by Amitav Ghosh
There was only one small chink in the armour of austerity that had sat so heavily on my grandmother ever since I could remember: she had a secret fondness for jewellery. There’d been nothing secret about this weakness of hers when she was a girl: it had been a passion.
I know this because I sometimes heard relatives – people who had known her in Dhaka – teasing her about her love of jewellery; asking her what had become of all those necklaces and bangles she had made my grandfather buy her.
Their teasing didn’t bother my grandmother at all.
It was a good thing I had something to fall back on, she would say quietly. How do you think I managed, all those years when I was living in that slum, when all of you’d forgotten about me? How do you think I would have survived if I hadn’t had my jewellery to fall back on?
The offending relative would be stung into silence. But later, when we were out of her hearing, they would explain to me, chuckling, that her love of jewellery had been a family joke when she was a girl. She would often be seen at the little gold-merchant’s shop at the corner of Jindabahar Lane, peering in through the bars, staring at the goldsmiths working inside. She took so much delight in exclaiming over her married cousins’ jewellery cases that they had kept the keys ready on the ends of their saris whenever she went visiting. At weddings, knowing old housewives would ask her for her opinion on the jewellery the bride had been given, as though she were a gold-merchant’s grandmother, rather than a chit of a girl.
She had stopped wearing jewellery publicly, of course, after she was widowed, and later, when my father married my mother, she had given her all the jewellery she hadn’t yet sold. She loved to see my mother wearing the bangles and necklaces she had given her. But my mother didn’t particularly care for jewellery and rarely wore any – even to weddings.
This never failed to infuriate my grandmother. So you’re going to a wedding with your neck bare? she would snap at my mother. I suppose you want to give everybody the impression that you’re starving here.
But it’s horrible to be weighed down with gold in this heat, my mother would protest.
So then what did I save all this stuff for? my grandmother would say, glaring at her. I could have sold it off, along with all the rest – God knows I needed the money – but I saved it so that my daughter-in-law wouldn’t have anything to complain about. And now you tell me you’re too fashionable to wear gold at a wedding. The problem is that your generation of girls has grown too used to luxury – you’ve forgotten the value of things. I’d just like to see you bringing up that spoilt son of yours in a one-room tenement in a slum; I’d just like to see it.
So, to mollify her, my mother would open the steel box in her cupboard, take out one of the necklaces she had been given and put it on.
My grandmother would pretend not to notice for a while, but in fact, of course, she was always delighted. After a decent interval she would summon my mother and run her fingers over the necklace, smiling to herself and reminiscing about the place where she had bought it, trying to remember the name of the shop.
My mother would take it off and slip it into her handbag as soon as she was out of the house (horrible heavy thing!), but my grandmother was not to know, and the mere sight of the necklace would leave her contented.
But there was one piece of jewellery that she had never parted with. It was a long, thin gold chain with a tiny ruby pendant. It was so much a part of her that I hardly noticed it: she had never taken it off, at least not in my recollection.
But all the same, she was very ashamed of wearing it, and went to great lengths to hide it under her blouse, spreading it out over her shoulders, with the pendant tucked deep inside so that nobody would see it. She believed that our relatives would gossip if they saw her wearing it.
I know what they’d say, she would mutter. They’d say: Look at her – she’s been a widow for years and she’s still wearing jewellery as though she were a girl. Why, I’m sure even your father thinks that, deep down in his heart.
Of course she did not neglect to inform my father of her views. He, for his part, would try to persuade her that he didn’t mind about her necklace at all, that, indeed, he would have been happy if she’d worn more jewellery. And perhaps in a way he would have been; perhaps it really would have pleased him to see her, all dressed up, like his fashionable colleagues’ mothers, who went to clubs with their sons wearing just the right touches of gold around their necks and wrists, laying claim to chicdom through their defiance of the ancient, but sadly démodé, proscriptions.
But my grandmother didn’t believe my father when he said he didn’t mind, and perhaps she was right: maybe my father, despite his protestations, did mind her wearing even that thin gold chain; maybe somewhere deep in his heart he did really think of it as a sign of disrespect to his dead father.
But my grandmother didn’t intend any disrespect to his memory; far from it.
I wear it because He gave it to me, she explained to me once. You know – your grandfather. It was the first thing He ever gave me – in Rangoon, soon after we were married. They have wonderful rubies there. I couldn’t bear to give it away now – He wouldn’t like it. I haven’t taken it off once in these thirty-two years – not even when I had my gall-bladder operation. They wanted me to take it off, but I made them sterilise it instead. I wasn’t going to have my operation without it. It’s become a part of me now.
Sometimes, while massaging her neck, or when she had fallen asleep in her chair, I would pull the chain out of her blouse and run it through my fingers. It was so scratched and discoloured it didn’t look like gold any more. It smelt exactly like her, of soap and starch and powder, but in a sharpened, metallic kind of way. It really was a part of her.
And then, one day in the year 1965, more than one and a half years after her trip to Dhaka, she gave it away.
