A New World: A Novel (Vintage International) (21 page)

“Baba, this tooth’s giving me
trouble
!”

“Is it?” he said. “Don’t prod it with your tongue, Bonny. You’ll find, suddenly, that it’s fallen off by itself.”

A man in a skull cap, with streaks of grey in his beard, rose unhurriedly from his seat.

A little later, Bonny took off his earphones and said:

“How long’s it been, baba? An hour?”

Jayojit looked at his watch.

“Only twenty minutes, I’m afraid, partner,” he said.

“Only
twenty minutes
? You mean not even
thirty
minutes
?”

“That’s right.”

Later, Bonny asked:

“Is it an hour now?”

“Still twenty minutes to go.”

“Oh God!”

Jayojit unzipped his bag and took out the
Asian Age
. Beneath it, there was a lump of gur that his mother had kept aside in the fridge from March, wrapped in newspaper and stored in a polythene packet—she’d been firm in her belief that the American customs men would look upon it kindly and let it through. It was like a clod of earth—it would certainly confuse them. “You mean you
eat
this?” they’d say. Far away at the back a boy was retching, and near Jayojit, in the same row, a woman in a sari was exhorting her child to sleep, while another, older child, looked on at her brother. He couldn’t help listening to the woman. Although the paper lay open on his lap, he stared blindly at the cartoon of a rotund politician, and, turning a few pages, couldn’t concentrate on what the editorial said about the decline of the Congress party. When the child became quiet after ten minutes, he looked at the cartoon with new eyes, made the sound of a laugh, and then decided to give the editorial a second chance.

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, FEBRUARY 2002

Copyright © 2000 by Amit Chaudhuri

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are
trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Chaudhuri, Amit.
A new world / Amit Chaudhuri—1st ed.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-307-42447-1

1. Americans—India—Fiction. 2. Custody of children—Fiction.
3. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 4. Calcutta (India)—Fiction.
I. Title.
PR9499.3.C4678 N49 2000
823’914—dc21 00-034916

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