The Man Who Would Not See

by Rajorshi Chakraborti

  ‘Ah, sometimes it was in the car when I’ve been driving them around, or else it would have been at bedtime.’

  Dada said it was important at this stage that she still thought the world was mostly good, and that strangers harboured goodwill within them. That was why he encouraged her to look out for chances to be kind. To which I immediately replied, and reiterated to Lena later, that these were wonderful values to be inculcating.

  ‘If she lived here,’ Dada had added, ‘perhaps that would be all she’d need to know as a child. But sooner or later, her home environment will reveal its other sides. As parents, it’ll be our duty to prepare her for the dangers she will face.’

  I momentarily had, then dismissed as ridiculous, a thought that Dada might be asking me to adopt Tulti, if not formally, at least by bringing her over here to live and study. I decided it could only be construed as insulting to ask him that, so I said something else that I believed up to a point, that outlook and behaviour were ‘Heisenbergian’, that how you came across did have an influence on your interactions. ‘I’m sure Tulti’s sweetness sweetens others. The face you prepare has its effect on the faces that you meet.’

  Dada listened, but I could tell he was jotting down one more damning proof about me in his inner charge-sheet of ‘incurable naïveté’ and ‘unbelievable blindness’.

  The curious case of the writer who ignored everything nasty.

  One request — no, call it an order — of Lena’s that I had obeyed up until this point was to not bring up the story of Dada and Didi’s leaving, and especially not to apologise for it as being my fault. I had mentioned to her before Dada and Tulti arrived that I would choose an evening in the middle of the stay once everyone was settled and comfortable to ‘clear the air’ once and for all, in particular about the period following their move, when I had protested to my parents several times each day and demanded their return (much as Mira was now doing back in Wellington, ironically, as Lena had been telling me). But Lena’s vehemence, both immediately and throughout that night, had made an impression: ‘Show them all the love you want to, but don’t leave yourself with a big target painted on your front as the one holding the can for that decision, especially not now when your father is no more and cannot correct the record, even if that was his wish. You’ll just become an easy scapegoat in Ashim’s eyes; in fact you’ll have gifted him that characterisation yourself, and then even if he’s genuinely come to build bridges, it will only resurrect barriers in his mind. Don’t, Abhay — not that mistake. Do everything else to show you care, and don’t bring it up at all.’

  And I haven’t, down to arriving in Auckland today two nights before they leave, continuing to play the roles of chauffeur and host, even though my brother disappeared for a day last week while he apparently agonised over telling me that he’d seen Lena appear very close to a man at a café in town during one of his walks.

  ‘I don’t know about her,’ he’d said, ‘but from the way the guy was speaking to her, and on one occasion held her hand, I felt certain he was in love.’

  Hot Water Beach on the second afternoon was the only time during our stay in the Coromandel that the three of us looked like we were actually having fun. First of all the weather had been damp, which meant we had to do a lot of our sightseeing from the car. Tulti would get bored in the back, and often spoke of missing Mira as well as her aunt. I was dutifully — despite the weather and my mood — trying to give Dada as much of a sense of the region as possible. I wanted to pass the tablet to Tulti as we would have done some of the time with Mira, so that she had games to play as well as selfies, photos and videos to take during the drives, but Dada turned down the idea, saying there was no point getting her used to something she wouldn’t have at home in just a few days. Hahei beach was stunning and wide and a five-minute walk from the motel, but the first day was a washout. The second morning, already at nine, the line of cars left by people walking to Cathedral Cove went all the way to the top of the hill, and we gave up on that plan. Only at Hot Water Beach that afternoon, with the rain holding off and sitting among a thousand others but in our very own dug-out hot pool, did the three of us giggle and marvel and squeal as a family. Watching Tulti make friends with two Spanish speakers of her size, I thought of how much Mira would have wanted to be here (especially trying out the Spanish she’d picked up from Dora the Explorer, her ‘Hola, soy Mira’ and ‘adios’ and ‘gracias’: I could just hear her), and it was the first time Dada said he was sorry Lena and Mira hadn’t come because of him. I didn’t reply to his apology, and continued to take pictures of Tulti, who was now surrounded by a Latin American touring party of seven including her two new friends, all with their feet in a large, steamy pool. She could easily have been one of them.

