The Sleeping Dictionary
JOHLPUR, WEST BENGAL, 1930
The Flower says I was born from the dust.
Kindly, kindly
Let me forget it
Let me forget it
Let me forget.
—Rabindranath Tagore in “Chandalika”
Chapter 1
When I visited India in my 20s, I began wondering whether I could write something that went beyond journalism.
You ask for my name—the real one—and I cannot tell.
It is not for lack of effort. To begin a proper explanation, the narrator must give her name. In fact, one of the first English phrases I learned was What Is Your Good Name?
As the years have passed, people have called me many things, not all of them repeatable. But in the beginning, I was called Big Sister or Pom, the last being a village nickname you will not find in any book. To me, Pom sounds hard: a hand on a drum, or rain pounding on a tin roof. Both are sounds that I remember from the Bengali village where I was born: Johlpur, the Town of Water.
Pom, Didi, Pom! Those who shouted for me the most were my younger sisters, Rumi and Jhumi, twins born on the same day who grew up looking as similar as grains of rice. But what a difference between them! Rumi was the easy one: quiet and helpful. Jhumi cried more and always demanded to be carried, even when she and Rumi were big strapping girls of six. Double Curses was what my grandmother Thakurma called the twins. But when our father, who we called Baba, was alone with us, he would sometimes say that a daughter’s birth lengthened a father’s life, and that for having three strong girls he might live to one-hundred!
Despite that proverb, our family still longed for a son. Most mornings when my mother made her prayers, she whispered her hopes If Goddess Lakshmi brought a son, my mother promised her a goat. Then she raised it to five rupees. This was going on for some time until the spring of 1930, when the flatness under Ma’s sari rounded; when my grandparents smiled more, and my father sang in the evenings.
As summer came my mother’s belly grew to the size of a good pumpkin. I marked my tenth birthday, and we ate sweet payesh pudding to celebrate. It was the same time that the daughter of Jamidar Pratap Mukherjee, the landed aristocrat who owned all the rice fields, began studying with a foreign governess. The Jamidar’s daughter was my object of fascination because of her many lacy pastel frocks and the white-skinned doll she carried. I did not know the little girl’s name, for we could not ask such a thing of our superiors. In my mind I called her the Princess.
My acquaintance with the Jamidar’s household began a few years earlier, when I was strong enough to walk distances carrying a bundle of short brooms that Ma and I made and sold. Our two mothers examined the brooms: hers looking down from a height, mine squatting on the stone veranda, turning over each of brooms to find the very best one. The Jamidarni would grumble that her sweeper didn’t need a new broom for the ridiculously high price of one anna. But then my mother would counter, Jamidarni-saheb, the rains are coming and with them, mud! Or, if it were a few months earlier: this is a frightfully dry season, please look at the dust on your veranda; it’s a shame that your sweeper missed it. Not the woman’s fault, just the broom’s.
On our last call to the estate, my mother was heavily pregnant and could not make her usual bright banter. Perhaps because of my mother’s condition, the Jamidarni smiled at me. I knew I should speak of the good brooms we’d brought, but I decided to ask first where the Little Memsaheb was, for she had not yet appeared. The Jamidarni replied with a word I hadn’t heard before: school. Two white women came to the house to teach the child five days a week. The Princess was learning to read and write English, to sing songs, and embroider like an angel. They had turned a parlour into a proper schoolroom with a desk and chair and a black board on which the Ingrej ladies wrote with a short white stick. Then the Jamidarni asked my mother why I wasn’t in school; she’d heard some village children were learning to read and write under the banyan tree behind Mitra-Babu’s shop.
Then I understood the word school, because I’d seen boys sitting in Mitra-babu’s yard scratching with reeds on palmyra leaves. For a girl like me, there would never be time to sit under a tree, but it didn’t matter because I was already earning money for my family. Although I had never seen a whole rupee, I had counted plenty of annas into my palm and was proud that I couldn’t be cheated.
