Reminiscence

It had been many days since Manan came back to the town. Nothing about the place had changed in particular. Plodding along the road he was lost in the never ending thoughts. His meditation had now taken a different course. He rushed frantically to catch the last bus to Sindri. The bus made no response and was soon out of sight. Dejected, he continued walking. The brooding dusk had hemmed the last sunrays. But he could still see the clearly the expanse of the vermillion (Sindoori -after which the town was named) soil that had just made its advent. Yes finally he was almost there. The rail whistle broke the silence of the milieu .It conjured up something that dated back to the precious memories.

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Unlike the other days this time the evening was scheduled not only for Mishraji’s tea and pakodas. Manan had to buy his acoustic guitar. On the way back the three were disappointed to see that they had missed the train by a whisker. Just the other moment Karthik noticed that the train had stopped. The driver signalled by the inviting hand. Soon they were ready the next run in pursuit of rejoice. Catching the train they caught a relaxing breath.
“Good lord. we didn’t miss the train. But Mishraji would be watching the way for us. “said Raghav.
“Don’t worry about that. Make sure that we don’t miss our night feast. Milan gardens at sharp nine o clock. “Manan said with a notorious smile.
“Hell. You must have reminded me about that. At least I would have managed with the turban. Are we supposed to go like this?”Raghav blurted out anxiously.
“Calm down. It’s not the first time we are doing this. And who cares to notice us in legion of guests.”Karthik intervened.
“But don’t you remember that the guards have begun to recognise us. Though they do nothing yet they pass ‘what are you doing here’ smiles frequently.”Raghav asserted.
Apart from studies there are a lot many things that an engineering college teaches you. Makes you a master in masquerading. Teaches that the distance between the hostel and college can be hundred times its displacement. Teaches you that your birthday is a celebration for everyone except you.
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That was the time when even a train used to be an acquaintance. Now he was a stranger to even a bus. Manan had a smile as he walked through. A smile on the vagaries that time had brought.
At the extreme end he could see the road diverging into two. One was the main road leading directly to the college campus. The other was narrow and surrounded by deep woods. Forlorn and silent. It was more of his whim than a desire to take the latter betwixt the two. Many weeds had cropped up along the side of the road. Moon was now his only company. Light was so scarce by now. The streets seemed like an obscure labyrinth running from here and there. Manan saw the silhouette of a factory or rather ‘the’ factory. He turned his eyes towards it. Silent it stood tarnished by the unremitting time. Streaks of grime ran through the walls of soot eaten walls.
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Clutching the window bars Debo gazed out at the smoke coming out of chimney of the factory. It was a daily affair; nothing new about it. He loved to see the chimneys kissing the skies. For a child like him nothing in the world could have been more enthralling than those two Eiffel towers.
Yes, Eiffel tower. In Paris it is. Debo had a tight grip of geography. He had scored 49 on a 50 in the test. “Why don’t the smoke do not go straight upright?” he asked his brother. He always used to pester his brother with myriads of questions fired one after the other.
“Because the air blows the smoke with it perhaps” answered Ratish casually; busy in his studies.
“Then why only towards the right. I’ve never seen it go left.”Debo asked now leaning against the chair.
Ratish tried to eschew all his questions but he could not help without answering looking at the perspicacious eyes seeking an answer.
“I don’t know Debo” he said gently,
“Bhaiya, there is a tall slouching man who sits up there in the big room. I often see him just sitting and doing nothing. He simply orders the others and never bothers to do anything by himself. Is he the owner of the factory?”
“No. He is just an engineer. His work is to only give directions.”
“Did he get a fifty on fifty when he was in fifth standard.”
“Not necessarily. For becoming an engineer all you have to do is to be good in science I suppose,” Ratish said and hurried for his piano practice.
Science is not that hard. It’s just a bit tricky. Debo muttered his thoughts to himself. He rummaged through the contents of the drawer and found out his test papers. Geography 50,Hindi 39,Bengali 42,Maths 40,Science 35……He laid a searching glance on the paper. Tiny characters were mired in red ink.
What is fertilisation the question asked.                                                                                                            The process of adding fertiliser to the soil.
Debashish could not find anything wrong with it. Of course his father worked in a fertiliser factory. He was sure for at least that question.
“Debo take baba’s lunch. It’s almost two o’ clock” called her mother from the veranda. Debo glared at the clock. The dial had no digits but simply four dots on twelve,three,six and nine. He always bemoaned about the way its manufacturer had made it. He may have flunked in arithmetic. But he had devised a smarter way. At 1:50 the clock made a tick mark in the mirror on the opposite wall. Debo turned back. Combing his hair and grinned at the clock in the mirror. Yes it was the right time.
