We were walking through the main hallway of the club after lunch to buy the girls a treat each from the bakery when Ashim asked, looking around him at several of the old paintings on the walls, were Baba and Ma both members here (meaning Abhay’s mother, of course)?
‘I think so. You would be entitled to apply for membership if you wanted to,’ Abhay had quickly said. ‘I don’t live here, and I’m a member.’
If I was Abhay, I’d have left that unsaid, I thought, and also, we should have just gone to a restaurant. Sulekha usually hosted people at one of her clubs, and we’d carried on with the custom without thinking. But for Ashim, this might be another of those ‘battles’ that Abhay had supposedly ‘won’.
A few weeks later, when Abhay decided to say yes to Ashim’s proposal to visit us in Wellington, it took him two further months to share this development with his mother, and he did so only after every part of the arrangements had been finalised — tickets, insurance, visas — and it looked certain to be happening.
Sulekha, who we usually chatted to three or four times a week, Skyped with us exactly twice during the four weeks of Dada’s visit: on Christmas Day and the 1st of January.
Back to Wellington in December, and Abhay asks me one night, ‘Look how both of us brothers turned out to be inseparable from our children. Do you think we’re reacting to our father, in Dada’s case unconsciously, despite the hero-worship?’
He adds: ‘I’ve actually thought about this ever since Mira was born. How could Baba stand to be apart for months at a time from two of his children? I’d wondered about it before, but it never hit me to the same extent until I became a parent myself. How was it not intolerable for him? I start to miss Mira in advance even when a short trip away from her appears on the horizon. I miss all the little moments of each day that I won’t be there to see.
‘You know why I don’t ask Ma about this? A, it would upset her, and B, she would insist Baba did it for us, and especially for me. To which I’d want to scream out in reply: don’t say that! Don’t put that on me. I never asked for that. The happiest moments of my childhood are from when all three of us kids briefly lived in one house.’
I think for a long time and then decide not to point out the example of Aranya, who might have taken after their father in not finding it impossible to stay away from her children. But until one of us shares a bit more about her, plucking that fact out by itself would be misleading and malicious.
I can see that task might fall to me. In keeping with family habit, neither brother has so far once brought up their absent sister.
Abhay
I don’t tell Lena everything I see about Dada, purely with the long term in mind. This is a relationship I don’t want to lose again, so my wife needs to feel comfortable around my brother, even if it means some unsavoury sides of him have to be put down to cross-cultural unfamiliarity and shelved away.
Sometimes it’s a small judgement, entirely understandable when placed in its context. Dada was first baffled, then full of scorn (little Tulti was only amused, and would point out and giggle) at the young people he saw in both Wellington city centre and in much larger numbers on holiday at Kaiteriteri and Nelson, who chose to wander barefoot around the streets. Even though I agreed that I too had been initially struck by this minor national tendency — people walking into art galleries, on university campuses, around supermarkets, crossing streets, all barefoot — but now ascribed it to an unshakeable confidence in the basic cleanliness of any surface underfoot, and an almost comical conviction that no matter where you are in New Zealand you could never actually be far from the mythic beach always in your head, even while walking along Willis Street in the middle of the national capital, Dada shook his head and said these kids needed to come and see what being barefoot meant in India, which was people who ran or walked all day on burning tarmac because they couldn’t even afford a pair of rubber slippers.
At first I teased him. ‘You’re absolutely right. Parents here should be telling their kids to wear their shoes more often, because children in Africa and India have to go shoeless.’
When this didn’t go down well, I tried to reason, while reminding Mira and Tulti to watch out for people already in the tunnel slide before heading down themselves (we were in the Botanic Gardens play area, and a young barefoot couple had just gone past): ‘Dada, to be fair I don’t think they’re doing it to insult anyone. It’s just some left-over thing probably from the hippie era. You will agree that the same thing can have very different meanings in another place. I’ll give you another example — when I first got here and saw golliwogs in toy or gift shops. In Britain or America, that would be unthinkable, because of what those toys represent over there, but when I asked some people here at dinner parties and gatherings if it didn’t make them uncomfortable — the associations with racial stereotypes and blackface — quite a few said golliwogs didn’t have the same meaning in New Zealand, although I’m sure many foreign visitors are as startled as I was to wander into the biggest department store in town and come across shelves full of golliwogs in the toy section.’
But I should have known better by now. I shouldn’t have lost sight of my brother’s uncanny gift, when he was in this kind of mood, for putting an unpleasant twist on the blandest happenings. In my defence, I was still getting used to this trait, despite having felt its lash several times recently. As a kid, when he lived with us, Dada had been so straightforward about what he wanted or was feeling, at least as I remembered him.
‘You’re right, Abhi,’ he said. ‘How lucky I am, in fact we both are, to have this opportunity to come abroad and learn valuable lessons like this. After all, I have only ever come across golliwogs in Enid Blyton storybooks and had no idea about their meaning in different countries. And likewise about going barefoot: why should I make the mistake of assuming it cannot be a matter of choice?’
Then he must have noticed my face, because he tried to turn his remarks into a joke. ‘I can go home and say, Abhi and I both live in countries where large numbers of people wander the streets with no shoes or shirts on.’
