The Lowland

and purses, lining the streets.
    It was Durga Pujo, the city’s most anticipated days. The stores, the sidewalks, were overflowing. At the ends of certain alleys, or in gaps among buildings, she saw the pandals. Durga armed with her weapons, flanked by her four children, depicted and worshiped in so many versions. Made of plaster, made of clay. She was resplendent, formidable. A lion helped to destroy the demon at her feet. She was a daughter visiting her family, visiting the city, transforming it for a time.
    The guesthouse was on Southern Avenue. The flat was on the seventh floor. Overlooking the lake. A women’s fitness club below. The elevator seemed hardly more spacious than a telephone booth. Yet somehow she and the caretaker and her suitcase managed to fit.
    You’ve come for Pujo? the caretaker asked.
    She’d been on her way to London, not here. Somewhere over the Atlantic, the destination had become clear.
    In London she hadn’t left the airport. The lecture she was supposed to deliver, the printed pages in a folder in her suitcase, would go unheard.
    She hadn’t bothered e-mailing the organizers of the conference to explain her absence. It didn’t matter to her. Nothing did, after the things Bela had said.
    She’d gone to the booking office in Heathrow, asking about flights to India. The Indian passport she continued to carry, the citizenship she’d never renounced, enabled her, the following morning, to board another plane.
    It took her to Mumbai. It was a direct flight, there was no longer a need to refuel in the Middle East. Another night at another airport hotel, cold white sheets, Indian television programs. Black-and-white films from the sixties, CNN International. Unable to sleep, turning on her laptop, she looked up guesthouses in Kolkata, booked a place to stay.
    The kitchen would be stocked in the morning. The durwan could send someone out to bring in dinner tonight, she heard the caretaker say.
    That won’t be necessary.
    Should I set up a driver?
    She could pay him a flat rate for the day, the caretaker told her. He would show up as early as she liked. He would take her, within the city limits, anywhere she wanted to go.
    I’ll be ready at eight, she said.
    She woke in darkness, her eyes open at five. At six she showered with hot water. She shed her clothes in a corner of the bathroom, brushed her teeth at a pink sink. On the pantry shelves in the kitchen she found a box of Lipton, lit a burner, and made herself a cup of tea. She drank it, and ate a packet of crackers left over from the plane.
    At seven the doorbell rang. A maid carrying a bag of fruit, bread and butter, biscuits, the newspaper. The caretaker had mentioned something about this.
    Her name was Abha. She was a woman in her thirties, a talkative mother of four children. The eldest, she told Gauri, was sixteen. In the afternoons she had a job, at one of the fancy hospitals, cleaning. She brewed more tea, set out a plate of biscuits.
    Abha’s tea was better, stronger, served with sugar and warmed milk. A few minutes later, she brought out another plate.
    What’s this?
    She’d prepared an omelette, sliced toast with butter. The butter was salty, the omelette spiced with pieces of chili. Gauri ate everything. She drank more tea.
    At eight o’clock, looking down from the small balcony off the bedroom, Gauri saw a car parked below. The driver was a young man with curly hair and a potbelly, wearing trousers, leather slippers. He was leaning against the hood, smoking a cigarette.
    She went to the north, up College Street, past Presidency, to visit her old neighborhood, to find Manash. But Manash was in Shillong, where one of his sons lived; he went every year at this time. His wife received her in her grandparents’ old flat, where the dark stairwell was still uneven, where the door opened for her, where Manash and his family continued to live.
    She sat with them in one of the bedrooms. She met his other son, the grandchildren from that family. They were incredulous to see her, welcoming, polite. They offered her sandesh, mutton rolls, tea. Behind her, beyond the shuttered door, she heard a constable’s whistle, the clanging of the tram.
    She was tempted to ask if she could step outside for a moment, onto the balcony that wrapped around the rooms of the flat, then changed her mind. How many hours had she spent staring down at the traffic, the intersection, her body bent