Prologue, Epilogue

Prologue

“Well, show me the way to the next whiskey bar”, hummed Arnab, hand light on the steering wheel, almost under his breath. To his surprise, Sundar heard him. He must not be very drunk. Owlishly focusing, Sundar slurred the words of their favourite college song, “Oh don’t ask why, oh don’t ask why.” Arnab took it up again, a little louder than before. “For if we don’t find the next whiskey bar.” All of them, the two half asleep souls in the back included, bellowed, “I tell you we must die, I tell you we must die.”

“I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we must die.”

Then they burst out laughing. The song seemed exquisitely funny, dredged out from young memories of so long ago; given their drunk state, they were proud of themselves, for having remembered this much, and for having made quite a performance of it. They were still giggling when Arnab stopped in front of Gautam’s house. Then suddenly they were grief stricken, Sundar more owlishly melancholy than all of them. “Bye Gautam!!” He bellowed. “Bye!” Then, unable to control his rising emotions, he swung open the car door, ran after Gautam, and embraced him from behind. They stood like that for a while, one monstrous, slightly swaying figure. In spite of themselves, Arnab and Naveen began to giggle again, helplessly hiccoughing, but made their faces sober by the time Sundar came back.

It was the same with the others, as Arnab dropped off Sundar, and then Naveen, they oscillated between mad laughter and wild grief; trying to recreate some magic they had once known, and falling just short. Once Arnab was alone in the car, that old old car they had driven when they were still in college, he put his forehead on the steering wheel, meticulously careful to avoid the horn. The pricking underneath his eyelids was strange to him, for a while he did not know what had happened; the last time he had cried was when he was fifteen years old.

*

“The same sky, the same stars, the same damn streetlights, forever. Either that, or her eyes. Something needed a makeover.” Walking angrily, with the ease of long experience, she avoided unseen potholes, stepped over unknown ruts. When she reached the little wooden shack, the shopkeeper smiled at her, and put a cigarette, a tiny matchbox, and two chlormints on the already crowded counter. She smiled at him in thanks and gave him the exact change. This unsaid bargain reassured her, for a moment. As she lit the cigarette and inhaled, sitting on rough stone steps outside an unkempt play ground, the assurance slipped away. She could hear the cries of the children playing, completely caught up in their game of cricket, unwilling to acknowledge the dusk. As if, by ignoring the lack of light, they could create light. Like saying the lack of hostility signified love.

Suddenly she grinned to herself. “Soppy simile. Get a grip, Ketaki.” She pondered over this curious habit she had developed lately, of talking sternly to herself. Everyone thinks in images, she knew, not in words. It was as if she was banning the images and replacing them with words, which were less dangerous in their associations. So with another “So stupid!” to herself, she took the last drag, threw the cigarette down and ground it out. Popping the chlormints into her mouth, she stuffed her earphones into her ears, and started her walk back home. “So here I am again in this mean old town, and you’re so far away from me.” She pulled the earphones out of her ears furiously, throat working, cursing this band she had loved for ten years. And she had promised herself not to cry today.

*

Epilogue

“How can you not like babies!” It was an exclamation, not a question. Arnab looked up from his scrabble letters, grinning. “I like dogs”, he told her. Ketaki opened her mouth, ready to argue, then realizing it was no use, shut up. And thought, for the umpteenth time that he would make a good father. Her father hovered around just outside the room, and she smiled to herself, a little irritated. As if they’d be stupid enough to try anything illicit when he was in the house at all.

“How can you listen to such nonsense?” he asked irritated. “You call this music?”

“It’s Natalie Imbruglia.” She said, unfazed.

“Whatever it is, it’s irritating. Turn it off.”

“I won’t. Turn it off yourself if it bothers you so much.”

He went over and turned it off. She felt that old familiar bite of anger contract in her chest and fought to keep it down. “Not today, please, not today,” she told herself, furiously. But he had seen that flash in her eyes. He sat back down and didn’t say anything. From there it went downhill for the rest of the evening. She was increasingly irritated by his feigned nonchalance and wouldn’t say much herself. And he was characteristically non confrontational. He hated a scene, and could stay silent forever to avoid one.

