Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

He especially remembered Mridula, the shy girl with the shining eyes and gleaming smile, enraptured by every word, saying nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

He was only in the village of Bonhooghly for a few days. On his return to England, he determined that he must go back there somehow, and that decision changed his life. An artist, he became more interested in the application of arts practice to community engagement, and less enamoured by a 'brilliant' career as an artist (an aspiration his meagre talent was in any case insufficient to support). In 1985 he returned to the village for three months, lived and worked there, ran art classes at Paddyfield School (not really a school), and at Nirmal’s insistence, spent his evenings visiting villagers’ homes to teach them English, which he said was desperately needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The Englishman was not an especially good teacher. The food and the climate did not suit him, and he became very thin. He was often tired and irritable, frustrated by the children’s lack of even the most basic understanding of English. And he was slow to learn Bengali, which even to this day, he has never mastered, despite frequent visits to the village down the years and decades after.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The house he visited most often belonged to Ashraf Ud-Din Ahmed, a farmer with an excellent grasp of English, who desperately wanted his daughter to learn it.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Nirmal told the Englishman that Ashraf’s daughter had as a small girl been one of his brightest pupils, but her confidence had been steadily eroded by her mother. Ashraf's wife had been a teacher, who had had a choice of marrying either Ashraf or his younger brother. In Ashraf she thought she had the better catch, but while the brother flourished, did well in business and built a big house, Ashraf had a string of misfortunes, and always remained poor. Ashraf’s embittered wife wanted her daughter to do better, and so was constantly criticizing her. According to Nirmal, nothing she ever did was good enough. The girl had retreated entirely into her shell, had not the confidence to speak in English, even though she knew some. Nirmal had become seriously concerned for her, and cajoled the somewhat reluctant Englishman to visit her virtually every evening during his three-month stay.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Sometime before the Englishman came, the mother had contracted cancer, and lay dying in the one room family home even as Mridula and the Englishman read Keats on the verandah. The family could not afford chemo or morphine, so her agonized cries were constant behind the door.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The Englishman did his best to figure out how to bring the shy girl out of her shell, and little by little she did, and her gleaming smile returned whenever he came. She, of course, was Mridula, the girl with the shining eyes, now 16, and fast approaching a critical stage in her education.

 

And I, of course, was the Englishman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

In 2005 I returned to the village as recounted elsewhere in this thread. I found that Mridula had married and had two children, Poppy and Feka, both girls.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

I remembered that her husband, Mir Latif, had been a skinny youth back in 1985, making himself useful around Ashraf’s house, constantly and unobtrusively in the background, though seemingly not highly regarded by Ashraf himself. He clearly adored Mridula. His gently persistent courtship of Mridula had eventually succeeded, and they now lived happily in Mir Para, where two of his eight brothers also had families.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Mridula’s niece was Lucina, whose story has also been recounted here.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

My last visit to the village was in the winter of 2008/09. Mridula had by now started teaching illiterate village women in her house.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Little by little, her family had become by mutual adoption my own, and I remembered how difficult it had been to leave that time, with everyone heartbroken, including me, but Mridula most of all.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Her English never had really improved, and in trying to formulate a formal farewell, inadvertently said “We wish you bad luck”, which had everyone howling with laughter.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Then the tears began.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

I remained in close contact, and in the intervening years helped pay for Lucina’s education. She is now doing her PhD at the Ramakrishna Mission University in Calcutta, and is doing very well. Meanwhile, Mridula finally came into her own, joining her husband in local politics, where she became revered for her compassion and creativity. She had roads built, trees planted, helped the poor, was re-elected to the village Panchayat four times in succession. (How many politicians can you think of who are universally beloved?)

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

I became increasingly involved in establishing a new arts center in Manchester that became a labor of Sisyphus. For five long years I had not returned…

 

Then, on Monday 2nd February, Lucina sent me the following message:

 

“How to give you the news I don't know. The pain we are bearing I am spreading it to you also. Mridula is no more. She has expired yesterday due to extensive hemorrhage in brain stem. It happened unexpectedly on 29th of January at around 11:20 p.m. immediately we took her to hospital and but there was no time to respond to treatment. We tried to give her best treatment but everything was vain. Cant say what is the situation of Poppy. Feka is not understanding properly what has happened.”

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The next day, Tuesday, I discussed the matter with my colleagues, and with their full support, (one of who sacrificed a holiday with her own kids to cover for me), I decided to reach the village in time for Mridula’s funeral on the following Sunday.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Calcutta is 5700 miles from Manchester, but my main problem was the lack of an emergency visa, issued by the Indian High Commission only to blood relatives who can produce proof of death. And my passport had less than 180 days left until it expired, without which travel to India is not permissible anyway.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Visa applications are now only accepted by post, and take a minimum of 10 days to process. On Wednesday I gatecrashed the Manchester Visa Office, but was confronted by a security guard who sternly refused me entry. But I got him to convey a question to the desk, and he returned with a message that I might have a chance of obtaining a visa at the Indian High Commission in Birmingham, provided I could supply proof of death. I immediately emailed Lucina requesting a copy of the death certificate.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

With this achieved, I then had to spend a day in Liverpool renewing my passport, but the earliest appointment I could get would be on Thursday. Time was running through my fingers, and there was nothing I could do to make the process any faster. In Birmingham on Friday, I was so convinced they would refuse my application I virtually broke down at the counter, found I could not utter the words "emergency visa". Maybe that is why, to my amazement, the visa was granted.