Shining Hero Read online

  The young bridegroom, Adhiratha, was twenty-seven years old and a company car driver. ‘He even has a pension,’ her father told Dolly. ‘You are very lucky for you will be provided for all your life. Even after he retires. You will not be poor when you are old like your mother and me.’

  ‘In fact we need a daughter with such a husband or how will we survive in our old age?’ said Dolly’s mother.

  Dolly laughed at the thought of caring for her parents, not being able to imagine such a role reversal.

  ‘He is everything nice,’ said Dolly’s mother, showing her daughter a photo of Adhiratha. She was happy to see the girl smiling again.

  The picture showed a pleasant-looking young man with a thin face, a large moustache and glasses.

  ‘He looks clever,’ said Dolly. She was quite excited now, longing to meet the man, with whom she thought she had fallen in love already. As a Hindu wife-to-be, and therefore required to respect the husband, as was the tradition she did not use his name even in her mind.

  ‘He has a sensitive face,’ she thought and the ‘He’ to which she referred was now the central person of her life. All other ‘he’s’ she thought, must go by some other name from this day on.

  Adhiratha looked like the kind of person who would appreciate education and Dolly visualised the two of them discussing books together, or even both attending night school. After all he would not be wearing glasses if he was not an intellectual.

  If Dolly had known then the real reason for the glasses, would her parents have continued to insist on the marriage? Would Dolly have felt afraid?

  Dolly fell wildly in love with Adhiratha the moment she set eyes on him.

  ‘How glad I am,’ she thought after their wedding, as they sat together in a proper electric-lit room to eat their meal. The company bungalow was a pukka stone and mortar affair with running water and glass in the windows.

  They could not stop smiling at each other across the table. Sometimes before the meal was eaten, with only a smile for a signal, the two of them would leap up, overturning chairs, spilling misti and rush for their bed with its new sheet and dunlopillo mattress that had been kept wrapped in its cellophane for protection.

  In bed they would lie naked, sweating under the slow turning fan, and explore each other’s beautiful bodies all over again. Adhiratha would bury his face in Dolly’s thick black hair that smelled of the spices she had been cooking. He would kiss the softness of her neck and whisper, ‘I love you, Dolly, I love you Dolly, I love you Dolly.’

  He went to work each day wearing his smart chauffeur cap and a pristine white uniform with the company logo embroidered on the pocket that had been lovingly starched and pressed by his little new wife.

  After he had gone Dolly would sing as she dusted her house, washed up the dishes, and swept her yard. She remembered how she had quarrelled with her parents when they had tried to arrange her marriage but now she was so happy. Her heart sang with joy because she loved Adhiratha so much and because everything she wanted in the world had been given to her. A hundred times a day, as she swept and polished their bungalow and made special delicious things for her husband’s evening meal, Dolly would say to herself, ‘How lucky my parents insisted I got married to Adhiratha.’ They even had a little garden and Dolly would pick hibiscus, zinnias and canna lilies and arrange them in a jug, then blush with delight when Adhiratha came home and praised her artistry.

  Dolly was invited to continue her education at the company school and when term began, each day she would walk across the compound to her class, crossing shady yards, under trees planted by the company, past beds of flowers. There she revelled in the company of girls of her own age and she and her friends would sometimes get a chance to go to the bioscope, then later imitate the accents and behaviour of Ashok Kumar, or swank around pretending to be Meena Kumari.

  But no matter how much studying she did, nor how much fun she had with her friends in the day, when Adhiratha got home in the evening she was always there, ready with his evening meal. Her mother had taught her to cook. Her chupatties puffed out like footballs, her parathas were as thin and fine as silk, her kheers and paish the best on the company compound. When Adhiratha invited fellow workers to a meal they would marvel that so young a wife should turn out to be such a marvellous cook. Pulling her sari over her head in deference, she would serve out the food for them, while the young men teased her until she blushed. ‘Hey, Dolly, those chupatties will float up like balloons if you make them any lighter.’ ‘Hey, Dolly. I think I will throw away my own wife and take you home with me instead so that I can eat sag like you make every day.’

