Free Rajmahal by Kamalini Sengupta Page A

could be so manly with jewelry and perfume and kohl! He was so handsome, Jack, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he handsome?” Her reference was to an ex-lover, the Maharajah of R.
    â€œWhy don’t I have such memories?” thought Jack. “Don’t I have an erotic side? All I can remember is Abdal out on the lawn, washing the ice with soap . . . That’s all I remember . . . Silly old Abdal out on the lawn, washing the ice with soap . . . ”
    â€œDo you remember Abdal, washing the ice with soap,” said Jack out loud yet again. “In the garden . . . Remember?”
    â€œOh yes! Wasn’t that funny! And shaving you in bed, every morning.”
    â€œBefore his hand started shaking . . . And talking of luxuries, there was “Lady” Myrna, reclining in bed with ayahs massaging her from all ends!”
    And then Myrna laughed, a natural, easy laugh, putting him into a state of painful suspense, suspense that her mood must soon return to normal. “No, not ‘normal’,” he corrected himself, “‘usual’.”
    The distinction seemed clear for the moment to Jack, whose mind broke up in confusion over two things: Myrna and his failed career. The latter lurked hidden, bursting out sometimes like a monster from a cave. Myrna overpowered most of his waking moments with her vexation and her emotion. When she screamed at the servants, he forced himself to remember her innate kindness. Servants were by definition imperfect and for compensation, perfect whipping boys. But Myrna had always looked after them, hadn’t she? Clothing and feeding them, spending freely on them. Martin, a native born “Anglo-Indian,” understood. Poor boy. How he had loved his India, Calcutta in particular. But . . . back he’d gone, and rightly . . . Is that what they should have done? Gone back?
    â€œOh but yes, yes,” said the swadeshi ghost, gently for once. “You would have been so much better off!”
    At the bottom of Jack’s decision to stay on was the fear of an uncared for old age, accessible to Martin but neglected because of a strong daughter-in-law’s dissent. Was it the right decision? Here they were, with an inaccessible Martin, plumb at the end of that old age. Was that better than the neighborhood neglect he had feared from his son? Who was here to care for them? The servants? Did he feel secure? Would he feel secure anywhere? Wasn’t old age the ultimate insecurity, the end without solution? Did he subconsciously hope that by staying on he could take
on the enviable attributes of an Indian extended family, loving care till the very end? What of Myrna’s mental state? What about all the cajoling for her to just step out of the apartment, through a stream of invective, complaints about the heat, about the cold, about a weak heart, the stairs ... ? But Jack was glad of the stairs. He took a sadistic pleasure in hauling himself up. It proved him still active and able, didn’t it? Even if obscured by stopping often for Myrna, which gave him a rest too, a rest to prolong the anticipation of reentering their last refuge, their apartment.
    Summer, winter, monsoon, the apartment was perfectly attuned after decades of organization. In summer, the khas khas tatties replaced the veranda chiks , with the breezes carrying in the zest of the wet reed. The dust scent settling under the first rains became a pleasant cliché for Jack, and if he had known, he would have bought the attars sold on street corners promising the bottled essences of khas and rain dust. The potted lilies prepared to bud and flower white against the dark of the chik s. Solutions were endlessly attempted against one of the few faults of the Rajmahal, the low plinth of the lobby floor that led to flooding. During early days, the Sardar Bahadur, always elegant, had shallow ducts carved to drain into the fountains. But rainwater during a Calcutta monsoon is jealous of elegant