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The year ends well. My friend and fellow editor, Kevin Mahoney, of Authortrek.com in the UK has been kind enough to put this up on his widely read website http://www.authortrek.com/
Pl visit
http://authortrek.com/author-success-stories/2009/12/30/
Kevin is also a published author and a publisher himself. I have seen his growth and let me tell you, it has been phenomenonal over the last three years. After Louise, it's Kevin; my friends from the West are being kind to me indeed.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
On Louise Penny's blog
On the last day of the decade, I am honoured by award-winning mystery series writer Louise Penny's mention of my blog in hers.
http://louisepenny.blogspot.com/
(Scroll down there, don't give up on finding me, please.)
Wishing everybody a very happy 2010.
http://louisepenny.blogspot.com/
(Scroll down there, don't give up on finding me, please.)
Wishing everybody a very happy 2010.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
A short story written when I can't for the life of me remember
CANCER
By Abhijit Dasgupta
+++++++++++++++
"Then die!" Suparna had blazed out of the room. Uddalok didn't even stir as the door shut with a heavy thud.
******************************************
At first, Suparna could not believe that this was the same Uddalok she used to know in college. "I have cancer, Suparna. It's just a matter of months. The liver…it's wasting away," he said, slowly, deliberately, making the pain come out through his words. He had a stubble and as he lay on the bed, Suparna asked, "How are you managing things…medicines…meals…the rest. Don't you have a help?"
"No. I manage. Anyway, I don't have the money for medicines. I have been to the doctor only twice. When I learnt about the cancer, I just let things drift…What's the point? I eat when I can and sit on that chair on the balcony waiting for death. It doesn't bother me. Not as long as the pain becomes crippling. Then there would be only one way out. Suicide. I am prepared for that too," Uddalok said without emotion.
Suparna felt like letting the tears go but she persuaded herself not to cry in front of the man who had loved her since she was in college and even attended her wedding, doing all the chores that are expected from a best friend.
Both of them knew that there was much, much more in the friendship than just trust, loyalty and dependence. There was love. It burnt like an active volcano inside Uddalok while Suparna's was restrained, giving only that much that was required from a dear friend. Uddalok never demanded more; he knew he wouldn't get any more.
Suparna kept her distance from Uddalok only for one reason: she was madly in love with Subhajit, her classmate, whom she was to marry later. Otherwise, as Suparna later reasoned to herself, there was nothing that could have stopped her from tying the knot with Uddalok. The guy had everything going for him.
It was just that Subhajit was better. More sober, kinder and definitely, more generous.
"You have never kept a single word of mine. Now that we meet after so many years and in these circumstances, can I ask you for one last favour? Promise you won't deny me that? I am a dying man and I have a request. Don't say no, Suparna. Na bolo na. I won't be able to take a rejection now."
Suparna thought for a moment, adjusting her glasses in the moist, humid heat of the small room. What could Uddalok want? What was there for her to give? She tried to focus as the noise from the office-going traffic filtered up two floors to the room. It wasn't a very healthy atmosphere to be in, she thought.
But she still loved Uddalok, a friendly love which had suddenly been rekindled in a strange fashion after she had heard that the man had cancer and would be dead in a couple of months. They had had great times with Uddalok at one time.
"What's your request? Boley phelo. Tell me…But I can't promise without hearing what you have in mind," she said, looking away from the man lying on the bed.
" I want to make love to you. Today. Now. Right now. Ekkhuni. Tumi na bolle ami morey jabo. I will die at your feet if you say no."
Suparna was first stunned, then surprised and, finally, disgusted. " You are crazy. I had heard cancer kills, didn't know it makes people mad too. How dare you say such a thing, Uddalok? How can you even make such a request? You haven't changed, Uddalok. You still are the same selfish man I always knew you were. But how, how on earth could you imagine that I would say yes? ?" Suparna's eyes were burning, a lot of it in anger but some of it with pure embarrassment.
Uddalok spoke silently. " Because I am convinced that you still love me."
Suparna sprang up like a goddess in anger. "Then you are wrong. I was never in love with you. I have always treated you as a friend. If you have not been clever enough to understand, it's your funeral." And then, she became cruel. " Anyway, that's not too far."
Uddalok suddenly seemed to turn into a corpse. He turned towards the fall, not facing Suparna any longer.
"Ekbar, just ekbar. Once, Suparna," Uddalok said feebly, still not facing her. "Before I die."
" Then die!" Suparna blazed out of the room, not looking back for a second.
************************************
Uddalok had always been the undisputed gang leader, the mastaan who always as if he owned the world. He had many female admirers, most of whom he ignored while he had countless rivals for whom he only had contempt. He was a chain-smoker and there were rumours in the college canteen that the smart, six-footer Uddalok had once challenged a friend that he would light up in class, a feat which he achieved without the lecturer realising what was happening behind his back. Literally, that is, because the smart guy had done his deed when the older man was writing on the blackboard and stubbed out the just-lit cigarette in a matter of seconds. He won the bet anyway though there were fights over whether lighting up and stubbing the cigarette immediately was part of the deal. Most of the girls in class supported Uddalok. Smart, handsome guys could be crooked and devious but they always had the women behind them in college. On top of that, Uddalok was a trained actor. He regularly played the hero at college functions.
This was a decade and half ago. Apart from the countless others, Uddalok worshipped himself as if he was his own god. The rest of the world meant little to him. Suparna liked and bonded with him but ignored him whenever she felt the need to do so. Uddalok, on his part, was madly in love. If there was one woman in the world he could die for, it was Suparna. She knew that. Whenever she talked to Uddalok, she made it apparent as to who was the boss.
Surprisingly, Uddalok never ever cold-shouldered Subhajit. They were not the best of friends but the relationship had always remained cordial.
Somehow, Suparna was always slightly confused and circumspect about the two men in her life sharing a cigarette together. It made her feel uneasy though she did not have an answer as to why.
Uddalok had never even touched her, not on any pretext ever.
***********************************
They had lost contact after college but Suparna and Subhajit both made it a point to visit Uddalok at his home at Hatibagan in old North Calcutta to invite him for their wedding. That was almost five years after they had graduated and not met even once, all three of them busy furthering their careers. Subhajit had landed a lecturer's job and was now absorbed in his Shelley, Tennyson and Wordsworth. He was rising and he gave everything to his career, slogging both at home with tuitions while attending every class with the same seriousness as if that was his first one.
Suparna was unambitous; her only thoughts lay with Subhajit's success. She was herself a good student and after much persuasion by Subhajit had taken up a school teacher's job in a renowned Montessori school. She was happy with children and the kids worshipped her.
The stage was set for marriage.
Uddalok bounded out of his ground floor room as he saw Suparna and Subhajit at the gate.
"Arrey, tora? You guys? Ah! I know…It's been five years… Kotodin pore toder dekhlam…Long time Where's the invitation card? Come, come inside. Let's have some tea."
After some small talk, they left, with Suparna handing over Uddalok their new address. Subhajit had already bought an apartment on the Bypass. Both of them had done up the house; it was a pretty picture. Uddalok said that he would be there at the wedding.
In the event, he started visiting Suparna's house from the very next day and, in a matter of days, made himself so indispensable that not a single major decision was made by the family without consulting him. Suparna did not quite like this and told her father as much.
"Ah, Buri! You fuss over everything. He doesn't have a job. You were college friends. If he wants to do this much for you, what's the problem? He means well, let me tell you," he father had reprimanded her. Suparna let it be, keeping quiet but an uneasiness lurked deep inside her which she tucked away.
Uddalok was almost the host at the wedding. The family was later to confide in private gatherings that the marriage would not have gone off so smoothly had it not been for this bohemian young, handsome man with a stubble.
A relative_ there is bound to be at least one such presence at all Indian weddings_ even ventured to ask Suparna's mother whether she thought Uddalok was a better candidate for her daughter's hand than Subhajit.
Suparna's mother had looked the other way and said, with some sense of remorse, " Ki korbo? What could I have done? It was Buri's choice. And anyway, Uddalok doesn't have a job." Then, switching topic, she said, " When are you visiting Subhajit's new apartment? They have everything there. The works. My son-in-law has been a good choice." The relative would smirk and move away.
After that, it had been a decade. Suparna suddenly met Uddalok at Ballygunge near her school, of which she was now principal, absolutely by accident but not without its inherent sense of drama that had always been Uddalok's calling card.
As their eyes met, both of them forgot that they were now pushing 40.
*****************************************
Suparna's car had conked out that morning and she had been forced to take a cab to school. Subhajit had offered to drop her but she had refused saying that she was already late. After school hours, which was around 5 in the evening, she ambled out of the gate, sure that there would be a cab waiting somewhere on the main road.
Suddenly, she noticed a cab screech to a halt in front of her. She looked through the front window and told the driver of her destination. Before the driver could even respond, a strong, male hand opened the rear door and was on the seat in an instant. An indignant Suparna didn't even look inside and curtly told the driver, " Onake namte bolun. Ami agey dhorechi . Ask him to get out, I got you first."
There's was a moment's silence as the driver tried to salvage the situation by looking back and telling the man , " Sir, please. She called me first."
Uddalok's gentle voice gave the answer in typically his style, "Don't worry, Driver ji. She will come with me."
Suparna faintly recognized the voice, and then she looked in, sharply exclaiming, " Tumi? My God, the last person I expected was you. Where are you going?'
" Home, Tumi? You going home? You still work in this school?"
" I am the principal,'she sounded proud. " Anyway, you go. I will get another cab. Hope you are well. Drop in sometime. Subhajit will love that."
"And you…?" He left it hanging, definitely deliberately.
" Of course, I will love it too. Drop in any time."
" You get in first. I will drop you home. Goppo kora jabe. We can talk in the meantime."
Suparna was only too willing. It would have been a pain to get a cab now. Also, she was meeting Uddalok after ages and she too wanted to talk.
The spark had suddenly come alive again.
******************************************
They talked and they talked. Old times, middle times and present times. It was a long journey and with the traffic snarl-ups holding back their cab every fifteen minutes, they had time on their hands.
" You have become thinner. You unwell or something?"Suparna asked with concern.
Uddalok shrugged. " Jani na. Majehe majhe mathata ghorey. The head reels, could be blood pressure. Otherwise, I am fine."
" Why didn't you get married?"
" Because you married Subhajit," Uddalok let out one of his huge laughs. Suparna joined in too.The man hadn't changed one bit.
" There's still time. We are 38, aren't we?"
" Never counted, should be. I don't think marriage will suit me, not without you." Suparna suddenly felt a chill down her spine as Uddalok's voice turned slightly serious, for the the first time since they had met.
After exchanging numbers and addresses. Suparna got down. She asked Uddalok upstairs but he had a tuition to go to after home and left. Suparna noticed_she always noticed these small things_ that Uddalok didn't even look back once after the cab had reversed gear.
Uddalok had now shifted to a one-roomed apartment selling of his ancestral house which was difficult to maintain with the upkeep costs being too high for him to afford. He now lived in Beckbagan off Park Circus and spent most of his time gallivanting on the streets of Calcutta and taking tuitions for a living. The rst of the time, his single-room apartment was always full of friends and cigarettes, a few bottles of whiskey making forays once in a while. Uddalok lived a life of a bohemian, which his friends often told him, reminded them of the stories that they had heard of the Calcutta of the Sixties and early Seventies.
Uddalok merely laughed. "If I had been born a century ago, I would have still been the same, " he said. He still did a lot of reading but his handsome features had taken a beating, though the charisma of his youth still returned in flashes which earned him admirers even now.
But he kept off women.
Today, after meeting Suparna, he suddenly felt lighter, happier. The mist in his head was clearing; he wanted to do somersaults on the streets. The blood pressure, if indeed it was that, was not bothering him now. He bought a half bottle of whiskey and went home. He would miss his tuitions that evening.
Dead drunk, around 11 in the evening, he called up Suparna. She picked up the phone.
He was slurring.
" I am drunk. Just because of you…no.no.no.I don't drink, Suparna. Only today. Just because of you. Only today. I want to see you now. Please come to me. I am not drunk. You come. Pleeease. I am feeling so lonely. Ten years, I hadn't met you for ten years. I must meet you know. Erom koro na, Suparna. Chole esho, please. Do come. Now…" He kept on repeating himself.
Suparna, the little that she knew of drunkenness, disconnected. It was useless talking to someone who wasn't in his senses. The phone rang again. She kept it off the hook.
She would call to check Uddalok out in the morning.
Subhajit, who was preparing to turn in, called out. "Who was that?"
" Wrong number!" Suparna, removed her glasses, wiped them with her saree, and moved inside the bedroom. She was still a very beautiful woman.
*******************************
In the morning, it was Uddalok who called. He seemed nervous, ashamed and embarrassed. " Did I say anything wrong?" he queried.
" You have said wrong things for fifteen years. How does once more make any diference?" Suparna found herself laughing like college times.
" I am sorry. This will never happen again."
" It's okay. But what happened? Why did you have to drink? You have got high pressure, you shouldn't drink so much."
" I don't drink…Yesterday…I don't know what came over me."
" Beshi phurti hoyechilo. You were on top of the world." Suparana was still laughing.
For the first time, Uddalok let out a sound which resembled a laugh. "Will you come home today? I need to talk to you."
" Not today, but I will. I will call you before I go."
" Make it fast. There may not be too much time left."
" Why? You got a job outside Calcutta?"
" Nah! Not a job. Esho. Bolbo. I will tell you when you come. But fast, Suparna, fast. I don't have time left."
" Don't talk in riddles. Okay, I will come. I will call you anyway."
Uddalok hung up.
For a while, Suparna stood beside the phone wondering what Uddalok had meant by saying he little time left.
Subhajit called out. " Who's that?"
" Wrong number!" Suparna replied without hesitation.
" Jani na baba tomar byaparshyapar. Never quite understood your ways. This is the first time I have heard someone talk for ten minutes to an unknown guy. Was the voice like that of Amitabh Bachchan?' Subhajit went back to his newspaper after laughing heartily.
Suparna joined in, but not with mirth.
****************************************************
It was three weeks later that Suparna found time to go to Uddalok's place. There were test papers to be examined, Subhajit had been down with a strange, unknown fever for almost a week and refused to allow her to go work like a child, and, uppermost, Suparna somehow felt a trifle uncomfortable going to Uddalok's place. She did not know why though she asked herself this question many times over. At least on one occasion, she had even prepared to go to Uddalok's place, then rejecting the idea at the moment because she felt uncomfortable at the last minute.
She had not mentioned meeting Uddalok to Subhajit. Again, why, didn't have an answer to. They could have both gone but no, she wanted to go alone. She did not hide this from herself. She wanted to meet Uddalok alone.
In the meantime, Uddalok had not called even once, wounding Suparna's pride perhaps.
But that morning, she called Uddalok and said that she would be there in the evening. Subhajit's fever had gone and he was attending college, she had finished correcting her exam papers and that morning, she decided to go. This was being rude to an old friend, she told herself.
Uddalok sounded mellow. "Come, I will be home," he said.
******************************
"Then die!" Suparna had blazed out of the room. She was in a daze, her head swirling as she thought of what had happened, at Uddalok's devious audacity and finally, because of her own gullibility. Obviously, the man hadn't changed one bit and was only using his disease to get something which he had always desired but never got. And never would, Suparna gritted her teeth as she got into her car.
She drove back home only to find Subhajit lying on the bed. This was not the time that her husband was usually home. But Uddalok had driven out common sense from her head for some time now and she dropped herself into the nearest sofa, her thoughts going back to Uddalok's request: " Just ekbar, Suparna. Just once." She stood up, unmindful of her husband who was lying with a pillow on his face, covering his eyes from the lights as it were, and stormed into the bathroom.
As she stood naked before the full-length mirror, Suparna looked at herself. She was 5 foot 4 inches tall, very tall by Indian standards, and her face still retained some of the innocence of the years gone by. Her nose was somewhat of an aberration in an otherwise well-etched lovely face, it seemed to curl upwards at the end giving her a snooty look which put off many people who had not had the privilege of knowing her well enough. She was dark, her breasts were still ample with large nipples, slightly sloping on either sides, the effect of both age as well as natural gravity. She had a small belly, the navel placed slightly higher than is usual in most females and her vaginal hair resembled almost a small bush.
Subhajit continuously teased her about that. "Junglee! " he told her whenever they made love. "You must have come straight from the jungles…I wonder where all that hair comes from. Shala, ekta choto jungle. A small jungle you have there…" In return, Suparna would bite him hard in his underbelly, just above his genitals and he would scream in pain.
Their love-making was always noisy. Suparna sometimes thanked God that she was childless.
Suparna again measured herself in the mirror. She had a good enough figure to match even 30-year-olds now and she stifled a proud laugh when she thought how her previous principal had praised her publicly in the staff room, which had the other women colleagues squirming, and Suparna smiling.
Suparna realised, even as she continued to look at herself in the mirror, that she still looked every inch a very proud woman.
That pride had been badly bruised today.
Suparna let the shower take over. She needed to cool down.
*************************************
In the night, Suparna tossed and turned while Subhajit slept soundly. He had had a terrible headache and Suparna had given him some sleeping tablets. He was snoring.
