Abhay

Ma didn’t return to Skype that day. Instead, I finally got through to her phone close to five, and her first question was why I hadn’t told her about Aranya.

‘That’s what I wanted to do today. I have been reeling from the news myself.’

‘And he told you not at Chhotka’s wedding, or any time before his visit, but on the last night before leaving?’

‘The second-last night as a matter of fact, but Ma, don’t you see his reasons? He might have wanted to observe my behaviour and decide how much I would care. If he’d thought I would be indifferent, he wouldn’t have said anything.’

‘So now people get to decide whether you “deserve” the news of a death in the family? How is Thamma 2 even supposed to show she cares when she is too second-class to be told anything?’

I could have easily pointed out that both she and I had had two-and-a-half years from the time of Didi’s disappearance to her death in 2012 to call Dada and show our concern (not to mention the dozen years before that, since Baba’s death), but I needed Ma in as positive and generous a frame of mind as possible over the next several days.

‘Ma, the main reason I rented this room is a project, a plan I have for which I hugely need your support. I too have been struggling to process this incredible thought that Didi has in fact been gone for more than three years now, when I have, however abstractly, been imagining her alive, and the best I’ve been able to come up with by way of a response is to collate as many memories of Didi as you, I and perhaps Dada can bring back, and then I’ll take these to her family on a trip within the next few months. Do you see why I need to speak to you so much? You spent way more time with her than I did.’

‘But clearly not enough for Ashim to consider me deserving,’ Ma said, but I could hear her voice breaking. Then she cried, and it’ll sound strange, but I felt pleased to hear it. I wished Dada could witness this.

We were underway that day itself. We spoke until 7, when I noticed I needed to get home to do Mira’s bedtime. On the very first day Ma gave me wonderful things, which later comprised the opening entry in my log of memories.

Didi had been called Tupur at home, but did I know that until the age of five her pet name had been Debi (which means ‘goddess’)? Apparently one day Didi went to her parents with a request — could her family please stop calling her Debi from now on, because she just didn’t like it!

Baba had told Ma the story. He and Didi’s Ma couldn’t get a real reason out of her, but what she did have for them was a ready alternative. She’d come with a plan. They could call her Tupur instead.

‘But what does Tupur mean?’ Baba had asked.

‘Brishti pore tapur-tupur, Baba.’ Didi had reminded him of the obvious, which was a well-known line in a children’s song about the rain falling pitter-patter, and in turn meant that Didi was asking for her pet name to be changed from ‘goddess’ to ‘patter’. Was this really what she wanted, or a gag?

But she’d been entirely serious, producing at age five, in the course of a single conversation one evening after Baba had returned from work, her next, unanswerable argument.

‘And all pet names don’t have a meaning, right? What does Tumpa mean, or Tinku, or Tutu or Bhuttu?’ These were, respectively, a cousin, her brother, and playmates from their neighbourhood.

‘So you just like the sound of Tupur?’

No, in fact she liked ‘tapur-tupur’ very much, but acknowledged that would be too long. Between the two, she preferred Tupur.

Apparently Baba had been very impressed by her advocacy of this change, and had inwardly decided to go along with it. He’d loved both the spirit of the word his daughter had chosen as well as the making of its case, but thought he would play the role of unconvinced arbiter for a bit longer.

‘Achcha, which part of this strange name do you like the most, the meaning or the sound? If you like the sound, how about Nupur, or better still, Dupur? Yes, that would be great. What if I offer you, in the spirit of compromise, Dupur as an alternative? You’re still winning, because you get to keep most of the letters you want. I’m just asking for one change. What do you say?’

For my Bengali-unfamiliar readers, Baba had offered Didi a choice between ‘anklet’ (a common-enough pet name) and ‘afternoon’ (which no one was ever called, boy or girl). He then appeared to favour ‘afternoon’.

Didi had been taken in by Baba’s tone and expression, and genuinely believed he was urging her towards this option. Apparently she’d looked crestfallen, and could only say ‘Na, Tupur.’

That’s when her mother had jumped to her rescue, and said she was happy to call her Tupur from now on, although at the start sometimes Debi would probably still slip out by mistake. And if her Baba wanted to call her Dupur, fine, he could do so, but on one condition — Debi, sorry Tupur, too would be free to change one sound of ‘Baba’ to whatever she wished. Like ‘dhaba’ (which is a roadside restaurant) or how about ‘thaba’ (a tiger or lion’s paw)?

A giggling Didi had loved this idea. Yes, she would call Baba different names on different days. And that was when Baba had capitulated, and how my sister got the pet name everyone knew her by for the rest of her life.

I loved the voice and spirit in which Ma told this story. There wasn’t a trace of ‘rivalry’ in it, or any resentment of Baba’s earlier life. I said I wished I’d known such stories before, then changed my statement to, ‘I wish I’d asked before — not just you, but Baba too.’

Then I wondered, but didn’t ask, if Didi had been five at the time of this incident, wouldn’t Dada have been just under a year old? And Ma, you said that Didi confronted Baba one day when he came back from the office, which is where you worked, right, and where the two of you met?

Had that already happened? Were you close? Was the beautiful, happy world portrayed in this anecdote already under a shadow, about to run out of time?

(Baba left his first marriage when Dada was one, I’ve been told. What I’ve never asked is how long he knew Ma — as more than a colleague — before they decided to marry.)

Walking home up the hill afterwards, I felt sure I’d done right in not pressing Ma on this question. It would have not only wrecked her mood and put her unfairly on the defensive, but gone against the spirit (that word again) in which she’d shared this tale. That was also when it came to me that perhaps this moment, with its possible, though unconfirmed, ironies, would form an apt beginning for my memory trail. Ma had chosen a lovely incident apparently at random, but it offered us a glimpse of Didi as she had been in her first home — independent, strong-willed, adorably sharp, reminiscent so much of Mira at her most barrister-like, our reigning family master of the exception clause (‘But Baba, when you said I can’t touch anything with my mangoey hands until I’ve run to the bathroom and washed them, what about the tap at the basin? How will I turn that on?’) — and the possible presence in the background of a life-transforming threat to all this (‘threat’ is the fair word to use, even if my mother had meant no harm) that little Tupur couldn’t have known about. Perhaps even Baba hadn’t known at that point what he was about to do. He and Ma might only have been copywriter and assistant back then.

And the next irony — that all of what followed had to happen in order to create the beautiful, happy world I knew, the one my parents shaped for me.

The very circumstances that led to my existence had of necessity been such a blow to my own siblings, who were only slightly older and just as innocent.