He walked up to the vehicle and asked the driver if he had seen Taruna. He hadn’t. Ankush then saw the packed photograph on the front seat and for some reason remembered the picture in it: them standing close to a pillar, their faces approaching for a kiss.
There was a ringing on his phone. It was Taruna’s mother.
‘Beta, we have been trying Taruna’s number for the last five minutes. Have you reached?’
‘No, we are at a restaurant,’ Ankush said. ‘She’s using the toilet.’
‘Tell her that it’s over,’ Taruna’s mother said.
‘What?’
‘He died half an hour ago. Tell Taruna. I think she’ll be happy.’
Ankush didn’t know what to say.
‘Tell her that we are happy; that she should be happy too,’ she said. Ankush heard her sniffle, and then there was nothing for him to do except cut the call.
He had to find his wife. He gasped for breath, looked around, ran. Taruna was nowhere to be seen. He had lost her. Then he noticed that one of the two Delhi-bound buses had left. He ran to the Indigo and asked the driver to drive towards Delhi. To catch the AC bus. The driver smiled at him in amusement.
The Mechanics of Silence
Anjana thinks about the silent movie she has just finished watching.
The actors over-animated thanks to necessity.
The dialogues mimed, shown.
And they must be precise.
This constraint, Anjana thinks, this constraint of not being able to give sound and words to what is to be conveyed, must have made silent movie writers creative.
Creativity is from constraints – she feels like noting this down somewhere.
Creativity emerges from the ardour to work beyond one’s constraints, she corrects herself.
Creativity is tunnelling through the constraints.
Creativity is going beyond a boundary, any boundary.
Even if that boundary is arbitrary and self-made.
So why doesn’t she call him?
Everyone in the silent movie is dead now.
That brute of a hero, his gestures brimming with strength, is dead.
That radiant heroine, a jailer to the camera’s gaze, is dead.
The director is dead.
Everyone who ever had to do anything with the movie is dead.
She plays the movie again.
The movie is now a pageant of death.
She feels as if she is ogling at the actions and gestures (even if make-believe) of the dead.
The movements of the actors acquire a new meaning now.
The certainty of their death weighs down upon everything.
All comedy is now a larger human tragedy.
The overacting doesn’t look like overacting now.
It looks like lived life.
The movie is a ruin in perfect condition, she thinks.
It is its own contradiction.
She needs to distract herself.
Maybe silent cinema should be a genre today, she thinks, just so that writers have an entirely different creative outlet.
Should she call him?
Her throat feels dry.
She shuts her laptop and goes to the kitchen.
She drinks a lot of water.
There is still thirst.
She keeps the bottle inside the fridge and goes to the bathroom to look at the mirror there.
Her face is her face.
He will not call.
She thinks of touching herself.
No.
She should go outdoors.
She should stop doing random things like watching silent movies on a Saturday.
She should run on Saturday mornings.
She is getting fat.
She washes her face and pins up her hair.
For a second, she appears beautiful to herself.
She puts on some shoes and steps outside the apartment.
On the street, the spring sun, clear and liquid, goes through her.
She reminds herself to stay away from cigarettes the whole day.
Some of the silent movie directors must have known that the silence of movies was temporary; that one day movies won’t be silent any more.
A camera could track her right now.
Right now, a camera tracking her would convey that she is going somewhere.
But she is not going anywhere in particular.
Where should she go?
The silence of silent movies is a felix culpa that allows us to know sound and soundlessness intimately.
She could go right or left.
Inside the mall, there is a strain of classical music – Western classical music.
Anjana thinks of Schubert’s Impromptus.
He could play a couple of them, though not very well.
She doesn’t know where to go inside the mall; some of the stores haven’t even opened yet.
Not that she is here to visit the stores that are still closed.
Or have just opened.
This coming-to-the-mall with nothing to do is not happening for the first time.
She wonders if it is a signifier of some malaise in her.
Like previous instances of being purposeless in the mall, she starts moving towards the top floor, where the food court is.
There is a series of escalators to be taken.
She has always found the appellation food court bemusing.
She has always found the serrated steps of escalators dangerous.
She reaches the food court.
There are people there.
Are these people like her, lonely folks who come to food courts inside malls?
She goes to McDonald’s and orders a meal.
She nibbles at the burger and fries, but is not really interested in eating.
The camera could be in front of her, focused on her eyes.
The movie will be a silent one.
She will not look directly into the camera.
But the gaze of the camera will make her confront the malaise.
She will probably cry.
The televisions of the food court flicker to life together.
They are telecasting a live cricket match.