It was the fifth night of their visit, a Thursday, and I suggested that if Lena took care of bedtime, I could take Dada into town for a drink, to show him some of the nightlife around Cuba Street and Courtenay Place. Friday and Saturday nights would have been even livelier, but I suppose I was subconsciously into ‘impression management’ about my city. In fact, for someone on their first trip abroad, would you thrust them straight into a weekend night in a city centre pretty much anywhere in the English-speaking world?
Anyhow, we were waiting in the car to turn into Willis Street off Ghuznee, and there was this obviously drunk young couple on the corner, although it wasn’t clear which way they intended to cross. The guy was in an LA Clippers vest, and the girl, who was pretty, wore an off-the-shoulder top from which it looked like her breasts might pour out at any time. While waiting for the green man on Willis to turn red before we could go left, and keeping one eye on the couple in case they decided to dash onto the road, I noticed Dada’s eyes fixed on the girl, who was also wearing tiny shorts. In truth I too had been staring at her, mostly because her top looked so certain to slip down.
A horn beeped behind me, and I realised the red man had appeared a while ago. I’d just moved forward when the couple chose that exact moment to run onto Willis Street directly where I would have turned. The young man carried on and raced across but the woman froze when she saw we were coming. As I braked, my brother said, ‘Let’s give it to her, lightly, just a touch. Let’s give her a scare.’
I looked at him, but there was neither the wink nor the smile I’d expected. It was something he kind of seriously wanted me to do. The girl realised I was waiting for her, and the other side of Willis Street was clear, so she ran across after her friend and the moment was over.
I didn’t mention it again in the course of the evening, but every few minutes a different implication of the incident would come to me, either whil
e walking, or else as we sat at a bar across from the Paramount and people-watched. We’d both been staring at her tits wondering if the top would fall, and Dada’s avidness was much more excusable since this was probably his first-ever ‘exposure’ to such sights. But then, why the sudden hostility towards someone he’d been attracted to just an instant before, the moment she was vulnerable and on the road? Was it sudden moral disgust, and was that towards her or himself? Was she a ‘slut’ in his eyes, whose body deserved no kind of respect, not even what we afford any pedestrian? Or was it a flash of anger towards them as a couple, that the young man she was with might soon get to enjoy her, actually pull down that top, and all we would get was this five-second glimpse of nothing?
I discreetly watched Dada’s eyes, especially when young women walked past us with bare legs or arms on show. I wondered what he thought when we went past a couple of the big strip joints on Courtenay Place, which I pointed out although I didn’t offer him the option of going in, and I didn’t tell Lena about the incident the following morning because we were only into day six of their visit, and this was his first time ever in such an environment and mixed reactions were to be expected, and of course because I too had been staring.
The only thing I said at one point to Dada that was any kind of reference to the girls around us was that these days I found myself thinking how most of them were closer in age to Mira than to me. When the fuck did that happen?
To which I could have predicted his reaction: ‘Abhi, at least you had your turn at the right time.’
On our way home from the museum the next day, where he’d wandered by himself while I took the girls to all the bits that Mira loved, Dada suddenly asked me if I had any Māori friends.
‘I do actually, and mostly thanks to tennis. There are a couple of kids at Mira’s crèche whose parents I chat to, but also quite a few people I play inter-club against who are at least part Māori, and over the years we’ve become quite friendly. What made you ask?’
Dada claimed to be ‘just curious’. That same morning, on our way into town, a recent Hindi film song had been playing in the car from one of my usual mixed playlists, and I’d joined the girls in singing along, when Dada remarked out of nowhere, in a similarly bland tone, that it must be nice to be able to pick and choose which aspects of India you wanted to keep close, such as the food and the music, while everything you didn’t like was so far away.
‘Outstandingly put, Dada. That’s exactly the way I feel, and probably many others in my situation,’ I’d replied, intending fully to smother his sarcasm with my pretend cheer.
I didn’t tell Lena, or Ma, that one day Dada had explicitly asked who officially owned our house in Ballygunge Place. He’d always believed it was my mother’s family home into which Baba had moved after remarrying, but since we’d lived on the first floor all by ourselves and both my maternal grandparents were no more, had Baba’s name ever been inserted into the title deed?
I evenly replied no (as if all I was doing was taking his query at face value), because Baba never asked for that or believed it was necessary, but inwardly I thought I knew exactly what Dada was implying. If his father had been included at any point as a co-owner of a large three-storey home in Ballygunge, or indeed if he’d ‘naturally’ inherited that status after the passing of both his parents-in-law when their home came down to their only daughter, why hadn’t that been part of the settlement of his estate? Where, and how much, was Dada and Didi’s share of our Calcutta house?
I reminded myself that of course on his own behalf and that of our sister, my brother had every right to ask such a question, especially if to his mind it had lain unmentioned and unresolved for seventeen years, but still decided it would be best never to share this with my mother, who would simply be infuriated, or for now with Lena while Dada was still our guest.
