The Gift

[Published in The Times of India, 8^th Day, Kolkata on 04 August, 2019]

 

So Arunava, on the prodding of what he hated to call just a passing whim, bought a car. He had so far only noodled around with the idea of buying one, never really focusing on the actual process. And now when all the paperwork was done and the check signed, and now when the silver tongued salesperson gently urged him to pose for a photograph with his brand new car did the idea slowly begin to seep in. For a moment, he considered his fleeting reflection on the dark rolled up window of the red Toyota hatchback he’d just purchased and then looked up and smiled mechanically at the phone the salesperson so patiently held out for him.

“Ready, sir?”

“Yes.” Arunava nodded shyly.

“There you go, sir. One’s first car is always special.” The man smiled and flipped his phone to show him the photo. “I’ll send it to you right away. May I have your phone number, please?”

It was then that it struck him. And, it struck him hard. He, Arunava Choudhury, a modest ledger clerk at the state electricity office, had bought a car! He thought of his wife Shyamoli. She was nearing her fifty-fifth birthday and although he knew she (as always) would never ask for a gift, she would nevertheless expect one and then secretly, despairingly, sulk at his deficient taste. Not that he was ever indicted for his seeming indiscretions; his wife just quietly tucked away all her birthday presents and never spoke about them again. He could only sense the shadow of her resentment; he was neither able nor willing to grasp it.

What would Shyamoli make of the car? He panicked as the thought crossed his mind. What would he tell her? That he spent half of his life’s savings on it? That he didn’t bring up the matter with her because he feared her disfavor, the unbearable coldness of her reproof? That it was meant for someone who had little use for a car? Yet, yet, it was important to him.

He was about to retire in two years. All his life he’d found himself reluctantly choosing utility over ardor, advantage over feeling, benefit over enchantment. He had often wondered: what was it to live the other way round – to make all the so-called wrong choices, to live unafraid, unhindered, tethered to nothing but his dreams? He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was a long and tiring day and a light rain was falling.

Arunava waited at the bus stop. He had decided to have the car delivered home the following day.  He himself had a driving license but was too scared to drive in the city. “It makes me go nuts,” he would confess diffidently to those wondering as to why he bothered to get a driving license at all, “all these cars rushing to and from only god knows where! The DL for me merely serves as an identity document.”  He would trail off gawkily.

Arunava got off in a familiar neighborhood, far from home. The city glistened in the light drizzle. He was not carrying an umbrella and the rain felt fresh and cool against his skin. He walked along a quiet avenue lined with crepe myrtles carefully avoiding the purple smear of fallen petals underfoot. It was seven in the evening. The cafes in the posh neighborhood were abuzz with the weekend crowd. The lineup of cars on either side of the street made it difficult at first to spot the gate he was so deliriously looking for. It’s been decades, he thought with a certain misgiving. And then, suddenly, he spotted it the very next second. The old bougainvillea still arched over the entrance but the lawn beyond felt smaller, even cramped. To his relief, there was nobody at the gate.

A woman briskly walked past him as he headed towards the building that stood at the far end of the graveled walkway. She didn’t seem to notice him just like the two men who stood under a blooming frangipani, talking in low voices. He was happy to go unheeded. He walked a few paces relishing the anonymity and the quiet comfort it yielded, paused and, as if he remembered something he ought to have remembered a long time ago, quickly turned around.

The two men were now on their way towards the exit. In a trance, as it were, Arunava made for the empty bench under the frangipani. Slowly brushing the limp, fallen flowers aside, he sat down, utterly spent and listless. He could have sat there for hours – letting the events of a distant afternoon unravel in his mind with dispiriting vividness. It made him want to break away and linger at the same time but he merely sat there, motionless staring at nothing in particular. What was he supposed to feel? Happy, now that at long last he has fulfilled a promise – a promise most discreet – he’d made to himself years ago? Sad – now that it’s been an awfully long time – long, too long for his pledge to make any sense at all; for his gift to keep its pertinence? He couldn’t tell for sure.

It had always been difficult for him: to probe his own feelings, his emotions; to chew over their little, disconcerting nuances. Still he made the effort, in earnest, despite the confusion and the soreness of it all. He had waited for this moment all his life. All his life he had been waiting to buy a car! Yes, a car. A car for his father.

But wasn’t it too late? He had crafted the moment over and over again in his mind with great care, chiseling out the finer details with a quiet deliberate passion. It was his dream to give the keys of the new car to his father right here, in this very place – casually, without any explanation or prelude – in the midst of conversation. And, the quiet sparkle in the older man’s eyes would, in a magical instant, erase all his shame.

