The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh

Author:Amitav Ghosh [Ghosh, Amitav]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9789791142205
Google: xrlC_zK4NnEC
Amazon: 0670082201
Publisher: Viking Adult
Published: 2000-01-15T08:00:00+00:00

Dinu was a favourite of Bela’s: she liked the way he looked, with his thin, bony cheeks and his wide forehead; she liked his seriousness and his manner of listening to people with an attentive frown, as though he were worrying about what they’d said; she even liked the way he talked, in explosive little bursts, as though his thoughts were spurting out of him in jets.

The day they went to Howrah station to get Arjun, Bela made sure that she was sitting next to Dinu. She noticed that he had a leather bag in his lap.

‘What have you got in there?’ she asked.

He opened the bag and showed her. It was a new camera, a kind she’d never seen before.

‘It’s a Rolleiflex,’ he said. ‘A twin-lens reflex . . .’ He took it out of the bag and showed her how it worked; it opened like a hinged box, with its hood flipping back so that you had to look down on it from above.

‘I’ve got a tripod for it,’ he said. ‘You can look through it . . . when I set it up . . .’

‘Why’re you taking it to the station?’ she asked.

He shrugged vaguely. ‘I saw some pictures recently,’ he said. ‘Railyard shots by Alfred Stieglitz . . . they made me wonder . . .’

The camera caused a stir when Dinu set it up at Howrah. The station was crowded and many people gathered round to stare. Dinu adjusted the tripod’s height to suit Bela. ‘Here, come . . . look.’

The platform was a long one, and it was topped with a steepled roof of corrugated steel. The late afternoon sunlight was filtering in from under the roof’s scalloped skirt, creating a stark, back-lit effect. In the foreground there were great numbers of people: red-jacketed porters, hurrying tea-boys, and waiting passengers with mountains of luggage.

Dinu pointed out the details to Bela. ‘I think this is even better than the pictures I had in mind,’ he said, ‘because of all the people . . . and the movement . . .’

Bela looked in again, and suddenly, as if by magic, Arjun appeared in the frame. He was hanging out of a carriage, holding on to the steel bar of the open doorway. He jumped off when he spotted them and the momentum of the still-moving train gave him a running start. He came racing out of the opaque white fog that was pouring from the engine’s steaming smoke-stack, laughing as he dodged the vendors and porters who were swarming across the platform. The tunic of his khaki uniform was drawn tight around his waist and his cap was tilted back on his head. He swept down on them with his arms outspread, laughing, and lifted Manju off her feet and swung her round and round.

Bela stepped away from the camera, hoping to conceal herself until the first flush of Arjun’s homecoming exuberance was spent. But just then he spotted her. ‘Bela!’ He swooped down to fling her up, over his head, ignoring her cries of protest.

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