Flame Tree Road (31 page)

Four months went by and he never stopped thinking about her. When he finally returned, the flame trees were in the madness of bloom. Everywhere they blazed a heart-stopping red. They singed the sun and washed out the sky. Biren felt the same madness in his heart.

Over the next few weeks he visited Jatin Nandi’s house several times. Each time he walked past the clatter of pots, the sizzles and smells of the kitchen, on his way to the study. All the while his heart tiptoed in the hope of seeing Maya, but she was never there. Even Mitra, whose chirpy presence filled the house, was hardly around. Each time it was on the tip of his tongue to ask where Maya was, but he was too self-conscious. Day after day the toothless old crone came and served them tea. Once the white-haired grandmother showed herself and was introduced. Each time Biren left with leaden feet, dispirited.

In desperation he walked to the school. A class was in session, and through the open doorway Biren caught a glimpse of a stout Anglo-Indian teacher with bobbed hair wearing a navy blue dress with white-cuffed sleeves. He walked around to the back of the schoolhouse, hoping perhaps to learn from the caretaker’s wife which days Maya taught in the school, but the hut was empty, the bamboo tray leaning against the wall. There was nothing much to do but walk toward the river. It was unimaginable how a single meeting with Maya had shifted the pivot of his entire universe. He watched a boat idle along the water’s edge. Kanai was perched on the prow. His slackened oar cut a thin knife line in the water.

Kanai raised his hand in greeting. “
Mia!
Care for a boat ride?”

Biren was about to decline when it occurred to him it was the second Tuesday of the month.

“Can you take me to the weavers’ village?”

“Yes,
mia
.”

Kanai turned the boat toward the bank, but Biren had already removed his shoes and rolled up his knife-creased trousers. He waded into the river and climbed in.

“What takes you the weavers’ village today,
mia
?” Kanai asked. He pushed back from the mud bank, catching the swirl of the midcurrent.

“My heart,” replied Biren impulsively.

“Ah, you are but young. You still follow your inner tide.”

He broke into a song. Biren listened, his bare foot trailing in the water. It was a haunting song from the great beyond, sung to the rhythmic chop of a falling oar. As the song dissolved into a hum, all that remained was the splash of wood on water.

* * *

He disembarked on the shore, feet bare, shoes in hand. The cracked river mud felt cold and the broken shells cut into the soles of his feet like shards of broken glass, but Biren did not notice the discomfort.

It was a flood-hazard area, Biren thought as he walked across the flat, cracked earth devoid of vegetation toward one of the meandering pathways leading into the village. The ground was covered with rows of saris in dazzling colors, stretched on bamboo frames. Twisted yarns of freshly dyed silk were drying looped on bamboo poles. For Biren it felt like walking through a rainbow.

The mud huts of the village were built on elevated slabs. A loud rhythmic
clack-clack
noise that sounded like a freight train grew louder as he drew near. He passed open sheds with women sitting in front of wooden looms operated by foot pedals as they pulled on shuttles of yarn threading the weft to create a woven fabric. He paused to watch them work, but his presence elicited curious stares that broke the rhythm of the weavers’ work, so he moved on.

Soon he came to an emerald-green pond with lush banana plantations all around and what appeared to be the only pukka brick house in the entire village. It looked fairly new and prosperous, with lime-washed walls and marigolds planted in terra-cotta pots lined outside the front door. A small cluster of slippers crowded the veranda, indicating people were inside. Biren looked in through the doorway. He wasn’t expecting to see Maya, and when he did he thought for a moment she was a mirage of some sort, so he stood looking at her, not daring to believe she was real. But she was. So engrossed was she in her work, she did not notice him as she sat cross-legged on a bamboo floor mat with her head tilted and the unsharpened end of a pencil dimpled into her cheek. Her hair, braided in a loose side plait, tumbled in a lazy coil to the floor, where a pile of saris lay in a massive heap. Two men sat across from her, their backs turned toward the doorway. Many of the saris were opened out of their ironed folds to display the inside patterning and intricate designs of the end piece. Next to Maya, a sultry young girl with liquid eyes was deftly folding the saris back into neat envelope-like folds and placing them into separate piles. The girl looked up and noticed Biren at the doorway. She cupped her hand and whispered something into Maya’s ear. When Maya saw him, she didn’t even look surprised. She tilted her head in a gesture that invited him inside.

Biren placed his shoes outside the door and entered the room. The two men turned around to glance briefly at him. They were dressed identically in starched white dhotis and embroidered kurtas the pale color of buttermilk.

He sat leaning against the back wall, feeling vaguely guilty. Maya glanced at him once or twice and went back to listening to the two men. One of the gentlemen fingered the edge of a sari and said something about thread count, border designs and motif placement. He could see Maya making neat diagrams in a notebook on her lap with a steady hand. She said something to the young girl beside her, who appeared to be her assistant. The girl went to the back room and came back with another pile of saris, which she started opening up and laying out on the floor.

Biren watched Maya as she sat beautifully in a lotus pose, her spine tall and erect, accentuating her long lovely neck. The light from the open window cast a glow around her and made her hair shine. He tried to sit quietly, all the while wishing he could swat the mosquitoes that were making a meal of his toes. He wriggled his toes constantly without appearing to do so.

One of the men counted out a wad of cash and handed it to Maya, who recounted it and jotted something in her notebook. She put the money inside a small metal box with a latch. The men got to their feet and Maya and the young girl accompanied them to the door.

When they were gone, Biren walked over to her. “Maya,” he said, suddenly shy, wondering how he would explain what he was doing in the weavers’ village. But she seemed to have arrived at her own conclusions.

