by Basu, Bani
Mahanam had fallen asleep. His right arm was stretched out. He was sleeping with his head resting on it. His face held the intimacy of death. An enormous release. Setting his other arm back on the bed with a liquid fondness, Esha sat up. Outside, she realized that in the final phase of its journey, The Condor was speeding along like a rocket. Thousands of waves were breaking the sky into pieces with its clouds and stars and planets. The water of the Arabian sea was boiling in bubbles around the ship. The deck was sunk in the glow from the sky, as though a cascade of water was flowing over it. Only a handful of chairs were floating, like pieces of wood in an ocean. Floating away, then floating back.
Resting her hands on the railing, Esha asked the sea and sky, whom shall I give my wealth, then? It will not run out even if I give it away with ten hands instead of two. Will something of me always be left over? Forever? What sort of cruel fate is this?
At that precise moment, as her nameless yearning rose from her intense sadness at feeling incomplete, someone on the deck of The Condor touched her from the back with a hand of air, calling out to her sonorously.
Esha felt goose pimples on her skin. Her veil trembled. All her resistance willed itself to fall away. If she turned around to look, she would burn with the unbearable joy of seeing him. Balling her fists, she tried with all her strength to restrain her heart, her lungs, her blood-bearing veins and arteries, all of which wanted to leap out of her body. Finally she turned around. There was no one there. It was empty. The top deck was absolutely empty at midnight. But she was certain that someone had come. No one she knew. And yet someone she had known for a long time. An indistinct form, his garments of uncertain colour, a deep, masculine fragrance. Had he left faster than the wind?
Restlessly she went downstairs. Wrapped from head to toe in blankets and sheets, whatever she could find to guard against the extreme cold, the passengers on the upper deck were swaying with the ship. Sleep all around her, only sleep. Rows of men, women and children were deep in sleep. A few young men had been trying to huddle behind a sheet and play a game of cards. They too were asleep, with the cards strewn around. A deckhand in uniform was passing. In desperation she asked, ‘Did you see anyone climb down here?’
‘I thought I saw someone, he went to the lower deck.’
‘The lower deck?’ It wasn’t very easy to go there. Every inch was covered with people. And this terrible wind on top of it. But she had to go. The lower deck was even more crowded. The assault of the wind was less here, though. Esha scanned almost every single person. Like the widows of the brave warriors searching for their husbands’ corpses on the battlefield after the Kurukshetra War. But Esha knew he wasn’t dead, he was exceptionally alive, he had made her feel an ecstasy that still pulsed in her. He knew, too, that she was searching for him. But there was no need to scour the ship for him, for she would be electrified as soon as she went near him. And so she went back to the upper deck, and then up the stairs to the top deck adjoining their cabins.
The night had lightened by then. Clouds of different shapes were becoming recognizable in the sky. Slowly the nocturnal wind was bringing itself under control. The birds on the shore would soon wake up and begin their song. Opening the door of his cabin, Mahanam came out to discover a dishevelled, sleepless Esha standing with her hands on the railing. With her back to him. Going up to her, he found her face awash with tears. ‘Haven’t you slept, Esha?’ he asked.
Esha turned. ‘Someone made me rapturous and left,’ she said.
‘Who was it? What was it?’ Mahanam asked in surprise.
‘I don’t know. I looked for him all night. Lower, even lower. See, I still have goosepimples.’
Mahanam listened with close attention. Night was breaking into dawn. The sky was neither black nor blue. Colourless, luminescent. Looking at it, he said, ‘Why search any more, Esha? Don’t you understand? You’ve found him. Found him already. He will flow in your blood from now on, sing in your blood. He will take all you have to offer without emptying you out, and will return it to you with thousand times the ecstasy. Can a pilgrimage ever fail, Esha?’
THE BEGINNING
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VINTAGE BOOKS
Random House Publishers India Private Limited, 7th Floor, Infinity Tower C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon – 122 002, Haryana, India
Random House Group Limited, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA, United Kingdom
Published by Random House India in 2014
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Copyright Pancham Purush © Bani Basu 1990
Translation copyright © Arunava Sinha 2014
Cover design: Bhavi Mehta
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN: 978-8-184-00572-1
This digital edition published in 2014.
e-ISBN: 978-8-184-00666-7