Harbart Read online

  Every revolutionary cadre should take the resolve to avenge the heroic martyrs. These butchers are enemies of the Indian people, enemies of progress and lackeys of foreigners. The Indian people will not be liberated until these butchers are liquidated.

  Binu heard the call and sprang to action. Some nights he wouldn’t come home. Dhanna-dada’s neighbourhood, though, was a completely Congress one. Even if a few red drops remained, they were barely visible.

  And Barilal was an informer.

  One day, Binu sent Harbart with quite a lot of money, and a receipt book printed with pictures of Mao Tse-Tung and Lin Pao, to be delivered to one Bijoy in the Lake Market area. Bijoy then took him to Kalighat, to a spot behind the Greek Church. There, a man wearing glasses, stubble-chinned and sunken-cheeked, embraced Harbart and said, “Congratulations, comrade! Binu has told me a lot about you. We need more loyal friends like you. Have some tea.”

  On the way back, two boys helped him negotiate the Manohorpukur crossing. Somewhere, somewhere close, a bomb exploded.

  Harbart never came to know that in 1971, on the morning of May 9, when Bijoy was hiding in Baranagar, when Bijoy crept out to buy some food, when Bijoy was standing at a small shop in the market, then Bijoy was shot dead by the police.

  Binu had not been back home for a long spell. Dhanna-dada sent off a letter to Krishnalal, Binu’s father.

  Krishnalal wrote back:

  Binu is a young man now. He knows what he is doing. And he is not alone in this, for there are many others like him who too have arrived at such knowledge and such a decision. Therefore, there is no question at all of my asking him to stop. Binu’s mother, too, entertains an agreement with my opinion. However, I understand that this is posing a difficulty for the household. So I am thinking of other arrangements. But I will have to request time until I can be in Calcutta again.

  I hope Baba and Ma are well.

  To Harbart and to your sons, my …

  But Krishnalal did not have to make other arrangements, after all.

  One night, on Elgin Road, on the walls of the ship-shaped house, when three boys were using a stencil to paint the face of Mao Zedong, then one of the men sleeping on the pavement on the other side of the street removed the sheet from his face and fired. One boy, standing on the shoulders of the other two, was painting. That boy fell. The other two tried to drag him away. But the air grew thick with the sound of running feet, the air grew shrill with the sound of blowing whistles. At the request of the wounded boy, the other two left him and fled. The wounded boy tried to drag himself along on his belly, scraping himself along by his elbows.

  A few yards. At most.

  The pavement was streaked with blood.

  Then he lost consciousness.

  Sub-Inspector Santosh realized: Prize catch! If Binoy could be helped to live, he would be helped to spill a lot of beans. So, a cabin at PG Hospital. A doctor.

  “The lungs are punctured. Nothing to be done. Any time. Tell the family if you know them.”

  The family was told. Dhanna-dada sent a wire to Krishnalal. Harbart spent all his time at hospital. Even though he had lost most of his blood between the pavement and the floor of the police van, an indomitable life-force kept Binu alive for another forty-eight hours.

  Krishnalal arrived.

  In the meantime, the police had ransacked Binu’s room, overturned the mattress, upturned the books—but found nothing. Long before this, acting upon Binu’s instructions, Harbart had carried up to his top-terrace copies of The Patriot and The Southern Country; a Bengali manual on guerrilla warfare printed in Chattogram; recipes for Molotov cocktails painstakingly cut out of the Tricontinental, a Cuban magazine; The Red Book; some letters. And burnt them all. Little by little, bit by bit. To keep the smoke to a minimum.

  No one had noticed a thing.

  At the hospital, Professor Prafullakanti, Krishnalal’s friend, took him down for a cup of tea, when in a sudden burst of benevolence, one of the two armed guards outside Binu’s door told Harbart, “Go in, he’s delirious. Now, where did that damn father of his go?”

  Harbart went in. To Binu. A blanket drawn up to his chest. An upside-down bottle, with a rubber tube ending in his arm. And something else, although Harbart couldn’t see that. From under the blanket, near his feet, a chain. Looped around the iron bed-leg twice and then secured with a lock. Once a young man had escaped despite the traction-clamp-contraption tight around his neck. Hence, now this more foolproof arrangement.

