‘Boss, it’s very early. I’m still making the coffee. Please allow some margin for my morning denseness and hold my hand for a bit longer. Or else give me fifteen minutes to fully wake up.’
Dada looked openly unsure as to whether I deserved such news at all. He looked disgusted. Then he resumed gushing.
‘It’s because it’s your daughter, and thereby also your future, that I’m telling you. Abhi, last night sitting on my bed, I glimpsed the mighty, limitless ocean. Not just glimpsed, I was in its presence for a long time, as perhaps I have never been before, and doubt I will see more than once in any given lifetime. In fact I felt like rushing back to you with the laptop, except I knew you wouldn’t be able to decipher what I saw. So I chose to remain where I was until sleep finally came, just taking in this vision of infinity, both the sound of the night-time sea as well as the sky above it, as clear as it was over Kaiteriteri when we would go outside in the evening with our drinks.’
Bro, you had me at ‘daughter’, but just then Lena opened the door and came in, and you clammed up as though you already knew about Tony! I changed the subject smoothly enough, though I’m sure she noticed something, especially because of the abrupt switch to English, but then soon we had plenty of time sitting together, not by the sea unfortunately but on a prosaic bench at Karori Pool, while the girls splashed about in the kids’ area with two of Mira’s friends that we’d met. I was in my swimming trunks too, but had realised this was a good chance to complete the earlier conversation.
‘Abhi, to give it to you in a sentence, there is no limit to what Mira can be. I don’t know if I’ve talked about this before, but I have been looking at horoscopes with the interest of an amateur, although not without some significant study as well as recent guidance from a genuine master, for about twenty years now. It’s something I only do for friends and relatives: I’ll never charge for this. I don’t have that right. But I have never seen yet what I saw in Mira-buri’s chart, although I’ve heard of a couple of world-renowned names with such a configuration, and I very much doubt I’ll come across it again in person.’
Well, of course I had to interrupt to ask him what (he believed) he had seen, while the astral prodigy in question was ten metres away from us, attempting to push her bigger cousin around the kids’ pool while Tulti sat astride a dolphin-shaped floating board.
Dada said something about I-forget-what being in the tenth house, and a couple of other planetary names and their positions. (Why didn’t I write these down?? For shame!)
‘And what do these imply for you?’
My brother was clearly emotional, which did move me even though I had not the slightest certainty about the soundness of his ‘vision’, but rather because he was as excited about a niece’s extraordinary horoscope as a parent would be. I was touched that he was so elated.
He turned to face me on the bench. Remember I’m in my trunks, while he’s fully dressed. Behind him, a grandpa is alternating polishing off a sausage roll and yelling encouragement to a boy named Rory. Needlessly, but just in case, I remind Dada to stick to Bengali, as if a child’s destiny is like an ATM PIN. No, it’s more that I’m embarrassed. I’m excited, just in case he’s onto something, but I’m still embarrassed.
‘Abhi, you know, that’s another thing I’ve been thinking about overnight, how to bring this home to you, what to leave you with by way of advice. And I realised that actually anything specific I say to you would trivialise what I saw; I mean, offering inanities like making sure she studies or nudging her towards this profession or that. It would be vulgar and crude to reduce such a vision to career advice, because in fact, if anything, the opposite is true. I believe I saw that whatever Mira chooses to do will become special because of what she’ll bring to it. Let there be no restrictions on what she explores, because that is what her stars say about her. There is no limit to what she can be. That is why I keep insisting to you I saw the ocean.’
As I tried to evoke before, because this was a public pool and I was ready to swim and Dada was fully dressed and this was Karori where I’m quite a known face — some groundless chain of associations like that — I didn’t embrace my brother, who by now had tears in his eyes. That he could be so moved and overjoyed by what he believed to be my daughter’s future. Even writing this down, I realise I should share this incident with Lena, despite the risk of her mocking and outright rejecting (as I’m fairly certain she would) both the basis of my brother’s beliefs, as well as, in this case, the specific messenger’s motive. Yet, after hearing this story, could she still stick to the conviction that Ashim meant us nothing but harm? His own daughter was in the water, now having a turn under one of the sprinklers to the side, and I defy anyone to have detected a trace of envy in my brother’s tone or words.
