Reams and Reams

2009-02-21T17:39:00.000+05:30

Chapter 6
Crying In the Rain

When the eight-year-old girl heard her name, she dashed for the nook behind the bed and crouched there. When the door opened, she closed her eyes and hid her face between her knees and chanted, Ramji Ramji Ramji Ramji. Her rhythm broke when she felt a cold wooden stick being poked against her face. She tried to chant again but the sharp pain she felt above her eye from the second poke made it hard.
“Come out,” shouted Amma.
A third poke.
“Haramzadi, are your coming out or you want me to kill you right there?”
A silence followed, which was disturbed by a screeching sound of the moving of the bed. She looked up and saw light staring at her in the face. Amma wrung her ears and pushed her head against the bed, and said, “Haramzadi, what were you doing near that tree?”
“Amma, nothing.”
“Nothing? Tell me, or I’ll break your legs. You have blackened my face today. Tell me what were you doing?”
“Amma, I was just playing. Nothing else.”
“Talking to trees and you call it just playing, huh? Haramzadi, do you know what happened? Mohit saw you talking to the tree and he told the whole basti about it. All the women were laughing at me, and some even had the guts to say, ‘Show her to a tantric and get rid of the ghosts.’ Do you know how ashamed I was feeling? Tell me the truth, was Mohit right?”
She wiped her tears and looked at Amma.
Amma gave a muffled cry and said, “So Mohit was right. I will kill you today.”
She lay on the floor, curled up, while Amma pounded the baton on her body frenziedly. A silence followed, interrupted only by her sporadic snivels. She heard a sob, which was not hers, and then the sound of the baton being thrown on the ground. When the pain eased a bit, she opened her eyes and saw Amma sitting on the floor in front of her, her face streaked with faint tear marks, her fingers pressing her eyes. She was muttering, “Why don’t you listen to me my child, why? Why are you ruining your life? Why?”
“Amma,” she said through her tearful face, “why do you beat me? I have not done anything. I was only playing with it. Why don’t you beat those people? I didn’t do anything. They even pull down my skirt down in the market and laugh at me and keep calling me, “Mad, mad”. But I don’t do anything. I wanted to throw stone at them and bite them. But I didn’t do anything because you say. Why don’t you beat them?”
“Why don’t you understand my child, why don’t you understand? I know those people are animals. But didn’t I tell you to stay away from them? They just want to prove you are mad, just like you Baba. It gives them pleasure.
I am working day and night to save for your dowry. Even I have dreams of seeing my daughter in her wedding dress—but you will ruin everything. Why will anybody marry a mad girl? Why? They will throw stones at you and call you mad. Mad. Like your Baba. Nobody will marry you. Nobody.”
She looked at Amma’s wretched, tearful face, and said wiping Amma’s tears with her fingers, “Amma, don’t cry. Amma, I am sorry. Very sorry.” She held her earlobes and squatted up and down.
Amma slapped her.
“What will this ‘sorry’ get you now?”
Amma wrung her ears and rammed her head against the bed and kept slapping her. Amma’s bangles broke, some shards of which dug in her flesh.
“Why didn’t you die the day you were born,” Amma said. “Why? You are nothing but a curse on me. A curse. You never listen to me—you never try to understand things. My parents told me to kill you when you were born. But I didn’t. I loved you, I brought you up, but I was wrong. I should have thrust sand in your nose the day you were born. Why didn’t I do it!”
Amma released her hand from her ears. She lay down, curled up and sobbed. Amma went out. A fire was burning inside her. Fire of Anger. She cried and cried and cried but the fire didn’t extinguish; the flames leapt up with every tear, searing her from inside.
Nandu, her puny five-year-old brother was peeping from behind the door. He could see her lying on the floor, her face covered with her hair, the sound of her sobs filling the air with gloom. He came in and squatted in front of her, and kept the glass of water on the floor and gently pushed it towards her. She looked up at him through the tears. He was looking at her like a curious little kid looks at an unfamiliar insect; his head was bent at an angle, the light shone in his eyes, and his lips were wry, as if he could feel the pain. She raised her hand in the air, as if to hit him. He fell back and his head rammed on the door. He went out.
When Amma came in an hour later, she was still lying on the floor. Amma sat besides her and passed her fingers through her hair. She jerked away Amma’s hand and uttered a grunt. Amma sat still for a minute, looking at her.
Amma said, “Forgive your Amma.”
She started sobbing loudly.
Amma said, “Look up.”
She didn’t look up, because if she did, she knew she would melt.
“Please forgive your Amma. Look, I am holding my ears also. Forgive me, my child.”
She screeched and started banging her head on the floor.
Amma placed her palm between the ground and her head and said in a tearful voice, “No my child, don’t. Forgive me, please. Beat me if you want, I wont complain.”
She raised her head and looked up into Amma’s eyes; they were as wet as hers. Her anger faded away somewhere. Like always. She never knew where. She dragged her body forward and kept her head in Amma’s lap.
Amma caressed her hand and said, “Your Amma is so bad. She is a devil. When you go up, complain to God about her. Tell Him that she was a bad mother and she used to beat you—”
“No Amma, no.”
“No, my child, do tell him. Tell Him she was so bad to you. Tell Him to beat her with whips and throw her in hell.”
“Amma, no. Amma you won’t go to hell. No, you won’t go.”
Amma cradled her lap and said after some time in a calm voice, “This world is very harsh. If people think you are mad like your Baba, then who will marry you?”
“But Amma I am not mad.”
“I know my child, I know. And I know you were just playing with the tree. But people don’t understand this. It is because of Mohit’s family that your Baba is in this condition; just because of an old family feud. Now they are searching for clues—they want to prove to the world that you are mad, so that no one can marry you. Amma is just trying to save you. When Amma beats you, it hurts her more then it hurts you. But what can Amma do? She is also helpless. If you don’t listen to her, how will you get married?
Now, promise me, you won’t ever go in that area. Promise me you won’t even go beyond Ramlal’s shop.”
“Promise.”
“Good girl. If you listen to me, you will get married in a good place. I want to see you in a wedding dress and then I can die peacefully.”
“No Amma, you won’t die. Amma, no, I won’t let you.”
“No, my child, every body has to die one day.”
“No” she shrieked and burst into fresh tears.
Amma wiped her tears with her pallu and said, “OK baba, I won’t die. Now, I have made parathas, you want to eat?”
“No.”
“Why no? You have eaten only one apple since morning. And because of you I have also not eaten. We both will eat together. I will feed you with my own hands. Wait here, I’ll get the plate.”
Before going out, Amma bend down and thrust a one-rupee note in her hands, and whispered, “Buy nankhatai with this.”

After Amma had gone to Vasant Colony for cleaning the utensils, she beckoned Nandu, who was sitting in his underwear and shirt near the tulsi plant. Nandu put the insect he was surveying in his shirt pocket and ran after her.
She turned back and called out, “Nandu, run fast.”
His speed was slow as he took short steps and ran with his eyes firmly fixed on the ground for impediments. He uttered a feeble cry. She turned back and waited for him. He made his way over the boulders and rocks, and tightly clutched her skirt when he reached her. She held his hand and they ran towards the deserted garden behind the Municipal Corporation building. Baba was sitting cross-legged on a platform, under the tree, looking at the ground, drowned in deep, deep contemplation; the cotton thread tied around his ear waved in the air. She and Nandu went and sat besides him. Baba raised a hand in the air and moved his index finger rhythmically, as if doing a sum. He turned towards Nandu, who was watching him with utter concentration and opened his mouth to speak something. His mouth remained opened, as if he was about to make a grave point of observation and someone had rudely interrupted him. He rubbed away with his palm the sum he was doing in the air and patted Nandu’s back—at which Nandu almost fell off the platform—and said, “Hello, Nandi, how are you?”
Nandu looked at his sister. She said, “But Baba, he is Nandu, not Nandi.”
Baba’s eyes lost their mirth and again became clouded with confusion; he withdrew his hand, as if Nandu had at once become a child unfamiliar and strange.
Baba said, “But why do you change his name every week?”
“No, Baba, we don’t. His name was always Nandu.”
Baba looked at Nandu, then at her, and then at Nandu. He took out the small steel box from the sack kept near his feet. He once searched for newborn mice in the trash mounds and placed them in this box. He would look at the little, wriggling, pink bodies from the air-holes and say, “They look so happy.” He felt they were wriggling out of happiness, and to spread more happiness, stuffed more of them in. For mysterious reasons, he released them one day. He then started collecting a different thing in it.
He brought the box closer to her and Nandu, like a magician about to perform a trick, and said, “Very very cold air inside. I caught it in winter.” Baba slowly opened the lid and said, “Ah! So cold!”
“Yes Baba, very cold,” she said.
Nandu looked confused.
Baba raised the box up and snapped it shut, like he had caught a mosquito. He clasped it by his chest and quickly tied a string around it, and said, “I have caught hot air. Now we will open it in winter.” Nandu looked at the air-holes, and then at Baba, and then at air-holes. He scratched his head and was about to say something, when Baba kept the box back in his sack.
“What is this?” Baba said looking at the nankhatai she had held out to him.
“Baba, this is nankhatai. Eat it.”
She gave two pieces to Nandu. Baba surveyed the brown square pieces on his paper and then licked them.
“Baba,” she said, “you have to eat it. Like this.”
Baba reluctantly ate it.
She kept a piece from her paper to Nandu’s paper. He looked at her for clarification, and when he got none, continued eating. When one piece was left, he neatly wrapped it in the paper and kept in his pocket. He looked at his pocket in dismay, for the insect was gone. He took out a golden wrapper and unfolded it. Inside was a piece of Cadbury, not larger than a shirt button. He promptly held it towards her. She shook her head. He held it towards Baba.
“No Nandini, you eat it.”
Nandu started at Baba for a brief period, and then ate it. Suddenly, he pulled at Baba’s kurta and said, “Baba, Baba, see.”
He kept his leg on the platform and searched for something on it.
He found it. “Here Baba, here it is. I fell down yesterday. So I got hurt here.”
Nandu kept his little fingertip precisely on the wound—which was itself not larger than his fingertip. Baba chewed his nankhatai and looked at Nandu; his lips were bent downwards and his forehead had crinkled. Then he took another bite, chewed it and looked at the wound, which also looked crinkled. Then Baba looked at Nandu’s forehead. Then he looked at the wound, and blew air on it. Then he looked at Nandu’s forehead and blew air on it. Nandu put his leg down, content with the first blow and puzzled by the second. He talked to Baba about the various insects he had collected from the rocks near his house, and also told him that he had seen a double-decker dog yesterday.
Not much later, while she was licking the traces of nankhatai from her fingers, Nandu was giving his pocket a forlorn search for the insect and Baba was contemplating, the word “Paagal” slit the tranquillity of the evening as if by a scythe. They all looked around. A stone hit Baba and he uttered a loud cry.
She went to Baba and tried to soothe him.
She shouted, “Who is it?”
Another stone hit him. He was now weeping.
She stepped down from the platform, picked up a stone and looked around. A voice came from behind the bush, “Oye pagalni,” and then giggles. She said Saaley Kuttay, and threw the stone at the bush. A stone hit her on the head and she fell back. She wiped her nose and tears with her skirt, stood up and started picking and throwing stones frenziedly at the bush, shouting after each stone, “Kutteykaminayharamzaadey Kutteykaminayharamzaadey” One more stone hit her but she didn’t stop. The giggles died from behind the bush. She stopped. The stone was clutched in her hand, dried leaves and pebbles were tangled with her hair, her face was covered with marks of tears and dirt stuck to it, and her little chest was rapidly rising and falling. She wiped her tears with her palm ran back to the tree. Baba had tightly clutched Nandu’s hand and was sobbing.
She tugged at Baba’s grip and said, “Leave him, Baba.”
Baba loosened his grip after she bit his hand with her teeth. She picked up Nandu and back home. Fortunately, Amma hadn’t arrived till then. Amma had strictly forbidden them to talk to Baba, to meet him or to even look at him when they passed by him in the market. When Amma had seen her talking to Baba last year, she was whipped with a belt.
She and Nandu were sitting on their respective cots in the kitchen, and Amma was taking morsels of rice between her fingers and feeding them one by one. It was Nandu’s chance when they heard a knock on the door. Amma leaned back to see who it was when Nandu leapt forward and ate the rice from between Amma’s fingers. Amma told them to eat by their own and she went to the door. The telegram announced that Amma’s father had died. Amma hurriedly did some packing and went to her village with Nandu on a bus. Due to the lack of funds, she was to stay with Amma’s friend.
Amma returned three days later, at six in the morning. With Nandu in her hands, she went to the well to drink water. She noticed Nandu was staring at the peepul tree, where Baba was sleeping. “Nandu,” she said, “don’t look there.” Amma did not look at Baba for more than a second, but that was enough for her to know that her daughter as also sleeping next to him. The women who had come to fill water from the wells were looking at Amma; their eyes swollen with pity. She was sleeping within an arm’s distance of Baba; the dirt and mud stuck to her face, legs, fingers but not interfering with their calmness and serenity, her palms joined together and kept under her head like a pillow, a tiny smile on her face that seemed to say, ‘Don’t disturb! I am watching a good dream.’ Next to them lay a paper plate and spoons that smelled of last night’s chutney. Behind them, a board read, ‘Mad House. Do No Disturb.’ Amma threw the packet of rice she had brought on her face. The serenity evaporated from her face. She opened her little eyes and had brought her hand to rub them, when Amma held it and dragged her across the ground. A voice bellowed in the air, “Arre, why do you leave this creature in the open, huh?”
The payal unclipped from her feet. She cried, “Amma, my payal, my payal. Wait.”
But Amma didn’t wait. She saw as the payal slowly drifted away, and was soon just a fleck of whiteness in the brown morning dust. When they reached home, Amma pushed her towards the tap. She said, holding her bleeding lip, “Amma, no Amma, I’m hurt.”
“Haramzadi, why did you go and sleep there? I told you not to go that side of the basti, didn’t I?”
“Amma, those people made me sleep alone. But I can’t sleep alone, I’m afraid.”
“You slept there daily?”
“Yes, Amma, but I was afraid. I can’t sleep alone.”
Amma picked up the metal bucket and threw it on her, and said “I will kill you today.” The sharp rim hit on her head and she fell on the ground. “Amma, no.” She tried to stand up and run away; but the thick film of tears had made it hard to see: she collided with the tap and fell back. “Amma, no,” she cried. She tried to stand up but something hit hard against her thighs. She saw Amma was holding something in her hands. The bat with which she beats wet clothes. She heard Nandu’s cries. Another blow; this time on her back. She coughed; her red sputum fell on the ground. The next blow made face fall flat on the red liquid. She heard a sound of banging, but felt no pain. She turned her head. Amma was banging her head on the wall. Nandu was crying on the doorway. “Amma, no,” she cried and dragged herself near Amma and held her feet. She stood up with the support of her Amma’s legs and tried to pull away Amma from the wall. But Amma kept hitting herself. She shrieked, “Amma no, Amma no.” She went between Amma and the wall and tried to push her away, but no avail. “Nandu,” she cried, “Nandu help me. Amma beating herself. Nandu come.” But Nandu didn’t come.
Amma cried, “I want to die. I don’t want to see my own daughter being admitted to a mental hospital.”
“No Amma, no. Get away from wall. I’m sorry.” Amma kicked her. But she stood up again and held Amma’s feed and tried to pull her off the wall. Amma rested her forehead against the wall, and wailed.
Amma said, “Now I feel I have started believing people. Perhaps my daughter really is mad. It’s all because of me. Me. Why didn’t I die before I gave birth to you?”
“No Amma, no. I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry.”
Amma turned back and saw her daughter coughing out red sputum and trying to say sorry, holding her earlobes, her feet red with bat marks, squatting up and down. Amma held her hand and pushed her in the room and closed the gate from outside. Amma’s loud, painful wails seemed to linger in the air like a dying bird with feathers of pain. She cried, “Amma no, Amma, don’t cry. I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry.” But Amma cried. She stood on the stool and looked out from the opening in the wall. Amma had crouched near the gate. “Amma, sorry. Sorry, Amma. Forgive me.” She held her earlobes and squatted up and down on the stool. But Amma still cried. Her feet shook with pain; she sat down on the stool. Then she heard Amma’s curses. She stood up and looked out. Amma was standing near the main gate, hollering abuses at some men, who were laughing at some distance.
The air was filled with the silence of a ransacked graveyard, but Amma’s wails still echoed in her ears. She now clawed her ears and twisted them and tried to pull them off; but they remained, and so did the wails in them. She was a devil, causing misery to everyone, including her own mother, her Amma. She remembered how the women would taunt Amma, telling her to throw to her daughter in the well to ward off the evil shadow, and how Amma would hold her and Nandu’s hands and walk away, saying nothing, with just tears rolling down. At home she would hide behind the gate, thinking Amma would throw her in the well, and when Amma saw her, she would cry and say, Amma please don’t throw me in the well; and Amma would wipe her tears, hug her, and feed her with her own hands and tell her that she is a piece of her heart and no one can throw her piece of heart in the well. How much Amma loved her. How much. Amma should have thrown her in the well. She was the reason for Amma’s tears. She felt like she was a mistake, a sin, whom Amma bore for years, without complaining. Amma worked so hard – from seven in the morning till nine in the night – washing utensils, cleaning floors, sweeping streets; and all this to feed her. Feed her. Feed a mistake. And that too with her with her own hands, never complaining when she bit it, never telling her to work in tea shops like other mothers do; loving her, loving again, and again, and more, loving a mistake. Amma even said she wished she had enough money to send her to school. She saw the tear of a failed dream in Amma’s eyes then. How much Amma wanted to give her. How much. She now clawed her face with her little fingers; red lines of pain formed. How much. She now rammed her fist on the wall. When she would wake up in sleep and start crying, Amma would make her sleep in her lap and then all the fears all the worries all the pains would go away, whoosh, like a rocket that never was; Amma would sing lullaby for her and tell her that she is her moon. A small piece of herself. Her world. Her everything. Amma never ever said she was a mistake. Never ever. The tears had now formed a small puddle on the ground. Poisonous tears. Tears shed by a mistake. Why did Amma love a devil so much? Why? More tears now fell in the puddle. Amma hit her only for her good. Her good. Only because Amma wanted her to get married and live a good life. More tears fell. And more. And then more. Amma would say, I will give you a red saree on your wedding, and you will look like a princess in it. She now picked up the stone and brought it down on her hand. Amma wanted to give so much to her daughter. She again brought down the stone and grunted with pain. So much. Again the stone came down, and then again. So much. And then once more. She felt something burning inside her. Fire. She fretted her teeth. Her tongue tasted the sweet blood. She was giving pain to the person because of whom Amma was crying. The flames leapt up. She clenched her hair and tried to pull them off. She banged her head on the floor. The fire seared her. She looked at her hands, hands of a mistake - she hated the design of her fingers, her red skin, her flesh, the sound of her cries, her existence. She the held her fingers between her teeth and bit them. Pain. Consoling pain. She was biting Amma’s miseries; biting a devil, biting a mistake. She turned her head and saw Nandu’s face in the window. He was trying to keep the glass of water on the sill. She leapt up towards him and held his wrist and pulled it. The glass fell down and he winced in pain. She bit his palm with her teeth. He started crying. She clutched his warm, shivering, fragile neck. She pushed his head from the window; he fell down from the stool he was standing on and ran back in the house. Seeing him cry, wince in pain, the fire ebbed, but only for a second. Now it leapt up again; with sound and with fury. She wasn’t able to breathe. She shrieked. The fire was in her throat. She clenched her throat and pressed it; she wanted to kill self. She liked the pain. Sweet pain. Soothing Pain. She gasped for breath, coughed, cried. She coughed, coughed again, coughed more. She wanted the blood to come out. She wanted the life to come out. The tears didn’t seem to dry up; they kept coming.
Amma opened the door two hours later.

It was two in the night when she opened her eyes, drew aside the blanket and crept in darkness towards the trunk. She spread her blanket on the floor, and quietly opened the large trunk. An assortment of smells burst forth, like a secret anxiously waiting inside, pervading the dull darkness of the night with a strange feeling of joy. Smell of a little boy who followed a little girl even before he knew who she was. Smell of a boy who loved before he knew the laws. Smell of a mother whose lap promised a sleep without nightmares. Smell of a mother who smelt like love. Smell of a love that always spilled beyond its boundaries. Smell of a love that never made you search old memories for happiness. Smell of a house where three people cried if one got hurt. Smells that she had grown up smelling. Smells she was smelling for the last time.
She turned back; Amma and Nandu were sound asleep. The trunk was divided by plyboards into three compartments; above each it was inscribed with a brick, ‘Amma’, ‘Nandu’, and ‘Neetu’ respectively. As she felt the rough cloth of her green dress, a dimpled smile came on her face. She kept it on the blanket along with the red dress and her undergarments, all of which Amma had washed the day before and neatly folded in the morning. She looked at Amma’s compartment – barren, dull. The smile shrunk from her face. She opened the wooden box from her compartment – a small Ponds cream, a comb hiding from dust inside its plastic wrap, a packet of bindis. She looked at the large comb with broken teeth in Amma’s compartment. She kept her comb and her bindi packet in Amma’s compartment and kept Amma’s large comb on her blanket. After a minute of thinking, she kept the Ponds cream also in Amma’s compartment. From her savings box, she kept a ten-rupee note over Amma’s saree and the rest on her blanket. She kissed the words ‘Amma’ and ‘Nandu’ and quietly closed the trunk. She kept aside her Hot Wheels car, her only toy, and knotted the blanket. She kept her car next to Nandu and a paper slip next to it; it read in Hindi, ‘Now it is yours.’ She whispered, “Bye” and kissed his hand and moved sideways to Amma. She looked at Amma’s face like a child looks at his birthday gift. A dimpled smile appeared on her face, and the past and future melted away into oblivion and what existed was only the present – which was nothing but a happy dream. She surveyed Amma’s eyes, nose, lips, ears, hair, skin. She joined her hands and prayed to God that she never forgets this face. She bent down and kissed Amma’s hand. Lured by its warmth, she rested her cheek on it. Tears came in her eyes, as if someone had snatched away that gift from the child. She snivelled. She couldn’t take her face away from Amma’s hand. One second more, she said to herself, just one second. Finally, she pulled her face away, keeping the last second as a memento. She crept towards the trunk and wiped her tears with the blanket. She knew she had to go before she gets weak. She picked up the blanket by its knot and walked towards the gate, after looking at Amma once again. Outside, the world was asleep, draped in an ebony blanket. She crouched by the doorway, and with the sack kept near her feet, she looked at Amma’s face while she waited for light. When day broke, she didn’t know why, it felt more dark. She pulled her face away from Amma and picked up her sack and walked out, after kissing the main gate.
As she walked towards the horizon, she wondered now who will feed her. She wiped her tears, and thought that she can always eat with her own hands, like most of the children. But—what if she wakes up in the night and cries? What will she do? She will cry a little and then she will go back to sleep. And what will she do if she misses Amma or Nandu? No, she reminded herself, she can’t go back. She was doing this for Amma. She reminded herself that she was a mistake. And by going away she was undoing this mistake from Amma’s life. But, this doesn’t answer the question—what will she do if she misses Amma and Nandu? She will try not to think about them. Yes, she wiped her tears, she will try not to think about them. But then—why is she crying? She kept the sack down and wailed. Why is she crying if what she is doing will bring happiness to her Amma? She didn’t know.
She turned back and looked at the house. Through the thin layer of mist, she could see Amma standing at the door. She wiped her eyes. Yes, Amma was standing at the door. She felt her feet shiver. She took a step towards Amma. In greed of love, she forgot what she was doing. She took one more step. Before she could throw aside the sack and run and hug Amma, she saw Amma go inside and close the door. She remained standing there, amidst the mist of life.

2009-02-21T17:37:00.001+05:30

Chapter 5
Knitting the Yarn of Happiness

Dai Ma sneaked into Amit’s room and placed her knitted sweater over Amit’s school sweater. The knitted sweater was two inch short at the arms and one at the chest. Dai Ma was mid-way into completing it when she had come to know Amit was going to the boarding school, about twelve months back. She hadn’t expected such difference. She noted the new measurements on her hand and went to the storeroom. There was no yarn left. She opened her money box - just fifty rupees in it. Dai Ma had not received her pay since three years. But until now, she had no use for it. With Amit gone to the boarding school, there was no one to spend it on. She took the fifty rupees and went to New Market, paying ten rupees for the auto rickshaw. She asked the seamstress to return the saree she had left for mending. As per the policy, they returned back only half the advance. She now had sixty rupees with her. She had selected the yarn she wanted, and had almost paid when her eyes fell on a shiny red yarn kept on the top of the counter, wrapped in tight polythene, with the elegance like a king.
“Bhaisaab, how much does that cost?” Dai Ma asked.
“Hundred rupees,” replied the shopkeeper.
“What is the difference between this one and that one?”
“Madam, that one is imported and made of hundred-percent cotton. Its sweaters are more comfortable to wear. And it is also more in quantity. You can make a sweater plus a cap from it.”
The shopkeeper continued, “Shall I get you that one, or pack this only?”
She convinced the shopkeeper that she will come back by eight o’clock and that he does not sell it till then. Instead of hiring an auto rickshaw, she walked back. By the time she reached, her feet were blistered and the joint of her chappal had come out. She joined them with the Fevistick. By the time she had cooked the dinner, it was already eight o’clock. She hadn’t as yet ironed the clothes and watered the plants. By the time she was done with all the chores, it was half past eight; but only to realise a moment later the clock had stopped. The clock in Neetu’s room showed the time as half past nine. She could hear the sound of closing shutters. Tired, she went and sat in the balcony and ate peanuts. She saw Amit come in, two brimming glasses tucked between his arms and chest, a water bottle between his palms and the inflated pack of last night’s Kwality Banana Chips dangling from his lower pocket. He gave her a smile and placed the things down. He took out a paper from his pocket and unfolded it.
He said, “Dai Ma, it tastes better with salt. Try it.”
Veiled behind his smile, Dai Ma saw the pang of disappointment in Amit’s eyes when he looked at the meagre peanuts left on the paper. She poured more peanuts on the paper from the sack, and went out. She felt she had heard him call her name, but she didn’t turn back. After Amit had gone, she cleared the papers and swept the floor. She unrolled her cot, sat on it and looked at the moon, which looked even more blemished today.