For shame it was, overwhelming shame, that he felt as a twelve year old boy as he sat alone, burning with fever, in the deserted lobby of Larson & Shaw’s watching his father trying desperately to wheedle a lift.

“Sir, myself Asit Choudhury from the sales department, sir. You’d handed me the best salesperson’s award last year from the eastern zone, sir. Remember? That’s my son, sir, over there. He’s feeling a bit unwell…it’s the weather, sir, you know…”

Arunava tried to focus on the conversation. His father was in the driveway, only a few meters away, trying to keep pace with a portly man in a dark suit who seemed to be in a great hurry.

“Oh-ho! But I’m running late, a long way to go,” the man wheezed. “No, I’m sorry…I’m not exactly heading that way…Why don’t you take a taxi…No, no, not that way either. Sorry!” With that, he disappeared into the capacious belly of the car that had just pulled up beside him. “Bugger!” The door slammed shut.

Arunava winced. He wished he hadn’t heard it: ‘bugger’ – the word stayed with him. It stayed with him forever.

It was before the rains. Everything – the weathercock atop a nearby building, the trees, the colorful canvas awnings of the cafes across the street – everything, everything under the darkening sky, was still.

“Baba, could we walk?”

“No, you’ve got a fever.” His father had felt his forehead and nodded.

“Come, let’s sit there for a while,” he’d gestured at an empty bench under a leafy shrub.

Arunava still remembered the expression on his father’s face as he repeated the question with feigned cheer: “Baba, I’m alright. Could we walk down to the bus stop? Maybe we could take a bunch or two of those beautiful flowers for Ma…” He’d pointed at the purple-crested trees that lined the street in the distance. “By the way, what are those flowers called? I’ve never seen them before.”

“Crepe myrtle.” His father had replied absent-mindedly.

“Myrtle! Really? That’s also the name of my English teacher: Miss Myrtle Fernandez…”

Although he struggled to talk and walk, the fever quickly gaining edge, Arunava tried hard and harder to keep the conversation going. His father’s unusual reserve – he’d never known a man more cheerful or sanguine in his entire life – scared him. And even though he kept his gaze fixed on some indeterminate point in the distance, he knew that his father, who silently walked beside him, looked helpless – even a little embarrassed.

“I’d buy you a car when I grow up, baba.” he’d muttered the words several times under his breath like a little prayer. “I would. I promise.”

It had taken him so long to grow up! Arunava thought with a tinge of regret. He got up to go.  What would he tell his father? Narrating the real reason behind the giving of the gift was out of question. To be discreet was his preference. He disliked excess. He never disclosed his feelings about the events of that day when he’d stringed along with his father to his head office a good many years ago to anyone, not to Shyamoli, not even to his mother. But the memory remained like a bitter aftertaste, relentless and unyielding. Ergo, it marred his every attainment – winning the district chess championship as a young boy of sixteen, a silver medal at the university, the best employees’ award five years in a row – turning each of them into small, insignificant feats.

Still, at the bottom of his heart Arunava knew that he could have bought the car ten or even fifteen years ago. Then his gift would have made sense; it could even have made a difference. Nowadays, his father mostly kept to his room, seated in an armchair all day, staring out of the window. He had suffered a stroke last year that left him unable to speak and, worse, to comprehend. What could the old man possibly make of his gift? Nothing. It was all meaningless now. Yet, in less than a moment’s time, he had made up his mind to buy the car. He was aware of the fact that it was neither a particularly practical decision nor just a passing whim. For the first time in his life, he had consciously, unflinchingly made a choice and he was happy that he did. It made up for all the years tainted by timidity masked as prudence, generosity and reasonableness. He felt a little tired but strangely relieved.

So what if he couldn’t make his father understand? So what if his father could make no sense of his gift at all? We don’t need the comfort of words as often as we think. Arunava decided that he won’t say anything. There was nothing to be said, or to be understood.

He surprised everyone when he took his father out for a drive the following afternoon. Shyamoli looked concerned to find her husband sitting behind the wheels: “Why bother? Let me try to get in touch with Ramesh. Let him do the driving…”

But Arunava didn’t need a driver. “No, I am good,” he replied confidently and then turning to his father asked, “shall we start?” The old man did not respond.  Arunava turned the ignition key. He didn’t have a plan; he just drove, first, in concentric circles and then, straight on. From time to time, he stole a glance at his father. The old man simply sat there, beside him, expressionless. He drove on until he felt relaxed. He turned on the stereo.

