The Epic City

by Kushanava Choudhury

  The next morning Tonoy called me over. ‘The Party guy you saw last night,’ he said, meaning a cadre of the ruling Communist Party. ‘He said he can help. Those guys know every vacancy in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Do I have to pay him?’ I asked, wary of demands from Party coffers.

  ‘No, no. Don’t get caught up in that!’ Tonoy warned. ‘Such touts are around by the dozen.’

  The Party guy would give me the landlord’s name and I was to speak with him directly. If a deal was struck, the Party would extract its gratitude from the owner. The next morning I stopped by the shop to see if Tonoy’s Party guy had come through. He knew of a nice flat, ‘Two bedrooms, facing the park,’ Tonoy said, and would come around later with the address.

  Jayanti was forever complaining about the encroachment in our para by the pavement bazaar and the ceaseless street festivities put on by the people who lived in the slum that ran alongside Tonoy’s shop. ‘Two bedrooms facing the park,’ said Jayanti, imagining its relative tranquillity. ‘How perfect!’

  I, too, began to contemplate living in front of the park, taking leisurely walks and enjoying cups of tea from the nearby shop. I even began wondering if I should join the weightlifters who assembled at one corner of the green and start pumping iron.

  Every evening I dropped in on Tonoy to catch up on para gossip, buy a packet of biscuits and subtly ask for the address of the two-bedroom flat facing the park. ‘Tomorrow,’ he always said, ‘Tomorrow.’

  After this routine had been repeated for a week, Tonoy became more embarrassed as I grew increasingly annoyed. It became clear that the Party was not coming through.

  ‘How long will I wait for Tonoy’s two bedrooms facing the park?’ I asked Jayanti.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Shombhu?’ she suggested.

  Shombhu sold cigarettes, soft drinks and paan. From morning till night, he sat cross-legged inside a wooden box on stilts, which was his shop, and resembled a mini watchtower. Nothing escapes the gaze of men like Shombhu, they are a para’s closed-circuit cameras.

  Shombhu was sitting at his stall, making paan when I dropped by. ‘Come tomorrow at ten,’ he said, having heard me out. He would introduce me to someone who could help.

  The next morning I went to Shombhu’s paan stall. Seeing me, he sent for his guy, Ghoton, who arrived, sweating and panting, from the para club.

  ‘Don’t talk business here in front of the shop,’ Shombhu said. ‘Take him to your house.’

  I explained to Ghoton our specifications – the number of bedrooms, the range in square footage, price and location. Did he know of any flats that would fit?

  Sure, he said. There was one that would be perfect. It had two bedrooms facing the park. He could show it to me tomorrow. Of course, a month’s rent would go to him, he explained, as a finder’s fee. He would call us to arrange a viewing.

  Durba and I grew eager with anticipation. The next morning we were having tea at the roadside shop when we ran into Ghoton. Next to him stood Toton, the handsomest fishmonger of the para.

  A line of blades rose up like sails on our street each morning as the fishmongers set up shop, squatting in front of their choppers. In that formation of men shooing away gluttonous cats and adjusting their privates, tiptop Toton always looked the odd man out. Tall and lean with a strong chin and a thick moustache, he was an Omar Sharif among the hilsa sellers. Surely one day a Bollywood talent agent would turn up shopping for some pomfret, Jayanti used to say, and Toton would be whisked away to stardom.

  ‘Toton,’ I called out with pleasure, ‘It has been a long time!’ Toton flashed an Omar Sharif grin. Some male-pattern baldness was setting in, but otherwise he looked the same.

  ‘You don’t need a house,’ he declared. ‘You already have a house.’

  ‘I’m married now,’ I said, introducing Durba. ‘We would like a place of our own.’

  We arranged to meet Ghoton at the tea shop that evening to see the two-bedroom flat facing the park.

  At 6 p.m., Ghoton was nowhere to be found. There again was tiptop Toton. He wore a black turtleneck, khaki trousers and white sneakers. His hair was oiled back, his moustache trimmed. He was gleaming. Dr Zhivago would have withered in his company.

  I walked up to him to say hello. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s Ghoton?’ I asked.

  ‘I came instead,’ Toton said.

  ‘But . . . you’re a fishmonger.’

