‘It’s about the Bengal Famine, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have any memory of the famine yourself?’
‘I do. I remember it only too well. It was only eight years ago.’ He paused. ‘I was somewhat active in student politics then. But do you know, we had a dog even then, and fed it well.’ He looked distressed.
‘Does a writer have to feel strongly about what he writes?’ asked Lata.
‘I haven’t the least idea,’ said Amit. ‘Sometimes I write best about the things I care about least. But even that’s not a consistent rule.’
‘So do you just flounder and hope?’
‘No, no, not exactly.’
Lata felt that Amit, who had been so open, even expansive, a minute ago, was resisting her questioning now, and she did not press it further.
‘I’ll send you a book of my poems sometime,’ said Amit. ‘And you can form your own opinion about how much or how little I feel.’
‘Why not now?’ asked Lata.
‘I need time to think of a suitable inscription,’ said Amit. ‘Ah, there’s Kuku.’
7.42
KUKU had performed her errand of appeasement. Now she wanted to go home as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it had begun to rain once more, and soon the warm rain was battering down on the roof of the Humber. Rivulets of brown water began running down the sides of the street. A little further there was no street at all, just a sort of shallow canal, where traffic in the opposite direction created waves that shook the chassis of the car. Ten minutes later the car was trapped in a flash flood. The driver inched forward, trying to keep to the middle of the road, where the camber created a slightly higher level. Then the engine died.
With Kuku and Amit to talk to in the car, Lata did not fret. It was very hot, though, and beads of perspiration formed on her forehead. Amit told her a bit about his college days and how he had begun writing poetry. ‘Most of it was terrible, and I burned it,’ he said.
‘How could you have done that?’ asked Lata, amazed that anyone could burn what must have been written with so much feeling. But at least he had burned it and not simply torn it up. That would have been too matter-of-fact. The thought of a fire in the Calcutta climate was odd too. There was no fireplace in the Ballygunge house.
‘Where did you burn the poems?’ she asked.
‘In the wash-basin,’ interjected Kuku. ‘He nearly burned the house down too.’
‘It was awful poetry,’ said Amit by way of extenuation. ‘Embarrassingly bad. Self-indulgent, dishonest.’
‘Poetry I don’t desire
I will immolate with fire,’
said Kuku.
‘All my sorrow, all my pain:
Ashes flowing down the drain,’
continued Amit.
‘Aren’t there any Chatterjis who don’t make flippant couplets?’ asked Lata, unaccountably annoyed. Weren’t they ever serious? How could they joke about such heartbreaking matters?
‘Ma and Baba don’t,’ said Kuku. ‘That’s because they’ve never had Amit as an elder brother. And Dipankar’s not quite as skilled as the rest of us. It comes naturally to us, like singing in a raag if you’ve heard it often enough. People are astonished we can do it, but we’re astonished Dipankar can’t. Or only once a month or so, when he has his poetic periods…
Rhyming, rhyming so precisely –
Couplets, they are coming nicely,’
gurgled Kakoli, who churned them out with such appalling frequency that they were now called Kakoli-couplets, though Amit had started the trend.
By now most of the motor traffic had come to a halt. A few rickshaws were still moving, the rickshaw-wallahs waist-deep in the flood, their passengers, laden with packages, surveying the watery brown world around them with a kind of alarmed satisfaction.
In due course the water subsided. The driver looked at the engine, examined the ignition wire, which was moist, and wiped it with a piece of cloth. The car still wouldn’t start. Then he looked at the carburettor, fiddled a bit here and there, and murmured the names of his favourite goddesses in correct firing sequence. The car began to move.
By the time they got back to Sunny Park it was dark.
‘You have taken your own sweet time,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra sharply to Lata. She glared at Amit.
Amit and Lata were both surprised by the hostility of their reception.
‘Even Meenakshi has returned before you,’ continued Mrs Rupa Mehra. She looked at Amit, and thought: Poet, wastrel! He has never earned an honest rupee in his life. I will not have all my grandchildren speaking Bengali! Suddenly she remembered that the last time Amit had dropped Lata home, she had had flowers in her hair.