Translated from the Bengali into English by Alamgir Mohammad
“Can a Black person ever become the President of America?”
A physician has been called in from Upazila headquarters – a doctor with a foreign degree. First, he tried to gauge something by pressing his thumb against the patient’s wrist. Then, taking out his instruments, he measured blood pressure, pricked a saline needle into the arm, and hung the other end from the mosquito-net stand of the bed. Even after regaining consciousness, it takes Harikishore quite some time to come to his senses. When he becomes certain that he is in his own home and that everyone except one person is familiar to him, he feels a great sense of relief.
Slowly, he tries to think about the cause of his illness. At that moment, seeing the city doctor, for some reason, he feels that it is only natural for this educated man to have answers to many questions. Hari asks him, “Well, sir, can a Black person ever become the President of America?”
The young physician is taken aback by this question. He never imagined that he would face such an international-standard question after coming to such a remote village.
He looked at everyone present for a moment. Noticing a hint of something in the eyes of the gentleman named Gyan Chakraborty—the school teacher who brought him here—the young doctor got back to his natural, confident expression.
Smiling, he said, “Why not?”
It wasn’t clear how much the patient was reassured by his words or how much was due to exhaustion, but he closed his eyes again. The doctor now became truly curious. In this monotonous suburb, where he was forced to come due to a government job posting, such a story was found, the monotony is broken, and it provides a reason or the sustenance to stay here for a few more days.
2.
“Gaurgopal Shukladas. He had admitted that the name was very melodious to the ear. Even Gyan Master had expressed some surprise that a man deprived of education could select such a name for his newborn son. But the sad part is that it couldn’t be saved in the end, because the name is incorrect…”
”Incorrect!”
It felt as if the very earth slipped from beneath his feet; not in the middle of a vast ocean, of course, but as if he were gasping for air in the middle of the Dalu river—that domestic river bordering Dolpabon village—during high tide. Harikishore said, “Why would it be incorrect, Master? How can a person’s name be correct or incorrect?”
Instead of answering this anxious question, Gyan Chakraborty made his facial expression meaningful. The intent was for a true connoisseur to decipher his meaning from that look. But Harikishore Shukladas was never a true connoisseur, so why expect the judgment to read facial expressions from him now? He kept staring at Gyan Chakraborty’s face with a gaze blurred by wonder and curiosities. Hari’s bewildered face had become quite enjoyable to him. His jaw tightened with the resolve to make Hari feel deep in his bones that the gap between the wise and the ignorant was much larger than Hari had imagined.
He said, “The name Gaurgopal is not just incorrect; there is even a bit of irreligion in it…” Not just in the middle of the Dalu river, it now felt as if Hari was caught in a suddenly formed whirlpool. In hopes of rescue, he simply held up his hand toward Gyan Chakraborty; if anyone could pull him to the shore, it was him.
”Gopal is one of the one hundred and eight names of Lord Krishna, alright?”
Hari nodded, “Alright.”
”Lord Krishna’s complexion is deep black, or according to some, deep blue… alright?”
Nodding again, Hari indicated that this, too, was correct.
”Then, my dear fellow, where did you discover this strange name, ‘Gaur’ Gopal?” Under the torrent of Gyan Chakraborty’s sharp questioning, Harikishore finally felt himself sinking into the waters of the Dolu river. Only his hand remained raised high; if anyone could pull him out, it was Master Gyan. In a timid, flickering voice, he asked, “Isn’t there any solution?”
Almost immediately, the Master pulled him back to the solid ground. With a dramatic change in expression, he said with a smile, “There is, there is a solution. But first, I need to know—how did the idea of naming the newborn ‘Gourgopal’ come to Hari’s mind?”
Finding his footing, Harikishore regained some of his composure. Pressing his folded palms to his forehead in respect, he said, “Sir, Sri Krishna is our worshipped deity, so I added the Lord’s name to my son’s. And what more can I tell you, Master? You know everything; in fourteen generations of my family, a child this fair has never been born… If such a boy isn’t named ‘Gour’ (Fair), how do I satisfy my heart?”
