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Authors: Raj Kamal Jha
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and Sister and I turn the other way, slightly embarrassed but very happy as Mother reaches out and draws us to her. We can smell the mothballs in her shawl as she tells us the story of how she got up last night and heard the snow, like a piece of cotton wool sliding down the face of a mirror.
She tells us the story for the tenth time but it doesn’t matter and we all laugh, Father holds Mother closer to her, my sister puts her hands in mine and we hold on to each other, the air trapped between our clothes, asking all the gods we know not to let the snow melt.
White in the dark.
Sarah Parker
You’ve been crying for more than five paragraphs.
You began when we stood in the balcony watching the children play with the snow, tying their old red ribbons around their snowmen’s necks, painting cricket balls black for the eyes and the ears. The TV was down, there was nothing to do, you cried and you cried.
Don’t worry, the police officer had told me. Newborns often cry at night, just like that. It doesn’t always mean they need a feed. Let them cry for a while and they usually go back to sleep.
You haven’t. What do I do?
Maybe I should hold you in my arms, my left hand below your head, my right arm underneath your back, your ear against my heart, and take you to the balcony. Show you, through the iron grille, the oil mill where the red flags still droop, where the pigeons stand fast asleep. And maybe if we are lucky, we can see some of them, white and grey patches in the night, their heads turned the other way, their beaks buried in their backs.
We could also stand where your mother stood once upon a time and watched one pigeon die. But it s very dark outside and they say that at this time of the year, late November, dewdrops keep falling from the sky. I could cover you with my handkerchief but then there are sodium vapour lamps on the street. Your eyes will hurt.
The nurse at the hospital has given me a pacifier but she said to wait for a couple of weeks, use it when she’s strong enough to move her lips. So I shall wait.
I’ve read in foreign magazines about things that may help you fall asleep. Tapes that play the music of the womb, mattresses that move up and down as if they have your mother’s heart inside. But I don’t think we get these things in the city.
I could try Toy Centre on Park Street, they say that shop gets its stocks from London, sometimes from Tokyo.
There’s some milk in the fridge but it’s too cold and by the time I warm it, you may slip into sleep again. I could take vou to my study, the room where I’m writing, and put you on the stack of pages that have been written. Maybe the change of place will calm you, from the blue bedspread to the white paper.
But pages flap, their edges are sharp, it’s not safe.
If only Miss Sarah Parker were alive, I wouldn’t be so helpless. Let me tell you the story of Miss Parker.
Long ago, more than one hundred years ago in fact, there was an American woman who worked out of an office of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation in Chowringhee.
When you grow up and if you live in this city, you will have to go to Chowringhee quite often. That’s where all the big offices are, government and private, the markets with fashionable clothes, the pavement vendors who sell eyeglasses in the summer, sweaters in the winter. That’s where the big movie halls are, the Everest Building is, the tallest in the city.
Chowringhee is where most of the buses and trams begin and end their journey. It’s the heart of the city and like blood, we keep rushing there, through the veins and the arteries of the streets and the lanes. To and fro, to and fro.
So that’s where there was a woman called Miss Sarah Parker. And at 7, Chowringhee, she set up a one-room office and she called it the Mesmeric Institute.
Every evening, after office hours, when everyone had gone, when it was quiet, when you couldn’t hear the horses’ hoofs any more, in those days they
She tells us the story for the tenth time but it doesn’t matter and we all laugh, Father holds Mother closer to her, my sister puts her hands in mine and we hold on to each other, the air trapped between our clothes, asking all the gods we know not to let the snow melt.
White in the dark.
Sarah Parker
You’ve been crying for more than five paragraphs.
You began when we stood in the balcony watching the children play with the snow, tying their old red ribbons around their snowmen’s necks, painting cricket balls black for the eyes and the ears. The TV was down, there was nothing to do, you cried and you cried.
Don’t worry, the police officer had told me. Newborns often cry at night, just like that. It doesn’t always mean they need a feed. Let them cry for a while and they usually go back to sleep.
You haven’t. What do I do?
Maybe I should hold you in my arms, my left hand below your head, my right arm underneath your back, your ear against my heart, and take you to the balcony. Show you, through the iron grille, the oil mill where the red flags still droop, where the pigeons stand fast asleep. And maybe if we are lucky, we can see some of them, white and grey patches in the night, their heads turned the other way, their beaks buried in their backs.
We could also stand where your mother stood once upon a time and watched one pigeon die. But it s very dark outside and they say that at this time of the year, late November, dewdrops keep falling from the sky. I could cover you with my handkerchief but then there are sodium vapour lamps on the street. Your eyes will hurt.
The nurse at the hospital has given me a pacifier but she said to wait for a couple of weeks, use it when she’s strong enough to move her lips. So I shall wait.
I’ve read in foreign magazines about things that may help you fall asleep. Tapes that play the music of the womb, mattresses that move up and down as if they have your mother’s heart inside. But I don’t think we get these things in the city.
I could try Toy Centre on Park Street, they say that shop gets its stocks from London, sometimes from Tokyo.
There’s some milk in the fridge but it’s too cold and by the time I warm it, you may slip into sleep again. I could take vou to my study, the room where I’m writing, and put you on the stack of pages that have been written. Maybe the change of place will calm you, from the blue bedspread to the white paper.
But pages flap, their edges are sharp, it’s not safe.
If only Miss Sarah Parker were alive, I wouldn’t be so helpless. Let me tell you the story of Miss Parker.
Long ago, more than one hundred years ago in fact, there was an American woman who worked out of an office of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation in Chowringhee.
When you grow up and if you live in this city, you will have to go to Chowringhee quite often. That’s where all the big offices are, government and private, the markets with fashionable clothes, the pavement vendors who sell eyeglasses in the summer, sweaters in the winter. That’s where the big movie halls are, the Everest Building is, the tallest in the city.
Chowringhee is where most of the buses and trams begin and end their journey. It’s the heart of the city and like blood, we keep rushing there, through the veins and the arteries of the streets and the lanes. To and fro, to and fro.
So that’s where there was a woman called Miss Sarah Parker. And at 7, Chowringhee, she set up a one-room office and she called it the Mesmeric Institute.
Every evening, after office hours, when everyone had gone, when it was quiet, when you couldn’t hear the horses’ hoofs any more, in those days they
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