Someone called! the note said. Just those two words and the exclamation mark. It was on the Cipla notepad in the middle of the table. Anjan knew the handwriting; it was Sundar’s. He was into exclamation marks. He didn’t bother peeling the note off the pad to put it on Anjan’s side of the table—typical Sundar! But since they were the only ones who shared the table, it couldn’t be for anyone else. The two other people that worked in the office were both part-timers. Ranja and Sudip—they sat at the table close to the door and were never there at the same time. And neither came in before noon.
Who could it be? Not too many people had his work number. And Sundar knew most of them. His mother was the one who called most frequently, but never this early. Besides, they were together until he left home for work a bit over an hour ago. Enough! he thought. He wouldn’t spend a minute more worrying about it. Whoever called would call back if it was urgent. Besides, Sundar would be back from the tea stall any minute now. He always arrived earlier than Anjan and went out for tea at this makeshift place about two hundred meters from the office. A ritual necessary for a good day at work, he insisted.
Maybe it was really time to invest in a mobile phone. His friend Bhaskar, who worked for The Statesman, had one and had been urging him to get one too. I’m not as mobile as you, Anjan would tell him. We’re more than half a decade into the new millennium, Bhaskar would say. You cannot not have a mobile phone, whether you’re mobile yourself or not. It’ll define how you live your life going forward. Having it or not will make all the difference. Anjan wasn’t convinced, and he couldn’t afford it either. The senior artist’s salary in the design department of this export house was barely enough to pay the bills. Without his mother’s pension, they’d be hand-to-mouth.
It was 9:46. Sundar wasn’t back yet. Which was unusual. If he had to go somewhere else, he would’ve left a message saying so. The sheep-leather swatches they’d worked on two days ago had to be sorted by size and design before Anjan could start putting the finishing touches. Sundar had told him he was going to do it before leaving work yesterday. It was his job as a junior artist. He did all the prep work, and did it fairly well for the most part. I’m staying a bit longer today, he’d told Anjan as he was getting ready to leave. I’ll do the sorting last. Which, clearly, he hadn’t. He hadn’t tidied up his side of the table either, which was also unusual given how fussy he was about how things should be on the table. So his side of the table was always spick and span, but not today. As for Anjan’s side, it was the usual chaos of magazines, pencils, pens, brushes, paint bottles, ink pots, erasures, design reference books, old letters, bills, notepads, and who knew what else.
He felt hot, the back of his shirt still soaked with sweat. He got up from his chair to go and crank up the fan’s speed. Several pieces of paper flew away from the table as soon as he did that. He went around the room to collect them—a voucher, three order slips, a tracing sheet, an A4 with scribbles and doodles, and a few scraps of useless paper, one of which was an old counterpart of a New Empire Cinema ticket. The floor hadn’t been swept in days thanks to the absence of Gambhir, the janitor. He wasn’t much help when he was around either. Would it make sense to walk to the tea stall to check if Sundar was there? Now that it was more than an hour past the time of his expected return? A mobile phone would’ve been useful now. If both of them had one, of course.
Anjan realized he hadn’t yet managed to get any work done. The pile of swatches lay exactly where and how he’d found it. He’d picked up a piece with the floral motif—three roses with stems and leaves, several blades of grass and a butterfly—but couldn’t focus on it. The thought of the phone call kept getting in the way. And Sundar’s unexpected absence. He glanced at the note every few minutes, as if reading those two words over and over would reveal more than they already had. He stared at the blankness around the writing—the way it wrapped itself around the two words and the exclamation mark—as he would at a painting’s negative space. He felt drawn toward blank spaces, and liked using them in his own work—not what he did here, for the export house, but in his paintings and drawings, whatever they were worth (which, he knew in his heart of hearts, was nothing). But he liked leaving a lot of space around the areas of interest. Why do you keep doing that? Bhaskar would ask. Anjan never had a good answer. He just couldn’t help painting that way. That was all. Bhaskar reviewed art exhibitions; he knew far more about art, and pretty much everything else, than Anjan did. There was no way he could defend his paintings against Bhaskar’s criticisms. Besides, wasn’t defending one’s own art a bit like having to defend how one’s home looked? You arranged your possessions the way you liked. Put things in places where you wanted them put. What was the point of justifying the placement of your chair, table, bookshelf, bed? The pictures that hung on your walls—if they did—and how they did. You put them where you put them based on your taste—your own sense of balance and harmony—to make you feel at home. If it was someone else’s home, they’d do it differently. They’d have a different arrangement of things, which themselves might look different—different shapes, sizes, colors, and so on. Painting, for Anjan, was like that. Each piece was an effort to quench the thirst of his eyes. His own eyes—he painted for himself, not for anyone else. The lines, the shapes, the layers of color, the light and shadow, and the empty spaces between and around the painted areas—they all strove to create something on the paper (it was mostly paper; he couldn’t afford canvas) for something in him to say, Yes, that’s how I like it! Simple thing—it didn’t need any clever arguments. I love blank spaces! That’s why I keep doing that. Do I ask you why your desk is so close to your bed? Why your bookshelf is where it is? Your choice, right? Same here. My art is my home, whether you like it or not. Of course, he couldn’t say any of this to Bhaskar. He was terrified of clever arguments.
