Scenes From Early Life (13 page)

Among Boro-mama’s neighbourhood cronies was a man he had been to school with, Nawshad. Nawshad’s family was not Bengali but Urdu-speaking: they came from Bihar. Nawshad was very much the same sort of wastrel as Boro-mama. He had grand schemes for making money – to open a cinema, to start importing American cigarettes into Dacca, to open a smart restaurant. None of these ever came to anything, because Nawshad had no money to invest, and none of the gang who spent their days smoking in the neighbourhood store had any money either.

Nawshad had a sister, however, called Sharmin. Sharmin was hard-working and academic, and was now studying at Mitford Medical College. She would be a doctor in a year or two. No, she was not beautiful, but she was clever and interesting, and would get on in life.

She worked too hard, Nawshad said, and it was difficult to persuade her to go out, even to the cinema, once a month. But he did persuade her to come out to the cinema that Friday. It was a hot night, and wet; the cinema smelt of mould and bodies, and the film was an old one that broke down for ten minutes after the first reel. Sharmin had come out with her brother, and his friend Laddu had joined them. They had found plenty to talk about. He had made her laugh.

‘Am I the only person in this family who didn’t know about any of this?’ Nana said.

It seemed that he was. Boro-mama had kept Era up to date with the details of their meetings, and their plans. Sharmin’s family lived near Rankin Street, and were in fact known to Nana in general terms. Boro-mama had found opportunities to sneak out of the house and to meet Sharmin in quiet corners, underneath umbrellas, shaded by trees in the street, in the back corners of shops. It all sounded – to Era, and even retold bluntly when the story was over – terribly romantic. In time, Boro-mama had told Era that he wanted to marry Sharmin. He had asked her to explain the whole matter to their father.

‘To Papa? I don’t think I can, elder-brother,’ Era said, alarmed. She had enjoyed the stories, and relished the monsoon-kisses, hopeless-doomed-passion aspect of her brother’s life. But it had not occurred to her that the story might have possibilities for development. She had had noble renunciation in mind. It was not really credible to her that her brother would want to marry this Bihari girl, rather than take her tear-stained photograph from a secret drawer once a year, and kiss it.

‘Well, I certainly can’t,’ Boro-mama said. ‘He would throw me out of the house.’

‘Why don’t you ask Mahmood?’ Era said. ‘Papa likes him. He would make him listen.’

A dark expression passed over Boro-mama’s features. ‘I could never do that,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be in Mahmood’s debt for anything.’

‘In Mahmood’s debt? Well,’ Era said, quite briskly, ‘I don’t see anything else for it. You will just have to go and talk to Ma. If she can’t explain it to Pa, then I don’t think anyone will be able to.’

No one knew what the outcome was of the conversation between Boro-mama and his mother, the day when he told her that he wanted to marry an Urdu-speaking Bihari girl called Sharmin. Nobody even knew when or where it took place, this conversation. They were both at home in Rankin Street all day long, with nothing very much to occupy them. It was to be supposed that Boro-mama wandered into his mother’s sitting room one morning and stayed there until the outcome was clear. Neither of them shared the details of the conversation with anyone else afterwards. Boro-mama told his sister Era about every detail of his courtship of Sharmin – the meetings under trees, the snatched five minutes, the outings to the park or the walks along the muddy Buriganga river with Nawshad, who knew to remove himself to a distance of fifteen yards. But when the conversation with Nani took place, nobody knew, nor what had been exchanged during it. Only when it was too late for anyone to do anything did it become clear that the conversation had taken place: that both of them had agreed never to mention anything about Sharmin, ever again; that Nani believed that whatever she had said had put an end to the whole business. She had seen no reason to mention any of it to my grandfather.

‘Era,’ my grandfather said, quite calmly, ‘I am not going to punish you. Do you know when it was that Laddu decided to run away and marry this woman?’

Era looked about her helplessly; she gripped her pink scarf to her neck. ‘I don’t know when he decided,’ she said.

‘What I mean,’ my grandfather said, in his most dispassionate and lawyerly way, ‘is when was it that you knew for certain that he was going to run away?’

