A New World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Amit Chaudhuri Page B
Authors: Amit Chaudhuri
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it!) but things aren’t half as bad as you think. Snap out of it, pal, and send me 1,500 words when you feel like it. Don’t leave it till the millennium. Best, Tony.” Antonio, settled with three children, married to a half-Vietnamese, half-French American, setting up the book for a bad review, knowing full well Jayojit’s distaste for airy-fairy “theory.” But Bonny was getting his t-shirt damp with the spray. Afraid of being reprimanded by his mother (he feared not so much his mother’s words as her silences), Jayojit said:
“Come in here, you!”
“Oh, baba!”
He hopped into the shop, throwing a glance at the books stacked everywhere. Jayojit brushed the moisture from the boy’s hair with his fingers. “Stand still!” Then: “Turn round”; the boy turning not so much obediently as displaying his swiftness; yet the tiniest bit afraid of his father’s brusqueness. “Okay.” He was thin now with burnt-up energy, but when he’d been born he’d been seven and a half pounds and his grandmother, his mother’s mother, had said, after the long night: “Ki bonny baby eta!” Yes, Bonny had been pink (“a little white mouse,” his mother had called him), with a hint of black hair which Amala repeatedly admired. They’d been in Claremont then, the nursing home had been on the outskirts, and the grandmother had come to be with her daughter. A week later, when it had come home, Jayojit had taken footage of the child, its first movements in the cot between the double bed and cupboard, and moments captured from its spells of sleep, on a camcorder, dipping into the baby’s life with the lens for two days, and then made videos for both sets of parents, who’d noted both the baby and the beauty of the house. The shopkeeper seemed not to notice the boy and the thirty-seven-year-old father’s exchange; keeping a vigil, he stared at Jayojit, his eyelids flickered respectfully, and, after opening his mouth to yawn, turned back to the books he was stacking on the table.
“How much is this?” asked Jayojit. He was holding a large hardcover in one hand; the picture of a cheetah, gold and black, jumped out of the cover. Its shadow leapt with the lightning.
The shopkeeper touched the book as if he intended, by some power of transformation, to make it seem like a saleable commodity. Wrapped in cellophane, its price was scribbled on the first page. “Five hundred and twenty rupees,” he said; some of his teeth were rust-brown with betel. His eyes held Jayojit’s. “Hm.” Jayojit turned the pages and consulted them heavy-handedly, superiorly. “Well, less than what I’d pay for it in New York,” he thought.
THE NEXT MORNING, the first day of the last week of May, he woke up feeling vulnerable and exposed. He hadn’t felt desire in a long time. Bonny’d been born, and at that time there had been a cutting off of sexual activity. Instead, when they had time, they would go to parks and sit on benches, admire the Fall’s redness that hung about the trees like an aura, talk about the new General Electric factory that was to come up in the outskirts and what it would do to jobs and to Claremont, and discuss moving to big cities in the East.
“When I was a kid, you know,” he told her when they were talking about the appeal of New York, and the fact that New York is attractive to every kind of Indian, from taxi drivers to dentists, “I used to think the Big Apple was the studio where the Beatles recorded their songs.”
She, in turn, warming to her memory of the Beatles, revealed to him how she’d liked Paul the best of the four, and how her friends would count how old they’d be when he was thirty-five. “ I’m twenty-nine now,” she said, watching two children play with a frisbee. “He must be . . . forty-five.”
“You’ll still be quite young when he’s sixty-four,” said Jayojit.
She turned to him in mock disdain. “Poor joke, Mr. Chatterjee,” she said.
“I’m a Lennon fan
“Come in here, you!”
“Oh, baba!”
He hopped into the shop, throwing a glance at the books stacked everywhere. Jayojit brushed the moisture from the boy’s hair with his fingers. “Stand still!” Then: “Turn round”; the boy turning not so much obediently as displaying his swiftness; yet the tiniest bit afraid of his father’s brusqueness. “Okay.” He was thin now with burnt-up energy, but when he’d been born he’d been seven and a half pounds and his grandmother, his mother’s mother, had said, after the long night: “Ki bonny baby eta!” Yes, Bonny had been pink (“a little white mouse,” his mother had called him), with a hint of black hair which Amala repeatedly admired. They’d been in Claremont then, the nursing home had been on the outskirts, and the grandmother had come to be with her daughter. A week later, when it had come home, Jayojit had taken footage of the child, its first movements in the cot between the double bed and cupboard, and moments captured from its spells of sleep, on a camcorder, dipping into the baby’s life with the lens for two days, and then made videos for both sets of parents, who’d noted both the baby and the beauty of the house. The shopkeeper seemed not to notice the boy and the thirty-seven-year-old father’s exchange; keeping a vigil, he stared at Jayojit, his eyelids flickered respectfully, and, after opening his mouth to yawn, turned back to the books he was stacking on the table.
“How much is this?” asked Jayojit. He was holding a large hardcover in one hand; the picture of a cheetah, gold and black, jumped out of the cover. Its shadow leapt with the lightning.
The shopkeeper touched the book as if he intended, by some power of transformation, to make it seem like a saleable commodity. Wrapped in cellophane, its price was scribbled on the first page. “Five hundred and twenty rupees,” he said; some of his teeth were rust-brown with betel. His eyes held Jayojit’s. “Hm.” Jayojit turned the pages and consulted them heavy-handedly, superiorly. “Well, less than what I’d pay for it in New York,” he thought.
THE NEXT MORNING, the first day of the last week of May, he woke up feeling vulnerable and exposed. He hadn’t felt desire in a long time. Bonny’d been born, and at that time there had been a cutting off of sexual activity. Instead, when they had time, they would go to parks and sit on benches, admire the Fall’s redness that hung about the trees like an aura, talk about the new General Electric factory that was to come up in the outskirts and what it would do to jobs and to Claremont, and discuss moving to big cities in the East.
“When I was a kid, you know,” he told her when they were talking about the appeal of New York, and the fact that New York is attractive to every kind of Indian, from taxi drivers to dentists, “I used to think the Big Apple was the studio where the Beatles recorded their songs.”
She, in turn, warming to her memory of the Beatles, revealed to him how she’d liked Paul the best of the four, and how her friends would count how old they’d be when he was thirty-five. “ I’m twenty-nine now,” she said, watching two children play with a frisbee. “He must be . . . forty-five.”
“You’ll still be quite young when he’s sixty-four,” said Jayojit.
She turned to him in mock disdain. “Poor joke, Mr. Chatterjee,” she said.
“I’m a Lennon fan
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