One afternoon I came home from school to find the radio blaring at top volume in my grandmother’s room, upstairs. It was so loud I could hear it on the pavement, where the schoolbus had left me. I ran in and found my mother lying prostrate on her bed, with her fingers jabbed against her temples and a wet cloth draped over her eyes.
What’s going on? I asked her.
Who’s to know but God? she said. Your Tha’mma went out of the house at ten this morning and came back a couple of hours later. She wouldn’t have anything to eat – I asked her myself, I said, you’ll fall ill if you don’t eat, but who’s listening to whom? – and instead she went upstairs and turned on her radio and it’s been going like that ever since. She turns it even higher when the news comes on; it’s happened three times already.
Where did she go? I said. I was very surprised, because at that time my grandmother hardly ever left her room: we could count the number of times she had been out of the house in the last year on the fingers of one hand.
My mother shrugged again and pulled a face. Who knows where she went? she said. Who cares?
Didn’t you go up and ask? I said, knowing that the answer would be no, because at that time I was the only person in the house whom she would allow into her room.
Why don’t you go and tell her to turn it down now? my mother said. She might listen to you. It’s no use my asking her.
I ran upstairs and pushed my grandmother’s door open. I could only see her back. She was crouching over the radio, with both her arms around it, as though she were waiting for the noise to blow a hole through her.
I knew at once, the moment I saw her.
Tha’mma! I shouted. What’s happened to your chain? What have you done with it?
She turned to look at me then. Her hair was hanging in wet ropes over her face; her eyes were glazed and her spectacles had fallen off. I was frightened by the sight of her: I wished I hadn’t shut the door behind my back.
I gave it away, she said, her glazed, unfocussed eyes alighting, not on me, but on a point on the wall above my head.
Why Tha’mma? I said. Why did you do that?
I
gave it away, she screamed. I gave it to the fund for the war. I had to, don’t you see? For your sake; for your freedom. We have to kill them before they kill us; we have to wipe them out.
She began to pound on the radio with both hands. I took a step backwards, fumbling with the doorknob, behind my back.
This is the only chance, she cried, her voice rising to a screech. The only one. We’re fighting them properly at last, with tanks and guns and bombs.
Then the glass front of the radio shattered as her fist drove into it. Bits of glass tinkled on to the floor and the radio sputtered and fell silent. She wrenched her hand back, gouging out flesh and skin on the jagged edges of the glass. She gave her bloody hand a shake, put it on her lap and stared at it, bemusedly, as the blood dripped down the sides of her sari, dyeing it a gentle, batik-like crimson.
I must get to the hospital, she said to herself, perfectly calm now. I mustn’t waste all this blood. I can donate it to the war fund.
It was then that I screamed. I screamed from the pit of my stomach, holding my head and shutting my eyes. I screamed until my mother and the servants came and carried me to my room, and even then I screamed and would not open my eyes.
I was still whimpering when my mother came into my room with the doctor. She patted my head and said: The doctor’s going to give you an injection so that you’ll be able to rest for a while.
I struck her hand away and said: What’s happened to Tha’mma?
Don’t worry about her, said my mother. She’s all right. Your father came with another doctor and they took her away to a nice hospital where she can rest for a few days. Doctors and nurses will look after her, and she’ll be very calm and happy. Don’t worry about her.
Why did she do that? I said. What did she want?
My mother felt my forehead worriedly while the doctor tested his syringe.
Don’t worry about Tha’mma, she said. It’s this war with Pakistan. She’s been listening to the news on the radio all the time and it hasn’t been good for her. She’s never been the same, you know, since they killed Tridib over there.
‘Killed’ Tridib? I said, as the needle slipped into my arm. Who killed Tridib? You told me it was an accident.
Yes, yes, my mother said quickly. That’s what I meant. Now go to sleep, don’t worry.
Why did you say ‘killed’? I said. What did you mean?
But the soporific glow of the tranquilliser had already begun to warm my body, and in a moment I shut my eyes and forgot.
That was the first time I had any inkling that Tridib’s death was the result of something other than an accident.
I was sent to stay with my mother’s brother in Durgapur when his body was brought back from Dhaka. He was cremated while I was away. May left for London the same day, and immediately afterwards Mayadebi and her family went back to Dhaka.
I knew nothing of what had happened, nothing – not even that Tridib was dead.
My parents came to Durgapur a week later, to fetch me, and on the way to Calcutta my father stopped the car at the great temple of Ma Kali at Dakshineshwar. I was taken aback, because I knew my father hated fighting his way through the crowds at the temple. Why have we stopped here? I asked.
Never mind, he said, and I knew at once that it was a special occasion.
We locked the car and went in, followed by a swarm of importuning pandas. My father spotted our family priest, and he came running across the great paved courtyard and led us through the crowd up to the inner temple. While we were circumambulating the inner temple, with our offerings cupped in our hands, my father put a hand on my shoulder and said: Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. A very sad thing happened while you were away in Durgapur. Tridib died in an accident in Dhaka.
He stopped and bent down to look into my face; I think he’d expected me to burst into tears. But for me ‘dead’ was just a word, associated vaguely with films and comic books. That was all; I had no means of attaching that word to a real presence, like Tridib’s. I felt nothing – no shock, no grief. I did not understand that I would never see him again; my mind was not large enough to accommodate so complete an absence.
