An Afternoon Visit
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The Train rumbled away and at last the track was clear. She crossed over to the other side, lifting the folds of her sari so that the hem would not get caught in the heels of her shoes. The strap of her heavy shoulder bag dug into her flesh. Her fist, curled around the handle of the gaily printed folding umbrella, felt slippery with sweat. Her eyes, strained and slightly red, the mascara smudged, were concealed under over-sized dark glasses. She glanced briefly towards the west, at the train which was now a faint smudge on the blazing horizon. There was a wistfulness in that glance, a small, fierce and desperate longing for the freedom that waited passively beyond the chalked out path between office and home. Then she quickly lowered her head and walked ahead, unwilling to trust herself with the strange, half awake yearnings that rose every time the train's mournful whistle retreated further and further away.
All was still-the clothes on the clotheslines, the potted plants on porches, the thick sludge on the drains. Through some of the open windows of the houses she could hear faint strains of music, snatches of conversation, water gushing into a bucket. She passed this road every afternoon at the same time on her way from home. She was always relieved she never met anyone, not even a child, because this was the time of the day she did not wish to smile or exchange a greeting. It called for immense effort on her part and she had no desire to be pleasant and cheerful, when somewhere inside her mushroomed a cloud of such dark misery that it seemed to blot out the sun and numb her spirit with a dank, clammy chill. One part of her was glad at the blessed predictability of it all, the orderly rows of houses, the neat
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lawns and curtained windows. And the other part of her cried out against the dullness of it, the bland commonplace desires of men to buy land, build houses, erect walls, close doors, map out their lives in predictable, seemingly pre-ordained patterns.
Another afternoon came to mind. Who was that girl, a childhood friend? Yes, Basanti Goel, October '75 Shillong. A sudden giggly expedition home from school to fetch the project report she had left behind. She had told Basanti that two foxes were to marry that afternoon. Aita always said foxes marry on a day when it rains and shines at once. The rain drops were like silver confetti against the golden light and they had held hands and run, breathless with laughter. She had been twelve then. She led Basanti first to another house, a run down cottage on the shadow of a hill, its garden unkept with tangled waist high grass. The unsuspecting Basanti had followed her until she had run out though the gate, doubling up with laughter "Its not my house, stupid!" She had kept Basanti guessing, trotting innocently up the garden path of this house and that, sometimes even ringing doorbells and running pell-mell to the street again. Weary and exasperated. Basanti had fmally wailed-"Where do you really live?"
Where did one really live? Yesterday was dead and tomorrow was yet to be born. Today was merely a bridge between the two. The soul lived in the body and the body lived in a house. A house needed a neighbourhood such as this-quiet, familiar, unhurried. And yet this all important body, for whose needs grew houses, neighbourhoods, electric cables, water pipes, shops, a million indispensable thingswhen this body lay lifeless in the street, many simply walked past, others could not bear to look at it. Someone's step faltered, someone fell silent and another shut his eyes at the sight. Did the soul of that lifeless body find its was back home-back to the family to whom the body belonged? Did anybody belong anywhere, to anyone? Didn't one always come alone, and depart alone?
She lifted the latch of the black wrought iron gate, pushed it open and looked upwards. High above the concret mass of the walls, above the delicate f1ligree of the second
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floor balcony railings, his face was a small fair blob, waiting for her ... her son. She was the maker of his world, the creator of that cocoon of Coffee Bites and Enid Blytons and warm wet kisses before lights out. She knew then, as he slowly climbed the dim staircase, panting and parched mouthed and dizzy, that a mother's love often had to fashion a kind of eternity. She would have to show him the path through the forest, not letting him know even for once that she too was lost.
"Mal" he pattered half-way down the stairs, barefooted, his hair tousled and took her shoulder-bag from her, setting it down on the landing and unzipping it with his slender, urgent fingers, rummaging impatiently among her books and papers till he clasped the smooth hard rectangle of the Cadbury's Fruit and Nut. He drew it out with a chuckle and scampered up the steps, without even a backward glance. This was what he had been waiting for, then, and the ~ mushroom cloud within her grew larger, blotting out the light.
