Amit Chaudhuri - A New World

“Where — I don’t think you have put on weight,” protested his mother, returning from the kitchen with a cup of tea.

She could not know of his secret life in that continent, of driving down the motorway, going to the supermarket, filling up a trolley with things, his orphanhood and distance from his country and parents, and that of other people like him, wandering around the aisles of the supermarket in shorts, with wives, or perhaps alone, with the ex-wife somewhere completely else, running into each other and saying, “How are you? Still around?” His mother could not even imagine it. There was a South Indian couple, the Nairs, he had run into three times at the supermarket he shopped at. They had had an arranged marriage (he had gone back to India to marry her); he was dark, pleasantly blunt-nosed, bespectacled, and had a moustache; she was curly-haired, large-eyed, and dark. Nair had a degree in biochemistry, and worked as a marketing man in a pharmaceutical company. They had met only once socially; but, in the vegetable section of the supermarket, they had discovered each other with surprised exclamations again and again. He had learnt that, unsurprisingly, they were vegetarians. The first time they had met at the lunch party, Jayojit had been with his wife Amala; but, at the supermarket, he was already alone, and they, after the first occasion, had not asked about her: word got around so quickly among the network of Indians they would have known. Jayojit enjoyed Nair’s South Indian accent, its slow intimacy, and his wife wore slacks and a loose t-shirt and a large bindi on her forehead.

“And what did you do all morning?” said Jayojit to Bonny.

“He has been playing with his Jurassic Park rakkhosh,” said the boy’s grandmother. “All morning. . They were lying on the floor last night and I put them on the table. This morning, he showed them to his dadu.”

“You scared of them, tamma?” asked the boy.

“Naturally I am! They are two rakkhosh!”

“Tamma knows about Jurassic Park, but she hasn’t seen it,” explained Bonny to his father. “It came to Calcutta two months ago, baba. Isn’t that neat?”

There had, in fact, been great excitement in the city with the coming of the film; crowds of people outside Nandan cinema.

“Ma,” said Jayojit, looking up suddenly, “can I have a glass of water?”

“Of course, baba,” she said, rising. “I’ll bring it right now.”

This made him remember that his father had never called him “baba” as many Bengali fathers do their sons — the age-old, loving, inexplicable practice of fathers calling their sons “father”—but always called him Jayojit, and nothing else; bringing an element of formality into their relationship, and also, he supposed, a note of respect for him. But, on the other hand, Jayojit had remarked silently that he sometimes called Bonny “dadu,” as if he were allowing himself to be more paternal, more Bengali, with his grandson; perhaps, with Bonny’s birth, he had begun a new phase in his life — who can tell the exact changes that take place in people, which are possibly unknown to themselves? Till they die, people keep trying to innocently adjust to life.

Jayojit’s mother returned with a glass of water, a tumbler from the old set they used to get free from the Services. He drank the refrigerated water, which had caused a dew of condensation to form on the glass, gratefully.

“Aah,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Tea is all right, but it makes one feel hot in this climate. What one needs is gallons of cold water!”

His mother smiled.

“Where’s baba?” he asked.

“He’s gone to the bank, to settle some matters,” she said, and Jayojit recognized, with an inward smile, a touching and naive piousness in her tone, as if she were speaking of some mysterious but trusted god who knew his business — no matter if he were a god who had almost died of a stroke seven years ago.

“In this heat?” asked Jayojit. “Is that good for him?”

“He always goes to the bank once a week,” his mother said, again with that piousness that could not understand criticism. “He takes the bus.”

“Is that necessary?” asked Jayojit, genuinely concerned. “How are you financially?”

“God alone knows, these things I don’t understand,” she said reticently. “You must ask your baba.”

Bonny had gone off to one side of the sitting room, and was playing between the armchairs and the sofa. There was no real difference between the sitting and dining room; they were part of the same hall, and only an imaginary partition existed between the two. The architect had thrown the dining space on the side of the kitchen and the small corridor to the front door, a pleasant limbo or island with its dining table and chairs; while the hall was pushed into the interior, and was adjoined to the semi-outdoors of the verandah. Here, not far away from his father and grandmother, and fully in their sights, Bonny had become transformed into another being, making noises with his mouth and throat, indicating the propulsion and motion of some agent of locomotion — perhaps an aeroplane. As he wandered among the furniture, he imitated moments of vertigo and others of equilibrium and rest.

“Well, I’d better get up now,” Jayojit said. “There are things to do.”

He had begun to feel the first movements in his bowels, and was oddly grateful and relieved; he was always lost when jet-lag caused his body to skip its more basic functionings.

“Have another luchi, Joy!” said his mother. She picked up one from the last droopy ones that hadn’t puffed up properly. “There are many more.”

“Ha ha. . No, ma — there’s a limit to the luchis you can digest,” said Jayojit. Before he went into his room, he said, “Be careful, Bonny!”

The Admiral returned at half-past eleven, ringing the doorbell three times. When he came in, his beard was untidy and parts of his white shirt were dark with sweat and clung to his skin.

“Damn bank!” he said, walking towards his right to the bedroom. “Can’t make the scoundrels work — it’s these damn unions!”

He went inside the room without addressing his wife directly — he never spoke to her unless he had to — and, having put the papers inside, came out again after a minute. Still in his sweat-stained shirt, he switched on the fan and sat on the sofa in the sitting room with a newspaper.

“Is it really hot outside?” asked Bonny, standing by his grandfather’s right arm and waiting for an answer.

“Hot and dusty, dadu,” said his grandfather between breaths. “Hot and dusty.” He was still breathing hard, as if his heart were pumping and exercising in a way that it would if he were getting off a bus or still walking down the road.

He was a large man of medium height, and was overweight; though he hid his bulk from himself and others by wearing loose white bush shirts, it could nevertheless be seen, especially now when the shirt stuck to parts of him and revealed the heaviness of his contours. He was not uncomfortable with his body; it was part of his presence. Although doctors had told him to lose weight, he forgot their advice the moment they were out of earshot.

“Baba — you’re back!” said Jayojit, coming out of the room and padding towards his father in his rubber sandals. He looked large and cool. “How did it go?”

“It’s a miracle these banks work, and that any money flows through this state!” said the Admiral. “Everyone belongs to a trade union, and no one believes in service. You ask them a question, and they’re busy talking to each other about a cricket match or a relative’s wedding!” Used to being deferred to at home and at work, he had realized in his post-retirement years in Calcutta that his commanding presence was of no use at post offices and banks; in fact, the clerks seemed to sense he took his privileges for granted and resented it. At these places, he had to learn to tone down his voice, to wait patiently like everyone else in silence.