Cobalt Blue (15 page)

Tanay came down the stairs and entered the house. I thought he had forgotten something upstairs but he had nothing in his hands. His face was, as usual, blank but, now that I was looking at him, I could see dark rings under his eyes. I hadn't looked at him for so long, hadn't really looked. I felt bad about it. I tried to reach out, put my hand on his shoulder: ‘You have the address, no? As soon as you've reached, call.'

He nodded.

‘When will you be back?'

He said nothing.

Aai gave him a bottle of water. His haversack over his shoulder, another bag in his hands, he went to the door.

‘I'll wait for your call,' Aai said, not moving.

Baba took the bag from him and went with him to the rickshaw. I watched them as they walked away: Baba moving slowly; Tanay clipping along, his head cocked. Then they turned a corner and vanished from my sight.

‘At least he could have waited for the engagement to get over,' Aai said through sobs. ‘Where will he stay? What kind of plays will he do?' I went and looked at the notepad that was kept by the phone. On it, there was an address: Amrish Dubash, 5, Summer Queen, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba. Aai read it over my shoulder.

‘Dubash?' she asked.

‘Parsi,' I said.

‘Now when did he start having Parsi friends? That's all you lot are good for: to dump some more tensions on my poor head.'

At seven that evening, Tanay called from Mumbai. I answered the phone. He had arrived safely. He was at the address he had scribbled on the notepad. He said, ‘Because it's you, I'm saying this. I won't be coming for any engagement shit. Rehearsals start tomorrow. And I have to find a job.'

As he was speaking, it seemed like he had received a jolt and he began to talk to someone in English. I told him about the interview at Green Earth. He wished me and hung up. As I was going into my room, Aseem said, ‘When Supriya and her folks are around, could you please wear salwar kameez? For my sake. Until the wedding is over.'

The engagement happened. I have no idea what happened exactly. Aai and Baba kept waiting for Tanay. The house was flooded with relatives. Everyone came up to me, to stroke my face solicitously, in the hope of extracting some juicy details. All of them approved of Supriya, except for Durga Aji. She said, ‘Whatever you say, Aseem is a little better than she is.' That night, Ram Kaka, Prakash Kaka, Baba, Supriya's father and her uncle sat down to a bottle of whisky. Supriya's uncle got drunk and began to act up. The girls from the Nadkarni Hostel came into the balcony to watch. He was brought into my room and put to sleep on my bed.

The day before the engagement, two workers were talking to Baba in the courtyard. All three went upstairs. Durga Aji had ordered the upstairs room cleared for the influx of guests. I watched from the window. ‘Don't stand there. Go somewhere else,' I ordered my feet but they remained stubbornly rooted to the spot.

Rolls of canvas, an easel, the two paintings on the wall, a tattered lampshade, a mat, a bucket, a bundle of clothes, a hotplate, a broken strainer, two glass plates, spoons . . . thick with dust, they were brought down by the workers. The glass jar broke on the way down; shards flew everywhere. Carrying an Irani restaurant-style chair, one of the workers came to the door. ‘This is in good shape. Do you want to keep it?' he asked. Before I could say anything, Aai said, ‘Throw it all in the rubbish. Burn the rest. I don't want even a thread from that room in my house.' And so they swept the room clean. Then they hosed it down, and a stream of blue water erupted from the door of the upstairs room and flowed down the stairs.

The day after the engagement, the phone rang. Sabina's voice came ringing down the line. I had got the job. I felt like I was floating. The other women were asleep in the room upstairs. I called to Sharayu Maushi. She came out with a cup of tea in her hand. I called her down and told her my news. She was delighted.

I got my appointment letter and sat the parents down. Baba said, ‘What about your MSc?' I replied, ‘Next year. This is work I like and I'm going to do it. And since we're sitting here and talking like this, I should tell you that I have decided to live apart. In Sharayu Maushi's flat. I think I'll feel better there. It's not that there's anything wrong with staying here, with you. But I think this is what I should do.' I knew what their arguments were going to be already so I tuned them out.

I haven't brought much stuff with me. My clothes, of course. My certificates, photographs, music. I left the bike behind. Since Aai was angry, I didn't think she'd help me. Sharayu Maushi brought in enough cooking vessels. She cleaned up the fridge and went to the supermarket. She helped a great deal. Anubhav worked for two days, cleaning up, giving the curtains for sewing, getting a plumber to repair two leaky taps, arranging the delivery of a cooking gas cylinder . . . that kind of thing.

The flat was too large for me to use so it was decided that two bedrooms would be locked up.

Sharayu Maushi stayed over for two days. She put the curds to set; then she explained the life cycle of milk to me: from milk to curds, from curds to buttermilk, from buttermilk to white butter or ghee. This was, I vaguely realized, a rite of passage. It was something Aai should have done for me. In front of the guests, Aai spoke her mind to me and to Sharayu Maushi. Aseem joined in with some shouting of his own. Baba even begged with folded hands. I could see that it wasn't about me; it was about how close the wedding was.

