SCALE (4)

When school opened after summer vacation, the girl's holiday ritual received a setback. When she fell asleep after a tiring day or read for a test, the parents kept the vigil on her behalf and devoured the news, for it was one kind of shame for a local storm to be overlooked but a far greater indignity to be defeated by the inevitability of the news schedule.

Late at night, when the girl shifted in her sleep and saw the moonlight flooding through the open window, she felt at peace for she had passed on some essential truth to her parents for safekeeping.

Years passed. The girl became a young woman, trying to realise her destiny and become a cog in some great wheel. She now lived in a misshapen city by a coarse grey river. A spell of inclement weather, both in the city, and the towns and districts further away, made her call her parents and speak to them over the phone. 

After the call ended, she realised they had paid their debt even as they were discussing mundane matters. With spirit and tenderness, she sat down and wrote, "Seven people were killed, including one in the city, when a cyclonic storm..."

Her boss summoned her soon after. He was a Party man, with a patient face and a droopy moustache, looking somewhat like a walrus. "Just rework the introduction, everything else is fine."

She waited for further instructions.

"It must begin by saying 'One person was killed in the city'", he explained. "Don't you see, the life of one person in the city is far more important than half a dozen in the districts."

(EOM)

SCALE (3)

It was still light by the time the storm died out. All their neighbours were outside, surveying the destruction. Part fearful and part wondering, they looked like those arrived on a new planet. 

Flowerpots in most balconies had turned into debris, a woman's nightdress had flown off the clothesline and now hung from an electricity pole. Vanquished trees lay on their sides, surrounded by the rubble of brick walls they had crashed against. Like any survivor, the earth looked exhausted but proud.

Soon, everyone learnt that not all localities had been as lucky as theirs. Somewhere, three people lay buried beneath a collapsed bus shelter. Several had been electrocuted by live wires while hurrying home to safety. This will make it to the evening news on television, the little girl's mother remarked to no one in particular. It made the little girl anxious, it had been two years since the mining disaster, the only time their dusty little town had made it to the news telecast from Calcutta. 

Once power was restored, she waited for the news bulletin. She felt a similar trepidation when question papers were handed out in her school's examination halls.

When those fifteen minutes came to an end, she sat with her mother and sulked. It was kind of last minute, her mother said, blaming the storm for its inconvenient timing. She felt they would have all the news by the next day, maybe some footage too. 

The next evening, the little girl felt more confident of the situation. Her hands were no longer clammy nor did her heart feel heavy and dull. She endured the speeches and meetings, road accidents and football matches. When the bulletin ended after the weather forecast, she stayed undefeated. 

She spent the next two hours waiting for the national news, where the logo of the news channel bounced across the map of the country to boisterous music. It was just a summer storm, not a big event, her father tried to reason. She sat through the bulletins in both Hindi and English, finding out about wars in distant lands and cricket in the Caribbeans.

By the third day of the vigil, her parents began to worry and consequently argue. Her father refused to believe the girl was unhappy. The mother sensed the disquiet but could not arrive at the reason. The girl responded to every kind of enticement but nothing could budge her while the news was on. 

Days turned into weeks. All through the day, the walls reverberated with the monotony of the news being read out. As evening crept in, the parents complained of nasty headaches. Fewer people visited now that the house had begun to reek of disappointment. Those that came preferred not to stay long.

SCALE (2)

As long as it raged, there was little one could do but sit inside and feel its power. Like every storm she could remember, there was a roaring crash of glass utensils within the first couple of minutes. Over time, the little girl had concluded that a mysterious, perverse family arranged their glassware on the windowsill at the mere whiff of a storm, just so they could hear them break.

Soon, the closed window shutters rattled, followed by a menacing whoosh, the sound of an angry wind dealing with whatever lay in its path.

