THE TELEPHONE
It was a night before that night—a dark and ugly night. The day had been a long and weary one. And now the night…My wife, as was her wont, had gone off to sleep, turning on the ogher side. I think I had wished her goodnight in a whisper. So softly, that she couldn’t even hear it. So gently, that only I was witness to my words…Yes, I had whispered goodnight to her and probably even given her a goodnight kiss….I had even hugged my two year old sleeping nearby. Before that, that is before going to bed I had even thanked my wife, out of habit, for the grey shirt she had bought me. What a pity! I detest grey and my wife hasn’t discovered this in the five years we’ve been married. But she had bought the shirt nevertheless and I had to express my gratitude. I did, and resting my head on the pillow, I lay down.
“Thanks honey. You…at least thought of a new shirt for me. No matter how old a man gets, a new garment always gives him a new feeling. I’ll wear it tomorrow. Positively tomorrow…to the office.”
My wife got bored with this meaningless blabber, turned the other way and fell asleep. I had spoilt one whole day for this night. What all
Translated by Naila Anjum
I had planned! But the fault lies in planning. Once we make op our minds about something, we are crippled. Because words complete their lesson as they jump around within our minds. And when they are required to recall the lesson, they are unable to do so.
Today, I had spent whole morning in daydreaming. In speculation. And in thought which had long ceased to enter my mind….
“Good morning. Do you remember something?” Earlier, your sweet, melodious voice used to wake me up. Your tapering fingers would run through my hair. Suddenly, flowers of heaving breath bloomed on your face and a faint scent came riding on the breath… the bangles tinkled on your wrists and some of them, when they cracked in the beautiful moments of our lovemaking, reminded us of their presence.
A morning of this kind, some empty fragrant day, some such cheerful afternoon of evening drenched in melody, beautiful night… I had really forgotten.
My mood was ruined today early morning. A rat died near the bathroom. To expect any energy from my wife was useless. Even after removing the dead mouse away from the house, the terrible stench lingered in the air. And with the smell I began to brood. The train of ideas created a riot in my head and heart.
Just one mouse! Just one mouse is enough to spoil a day?
Probably. But what would you have talked to her about?
Oh I haven’t thought about it. Maybe about days past, all those moments which were lovely, beautiful, graceful, and sparkling.
I have locked them up in some attaché of suitcase and sunk them into oblivion.
Then go and open it.
It’s not that easy.
Then keep quiet. Make a compromise. Let the creeper of life grow unhindered. It’ll grow old and wither away, it’ll fall off.
No, it’s a painful experience. More hurtful and horrible than the announcement of the death of the mouse.
So?
I haven’t laughed for days. Really, it has been ages since I laughed heartily.
Earlier you used to do a lot of thing, remember?
In front of the house there was a row of naked eucalyptus trees. The ground was brown, strewn with damp and dead leaves. If there were mountains around, if one could see the dazzling pearl. Like snow on the peaks. Foolish and sentimental. Sheer emotionalism.
Earlier I did many things that had to do with emotions. Then too this fragile girl existed. In an effort to make my eyes more and more attractive…. How stupid I used to look, only she can tell, but back then she didn’t speak. She only smiled gently.
“You’re looking great!”
“Me!”
The song of rivers filled my face became as fresh as a waterfall. There were many such occasions when we flowed without any rhyme of reason. We burst into laughter without any apparent cause, we became exuberant for nothing at all.
Back then, we were as excited and carefree as the mountains. We were as naïve and innocent as children, as stylish as flowers, and blooming like them too. Then we used to laugh genuinely. We ran like waterfalls.
Then we were in love.
Then the seasons were not as dry, the air was not so heavy, the nights were not so dark and ugly. The days were not so sad and hot. Then we did not argue, we did not get upset with serious talk. We were alive then, we made merry, we stayed happy, and our faces were always sunny.
And we used to smile with or without any reason. We used to laugh, whether there was an occasion for it or not.
I haven’t laughed for days. I must laugh. It has been ages since I have rejoiced.
Today the whole day, a day before the dark and ugly night, I kept doing this. That is, I spent the whole day looking for the happiness meant for me.
Today was eventful. For instance, early in the morning, I loudly called out to my wife on seeing the dead mouse.
“Look an elephant has died here.”
My wife came, holding her nose and looking anxious. Just then, the tumbler made of bone china dropped from Somi’s hands and the shards dispersed on the floor.
She looked at me accusingly, with anger. I picked up a stick and said jokingly, “I’ll bid farewell to it with arms.”
“Go and throw it away.” She was acting crazy. “look here, Somi is crying. For god’s sake console him. But no, first ….oh! I can’t stand the smell. For god’s sake…”
She repeated “for god’s sake” twice and slapping Somi angrily, she dragged him inside.
I concentrated. Somi was howling inside and her angry outbursts could be heard outside. I thought about myself-my languorous voice carried a sleepy laughter that was like the fading smell of a wilting flower.
No. Before leaving for office, I wasn’t pleased at all. Over the last two to three years I have been going out in silence, grief welling up inside me. As usual, I stepped out of the house.
The seat next to mine in the office is james’s. on reaching my desk, I got furious to see the file on the desk covered with millions of crawling ants.
“have you organized a feast for the ants?” james asked me with a smile.
“How did the ants come here?”
“You have invited them yourself,” james was laughing, “I didn’t ask the peon to clear your desk so that you could make full arrangement for the ants feast.”
Stupid james. I felt a pang of envy. How heartily he could laugh.
No, these moments are a gift to me…perhaps to laugh and feel happy. I must laugh. “Why james, don’t you think their party should be lavish?”
I poured some water into the glass from the jug kept on the table. Then I lifted the ants off the file with a pen and slowed started putting them in the glass.
“What are you doing?” james asked in astonishment.
“I’m helping them reach their destination. They are looking for some spiritual system, don’t you think? Why are you making a face james? Don’t you agree with me?” perhaps[s there was a smile on my face. “Don’t you think that the entire universe could be mere nothingness to them, and they could be moving towards that negation of existence, crawling on the files?”
“No you are wrong,” james quickly lunged towards me. He snatched away the file and kept it aside. “ No, jokes apart, they will die.” There was an innocent anguish in his face. “You are terminating their lives, which you shouldn’t be doing.”
I noticed a hint of pensiveness in his voice. I thought for a while. Even I wasn’t too happy. Probably there was some terrible misunderstanding. For a while I kept quiet, head lowered.
“What’s the matter?” james interrupted my reverie.
“Nothing. I’m just feeling bored.”
“If you’re getting distracted, go home.”
“Yes, I’m going.”
While returning home, that stupid scene kept leaping on to my mind like flames. The ants floating in the glass, breathing their last.
Why did I do so?
Why indeed!
I don’t know. Just watching the army of ants I felt they must be tired. They’d feel relaxed if released into water. They’d dance a little, whirl around a bit and then I’d bring them back on dry surface, their sojourn completed. And after drying themselves, they’d go home. But they died.
You are downright evil. Today you’ve committed too many murders.
The earth was spitting fire. The hot flames of the sun were baking the body like an oven. I reached home after spending a very hot heavy, listless day in the office. And of be honest, the whole rite of laughter was left incomplete. That day I couldn’t laugh. Lassitude clung to me even after my wife had returned home in the evening. But the train of thoughts was still moving on. Once again…after all it has been ages since we met. Even while having tea or eating dinner with my wife and son, I couldn’t laugh my share with them. My wife had bought the shirt on her way back from the office. The grey shirt.
Thus, one died early in the morning the next day, Somi did not drop a bone china tumbler. That day both of us had permission to go out. I tried several times to say something to her at every favourable opportunity, listen honey, today with you… after years…no! Do you remember the last time we laughed? In the zoo, no in the children’s park while eating ice creams. No, I have to rack y brains hard. It has been days. Nome of us laugh…let us try it some day for a change. Let us laugh a little.
She was perturbed, burdened with clothes and other things. Waving her bag, she disappeared with her problems.
Doesn’t matter, I consoled myself. She will come back in the evening. And before that, I have to ponder over the many reasons for laughter. What is it that can make me laugh and what is it that can make her happy-some lovely, ridiculous incident listening to which she’ll forget herself and burst into laughter? What is it that she likes? Something by looking at which she becomes happy? Bangles…no, she does not wear them now. Jewellery perhaps…no, now she does not even like jewellery. Since she has started earning her own money, she is not interested in any such thing.
What if I tidy the whole house…and when she comes back she finds the food already cooked….and the kitchen sparkling clean…no, these things are commonplace. Such acts pleased her earlier, but now…
What if I tell her a joke, some funny anecdote, an interesting event of some news of the neighbourhood…no, even these things will not elicit more than a nod from her.
The hot summer sun was hovering angrily over all the avenues of entertainment. No, I must tell her that we haven’t grown so old that even after belonging to each other we can’t be fellow travelers. Does it look good? What is it that has happened between us? So much harshness, bitterness, insipidity…so much silence. Can’t we bridge this gap? No, it’s all right….we have to stay alive. Everyone gone on like this… this truth comes before everyone at least once in a lifetime. But I have never ever thought about this truth in such a manner. No, never, I could never imagine…I only dreamt. In my dreams golden shadows had floated….I dreamt of myriad cities. I watched flying horses in dreams. On those horses two hands beckoned me. They made magic signs to me. I have always been a dreamer….always a dreamer…how could I become like this?
No, I must change. I have to make an effort to laugh. With Somi, with her. Let’s go out. No. she will not refuse right away but even if she consents, a sleepy heaviness will stay with her, then, we will return not nothing will happen. Nothing that would feel like a puff of exhilarating breeze.
This was the very night for which all these preparations had been made. She came back from the office. I had returned before her. She threw her bag on the bed and entered the kitchen as soon as arrived.
“What’s the matter?”
“The ants….”
“What…”
Before I could express my surprise, she remarked. “Nothing. There are ants in the sugar. These disgusting creatures have a way of settling down permanently on sweet things as if….”
“ A way of setting down…” The thought was amusing to me.
She was extremely serious. “In this season lots of ants come. Why? Because of the heat? No matter how tightly one keeps the lid closed, the ants…”
Someone was murmuring inside me. Whispering or laughing…this whole universe is nothingness to them, moving towards their destination of non-existence, sometimes in files, sometimes in cans of sugar…
“Did you say something?”
“No..” I murmured, trying to examine myself. She got up to change her clothes. The whole day passed with its dullness, and the night approached.
I heard her footfalls. She had come in after switching off the lights outside Somi had fallen asleep.
“You haven’t slept till now?” She was smiling.
I saw her smile and was taken aback. My face tried to put on different expressions but could not muster a single one.
“What’s the matter? Oh yes, I forgot to tell you” She gradually moved forward and sat on the bed. There was a special kind of glow on her face. My heart was beating aloud.
“Have you any idea what it could be? Guess.” She was testing me.
“No,” I said after thinking really hard. I couldn’t guess. “Why don’t you tell me?”
She got up to switch off the lights. Then she looked at me with a smile. “I forget to tell you. We’ve got the telephone connection…”
She switched off the lights. I couldn’t see her expression. But she was saying, “Now listen, you shouldn’t keep yourself hooked to the phone,” while turning on my side. There was a hint of disapproval in my voice too, “Why should I be hooked to it? There would be more calls for you.”
Thursday, April 1, 2010
the rain ,the forest and she
The rain, the forest and she………
“No love is not this”
“No love is not that either”
“Please stop. Anything that you will say at present about love will amount to have been said in a hurry. Have you seen love?” I said looking squarely into the eyes of my friends in the din of the coffee house table. Though, on my having said this, all my friends sitting there made a mistake in taking me to be the ghost of O’Henri’s famous story, “Ghost”. And, for that reason on of them smiled and said, “I wonder whether you will disappear having asked us “if we had seen love.”
‘Yes, I will, if you are not going to offer me a smoke.
My mind was alive with the vision of the train and its echoing whistles. I wondered if O’ Henry’s character, the ghost, was still present-in some vacant railway compartment that was resounding its own silence or amid the uproar of railway engine whistles-but the puff of an ordinary cigarette, the rings of smoke, the remembrance come alive, and the touch of cool, soothing, romantic wind incarnating some beauty face to face in the psychic world, was enough to transport me into a new land.
No. At that time it was not easy for me to think. I could not even think that love happens but once. And, on the second occasion? Does a satisfied person have just a desire for sex rather than love? Well, let us grant it. Now, let us suppose there is a man who has loved, gets married, and after the marriage if happens to find a different face reflected in the stream of fire?-a different body, a different countenance! No, we need not scrutinize the caves of history from napoleon to Nehru; the love remains love only even after it has substituted. A hundred faces of its own supposing you get soaked with it to the same extent, get submerged into it to the same depths, and feel the same every time……….
Instantly an innocent looking face flashed up before the eyes.
‘Are you going to propose noodles for me to eat?
‘No’.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t eat noodles.’
‘Don’t eat. But you can offer me to eat. Ha….. ha….. ha………’
As she laughed, there were flowers spread out all around. But I did not like the laughter in the least. When she ceased laughing, she touched my hand gently, as if she were counting the fingers. Some flame flared up, but passing through the stream of her very young age, cooled down.
‘Why? What happened?’
‘No. Nothing at all.’
‘Then, why did you withdraw your hand?’
‘Just so,’ I mumbled. I was frightened of her piercing eyes.
‘No just so’ you were frightened. Ha……..ha……..ha……..’
A strange mischief was born in her eyes. Clapping unrestrainedly she put forth a second burst of laughter, ‘Frightened,……..frightened!’
‘Yes. I got frightened, but why do you do all such things?’
‘First, you tell me, why you get frightened?’
Whenever she found I was passing through an ordeal, she would laugh out, ‘In a breathe I am transformed into a ball of fire, isn’t it? A girl who had played in your lap, and now just a touch from her makes you pass through the sensations of thrill and the complex of guilt too. Listen to me. Now I can’t be contained within your lap. Just try to lift me up to take in your lap.’
Shanta had no hard feelings towards her for she was born after we had already been married. Her father, who was our neighbour, was a painter, a meritorious artist.
Normally when such artists in small cities, despite all their worthiness, fail to attain remarkable heights, get frustrated. The same was true about Dillon. Papers and magazines, heaps of books and he, sitting there scratching his over grown beard, would get transformed into a philosopher, ‘In this consumer-culture society, on some day or the other, the predicament of art was sure to follow. When money gains in importance, art must lose its recognition. What a station is going to be attained by the people like us who have nothing but devotion and commitment……………………….’
Whenever I cited the examples of great artists like M.F. Hussain who rolled in money, he would suddenly feel downcast,
‘All the supremacy of money. An artist has to forgo the inclinations of his soul too. How many of them become a Hussain? The paintings of how many of the artists reach art galleries? How many of the visitors to the art galleries are connoisseurs? It is only the big names that sell. The big names are put to auction. People buy them as they will buy a pair of panties, a condom or an underwear.’ A few visitors buy them and carry them home as a conscientious effort on their part to give an intellectual touch to their drawing rooms where it is not the subtlety of the art but the price that is highlighted. An artist is descended to the status of a commodity only, today. I have heard lately, someone bought Hussain for Rs.31crore for a year,’ Dhillon was resentful. ‘The power of money has wasted away the power of resistence…….and one day…..in this new system, all the things of art will dwindle away to the status of useless things.’
When Dhillon was gone, Sakshi came in. Shanta had been out. A strange look made itself manifested on her face as soon as she saw me.
‘How is it that your father is always angry?’ I asked.
‘He keeps fighting against all the world.’
‘But why?’
‘He likes….,’ she checked herself in her speech. Her eyes looked unfathomable.’
She blushed deeply and lowered her eyes.
‘Your father is angry with all the world, and you………?’
Shakshi laughed out softly, ‘I know only love. The very word itself makes me crazy. I wish to take a flight …to touch the sky, to become a butterfly….and….the rain, a waterfall,’ she was looking into my eyes, ‘and you?’
‘I don’t know……..’
‘You know all but suffer from fright. I’m unable to understand why you feel frightened. I’m of the age of your daughter…..right?.....but not your daughter exactly,’ she was laughing. ‘I don’t know why it did happen to me. But, perhaps, I had become fond of you since my childhood. And then suddenly when I found you in the mirror while I was looking at my own reflection, I was amazed. You, in your entirety, were present in the mirror, looking at me, with your enigmatic eyes. Some hair on your temples looked grey……..had an impulse at heart to pick up father’s painting brush and colors them black. Then looked at you once again and felt the grey becomes you as it goes with you in your full manliness, your full maturity….’
The room was hushed. The wind froze. Time ceased to roll on. A quieter of excitements ran through me. Shakshi took a step forward. The disposition of bashfulness was won over now. A steadfast young woman who was a lover and who would exert herself to safeguard her right to love was born at her heart. The one who could snatch away this right for herself from a wife too, for she had answers to satisfy all the scruples. Softly she touched my hand with hers; and the very touch caused a thrill run through me….as some dull opiate would…She kissed my hand…..
The myriad stars of the heavens twinkled within her eyes.
‘Admit the truth or don’t………, you also are in love with me. Tell me whether you are, or aren’t. Her lips came upon mine quietly. A turbulence made itself felt. The freshness of the feel in the touch could not be equaled by that of a red red rose newly sprung, nor could the rose have that warmth….that heat.
But the very touch reminded me of shanta, and a sense of guilt overpowered me. As I separated myself in a flash, Shanta stood there like a question embodied. With resentment and dismay in her eyes she asked me.
‘Why do you keep me deprived of my right? She was angry. ‘Why did you separate yourself when you also wanted the same thing? Try to be truthful. You are truthful where others are concerned, why false when it is you, the concerned. Tell me if you did not like my coming over here, or my kissing you like this. But you suffer from fright. Why don’t you do away with this sense of fright in you? One aspect of the truth, isn’t it what you would say? But, suppose she had any, what would you do? Or, what should you have done?’
Shakshi’s eyes had descended into mine. She added, ‘Will I have to tell you that all the truths are not cast in a single mould. The have their separate recognizable identities. Should I tell you that love is born of a very natural phenomenon? Love is not a deliberate creation. Should I desist from loving you for the reason that you are my father’s friend? But there are no such prohibitions imposed by the religious books. Then ? Why should I not love you?
The pendulum clock on the wall seemed to have got awakened to motion. For a moment it felt as if the room was shaken by an unseen earthquake. A deep hush overspread itself at heart, and the numerous branches of the silence became alive on their own under the influence of the earthquake.
The confession of Aaditya Kapoor
I, that is, Aaditya Kapoor. I don’t know what you would do had a story like that begun in your own life. What like it feels, silently watching the growth of a guilty conscience developing within a person, can be understood by you by seeing me. My son Alok reads in Dehradun. Eleven-year old. Shakshi is older than him by seven years only. When they are together they seem to be a brother and a sister. They quarrel also as a brother and sister will. Now, it happened just on that day only. Looking for Alok she came into my room- riding of the chariot of air, as she always does. The feel that Alok is there in the house enhances my feeling of fear. Shakshi took hold of my hands quietly.
‘ Tell me that you don’t love me.’
‘I don’t.’
‘On oath of Alok?’
‘On oath of Alok, I mumbled, and instantly felt startled. In case there were some pleasant gusts of wind for Shakshi, then……? Why did I take an oath on Alok? O my God: What has possessed me?
Next morning, quarrelling with Alok, she looked at me and smiled.
‘Be emancipated from your oath. I’ve come back having made a propitiatory offering worth rupes one hundred in the name of Alok.’ As she laughed gleefully, her white teeth sparkled like pearls on a fine string.
‘What offering?’ Shanta had come out.
‘I’ve been to temple. Just praying for Alok’s long life, made an offering there.
Shakshi found me alone, once again.
‘ keep from speaking on oath. It is a sin. And money is required to make offerings. Will you give me- your second wife, your little wife-money for offerings again and again?’ Shakshi ran away, laughing.
Her peel of laughter still pursued me…….her concluding words in particular…. ‘He is a son of mine too…..How does it matter if he was not born of me……?’ So many glaciers within me were breaking and moving down the valley.
No, It was, perhaps, not easy at that time to think if one falls in love but for once. And on the second occasion? Does there still remain an indefinable longing even after one is divided, and shared by the wife and the family?-A suppressed desire that sparkles off the smoldering wood? No. Nothing was easy to think of at that time. Shakshi was always a small child to Shanta’s mind, the one who in her childhood woo let come from to her and nestle herself in Shanta’s lap. A vast world of recollection still persisted. There was a little cat, Kitty. During the winter it would come and quietly slip under the quilt. Shakshi would also come to listen to my stories. Once, while listening to me, not the little. Kitty but Shakshi slipped into my bed, I was much startled-for the first time. Her hands were warm. The look on her face was different. Shakshi was thirteen years old at the time. She bent a little and then transferred the weight of her beyond the window was a mass of vegetation-forest like……..shanta got in with atea in her hands, seeing shakshi drowsing said, ‘If we had the daughter…..’, had set fire at my heart. Kitty, sitting somewhere in a corner mewed. He looked at Kitty. A shade of anger could be discerned in its eyes for shakshi. I shivered. Very quietly shakshi’s hand slipped up to my chest and, perhaps, I was under some psychological pressure in this strange situation. Opened the window. A dense forest flourished in the dark. There were two or three little bungalows on one side of the forest, and a mosque also at some distance. At the present moment the solitude of the forest seemed to have enveloped me.
