The driver rolled his hands sadly in the air and said: There’s no sweet-shop here; it’s all gone. Now there’s only this one.
Then, noticing a sudden movement, he flung his door open and darted off to chase away a boy who had tried to touch the star on the bonnet of the Mercedes. The boy melted back into a knot of young men and children who had gathered around the car. Eyeing them uneasily, the driver beckoned at the security guard and told him to watch the back of the car, while he watched the bonnet.
There! cried my grandmother, pointing down the lane. Look! Our house!
Its edges were blurred with moss, and banyan shoots were clinging to its crumbling silhouette, but the shape of the outline was exactly as she remembered it, large, welcoming and ungainly. My grandmother shut her eyes and would not move until Robi tugged at her hand and said: Let’s go and see it, come on.
But before they could go on, the driver came panting up to Mayadebi, whispered a few words to her, and ran back to the car. What did he say? Tridib asked her, but she was gazing at the house, smiling dreamily, and he had to ask her again before she answered: Oh, nothing — he wants us to come back quickly, in case there’s trouble.
They went into the lane with a crowd of curious children swarming after them. Most of them attached themselves to May. Robi could hear them whispering to each other about her, and one of them, a little girl, slipped her hand through hers.
They could see the house quite clearly now: wet saris fell from the terrace in wide gashes of colour, like spilt paint, and through the shutterless windows they could see soot-streaked walls, and the tops of mosquito-netted beds, and clothes hanging from nails. A small board hanging under one of the windows on the top floor said: Lutfullah Ismail, BA, MA (Patna), and offered his services for typing and shorthand.
Robi went on ahead, looked through the gateway and came running back. Motorcycles, he said in awe. Motorcycles everywhere.
It costs me no effort at all to imagine the look of amazed disbelief with which Mayadebi and my grandmother received this bit of news. They had known about the workshop, of course, but they hadn’t thought that it would be right there; not there, in that little stretch of garden where the two of them had so often sat wondering about the doings in their uncle’s upside-down house.
It can’t be true, said my grandmother. It must be a lie.
But then, at the gate, throwing up her arms to shield her eyes from a sunburst of blinding silver light, she saw that Robi had told her no more than the truth: the old portico had sprouted a tin shed that was shining in the blaze of a blowtorch as a man worked on a motorcycle mudguard. The patch of grass they had once called a garden was now pitted with pools of black oil and strewn with tyre-tubes and exhaust pipes.
It was all changed, but now my grandmother didn’t care any longer. It wasn’t the house she remembered, the house she had built for me in Calcutta, but it was near enough.
I can see her, wandering into that yard, heedless of the pools of grease and the discarded tyres, gazing up at the balconies with their spindly wrought-iron railings, tripping over a bent wheel as she looks for the lime trees her mother had once planted, knocking her knees against a set of twisted handlebars, until Saifuddin, the mechanic, leads her gently to a bench and persuades her to sit down. She looks at his grease-blackened face then, and wonders from which part of the house this new relative whose face she can’t remember has appeared. And Mayadebi, trying to rescue her from her bewilderment, explains softly that this is Saifuddin, the mechanic who is going to help them take their uncle back to India. My grandmother starts, because she has forgotten all about her uncle, but slowly, with an effort of that prodigious will of hers, she brings herself back to the present, reminds herself that she has a serious duty to perform, that she hasn’t come all this way merely to indulge her nostalgia — she hates nostalgia, my grandmother, she has spent years telling me that nostalgia is a weakness, a waste of time, that it is everyone’s duty to forget the past and look ahead and get on with building the future — so now, slowly, she reminds herself of the duty that has brought her here, her duty to take her uncle away from his past and thrust him into the future.
Oh yes, Jethamoshai, she said to Saifuddin. And how is he now?
Saifuddin, who was a stocky, powerfully built man, in his mid-forties, explained to her, in rapid Hindustani-accented Bengali, that he wasn’t well, that they ought to do something for him as soon as possible.
My grandmother, nodding gravely, looked down at her hands, and saw to her surprise that she was carrying a brown-paper packet. Then she remembered why she had brought it, and thrust it into Saifuddin’s hands. Here, she said. It’s a sari for your wife.
A smile of pleased surprise appeared on Saifuddin’s grease-blackened face. He protested that she shouldn’t have bothered, and then thanked her profusely and shouted up to his wife to bring tea for their guests from India.
But shouldn’t we go and talk to him now? Mayadebi said. We haven’t got much time.
You have to have a cup of tea here before you go, the mechanic said firmly. After all, you’ve come all the way from India. Besides, it’s no use going to see Ukil-babu on your way; you have to wait for Khalil.
And who is Khalil? said my grandmother.
Khalil and his family look after Ukil-babu, Saifuddin explained to her. He’s a nice fellow. He came over from India too; from Murshidabad, in Bengal. He’s a bit stupid, but he’s got a good heart. That’s what I always say to people — I say, he may be foolish, but he’s got a good heart, otherwise why would he bother to look after that old man, a Hindu too, when he could easily have thrown him out and kept both rooms for his family?
He turned to Tridib, and said: Have you been to Motihari, sahb, in Bihar? That’s where I was born.
Tridib shook his head.
Saifuddin pursed his lips in disappointment. That’s sad, he said. You must go and visit Motihari when you get back. It’s a nice place, though of course there’s a lot of trouble there now.
How does Khalil earn a living? my grandmother asked.
He runs a cycle-rickshaw, Saifuddin said. And does little odd jobs here and there. Just about makes enough to keep his wife and children going. It was all right for them when the Ukil-babu was earning a little. But now that he’s bedridden, I don’t know how they manage.
He fingered his chin thoughtfully. There must be hotels in Motihari now, he said to Tridib. I believe the town has dozens of cinema halls.
Does Khalil’s wife cook for him too? my grandmother asked in a hushed voice.
Of course, said Saifuddin. If she didn’t the old man wouldn’t get anything to eat.
She exchanged a look of amazement with Mayadebi. Do you know, she whispered to Robi, there was a time when that old man was so orthodox that he wouldn’t let a Muslim’s shadow pass within ten feet of his food? And look at him now, paying the price of his sins.
Ten feet! Robi explained to May in a hushed whisper, marvelling at the precision of the measurement. How did he measure? he whispered back at my grandmother. Did he keep a tape in his pocket when he ate?
No, no, my grandmother said impatiently. In those days many people followed rules like that: they had an instinct.
Trigonometry! Robi cried in a triumphant aside to May. They must have known trigonometry. They probably worked it out like a sum: if the Muslim is standing under a twenty-two foot building, how far is his shadow? You see, we’re much cleverer than you: bet your grandfather couldn’t tell when a German’s shadow was passing within ten feet of his food.