Niranjen Sen, secretary of IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association), was in the same jail with me at that time. His brother Sachi Sen was a publisher, who ran an office called the Book World in Hastings. Street in Calcutta. Niranjan Sen told me that if I ever wanted to publish a book, I should certainly look up his brother. I did indeed, after a little over a year, having come out from jail. He welcomed me with affection. But, needless to say, I could not get back my (old) job, after my release from jail, in spite of a lot of effort. When I was in jail, my wife went to Writers’ Building and approached the then Chief Minister Dr Bidhan Roy, with a request for a monthly allowance for herself. Dr Roy said to her: “Why have you come for a monthly allowance now? Go, and ask your husband to bring about a revolution!” He however did arrange for a monthly allowance of a hundred and fifty rupees for her. But it was stopped after my release from jail. I needed a job desperately. I had to face every day my starving children and wife, and pay a monthly rent of ten rupees for one room with a tiled roof. The landlady was one Sukumari, whom we called Suku-di. We were not scared of her, but of her childless daughter Rambha. Rambha was a young woman. She had been married off when she was a child, but her husband, instead of setting up a separate establishment, was living at her mother’s house. Rambha was quite healthy, and had a certain beauty too. But she was probably infertile, and maybe in frustration, her behaviour was harsh, she was arrogant in her manners, and her language was extremely rude and obscene. She was the only child of her mother. The first question that I faced immediately on coming back from jail was Rambha’s: “How will they pay rent now? No one can live here without paying.”
Certainly! But then how to get a job? My previous employers had earlier sent to jail a certificate citing ‘insubordination’ as the reason for discharging me. If anything more was needed to make it complete, the jail authorities had put the jail stamp on it. So, here I was with a perfect certificate! I couldn’t attach it to any application that I might submit for a job anywhere. I would have been shown the door immediately.
I offered Book World’s Sachi Sen the manuscript of Nayanpurer Mati. But he didn’t approve of it. I then told him the theme of Uttaranga. He encouraged me to complete it. I continued to write, but how to make ends meet? Even if I took two months to complete it, how could I survive those two months? My heart used to dry up as I watched the faces of my children. I didn’t have the courage to look at the helpless faces of my wife.
During those days, a neighbour, who was mechanic in a jute mill, whom we called Narayan-da, along with his wife, loved my wife like their daughter. They used to call her ‘daughter’ and me ‘son-in-law.’ They were a little better-off, owned a few cows. Narayan-da said: “We’ll send a seer of milk and some muri (puffed rice) every day for your children. No man can remain unemployed for ever. When you earn, pay back the money for the milk. You don’t have to pay for the muri.”
Tears welled up in my eyes in gratitude, but I couldn’t express it in public. Why talk about God? Narayan-da himself appeared as a God. But he was never a Communist. I say this because what he did was not as if a party member was carrying out his duty, but it was from sheer humanitarian impulses. At the same time, another friend of mine from Bihar, Harisudan Prasad, gave my wife a sewing machine which had been lying in their house, to help her to earn some money by stitching clothes for the children of the locality. My wife was not a professional tailor, but still she managed to earn a little from this. I needn’t worry about the children as much as before. Even if they did not have full meals, they could still get some food. For their lessons, they went to attend the free school in Malapada (the fishermen’s settlement). And the two of us? Sometimes we did indeed get food. There were one or two friends in Calcutta and Jagatda (an industrial suburb), who occasionally used to thrust some money into our hands! They were not rich. So, often they gave us foodstuff, which we boiled and ate.
But how long could one continue like this? I approached Sachi Sen and prayed for some money. He promised to give me fifty rupees every month. I was working on Uttaranga at that time. But for some reason or other, Sachi-da couldn’t give me fifty rupees at one time. Quite often I had to come back from his office in Calcutta with hardly five, ten or fifteen rupees in my pocket, or even just the rail fare for my return journey. And then I would sign the voucher once these installments reached the final amount of fifty rupees. But the dues on house rent kept on accumulating. Every time Rambha glared menacingly at us with her arms akimbo, my heart palpitated. She would never address us directly, but spoke in an impersonal tone, as if about some other people: “They have their stove on, the husband and wife are filling up their stomachs! What humbug! They pretend to run short of money only when it comes to paying the rent. Fie upon them! What a nuisance! Why don’t they leave…”
It was indeed as a nuisance that I was beginning to regard myself. But there was one hope, only one hope that kept me going: Even if I don’t get any job, I’ll surely earn from my writings!
Meanwhile, Sachi-da, after having given me fifty rupees for three months–one hundred and fifty in all–expressed his inability to continue, and promised to pay after the publication of my book. By then Uttaranga had been printed off, and copies were lying with the binder. I was literally starving. I asked Sachi-da for some money. He said: “I’m writing out a note. Go to the binder tomorrow with this note, pick up some of the bound copies of your book, sell them and collect the money.”
Where could I sell the books? I had no clue at all. But after listening to Sachi-da, I immediately went to Naihati, my old haunt. I informed friends like Saroj Bandyopadhyaya, Umashankar Ganguly, Satyajit Choudhury, Prabhat Bandyopadhyay, younger friends like Ramesh Dey, asking them to come the next day to ‘Basanti Cabin’ (later I wrote Sreemati Café around this restaurant) to meet me, and be ready to buy the book.
But by the time I reached Calcutta to collect the copies of my book, black clouds had gathered over the sky, and lightning was splitting it apart. The copies were lying in the house of the bookbinder–a refugee from East Bengal–next to the rail tracks in Maniktala. As soon as I reached the place, rain came down in torrents. Water was pouring in through the enclosures of the bookbinder’s mud-built house. The binder, along with his family, began to lift all the books and papers to a wooden plank fixed high above in the room. The binder smiled apologetically at me, and said in his East Bengali dialect: “What can we do? Whenever there’s rain, the room gets flooded.”
It wasn’t an exaggeration. Within minutes, the water reached my ankles. By the time the rain slowed down a bit, it had almost reached my knees. But I couldn’t wait any longer. My wife, without any money, was waiting for me in her dingy room. In Naihati, my friends–the potential purchasers of my book–were also waiting for me. The money from them only could appease our hunger. But I was also worried about the copies of my book getting wet. Finally, it was book-binder who gave me the idea: “Take off your shirt and wrap your books with it.”
There was no other way out. I took off my shirt, packed the books inside it, and came out trudging through the knee-deep water. It was still raining outside. I cherished a deep fondness for the cover of my book. It was designed by O C Ganguly (Junior). However much I tried to protect it from getting wet, I couldn’t save it completely. When I reached Basanti Cabin in Naihati, I found everyone there except my dear friend Saroj Bandyopadhyay. I knew that he was always used to an early dinner and went to bed quite early. But the smell of the new book, the warm welcome by my friends, a cup of hot tea–all these together–acted like a potion to revive the dead. As far as I remember, I collected a little over thirty rupees, and returned to my home in Aatpur. The book cost three and a half rupees. But none of my friends ever thought of demanding a commission!
It was a very happy night. I was filled with an indescribable joy, mixed with both laughter and tears. I held close to my heart my first book in print. How pleasant it was to feel the warmth of satisfaction! Much later, I had some misunderstanding with Sachi-da. But today, I do not want to remember those things. I would rather express my innermost gratitude to him. It was he who published the first book of a new author.