sparrows to appear newfangled. The diverse, extraordinary components of the entire setting are telescoped in his parents looking like strangers. He senses, fuzzily but forcefully, that he doesn’t know them
at all
– not their essentials – their past, whom they yearned for at fourteen, and what they dreamed of at thirty-one – the kernel of their humanness; creation itself then seems without context. Jamun feels as though he has been cosily swimming underwater, and on gushing up for air has faced an altogether new world, and an outlandish light.
‘So,’ says Shyamanand pawkily, returning the letter, ‘after dissipating the ticket money that you posted, Burfi now implores you to “be a sweetie, a sugar” and send him “at least two hundred”, since the issue is of “life and death, and bloody Baba’d never understand”. Certainly, Baba doesn’t understand, not when life is jiving till dawn in some discotheque, and death is deviant sex with godforsaken hippies. As the world’s champion mother, you’re bullied by your conscience, no doubt, to exhort Burfi to carry on; especially when, as an upshot, he detests his father even more for not being like his poppet mother. Do despatch him the cash. What’s two hundred rupees in these days of inflation? Borrow from peons and typists, thresh about under their oblique derision, but feel saintly, bolster yourself with: I distress myself so that my deserving son can hold his head high in a discotheque. Five years later, will Jamun be as profligate as your elder son?’
Urmila is weeping by then. Her children have seen her sob night and day, to them, her lamentation has become piffling – now and then bothersome, vexatious.
Since that forenoon in Bhubaneshwar, Jamun has time and time again speculated on Burfi’s improvidence and Urmila’s outlook on money, for the attitudes of both have irked him. When he wasn’t yet ten, he would listen with rapt horror to Burfi, then thirteen, composedly cobble together – to bare acquaintances, to anyone who couldn’t verify – the mostpreposterous yarns about their wealth at home, or homes, for he endowed them with several: a kind of ranch outside New Delhi, with its separate swimming pool for the servants; a sort of chalet in Ooty, to which they retreated in the summer; a six-bedroom penthouse suite in Cuffe Parade; etcetera. His father, who smoked a pipe, planned to buy a building or two in Manhattan, but his mother wouldn’t allow him, because, she asserted, how would the nation press on if we showered our money upon foreigners? Of course, Burfi next had to compose sinuous excuses to stymie his disbelieving auditors from visiting him at home, or homes. Jamun would hear his brother fabricate with the misgivings that one senses when a loved one, unready, performs on stage.
When he was nineteen, Burfi’s buddies were the anglicised, modish children of rich men. The affluence of his friends made him sneakingly ashamed of his own family. On weekday afternoons, since his parents would be at office, he and his girlfriend, or a hippie-adventurer, would frequently fetch up at the flat for an hour or so of coupling. They would habitually encounter Jamun, aged fifteen, dawdling in the house in shredded vest and discoloured undies. The sight of him always discomposed, dampened and peeved Burfi. He would bellyache in the evenings, “Why can’t he dress less like a servant? He’s embarrassing.’
‘Why should I stew all afternoon in pants and shirt just to appease Burfi and his soulmates for the one second that they glimpse me?’ Jamun, disputatious, would demur. ‘They can shut their eyes and sniff their way to his room.’
At fifteen, and at twenty-eight, Jamun recognized the disparity in what money denotes to him, and to Burfi – rather, at fifteen, he was witheringly certain; at twenty-eight, he fancied that a difference in their attitudes might exist, but also that it might not matter. He himself-gauges money to be
at all
– not their essentials – their past, whom they yearned for at fourteen, and what they dreamed of at thirty-one – the kernel of their humanness; creation itself then seems without context. Jamun feels as though he has been cosily swimming underwater, and on gushing up for air has faced an altogether new world, and an outlandish light.
‘So,’ says Shyamanand pawkily, returning the letter, ‘after dissipating the ticket money that you posted, Burfi now implores you to “be a sweetie, a sugar” and send him “at least two hundred”, since the issue is of “life and death, and bloody Baba’d never understand”. Certainly, Baba doesn’t understand, not when life is jiving till dawn in some discotheque, and death is deviant sex with godforsaken hippies. As the world’s champion mother, you’re bullied by your conscience, no doubt, to exhort Burfi to carry on; especially when, as an upshot, he detests his father even more for not being like his poppet mother. Do despatch him the cash. What’s two hundred rupees in these days of inflation? Borrow from peons and typists, thresh about under their oblique derision, but feel saintly, bolster yourself with: I distress myself so that my deserving son can hold his head high in a discotheque. Five years later, will Jamun be as profligate as your elder son?’
Urmila is weeping by then. Her children have seen her sob night and day, to them, her lamentation has become piffling – now and then bothersome, vexatious.
Since that forenoon in Bhubaneshwar, Jamun has time and time again speculated on Burfi’s improvidence and Urmila’s outlook on money, for the attitudes of both have irked him. When he wasn’t yet ten, he would listen with rapt horror to Burfi, then thirteen, composedly cobble together – to bare acquaintances, to anyone who couldn’t verify – the mostpreposterous yarns about their wealth at home, or homes, for he endowed them with several: a kind of ranch outside New Delhi, with its separate swimming pool for the servants; a sort of chalet in Ooty, to which they retreated in the summer; a six-bedroom penthouse suite in Cuffe Parade; etcetera. His father, who smoked a pipe, planned to buy a building or two in Manhattan, but his mother wouldn’t allow him, because, she asserted, how would the nation press on if we showered our money upon foreigners? Of course, Burfi next had to compose sinuous excuses to stymie his disbelieving auditors from visiting him at home, or homes. Jamun would hear his brother fabricate with the misgivings that one senses when a loved one, unready, performs on stage.
When he was nineteen, Burfi’s buddies were the anglicised, modish children of rich men. The affluence of his friends made him sneakingly ashamed of his own family. On weekday afternoons, since his parents would be at office, he and his girlfriend, or a hippie-adventurer, would frequently fetch up at the flat for an hour or so of coupling. They would habitually encounter Jamun, aged fifteen, dawdling in the house in shredded vest and discoloured undies. The sight of him always discomposed, dampened and peeved Burfi. He would bellyache in the evenings, “Why can’t he dress less like a servant? He’s embarrassing.’
‘Why should I stew all afternoon in pants and shirt just to appease Burfi and his soulmates for the one second that they glimpse me?’ Jamun, disputatious, would demur. ‘They can shut their eyes and sniff their way to his room.’
At fifteen, and at twenty-eight, Jamun recognized the disparity in what money denotes to him, and to Burfi – rather, at fifteen, he was witheringly certain; at twenty-eight, he fancied that a difference in their attitudes might exist, but also that it might not matter. He himself-gauges money to be
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