Register My Name as Kulbhushan Please by Alka Saraogi: An excerpt

Prelude

Kulbhushan ka naam darj kijiye, is the story of Kulbhushan Jain, a man from a migrant family who came to India overnight from Bangladesh before independence. The story spans about four decades, covers three linguistic public cultures, two countries and one line of control that is the metaphor for the chasm between countries, hearts and relationships. A love affair culminating into marriage, extramarital relationships, family drama, myths and discrimination make for a heady mix. 

Alka Saraogi

(Translated from Hindi by Nandini Bhattacharya)

H

e was stopped in his tracks by the sight of a poster. A poster advertising a play called ‘Atmakatha’ or autobiography had been pasted on a wall on Lower Circular Road. It claimed to be “An Epic of the twentieth century’s last decade”. He didn’t quite get what it meant. He saw a bearded and seemingly educated man in a light blue shirt, gazing at the same poster. For a moment, he was tempted to ask the person the meaning of those lines, but soon abandoned the impulse.

He knew that there was an office of an old drama company nearby. He knew of it in the very same way that he knew of every roadside shop, building, office, mandir-masjid-church as well as the innumerable footpath shops dotting the city of Kolkata. He could promptly draw something like a comprehensive, authentic business map of Kolkata. He could even give names and addresses of small-time artisans and ‘Italian’ barbers – who sat upon a pile of ‘int’ or bricks on the roadside, as well as those of locksmiths who made duplicate keys to unlock padlocks whose keys were irretrievably lost.

As a caretaker in his brother’s bungalow, this knowledge came handy. But his nephews often chided him: “Bhushan Chacha! What discussions were you having with that ‘Madari’ who goes about with his trained monkeys to earn a living? Stuck in a traffic jam, I saw you hanging out with the fellow all the while!” He merely smiled in reply. He knew that they were going to have a hearty laugh behind his back. Someone would say “Probably Chacha was inquiring about a new business plan!” Then, visualising him moving around with a posse of monkeys, a small drum in hand, they would laugh till there were tears streaming down their eyes. He never minded people having fun at his expense. Often he joined them with a grin and shared their mirth. 

The vendor selling vegetables on a cart in the alley leading to his brother’s house often joked with him, seeing him alighting from a bus with a worn cloth bag full of vegetables in hand. “Chacha, what are you having for special lunch today?” He would reply without being ruffled, “A curry of green grams is on our menu. How much are you selling them for?” The vendor would cunningly quote half of the actual price, knowing well that chacha was never going to buy from him. Chacha would smile and move on saying, “I bought it at a cheaper rate than you!” 

His smile acted like a magic wand upon his face. This too he knew. Like he knew every nook and corner of this city. From his very childhood, his reflection in the mirror had saddened him. He was dark, unlike his brothers and sisters, with depressions and protuberances in the unlikeliest of places on his face. Who knows why the man above had played such a joke with his features. He had been an angry child, taking out all his frustrations on his mother. He had hated his father, given that he had inherited his ugly looks from him. Thankfully when he became an adolescent, he noticed that his cheeks fluffed up as he smiled and he looked much better. At least he didn’t look that ugly.

Those were the days when he became friends with the washerman’s son, Shyama, in Kushtia in East Pakistan. Shyama was ugliness personified with a complexion as dark as a cast-iron pan and a face pitted with smallpox marks. Only from the whites of his eyes could one discern that his beady eyes existed. And yet Shyama moved about radiating joy as if he was in possession of some treasure. 

His father Gobindo Dhobi had introduced his son to Kulbhushan’s mother, “Mataji, God has given me only one child. Have to teach him to earn a living”. She had baulked inwardly at his ugliness, but she said: “How joyful you are! Pray you remain like this throughout your life, Shyama!”

 

It was Shyama Dhobi who taught Kulbhushan about the button of forgetting. –“Don’t you know, Kulbhushan? God has put a button in our body. Just press it and you will forget how people make fun of you. Your entire soul will radiate waves of joy. You won’t remain glum even if you want to. An ascetic had come to our dhobi tank one day. I was thirteen then. He asked me, ‘Do you know why the Goddess of smallpox left you alive?’ Surely I knew I had come back from the very jaws of death in infancy. He then told me, ‘I will give you the secret button of forgetting. Whenever sadness clouds your mind, try the miracle of the button. People will be confounded to see the son of Gobindo Dhobi so joyous while even the rich, handsome businessmen and bankers move about moping all the time.’

Chacha alias Kulbhushan Jain had been drawan to the poster of the play ‘Atmakatha’, because the protagonist of the play was also some Kulbhushan. Bhushan Chacha had successfully edited out the ‘kul’ from his name Kulbhushan meaning ‘the pride of the family’. Why should he be given the responsibility of making his family proud, being the fourth son of his parents, that too with his dark complexion and the huge nose consuming his face making his eyes almost disappear. 