Ma only murmured something about needing my help now that a baby was coming. She placed her hand on her belly whilst Jamidarni pledged that she would make a special prayer for a boy. And then, for the first and last time, the Jamidarni bought a broom without bargaining.
We did not have such luck at other places. My mother and I slowly trailed home, the heat wrapping itself around us like a scratchy woollen shawl. We were still a month from the arrival of the monsoon, and the last weeks were always the worst. By the time we were home from broom selling, I was as wet as if I’d played the Two Turtles game with Rumi and Jhumi in the pond. I knew that for my mother to carry her waiting baby during that last hot month was not only uncomfortable, but also physically risky. Some women in the village had even muttered to each other that it would be a blessing if Ma lost the stone she carried, because three girls first was only likely to bring a fourth.
Everyone knew that we’d had trouble. Dadu was forced to sell the one rice paddy he owned to meet the debts of our family, and now his son, my Baba, farmed for others, receiving as payment a portion of rice. Still, we were not poor, like the ragged ones living in the alleys of the village. These were the ones my mother called lost souls, and if they came for food, she still always gave something. We always had something from our own vegetable garden. Fruits beckoned from old abandoned orchards and from neighbours who did not mind sharing. To buy foodstuffs we could not grow, my mother raised a small amount from the brooms in summer and catching fish during rainy season. I would do all this work with her until it was time for my marriage, and then Rhumi and Jhumi would do the same.
Try as I may, I don’t remember my parents ever complaining about the situation or cursing us for being girls.
“Your face is our jewel,” Ma would say sometimes, and I would laugh and crinkle my nose in embarrassment, because I felt awkward compared to the rosebud prettiness of the twins. But I knew that of all the girls in the family, I looked the most like Ma. It might help me get a husband, especially since there was no dowry we could give. At ten, I didn’t think much about marriage, even though my mother had married at eight, moving to our hut when she was thirteen. I was born two years after that. Sadly, Ma’s parents died from typhoid before my anaprasum, the 6-month first-rice-eating celebration of a child’s life. So I had nobody around except my two sisters, my parents, and one set of grandparents; a very small family.
Two nights after our final broom-selling journey, I awoke to realize that Thakurma was hovering near Ma. Baba was lighting the oil lamp. Thakurma whispered to me that my mother was going to have the baby soon and that I should take my sisters to sleep outside and then fetch Chitra-massi, the dai who lived inside Johlpur village. Thakurma reminded me to call the midwife-aunty’s name four times at the door: to call her once or twice might lead her to worry that I was a night-time ghost. I thought this was nonsense, but their door did not open until the fourth time I called. Fortunately, Chitra-massi was ready, handing me a basket to carry while she gathered her other supplies. Together, we made our way through the dark night back to the hut, where Thakurma took Chitra-massi inside and ordered me to rest with the twins.
It was a hot night, so it should have felt easier to sleep outside; but how could any of us sleep as the minutes turned to hours and my mother’s groans evolved into a tiger’s roar? Village women flowed toward our hut like ants on the trail of a dropped piece of sweet sandesh. I knew they felt especially concerned because Ma could not go to her childhood home to give birth, since her parents had passed.
Ma’s cries grew wilder, but still the baby would not budge. Eventually Chitra-massi told my father to fetch Dr. Dasgupta from the next village. My father rode off with a neighbour in his cart; it was some hours later that they returned with the doctor. The sky was light and my mother was hardly crying at all, which made me fear for her all the more.
I watched the doctor’s black case bang against his legs as he hurried inside. What did the case carry? I did not trust doctors and their tools. Silently, I begged the goddess Lakshmi to save my mother. I swore that it wouldn’t matter if the child were a boy or girl, just that my mother and whoever was inside would live.
Morning traffic to the river was underway when new sounds broke from the hut: happy cheering and laughter. Thakurma emerged covered in sweat but smiling. She told us that a little brother had been born, with big ears for listening to his sisters and lots of black curly hair. He had been locked inside of Ma, and Dr. Dasgupta had used forceps to free his head. She said Ma was quite tired, but wanting to see us.
