Chowringhee

by Mani Shankar Mukherji

  He spoke slowly. ‘Will you do me a favour? Will you go and meet Byron? Please?’

  How could I refuse? ‘What should I tell him?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell him. If you meet him, just let him know that I’m getting impatient.’

  I was about to set out immediately, but he stopped me.’ It’s teatime, young man,’ he said. ‘Tea will be served immediately, have a cup before you leave.’

  He thumped the bell. The hands of the clock showed ‘teatime’, which meant that 250-odd rooms would now have to be served tea simultaneously. The bearers must have gathered at the pantry muttering, ‘Quick, quick!’

  The bearer didn’t respond to the bell. He must have been waiting at the pantry, where two men would be swiftly pouring hot water into kettles while another one mechanically poured tea into them. The bearers had already taken the milk out of the fridge and the sugar from the shelves. Unless you saw it with your own eyes, you wouldn’t believe how efficient they were.

  It didn’t take long for the tea to be brought to the manager’s room. Lifting the tea cosy, Mathura Singh saluted and stepped aside, which meant: ‘Will sir pour, or would he like Mathura to do the needful?’

  Marco Polo nodded and said, ‘All right.’ Mathura Singh saluted once more and departed.

  No sooner had he stirred the tea in the pot than the manager jumped up in horror. ‘Poor quality!’ he exclaimed.

  Mathura was summoned. Quaking with fear, he said, ‘No, sir, it’s the same tea as you had this morning.’

  The manager sent for the steward. He was the man in charge of the stores, which meant he was the first target in case anything went wrong. A little later there was a knock on the door, and Jimmy came in. Forcing him into a chair, Marco Polo said, ‘I was dying to have a cup of tea with you, hence the summons.’

  Jimmy read between the lines and realized that there was trouble brewing. ‘Something wrong?’ he asked apprehensively.

  The manager exploded. ‘My dear fellow, I wouldn’t be surprised if a guest set fire to the hotel after a cup of your tea. If that tea gets to the stomach one might even feel like murdering someone.’

  Taken aback, the steward said, ‘Perhaps there’s something the matter with your teapot?’

  The manager made a face and said, ‘That question can be answered by the horses in the nearest stable.’

  Dripping obsequiousness, the steward said, ‘I’ll open a new packet and have some fresh tea sent to you right away.’

  Marco Polo guffawed. ‘You will, Jimmy, you will,’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to take my chair very soon.’ Turning to me he said, ‘You’re looking at your future boss.’

  Mathura Singh brought fresh tea. Pouring it out, Marco Polo handed me a cup saying, ‘This business of running a hotel—you can talk your way through it. There was this hotelier named Stephen in your very own Calcutta, who reigned simply on the gift of the gab.’

  ‘Who was he?’ asked the steward.

  ‘The founder of Calcutta’s biggest hotel. For that matter, also of one of the best-known hotels outside Calcutta. And don’t forget Stephen House in Dalhousie Square. The story goes that he found himself in a worse spot than you. One of his boarders found not only tea leaves in the kettle but a cockroach in the hot water.’

  ‘And then?’ Jimmy asked eagerly.

  ‘The guest marched straight to Stephen’s room, teapot in hand, quivering with rage. But Stephen wasn’t the kind of person to lose his nerve. Very cordially he asked his bearer to fetch another pot of tea. Then he poured a cup himself and gave it to the guest. The guest saw Stephen muttering something to himself, trying to work something out mentally.

  ‘“What are you thinking?” he asked.

  ‘Stephen replied, “We have five hundred rooms, which means five hundred pots of tea. One cockroach works out to one out of five hundred.”’

  The steward burst out laughing. ‘Wonderful! What presence of mind!’’

  Hmm. But times are changing fast, Jimmy. Mere words no longer make a difference,’ the manager said with a serious expression. ‘Unless we tread carefully we’ll be in for a lot of trouble.’

  Jimmy rose; so I had to, as well.

  After Jimmy left, Marco Polo said to me, ‘I could have given you a hotel car, but I don’t want this to get out.’