Was it a repetition of some Lolita within me? Some time in the night, while holding shanta in my arms, I found it was shakshi’s face that had come to freeze on the screen of my vision, for a long time too just one face gained intransience among the proceeding caravans of the stars. At the time of sexual intercourse with Shanta, the face of little Lolita would flash up and Shanta would vanish. In the dark the vision of Shakshi would become alive…her mischievous fingers….her maiden form shaping itself in a mould. And, at the moment thousands of ants would get access into me. Suddenly when my hot body turned icy cold, Shanta would turn and ask, ‘what happened?’ My growing age and indifference to sex would help her reach an answer to her question, but Shakshi would be there within my minds frame, looking at me in the dark of might with her enormous eyes, rippling writhing becoming a full fledged question, even after he was separated from Shanta.
Time rolled on. So many incidents connected with Shakshi attached themselves to his life. Sometimes marriage ceremonies, sometimes Shakshi’s coming first to him when she wore a new dress, giving a helping hand to Shanta in the kitchen, but, quite commonly, her squabble with Shanta over her laying my table, ‘Let me serve please she would say. ‘she is usurping up all my right,’ once Shanta said loving.
That gave me a rude shock.
And once again, on a certain night Shanta froze the hands in their serpentine movements when she said, ‘Perhaps our own daughter will not do as much as Shakshi does’….
The dense forest flourished on the outside.
The hands turning into snakes fell down as a lizard on the wall could….once again I was under a self analysis, or thinking for own self or lost in my own maze…. Aditya kapoor…what does all this mean? Are you getting perverted? Shakshi is like your own daughter…And then Shakshi’s tone would attack…. Like one, but not a daughter exactly. Then another voice would attack, and a burning body under the impulse of strong gusts of wind coming from the forest would slowly cool down.
An incident that occurred the next day. Having done with the breakfast Shanta had gone to a house in the neighbourhood to participate in some religious rituals going on there. Shakshi seemed to have been awaiting her chance. No sooner did Shanta go out than Shakshi got in like a ship rolling on the sea. Waves this was exactly their time when I was getting ready to9 go and take my bath, of course, with a towel only round the loin just I heard a footstep and there was Shakshi standing in front of me.
The wind stopped. Time stopped. Shakshi was seventeen now…her eyes wide open in a gaze…and suddenly I felt a flame flare up inside me. An unwounted sense of guilt erupted there in. as I was about to move ahead, Shakshi barred the path as solidly as a wall. He eyes sparkled, hands trembled, lips and cheeks too partook something of the trembling. Her hands advanced, snakes wriggled on my bare chest, instantly I closed my eyes. And then…all of a sudden I felt as if the world would come to an end, the land seemed to slide away from under the feet and the walls shake. The thirsty lips of shakshi pressed themselves against mine. And equally instantly the words spoken by Shanta in the silent dark night revived themselves forcefully, ‘perhaps our own daughter won’t do as much as Shakshi does.’ The air stopped Shakshi’s hands were glowing coals, blazing fire-balls. Passing through my own ordeal I was beyond my capacity to think judiciously, unprotected, wavering. As I pushed Shaksahi aside gently. She hung to me like a wild creeper clinging desperately to a tree. The very next moment, as I was suffering from my guilty conscience or remorse, I gave her a sharp slap. It resounded. There came a flash of fear in her eyes. She looked at him intently and then posed to retreat saying.
‘Lo! I won my this right also.’
‘What right? I stammered.
‘Suffering a blow from you.’
She turned her face. The cheek was purple. Then she turned and she did put her lips o9n mine, and then retreated. Pointing to her cheek she said
‘Now try to erase it out. It is you…your token. I’ll keep it alive. She was laughing.
‘Go and have your bath. But the I’ll tell you one thing, you are afraid. But the truth is—you think of me—perhaps all the time. You are never free from me, and will never be, ever.’
She turned to go, but stopped.
‘The world is undergoing a change. Change yourself too, Aditya.’
‘Aditya !’ this was the first time that she had called me by my name. the name ‘Aditya’ reverberated in my mind. I was under the shower, getting soaked. The spray of water beat on my head and body producing their own rhythoric sound, but her voice at my heart persisted, ‘Aditya… Aditya….Aditya….
The word transformed itself into an unfaltering echo. The echo in the wet nude body made itself manifest, and its ruthlessness too.
Perhaps Shanta had made up her mind never to comprehend the change that had occurred in life. But , had there really occurred a change in my life? While going through the equations of vice or sin, many at a time I had to go through the act of killing of my own thoughts. Shakshi had now begun to assert her own right to love even in small matters. I felt this turbulence was felt, besides me and Shakshi, by all—the heaven, the earth, the mirror on the wall in my bedroom, the nooks and corners of my house where at each and every occasion possible Shakshi would give me a lesson in love along with a renewed realization of her youth. Perhaps the current of time had weakened me. Her touch gave me an unwanted pleasure. But, simultaneously, a new awakening would take me into its gold making the blazing fire ball enter the slabs of ice, turning it cold. The wonder was that the matter was manifest to all the objects in the house from a corner of the house to the walls, but no human being was aware of it—neither my neighbours, nor my family members, nor Shakshi’s family members. I thought time puts an end to so many stories on its own accord.
These were the days when dhillon was much concerned about the marriage of Shakshi. To some extent it was caused by the insistence of Shakshi’s mother, and to some extent also because of his failing health and his disappointments born of his failures in his life—that, now, Dhillon wanted to free himself from the responsibility of Shakshi’s marriage.
Suddenly somewhere some leaf got detached from its twig. Some unheard shriek echoed, and the wind rustling through the dense forest raised a storm with in. standing at a short distance from my eyes was looking at me, horrified and unblinkingly. Sitting on his wooden bed, reclining on his pillow, Dhillon with his down cast head was breaking the ice of his words.
‘values of art have changed. Idioms have changed. The world has entered from the twenty-first into the twenty-second. But how long we can go on blaming others. We didn’t change ourselves. Ideals have changed. Colour and canvases have changed….if we could change ourselves a little…he began to cough.
The contemporary painting has become a thing for the elite class. And we are the ones who are carrying along the art on the pattern of the past. If we had endowed our art with a little light of the new intellectuality, new ways of thinking, perhaps the old age wouldn’t have overpowered us so very soon…’ the cough, once again, Compelled Dhillon to pause. ‘I have passed almost all my life now with my own imperfections and failures, but Shakshi!..’
Shakshi stood there in the shade of a wall.
In a little powered voice Dhillon said, ‘there is a boy under my consideration. A painter, It was a chance I pappened to see him last week. He regards me as his master although he is unlike me. He is ambitious. I think Shakshi…’
As if shots boomed one after another. Shakshi stuck to the wall. When I looked at her, she seemed to be trembling caught by the webs of her own conflicting emotions. She had turned pale.
Shanta came out of the kitchen.
‘Brother, it was good of you to do so,’ she said. ‘Finding promising young men is a rarity. See how she blushed with shame.’
Shakshi dashed off instantly.
I got petrified. Who could have seen her tears other than I. But those tears! They were not weak as others generally are.
Suddenly I lost my voice. For the first time I had felt a heavy punch at my heart. Never had occurred there any such feeling at my heart caused by anything concerned with Shakshi. But now the unexpected declaration of marriage….
I was standing by the window once again, after Dhillon had deposited. On the outside the forest flourished. The trees swayed from side to side. The gusts of cold wind coming in had foretold me of some tempest or great forest fire breaking out but who could have expected it to happen so very soon.
And, at the End, the Rain
On that day, it was raining. a torrential downpour. This was the time when the curtain was about to drop on this story I love rains. Amply I cherish thousands of sweet memories of them. Even today the rain sets itself. With its infinite possibilities, to pass me over to some utopia or fairy land. To me rain is not just water falling in showers, it is like the sweet sensation of getting soaked in the cascade of my own sentimentality. As sea waves are…I wonder if standing on the sea-shore you have ever watched the waves flowing in the dark and quiet of night. Listen to the noise of the wind and watch the sudden spurt of the waves come to the shore having covered a long course. Something convulsed within me in the like manner- giving a violent shake to the whole of my being, like the breaking waves.
On that day, as a specialty of the occasion it continued raining heavily through the day, as if the setter of question-paper for life had set such question for me as were an ordeal for me to go through. I stood amazed. And just before this happening everything was either normal, or not so. But, yes, there were signs of the on coming rains.
A number of happenings occurred that day. Dhillon fixed the date of Shakshi’s marriage. It was to take place after two months. Arrangements were to be made at my house. Shakshi, sitting at some distance and biting her nails would cast a glance at me now and then. She looked pale. A phone call in the morning that day a phonic message told my wife that Shakshi’s only uncle died. Shanta’s tears ran unabated since the time. She, as well as Alok, was to catch the 3 p.m. train.
The third issue concerned me. I was in fever. Shanta felt worried. Who would look after me in her absence?
‘Brother, he knows nothing. He doesn’t know about anything in the house where it is placed. I will return tomorrow, but to-night…?’ she said.
In fond memory of her departed uncle Shanta was wiping her tears with an edge of her ‘saari’.
Dhillon turned to cast a glance.
This was the very moment when the thunder of the clouds, for the first times, made its presence manifest, as if it was a drum-beat declaring the opening of the war, the thunder rumbled on. The icy words of Shakshi dissolved themselves in the far off rumble.
‘Go sister. I am here. I’ll stay here tonight I’ll take full care of him.’
‘See. The very problem id solved…,’ Dhillon commented smiling.
Shanta smiled lovingly and said, ‘I needn’t worry when Shakshi is here. Shakshi will take care of him.’
Shakshi’s face betrayed no emotions. With her full sensitive lips, she sat there biting her finger nails…
And then a number of thunder claps sounded themselves seemingly all together.
The ocean waves at my heart that had been calm initially, were beginning to gain momentum, preparatory to some war.
Dhillon departed from our home. Shanta and Alok left the house at 2 O’clock. As I moved ahead, adjusting my situation to my blood-pressure, I heard the outer door being closed from the inside. It was Shakshi. And now only the two of us remained there in the house.
And this was the time when a fine drizzle had started.
I got into the room. My breathing was deeper, though for no opparent reason. My awareness of Shakshi’s presence there excited me. Perhaps the temperature had shot up. A burning sensation was there in my forehead. My temp[les seemed to be on fire. I was sensitive to every sound. One…two… but no Shakshi came in. where did she linger on? I got up and walked out. On the outside Shakshi was lying down facing downwards. She was crying. Her sobs hurt me deeply. It was raining. At quite short a distance water was dripping from the awning. I closed my eyes, controlled the tempest rising at heart. As I came closer to Shakshi I felt I could withhold no longer. As if there was a volcano, a dormant one. And no sooner did I touch Shakshi than it would burst open. The veranda near the awning was wet. I drew my self back, came to my bed and lay down. The clock on the wall struck three. The pendulum was in motion. Suddenly, my body felt like having been transformed into a pendulum. She was coming. I closed my eyes hurriedly.
She held tea in her hand. She put the tea-cup on the table nearby. Medical tables were there in her hand. She came closer to me with the tablets and some water in a glass. She touched my forehead gently and got started.
‘take the medicine. I know you haven’t had a wink. Now don’t play a part. Fever is high.’
I saw her eyes. They were swollen for weeping. She was in a sky-blue shalwar and jumper having sky-blue flower prints on it. Her hands looked extremely beautiful. Taking medicine hand, for the first time I saw her body having the enchanting curves of her youth. fair complexion. long hair. long slender neck. Very soft and full lips. She noticed me looking at her and eyes to the ground. She didn’t stay there any longer. Went out of the room. I was passing through my self-analysis-entangling and struggling with myself every moment. About two hours passed. I got out and found Shakshi asleep in the previous posture, the same as when she was crying. The fiery glow of the promine4nces of her body curves was conspicuous from under her salwar and kameez. Very beautiful feet. Her fingers-as if they had been chiseled out. The rain abated a bit but soon after the thunder began. But the thunder, this time, had vigour and enthusiasm. It appeared as if the rain would never come to an end if it started for once. At seven Shakshi was awake once again. She brought me my bread. I was aware that Shakshi must be under going a tremendous conflict internally, probably much more than I was. ‘ But why es she so silent,’ I thought ‘Has she compromised with her new situation? She is to stay here for the whole night to-night. Where will she put up? But, why is she so silent? Has she compromised with her new situation?’ the thought occurred again and again.
But, perhaps, she hadn’t. there came the time for the dormant volcano to arrupt. It was nine at night, when Shakshi had seen me finish up my meal and the last dose of medicine as well.
On the outside it was raining rather heavily. The falling rain drops played a strange music. I moved forward and opened the window. On the outside the forest flourished. A wet forest. Lightning flashed at that very moments, and despite the dark it momentarily brightened up the fearsome plants and trees. And them I heard the foot-steps Shakshi came in with a pillow in her hands. She puts the pillow beside mine on the bed. And before I could look at her with wonder, she rendered me unspeakable. ‘I’ll sleep with you. At my disposal I have this very night only.’
There was a strong flash.
On the outside the forest flourished. From time to time the lighting flashed.
‘I’ve got you only for one night. Do you know how I spent the last seven hours? I lived with you, I was alone though. Lying alone I felt your presence in every pore of my body and limbs.
She was quite familiar with the room. She reached Shanta’s wardrobe as if it were her own. She took out a blue nighty. ‘Must be a bit loose’ she said. ‘Why don’t you speak?’ she shouted. ‘Why are you dumb founded?’
With the nighty she covered her face and burst out crying.
‘I’ll get married in two months. I was not to go into the world of brushes and canvas. Why did you let me go? Couldn’t you keep me with you?’
Clad in the nighty, coming to me, Shakshi stood erect.
Once again the lighting glowed white.
Her vody was very hot. The prominences of her body were well consp[icuous. She bent forward and put the fire of her lips on to mine …..
Her body emitted heat.
‘Satiate me. I don’t want to remain incomplete. For God’s sake don’t bring between us the disparity of our ages. Satisfy me. Give me life…’
I couldn’t turn back to see through the open window the forest getting drenched in the rain. Perhaps there was a lighting. Perhaps it had struck the forest violently. The whole of the forest seemed to have been set on fire. I was very-very weak at the moment…..
Or, perhaps, I was born for this moment only.
Have you seen love? No, come out with the truth. Have you seen love?
Suddenly I got lost like the ghost of O’ Henry. The wet forest was animated, and the rain in the forest-in colours the features of Shakshi had replaced mine….
So many rainy seasons…..so many autumns have passed since then….or….they are passing away.
“No love is not this”
“No love is not that either”
“Please stop. Anything that you will say at present about love will amount to have been said in a hurry. Have you seen love?” I said looking squarely into the eyes of my friends in the din of the coffee house table. Though, on my having said this, all my friends sitting there made a mistake in taking me to be the ghost of O’Henri’s famous story, “Ghost”. And, for that reason on of them smiled and said, “I wonder whether you will disappear having asked us “if we had seen love.”
‘Yes, I will, if you are not going to offer me a smoke.
My mind was alive with the vision of the train and its echoing whistles. I wondered if O’ Henry’s character, the ghost, was still present-in some vacant railway compartment that was resounding its own silence or amid the uproar of railway engine whistles-but the puff of an ordinary cigarette, the rings of smoke, the remembrance come alive, and the touch of cool, soothing, romantic wind incarnating some beauty face to face in the psychic world, was enough to transport me into a new land.
No. At that time it was not easy for me to think. I could not even think that love happens but once. And, on the second occasion? Does a satisfied person have just a desire for sex rather than love? Well, let us grant it. Now, let us suppose there is a man who has loved, gets married, and after the marriage if happens to find a different face reflected in the stream of fire?-a different body, a different countenance! No, we need not scrutinize the caves of history from napoleon to Nehru; the love remains love only even after it has substituted. A hundred faces of its own supposing you get soaked with it to the same extent, get submerged into it to the same depths, and feel the same every time……….
Instantly an innocent looking face flashed up before the eyes.
‘Are you going to propose noodles for me to eat?
‘No’.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t eat noodles.’
‘Don’t eat. But you can offer me to eat. Ha….. ha….. ha………’
As she laughed, there were flowers spread out all around. But I did not like the laughter in the least. When she ceased laughing, she touched my hand gently, as if she were counting the fingers. Some flame flared up, but passing through the stream of her very young age, cooled down.
‘Why? What happened?’
‘No. Nothing at all.’
‘Then, why did you withdraw your hand?’
‘Just so,’ I mumbled. I was frightened of her piercing eyes.
‘No just so’ you were frightened. Ha……..ha……..ha……..’
A strange mischief was born in her eyes. Clapping unrestrainedly she put forth a second burst of laughter, ‘Frightened,……..frightened!’
‘Yes. I got frightened, but why do you do all such things?’
‘First, you tell me, why you get frightened?’
Whenever she found I was passing through an ordeal, she would laugh out, ‘In a breathe I am transformed into a ball of fire, isn’t it? A girl who had played in your lap, and now just a touch from her makes you pass through the sensations of thrill and the complex of guilt too. Listen to me. Now I can’t be contained within your lap. Just try to lift me up to take in your lap.’
Shanta had no hard feelings towards her for she was born after we had already been married. Her father, who was our neighbour, was a painter, a meritorious artist.
Normally when such artists in small cities, despite all their worthiness, fail to attain remarkable heights, get frustrated. The same was true about Dillon. Papers and magazines, heaps of books and he, sitting there scratching his over grown beard, would get transformed into a philosopher, ‘In this consumer-culture society, on some day or the other, the predicament of art was sure to follow. When money gains in importance, art must lose its recognition. What a station is going to be attained by the people like us who have nothing but devotion and commitment……………………….’
Whenever I cited the examples of great artists like M.F. Hussain who rolled in money, he would suddenly feel downcast,
‘All the supremacy of money. An artist has to forgo the inclinations of his soul too. How many of them become a Hussain? The paintings of how many of the artists reach art galleries? How many of the visitors to the art galleries are connoisseurs? It is only the big names that sell. The big names are put to auction. People buy them as they will buy a pair of panties, a condom or an underwear.’ A few visitors buy them and carry them home as a conscientious effort on their part to give an intellectual touch to their drawing rooms where it is not the subtlety of the art but the price that is highlighted. An artist is descended to the status of a commodity only, today. I have heard lately, someone bought Hussain for Rs.31crore for a year,’ Dhillon was resentful. ‘The power of money has wasted away the power of resistence…….and one day…..in this new system, all the things of art will dwindle away to the status of useless things.’
When Dhillon was gone, Sakshi came in. Shanta had been out. A strange look made itself manifested on her face as soon as she saw me.
‘How is it that your father is always angry?’ I asked.
‘He keeps fighting against all the world.’
‘But why?’
‘He likes….,’ she checked herself in her speech. Her eyes looked unfathomable.’
She blushed deeply and lowered her eyes.
‘Your father is angry with all the world, and you………?’
Shakshi laughed out softly, ‘I know only love. The very word itself makes me crazy. I wish to take a flight …to touch the sky, to become a butterfly….and….the rain, a waterfall,’ she was looking into my eyes, ‘and you?’
‘I don’t know……..’
‘You know all but suffer from fright. I’m unable to understand why you feel frightened. I’m of the age of your daughter…..right?.....but not your daughter exactly,’ she was laughing. ‘I don’t know why it did happen to me. But, perhaps, I had become fond of you since my childhood. And then suddenly when I found you in the mirror while I was looking at my own reflection, I was amazed. You, in your entirety, were present in the mirror, looking at me, with your enigmatic eyes. Some hair on your temples looked grey……..had an impulse at heart to pick up father’s painting brush and colors them black. Then looked at you once again and felt the grey becomes you as it goes with you in your full manliness, your full maturity….’
The room was hushed. The wind froze. Time ceased to roll on. A quieter of excitements ran through me. Shakshi took a step forward. The disposition of bashfulness was won over now. A steadfast young woman who was a lover and who would exert herself to safeguard her right to love was born at her heart. The one who could snatch away this right for herself from a wife too, for she had answers to satisfy all the scruples. Softly she touched my hand with hers; and the very touch caused a thrill run through me….as some dull opiate would…She kissed my hand…..
The myriad stars of the heavens twinkled within her eyes.
‘Admit the truth or don’t………, you also are in love with me. Tell me whether you are, or aren’t. Her lips came upon mine quietly. A turbulence made itself felt. The freshness of the feel in the touch could not be equaled by that of a red red rose newly sprung, nor could the rose have that warmth….that heat.
But the very touch reminded me of shanta, and a sense of guilt overpowered me. As I separated myself in a flash, Shanta stood there like a question embodied. With resentment and dismay in her eyes she asked me.
