The Fifth Man (2 page)

There was no point disturbing her now. She would not respond no matter how many times she was called. But Aritra could not wait a moment after his bath. He needed his tea and breakfast at once. Or else his hunger turned into squirming worms in his belly. Neelam knew this. When he was bedridden, she would follow the routine diligently, bringing him his food as soon as she had wiped him down. Ari gazed for some time at Neelam the priestess. When he was a child, toy sellers commonly sold a sort of elongated balloon with a dimpled body, which the children loved. Who knew whether children liked them today? Neelam used to look like that once upon a time. Rounded, smooth, taut. And now she looked the way a balloon does when it is over-inflated, bulging disproportionately. The sharpness of her nose, the edge to her jaws, the exquisite lines at the corners of her eyes, the twist in her lips—all of them seemed to have been dulled.

She wasn’t to blame. It had happened after her hysterectomy. The doctor had warned about something like this. It had been difficult for Ari to talk about it because it had been a sensitive subject for a long time. Still, he dropped some hints occasionally. Neelam was not a fool. But what could he do if she pretended not to understand? She didn’t even bother to take all the medicines prescribed. They were forced to use injections at times. ‘If I’m going to lose what matters, I might as well lose everything. What’s the use of holding on?’ That’s what she would say with wistful eyes. Then she would suddenly come to him at midnight. ‘Ari, Ari, I’m frightened. I’m turning cold with fear.’ Aritra would say, ‘How many times have I told you to take the medicines?’ Evening came early. Neelam had turned numb with suffering.

The doctor understood these things. He had said, ‘If you let things go on this way, uterine cancer will develop nine times out of ten. What do you want to do?’

‘She is only thirty.’

‘Which is exactly why I’m asking.’

‘What are the after-effects of this operation?’

‘Her health will improve remarkably. She will be able to work more, she won’t fall ill easily. She may turn into an Amazon.’ The doctor hadn’t lowered his cigarette from his lips for a long time. ‘But.’

‘What?’ Aritra had asked impatiently.

‘She will no longer be a wife.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Instead, you may get a mother.’

‘What do you mean, doctor?’

‘Your wife will reach middle age very early, Mr Chowdhury. In her appearance, in her nature. Housewife, mother—these will be appropriate roles for her. She may not be able to play the role of a young woman very well. She will lose interest in that kind of life. In one sense both of you will end your youth with this operation.’

‘But I am not ill. I am a full-blown man.’ Aritra had jumped out of his chair.

The doctor looked grim. His eyes were sharp, a professional, expert look that bore deep into Aritra Chowdhury’s heart. He said, ‘That is why. That is why I’m asking. Do you want her life or her youth at this moment? You can’t keep both.’

The fundamental truth of Aritra’s married life was on the stand. The accuser looked at him with suspicion—at the beating of his heart, at the wails of his soul, his leaping rage, his fears. In a choked voice Aritra said, ‘Of course I want her . . . her life. That is the first consideration,’ and then, after a pause, ‘and also the last.’

The doctor’s chamber seemed to have been holding its breath. Now it breathed. The doctor spoke softly, sympathetically, ‘But whether it’s life or youth, everything is joint property, community property, belonging to both of you, don’t you think? Talk to your wife, Mr Chowdhury. Find out what she wants. I’m saying that ninety per cent of cases are dangerous. But that still leaves ten per cent. She could be among them if fortune favours her. What she wants is also very important. Go to her, explain everything.’

Neelam was silent for some time when she heard. Then she said, ‘Of course not. There’s no question of surgery. I have to take the risk. Forgive me, Ari.’

‘But Neelam, you will enter this stage of life in natural course one day or another. It’s only a change in the way you live. Isn’t that a life too? Perhaps this will open the door to other joys. Why be afraid of it? The alternative to an operation is cancer, do you understand? And unbearable pain, and the end.’

Her voice choking with agony and doubt clouding her eyes, Neelam had replied, ‘I don’t fear for myself, Ari. I am afraid for you. Of you. What use will I be to you anymore?’

Aritra’s face turned white as chalk. What was Neelam saying? Could he trust his ears? Did he deserve such a cruel judgement? Was this verdict his due? Then let me prove, Neelam, that your judgement, your verdict, is completely incorrect. I desired your youth because it was part of your unique self. Neelam was weeping with her head on a bewildered, desperate Ari’s chest. She had understood his pain. ‘I was wrong, forgive me Ari. I feel desire too.’ After a long time, after such a long time Neelam had come to him on her own. When your love comes to you like the rain after a long famine, how extraordinary the madness of those showers is! What a magical honeymoon they spent that night in the room of the blue sky. Just before youth was sacrificed.

