Placed second in the Mozhi Prize 2024
IT didn’t seem to Aangur—Aangurlata—that disaster had broken in her room.
She did not dissolve into tears and throw herself upon Nanda. Did not clutch his cold feet to her bosom or begin to hit her head against the wall. She did not even push the door wide open— it was already ajar—and run out, screaming for help. And she certainly did not crumple on the floor next to his bedstead and weep a few tears.
She had mixed up honey and a tonic with mortar and pestle, and bent over him to apply the concoction to his tongue. When he didn’t respond to her repeated calls, and didn’t put his tongue out, she regarded his closed lids with some suspicion. A black ant was making its way up his face and towards his eyes. His neck lolled to one side, his lips slightly apart, his face like a stale boiled egg—dry, hard and pale. Aangur held a finger to his nostril, the same finger she had scooped up the honey-and-tonic mixture with. No, Nanda was not breathing. When she took her hand away, it touched his nose. Cold. She placed a hand on his chest and listened for a heartbeat. Nothing there. He was going to die, anyway; it would have happened sooner than later. Well, he was gone at last. She put away her pestle in an alcove and opened the western window. A slow rain pattered on Himu’s tin roof, the mud walls were drenched. There was a growth of moss on the blue pond water, and sopping wet crows called from among the bushes of taro and the branches of the toothbrush tree.
Aangur turned back and looked at Nanda. On the rickety bedstead was an assortment of bones shrouded in a threadbare blanket. A pair of flies had settled on Nanda’s face. He is dead, he is past worry, but, Aangur thought, he had put her in a fix even in death. What was she to do? Who might she go to asking for help, no, begging for it? She felt a seething rage. The scoundrel had turned up at her doorstep knowing he’d be looked after, determined to be kept at her expense. Well, his mulishness won.
What now, Aangur wondered. She couldn’t leave the corpse lying in her room. It would have to be taken to the burning ghat for cremation.
She moved towards the eastern wall. On the dented, discoloured box was a pile of bundles and parcels, and on top of them a rolled-up mat. A spotted black cat lay curled upon it, sleeping. Seeing the cat, she broke out in a violent fury. She picked up the animal and hurled it at the half-open door. A thud, a faint yelp. The cat scurried away.
She began to snatch up bundles, the mat, a pillow without a case, just as she had grabbed the cat up by the neck, and tossed them on the floor. ‘The little shits,’ she railed. ‘Always manage to find me. No place you rascals can go to, huh? Nowhere to go but here, is it? No place for a shag or to drop off dead? Get yourselves off to the street then, you bastards! Or the dump.’
Her voice rose into a dizzying pitch and she stopped, as if she expected some low, melancholic, half-hearted rejoinder. And because there was none, she turned back to face Nanda and remembered he was dead.
She took up the tarnished box and groped in its depths. She picked out a worn hemp saree, once fancy, and two plainer ones of frayed cotton. A petticoat, the satin bodice. A wooden box and flowers from the temple, wrapped in a rag. A pair of dull rolled-gold studs, a string of glass beads. Some vermillion, a few hairpins.
She sat in silence for a moment, the vermillion and hairpins in her hand. She didn’t look at Nanda, but she thought of the Nanda she had known a few years ago. He had been heavier then, there’d been meat on his bones. He had attractive features, a full face, and longish hair.
And then an ache stirred in her heart. A slight tightness in her throat. A stinging in the whites of her eyes and pooling water. A drop trickled onto her wrist. Aangur watched it through a blur; abruptly, she craned her neck into the box.
The conch bangles weren’t there. She had known they wouldn’t be, for she had thrown them out into the gutter years ago. They weren’t marital bangles, and the vermillion wasn’t daubed in the part of her hair by a husband. They were only the seal of the man who had kept her for a mistress, of his monopoly over her. So she had gotten rid of the bangles and wiped away the pigment.
She dried her eyes, vexed with herself for the tears and the heavy-heartedness. She believed she was giving in to sentiment because it was what people wanted to see. Or Nanda, at any rate.
She turned away. Nanda wouldn’t see her weeping. He was dead.
She combed through the box and scraped together eleven-and-a-half annas. And a useless rupee. So worthless that nobody would accept it. Some bastard had paid her off with it, and he never came back. If he had, Aangur would have wrested the money from him. People left their unusable notes at the temple and tried the same trick in their district.
Eleven-and-a-half-annas. She ran a quick mental search. She remembered there was a half-rupee in the alcove, under a metal tumbler, and another two annas in the tobacco tin. And yes, another six annas or so in the rice pot. How much in all? About a rupee and eleven-and-a-half annas.
