The Man Who Would Not See

by Rajorshi Chakraborti

  When family suddenly becomes your greatest challenge, mystery, rediscovery.

  As children in Calcutta, Ashim and Abhay made a small mistake that split their family forever. Thirty years later, Ashim has re-entered his brother’s life, with blame and retribution on his mind. It seems nothing short of smashing Abhay’s happy home will make good the damage from the past.

  At least, this is what Abhay and his wife Lena are certain is happening. A brother has travelled all the way from small-town India to New Zealand bearing ancient — and false — grudges, and with the implacable objective of blowing up every part of his younger brother’s life. Reconciliation was just a Trojan horse.

  But is Ashim really the villain he appears to be, or is there a method to his havoc?

  ‘Since his dazzling debut, Chakraborti has embarked on one of the most interesting career trajectories seen in recent times.’

  — The Sunday Guardian

  Contents

  Prologue

  THE LAST HOURS OF THE PAST

  Section I

  CHRISTMAS

  Section II

  NEW YEAR

  Section III

  JANUARY

  Section IV

  FEBRUARY

  Section V

  THE LAST DAYS OF THE PAST

  To my Kiwi loves

  If I know that any one of you has murdered your brother, your mother, and the corpse is in this room and under the table, and I know it, and you know it, and you know I know it, and we cannot talk about it, it takes no time at all before we cannot talk about anything. Before absolute silence descends.

  — James Baldwin, in a conversation with Malcolm X, 1961

  Prologue

  THE LAST HOURS OF THE PAST

  Howrah, November 1988

  I often think to myself that so many different films could share a single title: The Last Hours of Their Lives. Only the characters never know this, and hurtle along with a truly moving degree of unawareness and vigour, doing both significant and trivial things as usual in the full expectation of living forever.

  My brother and I are with our dad at Howrah station to meet our grandmother off the train, but have learnt upon getting here that it’s running two hours late. Which is certainly not enough time to return home, and Baba doesn’t think it’s even worth heading back as far as Esplanade or Park Street for some kind of snack or treat. It will probably take half an hour getting there, crawling along Brabourne Road, and then we’ll have to come back. Let’s see what there is to eat at the station instead.

  Dada wants idlis, while I pick an egg-mutton roll, and Baba opts for shingaras. At one point, each of us is queuing outside a different kiosk. Dada’s idlis are inside him by the time I arrive at his bench with my roll, so I turn down every plea for a bite. Baba, though, has brought along an extra telebhaja for each of us. Dada wolfs his down in two bites: I tell him magnanimously he can have mine as well. In truth, I’m no fan of piyaajis.

  But all of that action takes barely twenty minutes, and Dada and I are twelve and nine, respectively. An hour and a half without a ball or bat or TV screen or at least a book (this is 1988, remember) is an abyss without end. Instead of frustrating himself by trying to entertain us any further, Baba reminds us that we should meet back here on platform 14 in exactly an hour, at this bench, next to the magazine stall, where Dada and I know he’s about to buy himself The Statesman (we get The Telegraph at home) and most probably a Sunday to pass the time (because we subscribe to India Today). I try my luck and ask if we could have a comic each. Baba says, one comic: will you be able to agree and share? I want a Mandrake, Dada a Phantom; we agree on Archie, but Baba shakes his head — too expensive. Dada and I look at one another and plump for Plan A, to have a wander around the station instead. Baba makes us promise before we head off: no separating. You have to be together all the time.

  And that is the only promise we actually keep over the next ten hours.

  It is at the far end of platform 1 that Dada notices a small revolving gate set within the boundary wall, which a number of passengers just coming off a local train are using to leave the station. There seems to be a well-lit roadside market just outside, and he suggests taking a look. I am reluctant because we’ve never been to the town of Howrah before, although of course we’ve been using the station all our lives, but Dada replies that we won’t have any time to go beyond the market. But look, we still have nearly an hour to kill, which is just long enough to have a wander and come back through the gate. Otherwise it’s going to be more of the same boring platforms. What else is left to see here?

  I have in truth been enjoying the bustle on the platforms we’d walked along, with a train to Bhubaneswar and the Bombay Mail via Allahabad about to set off on two of them, and a third — platform 1 — at which a local train from Bandel had just pulled in. We’d been dodging people rushing to and fro, getting out of the way of luggage-laden coolies on the long-distance platforms, checking out the girls to spot the pretty ones and seeing if they glanced back at us. The roadside market doesn’t look especially exciting to me, but I give in, since it’s just over there, and the gate is a simple one that can’t be shut. I mention I’m not carrying any money, and that Baba hadn’t given us any. Dada replies that he isn’t thinking of buying anything, just passing time.

  The change over him comes suddenly, or perhaps it has been gradual and I’ve been too distracted by the activity and traffic to notice. Besides the bigger shops, there are people selling vegetables, fruit, plastic toys, T-shirts, flowers, men’s and women’s underwear and plastic chairs and mugs and buckets from stalls on the footpaths or simply gunny sacks spread out on the roadside. Through the space left in the middle of the road between the vendors on either side are passing entangled streams of bicycles, rickshaws and pedestrians as well as shoppers, and also the occasional crawling taxi or minibus, which each time misses the edges of the vendors’ stalls by inches. There is as much to look at as to look out for, even at 9.30 in the evening.

