It had been raining in the town of words for two straight days. You could not tell dawn from dusk, the sky looked so leaden, like someone with a secret too dark to be shared.
In the morning bazaar, men moved around with rolled-up trousers, even women hitched their sarees up a few inches. You had to constantly avert your eyes away from the unfamiliar body parts of familiar people.
Every now and then, they greeted each other. "Low pressure. Bay of Bengal."
Those braving the sticky, treacherous puddles knew it stood for greeting.
Summer, at least, was over for that year.
On the evening of the second day, Anwar sat at the clubhouse, watching the evening news on television. The misfits who manned the weather office thought the deluge would last another thirty-six hours. A fogged-up Bengal, as seen from satellites in space, reminded him of a hole-in-the-wall establishment right next to the housing society.
Its owner, so decrepit that he looked like an unsolved puzzle of skin and bones, had made local history by mastering the art of frying all fish and fowl, and some fruits too. He had never trusted any employee or relative with his recipes. Every morning at five, his adult grandsons would take turns to carry him to the shop, where he sat doubled up in front of a blazing charcoal oven till they came and rescued him around midnight.
Anwar caught hold of one of the young boys hanging around the clubhouse, dispatched him to the fritters shop and wandered into the library's empty reading room.
He had seen the clubhouse in worse shape. With a corrugated tin sheet for a roof, it operated out of the motor room of the water reservoir when he had first got there. The lending library had consisted of a few dozen books, stacked on a meat shelf, donated by some departing homemaker. A small black and white television perched on top of it, with a sputtering picture tube that frequently squeezed all action into a thin horizontal line mid-screen.
It all seemed several worlds away, from the way things looked now. The blood-red sofas, upholstered with such posh fabric that Anwar always felt guilty sitting down. The shelves, which ran from the floor almost to the ceiling, serviced by a dainty aluminium step-ladder. The room had been done up to a colour called beige, which glowed like a bride's skin under the concealed lights.
Anwar looked outside. The rain had slowed to a drizzle but there were still no signs of his fritters or his mates. He sat and chewed his nails for a while. When it did not stop him from being bored, he flipped the pages of the lending register.
Wives and mothers were the most avid readers, devouring at least two books every week. Their taste was for edgy Bangla romance, the ones where women with deep desires smouldered on the covers. Only two English books had been borrowed in the past six months, by Sujoy, the judge's son. They were called 'Moonstone' and 'Catch-22'.
In response to an appeal for donations, someone had once dumped a stack of ancient IKEA furniture catalogues. The scatter-brained Rupsha Moitra was obviously thriving on them, borrowing one every week for a year now.
At the sound of someone clearing his throat, Anwar looked up. A man he was not familiar with was at the door. He was elderly, though not quite loyal to any particular age. An embroidered cloth bag, heavy with damp, hung from his right shoulder while he peered towards the bookshelves with mild caution. He wore a pale yellow shirt over his white dhoti, the latter was limp with mud splattered near the borders.
'Yes, how may I help you?" Anwar asked, going up to the door.
"Oh, namaskar," the man folded his palms together in greeting, unmindful of the spray of moisture that landed on Anwar's face from his folded, dripping umbrella. "I've come from quite some distance. Are you the person in charge here?"
"What do you want?" Anwar asked, stepping outside. The stage or performing area, where the man stood, was cloaked in partial darkness, lit only by the diffuse shafts of light coming from the rooms of the clubhouse, arranged in a semi-circle around the stage. He did not want the old man to be tempted to step inside.
The man hesitated, running his right hand over the furrows of his face as if to wipe them away. His skin looked like ancient bark. "It is, well, it is about a certain gentleman called Romit Sen."
"Oh, you wanted to meet Romit Sen? I'll show you the way," Anwar stepped forward, pointing with his outstretched arm. "See the two lanes on either side of the field? Well, take the one on the right and go up to the fourth building. Romit-babu's flat is on the first floor, his name is on the door. It's been raining this way for two days, I think he'll be at home."
The man stood quietly, seeming to think things over. When he spoke, his voice had a firmness that appeared alien to his self. "I apologise for not making myself clear. I have not travelled for a day and a half to talk to Romit Sen. I am here to talk about him."
****
Anwar switched off the lights in the reading room, locked it and came back to the room designated for indoor games. There was barely any furniture there so he had got hold of a cane chair for the old man to sit. When he returned, he saw three brown paper bags sitting on the edge of the mounted carrom board, flaccid with the hot oil oozing from inside. The boy who had gone to fetch them was nowhere around.
