First published in 2017 by
Becomeshakespeare.com
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Copyright © 2017 by Probir Sengupta
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ISBN: 978-93-86487-07-0
Contents
Foreword
Author’s Note
Twenty-seven
Three
Seventeen
Four
Eighteen
Five
Nineteen
Six
Twenty
Seven
Twenty-one
Eight
Twenty-two
Nine
Twenty-three
Ten
Twenty-four
Eleven
Twenty-five
Twelve
Twenty-six
Thirteen
Twenty-seven
Fourteen
Twenty-eight
Fifteen
Twenty-nine
Sixteen
Thirty
Three
Foreword
#xa0;
Huge brands with tiny budgets, serious meetings for funny ad-films, crazy deadlines by crazier clients, big ideas and big awards… As a charismatic, busy copywriter, that was Probir Sengupta’s world - the vivid and dazzling sphere of Advertising.
In the fast-forward motion of everyday creative life, Probir started feeling unusual fatigue and balance issues. Never before in his 15-year-long career with the biggest advertising agencies had he wanted to stop and put his pen down.
Many MRIs and tests later he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). This is an unpredictable condition of the Central Nervous System affecting its functioning unexpectedly and repeatedly, resulting in devastating disabilities in young people in their most productive years.
Today Probir’s life has changed due to MS. He is bravely facing MS related obstacles thanks to his loving family, friends and with the unstinted support and guidance of Multiple Sclerosis Society of India (MSSI). Established in Mumbai in 1985, this is the only charitable society fighting for this cause and now has a pan India presence. It supports MS patients and their families by providing many welfare services regularly.
Instead of giving in to increasing disabilities due to MS, this young man has used his creativity to explore and write this work of fiction.
On the occasion of World MS Day observed globally in the month of May by all MS member societies, we are happy to launch Probir’s first book titled ‘Unclothed’. He has truly achieved his vision of becoming a published author because of his determination to face life positively.
Today, all of us at MSSI are very proud of Probir and his first venture. With his fertile imagination and potent words, he has proved that MS is just a comma for him, and not a full-stop.
With every best wish,
Sheela Chitnis
Founder Member & Chairperson,
MSSI, Mumbai
#xa0;
To all my teachers
Twenty-seven
‘T hank God, it ’s 3:30 AM…’ thought Onni to himself as he looked at his watch. It was all that he was wearing.
Onniruddh’s tired legs could hardly carry him farther. He had been using the darkness to hide his nakedness while he ran as fast as he could, but he still had a little more to go.
Heaving, he stopped to take in a couple of breaths.
Far away he could hear a car honking as it sped away in the dead of the night, like him.
‘I have to get to D’s place. She’s the only one who’ll let me in like this at this hour,’ Onni reminded himself, trying to gather hope.
The way to Deepali’s house would have been easy, were Onni clothed. Thankfully, he knew every shortcut, every low wall, and every narrow passage on the way. He had used them all before, to get away from Deepali’s dad.
Finally, he reached the building and silently crept in through the gates. As luck would have it, he came face-to-face with the watchman.
Onni knew him. Keshav and he had met many times before when he visited Deepali at strange hours. But today was different. There wasn’t a single thread on Onni’s body and it is not every night that Keshav was startled by a nude twenty-seven year-old man walking in through the gates.
‘Shhh...’ Onni gestured with one hand, unsuccessfully trying to cover his branch and berries with the other. Keshav just shook his head in disbelief and quietly let him pass.
The elevator ride to the ninth floor seemed ridiculously long this time, and he kept pressing the button harder. Onni prayed that there would be no one waiting outside the elevator door on D’s floor. His prayers were granted.
Onni had to ring the doorbell a couple of times before Deepali’s door opened. ‘She must be sleeping, the poor girl!’ he thought.
He was wrong. At the door were some young women who he had seen in the past only in photographs.
‘Ooohhh! You didn’t tell us you had an unwrapped surprise dropping by, Deeps!’ one of the ladies screamed seeing the handsome man in the raw at the door. As Deepali finally emerged, Onni flashed his most disarming smile and blurted out ‘Hi, D!’
The young man could feel every single eye on his buck naked, strapping body. ‘I’m hosting a hens’ party... This is just what we needed!’ she said, after quelling the million questions budding in her head for a couple of seconds. He could trace the faint vestige of a smile on her beautiful face.
Onni stepped in. Deep down, he was actually enjoying making an entry wearing nothing but a smile. He was testosterone-soaked. Part Cro-Magnon. Part Alpha-Male.
He knew that this all-ladies party was about to get a lot noisier.
Three
It was a noisy Saturday like every other. And soon, it was going to turn into a noisy Saturday like none before.
