27

And so the days passed. Winter, too, was now drawing to a close.

Ever since Durga’s death, Sarbajaya had been relentlessly urging her husband to leave the village, and Harihar, for his part, had spared no effort in his search for a place elsewhere. But nothing had worked out anywhere. Of late, Sarbajaya had more or less given up hope. In the middle of this past winter, the widow of Harihar’s cousin-brother, Nilmoni Ray, had arrived. Finding their own ancestral homestead completely overgrown with jungle, she and her family had taken up residence at the house of Bhuban Mukhopadhyay. Harihar had shown considerable eagerness to have his sister-in-law come and stay in his own home, but Nilmoni Ray’s wife had not agreed. She had come here with her daughter, Atasi, and her younger son, Sunil. Her older son, Suresh, was at school in Calcutta and would not be able to come until the summer holidays. Atasi was about fourteen years old, and Sunil was eight. Sunil was not much to look at, but Atasi was quite lovely, though one could not call her a great beauty. They had, however, spent their entire lives in Lahore, where Nilmoni Ray had worked in the Commissariat; they had been born and raised there, and so, from head to toe, they possessed the flawless, robust health common to those from the western provinces.

When they first arrived, Sarbajaya had tried to befriend her wealthy sister-in-law. Learning that Sunil’s mother was the owner of ten thousand rupees in cash and Company bonds, Sarbajaya’s heart had filled with deference. She had made no small effort to go out of her way and strike up a friendship, but in the end, foolish though she was, Sarbajaya came to understand that Sunil’s mother was not prepared to pay her much mind. Her husband had always held a high-ranking post; she and her children were accustomed to a different way of life. From the very beginning, she maintained such a distance from her poor cousin-in-law Harihar’s family that Sarbajaya felt compelled to retreat on her own. In her words, her manners, her actions, in every last detail, she made it known that Sarbajaya was in no way qualified to associate with them as an equal. The way they spoke, the clothes they wore, their entire bearing constantly broadcasted the fact that they were a well-to-do household. The children were always impeccably dressed, their clothes never allowed to become the least bit soiled, their hair always combed. Atasi wore a chain around her neck, gold bangles on her wrists, and gold earrings in her ears. No one in their family ever went out in the morning without first having a serving of tea and snacks. They had a servant from up-country who did all the housework—in short, in every respect, their affairs were a world apart from the ways of Sarbajaya’s impoverished household.

Sunil’s mother hardly let her son mix with any of the village boys, not even with Apu—lest her children be corrupted by mingling with this pack of uneducated, uncivilized village urchins. She hadn’t come to live in this village; her purpose was only to oversee her property during the land survey. The Mukhopadhyays held some of her land, and as a favour, they had cleared out two rooms for her family in their western wing. Her family’s cooking and dining were also separate. In her dealings with the Mukhopadhyays, there was no discernible difference in Sunil’s mother’s behaviour, for the Mukhopadhyays had money; but as for Sarbajaya, she regarded her as a complete nobody.

During the Dol festival, Nilmoni Ray’s elder son, Suresh, came from Calcutta and stayed for about ten days. Suresh was Apu’s age and was in the fifth form of an English-medium school. He was not very fair, but had a radiant, dusky complexion. Because he exercised regularly, he had a strong, healthy physique. Though only a year older than Apu, in stature and build he looked more like a boy of fifteen or sixteen. Suresh, too, did not mix much with the boys from this part of the village. In the other neighbourhood, a son of Ramnath Ganguli of the Ganguli family was his classmate. The Gangulis celebrated the festivals of Ramnabami and Dol with great fanfare, and his friend had also come to visit his maternal uncle’s home for the occasion. Suresh spent most of his time there; it seemed he did not consider any of the other village boys worthy of his company.

For as long as he could remember, Apu had seen that overgrown, derelict plot of land lying next to their house. These were the people of that homestead. For this reason, he felt a strange fascination for them.

Suresh, who was his own age, studied in Calcutta—he had been waiting a long time for the boy to come home for the holidays so that he could make his acquaintance. But when Suresh arrived, he did not mix with him. Moreover, Suresh’s bearing and way of speaking were such that he seemed to want to demonstrate at every turn how much superior he was to the village boys. And so, though they were the same age, the shy, reticent Apu grew even more intimidated and did not dare approach him.

Apu had not yet been to any school. When Suresh asked him about his studies, he had said, ‘I study at home with my father.’ On the day of Dol, sitting under a hog-plum tree by the masonry ghat of the Gangulis’ pond, Suresh, with the grand manner of a world-conquering pundit, was interrogating the village boys with this question and that. He said to Apu, ‘Tell me, what are the boundaries of India? Do you know Geography?’

Apu could not say. Suresh asked again, ‘What mathematics have you done? Can you do decimal fractions?’

