Ma had asked me to wait a bit. But that had been a long while back! How much longer? What was she looking for inside the room? What was so important now? I couldn’t understand why she had asked me to wait! Oof, why did she have to do this when I was in such a hurry! Should I leave? No, maybe she’d give me something. Did she go in to get some money? Wouldn’t be bad if I got some. After all, I was beginning school today. It was my first day of school. If not an anna, even two paise was good. But I wouldn’t wait longer for that.

I could easily run all the way, but because it was the first day, I wouldn’t do that. If Ma held me up like this hereafter I would just leave. Hey, why was she going from one room to another? I knew that Ma shouldn’t move about like us. That was the toll of suffering her sickness. I saw Ma every day, but I had never seen her like I was doing today. Bustling around for so long. And through all that, it seemed to me that Ma was moving about with her sari wound around her body like thin skin.

Ma had had her medicine. The decoction from the kobiraj. Some pills. A powder. Only after having those did she begin cooking for the household. Baba too lent her a hand. That meant cutting the vegetables, washing them, washing the utensils, and preparing the wheat dough. Sometimes Ma would do it; at other times Baba would say, “Leave it, I’ll do it.” He wasn’t around all the time, so he tried to do some of Ma’s work in the little time he had at home. But despite all this, why wasn’t Ma getting better?

“O Ma, it’s getting late. What are you doing? Tell me what you’re looking for.”

“What else! The kohl container. It was next to the candlestick. Did you move it somewhere?”

“Aah,” I said impatiently. “What do you need the kohl for?”

“Oh dear! What are you saying? You’re beginning school, won’t I put a dot on you?”

“What’ll happen if you don’t put it? I’ve grown up now – I’m off!”

“Wait.” I had never heard Ma shout so loud! She wasn’t angry, it didn’t seem like a scolding either. It was like indulgence. I was annoyed but I couldn’t move. Ma walked slowly towards me. Coming closer, and before I knew it, she held my head gently between her palms and kissed me on the forehead! “Do your studies mindfully, my dear, I’m afraid I won’t be there to see it all.”

The thought of school vanished at once from my mind. Why was she choking? As she swallowed, she sniffled a little. Her eyes were brimming with tears. As if she was going to ... just now. I said softly, “Are you crying, Ma?”

“Where, no!” And saying so, she wiped her eyes. “Go now!” What if I went after a few days instead? Or never went at all so I could stay home with Ma? Could I not learn a trade like Baba’s instead of going to school? After all, I had gone all the way to Poyatibari after a bereavement there and cut the nails of the people in the household. The womenfolk there had held out their hands so gently. One finger at a time. In return, a clay bowl full of rice.

My mind wandered to that day. Aush paddy was planted in summer and harvested in autumn. Its rice was browncoloured. Also round potatoes, and sometimes clinking coins. So what if I was small, after all I belonged to that caste. I filled the bag with fistfuls of rice. The vegetables would be placed on one side. But that was for later. As soon as the bag was full, I would hear someone from the household say, “Don’t keep sitting there, come back to the house, come and have lunch when you are done.”

I could see it all, as if Thakur Moshai, the priest, was sitting far away from me. A banana leaf was full of rice, dal and vegetable curry. After mixing them with my hand, I licked the starch off my hand and fingers. Time and again I would think, no one was watching me eating, were they? Oh, how long it had been since I had eaten so well!

In front of Thakur Moshai were Kakima and others of the household. I was served a lot of rice and vegetable curry. It took a while to eat that. Someone shouted out from the veranda, “Just ask if you want more rice.”

I wondered, isn’t there anything else? Some fish? Maybe not the choicest one but perhaps a tail-piece? But then I thought, where’s the need for that! With what I had been served I wouldn’t have to eat till noon the next day. I continued eating. As I ate, I began to feel drowsy.

So, what was wrong with that – if I went around from village to village with a nail-cutting chisel? I could start earning right away. I just wanted to stay close to Ma. I wouldn’t go to school. What if she kept on crying after I went to school?

Ma understood. There were tears in my eyes. She wiped my tears and said, “Go, my dear, it’s getting late.”

I didn’t say “no”. Once again the urge to go to school awakened. “So, I’m going!”

Ma nodded.

I had come quite a distance. But Ma was still standing on the road in front of the house. I turned back every now and then to look. Ma waved her hand.

Chhor-da had left already for the day. Ma had said to him, “Drop your brother at school tomorrow.”

“He’ll go on his own. Why are you worrying? He wanders around everywhere all day long; won’t he be able to get there?” he had said.

Baba too had left for his shop quite early in the morning. Mej-da was sleeping. Bor-da had left for his in-law’s house.

As it is, my brothers – my dadas – didn’t venture to the shop. They were ashamed that Baba did this to earn a living. Chhor-da’s friends teased him, calling him “barber”. He didn’t like it but couldn’t say much in reply. I too knew that if I said anything to them rudely, they would smack me. They called me that too, “Hey you son-of-a-barber, you blackie …”

My dadas made sure to walk at a distance from where the shop was. I didn’t feel bad at all that no one was going to drop me to school. Why would I, after all I went everywhere on my own. I knew all the places! There was Ma, still standing. Once I turned at the curve in the road at the banyan tree, I wouldn’t be able to see her any more.

A shanty. It had no walls. Nor a fence. Just posts on four sides and a tin sheet on top. That was the school. The cemented floor was chipped and broken in places. Everyone had sat down leaving just those broken parts vacant. The room was almost full with the band of students. I wondered where I would sit. I looked here and there. There was such a clamour! I couldn’t fathom anything. It was Class I, wasn’t it? Was I even in the correct classroom! Was anyone from my village here? I tried to identify them. Where did Sir sit? As I was about to enter the classroom, I heard, “Ratan!” Who called me?

I entered. Who had called me? The students were like a shoal of squirming fish. Who was it?

Everyone had a slate in their hands. And a wet rag. What was the book in their hands? The same call again, “Ratan!”

“Hey Dulal!” I said, and smiled. Did I say that too loud? Everyone turned to look at me. Dulal was the son of the sister-in-law of Punyo Majhi, from the riverbank. Not exactly from my village, they lived at a little distance from the banyan tree. He was my marbles playing companion. As soon as I began to hover outside his house, he knew that I had come to play. We made a clearing somehow in a wooded part and began playing.

Baba had come to recognise Dulal. If he ever spotted him outside our house, he would come charging and hit me hard. Baba only had to say, “Marbles again?” Just that. And if Chhorda heard that, he too came charging and – sometimes the thrashing left me with a bleeding nose or lip. But it was when Chhor-da, who was strong, hit me that Ma got frightened. Even if she couldn’t get up, she wanted to ward him off with all her strength. She would want to restrain him. And if Baba was there, she would weep, “Oh dear, you hit him so badly, I’m going to lose Ratan! Hit me instead …”

Dulal would run away hearing the sounds of thrashing and weeping. It was the same Dulal. He asked, “When did you get admitted?”

“Yesterday, at the haat. When a Sir came for a haircut.”

Dulal knew that the Master admitted students outside school as well, in the market, or at a shop. He didn’t want to know any more. He said, “Sit down. Sir will be here in a little while. When he calls out your name, say ‘Present Sir!’”

The boy beside me asked, “Where do you live?”

“You know the banyan tree, if you go a bit beyond that, you’ll come to a house with banana-leaf fencing, and a threshing hut slanting askew beside the road. With bamboo supports. That house. Isn’t Sir going to come?”

“Oh he’ll come, he’ll be here. Where’s your book?”

I was silent. Had Sir said anything about that?

A boy wearing pants torn at the backside slid towards me. He said, “I think I’ve seen you somewhere.”

“Was it at the shop?”

“What’s your shop?”