***

The day didn’t turn out to be exactly like how he’d wanted it to. But he was happy. And he knew his father was happy, too, for his feeble fingers tapped away to the music that was playing.

 

 

 

 

The Lemon Orchard

[Published in The Times of India, 8^th Day, Kolkata, on 7 April, 2019]

 

When the MS Bonophool—the ‘rocket’ that was to take me to Khulna—docked at Dhaka’s busy Sadar Ghat, it was already evening. A fleet of paddle boats, barges, steamers and cargo ships choked the river for as far as the eyes could see. This was the Buriganga, arguably the busiest waterway of Bangladesh. A bulky two-storied wooden vessel lined with floating tyres, the ‘rocket’ was nothing like its name Bonophool—‘wild flower’ in Bengali. The bright orange paint had peeled off its sides laying bare large amorphous patches of a musty grey undersurface matching the dull oily water. In the evening half light, the riverfront bristled with commuters, fruit vendors and touts—the melee on the river mirrored perfectly on the waterside. It was time to go.

The gangplank had been lowered a while ago and there was such a rush of passengers that I—being in no mood to jostle my way up—decided to wait. With a chuckle of regret I regarded the motley crowd: I spotted a group of chattering women with children and an old hunchback man in tow and a few nonplussed tourists, visibly disappointed at the prospect of a rather long overnight cruise tucked in the shabby bosom of the ‘wild flower’.

A sleepy-eyed man, carrying a parrot in a wire cage, was followed by a bespectacled old man accompanied by three veiled women and a short stout boy who clambered up the gangplank carrying two oversize suitcases. I followed suit. Behind me was a monk, a short blond man with a Panama hat tucked under his large tanned arms and a man with two snuff-colored goats. The steamer has been overbooked and the lower deck swarmed with people. The first to have arrived have already started to unpack with pillows and beddings strewn all over the wooden floor and little children scampering about. I saw the man with the parrot well settled—cage and all—in one corner. The bird, perfectly composed like its master, pecked at a pink-fleshed guava from time to time.

My cabin, on the upper level, was a single-bed affair complete with a television set and a washbasin. There were four single cabins and eight doubles—all opening into a large deck with numerous steel chairs arranged in neat rows. A single line of plastic chairs supplied with tiny tables in between ran along the rickety railings for the passengers to have a more intimate view of the river as they enjoyed their tea.

At seven o’clock we set sail. The upper deck—where no passenger from the lower level was allowed—was relatively empty. I saw the small group of tourists, the monk and the three veiled women with their bespectacled companion—some sipping tea, others simply looking out into the dark, talking in low voices. The river stretched out into the darkness and the eyes—at least, for a while—beheld nothing else but the dim flicker of fishing boats way ahead.

A light breeze blew and I was almost lulled to sleep by the relentless whirr of the engine. Dhaka, now no more than a jagged amber line in the distance was already miles behind, but not in my mind. I kept going back to the riverside, past the wailing vendors and the battered warehouses to the fuming chaotic city—down the shimmering asphalt of the highway to one dusty town fringed by brown stubble fields and a pair of tall brick towers. Beyond these towers—funerary mounds, actually—stretched for miles on end the lemon orchard of Shalboni, the ancestral village of my deceased grandmother, Kumudini Debi. Kumudini’s father, Ashutosh Mitra, a prosperous businessman, owned the orchard together with the paddy fields and the land on which the funerary mounds—the tombs of his father and grandfather—still stand. I knew Shalboni inside out—the neighborhood, the people, the village school, the truant students, the bald bespectacled master, the rain-drenched fields from where the herons took flight—their dark, slender legs glistening in the sun like pairs of delicate silver tongs—the tall brick towers where the parrots nested—their wings darkening the sky at dusk.

A little way off from the towers was the lemon orchard—heady with the fragrance of flower and fruit. It was a magical place. I knew all the fruits by their names: the round, juicy Kagzi lebu, the sweet Sharbati, the fragrant Gondhoraj and the bitter Shatkora. In a way, I grew up in that very orchard—albeit, in my grandmother’s stories, it was nonetheless real—more real than my father’s carefully tended backyard garden with its exotic flora of magnolia and the Black Prince rose. Wandering in that neatly manicured garden, I often imagined myself cocooned in the fragrant emerald leaves of the lemon shrubs—my skin brushing against the delicate petals of the white, rose-tinged flowers and the coarse-skinned round or oblong fruits. I knew the village of my grandmother which I’ve never visited before far better than the city where I’d lived all my life. “Tell me how it was in Shalboni,” was all I needed to say and my grandmother’s face would light up. She would tell me the stories of her childhood with great relish as I listened, rapt. Her collection of stories was seemingly endless—each time she told me a different tale but all about the same place, her village. “Will you take me there?” I would ask. “But it is far far away,” she would sigh. “We can take Baba’s car or, even a plane, if you please.” She would smile. “Drive me there, when you grow up, little fellow.”

