Tales of Bengal

Front matter

AN EASTERN LIBRARY

No. I

TALES OF BENGAL

Introduction

INTRODUCTION.

he two sisters from whose work a selection is now translated and offered to the English-reading public are daughters of Babu Ramananda Chatterjee, the well-known publicist. He edits Prabasi, a Bengali monthly, and The Modern Review, an English one. Both are very influential, the latter being the most widely read of all Indian monthlies. This influence has come to him after a long struggle, in which he has shown uncompromising independence. Sprung from a family of Sanskrit professors and priests, his own generation, his cousins and brothers, first broke through their tradition of aloofness, and learned English. Ramananda Babu himself discarded the brahminical thread more than thirty years ago, when he joined the Brahmo Samaj. For many years he was a College professor, first in Calcutta, then in Allahabad. But he was restive under the educational system of Indian universities and his relations with governing bodies were often strained. He has continued to have strained relations with all governing bodies. Calcutta University has found in him a sleepless critic, who has been largely responsible for the public's loss of confidence in that learned body. Nor can Government have faced any more watchful foe. Without any of the elaborate machinery for collecting news which our great Western journals have at their disposal, he has managed, year after year, to gather in, month by month, often from the most inaccessible sources, items which have served him in his warfare. One never knows what is going to find its way next into the pages of The Modern Review. Yet he cannot be dismissed as an extremist. He has the cross-bench type of mind; and, if the political party that is in the ascendency today in India should win their aims, it is hard to see how they could use Ramananda Chatterjee. But whether they used him or not, he would remain a force to be reckoned with—the most resourceful, the most unresting of critics. Englishmen must have often found him bitter and unfair, but I for one have been compelled, sometimes almost against my will, to recognise his courage and his steadfast principle. He has repeatedly stood against a popular clamour from his own countrymen as stiffly as against any Government action, refusing to bow to the storm.

The father's whole life has been one of battle and political journalism. Yet the reader of his daughters' stories will be struck by the way they avoid politics. The centre of interest has shifted inward, to Hindu social life. This change of interest is a natural development from the father's effort, and completes it. Ramananda Babu is one of those Indians who cherish the name of Rammohan Ray, and, amid the insolent abuse recently flung at that name, as standing for the introduction of a denationalising foreign influence, he has proclaimed its outstanding greatness. Like Rammohan Ray, he has especially made the cause of women his own, and has never let pass any reasonable opportunity of protest againt wrongs inflicted by society. No man living has a more flaming anger at cruelty than Ramananda Chatterjee. The latest negro-burning in Georgia and the latest instance of a child-wife in Bengal committing suicide appear in his magazines, no less than the treatment of Indians in East Africa or Fiji, and go out into the bazaars and homes of all India. He carried his convictions into action in his own family. His daughters were educated at home in the usual subjects, including English, and then sent to Bethune College, Calcutta. From the earliest days their father gave them the fullest intellectual freedom, never seeking to censor their reading. Both passed the B. A. with great credit, at Calcutta University. In 1912, while still students, they published a volume of stories translated from English, which were immediately popular. They introduced Brer Rabbit to Bengali nurseries. They trained themselves by study and translation of George Eliot's work, and of a few stories from the French; they kept in close touch with their own land and its life. Their literary careers have advanced together. In 1917, Sita Devi's first original short story—Light of the Eyes—appeared in Prabasi, her sister's first one—Sunanda—appearing in the same magazine a month later. In 1918, they wrote in collaboration a novel, Udyanlata—The Garden Creeper—, a serial for Prabasi. This was given over a column in the Times Literary Supplement, from the pen of the late Mr. J. D. Anderson, who knew Bengali literature as no other European did. He speaks of the book's 'keen observation, sometimes girlishly amused, sometimes tenderly pitying, never harsh or bitter,' which was rendered in 'a style which is in itself a delight to any competent student of Indian letters.' They had excellent material, as he points out, in the contrast afforded between 'the varied life of the great cosmopolitan city of Calcutta, and also of the pleasant old-world existence led by rustic dwellers in the teeming villages of rural Bengal.' The same writer gave equal praise to Sita Devi's Cage of Gold, which appeared first as a Prabasi serial in 1919. It was followed by Santa Devi's serial, The Eternal, in 1920. Both sisters have written reviews and other articles. Santa Devi has painted in water colour. She is a disciple of the well-known artists, Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose. Sita Devi has published in The Modern Review translations by herself of her own and her sister's stories.

