Philip Hensher - Scenes from Early Life

The aunts came in, singly and in pairs, and found some reason to address me before leaving in an absent way. I could not account for it. My aunts had different favourites, and sometimes our own gestures of fondness were not returned; Sushmita had thought Nadira, with her dramatic entrances and her immaculate appearance, was marvellous, but Nadira, before she got married and went to Sheffield, was at best indifferent to the small, impressed offerings of gaze and giggle that Sushmita laid at her feet. Today every aunt came in and, one after another, stroked my head or called me a little sweetie. It was as if they wanted something from me. It was unusual in any circumstance: when Great-grandmother was there, making demands and criticizing the household, calling for people to brush her hair and listen to her stories, we children were used to being ushered into a quiet corner and expected to remain silent. The attention I was getting was pleasing, but unnerving. I wondered whether I was about to get a present.

‘And he is studying at college now,’ Great-grandmother said at table. She was talking about the son of a neighbour of theirs, a neighbour in the country. ‘Studying to be an engineer. He has made a good success of his life. When you consider who his father is. There was constant trouble with his father. Running wild. And now he is going to Libya,’ she finished, hunching over her plate.

‘Fateh is going to Libya?’ Nana said, puzzled. He remembered the farmer, his youth, running wild.

‘Libya?’ Era said.

‘Not Fateh,’ Great-grandmother said, her brilliant white hair combed back now. ‘Fateh could never go to Libya. Fateh stays where he was born. His son, he is going to Libya. He is studying at college. Studying to be an engineer. And afterwards, he is going to Libya.’

There was a satisfied pause. The dining-room door swung open, and in came a succession of dishes, steaming hot. All at once, the table broke into conversation.

‘Were you at your college today?’ Dahlia called across to Pultoo-uncle.

‘No, because—’

‘And Mahmood had a great success today,’ my mother called across to Nani, gesturing at my father who, in honour of a great-grandparent, had come, for once, to dinner on Friday.

‘I’m so pleased for him,’ Nani said. ‘Era, did you hear what your sister was saying?’

‘Yes, Mama,’ Era said. ‘A success, today . . . I was just about to say . . .’

It was mystifying. The lids of the dishes were taken off, in a shining line down the long table; the richest of the dishes before Nana. ‘Good, good,’ he said, poking in it with the serving spoon in his usual way; it was as if he suspected the most delicious parts to be always hidden deep in the dish. ‘Good. Chicken.’

Around the table, there was a nervous little spasm of conversation, and I had the sense of aunt turning to aunt, and smiling shamefully at me. ‘Do have some, Saadi,’ Mary-aunty said. ‘It’s especially for your great-grandmother, since she has come all this way to see us.’

A horrible thought came to me. ‘Where did the chicken come from?’ I said to Nana. ‘Nana, what is this chicken?’

But I had been shunted down a place by the arrival of my Great-grandmother, and he affected not to hear my shrill demand. ‘Nana,’ I said. ‘Nana.’

‘Quiet, Saadi,’ Bubbly-aunty said, next to me. ‘Don’t scream in people’s ears. It’s a chicken from the garden, as usual.’

‘Which one?’ I said. ‘Which chicken are we eating?’

‘I really don’t know,’ Bubbly said. ‘I really don’t know the difference between one chicken and another. They’d be very happy, I’m sure, if they knew they were going to make such a lovely dinner for all of us. Now, I’m sure you’re not going to be a bad little boy. I’m sure you’re going to be a good little boy, and eat your dinner, aren’t you?’

In my family, we did not leap up and push our chairs over; we did not scream and denounce our relations; we did not punch and pummel the servants, even the ones who had seized our pet chickens and put them in the pot without a second thought. We did not run howling out into the garden in search of our lost chickens. What we did was push the dish away when it came to us, and say, with murder in our voices, ‘No, thank you. I don’t care to eat a friend of mine.’

‘What did he say?’ Great-grandmother said.

‘I didn’t hear,’ Nana said. ‘Pay no attention, and everything will be quite all right.’

9.

I sat in mutinous silence all through dinner. I would not look at or answer my great-grandmother, for whose sake Piklu had been killed and eaten. I promised myself I would never speak to her again, not until she died like the other one, which would be soon. And when dinner was over, I gabbled out the formula asking for permission to get down from the table, and went swiftly out of the front door into the street. It was still light, and my shadow went before me as I walked, shivering and dancing like a puppet, making its own dance, as I tried to walk like a big man down the Dhanmondi street, trying my best to walk like a slave-owner, to walk as a talking car would walk, to walk down my grandfather’s street like Hungry Bear.

Chapter 3

Altaf and Amit

1.

The best place to watch what was happening in the street was from my grandfather’s first-floor balcony. The houses in the street were fronted by high walls, dusted with green lichen, for security. But the balcony on the first floor was high enough to see over. From there, you could see visitors approaching. It might be a family member returning: Nana in his red Vauxhall, driven by Rustum, or my father in a cycle-rickshaw, laden with papers, or some aunts returning from a visit in the neighbourhood. As you negotiated your way between heavy jars of pickles, or slices of mango laid out on kula to dry, you could see if there was a war going on in the street between children of the neighbourhood. Sometimes, when I was very young I would see Sheikh Mujib sweep by in his big official car, with a policeman on a motorbike driving just before. And you knew that he was the prime minister of the country. I never forgot that sight.

Or there might be visitors. Mr Khandekar-nana came sometimes, simply, on foot, with his wife and a son or two. Pultoo-uncle’s friends Kajol and Kanaq would arrive with their folders of art under their arms, sticking out from either side of a cycle-rickshaw. You could hear them arguing from a hundred yards away: they always turned up in a towering passion, appealing to anyone in the house to settle the dispute by taking one side or the other. From Nana’s balcony, through the branches of the tamarind tree, you could see all the way down the street to the left, and all the way down the street to the right. I spent hours up there, in the odour of spice and fruit drying in the open air, in the shade of the tamarind tree.

Some days, a sweet-seller would set up shop opposite Nana’s house. He would make those yellow calligraphic sweets that look like a circular signature in Arabic; I loved to watch. First, he would take a bag of wet dough, then write quickly, a round and a squiggle and a zigzag, directly in the boiling yellow oil, then another one, then another. The sweets would coagulate, then bob to the surface. He would know exactly when to fish them out to drain on newspaper. And then he would start again. It was a little marvel of the street, across the wall at the front of Nana’s house. I could have watched him all day.

I craned out, observing neighbours and guests and street-wallahs and unfamiliar figures; I got to know them from the way they walked, their usual belongings, the way they arrived in a rickshaw or a car or on foot. The most familiar of relatives looked unsure of themselves when surprised from up here, making their way down the public highway in Dhanmondi. Dahlia-aunty, for instance, so confident and cosy when going between Nana’s salon and the kitchen, looked fretful, nervous, and unsure of herself when making her way out of the gate to walk a hundred yards to visit a neighbour. She revealed a different side of herself. Or perhaps that was just the way she looked from Nana’s balcony.