Lata had taken up a job as a Bengali teacher in the Bolpur Girls’ High School, and as we moved into the small bungalow house I had bought from an old man who was moving in with his son in Calcutta. The house had two bedrooms, a study room, a dining hall, a kitchen, washrooms, two open verandas to act as the living room and a roof. It also had a small space in front between the house and the gates, where Lata could use her gardening skills. For the first time, the marble tablet on the nameplate pillar beside the gates had my name on it. It felt strange that we had to now call this unknown place home. Over time, I made some of my best memories in that house, and it was Lata whose ideas, skill and instinct made it my home.
The day we left Punya was indeed a memorable one. As the remaining servants loaded our trunks and suitcases into the car, Kakima and Kaka said their goodbyes to Lata. She promised to come home once we were settled, but the thought of seeing my house as someone else’s right in front of my eyes haunted me. So I refrained from making any such promises. Lata wiped her tears as she stood on the last stair leading up to our main gate and touched it to her forehead. To me, it wasn’t only the house I left that day. I left behind my childhood, my parents and grandparents, the festivities, the people and most importantly, memories of my youth with Lata. She drew her anchol over her head and folded her hands one last time, at the now-empty Thakur Dalan, before taking the idol of Gopal, carefully wrapped in a piece of red cloth, in her hands. Ananta looked hurt as he refused to look back at the house. To our surprise, the villagers, neighbours and even the Panchayat pradhan came to bid us farewell. It was as if, like Kakima said later, Ram was leaving Ayodhya for exile. I didn’t go back to Punya for the next five years till one of Lata’s cousins got married. Lata did, however, visit her Kakima once in a while during holidays and festivities. I can’t say how she could look beyond the emotions attached to the place so easily, perhaps because she still had a home in Punya.
The very first thing Lata did was to change the colour of the walls from white to shades of pink and blue. She handpicked the curtains, the decorations and even the bedsheets. The furniture we could bring from Punnya seemed too large for the house, but we were reluctant to replace it. Ananta moved in with us, in the spare bedroom that remained his room throughout, even when the children arrived and Lata insisted we had an additional set of rooms made on the roof, thus turning the bungalow house into two storeys like her home, later. You might think I am exaggerating, but Lata’s keen eye for details also made the children’s room look no less than the interior-decorated rooms you people spend lakhs on nowadays. Ananta got admission to Madras and decided to move there, much to Lata’s opposition. She never wanted him away from home and insisted he get admitted elsewhere, even trying to use her tears to stop him from leaving. The helpless Ananta turned to me, and I had to do the mammoth task of making his Didi understand that he was leaving for a career, like I did and would eventually come home to her, just like me.
Ananta did return with his MBBS degree in four years and had to move to Calcutta to practise for a while, staying briefly with Dada boudi, with whom our visits were reduced to courtesy trips for Bijoya Dashami. Soon after, we refused their offer to move to Calcutta and told them our choice to settle in Shantiniketan. Dada took it as a choice for me to disrespect his offer again and said, rather openly, that I was insane to risk my career trying to be a writer. Writing doesn’t pay bills; it is for the luxurious. I was more determined to prove him wrong. I will admit that there were days we struggled with Lata’s salary to get through the day, but we were happy. The lifestyle of the Zamindari I grew up in was hard to keep up with, but for a middle-class family, our household was adequate. Unlike Dada boudi, my aim in life was not luxury, a car or a business. It was about being content, and I was so, with Lata by my side through all the thick and thin.
Once Ananta had settled, he returned home to his Didi and opened his private chambers in the lane that led up to our house. Dr Bhattacharjee’s house was what our home was soon called, much to our pride, especially Lata’s. However, when Ananta refused to marry, Lata was at her wits' end. She called Bibha, and Boudi and the ladies tried hard, unitedly, to push a much resistant and reluctant Ananta into the bliss of matrimony. He, in turn, being the stubborn, pampered youngest child he was, tried to convince the ladies that he was better off being the uncle to spoil his nephews and nieces. Bibhabati sometimes came home with the children, especially after they had cousins to play with and stayed for a week or so. Those were the times I was duly ignored by Lata, who seemed to have waited for Didi's arrival to complain about us to her. Ananta and I wouldn’t protest, for she was right most of the time. It wasn’t easy to live with us, and Lata handled her teaching job and our house almost flawlessly. What Ananta and I learnt, for Lata went to work, was how to cook and sometimes even serve ourselves. Ananta would laugh and even joke about how our father or grandmother would curse us from heaven, watching men running the kitchen willingly once in a while. Ma would be proud, though, we both inferred. Once I was settled into my work, we started a family. What I could gather from my experience as a parent was that it was a rather competitive job between the two, and the balance of me being the not-so-strict parent was fulfilled by Lata’s now expert teacherly demeanour. She was the head of the department of Bengali in the school, and our daughters were enrolled there. The serious jobs of studies, marks and everything in between were her departments, while I balanced it out with weekend picnics, buying them toys and books and taking them out occasionally on short trips to Digha or Darjeeling. It was not until my fourth bestseller did we take a long holiday outside Bengal. I remember how the children fought about the location, and Ananta finally resolved the issue by putting chits with all our choices of destination in a bowl and letting Lata pick out one. Ananta accompanied us on that trip to Shimla, and finally, we stopped over at Kalka for a few days because Narayan was posted there. Our children, Charulata, Kedar, Hemlata and Diptojyoti were spoiled to no end by Ananta as well. He was their friend, philosopher and guide, like I was to him, much to my pride and Lata’s relief.
