Teatime for the Firefly (6 page)

The very next day, as if to prove Dadamoshai’s luck theory right, my baby crow died, as well. By then we were too confused about luck to know who or what to blame.

* * *

Later that night, Moon was asleep and I was tiptoeing to the bathroom when I heard the adults talking on the veranda. Both Mima and Dadamoshai were smoking cigars and enjoying a brandy, while Uncle Robi voiced his displeasure with tiny coughs of disapproval.

“She will get a hiding for this,” Mima said. “I have warned Moon. I can’t believe she said Layla is bad luck.”

“Don’t blame your daughter, Mitra,” Dadamoshai said. “Small towns do not let people forget their pasts. In Sylhet, Layla will always be the madwoman’s daughter, the bad-luck child. She will hear it until, sadly, she starts believing it herself. How will she survive? That girl will grow up to be a beauty. Have you noticed how people stare at her? Do you think you can prevent men from taking advantage of her? They will only mislead her, abuse her trust and marry someone else. I know the double standards of men in our society only too well, Mitra. I cannot bear to see anything bad happen to Layla...that child has been through too much already.”

A chair creaked as someone shifted their weight. My uncle coughed. He usually had nothing to add to conversations.

“Dada, what you say is true,” said Mima softly. “It makes me sad, really.” I heard her blow her nose. “I try my best to protect Layla, but I may not be doing enough. I don’t know what else to do.”

“I have been thinking about it,” Dadamoshai said slowly. “Layla is better off here in Silchar than in Sylhet. No one knows of her past here. People will talk and eventually find out. But I have clout in this town, and nobody will dare take liberties with her. She is safe with me. At the very least, I can make sure Layla gets a good education and learns to stand on her own feet.”

Mima laughed. “If anybody can give that child a future, it’s you, Dada. But how will you manage? A young girl needs a mother....”

“I have Chaya. She is a good-hearted, nurturing woman, and she will take care of Layla’s needs,” said Dadamoshai. “And I will be counting on you, Mitra. You have been a wonderful mother to Layla.”

Then, to my surprise, my uncle piped up. He was always so quiet that it was strange to hear his voice. “It will be for the best, Mitra,” he said, in his thin, raspy voice. “But I will miss Layla. She is like our own daughter.”

Mima sniffed. “I can’t imagine our family without her. And what about Moon? Those two fight like crickets, but they are good for each other.” Her voice broke.

“Think about it, Mitra,” Dadamoshai said softly. “Moon will marry someday and leave home, and what will become of Layla then?”

“Moon? Marry?” Mima gave a funny broken laugh. “I have no high hopes, Dada. As long as that child stands on her own feet and bulldozes her way through life, I am happy.”

“I want to take over Layla’s care—as soon as possible,” said Dadamoshai. “These are impressionable years. It will only get harder as she gets older.”

“But she is only seven years old, Dada!” Mima cried. “What am I going to tell Moon? She will be hysterical!”

“Tell her the truth.”

“I can’t do it, Dada.”

“Well, then,” said Dadamoshai, “I will tell her. There will be tantrums, no doubt.”

I could hardly contain my excitement. I crept back to the bedroom. The dim light from the veranda fell over Moon as she lay sleeping. She was sprawled sideways across the bed, her limbs akimbo, round fists balled up as if for a fight. I pushed her to one side to make room for myself and whispered into her ear, “Move over, sister. This is going to be my house and my bed from now on. The next time you visit, you will be my guest.”

She flailed her hands and swatted at me. I was suddenly overcome with love. I wrapped my arms and legs around her and kissed her cheek. For the first time, I realized how very much I loved Moon, and how terribly I would miss her once we were no longer together.