The Master knew how powerful this logic was. Not just for Harikishore’s fourteen generations—even if one searched the ancestry of everyone in Daspara, they likely wouldn’t find a single fair-skinned man or woman. When he arrived twenty years ago to join Dolpaban Primary School (now a High School), he was astonished to notice that in the fields, by the river, in the markets, or at school, there wasn’t a single person with a fair complexion. By some divine irony, despite being from a high caste and not a local, he ended up with a dark-skinned wife. Consequently, his two children were also dark. Yet, though Gyan Chakraborty’s own skin was copper-toned, there was no shortage of fair people in his lineage. Even his younger brother’s two daughters possessed a complexion described as ‘milk mixed with vermilion.’
Harikishore’s case was a bit different. While the Shukladasas of Daspara had earned their living washing others’ clothes for generations, Hari had distinguished himself by becoming the owner of ‘Srima Laundry’ in the sub-district headquarters. Through the mediation of Gyan Master’s wife, he had been fortunate enough to marry a fair-skinned girl from the Baidya caste—a match for which the Master’s wife had found a very strong justification. The situation was such: the girl was sickly and ill, and Harikishore was of a lower caste; the girl was poor and deemed “unmarriageable” despite being pale or fair, while Hari, though pitch black in complexion, was well-off.
Whether Harikishore was happy after getting married is impossible to say for sure because he had never thought about it; rather, he was accustomed to seeing his wife bedridden. It was perhaps for the very purpose of somewhat fading his lifelong curiosity and indomitable attraction toward fair-skinned people that this woman was born. Sometimes, while she walked…Harikishore would often mistake her for a human shadow. On their wedding day, looking at her fingers, he was reminded of a lizard’s tail. That his wife’s death during childbirth was almost inevitable did not disturb him. Rather, that the perpetually sickly woman had left him with such a healthy, fair-skinned son made it impossible for him to hold back tears of gratitude upon seeing the newborn’s face.
Gyan Master said, “There is a way, but it’ll cost a lot, Hari…”
Hari replied, “Let it be so, Master.”
After Gyan Chakravarti mentioned in his ‘prescription’ the donation of a pair of clothes and a cow or a goat to a Brahmin according to one’s means, a settlement was reached on a factory-made dhoti and a goat. There was no longer any obstacle for Harikishore’s son to be known as Gourgopal. Furthermore, Gyan Master advised Hari to shorten his son’s surname from ‘Shukladas’ to just ‘Das.’ Apparently, such things are happening quite often these days.
”Won’t it be an unrighteous act (adharmma), Master?”
“Oh no, even Yudhisthira, the son of Dharma, resorted to a line of unrighteousness when in danger. It’s no problem; after two generations, who is going to come looking for whom?”
This was the advantage of Gyan Chakravarti’s master’s knowledge—he had scriptural examples ready at hand. At that moment, the pain of Hari’s own lack of education surged within him and escaped as a deep sigh.
He had been rejecting a whispered proposal from the Master ever since the death of Gour’s mother. To propose marrying a young widow named Parul Rani seemed enticing, but the Master’s tight-lipped smile and the way he repeatedly winked his left eye during the conversation felt somewhat obscene to Hari. It didn’t feel like a marriage proposal, but rather like an enticement to spend a night in a brothel.
That body is floating before your eyes, Master… He wanted to say those words to his face, but he couldn’t. In truth, he both feared and respected Gyan Babu. For Hari’s age, mind, and household, a second marriage was logical by all accounts. But before the father of Gourgopal, there was now the possibility of transcending the boundaries of lineage and color! How could he destroy the dream he had built over so long while carrying the stigma of ages?
