Déjà vu

—:{ To: Sajit+MMRHS }:—

_And to Raphael, for a reason_

She sensed his discomfort quite readily: he had travelled a bit but he didn’t like to see places. She put him at ease by handing him a little doll she’d made out of a toffee wrapper. The doll was an afterthought—deft fingers, and she rolled it between her fingertips. They exchanged pleasantries. Then again he fell silent.

‘It seems like the storm has broken land. Brrr...it’s cold.’

He smiled, and then he turned, ‘Do you remember Lin?’

‘Vaguely...but he was so oddly named. In fact, the name’s all I recall of him...was fair, though, very girlish, curved eyebrows. Shouldn't you know?— He spoke with an accent. He must’ve been raised thereabouts.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know him at all...spoke to him once or twice, that’s all...you know, when we force it open, it’s those odd things which get stuck that come back at once.’

‘Hmm... like a dreadful jingle. Stays all day and drives you crazy.’

‘Like monkeys we hop from place to place to meet up here. Quite...locally, that is.’

‘Well, I'm not a local—not yet!’

‘Me neither...but the joke’s on, innit?’

‘Come on inside...it’s chilly...Can I offer you something? Coffee perhaps? Well, might as well be best, we're still learning and looking aren't we.’

Her place was nice; there was no hint of someone struggling to make ends meet. I was accustomed to the idea; she had struggled so long for so little. It was bound to stay. Single bedroom apartment. I recalled her telling me there was a spare room bare. For an occasional visitor. Parents, perhaps... ah, the things you grow accustomed to. In my mind's eye...she was still the little woman who made a lot of noise for so little. Unacknowledged favours, unreturned promises.

The balcony opened into a spacious living room—spacious, but sparse, and an antiquated bookshelf that held a couple of hundred books of the driest kind, technical books. Chemistry books.

‘I haven't seen your form lately with the word. May I consign you to a few minutes of crystalline boredom all alone, or in the company of these deafmute creatures (she motioned the library) while I shed the leavings of a hectic workday spent in the company of dandified fossils? Will you—’

‘It's okay, go and change.’

Does it change things, do things ever change...? But anything, anything...to gain time, to really know if nothing has changed.

She vanished without waiting for an answer. A spouting kettle announced an end to waiting.

‘How did you get into all of...this?’

‘Ah, yes, I'm glad you asked. I’m with a team of transcriptionists. Unfortunately it's the best I have on offer. I mean, I'm practically jobless without it. School's on a bizarre rent-a-week sort of economising.’

‘Which means—?'

‘Oh, nothing. I edit textbooks—for want of a better word—which require some homely rephrasing, but mainly it’s about wholesale cutting. Indian students still aren’t game for that sort of detail, not in my subject, they still think it's petrified history. I got a lucky break... Pays some bills anyhow.’

Quite impressive; it wasn't a bad collection by any reckoning. It was astonishing even to find a bookshelf in this place and time, but she had always been a good reader and an exemplary teacher. His eyes rested on a long row of shiny white-covered journals, possibly IEEE publications. It touched a chord...but far removed, far more recent, than her time. At school he didn't even knew these journals existed... There were memories too, bitter ones, but unrelated to her or to school. He turned his gaze and found that she was amused. Her progression seemed to have been linear.

'Lucky break, you say...'

‘Well, it was an acquaintance. I was seeing him for a year or so...and when he left, he set me up as a token. Does that satisfy your pipe dream chutes, Pinocchio?'

‘You are in good shape.’

‘You're a tasty morsel yourself. How come so blessed? Strychnine?’

‘The very idea! Why so retrograde in 2007? Selective amnesia?'

‘Well, something like that. I was counting on my memory being true. Was I so badly off—’

‘No no no... but you trod on me little toe.’

‘Nosey parker...as if you cared!’

‘The heady fragrance. Of romance. You can tell.’

‘Ah...yes. The odour of glossies must still turn you on or what?’

‘...Takes you back a long way...in time. Those wreckages, those magnificent ruins.’

Stung—he suddenly shrouded up, bottled. Her remark was reflective and supremely detached and its point—not to be missed. He had quipped without knowing, but now he stood at the precipice. He had been thinking of her immense effort in the classroom, working up such a pitch that she literally steamed out of every pore and beads lined her upper lips and brows. This was what his ardour found irresistible. And yet, it made her so very homely, natural, and vulnerable. This was precisely what she obliterated, then and there, in that cool Bangalore living room. He was wondering about layers of warpaint, wondering how she’d gotten to this, but she'd taken it off a while before and spared him. But she'd dealt it out, and for a cringing split-second he found it oppressive, that she was dealing out the context and policing his mind. In the soaked roots adolescence stuck fast like a white dress, pale and dark, blotchy but saintly, covering all but revealing, shredding your nerves—

‘Oh, I am so sorry...but you do live nearby, should've given you a bad turn often.’

My! If only she knew, if only she knew how it wrings the life out of poor love!

‘You can be cruel.’

She smiled a broken smile which opened out quickly and just then he became aware of a curious panel hung on the door of what appeared to be her bedroom. Four square white blotches stuck 2x2 in an enormous A2 size frame. He froze. If only—

Once more, she leaves me with no hole to escape. And this time...well, I shall face up to it.

‘If you only knew, if you only knew.’

‘Come, we needn’t draw circles again, need we. I was young and you were tiny. That was all.’

‘Oh, was it? I still used to moon a lot, and I never had the courage to go back there...not until after I had had my degree...and then I guess I fooled around, and, truth be told, you were never there for many days on end, never even in the back of my mind. But last week, I went back.’

