Fern Road

by Angshu Dasgupta

  As they pass through the dining room, Orko glances at the clock. It is half past eleven. Dirty bowls and dishes lie haphazardly on the dining table. Some of the bowls have the remnants of last night’s dinner in them.

  It’s not like his aunt at all to leave dirty dishes on the table, or to still be in her nightgown at eleven-thirty in the morning. Orko can’t see her face, but when she opened the door she seemed haggard, as if she were straining under a great burden.

  They’re on the balcony when she turns towards him. She looks embarrassed, as if she doesn’t want him to see her like this. ‘I was just going for my bath,’ she says. ‘Sit here for a while.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Orko. ‘You don’t look too well. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Sit,’ she says, by way of an answer. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Orko sets his schoolbag down on the high chair that he used as a child, surprised that his aunt still has it after all these years. He sits on the chair next to it. This chair is also in his earliest memories, although the dark varnish has been replaced by white paint.

  He regrets not visiting his aunt in these past few months. The truth is that Orko has been avoiding her. He knows that he has disappointed her. He can’t decide if it is because he has done poorly in his examinations, or because the last time he was here he discovered that she had seen him at her dressing table. He still remembers his face as he saw it in the mirror on his aunt’s dressing table – the face of a young girl, her lips smeared with maroon lipstick.

  The balcony is quiet. The ceiling fan is stationary. Orko wonders how long the power has been gone, and then he remembers the candle on the dining table, standing like the steadfast tin soldier amid the detritus of last night’s dinner. He begins to worry for his aunt. He wonders if she has forgotten to pay the electricity bill, like his father. Was she, too, worn out by his strangeness? Was she disappointed that, in spite of everything she has done for him, he has amounted to so little?

  ‘It’s so good to see you, Orko,’ Sudeshna says as she appears in the doorway. ‘It has been such a long time!’

  She’s draped in a saree he has seen her wear hundreds of times. The saree hangs limply from her body. Her wet hair, flecked with grey, is spread across her back. It catches the sun as she hangs a towel out to dry. She looks older than Orko remembers.

  ‘Yes, it has been a long time,’ says Orko. He feels like saying much more, to explain his long absence, but the sentences trip on themselves on the way to his lips.

  ‘I’ve had a bad night,’ Sudeshna says. ‘The power went out just as I sat down to dinner. I didn’t sleep too well.’

  Orko wants to ask her if she has paid the electricity bill, but she’s his aunt – she has always been in control of everything that goes on in this house. She would probably take umbrage at the suggestion that she can’t keep up with her own affairs.

  ‘I’ll go and ask the neighbours if they know anything,’ he says.

  ‘My little Orko is not so little anymore,’ Sudeshna says, smiling. ‘Yes, you better go find out what’s wrong.’

  On his way out, Orko notices that the house looks more unkempt than ever. The dishes have now been cleared away, but the rancid smell of spoiling food hangs in the air. The dining chairs are all askew. There’s a filthy rag on the towel rack by the washbasin. In the living room, there are old newspapers on the sofa and on the writing bureau. On the floor, between two chairs, is an empty biscuit wrapper. He makes sure his aunt isn’t watching, picks it up and stuffs it into his pocket. He draws his finger across the surface of the bookshelf. It comes away dusty; the bookshelf probably hasn’t been dusted in weeks. In the past few months, he has often been distraught at the state of his own room, but he has never let it get so out of hand. It wouldn’t disturb him so much, he figures, if his aunt wasn’t normally so fastidious. He can’t imagine that she spent the whole night with no electricity without bothering to investigate the matter.

  Orko feels unreasonably anxious as he stands at the gate of the neighbours’ house. He has been here, as a child, with his grandfather. This would be his first visit since his grandfather’s passing. He walks past the open gate. Through a window he can see the ceiling fan spinning away. He turns away, glad to have avoided having to speak to someone he doesn’t really know.

  ‘I think there’s something wrong with the circuit here,’ he says to his aunt. ‘The neighbours have power. Maybe a blown fuse?’ He feels silly saying this. His father would know what to do. He would probably have located the blown fuse and fixed it by now, without having to bother the electrician. Orko doesn’t even know where to find the electrician.

