More and more these days he thought of Sunder. When he was coming home from Narayan’s, late at night, feeling tired, he’d walk through the lanes of Saraswati Park and begin to relax. Then, he remembered those early days with Sunder: simple pleasures, like being able to go to a cafe together, or meet at college.
The next day, Narayan called. He said, ‘Should we have a day off tomorrow?’
‘Off?’
‘I mean, let’s skip our class tomorrow, and meet in a few days’ time instead.’
Ashish had been aching not to make the long, tiring, weirdly depressing journey to Kalina, but he agonized. He would, he was sure, die if he didn’t get to see Narayan tomorrow; the more he began to feel, with dread, that the teacher was withdrawing, the more it was absolutely necessary that their closeness remain. ‘Sure,’ he said, determining that he wouldn’t call Narayan first.
Three days passed. They settled into a pattern. Days would go by without contact, but suddenly Narayan would call and invite Ashish over. They would watch a film or eat takeaway food before going to bed for a couple of hours. They were having less sex; Ashish had instead to listen to Narayan talk about his life, his ambitions, and his disappointments.
‘I thought at one time, when I was about your age, that I’d do a lot of things: write, direct maybe,’ Narayan said. They were in the bedroom, and Ashish was twitching and wondering when they would get down to something more interesting than this conversation. The light was already murky and bluish; Narayan hadn’t even drawn the curtains. Instead, he was sitting on the bed, his back against the headrest. The fan was on: March, and it was filthily hot again.
‘So what happened?’ Ashish asked. He lay down, and wondered if he should take off his shirt.
Narayan blew on his tea, then looked at Ashish. ‘Well, life, I suppose,’ he said. He smiled to himself.
‘You could still do all that stuff,’ Ashish said.
‘Yes. Let’s not discuss it, it’s boring. What are you going to do, Ashish, when you graduate? Or are you not worrying about that as much after your lucky break?’ Ashish had told Narayan about Satish uncle’s will, in a moment of expansiveness; since then, he’d felt, oddly enough, as if the teacher liked him less.
He tried to salvage the moment. ‘It’s really hot,’ he sighed, and looked at Narayan from under his eyelashes, his head resting on his elbow.
The eyebrow rose a little. ‘Ye-es,’ Narayan agreed. He got up. ‘I think I want more sugar in my tea. Do you want some?’ he said, and went out of the room.
When he returned, Ashish went back to what had lately become his favourite topic. ‘We should go away somewhere, while I have study leave,’ he suggested.
The eyebrows shot right up. ‘What about your revision?’
‘Oh, it’ll be fine,’ Ashish said airily. He hadn’t worked seriously in weeks, and didn’t want to think about it.
Narayan sat in the chair near the desk. He cradled his re-sweetened cup of tea. ‘Do you think it’s wise,’ he enquired, ‘to take it so easy, when after all you’re repeating the year?’
Ashish went red. ‘Because of attendance,’ he said quickly.
‘Quite, so perhaps it’s a good idea not to have any further slip-ups?’
‘You’ve seen them in the daytime? But owls only come out at night.’ Late afternoon, a few days later; Ashish and Narayan were drinking coffee in the living room, and Ashish, relaxed for once, had told Narayan about the owls in the empty flat.
‘Oh no,’ Ashish said. ‘I looked it up. That’s a common misconception though. It depends on the breed.’
‘A “common misconception”, is it?’ Narayan’s face was distorted; Ashish realized the other man was in a small rage. ‘Well, thank goodness you cleared that up,’ Narayan said.
Ashish, left in the living room, raised his eyebrows to himself, then dolefully examined his hands. It was getting harder to like Narayan, but that only seemed to make the whole experience more necessary. He was sure, he decided, he was definitely certain that things could and would turn around. After all, they had been so sweet at the beginning. He allowed himself to flip through his memories of the early days, but instead of facts and incidents, it was hazy yet powerful feelings that returned: sitting in the train, after a trip to Kalina, and feeling exalted because of his secret.
