laws which are founded on it, is a shameful anachronism unworthy of our civilisation. Both in the past and in the present, women have disproved their inferiority, and how then can we at the present day tolerate or connive at a system which transforms a woman of whichever caste or class she may be, into a mere chattel, a piece of tainted merchandise? The inequity of the system is too deep for me to give expression, and further under that inhuman and unjust system the innocent children of a certain caste or community are trained to become proficient in all the arts of solicitation that they become captives to vice.’”
That men and women perpetrate social norms to justify the existence of the so-called ‘world’s oldest profession’ is well brought out in the book. That women forced into the sex trade are not doing this out of choice is conveyed with conviction. Names of Reddy’s associates include Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) and the well-known singer whose mother was a devdasi too, MS Subbulakshmi (1930-1997).
Reddy was one of the first female medical graduates[1] in India, the first woman[2] to enter an Indian Legislature and the first woman in the world to preside over a Legislative Assembly. A recipient of the Padmabhushan and more accolades, she, as a doctor founded the Addyar Cancer Institute in 1952 after her sister was caught with cancer, and, as a humanitarian, started the Avvai Home in 1931 for those rescued from brothels and streets. Her spirit is well captured by the author when she writes:
“In 1942, during the World War II, soldiers of the British Royal Airforce camping in tents on the banks of Adyar river had made some derogatory remarks about the girls and harassed them. Muthulakshmi stood vigil all night with a stick in her hand and dared any soldier to come near the Home. She even went up the ranks to the commander’s house near Fort St. George to complain to him about the conduct of the soldiers and curb their behaviour.”
VR Devika has extensively shown that Reddy was a force to be reckoned with but she has not given way completely to adulation. She has objectively shown how Reddy over ruled her son’s choices for the well-being of her own institutions. It brought to mind Gandhi’s attitude towards his own family. An established cultural activist, VR Devika has been associated with the inception of Chennai’s Dakshinachitra Heritage Museum and Tamil Nadu INTACH[3], has been visiting the Avvai Home and in this exclusive she tells us the story of how the book came about and why she visited this home and its impact on her.
VR Devika. Photo provided by Niyogi Books
Tell us why you felt that Muthulakshmi Reddy’s story needed to be told. What was the readership you had in mind when you wrote the biography?
The dance scholarship [donors] consisting of mainly outsiders who had a hypothesis, got a good grant, employed interpreters and cherry picked to denigrate her in a fashion that took dance academic world by storm after the 1980s. I had also bought into them when I began to learn Bharathanatyam. But when I joined INTACH Tamilnadu and Madras Craft Foundation in 1985 after having been a schoolteacher since 1974, I began a project of English language as a skilling programme and theatre as empowerment for Avvai Home. That is when I began to get the other side of the story that was really fascinating. I kept thinking I must reach this story out. Dr.V.Shanta, chairman of Cancer institute, said I must write her [Muthulakshmi Reddy’s] biography and I decided to work on it after she passed away. I had young people who were studying English but had no access to English other than their textbooks as the target audience but I am a story teller and I just began to tell the story in simple way as I always do.
You tell us in the authorial note that you went on ‘work’ to the Avvai home. Tell us about the home. Why were you there?
Geetha Dharmarajan and I lived near Avvai Home. I had no idea about the history of the home etc. But I knew very poor girls studied there. Geetha had spoken to them and I went along but Geetha relocated to New Delhi and started Katha[4] and I stayed on helping Avvai Home in many different ways. I have written a full story of Avvai Home in the book. It was volunteer work. Rajalakshmi of Avvai Home requested me to help them on a production on Dr.Muthulakshmi Reddy. I interviewed Sarojini Varadappan, Dr.Shanta, and several others to write the script for the production. I am now on their school advisory committee.
For me, the most interesting aspect was how Muthulakshmi Reddy made the transition from being born a devadasi to empowering herself enough to outlaw the custom. Did her parents ever marry?
No there was no way they could marry as a girl born in the system was barred from ritualistic marriage according to Hindu custom. She was his companion.
Your narrative is direct and eulogistic of great names and associations of/ developed by Muthulakshmi Reddy and the lady herself. The personal is largely left out, except to emphasise her achievements. Why?
I cannot [describe that] as I never met her. I had to sketch a portrait from her writings, her achievements and her son’s writing.
Would you regard the devdasi system as a social ill that has been erased or is it an ongoing battle?
There is no social evil that has been erased completely. Nostalgists for devdasi system denigrate her [Reddy]. But there is the social evil of discrimination against Dalits still, but should Ambedkar be blamed for giving a legal handle for those who wanted to come out and achieve something of their own despite the caste hierarchy? Those who benefited from the abolition of dedication are in thousands while those who bemoan the loss of culture in the way they want it are in hundreds.
The devdasi system is a generic system in a number of states in India. Did Reddy’s reforms benefit all the states? Was the Avvai Home open to all devdasis or only from her state?
Avvai Home never claimed to be only for devdasis but for girls who needed protection and access to education. No reform benefits everyone. Her law was for the Madras Presidency of the time which consisted of parts of Andhra, Orissa and Karnataka too as part of it.
Muthulakshmi Reddy started a number of things, including the second oldest cancer hospital in India. But all these were reactions borne of personal experiences. Do you think if she had been born into a regular family, and her sister would not have had cancer, would she have striven for these institutions too?
I can’t answer a hypothetical question. How do we know what she would have done?
What was the driving force behind the reforms instituted by Muthulakshmi Reddy?
Her own indomitable will and the stubborn streak that sought to get it done and get others who would help her come in whole heartedly.
Would you justify the “emotional blackmail” on her son to fulfil her own dream by giving up his own? Do you think that it is right of a parent to impose their will in this way?
I am not justifying it. It happened that way. Just telling the story. She did not force her elder son who went into Electrical Engineering. Her second son never resented the “emotional blackmail” He went along whole heartedly.
What for you was the most endearing quality of Dr Reddy?
I have many who worked with her telling me she was very kind, but she was also a tyrant and would not bend. Her own indomitable will and the stubborn streak that sought to get it done and get others who would help her come in whole heartedly. She was a mother (Amma) was the unanimous opinion.
[3] Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage
[4]Katha is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation that has established itself in the field of community development, child welfare, education and literature.
(This review and interview is by Mitali Chakravarty.)
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Eminent film journalist, Ratnottama Sengupta, in conversation with legendary actress Deepti Naval, on her penchant for words at the unveiling of her memoir, A Country Called Childhood, at an international literary festival in Shimla, India.
Ratnottama Sengupta in conversation with Deepti Naval at the Simla Literary Festival. Photo courtesy: Ratnottama Sengupta
“Where’s the session?”
That was the question on every lip as I entered the beautifully restored Gaiety Theatre – the Gothic architecture that was designed 135 years ago by an English architect following examples of Victorian Britannia, to be the Opera in the Town Hall complex built for the British rajas who’d shift the capital from Delhi to Shimla to escape the oppressive Indian summer.
