The roots of the banyan tree were nothing new to me. I had seen many trees and many roots – banyan and otherwise – in my life. The one growing from, and into, and around the cracks of the front wall next door was nothing new either. I had seen it open its first couple of eyes, and now, though not a formidable forest of aerial roots and fat trunk yet, it was already clear that it would consume the wall, like some demonic baby, once attached to the mother’s nipple, drink her dry and then begin to grow around her breast and over the rest of her body. The ultimate maternal sacrifice performed by the poor wall. And, if women are the fields upon which men sow their seeds, then every wall, every hill, every cliff top, every building, every wet, dry, barren or rancid patch of soil must be female. And every tree, plant or fungus must be male.

I stood on the balcony watching the late afternoon golden world below and in front of me. I love plants and trees, but just at that moment the thought of yet another woman subjugated, broken, consumed. The thought overwhelmed me. I wanted to take a machete and hack the little tree to pieces until every fragment and residue of its intrusion could be removed from the wall. And then I was angry with myself. Stupid girl! Stupid, stupid girl! Trees bear fruit. They perpetuate life. These are female characteristics. Seeds are like eggs out of which hatch new trees. The banyan is a female tree bringing life to an otherwise sterile wall. And the ferns and mosses that suddenly appear clinging to its surface during the monsoon rains are also female.

I felt comforted that I wasn’t witnessing a rape on my own doorstep. But angry with myself for succumbing to the notion of women as fields upon which men sow their seeds. Men don’t sow seeds. They just constantly look for suitable flowers to pollinate.

In two more days, I will be on my first aeroplane journey. Sometimes I can look so serious, so fierce, but with a calmness that seems to terrify people. They never disagree with me. Not for too long anyway. My father wanted to accompany me to England for the first few days to get me settled in. I didn’t debate. I just looked him straight in the eye and said “No!” There was no point trying to run away from someone and then take them with you. And then I went to the bathroom and quietly vomited. I hated my father. And I hated looking at him. My parents didn’t know this, but I was never coming back again. Not to them anyway. I had spent more than half my entire life waiting for this moment. I almost felt that I had been born just so that I could make this journey and find Matthew Ryan. It was my duty.

For the first time since moving to Calcutta about ten years ago, I went back to Darjeeling last week. Everybody was astonished, as the rest of the family had gone there on holiday many times to see old friends and walk around the mountains, while I always refused and stayed behind with my aunt Suchitra and her family. They really are a noisy bunch who always insist that I should be noisy too and pretend to be jolly so that we can all sit around with our jolly smiles and watch the latest Bollywood spectacular. Or even worse, a Bangla wannabe of one. I just closed my eyes and meditated or sat in a corner and read my book.

My brother, Parthak, wanted to go with me last week. He told me that I needed him. He told me that I didn’t know my way round those mountains, while he was an expert. I told him that I remembered every crack and boulder better than the lines on the palms of my hands. I didn’t want him accompanying me, as he’s a lafanga, an imbecile who often talks non-stop and laughs embarrassingly at all the wrong moments. I didn’t want background chit-chat and booming laughter buzzing around my ear like a slow and bloated suicidal mosquito just asking to be killed. I wanted to be alone and I wanted silence so that I could hear every sound that the mountains could make. I wanted to listen to the raindrops and every cowbell and Buddhist gong. But, most of all, I wanted to cry and mourn the sudden death of my childhood, and I wanted to say goodbye to Shaquilla, and give her flowers. I had to be alone.

I think she would have liked orchids, but I gave her frangipani, as these white fragrant waxy flowers are my favourite. But these were not ordered, threaded and regimented into a garland as was common, but a small branch, as frangipani flowers always naturally arranged themselves as a bunch surrounded by their long dark leaves.

We walked around the mountainside for a long time and talked while the clouds enveloped both of us and I cried and promised that I would study hard at Oxford and come back with a first class law degree and fight her case. I then planted the frangipani branch into the soil, plucked one of the flowers, tore off the petals and let them float away with the clouds. I watched them drift, rise up with the breeze, descend and disappear into the mist. And then I imagined a little girl in a village below catching one in her hair as she picked bananas.

I was supposed to have stayed there with old family friends. But I didn’t, as I didn’t trust any of them and despised them all. When I returned home three days later, I found my family distraught with worry. “Where did you go? Why didn’t you stay with …? Why didn’t you telephone?” they asked. I looked at them and quietly, but gravely said, “Women get killed on mountains all the time! It’s something that happens.” My mother started crying. Her daughter was going to the other side of the world in less than a week, and didn’t seem to care about their feelings at all. I was impotent to console her.

When I first told them that I was going to Oxford and that I had got myself a scholarship, my mother was horrified and my father was ecstatic. He told all his friends and bought sweets for everyone. A child of his was going to Oxford. Oxford. Of course, he would have preferred it if it was his son. But Parthak was a loafer who never studied or worked at anything. He just drank tea all day and beer all night. No doubt he’ll be found something in the family business. But I know that, if I wanted to, I would one day inherit everything, as my brother is too stupid to manage things properly and my father knows this.

