Little Things

"What makes the boat stay afloat on the waters,  Ma ? ", a pair of  glinting brown eyes looked up in expectation . 

Supriyo secluded himself from the raucous crowd of the bus , burying himself into his ever recurring pensive moods and thinking about Anu ;  Anunima  his mother (or was she anymore ? ) 

He was returning to roypara after almost 8 years , the neighborhood which had sheltered his childhood and perhaps mistakingly a few years of his adolescence as well . 

Roypara ; a sleepy neighborhood sprawling sheepishly  in the south of Kolkata. Its residents , mostly employees of the national banks , perpetuated the lives handed over to them by their ancestors , defying the  change and pace of the world around . They contented themselves with whatever life offered them , no excessive ambition  , no mercenary hankering dared to  sully the composed , handed-over -to them lives . 

He had been merely 6 when he was first confronted with the enormity of this locality.

Every afternoon when   Anu drew up from her daily exhaustion as a home maker while having her siesta , Supriyo would sneak out of the house furtively and join the other children playing hide and seek. His stealthiness did not arise from any sort of  consideration so as not to wake up Anu but to escape her knowledge of him leaving the house at such unholy hour, of which she often cautioned him against  . According to Anu , those unholy hours were meant only for a short  lackadaisical undisturbed sleep and any aberrations within  that acute  space enclosed by time's own hands on the wall would bring bad omens into her Supriyo and he would be taken ill . 

Though  a whip of fear would strike him every time, the moment such a thought had taken root inside him , he would shrug it off anyway  and blithely set about for his afternoon ventures . 

On that particular day when he was merely 6 and came to know of his locality a little more , by some hideous conspiracies of fate , he was the one who had to be the chor from the lottery of counting . Had the lottery decided the chance outcome of the winner of a five hundred rupee note , Supriyo wouldn't have detested it , five hundred rupees ! Can you imagine ? , he believed that five hundred is the highest amount one can own , why ? That's the highest denomination he had ever seen and shouldn't be it the highest amount one can own according to his mind , which was yet to be stilted with the basics of  arithmetic operations  ?

" Stupid unlucky lottery ! , decides who is the chor " , he thought to himself in angry disdain . 

But it was all done now and he had to be the one who would find all the other "hidden" children .

 He started off with the lanes he used the most , the one which led to school , then the one which led to Nil's house but to no avail . The other lanes which lay languidly before him in the afternoon sun , slumbered with the house makers , who made the house , not by cementing  brick upon brick but by cementing relations with care and affection .   Till that moment Supriyo thought that these other lanes didn't lead to anywhere , they were just there , lying lazily , unemployed . But now he had to venture into those unknown strange lanes , he had to find the "hidden children" .

 It was while wandering those strange lanes , when the enormity of his locality hit him , when the gods revealed to him the world that lay beyond his limited horizon of knowledge and acquaintance. 

On , the blue dome above his head , an airplane made its way through the wisps of clouds , leaving behind itself a trail of its own . Looking at it from one of the lanes of roypara an impertinent question slipped into his mind , its impertinence due to the fact that inadvertently it had hit someone so small , a mere child of 6 .

"Can they ever see me from above ?  Do they wave back to me ? Did they ever even  notice my frantic delight at the sight of that airborne object? " 

He suddenly became wary of how little , how insignificant a dot he was,  impressed upon one of the numerous lanes of roypara , a locality among the innumerable localities of kolkata , a city among the thousands in India , a country among the hundreds in the world .

Did he matter ?        Do little things count ? ....

Supriyo had just trudged into adolescence , walking down the aisles of time reluctantly with the stubbornness of his childhood which he was yet to discard, when his parents were divorced .

 By then he was old enough to know that divorce meant an agreement to  live separate , a document which did the hideous sin of dissolution of marriage.

 Things were parted , a conclusive end so as to who would have what was reached upon on paper . 

But what  of those wealths of emotions which had remained "hidden" in hearts ? How are they to be appropriated ? 

The "hidden children" of  sentiments brought up along with Supriyo in one of the numerous lanes of hearts , who would look after them , raise them up ? 

The legal papers missed out the little things . But , once again , did they count ? 

Supriyo had got an inkling of what would follow ,  something bad would happen .  And his apprehensions didn't wait long to become real ; It was decided that his father would take up his responsibility , and that he would be sent to a boarding school in the united states . 

Supriyo knew why it had happened . It didn't have to do anything with the tattered relationship that his parents had clung onto since the agreement was made between their parents , as if it had been a mere deal which his Ma made with the vendor who sold vegetables almost every other day , when both of them agreed on both price  and quantity ; but their agreement didn't have any price for what Anu would do for the family nor the quantity of love Anu and his father would have to agree on . 

