My Kind of Girl (6 page)

Finally, the play drew to a close and everyone pronounced it a grand success; the only regret we had was that as it was December, we could not carry on till dawn. Then it was time to go home. There was no transportation of any kind, people began to walk home in groups. For part of the way, everyone followed the same road. Everyone knew each other, so the noise emanating from the women continued non-stop, as though the play had not really ended and kept following them all. Suddenly the judge's car roared by and then – or so it seemed to me – it was silent all around, bitterly cold, field after field stretching
in every direction beneath the dead glow of the moon. You could not tell the tree apart from its shadow, and even the people trudging along seemed to be their own shadows. In a while there was no one else nearby, I was walking alone. I realized I had left my female companions behind; I must have been walking quickly because of the cold, and enjoying the walk. Just a few minutes earlier, I had been on the verge of sleep, but now I felt not a trace of it – in that enormous open field, on that foggy night, I felt every molecule in my body telling me I was awake, I was alive.

But had I pressed too far ahead? Was I neglecting my duty? Of course, having a boy who had only just acquired a baritone and a moustache beside them was not likely to be very helpful; on the contrary it would be inconvenient. But still, what if I was needed?

Pausing for breath, I looked behind me. The women's group lay far behind, barely visible in the fog. But it seemed someone was walking swiftly toward me. Who was it? A girl. Definitely a rebuke from my mother, or an order from my sister-in-law.

When she came closer, I saw it was Pakhi.

“What's the matter?” I said.

“Why should anything be the matter?” she replied.

“Well then?”

“What do you mean?”

“What brings you here?”

“They walk too slowly!”

I remember being surprised. What boldness! “Did you tell them?” I asked.

“I did.”

“What did they say?”

“What do you suppose?” Pakhi shook her head impatiently. I looked at her with new eyes in the faint moonlight.

“Which means . . .”

Pakhi interrupted me and said, “Are we just going to stand here?”

It was my first conversation with her. Suddenly I felt fulfilled, as though something heavy and profound had made its home within me.

We walked on, now side by side. But no more words the rest of the way. I walked swiftly, and not once did Pakhi say “Slower”; she kept pace with me. She was fourteen then, quite grown-up by the standards of the times, rather placid too, by those same standards. But she appeared anything but gentle then; it felt as though her legs could carry her thus for ages, ages, alongside me, beyond the houses, beyond the town, possibly beyond our small, familiar world to somewhere unknown.

So many thoughts crowd your mind in your naïve youth. And why should they not? By then we had left the paved district road for the walking trail winding through the fields, slightly heavy of breath, thorns pricking our feet at every step – they felt like naughty caresses – and the smell of the grass, the dew, the earth all around. We walked thus for some time as in a dream, then the fields ended, the town narrowed into neighborhoods; by the sleep-laden homes suddenly a pond appeared that had stolen the moon. Another bend in the road and there was the single-story house Pakhi lived in. Our houses were next
to each other, our families were close friends – everyone was friends back then, everyone was happy. That's the worst thing about the age we are at now, where it seems all happiness lies in the past.

Glancing back, I saw no sign of our guardians. We stood there silently as though in the wee hours of a winter morning, just when it's coldest; a spring breeze was blowing, breathing heavily, our bodies warm from the long walk.

A little later I said, “You'd better get home.”

“In a while.”

I liked this idea. But though all this while I hadn't worried about a thing, here in this familiar neighborhood, before this familiar house, I remembered our guardians. Maybe I had erred, maybe I deserved to be admonished, I should wait here with Pakhi to accept their rebukes humbly.

Then Pakhi spoke.

“If only our homes had been even further . . . mmm?”

I said, “But eventually the road would have ended.”

Pakhi glanced at me, her eyes glistening in the moonlight. Looking away, she said, “What were you thinking of all this while?”

“I don't know.”

“I was thinking – I was thinking, this walk is lovely, but it's because we're walking on it that the road will end.”

Back then, I found this funny. But now it seems that fourteen-year-old girl had, without knowing it, spoken wisely. Our existence is like that: living eats into our life, all the roads we love end because we take them.

“I was thinking of other things too,” Pakhi spoke again, “but I won't tell you, you'll laugh.”

“Tell me,” I gave her permission, as it were, drawing on all the maturity of my college-going self.

“No, I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I've forgotten.”

“So soon?”

“That's what happens to me. There are so many things I mean to tell you, but when it's time, it all slips away.”

“It all slips away?”

“Yes. I love you, that's why this happens. I forget it all.”

I trembled at her words. I looked away, so as not to have to look at her. The other womenfolk appeared at the head of the road. I was relieved. Who knew what else Pakhi might say?

Were we scolded for having walked on ahead? I cannot remember. The others said something, but I didn't hear a word of it. My hearing had no room for anything other than Pakhi's parting words to me.

I couldn't sleep that night.

Gagan Baran paused. The other three were motionless. There was no way to tell whether they had been listening or not: the contractor had turned up his overcoat collar to cover his ears, the doctor was wrapped in his blanket from the waist downward, eyes heavy with sleep. The writer was leaning back in his chair, facing upwards, a cigarette burning away in his fingers; that he was awake became clear when he raised
his hand to his lips. But this Delhi bureaucrat did not look at his listeners, studying the wall before him carefully, as though the rest of his story was written on it. The invisible writing of the past – which one cannot forget even when one thinks one has – swam up before his eyes, and he resumed in his smooth, slow cadence.