The two sisters thus present a wide culture, and their writings proceed from lives of unfettered freedom of thought. Other circumstances have helped to give them their detached view of Hindu society. Though born in Calcutta, they lived in Allahabad from 1895 to 1908, and most of their dearest memories cluster about that place. They have also lived for a considerable period at Shantiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore's 'Home of Peace', a place where thought is as liberal as the wide spaces that surround it. Here they found their fullest powers of expression, as nowhere else.

The English reader will now be in a position to understand something of the experience which lies behind these stories. He may be left to make his own comparisons, to see the resemblances and differences in their respective contributions. Bengali opinion discriminates between them by finding in Sita Devi's stories a touch of playful malice. Santa Devi's often show a delightful humour, with lifelike pictures of manners and persons. Both may be expected to improve greatly in technique, as they are still at the beginning of their careers. To the foreign reader, perhaps the most interesting thing in their writings will be the intellectual and personal element—their keen, scornful vision and the angry contempt which blazes out. We feel, as in the case of Toru Dutt, what force is in these Bengali ladies. Feel, too, as we do not feel with Toru Dutt, that they are exceedingly stirred against things close to their daily lives. Effective criticism of a society comes best from those who are members of it. Indian society has been portrayed in the writings of Bankim Chatterjee, of Rabindranath Tagore, of Sarat Chatterjee, and many others. But it is an immense gain to any nation that its society should be seen through the eyes of its own intellectual countrywomen; and Indian society, in its public aspects and activities, means Indian men. This fire of personality and personal feeling gives the sisters' work significance beyond itself, and will make it a matter of deep interest to watch the development and widening of their powers. For the present, there is in their work the added interest of seeing Indian life as Indians themselves see it, and of noting how Indian society deals with the problems which are occupying society everywhere, the readjustment of the relations of different classes, and above all, the readjustment of the relations in which the sexes stand to each other.

E. J. T.

The Ugly Bride

The Ugly Bride

The summer vacation was over and the schools and colleges were reopening one by one. Young boys, who had just passed the Matriculation Examination, were all starting for the city to get themselves admitted to one or other of the many colleges. They tried to look extremely serious with the stamp of newly found wisdom upon their young faces. In this respect, they beat even the more advanced students, so self-important was their bearing and general air. It was their Day; the day when they, after all, did cross the line that had hitherto kept them within the limits of boyhood. But now they looked back upon their previous life, with eyes full, as it were, of contempt, and presented themselves before the world, inwardly towering over the rest like the Colossus of Rhodes.

The third and intermediate class carriages of the railway train were choked with people of diverse characters. Passengers in the women's compartment were also conspicuous by their number and their marvellous capacity to accommodate themselves in a cage, ten foot by five. They were quite happy and at home in the little space, while the Railway Company's notice "To seat 10" stared down at them aghast and scandalised.

It was mid-night. The train was rumbling along the Loop Line of the E. I. Railway with its load of sleepless passengers, while the silent night trembled at the intrusion. Outside, the faint glimmer of a star or two, the flicker of the vigilant firefly and, close to the line, piles of burning coal, were all the diversion the eye could secure in that flood of inky nothingness. Dense black clouds were covering up the sky very rapidly, and only now and then a shining flash of lightning stabbed deep into their heart to show that they possessed a burning living soul. It was as if all creation had disappeared in the mysterious darkness, leaving only a handful of fiery dust behind.

Inside the carriage, the Railway Company supplied no more than standing accommodation. So the women tried to find relief in exchange of confidences as if they were intimate friends and not fellow-passengers who might never meet again in this world, or, may be, even in thought. Among the women was one, a native of Bengal but an adopted daughter of the upper provinces, who took the leading part in the conversation. A broad streak of the significant vermilion paint marked the place where she used to divide her hair in her long lost youth, but it looked as if it had suddenly become conscious of its loneliness and blushed at its own prominence. She had a man's shawl to cloak her corpulence, but she took good care to display her profusion of ornaments, which, in the eyes of the envious, were ill suited to her toothless appearance. In spite of the overcrowding of the benches, she lay with the upper part of her body inclined against a bundle containing a few towels, a gigantic aluminium jug and some vegetables. It was quite evident from her deliberate posture that she intended to stick to her principle of self-help, come what might.

A young school-girl, hailing from some progressive family, sat deformed and huddled up in a space absurdly too small to hold a human being. Her pleasure in the train journey became intensified as the bony knees of the old lady continuously probed and felt for her ribs, keeping time with the motion of the train. The owner of the offensive knees, after a time felt it her duty to utter something by way of apology, and said: "Excuse me, my child. You don't know how impossible it is for an old person to sit up like a pillar. At your age, I could sit up for ten nights and never feel it. I was not like this always." The girl, who found herself a stranger in the company of her fellow-passengers, felt so very shy that a little occasional smile was all the response she made to the familiarities of the old lady.

