‘And what about Riziya? Has she really become a kaffir, Maruf Bhai?’

‘How can I tell you about that, Hujur? I heard that there were signs of a Hindu woman on her body. She accepted widowhood under Hindu rituals. Do you know, I met her once! About two years ago. May I ask you something?’

‘Tell me, Maruf Bhai.’

‘You still think about Riziya, don’t you?’

Maulana Tahirul didn’t want to reply to that. How could he tell him that he had thought about Riziya every moment of these ten long years! Why he had remained unmarried. Tahirul had a lot to explain to Riziya! He was constantly plagued by curiosity, as to why she had run away with Suman. He had gone to Nazir Bhai’s house and asked Reshma Bhabi too, but he got no answer. Tahirul put down the handful of rice he was about to eat and merely said, ‘Forget all that. I don’t feel like talking about that subject.’

‘But do you know something – everyone thinks that Riziya wrote “Hare Krishna, Hare Ram” on the wall of the mosque. I am certain, though, that Riziya did not write that. I am a hundred per cent sure. I found no resemblance between her handwriting and the writing on the wall.’

‘Then who wrote it?’

‘I don’t know that. But I know that Suman didn’t write it either. I know his handwriting from our childhood. Once you know this, it becomes easy to understand why Riziya left. But people are angry. They are silent now because of the event. I’ve spoken to Rafiq Bhai as well, to see that the subject of Riziya is not raised right now. I heard that Rafiq Ali, too, went, after he got the news that Abid Sheikh had gone to collect Suman’s body. That’s their political compulsion.’

‘You asked me to moderate the event, but now I feel like I can’t do that. I feel like running away from here. It’s as if Riziya has slapped me hard and is still standing in front of me, but I’m unable to ask her why she did that!’

‘What nonsense! No one can moderate the programme better than you. You’ll forget everything once the programme is in full flow!’

‘I hope that happens, Maruf Bhai. I hope I can forget everything.’

seventy-two

When Riziya walked with Preeti through the crowded street in Sadnahati, everyone was stunned. Some people were annoyed to see her. Some bubbled with excitement, like the rice boiling inside a pot covered with a lid. What audacity! What a shameless girl! Nevertheless, Riziya was unruffled, and she entered the lane leading to Reshma’s house. Reshma had already told the people in her house that Riziya would be coming. And so, a crowd of many neighbouring women had gathered outside her room. All of them were eager to know whether Riziya had really become a Hindu. Riziya could read the expression on their faces. In the dim light of dusk, she could discern the look of astonishment and hatred in their eyes. She did not speak to anyone. She directly entered Reshma’s room. Many had speculations regarding Preeti. ‘How pretty she is, she looks just like her father.’ Riziya looked at the woman who’d said that. It was Nurul Da’s wife. She seemed to have greyed a bit. Achchha, did she finally have a son? Riziya was very eager to know!

After they were seated, Reshma went to get some refreshments. There were many questions: Where were you, Rizi? Okay, so you loved someone and ran away, but why did you write those things on the mosque wall? How could a girl from the Miya household, educated in religion, do such a childish thing! Why did Suman take his own life? These were extremely decent queries. But there were much more complicated questions as well. Riziya felt like dissolving into the earth in shame. Reshma was not able to control them. And in that situation, Riziya suddenly shouted out, ‘I beg you to be quiet. I know you have a thousand questions in your mind. But let me live. Don’t torment me in front of this little girl.’

Everyone became silent at once. Riziya was an educated woman. Now she had become articulate. Addressing the crowd, Reshma said, ‘Come on, go back to your homes now. You’ll know everything in good time. Go now.’

The crowd thinned a bit. And then the loudspeaker blared again. It had been turned off for a while for the Maghrib prayer. There was a pond behind Reshma’s house. Rahmat, the muezzin, lived on the far side of the pond. If one skirted past his house, there was the Eidgah ground. The day’s event was taking place there. Maruf was making an announcement. ‘Greetings and felicitations to the people of Sadnahati village. The public event organized on behalf of the committee of the Jumma Mosque is about to resume. The special feature of the programme is felicitating illustrious people. We will start that programme in a few minutes, Inshallah! The person to whom I am handing over the mic to moderate the entire programme is very well known to you – the former imam of this very mosque, Maulana Tahirul Islam Saheb!’

Riziya turned towards Reshma and mouthed, ‘Hujur!’

‘Yes. He arrived last night. He came to our house once before. He learnt about you too.’