Dai Ma looked at the clock; it was six in the morning. She turned her head and saw through the banister the sun peeking out from the horizon, and the still-sleeping city draped in a pale blue blanket. She rolled her cot and kept it behind the balcony door. She was passing by Amit’s room when she noticed he was not in his bed. He came out a moment later from the bathroom, the towel tied on his waist. He tried to pull over his shirt with his shivering hands, but it got stuck in his big head. Dai Ma took a step towards him, but drew it back. The shirt came down after some effort. He wore rest of the clothes in less than two minutes. He stood in front of the mirror and surveyed his hair. He picked up a comb and ran it through them. His wet hair stuck to his scalp, evenly. He passed a hand over a group of stubborn hair who had stood up. All sat down, but some stood up again. He pressed them down, and when he released his hand, none rebelled. He turned around and looked at the dishevelled bed. He spread the blanket over the bed. Then he picked up one corner, walked alone the bed, and placed it above the other; he did the same with other side. He did rest of the folds and kept it over the chair. Dai Ma noticed a few rebels had again stood up on his head. He made the bed and pulled out his shoes from under the bed. He didn’t tie their lace; he tucked them inside his shoes. Before he went to the boarding school, she always combed his hair, clothed him, arranged his school bag and tied his shoelace. She would tell herself there was no need for him to do it when she was there; he could always learn to do it later, when he grows up. He soon grew up enough to hold the glass of milk by his own. He grew up enough to pee on his own. He grew up enough to go to a primary school. He grew up enough to keep secrets. And then he grew up enough to go to a boarding school. When Neetu had said to Dai Ma, packing his bag, “Amit is now a grown up boy,” Dai Ma realised that her clock of years had stopped working long back, making her feel Amit was still five years old, just a kid, yet to grow up. Neetu’s words wound that clock, by five years in one second. But it was too late. He went to the boarding school; unaware of how to live without someone to tie his lace, bathe him, clothe him, feed him, love him.
Dai Ma walked to the kitchen and made poha. She called out, “Amit baba, breakfast is ready. Come.” He ate on the dining table, while she sat on the floor besides him. “Amit baba, you need anything?” He shook his head. She saw the milk pour out on the stove from the overheated tumbler. She rushed to the kitchen and transferred it with tongs to the counter. She turned back, and saw him eating without any of distraction. Amit kept the plate in the sink, washed hands and went to the drawing room. When Dai Ma went to Amit’s room, she felt there was little left to do; Amit had already done most of the work. She was horrified when she saw the little stain on his blanket. She washed and left it for drying on the terrace. It had happened for the second time since Amit had come. She thanked God Neetu hadn’t seen it.
She went to the storeroom and reluctantly took out forty rupees from the two thousand rupees she had kept aside. Her legs were still paining from yesterday’s strain. In her way to the shop she often stopped and, there being no bench around, sat on the steps of houses for a minute. She sighed with relief when she saw that the red yarn was still there, on the top counter. She kept the money on the counter, and was about to keep the yarn in her bag when the shopkeeper said, “Madam, it costs hundred and ten rupees.”
She said, “Bhaisaab, I came yesterday, and then you told me it was hundred rupees.”
“It is hundred and five.”
She searched among the darkness of her purse for whatever she could find. Four fifty-paisa coins and two one-rupee coins.
“Madam fast. Tell me you want it or not.”
“Bhaisaab, just one minute.”
The man sitting on the chair saw all this, and gave her the yarn for hundred rupees. She thanked him and walked back, without stopping, as the pain was evanesced by joy. At home, she saw Amit was still sitting in the drawing room, smiling at the fishes.
Dai Ma went in the kitchen to make lunch. She kept the parathas on the dining table, and said, “Come Amit baba, lunch is ready.”
She sat leaning by the divan and said, “Mummy has gone to her friend’s house and Papa is eating at the office today.”
He didn’t look at her.
After he had eaten, she went down to water the plants. Every now and then she turned back to see if he was coming down. He didn’t. When she was done, she went upstairs and saw him sleeping on the sofa.
Alone.
With no one by his side.
She sat next to him and pressed the rebels on his head; they went to sleep. She had been knitting since three hours in the storeroom when she realised it was time for Neetu and Rajeev to come home. She prepared the dinner. She knitted for the two hours she got after the dinner and before sleeping. When she came out, it was eleven o’clock. Amit was sleeping in his room. She rolled her cot on the cold, white moonlit balcony and poured peanuts on a paper. She saw Amit cross the drawing room to fetch water from the kitchen. He stopped on his way back and looked at her. From the kitchen, he brought a bottle of water and kept it next to Dai Ma and went back to his room.
The change in Amit’s behaviour had stirred a cord of fear in her. She remembers how until last year—after the formulation of The Half Love Rule—he would rebuke her if she didn’t allow him to eat with her. “Dai Ma,” he would say to her, “if you tell me to go away I will tell my friend Raman to come and beat you. He is my best friend and he will not say no to me.” Looking back, she felt she preferred those threats to his present silence. It was spreading inside him like a disease he had picked up at the boarding school. Since he has come back, he has been spending his days lying on the divan, looking at the fishes or the ceiling, with a gaze so still that it seemed he was competing for stillness with the ceiling. He hadn’t opened the TV since he had come. Two days back Dai Ma had switched on the TV and tuned to his favourite show, Dragon Ball Z. He didn’t even look at the TV. Not even when Goku, his hero, had come back to save his friends. Not even when Vijeta, the creature he loathes most, was defeated. He didn’t say uff! when the intervals came. He didn’t even dance or sing the song along when the credits rolled. He just smiled at the fishes. Dai Ma remembered what had happened to him last year when the serial was not aired for two months – he restricted himself to a meagre diet, resisted the temptation of the chocolate ice-cream that Rajeev brought, cursed the makers of the anime and even forbade himself from watching any other show. One day, he dug his head in Dai Ma’s lap and cried his heart out. And it was at that moment that Golawalla came into his life. Amit looked at the old crippled man as he crushed ice and moulded it into cones, dressed it with colourful nectars and presented it to him in a paper plate with a broad smile. Thereon, like a last-bencher waiting with vigilant ears for the ringing of the school bell, Amit waited for the tolling of the Golawalla’s bell. After silencing the TV, Amit would stand in the balcony ten minutes before four o’clock to look out for him. A notorious cow often came around the bend and shook the bell in its neck at sporadic intervals just to fool the eager waiting-for-Golawalla children, who, at the first hint of the sound, would come rushing out of their doors shouting out their colour preferences, while their mothers shouted out from the balconies that they will break their kneecaps if they eat more than two. Amit earned the distinction of being the only person in the colony who wasn’t deceived by the cow. Amit’s being a daily customer—and the most patient one—the Golawalla often poured extra nectar (and that too the red one) on his gola. Soon the anime started again. Amit ate golas while he watched the anime. Since then Golas and Dragon Ball Z accompanied each other like a couple made in heaven. When Amit had gone away, like most people, the Golawalla was heart-broken. Not because Amit was a regular customer, but because he was the only one who said Hello to him daily. Dai Ma had told Golawalla two weeks back and Amit would be coming back soon. Last week, at precisely four o’clock, the silence of the afternoon-napping colony was disturbed by the toll of Golawalla’s bell. It tolled and tolled and tolled. Like someone calling out for his beloved across two worlds. It tolled and tolled and tolled even after all other children had eaten stomach-full golas. One last forlorn toll, and then it stopped, leaving the air impregnated with a melancholy silence, like that of a battlefield. The old man adjusted his heels, turned the handcart around and went away.
Dai Ma kept her rosary in the tin box, unfurled her blanket and stretched out on the cot. A sharp sound woke her up few minutes later. She listened closely: it was the whining of a dog. She tried to go back to sleep, but the sound didn’t allow. The sharp whines pierced the silence of the night like arrows fired from a bow of pain. Dai Ma turned about and saw Amit standing in the kitchen, looking down the railing. He took out a hardened chapatti from a jar and gently threw it down the railing. The whines continued.
The next day, Dai Ma again found stains on Amit’s blanket. She wondered how many more days are left before Neetu comes to know Amit still pisses in bed. In the afternoon, she saw him carrying a mug of water to the garden. From the balcony, she saw him sprinkle it at one particular place on the rose bed. When she went in to water the plants in the evening, she noticed he had sprinkled the water on the sick rose which he had pointed out the other day. It was shrivelled and decaying. Dai Ma took out the large stones from around it and levelled the soil. She tried to lift it up, but it fell again. She took out a small quantity of manure and dabbed it around the rose. She noticed Amit was standing behind the hedge, looking at her, like a child who looks at the doctor who has come to see his ill mother. Dai Ma saw a small paper folded and kept behind the rose. Picking it up, she saw a photo of Lord Krishna on it; overleaf were the words, ‘Get Well Soon’. She kept it back.
That night, the whines again woke her up. And like the day before, Amit was standing by the railing. She saw him go downstairs with the door key in his hand. She went to the railing and saw him come out a few minutes later, carrying an empty gunny bag. He placed it over the dog. Dai Ma hurriedly went back to her cot. He came up and stood by the railing. The whines continued.
Early next morning, when Dai Ma went downstairs to get the newspapers, she saw a puny dog below the steps of the opposite shop, covered with the gunny bag, with a piece of bread kept next to it on a paper, untouched. Its black body was patched with large reddish spots; it looked as if its skin was falling off. Dai Ma kept a bowl of water next to it, but when she was buying the vegetables in the noon, she saw it had remained untouched. She heard the whines that night also, but this time Amit wasn’t at the railing but in his bed. When she went to the railing, she found the dog missing. But the whines continued all night. She was strolling in the garden next day when she heard muffled voices coming from behind the gazebo. She went there and saw Amit squatting besides the dog, trying to feed it the bread-and-butter slice he had pinched at the breakfast. She went up and tore open the packet of dog biscuits she had brought. When she went down, she saw Amit sitting on a bench with a copy in his hand. She asked, “Amit baba, where is the dog?”
He looked up from the book, briefly, and then continued writing.
She asked again, “Where is the dog?”
He continued writing with deep concentration.
“Amit baba—”
He said without looking up, “Yes?”
“Amit baba, where is that black dog, which you were feeding just now? Don’t worry I am not telling Mummy anything.”
He looked up in her eyes, and pointed his finger to a corner. At first Dai Ma felt there was nothing there but a large stack of bricks. But when she went on the other side of the stack, she saw a small room in the brick structure, curtained by a cloth. She raised the cloth and found the dog inside. Gunny bags were laid on the floor and a small torch was fixed in between two bricks. The dog was covered with the piece of bed sheet which Amit had taken from Dai Ma the day before to clean his study table. Next to it were untouched bread and cookies. Dai Ma turned around and saw Amit standing by the gazebo pillar, looking at her; his hair were falling over his eyes, hiding the creases on his forehead. She kept the dog biscuits inside and went away. Turning back from the stairs, she saw Amit squatting besides the kennel, trying to feed the dog with the biscuits.
When Dai Ma woke up the next day, she saw that Amit was not in his room but in the garden. Nursing the two sick. There was still an hour before Neetu woke up. Dai Ma went down carrying more dog biscuits. Amit was squatting next to the kennel, peering in.
“What happened, Amit baba?”
He pointed his finger towards the dog and said, “Dai Ma, he didn’t eat.”
The dog had bitten a small portion from a biscuit. Milk, water, bread, cookies – all were untouched. Dai Ma brought the biscuit to its mouth, but it showed no sign of opening its mouth.
“Dai Ma, will he be fine?”
“Yes, Amit baba.”
But Amit knew it was not. The dog was dying, not of a disease, but of the secret grief that was hidden somewhere in a dark nook of his heart, eating it away. When Dai Ma returned from the market in the evening, she saw Amit sitting cross-legged next to the kennel.
“Amit baba, Mummy is at home, you should—”
“Dai Ma, Dai Ma, look! See! He ate, he ate! I swear he did. Come, see.”
It had eaten three biscuits.
“Amit baba, how did this happen?”
“Dai Ma, you won’t believe it! I was sitting here and I was just talking to him, I was telling him about my school and I was also reading him my comic and you won’t believe it when I looked up from my comic I find him eating the biscuits.
Dai Ma, now I think if he eats your moong ka halwa, he will be just fine.”
Dai Ma examined the sick rose while she was watering the plants. Amit didn’t peep from behind the hedge; he came and squatted besides her.
“Dai Ma, will this be also fine?”
“I hope so.”
“I will read it my The New Adventures of Superman comic and then it will be fine.”
“Yes. But Amit baba, be careful; only come down to see the dog and this rose when Mummy is not at home.”
The next day, Dai Ma went in the garden carrying moong ka halwa in paper plates. Amit took out a pinch out it and kept it next to the sick rose. He kept the plate next to the dog and said, “Eat it. It is good.”
He turned to Dai Ma, “Dai Ma, where is mine?”
“Upstairs.”
Amit looked at the dog as it hurriedly licked it up the.
“Here,” Dai Ma said, giving a mischevious smile and handing over the other plate to Amit.
Dai Ma went upstairs to cook dinner. An hour later, she heard muffled barks. She ran downstairs. “Amit baba, Mummy is at home! She will see it. Silence it.”
“Dai Ma, Dai Ma, look it is fine now! I told you it will be fine if it eats your moong ka halwa. Look! It is speaking! It is speaking!”
The dog was frenziedly barking.
Dai Ma felt it was expressing its gratitude.
But Amit knew it was speaking out that secret grief.
Amit listened closely to his words, like a consoling friend. “Don’t worry, doggie, don’t worry.”
“Amit baba, come upstairs, dinner is ready.”
“Yes, Dai Ma, in just few minutes. He is talking first time today.”
When Dai Ma looked at him, she thought she had seen a glint of tear in his eye. She had been wrong. There was one thing that that one year couldn’t take away from him. He still loved more than he was supposed to.

2009-02-21T17:36:00.000+05:30

Chapter 4
The Biased Gardener

More than a week had passed since Amit’s arrival. As a custom, just before evening, Amit went to Ashraf Chacha’s shop and quietly sat on the chair besides him. After the customers were gone, Ashraf Chacha said in a deep, troubled voice,
“See what has happened to our poor world. Where ever you see there is fighting and blood. When will people learn to live in peace?” (he turned towards Amit) “OK, now look at us. You are a Hindu and I am a Muslim—but do we ever fight?”
“No, Chacha, we never fight. Because we are not bad people.”
“Shabbash! Give me a handshake on this. Good boy. I don’t understand why all Hindu-Muslims can’t live like us and love each other. Beta, always remember one things: first you hate a person, and then you later regret it, and then you will long for the time to come back so that you can say Sorry and love that person, and then you realise it is not possible. And life is too short for such a long process. Love everybody—I mean everybody. No matter how bad that person is. It’s short, simple and easy. Am I right?”
“Yes, Chacha.”
“Good boy! Now, eat your biscuits.”
Having finished them, Amit showed Chacha his new Spiderman comic. Chacha flipped through the pages, and patted Amit’s back and said, “Congrats! But don’t forget your studies because of it. OK?”
“OK Chacha.”
Amit finished reading the left over ten pages and said,
“Chacha, now I will go.”
“OK beta. And remember what I said: love everybody.”
“Yes Chacha, I definitely will.”
Amit was eager to see Dustoor Uncle’s indignation on the recent blasts. But he had to return home, disappointed, as his shop was closed. He saw Dai Ma watering plants in the garden.
“Dai Ma, can I help?”
She gave him a fleeting glance.
“No.”
He followed her, carefully observing her work, like an eager apprentice. He cupped his hands towards the hole in the hosepipe from where water was trickling out, and turned towards the flower bed and sprinkled on it. When he turned back to the hosepipe again, Dai Ma asked, “What are you doing?”
“I am helping you to water the plants,” he said.
“Amit baba, there is no need.”
But he felt there was. On his fifth turn, his feet tangled with the hosepipe and he tumbled down.
Dai Ma shouted, “I told you there is no need! Now go in and wash yourself.”
He stood still, looking at her with a hurt expression. He briefly dabbed water on his hands and legs and examined the tulip bed.
“Wow,” he said turning to Dai Ma, “look Dai Ma, this one is so beautiful. Please give this one more water than others.”
She didn’t say anything.
He proceeded to examine the rose bed. Concealed under its vibrant, sprawling peers, Amit saw a black, deformed rose. Poor creature! – fighting with death on the threshold of life when its peers were enjoying sunbathe. Amit laid his palm under it and gently tried to lift if up, but it fell again, like a depressed man.
Amit said, “Dai Ma—Dai Ma, please, listen.”
“What?”
“Dai Ma, no, don’t give extra water to that flower. Give extra water to this, please. It is sick.”
He stood up and watched it piteously. He didn’t examine the beds further, his heart being too weak.
Dai Ma said, “Amit baba, go in and have your dinner. Today papa will come late.”
He sat on the inverted bucket and looked at the flowers and manicured grass.
Dai Ma said, “Amit baba go in, otherwise Mummy will be angry.”
He went in, reluctantly, and sat on a chair in the dining room. Mummy was in the kitchen. His eyes fell on a familiar shape under the divan. He went over and took it out.
“Mr Mousey!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
He was about to ask Mr Mousey what he did in the vacations and if pestered Mummy, but when turned about he saw Mummy standing near the dining table, holding the plates, eyeing him furiously.
He looked at Mr Mousey and then at Mummy.
He said, “Mummy—no—no, Mummy I wasn’t—I wasn’t talk—talking to it, I was just seeing it” (she went back in the kitchen, without saying anything) “Mummy listen—mummy—”. He threw Mr Mousey down and trampled it until its tail popped out, kicked it under the divan and went back to his chair. Mummy came out a minute later, and keeping a bowl on the table she sat opposite to him. Amit took two cutlets and evenly diced them with his table knife. He poked his fork in them, gently, in the middle so that the grip doesn’t betray in mid-air, and ate them. After Mummy cleared the table, Amit sat on the sofa and started reading his Spiderman comic again. An hour later, he saw Dai Ma enter the balcony carrying a rolled paper. One page later, he kept the comic in pocket, and peeked in. Dai Ma was sitting on the floor, her back leaning against the pillar, eating peanuts kept on the paper. Amit rushed to his room and tore a page from his copy. In the kitchen, he poured out salt on the page, and folded it. He filled two glasses with water and took all this to the balcony. Giving Dai Ma a smile, he sat opposite to her, and unfolded the page.
“Dai Ma,” he said, “it tastes better with salt. Try it.”
He saw with dismay that less than a dozen peanuts were left on the paper. When they were finished, Dai Ma folded the paper and was going away, when Amit said, “Dai Ma, are there no more?”
“Yes. Wait.”
She kept the paper back and brought a sack and poured out peanuts on it. Amit had only shelled a peanut and daubed it with salt when he saw Dai Ma fold the cot she was sitting on. She said, “After eating, leave it all here. I’ll clear it.”
When she had reached the door, he called in barely audible voice, “Dai Ma.”
She hadn’t heard. She walked away.
He ate the nut in his hand. He shelled another peanut and ate it. Still chewing, he leaned forward and saw Dai Ma ironing. He shelled another peanut. He leaned forward; Dai Ma was still ironing. He threw the nut at the moon and walked to his room. He struggled through his holiday homework. Then, tearing a page from his copy, keeping aside all things, and taking out a fountain pen, he wrote in neat handwriting:

From
Amit

To
______
Address:
______
______
Dear my best friend,
How are you? I am fine. I hope you are fine.
Today I did very big mistake. I saw Mister Mousi sitting under bed. I was seeing him after one year so I asked him, “How are you?” Then I turned and saw Mummy was standing behind. I was feeling so sad. I wanted to hit myself.
Did I tell you my best friend that Dai Ma talked to me in the train? Yes she did. I was happy. But I do not know why she did not talk after that. She told me to sleep alone that night when I slept next to her. I was feeling so afraid in my room that I was vibrating but she did nothing. She is very hard heart. It is the first time I remember I sleep alone. And that is not all as today in the garden I was helping her and I fell down. She did not even pick me up. But she shouted on me. And after that when she was eating moongphali in the balcony I brought salt and water so that I and she can eat peacefully. I was sad because no peanuts were left. But then I became happy when she brought more. But then I became sad when she gave peanuts and walked away. I thought she will come back but she did not. I was thinking we will talk like we did in back days. In back days she would very happily tell me about her village. And I would tell her about my friend Raman. I would tell her he is my best friend and we share lunch and lot of things more. But there was no Raman. I was lying because she was very happy when I talked about Raman. In the bording school I had thought a lot of things about Raman that I would tell her to make her happy. But I could not tell her because she does not talk to me. Did I tell you my best friend that Dai Ma had stopped talking to me some years before I went to bording school? Yes she had stopped talking. I do not understand why. She even stopped Dettoling my hurts and forcing me to drink milk and lot of things more. She did nothing if I fell or got hurt or was sad. She stopped spending even one rupees on me. Earlier she would get me toys and mangoes but now she never ever does. At the railway station I asked for the new adventures of batman and robin special edition comic but she not give money.
When she talked to me in train I thought things have changed. But after that she did not talk anymore. She does not love me anymore. I know it. Sometimes I think she does not love me because she thinks I am a dirty beggar. Sometimes I feel like a pin is going inside my heart. Now I will also not talk to her and I will also not love her.
I saw long back photos one day. In them I was very small and Mummy was loving me. But now she does not. Both Mummy and Dai Ma both stopped loving me. Sometimes I start feeling I have really become a dirty beggar. Only Papa loves me and that also only sometimes. But he was not at home today. I feel so sad. My heart hurts.
Please reply soon. Not like last time.

Amit folded the letter and kept in the red bag along side similar unaddressed and unsent letters. The red bag had two pockets. On the pocket brimming with these letters, there hung a tag: ‘Letters to be send to my best friend’. On the other pocket, which was empty, the tag read: ‘Letters got from my best friend’.
It was twelve o’clock. Amit sat on his bed, took out the marble idol from his drawer, held it between his palms and murmured a prayer. He kept it back and stretched on the bed. He turned over and looked at the moon. White. Gloomy. Silent. He turned over and looked at the ceiling. Withering paint. Glum. Dull. Something was irritating him. He sat up. Crickets were chirping. He drew aside the blanket and walked out of room. Drawing room was dark, lit only by pale moonlight. Dai Ma was sleeping on cot, absolutely still. No sound. Only crickets chirping. Mummy’s room door was closed. He picked up Mr Mousey and cleaned it with his shirt. Sorry, he said, sorry. He looked around. Mummy was not there. He was sweating. He tried to fix the broken tail. Couldn’t. I’m very sorry, he said, very very sorry. He walked back to room clutching it to his chest.

2009-02-21T17:35:00.000+05:30

Chapter 3
The Half Love Rule

Amit went to his room and changed his clothes. Dai Ma went to the kitchen and poured milk for him. “Dai Ma, I’m going,” he said rushing out. “Wait Amit—your milk—” The door bolted behind him; the words remained inside. She went and sat in the balcony. As she stepped in, she left her present behind. She sat by the banister, and looked down at the street. She sang a melancholy song, only loud enough for her ears. The blaring horns, the mooing cow resting by the gutter, the tensed doggies, the withered man calmly sipping tea – with its tapestry of noises and colours, it looked like a fairyland, enticing her even today.

*

When Dai was ten years old, while sweeping, she would often lean by the banister and look down with awe at the hustling-bustling street; the noise galore, the liveliness of the never stopping cars, the calm demeanour of tea-drinkers – how different it was from her village. Rukmani Devi would chide her when she saw it. Then Savitri was born. Rukmani Devi would often leave the cradle in the balcony. Dai now preferred to peep in the cradle and look at the excited and wriggling baby. To make her comfortable, Dai once loosened the cloth around her, but she still kept wriggling. She once asked Rukmani Devi about it; at first Rukmani Devi looked perplexed, but then she replied that Munni did so because she was a baby. Dai didn’t find the answer satisfactory. Every day, looking at Munni posed a new puzzle before Dai. Then a khawasan was appointed. She would come early morning, wake up the Munni, bathe her, massage her with olive oil, rim kohl around her eyes and then wrap her in a cloth and keep her in the cradle. Dai felt that Munni looked miserable because she wasn’t able to kick now; but she still made saliva bubbles. Dai didn’t understand why bai would never clean the black spot from Munni’s forehead. It didn’t look good on her fair skin. One day Dai wiped it with her finger.
Rukmani Devi was seeing. “What happened, Dai, what are you doing?”
“That—that bai forgot to clean that—spot on Munni’s head. I was cleaning it.”
Rukmani Devi laughed. “Oh … you silly girl, that spot is to prevent Munni from evil eyes.”
Dai watched in amazement as Rukmani Devi brought the kohl and put a spot on Munni’s forehead. Her wonder and puzzlement increased with each day. She came to know that one talks to babies in a different language: by making funny sounds, sticking one’s tongue out, or mimicking its actions. Water was called mum-mum, cow was called gow mata, dog was called doggie, urine was called sussu and market was called bajji. She once tried to talk to Munni in this strange language. Munni looked at her, perplexed, and then started crying. However, on next try Dai succeeded to make her laugh. In two years, Dai was skilled enough to make her laugh, play with her, feed her and massage her. Dai’s puzzles were solved – some by answers others by time. And after a few days Rukmani Devi told Dai to hold Munni in her hands. Dai introduced Munni to the alluring, enticing, awe-inspiring world that existed down the banister. Dai made Munni stand behind the grating, held Munni with her hands and pointed with her finger the various things and named them, “That, Munni, is a big gow mata, and that, small one next to it is a doggie.” Munni looked at Dai and then at the street, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide open, her hands clutching the grate, her feet shaking; quiet, attentive, like a student learning about a new planet. Sometimes a loud horn would make her fall back and she would tightly clutch Dai’s leg and shiver, and laugh. And then Munni grew up, and became Savitri. She was no more interested in the balcony. Dai went back to sweeping, and looked at the world alone. Twenty years later, Savitri gave birth to a boy, Rajeev. No khawasan was appointed. Dai massaged and bathed him. When he was a year old, he was introduced to the world below the banister. He looked at it, enraptured. Then one day he cried to go down and touch the world. When Dai took him downstairs, to the street, he started crying. From then, Rajeev preferred to look at the world from a distance; he understood that touching it would break the magic spell. Dai did the same when Ragini, Rajeev’s sister was born. As they both grew up, for them the magic lost its lure. It became a part of their life, something which was around them, always, and hence not magical. Dai retreated back to her chores.
Dai had become Dai Ma by the time Rajeev married. He stayed here with his wife, Neetu, while his sister Ragini flew to Canada after marriage. A month before Neetu’s baby was due Dai Ma became equipped with kohl, olive oil bottles, clothes and nappies. With Amit’s birth the house the house bloomed up, with a transient joy.

*

Dai Ma saw Amit standing at the door. He was panting. “What happened, Amit baba?” she said standing up.
He just stood there.
“You ran away without drinking your milk. Sit on the dining table I’ll heat it again.”
Dai Ma walked out of the balcony, again becoming a part of the present, picking up time from where she had left it. While Dai Ma was heating the milk in the kitchen, she saw Amit come in and stand next to her.
“Amit baba, still on the chair, I’ll get the milk.”
He just stood there.
Dai Ma said, “Here, Amit baba, it’s done. It is very hot, come, I’ll keep it on the table for you.”
Amit followed her and sat on the chair. Dai Ma said, “Drink it slowly, it is very hot.”
She was going back in the kitchen when Amit said, “Dai Ma, where are you going?”
“Nowhere. I’m in the kitchen only, making tea for myself.”
When she would turn back from the stove, she would see Amit leaning back from his chair, staring at her. Moments later, she found him standing next to her, holding the glass in his hands.
“Amit baba, sit there and drink, it’s very hot.”
He heard it. But he just stood there.
He said, “No Dai Ma, it’s not very hot.”
“Amit baba, I will come there as soon my tea is ready. It will take just a minute.”
He just stood there.
Amit kept the milk on the platform. Dai Ma asked, “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he said before picking it up again. She saw his palms were red. She turned off the stove, took the glass from him and went out. Amit sat on the chair and drank the milk, with no hurry, because he knew it was very hot. He hasn’t changed, Dai Ma said to herself.
Neetu and Rajeev came half an hour later, at 7 O’clock. The dinner came and went, without disturbing the silence much.
It was one 12 O’clock and Dai Ma could see Amit strolling about the drawing room. When she turned about on her cot she saw Amit sleeping next to her. Neetu was asleep by now but Dai Ma knew she often came out to get water. She woke him up and told him to go back to his room. When he complained about mosquitoes in his room, she could sense the plea in his words. She sent him back forcefully, and shifted her cot next to the door of his room. But she couldn’t sleep. She sat up and looked at the ebony sky. She often turned her head towards the room; she knew Amit would check every hour if she was there. He always does. He always did.

