Death On A Wedding Altar

“They’re coming! They're coming!”

The news of their arrival spread in the house like the rapid shivering of leaves in a gale wind. And as if touched by a magic wand, the busy activities in the house suddenly transformed into mere excited movements. The men who were entrusted with tasks, ran to and fro with loud shouts giving directions to others; and those who were so directed, in their turn, perplexed and unable to understand what was being directed, simply looked around and got busy without really doing anything. As usual, the degree of excitement was much higher among the ladies and they were a feat to watch. But as some people are always to be found almost everywhere who can hold any situation in their strides, everything somehow seemed to move in their expected course.

The news had its impact among the guests too. The older gentlemen of the guests, though cheerless, straightened themselves and cast a curious look side ward to the gate; the younger ones while continuing to pose a smarter look about themselves to win the attention of the young ladies nevertheless, changed their subject of discussion for a moment. The ladies while they relayed the news between themselves, took a hasty look at their decorations, puffed their faces with hankies and passing some not-so-witty remarks for heavy laughter, tumbled on one another; their voices in exuberance, reducing almost to whispers and a cheerful shyness, peculiar to women, prevailed on their faces. The children proclaimed the arrival of the bridegroom's party by joyous clapping of hands and a clamoring shout, the world's most easiest of languages.

The band marched forward to give them a musical welcome. A gay note was being played on the shehnai (a musical instrument conventionally played during weddings). A thick, chilly wind mingled every sound for a lively, festive noise and it hovered around the colourfully lighted house unleashing from time to time, it’s chill on the cheerful, merry faces.

As soon as the news of the bridegroom’s arrival reached the bride's dressing room, most of the girls who were engaged in dressing the bride or otherwise making fun of it, driven by the irresistible womanly zeal, rushed out of the room in a bunch. Basanti's Pishi (paternal aunt) who was nearby, didn’t like their flight in that manner especially because many valuable ornaments were lying there in the room for bride’s decoration and perhaps, also because women of her age and nature are always spiteful towards youthful exuberance, more particularly among their own kinds and try to find fault with it. So while muttering curses on all the youthfulness of this world, she entered into the room to check up the valuables.

Leaning over the far end of the balcony, Romila too, like everyone else, cast an eagerly look downward in the lawn to have a sight of the bridegroom. While she looked, she almost instinctively hid her left cheek by the hem of her saree in her left hand. Her left cheek was burnt. It was the cruel mark of communal riot in Bangladesh which she miraculously escaped with her father, after losing everyone else of her family. That was quite a number of years back. But the horror of that past incident, worsened by her present miserable state of existence and a hopeless future in front of her, still haunts her in her memories, thoughts and dreams as well.

Now with every passing of a day, every happiness gleaming on others' faces, every whisper that points at her face; her heart shrinks and she laments – laments like a bird which has lost its wings and gazes at the sky all day long to see the fellow birds soaring and soaring above. She now hates herself for having survived that disaster. What on earth would have gone wrong if she had also died burnt in her house like her mother and two brothers. She was saved from the suffering of another few moments of burning then; but only to suffer a prolonged slow burn spread all through her life. Now she burns within herself when she meets the icy, disinterested eyes of her fellow people or their kindly words that constantly remind of her ill-fated, miserable existence. She now detests everything beautiful in life. While the flowers bloom on earth and tiny pearls of dewdrop play on the petals of flowers in the morning breeze; or while the tender moon and the stars from heaven shower their incandescent blessings on every happy and loving faces below on earth – she withdraws herself and curses her own fate and destiny.

Thus the years piled on her. The girls around her age whom she knew, one day decorated in beautiful dresses and ornaments, leave one by one, hand in hand with a vivacious young man, glowing with sobriety and pride at the same time. Today it’s the day of her cousin Basanti. Tomorrow it will be Shoma. Some other day – someone else. But one thing she knew for certain that her day would never come. Why? That wrinkled, brown and pallid patch of a burnt skin on her left cheek made all the difference. She had heard of plastic surgery. If it were Basanti in her place, she would simply have undergone such a surgery and everything would have been alright. But Romila's ill-fated father had no means to afford it.

Once she had everything in her life that promised a decent future for her. A happy family, loving parents and above all her own beauty and intelligence. When she was only twelve, her mother used to say to her father-“Have you noticed how your daughter is growing up? I'm afraid you’ll be inviting troubles if you don’t think about her marriage now.”