  That was no problem. I was used to riding a tramcar.

  I have never understood how it is that when a particular class of people live in the same neighbourhood, even the air in the locality acquires a distinctive smell. It’s difficult to say how this happens but it does. I could distinguish between Chhatawala Lane and Dacre’s Lane blindfolded. Even as the Esplanade–Park Circus tram crossed Wellesley Street and entered Eliot Road I sensed a distinct smell, a particularly unpleasant one at that. It wasn’t as though this area led Calcutta Corporation’s list of dirty neighbourhoods—in fact, I have spent a lot of time in lanes far dirtier—but I had never felt so uncomfortable.

  Getting off the tram, I tried to figure out the way to Byron’s home. A few half-naked Anglo-Indian children were playing marbles. It’s reassuring, somehow, to be in a place where small boys mill about playing games. There was a liquor store just a few yards away, but only its signboard was visible from the road. A dim light shining on the signboard tried to stimulate a little forbidden curiosity among innocent passers-by.

  The boys stopped their game and turned their attention towards me. When I took out a piece of paper from my pocket and asked them where the road mentioned in it was, they showed me the way in a strange cocktail of English and our national language. I was about to thank them and move away, when one of the senior lads told me that they expected something in return for their service.

  I knew one had to pay the lads to catch a taxi in Chowringhee, but this was the first time I had to pay four annas to locate an address in Calcutta. By the time I stood before Byron’s house, darkness had set in.

  The name had probably been marked in plastic letters on the front door, but some of the letters had, over time, forsaken their attachment and bid farewell, leaving only the letters R, O and N, which apparently could not give up on their love for the owner and were somehow managing to keep the show going.

  There was a doorbell, but when several attempts at ringing it elicited no response, I realized it wasn’t in the soundest of health, and started banging on the door in good old Indian fashion. It worked. I could hear a shackled dog raising cries of freedom from inside. There was a sound of a door being unlatched, and the person who emerged was Byron himself.

  Rubbing his eyes, he said, ‘What a surprise!’

  He ushered me inside with great affection. Had he been sleeping at this time of the evening?

  Offering me a battered cane chair, he went into the bathroom to splash water on his face. I spotted a pile of old American detective magazines on the table, and cobwebs and dust in the corners.

  Wiping his hands on a dirty towel as he came out of the bathroom, he said, ‘Surprised, eh? You must be wondering why I’m sleeping at this hour. I’ll tell you, but first things first—let me make some tea.’

  ‘I had a cup of tea a little while ago with Marco Polo himself,’ I said.

  ‘I have no objection to your drinking one hundred per cent pure nectar with the Agmark stamp on it. But how can you not have some tea with me? I still owe you forty-two cups.’

  He busied himself with the arrangements, saying, ‘My wife won’t be returning tonight, she’s going to her friend’s place in Batanagar straight from work.’

  Putting the kettle on the stove, he continued, ‘As I was saying, you must have been very surprised to find me asleep. But remember: whatever we detectives do, it is with a purpose.’

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I try to explain that to my wife all the time, but she refuses to accept it as easily as you do. Instead, she asks a thousand questions, not all of which I can answer. We make a living out of secrecy, after all. There are ma
ny things in our profession we can’t tell even our wives. After all, we live in India. If walls have ears anywhere, it’s in this country, particularly here, in Calcutta.’

  ‘So you have quite a lot of trouble?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘That’s why there’s a school of thought in our detective world which says that detectives shouldn’t get married.’

  ‘What!’ This was an astonishing theory.

  ‘Don’t be surprised,’ he said. ‘There’s an age-old controversy in the Church over whether priests should marry—it’s the same here. The members of the bachelor school of detectives say that wives are a positive nuisance to this profession.’

  ‘Many of the top barristers in the high court secretly believe the same thing,’ I said.

  ‘They’re bound to. Every ambitious and intelligent man will say as much.’ Taking the kettle off the stove, he went on, ‘But to be honest, I can’t blame my wife. Suspicion is not only the last word in our profession—it’s also the first. Since I posses that virtue in abundance, it is not fair to expect my wife not to have it.’

