Read Online Freedom Song by Amit Chaudhuri - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Amit Chaudhuri
Ads: Link
flicked through the pages of the yoga book till he had become familiar with the descriptions of the asanas and those thin, bare-chested men in their state of arrested transport, with the pale luminous white wall behind them. When their mother looked at Bhaskar and Manik, she saw two wiry, restive boys, but she also saw, in their eyes, in the way they walked, in the way they spoke occasionally, what they saw themselves as—Tarzan and Hercules—and, vividly, she could see them increasing and filling out to their imaginary proportions, to their ideal, while, at the same time, being able to see them for the two thin boys they were.
Bhaskar had never been, although he was a great shirker of studies, and also a great day-dreamer, a particularly rebellious boy. If his feet ever accidentally brushed against a book, for instance, he immediately and swiftly touched his forehead and chest with his index finger in quick, absent-minded repentance, and as, in those days, books and magazines that were being read by Bhaskar, Manik, or their mother would always be lying by pillows or on the middle of the bed, because the bed served as floor and bed and table at once, and because Bhaskar’s normal mode of locomotion in the room was quick skips, jumps, and runs from bed to floor and floor to bed, his feet were always grazing books, and he, at least five or six times a day, was engaged in making that brief, absent-minded gesture. Hisday-dreams were the usual ones dreamt by Bengali boys of his age: of alternative lives that were much like the lives of Swami Vivekananda and Subhas Chandra Bose. At the age of seven, he had been given a thin book with broad, flapping pages called
We Are Bengalis,
with small biographical tales about Vivekananda and Vidyasagar and Tagore, each prefaced by a portrait of a serene and grave face; and some of the stories fired him with pride, and others made him cry. Once he understood what a wonderful thing it was to be a Bengali, and that he was Bengali himself, he went around the house chanting, ‘We are Bengalis! We are Bengalis!’ and this echo, predictably, was taken up by Manik, who had no inkling of what it meant.
He had read the book on afternoons much like this one many years ago, lying on his stomach and flicking the pages. The story he liked the best was the one about Swami Vivekananda, who was once an ordinary man called Narendranath Dutta. Narendranath wanted a simple answer to a question he had asked men of several religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism—and the question was: have you seen God? Only Ramakrishna said, ‘Yes: yes, I have seen Ma Kali!’ Testing Ramakrishna, Narendranath placed a picture of Kali under his mattress, and the saint leapt up in agony as if he had been burnt. Ramakrishna, seeing Narendranath was a great disciple, gave him the name Vivekananda, and Vivekananda,journeying to America, homeless in Chicago, and then put up by a kindly old lady, brought glory to India by addressing the Parliament of World Religions with his speech: ‘Brothers and sisters of America . . .’ For a long time after, Bhaskar remembered every detail of this story, and he seemed to be there with Vivekananda when he was Narendranath and wandering from temple to church, and he entered the strange world where, with Narendranath, he met Ramakrishna, and he was there with Ramakrishna as well, when he sat in a trance and saw Kali before him, appearing little by little, her blue skin, the pink of her tongue, the black of her hair, and then becoming whole, and he came back to the real world with a little of the smoke and incense and terror still upon him. Through those days, as he walked from one room to the other in the afternoon, or came out from the toilet, he wondered if it was possible to see Saraswati or Durga or any divinity by chance, for a minute, for no reason. Then, one day, he asked an older, fifteen-year-old cousin who lived in North Calcutta, ‘What would happen if you saw a god?
Bhaskar had never been, although he was a great shirker of studies, and also a great day-dreamer, a particularly rebellious boy. If his feet ever accidentally brushed against a book, for instance, he immediately and swiftly touched his forehead and chest with his index finger in quick, absent-minded repentance, and as, in those days, books and magazines that were being read by Bhaskar, Manik, or their mother would always be lying by pillows or on the middle of the bed, because the bed served as floor and bed and table at once, and because Bhaskar’s normal mode of locomotion in the room was quick skips, jumps, and runs from bed to floor and floor to bed, his feet were always grazing books, and he, at least five or six times a day, was engaged in making that brief, absent-minded gesture. Hisday-dreams were the usual ones dreamt by Bengali boys of his age: of alternative lives that were much like the lives of Swami Vivekananda and Subhas Chandra Bose. At the age of seven, he had been given a thin book with broad, flapping pages called
We Are Bengalis,
with small biographical tales about Vivekananda and Vidyasagar and Tagore, each prefaced by a portrait of a serene and grave face; and some of the stories fired him with pride, and others made him cry. Once he understood what a wonderful thing it was to be a Bengali, and that he was Bengali himself, he went around the house chanting, ‘We are Bengalis! We are Bengalis!’ and this echo, predictably, was taken up by Manik, who had no inkling of what it meant.
He had read the book on afternoons much like this one many years ago, lying on his stomach and flicking the pages. The story he liked the best was the one about Swami Vivekananda, who was once an ordinary man called Narendranath Dutta. Narendranath wanted a simple answer to a question he had asked men of several religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism—and the question was: have you seen God? Only Ramakrishna said, ‘Yes: yes, I have seen Ma Kali!’ Testing Ramakrishna, Narendranath placed a picture of Kali under his mattress, and the saint leapt up in agony as if he had been burnt. Ramakrishna, seeing Narendranath was a great disciple, gave him the name Vivekananda, and Vivekananda,journeying to America, homeless in Chicago, and then put up by a kindly old lady, brought glory to India by addressing the Parliament of World Religions with his speech: ‘Brothers and sisters of America . . .’ For a long time after, Bhaskar remembered every detail of this story, and he seemed to be there with Vivekananda when he was Narendranath and wandering from temple to church, and he entered the strange world where, with Narendranath, he met Ramakrishna, and he was there with Ramakrishna as well, when he sat in a trance and saw Kali before him, appearing little by little, her blue skin, the pink of her tongue, the black of her hair, and then becoming whole, and he came back to the real world with a little of the smoke and incense and terror still upon him. Through those days, as he walked from one room to the other in the afternoon, or came out from the toilet, he wondered if it was possible to see Saraswati or Durga or any divinity by chance, for a minute, for no reason. Then, one day, he asked an older, fifteen-year-old cousin who lived in North Calcutta, ‘What would happen if you saw a god?
Similar Books
