In the days of letter writing, having penfriends was a big craze. The weekly magazine that we subscribed to had a list of names and addresses on the last page that intrigued me and urged me to write to someone. I was hesitant to be the first to write but I had sent my name and address in a few issues.
Maybe it was destined that love would hit me through a rose pink envelope and one day I got that first scented letter.
Apart from my name that letter had just two lines:
Dear Vijay,
I am a sixteen-year-old girl. I can’t promise that I will prove to be a good friend. Reply if you feel like.
Anamika
For some reason I took that letter as a challenge and I wrote back the same day. On a plain inland form were two lines:
Dear Anamika,
I am sure we will be really good friends.
Write soon.
Vijay
That was the first letter I ever wrote to a girl. My first love letter.
I remember writing my entire biodata to Anamika in the very next letter: where I lived, what I did, how I loved reading and intended to publish my autobiography one day, that I loved watching films and that I had a heart full of love. And of course my height, the colour of my skin, how I looked, everything, I wrote everything in that second letter.
Actually, it was a clever ruse on my part, for I received everything that I wanted to know about her in her reply: what she liked doing, how she looked, what she thought, what she wanted from life.
I was well aware of the fact that the same person who had written everything about himself in that second letter to a girl he had never met had spent a whole lifetime hiding his past from his wife, while quietly keeping it alive all this time.
And it’s sad, because Tanvi had always felt that I didn’t love her deeply, she always felt that something was missing, incomplete. I always stubbornly denied the truth.
The story of letters between me and Anamika took off.
At first, we wrote formally but slowly we began to share our deepest feelings. Things like, ‘Today my father was very angry with me,’ or ‘I saw that film today, and it reminded me of you.’
And she would write, ‘Today I rode on a classmate’s bike. I hope you don’t mind?’
We were getting closer.
I had never got as close to Tanvi in thirty years of marriage as I had to Anamika just through letters.
Coming across those letters suddenly had thrown me into great confusion. I would look at the letters and then at the pages of my almost complete autobiography. Tanvi had helped me so much in writing it—technical help, like drafting, proofreading, etc.
But after finding that letter I felt that I had left a beautiful part of my life out of my autobiography. That was a huge travesty. Against myself.
So I decided to add a few more pages to my story.
But the problem was, what would I say to Tanvi and how?
Whenever I got the chance I would take Anamika’s letters out and read every line over and over again.
They were filled with love, filled with the fragrance of the earth after the first rain, the bittersweet taste of young love.
I looked for the last letter she wrote to me, the letter that had changed my life. I remembered all those bitter words, words that altered my taste for life.
After a year and half of pure love-filled letters she had written:
This was all a joke for me, a way of passing the time. I don’t love you and my name is not Anamika; it is Saroj. Don’t write to me any more. My address has changed.
Goodbye.
That letter had shaken me deeply. Over the past year and a half I had done nothing else except love Anamika. But I had worked hard to win her over and earn her appreciation, and get admission in a good engineering college.
I didn’t get Anamika but I did get admission into a good college, and if I put aside love, everything improved in my life after that.
And I had put love aside, but suddenly, after all these years, the feeling was awakening. The emotions that had been sidelined all these years were now suddenly flowing out.
I knew I wanted to include my one and only love story in my autobiography—as if to make a dishonest relationship honest, legitimate. But did I have the courage to accept that I hadn’t loved my wife as much as I loved Anamika? And would Tanvi be able to endure this truth?
‘Now what? You want to change something again?’ she grumbled as she came and sat close to me. ‘At this rate this book will never get published.’
‘Tell me. What needs to be removed or added?’ she looked intently at me trying to read my expression.
Wordlessly I handed her a letter from Anamika.
She read it and smiled.
‘You were eighteen then, right?’
‘Hmm,’ I nodded.
‘Are there more letters?’ she asked.
I looked deep in her eyes. Tanvi was calm, as she always was.
Reluctantly I handed her the whole bundle of letters.
She read them all. Then she said softly, ‘I think her name was Anamika and none of this was a joke.’
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked quietly.
Wiping the corner of her eyes with the corner of her sari she said, ‘I’m a woman, I can understand her.’
I tried to read Tanvi’s mind. I felt relieved after having told Tanvi about Anamika; lighter, like some weight had been lifted from me. Eventually I did write about Anamika in my autobiography. I wrote about our letters but I didn’t know what to call our relationship. Was it love? What was the truth? How should I write about those untouched moments? I was confused. As always Tanvi came to the rescue. We called it an unfinished love story.
There were some things from those letters which I couldn’t bring myself to write about, like the time she had written that she slept with my letters under her pillow. Just that thought had kept me awake for so many nights.
I was happy that I had written almost everything about my life truthfully in my book. I was happy that Tanvi had understood me so well, that she hadn’t condemned me for it. For the first time I felt in love with Tanvi.
My book was published. I got some fan mail and a few phone calls. I felt satisfied that my book was a success.
Some day later a pink envelope came in the post. The handwriting was familiar. My heart raced. With shaking hands I lifted the letter to my face and breathed deeply. I laughed at my childishness!
