A week was all that remained for his departure; and a friend, Mihir, who’d been with him in school and was studying for an engineering degree in Calcutta, had, unxpectedly, made enquiries about his address and come to visit. His childhood was splintering now; different elements of it were being blown towards directions and places that were unthinkable then; and it always surprised him when one of those splinters returned to him, and took the trouble to look him up.
‘You sort of dropped out of circulation, yaar,’ Mihir said, as they stood in patient, forbearing camaraderie on the balcony. ‘But I thought I’d find out what you’re doing these days.’ He chuckled, as if taken aback by an act of transgression from a person he’d always suspected was capable of anything. ‘I didn’t realise you were off to the UK.’
‘What are your own plans?’ asked Nirmalya — partly because they were at the stage of their lives when ‘plans’ were important, when everyone around him was working overtime on a sifting and sorting out of destinies; but also because he’d reached that age when he was curious whether old, rapidly anachronistic friendships could be turned into alliances, when he’d realised that allies had become more important to him than friends. Yet, for all his hints, he had few friends, and even fewer allies. ‘Joining an engineering firm — going abroad?’
‘Probably do management,’ said Mihir, embarrassed and aggressive at once, because they’d wanted to be poets and artists two years ago, adding, ‘Philosophy-tilosophy is not for me.’
‘I thought you were quite interested in it,’ Nirmalya reminded him, anxious that the undefined cause had lost, again, a possible recruit, but confirmed in his own singularity.
‘Oh, that’s OK to patao the chicks!’ laughed Mihir loudly, vastly amused that anyone could think it had another purpose; and Nirmalya laughed too, at the validity of the suggestion, slightly apologetic that he hadn’t pursued its ample possibilities.
They were startled from their lugubrious sharing of thoughts by firecrackers. ‘Gosh!’ said Mihir; for a simple bang had woken him up to where he was. People Nirmalya knew vaguely by sight were rushing out of the porch, laughing breathlessly, long, festive kurtas shimmering, setting alight coils of serpent-like firecrackers that then exploded, in a rapid series of white flashes and spent smoke, deafeningly and endlessly. When one coil had burnt itself out, or even before, a tall young man would light another and, giggling as if at an old man’s unintimidating scolding, jump away as it began to go off.
‘Shit,’ said Mihir, trying to ignore the noise suavely, like an officer in the middle of artillery, ‘that’s black money, you know.’
The fragrance of burning crackers filled their nostrils. A man in a radiant sherwani and turban — the younger son of a family that lived on the second floor, transformed without forewarning into a bridegroom — walked stiffly towards a nervous but obedient horse that had appeared in the lane, and mounted it. Nirmalya was about to speak, but a fresh burst of crackers took his breath away; pigeons, now almost accustomed to the general atmosphere of disturbance, took off again lazily from the neighbouring mango tree.
‘This is what the Jews must have been like,’ said Mihir, his youthful, good-natured face (he wasn’t handsome, but something about him drew you to him) expressionless with irony, leaning on the bannister as they watched the family dancing in the lane, ‘before the Nazis came along.’
Nirmalya, already silenced by the crackers, was made speechless by the observation. A great gust of history seemed to blow towards him, threatening to spoil the idyll, but passed him by without harming him. What exactly did Mihir have on his mind; and in his heart? The fanfare, in its own quite organised way, moved left, probably towards some hall where the wedding would take place; the bridegroom, his face now covered by the screen of flowers dangling from the turban, sat still and lifeless on the horse, while the revellers, snapping their fingers and dancing round him, kept drawing more and more family members, the ones staying aloof and dignified in the background, into the dance; and it took these initiates only a second or two to cast off their aloofness and dignity, and to be converted to the pleasure of being a public spectacle. How many times in their life would they be asked to dance, after all? The horse would have looked ancient and fairy-tale-like, had it not been conveying, in spite of itself, its very animal discomfiture and unsureness to the onlooker. It was a relief to finally see it go, and the euphoric humans as well, towards the wedding. ‘Beautiful place,’ said Mihir, when it was quiet again (only the two latecomers, plump fifteen-year-old girls in gleaming white silk dresses, ran out to the lane to search for the lost party). ‘Your parents are lucky to have a flat here.’ Glancing cannily at Nirmalya, he added: ‘So much nicer than Cuffe Parade — don’t like Cuffe Parade at all.’ They lingered on the balcony for ten minutes, letting the scene, the lane, the trees, melt into twilight. Nirmalya felt a strange pang: it was more time he wanted, he half-realised, without the desire really breaking to the surface; a little more time to be with Mihir, more time before going to England, more time for the day itself to last. He mourned the fact that the day could not be longer.
* * *
TWO DAYS AFTER he’d left, Shyamji came to the Senguptas’ flat. The curtains were parted to let in the hot, bright light of early October.
‘What, has baba gone?’ he asked, looking slowly around him, as if the boy just might materialise from behind the furniture.
Although he was so dark, his face was pale and scourged this morning, as if he’d powdered it; his feet, beneath his pyjamas, seemed to be swollen. He hobbled comically into the sitting room scattered with curios and pristine ashtrays.
‘Oh, he reached there day before yesterday,’ Mallika Sengupta said — it was almost an announcement; not just for Shyamji, but for the world, if it cared to listen. ‘We spoke for a short while on the telephone. .’. She went into a momentary reverie. ‘The flat is so quiet now.’ Bleary-eyed, she asked — for her sleep had gone awry ever since she’d waited, in the airport, for Nirmalya to be airborne at three in the morning; she’d woken up yesterday and today at half past three, her mind on fire as she wondered where her son would be twenty years from now, eyes shut, determined not to notice the dawn stealthily coming to the windows — ‘Shyamji, will you have some tea before we start?’
Shyamji, who looked like he hadn’t been sleeping too well himself, his cheeks puffy, frowned as if he’d been challenged and said: ‘Why not, didi?’
So cups, trembling faintly, and the pot and strainer were brought to the sitting room on a wooden tray, and they sat, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the mother, sombre with reminiscence, and her teacher, drinking tea without any milk in it, each cup made wonderfully palatable with a sachet of Equal.
‘You know, he said to me on the phone day before yesterday, “Tell Shyamji to be careful. He isn’t looking too well.” ’
Shyamji sipped his tea, smiled ruefully: ‘He is my biggest critic. He keeps a stern eye on me.’