Sujoy had driven straight home from Ronojoy’s house. The apartment was a mess when he entered: newspapers piled outside the door, the musty smell of a house that hadn’t been cleaned or aired. Some of his clothes lay piled on the sofa and a foetid odour accosted him when he entered the kitchen. Anu would have a thing or two to say if she returned to find the flat in such a state, Sujoy thought. He called the cleaning lady and asked her to come by before noon.
Sujoy had lost track of what day of the week it was. He picked up the tiny black calendar from the television rack to check if it was indeed Saturday. Barely a week had passed since Dada and he had gone for the immersion of Ma’s ashes. Could that be right?
He tried to imagine how life would be once the weekend was over. Apu Kaka would have returned to America; Sujoy himself couldn’t go on ducking work indefinitely – there were already a few urgent messages on his phone, reminding him of imminent deadlines – and he would have to meet Anu to discuss the way forward. In short, his usual life – on hold temporarily – would need to resume, in some shape or form. Habit, good old dreary habit, wasn’t it finally the glue that held us together? But today was not the day to think of all that; today he would meet Dida. He dialled her number. It rang a few times and then she answered, ‘Hello Chhotku, you will live a million years, you know. I was just thinking about you when the phone rang. How are you?’
Her voice was, had always been, like a balm for him. Growing up, Sujoy had been a difficult child. She had been his horse whisperer, always able to cool the tempers that haunted him, douse the fires that raged in his tiny heart. Sujoy was no longer a child but she still had the same effect on him.
‘Am okay, Dida. How are you? Dada said you looked very tired when he met you.’
‘Yes, I do feel a bit listless these days. The years have caught up with me, I guess. But it’s good to hear your voice, it makes me happy.’
‘Dida, I need to discuss a few things – things that I can speak of only to you. Do you sleep in the afternoons, after lunch?’
‘Not at all. I sleep very little these days, anyway. Come whenever you want, I am home. You will come alone?’
‘No Dida, Dada will be there with me.’
‘I see,’ Dida sounded a bit surprised. The conversation ended. An image of Dida reclining in her arm-chair with the two brothers seated on either side, flitted through Sujoy’s head. He dialled another number. He had expected his mother-in-law to answer but it was Jeet’s excited yelp that came through: ‘Hello? Papa! Where are you? Hope you haven’t forgotten – we play Liverpool at 9:30. We will watch it together?’
Sujoy’s throat tightened at his son’s voice, he managed to say, ‘Hi Jeet, sorry but I am still stuck with work. I promise to catch next weekend’s match with you. Will see you on Monday, if all goes well, okay?’
This seemed to deflate Jeet, he sounded grumpy, ‘It’s been so long, Papa. I didn’t even go for soccer practice today. I want to go back home now.’
‘Yes Baba, it’s just a couple of days now. I heard you had a nice day out with Jethu? Okay, tell Mama I said hello. Will call soon. Bye bye.’
The slight lift Sujoy had felt after speaking to Dida, evaporated. The demons he had been wrestling in his head returned. The truth was, Sujoy regretted having a child.
The first time the thought struck him he had dismissed it as a feeling unworthy of a parent. Yet, it lingered – the feeling that he couldn’t consider options like simply being by himself for a length of time, leave alone starting over again with a clean slate. His son stood like a giant rock, blocking all these paths. Jeet needed him, emotionally and materially, and Sujoy didn’t know if he was up to the task. He just wanted to run away – from home, family, work – everything.
Had Ma felt the same way? Did she hit an emotional trough that made it impossible for her to even function normally – when the prospect of bringing up two damaged children for years and years had seemed a burden too huge to even contemplate? Sujoy had a glimpse of the anguish that might have pushed his mother down the path – that he had railed against all his life. This shook him.
This anger, at what he saw as his mother’s selfish desertion of her sons, lay at the core of Sujoy’s own personality. He had always felt wronged and nursed a deep resentment; it hurt him but also sustained him, in a strange way. Stripped of it, would he be like a beast of burden, the load suddenly lifted off its back, setting it free but also adrift, without the anchor of the burden that weighed it down?
A tiny morsel of empathy seeped in through the hard casing of hatred in Sujoy’s head. Yet, his mother’s choices hardly presented him with options, having experienced, first-hand, what the consequences of such actions could be. He was about Jeet’s age now when Baba died, when the distance with Ma started growing till it became a chasm that could never be bridged. Could he ever inflict the same damage, knowingly, on his son?