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The iridescent lightening grabbed Manan’s attention as he walked. The board read in bold letters ‘Milan Gardens’. For the first time he bothered to see the name of the bride and groom. He stopped for a moment. He felt a vicarious joy by seeing the college students entering the party. Finding them out was not a hard task. For who wears a turban with a chappal. A coat over a T-shirt that has not met a wash since ages. Crowd was blowing in from all directions and he stood at the entrance gate watching them go in. He realised that it was now not propitious to stand there anymore.
Manan had reached the motel by now. Putting his things aside he laid on the bed imbued with drowsiness. He stretched his hands for the watch. His spectacles were not on. All he could see was a tick mark. It was 10:10. He chuckled closing his eyes for sleep. An old thought had stroked probably. The last time he talked to Sir was only eleven months ago. He didn’t inform him of his coming. His guitar lay on the adjacent table. The song “ekla cholo” was playing on the radio. He was sleeping by now in the lap of music.
Manan woke up in haste and found him amidst the darkness. There was a power cut. On asking the bell boy said that it would take about an hour or two. The transformer had developed some problems. The heat was unbearable. Manan opened the windows. Sleep was no more in his eyes. He saw the college building at a distant end. There was a building next to it with the yellow square orifices breaking the chain of darkness.
The bell boy came with a candle and kept it on the table. Light suffused in the room. Manan was constantly watched the flame trying to unravel the knots of indelible memories.
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“What do you guys expect from this little candle? Raghav please go and get another one.” Aftab shouted from the common room.
“See I lost the won match because the dim light. I thought the ace to be a card of two” he added.
The huge audience watched the game of twenty eight. As Raghav entered the room he saw Karthik grabbing his phone in the mouth and sticking a page on his wall. Raghav took a closer look of the page. All he saw was a circle with alphabets here and there. The signs were out of his comprehension.
“What is this? A dart or something” he asked. Karthik shook his head. “Scales and chromatic signs………..well, just a way to remember my music lessons.” Karthik explained.
“At least wait for the light to come, you idiot.” Raghav said and took a candle. He saw Karthik change so much since he joined these days. A person snoring whole day had begun to wake in slumbering nights. He remembered once he played the keyboard whole for hours only on his ring and the little finger. The next day his hands were swollen. On asking he said “these two fingers have always been so lazy. It was just their punishment.”
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Mellifluous music echoed by the touch of the determinant fingers on the piano. The fingers were too short for the keys but stubbornness compensated the difference. Debo had to make it anyway.
“Bhaiya which is better. A guitar or a piano.” Debo had asked one night while going for the bed.
“Piano , I think” He answered with a mischievous smile pretending that he didn’t know the intention behind the question.
“Why not a guitar” Debo asked.
“What was the used of asking then.”
“Well, do know about Subroto. The master’s son. He had a cut in his finger when he played guitar for the first time. Have you ever tried it?”
“I was in eighth standard or it was ninth I am not sure. It was the year I first performed in the FCI cultural festival. There I got a chance to see guitar for the first time. It belonged to Patol Babu. He also told me that piano and guitar are based on the same notations. Patol babu can do magic with the strings. We had to satisfy with a second prize. But yes his hands did felt hard when I had a handshake with him.”
“I………..I want to learn guitar.” Debo had said that day his eyes sparkling with alacrity.
“Debo, baba had to be convinced that do well with piano presently. You know what I mean. Well it’s already too late. C’mon grab a sleep.”
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The azure canvas of sky had begun to be painted by the smoke. Debo leaning on the balcony watched the chimneys. It made him feel lively. For him it signified the initiation of the cycle of life. Hundreds of workers leading on to their work. Uncle Khalid opening his shop and small children buzzing around like bees with coins in their tiny hands. Bedlam of chirruping of sparrows on the roof. Battalion of flies attacking the chips spread on Meena Aunty’s roof kept for drying. Perhaps she forgot to remove them the last evening. Durga Puja is almost at doorsteps. Everybody seems indulged in the works.
A new wave of music flew in the ocean of sounds. Debo rushed downstairs. Her mother was playing veena . He stood there motionless entranced by the beauty of the moment he confronted. If goddess Sarawati really exists her mother was the living paradigm. In the tumultuous world her music was like an oasis of serenity. She stopped as she saw him. Smiling she elevated her questioning brows. Debo came near and took her hand in his. Ensuring that the strings had not hurt her. He kissed the hands feverishly.
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The three men were huddled together on the scooter with a ‘my days have come’ saying looks. A peevish screech brought the scooter to a halt. “What worse could I expect now. First of all these fingers have already given me an answer only in the first two weeks. Seriously, music is no child’s play” said Manan busy in making all the exertions to fix things up.
