Flame Tree Road (23 page)

“So I heard,” Biren said. “I met Samir’s brother, Diju, in London before I left. I heard Samir has moved back into the old family
basha
,
the one
with the sour plum tree.”

“Now he has built his own house. With a wife and two children...”

“He has
two
children—already?”

“What do you expect? He has been married three years. We must ask him to look for a nice girl for you. Maybe his wife has a nice sister or cousin.” Shibani shot him a sly smile. “Otherwise, there is always Ruby next door, you know.”

“Please, Ma,” Biren protested feebly. He suddenly felt claustrophobic. “I don’t want to talk about marriage.”

She patted his hand. “I know, I know. It is just your old mother rambling. Don’t pay me any mind, son. I am happy you are home, that’s all. I have waited for this day.”

Despite her reassurance, Biren felt an unseen pressure tighten in his chest.

Shibani handed him a tumbler of tea. “Try these palm fritters. Your Apumashi made them.”

“How is Apumashi?” he asked. “Do you see her at all?”

“Oh, yes, all the time. She comes here almost every day. Even though I have short hair, she still comes to oil it and give me a head massage,” said Shibani.

“So there are no restrictions with Apumashi coming over to see you now?”

“Not after her mother-in-law died. It was always our mothers-in-law who put the restrictions on us. I have never understood why one woman would want to put down another. But that is the way our society is. After both our mothers-in-law died we were free. I have even started to eat some fish now. Food-wise, I have no restrictions.”

“What about chili tamarind?”

“You remember the chili tamarind!” Shibani laughed with her crooked teeth. “It’s funny, but both Apu and I lost our taste for chili tamarind. It was our girlish craving for sour things at that time, I think. Now we just drink a lot of tea.”

“This tea is very good,” said Biren. He took a sip. “Better than I remembered.” The tea at the
basha
always had a hint of pleasant wood smoke boiled into the water.

“This is a very special tea your friend Samir sent through his servant. You cannot buy it in the market. Samir’s family now handles the transportation for all the British tea companies of Calcutta, and Samir gets a nice quota for himself. You must go and see him immediately. He is impatiently waiting for you. His servant came here several times to find out if you had arrived.” Shibani gave him a naughty smile. “They want to know when to send the palanquin for you.”

“I wonder if he still rides a palanquin!” Biren laughed. “It wouldn’t surprise me. I also want to go and say hello to Mr. Owen McIntosh at the jute mill sometime.”

“Mr. Owen is no longer there,
mia
. He retired a year ago. There is a young man by the name of Willis Duff in his place. He knows you. Last year when they sent me your baba’s bonus money, Willis Duff wrote a nice note and asked about you.”

“Yes, I remember him well. Duff was the young officer who accompanied me to boarding school on my first journey by steamer. He was very good to me,” said Biren, thinking about young Willis with his kind blue eyes and curly red hair. Their acquaintance seemed like such a long time ago.

Shibani had taken charge of her life. She managed the money for the household and ran the kitchen. Uncle was sober only for a few hours in a day, it seemed. Biren was greatly heartened to see traces of the old mother he remembered from his early childhood with her easy laugh and teasing ways. Despite her gray hair and failing eyesight, Shibani’s skin and eyes were clear and she seemed to be in excellent health.

He looked at his mother fondly and thought she was like a tree sprouting its first tender buds after a long hard winter.

CHAPTER

36

Sammy Deb’s family
basha
was where his joint family had lived for several generations. There were so many members in his household that Biren never quite figured out how they were all related. What was once a single-unit house had grown wings in every direction until it had become a sprawling mess of an establishment with several courtyards and wells—almost a minivillage in itself, all under one roof. The dominant feature was a sour plum tree, so unwieldy and overburdened with fruit that it had collapsed like a benign and overweight matriarch on the roof of the kitchen, and threatened to bring everything down. There were no plans to cut down the tree because it was a blessed tree, planted by a benevolent ancestor, and the good fortunes of the Deb family were attributed to it. However, to be on the safe side, the family constructed a new kitchen, and the old kitchen with its dangerously sagging roof became a relic of old times.

Biren arrived at Sammy’s house to find the tree still standing. However, acid from the sour plums had eaten through the thatch until the bare bones of the rafters showed, yet the roof structure, miraculously, was still holding. A few goats now occupied the old kitchen, munching happily on vegetable peelings, oblivious to their impending doom.

As usual, the house was pell-mell with people, all of them looking vaguely alike with their pale faces and soft stomachs. A miscellaneous relative directed Biren to Sammy’s new house. It was a pukka
house with a neglected English-style rose garden full of anthills. Biren found Sammy in the living room, reclining on two sausage-shaped bolsters, smoking a hookah and getting his toes tweaked by a minion.

“Goodness gracious, Biren!” he cried, the hookah dropping from his mouth. He struggled to his feet, ruddy and obese. “When did you get here, old chap? You look marvelous!” He slapped him on the back, grinning widely with
paan
-stained teeth.

“Quickly, get
boudi
,” he ordered the minion, “and tell her my best friend from England has come.” The man scurried off and Sammy cupped his hand and yelled behind his retreating back, “And bring tea.
Tea!
”

“So, you old so-and-so. Come to get married, have we? Always following in my footsteps, eh?” He laughed uproariously, holding his wobbling stomach.

Before Biren could answer, a plump woman with a sweet face rushed in. She covered her hair with her sari and bent down to touch Biren’s feet.

“Please, no,” he said hastily, taking a step back.

“This is Uma,” Sammy said, then turned to her. “My friend Biren Roy from England. Where are the children? Bring the children. Make sure their faces are clean.” Facing Biren once again, he said, “So tell me, how’s the Old Country? How’s our femme fatale Estelle Lovelace?”

