Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

Jaya was fascinated by the oil palms: clusters of yellowish-orange fruit hung from the stub-like trunks, each as big as a lamb. The air was very still and it seemed to have the texture of grease. Between the palms there were bird-houses elevated on poles. These were for owls, Ilongo explained: the oil-rich fruit attracted great quantities of rodents; the birds helped keep their numbers under control.

Then Morningside House appeared ahead. It was freshly painted and had a bright cheerful look: its roof and shutters were red, while the rest of the house was a pale lime-green. There were trucks and cars parked in front — under the porch and all along the driveway. People were bustling about all over the grounds.

‘The house seems very busy,’ Jaya said.

‘It is,’ said Ilongo. ‘I like to feel that it’s being put to good use. I and my family occupy just one part of it: the rest of it serves as the co-op’s office. I didn’t want the house to become a monument. It’s better this way: it serves a useful function.’

They drove round the house to the rear entrance. Mrs Alagappan, Ilongo’s wife was waiting for them. She was tall and grey-haired, dressed in a green silk sari. The two of them lived alone in their part of the house: their children were grown up, all of them ‘well settled and doing fine’. One of their daughters was in the civil service; another was a doctor; their son was a businessman, based in Singapore.

‘It’s just the two of us now.’

Every year, in the winter, they took a holiday on a cruise ship. The house was filled with mementoes of visits to South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji, Australia; there was a picture of the two of them dancing in a ship’s ballroom. She was in a silk sari; he in a grey safari suit.

Mrs Alagappan had prepared idli s and dosa s in anticipation of Jaya’s arrival. After lunch she was shown up to the guest room. She walked through the door and found herself facing the mountain through an open window. The clouds had cleared from the peak. On a wall beside the window there hung a photograph of the same view.

Jaya came to a dead stop, looking from the picture to the mountain and back. Ilongo was standing behind her. She turned to him. ‘Dato?’ she said. ‘Who took that picture?’

He smiled. ‘Who do you think?’

‘Who?’

‘Your uncle — Dinu.’

‘And do you have other photographs of his?’ ‘Yes — many. He left a huge collection here, with me. That’s why I wanted you to come. I thought he would have wanted you to have them. I’m getting old now, and I don’t want them to be forgotten. I wrote to Dinu to ask what I should do but I never heard back. .’

‘So you’re in touch with him then?’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that — but I had news of him once.’

‘When?’

‘Oh, it was a while ago now. .’

Some five years earlier, Ilongo said, the co-operative had decided to start a programme for migrant workers. Malaysia’s increasing prosperity had begun to draw many migrants from all over the region. Some of these workers were from Burma (or Myanmar as it was now called). It was not very difficult to cross clandestinely from Myanmar to Malaysia: the borders of the two countries were separated only by a few hundred miles of coastline. Among the Myanmarese migrants, there were some who’d been active in the democracy movement. They’d been driven underground after the crackdown of 1988 and had later decided to flee across the border. Quite by chance, Ilongo had met an activist of Indian origin — a young student who’d known Dinu well. He’d said that when he’d last heard of him, Dinu was living alone in Rangoon — Yangon as it was now called.

For over thirty years, Ilongo learnt, Dinu had been married to a well-known Burmese writer. His wife, Daw Thin Thin Aye, had been closely involved with the democracy movement. After the crackdown, both she and Dinu had been gaoled. They’d been let out after serving three years. But Daw Thin Thin Aye had contracted tuberculosis in prison and had died within a year of her release. That was four years ago, in 1992.

‘I asked if there was any way I could contact him,’ Ilongo said. ‘The boy told me it wouldn’t be easy — the junta has barred Dinu from having a phone or a fax. Even letters aren’t safe, but that was the only way, he said. So I wrote, but I never heard back. I suppose someone kept the letter.’

‘But you have an address for him then?’ Jaya said.

‘Yes.’ Ilongo reached into his pocket and took out a sheet of paper. ‘He has a small photo studio. Does portraits, wedding pictures, group photographs. That sort of thing. The address is for his studio: he lives right above it.’

He held the paper out to her and she took it. The sheet was smudged and crumpled. She peered at it closely, deciphering the letters. The first words that met her eyes were: ‘ The Glass Palace: Photo Studio .’

Afew months later, Jaya found herself walking down a quiet and relatively uncrowded street in one of the older parts of Yangon. The flagstones on the footpaths were buckled and broken and weeds were growing out of the cracks. The houses along the road had plaster walls, most of them patched and discoloured. She caught glimpses of courtyards with trees growing over the doors. It was mid-December, a clear, cool day. There was very little traffic; children were back from school, playing football on the road. Barred windows looked down on the street from either side: it occurred to Jaya that she was the only person in sight who was dressed in anything other than a longyi; women in saris were few, and trousers seemed to be worn almost exclusively by policemen, soldiers and men in uniform. She had the feeling that she was being observed by a great many eyes.

Jaya’s visa allowed her just one week in Myanmar. This seemed a very short time in which to find someone. What if Dinu were away, visiting friends, travelling? She had nightmare visions of waiting in a dingy hotel, in a place where she knew no one.

Earlier, at the airport in Calcutta, she had found herself exchanging glances with her fellow-passengers. They’d all been trying to sum each other up: why was he or she going to Yangon? What sort of business would take a person to Myanmar? All the passengers were Indians, people like herself; she could tell at a glance that they were going for exactly the same reason that she was: to look for relatives and to explore old family connections.

Jaya had gone to some trouble to get a window seat on the plane. She had been looking forward to comparing her experiences of the journey to Yangon with all the accounts she had heard over the years. But once she was seated, a sense of panic set in. If she were to find Dinu, what was the surety that he would be willing to talk to her? The more she thought of it the more the imponderables seemed to mount.

Now here she was, on a street that bore the same name as the one on the address. The numbering of the houses was very confusing. There were numerals and fractions and complicated alphabetical demarcations. Small doorways led into courtyards that proved to be alleys. She stopped to ask directions at a pharmacy. The man behind the counter looked at her piece of paper and pointed her to the adjoining house. She stepped out to find herself looking at a pair of street-level doors that led to the outer room of a large old-style house. Then she noticed a small, hand-painted sign, hanging above the doorway. Most of the lettering was in Burmese, but at the bottom, almost as an afterthought, there were a few words in English: The Glass Palace: Photo Studio.