Place: Roy House, Cornwallis Street (near College Square), Calcutta
Date & Time: Saturday, 10 December 1910, 8:07 p.m.
The wall clock in our dining hall coughed once and decided not to keep perfect time. It was the kind of cough that made you look up from your plate and wonder if the clock had opinions. Mine did. It disliked exam season and any conversation that lasted longer than the rice on our plates.
"Did you see The Statesman?" my nineteen-year-old brother Anir kept his voice down, which for him meant simply not alarming the neighbourhood cats. "They say the Viceroy has sanctioned more 'ether-lamps' for Borobazar—"
"—and you have sanctioned more ink for my tablecloth," Ma said, tapping the ring of his teacup with a spoon. "Newspaper first, excitement later."
"It wasn't me," Anir protested, lifting the teacup and revealing a perfect circle of excitement. He tried to smile. The circle looked back, unamused.
Across from me, our cousin Kaushik—twenty-two, graduate, recently unemployed by choice and therefore full-time philosopher—pushed spectacles up his nose and said, "Ether-lamps are a menace. Last night a tram bell rang and the light near Shobhabazar blinked like a dying fish."
"Your metaphors are a menace," I told him. "Also, trams ring at human pitch. Dying fish don't."
"As Assistant Professor of History," he said, "you would know how all fish died in the Pleistocene."
I tried not to grin. The grin came anyway. My name is Sourav Roy, twenty-five, teacher at Calcutta University, and the sort of elder brother who marks footnotes in the margins of life. Our house is old enough to have opinions too. On winter evenings it complains about the damp through the floor, and the gas lamps along the verandah hatch small halos on the walls, and the smell of hot milk drifts across the courtyard like a rumor that hasn't decided whom to ruin.
If you opened our shutters that night, you'd see College Square inked in, a rectangle of black water with the reflection of the Senate House trembling like a candle. A faint bell from a tramline, the clean bite of winter on the teeth, the soft press of December on thought—Calcutta at eight o'clock, preparing to discuss the world between mouthfuls.
"Read, Anir," Baba said, not looking up from his plate. He was timing his attention: one eye for the paper, one for the youngest in the room who might argue with the menu. "But read aloud properly. Don't swallow the important parts."
Anir cleared his throat, found the front page, and began in his storyteller voice: "The Statesman, Calcutta, Saturday, the tenth of December. 'Crown's Magisterium Reaffirms the legality of surveillance wards in commercial districts. The Governor-General's office insists the wards are merely preventive—'"
"Preventive headaches," Kaushik muttered.
"—'and will not impinge upon the liberties of loyal subjects of the Crown.'"
He folded the paper down just enough to show his eyebrows. "Questions: Are we loyal? And are we subjects?"
"Questions at the end," Ma said. "And don't crease the masthead; I keep them."
Baba took off his spectacles and wiped them on a handkerchief that had seen more arguments than any of us. "The wards will be everywhere soon," he said. "They hum at night—you can hear them if you listen. Like gnats, except with a law degree."
"The British call it magitech." Anir's voice warmed as it always did when he smelled a story. "They say their lamps aren't just lamps, they're eyes, and their telegram is half-ghost and half-wire. There's a rumor—"
"Anir," said Ma, "food first, rumours after."
I should say here that my mother is the only true magician I know. Without charms or amulets she keeps a joint household running, three generations on one courtyard, and seven spoons that never end up in the wrong drawer. If the British had her on their side, the wards would be polite.
But the world beyond our dining hall was not polite. It had begun, without consulting us, to turn very slowly on a hinge of secrets. The newspapers around Calcutta had the mood of crows on a cold wire: watchful, full of warnings. At College Street, pamphlets talked of spiritual disciplines and the old yogic siddhis—not as myths, but as techniques—while the Empire's notices praised inventions that glowed and listened and remembered names. Everyone agreed on one thing only: magic was not a metaphor. It had rules like rain and ambitions like empires. And it had chosen the twentieth century as its theatre.
