The Stone of Miss Evans | Rohit Chakraborty

Sun

They came in all the colours of the world: white, black, brown, yellow, he counted them off. There were the orthodox. There were the in-betweeners. Then, there were the khichuri kind; what a marvel they were: the plate of an enthusiast at a buffet. A glorious selection of ?yers and landers swirled like cigarette smoke in Terminal Four of Heathrow. Gargantuan men with ?axen hair spoke familiar gibberish into their phones. Gliding ladies pushed trollies brimming with bags and children. Pre-

Raphaelite babies trod in bomber jackets and frocks with a con?dence that would dissipate in the company of fellow pubescents in about a decade. At the centre of this whirlpool, an adult and a grown-up stood fast. Mr. Gogoi, the Deuta, bless his ?ve-?ve self, craned his neck to discern his name spelled out in alphabets which took him quite long to string into a meaningful sound: he was not born into the language. Nineteen year old Moina, his son, gaped at the crowd with the hunger of an aspiring bibliophile reading spines at a bookshop. He was taller than his father by two inches and unmindful of their luggage he had been assigned to heed.

The button on the right cuff of Moina’s chequered Oxford shirt was missing: he had bitten it off nervously when the aeroplane slanted “athwart the sun”. Moina had not repeated that phrase since he had learned it in school almost a decade ago. He was not sure what “athwart” had meant either. He had merely joined the other students in chanting Walter de la Mare for the teacher thought it was the only way her pupils would be able to commit the lines to memory. But it was one of the poems he had no trouble reciting verbatim (yes, the teacher insisted that you perfect the list of punctuations as well; if there was a comma or a semi-colon, you had better utter

“comma” or “semi colon”, and it was always sem-eee, never sem-eye). Never had that phrase come so aggressively, like an inundation, than at that moment when the aero-plane slanted upwards, towards the cumulonimbus.

Deuta returned with the suited chauffeur, whose collar was a dirty shade of mud. The Calcuttan Winter — London Summer breeze pierced Moina’s skin as they were escorted out and led into the taxi. Deuta climbed with the wariness of a novice at the haunted house in an amusement park.

‘Are we going to Finsbury Park?’

Moina felt a sharp pain when Deuta nudged him in the ribs to answer the chauffeur. ‘Yes, we’ll be staying at the Pembury for a week.’

They had never travelled beyond Calcutta where they had moved when Moina was a smidgen of a young man. Mrs Gogoi (née Hazarika), the Ma, bless her ?ve-two self, had developed an eating disorder while they lived in Kokrajhar which was three hours away from Bongaigaon where the doctor lived and practised. Their wise lodger who lived downstairs had suggested the metropolis. The Gogois left behind a thriving sweetshop to which everyone ?ocked. Ma was adored for the shingaras, chicken chops, and sweetmeats. Of course, this adoration puffed her up for she bit into her own crafts to ?nd out what it was that she was adored for. Was it that cauli?ower or the perfect cubes of potato? Was it the crispness of the shingara case? Was it the skin of the chops, charred to perfection? Was it the shreds of chicken that was never over or under? Or was it the generous dollop of curd cheese in her sweetmeats? One day she complained of a sting in her chest and panted while she was at it. Moina and Deuta hoisted her into the sleeper car of the train and they were on their way to remedy in the big city.

This was their ?rst holiday in ?ve years.

Terraced houses with lace curtains drawn, ill-kept front yards, shattered street lamps, and pavements, slightly worse for wear, swept past them like the images on a zoetrope. It was a sight not new for Moina who was afforded a similar spectre when he seated himself by the last window of the last bus leaving out of Salt Lake every day.

The metropolis had been a welcome change: there was the internet, there was the allure of adolescent beauty, and there was a history. There were neighbours who gave not a shit, unless, of course, you lived in the suburbs. There were hospitals that allayed fears and tears, unless of course, the doctor made a boo-boo. There were sweetshops, too, but none quite as superb as Ma’s for they were all glori?ed display cases for factories.

‘I did not come all the way here to live inside a wardrobe,’ Deuta’s exclamation confused the cleaning lady who walked by. To her it was unfamiliar gibberish. To

Moina it was a declaration made with a thick Assamese accent, complete with the roll of his “R”s and expletives invented in the land they had left behind.

As tiny as a kitchen, the humility of the room was off-putting. A queen bed had been pushed against the wall. There was a desk pushed to the adjacent wall and a chair placed at a careless angle. This desk came with a tray of dirty cups and saucers, an electric kettle that had had many affairs, and a box of Earl Grey tea bags. A ?oor-to-ceiling window was the only saving grace until Moina walked up to it, pulling his baggage with him, and failed at unfastening the window.

