The Stranger in My Home

by The Stranger in My Home- Facets of a Life (retail) (epub)

  I left town when I graduated, and Cathy went about the same time to a boarding school far away. A few years later the Johnsons returned to the US.

  Forty years later I moved to Washington with a UN job, and, in a remarkable coincidence, had lunch with a colleague who had known the Johnsons when they were alive and living in New York. He found Cathy’s address for me: married and divorced, she now lived with her daughter in Maryland and worked as a teacher.

  As Cathy came forward and kissed me, I whispered the words I had always wanted to tell her but never dared to articulate, ‘You look beautiful!’

  71

  MOTHER OF ALL FEASTS

  A STRANGE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

  JAHMIR MAJID, A HOTSHOT in his country and a friend of a friend of a friend of our family, came to stay with us for two weeks. Two memorable weeks.

  Father was a friendly person and had the habit of inviting virtual strangers over for dinner. Sometimes he went a step further and would invite the person to stay with us for a few days. That is how Uncle Majid, as we were instructed to call him, entered our life.

  Uncle Majid was a tall, dark-haired man, with a rugged face and a strong build. He was remarkably polite, almost formal, even with the children, and Mother audibly wondered why we could not be as courteous as him. He was an Iraqi scholar, whose research project kept him busy at the local university during the day, but in the evening he would go for long walks to explore the streets of Kolkata. Invariably he would encounter interesting people, from shopkeepers to rickshaw pullers to sidewalk vendors, and over dinner he would tell us their stories and put us to shame that a stranger had found in our backyard fascinating people we never knew existed.

  One evening he mentioned that the following Sunday was his son’s birthday and he would like to cook a special celebratory meal for our family. We enthusiastically agreed. Mother and a maid cleaned the kitchen scrupulously on Saturday and Uncle Majid returned from the market with several bags of provisions.

  Curious, I woke early Sunday morning and found Uncle Majid already at work in the kitchen. He said he had started at six and expected to be ready by six in the evening. When the family assembled for dinner, we faced a table fit for royalty. Father and mother had dressed for the occasion, and uncle Majid wore a tunic, and I felt embarrassingly underdressed for the feast that waited.

  We began with mezza, a tapas-like collection of various small dishes: fattoush, a vegetable salad with fried pita pieces, maqli, fried eggplant with tahini and lettuce and turshi, a potpourri of pickled vegetables.

  Then came an astounding array of entrées. There was maqluba, a rice and aubergine casserole, fesenjan, a chicken stew with walnuts and pomegranates, bamia, of lamb and okra, and in a tribute to my parents’ partiality for seafood, masgouf, a Mesopotamian dish of fish cooked in tamarind and olive oil.

  These were presented with plates of pilaf and side dish of muhammara, hot pepper dip, and tzatziki, strained yogurt with cucumbers, parsley and dill.

  We ended with two remarkable desserts. There was delicious qatayef, sweet crepes stuffed with cheese and nuts, and kanafeh, rose water scented semolina-and-cheese pastries.

  Unquestionably this was not just a memorable dinner, but also the greatest feast we had. Mother thanked Uncle Majid profusely, and we each told him, as he wanted, our favourite choice out of this amazing menu of delicacies. Then came the biggest surprise of all.

  Father turned to Uncle Majid, expressed his gratitude for the wonderful experience, and asked how old would his son be this birthday.

  ‘My son, Aftab,’ said Uncle Majid, ‘died of a pulmonary infection when he was six.’

  72

  THE LITTLE GIRL

  A GNAWING IN MY HEART

  THE DAY HAD FINALLY arrived. My daughter’s wedding, for which we had been getting ready for months, was now taking place.

  The guests had come. The flowers were in place. The chapel looked imposing yet cozy. My daughter, Lina, in her chosen dress, carefully coiffed, looked pretty. She took my arm, we walked without missing a step. I passed her arm to the groom and the ceremony continued.

  The pastor gave a short, sensible homily.

  Then we moved to the celebratory dinner. I said a toast; the witticisms went down well. The food was good. People seemed pleased. Even the weather was congenial.