"You want some?" he asked the old man, pointing at the bags.
"Just the right weather," the man replied, a glimmer lighting up his eyes. "What do you have?"
Anwar got up to check the contents of the bags. "Well, there's shrimp. This one's eggs. This ought to be banana flowers."
"I'm a vegetarian," the man said, pointing at his forehead. Three vertical sandalwood paste bars were painted on it, grown faint from the lashings of the rain. "Vaishnavs," he explained.
He reached into his bag and took out a small steel bowl. Next, a half-empty bag of puffed rice emerged from its pit. He poured some puffed rice into the bowl and reached out for a banana flower fritter. Once he had thoroughly mashed it with the puffed rice, he began eating with a pious concentration.
Anwar went outside to the empty stage. He stood at its centre, his hands resting on his lean hips, looking across the dreary mire of the football field. The rain had stopped. He could see Ranjan splashing across the mud towards the steps that led to the stage. A plastic bag sat like a fool's crown, shielding his head from the elements.
"Thought you'd never come," Anwar said. "And it's not raining anymore so you can uncover your head."
"Need new umbrellas," Ranjan said, removing his headgear and soggy sandals at the base of the stairs. "What do we have here?"
"Fried food. Mysterious visitor. To begin with," Anwar replied. "He's having his dinner though, so you will have to wait."
Ranjan tiptoed across the stage, peered inside and broke into a low chortle. "That will do for now. Good job, Anwar. Let's see what fate has washed up here on a stormy night."
****
The rain was pounding by the time the old man had seated himself on the cane chair again. In between, he had excused himself to the bathroom to wash his steel bowl and clean up from the stress of his journey. On coming back, he had taken out a string of rosary beads, thought the better of it and put it back. He sat with his feet planted wide apart.
"You have quite the establishment here," he remarked.
"If we could get on with the introduction," Ranjan said, his voice hinting at irritation. He sat facing the elderly man, leaning his back against a plastic chair, his hands thrust in his trouser pockets.
Anwar stood leaning against the carrom table, hands folded across his chest.
"I apologise," the man said. "My name is Parikshit Pramanik. I am a farmer."
"Where are you from?" Ranjan asked.
"The name of the village is unlikely to be familiar or useful to you," the man replied. "It lies beyond Kakdwip."
"So the Sunderbans."
"Yes," the man said, pausing for a while. "I have a little land there, an insufficient income and a large family."
"You sound like an educated man," Ranjan said. He reached into one of the brown paper bags for a 'devil'. It always reminded him of a crude bomb, the boiled egg coated with mashed potatoes and deep-fried in batter. The trick was to take a bite large enough for the layers to hit the mouth together. He took the right bite and looked at the man.
"So, Parikshit-babu, what was it you were not telling us?"
"I have little formal education. But like you gentlemen here, I love reading. In fact, I run a little mobile library of my own. Nothing grand, just some books in a tin box and a bicycle, covering a few villages besides my own. No money in it, of course."
When Ranjan did not reply, the man started again. "I am the father of five daughters. With my resources, we could arrange for the wedding of two of them. The youngest in still in school. The other two work as maids."
Anwar moved away, noticing a near-imperceptible nod of Ranjan's head. The visitor was not worth the attention. Such lengthy litanies of trouble always led one way, to a request for alms. He switched on the shaded lamp that hung above the carrom board and started arranging the dice around its centre.
The message was not lost on the man. The rain was now gushing down with fury, and he raised his voice. "The reason I was here was because of my fourth daughter. She had moved away from the village, since townspeople spend more on maids." He stopped, gazing at the neat array of black and yellow dice around the fat red one at the centre. "She was in the employ of Romit Sen."
Ranjan had finished eating and sat wiping his oily fingertips on the knee of his trousers. Anwar switched on the lamp above the ping-pong table, certain that no one else was coming on such a night. There were rumours about the clubhouse getting a videogame console. If that happened, it would take some doing to send the boys home.
"How long?" Ranjan asked.
"Around a year, I think," the old man replied.
"What I meant was how long did it happen."
The old man bowed his head, looking at the toes of his feet. They looked like they had been shaped out of clay. "From the beginning. All through."
"Go to the police. What do you expect us to do?" Ranjan said, his voice arid and emotionless.
