The creamy pinkgold of the afternoon curdles on the glass. I am sitting in the glass-walled, soft-sofa'd third floor cafe, pretending to be a grad, pretending to be useful as I grapple with my stupidity. The river snakes around in a steel half-quatrefoil beneath. I have the endless sky, the river and the languorous willows. What right do I have to be here? What right do I have to doubt?
The postcard perfection of the scene outside my glass box reminds of me other less placid beauties. I have seen other sunsets - severe, undying ones of the Calcuttan midsummer that endured with an irritating, loud yellow and refused to go until it was too late. The dogs would sit panting outside the house, a strange veteran patience in their lolling tongues and liquid eyes. The sunset was a relief. The world suddenly became traversable and it made sense to put the kettle to boil for a cup of tea before going out.
The ghosts of solstices past and the premonitions of the solstices future sit at the edge of my vision. They are not all mordant nor hopeless. Some are even wholesomely, quietly happy. Take that, you bastards, who wring all possibilities of happiness out of nostalgia.
But some memories do rage and storm.
The postcard perfection of the scene outside my glass box reminds of me other less placid beauties. I have seen other sunsets - severe, undying ones of the Calcuttan midsummer that endured with an irritating, loud yellow and refused to go until it was too late. The dogs would sit panting outside the house, a strange veteran patience in their lolling tongues and liquid eyes. The sunset was a relief. The world suddenly became traversable and it made sense to put the kettle to boil for a cup of tea before going out.
How different here, that the sunset sends down shivers. The bleary light only lasts for a few uneven minutes afterwards when the day seems immense and unfathomable, and I never know, not on a single afternoon, how I will brave the inevitable long, dull dark.
I can ask for little sympathy for my melancholy. Is it not a privilege to be sitting here, in this topsy-turvy land of sudden, guerrilla darknesses? The winter solstice beckons in all its mausoleal, annual sameness. For the briefest of the moments my mind breaks into an awkward crab-scuttle back to the teenage joys of badly-written paperbacks on Holy Grail conspiracies. Even the grim solstice had seemed exciting. A testament to the power of the fomented mind and the power of association. Coleridge, in all his deluded excitable voices - 'Ideas by having been together acquire a power of recalling each other; or every partial representation awakes the total representation of which it had been a part.'.
He was paraphrasing Aristotle, he said. I have read very little Aristotle so I will take him at his word.
The winter solstice has acquired many shards and shoals of ideas around itself over the years. As I sit here in the semi-dark of another useless day, I have to agree with the obsessive, sob-racked patheticness (MS Word refuses to believe that such a word could exist. OED crooks a snide grin.) of his idea.
The winter solstice has acquired many shards and shoals of ideas around itself over the years. As I sit here in the semi-dark of another useless day, I have to agree with the obsessive, sob-racked patheticness (MS Word refuses to believe that such a word could exist. OED crooks a snide grin.) of his idea.
The ghosts of solstices past and the premonitions of the solstices future sit at the edge of my vision. They are not all mordant nor hopeless. Some are even wholesomely, quietly happy. Take that, you bastards, who wring all possibilities of happiness out of nostalgia.
But some memories do rage and storm.
An old man walks past me. He walks in cautious baby-steps, he walks in a dimeter of walking stick thuds and the slow drag of his feet. Thud, drag. Thud, drag. Probably a retired fellow of one of the colleges. Who knows. He reminds me of another old man.
Bhaidimma. That is how the faces turn up - conjoined and inseparable. My mother had taught tried to teach her fat little girl to say dadabhai, but it was a mouthful, so her tall, stoop-shouldered, distinguished father became my Bhai. Bhai of the full, bardic laughter, Bhai of the crisp blue Bombay Dyeing shirts, Bhai of the telebhaja and muri and afternoon tea. Bhai who will soon be another year older.
He is now half the height he used to be. The crippling terrors of a pension-less retirement and a disintegrating family have left him nearly paralyzed and vacant. I look into his eyes and I only find the same joke, compulsively told and retold. The laughter lines have set in grim finality.
I loved him fervently and unwaveringly for many, many years until I grew up and began to see his mistakes - his mistakes that cost us all something or the other. But all this was far away when we used fight over the last beguni. Then Uncle Chips took over - it was over the last crisp. When we lived with them, I would hop around him when he shaved and he would put a big daub of foam on my nose. It was our little game, it was our little secret.
