Storywallah

by Neelesh Misra

  Girindra wanted to show Dr Chakravarty his place. It was this Dr Chakravarty who had glared at him from behind his bifocals and ordered him out of Diya’s life. Once he had left he had never found the time to return.

  For some years after he left Madhupur, he had continued to write to Diya at her friend’s address. But when he heard of her marriage, letters seemed useless. Now his life had two purposes. One was to ask Diya why she hadn’t waited for ‘Guys like you’ Girindra, and the other to show that old man Chakravarty that the world had come and landed at Girindra’s feet.

  During his penniless days—and when he became the guy who could afford to buy a grand house on the outskirts of San Francisco—he had done some things that kept him tied to his past.

  He never married. And he never thought about his family, who had thrown him out of the house at the time that he had needed them the most. But Girindra had never been able to forget Madhupur.

  The Diya with whom he had sworn to live and die had faded a bit from his memory. But the glitter of Dr Chakravarty’s eyes never grew dim. It always followed him. It was not for Diya but for Dr Chakravarty that he wanted to return to Madhupur. He wanted to say, ‘Dr Chakravarty, the person that you had called a beggar is standing in front of you today and the cost of his suit is worth more than two months of your pension.’

  He clenched his jaw. His chain of thoughts broke when the rickshaw stopped. He was standing at the main gate of his house. He took cover in the darkness. A window overlooked the road. It was open and the breeze blew the curtains. Ma had aged in these twelve years. Bhabhi was serving Bhaiya his food. Everyone was busy. The world was in place. Girindra’s leaving hadn’t meant anything to anybody. The neighbourhood had certainly changed. Rows of concrete houses had replaced the trees and clumps of bamboo. Halogen lights had replaced the bulbs that used to hang there. He looked despairingly at all those lights. In America he called the endless flood of lights ‘light pollution’. The brain needed some darkness to rest in. But he never slept in the dark; it made Dr Chakravarty’s piercing glowing eyes shine more brightly.

  This was the problem from which he needed freedom. And the way was to look into Dr Chakravarty’s eyes and tell him that making him worthless in Diya’s eyes had been his biggest mistake.

  Girindra hadn’t come to this neighbourhood to go home. He only wanted to see his house. But in his heart of hearts he wanted someone to see him, and recognize him and drag him to his home. So that Bhaiya and Bhabhi, his nephew and Ma could see his wealth. He was sure his nephew must have heard about his fame. But sadly, none of the people passing him on that well-lit road recognized him. He waited—for someone, anyone. He felt as if he had everything, yet he had nothing.

  Girindra had booked himself into the best hotel in town. The condition of the hotel showed him that however much Madhupur might have changed, it was all superficial. Inside, the city was the same: a ragged city that nobody came to. Why should they? He felt a strange satisfaction, a perverse pleasure. He felt good for the first time that day. Compared to that city he had indeed reached great heights.

  The next morning Girindra lost his way. He found himself standing at the spot where he and Diya had met for the first time. This was the park where all the couples from the city would come just to see each other and exchange fragrance-filled handkerchiefs. And if it was possible maybe gently touch each other.

  In the days when the rest of the students in Class Twelve were choosing between arts, science and commerce, Girindra and Diya had chosen each other, to be partners for the rest of their lives. When they met for the first time in this park Diya had given him a strange gift: a green bougainvillea leaf with his name scratched on it: Girin. Girindra had had nothing to give her in return except his heart. There were hardly any telephones in Madhupur at the time. Mobile phones had not made an entry in India. Sometimes Girindra would phone Diya’s landline number from the STD booth.

  If it stopped after three rings, Diya would know it was Girindra.

  They managed to talk on the phone sometimes, but mostly it was difficult to even get to see each other. There was a sign on Dr Chakravarty’s gate that read ‘Beware of Dog’. Whenever Girindra had gone there it was Dr Chakravarty’s piercing eyes that had filled him with dread more than the huge Dobermann.

