I saw her on a long distance trip.<\/p>\n
The bus from Las Vegas was scheduled to arrive at 5:20 am in this small town in Utah, where I stayed for several days. From there I started the next leg of my trip. I did not want to be late. When I came out of the hotel room the manager was asleep in his cubby behind the office in that early dawn. I did not want to wake him. I left the key in the keyhole and left. It was dark, cold and lonely outside. I walked to the nearby gas station that served as the bus station as well. No other passenger seemed to be waiting for this bus. But the bus did arrive at 5:10 am, a full five minutes earlier than scheduled. I thanked myself for being in the station a little early. The driver, a portly middle aged lady, opened the door and came out to check my ticket. She opened the luggage compartment in the belly of the bus, pushed in my suitcase and closed it. She then followed me inside the bus, took her seat in the driver\u2019s seat, and closed a tiny safety door around her. There were only a few passengers in the bus and it was very quiet. I took my seat behind the driver. Everybody looked asleep, or if not completely asleep they were trying their best to sleep. The driver started the bus and turned off all the lights inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere are you heading today?\u201d the driver asked me in a low voice so as not to disturb the sleeping passengers.
\n\u201cJunction,\u201d I replied.
\n\u201cJunction?\u201d the driver wanted to be sure. \u201cYou mean Junction, Kansas?\u201d
\n\u201cKansas? No. No,\u201d Did I then get on to the wrong bus \u2013 I thought. \u201cI want to go to Junction in Colorado.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s Junction City, Sir,\u201d The driver corrected me. \u201cJunction is in Kansas. Junction City is in Colorado. You want to go to Junction City in Colorado.\u201d She took a breath.
\n\u201cI won\u2019t go that far.\u201d She was now more relaxed. \u201cThere would be a change of driver before that. And that next driver is going to go to Junction City. And I am going to tell her to drop you off there.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was early and still dark outside. The driver appeared to be happy to have someone to talk to. Initially I wondered if she was feeling sleepy driving silently all by herself. But that was not the case – she was alert. In another hour or so the driver announced that the bus is going for a rest- stop. It was a gas station-cum restaurant and convenience store. She told passengers that this was a good time if anyone wanted to use the bathroom. Most of the passengers got off. Their eyes and disheveled hair told of the sleeplessness that they had gone through. Some stood in line for the early breakfast at the Subway restaurant.<\/p>\n
When the bus finally started from the rest-stop the faint light of the day was slowly appearing on the horizon. I could see that the passengers were still trying to sneak a nap. I tried to guess about my fellow passengers: their age, their race and may be their social and economic background and I was curious to sneak a peek into their lives and their families. If the upbringing has any bearing on one\u2019s physical appearance then none of them appeared to have come from a privileged past. Of all the passengers that I have come in contact with so far, most came from a class that I didn\u2019t know much about in America, but they were the ones that I wanted to know the most.<\/p>\n
An hour or so passed. I silently unbuckled my seat belt, stood up and took a slow walk down the aisle to the back of the bus. My alibi was to visit the lavatory at the end. On my right on the other side of the aisle was a middle aged lady who evoked the best impression of the bunch. Behind my seat and leaning over his backpack in sleep was a thin, malnourished white man. He would leave the most dramatic and traumatic effect on all of the passengers down that day. An African American young man was asleep curled up in the flat three-passenger seat next to the bathroom. I would not have chosen that seat to avoid the jerky motion at the back of the bus. But the young man seemed to be taking advantage of the little roomier space. He remained undisturbed as I opened and closed the bathroom door. In the middle seat was sleeping a Caucasian lady in her early to mid-thirties. Bereft of physical beauty and material means she reminded me of those luckless young widows of my yore. Next morning when the bus halted at another rest-stop for the passengers to clean up I noticed an effort on her part to keep away from any direct eye contact with others. I saw the sadness in her face and noticed her insecurity.<\/p>\n
Who a lady would be travelling from Las Vegas, the sin city, alone on this all-night bus trip? My mind roamed the alleyways of my memory to seek a similarity – any similarity – to link her to the people I had known. I remembered Radha-pishi<\/em>, my Radha auntie, that young widow who took care of me in my childhood. Radha-pishi<\/em> still had the glow of her youth then. And she was forced to move from one family to the next to secure her survival. Might she be travelling this bus on this night to earn an existence if she were in America now? I don\u2019t know. But I wouldn\u2019t blame her. I felt that \u201cRadha aunties\u201d are also in America, strewn away in the by-lanes of life, lost in the apparent dazzle of this country\u2019s prosperity.<\/p>\n I had searched for Radha auntie when I grew up and I wanted to know what had happened to her. When Ma came to visit me in America I thought about asking her about Radha auntie. But something stopped me from doing that. For I knew that would have opened a can of unsavory worms left closely shut and hidden away in our mutual memories many decades ago. It was in East Bengal and Radha-pishi<\/em> came to work for our family when I was a mere toddler. My developing sense of understanding was then fresh and it absorbed human emotions like a dry sponge thirstily absorbs water.