Empress of Strength – A short story

• By Amrita Mukherjee

“Sumita! Sumita!” someone was calling her name. She turned down the volume of her Philips Powerhouse and rushed to the balcony.

“Sumita! Come down,” shouted Papan.

He was standing on the opposite footpath next to the nearly-completed Puja pandal, his skinny frame lost in the baggy T-shirt and sand-blasted jeans he was wearing.

“It’s lunch time. Mom will not allow me,” she shouted from the fifth-floor balcony.

“He’s here,” he gestured, not daring to shout it out load.

Her heart skipped a beat. The night before, her father had picked up the phone several times and there was no reply from the other side. She instantly understood the call was for her. Thankfully, a cricket match on TV diverted his attention. She hovered around the phone standing on a round wooden pedestal in the staircase landing. She didn’t miss the next ring.

“I am coming over tomorrow,” he said.

“Where? When?” she asked frantically.

“You will see,” he said mysteriously.

Since then, Sumita had spent every minute in trepidation, wondering what plan he had up his sleeve. His mere voice made her 17-year-old head giddy. She didn’t know what she would say when she came face-to-face with him. So far, all her interactions with the love of her life were through a couple of lines written in her class copies and passed on through Papan.

 “Why did he have to be here at this hour? What should I do now?” Sumita panicked.

Lunchtime was sacrosanct at home. On Sundays, even more.

“Ma, Papan is downstairs. He urgently needs my Math copy to show to his tutor. I will just go and give it to him.”

She was in a shabby T-shirt and skirt but there was no time to change. Sumita rushed down the stairs with her Math classwork copy. 

“Where is he?” asked Sumita, breathless with excitement.

“In the lane. Waiting for you,” said Papan with a smile.

“Why your brother chose this time of the day to come I really don’t know,” she said indignantly. “I can be here just for five minutes.”

They walked to the lane next to her house and there he was sitting on the ground-floor steps of a two-storey house. Seeing Sumita, Sujan stubbed out the cigarette, and pushed his sunglasses on the top of his head exposing his brown eyes. She felt wobbly.

“Day after tomorrow is Saptami. You are going out with me,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I …I have to …what will I tell my parents?” Sumita stuttered.

“Tell them you are going out with Papan and your friends,” said Sujan.

Sumita nodded. “Only you and me? No one else?”

“We can take along Papan. You won’t have to lie then.” He laughed.

“Listen! Be there in front of Bambino in Gariahat at 11 am. I want to spend Puja with you so we will go out every day.” Those brown eyes held her in a trance.    

Sumita felt Ma Durga had finally granted her wish.

*

Hum Aapke Hain Koun had just released. Durga puja shopping meant going for Madhuri Dixit’s colour choices in the film – dark purple, parrot green, striking blue, vermillion red, sunny yellow – and the markets were flooded with these options too. Looking at his adoring eyes, Sumita knew her purple and green salwar kurta had done the magic.

As he stood leaning on the white painted iron railing in front of Bambino, the famous electronic store, she was over the moon on seeing Sujan had Salman Khan’s swag.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked her.

“Anywhere, I just want to be with you. I can stand here in front of Bambino all day if you are with me,” Sumita wanted to say, but just one word escaped her lips, “Anywhere…”

“Ok let’s go then.”

They boarded a tram and sat next to each other on the undulating wooden seat. She had never been so close to Sujan, his proximity felt intoxicating. The tram trundled on, giving plenty of time to their romance to bloom on its slow-paced wheels.

“Do you like tram rides?” he asked her.

“I love it. We must do the Maidan round one day,” she said looking out of the window, savouring the greenery of CCFC Club.  

“Anything for you,” he kissed her hand.

Her cheeks turned crimson. A tingle passed down her spine.

The tram ride ended at Park Circus Maidan. A glimpse of the beautiful golden idol was followed by a walk around the huge fair, a ride on the giant wheel, candy floss and phuchka and then Sumita’s eyes went to the rifle shooting stall.

“Let’s do that,” she said pointing at the booth.

“You can shoot? I have never seen a girl doing that.”

Eagerly, Sumita picked up the air rifle as a man in a lungi kept on filling it up with small lead bullets. To the man’s chagrin, she didn’t miss a single balloon and even swayed a nail that hung from the top.  

Sujan’s mouth was agape. “How are you so good at it?”

“I got some practice at NCC,” she said proudly.

He hit some, missed most, his face fell.

Sumita took out money from her purse to pay.

“I missed, that’s why you are paying?” Sujan asked sarcastically.

She looked at him puzzled.

“No need to waste your father’s money. I will pay.”

She suddenly felt he had turned his air rifle and shot her in the heart. It had stopped racing.

He moved on to a bangle stall that showcased colourful glass bangles.

“Let me buy you some,” he told her.

Was that an apology? She wasn’t sure.

“I have money. I give tuitions,” she said.

