Amit Chaudhuri - Real Time - Stories and a Reminiscence

“May I sit down?” said Mr. Gupta, smiling, but feeling as if he were straining against a hidden door that wouldn’t open.

“Yes, Uncle,” said Amal, glumly preparing for a conversation. The man sat at the edge of the bed, as if he’d been told to by a wave of the hand. The company itself had never been so perfunctory with him.

“Nice room you have,” he said, uttering a truth in a hapless way to make it sound like a lie. When, in the past, he’d presented his reports and the relevant taxation figures to his superiors, even the worst-compiled of them had more conviction than his platitude. The question that short-sighted politicians and bureaucrats had been asking of companies such as his — was it worth it? — the toothpaste, the colas, the enamel paint, the butter — was one he suddenly found asking himself. He picked up a dinky toy and put it down again.

The boy said nothing; then, moving his body towards Mr. Gupta, handed him the large drawing book he had in his hands.

“I drew these pictures today,” he said quietly, without modesty but without bravado, either.

“Oh, that’s nice!” said Mr. Gupta, finding it easier to lie as time wore on, staring at the clumsy figures in blue and yellow as if they were some sort of cipher, or somehow part of that other, more recalcitrant code he was trying to interpret. He bent his head, almost submissively, and said, “What’s this?”

He looked very gravely at a misshapen green creature, obviously an animal in the early days of its evolution, with what looked like rain falling behind it. It was as if the creature had floated out of nowhere into his immediate vision.

“That’s a horse,” said the boy, simply. “That’s the sky,” pointing to the crowded blue strokes. The man nodded slowly like one who, without realising it, had been made more knowledgeable, as indeed he had; what had seemed like clouds in his confused, self-created landscape, massed and obfuscating, were resolving themselves into ordinary shapes and forms.

Not finished, he noted a scarecrow-like figure with large eyes. Cheerfully, as if he were now more adept at this game, he asked:

“What’s this?” The boy picked up the tepid cola from the floor and sipped it as the man respectfully waited for an answer.

“That’s baba,” the boy revealed casually. Mr. Gupta started; he felt a secret had been revealed to him that no one else in the company knew. So this was how his father, Gupta’s own boss, appeared in the eyes of what was hidden, what lay at the source of questions and solutions that he would not be able to understand. Quickly he asked, still struggling to put his impulses into words:

“Any pictures of you? Or Ma? Or your friends — your best friend?” The boy closed the drawing book restlessly; Mr. Gupta feared his interview was going to be cut short. The sound of the air conditioner grew in its confidential presence. But he must continue; having been drawn in, he now felt excluded, as if a promise of something, something concrete, had been suggested to him, and immediately withdrawn. Where was he to go now? And if he did not go on, it would not be the boy, or the company, but himself he would be left to blame. In the end, you became your own accuser.

Not the boy, but a warm breath of air from the corridor interrupted him, as the door opened farther and Mrs. Sinha-Roy said cheerfully:

“Amal, where have you been? Mrs. Mehra wants to see you, and there are others waiting for you outside.” Mr. Gupta turned to see Mrs. Sinha-Roy, resplendent in her pink Parsi sari, at the door, and Mrs. Mehra, large and solid and smiling behind her, one of the overhead lights shining in her eyes. He knew then that all his years of hard work and preparation and dissembling and dreaming would get him no further than where he was.

“I was talking to Uncle Atul,” said the boy, as if this self-evident fact needed his witness to bring it to conclusion.

I AM BEING PREPAREDfor a sacrifice. This honour has bowed my head, above all the honours that people might give me. I walk in fear and humility, not quite following the significance of my function.

People are not only nice to me; they are tender with me. They are waiting for the big day to arrive. They have started constructing their shrines, making their preparations. Whenever I walk into the club, people stop eating and give me a second look; it’s as if they realize their food’s a shadow in comparison to the sanctity of my blood, my meat.

The other day I was sitting in the club with an old friend, someone close to my father’s age who has known me for years. He was in the navy blue suit he always prefers to wear, and there were chop suey and two bowls of clear soup before us. We were bent, absorbed, over our bowls of soup, and my friend, Mr. Dastur, asked me how my little one was doing.

“Oh, he’s fine,” I said. “He’s been going to school for a year now.” Mr. Dastur has never really been interested in small talk, although we make nothing but small talk, and he called out distractedly to a waiter to bring him some chili sauce.

“My grandson’s in the fifth standard,” he said. “He’s turning out to be a real smart chhokra.” Suddenly a look came to his eyes, not the kind of look he’d had when he was calling for the waiter, but an untranslatable look, something I’d rarely seen in his eyes, something that went to the very depths of his being.

“You know,” he said, looking at his soup, “you’ve surprised us all. I never thought, when you were a child, that…” I shook my head, not knowing what to say. There are some things human beings are still not articulate about; not even I, although my profession’s connected with words.

At first, I didn’t quite know. I didn’t know why people were nice to me, why they came and shook my hand and wanted to listen to my every word. I was interviewed by various newspapers; sometimes I’d be woken out of sleep by the sound of the phone ringing, not knowing, in my semi-awake startlement, what it all meant, as if my mind were still reluctant to emerge from the dream it was having, or had begun, without effort, to confuse dream and reality. In my daytime world, I was invited everywhere; everyone recognised me as soon as I walked in, and their voices took on a different kind of tone, their faces hovered between awe and inscrutability. Consuls and ambassadors invited me to their houses; they fed me the best food; when I went to a new city, I was kept in the most elegant hotels. Gradually, one day, or in the course of a number of days, it dawned on me — I don’t remember who told me — that I was being prepared for the sacrifice, that I’d become involved with something much bigger than I could understand, that my life had become, in some way, connected to the nebulous common good and its continuing life.

I am truly privileged. Over the centuries known to man, right from time’s consciousness, from the dawning of light on rudimentary societies, there were a few who were chosen. They didn’t lead the life that “normal” people do; they were set apart from others, pampered, worshipped. Their long preparation was always a mystery. Their clan’s, or tribe’s, dreams and hopes — something more than dreams and hopes, something I still find difficult to express — became theirs; their passing and return were celebrated in shrines, as they are now in newspapers. So it was then; so it is now.

I have begun my preparation. I had begun it even when I was not, could not be, altogether conscious of doing so, and continue it even when I believe I am immersed in other things. Long before the actual day arrives, you begin the sacrifice, you hand over your life, you allow bits and pieces of yourself to be taken from you. At the same time, you are loved, not for what you are (and what are you, anyway, what were you before all this began?) but for what you can give, and the immense gift you will bestow on everyone in the future. That day has not yet come. In the meanwhile, in the last, extraordinary days of my preparation, I accept, with good grace and humility, the curiosity and reverence that others direct towards me. There are a few who spit on me, because they think I am not worthy.