Missed Translations - Sopan Deb Page 0,44

like how I feel watching a Wes Anderson film: This is beautiful. Looks amazing. When does this thing get going? Oh. It’s over. Huh.

As I was standing on the dais, I thought to myself: This is not what I want. Getting married in a church without being religious myself didn’t seem authentic, no matter who my fiancée is. Not that I wanted Burning Man either. Frankly, I wanted Chuck E. Cheese.

In the lead-up to the ceremony, Bishakha took me aside and sternly said, “Shambo, I want you to have an Indian wedding.” I half expected her to follow that up with, “That’s an order, Lieutenant.” I didn’t take it seriously. We were distant at this point. I had thought a lot about my dream wedding and I knew that wasn’t it. Why lie to the many Hindu gods about my commitment to the cause?

Now I’m not so sure I need a wedding at all. A party is fine. Or nothing. A life partner is cool with me too. Except when I got to India, it wasn’t totally left up to me. Some family members wanted to speed up the process, whether we wanted to or not.

Sudhirendra’s house was a fifteen-minute drive from Shyamal’s flat. It was one of the rare treks through Kolkata during which the streets weren’t packed with cars. I snapped pictures out my passenger-side window with a DSLR camera I had brought with me on the trip. For the first time, I noticed the amount of lush greenery complementing the quaint little shops cramming the sidewalks. Some of the towering tree branches hovering over the street looked like they were emerging from the buildings themselves.

“The last few days have been so hot. I was concerned,” Shyamal said, from the front of the car. He didn’t have to shout for once. “Today, at least, it is a little mild.” It was a minimum ninety degrees and humid outside.

Sudhirendra’s wife, Namita, was there to greet us, along with my cousin Susmita. She offered us tea. Minutes later, Sudhirendra shuffled in with the help of a cane and we all settled into chairs in the cozy living room with light blue walls and a shuttered window that barely filtered the streaming light. My father’s eldest sibling couldn’t speak much—“perhaps old age,” as Shyamal might have said. But he was an imposing figure, six feet tall and with more hair than I had. Judging from the way the energy in the room shifted toward him when he walked in, my father’s description of him as the one-time patriarch of the family hit home.

I would do the lion’s share of conversing, mostly in Bengali, while Wesley sat nearby not understanding a word. But every now and then Sudhirendra would beckon me over to mutter one phrase repeatedly in English: “You should go visit Japan.”

There was no explanation. No one else in the room heard his suggestion. “You should go to Japan.” I didn’t know if this was genuine advice, code for a hidden treasure, or a signal that he was being held against his will. What could I say? I told him we would go someday.

Sudhirendra asked if I recalled his visit from my childhood.

“I remember a little bit,” I lied.

“You can speak Bengali also?” Sudhirendra said.

“He can speak clean Bengali,” Shyamal chimed in. “Wesley graduated from Harvard Law School.”

Sudhirendra couldn’t hear well.

“Harvard! HARVARD GRADUATE!” Shyamal said, this time louder.

My aunt looked at Wesley and said in Bengali, “Bishon mishti.” (“She’s very sweet.”)

But Namita was drowned out because my father was still saying, “Harvard! Harvard!”

“Kamon aacho, Dadhu?” I said to Sudhirendra, which translates to “How are you?” Dadhu typically refers to an elder.

“I am the age of ninety-two,” Sudhirendra said. “I have lots of complaints. When did you learn to speak Bengali?”

“I’ve been speaking it since I was little,” I said, slowly and deliberately.

“He can sing too!” Shyamal added. I can’t, of course. Not really. But we didn’t need to get bogged down in petty details like that.

“Really, though, I don’t speak it much anymore. But here, I’ve been speaking it again,” I said. My aunt concurred with Sudhirendra that my Bengali was top-notch. I kept trying to translate on the fly for Wesley, but she stopped me and said, “Don’t worry about me.”

When the conversation found a lull, Sudhirendra threw in another, “Go visit Japan!” for good measure.

After about an hour, my aunt called Wesley and me into another room, which I assumed meant we were getting the tour of the