From the short story collection Shedding the Metaphors, Black Eagle Press, 2023. Cover art by art collective Le braccianti di Euripide.
An elusive orgasm, that was indefinable, subtle, intangible, indescribable, fulfilling, soul-searching. She wanted to experience that every single time she had those rare intimacies with her husband. But she was far from getting that—always. Because two creepy hands, a stringent body and some distant fishy odors crawled into her cataleptic and subconscious mind during those moments.
Can one even blame her for thinking about those while having sex with her husband? I suppose one cannot, actually.
Jhumpa Chatterjee was a chubby cute little girl, all of sixteen, when Mai(her mother) got into the wheel chair due to paralysis of her lower limbs. Babai(Jhumpa’s father) was in his late thirties, and he had to bear the grunt of serving an ailing wife and looking after a teenage daughter in the small town, Sonagachi, a few kilometers away from Kolkata.
Sonagachi was a place close to nature, because it was essentially a forest, with tall trees around. It was so untouched by city life that even the roads here were dirt tracks, instead of proper paved ones. The area was inhabited by jackals, spotted deer, elephant, foxes, and many kinds of colourful birds, including parrots, kingfishers, ducks and woodpeckers. This was also the largest red-light area in Asia.
In Bengali, Sona Gachi means ‘Tree of Gold’. According to some folklore, during the early days of Calcutta, the area was the run of a notorious dacoit named Sanaullah, who lived with his mother. On his death, the grief-stricken woman heard a voice coming from their hut, saying, ‘Mother, don’t cry. I have become a Gazi’, and thus the legend of Sona Gazi came into existence. The mother constructed a mosque in remem- brance of her son, although it fell into poor condition within no time. Then Sona Gazi was transformed into Sonagachi.
The documentary Born into Brothels:Calcutta’s Red Light Kids won the Oscar for best documentary award in 2005. It illustrated the lives of children born to prostitutes in Sonagachi. Born into Brothels talked beyond the well-known prostitute-clogged streets and about the homes of the children who lived in the foulest place. A ten-year-old boy Avijit’s natural stimulating compositions through the lens got him an invitation to the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam, and he was from Sonagachi.
But Jhumpa was far from all those things happening around her, being dedicated to her preparations for the NEET for Medical Science. All she wanted was–to become a doctor. When did Mai’s partial physical paralysis become a metaphorical paralysis for Jhumpa’s life, even Jhumpa couldn’t realize. Everything happened so fast, so erratic.
At that point of time, Jhumpa was good friends with Grace and me. Jhumpa and me were from Hindu/Brahmin families and Grace was a steadfast Christian. We used to go to school together, play and study together, and my late father and Grace’s father were school teachers in Sonagachi. One day Jhumpa stopped coming to school, and bizarrely, she got completely cut off from us. Her Babai and Mai didn’t even allow us to meet her. There was no Internet, no Whatsapp or Facebook when we were kids. Grace was smarter than me, any given day, thus she tried to get in touch with Jhumpa by hook or crook. To my dismay, my father got a transfer from that town and I had to leave that
school, consequently, Grace, Jhumpa and everyone else. For the first few months, I wrote letters to Grace, asking after Jhumpa. But there was no news of her, ever.
And no news was no good news!
We grew up. With time, my childhood friends became
distant memories, though Jhumpa remained a persistent ache in the secret chamber of my heart. I left India with a fellowship, did my PhD in America and came back to join as a Professor in an Indian university in the capital. In 2020, I visited Kerala to meet Grace, my childhood best buddy, after having met her once again on Facebook. Grace had left Sonagachi after I left and she had settled down in Kochi. Our happiness knew no bounds. Finding Grace was like reviving some lost paragon, a hidden treasure. We met like wild streams in a rain forest.
That summer vacation was so full of excitement, enthusiasm, love, togetherness, happiness and then, sudden heartbreak!
On the very first day of our meeting, I asked Grace if she knew the whereabouts of Jhumpa. Grace avoided the question and took me to show her huge farmhouse where she did organic farming. Her two sons got along well with my son, and we became too busy handling the three naughty boys while we had so much to catch up after years of separation.
After a week, one early morning I heard Grace talking over phone in a suppressed voice. She was whispering, “Jhumpa, have you lost your mind? Once again you are going to that hell! If you do it, this time I am not going to protect you, especially when Ninny is here after years. The poor girl has been asking after you and I am avoiding. She can’t handle this, you know she is hypersensitive.”
Next moment, I was face to face with Grace, with legitimate questions about Jhumpa and her whereabouts. Grace, of course, couldn’t avoid those any further.