Narayan reappeared from the bedroom. He was wearing his glasses, and an unforthcoming expression. He looked older; Ashish almost wanted to giggle. Then he wanted to shout with pique, because the other man just sat down, grunted quietly – now the tiny softness at his stomach was apparent – and began to read a book with several slips of paper protruding from it.
‘He’s probably stressed,’ Ashish told himself. ‘With work.’ He sat and watched Narayan, who read with almost furious absorption.
Ashish studied the white hairs near Narayan’s temple, the lines from his nose down to his mouth, the teacher’s slight paunch, his short-sleeve, check shirt and corduroys, and then Narayan’s somewhat stubby feet, which were relaxed and propped on the coffee table. While Ashish watched, Narayan took an automatic pencil from the table and began to make notes in an exercise book. When he looked up briefly, Ashish smiled and raised his eyebrows. Narayan glanced abstractedly at Ashish’s face then, obviously dismissing it as a problem so minor as to be uninteresting, returned avidly to the book.
Ashish had a terrible thought: he might as well be dating his uncle if this was how Narayan was going to behave. He got up, walked to the window, and stared at the thickening evening. A rickshaw waited at the corner of the lane and a light inside it seemed to gather and hold a delightful mystery. Was it waiting for him? If he ran down now and got into it, without a word to this tiresome man, what would happen? Another chapter in my life, he thought, but without conviction.
He wandered past the shelves, scanned the DVDs – who, anyway, wanted to watch all these French films over and over? He turned around, decided firmly to be suave, and found himself yelping, ‘Are you just going to sit there ignoring me all evening?’
Narayan looked up, and put a finger in his book.
‘Well?’ Ashish said. He felt the blood begin to drum in his ears, yet knew he didn’t have the nerve to issue an ultimatum.
‘What’s the matter?’ Narayan was quite calm.
‘I thought you wanted to see me. You called, you asked me to come over.’
‘Well, I just thought I’d do some work.’
‘Then why did you call me over?’ Ashish repeated. He’d meant to be authoritative, but his voice sounded as though it was about to dissolve into tears.
Narayan looked blank.
‘I’m going to go and meet some of my friends,’ Ashish offered defiantly. Of my own age, he thought. He waited.
‘Okay, sure.’
Ashish stared at him for a moment; now he really hated this man. He grabbed his bag and stormed towards the door, clumsily and slowly enough so that he could be detained. At the door he turned. Narayan was standing, still holding the book, with a finger marking his place. ‘I’ll call you,’ Narayan said vaguely.
‘Yeah.’ Ashish opened the door and slid out. He would have liked to slam it but the urge to be thought grown-up stopped him. He closed it firmly and ran down the stairs. They smelled as dank as the first day he’d come there.
A few days later, he was back. Narayan had called; he said quietly, ‘I’m sorry about the other night. You were upset.’ He’d sounded sympathetic, as if being upset was a regrettable but understandable weakness.
‘No, I just got bored.’ As soon as he’d said it Ashish’s heart began to thump.
‘Well, would you like to come over tomorrow after college? I don’t have any work.’
‘Okay,’ Ashish heard himself say. He stared at his phone when the call ended. It had lasted forty-seven seconds. He threw the mobile onto his bed.
The next afternoon in Kalina Ashish stood looking out of the window and heard a mournful, drawn-out honk in the distance. You couldn’t see t
he railway line from Narayan’s flat but you heard the passing trains, which included long-distance ones from Gujarat, making for the terminus at Bombay Central. The sound of the horn always evoked a strange melancholy in Ashish – the sense it brought of endless partings and journeys through the night in disorientation; like the nocturnal howling of pi-dogs when he couldn’t sleep, the train horn elicited a luxurious sense of loss.
The same melancholy made him uneasy in the flat, as though everything that took place there was in the process of mourning its own demise. While Narayan sat reading a news magazine and waiting for the water to boil for tea, Ashish wandered restlessly, eyeing the objects in the living room.
‘What’s this?’ he asked. Narayan looked up from his magazine.
‘Hm? What have you got there?’
