Shazadpur,
September 5, 1894
After spending a long time on the boat, it feels wonderful to have suddenly arrived at the Shazadpur house. Light and air streams in unrestrained through the large windows and doors — wherever I look, I see green branches of trees and hear bird call. The moment I step out to the southern verandah, all the veins of my brain fill with the fragrance of Kamini flowers. All of a sudden I realize a hunger lurked within me for an expansive sky — being here has fulfilled it completely.
I am the sole master of four large rooms — I sit with all the doors open. The inspiration and motivation that I receive here to write is unlike that in any other place. A living essence of the outside world enters me unhindered through the open doors — the light and the sky and the air and the sounds and the smells and the waves of green mingle with the passions of my mind and create innumerable stories. The afternoons here, in particular, have a deep spell. The sun’s heat, the silence, the quiet, calls of birds, especially the crow’s and an extended period of leisure make me pensive and eager.
I don’t know why I have a feeling that Arabian stories are made of afternoons like these brimming with golden sunshine. Those Persian and Arabian lands of Damascus, Samarkand, Bukhara…those grape clusters, rose gardens, the nightingale’s songs, Shiraz wines, desert paths, rows of camels, horse-riding wayfarers, a clear source of water amidst a thick curtain of date trees…cities with narrow royal lanes festooned with awnings, a shopkeeper wearing a turban and comfortable, loose-fitting clothes — selling melons and mewa at the end of the street…a massive royal palace by the roadside with incense smell wafting out of it, a huge mattress covered with kimkhwāb placed by the window…Amina, Zubeidi and Sufi in zari footwear, wide pajamas and colourful corsets as they inhale smoke rising off a curled hubble-bubble near their feet, at the door, a habshi dressed in flashy clothes stands guard…and in this mysterious, unfamiliar faraway land, in a wealth-filled, spectacular yet eerie royal palace, thousands of stories — possible and impossible — are being created out of the laughter and tears, hopes and anxieties of humans.
These afternoons I spend in Shazadpur are fabled afternoons. I remember writing the story “Postmaster” sitting at the table fully engrossed right at this hour. As I wrote, the light around me, the breeze and the shivering tree branches all added their language to it. There are few joys that come close to creating something close to one’s heart by being immersed in one’s surroundings. This morning I became inclined to write something on limericks and could become thoroughly involved in it, which brought me immense delight. Like the world of clouds, limericks make for a free country unbounded by rules and laws. Unfortunately, the land that rules and laws dominate is never far behind to follow one. As I wrote, a sudden insurrection of officials stormed in, blowing to dust my land of clouds.
When that ended, it was time to eat. There’s nothing more sloth-inducing than eating a full meal in the afternoon. It overwhelms one’s imagination and the spirit’s higher callings. Bengalis are unable to enjoy the deep intrinsic beauty of an afternoon because of their predilection to eat sumptuous meals at that time and follow that by closing the door to smoke on tobacco and slide into a satiating slumber. This is what makes them hale and hearty. But nowhere do quiet, desolate afternoons spread over in the sweeping, silent manner in which they do over Bengal’s uniformly limitless, plain crop fields.
Afternoons like these have haunted me since childhood. Back then, no one used to be in the outer third-storey quarters; I alone sat in the angular couch with the door wide open and a warm breeze blowing in. My entire day went by in the company of vivid imagination and unspeakable desires.
y to imagine my mother’s face when I tell her over the phone that I’m coming home. When I tell her I’m coming home for Durga Puja. I try to imagine her face during every subsequent transatlantic conversation we have. I grapple to picture the contours of her face as we talk — has it grown a wee bit more cherubic ever since I told her I’m coming home? I ask her what she’s doing whenever I call her. She says she’s drinking her morning tea and I try to discern a smile in her voice, to distinguish it from the “tea drinking” reports she gave me every day until she learned about my visit. When she tells me she has asked for help to spruce things up around the house before I get there, I try to decipher the braille of her expression as she made that appeal. I trace impressions of jaws widening, eyes brimming up with sleepless excitement. We could Skype, we both have the tools, but we mostly talk over the phone. She knows how to see me through my voice, and the oceanic gulf that has kept us apart for the nine years since I got married enables me to see her the same way — through her quivers and monotones, her heaving sighs and squeals. Sometimes our phone calls trade in gossips and passionate debates. She cracks jokes on others. And on the government of the day. When this happens, I’m relieved in the knowledge that the weight of wrinkles haven’t yet buried that impish grin on her face. I see that, too. In the waves of her trills.
Bhaswati Ghosh 