Riziya did not say any more. She sat quietly. Tahirul was greeting all the people seated on the stage. Riziya could see all their faces in her mind’s eye: Kalim Mirza, Rahmat the muezzin, Rajek Sheikh, Rafiq Ali, the pradhan of the Panchayat, Abid Sheikh, the social worker, and Dr Jasimuddin. The names of people she didn’t know were Abdur Rahim Ali, Kabir Molla and Anadikumar Dutta, who were journalists; Gobindo Haldar, a teacher; and the writer Abinash Chandra Mukhopadhyay. Who was that? Abinash Babu! Here? Riziya remembered – Suman did tell her that he was Maruf’s favourite writer. Could he have told Maruf about Suman? Had Suman asked him not to inform anyone of his whereabouts?

Riziya heard a lot of speeches for an hour. She realized Sadnahati was awakening. There was to be a library, a health centre, and a computer centre under the aegis of the mosque committee. She was happy to hear that. Riziya wanted to see the people involved. It was Abinash Babu on the mic now. Riziya listened to his speech. How eloquent he was! She thought of Aaduri. Wasn’t Aaduri also responsible for Suman’s suicide? But if Riziya considered Aaduri guilty, then this writer, Abinash Babu, was also responsible for that. Why did he stay away from his young wife, leaving her all alone? Why should she alone be responsible for Suman’s death? Although Suman had left behind a note that no one was responsible for his death, could Riziya ever forgive herself? Abinash Babu was speaking at that moment regarding education. He said, ‘I witnessed in Sadnahati an exception to how we, non-Muslims, perceive a mosque. The darkness of illiteracy that haunts the Muslim community can be eliminated if the mosque committee comprises educated, cultured and religious-minded people. The imams of mosques have to play a positive role in this regard…’

Riziya began to feel restless. Preeti had fallen asleep on Reshma’s cot. The crowd of neighbouring women was no longer around. Riziya suddenly said to Reshma, ‘Bhabi, I want to go there.’

‘What are you saying!’

‘I want to go to the programme stage. Believe me, I cheated Suman, and Suman cheated me. But this Sadnahati did not cheat me. It is illiteracy that cheated all of us.’

‘You’ve lost your head! They’ll thrash you to death! What drama are you going to do there?’

‘No, they won’t do that. A woman, and a mother, has to learn to survive. Do you have a borkha? Give it to me, let me put it on.’

Reshma did not protest. Riziya put on the borkha. After that, she left the house by herself. The Eidgah ground was packed with people. Riziya knew the way from her childhood days. She quickly reached the place where the womenfolk were seated. No one recognized her since she was clad in a borkha. She went closer to the stage. The first person she sighted was Maruf. And standing next to him, wearing a white pyjama-panjabi, was Maulana Tahirul. There seemed to be no change in his appearance, he looked exactly the same. Riziya advanced towards the stage. The crowd of people was absorbed in listening to Abinash Babu’s speech. He continued speaking. ‘But I would like to say something to this mosque committee and to all the people of Sadnahati. You want to start a library, that’s good. I am a writer, so I want to express my full support. But where will you find the readers for the library? If you want readers, the number of educated people needs to increase. There’s neither a high school, nor a high madrasa here, although this is such a large village. You need an educational institution…’

Riziya stoically approached the stage and saw Jasmin, the daughter-in-law of the Haji household and now member of the local Panchayat, seated there. Abinash Babu went on: ‘But a school doesn’t materialize merely by saying we need to build one. That requires land. Arrange for the land, and I shall help you.’

The Eidgah ground resounded with continuous applause during Abinash Babu’s speech. Seizing the opportunity, Riziya climbed up on stage, went next to Abinash Babu, and without removing the niqab over her face, declared in front of the mic, ‘Let there be a school and a madrasa in Sadnahati. Let people be educated. I will donate the land.’

At first, that too was followed by applause. And then, for a moment, the programme suddenly halted. Who was there on the soil of Sadnahati who could donate land? Who was this woman? Abinash Babu’s speech was terminated at once. There was a cordless mic in Maulana Tahirul’s hand. He turned that on and asked, ‘But who are you? Please introduce yourself. After all…’

‘I’m a Sadnahati girl. I want people like Dr Jasim and Maruf Bhai to take the responsibility to set up a mission school here. I will donate the land. My name is Riziya.’

