Amit Chaudhuri - A New World

“You want to leave the tooth for tamma?” called Jayojit from behind the paper.

“Tamma,” asked Bonny, “are all dadu’s teeth real ?”

“All are not real,” said his grandmother, watering the hushed flat-leafed plant, “but some of them are real.”

“Like, he doesn’t put them in a glass ?”

“No, shona,” said his grandmother.

Maya came at about half-past ten and covered the bed in Jayojit’s room with a Gujarati bedspread.

“Maya,” Jayojit said, turning to her, “I’m leaving this evening. I’ve left your bakshish with ma.”

“When will you come back again?” she asked, with such innocence, as if he were going on a pleasure trip and she were as ignorant of this family’s recent history as they were of hers.

“Ei — next year,” he said, looking back into the suitcase. He didn’t want a conversation now; he’d withdrawn into his private sphere where he meditated on a future that he didn’t expect, or hadn’t wanted, to confront. Turning his face towards her again, he instructed her, “Work properly when we’re away, and look after ma.”

His mother had complained to him again that every few days Maya pleaded absence from work, either because of some obscure excuse to do with the weather or the children’s health, or because one of the innumerable local gods that presided over the poor — kitchen god, fertility god — had a Puja imminent and must be appeased. Given that his mother was exaggerating, he had noticed, in a dream-like way, Maya’s impenetrable absences, and sensed that the laws governing her life were other than those that pertained to what he called “ordinary” life.

Unmoved, Maya declared:

“Chhoto babu will be taller when he comes next time. He won’t remember me.”

And I’ll have a larger paunch, and you may not be in this job any more, thought Jayojit.

For lunch, they ate the parshe they’d had the previous night. Jayojit’s mother had had Maya buy a packet of sandesh from a sweet shop. “I know you like these,” she said. “Take them with you. You or Bonny might want to eat one at the airport,” she added. “For God’s sake,” said the Admiral in English, “don’t bother him with trivial things at this moment!”

“No, ma’s quite right,” said Jayojit. “I do like sandesh. But there are customs officials at JFK who always keep an eye open for foreign-looking food, even fruit — you know, mangoes, custard-apples.”

“But these are harmless, Joy,” said his mother. “They’re unadulterated and good for you. Doctors prescribe them to their patients.”

“True,” said the Admiral, speaking from somewhere else.

“What will I do with these then?” she asked.

“Why — you and baba eat them! Have them with tea!” he said. “I’ll eat one now,” he said, and bit into a sandesh himself.

The Admiral abnegated the world and stole an hour-long nap, Jayojit’s frequent conversations with his mother failing to wake him. By three o’clock, Bonny was dressed, and his pale feet, which had often padded about naked inside the flat, were hidden away inside socks and sneakers.

“I’m not gonna sleep tonight on the plane,” he warned his father. “I’ll watch the movie.”

“Of course you will,” said Jayojit; he was still in his shorts and sandals, as if he, at the last moment, had decided to stay back, or he were travelling to Barbados, and all he needed was a camera. “Have you picked up your dinosaurs?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your cars?” What about your books?”

“I dumped them in the suitcase,” he said. “But I want to take one with me, baba.”

“Okay. I’ll put it in my bag,” said Jayojit. “All right?”

There was a groan from the bedroom; the Admiral had got up and realized what time it was. He slipped his large feet into his sandals and stumbled to the bathroom to wash his face. Meanwhile, Jayojit let the cover of the suitcase flop shut; and once more stood face to face with the tartan design against the blue background. He zipped it shut.

He whistled in the bath — he had obdurate dry hair, which didn’t require frequent washing, hair peppered with a grey that seemed to be increasing almost daily. This metallic grey had come over him imperceptibly, and much fascinated his son, and pained his mother. Coming out of the bathroom, he said, buttoning his shirt, “Fine: we’re ready to leave. Where’s Bonny?” Then, seeing the ragged heap of his old clothes — shirt, underwear, vest — he said “Damn!’ and had to bend down to open the suitcase again. Pressing them into a small bundle, he pushed them to one side, next to a much-perused copy of his book, Ethical Parameters in Development . The clothes passed like a cloud over the title. His laptop rested against his shoulder bag.

The Admiral had changed into another of his white shirts; hair carefully combed, he lumbered into the sitting room; he sat there as if he were a guest; coughed a couple of times, and glanced at his grandson in the verandah. Jayojit’s mother had worn a starched tangail, and fastened her hair with a large clip. Jayojit dragged out the suitcase to the front door; it seemed to possess suddenly, after months of invisibility, a stubbornness and independence. “Oof! It feels heavier than when we came here,” said Jayojit. To Bonny, he called, “We’re leaving!” Bonny took his eyes away from the bit of the lane he was watching and walked towards them.

Once they were downstairs, they were noted, without much interest, by a few schoolchildren returning home, in blue and white uniform, and probably commented upon.

“Right,” said Jayojit, “I’m off to look for a taxi — only hope I can find one that isn’t falling apart!” He strode towards the lane, followed purposefully by Bonny; his parents waited on the steps, the Admiral squinting through his bifocals.

They returned a few minutes later in a taxi; “There’s always one, thank God,” Jayojit said, getting out. A dog had begun to bark upstairs; not Mrs. Gupta’s pomeranian, but the Alsatian who lived on the first floor. The driver, a clean-shaven man in his early thirties, had looked after his vehicle well; the upholstery inside was clean, reflecting the sunlight, and the taxi’s black and yellow shone brightly; he lifted the suitcase with a sullen respect. There was a companion sitting in the front — a boy in his teens, who watched with sleepy interest as the driver hauled the suitcase to the rear. The back of the Ambassador seemed to expand to accommodate the dour-looking grandfather, the grandmother, Jayojit, who, for some reason, was talking constantly, and Bonny, who stood between his father’s legs, and when tired of doing so, sat down upon one of them.

As they turned into the main road and the building vanished from sight, the Admiral rolled down his window a little to allow a breeze that had reached the main road to run through his hair. He leaned back slightly.

“All right, baba?” asked Jayojit.

His father nodded. But they were caught in a traffic jam in front of Modern High School, the massed cars still as a catacomb. Bonny turned to his father and whispered:

“Baba, who’s that?”

A small cut-out of Hanuman, pasted to the bottom of the windshield, had caught his eye. Hanuman, above the two motionless wipers, was in mid-flight, holding a mountain above him: the Gandhamadan parbat.

“That’s Hanuman, the monkey god,” said Jayojit, balancing the laptop on one knee.

“You mean, like, he’s the god of the monkeys?”

“Well, yes, but let’s say that he’s a god who also happens to be a monkey,” said Jayojit.

“He must be real strong,” said Bonny, curling his lip and smiling knowingly.

A little later, as the traffic broke up and they turned into Park Circus, he asked his grandfather: