by Basu, Bani
‘Oh my god, is that what you think?’ said Neelam. ‘You’ve forgotten my birthday, and now you’re pretending to remember. Shame on you.’
‘Well then stop blaming me,’ smiled Ari. ‘Please tell me what’s so special today.’
‘You’re rejoining work today. Don’t tell me you forgot.’
‘Oh, so all this is because I’ll be earning again,’ exclaimed Aritra in disappointment. ‘All these rituals are to celebrate the fact that I’m not going to be dependent on you as a cripple and am taking up the plough once more. That is why my housemate’s body is so fragrant today.’
Raising a cloud of talcum powder, Neelam sat down on a chair, avoiding physical contact. Gravely she said, ‘Not because you’re going to earn again, but because you’re returning to a normal, healthy existence. I don’t need you to earn for my security, do I? The house is registered in my name. You can’t throw me out even if you want to. You don’t even know where the documents are. On the contrary, I can get you into trouble if I want to. Better not take a chance.’
Aritra stared at her in mock dismay. ‘You mean I’ve made so many mistakes at the same time? It’s a calamity! I’ll obviously have to be very wary of you from now on.’
Sipping her tea, Neelam pursed her lips. ‘As if you’re going to be wary of me ever. Anyway, that’s up to you. I’ve sent a telegram to Bikram.’
Aritra seemed to have been administered an electric shock.
‘Whatever for?’
‘I’ve asked them to come. Around the twentieth of March.’
A perplexed Aritra said after a long gap, ‘So you’re playing on the front foot?’
‘The back foot isn’t good enough anymore. And besides, why take it that way? I’m sure Esha isn’t coming just to meet you or me, she’s coming because she wants to travel. Given the state you’re in, who will go with her? I’ve organized travelling companions for her. Thank me.’
‘Let me tell you something, Neelam,’ declared Aritra. ‘If Esha comes, if she really does come, I will never let her alone with Bikram. And besides, I’m quite fit now. If you can’t trust me, if you’re so afraid, I can wire Esha not to come.’
‘But Bikram is coming with his wife. What are you worried about? There’s no question of letting her alone with him.’
‘Bikram is a terror with or without his wife. No barrier is sufficient to stop him from fulfilling his urges. You know that very well. Tell me, Neelam, isn’t Esha a friend of yours too? How could you have considered Bikram a companion for her?’
Neelam answered grimly, ‘I don’t know, I thought Esha was an adult just as I am. Even if she is still a helpless, powerless, virginal girl in your head, reality says otherwise.’
‘I never left you alone with Bikram, Neelam,’ said Aritra. ‘You were an adult too.’
‘An adult, and a young woman of twenty-eight. It still isn’t clear to me whether it was Bikram or me that you were afraid of.’
‘It seems there’s a great deal that’s not clear to me either,’ said Aritra.
‘You don’t know these things because you never considered it necessary to know them, Ari. Once a woman is married, no matter how torrid the romance might have been, she is considered married for life. A well-thumbed book, a familiar story, a conquered kingdom—no man tries to understand her further, does he? But he always feels the need to tighten the patrolling. Since that particular need has ended, you probably believe you can do as you please.’
‘Patrol whom? What are you referring to as a need that’s ended, Neelam?’ Irritation was mingled with resentment in Aritra’s voice. His first cup of tea had turned cold by now. Gently he said, ‘What you’re thinking, what you usually think, is distorted perception. If I had wanted to do as I please, you think I couldn’t have by now?’
‘How do I know whether you have or not?’ Neelam’s voice had risen a notch, drowning the sound of Pupu’s scooter. Aritra lit a cigarette. Pupu entered with the telegram a little later. It had been lying under the music system in the living room ever since it had arrived. It must have fluttered into Pupu’s hands today.
‘Ma, Baba, who’s Esha Khan? The one who’s visiting us?’
‘Your father’s girlfriend,’ said Neelam with a smile.
Rising to his feet and stretching, Ari added, ‘Your mother’s, too.’
‘How interesting.’ Uttering just two words, Pupu went off to her room. Making what she could of her parents’ explanations, she would probably fill up the blanks with her own judgement and imagination.