***
In 2005 after I left Sonagachi, Grace became lonelier than ever as Jhumpa too had stopped coming to the school. She had joined some correspondence course to complete her education from home. Grace’s father sent her to a hostel in Kerala to do her college and university education, and she too fell out of touch with Jhumpa. But in 2008 when she went to Sonagachi to spend the summer vacation with her parents, she got to know that Jhumpa’s parents had been to their village for a month or two to perform the death rituals of their parents or in-laws. Jhumpa was alone with the maid, who was strictly instructed not to let her go out. That is when Grace discreetly got into her house with her cousins, Remchaso, Alwin and Thomas, all of whom were officers in the local church and were doing very well. To her utter disappointment, she found Jhumpa in a rundown, ramshackle state. She looked like a full grown-up woman, eyes lost in thoughts, nothing like a girl of eighteen or nineteen. Her demeanour disturbed Grace. She bribed the maid handsomely and took Jhumpa out of her house-arrest.
Jhumpa wasn’t comfortable in the streets, after almost three years she had come out. Grace and her brothers made her comfortable, offered her nice delicacies in a restaurant, did some shopping with her, and then took her to the church for a prayer. Jhumpa was happy; she was astonished to see the freedom of people there. She couldn’t understand the freedom of speech, being a caged bird. There was this Confession Box in a corner where everyone was talking their heart out, with probably no one listening to the conversation between the person and the God that s/he believed. After everyone had finished their prayers and confession, after the Carols and the chants had calmed Jhumpa, she agreed to go to the Confession Box and have a chat with her personal God, if there was any.
Grace confessed to me that she had inconspicuously fitted a recorder there with the help of her brothers. And then the moment of epiphany for us, with what Jhumpa spoke there. It was like a bombshell, it was devastating like a lightning bolt.
Jhumpa spoke, rather she keened her heart out in the Confession Box, “Oh Lord of this beautiful, tranquil place, I want to share my story with you here. I am confused, I don’t see a road ahead of this tunnel. When I was in class XI, Mai was in the wheel chair and my Babai had to work whole day. My parents were the ardent devotees of some ferocious looking Goddess, whose temple was in the basement of our house. Babai performed pujas there for hours every day. They did Kumari Puja and Kumari Sadhna. Babai and Mai told me, I was the offering/ prasada of the Goddess and I was a sacred girl. That is why they stopped my going to the school, and that night Babai did an exclusive puja for me when Mai was chanting the mantra. Once I was offered as prasada to the Goddess, Babai took me to the bathroom to cleanse me of the worldly sins. He gave me a bath in his own hands, like never before. It was uneasy in the beginning, but he explained that he was the devotee/sahdak of the Goddess and I was the prasada, so I need not feel shy and should allow him to do it, by just closing my eyes in surrender to the Goddess.I did as Babai instructed, guided. Mai was asleep in her room. Babai bathed me, touched my breasts and genitals tenderly, and then he vigorously rushed into me when I bled so much. It pained me, it was very hurtful. I cried, Babai consoled me, put me in his arms and put me to sleep after the act. Since that night, every night he follows the ritual of bathing me, his prasada, and repeats everything. And I don’t mind it anymore. I like whatever he does to my body; in fact these days I don’t get a sleep unless Babai does it and puts me to sleep. But what I don’t like in here is—Babai and Mai don’t allow me to talk to anyone, not even the maid. I am not allowed to go out; I miss my friends, I miss my school. I am no longer preparing for the medical entrance. All those dreams I had are actually forgotten. Today I am relieved after confessing before you, whoever you are. Grace told me that if we confess before you, our worries come to an end. Oh tranquil god, please tell me, am I going to have a secluded, secret, clandestine existence for rest of my life? Shall I never experience freedom like Grace and others out there?”
Jhumpa came out with tears in her eyes; Grace, Remchaso, Alwin and Thomas were burning with anger to hear this incest story of disgrace and shame. It was apparent that the unending consensual incest had set an increasingly ugly chain of events in motion in the life of an innocent girl. The worst part was, she didn’t consider this as unusual, obnoxious, objectionable. She was too tender a girl when she was introduced to this underground world of aenigmas.
Grace, Remchaso, Alwin and Thomas met the church authorities and devised a plan to salvage the ill-fated girl. Luck was in their side as Jhumpa’s parents were in their village for two months. Grace counselled Jhumpa day and night about normal man-woman relationship as well as father-daughter relationship. Jhumpa realized that she was being trapped into a bottomless pit and only Grace could take her out of it. Jhumpa dreamt of becoming a nurse, if not a doctor. She cooperated, and within a month she was baptized to Christian faith. Her visa was applied as an independent adult with special recommendation of the church that she was keen on going to the US along with three other staff nurses from the church to serve underprivileged children in America, and it was granted. She flew three days before her parents returned.
Babai was mad at the maid and of course he threatened Grace to file a complaint. Grace was ready with the audio recording, on the basis of which the man would have lost his job on the charge of promiscuity with his daughter and prolonged child abuse. His wife asked him to keep quiet for sometime as she didn’t want to lose her caregiver.