  ‘No you won’t, you swine,’ Adhiratha would josh back. ‘She’s mine. She’s the best thing in my life and I’m not giving her up for anyone.’

  ‘But when are you starting the baby?’ Dolly’s mother kept asking and patted Dolly’s stomach, which sounded hollowly empty.

  ‘We are waiting for a year. Till I take my exams,’ Dolly told her parents.

  ‘How modern,’ said the father. ‘Let us hope that the gods will not take offence.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dolly was startled.

  ‘They give us children when they decide. It is not up to you to make such decisions.’ He spoke fiercely. ‘Exams are not an excuse for delaying children.’

  ‘Oh, Baba, you don’t know anything,’ laughed the modern Dolly, amused by her parents’ silly superstitious and old-fashioned attitudes. ‘These days women don’t just have to fill the house with babies like they did when you and Ma were young.’

  ‘But why take such risks?’ said the mother, trying to soothe the situation. ‘What difference will it make? Have the baby and when it comes, God will look after you. And look after the baby.’

  ‘I plan to look after my baby, myself,’ said the blasphemous, proud Dolly.

  Soon after their marriage it was the time of the Durga Puja.

  Goddess Durga is the giver of rice. She is the mother. But she is also yellow and terrible. She is Devi, one of the female aspects of the Absolute, that infinite, inert and creative Silence. Her serene and aloof expression does not change as she slays the demon who is trying to destroy the world. She shows no trace of rage or emotion because, for her, the deed, the Cosmos and her self are only illusions, only parts of the Cosmic dream. She rides a lion, holds weapons in her many arms, is cool as a dream and calm as an untroubled river. She is the inaccessible, the inevitable, for she knows that all this is an illusion. All this is Maya. And Durga is responsible for the illusion, she is the illusion and she is only playing at creation. Creation is the play of the gods, nothing to be really taken seriously. That is what her calm face says.

  Each year great images are made of her all over Bengal. Wood armatures fifteen feet high are wrapped with straw, then covered with clay, which is modelled into the smallest detail. Lips rich with scarlet gloss, eyelids dark with lamp khol, fingernails manicured with crimson lacquer, her tiny waist belted in gold, her human hair glossed with resin. Her tinsel-trimmed sari glitters and her cut-glass jewels sparkle.

  The puja lasts for four days, during which the images, which have taken so many months to sculpt, are worshipped by the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate, who present the goddesses with flowers, fruit, garlands and sweets. For Durga is very powerful and has it in her power to grant life to the dying, health to the sick, children to the infertile and husbands to the hideous. There is no one so rich and privileged that they never need her help.

  There was much competition, at Durga Puja, among neighbourhoods and companies, but year after year Adhiratha’s employers always came out with the most beautiful image of the goddess and the most impressive shrine. The company shrine was an exact replica of a Hindu temple and as large. It was made of cotton material stretched over a bamboo frame which in the dark glowed with the light of a thousand multi-coloured electric bulbs. It was painted so realistically that people who saw it from a distance thought a new temple of brick and
stone had sprung up overnight.

  On the first Durga Puja after her marriage, Dolly made a dish of the milky sweets called shandesh. They were the shape of little fishes and she decorated them with foil of purest gold. When they were ready she put on her best sari and decorated her forehead with scarlet kumkum, then she walked across the compound to the shrine. There, many other people were making offerings to Durga. Some were prostrate on the ground before the goddess. Even the directors of this company had come with gifts for their goddess, for the company was thriving.

  Dolly put the plate at the feet of the austere towering image, then, placing her palms together, knelt and bowed till her head touched the ground and said, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

  After the period of worship was over, Adhiratha was one of those given the honour of carrying the goddess to the holy river, where she would be ritually immersed. People cried out Durga’s praises as the gigantic figure, with her calm face and ornate attire, was jogged along the roads. Some people ran ahead of the procession and threw themselves in the goddess’s path as though she was the Juggernaut and they wished to be crushed to death by her.

