Will She Be Mine

by Subir Banerjee

  At graduation I had never tried securing a scholarship for MS or PhD to the US like many others in my batch, but here I seemed headed for a PhD anyway. Doing it in India seemed much more honorable, and dignified. My father would be definitely happy. Maybe, Shalini would be impressed too when I told her that I’d eventually transform into Dr. Rajat Kumar. Or would Dr. RK sound better? I mulled over the new name, but decided I’d continue to be RK for my friends, and perhaps Dr. Kumar for the rest of the world.

  I felt like a big man already and enthusiastically started accompanying my boss during his sojourns to the research institute. The office had sponsored my boss for a PhD, so the trips from our office to the institute in official cabs had his boss’s sanction. I was keen to showcase my research abilities and intelligence and aggressively started solving the problems that came my way at the institute.

  “Maybe, he can carry on with some of the work at our office,” my boss suggested at a later date, during one of his meetings with his guide, Ananthpurusham. “That way he can attend to both his office work as well as this.”

  Thus it was agreed that I should spend more time at our office. As a result my outings from office would decline, which was a dampener. To pep up my enthusiasm, I was promoted to a gazetted post at the end of my first year in the job, as per the existing processes.

  Our trips to the institute gradually reduced in frequency over time but I kept working diligently on the research topics my boss assigned. I soon turned into his blue-eyed boy and was given full access to the computer in his room.

  In those days, in the 90’s, most employees who engaged in software development work in government organizations- barring very senior officials- did not have personal desktops or laptops. They worked on one of the many terminals arranged in long rows inside massive computer rooms, called terminal rooms, which were chilled like refrigerators. But I was especially favored by him to use the desktop kept in his room, much to the envy of some of my peers!

  A lot thus happened in my first year at the office in terms of achievements, besides getting promoted, though the promotion brought a negligible hike in salary. I was restless to brag about my exploits to Shalini and wanted to go home on a vacation. She’d referred to my joblessness the last time I proposed. I was working in a job now, and also attracting generous appreciation from my boss.

  Everything was going favorably. I now shared my simple father’s dreams more tangibly, of making it big in a government job someday, buy several houses and new cars, like some of the administrative services folks he’d mentioned, and wondered when the day would come. Perhaps it was indeed possible, though the salary levels seemed too low and the raises paltry, even at promotion. My next promotion would happen only four years later, as per government norms. Maybe, I’d get a better raise then.

  Anyway, this was the right time to meet Shalini and renew our wedding dialogue. When I asked for a break to visit home, Dwapayanan readily approved my leaves. I couldn't have asked for a better boss. Overall, my career seemed headed in the right direction.

  Within a few days I found myself on a train to Delhi, daydreaming about the days ahead with Shalini. The click of metal snapped me out of my reverie in the crowded non-AC compartment. Flies buzzed around in the smelly confines near the urinal where my berth was located. Foul smell permeated the air. I ignored the inconvenience and fished out my ticket to offer for inspection to the ticket inspector. He ticked a row in his register, after matching my name and the ticket's PNR number in his records and clicked his punching machine at the passenger sitting next to me.

  “Is the train running on time?” I asked politely.

  The inspector didn't as much as glance at me or bother to reply- as if I didn’t exist.

  “We're running two hours behind schedule,” a co-passenger replied helpfully.

  I glanced at the inspector for corroboration but he neither confirmed the information as correct nor denied it. His mind was elsewhere. When I’d been smaller and traveled on trains with my family, I’d seen them behave similarly discourteously with my father too.

  What they needed was better supervision and monitoring by their bosses. If arrogance or discourtesy was punished, and better behavior rewarded, I saw no reason why these people would continue behaving so boorishly. Since they were not corrected by their bosses in time, they sometimes ended up being spanked by their customers in the public, when the customers’ patience ran thin and snapped. They deserved it!

  By now a group of passengers was clamoring for his attention. They had been trailing him for a long time to be allotted berths. The inspector took aside two of them and wrote out a receipt to each after they took the initiative of stuffing a few currency notes into his palm. Upon seeing this, the remaining standing people fished out notes as well, but they were late on the draw. 'Sorry' the inspector said and started to move on. He had no more vacant berths in the compartment to distribute, though he seemed to have the will.

  “Won't you collect the change?” I asked one of the two who’d stuffed currency notes into the inspector's palm.

  From where I sat, I could read the receipt in the passenger's hand. It was for an amount less than what I’d seen him stuff into the inspector's hand, and didn’t see the inspector return the change.

  The man gave me an odd look. The inspector overheard and paused in his stride to give me a cold stare too, as if to say it was none of my business. A few of my co-passengers who overheard me, giggled.

  I felt embarrassed and became silent. I’d just seen bribe at work and not been smart enough to recognize it. It seemed all the people in the compartment had been trained by crooked fathers or been born crooks themselves. I felt angry at them. Why did they accept wrongs and open the doors to further harassment? Their acceptance only empowered the wrongdoers further. I could never be shameless like them. Had we all got together on this occasion, had they supported my observation instead of snickering, I was sure the ticket inspector wouldn’t have dared to glare at me for objecting to the bribery or confidently got away with his theft. I kept to myself for the rest of the journey.

