by Piya Chakrabarti

We, husband and wife, are moving to our new home. The trying years of my intimacy with a parochial household, a monarchical reign of obsolete ethics, a quagmire of unsinkable agitations and confrontations, are drawing to an end. Delightful it is, to anticipate the rest of my life with my beloved mistress, in the solitude of nonchalant, fresher habitat, and to ruminate on the delectable pleasures of conjugal existence. Yes, I may take the liberty of calling the woman I married two years ago, my mistress, with pride now. The answer to the question “how?” forms the rest of the narration.

Our marriage took place under the sacred laws of our religion, approved and sanctified by our parents. It was arranged and devoid of the excitements of romantic courtships, following the customs prevalent in my society, and it had the effect of fusing our futures concretely into an irrevocable bond. Surama had a pretty, rotund face, with large ebony eyes which remained always averted from me in shy resignation, thin, pale lips which smiled placidly at my sight, and a wheatish complexion. Her constitution was average, her hands being disproportionately slender, and her unobtrusive, composed and dispassionate nature (gathered from later recollections) was the picture of serenity, which rendered her voice its tranquil effect. She was a graduate in our regional language from a college of repute.

My household consisted of my widowed mother, my paternal grandparents and a widowed aunt (first cousin of my late father, aged fifty or thereabouts). My grandfather was a lamentable invalid, reduced to his wheelchairs, who ordered everyone around himself to nurse him, hear his endless, fretful prattle and recitals of his agonies with an attentive ear, and perform his daily chores for him. Sometimes, he would be seen reading out of an old, chafed book and for the time being I felt I had been relieved enough to concentrate on my official papers. A harmless poor, old soul- I pity him! Next, my grandmother – the most hypocritically pious, religious and superstitious individual, one can perceive through one’s mind’s eye. Her mornings started by a holy bath in our pond (owned by the family mansion and solely reserved for her holy contact!). The remaining hours of the day were devoted to her worships of scores of gods and goddesses, performed at various timings. There was the morning worship, the noon worship, the afternoon worship (meanwhile the Lords who govern the Laws of Nature were allowed to repose), the evening and the night worships. The intermittent time was spent chanting hymns from the holy books and preparing garlands. If there was any time left, it was spent moving around the neighbourhood advising discordant couples and sharing anecdotes on conjugal harmony, drawn from her chest of experience and wisdom of life. So far as now she satisfies the epithet of an angel or a do-gooder? In reality, she was an exact and furtive woman, if not wicked, when it came to handling of family inheritance issues. Her mind, which she had the impunity to call “sacrificed to God”, was crammed with the apprehensions of impending legal bills, repairing expenditures of our mansion and inheritance taxes. She was fond of all the old school  of cosmetics, with a promise of age-reduction, that would make her all the more attractive to the quarters, where she did more harm than good by her unrestrained gossip from one ear to the other and flighty advice. The memory of her outline, clad in off-white sari, and her heavily powdered, creased face and closed eyes, rendered solemn and still by the hands, joined together in deep reverence for the Divine statuette, fades away slowly, as I prepare to take my first step into my newly furnished home.

During the initial years of my marriage, I, still in my late-twenties, returned home late, nearly everyday, in a state of heaving exhaustion. One such day, fatigued by the incessant toil, demanded of me during my working hours, I took to my dinner as soon as I had crossed my threshold. Partly attributable to my mental agility and partly to the circumstances, I noticed an extraordinary quietness prevailing in my dining room. Everyone chewed their food in silence, with their faces lowered on their plates. My mother, a kind woman of few words, had taken her customary seat to my right, while the one to my left was occupied by Surama, who spoke even less. My grandparents and aunt, who were always in a conversational flurry during dinner, were subdued and unpleasantly silent as well. There was something common in all of them- they avoided looking at Surama at all costs. It suddenly occurred to me that the uneasy quietude had prevailed on us for quite some time by then, without my realisation of it. When I retired to my room for the night, and made my enquiries to the effect, Surama broke down. She cried pitiably like a child, complaining that she felt suffocated in my household. She could not explain anything substantially and there was nothing logical in her moans altogether. She only said, “I feel sorry, dear, but no one understands me here.” The night passed away uneasily. After that two months sped past, in the duration of which she never complained to me again. Anxious and annoyed, as my work-pressure left me, I never insisted to learn what ailed her. She greeted me at the door, with the same expectant, shy smile everyday, which was delightfully soothing for my aching nerves. The rest of the time, she worked like a machine, hovering unobtrusively around the house and performing routine tasks. She had learnt to cook fairly well, and sometimes helped mother in her sewing work. She was spiritual (yet not religious) and a disciple of the theories of Pantheism and Omnipotence, which so very appeals to modern, liberated women. She preferred a reserved way of life, limited to her room.

