TRANSLATED FROM THE BENGALI BY BISHNUPRIYA CHOWDHURI

I know I am going to kill myself. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after. One of these days. Some day.

Why?

Why not?

What do you think of death?

How is the passing of a tree different from that of a dog?

A stray dog or a cat, a cow or a goat…how are their deaths any different from that of a human being—yourself, for example?

or, the Death of a relationship?

My name is Rano. Not Ranojit. Ranojoy or Ranobeer. Just Rano.

My father named me.

I believe, human beings should be allowed to choose their own names, because,, names can define the course of their lives. And more often than not, those lives may turn out to be a mockery of their names. For example, my mother whose name is Swapna, the dreamy one– lacks even an iota of ingenuity needed to dream a real dream.

Maa used to have a harmonium, books on poets and great masters such as Tagore, Nazrul, Rajanikanta and the like.  She owned a few flowerpots, hand-knit sweaters, mats, kerchiefs, childhood playmates, pickles, and struggled to survive high school… She had it all.

Hot, sweet and sour. But never a dream…none at all. Which is why she was the wife to my father. Which is why they had me. She became my mother.

All three of us bear the same surname: Biswas, which means trust, faith. My mother trusts the Hanuman Chalisha, my father believes in “Long live Revolution”. I have come to realize that to have faith in something, one must lose it on some other things. If you would like to trust Netaji, you must not have faith in Gandhi. If you want to stay loyal to the Mohunbagan soccer-team, you better lose your faith for the team East Bengal. You must not believe in theism if you want to be agnostic. Similarly, to keep your faith intact in darkness, you cannot trust the light.

As of now, I am not trusting anything except you.

Because, you can simply shut this book and return to the mundane monotony of your life deprived of love, ethics, meaning, vision and any kind of ideals.

But you aren’t closing the book.

Do you think I just caught a glimpse of you? Or, did I make you face your inner self?

Oh look! That moon! Muddy, isn’t it?

I know, subconsciously, you’ll want me to lose. To myself, to life. You’ll want that I lose and simply decimate. But you and I, we are not that different though.

I am Rano. And I can feel through a strange sensation that as you are reading me, you have begun to trust me

Very slowly.

Because to have faith in my loss you must have faith in me.

I am Rano Biswas. At the moment, I don’t even trust myself.

Why?

#

The cockerel stands about ten meters from me. It belongs to Raktim and has a blood-shot look. Eyes, blazing like the sun; plumage, bloodier than revolution and those tail feathers as dark and intense as the fingers of death. Standing face to face with me, the feathers at its throat flare up every few seconds; its round irises get rounder, enraged. Raktim calls it Rajnikant like the Tamil Superstar! Raktim takes it to fights. Raktim’s father, who used to be a Maoist in his days, now, perched by the window observes the ants, birds, snails and lichens on the boundary wall and drools. Raktim told how the police took him and…

Raktim has a pet name: Laal—Red. His father named him when he was sane.

I am scared as shit. Rajnikant threatens me with those round eyes. My eyes burn in fear. I shut them tight.

And

I shrink.

I shrink and get shorter than Rajnikant. I shrink and get as puny as an ant in front of the giant bird. My fear shrinks to the size of a wood-ant.

Then, somehow, I manage to turn around, take the short-cut to school through the alley and run.

I shall kill Rajnikant one day. I know. I know cockerels are mortal.

Suddenly, Matal da’s Rickshaw turns up in front of me. I dodge the collison. As I run past, I hear the man yell “Man is mortal”. “Man is mortal”.

He says this often. Like that protagonist in the book Harbart who knew only “cat, bat, dog, water, fish”, Matal da’s knowledge of the language amounts to that phrase only. And I think, his life too will end muttering “man is mortal”.

Death of a cockerel and a human. Do you think they are similar?

Repeat,

“Our father in Heaven above us,

We ask Thee for guidance

In our daily task.

May virtue and manhood

Stand strongly amongst us.

To Thee we give all of our thanks.

The Scout Oath, the Scout Law,

Their lessons unfolding to our youth,

In numbers untold;

Our Motto, our Good Turn,

May we live it and teach it,

Great Spirit of Scouting, we pray.”

My grandfather founded our school in the year 1950. He highly emphasized physical training for the boys. Sports and physical education are mandatory for us till the tenth standard. Because I wear a full length trouser, Niren Babu, our coach has us kneeled down by the field. I have Bablu and Pinaki with me as well. They too, never wear shorts. They are homos. I can see Pinaki kneeling down—his legs trembling. It’s annoying. I find weakness in men annoying. In another five minutes he is going to faint right in the middle of the field. I know it.

I hate this physical fitness class. Shorts reveal my thighs where the hair keep getting coarser. And thicker. And, of course, I hate physical fitness.

