I am a woman first…
By Raja Radhika Raman
The tabla-player Ustadji’s fingers started playing on the tabla but Mohini’s feet, tied with strings of ringing bells, would just not move, let alone start the dance. Wiping the beads of perspiration from his forehead, the Ustadji kooked at Mirza, the sarangi player, who had started playing the soft tune in the mean time. Seventy years past, 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 in countless mehfils of wealthy zamindars and aristocrats in their mehfils, but for the last three years he had been playing 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 slowly 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 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.
“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 young 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!”
“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!”
[From 'Bikhare Moti-3']Sketches Courtsey GOOGLE
(C)Dr BSM Murty
Note : Nothing is old in
literature. Literature transcends time. What we write today is as readable, as what
someone wrote a century ago; sometimes, may be still better. Here is a story published 50 years back, by a writer most people have forgotten all about.
He was a zamindar-raja of a small estate in Bihar near Ara: Raja Radhika
Raman. He was a celebrated figure in literary fiction, a contemporary of
Premchand and novelists of that generation like Vrindavan Lal Varma, Chatursen
Shashtri, ‘Kaushik’, ‘Sudarshan’, et al. I am writing and compiling two books
on him that are shortly to be published by the Sahitya Akademi, Delhi. This
short story, edited and translated by me is to be included in one of those two
books. In a short while there will be more on this blog about Raja Radhika Raman. My reminiscence on 'Raja Saheb' is published in my book 'Darpan Me We Din'. There will be more about these recently published books in my running FB posts and my blogs.