A few more months had elapsed. Her conduct towards me remained the same—that of a dutiful wife. She served my breakfast with a deft hand, packed my lunch wisely, spoke customary respectful words at dinner, and yet, the attraction which binds husband and wife together into a passionate oneness was missing as ever. The fire of an all-encompassing love, ignited by a soft touch of the hand, a sublime caress of the lips, a gentle whisper of the mouth, defeating all my hopes, never engendered among us. She remained fiercely independent, defying all the delicacies and vulnerabilities of a woman. She had only taken me for granted as one in the class of “people who did not understand her”.

My aunt was a small and corpulent old lady, often seen in nifty off-white gowns, with a singular obsession with discipline and tidiness. She worked around the clock, cleaning, mopping, ironing, washing etc. and was the earliest to rise in the morning. She had my grandmother as a benefactor, and supporter to all her activities, which facilitated religious propensities. Her only son worked in a financial firm abroad.

And yet another few months—we were expecting a baby boy! (A boy! that was Surama’s curious whim ; ) She jostled around the house, searching for nutritious food and meticulously performed her exercise regimen. Occasionally I took a brief holiday to look after her, but soon became perturbed at her unintended defiance of my aunt at every juncture. She often sat cosily, crossing her legs on the bed, with her face drowned in the pages of a pamphlet. She catered herself kindly to poor children of charitable trusts, and often purchased expensive paintings by famous artists, despite my aunt’s remonstrance. She had a fetish for collecting conch shells and oysters. Whenever she was idle, she painted with water-colours. Her paintings were of the mediocre kind. She evidently had a creative disposition, but not the genius to earn a living or adulation by exhibiting it. She could have been an artist unless her unconstructive ways and my strict family would not have hindered it.

A day which particularly appeals to my memory is one, when a man from the boutique arrived with an array of roses, which we had ordered for our anniversary. The debonair, handsome and quick-witted man put them down on our dinner-table. While I proceeded to make his payment, I perceived Surama eyeing him intently and then diverting her eye elsewhere, in a sudden apprehension of discovery. The man (the impudent ass!) had perceived it too and persisted in his obstinacy to ogle at her, with his malicious grin brightening his face, all the more. He went so far as to advise her where the roses should be placed, in order to render the room more hospitable. “Thank you for your suggestion”, Surama had said, smiling the same half-shy smile, with which she received me at the door. The pertinacious fellow proceeded to explain the names, varieties and colours of the roses, fixing his languorous eyes on hers and ignoring all my advances. To make it worse, he had a charming manner of polite attentiveness that women find so irresistible. At last, when he was so benevolent as to say, “Wear them on your hair, ma’am. Trust me, you will look like a queen!”, Surama broke out into wild peals of laughter, violently jerking her shoulders. This momentary metamorphosis stunned me. I was habituated to see her unobtrusive self, whiling away with work and this excitable side of her nature shocked me.

Days rolled on, and I looked upon Surama with an eye of faded interest, tinted with disgust. We used to have an hour of introspective conversation, after dinner about the ongoings in our society, whether good or evil. Her opinions were that of any liberated man, conveyed resolutely through a few words, as her nature permitted, and never the impulsive ideas of a woman, coloured with romanticism. My mother was a seamstress and her sole income came from a tailoring shop in exchange of her skilled supplies of embroidered shawls and home-stitched apparel. She was a mechanical, yet kind and motherly woman, who had brought me up by her toil and wholeheartedly devoted herself to my welfare. She often asked Surama to sit by her and help her in holding the threads, while she worked away with her nimble fingers for hours together. This particularly irked my wife as was evident from her unwilling and careless way of attendance on my mother. Day after day, I had found her sitting across the sewing machine, grumbling about thousands of other chores she was left to attend, as a mode of offering a pretext. As soon as she was released from her duties, she made for her bedroom, sought her water-colour sketches in suppressed fury and poured into them until late afternoon. The beckons of my aunt roused her from her languid stupor and she hurried to participate in the evening-mopping exercise, as meekly as ever.  All evening, she remained at the prayer room, cornered and absorbed in her own thoughts, as a way of exerting her presence and participation in affairs of the home, on the elderly ladies.