As the night progressed, Suparna realised she would not get any sleep. Uddalok came revisiting her everytime she tought that she had fallen asleep. Finally, at the crack of dawn, she did fall asleep. When she woke up a couple of hours later with a heavy head and swollen eyes, she remembered that she had had a dream. In the dream, she had gone back to school and they, school friends all, had gone together for a film. The film was Anand, in which Rajesh Khanna played a cancer patient. The film had not left a single eye dry after every screening throughout India . That was way back when she was in senior school. Suparna wondered why she had suddenly dreamt of Anand.
The answer didn't take long to find out.
The phone rang. It was Uddalok.
" Rege acho? Angry?" Uddalok sounded meek and apologetic.
Suparna disconnected.
The phone rang again. This time, persistently. Suparna moved around the room trying to ignore the monotonous drone of the phone and finally found herself saying, "Hello?"
" Mam, this is Cutts, the butcher…" Uddalok was laughing feebly.
Suparna couldn't help but smile as she remembered how they used to tease her in college when she read Tintin comic books in the common room. Uddalok, whenever he saw her reading Tintin, used to act it out perfectly, as if phone in hand, and say grimly, "Mam, this is Cutts the butcher." The entire common room would burst into laughter and Suparna had to tuck away Tintin for home. There was such innocent fun those days.
The way he had said it now, it seemed like college had been yesterday. However, she couldn't get over what he had also told her the other day.
"Uddalok, don't call me ever again." He voice was tough and stern.
"Why did you take the call then?" Did she discern a mocking tone in his voice? No, she assured herself, he was in no state to do that now.
"You would have kept on calling. And that is disturbing."
"No, Suparna. You took the call because you wanted to talk to me. Be honest to yourself."
Suparna banged down the phone. She felt let down by herself.
******************************
A month passed and life had returned to its own boring normalcy. College, home, college. Uddalok returned at times in her thoughts but she brushed them away. Subhajit was having bouts of migraine and the doctor had advised him to get his eyes checked. Suparana had forced him to go to a homeopath and Subhajit reluctantly took the pills though they did not seem to help much. After some time, Suparna noticed that Subhajit had dropped the pills. Even his eyes were okay, there was no need to wear glasses. It was a migraine which, as everybody knew, had no cure. You had to bear it. Subhajit did precisely that though late into the nights, he would sometimes wake up Suparna and plead, " Suparna, aar parchi na. It's killing me. Will you massage the forehead for some time?"
Suparna did that without as much as him asking a second time and kept him on a diet of sleeping tablets every night. She had gone to the doctor herself. The medicine man had prescribed a small dosage of diazepam, which could do no damage.
Uddalok was far from her thoughts.
One day, on a bright summer afternoon, the phone rang. It was Suman, a college friend with whom she was in touch even though not too frequently.She was surprised. " What's happened? Tui, hotath? Anything wrong?" she asked.
Suman was now working as a software consultant and had a huge clientele. He was not the sort to waste time.
" Porna, Uddalok is dying. He refused hospital admission and things went out of hand. I have a request. In the state that he is…it's terrible…he has asked me to tell you that his last wish would be to see you once. Just once. Na bolish na, Suparna. Don't say no. That man is dying. After all, he was a friend at one time. And he loved you genuinely. Ja, ekbar ja. Meet him. It can't do you any harm." Suman was pleading.
Suparna heard him out and then tried to understand whether Suman knew what Uddalok had proposed to her during their last meeting. The tone in Suman's voice did not reveal much. It seemed an honest request to a friend from another. Suparna decided to keep quiet.
" Okay, let me see."
" Please. It could even be a couple of days away. Taratari jash, Porna. Visit him as early as you can." Suman disconnected.
Suparna thought for a while the dialed Uddalok's number. There was no harm in calling him anyway. The phone went on ringing. She disconnected, tried again. The phone kept away droning.
Suparna felt drained. She could feel small beads of sweat running across her cheek. What had happened? Had they forcibly taken him to a hospital? Wasn't he in any shape to take calls? Or, was he…was he…already dead?
Suparna changed fast. She drove like a woman possessed. After a long time, she confided in herself. Yes, she was in love with Uddalok too. She was not prepared to see him die.
***********************************************************
Uddalok was dressed to kill. As Suparna breezed into the room, she was shaken and somewhat stunned by what she saw. The cancer patient who the world knew would be dead in some time was looking fresh and smart. He had not shaved for some time now, but the radiance in his face was back. Uddalok was sitting cross-legged on the bed, a newspaper in his hands. He had just had a bath and was wearing a bright, blazing red shirt and spotlessly white pajamas.
He was smoking.
Suparna was shocked.
" Eki? You smoking? Suman called…he said things were bad…I rushed… Byaparta ki? You don't look sick…" She was taking deep breaths as she dropped herself on the bed beside Uddalok.
He let her get back her breath. She was looking at him with amazement.
" Tell me, Uddalok…What is the matter? Why did Suman call?"
" I asked him to."
"Why?"
" Because I am dying. Suparna, I am trying to make the most of my last days. The doctor has asked me not to smoke. I have not listened to him. What's the point in dying like all the others? I will, if I can, drink life to the lees till I am no more. The pain is taken care of by heavy dosage injections, I sleep most of the time, but today I had a gut feeling you would come…I dressed up, wore this shirt…I know you like red…and took out the pajamas from the cupboard after many months. And this is the second cigarette that I am having. I was getting impatient. Thank God, you came…"
He coughed a little and seemed to give in to the energy he had just spent talking. The cough continued; suddenly, Uddalok reeled and fell on the bed, his head hitting the pillow, only just about avoiding a sharp blow against the bed rest.
He lay on his stomach and let out hiccups which seemed to Suparna as far cries from another world, the wrenching sounds indicating a pain which nobody but the sufferer understands. The pain of cancer.
Suparna came closer to Uddalok. " Koshto hocche? Is the pain unbearable? Want some water? Any medicines…painkillers? Shall I call the doctor?"
Uddalok turned towards her and locked her hands in both his palms. " Ki labh ? What's the point? I am now used to it. Don't worry, I will be okay. Just pass me that capsule on the table, please."
Suparna rushed to the table, poured some water from the jug to a tumbler and handed over the medicine to him. Uddalok finished the entire glass of water with the capsule.
" Offff!" He looked above at the ceiling. " Ar kotodin? How many more days, my lord? I can't take this any longer." Then he looked at Suparna.
"Will you help me to the bathroom?"
" Sure…Esho." He caught hold of her. He felt her softness against him and his muscles tightened. She moved him towards the bathroom. She found it strange that a man who was in the terminal stages of cancer could have muscles like steel.
"Hormones, must be" she assured herself, without the slightest inkling of what hormones meant. She had simply heard that hormones were prescribed for terminally ill patients.
*************************************
Uddalok came out of the bathroom, looking better, having splashed his face with cold water.
" Feeling better?" Suparna asked.
" Hmmm. Slightly. I would like to get some sleep. Ektu amar pashe bosho. Please sit beside me."
"Of course, I will. You try and get some sleep first."
Uddalok lay straight on the bed, his face wracked by pain which he tried not to show.
Suparna sat beside him. He closed his eyes, took her hands, and kissed them. She did not object. He would fall asleep anyway, she thought.
" Ghoom ashche na, Suparna. I can't sleep." As he broke the silence suddenly, Suparna took her hands away, keeping them folded on her lap.
" Can I put my head on your lap, Suparna? Please…??"
For a few moments, she kept quiet. Then she looked at his face. She could see a prayer there.
She didn't think for a moment and moved towards him, taking his head on his lap.
As the minutes passed, and silence took over, she did not make any attempt to resist. His hands went all over her, his tongue entered her mouth as if searching for life itself, and as he undressed, Suparna could see his muscles ripple.
They made love. As she removed her saree, she only thought of her husband for a fleeting moment. For the next half an hour, it was only Uddalok, Uddalok and more of Uddalok.
She did not feel guilty; she had just given in to a prayer.
As she wore her saree, she suddenly thought that she had traced a faint flavour of imported perfume in Uddalok's armpits.
Uddalok came out of the bathroom after a wash.
" Suparna," he had a smile as he lit up again. He had brushed his hair too. And now the perfume was all over in the room.
" Don't smoke again," she shrieked.
" Why shouldn't I smoke?"
"Don't be silly…you know why!" There was reprimand in her voice.
There was mockery in Uddalok's. " It's you who has been downright silly. I expected you to be cleverer, Mrs Suparna Ganguly. Every pride comes before a fall… mone achey?.. Remember, how you spurned me? Remember how you used to insult me when all the other girls were falling at my feet. That day, the day you walked away with Subhajit, I promised myself that I would not allow you to go unscathed. Silly woman, you were too proud for your own good."
Then, without mincing words, he said roughly. "Remember what a good actor I was in college? That finally has come to use, darling."
Suparna was too stunned to react. She felt the room go round and round. A searing pain ripped through her heart. What was this man saying?
"I did not ever have cancer, Mrs Ganguly. With your best wishes, I will live a hundred years. And now, you may go back to your loving husband. By the way, please call Suman and thank him for me…I asked him to make that call. A good friend…that Suman…never lets me down."
Uddalok had not yet finished. "You enjoyed it too, didn't you? "
He lit up another cigarette. Uddalok had always been a chain smoker. "Where's the bloody bottle? I need to celebrate. This one has been the best in a long time," were the last mocking words she heard before she left the room in a daze.
******************************
Suparna went completely blank. The charade, the cheating, the diabolical drama to which she had been drawn like a small bird crashing into the windscreen of a high-flying airplane had left her sapped of energy, intelligence and confidence. Worse, she had not anticipated such evil.
She entered the sitting room, her hair tousled, her saree crumpled, her face a picture of desolation. The pain crept from her chest to the head. This was not a headache borne of migraine, this was simple helplessness casting its shadow on her body. The heart had given way, it was now time for the body to slip on soft ground.
Subhajit was sitting on the sofa, his head cradled in his two palms, a sheaf of papers lying in front of him. He looked up at Suparna.
" Edike esho. Come here," Subhajit seemed to whisper. There was no strength in his voice.
Suparna walked as if in a trance towards him.
" Look at this. Three months. That's what they have given me," his voice lapsed into a child-like whimpering cry.
Suparna did not even look at the papers he had handed her. She only mumbled, " Ki? What's it?"
Subhajit almost slumped in the sofa. "I kept it away from you all these days. I thought that everything would be okay. It's not. Dr Sanyal gave his final report to me today. I have three months to live."
Every word bounced off Suparna.
" Suparna, I have brain cancer."
Strangely, Suparna sat rooted to her sofa. After what seemed like decades to Subhajit, she spoke: " Tumio? You too?"
Then she stood up, walked straight to her husband and slapped him across the face, a stinging one which made his cheek bleed from the impact of her engagement ring made of gold.
Subhajit, weak and in despair, fell down on the ground. She didn't even look at him.
Without a word, she strode back to the sofa where she had earlier been sitting. She loosened her hair, threw her head back over the backrest, and then Suparna Ganguly started laughing, a coarse and heavy laughter which was not normal.
Her laughter did not stop for the next ten minutes. The she walked up to her husband.
"You too? Cancer, cancer…" she whispered in Subhajit's ears.
The whisper grew into a groan and then she lurched forward, fell in a heap across her husband, grasping her chest in a last-ditch attempt to gain air. Her face had the contortions of a stricken, painful death.
Suparna Ganguly had died of a massive heart attack.
Cancer had killed.
THE END
By Abhijit Dasgupta
+++++++++++++++
"Then die!" Suparna had blazed out of the room. Uddalok didn't even stir as the door shut with a heavy thud.
******************************************
At first, Suparna could not believe that this was the same Uddalok she used to know in college. "I have cancer, Suparna. It's just a matter of months. The liver…it's wasting away," he said, slowly, deliberately, making the pain come out through his words. He had a stubble and as he lay on the bed, Suparna asked, "How are you managing things…medicines…meals…the rest. Don't you have a help?"
"No. I manage. Anyway, I don't have the money for medicines. I have been to the doctor only twice. When I learnt about the cancer, I just let things drift…What's the point? I eat when I can and sit on that chair on the balcony waiting for death. It doesn't bother me. Not as long as the pain becomes crippling. Then there would be only one way out. Suicide. I am prepared for that too," Uddalok said without emotion.
Suparna felt like letting the tears go but she persuaded herself not to cry in front of the man who had loved her since she was in college and even attended her wedding, doing all the chores that are expected from a best friend.
Both of them knew that there was much, much more in the friendship than just trust, loyalty and dependence. There was love. It burnt like an active volcano inside Uddalok while Suparna's was restrained, giving only that much that was required from a dear friend. Uddalok never demanded more; he knew he wouldn't get any more.
Suparna kept her distance from Uddalok only for one reason: she was madly in love with Subhajit, her classmate, whom she was to marry later. Otherwise, as Suparna later reasoned to herself, there was nothing that could have stopped her from tying the knot with Uddalok. The guy had everything going for him.
It was just that Subhajit was better. More sober, kinder and definitely, more generous.
"You have never kept a single word of mine. Now that we meet after so many years and in these circumstances, can I ask you for one last favour? Promise you won't deny me that? I am a dying man and I have a request. Don't say no, Suparna. Na bolo na. I won't be able to take a rejection now."
Suparna thought for a moment, adjusting her glasses in the moist, humid heat of the small room. What could Uddalok want? What was there for her to give? She tried to focus as the noise from the office-going traffic filtered up two floors to the room. It wasn't a very healthy atmosphere to be in, she thought.
But she still loved Uddalok, a friendly love which had suddenly been rekindled in a strange fashion after she had heard that the man had cancer and would be dead in a couple of months. They had had great times with Uddalok at one time.
"What's your request? Boley phelo. Tell me…But I can't promise without hearing what you have in mind," she said, looking away from the man lying on the bed.
" I want to make love to you. Today. Now. Right now. Ekkhuni. Tumi na bolle ami morey jabo. I will die at your feet if you say no."
Suparna was first stunned, then surprised and, finally, disgusted. " You are crazy. I had heard cancer kills, didn't know it makes people mad too. How dare you say such a thing, Uddalok? How can you even make such a request? You haven't changed, Uddalok. You still are the same selfish man I always knew you were. But how, how on earth could you imagine that I would say yes? ?" Suparna's eyes were burning, a lot of it in anger but some of it with pure embarrassment.
Uddalok spoke silently. " Because I am convinced that you still love me."
Suparna sprang up like a goddess in anger. "Then you are wrong. I was never in love with you. I have always treated you as a friend. If you have not been clever enough to understand, it's your funeral." And then, she became cruel. " Anyway, that's not too far."
Uddalok suddenly seemed to turn into a corpse. He turned towards the fall, not facing Suparna any longer.
"Ekbar, just ekbar. Once, Suparna," Uddalok said feebly, still not facing her. "Before I die."
" Then die!" Suparna blazed out of the room, not looking back for a second.
************************************
Uddalok had always been the undisputed gang leader, the mastaan who always as if he owned the world. He had many female admirers, most of whom he ignored while he had countless rivals for whom he only had contempt. He was a chain-smoker and there were rumours in the college canteen that the smart, six-footer Uddalok had once challenged a friend that he would light up in class, a feat which he achieved without the lecturer realising what was happening behind his back. Literally, that is, because the smart guy had done his deed when the older man was writing on the blackboard and stubbed out the just-lit cigarette in a matter of seconds. He won the bet anyway though there were fights over whether lighting up and stubbing the cigarette immediately was part of the deal. Most of the girls in class supported Uddalok. Smart, handsome guys could be crooked and devious but they always had the women behind them in college. On top of that, Uddalok was a trained actor. He regularly played the hero at college functions.
This was a decade and half ago. Apart from the countless others, Uddalok worshipped himself as if he was his own god. The rest of the world meant little to him. Suparna liked and bonded with him but ignored him whenever she felt the need to do so. Uddalok, on his part, was madly in love. If there was one woman in the world he could die for, it was Suparna. She knew that. Whenever she talked to Uddalok, she made it apparent as to who was the boss.
Surprisingly, Uddalok never ever cold-shouldered Subhajit. They were not the best of friends but the relationship had always remained cordial.
Somehow, Suparna was always slightly confused and circumspect about the two men in her life sharing a cigarette together. It made her feel uneasy though she did not have an answer as to why.
Uddalok had never even touched her, not on any pretext ever.
***********************************
They had lost contact after college but Suparna and Subhajit both made it a point to visit Uddalok at his home at Hatibagan in old North Calcutta to invite him for their wedding. That was almost five years after they had graduated and not met even once, all three of them busy furthering their careers. Subhajit had landed a lecturer's job and was now absorbed in his Shelley, Tennyson and Wordsworth. He was rising and he gave everything to his career, slogging both at home with tuitions while attending every class with the same seriousness as if that was his first one.
Suparna was unambitous; her only thoughts lay with Subhajit's success. She was herself a good student and after much persuasion by Subhajit had taken up a school teacher's job in a renowned Montessori school. She was happy with children and the kids worshipped her.
The stage was set for marriage.
Uddalok bounded out of his ground floor room as he saw Suparna and Subhajit at the gate.