We shall run, play and laugh

And shall love everyone

Obey our elders

Write, read and learn

Be kind to the animals

Speak the truth

Walk the path of truth

Build with our hands

Build a robust body

Fight for the team

Work with our bodies

Dance in joy.

Pinaki hits the ground with a thud. Bablu and I, we straighten up. Legs feel sore. I kick, massage those calf muscles. Feels better.

Bablu and Niren Babu are now carrying Pinaki to the staff-room. A blazing sun. Ruthless like war. Beads of sweat break all over the cradle of my head and roll down my forehead. The rest of the class still stands in line for the physical fitness class. After he fainted, Pinaki’s nose bled. Niren Babu wiped it with his handkerchief. Now Niren Babu’s handkerchief has Pinaki’s blood. Blood that is part of him.

Blood is a lot like pain. Humans are made of blood. Pain makes humans. A body full of blood. A body of pain. No difference. Bruises, hurts­— too many of them make the man a lot like the moon.

Bruised. Tainted. Muddled. Still, the man holds together in one piece. Stands whole.

My father never wanted me.

Do you ache?

How old are your bruises?

The physical training class gets canceled for the day. Pinaki’s Dada takes him home on his bicycle.  Today is Thursday. In New Barrackpore, all dispensaries remain closed on Thursdays. So, Pinaki will not know until tomorrow what happened to him under the sun, blatant like war. How did he turn homo?

How do humans become homos and why? And how does one even become a hetero? Is it determined in the womb that all Pinakis are Homos and all Niren Babus are straight? Is it decided in the womb that Niren Babus and us, we have the right to sexually abuse Pinakis?

Are you a homo?

Are you straight?

Does it matter?

Biren Babu takes mathematics after the lunch break. Jagannath Daam shines the brightest in this one. Jagannath Daam, the darkest human I know of. When I first saw him in fifth grade, I thought he was from Africa. No one sat with him that day. No one sits with him still. They call him Mandela. I call him Mandela too—at least on the face. I feel good calling him Mandela in front of everyone. It feels so damn good that my eyes close in satiation.

I don’t know how but Jagannath is able to solve all mathematical problems. At first, Biren Babu would get skeptical, he would check his notebook again and again. But not anymore. Sitting in the last bench at the back of the classroom, all by himself, Jagannath, darker than darkness itself, solves all mathematical problems.

Do you need to be lonely to solve the problems? Do you need to stay in the dark?

Aren’t you alone too?

You too stare into the dark before falling asleep.

Have you found answers to all mathematical problems?

You haven’t.

Then do you need to stay lonely a bit more?

Do you need another slice of darkness?

At this very moment, you raised your eyes from the pages of the book to look at your life.

And you mulled over the colors, tastes and smells of life.

Then you breathed.

Then. At one point, you come back.

Jagannath is absent today, which is why Biren Babu’s eyes keep slipping to the darkness near the last bench. He even walks there once, just to be sure Jagannath was really not there sitting inseparable from the darkness. Just like you, my sums too seem stuck as usual. Mathematics leaves me hopeless. I barely manage the passing points. Father gets a bit more disappointed in me. He used to be brilliant in mathematics. Mother was just average. Probably, that is why she can recognize my failures. Swapna Biswas never calls on me. She makes tea, she cooks the rice in the kitchen while carrying those bruises on her back, on her face. She plays the daily soaps on the television and stares at the screen, unblinking. Just once, she caught me skipping math and working on a sonnet— “My father was unaffected by my birth”. She snatched my diary and flung it out of the window. I saw from my first-floor window in my fast-blurring vision, how the diary plopped into the pond and drowned.

That night, I dreamt of the fishes of the pond growing up reading my poems. Because the fishes too have their eyes open but can be asleep.  They grow up asleep. Just like the humans, I saw under water, deep down… those Labio Rohitas, those Katla Katlas, reading my poetry with their open but asleep eyes. And growing up.

Because I don’t eat fish, this dream was good. But then like every year, they let the nets down into the water.

Now, Dhiren Babu is teaching us the life-science. Before, I used to cross his residence on my way to school. Neat single-story structure, just how it suits a school teacher. Jhimli, his elder daughter, used to swing on the gate. And she licked her lips as she swung and stared at me. She licked her lips with her tongue. Did it again and again. Every time. So, now I take another route.  I pass by Raktim’s house. Every day. And every day Rajnikant…

Bishal Sarkar says,

“Rumli’s titties are bigger.

Abnormal chicks, I tell you, have big ones

Who knows who gets those massaged!”

