A Story in Continuum

2006-04-18T19:58:00.000+05:30

Part 1:

When he heard the rustle of a snake on the silk, he knew the time had come. Time to tell the story. A story in continuum...

He wore a silk scarf. One last time, he thought. He also held a silken handkerchief in his hand. Ram Bahadur put his sleeping bag and his suitcase in the rear of the car. As he shut the dickey, two crows sitting on the electric pole became alert. They tried to ward off their fear, hopping restlessly on their feet, but then decided to fly away. Ram Bahadur looked at him meaningfully and he gave a nod. The time had come. He looked at the house. He imagined father standing on the balcony as he always did, whenever he went away. On weekend escapades. On official tours. On long walks.

With a muffled groan, the car came to life. The headlights made two clear arrays on the road. Sunrise was an hour away. The car began to move. He turned his face towards the house. Before the turn, he waved the silken handkerchief. At the house. At the empty balcony. At the flower pot. At the jute string that dried his clothes for years. At the empty carton of their Television. At the worn-out pair of shoes which bore his body mass; bore the deckle edge of his very being.

On the main road, the yellow Police barriers were still there. Probably put up last night. One of the tell-tale signs of yesterday. And today he was moving away. Few hundred miles away. Few hundred metres upwards.

Barring a few major intersections, the red traffic lights still blinked as he passed through Delhi. Flats that looked like matchboxes appeared on his left side. Trucks moved like mad bulls, their axles appearing wobbly. This is the place where they would set up the Commonwealth games village. A temple which looked like a Mughal mansion had already come up, behind the huge water supply pipe. He observed water jetting out from at least two places. This is where, years ago, a Cartoonist of a weekly magazine was found dead. His tongue was cut and he was stabbed 32 times. Someone had turned death into Mardi Gras.

The car crossed the border, where they had put up a huge board. Uttar Pradesh welcomes you. Two policemen dozed off on a bench. Fire lit with waste cardboard gave away smoke. The BBC was predicting snowfall in Delhi. Snow. Something tossed inside him. The car turned left, where the signboard read, Meerut: 52 kilometres. He would be crossing Meerut.

Once again they would cross each other. He would pass through Meerut, imagining her asleep with a picture of his under her pillow. Was it love that he had with her? And what about her? Yes. He was sure about Nina. She loved him. Dewy-eyed Nina. Otherworldly Nina.

Urdu Poet Bashir Badr also lived in Meerut.

Ghar naya, Bartan naye, kapde naye
In puraane kaagzon ka kya karun?

My dwelling is new and so are my utensils and clothes
But these old papers, what about them?

There were old papers. Nina had this habit of writing Urdu couplets in Devnagiri. On tissue paper; with a pencil. Her fingers would play with the stirrer at the Flames. And invariably, she would break it. Then he would lift a fragment and keep it. As a souvenir. He still had one in his wallet. He lifted the flap and took it out. The coin-shaped, red-coloured stirrer top, with Bacardi written on it.

When she had broken enough stirrers, he would catch hold of her arm and make her sit in the Auto rickshaw. She would always refuse to go home. Ultimately he would be forced to stop the Auto before her flat arrived. Then he would take her to a Park. She would keep her head on his shoulder and say: Take me somewhere. But he always took her to her flat. Forcibly always. And then she would not speak to him. Till the next day.

In the morning, she would smile through her mobile and say: Are you game for some hot tea? Nina was like this only. But where was she now?

He saw Nina in his dreams a few nights back. She was jumping from the skeleton of a tree. A tree, devoid of life. He ran to hold her before she could hit the ground, but he could not move. He was transfixed by an unknown gaze. And then he freed himself and ran towards her. There was snow and he saw molten gold strewn on it. And then he found Nina. Oh Nina, he cried. Nina passed a smile; a defeated smile. It might even have been a smile of victory. With Nina, you never knew. He wiped off the blood from her lips. He could see each and very vein of her body. She was not dying, but she was insalubrious. He held her tightly in his arms. He would save her come what may. And then he woke up. Was it love that he had with her? Yes.

