by Neil Grant
‘Now, tea.’ Bansari, bustles from the room.
Rudra flops on the bed and stares up at the ceiling – at the patches of peeling paint like clouds. One is the shape of his father’s boat, tugging insolently at its anchor chain. He wonders if Cord is still sleeping on Paper Tiger, his world shrunken to the decks of his floating prison. Him, deep in a bottle, with a ship wrapped around the outside. And what of his anger – is it fading or growing? How will Rudra ever return to the Patonga he once knew? It seems like a place now existing only in memory, like Baghchara – his didima’s island.
‘Tea, Rudra. And rosogooooolaaaas.’ Bansari’s voice rings through the house.
He picks himself up from the bed and goes through to the sitting room. The tea is laid on a brass table with a plate of doughy white rosogollas to the side.
‘So, Nayna,’ says Bansari, sipping her tea. ‘Tell me why you are here. Details were not so clear from your message.’
‘Perhaps Rudra should explain,’ replies Nayna.
‘Yes, Rudra, explain your aunty why you are nearly a man and you have never ever come to visit me. Explain me that.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Just tell her why we are here, Rudra,’ says his mum gently.
‘My didima,’ starts Rudra. ‘She wanted to come back home. To have her ashes scattered on her island.’
‘Here? Gosaba? Such a low place. She spent much time in Kolkata also, when she was a child, you know. Before she went up in the world. Maybe it is better you take her to Varanasi where you can scatter her on the Ganga and she can be assured a high rebirth.’
‘She wanted to be scattered over Baghchara.’
‘Baghchara? Are you joking? That island was so terribly lowly that the river ate it.’
‘But that is where Didima wanted to go.’
Bansari lowers her eyes. ‘It is a pity you cannot argue with the dead.’
‘Keep going, Rudra,’ says Nayna.
‘I am all of the ears,’ says Bansari.
‘My Australian great-grandfather shot a tiger.’
‘In Australia?’ Her eyes widen. ‘Oh yes!’ She nods. ‘I have heard of such Tasmania tigers. Is it close-by to you?’
‘He shot it in India. When he was a young man.’
Bansari considers this point. ‘This is incredibly bad luck, Rudra,’ she says.
‘I know.’ He takes a sip of his tea. ‘Plus, he took the skull away with him.’
Bansari looks around the room as if Dokkhin Rai himself is skulking in the shadows. Her voice lowers to a whisper. ‘Where exactly did this happen?’
‘It happened here. In the Sundarbans. I think he shot it near Baghchara.’
‘When was this?’
‘A long time ago, Aunty.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Nineteen fifty-something maybe.’
‘Maybe it is the same story.’ She hurries out of the room and comes back with a scuffed album. ‘This was my didima’s.’ She clears away the teacups and, placing the album on the table, opens it. There are faded photos of weddings and picnics, of leaning temples festooned with monkeys, of solemn-faced men with thick moustaches. She stops on a page.
There, a photo similar to the one Rudra found in his father’s office, the one with Rudra’s grandfather, the Sikh, and the dead tiger. Below it, Netidhopani, 1952.
‘What’s Netidhopani?’
‘It is not a what, Rudra, it is a where. Netidhopani is a place. There is an ancient temple there and some many tigers.’
‘And this is where my Australian great-grandfather shot the tiger?’
‘Yes. And where your Indian great-grandfather was killed before that, by the very same tiger.’
Rudra looks at Nayna. ‘We think that is just a little too much coincidence, Aunty.’
‘Maybe yes and maybe not,’ says Bansari, her eyes as round as dinner plates. ‘Dokkhin Rai has many powers. And think on this, Rudra: the Lord of the South, he could flit between tigers when he pleases – taking on the skin of this one and that one. If he was still in the skin of the tiger your Australian great-grandfather shot, he would be most angry when this happened. Who knows what he would do for revenge.’
‘Enough, Bansari,’ growls Nayna. ‘I won’t have you filling my son’s head with this nonsense.’ She places her cup back on her saucer. ‘Maybe, just maybe, Rudra’s great-grandfathers were connected through a tiger. That, I will concede, is possible. But it is only coincidence. Nothing more.’