With power disconnected, the room was pitch-dark. Now and then, ventilation shafts admitted the pink-white brilliance of a lightning crackling across the sky. It relieved the obscurity for an instant, then the room seemed darker than ever. To keep the roar of the thunder out, the girl kept her earlobes pressed with her fingers. She sat close to her mother, who looked more reliable during thunderstorms, and asked her when the wind would slow. "Once it starts raining," her mother replied. 

This turned out to be inaccurate. The wind's fury refused to abate, even after heavy sheets of rain had started lashing around. The wind blew as if it was looking for scores to settle, with a piercing whistle and cruel method. 

For the girl, it was an unfamiliar face of the storm. She turned to her parents. They were trying to grade the storm according to its severity, as if the storm was a creature of reason and understanding and it would somehow reduce the hazard it posed. 

"Listen to that sound, that is a tree being uprooted," her father told her. Her mother asked her to invoke the relevant deities. The girl realised her parents were omnipotent only till a bad storm struck. In a calamity, they were puny and useless.

SCALE (1)

By the second week of April, people were talking of nothing but the weather. An arid burning heat had taken control of the land; no one seemed to remember the last time it rained. 

Behind shuttered windows, women spent the afternoons roasting raw mangoes to make cooling sherbet. Their children, near diabolical with their sweaty armpits and itchy hair, crowded storefronts, exhausting their allowance buying synthetic fruit concentrates sold in tall glass bottles.

The nights were more pitiless than the day. The searing heat was all around, as if its source had not been the familiar sun but some other-worldly presence. Power supply was fickle. On most nights, the Boses had their dinner by the unsteady flicker of an oil lamp. Reluctant, they went to bed, which was hot like an angry wife or mistress. 

Every night they agreed that a thunderstorm was overdue. It was the nor'wester, the sudden havoc of summer afternoons, which could deliver some reprieve before people started dropping dead.

The Bose's daughter was now almost ten. Her worries had always been greater than her age, and that particular night she stayed awake, fearing the worst. She made nothing of her parents' unthinking optimism, the elusive storm troubled her. When Mrs Bose awoke the next morning, she saw the girl sitting near the foot of the bed. 

Has such a hot dry spell happened before, the girl asked. Her mother assured her that it had, that people always spoke of the weather in extreme terms because they forgot what the previous years had been like. 

Over the next several days, the little girl watched the horizon for dark clouds. It began to seem vain, she had just about resigned herself to watching everyone she knew boil to a slow death when the storm arrived one afternoon.

The sun disappeared behind a sky the colour of dull copper; in the still, sultry air, breathing seemed like an act of penance. At around four in the afternoon, the dead leaves came to life, whirling around in a mad fury. Then the storm broke.

MARRIAGE

Aloka, with her unyielding optimism, ended up being hit the hardest. She sat alone in the bedroom, without stirring. Every few minutes, she tried explaining herself to anyone who cared to listen, mostly neighbours streaming in and out. 

She needed to darn new school sweaters for the boys and had sent Molly to get some yarn from the Lepchas who set up temporary shops near the bus terminus in winter. They were wrapping up for the year, she had heard, and clearing their stock at dirt cheap rates. 

Molly was late, yes, but not enough to make her worry. There were all those shops selling cosmetics and trinkets nearby, the girls always lingered there. Those who listened half-heartedly to Aloka's account failed to fathom its relevance now that Molly had turned up married and all, and sat in the living room, beaming with excited satisfaction. Rinku and Rimpa flanked her on either side, looking at the thick splash of red vermilion on the parting of her hair, and breaking out in helpless giggles every few minutes.

Proloy, who had been summoned back from office, stood outside the building, chatting with Dr Debdoot Das, now his son-in-law. He excused himself at the first opportunity and went to talk to Aloka in the privacy of their bedroom.

Aloka threw her hands up in the air. "Now what?"

"One down, Aloka. One down. You know what it means, don't you?" In his fervour, he had gripped her tight on the shoulders. He let go seeing her wince with pain. "The twins, with their reputation? They'll get their own guys. The problems are getting solved, can't you see?"