Apu knew none of that. But if he didn’t, did that mean his little tin box was short on books? There was a Nityakarma Paddhati, an old physical geography, a Shubhankari arithmetic book, a torn copy of Birangana Kavya, his mother’s Mahabharata—all these. He had read them all—and even after reading them many times, he would read them again. His father would often beg and borrow books from here and there and give them to him. That his son would become very learned, a great scholar, that he had to be raised to be a true man—on this subject, Harihar had an indomitable, unquenchable thirst, like that of a patient in the grip of a fever. But he had no money, an absolute lack of the means to send his son to a boarding school far away, and he himself was not very educated. Still, for as long as he was at home, he would have the boy sit with him and teach him this and that, tell him all sorts of stories, and to teach him arithmetic, he would first brush up on his own forgotten childhood knowledge with the help of a Shubhankari, and only then have the boy solve problems. Whatever he thought would increase his son’s knowledge, he would either give it to him to read, or read it aloud to him. He had long been a subscriber to the Bangabasi newspaper; many old issues were piled up in their house. Harihar had carefully tied them in bundles and put them away, thinking that his son would read them when he was older. Now they were coming into use. They could no longer pay, so new papers did not come anymore; the newsagents had stopped their delivery. Harihar knew only too well how mad his son was for that Bangabasi paper, how on Saturday mornings he would abandon his games and sit gaping expectantly by the postbox on Bhuban Mukhopadhyay’s porch, waiting for the postman—and it was precisely because he knew this that the inability to provide his son with this thing he so adored made his heart ache with a throbbing pain.

Still, from reading the old Bangabasi issues, Apu had learned many stories. To Potu he would tell of Leucas and Raphael, of the volcanic eruption on Martinique, the story of the gold-making magician, and so many other things. But as for school-learning, he had none. In arithmetic, he knew only up to division. No history, no grammar; he had never even heard the names of geometry or mensuration. His prowess in English extended only to the first few pages of the first book.

His mother had a different sort of notion regarding her son’s future. Sarbajaya was a village girl. She held no high hopes of her son becoming a man by going to school. In her familiar world, no one had ever seen the inside of a school. Her greatest hope was that, in a few years, her son would start visiting the households of their hereditary patrons, the shishya-bari, and keep those relationships intact. Sarbajaya held another hope as well. The village priest, Dinanath Bhattacharya, had grown old. His sons, moreover, were good-for-nothing. Rani’s mother, Gokul’s wife, the eldest daughter-in-law of the Ganguli house—all of them had voiced the opinion that, from now on, they would have Apu conduct their religious rites. When Dinanath Bhattacharya was gone, they wanted this innocent, simple, handsome boy to be a part of their Manasa Pujas and Lakshmi Pujas, instead of Dinanath’s opium-addicted son, Bhombol. This is what the women of the village wanted. Everyone loved Apu. On the path, at the ghat, Sarbajaya had many times heard her neighbours express this wish, and for now, this was her highest aspiration. She was a poor man’s daughter, a poor man’s wife; she had no concept of any brighter future than this. If this were to happen, it would be as if she had caught a late-night dream in the palm of her hand.

One day, this very subject came up at Bhuban Mukhopadhyay’s house. Many women of the neighbourhood were present at the afternoon card game. Sarbajaya, in a manner meant to please everyone, said, ‘Well, if my dear older sister-in-law here, and Thakurma, and Mejdi—if they are all kind, then my Apu can have his sacred thread ceremony next Falgun and begin to take on the village pujas. If that happens, what worries would I have for him? We have eight or ten patron households, and if, by Mother Siddheshwari’s grace, the Ganguli family’s pujas become his regular duty, then—’

Sunil’s mother smiled, pressing her lips together. Her son, Suresh, when he grew up, would study law and then join her cousin-brother, a famous lawyer in Patna, to practise law. That maternal uncle of Suresh’s was childless, yet a lawyer with a thriving practice. He was already eager to have Suresh come live with him and be educated under his care—but why would Sunil’s mother send her son to live in someone else’s house, and so on. All this information she had already managed to convey to everyone on previous occasions, not by babbling on and on like the foolish Sarbajaya, but by dropping hints here and there in conversation.

Coming outside Bhuban Mukhopadhyay’s house, Sarbajaya said to her son, ‘Listen to me a moment.’ Then, she whispered, ‘Go to your Jethima and say, “Jethima, I don’t have any shoes—won’t you buy me a pair?”’

Apu said, ‘Why, Ma?’

‘Just say it. They’re rich people. If you ask, they might give you a good pair of shoes—haven’t you seen the ones Suresh wears? A pair of red shoes like that would look very nice on you—’

Apu, his face shy, said, ‘I’d be too embarrassed. I can’t say it. What would she think? I…’ Sarbajaya said, ‘What’s there to be embarrassed about?… She’s your own family. Just say it! What’s the harm?’ ‘No… I can’t say it, Ma. I can’t speak in front of Jethima…’

Sarbajaya said angrily, ‘Of course you can’t! All your cleverness is for hiding in a corner. You’re running around barefoot. It’s been two years since you’ve had shoes on your feet, but that’s fine with you. She’s a rich woman, she might have bought you a pair if you’d asked—but no, the words won’t leave your mouth! You’re the king of the tongue-tied!’

On the day of the full moon, Apu went to Rani’s house to fetch the prasad from the Satyanarayan puja. Rani called out to him and said with a smile, ‘You used to come to our house so often before. Why don’t you come anymore?’

