I am a woman first…

By  Raja Radhika Raman Prasad Singh

 

The tabla-player Ustadji’s fingers started playing on the tabla but Mohini’s feet, tied with strings of tiny ringing bells, would just not move, let alone start dancing. Wiping the beads of perspiration from his forehead, the Ustadji looked at Mirza, the sarangi player, who had started playing the soft tune in the mean time. Seventy years gone, the Ustadji’s crown was already half-bald, only fringed with chalk-white hair. Ustadji’s hands, when not playing on the tabla, would always keep shaking, but once on the tabla, they would seem charged with electrical energy. Then you could hardly count his fingers there. For decades he had been playing tabla for countless wealthy zamindars and aristocrats in their mehfils, but for the last three years he had been playing tabla only for Mohini, living with her on her kotha, may be till his last breath, as he imagined.

 

He took a pan from the pandan with a pinch of fragrant zarda, and looked towards Mirza who had by then qietly put down his sarangi to one side. One of the guests, in desperation asked the Ustadji – “Ustadji, shall we go then, without hearing any songs tonight?”

        “ What’s the matter beti?” the old man asked Mohini anxiously after a while.

        “ Please, Ustadji, I’d like to be forgiven tonight, but I’m not well. I don’t feel like singing at all today”, she said.

 

She knew why. Scenes from the past flitted in her memory like dark clouds floating by in the sky. She had noticed Shekhar sitting among her guests, waiting for her song and dance performance. She was absolutely certain, it was Shekhar and none else. He had the same curly hair, that same fair-complexioned face and on a slim body, with his large eyes that looked tipsy now. Yes, it was the same Shekhar, the flame of her heart in her early-girly days. It was only six years back. Meanwhile the young man suddenly rose to leave. Mohini was now doubly sure, it was none else but Shekhar.

 

Mohini remembered how some years back Shekhar had come from his village, only twentyfive miles off the city where she lived. He must have come from his village by a bus leaving a trail of dust on the country road. His father lived in that village with five more siblings and his mother. In his Matric exams Shekhar had got high marks and had got himself admitted to a college in that city, but instead of living in the college hostel, Shekhar had chosen to live in a small rented room atop a house in a side narrow lane. And almost adjacent, at the corner of the lane, there was a large bungalow with a big compound where a car always remained parked. When he passed from there, Shekhar would often see a beautiful young girl in skirt standing by the railing of the compound amidst the flowers in the lawn. One day while returning from college, as he passed by and saw the girl standing there, she asked him –

          “Do you live in that room atop that house? May I know your name?”

        “Yes, I am Shekhar.’

He felt totally embarrassed as he stood facing a beautiful girl in blooming youth.

         “ I often see your lights on till late in the night.”

        “ Yes”, replied Shekhar sheepishly. “I have to study for my coming exams.”

        “But keeping awake till late in the night might prove harmful for your health.”

       “ Yes, I know, but I must work hard for a good career.”  Saying this Shekhar hurried forward to his room. Though he had not seen, but he could feel there was a smile on the rosy lips of the girl as she stood watching him go. It was the first conversation between them.

        One day Shekhar asked her – “I often hear music and dancing on the upper floor of your house in the evenings?”

        ‘Yes, it’s my mother singing, and I do my dance practice under her training in the evenings.”

          That evening when Shekhar looked out of his room’s window, he found the girl staring at him. He felt a bit flustered. Was it a glance of desire, he wondered? The very next day when he met her, she openly professed her love for him. “Shekhar, I want to tell you that I love you. Can’t we be together somehow,” she just blurted out to him.

        Since that day, they started going out together to the market and other places in the city.

        “ Aren’t you married yet?” She asked him one day. Shekhar replied in the negative. She quickly said – “Can’t we get married then? I know we love each other!”

 

Only a few days later Shekhar noticed a crowd assembled in the compound. He was told that Mohini’s father had died of a sudden heart-attack. The same night, Mohini came to his room and said- “ Shekhar, I have come to share a truth of my life with you. The man who died last night was not my father. In fact, my mother used to live with him as his kept woman, only as a singing-dancing tawaif, just for his pleasure. Now we must leave this house and go somewhere else. But when I told my mother about my love for you, she said, I could get married to you and we could then live together.”