The mobile vibrated in the depths of his pocket. It was Heather calling. Hello. Have you left? Yes I have. Ok, see you here. Is it cold there? Yes, very. Bye. Bye.

He looked from the car window. Meerut City welcomes you. He read it. And nearby, in a quilt, Nina shifted uneasily. So near. He felt his glasses clouded with the vapours of her breath...

Part 2:

His car had just turned into Meerut City. Nina would be probably asleep. May be a mile away. Or at the most two. His mind wandered. He remembered muffins.

Nina and he. They had this thing about muffins. They always promised to take each other out for a treat. A treat that would revolve around muffins. And eventually during treats like these, everything else would come, except muffins.

He remembered one such rendezvous which happened in Barista coffee joint. They sat on the corner table. Below the picture of a man, staring at a cup of coffee with such intensity as if it were a Sri Chakra.

She held her usual books in her hands. And she wore blue sneakers. They did not speak for long. They just sat there; she with her ice tea and he with his cold coffee. Her tea was about to finish. And he knew what was to come next. A minute passed. She emptied her glass. Only an ice cube remained there. Alone. She lifted it with the spoon and put it in her mouth, delicately pushing it through her lips. Her jaws moved as her tongue worked on it. Solid turned into liquid. Then she looked at him. He was already looking at her. Then they turned their heads towards the glass window.

The sun had set and dark was downing upon the square space at the PVR multiplex. Neon boards glittered like nail polish on the toes of a prostitute. Books were on sale. Clothes, alcoholic beverages and Music CD’s also. Two rag pickers fought over a leftover can of Diet Coke. A girl tried a glass-bead necklace. A string, tied three times over with a stumped pole, fluttered.

They would sit like this, almost daily, for hours. Very few words were spoken. Silence conveyed more than words. From Barista, they would enter Laxman Singh’s abode. Laxman Ji for them. While climbing the stairs of the Flames Bar, they always avoided looking at the moustached guard. They felt that he did not like them somehow. Upstairs, near the entrance, Buddha would be expressionless, as always. Two eyes from the statue looking in the straight direction.

Laxman Ji welcomed them with a grin that felt like a bear hug. They would always find him holding the door open for them. Barring Thursday, which happened to be his off. When they learnt it later, they also avoided going there on Thursdays.

In summers, he would have Whisky. In winters, he had Rum. Whenever she did, she had Vodka. After a drink, she would remove her right foot from her shoe and rest it on his left knee. He would feel the moisture of her socks. He would press it for a while.

After two drinks, she would start breaking stirrers. And then refuse to go home.

Part 3:

Some memories are better left to be forgotten. But some churn inside the lining of your heart so much that you just write them down. Hoping that they would remain as discreet as sacred verses in a talisman. Those memories travel in a Mobius strip. One after the other.

The memory of that summer is all over his heart. Like a Cheese spread.

In the afternoon, the sun spat fire. Birds stopped chirping. Dogs would roll out their tongue. If you walked on the road, the coal tar would stick on to your shoe soles. Mirages would appear in the highway of your vision.

This was the time when he sneaked out. Sleep had been evading him. As if someone had applied Dove’s blood on his eye lids. Thoughts of various hues and colours raced in his mind. One shade overtook another. Sometimes they collided with the boundaries of his existence. He would reel down under the pressure. At times like these Nina’s printed cotton Pyjamas provide him succour.

He cannot forget the sight of Nina watching him from the top floor of that house in South Extension; her right hand cupping her chin. He would look at her from beneath the house and then start climbing the stairs. She would lead him inside. Into her organised world. Her place had a unique character which could not be termed as mere cleanliness. It was an extension of her own self. White bed sheets with pink and blue floral patterns on two mattresses joined together. A side table and a lamp on it. Books, covered with recycled paper, with dried flower petals embedded in it. Bashir Badr. Kaifi Azmi. Some of their couplets neatly marked with a pencil. A plastic chair in one corner. A small book rack. Neatly stacked sheets of paper. And lots of pencils, sharpened. The empty paper bag in which she got a white Khadi shirt for him. A pair of Rubber slippers with her two-and-a-half toes imprinted on one of them.

