Gooptu - Menoka has hanged herself

SHARMISTHA GOOPTU

MENOKA
HAS HANGED
HERSELF

For
Aisha Gooptu Majumdarmy Rajbala

And

Rochona Majumdar
who fought off cancer and made our everyday battles seem so very small

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been a long time in the making. I always knew how the story would end, but it fleshed out slowly, sometimes in moments of inspiration, at other times uneasily. And a lot changed around me in those years. Aisha arrived in 2014, and motherhood went on to give me an entirely new and different perspective on everything. In this time, I also found new people, and tried to understand them. Their simplicity and their greyness became infused with my characters.

I must thank my commissioning editor Dharini Bhaskar, who patiently read and reread earlier drafts. My editor Himanjali Shankar has been supportive and appreciative, and my thanks are to her and Sayantan Ghosh for their editorial work on the book. Many moons ago, Rochona Majumdar had read the earliest drafts of the first chapters and had egged me on. My friends, Madhuja Mukherjee and Avantika Gupta sounded out some ideas, and gave useful pointers. Annesha Ghosh and Umakanta Roy were able and enthusiastic research associates.

But more than anyone, it is my husband, Boria Majumdar, who, as always, has driven me to find the best in myself, never asking questions of me, but always being there for whenever I need him. My overwhelming gratitude is to him, and my mother-in-law Roopa Majumdar, for keeping their patience with me and holding my hands through the trials and joys of little Aishas growing up. Sulekha Gooptu, my mother, may well have held her own in the cruel world of bioscope pictures, with her own undying spirit to always fight the odds. This book also remembers Menoka Devi (though it in no way draws on her life), lead actress of the 1930s, who died in penury in her old age. There are many like her, who are unknown and unsung, and who had their moments of glory, in what was, ironically, the disreputable profession of the bioscope. I also remember here Jamuna Devi, who became famous overnight as Parvati of Devdas (1935), and whom I had interviewed shortly before her death, along with Bharati Devi, who had a long career as an actress. Both ladies had provided me with rare insights into their world of the pictures.

And finally, Aisha, whose feistiness is what makes the Rajbala of this book. Being a mother made me want, more than ever, to tell this story.

PART 1

Ramola

I

What a perfectly horrible start to the year thought Ramola as she looked up at the clock one more time. Its hands were perfectly poised, one covering the other.

It was five minutes past one in the morning, the first day of 1937. Ramola Devi, star of Indian films, sat at the Victorian desk in her tastefully furnished bedroom, staring out of the window at a deserted Elgin Road. The lamp at her bedside illuminated her fair complexion and delicate features, her silky tresses hanging around her face, reaching almost to her slender waist. Without any make-up she looked almost unreal, her slight frame resting on the velvet cushion of a mahogany chair. Her window overlooked a street lamp and she watched it flicker slowly, as she caught snatches of a telephone conversation in the next room.

Bad lot, Sir, these ones, but we have to make do with them, thats how the business isvery true, Sir, gives us a bad name, though we do try our best to better their lot, these girlseducate themIm sure you will understandquite, quite

Then a minute or two of silence, the person at the other end was having his say.

Then once again, the voice in the next room broke in, He should never have opened the gate at that hour, I was very angry myself. We have imported machinery, cameras, all very expensivebut possibly because he knows the studio girls[laughing], he might have thought he stood a chance with her, if he let her in. You know these classes Sirthough it should never have happenedand I can assure you, we will not deal with it lightly

Then the other person spoke briefly before the voice at this end was heard again, this time a markedly relieved tone, Absolutely, Sirthis is much appreciatedwe have good relations with all the papersthat should be no worry at all

The clock in the next room had fallen behind again. It struck one, and Ramola lost Shankars words in the loud chime.

Tea, then, any day that suits you, Ramola and I would be delighted to see you again

The conversation had ended, and Ramola heard the receiver touch down on the cradle with its familiar tinkle-clang. But almost at once the instrument whirred back to life as more numbers were dialled in.

She had told her maid to make a cup of her favourite Darjeeling tea and as she waited, nursing the hot cup in her cold hands, she shivered a little bit in the morning chill. Her husband Shankar Chattopadhyay, head of Bharat Talkies, was in the next room, making these untimely calls, the last one to the citys police chief, whom he happened to know well, and who had been located at his favourite haunt at the Bengal Club. Luckily for Shankar, if at all one could say that under the circumstances, it was the early hour of New Years Day, and several among the citys notables were still up and about, ringing in the New Year, and he hadnt needed to rouse people from their beds.

That moment, as Ramola was finishing her tea, he was trying to place a call to the police thana. And Anil, his deputy would be on his way there by now. Anil was good in any predicament. He had a way of talking things through with people. He would know how to handle the police. Subol, the accountant at Bharat Talkies who lived inside the premises, had telephoned from Shankars office at the studio, about an hour and quarter minutes back. Menoka had hanged herself in the bathroom of the womens dressing room, wearing one of the costumes from her new picture. The very thought of it made Ramola feel sick in the stomach. She couldnt, simply couldnt for all her life, fathom the kind of despair that made people take their own lives, leaving behind everything that they had lived for.

I couldnt do it, if even I wanted to die, she mused. Maybeit is a thing with these classes, not able to think through a difficultyexcessive in everything, uncouth dramabaazi, dramatics in death even

She couldnt but think harshly of Menokas breed, though of course she was horrified at the girls fate.

Menoka was Ambarish Dev Burmas newest find, and had moved very fast from being chorus girl in one of the theatre companies to one of Bharat Talkies best new faces. She was a fast learner, and had delighted in being in front of the camera. Menoka had quickly picked up the ways of the studio para, the studio environs of Tollygunge in Calcutta, and even some social graces in the time that she had been at Bharat Talkies. Under Ambarish Dev Burmas direction, she had appeared in two of last years hits, and had become rather a favourite of the variety papers. Though, of course, Ramola herself had never acknowledged Menoka in any way. Menoka, not too long ago, had inhabited a house of disrepute in Bowbazar, a beshyabari, and all respectable ladies kept their distance from such girls even if they had made a name for themselves.

Even that night, Ramola, in her mind, rehearsed what would be her declared indifference to the whole thing. So many of these unfortunate women come to us for a better life, she would say if asked about Menoka. We do try our best to uplift them from their fallen lives, but alas, their past often returns to haunt them It was a line that one mouthed, keeping up the faadeone that was so carefully crafted and maintained in this line of theirs. But really, how inopportune that this should happen on the first day of the New Year, a time she always looked forward to, when everything seemed so nice somehow. What a very horrible start to the new year.