Freedom Song Read Online Free

in Calcutta, and its toffees and lozenges in cellophane wrappers stored in jars in every cigarette shop. The company had changed hands several times, until now it was owned by the state government, and, after having made losses for many years, was named a ‘sick unit’. Its loyal machines still produced, poignantly, myriads of perfectly shaped toffees, but that organ of the company that was responsible for distribution had for long been lying numb and dysfunctional, so that the toffees never quite reached the retailer’s shelves. Years of labour problems had sapped the factory and its adjoining offices of impetus, but eversince the Communist Party came to power, the atmosphere had changed to a benign, co-operative inactivity, with a cheerful trade unionism replacing the tensions of the past, the representatives of the chocolate company now also representing the government and the party, and the whole thing becoming a relaxed, ungrudging family affair. This kind of company was not rare in the ‘public sector’; in fact, brave little bands of men held out in such islands everywhere; but Khuku’s husband, before retiring, had worked in a successful private company, where every department whirred and ticked from nine to five thirty like clockwork, and he and his colleagues had only heard of the renegade lives of the ‘public sector’ companies from the outside. They were spoken of as backward but colourful tribes with a time-tested culture of tea-drinking, gossip, and procrastination, who had stoutly defended, for many years, their modes of communion and exchange from being taken over by an alien ‘work ethic’. Little did he know, then, that, in his days of retirement, he too would end up here. It was, in a sense, a relaxing place to be in, like withdrawing to some outpost that was cut off from the larger movements of the world. The factory was tucked away in a lane on the outskirts, not far from an important and congested junction on the main road, where no one would have expected it, hidden behind stone walls and a huge rusting gate that opened reluctantly to outsiders. Once, the two-storeyedbuildings made of red brick, with long continuous corridors and verandas, with arches that were meant to give shelter from the tropical heat, would have been impressive and even grand. Now it was like a hostel; cups of tea travelled from room to room, and bearers ran back and forth in the verandas. There was a perpetual air of murmuring intrigue, the only sign of life, until the doors and windows were shut in the evening.
    Yet the employees were, in their own way, simple and good-hearted. And though Khuku’s husband was only an adviser, they treated him with a bit of extra respect and sometimes as if he ran the place. ‘Put it back on the rails, sir,’ they said, ‘we need people like you. What a state the company’s in!’ And Khuku’s husband came home and told Khuku these stories, his eyes shining, and felt young again. And Khuku told her brother in Vidyasagar Road, ‘He’ll put the company right.’ Khuku’s brother, in a kind of infatuated haze, said, ‘Little’s—Little’s will be all right again.’ For many days after, he would not let Piyu or his brother’s children touch Cadbury, and go out himself in search of Little’s chocolates. His relationship would become temporarily strained with the keeper of the local shop, Pick and Choose, who was always doing his accounts on a scrap of paper and was not very concerned about human beings. ‘What, sir, you don’t keep Little’s toffee—
we
ate it when
we
were young.
You
must have eaten it as well. No, this shop is notwhat it used to be,’ he would conclude, shaking his head. ‘What can we do, Bhola babu?’ the shopkeeper would say. ‘They don’t
send
us the chocolates,’ as if he were speaking of a powerful but heartless family.
    Meanwhile, Khuku’s husband had discovered that, in spite of their good intentions, the employees, after making their