 Supriyo knew that this new agreement,  made to offset the previous one , a wrong done to undo a previous wrong  , was not because that the nuptial vessel his parents had set about  23 years ago had drifted devoid of any moorings of purpose , it wasn't because of the cold indifference that had wrapped and choked the holy fire of marriage , but it was the doing of the bad omens which had come to settle debts because he had sneaked out of house during the unholy hours .  

As Supriyo now mused about his naive childhood guilt ,a guilt borne of novice contemplation ,  the bus came to a sudden halt with the screeching of brakes and almost every one was lunged forward ; the standing passengers who held on the glossy gleaming rod of stainless steel , slippery with the sweat , slid forward as if in a consensus . Supriyo was thrown forward but held in good time the handle that abutted the upholstered seats . 

He was not used to the sudden jolts of public transport in India , being bred up in another part of the world , where he went to a boarding school and spent the holidays with his father .His days in the states passed off in their own paced succession , there were no days to  look forward to , no days to dread from , hence time didn't deign to change its gait for him .

 No day seemed too  long . No day seemed too short . 

   He grimaced at being snatched out from his dreamlike thoughts . But  for this jolt he would have continued thinking about Anu . He wanted to grab  whatever time he had before he saw Anu , after 8 years . Perhaps it was the inertia of change , or the anxiousness of change that drove him to hold tenaciously onto whatever memories he had of  Anu ,for he knew  for sure that Time would have played its role and like the agents of erosion , eroded Anu . 

The very thought of encountering a person who is not the way his mind had made space to accommodate, dreaded him . 

Tall ,lean , muscular and wheatish , he had inherited almost all of his physical attributes from his father . Even as a child , people would draw inferences  on how much he took after his father , the sharp thin nose , the flattering ridges balancing his brows  etcetera etcetera . 

But he knew that he had borrowed himself from Anu , his caprices , his wonder at even the most trivial of things , his stubbornness at being challenged , his eyes scurrying for the minute details , the little mole on his right chest just like the one Anu had on her collarbones which people missed out  , all were gifts Anu had presented him with . He knew that he was a part of Anu , a small part taken out of her in the guise of him and made to live differently . 

Anu used to be the one who would escort him to  school and despite being with Anu throughout the  day after school , even sleeping beside her in the night , his nose propped up against the nape of her neck while his breaths flurried its thin gold strands  which almost camouflaged as her skin , Supriyo would treasure each moment of the walk to his school with Anu . He didn't want her to leave him at the gate because  a nauseating cold fear of isolation would grip him the moment Anu would leave her grip of him and he didn't want to be accompanied by that sinister grip of the stranger at school, he wanted that familiar , amicable hold of Anu on his lean wrists which surprisingly was never too stromg , never too feeble .  But ,  he had to go to school .

"Somethings are to be done , even if you don't like it" , Anu had said . Hence , he too had to barter a few hours of Anu's tender grip  for the knowledge that was deemed to be necessary to be counted , civilised. 

Everything extracts a price for itself , even the little things . 

 One day , when the streets were swamped with the water that had channeled its way there  , snaking through the land and Anu was rushing with him to reach school before the bell , his black school shoe settled on the sludge , refusing to be lifted up and he had fallen  head long on the ground , one arm still held by Anu . Though he had managed to save a good portion of his shirt from getting sullied with the wet  alluvium , the dark crumpled skin of his elbows was scraped and now a blotch of blackish red blood was spreading its tentacles on his arm . It was while lying wounded on the narrow muddy lane for a few fleeting seconds , that he first recognised how detailed the lane was , its erratic topography, ant eaten leaves abutting it , grooves punctuating it every few metres , a mouse scuttling from the burrowed hole under the wooden electric pole towards the other side of the lane , a mugful of brick red water which levelled the contour of the lane forming a puddle ...

He had walked through this lane an innumerable number of times , knew it like the back of his hand but that day a whole new world had laid out its secrets before him  , a world way different from the one he knew , coexisting with the larger known world in a neglected , indifferent silence . However much one has absorbed of the world , there is always space for a little more .

However intimately one knows a person , there remains the sequestered space to know a little more ! 

Lying cuddled with Anu every night , Supriyo believed that he knew his mother more than anyone else in the world , he knew the mood she wore just by  listening to the pitch and cadence of her voice . Perhaps he did really know her better than anyone else , better than his father knew her or better than she knew herself  ; when lying awake by her side on some nights when sleep was reluctant to rest on his quivering eyelids he did notice how the fringes of Anu's lips fidgeted in glee,  like a  sleeping child yawningly making more room for itself , he knew that Anu was exulting herself  in some loving dream . He would be a little distraught that Anu had not made him come along to her dreamscape and tinges of envy would flicker within him . Knowing little things can be painful at times too  ! 

