And, of course, there will be Orphan, the youngest and the newest member of this family.
~
What will they do in The Mall?
Two hundred and eight stores, there’s so much to do.
WOMAN
Lecture Notes
I will read aloud your father’s college lecture notes, I will keep my voice low. If his ghost is here, he will listen. I think he will be pleased because I never did this when he was around. I will read a few paragraphs to give you a sense of what he loves, what he teaches.
~
Language, says Joseph Vendryes in his 1921 classic Le Langage, does not exist apart from the people who think and speak it. Its roots go deep into the consciousness of each one of us. It’s from there that it draws sustenance enabling it to blossom into speech. Language exists on the lips of common people. Spontaneity is its life, it has a sort of elasticity natural to life. But this isn’t the case with literary language. It develops from spoken language but grammar imposes a certain invariable order.
~
Your father’s notes are in three exercise books.
I smell the paper and ink, the touch of his hands, his fingers, the years.
He uses blue ink. Every night when he sits down for dinner, there is a blue smudge below his nail on the side of the middle finger of his right hand. The pages, though, are spotless: there’s no scratch, no streak, no smudge. No sign of any faltering.
~
Spoken dialect may be compared to a flowing stream constantly changing and literary language to a canal that issues out of it. In the latter, the flow of currents is checked by dams in the form of grammatical and other formal conventions, causing the water to stagnate. Vendryes compares literary language to the formation of a film of ice on the surface of a river. ‘The stream which still flows under the ice that imprisons it is the popular and natural language; the cold which produces the ice and would fain restrain the flood is the stabilising action exerted by the grammarians and pedagogues; and the sunbeam which gives language its liberty is the indomitable force of life, triumphing over rules and breaking the fetters of tradition.’
~
I find the exercise books years after your father’s death when I am cleaning up one day, brushing away dust mites in the cupboard, chasing out the silverfish from his books, watching them dart across the pages. On one page of his notes, in the margins, there is a pen sketch, very neat and elegant, of a tiny house by the banks of a river on which is a boat with its reflection. There are mountains behind the house between which a sun sets and birds fly. Does he draw that for you?
~
A time comes when a literary language, because of its highly conventionalised structure, becomes lifeless, artificial and colourless. It ceases to be intelligible to the people and then it is discarded and becomes dead. The need, then, is felt for the creation of a new language. One may naturally ask when and at what moment the course of linguistic evolution takes shape as to warrant the creation of a new language.
Marcel Cohen is of the opinion that the transformation of a language can be rapid. A period of a thousand years suffices for the accomplishment of the thrust from one language to the other. The history of the origin of Sanskrit, Prakrit and the Modern Indo-Aryan languages illustrates the law of birth and death of literary languages.
~
Is your father’s ghost listening? He must be because he is so quiet, I can’t hear him move as I do on certain nights when I cannot sleep.
The curtains are still, I cannot hear the windows creak.
Is he in your room? If he is, I hope he lets you know that. Maybe it’s easier for you to tell him stuff that you cannot tell me. So look for new creases in your bedspread.
If they appear and if they move, that means he is there. You may switch off the air conditioner for a while because he may be cold, he’s not used to it.
~
Magadhi is a Prakrit language which evolved from Sanskrit. To understand the relationship between these two, let’s look at a simple parallel. Indo-Aryan speech comes before us in the shape of three portraits. Sanskrit is a portrait of a boy of ten years; Prakrit of the same boy who has turned fourteen while Modern Indo-Aryan is one who has turned into a man of nineteen. In the life of language, our one year is almost equal to a century.
~
I press the notebook’s pages against my face. Each word your father writes crawls into me through my eyes and my mouth, I swallow your father’s words, I feel them inside me, next to my heart. The notes get progressively difficult, I cannot read them out loud to you since there are mathematical symbols, technical terms that describe the formation of the language, its verbs, adjectives and tenses, the thousand-and-one rules of its grammar.
Of course, there is someone who can help me understand all this.
You know who I am talking about but I can tell you more about him only when your father’s ghost leaves the house because I don’t want him to hear, I want this to be our secret.
MAN
Train Fear
Will he find Balloon Girl in the AIIMS mortuary?
Instead of an answer in his head, all he feels is fear. Like he has never felt before.
No, that’s wrong, he has felt fear like this only once. Long ago, at a railway station.
He sits in a train, next to a window. He is a boy, he has both parents.
~
He is nine years ten years old. His father, his mother and he are on a train to where he doesn’t remember. What he remembers is that his father cannot pay for air-conditioned or first class so they are in the general compartment, all windows open, his nose pressed against the bars, the iron-red paint peeling off in flakes, the heat from the engine and the fierce noonday sun floating inside, into his hair and his eyes.
