It likely has much to do with what she’s heard from Lena about Dada’s behaviour while he was here, but unfortunately Ma, during our Skype chats, is one way when she recalls Didi, and the opposite about Dada. Here is an email she wrote me that same night, after she’d shared the wonderful story about the becoming of Tupur.
I didn’t tell you so that you wouldn’t be upset, but Ashim wrote to me three years ago to ask who had ownership of this house. Now it occurs to me that perhaps it would have followed shortly after Tupur’s death. This house, your grandparents’ house! I replied to him: my mother till the day she expired and then me. I also asked him in that letter whether your Thamma had made a will, and if there was any mention of you regarding a share of the Hazaribagh property. So far, I’m still awaiting a reply. Please let me know if he said something to you, or else you could ask him next time you brothers speak.
PS: Wondered if you remember that Tupur was unbeatable at table tennis and badminton, at least by the two of you? And you in particular would insist that Didi was not playing fair because she was so much taller than you. You said she shouldn’t be allowed to smash in badminton, and in TT because of her reach she should give you a five-point advantage. As far as I recall, neither made any difference, and that was when you asked to start tennis lessons at the club.
The following morning when I switched on my phone, this text from Ma was waiting.
Listen to Lena. Call Praveen if you must to ask about Tupur, but DON’T visit Haz.
So with Dada I’ve myself made a start, alongside interviewing Ma. Didi is the priority of this project, and perhaps it’s best if Ma’s focus remains on her, rather than both of us getting sidetracked by what would be anger-tinted recollections of Dada. For now, I’ll supplement by putting down everything that comes to me about him, from the past as well as our two recent meetings. Yes Lena, not to worry, unpleasant memories too. If there is any secondary aim of this undertaking, it is at all times to trace and acknowledge the incredible complexity of how things have come to pass.
Just as one example, I intend to record not only my sorrow at how all this is affecting in the present both Mira and my relationship with you, but also my feelings when I had to let you know I was withdrawing money from our joint account to pay Tim the deposit and the rent for the flat, as well as to get its wifi up and running. Despite having published five books and done so much else, I still have to ask for pocket money; if not from my wife, it would have been my mother. Perhaps that will go in the book too as part of its frame.
And I will find a way to write about Dada’s behaviour here, as I know you’d want me to: what he suggested about you and Tony, what he might have said to Janaki, the way he spoke about barefoot kids, or that large woman happily crocheting away at her table in the Botanics café, his disgust at her obesity that I told you about. The wish to frighten those kids at the traffic lights after he’d ogled the girl; the look he gave you one night when you suggested — not without some mischief, you admitted as much to me — that he cook something for a change. Yes, I noticed, and noted down, all of that, if it happened before my eyes (the impatience that enters his tone sometimes when he finds out Moushumi hasn’t done something exactly as instructed), and I’ll ask you for other things I may have missed.
The flawed messenger who nevertheless roused me to this journey; that has to be part of the story.
And Ma too. Despite the wonderful moments this past week when we’ve spoken about Didi, and the obvious regret in her heart for what happened to their mother, there will come junctures in the book, if it means at all to try to be honest, when I’ll have to ‘confront’ Ma using her own testimony, offered with much grace and trust, about its blind spots and elisions. What about this whole period that we’re not speaking about, Ma? Or, couldn’t we interpret that incident a bit differently? And, while this was happening and we were here, did you or Baba ever wonder about how their mother was, or how they all were?
I will (have to) face those moments too in the writing when they come, and find a way to evoke these as-yet-unvoiced things so that neither my brother nor Ma will feel misrepresented or betrayed or, just as bad, judged by one who has no right.
Yeah, I just bragged about writing five novels, but I have never been on this territory before.