An Average Life

Nothing to peddle,

nobody to pander to,

just here to serve

a restraining order 

six feet around my mind,

lest one stumbles upon

a forgotten diary

where my life is parked

in relative anonymity.

But it's an average life

as Ricky Gervais says,

in depth, length and piddly breadth. 

A benign one, with smooth edges,

and subdued affections

throttled under a pillow.

Make memories, they said.

I bought memory foam instead.

Of Protracted Deaths

And so
we discussed at length
painless options,
procuring pills; ingenious whims
laughing at euthanistic prospects,
you pooh-poohing carrying out
mine
"if at all, it should be him..."
as we laughed some more;
both wanting him gone.

Lime pit is what we agreed upon.

What deliberation was it
to pick for mine
the most agonizing trick from
the stack
of protracted deaths?

"Koi?"

What brought the year to an end
came as the longest week

when the koi had forgotten to swim

upstream

to the Yellow River as is her wont,

unlocking the knotted love hung out to dry

Uncannily quiet, the week

came with motley sounds

of bikes whizzing past

dogs barking

clothes ruffling under the weight of hugs

and wafting notes from forgotten music

but not the proverbial fish

silent in its arrival

waking me up with an excess of vowels.

The year came to an end,

with the weight of the longest week in ages,

The weight of knowing she knows

What I forever feared,

but never knew.

The First Road Trip

___________________

Traveling on NICE corridor, if I roll down the windows while passing a slow truck, the steady drone of its nylon tyres on asphalt still brings back memories from childhood, of road trips all over India (by bus), baba and ma on either side. It started with Kashmir in 1975, when I was still hanging like a baby chimp from their hands, complaining of aching legs from all the walking, and went on till 1992, when we did Bandhavgarh in our uncle's Premier President (Fiat 1100). By then I was bold enough to walk with nothing but a sturdy twig in hand on to an oncoming tiger that kept roaring and approaching our huts, only to discover it was a bellowing ox returning home at twilight. Never been very fond of walking, however. That was probably the last trip with both of them. But today when I rolled down my window, I remembered my first journey by car. Not a taxi, an actual private car. 

Why roll down the window, you ask? Well, with diesel prices having touched Rs 100, I drive at 65-70 kmph on an expressway for optimal economy, without the airconditioning, worrying about my depleting reserves and how I can't afford a new petrol car anymore.  And then I see a bunch of laborers huddled together on a tractor returning home, at twilight, but not belligerent as the ox from Bandhavgarh. My worries melt, my privilege at being able to afford fuel for my car stings like a bee, as I quickly roll up the window and pretend not to see. I want to think of the lifespan of oxen. Just then the eyes of a little girl catch mine, and I roll down the window again and smile at her. She's going home too, with her laborer parents, who couldn't afford to hold her hand all day. Nestled in the lap of her mum, she smiles back, feeling as safe as I did hanging like a chimp. Nestled. Did you ever pronounce Nestlé as nestle? I didn't. I was taught not to ignore stressed vowels. The stress of remembering all that, I tell you, takes away all possible abandon from one's childhood.

That night my uncle and his friend came to take me from Durgapur to Dhanbad. Ma was already in Dhanbad, to participate in her younger brother's wedding, and I was supposed to go with baba a couple of days later. It was to be our first inter-city road trip by scooter, a distance of 130 km through non-existent roads of Bengal and Bihar (now Jharkhand). We had open helmets with goggles ready and faux leather jackets...but baba got hospitalized just a day before with acute chest pain. When my uncle and his friend came to pick me up in a black Ambassador, I was thrilled beyond belief. These men being senior cops, it was easy for them to arrange a meeting with my dad at the hospital late in the night, after which we took off. 

I couldn't believe I was traveling by car, and not a taxi. We couldn't afford taxi rides much, so even that was a luxury, but this was like a fairy tale come true. The entire rear seat was mine; I could choose to see anything on either side of the car. It was dark, the nylon on tarmac had a familiar buzz, as we crossed one truck after another. The lean, wiry uncle who was driving kept his loaded holster on the dash. 

Roll up the window, Shuvo, it's cold. 

But I never catch cold, don't you know? 

The weak halogen headlights seemed to fuse with the fog ahead in the cold night and I suddenly had the brilliant idea to ask them if they had fueled up. To this both of them laughed. Thanks for reminding, Shuvo. Eleven-year-old me felt mighty important that night, smugly looking out at the darkness and watching the even darker trees pass us by. They had acknowledged my clever idea after all! It was my first road trip, of which I have mostly olfactory memories of diesel fumes and nightly dust.

Rolling down the window and slowing down on a highway does have some benefits after all, and not all of it environmental.

Buttless

Mel Gibson has a "delicious butt," said some famous actor in a movie. It was quite brutal of her to mention it, considering she said this to Hugh Grant, who suffers from a severe emaciated derriere syndrome. Search for "Hugh Grant side profile body" and chances are you won't see his butt in any picture. That's because he doesn't have one to begin with. But who am I to mock him, for I have suffered a buttless existence for almost 50 years of my life. Rumor has it that I had a nice and shapely one while growing up, but years of cycling and motorcycling have compressed them into flatbread from buns or buttercups, with the pressure squeezing out all the yeast.

Another reason can be that I had butt envy for Bubun'da, who had the perfect glutes, from playing all the soccer that he did. Psychologists say butt envy is a real thing, where if your neighbor has a prominent one, your brain starts forgetting about your glutes and gets everything done by your lower back and thigh muscles instead. It is called gluteal amnesia, and believe me, am not making this up. 

After leaving Durgapur at 18, I thought I will meet other flatbread men, but as luck would have it, I ran into Arup Sarkar and the butt envy continued for another painful five years. His brain hadn't forgotten his glutes, and kept them well cushioned for some unfair reason unknown to me. 

However, with my fiftieth birthday coming up in six months, I thought of gifting myself a beach bod, and work toward shedding some flab and gaining some muscle mass. Like all Indian men with beefed up bodies and skinny legs, I have the same problem. I worked out my upper body, and ignored the lower. And I have a theory for why Indian men have historically ignored their lower bodies. 

Mirrors.

Yes, mirrors. Let me tell you why.

Remember how in the fifties we had only pale North Indian heroes in Bollywood? It didn't matter if they were extremely obese or had spindly limbs, as long as they were fair and wore lipstick. That is because in India, what was perceived as male hotness evolved with the economy. In the India of the yore, a mirror was synonymous with a small shaving mirror. You could only see your face, and as long as you had access to lipstick and face powder, you were covered.  

As the economy progressed, and the cost of sticking mercury behind glass came down, Indians could afford half mirrors, and we started seeing heroes like Sunny Deol and Anil Kapoor, hirsute as fuck, who dared to come out shirtless. By now Indian men could see half of their bodies and were vigorously working on their pectorals. Had it not been for all that chest hair, some of them could have been mistaken for generously endowed Bavarian women. 

