The Sleeping Dictionary Read online

  As rain has come too soon.

  Rabindranath Tagore, “Golden Boat,” (“Sonar Tori”), 1894

  CHAPTER

  1

  The Flower says I was born from the dust.

  Kindly, kindly

  Let me forget it

  Let me forget it

  Let me forget.

  —Rabindranath Tagore, “The Flower Says,” Chandalika, 1938

  JOHLPUR, WEST BENGAL, 1930

  You ask for my name, the real one, and I cannot tell.

  It is not for lack of effort. In a proper circumstance, the narrator must give her name. In fact, one of the first English phrases I learned was “What is your good name?”

  Over the years people have called me many things. Not all of them are repeatable. But in the early days, I was always called Didi 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 who looked 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 them. 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.

  I tell you this only so that you will understand how rich I once was.

  But nobody in my family understood that those days were perfect ones. Most mornings when my mother made her prayers, she whispered her hopes for a son. If Goddess Lakshmi would bring one, my mother was willing to give her a goat. Or five rupees. Anything, for the boy everyone wanted. Then, in the spring of 1930, the flatness under Ma’s sari rounded. Thakurma and Dadu—my grandparents—were suddenly happy with everything she did, and my father sang songs every evening.

  As summer came, my mother’s belly expanded 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, was studying with a foreign governess. The jamidar’s daughter had long been my object of fascination because of her lacy pastel frocks and the white-skinned doll she carried. I did not know the little girl’s name then, for we could not ask such a thing of our superiors. In my mind I called her the Princess; and that was not out of envy but amazement that another little girl could be so different.

  My acquaintance with the jamidar’s household formed at the time I was about seven, old enough to walk distances carrying a bundle of homemade brooms that Ma and I sold throughout the villages. When we reached the jamidar’s estate, the ritual was always the same. A servant would call for the jamidarni to see us; she would come out with her daughter hiding behind the folds of her shining silk sari. Then our two mothers would examine the brooms: hers looking down, and mine squatting on the stone veranda, turning over each of our brooms to find her the best. The jamidarni would suggest that her sweeper didn’t really need a new broom, then my mother would counter, Jamidarni-memsaheb, 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 gave me a gaze that seemed especially soft. This gave me the bravery to ask where the Princess was hiding herself. The jamidarni replied with a word I hadn’t heard before: school. Two Ingrej women came to the house to teach the Princess reading and writing and numbers—all in English! The Ingrej had turned a parlor into a proper schoolroom with a desk and chair and a blackboard on which they wrote with a short white stick.

  “Would you like to see her?” the jamidarni asked in her gentle voice.

  As I was nodding my head, Ma said no. Disappointment flooded me, but she ignored the look I gave her.

  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 what she meant by 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; that was why Ma hadn’t wanted me to see the jamidarni’s daughter in her special room.

  I said to myself that it didn’t matter; I didn’t want to be the only girl studying with those boys, and I was already doing something more important than they: I was with Ma, earning money for the family. And I didn’t need a numbers class to know how to count coins; by the age of ten, I was proud that I couldn’t be cheated. All this I wished I could say to the jamidarni, but it wasn’t my place.

  Ma was murmuring something about needing my help now that a baby was coming. She placed her hand on her belly, emphasizing this, and the jamidarni pledged that she would make a special prayer for a boy. Ma smiled at this, looking as grateful as if the jamidarni had bought ten brooms. And that day, the jamidarni bought her broom without bargaining.

  We did not have such luck at other places on our route. By mid-afternoon, my mother and I slowly trailed home, the heat wrapping itself around us like a scratchy woolen 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 in the pond with Rumi and Jhumi. 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 one another 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 had potatoes and eggplants and tomatoes and greens from our own vegetable garden. Fruits beckoned from old abandoned orchards and from neighbors who did not mind sharing. To buy foodstuffs we could not grow, my mother raised a small amount from selling 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 Rumi and Jhumi would do the same.

  “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 into my grandparents’ hut to live with them and Baba when she was thirteen. I was born two years after that. Sadly, Ma’s parents died from typhoid before my annaprasan, the six-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. In our village, this was 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 in Johlpur village. Thakurma reminded me to call Chitra-massi’s name four times at the door: to c
all her once or twice might lead her to worry that I was a nighttime ghost. I thought this was nonsense, but her door did not open until the fourth time I called. Together, Chitra-massi and I raced back to the hut, carrying her special bucket and cloths. Then Thakurma took her 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 our 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 shondesh. 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 neighbor 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 hold? I did not trust doctors and their tools. If he had a knife, he could kill my mother or the baby by accident. Silently, I begged the goddess Lakshmi to watch over my mother and the baby. I was beyond wishing for a little brother; I just wanted whoever was inside to come out alive.