Impossible to have the man’s last rites performed on that. These weren’t circumstances she had been in before, but she knew that two rupees would never cover it.
What would she do, what was there to do? She hadn’t a clue. There was nothing she still had to sell or to pawn. No bit of gold or silver, not even bronze. She never had any gold to begin with. It was Nanda who had made her a set of bangles in imitation gold, back in the day, and it had been sold. She had a pair of lightweight earrings, in gold, she’d had them made from her own earnings. She had to sell them, too, after Nanda appeared.
Nanda came with a mouthful of greed, the bastard. Her few karats of pure gold had to go, as did her nose pin, her silver comb, two silk sarees, her brass dishes, all of them.
Oh, what would she do? She hadn’t invited him, hadn’t made his bed for him. Nanda was no lover of hers. In fact, when that mealy-mouthed, evil, selfish rascal showed up, wheezing and gasping for breath, she had done her best to show him the door.
He had fallen at her feet, crying like a woman. Aangur had been repelled by the sores all over his body, the pus and blood that caked his filthy clothing. He smelled, his teeth were infected, there were lice in his hair, and he had a full beard and yellow eyes. His skin was hot as a haystack in April.
‘Let me stay for a couple of nights, Aangur, please,’ he had said. ‘I’ll leave as soon as the fever goes down.’ He clutched at her feet.
‘No way,’ she had said, rigid as wood hardened by rain and sun. ‘Go right back where you came from. Your fancy women wouldn’t keep you, huh, those ones you fooled around with all this time? Shooed you out!’
Nanda hadn’t answered. He had nothing to say. In the delirium of fever and agony, he writhed like an injured dog and beat his head on her feet.
Aangur wouldn’t have him, and Nanda wouldn’t budge, as if he hadn’t the strength to heave himself up.
So he stayed.
‘Stay if you must,’ she had warned. ‘But you clear out the moment the fever is gone, make no mistake.’
But of course, Nanda hadn’t arrived to get well, but to have her run through fire all over again. What a nuisance. The fever rose, and often Nanda fell into unconsciousness. When he was awake he thrashed about like a sacrificial goat at the chopping block.
One can only witness that sort of slaughter for so long. Helpless, she swallowed her disgust and called the doctor in, railing at Nanda all the time. The doctor’s name was Ambika; he practised in their neighborhood. To him, the secret maladies of Aangur and her ilk were clear as the light of day. He knew how to suppress their hidden burnings and blains.
Ambika examined Nanda. To her, he said, ‘Aangur, I could give him something for his sores, but his liver has rotted. Too much drink. He’s too sick, hard to heal. And perhaps he won’t get over this. Why don’t you take him to the hospital in Calcutta? They might help, there isn’t much I can do out here.’
She was thrown from the frying pan to the fire. She smoldered. She had wanted to kick the bugger out, but he established himself in her territory, with his fever and his decaying innards and polluted blood—a millstone around her neck.
Snuff it, she had wanted to scream. The scoundrel took his pleasure with others and showed up at her door when it was time to die. The double-dealing bastard. He deserved this disease, this falling to festered pieces. That’s how atonement worked. He should have known when he abandoned Aangur and disappeared. Yes, her mother had been destitute when he took Aangur away from home, but Aangur herself had never been loose. He had sweet-talked her into coming away with him, and at first, he had lavished endearments on her—
She was nubile, then, full of youthful sweetness. And Nanda wanted her for himself. They coquetted and they played, how! She put on the conch bangles married women wore, and vermillion in the part of her hair. As god was their witness, they were man and wife, the ground below knew it, and the lime on the walls, and the line between wall and ceiling.
It took Nanda only a year to suck her dry, and all that was left was bagasse. No pleasure in it for him anymore, only distaste. Nanda got away with no warning and no explanation, away from the bondage of her rooms. She saw nothing of him for four years. That is, until he returned when he was about to die, because he had no place else to go.
These grievances she screeched nonstop to anyone who would listen, loaded with invectives. She was filled with aversion, with disgust. She spewed her rage and repugnance, night and day.
She was stuck in some sort of inescapable trap that wouldn’t loosen its hold until the man was dead. So despite her extreme unwillingness, Aangur shelled out money for the doctor’s fees and medicine and food. Only to be rid of him.
Ambika pushed a few injections, a couple of bottles of medicine. The sores healed somewhat, but that was all. Once, she took him to the better-qualified doctor at the jute mill. He wrote a prescription and Aangur fed Nanda the remedies. To no avail. This other doctor also said it was better to take Nanda to the Calcutta hospital.