‘Oh, so you did manage to break your pretty little heart...after twenty years?’

I turned up and our eyes locked. She was unflinching; there was no emotion in those eyes. My own, glassy, yielding. In those depths I recalled a wild girl, frantic, staring down a pit soggy with the scent of fresh mud and first rain. The sky went out like light, and the clouds announced her tragedy in no uncertain terms: a strong breeze sent spikes of fright, she was cut to the core. She waited and waited, with quivering, tight-shut eyes—but there was no thunder.

She trembled and swayed. She was too afraid even to move. She was not even aware if the place was deserted or whether anybody was listening nearby.

It didn't rain. To this day she has no recollection of what happened that evening, or whether it had turned night after that. She knew nothing, felt nothing. But she was there. She had stayed.



[1400; 20 edits; inching close to final]

I have added the second dedication to one who so really deserves it for having saved it from a (still sticky) premature end in the reader's bit-bucket; for him I have deleted the references to the coffee and altered its ending somewhat, choosing instead to leave it on its head, enigmatic, open to everything, just like the terrified girl we leave on the shore of the sickening ditch.

As I said, I have made changes. To someone who is keeping track of this `Kindling' series, the changes might give a possible alternative setting for the original `Kindling' post. This is perhaps where the boy (now adult) meets girl again?

What I recall of the place is essentially driving these changes, as the person in question is, sadly, not available for comment. If not the corpse, then the ghost.

Dedicated originally to Mr S, as I have the journey to school entirely to thank for this...though he played no other part other than that of a very significant pillion rider, weighing in at a ton of kilos.

I don't know how he refuses to believe the fact that I have the ride to thank for this piece...and nothing else. In fact, this never occurred to me until much later...which somehow also supports his theory that 'I had it all with me.' It's just a way of seeing things differently. But I never had this story in my mind until I sat down to write.

I'm taking a big break, so this 'edit' should suffice for some more days.

[264]

Kindling

1997

---

~:To Blu:~

Amor Vincit Omnia, but in Dust We Trust

(And) My birthday wishes...for Feb 20

[traffic in Bangalore]

[...and my thoughts bounce back to find me: alone]

What is so special about sitting in a cab and going to my friends'? I could have troubled him, because he'd volunteered to do it all by himself, like a gentleman; but I kept that as an option. I wanted to give him the advantage he was entitled to; and I guess he was sort of relieved when he asked me over. At least for an instant he must have surveyed his vast playing field; I was relieved, because I'd been bored stiff⁽¹⁾. Only, he wasn't long here in this city so he hadn't the free time that he could know.

His place was some ten kilometres from where I was staying; ten kilometres in a taxi or an automobile, that is. Something struck me as odd. It was plain that he was not playing his full hand; his place felt familiar; likewise, his demeanour—what little of it he spilled in the few seconds it took me to tiptoe to the settee—was composed, but suddenly jittery now that the hour was upon him.

The drawing room had a studied laxness to it, most of which effect was due to the stifling multiplicity of books. Books of every kind, but, as I said, somewhat too easy in their lack of order. I wouldn't have cared but for the fact that there were a number of trade paperbacks—ones you rarely saw even in the television channels. You really couldn't get them from even the big stores. I'll fix you down yet, my brawns and noble man! First discordant note; but I wasn't going to make an issue out of it. I could just as well have walked into a room stuffed with cannabis or grass or mush; this was a lot better though it was quite out of the ordinary. Of course, being the egomaniac that I was, it only inflamed me; like I'd somehow missed an important clue. But I had never even noticed this comic-strip side of his personality. Could it be—but that alarming thought never struck me then.

The room was lit in packets of incandescence: there were at least half a dozen lamps, all carefully calibrated and focused, to highlight artifacts, so that the room looked queerly like a cave. He was a collector, and that would be one of the starting premises for the amateur of crime. He split the line dividing art and technique; but often, an artist needs to be technical. I noticed a luxuriant quilt, Farsi in its rich detailing, carelessly slapped on a sloping divan. It was so tempting that I suddenly allowed myself to be Pauline⁽²⁾ resting on it. For a few moments I felt like winner. And then, I noticed him, looking at me intently but still with that dissipated, studentlike quivering. But I'd still not played my hand.

He seemed quite all right but for his heavy, sleepy eyes. It was obvious he'd not slept well or much. And it was then I noticed in a lowly lit corner of the room an easel covered with gauze. O, dear me! Another blow! He was taking me down really quickly.

Luckily, I'd taken that devastating sidelong glance whilst clutching at one of the spokes of a rather Danish looking steeply chair. And I vaguely recollect swirling down and slowly bottoming in its reassuring felt upholstery. Felt? Velveteen? I fairly bounced myself from the bottom of pitiless despair, as though to make sure it had sunken in.

I braced myself for a light-and-sound show. It was just a question of bedazzling each other, I thought. I cursed the day I took it upon myself to descend upon his senses in all my intellectual fluorescence. My bulbs were faintly blinking, right now. But no; the lights did not glimmer or fade, I'd just been buttered up for something else. He twisted it in even further, delightful wretch! He offered me coffee, and toast seasoned with mayonnaise, jam, and a little chocolate. Even as I sunk my teeth into a third helping, I wondered if it was a mistake or culinary virtuosity. Delicious either way—so it mattered little.

Naturally, I was thirsty after my swept-off gastronomic abandon. His carefully chosen menu ensured that: It was almost 75 percent fat. After a while I sensed it was not me munching munchies but it was a huge succulent black forest chewing on me, gulping me down, as I wound down a circuitous and treachery country-lane in Schwarzenwald on my 911⁽³⁾.