The other issues that he grappled with – his marriage, his career – were thorny but not impossible to address, were it to come to that. Over the last few days, Sujoy had tried to imagine himself in situations and ask if that was what he wanted. So far, the answers rang hollow. He knew deep down that running away was not the answer. His demons would follow him wherever he went, they were inside him.
Ma had not found peace till the day she died, had she?
From the hotel, Ronojoy drove to Doctor Mirza’s residence. The doctor, back from his vacation, would start attending clinic only on Monday but had asked Ronojoy to come home for a preliminary visit. Ronojoy had been there before.
They sat now, in leather armchairs facing each other; Doctor Mirza said in his low, even voice, ‘I’m very sorry to hear about your mother, Ronojoy. Was she ailing?’
‘Yes Doctor, but we weren’t aware of it. You may recall from our previous conversations that she lived in an Ashram, our meetings had become less and less frequent over the years. She had become a recluse. It turns out she had been diagnosed with late-stage cancer but had withheld the information from us. We only found out after she passed away.’
‘That must have been hard for you and your brother.’
‘Yes, but that’s the least bit of it, Doctor. No one, other than the two of us, know what I am about to tell you. And I tell you, knowing that it will remain with you.’
‘Of course, Ronojoy, that goes without saying. I am your doctor.’
‘My mother left a letter to be handed to me after her death. The gist of it was…’ Ronojoy swallowed; no matter how often he thought of it, the words wouldn’t slide off his tongue easily, ‘…was that she had an affair with my uncle – my father’s younger brother – and Sujoy, my brother, is their biological offspring. Apparently, my father knew of it, struggled with the knowledge for many years before finally succumbing to it. On her death, my mother left the decision to tell Sujoy to me. I deliberated a lot but finally decided to tell him. He took it very badly. And I haven’t slept at all for a week now. Neither of us are in good shape, Doctor.’
Doctor Mirza took all this in. He never expressed surprise; there were very few exclamations in his measured stream of words. He said, ‘Ronojoy, this is a lot to deal with. Anyone in your position would have been very troubled. Actually, under the circumstances, I would say you are holding up quite well. Has Sujoy’s response been more intense – anything resembling a nervous breakdown?’
‘I fear so but you will be a better judge of that. He has been lashing out at everyone around him. His wife and son have shifted out of their home and to complicate matters even further, my uncle – his father – has come down from New Jersey to meet us, at Sujoy’s bidding. They met yesterday.’
Doctor Mirza looked grave as he asked, ‘Has your brother ever exhibited any signs of harming himself physically?’
Ronojoy had anticipated the question; given their family history, it was a fairly obvious one.
Images flashed through his head.
It was their first year in boarding, Sujoy would have been around seven. They were sitting in the ground outside the school building, on one of the wooden benches with tables, meant for visitors. It was late afternoon, after school hours. A few students were playing football. The brothers had been watching the game when Ronojoy suddenly heard a loud thump. It was Sujoy banging his head on the table; he did it again – bringing his forehead down on the table with full force, with no apparent fear of pain or damage – before Ronojoy could react. It had not happened again.
Many months after this incident, the two brothers were standing on the station platform in Kathgodam. The train, which would take them to Delhi, was approaching at a sedate speed. An inexplicable fear had crept up in Ronojoy. Just at the point where the train would pass them, Ronojoy had, almost involuntarily, grabbed Sujoy’s arm and yanked him back, away from the tracks. Sujoy, who had done nothing to warrant such a reaction, had stared at Ronojoy in puzzled surprise. Curiously though, he hadn’t said anything, almost as if he had understood, in an instant, why Ronojoy had behaved that way.
These images came back to him as Ronojoy considered Doctor Mirza’s question.
‘I know why you ask, Doctor. I have always been very worried about this, of Sujoy doing something violent. To the best of my knowledge, he has not, yet. I think he is capable of it but maybe I am just over-protective of him. I must confess it is one of the reasons I desperately want him to seek your professional counsel.’
‘Yes, the sooner the better. And how are you doing, Ronojoy? Other than the lack of sleep, have there been any other symptoms? You are not unfamiliar with this terrain, you know what I am talking about.’
‘Yes, Doctor. We need to talk about it in some detail. It’s the same pattern – that overwhelming tiredness, the endless hours of being stuck in one place with a hundred things going on in my head, the shrinking of my universe to just two or three people, and an awareness of physical ill-being – no sleep, no appetite and no energy – that broadly describes my state now.’
‘I hope you haven’t been drinking?’
‘No. No. That I have stayed away from, after that day when we spoke.’
