From the acclaimed author of Teatime for the Firefly comes the story of a man with dreams of changing the world, who finds himself changed by love

1870s India. In a tiny village where society is ruled by a caste system and women are defined solely by marriage, young Biren Roy dreams of forging a new destiny. When his mother suffers the fate of widowhood—shunned by her loved ones and forced to live in solitary penance—Biren devotes his life to effecting change.

Biren’s passionate spirit blossoms as wildly as the blazing flame trees of his homeland. With a law degree, he goes to work for the government to pioneer academic equality for girls. But in a place governed by age-old conventions, progress comes at a price, and soon Biren becomes a stranger among his own countrymen.

Just when his vision for the future begins to look hopeless, he meets Maya, the independent-minded daughter of a local educator, and his soul is reignited. It is in her love that Biren finally finds his home, and in her heart that he finds the hope for a new world.

Praise for Shona Patel’s debut novel, Teatime for the Firefly

“Patel’s remarkable debut effortlessly transports readers back to India on the brink of independence…fans of romantic women’s fiction will be enchanted by [the] Teatime for the Firefly’s enthralling characters, exotic setting, and evocative writing style.”

—Booklist, starred review

“The historical detail makes this debut novel a rich reading experience. Those who enjoy historical fiction and portraits of foreign cultures will surely love this book.”

—Library Journal

“Debut author Patel offers a stunning, panoramic view of a virtually unknown time and place—the colonial British tea plantations of Assam—while bringing them to life through a unique character’s perspective.… A lyrical novel that touches on themes both huge and intimate and, like Layla, is so quietly bold that we might miss its strength if we fail to pay attention.”

—Kirkus Book Reviews

“A captivating tale of discovery, adventure, challenge, romance and triumph over difficult conditions that rings with authenticity.”

—Bookreporter

“With lyrical prose and exquisite detail, Shona Patel’s novel brings to life the rich and rugged landscape of India’s tea plantation, harboring a sweet love story at its core.”

—Shilpi Somaya Gowda, New York Times bestselling author of Secret Daughter

“Patel takes readers on a vivid tour of 1940s India, exploring the attitudes of the day and the traditions of the tea-growing region of Assam. The story ebbs and flows gracefully, sure to keep readers actively engaged and fervently enticed. Simply stated, Teatime for the Firefly is a true treasure.”

—RT Book Reviews

“A lush, rich love story combined with history and culture…this gem of a novel is a perfect read for anyone looking for a deep, engrossing tale.”

—All About Romance

Also from Shona Patel and MIRA Books

Teatime for the Firefly

Flame Tree Road

Shona Patel

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Mothy, my sister,

the key to my authentic self

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Also from Shona Patel and MIRA Books

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

A Note to Readers

Acknowledgments

Reader’s Guide

A Conversation with the Author

Questions for Discussion

Extract from Teatime for the Firefly by Shona Patel

Copyright

The traveler has to knock at every alien door

to come to his own,

and one has to wander

through all the outer worlds to reach

the innermost shrine at the end.

Rabindranath Tagore

From Gitanjali

Small villages cluster the waterways of East Bengal in India. Seen from above they must appear like berries along a stem, dense or sparse depending on the river traffic that flows through. Crescent-shaped fishing boats skim the waters with threadbare sails that catch the wind with the hollow flap of a heron’s wing. Larger boats carry people or cargo: bamboo baskets, coconut and long sticks of sugarcane that curve on their weight down to the water’s edge. There are landing ghats along the riverbank with bamboo jetties that stick out over the floating water hyacinth. Here the boats stop and people get on or off and take the meandering paths that lead through the rice fields and bamboo groves into the villages.

Once a week, the big world passes by in the form of a paddleboat steamer bound for important destinations: Narayanganj, Dhaka, Calcutta. It shows up on the horizon, first a tiny speck the size of a peppercorn, and grows to its full girth as it draws closer. The village boats scatter at the sound of its imperious hoot, and small boys in ragged shorts jump and wave at the lascar who moves easily along the deck with the swashbuckling sway of a true seafarer. His long black hair and white tunic whip in the river breeze as the steamer gushes by with a rhythmic swish of its side paddles, leaving the tiny boats bobbing like toothpicks in its wake.

Once a bridal party loaded with pots and garlands caught the powerful wake of the steamer as it passed. It bounced the boat and almost tossed the young bride into the river. The shy young husband instinctively grabbed his wife, drawing her into an awkward but intimate embrace. The veil slipped from the bride’s head and he saw for the first time her bright young face and dark, mischievous eyes. He drew back, embarrassed. His male companions broke into wolf whistles and rousing cheers and his bride gave him a slant-eyed smile that made his emotions settle in unexpected places. During the remainder of the journey, their fingertips occasionally met and lingered under the long veil of her red and gold sari.

CHAPTER

1

Sylhet, Bengal, 1871

Shibani was the lighthearted one, with curly eyelashes and slightly crooked teeth, still girlish and carefree for a seventeen-year-old and hardly the demure and collected daughter-in-law of the Roy household she was expected to be. Having grown up with five brothers, she behaved like a tomboy despite her long hair, which she wore, braided and looped, on either side of her head twisted with jasmine and bright red ribbons.

Everything was so strict in her husband’s house. The clothes had to be folded a certain way, the brinjal cut into perfect half-inch rounds, the potato slivered as thin as matchsticks. Then there were fasting Mondays, temple Tuesdays, vegetarian Thursdays. Mother-in-law was very particular about everything and she could be curt if things were not to her exacting standards. But Father-in-law was softhearted; Shibani was the daughter he had always wished for. She brought light into the house, especially after the older daughter-in-law, who walked around with her duck-footed gait and face gloomy as a cauldron’s bottom. Perhaps being childless had made her so, but even as a young bride the older daughter-in-law had never smiled. What a contrast to young Shibani, whose veil hardly stayed up on her head, who ate chili tamarind, smacked her lips and broke into giggling fits that sometimes ended in a helpless snort.

During evening prayers Shibani puffed her cheeks and blew the conch horn with more gaiety than piety. She created dramatic sweeping arcs with the diya oil lamps, and her ululation was louder and more prolonged than necessary. Mother-in-law paused her chanting to give her a chastising look through half-closed eyes. Father-in-law smothered a smile while her husband, Shamol, looked sheepish, nervous and love struck all at the same time.

Every evening Shibani picked a handful of night jasmine to place in a brass bowl by her bedside so she and her husband could share the sweetness as they lay in the darkness together.

* * *

A year after they were married, the first son was born. They named him Biren: Lord of Warriors. Shamol carefully noted the significance of his birth date—29 February 1872—a leap year by the English calendar. Shamol worked for Victoria Jute Mills and owned one of the few English calendars in the village. Just to look at the dated squares made him feel as though he had moved ahead in the world, as the rest of the village followed the Bengali calendar, where the year was only 1279.

In truth, moving ahead in the world had been nipped in the bud for Shamol Roy. He was studying to be a schoolteacher and was halfway through his degree but had been forced to give up his education and work in a jute mill to support the family. This was after his older brother had been gored by a Brahman bull near the fish market a few years earlier. His brother recovered but made a show of acting incapacitated, as he had lost the will to work after he developed an opium habit—the drug he had used initially to manage the pain. Only Shamol knew about his addiction, but he was too softhearted to complain. He did not tell anyone, not even his own wife, Shibani. He considered himself the lucky one after all. Life had showered on him more than his share of blessings: he had a beautiful wife, a healthy baby boy and a job that allowed him to provide for the family. Every morning Shamol woke to a feeling of immense gratitude. The first thing he did was to stand by the holy basil in the courtyard and lift his folded hands to the rising sun to thank the benevolent universe for his good fortune.

CHAPTER

2

Mother-in-law was mixing chickpea batter for eggplant fritters when she looked out of the kitchen window and saw Shibani and Apu, her friend from next door, gossiping and eating chili tamarind in the sunny courtyard. Baby Biren lay sleeping like a rag doll on the hammock of Shibani’s lap. She jiggled her knee and his head rolled all over the place.

“Shibani!” yelled the mother-in-law. “Have you no sense? Do you want your son to have a flat head like the village idiot? Why are you not using the mustard seed pillow I told you to use under the baby’s head?”

“Eh maa! I forgot,” said Shibani, round eyed with innocence, a smudge of chili powder on her chin. She scrambled about looking as if she was going to get up, but as soon as her mother-in-law’s back was turned she settled back down again.

“The mustard seed pillow is currently being used to round the cat’s head,” she said to Apu, giggling as she tickled Biren’s cheek. “The cat is going to have a rounder head than this one.” Biren opened his mouth and she let him suck on her fingers.

“Aye, careful!” cried Apu. “You have chili powder on your fingers.”

Biren’s little face puckered and his big black eyes flew open.

“Eh maa, look what you did,” chided Apu. “You woke the poor thing up!”

“Just look at him smiling,” said Shibani. “He’s even smacking his lips. Here, pass me the tamarind. Let’s give him another lick.”

“The things you feed him, really,” said Apu reproachfully. She never knew whether to admire Shibani’s audacious mothering or to worry about the baby. “Remember the time you made him lick a batasha? He was only four months old!”

Shibani laughed, her crooked teeth showing. “You were my coconspirator, don’t forget.”

The two of them had smuggled batasha sugar drops from the prayer room and watched in awe as the baby’s tiny pink tongue licked one down to half its size. Of course, the sugar had kept him wide-eyed and kicking all night.

“This child will learn to eat everything and sleep anywhere,” said Shibani. “I don’t care if he has a flat head, but it will be full of brains and he will be magnificently prepared to conquer the world.”

* * *

At six months Biren had a perfectly round head full of bobbing curls, the limpid eyes of a baby otter and a calm, solid disposition. He hated being carried and kicked his tiny feet till he was set down, after which he took off crawling with his little bottom wagging. He babbled and cooed constantly and a prolonged silence usually meant trouble. Shibani caught him opening and closing a brass betel nut cutter that could have easily chopped off his tiny toes. Another time he emerged from the ash dump covered with potato peels and eggshells.

“This one will crawl all the way to England if he can,” marveled the grandfather. There was a certain sad irony to his words. An Oxford or Cambridge education was, after all, the ultimate dream of many Sylhetis and, being poor, they often did have to scrape and crawl their way to get there. Even with surplus brains and a full merit scholarship, many fell short of the thirty-five-pound second-class sea fare to get to England. Sometimes the whole village pitched in, scraping together rupees and coins to send their brightest and their best into the world, hoping perhaps he would return someday to help those left behind. But most of them never did.

CHAPTER

3

Shibani slipped around to the pumpkin patch near the woodshed behind the house. She cupped her hands over her mouth and called like a rooster across the pond. Soon, there was an answering rooster call back from Apu: a single crow, which meant, Wait, I am coming. Shibani smiled and waited.

The two friends no longer saw each other as much as they used to. Both of them had two-year-olds now. Apu’s daughter, Ratna, was born three days after Shibani’s second son, Nitin, who was four years younger than Biren.

Nitin turned out to be a colicky infant who grew into a fretful toddler. He clung to his mother’s legs, stretched out his hands and wanted to be carried all the time. He ate and slept poorly and forced Shibani to reconsider the charms of motherhood.

Shibani shifted her feet. Now, where was that Apu? Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a small movement in the taro patch. Shibani gave a tired sigh. It was that nosy son of hers again. Biren had lately started eavesdropping on their conversations. Apu and Shibani often discussed private matters relating to their mothers-in-law, husbands and what went on in the bedroom. Six-year-old Biren had already picked up on the furtive nature of their conversation. How long this had been going on and how much he had overheard already, Shibani dreaded to know, but this time she was going to teach him a lesson.

Apu ran out of her kitchen, wiping her hands on the end of her sari. Shibani watched her nimble figure jump over backyard scrub and race around the emerald-green pond. She is still so lithe and supple, like a young sapling, Shibani thought fondly of her friend, who was a trained Bharatnatyam dancer.

Apu huffed up to the fence and mopped her face with the end of her sari. “I have only five minutes. Ratna will wake up any minute. Quickly, tell me, what?”

Shibani rolled her eyes in the direction of the taro patch and silently mouthed, Biren. He’s listening. Then she said loudly, “Have you heard the latest news about the small boy in the Tamarind Tree Village? The one whose ears fell off?”

“No, tell me,” said Apu, suppressing a smile.

“He had these big-big ears and was always listening to grown-up things. Now I hear his ears have come off. Can you imagine? One day he woke up and his ears were lying on his pillow like two withered rose petals. Now he has only big holes through which bees and ants can get in and make nests in his brain. So tragic, don’t you think?”

Apu clicked her tongue. “Terrible, terrible. The poor fellow. What will happen to him, I wonder?” The shuffling in the taro patch grew agitated. Apu began to feel a little sorry for Biren. “Are you sure his ears fell off?” she asked. “I mean, fell right off? I heard they almost fell off. They had begun to come a little loose but thank God he stopped listening to grown-up things. He had a very narrow escape, I heard.”

“I hope so, for his sake.” Shibani sighed. “I would feel very sad if I was his mother. Imagine having a son with no ears and a head full of bees and ants.”

The taro leaves waved madly to indicate an animal scurrying away.

“Oof!” exploded Shibani. “That fellow is impossible. He listens to everything. Now I hope he will leave us in peace. I can’t wait for him to start going to school.”

“He starts next week, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Shibani. They had waited all this time because Shamol wanted him to go to the big school in the Tamarind Tree Village near the jute mill. It was a better school because the jute mill funded it privately. Most of the mill workers’ children studied there. “Thank God Biren is a quick learner. He’s already far ahead in reading and math because Shamol tutors him every night. That reminds me, did you talk to your mother-in-law about Ruby’s tuition?”

Apu sighed. “I asked her. Twice. Both times it was a big no. It is so frustrating. Your suggestion made so much sense. Shamol can easily tutor Ruby along with Biren in the evenings. But Mother-in-law won’t have it. She says if you educate a girl nobody will want to marry her.”

“What nonsense!” cried Shibani. “We both had private tutors and we got married, didn’t we? Thank God our parents were not so narrow-minded. Let me tell you, sister, Shamol especially picked me because I was educated. He said he wanted a wife he could talk to, not a timid mouse to follow him around with her head covered.”

“At least you two communicate. My husband doesn’t talk at all,” grumbled Apu. “He is gone all week and when he comes home I can’t get two words out of the man. Living with him is like living with a mango tree, I tell you. He gives shade, he bears fruit, but he does not talk.”

