Low Tide in Hooghly

Kamal, the woman who narrates the first story, has been married into a large, affluent family in 19th century Bengal. Her life, like those of the other daughters-in-law, is spent cloistered within the inner courtyard of the great house while the men spent their time with Calcutta’s high-class courtesans. Kamal’s early years are happy enough, spent wandering on the terrace with her playmate Suhasini, the carriage driver’s daughter. But after the death of her husband, Kamal’s life changes dramatically. She becomes one of the ghosts who haunt the great house — head shaven, clad in white, slipping in and out of the shadows — a widow. Sati has long been banned by law, but Kamal knows that she is still condemned to a future of suffering. “I wasn’t going to die, but would I live?” she wonders.

Milan reflects on the inevitability of such a decline: “Too many stories never left this place, got buried under layers of dust and the death of memory. There were always the journeys in crowded buses, hours with students who never cared, tea in the morning and the afternoon in tiny earthen cups at roadside stalls, weary chat with the regulars, the coldness of bureaucracy, more tea, a cigarette or two, breathlessness, a dull ache in the chest. A voice unheeded, uncared for…”

... contd.