The Glass Palace (75 page)

A
s the only child in the house, Jaya had the run of Lankasuka when she was growing up. Her aunt Bela lived upstairs, inheriting the flat after her parents' death. She never married and the everyday tasks of looking after Jaya fell mainly to her: it was in her flat that Jaya usually slept and ate.

But Rajkumar was never more than one flight of stairs away: after Dolly's departure, he continued to live on the ground floor, in Uma's flat. He had a small room of his own, next to the kitchen, furnished sparsely, with a narrow bed and a couple of bookshelves.

The only inessential object in Rajkumar's room was a radio— an old-fashioned Paillard with a wooden cabinet, and a textile-covered grille. Rajkumar always took his afternoon siesta with the radio on—it was Jaya who usually turned it off, after coming home from school. The silencing of the radio would often rouse Rajkumar from his nap. He would sit up, leaning back against his pillow, settling his granddaughter beside him. When he put his arm around Jaya's shoulders she would disappear into the crook of his elbow; his hands were huge, the skin very dark, marbled with lighter-coloured veins. The white hairs on his knuckles stood out in startling contrast. He would shut his eyes and the hollows of his face would fill with leathery creases. And then he would begin to talk; stories
would come pouring out of him—of places that Jaya had never been to and never seen; of images and scenes that were so vivid as to brim over from the measuring cup of reality into an ocean of dreams. She lived in his stories.

Rajkumar's favourite haunt was a small Buddhist temple in the centre of the city, a place that Dolly had liked to visit too, in the past. This was where Calcutta's Burmese community forgathered, and on special occasions Rajkumar would take Jaya there with him. The temple was on the fourth floor of a tumbledown old building, in an area where the streets were clogged with traffic and the air was dense with diesel smoke. They would make their way across town on a bus and get off at the stop for the Eden Hospital. They'd climb up the grimy marble stairs and when they reached the top, they would step into a hall that seemed a world away from its surroundings: full of light, perfumed with the scent of fresh flowers, its floors shining clean. On the floor there would be rush mats, woven in distinctive patterns: different from Indian mats, although at the same time, not dissimilar.

The temple was always at its liveliest during the great Burmese festivals—Thingyan, the water festival that inaugurated the Burmese New Year; Waso, which marked the beginning of Thadin, the annual three-month period of fasting and abstinence; and Thadingyut, the festival of light, which celebrated its end.

Once, when Jaya was ten, Rajkumar took her to the temple for Thadingyut. The temple was filled with people; women were bustling about in their longyis, preparing a feast; the walls glowed with the shimmering light of hundreds of lamps and candles. Suddenly, in the midst of the noise and the bustle, there was a hush. Whispers ran around the room: ‘The Princess . . . the Second Princess, she's coming up the stairs . . .'

The Princess stepped in and there was a quickening of breath, a nudging of elbows; those who knew how performed the shiko. The Princess was wearing a scarlet htamein and a kind of sash; she was in her late sixties, with her greying hair tied at the back of her head in a severe little bun. She was tiny,
with a kindly face and black, twinkling eyes. She too was living in India then, in the hill-station of Kalimpong. Her circumstances were known to be extremely straitened.

The Princess exchanged a few gracious pleasantries with the people around her. Then her eyes fell on Rajkumar and her face creased into a fond, warm smile. She broke off her conversations; the crowd parted and she made her way slowly across the room. Every eye in the temple was now on Rajkumar. Jaya could feel herself swelling with pride on her grandfather's behalf.

The Princess greeted Rajkumar warmly, in Burmese; Jaya couldn't understand a word of their conversation, but she watched both their faces carefully, studying their changing expressions, smiling when they smiled, frowning when they were grave. Then Rajkumar introduced her: ‘And this is my granddaughter . . .'

Jaya had never met a princess before and didn't know what to do. But she was not without a certain resourcefulness; she recalled a movie she had recently seen—was it
Sleeping Beauty
or
Cinderella
?
—
and sketched the beginning of a curtsey, holding the edge of her dress pinched between finger and thumb. She was rewarded with a hug from the Princess.

Later, people gathered around Rajkumar, wondering why she had singled him out. ‘What did Her Highness say?' they asked. ‘How did she know you?'

‘Oh, I've known her most of my life,' Rajkumar said off-handedly.

‘Really?'

‘Yes. The first time I saw her was in Mandalay and she was just six months old.'

‘Oh? And how did that come about?'

And then Rajkumar would start at the beginning, going back to that day more than sixty years before, when he had heard the sound of English cannon rolling in across the plain to the walls of Mandalay's fort.

In a quiet corner of Lankasuka, there was a niche that served as a shrine to Jaya's parents and her uncle, Arjun. Two framed photographs stood in the niche: one of these was a picture of Manju and Neel, taken at their wedding—they'd been caught glancing up from the sacramental fire, in surprise. The hooded veil of Manju's sari had slipped momentarily from her head. They were smiling, their faces shining and radiant. The photograph of Arjun was taken at Howrah Station: he was in uniform, laughing. A second face was clearly discernible, over his shoulder: Bela told her niece that this was her uncle's batman, Kishan Singh.

Three times each year, Bela and Jaya would perform a small ceremony at their shrine. They'd garland the photographs and light incense. Bela would hand Jaya flowers, directing her to pay her respects to her mother, her father and Arjun, the uncle she had never known. But when Bela lit the
dhoop
sticks, there were always four bunches, not three. Without ever being told, Jaya knew that the extra one was for Kishan Singh: he too was among their dead.

