The Museum of Final Journeys (2 page)

The only release to be had was to find an excuse to go 'on tour', summon my jeep and driver and make for the further reaches of the district. At its northern rim was tea country and the sight of that trim landscape of tea bushes and shade trees on softly rolling hills that rose eventually into the blue mountain range—alas, not my territory—was as reviving as a drink of cool water to me.

Seated in the ample cane furniture on the broad veranda of one fortunate tea-estate manager's bungalow over a whisky and soda, I could not help a sigh of relief tinged with melancholy that this salubrious place was not mine and I would soon have to return to my sorry posting below.

My host enquired how I was faring. When I told him—I admit with an openly pathetic plea for sympathy—he said, 'I know the town. I have to visit it from time to time. It doesn't even have a club, does it?'

'No! If only there were a club where I could play tennis after work...' I gave another sigh, drawn out of me by his evident sympathy.

'No social life either?'

'There's no one I could have a conversation with about
anything
but work. There's no library or anyone who reads. I'm running out of books too.'

My host got up to pour me another peg at the bar constructed of bamboo at the other end of the spacious veranda. My eyes followed him, admiring the polished floor, the pots of ferns that lined the steps and the orchids that hung in baskets above them.

When he returned to his seat, he handed me my drink and said, 'In the old days there used to be wealthy Calcutta families who owned land around here and who would come to visit it from time to time, throw parties and organise hunts. Of course, those times are over and their estates must have gone to rack and ruin by now.'

We talked a bit longer about this and that till I had to leave, and as I walked past the open door on my way to the steps and stood waiting for my jeep to be driven round to the front, my eye fell on a small object on the hall table—two small Chinese figures in flowered tunics and black slippers carrying a kind of palanquin between them. It was both unusual and pretty and I looked at it more closely: the details were exquisite and there was a gloss to it such as you see on the finest china. My host saw me lingering to study it and said, 'Oh, it's one of those objects one sometimes comes across in these parts that belonged to the old houses I was telling you about. One of them even had a museum once: perhaps this came from there. My wife picked it up, she has an eye for such things. I told her she had paid too much—it's only a wind-up toy, you know, and has lost its key.'

'A wind-up toy!' I exclaimed. 'It looks too precious for that. Is it very old?'

'I couldn't tell you, I don't know a thing about it. It's a pity my wife is in Shillong—our daughters are at school there—she would have been able to tell you more.'

'Beautiful,' I said, and reluctantly took my leave.

I can't say I gave that beautiful object or its provenance any more thought. Inevitably, I grew more involved in my work and had to see through various projects I had started on as well as the daily routine of attending court to hear cases that grew drearily familiar, and going through the bottomless stack of files in my office. I even stopped asking for milk and sugar to be brought separately for my tea and resigned myself to drinking the thick, murky liquid I was served.

I became so settled in a state of apathy—it was like an infection I had caught from those around me—that I felt quite irritated when the chowkidar at the circuit house roused me from it one evening as I sat slumped in the reclining chair under the revolving fan in my room, waiting for darkness to fall and for him to call me to my dinner.

Instead he said, 'Someone to see you, sahib.'

'Who?' I snapped, and added, 'Tell him to come and see me in my office tomorrow. I don't see visitors here.'

'That is right, sahib,' the chowkidar acknowledged, 'but he has come from far and says it is a matter he needs to discuss privately.'

'What matter?' I snapped again (I had acquired this habitual manner of speech to those in an inferior position—servants, petitioners, supplicants; I found it was expected of me, it went with the job).

Of course the chowkidar could not know or tell. He stood there expecting some action from me, so, with a show of petulance, I threw down the newspaper folded to the crossword puzzle that I had been pretending to solve, and went out to the veranda where the visitor stood waiting: an elderly, rather bowed man with wisps of white hair showing under his cap like feathers, enormous spectacles with thick lenses and heavy frames attached to him by string, and dressed in a faded black cloth coat and close white trousers, perhaps the outfit he had adopted as a clerk (he had the obsequious manner of one) before his superannuation.

