Storywallah

by Neelesh Misra

  A woman, ageing, her greying hair suggesting that she was probably a few years younger than me. She always sat on the yellow bench in the far corner of the park. Once, as I walked past, I saw that she was reading a book, reading as if she were drowning in it. ‘May I sit here?’ I asked hesitantly one day. She lifted her head and peered at me through her glasses. ‘Yes?’ she asked, surprised. ‘If you don’t mind, may I sit here?’ I asked again. She quickly glanced at the other benches in the park, they were all full. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘why not?’ and shifted over to one end of the bench and started reading again. And I began to read her.

  As she read her face would suddenly become sad, sometimes a faint laugh would light it up, sometimes a faint worry would furrow her eyebrows, sometimes peace would settle on it. Her expressions reflected whatever she read. I watched her. After a couple of hours she closed the book and put it into her bag, stood up with some difficulty (her knees troubled her perhaps) and then slowly walked towards the main gate.

  This went on for some days. She would walk to the yellow bench, read for a few hours and then leave. I had never, in all my hours in the park, found the peace that she seemed to find in her book.

  ‘If you don’t mind, may I ask you something? What is it that you read so intently?’ I mustered up the courage to ask one day. She smiled and replied, ‘Amrita. Have you heard of her? Amrita Pritam?’ I shook my head. ‘She writes beautifully, I’m reading a book by her.’

  ‘You?’ she inquired. ‘I live close by,’ I replied, ‘But I spend most of my time in this park. I’m a retired bank officer.’ She smiled. Her smile pulled at her wrinkles, deepening them. ‘You seem to have some trouble with your knees,’ I said. She closed the book and looked straight at me and said, ‘Yes, at this age it’s the knees that hurt, the heart is beyond all that.’ We both had a laugh.

  That was our first proper meeting. We spent time together after that, getting to know each other. I seemed to be alive again. Vrinda and I had found a friend in each other.

  Our friendship grew. It had the wonderful informality that friendship should have. Vrinda’s story was similar to mine. After the death of her husband, she too was trying to cope with the aloneness that age and circumstances brought with them. She had found a way to deal with it through books. She read Amrita Pritam’s autobiography, Raseedi Ticket, to me. Once she said, ‘Amrita lived with Imroz but she loved Sahir just as much. She and Sahir never got together though . . . You know Sahir? Sahir Ludhianvi?’ I didn’t know much about him but at least I knew who he was, so I nodded. She went on to tell me how sometimes, when Amrita and Imroz were riding on his scooter, Amrita would trace Sahir’s name on Imroz’s back. She told me many more entrancing stories and anecdotes. When she asked me to tell her something it almost always began with, ‘One day at the bank . . .’ and she would say, ‘Please, not about work, tell me something else instead.’ And I would get annoyed and say, ‘What should I talk about then? I don’t read interesting books.’ And she would say, ‘Tell me about Rehana.’

  That was a deep question. I think the detail with which I answered that took Vrinda by surprise. But I talked and she listened. I remembered every tiny detail: our arranged marriage in Delhi, our first holiday together in Mussoorie, she had gifted me a striped sweater and I had given her a pair of silver anklets, my first gift to her. She had worn those anklets her whole life. In fact, a few days before she died, in the hospital, she had said, ‘Bury these anklets with me.’ And I had put my hands to her lips to stop her words, saying, ‘Nothing will happen to you.’ I remembered everything about Rehana, every wrinkle, the lines on her face, the mole on her wrist, her palms, old and rough, that she had laid gently on my face, a few hours before she died.

  ‘You’re crying!’ as I looked up at Vrinda and exclaimed as she wiped her wet eyes. We were both late going home that day. When I reached home, Zaheer was furious. I think he and Aliyana had been looking for me for a while.

