Jasmine Skies, page 10
‘Not a problem,’ he says.
I close the door and breathe out, looking down at myself. I’d completely forgotten I’m still wearing Priya’s dressing gown. Janu has probably been up for hours working . . . I’m not even dressed and I’m telling him I’m tired! He must think I’m so lazy.
I walk through to the bedroom and place the handmade paper on the low table beside the bed. It fits perfectly, but it’s curled up at the ends and needs something to weigh it down. I run my fingers over the slightly bumpy surface; it’s as if it’s ingrained with some sort of hair. I’ve never painted on anything like it before. I walk over to Priya’s trophy cupboard with the idea I can use her dance trophies as weights, but then the carved wooden edges of the border give me an idea of how to begin this painting. Working out how to start is always the hardest part. I pick up the paper and take a charcoal rubbing of the carved pattern around the outside of the cupboard. At first I think I’ll use it as a border, like a picture frame, but I love the effect so much I decide to make it the background of the whole painting, like a textured wash under everything. It looks a bit like ancient peeling wallpaper.
I think about Grandad’s brother, Shudi, who carved this cupboard so long ago, yet there’s still something of him here to trace. I plug in my iPod, turn up the volume and let the music flood my mind. I let a drop of deep red paint splash into the middle of the paper and watch it seep into the texture and spread, like blood through a bandage. Then I take a fine brush and trail blood lines all over the page.
I don’t really think about what I’m going to paint. I just sketch in the things and people that pop into my mind . . . a suitcase floating in space, the old couple kissing at the airport, Dust Boy . . . ‘Ma’am, ma’am, little money, ma’am . . .’ I can still hear his voice echoing around my head. I draw School Girl in her clean uniform, sitting under her blue tarpaulin; then I add her mother plaiting her daughter’s hair. Next comes the great glass dome of the mall, with Manu’s Ambassador parked outside, Branded Woman and her baby peering in through the window. I draw Priya and me dancing on her bed, and the sari shop with Anjali holding up a piece of cream silk. Then I sketch a sari cupboard, and in the door I place a little silver key with a heart-shaped end, just as Anjali described it in her letter. I take out all of Shudi’s rainbow paints and the finest brush I can find, and brush stroke by brush stroke, line by line, fold by fold, I fill the cupboard with saris and even manage to paint in the detail of some lace-like border patterns in gold and silver.
Priya bounds into the room and I pull out my earphones. I have no idea how long I’ve been working on this.
‘OMG, have you done all that in half a day?!’ asks Priya.
‘I’m just sketching really,’ I tell her.
‘That’s not what I call sketching. Wait till Janu sees this! Serious talent! You’ll never get away from teaching at the refuge,’ she says, taking the paintbrush out of my hand and springing a great big cousin hug on me.
Human Garlands
There’s no fan in the yellow cab we’ve jumped into, and the driver refuses to have the windows open because of the pollution, which is really bad today. After being stuck in here for about half an hour I feel like I’m cooking. Even Priya keeps fanning herself.
As soon as the oven doors of the cab are thrown open I take a deep breath of hot air, scented with the sweet smell of roses and petrol fumes. We stand under the vast metal arches of the Howrah Bridge, where thousands of people and vehicles of every kind are crossing back and forth as if they’re taking part in some epic choreographed dance. This place makes the middle of London look like the countryside!
I look down at the water flowing slowly under the bridge. I love the feeling of being this close to the river. It’s like in London when you walk along the Thames – the city suddenly feels rooted. The water keeps on flowing, and no matter how important people might think they are, the river was there before them and it will be there after them, flowing on and on through time. I look down at the wide brown river as boats of every size – from great metal tankers to tiny rowing boats with colourful bunting flags – pass along the river. There’s so much I don’t know about this city. Today I read in my guide book that the River Hooghly was a tributary of the holy River Ganges. I read about those ‘ghats’ too – the steps that lead right down to the water’s edge, where people are washing their clothes and bathing.