CHAPTER 7

Shortly after Manik left for Calcutta, the monsoon broke with a fury. It poured like the bottom had fallen from the sky. Rain splattered in buckets from rooftops, turning into turbulent streams that raked up mud and debris and furrowed down past our house. The river overflowed its banks. Small koi fish jumped in the paddy fields and ragged children vied with one another to catch them in broken bamboo baskets. The sky was a deep asphalt-gray. Clouds darkened after a pause, only to gather forces for another deluge. Occasionally a rainbow throbbed in the sky, and sometimes the evening ended with a poignant, cloud-filled sunset.

Dadamoshai’s desk on the veranda was covered up with tarp, his papers moved inside. The blue elephant cushions on the chairs were wet and smelled of mold. Disheveled sparrows perched, puffed and glum, on the jasmine trellis, lulled by the downpour. Almost overnight, moss inched up the garden wall, and brilliant orange fungi sprouted in cracks. A chorus of cacophonous frogs ribetted through the evening.

When the rains paused, the air was so dense it was hard to breathe. Gone were the sparkling fireflies. Mosquitoes came out in angry droves. They attacked like suicide bombers, whining into ears, biting arms and legs, between toes and in the most unscratchable places.

I stayed home, nursing a monstrous cold, drinking ginger tea and staring at the calendar, watching the days tick by. Only five and a half months remained before Manik’s wedding day.

After four days, the postman finally resumed his rounds. I saw him lean his bicycle on the front gate and walk up the garden path, sifting through the letters. There was a small package for me.

It was professionally wrapped in brown paper, tied neatly with white string and fastened with red lacquer seals. There was a return label that read
The Oxford Book Suppliers Ltd.
and a Calcutta address. I opened it quickly to find a slim volume of Tagore’s poems,
Gitanjali
. It was a beautiful handmade book, bound in red silk with a gold-patterned border. It reminded me of a wedding sari. I flipped it open to a page that held a bookmark. The bookmark was cream-colored, die-cut of nubbly handmade paper with a block-printed gold paisley motif. The name and address of the bookstore was printed below it. I read the poem on the marked page, my heart beating wildly.

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honor it with a touch of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am aware, and the time of offering go by.

Inside the cover of the book, Manik had inscribed
For you
in an elegant scrawl that ran right across the page. It was signed with an
M
. Mysteriously obtuse, no names mentioned anywhere. Inside was a folded note.

Dear Layla,

I came across this book of Tagore’s poems and thought of you. Please accept this small gift as a remembrance of our talks together.

Manik

I could envision him scrawling across the page, the nib of his fountain pen catching slightly on the rough fibers of the handmade paper. Was it a coincidence that the bookmark had been on that particular page? Of course not! I chided myself. He was just a friend, nothing more. Yet what if...? Tiny tendrils of hope pushed through my brain.

That night I slept with the book and Manik’s handkerchief under my pillow. I had the strangest dream. Manik Deb was standing in a lily pond among the reeds and shaking out the pages of the silk-covered book. Hundreds of fireflies fell out into the water. They spun around in dizzy circles, sizzling like cumin seeds in hot oil before their lights extinguished one by one. At the far end of the pond, on the opposite bank I could see a small girl stretching out her thin arms toward him. “Look at me, Dada, I can fly!” she cried in a chirping voice. But Manik did not see or hear her. He just continued opening the pages of the book and releasing the fireflies.

It was then that I woke up.

* * *

It is hard to describe the emotional turmoil I went through in the weeks that followed. I felt hopelessly conflicted. There was so much I wanted to believe and so much I dared not. A streak of guilt coursed through my mind every time I thought about Manik Deb. Our society was bound by unwritten rules and I had overstepped an invisible line. Accepting a gift of love poems from another woman’s fiancé was as illicit as being kissed. Yet it was deliciously arousing and I felt hopelessly drawn.

I could have brushed off Manik’s gesture, put the book on my shelf and gone on with my life. Yet I clung to it like my last, slim, red-and-gold hope on earth. I caressed the silk cover, kissed the long pen strokes of his inscription. I savored every poem and swelled with the cadence of the lines and felt irresistibly connected to the heart where it was coming from. I knew it was the poet and not Manik who wrote the words but I wanted desperately to believe otherwise. Those were strangely melded days where I floated in limbo, an outsider to the world around me, a firefly baffled by daylight.