"Arrey, tora? You guys? Ah! I know…It's been five years… Kotodin pore toder dekhlam…Long time Where's the invitation card? Come, come inside. Let's have some tea."
After some small talk, they left, with Suparna handing over Uddalok their new address. Subhajit had already bought an apartment on the Bypass. Both of them had done up the house; it was a pretty picture. Uddalok said that he would be there at the wedding.
In the event, he started visiting Suparna's house from the very next day and, in a matter of days, made himself so indispensable that not a single major decision was made by the family without consulting him. Suparna did not quite like this and told her father as much.
"Ah, Buri! You fuss over everything. He doesn't have a job. You were college friends. If he wants to do this much for you, what's the problem? He means well, let me tell you," he father had reprimanded her. Suparna let it be, keeping quiet but an uneasiness lurked deep inside her which she tucked away.
Uddalok was almost the host at the wedding. The family was later to confide in private gatherings that the marriage would not have gone off so smoothly had it not been for this bohemian young, handsome man with a stubble.
A relative_ there is bound to be at least one such presence at all Indian weddings_ even ventured to ask Suparna's mother whether she thought Uddalok was a better candidate for her daughter's hand than Subhajit.
Suparna's mother had looked the other way and said, with some sense of remorse, " Ki korbo? What could I have done? It was Buri's choice. And anyway, Uddalok doesn't have a job." Then, switching topic, she said, " When are you visiting Subhajit's new apartment? They have everything there. The works. My son-in-law has been a good choice." The relative would smirk and move away.
After that, it had been a decade. Suparna suddenly met Uddalok at Ballygunge near her school, of which she was now principal, absolutely by accident but not without its inherent sense of drama that had always been Uddalok's calling card.
As their eyes met, both of them forgot that they were now pushing 40.
*****************************************
Suparna's car had conked out that morning and she had been forced to take a cab to school. Subhajit had offered to drop her but she had refused saying that she was already late. After school hours, which was around 5 in the evening, she ambled out of the gate, sure that there would be a cab waiting somewhere on the main road.
Suddenly, she noticed a cab screech to a halt in front of her. She looked through the front window and told the driver of her destination. Before the driver could even respond, a strong, male hand opened the rear door and was on the seat in an instant. An indignant Suparna didn't even look inside and curtly told the driver, " Onake namte bolun. Ami agey dhorechi . Ask him to get out, I got you first."
There's was a moment's silence as the driver tried to salvage the situation by looking back and telling the man , " Sir, please. She called me first."
Uddalok's gentle voice gave the answer in typically his style, "Don't worry, Driver ji. She will come with me."
Suparna faintly recognized the voice, and then she looked in, sharply exclaiming, " Tumi? My God, the last person I expected was you. Where are you going?'
" Home, Tumi? You going home? You still work in this school?"
" I am the principal,'she sounded proud. " Anyway, you go. I will get another cab. Hope you are well. Drop in sometime. Subhajit will love that."
"And you…?" He left it hanging, definitely deliberately.
" Of course, I will love it too. Drop in any time."
" You get in first. I will drop you home. Goppo kora jabe. We can talk in the meantime."
Suparna was only too willing. It would have been a pain to get a cab now. Also, she was meeting Uddalok after ages and she too wanted to talk.
The spark had suddenly come alive again.
******************************************
They talked and they talked. Old times, middle times and present times. It was a long journey and with the traffic snarl-ups holding back their cab every fifteen minutes, they had time on their hands.
" You have become thinner. You unwell or something?"Suparna asked with concern.
Uddalok shrugged. " Jani na. Majehe majhe mathata ghorey. The head reels, could be blood pressure. Otherwise, I am fine."
" Why didn't you get married?"
" Because you married Subhajit," Uddalok let out one of his huge laughs. Suparna joined in too.The man hadn't changed one bit.
" There's still time. We are 38, aren't we?"
" Never counted, should be. I don't think marriage will suit me, not without you." Suparna suddenly felt a chill down her spine as Uddalok's voice turned slightly serious, for the the first time since they had met.
After exchanging numbers and addresses. Suparna got down. She asked Uddalok upstairs but he had a tuition to go to after home and left. Suparna noticed_she always noticed these small things_ that Uddalok didn't even look back once after the cab had reversed gear.
Uddalok had now shifted to a one-roomed apartment selling of his ancestral house which was difficult to maintain with the upkeep costs being too high for him to afford. He now lived in Beckbagan off Park Circus and spent most of his time gallivanting on the streets of Calcutta and taking tuitions for a living. The rst of the time, his single-room apartment was always full of friends and cigarettes, a few bottles of whiskey making forays once in a while. Uddalok lived a life of a bohemian, which his friends often told him, reminded them of the stories that they had heard of the Calcutta of the Sixties and early Seventies.
Uddalok merely laughed. "If I had been born a century ago, I would have still been the same, " he said. He still did a lot of reading but his handsome features had taken a beating, though the charisma of his youth still returned in flashes which earned him admirers even now.
But he kept off women.
Today, after meeting Suparna, he suddenly felt lighter, happier. The mist in his head was clearing; he wanted to do somersaults on the streets. The blood pressure, if indeed it was that, was not bothering him now. He bought a half bottle of whiskey and went home. He would miss his tuitions that evening.
Dead drunk, around 11 in the evening, he called up Suparna. She picked up the phone.
He was slurring.
" I am drunk. Just because of you…no.no.no.I don't drink, Suparna. Only today. Just because of you. Only today. I want to see you now. Please come to me. I am not drunk. You come. Pleeease. I am feeling so lonely. Ten years, I hadn't met you for ten years. I must meet you know. Erom koro na, Suparna. Chole esho, please. Do come. Now…" He kept on repeating himself.
Suparna, the little that she knew of drunkenness, disconnected. It was useless talking to someone who wasn't in his senses. The phone rang again. She kept it off the hook.
She would call to check Uddalok out in the morning.
Subhajit, who was preparing to turn in, called out. "Who was that?"
" Wrong number!" Suparna, removed her glasses, wiped them with her saree, and moved inside the bedroom. She was still a very beautiful woman.
*******************************
In the morning, it was Uddalok who called. He seemed nervous, ashamed and embarrassed. " Did I say anything wrong?" he queried.
" You have said wrong things for fifteen years. How does once more make any diference?" Suparna found herself laughing like college times.
" I am sorry. This will never happen again."
" It's okay. But what happened? Why did you have to drink? You have got high pressure, you shouldn't drink so much."
" I don't drink…Yesterday…I don't know what came over me."
" Beshi phurti hoyechilo. You were on top of the world." Suparana was still laughing.
For the first time, Uddalok let out a sound which resembled a laugh. "Will you come home today? I need to talk to you."
" Not today, but I will. I will call you before I go."
" Make it fast. There may not be too much time left."
" Why? You got a job outside Calcutta?"
" Nah! Not a job. Esho. Bolbo. I will tell you when you come. But fast, Suparna, fast. I don't have time left."
" Don't talk in riddles. Okay, I will come. I will call you anyway."
Uddalok hung up.
For a while, Suparna stood beside the phone wondering what Uddalok had meant by saying he little time left.
Subhajit called out. " Who's that?"
" Wrong number!" Suparna replied without hesitation.
" Jani na baba tomar byaparshyapar. Never quite understood your ways. This is the first time I have heard someone talk for ten minutes to an unknown guy. Was the voice like that of Amitabh Bachchan?' Subhajit went back to his newspaper after laughing heartily.
Suparna joined in, but not with mirth.
****************************************************
It was three weeks later that Suparna found time to go to Uddalok's place. There were test papers to be examined, Subhajit had been down with a strange, unknown fever for almost a week and refused to allow her to go work like a child, and, uppermost, Suparna somehow felt a trifle uncomfortable going to Uddalok's place. She did not know why though she asked herself this question many times over. At least on one occasion, she had even prepared to go to Uddalok's place, then rejecting the idea at the moment because she felt uncomfortable at the last minute.
She had not mentioned meeting Uddalok to Subhajit. Again, why, didn't have an answer to. They could have both gone but no, she wanted to go alone. She did not hide this from herself. She wanted to meet Uddalok alone.
In the meantime, Uddalok had not called even once, wounding Suparna's pride perhaps.
But that morning, she called Uddalok and said that she would be there in the evening. Subhajit's fever had gone and he was attending college, she had finished correcting her exam papers and that morning, she decided to go. This was being rude to an old friend, she told herself.
Uddalok sounded mellow. "Come, I will be home," he said.
******************************
"Then die!" Suparna had blazed out of the room. She was in a daze, her head swirling as she thought of what had happened, at Uddalok's devious audacity and finally, because of her own gullibility. Obviously, the man hadn't changed one bit and was only using his disease to get something which he had always desired but never got. And never would, Suparna gritted her teeth as she got into her car.
She drove back home only to find Subhajit lying on the bed. This was not the time that her husband was usually home. But Uddalok had driven out common sense from her head for some time now and she dropped herself into the nearest sofa, her thoughts going back to Uddalok's request: " Just ekbar, Suparna. Just once." She stood up, unmindful of her husband who was lying with a pillow on his face, covering his eyes from the lights as it were, and stormed into the bathroom.
As she stood naked before the full-length mirror, Suparna looked at herself. She was 5 foot 4 inches tall, very tall by Indian standards, and her face still retained some of the innocence of the years gone by. Her nose was somewhat of an aberration in an otherwise well-etched lovely face, it seemed to curl upwards at the end giving her a snooty look which put off many people who had not had the privilege of knowing her well enough. She was dark, her breasts were still ample with large nipples, slightly sloping on either sides, the effect of both age as well as natural gravity. She had a small belly, the navel placed slightly higher than is usual in most females and her vaginal hair resembled almost a small bush.
Subhajit continuously teased her about that. "Junglee! " he told her whenever they made love. "You must have come straight from the jungles…I wonder where all that hair comes from. Shala, ekta choto jungle. A small jungle you have there…" In return, Suparna would bite him hard in his underbelly, just above his genitals and he would scream in pain.
Their love-making was always noisy. Suparna sometimes thanked God that she was childless.
Suparna again measured herself in the mirror. She had a good enough figure to match even 30-year-olds now and she stifled a proud laugh when she thought how her previous principal had praised her publicly in the staff room, which had the other women colleagues squirming, and Suparna smiling.
Suparna realised, even as she continued to look at herself in the mirror, that she still looked every inch a very proud woman.
That pride had been badly bruised today.
Suparna let the shower take over. She needed to cool down.
*************************************
In the night, Suparna tossed and turned while Subhajit slept soundly. He had had a terrible headache and Suparna had given him some sleeping tablets. He was snoring.
As the night progressed, Suparna realised she would not get any sleep. Uddalok came revisiting her everytime she tought that she had fallen asleep. Finally, at the crack of dawn, she did fall asleep. When she woke up a couple of hours later with a heavy head and swollen eyes, she remembered that she had had a dream. In the dream, she had gone back to school and they, school friends all, had gone together for a film. The film was Anand, in which Rajesh Khanna played a cancer patient. The film had not left a single eye dry after every screening throughout India . That was way back when she was in senior school. Suparna wondered why she had suddenly dreamt of Anand.
The answer didn't take long to find out.
The phone rang. It was Uddalok.
" Rege acho? Angry?" Uddalok sounded meek and apologetic.
Suparna disconnected.
The phone rang again. This time, persistently. Suparna moved around the room trying to ignore the monotonous drone of the phone and finally found herself saying, "Hello?"
" Mam, this is Cutts, the butcher…" Uddalok was laughing feebly.
Suparna couldn't help but smile as she remembered how they used to tease her in college when she read Tintin comic books in the common room. Uddalok, whenever he saw her reading Tintin, used to act it out perfectly, as if phone in hand, and say grimly, "Mam, this is Cutts the butcher." The entire common room would burst into laughter and Suparna had to tuck away Tintin for home. There was such innocent fun those days.
The way he had said it now, it seemed like college had been yesterday. However, she couldn't get over what he had also told her the other day.
"Uddalok, don't call me ever again." He voice was tough and stern.
"Why did you take the call then?" Did she discern a mocking tone in his voice? No, she assured herself, he was in no state to do that now.
"You would have kept on calling. And that is disturbing."
"No, Suparna. You took the call because you wanted to talk to me. Be honest to yourself."
Suparna banged down the phone. She felt let down by herself.
******************************
A month passed and life had returned to its own boring normalcy. College, home, college. Uddalok returned at times in her thoughts but she brushed them away. Subhajit was having bouts of migraine and the doctor had advised him to get his eyes checked. Suparana had forced him to go to a homeopath and Subhajit reluctantly took the pills though they did not seem to help much. After some time, Suparna noticed that Subhajit had dropped the pills. Even his eyes were okay, there was no need to wear glasses. It was a migraine which, as everybody knew, had no cure. You had to bear it. Subhajit did precisely that though late into the nights, he would sometimes wake up Suparna and plead, " Suparna, aar parchi na. It's killing me. Will you massage the forehead for some time?"
Suparna did that without as much as him asking a second time and kept him on a diet of sleeping tablets every night. She had gone to the doctor herself. The medicine man had prescribed a small dosage of diazepam, which could do no damage.
Uddalok was far from her thoughts.
One day, on a bright summer afternoon, the phone rang. It was Suman, a college friend with whom she was in touch even though not too frequently.She was surprised. " What's happened? Tui, hotath? Anything wrong?" she asked.
Suman was now working as a software consultant and had a huge clientele. He was not the sort to waste time.
" Porna, Uddalok is dying. He refused hospital admission and things went out of hand. I have a request. In the state that he is…it's terrible…he has asked me to tell you that his last wish would be to see you once. Just once. Na bolish na, Suparna. Don't say no. That man is dying. After all, he was a friend at one time. And he loved you genuinely. Ja, ekbar ja. Meet him. It can't do you any harm." Suman was pleading.
Suparna heard him out and then tried to understand whether Suman knew what Uddalok had proposed to her during their last meeting. The tone in Suman's voice did not reveal much. It seemed an honest request to a friend from another. Suparna decided to keep quiet.
" Okay, let me see."
" Please. It could even be a couple of days away. Taratari jash, Porna. Visit him as early as you can." Suman disconnected.
Suparna thought for a while the dialed Uddalok's number. There was no harm in calling him anyway. The phone went on ringing. She disconnected, tried again. The phone kept away droning.
Suparna felt drained. She could feel small beads of sweat running across her cheek. What had happened? Had they forcibly taken him to a hospital? Wasn't he in any shape to take calls? Or, was he…was he…already dead?
Suparna changed fast. She drove like a woman possessed. After a long time, she confided in herself. Yes, she was in love with Uddalok too. She was not prepared to see him die.
***********************************************************
Uddalok was dressed to kill. As Suparna breezed into the room, she was shaken and somewhat stunned by what she saw. The cancer patient who the world knew would be dead in some time was looking fresh and smart. He had not shaved for some time now, but the radiance in his face was back. Uddalok was sitting cross-legged on the bed, a newspaper in his hands. He had just had a bath and was wearing a bright, blazing red shirt and spotlessly white pajamas.
He was smoking.
Suparna was shocked.
" Eki? You smoking? Suman called…he said things were bad…I rushed… Byaparta ki? You don't look sick…" She was taking deep breaths as she dropped herself on the bed beside Uddalok.
He let her get back her breath. She was looking at him with amazement.
" Tell me, Uddalok…What is the matter? Why did Suman call?"
" I asked him to."
"Why?"
" Because I am dying. Suparna, I am trying to make the most of my last days. The doctor has asked me not to smoke. I have not listened to him. What's the point in dying like all the others? I will, if I can, drink life to the lees till I am no more. The pain is taken care of by heavy dosage injections, I sleep most of the time, but today I had a gut feeling you would come…I dressed up, wore this shirt…I know you like red…and took out the pajamas from the cupboard after many months. And this is the second cigarette that I am having. I was getting impatient. Thank God, you came…"
He coughed a little and seemed to give in to the energy he had just spent talking. The cough continued; suddenly, Uddalok reeled and fell on the bed, his head hitting the pillow, only just about avoiding a sharp blow against the bed rest.
He lay on his stomach and let out hiccups which seemed to Suparna as far cries from another world, the wrenching sounds indicating a pain which nobody but the sufferer understands. The pain of cancer.
Suparna came closer to Uddalok. " Koshto hocche? Is the pain unbearable? Want some water? Any medicines…painkillers? Shall I call the doctor?"
Uddalok turned towards her and locked her hands in both his palms. " Ki labh ? What's the point? I am now used to it. Don't worry, I will be okay. Just pass me that capsule on the table, please."
Suparna rushed to the table, poured some water from the jug to a tumbler and handed over the medicine to him. Uddalok finished the entire glass of water with the capsule.
" Offff!" He looked above at the ceiling. " Ar kotodin? How many more days, my lord? I can't take this any longer." Then he looked at Suparna.
"Will you help me to the bathroom?"
" Sure…Esho." He caught hold of her. He felt her softness against him and his muscles tightened. She moved him towards the bathroom. She found it strange that a man who was in the terminal stages of cancer could have muscles like steel.