Suddenly, probably around the time when Dr Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister and opened up the economy, full-length mirrors became a thing. We could finally see how we looked under those baggy pants. And believe me, it wasn't a pleasant sight at all. We had biceps and no triceps, because heroes in films are shown to work only on their biceps with dumbbells. And we had no thighs, butts, or calves at all. All that cycling, mind you, had had NO effect at all. 

By then my butt envy had turned toward women, and I had no time to work on mine any more. If you don't have one, go after one, was the general idea. 

However, three decades later as I now want to work out my glutes and bring them back to shape, I have nobody to turn to but Arindam Mukherjee, who's not only an expert on geopolitics, but also an avid body builder. "But I'm right wing," he said, "what if I mislead you? Why don't you ask some of the comrades instead?" This butt politics was getting murky and I couldn't possibly have asked Kim Jong Un for tips on working out my lower half, could I?

The only option left was to remind my brain to have a conversation with my butt. So I started with "Hey you up there, careful with the 100 dollar bill am holding between my butt cheeks."

And the brain replied, "Eff off you miserable Indian, that's more than your entire life's savings. Have you even seen a one-dollar bill?"

There went my plan!

Now all you can do is accept me as I am when I turn 50.

The Wisdom of Wheat Flour

Ma had poured a lot of wheat flour in that round vessel. 

Usually it was Maya'di who did all the cooking, but when all the siblings came visiting their mother with their families, she alone couldn't manage in that kitchen with the huge earthen oven that ran all day long. My mother and some other aunts used to help her. The oven was about five feet in width with two outlets at the top, and you had to stoke the coal from outside. You could cook two dishes at the same time, which was a novelty for us. And it was at knee level, so all the cooking had to be done sitting.

After a hard day's work, when the huge earthen contraption was drowsy, with the embers letting out an orange glow from its bowels, Darling and Betty would want to retire in the vicinity, to catch the residual warmth. Sometimes I used to go sit with the dogs, but they didn't think much of me. 

The kitchen was at the back of the bungalow, and was an open one. The dogs roamed free all night, and had access all around the bungalow. My grandma lived alone, with Maya'di the cook, and Sundar the watchman. Out of her five children, one stayed with her, but he too was busy all day. Hence the dogs. If one died, it was usually replaced by another Alsatian pup. And when it was time for the annual meet, the bungalow bustled with a lot of activity. The Australian cousins would love to explore the village, try to speak Bengali with us, the ones from Madhya Pradesh would converse in Hindi, and some of us from Bengal would try to keep up with our broken English and absolutely pedestrian Hindi. The four brothers and the sister (Ma) were mostly reticent people, hardly communicative or expressive, but not lacking warmth. 

One evening I was sitting with her at the kitchen, watching her knead the dough for rotis. 

“How do you know how much flour to use?” I was always curious. We needed rotis for almost 15 people, so the math always eluded me. How did she know?

“It’s always a smart guess, you can say. You can’t always be exact. Sometimes there’s extra and sometimes there’s a little short. It is much like every chance you take in life, you make an educated guess and go for it. There’s no telling how it will turn out to be. But there are always workarounds. Be it for kneading dough, or for something in life.” I wasn’t really curious about life lessons at the point in time, so I didn’t read her wan smile. “Our neighbors, Runu pishi? They used to take me to knead the dough every time they had guests over, because I am an expert in this.”

“But you don’t like to cook, do you?” I knew she hated the heat of the oven and disliked entering the kitchen. We’ve always had someone else cook for us back home in Durgapur. I hated the fact that she had to manage when the cook didn’t show up, but there was little I could do to help. I could chop vegetables, shell the peas from their pods, beat the eggs, and when we all went to our Grandmom’s place in Dhanbad, I tried my hand at drawing water from the well but never succeeded, with the weight of the laden metal bucket dragging me to the edge every time. I also loved to watch Sundar unload bags of coal into the oven’s mouth early in the morning. I offered to take the dogs out, and got dragged everywhere by the beasts, but I never let go. The metal rings of the chains would sometimes make deep marks in my palms. I went with Sundar to fetch fresh, foamy milk from the nearby buffalo shed. When Ma had to cook, I tried to help however I could, but couldn’t fathom why it is the woman who has to take up this responsibility. There were other aunts who loved to cook delicacies, and took pride in it, but I hated the fact that it was always the woman. “Why doesn’t Baba cook?”

“No, let him not try. We might have to go hungry even if he attempts to.” My dad used to vehemently insist that he too could cook, but then we knew he wasn’t any good at it. He was busy collecting accolades for his collection of books, for being able to hold lengthy discourses about world politics and history, playing the violin, solving others’ problems, helping others with their assignments, etc. To the rest of the world he was a hero. A feminist, a socialist, talking animatedly about Joan of Arc, Eisenstein, Tagore, Ray, or M.N. Roy’s radical humanism. But the woman had to cook. I often wonder how he managed for ten years after Ma passed, but when I saw him in the kitchen all by himself, he was busy with his imaginary conversations. He was never alone. Ma was. 

“You know I can manage with a roti and some boiled veggies. It is for you and your dad that we have to have elaborate food arrangements. And I don’t need more than one little cot. Have you seen the little green table fan? That was all I needed. I can’t stand the summers. Sometimes I wonder if this institution of marriage makes any sense at all.”

Then she went on to tell me how she never wanted to marry, but wanted to work at a museum after her PG in Anthropology. But opportunities were difficult to come by, and she ended up teaching. “Marriage is usually the end of the road for dreamers.” I grew up believing it, but when the time came to look for a profession, I first thought of joining St Edmund’s College for Congregation of Christian Brothers in Shillong. Ujjwal Routhe had told me how they get paid a fat sum, and all you had to do was believe. But I realized I cannot be a priest ever, because I wanted to sin. The fact that I wanted to commit it repeatedly wasn’t so clear in my mind then, but I needed the company of a woman. A Brother there couldn’t marry ever, and having grown up as an atheist, it really made no sense to suddenly turn a Christian. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a place for God in my life. Like I could never decide on which tattoo to go for, I couldn’t decide on a religion when there was a choice. "Become a Buddhist if you really need to belong. Forget it otherwise," came the bored answer.

“But then you wouldn’t have had me, if you never got married, isn’t it?” I was baffled. 

“No. But then I never wanted a child either. You’ve been a nice kid, didn’t trouble me much, and I do love you, but it is a superfluous thing to have a child. Like an appendage you don’t want. Your dad has a lot of expectations from you. But I don’t know how you will turn out to be. You seem to be doing fine, so far.” 

There were exactly 60 rotis at the end of the conversation. And when in between all this she sang mellifluous songs by Tagore, my uncles quietly got up from their living room conversations and came to sit behind us, listening. As a kid, I had already seen through the soullessness of the violin back home. But her singing never got its due.

