Chowringhee

by Mani Shankar Mukherji

‘Recognize me?’ I asked.

  She smiled wanly. ‘Why should I? After you went, Magpil’s business went down—many people cheated him, taking his baskets and not paying for them. He was forced to leave. My earnings have dropped, too—at least I used to make something from those baskets. It’s pathetic now. The younger girls have kindly allowed me to stay. They look after me, clean the room, and, if an undemanding customer turns up, they send him to me.’

  She tried to move her leg. ‘I can’t walk any more. I’m all right, but my leg isn’t—I fell down a long time ago and broke a bone. I couldn’t afford to see a good doctor, and the bone was set awkwardly. Now I’m paying the price.’

  Suddenly it all fell in place. Elizabeth was Lisa—the singer Susan had replaced! I knew her quite well when I was at Magpil. If only I had known that it was she who had got involved in poor Marco Polo’s life! Maybe I reminded her of the old days, because she started humming a line or two from a song that had once stirred Calcutta’s pleasure-seekers.

  ‘I can’t stand,’ she said. ‘I have to hold on to the wall and hobble to the toilet. Sometimes I can’t even do that—Barbara and Pamela arrange for a bedpan.’

  I gazed silently at her, thinking of her bizarre life. Sadness no longer causes me pain. Sometimes, when I’m really overwhelmed, it reminds me of the slaughterhouse. I feel like a sheep, waiting, watching as one of its kin is led to the abattoir to meet its ultimate, terrible fate.

  ‘Let me call someone,’ said Lisa. ‘Let them get some tea for you. After all, you’re a guest.’

  ‘Don’t bother, there’s really no need...’

  She seemed a little hurt. ‘You’re probably worried I’ll spend too much. I have money now, I earned quite a lot last night,’ then added, ‘by the way, where have you been?’

  ‘I work at Shahjahan Hotel now.’

  ‘Shahjahan!’ The light seemed to return to her tired eyes. ‘Ah, what cooking! Once you’ve tried it, the taste stays with you all your life. Their Omelette Champignon! If they give it to you free, will you please get me a Jumbo Grill from Shahjahan sometime?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ I said.

  ‘How much does it cost?’

  ‘About seven rupees.’

  ‘And you people get it free,’ she said, amazed.

  I would not get it free, but I didn’t tell her that. If she knew I’d have to pay for it she’d probably refuse to accept it.

  The tea was disgusting. Even if my grateful heart was prepared to cope with the unhealthy environment, my body was close to revolting.

  ‘Did you know anyone named Susan?’ I asked.

  ‘Susan? You mean Susan Munro? Who used to sell pastries? Who started singing instead of me on a ten-rupee salary? Of course I knew her.’

  She didn’t seem very favourably disposed towards Susan. ‘How do you know her?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘I heard about her from a friend in the excise department,’ I said. ‘Apparently she earned a great deal from a flat on Theatre Road.’

  ‘Is Susan back?’ she asked me. ‘Major Shannon must have kicked her out, then. I knew it would happen.’

  An island long buried in the ocean in the aftermath of an earthquake was resurfacing. I seemed to have been given the exclusive opportunity of unearthing something that had been considered inaccessible all this while.

  ‘You could do anything with money those days,’ Lisa said. ‘Those American soldiers could get just about anything by paying for it. How else could Shannon have transformed a woman of ill-repute into a virgin and taken her to Illinois with him? He even wanted to get the wedding over and done with here, but he didn’t dare. In the eyes of the law she already had a husband, but who would have known that in Illinois? In any case, who knows what name Susan Munro’s taken on now? But I said, all’s well that ends well—and I knew this wouldn’t end well.’

  I was tempted to reveal everything and ask her if she remembered her evening out with a foreigner named Marco Polo at Shahjahan, but resisted the temptation. I took her leave even though I wanted to stay longer. Having rediscovered a forgotten chapter in my life, I was sorely tempted to examine it closely, but Byron was waiting for me. He must have become very impatient, standing there on the road all by himself.

  ‘Eureka! Eureka!’ He hugged me, overjoyed. ‘It is God’s will—how could it all turn out this way otherwise? Why should you have got a job at Shahjahan? And why should you have been working at Chhatawala Lane before that?’ He ran towards a taxi. ‘Hurry up! Quick, take us to Shahjahan Hotel.’