“She’s well,” Biren said.

“Find yourself a nice country girl, I say, and settle down, for God’s sake. All the village belles will be lining up to marry you now.”

A tiny girl toddled into the room wearing a new dress, followed by Uma carrying a male infant who, seeing Sammy, immediately stretched out two chubby arms toward him. The baby’s eyes were lined with kohl, and there was a black dot marked on the side of his head to ward off the evil eye.

Sammy took the baby in his arms. “One, two, buckle my shoe!” he cried, tossing the child in the air, making him break into a cackling laugh. The little girl pulled at the silk tassels on the bolster and stared at Biren with big eyes. Seeing her father distracted, her hands crept toward the hookah while Uma watched her husband with a soft, dimpled smile.

“Here, go to your uncle Biren,” Sammy said, thrusting the baby into Biren’s arms. The smile on the baby’s face faded. He looked at Biren bewildered, and his face began to pucker as he mustered his forces for a colossal howl.

Biren jiggled him awkwardly. The howl became an ear-piercing shriek, and he hastily handed the baby back to his mother.

“Gouri! Where did you go?” Sammy swiveled around. “No, no, don’t touch the hookah.” He gave her an encouraging prod. “Gouri can sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’ And she will sing for Uncle Biren. Ready? One. Two. Three. Twin-kle, twin-kle lit-tle... Now, what’s the matter?”

The girl scrunched her face and sniffled. She, too, looked as if she was about to break into a howl like her baby brother.

“Oh-hoh,” said Sammy, exasperated. “Take them both away, Uma. Let me talk to my friend. Now, where is the tea?”

Uma whispered something.

“Send him for the sweets, but you can bring them later. For now tea will do. We will need several rounds. I am seeing my friend after a very long time.” He turned to Biren. “Stay for lunch. Uma is an excellent cook.” Without waiting for his reply, he called after Uma, “He is staying for lunch. Make something special, will you?” He settled himself back on the settee. “Care for some hookah?”

“I have my cigarettes,” Biren said. He looked around and located a brass frog ashtray on the windowsill. A child’s beaded necklace was stuffed inside it.

“Old habits die hard,” said Sammy as he watched Biren roll his cigarette. “I switched to hookah. I have other bad habits, I’m afraid—
paan
and the occasional pinch of snuff. In England you pick up good habits, in India you lose them.” He waved the mouthpiece of his hookah. “Vice and virtue, all the same. But you were the eloquent one. How I envied you. So what are your plans?”

“First thing is I need a job,” said Biren. “I made some inquiries into civil service positions while I was in Calcutta but it may take a while.”

“If it was just a question of a job, you know you can always work for our family. But I know you are quite ambitious. You may want to check out Silchar besides Calcutta. There are plenty of good jobs there with the British government, thanks to the growth of the tea industry. Did you try the tea I sent you?”

“Yes, it was very good. The best tea I’ve had, really.”

“Remind me to give you some more,” said Sammy. “The tea industry in Assam is booming. There is a big British population settled in Silchar and they have beautiful colonial-style bungalows, gymkhana clubs and a nice leisurely lifestyle. So unlike the hurry-scurry of Calcutta, if you ask me.”

“Ma was saying your family now has something to do with the tea industry, is that right?” asked Biren.

“That’s our main business now. We have our head office in Silchar. Our family handles the transportation requirements of all the tea gardens in the Surma Valley. We own several flatbed barges and we move tea, machinery and supplies between Silchar and Calcutta. If it had not been for my Uma and the children, I would live in Silchar. Uma wants to be close to her parents, and the children are happier in a joint family, so here we are.”

“You seemed to happily settle down.”

“Oh, yes, oh, yes, it a good life. My brother Diju was a fool to stay back in England. Who wants to live in that cold morbid country? At least you did not make the same mistake.”

Sylhet

17th April 1894

Uncle disappears for long stretches. I suspect he goes to the opium den. When he is around he is dazed and incommunicado. He is thin as a rake. Ma has taken charge. She is doing exceptionally well. Nobody really needs me here. I should be in Calcutta looking for a job. This listless waiting is causing a great deal of angst in me. Every morning I wake up filled with a toxic dread that spreads through my body. I lie in bed and ask myself, what am I doing here? I feel as if I have one foot stretched forward and the other one stuck in the mud. The monotony of village life is enough to drive me mad.

The morning hours creep intolerably. Lunch takes up one half of the afternoon, siesta the other. Evenings are spent drinking tea and in idle chitchat. Come dusk, conch horns sound deep and hollow, prayer bells tinkle in every house and the air smells of sandalwood incense. This time of the day brings back memories of Baba coming home from work. Even after all these years his memory is painfully sharp and clear.

Sylhet

19th April 1894

It has become the sacrosanct duty of every woman in the village to get me married. The fact that I am jobless is inconsequential. I am considered highly eligible because I am foreign educated and I have bright prospects. The fact that the bright prospects have not materialized is again inconsequential. Marriage proposals are flooding in. Invariably I come home to find a stranger waiting to meet me with an overeager smile and a box of sweets, and I know right away why he is here. It makes me want to turn around and run back to England.

Letters from Estelle arrived like a breath of fresh air. Even the paper she wrote on felt cool and crisp and carried the delicate scent of her citrus perfume. Once she enclosed a kingfisher feather of periwinkle blue, another time a pressed yellow burnet rose.

Daddy has a new puppy
, she wrote.
Her name is Annie. She is a cocker spaniel, the same as Josie but with none of Josie’s ladylike ways. Annie soiled the Persian carpet, broke the porcelain milkmaid figurine on the coffee table and chewed a hole in Mummy’s silk cushion all in a single day.

Dear Estelle! The joy and mischief in her voice made Biren smile.