When much later in life she met my girlfriend, she told her the same thing. “Don’t get married, dear. Live in. These guys are everybody’s and never your own. The day you want, you can opt out.” By “these guys” she meant boys in our family in particular, I have a sneaky feeling. “Always be financially independent. And if possible, don’t burden yourself with a kid.”

The concept of living in was new in the nineties, and although urban Indians had already been practicing it, it wasn’t a trend that caught on with the middle-class as much. “Don’t do it in Benares. People won’t understand you there. Might even burn you at the stake, for all you know. Live in here, in Calcutta. But then Calcutta has no opportunities for you. Move to Delhi.”

Move to Delhi we did, but we couldn’t do justice to the wisdom she passed on. Today when I help at the kitchen and knead the dough, am always confident, though. Don’t worry if there will be a little extra or a little short, just take a guess and go for it. Life will sort itself out. 

"Don't Put Sugar, Please"

"Please don't put sugar, didi" I blurted out with my hand stretched, but I had used the word "cheeni" and before I could stop her, Maruti's wife had already put a spoon of "shakkar" in the lemon tea. Sugar gives me acidity and leaves a sour aftertaste. She looked at me, puzzled. Marathis call sugar "shakkar" pretty much like we do in many other Indian languages. I realized if I ask her for sugarless tea now, she would have to make it again. So I gestured that everything is fine and accepted the red tin cup with both hands. It was a tiny cup that had seen better days. But it was the best Maruti's wife had.

It was early in the morning and there was a chill in the air, and I was happy for the hot cup of beverage.

The previous evening, in a bid to find a place to stay near Panshet Dam, I had lost my way somewhere along the banks of the huge lake and circumnavigated the entire catchment in search of some GPS signal. If the motorbike had stalled, I couldn't have pushed it back to civilization, and if it fell, I didn't have the strength to pick it up.

Going back to Pune meant another sleepless night with my friends who are die-hard nocturnal beings. And I had to explore more of Maharastra after having covered Panchgani, Mahabaleswar, and Pratapgarh Fort earlier that week. I came across a signboard with Panshet Valley View Resort written on it, pointing upward into the hills, and reached the place after 30 mins of negotiating broken roads through dense jungles. The sun was going down, the cicadas were out with a commitment to make the entire place sound eerie, and the little man Maruti was standing at the gate like a spirit. He didn't look surprised to see me. "Come in," he welcomed me with a smile.

It was a sprawling resort within the jungle with a pool, tents, normal rooms, rooms on stilts, a basketball court, a dorm, and a kitchen. My spirits were lifted. Finally a place to shack up for the night, then. Where are the others, I inquired.

Nobody, sir, there's nobody. They come on the weekends from Pune. Couples, mostly, he added. Sometimes large families and groups as well. By now he had opened the lock to a room with a spectacular view of the lake. I was in two minds about staying there and going out again in search of another place in the wilderness. We settled for a price that included my dinner and breakfast, and by then the sun had slunk away behind the hills, leaving a last bit of orange and blue on the sky. I couldn't have clutched on to the colors to ward off the gremlins in my mind. They come visiting on a solitary night. The full moon cast moving shadows of trees on the glass door to the balcony, and some restless night birds joined the cicadas. Have you heard a frog calling for help as it slides into a snake's mouth? It sounds like a groan that starts off as a tenor sax, and then gets higher in pitch like a shrill cry, before suddenly going absolutely quiet. I pulled the curtains and could feel my throat going dry.

Somebody knocked on the door. Chicken sukka and salad for dinner, sir.

I don't remember when I slept. I finished a book I had been meaning to read for a long time. The epilogue talked about how the book was originally written in 69, but was revisited in 1984. Read like a pastiche, I thought as I pulled the patchwork quilt over me, trying to push away the cold, slithering snakes crawling up my legs.

The morning was at 6.25, and sunrise precisely at 7.00. I busily clicked some pics, packed my little bag, and left. On the way out, Maruti called me to his house. But you had asked for an omelet for breakfast, he asked. I tried talking to him about intermittent fasting and then realized I must sound like a joker to them. As we grow older, we should eat lesser. He nodded in silent agreement. By then a little kid with a warm smile had come out to play on the porch. I gave him my metal water bottle to play with, when Maruti's wife got me the lemon tea.

On the way to Sinhagadh Fort I could see the jawans of the army jogging up the fort road in full gear. I waved at them and they waved back. I found myself smiling as I kept rolling my tongue, waiting for the sour aftertaste of sugar to set in.

Strangely, it was sweet.

Three States and a Biryani

BOOM…BOOM…BOOM…

When I came to, I could see myself fast approaching a gate that was coming down slowly, like an automatic boom barrier, accompanied with an intermittent boom boom sound... Dead Dog crossed the gate and I followed him...and immediately after that was a second gate, absolutely identical, which was coming down at the same pace as well! Only Dead Dog managed to cross the second gate, but I didn't. It was then that I realized I was on railway tracks, and had nowhere to go. There was another local fellow on a bike stuck with me.

I looked back.

Someone on the other side of the first gate frantically waved at us to come to his side of the tracks. The other fellow went across. I turned my bike and followed suit, and before I could realize, the Bangalore-Chennai Shatabdi Express thundered past just a few meters behind me. I had no clue where it came from and how fast, and that was when I properly woke up, shaken to the core. Someone was holding the handle of my bike steady to ensure I don’t get sucked into the vacuum and splatter against the train PHACHAAAAAK like in a comic book.

I was just about to die, a day short of my 48^th birthday, but what was I doing asleep on a running bike anyway!

When you plan a day-long bike ride in June, you tend to forget that you’re gonna leave the cooler climes of Bangalore and head into the dense heat of the neighboring states. Dead Dog had this 350-km trail riding planned for Sunday, and we started early at 6 a.m. from Hosur Road. Hosur Road starts from Bangalore and goes southward towards Shoolagiri and Krishnagiri, from where one the road turns left towards Vellore and Chennai, and another goes straight toward Salem and Kanyakumari. But we weren't gonna stick to the highway. We had other plans. 

We both ride Triumph Street Twins, and have modded our bikes a bit. We've moved from Pirellis to Timsun 659s, for better off-road grip, changed the fork oil for a more pliant front suspension, and while I have left the springs untouched, Dead Dog has put progressive springs at the front and also rear suspension from the old Continental GT by Paioli. We have put handlebar raisers for a more relaxed riding stance. X-pipes for de-cat and shorter silencers will follow, but for now, we're both happy with our rides.
About 10 km after Shoolagiri there’s a left turn through village roads towards Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh. From the broad, open highway, we suddenly found ourselves on a narrow, tree-lined road, but well paved. Dead Dog stopped at a place and expressed his disgust with the road being so smooth and beautiful. So much for trails riding, he said, but frankly I was enjoying the road. There were twisties, very few vehicles, and some wide-eyed villagers wondering where these aliens came from. Most of all, even at 8 in the morning, we could hear the birds tweeting, a soothing respite from the din of the concrete jungle. We reached a place that’s at the border of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Only Karnataka was on the other side of a hill. 

