A New World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Amit Chaudhuri

unrepentant, he said, “That’s not a real word! The word I was talking about is”—and he spelt “quality.”
    “Ice-cream?” said Bonny, lifting his chin from the seat, as if, like doughnuts, ice-cream was too outrageous to mention here.
    “You can have some later,” promised Jayojit. This was a commitment to be honoured at some unspecified moment.
    “Can I have some now, baba?” asked Bonny, tilting his face into the shadow, towards his father.
    “Not now , Bonny, sorry,” said Jayojit, slapping a housefly off his trousers, and then busily smoothing them again. “See, the ice-cream van’s gone ”—his voice shook as the taxi tried to swerve unsuccessfully around a pothole—“and . . .” He left the sentence unfinished, as if he’d already conveyed what he wanted to say. As an afterthought, he said, “ Gariahat might have ice-cream.”
    Just outside, the sun lay like fire on the pavement; two peasants sat on their haunches upon a kerb.
    There were children everywhere, scattered and released from school; a pavement stall selling newspapers.
    They were approaching the market; the tramlines here met and gleamed.
    “Turn left and stop there,” said Jayojit, pointing to the opposite side of the road.
    They waited for a tram to pass, the taxi already tensed to compete with a neighbouring car to make the first movement. When the taxi jerked forward, Bonny clutched the seat with his fingers, puzzled, but the impulse to race was spent almost as soon as it was surrendered to, and they were no more in motion.
    “How much?” Jayojit asked, opening the door and stepping out. “Careful, Bonny, don’t get out on that side”; afraid because of the buses like juggernauts.
    The meter said nine rupees.
    “Tero taka,” said the driver. Thirteen rupees; lucky number. Jayojit took out the notes from his wallet and handed them to the driver—they were from the second wad of cash he’d got across the counter after coming here, and the perforations from where the staples had been violently prised open still showed—who counted them, and fished in his pocket for change. There seemed to be confusion about whether, indeed, the driver had the change or not.
    “Fourteen, fifteen,” he said finally, as if muttering a charm to the counting of a rupee and two fifty paisa coins, and completed the transaction by dropping them into Jayojit’s palm.
    He turned and found that Bonny wasn’t there. Where in the world is he? He went through the narrow passage between two stalls, and saw a boy in a t-shirt standing before a shop: Bonny.
    “Ei khokababu,” said a voice, “ei khokababu!”
    “Don’t disappear like that,” said Jayojit to the unsurprised boy. “Okay?”
    Bonny assented by saying nothing and lifting his eyes to look at his father; then he rubbed one eye with the back of a hand.
    “Dada—take a look at these shirts!”
    Bonny was wearing sneakers; he must be hot—it might be an idea to buy him a pair of sandals. Where was Bata?
    They went past vendors selling fruit on beds of straw. Mangoes had just come into season, piled pale green on baskets, but theirs was a peculiar family, because the Admiral couldn’t stand mangoes and the mess they made, and Jayojit had inherited his father’s fastidiousness; his mother, over the last few years, had become stoic; and the money she thus saved compensated somewhat for her yearning for the first langra and himsagar. Finally, Jayojit paused and went inside a store and asked for Dove soap. His mother had said “Dove” wistfully when he’d asked her which soap they used these days; it used to be Pears, he knew, but on this visit, like a new discovery, it was Dove; and since it was more expensive, a rare indulgence. As if by coincidence, he now saw an advertisement on one of the glass windows of the cabinets inside. The model, in the make-believe opulence of her bath, looked familiar, but she couldn’t be, she was too young; he’d stopped noticing models for years