“Please take a seat.”
He didn’t want to at all, but something seemed to compel Makhanlal.
Malati sat at a distance and said, “I knew you’d come. I was waiting for you.”
Makhanlal felt a tremor run across his stout body at these words.
“There’s something I want to ask you.”
“Yes?”
“Why did you do this? Don’t be silent, answer my question.”
Makhanlal looked into his interrogator’s eyes and realized he had erred.
“Why did I do this? I have no idea.”
“You have no idea? Then let me tell you. The self-satisfaction of philanthropy is no mean thing. It feels wonderful to be given a chance to help the poor. The gratitude of other people is delicious, isn’t it?”
Every word tumbled out of this modern, educated woman’s shapely lips with lucid articulation. On hearing so many obscure words all at once, thickheaded Makhanlal became even more stupid. He could say nothing in response.
“And besides, you have your own motive too. You decided that you would bring us under your control and take revenge on us.”
Makhanlal could hear nothing but meaningless sounds in words like motive and revenge. He groped for words, just as a person gropes in the darkness, but could find nothing to say, nothing that he could say.
“But what you think will not happen, it can never happen.”
Now Makhanlal stood up and said, “I thought nothing, maybe I have created difficulties for you, those difficulties . . . please forget them.”
“Only after your money’s returned can we forget. But get it back you will. Maybe it will take time, but we will definitely return it.”
“All right.”
“Another thing. Do not come to this house again – never, not for anything.”
Makhanlal turned near the door and said softly, “No, I will not come.”
Back on the road, Makhanlal walked past his house. He walked around for hours that night, with that awkward gait of his indecently proportioned body. The thoughtful darkness of the blackout was sympathetic, if uninquisitive.
The room had been echoing with the contractor’s deep baritone all this while. As soon as he stopped, night descended more heavily on the waiting room, attendant to its expectant silence. From afar, penetrating the veil of fog, came the sound of shunting, like a stifled moan during a dream, and from even further the sky was rent by the anguished cry of a dog. When the sounds died away, the Delhi man coughed mildly and said, “Is that the end of your story?”
“Do you need to hear more?” a smile appeared on the edge of the writer’s lips.
The senior bureaucrat, even accustomed as he was to everyone’s obsequiousness, was not thrown off his stride by that derisive smile. He asked gravely, “Perhaps I may be pardoned for asking a question: did the professor return the money?”
The contractor reached out for a cigarette. His hand was like a claw, the knuckles extremely thick and covered with hair. His face was so large that the small cigarette hanging from his lips looked rather ill-fitting. Blowing smoke like an amateur, he said, “This is all I know of Makhanlal’s story, I do not know the rest.”
“There is no need to, either,” the veteran writer observed. “What happened after that, whether he met the girl again, how she felt after insulting her benefactor, whether or not she used to pretend to read by the downstairs window in the hope of seeing that huge, ugly man once more – all this is irrelevant. The girl of our dreams, who lives in our heart, Makhanlal wanted to see her for one time as a real person – that is all that is real, all that matters, nothing else does. Surely Makhanlal would have married a girl of his mother’s choice after they moved to their new house – by now he must have a full family of his own, children, he must be earning a lot, too – but none of these subsequent events can cancel out the earlier one. Whatever Makhanlal had to get from his Malati, he has gotten already, he will never lose that, don’t you think?” the writer looked at the contractor as he concluded.
“Never mind, Makhanlal, it’s the others’ turn now,” the contractor showed his large teeth as he laughed.
“Your turn,” the doctor winked at the bureaucrat.
The man from Delhi seemed prepared. He didn’t waste his time refusing – he had probably planned his own story while he had been listening to the previous one; probably the result of office discipline. Just as he did his work on time in the office, so he started his story the same way, in a low, smooth voice, using small words . . .
Chapter Three
. . .
GAGAN BARAN’S TALE
My name is Gagan Baran Chatterjee. I am a minor celebrity in Delhi and Shimla, where they know me as G.B. Chatterjee. The initials G.B.C. have been scrawled on important government documents at least a thousand times. I went to England at twenty-one, and upon my return at twenty-four, I got a job in Delhi. I’ve lived there ever since. So long have I been there that I can no longer imagine living, or ever having lived, anywhere else. After retirement? I’ve made arrangements for that too. I have a house at Civil Lines in Delhi, you can see the Yamuna from the veranda. Bengal’s damp climate doesn’t suit my wife’s health – her father used to be the principal at Agra College. Our children speak in Hindi-laced Bengali, and they speak in English even more. Even this conversation with all of you in Bengali – this too is new for me. I hardly ever have these trysts with Bengal anymore, I don’t even feel any attraction. Once in a blue moon when I do go to Calcutta it’s on official work, I don’t stay a day longer than necessary.
And yet it was in Bengal that I was born, that I grew up, that the first chapter of my life was spent. Back then, in that distant childhood, could I ever have imagined myself as I am now? Nor, for that matter, can I now picture that boy, that shy young man, as the first edition of myself. All those memories seemed to have been wiped clean, I thought I had forgotten them all – but suddenly, after our conversation, it’s all come back so clearly.