When it was time to go home, she waited outside for him to start his bike, and then said a clipped bye. When she turned to go inside, her eyes were already brimming over. Her tears had always been like this, for as long as she could remember. Sudden and unstoppable. And today she didn’t even know why. She was just tired of the whole goddamn situation. And she loved him so. So achingly, so preciously, so fucking wantonly.

And as the wind whistled in his ears on his way back home, he knew there were tears in her eyes. He always knew.

*

Ketaki had stopped crying now. It was all so damned silly anyway. She lay in bed now. Listening to the Doors.

I have an ancient indian crucifix around my neck
My chest is hard and brown
Lying on stained, wretched sheets with a bleeding virgin
We could plan a murder
Or start a religion.

The Doors were high in Arnab’s esteem these days. She grinned. She liked Jim Morrison too, but for other reasons. She smiled softly, warmly, wantonly; hot under the quilt, her hand reached between her thighs. Then she fell asleep. Arnab got drunk with many friends and watched porn. At four in the morning, he went to eat.

Hung over and happy, bobbing in the mob, he showed the finger to a passing tourist.

City

I love you as the plant that never blooms

But carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

Risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

- Pablo Neruda

Prologue

“You see”, said the girl, “All cities have souls.”
“How?” asked the boy. He knew enough to not mock her flights of fancy by now.
“Well, Calcutta is a good natured slut, Delhi is a devious conman, and Bombay is a… a harried businessman.”
“And this city?” he asked.
“…is a princess on holiday”, she said.

Italics

He could see what she meant. As they walked along the shady road strewn with sampige flowers, he pondered on the graciousness of this city. “It isn’t loud”, he decided. “It’s quiet, and dignified, and clean, and wholesome, and laughing” and he did not know where along the winding course of his thoughts, he had stopped thinking about the city and started thinking about the girl.

She was wholesome; her eyes brimmed with laughter and health behind her thick rimmed spectacles, her wide lips curved in amusement that was frequent and not entirely innocent. She was always scrubbed clean and smelled of ayurvedic soap and old books.

The dull clean gleam of thick white ceramic cups was reflected in her glasses. “I loved Mansfield Park”, she said, her eyes screwed up in concentration. They always did that when she was looking for the right words. “It’s quieter somehow, and more moral than either Emma or Pride and Prejudice. It’s a stronger book.” He smiled. He never quite understood how she managed to speak in italics. She did it regularly and unstintingly.

Coffee House was full of the regulars. Old white haired man with cane. Straight backed Anglo Indian woman with books. Students with dreams.

Parting

He was at the railway station, waving goodbye. There was an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, in his brain. Her wide lips were not smiling, this time. Her eyes were screwed up, and she was not looking for words, this time. She smelt of sweat and a sour railway smell, this time.
His parents found him quiet and unresponsive for the next few days, but as he had never been very talkative, they let him be. He had always been hard- working, but now he studied like one possessed.

Life, Letters

He thought, as he stared into the flames, that his wedding day was the wrong day on which to think of her. Snatches of her letter swam through his brain.

“…my marriage. It feels as if I am waiting behind a door that has so far been locked. I am uncertain, yet quietly happy. I feel, finally, irrevocably, adult…” That was three years ago. He had been immediately, horribly, murderously angry. And then slowly, almost unbelievably, it had stopped hurting. He had not thought it possible that the little gouging pain in his heart would ever cease. It had.

He had even smiled a year later at another one of her infrequent letters. “…like a wrinkled chilli. She looks nothing like a baby. People are already saying with obstinate certainty that she will look like me. All I can say is, if this is the miracle of birth…”

The flames were hot on his face. “Think of her now,” he thought. “The fire is cleansing you of her.” He snatched quick, furtive glances at his bride. The bride was unassuming and small. He was struck by her fragility, her translucent skin that shone in her bridal clothes and the light of the golden fire.

