Leela's Book (38 page)

Few in India mourned the departure of the suits. All attention was on the lingam, which had arrived that week in Delhi, flown first class by Pakistan International Airways to the Indira Gandhi airport, and thence by police escort to the Archaeological Survey of India at India Gate, and finally – after being subjected to a thorough examination by a team of respectful archaeologists – was packed up once more and dispatched to Calcutta, the city where Jinnah’s servant had ended his days, where a brand-new case had been erected for it in the Indian Museum, in front of the entrance to the Archaeology Gallery.

That was the story, and it was Pablo’s job to go to Calcutta, interview some passers-by about their feelings, and file a ‘nice, upbeat, cultural piece’ by the day after tomorrow at the latest.

As he sat on the terrace, waiting for the taxi he had ordered to arrive, Pablo thought about Bharati. He knew he had been insensitive for raising subjects as personal as her mother’s poetry and her estranged aunt – and remarkably stupid for doing so within hours of achieving his teenage dream of getting Ash’s sister into bed. Throughout their schooldays, Pablo and his friends had secretly pined for Ash’s aloof and pretty twin. They had come to the house to play chess with Ash or to collect him for birdwatching, morosely hoping for some interaction with that lovely creature. But Bharati was oblivious to their pining. She breezed through the house, waving to them en masse as she went – as if Ash’s entire social group was comprised of another, less important species; as if she was the flame-feathered flamingo, and they were a flock of common starlings, or worse, something waddling and banal, a duck or a chicken. They persisted, however, coming round early on Sunday mornings, hoping to see her at family breakfasts – but already, by the age of thirteen, Bharati took extravagant lie-ins at the weekends, and emerged around midday, looking gorgeously dishevelled and dispensing tart little snatches of her moodiness. They brought offerings – slim editions of Keats, a battered
Anna Karenina
, a cloth-bound
Gitanjali
– but Bharati had always just come out of a Keats phase, or had grown exasperated with nineteenth-century literary heroines, or was terribly bored of the Indian obsession with the big-bearded laureate and his old-fashioned ideas of what constituted progress. She offered scorn or casual thanks, and only once in every twenty times did she bestow upon these tongue-tied young men anything more substantial than a quick word or a cool, appraising glance. Bharati, like the rare migratory bird that she was, disappeared along some more elevated flightpath.

A horn sounded in the street below, and Pablo slung the bag over his shoulder, locked his flat and walked downstairs, wondering if he had ruined his chances with Bharati. He had thought the mystery of the poem might intrigue her; he certainly didn’t mean to upset her. But he had talked and talked this morning – it was as if a decade’s worth of repressed conversation had come pouring out – as if they were fourteen years old again, and he was still trying to impress her. Perhaps when he got back from Calcutta he could try to make amends. He couldn’t remember how long it was before she was due back in London – a week at the most. He could offer to take her birdwatching before that. He would tell her that he was no longer interested in the
Lalita
poems. But was it true? He had to admit that he had become a little obsessed by the idea of a collaboration between Meera and Leela. But if his guess was correct, then why hadn’t Leela objected when the poems were published in Meera’s name? And why had she had no contact with Meera’s children? He remembered the woman he had met in the basti – so elegant and sad and intriguing all at the same time. Perhaps if Bharati had had a woman like that in her life, she would be happier.

Sitting in the departure lounge of the domestic airport, waiting for his flight to Calcutta to be called, Pablo pulled out a photocopy of the rediscovered
Lalita
poem and read it again and again, looking for clues.

‘They say that this year the pollution is less,’ said a talkative man to his left, ‘because of this new compressed natural gas the taxis are running on, isn’t it?’ But although normally Pablo enjoyed interacting with strangers, and especially educating the ignorant about threats to the environment, on this occasion he ignored the opportunity. He had just noticed something about the poem – its date of composition, the place in which it was written:
Santiniketan, November 1979
. Twenty-two years ago. The year of Bharati’s birth. The month the twins were born – Ash was celebrating his birthday on Thursday.

Pablo gave a cry.
Santiniketan
– it had been staring him in the face all along.