Let ‘kul’, the family, go to the dogs, he had decided, when he fell in love with a Bengali girl! He knew only too well that his strict vegetarian Jain family would never allow a chicken-fish eating Bengali girl into their house. He had met Rima Sarkar outside a tailoring school on B.K. Pal Avenue. Rima was his exact reflection, with pitch dark complexion and odd features. But she too had that lovely smile, transforming her features like a magic wand. At that time, Kulbhushan was learning saree printing techniques in a factory. That factory was situated just behind the tailoring school with a common entrance. Coincidentally, both of them had entered that building together on three days at a stretch. They had finally smiled at each other and it was love at that first smile. 

Love transformed Bhushan’s world. He felt like screaming his head off to his family who always gossiped around that no girl would ever marry him for his looks, “I have found the girl! You may have your opinions about her, but she is my ‘Heer’ and I am her ‘Ranjha’. If I stop speaking to her, she cries like the film heroines Nargis and Meena Kumari. Our love is true, not coloured by the colour of the skin. We will grow old and wrinkled, but our love will be the same.” In any case, he thought with condescension, love never happens to people like his brothers in India. It is always a business deal between families based on colour, wealth or status or matching horoscopes. 

Looking at the poster, he wondered about his namesake. What kind of a life would this other Kulbhushan have lived, which he would narrate in this play. Did he have as many ups and downs? There was gnawing curiosity among his brothers’ family about Chacha’s life and he was well aware of it. Finally, one of his brother’s daughter, just married, asked him one day; “Chacha, did you really work as a bus conductor at some point?” Chacha knew that the girl must have hesitated a hundred times before asking such a question. None till date had asked him this thing to his face. Chacha of course, knew of the family gossip behind his back; “Have you ever heard of a boy from a Jain family of Rajasthan being a bus conductor? Unbelievable!”

Chacha didn’t reply to his niece’s query. Surely she had not heard of this incident from her father. He was the one who made him take an oath that Bhushan will declare it to be a rumour if ever asked. When his cousin’s son Suresh had boarded the bus and asked for a ticket, Chacha had been horrified. What is this rascal doing on bus number 32, which runs from Chowringhee in Calcutta to the suburb of Dakshineswar- an unlikely route for most of the family? He looked at Suresh with pleading eyes and didn’t even charge him for the ticket. The rascal surely could make out that Chacha wanted him to keep the secret to himself of seeing him working as a bus conductor. But on a sleepless night, Chacha had rightly imagined that the nephew had informed his parents right away and had dialled at least four others to spread the news. 

If he decides to write his autobiography like this actor Kulbhushan, shall he write about his experience of being a bus conductor or not? Probably better that it remains a mystery to his family. If he doesn’t mention it in his story, people would surely believe that Suresh had been lying as usual. But from where will his autobiography begin? From him being homeless? Or from being without a country—from being exiled from Kushtia in today’s Bangladesh, the erstwhile East Pakistan, which was East Bengal before that? Or would he start from the village in faraway Rajasthan, from where his grandfather had migrated to settle in East Bengal and established a flourishing wholesale business in oils and spices? 

Life in East Bengal had run on such familiar patterns, as if nothing was ever going to change. One and all addressed him with respect, adding ‘babu’ to his name. His grandfather always praised his business acumen, claiming that it was his legacy to Kulbhushan. This boy would mine gold from any place. Just put one drop of that chemical to the tins of mustard oil, and the vendors shall willingly pay a higher price. Adding ‘whitol’ to coconut oil will increase its volume and profit, something his elder brothers never bothered to learn. Cut down on losses at each point, was the mantra. Do everything with great diligence and care. Even today his brother’s family knows well that nobody can beat Bhushan Chacha in perfection in each and every chore he does. 

His brother’s daughter-in-law would say, “Chacha Ji, I have to attend a marriage. Could you please iron my heavy saree? No one could do it as well as you!” Chacha blooms at the praise and says,”It will take time, you know. I am slow, but surely I’ll do it. Why wouldn’t I ? Why would I not do it?”, he repeats. It seems as if he tells once to himself and then the same to the other. “Oh no, Chacha ji, I would have got it done from the servant, why would I bother you, but you know, last time he burnt a hole in my new sari!” Chacha wants to assure the daughter-in-law that he has no objections in doing such a menial job, but he knows that his brothers’ family must prove that it is only out of compulsion that they are asking him. This charade goes on. Both the parties stick to their guns, though there is no need as such to prove anything.

 

Life has always played such a game with Bhushan that all his secrets become public knowledge sooner or later. Someone by the name of Gopal Chandra Das lives in the narrow Telipada lane of North Calcutta in a rented house, known to his family as none other than Kulbhushan Jain. How did this fact travel ten kilometres away to South Calcutta to his brothers’ bungalow at Ballygunj? 