‘But, Nayna—’
‘Enough!’ Nayna holds up her hand. ‘Rudra will return this stupid skull. And then he will forget it ever happened. There is no curse. No Dokkhin Rai. Bonbibi will not protect him in the forest. We will throw that skull onto that godforsaken island and we will never look back.’
21
IN THE MORNING THEY SET OFF on a ‘tour’ of Gosaba. The tour consists of visits to many neighbours’ houses. At each house tea and ladoos are served, sometimes biscuits with fillings that leave a chemical aftertaste. At every house, Raj is made to wait outside. But he is there when they exit, hastily plugging out his beedi on the sole of one of his cheap shoes, smiling like he is happy. Nayna gives him fifty rupees to go get something nice for yourself. And they continue on the tour, keeping as far from the water as possible.
They stop for a moment in front of a small, neat bungalow.
‘This is your didima’s house,’ says Nayna.
‘She sold it to a prawn seed dealer before she left for Australia,’ says Bansari. ‘He is a big man around town.’
Rudra can tell from the way she says ‘big man’ that she does not approve. ‘What’s a prawn seed?’ he asks.
‘Baby prawns. They grow them up and sell them to fancy eateries. Many are trying to get rich from this.’
Rudra thinks back to Patonga – to his father and Wallace pulling prawns from the bay. He looks at Didima’s house. ‘It’s smaller than I thought it would be.’
Nayna nudges a tear from her eye. ‘Things are always smaller than you imagine.’
‘Were you happy there, Mum?’
Bansari interrupts. ‘You broke their hearts, Nayna.’
‘Not before they broke mine, Pisi.’
They walk to another house, another tea stop where gossip and tea is served with ‘milk separate’. Rudra begins to build a map of the Sundarbans in his head. But it contains no roads, or tracks, or trees, or buildings, no rivers or ponds. It is a map of people – who is doing what to whom and why. The Adivasis, the indigenous people on the ‘down’ islands, are not to be trusted. The men from Anpur are poachers. The Pods are getting above their station, what with all this prawn seed business and new money. On and on it goes. All the tea and gossip leaves Rudra feeling sick.
He excuses himself for a toilet break. Free of the tangle of tongues, he walks towards the river, finally glimpsing it between the mud walls. As he climbs the bund, the protective wall of sticks and clay, the river flares with promise in the midday sun.
In the shallows, a girl is wading. Rudra squats down and watches her. She is dragging a frame made of four bamboo poles strapped together with wire and nylon cord. A mosquito net has been bound to it, and two ropes form a harness. She passes along the riverbank, waist-deep in the water, pulling her makeshift net against the current. Stopping about twenty metres upstream, she trawls the net to the bank and scoops whatever she has caught (surely something small) into an aluminium pot. Then she starts again, working her way downstream.
As she passes Rudra, she flashes her bright white teeth at him. He smiles back and holds up his hand. Then, realising how stupid he must look, he sweeps the hand over his head as if smoothing his hair. The girl laughs, skipping through the water with her net skimming behind her.
Rudra thinks he might be brave enough to call after her when he hears the sour flute of Bansari’s voice. ‘Rudraaaaa. Rudraaaa. Rudra! What are you doing down by the river? You will catch malaria or dysentery or some such. You worry us sick when you w
ander off like that. Stay near. This is a dangerous place.’ She prods the air with her bottom lip and scowls at the prawn seed collector. ‘Come back home and I will make you a nice milk tea.’
‘I think I have had enough milk tea for one day, Aunty.’
Bansari’s lips tighten. ‘One can never have enough milk tea, Rudra.’
Back at the house, Bansari busies herself with lunch preparation while Rudra and Raj sit outside.
Raj says, ‘Do you think I could smoke?’
‘You’re an adult, Raj,’ replies Rudra.
‘Yes, but your aunty.’ He waggles his head. ‘She is formidable.’ ‘Your English is very good, Raj.’
‘That is one tremendous benefit of working at the Beamish Hotel. Very many English customers.’
‘And Mrs Ursu.’