  It was a perfect wedding.

  I came back home and wondered what was gnawing in my heart.

  Then I realized that – though I had long known of my daughter’s budding romance, though I had met her boyfriend several times and liked him, though I had known about the impending wedding and the new town she would be living in far from my home – I hadn’t quite gotten ready for the truth that she was never again coming back to stay with me.

  The little girl was gone.

  73

  THE LOST COMPANION

  MEMORABLE WALKS – EVEN WITHOUT TALKS

  KIRBY WAS PUT TO sleep three years ago, but it seems like yesterday. I am no great animal lover and Kirby wasn’t even my dog. It seems ridiculously maudlin to write the obituary of a pet that was not mine, but I must recognize a void that is both real and significant.

  Kirby belonged to my neighbour. Since we are friends, I would often have tea at his home, and the dog became familiar with me. Kirby was a fifty-pound brown-and-white Siberian husky, very fetching and surprisingly even-tempered even with a relative stranger like me. That tempted me to offer, on an occasion, to take Kirby out for a walk when my neighbour, because of an emergency, could not.

  I intended to take Kirby for a short walk, but she seemed to like it so much that we went around the entire lake near my home. She sniffed every bush on the way and anointed several trees. When the weather is pleasant and a cooling breeze is there to help, I like to intersperse my walk with a jog. This seemed to please Kirby all the more. She outran me easily and readily overlooked the distraction of the many squirrels that scurried temptingly near our trail.

  Since I walked the trail regularly, I took Kirby along a number of times. Then, barely noticed by me, our morning excursions became routine. At the crack of dawn, I would take Kirby along a trail, often alongside the lake, and walk and run for a full hour before we returned for our respective breakfast. If I had an early morning meeting and could not go for a walk, I would see Kirby, as I passed, standing at my neighbor’s door and plaintively looking at me, realizing that the quotidian stroll had been scuttled.

  I soon started declining first-hour meetings with specious excuses. Since the neighbour had by now entrusted me with the combination to their home, in the rare instance I could not escape an early meeting, I would take out Kirby for a walk at an unearthly hour. Kirby would be often thirsty at the end of our run, and I gradually got in the habit of pouring her some fresh water at the end of our tryst. Eventually I started supplementing the water with the dry food breakfast she liked.

  Soon we were walking in the evening as much as in the morning. The evening walk was less brisk and more leisurely, often interrupted by short conversations with friends and neighbours out for a constitutional. The amazing thing was that Kirby seemed to know the difference and never seemed to rush me or press me for a run. She was content to enjoy the roadside scents, the broken twigs, the fountain in the lake, the sunset from the Van Gogh bridge. Her placidity would be disturbed only on the rare occasion we sighted a fox in the bushes or a pair of deer in the woods.

  It impressed me that Kirby seldom evinced discomfort in the presence of other dogs. Most dogs, even the disciplined ones, bark, sometimes uncontrollably, when other dogs appear on the scene. Kirby didn’t. It was notable because Kirby was a spirited creature. In her younger days, her owner told me, she would often run out, if the door was left open, and disappear for hours. On one occasion, she had disappeared during her master’s trip to another town and simply could not be found. Her master returned home, disconsolate, but Kirby turned up after six weeks. She had found her way, across more than a hundred miles, and rea
ched home, hungry and filthy, but intact.

  When it rained or snowed, I occasionally resented having to go out. But, once dressed and out of doors, I felt thankful for the freshness of the air and the spirited air of my companion. Kirby, though getting on in years, was never morose, never dispirited, eager to explore the new day, the next bush, the unfolding drama of an unknown trail.

  That is what I most remember of Kirby: the endless yearning for the world outside, the craving to explore the unseen and the unknown, the eagerness to see even the familiar road to explore what is new or changed. Even as she grew older, her vision blurred and her hearing faded, her taste for life remained undiminished and her desire to experience the universe continued.

  Age and infirmity eventually took their toll, and Kirby had to be put to sleep. I still walk around the lake but without a companion. I stand on the bridge as before and watch the sun rise and ponder what remains to explore.