  Binu’s eyes were closed but his lips were moving. And what had sounded like delirium to the policemen was in fact lines from a poem by Barasat martyr Samir Mitra, remembered with great thought and uttered—not necessarily recited—with great effort …

  I can see

  Before my eyes, this forever-familiar world

  Changing, changing,

  (“Changing,” Binu said, “changing, changing.” Then the next few words had been remembered, then something like a cough had rattled him, then at the edge of his lips drops of blood had flecked the froth-foam that burbled, then Harbart reached for the red-dotted towel near his pillow, then the nurse rushed in, then the nurse wiped Binu’s mouth, then the nurse rushed out of the room.)

  Ravaged, ruined, and ransacked, dust to dust

  The old days fall.

  A storm is coming.

  (“Coming,” Binu said, “coming, coming.” Then opened wide open his eyes. Then Harbart leaned in, leaned closer. Then Harbart’s eyes were full of tears. Then Binu’s eyes looked left and right and here and there. Then Binu hadn’t been looking for anyone—he had been looking to see if there were any policemen in the room.)

  “Yes, Binu, what is it?”

  “Harbart-kaka, prayer room, diary … Harbart … kaka … diary … behind Kali … diary …” Then Binu stared. At nothing. People don’t usually stare that way. Not hoping to see anything, but staring anyway.

  The doctor came in. Told Harbart to step aside. The police. The nurse.

  Expired.

  Then, via police protocol and the morgue, to the crematorium. Binu’s body, slid into the electric furnace. So late at night, but so many policemen still on guard. His eyes fixed on the furnace, Krishna-dada murmuring.

  Above the furnace door, someone had scrawled, “Police dog, Debi Roy, Beware!—CPI(ML).”

  A certain intellectual police officer told a certain subordinate, “Look, look, a Naxal father, burning his son and chanting his prayers.”

  Harbart heard those words and moved closer to Krishna-dada. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Krishna-dada was reciting:

  Stormraisers every one, storm-hearted they,

  Writ in the blood of our foreign foes,

  In bullets and guns and bombs and blows

  Their lives and stories thrill us even today.

  Then, Binu was burning then.

  *

  Since then, the stinking and stagnant and wholly insignificant period that came to pass was so wearisome that we would be hard put to find its parallel in the annals of history. The sliver of the city in which Harbart lived had remained untouched by time from time immemorial but then the old houses were riven apart by shouting and screaming, and then shackled back together by walls and doors built up in the unlikeliest of places. And, yes, a change of taste had most certainly been provided by the developers who tore down some of those ancient homes and replaced them with the newfangled multi-storied. Then, by the video shop—Gyanobaan and Buddhimaan had been the first to take the revolutionary step of setting it up. There was a roll shop too, at the mouth of the lane. The main road had once been lined with tall trees whose soft shadows would fall upon the double-decker buses like a cool caress. Now the trees were gone. Now, only the frantic frenzy of traffic. The pushcart men had a favorite resting spot in the neighborhood—that was gone. Harbart remembered, one nig
ht there’d been an earthquake. The bundle of bed linen hanging from the roof of the second-floor veranda—swinging like a pendulum. One of the old pushcart men started shouting “Bhuidola, bhuidola!” in terror, trying to warn his sleeping friends. Yet, the next morning, on that decadent street, yesterday’s gamblers and yesternight’s drunks walking bleary-eyed to the market, the clumps of hair on the floor of the saloon, the rattle of the rickshaws—which man was man enough to tell from all this that just the night before this place had been rocked by an earthquake, a small one but still?

  There had been a few elections, in those in-between years. Not that Harbart gave a damn. He never voted. Every election day, he refused to step out of the house and spent all day perched high on the top-terrace. In tribute to Binu.

  Even though he could no longer remember much about him.

  *

  One afternoon, after the gift of the Ulster overcoat and the ugly thrashing from his nephews that followed, Harbart was up on the top-terrace, fast asleep. Krishna-dada was visiting Calcutta, then. After Binu died, he’d written off his share of the house to Dhanna-dada and gone away. Binu’s mother had died about five years after her son. So Krishna-dada was back after almost thirteen–fourteen years. Just as all the other times before, this time too Krishna-dada took Harbart to the Hawker’s Corner and bought him two dhutis and two full shirts.