Here we stopped to click some pics of the dense jungle, spotted some “elephant crossing” signboards, and as we went onwards to Kuppam, we inadvertently steamrolled some butterflies with our helmet visors. One might have entered my mouth. Didn’t taste anything like butter though.

I must have fallen asleep around this time. Maybe not fully asleep, but very drowsy. After finding myself on the railway tracks and narrowly escaping a gory death, I was wide awake and looking for some Red Bull, but found a lot of bulls and some coffee at a tea stall instead. The old lady sweetly asked us to stay back for lunch. It’s too hot out there, and am making brinjal curry and rice, she said. But we were headed for Khaja Restaurant at Vaniyambadi, for some mutton biryani. We were going along the railway track, criss-crossing it, and at one place even went underneath the track, squeezing through a narrow tunnel made for otters (video).

By 10.20 in the morning we had reached Khaja Restaurant. The biryani wasn’t ready, said an old man, but you can wait for ten more minutes. By then it was already very hot in Tamil Nadu, and we waited, tongues hanging, more for the heat than for the food. I watched how one man meticulously tied at least a hundred packets of raita in those ten minutes. Vaniyambadi is famous for its biryani, but then it isn’t a very clean town. The main road is rather congested like any other mofussil town of India, and traffic is chaotic. Couple it with the summer heat and the beggars on the road, and you have a very unsavory picture.  



The mutton biryani with quail pepper fry on the side was gobbled up in no time, but all I wanted to do was to head back home after that. It was around 11.00, the sun was looking fiercely down on us, kinda unrelenting, and I wanted good roads. Enough of trail riding on a Triumph Street Twin. We need a Hero Xpulse maybe.

Dead Dog would have none of it, though. He was determined to find his way through the villages of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh all the way to Mulbagal on Old Madras road.

He’s called Dead Dog because he once ran over a dog. Some call him Tandoori Nai, but Dead Dog kinda stuck. I followed him, and he followed Google Maps. Through some villages on Punganur Road, we were promised that Old Madras Road is only some 20 km away, when we suddenly came to the road’s end. A man hurriedly approached us on a Hero Honda Splendor and informed us that many bikers have vanished in the jungles mysteriously, while some were found in the ditch. “On bigger bikes than yours” he added. Must have been someone on a Triumph Tiger or BMW 1200 GS.

A little monkey brrrrred at me from the tree above when I drank the last few drops from my water bottle. I brrrred back at him and realized he’s probably asking for water. I had nothing left to give the poor little fellow, so made some unintelligible sounds, called it bubbi and kibbli, and went on my way. Back to the main road this time.

The last stretch to Mulbagal was a fair bit of off-roading because the road is being broadened. The front forks loaded with 20W Motul oil held up pretty well, and the Timsun 659 tyres instilled a fair bit of confidence in me. These are so much better than the OEM Pirelli Sport Demons the Street Twin comes shod with, and give you that extra faith to take your bike off the road.

Mulbagal to Bangalore is 93 km of straight highway, so it was an uneventful ride apart from a cooling stop at Polar Bear for some ice-cream. The overcast sky in the rear-view mirror was catching up with us, and during the last stretch we found a few drops of relief.

How long was today's ride, I asked Dead Dog on WhatsApp.
"Dunno, maybe 350 kms. But there’s a tri-state border with Kerala here," and he sent me a google maps location of a new place.

Dude, isn’t that gonna be an over-nighter?
Yes.

Time to look for a tent now. Oh, and stack up on Red Bull, coz I don’t like trysts with bloody trains no more. 

Home

“You know, home to me is memories of songs and familiar streets. Of tall trees and square ones. Of the fun of riding my cycle downhill from the 9th street of Newton all the way down to Marconi, feet spread on either side. Of the gradient of each road. Of coming home to find George Biswas singing "With a high hope" on the 33 rpm vinyl. Of the first footsie under Dhar Sir's bed that transported me to another land. It could have been Atasi or Sonali, but I have no way of finding out. Home to me is the fear of Mathematics and of rushing to Atanu's house for help. And of him making me smoke his dad's half cigarettes. 

When I speak with you, I have a tremendous urge to go home, only there's no home, just memories on YouTube, in forgotten songs that make my eyes well up.”

“Can you promise not to go to anybody else?” she suddenly asked.

"But, wait, didn't you say you aren't possessive just about half an hour back?"

"Oh, that was then. Now I think I love you."

"Err...what kind of love?"

"Oh, the possessive kind, I suppose? Like deep enough to say, don't go to that other woman.
Write to me about your memories."

"But, what did you say about love? Do you really mean it?"

She paused. I waited. I could see she was typing.

"Oh, that I can't tell. It is like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, you can say. I can't determine my feelings very exactly."

And she logged out soon after. Schrodinger's cat was trapped in her closed chat window, strangely three-dimensional. But we will never know. And I lost my sleep that night, and many nights thereafter. This was love I hadn't known erstwhile. Of someone being able to defend her unpredictability with quantum mechanics. Usually, I was the one being mysterious. Now was my time to be hunted. Strangely, it wasn't fear. It was the euphoria of being tranquilized by an excess of lotus leaves.

A strain of a Julia Stone song wafted into the room:

"So come on Love, draw your sword

Shoot me to the ground"

So I started writing to her, and it made no particular sense. I didn’t know if I was cautioning her or pacifying myself. My heart just seemed to beat faster.

“Each new love comes with a strange humming sound. Like a buzz. Like a disclaimer, a fine print of sorts. Perhaps of the same old mothballed caution? Of thunderstorms and telephones that never ring? Yes, you know what I mean. It is repeated, this time in a careworn, raspy voice, drooping to almost the floor with the weight of collected wisdom, just about holding its own against gravity by virtue of its need to be heeded just once. An inch, perhaps. Do not fall in love again, it says.

But as expected, you don't. Heed the good advice, that is.

Mothballed stuff is never used, you argue, never have been, in a bourgeois household, like the unworn cashmere gets used to the damp comfort of a loft as babies grow up and give birth to new babies. And houses moved. Old luggage discarded with mixed emotions. That's where you leave caution and wisdom to spoon, strange bedfellows. Out of sight and forgotten. The image of the loft has a familiar dampness to it. Place it next to a leaky toilet, for good measure. There's seldom a Toy Story in real life, is there!

You turn off the radio and holler out to the first mate to flank her into the storm, full steam ahead. With each lightning strike, with each rising to the crest and tossing into the sea, the gentle whir of wisdom is drowned just like you cannot hear her engine anymore. And there's no disembodied voice from down below loud enough to tell you if the engine is running at all.