The drive from Dhaka to Shalboni took about two hours. It was a warm sunny day. The asphalt glimmered in the sun and the sky above was a clear blue. Sohail—a boy of about nineteen—was driving the rented yellow hatchback. “You go to Shalboni?” “Yes,” I nodded. He seemed puzzled. “Bangladesh is a beautiful country. Very green. Beautiful rivers. But Shalboni is not green. It is old and dusty. No green, only grey. Why you go there?” He grimaced, gesturing at the distance. “See the dust?” The sun was merciless; the landscape, disconsolately bare.

We’d taken off from the highway and the road ahead was bumpy. Stretched out on either side of the severely potholed road were fallow fields. My heart sank. Are we lost? For the first time in my life I failed to remember the place I thought I knew so well and I feared I wouldn’t ever be able to recall its once-familiar lanes. That magic, I thought with some regret, had passed.

Sohail’s car pulled up in front of a large whitewashed building. “This is the new library,” he announced. A friend in Dhaka had mentioned the library. It was built in the 1980’s on the remains of an old mansion, the residence of the illustrious Mitras. Asking Sohail to wait, I stepped out of the car. I had no wish to enter the library and walked straight on. The narrow lane was lined with shops, a bank and a movie theatre but there was no trace of the school. Why, wasn’t it only a hundred and fifty paces from the house, in the shade of a banyan tree? Or was it peepal? I could not, for the life of me, remember.

The tombs were not difficult to find. I asked my way around. The brick structures—now more than a century old—stood intact, although weather-beaten. Save for a few drongos that flitted in and out of their honeycombed crevices, there was not a soul around. The parrots were gone, too.

At night, the river takes on a life of its own. The fishing boats were no longer visible. The water shone like quicksilver in the pale moonlight. At places, the channel narrowed and the darkened vegetation of the shore leapt nearer. Clusters of fireflies pierced the darkness, their rhythmic iridescence intensifying the night, deepening it—like it was on that fateful day when Kumudini was waiting for Bimal in the lemon orchard.

It was after the rains. Bimal had promised to come and his young bride waited in the dark shades of the lemon shrubs. It was dangerous to meet him in the open or at her father’s house for Bimal, a firebrand, was on the run and the British Sergeant had a warrant issued in his name. Tired and anxious, she had dosed off, lulled by the peewit peewit of an unseen bird wailing for its mate. And what was that moment like? And what was the thought that had assailed Bimal as he turned away from his longing bride—unwilling to let her tears weaken his resolve yet wanting to stay and love? Did they hear the ominous footfalls, the faint brush of uniformed bodies against the turgid unripe lemons, the quivering rain of opal petals crushed underfoot? The bird wailed again, peewit peewit.

There was a single shot in the distance and then silence. Deafening silence. I was too scared to ask her what became of my grandfather. I wanted the daredevil Bimal to live and believed that he did somehow. My grandmother believed it, too, for never in her lifetime did she take to the life of a widow. For as long as her family lived in Shalboni, she waited every night at the lemon orchard for him, returning at dawn, distraught; yet, she never gave up. A few months later, she left for Calcutta with her father’s family and her seven month-old son—my father.

At Shalboni, I could not find the lemon orchard. Nobody seemed to remember. Beyond the tombs were just the fallow fields—the relentless monotone of burnt sienna. As I stood musing on the deck, the sky lightened; it was almost dawn. A slight mist pervaded the air like a delicate smokescreen and through it the river shimmered. As I desperately needed some time to recover, I’d cancelled my flight to Calcutta, opting for the slow river transport in its stead.

At this hour, when the mist was slowly lifting from the waters, I thanked myself for the choice I made. This was the hour, the perfect moment. I rushed back to my cabin, returning with the small brass casket that I’d been carrying with me all this while. It contained my grandmother’s ashes. There was no last wish—my grandmother passed away in her sleep without having made one—just an unfulfilled promise. I had promised to take her to her village. I had made up my mind to scatter her ashes in the very place she called home and that which was inseparable in her memory from her undying love for Bimal. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it—the place felt oddly alien and cold. It was not the same village I knew so well but just another place in another time. I held the casket for a while, scattering the ashes in the river.