  New dhuti and new shirt-clad Harbart was asleep. Streaks of sunlight shone through strands of feathery white clouds. A gentle breeze blew, like a moist breath upon the skin.

  And Harbart dreamed a dream:

  What revelry is this, that you don a human part

  Are they, then, so close to your heart?

  Nagendrabala Mustafi

  Enormous, endless, a curtain of glass. On this side, running along its length, a broken-battered dirt track. On that side, at the base of a golden mountain, a vast cave from whose ceiling hang slivers of stone, like a crystal chandelier, from whose floor rise rivulets of rock—Harbart can hear Binu’s voice clearly—the ones that hang from the roof are stalactites, the ones that rise from the ground are stalagmites—that’s right, Binu had pointed them out in a book. Then the mountain comes to an end. Walking on, walking on and on. Sometimes, on the other side of the glass, water. Sometimes, sky. The light is fading. It’s such a long way back. Back where? As soon as this fear touches his heart, a cloud of crows collects on the other side. Pecking. Flapping. But making no sound.

  Crow blood and crow shit slowly smear-soil the glass.

  Then, through a gap in the crow-cumulus, Harbart sees Binu.

  The middle of the 1980s—after Binu’s death, this is the first of Binu.

  Binu standing still. Binu saying something. Waves of crows wash over him, hide him from view. At the foot of the glass, on the other side, crow corpses fall and fester. Binu comes closer. Binu smiles. Harbart smiles back. Waves. The words, Binu’s words, echoing on this side, stained with the strains of a song from a distant speaker …

  “Harbart-kaka, prayer room, diary … Harbart … kaka … diary behind Kali’s picture … diary …”

  Binu is close to the glass. Binu is staring. People don’t usually stare that way. Not hoping to see anything, but staring anyway.

  Harbart sat up with a start. Swiped his shirt cuff across his mouth and wiped away the dream-dribble. Raised his sleepy eyes to the sky and saw a rainbow—saw what looked like people walking over that rainbow. The sound of the heart-train thundering. The sound of the city blundering about.

  Harbart came down. Not to the prayer room. But straight to the second-floor veranda. Jyathaima was sitting on a mat. Krishna-dada, Dhanna-dada, and Dhanna-boudi were drinking tea. Dhanna was about to say something when Harbart screamed: “Jyathaima! I had a dream! Binu came. He said …”

  (Then he was confused. But then he remembered, shifting and faint …)

  Krishna-dada smiled. “You saw Binu in a dream?”

  Then he remembered everything.

  “See? How could I see? So many crows I could barely see. Binu, Binu said—come, come with me, Jyathaima …”

  “Calm down,” Dhanna-dada said, “then tell us. It’s easy to get confused. A dream, after all!”

  “He said, in Jyathaima’s prayer room, behind the Kali picture” (Harbart touched his forehead in respect), “behind it is Binu’s diary.”

  Jyathaima tried to rise from the mat: “Here, help me up. Mother, oh my knees, oh mother mine.”

  Harbart remembered it clearly, Jyathaima, hobbling in front, then Harbart, then Dhanna-dada and boudi, and finally Krishna-dada climbing up the barely lit stairs. Then, the door of the prayer room was unbolted. The dim light was switched on. The picture of Kali hanging almost in the middle of the wall. Jyathaima first bowed her head before the goddess, then gripped the lower edge of the picture and tugged. A lizard darted out from behind it, ran up across the wall. “Dhanna, pull,” Jyathaima said, “She’s so heavy—how I can lift her alone?”

  A large picture of Kali, set in a heavy frame.

  They pulled at the lower edge, but nothing happened.

  “If there was something, it should have fallen out by now.”

  “Why don’t the lot of you just bring her down?” Jyathaima said, “Then see if there’s anything behind her.”

  They saw it, as soon as they brought her down and turned her around. Screwed to the wooden frame, covered in cobwebs and dust—a small diary.