With each new love, remember to turn off the radio.”

And when I turned off the weather forecast and came back to the chat window, I unlocked the cat and let it go. It walked away or it didn’t.

She was calling out my name.

“I’ve baked you a shepherd’s pie. Come home.” And we logged in to Skype again.

Feburary

It is a dry February day and even at 10 in the morning the sun bears down like it has plans of magnifying its heat and burn some DTC buses in Delhi.
Only it is Bangalore, and such heat is unheard of.

Even Delhi is pleasant now, "just lazily slipping into Spring," as one particularly jealous friend informed last night. "Let the summer come, and we will have reason to rejoice as you all burn there," I thought as I hung up on her. But to accept to the denizens of Delhi that Bangalore is actually rather warm, is hurting my pride. Where was it that I read "denizens of Delhi" first? In a letter from Upamanyu Chatterjee to David Davidar, in the files of The Last Burden, if I remember. I should have torn off that handwritten note from the file and kept it folded in my wallet, but my wallet contains other unwanted stuff now, and some long unused condoms.

As I wait on my bike for the signal to turn green, the heat is burning my right thigh. I desperately seek a bigger vehicle to offer some shade, but am in the right lane and nobody can squeeze between me and the median. A giant oncoming BMTC Volvo stops on the other side and I pretend to listlessly look inside. From the corner of my eye I can see a young boy ogling at my bike and trying to figure out the make. I sit up straight on the saddle, posing like a true biker. But the traffic moves and the relief of the shade is short lived.

Two elderly gentlemen in front of Moghul Durbar last night were discussing just this. How the afternoon namaaz on Friday burnt everybody black. How much blacker will they become, after all, one of them quipped. And they rued the chopping down of trees around the Tilaknagar mosque, and were lost in memories of the canopy of leaves.

The signal turned green. It has rained in Durgapur, and it won't be long before it rains in Bangalore. You talk of tabebuia and eucalyptus, but I say, give me a good old banyan tree any day.

Much like a banyan tree, I've been rather stationary all my life. If life is like the last bench in a Math class, I must have moved only a few inches here and there, as the varnish faded and the planks started creaking, the nails became wobbly and purposeless, and Trigonometry struck off the curriculum. I had been in love with Ani since the day I first saw her. And today, standing at the signal, when I think of her, I realize I haven't moved very far from where I started, unless there were tectonic shifts that I am unaware of.

It is a story from only a couple of Februaries back. "Why, Shubho?" she had been crying. "Why did he go to another woman when I was carrying his child and waiting patiently for his return? Am I not beautiful enough?" She started taking off her clothes and tossing them all around the room. "Let's place some on the staircase to give it a classic Hollywood feel," I suggested in an effort to lighten the mood, as I picked up her discarded denims and black shirt to drop them from the landing to where the stairs started. "They belong there, at the bottom of the staircase. And now for scattering some lingerie as we come up."

She alternated between being coquettish and violent. To disarm me with her beauty and also to try and erase the memory of her cheating husband with a vengeance. But cheating is a relative term. Aren't you cheating on him by being with me? "I'm not sleeping with you. In the last three years I have allowed you absolute access to my body, but I'm not sleeping with you. You pleasure me with a massage, and it doesn't constitute cheating. It isn't adultery, if you know your penal code well. But he was with her all these years! I've seen their pictures together."

As she took off her red bra, I stood transfixed. It happens every single time I see her undress. I picked it up from the bed and walked to the staircase, to gingerly place it on a step. To the untrained eye, it would have looked like the aftermath of unbridled lust, with the clothes strewn along the path in utter disdain. The borrowed Nikon captured every stage of undress with care, but she was untiring as a model. Am all yours, she seemed to say, but not just to me. To the world, in a Marilyn pout.

I ran my fingers through the scar on her belly and asked who was the first to see her like this. "Like what?"
"Like this," I looked up, "with not a single thread sullying your beauty by attempting to cover an inch of it?"

"Oh, there were many, many, Shubho. But the first would be one village boy in Santiniketan who watched me bathe one evening." And then him. And them. And me.
We made love that February morning for the first time in three years. She lay there, insipid, the Tamil Brahmin side saying she had sinned, and the Bengali genes saying you finished what you started. That was the last I saw of her. Like she had failed to show up on a designated Ashtami evening several years back, she vaporized again, leaving no trace for me to pursue. I could sense something terminal in the way she picked up each piece of clothing on her way down, with clinical precision.

Februaries have continued to become harsher ever since. Some say it is global warming, but standing at the traffic signal, with the sun baking my limbs, my eyes still dart around for a glimpse of her in her red little car.

Baghdasha

Memories are tricky. Some titillate you, some waft in like the smell of fresh bread from the oven, and some draw you back in time, just to remember a forgotten name.

My memories of Borkhola are tinged in various shades of green. Of fresh tea leaves, mostly. And the smell of sweat when I played with the Santhal boys, just behind our tea estate, where the laborers lived. The Santhals were brought to the British tea estates in the late 1800s, but they remained indigenous. Living on the fringes of a small village, bordering the jungles, they were the first to face the wrath of the elephants and lose their children to the leopard cats. They danced around the fire at night, and the jungle beat of their drums could be heard reverberating in the hills. The memory of that rhythm is fading.

The winter memories beckon, of the empty paddy fields, the tea gardens in the hills, and of Nara Tilla, the single barren hillock that I could see from my terrace. It can't be far, I thought to myself, and I must roll down Nara Tilla one day. That seemed like a singular purpose for the longest time in my boyhood. I can't remember having any such concrete goals in my adult life now.

A laborer's boy and I had gone in search of that lonely hillock one day, just to roll downhill. The journey to the hillock was arduous, although it didn't seem so far. And on the way down we went over the touch-me-not bushes at breakneck speed. The fever that followed lasted 18 days. There are memories of Ma removing the tiny thorns from my body. That pain is still palpable. I can almost feel the harsh edges of the thorns under the skin of my palms, close enough to pull out but deep enough to hurt. Just like it hurt when she walked out the door, taking a part of my soul with her.

I can't remember the name of the boy, though. He tied a red thread around my wrist when I was leaving Borkhola. Protects you from the baghdasha, he said.

Thirty years later, I had never seen a leopard cat in my life.

***************************** After Ma passed, I had not gone back to Silchar, but the winter offer on the return flight was irresistible. Everything seemed to have changed in Borkhola. There were so many more shops. "There's a big mall coming up near the bazaar," I was informed, but I went walking to the Santhal village. There was Nara Tilla in the distance, and I could see a trail of smoke coming up from the village. As I approached the gathering of men and women around the fire, an acrid smell of burning flesh hit me. There was a dead animal hung above the fire, and everybody was cheering. The fur was burnt black, and the body had gone stiff. One man was turning the body with a long stick, to ensure it gets cooked evenly.

