2

On a monsoon evening the darkness of the sky hung heavy with moisture. Beneath the soundless dominion of a colourless, featureless mass of cloud, the city of Calcutta lay curled up in silence like some enormous joyless dog with its muzzle buried in its own tail. Since the previous evening it had been raining in a thin, persistent drizzle — a rain that had turned the roads to mud but had not mustered the force to wash that mud clean and carry it away. Since four o’clock that afternoon the rain had stopped, but the clouds gave no hopeful sign. In that interval of dreaded rain — when the mind cannot settle indoors and finds no comfort outside either — two persons sat upon two cane stools on the damp rooftop of a three-storeyed house.

When these two friends were small they had run about and played games on this very rooftop after returning from school; in the days before examinations they had paced this rooftop rapidly, like madmen, reciting their lessons aloud to each other; in summer they had come back from college and eaten their evening meal up here on the roof, and many a night the argument had gone on until two in the morning, and when the morning sun had fallen upon their faces they had started up to find they had both fallen asleep there on the mat. When not a single college examination remained to be passed, it was on this rooftop that the Hindu Welfare Society held its monthly session — one of these two friends serving as its president, and the other as its secretary.

The one who was president was named Gaurimohan; his family and friends called him Gora. He seemed to stand apart from everyone around him in a manner that defied all ordinary measure. His college tutor used to call him “the silver mountain.” The colour of his skin was an almost startling white — not softened in the least by any warmth of yellow. He stood nearly six feet tall, broad-boned, with fists like the paws of a tiger, and a voice so deep and resonant that anyone hearing it unexpectedly would start and cry, “Who is there?” The features of his face were unnecessarily large and excessively powerful; his jaw and chin were set like the stout bolts of a fortress gate; above his eyes there was barely any brow to speak of, and his forehead widened toward the temples. His lips were thin and pressed; above them his nose jutted like the blade of a chopper. His two eyes were small but keen; his gaze was like the tip of an arrow trained upon some invisible target in the far distance, yet capable in a single instant of turning back and striking what was near with the speed of lightning. Gaur could not rightly be called handsome, but there was no passing him by unnoticed — in any gathering of men, he would catch the eye.

And his friend Binoy was gentle and bright, in the manner of the ordinary educated Bengali gentleman; a natural grace of temperament and a keenness of intellect together gave his face a certain distinction. Throughout his years at college he had consistently won high marks and scholarships; Gora could by no means keep pace with him. Gora had no particular attachment to the subjects of study; he could not grasp things as quickly as Binoy, nor retain them as easily. It was Binoy who had served as his vehicle, dragging him along in his own wake through all the college examinations.

Gora was saying, “Listen to me. The fact that Abinash was speaking ill of the Brahmos shows quite plainly that the man is in a perfectly healthy and natural state of mind. Why did you suddenly flare up at that?”

Binoy. It is extraordinary. I could not even have thought that there was any question to be raised on this matter.

Gora. If that is so, then the fault lies in your thinking. When one set of people breaks all the bonds of society and conducts itself in a contrary manner in every respect, it is not in the nature of things that the rest of society should regard them with perfect calm and charity. Society will misunderstand them — that is inevitable; whatever they do straightforwardly will inevitably appear crooked to these others; their good will inevitably appear evil — and so it ought to be. Among all the penalties for choosing to break away from society at one’s own pleasure, this too is one.

Binoy. I cannot say that whatever is natural is therefore good.

Gora grew somewhat heated and said, “I have no concern with goodness. If two or four good people there be in this world, let them be — but let all the rest be natural. Without that, neither work can proceed nor life be sustained. Those who have the fancy to play the hero by becoming Brahmos must be prepared to bear this much sorrow — that non-Brahmos will misread and disparage everything they do. That they should strut about with heads held high while their adversaries follow behind applauding them — that does not happen in this world, and if it did happen it would not be to the world’s advantage.”

Binoy. I am not speaking of the denunciation of a community — I mean personal —

Gora. What is there in denouncing a community that counts as denunciation at all? That is merely the forming of opinions. Personal denunciation is what we want. Come now, you pious soul — did you never denounce anyone yourself?

Binoy. I did. I did so often — but I am ashamed of it.

Gora clenched his right hand into a fist and said, “No, Binoy, this will not do — it will not do at all.”

Binoy was silent for a moment, then said, “Why? What has happened? What are you afraid of?”

Gora. I can see plainly that you are making yourself weak.

Binoy grew slightly agitated and said, “Weak! You know, if I wished, I could go to their house this very moment — they had invited me — yet I did not go.”

Gora. But this very fact of your not having gone is something you cannot forget for a single moment. Day and night you think of nothing else — I did not go, I did not go, I did not go to their house — at that rate it would be better to have gone outright.

Binoy. Then are you telling me to go?

Gora slapped his own knee and said, “No, I am not telling you to go. I can write it out and read it to you: the day you do go, you will go utterly and completely. From the very next day you will begin taking your meals at their house, and having enrolled your name in the Brahmo Samaj’s register, you will rise up as a conquering evangelist.”

Binoy. What then? And after that?