*

Neetu had once dabbed Dettol over his knee when he fell down. The next day he came running with his elbow pointed out and said to Neetu, “Mummy, mummy, I got hurt. It is paining badly. Please put Dettol.” Neetu brushed him off, saying, “I don’t see any hurt.” Later the same day, he came back and told her the same thing; but this there was some dirt stuck on his elbow. Neetu knew it was forged. She slapped him. After Neetu went, Dai Ma went to his room and said, “Amit baba, where did you get hurt? Show me.” She looked at his finger and raised her brows in shock.
She said, “Oh Amit baba! How—how did this happen?”
“I was—” (he wiped his tear) “I was just playing when I fell down and hit a stone.”
“Oh! Amit baba, does it hurt badly?”
He nodded.
She brought cotton, soaked it in Dettol and dabbed it over his fake wound. When he said Ouch, she gave him a sympathetic look and said:
“Don’t worry, Amit baba, it will be all right, it will be just fine.”
She said, “Amit baba, you should be very careful while playing,” and bandaged his finger. He nodded and went away to play. His wounds now surfaced every four or five days. Dai Ma wiped them all with her Dettol.
Neetu’s friends would bring their children along and—to prevent them from jumping in their laps and drown their guffaws in their cries of Mummy mummy mummy—would leave them in the porch where they would play with Amit. Their customary game was of enacting roles. Amit was made the watchman; but he often mixed up his lines or forgot to salute. When he was made the sweeper, someone would always tumble down because of his absentminded brooming. Annoyed, the other children gave him a toy and told him to enact like an audience member. He did this job well. He sat in a corner, didn’t say a word, like an abandoned doll. When asked, he fetched water for the busy players. He breathed a sigh of relief when they decided to change the game. The new game was ghar-ghar, where a group had to enact like a family. The children were divided in two teams. No one was ready to take Amit. They decided that the family which was not managed properly by the end of the week would have to take him. A souvenir soon to be thrust upon the loser team, he stood leaning by the door, smiling when the father of a family said, The food is delicious, sulking when a mother complaint of rising prices. Dai Ma called him one day and showed him a board with incoherent lines drawn on it. She said, “Amit baba, do you know how to play changey-ashtey?”
“No.” he said.
“O! Amit baba, you are so big and you don’t even know how to play changey-ashtey! Don’t tell anyone that. They will laugh at you. Let me teach you.” The board was dusted, wood chips taken as counters, rules explained and the game played. They played for two hours. The next morning, Dai Ma was woken up by a muffed voice. She opened her eyes and saw two zealous eyes peering at her. “Dai Ma, wake up, Dai Ma—let us play changey-ashtey. The board is ready.” Amit sat on the chair and took five-minutes for each turn, while Dai Ma, sweeping the floor, came and finished her turn in five seconds. Some days Amit would take the board in the kitchen and keep it on the LPG cylinder. Dai Ma would take out snatches of seconds from her cooking and play her turns. Those days when she couldn’t play because she was already late for cooking, Amit would sit on an inverted tumbler in the kitchen and wait. With the advent of this new time-pass, he stopped following Neetu around. He trailed after Dai Ma; and she allowed him. Dai Ma saw Amit curled up on the sofa, crying. He told her through the tearful face that Neetu had not taken him with her and had even slapped him. Dai Ma said, “Amit baba, don’t cry. I am going to the temple. You want to come with me?” At the temple, she told him to join hands and wish for something (and not to tell that wish to anybody). After this, Dai Ma asked him to take sweets from the fat half-naked man who was standing near the idol. Amit shrunk back in fear. Dai Ma took the sweets for him. From the shop outside, she brought him a small marble idol of Lord Krishna. She said, “Lord Krishna was also very nut-khut like you. If you want anything, kept it between your palms and wish for it.”
“Will I get everything?” he asked.
“Yes, if you ask with a clear heart.”
As the days passed, he regularly went to the temple with Dai Ma. His fear of the fat half-naked man subsided; partially because he realised that he was harmful, and partially because he now donned more garments because of winter. One day, the fat half-naked man suddenly placed a rose string around Amit’s neck. Amit was surprised and delighted. For a second Amit thought he had now become bhaganwanji, but Dai Ma broke his oblivion.
Amit now went with Dai Ma to the market also, where sometimes she would buy him puffed rice (after making sure the stall was hygienic). On a few days, she would take out money from her savings and buy Amit mangoes. Amit would eat them sitting the balcony while she stood out guarding the balcony from Neetu (Mangoes were strictly prohibited in the household. Seeing someone eat it gave Neetu creeps.) After having finished them, Dai Ma would rigorously wash Amit’s hands and mouth.
Dai Ma once threatened him, “Amit baba, stay away from me! I won’t talk to you because you never drink milk on time.”
“Dai Ma, I drink milk on time.”
“I am not talking to you?”
“But why?”
She didn’t speak.
Amit looked at her and shouted, pointing out his finger, “If you won’t talk to me, I will tell my friend Raman to come and beat you.” She replied, “You will get your Dai Ma beaten? Your Dai Ma? Your own Dai Ma? Good. Very good. Go, tell him to beat me. You are doing a very good thing.” She looked away from him.
He said, “Dai Ma.”
“Arre, you haven’t gone yet? Go. Tell your Raman to beat your Dai Ma. Go now.”
He looked at her with tearful eyes, and said, holding his earlobes, “Sorry. I won’t tell him.” From the next day on, Dai Ma would make Bournvita milk for him (now in a larger cup) and tea for herself and they would drink it sitting in the warm sunlit balcony. Dai Ma had to keep telling him to finish it fast. He would stand leaning by the banister and then rush towards the glass, take a sip and then go back. He drank it all in one gulp if she reminded him of her threat.
Dai Ma said to Amit one day, “There is so much noise and dust down there. In my village there are no such things—no motor-cars, no motor-bikes, no traffic signals.”
Amit rushed over and sat besides her on the cot. “Really Dai Ma? Then how do people go about?”
“On foot.”
“And for long distances?”
“On cycles.”
“But it would take lots of time, won’t it?”
“Yes, lots of time.”
“Dai Ma you also had a cycle?”
“Yes,” she continued, “I had one. It was pink and white with roses made on it—very beautiful.”
“Wow, Dai Ma. And where did you go with that cycle?”
“Where? Oh, lots of places—my school, my old nanny’s house, to the grocer, and yes—sometimes to the lake also.”
“Wow, Dai Ma, you had a lake also?”
“Yes, we had a lake—a very very big lake. I would go there with my friends and sit on a stone and we all would chew sugarcanes.”
“Dai Ma, were there fishes in the lake?”
“Oh, yes, lots of them. Big fishes, small fishes, and some frogs also. Bust mostly there were lotuses—”
“Lotuses? Were there really lotuses Dai Ma?”
“Yes, hundreds and hundreds of them. They covered the whole lake. If you look from a distance you will feel as if it is a pink blanket over the lake.”
Arun tried to visualise it in his mind. “Wow,” he said. “Was there anything else also in the lake?”
“Oh yes, there is one jalpari also. My father used to say there used to many of them in olden times.”
“What is a jalpari, Dai Ma?”
“A jalpari is a woman which has a fish-like tail instead of legs.”
She told him about the friendly cow which she and her friends would feed everyday and the dog they had adopted and hid under an inverted basket. The excitement on his face waxed with every new detail. She continued to invent more details. She had rarely seen him so happy. She wished there really was such a lake, such a village.
He said, “Raman also has a dog at home—a very big dog.”
“Who is Raman?”
“Dai Ma, you don’t know Raman? He is in my class. He is my best friend. He brings cakes and pastries everyday and we share tiffin. He even gets the highest marks in Maths.”
She listened with interest as he spoke of his friend. She was glad there was someone to look after him in the school.
“—and that is not all,” he said. “Sometimes he brings so many toffees that his pocket looks like a balloon.” He stood up and stretched his pocket. “It looks this big. See.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Dai Ma, really. All types of toffees. Chocolate and strawberry also.”
He continued, “Dai Ma, I have one toffee right now. You want it?”
“No Amit baba, you eat.”
“No, Dai Ma, no. Please you eat.”
He took it out of his pocket and gave it to her.
“Amit baba,” she remarked, “why don’t you tuck in your shirt.”
“Dai Ma eat it right now, otherwise I know if I go away you won’t eat it.”
“OK.” She ate it.
She said, “Amit baba, tuck in your shirt, it will look better.”
He stood up and reluctantly tucked it in. Dai Ma noticed his pant was unbuttoned.
She said, “Amit baba, why is your button open?”
“Dai Ma it is very tight.”
“Oh. Then why don’t you tell Mummy to get you new pant?”
“I told her. She said she has got no time.”
“Amit baba, come with me.”
Dai Ma took him to the store room, brought down her sewing machine from the cupboard, dusted it, and sewed a new pant for him over the following days; he sat on a low stool next to her, giving his inputs for the design and colour. Her hands were out of practice so the pant turned out to be ill-fitting. Amit went away wearing his tight-fitting pant, without complaining. The next day she called him back in the store room. Kept on the table, next to the sewing machine, inside a polythene bag, was folded cloth.
“Today we will try our best,” she said.
The pant fitted him like a T. Over the next few days, she brought more cloth and sew him two shirts and two pants. Dai Ma tried to embroider a Spiderman on his shirt. The end result was something that looked like a red bald doll. On the second shirt, they settled for writing “I Am Spiderman” below the collar. With the leftover red cloth, she made him an eye mask. Donning his new attire, he dashed in the balcony, and said, “Dai Ma, get aside, I am throwing my web! Here it goes - shu!”
“Oi!” she said and jumped aside.
After fifteen minutes of webbing, Amit retired on chair and said, “Dai Ma, I am tired. I need water.”
“Ok, Amit baba, I will get it.”
She went to the kitchen and poured water in a glass. “Here Amit baba,” she said turning back. She knew he had followed her. They walked back. Dai Ma had crossed the drawing room when she turned back and saw Amit jumping over the stools, dashing across the carpet, his hand held out. His eyes brimming with fear of being left behind. His fear didn’t turn into words; it remained inside. She picked him up and walked back to the balcony.

*

Dai Ma smiled. She cherished memories. Even in the hardest of days, gloomiest of nights, they come like an angel from nowhere and give you a pinch of happiness. But that happens only with the happy memories. Sometimes a sad memory also crops up, like a maggot while peeling peas:

*

While Amit and Dai Ma were sitting in the balcony one day, she said to him, pointing to the tear on his Spiderman shirt, “Amit baba, how did this happen?”
Amit spoke reluctantly, “Mummy—mummy—hit yesterday.”
Dai Ma noticed how Neetu’s behaviour towards Amit had suddenly changed since Nandini’s visit. Dai Ma brought some cloth the next day and sewed him a new shirt. Looking at Dai Ma straining her eyes and labouring away for hours, Amit tried to pursue her that there was no need. But she still sewed it.
Dai Ma would stand by the door, muttering Ram Ram Ram and telling her rosary, while Neetu would beat Amit. She could never forget how he would wail and look at her through the thick blob of tears, as if begging for help. Dai Ma knew her intervention would only fuel Neetu’s anger. After Neetu went away, Dai Ma would enter the room carrying his food; Amit would be lying on the bed, still crying.
“Dai Ma, Dai Ma, here—just here she hit me with her hand—” (pointing towards his elbow) “and—and see—here—” (wiping a tear, raising his pant leg, pointing to his knee) “see, I fell down on the floor and got hurt here, see, on the knee. See.”
She saw all his wounds, examined them, showed her surprise and condolence, and fed him in midst of all this. The spoon was often refused entry inside his mouth until proper condolence was expressed. After that she would dab Dettol over the pointed areas. Amit traced the origins of the wounds once more now, to squeeze out whatever more condolence was possible.

Neetu was sitting in the drawing room when she said, “Dai Ma, have you taken out the new tea set from the storeroom?”
“Yes. And I have washed it and arranged it in the kitchen.”
“Fine. And is the cake ready?”
“I have kept it in the refrigerator. It will be done before Nandini comes in the morning.”
“OK, fine. Now you can go to sleep Dai Ma.”
Amit came out of his room, carrying his blanket and pillow. He was about to enter Neetu’s room when Neetu said, “Amit, wait, wait. Today you will sleep in your room.”
He stood at the door, motionless.
“Go to your room,” Neetu said.
Amit opened the door of Neetu’s room.
Neetu stood up and went towards Amit. He stepped back.
Neetu stood towering before him and said, “Amit go to your room! Or you want me to hit you like yesterday?”
He sat down on the doorway and started crying.
“Amit—Amit—stop crying! You will wake up the whole neighbourhood. Listen to me—you are grown up, you understand? You have to learn to sleep alone. Amit—listen—stop crying, and try to understand—”
But he didn’t understand and kept crying.
“Fine, I’m locking the door—cry as much as you want.”
She drove him out and shut the door. He banged on it, screaming, “Mummy, open the door. Mummy!” He was screaming at the top of his voice. Strain abated his loudness, but he kept shouting. It seemed his throat was puffing out the last of voice it had. Stripped of the garments of loudness, she could see the pain in his voice: naked, shivering, ghoulish. He rubbed his eyes, harshly, as if it would make his Mummy come out. Dai Ma tried to calm him, but he turned a deaf ear towards her words. He went to his room, coughing and crying. She followed him. He threw himself on the bed. She said, “Amit baba, don’t cry.” But he cried. She picked him up, brought him out and laid him on her cot. “Don’t worry Amit baba,” she said, “don’t worry—you can sleep next to me. No need to be afraid. Now stop crying.”
Slaps and cries woke Dai Ma early morning. Neetu was hitting Amit.
“Amit, Amit—I told you to sleep alone, didn’t I? Then why did you sleep here—why? You will make me feel ashamed in front of the whole world. You animal.”
Dai Ma said, “No, no, don’t hit him, Neetu. It was me—it was me. I told him to sleep here.”
Neetu glared at her.
“Dai Ma—why are you always teaching him to disobey me, huh? Be in your limits, you just work here. Amit sleeps on the bed, not on the floor with a servant, you understand?”

Few days later, Dai Ma was sitting in the balcony when Neetu came to her and said, “Dai Ma, I want to talk to you.”
She looked at her.
Neetu said, “Dai Ma—please go away from here.”
Neetu continued, “You can work at my friend, Rita’s house. She is ready to give you one thousand rupees more.”
“Neetu, but what happened?”
“Dai Ma, I don’t want to give any explanations. Just go away. I will come back in the evening, and I want you to be ready by then. Someone will come from Rita’s house and take you.”
When Neetu came back in the evening, Dai Ma was still looking down the banister. Neetu asked her why she hadn’t packed till now. Dai Ma turned her face and looked at Amit. He was sitting in the garden. Neetu told her she would explain things to Rajeev. Amit was playing with a ball and grass and plants, his only friends. Neetu told her Rita would give her a better room to live. Amit looked up and smiled, and showed her his new red plastic ball. Neetu told her she can bargain for more money. Dai Ma wondered what would happen to Amit if she went away.

Amit was going with Dai Ma to the temple enjoy the sumptuous feat of chhapan bhog, when Neetu called out, “Amit, where are you going?”
“We are going to the temple,” Dai Ma said.
“Amit,” Neetu said, “you shameless, you’ve got three marks in Science. Don’t you think you should be studying? Go to your room and bring your Science copy to me. Right Now.”
“Mummy, but before this I was studying only—”
She slapped him and said, “So you’ve learnt to answer back also, huh? Get your copy right now!”
Dai Ma said, “Neetu, Neetu, don’t hit him. He’s not lying—he was studying. I saw it.”
Neetu shouted, “Amit get your copy right now!”
He just stood there.
Neetu showered slaps on him.
Dai Ma tried to guard him with her hand, “Neetu, don’t—don’t hit. Please. Stop. He’s going. He’s going. Amit baba, go, get your copy. Good boy. Go now.”
Neetu glared at Dai Ma and said, “Amit, fast.”
Dai Ma understood the signal in her eyes.
She understood that from now on, she was allowed to love Amit only half.
Neetu walked away without telling where the other half was to come from.
She went back to her cot. Amit came back an hour later, carrying his milk glass. Dai Ma said, “Amit baba, go drink on the table.”
“No Dai Ma, it is OK. Mummy has gone to market and I have learnt the Science answers.”
“Amit baba, go.”
He looked at her and sipped from the milk.
“Didn’t you hear? I said go!”
He sipped it again.
“Are you going or not?”
He went out carrying his glass. He came back a minute later and said, “I have finished it.” He was about to sit down when Dai Ma said, “Now go to your room.”
“No.”
“Go or I’ll slap you.”
He looked at her with eyes filled with puzzled tears.
“Amit baba, this is the last time I am telling you—either you go away or I’ll slap you.”
He went away, crying.
The next day, he came in the balcony and stood near Dai Ma. She noticed he was holding a box. A long interval passed, after which Dai Ma said, “What do you want?”
He said, “Dai Ma, let us play changey-ashtey.”
Before he could open the box, she said, “No. I don’t want to.”
“No Dai Ma, you have to play.”
“I said I don’t want to! Are you deaf?”
He threw the box on the ground and ran away.

Rajeev was reclining on the sofa. He said, “Dai Ma, I told you many times before, why don’t you use the vacuum cleaner we have? I am sure your back would be aching terribly.”
“No beta, it’s fine. I am used to the broom. And as it is I don’t know how to use that machine.”
“Dai Ma, what is that—that tear in your saree.”
“Oh, nothing, nothing, just rats in the storeroom.”
“And yes, I forgot to ask you—why have you shifted your things in the storeroom? Any—any problem?”
“Beta, I am getting old, and it’s difficult for me to climb those big big stairs every time I want something. Here it is easy.”
“OK fine. I am going to Haridwar in a few days, I’ll get you a new saree.”
“No, beta, I don’t need it. No use wasting money—I’ll get this fixed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Rajeev went to his room, saying, “I think I’ll take a bath.”
“Amit baba, lift your feet,” she said to Amit, who was looking at her all the while, inertly. He lifted his feet, slowly. “Dai Ma, will you play changey-ashtey today?” Amit asked. What crossed the membrane of fear in his throat was only an inaudible murmur. She hadn’t heard. He asked again. A small, silent tear was anxiously sitting on his eyelid.
She said, “How many times do I tell you I am not free! All the time changey-ashtey changey-ashtey. Do I have no other work?”
The tear now finally got redemption. It glided down the contours of his cheek, happily, like a couple going for vacation.
“Dai Ma, why do you talk to me like this nowadays? It hurts.” he asked, wiping it in mid-path.
“Again you started crying! Are you trying to torture me?”
He forcefully wiped the last tear. He threw the toast on her and ran towards the kitchen. He looked at her from behind the gate. She picked it up and placed it back on the table. He said, “You talk to me like this and I will tell Raman and he will beat you.” She continued sweeping. He crept towards her and said, “Will you play if I don’t beat you?”
She struck on his leg with her broom.
He walked away, saying, “Kat-ti.”

Amit was sitting in the drawing room, next to a potted neem plant, holding a toy mouse in his hand. “Mr Mousey, say hello to Mr Plant.” He held the mouse close to the plant. “Good boy Mr Mousey!” Amit kept the mouse down and gently wiped the dew on the leaf with his finger, and said, “Aw, don’t cry Mr Plant, don’t cry. Mummy does not love those who cry. Look at Mr Mousey—he doesn’t cry.” Amit saw Dai Ma enter carrying a mug of water. He said, “No, Mr Mousey, no. Don’t say hello to Dai Ma, because she will not say hello back to you.” Amit looked at her, but she didn’t look at him. He said in a stern voice, “Don’t forget to water that plant over there—behind the bonsai. Nowadays you are not working carefully.” She didn’t look up at him. He went out, saying, “Mr Mousey, bad people have come here. We will go in the garden.”
Half an hour later, Dai Ma saw Neetu enter from the front door, dragging Amit by his wrist. She pushed him in the bathroom, closed the door and switched off the light from outside, saying, “I think this is the only way I can teach you to behave like humans. I will open the door when I come back one hour later.” Dai Ma went back in the balcony.
Amit screamed.
She looked at the motor-cars.
Amit banged his fist on the gate.
She looked at the dogs.
Amit shouted – “Mummy!”
She looked at the cows. She cried.
Amit called her name – “Dai Ma!”
Dai Ma opened the door and hugged him.
This time she loved him more than she was supposed to.
Amit also hugged her.
For he always loved more than he was supposed to.
When Neetu came back and saw the door open, Dai Ma saw the ghastly look in her eyes, as if they were saying, So you won’t understand like this. Neetu took Amit in the room and closed the gate. The ghoulish shrieks made Dai Ma shiver; the rosary fell from her hands. Neetu flung out Amit’s Spiderman shirts and pants from his cupboard and tore them all. Amit looked at the remains in the dustbin, searching for his fault. Dai Ma sat in the balcony, telling her rosary beads she won’t break the rule again.

2009-02-09T19:22:00.001+05:30

Crying In the Rain

Story of a Lunatic

2008-11-01T15:36:00.000+05:30

Amit was squatting on the grass, meticulously sketching on the white paper the smiling faces of Ranbir and Anu, who were sitting on the other side of the fire. Ramesh came out of the tent, carrying several platters and bowls on a tray. A snake passed near Ramesh’s feet, and he tumbled over. The tray fell over Amit.
The white paper got drenched in the spicy yellow dal; it looked in Amit’s hands like a lump of yellow shit. He threw it at Ramesh’s face and said, “You—you—bastard—son-of-a-bitch.”
Ranbir leaped up and stood in font of Amit.
“Calm down, calm down,” Ranbir said, “It was just an accident—”
Amit pushed Ranbir aside and picked up a bamboo stick from the ground. Ramesh had been leaning till now by the tree, unperturbed by the scorns, like an inanimate object. As the bamboo stick struck his chest and shoulders again and again, he uttered not a sound and there was not a blink in his eye. Ranbir snatched the cane from Amit’s hand and shouted, “For God’s sake stop it! What are you doing? He is a human like us. It was just a mistake!”
“You are always trying to protect him Ranbir,” said Amit, “get out of the way. He is a useless creature—brainless—mentally retarded” – he turned towards Ramesh – “—haramzaada. My father kept him in service just out of pity. He wasn’t able to feed his parents. He could do nothing in life. He is a bloody animal. He does not know how much I toiled over the sketch.”
For a minute, they looked at each other. The only sound that issued was Amit’s heaving. Anu remained unconcerned; it was a regular sight for her.
Amit was looking at Ramesh with his flaring eyes. Ramesh’s passiveness and impenitence enraged him further. He tried to leap over Ramesh, but was stopped by Ranbir.
“Stop it I say! Enough! Ramesh, you go back and cook again. After that you can sleep.” Ramesh walked back inside the tent, without saying a word.
Amit brushed off Ranbir’s hand and threw the stick in the fire. He took out a packet of biscuits from his backpack, and nibbled at them; his eyes, still red with anger, were fixed on the fire.
After some time, Anu kept her cell-phone in her backpack and said, “I am feeling bored.”
Ranbir said, “Let me tell you all a story.”
Anu looked at him with puzzled eyes.
“A story?” asked Anu.
“Yes—a story.”
“What is it about?” asked Anu.
“It’s about the world’s most amazing man,” said Ranbir. “Ok now, I need two names. First, the narrator’s, um . . . let us call him—”
“Ranbir,” said Anu and gave a wry smile.
“Ok, let us call him Ranbir. And the main character, let us call him,” – Ranbir saw Ramesh passing by the tent – “let us call him Ramesh.”
“Shall I begin?” asked Ranbir. “Amit, come on yaar, I’m sorry. Come here and listen.” Amit reluctantly came over and sat next to Ranbir.
“Start now,” said an excited Anu.

*

It does not take more than a few seconds to notice a noise, but it can take a long time to notice silence; it took me twelve years to notice Ramesh’s silence. The teacher had made me sit at the last bench, next to him. In the classroom, he always looked at the blackboard with his unshakeable gaze, and in the recess, at the air; I knew nothing about him other than this. But it was only after I got to sit with him, after twelve years of being in the same school, that I realised his silence. He had completely concealed himself from the world. I came to know that he had no friends; he didn’t talk to girls; he didn’t play cricket; he didn’t study; he didn’t come to school in a coloured uniform on his birthday; he didn’t fight; he didn’t eat ice-cream; he didn’t bully juniors; and he didn’t speak.
In fact, no one claimed to have heard his voice. Some juniors were convinced that he was mute. Once, some students of 2nd Class took to teasing him in the recess. They would throw paper balls at him and shout ‘mute, mute’. They were met with such indifference from his part that after a time they started feeling that he was partially blind and couldn’t even see them. They never teased him again, and became very sympathetic towards him. They would hide behind the tree and take turns in peeking at him.
I sat with him the whole year and came to know a lot of things. But what I came to know was what all he didn’t do; I didn’t come to know what he did, because he never did anything (except one thing): he never stood in groups, never smiled or laughed, never ran, was never excited, never teased dogs and never danced in the rain. He was the only boy who didn’t crowd around the ice-cream walla after the school hours. The only thing I came to know that he did was: he spoke—but not more than a couple of monosyllables in a week, and that too were almost inaudible. It was hard to believe at first, but I had heard him with my own ears.
Just a day before the end of our session, I offered him my ice-cream. He shook his head and went away. I stood there, with my eyes trying their best to pop out of their sockets. My classmates crowded around me, asking me to give them my ice-cream if I didn’t want it. I brushed them aside and followed Ramesh. He walked inside the woods and then, sat down on a stone near the lake. A sparrow perched on the ground next to him. He picked it up and caressed it. There came a smile on his face; by God, I was shocked. It was the second thing I came to know of that he did. If the boys of my class had caught the bird, they would have forced it to eat paper pellets, tied thread around its limbs or would have even stuffed it in their smelly bags. And if the boy was a kinder one, he would have thrown it in the air with a jerk, as if it were a stone. But Ramesh wasn’t like them; he gently placed it back on the ground, from where it flew away. He turned his face towards the lake and looked at it. His face was like a rock and his eyes fixed, almost frozen at a point; it seemed as if he was searching for his reflection in a water droplet in the lake. I went away from there and came back later in the evening. He was still there. By God, he had looked at it for a longer time than I had ever slept in my life, perhaps.

The more I came to know about him, the more I wanted to. The next year, I again sat with him. He didn’t bring lunchbox with him anymore; he slept during the recess. Soon, he started sleeping during all the free periods also. I was puzzled. Three months after our summer vacations, I saw him smiling again. All the classes had gone to Fun Fair. For three hours, while we sat on merry-go-rounds, slides, and even on roller-coasters, he sat on a chair and played with a leaf. A five-year old girl came and sat next to him, with a large bunch of flowers and a crutch in her hands. When I returned one hour later, with my hands full of Cadbury’s Dairy Milks that a rich man was giving for free, I saw him plucking the petals, sepals and leaves from the flowers; he was making a collage of the face of Mickey Mouse on the chair. The kid sitting next to him was jumping in excitement. When the collage was complete the kid clapped, and, that was when, for the second time, I had seen Ramesh smiling. He was the only person I ever knew who preferred playing with a disabled kid to roller-coasters and free Dairy Milks. He amazed me beyond limits.
You might find all that I am saying about him a bit improbable. I can understand it. Even I, who had seen all of it with my two eyes, found it hard to believe.