It had been a long time but Aritra had not forgotten that night. Perhaps Neelam had. She wanted to forget. Now her eyes were lowered, the end of her sari was draped around her neck, a radiant orbit of uncombed hair around her head. Neelam was deep in worship. Don’t disturb her, Aritra. She will tidy up your room all day, arrange flowers, consult a thick pile of books to cook Chinese, Mughlai and Continental food. Aritra didn’t have to spend any time on Pupu either—her education, her tennis, her rowing. Nor did he have to take care of the banking, shopping, the mail, social relationships with people in Calcutta— nothing, nothing. Only, Aritra and Neelam now slept in separate rooms.

Normally Piku and Esha led such uneventful lives that Piku herself felt claustrophobic at times. At nine every morning they took their mini buses from Central Park, one to Dalhousie and the other, to north Calcutta. From one end of the city to the other. Fighting through long traffic jams, taking two to two-and-a-half hours to cover what should have taken one. Tea in the morning, coffee in the evening. Conversations with the coffee pot between them. Reading magazines. Then the desk, pen in hand, notebook on the table, books on the shelves. Sometimes, the typewriter. A head packed with thoughts. A mountain of notebooks, red and blue ball-point pens. Piku would say, ‘How can you live like this? Let’s go for a film.’

‘What film?’

‘Who knows? Whatever’s running. Give me the newspaper, let’s see what’s on.’

‘Rubbish! Imagine watching a film just for the sake of watching a film! Very tiresome. Find someone else to go with, please, Piku.’

Piku would say, ‘You’re a bore! You think I have no other friends? Why don’t you realize I don’t want to leave you alone? Don’t you ever wonder why every day has the same colour, Esha? Always a low, slack, off-key note. Why should life be so mundane?’

Esha began to laugh. ‘Were you born thinking life is a romance novel? Then no one can prevent heartbreak for you, Piku. If you go for a film blindly you’ll be very disappointed.’

‘What to do, then?’

‘Nothing. Just wait. And that too, not impatiently.’

Piku would say, ‘Tchah! I’m off to water the plants then. The yellow hibiscus is budding. Let’s see if it’s bloomed.’

Esha told herself, ‘Well spotted, Piku. So ordinary and yet so extraordinary. Hibiscus, but a yellow one—as you watch the moments bloom, forget the grandeur you’re anticipating. If it comes, it will come. And no harm done if it doesn’t.’

This was how the days passed, the months too—they were spent ripping out the pages of the calendar and tossing them in the dustbin. Piku went for films, to picnics with friends, spent three days at her niece’s birthday party instead of a single evening, and came back refreshed. She fell in love anew with their home in Central Park, the veranda, the garden, the conversations, the unlit nights on the terrace with the door locked and mats laid out, stars and glow-worms, glow-worms and stars, the sweet fragrance of flowers, humming, sleep. You’re so strange, Esha. You could have gone on the excursion. Didn’t you get a wedding invitation the other day, why didn’t you go? Not in the mood. I like it this way, I really do. Then, at mid-morning, a potter’s wheel began to whirl in her head suddenly. A bird flapped its wings in her breast, pecking on her lymph nodes with its restless beak. Fluids began to drain out of the cage of her body, the currents seeking release. Esha felt like dying if she couldn’t go away somewhere at these times. She realized clearly that she had already been reborn and re-reborn. It wasn’t only cowards who died many times before their death. Even those who live on intense hope and experiences died and were reborn in the same lifetime. On these occasions Esha realized that here present existence had died. Until she was born again, she would live like a floating spirit.