"Hormones, must be" she assured herself, without the slightest inkling of what hormones meant. She had simply heard that hormones were prescribed for terminally ill patients.
*************************************
Uddalok came out of the bathroom, looking better, having splashed his face with cold water.
" Feeling better?" Suparna asked.
" Hmmm. Slightly. I would like to get some sleep. Ektu amar pashe bosho. Please sit beside me."
"Of course, I will. You try and get some sleep first."
Uddalok lay straight on the bed, his face wracked by pain which he tried not to show.
Suparna sat beside him. He closed his eyes, took her hands, and kissed them. She did not object. He would fall asleep anyway, she thought.
" Ghoom ashche na, Suparna. I can't sleep." As he broke the silence suddenly, Suparna took her hands away, keeping them folded on her lap.
" Can I put my head on your lap, Suparna? Please…??"
For a few moments, she kept quiet. Then she looked at his face. She could see a prayer there.
She didn't think for a moment and moved towards him, taking his head on his lap.
As the minutes passed, and silence took over, she did not make any attempt to resist. His hands went all over her, his tongue entered her mouth as if searching for life itself, and as he undressed, Suparna could see his muscles ripple.
They made love. As she removed her saree, she only thought of her husband for a fleeting moment. For the next half an hour, it was only Uddalok, Uddalok and more of Uddalok.
She did not feel guilty; she had just given in to a prayer.
As she wore her saree, she suddenly thought that she had traced a faint flavour of imported perfume in Uddalok's armpits.
Uddalok came out of the bathroom after a wash.
" Suparna," he had a smile as he lit up again. He had brushed his hair too. And now the perfume was all over in the room.
" Don't smoke again," she shrieked.
" Why shouldn't I smoke?"
"Don't be silly…you know why!" There was reprimand in her voice.
There was mockery in Uddalok's. " It's you who has been downright silly. I expected you to be cleverer, Mrs Suparna Ganguly. Every pride comes before a fall… mone achey?.. Remember, how you spurned me? Remember how you used to insult me when all the other girls were falling at my feet. That day, the day you walked away with Subhajit, I promised myself that I would not allow you to go unscathed. Silly woman, you were too proud for your own good."
Then, without mincing words, he said roughly. "Remember what a good actor I was in college? That finally has come to use, darling."
Suparna was too stunned to react. She felt the room go round and round. A searing pain ripped through her heart. What was this man saying?
"I did not ever have cancer, Mrs Ganguly. With your best wishes, I will live a hundred years. And now, you may go back to your loving husband. By the way, please call Suman and thank him for me…I asked him to make that call. A good friend…that Suman…never lets me down."
Uddalok had not yet finished. "You enjoyed it too, didn't you? "
He lit up another cigarette. Uddalok had always been a chain smoker. "Where's the bloody bottle? I need to celebrate. This one has been the best in a long time," were the last mocking words she heard before she left the room in a daze.
******************************
Suparna went completely blank. The charade, the cheating, the diabolical drama to which she had been drawn like a small bird crashing into the windscreen of a high-flying airplane had left her sapped of energy, intelligence and confidence. Worse, she had not anticipated such evil.
She entered the sitting room, her hair tousled, her saree crumpled, her face a picture of desolation. The pain crept from her chest to the head. This was not a headache borne of migraine, this was simple helplessness casting its shadow on her body. The heart had given way, it was now time for the body to slip on soft ground.
Subhajit was sitting on the sofa, his head cradled in his two palms, a sheaf of papers lying in front of him. He looked up at Suparna.
" Edike esho. Come here," Subhajit seemed to whisper. There was no strength in his voice.
Suparna walked as if in a trance towards him.
" Look at this. Three months. That's what they have given me," his voice lapsed into a child-like whimpering cry.
Suparna did not even look at the papers he had handed her. She only mumbled, " Ki? What's it?"
Subhajit almost slumped in the sofa. "I kept it away from you all these days. I thought that everything would be okay. It's not. Dr Sanyal gave his final report to me today. I have three months to live."
Every word bounced off Suparna.
" Suparna, I have brain cancer."
Strangely, Suparna sat rooted to her sofa. After what seemed like decades to Subhajit, she spoke: " Tumio? You too?"
Then she stood up, walked straight to her husband and slapped him across the face, a stinging one which made his cheek bleed from the impact of her engagement ring made of gold.
Subhajit, weak and in despair, fell down on the ground. She didn't even look at him.
Without a word, she strode back to the sofa where she had earlier been sitting. She loosened her hair, threw her head back over the backrest, and then Suparna Ganguly started laughing, a coarse and heavy laughter which was not normal.
Her laughter did not stop for the next ten minutes. The she walked up to her husband.
"You too? Cancer, cancer…" she whispered in Subhajit's ears.
The whisper grew into a groan and then she lurched forward, fell in a heap across her husband, grasping her chest in a last-ditch attempt to gain air. Her face had the contortions of a stricken, painful death.
Suparna Ganguly had died of a massive heart attack.
Cancer had killed.
THE END
My first e-book in 2006
Title: India Troys Boys
Subtitle: Is india wilting under western pressure?
Author: Abhijit Dasgupta
ISBN: 1-897313-07-1
Distributed by:
Medalion Enterprises
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Copyright©2005 Abhijit Dasgupta
First Edition, 2006
Published in Canada for worldwide release.
WarningDisclaimer
This book is designed to provide information on a general subject. It is sold with the
understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal,
accounting or other professional services. If legal or other expert assistance is required,
the services of a competent professional should be sought.
It is not the purpose of this manual to reprint all the information that is otherwise
available on the subject, but instead to complement, amplify and supplement other texts.
You are urged to read all the available material, learn as much as possible about the
subject and tailor the information to your individual needs.
Every effort has been made to make this manual as complete and as accurate as possible.
However, there may be mistakes, both typographical and in content. Therefore, this text
should be used only as a general guide and not as the ultimate source of information on
the subject. Furthermore, this manual contains information that is current only up to the
printing/posting date.
The purpose of this manual is to educate and entertain. The author, publisher and
distributor shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with
respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or
indirectly, by the information contained in this book.
About the Author
This book, by veteran Indian editor and journalist Abhijit Dasgupta, who has been
part of top, mainline dailies across India for the last quarter of a century and was
only recently pleasantly surprised when he could file a story from a cyber cafe in
the back of beyond of an Indian village, gives you a fascinating reality check on
the changing lifestyle of the urban rich and the famous; of the huge churning in
the morality metre of the middleclass and, of course, the mobile-flaunting, jeansclad
young, once-jobless blackmarketeer you confront outside cinema halls.
A delightful read for all those who dread India for its snakes, cockroaches and
tummy-upsetting hotel food.
A must read for those who revel in surprises!
INDIA: Troys boys
By ABHIJIT DASGUPTA
The rope no longer performs magical tricks nor does the snake sway to the tunes
of the charmer. There are no carcasses seen on the pavements lining the
millions of roads in one of the biggest nations, India. India slightly embarrassed
by its richness in poverty, remains a puzzle to most, an anachronism to even its
own, yet it is still the same land which Sir Winston Churchill once described as
being a mystery wrapped in an enigma. But thats only the view from the outside.
Deep inside in every town, in every glittering metropolis, a giant churning is
taking place; a movement which is taking the country forward, shaking off its
ageold shackles of superstition, morals and unproven wisdom. For eons, India
had remained the land of arts and religion; very soon, it is likely to surpass
stronger more contemptuous Western nations in logical progression.
It is true that Indians dont live in trees any longer. The old rope trick has
vanished from the Indian stage, snakes are seen only in remote villages while the
charmer has lost his tune and a casual walk across one of Mumbais boulevards
is bound to throw up a BMW or two, not without their proverbial, opulencesmattered
post-modern swaggers. Thats the view from the outside which does
not quite reveal the huge melting pot in which the country finds itself now.
I have so many childhood and early youth memories of my country that this
change seems more engaging and worth a sociological study. It would provide
more than a fascinating glimpse into one of the oldest cultures in the world
perhaps, the oldest. I am now 45; exactly the age when you should be
worshipping Janus, the two-faced Greek god who looked forward even as he
could see what had gone behind him. But that has changed.
Streets, hosepipes & men slipping all over
Even three decades back, in the early morning, I remember how the streets used
to be washed with long serpentine hosepipes by Corporation sweepers who
connected the thick, hollow rubber line to the nearest pavement sprinkler and
how the roads looked, soon after, as if they had got their early, morning bath,
soaped and sober. How people, wearing rubber slippers, busily walked these
shining lanes, sometimes went tumbling down, hastily cursing their clumsiness
and trying to make it look as if it was all so normal while the boys on the streets
rolled over in pure joy. That was captivating innocence on the dingy, soon-to-bedirty-
again streets, thick with traffic and office commuters.
Then, again in the mornings, when housewives and their maids, got up early,
crushed coal into the mud ovens and lined them up on the lane outside, the sizes
of the ovens indicating the number of family members. How the smoke from all
these chulas (brick ovens) thickened and curled skywards in the morning heat
and dust and covered the entire lane with a thick smog. Nobody complained of
burning eyes simply because gas ovens had not yet made their forays into
Calcutta now called Kolkata.
In order to write anything about the changing face of India, it is important to get
an idea of what it was like even twenty-five years ago, when the slow, at least
apparent progressive lifestyle began in the last years of Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi. Not many outside the subcontinent know what it was like and the wrong
impressions that permeated and generated gossamer stories of a land infested
only with rats, nude sadhus (saints) and ghosts, not to mention riots by religious
bigots who need to be weeded out before any point could even be made. I have
lived in Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai and even visited the gangster hub and
second largest city on the subcontinent, Mumbai, numerous times. During this
time I have never seen beggars dying outside international airports as this was
nothing more than fiction which had been justified as fact in many a travelogue
written by over-zealous white men and women trying to make their publishers
back home happy. I have lived and worked mainly out of Calcutta, on the eastern
fringes of the country bordering Bangladesh and whose lifeline is the river
Ganges, called Hooghly in these parts. The romance that the city still has for me
is not borne of only childhood memories but of actual happenings and concrete
evidence that we were socially more relevant at that point in time than we are
now with pavement dwellers in Levis jeans and Rayban glares. The Calcutta
that seems to have come of age to many is now socially irrelevant and lacks the
romance and sense of adventure which made it a pretty iconic city to live in
where Alan Ginsberg pitched tent and did drugs openly in the sprawling lush
green Maidan as much as within the cosy comforts of the many admiring, affluent
though fawning, obsequious gentry. All that has gone.
Of flyovers, bistros & discos
The old Calcutta has given way to Kolkata, a city of upcoming flyovers, elegant
lounges, incorrectly named bistros, waterworlds, amusement parks and four-lane
one-way traffic. There are now FTV cloned fashion shows every evening and a
middle-class who hates that very nomenclature. The middle-class, which was
once the backbone of an intelligent, culture-happy Calcutta, has almost vanished
and now it is routine to take your family out for dinner at a super-deluxe loungerestaurant
even if that means working yourself up to a stress level which saps
energy as well as grinds you to a sudden halt when you should have raced
forward to greater prosperity. Heart attacks and stress-induced illnesses are now
the primary killers in India, of which Calcutta is just one of those also-ran cities.
I have always been an avid reader of Rudyard Kipling, who lived and
institutionalised imperialism in India through his works, and scathingly wrote
about Calcutta in the late-19th century: "Palace, byre, hovel_ Poverty and pride_
Side by side." Remember, at that time, Calcutta was the second city only to
London in the entire empire and the Europeans, after having tried their best to
educate the native Indians about hygiene and other uplifting movements in life
had almost given up. With the shadow of the nationalistic Indian National
Congress, which had just been formed, looming large on the horizon and
threatening may just be sparks because of the existence of a 150-year-old
colonial fiefdom. Total independence was to come at least 60 years later in 1947,
but the British had seen the writing on the wall and were in the process of giving
up the colony while making the best of the loot. Indifference to Indian upgradation
and lifestyle was thus the last thing on their minds and it showed.
Pestilence, it was, which India inherited in the early Fifties; the palaces were all
but gone while poverty and pride was definitely rearing its ugly head for a good
number of years after that.
This was an India to which most of those who are now touching 50 or
thereabouts were born. I was born just a couple of years and a decade after
Independence was wrested from the British in 1947; and for a large chunk of our
generation, we managed through a critical period till our late youth compromising
with both palace and hovel, pride and poverty, not without their obvious
insecurities. We inhaled with great pleasure the sweet smell of the jasmine as the
vendor passed by in his cart on the lane below while the hamhanded
industrialisation and Licence Raj (another name for institutionalised corruption in
which the government handed out sanctions for business and other profit-making
ventures for a secret fee) were moving hand in glove with a greater and real
anarchy throughout India, giving way to the internal Emergency proclaimed by
Mrs Indira Gandhi in June 1975. The chaos within India was showing while the
largescale arrests and drowning of protests were stymied by a dictatorship which,
in the name of democratic functioning, produced, what in the very short run,
would push India back by centuries. I was barely in my teens at that time but,
with some native, homegrown intelligence, learnt to survive with both with pride
and poverty, side by side.
Remember that piano?
Part of the pride and romance about being what I was, included a huge British
era piano, a staple at any rich or upper class Calcutta household, but which could
not be played with the flamboyance, elegance and flair required by the
instrument because there was not enough space in the now-cubicled rooms to
allow for an audience or, even, anybody to pull a stool in front and run their
fingers across the length and breadth of the huge music-machine. The piano, in
the early 70s when Calcutta was torn by anarchy and bloodshed stemming from
a bulk of misguided youth believing in a violent version of Communism, lay
covered by tarpaulin, which was always wet at one spot where the water dripped
unceasingly from a crack in the damp, crisscross lined century old-ceiling. My
grandfathers father had built the house and there had been no attempt by
anybody over the previous 100 years to renovate or even think of pulling down
the old Gothic styled building to pave the way for a decent, spacious, new
highrise with, what was to happen later, matchbox apartments. .
Come the Nineties, and this was to happen throughout Calcutta. Old houses
were pulled down at random and skyscrapers, some of which collapsed within
years, sprang up in numbers, the moneyed people moved into them, handing
over some pittance to the previous owners who could not handle the
maintenance of such ancestral palaces any longer. The skyline changed as the
land sharks took over. In Calcutta now, apart from a few British-era buildings
which have been earmarked as heritage zones, almost all the palaces have been
razed to the ground and the city simply seems to look upwards, pining for what
only it knows.
When we were boys, we had a number of silver linings in the canvas of
bloodshed and so-called revolution which wracked the city. My friends and I
played cricket and football, depending on the season, but with one problem
which jeopardised our games every evening. The ball, carelessly tossed around
with boyish playfulness, invariably got lost in the thick, green and black
undergrowth of the backyard and either it was too dark by then to do the
searching or the neighbouring, loudmouthed factorymen hid away what for them
was a nuisance.
The terrace also had some flower pots, their painted patterns washed away by
time, and the thick foliage which rose from the ground below touching the terrace
gave
us great joy when some trees flowered on their own, the bloom giving rise to
small pink buds which we plucked and sucked for the juice. The juice was as
sweet
as honey.
Six per cent only for roads!
Now, post-middle age, I dont wake up any morning to jasmine or the flowering
trees. The number of cars has increased many fold (Calcutta has only 6 per cent
road space of its entire area), so much so that traffic seems to have overtaken
the city, pushing away vendors and their carts and the old man who used to carry
a chest full of cakes and pastries to be sold to eager children in households, rich
and poor. Now its MacDonalds and Kentuckys. I have forgotten what it feels like
to walk without slippers on grass wet with dew.
The problem with Calcutta and, indeed all major Indian cities, is that this
phenomenal change has not been a result of normal, easy progression. While
money has indeed lined the pockets of the middleclass which, sadly for a once
culture-literate, progressive national capital city, has not been able to handle this
sudden rise in cash flow with the method and intelligence it deserves in order not
to spoil you. The rush of money into a poor city has been like the sudden flow of
adrenalin in a terminally ill patient; the haste that ensues can only bring the
doctor home. This is obvious, in every nook and cranny of the country, the rich
has become richer and the poor almost obliterated, not by good governance but
by the sheer incapability to survive. From the top floor of any highrise in India,
only the drone of traffic filters above while the buzz of ant-like people walking in
various straight lines, together looking like a maze, resembling a jigsaw puzzle
left unfinished.
It is the haphazard urbanization of India, continuing into this century, which could
be playing havoc in the years to come; as explanation, one must remember that
the rapid urbansiation was not due to any social cause but purely economic in
nature. The urban chaos in India was the perfect refuge for the village-dweller
who slipped easily into being one of the million unknown wage-earners. In the
village, that is difficult; your neighbour would know how much you owe your
neighbour living on the other side. Tragically, in India, this little knowledge can
spark vicious riots if the castes come into play as it has on numerous occasions.
At least 28 per cent of Indias population now lives in cities and many more of its
citizens move in and out of them for temporary work. In some southern states,
nearly half the population is in cities. In 1991, India had 23 cities with one million
or more people. A decade later, it had 35. Something which was not put on the
storyboard by well-heeled planners in the first place. This is a country of 600,000
villages but it is the city which is bound to reshape India. And in a country which,
since ancient times, has been mothered by the village, this transition and power
equation change may be devastating and tragic.