It was our games period. I was feeling sick and was told to go back to class. Rather than keeping my head down, I opened Ramesh’s bag. Nothing struck me as odd in it, except for a small blue notebook. I took it out. It contained, as I felt then and as I feel now, the world’s best sketches: minutely detailed; lifelike; every stroke, every line, every dot was harmonious with each other; they looked so real that it seemed as if the world itself came alive and sketched them. The notebook contained ten sketches. My heart throbbed in myriad awe. The more my eyes devoured on the beauty of one, the more they became reluctant to move to the next; and as they moved to the next, the beauty of the first looked diminished. Every mark of pencil on the pages spoke of the genius of the man who held the pencil.
On our next games period, instead of playing, I went and sat besides Ramesh.
I said, “I saw your blue notebook. I didn’t know you sketched.”
My words didn’t produce any effect on him.
I said, “They were amazing.”
He turned his face towards me.
“You really liked them?” he said.
“Liked them? I loved them! They are the best I’d ever seen.”
For the whole period, he questioned me on what I liked about them and what I didn’t. The more I praised them, the more his face beamed with happiness. Believe me, happiness never looked so good on anyone’s face as it looked on his. He did most of the talking, and didn’t let me speak much. He asked me if I was free in the evening and could come to his house. After the period was over, there remained a perpetual shock on the faces of those boys and girls who had seen him talking.
His house was a modest one. Without introducing me to anyone, he dragged me to his room. He opened his cupboard and took out a veiled canvas and an easel. He quickly removed the cloth from the canvas. I was shell-shocked for some minutes. My father had tried to imbue artistic zeal in me by taking me to various art exhibitions; I had met a lot of artists, seen a lot of great works, and had even tried to learn painting; hence, I had enough knowledge of art and painting to judge which work was good and which bad. This one was great, though still half-finished. At 16, Ramesh was a genius.
“You know, there is a small lake near our school,” he said, “It is that lake I’m painting on the canvas.”
He continued after I didn’t speak anything:
“You must we wondering why I’m painting it here, in my room, and not on the scene itself.”
He looked at me. I was still looking at the painting, dazed.
“I go to the lake daily and look at it carefully. And then, I come home and paint it. I prefer painting from memory.
“This is my magnum opus. I have been working on it since long. Believe me, when it would be finished, it would be a masterpiece.”
“I agree,” I said, “it is amazing.”
“It has to be. I work on it nine hours a day.”
I looked at him, once more shocked.
“Yes, nine hours,” he said. “From 10 in the night to 7 in the morning. Without a break.”
“Is that why you are always sleeping the class?” I asked.
“Yes.”
We both laughed. When I returned home, I found myself wondering whether to call Ramesh a genius or a lunatic.

In the next few days, his passion for painting became clearer to me, and I also got my answer: he was both. I came to know that he wasn’t lonely: painting was for him his friend, his brother, his mate. Either he talked to me about painting, or he never talked; and when he talked about painting, his face would always be glowing with joy. Holding a brush and making colours dance on the canvas gave him the joy that the world’s most expensive and exquisite things could never have given. One day I asked him why he doesn’t show his paintings to someone at the Delhi Art Gallery. Ramesh thought about it, and then spent his whole pocket money and couriered two of his paintings, along with a letter, to Delhi Art Gallery. He got a reply within a week. The letter was filled with ravishing praises; one was, ‘. . . your vibrant use of colours reminds me of Gogh, and realism, of Waterhouse. They are masterpieces.’ Ramesh hadn’t mentioned his age in the letter. He was called at the gallery the next day. The comparison with Gogh made Ramesh mad with excitement. I also shed two tears.
Two days later, I asked him what had happened at the meeting. He said, “I didn’t go.”
“What! You didn’t go!” I cried, “Have you lost your mind! That man wrote that you will become famous all over the world in a few days!”
“That is the problem,” he replied. “Ranbir, you know that I’ve always been alone. I appreciate his praises, but I—I don’t want to become famous. I just want to be alone. I’ve always lived life that way. I can’t change it now. I’ve written a letter saying that I am donating the painting to the gallery, and don’t wish anybody to know about me.”
“Ramesh, I just don’t understand you—how can you—I mean this is insane—”
“I know it is weird, Ranbir. But I have always been like this. Nature has made he like this. I am happy with myself. I like to be alone. I am different from others. I’m happy the way I am.”
I was very angry with him.
“You know Ranbir,” said Ramesh, “to add meaning to our existence, we need to have something that we value more than out life. For me that thing is painting. I don’t care if I have no friends and live a lonely, baseless life. I am the happiest man on earth till the time I can paint. I am not sad having missed the chance to be famous, or even those bundles of rupees. I don’t want all that. I just want to paint. It is my only friend. It is all I need to be happy.”
Such lunatic geniuses are born once in generations. I knew I could never love anything in life, or even life itself, as much as he loved painting. He was, and will always remain, the most amazing person I’ve come across.

Ramesh had succeeded in hiding his passion for painting from his father, Mr Mohanlal, who kept on thinking that his poor grades were because of his low intelligence, not because he devoted less time to studies. Mr Mohanlal owned a small cloth shop, but most of his income came from dealing in shares. The recent Global Meltdown had, like everybody else’s, affected his investments. He had taken heavy loans and was now on the verge of bankruptcy. Out of tension, he started pacing about the drawing room late at nights. Then one day, he went inside Ramesh’s room. Ramesh told him everything. His father was furious, and threatened him to stop his madness and turn down to studies. Belonging to a conservative family, he felt that a man cannot earn his roti by painting. Mr Mohanlal didn’t realise what painting meant to Ramesh; it was as if he was telling him to stop breathing. Ramesh still painted. The slaps and canes had no effect on him. The share market fell further. Mr Mohanlal’s health fell along with it. I met Ramesh in the school one day and asked him what he planned to do now. He told me that he would prove to his father that a man can earn his roti by painting. When it gets completed, he would sell his canvas, The Lake, to the Delhi Art Gallery. From nine, he started working on it for eleven hours.
Ramesh failed in his exams. When he returned home one day, his mother told him that on hearing of his bankruptcy and of Ramesh’s failing in his exams, his father had fainted and had to be hospitalised. They rushed to the hospital, and came to know that Mr Mohanlal was partially paralysed for life. For the first time, he saw contempt in his mother’s eyes for him. He felt crushed under the weight of guilt. He swore never to paint again and tore all his sketches and paintings, and threw a bottle of colour over The Lake.

*

Ranbir fell silent. Ramesh came out of the tent carrying a large tray.
“Keep the tray and go, we’ll serve ourselves,” said Amit.
“Take a blanket if you’re sleeping,” said Ranbir.
They all ate in silence. Darkness had completely shrouded the woods. The moon and the stars looked like holes in the shroud. Amit kept his plate down and said, “Nice story. Thank God such things don’t happen in real life. I’m going to sleep.” Amit walked inside the large white tent.
Ranbir said, “I’m going for a walk. Want to come?”
“Sure,” said Anu.
As they walked through the tall alpines, the only sound that penetrated in the air was of the wet grass crushing under their feet.
After some time, Anu said, “Is that the end? What happened after that?”
Ranbir said in a sober voice, “Having failed in the exams, Ramesh was getting no job. His father’s friend took pity on his family and took him in as a servant. He would have killed himself long back, if it hadn’t been for his helpless parents.”
They passed by their tent. Ranbir picked up a spare blanket and walked to where Ramesh was sleeping, under the tree.
Ranbir covered Ramesh with the blanket and said, turning towards Anu, “By vowing to live without painting, he had vowed to live without his soul He became more secluded from the world than ever. Earlier, he would talk to me about painting, about the beauty of nature, about birds, trees, grass, lakes—but now, he didn’t. He never smiled again, never caressed a sparrow, never sat by the lake, and never spoke again. He had no complaint with God, or life, or with anybody. Only his lifeless body was being dragged along with time; his heart and brain had left his body, and were forever encaged in that moment when he had vowed never to paint again; they refused to accompany his body in being a part of that time where there were no colours and palettes. When I looked into his eyes, I felt as if—as if—a wire was pulling around his neck and he was being chocked to death. His silence pains me. Why doesn’t he speak to me about his loss, his suffering? Why does he keep it all inside, and suffer from the same suffering, every day, again and again? How can God be so merciless? Every night, I silently pray for death to come and free him from this suffering. Hell would have been a better fate.”
Anu looked at the thin stream of tears that was surging down Ranbir’s cheeks.
“Anu, you know what he did when he felt the urge to paint?” said Ranbir, his voice chocked with tears. “He took a blade and cut his thumb and index finger, so that he won’t be able to hold a brush or a pencil.”
Ranbir lifted Ramesh’s hand and showed it to Anu. The skin was swollen, and hard, and there were cut marks on his finger and thumb. Ranbir said, “Ten years have passed, but Ramesh still cuts his finger, every week. He punishes himself for the crime of being a genius.”

The Song of Happiness

2008-10-14T17:55:00.000+05:30

The waning sun found the seven-year-old Radha sitting under a streetlamp, eating a chapatti with half-baked potatoes. She saw a fleeting shadow on the yellow-lit road. She turned her head and saw a brown-coat puppy walking the along the edge of the road, sniffing the plastic cups, paan-spits and ice cream sticks.
Radha leaned towards it and said, “Hey little doggie, have you lost something?”
It turned its head and looked at her. It blinked and then began sniffing the trash again. She picked it up and said, “Please tell me little doggie, I will also look with you.”
It uttered a low mewl and then tried to spring down from her arms.
“What happened, you look so sad.” She loosened her grip, but it didn’t spring out. It turned absolutely still and looked solemnly at the leftover morsels of potatoes on the newspaper.
“Little doggie, are you hungry? Why, you not eaten anything?”
Radha took out a piece of dry chapatti from her pocket; the puppy grabbed it and hurriedly ate it. She put the puppy on the newspaper and placed another dry chapatti near it. After eating all of it, it sat down and wagged its petite tail.
“You liked it, little doggie? I cook it. Mamma also said I cook well,” Radha said, patting its head, “Okay, now that your tummy is full so you should go back, your mamma will be looking for you. If she sees you here, she say, ‘You bad bad girl! You are trying to take away my little child from me!’ My Mamma also got very worried when I come home late. Now go home little doggie, it is very late.”
Radha stood up and went down the twilit road, dancing on the notes of a song which, her Mamma used to say, a very old lady sings every night, while she sits on the moon, gently rocking in her chair, spinning something. Radha always wondered what the lady looked like, how many grand-children she had, whether she knew any stories, and what was she spinning. She looked up at the moon: it was round, white and calm, like a bowl of milk kept on a paper. Radha couldn’t see her, but she could hear the song: it was soft and clear; one could touch and smell it; it seemed to fill the air with happiness: if you listened to it carefully, you could feel happiness; and if you stretched out your hands, happiness stuck to your fingers.
Walking along with Radha was a shadow, short, with four feet, oblivious of the song, but trying to match with the rhythm of her dance. She turned around and saw the puppy. She stooped and said to it,
“Why are you following me, little doggie? Go back to your Mamma now, fast!”
She gently pushed it. “Come on now, go.”
She started walking again. The puppy stood there for a moment, silent, its sober eyes fixed on Radha. It followed her again. Radha had just walked a few steps, when she saw its shadow again.
“You silly doggie! If Pa sees you he beat me! Go away.” She picked up a small stone and threw at it. It hit him but failed to produce an effect more than a blink in its eye. She threw a larger stone. The puppy looked down and whined, and went away with sulky steps. Kali walked away, her steps faltering with the weigh of guilt. She could still hear the song, but she didn’t dance now.
She was soon inside the open ground, where she could see her shack standing among the squalor of gullies and gutters. She took a scrubber and squatted next to a bucket of clothes immersed in soap water. The mother Earth embraced its children with a soft kiss of breeze, covered them in a blanket of darkness and sang a lullaby of soporific silence: wailing babies, hitting husbands, crying wives, urchins and beggars—all went to sleep; except for Radha, who, seven-years-old, ugly, smelly, with dry hair, torn clothes, running nose, squatting near a drainpipe, scrubbed and washed the clothes.
Minutes later, it started raining. Amidst the clamour of rain, she could hear muffled whines. She stood up and went towards the ox-cart. She stooped down and saw the puppy, wet, shivering, looking at her with its black and still eyes. Then it looked down and tried to hide its face among its paws.
“You bad doggie! I knew you had not gone! Now it start raining and now you will catch cold and you mamma will blame me.”
She picked up the puppy and sat down leaning against a stack of hay. She softly slapped its head and said, “Now, tell me, why do you not go back to your mamma, hmm?”
The puppy looked down and hid its face in her arm, and mewled.
After a minute she spoke,
“You don’t have a mamma, do you?”
She took out a torn cloth from her pocket and rolled the puppy in it. It stopped shivering. They both—the little girl, clothes torn, hands rough and blistered, squatting besides a stack of hay, and the puppy, little, sad, rolled up in a cloth, under warm palms—, looked silently at the road as the drops poured upon it. Radha spoke,
“I miss Mamma. She was a good human. She never beat me. She even bring me clothes on birthday. Before she went to live with God, I play with other children. But now I don’t, because Pa send me to beg, and everyday I go to bus stop and beg, and I don’t have a bowl also. People there do not treat me nicely. I don’t like to beg. People curse me and push me and some even take my money and run away, and then I get home with less money and then Pa beat me. And I even wash clothes all night. Still he beat me. Mamma never ever beat me. Never. If Mamma were not live with God, she would not allow me to wash clothes or beg or Pa beat me. I miss Mamma. You also miss your mamma little doggie, huh?”
The puppy turned its head and looked into Radha’s eyes for a moment; and then looked back at the rain drops as they fell on the road and died. Rain drops don’t beg or wash clothes; they don’t have a bad father also; they just fall and die.
“I don’t have one friend also. Little doggie, you want to be my friend?”
Radha took out its paw from the cloth folds and gently shook it.
“Now that we are friends, I am sorry I hit you with a stone.” She held her earlobes and said, “Very very sorry. I wanted you to go away, because if Pa saw us, he beat us both. He won’t tell why, but he still beat us. He is bad human. I don’t like Pa. He always beat me and never tells why he beat me. Mamma said he is a bad man. Your Pa is also a bad man little doggie, huh?”
She bent her head and searched for the little being in the folds of the cloth roll; it was asleep, the peace and calmness on its face resembled that of the baby who, having cried all night, falls asleep when the morning suns rises from the ocean bed and comes out to greet him. When Radha looked at it, she felt what the mother feels when she wakes up and sees her little baby lying asleep next to her. A smile flits on Radha’s face. The puppy moved its head slightly and rested it against her palm. The warmth of its skin created a lovely feel; it thawed the coldness of her arms. She slowly moved her palm away, in case the blisters of her skin hurt it.
After a minute, she noticed something moving near her feet. She looked down and saw a mouse nibbling at her clothes. The puppy woke up and looked at Radha’s eyes; they were fixed on the ground, still ghoulish with the fear which had failed to come out in form of a shriek. With puzzled eyes, it looked down at her curled up toes. The sumptuous feast of the mouse was brought to a standstill, as it heard the loud bark of a big creature whose head was emerging out of a cloth roll. It was terrified, and would have had a heart attack, that is, if mice did really have them. It jumped several feet in the air—the puppy and Radha shrunk back with amazement—and fell in an old shoe nearby. It didn’t come out of it that night. The puppy looked at Radha. She said agitatedly, “No little doggie you should not, you should not! Mouse can harm you. They bite you. They once bite my ear while I sleep. You should not.” The puppy paid no attention; it fastened its paws around her palm and dozed off. She caressed its head with her fingers, and looked at the soft falling shower. Behind the translucent curtain of rain, she saw a tall and large-built figure coming towards her. She carefully placed the puppy behind the hay stacks and rushed towards it.
“Pa, Pa, I was—was washing—rain came—Pa I—”
He slapped her and showered curses. She fell down; he kicked her in the stomach with his army boots. Radha lay curled up on the wet road. She didn’t shriek or shout. She just counted the seconds that passed.
“Where is the money?” he asked, “You bitch! You are late, and I won’t be able to go today! You’re good for nothing, you bitch! Why didn’t you just die with your mother?”
Radha took out a sack of coins and notes from her pocket and handed it over to him. Before he could start counting them, he felt a pinch in his leg. He looked down and saw a puppy, with its teeth trying to dig inside his flesh. “This bastard!” He kicked it with his other leg. The puppy fell at some distance, and tried to stand up. He went near it and pressed his hard sole over it. It uttered low squeaks, whose audible range was not beyond its own breath. By this time, Radha was holding his boot, trying with her flimsy fingers to lift it off, uttering, “No Pa no! He is small—don’t don’t, it does hurt him it does, he is very small now I will get more money tomorrow, don’t hurt him he is small now Pa don’t, Pa—”
I remember how, five years back, a similar incident had occurred: she was trying to lift off Pa’s boots from her Mamma’s neck.
He said, “You bitch! So this was why you were late! Playing around with dogs!” The puppy stopped wriggling, and its squeaks slowed down and then ceased. He slapped Radha and walked away, towards the infamous iridescent streets whose glitter first attracted, and then blinded.
Radha crawled towards the puppy and whispered in a low voice, “Wake up friend, wake up, fast! He’s gone he’s gone, wake up, friend.”
It lay still; still as the road; still as the moon; still as her doll.
She shook it and said, “Wake up bad doggie, wake up, I not talk to you, I not, I not ever ever, wake up—
But no, it would not wake up. And she soon knew why. Five years back, when she shook her Mamma, who lay on the floor, absolutely still, she knew why she wouldn’t wake up. Mamma had left her alone and gone to live with God; and five years later, her little friend did the same. And she knew it, but she never understood it. She looked at the dead puppy for a minute, and then hit it with her hand, just as she once hit her dead Mamma. People didn’t have the right to leave her alone again and again, and live with God. She hated God. He always took the people she loved.
She picked up the puppy and ran, without crying, to the cemetery. She knew that she had to do the last rites, as no one from its family was there (her grandmother had once told her what to do with those who go to live with God). She dug a small hole next to the wall of cemetery, between the drainpipe and a sapling, and buried it there. As last rites, she joined her hands and prayed for it. She felt content.
She quickly bent her head down and whispered, “I forgot to tell: say to Mamma I’m fine.”
She was too tired to go away. She lay down next to the gutter and placed her head on a stone. She picked up a small caterpillar that was trying to make its way up a plant, and fondled it. Suddenly, her hand stopped and her smile faded: she realised what had just happened; she realised that little doggie had now gone to live with God, and so she won’t ever be able to see it again. Five years back, the day Mamma was cremated, she woke up at three in the night to cry because she knew she won’t ever be able to meet her again. She cried now also. All the beetles and worms hid under the wet soil. The caterpillar curled up and shivered. Radha flung it in the air and uttered a loud wail. For an hour, she turned her head left and right and cried and pounded the soil with her fist, talked in low whispers to the grave. And then a breeze blew: cold, shuddery, with a sharp whistling sound. Along with the breeze flowed the notes of the song which a very old lady sings every night as she sits on the moon, gently rocking in her chair. As the notes passed by, happiness fell from them and stuck to her arms, legs, mouth, hair and eyes. She stopped crying, as Sleep took her in her arms and sang a lullaby. She entered the world of dreams: her Mamma and her little doggie and she were playing ice-water in a lovely garden with pink chrysanthemums, green green grass, big big clouds, a smiling and happy sun, and fluffy rabbits jumping up and down. They all were laughing. No one was crying. They all were with her. No one was with God.
I perched on a branch and looked at her, and cried, just as I had been doing since seven years.

The Deafening Silence

2008-09-11T18:25:00.000+05:30

The doorbell’s sonorous sound encrusted inside my ears, shook my whole body, and woke me from the fitful sleep. I felt better having come out of the well of old and unhappy memories. I raised my head and looked at the incomplete article on the computer.
I opened the door.
“Done with the report?” Anil asked.
“Almost.”
“Want some help?”
“Yeah. If you could just proof-read what I’ve written—I’ll be back in ten minutes, and then I’ll finish it.”
“Fine.”
I looked down and walked along the clamorous sunlit afternoon street. I looked around: the road was brimming with pedlars and vendors, noises and shouts; the red spit clung to the walls, no more incongruous, but a design to beautify the dull thing. I looked at the crowd and the calm faces that rested above those uneasy bodies. I didn’t feel as if I was one of them. I was born here, but I couldn’t say I belonged to this place. This city nursed me, taught me to walk, hid me when there was danger, and one day, I left it. I raised my arm and allowed the warmth of sunrays on fall on my skin. It seemed to be flinching from me; it didn’t greet me with love, it showed apathy.
I entered a park, and sat down on a bench in the empty corner, occupied till now by pigeons. Time turns present into past; the present is shrouded over by a layer of time, slowly, like dust: blurs it, veils it, and then obscures its very existence: and then, when present has become past, you look back at it and say, “It never existed.” It heals gravest of pains and rids one of the harrowing memories. But somehow, owing to some arcane reasons, some incidents, some people, survive this mar of time; layers and layers of time fail to obnubilate them; they remain clear, unmisted, pristine and forever an invincible part of your memory. Hasan did. That tall, plump, sentimental ten-year-old boy defeated time.

*

It was the first day of my duty. I was patrolling with my chest aloft to flaunt the new ebony Break Monitor badge, when some noises drew my attention. I went around the staircase and saw a group of senior boys sitting under the peepul tree, jeering and laughing. At some distance, another boy was sitting on the low cement mound, calm and composed, indifferent to the jeers. One of the seniors picked up a small stone and threw at him. It fell in his lunchbox, almost tipping it off his lap. The boy picked up the lunch box and continued eating, silent, unperturbed, as if he never saw the stone. The senior who threw the stone laughed and boasted of his accuracy to the other boys. Then another senior from the group picked up a stone, a bigger one, and threw at him. It hit the boy’s head. Spasm of helplessness and despair appeared over the boy’s face, his eyes shut and his mouth angled downwards, about to burst into violent cries; but he didn’t cry, the despair vanished, slowly, as if coaxed by an invisible spirit. The boy rubbed his head where the stone struck, and then went back to eating, not even looking up once. His face was again calm and composed, but his body shivered with fear. One of the senior boys saw me. I was writing their names on a piece of paper to be handed over to the Discipline Head. They all hid their faces and ran away. I had written almost all the names. The boy turned his head back and saw me. I noticed tears under his eyes.
In a quavering voice, he said, “I—I am sorry. Don’t punish me—please.”
I replied, “Don’t worry, I won’t.”
I wondered what made him think I was going to punish him. I told him to sit on the steps besides me, so that the boys don’t bother him again. I advised him not to eat from that lunchbox and offered mine; he courteously refused. After propelling again, he took a bite of my paratha. He smiled and thanked me.
“What’s your name? I forgot,” I asked.
“Hasan.”
We had been in the same class, but it seemed to me that I was looking at him for the first time. For me he had been just a fat, tall and shabbily dressed boy, who scratched his unoiled hair, sat on the last bench and rarely talked to anyone. He wasn’t a popular, and other than during the morning attendance, his name was seldom called out in the class. There was nothing worth noticing about him.
“Can I take another bite?” Hasan asked.
“Of course.”
My eyes fell on the piece of paper stuck on his back, with ‘BEWARE I BITE,’ written on it. I took it out, but the chewing gum remained glued to his shirt.
“Hasan, this chewing gum won’t come out, you will have to buy a new shirt.”
He sighed and looked down.
“Vijay,” he looked up and asked, his large and round eyes fixed at mine, “can I always sit with you in the break?”
“Well, yes.”
The bell rang. It was our Social Studies class. Groups of children burst into the class, like a frightened cattle let loose. Hasan walked slowly and sat down on the last bench, indifferent to the paper balls that were being thrown at him. I turned my head and looked at him. Like a wounded animal, there was an innate fear in his eyes; as if he feared the very air he breathed. This fear had given birth to his indifference: he let himself be teased, mocked, dominated, without opposing. I felt pity over his condition and rage over him.
The teacher came in and announced that the results of our class were in the worse among all sections of 3rd. She called out the names of ten children – including Hasan – and made them stand in a line. She chided them all and sent them out of the class, after striking their palms with the wooden ruler.
After school hours, I met him outside the school gate and asked, “Hasan, why don’t you study hard? You failed this time also. I am sure you can pass with good marks only if you work a bit hard. It’s not so difficult.” He looked down and said, “There is always a lot of work at the shop.” I looked around, short of words.
“Hasan, you want to be my friend?” I asked, moving my hand towards him.
He shook it gently and smiled. The mirth in his eyes hid the innate fear for the time being.