‘Why do you keep me deprived of my right? She was angry. ‘Why did you separate yourself when you also wanted the same thing? Try to be truthful. You are truthful where others are concerned, why false when it is you, the concerned. Tell me if you did not like my coming over here, or my kissing you like this. But you suffer from fright. Why don’t you do away with this sense of fright in you? One aspect of the truth, isn’t it what you would say? But, suppose she had any, what would you do? Or, what should you have done?’
Shakshi’s eyes had descended into mine. She added, ‘Will I have to tell you that all the truths are not cast in a single mould. The have their separate recognizable identities. Should I tell you that love is born of a very natural phenomenon? Love is not a deliberate creation. Should I desist from loving you for the reason that you are my father’s friend? But there are no such prohibitions imposed by the religious books. Then ? Why should I not love you?
The pendulum clock on the wall seemed to have got awakened to motion. For a moment it felt as if the room was shaken by an unseen earthquake. A deep hush overspread itself at heart, and the numerous branches of the silence became alive on their own under the influence of the earthquake.
The confession of Aaditya Kapoor
I, that is, Aaditya Kapoor. I don’t know what you would do had a story like that begun in your own life. What like it feels, silently watching the growth of a guilty conscience developing within a person, can be understood by you by seeing me. My son Alok reads in Dehradun. Eleven-year old. Shakshi is older than him by seven years only. When they are together they seem to be a brother and a sister. They quarrel also as a brother and sister will. Now, it happened just on that day only. Looking for Alok she came into my room- riding of the chariot of air, as she always does. The feel that Alok is there in the house enhances my feeling of fear. Shakshi took hold of my hands quietly.
‘ Tell me that you don’t love me.’
‘I don’t.’
‘On oath of Alok?’
‘On oath of Alok, I mumbled, and instantly felt startled. In case there were some pleasant gusts of wind for Shakshi, then……? Why did I take an oath on Alok? O my God: What has possessed me?
Next morning, quarrelling with Alok, she looked at me and smiled.
‘Be emancipated from your oath. I’ve come back having made a propitiatory offering worth rupes one hundred in the name of Alok.’ As she laughed gleefully, her white teeth sparkled like pearls on a fine string.
‘What offering?’ Shanta had come out.
‘I’ve been to temple. Just praying for Alok’s long life, made an offering there.
Shakshi found me alone, once again.
‘ keep from speaking on oath. It is a sin. And money is required to make offerings. Will you give me- your second wife, your little wife-money for offerings again and again?’ Shakshi ran away, laughing.
Her peel of laughter still pursued me…….her concluding words in particular…. ‘He is a son of mine too…..How does it matter if he was not born of me……?’ So many glaciers within me were breaking and moving down the valley.
No, It was, perhaps, not easy at that time to think if one falls in love but for once. And on the second occasion? Does there still remain an indefinable longing even after one is divided, and shared by the wife and the family?-A suppressed desire that sparkles off the smoldering wood? No. Nothing was easy to think of at that time. Shakshi was always a small child to Shanta’s mind, the one who in her childhood woo let come from to her and nestle herself in Shanta’s lap. A vast world of recollection still persisted. There was a little cat, Kitty. During the winter it would come and quietly slip under the quilt. Shakshi would also come to listen to my stories. Once, while listening to me, not the little. Kitty but Shakshi slipped into my bed, I was much startled-for the first time. Her hands were warm. The look on her face was different. Shakshi was thirteen years old at the time. She bent a little and then transferred the weight of her beyond the window was a mass of vegetation-forest like……..shanta got in with atea in her hands, seeing shakshi drowsing said, ‘If we had the daughter…..’, had set fire at my heart. Kitty, sitting somewhere in a corner mewed. He looked at Kitty. A shade of anger could be discerned in its eyes for shakshi. I shivered. Very quietly shakshi’s hand slipped up to my chest and, perhaps, I was under some psychological pressure in this strange situation. Opened the window. A dense forest flourished in the dark. There were two or three little bungalows on one side of the forest, and a mosque also at some distance. At the present moment the solitude of the forest seemed to have enveloped me.
Was it a repetition of some Lolita within me? Some time in the night, while holding shanta in my arms, I found it was shakshi’s face that had come to freeze on the screen of my vision, for a long time too just one face gained intransience among the proceeding caravans of the stars. At the time of sexual intercourse with Shanta, the face of little Lolita would flash up and Shanta would vanish. In the dark the vision of Shakshi would become alive…her mischievous fingers….her maiden form shaping itself in a mould. And, at the moment thousands of ants would get access into me. Suddenly when my hot body turned icy cold, Shanta would turn and ask, ‘what happened?’ My growing age and indifference to sex would help her reach an answer to her question, but Shakshi would be there within my minds frame, looking at me in the dark of might with her enormous eyes, rippling writhing becoming a full fledged question, even after he was separated from Shanta.
Time rolled on. So many incidents connected with Shakshi attached themselves to his life. Sometimes marriage ceremonies, sometimes Shakshi’s coming first to him when she wore a new dress, giving a helping hand to Shanta in the kitchen, but, quite commonly, her squabble with Shanta over her laying my table, ‘Let me serve please she would say. ‘she is usurping up all my right,’ once Shanta said loving.
That gave me a rude shock.
And once again, on a certain night Shanta froze the hands in their serpentine movements when she said, ‘Perhaps our own daughter will not do as much as Shakshi does’….
The dense forest flourished on the outside.
The hands turning into snakes fell down as a lizard on the wall could….once again I was under a self analysis, or thinking for own self or lost in my own maze…. Aditya kapoor…what does all this mean? Are you getting perverted? Shakshi is like your own daughter…And then Shakshi’s tone would attack…. Like one, but not a daughter exactly. Then another voice would attack, and a burning body under the impulse of strong gusts of wind coming from the forest would slowly cool down.
An incident that occurred the next day. Having done with the breakfast Shanta had gone to a house in the neighbourhood to participate in some religious rituals going on there. Shakshi seemed to have been awaiting her chance. No sooner did Shanta go out than Shakshi got in like a ship rolling on the sea. Waves this was exactly their time when I was getting ready to9 go and take my bath, of course, with a towel only round the loin just I heard a footstep and there was Shakshi standing in front of me.
The wind stopped. Time stopped. Shakshi was seventeen now…her eyes wide open in a gaze…and suddenly I felt a flame flare up inside me. An unwounted sense of guilt erupted there in. as I was about to move ahead, Shakshi barred the path as solidly as a wall. He eyes sparkled, hands trembled, lips and cheeks too partook something of the trembling. Her hands advanced, snakes wriggled on my bare chest, instantly I closed my eyes. And then…all of a sudden I felt as if the world would come to an end, the land seemed to slide away from under the feet and the walls shake. The thirsty lips of shakshi pressed themselves against mine. And equally instantly the words spoken by Shanta in the silent dark night revived themselves forcefully, ‘perhaps our own daughter won’t do as much as Shakshi does.’ The air stopped Shakshi’s hands were glowing coals, blazing fire-balls. Passing through my own ordeal I was beyond my capacity to think judiciously, unprotected, wavering. As I pushed Shaksahi aside gently. She hung to me like a wild creeper clinging desperately to a tree. The very next moment, as I was suffering from my guilty conscience or remorse, I gave her a sharp slap. It resounded. There came a flash of fear in her eyes. She looked at him intently and then posed to retreat saying.
‘Lo! I won my this right also.’
‘What right? I stammered.
‘Suffering a blow from you.’
She turned her face. The cheek was purple. Then she turned and she did put her lips o9n mine, and then retreated. Pointing to her cheek she said
‘Now try to erase it out. It is you…your token. I’ll keep it alive. She was laughing.
‘Go and have your bath. But the I’ll tell you one thing, you are afraid. But the truth is—you think of me—perhaps all the time. You are never free from me, and will never be, ever.’
She turned to go, but stopped.
‘The world is undergoing a change. Change yourself too, Aditya.’
‘Aditya !’ this was the first time that she had called me by my name. the name ‘Aditya’ reverberated in my mind. I was under the shower, getting soaked. The spray of water beat on my head and body producing their own rhythoric sound, but her voice at my heart persisted, ‘Aditya… Aditya….Aditya….
The word transformed itself into an unfaltering echo. The echo in the wet nude body made itself manifest, and its ruthlessness too.
Perhaps Shanta had made up her mind never to comprehend the change that had occurred in life. But , had there really occurred a change in my life? While going through the equations of vice or sin, many at a time I had to go through the act of killing of my own thoughts. Shakshi had now begun to assert her own right to love even in small matters. I felt this turbulence was felt, besides me and Shakshi, by all—the heaven, the earth, the mirror on the wall in my bedroom, the nooks and corners of my house where at each and every occasion possible Shakshi would give me a lesson in love along with a renewed realization of her youth. Perhaps the current of time had weakened me. Her touch gave me an unwanted pleasure. But, simultaneously, a new awakening would take me into its gold making the blazing fire ball enter the slabs of ice, turning it cold. The wonder was that the matter was manifest to all the objects in the house from a corner of the house to the walls, but no human being was aware of it—neither my neighbours, nor my family members, nor Shakshi’s family members. I thought time puts an end to so many stories on its own accord.
These were the days when dhillon was much concerned about the marriage of Shakshi. To some extent it was caused by the insistence of Shakshi’s mother, and to some extent also because of his failing health and his disappointments born of his failures in his life—that, now, Dhillon wanted to free himself from the responsibility of Shakshi’s marriage.
Suddenly somewhere some leaf got detached from its twig. Some unheard shriek echoed, and the wind rustling through the dense forest raised a storm with in. standing at a short distance from my eyes was looking at me, horrified and unblinkingly. Sitting on his wooden bed, reclining on his pillow, Dhillon with his down cast head was breaking the ice of his words.
‘values of art have changed. Idioms have changed. The world has entered from the twenty-first into the twenty-second. But how long we can go on blaming others. We didn’t change ourselves. Ideals have changed. Colour and canvases have changed….if we could change ourselves a little…he began to cough.
The contemporary painting has become a thing for the elite class. And we are the ones who are carrying along the art on the pattern of the past. If we had endowed our art with a little light of the new intellectuality, new ways of thinking, perhaps the old age wouldn’t have overpowered us so very soon…’ the cough, once again, Compelled Dhillon to pause. ‘I have passed almost all my life now with my own imperfections and failures, but Shakshi!..’
Shakshi stood there in the shade of a wall.
In a little powered voice Dhillon said, ‘there is a boy under my consideration. A painter, It was a chance I pappened to see him last week. He regards me as his master although he is unlike me. He is ambitious. I think Shakshi…’
As if shots boomed one after another. Shakshi stuck to the wall. When I looked at her, she seemed to be trembling caught by the webs of her own conflicting emotions. She had turned pale.
Shanta came out of the kitchen.
‘Brother, it was good of you to do so,’ she said. ‘Finding promising young men is a rarity. See how she blushed with shame.’
Shakshi dashed off instantly.
I got petrified. Who could have seen her tears other than I. But those tears! They were not weak as others generally are.
Suddenly I lost my voice. For the first time I had felt a heavy punch at my heart. Never had occurred there any such feeling at my heart caused by anything concerned with Shakshi. But now the unexpected declaration of marriage….
I was standing by the window once again, after Dhillon had deposited. On the outside the forest flourished. The trees swayed from side to side. The gusts of cold wind coming in had foretold me of some tempest or great forest fire breaking out but who could have expected it to happen so very soon.
And, at the End, the Rain
On that day, it was raining. a torrential downpour. This was the time when the curtain was about to drop on this story I love rains. Amply I cherish thousands of sweet memories of them. Even today the rain sets itself. With its infinite possibilities, to pass me over to some utopia or fairy land. To me rain is not just water falling in showers, it is like the sweet sensation of getting soaked in the cascade of my own sentimentality. As sea waves are…I wonder if standing on the sea-shore you have ever watched the waves flowing in the dark and quiet of night. Listen to the noise of the wind and watch the sudden spurt of the waves come to the shore having covered a long course. Something convulsed within me in the like manner- giving a violent shake to the whole of my being, like the breaking waves.
On that day, as a specialty of the occasion it continued raining heavily through the day, as if the setter of question-paper for life had set such question for me as were an ordeal for me to go through. I stood amazed. And just before this happening everything was either normal, or not so. But, yes, there were signs of the on coming rains.
A number of happenings occurred that day. Dhillon fixed the date of Shakshi’s marriage. It was to take place after two months. Arrangements were to be made at my house. Shakshi, sitting at some distance and biting her nails would cast a glance at me now and then. She looked pale. A phone call in the morning that day a phonic message told my wife that Shakshi’s only uncle died. Shanta’s tears ran unabated since the time. She, as well as Alok, was to catch the 3 p.m. train.
The third issue concerned me. I was in fever. Shanta felt worried. Who would look after me in her absence?
‘Brother, he knows nothing. He doesn’t know about anything in the house where it is placed. I will return tomorrow, but to-night…?’ she said.
In fond memory of her departed uncle Shanta was wiping her tears with an edge of her ‘saari’.
Dhillon turned to cast a glance.
This was the very moment when the thunder of the clouds, for the first times, made its presence manifest, as if it was a drum-beat declaring the opening of the war, the thunder rumbled on. The icy words of Shakshi dissolved themselves in the far off rumble.
‘Go sister. I am here. I’ll stay here tonight I’ll take full care of him.’
‘See. The very problem id solved…,’ Dhillon commented smiling.
Shanta smiled lovingly and said, ‘I needn’t worry when Shakshi is here. Shakshi will take care of him.’
Shakshi’s face betrayed no emotions. With her full sensitive lips, she sat there biting her finger nails…
And then a number of thunder claps sounded themselves seemingly all together.
The ocean waves at my heart that had been calm initially, were beginning to gain momentum, preparatory to some war.
Dhillon departed from our home. Shanta and Alok left the house at 2 O’clock. As I moved ahead, adjusting my situation to my blood-pressure, I heard the outer door being closed from the inside. It was Shakshi. And now only the two of us remained there in the house.
And this was the time when a fine drizzle had started.
I got into the room. My breathing was deeper, though for no opparent reason. My awareness of Shakshi’s presence there excited me. Perhaps the temperature had shot up. A burning sensation was there in my forehead. My temp[les seemed to be on fire. I was sensitive to every sound. One…two… but no Shakshi came in. where did she linger on? I got up and walked out. On the outside Shakshi was lying down facing downwards. She was crying. Her sobs hurt me deeply. It was raining. At quite short a distance water was dripping from the awning. I closed my eyes, controlled the tempest rising at heart. As I came closer to Shakshi I felt I could withhold no longer. As if there was a volcano, a dormant one. And no sooner did I touch Shakshi than it would burst open. The veranda near the awning was wet. I drew my self back, came to my bed and lay down. The clock on the wall struck three. The pendulum was in motion. Suddenly, my body felt like having been transformed into a pendulum. She was coming. I closed my eyes hurriedly.
She held tea in her hand. She put the tea-cup on the table nearby. Medical tables were there in her hand. She came closer to me with the tablets and some water in a glass. She touched my forehead gently and got started.
‘take the medicine. I know you haven’t had a wink. Now don’t play a part. Fever is high.’
I saw her eyes. They were swollen for weeping. She was in a sky-blue shalwar and jumper having sky-blue flower prints on it. Her hands looked extremely beautiful. Taking medicine hand, for the first time I saw her body having the enchanting curves of her youth. fair complexion. long hair. long slender neck. Very soft and full lips. She noticed me looking at her and eyes to the ground. She didn’t stay there any longer. Went out of the room. I was passing through my self-analysis-entangling and struggling with myself every moment. About two hours passed. I got out and found Shakshi asleep in the previous posture, the same as when she was crying. The fiery glow of the promine4nces of her body curves was conspicuous from under her salwar and kameez. Very beautiful feet. Her fingers-as if they had been chiseled out. The rain abated a bit but soon after the thunder began. But the thunder, this time, had vigour and enthusiasm. It appeared as if the rain would never come to an end if it started for once. At seven Shakshi was awake once again. She brought me my bread. I was aware that Shakshi must be under going a tremendous conflict internally, probably much more than I was. ‘ But why es she so silent,’ I thought ‘Has she compromised with her new situation? She is to stay here for the whole night to-night. Where will she put up? But, why is she so silent? Has she compromised with her new situation?’ the thought occurred again and again.
But, perhaps, she hadn’t. there came the time for the dormant volcano to arrupt. It was nine at night, when Shakshi had seen me finish up my meal and the last dose of medicine as well.
On the outside it was raining rather heavily. The falling rain drops played a strange music. I moved forward and opened the window. On the outside the forest flourished. A wet forest. Lightning flashed at that very moments, and despite the dark it momentarily brightened up the fearsome plants and trees. And them I heard the foot-steps Shakshi came in with a pillow in her hands. She puts the pillow beside mine on the bed. And before I could look at her with wonder, she rendered me unspeakable. ‘I’ll sleep with you. At my disposal I have this very night only.’
There was a strong flash.
On the outside the forest flourished. From time to time the lighting flashed.
‘I’ve got you only for one night. Do you know how I spent the last seven hours? I lived with you, I was alone though. Lying alone I felt your presence in every pore of my body and limbs.
She was quite familiar with the room. She reached Shanta’s wardrobe as if it were her own. She took out a blue nighty. ‘Must be a bit loose’ she said. ‘Why don’t you speak?’ she shouted. ‘Why are you dumb founded?’
With the nighty she covered her face and burst out crying.
‘I’ll get married in two months. I was not to go into the world of brushes and canvas. Why did you let me go? Couldn’t you keep me with you?’
Clad in the nighty, coming to me, Shakshi stood erect.
Once again the lighting glowed white.
Her vody was very hot. The prominences of her body were well consp[icuous. She bent forward and put the fire of her lips on to mine …..
Her body emitted heat.
‘Satiate me. I don’t want to remain incomplete. For God’s sake don’t bring between us the disparity of our ages. Satisfy me. Give me life…’
I couldn’t turn back to see through the open window the forest getting drenched in the rain. Perhaps there was a lighting. Perhaps it had struck the forest violently. The whole of the forest seemed to have been set on fire. I was very-very weak at the moment…..
Or, perhaps, I was born for this moment only.
Have you seen love? No, come out with the truth. Have you seen love?
Suddenly I got lost like the ghost of O’ Henry. The wet forest was animated, and the rain in the forest-in colours the features of Shakshi had replaced mine….
So many rainy seasons…..so many autumns have passed since then….or….they are passing away.
manto and the dream
Munto and the Dream
I had been seeing him there for three or four days. When? Where? --perhaps it is not possible for me to describe sequentially…or you might say this also that I am possessed by a psychological fear, and it is for that reason that I am unable to tell you anything. At nights I wake up abruptly because of fear. And then I feel as if I were on an unfamiliar road or in an unknown bus. And again I feel a police van comes and halts in front of my bus. The policemen are surrounding the bus. They are in an offensive mood. And then, lying on the road, there is a dead body soaked in blood and encircled, the story of a false encounter. And the policemen, dreaming of their promotion, busy in preparing reports…..
No, perhaps now I need not tell you at all who I am and where I live. I am a minority girl belonging to the community that is a large one, as much as, it will be a mestake to take it to be less than 20-25 crore, as the census will verify. I don’t know even why our political leaders have doomed them by impressing upon them the sense of being a minority when such a large population is larger than that of many a country. Let the matter pass on. I don’t want to indulge in such political mazes. I simply to want to come to the dream that amazed and startled me.
Clad in white but unclean kurta-peyajama, a pair of worn out sandals, on the eyes a pair of very old fashioned spectacles, the eyes dangerously sharp…wearing the shine that would surpass the shine in the eyes of the eagle. But, at the present a deep solemnity had replaced the shine.
He was in the room, at the writing table, without my permission. He had rendered his teeth dark and fingers yellow by constant smoking. His hair was in a mess. He had not considered it necessary to brush it.
I had been seeing him for the last three days. I had got frightened on the first day. An unknown make person in my room! Frightened, I had asked him in confusion.
‘Who are you?’
‘Oh! A mistake,’ he replied in a very low voice.
‘What are you writing?’
He turned his eyes towards me,
‘Want to write something, but… I’ve lost the words. Can you recall, there was a time when I would write one story every day, and comfortably too?
‘Don’t pose. A story every day! This happened only once, and that for one month only. You didn’t have money to buy you cigarettes and wine. You would write a story, give it to the editor of the magazine and buy a bottle of liquor when you got the money. You didn’t care for your dear wife even….’
But it seemed as if he did not hear me. He was looking into space.
‘I had words and words, even at the moment when Toba Take Singh was about to close his eyes on the no-man’s –land… and…that…appallingly cold flesh…! Perhaps all that comes to my recollection…that disastrous afternoon… when hearing the voice of the doctor the had begun to unfasten her shelwar. No. I had words even at that time.
‘and now?’
As I was still looking at him he disappeared.
He, that is Munto. Saddat Hasan Munto.
I had got badly startled by the dream.
Well! Let me tell you even my name. Kausarb bee..or.. why don’t you choose a name for me that might please you?
