Free Shadow Play by Rajorshi Chakraborti

done too; then there would have been no misadventures. You tell me, are you feeling all right? I only hope you don’t catch a cold, otherwise your Ma will never forgive me. If she asks, just say we went for a drive. Don’t mention anything about Ramesh. You know how your Ma gets.’
    â€˜And listen,’ added Baba in English, as I was about to go down to play, ‘thank you for coming.’
    I’m much older today than my father was that evening, but the reasons behind my presence in the backseat remained opaque to me long after I lost any lingering illusions about my strategic importance on that mission. I never questioned Baba about it again, just as I never asked what document had suddenly been so important. They became further facets of his invisibility, which soon afterwards was sealed forever when I left the house with my mother.
    Years later, I was home for the first time from England (about to leave in a few days to take up my new position at St M.’s, but with no thought as yet of visiting my father despite a three-year absence: contact between us had withered to the point where he would learn I’d been home only after I’d returned to London), and Ma had just finished cooking. She was going to bathe and then we would sit down to lunch. In a ritual that I knew since my childhood, she took off a ring, a pencil necklace and her bangles and set them down before she went into the bathroom.For the first time ever, I looked at them properly and then quizzed her about them while we were eating. The ring was from my grandfather. The necklace had been a gift from Baba, the very first thing he had given her. She hadn’t even dared to wear it for a year until they were actually married, but carried it everywhere in her handbag. And now, though he was more than a decade behind her, and these days they rarely saw each other, she continued to carry this trace of my invisible father.
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    (A dream noted in my diary, from February 1976, shortly after I learnt of my great-aunt’s death)
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    In our giant family seat, a mistress has arrived to visit me. She is much older, stately and beautiful, and married to a bedridden man. A loving and devoted carer, these are the afternoons she claims to attend the club, twice a week, to have tea with friends and renew library books. I take her hand in mine just for its incredible softness; it’s a small miracle. But our shared drawing room is a much-violated space: children scamper around constantly, servants peep through the cracks in shutters when they aren’t appearing with unordered tea, one by one, followed by equally unsolicited biscuits, sweets and water, while relatives wait eagerly in every adjacent room for these spies to report their findings.
    We move to the room I’ve been assigned; since my father sold up, no part of the house belongs to us. I’m suffered, kindly enough, during this unexpected stay, and two young nephews have been cleared out for me.
    Here at least there are no stares. I draw her into my arms and fill my senses with her perfume, my lips grazing hesitantlyagainst her neck and shoulders, too anxious almost to begin the moment for fear of it concluding. She smiles and lies back; I envelop her in my embrace.
    We jump startled out of bed, still fully dressed: in lying down we nearly crushed something small and moving. I lift the sheet by its corner and sweep it off in a single motion. Three kittens appear exposed and mewling, without a mother. I’m still wondering if this is a prank when my lady reacts in a fashion I would never have imagined. She leans over and lifts one of them, her long fingers pinching between its ribs, oblivious to its pitiful flailing. Without pausing she hurls it a few feet away, screaming, ‘Rooms are meant for humans.’

The Perfect Worker

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Inside the Whale
    Because of the effects of the sedation, it took me over an hour to work out that I was in Brazil. After I