Scenes From Early Life Read Free

his father, only occasionally. This seemed to me the height of glamour, and it made me sick to see the ways in which Shibli was spoilt by my grandparents.
    Choto-mama, Little-uncle, came next. His name was Pultoo. He was not much older than the bigger children, and was still at college. He was not a lawyer; he was an artist. In an odd way, my grandfather was rather proud of that: he used to say, ‘If Pultoo wants to, he wants to.’ Some people assumed that Choto-mama had to sit next to Shibli, with his spoilt ways, as a punishment from my grandfather. But that was not true: my grandfather had given Pultoo a large room with sunny windows on the ground floor of his house as a studio. He was rather proud of him, as I say.
    Then his sister, Bubbly-aunty, the youngest of my aunts, and then Sunchita and Sushmita, my sisters. They sat at the end of the table, next to the television, which they could not see very well, and the fridge, which they often had to open and fetch something from for my grandfather.
    The far end of the table was not a good place to sit, and there might be placed a village aunt or uncle, a cousin travelling to Dacca on business. And next to them, working back on the other side of the table, might be Dahlia-aunty, my favourite, and Era-aunty. And I was between them and my mother. My grandfather called me Churchill; the rest of the family called me Saadi. Dahlia would lean over and encourage me to eat, especially delicious little things; she would talk to me about pickles in her memory. Nadira I loved, because she was such a good singer, though, of course, not at the dinner table. And my mother sat by my grandfather, as the eldest daughter.
    Two uncles, Boro-mama and Choto-mama, Big-uncle and Little-uncle; six aunts, Mary, Era, Mira, Nadira, Dahlia, Bubbly. Dahlia was my favourite and I was hers.
    6.
    Once, Pultoo-uncle was late for dinner. He was expected, but had gone out in the afternoon and had not returned by the time my grandfather came back. Pultoo had a wide circle of friends at the college of art, and occasionally he was seen in a café or ambling through a park, gesticulating and talking in the middle of ten friends. He was the only one in the family to wear traditional dress all the time, a long shirt and pyjama trousers. The rest of the family were proud of him, and thought that he could dress as he chose. He was thin and dark, with hair that swept back like a film star’s and big eyes set deep in his face. When he was excited, as, in conversation, he often was, his hands chopped the air, like a cook’s at work.
    It was understood that Pultoo-uncle had gone out to a class at the college of art that morning.. My sister Sunchita and I had been allowed to watch the television in the dining room. We had seen Double Deckers , and Tom and Jerry , and a new programme made in Bangladesh. My sister, who liked to lie on her stomach on the dining-table when she watched television, had been shooed off when the table was set; the children’s programmes had come to an end, and the adults’ programmes begun. Soon it would be the news and dinnertime. About the house there was the sense that the kitchen was ready and waiting, the dishes now being kept warm. My grandfather was not a stickler about mealtimes, but he liked to know if someone was going to be late.
    ‘I hope nothing is wrong,’ Mary-aunty said.
    ‘Wrong?’ Era said, alarmed.
    ‘Nonsense, nothing could be wrong,’ Dahlia-aunty said, although everyone remembered the time, not so long before, when young men had failed to come home and were never seen again. That possibility lingered for many years, and people did their families the kindness of being punctual, on the whole, to save their nerves.
    But Pultoo-uncle came in, as the clock in the hall struck eight, brushing his hair back with his hand and depositing a table-top-sized folder by the front door, apologizing as he came. Warm, he smelt of geraniums, and his long shirt was dusty with the red