My aunt—whom I will call Shobha mami—hovered around as we sat with our books in our hands; her presence brought us comfort while our minds raced with demons, usurped kingdoms, seashores, and collapsing houses. She was one of those people who have a gift with children, who draw an enchantment around them without any seeming effort; and the spell lasts all childhood. On growing up, I have not come any closer to her; it is almost as if she became someone else; and this is so, most probably, because I knew her as a child. Then, her flaws, her human failings, and the complexity of her character were concealed from me: she appeared to me as a myth would. It was partly, of course, that she was in the midst of her life’s beginning; only nine or ten years married, her life had still not closed into a pattern. It was not that she touched or held or kissed us. Her magic and contact were more subtle; she would sort out fish bones for us from a difficult fish; she would tease and joke with us; she would return home, flushed from the market. And she would treat us all alike; not as if we were, all three of us, her sons, but as if we were infinitely and equally interesting. It strikes me now how little I know her, or knew of her desires, fears, affections; but she cannot have been wholly an enigma; it is said that children sometimes see a side of a person that others do not, and if so, we saw a side of her that even she might not have been entirely conscious of.

They were hospitable people; and, in spite of their various burdens during that difficult time, relatives from other parts of the country were always staying with them as students, or visitors (as I was), or as those who were passing through the city. Downstairs there lived for many years an older cousin, brilliant student, son of a widowed aunt, who had left his house in Assam to study in Calcutta and was a mere twelve or thirteen years older than us, and thus almost a contemporary; he would later become a very rich man in America. From time to time, voices came upstairs, of my aunt, our cousin, my uncle, a discussion between the men, talk of lockouts and debts.