He glanced at the note once again. Someone called! The swatch was still in his hand. He laid it flat on the table and ran his right palm across it, from right to left and back. He did it several times, feeling the grain of the leather. There were footsteps outside the door. At last, he thought, turning to look. Ranja walked in. It was 9 minutes to 12. Unlike the other two, she was always on time. Ranja! The fan pulled some of the hot, humid air from outside and swirled it around the room along with her perfume. Hi, she said, hanging her purse from the back of her chair. You’re alone today? He’d spent the last two hours waiting for Sundar but was glad it was Ranja instead of him. She had on an off-white cotton sari—she hardly wore anything other than saris, and they were always cotton. Yes, he said. She turned to look at something on the table. The buttoned back of her blouse was soaked with sweat. Its shallow drop of buttons and the narrow back strap of her bra standing out like a plus sign. A bit of her bobbed hair stuck to the damp nape of her neck. Sundar’s note says I need to do the small swatches? She turned around. But they’re not sorted, he said. No problem, she said, walking over to Anjan’s table. Her nearness paralyzed him. As she collected the smaller swatches, carefully separating them from the bigger ones—the fluid, graceful movement of her hands, her body bending ever closer—he sank into her scent like a pebble dropped in a pond.
Anjan poured himself another glass of water. One of the people that had his number, whom Sundar didn’t know, was Bankim Manna. Renuka’s husband. He’d called only once and Anjan had picked up the phone himself. He’d asked the two of them not to call unless it was absolutely necessary. As it had been that one time when Manna-da had called. (He called him Manna-da because Pijush, his friend who’d introduced him to the man—they were colleagues—called him that. Besides, he was at least ten years older.) Could he be the “someone” of the note? And what if he was? What could have made him call this time? Was it yesterday? After he left work? Sundar had said he’d stay a bit longer. Or was it earlier today? There was no way to tell. That one time when he’d called, Anjan was alone in the office. Sudip had just stepped out. It was a Tuesday. Sundar was on leave that week. The final monthly consignment had been dispatched the week before, so there was hardly any work at all. Anjan had planned to visit Renuka at the hospital. She’d been in labor for several hours. Manna-da had called to ask if he could get there as soon as possible.
The baby was already there by the time Anjan had made it to the hospital. It was a girl. They’d put her in the ICU because of some complications. It had been a difficult pregnancy; Renuka had all kinds of problems. The two of them had to stay in the hospital for almost two weeks. Manna-da never called after that, even though Renuka and her daughter (they named her Bidisha—he liked the name) had been unwell several times. In the first four or five months, he’d gone to their house a few times—maybe three times, if he remembered correctly. He visited them again when Bidisha turned one. After that, he never went to their house. And the last time he’d seen the man was months ago, shortly before his abrupt resignation. He’d gone to his office to return a book he’d lent to Anjan.
The Ascetic of Desire. Not a book he’d ever pick up on his own. Books didn’t interest him unless they were about art and had lots of images—pictures of paintings and drawings—like the fat coffee table books he always looked at but couldn’t afford to buy. Have you read this one? Manna-da pushed it toward him across the table. This was only their seventh or eighth meeting. He’d come to Pijush’s office at the State Central Library in Ultadanga, which wasn’t far from his own office. They had plans of going somewhere for an after-work drink. They’d been doing this a couple of times a month since Pijush moved back to Calcutta two years ago. Anjan would come to SCL and then they’d take a bus to Dharmatala and get into one of their three favorite joints—Duke, Saqi, and Chhota Bristol. Not the nicest of places but they were cheap, especially Chhota Bristol. Once in a while, if they had a bit of extra cash and wanted to have a bite, they went to Chung Wah. Pijush had gone upstairs to see someone and had asked Manna-da to keep Anjan company. He and Pijush had known each other since high school. In many ways, he felt closer to him than to Bhaskar, who was all about books and ideas, which intimidated him. Pijush, on the other hand, didn’t care about books even though he worked in a library. He handled them the way a cashier handled cash—just keeping track of things as they entered the library (the cash drawer for the cashier) and left it; each item as valuable as the next. And he didn’t have a mobile phone either. It’s a novel about Vatsayana, Manna-da said. You know who Vatsayana was, right? Of course! Who didn’t? It’s my personal copy—you can have it. Manna-da smiled with a slight nod. A novel! Anjan wouldn’t have minded looking at a copy of Kama Sutra, but who cared about a novel about its author? Read it and let me know what you think. No one had ever asked Anjan to do such a thing. Not even Bhaskar.
