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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Fiction & Poetry |
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Fiction |
A Strange Attachment
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Published : 1 January 2012 |
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JAYARAMA UDUPA FOR THE CARAVAN |
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ABOUT THE STORY Arguably the greatest Indian short-story writer of the 20th century, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (1903-1950) possessed remarkable gifts of “voice”, of getting under the skin of a character. As evident from the story published here—a classic ghost story, held taut by a mixture of quotidian and supernatural details—Bandyopadhyay worked out a narrative style so smooth, easy and natural it seems more spoken than written. Not a word is wasted; the story goes forward with every sentence, drawing us deeper into its field in the same way that Nibaran Chakrabarti’s house in the story draws in and possesses the narrator. Also noteworthy is Bandyopadhyay’s evocative dialogue, a quality much praised by Satyajit Ray, who fashioned his film sequence The Apu Trilogy from Bandyopadhyay’s novels Pather Panchali and Aparajito. Bandyopadhyay’s style is here beautifully realised by Phyllis Granoff’s translation, the lead story of a collection, long out of print, published in Canada by Granoff in 1984 as A Strange Attachment and Other Stories (Mosaic Press, Ontario).
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T BEGAN TWO YEARS AGO, what I’m going to tell you about. I don’t remember it all that well; in fact, I’ve long forgotten most of what happened. How did I get here? Well, there’s a road that leads from Bagula on towards Sindirani. I was walking along that road one day. I’d been employed for years as a cook in a Brahmin household. I had just lost my job. |
I didn’t really care about losing my job; that was not what bothered me. What bothered me about the whole affair was that I had been fired unjustly. I hadn’t stolen the ghee; I’ve no idea who had, but my employers decided anyway that I was the guilty party. By the time I’d cleared Shantipada, Sarshe and Berjeradanga the afternoon was almost over. I was starved; I was a strong healthy young man and I had a good healthy appetite. Even though I’d some money on me I hadn’t seen any food stall in all these backward villages.
There was a beautiful lake to one side of the road. I’ve always loved bathing in lakes. I took off my clothes and left them on the broken-down bathing steps at the shore and plunged into the water. The shallows were choked with water hyacinths; I pushed them aside and dove into the clear water, enjoying the rush of coolness around my body. It was the end of the month of Baisakh; it was still very hot and it felt delightful to bathe in the lake. I hung my wet things on a branch of a tamarind tree by the shore of the lake. My body was cooled off, but my stomach was still burning with hunger. Weren’t there even any edible wild fruits at this time of the year? I couldn’t see a thing which looked edible, no matter how hard I tried. It was then that I noticed the old man coming down to the lake to have his bath. Catching sight of me, he asked, “Hello! Where did you come from?”
I replied, “I’m just a poor Brahmin; I’m looking for a job. At the moment I’m dying of hunger. Can you tell me where I can get something to eat?”
The old man said, “Wait. Just let me have my bath and then I’ll take care of you.”
After he finished his bath, the old man took me with him into the village to an old house that was completely surrounded by jungle. He told me, “My name is Nibaran Chakrabarti. This house belongs to me, though I don’t live here. My son runs a business in Kolkata; they’ve got a place in Shyambazaar. This huge house just lies here unoccupied, and there we have to crowd ourselves into three small rooms. I can’t tell you what it’s like for us in Kolkata! I come here every month to make sure everything is all right. My sons are afraid of the malaria in the village and so they never want to come. There’s a big orchard behind the house, it’s got all sorts of fruit-bearing trees. All the villagers come and pick whatever is in season. How would you like to stay here?”
I replied, “I could do that.”
“What kind of work can you do?”
“I’m a cook.”
“While I’m here you can cook; the two of us can eat together.”
“That would be just fine with me.”
As soon as he saw that I was agreed to his suggestion the man seemed unusually pleased. He brought me something to eat right away. When I had finished, he handed me an old mat and a big bolster and said, “Why don’t you take a little rest?”
I was tired from walking that long distance. When I woke up there was not much left to the day. The red sun was cresting the tips of the tall trees. The jackals had already begun to howl in the jungle behind the house. I went outside and walked around the forest for a while. As far as I could see there was nothing but forest and jungle with ancient mango and jackfruit trees. There wasn’t a single house in sight. All I could make out was a broken-down temple somewhere in the jungle. When I went over to investigate, I found it had been taken over by bats.
By the time I got back to the house Nibaran Chakrabarti had settled down to his smoking. He asked, “Do you know how to make tea? Then make some tea for us. You could also fry some of the parched rice we have. We can mix it with some oil, salt and unripe chillies.”
When the sun had set he told me, “Put up the rice. There’s some fine sundried rice and some ghee made from cow’s milk. You can boil some potatoes with the rice. That’s about what I eat, just simple things.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and you can make something from the striped gourds for yourself. You’ll see them growing behind the kitchen. At this hour you’d best take a lantern with you. And one more thing. Be sure to keep a light burning in the kitchen at all times.”
“Of course. How could I cook in the dark?”
“That’s exactly what I meant.”
It was a huge house. There must have been a good fourteen or fifteen rooms on the two floors. In addition there was a long verandah. All but a few of the rooms were padlocked. The kitchen had a long raised terrace in front of it; at one edge of the terrace were four or five palm trees and an orange tree. In order to pick some of the gourds I had to make my way over to that edge of the terrace by the trees and then down into the courtyard; then I had to circle around to the back of the kitchen. It was not yet completely dark; thinking that there would be no need for me to take the lamp I left it behind when I went to fetch the gourds.
My God! What a thick jungle had grown up behind the kitchen! It was full of wild gourd vines, the kind people call “rubbish vines”. You know what I mean, you know how vines sprout up when you throw the garbage out of the back door of the kitchen and the seeds in it take root. I noticed that many of the gourds had already gone to seed; I tried my best to choose the young ones. Suddenly I caught sight of a figure; it looked to me like some married woman from the village, just opposite me about ten paces away. She was bending down in the plants. Her face was half-concealed in her sari which she had pulled over her head; like me she was picking gourds. I glanced over at her a few times and then turned my back and went about my business of selecting seven or eight nice young gourds. When I was ready to go back in I took another look. The woman was still picking gourds.
Nibaran Chakrabarti asked, “Did you get yourself some gourds?”
“Oh, yes sir. There’s lots of them out there. Someone else was picking them, too.”
A note of surprise in his voice, Nibaran asked, “Where?”
“Out there, right behind the kitchen. Near where the jungle starts.”
“A man?”
“No, a woman. She looked to me like the wife of one of the villagers.”
A strange look came over Nibaran Chakrabarti’s face. He said, “What woman? Show me.”
When we got to the back of the kitchen I could see there was no one there.
Nibaran kept asking, “Where’s the woman?”
“She was right here, right in these vines.”
“Hmm. Just what I thought. Let’s get out of here. As if married women appeared just like that in a man’s backyard at this hour of the day.”
I was a little taken aback. What was so strange about a village wife going to pick some wild gourds? For the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. Besides, Nibaran Chakrabarti might be here today, but tomorrow he was going back to Kolkata and who was going to keep watch over his wild gourds then?
After we had finished our evening meal, old Mr Chakabarti brought up the business of the gourd-thief again. He asked, “Why didn’t you take a lamp with you when you went to pick the gourds? I told you to take a lamp, don’t you remember? Why didn’t you?”
I really couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. The old man just seemed to be one of those people who have to find fault with something. Why, I could see perfectly well without a lamp; hadn’t I seen the woman stealing the gourds? Then what could possibly have been wrong in my not taking the lamp with me?
The old man kept on, “No, no, after the sun goes down you must always keep a lamp with you.”
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