"Fine," Anir said, putting the paper flat. "No rumours. Only that the Crown's men say the phoenix is a baseless story."
"What phoenix?" Ma asked.
"The one they supposedly keep in London. To keep the monarchy fresh. Like squeezing a lemon over a fish fry—"
"Anir." My voice again. I couldn't help it; his metaphors needed seatbelts. "You were saying… baseless."
"Right." He peered at the print. "Also, a small note on page four: 'Disturbance in Jaipur. Two nights of temple alarms; no arrests.'"
"Jaipur?" Kaushik looked up. "That is… interesting."
"Because?" I asked.
"Because we just received a letter from Jaipur at six in the evening," he said. "From her."
The room did that subtle thing rooms do when a name rearranges the air: it quietened from the furniture up.
Baba looked over the rims of his eyebrows. "Your pishima."
I knew at once who he meant—Pishi, my father's sister, recently married into a merchant family with a mansion in the Pink City. Jaipur, with its measured avenues and winter that did not bite your bones so much as bargain with them.
Anir spread the letter on the table, careful not to let the lamplight brand it. The paper was heavy, creamy, with a faint imprint where a seal had been. The letters—English, but with a Jaipur hand—climbed the page nervously.
Sourav, my dear, and to Anir and Kaushik as well,
You must come for winter. Do not consult the almanac; consult me. I insist. There are matters here that require our own people. Think of it as a holiday. I will expect you by the twenty-first at the latest. Bring warm clothes and your cleverness. Both will be needed. Yours, Kalyani.
"Matters that require our own people," Kaushik repeated. "That means trouble."
"Or marriages," Ma said, purely to test the way all three of us jumped. She was satisfied with the results. "Trouble is still better. Marriages will need more luggage."
Baba drummed the table once: a small gavel. "It is Rajasthan. If Kalyani writes insist, we go. Your winter break begins on the twentieth, Sourav?"
"The nineteenth," I said. "I still have three tutorials and a mountain of essays whose footnotes are crimes."
"Then we prepare," Baba said, final. "Tomorrow I'll secure our tickets. Tonight we will discuss what not to pack, which is everything you want to."
"I want to pack my sanity," Kaushik said. "Is that allowed on a Northwestern line?"
"Only if it folds," I said.
The conversation fractured pleasantly—lists started, lists were mocked, and a small war broke out between my aunt and the house over the number of shawls that counted as respectable. And yet the letter on the table held its shape like a little square of weather. I kept glancing at the seal mark where the paper had once been warm. There was something odd about it—no, not the crest; the smell. A faint tang, metallic, the way coins smell in winter. Also the way old wards smell when they've been jostled by newer hands.
"Don't sniff the letter like it owes you money," Ma said mildly.
"It's nothing," I lied, because it wasn't nothing, and because saying so would turn the room serious. "Anir, what else is in the paper? Not phoenixes. Something boring."
He returned to the newsprint obediently. "Let's see… more ether-lamps sanctioned… third shipment of magisterial wands arrived at Garden Reach… protests in Bombay about licensing of scryers… small piece about a French alchemist visiting the university next week—oh, and a delightful advice column called 'Should I marry a man who sets wards in his sleep?'"
"Does he?" Kaushik asked.
"Apparently he hums while doing it," Anir said. "The columnist suggests separate blankets."
I chewed, swallowed, watched the doorway. The corridor carried the smell of polish and limewash; our house had a new coat against the chill. Family voices in other rooms rose and fell like distinct birds. The dining table's wood, dark and old, caught the lamplight in a way that made it look like it was thinking. I know, I anthropomorphize furniture. It's a habit from living in a city where things do think, sometimes. Where your front gate can learn who shouts too much, and the schoolyard banyan remembers all the exams it has shaded.
"Pishi expects us by the twenty-first," I said, "so if we leave on the twentieth we'll still be late unless the timetable is generous."
"When," Baba corrected. "When we leave. And we will plan it like an assault on Fort Jaipur. Kaushik, check the routes. Anir, keep that newspaper. We'll wrap pickles in it."
