Free Rajmahal by Kamalini Sengupta Page B

solutions and it had never worked. The Rajmahal tenants would be almost immobilized till the end of the rains. The house knew this disregard of old age underscored its decline as it shuddered and picked up its metaphorical hem. When the waters receded, a clayey lining was uncovered with little colonies of tadpoles and other slimy creatures of the wet. The Rajmahal suffered the clinging staleness of mildew and mold, straining to evict any organic remains after the post-monsoon cleansing.
    But the monsoon was a season Jack loved, and the outer veranda had always given him just the exposure he needed. He would venture out and peer around the chik s to enjoy the thunder and spray of the heavenly Niagara. Then the rains would come to an end. “Perfect,” he would sigh as the weather turned dry and fine, and fans and air conditioners were stopped. The renovation season would come around, and the “little men” appear. The polishing wallah to sandpaper and re-polish the teak and rosewood furniture and floors, the pleasant smells of spirit polish and beeswax spreading their fragrances. The masons to scrape and repaint the damp patches on the walls, sometimes to redecorate a whole room. The tailor to stitch up new curtains. The upholstery wallah to re-cover the chairs, Myrna overseeing their rearrangement with renewed pictures,
lamps, and polished silver. The newness would inspire vases full of flowers, early roses and chrysanthemums.
    But the movement of time came barging in, disrupting the harmony. The little men vanished, shifting away from traditional avocations. Water no longer flowed on demand from taps. Power breakdowns meant the installation of noisy generators. The khas khas tatties vanished. The tolerance to heat diminished with air conditioners. The floor waxing was short circuited after Myrna slipped and fractured her ankle, and the sparkle of seasonal adjustments all but disappeared. With them disappeared a civic feature unique to Calcutta, the washing down of roads with high pressure hoses by superhuman little men, deftly up and downing their water jets to avoid cars and passersby.
    The human contents of the Rajmahal, Jack’s companions over the decades, were fading like the building. Sightings of Mohini Mojumdar were rare as she took to her bed. Then there was Petrov across the landing, turning peculiar, and Proshanto Mojumdar, dozing off in the middle of his scatty chatter. The landlord hardly came down though he and his wife waved sometimes from their landing. And Jack would reproach himself when he was occasionally asked to help an aging co-tenant. “Of course,” he would say guiltily. “Certainly. It’s the least I can do. I’ve been so . . . ” And he would add, his conscience heavy, “I didn’t realize . . . ”
    One of the all-year-round activities involved the war against malaria-bearing mosquitoes. This was romanticized by Jack through the mosquito net which swirled down every night from the ceiling. Jack retreated to his bed, pulled at the strings tied by his side, and shut his eyes as the soft netting encircled him and Myrna, holding them in its protective embrace. That cloudy world gave Jack a feeling of intimate safety, like the net spread below trapeze artists, cocooning them in their aerial spaces. His worst moments came when the fan, still the crazily impractical fan with the wooden blades, tore the mosquito curtains when the delicate balance was upset. Each time, he saw to it that the netting was immediately replaced. The very worst was the day of the Bad News, when Myrna had lunged at the netting, tearing it from its moorings. Jack had felt as if he, a trapeze artist, had fallen from the high swings through a hole in the safety net, ever dreading the fatal impact to follow.
    He felt the same dread again, though the net was as secure as it had ever been.

    Petrov, the Russian tenant, kept a diary in which he made philosophical observations, which he