The Inheritance of Loss

Thirty-three

Six months after Sai, Lola and Noni, Uncle Potty and Father Booty made a library trip to the Gymkhana Club, it was taken over by the Gorkha National Liberation Front, who camped out in the ballroom and the skating rink, ridiculing even further whatever pretensions the club might still harbor despite having already been brought low by the staff.

Men with guns rested in the ladies’ powder room, enjoyed the spacious plumbing that was still stamped barhead Scotland, patentees in mulberry letters and dawdled before the long mirror, because like most of the towns’ residents, they rarely had the opportunity to see themselves from top to bottom.

The dining room was filled with men in khaki, posing for pictures, feet on the stuffed head of a leopard, whiskey in hand, fire in the fireplace still with rosette tiles. They drank up the entire bar, and on chilly nights they took down the skins from the walls and slept in the musty folds.

Later evidence proved they also stockpiled guns, drew maps, plotted the bombing of bridges, hatched plans that grew in daring as managers fled from the tea plantations that stretched in waves over the Singalila Mountains all around the Gymkhana, from Happy Valley, Makaibari, Chonglu, Pershok.

Then, when it was all over, and the men had signed a peace treaty and moved out – here at this very spot in the Gymkhana Club, on these dining tables placed side by side in a row – they had staged a public surrender of arms.

On October 2, 1988, Gandhi Jayanti Day, seven thousand men surrendered more than five thousand pipe guns, country-made revolvers, pistols, double- and single-barrel guns, Sten guns. They gave up thousands of rounds of ammunition, thirty-five hundred bombs, gelatine sticks, detonators and land mines, kilograms of explosives, mortar shells, cannons. Ghising’s men alone had more than twenty-four thousand pieces. In the pile was the judge’s BSA pump gun, the Springfield rifle, the double-barreled Holland amp; Holland with which he had roamed, after teatime, in the countryside surrounding Bonda.

But when Lola, Noni, Father Booty, Uncle Potty, and Sai were turned away from the Gymkhana dining room, they didn’t expect things to go so badly with the club. They mistook the gloom for present trouble, just as the manager had suggested, and not for a premonition of the dining hall’s future.

Where should they lunch, then?

"That new place, Let’s B Veg?" asked Father Booty.

"No ghas phoos, no twigs and leaves!" said Uncle Potty firmly. He never ate anything green if he could help it.

"Lung Fung?" It was a shabby Chinese establishment with slain-looking paper dragons dangling from the ceiling.

"Not very nice to sit in."

"Windamere?"

"Too expensive, only for foreigners. Anyway, it’s their tea that’s good, lunch is the missionary boardinghouse type of thing… thunda khitchri… blubbery collar of mutton… salt and pepper, if you’re very lucky…

In the end it was Glenary’s, as usual.

"Lots of options, at least – everybody can get what they want."

So they trooped across. At a table in the corner sat Father Peter Lingdamoo, Father Pius Marcus, and Father Bonniface D’Souza eating apple strudel. "Good afternoon, Monsignor," they said to Father Booty, bringing a whiff of Europe to them. So elegant: Monsignor…

As always, the room was mostly crowded with schoolchildren squirming with joy on their lunch out, boarding schools being one of Dar-jeeling’s great economic ventures along with tea. There were older children celebrating birthdays on their own without supervision, younger ones accompanied by parents visiting from Calcutta or even Bhutan and Sikkim, or Bangladesh, Nepal, or from the surrounding tea gardens. Several patriarchs in a generous mood were also questioning their children about their studies, but the mothers were protesting, "Let them be for once, baba," piling up plates and stroking hair, looking at their children in the way their children were looking at the food, trying to stuff in all they could.

They knew the menu by heart from years of special meals at denary’s. Indian, Continental, or Chinese; sizzlers, chicken and sweet corn soup, ice cream with hot chocolate sauce. Taking swift advantage of parents’ melting eyes – almost time to say good-bye – another ice cream with hot chocolate sauce? "Please, Ma, please, Ammi, please, Mummy," mother’s eyes turned toward father, "Priti, no, it is quite enough, don’t spoil him now," then giving in, knowing Ma, Ammi, or Mummy would be weeping all the lonely road back to the plantation or airport or train station. Had her mother been like this? And her father? Sai felt suddenly bereft and jealous of these children. There was one Tibetan woman so intensely pretty in her sky-colored baku and apron with those disjointed bands of jolly color that made one feel cozy and loved right away. "Oh, such sweet sweet cheeks," the family were all saying, laughing as they pretended to eat the baby, somehow kindly and gently, and the baby was laughing hardest of all. Why couldn’t she be part of that family? Rent a room in someone else’s life?

The ladies polished their cutlery on the paper napkins, wiped their plates and glasses, returned one that looked cloudy.

"How about a wee drink, ladies?" said Uncle Potty.

"Oh Potty, starting so early."

"Suit yourselves. Gin tonic," he ordered and dipped his bread stick directly into the butter dish. Came up with a cheerful golden berg. "I do like a bit of bread with my butter," he proclaimed.

"They do a good fish and chips with tartar sauce," said Father Booty with a flutter of hope, thinking of river fish in crisp gold uniforms of bread crumbs.

"Is the fish fresh?" Lola demanded of the waiter. "From the Teesta?"

"Why not?" said the waiter.

"Why not???!! I don’t know! You know WHY if NOT!!!"

"Better not risk it. How about chicken in cheese sauce?"

"What cheese?" asked Father Booty.

Everyone froze… chilled silence.

They knew the insult was coming -

Utterly butterly delicious… All India Cheese Champ -