  74

  THE BAD-BOY LARK

  ADVENTURE IN A NAUGHTY NEW ROLE

  I USED TO ATTEND a modest school near our home, but when we moved to downtown, my life changed momentously.

  The headmaster of a better-known school persuaded my father to move me to his institution. As I was switching from middle to high school, the key argument was that superior education would be greatly in my interest. It was a larger school with a bigger building located on a major avenue. The big sign proclaiming its pretentious name certainly made me aware that I was in a different circle.

  A curious factor reinforced the awareness. I had always been a good student, kept company with other good students, sat in the front bench (an individual desk was an inconceivable luxury in India) and was recognized as a brown-nose ‘good boy’ by teachers and students alike. But, before joining the new school I was required to take an admission test, and the result had somehow placed me in the lowest quartile of the new class. Much to my parents’ anguish, I had to join the fourth and lowest-ranked section of my class in the new school.

  The section had the worst students and the teachers had the lowest expectation of them. This was a new and intriguing experience for me. Earlier teachers expected consistently good answers from me. Now, if I gave a halfway decent answer, the teachers looked askance at me, as if I had performed a miracle. I liked to surprise them, but I quickly learned to offer the correct answer only if the teacher directly asked me. In the present body of students it would never do to raise a hand to show that I knew the right answer. That would invite class-wide derision and swift contemptuous labelling as a ‘teacher’s pet.’

  I craved to be one of them in the class, to be, in fact, one of the recognizably naughtier ones, and wear the prized halo of a wicked lad. If it meant to remain mute when the teacher asked a question of the class, I elected to do so despite an inner good-boy urge to pop the desired answer. I gained credit in class standing instead by doing naughtier things, like ascribing witty names to teachers or writing off-colour limericks about them. My status peaked the day I sketched and circulated during the maths class a picture of the well-endowed girl who stood occasionally at the window of a neighbouring apartment to the everlasting prurient interest of our class.

  After that I longed to do something more dramatic and gain the adulation of the class. The best opportunity was the practice of Shorty, our literature teacher, to encourage us – doubtless to spur our reading habits – to bring a favourite story to the class, read it publicly and lead a critical review of the story. Through diligent search I identified a short story by a reputed author that begins innocuously as a family story and ends in a shattering, literal account of an abortion. In the next literature class, the moment the teacher broached the idea of a story several classmates pointed to me on a cue and yelled that I had been skipping my turn.

  My reading began. It was a good story and everybody paid full attention, including Shorty. Near the end he started fidgeting a bit, possibly intuiting something untoward was about to happen. When the climax came, the whole class was stunned and silent. Nobody had anticipated the ghastly and explicit outcome.

  Shorty looked mortified, not just from the story, but also the inappropriateness of such a story read by a student to all other students. Almost incoherent, he muttered, ‘Well, well…That’s not the kind of story I expected!’ After a pause, he declared, ‘I don’t think today we will have a discussion of the story.’ He didn’t, couldn’t say any more. He got up and left.

  I had made my mark. I became the hero of the class.

  At the end of the year, based on my results, I moved to the best section of the next class. I returned to my erstwhile role of being the good student and boy.

  75

  CHOPSTICKS

  TO LEARN WITH PENCILS!

  I WOULD NOT EAT noodles without chopsticks. Never. Not just in restaurants. Even at home I keep some chopsticks in case I order or heat some chow mien or ho fun.

  Just out of the university I took a job with an international organization in Kolkata. We had a large corporate office on a busy corner and I found a pleasant Chinese restaurant two blocks down. Peiping became my favourite place for lunch.

  It was a big restaurant, with many tables and cabins, but one large cabin was always reserved, barred for clients. Promptly at three in the afternoon a sign went up: the door was closed for fresh clients. Clients already dining could finish their meals at leisure, but they would no longer be served.

