Ronny Banerjee,” Boro Jethu repeated. He had come down the stoop to meet Ronny midway, and now, in the light of the hundred thousand winking ‘toony’ bulbs, Ronny could see how much he’d aged. The skin below his chin hung in loose folds, his eyebrows were white, and his eyes had become cloudy, grey.
Ronny’s legs were feeling wobbly. A skein of forgotten despair, mixed with the peculiar smell of Bagbazar evenings, had begun to course through his blood in the cab, even before he’d entered the gates of Ghosh Mansion. Nevertheless, he smiled bravely at Boro Jethu, patted his hands in what he hoped was a grown-up, I-did-not-think-we-would-meet-again-but-I-hold-nothing-against-you way, and followed Lata inside. After the dazzling display of lights outside, though, he stumbled in the dark corridor, stubbing his toe in the process. “The bulb is fused, I think,” Ronny heard Lata in the distance, “Wait there.”
Ronny paused in the gloom of the hallway, with Lata’s ancestors glaring at him from the walls on either side. He closed his eyes. The layout of the entire ground floor flashed in his brain as though it were only yesterday that he had obsessed about the old house and its architecture, photographed its denizens in the pristine morning light of autumn, smoked up in the warren of inter-connected terraces upstairs as evening fell swiftly in winter, and discovered nooks and crannies that not even Lata — who had spent her whole life there — had known. The library, though, a few feet down the corridor, was his favourite place, all cool marble and dusty bookshelves.
Once upon a time, the Ghoshes, who had acquired their immense wealth through a legal talent, chiefly representing Bengal’s landed aristocracy whose favourite pastime was fighting cases against their own brothers and cousins and uncles and granduncles (on fewer, but by no means rare, instances, with their fathers and sons) had used the library to meet posh clients. A large wooden screen had been acquired from Kashmir to provide a sense of zenana-like privacy for the occasional lady client. By Lata’s time, though, the men, none of whom had completed law degrees, had been reduced to being on the other side of the karmic fence — and were fighting various cases with each other — and the library was a mere shadow of its former self.
The original fabric on the chairs and the chaises had frayed to the point of falling apart and nobody had dusted the bookshelves since the night of India’s Independence. However, the large mahogany tables were still in great demand. An uncle played bridge with his set, a grandaunt taught needlework to neighbourhood girls once a week. The various school-going children of the family were allotted slots for their myriad tuitions. For example, Molly did Sanskrit with Pandit Trivedi between 4.30pm and 5.30pm, while Goopy’s guitar guru came past 9.30 at night. Kakimoni maintained the roster. And through her good offices, Lata knew when the library was available.
On the afternoons that Ronny and Lata studied there for the Part II exams, the light would flute in through the skylights — the windows were mostly shuttered on the ground floor — and fall on Lata’s hair. The familiar sounds of the household would come to a pause during a small window between 3.30 and 4.15 in the afternoon, between the last child’s return from school and Pandit Trivedi’s appearance a quarter of an hour before time. It was what they called the magic hour. In fact, the sounds of the entire para, the whole city, the cosmos for crying out loud, would fall away from the library during magic hour and a perfect spring descend in that corner of the universe.
Afterwards, Ronny and Lata would kick off their slippers and sit on the verandah, dangling their legs into the courtyard, laughing to their endless supply of private jokes, as Molly dolefully parroted “nara, narau, narah” in the background.
“You are a filmmaker now,” Boro Jethu announced from behind. Ronny started.
“I still hesitate before calling myself a filmmaker,” Ronny replied, turning half-way to face him, “Sounds too grown-up.”
“Hmm,” said Boro Jethu, “Modest. So, tell me young Bengali gem, have you seen La Regle du Jeu?”
“I have,” Ronny replied with a straight face. “Though a long time ago.”
“And Throne of Blood?”
“Ah, Boro Jethu, of course. How could I not have seen Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth?”
“Is the fuse out?” Lata’s voice, dulcet to the accompanying bass of her heels clip-clopping on the marble, preceded her. She passed them by, looking annoyed. “Barunda? Tulsi?” Lata called, stepping out again.
“What about La Jetee?” There was a hint of desperation to Boro Jethu’s voice.