I remember a boy from an ordinary Bengali family, aged seventeen, studying at a small town college. Having won a scholarship for my matriculation results, I was at the center of everyone’s intense expectations; most of my time was spent trying to live up to those expectations. You may find it hard to believe now, but I really was an innocent back then, the quintessential “good boy,” ever obedient, a hardworking student, extremely courteous to all and sundry to the point where I didn’t even dare look anyone in the eye.
But so what? Within me, the spirit of seventeen was quietly doing its work. You spoke of love; I used to dream of it too. Learning the formulae of chemistry had taken so much effort, but the basic formulae of life were there to be learned on their own; they advised trying to add color to one’s life, if temporary, and I was no exception to this. Countless were the number of novels I lapped up in between textbooks, all the titles you get in our small town. Yes, I even read – as a writer, you’ll laugh – even poetry. In poetry or in prose, wherever there was romance, there my heart received its sustenance – and how strange it was too, not all the writing in the world could alleviate my longing. The more I heard about love, the more I wanted it.
Today, I feel that no matter how much I heard about love through the written word, I heard nothing; even if I did, I did not listen. But when I heard it at seventeen, from Pakhi, melody flowed from flutes to fill the skies.
Yes, back at that distant age of seventeen, Pakhi had loved me. I can recollect her exact shape as I speak, she’s coming to life before my eyes. Black eyes. It was in those eyes that love was born, in those eyes that love lived its life; in those extremely conservative times, there was no other language available to us. I would be present as others talked amongst themselves, and so would she – but I cannot remember our having said a single word to one another then. Or perhaps that conversation of the eyes was a form of dialogue, one that sated whatever hunger we felt then. At least, we harbored no hope of anything more, nor did we have the opportunity for i
t.
But this same Pakhi finally spoke one day – one night, on a winter night such as this one.
It was about three in the morning. Imagine a small town, the road cutting through an enormous field to one side, fog all over, and the pale radiance of a dented moon hanging in the sky. The play staged at the Railway Club had just ended – it was a major annual event – and every home was represented in the audience. The women were the eager ones, the majority of the men present merely escorts. That exalted post was mine for the night, despite my youth, simply by virtue of my being a male. While the elders were reluctant, there I was, jobless and without any examinations looming before me – entirely available in other words, which was why the womenfolk pinned me down. I wasn’t very keen, but in those days it was simpler to do something, even unwillingly, than to refuse.
The women still sat behind a screen back then, but there had never been anything to block out their voices. Even if I could not see them, I could hear them, their giggling, their conversations, their bickering over seats, their observations about the play, their admonitions to their children; a mix of peculiar cries. There was plenty of shouting on stage too. As I nodded off sleepily, I felt I was watching two different plays, no, three – for since I was sitting close to the stage I could hear the prompting too, not to mention the fact that Draupadi and Bhimsen could be seen smoking on the side, occasionally. This three-piece din went on and on, showing no signs of relenting – I kept dropping off every now and then – but the play simply would not come to an end.
Finally, the play drew to a close and everyone pronounced it a grand success; the only regret we had was that as it was December, we could not carry on till dawn. Then it was time to go home. There was no transportation of any kind, people began to walk home in groups. For part of the way, everyone followed the same road. Everyone knew each other, so the noise emanating from the women continued non-stop, as though the play had not really ended and kept following them all. Suddenly the judge’s car roared by and then – or so it seemed to me – it was silent all around, bitterly cold, field after field stretching in every direction beneath the dead glow of the moon. You could not tell the tree apart from its shadow, and even the people trudging along seemed to be their own shadows. In a while there was no one else nearby, I was walking alone. I realized I had left my female companions behind; I must have been walking quickly because of the cold, and enjoying the walk. Just a few minutes earlier, I had been on the verge of sleep, but now I felt not a trace of it – in that enormous open field, on that foggy night, I felt every molecule in my body telling me I was awake, I was alive.
But had I pressed too far ahead? Was I neglecting my duty? Of course, having a boy who had only just acquired a baritone and a moustache beside them was not likely to be very helpful; on the contrary it would be inconvenient. But still, what if I was needed?
Pausing for breath, I looked behind me. The women’s group lay far behind, barely visible in the fog. But it seemed someone was walking swiftly toward me. Who was it? A girl. Definitely a rebuke from my mother, or an order from my sister-in-law.
When she came closer, I saw it was Pakhi.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Why should anything be the matter?” she replied.
“Well then?”
“What do you mean?”
“What brings you here?”
“They walk too slowly!”
I remember being surprised. What boldness! “Did you tell them?” I asked.
“I did.”
“What did they say?”
“What do you suppose?” Pakhi shook her head impatiently. I looked at her with new eyes in the faint moonlight.
“Which means . . .”
Pakhi interrupted me and said, “Are we just going to stand here?”
It was my first conversation with her. Suddenly I felt fulfilled, as though something heavy and profound had made its home within me.
