Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

Mayadebi wrote that she had not been able to visit their old house yet, because she had been very busy with one thing and another, and besides, the house they were living in now was a very long way from Jindabahar Lane. Also, as Indian diplomats their movements were restricted — as we would understand. But she had been making enquiries and she had had a stroke of good luck; she had discovered that one of the High Commission’s drivers knew someone who lived in their old house — a mechanic called Saifuddin who had set up a workshop inside their old courtyard.

A workshop! gasped my grandmother. Inside our courtyard! What’s become of the old jackfruit tree?

The driver had brought Saifuddin to see her. He was a nice man, very well spoken and polite; he was from Motihari in Bihar. He’d come to East Pakistan with nothing at all, other than a large family, and he managed to set up a thriving little business. The driver said he was one of the best mechanics in Dhaka.

She had asked Saifuddin about their old Jethamoshai, referring to him as Shri Goshtobihari Bose. He hadn’t understood who she was talking about at first; apparently they knew him as Ukil-babu because until very recently he had still been drafting wills and affidavits, and even going to the High Court once in a while. But now, Saifuddin had said, he was completely bed-ridden, and his mind was wandering a lot — he often didn’t recognise people he had known for years. Luckily for him, he was looked after by a family to whom he had given shelter years ago. But they were very poor — their only income was from a cycle-rickshaw. They probably wouldn’t be able to support the old man for very much longer. It was providential, Saifuddin had said, that they, his relatives, had come to Dhaka now, a part of God’s design. Perhaps now the old man would be able to spend his last days with his relatives, in peace and comfort, as he deserved.

So, wrote Mayadebi, my grandmother’s intuition had been right: it was clear that they would have to do something for the old man. But they could decide about that once they were together in Dhaka.

In the meanwhile, perhaps she could bring a little present for Saifuddin, since he had been so helpful — maybe a nice Indian sari for his wife.

My grandmother handed the letter around with an air of quiet, unsurprised triumph: she had known all along. But once everyone else was out of earshot, she shook me gleefully and cried: Oh I’m so glad Maya hasn’t been back to the old house yet — I didn’t want her to be the first.

Later that evening, she announced that she wanted me to spend the night in her room: she was already missing me, she said. I was hoping she would ask me to: I liked sharing her bed and listening to her stories. But tonight there was another, more serious matter at hand too. When I had her to myself, I had decided, I would go over all my instructions about the plane once again. I had an uneasy feeling she had not been listening the last time.

So, as soon as I saw her climbing into bed beside me, I started at the top of my list: did she remember about buckling her seat belt? And keeping an air-sickness bag close at hand? Not to speak of the parachutes under the pilot’s seat, did she remember? She laughed and told me to go to sleep, but I said no, I wouldn’t, not without a story. So she began on one of her Dhaka stories, one about the old house and the people who lived down the lane. But her voice trailed away slowly, and when she got to Kana-babu’s sweet-shop, she forgot all about me and climbed out of the mosquito-netted bed and drew her favourite armchair up to her window. When I fell asleep she was still there, staring out at the smudged blackness of the lake.

When I woke up, our house was already convulsed with the preparations for their departure: my mother was in the kitchen, supervising the packing of the three different kinds of shandesh we were sending with them; my grandmother was in a fever of excitement, choosing a sari for Saifuddin’s wife, locking her cupboards and making sure she’d taken all her medicines with her. Only May seemed to be untouched by the excitement. I couldn’t understand how she could sit in her room playing her recorder like that, as though it were an ordinary morning.

We left for Dum Dum airport at noon. By the time we arrived at Ballygunge Place to pick up Tridib my grandmother was giggling like a schoolgirl. She couldn’t believe she was really going to fly off into the sky.

At Dum Dum, after we had said our goodbyes and they had been swallowed into Immigration and Customs, we went up to the terrace on the roof to watch their plane take off. We had to wait half an hour before we saw them, three tiny figures on the tarmac. They knew we were watching and they walked towards the plane with all the shy self-consciousness of amateur actors making an entry on a big stage. When they reached the stairs that led up to their brand new Fokker Friendship aircraft, my grandmother turned and waved in our direction, her sari a white blur against the black tarmac. We waved back, although we knew she wouldn’t be able to see us. Then a hostess bowed them through a hatch-like door and they vanished from sight. But minutes later I saw a face appear in one of the windows, like a smudged cameo, and waved wildly at it, certain it was my grandmother. The door was slammed shut, the stairs were wheeled away, and the plane began to move. It turned slowly and trundled down the runway with an ungainly, waddling motion. I stopped waving: it was hard to believe that this graceless, plodding thing would actually have the temerity to thrust itself into the sky. It came to a wide apron, turned again, and pointed its nose down the runway. It was stationary for a long moment; its energy seemed to seep away. A hush fell over the airport. Then the propellers started up; in an instant they were spinning so fast they melted into the shimmer of the heat on the tarmac. I was still watching my grandmother’s window — it was the third from the door at the back. I was sure I could see her, smiling, waving into the glass. Then the whole plane shook as a shudder ran down the fuselage. It began to roll down the runway, engines screaming, its silver body flashing back the glare of the midday sun. Its gracelessness was gone; the power of the engines had given the long fuselage the lean muscular tautness of the neck of a heron in full flight. It was shooting down the runway now; my grandmother’s window lengthened into a long, white blur. Its nose lifted, very gently, and then, suddenly, unbelievably, the whole of its huge metal body was riding the sky.

As the plane circled above us, my mother allowed herself, at last, to breathe a long, deep sigh of relief: till that moment she had not really believed that my grandmother would really go to Dhaka.

My father sighed too, but in a different sort of way, and said: Yes, it’s a good thing they’ve gone.

There was something in his voice that made my mother ask: Why? Why particularly?

He scratched his ear and said: People say there’s going to be trouble here. I’m glad they’ve gone abroad — especially May — they’ll be far away from it over there.

What trouble? I asked.

My mother gave him a frown and a quick shake of the head, so he turned me around, pointed at the plane and said: Nothing. Nothing that you would understand.

We watched the plane until it disappeared over the horizon.

Years afterwards, Robi told me that the first thing my grandmother said to Mayadebi when they met at the airport was: Where’s Dhaka? I can’t see Dhaka.

I tried then to see Dhaka as she must have seen it that night, sitting by her window. But I hadn’t been to Dhaka, and in any case her Dhaka had long since vanished into the past. I had only her memories to go on, and those put together could give me only a faint, sepia-tinted picture of her other arrivals in Dhaka, decades ago: a picture in which I could see dimly in the middle distance, a black steam engine, puffing smoke, and a long line of carriages vanishing into the right-hand corner; in the foreground a deeply shaded platform, porters and vendors, and a crowd of relatives jostling to meet the new arrivals as they step out of their carriage; in the background, perhaps, a glimpse of the minarets of a mosque. I can guess at the outlines of the image that lived in her mind, but I have no inkling at all of the sounds and smells she remembered. Perhaps they were no different from those in any of the thousands of railway stations in the subcontinent. Perhaps, on the other hand, they consisted of some unique alchemical mixture of the sounds of the dialect and the smell of vast, mile-wide rivers, which alone had the power to bring upon her that comfortable lassitude which we call a sense of home-coming.