Five images have remained with me from the five years I spent in West Bengal — 2004 to 2009. ‘Indelible’ is a hackneyed word, a cliché. And one must not use stale words to describe or recall experiences that are fresh in one’s memory. But that is exactly what these five images are: indelibly, permanently imprinted on my mind.

They are all about daughters of Bengal.

I have recounted them to myself and to others on different occasions and if the reader has heard them earlier, I may be forgiven.

The first is from Nimtala. Yes, that is right. It is from the site of Calcutta’s famous crematorium. And it comes in the shape of an inland letter that I received in Raj Bhavan one day during the height of the Nandigram crisis. The arrangement was that all letters addressed to me by name would be brought to me unopened and I would open them myself. This was to ensure that letters that are critical and worse will not be kept away from me by my considerate staff. The hand-written letter on that specimen of blue postal stationery was in high-class Bangla, and written in a beautiful hand. But the contents were anything but beautiful. Howling imprecations at me for having said and done whatever I did in the matter of that crisis, it prayed not for my early departure from Bengal but my early demise, no less. And the writer signed off as Kamana Biswas, that is, Wish plus Faith. It was only after I pondered over the letter for several minutes that I realized the significance of her obviously fake ‘name’ and her meaningful address. It was a total delight to receive that letter. An unforgettable delight. It gives a lesson to anyone and everyone who thinks he or she is saying and doing profound things. It certainly made me laugh in those tense times. Kamana Biswas is our future in Satire in general and Black Humour in particular.

The second is from Calcutta.

Tuberculosis is a national scourge. West Bengal, from the time Dr B.C. Roy was chief minister, has been battling it determinedly. At the instance of doctors engaged in this important work, I went to a centre where patients, all of them very poor, were being treated. A young mother, in her 30s, with her young, teenaged daughter was seated in the small foyer. You are getting the treatment you need, right? I asked. Nodding her head, she said yes. I then turned to the doctor present for some elucidation. They told me the case was serious as the patient was pregnant. I looked with concern at the woman. No, no, the doctors continued. Not her... the daughter... it is the girl who is pregnant. There was nothing more I could say or ask. It would have been indelicate to ask their names, and I did not. But they seemed like they could have been Fatima and Abida. And the one yet to be born? If a girl, perhaps, then Meher, which means grace, and if a boy, Enayat, which means roughly the same. But name apart, a healthy child who does not make its too-early-a-mother weaker than she is. The two and the one yet to come must, with the help of medical science, be our future in health.

The third image is from the time of Cyclone Aila, in May 2009. Ripping through the state and neighbouring Bangladesh at 110 kilometres per hour, it left over 300 dead and a million, at least, homeless. Meteorological foretelling helped, else the loss to human life would have been far greater. I was in Darjeeling then and venturing out to the affected areas later that day saw a middle-aged Gorkha woman of amazing dignity sitting beside her devastated home like a statue to human endurance. Not a word was exchanged but not a thought left un-shared. Parbatidevi, she may have been, daughter of the mountains, resolved to put together the debris of her life. The next day, in South 24 Parganas, another badly mauled area, I saw a mother and child in a relief centre. I should put the M and C in capitals. Michelangelo could have sculpted them. She was in a frayed sari with a faded red border, head covered, with her infant-child stretched out on her lap. Her eyes were open wide, the child’s as well. They were as mute and yet as eloquent as the Pietà with this difference that the Child here breathed, and with hope.

The fourth image is from Murshidabad. Having heard of the hard conditions in which bidi workers lived and worked, it was my duty to see things for myself. Visiting a family engaged in that occupation, I spoke to the pride of the house, a daughter, no more than twelve years of age, I think. I do not remember her name, but let me call her Onnora, for it was a name similar to that. In Bangla, mixed with Hindustani, I asked if she went to school. With an instant smile, she said, yes, I do. Can I, I asked, please see her school books? She opened a wooden box and brought one out, wrapped in brown paper, and gave it to me. Opening the cover page I was taken aback. It was an abridged and adapted version — in English — of the Constitution of India.

(Now it just so happens that I am writing this on April 14, which is Dr Ambedkar’s birth anniversary. And so in my mind I am dedicating this narration to him.)

“Do you know this book, Onnora?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Vah! Can you tell me what the first page — the Preamble — says?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me...”

Onnora took a couple of steps back and, standing bolt upright, began reciting it.

“We the people of India having solemnly resolved...”

I horripilated in awe, pride and faith.

May Onnora become President of India one day, I prayed within myself.

The fifth image is from Purba Medinipur. During the height of the Nandigram crisis, while touring that area, I stopped, without notice, at a hamlet called Muradpur. It consisted of not more than ten houses, around a pond. It seemed incredibly beautiful, like a scene from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Pather Panchali or a shot from Satyajit Ray’s great film of that great novel. The occupants of each mud dwelling asked me to come in and spend some time with them. They asked for nothing, expected nothing. The men all seemed to have gone out to work. Only the village’s womenfolk, children and some very old villagers were to be seen. Some of the women offered me food, some a little place to sit on. One asked me to step into her dwelling, which I did, remaining at the threshold so as not to disturb anything or anybody. She quietly went in and returned with a plate adorned with some flowers and a ready-to-be-lit lamp. I did not ask for and so do not know her name, but to my mind she was Kalyani, welcoming me with an impromptu arati. As she poured some drops of precious oil on the wick that she had hurriedly but carefully improvised, all of Bengal’s grace stood before me.

For me Kalyani is the future of political maryada.

All these women are voting in West Bengal. Irrespective of who they are voting for, they are voting for a future which must include in it harmless irreverence, faith in science and in the law, grace and, above all, maryada.