Some remnant of my upbringing surfaced through my adopted manner of irritable superiority (from behind my father's looming shadow, my mother occasionally emerged to stand watching me, hopefully, trustingly). I gestured to him to be seated and called to the chowkidar to bring us water. Just that, pani.

The clerical creature folded his hands and asked me not to bother. 'I am deeply sorry to disturb your rest,' he said in a voice just slightly above the whine of a mosquito, perhaps closer to the sound of a small cricket.

I found my habitual annoyance beginning to creep back and said abruptly, 'What can I do for you?'

'Sir, I have come from the Mukherjee estate thirty-five miles from here,' the poor man brought out as if embarrassed to make a statement that might sound boastful. Why should it? I wondered, and waited. 'I have served the family for fifty years,' he went on, barely above a whisper, and kept touching, nervously, his small white beard like a goat's—a goatee.

'I don't know the place,' I told him.

'Sir, it was once the largest estate in the district,' he said imploringly, seeing that I needed to be persuaded. 'The family owned fields of jute and rice and even tea and cinchona in the north. Also coal mines. Many properties in the district belonged to them. They were rented out. It was my duty to keep account of it all. In those days I had many assistants, it was too much for me to handle alone. My father had served before me and I was employed by the family when I was still a boy. They trusted my family and they put it all in my hands.'

This was going to be a long story, I realised, if I was to allow him to unfold it at this pace. We might need to travel backwards to generations now long gone, pallid ghosts disappearing one after the other into the dark night of the past. When would we arrive in the daylight of the present? I wondered, sitting up with a jerk to accept a glass of water from the chowkidar and hoping by my brisk action to indicate that my time was valuable and it was running out.

But, like a mosquito that has got under one's net and can't be driven out, the ancient gnome went on murmuring, and the tale he had to tell was exactly the one I had feared: the usual saga of a descent from riches to rags, the property fragmenting as the sons of one generation quarrelled and insisted on ill-judged divisions, the gradual crumbling of wealth as tenant farmers failed to pay rent, and litigation that never led to solutions, only protracted the death throes. Then the house itself, the one the family had occupied while it multiplied, falling down piecemeal, the cost of repair and maintenance making its eventual disintegration inevitable.

The familiar story of the fabled zamindars of old. I could have recited any number of them to this poor, whispering ancient who seemed to think his was the only such story to be told.

But at some point—perhaps I had dozed off briefly, then woken—I began to hear what he was saying. It was the word 'museum' that had the effect of a mosquito bite after a long spell of droning.

'The museum at our house was started by Srimati Sarita Mukherjee who was married to my master in the year 19—when she was thirteen and he sixty years of age. She was the second wife of Sri Bhupen Mukherjee who inherited the property from his father Debabrata Mukherjee in 19—. He had no issue from his first marriage. Srimati Sarita Devi was of the Sinha family that resides in Serampore. The family was wealthy and accordingly she brought with her a substantial dowry. It was not so large in property as in gold and gems. The family was known for its love of art and literature and she had grown up in the company of educated men and women and had some education herself.

'It was not easy for her to adjust to the life on our estate, which is not only a great distance from her home but far from any other estate in our district. Sri Bhupen Mukherjee, being an only son, had no brothers or sisters-in-law who might have provided her with some company. Naturally she had many lonely years as the only lady in the house. Then, when she was nineteen years of age, a son was born to her. Sri Jiban Mukherjee gave us all joy as he was the natural heir and we had great hopes he would keep the estate intact and make it prosper. Sadly, Sri Bhupen Mukherjee did not live much longer and could take pride in his heir for only a few short years before he expired. So my duty became very clear to me: I had to make sure that the inheritance that came to the young boy would be substantial and he and his mother would lack for nothing.'

At this point I found my knee beginning to jog involuntarily up and down. I am sure it was because I was growing impatient to learn: did
she
create a museum? Did it exist?