Ashish came nearer; he held in his hand a small pot that made him think of China or Japan. It was rounded and beautifully made, glazed in a dark, almost blue bitumen grey and speckled with brown.
Narayan reached out his hand for the pot.
Ashish let it go, but reluctantly. He waited for his answer. Finally he repeated, ‘So what is it?’
Narayan didn’t look up. He set the pot carefully down next to him on the small table. ‘It’s a tea cup, from Japan,’ he said.
‘You went to Japan?’
Narayan seemed to smile to himself. ‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ Ashish wandered towards the sofa, then back again towards Narayan. ‘Can I see it again?’ he said. Narayan picked up the cup with care and handed it to him; Ashish stood examining it. The glaze was translucent; even the speckles were somehow luminous.
‘So where did you get it from?’
‘My friend Ritwik gave it to me.’
‘Oh.’ Ashish put the cup down and stood looking at it. ‘Who’s Ritwik?’
‘Ritwik Bannerjee, a friend of mine.’ There was a complacent possessiveness in Narayan’s tone that Ashish hated. ‘He lives in Japan now, he’s teaching there.’
‘Oh. What does he teach?’ Ashish imagined this Ritwik, handsome as Mandrake the Magician, evil as Ming the Merciless.
Narayan looked up; he seemed amused. ‘English,’ he said. He smiled to himself and turned a page. One of his legs was tucked under him. The other stretched into a parallelogram of sunshine on the tiled floor. This foot now flexed, in a catlike movement of satisfaction.
Ashish would not, he determined, ask anything else. ‘So he used to live in Bombay? Before he taught English in Japan?’
‘Yes, he used to live in Bombay.’ Narayan looked up. He rose to go to the kitchen and, absent-mindedly, put a hand on Ashish’s neck as he passed. Ashish felt the warmth of the touch. Narayan’s voice came out of the kitchen. ‘Come, shall we have our tea in the bedroom?’
Finally Narayan agreed that they could go away for a weekend soon after classes ended, when study leave began. Ashish told his uncle that Mayank’s father had booked a suite for them and three other boys in a conference venue in Lonavala through police connections. ‘It’ll be ideal, Mohan mama, we can revise in the daytime and go for a swim in the evening. Walking, that kind of thing – healthy body in healthy mind. It’s too hot to concentrate in Bombay anyway.’
Mohan had looked as if there were things he wanted to say to this, but instead, after a pause, he’d nodded. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be away for long though,’ he said.
‘Just two nights, I promise.’
Ashish turned up at Narayan’s on Friday evening carrying a rucksack and wearing a brightly coloured, flowered short-sleeved shirt that he’d bought on Fashion Street for just such an occasion. He beamed when Narayan opened the door. ‘I know we’re not leaving till tomorrow but I thought we could get in the mood now,’ he chattered as he came in. ‘Have you packed? Not that I suppose we’ll need much, you know, for two days.’
Narayan looked at him and closed the door. ‘Ashish,’ he began, and appeared to change his mind. He guided the boy by the elbow. ‘Here, come and sit down.’
‘Shall I make some tea?’ Ashish asked happily. Narayan never allowed him to perform even simple tasks in the house because, the teacher had said, ‘I’m used to doing it, and if I let you do it I might miss it when you’re not there.’ Ashish had decided to interpret this as romantic.
‘Here, sit down.’ Narayan perched on the arm of a chair. ‘I don’t think –’ he began and then frowned, darting a quick glance at Ashish. ‘This would be easier if you weren’t wearing that shirt,’ he murmured. Ashish began to feel utterly stupid. ‘Ashish-’
‘What?’
Narayan had been gazing slightly to the left of Ashish. He now concentrated on Ashish’s face. ‘I don’t think this is a very good idea,’ he said.
‘What?’ Ashish’s stomach began to slide away.
‘Going away – and everything else. I don’t think,’ he repeated slowly, ‘that we should be involved.’ Narayan looked down and examined the palm of his hand. ‘You’re a wonderful person, Ashish,’ he went on, and again Ashish began to experience a terrible sense of betrayal and falsehood. This is bullshit, he thought, but for some reason he didn’t get up and leave. Narayan continued, ‘You’re so much younger, and I – in my position as someone elder to you, it’s not really right that we should have the kind of – relationship – that we have had –’ He seemed to be talking to himself, or to an invisible judge seated in front of him.
