One evening, in the early 1990s, the great Indian poet from Bengal, Subhas Mukhopadhya landed at Delhi airport from Kolkata. I was there to receive him. A man with his flowing bushy silvery hair, a relatively larger face, cleanly shaved and slightly stooping, that was Subhasda, as fondly called by everyone even little closer to him. He came out with a young girl, a co-passenger in the flight. A bright strong middle height young girl from the North East, I could guess.
‘She is alone and does not know her way to the hotel. We would first drop her’, he said not even trying to guess my inconvenience. He invited the girl in his husky feminine voice and started for the car parking. I was a bit surprised. Whenever I met him, wherever, I never found him a front-runner. He always behaved like a child, who stretches his fingers to hold someone’s to follow. Here he behaved a commander. However, I discovered, her to be dropped in the north when we were for south. And it was already passed ten at night. His worries for the girl’s safety were no wonder to me.
I knew him a man of deep affection. His look, as I found, strangely though for a poet, always remained unoccupied. Strange for it was him where the Bengali poetry took a new turn; strange for it is him where social realities in Bengali poems begins. How the eyes of such a poet could always remain unoccupied? His living, where nothing looked strange, may give us a clue. A large part of his house, despite his under-the-carpet financial constraint, was occupied by destitute relatives and stray animals. He had three adopted daughters as well.
That night I found Subhasda extremely suspicious about Delhi’s road safety as it is an impulsive interpretation of the Kolkatans till today. Was it out of worries or his anti-establishment trait? Once he was a hard core communist, but when I met him first in early eighties he was calm. I am not sure if that were a shift of his ideology. His poems, however, never conform this with certainty.
Subhas Mukhopadhyay had been awarded with the most coveted Jnanpith Award, the highest honor a creative person in Indian literature can wish for. I am not sure if he had received the honour by then. He had come to Delhi to attend a poetry reading session next day. I was among the organizers. It had been always a pleasure and affluence to be with him in exclusive.
Subhasda kept on telling the girl about the unsafe character of India’s capital, ignoring the fact that he was slipping needless fear into the head of a new comer from a faraway, almost disconnected, land. Needless talk may be but was it for he had no other topic ready at hand to justify that needless journey? I tried to dilute the unfounded perception, but failed, may be for Subhasda’s short hearing.
When we reached our destination, ‘Hotel Sartaj’, a 3-star hotel in the south, it was almost midnight. We checked in a decent room, which was booked early. Subhasda, with a deep ‘shooooss!’ sank himself in the bed, and before going for a wash, asked me, ‘What about a drink now, Arun?’ I knew any hard drink outside home was very costly in Delhi, where Bars were out of reach of middle class people, Subhasda loved relatively cheap Indian Rum though. Hotel Bar was closed by then. I opened the room’s little fridge and looked at the price pasted on its inside door, and hesitated for my pocket. At this he lifted himself, squeezed his pupils on the door and got a shock. He quickly turned to me as if in great distress, ‘Oh my! Arun, what to do now? I can’t sleep without a drink!’ His last words sounded almost begging. I well knew he is one of the leading poets in India, but financially one of the poor citizens too. He never took up a job; he lived only on publishing his writings. I knew why I cannot ask him to pay and drink, and I knew too why I cannot pay for him then. I felt ashamed of me.
Once I was in-charge of Kolkata’s first Children’s Book Fair’s publicity and some of its programs involving authors and children. Subhasda was one of the invited writers. Tarapada Roy, a ranking writer and poet, on their day, called me aside and said, ‘I have a request, Arun. The honorarium you are paying may be O.K. for others, but certainly not for Subhasda. Please buy him, at least a pint (half a bottle) of Rum. He loves to drink Rum.’ That evening I bought one for him on way to his home. In streak of a moment this incident flashed in me. Embarrassment took me to the bottom. Once I didn’t buy him a full bottle, despite pocket-full of money, and now I can’t buy him even a peg!
In despair, at that late night, I rang up my friend, Sasanka Sekhar Mukhopadhyay, senior to me by 36 years. Sasanka Sekhar was my friend, philosopher and guide. I was his joint editor of the Bengali literary magazine, PRANGSHU, he started well after his retirement. He was known amongst us as ‘the last British Bengali’ for his suave, graceful, and a refined gentleness. I did not hesitate to wake him up at that odd time. I knew, his was the right place at the moment since every evening he would have a shot of his magic potion, a peg of Rum. Sasanka Sekhar took no time to welcome us.
Did Subhasda notice me speaking? However, he didn’t ask me anything, nor I expected him to. I hanged the phone and said, ‘I have a place. Let’s go. It’s hardly half an hour drive.” Subhasda simply followed me out of the room.
When we reached Sasanka Sekhar’s house in Chittaranjan Park, it was well past midnight. We found his baithakkhan’ (the office-cum-drawing room) brightly lighted, as if the evening was yet to bump. He and Durga Devi, his children’s writer wife, welcomed us with all warmth.
After a short exchange of pleasantry, we sat around a low height center table, and to my wonder, in no time I found them old friends meeting after a long time! When it was discovered that Durga Devi and Subhas Mukhopadhyay were born in the same year, 1919, and Sasanka Sekhar was 10 years older than them, they travelled more closer and shook off addressing each other as ‘Apni’ (Respected You) and switched over to ‘Tumi’ (You, a friend). I was stunned at his amiability in such an outlying relationship. I had found none so relaxed at Sasanka Sekhar’s place earlier, not even Shakti Chattopadhyay, the most lovable easy-going legend. Subhas Mulhopadhyay is not a romantic poet, I knew, but what I didn’t know, he was such an intense family man elsewhere too. He left no prank to treat Sasanka Sekhar as a friend-in-law, and delighted Durga Devi as from his childhood town, Krishnanagar, where he was born. I knew they were born in two faraway places!
Durga Devi offered us dinner with meat curry and fried rice before we rose to depart. We could not know when and how she cooked such fresh delicate delicious dishes even when attending her ‘guest-friend’. That might have been the secret of the girls from other side of Padma-Meghna rivers.
All the way back to the Hotel, strange to me, Subhasda, uttered nothing about the visit or the drink we had there. It remains a catch to me till date. On our way back we talked something else concerning next day’s (the day’s) program.