  Handing me a hot cup of tea, he continued, ‘As I was telling you, do you know why I was asleep at this unearthly hour? I probably won’t get a wink of sleep tonight—I’ll have to search for someone. The name of the person might interest you, but we will come to that later. This secret’s like the government’s budget—until it’s announced in parliament, it’s top secret, but after that it’s public property.’

  Now he asked after me. ‘How are things? Is the job treating you well?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That woman isn’t back yet.’

  ‘Mmm, I haven’t checked on Rosie, I’ve been very busy for some time. I must find out now whether she’s coming back at all. Mrs Banegee’s getting very restless, too, she sent her daughter to see me twice.’

  Eventually, Byron asked about the manager, and I had to tell him that it was because of him that I had come all this way.

  ‘Did he say anything?’ Byron asked.

  ‘He told me to tell you that he’s getting very impatient.’

  Byron looked grave. Pushing his cup aside, he took out a cheap cigarette from his pocket, lit it and said, ‘Do you know what comes in the way of becoming a great doctor? You must not feel too much for the patient. It’s the same with us—you come to me in trouble, I try to help you; if I can, that’s wonderful, if not, better luck next time. But I can’t do it; I try to, but I can’t. Poor Marco Polo, I really feel sorry for him.’

  I looked on at the poor, half-clownish Anglo-Indian. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. I felt a trifle uncomfortable in the smoke-filled, cloistered room.

  ‘I see you are feeling uneasy,’ Byron said, ‘but opening the windows will only make matters worse, with all the smoke of burning coal fire from the neighbouring houses.’ He paused. ‘Life’s like that. Overcome by the smoke of my own sorrows, I rushed outside only to discover that it’s even worse there. It has overwhelmed my own suffering and often made life that much more difficult to endure. You have spent many years at the court, you’ve never seen life through the coloured prism of Shahjahan Hotel. You’ll enjoy poor Marco Polo’s tale.’

  And he proceeded to tell me.

  It is as fascinating a story as that of the boy from the aristocratic family in Venice who, in the second half of the thirteenth century, responding to the call of the unknown, presented himself in the court of Kublai Khan.

  ‘He appears quite a contented man, doesn’t he?’ asked Byron. ‘A two-thousand-rupee job.’

  ‘Two thousand rupees!’

  ‘Yes sir. One outcome of the war in Europe is that there aren’t too many competent people left—and those who are don’t come cheap. If you want to run a big hotel well, you can’t get a manager at that salary these days. In Rangoon, he earned not only the same amount but also commissions on sales.

  ‘But Marco Polo didn’t have things easy all his life. His father was a Greek innkeeper in the Middle East who had set off with his meagre savings, his wife and newborn son on a voyage. Many a heartbreak awaited them. Arriving at an Arab town, they put up for the night at a hotel, but they did not have to pay the bill—in fact, they didn’t even manage to come out of that hotel room, because a devastating earthquake flattened the entire town that day. People from all over the world came forward to help the ill-fated town where several thousand people were supposed to have been trapped in the debris and died.

  ‘At that time a group of Italian priests was working about thirty miles away. It was their mission to travel around the world, bringing sight to the blind. Their equipment loaded on two ambulances with red crosses on them, they would go from village to village like a circus party. Tents would be pitched, their flag would be hoisted, portable iron cots joined together to create fifteen-odd beds, and a small tent used as the operation theatre.

  ‘Local charitable organizations would be informed beforehand, and word would be sent far and wide that the priests had arrived. They would camp for a fortnight in each village, treat a variety of serious eye diseases and perform operations if necessary. Then, they would move on to the next destination.

  ‘Hearing about the earthquake, they rushed to the site. Sifting through the debris, they discovered a European baby, alive, while the bodies of its parents lay a few feet away. The priests took the orphaned child back with them to Italy and brought him up at their orphanage.

  ‘What would they call him? The head priest must have been partial to travelling—as well as to history. He said, “He seems to be ruled by a wandering star—look at where he was born, where we found him, and where we have brought him. The only apt name for him is Marco Polo.”

