Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

Throughout lunch Chhaya has watched the movements and actions of everyone, like an undercover surveillance agent. Purnima has, as usual, eaten as much as a Bihari guard or a rickshaw-puller, almost up to her wrist in the mound of rice and dal and vegetables and fish curry; Baishakhi has, uncharacteristically, toyed with her food, her mind altogether far away; it seems that Arunima, monosyllabic but jumpy and lit up somewhat dangerously from within as if plotting grand arson or regicide, is following her older cousin into a private no-man’s territory too. It never crosses Chhaya’s mind that others could be thinking similar thoughts about her unnatural silence: where is her relentless carping, her flurry of barbs let loose at everyone, the measured drip of acid from her tongue?

Chhaya had started off being unusually animated, asking everyone, nicely for a change, what plans they had for the rest of the afternoon, whether anyone would be interested in joining her for a few rounds of Ludo afterwards. When she had established what everyone was going to be doing — no one was remotely interested in Ludo or snakes-and-ladders — she lapsed into silence and let the viscous plan move up and down in her mind like the meniscus of an exotic poison.

Malati, the maidservant, comes rushing upstairs from the kitchen just as lunch is ending and says excitedly to Purnima, ‘The knife-and-scissors sharpening man is going down the street now.’ Purnima gets up, energised and active, goes to the kitchen downstairs and orders, ‘Quick, quick, gather all the stuff, don’t forget the bonti. And all the scissors — all of them, they’re all blunt. Call Gagan, ask him to carry the stone mortar. Quick-quick, I don’t want to miss the sharpening man this time, he’s been quite elusive, we keep missing him. The sheel has lost its friction. Call Gagan, what are you waiting for? Here, I’ll take the rest downstairs, let me first wash my hands. Call out to the man to stop.’ And in a whirling vortex of activity, Purnima thud-thuds out, carrying a clattering, clinking armoury of assorted knives and scissors.

Now that the sudden frenzy has blown over, Chhaya can hear the raucous cry of the dharwala cycling down the street, his call so stylised over time that you have to know what it is in the first place in order to identify it as the knife-sharpening-man’s call. An opportunity sent by Ma Kali, she thinks, as she too rises from the table and announces calmly, ‘I’m going to wash my hands now, I’m done. Arunima, if you’re going to watch all this sharpening, don’t stare at the sparks for too long, you’ll go blind. I know you like watching it, but be careful.’

She leaves the table and goes to the sink in one corner of the room to wash her hands. Then she goes to her room one floor up, picks up a bottle of red nail polish and walks out again. Moving calmly and confidently, she takes the stairs down, back to the first floor, then goes to Purnima and Priyo’s room. New clothes are strewn on the bed lavishly. A quick look tells her that they are both Purnima’s and Baishakhi’s. She empties the bottle of nail polish on as many of the garments on the top layer as the small volume of cosmetic will allow. Then she returns upstairs to her room, the empty bottle held in her hand. The burn in her is still unassuaged.

A small fear begins to form: she has to dispose of the empty bottle; what if they find it in her room? She lets the fear grow to the point where the accusing bottle glows with reproach. She picks it up and, calmly again, makes her way up to the roof. She is going to fling it far onto someone else’s roof and run away from the terrace as soon as the deed is accomplished. When she reaches the top landing, before she can push open the door to the terrace, she hears Baishakhi’s unmistakable voice, ‘If they look up, they’ll see you. Please, please don’t stand here’, followed by something unintelligible in a man’s voice. She begins to turn back to escape downstairs, but some knowledge gives her pause. She stands still for a while and the embers of the burn inside her suddenly flare up into flames of unexpected joy.

Earlier that day, while Purba had been filling up a bucket from the tap in the corner of the courtyard, the maid, Malati, had surreptitiously given her some Vim, which she had smuggled from upstairs in a small newspaper pouch.

‘You do your washing-up here with ashes and charcoal, seeing that makes me feel small, I do their washing with Beem, so I bring some down. Hide it, hide it, if anyone finds out, I’ll be kicked out,’ she whispered to Purba, slipping her the packet of powder. Noticing Purba’s hesitancy and fear, Malati added, ‘Take, take, quickly.’ Both women looked upstairs with guilt and fear.

Touched by this gratuitous act of kindness from a servant, Purba’s eyes pricked with tears. But sentimentality was a luxury, she knew, and fear had the upper hand. She whispered, ‘Come into my room. If anyone sees you standing here talking to me, you’ll have a lot of questions to answer.’

The two women scuttled into Purba’s little room. ‘You’ll get into trouble one of these days,’ she said to Malati.

‘Only if I get caught. But I’m careful.’

‘Why take the risk? I manage fine with charcoal,’ Purba said, trying to keep her voice steady; she felt soft, malleable.

‘What can I say? We are servants, illiterate, poor people, it is not our place to open our mouths. But we too have eyes and ears, we can see and hear what goes on.’

Purba could only remain silent in the face of such empathy.

‘Do you think we don’t know that Boro-boüdi secretly sends down used clothes and other stuff for your son and daughter? They’re growing up on leftovers and bones, those two; they’ll come good one day, you mark my words. Those who suffer, win.’

At the mention of her children, Purba couldn’t restrain herself. She covered her mouth with her sari to hide her trembling chin, her twisting mouth.

The timing for doing the washing-up has been calculated by Purba with the utmost deliberation: late afternoon, when everyone upstairs will be deep into their siesta, so there is no chance of getting caught using Vim. She will have to be very quiet too; no clanging and clattering pots and pans that could wake up her mother-in-law.

While doing the washing-up, Purba hears a commotion break out upstairs. A few minutes of straining to listen — and it does not require much effort, for Purnima’s voice carries for miles — establishes the main facts: Baishakhi has spilled a bottle of nail polish and ruined three saris and two salwar-kameez sets. Alight with rage, Purnima has mercilessly thrashed her daughter. Everyone in the family is now assembled on the first floor to witness the show and contribute their two-anna worth of opinion.

Kalyani comes out of Purba’s room and listens, wide-eyed, thirstily soaking up the sounds of the circus upstairs until Purba shoos her away: ‘Go inside, someone will see you gaping and grinning.’

Perhaps Purba is only trying to protect her daughter from the knowledge of how many new items of clothing the people upstairs have received and given, a knowledge that will extinguish the joy her daughter is clearly deriving from the drama. For the three of them, a separate household really, have received only one set each, the obligatory one bought at the last minute, from cheap shops and hawkers in Gariahat: Sona, a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of trousers two sizes too big for him; Kalyani, a salwar-kameez set; and Purba, a block-printed cotton sari. They will shrink, their colours will run, they will look like floor-swabbing cloths after the first wash, then they will start falling apart at the seams; you can predict all this by taking one look at the garments.

Washing-up completed, Purba crosses over to her side of the courtyard and enters her room. She feels like a nap, but there are a hundred and one things to be done — darning the holey mosquito net alone will take up the rest of the afternoon. She decides instead to fold the dry washing and put it away.