The times were disturbed even when I was born. Now and then fierce disturbances erupted even when I had grown up to be a girl. The tiny bells tied round the ankles of barbarity and terror produced the noise so very grating to my ears that I befriended books at my very tender age. And, unawares, reading the books gained friendship of this Munto who wore glasses on his large but deceptive eyes. To me it was almost inconceivable that this lean and thin person, sick looking man of letters, could intervene between me and my dreams.
No. it is necessary to give you a reference of that day.
Once again the city was overcast by the vultures of terror. Police vans visited the area populated by the minority cast much more frequently that they otherwise would. Not a long time elapsed since the unfortunate happening had taken place two or three years ago. The disaster was alive once again, in a different guise though.
I am not a journalist. And you can see such scenes on TV screen happening every day. I can recall only this much-
It had rained heavily that morning. Frightened, we stayed secluded, self-imprisoned with in our own home. What like it is to feel alienated in one’s own home, you may imagine that. On that day we had an early supper. As none of us was interested in the telecast stories of false encounters. We went to bed early. I came into my room, closed the window and lay down quietly.
No. Oh! I must beg your pardon for that weird dream. But, that night, Munto was in my room once again. And this was not a whim of my eyes.
‘let us go for an outing.’
‘Have you gone crazy? There is a curfew like noiselessness on the out side.’
‘I known. The conditions are not good.’
‘Then? The police will arrest you.’
‘Won’t arrest,’ he said laughing,’ perform an encounter directly.’
‘You know all this…., yet a proposal of an outing!’
Suddenly he turned grave.
‘Nothing will happen. We shall get back after a round of a mile or two.’
‘A mile or two … on foot?’
‘Sssh, I’ve got a car, by stealth…,’ he was laughing. ‘it is known to a few only that I had chauffeured for Quayade-Azam-Mohammad Ali Jinnah too.’
‘ I know. You drove his car into a collision.’
Munto was laughing. ‘you needn’t worry. I shall be driving this time carefully.’
I looked at the clock. It was three at night.
The road was deserted. I opened the window. The ground was still wet. I couldn’t understand what an attraction was there in this 42-43 years old, lean and thin creative writer that I accompanied him, enchanted.
The road, wet because of the rain, the sounds of dogs barking and whining.’ We took seats in the car. It sped fast. Drowsing police vans at short intervals but Munto was lost in his own thoughts. It seemed as if he desired to fill up his eyes with the vision of the city its solitude. At one or two places the police stopped us and ashed him a question or two. What answer Munto gave them laughing is unknown to me. I only saw this much that in the dark Munto had put a holy sandal mark on his forehead. He would laugh over the fright that held me captive.
‘hadn’t I told you that nothing was happen to us?...let’s cover just a little more distance…’
And now Munto steered the car into such a direction as made me cry out.
‘Where are you going to?’
‘Sssh ! he put his finger on his lips. ‘History does not die in such a short span of time. No need to say anything. Just keep on moving.’
I wanted to say, ‘History never dies,’ but I don’t know what made me keep my silence.
It was over four now. Now we were in a poor colony inhabited by the minority, where there stood mud and thatched huts of laborers or those who kept draught horses.
Dogs were still barking. Morning was already there for some of those horses. In some house kitchen-fire was alive. Some children are also seen in front of a few houses…the women were seen doing something going in and coming out of their huts…and suddenly that accident occurred…a terrible accident. There happened to come in front of the car a little minority boy, and also a little calf, at one and the same moment. To Munto, who was driving in a carefree mood, it was the very time to take a decision with in a flash of time.
No, if you prefer you may leave the story here. I won’t ask you to continue reading..for what you are going to read now is impractical, loathsome and violating the human right as well.
In the last fraction of the second as I was shutting up my eyes in desperation I chanced to catch a glimpse of the young calf bolting away. Munto had steered the car towards the minority boy.
No. I repeat. Please separate the cruel words said here presently from the story.
We were back home.
Munto was standing near the window bars. His spectacles were soiled with dust. He was smoking cigarettes recklessly.
‘You could have saved the boy,’ I shrieked out.
‘Only one-either the boy or the calf.’ Munto shrieked out more vehemently. ‘The casualty of a minority boy will be forgotten with in two hours. But, do you know what the accidental death of a calf in that locality means?’
Munto turned. He tore the papers on the table into little bits and threw them into the dustbin.
Munto disappeared, but the chair on which he had been sitting was still rocking.
I had been seeing him there for three or four days. When? Where? --perhaps it is not possible for me to describe sequentially…or you might say this also that I am possessed by a psychological fear, and it is for that reason that I am unable to tell you anything. At nights I wake up abruptly because of fear. And then I feel as if I were on an unfamiliar road or in an unknown bus. And again I feel a police van comes and halts in front of my bus. The policemen are surrounding the bus. They are in an offensive mood. And then, lying on the road, there is a dead body soaked in blood and encircled, the story of a false encounter. And the policemen, dreaming of their promotion, busy in preparing reports…..
No, perhaps now I need not tell you at all who I am and where I live. I am a minority girl belonging to the community that is a large one, as much as, it will be a mestake to take it to be less than 20-25 crore, as the census will verify. I don’t know even why our political leaders have doomed them by impressing upon them the sense of being a minority when such a large population is larger than that of many a country. Let the matter pass on. I don’t want to indulge in such political mazes. I simply to want to come to the dream that amazed and startled me.
Clad in white but unclean kurta-peyajama, a pair of worn out sandals, on the eyes a pair of very old fashioned spectacles, the eyes dangerously sharp…wearing the shine that would surpass the shine in the eyes of the eagle. But, at the present a deep solemnity had replaced the shine.
He was in the room, at the writing table, without my permission. He had rendered his teeth dark and fingers yellow by constant smoking. His hair was in a mess. He had not considered it necessary to brush it.
I had been seeing him for the last three days. I had got frightened on the first day. An unknown make person in my room! Frightened, I had asked him in confusion.
‘Who are you?’
‘Oh! A mistake,’ he replied in a very low voice.
‘What are you writing?’
He turned his eyes towards me,
‘Want to write something, but… I’ve lost the words. Can you recall, there was a time when I would write one story every day, and comfortably too?
‘Don’t pose. A story every day! This happened only once, and that for one month only. You didn’t have money to buy you cigarettes and wine. You would write a story, give it to the editor of the magazine and buy a bottle of liquor when you got the money. You didn’t care for your dear wife even….’
But it seemed as if he did not hear me. He was looking into space.
‘I had words and words, even at the moment when Toba Take Singh was about to close his eyes on the no-man’s –land… and…that…appallingly cold flesh…! Perhaps all that comes to my recollection…that disastrous afternoon… when hearing the voice of the doctor the had begun to unfasten her shelwar. No. I had words even at that time.
‘and now?’
As I was still looking at him he disappeared.
He, that is Munto. Saddat Hasan Munto.
I had got badly startled by the dream.
Well! Let me tell you even my name. Kausarb bee..or.. why don’t you choose a name for me that might please you?
The times were disturbed even when I was born. Now and then fierce disturbances erupted even when I had grown up to be a girl. The tiny bells tied round the ankles of barbarity and terror produced the noise so very grating to my ears that I befriended books at my very tender age. And, unawares, reading the books gained friendship of this Munto who wore glasses on his large but deceptive eyes. To me it was almost inconceivable that this lean and thin person, sick looking man of letters, could intervene between me and my dreams.
No. it is necessary to give you a reference of that day.
Once again the city was overcast by the vultures of terror. Police vans visited the area populated by the minority cast much more frequently that they otherwise would. Not a long time elapsed since the unfortunate happening had taken place two or three years ago. The disaster was alive once again, in a different guise though.
I am not a journalist. And you can see such scenes on TV screen happening every day. I can recall only this much-
It had rained heavily that morning. Frightened, we stayed secluded, self-imprisoned with in our own home. What like it is to feel alienated in one’s own home, you may imagine that. On that day we had an early supper. As none of us was interested in the telecast stories of false encounters. We went to bed early. I came into my room, closed the window and lay down quietly.
No. Oh! I must beg your pardon for that weird dream. But, that night, Munto was in my room once again. And this was not a whim of my eyes.
‘let us go for an outing.’
‘Have you gone crazy? There is a curfew like noiselessness on the out side.’
‘I known. The conditions are not good.’
‘Then? The police will arrest you.’
‘Won’t arrest,’ he said laughing,’ perform an encounter directly.’
‘You know all this…., yet a proposal of an outing!’
Suddenly he turned grave.
‘Nothing will happen. We shall get back after a round of a mile or two.’
‘A mile or two … on foot?’
‘Sssh, I’ve got a car, by stealth…,’ he was laughing. ‘it is known to a few only that I had chauffeured for Quayade-Azam-Mohammad Ali Jinnah too.’
‘ I know. You drove his car into a collision.’
Munto was laughing. ‘you needn’t worry. I shall be driving this time carefully.’
I looked at the clock. It was three at night.
The road was deserted. I opened the window. The ground was still wet. I couldn’t understand what an attraction was there in this 42-43 years old, lean and thin creative writer that I accompanied him, enchanted.
The road, wet because of the rain, the sounds of dogs barking and whining.’ We took seats in the car. It sped fast. Drowsing police vans at short intervals but Munto was lost in his own thoughts. It seemed as if he desired to fill up his eyes with the vision of the city its solitude. At one or two places the police stopped us and ashed him a question or two. What answer Munto gave them laughing is unknown to me. I only saw this much that in the dark Munto had put a holy sandal mark on his forehead. He would laugh over the fright that held me captive.
‘hadn’t I told you that nothing was happen to us?...let’s cover just a little more distance…’
And now Munto steered the car into such a direction as made me cry out.
‘Where are you going to?’
‘Sssh ! he put his finger on his lips. ‘History does not die in such a short span of time. No need to say anything. Just keep on moving.’
I wanted to say, ‘History never dies,’ but I don’t know what made me keep my silence.
It was over four now. Now we were in a poor colony inhabited by the minority, where there stood mud and thatched huts of laborers or those who kept draught horses.
Dogs were still barking. Morning was already there for some of those horses. In some house kitchen-fire was alive. Some children are also seen in front of a few houses…the women were seen doing something going in and coming out of their huts…and suddenly that accident occurred…a terrible accident. There happened to come in front of the car a little minority boy, and also a little calf, at one and the same moment. To Munto, who was driving in a carefree mood, it was the very time to take a decision with in a flash of time.
No, if you prefer you may leave the story here. I won’t ask you to continue reading..for what you are going to read now is impractical, loathsome and violating the human right as well.
In the last fraction of the second as I was shutting up my eyes in desperation I chanced to catch a glimpse of the young calf bolting away. Munto had steered the car towards the minority boy.
No. I repeat. Please separate the cruel words said here presently from the story.
We were back home.
Munto was standing near the window bars. His spectacles were soiled with dust. He was smoking cigarettes recklessly.
‘You could have saved the boy,’ I shrieked out.
‘Only one-either the boy or the calf.’ Munto shrieked out more vehemently. ‘The casualty of a minority boy will be forgotten with in two hours. But, do you know what the accidental death of a calf in that locality means?’
Munto turned. He tore the papers on the table into little bits and threw them into the dustbin.
Munto disappeared, but the chair on which he had been sitting was still rocking.
mirror image
Mirror image
Looking into the mirror as a kid was always an illusion, it was not her, somebody else. She screamed, ‘It’s not me, who is this? This is not my face, I can’t live with anybody else’s face.’
ssRunning after and getting drenched in the waves, waves of the past and present, she yelled, “Jimmy, Jimmy come back! Please for heaven’s sake!” Her words made her shiver- What is the need to go so far. Waves after all are waves, violent, mad, unstoppable and even deaf. “Come back Jimmy! I won’t be able to run now.”
Jimmy, with that twinkle in his eyes and large smile on his face came near her. “What happened, Mummy? Why do you get nervous?” “Nervous, why shouldn’t I be nervous? The world seems to be a playground for you. Why do you have to run so fast?”
“If, Papa would have been here……”
Jimmy was laughing. She just stared at the child. His words, his style, his style of looking down even before finishing the question. It was all so familiar. She knew him, it was not Jimmy. No, not at all, it was somebody else. She was seeing somebody else in Jimmy. “No Jimmy, please don’t look like this, don’t behave like this. It seemed somebody had thrown a stone inside the pond of her heart. Pond, no it wasn’t a pond. Rather a sea, a violent, mad, angry sea.
“No….No Jimmy don’t be like him”!
‘Him’ was his Father.
Time had stopped, the waves stood still, some footprints she had lost way behind ….some faces she had forgotten, but some came along with her.
“When father and I used to come here……..” She held his hand, “You still remember your father?”
“Yes, of course”.
The same way of talking, she stood there like a statue. Quite blank, quite void, lost in the oblivion. For a second, she took Jimmy to be ‘somebody’ else……then for a second lost in being a mother.
“Jimmy…….”
She laughed, laughed with no reason to laugh.
It seemed that laughter was the medicine bringing her back to the reality of being a mother. Its not rare when people resemble their father, but Jimmy was different…just after one year of his birth it seemed the whole of their conversation revolved around Jimmy, “Look at his hands……eyes….his feet, even the fingers…..they all are like yours…..isn’t it?”
With astonishment in her eyes, she asked-“How do you feel, seeing yourself in Jimmy, so small. Uhhh….. How do you feel?” He also started to swim with her on waves of amazement. Taking pride in his son he kissed Jimmy’s hands, his lashes….
“Jimmy….Jimmy my son.”
Eyes can cross the oceans of wonder within no time……
“Everybody says he is your son. He is not even near my shadow. You must be feeling proud. I am telling you, I will get a daughter, after all even a mother needs somebody to look like her. It doesn’t matter how she looks but there should be somebody like her. Somebody completely born out of her, as blooming…… as radiant as fresh milk. Why are you looking at me like that? Yes, I will get a sister for Jimmy, to make him feel jealous. Well, a daughter looking like me….will you love her or because of the wheatish complexion…?”
Jimmy……Jimmy.
Sometimes how easily can you draw pictures wet sand, how suddenly, thinking of such things. And the emotions inside you break loose. She was looking at him, and he with those eyes, lips, with his whole body smiled at her. He bends down, on the wet sand waiting for the waves to soak them instead of the picture on the sand.
“Listen…. sometimes there is something else than the kid…. a moment belonging to us….are you listening? Where there is nobody, no wet sand, no waves, just us and only a spell of half closed, half opened eyes.”
“And if the spell suddenly breaks, then….
Jimmy jumped out of the bed onto her shoulder. She giggled. He also smiled at Jimmy.
“Just like you…….stay away form me” she scolds Jimmy playfully, and Jimmy like an unstoppable, violent storm plasters her with kisses. He is laughing……..
She is soaked with the kisses, just like the wet sand-“Leave me –Stupid”
“That was when Jimmy was an year old and it seemed that ‘he’ also along with me and Jimmy had to face the dense forests of life ……..”
She changed the date in the diary.
Jimmy was growing holding his father’s finger. Days became months and months became an year and it seemed that his father’s fingers merged into his.
Just like him. It seemed they were identical. His laughter….his habits.
“Were you like this……?”
“I don’t know”.
“No, you wouldn’t have been as beautiful… like Jimmy……. like cotton…so soft.”
She is reading his lips. His lips are very near…… near to her eyes-Losing themselves into each other, waiting to get lost……. there is a hint of impatience in his behaviour. How was I like….the way Jimmy dances, does his naughty things, makes noise…. his likes, his dislikes.
She was getting jealous.
“…Yes, as a kid, just like him, was always lost in clothes, used to take out a whole lot. I also didn’t like new clothes, it was always the old and dirty ones I use to like. I don’t know why. I liked rain. I liked the way earth flew with the air, I liked getting wet, sitting near the window, sketching. I used to enjoy it a lot. I didn’t like bad faces, I didn’t like oranges, didn’t like ‘Karela’. Are you listening to me?”
Her voice was lost somewhere in clamor of the waves. She just looked at them plainly. It seemed that somebody had cut his flesh and made an exact replica of him, as if somebody had given him a small mirror. Hey look, look at your childhood’s photograph.
Jimmy’s small childish palms were growing bigger. The father was filled with joy excitement and a feeling of pride.
But who was jealous….Is Jimmy….?”
That day Jimmy suddenly stretched on the bed. There was a feeling of displeasure in his eyes. The displeasure, he had for her….. for a mother…
“Stay away….stay away from me mother……”
Darkness was spreading its wings, it seemed that the night was getting drawn into some lake. She wore her nightdress, woke up to switch on the blue night bulb. Jimmy eyes watched her every move…..her every action.
“Lights……Don’t turn off the lights”
“Why”
“I won’t be able to sleep. I will sleep in Papa’s arms”
He tilted his head a bit and nested it on his father’s shoulder. She smiled with meaningful eyes. She was shocked for a moment, their hands….their legs…their bodies…the only difference was that one was big and the other small. She came on to the bed after switching on the bulb.
Jimmy jumped onto her body, and she suddenly burst out laughing…I was getting jealous. Jimmy was loving her the same way as……
He was laughing.
She giggled.
Jimmy kissed her eyes, her forehead, he took her cheeks in his small hands and caressed them and….. bringing his small lips to hers………
Stay Away…..
She jumped like a fish in water, then laughed, released herself from his hold.
He was still smiling at Jimmy
She stammered, “See…how does he behaves….this…are you seeing this?”
“Yes” he laughed again, would you believe, Frayad said….have you read Frayad?” She felt insulted like scattered waves. “Everybody has read him…don’t act…but Jimmy…..he is just like you…..the wet sand was getting wetter and he was laughing.
That was when Jimmy was two years old and it seemed that He also, along with me and Jimmy had to face the dense forests of life…….
The dates in the diary were changed.
All of a sudden it seemed that Jimmy was growing. His eyes…...his lips and it seemed all of it was sinking in his father…no he was slowly disappearing. His eyes went first.
Jimmy came before her eyes……Mummy!
Then his lips…..then………
She used to check his father’s presence persistently in the dark- Are you there?
Sometimes Jimmy got surprised by it. Even while sleeping Jimmy’s hand used to remove hers from his father’s chest and suddenly changed position to come between them, followed by his usual laugh.
“Jimmy is growing.”
“Yes”
“We should be more careful with Jimmy, he has started observing things, and he repeats them too. You know his observation. Frayad once said sometimes a child becomes a man. No don’t get angry like foolish people, and don’t show me your eyes like that. It happens sometimes…..but a child will remain a child, like our Jimmy.”
Then, suddenly the days and night were lost somewhere.
And then it seemed as if she had lost a large part of her life somewhere, and then like the fog of ‘Sogwari’ in her eyes, she started looking for something in that four year child, Jimmy.
An accident, that was what it was, the same time in evening when the birds are retiring and the stars are starting to announce their arrival.
And then a star got lost somewhere.
She thought it to be the dense forest of life but it was nothing, only a thick cover of fog. A cover of haze, of darkness….a shadow. She just came to know about the accident, he didn’t return that evening, he never returned…….
She read Jimmy’s eyes.
“Papa didn’t come...?”
“No he will not come now!” she was crying.
Even after such accidents there is a life hidden somewhere, that life has to be found, has to be lived for those like Jimmy. And there is ‘something’ for oneself too, other that the accident. There is something other than the memories.
“Jimmy, are you listening? Dirty clothes, no, remove them Jimmy you have so many clothes, ‘Karela’ has vitamins Jimmy. Green vegetables, oranges make blood –you should eat them Jimmy….” Her voice was feeble, maybe Jimmy was not listening. She could see Jimmy in the darkness of night, Jimmy’s hand came over her eyes. Soft as a cushion. “Don’t cry Mummy, don’t cry….Papa…he will come, look I will become….” Even in the darkness she could feel the smile. Jimmy’s lips came to her forehead, he then kissed her eyes lovingly….He is loving her.
She got stunned like the waves. “Jimmy” Jimmy was frightened. She hugged Jimmy close to her heart……My son, my son, she is looking Jimmy’s father is smiling, she is telling him tales about Jimmy. Are you listening, after you have gone he becomes you, says, “I am Papa, are you listening?”
And then, like trees in Autumn, waiting to be decorated with new leaves, waiting for flowers and fruits to bloom-she saw that she was alone. Jimmy had started going to school, he has started wearing his school uniform. Maybe time flies like a ‘plane’. The morning and the evenings have changed. She woke up fast, went to Jimmy and said smilingly –“Listen, from today I will drop you to school. Is it alright, seasons change, Jimmy. She thought that Jimmy kept looking at her to his way to school. No, he is not ‘Him’, he is Jimmy.
That day with a new resolve, a new spirit she tore the diary. But before tearing it she wrote. “Now I will live for Jimmy, what right do I have to still carry something which no longer exists. I should look at Jimmy as Jimmy. Maybe, that is what is right for Jimmy….that he never faces any kind of inferiority complex.”
She tore that page too.
“Jimmy….Jimmy come back.”
“Why do you get so scared, Mummy?”
Jimmy’s small feet came running towards her. Jimmy was laughing, why you get so scared. Run, catch me.
He ran away, she is panting, he is running fast. She manages to catch him.
“No Jimmy, Jimmy stop…. Stop it Jimmy.”
