Shyamalda

i.m. Nandini Ghosh

My brother-in-law’s brother-in-law

is Shyamalda. “Same college,

same discipline,” he said to me

as we waited at Gorakhpur station

on the world’s second longest platform.

I was there to see him off.

Two days previously

we’d cremated my sister.

She’d been crushed by an ambulance

after a hatchback had knocked her down first

as she crossed the road

to go to the park where I sit and write this

in a notebook with rounded corners and

problem-free wiro binding.

The park, popular with morning walkers,

is opposite her house.

She was a pediatrician.

“Same college” is Bengal Engineering,

“second oldest after Roorkee,”

where Shyamalda’s father and grandfather

had studied before him.

“Same discipline” is civil engineering.

Shyamalda only does large projects:

nuclear power plants, bridges, refineries;

he tests the soil, measures depths. He is

a foundation engineer. The tree house

he built for his grandson was fitted

with a railway track on which food would

travel between tree house and family kitchen,

the whole contraption running on

shockproof electricity of Shyamalda’s

invention. Low in haemoglobin,

Shyamalda travels the world. His wife

doesn’t want to go and puts up

a fight each time. Some battles

she loses, like the one to see

the Northern Lights. His next destination

is South America, where he’ll look

for pebbles of a certain size and roundness

to put in his drive in Salt Lake, Calcutta.

It’ll be a United Nations of pebbles

collected from 160 countries.

Walking on them will have health benefits.

Amazon is also the name of a river.