‘Have you packed all your books?’ Sudeshna asks.
Orko hasn’t packed his books, or his clothes. ‘Can’t I stay here?’ he asks his aunt in a voice that’s almost a whisper. Sudeshna is distracted by the whistle of the kettle. She says nothing. ‘Just for a few more days?’ Orko is desperate now. He means to whisper, but the words come out too loud.
Sudeshna glances at him as she pours the boiling water into a teapot. She looks ill at ease. ‘Go home with your father,’ she says. ‘You can come and spend the weekend.’
‘But I don’t have to go to school until the exams,’ Orko says. ‘Study leave.’
‘I’ll come and help you with your studies,’ says Sudeshna.
‘But if I stayed here, you wouldn’t have to come all the way every day,’ he persists.
Sudeshna gives him a look that tells him it’s futile to argue more. On a tray by the stove is a plate with biscuits and a cup on a saucer. Sudeshna places the teapot on the tray and carries it out of the kitchen. Orko follows her into the living room.
‘Bring the teapoy closer to your father,’ Sudeshna says to Orko. Nandan looks up from his newspaper. ‘I’m arranging a Satyanarayan pujo for him,’ she says to Nandan, as she places the tray on the teapoy.
Orko is surprised – he has been here all week, and this is the first he’s hearing of the pujo. Nandan folds the newspaper carefully before putting it away. It’s clear that he is displeased.
‘I know you’re a nonbeliever,’ Sudeshna says. ‘I don’t care. You’re to bring him to my house next Sunday, at nine.’
‘There really isn’t any need for all of that,’ says Nandan. ‘He’s fine. Sit down and have some tea with me.’
‘I’ve never imposed my beliefs on anybody,’ says Sudeshna. ‘This is an earnest request – indulge me, just this once.’
Nandan smiles at Sudeshna, and Orko knows that smile. When he was younger and he said something amusing, his father would smile at him like that.
‘What are you smiling at me for?’ Sudeshna demands. ‘You think everything is a joke?’
‘Go pack your bag,’ she says to Orko. ‘And don’t come back here until you’re called for.’
Orko gathers his books from the dining table and hurries away in search of the rest of his belongings. He stuffs everything he can find into his bag. It isn’t as heavy as it had seemed when he left home with it. He wonders if he’s forgetting something. He goes back towards the living room, to ask his aunt if any of his clothes are in the washing, but he stops short. They’re still talking – about him, by the sound of it. The green curtain is thick enough that he’s sure they can’t see him.
‘I don’t see what’s wrong with the football camp,’ his father says. ‘It seems to have done Orko a lot of good. He’s more confident, more focused. He goes running every afternoon. I hear he shows a lot of promise.’
‘That’s a load of rubbish,’ Sudeshna says. ‘I taught adolescent boys for ten years. I know what they’ll do to someone like Orko. You didn’t think it necessary to ask me before sending him? Does my opinion count for nothing?’
‘I think you worry too much. He’s a big boy now,’ Nandan says. ‘Learning to play a team sport is very important. Besides, I’m sure he has made new friends at the camp.’
Orko can’t bear to listen anymore. He walks away quietly, to his grandfather’s room at the other end of the house. His head hurts. Did Bishu tell his father all those things about him? Did they meet, to exchange notes about his progress? Orko can think of no other way his father would know that he showed promise. None of the boys at the camp would have had anything good to say about him. Was his father a party to everything that had happened to him? Did his father ask Bishu to straighten him out, to teach him how to be a man? The very thought is so revolting that it makes his stomach turn.
As they walk away from Sudeshna’s house, Nandan seems lost in thought. Orko feels ungrateful for wanting to remain with his aunt. He wishes he hadn’t told her anything about the football camp. They walk past the cinema, and when they’re at the traffic lights at the end of the avenue Nandan says: ‘I thought you liked football. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but since you joined the camp, your demeanour has changed. For the better, I should think.’
Orko is lost for words. He feels as if his father doesn’t know him at all, and this, too, is entirely his fault. He thinks of all the times when Nandan asked him how he was, and ‘Fine’ was all he said. He wonders what his father would think if Orko told him the whole story. It is entirely a thought experiment, of course; he can never recount the whole story, to anybody.