It was the second day of Unmesh[1], and I was to conduct a conversation with Deepti Naval whose appearance on the Hindi screen with Shyam Benegal’s Junoon[2](1978) had given every young girl like me a new icon – one we could readily identify with, since the doe-eyed beauty was so Indian! Not overwhelmingly dolled up, not westernised, not running around trees mindlessly, the personas she essayed were so close to life! If anything, here was an actor who’d come back from the US armed with a training in Fine Art – but spoke like us.
The literary face of Deepti Naval is not so well known, though. In fact, some of the youngsters in the audience – which was studded with stars of Indian Cinema like Sai Paranjpye, Goutam Ghose and Atul Tiwari – didn’t expect the actress to be there, in the International Festival of Literature organised by the Sahitya Akademi, and hosted by the Ministry of Culture to mark 75 Years of Independence. “Who’s this writer? The actor Deepti Naval? Didn’t know that!”
So, although I cherish every memory of Miss Chamko in Chashme Baddoor (1981, As Far be the Evil eye); of Sandhya Sabnis in Katha (1982, Stories); of Mahatmain in Damul (1985, Bonded Until Death); of Ek Aur Panchavati (1986, One More Panchavati[3]) where she acted with my father, Nabendu Ghosh; of Memories in March (2010) and Listen..Amaya (2013), I decided to ignore the actress and bring to the fore the writer Deepti Naval, of whom Gulzar wrote in the Preface to Black Wind and Other poems (2004), her poetry collection: “She has her brains in her heart, or her heart in her head. She lives the experience twice. First, when she actually lands in a situation and takes the full experience of life. The second, when she filters it, takes the essence in a poem and relives it.”
RS: I’ve heard some of your poems on YouTube; I’ve read some of your stories, and though we don’t have the visa yet, we will soon have entry into that country when your memoirs are launched: A Country Called Childhood — I love the name!
All your stories and certainly your poems come out of your lived life. Is it always your own life or does your aesthetics sometimes follow what happened to another person? I know you’ve directed a television serial, so – d’you sometimes become the camera and simply watch the characters in action?
Deepti: Yes, all my stories come from real life. Most of the stories are my own experience and the rest either happened to friends or I heard the story, perhaps three sentences, that has stayed with me for some reason. It has registered and never left me. So, when I got down to writing, I thought, ‘Why don’t I recreate what could have happened?’
Obviously, there’s an element of imagination in recreating the stories but they’re real episodes that have happened to real people. There’s only one story – The Morning After – which is completely fictional. The rest of the stories are all somebody’s or the other’s experience.
RS: Just taking up on that expression — completely fiction: Does ‘fiction’ come out of the air or does it come out the soil?
Deepti: Always from somewhere — in life, in this world. Something has got rooted in your mind, and you feel that you can develop it. If you write about it, you can share.
RS: I know at least one story that I read – ‘Thhulli’[4]– has come out of the homework you did for a film that probably never happened.
Deepti: No, the film never got made. The film, Red Light, was to come out of a script that was given to me by Vijay Tendulkar. It was about a girl who stands under the lamppost in a red-light district, and then whatever happens… I was to play that girl. So, I felt I should do some homework.
Actors love to indulge in things like that. So, I went to a red-light district with three of my colleagues. And that experience, of that one night in Kamathipura, the red-light district of Bombay, what happened that whole night… How I met this girl called Thhulli, up in one of the brothels. How I pursued her — I wanted her to give me time. I wanted to sit and chat with her, and that was managed. I got that space with her — until things got a little rough. The whole ambience became very tense, and I had to be salvaged from that situation into getting out. It was an eye-opener.
RS: The portion that first grabbed me was your first encounter with Kamathipura.
Deepti: Yes, I’m particularly drawn to this one experience. It was a dark monsoon night when we first stepped into that area. And you know what the monsoon in Bombay is like — if it starts to pour, it is unending. So, it was one of those nights and we’re in my Ambassador car. We were just cruising along the red-light district. You don’t see many people because it’s pouring, and it’s very late in the night.
Reading from ‘Thulli’ by Deepti Naval
The street we had now entered was completely dark, the only source of visibility being the headlights of our car. It was an eerie feeling driving through a lane where you could see nothing, just the sense of something not being right. We drove slowly into the uncanny silence of the waterlogged avenue, broken only by the sound of ripples caused by the whirring of car tyres.
‘Something tells me we should turn back,’ Tanvir spoke gravely. No one said a word. Inayat drove cautiously up to the end of the lane, then switched gears. Slowly the Ambassador started to swerve, heavy with the water in its wake. This is when I began to get my bearings.
Thrown suddenly into the floodlights as the car made a gurgling U-turn, on both sides of the street, were women – standing behind the bars, their powdered-to-white faces alternately Illuminating in the shifting light. They were neither soliciting customers nor bargaining. They just stood there, languid, confined within their cages, each occupying a separate, dark world.
“Why are they locked behind bars?” — I spoke under my breath, not believing what I saw.
“These are cages,” answered Tanvir. “Women here are not allowed to get out.’
‘They’d be killed if they did,” declared Inayat.
“My God! So, they do exist, the famous Cages of Falkland Road!”
Excerpted from The Mad Tibetan: Stories from Then and Now
RS: But let me read a few lines from the portion where you’re recognised as an actress. That must be quite a common experience for you…
Reading from ‘Thulli’ by Ratnottama Sengupta
“No, no more Ikkey! Go…go! No more! The girls are tired and sleeping. I cannot wake them up now.”
“It is not a customer Thhulli!” he said in a hushed tone, then moved aside to reveal me standing nervously behind him. The woman saw me, and for a moment there was in her eyes… not instant recognition, as I had expected, but disbelief.
She suddenly looked perplexed. “She is… she is…”
“She is a film star…” and he whispered my name to her, bending real low, as if he was the only person who knew about my dark secret.
“She wants to talk to you. They want to make a film on your life.”
I shot a glance at him — a clever little fellow, I thought.
“At this time?”
“Just for a few minutes…” I quickly pleaded, the ‘please’ carried forward with my eyes.
The woman relented. The man stepped aside allowing me to enter through the half gate. “Yeh Thhulli hai!” he said, introducing me formally to the woman from the window.
The greater part of the room was in darkness. I walked into my grim surroundings, grateful for being let in at this unearthly hour.
I looked about the room. It was just a single room, very small, cramped with two giant sized wooden beds with bright coloured curtains hanging around them. Underneath the beds, sprawled all over the floor were girls. Nine of them, Thhulli informed me as she asked me to follow her.
She adroitly crossed over to the other side; I hesitated a bit, looking at the bare legs zigzagging the floor. Knees jutting into knees, hair enmeshed with hair, the girls slept soundly, huddled into each other. I followed Thhulli avoiding placing my foot on braids collaged against the burnt grey cement floor.
Suddenly, I stood face to face with a distorted version of myself in the huge mirror tilted against the green wall. Appearing strange in this setting, I saw myself slanted in the mirror — a cotton stole wrapped around my head, blue jeans and a white top, wearing my trekking shoes, the old olive Timberlands that refuse to wear out. A low night lamp turned to lime green the corner where the cupboard was cemented into the wall. Both of us now stood in the only space left in the room — the window.