My sisters and I could not get into the hut quickly enough. After kissing Ma, we all turned to the new one in the family.
“Bhai,” I breathed softly. Thakurma gently lifted part of the red swaddling cloth to show his miniature boy’s face with closed-shut eyes. He was the same golden-brown colour as me.
“Double curses wiped out by a gift from Krishna himself. We will give ten rupees to the temple, certainly!” Thakurma hugged me against her thin frame.
It didn’t matter whether Krishna or Lakshmi or any other deity was responsible, I thought while studying my brother’s wet curls plastered from the sandalwood-scented bath he’d just taken. He was so beautiful that calling him Bhai—brother—seemed too ordinary. All the other children in Johlpur called their brothers Bhai. And they had not prayed as hard for a miracle.
As I retreated back to the sleeping mats and settled between Rumi and Jhumi, I drowsed off, pondering what kind of name that my grandfather would choose for my little Bhai. We would only learn it in six months or so, at his anaprasum. Then another worry came: how we would ever come up with the goat Ma had promised Lakshmi, and the rupees owed to her and Krishna.
You may think such karmic debts are old-fashioned Hindu superstition worth as much as Englishman’s crossed fingers or thrown salt. But I have sometimes wondered whether paying those heavenly debts would have kept them from becoming my burden. Perhaps I would never have left the beautiful shores of Johlpur, and I would be able to tell you my name.
Chapter 2
“The sea, one massed foam, clamours with its million up-thrust arms,
‘Give! Give! Give!’
Wrathful at the delay, foaming and hissing
The aura Death grows white with mighty anger.”
—Tagore
After Bhai had turned six days old and had his nails clipped by the Napit woman, people stopped talking about him and thought only of the monsoon. Mitra-babu, the shop-owner, said that the rains had fallen on Travancore, the province at India’s southernmost tip, and were travelling upcountry. A second monsoon wind was sweeping the Indian Ocean to break at Bengal. This was the real storm, and from the shore, you could see it coming.
The day of the storm’s arrival, a slow parade of horse-drawn tongas, cycle- rickshaws and cars came along the coastal road. This spectacle of sightseers was almost as exciting as the pending monsoon. The year before, a white man sitting in the back of a big Rover had come past. The village children said he was called the Collector. When I asked Baba whether this was English for devil, as my friends had said, he laughed with a harsh sound. Baba said the Collector was Jamidar Mukherjee’s good friend. He took the district’s harvested rice and sent it to England or anywhere else the Government wanted. Does the Collector pay you, or the Jamidar? I had asked. Neither, answered my father, and I knew that he felt troubled. So I did not ask anything more, and came to believe, like the others in our caste, that this was our fate to be borne without question.
I did not see the Collector’s car today, but that did not trouble me. I was more interested in the holiday-makers: the well-dressed ladies who shrieked and clutched their saris which the winds tried to take them, and the valiant husbands who struggled in vain to keep umbrellas from taking flight. Broken umbrellas were delightful to find, because the umbrella-wallah paid for broken ones that he could combine with others to make splendid new ones. We owned one such umbrella ourselves.
This year, the monsoon was late. It had been a very hot spring; the ponds and rivers where we collected water for drinking were close to dry. Some children in the village had diarrhoea. Ma said that could bring cholera, so she kept us home and prayed. I didn’t need to pray for rain; everyone else was doing so. Instead I washed and rocked Bhai, and made sure that he always had a black spot drawn on his forehead to ward off bad spirits. I did plenty of housework, too, because my mother slept all afternoon with her sari spread around her and Bhai nestled at her breast. If no breezes came from our open door, I made Rumi and Jhumi take turns fanning her and Bhai, who had developed a prickly red rash.