Twenty miles to Calcutta, forty to return. The cost of rail and bus tickets. She had to haul Nanda around two hospitals, like a basket of fermenting fish, given he could barely move. For all her trouble nobody paid attention. No doctor examined him. They took one look at him and said she might as well have taken him directly to the burning ghat. Or, if she had the money, she might leave him there as a patient.
On the way back, Aangur raged against the hospitals as well as Nanda. After they returned, Nanda couldn’t even turn himself on his side anymore. She got homeopathy pills, and since the day before yesterday, the mixture of honey and tonic prescribed by Satya Kaviraj. And then it was over. Nanda died.
Aangur stared absently into the depths of her box. Unblinking. As if she weren’t there, or indeed, as if she hadn’t any work to do.
There was a loud thunderclap and she came to. She looked out the window and saw that darkness had fallen.
She lifted the gaudy hemp saree out and dropped the lid, moving towards the window. There were clouds, yes, but it was also late in the afternoon. The rain had stopped.
Outside, Champa, Chameli, Golap, Aata, and Lavanya had risen from their afternoon slumber. She heard some of them filling water, yawning, crossing the yard to fetch a little tea from the Odiya man’s stall, and talking. She heard Aata’s trilling and the niggling sound of Golap’s broken laughter.
Aata was one lucky wench, Aangur thought. A fellow from the jute mill had been coming often, on the heels of her last. Would Aata buy this saree, Aangur wondered. She liked vivid colors, garish styles. If Aata did, she could wear it for a good six months, frayed though it was. In any case, she wouldn’t be wearing it in bed.
If Aata agreed to buy it, Aangur would let her have it for four rupees. But what if she didn’t? In her head, Aata and the saree and Nanda all became a blurry jumble.
Aangur stood for a moment, going over her plans. What to do, who to see and in what order. She must hurry up, it was nearly evening. She couldn’t leave the corpse in her room indefinitely.
As she stepped out, she hurled an expletive at Nanda and shut the door behind her.
Aata sat on a stool at her door, smoking a cigarette. A customer must have forgotten it, or she might have set one aside for herself. Manda was combing Aata’s hair, no doubt because she hoped for a few puffs of the precious cigarette, and Chinu had squatted at her feet, scrubbing her soles with a pumice stone.
Aangur had already hidden the hemp saree away under her own. She didn’t want to approach Aata with that crowd around her. Manda would inevitably find fault with it, and she wouldn’t let Aata buy it, let alone bargain.
She would go to Himu instead. Himu was the only one Aangur thought of as a friend, someone she could confide in. Yes, she would tell Himu of this fix she was in.
Aangur scurried across the yard and went out the front door. Himu’s rooms were next to theirs.
Himu was doing her hair. Aangur explained her predicament. Himu’s hand stopped.
‘When?’ she asked.
‘This afternoon,’ said Aangur.
‘It’s been hours!’ said Himu. ‘It’s Saturday. I hope he won’t be cursed.’
‘Nothing I can do about that,’ Aangur said. ‘He didn’t leave anything behind to pay for the damn funeral.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Himu asked, beginning to roll her hair up.
‘If I can get my hands on a little money, I’ll get the bastard to the burning ghat,’ said Aangur.
‘Find Bishu,’ said Himu. ‘Ask for help. But they won’t do it for nothing.’
‘I know…’. Aangur faltered.
‘See if they will.’
Aangur searched Himu’s face. Himu was unaffected, uninterested.
‘Would you lend me a little, Himu?’ she asked.
‘Mon-ey?’ Himu drew the word out. There was disappointment in her face, and some sorrow. ‘Didn’t I tell you the other day I’ve been saving up for the goldsmith? I’ve got twelve rupees, and if I can get another four I can buy the thing. But what luck, I can’t get it together.’
Aangur stared at her friend. Himu was quiet, and then she said, ‘A penny here, a half-rupee. What else could I do, Aangur? Here, keep these two rupees. Return it later.’
Then Himu smiled differently. She said, ‘How ever will you manage that…’
Aangur stretched her palms out and took the money. She had to. Under any other circumstance, she wouldn’t have. Never.
From Himu’s, she made her way to Bedana Mashi’s quarters. Mashi snapped. ‘We said you shouldn’t have taken the bastard in. Did you listen? No! You were all sympathy, then! Now tow him to the ghat yourself. Little bitch.’
Aangur made no response. To herself, she thought it wasn’t sympathy she had felt when Nanda came, nor pity. She hadn’t made up a bed for him. She was no wife of his and she had no obligation to look after the diseased man. Just that they lived in the same room—he on the bedstead and she on the floor—so she poured him water when he was thirsty, administered medicine and served food.
