‘He’s not here.’
The tabla player continued to eye me with suspicion and I cursed my luck.
‘That is indeed a pity,’ I mumbled. ‘My boss, Rehman-sahib at the Union, was most insistent. He said it was imperative that Mr Gulmohamed receive this letter most urgently.’
‘He should be back this evening.’ This time it was the woman who spoke. While the tabla player seemed barely to acknowledge my presence, she looked at me with what felt like benevolence. ‘I’m his niece,’ she said. ‘You may give the letter to me. I’ll make sure he gets it.’
Her companion returned to his instrument and began idly beating a slow rhythm that echoed the thumping of my heart. I found myself holding my breath.
‘I’m sorry, memsahib,’ I said, remembering to exhale. ‘Rehman-sahib was most specific. He told me I must hand it to Mr Gulmohamed personally. If I return without passing on the letter, he will… well, you know what these burra babus are like…’
The woman smiled in sympathy.
‘Maybe you might tell me where he has gone?’ I continued. ‘I could try to find him.’
‘You have a pencil?’
I reached into my bag, found the stub of Sandesh’s pencil and passed it to her.
‘And the envelope?’ she asked.
‘Excuse me?’
She looked at me as though I were a simpleton.
‘I need to write the address somewhere.’
‘Of course.’ I grinned, and handed her the envelope, cursing myself for my lack of thought. If there was a silver lining, however, it was also the same lack of thought that one expected of a servant.
Turning the envelope to an odd angle, she began writing in the crooked manner of the left-handed. I too was left-handed, or at least I had been as a child, until my mother, convinced it was a mark of malevolence, beat it out of me. These days I used my right. Indeed I was surprised that this woman, so obviously of high standing, would not have undergone a similar process of exorcism.
‘There,’ she said, returning the envelope. On the reverse, in neat Bengali script, was an address in Budge Budge of all places, a restaurant called Lotus Hotel. Budge Budge was another ramshackle riverside township even further to the south and west of the city. Again, it was the sort of locale one didn’t venture into without good reason. And I’d never had one. Not till now.
I pressed my palms together, thanked her profusely, and realised I had absolutely no idea of how to get to Budge Budge.
‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘If I may ask. Do you know how I might get there?’
The tabla player gave a dismissive laugh. The woman, however, was again more amenable.
‘There’s a bus every few hours. It stops at the more outside the arch. But the buses aren’t that reliable. The quickest way might be to take a ferry from the ghat along the river.
‘Thank you, memsahib,’ I said. I offered aadabs once more and turned to leave as behind me the tabla player increased his tempo. I walked back down the path as the first notes from the santoor were struck and I found myself wishing I could have stayed longer, hidden myself away and simply listened to her play all day.
From the river I caught the ferry to Budge Budge, a dilapidated, antiquated thing, belching smoke and overloaded with passengers. It wallowed its way south with its engine complaining loudly. The boat never strayed far from the bank, thank the gods. I had never learned to swim, which is to say that no one had ever taught me, but this is not uncommon among Bengalis, which I have always found perplexing. For a people whose diet consists largely of fish, we are surprisingly fearful of all but the shallowest of water.
Budge Budge arrived thirty minutes later and not a moment too soon. Our ferry appeared to be taking on a troubling level of water, the bilge mixing with oil and soot and forming a most noxious effluent that pitched and rolled around our feet. I was one of the first to alight, and even the usually heart-stopping shuffle along half-rotten wooden planks from the boat to the jetty above the river and mud, seemed less precarious than usual.
Once back upon land, I removed my sandals, dried my feet with the cloth satchel, and took stock. The riverfront was dotted with tumbledown fishing huts and the occasional whitewashed temple between the hollowed-out carcasses of long abandoned wharves.
At the roadside stood a rickshaw stand and a tea stall congested with the usual assembly of the gainfully under-employed. I cleared my throat, and made my way over. We Bengalis are drawn to a tea stall like Englishmen to a club. It had been at least six hours since my last cup and I had the devil’s own thirst to slake. I bought a bhar, took a sip and ambled over to a group of rickshaw-wallahs who were reposed on the ground nearby, playing cards. One, probably the next in line for a fare, looked up. He was a grizzled old dadū, with silvery stubble and sleeveless vest.
‘Lotus Hotel,’ I said.
The man nodded. ‘Ak tākā.’