‘Not one such benefit.’ Raj pulls out a bundle of beedis, extracts one and, popping it between his teeth, lights it with a match. He offers the pack to Rudra.
‘No thanks.’
‘Because Aunty?’
‘Because they stink like burning cow shit.’
Raj considers this for a moment, then shrugs it off.
‘Raj?’
He squints through a cloud of smoke. ‘Yes?’
‘What are you going to do after this?’
‘I am going to go and have one drink at the English Wine and Beer Shop.’
‘I mean after we leave.’
Raj pulls the beedi from his lip, pecks a fleck of tobacco from his tongue. ‘Maybe Mumbai.’
‘You wouldn’t go home?’
‘I cannot.’
‘Why?’
‘Home is not where I left it.’
‘You mean your village has gone?’
‘No, it is still there.’
‘I’m not following you, Raj.’
‘My home is very small now. Much smaller than when I lived there. When I call my village and speak to my mother, she seems – I am ashamed even to say this – she seems not so clever.’
‘She’s become stupid?’
Raj winces at the suggestion. ‘She has not become that way, Rudra. She has stayed the same. It is I who have changed.’ His beedi has gone out. He strikes another match and relights it, rolling it through the flame. ‘This is why I cannot go home.’ Raj’s face brightens. ‘But in Mumbai there is Amitabh Bachchan. There is Bollywood, and the houses of the stars. I will go there and I will become a star. One Nepali actress has made it very big in Bollywood – Manisha Koirala. And I will be number one Nepali actor. Maybe we will marry. Amitabh Bachchan will come to us for milk tea and I will cook him biftek and potato au gratin. We will have an apartment in Colaba.’
This all seems extremely unlikely to Rudra, but he doesn’t have the heart to raze Raj’s dreams.
‘And where will you go after India?’ asks Raj.
Rudra thinks about the skull nestled beneath the bed in his aunty’s house. Soon, he will return the skull and his didima’s ashes. Then it will be done and he can go home. He will begin year eleven. He will surf with Maggs. And in the end he will, most likely, become a fisherman, like his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather – the hunter of Dokkhin Rai. The sea is inside his blood. Cursed, or blessed, on both sides.
This is all possible. In a most-likely world, it is probable. But he feels like he is at a tipping point now, hovering above a different path. What happens next could push him over. And then the town he has known his whole life may no longer exist. Not in the same solid, dependable way it has his whole life. Then it will be gone forever, as surely as Didima’s Baghchara.
22
WHEN RUDRA COMES YAWNING FROM HIS ROOM in the morning, his mother’s face is grey as cloud. She sits by a cold cup of tea, picking at the quicks of her nails.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks.
‘It’s your father.’
‘What?’ Rudra feels the panic. It’s hard to love Cord Solace, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t. ‘What’s happened?’
‘There was an accident. In the water.’
The room goes cold. Rudra falls into a chair. ‘Is he alive?’
‘They choppered him to Sydney. He’s in intensive care.’ She takes his hand. ‘I have to go back, Rudra.’
‘We’ll go together.’
‘No, you have to finish this. You can do it. With Raj, and with Bansari. She means well.’
‘Maybe we can do it together, quickly.’
‘I have to leave today. There’s a flight tonight. I can be in Sydney by tomorrow. I need to go.’ She picks up her teacup. It is delicate china, so thin he can almost see her fingers through the other side. ‘Your dad, he wasn’t always … I don’t want you to think badly of him.’
‘You need to stop defending him, Mum.’
‘I feel responsible.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘I know it is.’
‘I’ll help you pack.’
‘And you’ll stay? You’ll finish this thing?’ Her hands are fluttering near his.
‘I will.’
‘You’ll need to hire a boat to get to Baghchara. You’ll have to catch ferries and buses and trains to Kolkata. And then you’ll have to fly home by yourself. It’s a lot.’
‘I got this, Mum.’
She grasps his hand. ‘You call me, okay? Soon as it’s done and you’re heading back to Kolkata.’
‘I will.’
‘Oh God.’ Nayna suddenly looks panicked.
‘What?’
‘Your aunty, she doesn’t even have a mobile. It’ll take forever to get a message to you.”