"The villagers were furious," the man said, the words coming out fast and urgent. "We were poor but not without honour. But his colleagues helped him. The village boys were watching the exit routes, so he dressed up as a woman, covered his head and fled in broad daylight."
Ranjan sighed and stood up. "Fine, I get it. He's twisted. He's a con. But it's not our job to reform him."
The old man was on his feet too, his eyes wild with unaccustomed energy. "Oh, there's a report with the police all right. But they don't move, so I have to, on my own. He does it everywhere. He was at a town in Hooghly before he came to your place. Same story. Except there he ran away at midnight, dressed up in a burqa like a Muslim woman."
Ranjan had been standing with his eyes closed, the palms of his hand resting at the top of his head. He looked at the man once he was done. "Is that what you do, Parikshit-babu? You spend your life chasing Romit Sen, digging for filth on him?"
"It was not easy," the old man continued, ignoring the accusation. 'I've slept on platforms of railway stations. Once I missed a bus and spent the night next to the highway, in the middle of nowhere. Whatever I've had, I've spent bribing peons and orderlies of courts, even if there was nothing in my stomach but a cup of tea."
The rain had changed directions to slant towards the stage, most of it was already rippling under a fine sheet of water. Anwar closed the door, shutting out the raging gurgle of the storm pipes and the heavy rhythm of the rain.
In the novel hush that descended on the room, Ranjan spoke again. "Money? Compensation? What were you after?"
The old man took a step back and abruptly flopped down on the cane chair. He had lived his problem with such intensity that the possibility of solving it overwhelmed him. When he spoke, he sounded doubtful. "Not money. Justice. I want that man to be taught a lesson."
Ranjan was used to settling disputes, mostly among hotheaded youngsters. He mediated between families as well. The moral crisis of some faraway villager had forced its way into his life. He had never felt so nettled before.
He spoke up, his face warm and smiling. "Come Parikshit-babu, let me show you around. The rain's not letting up anytime soon."
The old man had sunk into a dull somnolence. He started at Ranjan's voice and stood up, following him as he strode across the room. "These walls need artwork. Paintings. Copies, of course, given our budget. We've talked to some art school graduates."
Parikshit Pramanik nodded, unsure whether he was expected to respond. Ranjan opened the door wide, a soaking chill flooded the room. The rain's frenzy had abated, it was coming down sharp and perpendicular. The sky looked like a swollen purple wig, lit up by silent flares of lightning.
Ranjan spread his arms as if of the three of them, he was meant to inaugurate the act. "There's just one more room there, right at the end. We call it the AV/TV room. Some audio-visual equipment, you know, projector and screen. We hang it right there, during cricket matches. Oh, you should see the crowd gathered then, all seated on the floor of the stage. The children use that room too, as a green room, when they perform in plays."
The old man looked around with curious wonder. "Very good arrangements. Excellent."
Ranjan turned to face him, fixing him with a kind, thoughtful look. "That was the way the world worked now, Parikshit-babu."
The old man nodded, agreeing. "You are a very busy man."
"It's what people want. Sit-and-draw contests for the kids. Fancy dress contests for infants. Quiz contests for the teenagers. The town's football tournament, between neighbourhoods. Annual sports day. You wouldn't believe it, last year we had to start a contract bridge championship. Dance-drama and musicals, else the girls feel left out. Not to forget Durga Pujo, the biggest show we have. In the course of a single hour, I might be talking to a priest, a make-up artist and someone giving me a bulk deal on knee-caps."
The old man smiled and folded his hands once more. "I've already taken enough of your time. Thank you. I should get going now."
Ranjan shook his head. "No, it's not about my time. It's other people's time. They don't have it anymore. At least not enough of it to be outraged against one of their own."
After a final round of greetings, Parikshit Pramanik walked away with nimble, wary steps. Within minutes, the sombre evening had taken him back into its folds.
Ranjan and Anwar had wandered back, facing each other across the carrom board. The lamp swung gently in the breeze, causing irregular shadows on the walls.
"I feel bad," Ranjan said.
Anwar agreed. "So do I."
"I feel bad that you got us a load of food and it got cold," Ranjan said, shaking with laughter. "That stuff will kill us of acidity now. Maybe we should send it to Romit Sen."
Anwar raised his eyebrows in surprise. "You planning to bring it up?"
"Oh, it was powerful stuff all right," Ranjan said, fiddling with the striking die. "Someday, it might come of use."
****
It was a Saturday evening lost to apathy. The weather had cleared but the odour of wet earth and decaying leaves bore down like a burden. People had wandered into the weekend like lost travellers, comforted that the weather-watchers were at least calling it a cyclone.