“No,” replied Ronny, though he had, in fact, seen the movie several times over the last two decades, loved it, hated it, then loved it again, and he’d even written a long, impassioned post on an online French cinema forum, defending its aesthetics.
“No?” Boro Jethu’s cloudy eyes lit up in joy. “Sheki?”
Suppressing his smile, Ronny replied, “I am afraid not. Let me note down the name.”
“L-A J-E-T-É-E...”
As Boro Jethu came closer and peered suspiciously at his phone, Ronny got that familiar old-people scent — the semi-sweet smell of decay, as though somewhere deep inside his body, something had gone off — curl up inside his nostrils, and without meaning to, he felt he wasn’t able to breathe.
“Okay, so I have sent Barun to fetch the electrician,” Lata reappeared. “I think we’d better go up and meet Ma. Jethu, given how dark it is, maybe you should go back too? Let’s walk you up.”
“Absolutely no need,” Jethu puffed out his chest. “I know every inch of this house, Charulata Ghosh, and I have been sleepwalking for decades. Did I ever stumble anywhere?”
He marched ahead and climbed down into the courtyard. That was the shortcut to his part of the house. Lata and Ronny and the light on their phones followed in his wake.
“Where did you see La Jetee?” Ronny asked.
“When I was visiting my son in USA, there was a film appreciation week on campus. Jethi and I had nothing to do, nothing at all, so we attended every screening. Very educative. You know Goopy?”
“Yes, yes,” Ronny murmured.
“He came nineteenth in Madhyamik,” Boro Jethu announced, panting. “Did you know that, Ronny?”
Lata rolled her eyes.
Upstairs, the wide verandah into which the various bedrooms and ante-rooms opened was dark too. Lata went ahead and flipped on a switch. A small pool of light now lit up a couple of armchairs. Boro Jethu collapsed into one.
“Come, sit, Young Gem,” Boro Jethu motioned.
Ronny and Lata exchanged a glance. “Don’t look at her, what does she know, come, come,” he said.
“Let me go check on Molly then,” Lata said, resigned, and Ronny surreptitiously looked at his phone.
***
“It’s a disaster, Didibhai,” Molly wailed when Lata walked into Kakimoni’s bedroom. Kakimoni was putting finishing touches on the tatto — beautiful trays that had been packed with Molly’s trousseau and gifts for AJ’s family. Lata spied the tiffin carriers, lined up by height and decorated with matching pink bows. Molly was sitting on the bed in a unicorn nightshirt.
“The lights outside are soooo tacky, AJ’s grandmother has been hospitalised, the Germans are fighting with each other and there is no electricity on the ground floor. This electrician I got from the app was useless.” Molly buried her head in Lata’s lap. “Also, the cleaning company I had hired online did not turn up even though I paid in advance. AJ’s mother is full OCD. If she sees how filthy the ground floor is...”
Lata patted Molly’s shoulders and said, “Now listen to me. I know you’ve organised the whole wedding online. But this is Calcutta. Some things have to be the done the old way. Barunda will get the local electrician. The one who has been getting shocks from the mess of wires for generations and is the brother of the decorator who did the lights outside. They are not tacky. The house looks lovely. It announces that “we are all celebrating this union of our Bengali girl with a not-Marwari-but-somesuch boy and we are chill”. Nimki didi will take charge of the cleaning. She can gather a crew in five seconds and I shall sponsor it. You can go to the beauty parlour tomorrow, as planned, ignore the Germans and silently pray the grandmother doesn’t pop off in the next two days. Even if she does, what are ventilators for? I can sponsor that too.”
Molly sat up and sighed. The role reversal, bringing them back to the original configuration, felt oddly satisfying to both.
“Now put on some clothes and come and say hi to Ronny.”
“Ronnyda’s here?”
Molly’s face lit up.
(To be continued)
Recap: Ronny and Lata catch up in the obscure, elliptical way of old friends and lovers. Ronny abandons work — sending an annoyed Bobby off on a vital meeting alone — and dinner plans with Pragya to tag along with Lata to Ghosh Mansion. Once there, however, he remembers his last visit — on the day before Lata married Aarjoe.