  At the railway station at Delhi I grabbed an autorikshaw to reach home. Earlier I had mostly traveled by bus in this city, but today felt I needed to impress my neighbors in case someone watching the road especially from Shalini's balcony saw me arrive. I might not be in a private sector job, but was nonetheless working in the area of software programming, which was an area much in demand in the market.

  They needn't know I’d traveled in a non-AC compartment, but they should see me alight from a three wheeler autorikshaw. It was the sign of being able to pay for life’s comforts, howsoever small- in some ways an indication of growing prosperity. Had I been smarter I might have thought of hiring a taxi at the station to impress her further, but it didn’t occur to me to boast that far.

  I reached home with flourish. However, no one saw me alight from the autorikshaw, so it was wasted money. Mother was delighted at my surprise visit. Father was at the office, being on the last leg of his job prior to retirement. My brother, Sujat, was in office too. His wife smiled at me. She was busy with her newborn.

  Immediately I set about trying to find my heartthrob's whereabouts. The year I’d spent away from her in Bangalore seemed like a decade. To my chagrin I learned she was traveling and her mother had no idea when she’d return, unless she was avoiding letting me know. As I sat in their house fidgeting under the stare of the grumpy woman who’d started withdrawing her favors from me, her father entered the house with a flustered look, carrying a packet in one hand.

  “What’s the matter, uncle?” I asked, thankful for the distraction.

  “Ragini’s very ill,” her mother answered coldly. “Our hands are quite full with her, so you might feel bored if you planned on staying here longer.”

  Mr. Nanda shook his head. “No problem, son. You can sit.” He handed the packet in his hand to his wife, and turned to me. “How’s Bangalore?”


  “Quite nice, uncle,” I replied courteously and looking around uncomfortably, summoned the courage to repeat my query about his elder daughter that his wife had earlier disposed off casually. “By the way, when’s Shalini back?”

  “We’ve no idea, son. Her tours are always like that. Often she herself doesn’t know when she’d return.”

  So his wife had not lied. The news was disheartening all the same, to have no inkling of her coordinates. I had so much to discuss with her. How would I spend my vacation without her? In this state of mind, I might as well share her parents’ concern for their younger daughter’s illness.

  “What’s the matter with Ragini, uncle?”

  “It’s been over four months that she’s running fever- always around 102F. We’ve visited three doctors in three different hospitals and repeated several blood as well as urine tests, besides X-rays as well. But everything’s normal.”

  “Was she tested for malaria?”

  “Everything, son,” Nanda replied in a forlorn voice. “Malaria, typhoid, everything. I guess we’ve covered most pathology tests.”

  “How’s her appetite?”

  “Normal. A doctor did suspect some problem with her spleen, but no medication by any doctor has helped so far. The fever has worsened, in fact.”

  “Did they conduct an x-ray of her spleen?”

  Shalini’s mother marched up. “Why are you asking all this?” she demanded rudely. “Do you think we’d have missed obvious investigations? Do you suppose we were waiting for your arrival to tell us what to do?”

  “Hold it, Charu,” her husband said tiredly, and turned back to me. “We’re at our wits end, son. We don’t know where to go next.”

  “Where’s she?” I asked.

  “In the bedroom,” he replied.

  I got up hesitantly. “Can I see her?”

  “Sure,” he said. “She’d be only too happy to meet someone from outside the house.”

  I fervently hoped I could suggest some homeopathy medicine that would help in her cure. It might move me up several notches in Shalini’s esteem.

  Ragini flashed a big smile as I entered her room. “Shell’s traveling,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. She referred to Shalini as ‘Shell’, while Shalini called her ‘Rags’.

  “I know,” I replied. “How’re you feeling?”

  “I think I’m dying,” she said in a low voice.

  Her father’s troubled face creased further at her words.

  “Rubbish! Don’t be silly,” I said, trying to sound hearty. “Tell me a few things. Do you have constant fever all the time or does it vary?”

  “Mornings I’m mostly normal. The fever starts building towards evening, peaking to 101 or 102F around 8:30 or 9PM, before gradually falling to normal by dawn again.”

  My mind was busy trying to match her symptoms with the homeopathic remedies I knew, but I didn’t have everything on my fingertips. I’d have to go home and study some of the medicines in details to match her symptoms with them, before arriving at the appropriate homeopathic remedy for her.

  “Uncle, if I bring her some homeopathic medicines, would you let her have them?”

  “Do you know a good doctor?” he asked hopefully.

  “He’s a doctor himself,” Ragini said with a wan smile, aware of my interest in homeopathy, but her father took it as a playful jest from her side and continued looking at me.

  I nodded. “Maybe. Let me see if I can help.”

  I returned to their house the next day with a tiny bottle of China 200 pills.

  “Give her four or five pills tonight, followed by another dose in the morning. After that wait to see if there’s any decline or change in the pattern of fever over the next couple of days.”

  “What’s this medicine for?” her father asked.

  “It’s homeopathic medicine and is supposed to treat symptomatically,” I said vaguely before vanishing.