Less than twenty-four hours after meeting Parikshit Pramanik, Ranjan and Anwar were sitting in Romit Sen's drawing room. Anwar had been reluctant. Our mysterious Mr Sen was a quality chap, he knew how to take care of people, Ranjan had assured him.
Sinking in the softness of his armchair, Anwar strained his eyes against the dark. A pedestal lamp with an ornate shade stood in the corner, its golden mist hid more than it revealed. His elbows on the wooden armrests, Anwar wondered how a drab government flat could mutate into such an enticing lair. It was all dark velvet, from the spread on the divan to cushions and pillows thrown carelessly around to the carpet beneath.
On the walls, a painting of a frail fishing boat, tossed helplessly on a rough green sea under a yellow moon.
Romit Sen had briefly excused himself and the clinking of fine glassware wafted in like light music. Kept nothing but Scotch, Ranjan's moist voice had whispered into Anwar's ears.
Once he had handed them their drinks in squat rectangular glasses, Romit Sen settled down on a longer settee, facing them. He wore dark blue denim pants with a black shirt. He seemed about forty. Behind his dark glasses and generous beard, his face was as much an enigma as his living room.
It felt like looking at the wrong direction and talking to a silhouette, while the real man lurked elsewhere.
"See how far we junior civil servants have fallen," he began, swirling his drink in his right hand. A silver bowl, piled high with roasted cashew-nuts, sat on the low table between them. "It used to be difficult getting rid of your sort as Durga Pujo neared. Now, I was actually bringing out the good stuff for your company."
Following Ranjan's cue, Anwar joined in the raucous laughter.
"Not fair," Ranjan said, raising his glass in a salutary gesture. "Our annual publication heavily relied on the ads you got us."
"Oh, don't shame me with the crumbs. It's like salt on the wound," Romit Sen said, shaking his head with amused disbelief. "But no matter how much money you raised, there was no escaping the caterwauling of Miss Rimjhim, was there?"
'You have no idea how much people craved those cover artistes and their accompanying orchestras," Ranjan said. He crossed his legs, warming up to the evening. 'They said it was easier, listening to the same songs year after year, the ones they had heard all their lives, and a few fresh popular ones thrown in."
"I saw her at last year's event, labouring over the keyboard," Romit Sen replied. "She looked like a puppet on a string. A shrill puppet, lost in the high notes."
Ranjan waved his free hand in the air, resigned to the inevitable. "Maybe we could ask her to stand and sing this year, move her hips a bit."
But he had lost Romit Sen's attention, who was now looking at Anwar, who had picked a toy turtle from the table and was turning it between his thumb and forefinger.
'I collect those," he said, pointing at the metallic reddish-green creature with a perforated pattern on its back. "That one's made of shellac."
"More turtles?" Anwar asked.
"They're everywhere," Romit Sen said, getting up to flick a switch. A tiny lamp illuminated a vertical row of shelves behind them. "Brass, silver, shell, terracotta, bone china. Plenty more. I travel with the smaller ones. The life-sized models were at my ancestral place."
Anwar had got up for a closer look.
"Any particular reason?"
"Were they not supposed to win the race?" Romit Sen said, baring his teeth with a smile.
"I thought it had something to do with politics," Anwar said, sitting down again. "Was it true, what people say about you?"
Romit Sen sat down as well, a profile in darkness. He put his empty glass down and popped a few cashew-nuts into his mouth. "People credit me with more courage than I have," he replied thoughtfully. "I grew up in tumultuous times, yes. But who was to say that I was not hiding under my bed when the real heroes were out fighting?"
The mood had darkened. When Romit Sen picked up the empty glasses and went to arrange for refills, the young men could not bring themselves to contradict him.
Like the perfect host, he had already decided on a new topic when he returned. He planted himself where he was seated before, took a loud sip from his glass and wetted the corners of his mouth with his tongue.
"Let me tell you about this odd incident that happened sometime back. It was in the papers. A big function was being held. Some 'sarkari' affair. Top brass, plus guests from abroad. Plenty of food to go around. No one had seen a little girl sneak in. She was utterly destitute and was eating some crumbs under a table when one of the foreigners noticed her."
Ranjan and Anwar sat in eager silence, enchanted by the deep baritone of Romit Sen's voice.
"Guess what happened next," the voice continued. "They were so shocked, they ended up arresting the girl, she was all of nine or ten."
