Anisha Bhaduri
Anisha Bhaduri is a writer from Kolkata, who lives and works in Hong Kong. A Konrad Adenauer Fellow, her journalism has been published across Asia. She has won a British Council prize, has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and nominated for Best of the Net 2023 for her first short story published in North America and for Best of the Net 2024 for her first work published in the UK. Her literary fiction appeared in She Writes, Random House India. Her debut crime novella Murders in Kolkata 26 was published by Juggernaut Books. Bhaduri’s short stories have appeared or forthcoming in Joyland Magazine, Tampa Review, Harpur Palate, Touchstone Literary Magazine, The Hopper, Sonder Magazine, the other side of hope and Kitaab.
Tokelau
On the third day of the Lunar New Year, I noticed Mr Cheong’s eyes were blue. He was sitting with his back to the wall, on a hard chair, his elbows on a collapsible plank of laminated wood that hemmed in a little square patch of the ground floor landing. The glare from the strip of neon overhead lent a hardness to his face. Then the main door to our building opened, and closed, and the lemony light that it brought in and also expelled, cut the neon’s hardness like lightning. And, in that quiet island of colors nudging winter smells, Mr Cheong’s irises had acquired an unmistakable blue.
“Kung he fat Choy!” my son greeted him.
Ah Cheong grinned, his dentures shone. A muscle quivered on his chin as he wished my son well too.
“He speaks Chinese?”
“Reads and writes, too,” I said proudly, ruffling my son’s hair. Drawing an impossible breath that mothers do when it is suggested that their children have it in them to test limits.
“My grandchildren speak French, only French, they read everything in French. Write in French,” Ah Cheong said deliberately, taking time, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
“Here, in Hong Kong?” my son piped up.
“Oh no, they are in Quebec. They all speak French there, nothing but French.”
“But Quebec’s in Canada, am I right, Mamma?”
Drawing another deep breath, I nodded. “Certainly.”
“Do you speak French, Mr Cheong,” I wanted to know.
“Oh no, not at all. Maybe I’ll learn when I visit them.”
The lift arrived and we said our goodbyes.
When we had moved in to this building on a Saturday in May, Mr Cheong was on duty. We had asked our landlady to make introductions.
“Are you from India?” he wanted to know in fluent English.
My husband and I exchanged a glance, a fleeting but concrete swell of relief of foreigners at a linguistic loss.
We nodded happily.
“From which part?”
“Calcutta.”
“Calcutta? You are from Calcutta? I’ve been to Calcutta so many times.”
I felt a contraction in my chest, a sudden stillness that comes when faced with the very unexpected. Only then I was properly aware of Mr Cheong. In his sky blue uniform shirt, sitting in the corner of a slight elevation from which stairs rose, an overhead fan stirring his white hair, his knuckles swollen and a smile that hid his eyes, almost.
I regarded this elderly Hongkonger and wondered what had taken him to Calcutta, again and again. What had made this man from an orderly metropolis disregard my city’s sagging heat and general filth? Did he see what I could clearly, that Hong Kong shared Calcutta’s template of conurbation – an unmistakable colonial legacy?
“I’ve been to Chennai too,” Mr Cheong declared.
“How so?” now my husband was curious too.
“I’ve worked on ships. The charters took me around the world. Calcutta, Chennai lovely cities. Great people. Liked it every time.”
There was a bland sincerity that told us Mr Cheong saw no need for curated emphasis. We became friends.
Mr Cheong was on duty only on Saturdays when he spelled our usual caretaker, also a septuagenarian. Waiting for the lift, I would chat sometimes. He would tell me about his usual place of work, closer home. How he would be rotated sometimes among the buildings that his company was contracted to manage.
“Good the government now allows more elderly people to work as janitors, security guards and caretakers.”
I would agree, remembering the piece of news clearly. How reading it had instantly brought to mind Mr Cheong.
“Hong Kong is so expensive,” he would say, bringing his hands together and rubbing the wrists. “The weather is not good for old people.”
