The Man Who Would Not See

by Rajorshi Chakraborti

  I felt irritated at the thought this conversation might be happening between Lena and Ma, because although I trusted that Lena wouldn’t embellish or ‘spice up’ the events of the previous month, I wanted to be in there amongst them to emphatically point out that, true as all of it was, it was still entirely irrelevant. Irrelevant to my present priority, which was just to recall my sister, as well as to my other aim — to try to trace with some honesty how the two halves of the family grew so shamefully far apart. This is the process I’m hoping to initiate in myself, Lena, and I’m hoping that Ma and Dada, the other surviving principals, will also participate. When I visit Didi’s family, which is only this preparation away, I can ask them what impact this gulf had had on her.

  Don’t you see, Lena, that even though I acknowledge the significance of Dada’s actions while he was with us, and that you’re probably right about the mischief in much of his motives, it is all still trivial when you begin to contemplate everything he was reacting to? Why he wanted to shake us up, which he undoubtedly did, quite so much!

  Imagine coming upon my happy, complacent life, in which I play tennis and run and write as I please and hang out every day of the week with my daughter, pretending to be as innocent as her, when something has happened of such enormity of which I’m utterly ignorant. Wouldn’t you want to jolt that guy’s world, especially if he was your brother?

  Even if I allow — and, trust me, I don’t need any persuasion to believe this, it’s entirely in my own interest — that Dada is wrong to hold anything against me from that night in Howrah, what about my conduct in the following twenty-seven years, especially since adulthood, when I’ve been free to get in touch with my brother and sister anytime I liked, with no need to route anything through my parents? There have been so many opportunities to prove my love, and then I certainly wouldn’t have found out about Didi in this way.

  And can I be certain — although I risk an absurd degree of both self-blame as well as arrogance in thinking this — that Didi might not have become a different person if she had remained connected to everyone in her wider family?

  All right, that is entirely unprovable, but I need Ma and Lena to see that although she is beyond our reach now, there is still a great mystery to confront. Why did Didi go away suddenly from her husband and children, and when did the journey towards that decision truly begin?

  Can we not at least agree that it most likely included her time with us (perhaps it began the day her mother passed away, or even earlier, when our father left their home), and so will require all of us cooperating by sharing everything we can remember — from her stepmother to both her children, as well as any friends that we can find — to even take a few steps along that path ourselves? We need to do this together; it’s the only way, and we’re doing it not for Didi any more, but for the rest of us. There are things her husband and kids won’t discover if we don’t focus our minds on the past, and there is so much Ma and I, and possibly even Dada, would love to learn from them.

  Creating that chain of memories is my shamefully late (how often that word, both of them, in fact — ‘shamefully’ and ‘late’ — have come to mind while writing this story) attempt to take us all a bit closer to Didi. And, wow, look, I suddenly said it, just like that: I’d never articulated my objective even to myself in quite these terms before.

  So that is why I took this room, to get to this moment first of all, and then to begin the process with Ma, and hopefully also Dada.

  Yes, Lena, I know what you’re going to say, but can we get past that irony already: that I needed to go away from my family to achieve the aim of uniting my family.

  Abhay

  Ma didn’t return to Skype that day. Instead, I finally got through to her phone close to five, and her first question was why I hadn’t told her about Aranya.

  ‘That’s what I wanted to do today. I have been reeling from the news myself.’

  ‘And he told you not at Chhotka’s wedding, or any time before his visit, but on the last night before leaving?’

  ‘The second-last night as a matter of fact, but Ma, don’t you see his reasons? He might have wanted to observe my behaviour and decide how much I would care. If he’d thought I would be indifferent, he wouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘So now people get to decide whether you “deserve” the news of a death in the family? How is Thamma 2 even supposed to show she cares when she is too second-class to be told anything?’

  I could have easily pointed out that both she and I had had two-and-a-half years from the time of Didi’s disappearance to her death in 2012 to call Dada and show our concern (not to mention the dozen years before that, since Baba’s death), but I needed Ma in as positive and generous a frame of mind as possible over the next several days.