Bhushan had been quite sick those days. Typhoid, malaria and flu, one following the other, had tied him down to the house for more than three weeks. His phone was not working. Those were not the days of the mobile. Kulbhushan wanted his college going son Prashant to go to his uncle’s house and seek some financial help but looking at Prashant’s face he baulked from asking him. 

It was his brother’s wife, ‘Bhabhi’, who always had sympathy for Kulbhushan. One morning, Bhabhi got up from bed and narrating the dream that she had about Kulbhushan, started crying. She wailed, nobody in the family gave the poor chap any respect though he was born from the same womb like the other brothers. How could her dead mother-in-law’s soul be at peace even now? The poor lady had mourned her youngest son’s plight all through her life and probably died due to that sorrow in her heart. Kulbhushan had to live like a vagabond, called a thief by some, characterless by others. 

When Bhabhi refused to touch her breakfast, her husband called the old cook Ramu and ordered him to go to Telipada lane in North Kolkata to find out why Kulbhushan had been absent for so many days. Ramu went to the given address and enquired from the group of jobless youth arguing over political matters as well as from the old retired bunch sunning themselves outside their homes. Nobody could tell him where Kulbhushan Babu lived. Getting tired, he sat near a washerman pressing clothes on a makeshift table on the footpath. Suddenly he spotted an expensive blue checkered shirt. He was sure it belonged to his employer’s youngest son Vinayak. He asked, “Dhobi, do you know whose shirt this is?” The Dhobi said proudly, “lt’s mine.” Undeterred, Ramu said,”Such a nice one. Wonder who gave it to you?” The Dhobi smiled and pointing to a house, said, ”So it is. You know Gopal Chandra Das? Lives there on the first floor. His son sold it to me for eighty bucks. Poor fellow had to sell. Gopal Babu has been quite sick. His employer had given him this costly shirt.” This is how Ramu reached the rooms of Gopal Chandra Das alias Kulbhushan Jain, who was immensely moved by Bhabhi’s dream about him and to receive the fruits and money sent by her. 

When Bhushan came back to his brother’s house, Bhabhi took him to the family temple room and blessed him for good health. Bhushan, swallowing the tears of gratitude, asked her about the pain in her left frozen shoulder. The poor woman cannot raise her hand a bit due to terrible pain. Has tried many doctors and physiotherapists, but to no avail.

At one time when Bhabhi was groaning in pain, Bhushan had started pressing her hand and shoulder involuntarily. Bhabhi got much relief and cried out to God to bless him. Bhushan saw that his brother was looking at him with much appreciation in his eyes. Since then, he has been the solution to all their aches and pains. He presses his brother’s aching legs, gives hot compress to his perpetually aching waist. To soothe Bhabhi’s pain, he puts the counter pain gel and gives steaming hot compress to her left shoulder making her fair skin turn tomato red. He, of course, had to press the button of forgetting, not to have sacrilegious thought like this. 

Bhabhi started telling him that her frozen shoulder was much better, certainly due to Bhushan babu’s ministrations. Just then, his brother appeared and said, “Bhushan, bring your ration card tomorrow. I want to see it”, and went back to his room. 

Bhushan felt the blood drain out of his body. So Ramu has disclosed everything! His ration card is in the name of Gopal Chandra Das. Somehow he had believed that Ramu would not divulge his secret, taking pity on his condition. How wrong he was! Your rich relatives are never your own as the barrier of money keeps them away; even the poor are not your fraternity because their loyalty lies with the rich bosses. 

Bhushan somehow swallowed his breakfast and shuffling his feet, went to the brother’s room, “Shall I bring you hot compress, Bhai?”, he asked. He saw his brother’s face softening a bit. “Bhushan, why did you do this? You changed your name- caste-parents- religion- everything? You married a Bengali woman, alright, but you should have given her your name! You became a Bengali instead? We lived and ate their grains and greens and talked like Bengalis in Kushtia, but did we change our names?”

Bhushan was numb for a moment. What to say? Then suddenly he found himself saying, ”Bhai, just like we were thrown out of Kushtia because we were not Muslim, I would have been thrown out of my house for not being a Bengali. They asked for a huge donation to organise the local Durga Puja, “Jain Babu! You can certainly afford it. You can’t stay here without the donation!” Bhushan saw his brother nodding understandingly. His brother had to shut down his factory thirty years back on such a threat by naxalites. “Just imagine Bhai, if I had become homeless again, would you have liked that? Hence I replied in the pure East Bangla accent, ‘What are you saying? Who is Jain Babu? Neither me, Gopal Chandra Das nor my ancestors have even seen so much money. This is what I spend in a whole year! Goddess Durga! Be merciful!!”