Home is the place where they had to take you in. Inside the large airy hall she took off her sunglasses and tossed them carelessly on the ornate Kashmiri table by the side of the bookcase.
"Warm the food". She told the maid shortly.
In the bedroom the curtains were tightly drawn, the windows bolted and shut. The ball bearings needed to be greased and the fan creaked as it stirred gusts of warm air. It was exactly the same scene every damned afternoonthe curtains drawn, the fan creaking, and Anubhav lying on his side on the wide double bed in vest and shorts, sunk in slumber, inert, impervious. Always, always, with his back to the door, his right leg Hung over a bolster and an arm over the head-never waiting to have lunch with her, never worried if she was late, never opening his eyes when she came in. The sigh escaped from her lips and whirled meaninglessly with the warm stale air. Deep in the heart of the Sundarbans, lithe Royal Bengal tigers leapt at unwary tribal foragers from behind, always aiming for the neck. They never attacked from the front. Tribals wore masks-crude, bright yellow masks with black exaggerated eyes and red grinning mouths on the back of their heads that confused the tigers as to whether their victims were coming or going.
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Even a mask, a pretence, was better than the dismal awareness of his dark, secretive head facing her every afternoon, as he napped before leaving for the factory at three.
Now she too turned her back to the mirror as she undressed in the small curtained off portion next to the bathroom. Eight years ago the masked surgeon had sliced her belly open, one inch below the navel, almost right up to the mound of her pubic and yanked out her slime-smeared son. That gaping wound had been stitched up with nylon thread and now there was an ugly, dark, puckered up scar running down the length of her belly, like a profanity uttered by a virgin. She could not bear to see it grinning back at her from the mirror. She could not bear to touch it. It was a silent reminder not only of her undesirability but also of her failure to give birth normally.
She ate her lunch silently, in an abstract, hurried way, not noticing what she ate, while the maid hovered quietly and uneasily nearby, ladling ounhe curry in a bowl, placing a spoon next to the jar of pickles, expecting to be reprimanded at any moment. She was a dull, seventeen year old bucktoothed girl who had lived with them for two years. When the master, mistress and child were away, she sang ribald Bihu songs in a mournful sing-song voice as she cooked and cleaned and swept. Her master and mistress were always polite to each other and the child was quiet too. But there was no joy in the house and the rooms looked somehow unlived in. She had never seen her master and mistress touch each other. Yet they dressed well, ate well, went out together in the evenings. She had never seen her mistress weep or the master utter a harsh word. But there was something dark and heavy and unspoken among them and the child seemed to sense it too, for his enoromous thickly lashed eyes were filled with a knowledge and sadness far beyond his years.
In the child's room, the sunshine spilled on to the bed, the floor and she felt her head throb. His toys were scattered all over the floor-the stiff mean-eyed GI Joes and the wrestlers-all of them-Yokozuna, Macho Man, Randy Savage, Goldberg. Hulk Hogan, and Ronnie sat among them, his legs stretched out, his back bent. On his left hand he
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held Bam· Barn Bigelow. The wrestler was in a black T-Shirt and black tights, jagged yellow streaks ran through his outfit, like tongues of fire. His smooth, shiny baby pink head was streaked with an electric blue tatoo. The face was corpulent with mean, close set eyes, his small teeth startlingly white against the black goatee. His thick neck, the clenched fists, the powerful biceps were astonishingly life-like and repulsive. On Ronnie's other hand was Lex Luger. Luger looked somehow less vindictive, more calm, his gaze level,· his lips set in an even line. His brown hair, parted in the middle gave him a courtly, poetic air, almost as ifhe belonged to another age. He was clad in a pair of white briefs, teamed up with white knee length boots and white wrist bands. The fingers of his outstretched hands were splayed out, in a gesture perhaps of acquiescence or surrender. A low hissing sound filled the room. It ensued from Ronnie's mouth as he knocked the two wrestlers against each other, head against head, chest against chest, over and over again, deciding who would win and for how many rounds. His enormous black eyes were fixed in malevolent glee over the two plastic dolls as they rammed and battered against each other. He was entirely unaware of her as he went on playing. How much happier, she thought suddenly, he would have been, if the wrestlers bled or broke their bones or became unconscious. She turned away, sick at heart, feeling she had intruded into a world her son did not want her to enter.
