Another person shouted out, ‘The loudspeaker will not be removed.’

Quite a few people gathered there because of the loud exchange. The matter was no longer limited to Maruf or Iqbal. It spread. The crowd increased because of the ongoing function. The aftertaste of the recent disturbance had not fully gone. Shouting and screaming commenced. The zikr stopped. The people who had been doing zikr had divine power, they were intoxicated with love for Allah. When they heard about the incident, they flared up in rage. Something had been said, but they interpreted it in another way. That was what was called rumour.

Had the Tablighis removed their loudspeaker? They had the audacity to do that! Abuses were hurled, and the creed of the Tablighis was declared to be a hellish one. Maruf did not wait any longer. He walked away from the fragrant ceremony.

Once the majlis concluded, some people were fed. Most of them were the womenfolk of the household. The venue was empty at this time. Nazir’s wife, Reshma, had sat down to eat with her daughter. She didn’t come much to Ostagar’s house. She felt a kind of inferiority and fear when she was there, although everyone in this household considered Nazir as one of their own. But his wife felt queasy there, as if she was uninvited and had come there to eat only out of compulsion. She had forgotten that her whole family had been invited. She saw Fulsura and Riziya standing a little distance away. Reshma wondered about the intimacy between Kalu Chacha and Iqbal Ostagar. And as she wondered, the two girls came up to her. They sat down beside Reshma. Having them next to her seemed to rid her of her feeling of loneliness and queasiness. She exclaimed, ‘What are you! You didn’t tell me in the evening that you people too were invited, or else I would have come with you.’

Fulsura replied, ‘Is this a wedding where we have to come all dressed up and stroll in together? I’ve come because they are our relatives.’

Riziya said, ‘But I came today to listen. I want to hear how our Hujur delivers his sermon. Won’t you people stay, Bhabi?’

Both Reshma and Fulsura burst out laughing when they heard her. Reshma said, ‘As soon as my daughter finishes eating, she feels sleepy. I’ve put the little one on her father’s lap. I can’t stay, sister. And why are you so keen to hear the sermon? After all you hear your Hujur’s owaj every day. Besides, with the number of loudspeakers Iqbal Ostagar has put up, you can hear it at home. Why do you need to come here to hear it?’

Riziya felt a kind of shyness at that. Yet she didn’t let even a tiny bit of her secret shyness show.

sixteen

All the musulli returned home after the conclusion of the Zuhr prayer at noon. The muezzin left, too, to join his family. Tahirul was all alone in the empty, silent mosque. Not exactly alone – various thoughts and concerns constantly hovered over him. Neither did he feel like sitting all alone in his room at this time. It would be good if he could eat something quickly and lie down for a bit. But he did not dare to. When there was a lull following a deep train of thought, he would become drowsy and fall into bed to doze. And just then the muezzin’s azan would sound. The azan for the Asr prayer. Tahirul felt annoyed when he rose hurriedly after having been fast asleep. But he couldn’t figure out who exactly he was annoyed with. That’s why he had decided never to sleep after lunch. He kept pacing up and down inside the mosque itself. He kept humming the songs in praise of the Prophet (PBUH). His voice echoed in the vast, vacant mosque, like from a microphone of the ecosystem. Last night, he had heard the programme until midnight. He had been compelled to hear it. It was simply not possible for him, as the imam of the locality, to be absent from such a religious programme. He felt like getting up and leaving several times, but he couldn’t. He was employed as an imam, and there were many unwritten rules which came with that – those had to be respected. However, everyone was overwhelmed after hearing the naats of the speakers. Tahirul too was stirred to life. He felt like singing his favourite naat inside the mosque. As he sang, a self-assurance was born inside him. That he, too, could sing well. If he practised regularly, he too could become a reputed speaker. There was a great demand for this class of scholars in village after village of Howrah district.

Tahirul had slept a bit after the Fajr prayer at dawn. So he felt sharp in mind and body. He was sometimes overcome by loneliness. Even after consuming all the different kinds of food with one family or another every day, he felt there was a dissatisfaction somewhere. There was a lot of respect conveyed in the food covered with a plate, there was devotion, but there was no love. Neither was there affection. He acutely felt the lack of love. He needed a family.

The proposal that Haji Saheb made to him was not acceptable to him. What if that proposal was made a bit differently? That might sound jarring; so thinking along these lines, Tahirul quickly took himself away from the thought. Actually, a dream was taking shape in Tahirul’s bosom very slowly. That dream was buried so deep inside him that it would have been difficult for even a deep-sea diver to fathom it!

The afternoon Asr prayer was a brief one. Tahirul left hurriedly. It was teaching at Kalu Miya’s house that was the happiest part of his day. A kind of mental entertainment to break the monotony. He no longer went to teach daily like he did earlier. He only went thrice a week. These three days were extremely valuable for him, an expectation of joy. What drew Tahirul there?

‘Hujur, assalamu alaikum!’

