The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [10]
Nilima’s customary manner was one of abstracted indulgence. Yet when the occasion demanded she was also capable of commanding prompt and unquestioning obedience — few would willingly cross her, for it was well known that Mashima, like many another figure of maternal nurture, could be just as inventive in visiting retribution as she was in dispensing her benedictions. Now, on catching sight of Kanai, it took her no more than a snap of her fingers to silence the people around her. The crowd parted almost instantly to let Kanai through.
“Kanai!” Nilima cried. “Where were you?” She ran a hand over his head as he bent down to touch her feet. “I was beginning to think you’d missed the train.”
“I’m here now.” She looked much more frail than Kanai remembered, and he slipped an arm around her to help her to her feet. While members of her entourage took charge of his luggage, Kanai grasped her elbow and led her toward the station’s exit.
“You shouldn’t have taken the trouble to come to the station,” said Kanai. “I could have found my way to Lusibari.” This was a polite lie for Kanai would have been at a loss to know how to proceed to Lusibari on his own. What was more, he would have been extremely annoyed if he had been left to fend for himself in Canning.
But Nilima took his words at face value. “I wanted to come,” she said. “It’s nice to get away from Lusibari sometimes. But tell me, how was your ride on the train? I hope you weren’t bored.”
“No,” said Kanai, “I wasn’t. Actually I met an interesting young woman. An American.”
“Oh?” said Nilima. “What was she doing here?”
“She’s doing research on dolphins and suchlike,” Kanai said. “I asked her to visit us in Lusibari.”
“Good. I hope she comes.”
“Yes,” said Kanai. “I hope so too.”
Suddenly Nilima came to a halt and snatched at Kanai’s elbow. “I sent you some pages that Nirmal had written,” she said anxiously. “Did you get them?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “In fact, I was reading them on the train. Were they from the packet he left for me?”
“No, no,” said Nilima. “That was just something he wrote long ago. There was a time, you know, when he was so depressed I thought he needed something to keep him going. I asked him to write a little thing about the Sundarbans. I was hoping to be able to use it in one of our brochures, but it wasn’t really appropriate. Still, I thought it might interest you.”
“O,” said Kanai. “I somehow assumed it was a part of whatever he’d left for me.”
“No,” said Nilima. “I don’t know what’s in the packet: it’s sealed and I haven’t opened it. I know Nirmal wanted you to see it first. He told me that, just before his death.”
Kanai frowned. “Weren’t you curious, though?”
Nilima shook her head. “When you get to my age, Kanai,” she said, “you’ll see it’s not easy to deal with reminders of loved ones who’ve moved on and left you behind. That’s why I wanted you to come.”
They stepped out of the station into a dusty street where paan shops and snack stands jostled for space with rows of tiny shops.
“Kanai, I’m very glad you’re here at last,” said Nilima. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“Why did you insist on coming through Canning? It would have been so much easier if you had come through Basonti. No one comes this way nowadays.”
“Really? Why not?”
“Because of the river,” she said. “It’s changed.”
“How?”
She glanced up at him. “Wait. You’ll see soon enough.”
“ON THE BANKS of every great river you’ll find a monument to excess.”
Kanai recalled the list of examples Nirmal had provided to prove this: the opera house of Manaus, the temple of Karnak, the ten thousand pagodas of Pagan. In the years since, he had visited many of those places, and it made him laugh to think his uncle had insisted that Canning too had a place on that list: “The mighty Matla’s monument is Port Canning.”
The bazaars of Canning were much as he remembered, a jumble of narrow lanes, cramped shops and mildewed houses. There were a great many stalls selling patent medicines for neuralgia and dyspepsia — concoctions with names like Hajmozyne and Dardocytin.