‘Why wouldn’t I, Ranu-di? I do come.’ Rani said, in a tone of mock complaint, ‘You do! You do nothing of the sort! I think of you so often. Do you think of me, of us?’

‘Of course I do! Go on—just ask Ma!’

He could not muster any other satisfactory explanation. Rani left him standing there and went herself to fetch fruit, prasad, and sandesh for him, which she then placed in his hands. She smiled and said, ‘Take the whole platter. I’ll come and get it from Khurima tomorrow.’

The smile on Rani’s face filled Apu with a sense of absolute trust in her. How beautiful Ranu-di had become these days. He had never seen another girl as beautiful as Ranu-di. Atasi-di was always dressed smartly, it was true, but in looks, she was no match for Ranu-di. Besides, Apu knew that among the girls of the village, none had a heart like Ranu-di’s. If there was anyone he loved after his sister, it was Ranu-di. And didn’t Apu know that Ranu-di was fond of him too?

As he picked up the platter to leave, he hesitated for a moment and said, ‘Ranu-di, those books in the armoire in your west room—Satu-da won’t let me read them. Will you give me one to read? I’ll return it as soon as I’m done.’

Rani said, ‘Which books? I don’t know. Wait, let me see—’

At first, Satu wouldn’t agree at all. Finally, he said, ‘All right, I’ll let you read one, if you do something for me. Fish are being stolen from our pond in the fields every day. Jethamoshay has told me to go and stand guard there in the afternoons. I don’t like being there all by myself. If you go in my place, I’ll let you borrow a book.’

Rani protested. ‘Well, that’s just fine, isn’t it? He’s only a child, and he’s supposed to go sit in the middle of that jungle and guard fish? You’re a grown boy and you can’t do it, but he has to? Go on, you don’t have to give him any books. I’ll ask Baba for one myself.’

Apu, however, agreed. Rani’s father, Bhuban Mukhopadhyay, was away from home, and it would be a long time before he returned. Apu, meanwhile, coveted those books dearly. For how long had he frequented Satu’s west room, his heart filled with longing for a chance to read them! He had even managed to read a little from one or two. But Satu not only did not read himself, he would not let Apu read either. Just as the hero reached a moment of dire crisis, he would snatch the book from Apu’s hands and say, ‘Put it back, Apu. These are Chhoto Kaka’s books. You’ll tear them. Give it here.’

Apu felt as though he had been handed heaven itself.

Every afternoon, he would choose a book from the armoire, get it from Satu, and go and lie on his stomach in the shade of the bamboo grove, on a bed of fresh-cut branches from the Sheora trees, and read with rapt attention. There were so many books—Pranay-Pratima, Saroj-Sarojini, Kusum-Kumari, the play Sachitra Joubane Jogini, Dasyu-Duhita, Prem-Parinam ba Amrite Garal, Gopeshwarer Gupta Katha… how many names could he list! He would pick one up and could not leave it until he had finished. His eyes would begin to sting, his temples would throb. In the meantime, the shade of the secluded bamboo grove by the pond would lengthen and creep down to the water-lettuce covering the silted pond, but he would have no notion of how the afternoon had slipped away.

And what stories! Saroj, with Sarojini, is travelling by boat to Murshidabad when, on the way, the Nawab’s men attack the boat and take them captive. By order of the Nawab, Saroj is sentenced to death. Sarojini is locked up in a dark room. Deep in the night, the door to her chamber opens. The Nawab enters, intoxicated, and says, ‘Beautiful one, Saroj is dead by my command. Why do you still…,’ and so on. Sarojini, drawing herself up proudly, says, ‘You fiend! You have yet to know a Rajput woman! As long as there is life in this body…,’ and so on. At that very moment, the prison window is shattered by someone’s mighty kick. The Nawab, startled, turns to see a sannyasi with matted locks, his body radiating a powerful aura, and with him, four or five robust men like messengers of Yama, the god of death. The sannyasi, his eyes red with fury, glares at the Nawab and says, ‘Wretch! You who should be a protector have become a predator?’ Then, turning to Sarojini, he says, ‘Ma, I am your husband’s guru—Yogananda Swami. Your husband has not lost his life. He has been revived by the water from my kamandalu. Come now, Ma, to my ashram. My child Saroj is waiting for you.’… The author’s literary skill was excellent—to elaborate further on Saroj’s astonishing revival, he stimulates the reader’s curiosity for the next chapter by saying: And now, let us go, reader, and see by what means Saroj’s life was restored to him after his execution… and so on.

Finishing each chapter, Apu’s eyes would grow blurry. It felt as if something were caught in his throat. He would gaze up at the sky and think for a minute or two; with joy, with wonder, with excitement, it felt as though fire were pouring from his ears. With bated breath, he would turn his mind to the next chapter. Evening would fall, the shadows all around would grow long, and in the bamboo grove above his head, so many birds would begin their calls, yet just as he would be about to get up, he would keep reading, his eyes an inch from the page—for as long as the letters were visible.

He had never read books like this! Where did Sita’s Exile or the story of Dupleix even stand in comparison?