  At the river other Durgas were arriving, though none as large and lovely as that which Dolly’s new young husband and the other men were carrying.

  The company had two long boats waiting, boards lashed between them to form a platform for the statue. It was hauled onto this, then held in place and steadied with poles and ropes.

  Dolly and Adhiratha stood on the bank watching while the boat was punted to the centre of the river which was already bobbing with a hundred little boats and rafts carrying Durgas of every size.

  There, with the lookers-on ululating and shouting holy praises, the goddess was tipped into the river. As she sank, people scooped up handfuls of water, that had become further blessed by contact with the deity, and threw it over their heads. And as the goddess disappeared from sight, men filled their mouths with petrol and, setting fire to it with cigarette lighters, blew great arcs of flame over the water.

  Firecrackers were hurled from the banks and bridges. Little clay lamps burning oil were set bobbing away on the water like luminous ducklings. For a while the whole bubbling river was spattered with bursts and crackles of fire and the wild cries of the people calling out to the vanishing goddess.

  Dolly took her exams and did well. She had been married for a year. In the evening when Adhiratha got home he told her, ‘They have promoted me. I am to become head driver and will get a raise of a hundred and fifty rupees a month.’

  Dolly put her arms round him and hugged. She felt so happy she could not speak. Then she whispered something.

  ‘What? I couldn’t hear.’ Adhiratha was teasing her. Although he had not heard, he knew quite well what she had said.

  Her eyes down and whispering a little louder, she said, ‘We can start our family this year.’

  ‘Did you ask for Durga’s blessing?’ he asked, laughing, as he hung his chauffeur’s hat on the rack. His wife’s devotion to Durga always amused him. ‘It’s only a statue,’ he would say. ‘I’m the one who does all the hard work, while she just stands there. It’s me you should be thanking.’

  ‘Oh, you,’ Dolly chided. ‘You must not talk like that about the goddess. She might put a curse on us.’

  That night Adhiratha made love to her without using a condom and afterwards they laughed and embraced each other, certain that the baby was already made.

  After three months when Dolly had still not become pregnant, the first little flicker of worry began to set in. Dolly, only half joking, told Adhiratha, ‘I said you should not have spoken disrespectfully about the goddess.’

  ‘Silly girl,’ said Adhiratha. ‘It is early days. Look how well everything is turning out for us.’ His new job had earned them a bigger bungalow and the allowance for a couple of servants. There was only one little trouble to shade their lives – Adhiratha’s eyes often ached.

  He had always had trouble with his eyes and his glasses were not a sign that he was educated or particularly literate as Dolly had presumed from looking at his photo. He had worn them since childhood.

  ‘Don’t keep rubbing them,’ Dolly urged and made eye-washes for him out of herbs and spices, remedies that the people in the village used when they could not afford a doctor.

  Dolly woke in the night sometimes, to hear him moaning softly. She would gently massage his forehead with her thumbs till the pain ebbed away.

  ‘You have to see the doctor,’ she demanded and went on insisting in spite of his protests.

  ‘I am a driver. If this company finds out that I have problems with my sight they may sack me.’ He tried to soothe her, ‘My eyes have given trouble all my life. I know how to cope with it,’ but she would not be calmed. She felt sure his eyes were getting worse.

  In the end, at her insistence, and with many misgivings, he agreed.

  The company doctor gave Adhiratha painkillers and made an appointment for him to see a specialist.

  Dolly had still not conceived a child by the third Durga Puja after their marriage. She was getting worried, no longer soothed by Adhiratha’s assurance that ‘it’s early days’. Her mother had been pregnant with her third child at this stage. Dolly felt ashamed to go and visit her parents these days.

  ‘What is the matter with you? Are you infertile or something?’ Dolly’s usually gentle mother became quite angry at the idea. And worried. Would Adhiratha’s family take revenge on her daughter, if they began to think she was infertile? There were stories of such failed brides having kerosene thrown over them then being set alight by the parents-in-law.