"I protest," Anir said. "My prose will smell like fenugreek."
"Finally some flavour," Kaushik murmured.
I tucked the letter into my pocket, and it felt heavier than paper. That metallic smell again—coin, winter, and… ash? The thought arrived and sat down without asking. I pressed my fingers to the words Bring warm clothes and your cleverness. My aunt's handwriting had always been like her walk: straight, with small surprises.
And something in me—the part that listens to the hinge of the world—leaned forward.
Calcutta, Sunday, 11 December 1910, 6:45 a.m.
The morning arrived with a soft sizzle of mist on the tank at College Square and the university bell announcing that it was too early. Our old cook opened the back door and let in a slice of blue that made the brass plates look newly minted. The city stretched: tramlines yawned, the bookshops along College Street bullied their shutters awake, and a flock of pigeons debated philosophy from the Senate House roof.
"I'm going to the University," I told Ma, as she supervised a line of sweaters that had decided to act like sleeping cats. "To submit attendance sheets and plead with the gods of timetables."
"Take your muffler," she said, and added as an afterthought, "and your sense. Hold on to both."
At the gate, Kaushik waited, his notebook under his arm like a loyal domestic. "I looked up routes," he said, falling into step. "Lines are awkward, but if we change at Agra and Jaipur Junction, we can make the twentieth. If the ticket clerk believes your face."
"My face is a moral question," I said. "We may not settle it by Monday."
On Cornwallis Street the morning crowd flowed around us: students with bundles of notes and the bruised joy of last-minute reading; a tram declaring its approach with a bell that sounded like judgment; and everywhere the tiny winter sounds of Calcutta waking—shawl edges being shaken, a broom at the threshold, the ink-bottle sigh of a clerk opening his desk.
Near College Square, we passed the boy who sold newspapers. He had a way of announcing headlines that sounded like scolding the government personally.
"The Statesman! Ether-lamps approved for Harrison Road! Licensing of scryers! Magisterium warns of counterfeit wards! The Statesman!"
I bought one, because I have a weakness for being told what the day thinks. The front page had the same 'preventive measures' we had read last night; the editorial had the tone of a patient teacher explaining that a cane is also preventive.
"What's that?" Kaushik pointed at a small column.
A tiny square, easy to miss: "Disturbance in Jaipur: Temple Ward Fails for Second Night—Local Authorities Blame Storm."
"Storms are convenient," Kaushik said.
"Storms are also storms," I said. "Let's ask Pishi when we reach."
We reached the Senate House by seven, a marble daydream resting its columns on the mirror of College Square. Inside, the corridors had that mixture of ambition and chalk dust that all universities share. I filed attendance, left a note for the Head of Department about my leave, and told my students two things: one true, one aspirational.
"The essay is due next week," I told the three who were awake. "And history dislikes people who cannot count to ten."
"Why ten, Sir?" one of them asked.
"Because that is the number of lies you can tell yourself before breakfast," I said.
By eight, I was finished with bureaucracy and in need of tea. On the way back we stopped at a stall on College Street where the kettle understood grief and the biscuits were argumentative. Kaushik spread the railway timetable on the bench; it made the bench look official.
"So," he said, tapping at the columns. "Tickets today, packing tomorrow, leave on the twentieth."
"Why the haste?" the stall owner asked, appearing with cups. "Is the British suddenly giving away the city for New Year?"
"Family," I said.
"Ah." He nodded wisely, which in Calcutta means he would not ask, which family. "Don't forget to carry notepaper."
"Why?"
"Where else will you write down all the things you will forget?"
I laughed, and a winter breeze lifted the edge of the timetable as if the air itself wanted to travel. On the back page of the newspaper, an advertisement caught my eye: "Ethergraph Service to Jaipur—Fast, Private, Discreet." I almost reached to tear it out, and then stopped. The ad ink was too dark. In this city, sometimes ink wasn't ink.
On impulse I held the page a little closer to the kettle's steam. Letters bloomed—ghostly, then firm—the way morning finds a face.
