Storywallah

by Neelesh Misra

  I couldn’t lie to him. Slightly sheepishly I said, ‘I thought you people had forgotten, that’s all,’ and looked away guiltily.

  Akshay held my hands tightly in his and said, ‘How could you think that, Papa? We’re your sons, we’re just like you, we care about you.’

  I breathed deeply and kissed his forehead.

  In a little while the boys went to their rooms and I thought about how sensible they both were, and how much they cared about me.

  ‘We’re just like you,’ Akshay had said. The words touched something deep inside. I was troubled. Were my sons really like me? Had I been a son like them to Babuji?

  Sleep had vanished from my eyes. I put my dressing gown on and sat in my rocking chair near the fireplace. My feet sank into the soft fibres of the thick carpet.

  This house in a posh locality in London was the result of my life’s hard work. When I had come here from India for the first time, I barely had anything—just a few pounds, some nascent dreams and a whole lot of fear. How would I show my face in India if I wasn’t successful here?

  These days I thought about the old days all the time.

  I understand that old age brings with it diseases. But I had called this disease upon myself. This wanting to revisit the old days all the time was disturbing me and making me ill.

  I had lived in Jabalpur before I moved to London. Babuji had been a professor in the government college there. We weren’t very rich but we lived comfortably. There were the three of us at home, Babuji, Bua and I. Bua had told me that there had been some complications at the time of my birth and my mother had passed away then. I had been with her for three days and then Bua had taken on the role of my mother.

  I learnt from other relatives that Babuji and Bua had raised me jointly. And after I grew up a bit, I realized how much I meant to them.

  When I was a little older Bua told me that my mother had made Babuji promise that he would never refuse anything I asked for. Maybe that was why Babuji had never married again. I didn’t know why Bua had never married, and I hadn’t tried to find out.

  Today my sons are grown up and when I started thinking about them settling down, I remembered Babuji and his house and Bua. I remembered my mistakes. No matter how hard I tried to shake those memories, I just couldn’t.

  Maybe I wanted to go back, but who was there to forgive me now?

  I woke up the next day with a heavy head. When I asked for an Aspirin with my coffee my sons got worried.

  ‘What’s happened, Papa? Is your blood pressure high?’ they spoke in unison. One of them placed his palm on my head and asked me, ‘Are you feverish? Should we take you to the doctor?’

  Their concern annoyed me for some reason and I spoke sharply, ‘Nothing has happened bhai! It’s just a headache. Please leave me alone!’

  Silence filled the room. It was not the custom in my home to leave a sufferer alone. I knew my demand would not be fulfilled so I took the car and drove off.

  A little while later I sat on the banks of the Thames. I remembered Gwarighat on the banks of the Narmada River in Jabalpur. I fixed my eyes on the water.

  The water was exactly the same. All water is the same, I suppose, but all people aren’t the same. I wished Akshay’s words were true. I wished I had been a son to Babuji like my sons were to me. I wished I hadn’t left Babuji to come and settle in London. I wished I had managed to convince him to come and stay with me here.

  Like the way I had convinced him when I had wanted to do the business course in Oxford. And the way I had convinced him to sell his house.

  The Thames’ banks were crowded.

  I remembered the days I had spent with Babuji along the Narmada’s banks—when I would go into the water to pick up coins tossed in by the faithful, and Babuji would make me throw them back into deep water telling me that the prayers of found coins aren’t answered.

  I had never seen Babuji throw a coin into the river. I had, once, with the prayer that Babuji would send me to England to study.

  When I sat on Babuji’s shoulders so that I could throw the coin into deep waters, I heard Bua, standing on the shore, shout, ‘Go further, a little more, a little deeper.’

  Three years ago she had shouted in the same way, when I had gone to immerse Babuji’s ashes in the river: ‘A little further, Bituwa, a little more, a little deeper!’

  Evening was falling. This was the first birthday I had spent away from my family. How strange that I suddenly remembered Babuji and Bua and my country.