Jimmy looks at her quite perplexed-as if asking why. And then suddenly she forgets everything….just stares at Jimmy. At Jimmy, his eyes….his lips…..
There is a feeling of amazement in his eyes, she holds Jimmy’s hand. She still stares at him.
How did it happen…how did it get into Jimmy? Her eyes,….her lips. “What happened Mummy?”
“No” she just giggled lightly.
Looking into the mirror as a kid was always an illusion, it was not her, somebody else. She screamed, ‘It’s not me, who is this? This is not my face, I can’t live with anybody else’s face.’
ssRunning after and getting drenched in the waves, waves of the past and present, she yelled, “Jimmy, Jimmy come back! Please for heaven’s sake!” Her words made her shiver- What is the need to go so far. Waves after all are waves, violent, mad, unstoppable and even deaf. “Come back Jimmy! I won’t be able to run now.”
Jimmy, with that twinkle in his eyes and large smile on his face came near her. “What happened, Mummy? Why do you get nervous?” “Nervous, why shouldn’t I be nervous? The world seems to be a playground for you. Why do you have to run so fast?”
“If, Papa would have been here……”
Jimmy was laughing. She just stared at the child. His words, his style, his style of looking down even before finishing the question. It was all so familiar. She knew him, it was not Jimmy. No, not at all, it was somebody else. She was seeing somebody else in Jimmy. “No Jimmy, please don’t look like this, don’t behave like this. It seemed somebody had thrown a stone inside the pond of her heart. Pond, no it wasn’t a pond. Rather a sea, a violent, mad, angry sea.
“No….No Jimmy don’t be like him”!
‘Him’ was his Father.
Time had stopped, the waves stood still, some footprints she had lost way behind ….some faces she had forgotten, but some came along with her.
“When father and I used to come here……..” She held his hand, “You still remember your father?”
“Yes, of course”.
The same way of talking, she stood there like a statue. Quite blank, quite void, lost in the oblivion. For a second, she took Jimmy to be ‘somebody’ else……then for a second lost in being a mother.
“Jimmy…….”
She laughed, laughed with no reason to laugh.
It seemed that laughter was the medicine bringing her back to the reality of being a mother. Its not rare when people resemble their father, but Jimmy was different…just after one year of his birth it seemed the whole of their conversation revolved around Jimmy, “Look at his hands……eyes….his feet, even the fingers…..they all are like yours…..isn’t it?”
With astonishment in her eyes, she asked-“How do you feel, seeing yourself in Jimmy, so small. Uhhh….. How do you feel?” He also started to swim with her on waves of amazement. Taking pride in his son he kissed Jimmy’s hands, his lashes….
“Jimmy….Jimmy my son.”
Eyes can cross the oceans of wonder within no time……
“Everybody says he is your son. He is not even near my shadow. You must be feeling proud. I am telling you, I will get a daughter, after all even a mother needs somebody to look like her. It doesn’t matter how she looks but there should be somebody like her. Somebody completely born out of her, as blooming…… as radiant as fresh milk. Why are you looking at me like that? Yes, I will get a sister for Jimmy, to make him feel jealous. Well, a daughter looking like me….will you love her or because of the wheatish complexion…?”
Jimmy……Jimmy.
Sometimes how easily can you draw pictures wet sand, how suddenly, thinking of such things. And the emotions inside you break loose. She was looking at him, and he with those eyes, lips, with his whole body smiled at her. He bends down, on the wet sand waiting for the waves to soak them instead of the picture on the sand.
“Listen…. sometimes there is something else than the kid…. a moment belonging to us….are you listening? Where there is nobody, no wet sand, no waves, just us and only a spell of half closed, half opened eyes.”
“And if the spell suddenly breaks, then….
Jimmy jumped out of the bed onto her shoulder. She giggled. He also smiled at Jimmy.
“Just like you…….stay away form me” she scolds Jimmy playfully, and Jimmy like an unstoppable, violent storm plasters her with kisses. He is laughing……..
She is soaked with the kisses, just like the wet sand-“Leave me –Stupid”
“That was when Jimmy was an year old and it seemed that ‘he’ also along with me and Jimmy had to face the dense forests of life ……..”
She changed the date in the diary.
Jimmy was growing holding his father’s finger. Days became months and months became an year and it seemed that his father’s fingers merged into his.
Just like him. It seemed they were identical. His laughter….his habits.
“Were you like this……?”
“I don’t know”.
“No, you wouldn’t have been as beautiful… like Jimmy……. like cotton…so soft.”
She is reading his lips. His lips are very near…… near to her eyes-Losing themselves into each other, waiting to get lost……. there is a hint of impatience in his behaviour. How was I like….the way Jimmy dances, does his naughty things, makes noise…. his likes, his dislikes.
She was getting jealous.
“…Yes, as a kid, just like him, was always lost in clothes, used to take out a whole lot. I also didn’t like new clothes, it was always the old and dirty ones I use to like. I don’t know why. I liked rain. I liked the way earth flew with the air, I liked getting wet, sitting near the window, sketching. I used to enjoy it a lot. I didn’t like bad faces, I didn’t like oranges, didn’t like ‘Karela’. Are you listening to me?”
Her voice was lost somewhere in clamor of the waves. She just looked at them plainly. It seemed that somebody had cut his flesh and made an exact replica of him, as if somebody had given him a small mirror. Hey look, look at your childhood’s photograph.
Jimmy’s small childish palms were growing bigger. The father was filled with joy excitement and a feeling of pride.
But who was jealous….Is Jimmy….?”
That day Jimmy suddenly stretched on the bed. There was a feeling of displeasure in his eyes. The displeasure, he had for her….. for a mother…
“Stay away….stay away from me mother……”
Darkness was spreading its wings, it seemed that the night was getting drawn into some lake. She wore her nightdress, woke up to switch on the blue night bulb. Jimmy eyes watched her every move…..her every action.
“Lights……Don’t turn off the lights”
“Why”
“I won’t be able to sleep. I will sleep in Papa’s arms”
He tilted his head a bit and nested it on his father’s shoulder. She smiled with meaningful eyes. She was shocked for a moment, their hands….their legs…their bodies…the only difference was that one was big and the other small. She came on to the bed after switching on the bulb.
Jimmy jumped onto her body, and she suddenly burst out laughing…I was getting jealous. Jimmy was loving her the same way as……
He was laughing.
She giggled.
Jimmy kissed her eyes, her forehead, he took her cheeks in his small hands and caressed them and….. bringing his small lips to hers………
Stay Away…..
She jumped like a fish in water, then laughed, released herself from his hold.
He was still smiling at Jimmy
She stammered, “See…how does he behaves….this…are you seeing this?”
“Yes” he laughed again, would you believe, Frayad said….have you read Frayad?” She felt insulted like scattered waves. “Everybody has read him…don’t act…but Jimmy…..he is just like you…..the wet sand was getting wetter and he was laughing.
That was when Jimmy was two years old and it seemed that He also, along with me and Jimmy had to face the dense forests of life…….
The dates in the diary were changed.
All of a sudden it seemed that Jimmy was growing. His eyes…...his lips and it seemed all of it was sinking in his father…no he was slowly disappearing. His eyes went first.
Jimmy came before her eyes……Mummy!
Then his lips…..then………
She used to check his father’s presence persistently in the dark- Are you there?
Sometimes Jimmy got surprised by it. Even while sleeping Jimmy’s hand used to remove hers from his father’s chest and suddenly changed position to come between them, followed by his usual laugh.
“Jimmy is growing.”
“Yes”
“We should be more careful with Jimmy, he has started observing things, and he repeats them too. You know his observation. Frayad once said sometimes a child becomes a man. No don’t get angry like foolish people, and don’t show me your eyes like that. It happens sometimes…..but a child will remain a child, like our Jimmy.”
Then, suddenly the days and night were lost somewhere.
And then it seemed as if she had lost a large part of her life somewhere, and then like the fog of ‘Sogwari’ in her eyes, she started looking for something in that four year child, Jimmy.
An accident, that was what it was, the same time in evening when the birds are retiring and the stars are starting to announce their arrival.
And then a star got lost somewhere.
She thought it to be the dense forest of life but it was nothing, only a thick cover of fog. A cover of haze, of darkness….a shadow. She just came to know about the accident, he didn’t return that evening, he never returned…….
She read Jimmy’s eyes.
“Papa didn’t come...?”
“No he will not come now!” she was crying.
Even after such accidents there is a life hidden somewhere, that life has to be found, has to be lived for those like Jimmy. And there is ‘something’ for oneself too, other that the accident. There is something other than the memories.
“Jimmy, are you listening? Dirty clothes, no, remove them Jimmy you have so many clothes, ‘Karela’ has vitamins Jimmy. Green vegetables, oranges make blood –you should eat them Jimmy….” Her voice was feeble, maybe Jimmy was not listening. She could see Jimmy in the darkness of night, Jimmy’s hand came over her eyes. Soft as a cushion. “Don’t cry Mummy, don’t cry….Papa…he will come, look I will become….” Even in the darkness she could feel the smile. Jimmy’s lips came to her forehead, he then kissed her eyes lovingly….He is loving her.
She got stunned like the waves. “Jimmy” Jimmy was frightened. She hugged Jimmy close to her heart……My son, my son, she is looking Jimmy’s father is smiling, she is telling him tales about Jimmy. Are you listening, after you have gone he becomes you, says, “I am Papa, are you listening?”
And then, like trees in Autumn, waiting to be decorated with new leaves, waiting for flowers and fruits to bloom-she saw that she was alone. Jimmy had started going to school, he has started wearing his school uniform. Maybe time flies like a ‘plane’. The morning and the evenings have changed. She woke up fast, went to Jimmy and said smilingly –“Listen, from today I will drop you to school. Is it alright, seasons change, Jimmy. She thought that Jimmy kept looking at her to his way to school. No, he is not ‘Him’, he is Jimmy.
That day with a new resolve, a new spirit she tore the diary. But before tearing it she wrote. “Now I will live for Jimmy, what right do I have to still carry something which no longer exists. I should look at Jimmy as Jimmy. Maybe, that is what is right for Jimmy….that he never faces any kind of inferiority complex.”
She tore that page too.
“Jimmy….Jimmy come back.”
“Why do you get so scared, Mummy?”
Jimmy’s small feet came running towards her. Jimmy was laughing, why you get so scared. Run, catch me.
He ran away, she is panting, he is running fast. She manages to catch him.
“No Jimmy, Jimmy stop…. Stop it Jimmy.”
Jimmy looks at her quite perplexed-as if asking why. And then suddenly she forgets everything….just stares at Jimmy. At Jimmy, his eyes….his lips…..
There is a feeling of amazement in his eyes, she holds Jimmy’s hand. She still stares at him.
How did it happen…how did it get into Jimmy? Her eyes,….her lips. “What happened Mummy?”
“No” she just giggled lightly.
my first story collection in english -coming back
COMING BACK
“Would that love had the tongue so that the covers of lovers would come undone. When the tongue unfolds the secrecies and the ways of love, the heavens call out: O you, the concealer of love! Why do you conceal it? The wool and the cotton possess fire. The more you conceal them the more they manifest it.”
There was no computer at the time
‘You have forgotten her; no?’
‘Can’t say…’
‘But I can say confidently. She hasn’t been there anywhere within you for the last five months.’
In the dark of night Tarana’s voice felt icy-cold..
‘Why should you believe so?’
She laughed out softly. ‘For, that world is only a make-believe one — a fairy land. And a fairy land is for children only. But when men like you go there, you carry along with a lot of suppressed desires that you can’t share with your wives even’ ….She became a bit serious… ‘But to forget her just in five months!? Sanyal, at least you must keep from taking after the mould of other men.’
The dark over powered me. The dark that, in spite of my quietly coming out onto the balcony, has over-powered the whole of my existence. All that had happened all of a sudden, … all the things. The whole world around me changed, and completely so. Time that had been moving on like rising waves, seemed to have acquired a magic wand in its hand. Time waved it. ‘Stop, you moving age! Stop there…. No. Recede back.’ Sailing in his middle age, on the threshold of his forties, the person was a young man once again. Time waved the magic wand once again. A very beautiful young lady was standing there…
Perhaps no magic wand was needed there. As soon as we entered that world, we grew romantic. It was the world where you just switched on a common electric button, there stood open all the doors of internet on the computer screen…
There was no magic here…
No magic box here.
No horse of age… Only a river flowing along the magical fairy land. There was the bazaar of beauty. And suddenly, like a supernatural happening, there was a girl belonging to any country, any religion,any community; and she asked you,
‘Do you like romantic chat?’
A fancy of the fairy land, emerging out of the fairy land, would brighten up, with all its elegance on the CAM or the Net Camera. I would set the microphone wire in my ears. The sweet romantic sound of ‘Jalatarang’ … and…The flowing stream of the gaining on age, with all of its images and beats of bygone days would get obliterated…
Perhaps, the world was not so shrunk then… The moon was shining in the sky. The sky was star sprinkled… Far away, …on the darkling sky a couple of floatin clouds were seen. But, the caravans of the twinkling stars stretched those clouds over themselves. And then leaving the moon and these caravans alone, those clouds proceeded on.
The computer did not exist then…
No internet was there… No mermaids were there…
The age had its own limits. And those limits couldn’t be moved forward or backward. But Love was there, even at that time ‘the platonic’ was perhaps more free then than it is now— the one that would settle down much deeper at heart than stray externally. The nights were moon-lit then. Should I look back, 16 years ago, some well defined cities of today would look like villages or small towns. No refrigerators, no telephones. Mobiles couldn’t be thought of. Despite their complexities and inconveniences the life in small towns was beautiful and lovely. Love had its own identity then. Had its own moods and manners, its own swellings of the sea. Like the rain-emanated scents of imagination, love
looked like a far high star shining in the sky, and it was not possible for every one to touch or even to see it.
But, perhaps, at the vulnerable stage of age, no sooner I befriended literature than the meanings of love changed for me. The keenly blowing wind that would carry you along with itself, and being blown away you couldn’t think, even in the least, what was happening to you. But your whole existence got submerged in that moment and felt the thrill of each and every moment.
And suddenly, in the small town, in the form of Tarana, I had the chance of feeling myself lucky. The deer-like Tarana. With the whole of her being, she was made or written for me only. After a few brief meetings the feeling of airy flights…—people were, perhaps, not so very cultured in small cities till the time… or, so very commercial. Things had begun to take wings, to get speed. From our college to our homes, the tales and stories were gaining circulation… Sanyal – Tarana……Tarana- Sanyal….
But, as it seems, both of us were full of rebellion. Or, the family members of both the houses were quite aware of the rebellion.
That day as Tarana met me, our love, gradually gaining momentum, was preparing itself to create a new chapter.
It was a small narrow stream that we were standing by. At some distance the keeper of a make-shift-shop was selling onions and potatoes. Two dirty young boys were laughing, looking at us… Tarana touched my hand: ‘Why didn’t you come home? You are frightened…’
No. I’m not frightened.’
‘Don’t tell a lie. You are frightened; perhaps because of the stories touching us are gaining circulation. Do you know…?’ She tightened her grip on my hand. ‘I keep awake all through nights. The house, doors, windows, all disappear, as if they were parts of a castle made up of airy nothing. The whole of my countenance gets transformed into a broad smile only. And you get transformed into a beautiful psychic being…. I hold your hand, kiss you, soar away far and high; and I am all an embodied joy… a trance. There is an old well within the inner courtyard. I come out stealthily and sit silently on its parapet. While the whole house is asleep, I keep looking at the moon. The moon sets and you… What’s this Sanyal?
The keeper of the small make shift shop called out, ‘Potatoes, ..Onions…’ Both the little dirty boys were still looking at us. Tarana’s hand tightened on mine;
‘Tell me…. What’s this?’
‘Should I?’
‘O yes, do.’
‘The levels of Dopamine and Norepinecrin have gained in you.’
‘What?’ Tarana was startled. ‘What is it?.... dopamine?’
‘A chemical, darling, that produces the feeling of pleasure or joy in the mind…?
‘Tarana smiled, ‘That means love…and that?
… and that? .. Nove… ‘Norepinecrin’
‘O yes, that very… so you are Sanyal… What’s that?
‘That also is a chemical that produces commotion and excitement at heart.?
Tarana gave a start, ‘So your love is just this much?... to watch the levels of dopamine and norepinecrin? Only this much is love? —an escape from literature to the world of chemistry…and that…
that happened to me!? At mid-night I opened the door and quietly got out of the house, just to look for you in the street. But then, I became aware of what I was doing. When I recollected, I got frightened. The whole of the street was deserted. Had people seen me at the time, who knows what they would not talk of me.’
‘Nothing. This shows the declining level of serotonin only.’
‘You mean…?’
‘The urge of sacrificing oneself for love… to the verge of insanity…’
‘Slap you I will…’ Tarana burst out laughing. The two boys too, looking at us, pealed with laughter. On the balcony the night was welllit. The stars were playing the game of hide and seek.
The emotions of sixteen years ago were ready to fall in showers, all at once. That long ago, only one name was there enshrined at heart and the mind — Tarana. And that name opened the doors of fragrance… In a vulnerable moment of solitude the swift-footed wind would cause a surge of excitement through the body, and then all my senses would be taken in thrall by a sentence of Tarana, “I know this much only that I must possess the object I love.”
It must be three o’clock at noon that day. As soon as I stepped on the threshold of my home, I came to know that Tarana was hospitalized. Passing on the news to me my sister-in-law looked at my face momentarily. My father, who was sitting silently on a cot, also shifted his glance onto my face. I put my books on the table standing nearby.
“I am going. I might not get back even at night.” Having uttered this much I got out of the room. I tried to, but it was difficult for me to guess the extent to which the level of chemicals — dopamine and Norepinecrin had shot up, or the level of serotonin gone down bringing her almost to a state of insanity
leading to her hospitalization. Anyhow, the condition could not be normal. In the pervious week itself, trying to get dissolved into every fibre of my being, she had shown the symptoms of the hard struggle that was undergoing within her. She had said:
“My breaths are breaking like the strings of pasta, and getting dispersed too. They want to see you all the time. Why do you go away Sanyal? Why don’t you keep with me in the way as stagnant time lives with me in my room at the time when thinking of you I get dissolved
in you.”
Her palms were the red-hot coal. Recovering herself she continued. “Sometimes, something like the mist fills up the room, and then lots and lots of things of the world seem to resound in my room. You get lost in the mist and then it feels the string of breathwill get snapped…Don’t go away please. Stay by me Sanyal before the strings of breath get dispersed.”
My feet moved fast. She was in the general ward. A couple of some other patients also were there besides her. As small cities have their own sense of history and courtesy, a number of women from her locality were also there around her. As she saw me, a strange delight that overspread itself on her face cannot be depicted in words. The next moment, despite the presence of other people and her own family members also in the general ward, she was in my arms…weak...sickly… She was trying to tell me that she could not speak, her voice was gone. I pressed her in my passionate embrace…. Tarana was crying. Holding her firmly against myself, and moving my fingers round her eyes very lovingly, I was saying:
“Assuredly I am here…your Sanyal… your voice. Didn’t you tell me I had the finest voice on earth and that no human voice could be sweeter than mine? At the present time you only have to listen to me, for I am the body, the voice and the soul for my Tarana…your voice. I’ll put the music of this voice on your lips, and your lips will be those of the most beautiful girl in the world. When you will converse with me in tune with my voice, the music created there by will be the sweetest one in the universe. But Tarana, today I am only an echo of yours. Feel my voice forgetting yours…
Tarana gathered up closer. Her hands felt firmer on my back. My shirt was getting soaked with sweat. As I lifted up her face, she was smiling — a smile that might be seen in a few of the finest masterpieces ever created.
I stayed on the bed next to hers in the general ward that night. It is known to all that the wind had wafted away the whiff of our odorous story through the small city. Now this story will take wings, disperse…but, perhaps, considering all the possibilities of the future I rested reassured.
The Net was not there at the time; mobiles also were not there. Even little common conveniences were far away from the general life. But the magic of love was there in all its profundity, and perhaps deeper than what it today is.
Outside, on the balcony the dance of stars continued in the milky shine of the moon. The young feeling that was there, sixteen years ago, stood revived.
But as any story began in the bygone days, the stories told by the maternal or paternal grandmother, a magic world would come alive in the wonderstruck eyes of the children lying on their beds
in the moon-lit night under the canopy of the blue heavens…There was a king…There was a queen… There was a demon…There was a magician… But, after sixteen years, in the modern world, the story will begin something like…There was a computer. A lake-fairy swam out on the Net. But there was no magic. Swimming on the water the fairy asked you, “Do you like romantic chat?”
What relations do you have with her?