“He’s a good man,” murmured Shibani. “He adores you and the girls. We were both lucky, really, to get good husbands.”

“But just see my karma! Thanks to my mother-in-law I am going to end up with two illiterate daughters.”

Shibani gave Apu a crooked smile “What is your problem, sister?” she said sweetly. “Your Ruby will marry my Biren and Ratna will marry Nitin. It’s all settled between us, remember? We decided that the day they were born. Now, concerning my future daughter-in-law’s education—has your husband spoken to his dear mother? He may be able to convince her to change her mind.”

Apu shook her head. “Oh, he will never go against his mother’s wishes, even if he disagrees with her. It’s just as well I have you to talk to, sister. Otherwise, I would have surely gone mad.”

Shibani gave a noisy huff. “How can anybody go through life without talking? I don’t understand.”

A loud wail came from the direction of Apu’s house. Apu glanced hastily over her shoulder. “Did you hear that? I better run! Ratna has woken up. I think she is coming down with a fever.”

“Can you come and oil my hair for me tomorrow?” Shibani called after her. “You give the best head massage!”

“I’ll come after lunch!” Apu yelled back. “Around this time when Ratna takes a nap. Don’t forget my chili tamarind.”

* * *

Later that evening Shibani overheard Biren talking to his grandfather. “Grandfather, can you please check? Are my ears getting a little loose?”

“Why should your ears be getting loose? Did your mother box them for you?”

“No, no, please see, Grandfather. I think they are going to fall off. What should I do?” Biren wailed.

Grandfather twisted Biren’s ear and pulled out a cowrie. “Look what I found,” he said, handing it to Biren. “Your ears are not loose. They are full of loose change.”

“Sometimes I think I hear buzzing inside. I think it may be a bee.”

“They are buzzing because they are full of money,” said Grandfather. “I wish my ears buzzed like yours. I’d be rich.”

CHAPTER

4

Every morning, Shamol Roy took the passenger ferry to the jute mill dressed in a spotless dhoti and a starched cotton tunic, with a handkerchief perfumed with rose water folded in his pocket. At sundown he returned, wilted and worn, smelling like the rotting dahlias in a flower vase.

The stench of decomposing organic matter clinging to his clothes and hair came from the raw jute in the mill storage godown where he worked as a bookkeeper along with his assistant. For ten hours a day Shamol Roy sat in the windowless godown of Victoria Jute Mills as sweaty laborers went in and out of the single door to unload the bullock carts lined up outside. The laborers hoisted the heavy bales on the claw hook of the large industrial weighing scale; the assistant squinted at the scales and shouted the weight, which Shamol Roy noted in neat, precise rows on his red tombstone-shaped ledger. The floor of the godown was black and sticky with dirt, and vermin of all kinds—cockroaches, rats, even predatory snakes—squeaked and scrabbled in the dark corners.

A small, tidy man, fastidious by nature, Shamol Roy sat on an elevated wooden pallet with four bowls of water placed under each foot to discourage the creatures from crawling up. There was little he could do, however, about the rotting smell that pervaded the godown; it came from the jute stalks that had been submerged in stagnant water to ret so that the useful fibers could be pulled out and dried for use.

The sun was already deeply slanted in the sky when he caught the ferry home. A sweet river breeze caressed his face and a great flock of cranes crossed overhead to roost in the marsh. The boatman sang a soulful river ballad accompanied by the beat of the oar as it broke the water into pleats of gold. As the boat turned the fork in the river, the flame tree of Momati Ghat first appeared like a gash on the horizon and blazed into full glory as the boat pulled up to shore. The tea shop was closed and a mongoose scrabbled among the broken terra-cotta cups. It streaked off into the undergrowth at the sound of his approaching footfalls.

As Shamol Roy walked down the crooked path to his basha, his heart skipped to see his pretty wife dressed in a fresh sari with jasmine twisted in her hair. His two little boys, scrubbed and clean with their hair combed, ran up to meet him. They each held a hand and walked him back to the house. Biren was bright with chatter about his first fallen tooth, which he rattled in a matchbox, while little Nitin toddled along sucking his thumb.

Shibani went inside the house to prepare his tea. She never waited to greet him at close quarters, knowing well that Shamol was embarrassed by his disheveled appearance and the smell that came off his clothes. The boys didn’t mind. For them it was the smell of their father coming home. In the bedroom Shamol Roy found a set of clean home clothes laid out on the bed: a chequered lungi, cotton vest and his wooden clogs on the floor.

He picked up the brass lota from the kitchen steps and headed down to the well, where he washed down the smell of the workday from his skin and hair. Only after he had changed into fresh clothes did he begin to feel human again.

He sat in the courtyard, a tumbler of hot tea warming his hands, a happy man.

“So how was school today?” he asked Biren.

“We had English lessons, and the new boy spelled elephant starting with an L.” Biren rolled his eyes as if to say, What an idiot.

Shamol Roy feigned ignorance. “Oh, elephant is spelled with an L, is it not?”

“Baba!”

“Then what is it?”

Biren mouthed E and his tongue poked through the gap in his teeth, reminding him of his recent toothless status. He opened the matchbox and looked momentarily stricken when he couldn’t see his tooth, but there it was in the far corner.

“So what should I do with the tooth?” he asked his father.

Shamol Roy looked at the sweet, solemn face of his son. “Let me see, now,” he said gently, pulling down Biren’s bottom lip. “It’s the bottom tooth, isn’t it? Then you must throw it on the roof of the house and ask a sparrow to get you a new tooth.”

“But how can I do that, Baba?” Biren cried. “I’m not tall enough. I can’t throw it over the roof. Then the sparrow won’t get me a new tooth.”

“I’ll lift you up. You’ll throw it over the roof, don’t worry.”

Nitin plucked at Shamol’s sleeve.

Shamol turned to address him. “Yes, what is it, Nitin mia?”

Nitin pulled down his lip to display his own pearly whites.

“Now, let me see. Good, good, you have all your teeth. No need to throw your tooth over the roof. You don’t need any new teeth right now.”

Shibani emerged from the kitchen with a ripe papaya on a brass plate. Next to it was a dark knife with a white sharpened edge.

“The first papaya of the season,” she announced, setting it down. “Perfectly tree ripened. Will you cut it for us, please?”

“But of course, my queen.”

The boys settled down to watch. They never got tired of watching their father cut a papaya because he did it with such ceremonial style. Shamol Roy held the papaya in both hands, turned it over and pressed down with his thumbs to examine its ripeness. He then picked up the knife, and with clean easy swipes peeled away the skin in even strips. The bright orange fruit was laid bare and the juice dripped onto the brass tray. Then came the sublime moment, the lengthwise cutting open of the papaya. The boys leaned over and gasped to see the translucent seeds nesting like shiny black pearls in the hollowed chamber. The seed and the fiber were scraped away and discarded on an old newspaper. Nitin amused himself by pressing down on the seeds and making them slip around like tadpoles. The peeled fruit was segmented into long, even slices. The boys were given a slice each and the rest disappeared into the kitchen.

No matter how wilted and crushed Shamol Roy looked at the end of the day in his foul-smelling clothes and the jute fibers trapped in his hair, he became God in the eyes of his sons when he peeled a papaya. They were convinced no other person in the world could peel a papaya as beautifully and expertly as their own father did.

CHAPTER

5

Eight-year-old Samir Deb came to the Tamarind Tree Village School wearing knife-edged pleated shorts, knee-length socks and real leather shoes. If that was not impressive enough, there were two brand-new pencils, one red and the other blue, sticking out in a flashy manner from his shirt pocket.

The pencils were immediately confiscated by the young schoolmaster, who probably fancied them as much as the other boys. Pencils and paper were a luxury, after all, erasers coveted and rare and a mechanical pencil sharpener considered a technological marvel. The boys were given slates and chalks to use in class that remained in the school. To take a piece of chalk home, they had to steal it. No wonder Samir Deb with his new pencils created such a sensation.

Samir said he was born in Calcutta. He also claimed he had been to London—twice—and seen Big Ben. Since nobody in the village school knew who this Big Ben was, the boys nicknamed him Big Beng. Big Frog. He was rather froggy looking, as well, with his flabby face and thin legs; Samir Deb was odd in every way. To begin with, he arrived in a tasseled palanquin carried by four burly men instead of by boat like the other village children. During recess he tried to join the boys in their rough play and pleaded with them in a high girlish voice. When he got pushed, he fell down, scuffed his knees and cried. Sammy’s humiliation was complete when he received a sharp rap on his knuckles from the schoolmaster after he was caught passing a wooden top from one boy to another in class. By the time he had climbed into the palanquin and left for home, he was convulsing in hiccupping sobs, and his knee-length socks had collapsed around his ankles.

* * *

The next day there was pandemonium in school. A brood of belligerent women in shiny saris and oversize nose rings rushed into the schoolmaster’s tiny office and cornered him against the wall.

“Why did you beat him so?” cried a pitcher-shaped woman with gold bracelets up to her elbow. She had a pale froggy face that looked like Samir’s, and was most likely his mother. “The poor child is completely traumatized. He cried all night. He would not eat, he would not sleep. Today he was terrified of coming to school.”

“My goodness.” The schoolmaster stared from one angry face to the other. “I hardly beat him at all. I just gave him a small tap on his knuckles because he was misbehaving in class. How else is the child going to learn a lesson?”

“You hit him with a stick.” The woman pointed to Samir’s knees, which looked ghastly thanks to the red Mercurochrome that had been applied to the scrape. “Look at his knees. The poor child can hardly walk.”

“I did nothing to his knees, excuse me,” said the schoolmaster indignantly.

“In our family we believe in kindness and love,” said a gray-haired woman who was probably Samir’s grandmother. She glared at the young schoolmaster severely. “You had no business to beat the child.”

“I repeat, I did not beat the child,” said the schoolmaster in a tired voice.

“But you just admitted you took a ruler to his hands. I want to make sure this never happens again,” said the pitcher-shaped mother in a stern voice. “This darling boy has never heard a harsh word in his life. It is unthinkable that anybody should beat and punish him.”

“So how do you suppose he is going to learn what is right from wrong?” demanded the schoolmaster.

“He will learn by watching others,” said the grandmother. “By following their example. May I please make a suggestion?”

“Go ahead,” said the schoolmaster in a resigned voice. Through a gap in the wall of female forms he spied the curious faces of his students looking in through the window. He clapped his hands abruptly to disperse them, and Samir’s mother, interpreting his action as a sign of mockery, flew into a sudden rage.

“Do you know who my husband is?” she shrieked. “He is Dhiren Deb. My husband is supplier of all the goods in the Victoria Jute Mills co-op store. My husband will ask the jute mill owners to stop all funding to this school if you do not pay attention, do you understand?”

“I am listening,” said the schoolmaster, a little taken aback.

“All we are suggesting,” the grandmother said in a soothing voice, “is the next time Samir needs to be disciplined, just take the ruler and beat the child next to him. If Samir sees the other child suffering, he will be frightened and behave himself.”

The schoolmaster was incredulous. “Beat some other innocent child who has not done anything wrong instead of the real culprit? How does that even make any sense?”

“Just try it,” said the granny, nodding wisely. “We know it works. Samir gets very frightened when he sees somebody else being punished. At home we just beat the servant boy and Samir immediately behaves himself. Now, don’t get us wrong. We want the child to be disciplined and grow up to be a fine boy. Just don’t beat our little darling is all we are saying.”

* * *

Samir quickly figured out some friendships were negotiable. He could join in a game by giving the leader a pencil. But most games involved a lot of push and shove, and he was deathly afraid of getting hurt, so he just stood on the sidelines and cheered the players on in his high girlish voice. Sometimes he was generous for no reason at all. He played treasure hunt and left coveted items in secret places so that they could be “stolen.” He even left his leather shoes under the tamarind tree and watched secretly to see who would steal them.

The one person Sammy wanted most to be friends with was the brilliant and smooth-talking Biren Roy. But Biren Roy avoided him. He and his three friends walked around with their hands in their pockets avoiding the riffraff. In class, Biren Roy asked such intelligent questions that he made the schoolmaster nervous.

Samir learned that Biren Roy lived in another village and went home every day in a small boat with a one-eyed boatman. He also came to grudgingly accept that there was no hope in the world of ever calling him a friend.

CHAPTER

6

Some days after school, Biren loitered at the tea shop on Momati Ghat. It would be around closing time in the early afternoon with a few fishermen smoking their last bidis. Sold as singles in the tea shop, the bidis were lit with a slow-burning coir rope hung from a bamboo pole. The fishermen who idled at the tea shop were the ones who had returned without a sizable catch. There was no fish to spoil in their baskets and no need to rush to the market. Those were also the ones who told the tallest stories.

Kanai, the one-eyed fisherman, waggled his foot and sucked the smoke from his bidi through a closed fist.

“I saw the petni again last night,” he said, narrowing his single eye.

“Saw it or heard it?” asked Biren. He had heard fearful stories from the fisherman about the faceless ghost of Momati Ghat with backward-facing feet who wailed in the voice of a child.

Kanai glared at him. “I saw it. I may have one eye but I am not blind.”

“What did the petni look like?” Biren asked.

“It was white,” said Kanai. “Completely white from head to toe.”

“Was it a boy or a girl?”

“What kind of question is that? A petni is a petni. It is neither a boy nor a girl.”

“If you are talking about the creature that is hanging around the ghat late at night, that is no petni, Kanai,” said the ancient fisherman they called Dadu. Grandfather. He had a foamy white beard and the skin on his face was cracked and creased like river mud. “That is one of the cursed ones.”

“Who is cursed?” asked Biren. He tapped a dimple in the soft ground with a twig and watched a tiny sand beetle pop out and take a swipe before sliding back into a whirlpool of sand.

“Widows,” said the old fisherman. “They are the most wretched creatures on earth. A widow is even more dangerous than a petni because it can appear in the daytime and spit on the happiness of others.”

Biren shuddered. “I hope I never see one,” he said.

“You’ve seen them, mia. They are everywhere,” said Kanai. “There’s one that begs under the banyan tree near the temple. Surely you’ve seen that one?”

“Oh, that one.” Biren sighed with relief. “That is only Charulata. She is harmless. We talk to her all the time. Baba said she is a poor woman whose husband died when she was only thirteen. A mango tree fell and cut her husband in half, poor thing.”

