(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
One night Ashima heard her husband speaking over phone, soberly but loudly enough so that she feared he would wake Alan and Judy upstairs, "Yes, all right, I see. Don't worry.yes, I will." For a while he was silent, listening. "They want to talk to you," he said to Ashima, briefly putting a hand to her shoulder. In the dark , he handed her the phone, and after a moment's hesitation, he got out of bed.
She took the phone to hear the news for herself, expecting her mother to be on phone, she felt a thrill, for it would be the first time she would hear her mother's voice in nearly three years, since her departure from Dum Dum Airport that she would be called Monu by her mother. Only it wasn't her mother but her brother, Rana, on the other end. His voice sounded weak, barely recognizable. Ashima's first question was what time it was there. She had to repeat the question three times, shouting in order to be heard. Rana told her it was lunch time. "Are you still planning to visit in December ?" he asked.
She felt her chest ache, moved after all this time to hear her brother call her Didi, his older sister, a term he alone in the world was entitled to use. "Of course we're coming," she said, "put Ma on, let me talk to her."
"She's not at home now," Rana said after a static-filled pause.
"And Baba ?"
A patch of silence followed before his voice returned. "Not here."
"Oh." She remembered the time difference ; her father must be at work already at the Desh offices, her mother at the market, a burlap bag in hand, buying vegetables and fish.
"How is little Gogol ?" Rana asked her, "does he speak English ?"
She laughed. "He doesn't speak much of anything at the moment." She began to tell Rana that she was teaching Gogol to say "Dida" and "Dadu" and "Mamu," to recognize grandparents and his uncle from photographs. But another burst of static, longer this time, quieted her in mid-sentence.
"Rana ? Can you here me ?"
"I can't hear you, Didi," Rana said, his voice growing fainter. "Can't hear let's speak later."
"Yes," she said, "later. See you soon. Very soon. Write to me." She put down the phone, invigorated by the sound of her brother's voice. An instant later she was confused and somewhat irritated. Why had he gone to the trouble of calling only to ask an obvious question ? Why called while both her were out ?
Ashoke returned from kitchen with a glass of water in his hand. He put down the water and switched on the small lamp by the side of the bed.
"I'm awake," Ashoke said though his voice was still small from fatigue.
"Me too."
"What about Gogol ?"
"Asleep again." She got up and put him in the crib, drawing blanket to his shoulders, then returned to the bed, shivering. "I don't understand it," she said, shaking her head at the rumpled sheet. "Why did Rana go to the trouble of calling just now ? It's so expensive. It doesn't make sense." She turned to look at Ashoke. "What did he say to you, exactly ?"
Ashoke shook his head, and then he reached across her side of the bed and pressed her hand so tightly that it was slightly painful. He pressed her to the bed,lying on the top of her, his face to one side, his body suddenly trembling. He held her this way for so long that she began to wonder if he was going to turn off the light and caress her. Instead he told her what Rana told him in a few minutes ago, what Rana couldn't bear to tell his sister, over the telephone, himself : that her father died the previous day evening, of a heart attack, playing patience on his bed.
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