Amit Chaudhuri - A New World

She was really more interested in the other things, however, turning them over, scrutinizing them with a firm gaze, trying to make the imaginative leap, to see them through the eyes of the people Jayojit would give them to. From this arose an unarticulated thought within her, concerning what kind of friends he had, and what beauty they found in these Indian handicrafts. “Look at these, ma, they’re lovely,” said Jayojit, unfolding the cushion covers. A taste for regional handicrafts had developed in him since he’d begun to live abroad, and one day he’d begun to look at one table cloth, one cushion cover and another with new eyes, comparing, evaluating. His mother liked the bedspread in her quiet way, and was attempting to picture, in her mind’s eye, what it would look like in her son’s bedroom. “It’ll look very bright over there ,” she said at last. Jayojit refolded the cushion covers.

Bonny had picked up one of the brass birds, and was trying to make it fly.

“Put it back, Bonny,” said his father. “It’s not a toy.” Then he said to his mother, “This Cottage Industries is big, all right, but the Delhi one’s much bigger, isn’t it?”

“Oh, what are you saying, Joy,” a shadow passed over her face and she smiled reminiscently, “it’s about three times this one’s size.”

He remembered he’d overslept on one of those days last year when he’d had an appointment with his lawyer in the morning. It was a late summer’s day; dahlias in bloom, hawthorn, roses on the hedges. His neighbour was in the garden; he’d retired now, but was still a consultant to a few hospitals, and he lectured as well, and gave to charities; once or twice Jayojit had been startled to see a horse in the garden, and the doctor’s six-year-old granddaughter sitting upon it. As he came out on to the doorstep, the cheerful cardiologist said:

“Hi, Jay. Everything okay?” The suburb they were in was on an elevation, and a road dipped and descended towards the town. (“The second poshest area in Claremont,” Bonny’d surprised Jayojit by saying a month before his mother left with him; strange what children will pick up from adult talk.) From strategic vantage-points the little map of Claremont could be seen below, including Gary the lawyer’s five-storey office: Bernstein, Paretski and Smith; and then the surrounding country unfolding.

Jayojit had smiled and said:

“Everything’s fine, Leo.”

Leo’s life had arrived at some kind of a plateau, a flatness where there was only horizon, at least that’s what it looked like from the outside. Three marriages; numberless children and children’s children — thousands, millions of hearts repaired, and his own red with haemoglobin. Jayojit’s own lot, despite his assurance to Leo, had been like one of the quinine pills he’d had to swallow hastily during this visit to Calcutta. He liked talking to this large, red man; none of the chitter-chatter he heard in the universities; feminism, which he considered an intellectual plague (how many arguments he’d had when he’d voiced his views!); careers and conferences. Late in the afternoon, Jayojit got up to begin arranging things for the departure, including the brass birds he’d bought for his neighbour. He opened the cupboard doors, peering inside, taking out a few of his shirts, closing them again, his mind, like an insomniac’s in the repose of the afternoon, returning to odd bits of conversation, including a ridiculous discussion he’d found himself having with a Jewish colleague, one of those men who called themselves “feminist”, in which he’d argued vociferously that America had taken away the constraints of the institution of marriage but replaced them with nothing else. “We can’t live without constraints,” he’d said. “Even the — no, especially the free-market economy is held together by tiny rules more subtly graded than the caste system!”

Then, going into the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of water from a bottle that had been left in the pantry. It had a flat taste; it was water in appearance and name only — he opened the fridge and shook out a few cubes from the ice tray into the glass. He drank impatiently, as he did everything, as if he were using up the moment.

In the half-open fridge, into which he once more put the ice tray, shone the small light; he closed the door; when he was a boy, returning home for the summer, he’d wonder, as if it were a matter far more important than his studies, whether the light stayed on even after the door was closed, and, if so, what the fridge’s sealed but lit world was like in the inside. It was an old fridge — he coughed solitarily and supposed he could buy his parents a new one; maybe on his next visit, when things had settled down a little. The smells from today’s lunch’s leftovers had escaped the fridge, came faintly to him, reminding him of what he’d eaten not more than two hours ago. He’d seen the food, daal with a shadow fallen over it, the patient head of a pabdaa fish, its eye chilled in its socket, placed on the racks in small stainless steel bowls.

Stepping out, he saw his mother asleep, her face in the pillow, her arm around Bonny. The sight, for no particular reason, made him smile, as if he’d accidentally beheld an odd and funny sight. He himself, surgically halving his growing up, as if it were a living thing which could somehow be distributed democratically, between Ooty and wherever his parents happened to be, hadn’t had much chance to experience closeness.

Going out into the hall, he noticed something glinting on the table. Bending, he saw it was part of the counterfoil for one of his father’s medicines — this one was for high blood pressure, Enapril; he’d heard the name on his mother’s tongue; she pronounced it “Annapril,” abstractedly and in passing, as if it were some Christian woman’s name. He picked it up and threw it into the dustbin.

Jayojit’s father was snoring. It wasn’t a comfortable sound; it was an irregular wheezing, as if the Admiral had carried over some complaint to the world of his sleep. Near the verandah, Jayojit became conscious, for the first time, that the wall of heat had gone; it was still hot, no doubt, but the powerful heat which attended the verandah was absent. He saw now that it was actually raining, a spray-like drizzle that whirled in the air before it fell.

Before the sun went down, Jayojit and Bonny were standing in the verandah when Jayojit saw a kite through the grille. It had perched on a dripping pipe, its brown feathers catching the remaining sunlight; the sun journeyed behind it, towards the cricket fields of the club. “It’s an eagle, an eagle! I saw it another day, too!”

“That’s a kite,” said Jayojit, glancing down at his son’s head.

“It’s an eagle,” said Bonny. “I’ve seen them in San Diego.”

“It’s a kite,” said Jayojit again. “Not the kind of kites people fly. It’s a bird called a kite.”

“What are you two talking about?” asked Jayojit’s mother, standing in the hall. “I could hear your voices.”

He’d gone downstairs, and he ran into Dr. Sen.

“Out for a walk?” he said, ambling towards him.

The doctor’s complexion looked a shade darker than usual. He ran a hand over his forehead, disturbed, in an uncharacteristic, nervous gesture, a few tracings of hair on his bald head.

“For a walk. . heh — no, not at this time of the day,” he said, shaking his head and smiling. “Besides, you know, one can’t walk about in Calcutta these days. There are one or two places,” he waved around himself, as if delineating his set of choices, “not many.” He looked at Jayojit, smiled, beholding him with the eyes of one who, in the midst of change, can only offer a sort of continuity, and said, “No, I had come to see if I had any letters.” And he did have a few letters in his hand.