It was her fifth month of pregnancy. One day, on entering my bedroom, I saw her cosily reclined on the bed, reading some papers, which gave me the impression of letters. The corners of her eyes were moistened, I fathomed. As she became conscious of my stealing step, she sprung up suddenly, with guilty astonishment seared on every line of her face. I confess that I am a straightforward man and I charged her directly. She gave me a vague answer and hurried to the terrace, the letters carefully tucked in her skirt-flaps. The serpent of jealousy raised its fangs and smote me. Who could this confidant be, corresponding with my wife? What right has he to write her letters and win her affections, which I, her lawful husband is so miserably deprived of? Was she really crying or was it my imagination? Why has she concealed those letters, if letters they were, from my knowledge? I spent my afternoon, tearing myself to undoing in these bitter thoughts. My grandmother had arranged a homely prayer congregation that evening. Surama was retained there and did not make an appearance until late evening, at dinner. Due to some inexplicable reason or my raked-up suspicions, she seemed to avoid looking at me and finished her meal quickly. At night I made a second attempt in these words, “My own love, you should know how I feel when you keep any secrets from me. I feel hapless. I’m in pain. I am only a man of flesh and blood, and I feel it…” She was plainly shocked and submitted in these words, “Stop raving like a madman. I told you I was culturing some old family documents, including letters.” Having forwarded this curt reply, she commenced to sleep with perfect inner calm. Another month was bygone, and I saw her grim outline, walking to and fro about the house, obeying orders and whims of the elders, with peevish annoyance.

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It was a singular day of autumn, the kind when the weather sheds its sultriness and the crystal blue heaven looks upon our face through a cool, cloudless sky. I saw Surama standing by the edge of the curtain of our room, her eyes steeped in intent concentration on a large photograph she held in her hands. Instead of taking her unawares, I assumed the character of a scheming man and hid behind the door. The watermark visible through the backside of the photo exposed a young man’s face. I had the privilege of owning a set of piercing eyes since childhood, and on this occasion, they clearly told me that the young man could not be me. At that opportune moment, my aunt stormed into the room with an errand and eyeing my suspicious way of standing, she ordered, “Boy, are you afraid to enter your own room? Come in, at once!” Surama hurriedly thrust the photo into her drawing book and left the room. At the first instant I was alone, I seized the book and plundered through its pages, to find—— nothing!

It was difficult to imagine Surama as a crafty and sly woman. My grandmother and aunt spent their leisure times “discussing” women of the neighbourhood, which was a polite word for criticism. Bland as she was in outward graces, they found her uninteresting and loathsome, and shunned her from their hours of juicy gossip. The next morning, Surama left home to purchase groceries of her own accord, which was most unlike of her. After five minutes of her leaving, I noted that she had left her money behind. I picked up her purse and followed the probable way that she could have taken to the market, and was soon lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her distant form, in conversation with a man beside the vegetable counter. The man’s face was eclipsed by Surama’s back, turned upon me. I could only guess from the partially visible rounded elbows and sturdy shoulders that he was fairly well-built and young. At this opportune moment, Surama, as if stirred by a diabolical sixth sense, turned back towards me. My heart jumped to my throat, and I too driven by my reflex turned sideways and swiftly walked in the direction of Messrs Clark & Sons, my employers.

 All evening, that day, I feared she would broach the incident of the morning, but nothing of the kind happened. Neither was she inclined to move an inch from home for the forthcoming weeks. As the first step of my investigation, I wanted to hunt down those letters from their secret burrow in her room. All day, she moved about the house performing chores, with every sign of being oppressed and tortured, reflected on her face, and all evening, she kept her room. I too loathed her as the rest. The costly paintings which I had purchased, admired and appreciated for her sake, in spite of my aunt’s protests, filled me with remorse and regret whenever my eyes fell on them. It was now clear to me as well as to others that all she wanted was to remain by her room—reading, painting, collecting nonsense and indulging in similar idle pursuits.

