I was back in Park Street, and was buoyant for two reasons: First, for my proven ability to materialise yet again in the world that I (for some obscure but dogged reason) love. Second, I was irrationally, almost spitefully, cheered by the fact that I was back when it was increasingly going to be the best time to be in Calcutta (a week before Christmas) and, coincidentally, the worst time to be in Norwich. Decades of dispiriting travel between the two countries have made my experience of place not just comparative, but, occasionally, vituperative. Before the England — India divide that’s defined my life in the last twenty-five years, there was the Bombay — Calcutta one. When visiting Calcutta from Bombay, I would actually think to myself, “How glad I am not to be at home!” while, back from England, I overhear myself exclaiming in the first few days: “How glad I am to be back!”—literally, at intervals, congratulating myself. In other words, the associations of “home,” “away,” “return,” are quite hopelessly mixed up in my mind.
As I stepped out of Oxford Bookstore, my pace quickening as I turned in the direction of Music World, I found myself accompanied by a girl who’d been sitting on the pavement (there are always one or two people domiciled just outside the bookstore). I’d noticed, without paying attention, that she’d been sitting with an infant, a boy, both diverting themselves with what looked like a large, flat bottle meant for storing mineral water — a curious plaything. Seeing me come out of the shop, the girl immediately abandoned the infant and hurried after me. I thought I’d end her pursuit by giving her a few rupees; then it occurred to me that, since I was writing about the city, I may as well have a conversation with her. The thought, a contrived and implausible one, became more and more natural and plausible in a few seconds, when we began talking.
“Naam kya hai?”
She was briefly confused, and then probably made an assessment — that this man would be worth cooperating with in the interests of getting a few more rupees later. We kept up the conversation while steadily approaching the traffic lights, where I’d cross to Music World. She was anxious and waiflike, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in a page inside the National Geographic.
“Pooja,” she said.
“Do you live here?” I asked — meaning this area, Park Street; more precisely, the pavement outside Oxford Bookstore. She shook her head. She told me her des, her native place, was Uluberia — not a village or town at all, but a downmarket locality on the outskirts of the city, near Howrah, which can be classified as the beginning of the end of Calcutta. Did she live there with her parents?
No, she lived in front of Forum, the big mall that had come up on Elgin Road and altered that historical area (the mall, awash with radiance and activity till nine in the evening, was one of those locations I suddenly caught myself thinking about in the solitariness of Norwich). By now, Pooja — whose real name, I found out, was Shabnam (many poor Muslims, as we know, instinctively take cover under neutral-sounding Hindu names) — and I had crossed and reached Music World; here, sitting on a parapet before a Mama Mia stall — which claims to sell not ice cream, but “gelato”—I clumsily opened a notebook which I was carrying in case I encountered Ramayan Shah, and, glanced at by the beady-eyed magazine-sellers opposite and the slinky college kids who always gather here, taking stock of the situation or romancing, began to scribble Shabnam’s replies. Her brother — whom she’d left alone, daringly, in front of the bookshop — was called Nasir; she earned between ten and forty rupees each day; she (who was just ten) didn’t like her parents so much, preferring her grandparents, with whom she lived on the pavement outside Forum. Our conversation had made us conspicuous: not just to the magazine-sellers and the smarter, uniformed men behind the Mama Mia counter, but to other beggars, whose numbers had grown startlingly, in a matter of minutes.
“I have to get back,” she urged. “My brother …” Yes, to leave an infant alone in front of Oxford Bookstore … I’d put that thought out of my head. How would she go back to Forum later? On foot, she told me. Other beggars were listening; and, when they saw me fish in my pocket and give Shabnam her reward for humouring me, they advanced in a proprietary way, demanding money.
It was a lovely afternoon, of course, and an excellent time to be in Park Street — seven days before Christmas, which, with New Year’s Eve, would transmogrify the place with its paraphernalia and magic and leave its unmistakable trace there for pretty much the rest of the year. As for the beggars (mainly children and women), I knew they drifted around Flurys and Music World and the traffic lights as a matter of course — I felt I’d seen them before. This, though, was an illusion. Like everyone else on Park Street, they too were part of a whirl and itinerary of arrival and calculated lingering. People come to Park Street for a reason — to have a cup of coffee and forget the world; to try out a restaurant; to keep a business appointment; to become a couple; to study girls; to be a consumer — and once they’re done, they’re gone. The beggars, too, had their reasons for being here — they didn’t actually belong to Park Street. With the destitute, whom you hardly notice, you invariably make an assumption that they’re integral to the milieu and landscape they inhabit; as they don’t have a home, you presume their home is where they are. This wasn’t true of the beggars in front of Music World — like everything else (cars, shoppers, students, coffee drinkers) that made up the strange energy at that junction, they were ephemeral. Chance had brought me and them together, but, actually, there was no guarantee I’d run into them at this spot tomorrow.
I discovered this while talking to them. One woman in particular stood out: sparse-haired, large, in a colourful rag of a sari she’d wrapped round herself, she sensed why I was here and promised me a story. “Listen to me, dada!” she cried. “Not now!” I said, “tomorrow!” She made a sign of disgust. “I won’t be here tomorrow!” she said, and walked off.