Their room was on the ground ?oor.

Warning.

For you safety

this window

is restricted

The rest of the afternoon was spent placing belligerent calls to the travel agent.

When all else had failed, Deuta slinked to lie beside Moina who held dearly to Miranda Hart’s memoir. He had in his hand a copy of Daruwalla’s Aquarian forecast which was ?ve years old.

‘What’re we going to do tomorrow?’ Deuta interjected after ten full minutes of silence that was ruptured occasionally by the rumble of the bed and the rattle of the large window pane when a bus drove past the inn.

‘Go down to the station, take a train down to Westminster, of course,’ said

Moina.

‘What’s in Westminster?’

‘That’s where all the kings and queens were coronated.’

‘What’s coronated? Is it some medical procedure?’

‘Coronation. Not circumcision, Deuta. When they place a heavy crown on your head and throw you to the love of the English populace and the scavenge of the pa-

parazzi, that’s coronation.’

‘Like a ?lm artist?’

‘Not quite. Helen Mirren doesn’t quite have permission to bestow actual knighthood.’

‘Who’s Helen Mirren?’

‘Not now.’

Arguments were once easily lost with Deuta. As he lay adjusting his rimless rectangles atop the bridge of his nose, Moina wondered if the tables were turning now. He wondered if he had been as dismissive of his curiosity as Deuta had been ten years ago when Moina had asked him what a condom was and why the actors in the adverts were always perspiring and short of breath. Were they af?icted with Ma’s disease? At ?fteen, a crowd had gathered in a circle in the little playground built at school for the primary students who studied at the Annexe. A pink rubber sat on the grass like a bearded woman at the circus. They had been expecting something of that sort on the last day before the holidays; someone always did something to defy the authorities.

The year before, ?reworks were smuggled in backpacks, stowed in the bathroom, and lit in the middle of the Seventh Period. The camera had captured the Year Ten students. Had they outdone themselves with the condom?

‘I have one more question. Just one more. Please.’

‘Go on.’

‘When you post a picture you have taken on your phone where does it go?’

‘It’s on the internet. It’s in the cloud.’

‘The cloud?’ he said pointing towards the ceiling. ‘Like where God is?’

‘Yes.’ Moina said to humour him.

‘What if it rains?’

Stone

Ma had a booming voice. Deuta was meek. Ma was the “hippopotamus auntie” to the evening toddlers. Deuta was the broomstick from Kokrajhar. Ma was the iron hand rusting before Moina’s eyes. Deuta was the trunk of the Nahor tree strengthening by the hour. Ma had been the executor when an examination at school went awry.

Now, Deuta held the wooden ruler which he ?icked in the air when incoherence, immobility, and a misbalance of the humours took over.

The selection before them was hardly appetising: stale bread with no toaster in sight, cold milk that you had to pump out of a metal contraption, corn ?akes that had wilted, and a selection of muf?ns. Butter and cheese came in impersonal cubes, squarish like the rooms of Pembury.

‘Do you have the camera?’ enquired Deuta as he shut the door.

‘I do.’

‘My phone is enough for me.’

‘Do you want me to apologise for asking for the camera?’

‘No, no, not at all. You misinterpret, baba. You take pictures on your camera.

I’ll take mine on my phone.’

At the station, the reins were handed to Moina for the second time when he was asked to inquire the details of the next train to Westminster. No sooner had Deuta declared his instruction than dread instantaneously inundated him. Through the glass façade that separated an overweight woman in a blue jacket with a mohawk and metal

pinned to almost every ori?ce in her face, he radiated fear at having to ask an acquitted murderess about how he could end up in that part of London were all the important British people were buried. She gave a gap-toothed smile. Moina may have even caught a ?ash of gold.

‘You see this deep blue line here, love.’ the Cockney was so thick, it was almost indiscernible, ‘take that. It’s called the Piccadilly service. It’ll take you straight to

Leicester Square. That’s where you’ll get your London Pass and stuff like that. Should

I say it again?’

Moina could only manage the nasal part of, “No”.

‘Alright, then. Go on now. Don’t get lost.’

They walked to the station, the woman of the house, swinging from the necks of the boys, huf?ng and puf?ng. Moina was as perplexed as that woman at the end of the street who peered out of the window when she heard the crackle of gravel in the dead of the night.

‘Where are we going?’ Moina has asked when a week before their late night escape, family had arrived to help packing. It was to be a meticulous affair: clothes would be catalogued and packed in trolley bags, duffels, and a tin trunk in which

Moina had found a rotten guava that Dida must have left behind before she passed.