When Hasan came to school next day, his face was bruised and his hands were swollen. When he sat besides me in the break, I asked him, “What happened, did you fall down?”
He replied, “No, I didn’t. Ammi hit me.”
“Why?”
“Because of that chewing gum on my shirt. She said that I was perhaps careless and we don’t have enough money this month to buy another shirt.”
He excitedly showed me his bruises and cuts, explained how they were made, as if they were souvenirs, or badges of honour earned at the battlefield.
I said, “You look so happy even though she hit you. I cry when Mummy or Daddy hit me.”
He laughed and said, “I don’t mind it. She loves me a lot. Every time after beating me, she starts crying and says Sorry, and then she puts a balm over my bruises and next day gives me ten rupees for lunch. And she says that she beats me because she loves me; she won’t beat people she does not love.” He thanked me for reminding him about the ten rupees. He ran to the canteen and fetched two samosas for us.
After the school hours, I found him waiting at the school gate. I approached him. He said, “Vijay, will you come to my house today?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Yesterday, I told my Ammi about you. She was very happy that I had made a new friend. She told me to call you for dinner today. Will you come?”
“Definitely! But, I don’t know you house.”
“No problem. Come to my shop today at four, I will take you to home.”
His shop was at walking distance from my house, but my parents still didn’t allow me to go alone. I took my elder brother Arnav with me.
Hasan’s shop was small compared to the other ones. He was sitting cross legged on the white cloth, that was spread over the raised platform, utterly absorbed in folding the bundles of loose cloth that lay spread all over. As he saw me approaching, he waved his hand and smiled. I told my brother that I will reach home before eight and told him to go back. I went and sat besides Hasan on the cold and cosy white cloth. We talked a great deal about school, our new Social Studies teacher and the myriad Maths homework. Hasan called for the tea pedlar, who was roaming in front of the shop. Hasan took out nine rupees from the crude locker and paid for three teas; two for us, one for the thin servant who sat in the corner still folding the cloth. Before my lips could touch the cup, he shouted, “Wait, Vijay! Stop! Don’t drink it!”
“What?” I asked, searching the cup if a lizard had fallen into it.
“Wait for a minute.” Turning towards the servant, he said, “Ramesh, come here.” Ramesh kept his tea on the counter and asked in sombre voice, “What?”
“Bring two Parle-G packets. Go fast!” Hasan gave a ten rupee note to Ramesh, and said, “Bring three, instead.” Ramesh put on his slippers and rushed out, somewhat happier than before. When the biscuits came, Hasan taught me how to dip them into the tea and toss into the mouth before it fell down and sank. He told me to look at Ramesh and learn. The thin boy was deeply immersed in dipping and flinging the biscuits into his mouth, with the agility and dexterity of a professional.
When it was 6 O’clock, Ramesh and Hasan closed the shop. I asked Hasan why his father was not at the shop today. He replied, “Ammi says he died two days before I was born.” He wasn’t sad and didn’t really mourn over his father’s absence: one can’t mourn over losing something one never really had.
He said, “Ammi cooks very well. You will like her food.”
His house was small, painted in dark green. When I entered, the strong smell of food filled my nose. Aunty came rushing out of the kitchen to greet us. She said that she was eagerly looking forward to meeting me. I sat down on a low stool and she sat opposite to me, on a cot; Hasan next to her. She asked about my studies and parents. And then she asked if Hasan does any mischief in school. She told me to look after him and if he did anything wrong, to punish him like an elder brother. She left us and set the table. She had cooked tomato soup and Shahi Biryani, along with the usual course. I and Hasan ate all the Biryani. Hasan’s mother cooked more, which she did with pleasure, extremely happy that I liked it. She closed the kitchen door and said Hasan that he was behaving like a rabbit gone nuts to prevent him from repeatedly opening the refrigerator door and exclaiming, “Yummy! Can’t wait for it,” with a strange amount of pathos in his voice. In the end, when I and Hasan were staring at our stomachs and wondering how it seemed so heavy but looked the same size, Aunty came with a cake in her hand. It was small and round, with a thin layer of white cream over it, embellished with crumbs of dark Cadbury and fine coconut. “Here it comes,” exclaimed Hasan. She said that it was to celebrate my coming to their house for the first time. We couldn’t eat more than a piece; she packed the rest of it in a steel box and told me to take it home. She also gave me a gift. When I shook it, no sound came. I was excited to reach home and open it. Then I and Hasan sat on the creaky chairs and she read us the story of The Happy Prince. Hasan cried.
I said, “Aunty, I have to go now. It is dark. Mummy will be waiting.”
“OK, I’ll take you.”
“No problem, I can go alone.”
“Not at all, I won’t allow you to go alone. I’ll come with you.”
“No Aunty, it’s all right, I can—”
“Vijay, I won’t allow you. It’s final.”
We three walked along the twilit road, holding each other’s hand. Aunty sang an old Hindi song on my request. Hasan tried to follow it, but only succeeded in uttering sporadic words.
“Aunty,” I said breaking the silence that prevailed after the song ceased, “the food was fabulous! Specially the biryani.”
“Oh, you really liked it? Why don’t you come with Hasan every Sunday? He will get some company and I’ll make delicious food each time.”
She looked at me beamishly. To visit Hasan and eat Aunt’s delicious food each Sunday would be idyllic, I thought. I found no reason to object.
“Definitely! I’ll come every Sunday.”
And I did go, every Sunday, for one year.

*

“You, Vijay, come here,” said a large built senior boy coming towards us.
“Why?”
Tension and strain appeared on my forehead as the boy came towering towards me, with his face and eyes burning in anguish.
“Hey, what’s you problem?” shouted Hasan who was standing behind the boy, leaning by the grid of our school gate.
“Because of this dog I got suspended today—I’ll kill him,” said the boy, reaching for my neck.
“Don’t you touch him!” shouted Hasan.
The boy pressed his fingers around my neck and forced it down: my knees fell on the rough ground and my neck hung in midair, held by his tight grip. Little did my senses work, but I think I heard a loud groan. The taut fingers fastened around my neck gradually loosened. I fell down and gasped for breath. I raised my head and saw Hasan and the boy rolling into the mud, kicking, and cursing each other. Hasan shouted, “Run Vijay, run. Fast! Go!”
I stood up and ran towards my house. I pushed open the main door, dashed across the hall and ran upstairs to my room. I jumped on the bed and threw a thick blanked over self. I could feel the shivering of my eye lids, the thumping of my chest and the fear that was imbued in every heave. I woke up two hours later from what seemed like a fitful state between sleep and reality, and left me sweating in that cold room. I washed my face, and went downstairs, feeling better. Mummy, Daddy and Arnav were watching the TV, petrified. I took a place besides Mummy and looked at the TV screen. The news channel was showing abandoned streets, obliterated houses, disfigured human bodies and sporadic blood puddles: it seemed as if the whole town was scourged by a tempest. Looking at it, one could never have said they humans lived here once: it looked as if it was a dumpsite of bodies and burnt houses and cars. I hid my face in the sofa and moaned in fear. Mummy took me in her lap and switched the channel. Daddy sighed and said in a low, forlorn voice, “What has become of my world! Animals live in more harmony. These people are killing each other as if—as if—people were rag rolls and not flesh-and-blood.”
“Yes, Pa,” said Arnav, “what happened Hindus did was wrong and their anger against it is justified. But what they are doing is also as wrong as what the Hindus did. They—”
“Anger, my child, is a son who devours over the womb that gave it birth. Those few Hindus did wrong by demolishing the Masjid, I agree. Those who were involved deserve to be hanged. But I don’t understand why they are slaughtering others for it. Sorrow does not compensate sorrow.”
“Things will be all right in a few days” said Mummy.
A silence issued, in which all looked down, as if ashamed of something.
“I am going to the shop,” said Daddy.
“No, please, don’t go today,” said Mummy.
“I will go. It is better to die than live in this vicious world.”
Before Mummy could do anything, Daddy picked up his handbag and stormed out of the room. Seeing the plea in Mummy’s eyes, Arnav rushed out to block the door. Daddy pushed him aside and went out, cursing.
The whole day Mummy sat besides the window, fanning the folded newspaper, now and then drawing aside the polychrome curtains to search the bright sunlit pavement for the tall figure of her husband coming back home. I hid behind the kitchen door and looked at the drops of tears that clung to her cheeks, refusing to slide down. She had always been someone who had comforted me when I cried. And now, when I wanted her comfort more than ever, I see her crying. It never occurred to me that she could have cried. I went back to my room and covered my head with the pillow, to keep the sadness from penetrating.
That night, as I was lying on the bed, I heard yells and cries. I ran downstairs. Arnav was holding Daddy’s rifle in his hand, yelling at Mummy who was holding his hands and was trying to snatch the rifle from him.
“Get away, Ma! Get away! I’ll not leave them alive—I’ll kill all! Their blood is not like ours; they are not humans. What was Daddy’s fault? He never did anyone harm. What did he do? He just wanted to run his shop. Those Muslims chopped him in mid street. He never did anyone harm. They want blood—I’ll show them what blood is. I swear on the heat of his pyre that I will kill those who killed him. Leave my hand!”
Arnav pushed Mummy. Her head rammed with the wall and she fell down. “They killed father; Those Muslims killed my father! He never did anyone harm.” he said and stormed out, kicking the furniture.

*

Mummy never sat by the window now. She was afraid to nurse hopes. The Ram-Sita and Krishna idols, which she loved and cared for like her own child, were given to our maid, and the small marble temple was now being used to keep utensils. For us, God was no more He, but It. There was a time when the warm morning rays used to enter through the window and collect around her temple, like little eager children, waiting for her to commence the morning prayers. And when she would sit on the cot and begin her prayers, the whole house would be filled with honeylike notes: the morning rays would flicker and beam and dance. And, like us, they relished the melody, and were ignorant of the meaning of those words. She would then move about the house, swaying the incense stick: the black and white figures would rise from it and dance, devoted, unperturbed, like a barmy Mira dancing in front of her Krishna. But things changed now: the rays collected around the abandoned temple, and waited, cold and quite, no more flickering or beaming or dancing. Instead of the black and white figure and becharming notes, the house was now shrouded in silence, loud silence, so loud that it deafened you.
I went to the school after five days. No one talked in the class. The deafening silence was present here too. You wanted someone to pierce your eardrums and run away from this place. But it wasn’t possible. It followed you like a shadow; it was present in every nook, alley, street, house, room and barn. Even the deaf could hear it, see it in fact. I raised my eyes from the blank notebook and looked at Hasan: his hands and knees were bandaged, and the pink stain of chewing gum was still clung to his shirt, only now dirt stuck to it. He looked at me and smiled. I felt rage towards him. My brother’s words echoed in my ears, as if they had abided there forever, to be echoed whenever I saw a Muslim. His people killed my father. His blood is different. I looked away.
Sitting on the steps, with the tiffin kept open on my lap, I was remembering Daddy and Arnav. I was about to tuck my head in my lap and cry when Hasan came and sat next to me; he opened his tiffin and laid in front of me.
“Not feeling well, huh? I brought biryani today, with extra paneer. Eat it, you’ll feel better. Ammi made it for you specially. I also got ten rupees for breaking my hand in the fight.”
I went away and sat on the raised platform under the peepul tree. Hasan came and sat next to me.
He said, “It’s better in here—shade and all.”
I ducked my head in my lap and held my hair in my hands and cried.
“What happened Vijay? Are you all right?”
“Go away,” I muttered under my breath.
“What?”
I raised my head and said, “Get away from me!”
“Hey, Vijay, what happened? You not feeling—”
I stood in front of him and shouted, “Are you deaf? Get lost!”
He stood up and said, coming towards me, “Vijay, wh—”
“Don’t you touch me! You filthy dog! Your blood is foul and dirty! Get away!” I picked up a stone and threw it at him. It hit his bandaged hand; the expression on his face said that it hit him like a bullet.
“You people killed Daddy! Get away from my sight before I kill you!”
I turned and ran, cursing him, feeling a vague pang of satisfaction.
Hasan stood up and went in the class. He kept the tiffin in his bag, rested his head on the table, covered it with his arms and cried. He didn’t understand why Vijay, his only friend, was so rude to him. Why did he say his blood was filthy? Had he done something that upset him? but what? He couldn’t remember.
He took out the dirty handkerchief and wiped his tears. But he still didn’t know why Vijay hated him so much. And there was no one to give him the answer. As he thought this, more and more tears surged down his cheeks. He turned his head sideways and stared impassively at the pencil box. He snatched the box and took out a paper cutter from. He pressed the skin of his lap under his index finger and thumb. With the other hand, he took the cutter and pressed it against the soft skin, slowly and carefully, as if threading a needle. A drop of blood came out, and slid down his leg; it was red, pure and shiny, not filthy. He wiped it with his finger and inspected it closely. Yes, it was not filthy. He kept the cutter back into his box. Vijay was mistaken, and he will go and tell him about it and Vijay will say Sorry to him and he say It’s all right and things will be back to normal. Yes things will be back to normal. But if Vijay didn’t believe him? And why did he say he killed his father? The tears slid down the contours of his cheeks mercilessly, as once more there was no one to answer his questions.
After the school hours, I saw him; he leaned by the school gate, his cheek pressed against the grid, his low lip sticking out, eyes round and blank. I looked left and right. I picked up a large stone from beneath the scooter and motioned it to hit him. He was unperturbed, unafraid; his eyes still round and blank. I threw the stone; it struck the gate, producing a sonorous sound. He ducked behind the grid. Then he peeped out and looked at me. He eyes narrowed and tears and redness replaced the void. He rubbed them with his wrist. I approached him and shouted, “Leave my country, go to Pakistan, your country. Just go away! You people killed my father. Your blood is filthy.” He was looking at me, tears in his eyes, his head pressed in between the steel bars.
I was walking on the clamorous street with my hand in Mummy’s. Among the large and vivacious shops selling the most lustrous bangles and polychrome sarees, I saw it: small, narrow and pallid as ever – Hasan’s shop. But Hasan was not there. A fat man, wearing a dirty white shirt, sat on the counter. Ramesh, narrow, thin, was sitting at the back, playing with a scissor. Ramesh saw me and rushed to me. Mummy was busy bargaining.
“Where is Hasan?” I asked before he could say anything.
He spoke in a dismal voice, “He left.”
“Left? When? Where?”
“Yesterday morning. He said that now he was going to live with his Uncle, in Pakistan. Things were unsafe for them here.”
“And yes, Vijay,” Ramesh spoke, “he left something for you.”
Ramesh reached for his pocket. Mummy called me. I turned and ran to her, without looking back.

*

The pain of a sad memory withers away with time, but it forever on remembrance gives birth to sorrow and guilt. I took stood up from the bench and continued my walk. I was late but had no mood to go back and work on that dire report. The street was filled with multifarious noises: shouts of pedlars, cries of infants, yells of drunks. But hiding behind these noises was silence, the loud and deafening silence. It was there in the awry alleys, the quite quoins, the raucous roads, the grim gutters, the pallid parlours; it was in your shadow, in your voice and your silence; in the dark and the light. It was there ten years back, during the Babri Masjid Demolition, and was here now, during the Godhara Riots.
I hired an auto-rickshaw and went to the street where Hasan’s shop was. It was still there, small, narrow, pallid. On the other side of the counter was Ramesh. Standing outside, leaning his elbow on the counter was a tall and thin man. He turned around and dusted his scooter with a cloth. Those almond eyes; the innate smile on his face, unperturbed by winter or autumn, despair or disdain; the gentleness in his movements: he couldn’t be anybody but the ten-year-old boy who cried because of me, ten years back. He saw me. The smile on his face faded away and his face turned blank. We stood looking each other, absolutely still, as if the fourth dimension had halted. His lips turned upwards and bloomed into a hopeful smile. I just stood there, inert. The unanswered smile vanished from his face. He picked up the polythene from the counter and drove away. He entered the crowd and became a part of it, like a droplet entering the ocean. I ran to where his house was. I hid behind the truck and looked at the small green building. Hasan’s mother came out on the terrace to hang the wet clothes on the clothesline. She was humming, in a sombre, calm, poignant voice.
I couldn’t sleep that night. What I said ten years back was right; his blood was different: it had fidelity. He came back to his city, his people, as soon as things were calm. He didn’t run away from memories, he came back to them, lived with them. As the dawn broke, I rushed to his shop. I wanted to breach the wall of religion that had soured our friendship. Hasan was kind; he couldn’t have refused my plea. For him, even ten years wasn’t too late to ask for forgiveness. Under the pale and cold morning light I saw Ramesh squatting by the shutter, opening the locks. He looked up.
“Ramesh, it’s me, Vijay. Remember?”
He looked at me with confusion.
“I used to come to shop with Hasan, remember?”
“Oh, yes, yes.”
“When did he come back? Is he buying back the shop?”
He looked at me with irritation and said, “What are you talking about? Who was come back?”
“I’m talking about Hasan and his mother.”
“—he died ten years back,” Ramesh said bending down to open the lock, “Hindus burned their train before it reached Pakistan. All were killed. Not a soul survived. I saw their bodies.”

2008-07-23T14:10:00.000+05:30

This is my first article, written for my quaterly school magazine. I don't think the editorial board will accept it - the students are only interested in ' Let's Laugh', 'Results of Painting Competition', and 'Solve this Puzzle'.

Bengali Renaissance
In 1814, Raja Ram Mohan Roy came to Bengal to fulfil his literary ambitions. He established ‘Atiyo Sova’ (Club of Kins) in 1815, and started an Amitya Sabha - a philosophical discussion circle to debate monotheistic Hindu Vedantism and like subjects. He also formed Brahmo Samaj, and tried to instigated radical ideas in people. He opposed the custom of suttee, the act of burning the widow alive on her husband’s funeral pyre. His radical views and revolutionary ideas triggered off a spark what would later turn into the fire of Bengal Renaissance.

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who was a frequent contributor to Roy’s Atiyo Sova, brought drastic changes in the Bengali alphabet; he made it more rational and simple. When he discarded the teachings of Vedanta and Samkhya, calling them “false systems of philosophy”, he drew in a lot of hostility from Sanskrit scholars. In the Sanskrit College, he debated that western philosophy – Fancis Bacon, John Stuart Mill – should be introduced in the syllabus. He was adamant on his decision till the end, and finally, won over his peers.
Shortly after his death, Rabindra Nath Tagore reverently wrote about him: "One wonders how God, in the process of producing forty million Bengalis, produced a man!" The influence of Vidyasagar over Rabindra Nath Tagore was persisting.
Despites its prominent achievements, the rising world of Bengali literature was fairly unknown in the West; this was changed by Rabindra Nath Tagore. He drew notable praises from the likes of Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913 and Knighthood in 1915. He traveled all over the world, spreading the knowledge of Bengali culture and art.
The aftermaths of Bengali Renaissance on cinema were profound. Bimal Roy made Do Bigha Zamin, a neo-realistic movie based on the plight of farmers; it paved way for future cinema makers in the neo-realist movement, which was to start in the 70’s. Inspired by Italian neo-realism, his peer Satyajit Ray made Pather Panchali. The movie was made on a shoestring budget by new-comers, was included in The Village Voice’s list of the greatest movies ever made. Ray is often considered to be the greatest Indian director, a fact which can be justified when mentioned that he won an Academy Award in 1992.
Music was also a part of this Renaissance, though on a smaller scare. A popular name to have come out it is Pandit Ravi Shankar. He collaborated with the Beatles, Satyajit Ray and many other famous names, winning three Grammy Awards and fourteen honorary degrees.

These geniuses collaborated with national and international names and reached the masses. But they remained faithful to their native land, working in Bengali as well as other languages. Bengal still produces geniuses, but unfortunately, they no more work or live in Bengal. To ‘make their work known to the world’ they leave their native land, and work in other languages. The irony is that they leave by will but express nostalgia over it to the media. Are they to blame?
The truth is slightly different than what it appears: it is we to blame. We Indians have never valued true art. The West gives them better prospects, and their leaving Bengal is justified. When we go to a book shop, we pick up the latest Campus Fiction book written by someone fed up of his monotonous post-IIT life; but none of us look at the small book kept in the corner titled ‘Gitanjali’. If we are planning to buy some DVD’s this summer, how many of them are going to by Ray’s black and white masterpieces? How many of you knew there was a movie called Do Bigha Zameen or Pather Panchali ever made in India?
We may become the ‘superpower’ by 2030 – as some people predicted –, produce dozens of billionaires every year, take over all high-paid jobs in the West, but when it comes to admiring art and valuing intellectuals, the future of India seems a bit bleak. Art is a sphere where we can’t expect to win over the West.

New Story

2008-06-03T19:10:00.001+05:30

31 May

Sand Castle

Bela kept fidgeting in her bed. Unable to endure the anxiety anymore, she picked up the spectacles -- whose broad rim, despites being bandaged over a hundred times, had been in use since fifty years -- and placed them on the edge of her nose. He should have been back by now. I didn’t hear his footsteps as yet, she thought as she came out in the corridor and hurried towards Anand’s room. Looking at the opened door she concluded that he was back, but her trepidation wouldn’t have subdued until she saw him. She gently opened the door and went inside.

“Anand, are you there?”

No reply. I think he’s asleep. .

In the centre of the suffocating room two chairs were placed facing each other; to the right, a small wooden desk and a chair were kept askew. Placed on the desk were an opened notebook and a pen kept in between the pages.

She peeped into the notebook. Oh! It’s his personal diary! She turned her head in the all the directions. Then she looked at the door that that led to his bedroom. She calmly pulled the chair and sat down.

_ _ _

January 13, 2007

It was 2 O’clock in the afternoon and I was still sleeping, when Bela, my sweet landlady, came in. She drew the curtains aside, told me the breakfast -- considering the time you can call it lunch also -- is kept on the table, and went out.

The bright yellow light pierced through my pupil. Even when I shut my eyes, the light remained impregnated; but now it became yellow with a bright white centre. I drew the curtains back together.

I walked towards the mirror and opened my eyes. A figure of an ugly man was visible, who somehow resembled me. His jaws and cheeks looked like a hard loaf of bread with thick spots of mould on it. The beard had covered almost every patch of skin on the face. His teeth had changed their colour from dim yellow to light brown. His clothes were no more alive, they were patches of different fabrics forcefully sewn together.

After eating the sandwiches, I went over to my incomplete painting. I looked at the giant oak tree in the centre and thought, Ok this part seems done. The vast empty space on either sides of the tree pricked my eyes. At least four months. My eyes fell on a branch on the top-left side and I almost jumped up. Aw God… how can I do it! I thought as I brought my eyes closer to the branch. Disaster! I just killed the painting.

I picked it up and bumped it in the shelf, along with the other seven. I halted in front of the shelf which contained my completed paintings and looked at my painting, ‘The Eighth Note’, which was kept in front, and had occupied the most space. I caressed its dry paint with the tip of my fingers and smiled with satisfaction. The anger was gone.

At 5 O’clock, I went back to my bed. Staring at the ceiling, I thought about my life. In the shallow pond of my present life I found nothing interesting. Then I tried to peep into the well of my past. Abstract images flashed in front of me. My brain was caught in a trap. I wanted to end the dream, wake up, but an invisible force stuck me to the bed. When I regained control over my mind, I panted towards the toilet and looked into the mirror. I regained my breath and sprinkled water on my red face.

My mind sails freely in the sea of my present life. But when I steer it towards my past, I find the water replaced by infinite blankness. If I go near it, my mind gets trapped in a whirlpool of abstract images. The same thing happened today. My past is a blind-spot.

The only clear image of my past is of a seven-year-old boy sitting inside the cupboard, amidst stinky clothes, hearing three distinguishable sounds: the low-pitched shriek of his mother, the sound of a wooden club beating her hard flesh, and the hoarse shouts of his father.

When I opened the curtains, the blaring yellow light had turned dim red and the sun had begun its journey to plunge behind the mountains. On the road below, a stout man took out a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and looked at this watch. He repeated this process every five minutes. A beggar came dragging his paralysed legs against the dusty road and extended his brass plate in front of the man. The man walked away. The beggar dragged along. The man yelled curses at him and went away, sweating. The beggar wasn’t angry. He had got used to it. He crawled away, consoling himself with his faith in God. I felt pity. Poor Guy. What all people do to earn money. I am lucky to have been living without a job or money. I looked above and patiently waited for the dim red ball to be swallowed completely by the brown teeth at the horizon.

I looked down. It was dark now. People were still moving here and there; with their pockets jingling, some were walking towards the bars; some were looking down and slowly heading for their homes; and some were nervously looking left and right and sneaking towards the dimly lit, forbidden street. I patiently waited. When all the people had concluded their journeys, I put on my overcoat and began mine.

I crossed a barren field and a deserted house on my way. The house was the only human creation visible; alone, empty, futile; like a black dot on a white paper. He was deserted the very day his four walls were erected. He stands there the whole day and talks to himself. At times, he cries by shedding tears of dry paint. But he knows it is of no use. No one will consol him. But still he cries. I know all this because we talk to each other. Before moving ahead, I always pause for a moment to talk to him. He is very sad; just like me.

I don’t know much about the field; except that he is also lonely and barren. But he prefers more seclusion that the house; he looks away when I try to talk. He is ashamed to show the sores and cuts on its face that the farmer has created.

There is also a straight path, away from the house and the field, but I prefer this one. There is always a lot of commotion there. There the lights don’t go off until 12 O’clock.

I went over to a bench, and sat down. I looked around. It pleased me to see that I was the only soul around. I don’t like people around me. Their fake smiles and false concern irritates me. All of them are salt outside and pepper inside. I fixed my eyes on the ground. The dust particles were laid dead on the uneven surface. They like human interference. If someone stamps on them, they wake up and run here and there with enthusiasm. At times, they grow very fond of some people; they stick to his clothes and happily go home with him.

After sitting there until 1 O’clock, I came home. Darkness prevailed from the horizon to the zenith; but I was not afraid. You will always notice it – lonely people are never afraid of the dark. For them, darkness is what sand is for a camel.

August 10, 2007

A great deal of time has passed since last I wrote. There were many days when I sat down to write, but I couldn’t; unlike today, my days have been going exactly the same as the one mentioned above. Life seems more monotonous than the hands of the clock.

At 10 O’clock, when Bela was going upstairs to hang the clothes, she passed through my room. She was surprised when she saw the morning yellow light unceasingly entering the room. She knew I didn’t like the curtains open. She came in and drew the curtains back together.

“I opened them. Let them remain.” I said, lying on the bed.

“How come you’re awake so early!” she cried.

“Don’t know. ‘just woke up.”

“Strange.”

In fact, it was strange for me also.

She returned after five minutes with finger-chips in a plate. While keeping the plate on the table, she looked at me with puzzled eyes.

I said without turning my eyes from the water-stained window, “Aunt, come here, listen. You know, I saw a strange dream today.”

“What kind of dream?” she asked.

“I was a white angel. I was flying in the sky, singing and delivering letters to the different gods. It started raining and I hid beneath the moon to prevent letters from getting wet. And look at the lovely weather - it was really raining when I saw the dream! I have this—weird feeling, like my instinct is trying to tell me something about the rain . . . dunno what. Maybe this coincidence is a good omen. What d’you say?”

I expected her to be astonished at my abnormal behaviour, but with a mocking smile on her face, she patiently said, “It’s a sign.”

After she walked out, I went towards my table, and picked up an old book. There was a thick layer of dust on it. I cleaned it with my hands and started reading.

After an hour, the door opened.

“The garden looks so good today. The smell of wet grass, the chirping of birds. It’s all so lovely!” Bela said in frenzy.

“So what?”

She slowly said, “So, instead of here, why don’t you come down in the garden for the tea?”

She knew I was happy and wouldn’t have refused. She can do anything to get me to eat downstairs.

“Please? Today I’ve got toasts also.” she said.

“Um…ok.”

“That’s like my boy!”

She took a chair besides me and said, “So, did you find it out as yet?”

I saw the same mocking smile on her face.

“What?”

“So you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“What is so special about today.”

“Oh! It’s holi today!” I said judging by the fact that a long time has passed since last it came.

“God!” she said laughing, “I can’t believe it!”

“What happened?”

“My darling, it’s your birthday today,” she said. “I don’t believe you forgot it. Your intuition, this off-season rain” (it rains every year on my birthday) “you don’t need a bigger signs, do you?”

“Anyways,” she said, “I have a very good plan for today. You will come with me to the temple. I have made some rice, with which we will give to the poor people there. They will give you blessings - which you sorely need. Maybe then you will spend less time in this wretched room. After which, we will go and have lunch at Pizza Hut - I have been saving money for it since a week. I will be back in half-an-hour, and hope to find you ready.”

“You know that I don’t out. I can’t come,” I said looking at her.

“Yes, you’re absolutely right. Why will you bend your rules for this for this poor old lady, huh?”

She waited for me to speak, when I didn’t, she said, “Come one now, don’t be such a lazy bun. Get ready and come down.”

For the first time in my life, I shouted at her: “I told you I am not coming. Do I have to repeat it again and again? You are not my mother; and don’t try to become one.”

She stepped back, and her head bumped with the iron hinge on door. I looked at her angrily. She stood motionless for a minute. She closed the door gently and went down.

I stood up and walked towards the mirror. The monster that was missing during the morning was back.

I would have agreed for the temple—considering the merry state I was in. But the word ‘birthday’ killed all the joy. There have been many harsh memories connected with my past birthdays. I don’t know what they are, but I know they are. My birthday is like my past – abstract pain. This day always haunts me. I looked at the roof; it might collapse any moment. The gently rain outside might turn into torrential storm any moment, and would wipe out my meagre existence.

I threw myself on the bed and covered my shivering body with a blanket. The darkness and the minimal space inside gave me a sense of protection. I felt the unholy calamities wouldn’t be able to touch me within the warm cosiness of the blanket. Sleep descended from the heavens, flew in through the wet window and took me in her comforting arms. Her soothing whispers drenched away my pain.