“Baitho[5],” said Thhulli, looking around for something for me to sit on.
From under a heap of bedsheets she pulled a red plastic stool spilling sleazy magazines about the floor. I tried not to look. She dusted the stool with it, then fixing her own hair in the mirror, moved down on the floor, gracefully. I looked at the stool at first, then, decided to sit down on the floor next to Thhulli — at the window.
Thhulli curled up and smiled, the innocent smile of a child. A woman of thirty or so, she looked older than her years. Her face had great beauty, I could see, with clear skin and gentle features. “Assamese?” I inquired. “No, Nepali,” she replied, her legs pulled up against her chest.
For a long awkward moment we looked at each other, then she spoke in awe, “You are very famous.” Her Hindi had a falling forward tilt to it. “I have seen you,” she said gently.
“In a film?” I asked, my hopes rising. This was my chance of connecting with her instantly.
“No, not in film. On the wall, on a poster… and on that!” She pointed towards a small television set, a grimy fourteen-inch B&W[6] perched on a heap of aluminium trunks at the other end.
“You were singing,” she said shyly.
“Singing?” I tried to restrict my voice to a whisper.
“Yes, under a waterfall… with… with Mithoon Chakraborthy… your song Uthaile ghunghata… chand dekh le!” [7]
“Oh my God! You watch that stuff!”
“The girls watch it all the time! They love that song. They love seeing films. We get to watch them in the afternoons. The minute they wake up, they switch on the TV set. I let them… they are young.”
“And you don’t go to the cinema hall?”
“We hardly go out!” Thhulli became quiet almost as soon as she said that. Dressed in a lungi and kurta, her knees pulled up on one side, she was far from the pan-spitting, hard faced kaddak madams of kothas[8] that we see in Hindi films. This was a face you would never expect to see in a brothel. I quickly revised my pre-conceived notion of prostitutes.
Excerpted from The Mad Tibetan: Stories from Then and Now
RS: The rest of it is also full of sensitive moments. And this is a story that we would not hear if she were not an actor. The amazing thing is this seems timeless! Recently we saw a similar situation in Gangubai Kathiawadi, which is set at least half a century ago, in Nehru’s time. There too the girl says, “We see the actors only on the posters, because we are never allowed to go out.”
Deepti: That’s a hard-hitting reality. They Are Behind Bars… and never allowed to go out!
RS: Deepti you’ve travelled widely, across the globe. After your studies you came back to Mumbai. You’ve travelled across India. You’ve also travelled through the arts. You’ve studied Fine Art in New York, you’ve seriously done photography, you’ve been in films, you’ve taken to writing. Lamha Lamha (Moment to Moment), your first book of Hindi poems, came out almost 40 years ago?
Of course, I’m going to ask you to recite one of your poems. Again, I won’t ignore the actress all together. In fact, one of my favourites is about Smita and you. It’s again an experience that you can share only with another actor.
Deepti: Smita and I? That’s from my second book of poems, Black Wind[9]. By the time it came out, I had lived life. Lamha Lamha was all about romantic ideas about life, about love, those tender feelings you have before you really start living the harsher realities of life. And Black Wind came out in 2004 – it was a dark period, when things were not going well. So, the poems turned out… a bit dark (smiles). But there’s this nice poem addressed to my friend Smita Patil. It kind of describes Smita’s and my relationship. I wrote this poem after she was gone.
SMITA AND I
Always on the run,
Chasing our dreams…
We met each time
At baggage claim
VIP lounges
Check-in counters.
Stood a while together
Among gaping crowds.
Spoke unspoken words.
Yearning to share
Yet afraid,
Afraid of ourselves.
All around us people
Cheering, leering…
And we, like spectacles
Amidst the madness.
Trying to live a moment,
A glance, a touch,
A feeling to hold on to –
And move on…
The last time we sat together
Waiting for a flight,
I remember I'd said,
“There must be another way
Of living this life!”
For a long time you remained silent.
Then,
Without blinking,
Without turning,
Said,
“There isn't.”
Today
You're gone
And I’m still running…
Still trying
To prove you wrong.
R.S Deepti, you’re a woman. And by that very definition you’re an artist. An artist who speaks in many voices. Do you still do photography?
Deepti: That’s taken a back seat since writing took over. But painting I still do, yes.
RS: So, in the title story of the collection, The Mad Tibetan, you’re relating your experience of travelling in Ladakh with the camera. You’re looking at your protagonist through the camera aren’t you?
Deepti: When I first went to Ladakh in 1993 there weren’t too many Indians there. Leh was full of foreigners. It was as if I’m in Europe. As a photographer it had fascinated me. About four years later, I wanted to see that landscape during winter. In summer you see these patches of green, a cultivated green patch between two houses. I thought, let me see how the landscape changes in winter, how it turns grey and brown and black.
So, after a Film Festival at Siri Fort [Delhi] I got onto a flight with some faujis – military men flying there from Jammu. Then I looked for a taxi. In summer I’d seen many tourists – foreigners toh bhare pade thhe[10]. But now I didn’t see a soul, taxis too were difficult to come by. So one fauji said, “Ma’am you wait here, we’ll organise a vehicle for you. Where d’you want to go?” “Leh,” I said. But Leh was deserted. No hotels in sight, the streets were deserted. I knew one co-actor, Phunsook Ladakhi, lived in Stok, some 13 kms away. I asked if they could take me there.
Phunsook was not there but his wife, her sister and a child were there. I stayed with them. They didn’t speak Hindi and I didn’t speak their language, but we could communicate. There I would take my camera, take some rajma — kidney beans — rolled in a dry roti in the pocket of my parka jacket, and go around Stok and Choglamsar. There I saw this Tibetan man in an open tent by the river Indus. I found it fascinating that a man was living in a tent that didn’t have a roof – it was tied down with bamboo poles but had no roof! ‘This is weird’ I thought and started taking photos. Pictures of him. A few kids were playing around him, calling out ‘Nyonba! Nyonba!’ – the word means crazy.
Meanwhile it started to snow. I was taking pictures – and I realised that in that wide open, with the kids gone, I was alone with the camera and this man! He was then posing for me with animated gestures, and I thought, “Wow! What a study for a photographer!” Then, once I realised that there was something off with the man, I started to retreat and get back on the tar road which is the old highway. And he ran after me for quite a bit. But he ran up to the point where there was a barbed wire. Perhaps that was symbolic: I managed to pull it up, got under it and came out on the tar road. He stayed there, and his expression was one of a child. Like, ‘Now you were playing with me, and now you’re running away! Game over?’
In the night, in the place I was staying in Stok, I could hear some sound: Ta-tar-tar-ta… It was a scary sound that I’d been hearing over the past couple of nights. I came down and didn’t see the women or the kids. I knocked on their door and got no response. There was no sign of life. And the sound had come really close. So, I said to myself, “No good being scared.” So at three at night, I opened the window and tried to confront the source of the strange sound. “Who’s there, trying to bother me?” I called out.