‘That’s good. Listen Ronojoy, I am going to write you a prescription, just something for sleep and to relieve the anxiety. But I would like to meet you and your brother, separately of course, on Monday. Please try to find the time. We have work to do. This is a difficult time and you need help. Will you call the clinic and set up the appointments please?’
‘Yes, I will, Doctor. But, I wanted to ask you something else. You know about my father’s suicide. When I started consulting you the first time, did the thought cross your mind that I may have inherited my strain of depression from him?’
Doctor Mirza nodded, ‘There is scientific evidence to suggest that children of clinically depressed parents are at higher risk of suffering from it, but it doesn’t necessarily follow. You see, there is little that can be deduced with absolute certainty where the mind is concerned. It’s all in the realm of the grey. Yes, depression can be triggered by traumatic events in childhood, and can be traced back to your genes. I would be lying if I said I knew for sure, which it is, in your case. And while I am prescribing medication for you, it is my belief that ultimately you will need to come to terms with the events that trigger this condition in you.’
Doctor Mirza stood up and saw Ronojoy to the door: ‘You will get through this, Ronojoy. Our troubles, they are just a part of us.’
There was kindness but not much conviction in his voice as he said this.
When Sujoy and Ronojoy walked into Dida’s house a few hours later they found her seated in her usual place. She looked even more diminished – her frail, solitary figure sunken in a chair in the large cavernous drawing room. Seeing her grandsons, she extended both her arms in invitation. ‘Come, come. Chhotku come here, let me see your face.’ Sujoy stooped to reach her, she took his face in both her palms and kissed his forehead. Holding his hand, she made him sit on the low stool next to her. Turning to Ronojoy, she said, ‘Bochka, tell me something. That Jamini Roy I had given you, you have put it up at home, right?’
‘Of course, Dida. Why do you ask?’
‘I was just thinking, before you walked in that I should give both of you something nice from this house. Something you will remember me by. I want to start giving away the few things of value I possess. There aren’t too many, but still.’
Sujoy said, ‘Dida, why are you saying all this? You aren’t going anywhere in a hurry, and we don’t need objects to remember you by.’
Dida smiled, ‘No, I want you to have these. Go to my bedroom, will you. You will find two small paintings on the table by the bed, please bring them here.’
Sujoy left the room.
Dida addressed Ronojoy in a whisper, ‘Something has happened, Bochka, I can tell. What is it?’
Her eyes were keen as ever, Ronojoy realized.
‘I would rather Sujoy told you, Dida. He has come to do just that.’
Sujoy returned with two frames. Both brothers were familiar with the works.
‘Dida, are you sure you want to give these away? You have had them for decades on your bedroom wall – won’t you miss them?’ Ronojoy protested.
They looked at the paintings. The smaller of the two was an image of beautiful red flowers on a branch – the flame of the forest – drawn on fine Nepalese rice paper, by Benode Behari Mukherjee.
The other was a still life by Ara – a vase with charcoal flowers on a beige backdrop. Dida loved still-lifes.
She had always been interested in art and would pore over the catalogues Ronojoy got her periodically, from galleries and auction houses, with great interest. Once she had looked up from them and asked, ‘Tell me, Bochka, is a thing of beauty not enough to move one any longer?’
Ronojoy had not been able to offer a suitable response.
He said now, ‘These are beautiful, Dida. I don’t know how to thank you.’ He clasped her palm.
Dida smiled, ‘Put them up in a place where you can see them often. Gazing at these flowers made me happy, though sometimes a bit melancholy too.’
‘I leave you two to decide who gets which one,’ Dida said, before turning to Sujoy, ‘Yes, Chhotku, you have things to say to me.’
Sujoy seemed hesitant, he looked at Ronojoy with beseeching eyes.
Ronojoy said, ‘Dida, it’s about Ma’s last days. You may find all this quite distressing. Honestly, I am not even sure we should be sharing it with you. In your present physical condition…’
‘Your mother’s life has been distressing for me all these years. She may be gone but these days I seem to think only of her. I would like to hear anything that you may have to say about Mala.’
Ronojoy stood up and extracted the folded envelope from his pocket.
‘Dida, Ma left a sealed letter behind for me with Ronen Uncle. It contains some very surprising revelations. Instead of me trying to explain, it may be better for you to read it yourself.’ He handed her the envelope.