♫

---

We both sensed the instant when we were both alone, intent, heads on the anvil—the moment of decision. Like bees buzzing, our minds full and our thoughts reeling in all directions, extending its spread and licking in the little flies and prey. But we both knew that every bee would tire in its time, and so also did ours; we were waiting merely for the eyes to lock up. It would come any moment because we were no longer shy, having gauged each others egotism and selfishness and found all in working order. And, in a sublime moment, almost idiotic in its ardency, the lock was acquired, and we were alone and isolated and we felt rather lost but resolute. No one, indeed nothing else, existed, pure consciousness, awareness of each other, awareness of another body, heaving, measuring, calculating, quivering, on the balance. Not simply awareness, it was as though something had been clasped into yours; it was not a decision to be made but inevitability. We felt clapped together, and it was only our selfishness that delayed the obvious. It was delicious because we both lazed under the impression that the other was forcing it whereas we were going at the same things and with the same ardency or lack. In lust, the inevitable is merely prolonged for obvious reasons. And it often is merely a habit, not a decision; supremely fit specimens could do without tarrying.

We fell. But afterwards, we talked. Which is to say, it was quite a pleasurable evening. And then it dawned on us that we'd been right in deciding not to talk, right in pursuing the course of events as they unfolded. In short—we were quite happy for each other.

♫

---

We talked quite a bit afterward. We were not tired, not unduly, that is to say. And we just chatted...chattered. About the weather, about the books, about art, about chemistry...and about each other and about our prospects. He was a hard man, and it almost surprised me how he could forget his hardness. That is to say, he was speaking his harsh views of things with such a mellow tone that for a few moments you forgot he was actually tearing things down. I was amazed at how clinically precise his casual observations were, how cutting, and how devastating it would be to be at the end of his stick. But he talked only when prodded. Or he would have been lynched long ago, he had a knack of hitting you where it hurt worst. If he chose to talk, the other ones would have no option but to kill him outright. It was not his logic, it was not his eloquence; it was the firm conviction with which he shone forth, so you could say it was a combination of everything lethal the spoken word could offer. And he was—if you were careless enough to let him be—quite insufferable, because his words always pointed a finger at you no matter who or what he was talking about. He swallowed everything, himself included, and he spat it out like putrid flesh. And he shadowed you like a con man.

I don't recall how the conversation turned and I started my bit. And then I guess let myself go. I fell for that trick. In hindsight, I could perhaps console myself that he was soliloquising. But my repartee was the opening of floodgate. Traditional, bitchy, I felt like a cow afterward but I recall that I loved it while I poured it out. What was I thinking? Maybe it went like this. One confidence deserved another...or, rather, one ear deserved another. We couldn't either of us assume the Odysseus-Penelope roleplaying. He wasn't Odysseus because he was suitably stacked; he didn't want my riches. And I wasn't exactly Penelope, because I was not exactly ugly though I wasn't rich by any yardstick. I was independent but not a vampire; I just moved on when it became too hot to handle, and I similarly appreciated it when the guy thought likewise and slipped from my grasp.

...But my headhunting days were over.

♫

⁽¹⁾ He was convinced I would buy his version of whatever he was selling because my position, too, was plain to see.

⁽²⁾ The sculpture by Canova.

⁽³⁾ Try it on NFS Porsche Unlimited, just like I did...!

---

Note
This... is where we actually rejoin the protagonist of Distances. Five years have passed. And I myself have taken quite a while, sufficiently long to again grow distant from my characters. But...I'm digressing. No more spoilers. Let's just say that in the meantime I've suffered quite a bit, endured an ordeal of sorts, and am now in the right frame of mind and cushioned by the right sort of reassurance (cushion is always psychosomatic but the conditions for replicating it are not well defined) to continue writing. In contrast to what other writers may say, the only drug I need to write is peace of mind. And when I'm not even thinking about writing it, the events unfold and I just go there with an umbrella to shade me from the sun.

I had drafted about 300 words and then left to watch over Baby. The power failed (and it was not yet time for the daily half-an hour of load shedding), and the PC went out like the light. (I haven't replaced the battery set on my four-year-old UPS.) This is drafted in Composer, and since I was just starting out, I hadn't yet saved it. Poof! went the first version of the file. It was, arguably, a better, crisper version—ever more so because I am now burdened by a sense of loss, and am vainly trying to figure out the mood in which I had composed those fifteen odd lines.

To offset the loss, and to absolve myself of any continuing affectation, I am leaving out those four paragraphs which might have set the story properly. What we now have is a more dramatic cutting-in; but I guess this one's going to take a while coming, so I'd better put it all down immediately before it leaves me or before the power fails.

---

[1549/321::1861. Minor edits and proofing. x15]

♫

And this specially for Raphæl: I had to make a start somewhere. This is just that, and you may yet get your serial. In time, in time. But I do have to say: the best things in life are episodic, those moments don't drag on. So too, those chance meetings pictured in Eleonora and in Distances. The great attraction of these meetings was their one-offness. From the moment those meetings became possible, the moment he and she became aware, they were aware of the uniqueness rather than awkwardness. Those moments would never ever come again. When the world was sleeping, when the rest were not looking, they were thrown together to confide in each other a little. That was the magic. I could not forget that I have carried meandering thoughts of this sort in my head for kilometres as the school bus spun around the same roads every day and i kept awake in a delirium. It was intoxication in anticipation of this tête-à-tête that never came. It never was love; there never was any contact, so it never escalated to that. My friend Mr S had a rather squarely-dismissive term for it—a pipe dream⁽⁴⁾. Love or attraction or whatever else had little to do with that magic. It was just the gravity of the moment.