Kanai spit on the ground. “She must be badly cursed, then.”

“That is not true,” retorted Biren indignantly. He flung his stick in a wide arc across the riverbed. “My baba says only ignorant people believe in curses and bad luck.”

“Just listen to this pooty fish and his big-big talk!” scoffed a diminutive fisherman nicknamed Chickpea.

“Your father is a good man, mia, but too much education is his undoing,” said Dadu, the old fisherman. “Education leads a man astray. He becomes bewildered and loses touch with his roots.”

Kanai took a deep pull of his bidi and waggled his foot. “Because your father works with the belaytis in the jute mill he has too much big-big ideas.” He turned to the others. “Do you know his father tried to tell me the earth is round? I told him I have rowed all the rivers, but I haven’t fallen off the edge yet, have I?”

The others laughed.

Of course the earth is round, Biren thought indignantly. But he did not know how to convince the fishermen.

Tilok, the tea shop man, stuck his head out of the shack and banged a spoon on his brass kettle. “Who wants more tea?” he shouted. “Today is the last day for free tea! No more free tea from tomorrow. Tomorrow you pay.”

Biren looked puzzled. “Why is he giving free tea?”

“Don’t you know?” said Chickpea. “Tilok had twin baby boys yesterday. He should be giving everybody free tea for two weeks.” He cupped his hand and yelled, “Do you hear that, Tilok? We demand free tea for two weeks.”

“Trying to make me a pauper, are you?” Tilok laughed. He burst into song as he poured the tea in thin frothing streams into a line of terra-cotta cups.

“Just listen to him—he is such a happy man.” Kanai chuckled. “Now, if he had twin daughters, he would be singing a dirge.”

Biren pushed his toe into the sand, thinking. His mother envied Apu for having girls. She made cloth dolls for Ruby and Ratna. She dressed baby Ratna in tiny saris and put flowers in her hair. “I wish I had a little girl,” she lamented to Apu. What puzzled him was Apu wanted boys and Shibani wanted girls. They each wanted what the other had. The fishermen on the other hand were unanimously in favor of boys. Daughters were viewed as a curse, it seemed.

Kanai flicked the butt of his bidi into the sand and sighed. “I go to the temple every morning to pray my wife has a son this time.”

“I have three daughters!” grumbled Dadu. “I had to sell my cow to get the last one married off. Marrying off daughters will pick you clean, like a crow to a fishbone. I would be in the poorhouse if my son had not brought in a dowry. By God’s mercy, all four children are married and settled now.”

Biren shaded his eyes toward the far horizon and jumped to his feet. “Oh, look!” he cried. “The jute steamer is coming!”

As so it was. A black dot had just popped up on the horizon. Its square form distinguished it as a flatbed river barge designed to carry bales of jute, tea chests and other cargo.

Biren dusted off his shorts and took off flying down the crooked path toward the riverbank. A small brown mongrel with a curled-up tail chased after him, yipping excitedly.

As the steamer drew closer, Biren saw a pink-faced Englishman sitting on a chair bolted to the deck. The man had one knee crossed over the other and was smoking a curved pipe, looking as if he was relaxing in his own living room. He surveyed the tumbled countryside, the cracked and pitted riverbank and meek-eyed cows huddled in slices of shade. When the man turned his head, he caught sight of the magnificent flame tree by the tea shop and stood up to get a better view. He failed to notice the small boy who waved at him from the riverbank. The steamer passed by smoothly, leaving the water hyacinths swirling in its wake.

Kanai spat on the ground. “Go, go, mia, run, run, run,” he muttered. “Chase after the belayti, wave to him, bow to him, lick his shoes. He will never acknowledge you. To him you do not even exist. The sooner you get that into your foolish head, the better it will be for you.”

CHAPTER

7

The river breeze teased Shamol Roy awake one night. He propped up on his elbow to gaze tenderly at his sleeping wife. Shibani lay on her side, her hands tucked under her cheek. Her lips were parted, and in the yellow light of the moon her skin glowed a satiny gold. Shamol traced her nose and lips with his finger.

“Precious pearl, sweet beloved, queen of my heart,” he murmured in her ear. “Do you hear the river calling?”

Shibani’s eyes fluttered open. Her smile gleamed in the dark. “Oh,” she gasped. “Shall we go?”

“If you wish, my beloved.”

They tiptoed out of the basha in their old cotton nightclothes and house slippers. The front door closed softly behind them and they ran giggling down the road, holding hands. Free from the cares of parenthood and family, they were like children again.

Shamol and Shibani had little opportunity to demonstrate their affections for each other during the day. Trapped in their roles of husband and wife, father and mother, son and daughter-in-law, a certain decorum was expected of them. Even in their early married days, and despite their yearning, intimacy had not come easy. The door to their bedroom had to be left ajar to allow Grandfather access to the bathroom, and nature called often and at random for the old man. Shamol and Shibani took to slipping out of the house and going down to the river, where under the flame tree, and calmed by the sound of water, they’d discovered each other for the first time.

* * *

The river sky floated with a thousand stars and a lemony moon sailed in their midst. Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest of them all, was a twinkling jewel on Orion’s belt. People whispered the Dog Star had mysterious occult powers. It caused men to weaken and women to become aroused, they said.

Shamol took Shibani’s face in his hands and kissed her until every star was pulled down from the sky. When he looked into her eyes they sparkled brighter than the heavens.

He led her to the flame tree and drew her down beside him. They leaned against the trunk, their arms around each other, and looked up at the sky.

“Oh, I forgot,” said Shamol. He fumbled in his kurta pocket and drew out a small paper-wrapped object. He pushed it into her hand. “I have something for you.”

“What is it?”

“Open it. It’s butterscotch toffee from Scotland. Willis Duff, the new engineer at the jute mill, gave it to me.”

Shibani unwrapped the toffee and took a tiny bite. “My, it is quite delicious. Here, try a bit.”

“No, no, you eat it. I only had one so I kept it for you. Every time I get something, I give it to the boys. Sometimes I feel bad—I never bring anything for you.”

She squeezed his hand. “You bring me fresh jasmine garlands wrapped with your heart. What more can a girl ask for?”

The caressing tone of her voice made his nerves tingle.

Overcome by bashfulness, he squinted at the glittering sky. “Look, there’s Sirius, the Dog Star. Do you see it?”

“It’s the brightest star in the sky,” murmured Shibani. “See how it sparkles. Maybe it’s winking.”

“Everything pales beside you, my darling.”

Shamol pushed Shibani’s hair aside to kiss the nape of her neck. “Do you remember our first time?” he said softly. His tongue tasted the salt of her skin. “Here, under this tree?”

Shibani leaned her cheek against his hand. Of course she remembered, and wasn’t Biren the result? Anything could happen on a night when the stars begged to be plucked from the sky.

The same thought must have crossed Shamol’s mind. “Little wonder our Biren has a keen interest in astronomy,” he said. “He was excited to learn that Sirius is used by mariners to navigate the Pacific. When I told him Sirius has a small companion star known as the ‘pup,’ Biren said, ‘That’s like me and Nitin. I am Sirius and Nitin is the pup. I will show him the way.’ Then he asked me completely out of the blue, ‘Is Sirius really very serious, Baba? Does he not talk very much?’”

Shibani erupted in a bubble of laughter. “He says the funniest things, really!”

“When I explained Sirius was named after the Egyptian god and has nothing to do with the English word, he listened carefully. He has an excellent memory, our son—he remembers everything.” He sighed and was silent. Somewhere on the riverbank a night bird called. “You know, Shibani, if I had my way, I would send Biren to an English school. I have always believed a correct English education is the passport to the bigger world. The bigger world is where our sons belong.”

“The English school must be very expensive, don’t you think?” Shibani asked.

“Not necessarily. Some English missionary schools are free. It is not easy to get admission, that’s all. I heard our jute mill is affiliated with a famous institution in Calcutta.”

“Maybe you should talk to Owen McIntosh about it. Your boss likes you. There’s no harm in asking him, is there?”

“That’s true,” Shamol agreed. “Tell me, beloved, would you feel very sad if the boys were sent away to a boarding school?”

Shibani shook her head. “I only want the best for them.”

“I do, too.” Shamol sighed. “But even if the boys got admission, my biggest hurdle will be to convince my family. They all firmly believe the only agenda of missionary schools is to convert Indian students to Christianity by offering them free education.”

They were silent, each with their own thoughts, for a while.

On the far horizon, tiny pinpricks of light appeared on the river. The melancholy strains of the Bhatiyali fisherman’s song slipped in and out of the breeze.

“Look!” Shibani cried, sitting up. “It’s the otter fishermen!”

They watched as the night fishermen from the mangrove village floated by in their bamboo houseboats. The glow of their lamps threw a broken sparkle on the water, and the dark, shiny heads of their trained otters bobbed up and down, their wet, gleaming forms tumbling in the boat’s wake. The otters herded the fish into the waiting nets and when the net was lifted into the boat it was full of flashing silver.

“How clever the fishermen are, don’t you think?” mused Shibani. “They just float along singing songs and the otters do all the hard work for them.”

“It is not as simple as it looks, beloved,” said Shamol. “It has taken generations to perfect this technique. Otter fishing is an ancient tradition passed down from father to son. The otters are bred in captivity. They would never survive in the wild. It is a symbiotic relationship between man and beast. But all these old traditions are dying out, aren’t they? More and more fishermen leave the village to find work in the city. Soon the memory of the otter fisherman will remain only in song. Then that, too, will be forgotten.” He got to his feet and held out his hand to Shibani to help her up. “Come, my queen, we must go back.”

They walked back to the basha, hand in hand, fingers entwined like teenagers.

“There is so much I wish for our two boys,” said Shamol. “I want them to be curious and have faith in their own ideas. I want them to know the wonder of books but also learn from the river and the sky.”

Shibani hugged his arm tightly. “The most important thing is they have you for their father,” she said in her honeyed voice. “You have given them everything. Now it’s up to them.”

CHAPTER

8

Biren looked forward to Tuesday all week. It was market day—the only day he had time alone with Father. Since Nitin had come along, Biren was forced to share Shamol with his brother. Nitin demanded constant attention. If Father stood up, Nitin wanted to be carried. If Father sat down, Nitin climbed onto his lap. Nitin interrupted important conversations by touching Shamol’s cheek and, once having got his father’s attention, he smiled his foolish smile and went back to sucking his thumb. Father judiciously divided his time equally among family members, the same way he divided a papaya. Mother had an unfair advantage because she and Father shared the same bed and they could talk all night long. The last sound Biren heard as he drifted off to sleep was their whispered conversation.

Thank God for Tuesday. It made up for the shortfalls of the week. The fish market was too far for Nitin to walk, which was just as well, although leaving the house in his presence normally provoked a monstrous howl. The only option was to slip out undetected in the wee hours, a conspiracy that made Biren feel grown up and in league with the adults.

The bamboo grove was still dark and hushed as father and son made their way to the fish market. Shamol carried his umbrella looped over his arm and Biren skipped along swinging two empty jute bags, one in each hand.

“You don’t need an umbrella today, Baba,” Biren chirped. “Look—” he swung his bag in a big joyful arc at the sky “—there is not a single cloud in the sky.”

“I know, mia,” Shamol replied. “My umbrella is broken. I am taking it to the market to be repaired. I don’t want to be caught without it when the rains come.”

The road opened out to an expanse of the river-sky, above which a feeble sun struggled to rise. The tea shop was still shuttered. Underneath the flame tree a baul minstrel sat cross-legged on a carpet of fallen blossoms, lost in his meditation. In his bright orange robe, he looked like a fallen petal himself.

A herd of cows bumped and shuffled across the riverbed toward the grazing ground. They were rounded up by a ragged lad with a neem toothpick stuck between his teeth.

At the ghat, the river ferry had just pulled up to disgorge a crowd of villagers. Vendors with earthen pots on bamboo poles slung across their shoulders pushed past women with large baskets on their heads and tiny babies on their backs. They skirted around an old man who shuffled slowly, dragging a monstrous elephant-size foot, the skin over it knobbed and lumpy like a custard apple.

Biren was about to swivel around to take another look when Shamol cleared his throat. “There’s no need to stare at him, mia,” he said softly.

“What wrong with his foot, Baba?” Biren asked, trotting to keep up with his father. “Why is it so big?”

“The man has elephantiasis, mia, as a result of an unfortunate disease known as filariasis. It is spread by a mosquito.”

Biren looked at a puffed-up welt on his upper arm with alarm.

“Oh, Baba, I have a mosquito bite!”

Shamol glanced out of the corner of his eye and suppressed a smile. “Don’t worry, mia, you won’t get elephantiasis.”

“How do you know, Baba?” Biren cried. He scratched the bite gingerly. It made the itch worse. His leg was also beginning to feel unusually heavy.

“Because elephantiasis is a rare disease. That is not to say it cannot happen to us. After all, it takes but a small misfortune, the size of a mosquito bite, to change someone’s life, doesn’t it? You must remember to be compassionate, mia, and to try to help others less fortunate than yourself.”

“Like poor Charudi, who lives under the banyan tree?”

“Yes, like Charudi. Remind me to buy some bananas for her at the market. We can stop by the temple and see her on our way home.”

* * *

While Father was getting the hilsa fish weighed and cleaned, Biren wandered over to the chicken man’s stall to check on his favorite rooster. Week after week, the black rooster never got sold. The chicken man said it was a special-occasion bird, too big and too expensive for most people to afford. Biren was secretly thankful, because he had grown rather attached to the rooster. He admired the bird as it strutted around its wire cage cocky and bright eyed. It had shiny blue-black feathers and a bright red comb and wattles—the exact same shade of vermillion his mother wore in the part of her hair.

But today the rooster’s cage was empty. In the next cage, six miserable hens with soiled feathers were crammed together looking half-dead.

“What happened to the black rooster?” Biren cried, pointing to the empty cage.

The chicken man made a chop-chop gesture with the edge of his palm. “Sold!” He waggled his toes and grinned widely with paan-stained teeth. “Goddess Laxmi smiled on me today. Tilok, the tea shop man, purchased the rooster to celebrate the birth of his twin boys.”

Biren’s eyes wandered over to the pile of shiny blue-black feathers and freshly gutted entrails cast to one side. A mangy pariah dog slunk around trying to take a lick. He suddenly felt nauseated.

“I have to go,” he said hastily, and ran back to his father.