  This was not a memorable part of their visit: there was hardly anything alive about it. In fact, its deadness was its interesting feature — that we were still going through the motions despite the rock my brother had hurled. I realised, or decided, that most of all I was doing it for Tulti, keeping up appearances so that she wouldn’t guess there was any tension, although I don’t know how Dada had spun the non-presence of her aunt and cousin in private. I didn’t do story-times any more now that it was just Tulti: that’s when they might have talked about it, or else there were many other chances, as they’d been sharing a room ever since we’d arrived in Hahei. The five minutes that Dada spent with his daughter in a far more efficient bedtime routine than either Lena’s or mine, I would either finish washing the dishes and pour us a drink, or send Lena a text. Then, instead of initiating any meaningful conversation with my brother, whom I would farewell in a couple of days and wouldn’t see again indefinitely, I’d sit near him sorting out the iPad photos, or jotting notes (mostly about him) in my tablet diary. Afterwards I’d carefully sign out of my user account as I hadn’t done once in the first eighteen days of his visit, and leave the tablet for him.

  I wrote a note sitting ten feet away from Dada on our first night in Auckland (once again we had a massive suite at the top of the City Hotel on Hobson Street, underlining how lively and fun this break might have been, how much Mira and Tulti would have enjoyed running around these four rooms and up and down the staircase), reiterating the simple point Lena had made to him: why hadn’t he just entered the café to say hello to her and Tony, or else mentioned it at dinner that evening? There had been so many ways to settle his doubt: what made him choose the maddest? The disappearance, with messages left for us with Tulti and Janaki; the phone silence for twenty-four hours; asking a neighbour for lifts and money!

  This final bit of the trip (most likely their last few days ever in New Zealand — at least my brother’s, I often took pleasure in telling myself ), I was only pretending to be large-hearted, without actually having forgiven or forgotten anything. Perhaps my aim was to shame Dada with this appearance of goodness; except when the script needed it most, when we were alone, I lacked the heart for the role.

  Second-last night in Auckland: I’ve just put down the iPad, asked him if he wanted to use Skype or email. I’m going to top up my wine. He says no to the machine, but likes the idea of more wine. He adds, sit down when you come back; there’s something I want to tell you. I reply, and freely let my weariness and cynicism hang out in my tone: what else is left, Dada?

  The biggest thing, he states.

  Abhay

  Dada said he’d waited for almost the final evening of the trip to tell me because he’d also been expecting me to ask. ‘You asked me at which hotel I spent the night when I went away, but never once this.’ (That answer, by the way, was Janaki’s place, six houses down from us: the melodramatic quality of that night left one with no recourse but to laugh out loud. He’d also returned the hundred and fifty dollars he’d taken from her, so that ‘no one else had to pay it back’. What I hadn’t asked him was how long they’d stayed up with Sky Sports on at low volume, and Dada giving Janaki his version over a large whisky of every single bad card dealt him by life.
)

  Just when I was about to invite him to add this as-yet-unknown sin of omission to the long list of my failings as a person, a brother and a host, a list that he could either email me once he was back or hand over as we said goodbye at Auckland airport, Tulti suddenly came down the stairs to say she wanted a light on in her room, but couldn’t find the switch Baba had shown her above the bed. Apparently she’d been calling out for us, but we hadn’t heard her downstairs.

  Dada was annoyed at this interruption, and told her to go back and leave her door ajar. I said I’d come find it with her.

  ‘Once again, you’re giving up a chance to find out the most important thing about your family,’ Dada declared dramatically as I walked away behind Tulti towards the stairs. ‘It’s something even your niece is aware of, but you have shown no curiosity about.’

  I replied with absolute calm, ‘If it’s been able to wait for twenty-four days, it can wait for another four minutes.’

