Amit Chaudhuri: A New World

Jayojit’s mother disappeared into the kitchen, while Vikram said pleadingly to his father, not very loud:

“Baba, I’m not hungry!” There was a faint American broadening in the child’s vowels.

“Baba, he’s right — we’ve been eating constantly on the plane — eating and sitting. Our body-clock’s gone com pletely awry!”

“Have a bath, then, you two,” said Jayojit’s father.

The heat had just begun to become intolerable — it was the middle of April. Outside, birds cried continuously, sharp, clear, obstinate cries. Shadows of windows and façades had settled everywhere upon parapets and bannisters.

“What we need,” said Jayojit, “is a glass of water. Of course,” a look of exaggerated caution appeared on his face, “as long as the water is boiled.”

“You’ve never drunk anything but boiled water since you were a child,” remonstrated his mother gently, returning with two glasses whose sides had already misted over. “And you know your father always drinks boiled water.”

“Still, it’s always good to check when you’re back!” said Jayojit, and drank the water urgently. “You know one could get dehydrated sitting on a plane for so long!” he said, putting down the glass. “These old glasses,” he murmured, looking at the glass quizzically.

Vikram drank some of the water slowly and then stopped as if he could drink no more, and his grandmother said, “Enough, shona?” The boy nodded seriously and gave her the glass, which she accepted as if it were a gift, with a smile.

“But tell me, Joy,” said his father, visibly irked and hot, “what made you take Bangladesh Biman of all airlines? Surely there are other, better airlines coming from America? I can’t believe that the best option is coming with all those Bangladeshis all the way from New York!”

“Baba,” said Jayojit, “the truth is there are a lot of airlines coming to Calcutta, all of them from third-rate East European countries — Rumanian, Yugoslav, Aeroflot of the defunct Soviet Union. KLM, Thai — I couldn’t get seats. Air India — if I have to tolerate rudeness, I’d rather it wasn’t from air hostesses who’ve got their jobs because of some reservation quota. At least in Bangladesh Biman, which doesn’t follow a single international regulation and isn’t even a member of the IATA, you have all these placid East Bengalis all around you, speaking to each other in dialect. Baba, I realized, sitting on that plane, why Bangladesh is the way it is: they’re all happy, and their marriages are working! Look at what happened to the Hindus who left.” His own parents were of East Bengali origin, the father coming from a land-owning family in Chittagong, the mother from Mymensingh. Apparently a few distant relatives had stayed on in the ancestral houses; a small businessman, a teacher — they were rarely in touch with them. “Besides, baba,” chuckled Jayojit, “the tickets are less expensive.”

“They’re certainly less expensive from here!” agreed the father, looking very concerned behind the beard, but in a way that suggested he was enjoying himself. “Every week tens of middle-class Bengalis who’ve been saving up all their lives queue up in the airport to travel by Bangladesh Biman — to visit their son or daughter in England, or to travel: you know the Bengali weakness for ‘bhraman’? Last week your Ranjit mesho and Dolly mashi, you remember them”—he looked reflective—“took a Biman flight to London.” The light glinted on his spectacles.

Jayojit pictured the couple in the check-in section of Calcutta airport, with its minuscule international air traffic and the rude officials behind the counters, Ranjit mesho and Dolly mashi, confused but not unhappy, with their suitcases, he looking like what he was, an executive whose career had begun well but not taken off, but who still believed in the system, happy to be going abroad, no matter that it was by Bangladesh Biman, and Dolly mashi, always in a printed sari, saving her good saris for who knows which day, accompanied by the same two suitcases they must always use when travelling.

“And the tickets are affordable—21,000 rupees,” said the Admiral in a strangely hurt way. “If you can tolerate Dhaka!” No reference was made to the fact that they had planned themselves to travel by Biman to America before the divorce had taken place; the unspoken reference to that possibility hung in the air like something that did not need to be said.

“How are their children, that reminds me?” asked Jayojit, pursuing a normal conversation. “Indra and what’s her name?”

“Oh, they’re all right,” said his father, a little disgusted, as if they couldn’t possibly be anything but “all right.” “One in England and one in America. . Indra is a scientist.”

“Always thought he would be.”

Vikram was in the balcony, looking at the potted plants which were placed half in sunlight and half in shadow; geometric shadows from the grille fell on the wall and the floor, giving a kind of visual relief; in his hand he held a small unfinished carton of pure orange juice he had taken out of his rucksack, whose dregs he sipped contentedly through a bent plastic straw whenever he stood still.

“But Bonny liked the Bangladesh Biman chicken curry!” said Jayojit. “Didn’t you, Bonny?”

The boy turned to look back, in surprise. Then, as if the words had reached him an instant late, he nodded.

Now Jayojit’s mother emerged again and said to Vikram:

“Come on, we are going to have nice Bengali fish for lunch. So let us have bath now.”

“All right, tamma,” said the boy, stepping out of the shade of the verandah into the drawing room.

He was her elder son’s only child — her only grandchild, born seven years ago. Last year he had written her a letter beginning, “Dear tamma. .,” and it should have been occasion for great pleasure, and it was, but that night she had lain thinking of what was happening, and the reasons why, and she had cried.

His blue t-shirt, which looked soiled and tired, and darkened at the sides, he took off and laid on the bed; divested of it, he looked surprisingly fresh, his upper body pale, he erect and ready for the bath as his grandmother took him into the bathroom. Barefoot now, he seemed to be enjoying walking on the cool floor of the flat, his toes curled a little at the thrill of the coolness.

“Come — I will bathe you,” said his grandmother, tying the aanchal of her sari around herself.

“No!” said the boy, in a voice that was small but clear. Shyly, he added, “Just show me how to work the shower.”

Although she felt a great urge to wash him, she restrained herself, for she sensed around him a wall of privacy he had grown up with — no fault of his, he was not even aware of it — which Jayojit did not have.

“Last time I bathed you — you remember?” she said. “We had so much fun!”

She advanced a few steps to the lever on the wall with the hot and cold water knobs on either side, which to the boy probably looked antiquated, and she said:

“I turn it like— this —and then I turn on the water like— this!” She was standing to the right, her left arm straining as she turned the knobs, and her two bangles, her iron wedding-bangle and a gold one, clashed against each other.

“Wooo!” said the boy as it rained on him, and he burst out laughing, a long series of delighted giggles. His grandmother, standing just outside the shower area, looked at him and smiled. His eyes and face were shut tightly. His arm reached out for the crevice in the wall where the soap was placed, and his hand closed around a new, waxy bar of Lux.

“I have kept clean towel for you, Bonny,” called out his grandmother, as if he were further away than he really was. He nodded vigorously, spitting out water, his hair plastered to his skull, his eyes still closed. “I’m going now,” she called again, and this time he did not respond. He had begun to play, quite independently, with the hot and cold water taps, adjusting them with his small hands. He hardly required any hot water; in April, the tanks became so hot that warm water flowed out of the cold water taps.