Abhay
I’d already had my first coffee when Dada and Tulti came down for breakfast on the morning of their last full day in Auckland.
‘Abhi, do you know who I just saw in Hazaribagh right before I woke up? That tall guy Dan.’
I was bringing out bread, cereal, milk and tea, and simply said ‘Oh, wow’, because the Dan he meant was the father of one of Mira’s playmates in Wellington.
‘Let’s aim to leave for the zoo in an hour,’ I added. ‘The forecast is good, and there’s a lot I have in mind to do.’ But Dada, with whom this was my first exchange following last night’s revelation about Didi, seemed oblivious to my brush-off. He enthusiastically wanted to share what he had seen, as he, and Tulti, had done a few times already on this trip. The ‘dream-sharers’, Lena and I called them, the family who find signs in everything.
Dada had apparently seen Dan, the father of Meg, a new friend of Mira’s from crèche, finishing off a lunch of kochuri and alur dom from a woven-leaf plate outside a renowned Bengali sweet shop on the market road close to the main Durga Puja compound in Hazaribagh. Tulti knew exactly which shop he meant and got very excited; I couldn’t place it from not having visited Hazaribagh in twenty years, but once more felt I was witnessing a regular breakfast ritual at their house, where each morning everyone was probably debriefed about their dreams, which were then scrutinised either for prophecy or else for portents of malice among their acquaintances and relations.
But then my next thought was that this was another ploy, some manipulation. Dada was, as usual, trying to plant something in my head. Which meant I had two options: either to tune out completely so that it wouldn’t affect me, or else to listen with extra care in order to parse it afterwards, perhaps back in Wellington with Lena. Because motives he would have had — of this I was never more sure; the blow yesterday had been calculated and timed to cause maximum hurt, quite apart from its horrific truth. Lena would probably find my mistrust of Dada long overdue (I hadn’t had a chance yet to tell her about last night, both the news and how Dada had hurled it), although I could then see her warning me: but don’t go so far as to credit him with any of the bullshit magic he believes in. It’s just good old-fashioned mind-games, dark to be sure, but nothing supernatural about them. We’ll simply pay attention and notice patterns and share what we see, and they’ll disappear like the bubbles they are.
At first glance, this ‘dream’ sounded innocuous enough. Dada was stunned to see Dan in Hazaribagh, but Dan had airily said he worked in a machine-parts factory just up the road and always came here for lunch. He asked Dada to have something with him, because he was about to order two rosogollas for dessert. Dada had just eaten, so Dan got himself his sweets, albeit asking for them in English. ‘Dan, I can’t believe it’s you, that you’re here in this market in my hometown. Last time we met was in the front yard at Whare Kea. The two settings could not be more different,’ Dada had apparently marvelled.
‘Let me finish this, and I’ll show you my factory,’ Dan had nonchalantly replied, which is what he proceeded to do, taking a nearby lane as a short-cut just as a local would. Dada remembered the factory building being pointed out to him from a distance, but then Tulti must have moved because he woke up, and the surprise and pleasure of walking behind Dan through the back lanes around Pagoda Chowk had remained vivid for him until now.
Tulti had lost interest and was putting jam on a slice of bread from one of the little hotel-room containers, but I asked Dada with a straight face what the dream signified for him.
‘The truth,’ he said with no hesitation. ‘It’s a precise foretelling of our immediate future, which will be full of nostalgia. We’ll be at home going about our everyday lives, trying to return to our routines, and suddenly, exactly in places like Sadar Bazar, or for Tulti in her school playground, people from New Zealand, and moments and places, will come back to us.’
Even I was impressed by that. Nicely put, Dada, I said, and then silently dismissed his explanation. There’s some shit you’re trying to plant in my head. I’ll figure it out afterwards with Lena.
Such was the state of trust between us on the last day of the trip that was meant to have been The Great Reconciliation.
‘Can the condemned have one final song request before we depart?’ We’ve brought our bags down to the living room; it’s 9.30 the following morning, and we need to be at the airport by 11, with some time in hand to return the rental car first.
On the iPad, Dada finds a recent rendition of ‘Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo’ (‘Don’t Go On About Leaving Today’) by the now elderly but still incredible Farida Khanum. As he perhaps imagined, and even intended, both of us have damp eyes as the song continues, with the singer imploring her love to remain beside her for the few free moments they have together.
What is this, Dada — as ‘spontaneous’ as your dream-sharing, or your decision to tell me about Didi two nights ago, or the soul-searching that compelled you to go AWOL last Friday, or is it simply a final flourish in your overall master plan? As I was composing emails on the eve of your visit about what to put in your hand luggage and exactly what you’d encounter at Auckland airport, were you also busy listing which cards to play on each day, right down to reducing me to tears on the final morning with this most extraordinary of songs?
(And — again — by a Muslim woman? A song from Pakistan? ‘Those people’ whose songs you love and you’ll step up to defend them on a bus against racist bullies, but won’t eat in their homes because that’s against your caste? For the n th time, what manner of walking impossibility are you?)
‘Abhi, do you know what I’m going to do as soon as I get home? I’m going to order your novels, all of them’ — which was when I realised that I’d never once asked him if he’d read my work, nor had it occurred to me to present him with any of my books. ‘Firstly, because that’s a way of spending more time with you, but also because I want to see how you depict life in your writing, how you capture moments like this, when a single song can mean so much, can bring so much back, that it becomes impossible to note down or hold onto even as it all races through your mind. You know, Ma would play this song on a record player, although I was too young at the time to pay attention. But then Didi had it on a cassette, which is when I first listened properly to the words. And a month ago, a nephew of Moushumi’s who knows I’m a fan of Farida Khanum forwarded me this latest recording, from October, when she would have been exactly eighty. Did you know by the way that she’s from Calcutta just like you and me, and then her family migrated? Anyway, thank you for letting me play it today, even though it’s delayed us a bit. I wanted to share it with you, and most of all I wanted to give this song one more layer of meaning by playing it at the end of this visit. Now New Zealand and you will also come back to me whenever I listen to it, along with Didi, Ma, Baba, and everyone who has left forever.’
He then put an arm around Tulti, who was beside him, and beckoned to me to come closer, just like the family hugs Mira, Lena and I had each morning when we dropped her off at crèche.
‘Do you remember I once said I’d angrily hand my life back to God when I see Him? Here You are; though You tripped me over at every chance, I still got up and did my best. But that’s not all I’ll have to say. There are also so many people, and so many millions of moments for which I want to thank Him in person. Thank You for everything that I cannot count or list or even hold onto, but I’ve always felt them inside me, and they made me feel rich all the time.’
Taking his arm off me, Dada picked up Tulti, kissed her on the head and said, ‘And one day soon it will be your turn to listen carefully and ask about the lyrics, and then for you they will bring back Abhi Kaku and Mira and me and your childhood.’
And to me, an hour later, upstairs in the international terminal after filling in their departure cards: ‘Let’s not lose each other again, OK, no matter how far apart we are. Each of us has lost too much already. From now on, we need to fill Mira and Tulti with fantastic memories.’
With that, the great puppet-master flew away, but his show was shortly about to begin its most awesome phase.
His puppets were going to play out the script without anyone pulling on their strings.