As they walk towards Gariahat, Orko picks at the memories of the conversations he had with his aunt. It is an idle exercise; he isn’t looking for anything in particular. Why was it that his father never spoke to him about his mother? Was it because he thought Orko was too young, or was it because it was too painful for him to talk about his late wife? Does his father miss his mother like he does? He pictures his father at the crematorium, chatting casually with his kinsmen about cricket and the Golden Temple, while his mother’s body lies on a bier a few feet away. Moments later, he hates himself for conjuring up that image. He tries to obliterate it – every memory of it – from his consciousness. The truth is that his father is a kind man. He’s a gentle man. He’s a learned man. He’s a respected professor at the university, and people come to him for advice about important things. He still finds the time to care for Orko, and to cook for him, and to ask after his wellbeing. It’s just as well that Orko doesn’t waste his father’s time with complaints about his own petty predicaments.
They’re in the fish market, and Nandan is paying for a kilo of pomfret. A year ago, Orko loved pomfret, just like his father. Now he loathes it. As a matter of fact, he never wants to eat fish again.
It’s Sunday again, and Orko and his father are at his aunt’s house. Nandan rings the bell; Orko stands behind him, hands clasped together.
‘Thank you for coming,’ says Sudeshna, holding the door open. ‘The priest has been here for a while now.’
Orko steals a glance at the clock on the far wall. They’re a few minutes late.
‘I have some errands to run,’ Nandan says. ‘Orko can come home by himself after the circus.’
Orko cringes at his father’s words, and Nandan leaves without saying goodbye. Orko follows his aunt to the balcony over the portico, where he spent so many afternoons with his grandfather. The balcony is unrecognisable now. In his memories, the windows are unadorned; there’s the television set, with the little magic box by its side; Amiya’s easy chair, the colour of ebony, about eight feet from the TV screen; Orko’s little rattan chair, now two feet to the right of Amiya, now brushing up against his side; Amiya’s hand in his – bony, trembling, encased in the softest skin.
Now the windows have white curtains, with lace trim. The spot where the television set used to be has been given over to the pujo. There’s a foot-high table, set out with the usual appeasements – tiny plates laden with fruits; matching glasses filled with water; little mounds of raw rice, moist, each crowned by a slice of banana; a copper pot, its mouth gagged with a red towel, on which is a green coconut with a long, gnarly stalk like the horn of a unicorn. The priest sits on a rough handloom prayer mat. There are three more stacked in a corner. Sudeshna takes one, and hands another to Orko. She spreads her prayer mat to the left of the priest, but not directly alongside, as if in deference to his higher station. She motions to Orko to do the same. Orko sits to the right of the priest, in line with his aunt.
When he was little, Orko and his mother performed a Lokkhi pujo every year. It was always just the two of them. They awoke before daybreak on the morning of the pujo. They drank the last glass of water they were allowed before the period of fasting began. They painted little footsteps, with paste made from chalk and rice dust. The footsteps led from their front door to every room in their flat. These were Ma Lokkhi’s footsteps, his mother told him. They s
erved as a guide for Ma Lokkhi, so she would know to visit every room, to bless its occupants. When the hour of the pujo drew near, his mother entrusted Orko with painting the remaining footsteps, while she worked on a large floral motif on the floor of the room where the pujo was to be performed. Ma Lokkhi’s idol took centre stage, on a foot-high wooden platform. Around the seat of Ma Lokkhi there were offerings, much like the offerings at today’s pujo. No priest invaded their private ceremony. His mother sat by Ma Lokkhi’s seat, on a prayer mat much like the one on which Orko is sitting now. She closed her eyes and went through the entire set of incantations, swaying from side to side, as if in a trance.
Today, the priest pronounces the incantations in a monotonous drone. He clutches a bell in his left hand and rings it from time to time. He tosses a few flowers at the unicorn. He doles out handfuls of petals to Orko and his aunt, asking them to do the same. He pronounces a Sanskritised version of Orko’s name thrice, in a verse that lasts about a minute. His aunt blows on a conch shell. The priest half-turns towards him and anoints him with sandalwood paste. Then he does the same to his aunt. He asks them to cover their feet. His aunt draws hers under the folds of her saree. Orko kneels, so his feet are hidden away. The priest sprinkles holy water on them. For peace, he says.
