Connie Takes Shankar to Ask Shibdas to Pray for Harry

Connie Takes Shankar to Ask Shibdas to Pray for Harry is a turning-point encounter in which Connie’s private anguish over Harry’s dwarfism becomes explicit, while Shibdas turns her hope into an opportunity for exploitation. The visit begins as a search for help, but ends with a cruel choice between changing Harry’s body at the cost of his life and accepting that the promised transformation will not come.

The Journey from the Hotel

Connie asks Shankar to go out with her because she knows little about Calcutta and does not consider it safe to explore the city alone. He agrees reluctantly. In daylight, she appears unlike the nighttime performer known as Connie the Woman: dressed in a straw hat, dark glasses, and a knee-length skirt, she resembles an enthusiastic but inexperienced European tourist. The contrast between her public stage identity and this guarded daytime appearance accompanies a trip whose real purpose she has not yet disclosed.

As they travel down Chittaranjan Avenue and reach Chowringhee, Shankar offers familiar sightseeing destinations, including the Victoria Memorial, the museum, the zoo, and the Governor’s House. Connie refuses the tourist itinerary and shows him a piece of paper bearing the name of a little-known street in a distant suburb. Her insistence makes clear that she has come to Calcutta for a specific appointment, not to admire the city. Shankar asks her to turn back, but she ignores him; the consultation matters enough for her to persist despite his misgivings.

At Shibdas’s Consultation

Shibdas’s office is on a small street in a remote suburb. When Connie and Shankar arrive, Shibdas is advising other clients, and an assistant leads them into a small waiting room. Connie removes her shoes at the entrance, approaches the spiritual practitioner in nylon stockings, receives a blessing from his sacred thread, and sits on the floor. Her absorbed, devout manner makes her seem at home in the unfamiliar setting, despite the conspicuous difference between her clothes and those of the other visitors.

Shibdas studies Connie before speaking. His customary method, as Shankar describes it, is to make an initial reading from a stranger’s expression and appearance rather than begin with questions. He attempts to infer Connie’s circumstances from her age, manners, and clothes. While he considers what to say, she places a ten-rupee note reverently at his feet. Shibdas then assures her that her wish will be granted and that she will obtain what her heart desires. Connie’s face brightens at the promise, as though these are the words she had travelled to hear. He adds that she has suffered greatly and will suffer more; the prediction moves her to tears.

Connie’s Plea and Shibdas’s Bargain

Connie explains that Harry is her companion and that he is a dwarf. Shibdas immediately claims he understands: Harry, he says, must be made taller and stretched until he has ordinary proportions. Connie offers to give whatever Shibdas wants. Her request is not for happiness, wealth, or property; she says she would gladly surrender what she has if Harry could become a person regarded as normal. Being short, she insists, would matter less than having others call him a dwarf. Her plea exposes the humiliation attached to that label, while also showing how completely she has come to imagine bodily change as a way to relieve Harry’s suffering.

Shibdas proposes a vamanavatar yagna, a complex rite requiring a priest to perform rituals for seven days and seven nights. Connie responds with urgency: she will suspend her performances, stay there, and persuade Harry to come as well. She also tells Shankar that their contract is weekly, that she will not renew hers, and that he must explain her decision to Marco Polo. The proposed cure is already reaching beyond the consultation: Connie is prepared to leave her work and reorganize her life around the ritual.

Shibdas then reveals its supposed cost. After the sacrifice, he claims, Harry would grow and look like an ordinary man, but would not live long; according to Shibdas, no one had survived it for more than six months. Connie’s immediate response is to reject the prospect of Harry’s death. Shibdas counsels that people should accept what God wills rather than try to alter it. The reversal destroys the hope his earlier assurance had encouraged: the promised transformation is no longer a simple blessing, but a bargain that could take Harry’s life.

The Amulet and the Return

After Connie listens to Shibdas, he takes an amulet from a box and describes its power as extraordinary, even atomic. He instructs her to put it on her bare foot after bathing and to avoid drink and sexual indulgence on the day she wears it. Connie accepts the amulet respectfully, says that she does not drink, and gives him another ten rupees. She asks whether Harry will find peace if she uses it; Shibdas assures her that this is precisely what the amulet is for. His sigh at losing the prospect of the costly sacrifice reveals the self-interest beneath his spiritual assurances.

Connie is silent throughout the journey back. Her hope that Harry could become physically typical has disappeared, and the amulet offers only the lesser promise of peace. Her final, subdued reflection is that she might find peace too. Back at the hotel, Sata Bose is behind the reception counter and looks toward Connie without really seeing her; Shankar returns to join him as Connie takes the lift upstairs. The return to the hotel’s ordinary routine sharpens the loneliness of what has happened: Connie has disclosed the depth of her devotion to Harry, but the encounter gives her neither the transformation she sought nor a trustworthy means of securing it.