And, much as I'd like to reinvent a story of true-blue love in Bangalore in 1997, I realise it's a near-impossible task if I'm to steer clear of all the cliché combinations of man-woman love. That is, I can't keep it sanitary and interesting at the same time. Perhaps I could do it short-term; all I ever try to do is short-term, and this will be no different.

⁽⁴⁾ He'd consumed his bit of Kubla Khan I presume. I was aware of his reading of Coleridge even then; he made no secret of it. He'd sent me a poem in which this motif figured prominently (It was an invective against the very teenage-boy habit of daydreaming, if I remember correctly.) (And sorry for this footnote to an endnote with parenthetical apologies. It's becoming a disease.)

[373, this special for Raphæl]
[1549|321|373::2243]

Distances.

She had a hard time convincing him she didn’t need the book for keeps; it was almost a blow to him. What was she thinking? But for her, the choice was clear, there being none; she knew she hadn’t the luxury to immerse in that big blue book and read. She coaxed him into supplying her with xeroxed copies of four random pages; the numbers she recited to him. He ran up the nearest shop and returned with an envelope. It was ornamented with an elaborate Beardsley at the centre of which a lily bearing her name rose like St John's severed head. Then they parted, and they were almost sad.

She rang him that night to fix up the meeting. She playfully hinted that he, being the gentleman that he was, should arrange everything and not let the lady know any of it; they could meet at her house, but that would turn three others (her parents and her younger sister) into lampposts or ninepins, which was not what they wanted. She had things to say and things to hear; meeting suddenly seemed an insurmountable obstacle, no place for rendezvous. They merely agreed to meet up at a bus stop (though not the one where they had parted a while ago, that would be too obvious) and left it hanging at that. As he was about to hang up, she asked about a few lessons she thought he had merely ‘covered’—he was not like that usually, he never gave any room for a suggestion for improvement. Apart from his an overdose of carelessness—putting him in her hands in each of the examinations—he was perfect and thorough. If he had the good humour, he would have told her that ketones and esters were the last thing on his mind. She suddenly fell silent, and her mien evaporated. The truth hit her like a sledgehammer: he had held up strong until now, it was obviously tough for him. Else he wouldn’t be opening up like this. ‘Be sure to bring me a gift,’ was all she could think. Suddenly he seemed to remember, and collected himself to wish her good night; she hung up feeling distressed.

She returned home to her evening lessons. Five of the worst and unruly boys were waiting on her, talking noisily amongst themselves; she was usually punctual and did not like keeping them an instant more than needed. She was already half an hour late. She had a good mind to excuse herself, but decided otherwise. She found herself doing the imaginary math and come up with a couple of wasted man-hours. Oh dear! She turned the doorknob and entered the bath. Turning on the light, she noticed her haggard face: it looked like she’d been crying, or as if she were stung by bees. Her face was terrible, and her hair was ruffled. Worst of all, she'd just had a bout of acne. It was horrid. She collected water in a pail and splashed it cruelly on her face. She did this over and again, until she was drenched right down to the shoulder and her blouse stuck to her body and the welts showed through. Turning sharply, she took hold of a towel and felt the cold licking of air. It would not be difficult to just go through the lessons and revise, she thought to herself as she emerged from the bath.

Much to the amusement of ‘class’, she apologised profusely for being late. Then she asked them to hand over the workbooks. She followed the same routine as in her school lectures: but she took good care that her wards completed the lessons individually. Needless to say, it paid richly, and she now had close to fifty students on different days; and almost all of them boys. She realized that it was only necessary to get them to work, and they worked willingly when she asked them to. If they worked, they were at least equal to the girls, who were always the more industrious of the two. No sticks here; and the work was rewarding, but an immense and bad reputation it had given her. The nightdresses she sometimes wore before the boys, the state of her skirt…it was probably a bit too much if you paid attention to that sort of thing but she knew she was spat like the proverbial cat. What did it matter, she wasn’t arranging something.

‘What is this Lino? What is this you’ve written for 6-marks? And you call this an essay?’

`Lino’ skulked away, as if he had half-expected the drubbing. She never let up even once, and they always bungled and spilled it in her plate. Perhaps he didn’t get the time, perhaps he’d missed her instructions—

‘For the hundredth time! Essays on a separate sheet, pin them on, essays on a separate sheet, pin. Ah, what's the use! and Mr Lino has decanted three priceless sentences for a page-length essay! Moron!’

Lino was already wavering; the sight of her in a rage was something that made them shrink back in their seats. They usually got on well, and she went to great lengths to simplify the reactions, and almost every other day she found herself repeating the first chemistry lesson in high-school—the balancing of chemical reactions. The boys too knew that they weren’t prime stuff for chemistry, and appreciated the pains she took. It cut both ways.

He opened his mouth to say that he was away with his family to attend a wedding reception…but he stopped short, it really didn’t matter, and even if she struck him with the cane it was all right, it would even out one way or the other. They all loved her like in one voice, they would die for her. She was tiny, she was fragile and had a notorious temper; when she raised her pitch the veins on her big forehead stuck out, and her tightly gathered hair gave her the look of a blazing preacher.

The class soon got underway along more familiar lines. She took a good class, couldn’t be otherwise. She cleared their doubts, which was really about starting from square one; and when she would up class, it was half an hour late. It was ten minutes to ten. She closed her big textbook (she did not teach from the school textbook, she used advanced textbooks) in a resounding thump and yawned.

She watched the boys walking slowly away. They were dropping with fatigue, and dragging their legs. She had kept them waiting far too long. They usually came straight to her house after the evening tea; strapping fellows, and this was the one thing where they admitted defeat and submitted willingly. Something was lacking in the intellectual department that made them attentive to all but the difficult things. But they were easy to get along; exactly the rationale behind private lessons.