  ‘No one objected, and, as a result, Marco Polo was reborn in Italy in the twentieth century. The priests left no stone unturned to ensure that the orphans under their care became self-sufficient as soon as they grew up. They sent Marco Polo to an institute of hotel management. In our country, those who can’t do anything else become homoeopaths, learn shorthand or open roadside restaurants. It isn’t like that abroad—people on the Continent, especially the Swiss and the Italians, don’t take the hotel business lightly. Students from all over the world visit those countries to specialize in hotel management—and degree and diploma holders from there work in big hotels all around the world.

  ‘This is one business where the English hadn’t been able to make much headway. Even in their own kingdom of Calcutta, barring one or two places, all the hotels and confectionery shops were run by people from the Continent. And even the few establishments owned by the English had people from Switzerland, France or Italy as senior staff members.

  ‘After graduating from the institute the lonely Marco Polo set out job hunting. A mere degree didn’t mean one would get a senior post. One had to start from the ranks. And it took time to learn, too. Experts say it takes five years to get to know the kitchen, two years to memorize the names and vintages of various wines and spirits, two more to learn accounts. And the rest of the time is spent unravelling the mysteries of human nature.

  ‘Marco Polo was extremely diligent. He worked hard and gradually moved up through the ranks, till he arrived in Calcutta. The hotel he joined as under-manager still glitters in a blaze of neon and is one of the most popular hotels in the city.

  ‘The god-fearing and grateful Marco Polo never forgot the Roman Catholic priests who had given him a new lease of life. In spite of many constraints, he went to church every Sunday, giving a hundred thousands thanks to the Almighty for sparing his life. Whenever he found time, he took a train to Bandel Church to light candles before the Virgin and to pray. He consciously kept himself away from the kind of life he could have easily slipped into by virtue of living at the hotel and looking after the bar.

  ‘That was when he met Miss Munro. Looking for respite from the din and bustle of his own hotel, he had entered a small restaurant on Park Street for dinner one evening. And Susan Munro happened to be singing there.’

 
Byron paused. Opening his briefcase, he pulled out an old newspaper, extended it lovingly towards me and said, ‘You move around a lot—ever seen this lady?’

  I tried to match the face in the picture with the faces of all the strange people I had known—but I couldn’t recall anybody like that.

  Byron said, ‘I got hold of the picture with great difficulty from the Statesman office. The restaurant owner had put in an ad. I had to buy that issue of the newspaper.’

  It wasn’t possible to fathom Susan Munro’s beauty from the old newspaper photograph. ‘She wasn’t particularly pretty,’ said Byron.

  But Marco Polo was convinced a nymph was dancing before him. Abandoning his dinner, he concentrated on her singing, inviting her afterwards to his table.

  ‘How did you like it?’ asked Miss Munro as she seated herself.

  ‘Marvellous. It was as though you were putting up an exhibition of paintings at the Academy of Fine Arts before a distinguished audience of blind men.’

  The lady smiled and said softly, ‘What can I do? Where can I find discerning listeners?’

  ‘Is everybody in this city deaf?’ smiled Marco Polo.

  ‘Deaf, but not blind! Their eyes are very alert, their sight very keen. Restaurant owners here know that, which is why they pay more attention to the visual aspects of the singer than to the aural ones.’

  Marco Polo laughed as he ordered two bottles of beer and told her, ‘But believe me, you sing beautifully. You’d be appreciated even in Europe.’

  ‘Any chance of a break in your hotel?’ Miss Munro asked.

  Marco Polo was surprised. ‘You know who I am?’

  With a wan smile she said, ‘I may sing at a small establishment, but does that mean I don’t keep track of big ones.’

  Marco Polo looked dejected. Woefully he said, ‘I’m really sorry, but those who run our hotel and those who visit it for pleasure don’t patronize anything made in Calcutta. Those who sing or dance at our hotel are all made in Europe or made in the USA. Even made in Turkey or Egypt will do, but never made in Calcutta.’