There was a faint smile on Riziya’s face. This smile made him feel helpless. He lost his normal poise. This hadn’t been the case earlier; rather there had been a kind of inertia within him. But that inertia had left him from the time he began talking to Riziya in Suman Nath’s house.

‘Waalaikum assalam! What’s the matter, why are you so late? Can’t you come before me?’ Tahirul asked, using the respectful ‘apni’ for ‘you’.

‘Don’t call me “apni”, Hujur. I feel ashamed.’

‘All right, it’s okay. Sit down. Hey, why doesn’t Fulsura come to study? How can she be absent when the class is in her house?’

Riziya made a joke about this. ‘Why? Why are you sad if Fulsura is absent?’

Riziya tittered. Tahirul was embarrassed and looked in the direction of the others. No, there wasn’t any reaction. They were young in age as well, and Tahirul thought that their minds had not mastered the skill of figuring out riddles. Besides, they were busy with their respective studies. And so Tahirul was able to muster some courage. ‘If someone comes late, that makes me unhappier than if they are absent.’

‘Who is that someone, Hujur?’

Tahirul was silent. He did not look in Riziya’s direction. With his head lowered, he said, ‘I don’t know. I said it just like that.’

‘I had gone to hear your sermon yesterday. But you didn’t deliver one!’

‘No, I didn’t. But I was there. I didn’t see you there.’

‘We are womenfolk. Can we sit around in a gathering?’

Tahirul was surprised at himself. How could he have asked such a stupid question? It was in front of Riziya that he was making a fool of himself. Even if he could maintain his seriousness in front of the entire musulli, when encountering this girl, it seemed he was reduced to being callow.

‘You can’t deliver sermons, isn’t it?’

‘Why won’t I be able to do it? They invited professional speakers from outside. If I delivered a sermon, what would they do! Merely eat chicken-porota and keep sitting?’

But Tahirul realized that his remark was not really an apt one. Everything he said seemed to be inappropriate. In response, Riziya said, ‘Say that you can’t. If you could, wouldn’t they have paid you as well?’

Tahirul felt envious of all those speakers. And at the same time, he pondered over Iqbal Ostagar’s lack of basic sense. He felt an inward urge to win the battle against this girl. He tried to give himself a bit of importance. That could act as a counter to his foolish remarks. He said, ‘If you had attended the Jumma prayer and listened to my sermon, you would have found out whether I can or cannot. People queue up and listen raptly to my speech. I don’t deliver any of those hackneyed, Yusuf-and-Zuleikha type of sermons. Understood?’

‘All right, all right. Why are you getting angry?’

Riziya turned silent. She realized that Tahirul had felt a bit offended. She turned something over in her mind. After a few moments, she said, ‘I have a question, Hujur, may I ask?’ And then, without waiting for a reply, she continued, ‘Why aren’t women allowed to enter the mosque? Are they impure?’

‘That’s the custom.’

‘Is it really a custom? But sometimes I, too, feel like going to the mosque and offering prayers. What you just said – that if I had attended the Jumma prayer – can I go to the mosque to offer the Jumma prayers if I feel like? My Ma died ages ago when I was little. I used to go to the mosque during Eid. And once I grew older – it’s because I’m a girl that I couldn’t go there any longer. But we don’t feel the same delight when we go to the Eidgah.’

‘When it comes to women, even if there are many dos and don’ts, they can step outside under certain conditions. Can’t they?’

‘Do those dos and don’ts apply only when it comes to the mosque? What about the Eid field? Although we aren’t allowed to go to the Eid field in the morning, we are allowed to go to the mela in the town in the evening. So where do the dos and don’ts go then?’

‘After all, the shariat can’t be blamed for that, can it! Our society is to blame. That’s the responsibility of the elders.’

‘And what about people like you?’

‘How far can we go?’

Everyone was listening open-mouthed to this conversation between Tahirul and Riziya. Sabina was astonished. How could Riziya dare to talk to the imam in this way! She looked with admiration at this educated girl and wondered, how do you know so much, Rizi darling? Was it by reading?

Tahirul was amazed too. He had been performing his duties as an imam all these days, and except for Maruf and Farid, no one had ever argued with him on religious subjects. But that was a different matter. However, as he talked with Riziya he realized that, even if one viewed society as seemingly moribund, the flame of knowledge kept burning. It occurred to him that this flame could be concealed, but it could never be extinguished. All these questions by Riziya were actually doors to knowledge. And so he explained in his own way. This conversation between them was a source of pure joy. He thought that all his religious education would bear fruit if he had such an inquisitive student.

Although Riziya was devoted to and respected her Chhoto Mama, Salaam, she loved her Mami much more. Her Mami, too, was quite pleased to be ‘Rizi’s Ma’ even though she hadn’t given birth to her. Everyone in the neighbourhood called her by that name. Not like a co-wife’s daughter, or a sister’s daughter, no, she wanted to hold this distantly related sister-in-law’s daughter close, like she were her own. It was her encouragement that made Riziya pursue education and be of an independent deportment, different from others. But it was Salaam Miya himself who often became the reason for Riziya’s unhappiness. Riziya did not express those feelings. And when she felt an acute sense of hurt, she wasn’t alone. She went at once to Reshma Bhabi. Nazir’s wife, Reshma, talked to her like an intimate.