When he came home, his mother would scold him. ‘What a simpleton you are! To go and guard someone else’s fish, all alone in that jungle, just for the sake of reading a book? He’s found a right fool in you.’

But the profit foolish Apu was gaining was of a kind his mother could not possibly conceive. Now he had got his hands on two more books: Maharashtra Jiban-Prabhat and Rajput Jiban-Sandhya… Against the backdrop of anthills and gooseberry thickets, scene after scene of the silent, magical afternoon would change—Zuleikha sitting on the banks of the Jhelum, tending to the wounded Narendra; Shivaji in Aurangzeb’s court, seeing himself placed among the five-thousand-mansabdars, swelling with rage and thinking, Shivaji, a five-thousand-mansabdar? Go to Pune just once, and you will come back having counted how many five-thousand-mansabdars there are in Shivaji’s own army!…

His entire day was spent in the desert mountains of Rajwara, in the Rangmahals and Shishmahal of Delhi and Agra, in the company of groups of beautiful women dressed in orna and peshwaj. What world was this—a world of only moonlight, swordplay, the friendship of beautiful faces, of galloping on horseback through barren valleys and fields of maize, long spear in hand, for the Aheria festival?…

What a hero could do, what a Rajput could do, what a man could do—Pratap Singh had done. His story is written on every stone slab of the mountain pass at Haldighat. In the heart’s blood of twelve thousand Rajputs on the battlefield of Dewair, his story is written in immortal glory.

Long afterwards, on winter nights, ancient warriors would sit beside the fire and tell their grandchildren the tale of the wondrous valour of Haldighat…

It was as if a spear, hurled by an unseen hand, had arrived.—Apu had grown up in the shade of this village’s ever-green woodlands, amidst the dense tangle of vines and leaves, in the scent of damp earth—and yet, he knew every place in the Bhil country of Rajputana, or in the Aravalli-Mewar region; he knew well the exquisite wild beauty of Nahara Magra…. The image of Tej Singh, weapon in hand, descending from the mountain—how beautiful it seemed!….

“For a long time in that Chappan province, in the desolate caves and on the high peaks of that Bhil village, the song of a woman’s voice could be heard at midnight. At the crack of dawn, in the lonely wilderness, travellers would sometimes see a woman’s pale face and restless eyes; people would say it must be some restless, troubled forest goddess”…. The faint, plaintive strains of that song seemed to float to Apu’s ears from behind the bamboo grove!…

Kamalmira, the battle of Suryagarh, General Shahbaz Khan, the beautiful Nur Jahan, Pushpakumari, the wild Bhil country, the boy-hero Chandan Singh—a distant, far-distant fantasy. And yet, how near, how real it all seemed. On the deserts of Rajwara and on peak after peak of the high blue Aravallis, the flowers of the chenar trees had blossomed and fallen; the crimson footprints of the goddess Mewar-Lakshmi were imprinted on the rocky banks of the Banas and Berach rivers, upon the pebbles of the waterfalls, in the fields of millet and sorghum and the forests of mahua….

Chittor could not be saved! Rana Amar Singh accepted the Badshah’s terms of honour. His father, Pratap Singh, who had lost everything, who for twenty-five years had fought in the forests and mountains with his bands of Bhils—from where had he watched all this, his heart stricken with grief?….

Through hot tears, the pond, the termite mound, the bainchi thicket, the bamboo grove—all blurred before his eyes.

That afternoon, his father, showing him a paper packet, said with a smile, “Look here, Khoka, what do you think this is?”

Apu quickly sat up on the bed; in an eager tone, he asked, “A newspaper? Isn’t it, Baba?” From the three rupees he had received from Behari Ghosh’s mother-in-law for writing out a Ram-kabach amulet, Harihar had secretly sent two rupees for the newspaper subscription; had his wife found out, there would have been no way to save those two rupees from the maw of their other innumerable wants.

Apu snatched the paper packet from his father’s hand and tore it open. Yes—it really was a newspaper. There was the word ‘Bangabasi’ written in those big letters, there was that smell of new paper, that print, that everything—for which, a year ago, he had waited open-mouthed every Saturday for the postman near Bhuvan Mukhopadhyay’s Chandi-mandap postbox, with the impatient eagerness of a crow at a holy shrine! A newspaper! A newspaper! What new stories must it hold? What unknown things were written on its big pages?

Harihar felt that the self-satisfaction of redeeming a mortgaged pair of earrings could not have been greater than this—the joyous smile he had brought to his son’s face in exchange for two rupees.

After reading for a while, Apu said, “Look, Baba, there’s a letter from a ‘Traveller to Bilat,’ it’s a new series starting today. Our paper came at just the right time—didn’t it, Baba?”

And yet, a sadness lingered in his heart that because they had suddenly stopped the paper last year, he had never read the end of the story of the Japanese Spider-Demon, and had never found out what happened to Raiko after he went to the royal court…

One day Rani said, “What are you writing in your notebook, eh?”