Gora. And after that! There is no worse abuse than death itself. Born a Brahmin’s son, you will go and perish in a knacker’s yard; not a single custom or scruple will remain to you; like a helmsman whose compass is broken, your sense of east and west will be utterly lost — and then it will seem to you that bringing the vessel into harbour is mere superstition, mere narrowness of mind — that only drifting along without purpose is true seamanship. But I have no patience to go on wrangling over all this — I say, go ahead and go. Why do you keep all of us in perpetual dread by standing with your foot already stretched toward the mouth of ruin?

Binoy burst out laughing and said, “It is not always the case that a patient dies the moment the doctor gives up hope. I see no signs of the final crisis in myself.”

Gora. You do not?

Binoy. No.

Gora. The pulse is not faltering?

Binoy. No, it beats with perfect vigour.

Gora. Does it not seem to you that if she herself were to serve it, even the food of the unclean would become an offering to the gods?

Binoy shrank inwardly with great embarrassment and said, “Gora, stop — enough of this.”

Gora. Why, there is nothing improper in what I say. Those gracious hands are not veiled from the sun’s sight. When the mention alone of those sacred lotus-hands — hands that freely shake hands with men — becomes more than you can bear, then, O Sanjay, I despair of your salvation!

Binoy. Look here, Gora, I hold womanhood in reverence — and our own scriptures too—

Gora. Do not invoke the scriptures to excuse the manner in which you are revering womanhood! That is not called reverence — and if I were to say aloud what it is properly called, you would come at me with your fists.

Binoy. You say that merely by the force of assertion.

Gora. The scriptures call women ‘worthy of worship, the luminaries of the household.’ They are worthy of worship because they illuminate the home. The honour accorded to them in the Western fashion — as those who illuminate the hearts of men — would be better not called worship at all.

Binoy. Because a distortion appears in certain cases, is it right to cast such a slur upon a noble ideal?

Gora grew impatient and said, “Binu, now that your capacity for sober judgment has deserted you, simply accept what I say. I tell you that underlying all the extravagant praise of womanhood found in Western doctrine is nothing but desire. The place for worshipping womanhood is the mother’s chamber, the seat of the faithful and virtuous housewife. To draw her away from that place and then compose hymns in her honour is to conceal an insult within a flattery. The reason your mind flutters like a moth around Pareshbabu’s house is what the English call ‘love’ — but do not let this monkey-business seize you, this notion that the English fashion of ‘love’ must be worshipped as the supreme purpose of a man’s existence!”

Binoy leapt up like a fresh horse stung by a whip and said, “Ah, Gora, enough — that is quite enough.”

Gora. Where is it enough! Nothing has been said at all. It is precisely because we have not learned to see men and women in their natural places with any simplicity that we have accumulated such a heap of poeticising.

Binoy said, “Very well, I grant that the relation between man and woman, if kept in its proper place, might remain uncomplicated — but we, driven by the force of instinct, transgress that boundary and falsify it. Yet is this fault to be found only in foreign lands? If the Englishman’s poetry on this matter is false, then our own perpetual extolling of the renunciation of woman and gold is equally false. To save man from that which most easily makes him forget himself, some choose to exalt the beauty of love through poetry and thus put its baser aspect to shame, while others magnify its baser aspect and prescribe the renunciation of woman and gold; these two are simply different methods adopted by people of different natures. If you condemn one, you cannot spare the other.”

Gora. Well! I had misunderstood you. Your condition is not as grave as I thought. As long as philosophy is still at play in your head, you may ‘love’ without fear — but take hold of yourself while there is yet time. Such is the request of your well-wishing friends.

Binoy said in haste, “Ah, have you gone mad! ‘Love’ — in my case! But this much I must confess: what little I have seen of Pareshbabu’s family, and what I have heard about them, has filled me with genuine regard for them. I suppose that is why I felt a certain attraction toward knowing what the inner life of their household might be like.”

Gora. Very well — that attraction is precisely what must be kept in check. Let the chapter on their natural history remain unexplored. Besides, they are a predatory species; in trying to learn their inner workings, you may venture so far inside that there will be no trace of even your topknot left to be seen.

Binoy. You know, you have one fault. You believe that God has bestowed all strength upon you alone, and that the rest of us are feeble creatures.

The remark seemed to strike Gora all at once as something new; with a burst of enthusiasm he brought his hand down on Binoy’s back and said, “You are right — that is my fault — a very great fault of mine.”

Binoy. Ouch — you have another fault far greater than that. You have absolutely no sense of how much force a fellow human being’s spine can endure.

Just then Gora’s elder half-brother Mahim came puffing up the stairs, his well-fed frame labouring with every step, and said, “Gora!”

Gora rose quickly from his chair and said, “Yes, sir!”

Mahim. I came to see whether the monsoon’s banks of clouds had descended on our rooftop with all their thunder. What has been going on up here? Have you by now driven the English halfway across the Bay of Bengal? I see no particular loss to the English, but downstairs your elder sister-in-law is lying abed with a headache — it is she who has been suffering from all these lion’s roars.

So saying, Mahim went back downstairs.

Gora stood still with a flush of shame — along with the shame a small flame of irritation began to burn within him, though whether it was directed at himself or at another could not quite be determined. A little while later he said softly, as though to himself, ‘In everything, I press far harder than is necessary, and just how insufferable that is for others does not properly stay in my mind.’

Binoy came close to Gour and took his hand with gentle affection.