Then there would be her personal glass with a blue tinge. Only he had the privilege of drinking water from that glass. Plain water. Lemon water. Chilled water. Mixed water (plain water added to chilled water).

Something happened to him in that room. It insulated him from everything that the rest of the world represented. Inside that room, only Nina and he existed. His eye lids would begin to droop. Nina would lift his head and keep it on her thigh. On her printed cotton Pyjamas. And then he would simply pass away. He also snored at times. That is what Nina would tell him. She would lie besides him. Even in his sleep, he could feel his hand feeling the contours of the mole near her navel.

She was also after his elbows. He didn’t care about them. They were dark and rugged. One day, she appeared with a small container. It contained elbow cream. He had never thought that something like elbow cream would exist. Every evening, as he resisted it, she applied a dollop of cream on his both elbows.

And now the fibers of his elbows were torn. A hole had developed in his Khadi shirt. It had turned pale as well.

But her memories remained white. They would never turn sepia.
He crossed Meerut.

Part 4:

He passed Meerut. And Meerut passed him. The Present passed easily. But the Past stayed with him somehow. Like a trail of dust left behind by a speeding car. Every particle of dust was clear. Every sound, every sight, every smell, every touch of his past was alive.

The Past. Yes, he remembered everything. He remembered how he loved the sound of doorbell in the afternoons. Because it usually meant the arrival of a Courier Boy. They brought with them, the expectations of future. He did not even mind receiving Mobile Phone bills. Tearing crisp, colourful envelopes. Wetting his fingertip with saliva and then turn a few pages. Pages which contained details of his world; the numbers he had dialed and the calls he had received.

And sometimes for days, no doorbell would ring in the afternoon. On days like these, he would just leave home. To have a coffee at Barista in Greater Kailash. He would walk till a point, take an auto rickshaw and bargain if he felt like. While the auto negotiated roads, poke-marked with potholes and blocked by castrated bulls, his mind would take a flight. He carried a newspaper to read. Sheets of blotting paper, pregnant with known, little known and unknown tales. Tales of people ready to die for a piece of land, the holes of a heart mended in a faraway city, tiger surfacing in a habitat after twenty years and killed instantly by a train, lives snuffed out in skies in fighter planes and somebody winning accolades in a game.

Sometimes he asked the Driver to drive towards the Tughlakabad fort. History always fascinated him. Because history consisted of moral and sordid fables. Of rulers and those who ruled their hearts. Of loyalty, of deceit, of rubies and of daggers.

When he reached Barista, he would think of Mrigya. Mrigya, his wife of three months. He wondered when Mrigya would come home. The time of her arrival was like a jigsaw puzzle which he was unable to solve. Even if she came home early, there would be no exchange of ideas. The conversation was bound to revolve around old and new clothes, crumpled bed sheets, post-dated cheques, car parking or FM Radio.

Just a month before those afternoons, he had quit his job. The successful job of a Television Journalist. The never ending world of deadlines had made him sick. And everyday it was the same story. Another ceasefire in the Northeast, another suicide attack in Kashmir, another operation to flush out militants and yet another set of accusations against a politician. It was a murky world out there – thankless and spurious.

He just decided to call it a day, one fine afternoon. He was in the office canteen, eating a burnt toast and looking outside through the window frame. He had felt his shoulders with one hand, pinching the flesh. Knots of lactic acid had accumulated under the layers, which were a indication of how stressed out he was. In fifteen minutes, he had to leave for an assignment. Some bloody Pentagon official was scheduled to meet the top brass of the Indian Army. The mobile phone screen blinked. He looked at the number flashing on the screen. It was his Bureau Chief.