  ‘This house is a millstone around my neck,’ Sudeshna laments. ‘Every day brings new calamities.’

  ‘Shall I call the electrician?’ Orko asks.

  ‘No,’ says Sudeshna. ‘He’ll charge an arm and a leg just for showing his face. Wait here. I’ll go get the neighbours’ driver to come and look at it.’

  Orko wonders if Sudeshna is having money problems. She doesn’t have a job. His grandfather had a pension from the government, but surely that must have been discontinued after his death. It is very likely that she only has the money she earns from tutoring schoolchildren. His father once told him that she had been on track to become the headmistress of the school where she worked, but she had left it all behind and came to Calcutta to look after her father. Now she is alone in this rambling old house, helpless and, possibly, in financial straits.

  The two women who worked in the household have obviously been let go. The layers of dust in the dining room, the biscuit wrapper and the unwashed dishes are testament to the fact that she couldn’t keep up with it all. In spite of being so hard up, she had arranged the pujo for his wellbeing. He had attended, but he hadn’t really participated. He didn’t have the courage to tell her point-blank that he didn’t believe it would do him any good, and he didn’t have the grace to absorb the spirit of the pujo, or to appreciate how important he was to his aunt. How ungrateful he had been! How insensitive!

  The sound of Sudeshna’s voice breaks Orko’s train of thought. ‘It was the fuse. What a clever young man you are,’ she says from inside the room. Orko leaves his seat by the railing and goes back into the dining room. The fluorescent light has come back on, and the fan is beginning to gather speed.

  He turns off the light. ‘It was just a lucky guess,’ he says. ‘Baba would have known right away. He probably would have been able to fix it himself.’

  ‘How is your father?’ Sudeshna asks. ‘I haven’t heard from either of you since the pujo.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, mashi,’ he says. The apology sounds hollow, incomplete. He stands there in silence as his aunt washes the dishes from last night’s dinner. He would offer to help, but he knows his aunt will turn him down.

  ‘I missed you,’ he says. ‘It’s been such a long time. I thought I would come and visit you.’

  He feels terrible about lying to his aunt. Of course he hasn’t missed her. He isn’t here to find out how she is doing. He has come here to unburden himself. As a matter of fact, on his way here, all he had thought about was absolution, of which he now feels undeserving. He is to blame for all his troubles. His aunt, on the other hand, has real problems. She is all alone. She had looked after him, and his grandfather, when they were helpless. It is his turn to look after her, and he has been derelict in his duty.

  ‘It’s been such a terrible night, and I’ve been so distracted that I haven’t even asked you if you’re hungry,’ says Sudeshna, smiling at last. ‘You must be. Shall I make you an omelette?’

  Orko is hungry. He could do with much more than an omelette. He nods.

  He follows his aunt to the kitchen, watching her every move. Her limbs seem less sure of themselves than he remembers, her manner more subdued than he knows her to be. She brings two eggs from the refrigerator. She breaks them against the edge of a mug that Orko recognises as the one in which his grandfather was served a milky porridge e
very morning. She beats the eggs with a fork, pausing briefly to add a dash of salt. She sets the frying pan on the stove, and breaks two matchsticks before she succeeds in lighting the flame. She measures out a spoonful of oil and, with a flick of her wrist, lets the oil fall onto the surface of the frying pan. At last, she seems in control.

  Orko remembers the evening at the Chinese restaurant. He doesn’t want her to feel the way she did that evening. He doesn’t want to leave her distraught, straining under the weight of his secret, alone in this old house with its fickle fuses, its furniture layered in dust.

  When Orko leaves his aunt’s house an hour later, his secret is still with him, like a foul stench that refuses to fade away.

  Thirteen

  It is past noon, and the air is thick with moisture; yesterday’s rain is now the perspiration on Orko’s brow. He walks aimlessly, without a particular destination in mind. It doesn’t seem like a very long time before he finds himself back at Golpark, across the street from the stop where he waits for his bus every afternoon. He crosses the street and walks past the bus stop, to a tea stall on the footpath. He sits down on the bench and asks for some tea.