Ranja had arrived less than an hour ago and had already completed more than a dozen pieces. He could see the bunch of finished swatches getting bigger on the right side of her table. As for him, he’d finished only one drawing—nothing having to do with office work, but a back portrait of her. He did it whenever he was alone in the office while she worked, sitting the way she was sitting now. The head tilted left, the slender neck, the left shoulder a bit higher than the right, the long arms, one elbow planted on the table, the other moving. And the heart-stopping plunge of her back into her heart-stopping waist. He loved the way the tip of his HB felt against the paper’s tooth, the sweet swish it made as it created a version of her on the paper. Every time he had a chance he’d take out his sketchbook from the locked drawer and capture these details as faithfully as he could. And as quickly as he could. The sneakiness made him feel like he was a street photographer stealing candid shots of unsuspecting subjects. Bhaskar hated street photographers; he called them voyeurs. If he saw Anjan now, who knew what he’d say. He was in the middle of his second sketch when the phone rang, startling him. He closed the sketchbook hastily and picked it up. It was his mother. Have you eaten? The same question, every day! Not yet. Busy right now!
They’d gone to Duke that day. Anjan showed the book to Pijush. Manna-da gave it to me when I was waiting for you, he said. Pijush glanced at the cover as he poured beer into his glass. He wiped his fingers on his pants and picked it up. He turned the front cover, then the back. Hm, he said, it’s not ours. No, Anjan said, he said it’s his personal copy. Pijush handed it back to Anjan and picked up his beer. Cheers, he said. Cheers, Anjan said, putting the book away. After years in the North Bengal State Library in Cooch Behar, Pijush was happy he’d got that job in Calcutta. He was happy to be back. There was no place he liked more than this city. And few things more than spending time with his old classmate. They’d gone to different colleges—Anjan to the Indian Art College and he to Scottish Church. Then he went to Durgapur for three years before moving to Cooch Behar. Anjan hadn’t gone anywhere, moving hopelessly from one low-paying ad-agency job in the city to another while trying his luck with various art galleries. We have to make up for lost time, Pijush said. Anjan couldn’t agree more.
A month or so later, on a Saturday, he went to Pijush’s office to find that he’d just left for home. His father is unwell, Manna-da said. Nothing serious, but his mother wanted him to go home. He called your office to let you know but no one answered. Maybe you were already on the way. He said he’d call you on Monday. As Anjan was about to leave, the man said, I can be his proxy, though, if you don’t mind. Unless you have other plans, of course. I do drink a beer now and then. Fine, but please no discussion about Vatsayana, Anjan wanted to tell him. He hadn’t read the book and didn’t want Manna-da to bring it up. Which, thankfully, he didn’t. He talked about a woman instead, whom he wanted Anjan to meet. His own wife, as it turned out. Renuka.
Long story short—Manna-da didn’t have a brother and was desperate to have a son of his own. He didn’t want to be the last branch of his family tree. Who would conduct his last rites, right? That they couldn’t have a child was, of course, his wife’s fault. Until medical exams proved that there was nothing wrong with her. His low sperm count was the culprit. He was devastated, and so close to going completely bonkers that he had to go to a counselor. Finally, after nine years of marriage, countless trips to gynecologists, ayurvedic and Tibetan doctors, sadhus, pirs and palmists, and wearing fistfuls of gems and talismans wherever on the body one could wear them, they decided to look for a different kind of help. There’s nothing wrong with it, he’d told his wife, who didn’t like the idea of having someone else’s child. It was too extreme a measure, which she thought was unnecessary and morally degrading. What about artificial insemination? Manna-da had argued. Isn’t it the same thing? It’s another man’s seed, right? Women abroad do it all the time. When Renuka suggested they adopt a boy instead, he said at least one of them should be the child’s biological parent. Then she gave in. And agreed to see “this nice, young artist.” No need to tell Pijush any of this, by the way, Manna-da said.
