Scenes From Early Life Read Free Page A

dust of the street. He had two friends with him, two other artists. Their names were Kajol and Kanaq. Kanaq fascinated me and my sisters because she came from a tribe; her appearance was highly exotic, with her slanted eyes and sleepy air. It was not unusual for Pultoo to bring friends for dinner, and these two often arrived at my grandfather’s house in the late afternoon on a Friday, and stayed for dinner with only a little urging, only one diffident invitation. They lived in lodgings, and I believe they enjoyed the chance of a family dinner. My grandfather did not really care who came for dinner; my grandmother, on the other hand, liked to be given the chance to offer an invitation.
    ‘Can we find space for these two?’ Pultoo said, when he came back from washing, his face wet and glistening, his white teeth shining. ‘I’m sure there is space.’
    My grandmother muttered something, and went off to the kitchen with the bare appearance of graciousness.
    ‘I do like them,’ my sister Sunchita said, in her adult, mature, book-reading way about the guests, as we went back to the dining room to catch the rest of the television before the news started. ‘But their painting is awful.’
    7.
    When the news was finished, my grandmother asked Pultoo what he had been doing at the art college that morning. He asked her permission to get out the drawings from his life class, which he had left in the folder. He passed them round the table; they were charcoal drawings of a naked man sitting on a box. ‘I think this one is the best,’ my grandfather said simply, when they got to him.
    ‘And we were late because we were planning something,’ Pultoo said.
    ‘Yes,’ Mary-aunty said. ‘You certainly were late.’
    ‘Late, yes,’ Era said. She often agreed with her sisters, in an echo; she was shy and did not venture her own opinions easily. Even her echoes of opinions were often given first in the direction of her plate.
    ‘We really got carried away,’ Kanaq said, her slanting eyes looking at the biriani. ‘It is such a good idea.’
    ‘We are going to produce greetings cards,’ Kajol said. ‘People always like greetings cards – we are going to give them something special.’
    My uncle went on to explain that their plan was for hand-made cards, sketches in pen and ink, in watercolours and in pencil, and to sell them on a stall in Ramana field in the first instance. ‘After that, if it is successful, we can think about opening a shop,’ Pultoo said. ‘It is such a good idea, I don’t know why no one has thought of it before.’
    The cards would be for the new year. In Bangladesh, Choto-mama said, people were always sending cards for any reason; but they were mass-produced, the same cards that were sold anywhere, and did not speak to the sender or to the recipient. ‘I saw a birthday card,’ my uncle’s friend Kajol said. ‘It was a photograph of a mountainside in the Himalaya, I expect, and the message inside was “This is what I dream of . . .” It means nothing, that kind of thing. Produced in factories, designed by slaves.’
    ‘Yes,’ Pultoo said, in his excitable way. ‘People would not buy that if they could buy the sort of thing we are going to make for them.’
    ‘What sort of thing?’ my grandmother said.
    I wondered whether their idea was to make cards with pictures of naked people on them. I did not think people would want to buy those. But Pultoo-uncle explained that they would be drawing and painting famous views in Bangladesh, typical scenes of Bangladesh, such as a village house or a tea plantation, perhaps even well-known corners of Dacca. ‘I would much prefer to see a hand-drawn picture like that,’ Pultoo said.
    ‘When are your teachers coming?’ Shibli called to Dahlia-aunty. ‘The musicians.’
    ‘Quiet, Shibli,’ Nani said, in her stagy way. ‘Don’t you have any respect? Your uncle is talking about your country.’
    ‘Your country, yes,’ Era said.
    8.
    The servants in