Ronojoy lay in bed staring at the ceiling when a beep from his phone broke his reverie. It was only six in the morning but Apu Kaka had sent him a message: ‘Jetlagged. Can’t sleep. Please come whenever you want. I am up.’
He heard noises outside. Sujoy was up as well. Opening the door, Ronojoy found his brother in the kitchen making tea. Sujoy offered him a cup.
They walked to the verandah, carrying their cups. Dawn had broken but the light was faint. The air had a hint of freshness; winter was coming.
‘What’s your plan for the day?’ Ronojoy asked.
‘Not sure. I was thinking of visiting Dida at some point, will you come with me?’ Ronojoy recognized the plea in Sujoy’s voice.
‘Would you like me to? If it’s later in the day, I could. In the morning, I will be with Apu Kaka. Would you want to meet him again, before he flies out?’
Sujoy didn’t answer.
‘If you would rather that I took him to the airport at night, I can do it; it’s no problem. But one of us should be there,’ Ronojoy said.
‘Can we decide this a bit later in the day, please?’
‘Sure. I’ll just tell him then that one of us will be there to drop him off.’
They finished their tea and went inside.
‘Shall I make you some scrambled eggs, Chhotku? It’ll take a minute.’
Sujoy smiled, ‘Thanks Dada, but it’s too early for breakfast. I’ll get some idlis on the way.’
He picked up his satchel and walked towards the door. There he paused and turned, ‘I forgot to ask you something; how did you find Jeet and Anu when you met them?’
‘They are okay, Sujoy. Anu is upset, understandably. After Apu Kaka leaves tonight, you will need to work at fixing things at home. Jeet cannot be away from you indefinitely.’
Sujoy lowered his head and walked out the door.
It wasn’t even nine when Ronojoy reached the hotel. Since Apu Kaka was up anyway, he reckoned an early start would be good. He messaged and waited in the lobby.
In a couple of minutes, Apu Kaka walked out of the elevator and spotting Ronojoy, approached him with a faint smile on his face. Ronojoy hugged him. They took the elevator up to his room.
‘Have you had breakfast, Bochka? I couldn’t sleep so I thought I would get all that out of the way before you reached. Have some coffee?’
‘I’m fine, Apu Kaka, thank you. You must be very tired. Such a long flight, no sleep…’
‘Yes, I won’t say I feel fresh but that’s okay. I will pop a pill and try to sleep through on the flight back.’
Then he looked searchingly at Ronojoy’s face, and said, ‘You have your mother’s face.’
‘Really? Dida says I remind her of Baba.’
‘A bit of that too, yes; you are built like him. Your smile...’ he didn’t finish.
‘Apu Kaka, I don’t know how your conversation with Sujoy went last evening but if Sujoy was hurtful, I hope you will forgive him…he has been very overwrought ever since he read Ma’s letter.’
‘No, Ronojoy. Sujoy was not out of line. He has every right to ask of me the questions he had. In his shoes, I would have been very distraught myself. After he left, I thought a lot about the things he said. You know, I deserved to hear all that. I only wish that we hadn’t lost so much time...’ He became absent-minded suddenly. Then, in a low voice, almost as if he was speaking to himself, he continued:
‘They say time heals wounds. But it can also loosen the ties that bind us. Years pass, so many things change and you just cannot put it all together again. Such realizations rankle a lot at my age, Bochka.’ Then he looked up, ‘And it’s not Sujoy alone who must hold so much against me. It’s your life too that I turned upside down, didn’t I? How can you ever forgive me?
‘Mala’s death must have hit you the hardest; I know she was the centre of your world, Bochka. You doted on her; at least that is how I remember it. Mala was a very special person.’ A pause. ‘I only wish she had reached out to me once. Perhaps she thought I wouldn’t be able to do anything to douse the fire in her soul – two drowning swimmers can never help each other, can they?’ Apu Kaka’s voice had a broken timbre to it.
‘Apu Kaka, did you ever try getting in touch with Ma? Forgive me if this is intrusive but I have been wondering a lot about how all these years might have been for Ma, and for you.’
‘Yes, I did, as I told Sujoy yesterday. She refused to continue any form of engagement between us. That was many years back.’
‘I see. So, your last meeting with Ma was at our home, shortly after Baba’s death? I remember you had come down...’
The question seemed to throw Apu Kaka, his eyes widened. When he spoke, his gaze was distant. Ronojoy could see that his eyes were bloodshot.
‘It was the worst day of my life, Ronojoy. There are moments in life when your own death seems far more palatable than the circumstances you find yourself in.’
With a shudder of his shoulders, Apu Kaka broke down. He wept freely, with his face in his hands, as a child would. Ronojoy had a lump in his throat. He felt no hostility towards his uncle, just an enormous sadness. Apu Kaka’s words were conjuring up images from another time; he could see them with astonishing clarity, as if under the influence of a narcotic.
