“I asks dadababu,” said Bishu guiltily. “Maybe he gives Amal some work.”
“Wake the child,” said Uma. “She has to eat.”
* * *
THE NEXT NIGHT, it began to rain again. It was late July, the middle of the monsoons, but it had been so hot over the last four or five days that everyone had almost forgotten the rains; it felt like April. But now, at night, it began to rain again with the intensity it had had before, as if to remind people that the monsoons had not gone away. There were flashes of lightning that illuminated the small room on the first storey, Uma’s figure on the bed, sleeping in her sari, with the child, a smaller and darker shadow by her side, seeming even more deeply asleep, unilluminated by the lightning. When there were those vast unexpected rumbles of thunder, the room seemed to shake, and the sky seemed to be falling on it.
“Close that window,” said Uma, still no more than an outline.
“Always raining … always raining,” muttered Bishu.
He got up from the mattress on the floor and went to the window; a cool wind blew onto his face. He pulled the window; already the ledge was wet, and he saw that the rain had begun to blur the lamppost opposite. When he closed the window, the room became darker, but all night it continued to thunder and the sound of rain could be heard. Although Bishu feared the rains and the damage they could do, he was also glad, because it had become cooler and he slept more comfortably.
The next morning the sun was out, but there were puddles of water on parts of the lawn. The sour-faced old mali, in a dhoti and a shirt, was bent over the plants and muttering something. Leaves and branches had fallen on the side of the driveway and had to be thrown away; the birds in the trees had returned to their normal life and business and could be heard all day. But, once more, that night it rained, and it continued to rain, on and off, for the next ten days. It brought chaos to the lane, Southern Gardens, and morning would begin with drivers shouting at each other and car horns being blown because water had collected at the entrance to the lane and made getting out difficult. “Now it’s really begun,” thought Bishu. The days were monochromatic and dull, with light like a suggestion. Then, on the tenth day, when the rain had reduced to a drizzle and there was sun and rain at the same time, the mali shouted to Bishu as he was passing by the lawn, “Ei Bishu, where’s that man of yours?” Bishu stopped. “Which man, dadu?” he asked. “‘Which man, dadu?’—why, that Oriya you brought here — I haven’t seen him for the last three days! Has he come here to work or sleep?” “I’ll see, dadu,” mumbled Bishu, and went off quickly, ashamed. After all, he was a man from his district; but, come to think of it, Bishu hadn’t seen much of Jagan during the last seven days, either, though that could be because he had been busy with other things during the rains; anyway, he worked inside the house and returned to his room only in the evening. But he decided he would look into Jagan’s room later.
In the evening, before going upstairs, he stood outside Jagan’s door and called: “Jaganda, are you there?” A voice came from inside: “I’m here.” Bishu went in, saying, “It’s just that mali was asking me about you — he hasn’t seen you for a few days.” Jagan was lying on the bed; he said, “I began to feel ill two days ago, and I haven’t been well — it’s these rains.” His voice was hoarse, and Bishu went up to him and felt his forehead. “You have fever,” he said. “Yes, it came a few days ago,” said Jagan, “but it’s getting better.” “Okay, then you rest tomorrow,” said Bishu, turning around to leave. Then he saw a mat rolled up against the wall, and Jagan said, “My aunt’s son is staying with me for a few days. He needs a place to stay, and I told him to stay with me for a few days. I don’t know the ways of this place — is it all right?” Bishu thought for a few seconds; he knew it wasn’t done, but he decided not to give it too much importance. “It’s all right, Jaganda,” he said. “You don’t worry.”
One night the following week, when Bishu had returned to the outhouse after some work in the mansion, he noticed three bicycles on the landing, leaning on the wall by the staircase. They seemed quite new; the bicycle spokes glinted sharply in the light of the bulb. Bishu wondered what they were doing there — had the watchman put them there? No, it must be Jagan. He listened outside Jagan’s door, but there seemed to be no one inside the room.
He went up to his room, and a little later Uma brought him his dinner of rice and daal and vegetables. He ate without talking much, thinking of whether he should tell Mr. Banerjee about the bicycles. “Something seems to be on your mind,” said Uma. “No, it is nothing,” he said, rising to wash his hands. “Nothing.” He decided to dismiss the thought from his head.
* * *
THEN A HOT SPELL BEGAN AGAIN, punctuated by infrequent showers. It was during hot days like these that Bishu had first met Uma two and a half years ago. Uma used to emerge from the gates of the building opposite, Southern Gardens Flats, and walk down the lane towards the main road, perhaps going to the market; on her way she would stop at the gate of the strange new, huge Marwari house, which looked like something between a castle and an aeroplane, and talk to the watchman, whom she seemed to know. Bishu, who was never really friendly with the servants in the house he worked in, loitered about a lot, and he had seen her a few times. She was not particularly pretty; she was thin (though not as thin as she was now), with protruding teeth; but, in her sari, she looked slim and small and had a certain grace.
Often she would come down the path that went past the outhouse with a pitcher against her waist. One day Bishu said to her:
“What’s the matter, don’t you getting water in your building?”
“Of course we do — why shouldn’t we?” said Uma. “It’s just that didimoni prefers tubewell water.”
Bishu noticed that there was vermilion in the parting of her hair: he realised she had a husband somewhere, in either her past or present; he was not unduly bothered. Thus their courtship began, fifteen or twenty minutes of conversation each day on the dusty path between the outhouse and the mansion that led to the tubewell, looked upon and ignored by the many windows and verandahs, the numerous eyes, of the multi-storeyed building. Sometimes she had a ponytail, sometimes a plait. Their differences — he an Oriya of the sweeper caste, she a once married Bengali — which should have kept them apart, only brought them together. In a couple of months, the conversations had led to the first physical intimacy in the room in the outhouse, hurried embraces; though everything was so quickly and secretively done that no one had an inkling, least of all didimoni. It was only after Uma had begun to retch and throw up and realised she was pregnant that she ran away from her job to marry Bishu.
* * *
AFTER A SHORT BURST of rain late in the morning, the sun came out and it became hot again. Priti, who either played with other children on the dusty path where her parents had once met, or wandered about at home, was now crawling about busily in the room, seeming to have found a playmate in the sun, which, though burning in the sky after the shower, appeared to be crawling about in the room as well. Her mother picked her up and put her on the bed, where she sat without protesting. A few minutes later, two shaliks came to the window.
“Paati!” said Priti, looking at them, for all birds were pakhi, or “bird,” to her. The birds took off immediately, and Priti seemed a little surprised that they were now here and now not. When her mother picked her up and took her to the window, she looked out at the lane contentedly, with its buildings and huge banyan and gulmohur trees casting shadows everywhere.