‘To run away? Last night,’ Era said. ‘He told me last night that he was going to do it today. I should have told everyone. I could have stopped it altogether.’

‘Very well,’ my grandfather said. ‘So I think we can all stop saying that Laddu ran away because I happened to ask him if he would see that the paths were cleared this morning. Clearly, he had made his decision before I mentioned that. Are we all agreed on that point?’

‘Yes, Pa,’ Mira, Mary, my mother and Era said, and Nana left the room.

‘Am I in trouble?’ Era said. ‘I’m not going to be punished, Ma, am I?’

‘Yes,’ Nani said. ‘You are in serious trouble. I am sure that when your father comes out of his chambers, he will tell me what your punishment is going to be.’

4.

For the next two years, nobody saw or heard of Boro-mama. The only fact that filtered back to Grandfather’s house in Rankin Street was that he had, indeed, married a Bihari woman named Sharmin. Incomprehensibly, her family were as deeply opposed to her marriage as our family was. They did not see the apparent honour involved in her marrying Boro-mama, a man without profession, character or education, whose entire prospects had been torn away by the severing of relations with his father. ‘I hope his father-in-law finds small jobs for him to do about the house,’ my father said caustically. He had endured enough insults from Laddu about cuckoos in the nest, over-educated clowns worming their way into the bosoms of other people’s fathers, and other mixed metaphors. He saw no reason to hold back when there was nobody but his cousins about.

Curiously, once Laddu had left the house, my father did not find it a more comfortable berth. It might have been thought that, with the departure of his only male cousin, my father would find life in Rankin Street very easy. My aunts were fond of their cousin, in general terms, although they did not pretend to understand the esteem in which my mother held him; my grandfather greatly respected him, and was forever holding him up as an example of hard work, discipline and moral rectitude to anyone who would listen and to a few who would not. But perhaps my grandfather needed to berate somebody; perhaps my father feared that he would soon find himself being given the sorts of household tasks that Boro-mama had found so profitable. I don’t know this for sure, but perhaps once – just once – Nana asked my father if he could possibly spare the time from his economics studies to have a look at the tap that seemed to be dripping in the downstairs bathroom.

My father was an independent-minded sort of person. Two months after Boro-mama’s sudden departure, and a couple of weeks after news had reached Rankin Street that he was irrevocably married to a woman who barely spoke Bengali, my father had moved out too, to a university hall. The gossips exaggerated: Sharmin, even then, spoke perfectly serviceable Bengali, though it was not her first language.

In the next two years, my father finished his economics degree, and then his MA in the same subject. He applied for the government service, and finished almost at the top of his cohort. He was appointed to a job as assistant district commissioner in Barisal, a middle-sized town twelve hours’ journey by rocket launch from Dacca. It was decided between him and my mother that they could get married in the middle of 1959. My grandfather and grandmother were very pleased. There seemed no reason to think that Mahmood would disappear from their lives in the way that Boro-mama had done.

During the British time, a space had been cleared in Dacca for a park. It was not made by the British, but it nevertheless had the air of pallid pleasure of the sort that the British enjoyed so much. It was called Balda Garden. As often with the British, it had an educational, almost museum quality. There were collections of botanical specimens from all over the world, some in the open air and some in a few rather crumbling hothouses. There were lawns and flowerbeds, and to that the British had added their own rather limp notions of enjoyment – a lake that had perhaps once been intended for boating parties, but was now just a kidney-shaped lake, and a picturesque Joy House, a combination of Swiss rest-house and Greek amphitheatre to one side. These joyless festival sites had now been taken over and colonized by my nation and its sense of fun. Constant supervision could keep Bengalis on their best behaviour for only so long. There were vendors of sweets and of tea; there were large families spread out comfortably on the lawns; there were picnics that took an entire afternoon to reach the end of; there were balloon-sellers and even, once, an acrobat. Under the trees, where it was quiet and shady, couples sat in peace and quiet, feeding each other from their picnic boxes, blushing, and laughing under their breath. It was a favourite place to visit on a Sunday, which was then the day of rest and pleasure in Dacca, as Friday is now.

My mother and father, before their marriage, regularly met at the Joy House on a Sunday evening. They would walk around the park, talking in the sort of privacy you can only have on the street or in crowds in Dacca.