And then I see this Nyonba. The mad Tibetan had strung together a whole lot of Coca Cola cans and was dragging them on the tar road like a rattle – going this way and then going that way…!
It was an amazing sight, and sound. I ran for my camera, but it was nighttime, there was hardly any light on the road, and I was on the first floor. So, I said, forget the camera, let me just be in this moment. The camera cannot capture all the beauty that we experience!
RS: Sometimes we don’t have the time – or the opportunity – to read but the experience is shared when the screenwriter narrates it so vividly like you just did. And clearly you have the eye for details. We see this in all your stories. Also, as I have already mentioned, most of your stories are about women – as was the series you directed, Thoda Sa Aasman[11].
I was touched by the story, ‘Sisters’, about the two pre-teen siblings who live with their alcoholic father because their mother has left them. And the father decides to shave off their hair because it’s full of lice. And the agony the loss of hair causes – only a woman can realise what it is to be forcefully deprived of their hair! It’s not vanity, it’s something deeper, it’s the crowning glory of an Indian woman.
Deepti: Yes, this story is set in Joginder Nagar, a small place in remote Himachal Pradesh where my mother had lived. When the father shaves off all their hair, and they have to walk back bald-headed, they are so embarrassed. Everybody is staring at them, the other kids are jeering at them. These Pahari women had beautiful long hair and now they were takla munda, a shining bald pate! The humiliation of being heckled at, the agony, is too much.
RS: But even at that tender age, and in such a disturbed state, the girls are so sensitive! They plan to leave their father and go away to the city where he won’t find them…
Deepti: They try to take the last train at night and get away from the misery of facing their neighbours after the unbearable loss. But then they think of their father, so forlorn without them. One of them gets on the train, but the other says, “Wait… what if mother comes back?” So, they both stay back!
RS: But Deepti, there’s at least one story – ‘Bombay Central[12]’ – which is entirely from the male perspective. It’s also happening primarily between two men. It’s not only a man’s point of view, it is a masculine experience too. How did you come by it? It was also the first story I read because, being born and bred in Bombay, I was lured by the title – I expected to see some of my city in it.
Deepti: I’d heard the story from an Assistant Director(AD) during one of my film projects. We were talking about who came to Bombay – now Mumbai — from where and how. This AD told me later, “I couldn’t bring it up in front of everyone, but I was only fifteen when I came to Bombay. And something strange happened…”
This boy was on the train coming from some place in Madhya Pradesh. Sitting across him in a starched white kurta-pyjama was this very proper slim man who kept looking at him, as if sizing him up. “Why is he staring away at me?” the boy started to wonder. As the train approached the Bombay Central station, the man started to make small talk with the boy. The conversation continued and when they alighted at the station, he brought the boy home.
The boy gets his first glimpse of Bombay, its downtown area, and is struck by it, and the house where he lands up. And through the night he spends there, he realises that he was brought home by the man for his wife! It so happens that she kind of seduces him – and he is made to sleep with her while the man is in the verandah across, lying on charpoy with his face the other way while the full thing happens here! The boy realises that he is probably impotent, but he loves his wife so much that he doesn’t want her to leave him… so he brought home a naïve young person who wouldn’t fight!
When I heard this, I felt I had to write it. I wrote some of it from imagination, building some of the description on what I was told – whatever he had conveyed to me… Yes, it is a male story!
RS: But as I finished reading it, I thought to myself, what if we change the gender? Would anyone be surprised if an elderly woman takes home a naïve young girl for her husband? I think we’ve all heard some such thing happening, being experienced so many years back and perhaps even now. But this was so startling, it reminded me of Roald Dahl.
I must mention two other things about the story. First, this is also happening on a monsoon night – the boy decides to stay in the man’s house because it is pouring when he arrives in a new city late in the night…
Deepti: Yeah! My stories are full of the Bombay monsoon! The rest are all in the pahar, mountains…
RS: The other thing is that the boy was also lured to the city by the moving images of the tinsel town on the silver screen. Of course, this guy was not coming to be an actor…
Deepti: No, he was coming to assist in filmmaking, to learn to eventually be a director and make his own movies…
RS: And what was the final resolution in life? Did he achieve his dream?
Deepti: Yeah, he became a filmmaker and made three-four decent films (laughs).
RS: Wonderful to know that Tinsel Town is not always heartbreaking, full of shattered dreams! Now, with A Country Called Childhood, we are in Amritsar…
Deepti: Yes, we will go there but before that – I will go back to my book of poems, Black Wind and Other Poems. There’s a section here called The Silent Scream. This came out of my curiosity, and deep interest in psychology and the aberrations of the so-called sane mind.
While I was writing these poems, I was also writing a script called Split. This was about an actor who gets a script where she has to play a mentally disturbed woman. I wrote about how the actor goes into that role for which she’s shooting in Ranchi. How she goes to the asylum, spends time in the women’s ward, comes to know some of them and imbibes all that into her work. But eventually her own ghosts start popping out from the closet – and in a cathartic moment she breaks down in front of the camera.
Yes, it turned out to be a dark script. Nobody wanted to put in money on a subject like this – so that got shelved. But what happened is that despite writing that script, there were many images that were floating around in my head, “this hasn’t been woven in… that too got left out…” Those came out in the form of these 22 poems.
What happened was, when I was shooting Hip Hip Hurray for Prakash (ex-husband Prakash Jha) I came to know that there’s a very big mental institution there – Ranchi Mansik Arogyashala.
At this time, I was offered a role by Amol Palekar in Ankahee where I play a girl who is slightly off the rocker. I told Amol, “I can’t do the scene – hallucinating, convulsing and all that. I need to see how some of the patients behave.” Amol said, “No no don’t – you’ll come up with all kinds of strange ideas.” But since I was in Ranchi, I decided to go. On one occasion, I went with Goutam Ghose – I wanted him to direct the film.
I went in planning to go there 2-3 days, and I spent 23 days. After the first four hours I spent there, I was so zapped, so enervated! I felt, “My god! Just one visit and I’m feeling so drained – what if I were to do an entire 30 days of shoot! What would it do to me as a person? And if an actor has to stay for 30 days in that character’s state of mind, would she remain unaffected? That was the seed of the script Split. The mirror image, but there’s a split.
So, I took permission and spent the whole day inside the ward, on the verandah with all the women. I came to know them at close quarters and ended up with a deeper understanding of their minds. Some of the women were clinically not even mad, but if someone came and wrote “her mind is not stable,” they can put you there. He can go frolicking and nobody comes to take the girls back. They can be excluded from property and everything, totally discarded. There were so many girls like that.
So, here’s a girl I used to watch every night. I’d be sitting in the verandah and she’d come out – I could see her trying to deal with herself…
OUT ALONE
She stands at one end of the verandah,
A naked bulb glows at the other end
Staining the dark floor with dull yellow light.
Beyond the empty ward
Drag echoes of the autumn night.
From pillar to pillar, in severe silence
Skulk slithering shadows.
