Visions of a Journey: “Bengal in My Blood”

Photograph of painting by Purnendu Mandal

A.J.Thomas

The great river, with its muddied stream the colour of mixed decanted tea
Loomed up like a ghost through a rent in the clouds
As the plane prepared to land. Bengal throbs in my heart…
The thread-like rain falling without stop 
Is the connection between the heavens and the earth.
Down on the ground, misery, want and uncouth inefficiency
Quicken my Delhi-wrath; I fail, groping for the words of a language
I lost decades ago, lisp and try haggling with the taxi man, to no avail,
But it’s unbelievably cheap as it turns out!
What turns me off is the sight of man-pulled rickshaws in the veins that lead out
From the heart of Kolkata; three decades and more of humane governance!
Intransigence, complacence, egotism, arrogance, mediocrity, apathy, sloth
Set against the brazen inhumanity of the new ‘ivory towers’ of the MNCs
Choke me….
The food is leaden on my palate; the fear of cholera
Forbids my thirst….
Dakshinesvar beckons me…
Kali Ma blesses me…
The great temples of art and learning,
The icons of the nation
Reassure me…
This is our Bengal…our Kolkata
Take heart….

***

Four Decades ago….

What shall I say of one teat
I let go
And the other I groped to suck,
I, a kid in the world of experiences?

The last hope of survival
In my native soil lost
The long walk of eight kilometres in the wee hours
To catch Baby Express to Kochi, thence
A train to the end of the world.
My father by my side—the father didn’t know 
What his brightest son could do
After his washout failure in the exams.

I boarded the Howrah Mail
With like-company of other bewildered lads
The coal-steam engine wheezing past rows of palmyrae
Reaching Madras Central, the vast
Hall with endless platforms, deafening din of people
And carts, and the pungent smell of bleaching powder
Unsuccessful in driving out the stench of shit and piss
From the open tracks, the tawny, smouldering heaps
Of putrid nightsoil and puddles and mangy dogs and pigs—
A void in the stomach, a sob in the throat….
‘What’d have become of my mother, sister and brothers?’

A sweltering day in the third class coach
Andhra running back on both sides
The mud-cup of hot tea peeling the skin of the lip
The water-melon’s sensuous red cooling the mouth
And stunning the sun’s demanding stare.
The coal engine spewing thick, choking smoke,
The cinders flying into the eyes….

Past the rocky haunts of Srikakulam, in the news lately 
For Kondappally and his comrades…
Past Chilika and waves after waves of storks
Against the heaven’s bounty of countless shades of gold….
Hopes of offering my life in the service of the Lord…
Sometime in the night, long, unrelenting nightmares
About my mother and siblings dying of hunger….

On the platform at Howrah at last, 
A repeat of the sights, sounds and smells of Madras Central–
The platform was dancing
As I stepped on to it after a continuous train ride 
Of three days and three nights…

The electric train took us to Bandel;
The cycle rickshaw ride beneath the underpass
Odour of smoke from the coal-ovens and cow-dung-cake chulas. 
Reaching the House, smells of freshly baked bread
And channa, soups and dessert, plantain and guava….
The yellow neem fruits on the mud-road 
Crushed under the boots of the boys
The yellow-and-black gadflies sucking the juice—the clay-mud
Crusted around; from the pores in the mud, crawling 
Millipedes and such—the Hooghly close by.

The burnt-coffee-smell of smoke from the paper and jute mills
From across the river, smart the nostrils
A lone boatman’s wailing song soothes the homesick
In the third floor dormitory with a free view of the Hooghly.
At dawn is heard the singing practice of some maestro 
From neck-deep water in the river…

The only time thoughts of home caught me by the throat
Was in the refectory, when we sat down to meals
To the accompaniment of readings from
The Bible, lives of saints and spiritual books
For edification–and for improving the pronunciation
Of some of them lucky blokes selected now and then
From among the later batch of grown-ups, the boors,
Who came in with the knowledge of the ‘world–’
To renounce the world in saintly solitude
Suppressing bodily urges…. Listening to tales of 
the Devil trying to check-mate John Vianney and Don Bosco,
Dominic Savio shunning the adolescents’ invitation to sin,
Maria Goretti’s brave martyrdom, resisting sin; and listening also 
To readings from Elected Silence: A spiritual Autobiography of Thomas Merton
And his other books The Seven Storey Mountain and The Man on the Sycamore Tree.
The hypersensitive aspirants hastened to chastise themselves
While the practical, worldly ones yawned sleep away.

Days and nights, nights and days, of discipline and vigilance
Spiritual practices, yearning for self-torture and imitation of Christ
Mind as pure as the autumn sky, clouded suddenly with obsessive doubts
The body’s language, grammar–all unintelligible…
The great preceptor Don Bosco’s strict regimen 
To escape sins of the flesh
‘Rule of Touch’ and ‘Rule of Pairs’
In the all-boys’ House….