"Sujan, isn't that you?" I heard a man calling out my name. He was a bearded man, squatting a few feet away from the crowd. "Am Ramdass, do you remember me?" There was Ramdass, my childhood friend and ace archer. He taught me how to make a bow and build two kinds of arrows. The thotti is to stun, and the gajal is to kill with piercing. I didn't have to tell him about my failing memory, so I just smiled and sat next to him.

"Nara Tilla, Ramdass, how can I forget? What are you people up to? Aren't the forests officials going to trouble you later?

"Oh, it was a baghdasha that we trapped after almost a month. It had taken away three babies last month from us," he muttered, "Dushman, dushman. The forest babus will turn a blind eye."

"I heard you've become a sadhu, Ramdass? That you are a clairvoyant of sorts?"

He smiled, exposing his burnt sienna teeth. "You've grown shorter than you were, Sujan. And don't worry, she will come back one day, only you have to unburden yourself of her memories first. But when she comes back, you won't want her anymore."

***************************** I don't know how one can "grow" shorter, but something tells me it means I lack the vision of a taller man, who can see clearly till the horizon, where the sun sets behind Nara Tilla.

(a story by Sujan Bhattacharjee)

Muluk (Ashtami)

1.

Muluk couldn't hear what Daaribaba said from under the tree.

Daaribaba sleeps on the platform at night and sits under the clutch of sal trees during the day. Muluk has seen him everyday the last 13 years he's been in this village. Ramu, Pocha, Muluk, his parents had run out of names and named their third kid after the village. He doesn't resent it. This is a little hamlet of about fifty families, and most of them are into tilling land. But they have a well-kept secret. The village of Muluk has created the best thieves, burglars and pickpockets in this part of Birbhum. Some have moved to Calcutta for better career opportunities, and Kartik'da is famed to have picked the pocket of the legendary Dharmendar in Bombay. Muluk loved Amitabh Bachhan better.

He dropped out of the village school after the master moved to another village. Apparently he didn't get his salary on time, but Muluk can't tell. Most of the breadwinners of the village used nearby Santiniketan for their daily haul. From bathroom mugs to slippers to dog chains, there's absolutely nothing that they didn't covet. "Don't be too discerning. Pick up what you get, and till the land during the day." There were little snippets of wisdom like proverbs in this community to whom stealing was a way of life in the absence of a religion. And the haul was traded every weekend near the railway station. It's the month of Aswin and time for Durga Puja, but there's no puja in his village. But the hope of new shirts and clothing from the clotheslines remains. The women prefer new sarees.

"Get me a towel. That Madrasi Mariamma of cobblers' street got a towel and says gamchhas aren't as good as towels. Can you find a towel for me today?" his mother demanded.

And Muluk walked along the rail tracks that led straight to Santiniketan, off to try his luck for the day. To find, among other things, a towel for Ma. Daaribaba was waving at him and saying something urgent. There was always an urgency in his voice as he nodded his head, shook his white beard, and lifted his emaciated hand to wave at someone. He had stories to tell, and nobody had the time. It somehow didn't matter,

It will take him a good one hour to reach Purva Palli, the area where all the rich folks stay, and he aimed to reach by twilight. "Make your hit either at twilight or before the birds are up." Muluk could never do 3.00 in the morning. He always chose twilight to do his thing.

****************************************
2.

It was the evening of Ashtami, and Anindita didn't like it one bit. She had a date with Shubho that night at the Central Pujo, and when they suddenly came off to Santiniketan this morning, she had no way of letting him know. She didn't have their number.
It made her very upset, but there was no protesting in the face of what had happened. Her dad's house in Santiniketan had been burgled the previous night and their neighbor had called to inform. The fun of Durga Puja for her was in Durgapur. And here she was, looking at the broken backdoor, the broken wardrobe from which the latest question papers were missing, and the dust around the rectangular spot on the mantelpiece where the radio used to be. They couldn't take much money because he had come to spend Durga Puja with them, but it was a burglary nevertheless.

"Let's check out the nearby pandal, why don't you take a bath and get ready, Ani?" her dad insisted. Prof Shankar Raman taught Physics at the university and although he was a Tamilian, he enjoyed celebrating Durga Puja with his Bengali wife and daughter. "Let's not waste the evening."

"How do you plan to lock the door, baba?"
"Oh, we'll leave it open anyway. They've taken what they had to take. I will make a new set of question papers for this semester. Come, come, hurry up. And Nobeen is coming to fix the door tomorrow."

Anindita went into the bathroom and switched on the light. The wooden shutters had been neatly lifted off their hinges leaving a gaping hole into the night. The neighboring land was vacant, home to wild shrubs and Giant Milkweed. If some house was vacant for a night, they didn't spare even the windows and doors.
Ani took off her chiffon kameez. Ma had bought her some pairs of Belle bras, but Ani didn't like them. Her breasts were pubescent, just showing up, and she didn't want to modify their appearance. The open window didn't bother her anymore as she gradually removed all her clothes.

The song from the nearby pandal had stopped playing, and the metallic sound of water filling the steel bucket shattered the silence. The Giant Milkweed has a thick white flower. The milk makes you blind, they say. She could see the white flowers in the dark outside, and the darker shape of a boy standing there, the light from the bathroom falling on him.

The boy was standing there, staring at her. He didn't have a shirt on. He was probably not even a teenager and Ani realized that he couldn't take his eyes off her. Ani stared back at him for a good long minute, without trying to cover herself up. The boy didn't try to run away.

Ani wrapped herself in the towel and switched off the light of the bathroom.

She didn't know if to cover her breasts or to cover the scar that ran from between her breasts down to the navel and beyond. She wasn't thinking. This moment hadn't happened.


***********************************

Muluk couldn't register what had happened either. He had seen the womenfolk of his village bathing at the pond, but he hadn't seen anybody like this before. She was beautiful, like the earthen idol of a young goddess. And with her inexplicable act of generosity that night, she was nothing less than god. There simply couldn't be a bigger act of kindness, there couldn't. It was the day of his richest haul, Ashtami. Muluk could hear a buzz in his head, the drum-roll of a possessed dhaaki, weaving magic with his sticks. How could she be so beautiful? Even the railway track seemed to shudder mildly with the drums. It was loud enough to drown the sound of the approaching train.

"Don't walk on the tracks on your way back, tonight. There's a new express to Sainthia." Daaribaba still waves at people and warns them. Nobody listens to him anyway. It doesn't matter.

Fair Game

It was the last day of sales training for Suvro. He was unusually reticent, and not an expert at convincing people about anything. It was still a mystery how he managed to get selected at all. But then, the water filter people didn't care much about whom they hired. They were just bothered about numbers. And nobody in Calcutta had heard about arsenic poisoning before this. Armed with deadly pictures and pamphlets about the effects of various water-borne diseases and how the ground water in Calcutta is polluted, it was fairly easy for even a shy person to meet the monthly targets.

