And I was moving up. So what if I lived in only a half-brick house? From an eater of cabbage, I was becoming an eater of chicken. I had a smartphone with a big screen, bought with my own salary. It was a basic smartphone, bought on an installment plan, with a screen which jumped and credit which I filled when I could. But now I was connected to a world bigger than this neighborhood.
* * *
*
ON MY WAY TO my job in the kitchen, I peep in the door of the pickle-making room, where six women prepare lime and onion pickles to sell outside. For years, the space was no more than an accidental warehouse of broken goods, until Americandi, our local entrepreneur, set up this operation from which the prison makes petty cash. Now the room is painted and lit, tables covered with jars, the air smelling of mustard. When she sees me, Monalisa takes off her glove to hand me a triangle of lime peel, dark and sour. A few days ago I helped her daughter learn the Bengali alphabet: paw phaw baw bhaw maw. The fragrance of the pickled lime makes my tongue water. The salt and acid play on my tongue, and I chew the sourness down.
PT SIR
AT THE END OF a school day, when the bottoms of his trousers are soiled, PT Sir holds his bag in his armpit and exits the building. Outside, the narrow lane is crowded with schoolgirls who part for him. Now and then a student calls, “Good afternoon, sir!”
PT Sir nods. But these girls, to whom he taught physical training just hours before, have hiked up their skirts and coiled their hair into topknots. Their fingers are sticky with pickled fruit. They are talking about boys. He can no longer know them, if he ever did.
When the lane opens up onto the main road, PT Sir is startled by a caravan of trucks roaring past. Three and four and five rush by in a scream of wind. Young men sit in the open truck beds, their faces skinny and mustached, their hands waving the saffron flags of ardent nationalism. One young man tucks his fingers in his mouth and whistles.
* * *
*
AT THE TRAIN STATION, PT Sir stands at his everyday spot, anticipating roughly where a general compartment door will arrive. He is leaning to look down the tracks when an announcement comes over the speakers. The train will be thirty minutes late.
“Thirty minutes meaning one hour minimum!” complains a fellow passenger. This man sighs, turns around, and walks away. PT Sir takes out his cell phone, a large rectangle manufactured by a Chinese company, and calls his wife.
“Listen,” he says, “the train is going to be late.”
“What?” she shouts.
“Late!” he shouts back. “Train is late! Can you hear?”
After the terrorist attack on the train, just a few weeks ago, the word “train” frightens her. “What happened now?” she says. “Are things fine?”
“Yes, yes! All fine. They are saying ‘technical difficulty.’ ”
PT Sir holds the phone at his ear and surveys the scene in front. Passengers arrive, running, then learn about the delay and filter away. To those who spread out the day’s newspaper on the floor and relax on it, a girl sells salted and sliced cucumber. In his ear, PT Sir’s wife says, “Fine, then. Can you bring a half kilo of tomatoes? There is that market just outside your station.”
A spouse always has ideas about how you should spend your time. Couldn’t he have enjoyed thirty minutes to himself, to drink a cup of tea and sit on the platform?
PT Sir goes to look for tomatoes. Outside the station, on the road where taxis and buses usually honk and curse, nearly scraping one another’s side mirrors, all traffic has halted. Motorcyclists use their feet to push forward. PT Sir learns, from a man who grinds tobacco in his palm, that there is a Jana Kalyan (Well-being for All) Party rally, in the field nearby. It is the biggest opposition party in the state. Film star Katie Banerjee is speaking at the rally.
Katie Banerjee! Now, PT Sir thinks, is it better to spend twenty minutes looking for tomatoes, or catching a glimpse of the famous Katie? Tomatoes can be found anywhere. In fact, tomatoes can be bought ten minutes from his house at the local market—why doesn’t his wife go there?
So he follows the street, which opens up onto a field trampled free of grass. The crowd, a thousand men or more, waves the familiar saffron flags. They whistle and clap. Some men cluster around an enterprising phuchka walla, a seller of spiced potato stuffed in crisp shells, who has set up his trade. The scent of cilantro and onion carries. On all the men’s foreheads, even the phuchka walla’s, PT Sir sees a smear of red paste, an index of worship—of god, of country. The men, marked by the divine, wear pants whose bottoms roll under their feet, and hop up now and then to see what is happening. The stage is far away.
“Brother,” he says to a young man. He surprises himself with his friendly tone. “Brother, is it really Katie Banerjee up there?”
The young man looks at him, hands PT Sir a small party flag from a grocery store bag full of them, and calls a third man. “Over here, come here!” he yells. Soon that man rushes over, holding a dish of red paste. He dips his thumb in the paste and marks PT Sir’s forehead, drawing a red smear from brow to hairline. All PT Sir can do is accept, a child being blessed by an elder.
Thus marked, party flag in his hand, PT Sir steps forward to hear better. Onstage, it is indeed movie star Katie Banerjee, dressed in a starched cotton sari. She too is marked by holy red paste on her forehead, PT Sir sees. Her speech drawing to a close, she raises both hands in a namaste. “You all have come from far districts of the state,” she says. “For that you have my thanks. Go home safely, carefully.”
The microphone crackles. The crowd roars.
When the star leaves the stage, her place at the microphone is occupied by the second-in-command of the party. Bimala Pal, no more than five feet two, arrives in a plain white sari, her steel wristwatch flashing in the sun. The crowd quiets for her. PT Sir holds the flag above his head for shade, then tries his small leather bag, which works better.
In the microphone, Bimala Pal cries, her words echoing over the speakers: “We will seek justice…ice! For the lives lost in this cowardly…ardly attack…tack on the train…train! I promise you…you!”
After a minute of silence for the lost souls, she continues, pausing for the echoes to fade, “Where the current government is not able to feed our people! Jana Kalyan Party—your idle government’s hardworking opposition!—has provided rice to fourteen districts for three rupees per kilo! We are inviting plastics and cars, factories which will bring at least fifteen thousand jobs—”
While PT Sir watches, a man wearing a white undershirt pulls himself up, or is pushed up by the crowd, onto the hood of a jeep far ahead. PT Sir had not noticed the jeep until now, but there it is, a vehicle in the middle of the field, still a distance from the stage. The man stands on the hood of the car, surveying the raised arms, the open mouths and stained teeth. Then he climbs onto the roof of the car, the car now rocking from the crowd shoving and slamming, their fury and laughter landing on the polished body of the vehicle.