Book Excerpts

A Week in Translations: Blue Is Like Blue

an excerpt from…

FISH

We ran into A narrow lane. Our house was close by. The roads were full of people; it was the day of the weekly bazaar. Then it started to rain and the crowd dispersed rapidly.

We were running because we were afraid that without water the fish might die while they were still in the bag. There were three fish in it. One had died while Father was buying them. Two were alive. I could feel them agitating in the bag. I thought I’d ask Father for one of them and release it into the well. We’d watch it become really big. If we wanted to play with the fish we could take it out in a bucket and put it back when we’d finished playing.

It had begun to rain hard. I stood in the downpour and opened the bag to the sky so that rain would fall on the fish. It might help them revive. Santu had gone and stood under a ledge to keep from getting wet. Still, we were both soaked to the skin. Just then, perhaps sensing in the raindrops a pond or river nearby, one of the fish made a big leap. The bag almost fell from my hands.

We’d shut ourselves inside the bathroom. The bucket was full, so we emptied out half and put the three fish in the water. Had the bucket been full they would have jumped out. Once, a small fish that I’d been holding had slipped from my hand and disappeared into the bathroom drain. Santu and I were immediately on our knees, trying to find it. When we couldn’t we went to the spot behind the house where our drain met a bigger drain. But we couldn’t see the fish there either. Didi, our elder sister, said that from there the fish would have made it to the biggest drain of the city and eventually reached the Mohara River, which was three miles away.

Santu shivered in the cold. We’d get a beating if Ma saw us wet. I told Santu he’d better wring his shirt. Both of us took off our shirts and wrung them. Then we tried to get the water out of our pants by kneading them with our fists. Wearing just the pants and holding our wet shirts, we sat around the bucket. The fish right at the bottom was the one that had died.

‘We’ll ask Father for the one that’s on top,’ I said to Santu.

Santu nodded and said, ‘Okay.’ He was gazing lovingly at the fish. He would have liked to touch them but was too scared. I moved closer to the bucket and, catching hold of the fish, I said, ‘Go on, Santu, touch it!’

‘No, it will bite,’ he said, refusing.

‘See, I’m touching it and it’s not biting, is it? This fish doesn’t bite. Here, touch it!’

Santu hesitantly put a finger on the fish. Then he got frightened and pulled his hand away.

‘Come, what are you scared of?’ I said, picking up one of the two fish.

It kept slipping from my hand so I put it back into the bucket. It leapt up as soon as it was in the water, splashing some of it on us. Santu stepped back, startled. I wanted to see my reflection in the eyes of the fish that had died. Didi said that you can’t see yourself in the eyes of a dead fish.

I dipped my hand into the bucket and took out the fish that looked like it was dead. I laid it gently on the bathroom floor. I shook it by the tail a few times but it did not move at all. It’s single-haired long moustache was curled at the ends.

‘Look into its eye, Santu. Can you see yourself?’

Santu was sitting at a safe distance because the fish was now on the floor, out of the bucket. When I said that, he moved a little closer, eagerly peering into the fish’s eye.

‘Go closer,’ I said. ‘Can you see it? Didi says you can’t see your reflection in the eyes of a dead fish.’

Santu kept sitting there quietly, his head bent, looking into the eye of the fish but not saying whether he could see his reflection or not.

‘It’s no good asking you,’ I said, catching the fish in both hands. I brought it very close to my face and saw a dim shadow in its eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was my reflection that I saw or whether this was what the colour of the eyes had become.

‘It might still be alive. Go quietly and bring Didi here,’ I said to Santu. And I put the fish back into the bucket.

Santu came back and said, ‘Didi’s asleep.’

‘She’s sleeping now, in the middle of the morning?’ I asked, surprised. ‘Where’s Ma?’

‘She’s grinding spices.’

My heart sank. ‘That’s terrible. She must be grinding them for the fish. It means they’re going to cook them today,’ I said sadly.

‘So, will they soon cut them into pieces?’ asked Santu innocently.

‘Yes.’

That made Santu sad too.