Everyone and everything in India is in such a rush. This is not the India we grew
up in and the contradiction hurts not only individuals but also the country and its
culture, I am sure.
The hero as anti-hero
My father, an amiable government clerk but very wise in his vision and ample in
his reading, the type of person who could easily sit for any management
examination and emerge with flying colours and grab a plum job even before
getting his degree papers in hand, had once told me when I innocently but with a
great deal of curiosity queried about the bloody, senseless revolution all around
us in the early Seventies.
. "You see all the violence around. The movement, the revolution, the bodies
lying all around Calcutta...how will you understand what romance, love, nature
and life is all about? When your next-door neighbour is dragged out in the middle
of the night to be shot in cold blood in the Maidan in the name of police
encounters, how will you appreciate literature, how can you enjoy a game of
cricket under the winter sun?God has taken your generation for a
suckerThese revolutionaries are not killing human beings, they are marauding
a city, a culture. They have destroyed our race and, one day, the repercussions
will kill the nation," he had said, without trying to sound like a preacher. For him,
then in his late 50s, life had been over and he saw no reason why he would have
to deliver sermons to a generation which he knew was growing up to be
confused and doomed. But at times, I saw him trembling when there was a
murder or an encounter in the neighbourhood. He would have tears in his eyes.
My mother would intercede with tea. At times, my father would refuse the tea and
walk up to the terrace. "What your generation needs is a villain as hero...Its a
vicious cycle, its bound to happen," he would mumble, as he climbed the stairs
to the open terrace. His wife would take his tea to the terrace room where Dad
would softly ask his wife, "I hope your son hasnt got links with them?" The "them"
was an obvious reference to the revolutionaries who had infiltrated every house
and bylane, planting moles against the police and government agencies.
His wife my mom would smile and shake her head. Content, Dad would pace the
terrace, tea cup in hand, shaking his head from time to time.
His words rang true in some short years.
Amitabh Bachchan, the star of the millennium, according to a recent BBC poll,
exploded on India shortly with his pan-Indian Hindi film, Zanzeer (1971), quite
aptly translating into The Shackles, which gave the entire angst-ridden youth of
India a role model, totally different and a greater necessity than the chocolate
face heroes ruling the roost before him. But the Seventies were not the time for
honey and dew in India and Bachchan and his script-writers wrested the
advantage in a fashion that can only be fantasised about. Hindi films in India are
a barometer of change; countless sociological texts and research have been
written and done on the impact of this genre on the India psyche. Almost all of
them have come to one singular conclusion. Hindi films define the majority of
India .
It is this national appeal, except perhaps in pockets of South India were the film
gods are different though the dividing lines are slowly vanishing with huge crosscultural
exchange, Bachchan, by far, 35 years later, remains the most popular
Indian alive. When he was nursing an intestine operation, one billion Indians
offered prayers at countless temples throughout the nation. But Dad was so right;
Bachchans staple was the anti-hero, almost a Dirty Harry-Clint Eastwood type of
character which he portrayed in film after superhit film: violence for a good cause
to defeat greater violence with an evil motive, revolvers to match swords if that
justified goodness and killing villains without mercy if that was what the nation
thought they deserved. The justification of the anti-hero as the archetype of the
messiah was at hand.
In the early 70s, it was the anger of an entire nation which broke its shackles with
Bachchan. Indeed, at that time, a romantic, good-looking, singing, dancing,
wooing hero seemed quite an anachronism. The anti-hero has been Indias
guiding image since then. Obviously, the anger of the early 70s has not
dissipated. It rears its head through riots, through brother killing brother over
religion, and in a country, though a single nation in geography books, which is
anyway split crisscross in every sector like those lines which drew unhappy
etchings across that damp ceiling overhead.
Of English and cricket balls
Strangely, it is the English which has still, to a large extent, kept this country
together with a game and a language. Cricket, a bat-ball game resembling
baseball, and the Queens English. Wherever you travel in India, you are bound
to come across young boys playing cricket with makeshift bats and balls,
breaking window panes, creating traffic jams, but with nobody objecting
seriously. When India play Pakistan, there is war on the TV screen and huge
groups of passersby or even those without access to a TV set, can be seen
clustering around to have a look at public screen at the electronics goods shop in
the neighbourhood. And knowing English is still a huge privilege and is a tongue
which is spoken with great variations, sometimes without much respect to
grammar, throughout the nation. Cricket players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul
Dravid are gods in their own fashion and schools teaching English have
mushroomed throughout the cities and even semi-urban areas with an influence
which is hard to ignore. So much so, that after years, there are various nooks
and corners of the subcontinent where pockets of protest are simmering over the
disuse of the mothertongue. But since India has over 200 dialects spoken
throughout its land, those protests cannot effect a plausible, effective change.
But the urbanite is not sophisticated or modern if he cant hold a fork in the
manner that an Englishman at a formal dinner would, no party now is complete
without the dance floor blaring hip-hop, trance or retro, and, if you are a dodo at
speaking the language, forget about moving into the upper echelons of society.
This is common throughout India, in every city and every small town vying for
urban status.
My own English reading seeped in early and I still remember those days when I
stayed up through nights finishing Enid Blytons Famous Five series because
those books needed to be handed back to the school library first thing in the
morning. In this, I befriended my mom. Initially, when I was very young, Ma used
to read out to me; slowly, I got hooked on to Enid Blyton, Noddy, the Hardy Boys
and the rest. But never Mills and Boons. I dont know why, but never.
The one Enid Blyton book which I longed to be part of was one that belonged to
the Famous Five series, complete with Timmy the Dog, the one in which the
adventures included a caravan in the English countryside. I asked Ma all sorts of
questions.
"What is a caravan? Do they have bathrooms inside them? Who drives them
when you sleep? Is there a driver and an engine like in cars?" Ma answered as
best as she could. She did not have the faintest idea of what the English
countryside looked like but she got prints of Gainsborough paintings from
neighbours and relatives and some from her own collection which showed rich
English meadows and hills and the lovely, verdant green. The young me, even at
that tender age, just wished I could be there. Going to London and visiting the
English countryside have remained one of those various carrots with which Fate
played come-hither games with our generation. Some have won; others, like me,
still wish I could see where Shakespeare was born. Anything with a hint of
English is still the best leveller, more than half a century after the tribe left Indian
shores. If there is one facility which the Indians are most emotional about, it is
their knowledge of English. Like everything else in the country, we tend to
become emotional about almost anything; what a Westerner would forget in a
minute, an Indian will brood over through the night. If somebody points out an
error in the usage of English as a professional tool or strategy in society, then the
brood could even turn into a nightmare.
Young bride walking
Talking of the changing Indian lifestyle, one incident, pertaining to a very painful
episode in a friends life, comes to mind. This was way back in the early Eighties
and my friend had just got married. This was an arranged one in which the bride
and groom first see each other at the wedding altar. He was happy, we had
glasses of whisky washed down with shredded lamb and salad and the
celebrations had continued in a state of recurring happiness and daze, whenever
the alcoholic haze cleared, that is. Then my friend went off to a seashore resort,
some 200 kilometres from Calcutta, for his honeymoon; those were days when
flying off to Singapore or Hong Kong to do some by-the-way shopping were not
even dreamt of. Honeymoons were spent in nearby resorts and only the real rich
could afford Kashmir in the north or Mahabalipuram in the south.
It had been, as was mostly the case, an arranged marriage, yet again something
which is alien to Westerners to whom getting married without having even seen
your bride or groom would be some sort of a disaster, if not sacrilege. In the early
Eighties, arranged marriages were the norm. It still is, but the honeymoon
destinations have changed. It is invariably Singapore for the middle-class,
Switzerland for the real rich and Kashmir, when it is peaceful, for those who have
saved throughout their working lives only for this one vacation.
My friend, an engineer from one of the best known colleges of India, however,
got into a mess. His wife, the lovely Jahnavi, another name for the River
Ganges, was a somnambulist, someone who walked in her sleep without
realizing that she was doing so. This disease is as uncommon as it was deadly.
My friend, Anirban, and Jahnavi, without barely knowing each other, had gone on
their honeymoon in high spirits and the much greater aspirational wish of any
man trying to possess a woman and a woman slowly stepping into her role as an
all-giving Indian wife.
What I later heard from Anirban was straight from a movie. Those days, West
Bengal, the province of which Calcutta is the capital, went without power for days
and on luckier occasions, for hours. Digha, their chosen destination, was no
exception.
It was past midnight in the hotel room in Digha. They had fun, played with the
waves and then returned to the room way past 8 in the evening, tired and spent.
Anirban, after a heavy dinner of chicken and spiced rice, had dropped off.
Jahnavi, who had shocked Anirban, but only slightly, a week back by telling him,
as a matter of fact, that she never slept with a stitch on, was fast asleep too. The
huge sea and the might of the breakers had left them with tired bodies. They
slept soundly. Anirban snored softly; Jahnavi had earlier told him she did not
mind.
They had not made love that night.
Suddenly, Anirban woke up. It was hot. The power had gone, there was no
generator and the zero-electricity hours in Digha, by consensus, were
unpredictable. He sat up on the bed, cursing the hotel, the government, and
finally, himself. The heat was unbearable. Did they at least have a candle at
hand?
He called out to his wife, "How the hell can you sleep in this heat?" He got no
answer. He stretched his arm towards Jahnavi; his hand caught emptiness. He
put on his glasses, always handy by his bedside, and tried to focus towards the
glass window through which the small, rectangular verandah could be seen. The
verandah, through the glazed window glass, was a shadowy mass under the full
moon but he could clearly make out its emptiness. There was no one standing
there.
Jahnavi wasnt anywhere. The door was locked; so she hadnt gone out either.
It was then that he heard the splashing of water in the bathroom. Anirban heaved
a sigh of relief. His wife was taking a bath to beat the heat. He thought of lighting
a candle and started searching for one, opening the door to let the moonlight
enter. Walking out on the verandah, he saw a room service boy, sleeping deeply
and silently. He nudged him.
"Hey! Do you guys have a candle? You ought to...Get me one. We cant sleep in
this heat. Might as well have a light inside...Get up, you!" He was almost
apologetic. The boy shifted sides and continued sleeping. Anirban realised that
he had to be more active.
He used only part of his strength to shake the boy awake. "I asked for a candle.
Its pitch dark out here. Get me one. Please. Make it quick!"
The boy yawned. "The lights will come back in half-and-hour, sir! Cant you wait?
I am sleepy and I dont know where the candle is. They are with Manager, sir," he
gestured towards the officials room downstairs.
"I dont care. Here, you get up and run. Get me a candle!" Anirban was now
losing his patience. "And a hand fan if you can. The mosquitoes..." He did not
end the sentence, hoping the boy would have made out by now.
The boy stood up, and on seeing Anirbans massive, erect frame, thought it wiser
to move. He walked slowly towards the staircase leading to the managers room.
Anirban grunted and then returned to the room, keeping the door ajar. His eyes
were now used to the darkness and he could see almost everything inside the
room in blurred outlines. The moonlight, washing the room in parts, helped.
He knocked on the bathroom door. "How can you bathe in such darkness? You
could have called me. There can be bloody cockroaches inside..." He was sure
that the very mention of the insect, of which his wife, like almost all Indian
women, was scared to the point of death, would have Jahnavi rushing out.
Nothing of that sort happened. The splashing of water continued without a break.
Anirban was slightly puzzled. "Jahnavi!" This time, louder. "Jahnavi!"
There was no answer even now. The water continued to make noises inside.
Anirban shrugged. "Okay. Have a nice time. Keep some water for me in the tub.
Ill have a splash too. Is the water too hot?"
There was no answer.
"I have asked for a candle. Dont come out unless that joker brings one. He was
sleeping outside. That idiot, wasnt budging. I have asked him to get one. Hang
on for five more minutes. I will tell you when..."
Abruptly, as if a small fountain had just dried up, the splashing of water inside the
bathroom stopped. The howl of the sea outside increased with the silence. The
door opened slowly, but steadily. From inside, with the moonlight bathing her
naked, glistening dark body, Jahnavi came out, indifferently drying her dripping
hair with a towel. She tiptoed across to the bed and turned, just once towards the
door, even taking a few steps towards it, making normal motions around the
room, as if taking her time till she would be sure that the entire length of her long
hair had been dried before she hit the bed again.
The tresses fell along her neck, past the shoulders, covering parts of her small
breasts. The towel continued to be rubbed against the wet hair. The rest of the
body was shining silk but dry. As usual, she had finished that part in the
bathroom and, as at home, come out, just to finish the hair part.
Add a lotus at the base and you have Botticellis Venus, Anirban thought for a
fleeting moment, before he inched forward lovingly to take his beautiful, naked
wife in his arms. Jahnavi walked past Anirban as if he didnt exist.
Anirban watched, sweating profusely in the heat, sensing something was wrong.
The moon was now bright on Jahnavis face. He now knew why he was uneasy.
Even as she walked around, doing all that normal things women do once they
have had a bath and are at home, Anirban recoiled as he realised that his wife
was still in deep slumber. Her eyes were closed.
"Sir! The candle...! "
The boy, gaping and shocked, was standing at the door with a candle which
suddenly lit up the entire room with a strength which could have felled Anirban.
The honeymoon was less than brief.
They were divorced a few months later with my educated friend, an engineer who
boasted of culture and knowledge, initiating the divorce case against his lovely
wife for cruelty. Jahnavi did not fight the case.
And whenever I remember my friend and his lovely wife and the tragic divorce, I
remember a story Anirban told me, sobbing all the while, about their wedding
night, something which all of us friends shared but which now comes through as
eye-opener for me when I study the social system of our country.
Anirban had a sharp, almost aquiline nose with a bright, blue mole on the left
side of his mouth. He was a delight for females though in the Calcutta of our
growing youth, no female came forward to propose to him.
Jahnavi had loved the mole and the nose, he told us. On their wedding night, as
they made love as if it was the first time they were doing so, his wife had licked
the small, little mound beside his nose and just above the mouth, and said,
releasing both of them together in a wave of delight, " Gawwwd...I am coming..."
Her slender fingers, which dug deep and clawed into his broad shoulders, left
stinging stripes in the morning. Interestingly, and socially relevant as I see it now,
Jahnavi belonged to those first generation Indian, middleclass women who made
love in English. She never went to a psychiatrist or medicine man when ill. That
was India 25 years back.
Strangely, they are still in touch. Jahnavi was cured completely after her second
husband, whom she married a decade later, took her to a psychiatrist and
followed all scientific steps to help her. Anirban, still recovering perhaps from the
shock of that dreadful night so many years back, has not married yet still deeply
in love with Jahnavi even now. They do small talk at parties.
Sometimes I wonder why our nation, with all its frills of missiles and shopping
malls and NASA-educated scientists, has not been able to educate the common
folk.
A stranger is a friend you have never met before; in India, the transition from a
stranger ( read: arranged marriages) to a friend ( husband or wife) takes more
than the usual time and even when the change does occur in a positive fashion,
it is either too late or by that time, familiarity with indifference and lack of emotion
may have already taken its toll. That being said, in India, you will find more happy
toothless, older couples than young, vibrant middle-aged or younger husbandwives
having a ball.
Never a canter
This country is a crystal ball into which any gaze can be revealing even for those
who dont know anything about predictions. You just need to get into the history
and psyche of this massive nation. India is an emotional nation-state; a spark
may create a conflagaration, a smile can be converted into a marriage. But
nothing happens easily out here and never ever in non-dramatic situations.
Nothing flows easily into a consequent action; its always either a hop, step or a
jump, never a smooth canter.
Therein lies Indias charisma as well as its ghost. Contradictions are what the
makes the Indian stage so dramatic, painful and, at most times, darned
interesting.
My young daughter, Ujjaini, studying English (ah! again!) in one of the premier
colleges in the Indian capital of Delhi is always fighting with me whenever I have
something good to say about Delhi where I have worked for almost five years
and then ran away because I couldnt keep pace with its hectic ant-like daily
business journeys at the workplace and even almost political deaths and backstabbing
at social gatherings. Nothing is laidback in Delhi and almost un-Indian in
its approach to life. Laidback is something you cannot call Delhi.
Argues Ujjaini, a name I gave her after a visit to Ujjain, the legendary pre-Christ
capital of thriving middle India, "The first thing you can be sure of if youre coming
from any other part of India, apart from Mumbai, is a massive culture shock
which I got when I first came to Delhi. The culture-shock which is enough to give
a normal conservative person the worst nightmare of his or her life! Chain-
Smoking and high rates of alcohol consumption both by adolescents and adults,
MMSs, zooming crime rates against women, very low safety precautions for
night-wanderers, accidents happening by the dozen every second in some part
of the city or the other. It truly is a nightmare, well, yes; I have nothing
complimentary to say about Delhi as far as the general people are concerned. It
truly is a beautiful city, with lots of greenery, well-maintained roads and almostsmooth
traffic, this coupled with the 100-odd super malls or so coming up and the
various lavish multiplexes and high-rises, we can say that Delhi has advanced
quite a bit in the superficial realm of looks and outward show and might even be
giving competition to many foreign countries in the years to come. Where the
people and morality are concerned, there cannot be any other city lower on my
chart than Delhi."
