An Act of Sheer Defiance (4)

(Let me take the liberty of sharing with you, dear Reader, a chapter from my unpublished novel entitled “My Sis: Through My Eyes” for the contest on “Sibling Love”. I sincerely hope that you like it. Please pray for my ‘one in a million’ kind of sister. God bless her.)

Chapter – 4: An Act of Sheer Defiance

“Ekta chhoto meyer (in the original text, it was actually ‘cheler’) ja sahos, ek bari suddhu loker ta nei”, (The pluck that a chit of a girl has displayed today, is unmatched in the whole household!). I am reminded of Sharat Babu’s “SriNath Bahurupi” (The Chameleon) right now thinking about the year, 1980 and my sister’s extraordinary courage. Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay, by the way, was a prominent Bengali writer of yesteryear, who, in the opinion of many, should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature long before Tagore.

Now to come back to my sister, Tripti – that was a whale of an afternoon in 1980 at 41. That day when the Principal of my college (MAC, Kolkata) paid a visit to our ancestral house. That was the day when my chit of a sister made it known to my father that First Class Engineer or not, she was not going to marry him. She also must have told my father that if she had to be married off at all, she was going to marry someone she had already lost her heart to. (God! What an act of defiance and resoluteness!)

Now, think of the time, my dear, reader. This incident happened nearly some four decades ago, when India was shaking slowly off many of her age-old, useless customs and traditions like it has been beautifully captured and delineated in Tagore’s “Woman Unknown”. My father, a retired Principal himself, must have been stunned, stupified by the guts of her youngest daughter, a mere college student at that time! He was shaken because his beloved youngest daughter had not so long ago rejected a similar offer from DIG, Mr. Panchu Gopal Bhattacharyya.

“Batay (I see)! So who is this Knight in shining armour, may I know?” Now let me tell you, reader, my father had a towering personality. All of six feet, he was one heck of a man. During the riots of 1947, the charging Muslims from behind our locality, had wounded him badly with a sword, having taken him to be the leader of the Hindus. So it was a bolt from the blue for him, when my sister, unfazed, replied, looking him in the eye:

“He’s Arun. Arun Ghosh.” I couldn’t write for some reason, ‘with her head bent low’ as she was not that type. “ARUN GHOSH’, ‘ARUN’, ‘ARUNDA’, the whole of 41 must have been shaken up to its roots by the name on that day. So the more pratical-minded of my relatives started finding out who this Arun Ghosh was. He was a stranger to the household at that time. Not completely though. He’s a friend of my late nephew. Of course, my nephew was alive and kicking at that time. They were friends pursuing their Law Course at the University of Calcutta.

Most of my siblings were shocked, in stupor. They couldn’t believe how our sister could have fallen for a complete stranger like him. Then, then, mayhem broke loose in our house. One brother after another had started raising hell. How could she fall for someone, that too at such a tender age? There was a total boycott of the culprit. She couldn’t have been more than 20 at that time! She was the youngest sister of a very large family indeed. That chit of a girl had to deal with all those big brothers and sisters including ‘yours truly’. Besides, the stranger did not belong to our caste, an unforgivable offence for any member of the Brahman family to fathom in those days!

When I think about the incident now, I can’t but admire the indomitable spirit, pluck or guts, call it what you will, of my sister. She was adamant, rock-solid against the mountain of protests and complaints raised in the household. If my eldest brother did not come down from Australia at that time at the summon of my Ma, I have my doubt unshakable, that her marriage wouldn’t have taken place!

I have seen many girls her age since then. But never have I seen a girl of 20 standing her ground, fighting her lone battle against a sea of siblings like it happened on that late afternoon and in the months following, in 1980. Nor am I likely to see such an act of heroism and courage, unless my daughter Akanksha or Anushka gets inspired by my sister’s heroic tale! 

Unfortunately, my sister was to learn the greatest lesson of her Life some 35 years after her whirlwind marriage. But that is another story.