  “Peeyu kahaan!” screamed a toothless mouth downstairs, “Peeyu kahaan!”

  “Oh! So many, so many crows! Pecking and pecking the glass from this side, that side. Flapping their wings. And in the middle of all that, someone singing! Binu smiling nonstop. I couldn’t hear a thing. Then, like a voice in an empty room … I heard him clearly … he spoke—and then he died again just like that other time.”

  Harbart could sense it. He would have to charge-barrage now. Binu had had his time. It was Harbart’s time now. He would have to produce pandemonium—rip apart everything, turn everything upside down until the entire universe reeled in the dance of devastation.

  Once upon a time, this land was home to many sages who were spirit-knowledge masters. We have heard that, in the present time too, elsewhere in the world too, many spirit-knowledge masters have been born. But their opinions are different from those of our sages. According to our sages, when one has become a ghost, then that ghost may be called or attracted, and that even the ghosts of gods and goddesses may be so called or attracted … We have heard that the present-day spirit-knowledge masters can, or indeed do, summon any dead person; in fact, one of them is rumored to have called the soul of the Buddha, no less.

  —Mysteries of the Afterlife

  With a sputter in my chest and a flutter in my breast, I drew closer to the window, I had but risen from my bed a moment ago—when my glance fell low upon the floor and I saw—to my astonishment—five or seven freshly severed human heads rolling about the room. Their monstrous mocking smiles—their furious frowning eyebrows—their lick-lolling tongues aroused in my heart a terror so extreme—I stood there, frozen like a statue—not daring to take even a single step more. The very next instant there came another sky-splitting scream.

  —The Horribly Haunted Circus

  “Peeyu kahaan! Peeyu kahaan!”

  *

  Krishna-dada went back home, and Harbart told Jyathaima that he’d be using the downstairs room for his business.

  Five

  If you do not offer this great sacrifice

  Our India shall never arise, never arise

  —Dwarakanath Gangopadhyay

  It was Dhanna who told the whole neighborhood about Harbart’s dream-discovery of Binu’s diary. When Dhanna told them, sitting at the Corporation park one Sunday evening, Barilal, Khettra, Gobi, Unjey, Hartal, and the other elders were stunned.

  Gobi, the alcoholic, turned his b
loodshot eyes to the waters of the Corporation pond, and said pensively, “Actually, you know what, it’s all the Mother’s doing. Who knows whose head she’ll tap with a divine finger. How else could our Harbart pull off such a miracle?”

  “Many people say that, in Tarapith, there’s a holy man’s grave. If you pour a whole bottle of booze on it, you get visions of the future, see things.”

  “No need to go so far. Go, just go to Ghutiari Sharif. See what goes on there.”

  “Must go see Harbart at once,” Barilal said, “I’d like to hear it all for myself.”

  Barilal’s real reason for wanting to visit Harbart was different. His brother Gama had died last year, died of liver-rot caused by too much drinking. Died, dead, alright, but ever since then, today this one had fever, tomorrow that one had diarrhea, day-after some other one failed an exam … Perhaps Harbart could offer a clue?

  A few of the neighborhood boys had been in Harbart’s room, then.

  By then, the steel of Harbart’s resolve had acquired its new edge.

  He stared, unblinking, at Barilal for a few moments. Then said: “A year ago, no?”

  “Yes, yes, eleven months. We did all the prayers and rest-in-peace rites, then. And soon, when it’s a full year, we’ll do them again.”

  “All that’s well and good, but the poor thing’s dying without water.”

  “Who?”

  “Who else? The champa tree, my dear, the champa tree.”

  The words struck a chill in Barilal’s heart. The terrace garden had been Gama’s only passion—and there, in a wooden box, he had indeed planted a champa tree. That was true.

  And from his top-terrace, Harbart had seen Gama tending the potted plants all evening, puttering with their soil, watering them.

  He had also seen, more recently, that champa tree drying to its death.

  Wanting to rush back home, Barilal stood up. And Harbart dealt his masterstroke.

  “If you see it’s dead, throw it away and plant a new one in the rains. If it lives, then no more to be said. Just a few days of watering, and you’ll know one way or the other.”