There was a small letter inside.
Dear Vijay,
So you finally wrote your autobiography, and so truthfully! Congratulations!
In response to your honesty, I want to share something with you. I didn’t write that last letter to you myself. My father made me write it so that I would not have any trouble getting married because of you.
My name is Anamika, not Saroj.
And that was not a joke, I did love you.
Anamika
Just then the door opened and Tanvi entered.
Once again I was hiding a letter behind my back, trembling like a pipal leaf. There was a strange silence in the room.
Silently I handed the letter to Tanvi.
I had understood the hurt of an incomplete and dishonest love. That hurt had now healed.
Tanvi was looking at me surprised. There was nothing except love and trust in her eyes. I went to her and held her hand. Her fingers closed tightly around mine.
The fragrance from the flowers in her hair filled the room.
SATRANGI
Manjit Thakur
The old mansion stood defiantly at the farthest end of the small town of Madhupur. Hastings House it was called. The only broken-down road that entered Madhupur stopped abruptly when it encountered the jungle that used to be the garden of Hastings House. The once grand garden was now overgrown and wild.
The mansion was dilapidated and desperately in need of repair. No one ventured near it. Not even the cowherds. There were a couple of graves in the grounds of Hastings House a
nd the town’s people believed that a ghost from one of those graves haunted the mansion.
Hastings House had once belonged to an Englishman but now Bauji was the owner. Bauji was one of the bigger zamindars of the area and lived in the city. Then some of the villagers, influenced by communists, had taken over the land amidst slogans of he who shall till the land shall own the land. Bauji had had to come back to Madhupur to save his lands.
With Bauji came his son, Chandramohan, and his daughter, Vibha. Though Vibha was married she didn’t get along with her husband and so she stayed with her father and cursed her husband and in-laws, swearing that she would only eat properly and sleep peacefully after she saw them dead.
Before Bauji and his family moved back the house had been repaired properly. Some cracks remained despite all efforts and the inhabitants lived with God’s name on their lips. Then during the summer wedding season Chandramohan got married to a girl called Satrangi. Unlike Chandramohan in every way, she was fair and beautiful and well-spoken. There was no comparison. Chandramohan had small eyes, hers were big and kohl-lined. His nose was bulbous, hers was sharp. With her graceful neck and waist-length hair she looked like a fairy.
Chandramohan was uneducated and Satrangi had topped the whole district in the Class Twelve examinations. She wrote poetry and stories, and everyone had known that she would make something of her life.
But then sometimes a twist comes along and something unexpected happens. At Satrangi’s mother’s insistence, Satrangi’s father who was a very influential person, denied her permission to do anything else with her life and married her off immediately.
It was their wedding night. Satrangi waited for Chandramohan.
Chandramohan came home in a drunken stupor, his eyes red. He lifted her veil and she looked away coyly. All the girls in college had talked about how the groom would be tall, dark and handsome. But the reek of alcohol in his breath was unbearable for Satrangi. After walking around uneasily for a while, Chandramohan went to the bathroom to vomit, and Satrangi sat on the bed waiting for him, her chin resting on her drawn-up knees, when suddenly she saw a shadow near the window.
She was terrified and lay down pretending to be asleep. She wanted to make believe she hadn’t seen anything. Exhausted after a long day, Satrangi did finally fall asleep. But all the while, somewhere at the back of her mind, the feeling lingered that there was someone else in her room.
It was true that there had been shadow there. The shadow had stood there, terrified, the whole night. He had lived in that mansion for two hundred years. Usually he never left the mansion after sunrise. He was the reason no one ventured near the place, even when it had been empty.
The shadow stood still against the wall. He was scared. The shadow, who the world called a ghost, was terrified of humans. Ghosts have fewer emotions than people. If there is love in people there is also hate, and hatred can cause a lot of pain.
The shadow saw the new bride emerge from the bathroom after her bath, her hair still damp. He watched Satrangi water the sacred Tulsi plant and light the oil lamp. Then she climbed the stairs up to her room. He was cautious now as he watched her.
There was a strange perfume in Satrangi’s freshly washed hair which had dampened the edge of her sari. He drew close to her. Very close. He knew she wouldn’t be able to see him unless he wanted her to.
Satrangi looked shyly at her reflection in the mirror as she combed her hair. She had forgotten that the previous night had been her wedding night, her first night with her husband. But even she couldn’t remember when her drunk husband had finished vomiting and had come and passed out on the bed.
She felt sad. Her dreams had already begun to die. She was so full of potential, and her husband . . . ?
For Satrangi her husband was nothing more than a limp drunkard. Her deep eyes filled with tears. As she applied kajal to her moist eyes the shadow drew even closer. He wanted to look deep into her eyes.
She opened her eyes wide to apply the kajal, her eyeballs moving from right to left, and he thought she looked like a fish. The shadow moved even closer to those eyes and suddenly Satrangi felt warm breath on her face.
It was a familiar smell. ‘Who is it?’ she asked, uncertain.
The shadow couldn’t control himself; he drew close to her and whispered in her ear, ‘It’s me, Robert Clive.’