Jhumpa apparently had a good life in America. She did her Bachelor of Science in Nursing there and dedicated her days to social service.
Anyway, her nights were difficult. She thought about the serpentine creeping of two male hands on her body, bathing her, interleaving her contours with restless respite.
She met Abraham, her colleague, who seemed to be attracted to her. He befriended her, told about his orphanage in Kerala, India, where he got education and support as to come to the US. He was nice and kind to her; he had some idea about her turbulent past, though he didn’t know exactly what was that. He believed that time is the greatest healer, and it must have healed Jhumpa by now, given the kind and serene persona that she had.
In due course, he proposed her and they got married.
Grace was very happy with the turn of events in Jhumpa’s life. She was relieved that she could rescue a girl and facilitated her to lead a good life. She called Jhumpa’s Babai and shared this news; he was very angry and sounded helpless. He cursed Grace over phone, Grace smiled triumphant.
But things were not as simple.
Initially Abraham thought that Jhumpa was shy and was an introvert. Thus he waited patiently for the consummation of their marriage. But Jhumpa locked her room every night after dinner, touched herself passionately, whispering something, muttering to herself. Her body was not prepared to accept the touch of any other male. Her body had its own chemistry. Abraham couldn’t understand this. But he knew that Jhumpa didn’t like physical closeness with him. His only desire was to give her an orgasm, a massive, fulfilling one, that is. He cuddled her, did the foreplay with care and love, tried to take her to that trance where the woman desires her man—but everything failed.
Not that, Jhumpa complained when Abraham failed and gave up. She caressed his head for a few minutes, put him to a restless sleep, and remained awake herself. During those nights, Abraham noticed that Jhumpa looked at the ceiling nightlong, and when she fell asleep, two dry tear drops would be lingering on her cheeks or eyelids.She was insomniac, nonchalant, monotonous.
When Abraham complained over phone, Grace asked him to wait patiently, though she never narrated the long history of Jhumpa, having a full-fledged, compulsive, obsessive sexual relationship with her father. She couldn’t gather her courage to narrate this to a husband who dearly loved his wife.
Abraham tried to ask Jhumpa the reason behind her aversion to him. Jhumpa only cried; she could never tell him the reason, because she too loved him. He was her friend and companion, but her body couldn’t accept his touch. There were a couple of times when Jhumpa quietly lied down beside Abraham, eyes tightly closed, when he had sex with her cold body. Abraham hated this—it was like necrophilia. And then, he completely stopped going near her. They just lived in one house like two guests, who had nothing to do with each other. He stopped asking her questions. Some nights, even he stopped coming home.
Jhumpa felt lost, once again. Her existential, empirical questions about life troubled her. She wanted a break and called Grace if she could come to her place, spend a few days with her. Grace asked her to work on her marriage instead and spend quality time with Abraham. Then Jhumpa threatened her, “If you are not willing to keep me for a few days with you, I would rather go to Babai’s place and resolve with him.”
That was when I caught Grace reprimanding her over phone early morning.
I was petrified, shocked with this unwarranted story of my long-lost friend. I probed into our past and thought about the unfair, raw deal life had done with her. Was her Babai a paedophile? A narcissist? Womanizer? Sick man? Did his wife’s inability to have an intimate relationship give him the freedom to abuse his girl child and ruin her life? Was her Mai so selfish that in order to shield her future with her ‘provider’ and caretaker, she became a party to the vicious plan of her husband and sacrificed her own daughter’s life? I somehow blamed myself for leaving Sonagachi when Jhumpa needed her friends. I told Grace, “Let us save this girl, Grace! We cannot sulk now, especially when she is in grief. She needs us.”
Next morning, Jhumpa was with us in Kerala. At first, she didn’t talk much, we just had casual exchanges. Grace told her that I knew it all. Jhumpa wasn’t very comfortable with this. I tried to make her easy and diverted the topic to tourism, politics, food, fabrics, shopping, friends, anything in general. I invited her to spend a few days with me in Delhi. Our children played with her. Jhumpa tried to cooperate, but her eyes were always lost in the horizon. When we went out on long drives, Grace and I sat in the front and Jhumpa sat on the back seat with children. I looked at her discreetly in the rear-view mirror, she tried to smile, but her eyes were numb and she had a poker face when she was absentminded. Anyway, she did cooperate when we cheered her up. She called Abraham without fail, twice a day. She checked mails and did her office work dispassionately.
One night, Jhumpa shocked us by sleeping nude, very casually, on the couch. Grace reprimanded her. “Don’t you think it is disgraceful, Jhumpa?”
“Come on Grace, what is there in the body! It’s just a concealment for the soul. And I am soul-dead since my childhood. I have been sleeping like this since my sixteenth year, and I don’t find anything wrong with this. Why do we have such inhibitions about the body?”
