How I was robbed on my way back home

It was in the waiting room of the Hayes station that I met Shoma Mitra.
Shoma Mitra and her son, Mohul Biswas.

I was waiting for the train, disinterestedly staring at a rejected piece of advertisement of Dell laptops that was occupying my seat before I displaced it; and cursing a whole set of morning events that had lead me to miss the earlier train by a mere minute. To see the tail of a train disappear away into the wilderness of tracks, for me was a regular sign of abject failure to never manage on time. It was then that the door creaked open and a plump lady pushed in holding in her palm the hand of a three year old boy; both covered in an extravagance of coats and scarves. Guided by her son’s pull to one of the seats, she asked in a suitably appeasing tone, “Do you want to sit here...?” The boy looked indignantly at the seat and then very solemnly answered, “No, it is dirty.” “Then sit on this one”, guiding him to the next seat while carefully accommodating herself on the first seat. “Ki Shona, any problem. Jol khaabe? (Do you want to have water?)

Now that happens to be the universal lingo that any Bengali mother, anywhere in the world will continue addressing her child as, until she realises that he or she has grown up (and that she usually realises pretty late). “They’ve got to be Bengali”, I said to myself. And so while I made pretence to study the Dell advertisement even harder, my ears perked up like the antenna of an insect, straining to catch a few more words of Bengali between the two to confirm my suspicions. However it seemed that behind the Dell laptop leaflet, I was forced to accept defeat as a sudden whisper of the child in his mother’s ear made the two suddenly get up and proceed out of the door; presumably because of the boy’s demand to use the washroom.

With the announcement of the train being made roughly five minutes later, I walked out of the waiting room. I saw the two standing on the platform, heads strained in the direction of the yet-to-arrive train, with the mother still tightly clutching the hand of the child. A gush of audacity overtook me, and in a fit of recklessness, I suddenly walked straight up to the lady and asked in Bengali, “I am sorry; but are you by any chance a Bengali?”

It was then that I got a full view of Shoma’s face. She was not quite tall; infact I could recollect her irritating quality to allow herself to be dwarfed by most people. Her nose supported a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles, which looked fashionable but at the same time made her glasses look more conspicuous than her face. In reply to my question her face suddenly broke into a very warm smile, as if she had stumbled upon an old friend, and she exclaimed, “Yes! Are you a Bengali too.....?” A whistling train cut her short and all three of us boarded the same compartment, with the son having to be buoyed by both the mother and I from the platform into the train. Inside, before either of us could regain our composure she started speaking, “Oh it’s so nice to have found a Bengali here! What is your name? By the way, my name is Shoma Mitra. I am much elder to you, so you can call me Shoma Aunty. And this is my son.” Nudging him, she said, “Mohul baba, tell Dada your name. His name is Mohul. Mohul Biswas.” And before I could phantom the discrepancy of the surnames, she said lowering her voice, “Mohul’s father and I have separated. So I am a Mitra, and he is still Biswas.” She said it with a kind of theatrical nonchalance; as if they were lines that she had been used to repeating, and that she had them very well rehearsed.

I managed to give my name, number and allow myself to be judged by my surname, my father’s profession and my current occupation; things that every Bengali would discreetly enquire from any newly acquainted fellow Bengali.

“So, how long have you been staying here, Aunty?” I asked.
“From 1986, I think. Ya........1986.”

I was taken aback. I was used to seeing Bengalis and infact other Indians too, strut about like proud peacocks in London, as if using their arrogance and stoic reserve to advertise how well-settled they were in a much better life. And here in front of me was this lady who had come to England about the time I was born, and was conversing with me without any show, sophistication and infact with a potentially rustic simplicity. “Mohul likes Elish fish with rice. He just doesn’t eat anything else for dinner. So I need to keep going to Hounslow to buy fish.” she continued as I wondered, sitting opposite the two in the ongoing journey to Holborn in the tube train. “I first came around twenty years back from Kolkata”, she replied to my enquiry. “That was when an Indian firm offered me a position in their London office after my graduation. I wanted to do something different, and so I broke away and came here. I still remember how I had learned cooking on phone from my mother and sister receiving dictation in a flat in London. Then I got married, went to Kolkata. And now I have come back. My father is no more. My mother is in a flat in Kolkata, quite close to the airport as a matter of fact. We will be visiting her quite soon, aren’t we Mohul? Mohul shona, you want to see didu, don’t you?” she said, as if suddenly aware of letting herself ignore her son for too long.

“I am taking Mohul to see his father today. According to the court settlement, he gets to meet him once every fortnight.”

We stood framed at Holborn station’s eternally long escalator, while I fought the umpteenth invitation by Shoma to accompany them to lunch later in the day. In the station, I shook hands with her ex-husband. He seemed quite pleasant. I mean, that was just how much you could size up a person in one handshake. As I left them, they infact looked very much like a happy family with the child gambolling about between them. And so when I reached college, I absentmindedly asked a friend, “If you’ve broken up with somebody, can you possibly not be bitter to him? Can you honestly make a good friend out of him?”

Shoma Aunty called the next day and I dutifully handed over the phone to my mother. I could sense a feeling of caution from my mother’s side as she chatted on the phone with her; like me even my mother seemed to have been taken aback with the huge superfluity of speech. She reciprocated back by inviting Shoma Aunty and her son for dinner. After keeping the phone down, she did what I had always seen her do after knowing that guests would be coming over-- consult my father on what dishes she should be preparing.

