The Hindi-Bindi Club (29 page)

10. Transfer to serving bowl or platter. Garnish with remaining almonds and fresh coriander. Eat with rice or roti.

Uma Basu McGuiness: Refilling the Well

D
ay after day, I wear my holy amulets, consume herbal roots, perform occult rituals. I battle sweaty, smelly crowds, endless queues to offer prayers at Kalighat. Inside, the temple crackles with a potent energy. Sizzles between secret lovers who have come to elope, circumventing their families. People from near and far offer their fondest possessions as honorable sacrifices. Marigolds, tuberoses, hibiscus blooms. Rupee notes and coins. Slain goats. Long snips of tresses, women’s prized beauty. But where, then, are the heaps of castrated penises? I hear Kali-Ma laughing.

The first time I read these words scribbled in one of
Ma
’s tablets, I was a student at Presidency College. I was shocked! Refined Indian women don’t use crude language. They don’t make overt dirty jokes. Such behavior, as innumerable others, falls strictly within the men’s domain.

If I hadn’t come to America, if I hadn’t married Patrick, if we didn’t have Rani, I would have omitted these passages from my English translations. And in so doing, I would have committed a grave injustice, not only to my mother, but to our posterity who deserve nothing less than the complete, uncensored truth.

“T
hey won’t give me the tablets,” says my sister Anandita (ON-un-DEE-tha) over her mobile from Kolkata.

Our connection is so clear, I feel I’m on the adjacent balcony. I hear the blaring of horns, barks of pariah dogs, whistles of night watchmen.

“Not even copies?” I ask.

“Not even copies,” she says, frustration evident in her voice. “I tried reason. I tried sweets. I tried guilt. I tried everything. Still, they refuse.”

I, too, have tried to persuade three of my six sisters—the stubborn ones—to part with their prized volumes of
Ma
’s writing, so I can translate and include them in my anthology. Tried and failed.

Some of her writing—a smattering of poetry, a short story here and there—
Ma
shared with others during her lifetime. But most of her words, written as well as spoken, she guarded. Her inner world was too private. Radical.
Damning.

After filling tablet after tablet with neat Bengali script, she mailed them to her mother, requesting her to lock them up in her metal cupboard. Before
Dida
—our maternal grandmother—died, she divvied and distributed them among my sisters and me. With precious few mementoes of our mother, we hoarded each and every one. Even a hairpin was an heirloom. So you can imagine how we felt hearing
Ma
’s voice, recorded in her writing, speaking to us.

“Bharati claims hers are lost.”

I roll my eyes. “She’s lying.”

“I know, but what to do?”

Cut up their ATM cards,
Patrick says, meaning
stop sending them money,
but that’s too American, too cold for me. In India, family—even extended family—takes care of family. Though we don’t subsidize others as we do Anandita, we do what we can to help with health care, education, weddings. It’s not a choice for me, but a duty.

“What to do,
Sejdi
?” my sister asks again, this time not rhetorically, but expecting an answer. Instructions from me. Next Steps.

In our family, I’m called
Sejdi,
which means third-oldest sister. Anandita is one of the twins. I call her
Choto didi,
youngest sister. The other twin, Oindrilla, lives in Australia.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Short of stealing them—?”

“Impossible. Even spices are under lock and key.”

We laugh. Tinny, nervous laughs of desperation.

Though Anandita and Oindrilla are twelve years my junior, my bond with them is tighter than with my other sisters. From their rocky beginnings, I felt protective of the twins. Of all my sisters, they—the ones who never had the chance to know
Ma
—are closest to my heart.

When our father arranged Oindrilla’s marriage to a Bengali economist who chanced to move abroad, to
Baba
’s dismay and my relief, I prayed for the same for Anandita. In Kolkata, the twins lived under a cloud of culpability for their role in
Ma
’s death. I wanted to get them away from that. But for Anandita, it wasn’t to be. No family could get past her epilepsy. They viewed her as damaged goods. Unacceptable.

Thankfully,
Baba
allowed her to attend Santiniketan, “abode of peace,” the college founded by Tagore, our Bengali Renaissance Man. This brought her great happiness and a lifelong network of friends. But he wouldn’t permit her further studies after she completed her B.A., certainly not abroad, not after my example.

Despite repeated offers to bring her to the States, to have her stay with Patrick and me, Anandita refused to abandon
Baba,
as the rest of us did when we married and joined our husband’s families. Though
Baba
showed little similar consideration for her, she continually fretted over his well-being.

“Who’ll look after him in his old age?” Anandita said time and again. “He has no son.”

Nephews could light a funeral pyre, but could they care for him the way his own children would? We had witnessed that, when push came to shove in our large joint family with its constant power struggles, a nephew’s loyalty laid with his own parents.

So it was that Anandita alone stayed by
Baba
’s side to the end, after which she had no desire to leave Kolkata. There she remains today, in Ballygunge, living with her black cat named Hulo in a luxury two-bedroom flat we purchased for her after
Baba
passed away.

“Sejdi?”
Anandita says. “Why don’t you come here? They won’t refuse you in person.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, grip the phone tighter, my palms growing slippery.

“
Baba
’s gone,” she says, reading my mind. “Gone-gone. Body and spirit. He isn’t lurking in the
neem
trees, poised to drop on you if you walk under them.” Only with me does she feel free enough to aim her slingshot at superstitions. With others, she guards her inner world, as did
Ma
.

Ma
’s deep, dark secret? Encrypted in innocuous poetry, but laid bare in journal entries: her unconventional, independent, clever mind. People could control
Ma
’s actions, imprison her body, but never her thoughts.