With time, my relationship with my siblings also changed. While most of us drifted away from Dada after he had no more reasons to contact or visit us, except on occasion, I grew closer to Ananta. He started feeling less intimidated by me as he grew up, and once he moved away, every time he came home, we would indulge in discussions on social causes, politics and sports, among other things. Ananta, much to my pride, was aware of the world. Bibhabati, however, even in her short visits, would always spend more time with Lata. It was only when Narayan came with her once in a while that I had someone to talk to. Unlike at Punnya, where relatives called on us and villagers were like family, we lived a rather secluded and quiet life of our own at Shantiniketan. The children loved the open spaces and quiet nature, yet sometimes I couldn’t help but lament to Lata on our quiet nights how I would have loved to show my children where we grew up and how things were. The only way they knew Punnya now was because of the annual one-day visits to Lata’s home for Bijoya Dashami. I missed home most at festivals. In Shantiniketan, we had to discontinue our extravagant pujas and rituals, but Lata continued them in her own way in our small prayer room, teaching the children to follow the same rituals we did from Rath Yatra to Durga Pujo as they grew up.
After the first few months at Shantiniketan, I had been offered to write a column in The Statesman, which I had applied for, without letting Lata know, after my first book failed. When the letter of the appointment arrived from the Calcutta office of the English news daily, Lata was disappointed. She didn’t want me to do what I didn’t like and pursue my writing for the next book. But I wanted to help her run the house and intended to start a family with her soon. All my life, I had missed father figures who would understand me. I wanted to be the father mine never was. I think, like many other things in life, Lata understood this thought of mine well, too, without it being put to words. When I firmly told her I wanted to help her out, she didn’t protest. Hence, I started my journey as a journalist, writing my first article in the newspaper on the scars the Emergency had left on us. The article was well appreciated and read, and put me in the eyes of many affluent members of some political parties. Some of them thought I was a secret Naxalite, given my birthplace was a seat of the movement, while the others thought I was simply in favour of a political party because I was against another. What many failed to understand was that as a journalist, the very first thing I reported was a fact-based event that had nothing to do with my political opinions. But it started off my career as a known name, for many readers of the Daily, who continue to write to me on events and topics I should cover for my next guest column.
Lata had always been an integral part of my process as she continued to read every single line I ever wrote, criticise them rationally and push me to do better. It was her constant persuasion that gave me the confidence to land in Calcutta one day, manuscript in hand and offer it to the leading publishers. After roaming for a week from publisher to publisher, lying to Dada that I was there for the maturity of an investment, I finally had the good news I had waited for. As my youngest nephew handed over the telephone to me, the voice on the other side had good news. My novel was liked by the editor, who in turn talked to the publishing house owner. They were ready to buy my first novel and publish it. I remember the look on Dada’s face when I handed over my signed contract to him. His expression changed from shocked to proud as he patted my back, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Baba would have done the same. Boudi brought sweets, and I rang up Lata immediately with the good news. Ananta snatched the phone from her and insisted that I treat them to a theatre or bioscope in Calcutta sometime soon. Lata could barely speak, but as Ananta spoke to me, I could hear her blowing the conch shell in the prayer room, and I smiled into the phone.
The day my book was published, we were at the publisher’s bookstore on College Street, with our close friends and family and some eminent book reviewers and journalists. Though intimidated at first, for I knew some of them to be harsh critics, I had opened the brown cover wrapping the new book, to reveal its title and without any hindrance, I handed over the first copy to a much surprised and proud Lata. Her eyes were teary as she took the book in her hand, as they trembled a little, and she opened the first page to see that it was dedicated “To the Protagonist of My Story, My First Reader.” And thus began, truly, this journey to reach your mind and heart with my words.