 

Shekhar was absolutely flabberghasted. How could he marry a tawaif’s daughter? Will his family accept her as his wife? But just to save the situation, he said, “ Mohini, give me some time to think about it. I’ll soon let you know my answer.” But the very next day, Shekhar shifted to some other place in the city. Mohini also had to move to another city soon with her mother.

 

It was six year later that Shekhar, now a married man, but a regular visitor to the locality of the tawaifs in that same new city, happened to ascend the steps of Mohini’s kotha. He had no knowledge that Mohini, too, had joined that sullied profession of a tawaif – now herself a dancing-singing tawaif. After this dismal discovery at Mohini’s kotha, as Shekhar came down the steps in great dejection, he kept thinking about that pretty youthful girl whom he had met and loved six years back. But he felt as if Mohini was following him and whispering in his ears  – “ Tell me, Shekhar, what choice did I have in the circumstances,  except to become a tawaif for earning a living? I might have come to this ignoble profession just for a living, but I’m still a woman. The world may have compelled me to choose a sullied profession that I hate from deep within my heart, but how can it force me to choose whom to love. I have always loved only you. If you don’t understand my helplessness even then, what can I do? That has been my fate. And how can I change my fate?

 

Mohini’s voice echoed louder and louder in Shekhar’s mind and soon he could bear that agony no more. He retraced his steps immediately to Mohini’s kotha. Mohini was utterly astounded to see Shekhar back at her place.

          “Shekhar, how come you are here again?”, she asked him totally puzzled

        “Yes, I have thought over it and decided to live only with you now”, said Shekhar impulsively.

        “ But how can that be? You are already a married man! No, no! Please go back to your wedded wife. I may be a tawaif, but I am a woman first!”

1.                           

Raja Radhika Raman Prasad Singh (1890-1971)

 

When one has crossed fifty, when every tomorrow brings you closer to your end, you tend to turn towards your past memories – memories that look like the sequences in a film. Hence, these are not merely stories, with the embellishments and craft of imagination, they are actual glimpses from real life. No imaginary stories can beat in significance these slices of real life (peeling off the layers of a woman’s mystery)…And what is a woman but a totally inscrutable entity – a complete enigma! What we see in a woman is not her entire   self. In fact, no man has ever been able to fathom the depth of her mystery.

 

           Raja Radhika Raman Prasad Singh was the  Raja of a small Suryapura estate in eastern Bihar. He became more famous, however, as one of the most prolific literary figures of modern Hindi fiction. His creative career spans the longest and the most productive period of Hindi fiction writing – the first six or seven decades of the last century. His magnum opus, the Hindi novel ‘Ram Raheem’, came out around the middle of the last century at a time when the Hindi novel was touching its highest peak with Premchand’s classic novel ‘Godan’. Popularly known as ‘Raja Saheb’, he chose fiction as the literary genre for his prolific creativity. He is credited with contributing a distinctive style of lyrical suppleness to Hindi fiction that has become his hallmark. The power of that lyricism in his prose style, consistently manifested throughout his fiction, is so innate to his literary talent that it becomes totally inseparable from the magic of his art of story-telling. He had published about a dozen collections of his (approximately 100) short or long stories. Among the three short stories selected here ‘I am a woman first…’ is from ‘Bikhare Moti’-3 (1969), The Bangle-Sellers  from ‘Tab Or Ab’ (1959) and The Dream at Dawn  from ‘Haveli  Or Jhopadi’ (1951).

            Raja Radhika Raman’s views about short story writing are scattered in the prefaces of some of his novellas and short stories, especially in the 4 volumes of Bikhare Moti (in Raja Radhika Raman Granthavali, 5 volumes, 1992).

              Word Notes: A large number of Hindi words are now commonly included in standard English dictionaries, and in most cases the context also signifies there meaning. But for easy and convenient reference, such non-English words are explained in these word notes, with the story numbers indicated in square brackets. [1]Tawaif is a dancing-singing prostitute, and all other words are related to that central word. Tabla and sarangi are musical instruments (percussion and stringed, respectively, played in accompaniment to the dance).The Mehfil (the audience at such performance) takes place at a kotha (a prostitute’s house, generally on the first floor) where betel-leaves( pan) ready to be served for chewing are kept in an a metal box (pandan). Beti is a term of endearment, meaning daughter. Zarda: perfumed tobacco taken with pan.[2] Chunri is skirt and choli is a bra-like close-fitting blouse. [3] Kothi is a palace like building.

  

 (C) Dr BSM Murty