The Beginning Of The Fall

Even then I was waiting for her, till the last day. Love makes you selfish, isn’t it? Cheating my wife, another little drop flicked next to me. She didn’t know that I was waiting for somebody else, not her. My wife loved me in the beginning. She thought that was inevitable and I laughed at her. I was a cruel pig. I was in my own cynical world. A new-born cynic. By the time I realized I was faking it, it was too late. I was bound to a girl I didn’t love, who trusted I loved her. Sometimes you are a king and sometimes you are a beggar. Sometimes you can’t see a thing but the pearls, the rubies, the diamonds and hanker after them. You can see them with clarity - a bit of effort and they will be yours. You don’t want anything else. Jades, amethysts, corals, who cares? They are only stones. They are under our feet, we are above them. Let’s go ahead even without a glance. How does it matter what they feel? Even if they are beautiful they are not beautiful enough. Then I lost her love. By the time I searched for it, it was gone. I was a beggar, with nothing under my feet but clay and sand. But I had my revenge. By the time she died she knew she was a beggar too. Perhaps long before that. I was a beggar and I had made her a beggar.

But I could not bear to know that. That I had cheated myself, cheated her. I had to find an escape. Not remember that. So I pushed her away further. Brought in between my kids, my work. If nothing else my books. Escape back into imagination, an unreal world. By choosing this wormhole of words. But it’s too lonely if you go there alone. One seeks a companion. So I sought my children, the way Beji had sought me once. The way Trishu had sought me once. While I was standing in the college canteen trying to read the small print of the menu board over the heads of a cluster of people, trying to find out how much a plate of idlis cost. She tapped me on my shoulder and I turned around to find my mystery girl giving me a pleasant smile. I, quite happy, smiled back.

You got Rangabhoomi, she asked.

No.

Oh sorry! I thought I saw you carrying it yesterday.

Yes, I have it. But not right now – in my room.

Can you lend it to me for sometime when you are finished with it?

Yes, of course I can.

Thanks, I will take good care of it.

Trishu did take good care of books. I learnt how to take care of books from her. She would get mildly agitated if someone stretched the pages too far. Seventy degrees, no more, she would say. I saw her once explaining patiently for five minutes to two of her friends how much exactly was seventy degrees. They laughed at her and she laughed back, but she didn’t leave them until they knew their seventy degrees. That was her.

She took days to read Rangabhoomi. I thought she found the book boring, or perhaps she was a slow reader. I caught her one day on the grounds. It was twenty days after I had given her the book. She was sitting on the grass, legs folded, feet bare, sandals kicked two feet away. Her head lolling downwards. I didn’t know her name even then. Had forgotten to ask when she had first caught me in the canteen or when I had given her the book in the class. There was just a silent acknowledgement then. I was yet a stranger. A person from whom you could ask a glass of water to quench your thirst once. I helloed her. For a few moments she didn’t respond. I wanted to touch her on the shoulder, but I didn’t. Something held me back. Was it the silent her? She had not even seen me and the boundaries were already defined. I helloed her again. She looked at me angling her face upwards, without changing its altitude. Hair silhouetting half her face, one of the eyes nearly closed in the glare of the sun. She smiled at me. Then pointed with her finger at the ground in front of her. Asking me to sit. How did she know I wanted to sit? I asked her. I know you have not come for the book, she replied. You wouldn’t want to read it so soon again. It’s not very interesting. Premchand was infinitely better in Mansarovar.

It’s boring? I rephrased her words, after sitting at the place she had pointed to.

Not exactly, but it’s not among his better ones either.

That’s why you are taking so long to finish it?

Am I?

Sorry. I thought so. Perhaps you were busy elsewhere.

No, I wasn’t. I just read Hindi slowly. Learned it recently.

You don’t speak Hindi?

I speak Hindi. I just can’t read it fast. It’s not my mother tongue.

That’s what I meant.

Her mother tongue was Oriya. She told me she was from Berhampur. I learned the place she was from before I knew her name. The irony of our lives. The place always moving with her like a shadow. A bigger shadow. A hostile shadow. Watching over us quietly like those watchers from Lord of the Rings. I asked her name then. Trishna. She pronounced the word slowly, relishing the word. It means thirst. I know, I said. I didn’t know enough. How thirsty we would become for each other. How thirsty we would remain for each other when the shadow came and pulled her away. Can you kill shadows? You can’t. You can kill people but you can’t kill shadows. You can’t kill shadows, you can’t argue with them, you can’t…You can do nothing. I could do nothing when Trishu said I have to go, the shadow wants to take me away. She wouldn’t show me any person, only the shadow. Whenever I asked her to take me to a person, she refused. I told her I would talk to her parents, her relatives, whoever it took to make her mine. Please let me. But she refused. I was only shown the shadow. It was their representative. I had to be satisfied with it. So I stood and helplessly watched as the wordless shadow came and took her away. The shadow of Berhampur.