‘But you never worried about that before!’ Ashish burst out. He felt his voice become gloopy; he was going to cry.
‘Well – there was an – attraction. I knew you were attracted to me and I allowed myself to act on that. Perhaps I shouldn’t have –’
‘Me attracted to you? You hit on me!’
Narayan stood up. ‘Ashish. Let’s try to keep this civilized.’
Ashish, sniffing back snot and tears, stood up too. ‘You don’t care any more. Or maybe you never did,’ he said. He put his hands to his face. His shoulders shook. He wanted to die, also to lie on the floor and hold Narayan’s feet, the kind of abject physical despair he used to experience in childhood and which his mother disapprovingly labelled ‘tantrums’. After a pause, Narayan came and put his hands on Ashish’s shoulder. Their warmth through the printed cotton was unbearable.
‘What’ll you do now,’ Ashish whimpered, ‘without me.’ He put his own hands on Narayan’s shoulders; the teacher flinched slightly. ‘I suppose,’ Ashish hissed suddenly, ‘you’ll be happy, staying here with your DVDs and your Japanese tea cup to jerk off into. Or with whoever else you’re seeing.’ His voice caught in his throat and he heaved a sob. Narayan drew back.
‘Maybe it’d be better if you left now,’ he suggested. He folded his arms.
Ashish straightened, sobbed, glared at him, this last look at his favourite face in the world, and stumbled towards the door. Narayan came after him. ‘Ashish,’ he said.
Ashish turned, ready to forgive all. Narayan was holding out the rucksack. Ashish snatched it, hiccoughed, slammed the door, and ran down the stairs into the lane.
He had long ago stopped carrying a clean, ironed handkerchief in his pocket; now he regretted it all the way home. He felt an appalling urge to cry; it welled up inside him, and his eyes stung. Of course, he didn’t cry – boys never did, and certainly not in public. But the nearness of it was frightening and he wished, often, that he’d had the comforting cotton square with which to pretend to take dust out, or mop his eyes, afflicted with a phantom conjunctivitis that would explain their redness. Instead, he got back to Saraswati Park, ignored the dosa wala who smiled and called out to him, and ran up the stairs of the building.
He unlocked the front door. ‘Arre, it’s you?’ said his uncle. Ashish just had time to see the eagerness on his face alter to surprise. ‘What happened?’
‘It didn’t work out,’ he muttered, heading towards the dark passageway. ‘The booking.’
He flung the satchel against the bookshelf and closed the door. His copy of D
ubliners fell onto the bed and opened. A folded, slightly warped piece of paper drifted onto the floor. Ashish picked it up – it was his timetable. There they were, the faded, coloured-in squares: green for baths and teeth-brushing, pink for studying, blue for exercise, yellow for (rare) slices of time off. His first impulse was to avoid looking at it. Then he thought he’d force himself to do so. What had made him think he could control his actions in such minute detail?
He turned over the paper and scanned the lists of topics and books under each heading. He was all right on the Romantics. Shakespeare needed a little work; he hadn’t looked at the Modernists; then there was the Indian literature paper, largely untouched. The timetable, so dusty and unloved, represented the shred of him that had wanted to make something of the rest.
Maybe there was a chance…but there was so little time now…His mind swayed between assertions and negations. Distractedly, he stared out of the window to see if the owls were there. It seemed to have been a long time since he’d checked; he didn’t see them. He glanced around the room. How untidy it was. Where had he been? One of Narayan’s dry remarks returned. Ashish had said, enviously, that the other man always appeared at ease. ‘I worry about stuff – you don’t seem to though, you’re always comfortable,’ he’d said. They’d been in bed, Narayan’s arm around Ashish and the boy eyeing the stain on the cream wall. ‘That’s because you’re in my world,’ Narayan had responded, with an irony that wasn’t addressed to Ashish.
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