  ‘Ma, the main reason I rented this room is a project, a plan I have for which I hugely need your support. I too have been struggling to process this incredible thought that Didi has in fact been gone for more than three years now, when I have, however abstractly, been imagining her alive, and the best I’ve been able to come up with by way of a response is to collate as many memories of Didi as you, I and perhaps Dada can bring back, and then I’ll take these to her family on a trip within the next few months. Do you see why I need to speak to you so much? You spent way more time with her than I did.’

  ‘But clearly not enough for Ashim to consider me deserving,’ Ma said, but I could hear her voice breaking. Then she cried, and it’ll sound strange, but I felt pleased to hear it. I wished Dada could witness this.

  We were underway that day itself. We spoke until 7, when I noticed I needed to get home to do Mira’s bedtime. On the very first day Ma gave me wonderful things, which later comprised the opening entry in my log of memories.

  Didi had been called Tupur at home, but did I know that until the age of five her pet name had been Debi (which means ‘goddess’)? Apparently one day Didi went to her parents with a request — could her family please stop calling her Debi from now on, because she just didn’t like it!

  Baba had told Ma the story. He and Didi’s Ma couldn’t get a real reason out of her, but what she did have for them was a ready alternative. She’d come with a plan. They could call her Tupur instead.

  ‘But what does Tupur mean?’ Baba had asked.

  ‘Brishti pore tapur-tupur, Baba.’ Didi had reminded him of the obvious, which was a well-known line in a children’s song about the rain falling pitter-patter, and in turn meant that Didi was asking for her pet name to be changed from ‘goddess’ to ‘patter’. Was this really what she wanted, or a gag?

  But she’d been entirely serious, producing at age five, in the course of a single conversation one evening after Baba had returned from work, her next, unanswerable argument.

  ‘And all pet names don’t have a meaning, right? What does Tumpa mean, or Tinku, or Tutu or Bhuttu?’ These were, respectively, a cousin, her brother, and playmates from their neighbourhood.

  ‘So you just like the sound of Tupur?’

  No, in fact she liked ‘tapur-tupur’ very much, but acknowledged that would be too long. Between the two, she preferred Tupur.

  Apparently Baba had been very impressed by her advocacy of this change, and had inwardly decided to go along with it. He’d loved both the spirit of the word his daughter had chosen as well as the making of its case, but thought he would play the role of unconvinced arbiter for a bit longer.

  ‘Achcha, which part of this strange name do you like the most, the meaning or the sound? If you like the sound, how about Nupur, or better still, Dupur? Yes, that would be great. What if I offer you, in the spirit of compromise, Dupur as an alternative? You’re still winning, because you get to keep most of the letters you want. I’m just asking for one change. What do you say?’

  For my Bengali-unfamiliar readers, Baba had offered Didi a choice between ‘anklet’ (a common-enough pet name) and ‘afternoon’ (which no one was ever called, boy or girl). He then appeared to favour ‘after
noon’.

  Didi had been taken in by Baba’s tone and expression, and genuinely believed he was urging her towards this option. Apparently she’d looked crestfallen, and could only say ‘Na, Tupur.’

  That’s when her mother had jumped to her rescue, and said she was happy to call her Tupur from now on, although at the start sometimes Debi would probably still slip out by mistake. And if her Baba wanted to call her Dupur, fine, he could do so, but on one condition — Debi, sorry Tupur, too would be free to change one sound of ‘Baba’ to whatever she wished. Like ‘dhaba’ (which is a roadside restaurant) or how about ‘thaba’ (a tiger or lion’s paw)?

  A giggling Didi had loved this idea. Yes, she would call Baba different names on different days. And that was when Baba had capitulated, and how my sister got the pet name everyone knew her by for the rest of her life.

