Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

I felt dizzy. Was this true? Had the unthinkable, something we hadn’t dared hope for, something that was the acme of all our striving and actions, had that come to pass with such ease, without us being even aware of it?

I was still in shock. My heart was rattling, but it was a different kind of motion and sensation now, much closer to those moments of intense joy of childhood. I wanted to shout and embrace everyone and tell the whole world that revolting against oppressors was the natural state of man.

There were two golas in the courtyard, one much larger than the other. The smaller one housed seed-paddy, the larger husked rice — for consumption, or selling, or for the other purposes to which it was unfailingly put: smuggling, lending it to extort interest or bind the farmer into ever greater ties from which he would never be able to free himself. The grain that gave life and took it away too.

I said to Dhiren and Kanu — Distribute everything. Equal amounts to all.

In the main bedroom, which Samir and Shankar had turned upside down, Bankim’s family was still cowering. I whispered to Samir — Good news.

Bankim’s wife cried out — Please let us go, spare us, spare the little children, they’ve done no wrong. .

I took an instant decision not to tell her about her husband. She would find out soon enough.

I rapped out — Shut up or I’ll slit your throat. And your children’s. Where’s all the money and jewellery? Where?

She quaked and wept, a ham actress in a bad film. Even in this moment of great danger, faced with such a threat, she was reluctant to reveal the whereabouts of her material possessions. For a second I toyed with the idea of giving her a few blows with a lathi, but instead I got Samir to try out the keys on the huge wooden almirah in the room. Everything of any value was bound to be in there. It took some time, but we got there in the end: 3,000 rupees in cash, a fair amount of jewellery, no guns. . but that wasn’t what I was looking for.

— Listen, take all that stuff, everything you can get your hands on. But look for documents: loan documents, stamp paper, lease deeds, deeds of sale. .

They were not in the almirah. Samir said — We turned up a wooden box. It was on the verandah, with a pillow on it, pretending to be a seat. Then I noticed it had a keyhole and hinges. .

We broke open the box. There was no time to fiddle around with keys. Yes, a loose stack of papers, some with revenue stamps on them, some with thumb imprints.

We took it down to the courtyard and set the whole thing on fire. The papers in it caught instantly. The box took its own time, but eventually it too went the way of the documents.

The farmers downstairs were busy filling sacks and clothes and gamchhas with grain from the storage rooms.

MADAN TIMED IT well. A month after he sacked the maid Somu had seduced, he came to Charubala with his petition.

‘Ma, my son is growing up. He’s a year younger than Chhoto-babu. It’s not a good idea to keep him in the village any longer.’

‘Why, what’s wrong with your village?’ Charubala asked.

‘There are no jobs to be had. Everyone says that now that the sahebs have gone, they are giving jobs in the big cities to our own countrymen.’

‘Yes, everyone says it, so you believe it. What sort of a naïve man are you? So, what will your son do? Be a cook like you? I can ask around.’

‘No, Ma, not a cook. I was thinking of some kind of a job in Calcutta, like an electrical shop. .’

‘Electrical shop?’ Charubala seemed surprised. ‘How on earth are we going to find him an electrical shop? And what do you mean: working in someone else’s shop or setting up his own?’

‘No, no, not his own,’ Madan replied hastily. ‘Where’s the money for that? But if Baba can find him something — he knows so many people. .’

‘So talk to Baba then. You see him every day, you live in the same house. What’s the big deal?’

Madan looked abashed. ‘No, Ma. If you mentioned it first to him. . then maybe. .’

‘Ah, I see,’ she said. Now that she understood what it was Madan had in mind, it became easier for her to talk it through with him.

‘Yes, of course, I shall mention it. Have you given much thought to what it is that you want your son to do? He’s only sixteen years old. Will he finish school this year?’

‘Yes, Ma, this year. He can read and write. If something were to come up. . If something could be found in one of Baba’s mills or factories. .’

More and more of the picture was beginning to get illuminated for Charubala. Yes, what a good idea, why had she not thought of it herself? This would be a good thing for Madan; she would make it her business to intercede. She performed a rapid calculation in her head, a piece of arithmetic that she has done without thinking an uncountable number of times over the years; a number, which never failed to amaze her despite its familiar and clockwork changeability, presented itself at the end of the process: next year Madan will have been with them for thirty years.

When Charubala’s children were grown-up she used to remark frequently, ‘It is Madan who has raised them, on his lap and his back.’ Prafullanath and Charubala guessed Madan was about ten years old — his birth was not registered, so neither he nor his family knew his exact year of birth — when he started working for them in 1922, while they still lived in Baubazar. Adinath had just turned one and was crawling everywhere on his hands and knees, trying to lift himself up and start walking, putting every bit of rubbish he chanced upon into his mouth first. Madan had come from a tiny village in Nuapada in the province of Bihar and Orissa, led by his uncle, who was the cook in a neighbour’s house. He began as the general dogsbody, helping Charubala around the house: he ran errands, swept and cleaned the rooms, did the odd task that was required of him at any given moment — carrying the bags of shopping in from the car, fetching a glass of water, making tea, bringing food from the kitchen to the table, moving a chair; he was the beck-and-call boy of the house. He looked after the children for short periods when Charubala was engaged in other things. He picked them up and carried them around, singing to them and rocking them if they grizzled or cried. ‘Careful, careful,’ Charubala laughed. ‘You’re leaning sideways under the weight of the child, you’re hardly any bigger than him.’ Like Prafullanath and Charubala’s children, he too called them ‘Baba’ and ‘Ma’.

Charubala, whether in shrewd speculation about the future or out of the compassion in her soul, also started giving the illiterate young boy, a year or two after he came to them, lessons in Bengali and basic arithmetic.

Prafullanath teased her, ‘Good plan. When he’s totally competent, I shall give him a job at the office and you’ll have to find another servant.’

‘Stop joking,’ she said. ‘I have my misgivings: I hear so many stories of people educating their servants and then the upstarts leave their homes and go and get a better job elsewhere.’

Still, Charubala managed to bury her qualms and be generous; she felt a tug in her heart when she saw the motherless boy’s shrunken little face and rickety arms and legs. Slate and chalk were bought for him and she wrote out the Bengali vowels and consonants on the slate and asked him to trace his chalk over each of those at least a dozen times, while saying aloud the sound of the letter at each repetition. They progressed slowly to Barna Parichay and numbers, elementary addition and subtraction, then to multiplication and division. Madan was given paper and pencil, but he struggled to find the time to do his lessons in the erratic and increasingly rare lulls between his duties. Sometimes he tried to put in an hour at night, after everyone had gone to bed, but failed to keep his eyes open after the first ten minutes. He tried to make use of the afternoons, when everyone had a nap and he had his first uninterrupted break for the day.