CHAPTER 8

Finally the rains abated. The sky gathered her dark, voluminous skirts and swept over the Himalayas into Tibet, leaving behind a drizzle like a sprinkling of fairy dust. Life returned to normal.

The ground was rich and moist. The earth turned a shrill and noisy green, vibrant as a parrot. The evenings felt lighter now, and on some days there was a lilt of autumn in the air. A river breeze flitted through the house, suffusing rooms with the scent of jasmine. Dadamoshai resumed his writing on the veranda.

It was late afternoon and I was reading in my room when I heard an unfamiliar voice calling out a greeting on the veranda. I parted the curtains a crack. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it was Mr. Sen, Kona’s father. He was not a regular visitor to our house.

Mr. Sen was a portly, round-shouldered man, dressed traditionally in a white dhoti and a handwoven brown waistcoat over his long starched cotton shirt. His face was black and shiny as a plum. He had oily hair, bright, beady eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache over a small mouth that was pulled tight as a purse string. His small plump hands were weighted down with an array of auspicious gemstone rings—coral, tigereye, topaz—each promising some aspect of health or wealth to its wearer.

Dadamoshai was in the middle of his writing, and I could see he was distracted with a thought half strung across his brain. As usual, he looked like a preoccupied sage, surrounded by his books and papers, his snow-white hair unkempt, his glasses askew on his nose. He was barefoot, his worn wooden clogs undoubtedly lost somewhere under his desk.

“My dear Rai Sahib, I have been meaning to pay you a visit.” Mr. Sen leaned his umbrella against the post and held out his hands in an exaggerated gesture of effusiveness toward my grandfather.

“A pleasant surprise, Sen Babu, a pleasant surprise indeed!” Dadamoshai exclaimed, patting absentmindedly for the cap of his fountain pen under his papers and shuffling his foot under the desk to feel for his clogs. “Please, please, do have a seat.”

Mr. Sen gathered the pleats of his dhoti with care and perched on the edge of the sofa, like a plump sparrow on a windowsill. He watched with a beatific smile as my grandfather tried to get his bumbling act together. Despite all the cordiality between him and my grandfather, their relationship bordered on distaste. Mr. Sen’s visit was undoubtedly suspicious.

I strained my ears to listen to their conversation. Mr. Sen was talking about the preparations for Kona’s wedding. He dropped numbers here and there, pretending to bemoan the costs of things, but all the while seeking to impress Dadamoshai with how much money he was spending.

“You have no idea how much it costs to get a girl married these days. We are in the middle of wartime and every item is either in short supply or priced to make your hands bleed,” he lamented.

Dadamoshai was trying very hard to look engaged. “I must congratulate you, Sen Babu. You have indeed made a fine choice of a son-in-law in Manik Deb. He is an exceptional young man with a remarkable future ahead of him,” he said conversationally.

Mr. Sen’s eyes wandered off into the jasmine trellis. He suddenly looked morose and crestfallen. His mustache twitched, and he nibbled his lips nervously, looking amazingly like a rodent.

“Manik Deb...” He paused, as if recalling a painful toothache. “Manik Deb has let us all down badly. He has devastated his family name and mine. It is unforgivable what he has done.”

Dadamoshai sat up, surprised, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Goodness gracious, is something wrong?”

“More than wrong, Rai Bahadur, sir, more than wrong! The biggest calamity has befallen our family.” Mr. Sen wiped his brow with the tail end of his starched cotton dhoti. He leaned forward, took a grateful sip of tea from the cup Chaya had just set down and sighed deeply and sadly.

I pressed against the wall of my bedroom, almost fusing myself into the plaster, trying to get every word.

