TWO SHORT STORIES
By “BANAFUL”
(Rendered
from Bengali by Phani Bhushan
Maitra)
1.
INEXPLICABLE
Directly
a child is born, it dies. There is no escaping this inevitable fate.
Doctors,
with all their ultra-modern drugs and devices, can do but less than nothing.
The swift passage of life from birth to death, is
unimpeded.
When
the fourth child thus goes the way of all flesh, the parents can no longer shut
their eyes to a singularly strange coincidence. The features of all the babies
are more than similar, they are identical. It is as if the same creature is
going round and round through the portals of life and death in a seemingly
interminable spiral.
Why?
Wherefore is this so? What’s it the child wants? Is it not properly cared for?
Rich
goods of rare luxury greet the fifth child in its lying-in chamber.
Yet,
the inexorable fate does not relent. The child dies all the same.
Wise
advisers next come forward with their brainy counsel. Entertainment of Brahmins
is a panacea for all ills and evils.
On
the day the sixth child is born a few picked guests of the holy caste are,
accordingly, treated to a sumptuous dinner of toothsome courses. Even music
graces the occasion.
But
still death claims its victim, and has it.
There
is now nothing else, and all fall back on the idea or some unknown sin, unatoned for.
What
the Holy Scriptures ordain, is performed with
scrupulous rigidity to hold fast the seventh child to life, and to its parents.
The
elaborate and expensive expiatory ritual cuts no ice either.
Deny
it or doubt it if you will, but the fact is there. The same baby–sometimes it
is a boy, at others, a girl–is coming over and over again to
torment the ill-fated parents...To die it is born, and to be born, it dies.
In
unspeakable misery the anguished mother cries her eyes blind.
“Why?
Oh, why is this so?” wails its father, blindly groping for some sort of an
explanation.
Who
knows?
At
last it is beyond the parents to stand this cruel trial any longer. Warded off
the haunting apparition has got to be at any cost...Driven to desperation, the
baffled father makes a grim resolve in his mad fury.
He
shears off the fingers and toes of his dead eighth child, and punishes it.
The
mother conceives for the ninth time, and is delivered of a child in due course.
It
is a girl this time.
It
is again the self-same baby–the same eyes, the same nose, and all–only it has
no fingers or toes...And, Oh horror! This time it defies death.
She
lives to this day.
For the last few days a butterfly has been visiting me regularly. It comes and settles on the green shade of my table-lamp, and sits motionless on its perch throughout the long hours I sit reading and writing at my desk...This began from within a few, days of Asha’s death.
In
comes Somesh–a pal of mine.
Of
late he has been frequenting my study oftener than before. And, if I must
confess humbly, I am somewhat ill-at-ease while he is here. For, the weakness I
have come to feel in my heart of hearts for his sister Bela he has shrewdly divined, the cunning devil...He has
the whip-hand of me.
He
hits the nail straight on the head.
“Made
up your mind yet, eh, old horse?...I mean, about Bela,” he begins in a light vein.
Should I stammer, or blush, or what?
“Have
her, or leave her, man,” he continues more seriously. “If wed you must–all
widowers re-marry, you know–well, there’s Bela ‘Twill
be taking a burden off my back as well. Besides. Bela too...So, that’s that; you follow what I mean?”
I
follow all right–still, words fail me and I just sit on tongue-tied.
How
it shames me now to remember my empty promises to Asha
while she lived!
“God
forbid; but should ever cruel death do us part,” I would wax eloquent in the
exuberance of my feelings and vouch solemnly with all the impressiveness of the
hero of a cheap melodrama, “never again the wedding bells for me shall toll.”
But,
alas, profession and practice are poles asunder.
To
me it is now plain as plain can be that, most assuredly, I would marry; and
marry Bela for the matter of fact.
But
to own as much, is a bitter pill to swallow.
“Silence
cuts both ways, Sonny...Say yes, or no, and have done with it...I’dn’t, for the life of me, force you to decide one way or
the other...Dwijen’s my next choice. And, if I may
hazard a guess, he’ll require but little persuasion to oblige me. Of course,
should you agree, I go no farther.”
The
deuce you do!
That
ugly Dwijen with the tooth-brush moustache to marry Bela! The idea is preposterous...He is then angling for
this covetable catch, is he? The mischievous rogue!
“To
hell with him,” I snap out in execration–“Know once for all then that Bela will be mine...Still, just give me some breathing
time, please, won’t you?”
“Oh,
surely...As you will...I can hang on your words indefinitely.”
“Hang
then, and be hanged!” I mutter inaudibly.
“You
promise then?”
“I
do.”
“Cheerio,
laddie,” gleefully shouts my friend, and he is
already on his legs, moving towards the door...“Lemme
play the happy harbinger, and run up to Bela with the
news. She should be the first to hear it.”...He is away before he has quite
finished.
What
happens next is incredible.
“Over
is my task then, and I’m off.” It is Asha’s voice
that suddenly rings out in the room, clear and incisive.
The
butterfly flutters out of the room through the window.