Dhiren Babu happens to be the only man in his house. He explains cell-division on the black board. He asks questions. Surprised, I see how Bishal Sarkar, Alakesh Roy and the likes of them, how they answer all queries promptly and correctly. I sit numb. Raktim sits at a distance, crafting and scribbling new cuss phrases in his notebook. Rajib, hunched at the second to last bench, scratching out the contours of a man and woman with the needle of a geometric compass on the surface of the high bench. You are there too. Sitting in the farthest corner. Silent. You are looking at me. Looking at my lanky, pale frame, my well-oiled and neatly combed black curls, colorless, limp and perfect parting of hair, my thin, pink lips, high and pointed nose. The Adam’s apple on my throat moves as I swallow.

See the classroom. The loud, gyrating ceiling fan. The startling pfyat pfyat flapping of the calendar on the wall. In your mind you wish for shai,shai swish.

Look at Dhiren Babu.

The man and his hand drawing rims and rounds of cells.

You think of Rumli

And her taut breasts…

And pollens

And Dhiren Babu’s hands on her…

Cut it.

Tell me, can you remember the first kiss of your life? First lover? Does he, does she, come back in your dreams? Why do they come back?

I hate female bodies. So far, I know, I am not homo like Bablu or Pinaki. Still, I hate it. The moment thoughts of female bodies come to mind; I get goosebumps. I chant

“Banchana kama kanchana, Ati nindito Indriya raag

Tyagishwara, hey Nrarabara, Dehapadey Anuraag…”

“You have conquered lust and greed and have spurned the enticements of sense pleasure.

O Lord of renouncers! O best among men! Grant us love for your blessed feet.”

Then slowly the mind returns to itself.

But I know how humans are born. Dogs, cats, cows, lizards, spiders, even butterflies.

I know how each of them are born. Last year, Vishal Sarkar and Alakesh Roy had us listen to their narration of “Kavita bhabi speech-drama”. And we learned everything. All. Nothing left unknown.

So, I hate my mother’s body.

Bablu breaks into a wail in Dhiren Babu’s class.

The chalk slips from his hands. He comes and places his hands on his shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

Bablu whimpers like a dog. Dhiren Babu keeps his hands on his shoulders. Class ends.

The world could have ended here. My words too. It would be perfect. But it doesn’t. The world, even after all these, keeps moving.

Tell me, have you not ever desired for the world to end at a certain moment? Probably you had a moment… with something or someone special. Did you not want the world to just end right there? For the sake of a personal happy ending, did you not wish for an apocalyptic ending upon the entire civilization? Ever?

I am Rano Biswas. I am fifteen years eleven months old.  Right at this very moment, I am facing Baren Babu. He wants me to answer the questions on History. I am standing at my place. I am answering. This is our history class. I have been asked to explain the reasons for the First World War. War has always intrigued me. When I was young, I saw the war of Kargil on the television. When younger than that, they used to telecast the epic drama– the battle of the Mahabharata. My Sundays were spent with wars. It was the wars that drew me to history. Often, I sit with the encyclopedia. I learn about wars. I talk about them. I see their pictures. Sometimes, alone in my room, I shadow-practice fights– sometimes with swords, or pistols or sometimes with bombs and rifles. Me or my shadow. None of us wins. None of us lose. Still, we keep fighting. On and on. Just for the fun of it. After much hassle, father got me a shutter-gun. You need to fill it up with tiny yellow pellets and shoot at targets. On holidays, I target the tree and shoot it. I turn the gun to the sky and hunt. I cock it at my shadow and kill myself.

School is over. Raktim and the lot of them will head to the field for soccer. I don’t play. I come back to my father’s house. I don’t really go outside. I don’t really do much. Rano Biswas is not really much. Rano Biswas is like you—just so ordinary.

Coming back home, I find Tinni, my cousin, visiting. She is younger to me by at least six months but the way she carries herself around like she has learned all that there is to know. She follows all the soap operas on TV. Even though she is now in my father’s house, she is watching television with Swapna Biswas while gossiping about the neighbors.

When we were young, Tinni used to attack and scratch me. They say, once she bit me so hard on my belly, right above my navel that I bled. I ran a high fever that night.  You can still notice the faint mark over my naval. These days, she acts shy, falling into awkward silences in the middle of describing another new recipe for the tapioca stems when I come in. Pretends to be engrossed in the television.

Is there anything that agitates you suddenly, without a pretext?

Agitation so great that it makes you want to just take down every damn thing?

Do you have such a thing or person in your life? Thinking about whom, blazing anger triggers within…you feel like crushing everything? Your insides go up in maddening flames?

I feel the same when I see Tinni.

Why?

As a child I used to watch the ants. I would pick and capture one inside the small plastic jewelry box Maa had given me. Then for a few moments, the insect ran around frantically, looking for a way out. Crawling from this end to that. But then, it would go limp. My entertainment ended and I left the box alone.  After a few days, I would remove the lid, take the dead ant out, insert a new one and shut the lid back on. Fun kicked off again.

