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  She came to our house one day and just sat there for a long time. She cried for a while, then sighed and said, ‘At least once I want to know what an orgasm feels like.’ Utterly surprised I asked, ‘What are you saying! You have never had an orgasm?’ She confessed she hadn’t. Humayun was out of the question. Since M was great in bed and could go on for even two hours if he wished to, he was the only who could probably give her one. As annoyed as I was I could not feel anything but compassion for her.

  I had later learnt via a survey conducted on female orgasms that most women do not know what they are. CS had known that there was such a thing as an orgasm and so she had wished to experience it. Those who don’t know what it is don’t desire it either.

  ~

  My life went on as it had to with or without CS’s woes. I was determined to make something of my medical expertise and to that end I got a signboard painted with my name, degrees and chamber timings and hung it from the main gate of Abakash. I even got letterheads specially printed from Jaman Printers. Patients did start coming in but they were usually from the locality and mostly known faces. Whenever they would stretch their hand towards me with the consultation fee my ears would start burning. No matter how hard I tried I could not stop it from happening every time. Unable to take money from these people I would hurriedly write the prescription and proceed to keep my hands folded under the table. Besides, I was soon overcome by yet another whimsical fancy—a dream to open a clinic of my own. I wanted to use the room in front of Abakash to make a small clinic that would provide pregnant women a chance to have a painless childbirth.

  There was a large piece of tin lying in the courtyard which I took to Shilpasree, Jayanta Talukdar’s shop in Golpukur, to have it cleaned and painted, and got ‘Dr Taslima Nasrin, MBBS, BHS (Upper). Especially trained in gynaecology and childbirth. We use painkillers here for delivery’, etc. written on it. The day I hung the new signboard in front of Abakash, that very day Father brought it down, stowed it away in the balcony and informed me that one needed a proper licence to start a medical clinic. Instead, much to my delight, seeing my immense enthusiasm for the medical profession he ended up offering me a job. He got a small room constructed for a pathological laboratory just outside his clinic, complete with a microscope and myriad red and blue bottles of chemicals. I was to sit there in the afternoon to test the laboratory samples he sent my way for 20 taka per test. We grew quite close during this time—after returning home at night we would often play chess, though Father would best me every time without much effort. In fact these chess matches were a thing of wonder in the house, with everyone else usually on my side and Father holding his own fort. Mother especially desired to see me defeat him and whenever he would capture one of my pieces she would get agitated: ‘See, you should have moved your knight! Your father gave it thought before capturing it. Why do you move pieces without a thought?’ If I lost she would usually be more depressed than me.

  The work at the pathology lab saw a slight slump when I began getting calls from Popular Clinic, off C.K. Ghosh Road. Jahangir, my brother’s childhood friend, owned the clinic, where women used to come for what we call menstrual regulation, or MR in medical terms—in laymen’s terms it can be called an abortion. I was paid 300 taka for every MR; the remaining 1000 or 1200 went to the clinic. It was not as if I was experienced in the MR procedure, especially because it had never been a major component of the medical degree. A large syringe had to be inserted into the vagina to draw out the foetus; the nurses usually kept the patients ready on the operating table and I only had to go in to complete the procedure. For the first few patients the procedure was not completed fully. Suffering from vaginal infections some had to come back to finish the procedure and I could not help but feel terribly guilty. Gradually, I became more experienced at it and began getting calls from Seba Nursing Home near Chhayabani Cinema too. I was earning more and Father too was keen on fanning my interest in the medical profession. He was not happy with me being stuck in an everyday job or earning a few extra bucks by doing abortions, though—he wished for me to study further. A doctor with only an MBBS degree was not hard to find and the degree itself hardly mattered much in the long run—with it one had to be satisfied with only being a doctor in a remote village somewhere.

