A Guardian and a Thief

by Megha Majumdar

“The best philosopher, don’t you know, is the one who laughs, and makes others laugh. This city will survive because it is full of such street corner philosophers. They understand that laughing is the most truthful way of approaching life.”

But all the parts of him that he delighted in—his creativity, his pull toward rhymes, his curious eyes and ears, his laughter—these he would never be able to claim in a new land, before a new peer. These, too, would remain in Kolkata. That old self would roam the vacant house like a ghost.

He understood, from everything he had endured in his own life, that the worth of honesty, presented as noble before schoolchildren, was itself a lie. The honest souls who paused to deliberate on morals found, when they made their choice, that the treasure was gone. What was absolutely true and right, and what was absolutely false and wrong, and how could any sane person live without crossing the borders every day? Lies were the lifeblood of the world. Lies activated the menacing truth Boomba now understood, and there was only one, which was, take what you want, or others will take it.

“Why don’t you sell those loud birds?” said her cousins, who donated some of their furniture to her before leaving the city behind for Australia. They told her about pet markets where ring-necked parakeets were in high demand, especially ones as beautifully colored as Abba and Bee Gees, with their green feathers luminous as rain-washed leaves, a touch of peach about their necks, and beaks bright as cherries. Their eyes, all knowing in the manner of elephants. But Mrs. Sen refused to consider such crude advice. After the door closed on those cousins, she thought: Why don’t you sell Pikoo, who is sprouting a mustache and still can’t make toast?

Perhaps the true adventure was not only in seeing the world but also in seeing the versions of one’s own self that the journey revealed.