Apu said in a tone of surprise, “Which notebook? How did you—”

“Didn’t I come to your house that afternoon? You weren’t there; I sat and talked with Khurima for a long time. Why, didn’t Khurima tell you? That’s when I saw it, in your bundle of books—in your red notebook, you’ve written all sorts of things. My name is in there, and something about a Devi Singh—”

Apu, blushing red with embarrassment, said, “Oh, it’s a story.”

“What story? You have to read it to me, you know.”

The next day, Rani put a small, bound notebook in Apu’s hand and said, “Write a story for me in this—a really good one. Will you? Atasi was saying you can write well! Write one, I’ll show it to Atasi….”

At night, Apu sat and wrote in the notebook. He would say to his mother, “Give me another pala of oil, won’t you, Ma? Let me just finish writing this little bit for today….” His mother would say, “No more studying tonight—there are only two palas of oil left, what will I cook with tomorrow? I’m cooking here, come sit and read by this light.” Apu would argue.

His mother would scold him, “Hah, the moment night falls, my son gets this urge to read and write—but all day long, not a trace of his topknot to be seen. What do you do in the morning? Go on, I won’t give you any oil.”

In the end, Apu would bring the notebook and sit by the side of the clay oven, in the light of the wood fire. Sarbajaya would think: When Apu gets a little older, I’ll find a good girl and get him married. A new brick house will be built on this homestead. Let’s get his sacred thread ceremony done next year, and then if I can secure the puja duties at the Ganguly house—

…Four or five days later, when he returned the notebook to Rani, she opened it eagerly and said, “You’ve written it?”

Apu, with a smile on his face, said, “Why don’t you open it and see?”

Seeing it, Rani said in a happy tone, “Oh, you’ve written so much! Wait, let me call Atasi and show her.” Atasi looked at it and said, “Did Apu write this, or what—Hmph! This is all copied from a book.”

Apu said in a tone of protest, “Hah, copied from a book indeed! I make up stories—just ask Potu, Atasi-di! Don’t I sit by the river in the afternoon and tell him all sorts of made-up stories?”

Rani said, “No, bhai, he wrote it, I know he did. He writes like that. He wrote a wonderful jatra play in a notebook, he read it to me….” Then she said to Apu, “Didn’t you write your name? Write your name.”

This time, Apu said in a slightly abashed tone that the story wasn’t finished, and that he would write his name once it was. Although he had started the story in the style of the play Sachitra Joubane-Jogini, he hadn’t been able to figure out how to end it; yet, fearing that if he kept the notebook for too long, Ranudi—and especially Atasi-di—might become suspicious of his poetic talents, he had returned it unfinished….

His father was not at home. In the morning, he got up and went with everyone else from his village to a neighboring village for an adyashraddha feast. Sunil went with him, too. Groups of feasting Brahmins had walked from various villages, some from as far as five or six krosh away. Each man had brought five or six children with him; trying to seat everyone conveniently, a riot was on the verge of breaking out. After four luchis had been placed on each person’s leaf-plate, the servers came with fried aubergine to find that no one had any luchis left on their plates—everyone had lifted them off and put them in the folds of their chadar or gamchha!… A small boy, not understanding all this, was about to tear into the luchis on his plate when his father, Bisweswar Bhattacharjya, snatched them from his son’s plate, placed them on the chadar beside him and said, “Put these away! They’ll give more in a minute, eat those.”

Then, for some time, there was a terrific uproar. “The luchi basket to this row!” “I got no pumpkin at all on my plate!” “Hey, give us the hot ones!” “Sir, just feel what you’ve served, it’s pure raw flour!”… A furious argument broke out between the Brahmins and the organizers over the quantity of the chhada! Someone began to shout, “In that case, you shouldn’t invite respectable people! Twenty-five luchis is the absolute fixed rate for a chhada—it’s been fixed since the time of Ballal Sen! I don’t want your chhada, Kandarpa Majumdar would never—”

The organizers fell at his feet and managed to placate Kandarpa Majumdar.

Apu, too, brought home a bundle of chhada. Sarbajaya hurried outside and said with a smile, “Oh my, look how much you’ve brought! Let me see, open it. Luchis, pantuas, gajas—so many! I’ll cover them up, you can have them in the morning.”

Apu said, “But you have to eat some too, Ma—I asked for pantuas twice for your sake.”

Sarbajaya said, “What, did you actually say, ‘My mother will eat them, please give me some’? You’re such a simpleton.”

Apu shook his head and hands. “Of course that’s not what I said! I asked in such a way that they thought I was the one who would eat them.” Pleased, Sarbajaya picked up the bundle and took it inside.

A little later, Apu went to Sunil’s house. As he stepped onto their veranda, he heard Sunil’s mother saying to Sunil, “Why did you lug that stuff home? Who told you to bring it?” Sunil, seeing everyone else do it, had also tied up a chhada. He said, “Why, Ma? Everyone else took one—Apu brought some too.”

Sunil’s mother said, “Why shouldn’t Apu bring it—he’s the son of a feasting Brahmin! He’ll grow up to perform pujas for people and scrounge for chhada—that’s their way. And his mother is just as grasping. That’s why I didn’t want to move to this village with you all. You’re picking up all sorts of bad habits from bad company! Go on, call Apu and give it all to him—go on; or else just go and throw it away. You were invited to a feast, you ate at the feast—what was the need to tie up food to bring home like a low-born person!”

