Chapter 20 of Stubs & Roses By Irene Dhar Malik, Mumbai, India
RECAP
A brief misunderstanding occurs when Dipta sees Ila leave the STD booth and upon questioning, Ila lies to him saying she was calling her mother. She soon tells him the truth and Dipta understands that she must have felt awkward about telling the truth.
Nihar wonders if it was Ila who had called and not spoken.
Dipta is going away in the morning, and he is a bit worried about leaving Ila behind all alone.
CHAPTER 20
She was lying curled, a soft, hand-sewn blanket covering her upto her ears as she tried shutting out the screams that were resonating in the room, in her ears, creeping inside her body. It sounded like a man in great pain; to her it sounded like Dipta, but she must be imagining things; he had left to spend a week at Rangpur just two days back. Maybe these hallucinations were due to her pregnancy. She wished she was in a city where she could seek medical advice. She wished Dipta was with her. The man was screaming so painfully that she sat up and put her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the noise. She was sure it was Dipta; she got up and ran outdoors, trying to run towards the direction of the cries. But they seemed equidistant from any point and she finally gave up, collapsing in a tired heap. She lay thus for a long time, her tears mingling with the cool earth, paralyzed by a sense of helplessness, till she could no longer hear the cries. When the sky gradually lightened and she could hear the village stirring to wakefulness, she forced herself to arise and go indoors.
The nightmare was gone but she felt a great sense of foreboding that grew so much that she found herself finding out how to go to Rangpur, and then sitting inside one of the many rickety buses that she would have to board to reach her destination. It was night when she reached and as the bus drove away up the narrow, snaky mountain road, she realized she had absolutely no idea about where Dipta could be.
The small village was already looking sleepy but she managed to find a country liquor shop open. Braving the stares, she proceeded to ask if anyone knew of Dipta, the social worker. Blank looks, or was it a reluctance to talk, did she imagine the panic in their eyes? She vaguely remembered that Dipta had mentioned some trouble here, a rape perhaps? She tried a house next, another, and another, but she again got the blank looks or a refusal to comprehend her question.
She finally gave up and sat leaning against a shack near the bus stand, aching with tiredness, hunger and worry.
It was getting cold too, and a dog came and curled next to her seeking warmth.
She heard a jeep drive up and stop, she heard footsteps approach her, she felt too tired to look up when the footsteps stopped near her.
“What are you doing here?” a gruff voice asked in Assamese.
She looked up and saw two men in uniform standing over her and knew that the moment she opened her mouth, she would give herself away. Then she wondered why she was thinking like a fugitive and tried saying she was looking for her husband Dipta, a social worker. One of the men told her to come with them, they would take her to him.
She shivered as the jeep sped away into an unknown darkness, due to the cold, and also because she had heard such tales of horrors about these uniformed men. They couldn’t all be bad, she reasoned, and I am an educated woman – I used to teach in one of India’s best colleges. Why, even some of our school classmates had gone on to become uniformed men.
The jeep stopped with a sudden jerk and she was asked to get off and follow the men into what looked like an outpost. They asked her to sit down across a table facing another uniformed man. He had the most expressionless face she had seen in her life.
“I’m looking for my husband, Dipta Chowdhury – he’s a social worker.”
“If my information is correct, your husband is Nihar Dasgupta and you are Dipta Chowdhury’s keep”, she was corrected.
“No, we’re as good as married, only the formalities are left. A – a divorce takes a little time”, she said awkwardly.
“Madam, Dipta Chowdhury’s love-life is of absolutely no interest to me. But his role as a conduit for arms supply to the insurgents is. We are looking for him; can you help us?”
“You must be mistaken, Dipta isn’t-”. She stopped because she realized it was absolutely pointless to try to argue with this man. She stopped because she actually did not have any idea of the kind of work Dipta did, she just believed in him. But belief is not necessarily founded on facts. Nihar must have believed in her and… she realized her mind was wandering and that she was feeling faint with hunger and exhaustion.
“My men had caught Dipta last night, they even tried interrogating him unsuccessfully, but he managed to give us the slip, the bastard.”
So it was Dipta who had been screaming.
“If we get him again, we’ll just finish him off this time.”
If you haven’t already done so, she thought. The screams had died out after all.
“I’d suggest you go back to Kolkata. My men will drop you off to Mangaon and I’m sure you can find your way back from there.”
“Have you all killed Dipta?” she suddenly blurted out.
There was silence in the room for what seemed a long while and then the man got up and walked away. Another of the uniformed men got up and locked the door and looked at her in a way that left no doubt about his intentions. She felt so faint that she wanted to put her head down on the table and pass out. The man took a step towards her. She tried reasoning.
