Amit Chaudhuri - A New World

“But you’re quite well, I trust? No stomach infections?” he smiled. “Thank God! No, I say this only because of this nasty weather, cool under the fan, hot outside, the change of season coming,” again, the words “change of season” in English; he shook his head in a grim, condoling way, as if speaking of a regrettable political manoeuvre. “ Lots of diseases this time of the year,” he said, “viral fevers, gastrointestinal problems,” the doctor for the first time ventriloquizing unselfconsciously through him as he uttered the terms, “bacterial infections, influenza.”

“Then you must be very busy,” said Jayojit.

“No, no!. . I mainly lecture at the medical college these days,” said the doctor, as if a subtle gear had shifted within him. “I go to the hospital once a week, and I see the patients who call me.” He meant that he no longer sat at a chamber. Behind the doctor’s seemingly fluid lifestyle, some sort of choice had been exercised; at some point he’d taken the decision that making money would take on a secondary importance in his life.

“How is your father?” asked Dr. Sen, looking up and, for the first time, meeting Jayojit’s gaze. “I don’t think it’s time to do an ECG again, is it? Anyway,” he waved his hand, “we can talk of those things later. How long will you be here?”

“Till the end of June, most probably. Or early July,” said Jayojit, as if he lived in a time when the simplest things were subject to unresolvable influences. “That’ll leave me about a month to the end of July, when my college leave ends and, anyway, when I have to take my son back.”

“Hu — hu,” said the doctor, before Jayojit had even completed the sentence, like one absent-mindedly soothing a child or allaying an agitation within himself. “He must be taller now. .” referring to the boy — then, delightedly, as if he had quite forgotten, and as if no personal calamity could take away this simple, happy fact: “They grow so quickly at this age, don’t they!” A little hesitantly, “Uh — Vikram, isn’t it? Or is it Benoy?”

“Vikram — that’s his proper name,” said Jayojit. “But we call him Bonny at home.”

“Bonny!” laughed Dr. Sen, that unfocused look returning. He gazed downward at the floor. “ Bonny . Yes. . yes. .” He seemed to be remembering something. Then he looked up at the space above the staircase and said without real interest: “Any plans — going anywhere?”

“Not really. I’m planning to complete — no,” he laughed, “begin, I should say — my second book,” said Jayojit. “I don’t write quickly. .”—this was confessed with regret— “I take a while. I hope it will deal with the ethics of developmental policy.”

“Very good. Excellent,” said Dr. Sen, nodding. “Economists are doing well these days, aren’t they? In my days it was Professor Amiya Dasgupta and. .” he hummed, “Bhabatosh Dutta! My word, all the students swore by him.” Jayojit waited patiently, as a “modern” composer might preserve a decorous silence as Beethoven is praised. “I think Amartya might have been his student. . Amartya Sen. . My God, he’s done well! When d’you think he’ll get the Nobel Prize — or do you think he’ll get it?”

“It depends on which political lobby is currently dominant,” said Jayojit with a laugh, but feeling an unpleasant weight too at having to speculate on another’s career. He was a generation younger than Sen, but felt equal to him; there were others equal to him; and yet he was defined by him as well. “It’s more politics than anything else. I mean also which school of thought exercises most power at the moment. Whether it’s free-market friendly or not.”

“Is that so. . is that so. .” The doctor shook his head. Then he brightened and said, “Yes, that is so, isn’t it? They didn’t give it to Gandhi but they gave it to Kissinger!” he said, indignant, as if he’d been in the midst of those events. “I used to know him, you know, not very well, of course, when I was a student.” Jayojit was perplexed. “Where does he teach now (I’ve heard his marriages haven’t lasted)?” and he realized it was Amartya Sen he was talking about. “We’re about the same age, you know. .”

“Harvard, I think. Though he seems to be everywhere at once. . In Oxford, in Cambridge, tomorrow at Jadavpur.”

They pondered briefly on how human beings at times seemed no more substantial than rumours. Suddenly, in an aside: “America’s one country I’ve never been to.”

“I don’t know if you’ve missed much. You must have seen Americans here — they go everywhere! Well, if you’ve seen one—” Interrupting himself, Jayojit thought back and said, “It’s warm there now: some places are even hotter than here.”

“I have some nieces and nephews there,” said Dr. Sen. “One in New York, another in a place called Mon — Montana.”

Jayojit narrowed his eyes, wondering if he might possibly know the people the doctor had mentioned. “Mm,” he said. “Big Sky country,” he concluded emphatically. “Montana — they have a bright blue sky out there. Emptiness.”

“My nephew’s a general surgeon there,” the doctor continued, incurious about what Jayojit thought of the vistas of the American interior. He glanced swiftly at his wristwatch and said: “A-are you about to go down — going out, maybe?”

“I was thinking of it,” said Jayojit. “It’s a bit hot, isn’t it?”

Dr. Sen smiled sadly and shook his head, as if at a regrettable piece of news which had only just been revealed to him. “It’s terribly hot!” They began to go down the stairs.

JAYOJIT AND AMALA had married eleven years ago; eleven years and seven months precisely. That was when that evening pleasantness had set in, the month of Hemanta on the Bengali calendar. They had been divorced at the end of the year before last in a bright, clean Midwestern summer. It hadn’t been an easy or even a civilized event; the court had ruled that Amala, who’d taken the child with her, would have full custody. His first reaction was that all was lost. Then he’d decided he must fight; not just his studied determination but his natural belligerence had guided him. He employed a new lawyer; “I’m sorry, Gary, but I have to think of other eventualities,” he’d said to the old one on the phone.

Hundreds of miles away, the Admiral quickly grasped the legal niceties. Examining the loopholes and details helped to lift him from the depression that he felt at almost all times during that period.

“But can it be done, though?” the Admiral had asked over the telephone at well past midnight — meaning moving the case to the Indian courts.

“Why not?” Jayojit had asked, out of breath with agitation. Their child was gone; six miles away, but further away than India. “If it hasn’t been done it will be now.” Pause; the roar of the long-distance line that swallowed voices and sometimes sent them back. “I’m an Indian citizen, aren’t I?”

Another deliberate pause; because if you interrupted the speaker the words cancelled each other out. You had to be sure the other person had finished. Sometimes there was an echo.

“But Bonny’s not,” the Admiral offered. “He’s not, is he?”

“He’s too small to be any kind of citizen,” Jayojit had said. “Anyway, we’re not talking about the son here, but the father. The father’s prerogative.”

It was at that time, the Admiral remembered, that the question of what it was to be an “Indian” had had to be addressed. It was not something that either Jayojit or Admiral Chatterjee had bothered about, except during moments of political crisis or significance, like a border conflict or elections, or some moment of mass celebration, when it seemed all right to mock “Indianness,” if only to differentiate oneself from a throng of people; but this was a legal matter.