A nation torn by revolutions, two inseparable brothers and a love bound by tragedy.
About a thousand days apart, Adrith and Rudra are brothers bound by blood, faith and indifferences. The question arises - how much loyalty one owes a brother, a fat...
"A person who steals bread during a famine is not treated as a thief." - Cat Stevens
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It was an international media frenzy.
In late August, 1943 in the Statesman Newspaper, they began hearing about a horrible disaster that'd hit the region of Bengal. The British Government was exposed. Pictures of people dying - either due to starvation or malnutrition began surfacing in the newspapers. Bengal was met with a very familiar face of death - the closest thing to the 1770 famine. About a million people had lost their lives, the death toll rising rapidly.
Similar news began to surface in Amrita Bazaar Patrika with similar graphic and disturbing images of the victims suffering. It became an international matter of controversy. The news brought in strong criticism towards the British Raj, which in time forced them to provide aid to the affected. It was believed that this was the act that angered the nation, and hence, all faith in the Raj was essentially lifted.
These newspapers were selling for nearly three times the price in the city where Rudra got his hands on it. His mother scolded him for paying too much money for just one newspaper, but then she heard the news.
"So they've been lying all this time?" She asked, shockingly.
"Seems like it, Maa," Rudra replied.
It was during this time Adrith had started behaving erratic. He'd often come home late for dinner, at times even after everyone had eaten. One day when he returned, everyone were already eating. When his mother prepared a plate for him, he left his food untouched. He said that he'd eaten elsewhere, at a friend's house. After he left, his father comforted his mother by saying, "Don't worry, he must've met a girl in the school. Perhaps another teacher there."
Adrith's behaviour took Rudra by shock. At first, he thought that Adrith was busy with nothing but work, but now knowing he'd eaten in someone else's house just made it clear that it wasn't work keeping him from coming home as usual. What was he hiding? Rudra thought to himself.
He was concerned, which was rather an obvious emotion, but more than that he was in questioning, disappointed that his brother, his best friend that he grew up with was hiding something that was perhaps important - or dangerous. Whatever it could be, his mind was lost in a daze.
That night, they didn't listen to the radio; nor did they smoke a cigarette together. And it all seemed a little too odd for Rudra. His mind was unsettled, foggy. He just could not fall asleep. But that's what happens, the mind always jumps to conclusions that never really conclude. Along with the world, his mind was at unrest too.
He looked on his right, on the floor at his brother sleeping, facing the other side on his stomach, the thin bedsheet covering his entire figure, except for the hairs on his head. Rudra then thought for a moment, before he reached down the waistband of his dhoti to his groin and pleasured himself to sleep.
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The Raj had pressurised the newspapers to publish false news, regarding the information of the famine. Hence, there was a delay in providing information and aid related to the famine. The newspaper explained, "The UK government seems virtually to have withheld from the British public knowledge that there was famine in Bengal at all." They further went on to say that the famine was in fact a "man-made" one.
Rudra and Adrith were listening to the broadcast on All India Radio channel. Rudra was holding the radio at the balcony door, and they were sipping chai in the early evening. Behind them, was a pedestal fan blowing lukewarm air to the back of their sweaty heads and necks. There were pigeons sitting on the rails of the balcony, cooing each other, their droppings splattering loudly over the cement tiles.
Adrith had come home early that day. The radio went on to say that the Government replied by saying that not announcing the "famine" was nothing but a war-time censorship. But they were too late.
Ian Stephens, the editor of The Statesman Newspaper who first published the pictures and knew, whose photographs made worldwide headlines, was now an international hero. Adrith didn't agree with that.
"What are they praising him for?" He said. "The newspaper also tried to cover up the event before they published the actuality."
"Well, yeah. But at least he helped push the news," Rudra replied.
"He did nothing but fed onto his guilt. He's just like his own type -"
"- who went against his own type and delivered the news and helped save perhaps hundreds of lives. What is the matter with you?"
There was silence.
"Nothing." Adrith replied plainly.
"No, seriously. I've barely seen you home this past two weeks. You've been gone, and only you know where."
Another pause.
"Baba was saying it may be a girl. Is it true? Are you fucking a teacher at school now?" Rudra put up the question very gently, but with velocity in his tone.
But that made Adrith let out a loud noise for a laugh. His head went back, right hand on the stomach and he held back some hiccups. "Look, I wanted to tell you, but I didn't know how -"
"- It's okay, Dada. I just wished you'd have told me this like at least a week ago instead of being so estranged."
"I wasn't being estranged!"
"Well, who is she? Your colleague?"
"What? No."
"Then, is it one of the maids there?" Rudra asked, now laughing, and his brother returned the laugh, throwing a cushion his way. Rudra caught it in time.
Adrith smiled plainly. Then, almost above the whine of a mosquito or housefly, perhaps as loud as a cricket in a quiet garden, he said, "It's a student."