He had seen Parul Rani. She lives in Dolpaban village itself. On the banks of the Dolu River, in Jugipara. Pitch black skin upon pitch black, a firm and full-bodied frame. Perhaps because of her attire, she looked much like a Bedouin (nomadic) woman. A layer of kohl was smeared over her dark eyes despite no need for it; her hair was tied in a high bun, and her gaze was indescribable. It seemed she would look most complete if she simply held a snake in her hand. Everything Gyan Babu had hinted at with his suggestive look was present in this girl. But Harikishore wouldn’t even dream of the nightmare of marrying a girl from Jugipara to fill his barn with black cows and goats. Instead, he thought of earning a few more pennies from the laundry, and he planned to hand over the responsibility of his son to Gyan Chakravarti once the boy reached school age.
3.
Upon entering the ninth grade, Gourgopal did something extraordinary. While registering his name for the school certificate examination, he reattached the portion of his surname that had been trimmed away.
Harikishore, already mesmerized by his son’s beauty, could never say anything to his face; moreover, with eyes wide and a smile on his face, Gour had said, “Just saying ‘Das’ doesn’t have the right rhythm, Baba…”
Father was, after all, Harikishore—he could be convinced with any flimsy excuse. But Gyan Chakravarti did not believe this logic. When he conveyed his doubt with a harsh and cold stare, Gour told him the real truth: “When the surname doesn’t match the father’s, people laugh… I don’t like it, Sir.”
Gyan Chakravarti had no answer to this. However, some days later, as if certain of it, the Master informed Hari, “This son of yours won’t amount to anything, Hari, your money is being wasted in a futile sacrifice…”
Harikishore’s heart thudded. It wasn’t enough to just say he wouldn’t amount to anything—he hadn’t dreamt of anything else but this one dream.
“Why, why did you say such a thing, Master?”
“Look, my dear fellow, certain signs make it clear. The other day, your son said to my face that I wear half-dirty clothes; he said when a white shirt turns yellowish, it looks very bad…”
To speak back to an elder was certainly wrong, yet Hari knew the statement was true. But for such a minor impertinence, the Master’s prophecy regarding Gour seemed quite an exaggeration to him.
Looking at Hari’s face, the Master—who had long mastered the art of reading his thoughts—said, “You’re wondering how I could make such a massive judgment about his future based on a bit of rudeness, aren’t you?”
”That’s exactly it…” Harikishore was thinking precisely that; he said nothing and just stared foolishly at the all-knowing Master.
Gyan Chakravarti thoroughly enjoys seeing Harikishore look like this. Therefore, suspending the current topic, he began to tell a story with great relish about an event involving a distant acquaintance of his: “Our Mukunda from the fishermen’s colony had saved up some money. He thought that wealth doesn’t last forever, but education is everything; it was a good thought. So, after the boy finished fifth grade, he sent him to an English school in the city. When the boy came to the village during summer break, he completely dazzled everyone by saying ‘Pen is mightier than the sword’ and ‘Man cannot live alone.’ Ha ha ha! So one day he met me, and I said, ‘Son, tell me a bit about your city school.’ The boy said with great enthusiasm, ‘Sir, there are twenty or twenty-two students in our class; when the teacher isn’t there, we wriggle and flop about like Koi and Magur fish, but as soon as the teacher enters, we become soft and straight just like Loitta fish.'”
”I laughed hearing the boy’s words. Blood, Hari, it’s the blood, you see? He went to a city school wearing nice clothes, even learned a few lines of English, but a fisherman’s son (Jaladas) couldn’t learn to give an example without mentioning fish. That day I told Mukunda, ‘Mukunda, teach the boy a bit of your ancestral profession, it will come in handy in the future; this English won’t last long.’ I was right, it didn’t last. Of course, he is happy now, his income is good, and English isn’t needed in the fish business…, ha ha ha ha!”
The Master’s laughter became like that of the demon in the ‘Mahishasura Mardini’ play. Harikishore’s chest and throat went dry, yet he continued to stare at Gyan Master with a pale face, as if God himself had handed over the responsibility of announcing his fate to this man.
