remembrance

He walks into the alleyway slowly, deliberately, looking at everything around him, trying to absorb all that he has been away from for so long. The sunlight filters through the leaves and creates shadows that are fixed. The air is heavy and very still but he likes that. He had told his friend once that the air in Calcutta is unlike that in any other place, that it is velvety, you can feel it brush past you or feel yourself brushing past it. It’s never cold enough to sting nor hot enough to burn, it just floats around you like an ethereal being with a life of its own, like it is feeling the texture of your skin and trying to understand what you are thinking of.

The alleyway seems to have not changed at all in the last couple of years though he keeps expecting it to. It is narrow, very narrow, just wide enough to let a car pass through it. There are shops everywhere, one selling cellular phones, one water-pumps, one has a photocopying machine set up and there’s even a small motel; all within fifty feet of the mouth of the alleyway.

He is there so that he can visit the tea-stall that is the busiest part of the alleyway. It is run by a family that probably lives there too. There’s the old father, fat and jovial, with white hair and a moustache and a stubbly beard that seems to stay at one particular stage of growth no matter what; he makes the tea, in a big metal pot, always steaming and frothing, feeding the surroundings with the sweet aroma of fresh tea. His wife sits by the side, hunched over a frying pan, creating delicious food that will be sold for a pittance. She has black hair, streaked with silver strands and her face always makes him think that she is what Cinderella’s fairy god-mother would have looked like. There is the elder son – dark and handsome, his body perfectly toned and every sinew and muscle visible as he lifts one of the stones that serve as benches and puts it to one side so that a car can pass through. The daughter is asking an old man if he wants more tea. The old man peers at this petite girl with large eyes and a voice like small silver bells from behind the thick lenses of his spectacles and jokes that he does but only if she will let him have it for free. She always has a smile on her face and his friends and he call her didi, sister. There’s also chhotu, little boy, and the little boy always asks him how he has been, even if he has been away as long as he usually is.

The tea stall is set against an abandoned house with shuttered windows, which has creepers growing along it and little plants sprouting out of the cracks between the bricks. Two bamboo poles hold up a sheet of thick plastic that serves as shelter from nature. There is a small surface of hardened mud upon which the father sits and on which the pot of boiling tea rests; there is a gap under the pot for the heat from the kiln. There are shelves along the back – an assorted jumble of foods is strewn across them. There are small cakes with bits of candied fruit in them; they are delicious. There are biscuits and samosas and various other snacks. All of it is made by the family.

He sits on the pavement and lights a cigarette, looking around to make sure no one he knows is around; his family doesn’t know he smokes. The little boy skips merrily toward him with a kettle in his hand and asks him where he has been for so long as he pours tea into the little earthen cup. He just smiles and says, “At school.” The boy smiles and displays a perfect smile made more precocious by a few gaps. The little boy scuttles back and starts pouring tea for the other customers. He thinks about how lucky he is to be able to go to school and wonders what the little boy will look like when he grows up, what he’ll do and where he’ll live.

Tea and cigarettes, hot tea and cigarettes, hot tea and cigarettes in a dusty little alleyway in Calcutta. The temperature is over forty degrees centigrade, in the shade; there are people everywhere; stray dogs loll on the cool stone surface outside the water-pump shop; loud horns blare in the background; the steam from the tea fogs his glasses.