have a fancy tablecloth, like the one Shyamal said that da Vinci painted in his version. So he had the artist change the tablecloth to a simpler white one.
Shyamal knew the story about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, an indication of humility.
“After cleaning of the feet by Jesus Christ,” Shyamal said, “nobody would wear sandals. I wouldn’t allow it! No matter what the truth is!” The apostles in Shyamal’s The Last Supper are all barefoot.
Thank goodness Shyamal didn’t live in Jordan. At the end of 2018, journalists at a publication called Al Wakeel News posted a version of The Last Supper with Salt Bae, the Turkish celebrity chef who is best known for creatively seasoning meat, into the background. The Jordanian government arrested the journalists responsible.
I had a great laugh about Shyamal’s peculiarities when we got back to the hotel that night, particularly his saying “No matter what the truth is!” This is the exact kind of shit I do—pointing out plot holes in movies, television shows, and plays. It is unbearable to binge watch anything with me. I nitpick it all. I still don’t get why Buzz Lightyear froze when adults walked into the room in Toy Story if he didn’t know he was a toy. Don’t get me started on any movie involving time travel.
Maybe Shyamal and I were both more alike than I realized. Maybe I’m a nitpicking asshole about art because of him. And, more frighteningly, after what he told me about Belur Math: Maybe I have my comedic sense because of him.
Yikes.
We all had dinner at the flat, which consisted of a fish curry and potatoes. Suparna was an excellent cook. Out of tiredness, we munched in silence.
After dinner, we said goodbye to Susmita, and Shyamal had a driver take us back to our hotel.
Shyamal and I had spent the day together. I was thirty, and we’d never done that before. It was a nice day, but a little bit like being thrown into the deep end of the pool.
In the car, I stared blankly out the window. The constant honking of cars had become white noise now. I wasn’t processing the sights or much of anything at all on the car ride back.
“If we had never come, and you had found out about all of these parts of him after he had passed away, I think it would have been so bad,” Wesley turned to me and said.
“Yeah.”
I didn’t have much to say.
“One thing I kept thinking about today when we were driving around is: What if you had been born here? What would your life have been like?” Wesley said.
“Yeah.”
“You wouldn’t be you.”
“I wouldn’t be me,” I repeated in a low monotone.
“I never would have known you.”
“Never would have known me.”
I looked out the window, hearing but not registering what Wesley was saying.
“It’s just your circumstances: You were born in the United States because your dad was an engineer and all of those things. But for any of us, it’s circumstances,” Wesley said. “You could have been someone else.”
Seven
“Do you wish you were closer?”
Shyamal’s apartment had a small sunroom off the living room filled with an array of potted plants, with other greenery peering in through floor-to-ceiling windows, not unlike the porch at Bishakha’s. Shyamal’s had a livelier view, though. There was the constant stream of tuk-tuks, cyclists, and foot traffic, but the pitter-patter of the rain against the windows made it sound almost peaceful.
I spent some time immersed in the view from the second story before sitting down at the kitchen table. The white woven tablecloth was carefully covered with a protective layer of plastic, and there were plastic floral placemats on top of that. Freshly washed water glasses had been placed in front of each seat, upside down, waiting for our next meal. Wesley sat at the far end of the table, Shyamal at the other. I was in the middle. The room’s primary light fixture flickered on and off, plunging the flat into and out of the dark, a harbinger of the conversation about to occur.
I placed a voice recorder between my father and me. Beep. A red light flicked on as I pressed the circular button in the center.
Shyamal hunched over the table with his hands placed apart, palms down. I sat up straight, put my elbows on the surface, and interlocked my hands in front of my face. We were both wearing dark blue T-shirts.
It was our second full day in Kolkata,