Shoma rung the bell and seeing her once again in the dark British evening with a fluffy coat, talkative smile and clutching Mohul who was covered from head to toe like an astronaut; I was reminded of how she was permanently smiling ever since I had met her. After handing over a bottle of wine and box of chocolates to my mother, she gave an unprecedented big hug to my mother; who for the second time in the day was caught wondering how to react to this sudden gush of intimacy. As Shoma accommodated herself on the sofa, while Mohul started laying down his arsenal of cars and fire engines on the floor, I realised that she was once again in her talkative usual. While my mother was in the kitchen getting the tea, she continued chatting inconsolably with my father. “Dada, Mohul ato dushtu hoyeche. Badi te aei sofa theke arakta sofa jump korte thaake. Nijeke Spiderman bole!” (Mohul is so naughty, at home he keeps jumping from one sofa to another. Calls himself Spiderman!) As I listened to her talk, I realised that from the very beginning, her talk would closely gravitate around to Mohul who unaware, was absentmindedly pushing his cars and trucks with intense seriousness.

Leaning on the wall, absent from Shoma’s attention; I heard her tale. The tale of a bright girl coming to London, making her own small fortune out of her job, getting a house for herself and ultimately even a British passport. Then meeting someone, going to Kolkata with him to marry. In the temptation of a settled life she lets go of all that she had accumulated over so many years-her job, house and money. Within a few years after marriage, her sister-in-law expires of cancer. Mother-in-law convinces herself that her daughter-in-law was responsible for this calamity. Harsh words exchanged, her parents regularly insulted in conversations, physical and mental abuse; and within all this- birth of her child. Which does not mend matters. Instead it becomes a liability, as if a curtailment on her bargaining power. Husband stays aloof. Would often come home drunk. Shoma decides that she does not want her son to be growing up in this abusive-being abused environment. Cuts her losses, gets a divorce. Her decision makes her the topic of endless discussion, ridicule and offensive curiosity amidst relatives in Kolkata. Finally, she could bear no longer the shame and stigma of being a single mother in India. Immigrates back once again to England, this time with a child in tow. Seeking the support from a foreign country that her own country denied her. Back to square one. And with less than what she had, when she had first come in 1986.

“He’s now married, you know.” she continued. “He contacted me again when he too immigrated with his wife to London. For Mohul’s sake, I have kept good terms with him. Mohul still knows that father goes to work very far off and hence can meet us only once in a fortnight. I do it for him. I am now trying to get work in the council or school. But I try not to brood over what has happened. I try to be happy, to be smiling, to make Mohul feel good. One day when he grows up, I want him to learn Science. I am deeply interested in religion, you know. I would like to sit in a rocking chair then and debate with him for hours whether Religion supports or contradicts Science..........”

Shoma Mitra, with her talkativeness and her eternal smile, remained our acquaintance for quite some time. As promised she came once from her new home in Greenford with a car to take us there, telling my father, “Dada, I told you I would come personally to take you for dinner to my house in a Mercedes car! Unfortunately I couldn’t manage a Mercedes this time. But I am sure Mohul will buy me one when he grows up!”

Then like leaves on an autumn tree she withered away from being an occasional visitor to a historical archive entry in the telephone book.

I was staring at the harsh light of the projector that flashed onto the white screen displaying a set of horrendous looking equations that was sending my professor into raptures. He pranced on the stage, excitedly drawing figures, scribbling expressions and talking animatedly, while I looked on clueless. I could not understand a word he was saying. Instead I felt like sobbing. Sobbing since for the first time in a long time, I was feeling so lost. The lectures seemed to progressively make lesser and lesser sense to me. I didn’t have any prospective job, a couple of interviews that did happen, all turned out into mare’s nests. My PhD applications seemed to have drifted into a state of lethargy, while people around me were getting lucrative calls. Back home, I had already appalled my parents with my mock exam marks. Hearing their regular nagging mired with expectation that I do better, seemed to make it a messy piece of dialogue. I had a tumultuous break-up with my girlfriend, and I wasn’t quite sure whether I was relieved or sad about it. Life had turned into one big, free fall. The more I tried to rein it in, the more it slipped out of my hands, like restless sand through a closed fist. Nothing was right. Everything was horribly wrong.

Thinking so on my way back from college, I got off the train at the Hayes station, and for no particular reason my attention fell on the quiet waiting room on the opposite side of the platform. It was there, two years back that I had met Shoma Mitra. And her son, Mohul Biswas. And that chubby smile that would hover on the face as if somebody was constantly tugging her cheeks up.

And it was then that it suddenly struck me, that she could so effortlessly smile inspite of her entire life been thrown in doldrums, while here I was, with a much safer and perfect life, with a protective family, friends, house and money; but still feeling depressed and low. While she happily remained with a ray of light in her world of darkness, I was surrounded by light, but yet chose to dwell in the shadows. I had seen her smile so many times, but tragically I could never understand the price of that smile.

And at that very moment of realisation, Shoma Mitra robbed me.

Robbed from me my authority to frown and bemoan at my life. Robbed from me the right to dismiss her smile as simply a product of facial contortion of muscles. Robbed from me my utter disrespect for the so many better things in my life which were denied in hers.

And all this because of the one fine, bright day when I had ventured to ask her “I am sorry; but are you by any chance a Bengali?”