“A barber shop.”

“Are you folk barbers?”

The boy was bare-bodied. I was looking at Sir’s chair. The broken handle had been fixed with a string. I also noticed a boy with a dot of sandal-paste on his forehead. Was he also a new student like me? The other boy suddenly grabbed my shirt. And then he said, “Why aren’t you telling me?”

I was in Class I. Back in East Pakistan, the hatekhori ceremony used to be carried out in Hindu households once a child crossed five years. The days had flown by since then, it had been a year or two. And now I was admitted to school. How old was I then?

I was scared. Would he hit me here, inside the classroom? Why did everyone hit me? Was it because I was dark-skinned? Or because I went to other people’s houses to work? Would they have let me join their games if Baba were not in this line of work? Would I have been spared the beating? Perhaps it would have been best if I hadn’t come to school today. How tearful Ma had been.

Seeing that I wasn’t saying anything, Dulal retorted, “Is cutting hair bad? Can you go around without having your hair cut? My uncle catches fish, which he sells in the market. Is that bad work? So why do you think of caste?”

The bare-bodied boy was not a little but much bigger than me. Then Dulal said, “Come, Ratan, sit here.”

The field in front of the primary school was very green. The schoolhouse was south-facing. It was Dulal who told me, “Once we’re in Class II, we’ll go to that nice schoolhouse.” The clamour was gradually coming to a close. He said, “There’s Sir!”

“But I know him. He walks along the riverbank. He’s from Atharokhoda village. That’s the village directly across from our village jetty.”

“Can you see that, just look, that’s the register. Your name’s in that. Do you remember what to say when he calls out your name?”

“Pejen Saar!”

He patted me on the knee, and said, “Correct!”

Sir fastened the string on the handle of the chair before sitting down. Did he know what had been happening here just a little while ago? The boys who were saying nasty things had also become like wet cats all of a sudden. All silent. Suddenly Dulal took my hand and held it to his pocket. “Can you feel it?”

Marbles here too! I suppressed a laugh. He pressed his finger over his lips. “We’ll play a few rounds after school gets over.”

“But I didn’t bring any”

“You’re an idiot, I wonder why you’re such a coward! Always keep marbles with you, I’ll give you some, so you can play if you feel like it. Hey, it’s your first day today, didn’t you bring any money to buy snacks?” I nodded to say no.

Dulal looked glum. He said, “You could’ve bought some marbles with that money, played a round with that …”

“Oh heck!” Then I said softly, “I think Ma would have given it to me if I had asked. But she was crying then.”

“But why was she crying? Did you say something nasty?”

“Oh nothing like that, it’s just that her health’s getting worse. She thinks she’s going to die. Thinks she won’t see me anymore. That’s why.”

Sir began calling out names. We were talking furtively. I wouldn’t have mentioned this, it was Dulal who suddenly asked. Besides, he was the only one I knew here, and I had only whispered it to him. He was about to say something when Sir said, “Who’s that talking?”

Several of the students turned around to look. I looked at them blankly, like a good boy. As if to say, it’s someone else who’s making trouble, not us, Sir.

After looking at us briefly, he continued calling out names. As soon as he called out the last name, “Ratan Paramanik”, I sat up, startled.

It wasn’t anyone else, was it? My heart was beating fast. He called out my name again.

“Ratan?”

As soon as I raised my hand, Sir asked, “Will you say something?”

“It’s me … I’m Ratan Biswas, Sir.”

“When did you get admitted?”

“Yesterday, at the haat.”

“Who admitted you?”

“A Sir, the one who’s dark-skinned. A bit plump. He had come to the shop for a haircut, it was that Sir.”

“Then it’s you.”

“But we are Biswas!”

“That’s fine, what else could your surname be but Paramanik? Sit down!” And saying so, he closed the register.

Excerpted with permission from The Last Bench, Adhir Biswas, translated from the Bengali by V Ramaswamy, Ekada/Westland.