Out alone in the cold she stands
Night after night
Fighting her demons!
Her body, frail and brittle,
Flaps leaf-like, on two glass feet.
The torched face, broken
Then tacked together, so bluntly
The ragged joints show.
Hounded eyes that do not blink
Frozen in a deathlike glaze.
Her fragile spirit, splintered.
These are not the features
She was born with.
This is the face we gave her.
Another poem is about a girl who’s different from the rest of us. She’s different, but delightfully confident. She has this flight of mind which the world doesn’t easily accept…
GODDESS
‘I’m DURGA! I’m KALI!
The GODDESS!
No one can conquer me!’
She pulled the crown off the idol’s head
And wore it on herself.
The crowds were aghast!
They swore at her,
Chased her with sticks, stones, screams…
But she slipped into the wilds
Flying beyond their reach.
At the magic hour
When sun and rain dazzle the earth,
She danced and skipped,
Jumped and leaped,
Chasing a single rainbow…
Light-footed, she glided
Through the celestial landscape
Wearing her cheap silver crown
She tripped the light, luminous.
“I am DURGA! I am KALI!”
A frog leapt in the slush –
She lunged towards it, caught it!
Croaky frog twitching in her left hand
Stick in the right,
A tinsel crown aslant her forehead
She was one with the elements.
With earth, with sky, with slush,
With trees, with breeze…
Dancing! Mesmerising her Gods!
Her laughter gurgled in the wind
Her feet spinning the good earth.
And then the villagers got her.
Caught her by her feet
Dragged her through the sludge.
Frog, stick, crown dragged behind,
Straggled on the muddy track.
‘She’s too dangerous to be left free!’
They signed on a piece of paper,
Dumped her in the loony bin,
Wiped the vermilion off her forehead
Chopped the long black hair
Razed it to scalp
Locked her behind the solid grill.
Left her squalling, on the cold dank floor.
Now, when the sky is overcast
And the earth is wet and brown,
She walks down the courtyard,
Blue-templed and dead-eyed,
The cardboard crown trails behind her,
None make a sound.
There’s another aspect to this. I was working on the script, taking notes, talking to the women. And there was one girl, she was mad on seeing me there. She was livid, she just didn’t want me there. She would come up and tell me, “Chiriya ghar hai kya? Is this a zoo? Ka dekhne aaye ho, tamasa? Have you come to see a spectacle?”
I knew what she was feeling. She thought – and it wasn’t tamasha, people just walk in to see us, “What are we? Creatures to be stared at?” She would confront me whenever she got a chance. Her state of mind I have tried to put down in this poem which is addressed to me – the so-called sane world.
THE STENCH OF SANITY
There’s something rotten inside of you.
In your flesh, the stench of sanity!
It breathes in your eyes, this thing…
Something decadent in your flesh
Decaying…
It will be too late,
You will die of it.
This thing that sleeps with you
Night after night,
Like an ageing wanton woman,
Spent, but not quite spent.
And she waits for you to dump her
In some dark street corner.
Yet she follows you, drunken whore!
There’s no getting away for you
You will die of it,
This thing, that breathes…
Inside of you, in your flesh
The stench of sanity!
The anthology Black Wind got its name from the lovely poem of that name. That was at a time when everything I was going through was dark. Between 1990 and 1995, I was going through depression, and suicidal attacks. It’d come every 20-25 days and I had to fight it. And I did!
Deepti Naval recites a poem from Black Wind
One has gone through all kinds of ups and downs in personal life, so my poems are autobiographical. There’s not much to hide – nothing that I am embarrassed of, nothing that needs camouflage. What I was reluctant to talk about, that is also in this new book, so I’m very comfortable with myself now.
RS: So now it is time for celebration… We’re about to enter A Country Called Childhood. What made you think of this title?
Deepti: I was writing and sharing my chapters with my editor, David Davidar of Aleph Book Company. Somewhere I’d written a sentence that these were the sound, the smell, the feel of a country where I grew up, a country called ‘Childhood’. He caught on to that phrase and said, “This will be the title of your book.”
Yes, childhood is a country where we’ve all been and at some point, we leave that country – ‘that museum of innocence’, as Goutam Ghose just mentioned – for good. And we leave with no return ticket! We only live with the memories of that place.
Deepti Naval and Goutam Ghose at the Simla Literary Festival. Photo credit: Ratnottama Sengupta
RS: Surely your childhood was in an actual geographical landscape?
Deepti: My entire childhood was spent in Amritsar. That’s where I was till I turned 19, then I went to America. But all the 18 years until then had been spent in Amritsar and growing up there left vivid imprints in my mind. The rest of it I’m a little vague. Sometimes a colleague says, “Arre we were there in such-n-such festival, together we did this, or that.” And I think, “This person remembers all this so distinctly, but I don’t!” But my childhood I remember.
The first four chapters were written 20 years ago, and since then I’ve been jotting down even the smallest incident that comes back at odd moments. Later on, I would recall it and write it the way I remember it.
Then of course there was this whole element of research. Because family history se jo suni-sunai baat hai — all that I’d heard or was part of family lore — had to be cross-checked to make sure they have a foothold on the ground. There was a lot on the Partition, there was the Japanese Invasion of Burma during WWII when my mother’s family walked over the Assam Hills and came into India over months. All these stories rooted in historical events needed cross checking.
And looking for photographs! From whichever source I could think of, any relative I met, I’d say, “Aunty you must be having some pictures? Please look for them!” “Y-e-s, there are some lying somewhere upstairs!” I’d coax them and chase them and get them to bring down the suitcase from the attic or wherever, dust it, tease them out of envelopes… And if I saw anything that was of interest to me, I’d plead, “Give this to me, I’ll get it professionally scanned… and cleaned!”
This went on endlessly. Off and on, I was also involved in [film] shootings. Only when the publisher came into the picture some five years ago that I said to myself, “Now this is a project, I have to complete it before I do anything else.” I did a couple of web series and a film too, but these were a distraction for me. I was dying to get back to the book. Because when you’re writing, if you do anything else, it takes so much more effort to pick up from where you left. Woh wapas itni aasani se nahin hota — it’s not easy to get back to the same state of mind. It’s a discipline I have to learn from people like Atul (Tiwari) here. Sai (Paranjpye) also has written her memoirs — A Patchwork Quilt, is a wonderful book. Sai’s the sole reason for people knowing me as Miss Chamko – that’s why my writing has been overshadowed by my on-screen essays (smiles).
RS: Is there anything on Sai in A Country Called Childhood?
Sai Paranjpye with Deepti at the Simla Literary Festival. Photo credits: Ratnottama Sengupta
Deepti: No, my next book will have a huge chunk on Sai. This is only about my childhood. I started to write it as a homage to my parents. But it took me so long to finish this book, they have both gone. That’s the only thing that’ll hurt me about this book.
RS: Are you a single child?
Deepti: No, I have an older sister and a younger brother in America.
RS: So what will you read out to us today?
