“The tea is ready, beta. Drink it while it’s hot, achcha. Oh, I forgot to tell you, today is the day!”
“Today is the day for what?” said my bewildered son, Satyajit as he skimmed the newspaper with a wary eye.
“Today is the day for my interview! That journalist woman, what was her name….Jessica something is going to ask me questions about the partition. I already told her, “Listen baba I am ancient, and I am stupid. Some people have gone so far as to say I have Alzheimer’s. What am I to do? My memories are distorted, I might end up making up things about the partition”, that’s what I told her. But her voice over the telephone was all smiles. She said, “Don’t worry, auntie, stories are what I want. I am compiling data from a very big sample, so it doesn’t matter if you exaggerate here and there.” I was certainly pleased with this girl, impressed even, I tell you.”
“Bhalo theko, Ma. I’m sure you’ll have fun recounting your childhood to a starry-eyed stranger.”
My darling son kissed me quickly on the forehead before leaving through the front door, briefcase firmly in hand. He was a bit of a cynic, Satyajit, but who wasn’t these days?
I finished my breakfast and bath and waited in the living room in a spotless white shari. The ticking of the clock suddenly seemed louder than usual, and the only sound in my living-room. I looked at my gold watch- fifteen minutes before the interview. The ticking persisted, and made me feel very uneasy for some reason.
Then I remembered.
It was my heart that was ticking fit to burst that awfully cold day in August, 1947.
I must have been seven, at most eight years old. I was shivering in my dowdy coat, as my heart continued beating like a time-bomb in the quiet of my dada’s room. I was waiting on him and it seemed to me then that the ticking of the clock masked the sound of his breathing. Perhaps, in truth his breathing had become shallow and pale, like his body.
He had been ill two weeks now. Ever since the Radcliffe Line was announced, his health had been deteriorating like the melting of an ice-cube. Mama had left me to care for him, while she scoured the garbage dumps for vegetables that weren’t completely rotten. When she could not find sufficient left-overs she would wander the lonely streets, begging for money or food. She took what she was offered; and beat her shriveled chest in agony when she was came home empty-handed.
This was of course in those hard, poverty-ridden days of the Partition. News of bloodbaths and riots frequently floated in and out of our threadbare household, but we had immediate troubles of our own.
Bengal had sampled the first tang of doubt sometime around June, when rumors of a second split were making the rounds. Our Muslim friend Muzaffer Bhaiyya, jute-mill worker by day and intellectual by night was educating us on the future of Hindustan. I remember sitting quietly in the corner, while he enunciated with the clarity of an English babu, that British India had run its course. “These Englishmen will have to go, Sharat, they will have to,” he kept repeating to my father. But Muzaffer Bhaiyya had also warned the room at large that the storm was coming. We all thought he was a bit senile. Oh, how wrong we were!
Within a month, the government had secretly set the mood for a series of communal riots that were to be the bloodiest Hindustan stood witness to. Dada had come running into the house one day, his eyes popping. He was shouting like a madman that his factory had been shut down. You see, there was no jute to process. East Bengal’s new policies would not permit jute to be imported by our jute-mills. Dada’s eyes leaked uncontrollably and I was never more afraid of him. He clutched me by the arms, drew me to him and spat in my face that I was never to speak to Muzaffer Bhaiyya or his son again. My mother had begun to cry as well, and I remember running out of the room and hiding in our backyard with our cat, Billi.
The day Dada was terminally ill, Mama did not come home. I was severely anxious about Dada’s health but what could I do? I applied a damp cloth over his forehead and waited. I must have dozed off but when I woke up it was pitch dark and there was a terrible scuffle in the backyard and I thought I heard Billi mewing. I ran to the back-door but opened it noiselessly, fear drumming in my throat. But I had forgotten to turn off the lights. The soft candle-light snaked out into the backyard throwing a small boy’s figure into sharp relief. It was Muzaffer Bhaiyya’s son. He stood stock-still without speaking. He held a bloody scythe in one hand and the corpse of my beloved Billi in the other. I paused for a minute, expecting some reaction. He just stood there, prepared to attack. I swiftly shut the door and bolted the lock. As I heard his footsteps sprinting among the bushes, I sighed in relief.
I shed uncountable tears for many people in the weeks to come. Mama and Billi had been the first to go, and their deaths had been the hardest to bear. But time does heal wounds, and Dada remained with me for a long long time. He got better and took up a job as a government census-taker.
The doorbell. I had to get that. Now how had these tears tricked their way into my lap?
I opened the door and said, “Hello Jessica beti. Ready to hear my story?”
