Flame Tree Road (5 page)

The same thought must have crossed Shamol’s mind. “Little wonder our Biren has a keen interest in astronomy,” he said. “He was excited to learn that Sirius is used by mariners to navigate the Pacific. When I told him Sirius has a small companion star known as the ‘pup,’ Biren said, ‘That’s like me and Nitin. I am Sirius and Nitin is the pup. I will show him the way.’ Then he asked me completely out of the blue, ‘Is Sirius really very serious, Baba? Does he not talk very much?’”

Shibani erupted in a bubble of laughter. “He says the funniest things, really!”

“When I explained Sirius was named after the Egyptian god and has nothing to do with the English word, he listened carefully. He has an excellent memory, our son—he remembers everything.” He sighed and was silent. Somewhere on the riverbank a night bird called. “You know, Shibani, if I had my way, I would send Biren to an English school. I have always believed a correct English education is the passport to the bigger world. The bigger world is where our sons belong.”

“The English school must be very expensive, don’t you think?” Shibani asked.

“Not necessarily. Some English missionary schools are free. It is not easy to get admission, that’s all. I heard our jute mill is affiliated with a famous institution in Calcutta.”

“Maybe you should talk to Owen McIntosh about it. Your boss likes you. There’s no harm in asking him, is there?”

“That’s true,” Shamol agreed. “Tell me, beloved, would you feel very sad if the boys were sent away to a boarding school?”

Shibani shook her head. “I only want the best for them.”

“I do, too.” Shamol sighed. “But even if the boys got admission, my biggest hurdle will be to convince my family. They all firmly believe the only agenda of missionary schools is to convert Indian students to Christianity by offering them free education.”

They were silent, each with their own thoughts, for a while.

On the far horizon, tiny pinpricks of light appeared on the river. The melancholy strains of the Bhatiyali fisherman’s song slipped in and out of the breeze.

“Look!” Shibani cried, sitting up. “It’s the otter fishermen!”

They watched as the night fishermen from the mangrove village floated by in their bamboo houseboats. The glow of their lamps threw a broken sparkle on the water, and the dark, shiny heads of their trained otters bobbed up and down, their wet, gleaming forms tumbling in the boat’s wake. The otters herded the fish into the waiting nets and when the net was lifted into the boat it was full of flashing silver.

“How clever the fishermen are, don’t you think?” mused Shibani. “They just float along singing songs and the otters do all the hard work for them.”

“It is not as simple as it looks, beloved,” said Shamol. “It has taken generations to perfect this technique. Otter fishing is an ancient tradition passed down from father to son. The otters are bred in captivity. They would never survive in the wild. It is a symbiotic relationship between man and beast. But all these old traditions are dying out, aren’t they? More and more fishermen leave the village to find work in the city. Soon the memory of the otter fisherman will remain only in song. Then that, too, will be forgotten.” He got to his feet and held out his hand to Shibani to help her up. “Come, my queen, we must go back.”

They walked back to the
basha
, hand in hand, fingers entwined like teenagers.

“There is so much I wish for our two boys,” said Shamol. “I want them to be curious and have faith in their own ideas. I want them to know the wonder of books but also learn from the river and the sky.”

Shibani hugged his arm tightly. “The most important thing is they have you for their father,” she said in her honeyed voice. “You have given them everything. Now it’s up to them.”

CHAPTER

8

Biren looked forward to Tuesday all week. It was market day—the only day he had time alone with Father. Since Nitin had come along, Biren was forced to share Shamol with his brother. Nitin demanded constant attention. If Father stood up, Nitin wanted to be carried. If Father sat down, Nitin climbed onto his lap. Nitin interrupted important conversations by touching Shamol’s cheek and, once having got his father’s attention, he smiled his foolish smile and went back to sucking his thumb. Father judiciously divided his time equally among family members, the same way he divided a papaya. Mother had an unfair advantage because she and Father shared the same bed and they could talk all night long. The last sound Biren heard as he drifted off to sleep was their whispered conversation.