<\/p>\n I remember that Radha grew up in her parents\u2019 home in the middle of a village not far from ours, and in the dry months we could easily walk there. But in the rainy seasons, we had to use a tiny boat,\u00a0which we children were not allowed to use. Radha-pishi<\/em> was Dotto-der meye<\/em>, the Dotto family\u2019s daughter. She looked young and beautiful. And she was a widow without any children. Not our immediate relative, she was a sister by acquaintance to my father and thus she became my pishi<\/em> (auntie). In this culture, we create relations based on one\u2019s age and sex. A middle aged man becomes an uncle. A young girl becomes a sister. Without a husband and child, Radha-pishi<\/em> lost all her claims to a home and livelihood, which was the accepted practice in our culture. As it happens with so many other young widows in Bengal villages, she ended up in her parents\u2019 house after the death of her young husband. I never knew how he died.<\/p>\n Brought up to be married off at a young age, the young girls in these societies were illiterate. They were worthy of no other work but to raise and take care of their families. And when there was no family of their own to take care of, they became the care taker of the village as a whole – if and when anyone needed them. When no one needed them they had no way to support themselves. That was how Radha-pishi<\/em> lived her life and so she was happy to come to our home helping my family. Along with Mohi, our live-in helper, she became the new help of the family. She cooked her own food in the small shed attached to the kitchen. And she might have slept in one corner of the long veranda of our big house. She had few material possessions – a couple of outfits and a container to pack her cooking pots. Radha never raised her voice, did not get involved in any fracas in the family and when challenged, she meekly moved on without a protest. Living on the pity of others in the society, she knew that there was no one to defend her.<\/p>\n Besides helping my mother in endless family chores, she also babysat me and took me around the neighborhood. In the summer evenings, when my mother used to be busy cooking inside the kitchen, she usually sat in the courtyard of the house. On a mat, stretching her legs, she would lay me in the cusp of her stretched legs and slowly bounced me up and down to help me fall asleep. Looking upward, I saw the bright silvery stars twinkling high up in the dark sky above. And I saw stars streaking across the open sky and falling somewhere on the earth. Jackals howled from near a haunted house in the distance. In no time the neighborhood dogs started barking. And in the pitch black darkness I grabbed Radha-pishi\u2019s<\/em> hand and softly said, \u201cPishi, I am scared of the jackal.\u201d She created her little \u2018home\u2019 in the nooks and crannies of our large house and her kitchen was in the outer shed. She collected her food from working around the village. In the early spring when the farmers finished harvesting their winter vegetable crops, Radha-meye<\/em> went around the fields collecting the left over tiny potatoes that the farmers did not care to collect. She would then fry them for dinner. Being her ward, I got the chance to consume a part of the food. In our home I could never taste such tiny potatoes because they were too lowly for my mother\u2019s cooking. The ones Radha-meye<\/em> fried tasted so amazing that I have never forgotten them.<\/p>\n And who would be the chaperone for taking the kids to the winter fair? Radha-meye<\/em> took me and a few kids to the arong<\/em>\u00a0(fair) at Afra one year on the last day of the Bengali winter month. We walked through the dry winter fields from our village to the next, and then the next; then we crossed the paved road, the only paved road we had in that area, on which buses ran. After walking through more empty winter fields we reached Afra, the place where two rivers met. We crossed the river by a ferry. The arong<\/em> was in full swing: kids were riding the ferris-wheel, and the candy man was making pink and blue cotton candies. Radha-meye<\/em> bought cotton candies for us. The winter day was short and we had to return early; thin patches of shapeless, gray-white clouds stretched across the afternoon sky as we crossed the vast, empty field. Crisp winter wind chilled my bare feet and they also hurt walking on the sharp stalks that had dried after the harvest. The day was clear, the sky ethereal, ambiance unforgettable and the serenity of the endless open horizon forever shaped my memory.<\/p>\n But those happy days did not last very long. A game had already been started behind me that as a child I would not have guessed. Around that time one day, Baba and Ma seemed to have some disagreement. They never quarreled. Only that Ma stopped eating. Neighbors came to talk to Ma to relent, but Ma did not. And then Baba also stopped eating. I don\u2019t remember for how long it continued, but one day Baba left for Hindustan. Many years later I heard that it was because Ma neglected her home cooking.<\/p>\n Around that time one day Radha-meye<\/em> started working for our relative next door. Soon she started moving her belongings from our house. One evening while she was working nearby, I caught sight of her. Somehow she did not notice me nor did she come to put me on her lap. I cried out loud for her attention. Before she would have come and\u00a0held\u00a0me to her bosom. But she did not come that day. My mother finally came and took me away. Radha-meye<\/em> seemed to forget me from then on. I longed for her and it was many years later that I came to know why. Ma did not like her affection for me. She felt that Radha was encroaching on my Ma\u2019s relationship with her little son. A widow\u2019s maternal instinct was standing in the way of my mother\u2019s love. My mother did not like her\u00a0being attached to me anymore and wanted Radha to move out of our house – which she did. This created a void in me that I lost only\u00a0after we fled East Bengal and take refuge in the West.