A wooden board in the house had been kept aside for this purpose. There was a zigzag of knife marks on it. The board used to be kept behind the storage barrel on the veranda and would be taken out the day there was fish to be cooked. Chopping the fish was the servant’s job. It had stopped raining. I came out into the courtyard and saw that the board had been washed and kept ready. There was some ash from the stove lying near it. I figured Bhaggu must be at the well, sharpening the knife. The door of the bathroom was open and I could see the bucket with the fish in it. Ma wasn’t around. She might have been upstairs. She didn’t like fish or meat being cooked in the house. Father had hoped that we children would take to eating meat, but Ma had strictly forbidden us to do so. And it wasn’t as if we wanted to either. So it was only Father who ate it.

Bhaggu seemed to know that the fish were in the bathroom. He went there at once and brought them out wrapped in his angocha. Our enthusiasm for nurturing fishes in the well had died somewhat. Father still wasn’t home. I went into the room and found Didi there, lying on her side. I beckoned to Santu to come in and change out of his wet clothes. He must have made a sound while doing so, for Didi turned round and saw us. She wasn’t pleased to see how wet our clothes were, but she spoke kindly to us. She dressed Santu nicely, in ironed clothes, though we didn’t know why she’d done that. Just as I was going to put on the clothes that had been washed at home, she told me to wear the ones that had come from the dhobi. She took them out for me from the tin trunk. Santu had long hair, so it was still wet. Didi wiped his hair with a towel and oiled it. She held his chin with her left hand when she combed his hair. Santu kept his large eyes fixed on Didi all the while. Everyone said that Didi was very pretty.

‘Didi,’ I said, ‘there’s fish being cooked today. There were three of them but I think one is already dead. Bhaggu’s going to cut them just now.’ Didi said nothing at first, but then she asked me to close the door from outside when we went out of the room. She wanted to be by herself. She didn’t feel well. Santu and I came out of the room quietly. I could see Didi lying down as I shut the door.

We were standing against the pillar behind Bhaggu, watching the fish being cut. Bhaggu first picked up one of the fish and hit it a couple of times against a stone. He rubbed ash all over the fish, and now it looked as if it was really dead. He then placed it on the board and with a quick movement chopped off the head. The fish did not agitate at all. Just then Santu grabbed one fish and ran out. Bhaggu left the fish he’d been cutting and chased him, ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ I kept standing there. The headless fish that had been rubbed with ash was lying on the board and I noticed that the third fish that was still wrapped in the angocha quivered once. Santu’s run off with the dead fish, I thought.

It seemed to me that I could hear Didi quietly sobbing in her room. I opened the door as slowly as I could and went in to find Didi lying on her side, with the sari pulled over her face, weeping. With each sob, a shudder would go through her body. I remembered the twitching of the fish under the angocha. I closed the door and came out. Bhaggu and Santu weren’t back yet. I came to the courtyard and saw that Santu was near the well, lying flat on his stomach. He was holding the fish with both hands and hiding it under him. Bhaggu was doing his best to snatch it away. He might have been worried that if Santu managed to throw the fish into the well, he’d hear no end of it from Father. I could hear Father yelling at the top of his voice from somewhere inside.

The three fish had been chopped into several pieces and the area around the board was strewn with shiny round scales. The door to the room where Didi had been lying was open. Ma was inside. Father was walking up and down. He looked angry. Didi was sobbing louder than before. I got the feeling that Father had beaten her.

Just as Bhaggu was leaving, Father said to him so that everyone could hear, ‘Bhaggu! Next time that Romeo Naren comes anywhere near this house, make sure you break his limbs and throw him out. I’ll handle the rest.’

Bhaggu nodded and left. Santu was standing there, very quiet. His clean clothes had got muddied, and his hair that had been combed so lovingly by Didi was full of dirt.

When I went into the bathroom, I got the smell of fish. I sat down beside the bucket and swirled the water around with my hand. Then I upended the bucket and for a moment the water filled the bathroom drain, but soon the drain was quite empty. The smell of fish seemed to fill the whole house.

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