Flame Tree Road

by Shona Patel

  Yours ever affectionately,

  Samaresh Bannerjee

  Calcutta

  7th December 1893

  Dear Biren,

  From the dates you have given, I see your ship docks in Calcutta on a Thursday, the steamboat for Sylhet leaves on the following Wednesday, which will give us a little under a week together. Please consider staying an extra week. I am keen for you to meet several people and to finalize our proposal to the education secretary, George McCauley.

  Your article on female education was much discussed within our group. It was reprinted in the Bengal Star, and many readers have written back with their comments. The members of our association have conceded to your idea of using English as the medium for education. The proposal has a much better chance of gaining government approval this way, especially since you put forward your arguments so eloquently. You may be interested to know the government has substantial funds earmarked for educational programs in India, which makes me hopeful our proposal will pass.

  I will be honored if you stay as our guest at our family home in North Calcutta. This is really the most pleasant time of the year in the city.

  Best wishes,

  Samaresh Bannerjee

  CHAPTER

  34

  Estelle went on an extended vacation to Europe. Biren received postcards from Rome, Milan, Brussels and Geneva. She was briefly in England for three weeks before she left to study at a private school in Switzerland. They kept in touch intermittently through letters. Whenever Estelle was in London, they made plans to meet but somehow the plans fell through. It was mostly Biren’s fault. Between his work at Lloyd’s and Lincoln Inn, he barely had enough hours in a day to eat and sleep. A few weeks earlier he had written to tell her he had finalized his plans to go back to India. After a prolonged silence, Estelle wrote back expressing her regret. Her letter was cryptic but Biren could sense the dark holes between her words.

  He wanted to talk to her in person and explain things. When Estelle returned from Geneva he invited her to dinner at the Lamb and Castle, a well-known pub of Central London. It had rained all day. The streets were filthy from the splatter of carriage wheels. Darkness had fallen early and the pollarded planes lining the streets looked ghostly in the yellow glow of the gas lamps.

  Biren hardly recognized Estelle. She swept in wearing a steel-gray ensemble with a silver ribbed trim; her hat looked like a tin can trailing ostrich feathers. She seemed sharper, more brittle, than he remembered her. Biren must have looked different, too, in his formal work suit and his newly trimmed beard. There they were, two strangers meeting after almost a year in a crowded London pub, seated next to table of loud drunks. The old connection between them was lost, and their conversation lapsed into uneasy small talk. The subject of Biren leaving for India sat between them like a moat while they each waited for the other to let the drawbridge of communication down.

  “I really don’t understand you, Biren,” Estelle blurted out finally. “Why would you want go back to India—when you have a future in England?”

  “It has always been my plan to return,” he said slowly, watching her. “Surely you knew that?”

  She turned to him with angry eyes. “I hope you realize you put Daddy in a false position after he went out of his way to recommend you for the job at Lloyd’s. Not many people get that chance, and you go toss it out like a cherry pit.”

  He looked at her, startled. “I was only looking for temporary work to pay for my living expenses in London. I thought I made that clear.”

  She ignored him. “I know the real reason you are going back to India.” She bit her lip and looked away.

  “What do you mean?” he said, puzzled. “The real reason is what I have been telling you all along. We are forming an organization, Samaresh and...”

  “The real reason is you are going to have an arranged marriage, like Sammy.”

  “Estelle!” Biren cried sharply. “That is simply not true!”

  He could tell from her eyes she did not believe him.

  “I am not Sammy, Estelle,” he said tersely. “Sammy comes from a business family. He has certain obligations to fulfill.”

  Estelle opened her mouth to reply and cringed when the drunks at the next table broke into a ribald song. Biren wished they had gone for a walk to Hyde Park instead, and then he remembered it was raining.

  He looked at her helplessly as she sat across from him with her wounded-child eyes, her small hunched shoulders in the stiff battleship dress. Where was the laughing, bright-eyed Estelle he once knew? It saddened him to see the distrust and cynicism creeping in. In a rush of tenderness he reached across the table to take her hand. It was trembling.

  “Dear Estelle,” he said gently. “You must believe me when I tell you, I am doing this only for myself, and marriage is not in my plans.”

  Biren felt her fingers relax slightly.

  “You are my dearest friend,” he continued. “We share so many thoughts and ideas, don’t we? You challenge me with your insights, you make me think—you make me laugh. I don’t ever want to lose our friendship.”

  She was silent but her face looked small and hurt like a child who has suffered a fall.

  Biren released her hand and sighed. “My life in India is not going to be easy, Estelle. I was counting on your letters to sustain me. I was hoping you would write to me.”

  She took a small sip of her sherry and fingered the stem of her wineglass as the color slowly crept back into her cheeks.

  Biren sought her eyes. “Will you write to me? Please?”

  Estelle hesitated, then gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  Biren looked around the table and realized both their dinners had remained untouched.

  “Please,” he said, indicating her plate. “You must eat something.”

  Estelle unfolded her white napkin slowly. “I had hoped...” she began in a small voice, and paused to blot her eyes with the edge of the napkin before she placed it on her lap. “I had hoped—rather foolishly, I suppose—that you would change your mind. But I know you must return.” She looked up and gave him a trembling smile. “No matter what you do, Biren, you must know I wish you well.”

