The Immortals

by Chaudhuri, Amit

  Mr Wilson, from the lower echelons of the company’s personnel department, arrived at the flat late one morning. Having been let in, he stood there sheepishly. Then, almost casually, with the enquiring look of a man in a museum, he strolled into the main hall.

  News was relayed down the long corridor to the main bedroom, by Arthur, then Jumna, then another, that Wilson was here. Finally, Mrs Sengupta, fresh from a bath, equanimous for the moment in a tangail, came out from the corridor into the sunlight of the drawing room.

  She knew Wilson; as far as she was concerned, he was an odd-job man. When something needed to be done – when she needed to find out if the flight her husband was on was delayed; or to book a private taxi because the driver hadn’t turned up – he was the one she got in touch with. He was a big, burly man who spoke English in his brief polite responses with a South Indian accent, rolling his r’s and everything else softly; and he got the job done.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, apologetic, but also as if he were sharing an unpleasant secret, ‘I must have an inventory done before you move. Which things are belonging to the company, which things are not . . .’

  ‘Wilson,’ she said quickly, ‘are you mad? What are you talking about?’

  In all these years, his sanity had never been questioned. He was wounded, but he was also ashamed.

  ‘I’m sorry, madam. What can I do?’ he said, sullen and obdurate, falling back on the phrase that was a favourite whenever he was in a sticky situation with his superiors. ‘I have orders from office.’

  Tentatively, Wilson began to walk around the drawing room, where he’d never been before, either as visitor or guest, with a notepad and pen in his hand. ‘It’s a disgrace,’ said Mallika Sengupta in a clear voice, as the figure moved further away. ‘I will complain.’

  ‘These will stay,’ he thought, looking at a rosewood cabinet and the large L-shaped sofa with a qualified but proprietorial eagle eye, as if he’d formed some sort of kinship with them. He barely glanced at the Grecian urnlike table lamps. At a huge stretch of carpet, deep and ruddy, he paused, undecided, and glanced at the paper in his hand. He was in a peculiarly emotional mood, at once self-effacing and blithely, insularly unstoppable. The only time he smiled slightly was at three photographs on a rosewood shelf, a close-up of Mrs Sengupta’s face from ten years ago, her charming uneven teeth showing in her blissful smile, and another of Nirmalya when he was eleven and pudgy, proudly wearing a zip-up T-shirt a relative had sent him from Europe, squinting unthreateningly (those were his last days without spectacles) at the sunlight, with parents on either side, against a wilderness that was actually Elephanta island; then another one in which Mr and Mrs Sengupta and nine-year-old Nirmalya, dressed for the Delhi winter, were posing beside a severe woman with a patient but unprevaricating gaze, who turned out to be Indira Gandhi. A spring came to Wilson’s step, a barely noticeable feeling of abandon; till, gradually, once more, he became serious and attentive. Around him, as if he were no more than a fleck of dust, Jumna reached casually with her jhadu for one of the many tables, and then wove herself towards the sofa to plump up a cushion.

  When he left, he had the pained, wise air of someone who’d been far happier booking private taxis for Mallika Sengupta, and checking times of flight arrivals and departures. ‘Thank you, madam,’ he said, as if he were referring not to the grace of the last half-hour, but redeeming the small role he’d played in her life.

  ‘How is your son?’ said a woman whom Mrs Sengupta knew well from these occasions, a Sindhi businessman’s wife. Mallika Sengupta, startled, didn’t know where to begin. They had plates of dessert on their laps, the sort of juxtaposition that was becoming increasingly popular in the business and corporate community, honeydew melon ice cream and semi-transparent, plastic-yellow jalebis. ‘He is reading all the time, very difficult books,’ she said, laughing. She was always defensive about him. ‘What will he study?’ the woman asked, persistent. ‘MBA?’ Mrs Sengupta was pleased, cruelly, because she knew her answer would disturb her companion’s ingestion. ‘He says he wants to study philosophy,’ she smiled. The woman paused, tried to capture, with her spoon, a slippery fragment of ice cream, and said with averted eyes, ‘Very nice.’ Then added, as if speaking of a rare condition she was not going to condemn or probe too deeply: ‘So he is not into money.’

  To regroup, she asked: ‘You are leaving this side of the city, Mallika? Where do you plan to go when your husband leaves the company?’ ‘Bombay is such a huge place, and so expensive,’ said Mrs Sengupta, glancing at her reflection to check if her hair was all right; the wall had large glass panels that doubled everything – the fluted frames of the chairs, the doorways opposite opening on to corridors, the hair held ornately in buns or falling darkly upon shoulders, the glow of the chandelier – with various degrees of approval. ‘My son’, she said with secret pride, ‘says he wants to go somewhere quiet and green.’

  * * *

  FINALLY THEY LEFT that side of the city forever – too cheap a word, whose meaning you don’t quite get to grasp in a lifetime; you only use it self-indulgently, for a luxurious and elegiac sense of closure. Instinctively, they didn’t use it; they didn’t believe in ‘forever’ – the company had gifted them, almost two decades ago, a permanent sense of the future. Only much later do you learn that there’s no going back; learn it, an incontrovertible, minor lesson, not very difficult to grasp, then move on.