***

She tried putting off what would happen the next day. If she were younger, a girl of sixteen or eighteen, she would have rejoiced in a clandestine way only stargazing girls are entitled to. But she was not sixteen anymore, and at sixteen she had found it hard to swallow the bitter pill. How rubbed out she felt! Nothing, nothing at all—came in to announce there was a hope in all this, that she could somehow reinvent her life, or make a new beginning. These were all daft ideas peddled in those potboilers she still found time to read. She knew the difference, yet it no longer stung.

In the space of five minutes she was asleep. Ah, just as well.

***

She woke up with a hangover. Se could barely walk straight, it was like the kick from a swing. Things of yesterday slowly crept into her, instant-by-instant, until when she’d done with her toilet, when she could remember everything that happened yesterday evening with a photographic accuracy. This filled her with a new drive and a new thought that had previously not come to her: she had to get a third party involved, if only as a sanity check, if only to share this with somebody. It was not that this would be so wonderful; on the contrary, she knew it couldn’t last, so she had to preserve it. She was already coping with the withdrawal symptoms.

She thought about what she’d said the day before. She’d said little, but he had said even less and yet sounded so much more meaningful, so big. He was just fourteen or fifteen. That was what made this all so crushing: not that he was younger, but it was exactly that which gave it a context. A man or a boy wouldn’t make such a difference, because it all went through the same process here; but it was inconceivable that such a boy, someone with perhaps no experience, should present it in such devastating fashion. It was all…so gross, and it wasn’t really required. She didn’t carry that much weight, yet her arms had been properly twisted. It was so gross that she knew the immense devotion that went into the making of that catalogue was simply lost.

The catalogue was no longer an artefact, it was more like a businesslike ledger that overwhelmed you with its immense content. She simply could not rub this off, it was too important even if it was but a gesture…but those pages...so many! It was too serious to be a joke. He had even filled it with rough sketches, coloured ones and silver point ones done in art paper, to preserve her memory. And then he’d presented it to her. Was it an undoing or was it just the foundation? She was not one to judge. As far as she could see, he was flotsam.

She slept soundly till 7:00. She usually got up at 5:00 to begin her daily rounds, starting with the tuitions at the centre nearby. In all she was making close to what a state school lecturer was making. Back-breaking work but at least she made it count with the nickel. Popular music from a careworn Walkman in her seedy room stuffed with books and clothes; she’d forgotten how it felt to live like a human being. Life for her alternated between book, class, students, blackboard, the cane and the endless trousseau of cotton saris; she’d inherited quite a few from her sister; they had been quite close. Indeed, she was the only one who really understood why she’d run away; in her place she’d have done the same. (And it was not as bad as all that: it was merely a statistic that she'd eloped with a driver—but he'd been in the military with her father. Gossipy summaries often make the most convenient elusions.) Her sister was pretty and well-mannered; it was not a wonder that such an opportunity came her way. She didn’t grudge her a better life. Saris were her only weakness; she made it a point to choose the most colourful and remarkable designs of cotton sari, and she flaunted her saris with pride.

But today she felt drowsy and her mind was not in anything. Her mother noticed this over breakfast and asked what was on her mind. The four of them sat silently (her mother and sister usually cooked, but she used to cook when she had free time), eating slowly looking at the plates… ‘It's nothing,’ she said and quickly left them bewildered.

She had a good mind to tell them what the matter was…but that would unnecessarily tax the boy, she was almost sure that this would pass, no matter how strongly bitten he was right now. If there was a word she would use to describe his condition, it would surely be love; but love was not a brick, it would pass when it went unrequited. Though only 24, she was his teacher and felt a bit too cold for that. It was not the years; it was the work and the misery that had broken her teen spirit. Two years ago she had been in the thick of it, and wore a pair of jeans to the college day and then to class every day. But that was two years ago—

It was clear that he was in love with her as purely as love could mean to a boy his age; he did not know, and indeed did not care, that she could have her mood swings and be horrid. He even did not know her from up close, her tuition-boys knew better, in a way. A disconcerting thought came to her, and she quickened her pace.

From the distance she spotted him waiting at the bus stop. He wore a chequered shirt and baggy trousers. He was attired casually, something she’d not ever seen her in the past two years; he could only be seen in uniforms even on the last working day of the month, when the students were allowed coloured dresses. It gave him a drab, studious image but she knew him a lot better than that. He simply had no other persona. But today he was attired brilliantly, and any girl would give him a second look. Military greens and a matching, variegated shirt. He had fine taste and a considerable pocket to keep it in; a matching bag was hung loosely on his left shoulder: she was impressed.

He was surprised to see her…not in a sari. She wore a white salwar with seamless pleated pants, she looked wonderfully different. Light makeup did her justice, and he bowed graciously as she came up: ‘You look amazing.’

She jerked her head sideways and his heart skipped one. ‘Thank you very much…and it was as well, seeing that you're yourself armed to the teeth.’ ‘Oh, it’s that bad is it?’ ‘Ha ha ha! I was thinking of asking you home if you were in uniform, bookworm!’ ‘Just about managed to save my skin, then.’

The greeting dissolved into a blossoming of light laughter. They looked at each other in a way far different from how they had used to: it was indeed a different beast the the other was seeing, and it wasn't just the dressing. He wasn't having her on; she looked magnetic in the white dress and would have passed for his girlfriend. Young and sprightly, seamless furls disappearing in tapering cones about her slender legs—it was not fashionable right then, it was outdated by a year or two, but it looked just fine on her. She'd worn a new pair of shoes to complete the coordinate look. He was dressed wonderfully hip, and walked upright. In school he would wear a pair of beach slippers for all he cared. He fairly pulled the rug from under her, and she took his breath away. The sting was mutual. Like a couple, they walked away arms entwined, feet tripping, mind rejoicing.