“I am pregnant, you know-”
The man didn’t stop his measured steps towards her till he reached her and removed her sari pallu with one swift motion.
She did not scream. Her head was already filled with Dipta’s screams.
To be continued ......
Oh Irene, that was really painful! Why are you doing this to Ila and also to us?
Reply to this
hi
Irene, I outguessed you here...
the emotions are just right, I admire your dexterity in controlled emotions here...
Reply to this
Well, I am glad you're still reading and liking it!
Reply to this
Well, I don't know what to say or think. The emotions that surged up in me when I began reading the earlier parts of the novel are pretty much dead now. Not that I think the story is not moving. It's moving alright, though it would help if you clarified why Ila heard Dipta's screams. I imagined he was running away from his captors and coming back to her to find a shelter, perhaps for both of them. In other words, I want to believe that he cared for Ila so much that he risked his life to come and hide her where she couldn't be found and tortured. Dipta deserves our sympathy. The way I am looking at the situation now, he loved her deeply, but he also loved a cause. His two loves conflicted and he made a painful choice. He had to behave the way he did partly to protect her, since he was aware of the dangers. But then he came back because he couldn't live without her and she willingly accompanied him, as she wanted to the day he informed her of his decision. In all this, Ila is the person who impresses me most. Am I right when I say, once a woman loves a man, she loves him for good. Once a woman says "no" to a man, she says so for good. Women, I feel, are far more steady as far as emotional commitments go. She left Nihar, not because she was fickle, but because she was NOT FICKLE. I wonder if she ever told Nihar that she loved him. She was prepared to live with him, care for him, make him happy in her company. But love? I wonder, though I am not sure I understand that concept too well. Only women know what love means. Men often find it hard to delink love from physical attraction. And I have given this whole thing a good deal of thought since your last instalment. As I told you, I am not too clear about notions like good and bad. At least, I don't want to take positions. True, nature created humaninty, humanity created society, society created values for its own preservation. In a sense therefore, society is itself a product of nature. And once you see it that way, values exist in nature. Perhaps so. But there is this notion of evolution too. Changes occur in nature as well as value systems. Around fifty years ago, Ila would be called a slut by 99% of people. That's not true anymore. Of course, the man who is about to rape her belongs to the old school. But there are a whole lot of others who wouldn't call her a slut. I wouldn't for one. And I have stopped feeling sorry for Nihar. Nihar will be happy when he finds Ila, whatever her condition may be, whatever she might have done to him. Why should one feel unhappy for a happy man? This is a tale of Nihar finding fulfilment. Dipta loses his life, Ila loses her mind and Nihar loses his meaningless existence.
Reply to this
I am sad that my story is almost dead to you now, in that it no longer rouses any feeling. The story is what it is though. And thanks for putting it so well that Dipta loses his life, Ila her mind and Nihar loses his meaningless existence. But Nihar's life is tough... many years of looking after a sick woman can test many a true love. Dipta didn't take Ila along when he first embarked on this out of purely selfish reasons. He had this vision of himself as a saviour, as a great man... Ila didn't fit in that scenario. Of course he didn't quite expect the loneliness, the harshness of that life must have belied a lot of romantic notions. He was just a college kid when he left. As an adult he possibly missed Ila and an adult companionship of his wavelength. Ila is not fickle, as you rightly say. If she loved them both, she loved Dipta first and only looked at Nihar as Dipta was no longer an option.
Reply to this
Yes, I understand you. I was merely trying to look at the whole story from another perspective. For some reason, perhaps my age and the sure knowledge that life is almost over for me, I am finding it increasingly difficult to find faults with humanity. The cosmic loneliness of our existence makes us act strangely. Each one of us is fighting this lone battle against nature's indifference, with nothing but frail mortality as our defence. I started out hating Dipta, I ended up pitying him. Him as well as the real life Diptas. The important thing that I learnt from your story is that a woman who leaves her husband the way Ila did is not to be blamed either. About Nihar though, I don't feel sorry. He will bear his pain with happiness. That's the way you created him. This may not be the way you are viewing the story, nor any other person amongst your readers. But I want to assure you that I have been reading you with true sincerity, otherwise I wouldn't be looking for alternative interpretations. Your story is not dead to me in the sense in which you might have understood me. It is dead in the sense that I am reading you differently from the way you might want your readers to read you.
Reply to this
I am so glad to have such an involved reader. I don't feel sorry for Nihar either, though his life might not be an easy one. He has a raison d'etre and that is so important, isn't it?