  ‘That was long ago,’ Toton said, laughing at my absurd remark.

  How long have you been showing houses? I asked. Toton just walked on. He marched us to Phoolbagan, grinning all the way. In front of the Bata shoe shop, Toton asked us to wait. ‘I have a nice place to show,’ he said. ‘Two bedrooms, next to the jute mill.’

  ‘I don’t think we want to live next to the jute mill,’ I said. ‘Show us the flat Ghoton mentioned, the one with two bedrooms facing the park.’

  ‘Well, there’s a cheaper flat near the railroad tracks.’

  ‘I would rather not live near the railroad tracks, Toton,’ I said. ‘I want to see the flat facing the park.’

  ‘How about one here in Phoolbagan? Just a look.’

  I relented. Toton brightened, if that were possible.

  A glass-eyed hunchback in a white dhoti cycled past. He looked like a character one might cast in an Indian Alice in Wonderland.

  ‘Wait here,’ Toton said, and went to track him down.

  The glass-eyed man produced some chits of paper for Toton and then cycled off. Toton began dialling. In minutes, an energetic man appeared. The newcomer and Toton had a huddle. Toton came back to us to report: ‘The Phoolbagan flat cannot be seen presently.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Onward to the two-bedroom flat facing the park.’ Toton reluctantly headed toward the elusive apartment. The newcomer accompanied us. ‘Do you want to see a three-bedroom flat near the graveyard?’ he suggested. ‘How about a large one-bedroom next to the nursing home?’

  ‘No, I do not want to live facing the graveyard,’ I said, ‘and I do not want to live next to the nursing home. We are interested in the flat Ghoton promised: two bedrooms facing the park.’

  As we neared the park, I grew hopeful. The duo led us into an apartment building and trailed the caretaker up the stairs.

  ‘This is the flat,’ the newcomer said, pointing to an entrance.

  Finally! Durba and I thought, as we stood with anticipation outside our two-bedroom flat facing the park.

  ‘But you can’t go in,’ he said. ‘The caretaker doesn’t have the keys.’

  Despite all of his preparation for a starring role in real estate, Toton had neglected one detail: he had no flats to show.

  The next morning, Ghoton came with a little man named Babon.

  ‘You are foreign-returned, isn’t it?’ said Babon. ‘Why don’t you buy a flat? There’s one next to the jute mill I can show . . .’

  ‘Please show us the two-bedroom flat as we discussed,’ I said to Ghoton, ignoring his friend.

  ‘Can you pay six months’ rent up front?’ Ghoton asked.

  ‘Can you pay two months’ commission?’ Babon asked.

  This went on for quite some time, until the duo had exhausted their arsenal. Then I said, ‘Let’s stick to the agreement: one month’s commission for the two-bedroom flat facing the park.’ Babon agreed to show us the flat the next day. We were to meet him at the Bata shop in Phoolbagan, and we were to be on time, he insisted, so as to catch the owner before he left for work. Durba and I once again began imagining morning walks and evening tea, waking up to the luxury of green space in our two bedrooms facing the park.

  The next morning, we cooled our heels outside the Bata shoe shop for forty-five minutes. When Babon arrived, he spotted us from the State Bank across the street, waved us over, and started off in the opposite direction. Weaving through the rush-hour crowds, we followed him like ghouls in a Pac-Man game. When he stopped, we were a long distance away from the park.


  ‘This is not the flat facing the park,’ I said to him, stating the obvious while panting from playing catch-up.

  ‘No, but it is in a nice area,’ he said, which was true. We stood outside a four-storey building with large balconies while he darted inside, then around the corner, then back out. ‘Actually, the owner has left for office.’

  Never mind, Babon said, he had a better two-bedroom flat in Beleghata.

  ‘I don’t want to live in Beleghata,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh it’s not in Beleghata. Just up the road here. Please come. As it is you have walked all this way.’

  As the sun rose higher, we walked deep into Beleghata and entered a nondescript apartment complex. Babon huddled with the caretaker. ‘This complex has a generator, its own deep tubewell, twenty-four-hour security . . .’ Babon narrated. ‘The flat is a thousand square feet, and the rent ten thousand rupees a month.’

  He led us up the stairs, and into a shoebox.