‘I wouldn’t recommend it!’ Priya laughs as we watch a bare-chested man walk into the murky brown water. ‘But this you’ve got to see!’ She grabs me by the hand and leads me down some steep concrete steps and along a pathway. A smell of roses fills the air, getting stronger and stronger. And then I’m in among a festival of flowers and people.
‘How do you like the flower market?’ asks Priya.
‘I love it!’
‘Thought you would!’ She smiles, looking pleased with herself that she chose the right place to bring me to.
I take out my sketchbook and try to capture anything that grabs my attention, which is just about everything: a baby peering over her mother’s shoulder, wearing a crown of pink and white roses in her hair; ancient hands stringing a garland of marigolds; a young girl in a bright pink salwar-kameez, her bare feet planted among a mountain of yellow flowers; a teenage boy who is smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke rings in our direction.
‘Why don’t you take photos?’ asks Priya, leaning over my shoulder and watching me sketch.
I shrug. I feel a bit strange about taking photos of people I don’t know. It’s cowardly of me, I know, because I’m happy to snap away through the window of a car, but face to face with people like this is different. But I would like to record it all because I know that I could be inspired to write and paint about all this for ages when I get back home. Just as I think this a girl about our age walks past us with a basket of marigolds on her head.
‘Photo, photo!’ she chants, clicking her fingers.
Priya raises her eyebrows to ask me whether she should, and I nod yes. As soon as the picture’s taken the girl holds out her hand for some money. Priya drops a few rupees into her palm and she walks on. I suppose I should ask people’s permission before I sketch them too, because in a way I think you can take even more from someone when you draw them than when you take a photo. Once, when Jidé and I went to Brighton, I started to sketch a homeless woman and her dog who were sitting by the pier. She got so angry that she chased us up the street, grabbed my sketchbook off me and ripped out the page. I’ll never forget her dog growling and baring its teeth, as if it was standing up for her. When Jidé tried to calm things down by offering the woman some money she just spat in his face and said, ‘You think just because I’m poor I don’t have any.’ I couldn’t get her words out of my head for ages afterwards.
We walk between mounds of flowers and smelly gutters, along the dirt path lined with more blue-tarpaulin-roofed shacks. Priya leads me to a raised platform that looks like an empty market stall and sits down.
‘You can sketch all you want from up here,’ she says.
I’d love to sit here and draw all day, but I don’t know how much longer I can take this heat. It’s hotter than ever today, and the smells and colours of the flowers are so intense, that I feel dizzy with it all. I rub my eyes to check I’m not imagining this . . . because what I think I’m looking at is a mountain of flowers walking towards me. Now I can just about make out the thin limbs of a man. He’s almost completely camouflaged by the garlands of roses and jasmine tumbling like a waterfall over the edges of the basket he’s carrying on his head.
‘Priya!’ a high-pitched voice shouts out from somewhere in among the flowers.
I jump backwards in fright. Priya laughs and puts a hand out to steady me. When I look closer I see that in the middle of the basket, swathed in garlands, is the sweet smiling face of a woman wearing an enormous red powdered teep between her eyes and sindoor through her parting. Priya waves towards her as she’s lowered carefully to the floor, still in her basket. The man lifts her up as if she weighs nothing at all and places her on the platform beside us. She slowly begins to remove garlands from her neck and child-like body. Underneath her flowers she’s wearing a bright blue salwar-kameez. I look down at her feet and see that they’re twisted in the wrong direction. I am trying not to stare as Priya holds her hands together in a namaste and introduces me.
‘This is Chameli and her husband, Ajoy,’ she says as we namaste each other and Priya hands Chameli an envelope. ‘For the flowers yesterday,’ Priya explains to me.
‘Ki sundor,’ I tell Chameli, pointing to the garlands and hoping you can use the same phrase to describe flowers as beautiful, as for humans – it’s something Grandad used to say to me, and it just slipped out. Priya smiles at me a bit taken aback. ‘I think you know more Bengali than you let on!’ she says.
‘Only a few words,’ I say, as Priya listens to Chameli.