I haven't seen Tanay. Not when I left the house and not for the two months that I have been living here. Certain things have become clearer but there's only so far you can probe. I've had some trial runs at living alone, but this is real. I still feel the need to be called when I've woken up, still feel the need to ask someone to get me a cup of tea. There's no phone at home. That means I have to plan my trips to the grocer so that I make all my calls and buy whatever I need and then come back upstairs. I don't have my bike which means I can't just up and go wherever I want. I've had to learn the bus routes, study the timetables.

I have to heat the milk myself. And then, how long can you survive on Maggi noodles and eggs, even in various forms? Today, I cooked some potatoes. You get packets of rotis at the grocer. Sometimes I still feel, when I'm returning from the office in the evening, that there should be someone to open the door, to ask me whether I want a hot cuppa. Most other times, it's a blessing. I only sweep and swab on Sunday. Otherwise, I just throw mats about. You know, it's true: vegetables are expensive. But a large cabbage can last me for three days. The fridge is old; after every two days, it has to be allowed to take a breather. I turn it off and then empty the tray which has filled up with water. Yesterday, two cleaning women turned up to inquire if I needed any help. I can't take any more people than is strictly necessary so I turned them away. Anyway, I don't generate enough work to keep a servant occupied. I've told the paper boy to bring me the newspaper. He's in the fifth or sixth standard and quite bright. I'm going to buy him some storybooks to read. I have also discovered that washing a vessel in which milk has been heated is the most trying job in the world. When I bring the trash to the door, the woman who comes to clear it tries to peek past me into the house. I have no idea what she wants. ‘Twenty-four hours is not enough time,' my mother would often say. I have now begun to understand what she meant.

But there's one thing I have which no one else does. In the evening, when I have the time, I take a plastic bag with a towel in it, and quietly descend the stairs. I loop around the housing society's lawn and reach the back. There's a swimming pool, full of clean water, glittering in the light of the setting sun. It's beautiful and, in the cool of the evening, few people bother to come.

In my swimsuit, I stand on the side and raise my arms and then leap into that deep-blue water.

I would like to thank Shanta Gokhale for suggesting
Cobalt Blue
to me. When I read it, I was struck by its simplicity, symmetry and daring. Its basic story is simple: a young man arrives as a paying guest and catalyses the lives of two siblings: a brother and sister.

Kundalkar's telling of it is likewise simple. The first half takes the form of a direct address to the missing young man. This immediately presented a small but telling problem for the translator. Tanay uses ‘re' constantly. It gives his monologue an intensity, a spontaneity and an affectionate intimacy that has no equal in English. I tried to use the word ‘love' as a substitute (as in, ‘You would, wouldn't you, love?') but it was not equal in valency or intensity. Finally, I had to abandon the attempt to find a substitute and accept that there are some things you simply cannot communicate.

The second half takes the shape of a diary that the sister writes. Now we see the same set of events from another position, another perspective. This often makes one's heart ache; surely Anuja and Tanay could have talked? Surely, those years of growing up together in the same house should mean something? But perhaps they don't; perhaps what really matters is the intensity of the time you spend together rather than the length of it.

In many cases, I have chosen to retain some of the original Marathi words. Aai and Baba for instance for mother and father; and the ceremony of the kelvan. In this day and age, anyone who wants to find out what a kelvan is can do so. Fairly reliable information is a couple of clicks away on a website designed specially for such inquiries.

As readers we all know that we should find out the exact meaning of every unknown word we encounter in a book. We know this but we live in an imperfect world and we are imperfect readers. Sometimes, the sheer pace of a narrative will carry us along and there will be no time to check the meaning of the architrave behind which the diamonds have been stashed, just one step ahead of the bad guys. Sometimes, we act on instinct, as so many Indian children did when reading Enid Blyton's descriptions of midnight feasts. Far better to dream up what a scone is, far better to let it explode in a million flavours on your tongue than to look it up and discover its somewhat quotidian doughiness. Most times, we get the sense of the word from the context and read on and through. This is true even when we are not reading books in translation. I have never bothered to stop for an architrave. I don't bother to find a recipe for polenta. I get the general gist and rush on. I expect my readers will do the same when they are guests at Manjiri's kelvan or inhaling the scent of chaafa from the imaginary bedroom Tanay builds or shielding their ears from sutli-bombs on a night of celebration.

As readers we expect narratives to fall into seemly timelines. But neither Tanay nor Anuja respect the sequential. Smitten, broken, rebuilt, they tell their stories as memories spill over, as thoughts surface. They move from the present to the past and back to the present without so much as an asterisk to help you adjust. Tanay says things again and again, as if he wants to reassure himself, as if repetition will fix what has happened in his memory. Once you get used to this, you realize that this is how we grieve, how we remember, in the present tense and in the past, all at once, because the imagined future must now be abandoned.

Finally, this is my first attempt at translation. I would like to thank Neela Bhagwat for her assistance with some of the trickier bits and the sociological implications of some of the phrasings; and Shanta Gokhale (again) for listening to the drafts. Sachin, just your luck that I get to cut my teeth on
Cobalt Blue
but thanks for trusting me with it.

JERRY PINTO

November 2012