Authors: Upamanyu Chatterjee
‘Yes – and there’s a limit to the weirdness that he can take.’ Kuki simpers in remembrance. ‘I was craving to film one of his pacemarker insertions – Oh, but you haven’t’ – He bounces out of the sofa – ‘even seen my latest thing.’ From his cupboard, from behind the hundred hanging shirts, he heaves out a greyish duffle bag with several scarlet zips. It discloses a compact video camera, a bit larger than his hand, and its accessories. ‘It’s far out, this Sony Handycam. I picked it up in Singapore – and I can’t look at my Nikon again.’ He begins to click into place the several attachments. ‘If you can spare twenty minutes, I could put on what I trapped two weeks ago – after midnight, the male sluts in Dost Garden, leching away.’ He starts to scrutinize, through the Handycam, the room, the contours and expressions of Kasturi and Jamun, murmuring all the while, ‘Like a high . . . you yearn to capsulize your . . . unkempt, soulless universe . . . for your home video . . . in these . . . tidy frames . . .’
Back in the car, euphoric with whisky, Jamun stretches out and tucks behind Kasturi’s ear a wisp of hair that has straggled across her cheek. His fingers tingle the downiness of her neck. She stares at him with pawky amusement, and asks, ‘In that dump where you work, what’s your recreation? Your company?’
‘Ah – a purposeful shift of subject. The cook. A meaty, middle-aged Kolhapuri jade and her lovechild. They aren’t there now. They’ve scooted to their backwoods village for some crisis.’ At the adduction of Kasibai and Vaman, Jamun’s wits – for one week convulsed by his mother’s affliction, and at that moment pulsing with sottishness – welcome, like an enslaved
satyr his fornicatress, the evocations of their bodies – Kasibai’s titanic soufflé thighs, Vaman’s blubber lipped smile, bashful. Inflamed, he clutches Kasturi’s warm forearm. ‘Will you drive with only one hand?’ she murmurs drily.
‘If you indulgently raise your right leg, then your toes can replace my hand on the wheel. If a cop objects, I’ll point out that the left hands of bachelors whose mothers are bedridden appear, on steering wheels, like womanly right feet. And doesn’t he know how addictive desire is, and how fulfilling caving in to it is, like the silence after a fever? Oh, but you snicker at mine, and piety mauls it.’
‘Tch-tch, poor Jamun.’ Kasturi giggles. ‘Did you scurry home for your mother, or for me?’
‘Scurry?’ He drives off slowly. ‘I took four days.’ A minute later, he chortles tipsily, ‘My father would’ve asserted I stampeded home for Joyce. As though in my case there must needs be a reason.’ Yet without a summons you wouldn’t’ve returned, he catechizes himself voicelessly. I shan’t come back until you clamour for me, he had willed to himself at his last homecoming. I need to break free. I must relish another life, other bonds.
At two one afternoon, in office, on a faultlessly languorous day six weeks ago, with all the king-sized windows yawning, and a warm, moist breeze on their skins, with a post-lunch paan from Hegiste glutting his mouth, a notion, like a windborne seed, had floated to Jamun that in the few months in his new post he had educed a tenuous – and ethically suspect – delight from electing to be away from where everyone fancied he pined to be – from thus, in likelihood, effecting heartache and concern in parents, sibling, lover and himself. He had found the notion nicely perturbing.
Yet on the third evening after the telegram informing him of his mother’s heart attack, on the roof of his block of flats, he had recognized that in biding his time for four days, he had sinned profoundly. He’d then determined, in penitence, that he’d stay with and foster his begetters till they died.
‘A friend of mine, Satyavan Hegiste, always uses the phrase “native place” for “home”. A matchless phrase, isn’t it – the only place where one is truly a native, and can mooch about in a lungi. Everywhere else, one is a migrant, marking time. And Mrs Hegiste equates one’s parents with one’s home, the base to which one regresses by reflex when blitzed, where your arrival is jubilantly welcomed for its own sake. That nonplussed me, and I joshed her, So you have no home, despite husband and son? And what of the lonely hearts like me, spouseless and bratless? She rebutted: man, woman and litter in themselves are just nomads, in caravans across the desert . . . Kasturi, am I gibbering?’
‘Yes indeed, but delightfully. I’d relish your babble even more if your hand didn’t, under its cloak, amble over me proprietorially. Mrs Hegiste must’ve married precociously – is she very young? – and like a patriarchal Jew out of Genesis or Jeremiah must hanker for her native place. Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country. Isn’t that an entirely Indian sentiment?’
‘Your Bible quotations are generously multipurpose. No doubt your fondness for them harks back to your green years, when the nuns of your school so inspired you that you actually wanted to convert – to float about like them – lay sister, lay!in white, colourless, serene, with Jesus’s candle in their crotch. But I adore the Bible too, and exploit Corinthians against my mother whenever she perorates about my unmarried state, and my father wields the
same
lines against my brother whenever he mopes about
his
married state. But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.’
