I have a 1.30pm flight to Varanasi.
Then we will be taking you Mr. Eliot because you are our friend from Australia. We are tired too. We will be seeing you in the morning. I am thinking 10.30am.
His luggage was waiting him in the small foyer of the hotel.
Please follow me Mr. Wilson.
They climbed two flights of stairs and on the second floor there was a small sitting room and two dining settings and from here he had access to his bedroom. The man unlocked the bedroom door and pushed it open.
This one is your room Mr. Wilson. I hope that you will be liking it. We will serve breakfast here from 7.30am.
Thank you, the room looks great.
The young man put down the backpack and red rolling case next to the double bed and then he closed the curtains across the window and the double glass doors that looked out onto a small balcony. He opened the door of the bathroom and poked his head in for a second. He turned on the air conditioner and left it on and turned on the TV and then turned it off. He was finished. Eliot thanked him and he left.
Eliot kicked off his thongs and noticed his bandaged toe. He lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling. He was there and he told himself that he had done ok, no serious mishaps, no Special moments. He had kept the monkey in his head quiet except maybe for a couple of occasions in the taxi but that might have happened to anyone and he had maintained his equilibrium for most of the time, only disturbed by the fat Sikh on flight AHK 417. He had done it without Marion too and he said I can keep doing this.
He reached across the bed and dragged his small backpack towards him. He unzipped the small front pocket and took out the envelope. The envelope that he had put away , the letter that he had read once and because it made him cry, he had chosen not to read again .The letter that he had taken from the bedside drawer and put in the front pocket of his small backpack just before Louise picked him up to drive him to the airport. Now he needed to read it. He opened the envelope.
Dear Eliot,
You know that you are so special to me and I think that I am lucky to have spent most of my life with you. When I have gone, value every day. Move on. Look to the future and do me proud by choosing the next stage in your life and by making it count.
With all my love
Marion xx
He put down the letter and tiredness had its arms around him and the letter made him feel melancholy. He had seen enough in life to know how lucky he had been. Those words had made him feel positive too, here was the permission to start a new life. He could never be without her but this was his journey. A good night’s sleep was what he needed now and then he would be ready for tomorrow. He lay on his back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. The air conditioner was starting to kick in, his neck was cool so he sat up and untied his ponytail and then the customary shake of his head and his hair fell over his shoulders. The idea jumped into his head like it had always being hiding somewhere inside there and what jumped into his head would be something that he would do in the morning, when the morning was still quite young.
13.
Not long after Eliot had closed his eyes and not too far away from the Emperor Residency, Pintu and Ravi sat on two pallet beds under a shelter of blue plastic tarpaulin in front of the house and taxi depot of Mr. Aadi Baag, the almost mansion of the owner of the clapped out taxi that they drove every day and night. Despite the hour, Mr. Baag was there in the heat of the night, ready to take his entitlement. As he waited for his entitlement he stroked his thin black moustache that had not a hint of grey. Sensibly Pintu and Ravi’s had a secret and that was that they had held back a bit of the money that they were expected to give up and tomorrow they hoped that the man with the ponytail would provide them with more.
The taxi’s engine made cracking noises as it cooled and they sat on the pallets and drank Director’s Special from a bottle they kept under the front seat from glasses that they kept in the glove box. Because they would be returning to Dum Dum in the morning and the morning was not too far away they had decided that driving to the comforts of home in Rajpur Sonarpur was not a good idea, so Pintu had sent a message to Nerada to say they would not be coming home, so that when the whiskey kicked in proper they could lie back on their pallets and catch a bit of sleep.
This Mr.Eliot he is OK I am thinking and he is not having his head up his arse like a lot of tourists and he is being friendly.
Yes he is OK, but they are all the same, he thinks that he will miss those rupees, it is like what do they say, chicken feet to him. In Australia he proabably lives on a big house with a swimming pool. You know my cousin, Ajit, he is living in Perth and he tells me that everyone has a swimming pool behind their house and maybe three cars in their garage and maybe a boat as well. Everyone is rich even if they don’t think they are.
Well all the better for us tomorrow Ravi, soon you can buy Aditya a new sari and little Virat his school books.
There is another thing that I don’t understand about the westerner men. Why do they dress like little boy? This Mr. Eliot is old but he dresses in shorts and sandals and silly T shirt. How old does he think he is? He is like our children. And I am looking at his hair and laughing inside. He is looking like a tail of a horse. I am thinking that when one is getting this old they should be home having their grandchildren on their knees. It is too old to be travelling like a single man who wants a bit of everything. I think that their fathers are spoiling them when they are growing up so maybe they never grow up
Yes I am seeing this too and maybe because life is too easy that is another reason that they never grow up, always being the little boy who is expecting everything to happen just for him, like he is wanting. Maybe you and I are lucky that we grow up in Kolkata where there are simple problems.....but I am also thinking I am tired and it is time for some sleep.
Pintu lay back on the pallet and rested his head on his hands.
Good night Ravi, tomorrow it will be another day.
Good night Pintu the door.
They both smiled in the half light.
14.
It was Carol’s first day at work, she had slept well in her new room in the nurses dormitory adjacent to the hospital, exhausted from the travel. The office girl, Fitri had just put a meal of Mie Goreng wrapped in brown paper on her desk. Carol was a little nervous because after morning break, in ten minutes, she would have a meeting with her boss Faraan and she knew that then she would better understand the challenges in front of her. Fitri stared across the office at her and smiled a smile of expectation. You like this food she said, not too spicy? Carol knew that she would have to get to like Sumatran food.
As Carol sat across the desk from Faran, when the new day was beginning to warm in Kolkata, Eliot absorbed the light and the smells like he had with Marion in Siliguri and Darjeeling years before and he was excited. He left his bed and put on his lungi and opened the curtains and the double glass doors that opened onto his balcony and the warmth felt friendly. A dog lay curled up in the middle of the road below and the chapati cart went around the dog and an old man on a push bike went around the dog, and the motorbike carrying four boys without helmets too and the dog didn’t move. He was in India. Across the road two women in colourful saris sat squatting beside each other hand washing some clothes in large metal basins and one looked up and noticed Eliot and waved with a smile and then the other and he waved back and he always knew that to acknowledge the existence of another human being who you didn’t