"Are you insane?" Aloka looked at him, horrified. "That man is as old as you are. Molly has married him. A man old enough to be her father."

"Well, he's never married before. Makes quite a bit of money. And look how decent he is. He could have taken advantage of her. But he did not. One phone call, they meet. He proposes marriage. Done."

Aloka looked at him with a frozen stare of disbelief. 

"Have you not seen how happy she looks?" Proloy continued. "We'll host a reception, of course. Debdoot, he deserves his name. Messenger of god. What more could we have given our Molly?"

He got up, too excited to sit at one place for long. "And yes, do not wake me before ten next Saturday, come what may."

And indeed Molly sat in the drawing room, face flushed with happiness. She, Komolika Kundu, was now the wife of a doctor. She was Dr Mrs Debdoot Das. Her old-fashioned name had not been an obstacle. The homework of yet-to-be-born children had not stood in her path. And she still didn't have the faintest idea about The Grateful Dead.

(EOM)

December 2, 2016

 

MARRIAGE

"I'm sorry to intrude Mr Kundu," the cardiologist son spoke up. "I'd like to have a private word with my mother."

It took the Kundus a while to realise that they were being expelled from their own living room. They hurried inside and closed the door after them, then gathered behind it to listen.

"Why are you punishing him? He is completely recovered now, do you not know that?" The words were bounding out of the cardiologist with fearsome velocity. That was why he looked so ill at ease, Proloy realised. 

"Ronnie, calm down and have these samosas," Brishti Bose was saying. "Now imagine them paired with your father's cocktails. This is the rage our parties have been missing."

"Any maid can do that. Maybe we should hire her?"

"Calm down, I said. She is not going to be your wife. You already have one, so busy running her dad's nursing home, you barely see her."

"You are looking for revenge, that's all. That girl." The cardiologist lowered his voice. "That girl, may I remind you, is not qualified to see the inside of a college. Think of the genes, for heaven's sake."

"May I remind you where your brother was the week his classmates were writing their final college exam? Under a sofa, at a crack den, on Ripon Street."

The uncle cleared his throat and decided to interject at that point. "May I remind both of you that we are in a one-bedroom flat, not a palace, and they can hear everything you are saying?"

By the time Proloy went back to the room, the cardiologist was waiting to leave. His hands were tucked inside his trouser pockets. "Congratulations, Mr Kundu," he said. He was slow and deliberate now, grating the words between his teeth with relish. "Your daughter will marry my younger brother. Children will be born of that union. And then, one day, they will stumble over their homework but that is not our worry now, is it?" He strode out, taking the stairs, stiff with hurt pride and a sense of injustice. 

Brishti Bose followed him, her face sullen with anger. "I'm sorry for his behaviour," she said from the doorway.

The uncle had stood up and fished out a soiled visiting card from his wallet. He gave it to Proloy Kundu, with an apologetic smile. "Should have done this when we came in. My name is Dr Debdoot Das. The phone number's there."

"You practice in town?" Proloy asked.

"No, the collieries. More money. No lack of individuals with outstanding police warrants. People like me, we are their only hope against disease and death."

"It says here you worked at a government hospital before."

"Let's say I was wrongly accused, of this or that. Or as the newspapers say, I left under a cloud." He looked pleased at his own wit. "Anyway, you come to our parts, let me know. I live alone."

 "My work is local area development," Proloy replied. "Strictly within municipal limits."

Molly, imagining the room to be empty, had come in to clear the plates. The uncle turned towards her with a kind smile. "It was nice meeting you, Komolika."

The sound of Proloy's and the visitor's footsteps died on the stairs. The taxi was having trouble, revving its engine. Molly noticed a tiny scrap of paper, tucked under the cup and saucer from which the uncle had drank his tea. She opened it. Inside, in hurried, urgent writing, was a message. "Call me. I'm lonely."