* * *

Shamol flipped through his notebook. “I think we have everything,” he said. “Let me see—fish, vegetables, joss sticks, areca nut and betel leaves for your grandmother, soap nut and shikakai for your mother.” He looked up. “Is the flower man here? Oh, there he is. Let’s buy a fresh jasmine garland for your mother. She’ll like that.”

“And bananas for Charudi?” Biren reminded him.

“Oh, that’s right, bananas for Charudi,” said Shamol. “Also, there is something else I know I am forgetting.”

“Your umbrella, Baba,” Biren reminded him. He looked toward the umbrella man’s stall, but it was empty. “The man is not there.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Shamol, picking up his bags, “we’ll get the umbrella next week. Hopefully it won’t rain before then.”

* * *

They made their way out of the fish market and walked toward the temple. Shamol carried both jute bags to balance the weight on either side. Leafy mustard greens and bottle gourds protruded over the top of one. There was fish in the other. Biren walked beside him carrying a bunch of bananas and a large brown coconut.

Charudi—whose full name was Charulata—lived under the banyan tree by the river just outside the village temple. A hollow inside the banyan tree trunk served as her storage compartment. Here she kept a small brass pot and books wrapped in a red cotton towel. Charulata shared the tree with a family of monkeys. The monkeys seemed to have accepted her as one of their own because they never tampered with her belongings and left her in peace. They didn’t afford the same respect to the temple devotees, however. Monkeys ran off with slippers, snatched fruits out of hands, gnashed their teeth and made babies howl. The animals were a nuisance but enjoyed the sanctity of the temple, thanks to Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god.

As Shamol and Biren neared the temple, they saw Charulata sitting under the tree, gazing out at the river and fingering her prayer beads. She was a tiny bright-eyed woman who wore a piece of white cloth, darned and patched in several places, but clean. Her hair, cropped close to her head, was a snowy fizz. Destitute since her teenage years, Charulata had taught herself to read and write Sanskrit, a language far more difficult than Bengali.

“She is even more learned than the temple priest,” Shamol once remarked. He had great admiration for Charulata. “She has studied all the great scriptures but the poor woman can never enter the temple.”

“Why cannot she enter the temple?” asked Biren, puzzled.

“Because Charulata is a widow, mia, and Hindu widows are not allowed inside holy places. It is a cruel and meaningless custom of our society since ancient times. The poor woman is banned for no fault of her own. But Charulata does not need to go to any temple because she knows that God is hidden in every human soul.”

Charulata looked up and saw them. She motioned them over with a smile and lifted her hand to caress Biren’s cheek. The skin on her fingers was rough but her touch was tender.

“This boy gets more handsome every day,” she said softly.

Biren gave her the bananas.

“Bless you, dear child,” she said. “Wait, I also have something for you.” She turned around and, reaching inside the tree hollow, pulled out a flat object wrapped in newspaper. She handed it to Biren.

“What is it?” he asked curiously, setting the coconut down to accept it. He turned the packet over in his hands.

“A gift.” Charulata looked at him with shining eyes. “Open it and you will see. I made it specially for you.”

“How is your cough, Charulata?” Shamol asked, setting down his heavy bags. He took out a white handkerchief to mop his brow.

“Much better, much better,” chirped Charulata. “My nephew, you know the one in Dhaka Medical College, gave me a herbal tonic. But more important he gave me a book of the Brahma sutras. I don’t know if it was the book or the medicine that cured me.”

“Baba, look!” cried Biren. He held up a slim oblong-shaped palm bark with beautiful patterning in white. He turned to Charulata, incredulous. “Did you make this?” The paisley designs were painted with delicate strokes and closely woven together like the border of an embroidered sari.

“Why, yes.” Charulata laughed.

“But how?” asked Biren wonderingly. He fingered the bumpy pattern.

Charulata dismissed it with a wave. “Oh, it’s just a design painted with a duck feather, some rice flour and gum arabic. You can use it as a bookmark if you like. Do you like it, mia?”

“It’s beautiful,” said Biren reverentially. “Very, very beautiful. I will use this bookmark for my most important book.”

“Ah, that would be the Book of Life, mia. The one that’s written by the universe. My book is nearing its end but yours has just begun.”

Biren studied the design closely. “I can see a B entwined in the pattern. And here, another letter. Oh, I see my name!” He looked at his father with shining eyes. “Look, Baba, it’s my name hidden in the design. It’s like a puzzle.”

“Yes, I see that,” agreed Shamol. “That is indeed clever.”

“I paint these palm leaf designs with the names of different gods hidden in the pattern. The devotees like that. The priest sells them in the temple and he gives me two paisa for each. But more than the money, painting the patterns feels like a kind of meditation to me. Now I am thinking of doing some colored designs using vegetable dyes. Turmeric, indigo, vermillion.” She gave a mischievous laugh. “I may not be allowed to wear colors, but God gives me permission to paint in any hue I choose.”

“You are an inspiration to me, Charudi,” said Shamol. “They can take everything away from you but you still have all the essential things that feed the spirit and keep you joyful. I have much to learn from you.” He picked up his bags. “I could spend all day talking to you, but we must rush home before our fish spoils. Come, Biren, we must go.”

“Until next time, then,” said Charulata. “God bless you both and thank you for the bananas.”

“And thank you for the artistic gift,” Biren said, wrapping up the palm bark in the newspaper. “I will put it on my study desk and look at it every day.”

* * *

“I would keep it a secret,” said Shamol when they were out of earshot. “Don’t tell your grandmother Charudi gave you the bookmark. Otherwise, she will make you throw it away.”

Biren was indignant. “I will never throw it away. It is a special gift with my name written on it. Why should I throw it away?”

“Then, don’t tell Granny because she’ll say it’s bad luck to accept something from a widow’s hand. That is, of course, not at all true.”

They walked across the riverbed toward the bamboo grove and the road leading to the basha.

“Do you know it was Charudi who gave you your name?” said Shamol suddenly.

Biren stopped walking and looked at his father in surprise. “I thought it was Grandfather who named me Biren.”

“That is what we led your grandmother to believe.” Shamol chuckled. “Left to your grandmother you would have been named Bikramaditya. Your mother and I did not care for that name. Your mother, especially, was vehemently opposed to it so we had to do something. The Sanskrit letter associated with your lunar birth sign is B, so your name had to begin with B. We managed to convince your grandmother to name you Biren and we made Grandfather believe it was his idea. A child’s name dictates his fate in life after all. Nobody in our family, besides your mother and me, know it was actually Charudi who suggested your name. You are the third person now to know this but you must keep it a secret for the reasons I explained to you earlier.”

Biren absorbed this in silence. “My name means a soldier, does it not, Father?”

“Biren means warrior. There is a difference, mia. A soldier follows the orders of others. A warrior follows his own path. Sometimes a warrior has to act alone. You, Biren, are the Lord of Warriors. Never forget that.”

“And Nitin? What does Nitin mean?”

“Nitin means Master of the Right Path.”

“Did Charudi give Nitin his name, as well?”

“No, this time it really was your Grandfather’s suggestion, but your mother and I both liked the name Nitin, so it worked out all right.”

Biren skipped along and repeated softly, “Lord of Warriors and Master of the Right Path.” More loudly, he said, “I am glad I am the warrior, Baba. One day I will become a lawyer and I will fight for Charudi so she can enter the temple.”

“Oh, I don’t think she’s missing much,” said Shamol drily. “I am not even sure she cares to enter the temple. She has found what she needs under the banyan tree.”

“I will still fight for her. I think she wants me to. That is why she secretly wrote my name and pretended it was only a design.”

“Just keep it to yourself, mia. Do you know the wise sages believe there is a great power in secrecy? If you talk loosely about your intentions this power will disappear. But if you keep your good intentions a secret, the universe will conspire to make it happen. This is one of the great spiritual truths, mia. Wise people never talk about their intentions. They let their actions speak for them.”

CHAPTER

9

It was Shamol’s day off. He sat on the kitchen steps in his pajamas with Nitin half dozing on his lap, a cup of tea and a sugared toast beside him. Shamol watched Biren play marbles in the courtyard. His aim was excellent; he rarely missed. But as soon as one marble clicked against the other, a tiger-striped calico cat hiding behind the holy basil shot out to pounce on the marble, spoiling Biren’s game.

Biren stamped his foot. “Shoo!” he said sternly to the cat. He grabbed the marble out of its paws and placed it back on the spot where it had rolled. “The cat is not letting me play, Baba,” he complained to Shamol.

Shamol took a sip of his tea. “Perhaps he wants to play, too.”

“I want to play, too,” said Nitin, taking his thumb out of his mouth. He clambered off Shamol’s lap.

“Now you have two cats to play with you,” said Shamol, smiling.

Biren sighed.

“Aye, Khoka!” Granny called to Shamol from the kitchen window. Granny always called Father by his boyhood name every time she wanted something done. “Plant the marigold seedlings in the pots for me, will you? I want to grow the flowers for my puja.”

“Yes, Mother,” Shamol called back. “I am just finishing my tea.”

Biren glared indignantly at the retreating form of his grandmother. Khoka, do this, Khoka, do that. Never a moment of peace for poor Father. No time to even enjoy his cup of tea!

Shamol whistled a boatman’s song and went into the kitchen to return his cup. He must have said something funny because Mother replied with a laugh—the girlish laugh she reserved especially for him. His parents had their own little secrets, Biren suspected. Where did they run off to in the middle of the night? And why was there sand on their bed in the morning?

Shamol emerged from the kitchen. “Is anybody going to help me plant the marigolds?” he asked.

“I want to play with marbles,” said Nitin. “Dada, play marbles with me.”

“You play with the cat,” said Biren in an imperious voice.

“I don’t want to play with the cat,” Nitin pouted.

“Come along, then, wear your slippers,” said Shamol, heading toward the woodshed. The two boys ran to catch up with him.

Shamol dug up the rich black soil, Biren broke up the clumps and placed them in the terra-cotta pot and Nitin sat on his haunches and handed Biren the seedlings one by one.

“Careful, mia, you are pulling them up too roughly,” Shamol said. He took the seedling from Nitin’s hand and pointed to the roots. “See these small white hairs? If you break them, the plant will die. Use a stick and pull out the seedling very gently, like this, see?”

“Father, if you could be a tree—any tree in the world—what tree would you be?” Biren asked suddenly.

Shamol leaned on the worn-out handle of the shovel. “What tree would I like to be, now? What an interesting question. I will have to think about it.”

He went back to digging, then stopped. “I know what tree I want to be. I want to be a bamboo, although technically it is not a tree. It belongs to the grass family. Does that count?”

Biren frowned. “I suppose so.” He was disappointed in his father’s choice. He had expected him to pick something more significant like, say, a mango tree or a banyan, even a papaya tree. But bamboo? Father must be joking.

“But why bamboo, Father? It’s so...so ordinary.”

“Your father is an ordinary man, son. But why a bamboo, I will tell you. A bamboo is strong and resilient. It has many uses. You can build a house with it, you can make a raft and float down a river with it. You can eat it as a shoot, and drink out of it as a cup. Most important, the bamboo is hollow and empty inside. If a person can be hollow and empty like the bamboo, all the goodness and wisdom of the universe will flow through him.”

Biren was still not impressed. He did not want to be a bamboo. He saw himself as a magnificent and glorious flame tree, admired by all from near and far. He told his father that.

“The flame tree is an inspiring tree,” Shamol conceded. “It gives cooling shade and when it blooms it brings joy to all. But also know this. When the flame tree sheds, it loses everything. You see this in life, mia. Sometimes a person has to lose everything to renew and bloom again.”

Biren twirled a marigold seedling between his fingers. “Why is there only one flame tree, Baba? I have not seen any other flame trees around here.”

“Because it is an unusual tree for these parts. The natural habitat of the flame tree is in tiger country, hundreds of miles away.”

Shamol smiled at Nitin, who was frowning at the ground. “So what do you think, Nitin? What tree would you like to be? Dada wants to be a flame tree and I want to be a bamboo.”

“I...I...” Nitin faltered. He looked distressed, like he had been given a difficult piece of homework.

“Don’t worry,” Shamol said kindly. “You don’t have to be a tree. You can be anything you want.”

“I want to be an ant tree!” Nitin blurted out.

Shamol twitched his lips. “An ant tree!” he repeated. He leaned on his shovel and studied the round, earnest face of his younger son. “How marvelous! But tell me, mia, is it a tree where ants live or a tree that grows ants? I am curious to know.”

Nitin brightened. “An ant tree is a tree that grows ants and when...when...the ants get ripe they all fall down...and...when they all fall down they all play together and go to school!”

“Is that so?” Shamol’s eyes widened. “Be sure to warn me, mia, if you ever see an ant tree. I would be very much afraid to walk under one, with all the ripe ants falling on my head.”

Biren rolled his eyes at their silly talk. He tried to give Shamol a knowing look to say, Nitin is such a baby, but Shamol’s face was deadpan as he struck his shovel into the ground and continued to dig.

CHAPTER

10

The schoolmaster told Biren to see him in his office. When Biren stood in front of his desk, he handed the boy a folded note.

“Give this to your father,” he said, without looking up. “And don’t forget to bring back the answer tomorrow.”

Biren looked at the schoolmaster nervously. This was the first time he had written a note to his father—for that matter, to anybody’s father. Disciplinary measures were taken care of in school with no interference from parents, except, of course, in Samir’s case. Even that was most unusual. Most parents could not read or write anyway. Biren’s father, who had attended college in Dhaka, was the most educated man in the village, even more educated than the schoolmaster himself. To send Biren home with a handwritten note for his father and expect an answer the following day was all very odd. Biren wondered what the note was about.

“Did I do something wrong, Mastermoshai?” he said anxiously. “Please do not report me to my father.”

The weasel-faced schoolmaster looked mildly amused. “Why, mia? Do you have something to confess?”

Biren shook his head. He looked so worried the schoolmaster felt sorry for him.

“This is another matter,” he said shortly. “It has nothing to do with you. Run along now and remember to bring back the answer from your father tomorrow. This is urgent.”

* * *

Biren hopped from one foot to the other as he waited for Father to come home. He desperately wanted to go and meet his boat at the riverbank, but it was too far for Nitin to walk, so Biren had to be content to wait at their usual place down the road. Father was running late. Biren walked up and down while Nitin squatted by the side of the road and pushed ants around with a stick.

