Scenes From Early Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand. I had the attention of the chicks. I lowered my hand almost to the ground. After a moment, a chick detached itself from the others, and came up, quite boldly, investigating. He pecked swiftly at the corner of the chapatti in the palm of my hand. He was not committing himself, staying in a place he could run from if I turned out to be an enemy, tempting him into a trap. I wondered at the cunning of a creature so small and so young in days. But then, as I did not move, but just let him go on pecking at the corner of Atish’s chapatti, he made some kind of decision, and hopped up on to the palm of my hand, where he could get at the bread more comfortably. He was darker than the other chicks, almost brown in hue, with two parallel black squiggles along his back, running along where his wings were.
    ‘You see?’ Atish said. ‘That one likes you. He’ll always remember you, now.’
    ‘How can he remember?’ I said.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Atish said. He threw his shawl over his shoulder, picked up his fork again. ‘But he always will. Sometimes when they come up to you, they think that you’re their mother, and then they never change their mind.’
    The idea that my chick thought I was his mother was so funny that I trembled with laughter. The chick jumped off my hand, but did not run away; he went on pecking nonchalantly around my hand as if the movement of my laughter had been an inexplicable quake. And in a moment he returned to me, and hopped back on my palm.
    When I went back into the house, I told everyone that I had a chicken all of my own and had decided to call him Piklu. My sisters, Mary-aunty and Bubbly-aunty, who had come from Srimongol to visit, all came out to see my chicken. ‘Don’t go too close,’ Mary-aunty warned. ‘You’ll upset the mother and she might even eat her own chicks.’ But I knew that would not happen, unless my sisters and aunts came running across and crowded them. I approached the mass of new chicks pecking at the ground before the chicken house, walking softly, and what happened did not surprise me at all. The chick with the two black squiggles down its back, the one a little darker than the others, detached itself quite easily from its brothers and sisters and came to say hello to me. I squatted down, and held out my hand, and the chick hopped happily on to my palm.
    ‘This is Piklu,’ I said. ‘He’s my chicken.’
    And Bubbly-aunty was so impressed, she went to fetch Dahlia out of her music lesson to show her.
    3.
    Every aunt had her occupation – to paint, to cook, to help Nana with legal research, to attend to the chickens. Bubbly, who loved food, was forever in the kitchen, though her particular task was to supervise the making of the pickles. Mary’s was to keep the children in order; Nadira’s was to sing. Though she was in Sheffield now, the other aunts talked about her ceaselessly. I could remember her wedding, how beautiful it had been, how beautiful she had been. Her singing had been good enough for her to appear on Bangladeshi television, performing Tagore songs. ‘Do you think she has her own programme, by now, on British television?’ Mary asked guilelessly.
    ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ Nani said.
    At the time when Tagore was banned by the Pakistanis, before independence, Nadira had hidden her music with all the other Bengali music, poetry and books in the secret cellar at my grandfather’s house. When it was safe to bring it out again, it was clear that she had not forgotten any of it. That was her occupation.
    Dahlia was my favourite aunt. Nadira had been fascinating and dramatic, always ready to shout and stamp or even to cry for effect in public. But she could also say, ‘Be off with you, wretched child.’ Dahlia was as fragrant as Nadira had been, and as pretty as her name. She, too, had her music. It was understood that Nadira was a better singer, but Dahlia took lessons from the two musicians who came to the house. Her occupation,