‘Clive? Clive who?’
‘A ghost. The ghost of this mansion.’
Satrangi wasn’t scared. She was strangely excited. And filled with this excitement she went about her daily tasks. She always felt as if someone was walking alongside her. In the kitchen, in the granary, in the courtyard, wherever she went, she always felt Robert near her.
At first she found the thought of a shadow being attached to her in the loneliness of the crowded house a bit unpleasant. But she also felt alone whenever Robert wasn’t around.
One night she was pleasantly surprised. She had just emerged from her bath and flowers began to appear on her wet footprints—oleander on the first, jasmine on the second and hibiscus on the third. Robert Clive . . . Satrangi smiled.
Days grew into weeks, and weeks into months.
Satrangi was no longer a new bride. She had been the darling in her home, but here in her husband’s house everyone put her down. Vibha seemed to have left her own husband’s house only to dance on Satrangi’s head. Trying her best to ignore Vibha’s taunts and sneers Satrangi cooked, cleaned the rice, washed and dried wheat, and if there was still time left she would make cow-dung pats for the fire.
Chandramohan would leave for the fields at the crack of dawn and would return for lunch. Before Satrangi could even speak him properly he would pick up his motorbike and leave for the nearby market. But when Satrangi finished all her chores and returned to her room, her mind was refreshed. Sometimes she would find bunches of jasmine on her bed, or the foot of the bed would be covered with a pillow of flowers.
Outside her room, as far as her in-laws were concerned, Satrangi was nothing more than a maidservant. Make tea for Bauji, or Chandramohan’s favourite mutton biryani, or oil Vibha’s hair and remove the nits.
But Robert always treated her like a queen. When she returned tired to her room he would take the jar of oil from her cupboard and would massage her beautiful, soft feet.
The coconut oil would smell of jasmine and the bath water in the bucket of rose water. At night she would go up on to the roof and he would sit like her shadow at her feet and tell her stories that were 200 years old.
One day while she was kneading dough, a strand of her hair fell across her face and Robert gently blew it away. He enjoyed that so much that he would often blow gently at her face.
Satrangi laughed, ‘How come you’re so sweet, Robert?’
She didn’t notice that Vibha had heard her laughing and was watching as she seemingly talked to herself.
The next day was a very difficult one for Satrangi. Vibha had the whole household worked up. ‘Bhabhi is mad, she talks to herself. On moonlit nights she recites poems to the wind.’
Soon the whole of Madhupur knew that the zamindar’s daughter-in-law was going mad. Before Bauji could come to know of it, Satrangi had been locked up inside her room. Instead of making her sad and lonely, Satrangi was relieved. She was free of her drunkard husband and that courtyard. Robert was always around her. ‘Satrangi! Satrangi!’ he would call out to her.
Satrangi had fallen in love with Robert Clive’s voice. He had a treasure trove of stories: incidents about the Madhupur area, the deaths from malaria and black fever, how the area used to be called Kalapani, meaning black water, and many other stories of lakes full of fish and fields full of rice.
Robert had drawn near Satrangi one day and whispered in her ear, ‘If I had been alive I would never had let your feet touch the ground. I would have put my palms under them for you to walk on.’
Satrangi smiled. Robert’s voice was deep and still. She hadn’t seen him but she loved his voice.
For her
Robert was his voice. She didn’t like to be without him for even a moment now. Robert had shown her his grave from the window of her room and told her the story of his death. The price for his love had been his life. Neither the local people nor the East India Company had been happy with him. This was the spot where he had shot himself.
Satrangi’s eyes swam with tears. ‘The price of love will be death in this lifetime too,’ she said.
She had been locked up in the room for a week now. Bauji still didn’t know anything about it or that she had gone without food or water for all these days, that very girl who he had emotionally declared would be like his daughter when he had taken dowry from her father.
Anyway, Bauji was Bauji; for him local politics was more important than the people in his house. But Chandramohan at least should have noticed. But he knew nothing. He would go to the fields in the morning and then where he went in the evenings nobody knew. Or at least everyone in Madhupur knew but his family feigned ignorance.
Satrangi sat on her bed, broken, tired, her head resting on her knees. Two days after she had been locked up Vibha had entered the room with an exorcist and some old women from the neighbouring houses. The exorcist wore a strange Turkish hat on his head with a rainbow tassel.
As soon as he had seen her he had said that she was haunted by a ghost, and that the ghost was in love with her long hair. They had pounced on her and shorn her head and tied her up in shackles. The door was locked from outside. According to the exorcist the lock was sacred and would prevent any ghost from coming near Satrangi.
Robert had disappeared at that moment. Satrangi had wept, ‘Robert! Where are you? See what they have done to me!’
There had been no answer.
But in the evening, once again the room was filled with the fragrance of flowers. She had lifted her head from her knees to see her bed strewn with flowers, hibiscus, jasmine, tuberose and Arabian jasmine. She heard Robert say, ‘I went to collect them for you. Did you think that fraud of an exorcist could stop me? No one can stop love.’
Storywallah Page 3