Deepti: Let me read the opening of my book. I’ve tried to recreate my childhood as vividly as possible, the way I remember it visually. And I want the reader to come with me… through my childhood.
Prologue — Reading by Deepti Naval
Memory rushes back. At times it pulls me by my finger, eggs me on, saying, “Come, let’s go inside those dark chambers where you stood in the light, rejoicing a life yet to unfold.”
It’s getting dark in the city of Amritsar. Shops are shutting down, street lamps come on, casting dim, yellow light. Rickshaws and bicycles hustle to make their way home. A handcart loaded with gunny bags wobbles down the street. Even Dwarka’s wine shop is closing. The old salwar tailor pulls his rickety shutter down, gets on his bicycle and paddles away. Shahani’s voice can be heard – she’s urging her buffaloes home. Grubby little boys, the mochis[13], play outside in the gully and behind the threshold of the phatak, the big iron gate, two little sister, Bobby and Dolly go about their lives…
This scene seems like it is from hundreds of years ago but it actually dates back to the year 1956. It’s one of my earliest memories, in which I’m almost four years old. It’s the street I remember the most, the street on which I lived.
So now I go into third person and I see myself there.
A litte girl darts out of a house, crying, “I want to go to my Mamma.”
“Your Mamma has gone to the cinema. You get in here at once.”
“I will also go to the cinema,” she retorts and runs down the street.
Suddenly something stirs in the air. There’s a muffled grunt in the sky and the breeze changes. The sky turns red. Tin sheds begin to flap and rattle. The smell of wind on earth. It’s a dust storm. Stray pieces of paper littering the ground outside the book binders shop fly up and float in the air. Bicycles fall in a slow, studied motion along the wall of the cinema hall. The wooden shutter of Gyan Halwai’s[14]shop tilts and slips out of its clamp. He stands with his arms outstretched, holding it with all his malai lassi strength against the wind, his lungi threatening to fly off. A rickshaw puller pedals backwards and sideways. The world seems to slant at the edges. Dust storms the streets.
My Sardi’s voice cuts through the mayhem. “Stop, I say. Get back girl. It’s dark!” she yells.
The girl is not coming back. She runs all the way to the end of the street and suddenly finds herself in the middle of Katra Sher Singh Chowk in front of the Regent Talkies, surrounded by huge cinema posters. The posters begin to tear from the whiplash of the wind. Sarr… sarr… sarr… faces of actors and actresses fold up and slap against the dry whitewash of the decrepit cinema.
Unable to keep her eyes open from the dust, wind and tears, the little girl hides her face in her sleeve. At her feet swirl particles of dust-torn scraps of paper; bright orange and pink trimmings from the tailor’s shop gather momentum. She stands still for a while, watching the little merry-go-round go around her dotted booties, until her eyes fall upon something.
Across the street, the Plotwala is doing a Tandav[15]. He’s the skinny man who sells little leaflets with the plot and songs of Hindi films printed on them. A strong gust wisps away the sepia-coloured leaflets from his hands and flings them into the wind. They soar in the air, going up and up in circles, dodging the poor man’s attempts to retrieve them. Tossed into the wind, the yellowed sheets somersault, now diving to his feet, now rising as if in sudden applause. He leaps and plunges by the side of the road, flapping his arms around, hurling himself at the musical notes. One leap slips into two and two into four till the songs dance above his gaunt, lanky frame. He dances with the songs, the poor Plotwala, trying in vain to hang on to his only means of livelihood as it slips away into grainy air.
No one notices the little girl as she stands in the middle of the road, enthralled by the dance of songs. Her large eyes filled with tears but she forgets to cry.
“There you are Marjani!” – my Sardi steps forward, scoops me…Now I’m back to first person: … scoops me in one sweeping movement, lodges me onto her hip, strides down the street, puts me back inside the house where I belong.
As we enter, my grandmother rises from a chair, pointing a finger at me, “No little girls from good homes go out to cinemas on the street.”
Excerpted from A Country Called Childhood by Deepti Naval
RS: One question in the mind of those who’ve been hearing you: Is poetry closer to your heart, than prose/ fiction?
Deepti: Writing is close to my heart. I look at life through both. I’m always looking for the little things that make life so interesting. At the end of the day, I would like to be known as an artist. Somebody who just felt compelled to express herself any which way, whichever form comes in front of me. Work is joyous, interesting work more so.
RS: One of our listeners here feels that the actor in you is talking when you are writing – because your writing is very vivid and visual. Does it come from your experience as an actor? Do you pay greater attention to details in life because you have to act?
Deepti: I think being an actor does train us to observe life. And when you notice something, you grab that and keep it somewhere in your emotional reservoir – perhaps for future use! But as a child too, I was very observant. I used to observe my mother very keenly. So yes, looking into the shadows helps me be Miss Chamko, and definitely it helps me in my writing.
RS: So which expression is more satisfying to the artist in you – acting or writing?
Deepti: It is immensely satisfying for me to put down something in writing. Because, as an actor I’m carrying to the audience a concept that is the director’s, and the writer’s. Then there’s an editor there who has put it together in the best way to take the emotion of the moment to the audience. I’m a tool in chiseling the portrait – Miss Chamko – that people love…
But we – artists — continually interpret life through our work. Even acting. Acting isn’t a camouflage either, you have to bare yourself, your inner self. There’s no work that is not autobiographical. Writing is perhaps more so.
Deepti Naval and Ratnottama Sengupta at the launch. Photo credit: Ratnottama Sengupta
[1] Translates from Hindi as ‘Awakening’. This is the name of the festival in Simla in June where Deepti Naval’s book was launched in 2022 June.
[2] Film based on Ruskin Bond’s A Flight of Pigeons (1978), set in 1857 against the backdrop of the revolt.
[3] The forest where Rama built a hut and stayed during his exile in Ramayana
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. Ratnottama Sengupta has the rights to translate her father, Nabendu Ghosh.
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Abhisar, translated as ‘The Tryst’, was written by Rabindranath in 1899. It is a story poem based on Upagupta, a Buddhist monk who lived in the 300 BCE and was revered by Emperor Ashoka and is still said to have a following in Myanmar.
THE Tryst
Sanyasi Upagupta
Was asleep under the shade of
The city ramparts of Mathura —
A breeze had blown off the lamps and flares.
The palace doors were shut.
The stars of the night
Had disappeared behind clouds.
Whose foot adorned with anklets
Suddenly rang on his chest?
Startled, the sanyasi woke up.
His dreams fled.
A dim light shone
on his forgiving eyes.
The court dancer was going for a tryst with her lover,
Intoxicated with her own vernal bloom.
Dressed in a deep blue saree,
Her ornaments tinkled —
As her foot fell on the monk,
Basabdatta halted.
With her lantern, she examined
his young radiant form —
A calm enduring tender face,
A glance gleaming with compassion,
A white moon-like forehead
aglow with gracious peace.
The woman spoke in a gentle voice,
Her eyes drooping with embarrassment,
“Pardon me, O youthful one,
I will be grateful if you come to my home.
The ground here is hard and rough.
This is not the right place to sleep.”