Tarana came in my life. We became a part of the rush of the cosmopolitan. And then we begot a little son too. Despite being a part of the rush of the cosmopolitan, the writer at my heart neither died nor did he go into oblivion, for Tarana did not let it fall into a slumber even for a moment. Her love was neither transient nor false. After our marriage too, to her eyes, her Sanyal was her lover. In my journey from literature to serials, Tarana had sacrificed all that could be called hers. If there had occurred any change in her, it was the physical one; the change that would co-occur as the mother begot a novel form of
her love, giving it a separate entity in the world. The impressions of fulfillment in seeing the child grow, changed the girl in her into a woman. But in most of her essentials she remained Tarana only; the same Tarana of sixteen years ago. But one day:
A computer arrived in the house, and the Net connection too. And there began a new story.
Is it that despite your loving some one very much, there remains a void at heart to be filled up?— or, an inconspicuous suppressed desire to be
gratified? Is a person seeking to fill up some nooks of his sexual urges with the help of the Net, not a divided personality, despite his having a very loving wife and equally dear children?
The world of the Net was the world of desires that lurked at the hearts of unsatiated young men, the aged, and the adolescent with a dream to feel satiated. From Orkut to High forward, Love Happens…and the Dream Comes to COM, there is a big racket of boys and girls with fictitious names all over the world, participating in the concerns of all — from children to the aged.
But there was a sense of guilt too at my heart. Why should this world get populated for me when Tarana was there? After all, why should we cherish a desire to get acquainted with unknown girls?
And that too, not just one but a thousand of them — a vast world of them taking in its fold so many countries, communities, religions; the vast world of the internet.
‘Is it a sin to enjoy the vast pleasures, and satisfaction therefrom, that this magical electronic world offers?’ I ask myself. One part of my self answers, ‘No harm. They all do it’; but the other part cautions me, ‘The satisfaction isfalse. They leave you more thirsty than otherwise.’
Despite the immeasurable love of home and relations, the new technology has opened up a new fountain head of unlimited love. You can no more be fully satiated with the homely love, for, you begin to feel the need of lots and lots of it. The sex urge, that was erstwhile checked by moral and cultural codes, has attained explosively violent dimensions…. But, perhaps the world besides ugly faces, has normal and very beautiful faces also... In addition to the evil there is much good too. In addition to the sex there is an urge to knowand understand one another. And one day suddenly…
As soon as I opened the Net I received a message on Yahoo screen. And, dear readers, there began this story. The message read: My name is Mahak. Mahak Ahmad. A resident of Lahore. Aged 23. Mother expired when I was five only. Thereafter I fell in the habit of two things— reading literature and telepathy. I read a story written by you. And then had to spend a month looking for your e-mail ID. I don’t have much time at my disposal to tell you all. It seems the whole of the system is poised to take a flight, the fastest one. I fell in love with you without any premeditations, for I have been touched by your story to the core of my heart. I would love you even if you were eighty years of age. Should you receive my mail, please send a prompt reply. And, yes. I am putting in an ad on Yahoo messenger for you. If possible, please do come in the evening. You know there is a difference of thirty minutes between Pak and Indian timings. Will you come? Yours Mahak.
God knows how many times I read the message. Just kept on reading it. In the world of literature and serials I had received so many letters before this one, had come across so many girls, but this e-mail made me feel flying in the air; as if the blood in my body were running faster… ‘Even if you were eighty years of age….’ The eyes went through the line again and again. ‘I am 23.’ Was there present within me a man with unsatisfied desires? Or, there was a man reaching 40 who felt pampered with the thought he could still be loved by a girl aged 22 or 23… I don’t know what the moment was, or what sentiments
had taken possession of me, by the time I wrote ‘Yours Sanyal’, I had sent the e-mail.
That very evening, for the first time, she came on Yahoo messenger, and it seemed as if the world, like some fairyland, had opened its doors for me…
A few mare days passed.
When you are in love, your love need not be declared. Its fragrance, like that of civet; makes itself known. The whole of your behaviour shows it. Many a time, presenting myself before Tarana, or while holding her in my arms I felt like a thief. But, as a man, I can tell you truthfully and honestly that at any
moment of my love to Tarana, Mahak did never have her presence within me. Does this mean that she was partially present in me while Tarana was wholly; or, was it because of Tarana’s love that although Mahak tried to occupy her place in my life she couldn’t? Or, remaining tied to a family was a compulsion on me? Or, in this glamorous world of the Net.
when do we meet physically? Perhaps, this excuse put heart in me, to some extent. But, although it was across the border, Mahak was present physically and of her presence I had read in the Net CAM, was it love? Had, in any way, Tarana’s love faded? And was it because of that I had involuntarily been turned to Mahak? Or, the virility of a man crossing forty had been revived having gained the company of a woman, the woman who not only loved him but wanted to get him with all his physicality.
But, perhaps, it did not become necessary for me to keep the truth hidden from Tarana’s eyes. Because, like the jungle storm, one day she came to know the whole truth. She was silent for a while.
‘Do you also love her?’ Tarana’s words were ice-cold.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps you do…’ She took a deep breath… but, the very next moment her eyes regained their age-old love…, the same frenzy, the same passion. Once again she saved me from my entering the slough of guilt. While departing she said only this much, ‘How would you have felt had there been any boy in my life?’
‘Sanyal!’ — passing through the self imposed ordeal I asked myself, ‘Sanyal, what will you do? What will you do the next, Sanyal? Time is trying to carry you alongwith its flow, but there is some
strong feeling too as your heart deters you.’
In the evening as I set the Net on, Mahak Ahmad was there on the line. As AOA was on light she wrote, first of all, AOA — the greeting ‘Assalamu- Allaikum’. And then the stream of words would open the doors of new utopia, and at the moment I was perhaps in some world above the earth, and words of Mahak were nothing but fragrance.
From the chat-room
She asked. She asked a lot. She asked, which of the two — a bird and a dream– is the better one. The answer was ‘the bird’, because they breathe and they sing of love when it rains, or when it is ‘savan’: the month of rains and greenery all around. Dreams are unfaithful. They come; they vanish away too.’
She asked, ‘Why is it so that star, her favourite star, shining in the sky surpasses the moon?’
She asked, ‘Why aren’t you a rose, the one that I should pluck and then place by my heart; that you should pervade, like the fragrance, in my breath, my heart…’ ‘Why aren’t you a butterfly, the one that in my forgetfulness, having been maddened by the intoxication of pining for you, I should chase through
the beds of roses and having got my finger pricked should write in blood: ‘love’.
She asked, ‘Why aren’t you a raindrop, the first born of the season, that like a heavenly blessing should descend on my open, uplifted palm; and that I should kiss it and then place it on my head with a dream in my eyes —the dream of getting evaporated, to lose my identity and be one with you, getting
lost to the world.
She asked, ‘Before you stepped in my life, the world was not so very beautiful, or I had not perceived its beauty, why?’
She asked, ‘Why does a single moment not contain a million of moments within it? And those millions could enclose usand then forget to pass on!’
She said, ‘My death, if co-occurred with yours would be much more beautiful than this life is. Do come… taking my trembling hands in yours, close your eyes… for ever… with the sense of my being with you. My body, swaying in the most beautiful intoxication of life; my shining and singing eyes — when they open, they should open on an uninhabited island where there should be none but you, wherever I should
cast my eyes.’
And then she asked, ‘Listen, why did you get born so very early? – much more early than me… What a cruel revengeis it of yours? Well, you were born alright, but why didn’t you wait for me? Why
didn’t you care for my dreams… Why didn’t you hear my steps? For, I was always there in every particle of earth. In so many past, glorious years I was in no other form but fragrance. I was there, my soul. My shadow was there. It was only that you couldn’t perceive it.
She asked, ‘Why did you get married before I came? Why didn’t you wait for me?’
She asked, ‘Who are they that know you more than I do?... My fragrance should be there within you more than the impression of a flower, fragrance or dream. I should see you more than the wife, the sun or the moon does. I should touch you more than the blowing air does. I should descend upon your
being like a pleasant drizzle— the one that ran through life.
She said, ‘The palanquin of our lives be placed on the bed of flowers in an isolated island… and your arms like tender branches, be spread over my body…’.
And then she said, ‘Tell me the truth. Is there any one other than myself, breathing within you this moment?’ And after a moment’s hesitation asked, ‘Your wife?’
Let it be the dead silence or din, each has a poetry of its own. The air bears its own verses, fragrances, rhythm and tunes of love. It was possible that this story would not have taken birth. And, that too for a person like myself, that is, a person devoted to creation, whose unperturbed state of being could
be compared to that of the still waters, or the waves on the calm ocean.
But I beg your pardon. The time when this story begins is serious. And it is necessary that the present time and the human rights associated with it, be assigned the function of the witness. And much more necessary is the question arising at the heart of lovers, floating ambitiously over the waves of love, that why they are not birds or animals; and also, the watchful eyes of the Human Rights to watch if the community of menfolk is, in anyway, thwarting the rights of the womenfolk. But please, excuse me, Here there is no violation of human rights. Contrary to it there enters quietly a woman in the life of a man aged over forty, and leading a quiet married life. The woman was not a wife but a lover aged 22 whose eyes would transform into the rains, dreams and rainbows from time to time. Getting aside, she demanded, ‘Grant me my rights.’ The answer given was, ‘This right belongs to somebody else.’ Before she could exclaim ‘No’, she was as violent as a great river in flood could be.
‘No?’
‘If it were any other person’s right you would not be here. Tell me, why you are here. Why aren’t you there with the one who has the right?’
Perhaps she giggled…but she was still asking … and she asked… ‘Why do you feel so very frightened allowing me my own rights? Would I be here if you had lost your right to love? Near you? Near
your breath? In your movements…in your restlessness… in your worries…and in your fingers…that while typing on the computer get abstracted from the word to love, and from the word to a passionate persistence… from eyes to the dream, and from lips to the song.’
And then she said, ‘ Listen to me Flood!...I fly… I swim. On dewy imaginations I weave the webs of waves. Time flies like little butterflies with their colourful wings around me. Taking them to be the feel of yours I try to grasp them with my hands. Through the long long days I have wings on my body to fly in the rainbow sky. During the night, as I am flying with butterflies with feeling of being with you, I grasp the time with a feel of you, and tying it in a knot, conceal it in the coils of my hair…’
And then she asked, ‘ Does your son know that some one, besides his mother, has come into your life?’
This was the time when the heart of Venus throbbed, and the planet known as the ninth one in our solar system, Pluto, had been exiled.’
I closed the Net quietly. Anyhow, for a little while kept looking on at the blank screen of the computer. The letters were gone… No, they were shining… and the combinations of them was giving
shape to the face of a girl having come from some dreamland. Eyes were lost on the island that was Salan’s eyes…All the words on her flower-petal lips were for Salan only…The body trembled. I got up, opened the side-door and began to feel the words typed by Mahak. They seemed to peep from the blue sky across the balcony. I felt as if she were standing in front of me asking, ‘ How much do you love me?;—the words that were meteor shower; as if an explosion had occurred; as if a shiver ran through the spine…She, too, was looking at him with a smile that expressed pleasure and mystery, both, simultaneously.
‘Why don’t you speak? Tell me how much you love me.’
‘I don’t do any.’ I typed the few words. She burst out like the torrential rain.
‘You do, but you dare not…Well, how deeply does Tarana love you?’
‘Very.’
‘More than I do?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. She can’t do more.’ She seemed reassured. ‘No. None can love you more than I do — not even the heart that beats in your body; not even the eyes that would strike up a melodious tune of love just by casting a look ...and…and your lips that play with the name can love you to the extent that I do.’
Mahak stopped. The conflict arising at her heart could be seen on the CAP. A thousand shadows arose and drowned in her eyes…Once again her fingers were on the type. My heart throb took a leap because of a flood of unfamiliar questions arising there in.
She said, ‘Well, listen…How much has Tarana touched you? I too wish to get transformed into ‘Savan’, into the rains, into the wind that should pass touching you…How does Tarana play on your body
with her fingers?...Very gently? …Very quietly? — like the dew drops falling down the leaves? How much has she seen your body? How much has Tarana known…? Isn’t it only that much as much a woman, bound to the role that she has to play as a wife, could know? Isn’t it only that much as the pain or
hunger…there is at a time in the body…would warrant? Isn’t it only that much as much there is the fever of hunger and sex-urge together in the body at a time? But how much does she see you when the two bodies are one? How many dreams can she visualize in every hair on your body? How much can she
discover you in the commotions of your breath? Does Tarana see in you, or she doesn’t, a new flood in you? — a new song, a new dream and a new flood?...?
Mahak continued to type and it seemed as if I were bathing in the rains of wonder every moment. What is this? Why do I become so very helpless as soon as Mahak comes. The cacti of questions begin to raise their heads from me within… ‘You have a son aged twelve,… on the threshold of becoming a full grown youth. She is older by ten years only.’
Do you know the meaning of having crossed forty years of age if you are born in an Indian family? It means— a grave personality devoted to your family, the one who understood the responsibilities towards children. Having reached this age you emerge a mature person who is looked on by your society with reverence because the society knows this person is an invaluable symbol of our ideal society, is a representative. This person cannot love. And, to him, thinking of any extramarital love is nothing less
than his getting doomed. Here there is no room for any unexpected occurrences.
Even then Mahak had got in through the back door that had remained open, only god knows how. She had come in,and was asking for her full right to love.
Tarana and question
Love is eternal.
The tales of global and geographical changes also are true. In the race of progress and development, there is also a row of mysterious happenings standing along with our worldly race; from miracles to inventions, from the system of downloading a man’s brain to the cloning of the human being. In this world of inventions and miracles the heart of Venus ceased to throb long long ago. Only God knows how long ago the heavenly star, that was love, got eliminated from its orbit, got shattered into innumerable number of pieces and was dispersed through the solar system. Plato, the symbol of trust was also exiled by the observers of the celestial bodies. But the splinters of the star — that was love — getting attached and detached with the masses of ice, seemed to be posing questions before mankind, ‘why did love get lost? Where did love evaporate? Why did you arrive on the land of hundreds of thousand years ago where there would be no life, the sun sans its fire — just a cool spherical body, and the lifeless earth…? At that time there shone a spark, and emerged out a ray from the star that was love itself. And after centuries a love story took birth… in the age of inventions, mysteries and the Jurassic… in the form of Tarana, in the form of Sailaan, or in the form of Mahak Ahmad.
‘Well, what did you think?’ Tarana’s eyes were peeping into mine.
‘Don’t know.’
‘There is an honesty in you that you did not fail to disclose to me that you too love Mahak…’
I remained emotionless with my down cast eyes. ‘Well, tell me; do you have romantic talks too with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very much?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps you would hold her hand too if she were in front of you…’ Tarana’s tone was icy. ‘Perhaps.’
‘No. Not perhaps. You would. Or, possibly more than that…,’ she checked herself in the mid-sentence.
‘Sanyal!’ she continued, ‘Didn’t you remember me, even for a moment while talking to Mahak?... Suppose you spent three hours with her in a day, it comes to 90 hours in a month, yes? …Don’t you remember Sanyal…’ Tarana held my hands. Swayed by the tender recollections of the bygone days her eyes were misty. ‘Don’t you remember? —you used to say a man who met a woman other than his wife but with the same fervour of love… may be deemed as having dismembered a part of his body. A person who met some other one again and again, is as good as the one who has dismembered all his body parts. Didn’t you say that? And you also said how such a person can take his wife or his children in his arms if he has already lost his limbs.’ Tarana looked at him, smiled, ‘I hope you are intact Sanyal, for me and my children…’
At my heart, my own shriek, smeared with blood, lay loaded with slabs of ice. in a moment, fighting against my own desperation, I took a decision.
‘That’s the truth of the Net, not of the body…’
‘Oh…,’ Tarana laughed out amiably.
‘They all Net, Where is the person who doesn’t do? ‘And people don’t share their experiences with their wives even.’
‘I don’t know the people, my love. I know Sanyal only…’ There was not the least resentment in Tarana’s voice. ‘You said that was the truth of the Net. Had you had romantic chat with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Took her hand in yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kiss…?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Not perhaps; say ‘yes’.’
‘Yes.’
‘On the lips?’
‘Yes…’
‘Well, let it be on the lips, the eyes… or as you like… for it is not easy to put into words how intense love is at a given moment, … but suppose you were before her … would you do all that Sanyal?’
‘But the condition is, if I were before her…’
‘You would turn into a ‘Tsunami. Isn’t it? Don’t get frightened Sanyal. Sometimes I feel like talking about petty things. Yesterday I kept thinking for a long time. After all where had I blundered?
Where did I leave a void within you in the past sixteen years? Where Sanyal? Tell me. But don’t think I’ll hinder you. I’ll just try to make you understand… for I have loved you. I have loved you intensely. It went all through my tender age. I won’t keep you from …. I will convince myself that my luck had only this much for me in store…. Where love falls under compulsion, is restrained, doesn’t remain love any longer…
selfishness comes in there…’
‘Then…?’
‘Tell me what you have thought about…’
My words got stuck to my throat. ‘Mahak wants to marry me…’
‘So…’
‘She says she will come to India…’
‘Ask her to come.’ Tarana took my hands in hers gently. ‘Ask Mahak to come.’
‘And you…?’
Tarana smiled mildly. ‘You know your Tarana. Never liked divisions ever since my childhood… placing Mahak’s hand in yours, I’ll quit quietly’. She turned away her face.
I felt ponderous thunderclaps operating at my heart. And during the moments that followed, there came before my eyes every aspect of Tarana’s beauteous face, her adornments — the sixteen year old Tarana. I felt, it was easy to slip into make-believe world, but very difficult to tread on the stony path of reality. While I was lost in my dreamy reflections. I felt as if I heard the soft musical sound of Tarana’s ankletwith bells, and in an instant, there was Tarana and Tarana only in my eyes, saying… ‘Then, do call her…’ I don’t know the reason why in the history of tales, till now, the wife is not the heroine. How is it that only the second or the third woman that comes in the life of a man is the heroine? Is it because offering her springs and dreams to her husband through the years of her youth, she gets lost somewhere? But, actually, having had her share in the history of the pleasures and pains of the household, she, in all her splendour, stands on the pedestal of the heroine supreme, having been observed and weighed every
moment. She is the fairy of the flowers. What is needed is the eyes that should recognize this flower-fairy. I was not in any sort of doubts. Detached from the waterfalls and rains of love, I was trying to study all the colours of this flower-fairy. And on that day, perhaps, my thoughts and sentiments reached Mahak. She asked me for the last time:
‘Tell me. Should I come to Delhi? I shall not be a burden on you, Sanyal, not even financially. I need your company only, the feel of your presence only. Yes or no, I demand your answer this very moment.’
There was no echo within me, neither that of a fire-work nor that of a blast.
Giving much thought to it, I typed quietly, ‘No.’
Mahak signed out. She didn’t meet again. Moments rolled on to cover months, unawares. Perhaps five months passed.
To die in your town
And after the five months—
Perhaps, this was the time when I was alarmed to see a meteor turn into a long line of brightness to get lost only. But, perhaps, such a void gives birth to an elegy. Or, such a love, once again, gives to the world such a masterpiece as the Taj Mahal. But perhaps, at that time I had no idea that the visualization of such images as an elegiac composition or the Taj Mahal by seeing a shooting star could disturb me to such an extent in the future.
Tarana would ask, ‘you forgot her. No?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Should she really have come, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You are telling a lie…’ Her eyes would grow mischievous by the touch of love. ‘Had she come you wouldn’t have been able to exercise any control on yourself.’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Why does it happen so? When everything is going on smoothly in life, there enters some one quietly?’ She hesitated momentarily and then added, ‘There was no shortfall anywhere, in any form. Perhaps, we had not left anywhere any void, even such a one as could be natural in the life of a married couple, like an unattended door, or a gap through which any one could jump in to reach
you. But, perhaps, a life that has been granted for once only…
There is a free sheet of paper also. A person feels no guilt or remorse writing the name of any other person on it. Because it is the most exclusive road lying in between the person and his soul, the road that your wife and your children are not allowed to walk along.
Tarana turned to him. “Well, suppose she should come suddenly and stand before you, then? What will you do Sanyal? Will you deny her? Will you ask her to turn back? Or, say, that you have no relations with her. Or, … tell me.’
So many missiles continued to be shot into the sky, simultaneously…
“Listen to what the flute says.
It complains of our separation”
(From the verses of Maulana Roomi)
It was a morning as usual. But, perhaps, not quite as usual. It couldn’t be as usual as other mornings for Sanyal in particular. Just a night ago there was a Mahal ke kho jane ka tazkera. Everything was normal a night ago. After high waves in the ocean there were deep whirlpools but there was quiet after it. The waves were calm. And suddenly on that bright morning so many stones had been hurdled into the water, and so many webs of the waves were formed in the river.
A knock at the door at 7 in the morning.
The door bell seemed to have brought in an unexpected storm. The boy who opened the door was looking wonderfully at the woman standing before him. Dusky face, sky-blue kameez and a salwar matching in colour. A dupatta hanging down the shoulders.
‘You are Asif, aren’t you?’
And as Tarana came, she embraced her and cried as a sister would.
‘And you are Tarana…? I am Mahak. From Pakistan. Came last night. Where is Sanyal?’
