26

Harihar had received no letter from home.

After leaving home on this occasion, Harihar Ray had first gone to Goari Krishnanagar. He knew no one there. Lured by the prospect that some opportunity or other was bound to turn up in a market town, he had made his way there. After staying in Goari for some time, he learned that work reciting the Chandi, on a daily or monthly contract, could often be procured at the homes of the town’s lawyers or zamindars. He spent about a fortnight in hopeful expectation, until the meagre sum he had brought from home for his expenses was exhausted; and still, nothing had turned up anywhere.

He found himself in dire straits. It was an unfamiliar place, with not a soul to help him with so much as a paisa. When his money ran out, he had to leave the hotel in Khore Bazar where he had been staying. From someone, he heard that at the local Harisabha, newly arrived Brahmins who were in need were given food and a place to stay free of charge. After explaining his situation, he was indeed granted a place to stay in a corner of one of the Harisabha’s small rooms, but it was deeply inconvenient. A number of idle, ganja-smoking men used it as their nightly haunt, spending almost the entire night in raucous uproar. On some nights, he even began to see the comings and goings of a certain kind of woman, who did not seem at all like respectable ladies seeking a viewing of the temple deity.

Passing his days in great hardship, he went around to the houses of the city’s prominent lawyers and wealthy householders. Some days, after wandering about all day, he would return late at night to find a man of unknown caste and character snoring away in his spot, having pulled Harihar’s own bedding over himself. For several days, Harihar slept on the outer veranda. When this became a frequent occurrence, it led to a small quarrel with the ganja-smoking fraternity. The next morning, goodness knows what they told the Harisabha’s secretary, but the secretary-babu summoned Harihar to his own house and informed him that the rules did not permit anyone to stay for more than three days, and that he should look for lodging elsewhere.

After dusk, taking his belongings with him, Harihar had to leave the Harisabha building.

He set down his bundle in a secluded little spot by the bank of the river Khore and washed his hands and face in the water.

He had not eaten all day. That day, he had sung some devotional songs to Shyama while sitting in a timber yard, and the proprietor had given him a rupee as a respectful offering. He broke the rupee for some change and bought puffed rice and yoghurt from the market. The food would scarcely go down his throat. He had left home with provisions for a mere ten days. Now, nearly two months had passed, and he had not been able to send back a single paisa. How had they been managing all this time? When he was leaving, Apu had told him again and again to buy him a copy of the Padmapuran. The boy loved to read. Harihar knew that he would sometimes sneak books out of his father’s trunk and read them. The inside of the trunk would be in a clumsy-handed disarray. The boy didn’t know where his father kept which book; he would try ineptly to cover his theft by rearranging them topsy-turvy. The moment Harihar returned home and opened the trunk, he could see the boy’s handiwork.

Before he left, Harihar had brought a cheap, press-printed poetic version of the Padmapuran from Jugipara for someone else to read. Apu had taken possession of the book and read it every day. He was greatly amused by the part about Lord Shiva going fishing in the fishermen’s quarter. Harihar would say, ‘Give the book back, my boy, the owners are asking for it!’

In the end, only after making his father agree to the condition that a copy of the Padmapuran be bought for him did he return the book. As Harihar was leaving, he had said again and again, ‘You’ll bring me a copy of that book, won’t you, Baba? This time, you absolutely must.’ Durga had no high-flown ambitions; she had asked him to bring her a green hawai cloth and a leaf of good-quality alta. But all that was a distant dream; the problem now was how the household was even managing to survive. After evening fell, he went to the familiar timber yard and took shelter for the night. He did not sleep well; lying on his bedding, he tossed and turned, worrying about how to send some money home. In the morning, he got up and, while wandering about, stopped aimlessly in one place. Across the road was a red-brick house with an iron gate. After staring at it for a long time, he had a feeling that if he went to this house and explained his sorrows, a solution would present itself. Like a clockwork doll, he walked through the gate. It was a well-appointed drawing room, with potted flowers arranged on marble steps, stone statues, palms, and a doormat at the entrance. A middle-aged gentleman was reading a newspaper in the room. Seeing a stranger, he put the paper aside, sat up straight, and asked, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

Harihar said humbly, ‘Sir, I am a Brahmin. I have studied Sanskrit, I do readings of the Chandi and such. Besides that, I also read from the Bhagavat or the Gita—’

The middle-aged gentleman, without listening properly, and in a manner that made it clear his time was extremely valuable and he had very little of it for idle talk, said, ‘No, there’s no opening for that sort of thing here just now. Try somewhere else.’

Harihar, in a last desperate attempt, said, ‘Sir, I’m new to this city. I have absolutely nothing in hand—I’m in great trouble, for days now I’ve only—’

The middle-aged man, in a gesture of hasty dismissal, lifted the bolster he was leaning against, picked something up, and extended his hand toward Harihar, saying, ‘Here, take this. Go on now, nothing else is going to happen. Take it.’ Had it been a coin of whatever denomination, offered in a different tone, Harihar would not have objected in the least to taking it—he had accepted such alms in many places. But he said humbly, ‘Sir, please keep it. I don’t just take money from anyone like that. I recite from the scriptures—besides, from anyone—very well, let it be.’