I remember another day. This time too, it was night, not day. This too was a moonlit night, but instead of winter's fog-swept moonlight, it was a mad summer's full moon night. I lived in Calcutta then, it was the second year of my M.S. My elder brother had moved to Calcutta the previous year, and I had left my hostel to move in with him at his Shyambazar home. It was there that Pakhi had come to stay the night, en route to her new husband in Kurseong.

Hers had been a big wedding. Devoting myself to mathematics had made me much less of a romantic, and I was struck less by novels than I'd been before, but I felt it wouldn't be fitting not to have even a small feeling of heartbreak at Pakhi's having gotten married. I even managed to snarl at her in my mind, picturing her as having betrayed me, but to tell the truth I felt no pain, no anger. Despite the stuff from the books, my heart remained intact. I was actually disappointed in myself, I went down in my own self-esteem, and, as far as I know, Pakhi hadn't breathed a single sigh either as she married the freshly minted deputy magistrate.

You may be wondering why she should have had cause to sigh at all. All this is part and parcel of adolescence, it cures itself with age, who frets about it afterwards? Yes, certainly I was being childish; as
long as there were children in this world, that particular quality could not be purged. No matter what we say now that we're old, you cannot dismiss it. It's true, neither of us had thought of marriage, there was no scope for it beyond the relationship we had then, that was what we had accepted in our hearts. But did that mean it was to be classified as weak, poor, watered down? If that were so, why did I suddenly think so intensely of Pakhi now, all these years later in this strange place, at this strange hour?

She had no lack of relatives in Calcutta, but she chose to stop at our house. I never asked myself why. My brother's wife loved her very much and she loved everyone in our family – even if there were a larger reason, a different, more real reason, I did not have the courage to acknowledge it.

No, I had not the courage. Pakhi arrived in the evening, I merely caught a glimpse of her, “How are you?” are the only words we exchanged. Thereafter she became the property of everyone else, especially the women, for there is no creature more interesting to other women than one who has just gotten married, be she seven or seventy-seven. Late in the evening, everyone settled down on the veranda under the moonlight to chat, while I slipped away to meet my friends at their hostel. We used to meet often like this, but I remember how special that evening was, each of them like soul mates. They agreed unanimously that they had never seen me in such good spirits either. Spirits? I don't know what name to give that feeling. Joy? Yes, it was a heartbeat-accelerating, fear-inducing, extraordinary kind of joy. Just as the miser cannot put his jewels out of his mind, deriving joy
from the certainty that he has them, hidden away, so too was I joyous at being possessed by this joy – except that the miser fears losing it, while I feared seeing it, getting it, owning it. This was why my heart beat faster all the way back home, in pleasure, in hope, in apprehension, in happiness.

That moonlit summer night was truly wondrous.

I went to my room after dinner. The women congregated on the veranda again, outside. I sat and listened to their voices, their laughter, Pakhi laughing in her soft voice. As the night advanced, conversation flagged. I sat before my table lamp, a thick book open before me. I was really reading it, or trying to, even turning the pages occasionally, but what I read, or even what book it was, was something I remembered absolutely nothing of the next morning.

Meanwhile, near the kitchen, the servants fell silent and the session on the veranda finally broke up. I sat on, listening to them shuffling around, to the small sounds of doors being locked. The noise on the road had died down too; the night was silent. I sat there, still, with my book open.

Suddenly I saw Pakhi standing by my desk. The moment I saw her, I realized this was what I had been waiting for. Yes, no point trying to hide it. I felt I had made her appear with the force of my longing – she had no choice, she could not have done otherwise. So I was not surprised, I said nothing, I only looked at her in silence.

What was she like, the Pakhi I saw that night? That slim girl of fourteen, and this glowing young married woman – could the two even be compared? Tonight she was dressed in a blue silk sari, bedecked with
jewelry of all kinds. I never could stand the sight of jewelry, but that night, that night they didn't look bad at all; they did suit some people sometimes.

Pakhi was the first to speak. I remember her words clearly.

“I'm a lady. You should stand up when you see me.”

I stood up obediently.

“Reading so late in the night?”

I glanced at the fat, open book in response.

“Are you up only to read?”

My head lowered itself in guilt. There was a silent pause. I could hear the ticking of the clock in the next room. There was one more sound, probably a sound in my heart, a strange one.

Pakhi spoke again, “You're going abroad soon?”

“Planning to.”

“How long will you be there?”

“At least two years, maybe longer.”

“When will you leave?”

“In September.”

We exchanged only these words as we stood there, and then silence descended again. Several times I felt the urge to look at her, directly, face to face, properly, but I don't know what shyness prevented me. I kept my face averted though I knew in my heart, with all my heart, that she was there, near me, so near. But soon she wouldn't be.

Suddenly Pakhi came around and stood in front of me. “Listen,” she said.

I raised my face to look at her. Her expression was severe, almost
stern. I could see the rise and fall of her breath in the hollow of her throat; it was so silent all around, and she was so close, that I could practically hear the sound of that breath.

“You must do great things in life.” All of a sudden, I heard Pakhi's voice. “Don't stay up any longer – you might fall ill. Go to bed, I'd better leave.”

I think I tried to say something, but not a sound emerged from my throat.

“I'll switch the light off before I go.”

I saw her hand touch my table lamp, and in a moment I was transported to another world. A dark, bluish moonlight came to life, my room was a room no more. Her blue sari looked almost black, and as soon as she moved her eyes glistened, her lips painted by the brush of the lunar glow. I saw her for a moment like this, and then her long, strong, soft yet firm arms wrapped themselves around me; she held me hard and kissed me on my lips again and again. My eyes closed, my breath stopped, I felt the foretaste of death.