Read Online THE MAGICAL PALACE by Kunal Mukjerjee - Free Book Online Page B

officers of the Durga Puja Committee had been elected.
    The guests feasted on samosas, kachoris and all kinds of Bengali sweets. I was too full to eat and was preoccupied with my scandalous discovery. After the Bengali Association members left, we sat around the dining table, planning our summer vacation activities.
    ‘Are you coming for pickle-making this year?’ Rani asked Mallika and Shyamala as we rose to leave.
    ‘When are you going to make pickles?’ Shyamala enquired.
    ‘In a couple of weeks, as soon as we start our vacation.’
    ‘I will be there,’ Mallika promised.
    ‘I have to go for my Rabindra Sangeet practice every day for the next few weeks, so I can’t join you,’ Shyamala complained. ‘Music practice is so boring!’
    ‘You girls have no respect for your culture. Rabindranath Tagore is like a saint to us and you do not appreciate him. I don’t know what kind of people you will be when you grow up,’ Binesh Kaku snapped.
    My father nodded his agreement and turned to us in warning. ‘Why don’t you children follow our traditions and make your parents proud instead of going to watch movies and listening to all that nonsense English music? Don’t forget your culture and start imitating others. I don’t want to hear anything about going to school dances and dating, do you hear? Or I will put an end to all of this nonsense. You will go to school and come home and study. That’s it. Understand?’ Binesh Kaku and he walked ahead, turning away from us.
    Mallika looked nervously at my father and then quickly looked away.
    Binesh Kaku saw us off, muttering about the unappreciative boys and girls of the new generation. We waved goodbye to Mallika and Shyamala and Anjali Mashi. Mallika could barely muster up a smile.
    On the way back, I thought about Mallika’s stricken face as we left. The rules that we had to follow were not just a matter of keeping a good reputation. They were about family honour and our parents’ ability to walk in society ‘with their head held high’. Having a love affair,and with a Muslim boy at that, was as big a transgression as Amit Puri’s love letter and the consequences would probably be as humiliating as his expulsion. Fear for Mallika paralysed me in the way that was fast becoming familiar to me.
    To relieve my anxiety, before going to bed, I looked for the dictionary in the bookshelf where my father’s engineering books were kept. It was old and heavy, the clothbound covers frayed and dog-eared. I opened the dictionary to the letter ‘h’. Running my finger down the page, I finally found it. It said:
    ‘ Noun: homo ‘hm–, [N. Amer.] [Brit.], slang for Noun: homosexual ‘hm‘sekul [N. Amer.] [Brit.]: Someone who practices homosexuality; having an attraction to someone of the same gender.’
    I stared at the page as my insides churned. So that is what a ‘homo’ was. Amit was a ‘homo’ because he had written a love letter to another boy. What Ranjan had said finally made sense. But I still did not understand why everyone was so upset about it. It must be considered to be really bad. Maybe I was one too. But I had not intended to do anything bad, only write a letter—I did not want to be different from others. Maybe I wasn’t really a ‘homo’.
    As I lay in bed that night, staring at the shadows on the wall, my doubts returned. What if I was not normal? Was there something wrong with me? Something that could only be cured by shock therapy? At least Mallika was normal, even though she had broken the rules. She was in love and wrote love letters to a boy. But she too would get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out. Of all the things she could have done, having a love affair with a Muslim man was absolutely the worst. I slept fitfully that night, anxious formyself, worried about how I would be punished if I did not fare well in the examinations and anxious for Mallika who would surely be in trouble if her secret got out.
    May 1973. Hyderabad.
    On the