Dida was visibly surprised, she hadn’t expected this. She held the envelope, smoothening out its folds – as if trying to right something that had gone wrong. She said in a barely audible voice, ‘I would like to be alone when I read this. Would you mind terribly if I asked you leave me alone for a while? I am sorry, but…’
Both the brothers stood up immediately. ‘Of course, Dida. We’ll take a stroll outside and come back in a while.’
Ronojoy and Sujoy didn’t need to think about how they would while away the next few minutes; diagonally across the gate of Dida’s house was a small park – one of those neighbourhood parks that dotted most South Delhi colonies. It was the middle of the afternoon and the park was deserted. They walked in through a metal gate and chose a wooden bench under the shade of a silk cotton tree. It wasn’t too hot in the shade. A short distance away, an ice-cream vendor rested on the grass with a towel rolled up under his head.
‘So, which one do you like more?’ Ronojoy asked.
Sujoy didn’t understand at first, then figured it was about the paintings. He smiled and said, ‘Well, I know which one you want; I’ll take the other.’
‘And which one do I want?’
‘The Benode Behari.’
Sujoy was right. Benode Behari belonged to that group of Bengal school masters from Santiniketan – along with Nandalal Bose, Tagore, Ramkinkar Baij – whom Ronojoy revered. Works of beauty never failed to move him.
‘Thank you, Chhotku. You like the Ara?’
‘Love it, it’s beautiful.’
As they spoke of paintings, the ice-cream vendor had quietly rolled his cart across. Two middle-aged men sitting on a park bench couldn’t have struck him as a promising sale prospect, but he was just trying his luck.
Surprising Ronojoy, Sujoy asked him, ‘Do you have Magnum?’
The man’s eyes lit up, ‘I do, Babu. Which one?’
‘The truffle, if you have,’ Sujoy said and turned to his brother: ‘How about you?’
‘Why not? But I’ll have a good old Choc-o-bar.’
The man extracted two wrapped ice-cream sticks from inside the cart. Collecting his money, he wheeled his cart away.
Sujoy took a slurping bite and nodding appreciatively, asked Ronojoy, ‘When was the last time you had an ice-cream?’
‘Oh, I had one with Jeet just the other day. And you?’
‘I have these once in a way too, when I take Jeet across to the mall.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Yes, just this morning.’
‘And?’
‘I told him I will see him on Monday.’
‘Good.’
‘Is it? I don’t know, Dada. I know that you, and everyone around, will be happy to see me go back to my usual routine – work, wife, son – and I probably will. But you know what, it’s killing me. Sometimes, a shake up like this just makes you see things more clearly. For the first time in my life, I actually understand why Ma may have done what she did. I know I have brought a child into this world, created a universe where other people’s lives depend on me, but it is not what I want. I may not be able to do anything about it, but can I at least tell you this, without fear of being judged?’
There was not a trace of anger in Sujoy’s voice as he said this, only helplessness. Ronojoy said nothing. He just draped his arm around his younger brother’s drooping shoulders. He felt his anguish. All these cul-de-sacs we forge for ourselves.
In a while, he said, ‘Sujoy, I met Doctor Mirza before coming here today. I will start my sessions with him soon but he is very keen to see you as well. For my sake, can you please give this a shot? Meet him once at least and see what you make of it? Please?’
‘All right. No harm meeting him once, if it makes you happy.’
A wave of relief coursed through Ronojoy. It was not just this surprising acquiescence but also Sujoy’s general temperament today – he wasn’t carrying his usual angry air about him. Ronojoy knew better than to read too much into it, but if this meant that they could, at least, send Apu Kaka off without further acrimony, it would be a relief.
Sujoy had finished his lolly and was licking his fingers. There was a touch of the bizarre about the setting – two grown men sitting under a tree in the park having ice-cream, in the middle of a working day. Ronojoy smiled to himself.
‘So, how did it go, with Apu Kaka?’ Sujoy asked.
Ronojoy didn’t answer immediately. He knew he had to choose his words carefully.
‘Chhotku, I know how you feel about him – that he ran away from the scene of crime, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. That isn’t quite true. As he told you, he did reach out to Ma. He tried to help but she spurned every attempt of his. None of us can say how things may have turned out if he had been allowed to come back – between them, between us, between the two of you.’ Ronojoy paused to allow Sujoy to respond. There was no angry retort yet, he continued, ‘It is unwise to judge with the benefit of hindsight, Chhotku. All of us make mistakes but sometimes we end up compounding our errors. Apu Kaka may be guilty of that.’