When they’re done, his aunt squishes the fruit and the rice together into a paste, which she then serves to Orko in a bowl made of bone china. She serves herself a bowl too, and genuflects before raising a spoonful to her mouth. Orko knows from experience that he must do the same. He turns his face away so his aunt can’t see him grimace. He gulps down the contents of the bowl with feigned gusto. He feels sick to the stomach. The paste reminds him of Bishu.
Seven
In December, the mornings are grey, the afternoons short and yellow, like the final moments of an ant drowning in a jar of honey. Sweaters, scarves and shawls emerge from the top shelves of wardrobes and from steel trunks stowed under beds. There’s a faint smell of mothballs in minibuses and in doctors’ chambers. Men and women scurry about the wispy morning streets, wrapped in their woollens of blue and yellow and brown. On Sundays they go to the Botanic Gardens and to the zoo, with sandwiches wrapped in old newspaper and thermos bottles of instant coffee, not quite piping hot. They recline on reed mats spread on the green, while their children play hide-and-seek or immerse themselves in adventures that can only take place in the pages of a book. Evening falls without warning. Feeble street lamps shine valiantly, illuminating huddled figures with plumes of cigarette smoke floating over their heads like speech bubbles in a comic book.
The grey mornings and the quick afternoons bleed into the new year, and the men and women spend their time and money at the fairgrounds by the maidan. They’re in trams and buses with armloads of books, a heady new book smell about them. Late in the evening, they wrap themselves in their shawls and drink tea, piping hot, from earthen cups before spending the night seated on uncomfortable chairs in concert halls fashioned out of tarpaulins and bamboo scaffolding.
Orko can’t remember a winter as idyllic as this one. His board exams are behind him. He is home, alone, swaddled in a soft shawl that had once belonged to his mother. The shawl is a fuzzy mauve, and it too smells of mothballs. The hours go by languidly, with Simon & Garfunkel playing on the stereo. Orko doesn’t know how long he’s been reading, only that it has been too long – the text on the page grows fuzzy, then fades into an unintelligible blur. He sets the book down by his pillow and contemplates his future, stringing together vignettes of an imagined adulthood. It’s a frustrating exercise, because he can never place his future self in these vignettes.
Priya is born in a lazy, ill-considered moment, to take Orko’s place in these imaginings. She lives here, in this room. Her given name is Orkopriya, but her mother called her Orko. She had chosen that name before Priya was born, in anticipation of a son. To her friends, though, she’s Priya, because Orko is a boy’s name.
In the beginning, Priya is just an apparition; a wraith who appears only in the dead of night, or early in the afternoon, when the world is bathed in honey. Orko isn’t alarmed, because he knows her from the sketches in his mother’s notebook. She reminds him of a song about moonbeams and fairytales. He watches her wistfully, enviously, with the knowledge that he is Orko and she is Priya, and that one could never be the other. She is graceful, like a ballerina, and he is like Pinocchio, his arms and legs held together with twine. She is self-assured – cocky, even – and he is the embodiment of infinite hesitation.
Priya has a wing, shaped like a butterfly’s, and striped like a zebra. She can’t fly on the one wing, of course, but she likes the way it looks. She pictures herself, naked, the wing resting against her shoulder blade. She wishes she had another wing so that she could fly away. She stands at the window, her wing in mourning for its lost twin. Orko wishes she would go away, and she does.
When she returns, she is no longer a wraith, and no longer benign. She begins to carve out portions of Orko’s life and claim them for herself. Soon there’s a poster of Boy George brushing up against Tracy Chapman, and by the stereo there’s a jewelled box made of silver. Inside the box are four pairs of earrings. The little golden hoops are the only pair she’s allowed to wear to school, but the ones she loves most are the silver owls that nestle against her earlobes. She only wears those in the evenings, because owls don’t like grey mornings or yellow afternoons.