Suvro was introverted and withdrawn because of his heavy German accent. His parents moved back to Calcutta in the 80s when he was barely ten, and Suvro could never recover from the cultural shock of having moved from a quaint little European village to a bustling city with frequent power cuts and curious people. The kids in the neighborhood made fun of his accent, and the only respite was the Sunday service at the local church, where Father Gilson used to preach. He was Belgian and had taught Mathematics at St. Xavier's School, Ranchi, before moving to Calcutta. Father Gilson understood the troubled kid and took him under his fold. He could sense that the kid wasn't growing up to be a Christian, but Father Gilson believed one would seek god only if one needed him. He watched this boy grow up mostly an agnostic, immensely interested in European history, and caught in a cultural limbo. The last few years of school was at South Point, the largest school in the world, but Suvro could hardly make any friends. But there was a lot of space for an agnostic Christian boy in a city that had opened its arms to people of all faiths and even to those with none.

And there was Maya. Dark, wiry, a long jumper, and basically lost in her thoughts all day. She had learned very early in her life that although this city had made peace with atheists, pickpockets, authors, playwrights, musicians, and communists, there was still no acceptance for a dark-complexioned woman. A person's good looks are defined by the complexion, and even in her family Maya had to face a lot of rebuke for being dark. Her aunt, who used to live with them, would constantly keep reminding her father that he wouldn't find it easy to get her married. "Men will just use you and move on." Maya hated going home. She would often sit by the river next to the abandoned jute mill. She would go only when Baba was around. He loved her unconditionally, and called her his pretty little Sreela. Sreela Majumdar and Smita Patil were beautiful actors (despite being dark, as the industry kept reminding you). But Baba seldom came home. After the closure of the jute mill, he took up another job that involved a lot of travel.

Maya loved going to school because she found a friend in Suvro. He was this confused kid, mostly cornered and bullied by the others, and only Maya didn't make fun of his accent. It didn't take long for them to find comfort in each other. They would have their tiffin-time stories. He would tell her about Bach and the wonders of how multiple layers of simultaneous music could be composed by one man's brain. And about Edward Hopper.

They grew up together and stuck with each other through school and college. Father Gilson died of cancer. Maya was the first among the two to get a job with State Bank of India for representing Bengal in athletics, and Suvro, being a student of history from Calcutta University, was struggling to find a job as a salesman. That's all Calcutta had to offer in the mid-nineties. A job in sales for many, a career for a lucky handful. But the water filter people selected him. They were recruiting for an army of sales locusts to cloud over the city and were not very discriminating. Can you speak Bangla? Hardly. And English? What's that accent? We will give him the Alipore sector and Hastings to cover. All the rich English babus there.

Suvro got a job and it was the final day of training. Mr Devadasan was a brilliant trainer and had taught them all the techniques of sales over the last two weeks. About tricky situations, difficult customers, categories of customers, how to read their minds, how to make an entry, and so on. It is about instilling fear in the mind of the housewife about water. Doesn't she love her children?

"Today, I will put a special mantra in one lucky person's mind. And that person will never fail in his career." Mr Devadasan sounded mysterious. "I will hypnotize him."

Everybody was eager to be hypnotized, but apparently there was a game to be played first, to decide who is most suitable. Not everybody can be hypnotized. You have to be willing.

All the trainees were asked to close their eyes and straighten out their hands ahead of them, with one palm facing up and the other down. They were to imagine a balloon tied to one hand, and a pound weight placed on the other. At the end of the exercise, when they were asked to open their eyes, Suvro was the winner, with one hand soaring way above his head and another almost wilting, about to touch the table. Most of the other students hadn't moved their hands much.

"Like I said, you have to be a willing candidate, and let your imagination rule you. I cannot hypnotize someone who isn't ready to let me control his mind."

Suvro then had the most amazing experience of his life. Sitting in the room, he experienced being taken deep into a dungeon down a white marble staircase that slowly turned moss green. It was the inside of the redbrick Astorhouse, where he had never been. The voices from all around sounded like distant gurgle, and the only controlling voice was of Mr Devadasan's, whom he saw in a white suit, holding his hand.

Suvro came to with the sound of fingers snapping. All this while he was seated in the middle and Mr Devadasan had pricked two needles into his stretched arms. It wasn't hurting, and there wasn't any blood. But Suvro had no recollection of this incident at all. Mr Devadasan removed the needles and pressed some cotton on the incisions. "I've given you the secret code to becoming a successful salesman. Come back next year and tell me how you fared."

It was getting late, Maya would be waiting at Desapriya Park after 5.30. They had decided to celebrate with muglai parota at Adi Sutripti after he got his first salary, but for now, it was roasted groundnuts at the park. Suvro was breathless by the time he reached. Maya was waiting for him at the gate. It would be awkward for a girl to enter the park alone, infested with couples and hawkers. Suvro ran toward her and animatedly started showing the incision marks, not sure where to start his story. It might not be in the same league as Jasper Maskelyne's creation of a German warship on the Thames, but this was nothing short of a miracle. Mr Devadasan looked like god, you know? In white.
Maya hugged him and offered some badam bhaja.
Suvro wasn't listening. The needle marks were his trophies for the day.

But Maya's trophy was much bigger than that. Just that she chose to keep quiet about it.
More than the medals, the cups, and being photographed with the Chief Minister Mr Jyoti Basu, she had found herself a fair-complexioned boy.

It was time for a triumphant return home.

The Minister and the Minstrel

What have you done to me? The hundred paces to my bejeweled harem, seem laborious, but the hundred furlongs to my minister's, I can cross in a heartbeat. Is she what they call a witch? In her black robes, with the knowledge of the world and wars, and the brightness in her eyes of a thousand suns, that's the light which beckons more than the oil of the night. She tells me stories of Byzantine to Ottoman, and how the wars were won. She tells me of the Greeks before Constantinopole, and of ancient times when the Thracians ruled Lygos. Of the change of guard over centuries and how it couldn't spill blood on the pristine Morning Glory that grow near the Aegean Sea. The lamp of Memorah never dies, she said, and I find myself walking toward her quarters, located at the edge of my desert. I had asked her to move in to my palace, but she wanted to stay away. I offered her guards, but she drew her sword instead, blinding me in its glint.

The eunuchs guard my harem and their shadows look menacing in the flickering light. They guard, they pleasure my queens in my absence. But I don't care. I want my Nisa. Of placing my throat at the tip of her sword, of looking up into her light eyes in total surrender. What has the Sultan come to?

********

The minstrel, with her soulful voice, sings songs of love in her saffron. She is something of a Hindu sufi, and calls herself Megh Baul. Sonargaon is all she said when prodded about where she is from. Like a raincloud, her songs tease the acres of barrenness in my kingdom. I bathe her in rosewater and milk, but the redolence of the wilderness persists. One day, like camphor, she dissolves.

