This is an English translation of Sonagachi, a Malayalam short story written by Mathavikutty (popularly known as Kamala Das). This story has been translated into Tamil (Details of Tamil translator are not available). Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam for this blog.
***
His wife was a very rich woman and loved him more than her
life. His son was seven years old. He had a peaceful family life without much
of any problem or misunderstandings with his wife. Notwithstanding that peace,
he woke up from his siesta on one Sunday afternoon and delved into thoughts
about a sex worker known to him. Her name was Amala. Now, he longed to go to
Kolkata to spend at least two days with her.
He took his eyes off the fleshy hands and legs of his wife
sleeping beside him and again started thinking anxiously about Amala’s
extraordinary beauty of her thin frame. Amala’s hands were looking like a
withered stem of a blue lotus flower, dark and dull due to its exposure to
sunlight. The very thought of taking refuge in those frail hands, he felt an
inexplicable streak of pleasure combined with pain running through his abdomen.
“O! Amala! My Amala!” he mumbled.
His wife opened her eyes—the eyes not familiar with what fear
was, the eyes that didn’t carry any sign of suspicion. “What did you say?” she
asked him. She pulled her skirt down, hid her fleshy parts of her leg shyly,
and smiled at her husband. She was looking like an orchard where sweet fruits
were found in plenty. She resembled a fully grown mango ripened under sunlight
and air.
“I need to go to Kolkata. I will be back after one week,” he
said in a firm voice.
“Okay… While coming back, please bring us Rasagulla
and Sandesh,” his wife murmured, still lying half asleep.
He thought about Amala.
On the day he was transferred from Kolkata, he decided to
visit a brothel. On many occasions, he had heard his friends praising the
attractive attributes of Bengali women while drinking. He thought of visiting
them once and following what they were doing. It wasn’t surprising anyway to
see a man who hadn’t lost his virginity would feel guilty about it. Without
seeking anyone to accompany him, he went alone to Sonagachi. He had one
thousand three hundred rupees in his pocket. When he pointed at Amala, the old
lady sitting there told him, “Three hundred is enough.”
When he praised the scent of her hair, Amala smiled and told:
“I am applying Keshranjan hair oil on my hair. It is the
scent of that oil. If you want to spend the whole night with me, the old woman would
demand a thousand and two hundred rupees.”
He counted the currency papers and gave them to her. As Amala
left the room, going to the old woman to give her the amount, he threw his eyes
all over the room—the wall where a full-length mirror was hanging, some
artificial roses, and a bed sheet with blood stains due to crushing mosquitoes.
For reasons unknown, he hated himself.
“It is not a mosquito. It is a bedbug. I got all these thick
patches on my skin because of bites of bedbugs, Amala told him, showing her
skin. She laughed to her heart’s content as if she had told him something
funny just to entertain his time. At that moment, he felt that thousands of
bedbugs and lice were crawling in his hair and body. Even as he loathed, he lay
there, hugging her, smelling the scent of her hair, snuggling up against her
embrace, and spent the whole night till the sky got sunlight in the morning.
“The men who visit this place are in no way better than Red
Hounds. All will bite me as they like and leave me half dead. When I see me
lying down beside you like this, I remember the days I spent with my bosom
friend, Meera, when I was young,” Amala told.
He had gone to her as a man. Hadn’t he? Was he searching only
for a young lady companion? Or had he found out the scent of his mother’s hair,
who had died long ago?
“You have lost a large amount of money. Haven’t you? Why are
you lying here without doing anything, thinking about something deeply?” Amala
asked him. Her teeth were stained with red tint. Frequent chewing of betel
leaves might have left a red tinge on her teeth. The red vermilion on her
forehead was soaked in sweat. She coughed a couple of times during their
conversation.
“Don’t be afraid. I am not suffering from T.B. I had a fever
for three days last week. I have not yet fully recovered, and the cough still
remains there.”
When he left her in the morning, he saw her standing near the
window like a fully bloomed lily flower. Her eyes were fixed on him till he
reached the end of the street. She didn’t ask him whether he would visit her
again. He also didn’t have the courage to tell her “No” either, if asked.
After this visit, his status and job in society didn’t allow
him to visit brothels and taverns. He became a known face in the society.
Weekly magazines and journals started publishing his face on their pages.
His wife’s family members were rich enough to run big-sized
industries. He never expected that someone would be kind enough to get their
good-natured and beautiful daughter married to him, whose background of birth
was no match in terms of their social standing. He tried hard with all possible
tricks to run his family without any fights with his wife. He succeeded in his
attempts.
Despite his peaceful existence of marriage, his waking up
from the cozy siesta every Sunday made him overtly afraid that his life would
be wasted if he didn’t cuddle Amala and spend time with her. He was longing to
gently press the tips of his fingers onto her thin wrist…to hide his face in
the lock of her hair…to hear the sound of her cough…to relish her nearness.
It appeared that Kolkata had changed drastically in its
appearance. Residential flats were found erected where the buildings he knew
were once standing. In one evening, he was searching for the address the sex
workers gave him. ‘Amala must have purchased a house. She would be a rich sex
worker by now’, he thought.
Amala was living in a small house thatched with zinc sheets
in the colony where the washermen were once living. Dirty feathers of culled
chickens and fins of fishes were found scattered around her entrance. Beside it
was a frail dog, lying, gasping for air.
“Amala,” he called her out.
“Who’s that?” a voice of a woman. Amala wrinkled her eyes and
tried to recognise him.
“It seems that you have forgotten me. Haven’t you? Don’t you
remember your words that lying beside me was like lying beside your friend at a
young age? He tried to bring back her memory.
“I left my business long ago. I don’t remember these old
stories,” she told.
“Business?... I haven’t come here to talk business with you.
I have come here just to lie down near you, without touching you, to smell the
fragrance of Keshranjan-laced hair…” He told her as he was gasping in bouts.
Amala was looking paler than earlier. Her skin was so pale
that, he thought, some electric bulbs were on underneath her skin. The nerves
on her hands were found bulging up.
“Please allow me to come in,” he pleaded with her.
Amala opened the door fully. She was wearing a crumpled
cotton sari, wearing no blouse.
“You…an innocent soul! No use of me now? Amala sneered at
him.
“Use of what? He asked her.
“I left my business long ago. I got T.B. later. The doctors
removed two bones in my ribs with surgery. I have been coughing even after that
surgery,” she told.
“Please come near,” he said.
Like a racehorse gasping for air, she went near to him.
“I wouldn’t be able to do anything now. The T.B. has taken
away everything from me, and I am completely worn out now,” she told.
….
He remained with her, hugging her all through the night till
the sun rose in the morning. However, he remained an unknown face to her.
She was visibly worried when she said with unease, “I am
unable to recollect your face.”
“Have you ever kept anyone’s face in your memory?” he asked
her.
“No…I haven’t”—that innocent face replied, displaying her
darkened teeth.
***Ended***