“One ant has died, Dada,” Nitin lamented with a woebegone face. “Shall we bury it?” Biren ignored him and gave a small shout when he saw his father turn the corner of the bamboo grove. Now he could see why his father was running late. Shamol held a big bunch of pink and white lilies, the stems wrapped in the pages of an old ledger and tied with a piece of jute string.

“A present for your lovely mother,” Shamol said. “I asked the boatman to stop at the backwaters today. Every day I pass these beautiful lilies and I always forget to bring a small knife to cut the stems. Today I made the boatman do a detour and take me there.”

Biren was not interested in the lilies. “Baba, Mastermoshai sent an urgent note for you. Here it is.” Biren waved the note under his father’s nose. “He said you must read it at once. He needs an answer by tomorrow.”

Shamol glanced briefly at the note. “I see,” he said vaguely. “Hold on to it. I will read it after my tea.”

Biren pulled at his shirtsleeve. “But this is most urgent, Baba. You have to read it now!”

Shamol gave him an amused look. “Is anything going to change between now and when I take my tea? I don’t think so. In any case your mastermoshai needs the answer by tomorrow. So what’s the hurry?” He stopped and turned to see Nitin trying to catch up. “Why have you left your brother behind? Why are his hands so dirty? Hold him by the hand. I can’t because of these flowers.”

Biren gave a noisy sigh, ran back and pulled Nitin by the hand.

“So what do you think the note is about?” he asked, sounding elaborately casual. He jerked Nitin’s hand to hurry him along but it only made him stumble. Nitin gave an indignant howl.

“Careful,” reprimanded his father. He lifted the lilies to his nose and inhaled deeply. “Smell these. They are heavenly.”

“I want to smell!” cried little Nitin.

Shamol bent down and held the lilies under Nitin’s nose. He grinned when Nitin closed his eyes, gave a dreamy sigh and went “aah” in a fitting imitation of Shibani.

Biren twisted a toe in the dirt. There was little he could do to hurry his father and Nitin along. He fingered the note in his pocket and the back of his neck prickled with impatience.

Finally on reaching home, the lily blossoms settled in a brass bowl and his father settled in the courtyard with a cup of tea, it was time to bring out the note again. Biren peered over his father’s shoulder trying to decipher the schoolmaster’s tiny, pristine Bengali script. The letter was full of big words.

“What is it, Baba?” he asked. “What is it? Tell me, quickly.”

“I see. It appears the new boy is your school needs private tuition. Why, is there a new boy in your school who is struggling with his studies? His name is Samir Deb.”

Biren shrugged. Samir Deb’s academic challenges were of little interest to him.

“Who needs tuition?” said Shibani, coming out of the kitchen. She handed her husband a rice crepe with coconut filling. “Try this patishapta. I made them today.”

“Samir Deb. The new boy in Biren’s class. The child is falling behind in his studies. His family wants to send him to study in Calcutta. The schoolmaster has recommended me to give him private tuition. I wonder why your mastermoshai does not give the child private tuition himself?”

“Because he is afraid,” Biren blurted out. He remembered how the belligerent ladies had cowed down the poor schoolmaster.

“Afraid?” said Shamol, puzzled. “Afraid of what? I don’t understand.”

“His mother is very...” Biren tried to think of the right word. “Ferocious.”

“Well, I am not worried about his ferocious mother. The problem is I get home too late. I don’t have the time to go to the child’s house but I can tutor him if they send him to our basha.”

Biren looked at his father in horror. “But he cannot come to our basha, Baba!” he cried.

“And why not?” said his father, mildly surprised.

Biren wanted to say, Because he wears knee-length socks and cries like a girl. Because he is too rich and we are too poor, because my friends will laugh and everybody will think he is my friend. But all he could say was, “Because he rides in a palanquin.”

“Why, that’s rather fine,” said his father.

“Like a girl,” Biren added, to drive home the point. “Only girls ride in palanquins.”

“I wouldn’t mind riding a palanquin,” said Shibani.

“Someday, my darling,” said his father, “and I will decorate it with sweet-scented lilies for you.” He gave Shibani a long tender look that made her toss her hair back in a girlish way.

Biren tugged his father’s hand. “Baba, what are you going to do?”

“I can offer to teach him at the same time I teach you two. They don’t have to pay me any money for that.”

“But they are rich,” said Biren. “Very rich. He brings new pencils and erasers to school every day.”

Shamol Roy looked at his son sadly. He wished he could buy his wife a palanquin, but she had to be content with a few lilies instead. Here was his boy hankering for a new pencil and all he could afford were the pencil stubs discarded at the office. Biren, dexterous for an eight-year-old, used a razor blade to pare both ends to get maximum usage out of them.

Biren was quick to catch his father’s sadness. “But I like the small pencils much better,” he said brightly. “They are easier to carry around in my pocket and if I lose one I don’t feel so bad because I have many more. Also, you want to know one more thing? Carrying long sharpened pencils in your pocket is very dangerous. If you fall down and get poked in your eye you can become blind. Then you won’t be able to go to school, or read, or...or...even fly a kite. So what’s the use?”

Shamol Roy smiled at his son, the diplomat. Biren was wily with his words, but more important he was a thoughtful, compassionate child. “Bring me one of your pencils,” he said. “Let me write a reply to your mastermoshai.”

“They will pay you lots of good money for the tuition, Baba.” Biren jumped up, dizzy with the vision of new pencils and erasers. Why, they might even be able to afford one of those mechanical pencil sharpeners.

“They may offer to pay me,” said his father. “But I don’t need to accept it.”

“But why not?” Biren was crestfallen. “Samir’s family has lots of money.”

“That is not the point,” said his father. “Do you know the difference between opportunity and advantage, mia? An opportunity is something that is offered to you. An advantage is something you take. It would be foolish to miss an opportunity but it is sometimes wise to forgo an advantage.”

“So why are you not taking the money?”

“Because I am not going out of my way to tutor the child. I am not doing anything extra. So why should I charge money for work I have not done? Never mind, don’t worry about it. Go get me a pencil.”

Shamol Roy scribbled a quick reply on the reverse of the schoolmaster’s note and sent it back with Biren.

CHAPTER

11

It was all settled, and Biren was asked to bring Samir home with him. It soon dawned on Biren he would not be taking the boat back to the village with his friends. Instead—to his horror—he was expected to sit in the tasseled palanquin next to Sammy and be carried to his own house. The very thought of it made him wish he had never been born.

He loitered under the tamarind trees in the schoolyard and kicked dirt while furious thoughts raced through his mind.

Finally he approached the palanquin bearers. “My father has strictly forbidden me to ride the palanquin,” he told them in an authoritative voice. “I can show you the way to my house but you will have to follow behind me.”

“But how will you walk? It is too far,” said one of the men. “It is much shorter by boat, we know, but Samir-baba gets nauseous in a boat, which is why we have to carry him everywhere.”

Biren was tempted to say he got nauseous in a palanquin, but that would not work. “What do you think I am? A cripple?” he said loudly, hoping to shame Samir into sending the palanquin home. But Samir was already seated inside sipping sweet bael sherbet and eating stuffed dates.

“Just follow behind me,” said Biren abruptly. He marched stoutly ahead and the palanquin bearers, habituated as they were to their own brisk pace, hobbled awkwardly behind him like a broken bullock cart.

After a while Samir got bored and got down from the palanquin and skipped up to Biren.

“Don’t walk with me,” Biren snapped, looking nervously around him. His plan was to pretend the palanquin had nothing to do with him, but to have Samir Deb in his pleated shorts and knee-length socks walk alongside was a dead giveaway.

“Why?” said Samir in a high-pitched whine. “Why don’t you want to walk with me? Why don’t you want to be my friend?”

Biren stopped in his tracks, almost causing the palanquin bearers to bump into him. “Because I don’t,” he said fiercely. “I don’t want to walk with you. I want you to stay two boat lengths behind me, do you understand?”

One of the palanquin bearers gave a snort, which made Samir fly into a rage. He looked like a miniversion of his mother. “Shut up, stupid donkey!” he yelled, kicking a small puff of dust with his shiny black shoe. “And you donkeys stay two boat lengths behind me, do you understand?”

And so the strange procession continued, Biren marching briskly ahead, followed by Sammy, two boat lengths behind, rounded up by the miserable palanquin bearers, for whom the lethargic pace was sheer torture.

* * *

When they reached the house, Sammy was hobbling and in tears. He removed his shoes to reveal two small, round blisters sprouted like batashas on his heels.

Shibani shush-shushed sympathetically, sat him on her lap, wiped his tears with the end of her sari and made him soak his feet in cool rose water. Just to see Samir with his fat tears wobbling on his chin and being fussed over by Shibani filled Biren with intense disgust. Even three-year-old Nitin had grown past such infantile behavior.

Shibani went into the kitchen to prepare fresh limewater.

“Your mother is so beautiful,” Samir said in a mellifluous voice. He twirled his pink toes in the basin. “I want to marry someone just like her.”

Biren went insane. “Well, you can’t!” he said fiercely. “She is already married to my father and she will be married to my father for the rest of her life!”

Nitin, who was splashing his hands in the foot basin, looked up with big, scared eyes. He had never seen his brother so angry.

Sammy tilted back his head to admire his toes. “I had an aunt once,” he said conversationally. He splashed a little water at Nitin, who darted away with a shriek, then tiptoed back to be splashed some more. “She used to be so beautiful. She had long black hair like your mother. Then my uncle died and she became very ugly. Nobody goes near her or talks to her anymore. Now she lives with the goats in the back of the house.”

“Who is it, Biren mia? Do we have a visitor?” Grandpa, woken up from his nap, called in a cracked sleepy voice from his room. “Bring him to me. Let me see who this is. Oh, my, my, what a fair and handsome fellow! What is your name, young man?”

Samir puffed out his chest. “My name is Samir Kumar Deb. I was born in Calcutta and I have been to London twice,” he said loudly. His eyes drifted lazily across the room, taking in Granny’s faded saris lumped over the clotheshorse and Grandpa’s lopsided clogs, the toes facing in opposite directions.

“London!” cried Grandpa, clapping his hands. “Imagine that! Tell me, mia, was it terribly cold? Lots of ice and snow?”

Biren left Samir sitting on Grandpa’s bed telling him all about Big Ben. Even Nitin fingered the fringe of the bedspread and listened with his mouth open. Biren was sick to his stomach. Samir enchanted the whole family. He made Shibani giggle by telling her she was beautiful like a goddess. Granny told them the story of Surparnarekha, the ugly she-demon with her sliced-off nose and used a candle flame to create shadow puppets. Grandpa, not to be outdone, pulled a cowrie out of Samir’s ear and offered it to him.

“No, thank you,” Samir declined politely.

“I’ll take it!” chirped Nitin, holding out his small hand. But Grandpa’s eyes wandered slyly and he put the cowrie away.

When Father came home, he cut a papaya and Biren was secretly pleased to see the wonder on Samir’s face. When Shamol handed him a slice, he wolfed it down wordlessly even before the others had taken a bite of theirs.

“I want some more,” he said, eyeing the remaining slices on the brass platter.

Biren opened his mouth to say everyone only got one piece each, when Shamol quickly cut up his own slice into equal portions and offered it to the boys.

“Here’s another small piece,” he said. “Today everybody gets a little extra.”

* * *

When it came time for homework, Shamol followed exactly the same routine as other days, not doing any more or any less than usual. Nitin stuck his tongue out and laboriously fashioned a capital A, only to be distracted by Samir making funny faces at him. Nitin broke into a squealy giggle and covered his mouth with his hands.

Shamol looked up from his book. “Boys,” he admonished them gently.

“I don’t need to do this sum,” Sammy announced, throwing down his pencil. “This is too easy. I already know the answer.”

“Is that so?” said Shamol mildly. “Perhaps you can show me how to do it, then.” He turned to Biren, who was standing beside him with a smug look on his face. “What is it, Biren, are you finished? Let me see. All right, you may put your things away and leave the room. And you, too, Nitin. Very good. Now, Samir is going to help me solve this tricky sum.”

Biren knew why Nitin and he were being sent out of the room. His father wanted to spare Samir the embarrassment of looking ignorant in front of others. Shamol Roy in his own quiet way instilled in his students a deep love of learning. He guarded their private struggles and brandished their victories to all. He was, after all, a born and gifted teacher.

* * *

The palanquin bearers slept peacefully under the mango tree. The shadows had lengthened in the bamboo grove and it was already time for evening puja by the time Samir was done. Shibani lovingly bandaged his feet in soft mulmul strips cut from her old saris and kissed the top of his head before sending him on his way. Biren sighed with relief to see the palanquin swing off at a brisk pace and disappear down the bend in the road. He had secretly begun to worry Samir would end up staying the night or, worse still, be adopted by the family and they would be stuck with him for the rest of their lives.

* * *

Six months later, Samir left for boarding school. Biren received a postcard with a beautiful photo of the marble domed Victoria Memorial of Calcutta.

Dear Biren Roy,

This is the Victoria Mangorial.

It is very fine.

I am very fine.

I hope you are fine, also.

Very truly yours,

Samir Kumar Deb

CHAPTER

12

It was Shibani’s hair-washing day. Her jet-black hair, a whole yard and a half long, tumbled in tresses down to an old sari spread on the ground for the purpose. She sat on a footstool in the courtyard while Apu rubbed coconut oil into her scalp, parting her hair in sections with a wide bamboo toothcomb. Shibani’s eyes were closed and her head bobbed willingly under her friend’s massaging fingertips. She looked blissfully relaxed. Beside her stool was a brass bowl containing a solution of soap nuts and shikakai for her hair wash.

Shibani squinted up at the gathering clouds. “Looks like rain, don’t you think? Maybe I should put off washing my hair today. It will never dry in this humidity. I always catch a head cold when I sleep with wet hair.”

“Then, you will have to sleep with your oily hair tonight,” said Apu. “This is your last oil massage for a while, sister. Remember I am leaving for my cousin’s wedding on Friday. I will be gone for a whole month. Tomorrow I have to prepare all the sweets to take to the groom’s house. Coconut balls, rice cakes and palm fritters. I will send the maid over with some for you.”

“Do you have enough saris for all the days? You are welcome to borrow some of mine, you know.”

“Oh, no, no. Your saris are too expensive and fancy. You know what these family weddings are like. With hundreds of people coming and going, things get lost or stolen all the time. I would feel terrible if that happened.”