  ‘This flat is not a thousand square feet,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes. A thousand square feet.’

  ‘It is no more than six hundred square feet.’

  ‘Of course, it is one thousand “Superbuilt”.’

  What are you saying?

  ‘Superbuilt,’ he repeated, meaning counting the stairs and the common areas, it all added up to 1,000 square feet.

  ‘This flat is no more than six hundred square feet,’ I said.

  ‘Without the stairs it’s eight hundred and fifty.’

  ‘No more than six hundred.’

  ‘Well perhaps it is seven hundred and fifty.’

  ‘It is at most six hundred and fifty square feet,’ I said.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘The rent cannot be more than seven thousand bucks.’

  ‘Well, OK,’ he said. ‘You liked it then?’

  We did not like it at all.

  ‘Would you like to see one which is twelve hundred square feet?’

  He led us to another flat in the same building, which was 700 square feet at most, and declared that we could pay 9,000 rupees a month to live in it.

  Perhaps these were the only flats we would find, Durba and I began to mutter to one another. We were no longer even in our para. Our hope of a two-bedroom flat in front of the park seemed a distant memory.

  Babon made some calls. Then he said, ‘I have the keys to the first flat. Let’s go.’

  In the noonday heat, we followed him back to the original apartment. Reprising his cameo, the glass-eyed man rode into our lives again. He mercurially cycled past us, doubled back, retrieved some papers from his breast pocket, and slowly cycled offstage. Durba and I have since developed many sinister theories about him, but little is known of his true provenance. Babon scurried first to the cyclist, then into the building, then to a group of men lingering at the bus stop. We waited.

  ‘Actually, the caretaker has gone to lunch,’ he said. There would be no viewing today. ‘But I have a nine hundred square-foot flat just around the corner for fifteen thousand bucks.’

  One of the men at the bus stop planted himself before us. He had a 1,500 square-foot flat next to the nursing home for 7,000 bucks, he said.

  ‘I don’t want to live next to the nursing home,’ I said.

  We were surrounded by a group now. Various voices came at us:

  ‘How about twelve hundred square feet for fifteen thousand next to the graveyard?’

  ‘Fourteen hundred square feet for seven thousand in Beleghata?’

  ‘One thousand square feet for nine thousand facing the park?’

  ‘Facing the park?’ Durba perked up.

  ‘Two bedrooms, all marble,’ a moustachioed man said. ‘I can show it right now.’

  We had been wandering the streets for a couple of hours. We were hungry, hot and more than a little disoriented.

  ‘Durba,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’

  ‘But he has a two-bedroom flat facing the park . . .’

  We went home.

  In the evening, Toton called several times, pledging to show us flats next to the graveyard, the nursing home and facing the park. A month’s rent in commission would have paid for a lifetime’s supply of his hair products. We began screening his calls. Men I did not know started following me when I crossed the main road yelling, ‘Brother,’ followed by various combinations of square footage and house rent. They all had two-bedroom flats facing the park.

  Even Jayanti’s teenage daughter seemed wiser than I. Sipun shook her head sagely and said: ‘How did you ever fall into the clutches of brokers!’

  ***

  I am a North Calcutta guy. When my foot touches down on Maniktala More, no matter how late at night or how much flooding there is, when I see the familiar clock tower of Maniktala Market and the naked bulbs of the vegetable sellers squatting on the footpath outside, I know that I am home. From the clock tower, a couple of blocks west past Amherst Street is Dida’s house. Go the other way, past Raja Dinenda Street and across the Beleghata Canal and you are in Bagmari, where we used to live with my other grandmother, my father’s mother, until I was six. Three more bus stops and you are in Kankurgachi, at Sir’s house. In Calcutta, my life is circumscribed by that one-mile radius from Maniktala More. But Durba and I gave up on trying to find a house in that radius. We began to look south.