Do not trust the 'discreet' offices near Jaipur Gate.
Say nothing of the dragon in public.
Your Aunt will deny writing this.
My hand did something I didn't know it could do: it trembled while holding tea perfectly level.
Kaushik had been looking at the timetable; now he looked at me. "What?"
"Nothing," I said, because something about the way the words appeared felt like the kind of secret that punishes honesty. "I just remembered I promised to meet the librarian. For, ah, a map."
"Maps are lies that apologise," he said cheerfully. "Buy one."
We finished tea. On the way home I folded the advertisement into my pocket with the letter from Jaipur. They touched like two coins of different metal.
Roy House, Sunday Night, 11 December, 9:30 p.m.
Evenings in our house have a tempo. The verandah gathers conversations the way ponds gather moonlight; the courtyard keeps score with the clink of plates; and the old gramophone coughs when it wants attention but never sings without persuasion. We met in the dining hall again, the world arranged around a table as if the table had a vote.
"All right," Baba said, opening a notebook. It already had a shopping list that read like a soft war. "Provisions. Woolens. One trunk and one holdall each. Tickets tomorrow. We send a telegram to Kalyani tonight."
"I'll write it," Anir offered.
"You'll write poetry," I said. "We need a telegram."
"I can write poetry that keeps to twelve words," he said. "It will be the strictest poem in Jaipur."
"Keep it plain," Ma advised. "Plainness travels furthest."
We composed it sentence by sentence, all of us resisting the urge to sound cleverer than the wire could carry:
RECEIVED LETTER. ARRIVING JAIPUR 21ST. THREE OF US. WILL WRITE DETAILS. — ROY HOUSE CALCUTTA
No dragon, no phoenix, no suspicion. Just family announcing the obvious. We took it to the office near Harrison Road—one of the new ether-offices where you can feel the wards like silk on the skin as you step in. The clerk looked at us with professional boredom and wrote our words into a ledger that might have been a grimoire in disguise. I tried not to stare at the coils of clear wire that pulsed faintly like veins. The city was changing its blood in front of us.
Back home, we began the ritual all journeys demand: laying out what we would forget, arguing about what we should not, and learning anew that men, when asked to fold, produce experimental geometry. Kaushik attempted to measure his shawl and discovered principles of infinity. Anir tried to decide which notebook would be 'the Jaipur notebook' and changed his mind after every sentence. I packed quickly and badly, because my method is to fix mistakes in new places.
From the window, Calcutta breathed winter into the house. A tram bell rang, almost friendly. Somewhere across College Square a harmonium tested three notes and found two of them willing. I took out the letter again. Bring warm clothes and your cleverness. Both will be needed.
"What are you thinking, dada?" Anir asked, from the floor where he was arguing with a valise that wanted to be a trunk when it grew up.
I hesitated. Then I told him the truth that could safely be mentioned aloud: "That Kalyani wouldn't summon us for a picnic."
"Trouble then," he said, satisfied. "You do well with trouble."
"Do I?"
"You look like you do," he said, and grinned. "That's the same thing for most professors."
I smiled despite myself. "And you? How are you with trouble?"
"I'll write it down first," he said. "Then I'll correct its spellings. Then maybe I'll help."
Kaushik poked his head around the trunk lid. "I have a question," he announced.
"Do not ask if we can pack fewer socks," Ma called from the doorway. "We cannot."
"Not socks," he said. His face had that earnestness that makes cousins both dangerous and necessary. "What exactly do we tell people if anyone asks why we're going?"
"The truth," Baba said, entering with the account book. "Family visit."
"And if they ask where we'll stay?"
"With family."
"And if they ask what we're carrying?"
"Clothes," Ma said. "And common sense. Two items most journeys run out of."
Kaushik nodded slowly. "Good. I just wanted to hear the cover story rehearse itself."
We laughed. It was a good sound—homely, sufficient. It made the house look taller.