That January, we had a cold spell. The winds brought tears and humidity hurt our bones. Rooms were fetid with colds on the mend and damp woolens bit into the body like snakes. One Saturday, he waved me over.
“I read Hong Kong had snow last Sunday. Is it true?”
“You tell me, Mr Cheong, this is your city,” I smiled, taking a while. “It was probably frost, nothing more. But it was certainly the coldest day in decades.”
“What do you think it would happen if it snowed here in Hong Kong?”
“You tell me, Mr Cheong.”
“If it snowed and there were icecaps on the sea, and if it all turned white, maybe I could take a picture and send it to my grandchildren.”
“To Quebec?”
“Yes, you remembered?” the blue in eyes glittered.
“But don’t they have enough snow there?”
“They do, they do, they have plenty. But if I had proof it snowed here in Hong Kong too, maybe they would visit.”
The lift keened in the pocket of silence.
I was suddenly seized by an image of Cindy Harlacher from years ago, in blue linen shorts and a dirty white vest, standing still in the shaded part of a terrace on the top floor of a newspaper office in Calcutta I had briefly worked in. In the newsroom, the air-conditioner was spreading a lukewarm apology and it was growing stuffier. I had to step out.
Cindy’s face was red, her alabaster arms and legs shiny with sweat and mottling slowly. Her blue eyes glittered in disbelief as heat rose from the cracked, weathered cement. It was 42ְ degrees Celsius in the sun. The slight Manitoban with a reddish mop of hair and a shy smile had told us quietly, just the day before, with the contrition of someone who was ready to be doubted in a land where the sun shone year around, that winters in her native Canada could push temperatures down to -30 degrees Celsius, even lower. We had smiled politely. In the height of an Indian summer, when an unrelenting yellow haze settled on the plains and dust spiralled like a madman’s rant, a terrain completely frozen over seemed as improbable as unseasonal rains carried over by damp winds from the Bay of Bengal.
On the terrace, as someone had called out her name, Cindy had turned around; a sweating bottle of water pressed to the side of her throat. The smile that rippled on her lips arrived moments late, and I recognized the relief of an itinerant. She pressed the cold bottle into the hands of the colleague who had turned up by her side, chatting easily, her manner animated as if she was already crossing into the realm of endless snow and silent nights, the end of her working holiday just a matter of time now.
I hadn’t thought of Cindy Harlacher since moving to Hong Kong.
Sometimes, on my way out on errands on Saturdays, I would notice Mr Cheong’s lunch sitting inside a white polythene packet – standard restaurant issue. Two flat, rectangular polystyrene boxes stacked one upon another, nudged by a lidded plastic beaker and disposable chopsticks, the shapes distinct through their polythene shroud; a disposable meal that leaves no aftertaste.
I saw men and women, even schoolchildren hurrying home at the end of the day, similar polythene bags dangling from their hands. But rarely at lunchtime. At that time of the day, fellow-feeling is greater. Co-workers tend to eat together, creating instant, ersatz families – a curious bond that is defined by the hour of the day and not the people who may have shaped it.
“Don’t you cook for Mrs Cheong?” I pointed at the takeaway, arms laden with shopping.
“When’s the time?”
“Why not? You get off at six, you can shop on your way home. Cook dinner. Don’t know how you can stand takeaway every day,” I rolled my eyes.
“Well, this is Hong Kong.”
So it is, one restaurant for every 600 people it seemed. He surprised me a few weeks later. “What happened to char siu?” I exclaimed, pointing to a bagel sitting inside a deli carton, ringed by little containers of different hue, rocket leaves peeping out like shy elves.
“That’s your lunch, Mr Cheong?”
The smile melted his eyes, and Mr Cheong nodded shyly. “Wanted to try one. The cream cheese tastes good.”
“But is it filling?” I said, moving my hands vaguely to indicate his usual fare.