He arrived in Calcutta, went straight to his hotel and asked for the times of trains to Santiniketan. Rabindranath Tagore’s university was on the outskirts of Bolpur, which was barely three hours away from Calcutta. The trains left Howrah station every morning at 6.05, and returned at four in the afternoon. He could get there and back tomorrow without anybody – the editor, the paper, the lingam – being any the wiser. This was an opportunity for him, a young reporter, to find out something, on his own, something real: not a regurgitated press release, or ministerial statement, or counter-claim from a non-governmental body, but something of true merit. He was supposed to return to the Indian Museum tomorrow and interview the Director. But he could do the interview on Wednesday, or on the telephone. He wasn’t going to pass up a trip to Santiniketan for a repatriated lingam. No way.

The next morning, Pablo dozed off on the train, and when he woke, they were travelling through the open countryside. As far as the eye could see, there were date palms, ponds and fields dotted with peasants. Pablo, who had grown up in cities, had a fascination with the Indian countryside – he was pleased that it did not make him shudder – and he looked out at the women as they worked in the fields, carefully cutting, gathering, scraping the dry rice stalks into piles. The starch in their saris had long since worn away, but the women stood out in their splashes of yellow and orange, with their curved blouses, their collarbones and shoulder blades, even the occasional kneecap where the mud was deep, their hair knotted and oiled.

The train pulled in to Bolpur just after nine. There was one platform, and, at the exit, countless cycle rickshaws, and a noisy clamour. Pablo chose a bicycle with a smart yellow hood, whose driver was young and looked strong. ‘Take me to the literature faculty,’ Pablo told the man. They drove through the town, past shops selling things found the length of India: shelves of soap in luminous green and pink packets, kilos of sugar weighed out and tied up in thin plastic bags, hanging khadi cotton school satchels, folded flowery saris. There was a row of metal trunk shops, a television-selling centre, an Internet point, a guesthouse. After a while, the shops thinned out into stalls, the stalls into fields, and here the rickshaw turned left, towards a sprawl of trees and houses and, in the distance, spacious playing fields. The rickshaw driver’s thick, muscular legs strained to reach them, over red, dusty paths, past yellowing hostels, under the branches of old, wide trees. ‘University campus,’ he explained, pointing right, and chanted: ‘Rabindra Bhavan, Kala Bhavan, Sangeet Bhavan, Central Office, Central Library, Chinee Bhavan, Mandir.’

The driver stopped outside a large white building with a flight of wide steps, and Pablo, looking up, saw that he had been brought not to the literature faculty, but to the Central Library. Feeling in his pocket for his wallet, he opened it and took out the newspaper clipping of his article about the poem, with the picture of Meera Chaturvedi. Then he walked up the steps, pushed through the doors and presented himself to the two gentlemen at the desk.

But they shook their heads when they were shown the clipping. They were too young to have known her, Pablo, thought; and he asked to be introduced to one of the older librarians. ‘It’s very important,’ he said, pulling out his press card.

‘We have reduced staff,’ one of the men protested. ‘It’s still the Puja holiday.’ But the other man got to his feet and moved off with some alacrity, and Pablo sat down to wait. He waited for a long time, and when the old librarian, a thin lady with glasses and a rough cotton sari, eventually arrived, she peered at the clipping and shook her head. ‘What did the person study?’

‘Literature,’ said Pablo.

‘Do you know who taught her?’

‘Ved Vyasa Chaturvedi.’

‘Oh, him.’ The librarian sniffed. ‘Wait a moment.’

She took out her keys and opened the door into her office.

‘Come in,’ she said, speaking over her shoulder as she shuffled towards a big metal cupboard at the back of the room. ‘He had a year-photograph taken with all his students. It was a new fashion. For a while, all the teachers did it. I kept copies because the first year I was in it, too. He insisted.’ She was looking through the shelves of files. ‘Here it is.’ She picked out a stiff cardboard print, flicked away the dust, and handed it to Pablo. ‘I’m there at the bottom, on the far right.’

Pablo looked at the photograph. It was black and white, taken on some steps, probably of the library. The librarian sat a little away from the group on a chair, a smile of alarm on her face. Ved Vyasa Chaturvedi sat at the front, in the middle, his lips pursed slightly. Leela was at the very back, staring straight into the camera, absolutely solemn. She wore her sari with the pallu pulled tightly round her bosom and tucked primly in at the waist. Next to her, holding a flower in her hands, her face radiant, was a girl with a cascade of long hair. ‘That’s her,’ Pablo said, pointing with his finger. ‘Meera, the woman Vyasa Chaturvedi married—’

‘If you say so.’ The librarian took the photograph out of his hands, slipped it back into the cupboard and shut the doors with a clang. ‘That’s all I can help you with,’ she said, ushering him out. ‘Vyasa Chaturvedi was a very popular teacher, but he only worked here for a year.’