Everyone had warned her not to take the Geetanjali Express. Although a shorter journey, it meant being on the train during the daylight hours of two whole days. Summer had just arrived. A hot wind usually sprang up as soon as the train left Bengal. But there was not an inch of space on the Bombay Mail. Not even the VIP quota worked. A taxi from the booking counters at Fairley Place to Esplanade. Esha was too excited to lean back in her seat. Only after she had got a ticket on the Geetanjali Express did the potter’s wheel in her head stop. Crossing space would mean traversing time, the inability to do which had always made humans sad. This urge within her to go away was a fundamental one. When it came, an image kept playing in her head, telling her where she should go. A dream on a full-moon night of a eucalyptus-lined avenue and a pair of siris trees arched over the road had led her to Rikhia. A vision of an expanse of cracked red earth fading in the distance under the sun had taken her to Daltonganj. The view through a glass window of unrestricted, unending blue Himalayan ranges had brought her to Ranikhet. Images seen in daydreams did not have shadows like night-time dreams. Sometimes these images were a blinding Van Gogh painting under a real sun, yellow fireworks on real mustard fields, or Jatin Sengupta canvases of real rivers tilting around one sharp curve after another. They made her twist in intense pain. Esha would take the image out of her heart and put it in her lap, hold it in her arms again, and finally hear a little boy crying like the high-pitched whistle of a train. Trembling with a fever in her passion for distant places, she kept saying, what do I do, I have no leave from the office, I have spent all my money building my house, and yet I’m drawn irresistibly to a Bhutia tea picker with a sweet, scrubbed face and a wicker basket on her back, working on a harsh but beautiful mountain plateau while the golden dust from cows’ hooves rises in the air, drawing me like a mother does, like the breeze on a spring night does, like a lover. I must go. Or else I will ignore Piku when she conjures up a new glow with fragrant golden tea in brand-new pink cups and saucers. I shall walk in the garden reluctantly, perhaps the flowers will say good morning, I shall be distracted and ignore them. The December dahlias bent over with pain, the first flowers of monsoon, the gentle melody of the jasmine vines on the lintel—I won’t allow them near me, I shall go deep into my pyre, deeper, while the beads of khoi are scattered on the road with cruel indifference during the final journey. I shan’t care for their pain. It’s not as though anyone has cared for mine. I shall spend hours in the shower, Piku will be fed up of calling me. I will take my clothes from the hangars arranged by Piku in my wardrobe and put them on mechanically. I shan’t remember whether I’m going out or have just come in. Piku will say, ‘Aren’t you eating?’ It’s not as if it will make any difference whether I eat or not. There were no elaborate meals anymore, no one threw away the leftovers in the back lane after a night of celebration. Now a meal was only a response to hunger. Whatever was available. Bread and butter, boiled potato and rice, sweetened peanuts, anything.

This time the image that came to her was related to food. As she was leafing through the Unesco album on Ajanta and Ellora, sleep descended on her eyes. Esha saw an embodiment of grief in the form of Krishna, alone in a chamber. Nothing but shadows in the room. A friend brings in a plate of rare delicacies and a plea in her eyes. The young woman is stilled, unmoving, her sadness beyond explanation. Once, twice, thrice, the image knocked on her mind and came back. At dawn a butterfly had flown in to perch, trembling, on the curtain drawn across the southern window. A bird that didn’t know how to sing—or had forgotten—chirped sleepily on a branch outside—tiktik, tuktuk, tiktik, tuktuk. Her hair, which she had not tied up the previous evening, was spread across her back and shoulders, her hands linked on her knees. Piku stared at her in surprise. Esha said, ‘I’m going to Ajanta, Piku, I want to see Ajanta.’

‘This very moment?’ said Piku. ‘Go, then.’

Her eyes were on the wall. Esha said with a gentle smile, ‘I have felt this way before. Manasa madhuram. A beautiful notion. But I want to go like Yudhisthir when he wanted to ascend to heaven with his body intact.’

‘Your companions on the journey will fall dead one by one.’

‘Let them. I’m not taking you lest you become one of them.’

‘Going with a dog?’

Mukhia was barking in the veranda. It was this sound that probably made Piku think of the dog.

Esha said, ‘Mukhi is all yours. You know that very well. I have given him to you as a gift. I give him a bath and food sometimes because you’re scattered about his care. That doesn’t mean your Mukhi will follow me.’

‘Don’t you know you cannot enter heaven without a dog!’

‘That’s a street dog. It follows at a distance, doesn’t brush its tail against you, doesn’t lick you everywhere like you’re a stick of ice cream, certainly doesn’t nag.’

‘There’s also that whole business of visiting hell.’

‘Look Piku, those who have been visiting hell in different ways all their life should not object to another visit in order to go to heaven.’

‘You’ll find Duryodhan and the rest of them sitting on thrones along with their courtiers, don’t forget.’

‘Now you’re really making me worry. Never mind all that. I’m definitely going. The last time was with my uncle and aunt when I was twelve. The porter carried our luggage across an empty field, the three of us were to spend the night at a government bungalow in Fardapur. My uncle told us that Ajanta was discovered in several stages, that there were probably tigers hereabouts at the time. And we were going to see it all in a single day. I still remember how the Bagoda river twists and turns. See, just like Ceres’s call to Proserpine at the end of the year, Ajanta’s call has reached me here in Hades.’

‘What! How can you refer to our home as Hades!’

‘You know perfectly well I can’t possibly refer to our home as Hades. Only if my heart is weighed down even in a paradise of pleasure will I use that name. I can scale any peak to escape this horrible mood, the altitude of Ajanta is nothing in comparison. But visiting a new place won’t do, I have to go with a new heart, a different state of mind.’

