“I left that sort of thing to others,” said his uncle as, looking right and left, they walked past Belsize Avenue. “It’s possible to take shortcuts writing poetry in English. There are no shortcuts to writing Bengali poetry.”
So not only was he claiming to be different from deluded friends (including Ananda’s father) who had, seized by the poetry bug, fooled themselves into thinking they were poets: he was having a go at Ananda and the new species he belonged to, of aberrants who’d elected to write, ridiculously, in English. Shortcuts! Was he saying that it was easier to be a fraudulent poet in English than in Bengali?
“Of course Chhorda began by writing some remarkable poems.” This was the older brother in Shillong. That he’d grown partly dependent on his younger brother since retiring from the state civil service led Radhesh to feel a vicious recoil against a man he’d once worshipped for his refinement and even been intimidated by. “He asks me for money now; he used to treat me like an errand boy then!” A couple of times in Warren Street he’d even called Chhorda sneeringly by his pet name — Manu. Which had provoked Ananda’s mother to heartfelt protest and remonstrance. Which had led to his uncle tugging her by the hair in rage and Ananda giving him a push that sent him flying back. They came to the steps of the Hampstead Town Hall, his uncle adding proudly: “What a sensation it was when Desh published one of his poems when he was sixteen!” It was a big deal to have a poem out in Desh in those days, whether you were from Calcutta or Sylhet, sixteen or sixty.
“Was it good? The poem?” Ananda was well aware that his uncle had it by heart.
“It was beautiful — yes.” He made the inevitable qualification: “Naturally, it bore the imprint of Tagore’s diction and cadence. Very hard to escape that.” English poets couldn’t match Tagore for his finesse. European poets largely didn’t exist. And no Bengali poet, whether it was his older brother or the great Jibanananda Das, could avoid visiting a tone and terrain that was already Tagore’s. Better, then, for the Bengali not to write poetry at all, and just read Tagore; his uncle had demonstrated the wisdom of this in the decision he’d long ago taken: to abstain.
“Also, that first flush — when Chhorda saw the world in a peculiar vibrant glow, in a colour close to purple — that faded. He told me he could never see that vivid colour after seventeen. Then he stopped writing poems.” And became a minor addition to the Assam Civil Service.
—
They paused before the Screen on the Hill. There was nothing to draw them immediately. Mostly the Screen on the Hill catered to the delicate art-house audience that lived in this environment. Contrary, lonely English people who were at once deeply, visibly English and gently Francophile. Hardly any of the movies that he and his uncle liked to watch together — James Bond played by Sean Connery. Tonight at 7 p.m. it was Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
—
Ananda’s uncle’s older brother’s poem. From Desh. He’d recited it during one of their strolls round the area, as if it were a canonical event, something that had subtly changed the world — at least his world. It was a strange poem for a sixteen-year-old to write — neither idealistic nor excessively emotional, but one that quietly observed a small but decisive transition in the young poet’s life. At first, Ananda thought it was addressed, as is the norm, to a woman — perhaps real, but probably imaginary. Then he heard from his uncle that these were lines written by his brother to their late father. Like “Surprised by Joy,” which records the realisation, in the midst of the poet’s natural elation, of the fact of his dead daughter’s absence, his uncle’s poem — the uncle who lived in Shillong — acknowledged the memory (breaking the day’s everyday, forgetful rhythm) that his father was gone; yet not quite gone. Written years ago. What did it mean to grow up without a father? Ananda knew that his grandfather was an engineer, and that his death in the riding accident had left his wife and children struggling. They’d never recovered. Ananda’s mother had been two when her father died; Rangamama three and a half. He’d maybe taken it worse than the others — it gave him an exaggerated sense of what he might have been. The older siblings had rallied, but for a while dabbled in the planchette to establish their father’s whereabouts. Then they’d set aside that nonsense in favour of marrying and having children, for the relief of letting their own childhood go.
—
“I wasn’t cut out for writing poems. Didn’t have the time for that kind of thing,” said his uncle with manly pride. “I had to be there — have to be there — for my family. I chose that role for myself.”
The black sheep, ordered to run errands. Used-car salesman. Now living in the cave in 24 Belsize Park, issuing cheques to a list of petitioners — close as well as obscure relations (relations’ relations) whom Ananda had never heard of — in corners of Bengal and Assam. The solitary, faraway pillar of a family scattered and dispersed: that’s how his uncle saw himself.
They were near the Belsize Bookshop. Its half-forgotten cocoon always a temptation to encroach on. To his uncle he said:
“You don’t have to write poems. There are people who make their life a poetic work. You may be one of them.”
Rangamama didn’t so much accompany his nephew as skulk slightly behind. Sometimes, when they were shoulder to shoulder, they collided sideways. His uncle nodded. He seemed intrigued. Certainly, the analysis was in tune with his own self-mythologising. (Having absorbed Ananda’s words, he would probably quote them back to him three days later, imagining he’d thought them up himself.) Once, in the course of a heated dialogue in which his uncle’s greatness was clearly not being adequately addressed, he’d snapped: “Do you realise I’m God?” Instead of pointing him to a psychiatrist, Ananda had controlled himself and replied that maybe all men, in some capacity, were God, and they’d both had the good sense to leave it at that. Another time, when they were discussing Ananda’s father’s many attractive qualities, his composure and general sanity, his uncle had said competitively: “There are many planes of existence. The people on the lower don’t see the ones on the higher. For example, there are beings around us now we can’t see. Your father can’t really see me. I’m on a different plane — invisible to him, like a ghost.” Ananda had forgotten to throttle him because he was mesmerised. Another time: “Do you know Jagannath?” The Lord of the Universe; yes, of course. “Do you know why he’s so ugly?” The likenesses of Jagannath were aboriginal, autochthonic: two stumps for arms; orbs for eyes — owl-like. “As Jagannath created the universe, he gave more and more of himself, denuding his form — until he became what you see today: incredibly ugly; a misshapen stub.” Narrated with melodramatic quietude. When he searched for this version of the myth in books, he found it nowhere — till he concluded it was his uncle’s invention, an allegorical account of himself. In this story, he saw himself giving and giving to a family that no longer cared for how he lived, that sucked him dry as he continued indefinitely in 24 Belsize Park, leaving him in the physical state he was now in: in the old three-piece suit, the incisor missing, the broad and full (and vibrant, Ananda thought) nose somehow highlighted by the hair cropped to pinpricks by the barber.