Amit Chaudhuri - Real Time - Stories and a Reminiscence

A narrow, tiled, clean corridor, going past forty-six and forty-seven, led to the main door to forty-nine, which was open. Faint music emanated to the corridor, and a few people could be seen moving about in the hall. There was a jumble of slippers and sandals and shoes by the door, promiscuously heaped on one another. Mr. Mitra took off his with an impatient movement; Mrs. Mitra descended delicately from hers — they had small, two-inch heels.

Mr. Talukdar, who was standing in a white shirt and trousers talking to another couple and a man, excused himself from their company and came to the newly arrived couple. “Come in, come in,” he said to Mrs. Mitra. To Mr. Mitra he said nothing, but accepted the tuberoses that were now transferred to his arms. “Nilima’s there,” he said, indicating a woman who was sitting at the far side of the sitting room upon a mattress on the floor, an old woman near her. So saying, he went off slowly with the tuberoses in another direction.

A small crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, gleaming in daylight. Near where Nilima, Anjali’s mother, sat, a ceiling fan turned slowly. Some of the furniture had been cleared away for mats to be laid out on the floor, but some, including two armchairs and a divan, had been left where they were. On the sideboard was a Mickey Mouse — shaped pencil box, next to a few photographs and curios. A clock upon one of the shelves said it was eleven-twenty-five.

Mr. Talukdar was a tallish man, heavy, fair, clean-shaven. Most of his hair was grey, and thinning slightly. He’d held some sort of important position in an old British industrial company that had turned into a large public-sector concern a decade after independence: British Steel, renamed National Steel. He was now standing next to a television set, whose convex screen was dusty, and talking to someone.

Mr. Mitra seemed to remember that Mr. Talukdar had two sons in America, and that the sons had children. But Anjali had had no children, and that might have made things worse for her. He looked at a man singing a Brahmo sangeet on a harmonium in the middle of the room, attended by only a few listeners, and saw that it was someone he knew, an engineer at Larsen & Toubro.

The song stopped, and the sound of groups of people talking became more audible. The hubbub common to shraddh ceremonies was absent: people welcoming others as they came in, even the sense, and the conciliatory looks, of bereavement. Instead there was a sort of pointlessness, as people refused to acknowledge what did not quite have a definition. Mr. Mitra’s stomach growled.

He looked at his wife in the distance, the bun of hair prominent at the back of her head; she bent and said something to Nilima, Anjali’s mother. Suddenly there was a soft, whining sound that repeated itself, low but audible; it was the cordless phone. Mr. Talukdar stooped to pick it up from a chair and, distractedly looking out of the window, said “Hello” into the receiver, and then more words, nodding his head vigorously once, and gesturing with his hand. He walked a few steps with the cordless against his ear, gravitating towards a different group of people. Mr. Mitra realised that the tuberoses he’d brought had been placed on that side of the room, beside three or four other bouquets.

He felt bored; and he noticed a few others, too, some of whom he knew, looking out of place. Shraddh ceremonies weren’t right without their mixture of convivial pleasure and grief; and he couldn’t feel anything as complete as grief. He’d known Anjali slightly; how well do you know your wife’s distant relations, after all? He’d known more about her academic record, one or two charming anecdotes to do with her success at school, her decent first-class degree, and about her husband, Gautam Poddar, diversifying into new areas of business, than about her.

“Saab?”

Thank God! A man was standing before him with a platter of sandesh — he picked up one; it was small and soft; he took a tiny bite. It must be from Banchharam or Nepal Sweets; it had that texture. There was another man a little farther away, with a tray of Fanta and Coca-Cola. Mr. Mitra hesitated for a second and then walked towards the man. He groped for a bottle that was less cold than the others; he had a sore throat developing.

“Mr. Mitra!”

There was a man smiling widely at him, a half-empty Coke bottle with a straw in one hand.

“I hope you remember me; or do I need to introduce myself?”

“No, I don’t remember you; but I spoke to someone at the club just the other day who looks very like you, a Mr. Amiya Sarbadhikari,” said Mr. Mitra jovially, taking a sip of faintly chilled Fanta. A large painting of a middle-aged woman holding flowers faced them.

They talked equably of recent changes in their companies, catching up from where they’d left it in their last exchange; then to their children, and a brief disagreement about whether civil engineering had a future as a career today.

“Oh, I think so,” said Mr. Sarbadhikari, “certainly in the developing world, in the Middle East, if not in the West.” His Coke bottle was now almost empty; he held it symbolically, putting off finishing the dregs to a moment later. There was an uneasiness in their conversation, though, as if they were avoiding something; it was their being here they were avoiding. Of course, people never remembered the dead at shraddh ceremonies; they talked about other things; but that forgetfulness occurred effortlessly. In this case, the avoidance was strategic and self-conscious; the conversation tripped from subject to subject.

“Mr. Mitra, all this Coke has swollen my bladder,” said Sarbadhikari suddenly, “and, actually, from the moment I stepped in…”

From his manner it looked like he was familiar with Talukdar’s flat. Gathering the folds of his dhuti in one hand, he turned histrionically and padded off in the direction of a bathroom door. A child, the only one among the people who’d come, ran from one end of the hall to the other. There were a few people on the balcony; Mr. Mitra decided to join them.

“I told them,” a woman was saying to a companion, “this is no way to run a shop; if you don’t exchange a purchase, say so, but don’t sell damaged goods.”

He quietly put down the bottle of Fanta on the floor. There wasn’t much of a view; there was the wall, which ran towards the street you couldn’t see, and another five-storeyed building with little, pretty balconies. Below him was the porch to the left, and the driveway, which seemed quite close. A young woman, clearly not a maidservant, was hanging towels from the railing in one of the balconies opposite.

Did it happen here? He looked at the woman attach clips to another towel. Apparently those who always threaten to, don’t. Anjali had been living with her parents for a month after leaving her husband. She’d left him before, but this time she’d said her intentions were clear and final. There was a rumour that her parents had not been altogether sympathetic, and had been somewhat obtuse; but it’s easy to be lucid with hindsight. He was still hungry, and he looked back into the hall to see if he could spot the man with the sandesh. But he had temporarily disappeared. As he moved about exploratorily, he caught his wife’s eye and nodded at her as if to say, Yes, I’m coming, and, Yes, it’s been a waste of time.

Cautiously, he tried to trace, from memory, the route that he’d seen Sarbadhikari take about ten minutes ago. He found himself in a bedroom where the double bed had been covered neatly with a pink bedcover; he coughed loudly. He opened a door to what might be the bathroom and, once inside, closed it behind him again. As he urinated into the commode, he studied a box, printed with flowers, of Odomos room freshener kept above it; then he shivered involuntarily, and shrugged his shoulders. He had a vaguely unsatisfying feeling, as if the last half hour had lacked definition.