Amit Chaudhuri: Real Time: Stories and a Reminiscence

The first thing Bishu did was go back to Jagan’s room and open the door; the room was completely bare, except for sunlight and shadows coming through the window. Then he went upstairs, and Uma came out of the door and said, “Where were you? Mali was looking for you.” “Why he looking for me?” asked Bishu, stepping inside. Daal was boiling on the stove, and Priti was sitting on the floor and slapping it with her small hands. “How should I know? Is he an easy man to talk to? He just mumbled something and went off — I think dadababu wants to see you.”

Later, when Bishu met Mr. Banerjee in the sitting room inside his flat, he found the latter had already taken a decision.

“Bishu,” he said, “I asked you to bring me a good man. Did you know Jagan was stealing bicycles?”

Bishu wondered if he would lie, but he swallowed, and nothing would come out except what had really happened.

“One night, dadababu,” he said, “I sees bicycles. But I don’t asks Jagan, because after rains he has fever, and I don’t disturb him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Bishu?” asked Mr. Banerjee.

“Dadababu, I don’t see the bicycles again. I–I forgets them,” said Bishu. “I don’t realise…”

“This morning,” said Mr. Banerjee, “the police asked me if any of the servants were involved with that man. I could have told them your name, but I didn’t. But, taking into consideration what has happened, I don’t think I can keep you in this house any longer.”

Bishu was standing barefoot, his hands behind his back, staring at the floor. Then he said:

“Dadababu, I do not knows this man. When you tells me, ‘Get me good man,’ I tells Mejda, and he says: ‘I sends man from Khurda district, I knows him, he is from our village, he is good man.’ I not knows the man, dadababu.”

“Be that as it may, you should have been more careful,” said Mr. Banerjee. “I can keep you no longer.”

Bishu was silent. Then, looking at the floor, he said again:

“Dadababu, I works for seven years in this house, this is my first mistake. Please forgive me … I never gives you trouble before. Last year, you goes out of Calcutta for one month and didi alone in the house. If I thief, I could steal then from the house, but I does not steals anything. Please forgive me this time.”

“I can’t change my mind, Bishu,” said Mr. Banerjee. “You will have your full month’s salary and your notice.”

When Bishu got back to his room, he sat on the floor and repeated every detail to Uma; Uma listened silently, while Priti still sat nearby, absorbed, playing. He slapped his forehead with his hand, and said, “That serpent was always in our house, and I does not know it? Hai, what happened!” He could not even properly remember Jagan anymore, just the yellow check shirt and the dhoti he had worn on the day of arrival, and his ordinary, lined face, a face like so many others, of people struggling and arriving in this city and looking for work. “The man is a serpent! Quietly stealing bicycles, and I does not know! There was gun inside his trunk!” he said, as if he himself had seen it, which he now thought he had, so clear and vivid and treacherous it seemed to him. “Now, when I thinks of it, I never sees him in his room when I comes back at night — he must be doing all his dirty business at night!” Then he said, angry and hurt: “Dadababu blames me! I does nothing, but, for no reason, he tells me to go! No, I does not want this job!” The injustice of it shocked him. Uma could hear the cries of shaliks and mynahs and crows increasing with the afternoon. She felt sorry for Bishu, who was, after all, younger than she, and on whom the burden of his small family had fallen unexpectedly.

Evening was full of activity. Bishu went to his friends in the building at the end of the lane, South Apartments, which was even bigger and more impressive than Southern Gardens Flats — it had come up two years ago. He told his friends to see if there were any jobs available. It turned out that a Mr. Chatterjee in one of the flats needed a helper in the house, and one of Bishu’s friends took him to see the gentleman. Mr. Chatterjee saw Bishu and did not dislike what he saw; it appeared there might be a chance for a job. Meanwhile, Uma, carrying Priti in her arms, went to didimoni to tell her of what had happened. Didimoni was aghast. “But what will you do now?” she asked. “The worst that can happen is we will go to Manecktala where we used to pay rent for a room. That room is still there,” said Uma. Mr. Sengupta, didimoni’s husband, said: “Bishu doesn’t seem to be to blame. If it comes to that, I could have a word with Mr. Banerjee and ask him to reconsider his decision.” At the same time, he was not sure if interference in another’s affairs was wise unless absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, Uma went back reassured, and with a lightened heart.

The plans of the evening came, unsurprisingly, to nothing the next day. The police wanted to question the servants again, and Bishu and Uma took Priti and their few possessions and walked towards the main road, with its smoke and noise, to catch a bus to Manecktala. Priti looked curiously around her; she thought it was merely an outing. At the bus stop, Bishu said: “After I leaves you at Manecktala, I goes to see Mejda”; Uma seemed not to have heard. Today, before leaving, no goodbyes had been said to the other servants; only the money was collected from Mr. Banerjee and a signature written inside a notebook. “We’re going, dadababu,” said Bishu, and Mr. Banerjee said: “Keep well.” It was a journey from the centre of the city, Ballygunge, with its tall buildings and shops, to what was much farther away and older. The room in the outhouse had not been much, but it had been something in an area where even the rich cannot afford houses; it had given Bishu and Uma a place to stay in proximity to the lives of the well-off, to employment, and yet given them the independence for the life of their small and new family. Now that phase of their lives, which, after all, was so relatively brief that they had hardly become used to it, was ending, and another was about to begin.

THE DAKKHINEE BOOKSHOP,at the turning of Lansdowne Road and Rashbehari Avenue — it was really no more than a pavement bookstall. It stands even now, though with more than half its books gone, still doing business, but a shadow of its former self. Yet if you go down Rashbehari Avenue towards Lake Market in the evening, you can still see it, a series of cupboards against a wall, lit by an electric light, and books leaning against one another upon bookshelves behind their glass-paned doors; a wonderful bookshelf, exposed to the surrounding pavement and the traffic, as if the house around it had uncannily disappeared.

When I was a boy, and a visitor to Calcutta and my cousins’ house, this was the main bookshop in the area; although it was a good half hour away from where my cousins lived, we would trek to it on foot, either with one another, or with our parents and aunts, on certain days. Any passing car at that time and that year would have seen three boys there, their backs to the road, their heads bent.

Then we would return home with the books in our hands, adventure annuals and mystery stories, my book an English one, and my cousins’ books in Bengali. Childhood was a time when I read nothing in Bengali, and my cousins nothing in English; yet none of us really needed to encroach on the others’ territory, so rich was the store of children’s literature in both languages. Sitting side by side, we would begin to read almost immediately, enveloped in the same contentment as we read our books in different languages, inhabiting different imaginary worlds.