In the Beginning, There was the Discontinuity

Our apartment in Calcutta was in an old but whimsical building. It had flecked marble floors and sunbathed rooms where the leaves of potted plants nodded lazily at the windows that had a view of the cobalt blue waters of Lake Sarobar. I don’t remember the apartment we had before that. Life in Calcutta meshed together in a tinted supercut, blurring in and out of focus as memories sifted through the sands of time. Life in America however, had sharper, bluer snaps, like salt crystals spilled out against velvet. It seemed like two different lifetimes, running parallel to each other, close, but never together. When in one, the other simply existed as a fantasy, a house of cards where all the faces had bizarre expressions and the mouths moved silently. 

Perhaps because the moves always happened so abruptly, so out of context to a child’s ears. I understand the context better now, amazed and infuriated to find a lack of pattern, a lack of continuity in this constant shuffle between continents. But back then, one moment you were racing around in your Barbie jeep, the next moment suitcases were being packed. I can still never quite shake off the feeling of movement, every place I’ve ever lived in has been veined with restlessness. I inherited a lot of this impulsivity from my parents, my dad in particular. 

Not that there was much room for it growing up, the reins were tight, and often choking. 

Like any other post-colonial Brahmin family, we were raised in a crash of opposing ideals and principles. We had to mind our Ps and Qs and learn cutlery etiquette and read Shakespeare and play chess and wear the correct stockings to society clubs. But we were also told there was no music like Rabindrasangeet, made to speak Bengali at home, get vocal lessons, read Scripture, learn to pick the bones off hilsa fish and tuck a sari properly. We also lived in the dread of threats of mission school, which even though was unknown to us, sounded frightening, like a house with no windows. 

The newly independent India was still finding her voice, in a landscape scarred by violence and turmoil. We took trips on the railway system engineered by the British, built by native slaves; we had tea parties at Bengal Club that had just started letting Indians be members; The Telegraph ran daily rants about the empire; fusion restaurants were popping up everywhere; we couldn’t decided on a national language and all of Bollywood seemed to have hopped on the Indo-Western wedding trend. With no war left to fight, the freedom fighters packed up their bags and music, handed things over to the fascists and Independence Day became just another school holiday. 

Not that we were privy to the sociopolitical chaos. Locked in our high rise apartments, escorted to places by drivers, reading assigned Nietsczhe, we laughed at the funny clothes our Minister wore and skipped the strike announcements in the paper to have a go at the Sudokus. 

Growing up, my two younger sisters (Ferret One and Ferret Two) and I were often left to our own devices. Under the careful eye of an ayah of course. Our favorite ayah was Ruma, the main qualifier being she wasn’t a tattletale. She could also make a carbonara so good, I write about it years later. She was with us the longest. We had other maids, cooks, drivers, errand boys that had various problems. One couldn’t cook for the life of her, one took pleasure in seeing the corporeal punishment we got from our parents, another stole, another one took random days off without warning. 

Ruma however, always took our side. No, she did eat all her fish, I saw her do it, yes the spill was cleaned up, yes she was working on her math problems, no she didn’t nap when she came home, I think the drawing is nice, I’ll clean up the crayons, don’t worry. 

She was the one person we could trust. Our parents were the authority figures, the rulers in a dictatorship, and we definitely couldn’t trust each other. No one knew which battle was being fought against who and when. Everyone was a spy, a snake, a liar, a soldier. 

Our parents did a slick job of turning us against each other, oiling us for information, in a way that we didn’t realize the common enemy. It was very divide and conquer of them.