****

MARRIAGE

In Bangla, the word 'Proloy' referred to a cataclysm. But he had always been unlike his name, his personality closer to a moss-infested duck pond, so that any pharmacy owner could walk in and make his children cry. 

He went back to the drawing room and opened the drapes. The tired light of the afternoon poured in. The curious neighbours from the adjoining flats had vanished from sight. The brevity of the lunch had convinced all that fate had failed Komolika Kundu, yet again.

****   

The evening's visitors had arrived from Calcutta that morning and checked into a hotel. The prospective groom had lost several valuable years of his life to a crippling cocaine addiction. His struggles were behind him now, and he had revived interest in two early passions, music and foreign languages.

Through the week, he taught French, German and Spanish to a bunch of school students from his parents' home in a posh neighbourhood in the southern part of the city. In the weekends, he picked up the guitar to jam with a different set of learners.

Over a telephone conversation, the parents had given veiled assurances to Proloy Kundu about their considerable financial heft, and how little it mattered what their son earned through his scattered efforts. The dabbler in music and languages had chosen not to make the four-hour train journey, sending his mother and elder brother to inspect the future wife instead.

The Kundus prepared for the visit with subdued expectation. With the passing of years, there came about new and clever ways of putting people in their places, Aloka had realised. It made her pour her heart into the one truth she was certain of and prepare tiny samosas with three different fillings. One with a mash of potatoes, peas and cashewnuts, the second stuffed with spiced chicken mince and a sweet one, containing grated coconut laced with jaggery and raisins. 

The Boses, mother and son, arrived at six sharp, and kept their metered taxi waiting in front of the building. The mother looked like she had been a striking beauty in her own days but bore the ravages of time with dignity. She was plump now, with bobbed hair and dark, tobacco-stained lips. She smiled with a warmth people usually reserved for long-lost friends.

Her older son, the cardiologist, was tall and lanky and wore a formal dinner suit. He looked agitated, in spite of spending the afternoon napping at the hotel. He kept thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets as if they contained the answers to whatever was churning his mind.

The Boses were accompanied by the woman's brother, a local doctor who was helping them around town. He was around Proloy's age and had the same aging good looks as his sister. He wore a maroon sweater over crumpled grey pants.

"Your house is unusually quiet for a family your size, Mr Kundu," Mrs Bose said, once they were seated. "Where did you dispose of the rest?"

Proloy hesitated for a moment, till Mrs Bose's robust laughter convinced him that her humour was sincere. 

"The movies," he replied. "With enough cash for some Chinese food later, there are food stalls around the movie hall."

"Call me Brishti," Mrs Bose replied. She slurped on her tea and turned to Molly. "I must begin by saying, I admire you Komolika. That's your name, right? You have worn a handloom saree, as if it's any other day. No ostentation at all. Takes guts. I'm very impressed."

Molly, somewhat alarmed at the unexpected praise, pushed the platter of crispy, browned samosas towards Brishti Bose. She took up a handful and began munching on them with obvious enjoyment.

"You know how I get my sarees? Say this jamdani I'm wearing? I don't go to shops, nuh-uh, not for me. You see Komolika, I have contacts among the weavers. No middlemen, no traders. Get the best, at half the cost. In fact, that is how we'll shop for the wedding too. No off-the-shelf business for my Komolika. Such a sweet girl."

Proloy's mind started racing. He was certain that good fortune did not arrive, so unexpected and vigorous, to small towns on winter evenings. But Brishti Bose was no fraud, her expensive attire and easy grace showed that affluence did not catch her by surprise. 

This must be some elaborate practical joke, he thought, some unusual game played by rich people to pass their idle hours. He stole a glance at his wife and daughter. Aloka's eyes were filled with tears, convinced that her painstaking effort with the samosas had finally wrought its magic. Molly had retreated behind her ancient goddess persona and showed no emotion.