  South Calcutta, as everyone knows, is more hep than the older North. It was built later than the North and so became poor later than the North. It is true that the women get better looking the farther south you go. But otherwise South Cal is no less dirty or diseased than the most pestilent corners of the old Black Town. The thought of shifting to South Calcutta left me cold. We would have to start over, find a new tea shop, a new sweet shop, new neighbours, a new para in which to dwell. It was something unnatural. In Calcutta, it is not as if we have an India Gate like in Delhi, or miles of beach as there is in Bombay or Madras. Our riverfront is full of warehouses and crematoriums. There is no place to relax, but in our own paras. In Gariahat, Gol Park and other desirable parts of South Calcutta, we were shown apartments by brokers who acted recognisably like agents in the US. But to plant anchor in Gol Park, to seek all the reference points anew, would be to almost start afresh in a new city. It did not appeal to me at all.

  One afternoon, I noticed an ad online for a flat that was in our para. The rent well exceeded our budget, but I called anyway. The man who picked up spoke in English. He had come from Canada he said, and wanted to find a tenant in two weeks while he was visiting his mother in Calcutta.

  ‘Durba, please let us charm these people,’ I said, when we went to see their flat. When we met, Abhishek was wearing shorts like a tourist. He had grown up entirely in Zambia, where his father had worked as an accountant at an emerald mine. During all that time, his father had nurtured the exile’s fantasy of return. He had bought an apartment in one of the new buildings in Kankurgachi and fitted it with end-to-end marble, air conditioners in every room and extensive custom-built woodwork. After a lifetime abroad, he and his wife had planned to retire in style in Calcutta. Then he had a heart attack and died. The flat had never been lived in.

  Abhishek had an elder brother, who lived in New Jersey. Their mother, Mrs Bhattacharya, now lived alone in their family house in Beleghata. She looked like a woman thrust into the public sphere far too late in life, with no forewarning. When we met, she said to me: ‘You remind me of my elder son. I keep telling him to find a nice Bengali girl and get married.’

  Then to Durba, she said: ‘You’re so lucky to have found each other.’

  Mother and son showed us the recessed lights and the hideaway bookshelves that Abhishek’s father had built in the apartment. The flat was much bigger, and snazzier, than we wanted. But they were willing to rent to us for far below their asking price. We were very desirable tenants in Calcutta, since we could be counted on to leave.

  As the son turned over the keys, he said, ‘Please. Take good care of this place.’ He had placed his fath
er’s legacy in our trust.

  Nimtala

  Dida had just returned home from the hospital on the day we went to see her, having sailed through perhaps her hundredth heart attack. Her eldest son Ashoke was visiting from California. My own parents had come from New Jersey. Jayasree, my eldest aunt, had come down from Ballygunge in South Calcutta. The house was full of people and Dida was in fine form. All afternoon, we laughed and swapped old stories about the family. I had always heard that the Kerrs had once owned fourteen houses, three gardens and umpteen ponds – or was it fourteen houses, three ponds and umpteen gardens? – indeed all of DL Roy Street.

  ‘Was it true that the family once really had fourteen houses?’ I asked Dida.

  ‘Oh, that’s true,’ she said. They really did own everything around here once.

  ‘Did you ever see any of that wealth?’

  ‘Me? No, that was before me.’

  On the walls of her room were full-length portraits of our ancestors: my grandfather, his illustrious brother the barrister, who had changed the family name from the Bengali ‘Kar’ to the Scottish ‘Kerr’ to attract more British clients – and their parents.

  ‘What did he do for a living?’ I asked her, pointing to the stern studio photograph of my great-grandfather.

  ‘What do they ever do, those rich men’s sons?’

  So his father – my great-great-grandfather – had been a rich man?

  ‘So, I’ve heard. He was dead by the time I arrived.’

  At some point in the 1800s, the Kars must have migrated from their native village in Burdwan to Calcutta, and amassed a small fortune by doing business with the British traders in the new capital. The family lore was that we had a shipping business, which ended when an English client insulted one of our ancestors. The proud Kar kicked the Englishman’s cargo – all thirteen boatloads of salt – overboard. Perhaps that boot was the beginning of our downfall. Dida was certain that the house she came to no longer had a thriving business. In fact, it was only half the size it is now. The family’s fortunes improved after her marriage, Dida said, when Dadu and his brother’s law firm prospered. She said that when his brother won a landmark case for the Star Theatre, his father went straight to the Star’s proprietors and collected payment in cash before his son blew it on booze and dancing girls. That was how the second floor of the house was completed, and a third floor built.