“Can you believe that this foolish fellow has given up his prestigious job in civil service and decided instead to become a tea planter!”

“A tea planter!” exclaimed Dadamoshai in wonderment, and with a twinge of awe.

“Yes, a tea planter.” Mr. Sen spat out the words distastefully like small eggshells he had just found in his omelet. “Imagine that! Who goes through a fine Oxford education with honors and distinctions to become, of all things, a
tea planter
?”

I could see Dadamoshai was highly amused. He threw back his head, let out a belly laugh and thumped the sofa cushion. Mr. Sen stiffened.

“Why does this amuse you, sir? Please explain yourself. I do not see the joke in this.”

Dadamoshai quickly composed himself. “Pardon me, Sen Babu. I did not mean to insult you,” he said apologetically. “But I do think it is rather bold and adventurous of the young man to deviate from the beaten path. I have heard tea jobs are very prestigious. It is rare for an Indian to be employed by a British company. They only hire Europeans, I know. I think you should be proud of your future son-in-law. It is a great honor for an Indian to be selected, really.”

“Honor? So that he can run around in the jungles with those debauched Englishmen? Rai Bahadur, sir, I have not been so deeply ashamed in my entire life! He has made a laughingstock of us all. Kona and her mother have not stopped crying since they got the news. All we received was one brief telegram, that’s all. ‘Change of career. Accepted job with Jardine Henley Co. as Assistant Manager in Aynakhal Tea Estate. Details to follow.’ What details? There has not been another squeak from Manik Deb. He has not replied to any letters from his family for the past month. He has simply vanished like a coward into the jungle.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
A tea planter?
Why would Manik want to do that, of all things?

“And that is not the worst part,” Mr. Sen was saying. “Manik Deb has signed a contract that does not allow him to marry for the first three years. It is the company rule. He did this without telling any of us. The shame of it all.”

“This may not be a bad thing,” Dadamoshai mused. “It will give Kona some time to mature before she marries. It is always advisable.”

“Mature, you say! Why, sir, my daughter will be a
seed pumpkin
by the time Manik Deb is ready to exchange garlands with her. How can I risk that?”

Mr. Sen nibbled his lips some more. Even from a distance, I saw glistening beads of sweat on his brow. “She has already waited seven years for this worthless fellow and spent all this time embroidering tablecloths! What is she to do for another three years? Embroider more tablecloths, you tell me?”

“Send her to school,” Dadamoshai suggested brightly. “An educated girl will make a fine companion for Manik Deb. He seems to enjoy intellectual conversations.”

“No, no, no, Rai Bahadur, sir, you are not getting the point!” Mr. Sen fanned himself furiously. “A girl of a marriageable age cannot be left on the shelf for too long. She will become like the suitcase left behind at a station where trains do not stop by anymore. Then I will have to pay even more money to get her married. I am beginning to doubt Manik Deb’s sanity. His tea-garden job has no future. Life in the plantations is very—what shall I say—different. There are only Europeans. I don’t know how my daughter will fit in. If only he could give us an explanation for his senseless decision. Which, my dear Rai Sahib, brings me to the reason why I have come to see you today. I need a favor from you.”

“Ah,” said Dadamoshai. He had probably suspected all along that his wily neighbor had an ulterior motive for dropping by.

“I know Manik Deb spent a lot of time in your company. He is a great admirer of your ideas, writings and such.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Did he by any chance talk to you about applying for a tea-plantation job?” Mr. Sen eyed my grandfather suspiciously, as if he was a coconspirator in Manik’s deceit.

“My goodness, he mentioned not a word of it to me,” said Dadamoshai, his eyes round and innocent as a child. “I am sure Manik has his reasons for making a career change. Have you tried to contact him?”

“Oh yes, we called the Jardine Henley Head Office in Calcutta several times. I finally spoke to one senior director. He was most cordial. When I told him I was calling from Silchar, he asked me if I knew you. His name is James Lovelace.”