‘It’ll be fine, Mum.’
‘Oh, Rudra. I’m sorry it turned out this way.’
‘Stop apologising.’
As the ferry pulls away from the ghat, Rudra feels a sob warbling – a caged bird – in his chest. He wants to release it, but Bansari and Raj are here and so many strangers. He knows it would bring shame on his aunty for him to cry like a child here in public. Instead, he waves to his mother, feels the cord that has tied them together stretch and break as the boat chugs to the far bank. He thinks of things he should have said; things he needed to ask. And now it is too late.
They discuss the boat they will need to take Didima’s ashes to Baghchara.
‘No motor,’ say Rudra.
‘But motor is faster,’ says Bansari. ‘And less common. Fishermen are not to be trusted. Also, what if dacoits attack?’
‘Dacoits?’
‘Bandits,’ whispers Raj. ‘Pirates.’
‘We’ll be okay, Aunty. I don’t want my didima’s ashes mixed with diesel fumes.’
‘But—’
‘Aunty, I am in charge now.’
She flinches as if he has slapped her. ‘So like my son. You young folk think you know it all.’
‘We will be fine, Aunty. Raj will find us a good boat.’
Raj returns before lunch with a fisherman in tow. The man is grey-haired. His arms are strong from rowing and he walks with a bow-legged strut. He is wearing a dirty lungi and a torn singlet.
‘This man is number one boatman in Sundarbans.’
‘Does he speak English?’
‘I speak Bangla,’ says Raj. ‘And for this there is the same charge.’
‘Does he know Baghchara Island?’
‘He says he says he knows of this place.’
‘Can he take us there today?’
Raj speaks to the man in Bangla. ‘Why not,’ he reports. ‘We should pack some food. The boatman says we should hurry if we want to catch the outgoing tide. Otherwise we must wait until tomorrow.’
Bansari packs them lunch – boiled eggs, roti and a thermos of tea. She tells them to return before nightfall – the river is a dangerous place at night, what with tigers and all, and dacoits too, poachers with no regard for human or other life, worshippers of Kali. They set off to the river with Bansari calling after them, ‘Tell your boatman to boil all the water. Ten minutes, minimum time.’ And, ‘Make sure he has a
mosquito net. They are more deadly than tigers.’ And, ‘Don’t trust the boatman, he is a Pod.’ Rudra squirms at the comment, but soon she cannot shout loud enough to reach them and they continue in silence.
The boatman’s name is Malo and he walks with a confident grace between the houses. In the beginning, he passes many people without speaking but as he gets closer to the water, more and more people call out to him. Some slap him on the back as if to say, Well done, Malo, you caught yourself a rich foreigner. Rudra wants to tell them how his family is from the Sundarbans, how his dadu was a solution-wala, but even if he had the language he doubts it would make a difference. He thinks back to when the surfer, Judge, roused on him at Box Head. How he called him a curry-muncher and told him to go home. To here? The tidelands are a place that is not quite sea and not quite land. He is a scrawled message in this intertidal zone, not sure to which world he belongs. He grasps his grandmother’s ashes tighter.
When they reach the river, Rudra is dismayed by Malo’s boat. It is shaped like a seedpod sliced in half, identically tapered at the stern and bow. No more than six metres long, its worn planks are riddled with wormholes. The smooth, oiled deck has a makeshift shelter of roped branches and a mottled bedsheet. The stern and bow lift gracefully from the water, but at midships, the gunnel is within a couple of hand spans of the river. A tiger would have no trouble clambering onboard. Two boards, on edge, run down that midship section; Rudra imagines they might stop Malo toppling into the water when he sleeps.
Malo wades towards the boat, turning to beckon them. Raj looks at Rudra. ‘I cannot swim,’ he whimpers.
‘You won’t have to. It’s only up to your thighs.’
‘But if I fall …’
‘You won’t fall. The boat is very close.’
‘I cannot go on this boat.’
‘You have to.’
‘Cannot, Rudra.’ Raj folds his arms. ‘Will not.’
‘Then you should stay.’
‘But who will help you to speak Bangla to this man?’