Last year, after the inauguration of my grandfather’s statue, everyone went to my father’s house except for Tinni and myself. We sat at the feet of the statue in the park. Our grandfather wore dark rimmed glasses and back-brushed his hair. Other than these two features, the statue had no other semblance with my grandfather.

You must have seen how the evening unfurls? You must have noticed how our eyes slowly make up with the darkness. How the eyes adjust to the darkness. Darkness slips into our eyes. And at one point, we can see clearly in the dark. I wonder how the nocturnal nature of all my ancestors have sustained into my blood stream.

Inside that crystal-clear darkness, Tinni clasped both of my hands and forced a kiss on my lips.

When I tried to free myself, she bit so hard that my lips bruised. I pushed her and stood up. She too sprang upright. Right in front of my grandfather’s statue.

“If mama-Mami learn even one bit of this, I’ll say you forced me.”  She hissed like a snake.

Now her fingers are busy flipping channels from one daily soap to another. Swapna Biswas’s eyes too are flitting from one show to another. I take a slice of cucumber and come back to my room.

A little later Maa comes in to inform that father will be sleeping with me and Tinni with her because now both of us are grown-ups and cannot sleep together.

In front of the others, Swapna Biswas appears as a jolly woman. She knows if she talks too much, she will never look morose. Words upon words upon words bury the pain underneath. Which is why today she is talking too much with Tinni at the dinner table. They are discussing why some random girl, Parul, is absolutely unable to marry the love of her life. Father asks for another helping of fish. Maa goes to the kitchen to get it. I don’t eat fish. So, I have egg and rice. And I am done. So, I focus on doodling houses and fishes on the plate with my fingers because father probably will not appreciate it if I leave.

“You should sit with Tinni and have her help you with math for an hour. She scored 91 at the Pre-board evaluation”, father commands chewing on the fishbones. Tinni and I, both look at father at the same time. Tinni tries to feign shyness again.

Ma comes back with the fish. “Why don’t you guys hang out these days like you used to?”

Tinni hands out a quick reply ‘Not enough time…Monima… I cannot even come too often these days…”

“That’s normal for this age” Father says, “These years of adolescence, girls and boys drift apart from each other.”

“That’s not true… me and Raja da, what fun we used to have when we were this age!” Ma blurts and falls quiet.

Raja da. Tinni’s father, my Piso, mother’s maternal cousin.

Father turns somber. I know he doesn’t like the guy. Just the way I don’t like Tinni. Father turns his attention to the fish.

Tinni sits cross legged on my bed with my most favorite edition of the encyclopedia in her hands. She touches her finger to her tongue and turns the pages with that same finger. Disgust… The rice and egg rolls inside my stomach.

“If you want your Bougainvillea to flower, you must not care for it. Just let it sit unkempt and wild, and it comes abloom. Did you know that?” She asks, looking at a picture of a bougainvillea.

Sitting at a distance, I keep playing with a paperweight and do not respond. It is clear that she won’t help me with any damn mathematics.

“I think some humans too should be treated the same way. They should be ignored and left uncared for…so they bloom. Just the way Mama-Mami handle you.”

“Ma doesn’t ignore me”, I feel my jaws clench.

“Really? What about your father?”

I stand up and go to the bathroom. I shut the door, run the faucet and stand in front of the mirror…

SLAP!

Then once again.  SLAP!

And a third time. SLAP!

Fourth. SLAP!

And a fifth time. SLAP

-I am done.

I usually do this when I get angry at myself. After I am done, I wash my hands in the basin. Shut the tap. Wipe my hands on the towelette and unlock the bathroom door.

My father did not want me. I told Tinni a couple of years back.

Have you ever prayed for another person’s pity?

Have you ever wanted someone to touch your forehead while asleep?

Did someone?

When was the last time someone kissed your forehead?

When I come back, Tinni is gone. She folded the corner of the page of bougainvillea in my encyclopedia. I immediately straighten it. Father enters.

It is a good time now to let you know that I do not like to be touched. Not even by my mother. My father makes all sorts of sounds in his sleep, keeps turning and often loses control of his limbs. I don’t know just how Swapna Biswas has managed so far with Father Biswas.

Hence, I won’t be able to sleep tonight.

Will you?

Do you sleep easily at night, every night?

Unless exhausted to the core, don’t you keep turning?

Don’t you sigh?

Do you feel like crying before you sleep?

I know you will not lie to me. Because you have started believing me. You can now see even if the rest of the world hurts you, I won’t. Because I need you whole, till the last page of this book. I am Rano Biswas and you know, just like you, “I too have nowhere to go, nothing to do.”

 

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Also, Read Book Excerpt from Windborne by Sanjib Pol Deka, translated from The Assamese by Daradi Patar and Published in The Antonym:

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