  Dear Estelle. She was so honest and brave. Biren felt a lump in his throat and his dinner plate blurred before his eyes. Her good wishes meant the world, because he knew when Estelle Lovelace said something it came straight from her heart.

  CHAPTER

  35

  On a wicked, blustery day in February 1894, Biren Roy boarded the steamer ship Imperial Saga and set sail for India. The sky was sludge gray, and seagulls floated like shreds of paper over the rusted grime of the Southampton docks. A foghorn sounded from the bowels of a distant ship, and Biren Roy, dressed in his fine tailored suit of cheviot wool, leaned against the brass rails of the deck and scanned the crowds for his last glimpse of Estelle. He had not expected her to come to see him off, but there she was in her pea-green coat with the fur-trimmed collar buttoned at the throat, the corner of a lace handkerchief clutched in her hand. It may have been the sea breeze, or perhaps tears that pricked his eyes, but his heart felt like a leaden anchor unable to lift free. The ship was already moving away and Estelle grew smaller and smaller until she was no more than a dot of green in a sea of waving hands. The shores of Southampton receded in a torpid haze, leaving the chimneys stark and gaunt on the industrial horizon as the Imperial Saga plowed through the frigid gray-blue water toward India.

  He landed in Calcutta on Bengali New Year’s Day. Instead of Nitin, Samaresh was there to meet him at the port. Nitin had to leave unexpectedly for Madras a few days ago to work at a medical camp associated with his college, Samaresh said.

  For Biren, this should have been an early indication that life in India rarely went according to plan. The next few days were caught up in a whirlw
ind of introductions and meetings and it slowly began to dawn on him that the genteel Bengalis of Calcutta, known for their legendary hospitality, were in no real hurry to get things done.

  The Albert Hall Coffee Shop was the meeting place for the intellectuals of Calcutta. There were foreign scholars among them, as well—writers and artists from Germany, Japan and France. It was at this coffee shop that Biren met Boris Ivanov, a burly Russian writer, and Ren Yamasaki, a Japanese architect with a peaceful face and pale, tapered fingers. Here, around the marble-topped tables and over strong dark coffee, great minds gathered to discuss the political and social issues of the day. Many, like Biren, had been educated abroad. There was a general agreement that education was a priority and the key to social change in India.

  “It’s not just a shortage of schools, there is a shortage of teachers, as well,” said Samaresh. “It is perfectly acceptable for an Anglo-Indian spinster or widow to take up a job as a teacher or secretary. They are encouraged to be self-reliant and lead a productive life because they are Christians. Think of all our Hindu widows, some so young, in their twenties and thirties. A woman loses her status in the family the day her husband dies. She cannot remarry and is expected to live a life of penance. If our widows were educated and trained as teachers, they could become the educational backbone of our society. Yet every time we make any effort at their rehabilitation, our efforts get thwarted.”

  “The opposition comes mostly from their own families,” added Ram.

  “Ram, tell them about the widows at Bhowanipore,” Samaresh urged him.

  “While researching mental illness, I spent a lot of time at the European Lunatic Asylum in Bhowanipore,” said Ram. “Most of the inmates there are permanent residents, many soldiers among them. Recently I discovered a secret ward of about two hundred Indian women. They are perfectly normal—not mentally ill in any way. I was shocked to learn that they are all Hindu widows of prominent families who have been locked away—hidden from society—using the pretext of insanity. You should see their pathetic state. They live like beggars. People don’t even know they exist.”

  Biren was outraged. Two hundred women locked against their will, mistreated, their lives ticking away, and here they were in a coffee shop calmly talking about it. How could anyone remain indifferent? One of those two hundred women could have easily been his mother. The only reason his mother had not been abandoned by their family was because her signature was needed to collect their father’s salary every month. Who knows what would have happened to her otherwise? Nitin and he would have been too young to do anything about it.

  Here he was, a grown man with a law degree from one of the best universities in the world, but where did one even begin? Samaresh and his peers came from wealthy established families of Calcutta. None of them had a need to earn a living. They were content to write articles and have intellectual discussions while they waited for change to happen.

  This is where I am different, thought Biren. I can’t just sit around waiting. I need to do something. I have to see tangible results.

  * * *

  Two weeks later Biren was on the creaky river barge sailing for his village home in Sylhet. His new friends loaded him with boxes of sweetmeats and waved him off cheerfully, but Biren left Calcutta with no job offer. Samaresh’s uncle, the judge, had fallen gravely ill, and he was in no condition to meet with Biren. Biren put in several other job applications before he left, but unlike England where jobs were secured over a single interview and a handshake, the approval process in India was excruciatingly slow. There was really nothing for Biren to do but return home. Besides, he was anxious to see his mother.

  Floating down the turgid waters of the river delta, he was seized by a sudden desperation—he wanted to push, to part the waves and move past quickly, but the steamboat swished along, giving a sleepy hoot every now and then as if to remind itself to stay awake. The coconut shells and dead fish left in its wake bobbed in exactly the same place when they passed. A slow malaise was creeping into his soul. After all the strides he had taken to forge ahead in the world, he now felt as though he was slipping back. For the first time since his return, Biren began to dread he was making a terrible mistake. But when he remembered the state of the widows languishing away in the Bhowanipore asylum he knew he had done the right thing by coming back.