The loving heart gropes through the darkness to find one reproof, however feeble it maybe, against multitude of evidences which stand like rock-solid pillars, exerting their truth and reason. The opportunity I was seeking came my way while she had been admitted to the hospital for her delivery, one fine day in early December. I ransacked her room, wardrobes, shelves and every other inaccessible corner until I stumbled upon them in a pretty handy place i.e. in a shelf near the bedpost. Four yellowish papers and a photograph were snugly placed in an old-fashioned tin-casket. Two among them were Surama’s report cards of matriculation and graduation, while the other two were letters. Yes, letters they were; I bit my lips with satisfaction of my discovery, while shivering by every nerve. Written by a rapid hand in slanting letters by her father, they were addressed to her mother, and described the new city he had been transferred to, as a job requirement. They ended in affectionate lines, suggestive of the pangs of separation that the young man was subjected to, away from home. The photograph turned out to be of Surama’s father’s, prior to his marriage. All the doubts, suspicions and apprehensions that dispersed and met in my head throughout the preceding months, vanished into thin air, and I was back to my previous light-hearted self. I organised the disarranged room in a jiffy and gallantly walked off to the hospital.

A son was born to us with the face of a prince. It looked at me through its dark eyes (after Surama), swaddled in delicate pink cotton. My aunt captured some photographs of the infant’s earliest facial expressions. All of a sudden, it dawned upon me that the picture of Surama’s father was much smaller in dimension than that I had perceived in her hand, past autumn. My heart recoiled deeper and deeper, into myself. Was it possible that I was the unfortunate husband of a cheating wife? Was it possible that she maintained a secret paramour outside her marriage? Was it possible that she had some connections with the flower-salesman or any other acquaintance, from her maiden days? Was it possible that this child….

I bolted for home without seeing her.

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Spring arrived late the next year and our backyard garden resounded with the twitter of many foreign birds that the northern winds had brought in their stride. Meanwhile, the baby-boy had become the apple of my eyes, and I showered the same unconditional love on him that I had received from my mother and late father, despite the suspicions that haunted me nevertheless. I had spotted Surama thrice chatting for a long time with a ghastly man, with a spherical depression on his forehead, near the post-office. If their meeting was pre-planned or if the man in question is the same sturdy one, I saw months back, is hard to ascertain. She had been sent outdoors on those occasions by my mother with some errand related to a sewing contract.

Another month sped by us, and then another. The affairs of my home had assumed a serious note, with complications clouding densely over our heads. Surama spoke next to nothing to any of us, dwelling under chronic depression. The realisation that she was scrutinised by my prying eyes all the while, weighed down her health.

My grandmother had planned a grand naming-ceremony for the child, then five-months old. I had carefully avoided calling in the lot of charming and unscrupulous workmen, who invade my house with the prospect of romancing my already frenzied wife, and placed all the major responsibilities on my aunt’s shoulders. All the precautions I had taken tenaciously, failed me when I entered my own house to find the devil itself, seated pompously on my sofa, under my roof, on the morning of the ceremonious day. I lost my temper to his provocation and said, “You fool! What brings you here? You dare to walk into my living room after all the mischief you have been up to! You have already turned my wife against me by your wicked tricks. You scoundrel! Don’t try to meddle with me or else I will not wait a second to get you behind the bars. Get lost from my house or else I will call the police in…”

The man was dumbstruck and unable to stir from the sofa after my attack and I too was satisfied, having made a chivalric speech before my wife. Her face turned to a deadly white pallor, but she remained silent as usual with no signs of defiance. My mother had evidently heard me and rushed to the man’s rescue. She said, “My dear, are you out of your mind? How can you insult our guest? He is the son of Brijwasilalji, the owner of the sewing company which engages me! Brijwasilalji has been confined to his bed due to illness for some months. In his absence we have none but his son, Badrinathji to come to our rescue and repair the old curtains”, and then turning to the man with the distorted forehead, she said politely, “Badrinathji, my son here, I think, mistook you for someone else. I apologise to you on his behalf. Here are the curtains and please don’t think anymore about it. Take some sweets, they have been specially ordered from Chandannagar factory…” Badrinathji mouthed a sweet and said, “Madamji, I have discussed a lot with your daughter-in-law, on three to four occasions, about the designs of the child’s kurta and carpets. You may completely rely on me.” Despite his facial abnormality he had an air of amiability which defines a clever businessman.

When he was gone, I thought to myself, how foolishly jealous and possessive I had been in my ignorance all this while, how doggedly I had pursued my suspicions and in the process, caused my wife severe mental injury. Suddenly the world around me changed and I could feel my light-hearted self floating in a sea of optimism. I held her hands lovingly, and the three of us were made to sit facing the holy pyre. The priest chanted his well-memorised incantations and after the religious rites were over, the parents of the boy were asked to suggest a name for him. Surama suggested “Agasthya” which was the name of a great learned sage of ancient India and one counted among the Saptarishis. I found it old-fashioned to the extreme and suggested a modern alternative- “Sameer” which meant the morning breeze. The priest said that the father’s choice must be honoured over the mother’s. She remained silent as usual. My elders suggested some names and after much deliberations, Surama said, “If he should be named at all, then name him after the ancient heritage of India!” We were all stunned at the firmness with which she conveyed it. The fact that, so quiet and unobtrusive a woman could ever find a voice, that also so firmly and impolitely, to raise against the entire clan of revered elders present in the ceremony, was shocking. The priest suggested “Sarasvat” which meant “the learned” in Sanskrit. She accepted it however, unhappily.