The train has stopped at a station. They have run out of drinking water. Father gets off the train to fill the pitcher with water from the station’s tap. Through the window, if he leans his head, he can see a row of taps and a very large crowd, passengers waiting, jostling, to fill their pitchers, bottles. His mother tell his father to hurry up because the train stops for just one or two minutes.
His heart begins to race, what if the mighty train with twenty, thirty coaches, two giant black engines, drivers with oil smeared on their faces and hands, as they lean out of their cabins, begins to move? The guard will wave his green flag, blow the whistle, there will be no one to stop the train.
His father has disappeared in the crowd at the tap.
He will lose his father.
Mother, I don’t want water, he says, I will go thirsty, please tell him we do not need water, please tell him he should return soon, the train will start to move.
Mother laughs, you are not a baby any more, she says, you are a big boy now, why are you worried?
He cannot see his father, the vendors are pushing their trolleys away from the train, he hears the piercing whistle, that’s the guard, he must be waving the flag. The train begins to pull out.
The sun blazing in the sky disappears, falls off the edge of the earth, day turns into night, blackness enters the coach through the window, cold and dark, he will never see his father again.
The train is gathering speed, the platform is now a living thing, pitch black, spread out all the way to where the sky meets the trees and the earth, heaving, rising until it curls up from the ground to the clouds, looks at him with many eyes blazing, many tongues in a mouth which is now as big as the night sky itself, opening wide as it descends, moving along with the train, as fast, until it’s right in front, it snaps, bites off the bars of the window, enters the coach, swallows him and while he is travelling inside this monster, the only sound he can hear is of the train moving and his mother saying, you are not a baby any more, you are a big boy now.
~
That boy who is not a baby wants to kill his mother although he doesn’t know what killing means. He wants to push her out of the running train, he wants to watch her head roll down
the tracks, her body get cut by the iron wheels, into two, three, four pieces, each piece tumbling, falling, and then speeding away like the trees and the ponds and the dirt-tracks that thunder past him, backwards, like in a stampede in reverse.
Why are you crying, Father asks, sitting next to him, the pitcher at his feet, full of water, and he turns, buries his head in his father’s chest.
~
That fear is back as the car moves towards the hospital, that same cold blackness in the middle of the white-hot day.
This time it’s the road that has become a living thing curling up into the sky, then coming down to break his car window and swallow him. He can hear his mother’s laughter in his ears, her words, you are not a baby any more, you are a big boy now.
‘We are almost there,’ says Driver. ‘Do you want me to stop at the hospital?’
CHILD
Neel Chatterjee
‘Step on the bricks,’ says Kalyani, ‘one by one, don’t worry, they won’t move, you won’t trip.’
‘I know that,’ says Dr Chatterjee as he stands at the edge of a puddle of dirty water outside her house, unsure how to cross. It is afternoon when the slum is deserted except for the very young and the very old, those who cannot work and those who can only play. Bhai, Ma, Pinki and Baba are all out at work, Kalyani is at home.
She has a fever, not high enough to worry but it makes her body ache, in the knees, in her head and heels. She is lying down when she hears his voice call out her name.
~
‘What happened to your phone? I try calling but it’s dead.’
‘I had to give the phone back when I left Little House, I will get one soon.’
‘How have you been?’
‘I am fine, Doctor, just a mild fever.’
‘Have you seen any doctor?’
‘It’s nothing, it will go away, please sit down.’
She shows him to the only chair in her house. Sunlight drips through the crack in the tin roof, stains the wall, falls into a pool of shadow on the floor.
The bed is rolled up neatly along one side of the wall next to the kerosene stove and the lantern.
He takes his shoes off before he steps inside. It’s so hot that he reaches out to switch on a stand fan in a corner.
‘That won’t work,’ says Kalyani, ‘a few minutes ago, the power went off.’
‘That’s fine,’ he says, ‘no need.’
‘All well, sir?’
‘Yes, I have some news.’
‘What happened?’
‘Orphan left.’
‘Left means? Has he found a home?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Hope?’
‘He ran away.’
‘How can he do that? He hasn’t even learned how to walk.’
‘They found a hole in the wall and he wasn’t there, it was the morning after the storm, they suspect the wind broke the wall, someone came inside and took him away.’
‘Where were you when the storm came?’
‘I didn’t go to work that night.’
‘I don’t believe this. Maybe he’s hurt and he’s still somewhere there in Little House.’
‘No, no, they looked everywhere, Orphan’s gone.’
‘Then someone must have come and taken him away, he can’t walk away on his own.’
‘Mr Sharma is very angry.’
‘I can imagine that.’
‘They even suspect you since he went missing after you left Little House. They say you may have come and taken him away at night.’
‘They can come and check my house. Have they sent you to do that?’
‘No, Kalyani, never. And even if they do, I will never do that. I know you will never hurt Orphan.’
