Shona Patel - Teatime For The Firefly

Dadamoshai’s desk on the veranda was covered up with tarp, his papers moved inside. The blue elephant cushions on the chairs were wet and smelled of mold. Disheveled sparrows perched, puffed and glum, on the jasmine trellis, lulled by the downpour. Almost overnight, moss inched up the garden wall, and brilliant orange fungi sprouted in cracks. A chorus of cacophonous frogs ribetted through the evening.

When the rains paused, the air was so dense it was hard to breathe. Gone were the sparkling fireflies. Mosquitoes came out in angry droves. They attacked like suicide bombers, whining into ears, biting arms and legs, between toes and in the most unscratchable places.

I stayed home, nursing a monstrous cold, drinking ginger tea and staring at the calendar, watching the days tick by. Only five and a half months remained before Manik’s wedding day.

After four days, the postman finally resumed his rounds. I saw him lean his bicycle on the front gate and walk up the garden path, sifting through the letters. There was a small package for me.

It was professionally wrapped in brown paper, tied neatly with white string and fastened with red lacquer seals. There was a return label that read The Oxford Book Suppliers Ltd. and a Calcutta address. I opened it quickly to find a slim volume of Tagore’s poems, Gitanjali. It was a beautiful handmade book, bound in red silk with a gold-patterned border. It reminded me of a wedding sari. I flipped it open to a page that held a bookmark. The bookmark was cream-colored, die-cut of nubbly handmade paper with a block-printed gold paisley motif. The name and address of the bookstore was printed below it. I read the poem on the marked page, my heart beating wildly.

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honor it with a touch of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am aware, and the time of offering go by.

Inside the cover of the book, Manik had inscribed For you in an elegant scrawl that ran right across the page. It was signed with an M. Mysteriously obtuse, no names mentioned anywhere. Inside was a folded note.

Dear Layla,

I came across this book of Tagore’s poems and thought of you. Please accept this small gift as a remembrance of our talks together.

Manik

I could envision him scrawling across the page, the nib of his fountain pen catching slightly on the rough fibers of the handmade paper. Was it a coincidence that the bookmark had been on that particular page? Of course not! I chided myself. He was just a friend, nothing more. Yet what if...? Tiny tendrils of hope pushed through my brain.

That night I slept with the book and Manik’s handkerchief under my pillow. I had the strangest dream. Manik Deb was standing in a lily pond among the reeds and shaking out the pages of the silk-covered book. Hundreds of fireflies fell out into the water. They spun around in dizzy circles, sizzling like cumin seeds in hot oil before their lights extinguished one by one. At the far end of the pond, on the opposite bank I could see a small girl stretching out her thin arms toward him. “Look at me, Dada, I can fly!” she cried in a chirping voice. But Manik did not see or hear her. He just continued opening the pages of the book and releasing the fireflies.

It was then that I woke up.

* * *

It is hard to describe the emotional turmoil I went through in the weeks that followed. I felt hopelessly conflicted. There was so much I wanted to believe and so much I dared not. A streak of guilt coursed through my mind every time I thought about Manik Deb. Our society was bound by unwritten rules and I had overstepped an invisible line. Accepting a gift of love poems from another woman’s fiancé was as illicit as being kissed. Yet it was deliciously arousing and I felt hopelessly drawn.

I could have brushed off Manik’s gesture, put the book on my shelf and gone on with my life. Yet I clung to it like my last, slim, red-and-gold hope on earth. I caressed the silk cover, kissed the long pen strokes of his inscription. I savored every poem and swelled with the cadence of the lines and felt irresistibly connected to the heart where it was coming from. I knew it was the poet and not Manik who wrote the words but I wanted desperately to believe otherwise. Those were strangely melded days where I floated in limbo, an outsider to the world around me, a firefly baffled by daylight.

CHAPTER 8

Finally the rains abated. The sky gathered her dark, voluminous skirts and swept over the Himalayas into Tibet, leaving behind a drizzle like a sprinkling of fairy dust. Life returned to normal.

The ground was rich and moist. The earth turned a shrill and noisy green, vibrant as a parrot. The evenings felt lighter now, and on some days there was a lilt of autumn in the air. A river breeze flitted through the house, suffusing rooms with the scent of jasmine. Dadamoshai resumed his writing on the veranda.

It was late afternoon and I was reading in my room when I heard an unfamiliar voice calling out a greeting on the veranda. I parted the curtains a crack. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it was Mr. Sen, Kona’s father. He was not a regular visitor to our house.

Mr. Sen was a portly, round-shouldered man, dressed traditionally in a white dhoti and a handwoven brown waistcoat over his long starched cotton shirt. His face was black and shiny as a plum. He had oily hair, bright, beady eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache over a small mouth that was pulled tight as a purse string. His small plump hands were weighted down with an array of auspicious gemstone rings—coral, tigereye, topaz—each promising some aspect of health or wealth to its wearer.

Dadamoshai was in the middle of his writing, and I could see he was distracted with a thought half strung across his brain. As usual, he looked like a preoccupied sage, surrounded by his books and papers, his snow-white hair unkempt, his glasses askew on his nose. He was barefoot, his worn wooden clogs undoubtedly lost somewhere under his desk.

“My dear Rai Sahib, I have been meaning to pay you a visit.” Mr. Sen leaned his umbrella against the post and held out his hands in an exaggerated gesture of effusiveness toward my grandfather.

“A pleasant surprise, Sen Babu, a pleasant surprise indeed!” Dadamoshai exclaimed, patting absentmindedly for the cap of his fountain pen under his papers and shuffling his foot under the desk to feel for his clogs. “Please, please, do have a seat.”

Mr. Sen gathered the pleats of his dhoti with care and perched on the edge of the sofa, like a plump sparrow on a windowsill. He watched with a beatific smile as my grandfather tried to get his bumbling act together. Despite all the cordiality between him and my grandfather, their relationship bordered on distaste. Mr. Sen’s visit was undoubtedly suspicious.

I strained my ears to listen to their conversation. Mr. Sen was talking about the preparations for Kona’s wedding. He dropped numbers here and there, pretending to bemoan the costs of things, but all the while seeking to impress Dadamoshai with how much money he was spending.

“You have no idea how much it costs to get a girl married these days. We are in the middle of wartime and every item is either in short supply or priced to make your hands bleed,” he lamented.

Dadamoshai was trying very hard to look engaged. “I must congratulate you, Sen Babu. You have indeed made a fine choice of a son-in-law in Manik Deb. He is an exceptional young man with a remarkable future ahead of him,” he said conversationally.

Mr. Sen’s eyes wandered off into the jasmine trellis. He suddenly looked morose and crestfallen. His mustache twitched, and he nibbled his lips nervously, looking amazingly like a rodent.