  I’m just about to ask Dada if he’s had enough and would like to turn around when he grips my arm with a question which I think at first I’ve misheard.

  ‘Do you want to see our house?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s go. I’ll show you our house.’

  ‘Whose house?’

  ‘Our house. It’s not far away.’

  I’m still certain I am misunderstanding him because our house is in fact extremely distant, on the other side of the river in Ballygunge Place. There is no possible short-cut through this market to our house, and absolutely no way for any short-cut to be within walking distance. Dada has got his geography horribly wrong.

  ‘Not our house, silly. My house, where Ma, Didi and I lived for three years. I used to come here for walks with Champadi, who looked after me, to buy treats and to see the trains.’

  Light at last. You see, Dada (his name is Ashim) is actually my half-brother. His mother and Baba divorced when he was a toddler, and Baba married my mother shortly after. I was born the following year. What Dada was now telling me was that after the divorce he, his older sister (Aranya, whom I too called Didi) and their mother had lived all the way out here in Howrah for a number of years. I knew nothing about this chapter of his life. Dada and Didi had moved in with us the year before last, in September ’86, after their mother had sadly died of cancer. I had never met her, but my half-siblings were among my best friends now. And we were here today to meet Baba’s mother, our shared grandmother, off the train.

  With Thamma’s train in mind, I check with Dada how far away this house is, on foot.

  ‘Ten minutes maximum, and we can run some of the way and make it quicker. We’ll be
back here within twenty-five minutes. What’s the time now; about nine-thirty-four, right? Thamma’s train is supposed to get in at ten-thirty. We’ll be with Baba by ten past ten if we leave right now.’

  But Baba wanted us back by ten, I counter.

  ‘Achcha, chol na. We’re wasting time with this conversation. Or else tell you what, you go back to Platform 14 and sit safely next to Baba. Tell him where I am. He knows the house.’

  ‘Why do you need to see this house so much?’

  ‘Because we spent three years here, and I’ve never had a chance to come back. It didn’t even cross my mind that we could go today. It’s only because we arrived at this far end of the station and then saw this market that I suddenly remembered.

  ‘Look, we are really wasting time. You don’t have to come. In fact, it’s better if you tell Baba where I’ve gone. He’ll understand. But we never come to Howrah other than to catch a train, and I need to take this chance to see the house. It’s the first place we lived in with Ma all by ourselves.’

  So of course I go along. I can easily see what his defiance and vehemence are masking. I never met their mother, but have a fair idea from the two years they’ve been living with us of how much he and Didi miss her. Try as she does to be loving and attentive towards all of us, there is no way my Ma can make up for that absence, and no way I can comprehend the scale of their loss. I realise immediately that I’m being petty to worry about a ten-minute delay. In fact, I regret that Didi isn’t with us. She’d wanted to come, but Baba said with Thamma and two suitcases on the way back, there wouldn’t be enough room in our Fiat.

  For the first three turns after we leave the bright market road, Dada seems confident of his route. Reflecting on it afterwards, and wishing to give him the benefit of the doubt, he probably would have led us easily to the house, as he’d claimed, if the power cut hadn’t happened. Or if it had happened just minutes before, while we were still at the market, where we could have asked at one of fifty shops for directions. When it comes, at 9.41 on my sliding Mickey Mouse wristwatch, we’re caught right in the middle, and probably much closer to the house than to the station (as Dada insists).

  We stand to one side trying to decide what to do. I point out that these residential lanes are pitch black just now, with no shops switching on generators or even kerosene lanterns here, and that he might not be able to spot his exact house, or even see much of it in any case. But we can still return while the thread of our route remains clear.

  ‘But I might be two minutes away …’

  ‘OK, tell me which turn comes next. Do you remember any landmark? You recognised the sweet shop at the first turn, and the hand pump at the next corner.’

  Dada looks ahead as if trying to answer me. I’m feeling frustrated, but then have a brainwave. I should say that as we have entered deeper into the neighbourhood, the lanes have got both narrow and quiet. The bustle on the market road, although only a five-minute walk behind us, seems like another time of day. No one has walked past us in the last couple of minutes on this late November night at a quarter to ten, nor can we make out any open shops.

  But what I’ve realised is that the next passer-by or rickshaw, whoever they are, will be able to help us, just as long as they’re locals.

  ‘Dada, we don’t need a landmark. Do you remember the postal address? We’ll ask the next person who comes along, and I’m sure they’ll know.’

  In the dark, I cannot make out his expression, but I’m exultant. Why hadn’t this occurred to us at the market itself? Because the power was on, and he’d seemed so sure of his way. All we need is the name of the lane, perhaps not even the house number. Once we reach the right lane, Dada would immediately know where he was.

  He doesn’t answer me, but something about my question might have jogged his memory, because he resumes walking and then turns around, pointing towards our next turn from about twenty metres away. Great, I shout, but look, it’s 9.47. How far do you think it is? There are no other voices, certainly none as loud as mine, coming from the houses around us. Perhaps there are glimmers of candlelight visible through curtains or the slats in the window shutters, but as of now, not one further passer-by whom we could stop for directions.