~
She lights the little gas stove to make some tea for him. He watches her move, the turn of her wrists, her fingers, as she opens a plastic box to spoon out the tea leaves, measures out the sugar, pours the milk from a small steel cup, adjusts the heat, leans back to see if the gas is right, so precise, as she pours out the tea into the cup a wisp of steam rises to touch her face.
~
Power is back, she shifts the stand fan to direct its draught towards him.
‘Where do you think Orphan is right now?’ she asks.
‘It’s been more than a week now,’ he says, ‘you think he’s alive?’
‘Please do not say such a thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘About the possibility of Orphan not being alive, let’s not even mention it.’
‘No, I am not so sure if he is safe.’
‘Where do we look for him in this city?’
‘They have put his name out on TV with a picture.’
‘But what about those who do not watch TV, what if they are the only ones who know where he is?’
~
Tea is over, Kalyani sits on the floor, her back pressed against the wall, her eyes are closing, the fever must be coming back. It’s time for him to leave.
‘I came to ask you something,’ he says.
‘Yes?’
‘I have been thinking about you.’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t know how to say it but I think of you a lot. After you left Little House, it’s been, how do I say it, very empty there.’
‘I had to leave, I need more money.’
‘I can give you money.’
The words tumble out on their own, he doesn’t want her to hear them but he cannot take them back.
‘No, no, I don’t want your money,’ she says.
‘No, that’s not what I meant, I am very sorry.’
‘Here, let me take your cup,’ she says.
He hands her the cup and saucer, both still warm from the tea.
Their fingers do not touch.
‘I will get going now,’ he says, ‘I need to be back at Little House for the night shift, you know how it’s like.’
‘It was nice of you to visit me,’ she says, getting up to see him off at the door. ‘And tell me about Orphan. I hope he’s fine.’
‘You should go see a doctor today,’ he says.
‘I think I should be fine by tomorrow,’ she says.
‘Let me know when you get a phone.’
‘Sure, Doctor,’ she says.
And he knows then that what he so badly wants is not meant to be. He steps on the same stones on his way out. The puddle has shrunk in the afternoon heat, and when he turns back to look, Kalyani is gone, the tarpaulin door still as in a painting.
MEANWHILE
Reporter from Little House at Her Child’s Nursery School
‘Welcome, parents, my name is Devika Bhattacharya, my colleague here is Megha Tripathi. We are class teachers of Nursery, Section E, New City International School, ranked first in Education World Survey for three successive years, 2011, 2012, 2013.
‘Congratulations. As you know, more than two thousand children applied for thirty-five seats in this class. You are the lucky ones, we are delighted to have you here today as we embark on a journey to your child’s future.
‘First of all, please fill out the forms you received in the Admission Packet you picked up at the entrance, we will have an interaction. After which the principal and the director of the Primary Section would like to share a few words with you, thank you very much. If you need any water, the cooler is in the hallway outside.’
Payal Wadhwa has filled out her form.
‘Nature of Work: Reporter, Camera India’.
Then, questions and questions, so many she loses count.
Are you a working mother? If no, why not? If yes, what are your hours in the office?
What is your favourite activity with your child?
What are the values you want your child to imbibe at school?
What do you do when your child misbehaves?
Which books did you last read with your child?
What’s your view on children from the economically weaker section studying in the same class
as your child?
She knows these answers by heart, an honest mishmash of some fact, some fudge.
She turns the form in, looks out through the window into the playground, a 7-foot-high wall with barbed wire that runs all around. So different from the crumbling wall she reported on yesterday, at Little House, the orphanage, after the freak thunderstorm, where a child went missing, a child, they say, younger than hers.
She looks around her, in the classroom.
So this will be where her son, her baby boy, who she has left at home since it’s his sleeptime, will play each day five days a week over the next year, five, ten, twelve years. This is what he will see from next week: stickers of starfish, sea anemone, crab, oyster and coral, all with smiling faces. Sea creatures in a city over 1,300 kilometres away from the sea.
Payal closes her eyes to find herself at the bottom of the ocean where these sea creatures live, miles of water pressing her from above. She doesn’t wish to swim back to the surface.
‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, now we begin the interaction segment of today’s programme. We would like you to share with the class an anecdote about your child. Please introduce yourself and mention your child’s name.’
~
‘Hello everyone, my name is Vanshikha, my daughter’s name is Zara. She is all ready to start school next week, I am sure of that. How am I sure? Well, yesterday, when I came home from work, she told me, Mama, you keep telling me that if I go to school, I can study and become whatever I want to be and then I can go to office in the morning, have my own car, come back every day just like you and Papa. Yes, I said.
‘To which she said, Mama, I start school next week. So when can I go to office, where is my car, where is my driver?’
She Will Build Him a City Page 15