I promised myself I would find an occasion to hug him later, New Year’s Eve being relatively easy for stuff like that. For now, I decided to be curious about another thing.
Had he not taken my details into his room as well?
‘Oh yes, it’s going to happen for you too, especially after forty. There’s a good period then that will last for four years. Your books will be in libraries. You hang in there.’
I guess this was something to grab onto (let’s go for a moment with accepting the basis of Dada’s esoteric deductions). Did I mention earlier that I’m thirty-seven? That, and the fact that Dada stopped there and said nothing about patrolling the edges of oceans by night filled with a once-in-a-lifetime awe, somehow managed to deflate me, even though of course I wanted my books to ‘be in libraries’. And forty is still young for a writer, right?
I guess what I’m saying is that coming on the heels of Mira’s unstoppable arc towards avatar-hood, Dada’s promises for me were kind of the astrological equivalent of a shrug and a ‘meh’.
Come on, Abhay, shame on you. Are you so self-involved that Mira’s uncle is going to be more enthused by her horoscope than her Baba is? Are you seriously competing for this with your four-year-old?
So I thanked Dada, got up to join the girls in the pool, turned around on an afterthought, and used what I’d just learnt to put a new spin on my circumstances that I could probably grow to live with.
‘Dada, if she is what my life has been for, if I’ve failed in so many ways just so that I can be the soil for her to grow in and reach the heights that you predict, then that would still be an incredible outcome. No matter what else fails to happen from here on, even if what you’re promising for me in three years’ time doesn’t transpire, I’ll try not to lose sight of this. All of me will always be available to help Mira become the very best of herself, and for reminding me of the significance of that role, I thank you.’
Why didn’t I tell Lena this story as a mollifier on New Year’s Day when Dada took off, or at least after my return from Auckland? Besides his evident, selfless joy for Mira, he’d thrown her struggling dad a lifeline as well. The self-proclaimed Ferrari of Karori suddenly had a passenger, and a journey, worth shouting about.
Lena
It’s amazing the extent to which when provoked he speaks of the last six years as ‘discharged duty’ (even ‘donated’ duty), during which he — he alone — has done an enormous amount for his family, first in agreeing to move to New Zealand, and then with his stay-home parenting. Why can’t I, the argument goes, grant him three months’ leave from this ‘never-paid job’ after so many years of loyal service, so that he can at least mourn a sister three years after her death?
The fact that I’ve mostly supported us throughout this time, which enabled him to work worry-free on the screenplays with Madeleine and return to fiction when that idea stalled, and with no other pressure to get a regularly paid job, becomes by-the-by in this version of the recent past. Because it’s been only me who has gained in this Lena-takes-all narrative — a return to my mother, my hometown, the perfect job, a daughter well cared for. Abhay has solely sacrificed.
And what about how ready Abhay had felt to leave Edinburgh, w
hen he would complain almost daily that — and even though it was seven years ago, I heard it so often that I’m sufficiently confident of the exact quote — ‘every morning when I leave the house, I feel certain that nothing exciting or even surprising will happen to me today’, and how when I applied for and was offered the Wellington job, he saw this as perhaps our last chance to do something reckless without having to worry about any dependants. Or his oft-stated wish at the time to me and all our friends to use the opportunity offered by our move to fill his days with all manner of writing — to live off his savings and finally discover what varied kinds of work might emerge if there was nothing else to distract him for a year or two. Well, Abhay did exactly that until Mira came along in late 2011, and he wonderfully took on the role of looking after her when I had to return to work; but now, or whenever he’s low, it’s only me who has gained from coming here. Being with Mira, being free to write and put whatever else he likes into his days, especially now that she spends much more time at crèche, in his dark moods count for nothing. New Zealand has only been a distant barrenness, indifferent to his work until he writes about here, and impossibly far from Delhi, Mumbai, London and LA, which, paradoxically, are the only places whose attention he seeks.