India is playing.
He must be watching.
She watches.
She is thankful that there is something she can watch.
It seems that India is in a tight spot, but it also seems that India will win.
She munches the burger a little more.
The food court begins to fill with more people.
Couples and families are joining in now; the singletons are becoming a minority.
The din in the place is increasing.
She listens carefully to the increments in sound.
There is that rustle at the food counters.
There are shout-outs to family members, things said loudly, loud laughter.
Kids.
She decides to gape at the action at a distant table, distant enough for its sounds not to reach her.
The kid is engrossed in the fries.
The father looks up at the television while dipping his burger in ketchup.
The mother has a bad posture while eating, and just stares at the food trays in front of her.
What would a silent movie director make of this scene?
The actors aren’t animated enough; so something will have to give.
The camera can move.
The camera will slowly move towards them.
The movement may mean picking out this Indian family as the Indian family.
The camera should keep going closer.
There should be silence, unforced, unexamined.
The camera should eventually position the audience right behind the father’s head and trace his gaze, towards the television.
The camera should then zoom in on the television, but it should show the action on the screen only as a blur.
What will this scene convey?
As far
as the Indian family is concerned, nothing.
Or perhaps the camera shouldn’t move.
It should stay where Anjana is, and keep gaping.
Some unsayable is bared when a gaze fixates on something with life.
But there should be silence.
There is a loud roar in the food court now.
The elements of this roar are indiscernible.
The roar just is.
It is a roar that enmeshes appetites, desires, grouses, anger, discomfort.
In that, this roar is akin to silence.
But roars and silences, both need subjects; they both need to belong to someone or something for them to convey anything.
This roar at the food court belongs to the crowd here.
The silence of their relationship belongs to _________.
Why are things so difficult to end?
Anjana is done with the burger and the fries and the soft drink.
She just sits there, watching India’s advance in the cricket match.
India will win.
He is watching.
He will be happy if India wins.
The roar at the food court is a kind of silence – she convinces herself of this.
The food court – the mall – is a festival of … what … life?
If it is a something of life, that something is not a festival.
The food court – the mall – is a depression of life, a trough.
She is being insane.
Becoming insane.
She feels bad that she buys a lot of groceries and yet eats from McDonald’s.
The silent movie she watched today, The Docks of New York, was released in 1928.
Should she buy something?
She gets up from the seat and shoves the tray’s refuse down a bin’s rectangular mouth.
She puts the tray on top of the bin.
She looks at the television.
India is very close to winning.
The roar is still there, unwavering, unperturbed.
A good-looking man passes by, holding a McDonald’s tray.
Anjana feels like telling him: ‘Don’t eat that garbage; come home and I’ll fix you some vegetables.’
The roar is there, unremitting, loud, silent.
She moves toward the escalators.
She will now go down down down.
Then she will walk back home.
It is likely, she knows, that she will watch another silent movie.
Instead of showing dialogue as text, could silent movies just show any text instead?
She gets new ideas when she watches silent movies.
It is good to have new ideas.
Silent movie characters can then be truly silent; they don’t have to say a thing.
Is there a movie like that?
The afternoon is hot.
Anjana wants to put something inside her vagina.
She fixes herself a drink, a sort of rum punch.
She googles for the best silent movies ever.
‘I’m a woman,’ she speaks aloud, for no reason at all.
The grill outside her window casts a grilly shadow on her ceiling.
I am decent, she thinks.
In the world of silent movies, there can be no wastage of words; the displayed text has to serve a great purpose.
She feels like buying a video camera online.
She feels like making a silent movie.
Compassionate Grounds
The news registered a whole minute after she cut the call. She was still in the party dress that she’d been too drunk to change from a few hours ago. To start, she stumbled to the toilet and brushed her teeth, hoping that it would conclusively wake her up and mitigate the alcohol smell in her mouth. She then removed the dress, breaking one of its straps while doing so. The kurta she put on was cut in the low, round-neck fashion, and the salwar was a patiala. Finding the whole ensemble improper, she changed it and wore a duller combination instead. She stuffed her clothes into one of Mahesh’s suitcases, careful not to disturb him too much with the opening and shutting of the wardrobes. Right after zipping the bag, she realized that she hadn’t put the toothbrush in. She spent some time looking for it, finally finding it on her bedside table. Seconds after stuffing in the toothbrush, she opened the suitcase again, this time to put in a pair of slippers. Then she paced around the apartment, not knowing why, her mind buzzing like late-night radio. She opened her wardrobe again and donned an old, cream-coloured cardigan, finding it somehow most appropriate. She remembered tampons and put some in the suitcase. After giving a thought to the number of days she might have to stay in Muzaffarnagar – at least two weeks, she guessed – she opened the suitcase again to count the number of undergarments she had packed. She tried to make a list of other essentials in her mind, but her brain was incapable of this kind of meticulousness. A headache felt as if it was a spear pushing deep in her head. She looked around for her phone. She had affixed it to the charger after the party ended; so it had full battery. Or was it Mahesh who had done that? She thumbed it open and sat on the bed and checked Facebook on impulse. There were photos of last night’s party and she had been tagged in some. She removed the tags. There were more photos in a WhatsApp group. Jerks, she thought, and, resolving not to pose with Mahesh’s friends ever again, switched the display off.