Whenever Dimma saw us she would join in. She believed in edible products of affection and those alone. Gently scolding her husband she would appear with a plate of fulkopi'r bora or alu posto or some other little piece of her culinary genius. Constantly bustling, muttering, scolding, cooking, Dimma was the perfect antithesis to her husband's stillness. Together they were the absent yet present stabilizing pillar to the stormy little unit of my bickering parents and their glum kid.
And now they have sunk so far in despair and oblivion that I can only talk to them in jokes and jocular one-sentence conversations. I saw them last summer when I was at home for three months. In those three long, luxurious months of leisure I only saw them twice. I do not know when the bell will toll but when it does it will certainly be for me.
People talk about apathy as if it is a long sleep. For me it comes in bursts when feelings are too big to bear. When I saw their hunched, glassy-eyed forms, I knew I had to forget about them, about myself and the memories if I had to survive the sight and go back to England in one mental piece.
But now, the winter solstice lurks in the air, bringing memories of Bhai's birthdays when he was younger and full of life and a gentle giant at six feet to my four feet self. Ma had taught me to finish all cards with 'Love, Koel' although I never felt like a Koel. But love poured generously from the tip of my new gel pen on to the handmade paper. Love would follow up in a big cake and hug.
Now I am here, and there will no cake, no card and no hug on his birthday. I will probably call him up, but he cannot hear very well, and it will be a shouty, cross birthday wish, cackling from a strange, cold corner of Europe to a less cold but equally strange corner in Calcutta.
Happy birthday, Bhai. You are the nicest , kindest, gentlest man in my whole family. I do not care anymore that you stopped ma from pursuing her career. I do not care that you refused to let her leave a terrible marriage. I do not even care that you disapprove of all that I am and am not.
Happy birthday. I love you a lot.
Bhaidimma. That is how the faces turn up - conjoined and inseparable. My mother had taught tried to teach her fat little girl to say dadabhai, but it was a mouthful, so her tall, stoop-shouldered, distinguished father became my Bhai. Bhai of the full, bardic laughter, Bhai of the crisp blue Bombay Dyeing shirts, Bhai of the telebhaja and muri and afternoon tea. Bhai who will soon be another year older.
He is now half the height he used to be. The crippling terrors of a pension-less retirement and a disintegrating family have left him nearly paralyzed and vacant. I look into his eyes and I only find the same joke, compulsively told and retold. The laughter lines have set in grim finality.
I loved him fervently and unwaveringly for many, many years until I grew up and began to see his mistakes - his mistakes that cost us all something or the other. But all this was far away when we used fight over the last beguni. Then Uncle Chips took over - it was over the last crisp. When we lived with them, I would hop around him when he shaved and he would put a big daub of foam on my nose. It was our little game, it was our little secret.
Whenever Dimma saw us she would join in. She believed in edible products of affection and those alone. Gently scolding her husband she would appear with a plate of fulkopi'r bora or alu posto or some other little piece of her culinary genius. Constantly bustling, muttering, scolding, cooking, Dimma was the perfect antithesis to her husband's stillness. Together they were the absent yet present stabilizing pillar to the stormy little unit of my bickering parents and their glum kid.
And now they have sunk so far in despair and oblivion that I can only talk to them in jokes and jocular one-sentence conversations. I saw them last summer when I was at home for three months. In those three long, luxurious months of leisure I only saw them twice. I do not know when the bell will toll but when it does it will certainly be for me.
People talk about apathy as if it is a long sleep. For me it comes in bursts when feelings are too big to bear. When I saw their hunched, glassy-eyed forms, I knew I had to forget about them, about myself and the memories if I had to survive the sight and go back to England in one mental piece.
But now, the winter solstice lurks in the air, bringing memories of Bhai's birthdays when he was younger and full of life and a gentle giant at six feet to my four feet self. Ma had taught me to finish all cards with 'Love, Koel' although I never felt like a Koel. But love poured generously from the tip of my new gel pen on to the handmade paper. Love would follow up in a big cake and hug.
Now I am here, and there will no cake, no card and no hug on his birthday. I will probably call him up, but he cannot hear very well, and it will be a shouty, cross birthday wish, cackling from a strange, cold corner of Europe to a less cold but equally strange corner in Calcutta.
Happy birthday, Bhai. You are the nicest , kindest, gentlest man in my whole family. I do not care anymore that you stopped ma from pursuing her career. I do not care that you refused to let her leave a terrible marriage. I do not even care that you disapprove of all that I am and am not.
Happy birthday. I love you a lot.
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