He thought of Vivek Singh’s Paan Masala-stained teeth and his wet lips. He would be sitting on his throne, aiming his spit in the dustbin kept under his table, with the hands-free of his mobile fitted deep into his ear canal. Vivek Singh would treat his Reporters like chotus working in a Dhaba, destined to run for errands.

At the sight of Sheila, a Junior Reporter, he would drool and if he had his way, he would make her the Editor-in-chief. For her, he was a slave, born to serve her – suggest story ideas, arrange camera units and a vehicle for her on priority, write her scripts and arrange a video editor for her. For others, he was the commander of the Third Reich.

In the morning, he would even make calls from his mobile to Reporters, while sitting on the Pot. At times like these, his voice echoed through the phone, as if he called from a Well. When he called him, he imagined Vivek Singh with his dirty Pyjamas lying at his feet, three newspapers in his lap and he talking to him about an assignment, and at the same time pleased about how last night’s laxative had done wonders to his bowel movement.

The mobile phone was still ringing. He had made up his mind not to press the green button and take the call. He was no longer willing to talk to someone who referred to Pastry as Cake. He switched off his mobile. He just walked off. Siddhartha must have felt the same, when he left his kingdom to become Buddha, he had thought.

He was a free bird now. He thought of taking a teaching assignment. He would teach students of journalism. More than journalistic skills, he would teach them how to tackle Vivek Singh’s of the Industry and how to follow their heart, once the knots started appearing in their shoulders. For Sheilas he would have nothing to offer. They would eventually find their Vivek Singhs. Or Vivek Singhs would find them.

He also remembers that afternoon in Barista. A love-struck couple held hands in the café. Love won by an expensive perfume or an Archie’s greeting card. A deal clinched under the table and the cupid becoming a petty clerk. No fifty-page letters, infested with magical prose and verse. No beseeching to walk on rose petals; redness fed by blood. Only short-lived butterflies in the stomach. Their kissing each other on lips. One pair coated with lipstick and the other with lust. No real contact. That micro-millimetre of a space would gradually turn into a gorge. Both of them would sit on two ends, thinking the other will fall into it. Eventually, both of them will fall into it, one after the other. Even in their fall, they will not be together.

He sipped his coffee, thinking of his new assignment. And of words he had always wanted to write.

Part 5:

Tea, tea leaves, future. Smile, which had meaning. Like Lotus Sutras.

Words. His life circled around them. They came like lava, jetting through the fissures of his mind. And sometimes they would just stay inert and trouble him. Sometimes they began their long march through his finger tips. And sometimes, they made staccato appearances and then disappeared.

Words would decide how he slept. Or did not sleep at all. They decided whether he would walk aimlessly on the road and speak to strangers. Isn’t life wonderful, he would ask them. Or if words had their way, he would see through people, as if they did not exist. As if his only mission in life was to set the world afire.

A gust of cold air hit him. He opened his eyes. Ram Bahadur was looking at him through the rear-view mirror. He had opened the window of the car. He looked out. They were crossing Bijnaur. On the stretch of the road, vegetable vendors had laid their items. Cows lay huddled in one corner, nibbling at green leaves. One vendor weighed muddy potatoes in his rusted balance. A man passed by, cleaning his teeth with a twig. Some people had assembled in front of a tea stall. He felt an urge to have tea. He asked Ram Bahadur to stop.

He walked towards the stall. The stove was lit up in red, blue and yellow flames. A teapot, covered in soot, whistled gently. His eyes spoke to the man, who was taking out milk from a pouch. The man nodded gently. After he had taken milk, he sealed the pouch back with a rubber band. Then he took his glass of tea and after taking a sip, he made the warm glass roll between his palms.

Nina was very fond of tea. Particularly tea made in roadside joints. One day she urged him to join her. As tea was being prepared, she told the maker not to filter away leaves from her glass. He was mad at her, he remembered. He loved his glass, absolutely leafless.