Next, came the turn of the middle name. There was no matter of a choice in that. It was our family tradition to supply middle-names of newborns after their grandparents or ancestors. My grandfather’s good-name was “Adheerendra”– named after the Moon. Surama stood up from her seat in desperate defiance, charged up as if she were to fight in a battalion! She was heaving under a strong emotion and composed herself with great difficulty to say, “I want my son to bear a name, which I wish to call him. Why is the whole world against me? Agasthya is a thoroughly good name. What objection can anyone have against it?”

The priest interrupted her, “But this name is not in accordance with the boy’s ruling planets!”

Surama said angrily, “To hell with the planets! They are for uneducated folk. I don’t believe them!”

The priest was too offended to speak. My grandmother said, “How dare you blabber in this way? You have taken enough liberties with your husband, which pulls out your black, sinned tongue! You find this ceremony a joke, and us the jokers playing it? I shudder to think, such a blasphemous soul as yours lived under my roof and kept corrupting our souls all this while.”

Surama said raising her voice, “He is my son. I have a right to name him as I desire.”

My aunt said, eyeing the guests frightfully, “My dear, you are obviously his mother. But we are his grandmothers and his well-wishers. When a child is named after his great-grandfather, he becomes the pride and flag-bearer of his family. Don’t deprive him of this right.”

My grandmother retorted, “You as our daughter should do as you are told, without explanations!”

Surama said bitterly, “I never said a word when he was given a first name. But now I will not remain silent. Agasthya will be his name and that is my last word. I implore all of you to leave me alone with my child!”

My aunt said, “The name is very old-fashioned and scholarly. Why not try out a different name?”

I said thoughtfully, “Two scholarly names, one after the other will not sound good. What if he doesn’t take after the scholarly gene? Why are you after that curious name?”

Surama said, “I know what traits my child is likely to take after. Agasthya will be his name.” At last, I supported her and the present all had  to submit to her whim. She was crying innerly and looked upto me with gratification. I kept brooding over her curious fascination with such a boring name as that.

That night, she secretly summoned me to the terrace and turning her face away from me to the skies, she said, “What you said, today morning to Badrinathji has opened my eyes to your suspicious nature”, she continued without any preface, “Agasthya is the name of my lost love, a love that came to my life like the first fountain of elixir, that drowns a barren land and then permeates through it to settle for a lifetime—a name that I could keep chanting for a lifetime like that priest. I hope I’ve been a dutiful wife to you but I fear I didn’t try my best to win your heart in a way, that you wouldn’t be suspicious of me. Maybe, you were not the kind of man whom I’d fall for in natural circumstances. The memories of my unfulfilled love never left me and I spent my years dreaming of that ideal union.”

She paused, shook my hands slowly, and said, “But now, I want to start a new life with you, away from the humdrum of this household. I want to get lost with you, somewhere far, somewhere inconceivable, like those stars which–”

Tears rolled from her eyes. It was impossibly difficult to absorb the words which she had just uttered. It was disturbing to accept the truth that I had spent the last two years imagining her to be deeply immersed in my love. It was a massive blow to my mind, which had satisfied its doubts that morning, after days of inner turbulence. But my conscience consoled me, “She is not the inanimate woman of your estimation. She has a heart and the capacity to love passionately, even if it is not me. The same devotion she may offer to me if she were to change her mind, which she is more than willing to, presently. Behind her somewhat eccentric way of bearing, there somewhere lies an earnest woman who is bold enough to confide her infidelity to me.”

Surama had opened her purse and drawn out a tattered, folded black and white picture of the side-face of a man, which without her explanation I understood to be her past lover. The man was faddy and exhibited long sideburns. This was the photograph I had seen in her hand and searched heaven and hell to find it. I asked no questions about him. Her honesty had moved me and my heart warmed towards her. We held hands lightly like two happy children, and stared up at the infinite vastness of the sky, engaged in vivid imagination of our future life in a new home, with renewed enthusiasm– a life wherein prevails love, faith and joy.