I also debated whether to casually ask Ma at a later date — after Dada had departed, so that she would have less reason to instantly smell a connection — if in fact Baba had legally been the co-owner of our home, if only because of patriarchal Indian law. I then decided to avoid any risk of backlash and simply Google the question later that night, which in turn, while Dada was speaking and I was mostly paying attention, led me to wondering: and what Pandora’s box would I open with that? What if I learnt that Baba had been a joint owner of anything that belonged to Ma? I clearly remembered having been so proud of the way in which my mother made sure above all to have the lawyer deal with Dada and Didi’s claims, as well as everything Baba had left Thamma in the will following the first heart attack, so that their share could be transferred as promptly as possible, but had any of them ever brought up the question of her parents’ house, which was now hers and therefore might have been her late husband’s as well? I was in the first year of my undergraduate degree in Edinburgh, reeling from the loss of my father at the age of fifty-eight, and proud of Ma (perhaps grateful is the truer word) for ‘coping’ so splendidly and never once countenancing my repeated suggestion after the shraddha that I should apply for a suspension of study and remain with her for a few months, and also for doing the right thing by her stepchildren, as well as the mother-in-law who had, truth be told, never been able to see past Ma as a home-wrecker, not even after Baba’s remarriage or my arrival (Thamma had just seemingly put her new grandchild and her second daughter-in-law in separate cardiac compartments, one warm, the other bloodless).
But that evening — and I know it sounds amazing, but for the past seventeen years if I’d ever subconsciously considered the matter I would probably have decided it was common sense that my maternal grandparents’ house belonged solely to my mother and should have no place in any settlement of Baba’s estate — I asked myself for the first time, what was the legal status of our home? Had the pay-out truly been comprehensive and fair? The fact that I believed it had been accepted by Dada and Didi without objection — how much of that was down to my physical distance from India and perhaps Ma shielding me from any such ripples, if indeed they had occurred?
And how much was because Dada, Didi and Thamma up in Hazaribagh had not had any other option? What if their silence hadn’t been mere gratitude, as I’d always assumed, but rather helplessness: i.e., not having the means to avail themselves of good legal advice in this matter that was being settled in distant Calcutta, and so they had to take whatever they were given, and seventeen years later it was one of the things on my brother’s agenda to finally bring up during this visit (at least I had agreed with Lena that whatever family feeling — and healing — this visit was about, it also certainly had an agenda).
That night, you’ll be interested to learn, I did not get around to looking online for opinions on my slightly significant legal query, or indeed at any other time during Dada’s visit even when I remembered it, mostly because I couldn’t think of what I’d do if the answers I found weren’t the ‘right’ ones. I would definitely need time to discuss the best response with Ma and Lena — after verifying what I’d found on Google with our family lawyer, of course — and it would also be easier to have that conversation and perform the necessary act of restorative justice with Dada via email and phone. I admit it wasn’t pleasant to contemplate being under the same roof with a brother you may have unknowingly wronged for seventeen years.
But here’s another moment that I did tell Lena about, as proof that other kinds of magical wonderings also passed through Dada’s head, not only anxieties about co-workers’ malice or what had been left out of their share of Baba’s property. He said to me one night while Lena was doing story-time:
‘Did you know that an uncle of Baba’s and an uncle of Ma’s [referring to his mother, not mine] lived within a ten-minute walk of one another in Bagbazar, and that they knew each other and always chatted if they met at the market? Baba’s maternal uncle was a college lecturer and was known in the locality as such, and of course Ma’s uncle was the younger son of one of the oldest established families in Bagbazar. In fact, when they met at M
a and Baba’s wedding [again, this was Dada talking about his parents’ wedding, not our father’s wedding to my mother], each was surprised at the other’s presence, until they learnt that the bride and groom were their niece and nephew, respectively. Isn’t that amazing?’
‘Yes, that is a nice coincidence.’
‘And do you know,’ Dada carried on, almost oblivious to my response, pursuing his own thought, ‘Ma would take us there regularly from the house in Howrah, on a Sunday usually, and I’ve been told by Didi that we actually stayed there for a few months when I was just one, before Ma found the Howrah place.’
I was listening, but most of my concentration had been diverted to concealing my unease. Any mention of Howrah and ‘the Howrah place’ made me uncomfortable for the obvious reason (aka The Blighted Night, or The Night of Endless Consequences), but also because whenever I’d thought back to that industrial neighbourhood in which we’d blindly wandered, I’d only become more convinced that my parents’ turning-out of Dada and Didi from our house (how else to put it?) was in fact the second great wrong Baba had done them, the earlier being his apparently resolute looking-away after his first marriage ended and he left that family entirely to fend for themselves. Which was why the best Dada’s poor Ma could do, with a one-year-old and a daughter of five, was to find a place close to a massive abandoned factory in Howrah.
In short, I hated any talk of Howrah because I had been there that final night with Dada when our lives were about to diverge forever, after at last running in close parallel for a wonderful couple of years. It made me squirm because of what it revealed about my father, twice. And I hated thinking of it because it could be argued without much serious resistance about both occasions that I was the great, and intended, beneficiary of our father’s callousness and negligence towards his other family.
The Man Who Would Not See Page 9