This finger-pointing is exhausting. No one other than Abhay cares more about this awful news than me. Even Mira has shown enormous understanding and sympathy when she was told that Baba is very sad these days because he just found out his sister died, and he’s trying to write down everything he remembers about her. Mum has jumped in to help by picking up Mira every afternoon. But where Abhay and I diverge is that he considers the mode of delivery of this news, and indeed everything Ashim threw our way in what amazingly was under four weeks, to be a minor detail compared to its import. ‘Help me, Lena, help me not to use Dada’s transparent manipulativeness as my latest pretext to look away from what I’ve just learnt, not only about Didi but also myself. I promise you I’m not letting him off the hook. But I have a sister to recall and cherish first, and then a much bigger case to prosecute.’
Yes, he’s probably right. If he’d asked for a writing studio at any other time at a rent that we could afford, would I have grudged him it? Do I disbelieve that he’s devastated about Aranya? Then why do I repeatedly fixate on this particular two-and-two, Ashim leaving and Abhay symbolically ‘moving out’ within weeks, even though he insists there’s no link?
He says but for Aranya he would have never needed this space. If the final bombshell Ashim hurled had been the pathetic fizzler about Tony, life would have carried on exactly as before. It’s not doubt about his family or our marriage that’s forced this step, rather a no-longer-escapable imperative to overhaul himself.
One day at lunchtime, I received a James Baldwin quote copied into an email:
If I know that any one of you has murdered your brother, your mother, and the corpse is in this room and under the table, and I know it, and you know it, and you know I know it, and we cannot talk about it, it takes no time at all before we cannot talk about anything. Before absolute silence descends.
Abhay
Evasion is unavoidable, I’m compelled to conclude. Even I can see that I’m always arguably escaping something. The seeker of smoothness slyly plies on.
With Mira starting school this year and me maybe three months away from submitting a novel to my agent, the question of returning to other kinds of work is on the horizon. But what am I any good for at thirty-seven in this land where I’ve never held a full-time post, as a former literature and creative writing lecturer and author of some well-reviewed and out-of-print novels (or rather never-in-print as far as New Zealand is concerned)? I’ve sprung on Lena the idea of turning our car into an Uber cab for a few hours each day, or else working part-time for Driving Miss Daisy, a service for elderly people who no longer drive. At least my love of driving qualifies me for those, I argue. The civil service, IT, cutting-edge animation (some of the other major employers in this town) — what do I have that they might want?
Lena thinks I feel too superior to apply for different things in New Zealand. I know it’s the opposite — I’m just ducking the prospect of dozens of rejections, albeit for jobs I’ve never once dreamt of landing.
And just in time appears this alibi, a tragedy and a lifesaver in one: you must go forth and reconnect with your family. Look, Lena, and everyone else, I’m not unoccupied, far from it. Can any of you deny how urgent this is?
It is to be noted in this regard how often I’ve asked Lena if she wanted another child, and let her know I’d be happy to play the same role once more of stay-home parent.
But then also consider my first step upon learning of Didi’s death. Not to head straight to Hazaribagh to try to meet the people who knew her best, because that would require a kind of courage I first discovered I lacked at age nine, and have done nothing since to grow. No, instead I rented a flat on Karori Road from my friend Tim (a fifteen-minute walk from our home), where I hope to write about Didi whom I last saw in ’98 at Baba’s funeral, and Skype with Ma about her long-ago memories of her stepchildren. That is in fact the amount of lukewarm urgency I have been able to muster. Is this how most writers respond to stuff, or just me?
But hey, it’s so much smoother this way: I’m inarguably ‘taking steps’ while still risking nothing. I’m doing something even if I’m not rushing to India. I’m (sensibly) not springing any surprises on Didi’s family, or setting myself up for probable rejection.
I’m dealing with my ‘grief’ in a smart, sustainable way, as if I were planning the different stages of a marathon.
Seriously, not just rhetorically: is this how other writers respond to stuff, or just me?
Or do you gravitate towards writing when habitually from an early age you respond to big shit in this way?