  To become a doctor of importance I set myself diligently to the task of preparing for my FCPS degree, without which a simple MBBS degree amounted to nothing. Ironically, though I did pore over books, it was poetry that I was studying and not medicine. Every day Father would return with fresh news regarding another old batchmate moving to PG Hospital in Calcutta for a postgraduate degree. This would be in tandem with his laments about my uncertain future. He had always encouraged my fantasies of becoming a doctor; rather, he had never been actively opposed to it. However, his lack of opposition was what I had taken to be encouragement and this was something he had begun to dislike. So began the pointed jibes regarding the 300 taka I was making from Popular Clinic and Seba Nursing Home: ‘If you pass the FCPS you can easily earn nearly three lakh from a single operation.’ He would tell me about his life, how as a poor farmer’s son he had chosen to not follow his father’s profession and had worked hard to become a doctor instead. He was a doctor with an MBBS degree, why should his children remain stuck with the same? They should become FCPS doctors, even go abroad to get their FRCS and FRCP degrees. He could not come to terms with how I was bent on wasting such a glorious opportunity for higher education and so he would go on and on about the wrong choices I was making and how time and prospects once lost could never be retrieved.

  Nevertheless, no matter what he said I could not continue studying for my FCPS exam. Although I was still a doctor, I was also acutely aware that I was tired of the life it entailed; that I wanted to do something different. And one fine day I did manage to do something different. I founded a cultural organization called the Shokal Kabita Parisad (Morning Poetry Council), with its offices in the room in front of Abakash where I had initially planned to set up my clinic.

  Lives

  My life was split between two cities—Mymensingh, with my home, my family and my job, and Dhaka, with its literature, its culture and my friends. Dhaka was always special; I would get on a train or a bus bound for the city whenever I had some money. There was another reason for visiting Dhaka so frequently—Suhrid. It had not been easy sending Suhrid to Dhaka. Chotda, my elder brother, had tried forcing him away once, amid screams and tears, to get him admitted to a school there. Mother too had given up and confessed that she could not look after him by herself any more, although later it was she who had gone and begged Chotda and Geeta to send Suhrid back. Not that she had had to implore much—Geeta had been more than happy to send the boy away again. In fact, Geeta had been rather taken aback by the boy’s behaviour. Suhrid was her son. She had carried him for nine months and given birth to him. If the boy was supposed to feel a connection to someone it ought to have been his own mother. However, let alone answering her when called or jumping on to her lap, Suhrid would run to his grandfather or to his aunts.

  Geeta could not fathom how her own son could dare ignore her so. Livid, she had sat and fumed and screamed. ‘My son’s gotten spoilt because of this infernal family. If they want a son so bad why don’t they get one of their daughters married?’ And my Chotda had knelt in front of her and implored, ‘Geeta, come what may I will bring your son to you.’ Geeta had remained unimpressed and my brother continued; he had had to admit that everything was his fault, that he was the cause of Geeta’s suffering, and that he should not have sent the boy to Abakash after his birth in the first place. He had had to accept that because of him their son did not want Geeta as a mother. He had blamed his mother and his sisters for how the boy had turned out and finally admitted that only Geeta was the right person to take care of Suhrid. Mollified, Geeta had finally stopped screaming and gotten up to pour herself a glass of water. She had then pushed Chotda out, locked the bedroom door and, walking up to the cupb
oard stuffed with saris, jewellery and money, fished out a photo album from under a stack of ironed plain cotton saris, proceeding to destroy all photos of Suhrid taken with us at Abakash and sparing only the photos with her in them.

  Joy usually knew no bounds in Abakash as far as Suhrid was concerned. We used to frequently have him pose for photographs. Yasmin had located a friend’s brother who owned a photo studio and she had gotten his camera and taken numerous photographs of Suhrid. The day she brought the photographs home, we had fought over who would get to see them first. Geeta had arrived with Chotda from Dhaka around the same time. She had had scant real interest in the photos, although she had managed to express some enthusiasm nonetheless. In fact, she had requested that the photographs be given to her, presumably because we had Suhrid for real while she had to make do with his memories via photographs. Not that she had said it in as many words; it had not been difficult to deduce the insinuation. On the basis of that deduction we had handed over all of Suhrid’s photos to her, an act behind which Mother’s sympathies for her had played a significant part.