  He practically ran up to the manager’s room, emerging again in a few minutes with Marco Polo in tow. They left the hotel together.

  William Ghosh was on duty at the counter. Poor William, he seemed to be having a bad time. Going up to him I said, ‘If you’re having trouble coping all by yourself, I can give you a hand.’

  Adjusting his tie, he said despondently, ‘I intend to survive without anyone’s help from now on.’

  ‘Not even Rosie’s?’ I joked. ‘When is she taking up residence on Madan Dutta Lane amidst the chanting of the scriptures?’

  He looked even grimmer. ‘Since you’ll get to hear anyway, there’s no point hiding anything. If I’d known the outcome, I wouldn’t have gone out with her. I troubled you needlessly, forcing double shifts on you while Rosie and I dined elsewhere.’

  ‘And what great harm did that do?’

  Looking up from his work, he said, ‘Having spent my adolescence and youth roaming the high seas, I had anchored this middle-aged ship at the Shahjahan harbour. After all, how many years do I have left? When Rosie and I became intimate, I thought, having given me a livelihood, Shahjahan was now going to provide me with a wife as well. In spite of all her immaturity and shortcomings, I really was in love with Rosie. But do you know what she’s saying now? She says I’ll have to wait for at least another five years. By that time her sick parents will have passed away and her sister will have married and settled down. She cannot even dream of marriage and happiness before that.’

  Rosie. The dark-skinned, beautiful typist Rosie. I had regarded her with nothing but hatred and contempt all this time, but at that moment she became a member of my family.

  ‘Rosie took me home one day,’ said William. ‘It’s not a home, it’s a hovel—the way they live in just one-and-a-half rooms! Three sick people on their cots, coughing and spitting constantly. It’s a hellhole. Rosie’s parents were probably scared at the sight of me. They didn’t want their daughter to fall in love with anyone, for then they would probably starve. I saw other people in the slum too, all curly hair and thick lips and snub-nosed. She told me, “The Rosie you see at the Shahjahan has her roots right here. You probably think of me as Anglo-Indian; that’s what I tell people too. But actually, I’m African—almost everyone here is a descendant of old African slaves.”’

  William had been surprised. She told him that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, their forefathers were shipped from distant African shores and made to disembark at Chandpal Ghat, ropes around their waists, and sold at Murgighata for twenty-five rupees each. At that time, the aristocracy of Calcutta used to buy slaves of their choice from this market. Many years later, a law was passed freeing all the slaves. But where would they go with their freedom? They stayed on in this city. They didn’t have names of their own, either, taking on the surnames of their former owners instead. What the slaves of Rome had done centuries ago, the slaves of Calcutta did as well—Dickson’s slave became a Dickson himself, Shakespeare’s slave came to the slum as a Mr Shakespeare, and so it went on. Even after a hundred years, that unique stream of Africa hasn’t become one with the Indian mainstream. Through their suffering, their deprivations and their uncertainties, they remained African.

  William had told Rosie, ‘I don’t care, we were all slaves once upon a time—millions of Indians were subjugated to another race all these years.’ To which she had replied, ‘Don’t tempt me. Please treat me badly. Or else I’ll want to marry you
right now—I won’t be able to wait another moment.’

  ‘I don’t want to wait any more, Rosie,’ William had insisted. ‘Five years is a long time. What’ll be left of me in another five years? Or of you, for that matter?’

  As he wrote in the register, William continued, ‘We are not getting married. I told Rosie she could carry on working after the marriage. She said, “Impossible! That devil Jimmy won’t let me work another day if I get married. He’ll sack me. You have no idea.”’

  I listened in silence.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll say I’m selfish. I’m thirty-seven now, in five years I’ll be forty-two. I’ve had a string of bad deals in life. I don’t want to wait five years for another.’

  16

  Ask me today which of Shahjahan’s treasures has enriched me the most, and I will say without hesitation that it’s my colleagues’ love. You never know just how or when office acquaintances become close friends. Suddenly one day you discover that many lives have been linked with yours in the same chain.

