Song without End and Other Stories by Neelum Saran Gaur

Author:Neelum Saran Gaur [Gour, Neelum Saran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184755466
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Major Event

For the first time in years, Vasant Panchami had fallen not only on 31 January but on a Tuesday as well, announced Badal Kaka. We all roared and thumped Grandfather on the back. And when Grandmother opened her mouth to speak, Shubho popped a sondesh into her mouth.

‘Fifty years of marriage, Grandfather, and to such a spitfire, heavens!’ gasped Probhat Kaka, putting an arm affectionately around Grandmother’s shoulders.

‘But I dealt with her, ah yes,’ chuckled the deaf old man, shouting fit to raise the dead.

‘So we perceive, Baba,’ said Bimol Kaka with a wicked grin and a wink at all of us. ‘There’s the eight of us standing evidence of how well you dealt with her.’

‘Hush, you rascal,’ hissed Aunt Bithika, pulling Bimol’s ear. ‘Take no notice of this young scapegrace, Baba. Times are different now.’

‘No different!’ roared Grandfather, mishearing again. ‘It was Saraswati puja day and no different.’

In those days we lived in a distant suburb of Calcutta which lay within the 24 Parganas. The vast city hummed in the background but where we lived the sea breeze came thrashing in, bending the palm trees low. All the shadows which stood still in the green ponds went sliding across the mirror-dark water. And in the twisting lanes a dark young woman went balancing her pitcher with a plaintive melody of Bengal on her lips:

Tree-like I catch my fingers in your clouds.

Undo these bones, unfasten these thoughts,

For my heart is full; ah, do not touch me, lord,

Lest a shock of tears shakes out of me …

The areca nut trees thrummed their dry green leaves like taut, vibrating strings under the chilly wash of wind.

Do you know what Saraswati puja day meant to us in those days? We awoke and saw the pale fumes of light collected in a corner of the sky. For half an hour the day seemed dazed by that dazzling fuzz of light and the morning was a shimmering fabric blown across the land. Then a sharp, crisp sunlight came and thawed the masses of cloud. Out in the open in the little tents, the slim white goddess sat on her swan, her long fingers curled upon a celestial raga. Little girls and boys, clad in yellow, learnt their first alphabets at the feet of the goddess and the bare-chested old priest lifted aloft the bowl of smoking incense. On such a day there was music everywhere.

And on that Saraswati puja day the eight sons and daughters, the sons-in-law and daughters-in-law and we nineteen grandchildren assembled to celebrate the golden jubilee of our grandparents’ marriage. Nobody enjoyed the pantomime more than the old couple themselves. Grandfather sat on the old canopied four-poster dressed in his crinkled white dhoti and white Panjabi with gold studs, eating sweet rice paste. And Aunt Bithika draped her rich Benarasi silk round Grandmother’s portly form, laughing at her protests. The treasure box was unlocked, the gold peacock pendant hung round Grandmother’s neck and the heavy bangles forced on to her dried-up wrists.

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