We walked on, now side by side. But no more words the rest of the way. I walked swiftly, and not once did Pakhi say “Slower”; she kept pace with me. She was fourteen then, quite grown-up by the standards of the times, rather placid too, by those same standards. But she appeared anything but gentle then; it felt as though her legs could carry her thus for ages, ages, alongside me, beyond the houses, beyond the town, possibly beyond our small, familiar world to somewhere unknown.
So many thoughts crowd your mind in your naïve youth. And why should they not? By then we had left the paved district road for the walking trail winding through the fields, slightly heavy of breath, thorns pricking our feet at every step – they felt like naughty caresses – and the smell of the grass, the dew, the earth all around. We walked thus for some time as in a dream, then the fields ended, the town narrowed into neighborhoods; by the sleep-laden homes suddenly a pond appeared that had stolen the moon. Another bend in the road and there was the single-story house Pakhi lived in. Our houses were next to each other, our families were close friends – everyone was friends back then, everyone was happy. That’s the worst thing about the age we are at now, where it seems all happiness lies in the past.
Glancing back, I saw no sign of our guardians. We stood there silently as though in the wee hours of a winter morning, just when it’s coldest; a spring breeze was blowing, breathing heavily, our bodies warm from the long walk.
A little later I said, “You’d better get home.”
“In a while.”
I liked this idea. But though all this while I hadn’t worried about a thing, here in this familiar neighborhood, before this familiar house, I remembered our guardians. Maybe I had erred, maybe I deserved to be admonished, I should wait here with Pakhi to accept their rebukes humbly.
Then Pakhi spoke.
“If only our homes had been even further . . . mmm?”
I said, “But eventually the road would have ended.”
Pakhi glanced at me, her eyes glistening in the moonlight. Looking away, she said, “What were you thinking of all this while?”
“I don’t know.”
“I was thinking – I was thinking, this walk is lovely, but it’s because we’re walking on it that the road will end.”
Back then, I found this funny. But now it seems that fourteen-year-old girl had, without knowing it, spoken wisely. Our existence is like that: living eats into our life, all the roads we love end because we take them.
“I was thinking of other things too,” Pakhi spoke again, “but I won’t tell you, you’ll laugh.”
“Tell me,” I gave her permission, as it were, drawing on all the maturity of my college-going self.
“No, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“So soon?”
“That’s what happens to me. There are so many things I mean to tell you, but when it’s time, it all slips away.”
“It all slips away?”
“Yes. I love you, that’s why this happens. I forget it all.”
I trembled at her words. I looked away, so as not to have to look at her. The other womenfolk appeared at the head of the road. I was relieved. Who knew what else Pakhi might say?
Were we scolded for having walked on ahead? I cannot remember. The others said something, but I didn’t hear a word of it. My hearing had no room for anything other than Pakhi’s parting words to me.
I couldn’t sleep that night.
Gagan Baran paused. The other three were motionless. There was no way to tell whether they had been listening or not: the contractor had turned up his overcoat collar to cover his ears, the doctor was wrapped in his blanket from the waist downward, eyes heavy with sleep. The writer was leaning back in his chair, facing upwards, a cigarette burning away in his fingers; that he was awake became clear when he raised his hand to his lips. But this Delhi bureaucrat did not look at his listeners, studying the wall before him carefully, as though the rest of his story was written on it. The invisible writing of the past – whic
h one cannot forget even when one thinks one has – swam up before his eyes, and he resumed in his smooth, slow cadence.
I remember another day. This time too, it was night, not day. This too was a moonlit night, but instead of winter’s fog-swept moonlight, it was a mad summer’s full moon night. I lived in Calcutta then, it was the second year of my M.S. My elder brother had moved to Calcutta the previous year, and I had left my hostel to move in with him at his Shyambazar home. It was there that Pakhi had come to stay the night, en route to her new husband in Kurseong.
Hers had been a big wedding. Devoting myself to mathematics had made me much less of a romantic, and I was struck less by novels than I’d been before, but I felt it wouldn’t be fitting not to have even a small feeling of heartbreak at Pakhi’s having gotten married. I even managed to snarl at her in my mind, picturing her as having betrayed me, but to tell the truth I felt no pain, no anger. Despite the stuff from the books, my heart remained intact. I was actually disappointed in myself, I went down in my own self-esteem, and, as far as I know, Pakhi hadn’t breathed a single sigh either as she married the freshly minted deputy magistrate.
You may be wondering why she should have had cause to sigh at all. All this is part and parcel of adolescence, it cures itself with age, who frets about it afterwards? Yes, certainly I was being childish; as long as there were children in this world, that particular quality could not be purged. No matter what we say now that we’re old, you cannot dismiss it. It’s true, neither of us had thought of marriage, there was no scope for it beyond the relationship we had then, that was what we had accepted in our hearts. But did that mean it was to be classified as weak, poor, watered down? If that were so, why did I suddenly think so intensely of Pakhi now, all these years later in this strange place, at this strange hour?
My Kind of Girl Page 4