The engine whirred. The dark line of vegetation along the distant shore lightened. The peach-hued sky took a dip into the water. The world was calm. For a long, long time afterwards there was not another sound. The river channel narrowed again and the shore swam nearer. A village here—tiny mud houses in the distance beyond the emerald fields. It was a beautiful morning—peaceful, full of hope. It was past noon when we reached Khulna. The riverside was nothing like Dhaka’s Sadar Ghat—it was shabbier, almost rundown yet, business on the river was brisk. I spotted several boats laden with rice and vegetables. From here, I was to take a bus to the Bangladesh-India border, crossing over to the Indian side, to Calcutta.

I looked back at the river for one last time. All partings are painful but not this one. And the flowing river, the sky overhead and the gentle breeze all whispered in unison.

 

 

 

 

The Angry Old Man

 

As I raced down the long corridor leading to Room 23, I heard the bell go. Damn! Ten already, I thought with some exasperation and sped up. In my great hurry, I’d brushed past a potted begonia in full bloom, scattering the bright red petals mercilessly on the floor. But there was no time to look back and I picked my way through the drifting crowd of boys and girls towards the far end of the passage, slowing down as I was just about to turn a corner. A man walked – rather, sauntered – ahead of me. “Excuse me!” I was impatient, but the corridor tapered down at its farthest end making it almost impossible for me to overtake him. “Excuse me!” I raised my voice. “You’re blocking my way.” The man rambled on unperturbed. He seemed to be startled as I almost elbowed past him, unable to contain my impatience and irritation any further. “This isn’t a boulevard, Mister. It’s a college, for god’s sake!” I blurted out with an indomitable sense of purpose as I darted into Room 23. It was five minutes past ten. But the dais, to my great relief, was empty.

“Relax, brother!” called out a voice as I tried to slide into the nearest seat in the front row, panting. “King Lear’s going to take some time. So, just relax.” I looked up to find a scrawny bespectacled boy considering me with great amusement. “Hello,” he smiled. “Call me Sandy.” He gestured dramatically at himself. “So you’re the new chip in the block, eh?” “Today’s my first day in this college,” I said, a little awkward.

“First day! Three months into the semester! Tch, tch, I must say you’ve got a great sense of time!” Sandy looked around gravely.

“My father’s got a transfer to the city lately, so…” I tried to cut my fairly long story short.

“So?” Sandy looked at me quizzically.

It was at that precise moment I suddenly became aware of the ten or fifteen boys and girls who were also sitting in the same room – their manner, almost alarmingly casual given the real purpose of their assemblage.

“Get ready, dude, to explain Lear. Your story, I mean,” the scrawny Sandy grinned innocuously. “Let me do the honors,” he continued unabated, cocking his head precociously as the worldly-wise veterans (or so it had seemed to me then!) peered at the newcomer with a newfound curiosity.

He lost his composure sooner than he’d probably imagined for in came Lear through the open door. Sandy had opened his mouth to say something but the words died a premature death on his lips. Why, we had met before! The man who entered our room was the same man I’d so purposefully – and foolishly, as it turned out – decried just minutes ago.

King Lear looked at me plainly and demanded, “Who are you?” repeating his question thrice but not in the same way. He stressed a different word each time. “Who are you?  Who are you? Who are you?” I froze. He came closer. Even though I’d lost my lucidity by then, I noticed that Lear had a kind face. His deep-set eyes narrowed and his wispy lips quivered as he repeated the question one last time. I ignored the emphases and blurted out my name adding to my shaky introduction an equally lousy explanation of my belated appearance. Lear returned a cold stare.

How does it feel to lose the handle? I, for one, know precisely enough. For, at that moment, I’d lost my composure and didn’t hope to regain it anytime soon. What kind of a person repeats the same question with such a baffling range of emphases? And, to what end?  I decided Lear was a bully. And I stuck to my judgment even more resolutely after I was shaken out of my troubled introspection with another woefully sticky question.

“You, there,” the man on the dais was looking straight at me, “yes, you. What’s the spelling of ‘incense’?”

I must’ve looked like a fool for I’d caught a glimpse of Sandy and another girl, with the corner of my eyes, trying desperately not to break into a potentially dangerous – given the gravity of the situation – laughter.