She left the apartment, slowly clicking the main door shut. In the lift, she closed her eyes and fell into an instant sleep, such that the tinkle of the elevator’s arrival at the basement felt too loud to her. In the parking lot, ten steps away from the space allotted to Mahesh’s cars, the fatigue suddenly overcame her. She collapsed. She was somehow aware of what was happening, but felt powerless before it.
She woke up some minutes later, with the realization that she was too tired and hungover to leave right away. So she decided to go back and rest a bit more, perhaps for an hour or so.
She got back in the lift and got off at the fourth floor. She then rang the bell to their apartment. Mahesh took a full five minutes to open the door, and could only manage a blank look of incomprehension. To be fair, it would be a mild shock for anyone: the woman who should have been in his bed was standing outside his door, with a suitcase.
‘What … were you trying to leave me, Gunjan?’ he said.
‘No,’ Gunjan said, pulling the suitcase past him and into the bedroom.
‘Then what?’ he said and followed her into the bedroom.
Mahesh had only his shorts on. Gunjan noticed that, unlike her, he had managed to remove his party wear before sleeping. She crashed on their bed with her back towards him, crushing her face against a soft pillow. ‘My father … he passed away,’ she said.
‘Oh.’
The oh was one of relief, not shock or empathy. She turned to face him.
‘Then … you should go,’ he said. ‘Right?’
Gunjan sighed and let her head fall on the pillow again. She would remember this oh from Mahesh. She would remember how he didn’t have the right words. But she was feeling only a minor anger towards him. Had she been sad, it would have hurt her more. But somehow she wasn’t sad. She closed her eyes.
‘Tell me what happened, sweetheart?’ she heard Mahesh say in a soft voice. He was sitting next to her now, running his hand over her head. He was like a child in moments like this one, when he sensed he had done something wrong.
It was the first day of January and Gunjan’s father had died. Nine days ago, on 23 December, her grandfather had died. The old man had passed away in his sleep and now her father had passed away minutes after waking up. On the morning of the first day of a new year. At around 6 a.m. She had talked to him on the phone last night, before Mahesh’s friends had starting streaming in for the New Year’s Eve party at their apartment. It was a brief conversation, in which he had stressed how important it was for her to be present in Muzaffarnagar on 4 January – the day of her grandfather’s terahvi. He had arranged a big lunch and invited hundreds of people. ‘It
’s an important day,’ he had said.
And now he was dead.
Mahesh woke her up three hours later. He told her that there had been repeated rings on her phone and that he had had to pick up the last one. ‘It was your bua,’ he said, ‘asking how long it would take you.’
Gunjan didn’t like that Mahesh had picked up the phone. She complained about not being woken up earlier and left the house within the next ten minutes, after having the cup of coffee he had prepared for her. She took the black Jetta, the least showy of Mahesh’s four cars. In her first attempt in the morning, she had unthinkingly picked up the keys of the black Merc that she had been driving the past few days. That would have been something for Muzaffarnagar!
It being the first day of January, there were not many cars on Delhi’s roads, and Gunjan drove through the city without much difficulty. At one of the signals, she dialled her mother’s number. It was picked up by Chhoti Maami. ‘I’m on my way, Maami. I will reach by one.’ Not wanting to hear a response from the other side, she cut the call immediately.
She recalled the phone call the night her grandfather had passed away. Her father’s message had been terse, his voice matter-of-fact. He had to be like that: grandfather’s condition had deteriorated irrecoverably at the onset of winter and everyone in the family knew he wouldn’t survive the season. The news hadn’t bothered her at all. She remembered going out for dinner with Mahesh that day, then watching a movie at home, also having sex. The next morning, she had thought about going to Muzaffarnagar; but then she ended up making a work-related excuse to her father, whose only demand was that she be present on the terahvi day.
Diwali in Muzaffarnagar Page 14
