Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

When Robi woke up on Thursday morning, he lay in bed for a long time listening carefully to the twittering of the sparrows in the mango tree, the buzz of the traffic on the road that led to the airport, the clanking of milkcans on a bicycle going slowly down their lane. He could not hear so much as an echo of a discordant note in that familiar medley of morning sounds. He got up and went to the window: if there was going to be trouble, he wanted to be the first to see it. He wasn’t very sure what ‘trouble’ was: there hadn’t been much of it in Canada or Romania, which were the only two places he had lived in that he could remember, apart from his boarding school in north India — and there wasn’t much trouble there either, at least not on their side of the walls.

The expedition to the old house depended on whether there were signs of trouble this morning or not. Of course, he didn’t care much whether they went or stayed at home to watch the ‘trouble’ — it would be exciting either way. But he had a feeling they would be going — despite the rumours, there hadn’t been any trouble in the last few days, and in the meanwhile Mashi had grown very impatient. At dinner last night his father had had to give in when she insisted; he had said, all right, they could go, but they would have to take one of the High Commission’s security guards with them.

Robi leant out of the window and looked down. The garden was bathed in the tranquil winter sunlight: he could see dragonflies’ wings glinting between the petals of the cannas and hollyhocks. Shading his eyes he looked down the road: Mr Haque their neighbour was out in his garden with a cup of tea, sniffing his roses as usual. No sign of anything that could be called trouble. Satisfied, he went down and announced to May and Tridib that everything was all right; they would be able to go after all.

Later, one of the details Robi remembered about that day was that my grandmother changed her sari twice before they left the house. She came down to breakfast wearing a plain but crisp white sari, and announced that she would like to leave as soon as possible. But when their Mercedes came back from the Chancery, with a security guard and a driver, she took a long look at herself, went upstairs, and came back a quarter of an hour later, dressed in a white sari with a green border. So now, ready to go at last, they got into the car. Then my grandmother exclaimed that she had forgotten the present she had brought for the mechanic’s wife and rushed into the house. But when she came back again, she was, dressed in a white sari with a red border. He remembered how his mother had laughed at her as she got into the car and said something about her being as anxious as a bride going home for the first time. He remembered too how she smiled back and retorted: You’ve got it wrong — I’m going home as a widow for the first time.

Robi scanned the streets as they drove through them, watching alertly for signs of ‘trouble’. But he was soon disappointed: at the New Market, for instance, all the shops were open and the streets were crowded, as usual, with people and cycle-rickshaws and cars. No one bothered to give their CD number-plated car so much as a second glance.

The driver pointed out the sights to my grandmother as they went by: the Plaza picture palace with a fifteen-foot hoarding of Ben Hur hanging outside, the Gulshan Palace Hotel, Ramna Race Course, and so on.

It’s all wonderful, she said. But where’s Dhaka?

Then, gradually, soon after they had crossed a bridge, the sights changed; the streets grew narrower and more crowded, the houses older, more dilapidated. My grandmother was alert now, sitting on the edge of her seat, looking out, sniffing the air. The car turned into a large, bustling square, and all of a sudden she gripped Mayadebi’s arm and cried out: Look, Shador-bajar, there’s the Royal Stationery, do you remember? Mayadebi threw an arm around her, and then, holding on to each other, laughing, brushing away tears, they explained to May that they had always shopped for textbooks there when they were schoolgirls. It had looked exactly the same then, Mayadebi said as they drove past the shop, except that the signboard had changed. But my grandmother wouldn’t allow even that. She had said fiercely: No, it’s the same signboard. I remember.

A few minutes later they turned into a narrow lane that was lined with shops on both sides. Now my grandmother didn’t know where to look, for suddenly the sights were falling into place like a stack of old photographs. She twisted and turned in her seat, pointing at everything: that’s where the boys used to play football, that’s where Shyam Lahiri used to live, that’s Rina’s house, I met her the other day in the park, that’s where Naresh-babu used to sit — behind the bars in that jewellery shop, sweeping up the gold dust with the hem of his dhoti …

The driver brought the car to a halt at the mouth of a narrow lane. Turning to Mayadebi, he pointed down the lane and said: That’s your house — that’s where Saifuddin has his workshop.

My grandmother, thrown into a sudden panic, began to protest. This couldn’t be it, she cried. It can’t be our lane, for where’s Kanababu’s sweet-shop? That shop over there is selling hammers and hardware: where’s the sweet-shop gone?

The driver rolled his hands sadly in the air and said: There’s no sweet-shop here; it’s all gone. Now there’s only this one.

Then, noticing a sudden movement, he flung his door open and darted off to chase away a boy who had tried to touch the star on the bonnet of the Mercedes. The boy melted back into a knot of young men and children who had gathered around the car. Eyeing them uneasily, the driver beckoned at the security guard and told him to watch the back of the car, while he watched the bonnet.

There! cried my grandmother, pointing down the lane. Look! Our house!

Its edges were blurred with moss, and banyan shoots were clinging to its crumbling silhouette, but the shape of the outline was exactly as she remembered it, large, welcoming and ungainly. My grandmother shut her eyes and would not move until Robi tugged at her hand and said: Let’s go and see it, come on.

But before they could go on, the driver came panting up to Mayadebi, whispered a few words to her, and ran back to the car. What did he say? Tridib asked her, but she was gazing at the house, smiling dreamily, and he had to ask her again before she answered: Oh, nothing — he wants us to come back quickly, in case there’s trouble.

They went into the lane with a crowd of curious children swarming after them. Most of them attached themselves to May. Robi could hear them whispering to each other about her, and one of them, a little girl, slipped her hand through hers.

They could see the house quite clearly now: wet saris fell from the terrace in wide gashes of colour, like spilt paint, and through the shutterless windows they could see soot-streaked walls, and the tops of mosquito-netted beds, and clothes hanging from nails. A small board hanging under one of the windows on the top floor said: Lutfullah Ismail, BA, MA (Patna), and offered his services for typing and shorthand.

Robi went on ahead, looked through the gateway and came running back. Motorcycles, he said in awe. Motorcycles everywhere.

It costs me no effort at all to imagine the look of amazed disbelief with which Mayadebi and my grandmother received this bit of news. They had known about the workshop, of course, but they hadn’t thought that it would be right there; not there, in that little stretch of garden where the two of them had so often sat wondering about the doings in their uncle’s upside-down house.

It can’t be true, said my grandmother. It must be a lie.

But then, at the gate, throwing up her arms to shield her eyes from a sunburst of blinding silver light, she saw that Robi had told her no more than the truth: the old portico had sprouted a tin shed that was shining in the blaze of a blowtorch as a man worked on a motorcycle mudguard. The patch of grass they had once called a garden was now pitted with pools of black oil and strewn with tyre-tubes and exhaust pipes.