Amit Chaudhuri - A New World

Today’s rate in the Statesman , in a row of crowded figures, was Rs. 29.00 to a dollar. Like mercury in an imaginary thermometer, this number rose and fell and rose. He turned back to the first page to double-check the date and that it was indeed the day’s newspaper; then he returned to the page at the back to scan, painfully, once more for the figure he’d noted not long ago.

Jayojit left Bonny at home with his grandparents. “This is not a fun trip,” he said.

He was wearing a light pink twill shirt that had, somehow, been left untouched during this trip.

It had rained in the morning, a dark drama of distant noises that had spent itself after the dawn; wheels had slashed through the wet road and left marks that had still not dried. He did not have to search for a taxi; there was one on the main road; the driver, he noticed, had only one good eye, and was wearing thick spectacles behind which his eyes swam liquidly. “Old Court House Street,” Jayojit said, leaning back heavily. The driver nodded; he had a learned, superannuated look about him.

Old Court House Street he associated not with the American Express Bank, but with the Great Eastern Hotel, to which he’d been as a child of ten; they’d gone on someone’s birthday, probably his mother’s. At the time it wasn’t the celebrated catacomb it was now, but still a hotel where people stayed; but Jayojit’s picture of it came from word of mouth and family anecdote, because he actually had no memory of it or of the famous Chinese restaurant they were supposed to have gone to. In fact, he wasn’t even sure where his father was posted at the time and what they were doing in Calcutta.

“Take it through Lower Circular Road,” said Jayojit. Morning traffic faced them everywhere; to offer a route from a limited number of alternatives was not to be any more ensured of a quicker journey than to turn a few names in your head and mutter one hopefully.

They passed the Chief Justice’s bungalow, an island flanked by potted plants. Absent-mindedly, he felt the rim of the brown paper envelope he was holding in one hand and which he’d lifted from a pile of the Admiral’s correspondence; he’d put his passport and the traveller’s cheques inside it (must be careful not to lose it), he two kilograms lighter and a few shades unreally darker in the passport photograph taken in a booth in Claremont’s small downtown drug store three years ago, when the old passport in a drawer had suddenly expired and given up its ghost, and he had been at a loss about how to apply for a new one, and had daydreamed, or day-nightmared, of forms and registered-post slips.

They were stuck behind a bus; with every vibration, it sent a burst of exhaust fumes into the taxi. The driver seemed unperturbed; embracing the steering wheel with both hands, he seemed to be staring at the advertisement for a cooking oil on the back of the bus. He inhaled the air which absorbed the exhaust as soon as it had threatened to darken it.

Above the buildings, one behind the other, Eveready battery, Sonodyne television videos, etched against a net-like background which would begin to glow at twilight. Obediently, as if he’d been commanded to, he read the messages. There was a large Asian Paints sign, already heralding the Pujas, which this year would begin in late September. Two large eyes, presumably Durga’s, filled the hoarding, and the message, Celebrate With Asian Paints.

“Traffic today,” said the driver.

There was a pause. At the driver’s ironic observation, the other noises receded accommodatingly, and the driver’s voice somehow grew louder than the orchestral background of engines.

“Yes,” Jayojit said, lamely. He never knew what to do when someone spoke to him uninvited. His self-confidence actually hindered him when he was asked to interact with a person well outside his social sphere. Then, against his better judgement, although he knew the question was as rhetorical as the driver’s gambit, added, “Always like this in the morning?”

“Much more,” said the driver in broken Bengali. “Let a drop of rain fall and you will see what happens.” For good measure, he appended the generalization, neither turning back nor looking at the rear-view mirror, “Chowringhee not good road.”

Passing the Chief Justice’s bungalow had reminded Jayojit of Amala’s father; it was both surprising and fortunate that they hadn’t run into each other since the divorce. They’d had many common friends, moved in the same circles. . Indeed, both his father and Amala’s were on first-name terms with the Chief Justice. By the time of the marriage, Jayojit had a good relationship going with Mr. Chakroborty; so that, at the time of the ceremony (Mr. Chakroborty bare-chested and dhoti-clad), they’d exchanged a smile at the start and the man had shrugged his shoulders, as if they were two proud brahmins enacting but tolerantly disowning the rigmarole of Hindu ceremony. Jayojit had attended the wedding something like a tourist; he was one of those who had no time for tradition, but liked, even in a sentimental way, colour and noise; so he’d reacted to the smoke and fuss of ritual with the irritation of a visitor in a traffic-jam, but had said, with genuine delight, “Absolutely wonderful: Bismillah Khan!” when he’d heard the sound of the shehnai. Last time Jayojit had heard — he couldn’t remember from whom — that Amala’s father had become a lawyer at the Supreme Court and was posted at Delhi. Amala’s father was quite a bit younger than Jayojit’s — probably twelve or thirteen years — a man whose family had settled in these parts for generations. Amala’s father had eventually moved out of the ancestral house in Tollygunge; Jayojit had been more than once to the two-storeyed house in Jodhpur Park the man had constructed for his own family, the ground floor divided into a sitting room and a study; on the first floor were the bedrooms, bookshelves, and dining room.

But this time, Jayojit hadn’t been in that area even once. He could never, anyway, distinguish one lane from another in Jodhpur Park, nor make any sense of the way the houses were hurriedly, almost frantically, numbered, as if the planner, when conceiving of this serene and perfectly pleasant area, had had a train to catch.

A horn blew near his ear. “Saala!” whispered the driver, and wrenched the gear; it’s these elderly ones that are the most violent, thought Jayojit in surprise. The envelope rested in his left hand; he moved it to his lap.

Outside the Express building, he parted with a rupee coin to a boy of twelve or thirteen. On the first floor, it was cool, as if he’d climbed the stairs to mountainous Tibet, or found himself near Shangri-La. But he had a faint premonition and a memory of the country he’d come from not long ago. There wasn’t much of a queue; three people, who had the air of harmless scavenging birds about them, and must therefore be travel agents, and the back of a European’s head, fine, pale gold. A bearded Bengali sitting on the sofa with his daughter. Something about the colour of her skin, milky-pale, next to her father’s light brown, suggested her mother was European. He turned from them. Jayojit looked about until his eyes found what they were seeking; the buying rate on the board: Rs. 29.30 to the dollar — thirty paise more than what the Statesman , in its more conservative speculation, had promised.

“HE DOESN’T LIKE FISH,” said Mrs. Chatterjee. She had a martyred look.

“Well, I’ve had my fill of fish,” said Jayojit, patting his stomach.

“You don’t feel hungry when it’s hot,” said Bonny, struggling to emphasize every important word.

The Admiral’s hair was lifted by the breeze. “It’s a lovely time of the year,” he said.