  ‘Is this any time to come home, Abba? After a long day at work, I want to rest, not run around looking for you,’ Zaheer’s voice was thick with anger. Aliyana spoke from behind him, ‘We were looking all over for you. Do you have any idea how worried we were? Not fair.’ She flounced away, sweeping a bewildered Amaan away with her as she left. Zaheer came up to me and said, ‘You shouldn’t go out without telling us. Look at how upset Aliyana is.’

  The house was quiet that night. I went into my room and lay down. At ten o’clock that night there was a sound at my door. It was Amaan; he had a torch in his hand. He often came to my room at night like that. When his parents were asleep he would creep into my room with his torch and snuggle up under my razai with me. We would whisper like secret agents in the torchlight.

  He lit the torch under the razai and asked, ‘Dada, had you gone away somewhere? Papa was very angry.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I had some very important work.’ And then changing the subject I asked, ‘Have you seen the new nest on the roof? Has it hatched yet?’ He was quiet and then asked, ‘You must have felt really bad when Papa spoke to you like that?’ The innocence of that question deepened the silence of the night. ‘Not at all,’ I said, ‘he was only angry because he was worried. And that’s because he loves me very much. Do you understand?’

  I don’t know what Amaan made of that explanation. For a long time after he went, a memory played in my head, an incident from a long time ago. Zaheer was a small boy. One day, instead of coming home from school, he and his friends had gone straight to a video parlour. Rehana and I had waited for him for quite a while. Then in a panic, we ran to school and he wasn’t there. Desperate, we looked for him everywhere. We had been worried too, we loved him too. But when we finally found him we didn’t scream at him. We had just held him tight, to our hearts. Maybe there is a difference in the way parents love their children and children their parents.

  The next morning was a special one. Vrinda and I were going to a cafe together for the first time. I had made special arrangements. I had ordered a special sugar-free cake for us. It said: ‘Cheers to our friendship!’

  The air in the cafe was rich with the aroma of coffee; the sound of customers talking, and of their chairs as they arrived and left, filled the room. In one corner at a table set against a large window, Vrinda and I sat across from each other. She looked lovely that day. Her skin was old now, loose around her neck—it looked beautiful to me. The wrinkles were poetry on her face, a nazm written by her beloved Sahir. Age made her hands shake a little. I felt some music might arise from them as they trembled. We gazed at each other through fading eyes. ‘Would you like to order something, sir?’ a waiter asked. I ordered two coffees. We talked about everything over coffee: our homes, our families, the people we had lost and our friendship. We cut the cake and shared it with everyone in the cafe.

  That was the first official day of our friendship but something also changed that day. We became more than friends. We spent all our time together. She would read to me the love stories of Amrita Pritam and Sahir. And when her glasses got dusty, she would hold them out to me with a smile. I would clean them on the corner of my sleeve. I felt I was listening to a story I had heard before.

  Maybe at this stage in life one needs a companion more than a friend. We now wanted to spend all our time together. We wanted to look after each other, to know more about each other. We wanted to spend the rest of our lives being happy. Together.

  We didn’t have much time to think. We wanted to do what we wanted to do today. Who had seen tomorrow? One evening I said, ‘Vrinda, I can’t go down on my knees, so I’ll have to ask you like this. Will you be mine?’ She looked intently at me through her glasses. She knew what I was asking of her was not going to be easy. ‘You can trace Sahir’s name on my back,’ I said. She smiled and placed her slightly shaking hand in mine.

  We had chosen to be happy. But it was against the norm of the times. When I told my son it was as if an earthquake had struck. Society, relatives, people, what will they think, an
d a host of other opinions ricocheted off the wall and echoed in the house.

  ‘But this is not right! People will laugh at us, Abba!’ Zaheer shouted at me. I looked back at him, ‘What have I done?’ He ranted on, ‘What are you punishing me for?’ Then drawing close to me he said, ‘Are you doing this because you want to shame us into leaving your flat?’ Stepping back he said, ‘There was no need for you to do all this, we’ll leave anyway. As soon as possible.’ And he turned and left.