It was only when Jaya was ten years old, already conscious of a growing interest in cameras and photographs, that it occurred to her to ask her aunt about the pictures and who had taken them.

Bela was surprised. ‘I thought you knew,' she said in puzzlement. ‘They were taken by your uncle Dinu.'

‘And who was that?' said Jaya.

This was how Jaya learnt that she had a second uncle, on her father's side—an uncle who had not been memorialised because his fate was unknown. In Lankasuka no one ever spoke of Dinu—neither Rajkumar, nor Uma nor Bela. No one knew what had become of him. He was known to have stayed on at Morningside until the last weeks of 1942. At some point after that he'd left for Burma. Nothing had been heard from him since. Privately everyone suspected that he had become yet another casualty of the war, but no one wished to be the first to voice this fear and, as a result, Dinu's name was never mentioned in the house.

Through the late 1940s, the shadows of the Second World War deepened over Burma. First there were protracted civil conflicts and a large-scale Communist uprising. Then, in 1962, General Ne Win seized power in a coup and the country became subject to the bizarre, maniacal whimsies of its dictator: Burma, ‘the golden', became synonymous with poverty, tyranny and misgovernment. Dinu was among the many millions who had vanished into the darkness.

Until the day of her marriage Jaya lived in Lankasuka, with Bela, Uma and Rajkumar. She married young, at the age of seventeen. Her husband was a doctor, ten years older. They were very much in love and a year after the wedding, they had a son.

But when the boy was two years old, tragedy struck: his father was killed in a train accident.

Soon after this Jaya moved back to Lankasuka. With her aunt Bela's support, she enrolled at Calcutta University, took a degree and found a job as a college teacher. She worked hard to give her son a good education. He went to the city's best schools and colleges and at the age of twenty-two he won a scholarship and went abroad.

Now for the first time in years, Jaya had time on her hands. She resumed work on a long-delayed PhD thesis, on the history of photography in India.

In 1996 Jaya's college sent her to an art history conference at the University of Goa. On the way, while changing planes at Bombay airport, she was ambushed by one of the worst of all possible airport experiences: on arriving at the check-in counter she was told that her plane had been overbooked. If she wanted to be sure of a seat she would have to wait at least a couple of days; alternatively the airline would pay for a bus or a train.

Jaya went to another counter, brandishing her ticket. She found herself at the end of a long line of angry people; they
were all shouting the same refrain at the desk-clerk: ‘But we had reservations . . .'

Jaya was slightly built and of medium height. Her hair was wispy and grey and she looked very much what she was—an unassuming and rather withdrawn college professor who often had difficulty keeping order in class. She knew that there was no point in adding her voice to the chorus of indignation at the counter: where the others had been foiled, no one was less likely to prevail than someone such as herself. She decided to take the train.

Bombay was not a city that Jaya knew well. She collected a voucher and went to Shivaji station on a bus provided by the airline. She bought a railway timetable and learnt that the earliest train was not till several hours later. She got her ticket and then decided to go for a walk. She checked her suitcase into the left-luggage facility and stepped out of the station. It was late afternoon, the start of the rush hour; she allowed herself to be swept along by the surging crowds.

After a while she found herself standing beside the tinted doors of an air-conditioned art gallery. Her breath created a misty halo on the chilled green glass. There was a flyer on the door, announcing an exhibit of newly discovered work by a pioneering photographer from the early years of the century, a hitherto unknown Parsee woman. At the top of the flyer there was a small graphic, a computer-shrunken reproduction of one of the photographs in the exhibition—a group portrait of four seated figures. There was something about the picture that caught Jaya's eye. She pushed the door open. The gallery was very cold and almost empty. There was the usual surly chowkidar perched on a stool, and behind a desk, a bored-looking woman in a silk sari and diamond nose-ring.

‘Could you please show me the picture that's on this flyer?' The woman must have heard a note of excitement in Jaya's voice for she rose quickly to her feet and led her to the far corner of the gallery. ‘That one?'

Jaya nodded. The image was blown up to a great size, larger than a poster, whereas the version she remembered was
no bigger than a postcard. She had known the picture all her life, but she was looking at it now as though for the first time. The picture was taken in the garden of the Collector's residence. Four chairs were placed in a semicircular arrangement on a finely trimmed lawn. Uma and her husband were at the centre of the group, and seated beside them, on either side, were Dolly and Rajkumar.

Behind them was a terraced garden, descending steeply down the side of a hill. A number of people were visible in shadowy outline in the middle distance, in carefully arranged postures— servants, grooms and gardeners, all equipped with the instruments of their various trades: sickles, hoes, whips. In the background, stretched across the top of the frame, was a landscape—so sweeping and dramatic that it looked like a painted backdrop: a river curled round a hill and broadened into an estuary, a line of cliffs jutted out into a frothing sea, a palm-fringed beach slid gently into a sun-washed bay.

The Collector was in the foreground, thin and dapper, dressed in a three-button linen suit. He was sitting perched on the edge of his chair like an alert bird, with his head cocked at a stiff and slightly distrustful angle. Uma, on the other hand, seemed very much at ease. There was a certain poise and self-assurance about her demeanour, about the way her hand rested lightly on her knees. She was wearing a plain, light-coloured sari, with an embroidered border; the end was draped shawl-like over her head. Her eyes were large and long-lashed, her face generous but also strong: Jaya remembered it well from her childhood. It was strange, in retrospect, to think how little Uma's appearance had changed over the course of her life.