Scathing, critical and full of sledge-hammer blows, Ujjaini continues, "But dont
jump to conclusions and brand me one of those outsiders who see nothing good
in any other city than his/her home-town because at no point of time am I saying
that partying, having fun and freaking out are bad. I am a young ,fun-loving girl
myself, who visits discos, hang out with my friends and basically freak out
and avail of the 'little' liberties that being away from home permits. Neither is
there anything wrong with being a little contemptuous sometimes and showing
your attitude to people by virtue of being residents of the capital of India. What
I'm critiquing here is the complete lack of moral and ethical behavior indulged in
by and large the majority of the youth and almost the entire adult population,
shockingly enough. We have not been able to take the better qualities from the
West. India indeed has changed from what we have been reading in books and
seen in films.Yes, the image of India as the country of the snake-charmer
and elephant has been reduced to large extent but it would be wrong to think that
the image of India with little street-urchins on the streets begging for food and
money or very (in) conveniently treating the footpath as a lavatory. We have
been able to take from the West as far as the external facade of the country is
concerned (and that too only represented by the upper classes) there are still
miles to go before India 'awakens' to the advancement required to it to be a
country to be emulated, not emulating. Consider this, if India had really come at
par with all the western countries we sometimes equate it with, would you really
e asking whether India has been able to 'reach' or 'aspire' to that status?" b
But she continues to study in Delhi because that is where education is happening
and from where a degree means much more than anywhere else in the country.
Also, being a Delhi-ite has its own virtues; for one, you cannot afford to be bovine
or too innocent. Delhi teaches you to be streetsmart and gears you up to look the
world square in the eyes. And, for that, if morality and other social considerations
are given the go-by, then so be it. The urban youth of India has now taken this
philosophy to heart.
"Nobody gets up here to offer the seat to a wizened old lady (let alone a young
lady) in crowded buses. People have forgotten that there exist words such as
sorry and thank you in the English dictionary. People here are so selfabsorbed,
superficial and so caught up in the petty concerns of their own lives
that they could care less about anything else in life. If wearing Marks and
Spencer clothes, smoking, attending parties, socialising, throwing empty kisses
in the air and hugging every old and new associate you meet on the roads are
signs of emotion, strutting around in the exquisite malls and having live-in -
relationships, one-night-stands with whom ever you meet, is not advancement."
Ujjaini is a vocal young lady of Delhi, thats for sure. But, however, she may be
quite right. We do not seem to have absorbed the better side of Western society,
picking and choosing the wrong things at the right time when the country was set
to zoom ahead. But the new youth, I feel, will not let happiness and a politically
correct social lifestyle to be their staple where all can join hands for a good life,
warped as they are in their own selfish, so-called modern lifestyles where the
guiding principle is "I, Me and Myself". And that is the killer.
One for the road, only
Interestingly, taking off from where Ujjaini left, I rummaged the files to check out
some figures of alcohol consumption among the urban youth which is not
something that our country has imported from the West. India was the land of
Sura (wine) in ancient times when the West was living in caves; however, once a
drink in hand became the sign of machismo much like the Marlboro ad, it became
a defining statement. Beer continues to be the favourite drink among the urban
youth. Increased purchasing power and changing lifestyles have contributed to
its double-digit growth with sales touching 100 million cases last year. Beer
drinkers may not switch over but women and young people who have been
consuming vodka and rum may try these flavoured drinks. So next time you visit
an Indian nightclub and see young men and women dancing away with beer
bottles in hand, dont be surprised; this is only an extension of the "I, Me and
Myself" concept. Drink, dont overindulge. Sounds good but not to our generation
which drank to get drunk and had a ball of a time. Competition and work desk
rivalry have also robbed the Indian urban youth of the little pleasures of gay
abandon. And this phenomenon is Pan-Indian.
The flute with the organ
I remember another ditty from my childhood in Calcutta which could well serve
the purpose of this book about the changes that have taken place in a short span
of some 35 years.
We had a boy-servant from the state of Orissa, adjacent to Bengal, of which
Calcutta was the capital, and who was, despite severe warnings from my
parents, my best friend for many years. I had lost him somewhere down the line
and in the quagmire of years. His name was Kalu.
Kalu, I remember, was a squat, dark, bare-chested boy with large eyes just
below joined, wide, bushy eyebrows which stretched right across his forehead.
Kalu also had a limp, one of his legs being slightly shorter than the other.
Whenever he walked, he seemed to slip, which he did not, but which, in the
event, infused his movement with a sense of drama. His single eyebrows and his
limp were the young servants calling card.
Nobody even bothered about child labour those days. Kalu came to our
household when he was barely eight and did all the hard labour that even an
able-bodied man would not do without a very expensive fee in the West. Neither
Kalu nor his family objected; it was normal, and most natural, for a boy of that
class to earn his familys bread by doing household chores. That was the
Calcutta, and indeed, India, of our childhood. You wont find a single boy-servant
in the urban cities nowadays; and even if they do, they will either work shifts or
charge a fee enough to make the lady of the family cringe and offer to do the
hard work herself. Not that the tribe has vanished but they cannot be dictated to
any longer in a land where drivers of even small cars are given mobile phones by
their employer so that they dont get lost in the labyrinth and parking lot maze
where it is impossible to find your car after a good evenings heavy shopping.
In the afternoons and during holidays, both of us went up to the terrace which
was the only thing left in our household which reminded everybody in the locality
that we were once bigtime. The terrace, square-shaped and with a tap, shaped
like a small fountain which sprinkled water when the rusted red star-shaped knob
at the base was forced rightwards, was more than a century old and a huge joy;
from that terrace, the entire part of central Calcutta, complete with the toy-like
Howrah Bridge from afar, and the sprawling Maidan with the 350-foot-tall
landmark Ochterlony Monument sticking out like a pencil could be seen. Among
these two landmarks were buildings, new and old, some showing open terraces
with clothes left to dry on lines drawn across, and others, towering above the
rest, showing which way the city was heading, which was skywards. But, sadly,
only literally.
On the terrace was a small room with one window which opened on to the street
below and a small cot in which nobody slept. Kalu played the flute. It was a small,
perforated little bamboo instrument which I never saw Kalu without and the
young boy from Orissa carried it like it was property which the entire world was
bent on snatching away from him. Even when he washed dishes, Kalu kept the
flute, diligently sticking it away in the folds of his strapped loincloth and pressed
tightly against his lean stomach.
Both of us played our own instruments; Kalu had his flute, and I with my mouthorgan,
which rather ceremoniously was called the harmonica. I had within the
first few years, mastered quite a bit of the mouth organ, so much so that any
relative coming over was invariably welcome to a free concert. Nobody wanted to
hear Kalu play his flute.
Kalu played a wistful tune which he had picked up from his father who also
played the same instrument in the fields back home. The servant did not
remember his mother but the old, wiry man did come dutifully at the beginning of
every month to collect the fees, leaving his boy with a few rupees to spend. Kalu
almost invariably used up some of the money in keeping his flute in order. There
were plenty of shops, trading in flutes, tablas, organs, sitars and sarods, in the
labyrinthine lanes of our neighbourhood. Kalu had befriended one of the owners
and went from time to time to check his flute. It was in fine fettle.
Once in the room, on the terrace, both of us began together, the flute and the
mouth-organ, pressed to young mouths, breathing music into the air around
them.
Pigeons gurgling in their small little cubby holes along the parapet and on the
other side of the terrace, and all around, fluttering their wings and all on flight at
once as soon as the music would start, their silence disturbed by noise, the
stillness of the afternoon broken by two young boys making music.
After some time, the pigeons, unhappy circling the sky, would return. And settle
down in their cubby-holes. Back to the comfort of their happy gurgling, their
fluttering wings not keen to fly any more.
"They are listening to us. Our only audience," I used to tell Kalu. And we would
laugh together. We bonded well. Kalu and I. The servant and his master. Both
covering up for each other when the need rose. And helping each other as
friends.
Its cartoon time, folks!
My son, who is just in his teens, does not need any Kalu for company. Since we
have moved from our ancestral house, he doesnt even have any idea of what
fun on a terrace could possibly mean. When I asked him whether he had ever
heard of pigeons gurgling in cubby holes and flying in circular groups in the sky,
he did not show much interest. The sky and terrace, if ever he had gone up to
check, I am not sure, would have been all about whether the cable connection
with the TV antenna was in place. He, was named Vinayak after the fat, elephant
head god of prosperity, Lord Ganesha, has only one connect: the Beyblade for
now as it was the Cartoon Network some years back while, when he was just a
toddler, it was He-Man or may be, just to lend some concessions to his father,
Superman. But never in frozen cartoon strips; it always had to be the moving, TV
screen. All borrowed from the West, mind you. No homegrown pigeons and
bamboo flutes and wistful tunes of the field for him. As it is the same with almost
all children in the urban pockets of the country.
During my previous visit to Mumbai, I was astonished to see young boys and
girls working in fast food joints as delivery boys, something which I had heard
worked only in the West. But for the youth now, open as they to western values,
this is not seen as a slur on dignity; rather, this is a smart way of earning money.
Its smartness thats iconic nowadays. Indian tennis star Sania Mirza stars in a
commercial endorsement where a young rookie realizes that while the star
enjoys every bit of the cold drink, it contributes nothing to her success. This
commercial has now become a rage in India; be smart, not gullible, work hard,
and you will be successful. Its interesting that unlike us and our forefathers,
Indias new youth has stopped trying to take short-cuts.
This is the Indian youth archetype now, considering that the nation is one of the
youngest countries where, significantly, two-thirds of the population is under 35.
Obviously, it is this segment which will decide what is going to happen next.
Quite understandably, it is this group which looks to the West as an example and
also makes full use of the consumerist society that India has changed itself to in
order to manage a decent if not luxuriant and conscious-choice lifestyle for itself.
Smartness is iconic
Interestingly that is bringing back many Indian expatriates from abroad; those
who have seen enough of the West and now want to come back home to an
enterprise-oriented, decent living, encouraged and inspired by the consumerist
society where they have lived abroad. On the flip side, the most that Indian films
can still boast of is going to the Oscars, never mind even if you do not get
passing mention in the foreign media; the highest accolades are reserved for
starlets like Mallika Sherawat who has just signed up with Jackie Chan and will
be visiting Cannes as a member of the Indian delegation and Indias greatest joy
comes from possible trumped-up winners at Miss Universe pageants. A pat from
the West and everything is okay with this cocooned world of ours.
It is this same youth which has waited for Maxim and now got it. As Sunil Mehra,
the editor, sets out his policy. We dont do breasts. We dont do nipples. We do
cleavage; thats our cultural template, he said. Just for informational purposes,
Playboy, without the brand name synonymous with nudity, is to be launched in
the country soon, a decision which apparently has been taken because market
analysts feel that the Indian male is still not fully comfortable with total nudity.
Playboy without its name, Maxim pitching for only cleavage, India celebrating a
siege.
Does the jigsaw fit?
THE END
Subtitle: Is india wilting under western pressure?
Author: Abhijit Dasgupta
ISBN: 1-897313-07-1
Distributed by:
Medalion Enterprises
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Copyright©2005 Abhijit Dasgupta
First Edition, 2006
Published in Canada for worldwide release.
WarningDisclaimer
This book is designed to provide information on a general subject. It is sold with the
understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal,
accounting or other professional services. If legal or other expert assistance is required,
the services of a competent professional should be sought.
It is not the purpose of this manual to reprint all the information that is otherwise
available on the subject, but instead to complement, amplify and supplement other texts.
You are urged to read all the available material, learn as much as possible about the
subject and tailor the information to your individual needs.
Every effort has been made to make this manual as complete and as accurate as possible.
However, there may be mistakes, both typographical and in content. Therefore, this text
should be used only as a general guide and not as the ultimate source of information on
the subject. Furthermore, this manual contains information that is current only up to the
printing/posting date.
The purpose of this manual is to educate and entertain. The author, publisher and
distributor shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with
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indirectly, by the information contained in this book.
About the Author
This book, by veteran Indian editor and journalist Abhijit Dasgupta, who has been
part of top, mainline dailies across India for the last quarter of a century and was
only recently pleasantly surprised when he could file a story from a cyber cafe in
the back of beyond of an Indian village, gives you a fascinating reality check on
the changing lifestyle of the urban rich and the famous; of the huge churning in
the morality metre of the middleclass and, of course, the mobile-flaunting, jeansclad
young, once-jobless blackmarketeer you confront outside cinema halls.
A delightful read for all those who dread India for its snakes, cockroaches and
tummy-upsetting hotel food.
A must read for those who revel in surprises!
INDIA: Troys boys
By ABHIJIT DASGUPTA
The rope no longer performs magical tricks nor does the snake sway to the tunes
of the charmer. There are no carcasses seen on the pavements lining the
millions of roads in one of the biggest nations, India. India slightly embarrassed
by its richness in poverty, remains a puzzle to most, an anachronism to even its
own, yet it is still the same land which Sir Winston Churchill once described as
being a mystery wrapped in an enigma. But thats only the view from the outside.
Deep inside in every town, in every glittering metropolis, a giant churning is
taking place; a movement which is taking the country forward, shaking off its
ageold shackles of superstition, morals and unproven wisdom. For eons, India
had remained the land of arts and religion; very soon, it is likely to surpass
stronger more contemptuous Western nations in logical progression.
It is true that Indians dont live in trees any longer. The old rope trick has
vanished from the Indian stage, snakes are seen only in remote villages while the
charmer has lost his tune and a casual walk across one of Mumbais boulevards
is bound to throw up a BMW or two, not without their proverbial, opulencesmattered
post-modern swaggers. Thats the view from the outside which does
not quite reveal the huge melting pot in which the country finds itself now.
I have so many childhood and early youth memories of my country that this
change seems more engaging and worth a sociological study. It would provide
more than a fascinating glimpse into one of the oldest cultures in the world
perhaps, the oldest. I am now 45; exactly the age when you should be
worshipping Janus, the two-faced Greek god who looked forward even as he
could see what had gone behind him. But that has changed.
Streets, hosepipes & men slipping all over
Even three decades back, in the early morning, I remember how the streets used
to be washed with long serpentine hosepipes by Corporation sweepers who
connected the thick, hollow rubber line to the nearest pavement sprinkler and
how the roads looked, soon after, as if they had got their early, morning bath,
soaped and sober. How people, wearing rubber slippers, busily walked these
shining lanes, sometimes went tumbling down, hastily cursing their clumsiness
and trying to make it look as if it was all so normal while the boys on the streets
rolled over in pure joy. That was captivating innocence on the dingy, soon-to-bedirty-
again streets, thick with traffic and office commuters.
Then, again in the mornings, when housewives and their maids, got up early,
crushed coal into the mud ovens and lined them up on the lane outside, the sizes
of the ovens indicating the number of family members. How the smoke from all
these chulas (brick ovens) thickened and curled skywards in the morning heat
and dust and covered the entire lane with a thick smog. Nobody complained of
burning eyes simply because gas ovens had not yet made their forays into
Calcutta now called Kolkata.
In order to write anything about the changing face of India, it is important to get
an idea of what it was like even twenty-five years ago, when the slow, at least
apparent progressive lifestyle began in the last years of Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi. Not many outside the subcontinent know what it was like and the wrong
impressions that permeated and generated gossamer stories of a land infested
only with rats, nude sadhus (saints) and ghosts, not to mention riots by religious
bigots who need to be weeded out before any point could even be made. I have
lived in Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai and even visited the gangster hub and
second largest city on the subcontinent, Mumbai, numerous times. During this
time I have never seen beggars dying outside international airports as this was
nothing more than fiction which had been justified as fact in many a travelogue
written by over-zealous white men and women trying to make their publishers
back home happy. I have lived and worked mainly out of Calcutta, on the eastern
fringes of the country bordering Bangladesh and whose lifeline is the river
Ganges, called Hooghly in these parts. The romance that the city still has for me
is not borne of only childhood memories but of actual happenings and concrete
evidence that we were socially more relevant at that point in time than we are
now with pavement dwellers in Levis jeans and Rayban glares. The Calcutta
that seems to have come of age to many is now socially irrelevant and lacks the
romance and sense of adventure which made it a pretty iconic city to live in
where Alan Ginsberg pitched tent and did drugs openly in the sprawling lush
green Maidan as much as within the cosy comforts of the many admiring, affluent
though fawning, obsequious gentry. All that has gone.
Of flyovers, bistros & discos
The old Calcutta has given way to Kolkata, a city of upcoming flyovers, elegant
lounges, incorrectly named bistros, waterworlds, amusement parks and four-lane
one-way traffic. There are now FTV cloned fashion shows every evening and a
middle-class who hates that very nomenclature. The middle-class, which was
once the backbone of an intelligent, culture-happy Calcutta, has almost vanished
and now it is routine to take your family out for dinner at a super-deluxe loungerestaurant
even if that means working yourself up to a stress level which saps
energy as well as grinds you to a sudden halt when you should have raced
forward to greater prosperity. Heart attacks and stress-induced illnesses are now
the primary killers in India, of which Calcutta is just one of those also-ran cities.