Frightened, Apu did not enter Sunil’s house. Walking home, he wondered—why did Jethaima get so angry at the very sight of something that made his own mother so happy? Was the food just lumps of clay that it had to be thrown away? Was his mother grasping? Was he the son of a feasting Brahmin? Goodness, it was as if Jethima had eaten plenty of pantuas and gajas in her life, but his own mother never got to eat such things. And how often had he himself eaten them? How could something that was wrong in Sunil’s case also be wrong in his?

He didn’t get much studying done; this is what he spent his days doing. Attending feasts, tying up chhada, going with his father to the homes of his disciples, fishing. That little boy Potu—the same one who had been beaten up for playing with cowrie shells in the fishermen’s quarter—was Apu’s companion in all these matters. He was bigger now, and taller, and followed Opuda around all the time. He came from the other side of the village just to play with Opuda; he didn’t mix much with anyone else. He had still not forgotten how Opuda had taken a beating from the fishermen’s boys while trying to save him.

Apu was extremely fond of fishing. At the mouth of the Kanchikata canal, by the banks of the Ichhamati below the Sonadanga fields, you could catch a lot of fish with a rod. He would often go to this very spot and sit fishing under a large chhatim tree on the riverbank. He loved the place dearly; it was utterly secluded. On both sides, all sorts of trees and plants leaned over the river’s water; on the far bank was a dense green thicket of ulu grass, interspersed with vine-draped kadam and shimul trees, and bushes covered in the purple flowers of the wild bon-kolmi. In the distance lay the bamboo groves of Madhabpur village. The calls of birds, the shade of the forest, the greenness of the ulu grass—all mingled and merged into a gentle solitude!

Ever since that day in his early childhood when he first came to the Kuthi grounds, what an enchantment these fields, forests, and this river had cast upon him! Casting his line and sitting in the shade of the chhatim tree, just looking around was enough to fill his heart with an exquisite joy. Fish or no fish, whenever the deep afternoon shadows grew heavy with the scent of ripening dates from the palm thickets at the edge of the field, whenever the calls of the bou-katha-kao and the papiya floated in on the gentle breeze, whenever the sun-god, scattering mica and crimson powder on the branches, sank behind that Thangare Banyan tree on the Sonadanga plain, when the river water turned black and flocks of river mynas returned to their nests with a great chatter, his heart would become entranced. He would look around with eyes full of wonder, and think that even if he caught no fish, he would come and sit at this very spot every single day, right here under this big chhatim tree.

He rarely caught any fish. For hour after hour, the reed float would remain on the still water, as motionless as the unwavering flame of a lamp in a windless room. He didn’t have the patience to sit in one place for so long; he would fidget and wander about, searching for birds’ nests in the thickets. Returning, he might see the float bobbing ever so slightly! He’d lift his rod and say, “Damn! A shoal of jheya fish. Nothing’s going to happen here.” Then he would pull up his line and move a little way off, casting his bait beside a patch of algae. The deep black colour of the water made it seem as if a big rui or katla was about to swallow the bait any second! The illusion did not last long; the reed float would attain a state of motionless trance….

Some days he would bring a book with him and sit.

He would cast his line, open his book, and read. He had borrowed an illustrated English reader for a junior class from Suresh, along with its book of meanings. He couldn’t understand the English, so he would read the Bengali of the story in the book of meanings and just look at the pictures in the English book. Stories of distant lands and tales of greatness of every kind had deeply stirred his mind from childhood, and this book contained many such stories. A traveller in some open wilderness, losing his way in a terrible blizzard and wandering in circles until he freezes to death; how Christopher Columbus, setting sail on an unknown ocean, discovered America—stories like these. The English boy and girl who got into trouble while collecting seagull eggs from a cliff face by the sea; the courageous girl, Prascovia Lopouloff, who, in the hope of having her exiled father’s sentence revoked, set out alone from distant Siberia through the desolate, snow-covered wastes—it was as if he would recognize them on sight.

Reading the little story of Sir Philip Sidney, his eyes filled with tears. He went and asked Suresh, “Suresh-da, do you know this story? Tell me the long version, won’t you?”

Suresh said, “Oh, the Battle of Zutphen!”

Apu said in amazement, “What, Suresh-da? Zutphen! Where is that?”

Suresh could say no more than that….

One day, about a month later.

While fishing, a big sarpunti fish somehow got caught on his line.

Grown greedy, Apu would not leave the spot—he broke off branches and twigs to make a comfortable seat.

Slowly the day passed. On the field by the river, there was again that exquisite silence, on the Kash thickets and the kadam and shimul trees of the vast green ulu grassland beyond the Deyara fields on the far bank, his old, familiar companion from the auspicious moments of his childhood’s delight—the last, fading light of afternoon!