  Men pass on the footpath – some of them seem like they’re in a tearing hurry; others just saunter along. Orko assigns names to them: Mr Bose, Sadhan-babu, Mintu-da. Orko has come across hundreds, maybe thousands of men like them. They aren’t bad people. They’re happy, successful, useful to society. They work at offices and banks, and some of them do important things. On their way home, when the creases in their trousers lose the edge, they stop at tea stalls like this to smoke their cigarettes and drink sweet tea, piping hot, from tiny earthen cups. Some of them dip biscuits in their tea – biscuits that look like butterflies.

  Once, Orko saw a young woman at this tea stall. She had come with a man who was about the same age as her. There were four men, older, sitting on the bench, arguing about football. The World Cup was on at the time, and he heard the words ‘Brazil’ and ‘Argentina’ spoken fervently, as if they were the names of gods or great warriors. One of the men said, loudly enough for the woman to hear: ‘Look at the lovebirds!’ The others laughed. Someone commented on the clothes the woman was wearing, remarking that she looked sexy. The young couple slunk away, as if they had fallen afoul of an unwritten rule.

  The memory brings with it a flash of anger. Who made these rules? Who gave those men the right to enforce these rules in that odious way? He thinks about Bishu’s teachings, and their sheer absurdity leaves him incredulous. He drains the earthen cup and tosses it into the wastebasket by the bench. He leaves a two-rupee coin on the counter and walks away, towards the boulevard. The shopkeeper calls after him, reminding him to take his schoolbag. Orko slings it over his shoulder and turns away, too embarrassed to thank the man.

  On the boulevard, the shopkeepers are preparing their makeshift stalls for the day ahead, setting out their wares on countertops or stringing them up on lengths of nylon cord. A man with a cloth duster polishes the glass door of the photo studio. Orko steals a glance at his reflection in the glass. Beside the photo studio is a tiny sliver of a shop that sells underwear, and past it is a jeweller’s. On the signboard, below a crude illustration of the various gemstones that might be purchased there, is a declaration that Orko thinks he had seen when he passed the shop on his way back from school. In a crooked blue typeface, it says: ‘Piercings done here’.

  The man at the counter looks up as Orko walks through the door. He’s wearing a monocle. Orko waits for the man to ask him what he wants, but the man just looks at him, sizing him up. Orko is ill at ease. On any other day he would turn around and walk out of the shop.

  ‘I’d like my ears pierced, please,’ he says, trying his best to sound as if he has given this some thought.

  ‘Hmm,’ says the man. He takes off the monocle and places it on the counter. ‘Just one ear, or both?’

  Some people do wear a solitary earring, usually on their left ear, but that is not what Orko wants. ‘Both,’ he replies.

  ‘I’ll do it for free if you buy earrings from me,’ the man says.

  Orko’s pulse races. ‘How much?’ he asks, fingering the currency notes in his pocket.

  ‘Well, let’s see,’ says the man. ‘For fresh piercings, you want gold. Anything else will give you an infection.’ He reaches below the counter and brings out a small jewellery box. ‘I have just the thing for you,’ he says, opening the box and laying it on the counter. In it is an assortment of tiny golden earrings.

  ‘The studs are two hundred rupees,’ he says. Then, pointing at a pair of tiny hoops like the ones Urmi used to wear to school, ‘These will cost you three hundred. I don’t think any of the others will suit you.’

  The man is right. Orko can’t imagine wearing the large hoops, or the ones set with fake gemstones.

  ‘I’ll take these,’ he says, pointing at the little hoops. He removes the wad of cash from his pocket. The man watches him count out three hundred rupees, in ten- and twenty-rupee notes. Orko sets the money down on the counter, and the man puts it away in a drawer. He latches the door and draws the curtains. ‘Come with me,’ he says.

  Orko follows the man into a well-lit antechamber. The walls are lined with shelves, most of them empty. Some are stacked with jewellery boxes, large, medium, small. In one of the shelves is a series of ornate gold necklaces in open cases.