Wardrobes, kitchen sets, and china were to be left behind. Only the essential: toiletries, decent wear, some rupee notes, and some photographs. He was caught unawares.

They sprung it on him. It was unfair. He had had no friends. But, he had come to love

the dust roads of the town, the little shop at the bend which was always out of stock, and the searing eyes of the Bodos who thought he was Bengali by the looks of him.

‘Where are we going?’ Deuta whispered in Assamese as they walked down the tunnel and hear the zoom of the trains.

‘Leicester Square.’

Deuta consulted his pocket map and when he located it, he tried to pronounce it.

‘Lie-chester?’

‘Lester.’

‘What’s the point of so many alphabets? Always complicating stuff, these boga

manuh. See, look at our alphabets. What you hear is what you’ll get.’

‘For the love of god, don’t refer to them as boga manuh.’

‘As if they understand the language.’

‘They understand your tone. What they hear is what they’ll get.’

Some did stop in their tracks as they clambered out of the earth, trying to discern which part of the world they came from. The Bodos had done that in Kokrajhar, stopping in the bazaar to stand ever so closely to Deuta and ascertain that Calcuttan or Dhaka accent in his Assamese. The roll of their “R”s had, of course, saved them from subjugation.

Once they had obtained their London Pass, among other paraphernalia, they set out towards Trafalgar Square in search for Westminster Abbey. Moina was stopped before Nelson’s Column that shot into the clear white hot sky.

‘Baba, picture please. One.’

‘No,’ Moina fussed.

‘Please.’

‘No,’ he set to walk off in another direction.

‘Fine. Then what’s the point? I’m going back to the hotel.’

‘No, wait. Here.’

He put his hands behind him.

‘Like a military man?’

‘That’s how I like to stand. Just take it.’

They passed block after block of the same grey monument, the same high tower, the same veneered man sitting on a chair or pointing at the heavens. Deuta lagged. He complained of a sting in his feet and panted while he was at it. Truth be told, he had taken to a cocktail of tablets that controlled his high blood pressure and cheap vodka every night. He had never known his father to be a drinker. It was only after Ma had her ?rst stroke that he saw them in the dead of the night, sitting in the balcony, sobbing at each other, Ma ?nishing it off with a paan stuffed with a ?stful of

Baba chewing tobacco and Deuta with a swig of Magic Moments. Truth be told, he had stopped at several places, to take pictures on his phone.

How gloriously they entered the Abbey, jumping the long queue with their Pass.

Where’s the Boga Manuh superiority now, eh? Deuta must have had a strong urge to scream out at the people.

‘Sir, please put your phone away. Photography is prohibited here.’

It was all the same. Tombs as large as their four posters in Kokrajhar that Moina always had trouble climbing up as a child. On them, stony, robed ?gures lay on their backs, their hands joined in prayer, looking at the ceiling. Jeremy Irons guided them through the Abbey by means of that curious remote control-like contraption. Alas,

Deuta understood not a word. It was too rapid, too stylised. So he swung this box from his wrist with its strap.

‘There you are.’ Deuta joined Moina, who sat at a stone bench in the Poets’

Corner, trying to catch a breath away from his father.

‘Dickens, Carroll…Elliot.’

Deuta’s feet lingered over George Elliot’s tile:

The ?rst condition of human goodness is something to love: the second something to reverence.

‘Where do we go tomorrow? Oh, do we go to the Albert Hall?’ he said.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Ma always wanted to see that, didn’t she? Ever since she saw a picture of Lata

Mangeshkar performing there. Let’s go there tomorrow. It’s included in the Pass.

Didn’t she perform it with an orchestra? Named for a bird?

‘Yes, the Wren Orchestra.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘The Wren and the Nightingale. Ah.’

 

Horizon

‘He’s a Bangladeshi. We must have their biryani for dinner tonight.’

‘I’m too tired. You go.’

Deuta had stumbled drunk into the bedroom. He had woken up Moina. But, he played asleep. He spoke gibberish for a few good minutes in the dark before collaps-

ing to the bed with his loafers on.

‘Bangal…speaks Bangal…misses home…where are you? Sent it to the cloud—to you—rice. They don’t eat rice here. I had rice with the Bangladeshi. Spoke Bangal with him. So happy to see another brown face. Free of charge. Hah…at home—Bodo would have killed me—would have killed him—Bangal. Can’t stand Bangals, those

Bodos. You’d have liked him. You like London? Is another world, no?’