Ankit tapped hurriedly on the windowpane and screamed, ‘Onni, come let’s play.’ The terrace would be theirs, all of Saturday and Sunday. Onniruddh gulped down his breakfast so fast that he could not even taste what he was eating. ‘Yes!’ he garbled out loud with his mouth full.
Ankit and Arpit were Onni’s only friends this side of the world. That is, whenever the three year-old was at home. At his preschool class, of course, it was the bunch of fifteen little boys and little girls. They all stayed close to school, close to Didima’s house, where Onni went from Monday to Friday. But Saturday and Sunday were always meant to be spent at home, with Maa and Baba. And Ankit, Arpit and their pet tortoise, Star.
‘What to play?’ Onni asked. ‘Pakda-pakdi! ’ both Ankit and Arpit answered together. They were some years older than Onni, but always made him a part of their team.
The three boys had great fun every time they ran around the terrace playing catch-n-cook. They would sometimes even pick up Star and run around with him cradled in their arms, making the tortoise play with them. This was their way to start off the weekend.
The game was on. Ankit and Arpit were wearing their old
school uniforms held together by safety pins and stitches. Onni sported a striped t-shirt and a pair of tight indigo polyester shorts that he kept pulling at to make himself comfortable. It had a tiny hexagonal pocket on the left side, so small that it would never hold anything. But it had little shiny, golden stripes that Onni loved. His sports shoes were almost new and gave him the amazing lightness that the salesman at the shoe store had promised.
The twins were running barefoot on the long and wide terrace that was plastered with broken mosaic tiles. The shining pieces cast bright patterns on the boys’ faces as they ran around playing noisily. Onni chased the two brothers.
Suddenly a lady’s shrill shout filled the air.
‘Ankit, Arpit... Vadilansobat bajarat jaa! ’ Maushi screamed. She wanted her sons to go to the market with their father.
That was the end of the game. Onni and the two boys went into the other house adjoining the terrace. The Shindes were the only neighbours that the Rays had. The two houses shared the common terrace.
Ankit and Arpit would have to accompany their father to the market to help him car ry the heavy bags. Their expressions said that they weren’t too happy.
As they got ready, Onni played with Star.
All of a sudden his attention was drawn to the loud chirping that was coming from a cage of birds in the balcony. He had not seen them the whole week. The little boy ran to the cage and looked at the feathered creatures – a plethora of finches, twittering away noisily and waiting to be fed.
Little feathers, some grains and patches of dried bird-droppings were all over the floor of the cage. ‘The little birds have to be so careful, picking up just the grains and not the feathers or those other dirty things with their beaks!’ the three little boys used to always discuss in wonder when they came to the cage.
The birds started chirping more loudly. And Onni knew what they were trying to tell him.
‘Wait...’ he gestured. Taking a handful of grains from a scratched and dented Farex tin kept outside, he squeezed his small hand into the cage. ‘Eat! Come... Eat!’ he smiled and lovingly invited the birds.
‘Bye, Onni! Wait till we come back...’ Ankit screamed as the twins left with their father for the market.
‘Onni, tu pohay ghenar?’ he heard Maushi shouting and again asking whether he will have some breakfast.
‘Naah... ’ he replied. He looked at the birds. They were all around his palm picking at the seeds. Onni loved the feeling. Little birds eating out of his little hand; it was so much fun.
Suddenly, a pricking pain shot through his palm. It was enough to make him jerk his hand and spill all the seeds on the floor of the cage. Some of the birds flew to the sides of the cage. Some just went to the seeds that lay scattered on the bottom.
Onni realised what caused the pinching pain.
One finch had gotten hold of a bit of skin on his palm instead of a grain, and had pulled at it.
The pain was not unbearable to Onni. ‘But this bird has to be taught a lesson...’ he thought. Suddenly, he moved his hand to hold the little bird in his tiny grasp.
Just its head poked out of his clenched fist. He brought the little bird out, covered with all his fingers. He held it carefully, close to his face and looked at its smooth beak, speckled feathers and big eyes. His grasp was light to avoid hurting the little bird.
‘Don’t bite!’ he corrected the warm bird as it stared back at him.
Slowly, he put his hand back into the cage. He opened his grasp to let the bird go. He knew it would just fly out and mingle with the other birds.
But the finch just dropped heavily on to the floor of the cage.
And it lay there motionless.
Seventeen
Onni sat motionless and stared out, as the bus he was in waited endlessly at a painful traffic snarl.
He watched a murder of crows that kept cawing and cawing even more on the footpath adjoining the road.
‘They must be trying to tell each other something... Different crows with different tales.’
The shiny black birds with ash-coloured necks were all seated around in a circular arrangement on the pavement. ‘From far, it must be looking like a big black mole on the face of the road!’ Onni thought.
One flew to a new position and another took its place; the crows happily exchanged their vantage points with each other. Like black chessmen they kept playing amidst themselves, with no white chessmen to defeat.