He remembered that beautiful story he had read in the ‘Bangabasi,’ in the letter from the Traveller to Bilat…

He had seen the Mediterranean Sea on Suresh-dada’s English map; he knew that the country of France was on the other side of it. Long ago, a foreign army was pressing down on the breast of France; the country was in peril, the king was powerless, and chaos and plunder reigned everywhere! In this time of the nation’s deep humiliation, in a small village within the province of Lorraine, a poor peasant’s daughter would take her father’s sheep out to graze, and letting the flock wander here and there, she would sit alone on the grassy fields of the quiet countryside, lift her two blue eyes to the sky, and contemplate her country’s plight. As she thought on this day after day, it dawned on her innocent, maidenly heart that someone was telling her: You are the saviour of France. Go, gather the royal army, take up arms; the salvation of the country and the nation is in your hands. The Virgin Mary was her inspiration—day after day, her call came from distant heaven. How the French army, fired with new vigour, then drove the enemy from the country; how the visionary maiden herself took up arms and placed the king upon his throne; and how, afterwards, the ignorant and blind populace, accusing her of being a witch, burned her alive—he had read all of this today.

In this afternoon light, by the quiet river, thinking about the story, how exquisitely his mind was filled! He didn’t think so much about the maiden’s battles, her victories, or any of those other things. But the image that returned to his mind again and again was only that of the girl lost in thought in the lonely meadow, the flock of sheep grazing freely all around her, the green grass below, the open blue sky above. On one side, the formidable foreign enemy, cruelty, the arrogance of the lust for victory, rivers of blood—on the other, a simple, divinely inspired, blue-eyed village girl. The picture captivated his burgeoning boy’s mind.

Other pictures came to mind. The island of Martinique, far away, ringed by a blue sea. Sugarcane fields all around, and overhead the blue sky—far, so far, only blue sky and blue sea! Just blue and more blue! And so much more, things that could not be explained or expressed.

He reeled in his line and got ready to go home. Along the riverbank, groves of drooping babla and sain-babla trees were shedding their burden of blossoms into the river’s cool, dark water. Behind the Thangare Banyan in the middle of the Sonadanga plain, the immense, crimson sun was sinking—as if some child-god, from the blazing, foamy, golden sea of Alaka, had playfully blown a bubble, sending it flying into the sky, and only now was it descending at the western horizon, into the forests at the edge of the world!

Someone covered his eyes from behind. He forced the hands away, and Potu, giggling, came around to the front and said, “I’ve been looking all over for you, Opuda! Then I figured you must have come here to fish, so I came too. No fish? … Not even one? Come on, let’s untie a boat and go for a ride—want to?”

At the Sahib’s Ghat by the kadam tree, boats came from many distant lands; boats laden with golpata thatch, laden with paddy, laden with mussels, were tied up in rows. On the river, fishermen had cast large nets from their mussel-gathering boats. At this time every year, they came from the south to collect mussels; they had moored their boats in pairs in the middle of the river. Sitting on the bank, Apu was watching a dark-skinned man repeatedly diving to search for mussels and, after a short while, surfacing beside the boat, sifting two or four collected mussels from a mass of sand and mud in his hand-pouch, and tossing them into the boat’s hold. Apu, delighted, pointed him out to Potu and said, “See that, Potu? See how long he stays under. Come on, let’s count—one, two! Could you stay underwater for that long?…”

The river’s bank, mantled in durba grass, sloped gently down to the water’s edge. Here and there, laden boats were moored, their stakes driven into the bank, their anchors cast. How many distant lands they must have come from, having crossed so many great rivers and canals, having braved the tides and tempests of vast salt-water estuaries. Apu longed to sit with the boatmen and listen to tales of all those lands. His only desire was to roam from river to river, from sea to sea; he wanted nothing more. Ever since reading about the mariners of distant lands in Suresh’s book, this desire had grown powerful in his mind. He and Potu would go up to the boats and make enquiries. “Hey, boatman, how much for a mat of golpata?” … “Where’s your rice boat from, boatman?” … “Jhalokathi? Which way is that? How far from here?”

“Apu-da,” Potu said, “come on, let’s find a dinghy at the Tentultala ghat and go for a ride.”

The two of them untied a small dinghy from the ghat at Tentultala, gave it a push, and climbed aboard. The cool, damp smell of river water rose up; jacanas perched on tangles of kolmi creepers; along the banks of the shoals, farmers were weeding their potol fields, while others cut grass and tied it into bundles; at the bend in the river at Chaltepota, a flock of gangshaliks chattered in the dense thickets along the bank; in the waning afternoon, piles of multi-coloured clouds massed in the eastern sky.

“Apu-da, sing a song, won’t you?” said Potu. “That one from the other day!”

“Not that one,” Apu said. “I’ve learned the tune for a really good one from Baba. I’ll sing that, but let’s go a little further on, brother. All those people are on the bank—not here.”

“You’re so shy, Apu-da. Who cares about people so far away? Getting shy over a song—oh, never mind that!”

A little further on, Apu began to sing. Potu, lifting the bamboo-slat paddle, sat silently in the boat’s prow, listening with rapt attention. There was no need to row; the current carried the little dinghy, spinning it slowly as it drifted towards the great bend at La-bhanga. When Apu’s song was finished, Potu started one of his own. This time, Apu rowed. They had come quite a long way—the bend at La-bhanga was already coming into view. Suddenly, Potu pointed to the north-east corner of the sky and said, “Hey, Apu-da, look at those clouds gathering! A storm’s about to hit—should we turn the boat back?”