  This, maybe, was the ‘quiet, green place’ that Nirmalya had been thinking about, but whose existence he’d never really suspected; a lane off one of the downward slopes of Pali Hill, a blue plaque announcing its name hanging by two rings from a pole at the base of the lane, which swung in a monsoon breeze in an intrepid, self-contained way, a gate opening on to a building, a second-storey apartment, three bedrooms, roughly fourteen hundred square feet, just a little more than a third of the flat in Thacker Towers. It was as if, wandering down Thacker Towers, they’d discovered an annexe no one had noticed before, an annexe whose balcony opened on to a silent neighbour, a jackfruit tree – and they’d decided never to return to the main flat.

  The way to the city was long; sometimes it took as much as an hour. Every morning, Apurva Sengupta – he now had a post-retirement job as a consultant in a German firm – went back to it, past the upturned hulls of fishermen’s boats on the sand in Mahim, the new Oil and Natural Gas Commission township breeding in the swamp in the background, the Air India maharaja on the left, full of a droll and emphatic sincerity, promising seven flights to London a week; off he went in a sturdy white Ambassador he’d bought from the company, and in which an air conditioner had been fitted. They’d got used to air-conditioned transport, the sealed air, the busy, glinting, ragged world kept at bay by glass; they couldn’t, any more, imagine long journeys without it. The air conditioner, however, hadn’t been part of the original engine; it had been transplanted in a garage and installed as an extra, and it took something extra out of the machine. Slowly, shamelessly, it was reducing the engine’s life. No matter; it gave the Senguptas comfort – every blast of coolness on a hot, uncontainable day was welcome; it turned the interior of the Ambassador into a time capsule, a seamless continuation of their old, familiar life in the Mercedes, which they’d bid farewell to without much of a pang. But, since the air conditioner wasn’t built into the engine, it worked off and on, it stopped when the car stopped at traffic lights and went into fan mode, warm air emerged from the slats and brought the Senguptas back to where they were with a wave of irritation. Then, as the light changed to green and the car moved on, there was relief again.

  And, in spite of their satisfaction with the new charming little flat, with the quiet lane off Pali Hill and its gulmohur trees with fan-like leaves and churches that emerged silently but busily at the end of a street and reminiscent bungalows that still belonged to Goans, they felt compelled to make the trip, each day, to the centre of Bombay, to Dhobi Talao and Flora Fountain, to partake of their old life: the life they consider
ed shallow and a bit fake. Like interlopers, they arrived, having burnt an hour’s worth of fuel on the way, at the club they used to frequent; ordered food, feeling dishevelled after the journey; disappeared into the spacious, forgiving gentlemen’s and ladies’ bathrooms to splash water on their faces, adjust the bindi on the forehead, smooth their clothes; then, like people who’d been pacified and made whole, returned to their sofa and ate wonton soup and fried rice or a plate of steak sandwiches.

  One day, Mrs Sengupta, an hour after her music lesson, found Shyamji at the top of Pali Hill, determined but anguished, his Fiat uncooperative and impenetrable, he about to push it up the slope, while his driver, collar hanging back from his bare brown neck, stood next to the car, one arm plunged into the window, his hand on the steering wheel. Mrs Sengupta was seized by a moment of pity; leaning out of her window, she surprised him with, ‘Shyamji, I will drop you – where are you going?’ Nirmalya, her only company in the back, smiled indecisively. Shyamji smiled too, in a pained way, as if neither he nor the second-hand car was to blame, but something more mysterious and inscrutable that had acted up this hot, dazzling morning.

  He was grateful, settling into the front seat; he’d have had to take the local train otherwise. ‘Where are you going now, didi?’ he asked, politely, almost an afterthought, delicately adjusting the kurta sleeves which had dark patches beneath the armpits; but with a curiosity that hovered on the brink of wonder, as if he were convinced that her daily routines were bound to be interesting and unpredictable. And, having known Mrs Sengupta for four years, having been close to the family, he was circumspect and cautiously concerned about the sort of journey she was making now, he didn’t want her to ever be too far from what had been her sources of pleasure and well-being. Her reply gladdened him immediately:

  ‘We’re going to the club. We’ll have lunch there,’ she revealed in an unflappable sing-song, ‘and wait for Mr Sengupta to join us for tea.’

  So things were more or less as they were, he thought, nodding in assent inwardly, becoming increasingly calm in the interrupted air conditioning after the little incident with the Fiat; this move to the suburbs, the retirement, hadn’t really changed anything. After a moment, Mallika Sengupta said:

  ‘In fact, Shyamji, why don’t you join us for lunch? If you’re not doing anything else?’

  Traffic lights changed into a church and into mosques. She was pleased with the idea. Residential buildings with names like Jaijaiwanti and Ahir Bhairav widened into new office blocks; the sea came and went slyly. Shyamji was uncomfortable but full of curiosity.