  There was a reason behind this. The reason was the care my sons showed for me, their love for me. These two boys who had grown up abroad were with me at every step. And it was all this that made me feel like a sinner. Maybe I was afraid that I would lose their respect if they found out the truth about me. Would the darkness of the past get hidden with the bright colours of the present?

  In my restlessness I called Bua from there itself.

  Her frail voice made my throat dry. ‘Bua?’ Somehow I got the word out.

  Her voice grew stronger immediately on hearing mine. ‘Bituwa? It’s your birthday today. Do you remember?’

  She remembered my birthday. I burst into tears, and disconnected the phone.

  Every birthday Bua would wake me up early, bathe me and take me to the temple. She would ask Panditji to do a special puja for me, so that nothing bad would ever happen to me again.

  And what had I done? I had turned her out of her own home. Babuji had had to sell his house so that I could study abroad. He had spent the last years of his life in a rented house. Where Bua still lived.

  Yes, I did send her money every month to fulfil my duty. But today I understood that money transferred into a bank account can never make up for the absence of a child.

  The sun was setting across the Thames. India was four and a half hours ahead of London; the sun must have set a long time ago there. It probably set when I had left Babuji and Bua and moved to London.

  Staring at the sky I recollected the past. When Babuji would take me boating at a huge waterfall, only so we could see the sunset. He would say, ‘This is the only time you see so many shades of orange in the sky; orange, the colour of hope, hope that the sun will rise again tomorrow.’ He would tell me stories of that river surrounded by marble rocks. They were all sad stories.

  I felt restless. Heavy-headed. I called my travel agent. ‘A ticket for next week. No, not a return; a one-way.’

  I felt some peace after I put the phone down. I went home. They must be waiting for me for my birthday party.

  That night when I told my wife and children about my plan to go to India, they were shocked. My wife said, ‘What is the need now? Babuji isn’t here any more and you send money to Buaji every month.’

  My sons were quiet. Then after a while Akshay spoke, ‘If you want to go you should.’ And the younger one joined him, ‘You must go, Papa.’

  Something inside me hurt. Whenever my children said ‘Yes, Papa,’ agreeing to something I said, I heard my own spoilt insistence, ‘No, Babuji, no.’

  Every good thing about my sons showed me all my mistakes, made me remember Babuji and Bua.

  When I had first mentioned wanting to go abroad, after two years with an IT firm in India, it had made Babuji deeply uneasy. I didn’t realize it then but it was the fear of losing his son.

  I had convinced myself that it was the pain of having to sell his house to arrange the money for me. Maybe that’s why I assuaged my mind by sending him money.

  But the wounds I inflicted had deepened and I had remained oblivious.

  When I landed in Jabalpur it was eight in the morning. I caught a taxi and went home. The last time I had been here was when Babuji had died. And I had come for a week two or three years before that.

  As I entered the house I was welcomed with the fragrance of incense. I had forgotten how the perfumed air could touch your mind. I pushed open the door to see Bua praying to the tulsi plant.

  Seeing me she left her puja midway an
d ran to me and clung to me. She softly said, ‘You’ll stay a few days? You don’t have to leave early?’

  I enveloped Bua, in her crushed and worn sari and her fragrance of sandalwood, tightly in my arms. ‘I won’t go, Bua, not soon.’

  After crying for a while Bua asked if I wanted water. Then she made me a cup of strong tea. She had my luggage placed in Babuji’s room. The cupboard in his room was still filled with his things: his glasses, calculator, diary and pen. I put my glasses and my phone and my pen next to his things. His photograph hung on the wall, the one with him and my mother, their wedding photograph.

  I ate my food and left the house. I had something urgent to do.

  I walked down the alley to its other end, to the house in which I had spent my childhood. Whose mango tree bore the raw mangoes from which panna was made to save me from the Loo that blew in the hot summer months. The house that I had caused to be sold.