She did not remember her own Abba. But what about her birth mother? After all, it was by focussing on Riziya that she had wanted to make her life as a widow easy and simple. She had not got any share of her father-in-law’s house. If a son predeceased his father, his heir would get nothing. That was farayez law. When Riziya’s Abba died, his father was still alive. That was why Riziya’s Ma, Jamila Begum, had put up at the house of this cousin from her father’s side. The face of her Ma whom she had with her till she was eight years old, often floated into her consciousness. A sad, sick face. Bedridden, dying. Muttering in a feeble voice and saying so many things to Chhoto Mama. The little girl Riziya hadn’t heard anything. But she did realize one thing: her Ma would no longer be alive. It was her Chhoto Mami who then became her refuge, whom she loved and trusted. She had unwittingly fallen asleep next to her Mami’s bosom in the adjacent room. Hearing the sound of shouting and weeping in the morning, she had woken up. The first morning of the orphaned Riziya. When she went and stood in front of her dead mother, her body had already been laid out, supine. She was entirely covered with a white sheet. Turmeric dust on all sides marked the boundaries of the supine figure. Incense smoke at the head side. One woman had moved the shroud cloth near the face to show Riziya. The intensity of all the upheaval of grievous weeping denied Riziya a chance to see the face properly. Her Chhoto Mama had pulled her away firmly. Her Boro Mama, Kalu Miya, had declared that he would raise her. But it was as if her Chhoto Mama had never heard that. She had been with this family ever since then.

It took Tahirul quite a long while to learn about all this, bit by bit. It occurred to him that Riziya was actually a woman of misfortune. For all her outward exuberance, she was grieving to death inside. Tahirul developed a weakness towards her in empathy. The girl had found a place in his heart. A feeling of love was created. But this love was wrongful! It was a major offence. So Tahirul became perturbed. One ought not to drill a hole in the plate one was eating from. Sadnahati was the place of his livelihood. He did not want to embroil himself in any kind of trouble or scandal. After all, it was not any ordinary man who had this weakness towards Riziya, it was an imam. Tahirul reflected that he simply had to remain virtuous. He would not allow a blot on his character. There was no beautiful variety in a clear, blue sky. Rather, the little blots of white or dark clouds lent beauty to the sky. Tahirul’s life was simple and serene. Free of blots – a religious life shorn of variety. But was the colour of life an everlasting one? That changed too, in step with time. The tale of Adam and Eve was constantly rewritten in the lives of men and women.

seventeen

Suman’s father was the sole government employee in the village of Sadnahati. He was known to everyone as ‘Naren Master’. After he died, Suman’s mother received a pension. But that was not enough to run her household. Suman’s goal was to get a government job. Having completed his MA, he was engaged in giving tuitions now. That was not because he was the son of a teacher; there was simply no private tutor other than Suman in this locality. That’s why he had a horde of students. The earnings weren’t bad. But although that saw him through the days, it was no life. That’s why he appeared for job-related examinations. He had to read various books for the exams. And in this regard, Suman was most dependent on Maruf. He thought that Maruf could easily obtain a job if he tried. But that urge never dawned within Maruf. He did not need a job to get on with his life; yet Suman was of the view that Maruf’s intellect was of a high calibre. He couldn’t quite figure out Maruf.

Suman gave tuitions all day, in three shifts. There were more female students than male ones. He knew what the village of Sadnahati was like. He did not have the kind of student that one could devote oneself to teaching. It was only the student by the name of Riziya who he thought possessed an intellect. But her uncle had decided to discontinue her education after Class Nine. Suman had spoken to Salaam Chacha at the time and persuaded him otherwise. That had yielded results too. Riziya performed well in both the Secondary and Higher Secondary exams.

He paid special attention to her. That angered some girls who were envious, and Suman knew that.

Although they belonged to a different religion, Sadnahati folk felt a deep kinship with the people of Jogipara. The religion, society and culture – everything – of the Muslims affected them. But that did not take away their individuality. There were people of different persuasions among the Hindus as well. Suman’s family were followers of the Nath sect. Although brahmin, they were somewhat looked down upon. In the course of discussions with Maruf, Suman had observed that he was of a conservative bent. He, too, shared that feature. Suman followed the conservatism of the Nath community. He therefore did not believe in idol worship. He tried to present himself as a sacred-thread-wearing jogi or ascetic brahmin. Suman too had studied a lot. Through conversations on the subject of religion with Maruf, Suman had realized that religion denoted orderliness. A person living in a society needed an orderly life. That’s why religion had come up. He used to tell Maruf, ‘All the people of the world ought to be differentiated first in terms of two categories, believers and atheists. Then you divide the believers into two categories, those who are idolatrous and those who are not. The non-idolatrous can again be divided into two, that is, those who are monotheistic and those who are polytheistic. Viewing things in this way, it would seem that religions came up precisely to meet the needs of each age.’