  One day it had been raining hard. Girindra was lying in his bed, struggling to compose a poem on the last page of his physics notebook.

  She came home.

  She, Diya Chakravarty.

  He still remembered that day clearly. He had been half asleep when he felt a few drops of water on his face. He opened his eyes to find Diya Chakravarty leaning down over him, drops of rain falling on him from her wet hair. As soon as she heard he was alone at home she had come to meet him. Girindra felt the coolness of the rain and the warmth of her breath on his skin. He loved the special fragrance of her body.

  He touched her face lovingly. He counted all the moles she had on her forehead, near her eyes, on her neck, her cheeks.

  She had stood up suddenly and smiled at him and then she was gone. Her father would be angry if she was late. As she went she left him a letter. It was five pages long. It was Girindra’s first love letter. And his last.

  She asked him to get a government job that year itself. She promised to love him forever. She told him how much she loved him.

  Her handwriting was beautiful. Her cursive writing in English—mashallah! Girindra had studied in a government school. She was the product of a convent school. They only taught English after the sixth standard in government schools. Girindra’s English had been quite weak.

  Diya’s letter was filled with things of the heart, and promises to stay together. Heavy words and thoughts appeal to the head but simple things are the ones that have the gift to touch the heart. Diya’s words had pierced Girindra’s heart.

  That letter was still safe in some file. But not all the five pages—only four. The last page, on which Diya had written that she would die if she had to live without him, the one where she had written ‘only yours’, that page had somehow found its way into the hands of Dr Chakravarty.

  Dr Chakravarty had called him to his house the next day. He shouted at Girindra, ‘Do you know that I am the biggest doctor here? In this whole town? You vagabond, saala, you beggar! You don’t have enough to eat two meals a day and you will marry my daughter? Do you think my daughter will choose her own husband? And you, shameless fellow, get out from here! I will find my own son-in-law!’

  Girindra’s heart broke. He felt completely humiliated! But he stayed quiet for Diya’s sake. Later that evening Dr Chakravarty came to his house and complained about him to his mother. ‘Your son has been troubling my daughter. He is trying to influence her and if he doesn’t stop what he is doing right now I will see to it that this wastrel son of yours goes to jail!’

  As he left he told them that he had the police at his disposal and could get Girindra beaten up at the local police station. Girindra didn’t have to go the police station but Bhaiya and his friends had beaten him up badly.

  His mother had cursed him, ‘Karamjala, you have brought nothing but misfortune since you killed your father the day you were born. Now you want to destroy the rest of us!’ Girindra had become unbearable for his family.

  Girindra had just decided to leave the town when Diya’s friend sent a message saying he was to go to her house. Diya was there. Girindra had more pain in his heart than in all the bruises left by hockey sticks. Wounds inflicted by one’s own hurt more. He felt like his family was looking for an excuse to discard him.

  Diya had cooked roti and bhindi bhajiya for him. In a moment of love she had promised him that she would feed him bhindi. Girindra didn’t like bhindi and that’s why she had promised to feed it to him. He wept as he ate.

  That was his last meeting with Diya. And that evening his last evening in Madhupur. He caught the night train to Delhi. He soon got a job in a software company in Gurgaon and he threw everything into it. He w
orked hard day and night, always thinking of new things, devising new ways. He had nothing to lose. He moved up the ladder from job to job and company to company. And finally he had ended up at his American software company where he now shone. ‘Guys like you can change the world!’ they had said.

  Girindra returned to the present. He stood in front the imposing Chakravarty mansion. The gate was the same. ‘Beware of Dog’ it still said, but there were no signs of any dog. He entered the gate and a maidservant came out.

  ‘Ki chai?’ she asked in Bengali. What do you want?

  ‘Dr Chakravarty?’ he asked.

  ‘Daran,’ she said. Wait.

  Five minutes passed. Girindra wondered if Dr Chakravarty would light a cigarette in the same menacing way he had all those years ago. Will he talk about Diya? I’ll offer him my packet of Havana Cigars, he thought. Dr Chakravarty, a gift for you. A voice in his head shouted, From guys like me!