‘That day is imprinted in my brain. I tried to speak to Mala but she just sat there, hands folded on her lap. When I reached out for her hand, she shrank away violently as if my touch would contaminate her further. I said it was all my fault and she should not blame herself; it fell on deaf ears. We just sat there, drowning in the enormity of what our liaison had brought to bear upon all of you. Then Mala said that it was you who had discovered the body. She said something to the effect that our lives were now destroyed but what would happen to the two of you. That is when I had …’ Apu Kaka stopped. He seemed to consider whether he should continue with what he was about to say. He decided to: ‘That is when I said that I was open to marrying her. That we could go away somewhere and raise the two of you, together.’ Apu Kaka raised a hand as if in defence of such a preposterous suggestion, ‘I know, I know how crazy it all sounds now but I was trying to think of something, anything, that would alleviate her misery and helplessness.’
‘And what did Ma have to say to that?’
Apu Kaka shook his head, ‘I cannot describe the look of utter distaste with which she regarded me. She asked me to leave the house and never try to get in touch with any of you ever again. She said it with such finality that I got up and left.’
Ronojoy felt quite shaken by this new revelation – Apu Kaka’s proposal of marriage to his mother. Not because it was, in his words, a preposterous idea, but it cast a slightly different light on his uncle’s affections for Ma.
‘Apu Kaka, were you serious? About the proposal – if she had been open to the idea? Or was it just a desperate attempt to console her?’
Apu Kaka paused, as if to ensure that his response didn’t come out the wrong way:
‘I am sorry if this offends your sense of propriety, Ronojoy; my intent was not dishonourable. Did the thought come up at the spur of the moment? No, it didn’t. I know how all this may sound and you can easily see it in the worst possible light, but it was such a dire situation for all of you that it seemed like an option to me. Of course, we would have to go away somewhere else and you were already grown up but stranger things have happened in families...’ His voice trailed off.
‘So, it would have been a kind of arrangement, is that how you thought of it?’
‘You ask me these strange questions now, Ronojoy, after so many years. It is awkward for me to speak about these things with you – the fact that you were only a little boy when we last met, doesn’t help. But you have the right to ask anything you want, that’s the least I owe you.
‘Well, no – I didn’t see it as an arrangement. If I was asked back then I would have said, without hesitation, that I was in love with Mala. As one gets older, one becomes suspicious of these phrases; but I did love your mother. I cared deeply for her. If your impression is that what passed between us was a mere attraction of the flesh, then I must correct you. It was much more than that. There was not a day in those six years, since I left for Singapore, that I didn’t think of her. For nearly twenty years, till I met Anne, I didn’t have a significant relationship with another woman.
‘I still feel that if Mala had given me a chance, I could have been some comfort…at least company, in her more difficult moments. I could have given you and Sujoy the love you were deprived of,’ from a low, plaintive drawl Apu Kaka’s voice flared up suddenly, ‘but for Mala, any emotion she may have felt for me had gone out, like a light. The mere sight of my face, or memory of it, became a hateful reminder of the reprehensible act that had ruined our family. Till her last day, she must have nursed this venom in her heart.’
These intimate disclosures had taken a lot out of Apu Kaka, he seemed spent. Ronojoy offered a respite:
‘Apu Kaka, would you like to rest for a while? I could come back in an hour or so…’
‘No, Bochka, I am here only for the day. After this, who knows when we will meet again. Please stay, as long as you wish to. You are not upsetting me, if that’s what you think. It’s just… just that I have never spoken about all this to anyone.’
‘Yes, I can imagine it’s not easy. Tell me about your wife then, how did you meet her?’
This brought a smile to his tired face:
‘Oh, Anne? We had been colleagues for many years, you see. Interestingly, we weren’t even friends or anything; we would bump into each other occasionally at office gatherings. I knew she had a previous marriage that had ended some years back; she knew I lived alone. I really can’t say what may have brought us together, you know – except that lonely people can detect loneliness in others too. Sometimes, people will reach out more to offer help or company than to seek it, at least that is how it was for Anne. She is a very kind person. I don’t know if you will ever meet, but you would get along; it’s difficult to not like Anne.’ The smile hadn’t left Apu Kaka’s face. Ronojoy was happy for it.
‘And your daughter? I don’t think you mentioned her name.’