She emerged soon afterwards, dressed in the baggy clothes she wore at home, drying her hands on a towel. Drops of water shone on her face. With an innocent smile, she said, ‘No problem—we can lay out the folding cot in my room.’
Ari did not know how much Pupu had matured. She probably imagined that, despite her father’s fondness for his friends, he found it both difficult and troublesome to let go of his privacy, even if it was only for a few days. So she had unhesitatingly relinquished her own rights. Virtually sacrificed them. The major part of their 1,000-square foot flat had been gobbled up by the living room. Two bathrooms had been carved out of the remaining space. A generous kitchen. A balcony, and the portico outside. The two rooms were not very large. The smaller one was under Aritra’s control. As for the larger one, Pupu referred to it as her mother’s, while her mother referred to it as hers. Neelam slept on the same wide bed as Pupu. Only during the time Ari was fighting with death had she spent a few nights in his room. Since then the poor thing had had to divide her time between the two rooms, looking in on Ari at least twice each night. Neelam could not relax. Sometimes Pupu looked in on her father too.
Neelam stood up. She would give Pupu breakfast now. Pupu ate the heaviest meal of her day at this time. Neelam usually made some dry mutton or chicken or vegetables the previous night. Now she would make fresh parathas—methi paratha or aloo paratha. Pupu would eat heartily, with salad and pickles on the side, and, before going to college, just a glass of milk. Lunch was a fruit or two. Rarely did she take a packed lunch from home. She would shut the door to her room now, and become engrossed in her T-square, set squares, white sheets of paper and diagrams. Not all of this drafting was for her college course. She was obsessed. She had books sent to her from different countries—she wanted to design new housing complexes, new towns. The room had to be left to her entirely sometimes.
Aritra would bathe and leave for office after Pupu had eaten and withdrawn into her room. They could never spend their mornings together. After the father and daughter had left, Neelam would arm herself for battle. Somebody had been studying in this room or had bathed in that bathroom, someone else had been sitting here or lying down there—she wouldn’t leave a single sign of their activities, she’d turn the house into a movie set. The maid might be dusting and scrubbing in the bedroom when Neelam’s heart would suddenly leap into her mouth in the kitchen. ‘Have you wiped the sides of the bed, Bai? The window sills? What’s that stain like South America on the window pane? Clean it at once. Use some more detergent—yes, that’s better.’
There was plenty of time. But still Aritra sat down to eat as he had bathed already. Neelam was eating too. She put the coffee pot down, arranged the food on the table, and said softly, ‘One point. Pupu’s suggestion was her own. It doesn’t mean we have to do it her away. If Esha comes—why if?—she WILL come—I’m going to sleep in your room. The bed’s narrow, but that’s all right.’
Ari was eating absently. ‘You could sleep in my room even without Esha visiting us,’ he said. ‘Only you know why you don’t.’
‘I forgot dessert,’ said Neelam. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ She went off to the kitchen without answering—avoiding the question, in other words. She would take the dessert out of the fridge now. Put it in a bowl of warm water to thaw it. Meanwhile Ari would indeed keep eating, but the food on Neelam’s plate would turn dry. This was her usual way.
Aritra wondered whether Neelam wanted to keep him
under watch. One of the biggest flaws of their home was the lack of a guest room. It was essential for those who lived away from their hometown to have one. The arrival of a guest turned the regular routine upside down, which Aritra did not like at all. He found it difficult to locate the things he needed. Not being able to occupy his usual spots in the house disturbed him constantly. But this was inevitable when they had a guest. The three of them had become used to it. This time too he could have given his room to Esha for a few days and occupied the living room, sleeping on the sofa-cum-bed. Laying out his possessions on the table on which the stereo was kept and in the drawers would not have violated his principles. But under Neelam’s arrangements Esha wouldn’t have a room to herself, as any guest should if possible. It was different for close friends and regular visitors, but Esha was quite new. She did not know this Aritra, this Neelam, their joint household and, especially, Pupu. Asking her to stay in Pupu’s room . . . Who knew what Esha’s own habits were like? And yet proposing anything else would lead to misunderstanding and domestic strife—there had never been such conflicts in Aritra’s home since Bikram and his wife had left Pune. It was best to accept the suggestions without the slightest protest.