It all seemed so sacred. So sanctified. He was ludicrously teary. Ridiculously determined to protect the little woman sitting so quietly by his side. In later years, he often laughed over this particular memory. It seemed to him his last adolescent memory.

In later years he found no time and no necessity for protecting his wife. Their life was devoid of any situation that demanded heroics. They were quiet. They were happy. They were wise and left each other alone often. They had children, two boys, and were proud of them; he in a detached sort of way, and she with an all-consuming ferocity.

Memories

He did not have many regrets. Except the shared walks under the sampige trees. He had brought his wife once, being naïve enough to believe that the old magic could be recreated. It could not. So he took his walks alone. That solitude was his only luxury, the only token of his remembrance.

Then one day his elder son announced a pressing desire for tuitions. That was the day he cut his walk down by fifteen minutes, after picking his son up from school and dropping him in time for the tuition bus. The bus stop seemed uncommonly crowded that day. He decided he would see the sturdy little boy onto the bus. In that crowd, the sturdy little boy looked small and vulnerable and a little scared. The bus creaked ominously under its weight of hurrying humanity, narrowly missed the signal, and honked in frustrated fury. He shuddered a little at the sight, and then headed back home for his delayed coffee and walk.

Mostly life was routine after that. He made a few friends on his walks. He never spoke to them, true, but he missed them if they did not come, and that, after all, is a sure test of friendship. Among his friends were a dog, a squirrel, and a military looking old man with a wonderful moustache. He missed the squirrel one sunny, unusually hot day. He was not in general an observant man, but he noticed the cut-down trees. The squirrel never came again. The shade was replaced by a block of flats where the trees had been. It was a dustier, more hostile shade. But he was not in general an observant man, so he did not notice.

His walks now lasted only half an hour. It seemed to take longer for him to get home.
One day he narrowly escaped an accident, almost falling into a large pit that had never been there in the last ten years. That day he had to take a slightly longer route to office and back. He refused to shorten his walk further, on principle.

The next day, he missed the dog. He was not in general an observant man, but under the now cheerless shade, on a road where now no flowers ever fell, he noticed a dull spot where blood had soaked into the hot road. When he asked around a bit, he found that the car responsible for the crime was brand new, and that he had never heard of the brand.

Meeting

“Coffee House?” he asked, eagerly.
“No, no, I’m sorry,” came her voice, her voice, smiling, and a little apologetic, on the phone. “You see, I have to meet a lot of people and then I have to be at the airport by…”

The memory of her voice was still warm, still reverberating in his ears. So long since the last letter. So much ever longer since the farewell at the railway station. He had dressed with meticulous care. His teenage sons were a little amused, a little astonished at this sudden change in their stolid father. Their mother was tending an invalid sister and did not have time to be amused.

The wind whistled in his ears. This was an unfamiliar road. A new road. Young boys whizzed past him. And he thought he was going fast! He smiled a little. Everything was tremulously funny today.

Suddenly he gaped. Teetered dangerously to a stop. It had been a long time since he came here last. Long time. L O N G.

The road had shot up. Literally. Vertically. Glass and concrete shone everywhere, neon blazed, burnt into his eyes, seemed etched on his eyelids even when he closed his eyes. A steady, slow stream of veritable monsters was everywhere. These couldn’t be called cars. They seemed half steel, half light monsters.

He climbed the stainless steel staircase, still a little dazed, still hopeful, and still expectant. His mind still seethed in a mad cacophony of all the yellow and blue signboards he had seen. Not signboards. Billboards. There was a solid mass of people at the head of the staircase. Impenetrable. So much scent. For the man who doesn’t have to try, too hard, his mind giggled foolishly. Immediately, many people grinned vapidly back at him.

A hand was on his shoulder, her voice, her voice was saying, “I’m sorry, isn’t it horribly crowded? I knew you the moment I saw you. You haven’t changed at all.” He was quiet for an instant, drinking it in. Then he turned quickly around.