  His chain of thoughts was broken when the maidservant moved aside a curtain and pushed a wheelchair into the room. He had spent twelve years of his life rehearsing the moment when he would come face to face with Diya’s arrogant father. How he would show him his bank balance and photographs of his long car. The old man will probably have a heart attack when he sees my house in San Francisco he had thought.

  But the twelve-year preparation came to nothing. The thought of his own greatness and the cheap pleasure he would get from fighting with Dr Chakravarty suddenly lost its appeal.

  The eyes that had cost him twelve years of sleep, though still behind bifocals, had lost all their fire. They were extremely weak.

  ‘Who is there?’ Dr Chakravarty’s voice quavered. The skin of his neck hung loose.

  ‘Dr Chakravarty, it’s me, Girin.’

  ‘Who Girin?’ Dr Chakravarty didn’t remember him.

  ‘That beggar. Saala bhikari.’

  Dr Chakravarty was quiet. A heavy silence enveloped them. The maidservant got them some tea. Finally Dr Chakravarty told him that Diya’s husband was a professor at the Jadavpur University. But despite being so close Diya never came home. She never had. It had been ten years. He had nothing left.

  How pitiful Dr Chakravarty looked. And how pitiable he himself was, Girindra thought. They had both lost Diya. Dr Chakravarty survived with the help of a servant. Would that be his fate too?

  Silence fell between them again. They were both deep in thought.

  Suddenly Girindra broke the silence, ‘Dr Chakravarty, if you don’t mind, can I ask for something?’

  ‘When I had something to give I called you a beggar. Now what do you want?’ Dr Chakravarty asked with a wistful smile.

  ‘Doctor, will you come with me to America? To my home?’

  Dr Chakravarty said nothing; his eyes filled up and tears rolled down his cheeks.

  THE MUFFLER

  Umesh Pant

  Winter had announced its arrival. As I took my warm clothes out of the cupboard, I looked among them for a muffler. It was maroon, black and white. Just looking at the muffler reminded me of the whole story. The story about how Susmit became a part of my life and who I was going to meet now.

  Yes, it was winter, December in fact. Those were my wild carefree days. My mother had already declared, ‘This girl has gotten out of hand now.’ One day, sick of the humdrum Delhi life, I quit my job. I thought I’d spend a month travelling around and see what happened. Travelling from place to place, I found myself in Manali. I left early in the morning for Solang. When I reached the place from where the trolley took you up to Solang, a thought struck me. How about if I walked up instead? Those were the days when one did whatever one thought of.

  I rejected the trolley and set off on foot. In the beginning the climb was easy enough. But as I reached higher the way became progressively more difficult. And finally, in one place the path gave way to snow.

  I had been climbing over half a kilometre now and the thought of going back wasn’t appealing. I broke a stick from a shrub growing on the side and began to pick my way carefully through the snow. After some fifty steps forward I froze. There was a steep, snow-covered rock in front of me. It would be impossible to climb that alone. And when I turned around I realized that going back was impossible too. My unconcern suddenly turned into fear.

  What if it starts to rain? I was hanging like Trishanku on this mountain. I couldn’t move forward. With every step I tried to take, I slipped, and the mud beneath the snow was giving way.

  I understood that I had made a huge mistake by setting off on foot alone.

  ‘Help! Help!’ I screamed. But there was no one for miles around who could hear my plea for help. I could see the trolley high above me, ferrying travellers up and down the mountain. If one of them were to see me and realize that I was in trouble maybe I could be saved. Waving my arms over my head, I screamed ‘Help! Help!’ but after a while I realized it was childish. I had almost given up hope when I heard a voice calling from the valley below.

  ‘Madam! Are you crazy?’

  ‘Lecture me later, first help me, you idiot!’ I shouted.

  I looked over the ledge to see a boy. He heard this and turned to go. Oh no! He must have got offended. I felt guilty at my behaviour. Is this the way to ask for help? I had found someone to help me—and had turned him away.