“Charming - isn’t she?” Her father used to reply with an indulgent smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll fetch a prince for her.” Her mother would try to inject some seriousness in the matter. She would tell him that the other day she heard some Muslim boys targeting and throwing vulgar words at Romila and her other friends. She would remind him about what happened to Bose's eldest daughter who was kidnapped by a Muslim teacher of the same village and kept her hidden in a city slum for more than a year. The teacher who was twice her age, later brought her back to the village when she gave birth to a child only to live a shameful, miserable life among the man's two other existing wives. She also used to caution him that they were in fact, living between hostile neighbors and that it was not at all a wise decision to keep a grown up daughter at home specially as beautiful as she was, without giving her marriage. But all those words would hardly enter into the head of her indulgent father.

Her father would have called him a prince or not, for her, Ashok was no less than a prince of tales. He was a bright boy of her school. Being dreamy and ardent reader of poetry and fiction, he had, even in that juvenile age, a thin veil of romanticism cast around him. He used to tell to her stories of a different world, of different peoples and different feelings. Sometimes sitting in the orchard under a mango tree in the silent, scorching summer noon, he used to read to her from Sarat Chandra's novel. While they read and listened to each other, they would gradually transport themselves to the wonderful world of their own imagination where they reflected themselves and enacted the romantic episodes of happiness and agonies the principal characters of the novel were subjected to. In that quietness, sometimes a gentle breeze would blow making the leaves to flutter and driving the unnamed small flowers in the shrubs on one another’s arms. Somewhere a bird's chirping sound could be heard while fondling it’s nestlings, sometimes an occasional distant breeze would blow a sweet fragrance of the newly blossomed ‘Kadamba’ flowers into their nostrils and then they would open their hearts to each other. Sometimes their eyes would meet and they would smile at each other as if being understood their funny games of wandering in the distant dreams for one who is so near that their fingers could feel. And when they raised for home by the setting of the sun, they would feel that they were very much in love with each other, perhaps without knowing what it really meant and an inexpressible joy would fill their hearts to the brim.

How far are those days! As she now looked below at the bridegroom, his resplendent face in white silky wedding attire, his head with the ceremonious ‘topor’, on it, bent slightly forward in a gentle self-dignity; a fleeting thought of Ashok came to her mind. If everything went as she had thought then, someday her friends would have decorated her too in a matchless bride's splendor and it could have been her Ashok in that beautiful attire looking into her eyes on the wedding altar. She thought and dreamed and assailed by those possibilities which could have happened except for that unfortunate catastrophe in her life.

She dreamed about her lost days - those days in the orchard with Ashok - those sweet, fragrant, ineffable days - the day when they had played an wedding game themselves in the orchard reciting the dialogues from a book.

“Won’t you kiss me Romi ?” - Ashok had asked her reciting from the book.

She had blushed red in the cheek and had only lowered her eyes when Ashok …..

“Don’t you hear me, Romila? ..R..o..m..i..l..a.. ? - A smothering voice vibrated into her ears and she raised her head in a sudden fright. She found Basanti's Pishi standing in front of her and looking at her as though two bullets were held back in her pupils which would be released at any moment of time.

“Come with me” - she ordered.

Raising her large, alarmed eyes, Romila looked at her wonderingly.

“Now move, will you?”- Pishi's impatient, rasping voice attracted peoples around to look at her. Romila moved as ordered. Basanti’s Pishi led her to the stairs for the rooftop.

“Go up..” she ordered again.

Romila hesitated – “why? What’s there on the rooftop?” - she asked almost timidly.

“Why – don’t you know?” A bitter hatred crackled in Pishi’s voice and her face distorted in a suppressed rage. Romila could not endure that face and she walked up the stairs.

No one was there on the rooftop. Not a single light – nor darkness too. A patch of moon shone bright over the sky. And innumerable stars. It was a flat roof without any wall or railings at the verge. On the one side there was a heap of small wooden folding chairs, tarpaulins, bamboos and other things stored up for the ceremony; and on the other side, there were some broken or otherwise useless household disposals.

“Why have you brought me here”? Reaching the rooftop Romila muttered again frightfully.

“Why, you ask?” Pishi roared with all her furies now being assured that no one heard her - “To save the face of this family if not your ugly face. ...What a gratefulness! When you and your father came here like the street dogs from Bangladesh, who gave you shelter? .. your clothes? Food? Money? Where would you all have been if Basanti’s father didn’t help you at that time? He's an angel of a man. Nobody else in this world would do what he had done for you. – And you pay back. You show your gratefulness by stealing in his house. That too on the day of his only daughter’s wedding. What a shame! Chhi .. Chhi ..”