Let Esha come, no matter how, no matter what the sleeping arrangements were. Let Esha come close to him. Once the air in the house had touched Esha, it was certain to touch him too, even if it passed into every room. Ari’s home would acquire the boquet of Esha’s presence. His marriage would finally be stamped with the seal of acknowledgement. Because Esha would visit, because Esha would touch, because Esha would stay.
Aritra suddenly felt a jolt. What was his relationship with Esha? Was there any justification for considering Esha’s acknowledgement the most important and the most absolute? Their earlier relationship certainly did not exist anymore. It had actually acquired a rather complicated form. Whichever city Aritra lived in or had moved to, he had always written to Esha at her old address once or twice a year. And on New Year and Durga Puja, of course. None of them had been answered. Not one. Every time he had posted a letter to her, it had been like leaving flowers on her doorstep. One day after another had passed in the grip of meaninglessness. And then had come the forgetting, amidst work-duty-domesticitytreatment-routine. Forgetting that he was supposed to have got something, but had not. But something within what has been forgotten stirs the currents of blood unknowingly. Someone’s blue sari draped itself over the spring sky now. The faint scent of a particular woman wafted in from the leaves on either side of the tree-lined avenues of Priyalkarnagar, making him melancholy. The Sahyadri remained sullen throughout July. Under the buffeting monsoon winds, light and shade glittered— dusty but radiant, as though the sun shone behind it. Not remembering the luminous delicateness of Esha’s skin in the moist rainy season did not mean forgetting it entirely.
But eighteen years afterwards! How was Esha now after eighteen years? What was she like? Two more years and it would have been Jibanananda Das’s famous twenty years. The dew had hunted her down. But what if I found you in the mist twenty years later.
After all this time, having ignored an average of two letters a year and therefore thirty-six in all, why had she remembered Aritra? There was a time when Esha would turn to Aritra whenever she was in trouble. These difficult periods were very important to Esha. And a matter of amusement for Aritra. He still found it funny when he thought of it.
Esha had left her diary on the tram. All her secrets were in it. Suddenly there was a telephone call for her at home— Esha’s sister-in-law handed the phone to her. Esha took the receiver. ‘Hello, may I speak to Miss Tagore please.’
‘Miss Tagore? There’s no one here named Miss Tagore.’
‘No one? Who’re you trying to fool? Who’s going to write all this poetry except someone from the Tagore family?’
Esha ran to Aritra.
‘Ari-da, Ari-da, those horrible fellows are phoning every day. Even though Boudi keeps disconnecting. It’s creating a lot of trouble at home. They can even disguise their voices. The diary has not just poems, it has heaps of quotations, they’re going to be obscene about them, lots of addresses and phone numbers, they’ll annoy everyone.’
Ari listened gravely, doodling.
‘Do something, Aritra-da, say something.’
‘What can I say? Scatterbrained girls deserve such things. I’ve told you many times that your diary is not the appropriate place to practise your rhymes.’ Apparently all her poetry came to her from the sky. Esha turned away, she was leaving now, a memorable image. Had she come straight out of the Vaishnav Padavali? Her face half obscured by her ever so slightly reddish hair. Eyelids visible. Long lashes. The tip of her nose was shining. Flaring nostrils.
Ari said, ‘Listen, Esha, listen. When they telephone again tell them to meet you at the east gate of Victoria Memorial, the gate near Cathedral Road.’
‘What rubbish is all this? I’m going. It’s best to depend on oneself when in trouble.’
‘Not rubbish at all. You must say—I need my diary sooooo much. Pleeeease return it. Be coy with specific words, just as I’m showing you. They will inevitably want to meet you to return it.’
‘They’re doing that already. I told them to come home. Said I’d give them a treat. Still they haven’t come.’
‘They won’t. Ask them to come to the spot I told you about, they’ll turn up. Without any objection. Then, at the appointed hour, accept the diary with lots of smiles. Invite them to meet you again.’
‘Lovely. And then?’
‘And then trust me. Be prepared when you go.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean don’t keep your hair loose or something. Wrap the end of your sari round your waist. You must be ready to run.’
Esha went as instructed. A green sari with a red border. The end of her sari wrapped around her waist. Parrot green trees and grass, parrot green sari on Esha. Aritra and his gang were observing from a distance. Three louts were saying something to Esha, waving their arms and displaying mouthfuls of teeth. They were a bit flustered by Esha’s presence. She was probably not the kind of feminine personality who made their talents flower. One of them gave her the diary. And Aritra and his companions approached them slowly from the back.
