Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

At times we sped down a highway bordered on each side by great chawls — those incredible slums of tin roofs, gunnysack walls, and mud-path streets — which extended for miles and were terminated only by gray monoliths of factories belching flame and unfiltered soot toward the monsoon clouds. I realized that sweeping philosophical convictions such as ecology and pollution control were luxuries for our advanced industrial nations. The air in Calcutta, already sweetened by raw sewage, burning cow dung, millions of tons of garbage, and the innumerable open fires eternally burning, was made almost unbreathable by the further effusion of raw auto emissions and industrial filth.

The factories themselves were huge artifacts of worn brick, rusted steel, rampant weeds, and broken windows — pictures from some grim future when the industrial age had gone the way of the dinosaur but left its rotting carcasses sprawled across the landscape. Yet, smoke rose from the most tumbledown ruin, and ragged human forms came and went from the black maws of the darkest buildings. I found it almost impossible to imagine myself living in one of those floorless hovels, working in one of those grim factories.

Amrita must have been sharing similar thoughts, for we rode in silence, each watching the panorama of human hopelessness pass by the car windows.

Then, in a space of a few minutes, we crossed a bridge over a wide expanse of railroad tracks, passed through a transitional neighborhood of tiny storefronts, and were suddenly in an old, established area of tree-lined streets and large homes guarded by walls and barred gates. The thin sunlight glinted off countless shards of broken glass set atop the flat walls. At one place there was a yard-wide swath cleared on top of a high wall, but the mud-colored masonry was smeared with dark streaks. Well-polished automobiles sat at the end of long driveways. The iron-spiked gates bore small signs warning Beware of Dog in at least three languages.

It took no great insight to realize that this once had been a British residential section, as separate from the pandemonium of the city and its natives as the English governing class could make it. Decay was evident even here — the frequently filthy walls, unshingled roofs, and crudely boarded windows — but it was a controlled decay, a rearguard action against the rampant entropy which seemed to govern Calcutta elsewhere; and the sense of dissolution was ameliorated somewhat by the bright flowers and other obvious attempts at gardening that one glimpsed through high entry gates.

We pulled up to one of these gates. The driver bustled out and unlocked a padlock with a key from a chain on his belt. The circular driveway was lined with tall, flowering bushes and drooping tree limbs.

We were greeted by Michael Leonard Chatterjee. "Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Luczak! Welcome!" His wife was also standing by the door next to a toddler whom I first took to be their son but then realized must be a grandson. Mrs. Chatterjee was in her early sixties, and I revised her husband's age upward. Chatterjee was one of those smooth-faced, perpetually balding gentlemen who reach fifty and seem to stay at that age until their late sixties.

We chatted on the front step for a moment. Victoria was duly complimented, and we praised their grandson. Then we were shown through the house quickly before being led through another door to a wide patio overlooking a side street.

I was interested in their home. It was the first chance I'd had to see how an upper-class Indian family lived. The first impression was one of juxtaposition: large, formal, high-ceilinged rooms with paint flaking from begrimed walls; a beautiful walnut sideboard covered with scratches on which was displayed a stuffed mongoose with dusty glass eyes and molting fur; an expensive, handmade carpet from Kashmir set atop chipped linoleum; a large, once modern kitchen now liberally cluttered with dusty bottles, old crates, crusted metal pans, and with a small, charcoal fireplace set squarely in the center of the floor. Smoke streaked a once white ceiling.

"It will be more comfortable outside," said Chatterjee, and held the door open for Amrita.

The flagstones were still wet from the last rainshower, but the cushioned chairs were dry and a table was set for tea. Chatterjee's grown daughter, a heavy young woman with lovely eyes, joined us long enough to chat with Amrita in Hindi for a few minutes and then to depart with her son. Chatterjee seemed bemused by Amrita's linguistic abilities and asked her something in French. Amrita answered fluently, and both of them laughed. He switched to what I later learned was Tamil, and Amrita responded. They began exchanging pleasantries in simple Russian. I sipped my tea and smiled at Mrs. Chatterjee. She smiled back and offered me a cucumber sandwich. We continued smiling at each other through a few more minutes of trilingual banter, and then Victoria began fussing. Amrita took the baby from my arms, and Chatterjee turned to me.

"Would you like more tea, Mr. Luczak?"

"No, thank you, this is fine."

"Perhaps something stronger?"

"Well . . ."

Chatterjee snapped his fingers and a servant quickly appeared. A few seconds later he reappeared with a tray laden with several decanters and glasses.

"Do you drink Scotch, Mr. Luczak?"

Is the Pope Catholic? I thought. "Yes." Amrita had warned me that most Indian Scotch was atrocious stuff, but one swallow told me that Chatterjee's decanter held only premium whiskey, almost certainly twelve years old, almost certainly imported. '' Excellent.''

"It's The Glenlivet," he said. "Unblended. I find it rather more authentic than the blended premiums."

For a few minutes we discussed poetry and poets. I tried to steer the conversation around to M. Das, but Chatterjee was reluctant to discuss the missing poet beyond mentioning that Gupta had arranged the details for tomorrow's transfer of the manuscript. We settled on discussing how hard it was for a serious writer in either of our countries to make a decent living. I got the impression that Chatterjee's money had come down through the family and that he had other interests, investments, and incomes.

Invariably, the talk steered to politics. Chatterjee was most eloquent about the relief the country was feeling after the ouster of Mrs. Gandhi in the previous election. The resurgence of democracy in India was of great interest to me and something I'd hoped to work into my Das article.

"She was a tyrant, Mr. Luczak. The so-called Emergency was merely a ruse to hide the ugly face of her tyranny."

"So you don't think she will ever reenter national politics?"

"Never! Never, Mr. Luczak."

"But I thought that she still has a strong political base and that the Congress Party is still a potential majority if the current coalition was to falter."

"No, no," said Chatterjee and waved his hand in dismissal. "You do not understand. Mrs. Gandhi and her son are finished . They will be in prison within a year. Mark my words. Her son is already under investigation for various scandals and atrocities; and when the truth comes out, he will be lucky to escape execution."

I nodded. "I've read that he alienated many people with his drastic population-control programs."

"He was a swine," Chatterjee said without emotion. "An arrogant, ignorant, dictatorial swine. His programs were little more than efforts at genocide. He preyed on the poor and the uneducated, although he was an essential illiterate himself. Even his mother was frightened of the monster. If he were to enter a crowd today, they would tear him apart with their bare hands. I would be pleased to take part. More tea, Mrs. Luczak?"

A car moved down the quiet side street beyond the iron fence. A rew raindrops pattered on the broad leaves of the banyan tree above us.