Afterimages

He gazes straight ahead, past the milling throngs. His back is erect; his hair is grey at the temples. Raucous laughter fills the air. He smells alcohol on many unshaven young faces. He thinks something is wrong, that their faces should not be so close to his face. He realizes that they cannot help it. There is no other way to walk these days. He does not have the requisite skill. Many times he bangs unpleasantly into people. He turns around to apologize, only to find that they have gone.

His feet take him unthinkingly into coffee house. He sits down and orders coffee. The cups are still dull and white and clean and thick. The coffee isn’t exactly the same, but he is insensibly reassured.

Looking around, he finds this new assurance slipping away. No white haired old man. No Anglo Indian teacher. No students. No dreams. He is infected by some dreary horror. Sounds and sights recede into the distance. He is weary and surprised at the magnitude of his weariness. A girl and a boy are sitting at the next table. He stares in growing resentment at the girl, her clothes, and at the musky scent that wafts from her person. He stares at her unnatural hair, her expensive rimless glasses. Her lips are the colour of congealed blood, and as they move he shudders. His eyes close. He can still see the lights, the cars, her. Their afterimages are carved on his eyelids.

Déjà vu

“… distinct personalities. Every city has one. Delhi is a showy socialite. Calcutta is a misinformed intellectual. Bombay is a schoolboy without a sense of humour.”“And this city?” asked the old man at the next table.

The girl looked at him, not seeming to mind the strange intensity of his eyes. She was young, as young as he had been when they walked under sampige trees. But her eyes were tired; her skin had an unhealthy pallor under her brilliant makeup. Her brilliantly polished fingernails tapped cynically on her coffee cup.

“… is a tired queen”, she said.

Epilogue

… And he did not know where along the winding course of his thoughts, he had stopped thinking about the city and started thinking about the girl.

Michael

I had a little cut once, on my finger, and I named it Michael. I used to press on the sides of that cut, and watch smiling as a little drop of blood oozed out, globular and warm and sticky and red. I smiled because it was proof of my breathing, beating life; it showed me that I was alive, and the pain? It was nothing. A mere tingle on my finger. I smiled because that cut could harm me no more than plucking a leaf could harm a tree, and I wanted to live very long, and I wanted to do many things.

(We went out, he and I, we did many things, perched on park benches and chairs of restaurants, walked under yellow streetlamps, made love behind closed doors, on his bike wind whistling in ears, but above all, we spoke, and it did not matter what we spoke, but the sounds of our voices were always happy, always laughing.)

I started suddenly in surprise. I had made no attention to it for a few days and the cut had become a gash. I discovered it suddenly while taking a bath. Watching the water run down the unbroken, smooth skin of my body, into every curve and slope I recognized, I discovered suddenly this throbbing red gash. It pained now, and I thought I would bandage it and keep it out of sight. And it would heal, and the skin would be as good as new. So I put hot water on it and once I came out of the bathroom, I patted it dry gently, and I bandaged it carefully. It would heal now, I thought, and I didn’t think of it much, except to wish sometimes, when it throbbed a little too painfully, that it would heal quickly, because I cannot bear pain. And I love myself so much.

(Then we were together under the same sky, and suddenly we were alone together, with none of the interruptions that we used to have before. We were in a city of broad roads and palaces, and there was enchantment everywhere, when we went up to a temple on a hill, and the stars of the sky were above us, and the lights of the city were below us.)

The bandage was sticky red with blood already, and it had just been dressed. A dressing every day, and nothing would staunch the blood. And every time a soiled bandage was undone, I could see the jagged ends of the cut, like snarling lips, and inside everything was unhealed and shiny pink of tissue that should not be revealed. I could not sleep for the pain, I could not move. And I was afraid. I was very afraid of that limitless, angry, self-feeding wound, which would not, could not heal.

