Calcutta 1969, a period of revolution and poetry.
Charulata Dutta dreams to be a scholar, even if it implies going against her conservative family. Despite being the first graduate in the history of Dutta women, she soon finds herself trapped in a w...
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'Dear Nalin,
The magnificent jasmine flowers are currently spreading their fragrance in my life....'
In the eerie glow of the candle, Charu scrawled a letter to her newfound companion in her neat feminine handwriting, taking care not to blot the parchment paper. She wondered if she should send something to him too, but decided against it. If they continued their correspondence, there would be plenty of opportunities later. She glanced at the veil that still rested over the shriveled flowers, and scribbled in the paper. She might pour her heart out to a total stranger, but didn't disclose her identity. 'I have a sister.' She wrote, but couldn't bring herself to write that her sister was a young widow. 'Maybe in the next letter' she thought. Instead, she wrote eloquently about their enormous mansion in Harrington Street – their gigantic courtyard, the serene garden and the incessant buzzing of vehicles just outside their gates. She wondered if Nalin would suddenly appear at their gateway, holding a bouquet of jasmine for her, and giggled to herself. She did not know the man, if at all he was a man.
She signed her pseudonym in an articulate penmanship. The sound of her felt tip pen scratching over the uneven surface of parchment paper echoed eerily in her dark room. The bluish black ink looked different altogether – like some ethereal liquor spilling itself to form letters of her heart. The entire atmosphere felt so strangely intimate and romantic – a cold flush went down her spine. True, she was lonely, but how could a simple letter to an anonymous friend feel so intimate?
Charu shook herself out of the reverie. She had plenty of work to do – both for college and the voluntary work she had taken up – translating Nilotpol's novel. It was going to be printed from the first of next month, and she had less than a week to perfect it. Fishing out the manuscript from her bag, she gingerly turned the first leaf. In a tiny scrawl, he had written:
নির্জন দুপুরের স্বপ্ন
Charu blinked for a while, stunned. The title that Nilotpol had chosen was ethereal. She touched the page gingerly, it seemed to emanate a yellowish glow in the flickering light of the flaming beeswax – like an antic manuscript excavated from the labyrinthine passages of time. She smiled faintly – what has she come to? Was she romanticizing a piece of parchment just because the author was sympathetic to the plight of her sister?
Nonetheless, she flicked the page gently and began reading. The next time she would glance at the clock, it would be almost dawn, and she would've completed the entire manuscript from cover to cover.
* * *
"The novel is entirely based on colonialism sir!" Charu announced, looking at JCB. "The character Prospero can be regarded as the ideal colonialist of the 15th century, when the Anglican Europeans argued that colonialism is, in essence, a service to humanity as they enabled the converted natives to reach the illumination of Christianity. Sycorax, the banished witch might represent the queen of the land, whom Prospero had assassinated and Caliban is the distressed prince who is forced to work as the servant of the new master."