The room seemed to have been caught by a tremendous earthquake. The son, nonplussed, looked at her. Tarana’s eyes still innocent, or concealing their truth were looking at her. As I came out the two impatient eyes were transformed into the eyes of a stone image that emerges out in mystery stories. She was pointing towards me with her finger. Words were lost to her. The feelings or sentiments had transformed the face and the body into a book, such as no human soul had been able to behold as yet…
The voice of Mahak trembled. ‘Tarana, could the two of us be in seclusion for two minutes…Could we talk?
The son, somewhat frightened, was in his mother’s arms. Tarana, smilingvaguely, seemed to be saying… ‘O, yes; why not?”
But, perhaps, Tarana was not able to look into my eyes. Or, I could not muster up the courage to look at Tarana or the son. When and how she came and stood close to me, I couldn’t perceive.
‘Which room is yours?’ Her voice was cool. To my mind the fragrance from Pakistani garments was not different from the Indian ones.
The room was transformed into an object quite strange to the world. Deep within me there rose the waves of fire that seemed to burn my very existence, trying to turn everything to ashes. The words were lost, disappeared into a channel or a cave. It was difficult to conjure up my thoughts about my son or Tarana standing outside the room. A cold wave had taken the room inits folds.
She was touching me : every joint of the finger, the nails, my clothes, my body, my soul, or the soul of my souls.
‘You are Sanyal. No? How can I believe myself. No. I can’t be so very fortunate. You…so close…so very …close… No. Don’t stop me… let me touch you. These are your fingers…these your garments…I can see you, touch you. I am so close to you and… how is it that I am still alive… seeing you.. Sanyal? Would that death capture me, this very instant while I am seeing, feeling and living the thought of you. You never thought that Mahak could come here too. Isn’t it? — Toyour country, to your city, into your house. In the frenzy of my breaths, stealthily, I had made an enclosure and put you therein. I never gave a thought to the inconvenience you may incur by this act of mine. Aren’t you all right?... Why don’t you speak Sanyal?
‘How did you come?’ came in a low tone, as some voice had resounded the valley of Kakeshiyan mountains, as all the freshness of the air carried along with the blood and circulating through the body had begun to inaudibly call out her name, forgetting all the things in the world…
‘Sponsored by the university a group of twenty, boys and girls, has come to visit the ancient monuments and buildings in Delhi. We arrived here last night. Every moment of the night was transformed into a breathing portrait of your name. The whole night I was in the state of worshipping you and in the morning as the first ray of the sun touched the earth, I concluded my prayers with the final bow and without telling any body…’
‘Didn’t you tell anybody?’
‘No.’
‘Suppose someone set out in search of you.’
This was the first shock of the earthquake. Innocently, she was still touching my fingers. ‘Hina knows aboutyou, but not much.’
‘Who is Hina?’
‘A friend of mine…,’ she spoke gently. ‘This morning at ten we have to report to the police headquarters just to observe some formalities. But I am quite unable to go.’ She was shuddering. Her eyes
were closed. ‘I want to absorb within myself the feel of your presence.’ And then she added in a very low voice, ‘The purpose of my having opened my eyes in the world will have been fulfilled…’
Like a child she turned towards me, and then she began to investigate the things in the room. ‘Isn’t this your bed? You must be there in the creases of the sheet, isn’t it Sanyal? They bear your touches of the private hours too. I need have all the feel of your touches. Speakto me; won’t you?’
She promptly advanced and lay down on the bed. For a moment she closed her eyes… then got up… adjusted her dupatta. She was laughing. No; she was crying. ‘Well, I visited my home too. Lay in bed too, saw my room also. Make me stay here with you please. Don’t let me go..’
Somewhere, far away, the tune of Maulana Roomi’s flute was there in the air, ‘Listen to what the flute says…’ The flute had turned these moments into disastrous moments. My face was transformed into a stone image. Thinking of Tarana and the son outside, I felt myself to be overcast by the dark clouds of misgivings; and Mahak with her eyes almost closed, resting her head on my chest, was lost in some alien
world…perhaps I was trembling. As I gently reached my trembling hand onto her back, she seemed to get lost into my chest, my breaths. But misgivings were there, holding their question-spears, ‘If Mahak did not depart?... How should I ask Mahak to go? Her not going back may create a disastrous scene. The matter is concerned with a girl, come from Pakistan, and now missing. And, then?
The recollection of so many stories, ranging from terrorist activities to suicide bombing, deeply disturbed me during those eternal seconds. But, probably, it was not possible to tell anything to Mahak. And, the fact is — I did not want that Mahak should separate herself from my body. Her love, elevating itself from just an intoxication to the level of worship, was getting dissolved into my very existence. And then time came to a stand still… In a flash Mahak stood apart from me, turned to me with a stream of tears running through her stony eyes.
‘I am going away. I’ll trouble you no more. I can’t even see my love worried. But it was necessary to see you once, to touch you, to preserve the feel of your touch at my heart.’
Her face bore a strange smile — ‘Don’t ask me to stay… And yes, don’t have a misconception that I shall get back to Pakistan.’ She smiled gently, ‘If I can’t live in your city, I can die here at least.’
Coming forward she pressed her hot lips on mine, and then swiftly got out of the room. And before I was able to comprehend anything, I felt the earth shake under my feet. The notes of the flute were nearer…
‘Since you have made me drunk, don’t impose confines on me. Codes of religion are not operative on the insane.’
(A verse from Maulana Roomi)
It seemed as if she had left her everlasting ‘presence’ in the room. She seemed to be breathing still on the bed, in the garments, on every joint in the finger. I was shivering all through. Her departing words still rang in my ears:
‘I may not live in your city,
But I can die here, at least.’
“Would that love had the tongue so that the covers of lovers would come undone. When the tongue unfolds the secrecies and the ways of love, the heavens call out: O you, the concealer of love! Why do you conceal it? The wool and the cotton possess fire. The more you conceal them the more they manifest it.”
There was no computer at the time
‘You have forgotten her; no?’
‘Can’t say…’
‘But I can say confidently. She hasn’t been there anywhere within you for the last five months.’
In the dark of night Tarana’s voice felt icy-cold..
‘Why should you believe so?’
She laughed out softly. ‘For, that world is only a make-believe one — a fairy land. And a fairy land is for children only. But when men like you go there, you carry along with a lot of suppressed desires that you can’t share with your wives even’ ….She became a bit serious… ‘But to forget her just in five months!? Sanyal, at least you must keep from taking after the mould of other men.’
The dark over powered me. The dark that, in spite of my quietly coming out onto the balcony, has over-powered the whole of my existence. All that had happened all of a sudden, … all the things. The whole world around me changed, and completely so. Time that had been moving on like rising waves, seemed to have acquired a magic wand in its hand. Time waved it. ‘Stop, you moving age! Stop there…. No. Recede back.’ Sailing in his middle age, on the threshold of his forties, the person was a young man once again. Time waved the magic wand once again. A very beautiful young lady was standing there…
Perhaps no magic wand was needed there. As soon as we entered that world, we grew romantic. It was the world where you just switched on a common electric button, there stood open all the doors of internet on the computer screen…
There was no magic here…
No magic box here.
No horse of age… Only a river flowing along the magical fairy land. There was the bazaar of beauty. And suddenly, like a supernatural happening, there was a girl belonging to any country, any religion,any community; and she asked you,
‘Do you like romantic chat?’
A fancy of the fairy land, emerging out of the fairy land, would brighten up, with all its elegance on the CAM or the Net Camera. I would set the microphone wire in my ears. The sweet romantic sound of ‘Jalatarang’ … and…The flowing stream of the gaining on age, with all of its images and beats of bygone days would get obliterated…
Perhaps, the world was not so shrunk then… The moon was shining in the sky. The sky was star sprinkled… Far away, …on the darkling sky a couple of floatin clouds were seen. But, the caravans of the twinkling stars stretched those clouds over themselves. And then leaving the moon and these caravans alone, those clouds proceeded on.
The computer did not exist then…
No internet was there… No mermaids were there…
The age had its own limits. And those limits couldn’t be moved forward or backward. But Love was there, even at that time ‘the platonic’ was perhaps more free then than it is now— the one that would settle down much deeper at heart than stray externally. The nights were moon-lit then. Should I look back, 16 years ago, some well defined cities of today would look like villages or small towns. No refrigerators, no telephones. Mobiles couldn’t be thought of. Despite their complexities and inconveniences the life in small towns was beautiful and lovely. Love had its own identity then. Had its own moods and manners, its own swellings of the sea. Like the rain-emanated scents of imagination, love
looked like a far high star shining in the sky, and it was not possible for every one to touch or even to see it.
But, perhaps, at the vulnerable stage of age, no sooner I befriended literature than the meanings of love changed for me. The keenly blowing wind that would carry you along with itself, and being blown away you couldn’t think, even in the least, what was happening to you. But your whole existence got submerged in that moment and felt the thrill of each and every moment.
And suddenly, in the small town, in the form of Tarana, I had the chance of feeling myself lucky. The deer-like Tarana. With the whole of her being, she was made or written for me only. After a few brief meetings the feeling of airy flights…—people were, perhaps, not so very cultured in small cities till the time… or, so very commercial. Things had begun to take wings, to get speed. From our college to our homes, the tales and stories were gaining circulation… Sanyal – Tarana……Tarana- Sanyal….
But, as it seems, both of us were full of rebellion. Or, the family members of both the houses were quite aware of the rebellion.
That day as Tarana met me, our love, gradually gaining momentum, was preparing itself to create a new chapter.
It was a small narrow stream that we were standing by. At some distance the keeper of a make-shift-shop was selling onions and potatoes. Two dirty young boys were laughing, looking at us… Tarana touched my hand: ‘Why didn’t you come home? You are frightened…’
No. I’m not frightened.’
‘Don’t tell a lie. You are frightened; perhaps because of the stories touching us are gaining circulation. Do you know…?’ She tightened her grip on my hand. ‘I keep awake all through nights. The house, doors, windows, all disappear, as if they were parts of a castle made up of airy nothing. The whole of my countenance gets transformed into a broad smile only. And you get transformed into a beautiful psychic being…. I hold your hand, kiss you, soar away far and high; and I am all an embodied joy… a trance. There is an old well within the inner courtyard. I come out stealthily and sit silently on its parapet. While the whole house is asleep, I keep looking at the moon. The moon sets and you… What’s this Sanyal?
The keeper of the small make shift shop called out, ‘Potatoes, ..Onions…’ Both the little dirty boys were still looking at us. Tarana’s hand tightened on mine;
‘Tell me…. What’s this?’
‘Should I?’
‘O yes, do.’
‘The levels of Dopamine and Norepinecrin have gained in you.’
‘What?’ Tarana was startled. ‘What is it?.... dopamine?’
‘A chemical, darling, that produces the feeling of pleasure or joy in the mind…?
‘Tarana smiled, ‘That means love…and that?
… and that? .. Nove… ‘Norepinecrin’
‘O yes, that very… so you are Sanyal… What’s that?
‘That also is a chemical that produces commotion and excitement at heart.?
Tarana gave a start, ‘So your love is just this much?... to watch the levels of dopamine and norepinecrin? Only this much is love? —an escape from literature to the world of chemistry…and that…
that happened to me!? At mid-night I opened the door and quietly got out of the house, just to look for you in the street. But then, I became aware of what I was doing. When I recollected, I got frightened. The whole of the street was deserted. Had people seen me at the time, who knows what they would not talk of me.’
‘Nothing. This shows the declining level of serotonin only.’
‘You mean…?’
‘The urge of sacrificing oneself for love… to the verge of insanity…’
‘Slap you I will…’ Tarana burst out laughing. The two boys too, looking at us, pealed with laughter. On the balcony the night was welllit. The stars were playing the game of hide and seek.
The emotions of sixteen years ago were ready to fall in showers, all at once. That long ago, only one name was there enshrined at heart and the mind — Tarana. And that name opened the doors of fragrance… In a vulnerable moment of solitude the swift-footed wind would cause a surge of excitement through the body, and then all my senses would be taken in thrall by a sentence of Tarana, “I know this much only that I must possess the object I love.”
It must be three o’clock at noon that day. As soon as I stepped on the threshold of my home, I came to know that Tarana was hospitalized. Passing on the news to me my sister-in-law looked at my face momentarily. My father, who was sitting silently on a cot, also shifted his glance onto my face. I put my books on the table standing nearby.
“I am going. I might not get back even at night.” Having uttered this much I got out of the room. I tried to, but it was difficult for me to guess the extent to which the level of chemicals — dopamine and Norepinecrin had shot up, or the level of serotonin gone down bringing her almost to a state of insanity
leading to her hospitalization. Anyhow, the condition could not be normal. In the pervious week itself, trying to get dissolved into every fibre of my being, she had shown the symptoms of the hard struggle that was undergoing within her. She had said:
“My breaths are breaking like the strings of pasta, and getting dispersed too. They want to see you all the time. Why do you go away Sanyal? Why don’t you keep with me in the way as stagnant time lives with me in my room at the time when thinking of you I get dissolved
in you.”
Her palms were the red-hot coal. Recovering herself she continued. “Sometimes, something like the mist fills up the room, and then lots and lots of things of the world seem to resound in my room. You get lost in the mist and then it feels the string of breathwill get snapped…Don’t go away please. Stay by me Sanyal before the strings of breath get dispersed.”
My feet moved fast. She was in the general ward. A couple of some other patients also were there besides her. As small cities have their own sense of history and courtesy, a number of women from her locality were also there around her. As she saw me, a strange delight that overspread itself on her face cannot be depicted in words. The next moment, despite the presence of other people and her own family members also in the general ward, she was in my arms…weak...sickly… She was trying to tell me that she could not speak, her voice was gone. I pressed her in my passionate embrace…. Tarana was crying. Holding her firmly against myself, and moving my fingers round her eyes very lovingly, I was saying:
“Assuredly I am here…your Sanyal… your voice. Didn’t you tell me I had the finest voice on earth and that no human voice could be sweeter than mine? At the present time you only have to listen to me, for I am the body, the voice and the soul for my Tarana…your voice. I’ll put the music of this voice on your lips, and your lips will be those of the most beautiful girl in the world. When you will converse with me in tune with my voice, the music created there by will be the sweetest one in the universe. But Tarana, today I am only an echo of yours. Feel my voice forgetting yours…
Tarana gathered up closer. Her hands felt firmer on my back. My shirt was getting soaked with sweat. As I lifted up her face, she was smiling — a smile that might be seen in a few of the finest masterpieces ever created.
I stayed on the bed next to hers in the general ward that night. It is known to all that the wind had wafted away the whiff of our odorous story through the small city. Now this story will take wings, disperse…but, perhaps, considering all the possibilities of the future I rested reassured.
The Net was not there at the time; mobiles also were not there. Even little common conveniences were far away from the general life. But the magic of love was there in all its profundity, and perhaps deeper than what it today is.
Outside, on the balcony the dance of stars continued in the milky shine of the moon. The young feeling that was there, sixteen years ago, stood revived.
But as any story began in the bygone days, the stories told by the maternal or paternal grandmother, a magic world would come alive in the wonderstruck eyes of the children lying on their beds
in the moon-lit night under the canopy of the blue heavens…There was a king…There was a queen… There was a demon…There was a magician… But, after sixteen years, in the modern world, the story will begin something like…There was a computer. A lake-fairy swam out on the Net. But there was no magic. Swimming on the water the fairy asked you, “Do you like romantic chat?”
What relations do you have with her?
Tarana came in my life. We became a part of the rush of the cosmopolitan. And then we begot a little son too. Despite being a part of the rush of the cosmopolitan, the writer at my heart neither died nor did he go into oblivion, for Tarana did not let it fall into a slumber even for a moment. Her love was neither transient nor false. After our marriage too, to her eyes, her Sanyal was her lover. In my journey from literature to serials, Tarana had sacrificed all that could be called hers. If there had occurred any change in her, it was the physical one; the change that would co-occur as the mother begot a novel form of
her love, giving it a separate entity in the world. The impressions of fulfillment in seeing the child grow, changed the girl in her into a woman. But in most of her essentials she remained Tarana only; the same Tarana of sixteen years ago. But one day:
A computer arrived in the house, and the Net connection too. And there began a new story.
Is it that despite your loving some one very much, there remains a void at heart to be filled up?— or, an inconspicuous suppressed desire to be
gratified? Is a person seeking to fill up some nooks of his sexual urges with the help of the Net, not a divided personality, despite his having a very loving wife and equally dear children?
The world of the Net was the world of desires that lurked at the hearts of unsatiated young men, the aged, and the adolescent with a dream to feel satiated. From Orkut to High forward, Love Happens…and the Dream Comes to COM, there is a big racket of boys and girls with fictitious names all over the world, participating in the concerns of all — from children to the aged.
But there was a sense of guilt too at my heart. Why should this world get populated for me when Tarana was there? After all, why should we cherish a desire to get acquainted with unknown girls?
And that too, not just one but a thousand of them — a vast world of them taking in its fold so many countries, communities, religions; the vast world of the internet.
‘Is it a sin to enjoy the vast pleasures, and satisfaction therefrom, that this magical electronic world offers?’ I ask myself. One part of my self answers, ‘No harm. They all do it’; but the other part cautions me, ‘The satisfaction isfalse. They leave you more thirsty than otherwise.’
Despite the immeasurable love of home and relations, the new technology has opened up a new fountain head of unlimited love. You can no more be fully satiated with the homely love, for, you begin to feel the need of lots and lots of it. The sex urge, that was erstwhile checked by moral and cultural codes, has attained explosively violent dimensions…. But, perhaps the world besides ugly faces, has normal and very beautiful faces also... In addition to the evil there is much good too. In addition to the sex there is an urge to knowand understand one another. And one day suddenly…
As soon as I opened the Net I received a message on Yahoo screen. And, dear readers, there began this story. The message read: My name is Mahak. Mahak Ahmad. A resident of Lahore. Aged 23. Mother expired when I was five only. Thereafter I fell in the habit of two things— reading literature and telepathy. I read a story written by you. And then had to spend a month looking for your e-mail ID. I don’t have much time at my disposal to tell you all. It seems the whole of the system is poised to take a flight, the fastest one. I fell in love with you without any premeditations, for I have been touched by your story to the core of my heart. I would love you even if you were eighty years of age. Should you receive my mail, please send a prompt reply. And, yes. I am putting in an ad on Yahoo messenger for you. If possible, please do come in the evening. You know there is a difference of thirty minutes between Pak and Indian timings. Will you come? Yours Mahak.
God knows how many times I read the message. Just kept on reading it. In the world of literature and serials I had received so many letters before this one, had come across so many girls, but this e-mail made me feel flying in the air; as if the blood in my body were running faster… ‘Even if you were eighty years of age….’ The eyes went through the line again and again. ‘I am 23.’ Was there present within me a man with unsatisfied desires? Or, there was a man reaching 40 who felt pampered with the thought he could still be loved by a girl aged 22 or 23… I don’t know what the moment was, or what sentiments
had taken possession of me, by the time I wrote ‘Yours Sanyal’, I had sent the e-mail.
That very evening, for the first time, she came on Yahoo messenger, and it seemed as if the world, like some fairyland, had opened its doors for me…
A few mare days passed.
When you are in love, your love need not be declared. Its fragrance, like that of civet; makes itself known. The whole of your behaviour shows it. Many a time, presenting myself before Tarana, or while holding her in my arms I felt like a thief. But, as a man, I can tell you truthfully and honestly that at any
moment of my love to Tarana, Mahak did never have her presence within me. Does this mean that she was partially present in me while Tarana was wholly; or, was it because of Tarana’s love that although Mahak tried to occupy her place in my life she couldn’t? Or, remaining tied to a family was a compulsion on me? Or, in this glamorous world of the Net.
when do we meet physically? Perhaps, this excuse put heart in me, to some extent. But, although it was across the border, Mahak was present physically and of her presence I had read in the Net CAM, was it love? Had, in any way, Tarana’s love faded? And was it because of that I had involuntarily been turned to Mahak? Or, the virility of a man crossing forty had been revived having gained the company of a woman, the woman who not only loved him but wanted to get him with all his physicality.
But, perhaps, it did not become necessary for me to keep the truth hidden from Tarana’s eyes. Because, like the jungle storm, one day she came to know the whole truth. She was silent for a while.
‘Do you also love her?’ Tarana’s words were ice-cold.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps you do…’ She took a deep breath… but, the very next moment her eyes regained their age-old love…, the same frenzy, the same passion. Once again she saved me from my entering the slough of guilt. While departing she said only this much, ‘How would you have felt had there been any boy in my life?’
‘Sanyal!’ — passing through the self imposed ordeal I asked myself, ‘Sanyal, what will you do? What will you do the next, Sanyal? Time is trying to carry you alongwith its flow, but there is some
strong feeling too as your heart deters you.’
In the evening as I set the Net on, Mahak Ahmad was there on the line. As AOA was on light she wrote, first of all, AOA — the greeting ‘Assalamu- Allaikum’. And then the stream of words would open the doors of new utopia, and at the moment I was perhaps in some world above the earth, and words of Mahak were nothing but fragrance.