The door opened slightly, and in a soft low voice, Bela said, “Please come down, dinner is ready.”

My eyes were fixed on a drop of water that was alone sliding down the glass. When she had gone, I came back from the world of thoughts and realised that I had forgotten to refuse.

Around the oval shaped dining table, two chairs were kept facing each other. The food items, plates and a bottle of cold-drink were placed orderly on the table.

The dinner was delicious; but I was so occupied with the thought of my birthday that I forgot to praise Bela at her success, for which she was patiently waiting.

While I ate the delicacies, the way she talked and smiled, it seemed that she had forgotten that I had shouted at her some time back.

She didn’t mention about the temple again. She went alone. When she had gone, I saw a square, chocolate cake kept in the refrigerator. It was my birthday cake, but she didn’t ask me to cut it. She didn’t want me to get angry again.

The care and love which I see in her eyes frights me sometimes.

August 10, 2008

This year when Bela came into my room to keep the sandwiches, she had expected to find me standing besides by the window, praising the rains or narrating some weird dream of mine. But she was disappointed. She found me lying in the bed.

I could have stood by the window, but the lashing sound of the rain and ugly drops of water sliding down the glass pane would have slain the little courage I had gathered to face my birthday.

After eating the sandwiches, I went over to my table, took a sharp pencil in my hand and sketched what first came into my mind: a butterfly flying in a field of pearl-white jasmine flowers. After I had completed it, I got irritated and threw it away. It was the first time in four years of paintings and sketching that my hands had created a flower.

Today when I reached the bench, I saw a one-year old boy sitting there. There were a few traces of hair on his head, under the lamp, which gave it a bright yellow shine. I hated babies, and sat as far away as I could. The voice of his laughter irritated me. He held a rubber Donald Duck in his hands. He inspected it from every angle, like a goldsmith giving his finishing touches. Then he raised it high in the air and threw it on the bench. The toy made a squeak sound, following which, the baby burst out laughing, and fluttered his hands up-and-down like a butterfly. Besides his bald head, the other noteworthy feature was his two minute teeth that made their presence felt when he opened his mouth to laugh.

Unwillingly, I kept turning my head to look at him. Then he came and sat besides me. He grabbed my shirt with his little curly fingers and stood up with its support. He was unable to make a firm balance, and kept rocking like a cradle. I broadened my eyes and looked at him in anger. He looked into my eyes and laughed, showing his miniature teeth. I held his chest around my arms and tried to make him sit. My grip slipped and he fell over my chest; he tightened his arms around my stomach to prevent from slipping down. I wanted to grab him, fling him on the bench and go away.

He moved away from my chest and sat down besides me. His gaily laughter paused for a moment. I looked at him again. His big round eyes were fixed at me and his mouth was slightly open; as if he was asking, “Why did you try to hurt me?”

I felt ashamed. Deep in my heart, I wanted to play with him, take him in my hands and love him. But I couldn’t: lonely people don’t do such things.

A tall, dark man came towards the bench. He was wearing bright blue clothes, which were visible even in the dim light. He sat down on the bench, and took the baby in his lap. The baby became cheerful again and gave such a big laugh that his eyes had to shut in order to make space for the widely opened mouth. He pointed his tiny index finger towards me—which he later placed in his mouth.

“It seems that he likes you.” The man said, still looking into the eyes of the baby.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “He’s a cute boy.”

“What’s your name, young man?”

“Anand Kapoor.”

“I think I know you. Are you the one who lives with the landlady, Bela?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Rajesh told me.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“I met him at a tea stall near your house. Nice boy.”

“He’s a nice boy,” I said, “but he talks a lot. He didn’t bore you?”

“No, not at all. In fact, I felt he was a very interesting chap,” he said. “He also told me a lot about you.” He spoke the last sentence in a gloomy voice.

“What did he tell?”

“He told me how you spend all your days inside, never going out—doing painting and stuff.”

I looked away irritated.

He sunk his head in his jacket, and after a long pause he looked up and calmly spoke, “Listen buddy, life is fruit that cannot be eaten alone. Maybe you’ve seen only treachery, theft, and evil in the outside world; but it doesn’t mean that you spend the rest your life inside; all alone in a small room, painting, sketching or reading books.”

“Better rot inside than living outside—in that filthy world.” I replied.

“This world is not as bad as you think—”

“It is. It is worse than what I think. This world is a huge pile of trash; filthy, dirty, corrupted. People live for their own sake. They can kill their own mothers for money. There is no love, no friendship, only greed. There is only evil in it. ”

“You’re wrong, my friend. There are bad aspects, I agree. But there are equally good ones also.”

“I agree that there are equally good aspects. But only a handful of people get to face them—the rich ones, and the ones who cheat. Most of the others live in the dirt, and face the bad aspects. The cruel don’t have faith, and they live. The poor do, and they die.”

“It’s a wrong assumption, my friend. God is never biased”

“It seems that you are a firm believer in God.” I said mockingly.

“Yes.”

“There is no God.”

“That’s another wrong assumption.”

“Okay,” I said looking angrily into his eyes, “you believe that God is there, has made this world, and has the power to do anything, right?”

“Right”

“Then, tell me,” I said, “why did he make sadness? Or things like pain, tears, ugliness . . .? Wouldn’t life be better without these? Can’t he remove all this with his power? Or tell me, he hasn’t got the power?”

“Look at that flower,” he spoke after a long pause, pointing towards a rose. It was a red rose, whose petals were dispersed in a way, as if showing the insight of a person’s brain whose mind is a whirlpool of thoughts. Beneath the rose was a broad green belt, wrapped around with exquisite thorns pointing in all the directions, protection the virgin beauty and divine innocence of the rose from the evil. On the other plants around it, the flowers and other inferior creations of nature bend their heads in jealousy and shame.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he continued.

“It’s amazing.”

“Look at those thorns. Don’t you feel pity for the rose? It is so beautiful, and those thorns—so ugly.”

I looked at the long pointed thorns and gave a nod of approval.

He gave a soft laugh, and continued, “But the rose doesn’t think so; it understands the value of those thorns in its survival. If it wouldn’t have been for them, the rose would have been plucked up by someone, and would have been lying somewhere on the street. Don’t you think so?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

The baby was looking at us with amusement. He kept twisting his head left-and-right in order to see the face and expression of the speaker.

“Always remember,” he said “every time when God created a bad thing, there was a firm reason behind it. The reason may be different for different cases. In this case, the ugliness was acts as a protector. He, who understands this, never loathes life. This world works because of the harmony between good and bad. It will collapse if we remove any of these.”

He waited for me to speak, but when I didn’t he continued, “Moreover, even if we do remove the latter, and somehow, let us say, this world doesn’t collapse. Then one day, people would start calling less happiness as sadness. Things would come back from where they started.”

He was so right, so truthful. His words struck me like magic.

We remained silent for some time. Then the man stood up and said, “Ok, now I gotta go. See you later, Anand.” Without waiting for me to say anything, he took the baby in his hand and walked away. The baby, resting on his shoulders, looked at me and smiled. I smiled back—this time without hesitation—and waved my hand. He turned back and said, “Give life another chance my boy.”

I looked at the faintly visible outline of their body, which soon got dissolved in the ubiquitous darkness.

Drops of water fell over the dusty road. The fallow-brown dust rebelled and arose in anger. Soon, the weak dust lost to the force of rain. It mixed with the droplets, lost its brown anger and settled down to form mud. The sepia landscape was washed clean. Everything looked new and fresh. The rain, sliding down the chalk-cement carving, produced an irresistible fragrance. Maybe he’s right, I thought. I walked slowly, enjoying my birthday rain pouring over me, washing away my sorrow, leaving behind a faint odour of joy. I wasn’t afraid of the rain anymore. A new sun was ascending at the horizon.

August 11, 2008

Today Bela didn’t come to wake me up.

When I went down, she was sitting on a rocking-chair looking out of the window. As soon as she looked me, she turned her head away. On the rim of her twenty-year-old, bandaged spectacles, I saw stains of water. I ran to the kitchen and asked Rajesh about it.

“Sir, she is very upset today.” he said.

“What happened?”

“You uncle Ranbir came to meet you from Delhi.”

“So?”

“He said that he is going to Sydney in a month; he got a job there. And he said that he wants to take you with him. He said that he will get you a good job there. The old lady is upset that you will go away with your uncle, leaving her alone.”

I moved out of the kitchen, towards the room where Bela was sitting. She knew that Rajesh had told me all, and was waiting for my reply. I went over and took a seat besides her.

“Aunt,” I said looking into her wet eyes, “do you trust your Anand? Do you thing he will leave you and go away?”

“Why should I care?” she said and looked away.

“Aunt, you don’t care, but I care. I won’t leave you. It’s a promise.”

She looked at me with her inquisitive eyes. Her looks told me that she wanted me to repeat the last sentence.

“When uncle comes next time, tell him that I won’t go with him.”

I went over to get water for her. I didn’t look at her face but I knew that she was crying. Consoling her gave me special warmth. Moreover, I am happy here; I may get a good job and a luxurious life over there, but I don’t want to go.

When I went back to her, she said, “I trust you my son, I trust you. I’m really sorry, I got too possessive.” she said wiping her tears.

During the dinner, Bela was in a very cheerful mood. She sat opposite to me and kept asking me abstract questions. It seemed that she wanted to talk, but was out of words. Then she asked me, “Anand, you look soooo happy today. You should always be like this. Any special reason, huh?”

I recalled the clatter of rain, the smile of the baby, and my meeting with the man.

“Oh, no, nothing. It’s just—a good day.”

“You should always be like this. I feel very sad when I see you sitting alone in your room. I have told you so many times, why don’t you go out? If you want you can come with me for a walk every morning.”

“No, thanks Aunt. I prefer my night walks.”

“Aunt,” I asked after a hiatus, “why didn’t you ever marry?”

God know from where the question sprung up!

“I’m already married,” she said without looking at me. “His name’s Prithvi. I saw him for the first time—twenty-seven years ago, on the day of our marriage. Father had said that he’s a good boy—I agreed. He was a tall, dark, handsome man, about two years my elder. He had those ambitious eyes; looking into them one feels so small. When we were left together to talk, he told me about his interest in astronomy. He said that he wanted to study at MIT, and then go to NASA. I sat besides him, wearing my heavy zari saree, and a golden necklace around my neck, looking at him timidly and listening to every word he said. He soon understood that I knew nothing about astronomy and science. He never talked to me nicely again. Throughout the ceremony he had a gloomy look on his face. I felt that he wasn’t happy with the marriage. After our marriage, he would bring heavy books from the library and would spend hours reading them. After five years of our marriage, one day, while I was watching TV, our little boy, Raj, came rushing towards me with a slip of paper in his hand. His father had gone away from our lives. He had only written in his note that he is going forever, and he hates me. He took away the money that my father gave us as dowry. I wanted to use that money for Raj’s education. Prithvi’s parents had died during the second year of our marriage; hence, I and Raj were left alone in this house. Raj had always been under the influence of his father; hence, he wasn’t very fond of me. But I was very fond of him. Anand, he looked just like you: the same small nose, round eyes; you smile always reminds me of him.”

“Where is Raj now?”

“He left me,” she said pricking her fork into the peas, “Twenty years after Prithvi left, I woke up one day and found him missing. Unlike his father, he didn’t even leave a note for his mother. You know, I sank into a depression after he left.”

Here she paused for a few seconds and then spoke, “And then, you came here in the search of a house. I was living all alone; hence, I thought I will get a good company. After this, I got engaged in cooking, washing, gardening, waking you up—and my depression went away. Time is the best medicine, they say.”

Even though she didn’t say it directly, I understood that she meant she was living because I came into her life. She finds her son in me. Maybe you mean nothing for this world, but for someone you mean the whole world. It feels so good when you realise this.

I hurriedly crossed the house and the bench. From a distance, two figures were visible sitting on the bench. I approached them with a rare smile.

“You come here often?” the man asked.

“Yes, daily.”

“Okay. I’m new in the city.”

“Where are you from?”

“I come from Ajmer,” the man said, “where I used to work as an insurance agent. I change my job and city almost every second year. Before that, I was at Baroda. There I worked as the General Manager of an electronics showroom.”

“What’s your name, by the way?” I asked.

“Oh! I didn’t tell you my name? My name is Mohan Biswas. And this is my son, Karan.”

Karan was looking at us with amusement. When he sees us talking, he smiles; and when we stop, he face acquires a stern expression.

“Anand, are you free tomorrow?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Tomorrow, we have a party at our house. Just a—small one. I have already talked to Bela, and she is ready to come. When I told her to bring you along, she said that it is impossible. So I thought why not I give it a try. So you’re coming?”

“I can’t come. I don’t—”

“Hey, come on buddy. Just a few hours?”

If I agreed, I’d be giving life a new chance. But it would be very hard; I don’t like even two or three people around me, and in the party there will be a whole bunch of them. If I would refuse, I wouldn’t get such an offer again and I’d surely spend the rest of my life in my room.

“Yes, I will come.” I said, looking forward for the first party of my life. It was dark, but light was visible at the horizon – a faint yellow light.

August 13, 2008

Five minutes after returning from the party, Bela and Rajesh found themselves standing next to the washbasin. Rajesh had clipped his nose tightly with his fingers, and Bela was patting my back. She told Rajesh to get ten drops mint mixed in a bowl of water. With great courage, I took my face away from the washbasin and drank the contents of the bowl. The strong mint revived my taste buds and brought an end to my vomiting.

Bela had heard the time wrong, because of which we reached Mohan’s house quite early; in fact, three hours before the next guest arrived. Mohan was in the highest of spirits, and instead of saying, “It’s all right.” he greeted us with, “That’s even better!”

After introducing me to his wife, Leela, he took me to his study. The room was brightly lit. A dazzling array of black and white smoke arose from the thick wick placed in a plate, and filled the room with its fragrance. On the blue wall, numerous paintings and portraits were hung. On the shelf, which covered an entire wall, books of all thickness were orderly placed. We sat down on a cosy sofa and discussed about his job and the various cities he had visited. Our talks took a sharp turn and we soon found ourselves plunging into the pools of life and philosophy. He was quite happy when I told him that I agreed with some his points. Unlike other men who are uncomfortable in discussing such serious matters in front of their family members, Mohan’s tone and facial expressions didn’t change when his daughter Tina entered to serve the snacks. I was lost in her enchanting beauty. Her hair were so black that even the black sky would have turned green with jealousy; her eyes lacked the skill to intoxicate a man or wound someone’s heart, instead, they had an aura which could bestow sanity to the insane, or heal even the most painful of wounds. The halogens, who found their brightness shadowed by her face, expressed their discomfort by blinking red and green; and Mona Lisa kept staring at her smile, and later hid her face behind the wall and cursed Da Vinci for his incompetence.

I tried not to look at her again and again; but when, for the fifth time, I looked up from my plate and gazed at her face, I felt it was impossible.

The reader might be thinking that I am in love. But this is false. I have never been in love, nor would I ever be. All I wanted was to befriend her. She went away without looking at me. I was disappointed.

Our discussion about life was followed by a discussion on ancient literature and renaissance paintings. I told him that I also paint. He showed a grave interest in my paintings. I promised I will show them soon.

By 7 O’clock, all the guests had arrived. They comprised entirely of people who were either his acquaintances—which were made in the narrow time line between his arrival in the city and this day—and the people who worked with him.

Throughout the party, I conversed with either Mohan or Bela. In case, any of these two dragged me in midst of a group, or tried to introduce me to someone, I stealthily moved away.

After some time, frustrated, I sat in a corner and looked at the happenings, just like a spectator in a circus. People stood here in groups, with more or less an empty glass of cold-drink in hand; and despites the loud music blaring in the background, the women folk conversed mindlessly about jewellery and sarees, and men folk shook some familiar but most unfamiliar hands and asked everybody, “How do you do?”—the reply to which is a universal constant but is asked nevertheless.

A group of boys went to Mohan’s room along with the CD-player in their hands. The women folk and I took a breath of satisfaction on getting rid of the devastating compositions. Mohan came to me, and told me go along with them so that I can make new friends. This time Mohan did not approve of my firm refusal and I was pushed into the prison with a bunch of drunken cavemen dancing to haunting tunes. After half an hour of sitting and listening to music that almost made me loose my sanity, we were called by someone to come out for the dinner; and because my mind was bereft of senses at that time, even the gender of that person escapes my memory.

After the last song, which contained lengthy curses of a witch who was probably getting buried alive—one of them told me that it’s alternatively called ‘heavy metal’—, I looked forward to something that would rejuvenate my senses, and expected food to do the job.

Happenings of the rest of the day do persist in my memory, but I, being a human, cannot recall them (except for the one about the washbasin); just like the memory of the day when your mother scolded you when she first found a puddle of pee in your bed does exist in some drawer of your memory, but cannot be recalled.

I have even forgotten how the food tasted. I judged it by the number of cockroaches who lost their lives in the floods of my vomit. Bela, who went for a walk early morning today, found their bodies lying overturned and unclaimed near the sewer outlet. I decided that I will refuse even the most forceful party invitations in future.

October 28, 2009

During these months, our acquaintance with Biswases turned into friendship. We often visit them now. We went to their house twice for dinner, and they came to out house one for lunch, and we also had a few tea parties.

I and Mohan have become very good friends. He is a man of exceptional charm and humour; and the effect of his latter quality has had a lasting effect on me. He showed a grave interest in my works. He’d spend a lot of time in my room, looking at my paintings. He told me that once he used to be a professional artist.

In his cosy study, we had long discussions on Renaissance, Da Vinci and Michelangelo. I came to know about Mohan’s interest in ancient literature and languages.

Sometimes, Karan would come toddling in the study. Mohan would give him a picture-book and he would sit and look at them with amazing seriousness. Mid-way, he would keep his head on the book and sleep.

There were a few more parties held at their house, but I refused. Mohan understood my problem and saved some cockroach lives.

Feburary 18, 2009

The other day, I had gone to their house for Tina’s birthday. I and Bela were the only guests. We were playing a game where each one of us had to act. Tina was to decide the role we had to play. When Mohan’s chance came, he was told to act like a person who just won a lottery of one crore rupees.

Mohan said, “huh? This is it?” and began by taking off his jacket which he waved in the air and threw in a random direction. It hit Karan in his face, and almost knocked him off the table. Then Mohan jumped around the carpet, yelling his plans of buying a car and a flat. As soon as Karan saw him coming near him, he hurriedly toddled towards his mother, but failed. Mohan grabbed Karan in his hand and waved him around in all the directions and told him that he would buy him new clothes and toys. Karan started crying. No one noticed it. A river of vomit came out from his mouth and covered Mohan’s face. It took him half-an-hour to clean himself, and till then, we laughed. It had been a long time since I had last laughed. A sudden rush of pain stopped my laughter. I went to the toilet and looked in the mirror. I touched my lips. They pained. Bereft of smiles and laughs, my lips had grown rusted all these years.

But I wasn’t sad. In fact, I was happy. It was a sign that told me my life is changing.

All these four months, my life has been blessed with a lot of other such changes, and the most prominent being the arrival of joy. Most of these took place because of Mohan. He gave full support to Bela in trying to drive away my loneliness.

Some days back, while I was sitting with Bela, enjoying tea in her new Chinese tea set, I heard a knock on the door. I saw Mohan, Tina, Leela and Karan standing outside, all neatly dressed, with their car parked in front. Mohan told me that they were going to McDonalds and wanted Bela and me to come with them.

“I can’t come.” I said.

“Oh, come on Anand!” said Mohan.

“No, I don’t feel like going. Please, I can’t.”

Mohan was disappointed. He looked around as if searching something. He looked at Karan and said, “Tina, look at Karan. It seems he wants to sleep.”

Karan, who was in Tina’s arms, leaned towards Mohan and gave a puzzling look.

“It’s a big problem: where will he sleep in the restaurant?” Mohan said, “I think it is better we don’t go.” Mohan said.

“Yes, you’re right.” Tina said, searching Karan’s face for signs of fatigue.

Mohan erupted, “I have an idea! Why don’t we order something here? Anand doesn’t want to come with us, fine, no problem, but at least he can eat with us here. What’d you say, Anand?”

“I—”

Before I could finish my sentence, all had gone inside with their faces lit up.

Love and care can melt the hardest of hearts. My refusals soon changed. I started going with Biswases to their picnics, movies and theatres. I became a regular customer of McDonalds and Pizza Hut. I managed to get a discount card also of the latter. I also met some of Biswases’ relatives.

Few days back, Mohan told me that he is busy and asked me to take Tina to meet her Aunt, in the countryside. Tina’s aunt was of the same age as Bela. She lived with her son, who was about the same age as me. Her house was not big, but a very comfortable one. Strong fragrance of sandalwood greeted us on the door. When I went inside, I saw that it was made up of rough wood; and wasn’t even painted. She had cooked native food for us. At first I was reluctant to eat it, but then Tina told me it tastes better than the city food. When we were going back, Tina’s aunt forced us to come next Sunday also. Our trips soon became a routine. One day she took us to her fields. I felt that life in the countryside is amazing: away from the noise, tension and pollution. One day we went for fishing also. When the basket would become full of jingling creatures, Tina would record the number and would throw them back in the lake. Then we would again sit down to fish. Most of the time, I won.

Tina became a very good friend of mine. The beauty of her heart exceeds the beauty of her figure by leaps and bounds. While I and Mohan would sit in the study, discussing, she would bring a strawberry cake for us (Tina always smiled when she handed me the plate. I soon realised that my pieces were bigger than Mohan’s). We would sit in the garden and talk endlessly. Hearing her laughter, many birds would come from the neighbouring gardens to join our conversation. She knows a lot about my tastes and sometimes she even fights for me. One day, I saw her arguing with Leela in the kitchen. Tina was saying that they should make Chocolate pudding for desert and not strawberry or banana pudding. I had told her the day before that I liked chocolate pudding.

Four days back, she gave me a present. It was a brown teddy bear with a red heart, made of silk, stuck to its belly. She said that she saw it in a shop and thought that I would like it. When I showed it to Bela, she giggled and said, “Today is 14^th February.”

Very soon, a bond of love was formed between me and Tina, whose presence was known by both, but was never exchanged in words.

At times, I would see her sitting in the garden: her hands were laid on the table overlapping each other, her chin lay resting on the fluffy pillows of her hands, her tightly closed mouth created wrinkles on her lips, which looked like the peel of a pink strawberry in the clean light. I would lean by the pillar and look at her mesmerising beauty, until Bela would come and shake me. I feel I have everything one expects from life.

Though I came to know Mohan and Tina very well, but Leela’s character confused me. She is very reserved. All I came to know of her was that she was a lady who had astray hair, wore shabby clothes, didn’t talk much and spent most of her time in the kitchen helping Bela or sitting on the sofa without a sound.

These days were a mixed bag of joy and sorrow for Bela.

When I would come home after spending long hours at Mohan’s house, I would find her waiting in the drawing room. She would frown, and in a broken voice she would tell me that she had been waiting for me since four hours, and even though I know that she always eats with me, I came late; and that I have forgotten her as I have got new friends, and that one day I will come home and find her lying dead on the sofa, and wouldn’t have enough time to attend her funeral also. I would hug her and say sorry. Then we would go and have dinner. For the sake of her happiness, I never told her that I had already eaten.

At times, while playing, Karan would urinate on Mohan’s face and I’d start laughing. Bela would peep in from the kitchen, and then tears would trickle down her cheeks. Later she’d tell me that those tears are of happiness, and she is very happy to see the new Anand and the only thing she ever wanted is my happiness and that now she has got it; and that even if she dies, she’d die happily. Then she would abruptly say, “Oh no, not at all! I take my words back! I won’t die happily until you children piss on me.”

Scattered among these happy days, were a few sad days also. But they didn’t bother me much; the happy days outnumbered the sad ones by far.

Few days back, I saw a doctor coming out of Mohan’s house. I ran inside and asked him what happened. All tried to avoid the topic. After much forcing, Mohan told me that he is Asthma patient. Before I could mourn, he told me that it’s very minor. He refused all sympathies from me and Bela. He said that sympathies make a man weak.

One day, while I was sitting by the window, looking at the squirrels playing hide-n-seek, the face of an old woman flashed through my mind. Her skin had lost its beauty to numerous black-spots, but was still bereft of wrinkles; it showed that she had aged before time: it was the result of long hours that she had spent working over-night to get her child admission in an English-medium school, and to fulfil her husband’s requests for beer. Her flesh had grown hard like a sand bag, owing to numerous clubs and hockey-sticks that were regularly struck on it. Her eye-sight had weakened, for the numerous nights that she spent looking out of the window, waiting for her son to come back. Every year on his birthday she would bring a cake, decorate the house with balloons and would wash the bed-sheets. Then she would place a chair in front of the door and would patiently look at it; in case it opened and her son came in. And when he didn’t, she would rush towards her room, lean out of the window and cry. She was my mother.

I laid my head on the window pane. I wanted to cry, but tears refused to come out. Pain without tears hurts more. Then, I felt better when I consoled myself by telling that I am blessed with so much happiness that I have forgotten how to cry.

Entangled in these commotion and changes, I didn’t realise when Biswases became such a vital part of my life. Today when I look back, I feel pity for what I was: I hated people, life, god and religion; but I didn’t know why. As if hating them gave me consolation. But things are different today. Sitting by the window, I see a rising sun every day.

June 13, 2009

My painting, ‘The Ninth Note’, consumed one whole year of my life. It is my most ambitious and secretive work till date. Near the bottom of the frame, citizens are running here and there, terrified by the flames shooting from the sky. Taansen, sitting on the right side, over a mat, wearing a gold-embroided robe, is so wonderstruck that he just forgot to fret over his defeat. He is looking at Baiju Bawra, who, sitting in the centre, over the floor, with his eyes shut, is lost in the notes of his Deepak Raag.

“Anand, you can fetch a very good price for it.” Mohan said looking at it.

“Eh…no, I don’t want to sell it. I paint for myself, not for money.”

“One can’t live his whole life without earning money. I insist you sell them; if not for money, then at least for giving this world a good piece of art.”

“That’s right but—well…I will think about it.”

His words inspired me; but were far from convincing.

I began painting to express my feelings. They contain abstract allusions and hints, which, when joined together, reveal every secret buried in my heart. So, my paintings are like my personal diary, and one does not sell his personal diary.

Mohan went over to my book shelf, and for a long time, passed his eyes from one column to another. At last he said, “Anand, there no Russian writer here. Strange.”

He advised me to read Gogol and Dostoevsky. Then he looked at his watch and said that he has to go somewhere.

Half-an-hour after he left, I went downstairs. Bela saw me passing.

“Sit sit,” she said hysterically, “It’s very important.”

I went and sat on the sofa. Before I could say anything, she hurriedly looked around and asked, “Anand, do you like Tina?”

“Yes I—I do like her. She’s a good girl—“

“Arre baba, not like that. I mean—do you love her? Would you like to marry her?”

Her eyes showed the fascination of a four-year-old who was waiting for me to tell whether the fairy and the prince happily lived after or not.

When I didn’t say anything for two seconds she repeated her words.

“W-Why are you asking this?” I asked.

“Yes or no? Fast!” She said, springing up and down on the chair.

Before I could comprehend the situation, I felt I had already uttered a word that somehow resembled ‘yes’. Before I could say something else, Bela had already taken the air out of me by her grand hug,

“O,” she said sobbing, “you are going to get married.”

“What?”