  ‘Didi,’ he said, looking at the road ahead of him in Shivaji Park, ‘will I be allowed in these clothes?’ for he was in his usual loose white pyjamas and kurta.

  ‘Of course you will,’ she said, in a tone that dismissed all imaginary opposition in advance. ‘There are no dress restrictions.’

  In the foyer of this old, slate-roofed building, she impatiently signed him into the voluminous register which was open upon a page full of names and signatures and distinguished scrawls, while Shyamji stood beside her, with the mildly questioning furrow on the brow that was almost always present these days, adorned by the remnant of a small orange tika that had been put there by his mother after the morning pujas, neither at a loose end nor relaxed, waiting for something – some embarrassment or unforeseen glitch. The moment didn’t come; as you entered the corridor, the members usually looked up from their food or conversation or glass of fresh lime soda to stare at you, but only if they already knew you or thought they should; unashamedly, almost with warmth, certainly without hostility, they rested their eyes on the newcomer, as if they were about to smile; but they had an instinct for not dwelling at all on people or detail that didn’t interest them. Hardly anyone noticed Shyamji.

  Climbing up the three steps to the veranda, Mallika Sengupta, unaware of Shyamji’s discomfiture, clutching her handbag, led the way. They entered the dining hall. Shyamji, decorous, eyes lowered in expectation, and Nirmalya, his chappals making a slight hissing sound as he dragged them on the wooden floorboards, followed. Shyamji would not have understood Nirmalya’s embattled defiance, or what he thought he was fighting. He, unimpeachable in his white kurta-pyjamas, had become very serious, and mildly disapproving, as he always was, of any hint of flippancy.

  They were surrounded by the din of waiters and executives, lawyers, businessmen. They sat at a table, the menu card, propped up on a holder, upright before them. It said in undistinguished bureaucratic type, ‘Chicken Xacutti, Brown rice, Daal, Kachumbar salad’, and, beneath this, the same list was faithfully repeated, except that ‘chicken’ was substituted with ‘paneer’. And, further below the main course, the terse but inviting addition, ‘Ginger pudding and custard’.

  ‘What will you have, Shyamji?’ asked Mallika Sengupta. Waiters were disappearing at the far end of the hall behind a partition that separated kitchen from dining room.

  ‘Vegetarian,’ he said, simply, as if that would solve all his problems; he glanced around him, bemused. Orders were placed with a tall, swarthy waiter who suddenly loomed before them, nodding and writing with a pencil as Mrs Sengupta spoke. Then they sat silently for a while, Shyamji toying with and unfolding the napkin, Mrs Sengupta momentarily contented, as if she were giving him not only lunch, but the club on a platter. Words were unnecessary between teacher and students; finally, as water was being poured from a jug into their glasses, Shyamji enquired, his brow creased, thoughtful:

  ‘Didi, how much does it take to be a member of this club?’

  And Mrs Sengupta felt a pang for him, too brief to be called sadness – again, it was a sort of pity she felt, as when she’d seen him standing absently in the bright sunlight on Pali Hill next to the broken-down Fiat.

  ‘Seven or eight thousand,’ she said quickly; she noticed the gold-plated buttons on the kurta, the hair combed serenely back. ‘Mr Sengupta would know.’

  He nodded, abstracted and serious.

  ‘Achha hai,’ he said firmly, dispassionately, as if he didn’t mind facing up to the truth, however surprising it might be. ‘It’s a nice place.’

  Shyamji left them soon after lunch; his series of ‘tuitions’ in this part of the city began from early afternoon. Mother and son approached the sofas on the veranda; they stood against the nets that had been hung along the side to keep out crows, marauding cats, and the cricket ball, waiting to bid farewell to Shyamji.

  ‘Bhojan se anand aa gaya,’ he said, referring to the food. He smiled affectionately, teasingly, at the boy; then the smile became formal, but nonetheless remained warm, as he turned to look at Mrs Sengupta. ‘It was a great joy.’

  ‘Shyamji, you did not eat properly,’ she remonstrated.

  ‘What, didi,’ he said, upbraiding her gently; his kurta looked as good as new – there wasn’t a hint of dishevelment about him.

  Nirmalya and his mother sat on one of the sofas, waiting for early afternoon to dilate to teatime. Others were immobile, holding the first evening papers in their hands, with digestion. The nets hadn’t succeeded in keeping the club cat-free; they crept to the tables and meowed persuadingly, begging adeptly, without desperation; and the smaller children, who’d already finished school, and were sitting oddly alone in their uniforms, their ‘house’ colours displayed on sashes or badges, or had been briefly reunited with a parent, dropped bits of steak sandwich in their paths, pleased to be showering them frugally with their teatime snacks, which the cats pawed without eagerness. And, on the whole, there were few ‘dress restrictions’; grown-up men danced slowly past in shorts and strapped sandals; and once, a handsome, well-built teenage boy, taking a short cut between the bathroom and the pool, ran across in swimming trunks, a towel over his shoulders, his hair ink-black and wet, raising a few eyebrows and titters.