An Elusive Morsel of Rice
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An oblique sunbeam has mildly lit up the portico of the house. A dim glow reflecting from the red-bordered sari of my mother hanging on the rope has spread in the room. I could still smell the odour of juvenile memories in the hem of the sari from the stitched catchword Kolkata-300. It appears that the enchanting juvenility with its reach memory of some previous life has embodied itself.
Kamal was then just a fresher in Presidency College in Kolkata. To give a pleasant surprise to his Natun Bauthan[1] he bought the sari for her with the money he has received from his scholarship. It’s customary to address the eldest sister-in-law as Bara Bauthan. However, Kamal who had been brought up by that Natun Bauthan with love and care, never allowed his Natun Bauthan to be old. Still now, the memory of the purple glow reflecting from the face of my mother who was sitting between my aunts flashes across my mind. What I thought to be the light of pleasure during my juvenile days has turned into a shame of embarrassment in the closing chapter of my youth. For a joint middle class family price of one piece of Kolkata-300 sari in place of three pieces of ordinary sari is certainly too heavy.
When my grandfather arranged marriage for his eldest son, Sarama, a young woman hailing from Kolkata appeared in the family as the eldest sister-in-law of Kamal. As soon as she stepped into the in-law’s house situated in a remote village, she discovered a child catching hold of hem of her gorgeous Banaras silk sari stood speechless with a shy but ineffable smile. The mother-in-law of Sarama announced that the child, though four or five years of age, was no doubt the youngest master of the future days. Sarama took up the young brother-in-law in her arms. Instantly, the child-hero shaking off all his shyness concealed his face in the shoulder of his Natun Bauthan.
While giving birth to three children in succession the new sari of Sarama became old. Still Kamal’s Natun Bauthan never became old to him. There’s no dearth of members in the big Mukherjee family to verify the relation between the brother-in-law and his eldest sister-in-law. However, the city bred Sarama never cared for that scandal. As a result, the critics had to stop slandering. Sarama’s mother-in-law who gave birth to sixteen children got no chance of bringing up her youngest issue, Kamal. Nobody knows how the city-bred Sarama won over her mother-in-law. In her deathbed, she said to Sarama, ‘My dear daughter-in-law, I hand over to you all responsibilities of rearing up Kamal.’ Since that day, Kamal never felt the absence of his mother. If ever had Kamal spouted his lips out of sentimental reaction, Sarama to mock at the relation between brother-in-law and sister-in-law would say, ‘Why are you angry with me, my boon companion?’ Kamal’s ear would redden a bit more as soon as she addressed him as boon companion. The moment Sarama would stir his hair his sensitiveness seemed to intensify even more. Yet that one-eyed, biased almighty is so crooked that he’d gifted the panacea to that very person who is the cause of this sensitiveness. Then there was no other alternative left for that little child than to hide his face in the lap of his Natun Bauthan. Moreover, that powerful, dominant mistress of the big family, when the child brother-in-law came to her would at once indulge in childish activities. Both Kamal and his Natun Bauthan surrounded themselves to such a bond of love that can hardly be defined. Yet that ideal relation of love didn’t culminate in a happy ending.
I can hardly recollect when I with mother and Chotka[2] came to settle in Kolkata, bidding goodbye to our ancestral village home. I, too, stepped over the boundary line of youth while making a heap of phials one by one. Still now, my juvenile days peep in my memory. Initially being highly optimistic, I bought number of books and placed them on the shelf opposite to the bed of Chotka in such a way that he could easily catch sight of it. However, Chotka hasn’t turned over a single page of those books even today.
Yet he was once a bookworm of storybooks. During the evening, my mother used to tell story to control her restless children. Chotka too, preyed by an irresistible charm of listening to her story would scuffle for our mother’s lap. Later, when he was admitted to Presidency College in Kolkata it seemed to us that he’d suddenly grown up. We missed him as our playmate. Chotka was the first to read in Kolkata in our family. That too was possible for the eagerness of Sarama. A sense of reverence grew in us beyond our knowledge. She always warned us not to disturb Chotka, while he was studying. After getting scholarship in the School Final Examination when Chotka came and bowed down to the feet of his Natun Bauthan with the mark-sheet in hand, the memory of the indescribable beauty of her face is still fresh in my memory. And right behind there was an indefinable thorn of jealousy of my juvenility pricking my memory.
[1]Natun Bauthan – New sister-in-law, whose name in the story is Sarama.
[2]Chotka – The youngest uncle of the character ‘I’. Name of this uncle in the story is Kamal.
Runa Bandyopadhyay 