“Let the storm come!” said Apu. “It’s better for rowing and singing in a storm. Let’s go on!”

Even as they spoke, a dense black cloud rose from the direction of Madhabpur’s fields and filled the entire sky, its dark shadow blanketing the river water. Potu stared at the sky with eager eyes. Far away, a roaring sound arose; with the indistinct clamour came the chatter of many birds, a cold wind began to blow, and the scent of damp earth drifted towards them. Winged seeds of the akondo plant flew in countless numbers from the fields, and in an instant, trees bowed their heads, swaying and breaking as the terrible Kalbaishakhi storm burst upon them.

The river water turned a dense black. The branches of the sainbabla and the great chhatim trees on the bank looked as if they would break and fall. A flock of white egrets fled, flying in a long line beneath the black sky! Apu’s chest swelled; in his thrill and excitement, he let go of the rudder and gazed all around, watching the storm’s spectacle. Potu untucked the end of his dhoti and held it up to the wind like a sail, and it billowed out as the gust caught it!

“It’s a fierce headwind, Apu-da,” said Potu. “The boat won’t go forward. What if we capsize? Lucky we didn’t bring Sunil with us!”

But Apu was not listening to Potu; he had no ear for it, nor any mind. He sat in the prow of the boat, gazing transfixed at the storm-tossed river and sky. All around him, the dancing black water of the river, the flying flock of egrets, the masses of stormy clouds, the boatmen’s heaps of oyster shells from the southern country, the clumps of water hyacinth floating on the current—all of it seemed to be erased! He imagined himself as that England-bound traveller from the pages of the Bangabasi newspaper! His ship has left from Calcutta; leaving Sagar Island behind at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal, it passes countless unknown little islands in the middle of the sea, gazes upon the lush green beauty of the coconut groves on the coast of Ceylon, leaves the blue mountains of some wondrous land on the distant horizon, and, bathed in the crimson light of sunset, sails on through an ever-changing vista of new countries! On and on and on!

Like the waters of this Ichamati, the breast of that unseen, distant sea was just as dark, deep, and agitated; and on that island in the Arabian Sea, there would be green thickets just like these. There, sitting under a tree on a similar evening, just like that traveller bound for England, he too would ask for a glass of water from the hand of a beautiful Arabian girl and drink it. Gazing towards the bend at Chaltepota, he could see, as if with perfect clarity, the flock of seafowl described in the newspaper, flying in the ship’s wake!

He would go to all those places, see all those things; he would go to England, to Japan; he would embark on trading voyages, become a great merchant, constantly roaming from country to country, from sea to sea; he would face great dangers. When his ship was on the verge of sinking in a terrible tempest in the China Seas—a storm just like this soul-stirring Kalbaishakhi today—he, like the sailors he’d read about in My Wondrous Travels, would escape on a life raft and cross the boundless ocean, surviving on roasted periwinkles and snails scraped from the sides of a submerged reef! Just over there, beyond that mountain of indigo-coloured cloud that had been leaning over the bamboo groves of Madhabpur village a moment ago—beyond it lay all those blue seas, unknown shores, coconut groves, volcanoes, snow-swept plains; Zuleikha, Sarayu, Grace Darling, Zutphen, the handsome English boys and girls who gathered seagulls’ eggs, the gold-finding magician Botgar, Lorraine’s blue-eyed country girl Joan, lost in thought on a lonely plain—and so much more! His few books in the tin box, the books from Ranu-didi’s house, the one he had borrowed from Suresh-dada, the old issues of the Bangabasi newspaper—they all spoke to him of those lands. Somewhere in those lands, someone was waiting for him. One day, a call would come for him from there, too—and he would go!

It never occurred to him how far away those lands were, who would take him there, or how it would even be possible for him to go. That he, the one who would soon have to support his family by performing pujas from house to house; who had to endure his mother’s scolding for the oil needed to study at night; who, at his age, had not yet seen the inside of a school; who did not know what fine clothes or fine things even were—who would ever invite that ignorant, unknown, helpless village boy to join in the great, joyous festival of a larger life?

Perhaps if these questions had arisen in his mind, the momentum of his young imagination—the irresistible allure of his hope-filled path in life—might have conquered every fear and every doubt; but such thoughts never even occurred to him. He only felt that everything would come to pass once he was grown up, that all opportunities and advantages would be found for the picking along the way… all he had to do now was wait to grow up! When he was a man, he would get his chance; fond invitations would come to him from every direction; he would set out on a grand conquest to know the world and to know its people.

Lost in this dream of a colourful future, the rest of his journey passed. The rain did not fall again; the storm had blown away the masses of black cloud, clearing the sky. He was startled back to reality only when the dinghy drew up to the ghat at Tentultala. Tying up the boat, he walked ahead of Potu along the path through the bamboo grove, whistling joyfully as he went home. He too, like his mother and his sister, had learned how to dream.