‘I was really attracted to a lady-crow a few days ago, just a couple of blocks away... Now, I don’t know how to find her again amongst all us crows!’ Onni imagined one crow saying.
As many crows cawed back, Onni kept imagining. ‘I’m the one!’ ‘No, I am...’ ‘Believe me, the one that stole your heart is none other than me!’ he assumed some female crows had answered.
‘This lady, she always gives me fresh food, thinking that I’m her reincarnated father... Hope she’s cooking something nice today... I just didn’t like the dishes yesterday!’ he smiled thinking when another crow cawed.
‘39!’ Onni supposed a crow declared as it flew in to join the group.
‘39?’ all of the crows around enquired with short inquisitive caws. Onni conjured up the plot in his head with a wicked smile.
‘Yeah... That was the 39 th unsuspecting human I shat on!’ he thought the crow declared with pride.
Just then the bus growled and came back to life. Onni looked at the noisy crows scattering off as the traffic started crawling again. His mind raced back several years. Though that day the little finch lay motionless in Ankit’s and Arpit’s birdcage; it flew around in circles in Onni’s memory, never to leave. The bird in his mind fluttered along... Along with the moving bus.
Everybody is born brand new and dents like these make them who they are. Ditto for Onni.
‘There!’ his eyes were hijacked by something else. They were mounds of femininity. Actually they were not mounds; they were mountains of femininity. ‘Let’s see that painting again...’ Onni thought and very attentively looked out at the posters that hung at a theatre that his bus passed every day on the way to college.
There was nothing that was not bawdy. The heroine’s sari was wet, leaving almost nothing to the imagination. Even behind her, the hills were skin-coloured, resembling towering pointed breasts that challenged the skies. ‘Pyaar ki Unchhayee... Height of Love’ said the garishly coloured alphabets on the poster.
Onni enjoyed guessing the stories by the nuances of the multi-coloured film banners, every time he passed the hall. But he never actually stepped into the theatre to see any of those movies.
‘These dirty films should not be allowed to be screened!’ a voice angrily rattled the bus. It came from someone close by. Onni turned to see that the old uncle who was yelping was sitting a little away from him. Some of the passengers also looked at the elderly man with an amused smile and then went back to staring at the love-mountains, almost reflexively.
Even the women stole surreptitious looks at the voluptuousness that was crying for attention from the gigantic painted posters. ‘They must be comparing themselves and trying to find out how much they score,’ Onni thought.
He noticed that the elderly uncle too was glancing at the colossal cut-out of the drenched heroine out of the corner of his thick horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘In our times, such things were not there... That is why there was no crime. And look at now!’ the old uncle kept muttering and complaining.
Hearing his remorseful remarks, the bus-conductor, another wrinkled man, turned.
‘Arre, let’s face it...’ the old conductor replied with a chuckle. ‘If such films were there when we were young, we would have gone to see them, sir!’
‘Uncle, is that stopping you from looking at that poster? You are still squinting at it, aren’t you? What fun!’ On
ni imagined himself telling the old man.
He looked back at the heroine on the poster. ‘Poor thing, she has been flaunting her wares like this for the whole of last week... Hope someone goes into the hall and sees her. I think this old Uncle and the bus- conductor will,’ he thought with a smile.
‘Should Arun, some of the girls and I come across today in the afternoon? Maybe we can bunk a few lectures... We’ll see.’
The bus came to a grinding halt. Onni was shaken out of his thoughts. Getting off at the bus stop, he walked into the college and then towards the Zoology laboratory. The buxom beauties around were impressive. ‘But none score more than the one who adorns that film poster!’ he thought as he went.
The aging edifice had old walls that stretched up to the high ceilings. The paint was peeling off at places. Where the new layer had fallen away, the old and pale colour showed through. As he entered the laboratory, the seventeen year-old greeted the many shapes of creatures that he had imagined in the flaking colours around on the walls. It was so natural that the Biology laboratory had strange life forms inhabiting the strangest places.
Onni was late. Suri Madam was already in class. But the youngster was happy. It gave him the chance to walk in all alone and have all of her attention to himself.
Suri Madam was actually made for the movies. She was perfectly co-ordinated every single day. The shoes, the bags and even her minimal jewellery were well selected. Both Onni and Arun made a note of these details in secret. Her thick jet-black locks were straight and flowed down to her waist. Her saris were crisp and well-pleated in place. They were held there by lucky little safety pins. On the days when she was in churidar-kurtas, her dupatta was almost like poetry wafting through the air. All the young teenaged boys, whether interested in Biology or not, felt it was absolutely vital to attend her lectures.
So there Onni was, seated next to Arun, to learn from Suri Madam about the mating habits and reproductive behaviour of the Mahseer, a nice big, well-built fish that travelled up the Indian rivers and into small streams and rivulets to sow its seeds.
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