The sanyasi responded with kind words,
“It is not yet time for me
To visit O graceful one,
Please go your way in prosperity.
When the time is right, I will myself
Come to your bower.”
Eventually, a fiery spark thundered,
Opened a monstrous mouth.
The young woman shivered with alarm.
As a terrifying destructive wind howled,
A lightning ripped a cruel smile
Across the sky.
*
The year was not out.
It was an evening in Chaitra.
The breeze fluttered with restlessness
The trees along the path were laden with buds.
The King’s garden was flush with blooms of bakul,
Parul and rajanigandha.
From afar, wafting with the draft
Was the mesmerising timbre of a flute.
The city was empty as everyone had left for
The festival of flowers in the honeyed woods.
The full moon smiled at the town
Emptied of people and protectors.
On the lonely moonlit path,
The sanyasi walked alone
Under leafy branches, from where
Cuckoos cooed repeatedly —
After so many days, was it time for him
To fulfil his tryst with the beloved?
Crossing the town, the wise one
Went beyond the city walls.
He stood beside the moat —
In the shade of the mango grove,
Who was that young woman
Lying near his foot?
Her body was blistered with sores
From a deadly disease —
As she darkened with the blight,
The citizens threw her out
Beyond the city moat, fearing the
Poison within her.
The sanyasi sat down by her.
And put her stiff head on his lap —
He poured water into her chapped lips,
He chanted a mantra on her head,
Covered her body with a soothing
Cool sandal paste.
Bakul blooms were falling, the cuckoos were calling,
The night was filled with moonlight.
“Who are you, o compassionate soul?”
The woman asked. The sanyasi replied,
“Tonight is that time. O Basabdatta,
I have come for our tryst.”
Sanyasi-- a monk or mendicant, in this case a Buddhist Bhikshu
Chaitra -- spring when the old year ends and new starts in the Bengali Calendar.
Tagore had translated this poem in English for a collection called Fruit-Gathering, brought out in 1916 by Macmillan. The eighty-six translated poems by Tagore in this edition were from a few selected collections in Bengali: Gitimala, Gitali, Utsarga, Kheya, Naivedya, Gitanjali,Katha and Balaka.
1916 edition of Macmillans’ Fruit-Gathering
(This poem has been translated for Borderless Journal by Mitali Chakravarty and edited by Sohana Manzoor and Anasuya Bhar.)
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Like every city or village, every road too has a character of its own. The road which has spread out its clumsy, uncouth body here, aiming to touch some distant point in the south of town, has no character to speak of. It is ugly and chaotic. It has let its coarse surface to be abused daily by scores of vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, rallies, wedding processions, hearses and more. Humans and their automobiles mingle with stray cattle and dogs in a sad spectacle of urban confusion. Pedestrians have surrendered their right of walking to assorted vendors whose unauthorised shops have blocked the footpath. Anybody bold enough to walk on the remaining part of road is under constant threat of being hit by vehicles zooming past in both directions.
Our protagonist here is not the road but a person walking alone on the road. His name is Narottam Chowdhury. His destination and intent are both extremely unusual. Tragic and extreme too. He is on his way to commit suicide by jumping before a moving train. He is aware that the road on which he is walking doesn’t touch the train line, so he has planned to leave this road and enter into a narrow lane on the right side after about half a mile. The lane ends at a shrubbery which has the look and feel of a small jungle. He will find his way through the bushes to the open expanse where he will find two silvery lines of steel on which the trains pass. He has no idea where these two parallel train lines originate and where they end. Narottam will throw himself in front of a passing train today, which he has planned meticulously. This is going to be his last walk on this road. This same road may be used to bring his mangled, lifeless body from the railway track, possibly in an ambulance, after an hour or two.
He has been contemplating suicide for a long time. Once he had accidentally blurted it out before a few friends, but couldn’t come up to the stage of actual implementation. Although almost five long years had lapsed since that date, he was still hanging on to his meaningless life shamelessly. But he was determined to accomplish the task today. His life was becoming unbearable with every passing day. He was not so immature as to die just to honour his word. He had to die because he was unable to live the life available to him.
He gently touched his chest while walking, but not to check his heartbeat, which is steady. He wanted to ensure that his cell phone was intact in his chest pocket. He was not in favour of carrying this device up to the point of death, but realised afterwards that it was an essential accessory for anyone dying outside home or hospital. A phone in the pocket of a fresh corpse would quicken the intimations to his kin. The body would get identified fast. He had also placed a neatly folded note in his pocket which contains just the basic information about himself, including relevant phone numbers. It would come in handy for the finders of his body. He wasn’t too sure if either the cell phone or the paper can be salvaged from the mangled corpse, but it would always be better to carry both in order to improve chances. He also carried some money in his pocket. His spectacles were in place on his nose. His old wrist watch stayed at its rightful place, his left wrist. These were the only earthly possessions he was carrying with him, apart from the modest clothes he was wearing. The noisy erratic traffic on the road did not bother him. He did not mind being hit today by a passing vehicle on the road, although he will be terribly disappointed if the accident left him maimed but not dead. It would be very difficult to plan a decent suicide again if he wer maimed.
Did he hear something? Some vague distant voice seemed to reach him in spite of the din and bustle of the busy road. He would have dismissed it as a disturbance in his own mind, but it actually sounded like some announcement through a microphone. Had he been caught? His secret exposed? A public announcement asking people to capture Narottam before he did something foolish? He chuckled at his own silly thought.
How could anyone even guess what he was up to? He had been extremely careful; knowing well that even the slightest slip from his side could abort the mission. True, he had once blurted it out before four friends; but that was five years ago. He had let his intent slip in a moment of carelessness, purely by accident. He was neither hungry for sympathy nor did he want to deliver a shock. His announcement had not jolted anybody. Nor had anyone asked him to desist from such misadventure. They just asked him not to blabber like a mad man and veered away from the topic which, in their judgement, didn’t merit any further attention. Narottam wonders whether any of those friends still recalled his intent. Or perhaps, they were silently waiting to see whether Narottam really meant what he had said.
He was satisfied that during the half hour since he left home, not for a moment did he waver or vacillate in his resolve. Sometime back, he had stopped briefly at a stall selling hot snacks on the pavement. A sweaty man with a balding forehead was passing on hot samosas on round paper plates while collecting cash with remarkable speed and efficiency. Narottam stood and watched silently as balls of yellowish brown dough, with fillings of cooked potato, were moulded into tiny pyramids and dipped in a cauldron of boiling oil perched on a huge hissing stove. The samosas were allowed to sizzle and dance in oil a few minutes before a large slotted spoon would fish them out and heap in a basket, for onward transmission to the paper plates. The entire process, right from making of dough to eventual annihilation of the end products in hungry mouths, presided over by the balding man, was taking place in full public view. Narottam saw life pulsating at every segment of this activity, but scampered away from the spot, afraid that such open display of life might weaken his resolve to die. He wouldn’t allow some silly distraction to interfere with his tryst with death.