Lena is right. The only person this whole drama, this frantic-yet-safe running on the spot, is really affecting is the most blameless of all. Why did I never know about Baba’s sister, Mira has already asked. Why can’t Baba write about her in our house? Why does Baba never do bathtimes and bedtimes any more, or take me for bus rides or sushi?
Because, sweetheart, your Baba’s finally facing up to his responsibilities. He’s beginning at the top with those who are dead, and will work his way down the list to you.
Abhay
The first Skype with Ma that I had mentally designated as an ‘interview’ about Dada and Didi (this was three weeks after I’d seen him and Tulti off in Auckland) was spent almost entirely in explaining — just as Lena had predicted when comparing me to Milhouse’s dad and Niles Crane — why I was calling from an unknown, ‘ugly’ place (her word, after I’d given her a virtual tour).
‘It’s my new writing studio, Ma. It’s meant to be bare bones. I’m trying out this arrangement for three months to see if I can get some more work done, if Rosemary picks Mira up from crèche and I have my own place to write uninterrupted.’
Ma asks about her Skypes with Mira.
‘Those will still happen. Twice a week I can be home by seven. I’m just a fifteen-minute walk away, up Donald Street, and then we’ll all chat until her bedtime.’
‘What are you not telling me?’
‘What do you mean? Although there is something I’d like to discuss with you today, if you’re free, and perhaps over our next few catch-ups as well.’
‘If I call Lena right now, will she give the same reason?’
‘Well, why don’t you try that? And then come back online, because I did have other things to ask too.’
My mother called my bluff. I hurriedly messaged Lena to say that Ma would text or call, and that she was suspicious of my writing studio. So, please, reassure her, because I needed her as calm and positive as possible for the next few days of interviews.
Lena didn’t reply. I decided to go for a stroll around Homewood Ave, made a circuit of it and came home past the library, where I noticed Mira through the glass walls browsing the children’s DVD section, w
ith Rosemary in the next aisle gathering books for her. This was exactly what we did on Friday afternoons, often followed by a walk across the road to pick up something savoury as well as sweet (to be had in that order) from the bakery. Mira must have told her Nana the routines to follow.
I wanted to go inside and hug my daughter in an entirely natural way; it was, after all, the equivalent of a dad who worked in town running into his daughter on the way to somewhere and giving her a passing hug. I had done nothing to deprive myself of this right. I could go in right now, or wait on the footpath and surprise them. But I just skulked there, right behind where Rosemary was browsing, for a couple more minutes, as if I wasn’t allowed near Mira. I told myself that seeing me might upset or confuse her, especially if I then insisted I had to return to my new place for some more hours of work rather than hang out with them. (Mira had visited the flat just once so far, pronouncing, with independent judgement but in concordance with everyone else in the family, that she didn’t like it and ‘our house [was] much nicer’; I hadn’t tried to bring her again, out of some idea that it might be easier all round if she didn’t fully realise quite how close to home Baba worked, and that it was always an option to drop in on him.) So, with some strange feelings that reminded me of the Nathaniel Hawthorne story Paul Auster admired, about the man who just takes off from his established life one day after escaping what would have been a fatal accident, and then returns but only to spy unseen on his family several years later, I kept walking, hoping that Rosemary wouldn’t notice me and feel disgust.
Or we can just leave it at saying that, as per instinct, I took the smoother path.
When I got back to the studio, Ma still wasn’t online, so I called her, but her phone was engaged. I wondered, with some anger, what Lena was putting together to tell her. They could have been talking for fifty minutes. She was probably leaving nothing out, from the mind-poisoning of Janaki to the drama of Dada’s ‘disappearance’; would she also be the one to tell her about Aranya? And, if so, would she pass on Dada’s reason for not telling his stepmother himself three-and-a-half years ago, because he believed she wouldn’t have cared? If you do one, you must go through and point out the other, Lena. That’s an integral part of the story: it’s also the reason why I didn’t know until now. Dada believed the same about me.
The Man Who Would Not See Page 17
