The Last Bench: A story that moves readers to question caste norms

This book doesn't call for action to abolish the caste system - yet it leaves the reader wanting to do away with it

The Last Bench

by Adhir Biswas

Published by Ekada, Westland

184 pages ₹399

  Memoirs written by Dalit writers are often memoirs of their community. Whether it is Baluta by Daya Pawar, translated by Jerry Pinto or The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble, translated by Maya Pandit, these memoirs are written by adults with social awareness and a Dalit consciousness. What happens when a childhood memoir of a lower-caste person is written in the voice of a child but with the craft of an adult?

 

Set in the 1960s, Adhir Biswas’s The Last Bench, translated by V Ramaswamy, returns to the author’s childhood in a village, Magura, in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Born to a barber family, he helps his father get customers to their shop in the market. When called for, he visits families of people during shraadh or during the birth of a new baby to cut the nails, collect old clothes worn by people during the last rites and so on. Those acquainted with the Hindu caste system will recognise these as casteist roles set aside for barbers, as their “right” or “purpose”. As a child, Mr Biswas doesn’t call out such practices; instead, he sees them as opportunities to help his father.

 

His father sees education as a ladder to grow out of poverty. He enrols a six- or seven-year-old Biswas in the local school, in Class 1. That is where he is made aware of his caste. Despite trying to convey that his surname is Biswas, he is called Paramanik (a professional title for barbers). He is abused by his upper caste classmates, bullied violently, and is a regular victim to thrashings by his teachers. Although he stands second in his class after the annual exam, he constantly thinks about quitting studies, just as all three of his older brothers had done. An intelligent child who enjoyed going to school was driven to invisibility by being made to sit on the last bench.

 

This translation by V Ramaswamy keeps the voice of the child intact and creates a visceral narrative where readers can almost see the child afflicted with scabies, sense the child’s pleasure when his mother creates a wick out of her aanchal to clean the pus from his ears, and smell the stink of which his classmates complain. This lived reality drills into the reader the indignities and exclusion that are forced on lower-caste people even when they are given similar opportunities. The social hierarchy of the caste system forces them to sit on the last bench, outside the vision of the upper-caste, as far as spatially possible. Mr Biswas writes, “It was my body’s fault. A body with scabies that smelt of pus. But how could I set it aside?”

 

Despite his experiences of isolation inside and outside the classroom where no one played with him, Mr Biswas comes across as an empathetic child burdened by his young age, which renders him  useless to help his parents. This memoir is laced with the child looking out for his ailing mother — his only refuge —fearing to lose her to death. It brings out tender moments where the mother-son duo goes foraging into the fields. He writes, “…we were poor too. We too had come to forage fuelwood in order to be able to cook. Foraging meant picking up something that was lying around, not asking anyone for anything. But this too was an unstated form of begging.”

 

Mr Biswas wished for the caste-based exclusion to end but found ways to bond with everything around him, making friends with a dog and having conversations with fish. His house was situated at a distance from others but was often visited by foxes, jackals, hornets, bees, scorpions, caterpillars, and so on. He regarded them as active members of the village and his house. This endearing relationship between the child and nature forms the backbone of this memoir.

 

The author’s early caste consciousness layers the memoir in evocative and subtle ways. This child knows that if “grown-up folk do the work, it’s three taka a day. Because I’m still young, it’s only lunch.” As a craftsman, he describes the days following the loss of his mother, leading to his migration to West Bengal but he doesn’t talk about the event of death. The grief is painted on the walls of the house he is bound to leave even when he doesn’t want to. 

 

The Last Bench is a significant translation that captures the experience of a boy navigating an unequal society, asking existential questions in his pre-teens. It may shock the readers new to memoirs written by lower-caste people and will fill them with sympathy. However, the readers acquainted with the genre will experience a sense of wonder at the child’s perseverance in the face of oppression. Empathetic readers are likely to ask: What was the child’s fault? The book begins with the answer: “Your father touches you. As do your forefathers. They touch you with their caste.” Mr Biswas doesn’t call for action to abolish the caste-system — but he leaves the reader wanting to do away with it.

 

The reviewer is an independent writer based in Sambalpur, Odisha. X/Instagram: @geekyliterati