<\/p>\n Many years later as East Bengal was exploding under the grip of the Pakistani military, millions of people came seeking shelter in West Bengal and I wanted to see if Radha-meye<\/em> might have crossed the border along with others. However I could not reveal that to Ma. One day, I traveled to the border town, seeking Radha-meye\u00a0<\/em>in case she might have crossed the border with all the unlucky millions. But I fell ill from heat and exhaustion. When I arrived home the next day, Ma had to call the doctor home. I told Ma that I had gone out with my friends, and had to spend the night with them. I could not tell her the whole truth; I spent those two days searching for Radha-meye<\/em> in the refugee camps along the border town, and I did not find anyone of that name or resemblance. I never heard of Radha-meye <\/em>again. Years passed, and I went to a university, and then to America for even higher education.\u00a0Over time, I stopped thinking about her.<\/p>\n Later, Ma came to visit me in America. She spent a lot of time alone on the sofa, watching the television. Though she did not know English and did not understand the conversations among the characters, I guessed that she could pick up the story. Sometimes when I returned from office and we ate dinner, I would sit near her watching the evening news, and the next show after that. On one of those days, there was the very hot story of the divorce of famous movie actors. There is really nothing unique about such news in American Hollywood stories.\u00a0But this divorce happened because the wife claimed that her husband had an affair with the nanny of the family, a beautiful girl who took care of the couple’s young children.<\/p>\n That story reminded me of my own childhood and of Radha-meye,<\/em> who dearly cared for me and who was a beautiful nanny in our house. One difference was that she was a young widow.\u00a0Now that I was older, I started to look back and wonder if there might have been some similarities there. I started to ask myself, once again, what\u00a0the two ladies had fought about so many years ago. Was it about me, who both Ma and Radha-meye<\/em> loved dearly? The memory that comforted me was also the memory that came back to confront me. And conspire. If that was the case then why did Baba and Ma stop eating and why did Radha-meye<\/em> leave? Why did the elder neighbors come to our house late at night, when\u00a0us children would normally be asleep, to try to intervene between my parents? They talked in whispers as if to keep us children undisturbed. And what made Baba leave for Hindustan? My longing for Radha-meye<\/em>\u2019s love started to create cracks. My world unraveled. Was there then another love triangle that existed?<\/p>\n Could it really be Baba who created the friction between the two ladies? It had to be a social taboo. Radha-meye<\/em> might have lost in that socially-forbidden fight, like all the other\u00a0 fights in her life. But I harshly questioned my doubt. I realized that my long-held beliefs about a simple life and love could no longer satisfy the logic of a mature mind. In my mind I tried to salvage whatever was left of the sweet serenity of my childhood. Was her love for Baba the main reason Ma had fought? Then what about me? What about all the love I cherished and longed for? \u201cWas I then just a pawn in the middle,\u201d I asked myself. \u201cWas I just a collateral casualty?\u201d<\/p>\n The next stop was my destination. The landscape along the highway outside had grown vast and lonely. Craggy, twisting canyons with burnt-red buttes beckoned in the distance. It was then that I heard a female voice sobbing on a phone. Though the voice was muffled by the noise of the moving bus I could hear her nonetheless.<\/p>\n \u201cHe beats me,\u201d the voice cried inconsolably. It was that lady. Fellow passengers around grew inquisitive. But the bus wheezed brazenly past that desolate land. It was surreal. And I wondered if Radha-meye<\/em> would have done anything like that if she was in America. The lady tried to hide her face between the seats and\u00a0lower her voice. (I like to thank Mrs. Catherine C. for her advice and editorial help.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I saw her on a long distance trip. The bus from Las Vegas was scheduled to arrive at 5:20 am in this small town in Utah, where I stayed for several days. From there I started the next leg of … Continue reading
\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid, Baba,\u201d Radha-pishi<\/em> held me in her bosom and hugged dearly to comfort me. \u201cI am your meye<\/em> and I shall be always with you!\u201d
\n\u201cMeye<\/em>?\u201d I wondered loudly and cheerfully.
\n\u201cBecause you are my Baba,\u201d she said poignantly. I could see her shining wet eyes in the light of the stars.
\nFrom then on I called her Radha-meye<\/em>. In some evenings she carried me on her waist around the neighborhood till I would fall asleep and she would hand me over to Ma. Getting up in the morning, I would still look for Radha-meye<\/em>. I was so attached to her!<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSuch affair can only happen in a promiscuous society,\u201d I tried to blame it on America.
\n\u201cIs that right?\u201d my conscience retorted. \u201cThen what happened between Malanchi-mashi<\/em> and her next door neighbor? Was that not love?\u201d
\n\u201cBut it\u2019s so difficult to happen in such an old and open society,\u201d I tried to temper down the raging tempest in me. \u201cIt was such a rural place.\u201d
\n\u201cSo love does not happen in small villages?\u201d countered my morality.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to go back to him anymore,\u201d her voice cracked. \u201cHe does not love me no more.\u201d<\/p>\n