She stood in the cool dark hall, between the two bedrooms, unwilling to be beside her sleeping husband, furious at herself because she realized that her happiness, her sense of her own worth, depended so much on the whims of her husband and her son. Why couldn't she be like them, perfectly content to be left to their own devices? She was just like a damned dog which needed to be patted and reassured constantly. And like that damned creature, man's best friend, she could crouch in some corner, waiting for them, her masters, to call for her. And she would go bounding up to them frantically happy and excited in the knowledge that they needed her ... she felts a soureness in her mouth as these thoughts came crowding in her mind and felt her self-abasement complete.
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Suddenly the telephone began to ring, shrilly, like an animal caught in a trap. She moved swiftly to the bedroom and picked up the receiver. Anubhav sat up red-eyed, groggy, disoriented.
"Is this Anubhav Chowdhury's residence?" asked a woman's voice uncertainly.
"Yes, it is" she said. "May I know who's speaking, please?"
"Well, is he at home? I'd like to speak to him myself." "It's for you", she handed the receiver to him and turned away to leave the room. She did not want to dawdle and eavesdrop on the conversation. She was not the suspicious sort. But then Anubhav had never ever given her any cause for suspicion. Or was it that she was beyond caring? She was in the living room, idly leafmg through a magazine, when he went over to her, a baffled look on his face.
"Its Paromita", he said. "She wants to meet me".
Paromita was the girl he had left twelve years ago when he had met her, Urmila, at the college fresher's. Paromita had been beautiful, vivacious, a skilled debater and he had simply dropped her without a thought, without a backward glance, when she came along. Looking back on it now, it seemed a cruel and unscrupulous thing to do and yet, that act of betrayal seemed to her an acknowledgem.ent of her power over him and she had exulted in it all through the period of their brief, intense courtship. She had been overwhelmed by his love, his all consuming need for her and his rages and sulks when she fell short of reciprocating in equal measure. She had just graduated at the top of her class and was keenly waiting for university classes to begin. But he had been adamant. They would have to marry. and he had been particularly insistent about the date-10th October '84. Her parents were furious, her friends thought she was mad, disrupting her studies. But by then, nothing mattered to her but the wish to make him happy .. ,
Mistaking her silence for anger, he came forward and touched her lightly on her shoulder. "Don't worry, Urmi. I've called her here. Whatever she has to tell me, it will have to be before you. You're my wife, Urmi",
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"It might be embarrassing, you know", she said, searching his face. "What if she wants to exchange memories of your stolen kisses at Aditi Cinema hall?"
He laughed. He had a special talent for laughter that did not convey the slightest zest or merriment, or even spontaneity. Like so much else about him, it was strangely ambiguous.
Paromita would be arriving in twenty minutes. She woke up the maid, plumped the cushions on the sofas, rearranged the magazines on the coffee table, brought in the potted plants from the balcony. Changing into a peach chiffon sari, she carefully touched her lips with lipgloss and suddenly realized that her hand was trembling. It was quite unreasonable, considering that she was the victor, the wife, the mother of Anubhav's child, while Paromita was the jilted, forgotten sweetheart.
The dorbell rang and Anubhav glanced at her uneasily from across the room, as if awaiting her permission to let the visitor in, the ghost from the past who had turned up so unexpectedly.
