Amit Chaudhuri - Real Time - Stories and a Reminiscence

“What time’s Sinha-Roy’s dinner?” asked Mr. Gupta, glassyeyed, scratching his stubble as he cruised that morning down Marine Drive. In the office, he referred to Sinha-Roy as “sir” or “Mr. Sinha-Roy,” but in private he derived a careless, imperious pleasure from dropping the awed monosyllabic whisper of the first word or the ingratiating, lisping two syllables of the “Mr.” This was one of the small freedoms of “company life”: that, however it may have ingrained itself into you as a religion, you did not have to practise it at home. Driving down Marine Drive, Mr. Gupta was a free man; though only in a sense, because the car on whose steering wheel his hands rested was an accessory of the company’s, both a free-moving object that gave him the illusion of ownership and control, and an accomplice to employment.

“Seven-thirty,” said Mrs. Arati Gupta, brushing aside the filigree of hair that had blown across her face with the breeze. She was the less sharp but the more pragmatic, even the wiser, of the two. In a sense, she was the one behind the wheel, always had been, always would be, while he made the protestations and clamour of the engine. “But eight o’clock would be all right, don’t you think?” always seeking his agreement, if not permission, at the end of a suggestion.

The palm trees of Marine Drive rushed in the opposite direction, like a crowd that was running to meet someone. Only recently, Mrs. Gandhi had waved a wand — or was it a cane? — and nationalised all the banks, and substantially reduced foreign shareholdings in “private sector” companies. This was true of the private sector company, which manufactured paint, where Mr. Gupta worked, which recently had been made more “Indian” or true-blooded but whose status derived from the fact that it had once, not long ago, had the word “British” in its name (the word had now, with dignity, been dispensed with). The private sector found itself uneasily on the cusp of a world that had been left behind and which Mrs. Gandhi, reportedly, had set about changing.

“Yes, eight o’clock; I don’t want to go too early,” he said, taking a bend. Mrs. Gupta said, as if the thought had just come to her: “Should we take something for them?” There were, of course, no rules on this matter, of visiting your superior’s house on what was after all a social and civilised visit, no rules except when you realised that every form of interaction was permeated by company law, not the sort of company law that Mr. Gupta had studied laboriously what seemed not many years ago, but the kind that Arati Gupta had become an avid student of.

“I don’t know,” said her husband gruffly. “It’s not done. People will talk.” “People”; “them”: simple, collective pronouns and nouns that had, however, complex but exclusive gradations in the life they’d made their own. “People” was not only managers, heads of sections, and directors, but their wives, too. “Them” had the ability to take on different, often contesting, resonances: right now it conveyed, at once, both Mr. and Mrs. Sinha-Roy and the difference between them as individuals.

“What about the son, what about Amal,” said Mrs. Gupta tranquilly. “We should take him a little something.”

It was as if she were testing him; she liked teasing him at times.

“What about Amal!” he said, mimicking her. “He doesn’t need anything. Don’t be silly!” His face had a special vehemence of emotion that came into being when he knew he’d be called upon to display a fatherliness that he did not possess. Somehow, the boy — the idea of him, not even the boy himself — exhausted him more than anything else.

In the Sinha-Roys’ flat, the cook, a dark septuagenarian, woke up from a brief nap to finish frying the little patties he’d set aside for the afternoon. The driver rang the bell and came in holding a bouquet of flowers; and Mrs. Sinha-Roy, like a somnambulist in her housecoat, moved from dining table to living room and back again in the heat of the afternoon, distributing flowers from one vase to another.

The whole day seemed like an eternity to the boy, especially when holiday and party happened to coincide in a chance intermission. He had no homework he needed to attack immediately; instead he had this sense of a function, a role that had come to him out of nowhere, a calling that he was equal to.

By evening the guests and colleagues, before they left their houses, had begun to apply the finishing touches — aftershave lotion on the cheeks, the last fold of the sari smoothed till it seemed exactly in place. And, at home, like some unappeasable master of ceremonies, Amal tasted the savouries, which were either brought to him on a plate with a glass of cola, or which he himself chose at random.

The Guptas were, as it happened, the first to arrive; they must look suitably grateful, because they were to occupy this flat from the twenty-third of the month; they needed to put in an appearance before anyone else. On the way, Mrs. Gupta had bought herself a fragrant mogra from a girl and put it in her hair. The flat itself was on display; every preparatory movement had stopped, and the drawing room had a finished look about it, as if a work of art had reached its public, final version.

Gradually, the other guests began to trickle in, the doorbell was rung, and each couple greeted with varying degrees of surprise, recognition, and familial warmth. “Where’s Amal?” everyone wanted to know, as if the solution to this party lay not in its social hierarchies, or in the longer-term destinies it vaguely pointed to, but in where, and who, the boy was. Because the party, after all, was a serious business.

As the party moved on, and the evening darkened outside with the intermittent light of other buildings, Atul Gupta found himself, at nine o’clock, alone and moorless for a few minutes in the corridor, with a drink in his hand. He realised, with a sort of tentativeness that was rarely visible but had been reserved for his first days in the office, which had been naked then but was apparelled in decent clothes since, that the door not far away from him, which had been left slightly ajar and from which a bright light was shining, was the boy’s door. He saw his ambition and fear and curiosity had preceded him here and were waiting like a shadow outside it. He cleared his throat and, taking a few steps forward, knocked.

“Come in,” said a small voice from within. Mr. Gupta’s heart beat a little faster. He pushed the door by the handle; the beast, or god, or mystery, the company’s inmost secret, however you chose to view him, was sitting there at the edge of his bed, a glass of cola on the floor before him, a drawing book in his hand. This was the head of finance’s innermost sanctum, this was where his life and heart beat, and he, Assistant Company Secretary, must, against his own wishes, surrender and bow his head silently before it. On a bright red carpet lay, innocently, three or four dinky toys, including an overturned truck; stopping near it as if it might go off if he touched it, Mr. Gupta said:

“How are you, young man?” The boy turned to look at him; and Mr. Gupta flinched, as if his future, or what little he knew of it, had turned to look at him in that air-conditioned room and judged him; for these were not his boss’s eyes, but the eyes that, invisibly, ruled and governed his boss’s life. He had not known, before he’d begun, that company life concealed such mysteries; the Managing Director’s children were long grown up and lived abroad, in England. It was here, then, that, by default, all that was sweet and virginal and innocent about the company dwelt, a savage whose mind was far removed from adult reasoning and the laws that governed adult life.

“Hello, Uncle Atul,” said the boy, without much interest. “I’m fine, thank you.”