“I once had cheese in Holland, brought some home too. Excellent. But it spoiled in the heat here, the children were very disappointed,” Mr Cheong said with his eyes on a paper napkin he was using to wipe off cream cheese from his chin.
“You children like cheese?”
“Oh, yes, they do. But my grandchildren love bagels with cheese. They really do.”
Between noon and one, the front door of the building would remain shut. With Mr Cheong taking a break, it was up to residents to buzz visitors in. Sometimes, a deliveryman would be at a loss, lingering apologetically. Mr Cheong would materialise, asking his business. And if satisfied, would admit him.
I asked him once, how did he know it was all right to let in a stranger. He said he didn’t, couldn’t possibly and that it was a gamble, anyway; one just hoped the bad guys would keep away. I laughed with him till nudged by an image of my little son playing on the foyer carpet, all by himself, in the shadow of our closed main door.
The fragility of it all was splinter sharp and I admonished the elderly caretaker, “You must take it seriously, Mr Cheong. You must.”
Neel had just started in a new kindergarten and wasn’t settling well. He would cling to me when I went to drop him off and I could hear him wailing long after the class nanny had collected him. There were a few, not unexpected debacles but Ms Lee, his playgroup teacher, was patient.
She told me it was remarkable that Neel insisted on starting conversations despite having little Chinese and what was even more remarkable that his little classmates seemed willing to absorb familiar words and phrases in foreign tones. Sometimes, Ms Lee said, a few words would even be exchanged. Was that progress? “Oh yes, sure la,” giggled Ms Lee.
That day, with my son’s little fingers clutching mine, as we walked back home, I asked Neel to point out in Chinese the things that he found interesting. He shook his head, lifting his arms to show he wanted to be carried.
“What? A five year old? Shame…” I intoned as I picked him up, looked into his dark eyes, smelled the fragrance that flowed only from him and breathed in deeply.
I regarded our building from the opposite pavement, waiting for the lights to change. The wind was rising and carried the smell of dried seafood along the tramlines. Chinese sausages hung from the rafters and dried fish wrapped in white paper showed their tinsel tails in the shops that lined the road. There was a stink that told you the sea was not far.
Our 14-storey building with peeling paint and protruding washing rails wouldn’t have been out of place in my native Calcutta where dilapidated block of flats stood confidently in serpentine lanes, braving open sewers and the stench of rubbish. During rains, each building was like an island with water standing irresolute around them.
There, tenants still paid pre-War rent agreed to by grandfathers long dead and landlords did little or nothing to maintain property they had inherited on paper. It was a tyranny of thrift practised generation after generation, refined, brandished – sometimes in courts – till smart developers took over, if they could. Urban renewal in that city was at the discretion of market forces and musclemen, not municipal officials. No surprise then this ungentrified strip of Hong Kong suited us.
A visitor from the fancier Mid-levels had once raised an eyebrow as a stevedore stripped down to waist had emerged from the lift pushing crates of dried sea cucumber from the warehouse a floor up.
“No cargo entrance?”
“Same lift for all.”
“Oh, I see,” she said as she lifted the pleats of her saree and wrapped the end around herself tightly.
Mr Cheong hadn’t impressed her either.
“You know, people in suits take care of our block of flats,” she said eventually, munching on onion fritters I had prepared Calcutta style, served with piping hot milk tea.
Our regular watchman, Mr Wong, was an acerbic individual with a long face who relished quarrels with elderly matrons who seemed to be in a majority in our building.
“That’s why the building is still standing,” one of them once declared angrily in lisping English. “Left to our children, the flats would have been sold off ages ago and we would be forced to live in nursing homes and shoe-box public housing units. I tell them, space matters, shininess doesn’t. But who listens? You tell me, you have a small child, isn’t it better to have more space and pay low rent?”
I couldn’t disagree but then, she was probably a rent-controlled tenant, with her spacious unit needing repairs and her kitchen and plumbing not upgraded since the 70s. Mr Cheong, who was listening, told us he lived in a public housing estate after languishing on the waitlist for five years and that he paid subsidised rent.