Paromita was short. She had imagined someone tall, willowy. The woman who slipped off her shoes and followed her shyly into the living room had long lost the beauty she had been famed for. She was now a common looking, matronly housewife fast approaching middle age. Her lank lifeless hair was pinned l;>ack carelessly with a gaudy clip shaped like a butterfly. Her cotton sari was crumpled and half-moons of sweat cast damp patches on the armpits of her blouse. She sat on the edge of the opulent velvet sofa, fidgeting nervously with the clasp of her fake leather purse, her tired eyes darting from the crystal bric a brac on the sideboard to the gold lettering on the spines of the books on the glass case to the jade Bvddha contemplating her calmly from the glasstopped centre table.
"Well, well", Anubhav came in, "To what do we owe the honour of this visit? It is a surprise, believe me ... come on Paro, lean back, make yourself comfortable. Urmila, this is Paromita, the classic beauty of yesteryears ... "
Yesteryears. He deliberately stressed on the last word and Urmila saw the dull flush that crept to Paromita's cheeks.
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"Let me get you a cold drink" Urmila broke in hurriedly.
"A Pepsi?" Or would you like nimbu-paam7"
"N-no, thank you," stammered Paromita, strugging to smile. "Just a glass of water".
Urmila called the maid. "This is a huge place you've got here", said Paromita. "And such a quiet neighbourhood".
"You never expected I'd be capable of this, did you, Paro?"
Anubhav leaned forward, amused.
"N-no, I didn't mean that. You've achieved so much in a few years .... I hear your business is doing very well ...
"Everything in my life is doing well, Paro. I'm very happily married, Urmila is the perfect wife. We've got a boy. He's a computer whizkid. Wants to meet Bill Gates. By the way, I hope you know who Bill Gates is ... "
Urmila could see Paromita visibly shrinking.
"I thought you live in Dibrugarh", Urmila turned to her, kind gracious, interested. "Are you in Guwahati on a visit?"
"We live here, my husband got transferred last year. It was mainly for our daughter, you see".
"Oh yes", nodded Urmila "All the good schools are here ... " "No, its not that". There was a brief silence as Paromita stmggled to form the words. "Our daughter is retarded ... She can't walk or talk and she needs special care .... " Anubhav fished out the gold cigarette case from his
kurta pocket, put a Benson and Hedges on his lips. There was a small flare as he flicked on the lighter.
"Hmmm ... " the smoke escaped his nostrils and he leaned back, .relaxed, completely indifferent. "So you're planning to shift her to some institution I suppose ... Not a bad idea, considering that you won't be around forever. Let her get used to it ... "
Urmila was speechless with shock. She stared lit Anubhav as if she was seeing him for the first time. Was this the real man, taking a perverse pleasure out of a woman's he!'lrt-rending tragedy, humiliating her with a vindictiveness that was so shockingly uncharacteristic of him? Then she remembered. He had betrayed this woman.
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He had simply cut her out from his life. He had said so himself. All was fair in love ...
The maid brought in the tea tray and set it on the small incidental rosewood table next to Paromita. On a gold rimmed bone-china quarter plate reposed three dainty, perfectly cut cucumber sandwiches. Beside it was a cup of tea and a small bowl of sugar cubes and a pair of tiny silver tongs.
Paromita sipped her tea, quickly, anxiously, as if eager to complete a tedious ritual. When Ronnie came in, Paromita called out to hL.'11, her voice soft and coaxing, but Ronnie sat
. beside his father, as if ranging himself against this unknown woman, forming a solid phalanx to counter an adversary. Anubhav made a great show of clasping the boy' close to him, rumpling his hair and lifting the small chin to kiss his brow. He and Ronnie had always been a little wary of each other, holding each other at arm's length and to Urmila's eyes this pretended intimacy seemed slightly grotesque. The boy seemed to sense it too, for he wriggled out of his father's grasp and pattered back to his room. Anubhav glanced at his watch and exclaimed.
"What? Three already?" He sprang up from the sofa. "1 must be off. Its payment day at the factory ... Can't let twenty families strave for the week-end, right?"
