‘Taasha madam nahin aayi?’ A chocolate smeared mouth draped in a monk maroon choga below popped out of the cobbled street. Must be around four years, he wound past rolling his weathered tyre with a stick. The next moment he rolled it back and stopped with a jerk, within a feet of us.
‘Hey, do you know me? I don’t have a single release yet,’ I asked wondering. He gulped in a long and deep breath pointing his stick at a gang of young girls sitting huddled on a pavement to the left side. They had laid out a pandora of trinkets on a white sheet below. The sheet was kept in place by four bricks on the respective four corners. Nothing could move it away. Their rustling skirts caught my eye. They were wearing the traditional wrap arounds in fine silks. Every possible and visible part of their body was either adorned or pierced with intricate silver miniatures. Next my gaze moved to their eyes. A blush fell on the whole gang as if I had caught them with their little secrets. Such wondrous smiles. Taasha should have been here.
The young girls having blushed enough, were now waving at me.
‘Hiiiii! Did you miss me?’ Amaal waved back with a feigned excitement, wrinkling his nose a fraction later in an unfeigned disappointment. ‘Waise bhi no one ever knew me before also.’
‘Ahh… the ever-suffering silent worker!’ I slapped his arm telling him to behave. The beauties in the rustling silks spluttered in to giggles. Though low in volume they were so full of life that not even a boulder could resist being tickled.
‘Woh so rahi hai! The diva needs her beauty sleep, you see’. He shouted to them with a huge grin.
I could not resist pitying him. Let me take over. I turned to them.
I joined my hands and turned them in to a pillow to help them conjure a soundly sleeping Taasha, followed by a rephrasing of his words. The shy lot nodded in acknowledgement. Their faces fell, however.
‘Yes, silent worker with only 19 days left.’ I rephrased our thread. He did not react, kept moving his eyes on faces on the road and beyond. Even those faces seemed to be acknowledging him. Suddenly the sun shone strong. It was shining sharply, with a different sharpness at him. It was giving him his special attention. Only if he knew him well. Well enough.
But his eyes were not bothered. They were hopping from one thing to another. Why is he still interested in anything? Anything beyond me if he is here for me? I kept following his gaze. Point by Point.
Is he for real? Am I for real?
As if on a cue, the sun withdrew. The special effects on Amaal vanished and the acknowledging faces went back to their original centre of attention - phone screens. Young, old, everyone. Side by side, my mind was assessing the weight of the silver jewelry on the women around, wondering if the weight of all these pieces made their posture difficult. If they ever felt like throwing off all to catch a breath. If they took them off before going to bed? Especially the pierced ones. Didn’t it hurt? But no such sign seemed evident in those bursting smiles. If there were mechanical tones of washing machine beeps and car crashes booming from the games in youngsters’ phones, from the elderlies it was the old Pahari songs and WhatsApp forwards. The world here seemed busy, unlike the earlier times.
‘Hmmm.’ I grunted.
‘What?’ He implored.
‘Not even a single young couple hand in hand on the roads. Only the ones with the ‘married’ stamp!’ I gestured towards a new bride with a shining metallic thread around her neck. She definitely seemed being pulled down under its weight.
‘Must be hundreds of them behind doors.’
‘When will we all grow up?’ I looked around, my gaze landing at an old patriarch hooked on to his hukkah.
‘But it is all fun. No? This lukka chhuppi!’ He tried to lighten the conversation.
‘Remember when you used to come down to meet me at the college lab, sneaking and hiding. It still brings a blush on my cheeks’. My smile breached its limits at the mention itself.
‘And of course, counting time has always been your forte. At that time, it was seconds, minutes and hours. Ohh, we have only half an hour! Wish we could spend the whole day at the fest! And that day when the Professor almost caught us behind the titration chamber. I can still smell that pungent liquid; how lovely was it! We were saved by the ringing of the bell just two seconds before he stepped close enough, uff!’ He put a hand on his heart. ‘I still get nightmares!’
‘Yes. I remember. God knows what Principal sir would have done if we were busted that day’. We did not fear anyone as such but so much was going on between us that it didn’t feel right to come out as yet.
Me and Amaal.