"O paran, tomar majhe ashi
Chhere sobuj sonargaon
Sonar morur pashi

Morey jete na dao, dhoira rakho
tomay bhalobashi..."

Yes, I won't let you go, but where are you? I am torn now, between the empty court at night, vivid with memories of Megh, and the walk to Nisa's. With one last longing look at the palace, I walk to the edge of the desert.

*********

One will win, as is the nature of things, wild. Nisa's light eyes have a strange sparkle. A fear grips me as I hear her say "I have sent your poet to be with her god, Sultan."

I slump to her bed. The strain of a distant song wafts in.
A Hazara child is walking home, humming to himself "jetey na dao, dhoira rakho..."

Mahalaya and Saptami (two stories)

Mahalaya

In front of our house was a row of yellow and red company quarters. Our row and their row met at the end of the street, giving us a triangular field in between. This triangular strip of land served as our football, hockey, and cricket field. Every Sunday we used to abandon our books around 10.00 and run to the field to play in the sun. We had heard of the hole in the ozone layer in the southern hemisphere, but that wasn’t a deterrent. We had melanin and adrenaline to keep us going in the sun. Our mothers started calling from around 12.00 noon, but the games went on till about 1.00 in the afternoon. My mom would come and stand at the door, waiting to catch my eye, and then silently go inside.

A few days before the Durga Pujo celebrations in October, came this special day called Mahalaya. Early in the morning my dad would switch on the radio and listen to the voice of Birendra Krishna Bhadra welcoming the goddess and asking her to come down to earth for four days. It was the most beautiful chant, and our entire field outside resonated with the sound emanating from the radios in all the houses. One morning I went out to sit in the field and listen to it coming from everywhere, all around me. It was a magical surround sound experience. If I have an AV room someday, I will make it triangular, I thought.

Mine being an atheist home, the significance of the chant was restricted to the love for the man who sang it, and although the other kids would not have to touch their books today, I would have to finish my homework before the games began at 10.00. Whereas on other Sundays and holidays I would eagerly finish my studies before the field beckoned, studying on the day of the Mahalaya remains in my memory as particularly painful, as tears would well up and the words in the books would go hazy.
But that marked the beginning of the celebrations for the next ten days. We would discuss our new clothes and the latest fashion, chalk out the pandal visits, plan to meet friends at appointed hours, and everybody seemed to be smiling. How much pocket money will we get, was the question on every boy’s mind. Egg rolls at the Newton pujo were legendary.

It is Mahalaya today, and being outside Bengal, it has lost its significance to me now. I still have to come to work, and my son has no idea of what it meant to us as children. That was a day when everything was allowed. Don’t want to study? Okay. Don’t want to do the dishes? Okay. Want to have luchi? Okay. And payesh too? Okay. Want to try out your new clothes in front of the mirror? Okay. The excitement of trying out new clothes isn’t there anymore, and life is the same as it is on any other day.
"But, shouldn’t there be an exception to the rule?" Saya asked.

"Let it be sugar in the tea today then, instead of sugarfree."

______________________________

Saptami

“So, tell me about Pujo - what happened then?” Saya asked, sipping her sugared tea. It was the morning of Mahalaya, and we'd decided that work could wait, for a bit. “Tell me", she prodded.
Oh, so much happened. All the action was around Newton, Einstein, Vivekananda, and Aurobindo. “What now", she said knitting her brows, "make sense now". I was at the risk of losing my only audience. Not people, places. In Durgapur, avenues and roads are named after everyone who is a someone; Tolstoy to Guevara. Okay, I kid you, not Guevara. There is a markedly large number of men, dominating road names, I accept. Though this would be an interesting topic, for a debate, I must'n’t digress.

Most of the Pujo action was centered around Newton Avenue, where we had a carnival of sorts around the main dais. After the Mahalaya, the days passed quicker than ever and as Saptami approached, we were gripped by a frenzy of expectations. It was mostly about food, clothes, and not having to study, as I told you.

“And girls? Isn’t that the primary thing for boys during the Durga Pujo? To ogle at all the beautiful girls and flirt with them?”

I ignored her question and continued. When I was 14, egg rolls were about Rs 4.00 each and chicken around Rs 6.00. The pocket money we got during the pujo was around Rs 30 for the three days, which was enough. Nobody asked for the change back, and you could spend all your money on day 1, if you were living for the moment.

At Newton, on Saptami, I had worn a dhoti for the first time in my life, just for the effect. It was a cumbersome silk cloth draped around my waist and made walking rather uncomfortable. My dad made me wear my football shorts underneath, in case of an emergency. Sankar kept shouting at the public in general “hey, everybody, here’s a groom in the market for you, here’s a grooooom, any takers?”
The joke was on me; I was blushing all through the evening and the kurta already got soiled, and they were playing “Meri Biwi Maike Chali Gayee” on the loudspeaker. Suddenly someone changed the song to Tagore’s “Arjun, tumi Arjun.” Before I knew it, a girl broke out of the crowd and started dancing in front of the pandal. Dancing to the song, as Arjuna the warrior.

"Oh yes, that's from Chitrangada. That's a beautiful dance drama. I used to be Chitrangada in it," the wife piped up.

And this girl, with her short hair, was Arjuna. She was oblivious to her surroundings, tied her saree way way above her waist, and danced like a warrior!

Her friends cheered her on, people gathered around, and by the time she finished, I was in love.
I had seen this girl earlier at Ma’s school, playing Swami Vivekananda, delivering the famous Brothers and Sisters of America speech from 1893. She had lodged herself in my head like a buried dream, and there she was, in front of us, in front of me, at touching distance!

After the dance, she came up to me and asked about my mother. "I’ve seen you with Namita miss. You are Shuvo, aren’t you? What's with the dhoti?"
"What's with the saree, then?" I asked.

My friends had abandoned me, just when I needed their support the most. I heard myself offering her chicken rolls. There were five of them and I had paid for it all. My first act of chivalry saw me spending all my Pujo pocket money on five girls. We talked like we had always been friends. It was a strange happiness, to know love for the first time, and when I walked back home with my friends that night, I was determined to tell her one day, about my affection like instantly brewed coffee.

“What was her name?” asked Saya.

I never asked. She knew my name and I pretended to know hers. Seemed rude to ask. Back home, when Ma asked how much I had spent, I couldn’t lie. I told her about the girl who played Vivekananda at her school, and that I had bought her chicken rolls. But I didn’t want any more money, I was covered. And it’s not necessary to have rolls, anyway, I added.

Ma listened to my story attentively, smiled and kissed my forehead. As I stood there hugging her, I heard her quietly add, “And by the way, her name is Anindita.”

The wait for Ashtami had never been longer. And when I found another thirty rupees in the pocket of my Avis jeans the next day, the atheist in me suddenly felt the stirrings of faith in Ma.