One rupee seemed excessive. From the look on his face, I sensed that he wasn’t about to haggle, not in the company of his comrades. Rickshaw-wallahs are curious fellows. Individually, they would happily strike a deal, but when there are two or more together, they display the ruthless determination of the most militant of unions.
‘Chalo,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
The Lotus Hotel was a hotel only in the Indian sense, which is to say it wasn’t a hotel at all but a restaurant, though in this case, even the latter term seemed like pretence. It was a single-storey structure, squatting on a dusty street with an open sewer in front and resting between a bicycle repair shop and a Chinese laundry. Opposite sat a pūkūr of stagnant green water, its surface strangled with the usual bustee flotsam and the occasional lotus flower. The exterior was crudely fashioned from orange bricks and bare cement, with holes for where the windows and door should have been. Along the top, the hotel’s name had been painted in shabby blue letters which dripped across the metal casing of a roll-down shutter.
I wondered what on earth would bring a Bombay politician to this dive of a place in a part of town which most right-thinking people did not even consider to be part of Calcutta.
There was one way to find out.
Gulmohamed did not know me. In my present garb, and in these surroundings, I looked no more conspicuous than a tree in a forest. Even if he did see me enter, I doubted he’d remember my face a minute later. I stepped over the slab above the open sewer, through the jaws of the entrance and into the gloom beyond.
The interior was bigger than I had expected, yet no more remarkable than the exterior. Two dozen square tables, packed tightly together, most occupied by groups of young men, smoking bidis and deep in adda over cups of tea. Around them, a gaggle of waiters waded to and from the kitchen through the fog of cigarette smoke.
I took a seat at one of the few empty tables – this one along the back wall, picked up a discarded, day-old copy of Ananda Bazar and pretended to scan its pages. I spotted Gulmohamed almost immediately. He was significantly older and better dressed than most of the clientele. Across from him sat another man: younger, shaven-headed and fair-skinned, but not fair enough to be an Englishman, and built, as Sam might say, like a brick latrine. He was dressed in a white shirt the cut of which suggested it was expensive. Before I could examine them further, however, a waiter approached to take my order.
‘Cha,’ I said.
He left with a nod and I returned to my perusal of the two men. Gulmohamed was speaking, as much with his hands as his mouth, and from my vantage point, appeared unsettled. His companion though seemed to be taking it calmly: nodding, listening, and finally raising a smile and a placatory hand.
I doubted this was their first meeting. In my experience, politicians rarely became heated with a brand-new acquaintance. What’s more, from their attire, I doubted either man would be the type to consider the Lotus Hotel an appropriate venue for a first meeting, not if they intended to make a good impression.
The fair-skinned gentleman leaned conspiratorially across the table, just as the waiter returned with my tea. Waving him away, I returned my attention to Gulmohamed’s friend. He had taken out a pen and was sketching something on a paper napkin. It seemed to placate Gulmohamed, though his expression suggested that full agreement had yet to be reached.
The two continued to negotiate, while I sipped my tea. Fifteen minutes later, the shaven-headed gentleman rose to his feet. He held out a hand and Gulmohamed half rose to shake it, then dropped back onto his chair as the other placed a few rupees on the table and made for the exit.
Gulmohamed watched him leave, and for some moments, simply sat there. Finally he reached into the breast pocket of his suit, pulled out a silver cigarette case and flipped it open.
He selected a cigarette, gold-filtered and foreign, tapped it gently on the table, and, with a flick of his thumb, lit it with a flash of flame from a matching lighter. He smoked it slowly, as though it were an aide to his contemplation. Only once, as he returned it to the table, did I see his hand shake.
Finally, he checked his watch. Taking one last pull, he then pushed the golden stub firmly into the flimsy tin ashtray on the table and rose. Within seconds he was striding out of the door as I called for the waiter, threw a few coins on the table and set off after him.
Gulmohamed was already twenty yards down the street, passing a bent-backed workman pulling a cart laden with jute sacks. From his pocket, he extracted a piece of paper: the note, I assumed, that the well-dressed Eurasian had written. He stopped to consult it, crossed over the road and turned into the shaded entrance to a narrow, puddle-filled gullee.
Taking care to maintain an appropriate distance, I too crossed over, pausing at the mouth of the gullee to make sure he didn’t double back. I stared into the darkness of the lane but saw nothing. Gulmohamed had disappeared, enveloped by its shadows.