‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ Piya was mortified: of everyone in the compartment, this was the last person she would have chosen to scald with her tea. She had noticed him while waiting on the platform in Kolkata and she had been struck by the self-satisfied tilt of his head and the unabashed way in which he stared at everyone around him, taking them in, sizing them up, sorting them all into their places. She had noticed the casual self-importance with which he had evicted the man who’d been sitting next to the window. She had been put in mind of some of her relatives in Kolkata: they too seemed to share the assumption that they had been granted some kind of entitlement (was it because of their class or their education?) that allowed them to expect that life’s little obstacles and annoyances would always be swept away to suit their convenience.
‘Here,’ said Piya, producing a handful of tissues. ‘Let me help you clean up.’
‘There’s nothing to be done,’ he said testily. ‘These pages are ruined anyway.’
She flinched as he crumpled up the papers he had been reading and tossed them out of the window. ‘I hope they weren’t important,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Nothing irreplaceable – just Xeroxes.’
For a moment she considered pointing out that it was he who had jogged her hand. But all she could bring herself to say was, ‘I’m very sorry. I hope you’ll excuse me.’
‘Do I really have a choice?’ he said in a tone more challenging than ironic. ‘Does anyone have a choice when they’re dealing with Americans these days?’
Piya had no wish to get into an argument so she let this pass. Instead she opened her eyes wide, feigning admiration, and said, ‘But how did you guess?’
‘About what?’
‘About my being American? You’re very observant.’
This seemed to mollify him. His shoulders relaxed as he leaned back in his seat. ‘I didn’t guess,’ he said. ‘I knew.’
‘And how did you know?’ she said. ‘Was it my accent?’
‘Yes,’ he said with a nod. ‘I’m very rarely wrong about accents. I’m a translator you see, and an interpreter as well, by profession. I like to think that my ears are tuned to the nuances of spoken language.’
‘Oh really?’ She smiled so that her teeth shone brightly in the dark oval of her face. ‘And how many languages do you know?’
‘Six. Not including dialects.’
‘Wow!’ Her admiration was unfeigned now. ‘I’m afraid English is my only language. And I wouldn’t claim to be much good at it either.’
A frown of puzzlement appeared on his forehead. ‘And you’re on your way to Canning you said?’
‘Yes.’
‘But tell me this,’ he said. ‘If you don’t know any Bengali or Hindi, how are you planning to find your way around over there?’
‘I’ll do what I usually do,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’ll try to wing it. Anyway, in my line of work there’s not much talk needed.’
‘And what is your line of work, if I may ask?’
‘I’m a cetologist,’ she said. ‘That means—’ She was beginning, almost apologetically, to expand on this when he interrupted her.
‘I know what it means,’ he said sharply. ‘You don’t need to explain. It means you study marine mammals. Right?’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘You’re very well informed. Marine mammals are what I study – dolphins, whales, dugongs and so on. My work takes me out on the water for days sometimes, with no one to talk to – no one who speaks English, anyway.’
‘So is it your work that takes you to Canning?’
‘That’s right. I’m hoping to wangle a permit to do a survey of the marine mammals of the Sundarbans.’
For once he was silenced, although only briefly. ‘I’m amazed,’ he said presently. ‘I didn’t even know there were any such.’
‘Oh yes, there are,’ she said. ‘Or there used to be, anyway. Very large numbers of them.’
‘Really? All we ever hear about is the tigers and the crocodiles.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘The cetacean population has kind of disappeared from view. No one knows whether it’s because they’re gone or because they haven’t been studied. There hasn’t ever been a proper survey.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Maybe because it’s impossible to get permission?’ she said. ‘There was a team here last year. They prepared for months, sent in their papers and everything. But they didn’t even make it out on the water. Their permits were withdrawn at the last minute.’
‘And why do you think you’ll fare any better?’
‘It’s easier to slip through the net if you’re on your own,’ she said. There was a brief pause and then, with a tight-lipped smile, she added, ‘Besides, I have an uncle in Kolkata who’s a big wheel in the government. He’s spoken to someone in the Forest Department’s office in Canning. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.’
‘I see.’ He seemed to be impressed as much by her candour as her canniness. ‘So you have relatives in Calcutta then?’
‘Yes. In fact I was born there myself, although my parents left when I was just a year old.’ She turned a sharp glance on him, raising an eyebrow. ‘I see you still say “Calcutta”. My father does that too.’
Kanai acknowledged the correction with a nod. ‘You’re right – I should be more careful, but the re-naming was so recent that I do get confused sometimes. I try to reserve “Calcutta” for the past and “Kolkata” for the present but occasionally I slip. Especially when I’m speaking English.’ He smiled and put out a hand. ‘I should introduce myself; I’m Kanai Dutt.’
‘And I’m Piyali Roy – but everyone calls me Piya.’
She could tell he was surprised by the unmistakably Bengali sound of her name: evidently her ignorance of the language had given him the impression that her family’s origins lay in some other part of India.
‘You have a Bengali name,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘And yet you know no Bangla?’
‘It’s not my fault really,’ she said quickly, her voice growing defensive. ‘I grew up in Seattle. I was so little when I left India that I never had a chance to learn.’
‘By that token, having grown up in Calcutta, I should speak no English.’
‘Except that I just happen to be terrible at languages …’ She let the sentence trail away, unfinished, and then changed the subject. ‘And what brings you to Canning, Mr Dutt?’
‘Kanai – call me Kanai.’
‘Kan-ay.’
He was quick to correct her when she stumbled over the pronunciation: ‘Say it to rhyme with Hawaii.’
‘Kanaii?’
‘Yes, that’s right. And to answer your question – I’m on my way to visit an aunt of mine.’
‘She lives in Canning?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She lives in a place called Lusibari. It’s quite a long way from Canning.’
‘Where exactly?’ Piya unzipped a pocket in one of her backpacks and pulled out a map. ‘Show me. On this.’
Kanai spread the map out and used a fingertip to trace a winding line through the tidal channels and waterways. ‘Canning is the railhead for