The Lowland

the streets of Calcutta, in front of a building he did not recognize. He wondered if Udayan had taken the picture. If he’d inspired the playful expression on her face.
    This is in lieu of a formal introduction, and it will be as formal an announcement as you will get. But it’s time that you met her. I’ve known her a few years. We kept it quiet, but you know how it is. Her name is Gauri and she’s finishing a degree in philosophy at Presidency. A girl from North Calcutta, Cornwallis Street. Both her parents are dead, she lives with her brother—a friend of mine—and some relatives. She prefers books to jewels and saris. She believes as I do.
    Like Chairman Mao, I reject the idea of an arranged marriage. It is one thing, I admit, that I admire about the West. And so I’ve married her. Don’t worry, apart from running off with her there’s no scandal. You’re not about to be an uncle. Not yet, anyway. Too many children are victims of our defective social structure. This needs first to be fixed.
    I wish you could have been here, but you didn’t miss any type of celebration. It was a civil registration. I told Ma and Baba after the fact, as I am telling you. I told them, either you accept her, and we return to Tollygunge together, or we live as husband and wife somewhere else.
    They are still in shock, upset with me and also for no reason with Gauri, but we’re with them now, learning to live with one another. They can’t bear to tell you what I’ve done. So I’m telling you myself.
    At the end of the letter, he asked Subhash to buy a few books for Gauri, saying that they would be easier to find in the States. Don’t bother putting them in the mail, they’ll only get lost or stolen. Bring them with you. You will show up to congratulate me one of these days, won’t you?
    This time he didn’t reread the letter. Once was enough.
    Though Udayan had a job, it was hardly enough to support himself, never mind a family. He was not yet twenty-five years old. Though the house was now going to be big enough, to Subhash the decision felt impulsive, an imposition on his parents, premature. And he was puzzled that Udayan, so dedicated to his politics, so scornful of convention, would suddenly take a wife.
    Not only had Udayan married before Subhash, but he’d married a woman of his choosing. On his own he’d taken a step that Subhash believed was their parents’ place to decide. Here was another example of Udayan pushing ahead of Subhash, of contradicting that he’d come second. Another example of getting his way.
    The back of the photograph was dated in Udayan’s handwriting. It was from over a year ago, 1968. Udayan had gotten to know her and fallen in love with her while Subhash was still in Calcutta. All that time, Udayan had kept Gauri to himself.
    Once more Subhash destroyed the letter. The photograph he kept, at the back of one of his textbooks, as proof of what Udayan had done.
    From time to time he drew out the picture and looked at it. He wondered when he would meet Gauri, and what he would think of her, now that they were connected. And part of him felt defeated by Udayan all over again, for having found a girl like that.

II
    1.
    Normally she stayed on the balcony, reading, or kept to an adjacent room as her brother and Udayan studied and smoked and drank cups of tea. Manash had befriended him at Calcutta University, where they were both graduate students in the physics department. Much of the time their books on the behaviors of liquids and gases would sit ignored as they talked about the repercussions of Naxalbari, and commented on the day’s events.
    The discussions strayed to the insurgencies in Indochina and in Latin American countries. In the case of Cuba it wasn’t even a mass movement, Udayan pointed out. Just a small group, attacking the right targets.
    All over the world students were gaining momentum, standing up to exploitative systems. It was another example of Newton’s second law of motion, he joked. Force equals mass times acceleration.
    Manash was skeptical. What could they, urban students, claim to know about peasant life?
    Nothing, Udayan said. We need to learn from them.
    Through an open doorway she saw him. Tall but slight of build, twenty-three but looking a bit older. His clothing hung on him loosely. He wore kurtas but also European-style shirts, irreverently, the top portion unbuttoned, the