Thank God for Tuesday. It made up for the shortfalls of the week. The fish market was too far for Nitin to walk, which was just as well, although leaving the house in his presence normally provoked a monstrous howl. The only option was to slip out undetected in the wee hours, a conspiracy that made Biren feel grown up and in league with the adults.

The bamboo grove was still dark and hushed as father and son made their way to the fish market. Shamol carried his umbrella looped over his arm and Biren skipped along swinging two empty jute bags, one in each hand.

“You don’t need an umbrella today, Baba,” Biren chirped. “Look—” he swung his bag in a big joyful arc at the sky “—there is not a single cloud in the sky.”

“I know,
mia
,” Shamol replied. “My umbrella is broken. I am taking it to the market to be repaired. I don’t want to be caught without it when the rains come.”

The road opened out to an expanse of the river-sky, above which a feeble sun struggled to rise. The tea shop was still shuttered. Underneath the flame tree a
baul
minstrel sat cross-legged on a carpet of fallen blossoms, lost in his meditation. In his bright orange robe, he looked like a fallen petal himself.

A herd of cows bumped and shuffled across the riverbed toward the grazing ground. They were rounded up by a ragged lad with a neem toothpick stuck between his teeth.

At the ghat, the river ferry had just pulled up to disgorge a crowd of villagers. Vendors with earthen pots on bamboo poles slung across their shoulders pushed past women with large baskets on their heads and tiny babies on their backs. They skirted around an old man who shuffled slowly, dragging a monstrous elephant-size foot, the skin over it knobbed and lumpy like a custard apple.

Biren was about to swivel around to take another look when Shamol cleared his throat. “There’s no need to stare at him,
mia
,” he said softly.

“What wrong with his foot, Baba?” Biren asked, trotting to keep up with his father. “Why is it
so
big?”

“The man has elephantiasis,
mia
, as a result of an unfortunate disease known as filariasis. It is spread by a mosquito.”

Biren looked at a puffed-up welt on his upper arm with alarm.

“Oh, Baba, I have a mosquito bite!”

Shamol glanced out of the corner of his eye and suppressed a smile. “Don’t worry,
mia
, you won’t get elephantiasis.”

“How do you know, Baba?” Biren cried. He scratched the bite gingerly. It made the itch worse. His leg was also beginning to feel unusually heavy.

“Because elephantiasis is a rare disease. That is not to say it cannot happen to us. After all, it takes but a small misfortune, the size of a mosquito bite, to change someone’s life, doesn’t it? You must remember to be compassionate,
mia
, and to try to help others less fortunate than yourself.”

“Like poor Charudi, who lives under the banyan tree?”

“Yes, like Charudi. Remind me to buy some bananas for her at the market. We can stop by the temple and see her on our way home.”

* * *

While Father was getting the
hilsa
fish weighed and cleaned, Biren wandered over to the chicken man’s stall to check on his favorite rooster. Week after week, the black rooster never got sold. The chicken man said it was a special-occasion bird, too big and too expensive for most people to afford. Biren was secretly thankful, because he had grown rather attached to the rooster. He admired the bird as it strutted around its wire cage cocky and bright eyed. It had shiny blue-black feathers and a bright red comb and wattles—the exact same shade of vermillion his mother wore in the part of her hair.

But today the rooster’s cage was empty. In the next cage, six miserable hens with soiled feathers were crammed together looking half-dead.

“What happened to the black rooster?” Biren cried, pointing to the empty cage.

The chicken man made a chop-chop gesture with the edge of his palm. “Sold!” He waggled his toes and grinned widely with
paan
-stained teeth. “Goddess Laxmi smiled on me today. Tilok, the tea shop man, purchased the rooster to celebrate the birth of his twin boys.”