“Mohan came to me with a proposal. He wants you to marry Tina.”

“Did—they ask her about it?”

She laughed and said, “She was the one who asked Mohan.”

We went over to their house for dinner at 8 O’clock. Tina greeted me with a hug at the door (our first). Karan started giggling. After the dinner, when we all were sitting in the drawing room, Mohan came out of his study and told me come inside. He held my hands and made me sit. He expressed his heart’s elation, and said that Tina loved me a lot and she was afraid if I will say no, and that they could not have got a better husband if they had searched this world for a hundred years. I was out of words. We both remained silent.

After some time, his tone changed and he calmly spoke,

“Anand I—I want to talk to you”

I nodded.

“Anand,” he said, “I can’t force you to do anything. But, tell me, how will you feed your children? It’s all right if you don’t want to sell your paintings, at least you can do a job? If you want I can help, I can talk to—”

“No, I can’t work under anyone. It’s well and good if I sell my paintings. And, if they fetch a good amount, I will pursue my career in painting.”

“Excellent!”

“But the problem is—I don’t know where to sell them, can you help me?”

“’Course I will! You give me your paintings; I will be leaving off to Delhi soon, where I know quite a few people who might be interested in them. Anand, this is all what I wanted to hear from you.”

June 14, 2009

Tina, wearing a white dress, with blossoms engraved on it, is running around in our new house, with a plate in her hand, trying to catch hold of the seven-year-old boy who is far away from her, and is singing, “I won’ eat it! I won’ eat it!” The boy enters a big room. He sprints pass the enormous ceramic vase in the centre, imported from China, and without looking at the enormous gold trophies, or the paintings, which, like their predecessors are expected be sold for more than ten million rupees, he grabs me leg, and says, “Fath’r! Fath’r! ‘elp me.” I keep the brush down, and look at Tina, who is holding her knees, panting, and warning Om to come out from my back or face her wrath.

Before my dream could come to a conclusion, a voice told me to come downstairs. I woke up and went down.

With a brown shawl wrapped around his shoulders, Mohan sat in the centre. He was looking lean and pale. I sat down and waited for someone to speak. Tina, who was standing behind Mohan with her head bent down, muttered that Mohan fainted the day before, his test reports were appalling and they are leaving for Delhi the same day.

While eating, I raised my eyes and looked at Mohan. Despites his ill health, the smile on his face was not lost; it had the same pleasantness as I had seen on the day I met him. He didn’t have much time; yet he spent it under the roof of two people with whom he has no blood relation. All these days, he knew that he hadn’t got much time, but he still spent all of it on me: he wanted to reform me.

Things seemed to have changed so soon. All those days which I spend in his study, when I went with him to McDonalds, when I earnestly listened to his philosophies – all seemed so quaint.

When we were alone, he told me to get all my paintings. I told him that they are not important at this time. He tightly held my hand, and with tears in his eyes, he said, “Anand, please try to understand. I want to see your paintings fetch a good price before—before something happens to me—”

My philosophies, my hatred towards love, my agony towards god, my scepticism towards religion; all seemed so small in front of his love.

I gave him all my eight paintings. Never was the burden of Mohan’s gratitude more than at that time. I hugged him and cried, until he said that I am behaving like Karan by wetting his shirt. I have always loved him; but at that moment I felt like hitting him. Why is it that he cares for others and never for himself?

June 20, 2009

After waking up, the first thing I did all these days was to check if any of the letters had the word Biswas written on it.

In a fit of rage, I threw away the painting I had been working on, and took a vow not to work on anything until Mohan is back.

During the days Mohan was in my life, the house and the field didn’t talk; I searched their faces to see what they were hiding, but the place where their faces had one been was now covered by peeling paint and rocky soil. Form living creatures, they soon became inanimate objects: a hollow brick-structure, covered by corrugated iron, which stood by the road; and a piece of infertile land that brought misery and hardship to the owner. But today when I went pass them, I saw the life back again. They talked to me, consoled me, and said that life had played similar games with them. In the tears shed by the house and in the wounds & scars on the surface of field, I found my true self - alone and sad.

Life is what I had told Mohan: an unbalanced weighing-scale, a joke played by God to amuse his spouse, and bread that is thrown on earth to rot for seventy years.

June 27, 2009

I tried to recall the face of my mother. I could not. Instead, baffling images flashed through my mind. After I came back to senses, I rushed to the toilet and saw my face red in the mirror. My past had again become a series of painful of abstract images.

I realised one thing today: I am able to remember my sad past only when I am happy. Strange.

Bela is doing all she can to make me happy. She even took out money from the forbidden locker and forced me to come with her to McDonalds.

All these days, she has been spending her time either in the kitchen, trying her hand on the various recipes, hoping that one of them pleases me, or going through tons of jokes books and reciting the best ones aloud when I am nearby.

July 1, 2009

Bela rushed upstairs and gave me a folded piece of paper. In petite and confusing handwriting, Tina had written they had safely reached there, and were living with her Aunt. The operation would be carried out within a week, and they expect to come back within thirty days. In the meantime, she would not be able to write letters any more.

August 10, 2009

More than a month has passed. No more letters came. My worst fear has taken a firm shape.

Today, I opened the curtains. The dazzling yellow light pierced through my pupil and got engraved on my retina. I didn’t close my eyes until tears came and got evaporated, before they could fall down on the window pane. I looked up at the sky. Behind those white clouds, were a lot of dot-like stars. Some of them were new; some of them were older than the earth. Mohan is one of them now. He’s one of the recent stars, one of them which were formed within the past month.

I put on my overcoat and went out. It had been a long time since the yellow light had touched my skin. The sun seemed to have lost its glory. It didn’t shine the way it did when I used to go out with Mohan.

The cliff was not far away. It was nine hundred yards from the house. The jagged land ascended upwards, until it got higher than any other patch of land visible. Then, skilfully sliced by the God’s knife, it fell down perpendicularly and got drowned in the shallow lake beneath. I looked around to see the world for the last time. I took a step forward and recalled the days spend with Mohan, Tina, and Bela.

I stepped back, thinking about Bela. I can’t. I turned back and ran; only for the sake of that old woman who wakes up every morning to see my face.

Smells of baked brown-bread, rose-water, lime soaps and fresh baked cookies impregnated the street; but were still unable to conceal the familiar faint whiff that came from the crowd. I looked around. Amid the thousand heads, resting on a thousand indistinguishable bodies, there was one that seemed familiar.

“Tina!” I shouted.

Without looking back she ran away. I followed after her until she ran inside a narrow lane. With her back touching the brick wall, she unveiled her face and panted. I hugged her and asked, “How is Mohan? How is Mohan?”

She threw me on the opposite wall.

“I hate you.” She said.

She ran, took a sharp turn to the left, repeated her words and was soon out of sight. I leaned on the wall and allowed my back to slide down the brick wall. Every inch of slide blended a hundred questions in my life. I stood up and ran after her; unconscious of where I was, who I was, or if I was. A fifty yards in front of me, I saw her enter a white mansion. I sneaked in.

There was nobody in the drawing room. In the centre, under the bright halogens, a king-size sofa was laid. A round glass table was set in front of it. In the glass showcase to my right, a series of unrelated ceramic pottery were concealed. The dining table was wrapped in thick polythene. On the table a TV was kept packed in a box.

A string of large paintings, articles and photographs were hung on the wall. The smallest one was a framed magazine article. I went closer and looked at it. A big glass trophy was being exchanged by two hands. The picture was magnified, due to which the faces had become unrecognisable, and they looked like a combination of innumerable brown coloured squares. On the left, in large black letters it was written, ‘Mohan Biswas fetches 10 crore and wins annual paintings prize for his masterpiece, ‘The Ninth Note’’ For ten minutes I kept re-reading the words; hoping that my eyes had betrayed me the first time.

A man, dressed in an exotic black suite was descending the stairs. Walking along his sides were two men, dressed in tight-fitting blue shirts.

“Mohan!” I shouted.

He ran downstairs and the two men came along.

“What are you doing here!” Mohan yelled.

I looked into his eyes and muttered, “Why Mohan, why?”

He rubbed the tips of his fingers over his forehead, turned back and shouted, “Ali! Abbas! Come here!”

The two men came rushing down. Mohan went over to the sofa and seated himself. He drew a cigarette from a case that lay on the glass table and placed it between his lips. He pointed his index finger towards me and said, “Teach that baaastard a lesson. Break his bones.”

Time lost its faithfulness. Every passing second seemed longer than the predecessor. Ingratitude and shoes combined together and unleashed a spasm of weird feeling in body, which was akin to pain, but was much intense. During those rare instances, when the men stood erect and panted for a while, did time come back on its trail and pain gave a clearer account of its presence. Every thump on my skin pushed the previous sore deeper and deeper inside my flesh. An hour of time and a century of pain seemed to have passed when the men finally stepped back and allowed the light on hit my body. Like a worm, I lay curled on the floor. I raised my eyes from the floor and saw Mohan sitting on the sofa. How different he looked since last I saw him. The smile that once used to light up my face even in the moments of utter despair was replaced by a wicked grin of pride. His eyes, which once brimmed with infinite love, had arched and become thin, like a predator’s.

He bent towards me and said, “As far as the police are concerned—you can always approach them. I will make sure they help you. But then—I’ll have to tell my boys not to kill Bela. You know—they get very angry if someone goes against me.”

He took out a bundle of notes from his pocket and kept it on the table.

“Take it, and leave. It’ll help you to reduce some medicinal charge.” His eyes bulged out and became red. “And if I ever see you here again. I swear immortality won’t be able to prevent your death.”

I came out of his mansion. He is not Mohan. He is someone else. My Mohan was different. He was not like this. I had almost lost my senses. Were those years the reality, or was this the reality? All happened in an instant. My world betrayed me in an instant.

Hearing the eight alike notes of nature, in some part of the land, came out a vibrant peacock and danced her heart out, unaware, unconcerned, like a free spirit. A naked child came out of the shack to enjoy the off-season delight. Drops trickled down black his naked skin. He shivered with joy. His mother, concerned about the clothes that hung on the barbed wires, rushed out bare feet to take them.

The wind blew, the odour chased; umbrellas claimed their freedom, the iron roofs angrily clattered; the branches waved, the bark tried; the cows waved its head, the bell trailed—all danced to the song of rain.

It didn’t seem as if the earth was created a billion years ago. It looked fresh as dew. I looked up and smiled, rejoicing every drop of my birthday rain that slid down my chest and entered my mouth. Drops washed away the blood and stained the road. Mixed with the rain, were tears of my mother, who was sitting in heaven, crying.

I was not sad because he cheated me; I was sad because he killed my hope. I felt like a pilgrim who walked the whole world, bare feet, to meet his idol; and when he reached his destination, he found out that his idol never existed. His faith, his hope, his expectations – all was an illusion.

It was noon, but the sun was not overhead. It was beyond the horizon, where it was emitting its last warm rays. It had already begun to sink in the vast ocean. The yellow glare had become dim red. The tired sun would soon complete its long journey, crawl in its bed and sleep; leaving behind pristine shadows and reminiscences of warmth.

Jumping over the puddles, I went back to his house.

_ _ _

Bela closely examined the last page. The ink was fresh. The last words had been written just a few minutes back. She took out her spectacles and pressed her eyes to drain out the tears. The torrential rain clattering on corrugated iron roof didn’t let her sleep. The whole night, wetting her pillow, she thought of the injustice done to Anand.

As an act of sympathy, she had planned to make pepperoni pizza for her tormented child. She was baking the wheat base when Rajesh came inside the kitchen.

“You read the paper today?”

“Don’t disturb me,” said Bela.

“Listen, it’s very important. You remember Anand’s friend, Mohan? He died yesterday. At—” he searched the dismantled newspaper in his hand and said, “at 11 O’clock. He was stabbed. It says, the murderer ran into the kitchen, picked up a knife—”

“Oh my God!” She muttered as she threw the half-cooked base on the dirty floor. She ran upstairs, pushed open the door and ran into Anand’s bedroom.

Rajesh ran after her. A puddle of water was formed on the quaint carpet. All the paintings were teared and kept arranged on the table. Next to them was a scissor. The fan was bent because of a thick rope that was tied to it. Bela blankly stared at the familiar body that was hanging from the rope. Rajesh took out a dirty handkerchief to wipe his sweat and waited for Bela to respond.

He went downstairs to get water for her. Climbing the stairs, he fell down and had to go back again. When he came in the room he saw Bela sitting on the floor. Anand’s head was laid in her lap. She was passing her hand through his hair and was talking to him in whispers.

The glass fell off Rajesh’s hand.

She looked up and angrily said, “Shh….”

Rajesh was happy, but also puzzled, as things had became normal as soon as the funeral procession was over. Bela soon laughed and chattered like before. She went to market the next day and began preparations for Diwali: cleaning the outhouse, new paint for the house, replacing the furniture of her bedroom etc…. She called her friends for tea parties and sat in the garden for long hours. The house was filled with their loud laughs. The birds chirped again.

Rajesh felt Anand did the right thing by killing Mohan. He tried to discuss it with Bela, but she grew agitated and nervous whenever anybody talked about Anand. She also closed Anand’s room forever. No more was ever heard of Tina or Leela.

Exactly one year had passed since Anand’s death. Rajesh ran inside and shut the door. He closed his umbrella and placed it besides the sofa. As he took out his wet jacket, he heard a loud wailing from Bela’s room. The wailing persisted for two hours. When she came out, she was in a state of frenzy. She closed all the windows and doors. Then she sat on the table, tightly clasped her ears with her hands and started shouting, “Stop this rain. Please, stop this rain. Can’t bear it.” She remained like this for a long time. Afraid, Rajesh ran home. The next day when he came, he had expected to find the things returned to normal, but when he went inside, he found Bela missing. He went to her room and found that clothes and some money were missing. Even the suitcase was not in the closet. He considered that she had gone to her maternal house in Haridwar. She would often go there for months, leaving the house to him.

Ten months passed. Rajesh felt that she had gone forever. He was angry as he had been taking care of the house since ten months and was not yet paid for it. He got an idea to pay back his rising debts. He put up a big board in front of the house. It read, ‘TOLET’.

A small family moved in. He told them that they can live only for three months, paying three thousand rupees per month. Time passed, but Rajesh remained worried if Bela came back.

A long time passed; Bela didn’t come. One day, the children rushed to their mother and told her that a pungent smell was coming from the room upstairs. She ignored and told them not to disturb her. The smell soon filled the house. Rajesh was called to open Anand’s room.

“I told you I can’t open the room. It’s impossible.”

“We leave this house today.”

Rajesh brought the keys and opened the door. The children ran away as soon as the door was opened. The rain water entered through the window and had already covered half the floor and was constantly acquired new territories. The torn and dusty paintings were kept on the table, with a rusted scissor besides them. The pungent smell had driven away the spiders, leaving behind the thick white webs had made the corners round, as if they were part of a large sphere. Cockroaches were crawling on the rope whose one end was fastened around the fan and the other around the elongated neck of an old woman. Her hard hair had become a habitat of cockroaches and their slimy larvae. Just below the oscillating body lay spectacles whose glasses were cracked and coated with dust, and whose broad rim, despites being bandaged a hundred times, had been in use since fifty years.

New Short Story

2008-04-25T16:44:00.000+05:30

A Day with Uncle Grisha

I was leaning over the table, busy with my college assignment. I looked up to relax my eyes, and saw the watch that hung on the wall. I had to meet Grisha in twenty-minutes.

At that time, Dad worked as a salesman in a local company. He wrote me a letter saying that - due to the mounting inflation, a couple of new babies in our house, and the denial of his promotion, he is unable to support my further education. He wants me to meet his friend, Grisha Raj Anand, who would arrange a part-time job for me. I had talked to Grisha over the telephone and we were scheduled to meet at his warehouse.

I stood up, put on my ragged overcoat and went out of the small room.

When I reached his warehouse, I was told to wait. I stood outside trying to read the tiny letters written on a board that hung above. Finally I figured it out: it read, “Grisha’s Warehouse”. A person came out and asked me if I was John, to which I replied yes. He took me inside and again told me to wait.

A truck halted in front of the warehouse. A man jumped out of it and sped inside. After some time, he came out with eight workers following him, all carrying a carton. Their backs were poorly bent, for the carton weighed not less than a boulder. Among these eight workers, one was an old man. I stood there wondering how this aged man—who was probably in his late 60’s—lifted such a heavy weight.

Suddenly, his hands started shaking. The carton moved back and forth on his back. Someone came rushing out of the warehouse office and helped the man. In fact, this person took the carton over his back and loaded it on the truck. He didn’t seem to be a worker—he wore a decent black jeans and blue jacket, unlike the half naked workers. He gave the old man some money and told him to go home. To my utter shock, he continued loading the cartons. He accompanied the workers until the warehouse was exhausted of all cartons.

I waited there for another five-minute. The peon came back and told me to proceed to the office. I went inside and saw a man— the same one who was wearing blue jacket and black jeans—sitting on a chair behind the desk. On a golden plate kept on the desk, I saw the words “Grisha Raj Anand” written.

“Please sit, er—” Grisha said

“Aditya, Aditya Jain. I hope my dad has told you about me”

I tried to be as formal and courteous as I could.

“Yes, yes, he did tell me. Please sit.”

Grisha opened his mouth to speak something, just then, a man entered the office. He was lean as a toothpick, wore torn clothes, and had dishevelled hair. Both his hands were covered with thick layers of bandage. He seemed to be in a hurry.

“What happened to you, Rajesh? How did this happen?” Grisha asked, looking bewildered.

“I had an accident yesterday—a small one” Rajesh said, “I am here to ask if I can get a leave for two days?”

“Well, of course, of course. Yes you can get it. Tell me, did you see a doctor? Shall I fix an appointment with Mr.Das? No? Ok fine. Here, keep this with you.” Grisha said, taking out some money from his pocket.

“No sir, you know me. I can’t take it”

Rajesh moved towards the door. Grisha told him to stop and said:

“Just a second please. Can I ask you for a favour? Do you have a change” Grisha asked taking out a folded note from his pocket.

We both—Rajesh and me—were taken back at his uncanny petition. Grisha kept looking at him, waiting for a reply. At first I thought that he was joking. When there came no smile on any face, I concluded that he was serious.

“A change? Well—yes. I do have a change. But as you see—my hands won’t go inside my pocket” Rajesh replied.

I looked at his hands. I agree that it was impossible for his hands to go in his pocket without tearing it out.

“That’s no problem,” said Grisha, “My hands are fine; they can go inside. I hope you don’t mind. I need the change desperately. You see, I need to buy some grocery while going home. You know my wife; she’ll kill me if I don’t”

“Ok, ok sir. How much?” Raj replied.

“Hundred rupees”

Grisha stood up and placed his hands in Raj’s pocket. He took out a bundle of coins and notes, and counted them till they equalled hundred-rupees. He then put the rest back in his pocket, along with a folded hundred-rupee note.

Rajesh went out of the room. Grisha took the cap from his desk, moved towards the door and alluded me to move out with him.

“Sir, what about—“

“Call me Uncle Grisha”

“Uncle Grisha, what about my job?”

“Aye, don’t you worry about it. Have you had your dinner?”

“No, not yet”

“Eat with us today. You’re aunt makes good food. We will discuss it over the dinner”

I accepted the proposal.

After we had walked for half-an-hour, I asked him:

“Uncle Grisha, from where will you buy the grocery? The shops are all closed”

He gave a hearty laugh, and said without looking at me: “It seems you are still in the dark. I didn’t ask him for a change for this purpose”

“Then?”

“I took hundred-rupees worth of change from him; you saw it, right?”

“Right”

“You also saw me keeping a folded hundred-rupee note in his pocket, right?”

“Right”

“It wasn’t a hundred-rupee note; it was a thousand rupees note”

‘Really?”

“Yes. I was aware that he wouldn’t cross-check the note. I knew that that was the only way to give him money. You know, he a very poor man. In a matter of few days, you would have encountered him begging for alms, hadn’t I given him the money”

I felt a bit flattered by his generosity.

On our way home, he took me in a bar, where he ordered two cold-drinks for us—he loathed hard-drinks and gave me a lecture on its harmful effects. I excused myself, went to the waiter and told him to add vodka in our cold-drinks. In a matter of time after our first drink, Grisha became very gay. He laughed loudly and slapped my back with full force, in praises of my lame jokes. When I saw tears in his eyes, I told him that my stock of jokes has ended.

He recognised some old friend of his, who was sitting at some distance with a girl. Grisha gave a smile, to which the man didn’t respond. Grisha looked at me and said with confidence, “I think he didn’t see”

We went over and Grisha asked him if we could sit besides him, to which the man agreed. From the smell of his mouth, I guessed that the man had been drinking since a century. Grisha kept talking to him, reminding him of their old days. I concluded from their talks that some nine years back, they worked together in some Kitty’s Grocery shop. The shop closed, Kitty went to South Africa with her boyfriend—where a lion molested her for irritating her cubs—and they both were left unemployed.

The man kept scratching his head, searching the forbidden rooms and dusted corners of his brain to find the proofs of Grisha’s talks. The girl sat there, without speaking anything; and sweated, despites the chilly weather. Grisha would have talked more, if the man wouldn’t have interrupted and said “I need to go now”

A waiter came to our table with a bill of four-hundred-and-fifty rupees. Grisha paid the whole bill despites furious protests by his ‘friend’. A faint joy sprouted on the girl’s face.

When we came out, Grisha was more cheerful and gay than ever. He tightened his right hand around my shoulder, and plodded along the way. I think the waiter was in a state of ecstasy when he was added vodka to our drinks.

“What is his name, Uncle?” I asked.

“I do not know. That drunkard is not my friend” he replied.

At length he spoke, “I’ve seen him many times. Every day he goes to a different bar in the city. You know one thing - he never brings a single rupee with him. He always gets insulted and beaten up by the people, and washes plates whole night. But no, I didn’t pay the bill to save him. He deserves to be insulted.”

Then his face lost its animation and became stiff. He concentrated his eyes on an invisible spot in the darkness that lay before us, and said: “I paid the bill for the girl who was there with him. She was his wife. He always drags her with him. Did you look at her hands? They were never still, always moving up-down, left-right, agitatedly. She knew she and her husband would be beaten up today. She wanted to cry—but couldn’t. I wanted to save her. I paid the bill—for her.”

I was puzzled, whether Grisha was stupid, or generous.

It took us half-an-hour to reach his house. His house was a very modest one: Mud walls, tinned roof, creaking door, fatal smell . . . . When we went inside, we saw his wife and his son—who was about sixteen-year-old—having a fierce argument over some money matters. Grisha rushed towards the boy and tried to cool him down; it took him all his moral and physical power to do so—I am sure his boy would have broken his mother’s head if Grisha hadn’t come in between. He took his son to his room, and asked me to accompany him. His wife, who was silent till now, remained so.

In his room, Grisha asked him, “What was the matter?”

“She refuses to give me money! How dare she! I will slam her head—”

His sore words had an unusual smell in them; I concluded that he was also drunk.

“What do you need the money for?”

The boy did not reply.

“How much do you need?”

“Two-hundred rupees”

Grisha took out a two-hundred rupee note and a fifty-rupee note and handed it over to him. Grisha kept his hand over the boy’s head and caressed it; the boy shook away his hand.

I stood up and moved away from the bed; Grisha’s love for his son was pricking me. Born-and-bred in a family of gamblers, all I had seen was parents beating their children or forcing them to work; this sight was new to me. At that time, I hated Grisha for making me realise that something called love is missing from my life.

Suddenly, I remembered that I had to pay back the loan that I took from my friend Raj some days back, for my books. I immediately wanted to talk to Grisha about the job, and also wanted to ask if he could lend me some money. The monster of greed whispered an enchanting mantra in my ears; I smiled. An idea struck me.

Grisha stood up and moved towards the door. He said to me:

“Freshen up and come down. Dinner will be ready soon”

I was left alone with a sleeping boy, a stinking bathroom, a broken table and four-hundred rupees that were kept over it. I walked over to the table. I checked the boy – he was asleep. I closed the door. My hands went over to the notes, and became numb. I could not move them. This money would end all my suffering, I thought.

Greed took possession of my soul. I snatched three-hundred rupees, and thrust them in my pocket. I went over to the door, took out my handkerchief, wiped the sweat from my forehead and went downstairs. Grisha was sitting with his wife on the dinning table, waiting for me. I went over to him and said:

“Uncle Grisha, I—I need to go now” I was afraid of looking into his kind eyes.

“Wait. Where do you have to go? Please, have your dinner first. Your aunt doesn’t cook so badly” He looked at her and gave a hearty laugh.

“No—no. I need to go. It’s urgent. I have to meet someone. It is indispensable.”

I rushed to the door, when he shouted:

“Wait a second. Come here”

The intensity of fear was more then ever now. “He knows I did it. He saw me stealing,” I thought “I will fall on his feet and ask for forgiveness”

I went to him.

“Your aunt here says that she needs some milk for tomorrow. If you can please lend me you overcoat . . .”

“But—”

“I promise it won’t take long. You sit here till I fetch the milk. Please?”

I gave him the overcoat and sat down; there was no other way out. I took out my handkerchief and wiped my forehead. Then I realised that sweat was on my brow not forehead, so I wiped my brow also.

Grisha ran upstairs. My heart thumped out and fell on the dirty carpet. “God! He will notice the money missing from the table. I am dead”

He came down and rushed out of the house, without saying anything. I felt relieved.

But my joy was short lived, as another thought crossed my mind: If he sees the money kept in the overcoat’s pocket?

He came back after five-minutes and gave me the overcoat. I stopped shivering, stood up and moved towards the door, when he said:

“I will talk to Gregory over your job matter. I’m sure you will get it. Here’s his address, talk to him after two-days.”

I took the folded slip, kept in my pocket and ran out. I ran on the streets like a mad-man. I didn’t care what the people thought. “I will pay back Raj the money; I will buy books with the rest - that’s it! All’s well that ends well” I thought.

My heart flew out of my body and skimmed over the clouds. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Grisha would have thrown away rest of the money also. I am going to use it for a good cause now. Yes, I did the right thing . . . .”

I took refuge under a lamp-post. I overturned my pocket, and a few notes and two papers slips fell out from it. One of the slips had Mr. Gregory’s the address, the other ran thus:

My Dear John,

I was such a pleasure spending time with you. I look forward to more of your visits. I spoke so openly to you; I’ve never talked like this any one else. You bought a wave of joy in my monotonous life. I sincerely thank you for that.

I consider education to be a gem. Though, I have never had any formal education myself. We had a small family; I, my mother, and my father, we all lived happily in a small house. My mother taught me to read and write. I wanted to learn more, but I couldn’t. We were poor. I consider you to be lucky in this matter. Nothing done for the cause of education is wrong; hence, I consider your taking money from the table to be justified. I have kept the last hundred-rupee note in your pocket also, in case you might need it--anyways it shall be of no use to me. I know that you are not a bad human being. You did it for the sake of education—I am sorry I read Raj’s letter kept in your pocket. I do not want you to torment yourself with guilt or pity.

I hope you have a happy life ahead. May God bless you!

PS: That vodka-mix-cold-drink was excellent!