  That very afternoon, when Yasmin’s friend Krishti had come over and Yasmin had wanted to show her the photographs, Geeta had categorically refused to hand them over. She had taken them with her to Dhaka and later torn them up. In fact she even tore up the negatives and dumped them in the bin in the kitchen. It may have calmed her down for the moment but it had not succeeded in getting rid of the animosity she felt for us: Mother, Yasmin and I. The feeling had made her hands itch and wish to tear us bloody with her talons. What had we done? According to her, we had formed a hold over someone else’s child—that had been our fault. Even without the love and attention showered on him Suhrid had always been an energetic child. Mother would keep calling for him and he would not even look back, running like the wind, stealthy and swift, racing up to the roof or off to the field. Mother would constantly worry about him falling and getting hurt somewhere. Geeta had been adamant that her son had to listen to her. So when he refused to do as asked, refused to sit down when told to or stand up when ordered, she would get displeased and angry. For her it did not matter if Suhrid did not listen to anyone else in the world; he had to automatically listen to her. Did he not know who she was?

  Geeta would stomp about ferociously and yank Suhrid towards her, her eyes red with rage and her teeth bare, and demand, ‘Do you know I am your mother? Do you know there’s no one closer to you than me? Why don’t you come to me as soon as I call you? Why? From now whenever I call you have to be in front of me immediately!’ Suhrid, dumbfounded, would tilt his head in agreement and then run to Mother to hide behind her and weep helplessly. His tears used to break us. Mother would try teaching him every day to love his parents. One day she had even tried speaking to Geeta. ‘Why don’t you try it nicely . . .’ she began in a placatory tone. ‘I will decide how I speak to my son,’ Geeta thundered. Mother had gone quiet and so had we. After a long while she had spoken again. ‘He stays here and so he considers us family. He comes to us, is attached to us. When you take him with you he will form a similar bond with you. Then he won’t even want to leave you and come visit us.’

  During her brief visits to Abakash, while Geeta’s only concern would be to make Suhrid listen to her, the little boy would constantly struggle to escape her clutches. Whenever they suggested taking him away to Dhaka he would clutch at one of us in fear and whisper in our ear to hide him somewhere and not let him go. If we did not comply he would go ahead and find a hiding place himself; once he had gone and hidden in one of the paper boxes under the bed in the tin room. Geeta would notice how close he was to us and how much he loved the people at Abakash; she would notice how he did not love her as he loved us. To the boy she was terror personified, a nightmarish ordeal and nothing else. Every time she visited us she would drag him to a separate room and tell him, ‘You have no one else in this world other than me.’ He would stare at her and then try to run away, failing to do so because of her vice-like grip on his neck. He would end up crying and driving his mother to thoughts of murder.

  In all this Suhrid was the one who got dragged around. Once, while he had been playing badminton, Chotda had arrived from Dhaka without any advance notice and taken him away from the field. The little boy had kept crying for help as he was being taken away. A few days later he was brought back to us again and it seemed the little boy had been given a fresh lease on life. We got him admitted to a school called Notun Kuri (Tender Buds). I used to take him to school and fetch him back while Mother took on the task of teaching him English and vernacular alphabets at home, and how to draw and spell and recite nursery rhymes, shaping him into the brightest boy in his class. He was growing up enveloped in our love and care. The day Chotda arrived again to take him to Dhaka for good, this time by any means necessary, Yasmin had fled with the boy. By the time she had returned in the evening Chotda had left after waiting for them the whole day, but not before soundly admonishing us regarding our role in spoiling Suhrid and warning us that they would cut off all ties with Abakash unless we agreed to send Suhrid to Dhaka the next day. A meeting was called that night and Father decided that it was best to comply. There were good schools in Dhaka and he would get a lot of opportunities. It broke our hearts into pieces to have to do such a thing but we had to consider the bright future ahead of him and gather our emotions.