There is a stillness before the rains come: a kind of energy that holds you and everything else motionless. It was holding us then. The sun had gone, making the house so dark that I had to squint at the dal I was picking through. Silently, Rumi fanned Ma and Bhai, while Jhumi napped next to Thakurma.
Into this silence, a neighbour boy outside called: “Look! It comes!”
Rumi left off fanning and ran outside, while Thakurma slowly got up and took Jhumi with her to check the weather. I stayed at my job, because I knew if I didn’t Thakurma would scold me. When they returned, both sisters jumping and tugging at Thakurma’s sari, my grandmother said, “The boy was right. Rain is almost here.”
“Let’s go!” Jhumi squeezed out of her position next to Ma and ran to hug Thakurma. “You promised we could this time.”
The twins were desperate to see the monsoon arrive because they’d missed going the previous year. It was because they had misbehaved, snatching a rose apple that Thakurma had carefully placed at her small alter to Lord Krishna. My sisters had wept while I was allowed to join the rest of the village in celebrating the rain.
“No, wait,” Thakurma said to the twins. “When Baba’s back, then you go.”
“Yes,” Ma said, sleepily awakening. “Baba will surely be finishing his job and coming home soon.”
“What if he’s late?” Jhumi asked. “What if he is so late that we miss the cloud?”
It was only mid-afternoon; Baba usually worked until the sun started to fade. He’d been very busy lately, working every day to irrigate the Jamidar’s dry fields.
“You cannot go alone!” Thakurma scolded. “Your mother is staying here with Bhai, and Dadu and I are too old for the comings and goings. Yesterday somebody else shouted the rain was about to fall. And it did not!”
“I could ask what Baba thinks,” I suggested, seeing in Jhumi’s eyes a glare that could easily earn her a cuff from Thakurma. “Perhaps the overseer will let them all off before the road floods. And if Baba can’t come—” here, I turned to nod respectfully to Thakurma—“Well, then I can explain to Rumi-Jhumi and we will all wait together.”
Thakurma waved her hand with a shooing gesture. “Yes, you go, but quickly. Before it becomes dark.”
“Wait, Pom!” Ma said. “Remember, don’t take the jungli path.”
My pleasure at being allowed out to find my father was dulled by my mother’s command to take the long route. She had loaded me with many frightening tales about the jungle hideaways of the revolutionaries who robbed innocent country people in their efforts to raise funds for anti-government activities. When my mother wanted me to understand something, she told a dramatic story; Thakurma did as well. Perhaps it was because they knew I cared for stories more than anything.
There would be no dacoits hiding in the jungle today, I was sure. When I was out of my family’s eyesight, I slipped off the main road and through the chaohan trees into the jungle, where a shortcut led to the rice fields. It was not like me to break the rules; but I had a feeling the rain was very near, and I so wanted to be with my father when it began.
The narrow path through the jungle was easy to miss, but I recognized landmarks like the alacea tree that always hung with a jug of rainwater for wandering holy men. I supposed the dacoits might drink from it too; I was careful not to go near it. As I passed a small grove of papayas, I picked up several freshly fallen ones and tied them in my sari’s pallu. Later I would share them with my family.
The sun was almost gone when I reached the edge of the fields where a few men raked the dull, dry earth. My father was not there, and that working group didn’t know of him, so I walked on. I already had a few cuts on my feet that smarted as I walked on the pebbled path. The fields themselves would have been softer, but I didn’t dare walk on the precious seedlings.
The sky was darker now and slightly green. I felt an absolute quiet in the air—not a single leaf moved. Then a cool wind rushed over everything, rippling the trees, grasses, and my hair. In minutes, I imagined, the storm cloud would arrive.
I was anxious about finding my father, so as the raindrops began to fall slow and far apart, I hurried on. The next field had workers, some of whom were already dancing in the rain, but far more bent over, hoeing channels for the heavenly rain. It turned out that this was my father’s group. They said he had gone back to town an hour ago on the company cart. Baba had told the overseer he was feeling poorly, but one grinning man told me he had only wanted to reach the shore with his daughters.