  I stopped in front of the house. It was in a bad condition, the plaster peeling, the mango tree covered in dust. I wondered if it still bore fruit.

  There was a brick boundary wall outside the house. It hadn’t been there before. Earlier, a thick grove of henna had been enough; green and fragrant, it had looked so lovely. When homes become houses, their greenery goes away, and their perfume.

  I went home. Bua had made gatte ki sabzi and roti and was waiting for me. She remembered what I liked to eat, she remembered everything.

  For the first few days she cooked for me and we talked about Babuji and my childhood. The thing that pained me the most was that she had no complaint against me. Nothing she said showed me that Babuji had been upset with me, or disappointed in me.

  In a few days I had accomplished the task that I had come for. I was the owner of Babuji’s house, my house. The papers of the house felt like Babuji’s caress and my mind’s burden lessened a little.

  I took the papers to Bua and smiled as I put them in her lap. She looked at the papers but didn’t say anything for a long time, then softly she said, ‘Why did you spend so much money? I am okay here.’

  I was surprised. I had thought Bua would dance for joy when she got the papers and run and place them in her mandir. I thought she would hug me and heap the blessings of the world on me. And then she would rush to make something sweet and stuff it down my throat.

  But it hadn’t happened like that. She just got up and went quietly to her room. When the house had been sold too she and Babuji had been calm like this.

  I remained sitting in the courtyard. I realized that I hadn’t ever really understood Babuji and Bua. It was I who had been important for them. The house was irrelevant then and it was irrelevant now.

  But now I knew what I had to do.

  Some weeks later Bua and I were clearing the security check for our flight to London at Delhi’s International Airport. I smiled as I watched Bua arrange her badi and pickle packets.

  The sparkle in her eyes and the joy that filled her face were like a soft balm on old wounds.

  NAILS

  Umesh Pant

  The engagement had just finished, signs of it lay littered around the room. On the tables teacups and empty plates waited to be cleared away. My cousins were examining the gifts I had been given and my friends were teasing me about Sumit, who had become my fiancé from being my boyfriend and who had just left for office. Ma was complaining, ‘He could have taken a whole day off for his own engagement at least.’ I had tried to explain to her that he had an important meeting that he couldn’t get out of, but would she understand? And how could I expect her to understand? Nothing was usual about our relationship. Even today Sumit and I are more friends than lovers, we live in the same house, dream the same dreams, live the same lives, a life in which we are equal.

  Many things had changed since we had first declared our love, and we viewed those changes as achievements.

  When we first met we both had twenty-five-thousand-rupee jobs. We lived next door to each other in rented rooms in Munirka and shared a bathroom. We both went to our respective offices in DTC buses and stopped together on the way home to enjoy a qawwali at Nizammudin or to spin dreams at the Qutb Minar in Mehrauli. Sometimes I would forget my religious beliefs and eat some gravy from his plate of chicken curry and sometimes he would toss aside the nonvegetarian menu in a restaurant and ask, ‘What is your vegetarian speciality?’ In those days late-night auto rickshaw rides were a luxury.

  We were both software engineers which is how we got to know each other. Soon we were neighbours and then we were in love. We now going to put the stamp of society’s approval on our four-year-old love story. But as our engagement concluded something had happened that made me question if we were doing the right thing.

  Our families had been sitting around when Sumit drew out a beautiful blue engagement ring from his pocket. I extended my left hand. He hesitated and looked at my hand strangely and then at me.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said and slipped the ring on to my finger. I put my ring on his finger and whispered in his ear, ‘Congratulations, Mister Sumit! You are going to become a husband!’

  He smiled in response but it had been a bland smile. His response to my congratulations was, ‘Yaar, the least you could have done was cut your nails. You know I don’t like these long nails.’

  ‘Why are you ruining your mood for such a small thing, and on a day like today?’ I tried to make light of the matter. But Sumit seemed to be more upset then he looked.

  ‘It’s not just a matter of a nail, Simmi,’ he said.