‘What can I do?’ barked Bedana Mashi.
‘I can’t leave the corpse in my room…’ Aangur managed to say.
‘What choice do you have?’ Mashi spat. ‘You give me no peace, you girls. Get one of those scavengers and get him out to the dump. They’ll do it for a couple of bucks. Or just have a lay. They’ll lug him out.’
Something leapt in Aangur’s heart. Scavengers! In a flash, she remembered how they hauled dead dogs away by their legs, bound by ropes.
She remembered Nanda’s surname. Chakraborty. A Brahmin.
She flinched. A strange pain in her chest, a queer feeling of helplessness. It was evening.
She hastened to Aata, who was dressing. Aata had pulled on a new red petticoat over the old, torn one. She had certainly filled out. Her bodice was fastened, her saree draped.
Aangur decided to be direct. She pulled the hemp saree out.
Aata took it, unfolded it, folded it around her waist and across her shoulders. ‘It’s so old-fashioned, Aangur di,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the border.’
What could Aangur say! A three-year-old saree, old-fashioned!
‘It will suit you,’ she muttered. ‘It will.’
Aata simpered. ‘Charu Babu got me a new, printed one the other day,’ she said. ‘What would I do with this? So tacky.’
‘Take it,’ Aangur found herself pleading. ‘Take it, I tell you. You look pretty in it. And I’ll tell you this—you won’t be wearing it when you sleep with them, will you? If you wear it once in a while, it’ll last you a year, or more.’
Aata thought for a minute. ‘I have three rupees. I can give you two-and-a-half. Or you can take it away, I don’t need it that much.’
Aangur took it and stepped out into the corridor. Chameli, Lavanya and the other girls were dressed up in their rooms. Lanterns burned. The sky was tinged with red. Chances were there would be rain afterwards; it was drizzling. Despite the weather, some of the girls had pulled their sarees over their heads and were making their way to the main street beyond the half-dark lane. A few heads huddled under an umbrella. The evening’s routine had begun. Golap and the others flocked together, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, laughing, and fawning over each other. A few early customers had showed up.
Standing there Aangur quickly totted up her funds. A rupee and eleven-and-a-half annas, the two from Himu, and two-and-a-half from Aata—a little over six rupees. Now she had to see if Bishu would do it for this. Probably not, and she had no idea how much he might demand. She walked fast, asking around for him, and found him in the bicycle repair shop. He was seated on a tin chair, feet propped up on the shutters, sipping tea from a glass tumbler. Carbide light fell on his pajamas and his face.
Aangur moved closer and beckoned to him.
Bishu finished his tea and walked up to her, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. ‘What is it, Potli?’ he said. To him, Aangur and the girls were always ‘Potli’. Before she could speak he said, ‘Give me a minute. I’ll have to have a paan first. This bloody tea tastes like horse piss! What an aftertaste!’
He held a palm out. Aangur knew how these things worked; you paid first and then got into dealings. She untied the half-rupee from the free end of her saree and gave it to him. ‘A single paan and a cigarette,’ she warned. ‘Nothing else. In Ma Kali’s name.’
Bishu chortled. ‘Business that slow, eh, Potli? These times are like Satyayug! Damn, nobody to lick at all the juicy fruit, huh?’ Bishu made his way towards a stall.
Then he was back, mouth full of paan, a real cigarette between his lips. Of course, he didn’t return the change. ‘Yes, Potli, you were saying-‘
Aangur told him, worriedly, pleading.
In the trickling half-light, Bishu scanned her face intently. After a pause, he asked how much she had.
‘Six rupees,’ Aangur said.
‘Six rupees! What are we going to do with that? You couldn’t burn a limb,’ Bishu laughed aloud.
‘How much, then?’ Angur asked forlornly.
‘Mango wood is a rupee-and-a-half for forty kilos or so. You’ll need three hundred. So you’ll want at least ten just for the wood. Then there’s vessels, incense—say another rupee. If you want to put him in new clothes—’
‘No,’ Aangur shook her head. The dread was overwhelming. There was no need for new clothing.
‘Then, that’s it. And four pints for the four of us who’ll carry him, the cheaper kind, we’ll live with that. Two bucks and a bit each, say another ten.’
Aangur’s hands were numb, and her feet too. Bishu’s face looked pointed, like a pig’s, and just as revolting.
It took her a little while to adjust to this shock. She said, ‘How am I going to get that much? Is he my father or a lover that you’re asking for twenty rupees to have him roasted?’
‘Then let it be. Go tell them at the police station, and they’ll send some scavenger to have him picked up.’
