Fiction: Three women from Kolkata are on a journey across the worlds of the living and the dead
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Men are bastards, Mishu-moni, was a pronouncement for which my grandmother switched to English. She’d pause for effect, take a measured sip of her whisky and tell me stories of bastardous men.
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I was 13 or 14 at the time. Thima somewhere in her sixties, with a dead husband and a dead son behind her, and her body neatly divided into three sufferings – spondylosis on top, irritable bowel in the middle, arthritis below.
But her evening ritual did not suffer.
At half past six, when other grandmothers in other houses were lighting incense, ringing their little brass bells and sending up prayers to 33 crore gods, Thima attended to more important business. She unlocked her almirah, stroked her chiffons and organzas for the right sari to wear, before ringing her own little brass bell for Bani, our help, to bring in a glass of Scotch.
Thima. In front of the mirror. In a perfectly tailored sleeveless blouse, matching petticoat. Thima wrapping her sari in intricate folds and tucks, her fingers spread out like a dancer’s mudra, swishing this way and that, magically gathering cloth into neat concertina pleats like the paper fans I made on breezeless summer days.
And I, her partner, playmate, pleat-tweaker, poised...