If you keep walking forth in the last lane of Kolkata’s Kalibari area, you will come across an old, crowded neighbourhood to your right. Nobody knows how old this neighbourhood is, and those who knew have been dead for a hundred years or so. There are houses on both sides of the narrow lane, and the image is a vivid reminder of old Bengal. This locality is home to the chaos of routine. Sometimes a fisherman sells his catch, or a villager trades his ghee. The ruckus of the vehicles passing on the street is ceaseless, but even more deafening is the din emerging from the houses, successfully contributing to the pandemonium. Bengali households are known to casually converse at high pitches, so whenever you pass by this locality you are sure to hear shrill voices calling out “aami jani na”, “kothaay?”, “kemon aachhen”, “aami jaabo”, words which echo down the street. It is impossible to locate the house from which these voices emerge.
Number 11, the big house of this street, belongs to Nikhil Chattopadhyay. This two-storeyed house has a very old construction style. It has several rooms, antique red windows, and an open courtyard in the middle. There are painted pillars in this courtyard, a water dish for birds, and kids are always running around giggling. Nikhil babu is a civil servant, a simple man…an epitome of ordinariness. He eats luchi and alu bhaja for breakfast every day, goes to work, reads the newspaper in the evening while worrying about the country, takes his churna powder to aid digestion, and goes to bed early. Detached from the hassles of his neighbourhood and house, he lives his uneventful life comfortably. Since the past fifty-five years, all his days have mirrored each other. On some days he has laughed uproariously, or on some he hasn’t gone to work on account of a fever; besides these instances, the daily routine has seen no change. Nikhil babu has a very big family – two sons, their wives, their children, a married daughter, and of course – his better half…the mistress of the house, Pauloma.
Pauloma is a vivacious woman with an abundant love for life. She likes gossiping with the neighbours, bargaining with the saree seller, watching Bengali plays with her daughters-inlaw, and feeding her grandkids sondesh. Though Nikhil babu and Pauloma are very different, it can be safely said that their world provides a sense of stability. Everything has been well for a long time, and there have been no problems.
Nikhil babu was born in this house five-and-a-half decades ago, and it was in this very kitchen that his mother had informed him of a girl named Pauloma who was to marry him. From the day of their shubho-drishti, their life has been blissful to date. A middle-class man’s definition of happiness is too often consistency, and by that standard, the Chattopadhyays were about to cross the sea of life without any mishaps.
But…but sometimes a strange thought crosses Pauloma’s mind as she sits by the window, rubbing oil on her scalp. “My life has gone by without anything extraordinary occurring.”
As she turns the shell bangle on her wrist, she thinks that life shouldn’t be like a straight line without any exciting deviations. But all this is momentary, unconscious. Apart from such random moments, she is quite happy. She has never faced financial problems, and neither have they been very rich. Her children have never let her down but have not done anything unusually great either. And Pauloma herself wasn’t very beautiful, but neither was she ugly. In short, Pauloma is as happy as any ordinary fifty-year-old, bright-eyed, sindoor-wearing Bengali woman ought to be. And ten generations of Pauloma would have lived their lives the same way if Ram babu hadn’t come to their house that day.
Pauloma and her daughters-in-law were chopping jackfruit when the loud voice of Ram babu (who worked at the museum) was heard. “Kemon achhen, didi?” Ram babu and his paan-stuffed mouth had ruined Pauloma’s day and created a hullabaloo in her household. The crux of the matter lay in the locked storeroom of this ancient house. In the storeroom were three earthen storage vessels which were set in the ground. The vessels were quite wide and deep, and had been firmly set by digging and removing rocks. Pauloma’s grandmother-in-law had stored grains in these vessels once upon a time, but then came metal storage vessels, later followed by aluminium boxes, and then the practice of storing grains stopped altogether. Now the vessels were of no use. Once a year during Durga Puja, a servant was sent into the storeroom to clean them. Just like the countless useless things in the house, these earthen vessels had rightfully occupied their place in the storeroom for years.
Ram babu had come with the proposition that if the Chattopadhyays were to sell these vessels to the museum, they might avail some financial benefit. He had argued, “Foreign tourists will pay a fortune to see these old things and, moreover, there is no use for such vessels in modern times except for display in the museum.” Both the daughters-in-law became uncharacteristically cheerful after listening to the proposal. This joy did not stem from anticipation of the money they would receive, but from the riddance of cleaning the vessels each year. The younger daughter-in-law brought up the topic during dinner that night and the sons and Nikhil babu agreed without much discussion. For a moment it felt like a shared decision, but suddenly Pauloma, who was mixing her curd and rice, contorted her face and muttered the word “impossible” twice. The weight carried by her words had stopped every other member’s morsels from going down their throats.
From that day onwards, a cold war had begun between the women. The elder daughter-in-law had proclaimed rebellion by dusting the bedsheet aggressively, whereas Pauloma had blown the conch shell angrily in the morning. The men had stayed out of this but Nikhil had tried telling Pauloma that holding on to useless earthen vessels was futile. The argument between them had lasted for six minutes, after which Nikhil had grumbled that this was pointless and unnecessary and slapped down the newspaper without even reading it. This had baffled Pauloma. In the thirty years of their married life, this had been their worst and longest fight.
Ultimately, Pauloma had agreed to give away the vessels. Ram babu had sent word that someone would be by to collect them in a few days.
Excerpted with permission from The Many Lives of Pauloma Chattopadhyay, Devangi Bhatt, translated from the Gujarati by Mudra Joshi, Thornbird/Niyogi Books.