There were two healthy-looking girls in blue silk jackets, which did not quite match their dark complexion, and they were engaged in an endless discussion of the sorrows of their young lives. They were perhaps finding some solace in thus pouring out their secrets before an assembly of unknown faces. The old lady, who felt much interested in their discussion of how one had lost her mother and another her sister, and how one was not loved by her husband and persecuted by the mother-in-law, suddenly lost all interest in the girl who wore stockings, I mean the school-girl, and asked one of them, "I say, little girl, do you hear? Why haven't you put on your ornaments? You are married and your husband is living; and you are none too old; then why such neglect? What is wrong?"

The elder one of the two answered: "There is no end of troubles, mother, but what is the use of recounting them? I had been to my father's house on the occasion of the marriage of my niece, but, as ill luck would have it, had half my ornaments stolen. My mother-in-law, when she heard about it, rebuked me so that one would think I myself was the thief. But why should I blame her? Who would not resent the loss of the gold obtained by selling her son? I should not expect a treat of candies from her. That is why I have taken an oath not to put on the remaining ornaments again, as I feel the abuse showered on my father cut into my heart when they rest against my skin."

The old lady dug her knees carefully into the soft flesh of the school-girl who wore her hair in a novel and out style, and replied: "But you could have done one thing. Why did you not replace the stolen pieces with gilt ornaments? You could have escaped the punishment for the moment and might have changed them for gold ones when you had money."

An acquaintance of the old lady thereupon interjected, "You will insist upon giving other people curious advice, sister; can't you do without it even during a journey?" To which the old lady replied: "Ah! it pains my heart to see others in trouble. She was shedding tears in her trouble and I knew the way out; isn't it my duty to tell her? God has given me experience and age that I might help others. I know the remedy for all evils."

There was a young mother who had remained silent up till now in an obscure corner of a bench. Her sick child was also there upon her lap, lying inert and looking more like a dried fish than a human baby. She had a gold circlet hanging from and encircling her nose like the moat of some ancient city. She was dressed to the extent of a cotton sari and a misfitting jacket made of some flimsy stuff. But her poor sick baby was practically smothered in an abundance of flannels and shawls and was on the verge of collapse owing to the excess of wrappings. Every now and then this unfortunate and tortured child opened its eyes and cried as if to protest against the outrage. The fond mother at once took care of her child by putting a few folds more of a dirty shawl over its nose, which was in her opinion the best method of putting a child to sleep.

The young mother was very much impressed when she heard of this remarkable gift of the old lady, and naturally she came forward a bit. This brought her within the vision of the old lady, who yawning, and snapping her finger to avert evil, asked: "How old is the child? How thin the poor thing is! How many months old is he?"

"Months indeed, mother! He is just one year and six months, by the grace of the goddess Shashthi. I never for a single moment take him out of the room, never risk a cold. So I keep all the windows closed even in this awful hot weather. And in spite of all my care, mother, he puts the doctors to shame."

The sibyl answered: "The Puin, the evil Puin, possesses him. That's what it is. Nothing can cure him except a dip in a pond which is at Chandernagar." Heaven knows what infernal spirit goes under the name of Puin, but the anxious mother was very much impressed when that malignant spirit was mentioned. She eagerly asked: "Tell me exactly where the pond is, mother. We shall pass through Chandernagar and I will bathe him in the pond."

Binu, who was the old lady's friend, was always given to criticising. "Tara-didi," she said, "you should not thus play with the lives of other peoples' children. Who knows what may come out of your quack remedies? Why court the curse of others?"

Tara-didi was going to expatiate on the healing powers of the pond when her attention was diverted by something else.

The train had halted at a small station. But that was not the cause of this sudden diversion of interest. The cause was the precipitate entrance into the carriage of a widow accompanied by a couple of tin trunks, a large bundle containing sundry specimens of wicker baskets, a boy and a girl. As she opened the door of the compartment, a torrent of rain took it into its head to bring up the rear of the procession. This resulted in the expression of some human sentiments on the part of those who were nearest the door, and all eyes were focussed on the poor widow. She looked absolutely harmless. The hair upon her forehead was partly grey but she was still quite straight and strong. The boy was about six or seven years old and the girl was about twelve or thirteen. She was dark, thin and tall, with big round expressionless eyes which seemed for ever at a loss to make anything out of anything, and her broad forehead looked all the larger for her hair having been drawn back as far as it could be and tied into a knot behind her head. It was a huge knot. Not by any profusion of hair but because it was of the shape of a large hollow circle which encircled a stock of hair-pins. Or, shall I say, it was like a wheel in which the rim was of hair and the spokes of iron pins? Her eyes were remarkably pacific but blank, devoid of any stamp of intelligence; as if waiting for some one to give them meaning. She was not well dressed and the few signs of her or her mother's attempt at fashion added much to her homeliness. The girl entered the carriage, wet through and through, and remained standing in a corner. Her mother made just enough room to seat herself and her son and so the girl stuck to her post with a shapeless but by no means weightless bundle dangling from her arm. "Kalo," said the mother, "why are you standing? Sit down."