The graying lady with the fruit shop at the foot of our building probably paid controlled rent too. She regularly harangued buyers, had a reputation for overcharging and selling spotty fruits going soft. But a corner shop had its advantages so she seemed to get by. Sometimes, she would spare a smile which faded the instant she spotted her husband across the street smoking midmorning, without a care. He was the neighbourhood thinker.
A middle-aged man, dressed in blue jeans complemented alternately by plaid shirts and golf uppers, tails tucked neatly, the creases on his jeans faithfully meeting the laces of his pristine sports shoes; an inevitable cigarette dangling from his fingers, burning bright with every drag.
He liked to smoke in the company of Mr Cheong when the old man was on duty, both inhaling seriously, unsmiling, their eyes fixed on matters of interest they would shortly begin to comment on.
Sometimes, I was tempted to gift them packs of cigarettes for the sheer pleasure of watching the two blow perfect, leisurely rings on a Monday morning. But Mr Cheong only worked Saturdays.
When humidity climbed with the cloying heat, Mr Wong would undo all buttons of his uniform shirt and with fists bunched into pant pockets would walk up and down the lobby with his singlet showing, his sinewy arms curving out of rolled sleeves. He couldn’t stand the thinker and was rumoured to share uncharitable observations with the harmless man’s wife within his earshot.
Mr Choeng’s mariner mien was manifest in the neatness of his uniform and his blue shirt would always remain buttoned.
“How old are you Mr Cheong?”
“Guess,” he said and left it at that.
Sometimes, I thought a Chinese saint would look just like him – a head full of white hair and a face so serene it seemed the sea had sucked all tempest out of him.
One Saturday, as he handed me a letter from my parents, he wanted to know how frequently I wrote to them or called. He already knew we flew to Calcutta twice a year to visit family.
“I write to my grandparents in Bangla,” my son said as he snatched the letter from my hands and started to tear the flap open.
“It’s for him,” I told Mr Cheong.
“Stamps, stamps!” Neel screamed, jumping up and down in the lobby.
“Stickers too,” he squealed as treasures tumbled out. He held the letter close to his eyes, inhaling deeply.
“Nani, Nani,” he pointed at the handwriting of my mother.
“Dadu, Dadu,” he rubbed a finger on my father’s.
“He knows?”
“Oh yes, Mr Cheong,” I laughed, enjoying his incredulity. “He can read and write in Bangla – the language we speak.”
Mr Cheong leaned back a little and we said our goodbyes.
The Chinese New Year came and went in January and the customary red envelope we had prepared with Mr Cheong’s year-end bonus inside stayed in my handbag.
“Have you seen Mr Cheong lately?” I asked my husband on a Saturday as I was cleaning out my tote.
“Not for sometime.”
“I still have his lai see here,” I dug out the small red envelope and waved it.
“Still not back from his New Year break?”
“Let me find out,” I said, pulling on a coat.
Mr Cheong’s replacement smiled a lot. He had little English.
“Mr Cheong?” I pointed at the seat the elderly man had just vacated and moved my right hand in a gesture that splayed the fingers and brought the palm upwards.
“Is… he… still… on… leave?” I took my time with each word.
“Canada. He go Canada.”
“To visit?”
“He go, he go,” the smiling caretaker said. The aged lift screeched behind me as it winched itself up.
As I walked up the stairs, I thought of Mr Cheong. I saw him in my mind hemmed in by snow in distant Quebec, his grandchildren calling out to him in French, nothing but French; his saint’s face crumbling as the language he spoke to his children was meaningless to theirs.
And, I thought how he must be missing the sea, its saltiness.
That evening, I looked up from the newspaper I was reading and called to my son to come to me. Then, with his little hands in mine, I told him about the tiny island nation of Tokelau, a dot in the blue of the Pacific, whose population of 1,403 can only be reached by sea.