Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

A trunk call from another city was a very exciting matter: a kind of minor miracle, but also cause for anxiety until one found out whether the news was good or bad. I ran up the stairs so fast that when I got to her room I was too breathless to explain. Instead I simply grabbed her hand and dragged her down the stairs.

My parents and I hovered around as she stuck a trembling finger in one ear and raised the instrument to the other. We heard her say: Yes, yes, I don’t know, I can’t make up my mind, when are you leaving? There was a short pause as she listened to Mayadebi. Then, at the top of her voice, she began to explain that their uncle was still alive, still living, in Dhaka, in their old house; that she, Maya, must go and look him up as soon as she reached Dhaka, something had to be done about bringing him to India … She ran out of breath and listened again, for a bit. I don’t know, she said in response to a question. No, really, I can’t decide — it’s not for myself, I’m worrying about Jethamoshai. Then again she listened, smiling now, and at last she said: All right, I’ll come, I give you my word.

Mayadebi, the Shaheb and Robi had flown into Delhi last week, she explained to my parents after she had put the phone down. They were leaving for Dhaka a couple of days later — they weren’t going to be able to stop in Calcutta — they didn’t have enough time.

But are you going to Dhaka too? my father said. That’s the important thing.

My grandmother shrugged helplessly. What else can I do? she said. It’s out of my hands now; everything seems to be pointing in that direction.

When will you go then?

If I go, she said, it will have to be in January next year. I must give them some time to settle down in their new house.

A few weeks later, at dinner, my father, grinning hugely, pushed an envelope across the table to my grandmother. That’s for you, he said.

What is it? she said, eyeing it suspiciously.

Go on, he said. Have a look.

She picked it up, opened the flap and peered into it. I can’t tell, she said. What is it?

My father burst into laughter. It’s your plane ticket, he said. For Dhaka — for the third of January, 1964.

That night, for the first time in months, my grandmother seemed really excited. When I went up to see her, before going to bed, I found her pacing around the room, her face flushed, her eyes shining. I was delighted. It was the first time in my eleven-year-old life that she had presented me with a response that I could fully understand — since I had never been on a plane myself, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to me that the prospect of her first flight should fill her with excitement. But I couldn’t help worrying about her too, for I also knew that, unlike me, she was totally ignorant about aeroplanes, and before I fell asleep that night I resolved that I would make sure that she was properly prepared before she left. But soon enough it was apparent to me that it wasn’t going to be easy to educate her: I could tell from the direction of the questions she asked my father that, left to herself, she would learn nothing about aeroplanes.

For instance, one evening when we were sitting out in the garden she wanted to know whether she would be able to see the border between India and East Pakistan from the plane. When my father laughed and said, why, did she really think the border was a long black line with green on one side and scarlet on the other, like it was in a school atlas, she was not so much offended as puzzled.

No, that wasn’t what I meant, she said. Of course not. But surely there’s something — trenches perhaps, or soldiers, or guns pointing at each other, or even just barren strips of land. Don’t they call it no-man’s land?

My father was already an experienced traveller. He burst out laughing and said: No, you won’t be able to see anything except clouds and perhaps, if you’re lucky, some green fields.

His laughter nettled her. Be serious, she snapped. Don’t talk to me as though I were a secretary in your office.

Now it was his turn to be offended: it upset him when she spoke sharply to him within my hearing.

That’s all I can tell you, he said. That’s all there is.

My grandmother thought this over for a while, and then she said: But if there aren’t any trenches or anything, how are people to know? I mean, where’s the difference then? And if there’s no difference, both sides will be the same; it’ll be just like it used to be before, when we used to catch a train in Dhaka and get off in Calcutta the next day without anybody stopping us. What was it all for then — Partition and all the killing and everything — if there isn’t something in between?

I don’t know what you expect, Ma, my father retorted in exasperation. It’s not as though you’re flying over the Himalayas into China. This is the modern world. The border isn’t on the frontier: it’s right inside the airport. You’ll see. You’ll cross it when you have to fill in all those disembarkation cards and things.

My grandmother shifted nervously in her chair. What forms? she said. What do they want to know about on those forms?

My father scratched his forehead. Let me see, he said. They want your nationality, your date of birth, place of birth, that kind of thing.

My grandmother’s eyes widened and she slumped back in her chair.

What’s the matter? my father said in alarm.

With an effort she sat up straight again and smoothed back her hair. Nothing, she said, shaking her head. Nothing at all.

I could see then that she was going to end up in a hopeless mess, so I took it upon myself to ask my father for all the essential information about flying and aeroplanes that I thought she ought to have at her command — I was sure, for example, that she would roll the windows down in midair unless I warned her not to.

It was not till many years later that I realised it had suddenly occurred to her then that she would have to fill in ‘Dhaka’ as her place of birth on that form, and that the prospect of this had worried her in the same way that dirty schoolbooks worried her — because she liked things to be neat and in place — and at that moment she had not been able quite to understand how her place of birth had come to be so messily at odds with her nationality.

My father could see that she was worrying over something. But Ma, he said, teasing her; why are you so worried about this little journey? You’ve been travelling between countries for years. Don’t you remember — all those trips you made in and out of Burma?

Oh that , my grandmother laughed. It wasn’t the same thing. There weren’t any forms or anything, and anyway travelling was so easy then. I could come home to Dhaka whenever I wanted.

I jumped to my feet, delighted at having caught her out — she, who’d been a schoolmistress for twenty-seven years.

Tha’mma, Tha’mma! I cried. How could you have ‘come’ home to Dhaka? You don’t know the difference between coming and going!

I teased her with that phrase for years afterwards. If she happened to say she was going to teach me Bengali grammar, for example, I would laugh and say: But Tha’mma, how can you teach me grammar? You don’t know the difference between coming and going. Eventually the phrase passed on to the whole family and became a part of its secret lore; a barb in that fence we built to shut ourselves off from others. So, for instance, when we were in our teens, often, when Ila was in Calcutta and we happened to meet an acquaintance who asked: When are you going back to London? we would launch into a kind of patter: But she has to go to Calcutta first; Not if I’m coming to London; Nor if you’re coming to Calcutta … And at the end of it, sobbing hysterically with a laughter which must have seemed as affected as it was inexplicable to those who heard it, I would say: You see, in our family we don’t know whether we’re coming or going — it’s all my grandmother’s fault. But, of course, the fault wasn’t hers at all: it lay in language. Every language assumes a centrality, a fixed and settled point to go away from and come back to, and what my grandmother was looking for was a word for a journey which was not a coming or a going at all; a journey that was a search for precisely that fixed point which permits the proper use of verbs of movement.