“Don’t be silly!” Shibani laughed. “Take my saris. I don’t care if they get lost. I have too many. There will never be enough occasions to wear them all. I’ll tell you what, when you have finished oiling my hair, we’ll go and pick out some for you. I have a beautiful banana-leaf-green one that will suit you very well. Today I am free in the evening and I can do the hems for you.”

* * *

That same morning on his way to work, Shamol Roy had noticed the clouds in the east had swallowed the sun. The river turned a dark and oily black against which the jute plants, eight feet tall, glowed an eerie and electric green.

Shamol fretted because he had not picked up his umbrella from the umbrella man. Now from the look of the sky they were heading for quite a downpour.

He arrived at the jute mill godown to find it still locked. Usually his assistant, who lived in the jute quarters nearby, came early to open it. The bullock carts laden with bales were already lined up outside. Shamol went to the main office to pick up the godown key and learned his assistant was sick and would not be coming in that day. Mr. Mallick, the mill manager, assured Shamol he would send help immediately.

By midday, no help had arrived and Shamol was finding it increasingly difficult to manage on his own. It was a brutally hot and humid day with no respite, not even a cup of tea. He had to run back and forth from the weighing scales outside to the ledger in the godown. The bullock cart lines grew longer and backed up all the way down the road to the bazaar. By early afternoon Shamol realized he would have to lock up the godown and drop off the keys at the main office at the end of the day. This meant he would most definitely miss the last ferry home. His only option was to stay overnight at a relative’s house in the village, but before that he would have to send a message home through Kanai. Maybe Kanai could bring back a change of fresh clothes for him. If not, he would have to borrow something from his cousin to wear to office the following morning.

But despite the harried day, he did not forget his son’s pencils. He had collected six stubs from the office, each two or three inches long. He wrapped the pencils in a piece of blotting paper and put them in the front pocket of his tunic.

Finally the last bale was weighed and the bullock cart ambled away, tinkling its bell. Shamol Roy made the last notations and closed his ledger. He sat down at his desk and felt the weight of the day slump on his shoulders. It was getting dark inside the godown. He knew there were candles and matches tucked around somewhere, but only the assistant knew where.

He was about to leave when the rain crashed down like a wall of glass. Shamol was trapped. There was nothing he could to do but wait it out, but he would have to find the candles before that.

He groped his way to the back of the godown. Squeaks and scrabbles emanated from the bales, and a small creature with scratchy claws ran over his feet, making him jump. To his relief he located the candles and a box of matches on a small bamboo shelf on the back wall. Shamol lit two candles and made his way back to the elevated platform of his desk. He considered shutting the door of the godown to keep out the rain but then it would get terribly stuffy. As it was, a thick vapor was rising off the floor and the smell of rot and decay from the bales was almost too much to bear.

He realized he had not eaten anything all day. The potato and fried flatbread Shibani packed for him that morning lay untouched in a cloth bag on his desk. He opened the bag and ate his cold food in the flickering candlelight while rain crashed and splattered outside. This kind of torrential rain usually did not last too long, he thought thankfully.

He missed Shibani and the boys. He was spending only one day away from his family and he was already homesick. He wondered what they were doing. Shibani was probably chatting with Apu. The boys would be out playing somewhere; there was no schoolwork after all.

His thoughts turned to Biren. The child was a dreamer. Biren saw the magic in the mundane. He imagined things bigger, better and more elaborate. When most children made a paper boat, Biren made a steamer ship with a chimney. When other children drew a duck, Biren drew a swan. He had natural showmanship and expressed himself with touching eloquence. His flashy good looks added to his charisma. Biren had curly hair, a straight nose and a wheat-colored complexion, but his most striking feature was his dark, expressive eyes.

Then there was, of course, little Nitin with his wandering smile and look of perpetual bafflement. No star quality there, Shamol thought tenderly of his younger son, but God had given the little fellow his own charm to get by in the world.

He wished he could do more for his boys. They deserved a better education, for one. He remembered what Shibani and he talked about a few nights ago by the river. She was right. Maybe he should broach the subject of the English boarding school with his boss, Owen McIntosh. There was no harm in asking after all.

The rain had almost stopped. In another ten or fifteen minutes he would be able to lock up the godown and leave. Shamol decided to use this time to write Owen McIntosh a letter and drop it off with the godown keys at the jute mill office on his way to his cousin’s house.

He found a clean sheet of paper, uncapped his fountain pen and began to write.

* * *

Biren had just got back from school when Kanai brought news that Shamol was not coming home that evening. Biren’s heart gave a little jump. That meant no homework. It was the perfect day to go fishing with Kanai.

After some persuasion, Kanai agreed to take him. It was a gloomy afternoon, and by the time they arrived at the backwaters, the clouds had deepened to purple-black like an angry bruise across the sky. A sly wind flicked the water and pushed the boat toward the reedy marsh, where it was difficult to cast the line because the wind blew it in the wrong direction. After an hour on the wobbling boat Kanai said they should go home. Biren was deeply disappointed.

Shibani was sitting on the bed, hemming the bottom border of a leaf-green sari. She wore an old turmeric-stained blouse and petticoat and her head, wrapped in a cotton towel, looked like a giant breadbasket. Biren had never seen his mother so slovenly. In the evenings she was usually dressed in fresh clothes with flowers in her hair. Then he remembered his father was not coming home that day.

Nitin hung upside down off the edge of the bed, swinging his hands. Shibani kept her foot firmly pressed on his bottom to make sure he did not slide off.

“I was worried about you,” she said. “Today is not a good day to be out in the open water. Kanai should have more sense than to take you.”

“We hardly got any time to fish,” grumbled Biren. “There were many other boats still out in the river, but Kanai made me come home.”

“Did you catch a big chital fish, Dada?” Nitin righted himself. His hair, long and straight, hung down like river reeds over his eyes.

Biren shook his head.

Shibani cut the thread with her teeth. “Go and wash your hands and face,” she said. “I want you to take these saris to Apumashi’s house before it starts raining. Come back immediately. Your grandmother is not feeling well. We are going to eat dinner and go to bed early tonight. I have to wash my hair in the morning.”

* * *

That night Shibani dreamed of a snake.

She could not see it, but she felt it twisted around her throat in thick damp coils, choking her breath. When she tried to scream, the coils tightened. She woke up drenched in sweat to find her long oily hair freed from the towel wrapped around her neck. Her hand crept instinctively to Shamol’s side of the bed and a small sadness fluttered in her heart when she touched his empty pillow. She lay in bed and thought of him. She hoped he would get some sleep that night. Shamol’s cousins were a big noisy family with several ill-behaved children who ran rumpus over the house. Would he miss her? She smiled. Of course he would. Her husband was a deeply romantic and sentimental man.

Shibani’s heart swelled with gratitude when she thought of him. He was such a caring husband and a good father. Shamol discerned unique qualities in each child and wove them into their self-confidence. She remembered a phase Nitin had gone through when he’d wanted to dress up in girl clothes and play with dolls all the time. Shamol had never once tried to dissuade him or make him feel it was wrong. “The child is only acting out his imagination,” he’d explained to Shibani. “He will grow out of it.” And sure enough, Nitin soon had.

Samir in the meantime had turned around and called Nitin a sissy. He’d done it in a mean-spirited way and Biren had been quick to lash out in defense of his young brother. “You are the sissy,” Biren had shot back. “Imagine a grown-up boy like you riding in a palanquin!”

Shamol, who had overheard their quarrel, had quickly diffused it by telling the boys about the brave Scottish Highlanders in their wool-pleated kilts and Roman emperors who wore togas. He’d gone on to talk about Japanese emperors and brave Samurai warriors who were borne aloft on palanquins because of their exalted status. At the end Shamol had had all three boys keen to wear kilts and togas and ride in palanquins.

Shibani’s fingers caressed her husband’s pillow, remembering. She slipped her small supple hand under it and found a sprig of dried jasmine from the garland of her hair. Her sweet husband must have tucked it there. Breathing in the scent, she drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

An inky darkness had fallen outside by the time Shamol finished his letter. The rain had ceased and the candles, now reduced to shapeless gobs, spluttered in their pools of wax. Outside the door the jackals howled in a lonely chorus. Shamol quickly folded the letter, gathered together his things and picked up the ledger and keys from the table. Then he blew out the candles one by one. As he stepped off the platform, the keys slipped from his hand and fell with a clatter to the floor. He bent down and felt for them in the dark and bumped up against what he thought was the leg of the table. But it was hard and muscular and writhed against his upper arm. Too late, he realized it was a snake. He jerked back his hand and heard a loud spitting hiss followed by a needling stab on his right wrist. Shamol’s knees buckled; he grabbed the table to steady himself and slowly crumpled to the floor. A milky film floated before his eyes, his tongue twisted to the roof of his mouth and ribbons of white froth dribbled down his chin. The last thing Shamol Roy felt was a tremendous crushing pain in his chest and the sensation of being sucked underwater.

Twenty minutes later, he lay dead in the jute godown, surrounded by the rats and the filth. His hand clutched his pocket that held the six pencil stubs wrapped in a blotting paper he had planned on taking home for his son.

CHAPTER

13

The disheveled man waiting for Biren in the headmaster’s office looked vaguely familiar. His hair was uncombed and he was still in his night pajamas. It finally dawned on Biren he was their neighbor, Apu’s husband, a man he had probably seen five times in his life and never spoken to even once.

“Mr. Bhowmik will take you home,” said the headmaster, fiddling with a bunch of papers on his desk. He did not explain why. From the look on their faces, Biren knew something was wrong. It must be something to do with his granny, he thought. Maybe she had died. Old people died quickly and suddenly after all. Like Kanai’s granny. Kanai said one day she was chewing betel nuts on the front steps and chatting with the neighbors and the next day she was gone.

On the boat ride back home the man turned his face away toward the jute fields and made no attempt at conversation. He was not one to talk much, from what Biren remembered. If Granny had died, why hadn’t his father come to get him? It was not like Father to send a stranger in his place.

Maybe he could trick Apu’s husband into conversation.

“I wonder if it will rain tonight,” Biren remarked, peering up at the clouds. “This changing weather is terrible. It is making us all sick. My granny had a high fever last night. She was terribly unwell.”

The man coughed and gave a brief nod but did not say anything. The silence was getting sticky. The boat rowed past the backwaters.

“I went fishing out to the backwaters yesterday,” Biren said brightly. “Kanai the fisherman caught a big chital fish a few days ago. Fifteen kilos, imagine!” Biren cast a sly glance to see if the man was impressed, but he just crossed his arms over his chest. “But it was hopeless for me,” Biren continued. “I did not even catch a two-inch pooty fish! It is this rough weather, you know. When it gets too windy, the fish go down too deep and don’t bite. It was a good thing we decided to come home...” His last few words dribbled off. His pitcher of conversation was running dry.

Finally, as the boat pulled up to Momati Ghat, the man cleared his throat. “You will stay at our house today,” he said. Biren was startled to hear his voice. It was low and throaty. Something warned him not to ask further questions.

They entered Apu’s house through the front door, which had a different street entrance from their own. Nitin was already there, behaving in a manner that would have earned him a sound paddling from Shibani. A half-packed trunk lay open on the floor. Nitin and Apu’s two little girls, Ruby and Ratna, had pulled out an expensive silk sari from the trunk and ran shrieking through the house as they trailed the leaf-green silk behind them. Biren remembered it as the same sari he had delivered the day before.

A toothless granny with collapsed cheeks, her hair coiled into a walnut-size bun, sat on the bed with a string of prayer beads wrapped in her hand. She called after them in a wavery voice, “Careful, careful.”

“Ma!” yelled Apu’s husband loudly in the old woman’s ear. “I am going out. Keep an eye on the children, do you hear? Don’t let them out of the house.”

Biren tugged the man’s hand. “Can I go home?”

“Not now,” said the man. “Your Apumashi will come to get you both later.”

“Where is Apumashi?”

“She’s gone...out,” said the man. “You all stay here. You must not leave the house.”

He turned around and left.

Four-year-old Ruby came running up to Biren and hugged him tightly around the waist. “Oh, my husband! My sweet husband!” she cried. She grabbed his hand and kissed it feverishly.

“I am not your husband,” Biren said gruffly, snatching his hand away. He disengaged her arms from around his waist.

“But of course you are,” Ruby replied in a sugary voice. She gave him a sly, coquettish look. “You are, you are, my handsome husband.” She twirled her skirt and sang. “We are going to get married. I will wear a red sari and we will exchange garlands. Oh, I love my husband! We are getting married.”

“Getting married! Getting married!” shrieked the other two, flinging the folds of the sari up in the air.

“Careful, careful,” chirruped the granny.

It was strange, but there didn’t seem to be another soul in the house.

“Granny!” yelled Biren in the old lady’s ear. “Where is everybody?”

“Everybody?” pondered the granny. “Everybody must be doing puja.”

The puja room was empty, the sandalwood joss sticks burned down to a bed of ash.

Biren grabbed Nitin as he ran by and shook him by the shoulder. “Nitin, who dropped you here? Where is Ma?”

Nitin shrugged off his brother. Reckless and out of control, he ran off screaming behind Ratna.

The kitchen looked as if it had been abandoned in a hurry. On the floor were several brass platters of grated coconut, sesame seeds, mounds of jaggery and a large basin of rice flour batter. Biren turned to the window, which faced the pumpkin patch, beyond which he could see the rooftop of his house in the distance. A small slice of their courtyard was visible. He saw several men in the courtyard but could not make out their faces.

Then he heard a strange sound. What was it? It was between a howl and a moan. Then came another and another. There were waves of them. It sounded like a dying animal in mortal pain. Maybe it was a wounded jackal in the taro patch. Biren made a note to himself to look for the poor creature when he got home.

CHAPTER

14

What a damned, wretched day, thought Owen McIntosh, the Scottish owner of Victoria Jute Mills. He sat on the veranda of his bungalow, the pipe in his mouth remained unlit, his cup of tea untouched. After the horrific events of the day before, he felt no desire for the small comforts he looked forward to every evening when he got home.

A dreary darkness had settled around the bungalow compound, and in the distance the jackals howled in chorus. It was around this time yesterday that Shamol Roy had suffered the fatal cobra bite in the jute godown and breathed his last. Owen was horrified to think of the poor man lying in his own vomit all night, surrounded by rats, cockroaches, the jackals wandering in and out of the open doorway. When the laborers found his body in the morning, the jackals had half dragged it out of the doorway and it was a gruesome sight. Owen McIntosh covered his eyes and felt the bile rise to his throat at the memory of what he had seen.