(Once we fought, and his absence was asphyxia. His absence was a blaring silence. His absence was black and white and gray. His absence was starvation and thirst. And then he came back, and everything returned, oxygen, and music, and colour, and food and water. But you cannot stay with too bright a light for too long, otherwise your eyes ache, and you burn out faster. You do not have enough fuel, and you start to get an inferiority complex.)

The doctor smiled, reassuringly. He had told me that I would be living very close to a normal life. I believed him, because he smiled reassuringly, and because there was nothing else to believe. There was a sweet smell, and then I was asleep. When I woke up, my cut was gone, and so was my hand, amputated just below the elbow. I knew I had lost, that I could not fight what I was trying to fight. That I had lost even before the fight had begun. So I sighed, looked at my stump of a hand, short and round and fingerless, and played my ancient game. I had an amputated hand once, and I named it Michael.

How the Writer Died.

First, they just used to laugh at him. Laugh at his thin legs and arms, as he tried to lift burdens that were too heavy for him. They laughed at how his knees used to buckle under him, and at how his wrists were on the point of cracking, and at how he never gave up. They thought laughing would make him stop torturing himself like that. But he never would; he would pay no attention, and keep on trying, with shivering, trembling limbs, to hold up what he thought was his burden that day. He held up dams and irrigation projects, he held the entire weight of the corrupt bureaucracy, and he held up vats of blood that other people had spilled. "It is not your burden to carry", they would shout, and he would pay no attention, and go on. She would watch him. Sometimes she used to think that she should go to his aid. But she would never have the courage, and she was a little too lazy to engage in a battle that was not hers. But her eyes would fill with tears at the sight of him, so brave, so gallant, and so sickly. Her tribute to him was that she never laughed at him, she did not even smile, merely looked at him with a solemnity that she hoped gave him strength; she did not know, she did not think it did. Anyway, he seemed equally oblivious to mockery and encouragement.

(When she submitted her little essays and stories, the teachers would smile indulgently. She would be enormously riled, she would imagine them tittering at her little attempts, passing along her precious sheets of paper to each other with mocking smiles. She wanted to scream at them, howl at them that they did not realize what went into those stories, those pretty poems. She wanted to make them read each one aloud, explain what she meant by every single word, why every word was used where it was. She never did. Just glared, a little mutinously, a little afraid of what their judgment meant to her.)

He was stronger now; his limbs did not look like little sticks. His effort displayed sinew and muscle, and no one could laugh anymore. They began to be afraid of his strength. He ignored them, as set in his unreadable eyes and his hidden purpose as he had always been. She always gave him a friendly, comradely grin as she went past. She did not know if he noticed.

(Nowadays she did not have to pore over her paper. Words flowed from her pen like little confident streams. She knew the little arts of adjectives and metaphor. She could be tender, scathing, majestic, intricate. She wrote with abandon, with madness, with magnificent fury, with gentle serenity. The teachers no longer tittered. They looked worried at how her papers seemed like molten lava these days, liable to scald them if they held them too long. Liable to amber immortality if kept for too long.)

So they chained him. And they starved him. “We’ll see how you make a martyr out of yourself now”, they said. His eyes were never pleading, merely surprised that they thought he wanted to be a martyr. In this forced inactivity, he noticed something that he had not had time to notice before. The girl did not smile at him anymore; she merely glowered at him, half painfully sympathetic, half resentful.

(“Do you think money grows on trees?” the teachers asked. “How will you feed yourself? Write indeed! An excuse for living on charity. Learn a trade and then you indulge in hobbies.” She was immune in the beginning. The she felt sandpapered, eroded into an alien shape, a shape that was afraid of small things. Silly things, like not being able to afford autos, or never being able to buy new clothes, or being laughed at.)

He waited patiently, hope undying. She could not meet his eyes or stare into their honest, clear depths anymore.

(She embarked on the adult business of making money, of subsistence. She embarked on the very adult business of earning a living.)

No one else mourned his passing, or thought about him, except with a feeling that was relief compounded with guilt.

He died that night, in chains.

She cried herself to sleep.