In the previous year, when the entire family had lived together, before Jamun had chosen to be transferred, Shyamanand had been distinctively vocal on the subject.
On the sporadic Saturday, the two brothers, the one wife and the two children ebb away the whole day loitering, window-shopping in the ostentation of any one of the city’s voguish bazaars. Shyamanand grouses to Urmila, ‘Your daughter-in-law adores this loafing about in glitter and gloss, trailing two goodlooking men, wearing clothes too youthful for her, slopping money on frippery, glutting her brats with candy and other junk, triumphantly islanding her husband – and even brother-in-law! – from us even on a holiday.’
Jamun presumes that Shyamanand’s gripe is only huffiness at being neglected for these Saturday jaunts. So he invites his parents time and time again to join them (while simultaneously reminding them how boring and fatiguing these outings in fact are – ‘we return every evening with foul tempers and aching calves’), but Shyamanand consistently rebuffs with, ‘Your sister-in-law’ll demur against my presence,’ and Urmila declines with, ‘No, please, I’m too fagged, but please, please lug your father with you, so that I may unwind at home by myself.’
But by, that juncture of his life, Burfi has become inured to Shyamanand’s opinions on his wife, and on all other issues – or almost inured. Husbandhood and Joyce’s unremitting, subdued disdain have secretly seared him; now he usually feigns to disregard all the opprobrium against her that doesn’t pointedly discredit his own sagacity in picking such a spouse; and yet, at the same time, the most elementary parley, with parent or with wife, appears to have become a potential spark for factiousness.
In the lambency of marriage’s initial years, the discord would have germinated differently. Burfi had all but shouldered his father out of his house once. ‘He’s nuts. He wanted to bed down in my room and wished Joyce to sleep alone in the spare bedroom.’
Burfi’s account. Joyce’s too. Shyamanand presents no version because he is never so importuned. His account will doubtless be more vapid, and which audience relishes the
etiolation of an unwholesome yarn? Burfi’s auditor is his brother, who threads his recital to the corpus of unfilial anecdotes that kith cannot forbear from recounting about kin.
‘You must remember,’ advises Burfi, ‘that those days, Joyce and I rendezvoused only on intermittent weekends, in Udaipur, because she was stationed elsewhere. Baba arrived for his holiday, alone, his maiden visit after our marriage; I was glad for his society. I even made believe that during his sojourn his relations with Joyce would mend. He’d partner me on my tours, etcetera. But patently, I existed just for the Friday to Monday, youthful lust and all that. I’d allotted Baba the second bedroom, and he appeared to’ve liked it. At least, he didn’t bleat for three days, not until the Friday when Joyce arrived.
‘I’d brimmed myself with rum. Baba didn’t swill at all. At dinner he and Joyce were starchy, but okay. Then we said goodnight to Baba, I puffed a joint, we tee’d up for bed – shadowy light, Joyce’s notion of soulful music from the stereo, Perry Como crap – and a demanding thumping on the bedroom door. What the fuck, I spluttered. Who’s it, I hollered. Joyce’s face was a cartoon of frigid rage. “Your father,” she spat, “can’t stomach our being together.”
‘“Sorry to disturb,” spouted Baba, but for sure he didn’t mean it. He muttered that he’d panicked because of the scorpion in his bedroom. He looked genuinely scared, in a cold sweat. What the fuck, I groused to myself again, knowing that bloody Joyce’d censure only me for this dishevelment. Oof, I felt so pestered. “Won’t you at least come out and help me?” asked Baba.
‘The scorpion was monstrous and beautiful, a sable six-incher, between chair leg and chest of drawers, tail nutating like an acrobat on a tightrope, flawlessly poised. Killing a fucker like that isn’t the smoothest stunt when you’re stoned and’ve just been plucked out of humping. Baba carried on spluttering. “Don’t approach it! Keep clear of it!” Apparently he’s been stung once by a scorpion, as a cub, in his village, by the well or something. The terror and pain’d blacked him out. I bellowed
for the menials. One of them, a tribal from a dot in Gujarat, simpered unabashedly when he sighted the scorpion. With a knife he snicked off the final quarter-inch of tail, and, smirking like a primate, he – phew! – hoisted the scorpion by the tail and, waggling it about, carted it to the wilderness of the compound. We overheard the other flunkeys chortling outside. Tizzy over, I was slipping back to Joyce, when Baba demanded, ruffled, “Where should I turn in? I can’t sleep here.”
‘But where could I park him? That house was a tumbledown chateau of horrors, erected circa 1875. In the downstairs halls some snakes and their chums had taken up residence. As a choice for Baba, there remained only the upstairs verandah. He tacked on, “And your own bedroom.”