‘Is there anybody else who might remember anything?’ Pablo asked.

‘Try the Public Relations Officer,’ she said. ‘Or go and ask at Vidya Bhavan, the humanities faculty. It’s a five-minute walk away. The Puja holiday for the academics is still on but the admin are here.’

The Public Relations Officer was an affable man who worked in a building that resembled a cottage, with a gate and a flower garden and a desk with a large photograph of Gandhi and Tagore hanging above it. He ordered Pablo a fine Darjeeling tea, and spoke with enthusiasm of the university and its teachers and alumni but he had nothing to tell Pablo about Meera Bose. Twenty years ago was a very long time, he pointed out; the only people who might know were the academic staff. He doubted that there was anybody who had been here as long as twenty years. He opened his hands wide to show that he knew nothing and repeated what the library staff had said. ‘But they won’t return to full teaching until next week,’ he sighed, ‘after the last puja is over.’

Pablo, too, sighed as he walked outside, and down the lane that led into the middle of the campus, under Santiniketan’s large peepul trees and into the pleasant, dappled shade. Vidya Bhavan was a long low yellow-painted building. By now it was nearing midday and most of the staff had left for the weekend. Pablo stood in the doorway, trying to explain his problem to the remaining Section Officer, holding up the clipping and feeling hopeless. ‘What is her name?’ the man asked. ‘And her father’s name?’ But he shook his head when Pablo answered. ‘Better that you come back the day after tomorrow,’ the Section Officer said. ‘Then we will allocate the concerned official to your problem. Actually,’ he added, ‘the day after is the Diwali holiday. Please return on Friday, when the clerical staff will be sure to see to your enquiry.’

Pablo was walking out to the road again, when the Section Officer cycled past. ‘Go and ask at Central Office,’ the man called. ‘They stay till five on Tuesdays. Maybe they can pull out examination records for you.’

Pablo stood on the road where six workers with cloths wrapped around their heads were ladling red grit onto the path from a lorry. He felt annoyed with these people for not cooperating with his investigation. Not that they would be able to tell him anything useful – for what was he looking for, anyway? That was the problem: he didn’t really know. Yes, he could go to Central Office. He could also go and check for records of Meera at the girls’ hostels; but perhaps what he needed most was some refreshment.

‘Tea?’ he said to the rickshaw driver, and the young man nodded. The student canteen was still closed for the holiday, but the rickshaw driver knew of a teashop nearby which was run by a Santiniketan old-timer: the same family, three generations since the era of Tagore.

It was lunchtime now, and the teashop, when they got to it, was almost empty. Pablo and the rickshaw driver sat down beside the window and gave their order to a waiter.

The waiter was an old man: thin and slow and haggard like so many working men in India. But he was of just the right age, Pablo reflected, and when he brought over their order, and put down the tray on the table, Pablo asked him, ‘Have you always worked here?’

The man nodded, and asked, in his turn, ‘Are you here on business of some kind?’

Pablo hesitated before answering, and it was the rickshaw driver who spoke, looking up from slurping his tea and saying something quickly in Bengali.

‘So you are looking for somebody?’ the waiter said, and Pablo nodded. ‘For a woman?’

Pablo nodded again, and pulled out the clipping of Meera.

The man took it from him and studied it carefully. Pablo could tell nothing from the expression on his face but when he handed the clipping back, the waiter said, ‘Never seen her before in my life.’

Pablo was beginning to feel very foolish. And what kind of scoop was this anyway? His editor wouldn’t sanction yet another story on this twenty-year dead poet, even if her daughter was a highly desirable individual whom the journalist in question was sleeping with. How was he going to explain himself back in Delhi? It was lack of sleep that gave him these pompous notions of himself; they always disappeared once he had some food inside him, leaving a faint, shameful residue in the mind. He took out his notebook, and with his pen, drew a dark, ominous line through the words that he had written at the top of a new page just this morning on the train:
Leela and Meera Bose. Mystery of the poet Lalita. Santiniketan?