Nasumama and I

I was still little then. A child of eight. "We'll marry you off to Atul," my grandmother used to say. I grew up at my uncle's—my father was a ghawrjamai; he used to live at his in- laws. Of course, I realised this equation much, much later. "Atul was the son of one of my grandmother's friends. He studied at the village school, a tall boy, fairer than the rest of his friends. Sitting inside our kitchen, he'd busy himself in conversation with my grandmother and her friends. I didn't like him much. There was something quite off putting about the way he spoke. He would, for example, say things like, "Pachi, what are you doing here?—Go, shoo! Go play with your friends—" At other times, he'd say things like, "If you continue to irritate me, "I'll throw you into that huge fox's mouth deep in the woods, I tell you!" Everyone called him a 'good boy'. I didn't like him one bit, though. No matter how much he was celebrated. No matter how special they called him." Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay is mostly associated with Satyajit Ray's movie adaptation of his classic novel, Pather Panchali. But to readers of Bengali, Bandyopadhyay remains an icon. This is one of his stories, originally written in Bengali, translated in English by Utsa Bose.