So my father was home, and I was far away! If I’d taken the main road as Ma had ordered, my father would have seen me, probably swung me up to join him on the cart. We would have returned together. Now everyone would be waiting for me and becoming angry.
“Another cart comes through in an hour,” one of the workers said. “You can ride on it with us.”
It would have been fine to ride home alongside Baba; if Ma or Thakurma heard from anyone that I’d ridden in a cart with strange men, some of whom were Muslim, I would surely be beaten. I didn’t hesitate in my reply. “No, Uncle. It is not far. I will walk.”
The trip home seemed faster because it was slightly downhill. My feet moved so quickly I hardly felt the thorns. I opened my mouth wide, tasting the cool, fresh rain. I was not on the beach; but I was still enjoying, Then I passed the papaya orchard, and from a slight rise was able to glimpse the thatched roofs of Johlpur and the great sea beyond. Several cars had parked on the beach, and many tiny figures ran along the sandy beachfront, arms outstretched to the massive dark cloud. As I lingered, trying to decide whether a faraway man and two children might be Baba and the twins, I noticed some people were shouting.
The sea was like goddess Durga, my father had told me once; so mighty that she accidentally killed her husband Siva with a careless blow of her arm. I remembered this because a great wave was rolling in: a wave so tall, so long and thick that it resembled a wall. The highest walls I knew were the stucco ones that surrounded the Jamidar’s estate; this wall of water was much higher, and it bore down on the beach as I had never seen.
A few people had started to run, but the wave was closing in fast. Then it rushed right over them. The water looked as if it had taken away all the land beneath. Where was the shore? I searched for it, thinking this must be a dream: the endless water with small black specks floating.
The rain continued to fall in great cold sheets that stung. I looked without seeing the people reappear, so I turned away from the confusing sight and continued into the jungle. In the darkening evening, everything seemed foreign. The ground’s stones and nettles were covered with water high enough to touch my ankles, and I could not see through the trees to where I was going.
I did not let myself worry, for I knew the path home was quick. Everyone would be waiting at the hut. I would tell them about what I’d seen while Ma cleaned my cuts with mustard oil. But as I descended into what I knew as the jungle’s end, everything seemed to dissolve into a giant puddle. My walking slowed, and the puddle rose to my knees. There were floods in Johlpur every year, for at least some of the rainy season—but always in the low areas and along the village road. I couldn’t remember anyone talking about floods touching the jungle.
Just a bit farther was a tall, sturdy date palm, with enough branches to get a foothold. I pushed my way through the water that had risen to my waist and pulled myself up the tree. I was doing something I had heard Dadu talk about doing once when he was a young man, to survive a very bad storm. I climbed as high as seemed safe and unfurled half of my sari to tie myself firmly into the embrace of the tree. It reminded me of the way Ma tied Bhai against her body. My little brother would be frightened by this change of weather; thinking about Bhai’s fears took away my own. I remembered the papayas I’d tied in my sari and ate the first one.
I had no idea about the passing of time, for it had become dark and the rain never stopped. Despite this, I slept fitfully. When I awoke for good, the sky was a soft purple colour, and the crows were crying. I couldn’t make out a break between sky and water, just an endless purple-blue. Eventually, the rain slowed to a drizzle, and the sun appeared.
I struggled to identify the clearing where our settlement of huts should have been, but it wasn’t there. All that stretched ahead was brackish water that grew steadily clearer and bluer as it met with the sea. My memory returned to the wave I’d seen, so strange and high that it might have come from one of Thakurma’s religious stories. I watched the water swirl, and very slowly, it carried things past. Trees and roofs. Beams and wheels. Goats and donkeys and water buffalos. Even Jamidar’s silver Vauxhall, which lay sideways as it floated past.