‘Counting is still your strength. No? especially back counting?’ He brought it up again. His mind was on a run. My lazy mind meanwhile was imagining what reason could possibly bring me back if I were him. And also if I weren’t?
‘So, if you say it is 19, 19 it must be’ He meanwhile continued.
‘And what is your forte? Sarcasm?’ I snapped back. I could feel a familiar acrid taste in my mouth. Why do people have to necessarily blurt out every random thing knocking their mind?
‘And what about that thing of accepting someone completely. With all their flaws?’ He leaned close to whisper in me.
‘It happens only in books, dreams and movies.’ I waved my hand off.
‘Why?’
‘Because they are supposed to have an end. To let people, live happily ever after’. I lowered my voice to not attract the attention of the people passing by.
‘Hmm. Just like us. Our story began, ended, re – began, and so on. Rinse and repeat. God knows how many times.’
‘5 times. I replied with a show of fingers.’
‘No. Actually 7 and still going on.’
‘Is that why you are back?’ I stared back at him with a stern.
‘May be.’ He returned the stare.
We were standing across the library shelf on either side like we stood years ago. I was begging him to let me go for youth fest in Mumbai with my theatre group. He did not want me to go without him, with his college elections staring at him.
May be - was his response then too. Mrs. Banerjee had to come thrice from the book - borrowing desk to hush us up. We were barred from the library for a week and even from my theatre group. We won the elections though.
That bitter taste swam back again.
‘If so, then please take a U-turn. I have had enough’. Unguarded, the words leapt out of me.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah really!’
I rearranged my shawl and stomped ahead. At least after all this, I thought, he would be able to see clearly beyond his flimsy ego. My cheeks were burning with a rage laced with disappointment. He has always been like this.
An elderly woman in her 70’s was plonked on the threshold of a small grocery kiosk, smoking a hukkah. Her skin was sagging from all corners, only being held up by her grit and her gussa splashed across her face right now. It refused to be blown away by the deep exhales gushing out of her. As if , if she relented, the slithering skin would slop down in the heap of her breasts. On a coir stool outside sat a man, probably a few years older than her, reading a newspaper with shoulders pulled up in a waning air of authority. Must be her husband. As I came closer, the gussa across her was already thicker and heavier. It had to be, since with every full-blown volley of hers, the man with the newspaper responded with a deep pause first, followed by a matter of factly reply without even bothering to shift his gaze from the paper in front of him. Blasphemy it was. Wounded and humiliated with ungrateful and emotionless responses, she shot up and threw a broom lying next to her. He simply picked it up and kept it aside and immediately got back to his current centre of attention. She stomped back fuming in to the shop. Some pressure off.
‘Hmm. That is what I love about the mountains, boss women!’ Amaal announced with a glint in his eyes.
‘Not the boss but the breadwinners. Men keep company with their liquor.’ I clarified gesturing towards the elderly taking another sip from the almost empty bottle. Next time he would probably have to lick it. Meanwhile she was busy making bundles of around 2 kg potatoes each. Her hands were moving deftly on their own with her mind too busy with a rumble to send any instructions to them. Wasn’t it better for her to marry another woman instead? I couldn’t look at them anymore. ‘This piece of shit would definitely not survive for long. She will die alone.’
‘Well, somehow I have come to believe that all this companionship business is also only for the speeches. Look at him. He has his. He is happy. Do you think he needs anything else? For him, she is just a caretaker. And for her he is a social status, rather a guarantee. That’s it. Love is too overrated in our worlds’. Amaal mumbled.
‘Then what else are you here for?’ I asked.
‘I have already told you’.
‘I will keep asking till I get the right answer’.
‘As if you don’t know?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Then look for it. Find what you can’t see.’
Meanwhile, the old man had rolled off the stool and the woman held him in her arms trying to wake him up.
*****
‘It was not exactly a sunny day but neither was there a lukka-chhuppi of rain and shine. They were too lazy and probably sad to go for the game that afternoon. I still remember where I sat. Few feet away from the stairs from where you were being send off. Not that I was denied to sit there by your family but I did not even ask them. How could I have witnessed that? How could I even have allowed that?’
My intent eyes were looking ahead but I could not point out exactly where. Amaal knew what was going through my mind. And tried to bring me back. Meanwhile, boss-woman came with two cups of tea and placed them strategically in front of me.