A woman who leaves her husband is sometimes just following her heart, her instinct, her conscience. She is helpless and has to give in to the forces sweeping her away in a great wave ... Imagine Ila staying back and living with this huge regret all her life. Her life with Nihar would have been a waste.
Reply to this
Oh my God!! This chapter is soo soo sad...Dipta is dead, Ila is raped...and the most striking thing about the chapter is that you made us feel the intensity of the pain without putting us readers through too many gory details. That's really amazing. But does this chapter begins the end of the novel?
Reply to this
Yes, its a sad chapter, and the assault has been brutal on Ila - and I don't mean just the rape. Thanks for reading.
Reply to this
I loved reading this chapter. Yes, the beginning was indeed very well written. Now I am looking forward to'Calcutta' again!
Reply to this
Thanks for reading Sangeeta. You know what, when I began writing this novel, it was set in Mumbai, but Kolkata just wrote itself into the novel.
Reply to this
Life is such !
Reply to this
Thanks for reading Jasmin.
Reply to this
I have to Irene, especially because I am a Kashmiri too :Kaul.My dear dad was Kashmiri and my dear mum was Punjabi !
Reply to this
You have still not told why Ila should have married Nihar, if she had so much love surging in her for Dipta that she chose to run away with him, with Nihar's child in her womb. And meet with the fate that she has now. That aside, it is sad that uniform at times facilitates and at other times actually perpetrates crime.
Reply to this
But Subra there are no clear cut answers as to how people sometimes act, especially in matters of the heart. Dipta had gone away forever (or so he had said) and Nihar was in love with her. He floored her with his love but when Dipta came back, she just walked away in one crazy moment of following the heart.
Reply to this
I can understand the pain that has helped u create a character as conflicting as Ila. However, all said, I still feel Nihar would have given more sense to the relationship! If Dipta wanted her, it was because of the notion that he needed company ... nothing else. You may find fault with my admission, still I would suggest had we seen the other side of Nihar, who left no stones unturned to protect an elderly woman's life in misery. He would have definitely taken care of Ila. Still it was her prerogative to select Dipta, the adventurous guy. I had a hunch that Dipta will turn out an insurgent, and I am sad to suggest that such men tend to have little compassion for other humans too ... leave alone his partner. I may be sounding conservative, but I was very sad the day Ila left Nihar!! I feel for him, the way I knew Nihar ....
Reply to this
Man-woman relationships are tough to understand and define... there are no absolute rights and wrongs here.
Reply to this
The chapter is quite moving. The pain which comes acrsso touches the core.. I know I should feel sorry for Ila, but honestly speaking I don't. I may comes across as cruel and heartless, but I still believe what she did to Nihar was not right. If she loved Dipta so much, she should not have married Nihar in the first place. And then she just disappears from his life, just like that. For her Nihar was just something that could be discarded without a moments thought. I will not say, she should not have gone with Nihar, but atleast she should have left a note or some indication to inform him of her decision. As far as Dipta is concered, I feel he is a very selfish person whose every decision has a motive behind it. He left Ila in pursuit of his vision, he came back when he felt the loneliness. He may have wanted to keep Ila out of danger and hencehe may not have told her about his cause, or he may have thought that Ila would not accept him if she knew the truth. Whatever may be his thought, he knew he was leading a dangerous life and he had not right to drag someone into its midst, without the persons knowledge.
Reply to this
So perhaps Ila just got what she deserved... but poor woman just followed her heart... was she so wrong?
Reply to this
No, she deserved much better, because I feel she is not a bad person.. she just made some wrong decisions by following her heart..
Reply to this
yes, screams DO creep into the body.
and the last line, Irene-- thank you. thank you.
please keep writing your stories.
Reply to this
Thanks Nadi, for your kind words.
Reply to this
oh man...the oscillations of a woman's placement in this world are so painful now to be told in such telling ways...from tedious lock-down boredom in uninspiring conventional life to the extreme uncertainties alongside a romantic masculinity of a life on the margins of society...finally to the ubiquitous reduction of her self as the body under rape...i refuse to accept 'lunacy' and a despondent lack of agency now as the only 'escape' from the seemingly overwhelming challenges of this world...yet, i leave deeply admiring the courage of such writing...cheers
Reply to this
Perhaps lunacy seemed like the only refuge that was remotely sane...?
Reply to this
A very painful chapter in Ila's life.Is Dipta really gone or was it as you say,a hallucination?
Reply to this
He's really gone I'm afraid...
Reply to this
Hi Bhabhi!
Very involving chapter and the events follow very swiftly. Dipta's death is and Ila turning numb in a way...
Reply to this
Thanks Astha.
Reply to this