The phone rang, startling him once again. It was his boss this time. Barun Deb, the owner of Deb Exports. He said Sundar couldn’t come because of some family problem. Someone is sick. He’d told me last night, he said, sorry I forgot to let you know earlier. But Ranja is there, isn’t she? If the swatches are ready you can send them to the fabricators. They’re not, Anjan said. No problem, we have time, the man said before hanging up.
They are ready! Ranja smiled, walking to his table with the bunch of finished swatches. He glanced at his sketchpad to make sure it wasn’t open. At least the smaller ones, she said, setting the bunch gently down on his table. Anjan could hear his heart pounding inside his chest. Could he ever get any closer to her? Could anyone help in any way? Ranja lingered there for a moment or two, as did the smile on her face. As if she knew what was going on. But of course she didn’t—there was no way she could! He looked at her work—the top piece of the bunch that she’d just put on the table. How good she was at what she did. How clean and well-defined her lines were, how precise the application of color. She had a BFA from Rabindra Bharati, and it showed. And her real work, her paintings—he’d been to two of her shows—were on an entirely different level. Unlike him, she painted large canvases, which filled the gallery walls. Which the gallery owners liked. He did too. Scale matters, she was in the habit of saying. And Anjan agreed. She was younger, but way ahead of him as an artist. She’d had several solo shows in the best galleries in town. And his only solo was at the Academy of Fine Arts, where anyone could have an exhibition.
Anjan’s thoughts went back to the phone call. Whoever it was, they’d called yesterday after he’d left. And if by any chance it was Manna-da, why didn’t he try calling today? Whatever the reason behind his attempt to reach him, it had to be an urgent one. What could it be, though? He hadn’t seen him since returning the book. And he hadn’t been to his house in a long time. Who knew how the family was doing. He never found out why the man had resigned even though he was going to retire in just three years. Pijush didn’t have a clue either. How little he knew about the man! And he didn’t know his wife any better. In fact, he knew her even less—their interaction restricted by his role. Which, come to think of it, was of a sperm donor, wasn’t it? That was who he was to them. A seedpod! And who wanted to reveal their true selves to a fucking seedpod?
A fucking seedpod! Anjan cringed at the thought, the images it led to. He remembered how matter-of-fact, almost businesslike, Renuka’s behavior had been when they’d got to it. Once the set-up was in place and all the lead-in small talk over beer (with him) and cups of tea (with her) was out of the way, it was a quick transaction of pleasure with a definite goal. And it happened twice, a day apart. And she was in charge, both unhesitant and detached at the same time. Anjan had been the coy one, at least on the first day, unused as he was to being intimate to someone he wasn’t close to. The last time he’d undressed in front of a woman was years ago. And he’d done it in front of Brinda, his only girlfriend ever. And it wasn’t undressing—it was ripping clothes off each other’s bodies before having the most amazing sex at least he had ever had. In all these years he never understood how they—she—could’ve broken up almost immediately after that day.
Your art looks like the work of someone who’s sex-starved, Bhaskar told him once. He used a word Anjan had never heard before—“sublimation”—and he’d written it down somewhere. Get married or get a girlfriend, and your paintings will change, his wise friend had said. Anjan didn’t know about that one, although he didn’t argue, but he understood sex-starved. He was sex-starved! Why would he let himself be used by Manna-da and his wife if he wasn’t? The book, and the whole story about this nice woman I’d like you to meet some day—he wasn’t a fool! He was just…anyway. If Ranja had come into the picture a little earlier, he wouldn’t have fallen into that rabbit hole. Just her presence in his work life, the way it was now, would’ve prevented that. Pijush thought as much. He of course knew the whole story—Anjan had told him everything; there was no way he would’ve kept it from Pijush of all people. You don’t have to keep visiting them, he’d told Anjan when Bidisha was just two months old. You don’t have any obligation—you’re not a member of the family! Anjan had no illusions about that either. It was a strange sense of—what was it? decorum?—that had made him stay in touch with the couple and even visit them once when Renuka was pregnant. And of course he’d gone to the hospital the day Bidisha was born. Your job’s done as far as they’re concerned, Pijush would say to him without hiding his irritation. Do you want Bidisha to grow up knowing you as some kind of an uncle hanging off the edge of the family? A hard to explain appendage? Get out of their life and start your own! Talk to Ranja.
