Anuttam

The rainy season wasn’t gone, but that evening, there were no clouds in the sky. As we trudged along, we didn’t feel the sultry Bengal summer. The kash hadn’t arrived on the fields yet, but there was a hint of autumn in the air. For as far as we could see, the flat plains were washed by a soft but unusually bright moonlight seen when the sky clears after rains. A full moon was high up in the sky, it was beyond midnight in the sleeping villages around.

Three of us, Anuttam, Shyam, and I walked grimly along the uneven village path behind the bullock cart. A kerosene lantern was tied under the carriage. Working like a projector lamp, it threw mysterious long images of the wheels one moment, and in the next, as it swung the other way, the abstract figure of light and shade on the ground became short. The mythical little movie went on as none of us talked. Absolute stillness reigned, except for the monotonous grind of the wooden wheels without bearings.

We didn’t wish to talk possibly because all of us were thinking – in our own different ways – about the only passenger on the cart, a beautiful girl of around fifteen in a cotton sari, sitting with her head on her folded knees. Shyam’s younger sister.

She would die soon. She had been discharged from a hospital a few days before; there was no cure for her condition those days. Why Anuttam and I were accompanying her on her last journey in this world is another story. Maybe, I will come back to it some other time, but today, I am trying to write about Anuttam. …

Minutes after we crossed Goalpara, we could see the River Kopai at a distance. For most of the year, Kopai has ankle deep waters. But that evening, she was a wide brimming stream of molten silver shining under the full moon. In that out-of-the-world evening, Anuttam sang the Manna Dey song,

আমি যামিনী, তুমি শশী হে, ভাতিছ গগন মাঝে
মম সরসীতে তব উজল প্রভা বিম্বিত যেন লাজে

I’m the night, you’re the moon
Shining in the sky,
Your image on my crystal mirror
Is trembling, blushing shy.

We had originally planned to bid goodbye to Shyam and his sister from this side of the river. But Anuttam, immersed in his song, kept walking across, following the cart. I joined him. The water rose almost to our chest and then fell.

Anuttam’s mellifluous voice overflowed two sides of the river; spread beyond the horizons in moon light … and added another intriguing layer to the magical evening. As Anuttam sang, the thought crossed my mind that I had never experienced anything like that ever.

I was young then. I didn’t know that such ethereal moments came but once in our lifetime if we were fortunate. “এ পৃথিবী একবার পায় তারে, পায়নাকো আর।” This world comes across her only once, never again.

*

If you asked me to make a list of the most unusual, special men and women I have come across in life, Anuttam Biswas would definitely be in it. My friend for over fifty years, Anuttam passed away on 10 August 2019. So, he would have been just over 70. His brother Gautam, younger than him by a few years, died maybe, a decade ago. The brothers, different as they were, were both unusual, fascinating specimens of humans. Both would often sing aloud as happiness overflowed their souls. Neither of them would pick up an argument with anyone. They never had an enemy. Rather, they were two people who were loved by all who knew them.

Anuttam had an unusual pet name, Bhondul, which in Bangla means topsy-turvy. I bow to the prescience of the person who named him Bhondul. He did look at the world differently, he followed his own rules and perhaps had the insight to see how confused and upside down the real world was. Once, I spent a day at his home in a small market town in rural Bengal. He taught at the only college there.

Both Anuttam and Sreela sang and we talked nineteen to the dozen. In the evening, the men felt a drop or two would make the evening even nicer. However, in that hypocritical small town it was unthinkable that a college prof would buy drinks from the only liquor shop in the town in full public view. Anuttam told me, ‘No problem, come with me.’

He took me along to the only bookshop there and, after handing over a small chit to its owner, he said, ‘Please see if you could get this book.’

‘Yes, Sir’, said the bookseller deferentially, ‘of course.’

The name of the book was “A Bottle of Old Monk”. It was faithfully delivered to the professor’s home a little later.

*

The child of a broken family, Anuttam had no home to go during college holidays. He used to stay at our hostel and eat wherever he could. We spent a lot of time together, we were in a hostel that had just ten rooms around a courtyard. His songs were captivating, and he wrote some of the most beautiful poems I have read. There was a time when I could recite a few of his poems, but now, only isolated lines come to the surface of my cluttered mind. Perhaps he got his literary genes from his grandma on the mother’s side, who was one of the first Bengali women to have published a novel. The elderly lady used to visit our hostel from time to time. A sanyasin, she wore saffron. Her older grandson too was weary of worldly attachments.

Anuttam was both exceedingly popular among friends and at the same time, a loner. The combination is not easy to handle, but Anuttam wore both the hats effortlessly. At least once he ran away from home; the loner in him perhaps had got the better of him.

As I have said, Anuttam did not, at least tried not to, follow given patterns in life. He was not someone who would go out of his way to keep in touch with friends or send new-year cards. Neither am I good at it. So, from time to time, we were out of touch for years together. But when we met, we picked up the threads as if we were meeting after a week. The last time we met, it was by pure chance.

Arundhati and I discovered him at a toy store in a shopping mall four years ago. Anuttam had come to look for a specific board game for his grandson. The way he was talking to the storekeeper, it seemed they were old friends. They possibly were. Anuttam made friends easily, and people fell in love with him perhaps even more easily.

Following the chance meeting, he and Sreela came home and we spent a glorious day together. It happened on 27 April 2015. I can tell you the date because my phone, quite unemotionally, recorded the date when I took a few pictures that afternoon. We parted with promises to meet soon and with lots of plans. …

Anuttam was diagnosed with brain tumour in 2016. He would be no more in three years’ time.

Anuttam’s death didn’t bring tears to my eyes. His passing means I will have a void, a dull pain buried deep in some corner of my being for as long as I live.

If you are fortunate, you come across someone like Anuttam only once in your lifetime, never again.

Bangalore
Thursday, 24 October 2019