Ode to Broken Things by Dipika Mukherjee Read Free Book Online Page A

shower, emerging as a lovely young woman in the spring of her life. He would fall in love, again.
    Agni was waiting for him to speak again. But he didn’t know how to play her game, at least not yet.
    He reached for the kretek in his pocket. It was a lifelong addiction stretching well over three decades, and he had always found a supplier, even in Boston. This pack was half empty, and he tossed it on the table, the open winged bird on the cover with the Gudang Garam stamped below so creased that the paper flaked onto his fingers. He lit the cigar, and the sweet fragrance of cloves spiced with cinnamon, followed by a hint of star anise, wafted up towards Agni.
    He realised his rudeness. “Sorry, do you mind?”
    She started to wave a lazy hand over her face and wrinkle her nose, but then changed her mind. Inclining her head in a mocking request for permission, she bent down to extract a kretek and, with a practiced flick of her thumb, she lit it with his lighter. Jay thought her display of cleavage lasted slightly longer than was necessary, but who could be sure? Not that he objected to her charms; rather, it was the discomfiting notion that she was making it clear that she knew just how to handle men his age.
    “I hope I am not being intrusive, but I grew up with your mother…”
    “Oh, I don’t mind your questions, Professor Ghosh. It feels good to be able to talk about her actually. Maybe that’s why I wrote… too much… in that email. My grandmother used to tell me about the two of you, childhood best friends… your pets, some of your adventures. But that was before her stroke. Now she can’t talk at all.”
    He already knew about Shapna’s condition and the details did not interest him. It was enough that the stroke had silenced the woman, and made it safe for him to return.
    “I was very sorry to hear about your grandmother. But your father… as you wrote, he came back alone? How is he?”
    “Father? The Sylheti man my mother married, if that’s who you mean.”
    She played with a thin gold bracelet, her arm glistening with the humidity in the room. Jay saw rich Chinese tea, sharp with the taste of gold on the tongue, and just a hint of steam. He flicked a silver strand of his hair from his knee.
    “When my mother died, my father broke an earthen pot.” Agni ground the cigarette stub savagely. “He let the water set her soul free, and wrung me out of his life. That was that. The last time I ever saw him.” She lit another kretek and blew out a puff of smoke with great deliberation as the ash flickered down, spiralling with the dust motes. “I was handed to Dida, the conjurer of dreams, and her deep pouch of fables,” Agni laughed self-consciously. “Maybe I’m getting a bit carried away, Professor, but you know how it is. Thakumar Jhuli must have been a part of your growing up too, eh?”
    “That book, and many more.”
    But Agni’s attention had shifted. She looked towards the bedroom where her grandmother lay sleeping. “Our grandmothers’ tales are cruel, Professor. No tame storks to bring babies for us; our stories are about kings who believe that their queens give birth to animals, or that children buried alive turn into flowery trees to sing for their parents… so much crap.”
    Jay nodded in recognition. Agni leaned forward again. “You must know my mother was a fairy child, Professor? Her birth was like a familiar fairytale, but with an unhappy ending. No one even remembers the same story.”
    She leaned back on her chair, and sent the kretek spiralling out of the window with a backward flick of her wrist. There it was again, the flash of a tiny waist, perfectly dimpled. “Perhaps you should tell me what you remember, Professor Ghosh?” Agni dipped forward, her breath a whisper near his face, “Were you there when my mother died?”
    He could smell the cloves on her breath. He focused on the glitter of her fingertips splayed on her upper thigh. It wasn’t enough. In an