Grace, anyway, threw a blanket over her fair, curvy, nude body and we went to the children’s room to sleep.
We didn’t judge her. She was a survivor; and we were glad that she had started talking.
After a couple of days, we received a call from Jhumpa’s Babai, telling her, since she was in India, she must visit her Mai, who was, apparently, counting her last breaths.
Babai always knew the whereabouts of Jhumpa. Despite our protests, Jhumpa went to Sonagachi. Mai was in a bad shape, Babai looked fine, in his fifties.
Babai didn’t exchange a word with Jhumpa; they had met after a decade or more. He had no complaints; he was calm. He was busy looking after his sinking wife, taking care of Jhumpa’s food and comfortable stay. Jhumpa’s room in the first floor was neatly done even after her long absence.
She felt the unmistakable presence of someone in her room even when she was alone there.
Was it the calm before the storm!! Jhumpa wondered.
When Grace called her during lunch, we overheard her father’s voice, asking her to take a second helping of the fish curry and not eat like an American. Her mother was perhaps asking her to eat what her Babai offered. The thought of what might be happening there sent us shivers down our spines.
“Grace, we must call her frequently tonight and ask her to come back tomorrow itself. It was such a bad idea to allow her to go there in the first place.”
Grace agreed to my idea.
I asked Grace, what exactly was the problem between Abraham and Jhumpa, now that Babai was not in her life and the couple loved, at least liked, each other. Grace told me, “Jhumpa had never had an orgasm with Abraham, maybe because the childhood sexual abuse was still traumatic for her.”
I suspected that simplistic approach, because Abraham seemed to be a very matured person, with lot of patience, not to coerce or frighten Jhumpa.
I doubted something else, very complex, encrusted and layered that I got a hint of, specifically from the salamander appearance of Jhumpa last few days.
“But tell me Grace, why should an orgasm be so elusive for a healthy female when she has the sexual act with a healthy male!” I tried to sound clinical.
“Foreplay, cunnilingus and all such things are very seminal to achieve an orgasm, but it’s not that simple. Because for most women, an orgasm is a matter of the heart and mind rather than the body. Perhaps Jhumpa’s mind is not able to concentrate when she is with Abraham.”
“There you go Grace! Do you think her mind and heart are still there with her Babai? Was her childhood abuse a guilt-ridden pleasure for her? I am just thinking aloud Grace.”
“What nonsense! Too much reading has made you so complex Ninny! You like to problematize everything!”
I kept quiet, kept thinking.
As decided, we started calling Jhumpa every fifteen minutes from 7 pm. Whatsapp video calls.
Jhumpa knew the purpose, and she was agreeable with us. From 7pm to 9pm she was with her Mai downstairs, and then she went to her room. We talked casually, inquired about her mother’s health, but everyone was tight-lipped about her father. She wanted to sleep at 10 pm, and we three were talking about her return tickets for the US, and a short trip to Shillong with children before the vacations for all of us would end.
Jhumpa was startled by a suppressed, surreptitious knock at her door at 10.10pm. We had anticipated it.
We almost knew it.
“Jhumpa!!! Just shout at him that if he continues to knock your door, you’ll call the neighbours from the balcony. You’ll call the police. Don’t just open the door, and keep the video call on. Got my point?” Grace yelled at the peak of her voice.
I was shaken, bewildered, scared, my BP went low, mouth was dry, and I was crying. I couldn’t talk.
“Jhumpa, you have to survive the night. You have to withstand. Be strong, ok? You are a true devotee of our Lord, and a faithful wife to your husband. You are a chaste, upright, virtuous woman. Don’t forget that.” Grace kept on talking aloud.
Jhumpa’s face looked different, she didn’t respond to Grace.
We looked on. My tears rolled. I was trembling. Grace was terribly mad at her.
Jhumpa whispered, “No Babai, please, please go! Don’t do this to me!”
“Open the door Jhumpa, my love. I am here, for you. I’ll take care of you, I’ll soothe, pacify, mollify, comfort your sad body. You are my prasada, how can you forget that? You were born only for a devotee like me. I won’t hurt you. I will put you to sleep. You look so tired,you haven’t slept since ages.”
Jhumpa looked pale. Dazed. Benumbed. Emotionless. Motionless. Weary.
Before going towards the door, she disconnected our call and switched off her phone.
That night, Jhumpa slept peacefully. We knew it. Next morning, I had a lump in my throat.
***
Nandini Sahu, Professor of English and Former Director, School of Foreign Languages, IGNOU, New Delhi, India, is an established Indian English poet, creative writer and folklorist. She is the author/editor of fifteen books. She is the recipient of the Literary Award/Gold Medal from the hon’ble Vice President of India for her contribution to English Studies. Her areas of research interest cover New Literatures, Critical Theory, Folklore and Culture Studies, Children’s Literature and American Literature.