What a fine young man Shamol Roy had been. He’d had so much promise and was undoubtedly one of the best employees of Victoria Jute Mills. Owen believed Roy deserved better. He had been too educated and genteel for the rough work he did in that filthy godown, managing the common laborers, day in and day out. That man had a quiet presence about him, a dignity of carriage, speech and manners that belied his humble village upbringing. From what Owen knew, Shamol Roy had been the only earning member of his joint family. He had accepted the godown job because the pay was slightly higher than the administrative work at the mill office. Owen had had every good intention to promote him to a better paying position in the main office as soon as he could find someone to replace him. At one point, he had even toyed with the idea of grooming Roy as his personal assistant. Now it was too late.

More than just sadness and regret, Owen McIntosh was tortured with guilt. He knew in his heart he had delayed Shamol Roy’s promotion because of his own self-interest. Raw-material management was a critical part of the jute mill business and Owen had yet to find someone as responsible and capable as Roy. Roy had had a gentle way of dealing with the rough laborers. He had known each laborer by name and often asked after their families. Shamol Roy had been meticulous about his job and never acted bossy or condescending toward his assistant. Because he’d managed the godown operation so faultlessly, Owen had let him run it. He had not tried hard enough to find a substitute, and the soft-spoken young man never once complained.

Shamol Roy had elected not to live in the jute mill quarters provided free to employees. Rather, each day, he traveled up and down by boat from his village to work. Most other workers went home only on weekends. A cluster of cheap wine shops and brothels had sprung up around the jute mill area to cater to these men. Many showed up to work red-eyed and hungover in the mornings, but Shamol Roy had always arrived impeccably dressed, never absent or late. He had to return home every night to tutor his children, he’d explained, to help them with their schoolwork, as he did not want them falling behind in their studies. Owen also knew he had collected the discarded pencil stubs from the office to take home to his son.

He had once met the older boy at the office of Saraswati Puja. Held in the jute mill compound during early spring, the puja was a joyous occasion celebrated with the beating of drums and blowing of conch horns. Employees brought their wives and children from the villages, dressed in bright new clothes to see the bedecked Goddess of Learning seated on her snow-white lotus, holding a stringed vina in her hands.

Owen had been in his office when Shamol Roy had walked in with his eight-year-old son. A bold and curious child, he was intelligent beyond his years. The boy had sat on the edge of his chair and knew more about jute manufacturing than most of the employees at the mill. Thoroughly charmed, Owen had, with mock gravity, offered the lad a job. To his surprise the young fellow piped up, “Thank you, sir, but I must complete my education first.”

“And did you make a special wish to the goddess Saraswati today?” Owen had inquired gently. “What do you want to be when you grow up, young man?”

“I want to be a lawyer,” the boy had replied without hesitation.

“Indeed! And why not a doctor, may I ask?”

“Because...” The boy’s soulful eyes had deepened. “Because if I am a doctor, I can only make my living if people fall sick, but if I am a lawyer I can make my living by fighting for what is right.”

Owen had been astounded by his sage-like answer. What was more remarkable, Shamol Roy had let his young son take center stage, never once chiding or belittling the boy in front of his boss. He had treated his son respectfully like an adult and as a result the boy stood tall and felt entitled to speak his mind.

Owen thought about his own two children. Alan, his son, was the same age as this boy, maybe a wee bit older, and his daughter, Margie, was six, but both his children seemed like toddlers compared to Shamol Roy’s boy.

Owen’s heart was filled with despair. What would become of Shamol Roy’s young sons? Who would tutor them, who would give them the confidence to strive higher? Their education would be cut short and they would be sucked back into their village life. What a waste of potential. The more Owen thought about the two boys, the more wretched he felt. He blamed himself in part for Shamol Roy’s death. How was he ever going to live with himself?

Another thing bothered him. A few years ago Roy had approached his office, stood shyly outside the door and asked to speak with him on a private matter. He had explained to Owen about his family situation. His brother was unable to work because of an injury sustained a few years ago, so the responsibility for his aging parents, his brother’s family as well as his own, was on him. As Roy had talked, Owen McIntosh had begun to suspect he was going to ask for a loan, but he was wrong.

Roy had said he had been thinking about the future of his boys. To make sure there would be sufficient funds for their college education, he wanted to set aside a portion of his salary every month. Unfortunately, he would have to do this without the knowledge of his family. His older brother, who managed the funds of the family, was childless and did not put the same value on education as Shamol did. Shamol Roy himself had missed the opportunity to finish college. He did not want his sons to suffer the same fate. He had asked if Mr. McIntosh could deduct a small portion of his salary every month and put it aside in a separate fund for him.

Owen McIntosh had been deeply moved by his story. He said he would not only be glad to do that, but every month he would add a small bonus to compensate him for his hard work.

Shamol Roy was now dead at the age of thirty-four. The fund, meanwhile, had grown to a sizable amount. The question was, what to do with the money? If Owen handed the money over to Roy’s joint family, chances were the boys would never see it. It became increasingly clear: he had a moral responsibility to protect the two boys.

Now there was Roy’s final letter where he had asked, rather timidly, if Owen could help his sons get admission in an English missionary school. It had never occurred to Owen to do that for any employee, as it meant assuming full guardianship for the boys. But Roy was dead and Owen had his letter as proof. He decided he would do everything in his power to make Roy’s last wishes come true.

Having come to that decision, Owen McIntosh felt better. He called for the bearer to make him a fresh pot of tea, and finally lit his pipe. He could only hope Shamol Roy’s family would agree to his plans.

CHAPTER

15

Biren remembered very little of what happened in the next few days. He was told his father had died from a cobra bite in the jute mill. The house was full of strange people. They huddled in clusters; the women beat their breasts and wailed. Granny’s potted marigolds all died because nobody watered them. Bunches of tuberose lay discolored and rotting, still wrapped in newspaper and string. Granny took to bed and cried day and night, Uncle disappeared and Grandpa retreated into a stony silence while the gloomy aunt did her best to manage the chaotic household. As for Shibani, she was nowhere to be seen.

Bewildered, Biren wandered around the house looking for his mother. He had seen her last on the morning before he left for school. She’d looked fine and had been getting ready to wash her hair. That night he and Nitin had fallen asleep in Apumashi’s house. Somebody had carried them home late at night and they had woken up to find both their mother and father gone and the house full of crying people.

All he knew was his father had died and his mother had disappeared and nobody talked about her. There was a different bedspread on her bed. He looked for her sewing basket, which was full of needles, buttons and colored threads wrapped around bamboo spools. He often rummaged in this basket looking for tacking pins to bend into fishing hooks. Her basket was nowhere. Panic set in. He began to fear his mother had abandoned him and his brother. Maybe they were bad boys and she didn’t want them anymore.

Everything that belonged to his mother was gone. Her trunk of saris, her comb, her bangles, the brass container of vermillion she used for the part of her hair. Oddly, his father’s things remained exactly where they were before he had died. His lungi and vest were folded neatly over the clotheshorse. His books, English calendar, wooden clogs and even his comb with a few black hairs still stuck to them. It almost felt as if his mother had died and his father had gone away. Something was just not adding up, but Biren could not put a finger on it.

In the evenings Biren felt the urge to walk down the road to meet his father, only to realize with a stab of pain that his father would never come home again. He wished he could talk to Apumashi. She would explain everything. He wanted to go to her house, but Granny would not allow him. “We are in mourning,” she said. “You don’t visit other people in their homes for thirteen days.” In desperation he imitated his mother and rooster called to Apu across the pumpkin patch but there was no answering call back.

Nitin behaved strangely. He walked around with his hair uncombed and sucked his thumb. He started to wet his bed and after a while he stopped talking entirely. One day Biren saw him put a blue marble inside his mouth. The next thing he knew, Nitin had gulped. Biren rushed over and forced Nitin’s mouth open. He stuck his finger inside and moved it around but the marble was gone.

“Granny!” screamed Biren, dragging Nitin to Granny’s room. “Nitin swallowed a marble!” To his shock, Granny did not seem to care.

Biren wandered around in a daze holding Nitin tightly by the hand. His father and mother had both disappeared; now Nitin had swallowed a marble and was surely going to die and nobody cared. What was going on?

Then out of the blue Nitin fell on the ground and threw a tantrum. He screamed and begged and promised never to play with his mother’s sari again. Nobody, except Biren, knew what the hysteria was about. Biren knew for certain their mother had not gone away because Nitin had spoiled her expensive sari. Finally, he could stand it no longer.

“Where is my ma?” he asked his morose aunt.

“She will be here soon,” said the aunt.

“Where is Ma’s sewing basket?” he persisted. “Where are all her things?”

“They have been disposed of,” said the aunt. “They are contaminated.”

He heaved a sigh of relief. So that was the problem. His mother had caught an infectious disease and she was in quarantine, which is why nobody was allowed to see her. It was probably measles or chicken pox. Why didn’t they just say so? She would soon recover, and Apumashi would come to wash her hair again and they would laugh and eat chili tamarind in the sun.

For now, he would have to take care of his younger brother. Biren invented little games for them to play and tried to teach Nitin his ABCs. Nitin solemnly chanted in a singsong with his finger on each letter: “A for pipra, B for cheley,” substituting the Bengali words for ant and boy, and Biren did not have the heart to correct him.

The next day he combed Nitin’s hair, holding him firmly by the chin just as his mother used to do, and took him for a walk down the road.

“Is Baba coming home today?” Nitin’s small face was bright with hope.

“Not today,” said Biren. He wondered how much longer he would have to lie to his little brother. How could he explain anything when he was so baffled himself?

A neighbor they only vaguely knew hurried down the road on her way home from the fish market. She stopped to ask how they were doing, but made no mention of their mother.

“My mother is getting better,” he called after her. “Come and see her soon.” The neighbor just nodded and hurried along.

Three days passed in a blur. The house was sickly with the smell of incense and dying tuberoses. Most nights Biren dropped off to sleep from exhaustion. In his dreams he saw black twisted smoke, and smelled burning ghee. He started awake with a great choking sensation, unable to breathe, unable to cry. Every sound was amplified in the night. The soft wheezing snore from his grandfather’s room, the rustle of a mouse scrambling on the thatch. One night, late, he heard a sound. It was same sound he had heard from Apu’s house the day his father had died: the low, moaning sound of an animal in pain.

He crept out of bed, tiptoed out into the courtyard and stood beside the holy basil plant and listened. There it was again, louder this time. The sound came from the direction of the old woodshed next to the taro patch. He walked toward the shed and could see the flickering yellow glow of a diya lamp through the slatted wooden walls. There was somebody inside. The sound was a singsong moan, rising and falling, regular and monotonous, almost mechanical. Biren inched up to the papaya tree, not daring to go any farther. Someone was quarantined in the shed, and she was in a lot of pain.

Ma!

He ran across the undergrowth to the shed. The door was locked.

He rattled the lock. “Ma!” he whispered urgently. “Ma! It’s me.”

The moaning stopped. He peeped through the slats and froze in terror. It was not his mother at all but a bald old man dressed in a white cloth sitting on the floor with his back turned.

It was a ghost—the petni that Kanai spoke about!

Biren thought he would suffocate with fear. He was about to step backward when the man turned his head around and looked at him. The face was dull and white, flat as the moon with bloodshot eyes.

Biren stifled a scream, stumbled through the bushes and ran back toward the house. He flung himself down on his bed and lay there. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, his fingers dug into his palms; every muscle in his body was contorted with fear.

That pale, flat face with its red eyes kept floating into his mind. He had no doubt the creature in the woodshed was his mother. She had stretched out her hand and he’d recognized her plaintive voice as she called his name.

But what had happened to her?

* * *

He drifted off into a fitful sleep. Random choppy images swirled through his brain. He saw himself in a large field. The ground was strewn with damp white lilies and tiny pencils with broken points. There were so many broken pencils that they looked like scattered peanuts. Biren was bending down to examine the pencils when he heard something that sounded like the drone of bees in the distance. He looked up to see a crowd approaching. They were faceless, hairless people, neither men nor women, all dressed in white, moving toward him in a serpentine wave. As they drew closer, their hum turned into a mournful wail that looped over and over in a mounting crescendo. They trampled over the delicate lilies and left behind a brown, slimy waste. They headed toward the fish market and Biren followed them.

Next he found himself in the fish market with his father. Biren reached for his father’s hand but came up with a fistful of coarse, white cloth. He panicked. Where was Baba? None of the people around him had any faces. To his relief, he saw the chicken man. Biren knew he could wait safely at the chicken stall and his father would surely find him. The chicken man acknowledged him with a friendly nod. He was in the middle of telling his customer the story of a man who contacted rabies after being bitten by a chital fish. Biren listened idly, thinking one did not get rabies from a fish bite. But he didn’t want to spoil the chicken man’s story. The chicken man stroked the beautiful black rooster on his lap as he spoke. The rooster’s yellow eyes were closed and it looked like it would purr like a cat. Its blissful expression reminded Biren of his mother’s face when Apu gave her a head massage.

The chicken man finished his story. He took a puff of his bidi and, with the bidi still dangling between his lips, he placed both his hands around the rooster’s neck and broke it with a single, sharp twist. Then he held the bird down until its wings stopped flailing. Biren felt bile rise in his throat as he watched the chicken man chop off the rooster’s head, pluck the feathers, gut its entrails and tear out a small pink heart that was still pulsing. After splashing water from a bucket to wash off the blood, he shoved the heart, liver and gizzard back inside the chicken, trussed up the bird in a banana leaf and put it in the man’s cloth shopping bag. Then the chicken man counted his money, shoved it under his mat, rocked back on his haunches and smoked the rest of his bidi. Every time he drew in the smoke, he narrowed his eyes.

Biren woke up clammy with sweat and lay in bed thinking. That was what had happened to his mother. In the same way the rooster was changed from a bright-eyed bird to three pounds of meat and bone in a banana leaf, his mother was stripped of her long hair, her colorful sari, her bright laugh and the kohl in her eyes. Dehumanized, she was just meat and bones wrapped in a white piece of cloth. She had become one of those cursed ones: a widow.

CHAPTER

16

Biren returned to the woodshed again that night. Shibani was expecting him. She pressed her cheek to the wall and touched a finger to his through a gap in the wooden slats.

“You came back, my son,” she whispered. “I think of you and Nitin all the time.”

“What happened to you, Ma?” Biren cried in a broken voice. “Who did this to you? What happened to your hair?”