Priya taunts Orko with visions of futures that could never be his. She’s a singer, and a songwriter. She plays the flute, the dulcimer, the guitar and the piano. She speaks French and Japanese, fluently. She’s a mystery writer. She’s the first human on Mars. She’s a champion swimmer. She has two children, and she takes them swimming every afternoon.
Orko envies Priya, but it isn’t because she’s so accomplished, or because she has two children. He envies her for the secrets she shares during sleepovers at Urmi’s, under a duvet so roomy that there’s four of them in there, with room to spare. He resents her because she plays games with his memories, painting pictures of a past that might have been his if he were a girl. It’s Priya who sat with Urmi on her terrace, reading, eating puffed rice and fighting over the boy in the book. Priya had her ears pierced first, and Urmi envied her for the beautiful earrings she wore to school. When she went swimming with her mother, she was never sent away to the men’s changing rooms. When the boys on the football field taunted her with that jaded trope about cows and flowers, she had the last laugh; she ran circles around them during the game that followed. When Bishu asked her to take her clothes off, Priya chopped off his penis with a machete.
When the doorbell rings, Priya leaves, taking with her the poster of Boy George and the little jewelled box from beside the stereo, and Orko is left floundering, gasping, clutching at thin air in an effort to piece together a future in which he can participate as himself. He knows that he’s never going be able to play the dulcimer or the flute, and he’s not going to be an astronaut. He’s never going to marry, or have children, or wear silver owls on his earlobes. Nevertheless, he decides that he isn’t going to remain friendless and alone just because he isn’t a girl; he isn’t going to try to walk like a man, or sit or carry his books like one, because the idea that somehow one could learn to do that seems preposterous. He is tired of being afraid. He is going to go back to the football field, and he is going to run. He’s going to become strong and confident, like his mother. In the meantime, if Bishu tries to speak to him, he is going to keep on running until he reaches home; Urmi’s mother told her to run as fast as she could if strange men tried to talk to her.
It’s a Monday morning, more golden than grey. Orko answers the door, and he’s surprised to see Urmi. They haven’t spoken in weeks. On the night after their last board exam, Urmi had a sleepover at her place. Nilanjana and Paromita were invited; he wasn’t. Orko swallowed his pride and asked Urmi if he could come too, but Urmi said that it was girls only; she couldn’t do anything about it because her moth
er said so. Orko didn’t quite believe her, because he had spent the night at Urmi’s in the past and her mother never seemed to mind. He considered asking Ketaki-mashi if she really didn’t want him to spend the night, but he was afraid that he would discover it was Urmi who didn’t want him.
Orko doesn’t want to be the first to speak. He waits for Urmi to tell him why she’s here, but she doesn’t say anything either. Impatience gets the better of him, and he throws her a questioning glance.
‘The results are out,’ Urmi says. ‘I’m going to school. Ma says I should ask if you wanted to come along.’
‘Why don’t you go with your friends?’ Orko retorts. ‘I’m sure they’ll be happy to go with you.’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ Urmi says. ‘Do you want to come with me or not?’
Orko doesn’t want to go to school. He’s sure he has failed the chemistry test. He tries to construct the sentences that he’s going to use to break the news to his father.
‘Well?’ Urmi asks impatiently.
Orko has half a mind to say something spiteful. He wants to tell her that it was terribly mean of her not to invite him that night, but he can’t think of a way to say it without giving her the upper hand. ‘Please be seated,’ he says, in a tone he uses when addressing a visitor asking to see his father. ‘I’ll get dressed.’
As they walk to the bus stop, the bristling resentment begins to fade. He can see why Urmi didn’t want him at the sleepover. Their friendship is hopelessly broken, and he’s the one who broke it. The die was cast when he decided to go to the football camp just to spite her. When Bishu told him that he mustn’t be friends with girls, it was Orko who began to distance himself from her. He stopped going for walks with her, and when she smiled at him he didn’t smile back. In spite of it all, Urmi came looking for him this morning. She isn’t going to be his classmate anymore, and they would probably drift further apart. In two years she would go away to college, like her brother. He would see her twice a year, when she came home for her vacations. He tries to frame an adequate apology as they ride the bus to Golpark, but every iteration seems hollow and facile.
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