Strangely, they ended up in an ice-cream parlour a kilometre from her house. She used to go there to while away the time, so she was somewhat well-known there. She didn't tell it him; it would be too much of an effort for nothing. She ordered while he went to the washroom. In time, they came clean about everything: if nothing else came out of it, they wanted things to stay, at least the more permanent things. She felt bolstered every minute; she hadn’t been wrong about him or about her own feelings. He was not after that fling, and he still had not hinted at any idiotic frozen-in-time idealism. He knew exactly what he was talking about and so did she and he knew it as well. They had some work cut out between them.

After a while they were talking like they had known each other a long time. The perfume had worn off, and she was slightly sweating above her lip, and moisture sprayed beads which she kept thwarting with one of her innumerable flimsy nose rags. They were both after the same kind of succour—the consolation of words. It couldn’t have been otherwise; both were smart enough to realise how they stood, and how little it would matter had they taken the plunge, both willing and primed, to the unknown. She knew it personally, her sister had gone from one hell to another. He seemed wise enough and in control of himself. She seemed to hesitate a bit before committing, ‘This your first big...work?’

He seemed to hesitate an interminable pause. Nothing else was forthcoming, she was just waiting for it to sink in herself. It was not a snide remark, nor was it a slip. He had to recycle the spurious insight that she wanted to see it that way—

‘I been writing since ’86. Of course, I don't write so for a hobby, no. If that's what you meant.’ ‘To any other I would say “wow!” but to you—I wouldn't make bold as to slight you so—

‘No really, it’s not the words—I suppose you can find the words in your sleep, you realise that much in a single paragraph—but the devotion, the unflinching faith to keep it going…well, you can be quite candid, you know, I know I’m not exactly a cow but I’m no siren either. You need to be really in love with something to do this, be in love as a principle. For the time being, I’m setting away that disconcerting thought that this is about me.’

The spell was indeed broken. They were again businesslike, hovering about the bounds of what was permissible. The unseen forces suddenly cast about their nets and they were trapped like butterflies: conversation flagged, and they began groping in the dark. Marooned in a sea of silence: and they both realised that for the past hour or so, they had lived like two lovers, in perfect unison, looking to see. They had seen the best each had to offer and they were content.

‘It matters aught…what you think, or how you take it. I myself don’t force the thought; it never works that way. You must have noticed that I’ve never worn the ‘Best Student’ badge. I’ve won it probably more times than anyone else…but in my view, that badge should be won by someone who knows its true worth and suppressed…which is what I’m doing. And I like it when you’re occasionally temperamental, flying away when we blurt out a blunder…you can be such a tease. But I must tell you—this is about you, I would do it only for you. You can invent a world of excuses, and as we have both of us rightly observed, a sea here separates us, but that will never blot out the truth, which is that I love you and you mean so much to me. This meeting and these words I take as a supreme gift. I guess I have earned it, and this book is my passport. Yet you returned it without even looking.’

He’d played into her hands again, he was sounding a schoolboy. She was utterly confused now. He gave the impression of being impervious to her words yet deeply hurt by her words—which was it? She was talking freely to him, in a way she’d never done in her life, she was saying things she was amazed she could. She was sprucing up a world she knew was make-believe, just because of him. For an instant she lost the baton, she did not know if she still controlled the things she said.

‘Oh, you cruel man...twist it in, should you! You mean that it means nothing to me? That I’ve been…I clench my heart when I make myself say those things I must. If you were older we wouldn’t need this talk, we wouldn’t need to talk…you are not free. You are not free in much the same way I am bound myself. You're probably too young but you have to deliver, and I get you fouled up—forget what they would do with me—I wouldn’t forgive myself. O no! Yes, I do care about you, and I’ve seen how you see me. I can’t promise you anything…even if it is so simple. I’m worthless and insignificant, but I can’t promise you. It is not mine to give— When will this end! Oh! Don't make me beg! Oh—!’

He slowly reached out both his bands and took her folded hands in his. Moist. And as she turned up her sobbing eyes he said solemnly:

‘This here is a sea separates us; you are right about that and I admit it. Like from a lighthouse your kindness touches me, and I cross the sea to you. This is all I need, this trust and this inclusion, I ask for nothing more. I treasure feelings and experiences and if you know what I say, you will know what to do. Life…is important. With a light heart, I leave.’

Eyes kindly and without malice: she smiled through her tears. She was perspiring and heaving in gulps of air. Nothing remained to be said, their minds were calm. She did not understand much of what he said just then but she would recollect it; it was etched in her memory. She knew hardly anything about him; it was an exercise in finding out how she stood in relation to this new development. Like a girl under the influence, she took his hand and staggered across to the street and into the sun.

---

[3787; 33 edits; 330 min (180 min for base 3340);
done over five days in three sittings; one of my longest posts by far]

This is freeform—almost dust. The persons remain the same, with status quo unchanged.

Gratis:

1. {♫
   Metallica—Hero of the Day, Bleeding Me, and Outlaw Torn;
   Leftfield—Rhythm and Stealth, especially Swords, 6/8 War, Double Flash and Rino's Prayer;
   Jean Sibelius—Kullervo, especially Grave and Sister;
   Transglobal Underground—Taal Zaman, I, Voyager, Templehead and Monter Au Ciel
   ♫}
   
2. [Raphael]
3. I hope the special persons in this special story all approve of my noble intentions (amor vincit), and do not pull out at an inopportune moment. This, though is inevitable, it can only be forestalled by such and such a duration and not indefinitely. (Alas! Life is such.)
   