Both of them were highly punctual people, and when they agreed to meet at the Joy House at six, both of them would be there at six. My father, however, was still more punctual than my mother – in fact, he often regarded her as a poor time-keeper. This was unfair, since she generally arrived at the time specified; my father would arrive a good fifteen or twenty minutes in advance, and pace up and down, inspecting his watch.

At twenty to six, my father was already standing at the Joy House, waiting impatiently. It was a favourite place for meetings, and he stood among people who had made arrangements to meet at half past five as well as a few early arrivals for six, like himself. Along the path came couples, families and small groups of young men, out for a Sunday-afternoon walk. The sun was in my father’s eyes, and the groups approaching from his left were mere silhouettes. When a figure greeted him, hesitantly, my father did not know immediately who it was, and greeted him back without hesitation. When he realized that it was Laddu, who would not have realized that my father was standing in a blinding light, it was too late to withdraw the greeting.

‘We often come here,’ Laddu said. ‘It is so pleasant. I wonder – could I introduce my wife to you?’

Boro-mama’s wife was, it appeared, the small, sweet, round person by his side. She was not a beauty, but had a pleasant, open face and pale, rather yellowish colouring. Her name was Sharmin, and my father greeted her politely. In the heat, the pre-monsoon congestion in the air, she fanned herself with curt and efficient gestures. Boro-mama asked after everyone, and was surprised to learn that my father no longer lived at the house in Rankin Street. My father thought that Laddu gave him a look of near-respect on hearing this. Like many habitual dependants, Boro-mama made a point of denouncing and disapproving of other people’s sponging, as he often called it.

They talked, quite cheerfully, for ten minutes, until my father mentioned that he was waiting for my mother. A look of doubt crossed Boro-mama’s face, and he seemed almost on the verge of running away. ‘Oh, Laddu,’ Sharmin said, taking hold of his arm. To my father’s surprise, Laddu suggested that they meet later in the week, perhaps to see a film. My father said – I am sure he said – that he was very busy with work, and with preparations to go to Barisal to take up his post as assistant district commissioner. But Boro-mama pressed him, and eventually he agreed. It was five to six: Boro-mama and Sharmin said their goodbyes and left. It was obvious that they would not risk an encounter with my mother, or with any of the rest of Laddu’s family, just yet.

5.

The night after my father and Laddu went to the cinema together, my father was invited round to Nana’s house to have dinner. He had a regular weekly evening there as the guest of my mother. While he was waiting to take up his appointment in Barisal, my father had continued living in the university residence. It had its disadvantages. The price he paid for the independence of living there was perpetual hunger. In the residence, food was provided as part of the living expenses. But there were hundreds of other hungry young economists living in the same place, and the food was basic, dull and prepared in great vats. Like all male students, at any time, at any place, my father was appallingly hungry from one end of the week to the other. His evening at Nana’s would set him up for the barren remainder of the week, eking out the institution’s thin dal and rice, the meagre pickings of its birianis with memories of Nana’s dinner and the occasional bought treat. He was punctilious about waiting for an invitation, and would not have come if he were not asked; fortunately, my mother was just as punctilious about asking him, once a week.

The monsoon rains had broken that week. My father, the aunts and Nani sat inside the house, looking out on the veranda. The garden was already soaked with mud; the rains made a deep, resonant trill on the flat surfaces of the house, made the trees spatter and slap. Because of the sound of the rain, nobody heard Nana’s car approaching, and the first anyone knew of him was his voice in the hall. ‘Is nobody here?’ he called, and then they heard his umbrella being rapidly opened and shut, two or three times. His daughters came out to the hall to meet him behind Nani; my father following somewhere in the back.

‘What is that sound?’ Nana said, after he had greeted them all and handed his raincoat and umbrella to the boy.

‘What sound?’ Nani said.

‘That sound of dripping,’ he said. ‘It kept me awake all last night. Can you hear?’

The aunts compared notes, discovered that they could not hear any particular dripping. Mira asked if he meant the sound of the rain on the terrace, and was asked if she thought he was a fool, and not to be so pert, child.