From the chat-room
She asked. She asked a lot. She asked, which of the two — a bird and a dream– is the better one. The answer was ‘the bird’, because they breathe and they sing of love when it rains, or when it is ‘savan’: the month of rains and greenery all around. Dreams are unfaithful. They come; they vanish away too.’
She asked, ‘Why is it so that star, her favourite star, shining in the sky surpasses the moon?’
She asked, ‘Why aren’t you a rose, the one that I should pluck and then place by my heart; that you should pervade, like the fragrance, in my breath, my heart…’ ‘Why aren’t you a butterfly, the one that in my forgetfulness, having been maddened by the intoxication of pining for you, I should chase through
the beds of roses and having got my finger pricked should write in blood: ‘love’.
She asked, ‘Why aren’t you a raindrop, the first born of the season, that like a heavenly blessing should descend on my open, uplifted palm; and that I should kiss it and then place it on my head with a dream in my eyes —the dream of getting evaporated, to lose my identity and be one with you, getting
lost to the world.
She asked, ‘Before you stepped in my life, the world was not so very beautiful, or I had not perceived its beauty, why?’
She asked, ‘Why does a single moment not contain a million of moments within it? And those millions could enclose usand then forget to pass on!’
She said, ‘My death, if co-occurred with yours would be much more beautiful than this life is. Do come… taking my trembling hands in yours, close your eyes… for ever… with the sense of my being with you. My body, swaying in the most beautiful intoxication of life; my shining and singing eyes — when they open, they should open on an uninhabited island where there should be none but you, wherever I should
cast my eyes.’
And then she asked, ‘Listen, why did you get born so very early? – much more early than me… What a cruel revengeis it of yours? Well, you were born alright, but why didn’t you wait for me? Why
didn’t you care for my dreams… Why didn’t you hear my steps? For, I was always there in every particle of earth. In so many past, glorious years I was in no other form but fragrance. I was there, my soul. My shadow was there. It was only that you couldn’t perceive it.
She asked, ‘Why did you get married before I came? Why didn’t you wait for me?’
She asked, ‘Who are they that know you more than I do?... My fragrance should be there within you more than the impression of a flower, fragrance or dream. I should see you more than the wife, the sun or the moon does. I should touch you more than the blowing air does. I should descend upon your
being like a pleasant drizzle— the one that ran through life.
She said, ‘The palanquin of our lives be placed on the bed of flowers in an isolated island… and your arms like tender branches, be spread over my body…’.
And then she said, ‘Tell me the truth. Is there any one other than myself, breathing within you this moment?’ And after a moment’s hesitation asked, ‘Your wife?’
Let it be the dead silence or din, each has a poetry of its own. The air bears its own verses, fragrances, rhythm and tunes of love. It was possible that this story would not have taken birth. And, that too for a person like myself, that is, a person devoted to creation, whose unperturbed state of being could
be compared to that of the still waters, or the waves on the calm ocean.
But I beg your pardon. The time when this story begins is serious. And it is necessary that the present time and the human rights associated with it, be assigned the function of the witness. And much more necessary is the question arising at the heart of lovers, floating ambitiously over the waves of love, that why they are not birds or animals; and also, the watchful eyes of the Human Rights to watch if the community of menfolk is, in anyway, thwarting the rights of the womenfolk. But please, excuse me, Here there is no violation of human rights. Contrary to it there enters quietly a woman in the life of a man aged over forty, and leading a quiet married life. The woman was not a wife but a lover aged 22 whose eyes would transform into the rains, dreams and rainbows from time to time. Getting aside, she demanded, ‘Grant me my rights.’ The answer given was, ‘This right belongs to somebody else.’ Before she could exclaim ‘No’, she was as violent as a great river in flood could be.
‘No?’
‘If it were any other person’s right you would not be here. Tell me, why you are here. Why aren’t you there with the one who has the right?’
Perhaps she giggled…but she was still asking … and she asked… ‘Why do you feel so very frightened allowing me my own rights? Would I be here if you had lost your right to love? Near you? Near
your breath? In your movements…in your restlessness… in your worries…and in your fingers…that while typing on the computer get abstracted from the word to love, and from the word to a passionate persistence… from eyes to the dream, and from lips to the song.’
And then she said, ‘ Listen to me Flood!...I fly… I swim. On dewy imaginations I weave the webs of waves. Time flies like little butterflies with their colourful wings around me. Taking them to be the feel of yours I try to grasp them with my hands. Through the long long days I have wings on my body to fly in the rainbow sky. During the night, as I am flying with butterflies with feeling of being with you, I grasp the time with a feel of you, and tying it in a knot, conceal it in the coils of my hair…’
And then she asked, ‘ Does your son know that some one, besides his mother, has come into your life?’
This was the time when the heart of Venus throbbed, and the planet known as the ninth one in our solar system, Pluto, had been exiled.’
I closed the Net quietly. Anyhow, for a little while kept looking on at the blank screen of the computer. The letters were gone… No, they were shining… and the combinations of them was giving
shape to the face of a girl having come from some dreamland. Eyes were lost on the island that was Salan’s eyes…All the words on her flower-petal lips were for Salan only…The body trembled. I got up, opened the side-door and began to feel the words typed by Mahak. They seemed to peep from the blue sky across the balcony. I felt as if she were standing in front of me asking, ‘ How much do you love me?;—the words that were meteor shower; as if an explosion had occurred; as if a shiver ran through the spine…She, too, was looking at him with a smile that expressed pleasure and mystery, both, simultaneously.
‘Why don’t you speak? Tell me how much you love me.’
‘I don’t do any.’ I typed the few words. She burst out like the torrential rain.
‘You do, but you dare not…Well, how deeply does Tarana love you?’
‘Very.’
‘More than I do?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. She can’t do more.’ She seemed reassured. ‘No. None can love you more than I do — not even the heart that beats in your body; not even the eyes that would strike up a melodious tune of love just by casting a look ...and…and your lips that play with the name can love you to the extent that I do.’
Mahak stopped. The conflict arising at her heart could be seen on the CAP. A thousand shadows arose and drowned in her eyes…Once again her fingers were on the type. My heart throb took a leap because of a flood of unfamiliar questions arising there in.
She said, ‘Well, listen…How much has Tarana touched you? I too wish to get transformed into ‘Savan’, into the rains, into the wind that should pass touching you…How does Tarana play on your body
with her fingers?...Very gently? …Very quietly? — like the dew drops falling down the leaves? How much has she seen your body? How much has Tarana known…? Isn’t it only that much as much a woman, bound to the role that she has to play as a wife, could know? Isn’t it only that much as the pain or
hunger…there is at a time in the body…would warrant? Isn’t it only that much as much there is the fever of hunger and sex-urge together in the body at a time? But how much does she see you when the two bodies are one? How many dreams can she visualize in every hair on your body? How much can she
discover you in the commotions of your breath? Does Tarana see in you, or she doesn’t, a new flood in you? — a new song, a new dream and a new flood?...?
Mahak continued to type and it seemed as if I were bathing in the rains of wonder every moment. What is this? Why do I become so very helpless as soon as Mahak comes. The cacti of questions begin to raise their heads from me within… ‘You have a son aged twelve,… on the threshold of becoming a full grown youth. She is older by ten years only.’
Do you know the meaning of having crossed forty years of age if you are born in an Indian family? It means— a grave personality devoted to your family, the one who understood the responsibilities towards children. Having reached this age you emerge a mature person who is looked on by your society with reverence because the society knows this person is an invaluable symbol of our ideal society, is a representative. This person cannot love. And, to him, thinking of any extramarital love is nothing less
than his getting doomed. Here there is no room for any unexpected occurrences.
Even then Mahak had got in through the back door that had remained open, only god knows how. She had come in,and was asking for her full right to love.
Tarana and question
Love is eternal.
The tales of global and geographical changes also are true. In the race of progress and development, there is also a row of mysterious happenings standing along with our worldly race; from miracles to inventions, from the system of downloading a man’s brain to the cloning of the human being. In this world of inventions and miracles the heart of Venus ceased to throb long long ago. Only God knows how long ago the heavenly star, that was love, got eliminated from its orbit, got shattered into innumerable number of pieces and was dispersed through the solar system. Plato, the symbol of trust was also exiled by the observers of the celestial bodies. But the splinters of the star — that was love — getting attached and detached with the masses of ice, seemed to be posing questions before mankind, ‘why did love get lost? Where did love evaporate? Why did you arrive on the land of hundreds of thousand years ago where there would be no life, the sun sans its fire — just a cool spherical body, and the lifeless earth…? At that time there shone a spark, and emerged out a ray from the star that was love itself. And after centuries a love story took birth… in the age of inventions, mysteries and the Jurassic… in the form of Tarana, in the form of Sailaan, or in the form of Mahak Ahmad.
‘Well, what did you think?’ Tarana’s eyes were peeping into mine.
‘Don’t know.’
‘There is an honesty in you that you did not fail to disclose to me that you too love Mahak…’
I remained emotionless with my down cast eyes. ‘Well, tell me; do you have romantic talks too with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very much?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps you would hold her hand too if she were in front of you…’ Tarana’s tone was icy. ‘Perhaps.’
‘No. Not perhaps. You would. Or, possibly more than that…,’ she checked herself in the mid-sentence.
‘Sanyal!’ she continued, ‘Didn’t you remember me, even for a moment while talking to Mahak?... Suppose you spent three hours with her in a day, it comes to 90 hours in a month, yes? …Don’t you remember Sanyal…’ Tarana held my hands. Swayed by the tender recollections of the bygone days her eyes were misty. ‘Don’t you remember? —you used to say a man who met a woman other than his wife but with the same fervour of love… may be deemed as having dismembered a part of his body. A person who met some other one again and again, is as good as the one who has dismembered all his body parts. Didn’t you say that? And you also said how such a person can take his wife or his children in his arms if he has already lost his limbs.’ Tarana looked at him, smiled, ‘I hope you are intact Sanyal, for me and my children…’
At my heart, my own shriek, smeared with blood, lay loaded with slabs of ice. in a moment, fighting against my own desperation, I took a decision.
‘That’s the truth of the Net, not of the body…’
‘Oh…,’ Tarana laughed out amiably.
‘They all Net, Where is the person who doesn’t do? ‘And people don’t share their experiences with their wives even.’
‘I don’t know the people, my love. I know Sanyal only…’ There was not the least resentment in Tarana’s voice. ‘You said that was the truth of the Net. Had you had romantic chat with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Took her hand in yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kiss…?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Not perhaps; say ‘yes’.’
‘Yes.’
‘On the lips?’
‘Yes…’
‘Well, let it be on the lips, the eyes… or as you like… for it is not easy to put into words how intense love is at a given moment, … but suppose you were before her … would you do all that Sanyal?’
‘But the condition is, if I were before her…’
‘You would turn into a ‘Tsunami. Isn’t it? Don’t get frightened Sanyal. Sometimes I feel like talking about petty things. Yesterday I kept thinking for a long time. After all where had I blundered?
Where did I leave a void within you in the past sixteen years? Where Sanyal? Tell me. But don’t think I’ll hinder you. I’ll just try to make you understand… for I have loved you. I have loved you intensely. It went all through my tender age. I won’t keep you from …. I will convince myself that my luck had only this much for me in store…. Where love falls under compulsion, is restrained, doesn’t remain love any longer…
selfishness comes in there…’
‘Then…?’
‘Tell me what you have thought about…’
My words got stuck to my throat. ‘Mahak wants to marry me…’
‘So…’
‘She says she will come to India…’
‘Ask her to come.’ Tarana took my hands in hers gently. ‘Ask Mahak to come.’
‘And you…?’
Tarana smiled mildly. ‘You know your Tarana. Never liked divisions ever since my childhood… placing Mahak’s hand in yours, I’ll quit quietly’. She turned away her face.
I felt ponderous thunderclaps operating at my heart. And during the moments that followed, there came before my eyes every aspect of Tarana’s beauteous face, her adornments — the sixteen year old Tarana. I felt, it was easy to slip into make-believe world, but very difficult to tread on the stony path of reality. While I was lost in my dreamy reflections. I felt as if I heard the soft musical sound of Tarana’s ankletwith bells, and in an instant, there was Tarana and Tarana only in my eyes, saying… ‘Then, do call her…’ I don’t know the reason why in the history of tales, till now, the wife is not the heroine. How is it that only the second or the third woman that comes in the life of a man is the heroine? Is it because offering her springs and dreams to her husband through the years of her youth, she gets lost somewhere? But, actually, having had her share in the history of the pleasures and pains of the household, she, in all her splendour, stands on the pedestal of the heroine supreme, having been observed and weighed every
moment. She is the fairy of the flowers. What is needed is the eyes that should recognize this flower-fairy. I was not in any sort of doubts. Detached from the waterfalls and rains of love, I was trying to study all the colours of this flower-fairy. And on that day, perhaps, my thoughts and sentiments reached Mahak. She asked me for the last time:
‘Tell me. Should I come to Delhi? I shall not be a burden on you, Sanyal, not even financially. I need your company only, the feel of your presence only. Yes or no, I demand your answer this very moment.’
There was no echo within me, neither that of a fire-work nor that of a blast.
Giving much thought to it, I typed quietly, ‘No.’
Mahak signed out. She didn’t meet again. Moments rolled on to cover months, unawares. Perhaps five months passed.
To die in your town
And after the five months—
Perhaps, this was the time when I was alarmed to see a meteor turn into a long line of brightness to get lost only. But, perhaps, such a void gives birth to an elegy. Or, such a love, once again, gives to the world such a masterpiece as the Taj Mahal. But perhaps, at that time I had no idea that the visualization of such images as an elegiac composition or the Taj Mahal by seeing a shooting star could disturb me to such an extent in the future.
Tarana would ask, ‘you forgot her. No?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Should she really have come, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You are telling a lie…’ Her eyes would grow mischievous by the touch of love. ‘Had she come you wouldn’t have been able to exercise any control on yourself.’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Why does it happen so? When everything is going on smoothly in life, there enters some one quietly?’ She hesitated momentarily and then added, ‘There was no shortfall anywhere, in any form. Perhaps, we had not left anywhere any void, even such a one as could be natural in the life of a married couple, like an unattended door, or a gap through which any one could jump in to reach
you. But, perhaps, a life that has been granted for once only…
There is a free sheet of paper also. A person feels no guilt or remorse writing the name of any other person on it. Because it is the most exclusive road lying in between the person and his soul, the road that your wife and your children are not allowed to walk along.
Tarana turned to him. “Well, suppose she should come suddenly and stand before you, then? What will you do Sanyal? Will you deny her? Will you ask her to turn back? Or, say, that you have no relations with her. Or, … tell me.’
So many missiles continued to be shot into the sky, simultaneously…
“Listen to what the flute says.
It complains of our separation”
(From the verses of Maulana Roomi)
It was a morning as usual. But, perhaps, not quite as usual. It couldn’t be as usual as other mornings for Sanyal in particular. Just a night ago there was a Mahal ke kho jane ka tazkera. Everything was normal a night ago. After high waves in the ocean there were deep whirlpools but there was quiet after it. The waves were calm. And suddenly on that bright morning so many stones had been hurdled into the water, and so many webs of the waves were formed in the river.
A knock at the door at 7 in the morning.
The door bell seemed to have brought in an unexpected storm. The boy who opened the door was looking wonderfully at the woman standing before him. Dusky face, sky-blue kameez and a salwar matching in colour. A dupatta hanging down the shoulders.
‘You are Asif, aren’t you?’
And as Tarana came, she embraced her and cried as a sister would.
‘And you are Tarana…? I am Mahak. From Pakistan. Came last night. Where is Sanyal?’
The room seemed to have been caught by a tremendous earthquake. The son, nonplussed, looked at her. Tarana’s eyes still innocent, or concealing their truth were looking at her. As I came out the two impatient eyes were transformed into the eyes of a stone image that emerges out in mystery stories. She was pointing towards me with her finger. Words were lost to her. The feelings or sentiments had transformed the face and the body into a book, such as no human soul had been able to behold as yet…
The voice of Mahak trembled. ‘Tarana, could the two of us be in seclusion for two minutes…Could we talk?
The son, somewhat frightened, was in his mother’s arms. Tarana, smilingvaguely, seemed to be saying… ‘O, yes; why not?”
But, perhaps, Tarana was not able to look into my eyes. Or, I could not muster up the courage to look at Tarana or the son. When and how she came and stood close to me, I couldn’t perceive.
‘Which room is yours?’ Her voice was cool. To my mind the fragrance from Pakistani garments was not different from the Indian ones.
The room was transformed into an object quite strange to the world. Deep within me there rose the waves of fire that seemed to burn my very existence, trying to turn everything to ashes. The words were lost, disappeared into a channel or a cave. It was difficult to conjure up my thoughts about my son or Tarana standing outside the room. A cold wave had taken the room inits folds.
She was touching me : every joint of the finger, the nails, my clothes, my body, my soul, or the soul of my souls.
‘You are Sanyal. No? How can I believe myself. No. I can’t be so very fortunate. You…so close…so very …close… No. Don’t stop me… let me touch you. These are your fingers…these your garments…I can see you, touch you. I am so close to you and… how is it that I am still alive… seeing you.. Sanyal? Would that death capture me, this very instant while I am seeing, feeling and living the thought of you. You never thought that Mahak could come here too. Isn’t it? — Toyour country, to your city, into your house. In the frenzy of my breaths, stealthily, I had made an enclosure and put you therein. I never gave a thought to the inconvenience you may incur by this act of mine. Aren’t you all right?... Why don’t you speak Sanyal?
‘How did you come?’ came in a low tone, as some voice had resounded the valley of Kakeshiyan mountains, as all the freshness of the air carried along with the blood and circulating through the body had begun to inaudibly call out her name, forgetting all the things in the world…
‘Sponsored by the university a group of twenty, boys and girls, has come to visit the ancient monuments and buildings in Delhi. We arrived here last night. Every moment of the night was transformed into a breathing portrait of your name. The whole night I was in the state of worshipping you and in the morning as the first ray of the sun touched the earth, I concluded my prayers with the final bow and without telling any body…’
‘Didn’t you tell anybody?’
‘No.’
‘Suppose someone set out in search of you.’
This was the first shock of the earthquake. Innocently, she was still touching my fingers. ‘Hina knows aboutyou, but not much.’
‘Who is Hina?’
‘A friend of mine…,’ she spoke gently. ‘This morning at ten we have to report to the police headquarters just to observe some formalities. But I am quite unable to go.’ She was shuddering. Her eyes
were closed. ‘I want to absorb within myself the feel of your presence.’ And then she added in a very low voice, ‘The purpose of my having opened my eyes in the world will have been fulfilled…’
Like a child she turned towards me, and then she began to investigate the things in the room. ‘Isn’t this your bed? You must be there in the creases of the sheet, isn’t it Sanyal? They bear your touches of the private hours too. I need have all the feel of your touches. Speakto me; won’t you?’
She promptly advanced and lay down on the bed. For a moment she closed her eyes… then got up… adjusted her dupatta. She was laughing. No; she was crying. ‘Well, I visited my home too. Lay in bed too, saw my room also. Make me stay here with you please. Don’t let me go..’
Somewhere, far away, the tune of Maulana Roomi’s flute was there in the air, ‘Listen to what the flute says…’ The flute had turned these moments into disastrous moments. My face was transformed into a stone image. Thinking of Tarana and the son outside, I felt myself to be overcast by the dark clouds of misgivings; and Mahak with her eyes almost closed, resting her head on my chest, was lost in some alien
world…perhaps I was trembling. As I gently reached my trembling hand onto her back, she seemed to get lost into my chest, my breaths. But misgivings were there, holding their question-spears, ‘If Mahak did not depart?... How should I ask Mahak to go? Her not going back may create a disastrous scene. The matter is concerned with a girl, come from Pakistan, and now missing. And, then?
The recollection of so many stories, ranging from terrorist activities to suicide bombing, deeply disturbed me during those eternal seconds. But, probably, it was not possible to tell anything to Mahak. And, the fact is — I did not want that Mahak should separate herself from my body. Her love, elevating itself from just an intoxication to the level of worship, was getting dissolved into my very existence. And then time came to a stand still… In a flash Mahak stood apart from me, turned to me with a stream of tears running through her stony eyes.
‘I am going away. I’ll trouble you no more. I can’t even see my love worried. But it was necessary to see you once, to touch you, to preserve the feel of your touch at my heart.’
Her face bore a strange smile — ‘Don’t ask me to stay… And yes, don’t have a misconception that I shall get back to Pakistan.’ She smiled gently, ‘If I can’t live in your city, I can die here at least.’
Coming forward she pressed her hot lips on mine, and then swiftly got out of the room. And before I was able to comprehend anything, I felt the earth shake under my feet. The notes of the flute were nearer…
‘Since you have made me drunk, don’t impose confines on me. Codes of religion are not operative on the insane.’
(A verse from Maulana Roomi)
It seemed as if she had left her everlasting ‘presence’ in the room. She seemed to be breathing still on the bed, in the garments, on every joint in the finger. I was shivering all through. Her departing words still rang in my ears:
‘I may not live in your city,
But I can die here, at least.’
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