I have always been an avid reader of Rudyard Kipling, who lived and
institutionalised imperialism in India through his works, and scathingly wrote
about Calcutta in the late-19th century: "Palace, byre, hovel_ Poverty and pride_
Side by side." Remember, at that time, Calcutta was the second city only to
London in the entire empire and the Europeans, after having tried their best to
educate the native Indians about hygiene and other uplifting movements in life
had almost given up. With the shadow of the nationalistic Indian National
Congress, which had just been formed, looming large on the horizon and
threatening may just be sparks because of the existence of a 150-year-old
colonial fiefdom. Total independence was to come at least 60 years later in 1947,
but the British had seen the writing on the wall and were in the process of giving
up the colony while making the best of the loot. Indifference to Indian upgradation
and lifestyle was thus the last thing on their minds and it showed.
Pestilence, it was, which India inherited in the early Fifties; the palaces were all
but gone while poverty and pride was definitely rearing its ugly head for a good
number of years after that.
This was an India to which most of those who are now touching 50 or
thereabouts were born. I was born just a couple of years and a decade after
Independence was wrested from the British in 1947; and for a large chunk of our
generation, we managed through a critical period till our late youth compromising
with both palace and hovel, pride and poverty, not without their obvious
insecurities. We inhaled with great pleasure the sweet smell of the jasmine as the
vendor passed by in his cart on the lane below while the hamhanded
industrialisation and Licence Raj (another name for institutionalised corruption in
which the government handed out sanctions for business and other profit-making
ventures for a secret fee) were moving hand in glove with a greater and real
anarchy throughout India, giving way to the internal Emergency proclaimed by
Mrs Indira Gandhi in June 1975. The chaos within India was showing while the
largescale arrests and drowning of protests were stymied by a dictatorship which,
in the name of democratic functioning, produced, what in the very short run,
would push India back by centuries. I was barely in my teens at that time but,
with some native, homegrown intelligence, learnt to survive with both with pride
and poverty, side by side.
Remember that piano?
Part of the pride and romance about being what I was, included a huge British
era piano, a staple at any rich or upper class Calcutta household, but which could
not be played with the flamboyance, elegance and flair required by the
instrument because there was not enough space in the now-cubicled rooms to
allow for an audience or, even, anybody to pull a stool in front and run their
fingers across the length and breadth of the huge music-machine. The piano, in
the early 70s when Calcutta was torn by anarchy and bloodshed stemming from
a bulk of misguided youth believing in a violent version of Communism, lay
covered by tarpaulin, which was always wet at one spot where the water dripped
unceasingly from a crack in the damp, crisscross lined century old-ceiling. My
grandfathers father had built the house and there had been no attempt by
anybody over the previous 100 years to renovate or even think of pulling down
the old Gothic styled building to pave the way for a decent, spacious, new
highrise with, what was to happen later, matchbox apartments. .
Come the Nineties, and this was to happen throughout Calcutta. Old houses
were pulled down at random and skyscrapers, some of which collapsed within
years, sprang up in numbers, the moneyed people moved into them, handing
over some pittance to the previous owners who could not handle the
maintenance of such ancestral palaces any longer. The skyline changed as the
land sharks took over. In Calcutta now, apart from a few British-era buildings
which have been earmarked as heritage zones, almost all the palaces have been
razed to the ground and the city simply seems to look upwards, pining for what
only it knows.
When we were boys, we had a number of silver linings in the canvas of
bloodshed and so-called revolution which wracked the city. My friends and I
played cricket and football, depending on the season, but with one problem
which jeopardised our games every evening. The ball, carelessly tossed around
with boyish playfulness, invariably got lost in the thick, green and black
undergrowth of the backyard and either it was too dark by then to do the
searching or the neighbouring, loudmouthed factorymen hid away what for them
was a nuisance.
The terrace also had some flower pots, their painted patterns washed away by
time, and the thick foliage which rose from the ground below touching the terrace
gave
us great joy when some trees flowered on their own, the bloom giving rise to
small pink buds which we plucked and sucked for the juice. The juice was as
sweet
as honey.
Six per cent only for roads!
Now, post-middle age, I dont wake up any morning to jasmine or the flowering
trees. The number of cars has increased many fold (Calcutta has only 6 per cent
road space of its entire area), so much so that traffic seems to have overtaken
the city, pushing away vendors and their carts and the old man who used to carry
a chest full of cakes and pastries to be sold to eager children in households, rich
and poor. Now its MacDonalds and Kentuckys. I have forgotten what it feels like
to walk without slippers on grass wet with dew.
The problem with Calcutta and, indeed all major Indian cities, is that this
phenomenal change has not been a result of normal, easy progression. While
money has indeed lined the pockets of the middleclass which, sadly for a once
culture-literate, progressive national capital city, has not been able to handle this
sudden rise in cash flow with the method and intelligence it deserves in order not
to spoil you. The rush of money into a poor city has been like the sudden flow of
adrenalin in a terminally ill patient; the haste that ensues can only bring the
doctor home. This is obvious, in every nook and cranny of the country, the rich
has become richer and the poor almost obliterated, not by good governance but
by the sheer incapability to survive. From the top floor of any highrise in India,
only the drone of traffic filters above while the buzz of ant-like people walking in
various straight lines, together looking like a maze, resembling a jigsaw puzzle
left unfinished.
It is the haphazard urbanization of India, continuing into this century, which could
be playing havoc in the years to come; as explanation, one must remember that
the rapid urbansiation was not due to any social cause but purely economic in
nature. The urban chaos in India was the perfect refuge for the village-dweller
who slipped easily into being one of the million unknown wage-earners. In the
village, that is difficult; your neighbour would know how much you owe your
neighbour living on the other side. Tragically, in India, this little knowledge can
spark vicious riots if the castes come into play as it has on numerous occasions.
At least 28 per cent of Indias population now lives in cities and many more of its
citizens move in and out of them for temporary work. In some southern states,
nearly half the population is in cities. In 1991, India had 23 cities with one million
or more people. A decade later, it had 35. Something which was not put on the
storyboard by well-heeled planners in the first place. This is a country of 600,000
villages but it is the city which is bound to reshape India. And in a country which,
since ancient times, has been mothered by the village, this transition and power
equation change may be devastating and tragic.
Everyone and everything in India is in such a rush. This is not the India we grew
up in and the contradiction hurts not only individuals but also the country and its
culture, I am sure.
The hero as anti-hero
My father, an amiable government clerk but very wise in his vision and ample in
his reading, the type of person who could easily sit for any management
examination and emerge with flying colours and grab a plum job even before
getting his degree papers in hand, had once told me when I innocently but with a
great deal of curiosity queried about the bloody, senseless revolution all around
us in the early Seventies.
. "You see all the violence around. The movement, the revolution, the bodies
lying all around Calcutta...how will you understand what romance, love, nature
and life is all about? When your next-door neighbour is dragged out in the middle
of the night to be shot in cold blood in the Maidan in the name of police
encounters, how will you appreciate literature, how can you enjoy a game of
cricket under the winter sun?God has taken your generation for a
suckerThese revolutionaries are not killing human beings, they are marauding
a city, a culture. They have destroyed our race and, one day, the repercussions
will kill the nation," he had said, without trying to sound like a preacher. For him,
then in his late 50s, life had been over and he saw no reason why he would have
to deliver sermons to a generation which he knew was growing up to be
confused and doomed. But at times, I saw him trembling when there was a
murder or an encounter in the neighbourhood. He would have tears in his eyes.
My mother would intercede with tea. At times, my father would refuse the tea and
walk up to the terrace. "What your generation needs is a villain as hero...Its a
vicious cycle, its bound to happen," he would mumble, as he climbed the stairs
to the open terrace. His wife would take his tea to the terrace room where Dad
would softly ask his wife, "I hope your son hasnt got links with them?" The "them"
was an obvious reference to the revolutionaries who had infiltrated every house
and bylane, planting moles against the police and government agencies.
His wife my mom would smile and shake her head. Content, Dad would pace the
terrace, tea cup in hand, shaking his head from time to time.
His words rang true in some short years.
Amitabh Bachchan, the star of the millennium, according to a recent BBC poll,
exploded on India shortly with his pan-Indian Hindi film, Zanzeer (1971), quite
aptly translating into The Shackles, which gave the entire angst-ridden youth of
India a role model, totally different and a greater necessity than the chocolate
face heroes ruling the roost before him. But the Seventies were not the time for
honey and dew in India and Bachchan and his script-writers wrested the
advantage in a fashion that can only be fantasised about. Hindi films in India are
a barometer of change; countless sociological texts and research have been
written and done on the impact of this genre on the India psyche. Almost all of
them have come to one singular conclusion. Hindi films define the majority of
India .
It is this national appeal, except perhaps in pockets of South India were the film
gods are different though the dividing lines are slowly vanishing with huge crosscultural
exchange, Bachchan, by far, 35 years later, remains the most popular
Indian alive. When he was nursing an intestine operation, one billion Indians
offered prayers at countless temples throughout the nation. But Dad was so right;
Bachchans staple was the anti-hero, almost a Dirty Harry-Clint Eastwood type of
character which he portrayed in film after superhit film: violence for a good cause
to defeat greater violence with an evil motive, revolvers to match swords if that
justified goodness and killing villains without mercy if that was what the nation
thought they deserved. The justification of the anti-hero as the archetype of the
messiah was at hand.
In the early 70s, it was the anger of an entire nation which broke its shackles with
Bachchan. Indeed, at that time, a romantic, good-looking, singing, dancing,
wooing hero seemed quite an anachronism. The anti-hero has been Indias
guiding image since then. Obviously, the anger of the early 70s has not
dissipated. It rears its head through riots, through brother killing brother over
religion, and in a country, though a single nation in geography books, which is
anyway split crisscross in every sector like those lines which drew unhappy
etchings across that damp ceiling overhead.
Of English and cricket balls
Strangely, it is the English which has still, to a large extent, kept this country
together with a game and a language. Cricket, a bat-ball game resembling
baseball, and the Queens English. Wherever you travel in India, you are bound
to come across young boys playing cricket with makeshift bats and balls,
breaking window panes, creating traffic jams, but with nobody objecting
seriously. When India play Pakistan, there is war on the TV screen and huge
groups of passersby or even those without access to a TV set, can be seen
clustering around to have a look at public screen at the electronics goods shop in
the neighbourhood. And knowing English is still a huge privilege and is a tongue
which is spoken with great variations, sometimes without much respect to
grammar, throughout the nation. Cricket players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul
Dravid are gods in their own fashion and schools teaching English have
mushroomed throughout the cities and even semi-urban areas with an influence
which is hard to ignore. So much so, that after years, there are various nooks
and corners of the subcontinent where pockets of protest are simmering over the
disuse of the mothertongue. But since India has over 200 dialects spoken
throughout its land, those protests cannot effect a plausible, effective change.
But the urbanite is not sophisticated or modern if he cant hold a fork in the
manner that an Englishman at a formal dinner would, no party now is complete
without the dance floor blaring hip-hop, trance or retro, and, if you are a dodo at
speaking the language, forget about moving into the upper echelons of society.
This is common throughout India, in every city and every small town vying for
urban status.
My own English reading seeped in early and I still remember those days when I
stayed up through nights finishing Enid Blytons Famous Five series because
those books needed to be handed back to the school library first thing in the
morning. In this, I befriended my mom. Initially, when I was very young, Ma used
to read out to me; slowly, I got hooked on to Enid Blyton, Noddy, the Hardy Boys
and the rest. But never Mills and Boons. I dont know why, but never.
The one Enid Blyton book which I longed to be part of was one that belonged to
the Famous Five series, complete with Timmy the Dog, the one in which the
adventures included a caravan in the English countryside. I asked Ma all sorts of
questions.
"What is a caravan? Do they have bathrooms inside them? Who drives them
when you sleep? Is there a driver and an engine like in cars?" Ma answered as
best as she could. She did not have the faintest idea of what the English
countryside looked like but she got prints of Gainsborough paintings from
neighbours and relatives and some from her own collection which showed rich
English meadows and hills and the lovely, verdant green. The young me, even at
that tender age, just wished I could be there. Going to London and visiting the
English countryside have remained one of those various carrots with which Fate
played come-hither games with our generation. Some have won; others, like me,
still wish I could see where Shakespeare was born. Anything with a hint of
English is still the best leveller, more than half a century after the tribe left Indian
shores. If there is one facility which the Indians are most emotional about, it is
their knowledge of English. Like everything else in the country, we tend to
become emotional about almost anything; what a Westerner would forget in a
minute, an Indian will brood over through the night. If somebody points out an
error in the usage of English as a professional tool or strategy in society, then the
brood could even turn into a nightmare.
Young bride walking
Talking of the changing Indian lifestyle, one incident, pertaining to a very painful
episode in a friends life, comes to mind. This was way back in the early Eighties
and my friend had just got married. This was an arranged one in which the bride
and groom first see each other at the wedding altar. He was happy, we had
glasses of whisky washed down with shredded lamb and salad and the
celebrations had continued in a state of recurring happiness and daze, whenever
the alcoholic haze cleared, that is. Then my friend went off to a seashore resort,
some 200 kilometres from Calcutta, for his honeymoon; those were days when
flying off to Singapore or Hong Kong to do some by-the-way shopping were not
even dreamt of. Honeymoons were spent in nearby resorts and only the real rich
could afford Kashmir in the north or Mahabalipuram in the south.
It had been, as was mostly the case, an arranged marriage, yet again something
which is alien to Westerners to whom getting married without having even seen
your bride or groom would be some sort of a disaster, if not sacrilege. In the early
Eighties, arranged marriages were the norm. It still is, but the honeymoon
destinations have changed. It is invariably Singapore for the middle-class,
Switzerland for the real rich and Kashmir, when it is peaceful, for those who have
saved throughout their working lives only for this one vacation.
My friend, an engineer from one of the best known colleges of India, however,
got into a mess. His wife, the lovely Jahnavi, another name for the River
Ganges, was a somnambulist, someone who walked in her sleep without
realizing that she was doing so. This disease is as uncommon as it was deadly.
My friend, Anirban, and Jahnavi, without barely knowing each other, had gone on
their honeymoon in high spirits and the much greater aspirational wish of any
man trying to possess a woman and a woman slowly stepping into her role as an
all-giving Indian wife.
What I later heard from Anirban was straight from a movie. Those days, West
Bengal, the province of which Calcutta is the capital, went without power for days
and on luckier occasions, for hours. Digha, their chosen destination, was no
exception.
It was past midnight in the hotel room in Digha. They had fun, played with the
waves and then returned to the room way past 8 in the evening, tired and spent.
Anirban, after a heavy dinner of chicken and spiced rice, had dropped off.
Jahnavi, who had shocked Anirban, but only slightly, a week back by telling him,
as a matter of fact, that she never slept with a stitch on, was fast asleep too. The
huge sea and the might of the breakers had left them with tired bodies. They
slept soundly. Anirban snored softly; Jahnavi had earlier told him she did not
mind.
They had not made love that night.
Suddenly, Anirban woke up. It was hot. The power had gone, there was no
generator and the zero-electricity hours in Digha, by consensus, were
unpredictable. He sat up on the bed, cursing the hotel, the government, and
finally, himself. The heat was unbearable. Did they at least have a candle at
hand?
He called out to his wife, "How the hell can you sleep in this heat?" He got no
answer. He stretched his arm towards Jahnavi; his hand caught emptiness. He
put on his glasses, always handy by his bedside, and tried to focus towards the
glass window through which the small, rectangular verandah could be seen. The
verandah, through the glazed window glass, was a shadowy mass under the full
moon but he could clearly make out its emptiness. There was no one standing
there.
Jahnavi wasnt anywhere. The door was locked; so she hadnt gone out either.
It was then that he heard the splashing of water in the bathroom. Anirban heaved
a sigh of relief. His wife was taking a bath to beat the heat. He thought of lighting
a candle and started searching for one, opening the door to let the moonlight
enter. Walking out on the verandah, he saw a room service boy, sleeping deeply
and silently. He nudged him.
"Hey! Do you guys have a candle? You ought to...Get me one. We cant sleep in
this heat. Might as well have a light inside...Get up, you!" He was almost
apologetic. The boy shifted sides and continued sleeping. Anirban realised that
he had to be more active.
He used only part of his strength to shake the boy awake. "I asked for a candle.
Its pitch dark out here. Get me one. Please. Make it quick!"
The boy yawned. "The lights will come back in half-and-hour, sir! Cant you wait?
I am sleepy and I dont know where the candle is. They are with Manager, sir," he
gestured towards the officials room downstairs.
"I dont care. Here, you get up and run. Get me a candle!" Anirban was now
losing his patience. "And a hand fan if you can. The mosquitoes..." He did not
end the sentence, hoping the boy would have made out by now.
The boy stood up, and on seeing Anirbans massive, erect frame, thought it wiser
to move. He walked slowly towards the staircase leading to the managers room.
Anirban grunted and then returned to the room, keeping the door ajar. His eyes
were now used to the darkness and he could see almost everything inside the
room in blurred outlines. The moonlight, washing the room in parts, helped.