4. Best viewed in Netscape Navigator 9.0.0.5/6, on which this was done. Netscape is dead, Long live Netscape!
5. Or try Safari. It's from Apple and all the rest—but seriously, if you're doing some reading on a browser, Safari renders things best.
   

Eleonora Amore

'I’d no idea it would be like this…knew you were strong, clever…not that you’d be living in a hell, like this, by your own choice! But why…why?'

The pages blinked at her in motley floral hues. There was an entry for each day of school he’d attended that year: and special entries for each of those days she’d engaged classes for X A. But that came to just two days a week, plus those days for any extra hours engaged. In all, it came to seventy one special entries, each of which took up more than two pages, and the other ordinary days. He’d filled up the specials in a scarlet ink. Then there were long passages which were written in green and crossed out in black; some were still visible, and at times it gave you the impression that he’d done it after a lot of thought.

It was evident that this had been his major preoccupation for the whole year. But she recalled with horror that she’d been his teacher for the previous year also, and he’d probably first seen her a year before that. It was not just a crush, it was an obsession growing strong by the minute, engaging and disengaging like the tentacles of an octopus: but he was holding up well, his grades were still the very best, and he was hard to beat in anything he’d set his sights on. He was still the role model for the entire 2500-strong student-force of the school; there had never been anyone like him before.

She found herself in a bizarre situation: it was not her choice, it was not his either, they were thrown together not by the crush or by the rush of feelings; no, there had never been any chance for that sort of thing, and there certainly had been no dalliance. She set exemplary standards in teaching and he in learning, and this came at a price. They both paid with their time; it was well-known that they had little or no free time, and it was also well known that they were not teaching or preparing or studying all the time. He still took no private lessons, though it had been rumoured for a time that he might find her tutelage useful, maybe just to lessen his load. She knew all along that he was built for far more difficult tasks, this was a side-business to him. So she never harboured any notion of his coming to take private lessons from her.

And side-business it was, too. When she tested him three months into the year, she found that he’d carefully compressed everything into neat little pills to be reproduced later: unravelling like paper flowers, he was only concerned with the most efficient arrangement—a hierarchy—of the knowledge structure he built. In the end, she realised with considerable wonderment and admiration, it all reduced to several bullets of hyphenated analytical headings that told the story—but just to him and to those similar.

The school bus was gone now. In three weeks he would be finishing his business at the school. She was already thinking of that. Sure as a dumbbell he would top the state examinations; and sure as anything, the school would never be the same again, the disturbance would be immense. It would never recover from the huge shadow he would cast over it. It was nothing to do with the school at all: he had his own methods, and he would follow a course almost in opposition to the accepted curricular ones. It was a source of relief to her that she was the chemistry mistress and not the history or any other humanities mistress; the way he wrote in the examinations was an exercise in kindness. He would write answers in keeping with the invigilator, and he knew everyone and their level pretty well. But she was proud to be his chemistry miss: she was really good and she prepared well, and before she came to meet him she had a sort of arrogant self-assurance that bordered on the despotic.

In one day that had changed when in the course of a lesson she pronounced 'Raul' for Raoult, in whose name there is a famous chemical law ('the vapour pressure of an ideal solution...'). He casually remarked that it was “Ray-o”. It was a surprise but she had it coming: his reputation was such that every schoolmistress knew that the boy was special, and the first lesson everyone learnt was to realise that this was no ordinary boy. It was quite well known that the Principal used to instruct all teachers before engaging Std X A; the reason was this boy. And with the utterance of that single word, the equation between the two changed; it imperceptibly coloured her evenings and changed him.

In that first class, when she spoke out her taskmaster rules—which included the admonition that they should all take down lecture notes—she was transferring what she’d herself learnt at college a few years ago and found useful—when she spelt them out, waving the cane like a baton, he realised that his life would never be the same again. They were only doing the ninth standard and here she was, already launching them into young adulthood, on the path to true scholarship. He became immensely respectful towards her. And to everyone else it was not just respect of any sort: it was respect towards her superior technique and great battle-readiness. Though everyone grudged her these qualities, none wanted to be in her shoes. She came every day to school prepared to face the music; her preparations for class were legendary.

Short and diminutive; at 155 cm perhaps not everyone would call her short, but at 95 lbs she was surely petite. She walked very upright and briskly. She was very adept at draping the sari; she would habitually use ironed cotton saris that would keep their impeccable falls intact at the end of the day and even through the night if need be; she was very careful about dressing and being clean. But dusky complexion and acne played sore bed mate to her grooming, making her look like a prude and a tart. In the eyes of the boys, she was either remarkably depraved (which was a reflection of their own veiled sexual longing) or incredibly unfortunate. (It was a fact that her father had retired penniless from the army; she had an elder sister who has run away with a bus driver, and a younger sister who had tried along similar lines to the disgrace of the family, which was why they were changing houses every now and then.)

'Come…it’s getting dark.'

They walked peacefully beneath the lindens. It was the last week of February but the summer heat was already upon them; the trees were abloom. He had chosen a most delicate moment to hand her his most trusted secret…a huge, 500-page book, so carefully written and indexed that it did not take much effort on her part to understand that it was a boy’s life.