Again the mention of scavengers! That uneasy throb in her chest. Weakly, she said, ‘If I could, I’d give you twenty. Don’t be a jerk, Bishu.’
‘For god’s sake, Potli!’ Bishu protested. ‘It’s raining! If we have to go to the burning ghat, I’ll have to look up those bastards – Kelo, Bire, Pencho. And none of them will do it for nothing. Shell out some for the drinks, we’ll have to kill the ache after we’ve carried him there.’
‘Oh, hell,’ Bishu went on. ‘We’ll settle for just a pair of pints. If he’s nothing to you we’ll do it for a pittance. But that’s all Potli, don’t haggle anymore, I swear.’
Aangur didn’t answer, didn’t accede by a nod of the head. She looked vacantly at the intense dark, the dim lights, the lightly pattering rain, the people about, the shops.
Bishu spoke. ‘Damn, we’ll make do with less wood. If he’s nobody, we’ll manage with less. He might be half-burnt but we’ll toss the carcass into the river. Get together another six or seven bucks, quick, and come back. I’ll be at Hadu’s shop.’
Bishu went. Aangur stood still. Where would she go begging for another seven rupees?
She began to make her way back, as if in the spate of fever, numb and only half conscious. She saw nothing, she couldn’t think.
Let a garbage collector come and take Nanda’s corpse away and dump it. What could she do? What on earth? The rage she felt for Nanda was violent. If she had him alive, she would have mauled him. He’s making it hell for me even in death, Aangur thought, he’s making it unbearable, and how! She wanted to cry.
She walked down the main street towards their strip of rooms. She kept an eye out for anyone she might run into, anyone she might appeal to for a few rupees.
There were people out and about, but nobody who would let her have some money at the drop of a hat. She thought that Nanda wouldn’t have a decent funeral, it wasn’t possible. The lying, cheating bastard hadn’t done enough good deeds to deserve a legitimate cremation. Atonement, she thought, the son of a Brahmin, flung into the dump by a lower-caste garbage man, the way dead cats and dogs were.
Her neck hurt. In her head, there was a throbbing, and her spine seemed to be coming apart. Ahead of her, the street was blurry, strange! She couldn’t manage it. A man had died and he wouldn’t be cremated. Nobody would help, nobody was accountable. Why should they be? Nanda wasn’t their father or son or husband or brother. Suddenly, she spied Manik Babu, hurrying down the street under an umbrella. Aangur didn’t know what came over her. She ran to him and blocked his way.
Manik Babu did not recognize her. ‘Who is it? What do you want?’ He stood an arm’s length away from her, obviously recoiling from the touch of a woman from their district.
Aangur had no concern for proprieties and launched into a rambling entreaty. ‘Babu, you had come to get our vote for the councillor, you said you’d look after us if we got into any trouble. Babu, there’s a man dead and rotting in my room and I don’t have enough to have him burned. Please do something. Let me have seven rupees, please.’
Manik Babu snarled. ‘Such whims,’ he said. ‘Money, eh! Why would the councillor give you money? Out! If you want a word with him, you’ll have to visit the office tomorrow, after ten.’
He went, leaving Angur stunned. Tomorrow at ten! The man had died this afternoon and she was supposed to wheedle for the funeral expenses the day after!
She was beginning to understand that this was something she had to do herself. Nobody would help, or take responsibility. These were the men who had gone knocking on doors at their red light district, asking for votes, treating them to paan and sweets. And today, they didn’t want to be bothered.
She was about to break into a fit of weeping.
But she didn’t. She saw the little shop ahead of her, selling paan and odds and ends. A man had the lower block; he sold puffed rice and chickpea flour. In the upper part, another man had a paan shop, decorated with mirrors and rows of bottles and vials of all kinds. Attar, chewing tobacco, kohl and—people said—certain drugs.
Standing a little apart, Aangur watched the shopkeeper, and abruptly her eyes began to blaze. Yes, she knew the man. Prabhulal. She also knew that Prabhulal went into a kind of feverish frenzy when he set his eyes on Aangur. His teeth and mouth and eyes and body throbbed and trembled when she was around. One of his eyes—the one that protruded like a fish egg, green and oily and limp—grew uglier. Teeth spilt out of his dark mouth. He salivated.
Prabhulal had always been this way. God knew why. Aangur didn’t get it, but she knew there were men who felt this way about certain women. That was why that handsome Mantu Babu set such a store by Jhumur, with her high forehead and overbite. Mantu Babu ended up taking Jhumur away from this neighbourhood.
