‘Oh, Alsi, I just keep thinking what a shame it is that he had to take the good one! He was so very clever and so beautifully behaved! You didn’t have to worry about drugs and dirty girls with that one. Only the price of spectacles with all that reading.’ Oh, there was a certain pleasure. And don’t ever underestimate people, don’t ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own, from delivering bad news, watching bombs fall on television, from listening to stifled sobs from the other end of a telephone line. Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt. Alsana sensed all these and more at the other end of her telephone line as the calls flooded in — 28 May 1985 — to inform her of, to offer commiserations for, the latest cyclone. ‘Alsi, I simply had to call. They say there are so many bodies floating in the Bay of Bengal . . .’ ‘I just heard the latest on the radio — ten thousand!’ ‘And the survivors are floating on rooftops while the sharks and crocodiles snap at their heels.’ ‘It must be terrible, Alsi, not knowing, not being sure . . .’ For six days and six nights, Alsana did not know, was not sure. During this period she read extensively from the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and tried hard to believe his assurances (Night’s darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn), but she was, at heart, a practical woman and found poetry no comfort.