“Stealing ..? Me..? What’re you telling Pishi?” Romila trembled within her veins.

“Don’t pretend? Where have you hidden the diamond ring? Hand it over to me.”

Romila was dumbfounded and looked blankly at her. She didn’t know what to tell.

“Still you pretend. Don’t you have a single drop of shame left in your soul ? Have you thought for a moment how Basanti’s father would show his face to the groom and his family? It’s their family's traditional wedding ring. What the people will say when they will know that the thief is nobody else but one of his relatives? So close one as you are. Where the name of this family will stand? Have you thought that? You shameless witch! Now hand the ring over to me.. I said give me the ring ..are you giving it?”

Now and then a neon sign from across the road was spreading a red glow on Romila’s left cheek while it blinked. She grew pale. In fact the ring was in her finger. At the very moment she realized it, she hid her left hand inside her clothes. She felt her left hand suddenly turn heavy and torpid and it dangled in suspense on her shoulder like an iron beam on a crane. She wished she could melt it away in that very moment.

At the first instance she could not realise how the ring came to her. But gradually she recollected that she had indeed, picked up the ring out of a casual interest just to see how it looked in her finger and then swayed by the news of the bridegroom’s arrival, rushed out of the bride's dressing room like everyone else, forgetting at the same time to keep the ring back in its place. As she reflected now, a strong sense of shame which Pishi imparted in her, flooded her whole being and she thought that what had been done cannot be undone now and her explanation would look silly and unbelievable and of no use to anyone else than her. She felt a hundred thousand fingers snapped at her almost piercing her skin. The whole world merging into Pishi’s very profile, stood against her. She stepped back. And suddenly a morose despondence, peculiar to a person who is in extreme rage and fails to find his words at the moment to prove a silly but serious injustice leveled against him, took hold of her and it carried her like the downhill current that drifts away the logs of wood.

She cried at the top of her voice, “No …”

“No you say, you unfaithful, ugly bitch. You are a fool if you think nobody has seen you lifting the ring. Enough of your acting. Now let me search you.” Pishi stepped forward to get hold of her.

Now that her solitude, quietness and dreams have shattered like a China vase and that the incident has led her to a point of no return, and the fact that the root of all these things was laid in nothing but her own misfortunes and the miserable state of her own being; she felt an angry emotion raving through her veins. The futile rage took out all her self consciousness and filled her eyes with tears and with a choked voice she uttered her denial, “No, I haven’t stolen. Don’t touch me. Leave me alone.” And she stepped backward.

The silver moon went behind the clouds for a moment. The shehnai suddenly pitched out a pungent note. The band’s clamoured. Ladies yelled out their auspicious ‘uludhwani'. And her last denial, broken in fragments, was lost between those festive sounds.

She fell on the ground beside the wedding altar which was ceremoniously decorated with flowers and painted with auspicious rice-paste, and after a few moments of struggling with pain, her lifeless body lied prostate over there on her front. Her left hand was stretched forward as though she made an effort to clasp the elevated altar in her last moment revealing the diamond ring in her finger. Her burnt left cheek, the symbol of all her miseries which she hated most and always tried to hide away from the notice of others, was smashed and buried on the ground and a pool of blood rolled towards the wedding altar. Slowly the flowing blood touched the altar and crept around it spreading it’s dark redness over the place. The other cheek of her gave almost a beautiful look about her.

Everyone came and crowded there. Everyone guessed it in their own way. Some said it suicide, some said it to be an accident, some even guessed a foul play in it. Even the bridegroom who was sitting near by surrounded by his friends, managed a glimpse of the mangled body. ‘What a lovely girl to die like that..’ he thought aloud to himself. For an instant, as though a bubble had broken in his memory, the girl's face seemed distantly familiar to him. He fumbled in his memory for a moment or two but could not trace her out in his memories. Perhaps, he had forgotten his young playmate like every other playthings of childhood days. Perhaps, those entrancing afternoons spent in the orchard, those strolls together along the ripe, golden paddy fields while the setting sun threw it’s colours carelessly among the clouds; or those nameless childish games played behind the haystack, among the flower bushes or in the courtyard while the full moon poured it’s luminous glory on earth; had faded in his memory. …Or perhaps, he did not have time to rake up his memory hard on a day like this.