Dead people were also part of the tide. I did not want to look at them, but I knew I had to, for each one I didn’t recognize meant there was still a chance my family was alive. But thAnd then I was crying, silently, because if the sound were audible, it would mean my mourning was real, something I could not deny. I was afraid my family might have drowned, but I was not convinced.
The rains came and went all day, bending the branch to which I clung so deeply I was sure I would fall. But I did not; I knew I must hang on. When night came, I fell into a strange sort of waking dream, where every sound I heard was Baba’s firm footstep, although there could be no sound of walking when all the earth was covered with water.
The next morning followed the same pattern as the one before: a purple sky growing paler, then sunlight, with monkeys and crows chattering. I ate the second papaya and watched more bodies float in the water. The outside of my sari had dried stiff and dirty, but water remained inside some folds. I unwound the cloth and began sucking from it, tasting earth and salt, because there was nothing else. Tree ants climbed my legs and arms and bit me in places that I couldn’t reach. I tried talking to them, explaining that I did not want to be in their home, and begging them to leave me in peace. I grew dizzy imploring the ants to create a miracle bridge for me to get away from the trees altogether and back to civilization. But they did not.
Hours later I thought a miracle had arrived when I saw a fishing dinghy loaded with living people. I called down to them as they approached, but the men paddled on without a glance. I hadn’t wept since the night before, but now I did. The same thing happened twice more as boats passed slowly, all of them overloaded with people and animals. I called each time with the small, rough voice I had left. Look! I’m here! Save me, please. How thirsty I was. I feared I might wither up where I was, like a dry leaf on a tree.
Then, late in the day, I spied a small fishing boat occupied by what looked like a single family: two grandparents, a man and a woman of middle age, and two young boys. The boys were pointing at some animal swimming in the water and laughing as if it was an ordinary day.
I shouted louder than I had before, and the brothers stopped laughing and began looking.. I could tell the children had not yet seen me. Quickly I pulled off my sari and, holding one end, flung it out like a flag. Now the children pointed at the dirty, cream-colored cloth; and to my joy, the father began rowing in my direction.
As the boat approached, I wrapped my sari and descended the tree that had saved me: a difficult operation because my limbs had not moved for so long. But I finally reached the water and swam the short distance to the boat. The boys’ father held out an oar that I caught.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you very much.”
“Girl, where is your family?” asked the wizened old man who was likely the family grandfather.
“Saheb, I don’t know!” I said, as I clambered aboard. Even though the man and his family did not look wealthy, I was careful to speak politely. “We lived in Johlpur, but it is gone.”
“We’re from Komba. Our place is gone too,” the younger boy said, sounding almost excited.
“A terribly big wave swallowed the beach,” I said as the boat moved along, passing thick mangrove forests on one side and open sea on the other. It was a landscape I knew by heart, but seemed alien with so many of the mangroves uprooted and leaning crazily.
“Not a wave. It was Goddess Kali’s doing. Do you have water? Food?” the grandfather asked.
Having eaten up the two papayas, I murmured that I did not.
“We can’t give you food or drink, as there is not even enough for ourselves,” the grandfather said. “But it is a sin not to help. We will take you to shore. From there you can find your people.”
Had he not heard me saying that my family were from Johlpur, the place he was going away from?
“Don’t worry. On land someone will help you.” The boys’ mother spoke quietly. The water had stained her white sari gray, but I could still see the thin red border. She was well off to have a sari woven in a mill.
“Who will help?” I asked, for I was beginning to realise that my old life might be over. A new wetness trickled down my cheek, and my thirsty tongue crept out to catch the salty tear.
“You’ll ride this boat only as long as your mouth stays closed.” The grandfather’s voice was as rough as the crows that had wakened me that first hellish morning, and I imagined that he truly might order me overboard to become part of the horrible debris around us. Immediately I folded my hands and whispered my penitence. “Forgive me, please. I am so grateful that you saved me—”
“Shut up! ” the old man snapped.
I said naught until the next morning, when we touched land.