‘You won’t understand’, she retorted lightly; her voice audible to him only, ‘I know how to predict future through tea leaves once they are left behind in the glass’.

‘Ok then, what do your leaves tell you about me?’ he asked her. She passed a smile. Her smile had meanings in them. Like Lotus sutras.

‘I am better off without you and your lunacy,’ he teased her. She didn’t say anything. She still smiled. Here eyes recited a madrigal. Minutes later, he received an SMS. It was from her.

Agar talash karun, koi mil hi jaayega
Magar tumhari tarah, mujhe kaun chahega

If I search, I will find someone
But who will love me, like you do

He held her hand. She pressed it. Their sweat became one.

He felt something warm in his hands. The vendor had handed him the glass of tea. He did not know when.

Part 6:

Rain, red umbrella, Asha Bhosle, fried onions. And sesame seeds.

Remembering Nina was like playing dumb charade. With himself. Where the hours, days and weeks he had spent with her acted like props.

He did not remember when it had rained last in Delhi. The real rain which needled through the skin. The one which cleared the air of its dust and made the bacteria in the earth shed its fragrance. When one felt like brewing coffee of one's own and watch the world through the window pane of one's existence. It no longer rained the way it did before. The way it did, when Nina was in Delhi.

The car stopped suddenly. He opened his eyes. The car had stopped in front of a railway gate. A train was about to pass. Many vehicles had lined up, their engines coming to a still with the movement of a key. Anticlockwise. Young boys, selling oranges, biscuits and potato wafers looked inside the vehicles with expectation. A hope that a window will roll down and a hand holding a currency note would come out. A boy rushed towards the car standing in front of him. The window must have come down. But instead of a hand, a face came out. An old, burly man spat out betel nut juice.

One August afternoon, he was lying on the floor in Nina's apartment. On his belly. Trying to create a free verse in his mind. Gray clouds were writ large in the sky. A minor storm was raising dust on the road. Few waste papers had taken flight. An empty plastic bottle ran helter skelter. Nina had just massaged his shoulders with warm oil, with sesame seeds put into it. Why sesame, he had asked. That is none of your business, she replied.

He heard some voice. From one corner of his right eye, he saw Nina playing with her music system. In a minute, Asha Bhosle's voice appeared on the magnetic strip of the cassette. It was a song from Ijazzat. The first stanza had been played sometime earlier. The song began from here:

Eik akeli chhatri mein jab, aadhe aadhe bheeg rahe the...

Under a lone umbrella, when we turned partially wet...

He looked at her. She was dusting her table lamp. Then she went out. After some time, he could smell onions being fried in the kitchen.

It began to rain. After a hail storm. But inside the apartment, a blissful peace prevailed. With Nina and her onions. Suddenly he saw the corner of something red. He opened his eyes again. Nina was standing in front of him. She held a red umbrella in her hands. Let us go on the rooftop, she said. Mesmerised, he followed.

He held the umbrella over them. With every gush of wind, it would want to go away. But he held firmly to it. They stood in one corner. From a distance, they could see vehicles stranded on the Moolchand flyover. Scooters and motorbikes had piled outside a bustop. Their owners has taken refuge under the shed, waiting for the rain to stop. The rain won't stop now, Nina mockingly pointed towards them.

They had turned wet. Partially. He on his right and she on her left. He put his arm around her waist. She took the umbrella from his hand and tossed it away. He could feel sesame seeds washed down from his shoulder blades.

Sahab, please close the window behind. He opened his eyes. Ram Bahadur was closing his window. Rain droplets were coming inside. It had begun to rain in Moradabad. Kausani was not very far now.

His hands went inadvertently towards his shoulders. There were no sesame seeds there.

© Rahul Pandita, 2006, all rights reserved

Rahul Pandita: A Story In Continuum

A Story in Continuum