Yours sincerely,

Uncle Grisha

I counted the notes; they totalled four-hundred rupees. I stood still and stiff, like a lonesome black dot on a white sheet of paper. I looked at the people around me – they all looked like monsters metamorphosed into ugly humans. They all had committed sins in their lives, and were shamelessly hiding them now. A dense crowd of people swept past me. I looked at their faces; some had happiness on their face, some had despair, some had glee, some had tears. A looked at a young man passing by; he was probably new to the city – his hungry eyes skimmed in all the directions. A beggar was sitting besides a trash-bin, waiting for one of the sinners to give him alms so that he can have his day’s share of beer. I wondered if all these people had also gone thought the same feelings like me, some or the other time in their lives. God’s weighing machine of joy and sorrow seemed biased to me. I went home, tormented with a dilemma: was Grisha stupid, or generous? The answer to this, even while writing this escapes me.

Love and Forgiveness

2008-04-12T16:56:00.000+05:30

Mr. Ben Stalls was a man of extraordinary principles and philosophies. According to him, he had acquired them while he struggled with his life, on the streets of Pondicherri where he used work as an assistant of a cobbler. His journey from a seven-year-old child-worker to a sixty-year old business tycoon was not an easy one; climbing the ladder of success, there were time when he had to take a dishonorable step. Looking out of the magnanimous window of his luxurious flat, situated twenty-two stories from the ground, he recalled his forgone days with pride, not disgrace. He now considers those ‘dishonorable’ steps as his pillars of his success.

They say, “What you get from this world is what you give it back”. His life proves this the authenticity of this proverb. He has lived a life bereft of Love; consequently, he never gave love to a soul.

A knock on the door diverted his attention.

“Fielding! Open the door”, he shouted.

The poor servant threw his broom and rushed towards the door. A stout man, of the same age as of Ben entered through the door.

“Hello Ben! I hope I am not late” said our visitor, Mr. Andrew. Despites his coy and witless nature, he has acquired more respect than Ben in the hearts of people. Reason - the kind and caring heart which he posses towards one-and-all, whether the person be his friends, or his enemy. He is always ready to help a person, or give him a piece of advice. There have been cases where people have paid for his care with their scorns and comments, calling him an ‘interferer’. Yet he never loathed any of them – he is too kind to do such a thing.

“Ah! There you are my friend. Pray have a seat.” Ben said.

Ben was recently honored with the title of ‘Business man of the year’. To celebrate the joy, he invited his friends to have dinner with him.

The minute-hand of the clock had to complete two circles before all the nine guests had arrived. Hard-drinks were served by the servants along with French fries and samosas.

Ben was not the only person dwelling the giant flat. Along with him lived his six-year-old grand-daughter, Tina. In her life of solitude, she got solace from servants, especially from Martha, whom she treated not less than she would have treated her own mother.

Ben’s thoughts never matched with those of Tina. He wanted money and respect; she longed for love. The most striking different between them was: she was always ready to change herself to get love, but he wasn’t ready to change himself and give love.

Tina devised a plan to get some love and attention from her grand-father. Ben had a habit of shouting at his servants. The only time when she found him in house was the morning time. For a few days in his presence, she tried to shout on the servants in order to win some attention from him; it was her way of telling him: “Look at me! I am like you. I am not different. I can also shout. Now will you love me?”

Ben would ignored her and leave for office. When she felt that her plan was of no use, she would retire to her room and weep. Then her care-taker, Martha, would enter the room and comfort her. After five minutes, Tina would come out wiping her tears with Martha’s handkerchief and would say a pitiful “Sorry” to the servants.

Tina was told not to come out of her room till the party lasted. She dutifully agreed, and went to sleep an hour prior to the party. Her dreams were usually of unicorns, Bugs Bunny or other characters on cartoon network channel. But, every rose has a thorn, right?

Tina’s dreams were of cartoons; but not always. There had been a few instances when her dreams were frightful enough to wake the dead; or to kill the alive. One such dream she saw that day:

Singing and dancing, Tine enters a dense forest. She stops when her eyes meet that of a young man, who lays wounded besides an oak tree. She fearfully looks at his bleeding leg. He stretches his hand in want of aid. Tine hesitates; then she lifts her hand from her body, and her finger touches that of the man. A black horse comes rushing towards the man. The horse bends his head, his eyes face the ground, the thorn on his forehead points towards the skull of the man, and in an instant, it pierces it. The horse twists left and right, digging his thorn further in the man’s skull. Tina pulls her hand back. The man’s face becomes clearer to her; it is her father. His eyes shrink, and he gazes her. He lifts his hand and points towards her. He says, “You killed me”. Uttering his last words, his head hits the ground; blood comes out of his forehead like a fountain.

Tina woke up shouting “Father! Father!”

She tossed her blanket aside, rushed towards the door, flung it open and—breaking her grandfather’s command—she came out of her room. She crossed the wide corridor, pushed Shella aside, ran to the party-room. She saw Ben standing with his friends, drinking. She ran to him, hugged him and cried with all her might. She placed her cheeks to his round belly and muttered all the happenings of her dream. “Dadu-dadu, a b-b-bad dream—weeps—b-black horse—weeps—k-killed man—weeps—k-killed father—weeps—I-I love fa-father . . .”

Never in his life had Ben felt so embarrassed. Her hands were around his waist, but his were still his pocket, afraid to come out and give some love.

His grand-daughter, in her night-dress, coming to him and hugging him? That too just because of a silly dream? That too in front of his friends? No! It was an insult to him; an insult to his friends; an insult to the whole mankind. How dare she!

In a low voice he said, “Don’t worry – don’t worry. All’s fine. Go back to your room. I am coming there”

She continued with her dream in her broken voice. At last, murdering his patience, he shouted at the top of his voice.

“Go back to your room”

Tina’s cries paused for a second. She ran towards the door of the room, crossed the corridor, pushed Martha aside, ran to her room, and threw herself on her bed. She cried monsoon that day.

In fact, Ben had shouted so loudly, that he wasn’t able to utter a word for five-minutes.

Andrewcame to him and said: “Ben. You were cruel to her. You shouldn’t have shouted like this. She came-“

“Listen, Andrew. I know what to do with my grand-daughter. You needn’t tell me”

To avoid further conversation on the subject, Ben went ahead and joined Mr. Batliwalla and discussed about their business.

The party lasted for only half-an-hour more. Ben was extremely tired and retired himself to his room. He slipped in his night dress, placed a cigar in his mouth and sat down on the chair. For a few minutes he kept still, his mind wandering over some thoughts. Then he stood up and moved towards his small book-shelf. Beginning from the top shelf, right hand-side, he read the name of every book. Unsatisfied, he moved on the next shelf. He picked up Dicken’s Bleak House, kept on the bottom shelf. He went back to his chair, sat down and opened the book. He read one page and closed the book. Agitated, he threw the book on his study-table.

‘Did I do a right thing?’ he thought, ‘Maybe--yes. She shouldn’t have entered the room like this. This was not the right thing to do. If she was scared, she should have called Martha. But sh-she was crying. She has had these dreams before also. Maybe it was quite bad this time.”

He opened the drawer of his study-table, picked up a photo that had laid there for seven years, unperturbed. The man in the picture looked young; he wore small round spectacles, his hair flew in all the directions, and there was a gleaming smile on his cheerful face.

It was his long lost, long forgotten son, John. He was a man of extraordinary genius. He had a personality that attracted every one towards him. In every field he was an adept.

Every frame of that night is still vivid in Ben’s memory. The raindrops were hitting the roof with full vigor, often a zig-zag white light appeared on the sky. He and John were having a quarrel. Ben wanted to send him to Harvard to do MBA. He refused: he wanted to serve the country by joining the army. John did a fatal thing – he hurt Ben’s pride. He was thrown out of the house. Ben was aware of the pouring rain; he was aware John had nowhere to go. He believed that after half-an-hour, John would come back and would agree for Harvard. John went out of the house; he took neither clothes nor money with him. Ben was considered an excellent judge of a company’s future; by looking at the accounts he could judge the future and sustainability of the company in the market. However, this time his judgment was wrong; his misjudges John’s courage. John never came back. Next day, they found his dead body lying next to the canal. Post-modem confirmed his death due to lightning. The memories of his lost son pricked Ben’s heart; just the way his pride did. He thrust the photograph back in the drawer and shut it hard. Tina was a part of John that lived in front of him. She was the only person in this world whom Ben could love; yet he never loved her; he loved his own pride, his own valor.

He stood up and moved towards the door, ‘I think I need to have a discussion with her’

He went to Tina’s room. He wiped the sweat off his brow, and entered the room. He looked all around; Tina was nowhere to be seen. He got worried. He turned back and saw Martha passing by.

“Come here, Martha”

“Yes sir”

“I hope you had watered the plants during the evening? Where is Ramu? He is nowhere to be seen. Why is Tina’s room in such a mess? Where is she?”

Ben mingled his main question in midst of other useless ones. Martha knew that she only had to answer the last one.

“She’s sitting on the veranda, sir”

“O-Ok you can go”

Ben climbed the stairs in a state of frenzy. He changed his mind at every alternate step. Finally, he was upstairs. She was sitting on a bench, with her teddy bear in her hand. He went closer. He called in a soft voice, “Tina”. She stood up, kept the teddy on the chair and looked at Ben. She was afraid--rather shivering. Tears had formed read outlines on her face. Tears only hurt for a minute, but their stains hurt for a longer time.

Ben recognized the gravity of his mistake. Now there was no going back. He had come to apologize, and he would do that.

“Grandpa, I . . . I wanted to talk to you” her voice was quivering.

“Yes”

“I am very, very sorry.”

“No, I—“

“I shouldn’t have disturbed you, it was my fault.” New streams of tears glided down her cheeks, dissolving the previous stain marks, and creating new ones.

Ben was shocked. He knew what he had come for, but he didn’t do it. She waited for Ben to say something.

“It’s ok”, he said

She crossed him and went to her room. He stood there, infected by his fake pride, his hollow valor. He muttered to himself: “She is—just like her father”

A tear trickled down his eye, hit the ground and dissolved with the dust; it took some of his pride with it. He felt he was losing the reminiscent of his lost son. Life was playing with him. For the first time, he felt defeated.

Short Story :

2008-04-09T12:45:00.000+05:30

Three Seeds

The town of Chandrapur was considered – by the inhabitants – as the best place to dwell in India. All over the city there were sprawling gardens, where one could walk without being disturbed; magnanimous sculptures, at which one could gaze, when sitting idle; a great number of museums, where the townsmen can go and know about their rich cultural heritage and appreciate it. But the heart of town’s popularity lied in the fact that if you are a tourist, every passer-by possesses a generous heart towards you. Ask him the directions and he will escort you to your destination. This gave the city a good reputation in the outside world also.

Mr. Bradbury, a British businessman who came to the city on a vacation, found himself very much attracted by it. He decided to construct a Nuclear Power Plant here.

Accompanying the Plant, a waste-trench was constructed - in order to discard the radio-active waste. Very soon, the streets around the area became laden with animal corpses; the vegetation started dying; and it became impossible for the nearby residents to live. The philanthropists got enraged and made plans to rebel. They pled the workers to go on a strike; the workers agreed. The factory owners declined to negotiate, which caused the strike to continue much longer than predicted. Its impact on the lives of people proved to be gruesome; in some cases, fatal.

For Rajesh, a low-paid worker, the factory was his only source of income. Since two months, he had been surviving on his savings.

Rajesh’s family was seated at their small dining table, feasting upon the leftovers of yesterday. Suddenly, Rahul – Rajesh’s son -- threw his spoon in the rice bowl, pushed it in front and yelled:

“Mom, I can’t eat this. It’s stale! It stinks. Can’t you get us somethin’ worth eatin’?”

“Rahul, you shouldn’t talk like this to your mother. This is all we have” said Rajesh, pointing towards Neelam, his daughter, “She’s eating the same thing, yet she does not complain”

Neelam was used to such quarrels. She ignored it, and kept herself engaged with her food.

Rahul gave an angry look to his father. A minute passed between them. He then picked up his spoon and started nibbling again.

“Rahul, Neelam, I have something to tell you”, said Sheela, Rahul’s mother, who was silent till now “Sridhar will come to-day to dine with us. I expect you to behave like proper hosts”

Sridhar was also a worker in the same factory, but was placed at a much inferior post than Rajesh. There was a time when they used to be good friends. They would visit each other’s houses on every occasion, and would invite each other for dinner parties.

Some time back, Sridhar used to be the driver of a rich businessman. One day, he seriously injured his right leg while saving the businessman’s daughter. The girl was unable to narrate Sridhar’s bravery to her father – she being two years old –, and he soon found himself thrown out of the job, accused of negligence while driving. He was forced to work as a sweeper in the same factory as Rajesh. He began to consider Sridhar as inferior since then. The sole purpose of his calling Sridhar to dine with them was to prevent his family from dying of hunger.

“Not again”, said Rahul, throwing back the spoon in the bowl “Why does he keep eatin’ in others houses. He came to dine with us last week also. He should eat in his own house. Hasn’t he got one of his own?”

“As it is we don’t have much to eat.” mumbled Rahul.

Just like his father, Rahul was also infected with the bug of prejudice.

“Rahul, listen. Sridhar has gone through tough time because of the strike. His wife is really depressed. You know his son, Nanu, you friend. Last week he was seriously ill – on the verge of dying in fact. They are not able to feed themselves. It is our duty to give him a helping hand.”

“I hate their family”, said Rahul in a low voice, “He was the one who called for the strike”

“Rahul!” shouted Rajesh, “Its better you mind your tongue. Sridhar is a very good human being. He is doing all this for the workers.” Thought he himself didn’t believe it.

After this, no one spoke a word at the table. Rahul finished his Lunch and ran back to his room. He jumped on the bed, covered himself with the blanket and looked out through the window. His window overlooked a big and filthy trench at some distance – the same one constructed by the factory owners. On the bank of it was a banyan tree. Rahul remembered that he was the one who planted the tree, some five years back. The first thing he used to do after waking up was to gaze at the marvelous wonder of God, his tree. It had grown to unimaginable heights. But the tree was no more the same now; it was dead. It lay in front of his eyes like an ugly spot on mother earth. Earlier he would sit under the tree with his friends and play; now it wasn’t possible. The area around the tree smelt of dead rats and faeces.

“I don’t like him”, muttered Rahul “Why does he keep eatin’ eat in other people’s houses? All would have been fine if he hadn’t called for the strike. We are suffering because of him. We don’t have much to eat, and now we have to share that also with him. That . . . beggar. I hate him. His clothes stink. I don’t like Aunt also, she’s always crying since the strike. It is a bad habit for people to got around begging in other’s houses”

* * *

The door creaked open and a fat gentleman with a stick in his hand entered through it. He had difficulty in walking. Following him, a woman and a child entered.

“Hello Sridhar. I hope you didn’t have difficulty in coming”, Rajesh said with a stiff voice, not disturbing himself from his book.

“No, no difficulty-”

“What’s this? You got hurt? How did it happen”, he said looking at the white cloth that was wrapped around Sridhar’s hand.

“Nothing, nothing. Don’t worry. I just … just fell down”

Rahul was sitting sunken back on his chair, looking at the happenings with disgust. Nanu was standing behind Sridhar, peeping at Rahul with his inquisitive eyes.

There was a time when Nanu and Rahul used to be good friends – in fact, the best friends. Rahul began disliking Nanu since the time his father began disliking Sridhar. The exact reason for their hatred was unknown to them. Nanu always had hopes for a better day – just like his father. He knew that one day he would pull out his friend from the well of prejudice. One day, Rahul would come to him rushing, hold his hand, take him to his room, invite him to play, show his toys . . .

But nothing as such had happened till now; Rahul kept looking at Sridhar with irritation and Nanu kept waiting for his hand to be held by his old friend.

Neelam, Sheela and Meghna (Aunt) moved towards the kitchen and got themselves busy with the dinner preparations. Sridhar seated himself next to Rajesh. Nanu sat on Sridhar’s lap.

“It is all because of that . . . that greedy businessman and . . . and his big plans of making Chandrapur ‘electricity capital of the country’” said Sridhar, in a poignant voice, addressing Rajesh.

“Yes. You’re right.” Rajesh replied, uninterested.

Suddenly Rajesh stood up, and excused himself giving the reason that he had to make an urgent call.

Rahul felt it was the right time to begin with the first phase of his revenge. Next to him was a side table, on which was kept Rajesh’s gold watch. It was gifted to Rajesh by his father, some seven years back. He never allowed a soul to even wander around it, let alone touching it; yet today he forgot to wear it. Rahul knew how he had to exploit Dad’s love for the watch, for his own good.

“It seems Dad forgot to wear it” he said looking towards it “he he. I got an idea! he, he. Sridhar is in big trouble now.”

Our soldier (Rahul) stood up, walked towards our enemy (Sridhar), with a bomb in his right hand, which was waiting to spur out fireworks (the watch). Our enemy, who was already injured in the hand, was unperturbed and unconcerned to the approaching danger; he seemed to welcome our soldier with a smile on his stupid face. Our soldier ran towards his enemy; then, he struck his feet with a table nearby and he fell over our enemy’s injured hand, and also placed the bomb in our enemy’s jacket.

Our enemy stood up and tried best to control his shriek. Rajesh saw all this and came rushing into the room. A tear trickled down our enemy’s eyes. Rahul fell back on the sofa with satisfaction. He was successful in making the incident to look like an accident in others’ eyes.

“The watch beeps daily at 9 O’clock.” thought Rahul “He, he. Sridhar’s gonna be dead now. Dad’s gonna accuse him of theft”

“Rahul, see what you did.” said Rajesh “You should have been careful. Sridhar sit down. I’ll get some water.”

He rushed towards the kitchen and within a few seconds came back with a glass in his hand. Throughout, Sridhar didn’t utter a word, neither of pain, nor of complaint. As if, he knew all this was coming.

Rahul had always noticed one thing in Sridhar: there was always a smile of patience and satisfaction on Sridhar’s face while he went through pain. He saw it on his face when he lost his first child; when his wife almost died when she came under a horse-carriage; and last, he saw it when he fell on his injured hand. Earlier, Rahul would consider it to be the unbound self-control and patience of Sridhar’s character, but this time, it irritated him.

“Rahul.”, said Rajesh “Why don’t you and Nanu go upstairs and play? I’ll call you when the dinner’s ready”

Rahul stood up and went out towards the stairs, without looking at Nanu or inviting him to follow. Nanu followed him – he needed no invitation to join his friend. They walked together, side-by-side, without uttering a word.

Rahul stopped and bent down to tie his lace. Nanu continued walking, but at a much slower pace, waiting for Rahul to catch up. Suddenly, Rahul stood up, came rushing by and pushed him. Nanu fell down; his forehead hit the edge of a stair. It was lucky of him that he didn’t roll down the stairs. He uttered a soft cry of pain, inaudible to anybody except Rahul. Sridhar came rushing, followed by Rajesh.

“Oh! I am sorry Nanu” said Rahul “I didn’t do intentionally. I’m very sorry”

Nanu tried to suppress his shriek in order to utter his two worded reply: “It’s ok”.

Both these words came out of his mouth rugged and dead, filled with pain.

Rahul bent down to help Nanu to stand up, but before he could do so, Sridhar came rushing, picked up Nanu in his hands and tried to comfort him. Nanu wasn’t crying, contrary to the expectations of Rahul. He could have accused Rahul, but he didn’t.

Sometime back, Rahul’s mother was narrating him an incident about Sridhar. Once, a mad-man was running after Nanu, trying to scare him. Nanu fell and got his knee badly bruised. Sridhar came rushing by, picked up a brass rod and thrashed the mad-man. Sridhar had always been a calm fellow; his beating someone shocked Rahul. The mad-man was rescued by a police constable who was luckily nearby. Otherwise, she said, the mad-man would have died that day.

Rajesh gave an angry look to Rahul. He lifted his hand to beat him, but was stopped by Sridhar.

“No, No. It wasn’t his fault.” Sridhar said, “Nanu wasn’t careful. I saw it. Don’t hurt him”

Rajesh went down-stairs, back to his seat. Sridhar followed him, with Nanu in his arms. Rahul stood there for a minute, trying to recover from the shock.

‘Nanu wasn’t careful. I saw it.’ – These words echoed in his ears.

“Did he really feel that Nanu fell on his own?” Rahul thought “How is it possible? He saw it all. Whatever. It doesn’t matter to me.”

* * *

The men were sitting on the small round dining table and the women on a mattress spread on the floor. The food was distributed among the two groups. Sridhar saw Rahul coming towards the table and alluded him to sit besides him. The women had already begun eating. There were eight pieces of chapattis kept on the table for the men; and six were kept with the women. During the normal course of days, Sheela would cook twelve chapattis - four for Rahul, three for Neelam, three for Rajesh and two for herself.

Rahul felt very irritated with the very thought of sharing his family dinner with someone else. He expected that the chhapatis would be distributed equally among them, each would get two. Any change in the given syllabus would have seriously offended him – unless, of course, it was in his favor.

Soon, Rahul found himself quite busy with his dinner, but he still kept a constant attention at Sridhar’s actions. Rahul was waiting for him to raise his eyes from his plate and look at him so that he can make faces at him. He got this privilege twice. Each time in reply, Sridhar chuckled. He thought that Rahul was showing his affections towards him by trying to make him laugh, and not trying to insult him. Moreover, the fact that he was the only one who received this privilege, made his conviction even stronger. After two failed tries, Rahul gave up.

After his first chance at affronting Sridhar failed, he began to look forwards for his next one. He kept a close eye at Sridhar, to make sure that he doesn’t take a chapatti more than the allotted two.

Rahul’s mother told him that once they had gone to Sridhar’s house for a dinner party.

“Sridhar used to be such a happy person” she said “He used to have a very big appetite. I saw him eating four chapattis once!”

Rahul would have left no chance at insulting him, in case he went from two chapattis to three.

Rahul’s second chance at insulting was even more brutally crushed. Sridhar – to Rahul’s utter astonishment – retired himself after just one chapatti. He even offered Rahul to take his second one. Rahul, being hungry, agreed. Nanu looked at the incident with confusion. He felt confused what he shall do with his second chapatti? He thought that he was expected to do the same, and hence, he also offered Rahul his second chappati.

To Rahul, it was perhaps the most shocking incident of the evening. He was very well aware of Sridhar’s large appetite.

Rahul finished his dinner but kept sitting at the chair, thinking.

“Did he eat anything and come?” Rahul thought “No it can’t be. How can he? He wife is ill, she can’t make food. Maybe . . . he intentionally left it for us . . . for me. Oh! No how can it be. I’m worrying myself with all useless thoughts. He might not be hungry, that’s it. But still . . . he’s not a bad human being. Maybe I was wrong about him”

The table and floor were cleared by Sheela and Meghna. Neelam, very soon after the dinner, retired herself to her room for completing her school work. The men found themselves seated in the other room.

Leaving aside the occasional bark of a dog or whispering sounds from the other room, the room in which men were seated was dead silent.

“I have heard that you went to the court yesterday.” Rajesh asked, breaking the silence “Is the government ready to help us? What did the government officials say?”

“Ha, ha! No one’s gonna help us.” Sridhar burst out, feeling happy to be talked to “I went to the IAS officer. His watchman told me to sit outside, as IAS officer was busy in a meeting. I sat there for four hours. God! I tell you what – no one even asked me for water. Four hours in the sun! Then, the watchman came out and told me to go. I told him that I was waiting there for the IAS officer since four hours. He tried to force me to go. I was reluctant. Then, he called for two people from inside. They . . . they bought bamboo sticks and thrashed me. Some white-collar people came out and laughed at me. The watchman told them that I was trying to steal something. I had to run from there limping.”

The expression on Sridhar’s face was very lively after the dinner – as he had self-confessed that the dinner was excellent – but when he told Rajesh about the whereabouts of his meeting, every sentence made a new pore in his liveliness. By the time he reached his last statement, every trace of liveliness had ejaculated; and was replaced with a fresh dreariness.

Rahul looked at him with utter interest and tried to catch each word. By the time Sridhar had reached the conclusion, the sturdy glass of hatred inside Rahul’s heart was blurred by the fog of sympathy.

The hatred was diminished, but love was yet to be born, and guilt was nowhere even on the horizon.

“He’s not so bad after all.” Rahul reflected “How brutally those people have beaten him. He has started limping also. But . . . oh well . . . anyone would have beaten him. He refused to go from there. But it seems – they have been too cruel to him”

Sridhar looked at the ground with blankness on his face. Suddenly, as if remembering something, he took out something from his pocket.

“Hey Rahul, come here. See what I got for you” Sridhar said, taking out a toy car “Ta Da! A Gift! It’s a car. I know you like cars. I brought this one exclusively for you. Hope you like it”

Rahul reluctantly moved towards him, and took it.

“This car, I saw it somewhere” Rahul thought “This car belongs to Nanu. It is his favorite toy. I saw him playing with this one. How can he give it to me? How can he be so cruel to his own son”

Nanu felt he might cry, if he looked at his toy even once more. To avoid this, he fixed his eyes towards the door and kept looking outside.

Rahul didn’t say anything, and went back to his seat.

The windows split open, the wind rushed in with full vigor. It carried with it a seed. It planted it on the barren lands of Rahul’s heart; it was the seed of pity.

Rahul rushed to his room, threw himself on the bed and got himself busy with his toy. Half-an-hour passed. It started raining. Some raindrops came rushing towards his window. They had planned to greet Rahul the first rain of the season, but they all collided with the window and died. The rain brought some joy with it, which it gave to Rahul.

“He’s not so bad after all.” He thought “In fact . . . he’s good.”

The joy gave birth to love.

Rahul ran downstairs, planning to give a big smile to Sridhar in lieu of his love for him. That was when he saw:

“Listen Sridhar, I don’t want to hear anything” shouted Rajesh “Get out at once. I don’t want to call the police”

“I . . . I didn’t do anything. Please listen to me.” Sridhar begged. There were tears in his eyes. He almost knelt in front of Rajesh. Meghna was standing behind him, pursuing him to leave. Sridhar would not listen; he was not willing to leave unless he proves himself innocent.

“Go at once!” Rajesh said, and shut the door.

Suddenly, Rahul felt that the reason of this upsurge was not so much alien to him, as he had thought. The time was 9’O clock, the clock in Sridhar’s pocket might have rung, he thought.

Sheela went inside, followed by Rajesh, who muttered before going “Poverty is a sin”

Rahul went down-stairs, and having conformed that there was no one around, he opened the door. They all were going down the street. He could hear Sridhar’s weeping, Meghna was trying to comfort him; Nanu was walking slowly, behind them. Nanu looked back. Rahul feared that one of his veins might burst out – he didn’t have the courage to face Nanu. Nanu gazed at him with his inquisitive eyes. Rahul felt like a criminal . . . like a murderer; he felt Nanu’s eyes were asking him – Are you the same Rahul I knew of? Why didn’t you save my father, when you could have?

The raindrops changed their course and moved towards Rahul. They were angry; they wanted to hurt him, but all failed – they hit his hard skin and died.

The wind blew once more. This time it carried two brother seeds with it. The eldest seed is of no use when present alone; the younger is not born until the elder is present. When they are both present together – they do wonders. They hold the power to make even the most ruthless murderer kneel before them and cry. The wind sowed these seed, next to the seed of pity – which had sprouted into a plant by now. The elder seed was of Shame; the younger, of Remorse.

The path between Sin and Redemption is a narrow bridge. In order to get redemption, one has to cross the bridge. This bridge is made up of three planks. One cannot leap; he has to step on all the planks. These planks are: Pity, Shame and then Remorse, respectively.