“It seems that the rest of the one mile has to be done on foot” said Raghav.
“Hundred pessimists had died before you were born” said Manan cutting through his lines.
“Bunty’s shop is about five minutes from here. Let’s drag this scrap up to there.”Karthik said.
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“A mile still to go…” thought Manan sitting in the rickshaw. Through the windows he saw the tree running behind. Not only trees but the time too seemed to run behind. Running behind by four years. The second year of college and the first music class. He was now hearing the winds repeating the same rhapsodies. I have been working on railroads……..Long Long ago…….singing hills…………Come September….one coming after the other incessantly. He didn’t even realise that he was there at Sir’s house by now.
‘Debashish Banerjee’ the nameplate read. He rang the bell. Sir’s wife showed up. It took her no time to recognise him. Eleven months are not too long he thought. Sir had gone out for some errands. Manan had to wait. He sat on the armchair twiddling his thumbs. The room consisted of panoply of instruments associated with music. Manan’s eyes shifted to a sparkling trophy in the showcase. ‘FCI Cultural Festival, Sindri 1990’ First Prize. It was not that Manan could see those small letters from the distance but that he could read them. Sir had told its story numerous times. Each time forgetting that they already knew it. Still they never complained. They loved to see him getting lost in the halcyon days.
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Thousands stars glittered in the curtain of night. The auspicious occasion of Durgashtmi had elevated the programme to the eleventh sky of blithe and joy. Debo was ambling near the stage. Today he was not nervous. “Music is not about mugging something up and vomit it in front of others. It is spontaneous like the flow of the river” his baba had once said. The day he performed oblivious to everything around him as if it never existed. There was just his father’s voice, the ethereal music of veena, sound of his brother playing harmonica and his piano and their confluence into the stream of oneness. Returning home Debo was mesmerised to see his reward. Patol Babu had come all the way to give him a guitar. Nothing more could have been asked by that boy of fourteen at that moment. He knew that all this was more than a serendipitous happening. He saw the face of his brother . Ratish just had a smile on his face. A smile that demanded no returns.
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Manan cleared his throat and started recollecting how to start at the sound of the footsteps. But as Sir came everything seemed useless. He embraced him immediately, smiling exultantly. “You here like this. How come?  Any work or something.” Sir asked.
“Sir I have shifted to Dhanbad permanently.”
“That’s something great to hear. So still practise or forgot it altogether.” He asked pointing to the guitar.
“No, no. I do play it occasionally.”
“What about the others. Where are they all nowadays? Where is Karthik?”
In a card castle a single blow is enough and the cards fall incessantly one after the other. Same is true with Sir. A new matter starts and it takes him no time to come up with things one after the other. The conversation continued for hours. Cups of tea helped continue the chain of talking. Manan noticed that today Sir’s wife (Reema as was her name) didn’t complain about it.
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“Reema, bring some tea.” Debashish said playing the piano casually.
“Tea, tea, tea. If you want then come and get it yourself.” She answered curtly.
“See Karthik, my position in my home.” Sir said with a grin.
Karthik simply smiled.
“Sir who is this Frank xave…Xavier or whatever it is. Never heard his name before. He shares his name with Mozart in this particular composition.” Manan asked having the songbook in his hands.
“‘Requiem’ it is if I am not mistaken.”
“Yes Sir”
“He was his student. People say that in his last days when Mozart was having a deadly disease he left his composition incomplete. He was only about thirty. He dictated his passages to Frank Xavier . Frank completed the ‘Requiem’  in the hope of emulating his teacher’s achievement but Mozart did not live long enough to hear his last symphony; one of the greatest among the other forty one.”
Meanwhile a cup of tea had arrived on the table. Sir simply chuckled.  There was another kind of chemistry between him and her wife. Her sour remarks could only be construed as the words of affection by him. Their marriage had been eight years ago but their love was twelve years old.
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It was the year 1996. Debo’s day now didn’t used to start with the chimneys. Well for now there used to no morning shifts. The factory had to trim its sails and so many of the employees. The factory was not earning much profit everyone said. Some of the families had left the town. In the spare time to get out of his ennui Debo’s father had started music classes. At least once  Debo managed to get into the room to offer Baba betel nuts. This was not out of the putative service to his father but in order to have a furtive glance of the girl; a girl with beady eyes . One day Baba scolded him in front of all his students. “Thousand times I have said that I will eat them after the dinner. Will I teach them or keep eating.”
The very next day out of his whim he went to the adjacent room and played his guitar loud enough to be heard parallel to the classical singing classes. His fingers manoeuvring on the guitar in greatest possible speed all in order to woo the girl he loved.
