Chapter One
Silver Ganesh
Ambona, 1958
My mother, Maya, who was a storyteller her name, aptly, means "illusion" used to say that writers have a special responsibility to the world because they have the power to change it. They must be careful how they tell their tales, and to whom, for storytelling is an act whose effects are incalculable and endless.
These are things I remember from my childhood, those evenings of forty years ago in India, when she was surrounded by her clever friends artists, musicians, filmmakers in our drawing room full of candles (kept for power cuts, but used regardless) and...in my mind's eye I see bottles of wine, but this is the memory playing tricks. In the fifties there were no Indian wines and Maya's guests had to do their merrymaking with whisky distilled in Bangalore and obtained, on my father's account, from the naval stores.
Music, laughter, intense discussion, this is what I remember, my mother moving round the room in a silk sari that changed color as the light caught it, putting a record on the gramophone, pulling a book off a shelf to show someone, holding a match to an incense stick, calling to Yelliya, our surly south Indian cook, to bring the food. Dinner was rarely served before midnight. How Maya loved those gatherings. She wore a large red kumkum dot in the middle of her forehead and this seemed to accentuate her eyes, which were dark and huge and shone with excitement as she talked. I would creep out of bed and hang, half hidden in a curtain, watching and listening. I was always caught, of course, and dragged in my pajamas before the company to be scolded and petted and praised, after which I would be allowed to sit for a while, with a glass of lemon squash, listening to the conversation.
One night I particularly remember. My mother was talking to a bear of a man with a beard that lay like a bib upon his chest. He wore the long muslin kurta that is practically a uniform for Bengali intellectuals. A twiglike pipe stuck from his hairy mouth. His name was Babul Roy and I remember thinking how funny it was that they called him Bubbles. Bubbles was in those days an arty and rather unsuccessful film director and Maya was eager to tell him about her new story. (It was her screenplay period, cinema was exciting, Satyajit Ray had just released Pather Panchali, two of her scripts had recently made it to the screen.)
"How should we behave," my mother was saying, "when we don't know what the result of our actions will be? Not even don't know, can't know?"
"You won't catch me with this bait again," said Bubbles, sucking on his pipe in a way that made it chuckle in sympathy. "This is your favorite impossible question."
Catch with this bait...? Did Bubbles really say that? It seems unlikely, but is what comes to mind my eight-year-old brain was obsessed with fishing. In any case, Maya got what she wanted, which was not an answer, but the chance to launch into her plot.
"Let's make you the hero of the story," she said. "One day you leave your house and, outside, find a street boy being beaten by two policemen. They have tied his wrists to your railings and are thrashing him with their batons. He's the same age as Bhalu, but a lot smaller. He's howling. His dirty face is streaked with tears. When they see you, the policemen stop. You ask what the hell they're doing. They say they are interrogating him because they suspect he may be about to break into your house. You, decent soul, are outraged. You order them to release him. They grumble that people like you are the first to complain about crime, and now you're stopping them doing their job. Ten rupees shuts them up."
"Ten rupees? I wouldn't give those bahinchods ten annas," said Bubbles.
"Not even ten pice!" I shouted. It was a horrible story. I felt sorry for the boy. I could feel the blows of the policemen's sticks landing on my head and back. Bubbles, who had forgotten I was listening, was mortified. He said to me, "Hey, Bhalu, champ, you forget what I just said."
"He already knows that word," said my mother. "You should hear his grandfather. My God! Every second syllable!"
My father's parents had come down from Kumharawa to visit us in Bombay. This was before we moved to the hills. The old man complained about every bahinchod thing. The fruit, the fish, the vegetables. He quarreled with the bahinchod dhobi and the twice-bahinchod milkman. This isn't the right moment to tell the story about the cow. After they left, I missed him horribly, and Maya said she had forgotten how coarse village ways were.
"So, anyway," she resumed, "you take the boy inside, and tell your servants to feed him. They, of course, think you've gone mad."
Bubbles nodded. I was fascinated by the way his pipe shot out little cannonballs of smoke, like the engines that chuffed through Ambona station.
"He eats like the starving animal he is. You ask him about his family, life on the street, but he won't talk. He doesn't trust you. What he does do is ask you for money. You give him five rupees. After he leaves, you find that your silver Ganesh statue is missing."
"And the servants say, See, I told you so'..."
"Your servants urge you to report the theft," said Maya.
"Otherwise suspicion falls on them."
"You're angry, of course, about the statue, the boy's contempt for your kindness, but mostly with yourself for being bourgeois enough to think that one decent act can erase a lifetime's brutality. Reluctantly, you go to the police station..."