  Perhaps about seven or eight minutes later, after I’d shown Tulti the bedside light switch, asked her if she needed the bathroom and shown her where that switch was, made sure there was a glass of water near her on the floor and hugged her goodnight, my brother took noticeable relish in informing me that our sister had been dead for over three years.

  In February 2010, just before Lena and I moved to New Zealand, Didi disappeared one day from her home. This we all knew. Dada had informed Ma over the phone that Didi had decided to follow a sadhu on his wanderings after attending three ‘discourses’ while he was visiting Hazaribagh. She had left a letter and her phone behind.

  Apparently two years after that (October 2012, when Mira would have been just over a year old, and I was settling into the role of a stay-home parent after Lena had returned to full-time work), the Hazaribagh police received a call from their counterparts in Bhagalpur (in the neighbouring state of Bihar) that a woman from Hazaribagh, according to those who knew her, had committed suicide.

  I learnt the incredible fact that our brother-in-law Praveen had chosen not to go to Bhagalpur to identify or claim the body, apparently citing the effect it would have on his children. Dada said he wasn’t sure what Praveen had subsequently told them about their mother — whether he had mentioned her death at all. But Dada had gone over immediately; he’d called the Bhagalpur police, and left in a borrowed car that evening. After identifying the body, he decided to have Didi cremated in Bhagalpur, and hoped her children would forgive him for this someday. In the three years since, he hadn’t spoken again to Praveen, although he would frequently get Moushumi to call and ask for his nephew and niece to come to the phone when he wanted to speak to them. Recently the boy, Jhappi, who was seventeen, had bought himself a phone, and Dada now called him directly.

  ‘And in the heat of the moment I decided not to tell your mother either, even though legally she was Didi’s stepmother. But you’ll know I’m not lying if I claim that since I called to tell her that Didi had left the house in 2010, not once had she sent even an SMS, let alone called, to ask how Didi was, how her family was coping, or indeed how Moushumi, Tulti and I were. And after Didi’s death, it seemed very clear to me exactly what family we had who were worth the name, and who would be really affected by what had befallen us. And the answer was — Thamma was dead, and Praveen had put Didi in his past, so the only people besides me who felt Didi’s absence were her children, which is why I stay in touch with them. Your mother only spoke to me if I called her, at Bijoya, say, and with you there wasn’t even that. So I apologise for my emotions at that moment, and yes, both of you had a right to be informed, but after what I had seen, my own sister on a burning pyre with not one other family member in attendance, I was in no state to make phone calls out of duty.

  ‘And in the three years since, whenever I’ve spoken to Ma, I thought at first that keeping up the lie would be difficult, but each time she has cursorily asked about Didi, it’s actually been so easy to say “nothing new to report” and move on to the next bit of formality.’

  Abhay

  Badrida. The name came to mind while Dada was sharing this horrific news. He had been my art teacher at home between the ages of eight and eleven — I should emphasise, not because I ever showed any glimmer of talent, but rather because my parents thought perhaps an interest might emerge if someone was there to keep me at it.

  ‘Keeping me at it’ was in fact a significant part of the job description (I’ll explain presently), and when I say ‘me’, I suddenly realise of course I mean ‘we’, because for two out of the three years that Badrida taught me, Dada was also his pupil. He’d been engaged for both of us; to tell the truth, it was no secret even back then that one of Ma’s objectives was to have at least one relatively stress-free evening each week (Thursdays, they were) when she’d know exactly where we were.