”Hari, the moment your son’s gaze fell specifically on my half-dirty clothes, the reason became clear to me in an instant. A Shukladas, a washerman (Dhopa) by caste… no matter how much you send him to school… the first thing that catches his eye is the uncleanness of others…cloth. “No matter how much you wash coal, Hari…”
”Don’t take Gourgopal’s words like that, Master; besides, what are you there for? You are the one who will turn a donkey into a horse…” Hari tries to soften the Master with flattery. But it didn’t seem to work much; the grievance over the “half-dirty clothes” simply wouldn’t go away. He continued to grumble, his eyes fixed on the teacher’s unclean garments—”A washerman’s son is a washerman after all, a damn Shukladas…”
From that point on, the teacher-student relationship between Gyan Chakravarti and Gourgopal ended. However, an unacknowledged friendship between the Master and Hari remained. The Master would come to his house in the evening for tea and biscuits. In Daspara, and even in the village of Dolpaban, this house was somewhat unique. Tin roofing over brickwork, whitewashed walls. A portion of the front courtyard was paved with bricks, where chairs were set out for evening chats—unimaginable for Daspara! Nearly ten kathas of land, fenced all around, with a paved bathing ghat at the pond behind the house. The Master had to admit that not only had this man earned money, but despite being of a lower caste, he had good taste. He even preferred to think of Hari’s deference toward him—despite being nearly the same age—and the way he lent ten or twenty rupees whenever asked without nagging for repayment, as a sign of refined character. The problem was that the son didn’t possess even a shred of his father’s humility. It wasn’t just the “half-dirty clothes” comment that forced the Master to give up the 150-rupee monthly fee voluntarily. Who knew better than Gyan Master that, in reality, Hari’s son was putting him in a corner? For the past few days, the “low-caste brat” had been mocking him by presenting complex problems in math and science. Gyan Babu wanted to keep his competence beyond question, at least in Hari’s eyes; hence the drama about the dirty clothes. He had to skillfully escape the boy’s clutches. Though he didn’t tell Hari, he knew the boy would succeed.
4.
Things were happening for Gourgopal much faster and more grandly than Gyan Babu had imagined. Finishing his school finals near the top of the merit list, the boy left Dolpaban for Dhaka. Even with his son’s success, Harikishore could not feel entirely certain; Gyan Master’s prophecy… He could not erase it from his mind for a moment.
For some reason, Harikishore could not forget the story of the fisherman’s son in the city and his talk of Koi, Magur, and Loitta fish. Thus, while bathing, standing in waist-deep water in the pond, he would sense the existence of God in the sky, fold his hands in prayer, and plead repeatedly that the eyes of the son of a Shukladas should never fall upon anyone’s half-dirty clothes.
Breaking one boundary after another, the boy was rising in status. Once, his photo was even printed in the newspaper because of his excellent results. Harikishore couldn’t comprehend exactly how good it was; he would just stare at his son secretly whenever the boy came home for the holidays. Who would say this was his son! The fair-complexioned, tall boy had a broad forehead, eyes that were slightly brownish, full lips, and a head of unkempt, thick hair. Such immense blessings from God almost bowed Harikishore down. Surely this was impossible through his prayers alone; it was the result of the devotion of several generations—this union of beauty and merit.
Gyan Master was also astonished, but that astonishment was coupled with envy, leaving him frustrated and heavy-hearted. He could in no way draw a comparison with his own two children. He had married off his daughter at a relatively young age. Because her looks were not good, she found a groom within the same caste, but though he had a family lineage, he had no real income. The wound of envy festered when he thought of his own son. He hadn’t even finished school; after swindling his father out of money, he was now running a grocery shop. The son of a schoolmaster as a grocer—suppressing a deep sigh, he thought about how he had once belittled the working people of Dolpaban village, mocking their lack of education and their lack of interest in sending children to school. He was now suffering the punishment for that behavior; God had given him a harsh sentence. With his umbrella sometimes under his arm and sometimes over his head, Gyan Babu would rush along the road by the Dolu River to tutor in Daspara and Jugipara. Sometimes he would stop, overcome by fatigue and exhaustion, as the howling wind blew from across the river; then he could no longer suppress his sighs, letting the wind carry away the sorrow of the gap between his life’s desires and reality.
