Hangwoman by K.R. Meera

Author:K.R. Meera [Meera, K.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351187264
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

28

Grandfather Kalicharan met Binodini Dasi the first time at Jamuna Baiji’s house, one monsoon. She was barely eight then, and already married. He was sitting in the veranda of Jamuna Baiji’s house at Kalighat. Jamuna Baiji was a scholar and a very learned musician. Hers was a typical Bengali home with a central courtyard where kitchen utensils and clothes were washed, and the men bathed. There were rooms around it with balconies bound by delicately patterned iron grilles facing the courtyard. Grandfather saw a little girl, an angry pout on her face, clad in a single garment, the end of which was pulled over her head. She came in from the rain, shielding herself with a large leaf, a red kite with a broken string clutched to her chest. But it was when he saw her act on stage that she captured his heart. Grandfather was a strong man, of robust health, fond of the arts, and till then, free of the entanglements of love. But Binodini’s acting left him shaken. Like the rope that extends into the cellar after the hanging is over, the veins in his heart trembled and shivered. She became a famous actor who shook all of Bengal.

When I set foot on the front yard of a bungalow that hid its face partially behind a decrepit old house on Avinash Kaviraj Street in Sonagachi, following Sanjeev Kumar Mitra, the image of Binodini Dasi sitting upright with her left leg resting on her right knee, dressed as Chaitanya in Chaitanyaleela flashed in my mind. For a moment I thought I was in her house. If it was indeed so, Grandfather too must have stood sighing at its doorstep, his heart heavy with love, head bowed with the weight of the inferiority of his old age. I was elated by the thought. There were four or five cars parked in front of the white-walled bungalow; I could see four or five men, some clad in a chauffeur’s uniform. From the white porch, the pillars of which seemed to rise to the sky, there were nine flights of steps that circled the veranda leading to the interiors. The steps led to vast open doorways. My eyes were drawn to the innumerable windows in the building—the windowpanes were painted a strange red, and they glinted upon the white walls even in the darkness of night. Like a lamp gleaming from behind a curtain, the inside of the red-windowed bungalow glowed a deep yellow. The stories that Thakuma used to tell us of the two- and three-storeyed mansions in the turning from Chitpur Road to Cornwallis Street and towards Bowbazar and Maniktola, and the wealthy bazar women who owned them sprang to mind. I stared in fright at Sanjeev Kumar Mitra who was waiting for me at the door where the stairs ended.

‘Are you afraid?’ He took off his glasses and looked at me seductively.

I could hear vaguely some music being played inside; it sounded like raucous disco music. Father referred to my ancestor Kalicharan as ‘bada artist’.

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