"Good grief," Ranjan exclaimed, his voice like a faraway echo across the darkness.
Romit Sen put his glass down on a coaster. "Like you, I had somehow missed the incident till I ran into a folk singer. He's local, by the way, from these parts. He had written a song about her. It went, 'Babuder lojja holo/ami je kuriye khelam'. You big people felt embarrassed, because I had picked up a few crumbs to eat. The girl's point of view. When people have had their hearts' fill of Miss Rimjhim, you could try these singers."
Somewhere, a clock had begun ticking noisily. But it was sitting inside the belly of a turtle, Anwar thought.
Once outside, Ranjan slapped Anwar on the back. "So, what did you think?" The buzz from the alcohol had travelled all over Anwar's body and was back gnawing at his face now. He drew a deep breath to steady his thoughts. "Not for a moment could I forget Parikshit Pramanik," he confessed.
Ranjan stood silent, mulling it for a while. Most houses looked deep in sleep, except the Mukherjees on the ground floor. Their windows were wide open, the insides shining in a blaze of lights. "It's the beard. Makes him look like a villain."
****
Facing the east, the second gate was more like a rupture in the wall. There was no way of barring it. Too constricted for cars to pass, those on foot or riding their scooters used it, without having to look over their shoulders.
After dark, it hurriedly slipped into obscurity. There were no streetlights in that part and decent people had learnt to fear those who huddled in the shadows.
These were convincing arguments that stood their ground once the leisure to think things over had returned. Repeated ever so often, they became as timeless as folklore, beginning to resemble a kind of truth.
For a while, Anwar and Pijush had tried to chip away at a sore infirmity of that logic. Almost all of the thirty or so young men with wild, fixed stares who had walked in through the second gate held flaming torches in their hands. They had illuminated their way in, not come in unnoticed.
As a line of reasoning, it found favour with few. In future recounting of the incident, both Anwar and Pijush were left out.
It was somewhat malicious, for when the thirty odd men from a nearby slum had surrounded the building in which Romit Sen lived, Anwar and Pijush were the first, and only ones, to attempt a rescue effort. It had been less than five minutes that Romit Sen had got off the jeep that brought him back from work. Clearly, he was under watch.
Anwar and Pijush had run about in vain, only to be turned away from most doors. There's no knowing when he would be back; he was back but had a headache. When they had returned to the site of the siege, a young man of about twenty, with shoulder-length hair and a face flushed with heat, had asked them not to waste their breath.
How much, Pijush had asked.
Not cash, he was going to marry our sister, the fellow had replied. He had raised the hand not holding the fiery torch. In its clumsy grip were garlands, woven with various flowers, like at a traditional wedding, and a 'topor', the white conical headgear with flouncy balls worn by the bridegroom.
Pijush and Anwar had stuck around somewhat against their will. Ranjan had left town early that morning on some errand. As his informal retinue, it made them responsible for keeping an eye on things till he was back.
At a precise moment, a priest had appeared and started setting up the sacred fire on the clubhouse stage to solemnise the marriage. It had looked like the weddings little girls arrange for their dolls, a shell without substance. The bride, wrapped in fabric that was red and shiny, had wide trusting eyes. The groom, her employer, looked like someone in whom the shadow had united with the self.
You think he would take care of her, Pijush had wondered. He did not have a choice, Anwar had said, looking towards the rugged army, high on adrenaline, which had surrounded the couple on stage. They had agreed that he would probably request a transfer first thing next morning. As it happened, Romit Sen sent that request later that evening.
Somewhere along the way, they had been briefly interrupted by the overseer Mukherjee, on his way home after escorting his daughter Payal back to her husband and children. In ebullient spirit, he had hugged them tight by turns, and then exclaimed, "All's well that ends well, right? Ha ha!"
For many days thereafter, Pijush and Anwar had been locked in a fruitless argument whether old Parikshit Pramanik had been part of that crowd. Anwar, who had actually met him, refused to believe he was there; the image of a pair of furtive eyes and agitated fingers making its way through an impromptu meal had seared itself into his memory.
Pijush was adamant that he had seen an ancient rustic with a cloth bag slung on his shoulder who had no business being in the company of such an aggressive bunch of no-gooders. When they had both run out of ways of disproving the other, they had agreed, along with Ranjan, that the insignificant farmer who ran a mobile library was in all likelihood there, finding out new ways in which the world worked.
(End)
February 3, 2017.