  So the drill was that on Thursdays when we headed out to play just after four, we weren’t allowed to take our bikes. We could go out on condition that we’d be playing cricket or football, depending on the season, in one of the nearby dead-end lanes that we used because they were quiet, which would make it easier for Badrida to collect us when he arrived for our lesson at around five. If we were on our bikes we’d have been impossible to trace; this way at least we were within a hundred yards of our house, easier for Badrida to shepherd — that is, as soon as ‘this over is bowled’, or else ‘right after the next goal, which will be a sudden death, promise, Badrida, no matter which team scores.’ Then the twenty-two-year-old recent art-college graduate, with patience and good humour like no other grown-up we knew, would wait on the footpath or behind a goalpost, and finally, up to fifteen minutes later, the two of us would unwillingly trudge home with him, where of course a further twenty minutes might easily be used up washing our hands and faces, going to the toilet, drinking a bottle of fridge water each and putting together a big plate of biscuits or chips and other salty snacks for the three of us to share. When we eventually got to the ‘art’, it might nearly be six o’clock, and Badrida left just after seven, and of course there was chatting and brotherly argument and ‘Did you watch the Sharjah match, Badrida?’ during that meagre hour too (meagre it seems now; back then an evening hour when you knew your friends were playing on the next street seemed improbably endless).

  When my parents announced their decision to banish Dada from the house, and Ma claimed to have spent much of the previous two years in a state of routine anxiety from not knowing where on the streets on their precarious-seeming bikes her sons were (a BSA Champ and an SLR, respectively, for me and Dada, which meant I was always struggling to keep up on my smaller wheels and forever making the case that I too was ready for a bigger bike; also, now I see why it was easier for Ma to imagine Dada as the ringleader on the grown-up bike leading her little boy into danger), I in fact made them a counter-offer: ‘Let’s have Badrida over three — no, four times each week, and he can maybe help us with other subjects as well depending on what he’s good at, and we won’t go out biking except on the weekends, or not even then, and that way you’ll have no tension and Dada can stay.’

  (Just in passing, I wonder if today’s Ashim even remembers any of those desperate promises we both made to try and keep the two of them in Calcutta.)

  But they went away, and Badrida continued to come just once a week for a further year, and had very little trouble finding me each Thursday before our class because without Dada I actually stopped biking as it felt so strange alone, and didn’t ask to take the bike out for over a year. And I’d still drink cold water and choose snacks from the various jars claiming to be famished and employ all the old delaying tactics, and because he was teaching just me the time seemed more unending than ever, but that’s the other thing, Dada: if you could find Badrida and talk to him, he could be a witness on my behalf about something I know you accuse me of. He could tell you how I was during that year (1989) after you left, and how much I missed you both. And how we both said repeatedly that no class was the same without you.


  He would have known things I never shared with Ma or Baba, mostly because I saw them as the perpetrators of this massive injustice, but Dada, you know, you can’t ask him, even if you were delighted to hear about him for the first time in decades and would love to get in touch. Because the thing that brought Badrida back today as you were telling me about Didi’s death in 2012 is that he is the other dear one who died for me in this way, long after his actual death.

  Badrida moved to an uncle’s place in Bombay in January 1990 to give himself a better chance at getting a job with a top advertising agency (‘like Lintas or HTA’, I remember him mentioning), and in time we mostly forgot about him, after initially staying in touch through a couple of visits when he returned home to see his sister and mum. After that, it was only around the early to mid-2000s — in that widespread period of great curiosity about old school friends and people from the distant past whom Google and then Friends Reunited and, later, Facebook allowed you to look up and perhaps catch a glimpse of — that I began searching for him, but for a long time in futility. This was very strange, though, because for someone in Bombay with Badrida’s media-oriented gifts for design and drawing who we knew had gone into advertising and would be in his late thirties, it was downright unexplainable why he would be totally without mention on the internet.

  Then one night in 2009, Ma was visiting Lena and me in Edinburgh and we’d talked about Badrida at dinner, and after Ma had gone to bed I idly typed in his name again within inverted commas, perhaps for the first time in two or three years, and suddenly there was a blog post. At Café Mondegar in Bombay there were murals on some of the walls apparently painted by the well-known artist Mario Miranda, which a blogger had admiringly photographed, but here was someone commenting below the post that in fact these particular works weren’t by Miranda, but had been done with his permission by a young artist named Badri P, who had tragically been killed in a local train accident back in 2004. Badrida had been a friend of the commenter’s, who had wished to give him this small bit of posthumous credit.