But she did not think it necessary to enquire where she was to sit down. The obedient girl found a solution of the problem by squatting down plump upon the flooded floor of the compartment. It never entered her head that she had as much right to find a seat for herself on a bench as other people, and her plain appearance, made more unattractive through careless dressing, stimulated nobody's sympathy enough to invite her to any seat that remained undiscovered.

The inquisitive soul which lurked behind the corpulence of Tara-didi, had become very restive at the possibility of gaining some new knowledge from this last addition to the number of passengers, and was dying to feed upon the widow's autobiography and her family history. So, before the girl could properly squat on the wet floor, she found the mouth of Tara-didi, which was, by the way, almost full of a semi-liquid mixture of saliva and juice of betel leaves, in front of her nose making a gurgling noise, which conveyed to her dull sense the information that the owner of the mouth was very much interested in their affairs and wanted to know who they were. The half-mute girl fixed her big eyes upon her mother as if to ask whether it would be right for her to answer. She feared lest she should disobey the command of one or other of the numerous Sastras, by answering a straight question. Kalo's mother answered for her daughter and said: "We are Brahmins; she is my daughter."

"Your daughter! I thought she was your granddaughter! She is probably a daughter of your old age! This is your son, eh?"

Kalo's mother said, "Yes. He is the only one I have got. After giving birth to five daughters, I prayed and prayed and the gods favoured me. But wretch that I am, I could not enjoy such happiness for long. Before he was one, his father went away to answer the call of his gods."

The sympathetic Tara-didi struck her own forehead with her open palm. "You must have been," she said, "born under an evil star, or why should you meet with so much misfortune and bring forth daughters by the dozen? But why have you not married this daughter as yet?"

Binu was feeling very uneasy at this fresh outburst of her friend's inquisitiveness, and, to put a stop to the flow of her none too sweet words, she said, "Why take so much interest in what does not concern you?"

This rebuff had absolutely no effect, and the undaunted old lady replied: "Why! is it a sin to sympathise with others and to give them a chance to unburden their sorrowful hearts?"

An expression of sublime sentiments which at once melted the heart of Kalo's mother, who said: "I am going to Calcutta to settle about her marriage, or why else should I, a country-woman, take the risks of a railway journey? The unfortunate girl has lost her father, and so her mother must go about entreating others. I have come to know of a probable bridegroom, but his people would not see the bride unless in Calcutta. Indeed it is only to the greatest of sinners that daughters are born!"

At this Kalo lifted her soft eyes and fixed them upon the old lady and her mother. Then once more she shrank within herself, and went on listening to the conversation. There was no pained look in her eyes, nor tears, nor did her heart respond to the cruel words of her mother in painful throbs, for such heartlessness was her daily food and her mind had long become dead to such insults. So nobody could have judged from her appearance that she herself was the object of these heartless words.

Tara-sundari turned towards her and asked, "What is your name, my child?"

The girl looked at her mother as if for instruction, and her mother said, "Tell her your name, what is the harm?"

The girl's face pleaded her own guilt in being born a daughter as she answered, "Kalidasi."

"Then, God help you!" said "Tara-didi "You are not likely to be married."

Binu made a dry face at this. "Ah, stop your nonsense, didi," she put in.

Tara-sundari resented such interference with her philanthropy and replied, "Why? Have I said anything wrong? Now look here (this to the widow), as soon as you reach Calcutta, find a suitable name for your daughter; for, be sure, the modern young man will never marry a Kalidasi or a Jagadamba, or a Katyayani, or any one with a name smelling of the days of your great-grandma."

To change the topic, Binu asked the young girl who wore leather shoes like men, the school-girl to wit, "What is your name, please; it must be something very charming and sweet?"

The girl smiled faintly as she answered, "Sobha."