  That’s probably why I’d forgotten that, initially, Rosie had been the cause of many of my problems, and that till a few months ago I didn’t know William Ghosh, Gurberia or Nityahari. At one time they were complete strangers, but now I knew so much about them.

  Nityahari once said, ‘This whole business is like marriage, you know. Say a friend of fifteen years arranges a match between you and a woman he knows. Soon after the wedding, your wife will know much more about you than your old friend ever will. A job is also like a marriage; in fact you could say it’s more important than marriage.’

  I didn’t probe too much, but Nityahari wasn’t to be deterred. Sidling up to me he whispered, ‘What’s up, sir? I heard Satyasundar Bose asking the manager for a few hours off. Whatever’s happened to the man who hasn’t set foot outside for twelve years? I don’t like the look of things.’

  I was about to protest, but he continued, ‘Remember, smoke, money and love can’t be kept under wraps. They’re bound to come out into the open.’

  And with that he walked off, without giving me the opportunity to say anything. I had to agree, however, that Bose-da was indeed moving away.

  Bose-da, I don’t mind confessing after all these years that I really felt jealous of Sujata-di at the time. It’s true you had given all you could to the young newcomer, the stranger who’d arrived at Shahjahan, but he wasn’t satisfied—he wanted more.

  Do you remember that evening on the terrace? You were sitting in an armchair, while clusters of stars were lighting up one by one in the sky. You were a different person that evening—not the Sata Bose who had welcomed me at the counter on my first day, who had nurtured me through good times and bad. There was something in the way you asked me to sit down beside you that made me nervous. You were calm. Like a gentle rain-bearing cloud, you had slowed down. I sat silently on a stool next to you for hours.

  ‘Miss Mitra thinks very highly of you,’ you had said. ‘She thinks you are as innocent as a child.’ I had flushed with embarrassment and pleasure. ‘She’s very down-to-earth too,’ you continued. ‘I’ve seen lots of air hostesses since I came to work at this hotel, but I really can’t imagine how someone like her can entertain passengers up in the clouds.’

  ‘Some people have this simplicity built in their personalities,’ I had said. ‘They can’t shed it even if they want to.’

  What I said probably appealed to you. Unknown to yourself, you had started to hold Sujata-di in high esteem. This esteem is the foundation for real love.

  You went on to say, ‘I looked rather silly today, I had no inkling she’d ask such a question. She was quite annoyed when she said, “Are you aware of life outside this hotel?” And like a fool I answered, “Of course. That’s where the customers come from, and that’s where they go back to.” Do you know what she said then? “Why are you wasting your life like this? You are obsessed with the hotel—thanks to you, even that young fellow is messing up his present and future.”

  ‘Didn’t you say anything?’ I had asked you.

  ‘I had meant to,’ you said, ‘but I couldn’t. I hadn’t expected her to be quite so aggressive.’

  I was positively astounded to hear that Bose-da had run out of rejoinders. I wouldn’t have believed it possible. Many years later, I found an explanation in Victor Hugo: ‘The first symptom of love in a young man is timidity; in a girl it is boldness. The two sexes have a tendency to approach and each assumes the quality of the other.’

  I remember Bose-da saying, ‘I did protest, but this display of stars does make me feel that in opting for exile in Shahjahan, we are indeed depriving ourselves of many of the joys and blessings of the world.’ Glancing at his watch, he said, ‘You never know, Sujata Mitra could turn up here.’

  ‘I hope so; it’s always a pleasure to banter with her,’ I said.

  Bose-da lit a cigarette. ‘Night duty again tonight—but I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘You needn’t go as long as I’m here.’

  ‘I must have kept my parents awake late at night in my previous life, which is why I’m paying the price for it in this one. Now if I keep you awake too, the accounts for my next life will get all messed up as well!’

  ‘It will work out to my benifit,’ I said. ‘If I can be of service now I can spend my next life snoring my head off.’

  ‘Now that I think of it, it’s true, you know—I have been so engrossed in the hotel, I have quite forgotten that I have a life beyond it, that one day I too had come in here from the world outside.’

  Just then we heard someone say, ‘May I come in?’ It was Sujata Mitra peeping in at the terrace door.

