Jyathaima was engrossed in a TV show. Harbart stood beside her for a while, then silently came away. On a page in his notebook he scribbled a few words, then tore it out and folded it into his chest pocket.

*

The booze bash was a smash hit.

The ice in the bucket was slowly turning to water. Harbart said, “The fan will spread the cool air from the melting ice, cool the room.” Harbart said, “He scared the shit out of me. That Ghosh, that one who wrote the letter. How he was staring at me—bloody bastard. And only spurting English, only blurting English. The more the English, the more my balls shrinking and shrinking.”

“And that newspaper girl, boss—what a fucking cow! Puffing on her cigarettes one moment, flashing her camera the next!”

“Harbart-da, all this conversations with the dead—was it all a load of crap?”

“What do you think?”

“If it was, then why did so many people come to you? So many people, so much talk—all crap?”

“I won’t do this anymore. There’s no stopping the stink that will spread, but Harbart Sarkar will pursue this line no longer.”

“Then what, boss?”

“I’m thinking. Thinking. A new line is bound to show up. Oh, and did you see, I took off the noticeboard outside? Now, Koka—show us something.”

Koka can show two things very well. One is an Isabgol ad, entitled Hanuman Shitting on a Chair Pot. This he’d picked up from TV. The other is Goju Bose’s expression when he finally succeeded in signing up Kushanu and Bikash for Mohun Bagan.

“Which one, guru? Shit on a chair?”

“No, no—Goju Bose.”

Koka showed them. They freaked out—they flew high as kites. All the ice in the bucket turned to water. All the bottles grew empty, save a few drops of rum in one. By the time they got up to leave, Harbart was closing his windows.

Deep into the night, late into the darkness, to the house in the lane, the road in the house, the house in the street … the house back home … Borka had spoken those words:

“Let him sleep. He’ll be alright if he sleeps.”

Two

Abroad, beloved, when you travel

A new sight will greet you every day

—Baldeb Palit

From the notebook Harbart wrote in Puri while on holiday with his Jyathaima, we come to learn that:

What we do not learn from the notebook is roughly as follows:

Harbart Sarkar. Father Lalitkumar. Mother Shobharani. Harbart’s arrival: September 16, 1949. Lalitkumar poured all his wartime earnings into the movies and was bankrupt fairly soon. In 1950, soon after Harbart’s first birthday, Lalitkumar was killed in a jeep accident on the Darjeeling–Kurseong route, along with failed film actress Miss Ruby, two other passengers, and the driver. Mother Shobharani took baby Harbart and went to live with her parents. About eight months later, trying to hang the washing on a metal wire up on the terrace, Shobharani was electrocuted to death. Baby Harbart wailed “Ma go, Ma go” and tried to walk to her but stumbled and fell, and then lay on the ground, crying helplessly, until high in the sky he spotted two kites—a Burnface and a Splitbelly—engaged in a fierce slack-string fight which captured his attention entirely, thus saving his life. Baby Harbart then returned to his father’s family home and proceeded, through indifference and neglect, toward adulthood, his Jyathaima being the only one to spare him some affection.