Sujoy sat quietly, taking all this in. Then he asked, ‘How are you so bloody composed, Dada? I mean it was your father who died. I refuse to believe that all this isn’t driving you insane too. What is it? Is it the medication? Or do you feel that you have to lump everything and play stoic big brother for me? If that is it, just stop it, will you? I don’t want you to end up like Baba!’
That was the end of their conversation in the park.
They found Dida where they had left her. The letter lay neatly folded on her lap. Her face was turned away from the door but they could see that her eyes were shut.
She sensed their presence and turned towards them.
‘Would you like to be alone for a bit longer… should we come back later, Dida?’
‘No, come. I have read the letter.’
Her tone had changed.
It was Ronojoy that she turned to first, ‘Bochka, it couldn’t have been an easy decision for you, to let Chhotku know about the letter and you may still have misgivings about it. If it is any consolation, I would have done exactly the same. There have been enough secrets in this family, we don’t need any more.’
Then staring ahead, she continued, addressing no one in particular, ‘Mala’s letter surprises me, and it does not. I would be dishonest if I said that such a possibility had never crossed my mind. The sudden deterioration I saw in relations between Mala and Subir from around the time Sujoy came in to this world, the mysterious manner in which Apu disappeared overnight, not even coming up in conversations henceforth, had led me to suspect that something had happened. Of course, I couldn’t have imagined the extent of it. Later, Sujoy’s striking resemblance to Apu...’ her voice trailed off. ‘We can never know everything about anyone, can we? Even the ones we are closest to…’ A veined, skeletal hand emerged from her lap and rested on Sujoy’s arm. ‘What do I say to you, Chhotku? Except that I have this overwhelming urge to wrap you in my arms so that no sorrow can ever touch you again. I feel all of us have … have failed you.’
Sujoy’s eyes brimmed over.
‘I feel so sad for Subir. I was very fond of him, you know. Ronojoy, you remind me of him sometimes. You have his quiet manner; such a dignified, gentle soul he was –
perhaps too gentle for his own good.’
Dida stopped. She had been speaking in a slow, halting, almost laboured manner, as if the words were an effort, as was the summoning up of memories. She looked into Sujoy’s eyes for a few moments before continuing:
‘I know how unfair all this must seem, and how angry you must feel, Sujoy. Even as a child, you carried this hurt inside you, as if a part of you somehow knew, all along. I tried to protect you, with all my love and affection, but I know I didn’t always succeed. I fear I will fail you again today, Mala’s letter has broken my spirit. Please don’t walk down the path she did, Sujoy. It leads to ruin.’
Dida appeared broken but soldiered on: ‘Can you imagine the life your mother had? To carry this burden, of Subir’s suicide, for so many long years? To forsake two little children because she felt she was not the mother they deserved to have? To be so racked by guilt that she renounced living altogether and ran away to that anonymous refuge where no one would know her past? It is Mala I feel the saddest for. You could say she brought it upon herself but no one deserves a life like that. It breaks my heart to think of the torture she inflicted on herself.’
Ronojoy tried to intervene, but she wasn’t finished yet. ‘No, Ronojoy, let me speak. It is important that I say this to you today. Yes, Mala was my only child but I have never considered the two of you anything other than my own. What I tell you is not in defence of what she did.’
Pain lined Dida’s face, Ronojoy could almost feel the anguish radiating from her, but she steeled herself for one last appeal to Sujoy,
‘Chhotku, listen to me. They are all gone now, I will be too, soon. The two of you have your lives ahead of you. I cannot bear the thought of any of you coming to harm. Remember Mala’s last words to you – she asks you to forgive her, so that you can move on. She carried her guilt to the grave but your anger still rages in you. Only forgiveness can douse those flames, Chhotku. Forgive your mother, she paid for her mistakes. No judge in the universe could have handed her a harsher sentence – her death was a liberation.’
Dida’s eyes were moist with tears now. Sujoy knelt in front of her chair and buried his face in her lap. Ronojoy watched his brother’s body shake as he clung to his grandmother. He felt a strange lightness, though he couldn’t say why.
They sat, this way, for what seemed like a considerable length of time. No one spoke, the words had run out. After a while, Ronojoy walked up to her and said, ‘Dida, we will leave you alone now; this has been a huge strain. Would you like to keep the letter with you?’
Dida had a sad smile on her face, ‘That’s kind of you, Bochka. Yes, I would like to. Reading it, I felt a strange connection with Mala. I would like to read it again, it’s all that is left.’
She closed her eyes.
At the gate, Ronojoy asked, ‘So, do you want me to…’
‘No, Dada. I will drop Apu Kaka to the airport.’