And How Are You?
Arunava Sinha By Buddhadeva Bose (translated from Bengali) Sometimes I want to know how you are. When I go to sleep, when I wake up, when I drive at ninety miles an hour, when the weight of time suddenly drops after a few quick vodkas and brandies. Dawn breaks, night falls; dawn again, night again. The same way, day after day. Sometimes it feels as though something will happen. Nothing does. Day after day. Believe it or not, I look at myself in the mirror at times. When I shave? No, I think of other things then. But sometimes, alone in the room, after a bath, or before going to bed eventually, I stand face-to-face with myself, eyeball-to-eyeball. Just me, without adornment; a lump of flesh, flab and filth. Completely bald, blunt nose, bags under the eyes, a broad hairy chest, the spitting image of a powerful, aged baboon after removing the glittering false teeth. I enjoy taking off my dentures and making faces, balling up my fists – like two wild beasts poised for battle – when I open my mouth wide the darkness seems to be the road to hell. – How? I don’t even know where you are. Come, let me introduce the rest of you – this aged baboon you see is Abanish Ghoshal, with engineering degrees from Glasgow and Berlin, learnt the ropes at Ford’s factory in Detroit, now engaged in making steel at Pippalgarh. His monthly income is five thousand rupees, more or less, he has been around the entire world thrice at his company’s expense, he has to visit Japan or Germany or Sweden or Russia or America once a year. In other words, this aged baboon is a very important person. But actually I am someone else. Alas, there’s so much ugliness that the tailor can hide, so much pus that formidable degrees can conceal blandly. Fame, honour, riches, influence – all of it may have been achieved, but after that? What lies behind, covered, within? Was there really a ritual in Athens where young women would emerge naked after bathing in the sea for the ancients to select the most beautiful among them that year? But how else can beauty be judged? All we consider are the adornments. Degrees, learning, ‘qualifications’. Everyone wants to know what I can do, no one knows what I am. You know. Do you? The population of Pippalgarh is fifty thousand, everyone’s livelihood is this steel factory, their lives too, in fact. We are building the new India; creating wealth for the people, earning foreign exchange for the country, with four hundred million by our side, we are marching ahead, marching ahead. Can we ever say that the people involved in such a gigantic endeavour are not successful? But I remember you from time to time. Pippalgarh has a reputation around the country of being progressive. We have delivered radios to the homes of the workers; we have swept out cholera and small-pox; our huge cooperative store is a veritable showpiece. We have a school, a library, clubs at different levels and of different kinds, doctors, nurses, a free hospital, even a contraception clinic adjacent to the maternity home. Everyone here is happy; they work with healthy bodies, with resolve in their minds and with hope in their hearts: work goes on round the clock, smoothly; our productivity is the highest in India. We affirm life here. Do you remember that morning – those dewdrops on the grass, and the soft, tender, pink sunshine? There are hills in the distance here, a sea of earth lies grey beyond the town. There is only emptiness in the vast expanse stretching to the horizon, nothing but emptiness either in the enormous sky above. Nothing at all happens – the sun rises, the sun sets, nothing happens at all. Everyone says Mr Ghoshal works like a demon. They don’t lie; I feel no fatigue when it comes to work, I do not have the ability to rest. My routine stretches from eight to eight; I fell the day with a single blow. Yet the victory does not seem to be complete; sometimes I go back late at night – where the huge fires burn furiously, I walk around supervising things, when I come out I find the darkness thinning. There’s no need, of course, there are people specifically for this task – but this is what I enjoy. I like to think that something is happening – this pit of fire, this fierce sound, the mechanical movements of the factory-workers – all of these help me forget that I am actually someone else. And I can be seen at almost each of the innumerable parties that are thrown here in Pippalgarh – I always make an appearance, even if only for ten minutes – and if ever I feel like “letting myself go” I can put away one-and-a-half bottles of Scotch and still continue with my measured smiles, my conversation, my flirtations with the women, without breaking my stride. I am on cordial terms with everyone, but none of them means anything to me. That’s the way I like it. Like it? That’s incorrect. There’s no question of liking or disliking anything. I work – since I have nothing else. I go to parties – since I have nothing else. Nothing else. I do not have the one thing that would have meant having everything. So I have nothing. But is it even possible that I am the only one who has come to know this, but no one else has? Is it even possible that I am the only one among this fifty thousand who wonders how you are? Everyone is happy at Pippalgarh, but the happiest are the women – meaning, the wives of those “sahibs” who earn more than two thousand rupees a month. There’s a separate club for them – meaning, the “memsahibs”. There they can attempt self-improvement without the company of men: swimming,