He knocked on the bathroom door. "How can you bathe in such darkness? You
could have called me. There can be bloody cockroaches inside..." He was sure
that the very mention of the insect, of which his wife, like almost all Indian
women, was scared to the point of death, would have Jahnavi rushing out.
Nothing of that sort happened. The splashing of water continued without a break.
Anirban was slightly puzzled. "Jahnavi!" This time, louder. "Jahnavi!"
There was no answer even now. The water continued to make noises inside.
Anirban shrugged. "Okay. Have a nice time. Keep some water for me in the tub.
Ill have a splash too. Is the water too hot?"
There was no answer.
"I have asked for a candle. Dont come out unless that joker brings one. He was
sleeping outside. That idiot, wasnt budging. I have asked him to get one. Hang
on for five more minutes. I will tell you when..."
Abruptly, as if a small fountain had just dried up, the splashing of water inside the
bathroom stopped. The howl of the sea outside increased with the silence. The
door opened slowly, but steadily. From inside, with the moonlight bathing her
naked, glistening dark body, Jahnavi came out, indifferently drying her dripping
hair with a towel. She tiptoed across to the bed and turned, just once towards the
door, even taking a few steps towards it, making normal motions around the
room, as if taking her time till she would be sure that the entire length of her long
hair had been dried before she hit the bed again.
The tresses fell along her neck, past the shoulders, covering parts of her small
breasts. The towel continued to be rubbed against the wet hair. The rest of the
body was shining silk but dry. As usual, she had finished that part in the
bathroom and, as at home, come out, just to finish the hair part.
Add a lotus at the base and you have Botticellis Venus, Anirban thought for a
fleeting moment, before he inched forward lovingly to take his beautiful, naked
wife in his arms. Jahnavi walked past Anirban as if he didnt exist.
Anirban watched, sweating profusely in the heat, sensing something was wrong.
The moon was now bright on Jahnavis face. He now knew why he was uneasy.
Even as she walked around, doing all that normal things women do once they
have had a bath and are at home, Anirban recoiled as he realised that his wife
was still in deep slumber. Her eyes were closed.
"Sir! The candle...! "
The boy, gaping and shocked, was standing at the door with a candle which
suddenly lit up the entire room with a strength which could have felled Anirban.
The honeymoon was less than brief.
They were divorced a few months later with my educated friend, an engineer who
boasted of culture and knowledge, initiating the divorce case against his lovely
wife for cruelty. Jahnavi did not fight the case.
And whenever I remember my friend and his lovely wife and the tragic divorce, I
remember a story Anirban told me, sobbing all the while, about their wedding
night, something which all of us friends shared but which now comes through as
eye-opener for me when I study the social system of our country.
Anirban had a sharp, almost aquiline nose with a bright, blue mole on the left
side of his mouth. He was a delight for females though in the Calcutta of our
growing youth, no female came forward to propose to him.
Jahnavi had loved the mole and the nose, he told us. On their wedding night, as
they made love as if it was the first time they were doing so, his wife had licked
the small, little mound beside his nose and just above the mouth, and said,
releasing both of them together in a wave of delight, " Gawwwd...I am coming..."
Her slender fingers, which dug deep and clawed into his broad shoulders, left
stinging stripes in the morning. Interestingly, and socially relevant as I see it now,
Jahnavi belonged to those first generation Indian, middleclass women who made
love in English. She never went to a psychiatrist or medicine man when ill. That
was India 25 years back.
Strangely, they are still in touch. Jahnavi was cured completely after her second
husband, whom she married a decade later, took her to a psychiatrist and
followed all scientific steps to help her. Anirban, still recovering perhaps from the
shock of that dreadful night so many years back, has not married yet still deeply
in love with Jahnavi even now. They do small talk at parties.
Sometimes I wonder why our nation, with all its frills of missiles and shopping
malls and NASA-educated scientists, has not been able to educate the common
folk.
A stranger is a friend you have never met before; in India, the transition from a
stranger ( read: arranged marriages) to a friend ( husband or wife) takes more
than the usual time and even when the change does occur in a positive fashion,
it is either too late or by that time, familiarity with indifference and lack of emotion
may have already taken its toll. That being said, in India, you will find more happy
toothless, older couples than young, vibrant middle-aged or younger husbandwives
having a ball.
Never a canter
This country is a crystal ball into which any gaze can be revealing even for those
who dont know anything about predictions. You just need to get into the history
and psyche of this massive nation. India is an emotional nation-state; a spark
may create a conflagaration, a smile can be converted into a marriage. But
nothing happens easily out here and never ever in non-dramatic situations.
Nothing flows easily into a consequent action; its always either a hop, step or a
jump, never a smooth canter.
Therein lies Indias charisma as well as its ghost. Contradictions are what the
makes the Indian stage so dramatic, painful and, at most times, darned
interesting.
My young daughter, Ujjaini, studying English (ah! again!) in one of the premier
colleges in the Indian capital of Delhi is always fighting with me whenever I have
something good to say about Delhi where I have worked for almost five years
and then ran away because I couldnt keep pace with its hectic ant-like daily
business journeys at the workplace and even almost political deaths and backstabbing
at social gatherings. Nothing is laidback in Delhi and almost un-Indian in
its approach to life. Laidback is something you cannot call Delhi.
Argues Ujjaini, a name I gave her after a visit to Ujjain, the legendary pre-Christ
capital of thriving middle India, "The first thing you can be sure of if youre coming
from any other part of India, apart from Mumbai, is a massive culture shock
which I got when I first came to Delhi. The culture-shock which is enough to give
a normal conservative person the worst nightmare of his or her life! Chain-
Smoking and high rates of alcohol consumption both by adolescents and adults,
MMSs, zooming crime rates against women, very low safety precautions for
night-wanderers, accidents happening by the dozen every second in some part
of the city or the other. It truly is a nightmare, well, yes; I have nothing
complimentary to say about Delhi as far as the general people are concerned. It
truly is a beautiful city, with lots of greenery, well-maintained roads and almostsmooth
traffic, this coupled with the 100-odd super malls or so coming up and the
various lavish multiplexes and high-rises, we can say that Delhi has advanced
quite a bit in the superficial realm of looks and outward show and might even be
giving competition to many foreign countries in the years to come. Where the
people and morality are concerned, there cannot be any other city lower on my
chart than Delhi."
Scathing, critical and full of sledge-hammer blows, Ujjaini continues, "But dont
jump to conclusions and brand me one of those outsiders who see nothing good
in any other city than his/her home-town because at no point of time am I saying
that partying, having fun and freaking out are bad. I am a young ,fun-loving girl
myself, who visits discos, hang out with my friends and basically freak out
and avail of the 'little' liberties that being away from home permits. Neither is
there anything wrong with being a little contemptuous sometimes and showing
your attitude to people by virtue of being residents of the capital of India. What
I'm critiquing here is the complete lack of moral and ethical behavior indulged in
by and large the majority of the youth and almost the entire adult population,
shockingly enough. We have not been able to take the better qualities from the
West. India indeed has changed from what we have been reading in books and
seen in films.Yes, the image of India as the country of the snake-charmer
and elephant has been reduced to large extent but it would be wrong to think that
the image of India with little street-urchins on the streets begging for food and
money or very (in) conveniently treating the footpath as a lavatory. We have
been able to take from the West as far as the external facade of the country is
concerned (and that too only represented by the upper classes) there are still
miles to go before India 'awakens' to the advancement required to it to be a
country to be emulated, not emulating. Consider this, if India had really come at
par with all the western countries we sometimes equate it with, would you really
e asking whether India has been able to 'reach' or 'aspire' to that status?" b
But she continues to study in Delhi because that is where education is happening
and from where a degree means much more than anywhere else in the country.
Also, being a Delhi-ite has its own virtues; for one, you cannot afford to be bovine
or too innocent. Delhi teaches you to be streetsmart and gears you up to look the
world square in the eyes. And, for that, if morality and other social considerations
are given the go-by, then so be it. The urban youth of India has now taken this
philosophy to heart.
"Nobody gets up here to offer the seat to a wizened old lady (let alone a young
lady) in crowded buses. People have forgotten that there exist words such as
sorry and thank you in the English dictionary. People here are so selfabsorbed,
superficial and so caught up in the petty concerns of their own lives
that they could care less about anything else in life. If wearing Marks and
Spencer clothes, smoking, attending parties, socialising, throwing empty kisses
in the air and hugging every old and new associate you meet on the roads are
signs of emotion, strutting around in the exquisite malls and having live-in -
relationships, one-night-stands with whom ever you meet, is not advancement."
Ujjaini is a vocal young lady of Delhi, thats for sure. But, however, she may be
quite right. We do not seem to have absorbed the better side of Western society,
picking and choosing the wrong things at the right time when the country was set
to zoom ahead. But the new youth, I feel, will not let happiness and a politically
correct social lifestyle to be their staple where all can join hands for a good life,
warped as they are in their own selfish, so-called modern lifestyles where the
guiding principle is "I, Me and Myself". And that is the killer.
One for the road, only
Interestingly, taking off from where Ujjaini left, I rummaged the files to check out
some figures of alcohol consumption among the urban youth which is not
something that our country has imported from the West. India was the land of
Sura (wine) in ancient times when the West was living in caves; however, once a
drink in hand became the sign of machismo much like the Marlboro ad, it became
a defining statement. Beer continues to be the favourite drink among the urban
youth. Increased purchasing power and changing lifestyles have contributed to
its double-digit growth with sales touching 100 million cases last year. Beer
drinkers may not switch over but women and young people who have been
consuming vodka and rum may try these flavoured drinks. So next time you visit
an Indian nightclub and see young men and women dancing away with beer
bottles in hand, dont be surprised; this is only an extension of the "I, Me and
Myself" concept. Drink, dont overindulge. Sounds good but not to our generation
which drank to get drunk and had a ball of a time. Competition and work desk
rivalry have also robbed the Indian urban youth of the little pleasures of gay
abandon. And this phenomenon is Pan-Indian.
The flute with the organ
I remember another ditty from my childhood in Calcutta which could well serve
the purpose of this book about the changes that have taken place in a short span
of some 35 years.
We had a boy-servant from the state of Orissa, adjacent to Bengal, of which
Calcutta was the capital, and who was, despite severe warnings from my
parents, my best friend for many years. I had lost him somewhere down the line
and in the quagmire of years. His name was Kalu.
Kalu, I remember, was a squat, dark, bare-chested boy with large eyes just
below joined, wide, bushy eyebrows which stretched right across his forehead.
Kalu also had a limp, one of his legs being slightly shorter than the other.
Whenever he walked, he seemed to slip, which he did not, but which, in the
event, infused his movement with a sense of drama. His single eyebrows and his
limp were the young servants calling card.
Nobody even bothered about child labour those days. Kalu came to our
household when he was barely eight and did all the hard labour that even an
able-bodied man would not do without a very expensive fee in the West. Neither
Kalu nor his family objected; it was normal, and most natural, for a boy of that
class to earn his familys bread by doing household chores. That was the
Calcutta, and indeed, India, of our childhood. You wont find a single boy-servant
in the urban cities nowadays; and even if they do, they will either work shifts or
charge a fee enough to make the lady of the family cringe and offer to do the
hard work herself. Not that the tribe has vanished but they cannot be dictated to
any longer in a land where drivers of even small cars are given mobile phones by
their employer so that they dont get lost in the labyrinth and parking lot maze
where it is impossible to find your car after a good evenings heavy shopping.
In the afternoons and during holidays, both of us went up to the terrace which
was the only thing left in our household which reminded everybody in the locality
that we were once bigtime. The terrace, square-shaped and with a tap, shaped
like a small fountain which sprinkled water when the rusted red star-shaped knob
at the base was forced rightwards, was more than a century old and a huge joy;
from that terrace, the entire part of central Calcutta, complete with the toy-like
Howrah Bridge from afar, and the sprawling Maidan with the 350-foot-tall
landmark Ochterlony Monument sticking out like a pencil could be seen. Among
these two landmarks were buildings, new and old, some showing open terraces
with clothes left to dry on lines drawn across, and others, towering above the
rest, showing which way the city was heading, which was skywards. But, sadly,
only literally.
On the terrace was a small room with one window which opened on to the street
below and a small cot in which nobody slept. Kalu played the flute. It was a small,
perforated little bamboo instrument which I never saw Kalu without and the
young boy from Orissa carried it like it was property which the entire world was
bent on snatching away from him. Even when he washed dishes, Kalu kept the
flute, diligently sticking it away in the folds of his strapped loincloth and pressed
tightly against his lean stomach.
Both of us played our own instruments; Kalu had his flute, and I with my mouthorgan,
which rather ceremoniously was called the harmonica. I had within the
first few years, mastered quite a bit of the mouth organ, so much so that any
relative coming over was invariably welcome to a free concert. Nobody wanted to
hear Kalu play his flute.
Kalu played a wistful tune which he had picked up from his father who also
played the same instrument in the fields back home. The servant did not
remember his mother but the old, wiry man did come dutifully at the beginning of
every month to collect the fees, leaving his boy with a few rupees to spend. Kalu
almost invariably used up some of the money in keeping his flute in order. There
were plenty of shops, trading in flutes, tablas, organs, sitars and sarods, in the
labyrinthine lanes of our neighbourhood. Kalu had befriended one of the owners
and went from time to time to check his flute. It was in fine fettle.
Once in the room, on the terrace, both of us began together, the flute and the
mouth-organ, pressed to young mouths, breathing music into the air around
them.
Pigeons gurgling in their small little cubby holes along the parapet and on the
other side of the terrace, and all around, fluttering their wings and all on flight at
once as soon as the music would start, their silence disturbed by noise, the
stillness of the afternoon broken by two young boys making music.
After some time, the pigeons, unhappy circling the sky, would return. And settle
down in their cubby-holes. Back to the comfort of their happy gurgling, their
fluttering wings not keen to fly any more.
"They are listening to us. Our only audience," I used to tell Kalu. And we would
laugh together. We bonded well. Kalu and I. The servant and his master. Both
covering up for each other when the need rose. And helping each other as
friends.
Its cartoon time, folks!
My son, who is just in his teens, does not need any Kalu for company. Since we
have moved from our ancestral house, he doesnt even have any idea of what
fun on a terrace could possibly mean. When I asked him whether he had ever
heard of pigeons gurgling in cubby holes and flying in circular groups in the sky,
he did not show much interest. The sky and terrace, if ever he had gone up to
check, I am not sure, would have been all about whether the cable connection
with the TV antenna was in place. He, was named Vinayak after the fat, elephant
head god of prosperity, Lord Ganesha, has only one connect: the Beyblade for
now as it was the Cartoon Network some years back while, when he was just a
toddler, it was He-Man or may be, just to lend some concessions to his father,
Superman. But never in frozen cartoon strips; it always had to be the moving, TV
screen. All borrowed from the West, mind you. No homegrown pigeons and
bamboo flutes and wistful tunes of the field for him. As it is the same with almost
all children in the urban pockets of the country.
During my previous visit to Mumbai, I was astonished to see young boys and
girls working in fast food joints as delivery boys, something which I had heard
worked only in the West. But for the youth now, open as they to western values,
this is not seen as a slur on dignity; rather, this is a smart way of earning money.
Its smartness thats iconic nowadays. Indian tennis star Sania Mirza stars in a
commercial endorsement where a young rookie realizes that while the star
enjoys every bit of the cold drink, it contributes nothing to her success. This
commercial has now become a rage in India; be smart, not gullible, work hard,
and you will be successful. Its interesting that unlike us and our forefathers,
Indias new youth has stopped trying to take short-cuts.
This is the Indian youth archetype now, considering that the nation is one of the
youngest countries where, significantly, two-thirds of the population is under 35.
Obviously, it is this segment which will decide what is going to happen next.
Quite understandably, it is this group which looks to the West as an example and
also makes full use of the consumerist society that India has changed itself to in
order to manage a decent if not luxuriant and conscious-choice lifestyle for itself.
Smartness is iconic
Interestingly that is bringing back many Indian expatriates from abroad; those
who have seen enough of the West and now want to come back home to an
enterprise-oriented, decent living, encouraged and inspired by the consumerist
society where they have lived abroad. On the flip side, the most that Indian films
can still boast of is going to the Oscars, never mind even if you do not get
passing mention in the foreign media; the highest accolades are reserved for
starlets like Mallika Sherawat who has just signed up with Jackie Chan and will
be visiting Cannes as a member of the Indian delegation and Indias greatest joy
comes from possible trumped-up winners at Miss Universe pageants. A pat from
the West and everything is okay with this cocooned world of ours.
It is this same youth which has waited for Maxim and now got it. As Sunil Mehra,
the editor, sets out his policy. We dont do breasts. We dont do nipples. We do
cleavage; thats our cultural template, he said. Just for informational purposes,
Playboy, without the brand name synonymous with nudity, is to be launched in
the country soon, a decision which apparently has been taken because market
analysts feel that the Indian male is still not fully comfortable with total nudity.
Playboy without its name, Maxim pitching for only cleavage, India celebrating a
siege.
Does the jigsaw fit?
THE END
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