His brother could not control his laughter at Bhushan’s perfect mimicry of their old neighbour in Kushtia, Gopal Chandra Das. “Bhushan, you could have made a career of a villain in films. You remember the role you had played of the demon Ravan’s son, Meghnad at the play we had staged. People had given you a standing ovation!” For a few moments both the brothers became the brothers of yore. Their faces lighted up with the innocence and joyful memories of childhood. 

Bhushan heaved a sigh of relief inwardly. Just then his brother said,”Bhushan, Ramu told me about how he located you. I must ask you. How did the blue checkered shirt which your son sold to the dhobi reach your house? It was brand new and Vinayak had been looking for it everywhere. It’s not that we give you only secondhand clothes. We give new clothes for your whole family on Diwali. Do you think we can still trust you?”

Bhushan’s heart stopped beating. He had wanted to give a new shirt to his son on his birthday. But medical expenses had drained his purse. One day he saw the checkered shirt in a hanger meant to be ironed. The shirt stole his heart and he wanted to see his son in that shirt. What to say to Bhai now? Can he say, my heart beats for my son’s happiness just like yours beats for your son? 

Bhushan thought of the days in his past, spent in looking for a job in one and half slippers, the half of one rotting away. He said,”But Bhai, Vinayak himself had given me that shirt for my son Prashant’s birthday. How could you even think that I would steal anything from your house? My house is bursting at the seams with all the stuff you and Bhabhi give me.”

His brother looked puzzled. He said, “As far as I know, Vinayak had been looking for that shirt for many days. Call Vinayak now. Let’s ask him.” Bhushan’s heart stopped beating again. He had hoped that the matter would be closed. “Vinayak, tell me that blue chequered shirt which you wore on your birthday, did you give it to  Chacha yourself?”

“Which blue shirt?” Vinayak asked and looked long into Chacha’s eyes. “The one you had worn on your birthday and later were hunting for high and low!”, his father asked impatiently. “Oh, that shirt? Actually, I had forgotten that I had given it to Chacha for his son Prashant. Later I remembered, but forgot to tell you. Chacha, how’s your health now?” 

Chacha nodded in relief. The son has taken totally after his mother. May God save your dignity, the way you have saved mine, he blessed him inwardly. His brother was fuming, “Don’t know what has happened to these boys of today! They keep on forgetting everything. First he forgot that he had given you the shirt and then he forgot to tell me that the shirt was not lost. Well done! By the time you reach my age, you will forget your father‘s name too!”

“Bhushan, how many more years we have on this earth! I’m sure that you are not the same person that you used to be. I always thought that people accused you wrongly of stealing our mother’s gold chain.”

Bhushan felt hot tears welling up. He got up with a jerk and came out of the brother’s room. But he stopped in his tracks when he heard Bhabhi telling Vinayak, “I also used to steal cashew nuts as a child. Later on too, I stole a few things. My mother-in-law never gave her keys to me. You tell me, have you never taken out money from my cupboard when you were a child?”

Vinayak laughed, “Mom, you were so careless with your money. I never had to open your cupboard. But mom, I want to tell you something, that I’ve never told anyone else till today.” Then he whispered, ”When I went to Singapore the first time, I picked up an expensive watch from a shop. I was caught red handed and I had to pay for it.”

“Oh! One of my cousins steals things from every home that she goes to. We all know about it. Human beings are all the same. If they cannot afford to buy anything but that does not mean that they cannot afford to have desires. Even very rich people steal something or the other, when they can.” 

Bhushan listened to the conversation between mother and son. Everyday in the newspapers, he reads of big scams and thefts. Important people like ministers and businessmen keep going to jail or being released from jail. Does that mean that every person is a thief? Between birth and death, is there anybody who has not stolen anything? 

No, Bhushan does not think of himself as a thief. If he ever writes his autobiography, he will never write that he had stolen anything. If he had stolen a golden chain belonging to his mother or something else, it was only to feed his family or to make his love, Rima Sarkar happy. In any case, what parents think of as their property is not actually so. It belongs to their children. Could my mother haved taken that golden chain to the heavens with her? Somebody would have inherited it. If ever Bhushan has picked up something, it was only out of stark necessity or because it had stolen his heart. Actually, it’s only people in high places who can be called thieves, because they never steal out of dire necessity and they are able to get what their heart desires. 

****** 

Note
The above is an excerpt from the Hindi novel ‘Kulbhushan ka naam darj kijiye’ by Alka Saraogi. (Vani prakashan,2020)

Alka Saraogi is a fiction writer, part of the Marwari-Rajasthani diaspora of Calcutta settled in the city before First World War, writing in Hindi in a predominantly Bengali milieu. Her first novel ‘Kalikatha via Bypass’ won the Sahitya Akedemi award in 2001
Her repertory includes seven novels and two collections of short stories. She has been translated into many European languages like German, Italian and Spanish and regional ones in India

Nandini Bhattacharya teaches at the Dept of English. University of Burdwan, West Bengal.