  ‘Listen! Sorry! Please help me!’ the desperation in my voice increased with every word. That boy had disappeared down the mountain without saying a word. It was two in the afternoon. In a while, daylight would start to fade. Possible scenarios began to unfold in my imagination.

  It would be dark soon. Slowly the cold would intensify. And taking advantage of the darkness, some wild animal would eat me. These mountains are full of leopards. And I was stuck right in the middle of a forest. No one would even find my body. This lust for adventure can have bad repercussions sometimes. Would anyone even remember me after I was dead? I think Simmi will miss me. And, yes, Ma would too. I wished I could say sorry to Papa for lying to him so that I could wander like this. I could almost see my skeleton lying among the bushes when I heard a voice from below.

  ‘Madam?’ I looked down and I suddenly came alive again. The boy had come back, this time fully prepared.

  He had come armed with a rope. One end of the rope had a large hook on it. He also had a trekking stick with him. He climbed towards me carefully and soon he was quite close to where I was. He threw the rope to me. I couldn’t catch it and almost slipped down the mountain in my attempt.

  ‘Carefully, madam, don’t send all my hard work sliding down the hill.’

  He threw the rope towards me again and said, ‘Stick the hook firmly into the ground. Come down carefully using the rope. Don’t rush. There’s no need to be afraid now.’

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ I lied as I moved my trembling legs towards the rope.

  ‘Yes, I know. You must be a Lady Bond, because where do normal people like us attempt to climb steep and dangerous mountains like this without any equipment?’

  He had hit home. I realized that it was better for me to keep quiet. Slowly with the help of the rope and that boy I began to descend the mountain. I was relieved. And now that the fear of death had passed I began to be aware of the cold. My teeth began to chatter. My ears and face were red from the cold.

  ‘Here, take this muffler. Cover your ears and mouth with it.’

  The boy removed the muffler from his shoulders and held it out for me. I took it gratefully and covered myself with it.

  ‘You weren’t attempting something else, were you?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said moving the muffler away from my lips.

  ‘I mean suicide or something?’

  He spoke without hesitation. I looked at him intently. He didn’t look that annoying. I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but that is precisely what I couldn’t do. He had ruined a day of his holiday and put his life at risk for me.

  ‘Thank you so much. If you hadn’t been there today I wouldn’t have been ar
ound tomorrow.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Thanks to you, I had a bit of an adventure myself. Otherwise I would have gone up and down in the trolley. These twists have their own charm,’ he said as he exhaled and watched his breath mingle with the wind. So this was a man after my own heart after all. We would probably hit it off well, I thought happily.

  He told me his name was Susmit when he left for his hotel later that evening. When I had wanted to return his muffler he said, ‘Keep it as a gift from one traveller to another.’

  ‘But you’ll get cold too. And then you’ll curse me every time you sneeze.’

  ‘I don’t curse. And if I remember you, well, there’s nothing wrong with that.’

  He looked at me for a moment as he said that. It was the first time our eyes met and I felt shy for some reason. I had to look away. The street lights in Manali bathed us both in a faint yellow glow. Maybe that’s why the air suddenly became intense.

  ‘This muffler looks good on you,’ he said, and I smiled.

  ‘Okay, then you’ll have to take a return gift. I’m here for a week. Let me know if you’d like to meet up. You have saved my life after all. We should meet.’

  ‘I have to leave early tomorrow morning for Delhi. I have an important meeting. I’ll call you and we can make a new plan to meet.’

  That boy was a wanderer, but not a hardened one like me. He had kind of turned down an offer from a perfectly respectable girl. We exchanged numbers and went our separate ways.

  When I got back to the hotel I looked at myself in the mirror. I don’t know why. The maroon, white and black muffler did look good on me. The muffler reminded me of Ma. I felt a strange excitement.

  I called Ma.

  ‘Where are you, Nimmi? You’re not going to stop this madness for us, but at least let us know where you are.’