Why did she do this? How could she be so weak? She had been so brave, so crazy once. There was a professor who used to go around checking our class notes. We were undergraduates and he did that. We were supposed to write all or most of the stupid shit he cackled at us. Most of us did; me too. Who wants to bang heads against marble walls. Walls that want to be noticed. He walked too like a wall, or rather waddled like a wall. A very self-important wall. Trishu was once dreaming in the class of this self-important wall. Looking out of the window while he was talking about Mazzini, showering praises on him. Irony at its worst. He caught her, asked her to show him her notes. Trishu showed him her notes - lines imagining Mazzini’s reaction in heaven while he listened to the professor pontificate on him. She told me later it had a paragraph that vividly described Mazzini beating his head on the pearly gates, pleading with St. Peter to let him out - there was a class down there on earth in which he desperately needed to go and change impressions about himself, do some serious correction. When the professor asked what is this, she told him calmly that between the agitprop he had dished out to us and her fiction he had just read, hers was perhaps nearer to truth. We were aghast. Did she know who she was talking to? I was frightened. Thought she was a goner now. This was indiscipline beyond tolerance. I was angry too. Thought she would be thrown out, something of that sort. I was afraid of losing her. Wanted to shake her into her senses. The professor asked her to get out of the class. The matter went to the principal, but mercifully nothing happened beyond that. Trishu managed by apologizing in writing, after I had convinced her into doing that by pelting her with a long angry harangue. When I asked her why she had been so rude to the professor, she said she had been pushed in that class beyond the limit of her endurance. He was behaving like one of those toadys in Congress who thought their duty towards their countrymen was done best by lavishing eulogies on Nehru, getting people inside Congress. The class was not a hunting ground. We were there to learn, not to get indoctrinated. I told her to calm down, there were better things in world to battle for. She asked me with a laugh if I thought she was crazy. I told her yes, she was, but I didn’t mind it as long as it didn’t push us apart. But her craziness didn’t push us apart. Her sanity did, her endurance did. When she began to accept things like the rest – the world is like that Firoj, we won’t be accepted, we will be alone, I can’t leave my people, I don’t know what will happen, but whatever happens I will have to go through it. Whatever happens I will go through it. How could she say that? She had no right to say that. No right to turn sane. That’s what had bound us to each other – the troth of craziness.

You know how we met the third time. Trishu came from behind and thumped me on my back. It was 1957, she was a girl, and she thumped me on my back after having met me just twice. She was that crazy. I turned to find her grinning at me. Remember me, she asked; you should, I still got your book. Yes, I said, I remember you. Then I tried to think what I should talk to her about – anything but the book. I was tired of talking to her about the book. I wanted to talk to her about her. Know more. Whenever I saw her, I wanted to touch her. It was a strange feeling, never had it before. I wanted to hold her. Wished everyone would disappear from the background and there would be a wall and I would hold Trishu against the wall. Stare into her eyes not letting her leave until she had kissed me. I wanted to run my hands through her hair, part the strands from each other. Take both my thumb and press it into her temple down her cheek down her neck into her arms, pressing into the skin till I reached her fingertips. Then I would clasp her wrists with my hands, I would clasp her lips with my own. But I knew I couldn’t touch her with my hands now, so I wanted to touch her with my words. It would be a beginning.

But she wasn’t tired of talking about the book. I am almost finishing it, she began. I am where... I stopped her - let’s talk about something else.

What?

You?

What about me?

Anything. What do your friends think of you?

I don’t have many here right now.

Wherever they are.

You don’t want to know.

Why?

They think I am half mad. Sometimes full. When I am not mad, I am nice.

I am ok with that.

Let’s go then.

Where?

Somewhere less crowded. Do you want to talk about me standing in the middle of this?

Ok, let’s go.

We walked away. That was the beginning of my fall.






I fell with madness, into madness. Doing the dance of Zorba. We were intensely happy.