  Morning traffic to the river was under way when new sounds broke from the hut: happy cheering and laughter. Thakurma emerged covered in sweat but with a smile as wide as the lightening sky. 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 something called forceps to free his head. She said she’d almost fainted from the sight of it, but it had worked. Ma was quite tired but wanted to see us.

  My sisters and I could not get inside the hut quickly enough. The air was full of heavy smells: incense, the afterbirth, and sweat. After kissing Ma’s damp cheek, I turned to look at 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. His skin was fair, but the sun would darken him to the same golden-brown color as me.

  “Double curses wiped out by a gift from Krishna himself. We will give ten rupees to the temple!” 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 my grandfather would choose for my little bhai. Then another worry came: how would we ever come up with the goat Ma had promised Lakshmi and the rupees owed to both her and Krishna?

  You may think such karmic debts are old-fashioned Hindu superstitions worth as much as an Englishman’s crossed fingers or thrown salt. But I have sometimes wondered whether paying those heavenly debts right away might have kept them from becoming my burden. Then 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,

  clamors with its million up-thrust arms,

  “Give! Give! Give!”

  Wrathful at the delay, foaming and hissing

  The aura Death grows white with mighty anger.

  —Rabindranath Tagore, “Sea Waves,” (“Shindhutaranga”), 1887

  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 traveling upcountry. A second monsoon wind was sweeping the Indian Ocean to break at Bengal. This was the real storm, and from the shore, one could see it coming like the most magical blackness in the world.

  The day those rains came, a slow parade of tongas, cycles, rickshaws, and cars snaked 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 the jamidar’s good friend. He worked for the government and gave the district’s harvested rice to the people in England and other countries the Ingrej owned. Does the Collector pay you, or the jamidar? I had asked. Neither, answered my father in a short, hard voice. There is no pay. Just whatever bit of rice they let us keep.

  I did not see the Collector’s car today, but that did not concern me. I was more interested in the holiday makers: the well-dressed ladies who shrieked and clutched their saris that the winds tried to take from them, and the valiant husbands who struggled in vain to keep umbrellas from taking flight. I loved to see the rich people in fine clothing; to me, they were as amusing as monkeys playing games in trees.

  Stillness precedes the rains: a kind of energy that holds you and everything else motionless. It was holding us then. My sisters and I went inside as the sun had slipped away behind the clouds. The hut became so dark that I had to squint to properly see the dal I was picking through. Silently, Rumi fanned the sleeping Ma and Bhai, who had a black spot drawn on his face to ward off the evil eye. Nearby, Jhumi was snuggled against Thakurma’s thick, comfortable belly.

  Into this peaceful silence, a neighbor boy outside called: “Look! It comes!”

  Rumi left off fanning and ran outside, while Thakurma slowly arose and took Jhumi with her to check the weather. I stayed at my job so Thakurma wouldn’t have reason to scold me. When they all returned, both sisters jumping and tugging at Thakurma’s sari, my grandmother said, “Rain is here.”

  “Let’s go!” Jhumi hugged Thakurma. “You promised we could!”

  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 altar to Lord Krishna. My sisters had wept while I was allowed to join the rest of the village in celebrating the rain last year. They had been five. Now they were six, but still too wild, everyone said.

  “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 midafternoon; Baba usually worked until the sun faded. 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—“I can explain to Rumi and Jhumi and we will all wait together.”

  Thakurma gave me a shooing gesture. “Yes, you go, but quickly. Before it becomes darker.”

  “Wait, Pom!” Ma said suddenly. “Remember, don’t take the jungle path.”

  My pleasure at being allowed out to find my father was dulled by my mother’s command to take the longer route. She had loaded me with many frightening tales about the jungle hideaways of the revolutionaries who robbed innocent country people in t
heir efforts to raise funds for antigovernment 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 paid more attention to stories 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 a cassia grove 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 wanted to be with my father when it struck.

  The narrow path through the jungle was easy to miss, but I recognized landmarks like the supari tree on which always hung a jug of rainwater for wandering holy men. I supposed that 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 a couple of freshly fallen ones and tied them in my sari’s pallu to share later 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. That group didn’t know of my father, so I walked on. I already had a few cuts on my feet that smarted as I continued on the pebbled path. The fields themselves would have been softer, but I didn’t dare trample 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.

  As the raindrops began falling slow and thick, I hurried on, wishing I’d found my father. The next field had workers, some of whom were already dancing in the rain, but far more were still bent over, hoeing channels for the heavenly rain. This was my father’s group, but the men said he’d gone home on the longer route with several others an hour ago on the company cart.

  So my father was in another place; I’d missed him. I felt my heart pound with the frustration of it. If I’d taken the main road as Ma had ordered, my father would have seen me and probably swung me up to ride along on the cart. We would have returned together. Now everyone would be waiting for me and becoming angry.