  ‘Of course. This terrace isn’t reserved for us alone,’ said Bose-da.

  Shielding her silk sari from the assault of the breeze, she came up to us. I rose and offered her my seat, meaning to go to my room. But Bose-da said, ‘Get the stool from my room, let’s all have a chat.’

  ‘Chat with you!’ Sujata snapped. ‘You’ll bring in breakfast, lunch and dinner to the conversation immediately.’

  ‘Whatever I may bring into the conversation, may I have some tea brought in right now?’ Bose-da asked.

  She didn’t give up. ‘Hotel staff enjoy a lot of advantages—it makes me jealous. Whether guests get their food or not, the staff get it all the time. That’s why gluttons are envious of hotel employees.’

  ‘That’s why every small boy wants to work in a chocolate factory when he grows up,’ said Bose-da with a smile.

  ‘Just as I had wanted an airline job.’

  Both of us looked enquiringly as her face took on a wistful expression. ‘I was in school then,’ she said. ‘We used to live in Bombay. I remember one time we didn’t get tickets for the train so my father decided to fly down to Calcutta; and that did it for me.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘As soon as I got into that plane my life took a turn. I stared at the pilot’s cockpit throughout. The captain was a nice man—he indulged me and patiently showed me around, explaining everything.’

  ‘What’s the big deal?’ Bose-da quipped. ‘If there were such an attractive woman around, I would have neglected the plane and enjoyed the pleasure of her company too.’

  Sujata flew into a mock rage. ‘No more stories if you talk that way—didn’t I tell you I was a twelve-year-old schoolgirl then?’

  ‘I should quote the ancient Indian poet Vidyapati in response to that but the gentleman’s made so many hostile comments about beautiful, well-endowed women that he’s better avoided.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have been as thrilled if I’d met Tagore himself,’ said Sujata-di. ‘When the captain signed my autograph book, I was over the moon. I told my father, “I’m going to be a pilot, Baba.” He didn’t have the heart to object. He may have ruled his office with an iron hand, but he couldn’t say no to me. “You’re my son and daughter rolled into one,” he would say.’

  Sujata Mitra took a long dip in the blue pool of nostalgia.

  �
�Despite my mother’s protests my father said, “Do well in school, and then, no matter what, I’ll ensure you become a pilot.” But ultimately it was mathematics that did me in. If you want do anything worthwhile in life, the first question they’ll ask you is, do you know maths? You want to be an engineer, they’ll ask, do you know maths? You want to be a doctor and cure diseases, they’ll demand that you know maths. The way things are going, even to get into art school you’ll have to show the principal your maths marks. So I narrowly missed the honour of being Bengal’s first woman pilot—but I did get half a loaf. I was determined not to give up. I had to fly up there. The things I imagined: From the cockpit I’d go for a swim in space, with the friendly stars giving me my bearings; Ma, Baba wouldn’t need tickets when they travelled with me; during the flight I’d sometimes go up and chat with them. Ma had her own solution. “Since you’re so keen on flying I’ll get you married to a pilot.”’

  ‘That wasn’t such a bad proposal, was it?’ said Bose-da. ‘Can’t be a pilot? Marry one!’

  ‘I wonder how an argumentative person like you can work as a receptionist.’

  ‘Ask this chap here whether another receptionist of Sata Bose’s ability has been born in India. If I’d been born in England I’d have become the manager of Claridges by now, and if I’d been born in America, I shudder to think what the fate of the present manager of the Waldorf-Astoria would be. Well, young man, how about standing up for me?’

  Before I could make up my mind about what to say, Sujata Mitra said mockingly, ‘Some ally—the drunkard propping up the bootlegger.’ She giggled. ‘Please don’t mind, I was just joking.’

  I had in the meantime decided that it was Bose-da who was at fault. ‘It’s your fault,’ I told him. ‘Why do you have to keep interrupting?’

  In mock despair, Bose-da exclaimed, ‘Et tu Brute! You let down an old friend only because of an air hostess’s charming words. You aren’t even aware that air hostesses too take tablets to keep smiling, just like we do. It’s part of the job profile. We could be writhing with a stomach ache but would still have to put our dentures on display at the counter.’