‘She says you are very beautiful!’ Priya translates, giggling and chatting away to the woman before she turns back to me.
‘Chameli predicts that you are sure to meet the boy of your dreams here in India. She says that I on the other hand should go to London!’
I smile back and I can’t help thinking of Janu, even though I’ve been trying so hard not to.
Chameli places a garland of marigolds around my neck.
‘Have you got a few rupees for me to give her?’ I whisper to Priya.
‘Not necessary, she’ll be insulted,’ says Priya. ‘Would you ask her if she minds me taking a photo?’ Chameli nods and holds out her arms to me. I hand my camera over to Priya and I sit down next to her and her basket of garlands. I can’t get over how warm and generous people are here, even strangers.
‘So what’s their story?’ I ask as we meander back through the market past the mountains of flowers.
‘They came to the refuge when they were still young. Since then they have taught so many children how to make garlands, and sometimes they go with Ajoy and Chameli to stay in their village and help them to farm the flower fields. Janu is trying to build it into a partnership for the refuge kids. Anyway, they’re quite famous, you know. Ajoy carries her over the Howrah Bridge in a basket loaded up with garlands maybe three or four times a week. They have to carry as many garlands as they can, so when they sit on the train their faces are sometimes covered by flowers. They’ve been written about in tourist guides and everything. If they’ve had a good day, Ajoy says, he only has to carry his “most beautiful flower” back home. Romantic or what!’ Priya laughs.
Now she’s tugging me across a sea of bodies, and I’m clinging on to her because I know that if we get separated I won’t have a clue how to get back to her flat. I haven’t even memorized her address. I should really sort my mobile phone out and ask Anjali for one that works. At least then, when Jidé comes back I can text him. I don’t know why, but I didn’t think we would have as much freedom to travel around Kolkata as I do in London.
At the end of the bridge we’re pushed through a bottleneck of human bodies and out on to the road. Within seconds Priya manages to hail a yellow cab. Once we’re inside she passes me a bottle of water and I drink greedily. I’m so hot and bothered – my hair is plastered over my skin and my spine’s sticking to the plastic seats. I lean back, trying to catch a breeze on my face from the slightly open window.
Priya hands me a wipe. ‘I forget you’re not used to this heat. It builds and builds so you think you can’t stand it any more, and then the sky opens . . . whoosh! I love it when all this city noise is drowned out by the music of the monsoon rain. They’re saying it’s coming early this year . . . I hope maybe before you leave.’
Sometimes when Priya talks it’s almost as if she’s composing a song, trying things out for the way they sound: ‘drowned out by the music of the monsoon rain . . .’
When we get back to the flat Priya rushes in, flings on her dance clothes and runs out again. ‘Sorry I’ve got all these rehearsals,’ she calls as she disappears down the stairs. ‘I promise I’ll race back.’
I pick up my garland and study how the flowers have been woven so skilfully into it. Then I paint a border of jasmine around the edges of my painting. After that I add a scene with Chameli in her basket, her face peering out through the garlands.
‘Everything all right, Mira?’ calls Anjali as she comes in from work.
‘Fine!’ I shout back.
‘Have you had something to eat?’ she asks, wandering into Priya’s room and taking a good long look at my painting. ‘That’s really coming on. You met Chameli and Ajoy then?’ She smiles, inspecting the basket of garlands I’ve been painting. For a moment I think she’s going to say something else, but then she seems to get lost in the detail of the painting. She looks over to Priya’s trophy cupboard in the corner of the room and back at the paper.
I follow her gaze to the section I’ve worked up of the sari cupboard with the little silver key.
‘What’s this?’ she asks, a thundercloud passing across her face.
I suppose it is the most complete bit of the painting. Strange in a way, because it’s more or less the only thing I haven’t actually seen with my own eyes. It’s just the thing that captured my imagination in her letter. And then I get why she’s asking about it . . . I should have realized the danger of adding the detail of the heart-shaped end to the key.
‘Just one of the cupboards in the sari shop,’ I mumble.