  ‘Sit down,’ the man says, pointing at a stool beside the door. On a workbench in the corner is an assortment of tools that look like they’re from an alien civilisation. Orko recognises a Bunsen burner, and a pair of tweezers lying by its side. The man fires up the burner before rummaging in a drawer for a few seconds and bringing out a well-worn leather pouch. From the pouch he removes a metal stalk, about the size of a crochet hook. From another drawer he brings out a bottle of Dettol and a wad of cottonwool. He moistens a swab of cottonwool with the antiseptic and wipes down the tip of the stalk. He uses the same swab to wipe Orko’s earlobes and the tiny golden hoops. He holds the stalk over the burner until it turns blue.

  ‘Hold still,’ he says. ‘It’s going to hurt a little.’

  Orko is as still as he can be. The man’s fingers are on his earlobe now, and he feels a prick, like an exceptionally painful injection. The pain is momentary, and is followed by a sharp, burning sensation where the piercing must be. ‘This one looks good,’ says the man, and moves on to the other earlobe. This time it doesn’t hurt as much. The man picks up an earring, and Orko winces when he loops it through the piercing.

  ‘Can I put on the other one myself?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s better that I do it,’ the man says. ‘You might end up inflaming the piercing. It’s going to be a little tender for a few days.’ When he’s done, they return to the shop.

  The man unlatches the door before returning to his post behind the counter. ‘You shouldn’t take them off for the first week or so,’ he warns. ‘The piercings will close up if you do.’

  Out on the footpath again, Orko anxiously studies the faces of strangers, watching for signs of contempt, or of ridicule. There seem to be many more people out and about now, and they go about their business, asking to see nighties and bedcovers and haggling over prices. Nobody seems to mind, or even care, that he has broken a rule that he has always thought was inviolable.

  It’s not that he has never seen a man wear earrings, but those men are nothing like him. They inhabit film magazines and the covers of music albums. They have a certain swagger about them, and some of them wear carefully manicured stubble. They don’t walk about in school uniforms on the footpaths of Gariahat, and they don’t look like anyone ever teased them for not being masculine enough.

  Orko’s anxiety comes and goes in waves. He doesn’t know what he will tell his father about the earrings. Going by the way things have been between them lately, it’s likely that his father won’t even notice. Perhaps he will reason with his teachers that everyone else in his class wears earrings. Then there are peopl
e like Kaushik and Pratik, with whom there is no reasoning. ‘Fuck off ’ is what he’s going to say to them. The woman walking in front of him whirls around, and Orko realises that he said the words aloud, loud enough for her to have heard him. He averts his eyes and steps off the footpath. He walks along the edge of the pavement until he comes to the bus stop.

  Orko has been at this bus stop hundreds of times. Today there are five men and a woman waiting with him. The woman is wearing earrings, and although Orko’s earrings aren’t as pretty, he feels no envy. Every few moments he is tempted to touch his earlobes. He resists – he doesn’t want to let on that he’s a newbie.

  The conductor stares at Orko’s ears as he hands Orko his ticket, and Orko remembers what Brishti had said to him and stares back at the conductor. The conductor looks away, embarrassed. Orko feels triumphant, but only for a moment. It dawns on him that he lacks even the most basic skills that his friends have. He would never have known that he ought to stare back at people who stare at him. No one has taught him that he should run away if men like Bishu try to approach him, or that he should avoid being alone with boys like Kaushik.

  His mother told him that he was a boy, and he ought to be brave and strong, that he would grow up to be a great man, and that he was going to rule his own little piece of the world. For as long as he has known that he’s a boy, he has wished that he wasn’t, and yet he doesn’t know the first thing about navigating the world as a girl. Brishti was right. It is unfathomable that he wishes he was a girl. It doesn’t make any sense.

  When he was very young, he used to think that he wished he was a girl because boys couldn’t have earrings. As he grew older, the feeling didn’t go away, and he thought he felt this way because all his friends were girls, and they shared secrets among themselves that they would never share with him. Now he’s wearing earrings, just like the ones Urmi had when they were seven, and Brishti is the closest friend he has ever had. They have lunch together every day; they love the same music; they’re strange in ways that none of their classmates are; they spend most of their waking hours together, sharing secrets that no one else could even begin to imagine. And yet, Orko still wishes he was a girl, and he can’t say why. It’s like asking someone why they like roasted peanuts, or the colour blue.