‘Take care as you go,’ said Piku.

From the booking office Esha went directly to the Esplanade post office and despatched a telegram.
REACHING KALYAN BY GEETANJALI, MARCH 17
. The west coast was completely unknown to her. Except Bombay. She knew no one else. Going alone to Lucknow had proved to be a terrible experience. She had no idea there were so many Romeos in Lucknow. A hippie was wandering about right next to her in patchwork clothes with a rucksack on her back and a camera in her hand, but no one disturbed her. But an Indian woman in a sari must not travel alone. What did the descendants of Shivaji’s Mavli soldiers do for a living now? What if no one was waiting for her at Kalyan? She would have to take the connecting train to Pune alone. Who knew how late she would reach. But then there was bound to be a retiring room. She would spend the night there and find the tourist office in the morning. To Ajanta via Aurangabad.

Esha did not know why she had sent a telegram to Aritra Chowdhury. He should have been the first among the last people on Earth whom Esha could wire. And yet this occurred to her only after she had sent the telegram. Esha bit her lip with her teeth. She did not know what had made her do this. Her entire life was a perfect progress report of her penchant for burying all her natural proclivities under a rock. Sometimes these aborted wishes took revenge. Leaving the post office and walking towards the bus depot, Esha felt that occasional defeats like these were healthy. Small defeats. Large victories.

The hesitant telegram reached its destination with several hops, like a chick that had just learnt to fly. It had been sent to Aritra’s office address. He had not joined yet. So Mandal, his personal assistant, delivered it at home riding his scooter at breakneck speed. Aritra was sitting with Neelam in a patch of sun on their tiny lawn, having his afternoon tea. Neelam had made pastries today. Chocolate cream. Pupu had taken a box on her trip to Goa with friends, for eating on the train. Putting the telegram down on the table, Mandal clicked his heels and saluted in military style, saying, ‘I don’t have a minute today, Bhabi. Keep my pastry for some other time. You won’t forget, I hope.’

Smiling, Neelam said, ‘Do you have more telegrams to distribute? Have you been demoted now that your boss is out of action?’

Mandal said, ‘Sweet are the uses of demotion if it makes me arrive at people’s homes in time for evening tea. But it isn’t that, Bhabi. We’re expecting guests from my wife’s family at home, if I’m late I’ll be skinned alive.’

‘How dare you blame your wife? Run along at once.’

Mandal turned and leapt on to his scooter, disappearing instantly in a cloud of dust. He always received a warm welcome here. Not just him. Neelam Bhabi was the centre of attraction for a large squad of Lakshmans. Her influence on them was much higher than Aritra’s. One of Neelam’s greatest qualities was that she did not take hierarchy into consideration. She was as warm with the personal assistant as with the chief engineer—they attracted her as human beings. This attitude was not easy to come by in any industrial area. Of course, the workers in Pune’s industrial outfits lived all over the city. There was no industrial colony here like Tatanagar or IIT Colony. So some of the characteristics of a large metropolis were visible here. It was hard to say whether Neelam’s natural democratic ways would have survived otherwise.

Priyalkarnagar had been built from scratch. There was still white dust everywhere. It made things dusty, but not dirty. Tall trees lined both sides of the road a little further ahead. There were plenty of bushes around the blocks of buildings. High fences had been put up now. Mandal turned into a dot amidst the trees and disappeared. Neelam said, ‘Is everything all right at home? What’s the matter? What is it?’ Aritra had dropped the telegram as though it was a scorpion. ‘Esha is coming. Seventeenth March. Geetanjali.’

Neelam’s face competed with Aritra’s in turning ashen. She couldn’t speak, and went away a little later, her tea half drunk. Ari remained sitting with his own cup. Why had he reacted this way? No matter what Neelam might feel, was this telegram really unexpected? The essence of the letters he had sent day after day from his revolving chair set on the light green tiles of a room painted in pastel shades of green and pink acrylic was: Come, Esha. Come and see for yourself. The tree of the world grows in silence, not on love or the lack of it. The leaves, the flowers, the green canopy of this silent tree provides refuge, believe me. Come, Esha. A bed of the ashes of humiliation does not befit you. Then why shouldn’t Esha telegram him? Aritra was not a liar! Was he destined to be a liar in Esha’s eyes all his life? And yet all his other relationships were ticking along just like a well-oiled clock. Was his relationship with only one person a lie? He did not tell her what he wanted. Ari would ask Esha, ‘Why did you come Esha?’ Esha would say, ‘But you wanted me to.’