As soon as Riziya removed the niqab from her face, there was a hue and cry from a section of the audience. Maulana Tahirul was at his wits’ end, and as he stood on one side, he remembered that, in exactly the same way, he had suddenly gone up on stage during the function organized by Rafiq Ali. He kept gazing in Riziya’s direction. Thousands of verbal arrows were flung at Riziya. If she hadn’t been a woman, she would have been dragged and hauled off the stage. But quite a few people had also responded with applause. They wanted land for a school. Meanwhile the Panchayat Pradhan, Rafiq Ali Sheikh, had grabbed the mic. He roared out, ‘Wow! What a fantastic drama we are seeing here! And all of you are watching that! Rizi becomes a Muslim again as soon as Suman dies! It’s all a conspiracy against me! Wasn’t part of the land purchased by me? All of you know that Kalu Miya sold his share of the land to me. Let me see how a school comes up with her sole donation. Many of you saw who brought her by taxi from the morgue in Howrah. All this is his conspiracy. Does that land belong to Riziya alone?’ And as he said that, he pointed to Abid Sheikh. Abid Sheikh’s supporters raised an uproar in protest.

Maruf was stunned. He stood silently on one side of the stage. What he was hearing was no melodious azan like that of Bilal of yore. He could only hear the growls of dogs fighting. He looked despondently and speechlessly at Riziya. And then he turned his eyes towards Rafiq Ali and Abid Sheikh, towards the elderly people seated on the stage, and Abinash Babu. He then walked past Tahirul, and slowly climbed down the stage.

And just then, someone whispered something into Tahirul’s ear. He turned the mic on again, and announced:

‘I request everyone to remain silent. I have a sad announcement to make. We have to pause the programme. We have just received news that Kalu Miya’s son, Raqib, has passed away. Inna Lillahi…’

about the book

Set in Sadnahati, a Muslim-majority village in West Bengal, Talashnama is the story of Riziya, an educated and headstrong woman with an anguished past.

Hounded by a devastating secret, Riziya elopes with her tutor, Suman Nath, a Hindu, although it is Tahirul – the local Imam torn between duty and desire – who is her true love. On the day she leaves, she allegedly writes anti-Islamic graffiti on the wall of the village mosque – an incident that both baffles and enrages the villagers. Ten years later, Suman Nath takes his own life, and Riziya must return to a Sadnahati fraught with disapproval and condemnation...

Ismail Darbesh’s debut novel, Talashnama, is a thrilling literary tour de force, where love, religion, modernity and politics collide. A bestseller in the original Bangla and translated brilliantly by V. Ramaswamy, it is also an evocative inquiry into the uncertainties and challenges of being Muslim in today’s India.

about the author and the translator

ismail darbesh was born in an ‘ostagar’ or traditional garment-maker family, and completed his schooling at Tentulkuli High School and Makardaha Bamasundari Institution, after which he attended Narsingha Dutta College in Howrah and graduated with Honours in Bengali. He began writing stories, essays, features and sketches for little magazines from the time he was in college, but discontinued thereafter. From 2016, after getting a smartphone, he began writing again, this time on Facebook. His collection of short stories, Kangshobodher Nepothye (Behind the Scenes of Kamsa’s Vanquishment) was published in 2020 by Abhijan, Kolkata. Talashnama, his first novel – which also began as a series of posts on Facebook – was published by Abhijan in 2021. His second novel, Raanridighir Brittanto (Tales from Raanridighi), will be published later this year.

v. ramaswamy has translated Subimal Misra’s The Earth Quakes: Late Anti-Stories, This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale: Two Anti-Novels, Wild Animals Prohibited: Stories, Anti-Stories and The Golden Gandhi Statue from America: Early Stories; Shahidul Zahir’s Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas (with Shahroza Nahrin), Why There Are No Noyontara Flowers in Agargaon Colony: Stories, and I See the Face: A Novel; and works by Manoranjan Byapari, Adhir Biswas, Mashiul Alam, Shahaduz Zaman and Swati Guha. He was a recipient of the Literature Across Frontiers–Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship in creative writing and translation at Aberystwyth University in 2016, the New India Foundation translation fellowship in 2022, the PEN Presents award in 2022, and the Bangla Translation Foundation (Dhaka) prize for the best translated book of 2022. He lives in Kolkata.

Praise for Talashnama

‘What makes Talashnama fascinating is not just its nuanced portrait of conflicts in a sited rural Muslim community, but the way these conflicts are used to adumbrate the larger tensions, problems and possibilities of our times and country. Engrossing and illuminating.’

– tabish khair, author of The Body by the Shore

‘A sensitively observed tale of immense contemporary significance.’

– kunal basu, author of Filmi Stories

‘Talashnama is a provocative and insightful portrayal of the reality of the Muslim community, far removed from the picture one often gets from those in a position of power. It is an exemplary exposition of religion and spirituality, of belief and faith, of puritanism and pluralism, of fundamentalism and liberalism, of rights and deprivations. And underlying the many voices that one hears in the story, be it within the family or outside of it, within religion or politics, is an empathy and understanding that are as profound as they are palpable. A brilliantly crafted novel, soulfully translated.’

– k.r. meera, author of Assassin