  At this year’s Durga Puja, Dolly prostrated herself before the haughty goddess and instead of saying, ‘thank you’ said, ‘please, please, please’. She rose at last, speckled with grit from the ground, having only implored, ‘Make me a baby, make my husband’s eyes better.’

  The specialist diagnosed Adhiratha’s problem as glaucoma, a build-up of fluid within the eyeball. He gave the young chauffeur drops to put in his eyes that might, over time, reduce the pressure.

  ‘How much time?’ asked Adhiratha.

  ‘One or two years. This medicine retracts the pupils, affecting your sight, so you must not drive a car for a couple of hours after application.’ Adhiratha had to get up two hours earlier each morning to get rid of the effects of the medicine in time for his day’s work and he lived in a constant state of anxiety in case he was called upon for emergency jobs, when his vision was still blurred.

  ‘It is preying on your mind, my husband,’ Dolly said. ‘Isn’t there another job the company can give you that does not need good sight?’ Secretly she began to think that part of the reason for her failing to conceive was because her husband was so worried and tired.

  Six months later Adhiratha crashed a company car.

  ‘We are sorry to see you go,’ said the manager. ‘You have been an excellent driver.’

  ‘Is there no other job you can give me?’ pleaded Adhiratha.

  The man bowed his head and looked sad. ‘If this had happened a year ago, yes, we might have found some place for you in the packing department. But last year we made a loss. We are getting rid of staff. I am so sorry, Adhiratha, but there is nothing I can offer you.’

  Adhiratha was given a farewell party and a lump sum.

  Dolly cried the day she and Adhiratha had to leave their bungalow in the company compound. She moved in with her parents while Adhiratha dossed down with friends and hunted for a place to live that they could afford. Because he had only been working for the company for five years, although they had been as generous as they could, the severance payment was not enough for him to rent anything better than a short-term lease of a room in the bustee.

  ‘It’s home, though,’ he told Dolly when she arrived to join him. ‘And knowing you, you’ll make it nice.’

  Dolly cried again when she saw the sordid room.

  ‘I’ll get a job, don’t worry, don’t be afrai
d,’ Adhiratha tried to reassure her, but she could hear the fear in his voice too.

  Adhiratha had no skills apart from driving and for a while worked as a taxi driver. But a smashed taxi put a stop to that.

  ‘Don’t worry, my darling,’ soothed Dolly. ‘We still have a little money left, and something is sure to turn up.’ By now he had to accept that his driving days were over. No longer treated by the free medical service of the company and without enough money to pay for the expensive drugs, his eyes rapidly deteriorated. He could hardly see six feet ahead of him. And what work can an almost blind man find in a city with so much unemployment?

  ‘Don’t be sad, darling husband,’ sobbed Dolly. ‘I have got my school cert so I should be able to get a job while you are looking for something. I might become a hotel receptionist.’ She felt quite excited at the idea and visualised herself seated behind a smart desk, wearing a uniform, and meeting all kinds of interesting people.

  But when she went out in response to adverts in the Statesman she found that she was competing for humble jobs with people much more qualified than she was. Men and women who had left university with first-class degrees were clamouring to become shop assistants, bus conductors, railway clerks and company secretaries. Dolly didn’t stand a chance.

  After six months the severance payment was nearly finished. Soon, not only would they have nowhere to live, they would have nothing to eat either.

  ‘We will have to go to the village and live with your parents,’ wept Dolly.

  Adhiratha shivered at the idea. ‘They have ten other children and are trying so desperately to raise enough money for the dowries so that my two sisters can marry. If there is no work in the city there is certainly none in the village. How can we possibly inflict ourselves upon them?’ He felt sick with shame.

  Next day Dolly went back to the company where she and Adhiratha had once been so happy. She went from bungalow to bungalow offering to do the washing for the families there. At the end of the day she had the promise of five households of washing.