The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri

Author:Amit Chaudhuri [Chaudhuri, Amit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9788184759617
Google: D91GydUdljUC
Amazon: 0307454657
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2010-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

TWO MONTHS AGO, Nirmalya and Mallika Sengupta had gone for the first time to Shyamji’s house.

‘It is very far, didi,’ Shyamji had warned her, as if she’d suddenly threatened, unreasonably, to journey to a wilderness. ‘A very small place – we don’t have much to show . . .’

‘What nonsense!’ said Mrs Sengupta, in total control, as usual, of her decision, distracted by the heat, a neglected spot of powder on the tip of her nose.

Shyamji had recovered instantly and smoothed his hair back as he went out of the apartment; he’d said very sincerely, his pride recollected:

‘Please do come, didi. We’d be very happy if you did.’

When they arrived finally after an hour and a half in the summer evening, moving from familiar terrain into unfamiliar Matunga, through dust, oil-slicks and traffic past the slums of Dharavi, they found Shyamji in spotless white kurta and pyjamas, and Sumati, smiling, her pallu covering her head, waiting for them.

‘Aiye, aiye, didi,’ said Sumati. ‘Oh, I’m so glad baba came too. Vel-come,’ she said to him in English. ‘Kyun, did I say it right?’ and laughed loudly.

Shyamji and Sumati vacated their places on the divan for Mrs Sengupta and Nirmalya, and sat on an old sofa opposite. Hurriedly, Sumati went inside to make tea; the small sitting room was divided from the kitchen and the bedroom inside by a curtain and a wall. She came out briefly again with a tray with two glasses of water for the visitors and stood before them; they didn’t know, for a moment, what to do. Caste was not, of course, the problem; for what can keep you from accepting food and drink in a brahmin’s house? No, caste, anyway, was an irrelevance for the Senguptas – but other questions preoccupied them. Shyamji was watching patiently; but the Senguptas didn’t drink water that wasn’t boiled; they’d agreed amongst themselves to ban all water offered to them outside home, unless, of course, it came from a completely trusted source. Still Sumati, in her innocence, hovered like a spirit of solicitude, a half-smile on her lips; Mrs Sengupta, hot in her sari, hesitated, then picked up the glass and, as if this were the logical thing to do, placed it on the table in front of her. Nirmalya, faced with the tumbler, retreated almost visibly into his own awkwardness: ‘No, I’m all right,’ he said, and Sumati protested in disbelief, ‘Kya, baba, you don’t want water?’ and the tumbler returned to the kitchen behind the curtain from where it had come. Behind the divan, on the wall, was Pandit Ram Lal’s portrait, utterly still. And, from a distance, you could hear kirtans from the gurdwara’s loudspeaker.

And yet how wonderful it was to be in his guru’s house, the electric bulbs making the room bright, a room in which visitors were welcomed, but in which the divan where they sat, lightly covered with a sheet, obviously became someone’s bed at night. Mrs Sengupta did most of the

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