She’d left. Which was quite a bit earlier than usual, but she’d finished all her tasks. And it wouldn’t have been fair to let her either sit around in this stuffy place (although he would’ve loved it if she had) or do more than her share of the work. Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do? she’d asked. Yes, thank you, he’d said. Could she leave in that case? Of course! Anjan put the sketchbook back in the drawer, checking it twice to make sure he’d locked it properly. He had this checking habit he tried to stop but couldn’t. He started thinking about the place where the Mannas lived. The one-bedroom unit and its dimly-lit living room with three wicker chairs, a glass-top table, a divan, a plywood cabinet, and an old fridge. A calendar, framed pictures of Lenin and Subhas Bose, and one of a dead family member, hung on the light-green walls, across which house geckos chased one another endlessly. As for the bedroom, which he’d seen twice, the only thing he remembered was how high the bed was.
It was Bidisha he was worried about. Never mind that she’d never know who he was. He’d made up his mind to do as Pijush said—he’d get out of their life. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He’d held her in his arms just once. She was about five months old then—really small and almost feather-light. He imagined her to be slightly bigger now, and hopefully heavier too. He wished he’d gone to their house at least once since Manna-da left SCL. He wanted to see her once again. It was almost 4 by his watch. He knew that Pijush was at work, and so he dialed his number.
“Hi, it’s me,” he said as soon as Pijush picked up the phone. “Manna-da might have tried to reach me yesterday. And I’m thinking…what if it had something to do with Bidisha?”
“What makes you think so?” Pijush said.
“I don’t know. I’m worried.”
“Then go take a look.”
“Go to their house?”
“Where else?”
“Okay!”
That was what Anjan had wanted to do as well. Pijush’s words just gave him the courage he’d been lacking.
Within minutes, he was out of his office. The tightness in his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten lunch—the potato curry and rice that his mother had packed for him. He’d taken the tiffin box out of his bag and put it on the sideboard and then forgotten about it. The afternoon sun was unforgiving. The heat was going to spoil the food in no time. Anjan imagined the revolting smell it was going to give off when he’d open the box tomorrow. He held his bag in front of his eyes to shade them from the glare of the sun as he walked to the bus stop. The tar on the road had melted unevenly. He felt his shoes sinking into it in some places. Sweat dribbled past his eyes, nose and mouth like rainwater, the shirt sticking to his body. He spotted a taxi near the bus stop and quickened his pace, but it was gone before he could get to it. A bus arrived a few minutes later. Not wanting to waste any more time waiting for a taxi, he got on board.
For the next forty minutes or so, his mind was like a matchstick caught in a torrent of floodwater—random, unrelated thoughts swirling in his head. Bidisha’s face, the unfinished swatches, Manna-da’s voice (Have you read this book? I’d like you to meet her!), the buttons on Ranja’s blouse, his drawings, Sundar’s note, Renuka saying He wanted a boy (she’d said that when she was still in the hospital, and Manna-da wasn’t around), Have you had lunch yet? The potato curry spoiling in the tiffin box. He wanted a boy! Could he be harassing her because he hadn’t got a son? Would he take proper care of Bidisha?
He got off the bus at the familiar stop, and within minutes reached the entrance to the old apartment building where the Mannas lived. The double-panel wooden door with its flaking green paint was ajar as usual. Anjan pushed it open and eased himself in to the cool, dark hallway, which led to the six flights of stairs he had to climb. Narrowing his eyes for a better view, he groped his way to the bottom of the stairwell, taking care not to step on the old dog that slept there. The stairs were lit by daylight sifting through the grimy windowpanes on each landing. Anjan hoisted himself up the stairs as quickly as he could. At the foot of the last flight, he thought he caught a whiff of familiar smells—like those of the hair oil and talcum powder Renuka used. The smells thickened as he reached the top of the stairs, but they weren’t quite as distinct anymore, mingling here with other, more pungent odors—flowers, incense sticks—like in a temple. The flat in which the Mannas lived was the last one on the left. He walked toward its door at a slower pace, panting. A lock hanging from the hasp shone in the light that came in through the open window at the far end of the corridor.
Anjan stood in front of the door, his mind blank for a moment or two. He took the lock in his hand and pulled at it. A moment later, he pulled at it again. Harder this time. He had no idea what to make of it. Had they left this place for good? There was no way he could find out. There was no way he could find out if Manna-da had been the caller. And if it was him, why had he tried to reach him? Was everything okay with them? Was everything okay with Bidisha? Would he ever see her again?
He walked over to the window. A startled pigeon flew out of the cornice as he leaned over the ledge. Below, the traffic of trams, buses, taxis, autorickshaws, motorbikes and pedestrians moved like debris in a half-clogged gutter, the noise billowing like dirty foam. Looking up, Anjan found the pigeon flying in nervous circles, its wings bright against the clear, blue sky.
He stood still, as if waiting for it to come back down.