  It would have been impossible for Chotda and Geeta to take him to Dhaka, though; even if they were to tie him up in the car he would have attempted to jump off the moving vehicle. So it was decided that Yasmin and I would take him. Since he would have refused to go with us if he had known we were going to hand him over to his parents, we had to lie to him about visiting a fair in Dhaka and about returning the very same day. We took the morning train, got off at Kamalapur station in Dhaka and hailed a rickshaw for Nayapaltan. Suhrid had been expecting the fair we had promised him and it was only when we reached Nayapaltan that he had finally figured out our ruse, beginning to scream and cry immediately and demanding why we had brought him there instead of taking him to the fair. The more we had tried convincing him that we would simply drop by for a while and leave, the more he had cried that he did not wish to go at all. We had gotten off, bought him ice cream and walked with him for a long time, telling a him a bunch of lies—that we had run out of money and had to go see Chotda to borrow some in order to be able to visit the fair and return to Mymensingh at night, and so on. The beloved boy had believed everything we told him that day and entered the house with us. Chotda had been away but Geeta was there. One look at her and Suhrid would not let go of us. Geeta could not stand it, his insolent attachment to us that made him refuse to obey his mother’s orders. She had wrenched him away by his wrist and thrown him to the floor. Shocked, we had tried to intervene; she had lunged at him again and slapped him across the face. Terrified, he had tried running towards us but she had grabbed hold of his collar, yanked him back and roared, ‘Where are you going? Come here. One step without my orders from now and I will murder you.’

  We could see him trembling in terror. No one had ever laid even a finger on him in Abakash, let alone strike him or push him. Neither had he ever heard anyone speak to him like that. He had started crying in fear and was rewarded with another slap and a blow on his back. ‘Not a single sound,’ Geeta had screeched. Silent sobs were racking his frame while we stood in a corner weeping, unable to do or say anything. Even the mildest protest from us would have resulted in revenge in the form of another blow—he was within her grasp to do as she pleased with him. If she wanted she could tear him to pieces. The boy who used to be treated like a prince in Abakash, whose well-being had been our primary concern, who was smothered in attention and fed with love every hour—chicken soup, fruit juice, pure milk, cream, fish koftas, carrot halva, puddings with eggs and so much more—was not allowed to eat anything the entire day. We could not stand it. We had returned to Mymensingh that day, both of us crying the entire way back. We had asked ourselves repea
tedly whether Geeta had truly ever wanted Suhrid with them in Dhaka, since it had not seemed so to me. She had been happier when he had been away; he had been the perfect weapon for her to manipulate Chotda’s guilty conscience with and keep him compliant.

  ~

  We kept going back to Nayapaltan despite Geeta’s misbehaviour in order to see Suhrid; he seemed to come back to life whenever he saw us. Geeta would quickly usher him to another room when he tried to come near and not allow him to talk to us. He would be locked up in another room from where he would stare at us through the crack between the door. If Geeta allowed him to get a drink of water or go to the toilet, and our eyes would meet for an instant, all our love used to be exchanged in that one fleeting glance. He would keep trying to be let out just for that. We did not dare protest. We had no choice but to stay silent, like deer hiding from a stalking predator.

  Or Geeta would have to be enticed with gifts to thaw her, for her to allow us a brief meeting with Suhrid. He would approach us cautiously, his eyes glistening with joy. The boy who used to laugh out loud and do as he pleased, who used to run like the wind and speak nineteen to the dozen, was no longer allowed to smile or cry. Forced to speak in whispers, his voice grew hollow, his entire mien terrified and lifeless. He would keep saying the same thing to us: ‘Stay. Don’t go.’ If he were to see the return tickets in our hands, his eyes would well up and he would try and snatch them away. Even if we were not allowed to talk to him, our presence in the house gave him comfort, the fact that we were there near him in one of the rooms.