“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet/ Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs…In-cense.” Lear kept his eyes closed as he repeated the lines from the poem he was teaching for my benefit. “In-cense.” He seemed to drill the word into my head.

He was standing right in front of me – his face growing kinder with each ominous iteration. My answer – needless to say, I’d bungled this time, too (the wretch that I was!) – incensed the grand old man of the English department of the city’s oldest and most famous college who, almost without warning, flew into a violent fit of rage. “I don’t want to see you in my class ever again,” he hissed. “You, YOU, of all, who doesn’t know the spelling of incense wants to major in English? Is this a joke?”

The ringing of a bell had never sounded any sweeter before. Lear looked unhappy. I was glad that my ordeal was just about to be over. “I-n-c-e-n-s-e,” I muttered – reigning in the c and the s this time, pinning the wily letters down to their rightful seats. I felt my confidence returning to me, albeit with little wobbly steps, occasioned by the pleasant note of the ringing bell. For, eleven it was according to the watch sitting pretty on my wrist – the end of the first period; the end of my shame.

For a brief fleeting second our eyes met before Lear sauntered out. I wasn’t sure if he heard what I had said; I was too rattled to make sure that he had so I let the matter rest.

“Man, what a stunt that was!” Sandy was forever ready to offer an embracive review of the situation, any situation. It was another matter that, at the time, I wasn’t looking particularly forward to his vacuous commentary.

“Why do you guys call him Lear?” It was my turn to ask questions. “I’m sure it’s a moniker…”

“’Cause he’s Lear – the crownless king of the department; he’s got three sons, too, and a daughter. You may choose to ignore the extra…” Sandy prattled away.

“So, all these boil down to the man’s Lear-hood?”

“His sanity is also in question,” the girl who’ve been sitting next to Sandy came forward. “You’ll soon get a feel of his, should I say, rather devious sanity,” she announced with the discerning air of a clairvoyant.

Mornings do not always show the day. By the time I went home in the evening, I’ve made a bunch of friends. And, over time, Ritu became Ri, Pallab, Pablo; Meenakshi, Mini; Samiran, Sam; Kuntal, Kenny – not to mention Sandipan or Sandy, who, despite his corny antics, happily failed to qualify as an exception. In fact, Sandy was special. Speaking loftily (like all aspiring English majors are often, albeit naively, expected to do), if I could – in another time and space – even falteringly, pass for Dante, Sandy could swimmingly pass for (my very own) Virgil. He was a rather insightful guide so much so that I missed his counsel dearly once the three years of college was over and I, thanks to my itinerant family of civil servants, left the city for good.

Meanwhile, despite my sincere efforts in the direction, I was unable to come to a satisfactory explanation as to why the angry old man, Professor Bimal Kanti Shome or BKS was christened ‘King Lear.’ Did he ever play the part of Lear at an earlier time? Was he cursed with conniving, thankless children? I didn’t know. Nobody did, either. Lear lived a fiercely private life.

With time, it became less and less of a concern and given the ease with which I metamorphosed into Jetty from Jayanta, Bimal Kanti’s metamorphosis into Lear seemed more random than anything carefully mulled over. To me, he simply remained the angry old man with a kindly face. I scrupulously avoided him and he seemed to ignore me until one day he asked me to meet him in his office at four in the afternoon. Throughout the day, I speculated uneasily. What could be the reason for his wanting to meet me? My friends read doomsday in this unlikely invitation and urged me to exercise caution.

“Lear’s got you, Jetty. Beware the ides of March!” For it was, indeed, March 15 and Pablo’s words scared me to death. I thoroughly scanned the texts Lear had been teaching us for any potential trap. Danger lurked in the unlikeliest of places and I braced for the fateful hour with utmost caution.

“It must be the term papers,” suggested Sandy with cool confidence, “I hope you’ve not tried to prove yourself a maverick out there. Lear hates jazzy stuff!”

At five minutes to four, I found Lear’s room locked and not a soul around. Should I hang around? For how long? After an agonizing wait, I finally left around five. Lear didn’t bring up the issue in our next class and I was glad he forgot. Life went on as usual and our paths rarely crossed in any memorable manner until one fine day in July. The summer recess has just come to an end a week ago. I’d been away for a cousin’s wedding in Bhopal and missed the first week of class. I knew I was in the firing line as Lear was a stickler for attendance. I hoped he would forget. But I was neither lucky nor Lear utterly forgetful. And, as luck would have it, I bumped into the angry old man on my way to the classroom. “Hey you,” he called out to me as I tried to maintain a straight face as hard as I could.