‘I didn’t see anything like this.’ Anjali looks straight at me as if demanding an answer. ‘Or that little key . . .’
It’s strange how she’s so kind and calm about things except when I touch on anything to do with what was written in her letters: first the house in Doctor’s Lane and now the sari cupboard. It’s like she knows I’ve read them and is waiting for me to admit it. She walks over to the wardrobe and takes out my sari, smoothing her hand over the silk. She turns to me as if she’s about to say something, but then she just sighs and places the sari back in the cupboard. Definitely weird.
Anjali takes a deep breath and walks over to the door but just as she’s about to leave she turns around and says, as if to apologize, ‘It’s going to be an amazing painting, but I don’t want you spending so much time here when you could be experiencing more. I’m sorry Priya’s so busy. She was only supposed to have a couple of hours’ rehearsals a day – it’s why we thought this would be a good time for you to come, despite this heat, but one of the dancers, Paddy – I think you’ve met her – has hurt her hip, so they need extra practices to rework the dances without her.’
‘It’s OK,’ I say. Anjali looks really tired, and I don’t want her to feel like I’m something extra to worry about. Anyway, the truth is I sort of need a bit of switch-off time.
‘No, it’s not OK! So I have organized for Ma to take you sightseeing, and tomorrow you can come to the refuge and maybe Janu can show you around.’
I don’t even hear the rest of what she says because my head is whirling. If I’m going to spend any time with Janu, I’ll have to find a way to tell him about Jidé. That will settle everything.
The Refuge
This continuous heat, the sights zipping past the window of this tram and, if I’m honest with myself, sitting this close to Janu, is making my head spin. At least I’ve been able to talk to him today and, now and again, even look him in the eye. I snap away at the street scenes, but I’m not thinking about what I’m seeing. I know it’s sad of me, but as well as becoming a bit obsessed with trying to capture everything this camera is coming in useful to hide behind. I’m still trying to find a moment to tell Janu about Jidé. So far we’ve sort of had polite conversation; he’s asked me how I liked the flower market and now we’re on to Priya and her dancing.
‘Bharatanatyam,’ he says, ‘is Priya’s best dance. It is funny, because all the time she’s trying to be so . . . modern, but already she is one of the best young classical dancers in Kolkata.’
I’ve been so fixed on talking to Janu that I’ve hardly noticed the dust, sweat and bustle of the rest of the journey to the refuge. Maybe I’m learning, like Manu said, to close my eyes and my ears to the road. And I think he was right, because even in this heat I’m starting to feel more at home.
The tram grinds to a halt and Janu stands up, gesturing for me to follow him.
‘This area is called Chowringee,’ Janu says as we step off the tram.
We walk down a street bustling with traders selling cloth, handbags, children’s clothes, sizzling food . . . Some jalebi are being thrown into sizzling fat, the sweet batter spirals round and round, spitting and spluttering up into coiled sweets. My mouth instantly waters as I inhale the sugary smell. An image of Grandad eating these for breakfast fills my head and makes me smile. Now I know what he meant when he used to talk about ‘memory food’.
‘Want to try?’ Janu asks, stopping to buy a packet and offering me one. I’ve had these cold at home, but never fresh from the pan. This hot, treacly sweet must be just about the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.
‘Don’t tell Anjali. She thinks eating from the street will make you ill. But it is the best food you can find anywhere. The most delicious is when you don’t expect it. It’s there in front of you and you just have to try it.’
‘Do you eat these every day?! I ask, wiping my mouth.
‘No! Only for special occasions –’ he smiles at me – ‘or I would be getting fat!’ He taps his flat, muscly stomach.
‘How did the refuge start?’ I ask, trying to change the subject. I already know some of this but I want to hear it from Janu.
‘Anjali and Dinesh opened it about sixteen years ago. It started in one room and now the whole building belongs to them. Your uncle and aunt are good people,’ says Janu. ‘Dinesh is campaigning for new businesses to make partnerships, sharing the wealth and paying more for education and health of the poor. This is the only way to move forward.’
