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| Mathavikutty (Kamala Das) |
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, misunderstandings with his
wife. Notwithstanding that peace, he woke up from his siesta in 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 for spending 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 blue lotus flower, dark and dull due to its
exposure to sun light. The very thought of taking refuge into 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 which 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 sun light 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 sleep.
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
thousand and 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 thousand and two hundred rupees”
He counted the currency
papers and gave it 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 bed sheet with blood
stains due to crushing mosquitoes. For reasons unknown, he hated himself.
“It is not mosquito. It is
bedbug. I got all these thick patches on my skin because of bites of bedbugs”
Amala told him, showed 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 sun light in the morning.
“The men who visit this
place are 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 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 betal leaves might have left 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 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 size industries. He never expected that someone
would be kind enough to get their good-natured and beautiful daughter married
to him whose back ground 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 washer men were once living.
Dirty feathers of culled chickens, fins of fishes were found scattered around
her entrance. Beside it, was there 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 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 her.
Amala opened the door fully.
She was wearing a crumbled 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 a surgery.
I have been coughing even after that surgery” she told.
“Please come near” he said.
Like a race horse 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 an 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***
Source: Tamil translation of
Mathavikutty’s Malayalam short story “Sonagachi”
Translated into English by
Saravanan Karmegam.
