Free Freedom Song by Amit Chaudhuri

they burst into life and floated hither and thither, casting shadows much larger than themselves. The wall was always full of the shadows of faces, of bodies, of the slope of shoulders, the liquid outlines of loose clothes, of shawls, of pyjamas, a play of pictures accompanying messages conveyed from one kingdom to another, and cunning murders being committed. And who were these shadows but Bhaskar, Samaresh, Sumanta, Nikhil, Dipen, robbed of their features and invested with a curious darkness and poignance, shadows where the bright white lime-painted wall became mysteriously blue? And the moths, when one noticed them, reminded one of the alleyways, of green shuttered windows with iron grilles behind them, and the perpetuity of habitation, where they lived with children, young men, fathers, mothers, restingon a wall next to a calendar with a picture of Shiv or Durga, or behind cupboards with piles of old shirts and saris, or distracting two boys as they sat down to study at their table. Such tranquillity they possessed—not a wall existed in Calcutta that would not give them repose!
    And now a link was sought to be made between one person and another, between Bhaskar and a girl, who had been growing up all the while in this city, secretly, while Bhaskar had been wearing half-pants, and buying
Sportsweek
and reading Mandrake comics, and going to Gariahat Market with Robida to buy a water bottle, and riding on trams, his shirt clinging to his back with sweat—someone, somewhere else, was growing up as well, in as random and unpredictable a way, in a little self-absorbed world of day-to-day desire. There were so many places it could have happened—in Mandeville Gardens, in one of the lanes that surrounded the South Point School; in a nook in Jadavpur; in the half-countryside, half-urban settlement of Tollygunge; in Jodhpur Park, past Dhakuria Bridge, by the daily swell of smoke and traffic. There she had grown up, dragging her feet in chappals, wandering indolently in the veranda, making friends with girls called Bapsi and Mintu. Now it was study time, and now it was evening, with the tube-light switched on, and, all through her growing up, the city, like a great arm, had protected her, and kept her hidden and nameless.

T wice a week, they’d go to a nursing home in Dhakuria. It was a new place, built on a field that had once been empty. A by-lane of two-storeyed houses and trees led to it. Because the building itself was new, with a flat white façade that had red borders, it looked like a mirage, as all new things do in Calcutta. And then it had those tinted glass doors at the entrance that kept its interior a secret and imaged the world outside, and those new, flourishing money-plants on the porch that shone so, that they seemed to be made of plastic. Not to speak of the watchman in khaki, like a large ragged doll, the winter light falling on the stubble on his face.
    ‘Ma Sharada Devi nursing home,’ said Khuku to Mritunjoy, the driver.
    The words were enough to please Mini. She was something of a devotee of Ramakrishna and SwamiVivekananda; had long been one; not a formal one, but one who’d read their books, life stories, and sayings.
    ‘Who built the nursing home, re?’ asked Mini.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Khuku, who’d never had much interest in facts. She relied on instinct. ‘It’s a good, clean place,’ she said.
    Some doctor had recommended it to her when she’d needed a check-up (both check-ups and age had nudged Khuku, who felt so inwardly young, and surprised her into disbelief), and she had recommended it to Mini when she realized she required treatment. In her mind, the place had become associated with healing and a certain stage in her and Mini’s life, and afternoons when her husband was at work.
    Her husband at work—seventy years old, hair half grey; yet the five thousand rupees coming in per month from a ‘sick’ company was useful in all kinds of small ways. It needn’t
remain
sick,