“It’s my gift,” he picked up a set of bangles and asked her to extend her hand. His touch brought back that tingling sensation on her skin.

Saptami ended with pandal hopping with Papan and their friends as Sujan led the gang as the big brother to Ekdalia Evergreen Puja, Singhi Park, Triangular Park, Ballygunge Culture, Samaj Sebi and Maddox Square.  

Sumita treated everyone to chicken rolls from a roadside stall. Sujan wasn’t in the mood for it he claimed, and fetched a bhar of cha for himself.

“It’s your hard-earned money. Don’t throw it around like this,” he told her.

She went to bed with aching feet and a happy heart. Wasn’t love like this? Imperfect, unreasonable, heady, protective, she told herself when her head hit the pillow that night. 

Ashtami took off with a Metro ride to Sovabazar Rajbari. The gang had swelled up that day. There were at least ten boys and eight girls in the gang. The boys were in kurtas and the girls in sarees.

Sumita couldn’t take her eyes off Sujan. The red border in her yellow saree complemented his red kurta. The Rajbari was the perfect backdrop for their loved-up photos in ethnic attire.

Being a hardcore South Kolkata girl, Sumita had never seen a Bonedi Bari puja. The beautiful thakur dalan, the jhar lanthon, the alpona, the family dressed up in Benarasi and gold, kept her glued to her lens. She marvelled at the Durga Puja that was started by Nabakrishna Deb way back in 1757.

“You like photography?” Sujan asked her as they got up on the terrace of the Rajbari to click the ornate, crumbling pillars.

“I love it. My father got me this camera when I was in Class VI. I have been clicking since then,” she said. “You want to click?” she handed him the camera.

“These artistic obsessions are not for engineering students,” he said with a smirk as he nonchalantly turned around the small black camera in his hand.

“I am sure you are not thinking of going for engineering or medicine…” he added.

Sumita was perplexed, unable to fathom where the conversation was leading to.

“I am studying science now,” she said looking at him.

“Then?” he asked.

“I have not decided yet,” she said.

“There you go. Unlike men who know what they want, women are always indecisive.”

With a shrug she got back to clicking photos. She sulked.

After Mohammed Ali Park, Simla Byayam Samity Durga Pandals, their last stop was College Square Durga Puja. The famished group gorged on Kabiraji Cutlet at Dilkhusha Cabin on College Street, a 100-year-old culinary wonder of the city.

Sumita sat next to a classmate because she was still angry with Sujan for belittling her hobby, calling her indecisive as well. Still, very strategically she kept the seat next to her empty hoping Sujan would occupy it. It remained empty.

The entire group got up on a tram headed to Shyambazar because they believed Ashtami had to end with the unmatchable kosha mangsho and paratha from Golbari. Sujan didn’t board the tram.  

*

She looked at the photograph in her album. Everyone was holding gas balloons they had bought from College Street. They were holding it inside the tram, inside Dilkhusha Cabin, inside the bus that took them back to Gariahat. Then the last photo was in front of Anandamela. Her friends were holding on to the colourful balloons, as if their life would end if they let go off the strings. Sumita laughed looking at those photos of simple happiness, unbridled joy of the teen years.

She had lost count of the number of times she had missed Durga Puja in Kolkata since then. Had the New York-based magazine not sent her on assignment to the city, she would probably have never flipped through this album, sitting on her book shelf, long forgotten.

What she had always thought as a way of life in the city had got a UNESCO tag of Intangible Cultural Heritage and ample international interest. So there she was, carrying her camera and tripod to all those places that she earlier clicked with her ancient Agfa Snapper. These photos would be published in a glossy magazine, then stored in a drive but never printed for keepsake.  

No one used a film roll camera anymore, Bambino closed long time back, Anandamela shut down too, trams are on their way out and Sujan…

On Dashami, Sujan had apologised to her for abandoning her so abruptly on the tram ride to Shyambazar.  

“You were so friendly with the boys of your class, I felt jealous,” he had told her.

As a peace offering, he had taken Sumita to Durgabari in Ballygunge Place to witness the Sindoor Khela. She looked at their last photograph together, taken by Papan. Both of them smeared with sindoor. He had wanted to apply sindoor on her hair parting, like they do during a wedding ritual.

“You will be mine, forever. This is my promise,” Sujan told her dramatically.

“Please don’t,” Sumita had said firmly.

“If you want to do this, do it properly on our wedding day. Not like this.”

“You don’t want Durga’s blessings…what kind of a girl are you?” he asked angrily.

Sumita didn’t relent.

She had often thought of him, her first love. She picked up her bulky digital camera and looked at the boy she had clicked at a pandal the day before. The likeness was striking.

Looking at the handsome young boy in the photograph, all she felt was affection. Papan had told her Sujan’s son was 17 now.   

The Dhakis started playing in the pandal opposite her house. She thanked Durga for showing her the right path on Dashami, thirty years ago.