Now that I think about it, Anandita’s deep, dark secret is similar. She’s an atheist.

She won’t admit to it. Not even to me. Doesn’t live in a world where one safely can. To varying degrees, most of today’s world—East, West, and Middle; First, Second, and Third Worlds—still largely fears and shuns, if not punishes, nonbelievers, equating
godless
with
immoral
. Self-preservation spurs Anandita through the motions of socially accepted piety, not belief in a higher power.

How do I know? The same way I know about Saroj’s extramarital affair, Meenal’s crush on my husband, and a whole host of other secrets no one suspects. I pay attention. Not only to what’s said, but what isn’t. Not just actions, but inactions.

Take Anandita’s tireless humanitarian work, as an example. That’s real. It’s her passion, her raison d’être. But observe her body language, listen to her response when people tell her, as they often do, that she’s doing God’s work or earning her wings in heaven. She bristles. Averts her gaze. Turns away. If she replies, she says things like: “I’m doing
man’s
work.” Or: “It’s not for my
karma
that I do what I do.” She may quote the
Gita:
“Let right deeds be your motive, not the fruit which comes from them.” Such qualifiers, disclaimers, hardly register on a radar screen; but over time, tiny blips add up.

“
Sejdi,
are you still there?” Anandita’s voice comes over the line. In the background, a dog howls.

“I’m here,” I say. “And I must stay here. You know that.”

Because she was there, Anandita’s the only living person, besides me, who knows what
Baba
said to me before he died, words I could never repeat verbatim, even to my husband,
especially
to him, because what hurts me hurts Patrick. With the last of his weak breaths, my father used all his remaining strength to cane these words on my soul:
Never step foot on Bengali soil again.

“This is your bloody soil,” Anandita says, and my vision blurs. “Your birthright.”

I cover my eyes. “
Choto didi,
please. I can’t.”

“You mean you
won’t
.”

“Yes. That’s right. I won’t.”

It’s my choice to honor
Baba
’s deathbed request. This is the sacrifice, penance by which I hope to wipe my karmic slate clean with my father. Patrick understands this. When he and I were in Kolkata, I caught the tail end of a conversation he was having with my sisters.

“So the Christian notion of Hell exists here on earth for those paying off bad
karma
?” he asked.

“Yes,” Moitreyee said.

“He is getting it,” Tapasi said.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Anandita murmured from the corner divan where she absently stroked Hulo, a cat who thinks she’s a dog. “The gospels to which humans, in all cultures, cling to ease the pain of living and dying?”

Anandita knows my beliefs, even if she doesn’t accept them. And, as evidenced in the letter I receive weeks after our phone conversation, she’s clever enough to speak to them.

My dearest Sejdi,

After great thought, prayer, meditation, consultation with gurus, and pilgrimage to Kalighat, I have reached the following conclusions: You have stayed away long enough in deference to Baba’s wishes. Come back, and we shall do all the necessary spiritual cleansing. As you know, these important rituals are best performed in India, and there’s no holy place better than our Ganges.

I eagerly await the news of your imminent arrival.

Yours affectionately,
Choto didi

P.S. Your presence in Kolkata is the only hope of compiling a comprehensive anthology.

“I’ll go if you go,” Saroj says, offering her hand to me in pact. “We’ll do it together, at the same time.”

She understands as no one else can: When you are thrown out of a place, it’s not easy to return, under any circumstances, no matter how much you may want to.

I take her hand. “You go to Lahore. I’ll go to Kolkata.”

“Deal.”

We shake, two live wires of nervous energy coiling together.

Hi, Mom!

Can’t sleep. Decided to get up and write you. How are you and Dad doing? Do you miss me terribly? Everything here’s fine. I finally unpacked my suitcases. That’s gotta be a new record for me. Just don’t ask if I’ve done laundry. :P

In the Good-News department: My chronic fatigue has lifted. I’m not feeling the terrible lows anymore. In not-so-good-news: My passion’s definitely missing. My highs are gone. I’m listless. And yes, I’m wishing I listened to you and stayed there another month. Is the latest “being right” streak giving you a swelled head???

I feel like I’m wasting so much time, on this extended vacation from my life. I know Bryan’s going through the same thing. In our own ways, we’re both floating…drifting…aimlessly. Don’t get me wrong, floating’s a helluva lot better than drowning -- NO danger of that, believe me. It’s just that I want to SWIM again. I want purpose. I want passion. I miss it!

And now that I’ve written all this, I want to go to sleep…Zzzzz…:-)

Thanks for listening, Mom.

XOXOXO,
Boo

Dearest Boo-Boo,

We miss you more than stars in the heavens, raindrops in the monsoons, sands on every beach, and colors in all the world. Raised to the power of infinity -- that’s how much we love you.

Let’s talk later tonight, okay? I have a proposition that may spur you in the right direction.

In the meantime, remember we talked about your creative well being dry and how you cannot continuously take from that place without occasionally replenishing it? Boo-Boo, you refill the well by living in the world, =experiencing= life. Stopping to smell the roses is NOT wasting time.

Love,
Mom & Dad

What about stopping to SMOKE the roses?

Seriously, thanks for the pep talk. Nothing on tap here tonight, so call anytime.

XOXOXO,
Boo

Kolkata is a city of juxtaposed contradictions. Splendor and squalor. Fragrance and stench. Intellect and ignorance. Humanity and apathy. Culture and uncouthness. Arrogance and humility. Cutting-edge technology and Stone Age backwardness. Generosity and avarice. Joy and despair.

Once the capital of British India, this wonderful, horrible city represents (to me) a microcosm of the world. The full range of the human experience. If ever there was a place to inspire an artist, Kolkata is it.