‘Sara. Without the H. She is a lovely child. I wish…oh, hold on,’ Apu Kaka had suddenly remembered his phone. He whipped it out, typed a password and handed it to Ronojoy. The screensaver was a shot of Anne and Sara, their smiling faces huddled together. Anne would be much younger than Apu Kaka, Ronojoy reasoned, but looked almost as old; a lot of lines creased her face, many of them at the corners of the eyes, where her smile met them. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a warm and kind person. Sara looked more like her mother; her Indian genes were not apparent, except for the wheatish complexion that hinted at a possible non-Caucasian bloodline. She was lovely, with a teenager’s radiance. Ronojoy handed the phone back with a smile. It occurred to him that Apu Kaka, even if it was forgetfully, had done the right thing in not showing the picture to Sujoy.
His reaction might have been different.
‘They have brought a lot of stability to my life, Bochka. The years before Anne were difficult. One can never be rid of the past but the presence of human warmth and love does make things easier. That is what I feel the saddest about, Ronojoy… that your mother never gave herself a chance at healing. She left with the same regret she carried inside her all those years.’
The fleeting ray of sunshine that had wafted into the room had vanished, the darkness was back.
‘I know Sujoy has a family now, a young son too. I can only hope that they have the same calming influence on him. He seems very angry, unlike you, Ronojoy.’
‘I hope so. But this is all too fresh now, the wounds are raw. You have had many years to deal with it. But yes, I worry about him too.’ Ronojoy felt that their conversation was drawing to a close. But before he left, he needed to ask a few last questions.
‘Apu Kaka, did Baba suffer from depression? I mean, was he clinically depressed?’
This seemed to surprise Apu Kaka: ‘Why...’ he started to say and stopped. A hand cupped his mouth as he strained to remember, his face lined with concentration. ‘You know, you have got me thinking there, Bochka. I wasn’t in touch with him after I left for Singapore, as you can imagine, so I won’t be able to tell you about his state of mind in those years. Perhaps Ronen Da will have a better sense, but again Dada was such a private person, I don’t know. But even before that, I remember Mala hinting at something to that effect when she asked me to speak to him about resuming work. She didn’t use the word “depressed”, but in those days there wasn’t as much awareness. It was just dismissed as someone being moody or melancholy. You hardly ever sought medical counsel for it, as you would today.’
He paused and then said, more hesitantly, as if it had just occurred to him: ‘There’s one other thing, Ronojoy. When Mala informed me about the pregnancy she mentioned that Dada and she had not been physically intimate for many years. I can’t say if that was another symptom of the malaise. But why do you ask? Was there something in Mala’s letter…’
Ronojoy shook his head, ‘No. It concerns my own mental health, Apu Kaka. I needed to know if there is any medical history of depression in our family.’
Apu Kaka looked concerned, ‘Oh, Bochka. I am terribly sorry to hear that. And very surprised. You don’t come across as that at all, though…’
Ronojoy decided to change the subject, ‘Did you and Baba speak at all, after he found out?’
Ronojoy had the impression of a cloud passing over his uncle’s face.
‘Yes. As soon as Mala discovered she was pregnant, she asked me to leave. She was adamant about it. It so happened that the bank I worked for had a vacancy in their Singapore office and I availed of the transfer immediately. I went across to see Dada before leaving the country. An apology, I knew, was ridiculous, after what had happened. I just wanted to ask him to forgive Mala, if he could. When I saw him – you know how your father was – he could never be uncivil, however grave the provocation; he just looked at me once with such sad accusing eyes without uttering a word… and I couldn’t bring myself to say anything either. His silence screamed: “Of all people, you?” I left the room. That was the last I ever saw him.’
There wasn’t much else to talk about. Since reading Ma’s letter, Ronojoy had sought to piece together a thread of how events had come to pass in those fateful years in the life of their family. Yet, the morning spent with Apu Kaka only strengthened his conviction that there was just no way of fathoming the truth about what went on inside people’s heads. It was a dense fog of words and actions that you waded through to arrive at some hazy conclusion. Judging anyone, or anything, was an exercise in futility – there was just no one reality. It was a chimera: nebulous, intangible and forever shifting.
Sujoy’s anger, he reflected, was almost a reflex emotion. Once he got past that, would come the more difficult part.
It was time to say goodbye. He walked up to Apu Kaka, who sat in a stupor, and placed a hand gently on his shoulder, ‘I will leave you now, Apu Kaka. Get some rest, after dinner Sujoy or I will come by to take you to the airport.’ Apu Kaka nodded listlessly.
‘And Apu Kaka, I do appreciate the trouble you have taken to come so far, just to see us. I don’t know if we will meet again but you will be in my thoughts, now more than ever. I can’t speak for my brother but I will always wish you to be happy, don’t ever doubt that. Take care of yourself. Bye.’
Ronojoy walked out feeling heavy from the weight of his last words to Apu Kaka. His words had been deliberately kind; yet he felt the sadness that came from staring into the eyes of one hungry for even the smallest gesture of kindness and sympathy.
There was also a great despondency about any final parting – in a way, it was akin to death.