  A low hammock of rain clouds hung over the riverbank at Momati Ghat. The flame tree blazed in lonely splendor. The only sign of life was a scrawny goat scavenging among a pile of discarded coconut shells around the shuttered tea shop, the bell around its neck making a hollow sound. There was nobody there to meet him, but Biren was not surprised. The postal service from Calcutta was unreliable, and chances were his letter would probably reach home after he did.

  The steamer docked among the floating purple hyacinths and the lascar lowered the gangplank and deposited Biren, his bedroll and his steel trunk on the riverbank before it chugged away. Biren dragged his luggage over to the abandoned tea stall and pegged his jacket on a bamboo pole. Overcome with desolation, he sat on his trunk and stared at the brown river. There was nothing to do but wait for the village to wake up from its siesta, another couple of hours at least, after which he could hopefully send word through someone to his family or find a bullock cart to take him home.

  * * *

  His unexpected arrival in the back of a bullock cart created quite a stir in the village. Small boys ran ahead to alert the family and an excited crowd followed the cart up to the doorstep of his basha. Biren’s uncle, now only skin and bones, was sitting under the banyan tree. “Who is it?” he said in a thin, faltering voice. “Biren, mia, is it really you?”

  “Yes, Uncle,” he said, bending down to touch his feet.

  “Why, I thought you were a belayti!” Uncle exclaimed.

  Sunless England had indeed turned Biren’s skin pale. He felt like an albino among his dark-skinned countrymen. He was a curiosity in his Western-style clothes, and half the village crowded into the house to stare at him while the rest peeped in through every available door and window.

  Shibani had moved back into her old bedroom and was sitting on her bed cutting areca nuts. Her short hair had turned a premature gray, and Biren was surprised to see her quite round and plump.

  “Ma!” he called out to her from the doorway.

  Shibani turned at the sound of his voice and gasped. The brass cutter fell with a clatter onto the floor as she scrambled off the bed. Her fierce embrace left him gasping. She kissed his forehead, his cheeks and his ears as tears streamed down her face.

  “My son! My son,” she repeated over and over. “Is it really you?” She led him over to the bed and pushed the hair out of his eyes as if he was a little boy, trailing her fingers all over his face. “You are a grown man. I thought you were never coming back. Oh...” She choked, breaking into a sob. “If only your baba could see you. How very proud he would be.”

  “Don’t cry, Ma,” he said softly. “I’m home now.”

  Home. The word had a hollow sound. Biren felt out of place in the thatched basha with its chalky blue-gray walls, the doorway so small he had had to duck his head to pass through. But seeing his mother looking so well made it all worthwhile.

  “You are very handsome, I can tell. I am losing my eyesight, mia.” Shibani sighed. “That is why I did not see you.”

  Biren grabbed her face in both his hands and examined her eyes. She stared back sightlessly.

  “What are you saying, Ma?” he cried anxiously. “Since when? Why didn’t Nitin say anything in his letters to me?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t know, mia. I hide it quite well. I don’t tell him because he will worry.” Shibani scrambled off the bed. “But I am not too blind to make tea.”

  He followed her into the kitchen and sat on a footstool and watched her fill the kettle and put it on the stove. The kitchen was exactly the same as he r
emembered it, with its soot-stained walls, the round-shouldered mud stove and hammered-tin chimney.

  “Your uncle saw your old friend Samir a few days ago,” Shibani said. “His wife is a very nice Sylheti girl from a good family. She even speaks English, I am told.”

  “So I heard,” Biren said. “I met Samir’s brother, Diju, in London before I left. I heard Samir has moved back into the old family basha, the one with the sour plum tree.”

  “Now he has built his own house. With a wife and two children...”

  “He has two children—already?”

  “What do you expect? He has been married three years. We must ask him to look for a nice girl for you. Maybe his wife has a nice sister or cousin.” Shibani shot him a sly smile. “Otherwise, there is always Ruby next door, you know.”

  “Please, Ma,” Biren protested feebly. He suddenly felt claustrophobic. “I don’t want to talk about marriage.”

  She patted his hand. “I know, I know. It is just your old mother rambling. Don’t pay me any mind, son. I am happy you are home, that’s all. I have waited for this day.”

  Despite her reassurance, Biren felt an unseen pressure tighten in his chest.

  Shibani handed him a tumbler of tea. “Try these palm fritters. Your Apumashi made them.”

  “How is Apumashi?” he asked. “Do you see her at all?”

  “Oh, yes, all the time. She comes here almost every day. Even though I have short hair, she still comes to oil it and give me a head massage,” said Shibani.

  “So there are no restrictions with Apumashi coming over to see you now?”

  “Not after her mother-in-law died. It was always our mothers-in-law who put the restrictions on us. I have never understood why one woman would want to put down another. But that is the way our society is. After both our mothers-in-law died we were free. I have even started to eat some fish now. Food-wise, I have no restrictions.”