Amit Chaudhuri - A New World

“Give me the key, I’m going up,” she said.

She blinked as the boy dug into his pocket.

“What happened to mummy?” asked the boy as he handed the key over, as if “mummy” were a constant nuisance.

Play started again. There was a moment of hesitation after the game ended; then Jayojit went up to one of them and said, stammering courteously:

“I say. . can we have a few shots. . if you guys don’t mind — just for a few minutes.”

“I don’t mind, uncle,” the thinner boy said. “It’s okay, huh, Ajit?”

The boy, who’d voiced his exasperation about his mother not long ago, responded with an unequivocal gesture.

“Thanks, guys,” said Jayojit, looming over the two. “Here, Bonny, see what you can do with this.”

They, Bonny’s hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, played the simplest game, quite unlike the storm the other two had created; an uncomplicated give-and-take; Bonny’s small frame had agility, but was still to acquire discipline. It wasn’t a game, just an exchange of shots, measured and calculated. When either missed, they chased awkwardly after the ball and started again immediately. Everywhere the noise of children about their own breathless business surrounded them. After five minutes, Jayojit handed his racquet to one of the boys:

“I say, thanks, guys.”

“You’re welcome, uncle.” The boys changed sides now.

“Let’s take a small walk, and then we can go back,” said Jayojit.

There was a breeze; it seemed to have rained somewhere. A couple were in the compound, a lady in a chiffon sari and a man in white kurta and pyjamas beside her.

The moon, almost full, hung above this side of the building, staring at the balconies and clotheslines. No doubt this was significant in the almanac, a day of prayer in North India. His mother had told him only this morning, “They”— meaning the women in a neighbouring Marwari family, a mother and her teenage daughter—“come to our flat to look at the moon from the bedroom window. Every year. Because it’s not visible from their flat. They’re very polite about it. The girl says, ‘Aunty, do you mind? It’ll only take five minutes.’ ”

“But why?” Jayojit had asked, incredulous, noticing his father loitering, introspective, by a cupboard.

“I don’t know. There’s something auspicious about it.”

Now the moon looked like a copper platter that a Marwari girl might have held in her hands. Climbing back up the steps to the hall, they found the boys gone and the table-tennis table free.

“Baba,” said Bonny, stopping before the table, “we can play here now!” Visibly relieved that the others had gone.

“With what?” cried Jayojit. “We can use our hands, but we’ll have to dream up a ball.”

They walked towards the lift.

“Want to race me up the stairs?” asked Jayojit, turning. “It’s good exercise.”

But the lift had arrived; a woman emerged, holding a pomeranian by a leash. Bespectacled, she was about to pass Jayojit when she glanced at him and stopped.

“Mr. Chatterjee, isn’t it?” she asked sharply.

“Yes,” said Jayojit; he’d recognized her with an odd feeling of ambivalence. “How are you, Mrs. Gupta?”

“Quite well,” she replied, smiling as if she’d let slip a white lie. “Not too bad. Back again from England?”

The pomeranian strained at the leash, and traced part of a circle; its paws made a glassy sound. Bonny gazed at the dog; he didn’t like pomeranians, they were too perfect and toy-like.

“America, actually,” Jayojit said, apologetic; storing her words for future use in an anecdote.

“Oh! of course — (actually it’s all the same to us here)!” she confided without embarrassment. “But I much prefer the English accent, don’t you? My God, I don’t understand the American one at all!”

“No.” He added, “It’s strange to our ears,” speaking like one who hadn’t been to that country himself, but also being truthful.

“And how long have you been here?” she asked brightly.

“A month and a half. .” Time seemed to have passed more quickly in the last week than during the first half of the stay.

“One and a half months — in this weather! Really, what endurance you have, Mr. Chatterjee! Go back to America, go back to America!” She broke into a piercing laugh that seemed to have nothing to do with what she’d just said. Then, solicitously, “My niece in Cambridge is getting married,” she informed him.

The niece. Jayojit had never met her — he hardly knew Mrs. Gupta — but ever since she’d heard that he taught economics, she’d told him that she had a niece at Cambridge— and last time, with her husband looking on, had said, “But you have a Cambridge in Massachusetts, don’t you?” as if briefly noting, and then choosing to give no importance to, a slightly compromising fact — and then felt obliged to provide him with auntly bulletins of her progress in England whenever she met him, which, as it happened, was two or three times a year; the niece, to his chagrin, had become a spirit who inhabited their conversations.

“That’s very good! Congratulations!” Then, wondering why it should be the aunt who should be congratulated: “When?”

“January,” she said.

“Cold time of the year — if it’s in England.”

“Oh yes! I plan to go for the wedding.” The way she said this made it seem that the wedding was going to take place around the corner. “I’ll eat a lot and keep warm.” Then, as if she’d saved the most interesting nugget for the last, “She’s marrying an Englishman,” a little romantically. “Anyway,” she sang, “I must go now.” The leash in her hand became straight and taut. “Mimi’s urging me to go! I hope to see you again! Come on, Mimi,” she added in English, as if it were a language that came naturally with the pomeranian. She had altogether ignored his son, standing next to him.

When Jayojit had come to visit his parents a few years ago it was her husband, a man who’d been reduced by a stroke to shouting out his sentences, she’d been walking. A tall man in trousers and a bush shirt; part of the face had been paralysed, but it was the part that moved and spoke that looked disfigured. Although agitated, he took care to show that the agitation was directed at no one but himself, and, lifting his eyes, would manage to convey a smile. Mrs. Gupta had gone about with him, her refusal to display any outward sign of discomfiture so marked that it was that that became noticeable. On the three days of Puja celebration, the man moved about with a light in his eyes, in a bush shirt he must have struggled to put on himself; and Mrs. Gupta flitted between the sound of the drums and the children in new clothes. On Jayojit’s last visit, soon after he’d arrived, alone, he’d learnt, in an aside during the first serious discussions they’d had about his divorce, that the gentleman had died; he’d had no time to register the fact; but when he’d seen Mrs. Gupta again a few days later, she’d somehow seemed bereft without the hobbling man next to her.

“WHAT A COMMOTION!” said Dr. Sen, shaking his head.

Two men were repairing a pipe.

Jayojit said: “I hope this doesn’t mean that there won’t be any water! We had a whole morning without water a few days ago.”

“Oh, no no,” the doctor said. “I think this is a leakage. It’s one of the things we discuss on Saturday.”

One of the men jumped back at a gush of water.

“Yes. The monthly meeting of the committee,” said Dr. Sen. He said, like one reporting a scandal, “The plumbing’s old. It hasn’t been looked into properly even once. They just ignore the problem, as if that’ll make it go away.” Jayojit hadn’t seen him so excited before; the doctor didn’t explain who “they” were.