He no longer felt confident enough to behave authoritatively toward Harikishore. No matter how humble the man remained regarding his own lack of education, Harikishore surely had the sense to realize how significant the events were when pieced together: Dhaka University, an M.A. degree, Economics, a gold medal, and a photo in the newspaper. But how did Harikishore internalize this wondrous mystery? The son’s name was on everyone’s lips, yet Harikishore remained seemingly indifferent. The Master thought there could be only one reason: just as someone who finds treasure while digging the earth doesn’t want the news to spread, Harikishore didn’t like making a fuss over the “wealth” that was his son. Know, know I understand—whether you keep your wealth a secret or broadcast it is your choice.
Yet even that Harikishore was seen excited one day. He came running to the Master’s house himself. He was breathing so erratically that he couldn’t organize his words. But the gist of what the Master understood was that Gourgopal Shukladas was going to America to work for the World Bank. No news regarding Hari’s son was surprising to the Master anymore; he just had to suppress another sigh. But Hari looked truly bewildered; he couldn’t even tell if this was good news or bad. He had come to the Master for understanding, but even he had begun to realize lately that his son’s work had long ago exceeded the limits of Gyan Master’s knowledge.
Harikishore could not settle his mind on any work. Most of the day, he sat dejectedly at the pond’s edge behind his house. For some reason, he kept remembering his wife, whom he had never cared for. For the first time, Harikishore began to feel a painful sense of loneliness. However, he rescued himself from collapsing by pulling up memories of his childhood. He remembered standing like a beggar in front of wealthy houses, and the strange looks of the household members as he returned with bundles of dirty laundry. At that age, Hari could understand the difference between his skin color and theirs! He felt like a man who had emerged from the mud. The people of Daspara, Jugipara, and Haripara in Dolpaban were all just like him, yet the gaze of everyone—young and old—in those big houses kept him crushed into the earth. His father and uncles probably never even thought of these things. They washed clothes in the waters of the Dolu, let them dry in the river breeze, and delivered them to houses or shops on schedule. Every male, young and old, in the entire Daspara did the same work: bringing clothes from house to house, from the laundry in the village market, from the laundry in the sub-district headquarters. A boy who grows up with the scent of others’ half-dirty clothes near his nose, and spends the rest of his life scrubbing those clothes to remove stains and washing away filth. Harikishore had broken that circle; what greater work could anyone in Dolpaban’s Daspara have accomplished!
At the end of his life, like his father, as his vision began to fail, his mind grew sad and heavy at the thought of the future. He did not dream of attaining heaven by receiving funeral offerings from his son’s hand, but it broke Hari’s heart to think that his only son would not even stand before his corpse at the cremation ground. But when he thought of where the boy had risen from the Daspara of Dolpaban, this sorrow would vanish like clouds in a gust of wind. At least no one from his family would ever again stand within this circle of Daspara.
5.
While going to bid farewell to Gourgopal, Harikishore saw Dhaka city for the first time. Of course, he brought Gyan Babu along. It is helpful to have an educated companion in an unfamiliar place. “A father is known as a friend in one’s own home, but a farewell is known as a friend when going abroad”—this eternal message had long hung on the wall of Srima Laundry, written in red thread on white cloth, framed in glass. Gyan Master also got a chance to visit Dhaka once for free; this was his third time, but it seemed to have no connection to the Dhaka he knew. The fleets of rickshaws, buses, and cars, the lines of people, the smoke and dust—everything was now excessive. And the buildings touching the sky seemed to have appeared in this city out of nowhere.
Hari, however, had neither the heart nor the time to be astonished. The thought of his son’s journey abroad so consumed his mind that his trance was only broken by the loud blaring of horns close by on the streets of Dhaka. In truth, Hari was becoming like a pauper. At the airport, in the final moments, he was touching his son’s hands, eyes, and face; Gourgopal, too, held his father close to his chest almost with a parental affection. This son was the greatest achievement of his entire life; when would he return to the country? Would Hari even be alive by then?