“I am so happy you came to visit the weavers’ village,” she said. She was putting away her notebook and pencil inside a cloth bag embroidered with mirror work. “Did you come by boat?”

“Yes,” he said, still feeling tongue-tied. She turned to the young girl who had reentered the room.

“This is Chaya,” she said by way of introduction, “my assistant.”

“Do you always have an assistant with a rhyming name?” Biren quipped. She made him feel gleeful and young, maybe because she was so composed and serious herself.

Maya laughed. “Chaya is the head
tanthi
’s daughter. She is a gifted weaver herself. Her family have been weavers for...how many generations now, Chaya?”

“I am the fifth generation,” the girl said, smiling shyly and covering her mouth with the end of her sari.

“Five generations!” Maya said, turning to Biren. “All that collective expertise, know-how and patterning go into each exquisite sari. The temple-style weave is the signature pattern of this particular village. Not many weavers can accomplish this complicated design.” She handed the girl a sheet of paper. “Here is the order list for next month. Make sure Yosef sees the special instructions.”

“Yes,
didi
,” said the girl, addressing Maya as her older sister.

Maya lifted the hem of her sari and slipped her shapely feet into a pair of leather slippers with red tassels. Biren sat on the stoop to put on his shoes and she sat beside him. Her silky braid brushed his arm softly like a caress.

She did not comment on his filthy feet, and he was glad he did not have to explain. How could he tell her he had been walking barefoot all over the village, shoes in hand, if not for the madness of looking for her?

“Do you have a boat?” she asked.

“I sent it back,” said Biren lamely.

“Then, how will you get back? No boat will go toward town now. They are all returning to the villages this time of the day.”

Biren felt a little foolish. All he had wanted was a one-way boat ride to Maya, and he did not care if he ever got back.

“My boatman is waiting,” she said. “You can come with me if you like.”

Biren smiled. “It will be my pleasure.”

They walked toward the riverbank. She carried the embroidered tote easily on her shoulder and walked with quick, light steps. The sun caught the sparkle of a gold floret in her earlobe, and a single bangle with a clasp fashioned in the shape of two elephant heads sat easily on her slender wrist. She was almost too beautiful to be real.

When they reached the boat, he climbed in and held out his hand, feeling the thrill of her fingers grasping his own. Once in the boat they sat like strangers at opposite ends, too far to talk, but Biren did not mind. He was content to just watch her.

A gigantic sun dipped into the curve of the horizon. The oar broke the water into lilac ribbons. The boatman sang an old Bhatiyali song.

“Oh, friend of my heart, you leave me afloat on a shoreless sea.”

Maya’s face was turned toward the shore, her profile etched in the dying sun.
Every feature on her face is perfect
, marveled Biren. What made her so serene and self-assured? he wondered idly. It had to be the security of being deeply loved and cherished. It hit him with a sickening jolt. Of course, it was another man. The thought was just too painful to entertain.

CHAPTER

45

It slowly dawned on Biren that courting Maya was going to be complicated. First there was the protocol. When he visited her house, he rarely got to speak to her alone. Jatin Nandi was broad-minded, but it was the old granny who set the rules. Granny had firm views on how respectable girls should conduct themselves. Loafing around and going for boat rides with a young man was out of the question. That was what common people did. Boys from good families looked for a chaste bride, not some gadabout they could have a good time with.

Maya was allowed to go to the weavers’ village, but only with a trusted boatman known to the family. It was just as well nobody had seen Biren in the boat with her the other day; otherwise, Maya would have some explaining to do.

All this put Biren in a bind. His only resort was to mentally keep tabs on Maya’s whereabouts and pretend to accidentally bump into her, so that he could legitimately walk a short distance with her and slip into a conversation. But the occasions were few, and each situation had to be strategically planned to make it all look natural. This caused Biren a great deal of frustration, and he felt increasingly irritable with the Indian community’s narrow-mindedness. His brother, Nitin, had been lucky. Calcutta was a big city and it was easy to remain anonymous. Also, Nitin had had an accomplice. Who did Biren have? He was lumped with the European community, where he did not belong, nor was he a part of the Indian community. There was nobody who could remotely act as a liaison between him and Maya.

The only thing left for him to do was to meet Maya at the weavers’ village. The village was far from town and nobody knew him there. But that was only once a month.
Once a month!
If something at work came up that coincided with the second Tuesday of the month, Biren had to rack his brains for elaborate excuses. He was past caring if it raised suspicions at work. All he cared about was that it gave him four hours of uninterrupted time with Maya.

When the day came and he visited the village, he observed her as she went about her work. The weavers came to accept him as her relative—a distant cousin, perhaps. Maya visited the different sheds, talked to the weavers, checked samples with her young helper, Chaya, always in tow, keenly observing and learning. She obviously hero-worshipped Maya. Biren learned a lot about the weaving and selling of hand-loom saris on those days, and some things came as a shock. For one, it seemed that the practices of the British government were aimed at wiping out the weaver community.

“It’s true,” Maya asserted. “Earlier the British government used to send merchants from Calcutta to act as middlemen who paid the weavers very poorly. The weavers were forced to match the prices of mass-produced factory textiles imported from Britain. How could they? As a result they were starving to death.”

She held up a delicate mauve sari with an inlay of intricate thread patterning in a subtle duotone. “Look at this exquisite weave,” she said passionately. “Centuries and centuries of craftsmanship passed down from one generation to the next have gone into this. All that history in a single piece of cloth. How can we lose this heritage?”

As Biren felt the fineness of the cloth, their fingers touched.

She smoothed out the sari before creasing it back into its folds, and patted it reassuringly.