Supriyo was one of those children who wasn't blessed with the blissful ignorant acceptance of existence , had he been so  , life would have been a lot easier for Anu , for wherever he went , he used to carry his rucksack of questions , questions which the wise minds of the world deigned unworthy . 

" why do the trees and clouds interchange roles once the shower has ceased ? " 

"Do shadows have shadows as well ?" 

"Why was Anu born with a hole in her lobe and not he ?"

Or 

" What makes boat stay afloat on the waters , ma ? " 

He did learn the answers to a few of them later , but wasn't too convinced with the reason they had offered . Anu had told him , eradicating his puerile worries of drowning that   it was the water's love for the boat which made it stay afloat , that the water loved the people on the boat  and it wouldn't let them drown and out of the all it loved Supriyo the most . He had spent the rest of the boat journey gazing at the waters , trying to weave an unasked web of acquaintance with the waters , trying to know it a little more , befriending the vastness of the flow-er which in its loyalty never distanced itself too far from him, wherever he went . He knew that the waters loved him and wouldn't let him drown , and more importantly, he loved it back . 

The air inside the bus was now completely laden with the moisture that evaporated from the sweats , leaving the salts behind to form white scribbles over the fabrics .  The typical sultry air of the tropics ! Supriyo was perspiring profusely , he had forgotten his handkerchief . Even the paltry air that sneaked in through the windows had undergone a change of mind . The bus was now waiting in the traffic , waiting for the lights to gleam green . By now , Supriyo was inured to the the jolts of the bus , but now with the sudden halt , his thoughts too held their flow for the while . The sounds of the vicinity acquainted themselves  to him . He could hear the cries of the swarthy bare bodied children selling pirated bestselling paperbacks , knocking expectantly on every other car window . Not selling , rather getting rid of the enigmatic texts which they could neither read nor understand . On the other side of the road , in an ugly tea shop , vapours made the air around it fidget , forming shuddering shadows on the soot stained walls . In another shop , of a better appearance than the previous one , the frothy oozing from the cooker and a prolonged whizzing sound announced that its job had been done . Visibly clean water splashed out from the municipal water  tap whose valve had been long broken and and gurgled into the drain flanking the road. 

Supriyo listening to all of these , unwillingly drifted his thoughts to that one instance, the memory of which was bold enough to shudder him with remorse  ;  when Anu had been furious at him . 

She had slapped him in a spate , smeared his mouth with green chillies and locked him in the store room . He was left screaming , his mouth almost singeing from the heat  that churned itself out  slowly from the acrid taste of the chillies. He  had cried , tearing his voice ,  but to no avail . Anu didn't open the door for a full  hour and after opening it she gave him a tirade about the abominable misdemeanour he had shown , using obnoxious language for his mother . 

Supriyo didn't have the slightest inkling regarding the reason for such a conduct that had spewed out of him . When did that sinister word slip  into his lexicon ? 

From where had he picked it up ? How did he muster the temerity to utter such a word before Anu ? Did he know what it meant , when he hurled it  so unabashedly at the person who disliked even the shift of calling him by his name in public and not by the name she gave  him some random moment , brimming  out of love ," Shona" ? 

"Shona" . Gold . A gold which she had mined from the  ore of her womb.

Anu had warned him from telling lies . She could condone any mischief of his but lies were one thing which she didn't spare . She herself never relied on lies to get through something , and hatred rushed into her for the person who lied to her , unbidden . On that day when she was furious at Supriyo, he had lied her about going to tuition , whereas he had really gone to the cinemas . 

Anu somehow came to know of it and slapped him furiously , she even made the pronouncement that Supriyo could never go out for playing from then on, that

he could never touch the computer again  .... Supriyo was seething with helpless anger . While Anu's  infuriation at Supriyo was more due to the fact that she knew that he had lied to her and hatred would come once again unbidden , this time even detested . Perhaps the anger was the veil drawn to keep hatred slipping between her and her Supriyo. In some tacit pact with fate , she had traded hatred for anger . She couldn't bear hating Supriyo even if for a little while . 

It was during the absconding for lying to Anu , that in some unknown fit of rage ,  Supriyo had impetuously spoken that ill fated word . 

" you are a witch  ! " 

As soon as he had uttered it , a silence yet  more deafening than the admonition ,  ensued . A silence which consumed the stifled impotent  cry of Anu's heart . 

And the chilli rubbed painful isolation in the darkness of the store room along with the long irate speech was the remedy Supriyo had been given , a remedy to cure him of bad words . As if it was a malady like cold , which could be cured with kaadha , a bitter medical formulation. 