‘When will you come again? You must give separate dates to each of us.’
Now Aritra’s group pounced with hockey sticks. Esha disappeared in a flash. So many world wars had been fought over women, but how many of them had been written about outside the epics? At eight-thirty that night Esha appeared in Aritra’s tiny coop at their joint family residence. Ari seemed to be asleep. Sticking plaster on his chin and forehead, his mother was saying, ‘Why does he have to play hockey? Coming home with bruises.’ Ari laughed in his head, his eyes shut. The hockey stick was so potent that trying to thrash the enemy had led to a couple of same-side goals. Esha was leaving, thinking he was asleep. But his acting prowess was preventing him from finding out just which Padavali her gratitude belonged to. Esha, you’re a more distant isle, near the stars of the night. How can that same you come so close to me now? This was what Aritra Chowdhury could not grasp. Could she manifest herself in the physical world? No, she could not, Aritra decided in a burst of clarity. Which was why this incredible impossibility was about to become possible. She had driven a bulldozer over his life for eighteen years. Esha was no longer the Esha of the Padavali. Just as Neelam was no longer a Raphael painting either. Why had this obvious truth escaped him? Along with the outer Esha, the inner Esha had changed too. Even the Neelam who had been so exuberant and blossoming and stricken and distressed and detached and engrossed in every bone and tissue of her body eighteen years ago was now a cold block of stone. An unmoving glacier. And even Esha could not possibly have remained the long-lashed, intimate, deep, emotional, steadying blue lightning she had once been. He had no idea how she had spent these eighteen years. He had had no way of knowing. He had always been unwanted in Esha’s home. It would have made no sense
to enquire there. Still he had kept writing, like setting a series of lamps afloat on the Ganga at Har ki Pauri during evening prayers. The lamps drift away on the currents—kasmai devaya? To which god? Did the intended recipient ever receive it? Was the ethereal half-familiar deity seen dimly through the fumes of incense real? Would he descend from his divine proscenium to a place in full view of human eyes? Was it even possible? Or would there be an accident before that. It could happen to Ari, it could happen to Esha. Deep inside himself, he shivered violently. What if something happened to Esha! Did Ari want her to die? Lest his dream be shattered. No, never. Aritra had the courage to look the truth in the eye. Esha was not the same Esha anymore. A different Esha was on her way. A different Neelam, a different Esha, a different Aritra. The geometry had changed. The old history on the pages would be rubbed out with an eraser to make room for a new one. That was best. This was best. Patil was blowing the horn gently. Adjusting the knot of his tie, Aritra slipped his feet into his shoes. Neelam brought a small packet of holy flowers and touched his forehead with them before putting them in the pockets of his trousers. The door had opened. The old routine after a long time: work, conversations with several people while a Dunhill hangs from his lips, telephone calls, lunch at the gymkhana, inspecting the layouts of advertisements, conferring with Vinay Desai over the visuals. What meaningless tasks and waste of time a man could be absorbed in. The very entrails of civilization had been entangled in the impenetrable evilness of demand for worthless commodities.
FIVE
After the seminar on the first day had ended, Mahanam stood in the small balcony adjoining his room in Chandrashekhar’s house. The glare of the late afternoon was palpable. There would be light for a long while yet. Shekhar hadn’t been to the seminar today. He had other work. His students were conducting a survey of adolescent children from low-income groups. He was probably at a school in old Pune. He hadn’t said whether he would ask his students to prepare the report on returning to the university, or whether he could come home directly. Mahanam had made himself a pot of coffee. He had been feeling tired, but the coffee had revived him. He would go out for a walk after Shekhar was back. He couldn’t leave the house empty, though Shekhar had given him a duplicate key. The house had been alone all day. It probably wouldn’t be right to abandon it again. Only what lay behind these blocks of flats was visible from this balcony. Slices of the road through the gaps. Beyond the road lay fields, but they had vanished behind a dense growth of greenery. Mahanam went back into his room after a while. He was feeling restless. The visit to Priyalkarnagar was not taking place. He had shown up like a ghost at midnight the first day.