  As I walk, I think about my father, who is a pretty relaxed disciplinarian to the two of us (Didi in the time I’ve known her has never merited even a scolding). He might allow us as much as a fifteen-minute grace period, even though the reason he was so precise about a return time is the watch I’m wearing, a Puja present from just the month before, as well as the clocks on every platform. After all, he was never expecting us to leave the brightly lit station. In his time with us, Dada knows Baba to be forgiving of such delays to an extent my mother would never be, and that’s why he’s pushing the limit.

  And then I add to myself that Baba would certainly excuse him the moment Dada tells him where we’d been. In fact, the only person we need to be careful of not holding up is our grandmother. We have to be back before her train arrives. Causing Thamma anxiety would be something Baba wouldn’t forgive quite as easily. We had been constantly reminded before this visit of her high blood-sugar level, and how she was coming to us to visit a specialist to try to bring this down. Besides, she would also be exhausted from travelling all day, first by car from Hazaribagh — our father’s birthplace, where Thamma still lived — to Dhanbad, and then this delayed train journey.

  But as I follow Dada down lane after lane — the turns are now coming much more quickly, and each successive lane is narrower; for instance, where we are now, only a rickshaw could pass, the open drains on either side wouldn’t permit cars — even the extra twenty minutes or so that I have generously granted ourselves on Baba’s behalf are being eaten up, especially when I also think about our return. This is how my mind is whirring as I struggle to keep pace with my fast-walking brother, always five metres ahead, answering nothing any more: two minutes to our destination, say, from here, then three to four minutes outside the house as he takes it in, points out things to me, shares some memories of living there, pauses to think about his Ma. Then we start running back. Not walking, because that won’t be quick enough, but jogging at least. Hopefully he’s doing a mental Hansel and Gretel as we’re proceeding just now and throwing down breadcrumbs as we go, and there won’t be any errors because we’ll be able to verify one another’s recollections and make all the right turns. And with a bit of luck this might turn out to be an unusually brief power cut and even the lights will come back on, and we’ll see the glow of the station and the market from far away. Yup, seventeen minutes from here on should just about do it, assuming no further wrong turns, not lingering too long in front of the house, and oh, don’t forget to add at least five minutes of close-to-sprinting once we’re inside the station because, remember, we’ll enter near the far end of platform 1, and Baba’s waiting at platform 14. So that’s actually 10.25 if I’m being realistic … but what if we bring a coolie along with us — we can say we got late trying to find a coolie for Thamma’s suitcases.

  We’re standing outside a massive factory gate four minutes later. No, of course this isn’t my half-brother’s former home, which we appear (finally) to have given up on. Instead, he’s settled for a suddenly glimpsed consolation prize — this factory compound which had been closed even while they lived here, but the little door embedded in the gate used to be merely bolted, and Dada and his ayah Champadi apparently spent several afternoons just like lots of other local kids freely exploring the place, which, he tells me, had seemed to him at the time like the inside of an enormous fortress.

  We’ve come upon the factory by chance: he hadn’t even mentioned it until he noticed the towering chimney to our left. We’d just emerged from a warren of narrow, inky alleyways, and at that point our eventual goal had been scaled back to merely sighting a main road once more, by which we meant anything wide enough at least for rickshaws. The power cut had completely thrown Dada’s sense of direction, but it took him a while to admit
this. For our final couple of minutes inside that maze of by-lanes we’d been sprinting, with no regard for the darkness or stray bricks or open manholes or the drains on either side, me following him, looking only for the slight glow at one end of the next alley that might indicate a broader road. And then we found it, and there was also this factory.

  Standing outside the giant gates and taking in both the chimney looming above us as well as the high boundary walls on either side (the fortress comparison was a good one), I have perversely been putting off glancing at my watch, scared of what I would find. When I finally dare, it is 9.58, which in fact falls short of my worst fears. But Baba will be expecting us within the next two minutes. And we have half an hour before Thamma’s train is due.

  ‘Do you think this road itself leads back to the station?’ All of a sudden, I’ve had another startlingly logical insight, and am in truth a little dazzled by my own responses to extreme pressure. This is genius-level clarity at such a time. Between the factory gate and Howrah station must be a broad road, surely, for materials to go back and forth, everything the factory needed and also for whatever it once made. This road we’re standing on, for instance, it’s wide enough for a lorry. Perhaps we only need to stay on it, walking possibly in that direction to our left if it were up to me to choose, and it’ll take us back to the end of one platform or another.

  ‘Let’s run this way. I’m certain it leads to the station. Maybe even via the market. We just won’t leave this road at any point.’

  But Dada is obviously not listening, because he is candid enough to admit something else just then — that he can’t remember the way between the factory and their home. I’m aghast he is still trying, but consciously strive to keep this out of my voice. Right now, even though I’m the younger brother, I’ve realised I need to be the one who undertakes to deliver us both back to Baba. Dada has his mind solely on his impossible goal: he doesn’t even seem to be concerned about our return.