As the plane rose into the sky and shrank until it looked almost like a teardrop, Hari became tearful. He wanted to sob, but the unfamiliar and all-knowing environment of the airport suppressed his desire.
The events following this were ordinary. Having sent his son to a country far away, he could not even visualize it in his imagination. All the work of his life was finished; now, Hari began to fade rapidly—that is, to age. In between, letters from his son would come once in a while, and he would wake up, as if from a slumber, and live vigorously for a few days. But for every letter the son sent, he sent many times more money—so much money that Hari couldn’t even learn how to use it properly at his age. All in all, he couldn’t decide whether this time was one of happiness or of painful suffering. However, even if joy and sorrow were blurred, there was a kind of promise in his mind; even with his dull perception, he had no trouble feeling it.
But after about three years, Gourgopal sent a letter that turned everything upside down. The son wrote that although he had kept it secret until now, he felt it would be wrong not to share it anymore: he had married a girl in that country, and they recently had a son. Good news. Telling his elderly father this much would have been enough for the rest of his life. But his son sent a photograph and joyfully informed him that his newborn child’s face and complexion were exactly like his grandfather’s. Looking at the colored photograph, Harikishore’s body and mind were completely upended. Where did Gour find such an ugly and pitch-black woman in the land of white men and women! Looking at the child, he was holding with a smile, one would instantly think of a servant’s son in the lap of a king. Had Gyan Master’s prophecy finally come true after all this time? Reading Gour’s letter, Hari seemed to hear fate’s cruel laughter in the style of a folk play (Yatra). What was the value of such high education if he could so easily write to his father that he had named his son Krishnagopal Shukladas! Gour wrote that a famous American astrologer, after considering his birth time and calculating his horoscope and palmistry, had prophesied that this boy would one day be the President of America. Again, that cruel dialogue from the folk plays of his childhood seemed to float back: “Will the son of a Shudra attain the royal throne? Who has ever heard of a necklace of pearls and gems adorning a monkey’s neck…”
However, Harikishore didn’t have the strength to completely dismiss the boy’s words. He had seen much in this one life. If Hari’s son could reach from Dolpaban to America, from Daspara Primary to the World Bank, what was the harm in Gour’s son becoming the President of America?
Hari saw no difficulty in it. The only problem was the complexion. Such a pitch-black Krishnagopal would be the President of the land of white men! Whatever else happened, believing this was quite difficult. Rather, it was befitting enough to stand before the house of the elites with a sack of dirty clothes.
Wrestling with these thoughts, his nights became sleepless. The weight of possibilities and fears whirled so violently that he could no longer maintain his physical or mental balance. He had been feeling feverish for days. When his vision went dark at the pond’s edge one evening, his entire world was still consumed by one single thought: the future of Krishnagopal.
Upon regaining consciousness, Harikishore saw Gyan Chakravarti at his bedside. He could no longer view this man as an absolute sage as he once had. Yet, as the Master’s intellectual limitations became clearer, he became a truer friend to Hari. Placing a hand on his sick friend’s head, Gyan Master said, “Don’t fear anymore, Hari. A doctor has come from the district headquarters, with a foreign degree…”The Master emphasized the “foreign degree,” and the words pierced Hari’s heart. It was as if this was the man he had been searching for. Looking at the doctor, Hari suddenly asked in a weak voice, “Can a black man ever become the President of America, sir? Someone pitch black?”
The doctor was taken aback by the irrelevant question. He looked at the others, considering it a symptom of insomnia, and thought about the medication. When Harikishore repeated the question, the doctor smiled and asked, “Why wouldn’t it be possible?”
Harikishore closed his eyes. There was something in the doctor’s smile—like a false consolation given to a child. He wanted to feel reassured by those words, but he couldn’t. He could not erase the vision of a dark-skinned boy standing before the masters’ front door, clutching a sack of half-dirty clothes.
[Alamgir Mohammad teaches literature at the tertiary level. He translates literature and textbooks by NCTB, and is a member of the Translation and Review Committee for National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam’s literary works. ]Illustration : Rajat