  That night was very long. Under my pillow wrapped in paper was a single anklet. I took it out. Tears filled my eyes and flowed down my cheeks. Please forgive me, Rehana. I didn’t fulfil your wish. I buried you with only one anklet. But this anklet is what has kept me alive. I held it for a while, caressing it.

  At four thirty the next morning, the alarm rang as usual. But it was not a usual day. I glanced out of the window. The sun was getting ready to rise, the birds were waking up. Everything was new, as if it had been made just today. As if it was the first day of a new world, and I was the first person to see it.

  An hour and a half later, I left the apartment as I had every day. But today I had a bag. I was setting off on a new journey. At the corner of the park, Vrinda was waiting for me. The world looked so beautiful. We boarded the seven-thirty bus to Mussoorie. As I looked out from the window at Delhi falling away in the distance, I thought Zaheer must have read the note I had left him by now.

  Zaheer, no, I don’t want you to leave. I am going instead. You won’t need to answer any questions. But don’t forget, son, that when you had brought Aliyana home, from another country, another religion, another culture, the same questions had been before me. What will people say? What will people think? But I had done what I knew would make you happy. But please, don’t have regrets. I will come sometimes to visit Amaan when I miss him too much. Be happy, son.

  That evening, surrounded by mountains, Vrinda and I sat in a lovely cafe on the Mussoorie Mall Road. She looked lovely, and even more lovely was Rehana’s anklet, shining on her foot.

  AMAYA

  Anulata Raj Nair

  As the train roared along the tracks, trees and mountains fell swiftly behind. So did Amaya’s past.

  Resting her head against the windowpane, she gazed at the moon that was travelling alongside her—it was her only companion now. Perhaps it was companion to every lone traveller setting out on a cheerless journey. Amaya began to see Prashant in the moon, she saw his smiling face.

  He had always teased her about her obsession with the moon. ‘You should have married a poet, not a gun-toting soldier like me. Then he would have written poems about the moon for you and you would have been happy.’ And smiling as she rested her head on his shoulder she had said, ‘I’m happy, Prashant. Very happy.’

  It was true that he didn’t write poems about the moon. In fact, he often called it barren and rocky. He would say, ‘Even the moonlight of this moon of yours is borrowed.’ But she was very happy with him.

  When she was in his arms she felt no pain in the world could touch her. Life was so carefree when he was with her.

  The four years after their marriage were the happiest years of her life. They hadn’t spent one day apart from each other. They lived fully. He took such good care of her, of her happiness, giving in to every demand she made, whether it was justifiable or not.

  Amaya remembered when they had gone to stay at his parents’ house for the first time. He would come to check on her every few minutes, to see if she was okay. Sometimes his mother would reprimand her, ‘Bahu, don’t laugh and joke like that with him in front of people.’ She put small restrictions on her like ‘walk slowly’, ‘wear saris’.

  One day Prashant had taken her on, ‘Ma, why are you insisting? Let her do what she wants!’

  Amaya had rebuked him. She had listened to Ma and had gone in and changed into a sari. There was no harm in doing things that made Ma happy while they were there. In a family, if you held yourself in a bit in one aspect you would find the freedom to fly in another.

  But Prashant wasn’t with her today. He had left her and gone forever. And she, of her own volition, was going back to his home town, to spend the rest of her life there, alone, without him.

  She had taken this decision after a lot of thought. She felt that perhaps this is what Prashant would have wanted. And now that he wasn’t here any more she had set off to be Prashant.

  Tears rolled down her face. She felt as if the past wasn’t getting left behind. It was running alongside the train, holding on to the moon’s fingers.

  The first day at her in-laws’ house was very difficult for her. It was the first time she had come here since Prashant’s death, and everything had changed.

  She was surrounded by mourners the whole day. Some would hug her and weep, others would bemoan her fate. She wished they would leave her alone. She wanted to indulge her grief herself, but perhaps this was society’s way, to pick at wounds.

  The Amaya who had lived her own life on her own terms had come back to become a part of this same society.