Narottam could vaguely hear the public announcement which had become a bit louder by then. Slightly louder but still indistinct. He strained his ears but could not make out what it was about. He would have been happy to hear every news, gossip, message circulating in his world during his lifetime, but what was the point now? Even if the government was announcing a ban on use of this road for walking towards train tracks, it wouldn’t affect him. He would have gone before the dictum was enforced.
An assessment of his age and health had convinced him that number of years he could reasonably expect to live was by no means small. He could not wait so long for a natural death with his unbearable life, with every passing day renewing a blow to his desire to live, which was already at its lowest point.
He had even weighed all alternate modes of suicide to choose the method most suitable to his condition and temperament, with zero risk of failure. Swallowing some strong insecticide, or any other dependable poison, in solid or liquid form, would have been easier but with uncertain results. He had heard of people surviving such attempts with severely damaged organs. Jumping from the terrace of a high-rise had never appealed to him, for fear of hitting some innocent person or dog or car on the ground. He preferred his corpse to be delivered undamaged at his home; but he had to abandon that preference when his secret attempt to hang himself failed by a wide margin of error. That was almost a year back. He had rolled his wife’s sari into a coil, secured one end around stem of a ceiling fan just above the blades; but the art of making a proper knot eluded him. The sari was retrieved with a thick film of dust collected from the ceiling fan. Cleaning it secretly, folding neatly and placing it back in his wife’s wardrobe was no mean job.
Slicing a wrist to allow his blood to drain out was an option, but his research showed that the success rate was only about forty percent. Even swallowing handfuls of powerful sedatives, with its fifty one percent success rate, didn’t meet the rigorous, zero-error standards he had set before himself. Finally he was left with only the train line, widely followed and highly popular among the suicide aspirants. Easy availability of open train tracks in his town came as an additional incentive.
Not far from the rail lines stood the small temple of Shiva on right side of the road. Narottam suddenly decided to have a last glimpse of the deity. It was not a part of his plan, but why not? Like all Hindu temples, this too expected devotees to remove their footwear outside. But Narottam didn’t go in. Gaining an unhindered view of the deity from the road itself, he folded his hands, closed his eyes and muttered a brief prayer: “I haven’t come to seek anything, Oh God. I am leaving. This is our last meeting! Goodbye.”
As he descended back to the road, he halted briefly, training his ears to listen to the announcement which was now audible clearly. A rickety van came slowly , with a large funnel shaped amplifier repeating one sentence ad nauseam : “Please be informed that electricity will be cut off tomorrow from seven o’ clock in the morning to five o’clock in the evening , on account of urgent maintenance work.”
How did that matter to a person who would not be around tomorrow?
But no, he made a quick reality check. What would happen if the news didn’t reach his home that day? The next morning there would be no water in the overhead tank, no electricity for any work whatsoever, not even for charging a mobile phone – and all this while a mutilated body would be awaiting cremation, not to speak of the fast arriving crowd of friends and relatives. This piece of news had reach his home immediately. His hand reached his pocket for the mobile phone, but he stopped again. Could he call at this point just to pass on this information? He would surely subject himself to the obvious question: why couldn’t he wait till he returned home. Could he say he had no plans to return home? He surmised that a public announcement as loud as this must have reached his home too. So his cell phone went back to the pocket.
In fact he didn’t have to feel guilty about leaving such a petty problem as a temporary power outage outside of his life span unresolved. He had listed and attended to every single issue that a man of the world is expected to. All financial and legal issues relating to his home, money, mortgage, insurance etc. were taken care of. Keys, IDs, passwords, codes, ATM pins were all kept neatly and could be easily located. He had also kept an index of all documents clearly mentioning where they could be found. Content with the knowledge that his absence would not cause any material problem to his family, Narottam continued his death walk.
His preparation had been thorough even about action points during his final moments. His mind and body both were well prepared, strong and unwavering. He had planned out where exactly he would stand before his final leap. He had to hide behind the thick foliage nearby waiting for a train to arrive. The wait would not be long because this line, extremely busy in the evenings, had a train passing almost every five minutes.
Last week, he had seen three trains passing in about twenty minutes, two carrying passengers and the third one some cargo in containers. The second train was passing slowly; so he could see a bunch of giggling kids waving their hands through the open window, hollering something he could not hear. He had wanted to ask them why they were so happy while in a moving train.
Today it would not matter what or who were in the train. He would jump not more than five seconds before the train reached the spot, not allowing enough time for the driver to apply brakes. In those few precious moments, his tormented soul would have been released to heaven. Or hell ; it did not really matter.
It was entirely up to him on which of the passing trains he would bestow the honour of crushing him. He might let the first train pass, perhaps the second one too; but not beyond the third, lest his resolve lose steam. His day without a tomorrow would be drawing to a close even as the townsfolks would be preparing for next day’s power outage. The announcement, still audible to him even from a distance, irritated him. He had two questions for the announcer in the van. Had it been announced distinctly near his home? Was the man sitting in the van using pre-recorded audio or parroting the sentence in real time?
Nearing his destination, he made a quick calculation in his mind and realised that in fifteen minutes he would be at point zero. Within an hour he would be dead and within the next one hour, his body would have been located, identified and taken to morgue.
He felt a vibration near his chest and stooped to locate its source. The cell phone. It released a gentle alert, shook a bit and fell silent. A message for sure. Should he read? Let the message also die unseen, unread. He hadn’t brought the offending device with him to receive messages today. He decided not to touch the mobile at all, but could not approve the propriety of dying before reading a message specifically meant for him. He would remain in dark about its content for ever, even though ‘for ever’ for him means just an hour. His curiosity overpowered him. He fished out the phone from his breast pocket and stared at the screen.
Gosh! This? Of all matters on heaven and earth?
It was a shame that such careless, offending words would claim his attention at a sensitive and delicate moment of his life. He would have thrown the cell phone and crushed it in sheer disgust, but he didn’t. It went back to his pocket. Cursing himself for having read the message, he decided to ignore the message and walk on towards his tryst.
But he could not. A sudden feeling of helplessness overpowered him. The moment he read the single sentence, he had understood that he had lost. He could not ignore it and proceed on his own. Not today.
He walked back and entered a market he had left behind. He took out his phone, read the message again and felt like kicking himself for his surrender. ‘Bring flour, sugar and some vegetables on your way back.’ Just ten words.
What does ‘on your way back’ mean? He had no plan to turn back today. Silly. Humiliating. But that was that. His zero-error plan, carefully chartered strategy lay assaulted and shattered by rude, untimely interruption of these shameless words.
While trudging homeward on the same road, clutching a bag of grocery, Narottam resolved to wait and plan for another day. The setback was temporary, not strong enough to break him.
A glance at his watch convinced him that nothing would be out of place. This was the normal time for his homeward trek every day. He would reach home at the usual time and nobody would be any wiser.
Satya Misra writes short stories in Odiya , a regional language of India. Some of his stories have been translated into other Indian languages. This was first published in Odiya magazine, Katha, and subsequently included in his collection, Miccha Raastara Sata.
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Borderless 