" witch " , what did it really mean ? . He had never anticipated that such a small word could have the influence of a juggernaut . He knew that it was something bad , just like the names the children at school call each other . Stupid . Idiot . Mad . 

That night , he had vainly groped in his memory for its meaning , uttering it in iterations , again and again as if it was a distant person who wasn't able to hear his name being called out . 

" Maybe if I repeat the word , I could beckon it's meaning too"

But slowly , even the vague meaning which flickered in his mind was stripped off from the word , and it was left  like a mere amalgam of sound on his tongue , a sound containing smaller  sounds , it was  now just a sound , without any meaning . 

There were different words for sounds , he had learnt it at school , but that night in the remorse filled dreadful darkness something obscure , yet deeper dawned on him ,  that even sounds did have words for them .  

Besides the sun,  mornings  begot another effulgence which adorned its image on the mirror while shafts of the grimy pale -orange light illuminated the room and Supriyo would gaze with half closed eyes at the most spectacular form given by God to a woman , adorning itself sitting on the morah , a specimen of Indian cane furniture . Anu would sit there with her wet hair unfurled in languid poise , while a few drops of her hair kissed water dripped from the frayed ends of the hairline which wetted the back of her blouse , mellowing its hue a little . 

Anu pinned the layered Aanchal to the part of the blouse covering her shoulder and at the same time remembering that Supriyo hadn't yet woken up , called out " its time , wake  up Shona . "

While the rest of her dressing up affirmed to the accepted norms that society had laid down for the attire of an Indian woman , Anu didn't wear a bindi on her temple . She was somehow convinced  that this little adornment had hardly any role to play on her face , and thus her face always  remained pristine , its untouched immaculate skin lying bare to the airs to kiss , ruffle and caress it in its own free will .  Anu was not someone who could be perceived widely as "too beautiful" but her face was quite distinct , a face which even  if one saw in some crowd would remember for a while even after he has passed it . What exactly made it so captivating was hard to get at , it wasn't the most beautiful face in the crowd but something made it stand out , something of it tugged at the onlooker's gaze;  a distinguished  face of undistinguished beauty  . 

And  that " something ", made the little world of Supriyo complete . It was that last piece of the cryptic puzzle of Supriyo's life , which held it all together and made it  complete . 

The sudden falling apart of her marriage hadn't shocked her very much , she was already left numb with the prophecy of a vast life without Supriyo ,lying before her , like a  burning pyre waiting for its prey to surrender itself to it . A little letter when displaced can change the meaning of things  . Just like Supriyo's displacement had changed hers . 

Four years into this lonesomeness , Anu remarried . Rohan Ghosh , a colleague of Anu's at " Rhythms" , a dance school where Anu went to learn this art . She had drifted towards this form of art not because it made her any happier , but because dancing to the beats of music gave her the reaffirmation that besides the banal routine of the air journeying through her nose,  something else too was disciplined and ordered in her life . Dancing was like an outlet which let what was contained within her , find its expression in the poised graceful movements of her arms and limbs . 

Marrying Rohan was more of a necessity than love for Anu . Rohan somehow eased her . With Rohan , though life didn't become full or complete but it certainly became a little easier . 

Though her wistful of Supriyo didn't cease coming to her , but they didn't prick anymore ,  from agonising they changed to bearable bittersweet memories . 

But for Supriyo , the thought of his Anu being someone else's , was all the more difficult if not unbearable . 

Supriyo reached his destination ,  stepped out of the bus and for a few moments to his great relief stepped out of his thoughts as well . The moment was nearing , the moment which was longed for as well as dreaded. 

From the bus stand where the bus and his pensive world of Anu's memories left him behind just a few moments ago , he scurried  for the other side of the road  looking for a rickshaw . 

Supriyo knew that it will never be the same with Anu , time had filled hapless, irreconcilable rifts between them, rifts that have nothing to do with any bitterness between hearts , rifts which form on landscapes of relations  just like the wind forms random dunes on the desert , rifts which pityingly ease detached and displaced lives , rifts which heal lives without asking , making  it if not jovial , a little bearable . 

He wasn't the same , neither was her mother . She wasn't his Anu ;  Anu , his mother . She was now Anunima Ghosh ; someone who had loved him dearly and still did so .  

Anu was  someone  from whom he had learnt to look for the finer details , to notice the little things , someone from whom he had got the little mole on his right chest .  

She was the waters ,  whose love wouldn't let his boat  drown . A  love which  can never wholly claim , else the boat will be upturned. 

Anu was in the little things . 

Little things did count .

"Where to ?" 

"Roypara . " 

The rickshaw was much better than the bus . Supriyo realised that for the first time since he had started his journey , he had drawn a full easy breath. 

  

-  Govind Gupta  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------