“Me?”

“Yes, yes you. Who else? Is there anybody behind you?”

Nobody was. The corridor was empty save for a group of students walking ahead of us. Thankfully, they were out of hearing shot. I readied myself for Lear’s volleys.

“Where were you all these days? Classes have started a week ago.”

I thought it best to keep quiet; I fixed my gaze on the floor and concentrated on my newly-bought sneakers.

“Did you not think of informing me or anybody else in the department?”

Of course, I didn’t, but I dared not open my mouth. Instead, I shifted my focus to a dead moth that lay – wings down – on the floor, a few meters ahead. I am carrion, I thought with a tinge of regret.

“Where were you?” Lear’s baritone crushed all of my residual courage.

“Sir, I..I was in Bhopal for my cousin’s wedding.” Oh, how I whimpered before the man! I felt like kicking myself.

“You should have informed us at the department, Jayanta.”

I was surprised he remembered my name. “I am sorry, sir. I am extremely sorry.” Enthused by the glimmering prospect of a close shave, I looked up meekly at my inquisitor. I wasn’t carrion. No, not yet.

Lear gave me a long stare. His face grew kind. “Jayanta, you should have informed us, we were so worried here at the department, so worried about you. You should’ve called, dropped us a line – things like that, you know…”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Was there a trace of sarcasm in his voice? Was he playing me? I kept telling myself that he was and that sarcasm came to him as spontaneously as new leaves to a tree in springtime. But I was mistaken. Lear’s concern, no matter how hard I tried to believe otherwise, was genuine. It was real. I didn’t know what to say.

“I am sorry, sir,” I repeated meekly, dreading every second of calm. But Lear said nothing. He gently patted my back and, leaving me stupefied and tearful, slowly walked away.

 

 

 

The Man Who Ate Too Much

[Published in The Times of India, 8^th Day, Kolkata, 16 September, 2018; revised with minor modifications]

 

He wasn’t a pathological gatecrasher. In fact, he was; without seeming like one. And, that – that alone – made all the difference.

He was amiable, friendly and very talkative. Above all, he had the uncanny ability to blend in with the surrounding to the extent that the delivery boy of the neighborhood grocery store once mistook him for my father! “But I saw him just some time ago feeding the parrot and you telling me he not home!” “But, baba is not home…,” I protested. The boy cut me short: “He even looked up and waved at me,” he shook his head agitatedly, “how can he be not at home? My amma ill. Your baba say he’d do checkup on Sunday.”  The oaf relented reluctantly only at my mother’s assurance: “That was not your dada you saw in the morning; it must’ve been our guest, Bubul’s uncle,” she gestured at me. “Bubul’s father would be back this Wednesday. Bring your amma then.”  The boy left without any further argument but I could tell from his shifting gaze and faltering pace that he was terribly confused. So was I – only the reasons for our respective confusions were different.

How could I have not noticed the similarity? I went hurriedly inside but slowed down once I’d crossed the long verandah lined with the day’s washings. The parrot ignored me from its perch. My mother was frying luchi in the kitchen. She, too, at first ignored me. “Where is Pintu kaku?” I asked her. “Here,” she thrust a plate full of luchi with a bowl of alur dom balanced precariously on one side. “Wait! Take these too,” she handed me another smaller bowl with a pair of roshogollas from the fridge, “take these to him.”

I knew the drill. I had to find him and invent an excuse for my mother’s no show – oh! she’s got arthritis, you know – baba’s asked her not to walk around too much – of course, she hates it…! Then I was to present the ‘breakfast’ to the ‘guest’ and politely brush aside his mild (very mild) protests: “but I can’t have so much, Bubul! Take away a roshogolla at least, such huge things these are and two is too much…but they are too delicious, aren’t they… and I, a little hungry, to tell you the truth… and then here’s boudi’s heavenly luchi and alur dom. Ah, what aroma! Why, Bubul, they are the best in the world! Your mother knows how much I love them…”

“Do you want some more luchis, Pintu kaku?” “Eh, no no, boy, I’ve never had anything more scrumptious in my life…” He would close his eyes in relish and not open them fully until I was back with a second serving. And then, he’d suddenly assume a more serious tone: “But Bubul, you’d make me fat…” He would puff out his cheeks, “like that! …. but, wait, if I send you back now, boudi would think I didn’t appreciate what she had so lovingly prepared. Not true, not true at all.” He would shake his head vigorously from side to side. “So, I will have them even though I am full, really, really full – just out of gratitude and respect, okay?” He would then smile his broadest smile.

