The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [6]
“Is that an invitation?” Piya said, smiling.
“Absolutely,” Kanai responded. “Come. I’m inviting you. Your company will lighten the burden of my exile.”
Piya laughed. She had thought at first that Kanai was much too full of himself, but now she was inclined to be slightly more generous in her assessment: she had caught sight of a glimmer of irony somewhere that made his self-centeredness appear a little more interesting than she had first imagined.
“But how would I find you?” she said. “Where would I look?”
“Just make your way to the hospital in Lusibari,” said Kanai, “and ask for Mashima. They’ll take you to my aunt and she’ll know where I am.”
“Mashima?” said Piya. “But I have a Mashima too — doesn’t it just mean ‘aunt’? There must be more than one aunt there: yours can’t be the only one?”
“If you go to the hospital and ask for Mashima,” said Kanai, “everyone will know who you mean. My aunt founded it, you see, and she heads the organization that runs it, the Badabon Trust. She’s a real personage on the island — everyone calls her Mashima, even though her real name is Nilima Bose. They were quite a pair, she and her husband. People always called him Saar, just as they call her Mashima.”
“Saar? And what does that mean?”
Kanai laughed. “It’s just a Bangla way of saying Sir. He was the headmaster of the local school, you see, so all his pupils called him Sir. In time people forgot he had a real name — Nirmal Bose.”
“I notice you’re speaking of him in the past tense.”
“Yes. He’s been dead a long time.” No sooner had he spoken than Kanai pulled a face, as if to disclaim what he had just said. “But to tell you the truth, right now it doesn’t feel like he’s been gone a long time.”
“How come?”
“Because he’s risen from his ashes to summon me,” Kanai said with a smile. “You see, he’d left some papers for me at the time of his death. They’d been lost all these years, but now they’ve turned up again. That’s why I’m on my way there: my aunt wanted me to come and look at them.”
Hearing a note of muted complaint in his voice, Piya said, “It sounds like you weren’t too eager to go.”
“No, I wasn’t, to be honest,” he said. “I have a lot to attend to and this was a particularly busy time. It wasn’t easy to take a week off.”
“Is this the first time you’ve come, then?” said Piya.
“No, it’s not,” said Kanai. “I was sent down here once, years ago.”
“Sent down? Why?”
“It’s a story that involves the word ‘rusticate,’” said Kanai with a smile. “Are you familiar with it?”
“No. Can’t say I am.”
“It was a punishment, dealt out to schoolboys who misbehaved,” said Kanai. “They were sent off to suffer the company of rustics. As a boy I was of the opinion that I knew more about most things than my teachers did. There was an occasion once when I publicly humiliated a teacher who had the unfortunate habit of pronouncing the word ‘lion’ as if it overlapped, in meaning as in rhyme, with the word ‘groin.’ I was about ten at the time. One thing led to another and my tutors persuaded my parents I had to be rusticated. I was sent off to stay with my aunt and uncle in Lusibari.” He laughed at the memory. “That was a long time ago, in 1970.”
The train had begun to slow down now and Kanai was interrupted by a sudden blast from the engine’s horn. Glancing through the window, he spotted a yellow signboard that said CANNING.
“We’re here,” he said. He seemed suddenly regretful that their conversation had come to an end. Tearing off a piece of paper, he wrote a few words on it and pressed it into her hands. “Here — this’ll help you remember where to find me.”
The train had ground to a halt now and people were surging toward the doors of the compartment. Rising to her feet, Piya slung her backpacks over her shoulders. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”
“I hope so.” He raised a hand to wave. “Be careful with the maneaters.”
“Take care yourself. Goodbye.”
CANNING
KANAI WATCHED Piya’s back with interest as she disappeared into the