Biren’s eyes wandered over to the pile of shiny blue-black feathers and freshly gutted entrails cast to one side. A mangy pariah dog slunk around trying to take a lick. He suddenly felt nauseated.

“I have to go,” he said hastily, and ran back to his father.

* * *

Shamol flipped through his notebook. “I think we have everything,” he said. “Let me see—fish, vegetables, joss sticks, areca nut and betel leaves for your grandmother, soap nut and
shikakai
for your mother.” He looked up. “Is the flower man here? Oh, there he is. Let’s buy a fresh jasmine garland for your mother. She’ll like that.”

“And bananas for Charudi?” Biren reminded him.

“Oh, that’s right, bananas for Charudi,” said Shamol. “Also, there is something else I know I am forgetting.”

“Your umbrella, Baba,” Biren reminded him. He looked toward the umbrella man’s stall, but it was empty. “The man is not there.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Shamol, picking up his bags, “we’ll get the umbrella next week. Hopefully it won’t rain before then.”

* * *

They made their way out of the fish market and walked toward the temple. Shamol carried both jute bags to balance the weight on either side. Leafy mustard greens and bottle gourds protruded over the top of one. There was fish in the other. Biren walked beside him carrying a bunch of bananas and a large brown coconut.

Charudi—whose full name was Charulata—lived under the banyan tree by the river just outside the village temple. A hollow inside the banyan tree trunk served as her storage compartment. Here she kept a small brass pot and books wrapped in a red cotton towel. Charulata shared the tree with a family of monkeys. The monkeys seemed to have accepted her as one of their own because they never tampered with her belongings and left her in peace. They didn’t afford the same respect to the temple devotees, however. Monkeys ran off with slippers, snatched fruits out of hands, gnashed their teeth and made babies howl. The animals were a nuisance but enjoyed the sanctity of the temple, thanks to Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god.

As Shamol and Biren neared the temple, they saw Charulata sitting under the tree, gazing out at the river and fingering her prayer beads. She was a tiny bright-eyed woman who wore a piece of white cloth, darned and patched in several places, but clean. Her hair, cropped close to her head, was a snowy fizz. Destitute since her teenage years, Charulata had taught herself to read and write Sanskrit, a language far more difficult than Bengali.

“She is even more learned than the temple priest,” Shamol once remarked. He had great admiration for Charulata. “She has studied all the great scriptures but the poor woman can never enter the temple.”

“Why cannot she enter the temple?” asked Biren, puzzled.

“Because Charulata is a widow,
mia
, and Hindu widows are not allowed inside holy places. It is a cruel and meaningless custom of our society since ancient times. The poor woman is banned for no fault of her own. But Charulata does not need to go to any temple because she knows that God is hidden in every human soul.”

Charulata looked up and saw them. She motioned them over with a smile and lifted her hand to caress Biren’s cheek. The skin on her fingers was rough but her touch was tender.

“This boy gets more handsome every day,” she said softly.

Biren gave her the bananas.

“Bless you, dear child,” she said. “Wait, I also have something for you.” She turned around and, reaching inside the tree hollow, pulled out a flat object wrapped in newspaper. She handed it to Biren.

“What is it?” he asked curiously, setting the coconut down to accept it. He turned the packet over in his hands.

“A gift.” Charulata looked at him with shining eyes. “Open it and you will see. I made it specially for you.”

“How is your cough, Charulata?” Shamol asked, setting down his heavy bags. He took out a white handkerchief to mop his brow.

“Much better, much better,” chirped Charulata. “My nephew, you know the one in Dhaka Medical College, gave me a herbal tonic. But more important he gave me a book of the Brahma sutras. I don’t know if it was the book or the medicine that cured me.”

“Baba, look!” cried Biren. He held up a slim oblong-shaped palm bark with beautiful patterning in white. He turned to Charulata, incredulous. “Did you make this?” The paisley designs were painted with delicate strokes and closely woven together like the border of an embroidered sari.