Abhijit Sen's novel স্বপ্ন এবং অন্যান্য নীলিমা (Dreams and Other Blues) first appeared about 28 years ago in a special issue of Pratikshan. After considerable revision, it was published as a book in 2000 by Dey's Publishing, Calcutta.

Dreams and other Blues is set in the background of a tiny town at the border of India and Bangladesh at the crucial time of the independence movement of Bangladesh. Abhijit Sen’s characters are not confined to one time period in one small town but spread over centuries and across geographic borders from rural Bengal in pre-British rule to Calcutta during the fiery decade of Naxalite student movements. Throughout this vast landscape of time and place, the author has depicted the lives of ordinary middle-class men and women, Hindus and Muslims, idealist student rebels, and rural farmers and laborers, with a keen sensitivity and impressive historical detail.

Jibanananda Das

The milestones of his life were significant, though. He was not sure when exactly he was born. In 1971, he was over thirty-one years old. He knew this, though no written proof existed beyond a single sheet of paper—his School Final certificate—which declared 1945 as his birth year.

It's safe to assume that many people born in the fourth or fifth decade of the 20th century who had emigrated from India and East Pakistan had discrepancies in their birth records. Similar problems, no doubt, existed on the western end of the country as well.

Of course, there were many exceptionally honest, righteous, and principled people in the country. The lofty passion that elevates a man to acts of self-sacrifice had reached its peak during this historic period. Yet he was certain that many born during that time had fudged their names and birthdays. However, he was sure that he wasn't one of those people born on a certain day in January 1945. Similarly, many others, including his siblings, were never born on their ‘birthdays’!

If his mother had passed away in 1959, the births of his last three sisters couldn't be verified either, despite their physical existence! The factor of time was crucial to make sense of such awkward problems.

His father was among those honest individuals who would never falsify his children’s ages to ease his own future—and he did not. However, the workers in the border refugee centers may not have cared about the exact date of his birth, or perhaps the teachers at his school made errors during the rush of admissions.

Later, he calculated that he was most likely born in 1941—or perhaps in 1942. But certainly not in 1945.

When he was old enough, his aunt (father’s sister) once remarked, ‘You and Amal are six months apart in age.’ Earlier, he discovered that the year of Rabindranath Tagore’s death (1941) might align with his birth year. An old ‘grandma’ in the family had remembered, ‘Either you or Dholu was born the year Rabi Thakur passed away.’

Less than a year ago, when he had arrived in this town, he spotted an opportunity to document his correct birthdate, month, and year. Life takes one through many ups and downs, battles and truces, all of which supposedly shape one’s character. What he was today had been forged by such unexpected events in his life. He doubted if a perfectly planned life was ever possible. Many had tried to build their lives according to their parents’ wishes and societal norms, and they largely succeeded in pleasing their family and friends.

All of this unfolded against the backdrop of 1971, when he arrived in the town. The science of genetics was not widely known or understood at the time. It was mostly limited to studies of albinism and rooster comb variations—perhaps, at most, certain sex-linked traits. Words like “viral mutation” or “genetic engineering” had not yet entered the lexicon. Later, people would come to see genetics as a way to absolve criminals, simplify the lives of homosexuals, and release everyone from responsibility. It was seen as a modern version of karma, predetermining lives.

Even without modern genetics, there were people with certain anomalies. If they affected you from a young age, you would suffer for the rest of your life. Even in old age, when there shouldn’t be anything left unresolved, you would feel incomplete, as if you needed more time to undo those damages. This, too, was a type of conservatism that stuck to one’s character till the very end.

At any rate, after living in the city for a few months in 1971, he managed to document his correct birth year by changing his age from twenty-six to thirty. It was not merely a correction of some arbitrary numbers. He finally felt like a full-fledged adult.

This deficiency of four years had needlessly bothered him. At age fourteen, he was forced to mix with ten-year-old boys and behave like them. He had to sit with them in the same classrooms and do the lessons. The partition of the countries had robbed three to four years of him and his brothers. Naturally, as a result, they had fallen back mentally also.

This mental deficiency also stunted his physical growth. On paper, when he was ten or eleven, he was shocked to see the sex organs of his cousin Amal while bathing together. At fifteen or sixteen, Amal had almost fully developed organs, strong and shaded by dense hair. But his own organs had not yet shown any such changes.

Amal had tried to teach him about sexual feelings and how to enjoy them. He tried Amal’s method a few times and quit as he felt nothing but physical pain.

‘You and Amal are only six months apart,’ his aunt had said. But she must have been mistaken, he thought; she probably confused him with his older brothers. By then, he had come to terms with the partition-induced loss of four years. He even found an alternate explanation linking his birth to Tagore's death.

This time, he quickly filled in that deficiency while living in this small town in northern West Bengal. There is little visible difference between a twenty-six-year-old and a thirty. The twenty-six might have been slightly more passionate than the thirty. But in his special situation, it felt like a long leap from one age to another. He suddenly felt more mature--and, oddly, a strange sense of despair. For the first time, he felt four whole years had magically disappeared from his life.