Aangur knew she had lost her looks. What with her secret disease, it was inevitable, for it was a malady that settled down in a place that threatened her survival. Ambika, the doctor, had spoken plainly. ‘Be careful, Aangur. Best if you can quit this trade. Or, it will take you.’
That was the beginning of her decline, the reason why she had to bear with Aata, Chinu, and Chameli’s impudence. God’s dispensation. For a year she was as cautious as could be. It was only when she ran out of staples that she painted herself and took up her place at the end of the lane.
But, after all, the disease was visceral, and Aangur still possessed some glamour. A nicely proportioned face, curving breasts and waist, graceful movements—impossible to turn a blind eye to.
She started making her way towards Prabhulal’s shop. How she used to despise him, his black skin, his fleshy, heavy body, like an otter’s, and that grotesque face with its fish-egg eye, protruding. It made nausea rise inside her, and fear. She couldn’t look at him for longer than she had to. Prabhulal had tried to pick her up often enough, but Aangur had never shown interest. God, he was repulsive. She could never bring herself to sleep with him. She would rather have died.
But, today, she didn’t want to think of any of that. Instead, she felt trepidation. What if Prabhulal, too, refused her?
With a beating heart, she went and stood right in front of this shop. ‘Do you have kohl?’ she asked. She flashed him a small smile.
At first, Prabhulal was surprised. Then, as if a feather had tickled him, he let out a laugh, twisting and squirming, making throaty noises thickened by mucus and excitement.
He did not reach for the kohl. He bent towards her and said, ‘Here you are! Where have you been? The whole bloody place went dark.’
Aangur made herself laugh. In an abrupt fluid motion she let herself fall over his lap, but not quite, and then straightened herself. ‘I haven’t the time for jokes,’ she rallied. ‘If you don’t have it I’ll be on my way.’ She proffered her bosom upward, and then drew herself back, the way you tug a spinning top by its string, canted her neck and threw him a coy look.
‘I do,’ Prabhulal’s eyes shone. ‘Here to put kohl on your eyes, aren’t I?’
‘No need,’ she chuckled. ‘Ants will get your hands if you do.’ She laughed again, leaning on an elbow at Prabhulal’s seat. She cupped her cheek and held her face up. Prabhulal’s fish-egg eyes seemed to be melting. Aangur shut hers.
‘Let’s get it going, Aanguri,’ he slurred. ‘I’ve wanted to for so damn long.’ Prabhulal had grabbed her by his hot hand, above her elbow. She took a long, deep breath. Her bosom heaved. She bit her lip and winked, gave him a conspiratorial smile.
‘And how long will your nasty attar last?’ she wanted to know.
‘I’ll give you the real thing. As long as you like,’ he said.
She pretended to think. ‘Then give me ten rupees.’
‘Te-en?’ Prabhulal was taken aback. ‘That much!’
‘I need it. Give it to me.’ she insisted.
‘Advance?’
‘Yes,’ Aangur nodded. ‘If you can’t, then let me have seven or eight—’
Prabhulal made a mental calculation. ‘Very well,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’ll give you eight. But—’ The corner of his moustache rose in a shrewd smile, and he raised a few fingers to give her a count. Nearly the whole week!
She paid no attention. She held her palm out. ‘The money -‘
Prabhulal pinched her cheek. ‘Go on, you mad thing. Get yourself decked up like those Calcutta girls. I’ll shut the shop and come with the money.’
Aangur started. A cold swept through her body, her legs were like stone. She stared blankly at Prabhulal.
‘What is it?’ Prabhulal was gathering up his bottles and measuring scales. Aangur managed to find her voice. ‘Not in my room, somewhere else -‘ she said slowly.
Prabhulal had clearly never heard of such an arrangement. ‘What! Here I’m paying you and you ask me to find a room, too! Then, I can pick another woman-‘
She didn’t see Prabhulal, she only took in the lights, the mirrors, the bottles, and something vague and bleary, something like the yellow blur of fever, not knowing what was what, nearing unconsciousness.
Then she nodded. ‘Fine, come to my room. Quickly.’ She carried her body, new and different, on tottering feet down the dark, mud-spattered lane, like one intoxicated. There was a confused din in her heart and her head was stuffed. With what? Aangur couldn’t tell. Her eyes didn’t see, her feet and hands were deadened. She went through the motions like a wind-up doll.
She lit a lamp and some frankincense, also a few sticks of incense. She looked through her box, searching for the hemp saree, then she remembered she had sold it to Aata. She wrapped herself in a worn, dark red cotton, and the old satin bodice, did her hair up, and painted her feet with aalta. Put a coloured dot on her forehead. Lined her eyes with kohl.