  That was the hour for the owner, manager, chef, sous-chef, assistants and servers to sit down in the large cabin and have their meal. It was a family restaurant and I believe all of them were related in some way. The owner was a fiftyish woman of commanding presence, no longer slender but strong and sprightly, constantly crisscrossing the hall and making sure the diners were well looked after. Madam – nobody dared to say her name – was affable but not easily approachable. Incurably curious, I had asked others and found that she had come as a young girl from Shanghai with her father and uncle, who both worked in the Grand Hotel, and, after a brief, unsuitable alliance, had started Peiping with her uncle’s help.

  Peiping was a smaller restaurant then, but had quickly picked up a devoted clientele, for its prices were reasonable and the quality excellent. Eventually, Madam bought the adjacent shop, expanded and renovated the restaurant, and established herself as a prime restaurateur on the city’s busiest and most prestigious corner.

  I ate with knife and fork, as my father’s British friends and colleagues had modelled, but I was impressed by the elegance of the Chinese diners who wielded their chopsticks with incredible aplomb. On a less busy afternoon I approached Madam with trepidation and humbly begged to know the secret of chopstick sorcery.

  She laughed. ‘No magic. Just practice.’

  I persisted, ‘How do I learn? I want to do it well – like you.’

  She melted at last and invited me to join her meal with the family. So there I sat, with a pair of gold-rimmed chopsticks in my hand, surrounded by ten of Madam’s employees and family members, all enthusiastically showering me with instructions and encouragements. I had to hold the first chopstick between my middle finger and thumb base, keep the second on top between the index finger and thumb, and then open and close the chopsticks to ‘pinch’ the food at a 45-degree angle. The trick was to hold the bottom one immobile as an anchor, like a pen, and move only the upper one to grab morsels of food. ‘Even grab rice like that?’

  ‘Even a pea,’ replied Madam.

  When I left, she gave me two bamboo chopsticks to practise with and also two gold-rimmed chopsticks, she said with a twinkle of her eye, ‘For your girlfriend’.

  I wanted to practise without being noticed. In the office, I kept two long pencils, both held in my right hand in the Madam-approved manner, and kept practising grabbing paper clips and binders, as I held the phone in my left hand and answered calls. Over weeks I improved steadily: I learned to grab the rice gently, not too softly to let it drop nor too hard to squish it.

  Even m
y etiquette improved under Madam’s vigilant gaze. Take up your chopsticks only after the eldest at the table has done so. Keep the food furthest from your fingers; it is elegant. Never point at anything with chopsticks, not even food; it is gauche. Above all, never plant your chopstick in the food upright. It is the height of impropriety, for it reminds the Chinese of incense and funerals.

  Months later my tutelage came of some use when I had a Japanese girlfriend. Alas, she did not think much of my vaunted gold-rimmed chopsticks. Instead she got both of us a pair of ivory Japanese-style chopsticks. They were pointed, and she lovingly explained that the points were useful in piercing certain types of food. I did not have the heart to tell her that Madam would have considered ‘stabbing’ food an insult to the chef.

  Last year I took a walk from Free School Street, now called Mirza Ghalib Street, where my office was, down Park Street towards the Chowringhee. There were some uninteresting shops, but there was no Peiping. There was only the memory of Madam and her stern but affectionate lessons in chopstick wizardry.

  76

  TALE OF MY TWO CITIES

  A PLACE THAT IS MORE THAN A PLACE

  YES, KOLKATA IS A city in eastern India. But there are many Kolkatas. Rich Kolkata and poor Kolkata. North Kolkata and south Kolkata. Elegant Kolkata and grimy Kolkata. Amazing how many Kolkatas there are. But for me there are only two Kolkatas. The Kolkata I lived in thirty years ago and the Kolkata I now visit.

  In fact, the Kolkata I grew up in had a different name, Calcutta. Up to the end of the sixteenth century, India was the world’s richest country with the largest economy. The British, the greatest maritime power at the time, sought a trading licence from the royal Nawab to make use of the riverine port of Calcutta and three villages. Over the years they fortified their trading post and eventually, treacherously, ejected the Nawab. They made Calcutta their capital, the starting point of their Indian empire, the jewel in the British crown.