While changing the age, the name also needed to be changed. Using the old name with the new age might cause problems, so with a new name, he started a fresh chapter in a new town.

His mother had named him Saroj in his childhood, before all this confusion with age started. However, hardly anyone knew this name until he began attending school in the old country.

In Calcutta, the guardian who escorted him to school didn't know his formal name and wrote down his pet name in the school register.

He wasn’t sure if that man deliberately messed up. He was known for his strong practicality. But at that moment, during the confusion of partition, when Saroj’s own parents were still left behind in the old country, it wasn't possible for him to judge the exact age or proper name of his ward.

Eventually, when he did manage to obtain a name and an age, which was impossible earlier because of war, riots, expulsion, and expatriation, it felt like a huge burden had been lifted.

This town, built on sand and silt, was called Majher Bundar (Middle Port). In 1971, he, Saroj Ray, a young man of thirty, suddenly decided to settle here. Initially, he thought a small town would be ideal to pass this awkward time. He didn't know how long this phase would last—perhaps months, perhaps a few years. This lack of knowledge bothered him occasionally, but he knew he had no control over the situation.

At least he was lucky that he could take care of his name and age during this unsettled period of the early '70s.

Sometimes, a span of thirty years can hold the weight of three hundred—or even three thousand—years. Entire centuries may seem to compress into a painting on a canvas of a single year. Layers of light and shadow from the past mix and overlap until they’re impossible to tease apart. At times, certain fragments glow with a peculiar brightness, and moments from the past become glimpses into the future. Across these thirty years, within the framework of a year or so, a few characters emerge. They carry their past and present within them, their tales sometimes sharply discordant, other times shrouded in a dreamy haze.

Saroj was one of them. Some people look in the mirror not just to see themselves but also to see far back. See all the thirty years in one glance.

In these thirty years, all his thoughts and actions, hesitations and impulsive decisions had all been impromptu and unplanned. Mostly directionless, or so it seemed.

But some destination must have been predetermined for him long ago, even if it defied molds and expectations. As the whiff of a perfume suddenly evinces a long-forgotten memory, his destiny too had emerged, whether by genetic conspiracy or simple legacy.

2.

It was a tiny district town—so small that some might even object to calling it a town. Especially someone like Saroj, who had grown up in the megacity of Calcutta.

Majher Bondor (Middle Port) was home to only twenty-five to thirty thousand people. The name had initially intrigued him, as if it held some deep-seated meaning. Later, he realized it was nothing like that. There were other towns nearby named Uncha Bondor (Upper Port) or Nicha Bondor (Lower Port). Beyond the border was Chiri’s Port. There was only one paved road in this town. At ten feet, it was also the widest. The road curved like a walking stick and stretched barely a mile.

About a hundred and fifty or two hundred houses were built of brick and mortar, of which only four or five were double-storied.

A generator from the Bihani company supplied a meager amount of electricity to those brick houses and a few select shops in the market. The rest of the town had to manage with gas lamps and hurricane lanterns.

Every winter, 'Motor'-babu’s troupe from Maldah would perform two or three Gombhira musical shows in Majher Bondor. His theatrical way of focusing a flashlight to check Bihan company’s weak electric supply had become old but not yet a cliché to the audience.

Being a 'bondor' (port) by name, there had to be a river nearby. It was a beautiful river and quite navigable in the past. Large mercantile boats used to arrive in the English ghat from Calcutta via Nadia and Murshidabad and depart for Dhaka through the Barisal, Faridpur, and Rajshahi districts. But all that ceased after the partition of the country. Perhaps ‘ceased’ was not the right word. Trades that had flourished for centuries could not be halted so easily. Big merchant vessels now arrived at the ghat under the cover of darkness, their ghostly lights flickering.

They would deliver and pick up goods. At that time, in the beginning of the '50s, the rules and regulations were not strictly enforced. Two non-competitive gangs of smugglers gradually settled down to business. The centuries-old trading activities could not be made illegal overnight. The merchants had no say in it. Still, it was the law of the land, and they offered it the bare minimum respect by conducting their business in the dark of night, like turning your face away while smoking in front of an elder. Before long, these operators built up a solid commerce between the two countries.

Such trading of harmless commodities like paddy, jute, betelnut, salt, and sugar with only minor cheating, gains, or losses had never introduced any major criminal activities. The ethics of these traders, deemed illegal overnight, were never pushed to the limit.

In Majher Bondor, the stretch of river twenty miles upstream and about one and a half miles downstream marked a peaceful, serene border between India and Pakistan. Trading was smooth and the smuggling placid. The neighboring townships were ancient and clung to their old ways. Religion, culture, and tradition remained steadfastly old-fashioned.

Barely fifteen miles away, twenty-some revolutionaries were killed by the police during the Adhiyar movement (movement for adha or 50% share of crops by sharecroppers) at the beginning of the Independence. By now, those memories had faded as well.