Prabhulal came into the too-dark room. ‘No lantern?’ he asked. His clothes smelled of attar and he carried a parcel of paan. He had paan in his mouth too, and tobacco. His eyes were shining red, the fish-egg nearly molten. His red teeth were ready to close down on flesh, to suck and chew and swallow. His breath came in rasps.
Aangur’s body was senseless, floating on a river, unaware. She counted the minutes. How late was it? Would Bishu still be at the shop? Would she have to leave the corpse in her room all night? She hoped Nanda wouldn’t be cursed for dying on an unlucky Saturday.
She didn’t see herself, because the shadows were on her body. A feral dog was tearing her apart.
Her wretchedness raged, but she did not know who she was avenging, or why. She only suffered, she felt the pain impersonally.
Was it raining again? Let it not rain, Maa Kali, she prayed. Not until I’ve taken the corpse to the burning ghat, I beg you.
Prabhulal was satisfied. Aangur stretched out a palm. He held out eight rupees, much like a man might pay at a hotel after a sumptuous meal, stuffing more paan into his mouth and picking at his teeth with a silver toothpick. He smiled and smiled, and pinched her cheek one final time.
Aangur pooled her coins together and tied them into the free end of her saree. Then she got out and latched the door. In the other girls’ rooms, the lamps were lit, there was the sound of frolic, of laughter, clapping and songs sung out of tune. The smell of country liquor.
She clambered quickly down the steps and onto the verandah, then to the main street. She found Bishu in Hadu’s shop and brought him back with her, and three other boys. She pushed the door open and led them in.
‘Where is it?’ Bishu said. ‘Ah, some fancy incense, that is.’ He inhaled deeply, and Aangur lit the lamp again. Bishu peered around. ‘Where is the corpse?’
Aangur pointed to the place beneath the bedstead. Bishu bent and looked.
‘How in hell did he get in there?’ Aangur did not answer. Bishu waited a moment and then he called Pencho and Bire in.
‘Got bamboo poles? Now we’ll have to drag him out and tie the bugger up.’
It didn’t take long. Aangur followed the little team down the steps. ‘No Hari-bol?’ she said.
‘Once we’re out, good and proper into the street,’ Bishu said. ‘If we shout the lord’s name in here, the Romeos won’t like it.’
Bishu and Kelo picked up the front poles, Pencho and Bire took the back. Nanda’s body was wrapped in a mat, secured with rope and heaved up. Four shadows carried him, and Aangur brought up the rear. From Aata’s room, a wave of laughter poured out, and Aangur was sure someone was doing a striptease.
It was nearing midnight when they arrived at the burning ghat. Kelo went off to get wood, Pencho for the pints. There were shops around to take care of that need. Bishu lit a cigarette, and Bire sang a song from a film, drumming on a clay pot they would need later. Aangur sat a little distance apart.
You had to give them credit—Bishu’s team had everything ready in under an hour. They bathed Nanda with water from the river, piled the wood to build a pyre. Then it was time to touch his face with fire.
Bishu ignited a bundle of reeds and held it out to Aangur. ‘Here, Potli, touch his face with this.’
She was startled. Why would she have to carry this rite out? Was she a relative of Nanda’s? No. Nanda was nothing to her.
‘Why me?’ she remonstrated. ‘One of you do it.’
‘You won’t? Kelo, get it done then,’ Bishu said. But Kelo had moved away from the group, and already, he was nursing the first bottle of pint. Pencho said to her, ‘Well, you should be the one to do it. You knew him some. We’re total strangers.’
Did she know him a little? Had they been close? Indeed, she could not deny it. She was the only one in this little group who knew Nanda. She had shared rooms with him, and meals. She had slept with him, played at being married. She had worn the conch bangles married women wore and dabbed vermillion on her head.
The reeds burned, and watching that, Aangur became flustered. She reached for the bundle. She stood by the pyre and saw that in the blazing light Nanda’s face was desiccated and shrunken, a stale-boiled-egg, queer up close, as if he’d taken a final, fatal blow and gone to sleep.
‘Careful, Potli,’ Bishu yelled. ‘Watch your saree.’
Aangur caught at her flailing saree, pulling it away from the fire. She thought she saw something in the flames and stopped abruptly, under a bout of self-conscious awkwardness. There was a new sickness within her, a sense of being unclean. She had worn this saree in bed with Prabhulal. And on it was his—. No, she couldn’t go through with the rite of the fire in this. Whether Nanda went to heaven or hell was no business of hers, but he was leaving this world. Why taint that departure?
She put the flaming reeds down on the ground and strode away.
‘Where to?’ Bishu said in surprise.