What sort of accident? I said.
Their car was stopped by some hooligans, my father told me. Just ordinary ruffians like you have everywhere. But the car swerved and crashed into a wall or something … That was all. No one else was hurt.
I nodded and went ahead, my offerings still safe in my hands.
No, wait, my father said, pulling me to a halt. Listen: you have to promise me something. Remember you’re holding Ma Kali’s flowers in your hands, so you can’t ever go back on your word. Promise me that you’ll never talk about this anywhere – never, not in school, not to Montu, not to your friends at the park. You know that Meshomoshai – Tridib’s father – is a very important man in the government? He doesn’t want people to hear about this – it has to be kept secret, so you mustn’t talk about it. Most of all, you mustn’t ask your Tha’mma any questions about what happened. She’s already very upset, and it would only get worse if you made her talk about it. You’re growing up now, you’re a big boy, and you have to understand that there are things grownups don’t talk about.
I nodded, but I didn’t really give him my word – not because I did not think I could keep it, but merely because I could not understand why he was making such a fuss. My friends wouldn’t have been interested in an accident in some far-off place anyway. There was nothing to talk about: an accident was such a petty way to die.
The first time Robi ever talked about Tridib’s death was in London: at the end of that beautiful September day when Ila took us to Lymington Road to meet Mrs Price.
Ila had promised to give Robi and me dinner at her favourite ‘Indian’ restaurant – a small Bangladeshi place called the Maharaja, in Clapham – after we’d been to see Mrs Price. She did her best to persuade Nick to come with us too, when he walked us back to the West Hampstead tube station. But Nick declined politely: he had something to do that evening, he said; he would have to put it off till some other time. He waved us goodbye at West Hampstead station.
Ila was so disappointed she did not say a single word all the way to Clapham Common.
The restaurant was only a few minutes’ walk from the underground station. Ila pointed it out to us as soon as we climbed out – a dimly lit plate-glass window, with heavy velvet curtains, wedged in between a dozen other eating places, ranging from Guyanese to Turkish. When Robi pushed the door open, we found ourselves in a narrow, rectangular room, divided into little cubicles, each with its own table and chairs. The tables were lit by brass lamps with tasselled shades and the chairs were upholstered in worn purple cloth. The room smelt powerfully of spices, as though the central heating had grafted the odours of the kitchen deep into the wallpaper and upholstery.
The restaurant was almost empty when we went in. The man behind the counter, at the far end of the room, waved when he saw Ila, and came hurrying towards us.
How are you, Rehman-shaheb? Ila said as she handed him her coat.
I’m very well, he said, smiling broadly. He was a short, middle-aged man, with round cheeks and greying hair, dressed in a black jacket and a white bow tie. He spoke Bengali with a nasal Sylhet accent, and we had to listen to him carefully to follow, even though he was obviously making an effort to match his speech to ours.
Where have you been all these days? he was saying to Ila. We haven’t seen you in here for so long we thought you’d moved away from Stockwell.
Ila laughed. Oh no, Rehman-shaheb, she said. I wouldn’t move away without telling you first.
Rehman-shaheb ushered us to a table, pulled back the chairs and handed us each a menu. Robi opened his, looked at it for a moment, and gave me a sidelong glance.
Chicken Singapore? he said under his breath.
Prawn Bombay? I responded.
Robi sighed and snapped his menu shut. Why don’t you order, Ila? he said. You obviously know the place.
She was proved right when the food came: everything fell just beyond the border of familiarity – the usual taste of spices transformed by stock and cream and Worcestershire Sauce. But the food was delicious in its own way, and we ate heartily while Robi told us stories about his colleagues in the Indian Administrative Service – funny stories about lonely young men who lived in huge colonial mansions in remote districts and spent their time writing symbolist poetry and masturbating.
After the plates had been cleared away and Ila had paid for the dinner with her credit card, Rehman-shaheb came back with three cups of coffee on a tray.
This is from us, he said. I mean, ‘Compliments of the House’, ar ki; you know? It’s a custom over here.
Oh, Rehman-shaheb! exclaimed Ila. Why did you do all this? You shouldn’t have. But now you have to sit with us for a while.
Yes, do sit with us for a bit, I added. For me the experience of hearing Bengali dialects which I had never heard in Calcutta being spoken in the streets of London was still replete with unexplored ironies.
All right, Rehman-shaheb said, and pulled a chair up to our table. There was an awkward moment of silence, and then Ila said: Rehman-shaheb, do you know, my uncle Robi over there lived in your part of the world when he was a boy, in Dhaka.
Oh, is that so? said Rehman-shaheb. I lived there too for a bit. When were you there?
It was a long time ago, said Robi. From 1962 to 1964.
I see, said Rehman-shaheb, I left before that – joined a ship, you know. Have you been back after that? After Bangladesh became independent?
Robi shook his head.
You must go, said Rehman-shaheb. It’s completely changed now – so modern. You won’t believe it. But tell me, which part of the city did you live in?