"Please", Paromita raised her hand, anxious, imploring. "1 won't take much time. There's a special reason 1 turned up today ... its only that my husband ... "
"Good God!" his jaw dropped. "1 hope he isn't going to leave you ... "
uP-Please Anubhav". Urmila broke in warningly.
"As you know, my husband Gautam is a government servant," said Paromita, her gaze lowered.
"You can imagine how it is ... they've not been paid salaries for four months now. 1 need to pay the fees for my daughter's physiotherapy sessions. 1 would appreciate it very much if you could lend me about two thousand ... "
"Your wish is my command", he gave a small, courtly bow and went to the bedroom.
She must be really desperate, thought Urmila, as she sat watching Paromita with growing pity. So desparate for
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that two thousand that she had swallowed the insults without a murmur, without even the faintet glimmer of rage in her defeated eyes.
"He hasn't really forgiven me, I know that now", Paromita said shakily, a wan smile flitting briefly across her pale, damp face.
"Forgiven you?" A small furrow appeared on Urmila's brow. "What for?"
"I betrayed him ... he used to call up every Friday afternoon. That day he did the same. I tried to break it to him as gently as I could. I said 1 couldn't think of a future with him anymore ... Gautarn's parents had come to see me. I told him not to call me again, ever. He was just a penniless young man those days ... clowning around ... but 1 wanted the good life .... He was shouting on the phone ... he was incoherent. But 1 could just make out the last words. He said he would put the phone down, walk out of that booth, and fall in love with the fIrst girl he met on the kerb outside ... "
Urmila drew in a sharp breath. That was exactly how it was ... her fIrst glimpse of Anubhav twelve years ago ... a young man, pale, unsmilling, a little dazed, almost staggering out of that phone booth next to Urvashi Studio, his eyes holding hers in a kind of desperation that she thought was what they called love at fIrst sight. He had reached for her the way a drunk leans for balance against the nearest lamp post, or a drowning man clutches the lowest overhanging branch of a tree. It coult have been any lamppost, any branch. That it was she whom he encountered in tha.t terrible moment when the ground slipped beneath his feet was wholly a coincidence and everything between them-the child, this beautiful house, this precious edifice of family life was a result of that miraculous coincidence ... She was blessed, for so much that was good and enduring in her life came from that moment and out of the ashes of an old love, a new one was fashioned ... perhaps by force, perhaps as a kind of reckless gamble, but it had endured for twelve long years and she could now feel the weight of that mushroom cloud dissolve within her. Paromita had needed to make this visit for money. And yet, she and Anubhav too had needed this visit-Anubhav, to get all that rage and hurt out of his system,
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and for her, Urmila, to fmally understand him as a person who was not as indifferent as he appeared but was vulnerable, scarred and needed to be loved so that he could be healed again ...
He came into the room, holding the wad of notes in his hand.
"I'll return it next month" Paromita mumbled greatfully, thrusting them into her bag, rising to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster.
Urmila glanced quickly at her husband. He was about to say something cruel, a last parting shot and when she touched his arm and pressed it gently, he turned to her. Her eyes, full of love and quiet understanding, made him fall silent. She knew. She knew the dark secret that had corroded him acid-like for so long. He realized then that he had married this quiet, thoughtful woman as a means to an end, of proving to Paromita that any woman he chose would love him ... but Urmila deserved more than that. From now on .... she would be the end rather than the means andsuddenly he was eager to be alone with her again, in that sacred inviolate space where their love mattered more than the crumbled debris of a dim past.
"Let me drop you Paromita", he said quickly. "You better get back to your daughter soon".
Paromita agreed gratefully, at once touched and puzzled by the change in him. But as the car eased out of the gate and moved swiftly down the lane, Urmila, watching from the balcony, understood that for Anubhav, the process of healing had already begun. She drew a deep breath and looked up. Silhouetted against the crimson evening sky, flocks of birds were wheeling home.
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