‘Coming,’ said Aangur. ‘I’ll just take a quick dip in the river.’
She went down the steps and waited at the water’s edge, under a red sky. No stars in sight, but there was a wind. The water was black and humming with the current and the breaking of waves on the ghat. She was ankle-deep in the water, under the sky, and surrounded by the quiet, dousing herself with it all, clearing her head out, soothing herself, her mind.
And then, suddenly, a putrid scent filled her nostrils, possibly from the decomposing carcass of a cow or a goat that had floated downstream. Or maybe, a half-burnt human body.
A terrible stench. She looked around for the source and held her breath. When she inhaled again, the scent assaulted her afresh. She knew this scent. It hung about Bishu, and Aata, Bedana Mashi and Prabhulal. It was everywhere, suffusing everything.
And in a flash, she knew what it meant to go dipping in this river. Where had she come to cleanse her sins? A nerve ticked in her head, set her on fire. Impure, was she? What was the river supposed to wash away? Her clothing, her body, her soul? This same river had washed Bedana Mashi and Himu… What did it do for them?
She gave the water a violent kick. Then she ran, all the way to the pyre. She picked up the burning reeds and thrust them to Nanda’s face. The corpse caught fire, and then there was fire everywhere she looked. They had built a good pyre, choosing the driest wood.
She stood by herself. Bishu finished the first pint and opened another. The sky was still red. She hoped there wouldn’t be any rain. Nanda’s face was obliterated. Bire poked the fire with a stick. Aangur watched this strange cremation. The fire erupted, turning the pyre blood red. And she, watching, broke into a high, hysterical laugh she couldn’t rein in.
Bire was still stoking. He used a bamboo pole to break the corpse up, and the wood became brittle. Nanda’s bones snapped noisily. The sound crashed on Aangur’s ears and hurt her. She was restive, as if her ribs were being shattered, and pieces of her were being hollowed out and thrown into the fire. She couldn’t take it anymore. The pain in her chest began to twist and turn and set up an agitation that went through her body. There was a lump in her throat that swelled and swelled. She could no longer bear the sight of Nanda’s burning corpse.
‘You’re all the same,’ she thought, staring into the fire. ‘All of you—you, Himu, Bedana Mashi, the hospital, the doctors, Aata, Bishu, Manik Babu, Prabhulal—every one of you. And that’s your river, made from the mud and soil and water of this world. All in the same cast and living out the same patterns.’ She was full of sorrow, thinking of how she had been absorbed with her hatred and loathing of Nanda, of him alone.
She wept. Alone and sobbing, biting down on her lip. The lethal fire burning Nanda up was sweeping her into its depths. Grief! The fire illuminated the world and the way people lived in it, the love it contained, the making and breaking of homes and people’s hearts. She let out an abrupt and high wail, like a wounded animal, unsettling the others. She thrashed about. She cried out loud in her misery, she howled. She wanted to run into the flames and clasp Nanda’s nearly-burned, roasting feet to her bosom, to kiss them. She did take a few leaping steps before Bishu seized her around the waist. ‘Planning on dying, Potli?’ he said with amazement.
No, she wouldn’t die, not just yet. She lifted her eyes up at Bishu, and considered the sky, the pyre and the river. She knew this world, knew the sky and soil and people. She wouldn’t die. She wouldn’t weep.
Aangurlata, by Bimal Kar, translated from Bangla by Malini Bhattacharya
Translator’s note: The person who introduced me to the work of Bimal Kar was my mother. I was in my early teens, read voraciously, and was desperate for stories about ordinary people (as opposed to larger-than-life Darcys and Scarlett O’Haras), so I tried my luck with the book my mother was reading then – Kar’s novel Asamay (Untimely), and I knew I had struck gold.
I took myself through most of Kar’s oeuvre, and I liked his short fiction even better than his masterful novels. I aspired to his impeccable linguistic economy and his conversational prose, adroitly maneuvered to tell complex stories. And of all his stories, it was “Aangurlata”, detailing the struggles of a retired prostitute as she hustles to raise money for an old lover’s funeral, that moved me most. It is “Aangurlata” where Kar’s brutal observatory powers and his ear for the Bangla of the streets truly come alive.
Translating “Aangurlata” was my tribute to Bimal Kar; also an effort to rejuvenate discussions on his work. I am convinced that drawing attention to a “fallen woman” protagonist’s reality can make some small amends for the marginalization of her counterparts in the real world.
The task was ambitious and challenging, given that it is written in a Bangla no longer spoken in the metropolis. I met serious obstacles when it came to translating dialogue, but breaking through brought the catharsis I had known was waiting in the end.