Old man Thimpu carrying the boys in his cycle-rickshaw 
To the doctor who certified them fit, checking even their genitals;
The Prefect of Studies checking the books they carried in from ‘the world’
And granting his Imprimatur.

Naxals snatching rifles of the placid policemen,
(who later began fastening them to their belts with dog-chains)
Decapitated bodies floating in ponds;
Night vigils by senior boys by turn, to protect the priests;
Genocide in East Pakistan;
Indian Army and Mukti Bahini snatching the country
From Pakistanis and creating Sonar Bangla;
Millions of refugees flooding Calcutta (it was that then).
The history-minded amongst the boys including me, writing pages of immortal’
Accounts of what they thought would reveal to the world
The magnitude of the genocide, the train-loads of dead Indian soldiers
Cleared daily from the grounds 
Where they fought and died along with the Mukti Bahini;
And the Sabre Jets felled by Indian Ack-Ack Guns at Mogra,
The undulating wail of the siren
Sending the boys packed to the air-raid shelter in the cellar
 With cotton wool stuffed in their ears;
 The misery in the refugee camps at Krishnagar….
All forgotten in the euphoria of victory,
The future dictator and the Emergency, a step away.

Bullies and chauvinists striking terror, to be suffered mutely. 
Strange affections and affinities
Of the hapless Santhals and other meek confreres
Who never were on par with the snobbish 
Middle-class priesthood-aspirants.

A couple of months’ residence in Darjeeling;
The first sightings of rhododendrons, 
And an exam done, straight from the quilts;
Chilly water from the taps inhibiting ablutions…
Deep brown hard-baked bread laden with crimson marmalade
With thick knife-swabs of butter for evening tea;
Walks along the winding road; tea-pinching Sherpa women
Of indefinite age smiling with toothless gums, their gigantic
Baskets slung from the head; orchids and sub-Himalayan 
Tiny-leaved shrubs and flowers;
An early-morning trek of several miles to Tiger Hill,
To miss out the glory of Kanchenjunga at dawn, enveloped in the clouds and fog…
 
Failing to hear God’s call in turmoiled emotions,
Leaving the House for good…
Old man Thimpu’s cycle rickshaw once again
To the ancient Bandel Station
Fond impressions of the eternal river
And the vast sky reflecting on it, a silvery sheet….

Life’s many scenes played out; the script and theme
Changing over and over again with time….. 

***

Four decades later, a visit in driving rain and sleet…
To this haven green in memory and 
Oft visited in dreams and reveries over the years as the heart 
Quickened in nostalgic anticipation…

The House no more, only the buildings remain
The ancient venerable Bandel Church face-lifted into
A gaudy, garish ‘basilica’….the maidan shrunken, decrepit…
A priest, years junior to me in the House
Fearful, hesitant to offer bonhomie. The river’s invite
Still irresistible. The path that led to the riverbank
Slushy, the sticky mud hugging the shoes
The tiny fishing village, with cute, black boats
Tucked away in the inlet-stream. The greenery
Of banana tees. colocasias, mango-trees and drumstick trees
The misery of the shacks and hovels, all unchanged
In spite of the few new terraced buildings.
The road to the station is the same; same the lump
In the throat that rose as I left on a cycle-rickshaw 
For the station last, four decades ago.  

The heart of Bengal
Still draws me close; the squalor and hopelessness
Of the villages and towns and the metropolitan streets
Of Kolkata save for me a familiar wag of humanity’s tail.
I, like Yudhisthira, look towards it…
the end of trials and tribulations.

April, 2008.

******

Notes
--The main visual is a photograph of painting: Rickshaw puller in Kolkata by Purnendu Mandal Courtesy Artzolo.com. https://www.artzolo.com/painting/rickshaw-puller-kolkata-ii?

A.J. Thomas is an English-language poet, fiction writer, translator and editor. He translates poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction prose from Malayalam to English, and has more than 20 titles to his credit. Hee has M.Phil, and Ph.D. degrees in English Literature (Translation Studies) from the School of Letters, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam..
As a poet and translator his works include Germination (Poetry, 1989), Aagaami Pal Ka Nirman (his poetry in Hindi translation-2010),  Bhaskara Pattelar and Other Stories, (Manas, 1993), Reflections of a Hen in Her Last Hour and Other Stories (Penguin India), both Paul Zacharia's story-cllections in translation, Keshavan’s Lamentations (Keshavante Vilaapangal, renowned novelist M.Mukundan’s premier work),  ONV Kurup’s verse-novel Ujjayini, (Rupa) among others.
He has been on the editorial team of Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi’s literary journal, for more than 20 years as its Assistant Editor, Editor and now as its Guest Editor.
He lives in New Delhi