  I loved the voice and spirit in which Ma told this story. There wasn’t a trace of ‘rivalry’ in it, or any resentment of Baba’s earlier life. I said I wished I’d known such stories before, then changed my statement to, ‘I wish I’d asked before — not just you, but Baba too.’

  Then I wondered, but didn’t ask, if Didi had been five at the time of this incident, wouldn’t Dada have been just under a year old? And Ma, you said that Didi confronted Baba one day when he came back from the office, which is where you worked, right, and where the two of you met?

  Had that already happened? Were you close? Was the beautiful, happy world portrayed in this anecdote already under a shadow, about to run out of time?

  (Baba left his first marriage when Dada was one, I’ve been told. What I’ve never asked is how long he knew Ma — as more than a colleague — before they decided to marry.)

  Walking home up the hill afterwards, I felt sure I’d done right in not pressing Ma on this question. It would have not only wrecked her mood and put her unfairly on the defensive, but gone against the spirit (that word again) in which she’d shared this tale. That was also when it came to me that perhaps this moment, with its possible, though unconfirmed, ironies, would form an apt beginning for my memory trail. Ma had chosen a lovely incident apparently at random, but it offered us a glimpse of Didi as she had been in her first home — independent, strong-willed, adorably sharp, reminiscent so much of Mira at her most barrister-like, our reigning family master of the exception clause (‘But Baba, when you said I can’t touch anything with my mangoey hands until I’ve run to the bathroom and washed them, what about the tap at the basin? How will I turn that on?’) — and the possible presence in the background of a life-transforming threat to all this (‘threat’ is the fair word to use, even if my mother had meant no harm) that little Tupur couldn’t have known about. Perhaps even Baba hadn’t known at that point what he was about to do. He and Ma might only have been copywriter and assistant back then.

  And the next irony — that all of what followed had to happen in order to create the beautiful, happy world I knew, the one my parents shaped for me.

  The very circumstances that led to my existence had of necessity been such a blow to my own siblings, who were only slightly older and just as innocent.

  Lena

  Abhay shared that story with me while giving Mira her bath. He called me into the bathroom in an unexpectedly cheerful voice. I felt lucky; I’d been expecting far worse after having told Sulekha much, though not all, of what Ashim had got up to while visiting us.

  Then Mira once again refused to do story-time with Baba; it had been a pattern these past days. She also declined Baba’s offer to split the bedtime routine into two, where he would read to her, and afterwards she could have Mummy in the chair by her bed until she fell asleep, or the other way around. In fact, Abhay had had to resort to some mild emotional blackmail to bulldoze his way into doing bathtime. ‘I haven’t seen you since breakfast: can’t I at least do bathtime? Didn’t you miss me at all?’

  I’m sorry if my tone is coming out wrong. I don’t mean to sound maliciously gleeful. I loved the story Abhay shared about Aranya, and feel proud of what he’s decided to begin.

  But from one week to the next, with no preparation, he forced Mira to completely change her expectations of him. From day one he had always been there; now he gets home just before her bedtime, and talks about taking off for India indefinitely, because she’s ‘old enough’ to be without him for a while.

  She’s not even four and a half yet, Abhay, and with no warning you took out a pillar of her life. That is the only reason why just now it has to be Mummy for everything. Don’t you see that?

  I’m sorry, but there is a shadow, no matter that it’s not terminal, lurking over Mira’s world too. She doesn’t know when she’ll get her dad back in the way that she’s used to.

  Between the vulnerable and innocent of the past, and those in the present, there shouldn’t be an either/or. I still believe there needn’t be; but precisely that idea is the seed that Ashim planted in Abhay’s head.

  Abhay, a second act of negligence won’t redress the first.

  And I also hold against you your inability to look squarely at Ashim. There might be a context for his malice; it doesn’t make the malice less real. You want to bond more closely with him, even go over for a return visit, ignoring what you’ve seen in Wellington. That might be your choice, but you further want that I should forget the finger he pointed at me. If you had suggested something similar about Moushumi, would either of them have forgiven you?