‘I sweated to cajole him to hang on in that same room. Scorpions don’t intrigue and harry the same patsy in droves. We both began to bridle. Then Baba proposed, “Why don’t you and your wife doss down here? And I in your room?” Boy!! Next – you won’t believe this – in a modulated tone, the pharisaic inflexions of stratagem, he suggested, “If your wife” – never Joyce, always “your wife” – “can’t sleep in the same room with me, then perhaps she can bed here alone.” He scanned my face, and demanded spleenfully, “Can’t you rein in from your wife even for one night?”
‘I returned to my room, fuming, and latched the door. I could’ve whammed him. The idea of Joyce and me together was deranging him. For hours, until we crashed, we heard him clumping about in the verandah – the plod and shuffle by and by pacing my guiltiness.’
‘D’you want to come in?’ asks Kasturi at her gate, not looking at Jamun, abruptly, curiously formal. Jamun doubts whether, with Urmila not there, anyone at home’ll remember to put by some dinner for him. He drily senses that their house no longer has a whipping boy whom they can all berate for such inattention. Kasturi then glances fugitively at him, gauges the yes on his face, grins and asserts, ‘You won’t accept when you realize that my younger sister’s sharing my room.’
‘Will you feed me something?’ coaxes Jamun, laughing, as they go in.
Nearly midnight when he reaches home, fuddled and relaxed. In that mood, Urmila’s affliction is not dismal, but inexorable. A soused Burfi has described the state, with which he himself is most intimate, as the Omar Khayyám blues.
The lights in Burfi’s room and the upstairs rear verandah are on. That isn’t extraordinary, since Joyce is a wholly nocturnal creature. Burfi, Joyce and Chhana are in the verandah, on the floor of which, in the slack gusts, dart – like wee, black-cowled, terror-crazed Inquisitors – shreds of charred paper. From the mien and attitudes of the three, Jamun senses that some unusual event has occurred. For one unhinged second he believes that they’ve murdered Shyamanand and triumphantly incinerated him in the verandah. ‘Anything wrong?’
For a moment, none responds. Joyce cautiously steps past Jamun and goes in. Chhana glances at Burfi out of the corner of her eye, histrionically. Jamun knows that she has secretly enjoyed whatever has happened. Her wry mouth and her parabolic eyebrows, thrusting concentric ellipses of forehead flesh into her hairline, tacitly connote both scorn and amusement, and concurrently gainsay any possible complicity in the affair. Burfi intends to answer casually, but falters. ‘Uh . . . Joyce suddenly started burning my things – my management textbooks, my new Jordache jeans, the Frank Zappa CD, two hundred-dollar bills.’ He looks at Jamun shamefacedly and grimaces a smile. ‘The kids were present. Even Doom pegged away at her – “Mama, why you burning Baba’s things?” When I dashed to check her, she chucked at my face the burning jeans.’
‘Shall we chat about this over a gin?’ moots Jamun.
‘A first-rate idea,’ purrs Burfi, alacritous, even under stress, to quaff someone else’s booze.
The brothers and Chhana deposit themselves in the verandah under a louring, starless sky. ‘I half-felt like calling in the police. Doubtless the cops would’ve only tried to quarry some money out of us, but we should’ve summoned whoever deals with
screwballs, and made her over – so what if she’s a wife? Opinion conveyed, Burfi declines into his basket chair, muses whether he’s gaffed, and downs half his gin. Mindful of the silence of his companions, he then lights a cigarette. ‘Nineish. Chhana and I’d just returned from the hospital. Joyce was fulminating because we were overdue for dinner at Rani’s house. She ranted for fifteen minutes, clumping about the room like a foiled strangler, eyes debouching out like a nervous disease – I’m perpetually unpunctual, I forever delay her in every matter. Doom witnessed us from the bed, agape. I protested, I’ve barely got back from the hospital, they’re sliding in the pacemaker day after tomorrow, we had to chat with Haldia’s troupe. That was more important than dinner and prattle with her Rani. Then I reminded Joyce that she hadn’t even once visited Ma in the nursing home, which is a revolting omission. At that, she boiled over again. Afterwards, Pista confided that he’d thought that the room’d burst, like a pressure cooker – his simile. Your mother hates me, Joyce screeched, why should I yawn about in a hospital watching a shrivelled cow die? If her two darling sons treasure her at all, they should be waiting their nights outside Intensive Care; instead, they look in now and then, as though she was a dragging Wimbledon quarter-final on TV. At which, I retorted that I would
not
chaperone her for dinner to her bloated, lesbian ex-beau, except that Rani’s not ex. We bickered at that incendiary level for a while. Joyce then set fire to some of my stuff, and is now swanning off for Rani’s house, never to return, which should mean Sunday.’