The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

shaded veranda, equipped with fluted columns, neoclassical pediments, vaguely Saracenic arches and other such elements of the schoolhouse architecture of its time. The rooms were large and airy, with tall shuttered windows.
    Not far from the school lay a compound cut off from public view by a screen of trees. The house that occupied the center of this compound was much smaller and less visible than the school. Yet its appearance was, if anything, even more arresting. Built entirely of wood, it stood on a six-foot trestle of stilts, as if to suggest it belonged more in the Himalayas than in the tide country. The roof was a steeply pitched wooden pyramid, sitting on a grid of symmetrical lines: stilts and columns, windows and balustrades. Rows of French windows were set into the walls and their floor-to-ceiling shutters opened onto a shaded veranda that ran all the way around the house. In front there was a lily-covered pond, skirted by a pathway of mossy bricks.
    In 1970, Kanai recalled, this compound had seemed lonely and secluded. Although it was situated in the center of the settlement there were few other dwellings nearby. It was as though some lingering attitude of deference or respect had prompted the islanders to keep their distance from that wooden house. But that had changed now. It was clear at a glance that the area was among the most heavily trafficked on the whole island. Clusters of huts, houses, stalls, sweetshops and the like had grown up around the compound. The lanes that snaked around its perimeter echoed to the sound of filmi music and the air was heavy with the smell of freshly fried jilipis.
    Kanai glanced over his shoulder and saw that Nilima was busy discussing Trust business with a couple of officeholders of the Women’s Union. Slipping away, he pushed open the compound’s gate and went hurrying up the mossy pathway that led to the house. To his surprise, none of the noise and bustle of the village seemed to filter into the compound and for a moment he felt as though he were stepping through a warp in time. The house seemed at once very old and very new. The wood, discolored by the sun and rain, had acquired a silvery patina, like certain kinds of bark; it reflected the light in such a way as to appear almost translucent, like a skin of mirrored metal. It seemed now to be almost blue in color, reflecting the tint of the sky.
    On reaching the stilts, Kanai stopped to peer at the dappled underside of the house — the geometric pattern of shadows was exactly as he remembered. He went up the steps and was starting toward the front door when he heard his uncle’s voice, echoing back from the past.
    â€œYou can’t go in that way,” Nirmal was saying. “Don’t you remember? The key to the front door was lost years ago. We’ll have to go all the way around.”
    Retracing the steps of that earlier visit, Kanai went down the veranda, around the corner of the balcony and along the next wing until he came to a small door at the rear of the house. The door opened at a touch and, on stepping in, the first object to meet his eyes was an old-fashioned porcelain toilet with a wooden seat. Next to it was an enormous cast-iron bathtub with clawed feet and a curling rim. A showerhead bowed over it, like a flower drooping on a wilted stem.
    The fittings seemed somewhat more rusty since he had first seen them, but they were otherwise unchanged. Kanai remembered how eagerly, as a boy, he’d taken them in. Since coming to Lusibari he’d had to bathe in a pond, just as Nirmal and Nilima did — he’d longed to step under that shower.
    â€œThis is a shahebi choubachcha, a white man’s tank,” Nirmal had said, pointing to the bathtub. “ Shahebs use them to bathe in.”
    Kanai remembered that he had been struck by the aptness of the description while also being offended at being spoken to as if he were a yokel who’d never seen such things. “I know