Feudalism was deeply entrenched in the region. The descendants of those revolutionaries who gave their lives for their demands borrowed paddy at 150-200% interest to keep their heads above water during the tough months of Ashwin-Kartik. Almost all of them, with unfailing honesty, eventually managed to pay up their loans. The lenders included teachers, ordinary clerks, and well-off farmers, who were also into politics. During the incendiary political climate of 1967’s West Bengal, they raised slogans like ‘Seize the paddy from the landowners’ and ‘Occupy the hidden lands’ and incited poor farmers and sharecroppers to loot the paddy from thousands of acres, occupy those lands, and sometimes redistribute them amongst poor farmers, farm laborers, and sharecroppers. Hypocrisy was natural for the middle-class politicians ruling a town without railways or a factory, without even a single wealthy citizen.

Brahmins were at the top of the social pyramid, as always. But in this town, Mahishyas and Sadgopes –the Bhumiputras or ‘the sons of the soil’ were number two after the Brahmins. Many efforts had been made throughout history to dislodge them, but were unsuccessful. These two castes were close but not without conflict with each other. In all political parties, including the Left, they managed to maintain separate lobbies. Besides them, there were Rajbanshis, Paliyas, and various tribal groups who were mostly rural. The first two were also Bhumiputras, but not the tribals. Guided by traffickers, they had arrived here in the 18th and 19th centuries after crossing the Ganges from the south. Then there were the Muslims. In some communities, they were the majority; in others, they were at least half the population. Despite bountiful harvests in the fields and abundant fish in the rivers, these districts were always so poor!

Saroj arrived at Majher Bondor unexpectedly. His decision to leave Calcutta and come five hundred kilometers away to live here was so abrupt that it took him a few days to get used to it, as if he were improvising a story after losing its thread. Only after a couple of uneasy weeks he felt assured that this placid town-in-name-only village might be just right for his anonymity.

But the tranquility didn't last for long. To the east lay the international border running from north to south. Bengali refugees from East Pakistan poured across the long border by all roads, fields, or streams to enter India. On the other side, the struggle for independence had already begun. Numerous tents sprang up along the border to house the refugees. At the advice of a few new friends, Saroj took a job managing one of these camps.

He lived alone in a one-and-a-half-room. One morning, he had barely awakened to sip his first cup of tea when he heard someone knock on his door. The maid at the tubewell washing last night’s dishes got up to open the door.

Saroj didn’t get up but pricked up his ears.

“Is the sahib up?” asked a woman’s voice.

Nobody here called Saroj ‘sahib.’ Even the maid had no reason to call him that. He tried to listen.

The woman entered the courtyard and said, “Just call him.”

Saroj got up and put on a shirt.

His house was not one of those brick houses mentioned previously. It was a single-storied place made of mud and clay rooms that surrounded an inner courtyard. Saroj’s room ran east to west, with a tiny kitchen at the back. The doors to the kitchen and his room were on the north side along a verandah. Part of the verandah was fenced in to make another small room. His main room also had a verandah on the east side with another door that Saroj kept closed most of the time. He entered the courtyard from the lane outside and used the north door to his room. The floors were cemented. Two steps below on the left side of the verandah was the inner yard with the holy tulsi plant on a podium. There was another room on its east side with an attached bathroom and latrine. Krishnapriya Gupta and his wife Atashi lived there. Saroj got the space here through their help.

The lady entered with the maid. Saroj immediately recognized her.

She was Sati. Her formal name was Farida Mansur. There was no reason to forget her after one meeting. She was quite attractive, tall, sophisticated, and above all, very modest in appearance. Saroj had met her only a few days ago. He must have also met a thousand others in the same period, but had not bothered to keep any of them in mind.

Seeing her, he put down his cup and stood up. Sati shyly bowed ‘adaab’ but immediately corrected herself and greeted him with a ‘namaskar.’ Saroj thought the way she said ‘adaab’ was very beautiful.

Beside the stool he sat on, the only furniture in the room was a chair with broken arms. After returning her Namaskar, he bade her sit on that chair.

As she sat, a sound like a sigh emerged. Perhaps it was the trapped air released from the cheap sari she got from the relief agencies. There were some nice things in the agencies, too, but those were quickly divided between the corrupt officers and their workers. Saroj would have loved to get Sati a finer sari.

Sati looked somewhat recovered from her devastated appearance of a few days ago. She seemed less fatigued. Relief from the worries and fears had brought back some of her natural beauty. But the terror and despair were not to be erased that easily. A deep melancholy still surrounded her.

Shyly and hesitantly, without giving Saroj any opportunity to defend himself, Sati asked, “Forgive me if I am wrong, but aren’t you Manikbabu?”

The suddenness of the question threw Saroj into a conundrum. The question was out of place in this town and at this time. He had spent about nine months carefully guarding his anonymity in this town. Nobody here knew him as Manik. But now, this attractive girl, fleeing from the Rajakars and the soldiers of East Pakistan, who was not related to him by any means, was looking at him with desperate hope. She seemed anxious as if his denial might cause her some serious trouble. And he felt so relieved after erasing Manik’s name, age, and other associated identities—not just for self-protection but also to reestablish himself in his new life.