'Then we had a number of bad years in a row when the rains did not come and the crops were ruined and our coal mines suffered one disaster after another and had to be abandoned. For several years the estate had no income at all, only losses. There was no money available for repairs and maintenance. We were forced to take loans simply to keep the place running and we fell into debt.

'Times did improve but whatever income there was had to be spent on paying off debts. It was sad to see Srimati Sarita Devi's face so careworn and her hair turn grey before her time. She was burdened with worry not only with regard to finances but also to her son Sri Jiban's upbringing and education of which she had sole responsibility after the death of his father.'

At this point the narrator paused. He seemed crushed by the sadness of what he had to relate. I found I had become involved with it in spite of myself and so had to allow him to unfold the tale at his own pace which was slow but persistent. Having run out of books to read, even so slight and familiar a story as I was hearing now had enough interest to keep me from seeing off this unwelcome insect of a visitor.

'I am sorry to say she had to sell her gold and jewellery bit by bit to pay for his education as the estate itself could not bear the expense. She saw to it that he was sent to the best school in Calcutta, one run by the Jesuit fathers, and thereafter to university in England as his father would have wished. We had great hopes that on his return with a degree in law, he would set up a successful practice as a barrister so that he could support his mother in the manner to which she was born.'

His voice had grown so low that it seemed to mimic the dusk into which the circuit house, its veranda and the surrounding wilderness had sunk, leaving us in darkness, and for a while I could barely hear him at all, but perhaps that was because the chowkidar had arrived with a mosquito coil which he lit to drive away the mosquitoes now beginning to swarm, then went indoors to pump a Flit gun vigorously for the same purpose, and finally turned on the lights. He also coughed repeatedly, in a blatantly false manner, to signal it was time for my visitor to leave so he could serve me my dinner, then retire. I could interpret all these signs after my protracted stay in the circuit house but my visitor ignored him and after a few long sighs resumed his narrative.

'Unfortunately, Sri Jiban, having lived abroad for several years, could not adjust to life on our estate or even to Calcutta. He had no interest in the affairs of the estate and left it all to his mother to take care of as before. We waited to see what his plans were for the future. Naturally he did not confide in me but one day I saw him packing his bags and heard him send for a tonga to take him to the nearest railway station. His mother wept as she saw him drive away and when I attempted to console her by saying he would surely return soon, she replied she did not think he would because he was planning a long sea voyage to countries in the East. I was astounded by this information because I did not see how he could fund such an ambitious voyage; nor could I see its purpose. I then learned she had sold the last of her jewellery to finance his desire.'

I was now beginning to wonder why I was being made privy to the family's secrets. I would have risen to my feet to indicate the time I had given him was now up, but something about his posture, so crushed, his hands held tightly together as if in agony, and the way his old white head trembled on its thin stalk of a neck stopped me. Also, frankly, I wanted to know where the story would go.

To my surprise, he now lifted his head so I could see his expression more clearly by the light that fell on us from the lighted rooms within, and I saw that he looked quite serene, almost joyful.

'Then the boxes began to arrive. They came from Burma, from Thailand, from Indonesia, from Malaya, Cambodia, the Philippines and even China and Japan, containing such objects as had never been seen in our part of the world! People would come from their villages miles away to our gates to watch the bullock carts they had seen hauling these boxes to our door, and there was much talk about what they might contain.' He actually laughed at this point, a dry rustling in his throat like that made by a bird or insect in a bush, a kind of cackle you might call it. 'Our people are simple folk. They have no knowledge of the world and the countries our young master had visited but, seeing the size of the containers, they thought he was involved in trade and that he had made a fortune so he could send his mother treasures in the form of silks and jewels and other valuable goods.' He shook his head now at their foolishness and gullibility. 'They believed the young master would return a wealthy man and restore our estate,' and here his laugh ended in a small hiccup. 'We opened the containers as they came and were astonished by what we found. He had sent us few letters or messages and we could only conjecture where he had been and where he had found or purchased the goods revealed to us.'