My mother was terrified at the thought of me going so far away. “The daughter that has hardly said a word for the last thirteen years. And now, she was going away, and might never be heard again.” But my father’s excitement had fructified across town like a kind of fungal infection, so that, after a while, my mother stopped voicing her doubts. Nobody was going to listen.

I had been standing on the balcony so long. It was getting dark and the solitary light bulbs in the little shops and snack places below were already turned on. They were still dark places with their low wattage, but not reduced to blurred silhouettes. I could smell the puris frying and wanted to reach out and grab a couple, as I was really hungry. Then I remembered Revati, the goddess with her long tongue entering the body of animals to slay every last demon, and my spirits fell silent. What did happen during that great battle between the gods and the demons? How can one young girl, even with a long tongue, change everything?

There were people in the house. My parents had decided to have a farewell dinner party for me. I, however, did not wish to socialise and listen to all the advice and inevitable tales of horror regarding my stay in England. So, I locked the door of my room so that nobody could follow me out onto the balcony. Eventually, somebody will venture out onto one of the other balconies and start talking to me from there, and my silence will be disrupted. This was a certainty!

I decided to go in and turned on the light and the ceiling fan. I stood in front of the mirror. I looked at myself. So stern. So severe. Dark, dark hair. Coconut-oiled. Front-parted. A loose bun at the neck-line, held in place by a piece of stiff curved leather and a black wooden needle pointing through the holes and into my hair. Not a strand out of place. Ordered. Controlled. Defiant in its conformity in a world that thinks it is unconformist. No make-up. No cream. Just sweat.

The tiktiki lizard scurried up the wall. Looked at me. I looked at myself. I took off the dark glasses and saw the tear gently rolling down the cheeks of a young woman entombed in a dead woman’s aroma. Uma mamani had died a long time ago. Now, it’s just Uma. It’s been just Uma for a long time. No terms of endearment. Just Uma.

Such a serious face! I tried to smile. My cheeks quivered as the ends of my mouth tried to spread themselves across pioneering facial ground. Then, unable to cope with the difficulty of the terrain, they retreated back to their former homes. My eyes watched their defeat. My eyes watched themselves defeated. The faraway look made me shiver. I put my arms around myself, held myself tightly, stepped away from the mirror and sat, knees drawn into my body in a foetal position, gently rocking, up and down.

Mirrors have stories. Stories bundled inside many layers of subconscious fabric. You can change house, go to a different part of the country, never paint the walls the same colour again, go somewhere where even the flowers smell different and the ground beneath your feet is of a different colour. But, you can’t escape the mirror, or the face you see inside. You can stand there and look at the woman you don’t recognise. The woman you have been avoiding for so long, never looking at the mirror for more than a vague, over-the-shoulder glances. Convincing yourself that you don’t need to. You wear the clothes that fit as long as the colours are not too gaudy. Your hair is the same everyday. You become an artist of the front parting. A master of the neckline bun. You wear no make-up, no jewellery, no frivolities of any kind. You don’t even look for those spots and blemishes that might appear on your face. And people tell you what good skin you have and how beautiful you are, or would be, if only you smiled and wore a little make-up, styled your hair, and put away those conservative glasses and kermises for more fashionable numbers.

“A young girl like you should be mixing with young people her own age. Not always hiding herself away behind books!” Then they all remember. Even those who were never there. And those that never knew in the first place. They all unite in a collective act of remembrance. The great fever of July 2000, when you nearly died and then awoke, not speaking. Perhaps never speaking again? So many doctors baffled. And then you speak. But, only when you have to. In the classroom, you excel in eloquence. In the playground, you are silent. And then you look into the faces of your collective sympathisers as they find yet another tenuous reason for solidarity and you wonder what putrefied skeletons lie hidden behind the smiling layers of foundation cream. With one pinch below the ears, you would like to pull off the rubber masks that move so predictably in response to all the other rubber masks telling the same tired old stories of how many ounces of gold their husbands gave them, or their latest sari purchases, or the most recent property acquisition. You wonder what demons they’re trying to cover up with all that chit-chat diversion. Who have they killed? Who have they beaten? Who do they want to destroy?

A small bat just flew into the room, so I got up and turned off the ceiling fan in order to stop the creature from being slapped across the face by the fast-rotating blades. So now, it was hot and I was hungry, and the gentle fragrance of hasna hena flowers wafted into my room, as the paper-collector sang, “kagoj!” down the street, the bullocks mooed and a megaphone shouted for everyone to vote for hurricane-marka. I turned off the light, unlocked the door, and went off to eat.

“Tomorrow, I will look at Calcutta for the last time.”


---Jib, 2.48pm, 27 July 2001. Huang Dao, China. Narrator: UMA. From: ‘Shaquilla’s Papers’