The Lowland

things Castro had done.
    5.
    By early 1968, in the face of increasing opposition, the United Front government collapsed, and West Bengal was placed under President’s Rule.
    The education system was also in crisis. It was an outdated pedagogy, at odds with India’s reality. It taught the young to ignore the needs of common people. This was the message radical students started to spread.
    Echoing Paris, echoing Berkeley, exams were boycotted throughout Calcutta, diplomas torn up. Students called out during convocation addresses, disrupting the speakers. They said campus administrations were corrupt. They barricaded vice-chancellors in their offices, refusing them food and water until their demands were met.
    In spite of the unrest, encouraged by professors, both brothers began postgraduate studies, Udayan at Calcutta University, Subhash continuing on at Jadavpur. They were expected to fulfill their potential, to support their parents one day.
    Udayan’s schedule turned more erratic. One night when he did not return for dinner, their mother kept it waiting in the corner of the kitchen, under a plate. When she asked, in the morning, why he hadn’t eaten what she’d set aside, he told her he’d eaten at the home of a friend.
    When he was gone, there was no talk during mealtimes of how the Naxalbari movement was spreading to other parts of West Bengal, also to some other parts of India. No discussion about the guerillas active in Bihar, in Andhra Pradesh. Subhash gathered that Udayan turned to others now, with whom he could talk freely about these things.
    Without Udayan they ate in silence, without strife, as their father preferred. Though Subhash missed his brother’s company, at times it came as a relief to sit down at the study table by himself.
    When Udayan was at home, odd hours, he turned on the shortwave. Dissatisfied by official reports, he found secret broadcasts from stations in Darjeeling, in Shiliguri. He listened to broadcasts from Radio Peking. Once, just as the sun was rising, he succeeded in transporting Mao’s distorted voice, interrupted by bursts of static, addressing the people of China, to Tollygunge.
    Because Udayan invited him, because he was curious, Subhash went with him one evening to a meeting, in a neighborhood in North Calcutta. The small smoky room was filled mostly with students. There was a portrait of Lenin, wrapped in plastic, hanging on a mint-green plaster wall. But the mood in the room was anti-Moscow, pro-Peking.
    Subhash had pictured a raucous debate. But the meeting was orderly, run like a study session. A wispy-haired medical student named Sinha assumed the role of professor. The others were taking notes. One by one they were called upon to prove their familiarity with events in Chinese history, tenets of Mao.
    They distributed the latest copies of Deshabrati and Liberation. There was an update on the insurgency at Srikakulam. One hundred villages across two hundred mountainous miles, falling under Marxist sway.
    Peasant rebels were creating strongholds where no policeman dared enter. Landowners were fleeing. There were reports of families burned to death in their sleep, their heads displayed on stakes. Vengeful slogans painted in blood.
    Sinha spoke quietly. Sitting at a table, ruminating, his fingers clasped.
    A year has passed since Naxalbari, and the CPI(M) continues to betray us. They have disgraced the red banner. They have flaunted the good name of Marx.
    The CPI(M), the policies of the Soviet Union, the reactionary government of India, all amount to the same thing. They are lackeys of the United States. These are the four mountains we must seek to overthrow.
    The objective of the CPI(M) is maintaining power. But our objective is the formation of a just society. The creation of a new party is essential. If history is to take a step forward, the parlor game of parliamentary politics must end.
    The room was silent. Subhash saw Udayan hanging on Sinha’s words. Riveted, just as he used to look listening to a football match on the radio.
    Though Subhash was also present, though he sat beside Udayan, he felt invisible. He wasn’t convinced that an imported ideology could solve India’s problems. Though a spark had been lit a year ago, he didn’t think a revolution would necessarily follow.
    He wondered if it was a lack of courage, or of imagination, that prevented him from believing in it. If the deficits he’d always been