“Oh yes, James Lovelace! Of course, I know him well.” Dadamoshai smiled broadly. “He is the brother of a very dear friend of mine. I heard James was in India, but I had no idea he worked for a tea company.”

“Well, James Lovelace is a big shot of Jardine Henley & Company. He is very impressed with your work in the field of education, and praised your intelligence, character, etcetera. And since you are such a dear friend of his brother’s in England...”

“Sister, actually,” Dadamoshai said a little dreamily.

Mr. Sen’s piggy eyes were quick to catch on. Ha! He seemed to be thinking, the sister—no doubt one of the Rai Bahadur’s sleazy English mistresses. But this was no time for moral judgments. He was on a crucial mission.

“Well, his sister, then...but maybe you could use your influence with James Lovelace to contact Manik Deb? We urgently need to speak to him. Manik’s older brother, who arranged this marriage, is very disturbed. He thinks he can convince Manik to change his mind before it is too late, which is why we have not postponed the date for the wedding.”

“That...I cannot promise,” said Dadamoshai evasively. He did not believe in arm-twisting someone in his or her career choice. “Maybe we should trust the young man’s decision. What I have seen of Manik tells me he is no run-of-the-mill fellow. The tea-plantation job may suit his adventurous spirit just fine.”

“But what about my daughter? Who knows what goes on in those tea gardens? I don’t know a single person who knows anything about the kind of life there, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I have an English friend who visited his brother in a tea plantation here in Assam. What he described to me was most interesting.” Dadamoshai rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I also read the most fascinating book on the history of Assam tea. It’s a real eye-opener. You should read it, Sen Babu. It will give you a much better understanding.”

Mr. Sen twirled the coral ring around his finger forlornly. He picked up his cup, but it was empty.

“Another cup of tea, Sen Babu?”

“Yes, thank you, I would like that very much,” said Mr. Sen. He decided to change the subject. “So how is everything going with the English school project? James Lovelace was very keen to know the details, but unfortunately I did not have much information. I told him I would give you his telephone number and you would contact him.”

“The school project is most challenging, Sen Babu. We have an acute shortage of funds as you can understand. Perhaps you would consider making a small donation? We have sixty students and only two classrooms. How can the poor girls concentrate on their studies when they are sitting four or five to a bench butting elbows, with no place to write?”

Mr. Sen waved his hands as if brushing off a gnat. “My dear Rai Bahadur, whose fault is that? Young girls were not meant to go through such hardships. They should stay at home and prepare for marriage. The importance of cooking and sewing for girls should not be undermined. Besides, what are the girls going to do with all this education? It is a cart with no horse!”

I could see Dadamoshai stiffening. “Mr. Sen, is not dignity and self-confidence in a young woman worth anything? Our society treats women like they came floating down the Ganges. Should they not be given a choice in their future?”

When Dadamoshai got riled up, his eyebrows bristled. He leaned forward, tapping the coffee table with his forefinger. “Tell me, Mr. Sen, how is a woman supposed to fend for herself if things go wrong? Young girls are married off to men twice their age! We have too many child brides and too many young widows in our society, Mr. Sen,
too many widows
! And you know how our society treats widows.”

“Rai Bahadur, sir, I agree it is unfortunate if a young wife loses her husband, but at least she still has her in-laws. Who does a spinster have? No one. I still believe marriage is the best solution for girls. At least it grants them an honorable place in society.” Then he waved a heavy ringed hand dismissively in the air. “But forget all that, getting my daughter married will put me in the poorhouse. I will not have even one anna to spare. You cannot imagine the exorbitant price of
rui
fish these days. I was speaking to the fishmonger only yesterday...”

But I was not listening anymore. Something told me unseen forces were shaping my future in mysterious ways. I was getting pulled into the flow, not exactly as flotsam, but a buoyant, eager participant, fully trusting the tide. And who knew? Maybe with the right “breeje” I would catch a current and float right into Manik Deb’s life.