A stroke of good fortune, it seems, had occurred. One day, a lead turned up at Rakshit Mahashay’s timber yard. In a village near Krishnanagar, a prosperous merchant was looking for a Brahmin to perform the rites for his household deity, someone who would stay on permanently. Through Rakshit Mahashay’s connections, Harihar went there at once, and the master of the house took a liking to him. He was given a room to stay in, and there was no want of hospitality or care.

Puja arrived just a few days after he had started work. When it was time for him to go home, the master of the house gave him ten rupees as a gift and his travel fare. When he went to Goari to take his leave of Rakshit Mahashay, he received a gift of five rupees from there as well.

There was a scent of warm sunshine in the sky and air. Looking at the blue, cloudless sky brought a sudden surge of joy to the heart. The fresh green creepers and leaves of the monsoon’s end seemed to suffuse a traveller’s very stride with a kind of joy. Clumps of kash flowers by the railway tracks swayed and bowed in the rush of the train. As he travelled, his thoughts turned constantly to home.

A group of merchants from Santipur, who had gone to Calcutta to buy bales of cloth before the Puja, were making a cheerful din aboard the ferry at Churni Ghat. Everywhere, there was a festive exuberance. In the market at Ranaghat, he bought clothes for his wife and children. Durga loved to wear saris with red borders, so he chose a fine one for her, and several leaves of good-quality alta. He searched high and low for Apu’s Padmapuran but couldn’t find it; finally, he bought a copy of ‘The Illustrated Glory of Chandi, or the Tale of Kalketu’ for six annas. Sarbajaya had mentioned a couple of household odds and ends—a wooden board and rolling pin—and he bought those as well.

Alighting at his local station, he walked and reached his village in the late afternoon. He barely met anyone on the path, and even if he had, he was hurrying along with an anxious heart, paying no particular attention to anyone as he headed for home. As he was about to enter the gate, he muttered to himself, ‘Uff, just look at that! The bamboo grove has bent right over the wall. Bhuvan Kaka won’t cut it back either—what a nuisance.’ Then he entered the courtyard and called out in his customary eager tone, ‘Oma Dugga! O, Apu!’

Hearing the sound of his voice, Sarbajaya came out of the room.

Harihar smiled and said, ‘Is everything all right at home? Where has everyone gone? Are they not here?’

Sarbajaya came forward calmly, took the heavy bundle from her husband’s hand, and said, ‘Come—come inside.’ Although Harihar noted his wife’s unprecedented calm, no suspicion entered his mind. The current of his imagination was now racing wildly in another direction—any moment now the children would come running.

Durga would come up, smiling, and say, ‘What’s in here, Baba?’ At once, Harihar would hurriedly open the bundle and show them his daughter’s sari and leaves of alta, and his son’s illustrated ‘Glory of Chandi’ and the little tin train, and leave them speechless with surprise. As he entered the room, he said, ‘I’ve brought a fine new rolling board and pin this time.’ Then, looking around with eager eyes tinged with a little disappointment, he asked, ‘Where are they? Apu, Dugga—have they all gone out?’

Sarbajaya could hold it in no longer. In an overflowing voice, she burst out sobbing, ‘Oh, our Dugga is no more! Ma has tricked us and gone away! Where have you been all this time?’

The Puja at the Ganguli house was a tradition of many years. During these few days, not even the poorest person in the village went hungry. Everything was arranged in the old, established way: at the appointed time, the potter would come and sculpt the idol, the poto would paint the backdrop, the garland-maker would supply the decorations, and the Bauris would gather lotuses by the armful from the marsh at Barase-Madhukhali.

Dinu, the sanai-player from Ansmali, came as he did every other year to play with his ensemble. The joyous melody of the Agamani songs rose into the morning sky—a tender welcome to the approaching season of Hemanta, a welcome to the new clusters of paddy, to the newly arrived shephali blossoms, to the Shama, that wayfaring bird flown from beyond the Himalayas, to the dew-kissed, lotus-blooming evenings of autumn.

Harihar, having dressed his son in new clothes, took him along to the feast. The secret, insistent plea of a small face, framed by untidy hair, lingered in the air by the doorway. As Harihar stepped onto the path, he grew distracted. He said to his son, ‘Walk on ahead, it’s gotten very late, my boy.’

The courtyard of the Ganguli house was filled with smiling, festively dressed children. Apu saw that Satu and his brother were wearing shirts the colour of mandarin oranges. Ranu-didi looked so lovely in a green sari with her hair beautifully done!

Sunayani, a daughter of the Ganguli family, stood on the veranda of the puja hall with five or six other girls, a sprig of tuberose tucked into the bun of her hair, talking and laughing animatedly. Apart from Sunayani, he did not know the other girls; they must have come to stay for the Puja from some other place. They were probably city girls, judging by their clothes and their looks! Apu stared at them, transfixed. Over on one side, someone was shouting, ‘You still haven’t arranged for the big canopy to be brought? Bravo! The way you people work! Just you see the fun and games that will follow. What’s next? Are the Brahmins going to sit down to eat at five in the afternoon?’