Moina was not sure if those words were meant for him. He had turned down

Deuta’s offer earlier in the evening to dine with the biryani-wallah. So, dejected, Deuta

brought the biryani, arranged neatly in an oblong tin-foil box, assuring his son, that his new friend in this strange land had put in extra large bits of tandoori chicken among the rice grains , set it on the desk by the bed, and left to eat with the owner after hours.

They must have uncorked a bottle. Perhaps, several.

An object landed hard on Moina’s heart. It had slipped out of Deuta’s grasp as he lay at the edge of the small bed, still, unmoving. At that moment, he resembled

Ma’s massive frame on her ?nal night, as she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her

?ngers entwined, her hands on her heart as if she had passed in communion with the

Divine.

‘An Instagram account?’ Moina whispered to himself.

12

The username read nahorhazarika. He fetched his phone from the desk and typed in his mother’s name.

This Account is Private.

Letting go of his phone, Moina inspected his father’s. The tiles added over a period of several hours comprised Moina standing in his aztec print shirt and grey cardigan for the pictures Deuta had taken. Some were images of gated entrances to establishments. A few were of the façade of the Abbey. On their way back, they had stopped at the National Portrait Gallery. In the Romantic section, Deuta had taken a picture of Moina standing before a bust of Lord Byron. The caption read: Look Nahor.

Moina tells me he is a poet that likes to have the sex very much.

‘Wren and Nightingale?’ Moina found himself scof?ng at his father. ‘Wren and

Martin will suit him better tomorrow.’

As he scrolled down pictures of the city Ma had longed to visit in her lifetime, he found a picture of Deuta, puffy, clean-shaven, and unsmiling. Moina had insisted that the ?rst picture he takes on his new camera be of his father. Don’t worry, he had said. It’s just for testing. So don’t be ?attered.

Deuta must have liked it quite a lot for a lot of transfers had to be made to get the picture on to his phone.

Underneath this picture, comments were made. By the same individual, Moina suspected.

 

nahorhazarika          You don’t drink, do you?             4d

nabingogoi                 I take a sip once sometimes.       4d

nahorhazarika           A sip? Don’t make me laugh.      3d

nabingogoi                It is not easy raising him.

                                  He’s doing that alone by himself.    1hr

Nahorhazarika       Then just stand and see him raise himself. Don’t quiver.

                                  Don’t stumble. Stand. And watch.  8m

 

‘Ei, Moina? What’s the meaning of quiver?’ Deuta had lifted his head from the newspaper the morning after he had thrashed Moina for switching the channel on the television. He was under in?uence, obviously.

‘To shake. To quake.’

‘Like an earthquake?’

‘Yes, because the earth quakes. It quivers. It shakes.’

‘It says here in the headline. So I asked. I didn’t know what it meant.’

‘Yes, I gathered.’

Moina fell deep into slumber.

The morning after, as they waited under the asymmetric glass ceiling of King’s Cross for their Edinburgh bound train, Moina nervously checked the tickets, memorising the platform and seat numbers whilst Deuta sat on the heap of their luggage, humming a tune from his boyhood days.

Inside the train, Deuta sat by Moina and studied the window and the tabletop, the menu, and the couple snogging before them.

The waitress came pushing the trolley of sandwiches and salads, wine and dessert. Moina helped myself to a can of Coke and, unbeknownst to Deuta, a ham sandwich. Deuta had a tiny bowl of Caesar’s Salad. He pulled his phone out and snapped their meals and the conifers and the rolling grasslands outside, to send them to the goddess above, whom he loved dear still. Covertly, he took a picture of Moina taking a large bite of the ham sandwich.

‘What’s in it?’ he asked.

‘Chicken.’

‘Would you like dessert?’ the woman asked me.

‘Yes,’ Deuta said, ‘something with chocolate in it. Lots of it.’

‘And would you like something to drink, sir? We have wine and brandy.’

‘No, I’m alright.’

 

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Indian Literature Review | Short Stories from India | Author | Rohit Chakraborty is the author of  The Mug of  Melancholy, the ?rst in a series of  ?ve children’s novels, which was published by Tara Press in February 2015. His short story “Ella’s Song” was published in Kindle Magazine in its February 2016 issue. Two non-?ction pieces by Chakraborty: an interview with DrAnanda Lal of India’s Writers Workshop, and a report on EndPapers, an archival blog run by English Literature students at Jadavpur University, have appeared in Campus Diaries. In March 2016, he was selected one of the winners in Campus Diaries’ ‘25 Under 25’in the Writing category. Chakraborty is represented by the Red Ink Literary Agency. He lives in Calcutta with his family and reads English at Jadavpur University since 2014.

Indian Review & Literature | Read works of Rohit Chakraborty on Indian Review. The best Indian Literature Magazine with literature from around the world