  Over the next two days her fever started falling, coming down to normal by the night of the second day. It was exciting to be able to control the course of long drawn illnesses with small, sweetened pills. I was in Delhi for a couple more days after that and her temperature continued to stay normal. Her father was elated and shared his joy with me. Her fever had subsided after over six months of wait and anguish. I was glad too, but felt a little dismayed on another account. There was no news of Shalini’s return yet.

  I’d been hopeful of seeing her at close quarters after all this time. Her sister’s illness would have given us an opportunity to draw closer to each other, but her absence hosed my enthusiasm, washing the joy out of my entire vacation. I desperately waited each day with bated breath but she didn't return while I was there.

  Dejected I returned to Bangalore, back to be my boss's bored, blue-eyed boy. It had been a wasted trip to Delhi, though I hoped Ragini and her father would recount my heroics in curing the younger sibling and Shalini would take note and get in touch with me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  One day Dwapayanan overheard me humming some tunes I’d composed and promptly showed his appreciation.

  “How do you manage it, RK?” he asked with genuine admiration. “Must say you're a genius. It’s not every man's cup of tea to compose melodies.”

  I felt flattered. It was a good feeling to be praised for my artistic abilities and be treated as a talented musician. At least he didn't laugh like Shalini’s kid sister. I’d never forgive that girl. As my boss looked on with interest, I explained how composing melodies was a matter of inspiration and intuition. He nodded. Once there was a tune available, the next step, of generating an accompaniment, was made easier with the help of software that took care of the rhythm, tempo and scale of the music. He expressed his curiosity to know more.

  “The musical arrangements are in MIDI format which is a compact, efficient way to manipulate the tempo, beat placement and other parameters of the song,” I explained further. “I match the rhythm and beats of the MIDI to my tune. But till one uses virtual studio instruments to play these compact MIDI arrangements, the performance doesn’t sound lifelike. It’s possible to do everything on a computer these days.”

  “Sounds great! Where did you learn all this?”

  “Mostly by reading books and sometimes by browsing the internet at public cafes,” I replied. “I want to try out some of these software products in more details after I buy my own computer.”

  “RK, if you want you can install some of your music software on my desktop computer, I won’t mind,” he said in an encouraging, friendly tone. “You have my permission.”

  Delighted, I downloaded a couple of freeware and installed them on his computer. But when I spoke to my father over phone the next time, he asked me to remove them immediately.

  “Don't do anything that can be considered ethically wrong,” he cautioned. “Remember that if you do something wrong in life, even unknowingly, you leave behind a trace of such wrongdoings, which can be misused against you later if you ever fall out of favor with your benefactor.”

  I wanted to tell him that Dwapayanan didn’t seem like such a person, who’d penalize me vindictively if our relations ever soured, but checked myself. I’d found him to be a glib person, without conscience at times. Overall he seemed to have a soft corner for me, but those who knew him longer- like Shenoy- always cautioned me to be careful of him.

  “Remove traces that point back to you the moment they come to your notice, Rajat,” father continued. “No matter who authorizes you, always use your own judgment whether the action is justified or not, right or wrong. In this case, I think your act of using his official computer for personal music compositions is not justified. How can you use office resources for personal pursuits?”

  Perhaps he was right. My sense of right and wrong were not out of the world, but at my age it was easy to be misled by outsiders, otherwise I couldn't be very wrong in my principles for they were not my original ones. I’d picked the
m up from father. I’d heard him praised by family folks, neighbors and his office colleagues alike.

  Over time I came to realize what a straightforward, honest man he was, and how difficult it was to earn the title of gentleman from one’s peers, seniors and juniors alike. His earnings were made of pure sweat and salt, honest to the core, though meager. He couldn't grow much career wise, naturally.

  “Perhaps I made a mistake, father,” I admitted. “I’ll remove my music software from his PC.”

  “Yes, do it early.”

  “By the way, when did Shalini return? And how’s her sister?”

  “She’s again down with fever. Seems the medicine you gave only worked for a week before the fever returned,” he replied. “They’re all quite worried in their family.”

  He didn’t say anything about Shalini, so I wanted to ask again when she had returned from her tour. Since I’d also asked about Ragini in the same breath, he had responded only about the latter’s fever. I agreed that her fever was a genuine concern for her family and made a mental note to look up my homeopathic materia medica again, to find more appropriate remedies related to spleen and fever. There seemed no other visible symptoms. Father returned to the topic of my boss before I could ask about Shalini again.

  “Your boss might be friendly, but don't arm others unnecessarily.”

  I went home thoughtfully after our chat, thinking about his advice. I didn't quite follow his reasoning entirely, but promptly removed my personal software from Dwapayanan's computer the next day. My boss was fast to notice.

  “What happened, RK? Why did you remove them?””

  “There's no point, sir,” I replied casually. “I'm so busy with office work that I get no time to pursue personal interests. So I removed the software I installed.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.”

  He didn't say anything.

  “He's using you,” Shenoy told me later. “Just wait till he starts sharing his PhD thesis with you. You'd understand what I mean.”