She was a much-misunderstood, much-exploited woman herself. She’d struggled to get her master’s, worked odd jobs until she’d found employment in this school, which still paid her a pittance. She took private tuitions and also engaged classes during the morning (pre-school) hours at a nearby tuition centre. It all added up to something more significant than her salary. She was unmarried, and her folks needed her badly just for the money. So they left her alone…to work, to toil, and make ends meet which were not hers to twine and knot. And…in the long run, her private tuitions—combined with her dressing, which was always decent but a bit too perfect for mere mortals to duplicate—gave her a bad name. In this little conservative place where an English song would be front-page news, an unmarried woman of 24 living hand to mouth had very limited options. It was said that she was a very frustrated creature. He never knew for real, nor did he ever try to find out.

So many distant doors had opened and all of them had closed…and she’d not even tried a few of them, she never got that far in her hurried life. But of one thing she was sure: when she was in the class, in front of the blackboard, her heart was stone and she poured it forth in a carefully modulated stream which was both effective and captivating. Her accent was superb, her method uncompromising. She summoned all her heart and all her life-force to beat the life out of those outstretched felon hands. She would cry horribly in the staffroom, and during those times she cut quite a sorry figure, and even the `felons' would often come in droves to console her. But she never stopped crying.

They’d walked the kilometre to the highway. It was now completely dark, and they had been talking all the while. He had written wonderfully, and it slowly bit into her to realise that she had been closely observed, her every word appreciated and noted by this maverick of a schoolboy who had been, by his own admission, just ‘looking to see.’ Ah, how he said it! He was looking to find her faults! The classic formula for falling…rising in love. But his words were kind; even her mother hadn't spoken so tenderly to her in years.

She enjoyed the strictly programmatic beginning of each entry. It merely described her getup, her hairdo (which was wont to be the same everyday, a ponytail—so he took his chances at the colour of the hair band, and noting if a few curls of hair actually evaded the clasp of the girdle), her first words (mostly the greeting, so he would note the exact phrasing and the look she wore when she said it), and of course, which of the legs she crooked underneath when she sat down to take the toll.

She was not hurt by this immense invasion of privacy: her every atom reverberated not with the sense of being violated, but with an almost helpless urge to cry out, ‘Why, why me?’ But it could only be she; and she knew it. They were alike in a lot many respects, and they knew it all along; the only thing that was missing in her was the realisation that he was in fact, filing her away in this big blue book whilst she toiled in the tuition home and in her little room up the stairs. An uncontrollable rage welled within her, and she glared at him: but there was no malice in his eyes, and she knew instantly that he too was living in hell. Each to one's own: they were so close, yet so far away.

She turned the pages once more under the sodium lights: she laughed at the monthly summaries he had written, which were mostly summaries of the saris she had worn, how she’d been during class…she broke out in a fit as she read his snide remark that he suspected her mother of running a laundry service. But it was not a totally naïve record either, he had noted additional details that spiced up an otherwise clinical report that startled one with the regularity of a striking clock. O! The things people cook in their pots! She was stuck for words so she merely asked him, ‘How did you manage to find the time for this?’

‘No no, the miracle was that I found the time to live,’ he smiled and said nonchalantly, ‘you are my life.’

At that moment, a long truck passed them on the road, cutting off the light for more than a few seconds. In darkness, she saw his silhouette bristling with an aura of orange backlight. This was a not a boy who would just look and look; he had transfixed her, and he himself has secured it all by transferring all his energies into this one concept he had drilled out and christened as his life’s motive. Of course he was playing, of course he was just making it all sound worthwhile. But she was at the end of it—she was the quarry, she was the object of his gaze, and she had been invaded—and she felt tiny, in a way she had never felt even beside her huge uncle. Silent and benign, he was just a shadow, a disconcerting fond gaze at the other side of the void: but he was there, and his faint offer (was it love? But he never said it, perhaps it was not required) only made her tremble every now and then when the realisation dawned upon her.

He was fifteen and she was 24. But how did it matter! It was not as if they were arranging something. But for the first time in her life, she felt respect for a man. She felt respect for a boy who appeared infinitely thoughtful, caring, and even chivalrous: he had written all of this magnificent book only for her, just to show her. For two years he had toiled for this; and he had completed all but the last dozen or so pages in a most regular pattern. She respected the man he already was, but felt like squealing a cry because there was nothing she could offer him to eradicate that huge chasm separated them.

‘No, wait…wait…’ She buried her eyes in her face, and slumped down on the rather wide road marker just beside. Sighing audibly, she dissolved in silent peals of gentle sobbing. He could hear the wavelike regression of her breath. He wanted to comfort her, to be the fragrant petal, tears meant something to him, and it scared him when a woman cried.

‘I am sorry…?’ She fished about and emerged in a strong rally, putting away her handkerchief. ‘You’ve dropped this on me…no, really. I’d like to talk about it…just talk, I’m not…I cannot…you know that, don’t you. You’re a wonderful person…but I have to live out my life just the way it is…but I’d like to tell you a few things. I don’t want…I want to know a few things, too. Tomorrow—’

By all means, yes, he was ready to hear her story. ‘Tomorrow’ would be a Saturday and it suited him fine. But his eyes betrayed him; and she assured him that she knew it was not for the tête-à-tête that he’d given up his secret to her. ‘Tomorrow’ would be a big day for either of them.

'Til tomorrow, then. What she'd not asked was his permission—she was already trapped anyhow—the permission to really be miserable, to feel disconnected and awful in a way her listless life had never afforded her to. But...'til tomorrow, it was a promise, and they both hung on it.


[2600, 12 edits, 100 min for basic text (2347), 90 min for edits]
[This had come to me today in a dream, but I'd probably lived this dream about 15 years ago, and hundreds of times. Coloured by selective memory and a fondness that grows with distance and irreparable loss; This to a very special person who remains...special.]