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It had been nearly two years since Manan and Karthik were going for the music lessons. Unlike any other day today Karthik was nervous. He never acted prissy like some of the student who came apart from the college but Sir unintentionally showed some inclination towards him. His eyes always expected more from him. Sir had once asked him to make up a  new tune, a tune of his own. So there he was; ready with it. While he played it Sir listened with his eyes closed. After it ended there was no laud; no complaints either. He simply said to note it down somewhere. Karthik wanted to know if there was something wrong with the tuning. “Oh I had nearly forgotten about it. Yes it sounded so innate as if; as if a child was singing.”  That tune was harking Debashish back to the past.
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Debo had been in mare’s nest since the past week. Patol Babu had asked him and Subroto to create a composition of their own. As a boy of fifteen he had learnt a lot many things about guitar but making up a tune was something no one taught and that too up to the expectation of his teacher. Out of nowhere a thought had occurred to him that however his tune be it should be better than Subroto. His searching mind used to wake up with stars. He had created a many but all seemed vapid and a mere repetition of each other. One day Ratish knowing the situation in which his brother was went to him.
“You know Debo a kasturi  mriga throughout his life desperately follows the smell of kasturi in order to find it. It ultimately die in his pursuit. And the kasturi lies nowhere but in his navel.”
Debo smiled.
“Don’t you sometime think Debo that everything is like that mirage? What we people call ‘mriga- trishna’; aren’t we also doing that with our lives. The thing for which we keep searching outside is not out there but within. Am I boring you out in the sun? “He asked with mincing words.
“No, I want to listen.”
“Debo the world do not have all the answers of our questions. Music for example is a dormant serenity that dwells in all of us. It is like the impalpable medicine that heals the pains of the listener.  A musician’s work is to render service to others in the name of best within him. Music can never be comparative. Every piece is one of its kind. In real terms it is everyone’s or maybe no one’s.”
“So do you mean ambition is wrong?”
“Ambition is never wrong; greed is. Tagore had once written. When one stretches his hand to pluck a flower of lotus in a pond the waved even take it farther from him. It is not that his want is wrong but that it is ephemeral. The intrinsic truth is that the pond suits the lotus the best.”
                                                         
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Debashish had very soon realised that there was only few days left for the boys’ graduation. He was simply speechless at the sudden passage of the time. Many things were left to be covered up. In those last days he wanted to teach them every intricacy of the art. Maybe the same desperation Mozart had in his last days. In the last class nothing unusual happened as such. He gave Karthik a songbook ‘Tagore on Staff’ it read. He took it with utmost reverence. While everyone was busy in talks Debashish went to the table and took a songbook out of his whim. It was Karthik’s. He glanced through the pages as if recalling the whale of time they had together. Turning the last page he saw notations of a tune he knew but not know. He looked at the title at top. ‘Baby’s mouth full of grapes’ it read. He had a smile on his face. A smile of satisfaction.
That evening he didn’t come through the main road. He took the road less travelled by. The factory stood there. The initiator of the cycle of life. In the past seven years the world around him had turned upside down. But that building stood there witnessing the waxes and the wanes. In the past few years he had started smiling again. The music classes were a pretty respite from the dolorous memories of the past. The older days seemed to have come back again. Maybe he had misunderstood the fog to be the smoke.  He averted his eyes and kept on walking.
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Milan Garden was decorated as a bride. FCI alumini meet it was. The college had also been given the invitation. Manan, Karthik and Raghav sat in one corner. For their disgrace they were for the first time there ‘invited’. Unlike the other days they didn’t feel hungry for a change. Sir was also there. He had been quiet for a long time. But that quietness didn’t last long and neither did the unsaid feelings that Sir had sequestered to himself till then. “In 1990 a similar programme was held here. A boy had lived one of the best day of his life that day.” He began in  a wistful tone. “But the fate had decided something else. My day used to start with watching the smoke coming out of the chimneys. One day it was closed shut. I still remember September 2002 it was. My brother who had been everything to me committed suicide for some reasons. My father was never heard singing after that. Maa never played veena anymore. Happiness had gone out of our lives and what remained was darkness of sorrows. Sometimes I really feel helpless before the ebbs and flows of life. I hate changes. Sometime it takes you up’; up to the heights of fame, achievements and joy and the very next moment drops you down in the way you never expected. Yesterday I went in the old township. There were same houses but new faces there. There was no chirruping of birds. The shop next door had a lock but no flock of children around it. But the factory was there with the grime of melancholy strains. As I started to depart I remembered something my brother once said to me. ‘Don’t be sad because it is over. Be happy because it happened’. I smiled and walked on. Yes somethings are beyond the reach of the transient time.”



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