Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

‘You have always been the quiet one, haven’t you?’ the man says, not really asking a question, but giving voice to an idle, fleeting impression. Then something approaching intent shows itself in the next few words — ‘You know what they called you? Your nickname, because you are so silent most of the time?’ — before the refusal to reveal the answer leaches it away. Or perhaps that is the intent — the dangling question that will goad him to ask for an answer. But he is not going to oblige.

‘It’s not as if you have been conducting all your. . er. . your business in complete secrecy,’ the interrogator continues. ‘All these farmers, hundreds of them across dozens of villages. . and then boasting about it in your papers, Liberation and Deshabrati , although those reports are slightly wishful, don’t you think? The vast numbers of people joining you, the enormous impact your group’s actions have, the great success of all this squad action and annihilations, the Red Party inexorably exercising its hold village by village — these claims were always a bit hopeful, a bit exaggerated in your reports, no?’ His voice is apologetic, as if he is slightly distraught at having to point out the gaps and the errors and the abridgement that ideology inevitably demands.

‘But very little reporting, I see, of your retreats and losses and setbacks. Those are dealt with’ — pause — ‘hurriedly. If at all,’ he adds as a coda. The tone remains regretful.

The greater part of Supratik’s mind is too busy whirring away elsewhere to heed these ant-bites. Could this man be from the Congress ? If so, there is some hope of escaping lightly: did his grandfather not have some Congress connections, or even his father? Did they not know anyone high enough up the ladder to put a few words in the right ears?

This time the man reads Supratik as if his head has become transparent glass and the thoughts inside it a lean procession of simple, large words. ‘It must have occurred to you, once or twice, that you could have been arrested earlier had it not been for the, uh, police connections that your family has maintained for many years?’ he asks, but the interrogative tone at the close of the sentence is so attenuated as to be almost absent; he does not require an answer to this one, either. That vertiginous feeling revisits Supratik. Could that be why he has not been banged up with other prisoners in Ballygunje police station — so close to what he still thinks, perhaps with renewed intensity at this moment, as home — but instead held alone in a cell for three days, or was it four; not penned and beaten up with other political prisoners, which is, he knows, a matter of routine occurrence? Again, that near-instantaneous reversal: it could equally be because they have different plans for him; that specialness could only contain a terrible meaning.

‘We are just trying to establish,’ the questioner says, ‘how much of a linchpin you were. Or were you one of the members of the high command?’

Despite himself, Supratik is impelled towards an answer. ‘Since you know everything, why go through this drama of questioning?’ he asks. He had meant it to sting, a retaliation perhaps for the barbs his questioner has been aiming at him, but only manages a petulant tiredness.

‘We do know a lot of things,’ the man admits, somewhat disarmingly, then flicks the tone like someone tossing a coin. ‘Which is why it may not be such a good idea to remain silent. Or to lie.’

The silence seems to be emanating from the interrogator now, not imposed by Supratik on the proceedings. He controls its flow according to the rules of the game, which only he knows, then cuts it out with unusual garrulity: ‘The members who plan and give out the orders, that’s what that’s what, um, interests us. The fingers of your hand pick up something, but the command comes from the brain. The central nervous system. That’s the goal. Not the ideologues, mind you, those we know; not even the foot soldiers, but the generals. And you are one of them, am I right? The stealthy nights of planning in, here, let’s see’ — that show of consulting papers again — ‘oh, let’s choose any three from this long list, quite long, 23A Satgachhi 2nd Lane in Tiljala, 76/2 Dihi Entally Lane, 17/B/2 Bechu Chatterjee Street in Kalabagan. . what? Am I right?’

Supratik makes fists of his hands under the table to steady himself. The sudden change in the man’s persona, from a mild, laconic nobody to this spitter of absolutely accurate facts, like your pot-bellied, rice-and-fish-eating next-door neighbour turning out to be a supreme assassin, getting his bullets unfailingly into the plumb centre of his target time after time, sends Supratik’s whole being careering. Yes, they know everything. There is no hope; and yet that great deceiver taunts him with the meagre residues — look, it says, they do not know about X or Y. And only X or Y it will be, since they have made it their business to know the entire alphabet bar those final two or three letters. Which they may very possibly know about, anyway.

The man now asks his first direct and pointed question: ‘Who are the city guys still in Medinipur?’

Silence. Do they really want to know, fill a gap in their knowledge, or are they trying to catch him out?

The man persists: ‘Did you not like the question? What about a different one: name me some villages that your groups, ah, penetrated. Not only in Bengal, but also Bihar and Orissa. I read in your papers how your spread is now over a hundred districts. The figure in that boast — is that wishful?’

‘I don’t know,’ Supratik replies; so lame even to his own ears. He has the sense that the man is looking at him fixedly, but he cannot be certain of it because of the combination of the thick glasses, the shadow in which he keeps his face and the cone of light under which Supratik sits directly. A worrying thought darts through his mind — how can he not see the face of a man sitting three or four feet opposite him? — and slips out again.

‘I have a different matter to sort out with you, it’s been worrying me for a while,’ the man now says. ‘Something private, something more about me than you. I want to understand something. A lot of these young Naxal men, both activists in Calcutta and in the rural districts, they come from poor families. I can see how they would want to. . to to throw in their lot with a, ah, movement that promises to be of the poor, for the poor, by the poor.’

Supratik knows so well where this is going that he finds himself nodding as if to encourage the man.

‘But. . but so many of you, the boys from the city, I mean, what your Charu-babu calls “the urban intelligentsia”, so many of you come from well-off, middle-class homes, in your case an upper-middle-class home, am I right? You boys have been educated in good schools, you’ve had enough to eat, enough to wear, comfortable homes to live in, the benefit of college education, not a day’s want in your lives. . What made you leave that that that comfort zone to risk your lives?’

How amazing the transformation is, Supratik thinks: you scratch the surface of a serious-seeming, important apparatchik, all silences and measured reserve, and out comes the loquacious Bengali soul; no less a performance, that incessant chattering, but a thinner mask, all too easy to come by, and easily wearable.

He is not done: ‘Putting yourselves in such danger. . bombs, guns, knives, axes and whatnot?’

He makes it sound like sweeties that will give you a sore stomach, if you indulge too much.

The man continues, ‘And life in the villages could not have been a bed of roses, right? Especially for people from your kind of background? The rough food, the discomforts of daily life, no electricity, no sanitation. Did you boys get diarrhoea and stomach upsets a lot? Surely you must have.’