Shibani touched her bald head. “Oh, I must look a sight, don’t I?” she said ruefully. “I have not seen myself, which is just as well. This is what being a widow is all about, mia.”

“Did they cut all your hair off?”

She nodded. “The priest shaved it.”

“Why?”

Shibani gazed at her son’s soft, troubled eyes. “It is the custom, mia. That is what they do to widows so they can never marry again.”

“Why did they lock you here? Who gives you food?”

She sighed. “This is my mourning period. I must be kept in isolation. Even when that is over, things will be very different. I want you and Nitin to prepare yourselves. You will not see much of me after I come back into the house. I will no longer be a part of the family. I have to cook my own food now. Eat alone and only once a day. I can never touch meat or fish or eat spicy food or even drink a cup of tea.”

“What about chili tamarind?” asked Biren. He had not meant it to be funny, but he was relieved to see her old crooked smile.

She looked away. “No chili tamarind,” she said softly.

“When will Apumashi come to—” he was about to say “oil your hair” but stopped himself “—see you?”

She sighed. “I will not be allowed to socialize with anyone. A widow is a cursed being. Married women with children and happy families like your Apumashi are not allowed to come near us. They fear our bad luck may rub off on them. My friendship with Apu is over, I’m afraid.”

It was inconceivable! They were best friends; they told each other all their secrets. Had they not promised to live next door to each other forever? They had even planned to get their children married to one another, so that they could live together as one big happy family.

Biren was beginning to feel desperate. His words came out in a rush. “What if...if I marry Ruby? What if Nitin marries Ratna? Then you will both be in-laws. You have to be friends.”

Shibani regarded her son tenderly. His sweet, hopeful face, the feverish plea in his eyes. A tear coursed down his cheek. Biren dismissed it with a careless flick. Seeing this adultlike gesture broke her heart. Her sweet baby boy was growing up in front of her eyes.

Biren’s chin trembled. “I will marry Ruby,” he declared with manly determination.

Shibani was touched and amused at the same time. “Oh, you really want to marry Ruby, then?” She suppressed a smile. “So you think it is a good idea, after all, do you?”

“No, but...”

“I want you to listen to me, son,” Shibani said firmly. “Your father...” Her eyes filled with tears, but she controlled herself. “Your father and I did not bring you up to do things against your will. Marrying Ruby is childish talk. That is not the answer and that is not going to solve the problem. You must take care of your brother. Only you can explain things to him. Just do the best you can. Be there for him. I cannot be there for you both any longer. My life is over. Yours has just begun.”

Biren’s thin veneer of adulthood cracked and he broke down with a cry. “Why do you say that, Ma?” He sobbed. “Why do you say your life is over? Are you going to die?”

“Shush, mia,” she whispered, touching his cheek with the tip of her finger. How she wished she could cradle him in her arms and wipe those clumped eyelashes with the end of her sari. “Of course I am not going to die. This is no time to cry. I am just trying to prepare you for what lies ahead. I will be here, but I will no longer be a part of your life. A widow does not have a position in the family. I will remain in the background and you may not see much of me, but I want you both to remember me—not the way I have become, but the way I used to be. You can come and see me when you wish, but you must promise not to do so out of sorrow or guilt. Come and see me when you have good tidings and we will rejoice together. I may be cursed as a widow, but I have been blessed as a wife and mother, and nobody can take that from me.”

Through the slit in the wood, all Biren could see were her eyes. They burned with the unnatural brightness of anger at the injustice of it all.

His mother may be trapped, Biren decided, but he was not. It would be up to him to set her free.

He did not go straight back to bed. Rather, he sat on the kitchen steps by the pot of holy basil and hugged his knees, thinking. A big moon sailed high in the sky, weaving in and out of the clouds, sometimes bright, other times clumped and patchy. Biren’s thoughts churned deep and dark into his soul, trying to find glimmers of meaning through his sorrow. Surely there was something he could do.

His throat caught in a strangled sob. What would his father do if he saw what had become of Ma? Surely he would do something? But Baba was dead. He was no longer there to protect her. Biren sat up a little straighter. He had a young brother to take care of. Nitin would grow up and have his own life, but what would happen to his mother? Would she become destitute like Charulata and be forced to beg under the banyan tree?

He thought of Charulata. She had given him his name and painted it in the patterns of hopes and dreams. She must have seen in him the seed of a warrior. Baba said a warrior did not follow the dictates of others but his own conscience. Biren’s conscience told him the treatment of widows was inhuman and unjust and it should be condemned. He would fight for them.

It was on that premonsoon night, in the moonlit courtyard of his village home, that eight-year-old Biren Roy watched the purpose of his life unfold. It came to him in the parting of the clouds and the full brilliant light of the moon, an uncommon zeal that would guide his journey forward.

CHAPTER

17

Owen J. McIntosh

Proprietor

Victoria Jute Mills

20th July 1880

Dear Mr. Anirban Roy,

Please accept my sincere condolences for the untimely and tragic death of your son Shamol Roy. Shamol Roy was an exemplary human being of great integrity and impeccable courtesy. He was also my most promising employee, and had the potential to go far in his career. I feel privileged to have known this young man. I saw him as a devoted husband and father and admired his honorable commitment to his family.

I would like to reassure you, Victoria Jute Mills is deeply committed to ensure your family is financially compensated in every way. To that effect, you will continue to receive Shamol Roy’s full monthly salary for the next sixteen years—by which time he would have reached the retirement age of fifty—and this includes any bonuses he may be entitled to. After that, his widow will continue to receive a monthly pension until the time of her death.

Mr. Prabhu Mallick, our mill manager, will explain to you in detail the pension scheme and other compensations available to Shamol Roy’s widow. You can also personally contact me if there is any other way I can be of further assistance.

Besides general compensation, I would like to put forward a separate proposal, which I hope you will take into serious consideration. This pertains to the education of Shamol Roy’s sons. I am well aware how committed he was toward the education of his children. I have from him a letter expressing his wishes to admit them to an English school, and to that end I am willing to personally sponsor their schooling in Calcutta. Victoria Jute Mills is affiliated with one of the best schools for boys in India: the Saint John’s Mission. The school offers full boarding, excellent teachers and is noted for its high scholastic record. Many of Saint John’s students go on to study in Oxford and Cambridge on full merit scholarships. Since admission to Saint John’s requires the signature of a British legal guardian, I am willing to offer my services to that effect.

It is my understanding that Shamol Roy would have wanted the best possible education for his sons. I would like to assuage any concerns you may have about the Christian/religious orientation of this institution. Although Catholic missionaries run Saint John’s, it is not mandatory for students to convert to Christianity. I can get a written statement to that effect if you wish. I leave it to Prabhu Mallick to explain the details. One thing to keep in mind is the school session begins in September, which leaves us only six weeks. I will need your answer in the next few days to ensure the older boy’s placement for this academic year. The younger child will have to wait until he is eight before he can be admitted.

I would appreciate your answer at the earliest.

Very truly yours,

Owen McIntosh

“It is completely out of the question,” Biren’s uncle exploded. “These Christian schools, all they care about is religious conversion. They bribe us poor Indians with education and the promise of opportunity and betterment. They are destroying our culture and killing our religion. These belaytis will do anything to control our country.”

“But the letter said conversion to Christianity was not compulsory,” said Grandpa. “Think of the opportunity. The boys will get a good education. It will give them a head start in life. Nobody gave us this chance.”

“But it is an English education,” argued the uncle. “English education gives Indian students false hopes. They will never be on the same rung as a white man. The belaytis dangle the carrot, then they take it away. What is wrong with the village school? Biren can continue to attend the school and pass his matriculation. After matriculation he will be old enough to go to work. He can easily get a job in the jute mill. As it is, he has already impressed McIntosh. Who knows, he may even give Biren an equal or better paying job than Shamol. After that it will be up to Biren to prove himself and move up the ladder.”

“Shamol would not like that,” said the grandma, wiping away a tear. “He always said he wanted his sons to get a better education, to go further than he did. He never wanted the boys to work in the jute mill. There is no future there. Shamol was so brilliant in his studies, but he had to give everything up and go to work to support our family, because you...you...” She sighed. “You are ill.”

“Ill, my left foot!” exploded Grandpa in a fit of rage. “You are bone lazy, that’s what you are. Too high and mighty for any job. So many jobs have come your way but you turn them down because nothing is good enough for your highness. Even if you did a part-time job—which you know very well you are capable of doing—it would have eased Shamol’s burden. He would have had time to pursue his own studies. Shamol was the brilliant one and look at the kind of job he did! Did he once complain? Now you are trying to deprive his children of an opportunity he has paid for with his life. What is wrong with you? Now, you stop all your addabaaj under the banyan and get some kind of a job. It’s high time.”

“Baba, please calm down,” pleaded the older daughter-in-law. “We all want the best for Biren and Nitin. I just don’t think Shamol would have wanted to send his children so far away from home, considering the current circumstances. We think the children should stay close to their mother and be a comfort...”

She froze and her hand crept up to her mouth.

Shibani stood in the doorway with her shaven head and her white borderless sari. Her face was waxen, her eyes cold and dead. She rarely showed herself in public and, when she did, her presence was chilling.

“You really think so?” Shibani said in a soft voice. “You really think my two sons are a comfort to me, sister-in-law?” she repeated, her voice turning hard and cold like marble. “Then, why are they kept away from me? Why are they never allowed to come close to me? Why can I not cook for my own boys, feed them with my hand, comb their hair like a mother should? Because my curse will contaminate their young lives, is it?”

Nobody said a word.

“My children have already been taken away from me,” Shibani continued. “Do they even see me as the mother they once knew? Look at me!” She spat out the words. “Just look at me, will you? Is this the girl you brought into this house as your daughter-in-law? Is this the woman who gave birth to your two grandsons? Is this the way God wanted me to be, or is this your doing? You tell me.” Her eyes, brittle with anger, snapped from one face to another. She exhaled sharply and, as she did, the flat look returned. It drifted over her eyes like scum, covering a splash in a pond. “I lost my beloved husband to snakebite, but I will not lose my sons to ignorance.” Her voice was deadly. “I, as their mother, may not have a say in their future, but remember this—if you don’t let my sons go, I will hang myself. The only reason I am keeping myself alive is to protect my sons, to see their future is not marred.” She looked at her brother-in-law without blinking. “If you stop them from going to this school, you will have a widow’s death on your hands, brother. And this family will be doubly cursed. Remember that.”

With that, she turned around and vanished in a whisper of white, leaving her ominous words hanging like a shroud over the stunned family.

CHAPTER

18

Willis Duff, the twenty-two-year-old assistant engineer of Victoria Jute Mills, felt dreadfully inadequate about his wardrobe. After living three years in the small jute mill town, he had sacrificed fashion for the white ducks and bush shirt he wore to work every day. Now he was going to Calcutta on his furlough and his clothes looked hopelessly avuncular. Willis had looked forward to the Calcutta trip with feverish anticipation. He had saved up a nice bundle of pay and dreamed of cocktail luncheons at the Great Eastern with the pretty ladies of Calcutta who would hopefully grant him a kiss or two.

Any spare moment he could find, Willis sat at his office desk and browsed the mail-order catalog that had arrived from Cuthbarton and Fink, fine gentleman clothiers of Calcutta. He was just earmarking a page for white pique bow ties when his boss, Owen McIntosh, summoned him to his office.

“Duff, I have a job for you,” he said.

Willis Duff’s heart sank. Was his furlough going to be canceled?

“There is a young Bengali boy I want to send with you to Calcutta. Do you recall the godown clerk, Shamol Roy, who died from a cobra bite some months ago?”

Willis nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He remembered the fine upright young man in his spotless white Indian clothes that looked out of place in that dank and filthy godown. Willis had felt sorry for the man and given him his last butterscotch toffee.

“This boy is Roy’s son,” Owen continued. “Your job is to take the lad and deliver him to the representative of Saint John’s Mission. The priest will meet you both at the steamer docks. He will be carrying documents for the boy. You will need him to sign the documents when you release the boy.”

Willis was so relieved to hear his furlough was not going to be canceled that his face broke into a grin. “That should be no problem at all, sir. No problem at all.”

Owen McIntosh looked at him grimly. “I want you to take this assignment very seriously, Duff. I am entrusting this lad to your care. He is a plucky little fellow, very intelligent. I suspect he has never left the village before, so he is likely to be nervous and upset. Be gentle with him, will you? Don’t leave him alone in the cabin and go off drinking with lascars on the riverboat. I am more than a little worried about the lad, to tell you the truth. He was very attached to his father. I want to make sure he is all right.”

“Of course, sir. I fully understand. Please rest assured.”

Owen’s cryptic words had a sobering effect on Willis. He had indeed toyed with the idea of wild drinking and gambling on the riverboat with the captain and crew, but now he would have to be careful.

* * *

Willis Duff had only to take one look at Biren Roy to feel his heart melt. An orphan himself, he could well understand the terror and uncertainty he saw in the young boy’s eyes as he stood clutching his uncle’s hand at the steamer ghat. The wee lad looked small and lost in his new travel clothes—an oversize pair of matching sky-blue shorts and shirt that flopped on his skinny frame. His only luggage was a cloth bag worn on a long sling that hung past his knees.

“Traveling light, are we?” Willis joked. Seeing the blank look on both their faces, he tried again, speaking more slowly. “Is that all the luggage you have? Only one small bag?”

“Yes,” said the uncle. “Biren is carrying two sets of clothes. The school said not to bring anything else. They will provide everything—uniform, books, toiletries, even pocket money.”

“I dare say they’ll throw in some whiskey, as well.” Willis winked at Biren, who shied behind his uncle.

“No whiskey, no whiskey,” said the uncle uneasily. “This is a strict Christian institution.” The boy peeped out and gave Willis an impish smile. Intelligent little fellow, Willis thought. The uncle on the other hand looked as though he would not have understood a joke even if it jumped up and bit him you-know-where.

“Quite so, quite so,” Willis agreed. He turned to Biren. “Say, Biren, do you know how to play fish?”

Biren’s face brightened. “Can you catch fish from the steamer boat?” he said, momentarily forgetting his shyness.

“Not that kind of fish.” Willis laughed, delighted to hear the boy speak English. He had worried how they were going to communicate. “This fish is a card game. I can teach you how to play it, if you like. But you know what? We may not even have time to play card games. Have you ever traveled by steamer down the big delta to the sea?”

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