  There is a part of me that already knows I won’t try to stop Abhay from going to Hazaribagh, as he seems to be planning. It means too much to him, and I certainly won’t ask him to choose again, as his parents did, between two parts of his family.

  But I worry about what he will find, whether he will be hurt more than welcomed, and not just by my dubiously principled brother-in-law.

  It is one thing to make a start on healing through Skype interviews with your mother from a room in Wellington. But then to actually go over — as someone beginning at a disadvantage even compared to a stranger, because your unknown family has this pre-existing idea of you as the ‘uncaring’ one — and try to approach the incredible grief and mystery of such a death, as well as the years of history that preceded it … can so much be bridged or shared?

  Later that evening, after Mira had fallen asleep and I’d come out of her bedroom, Abhay said that he was going to try to make things up with her every spare minute he had, but that he also, God willing, had days, months and years ahead to prove to her that this absence was a mere blip. Very little that was as urgent would come his way again.

  ‘But with Didi I ran out of time long ago, and didn’t even know it, Lena. This was the rage Dada was probably seething with against me. It wasn’t about 1988 at all.’

  Abhay

  It likely has much to do with what she’s heard from Lena about Dada’s behaviour while he was here, but unfortunately Ma, during our Skype chats, is one way when she recalls Didi, and the opposite about Dada. Here is an email she wrote me that same night, after she’d shared the wonderful story about the becoming of Tupur.

  I didn’t tell you so that you wouldn’t be upset, but Ashim wrote to me three years ago to ask who had ownership of this house. Now it occurs to me that perhaps it would have followed shortly after Tupur’s death. This house, your grandparents’ house! I replied to him: my mother till the day she expired and then me. I also asked him in that letter whether your Thamma had made a will, and if there was any mention of you regarding a share of the Hazaribagh property. So far, I’m still awaiting a reply. Please let me know if he said something to you, or else you could ask him next time you brothers speak.

  PS: Wondered if you remember that Tupur was unbeatable at table tennis and badminton, at least by the two of you? And you in particular would insist that Didi was not playing fair because she was so much taller than you. You said she shouldn’t be allowed to smash in badminton, and in TT because of her reach she should give you a five-point advantage. As far as I recall, neither made
any difference, and that was when you asked to start tennis lessons at the club.

  The following morning when I switched on my phone, this text from Ma was waiting.

  Listen to Lena. Call Praveen if you must to ask about Tupur, but DON’T visit Haz.

  So with Dada I’ve myself made a start, alongside interviewing Ma. Didi is the priority of this project, and perhaps it’s best if Ma’s focus remains on her, rather than both of us getting sidetracked by what would be anger-tinted recollections of Dada. For now, I’ll supplement by putting down everything that comes to me about him, from the past as well as our two recent meetings. Yes Lena, not to worry, unpleasant memories too. If there is any secondary aim of this undertaking, it is at all times to trace and acknowledge the incredible complexity of how things have come to pass.

  Just as one example, I intend to record not only my sorrow at how all this is affecting in the present both Mira and my relationship with you, but also my feelings when I had to let you know I was withdrawing money from our joint account to pay Tim the deposit and the rent for the flat, as well as to get its wifi up and running. Despite having published five books and done so much else, I still have to ask for pocket money; if not from my wife, it would have been my mother. Perhaps that will go in the book too as part of its frame.

  And I will find a way to write about Dada’s behaviour here, as I know you’d want me to: what he suggested about you and Tony, what he might have said to Janaki, the way he spoke about barefoot kids, or that large woman happily crocheting away at her table in the Botanics café, his disgust at her obesity that I told you about. The wish to frighten those kids at the traffic lights after he’d ogled the girl; the look he gave you one night when you suggested — not without some mischief, you admitted as much to me — that he cook something for a change. Yes, I noticed, and noted down, all of that, if it happened before my eyes (the impatience that enters his tone sometimes when he finds out Moushumi hasn’t done something exactly as instructed), and I’ll ask you for other things I may have missed.