I slipped the folded advertisement out of my pocket while no one watched. Held to lamplight, the hidden letters did not return. Steam had coaxed them forth; the dry air denied them. I took the letter from my aunt and pressed the advertisement against it. The paper warmed in my palm—only body heat, I told myself—and something ink-dark flickered where the two pages met.
A line. Three words. Faint as breath on glass.
Don't be late.
My jaw did that undignified thing it does just before a thought learns to panic.
A bell rang at the gate.
We froze, in the agreeable way families freeze when visitors at night might be telegrams or news or—worst of all—someone who wants to discuss politics after nine. Baba went to the verandah, the rest of us behind him like a small parliament.
On the brick path stood a boy in a postman's cap too large for him, holding an envelope that had decided it was important. The boy had that expression all messengers have at that age—I do not know the contents, but they weigh more than me.
"For Roy-babu," he said, and the way he said babu made it sound like a caution.
Baba took the envelope. The seal on the back was unfamiliar—a small circle, a line through it, very neat. He cracked it carefully and unfolded the paper.
The letter was brief. So brief it made the telegraph jealous.
To the family of Mr. Sourav Roy,
You are cordially invited to spend the winter in Jaipur as discussed. Kindly refrain from using ethergraph services between now and your arrival. For your safety, burn this letter immediately after reading.
— House of Kalyani Mukherjee, Jaipur
"Burn immediately," Kaushik read over his shoulder. "All right. That is not at all ominous."
Baba looked at me. "Do you still think this is a picnic?"
"No," I said, and my voice managed to stay light. "It is worse. It's an exam with practicals."
The boy at the gate coughed. "There is also… a parcel," he said, and produced from his satchel a small wooden box, no larger than a book. He placed it in my hands as if he had seen too many boxes misbehave.
Inside, wrapped in cotton, lay a map. Hand-drawn, precise, signed with my aunt's careful initials in the corner. A section of Jaipur I did not recognize—alleys and courtyards, a temple marked with a small red dot, and along one edge, a line of little crosses like stitches. In the bottom margin, a single word in her soft script:
Listen.
"Listen to what?" Anir whispered.
I did not have to reach for an answer; one had been rehearsing in the back of my head all day. "To the city," I said. "It's going to talk."
The telegram boy shifted from foot to foot, impatient with our suspense. We thanked him; Baba gave him a coin; he saluted the coin harder than us and left.
We went to the courtyard. Baba lit the corner of the letter. Fire ate the page with an appetite we all understood. For a second the flame showed shapes—not letters, not images exactly, more like the outlines of words that had changed their minds. Then it turned to ash, honest and final.
"Tickets tomorrow," Baba said. "Pack tonight. Sleep if you can. Whoever speaks to anyone on the way to the station will be polite, concise, and unhelpful."
"Yes, Sir," we chorused.
Anir tucked the map back into its box with the care of a junior priest replacing an idol. "I'll start a list," he said, almost cheerful. "Title: Things We Will Forget."
"Put 'forget to be afraid' at number one," Kaushik said.
We smiled at each other like accomplices who had found a good staircase.
Midnight nudged the house. The gramophone did not sing, but it approved of the silence. In my room, I put the box with the map into my satchel, along with the advertisement that had become shyer than ink. I pulled out a notebook and wrote the date and the place at the top, because that is how I tell myself a day has happened: Calcutta, 11 December 1910. Then I wrote one line because it deserved to exist somewhere:
When the world changes its blood, you learn which pulse is yours.
From the corridor came the rustle of packing, the whisper of shawls learning to fold, the soft thud of a trunk agreeing to close. The house breathed. Calcutta put her hand on the shutters and said: sleep, or pretend to. I blew out the lamp.
The last thing I saw—before the dark made me honest—was a sliver of the map under moonlight, and one of the little crosses along its edge moving half a finger's width, as if stitched by an invisible hand.
I was about to call out when I heard the faintest hum from downstairs, like a ward checking its teeth.
We were not the only ones preparing.
—End of Chapter One. Preparations begin. The train and the truth wait at the twentieth.