  After a few days people stopped coming to the house and Amaya tried to fit into the new house and atmosphere. She started to arrange the things she had brought with her in her room—the room where Prashant had spent his childhood.

  There was a black-and-white photograph on the wall in which he held a mike as he sang on the stage in school. Amaya hung another photograph next to it. Prashant held a mike and was singing in this one too. But in this he was singing for her as she sat in the audience.

  She smiled. That life-filled photograph eased her pain a little.

  It was during those days that Amaya realized that Prashant hadn’t left her; he was a part of her. She was pregnant.

  She couldn’t sleep that night. She sat in the courtyard and looked at the star-filled sky. She wanted to be a child and believe that everyone became a star after they died.

  She looked for one that looked familiar.

  Every happiness felt incomplete unless she shared it with Prashant. And this was happiness given by Prashant. The next morning she told her mother-in-law about it. Her parched, dry face looked as if someone had sprinkled it with fresh dew. That was the first day she blessed Amaya.

  Amaya began to string together the scattered beads of her life into making new bonds. She sang sweet lullabies as she prepared for the beautiful days ahead.

  One day Amaya was settling her cupboard. It was a task she loved doing and she did over and over again. The creases in the clothes held memories. A particular fragrance lingered in them. She pulled out a bright orange sari.

  Whenever she wore that sari Prashant had said she looked like the setting sun, and she would get annoyed and say, ‘At least say rising sun, which had a day to live. Why setting sun that will die in a few minutes?’

  Prashant always laughed at her poetic turns and for the thousandth time said, ‘You really should have fallen in love with a poet!’

  Two drops fell on the sari in her lap.

  She draped the bright orange sari about her and stood in front of the mirror. It was evening. She looked out. The setting sun peeped out from behind the pipal tree, exactly the colour of the sari.

  The next morning when she wore the orange sari and stepped out of her room, she noticed the questioning looks from the family.

  ‘What’s wrong, Ma? Why is everyone looking at me like that?’ she asked, puzzled.

  After a few minutes her mother-in-law said, ‘Does it look nice to wear these bright colours?’ Her voice had a hint of censure.

  ‘Why, Ma? This is Prashant’s favourite sari,’ Amaya answered naively.

  Prashant’s elder sister replied, ‘It was Prashant’s favourite, right? Well he’s not sitting here now to appreciate you in it.’

  Amaya was stunned. The harsh words made her throat dry. She was troubled and went back into her room, without a word.

  For the next few days Amaya was told about the colours she could wear and the ones she couldn’t. Cer
tainly not Prashant’s choice or hers.

  Amaya, who had worn the colours of the rainbow, now only had a few colours to choose from: white, brown, blue or grey. This was society’s dress code.

  She wasn’t able to understand what was right and what was wrong. Lying awake till late at night she would wonder, could Ma and Dadi be right? She couldn’t understand how dull colours would ease her pain. Would the way she lived now determine whether she loved Prashant or not?

  She was getting trapped in her confusion.

  Maybe it’s true, she thought, when there was nobody to appreciate how she looked any more, how did it matter if she wore brown or white? Dadi wore those colours too.

  She sat at her cupboard again. She sorted all the colourful clothes out and put them aside. She was trying to do everything she could to deal with her grief but no one in the house helped her. No one held her hand through the dark nights and led her towards the light of day.

  It almost felt as if they didn’t want her to be happy. They seemed to have heaped endless mourning on her. The fragrance-filled blossoms she had inside seemed to be drying, as if weeds had taken their place and were spreading roots, taking over everything.

  She wanted to uproot them and discard them but the people around her watered and tended to those thorny growths.

  She was lonely amongst all those people. She looked for herself in the drab colour draped woman she had become, and got lost again.

  The orchard outside the house, full of flowers and fruit, was Amaya’s favourite place. Whenever she missed Prashant she would sit in the thick shade of the mango tree, where the previous summer she had scratched a heart and written ‘Prashant’ inside it. He had scratched a heart and drawn a sun in it. A setting sun.