  It certainly wasn’t, I thought. If my nail could have caused him so much trouble, there must be something triggering the strong reaction.

  Was it my nail that had annoyed him, or the fact that I had not listened to him? If it was the first reason it was okay but it was the second?

  We had just got engaged, then why had the relationship that had grown over four years suddenly started seeming weak to me, over an insignificant nail?

  ‘Where are you lost, Simmi? Your phone is ringing,’ Ma’s words broke into my thoughts. It was Sumit. I picked up the phone and heard Sumit’s voice on the other end. ‘Could I speak to my soon-to-be-wife, please?’

  ‘She’s busy at the moment. Please leave a message and it will be delivered,’ I replied.

  ‘Please tell her that I will be late today and that she should have her dinner and sleep.’ And he hung up. There was a hackathon in his office that day and no one would leave till all the work was finished. He was presenting a new software idea and if it was selected he would win a trip to Paris. I had been very excited for Sumit, but suddenly I found myself wishing he didn’t win the contest.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to win. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get long leave within the next two months. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind earlier. But suddenly I was wondering what would happen if he won the contest and I couldn’t go to Paris with him. I had always believed that Sumit would respect his happiness but at the same time he would also understand my constraints.

  I couldn’t get Sumit’s expression as he had looked at my nails out of my head.

  I took the car out and drove mindlessly around. Whenever I needed time to think alone I would drive out to unknown roads. I sit in a new cafe. It’s as if the strangeness of the new place brings me closer to the familiar. I find it easy to talk to myself.

  I was sitting alone in a cafe again.

  The shine seemed to have gone out of the dreams I had seen of a future with Sumit. The weather reflected my confusion, it couldn’t decide whether it was going to be sunny, or rain.

  Ma had taken a long time to try and explain things to me.

  ‘Look, Simmi, you have decided who you want to marry and we haven’t objected; we compromised on our views on caste and arranged marriage. Marriage is all about compromise; you will have to learn to adjust.’

  How could I explain to Ma that the thing that had drawn me to Sumit was the fact that I didn’t hav
e to adjust myself for him. I had stayed how I was and that was how Sumit had fallen in love with me. And he had stayed how he was. We had never tried to change each other. So how is it a small thing if this crucial thing has changed now?

  Since my childhood I had rebelled for all sorts of things, including my nail.

  The first time I had bought a new nail polish and worn it to school, the teacher had noticed it immediately. ‘Simmi, nice girls don’t grow their nails so long. Cut them and come to school tomorrow.’

  Then I made the mistake of asking her, ‘What is the correlation between long nails and goodness, ma’am?’

  She looked at me in disbelief, amazed that I had asked the question. I knew that one shouldn’t have long nails for hygiene purposes. But I had only grown the nail of one finger. And I always kept it clean. I really wanted to know how one became good if one kept their nails short.

  My teacher had slapped me for asking the question. Even then the question had not been of the nail. It had been my questioning her authority.

  Why had such a small incident created this storm in my mind? Was I making too much out of it?

  For a while now I had not been able to imagine a life without Sumit. He used to drop me to office every morning and pick me up every evening. When he didn’t have the car I used to pick him up in an autorickshaw on the way home. We had both wanted a car but neither of us could afford one. When I had got my first proper bonus after my promotion it had been my suggestion that we both jointly buy a car, ‘I’ll make the down payment, you pay the EMIs,’ I had suggested.

  It seemed to trouble him a bit and then he brushed it off lightly saying, ‘No, yaar! I’m not going to buy my first car with my girlfriend’s money! I’m not that badly off!’

  But I had insisted.

  ‘Come on, Sumit. We are going to marry each other. How does it matter?’

  I had managed to convince him somehow. After that we both joined the same driving school and learnt how to drive. But I couldn’t remember a single occasion when I had sat in the driver’s seat. For the first time in years I wondered, why was Sumit always in the driver’s seat?