Even back then, I only half believed his semblant dread of obesity. He managed to retain his characteristic lankiness despite eating so much. He had superhuman metabolism, a fact we all secretly marveled at – I, in my eternal disbelief that a fellow human could eat so much food; baba, in his earnest amusement and ma, in her helpless disdain. I knew at the bottom of my heart how much my mother resented his unannounced arrivals and her ineluctable obligation to prepare elaborate meals for the ‘guest’ whom in private we referred to as ‘the man who ate too much.’

Needless to say, he loved to eat and the hapless tradition of the five-course worthy-of-guests meal continued despite the occasional hiccups. Don’t ask me why. My mother often came close to damning traditions yet, not close enough. As I grew older, my belief in my father’s invisible influence over her grew stronger although neither of them ever acknowledged or confirmed my suspicion. It was their own private equation.

The man who ate too much was not a gourmet (as my father often described him to be) but a gourmand (as my mother firmly maintained). I was a poor eater and a disgrace to my father’s epicurean clan. My mother disliked fuss of any kind – she ate in order to survive unlike the ‘guest’ who, I suspected, would have suffered from a severe existential crisis if kept away from food and the prospect of eating for however ignorable a duration of time. To make matters worse, he seemed to indulge in the perverse pleasure of surprising his hapless hosts at the oddest of hours and keeping them perpetually guessing on his departure plans.

He arrived unannounced, uninvited and without the slightest embarrassment. His departures were as surprising and abrupt as his arrivals. One day he’d be suddenly gone leaving all of us clueless – I don’t remember him ever bidding goodbyes to his hosts. He was the guest who never left and was never missed. After a while, everyone happily forgot him (or pretended to) until his next arrival and life went on as usual.

Pintu kaku was far too distant a cousin of my father to feature in our everyday lives or conversations. But despite the distance in terms of genealogy, from certain angles he did resemble my father. Was it the characteristic drift of his receding hairline, his rather long aquiline nose or his toothy child-like smile? I couldn’t tell which. Was it a certain slant of light on his forehead as he relished a bowlful of ice apples by the window on warm August afternoons or was it the way in which his nostrils slightly flared up in concentration as he loosened meat from the leg of curried crabs that highlighted his uncanny resemblance with my father? Perhaps, it was for this reason I’d developed an odd sense of sympathy for our unbidden guest which made me secretly resent my mother’s rancor. “Doesn’t he have any work to do, somewhere else to go? Why must he impose himself on us every single time the thought happens to cross his mind? He comes and he goes as he pleases and he eats too much! Oh dear, how can one possibly eat so much? And why must I cook all these lobsters and crabs and hilsas for him? Pray, why must he be so pampered?…” My mother’s complaints, though predictable, were fairly infinite and my father’s feeble protests only helped deepen her resentment. “Yes, I am mean, if you please. I cannot and will not put up with this nonsense anymore…,” ma would rant angrily. While all this drama played out in my parents’ bedroom, Pintu kaku slept like a dead horse in my room (which became his during his stay at our place while I slept in the hall). I know this because I’d tiptoe in to check if he’d overheard my parents’ conversation and was relieved to find him snoring. Could he be dreaming of food? He smiled when I asked him the following morning. “Yes, I do, but only sometimes.”

From the next day, food was ordered from a popular eatery in the neighborhood. In the morning when I took a plateful of limp luchis and cholar dal to the terrace, Pintu kaku was observing a gnarled bonsai with great interest. “Here’s breakfast,” I announced with false cheer, “these are from a very famous Calcutta sweetmeat shop…” He turned away from the bonsai and slowly took the plate from my hands. “Thank you.” As I stood there unsure of my next move, he ate silently and with great care.

“We can’t have home-cooked food for a while, Pintu. Reba, I mean your boudi, is not keeping well,” my father had tried to explain hesitantly when lunch was served later in the day. “It’s perfect, dada. Moreover, it’s nearly a week now, I got to go.” Glad he’d got the hint, my mother chipped in eagerly: “your dada will drop you off at the railway station tomorrow if you please; don’t bother booking a cab.” Well, Pintu kaku had never, even once before, called a taxi; we never ever saw him leave for that matter – it was my mother’s way of signaling to the guest that he had overstayed his welcome.

He was gone the following morning. He never came back. And, although the man who ate too much did feature occasionally in family anecdotes for a while afterwards, he remained just there until he became as out of place as an old hat and slowly faded away.