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RAJ KAMAL JHA's novel The Blue Bedspread was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Jha is Chief Editor of The Indian Express.

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Blue Bedspread

Harvest/HBJ Book

Excerpt

I could begin with my name, but forget it, why waste time, it doesnítmatter in this city of twelve million names. I could begin with the way I look,but what do I say, I am not a young man anymore, I wear glasses, my stomachdroops over the belt of my trousers.

Thereís something wrong with my trousers. The waist, where the loops forthe belt are, folds over every time, so if you look at me carefully while I amwalking by, on the street or at the bus stop, you will see a flash of white, thecloth they use as lining riding above my belt, peeping out.

There was a time when I would have got embarrassed, sucked in my stomach,breathed deep, held that breath. Or even shouted at the tailor, refused to paythe balance, bought a firmer belt, tightened it by piercing the leather with afew extra holes. But now, why bother?

All that matters is you, my little child, and all I want at this moment is somesilence so that you can sleep undisturbed and I can get over with these stories.

I will have to work fast, there isnít much time.

They are coming to take you soon, the man and the woman. They will give youeverything you need; they will take you to the Alipore Zoo, to the BirlaPlanetarium, show you baby monkeys and mother monkeys; the tiny flashlight,shaped like an arrow, that flashes, darts across the huge, black hemisphericaldome. They will make faces at the monkeys, you will laugh; they will tell youwhere Jupiter is, why we have evening and why we have night.

And then, after several summers and several winters, when the city has fattened,its sides spilled over into the villages where the railway tracks are, where thecycle-rickshaws ply, if you grow up into the fine woman I am sure you will, oneday you will stop.

Suddenly.

Something you will see or hear will remind you of something missing in yourheart, perhaps a hole, the blood rushing through it, and then, like a machinethat rumbles for a second just before it goes click, just before it begins tohum and move, you will stop and ask: ìWho am I?î

They will then give you these stories.

**********

The house where we are, the room in which you sleep, is on the second floor.From the veranda, you can look down on the tram wires; the streetlight, theyellow sodium vapor lamp, is a couple of feet above you. If you strain youreyes, you can see dead insects trapped in the Plexiglas cover. How they got in Idonít know.

Across the street, thereís an oil-refining mill that shut down after aworkersí strike long ago. But its owner, I guess, had some of his heartstill left, so he continued to pay an old man to look after the dozen pigeons hekept in a cage near the entrance. Half of them are white, the rest are gray, andat least twice every day I stand on the veranda, nothing to do, watching thebirds in the cage fly around and around.

White and gray, white and gray, like tiny clouds blown across a patch ofimprisoned sky.

We are on Main Circular Road, which connects the north to the south of the city,the airport to the station, and right through the day buses and trams, trucksand taxis keep passing by, making so much noise that itís only now, wellpast midnight, that the ringing has stopped in my ears: the horns and thebrakes, the angry passengers asking the driver to please slow down or stop, busconductors coughing and spitting, jangling the bells, shouting theirdestinations in between.

Now itís just the opposite, silence sits in one corner of the house; whenI move my head to the right, when I move it to the left, I can hear the stubbleon my chin graze my collar, I can hear my breath, even the crick in my neck,some muscle being pulled, perhaps some bone rubbing against some other bone. Iam not a young man anymore.

I am not going to type, since the noise may wake you up, the paper being rolledin, my clumsy fingers pushing the keys, the bell that rings at the end of eachline, the paper moving up, the page ready to be rolled out.

And somewhere in the middle, if I wish to erase a word or add a letter, fix acomma, I will have to use the All-Purpose Correction Fluid. This means morenoise: I will have to shake the glass bottle, open its cap, pull out the brush,let the white drop fall and then blow it dry with my lips. What if the bottleslips, falls on the floor?

At this hour, every sound gets magnified, every ear gets sharper.

I have heard that there are some babies who sleep undisturbed, even during thefireworks festival, dreaming silently to the noise of Catherine wheels andchocolate bombs. And there are some babies who wake up at the slightest ofsounds, whose ears are like little funnels made of something like gossamer,ready to tremble, to catch anything in the night. A dog barking a dozen housesaway, the wind blowing through the garbage dump, the ceiling fan, the tapdripping in the bathroom, the man beating his wife in the upstairs flat.

So where do I begin?

With you, the baby in my bedroom, on the blue bedspread, no taller than my arm,your tiny fingers curled up, the night resting like a soft cloud on your body. Ishall begin with the phone ringing late at night, the police officer telling methat you have come into this city, unseen and unheard.

And once I have told you this story, I shall tell you more, as and when theycome. I shall retell some stories, the ones your mother told me, even those thatshe told not in words, but in gestures and glances. Like that of theblack-and-yellow Boroline Cream banners catching the wind on Durga Puja day; thedead pigeon, its stain carried all across the city; the albino cockroachhanging, upside down, from the bathroom drain.

Or that evening in the maternity ward, when she stood in the room, your mother,in the hospitalís oversize nightdress, looking out of the window at thestreetlamps being switched on, one by one.

We shall visit all these places; I shall hold your hand, open all those roomsthat need to be opened, word by word, sentence by sentence. I will keep somerooms closed until we are more ready, open others just a chink so that you cantake a peek. And at times, without opening a door at all, we shall imagine whatlies inside. Like the murder, the screaming, a red handkerchief floating down,just as in the movies.

In short, I will tell you happy stories and I will tell you sad stories. Andremember, my child, your truth lies somewhere in between.

Continues...

Excerpted from Blue Bedspreadby Raj Kamal Jha Copyright © 2001 by Raj Kamal Jha. Excerpted by permission.
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