But man is a creature of his tendencies, and so Tara-didi at once used this new piece of information in aid of her own philanthropic endeavours. "Did you hear that?" she said to the widow, "Give her some such name. Either Sobha, Bibha, or Abha. I have borne no less than eight daughters. They were my own, but for the sake of truth, I must admit that not all of them were like so many golden statues. Still, that did not prevent my naming them, Swarnalata, Kanaklata, etc."

Kalo was hitherto ignorant of the wonderful virtues of a name. So she took this opportunity to turn her head towards Sobha to have a look at one who had so much of that wealth. Her eyes were overflowing with admiration, which was but ill-expressed; for from her childhood she had been drilled into the habit of gazing vacantly without any definite meaning. Her soul felt shy and afraid to look out of the windows of its cage.

This movement on the part of Kalo, at once brought into prominence her wide forehead, from whose surface every single hair had been carefully drawn away upwards, and Tara-sundari lost no time to notice this particular point and to express her opinion on it. "My goodness, what a shameful way to treat one's hair! As she is, she is none too charming, and if you do her hair like that and display that race-course of a forehead, I should not be astonished if nobody even looked at her."

The owner of the race-course did not lower her head but kept her vacant eyes fixed upon the critic. Tara-sundari suddenly caught hold of Sobha's chin in order to bring her hair within the view of everyone. "See how she has done it," she exclaimed. "Do her hair loosely like this, and cover up a bit of that broad forehead. Holy Durga! Is this the way to treat human hair?"

Kalo's mother was looking hard at Sobha, as if to find out the secret of the fashion, and the girl feeling very shy at this inspection turned away her head.

Tara-sundari waited a moment as if to recover her lost breath, and then suddenly said with the tone of one inspired: "Look here, present your daughter to the bridegroom's people with her hair done loose. And do you know what a Jhapta is? The ornament some use on the forehead. Get one, and there you are! No one need know whether she has a forehead at all. Moreover, she will look beautiful, too."

Kalo's mother made a sorry face: "But that is not her only defect, she is too dark."

Tara-sundari was a picture of pride as she said, "Do you know, I have married eight daughters, eight! What if she is dark?. Give me the darkest girl with any sort of a nose to show, if I don't marry her, I will rub my nose on the pavement by way of penance."

"If she is a girl," she continued, "that's enough. Hear what I say. Have you seen powder? Get four pice worth of pink powder from the market and apply it to her face. She will soon look fairer. It you can't get powder, pass some meal through a piece of muslin and keep it handy. Then pass your hands very lightly over a whitewashed wall—not a mud wall—mind you, very lightly, and apply them to the girl's face. Then get some of the meal and with the corner of your sari, apply it gently to her face! And one thing more; present the girl to them just after sunset and in candle light. Tell her not to lower her face, for that makes a person look dark—understand? And if they ask to see her hand, show them the palm."

"But if they want to see the bride in daylight, what then?" asked the mother.

Tara-sundari laughed contemptuously at this fresh sign of stupidity in the woman, and said: "Of course! Mere asking will not procure a thing. Haven't you got an ounce of common sense in your head? Tell them that in your family you don't show brides in the day time. You don't, for it is forbidden. Bus! What more, who can do that which is forbidden?"

The tremendous logic and force of this argument were not lost upon the widow, who swayed her head up and down as if intoxicated with the wine of the old lady's wisdom. Binu laughed derisively and said, "Didi, you have gone clean off your head."

But Didi could not stand this new affront and burst out, "Why, what have I said wrong? It seems that one will soon be prosecuted for doing good to others!" She was apparently very pleased with herself and looked at Sobha for a supporting glance as she said: "What do you say, my dear?"

A faint smile was the only encouragement Sobha could spare; but that was enough. The woman with a sick child, who a little while ago was receiving the full benefit of Tara-sundari's "Be-helpful" nature, now embraced the opportunity to attract attention. She left the seat, which she had in an obscure corner, and ploughed her way to the front by the slow but sure process of treading upon other people's toes, and asked, "Do you know whether those who will come to see the bride, belong to the bridegroom's family or not?"

Kalo's mother said, "Oh, not of the family, but only relations."

"Then do one thing. Dress your daughter in up-to-date fashion and take her to a photographer's. They will make her all right in appearance. My younger sister, she had nearly no nose and only dots for eyes, but thanks to Boron Shepad Saheb, she looked in the picture like a fairy with her wings off. He will make your daughter's high forehead and sunken cheeks absolutely charming."

On hearing this latest, Kalo turned round and greeted this novel and wonderful suggestion with one of her quiet and expressionless glances. Her mother said, "Ah Kalo, at your age too, why are you turning and twisting like a tomboy?"