Was It Love?

  Like so many others of his ilk in Calcutta College, Arjun Sinha had lazed away the first year of his English Honours graduation course in indulging in endless adda or chat sessions with his newfound friends and freedom in the college canteen. Now at the end of the sophomore year, the possibility of flunking in the term-end exams dangled like the Damocles blade over his head. Now he had to burn the midnight oil to make up for the lost time.  

To supplement his studies Arjun started taking private tuition from a Professor of English renowned both for his erudition and eccentricity. This fountainhead of learning resided about seven kilometers away out of the city. As the pundit conducted his classes early in the morning, thrice a week, it became imperative for our student to be up with the birds and commute by the local public bus to his teacher.

At the breaking of first light, he reluctantly uncurled out of his bed and shook off the lingering somnolence with mugs of scalding black coffee. After sufficiently waking up his sleepy limbs and half-asleep brain, he would just about manage to hotfoot it to the bus stand to be in time for the first bus out of town. 

During one of those early morning bus rides, our teenager Arjun had a unique romantic experience, which poignantly etched onto his memory and survived the rough and tumble of Time’s passage.

On that, dry chilly winter morning when Arjun had reached the bus-stand the place wore a forlorn look. Except for two or three fellow sufferers, all wrapped up against the raw breeze, a stray mongrel and a scruffy waif were hugging each other for warmth in a doorway. A little down the road two wiry men were unloading bright plastic crates stacked with frozen poly packs of Soya milk from a blue van. The ozone rich morning air was heady and exhilarating. The usual gray smog had not yet smudged the starched wrinkle-free white shirt of the smart morning sky. From a roadside banyan tree, the coarse cawing of crows rose above the incessant racket of other smaller avian performers. A baby is intermittently bawling and the sonorous clattering of a milkman’s cans sound the birth pangs of another new day.

Soon the bus came around the bend and scrunched to a halt at the stop. All the waiting people boarded it and our student settled down beside a window. The conductor in his faded khaki uniform, tugged at a cord above the door tinkling a tiny bell in the driver chamber and with a shrug, the bus began to move.

His fellow companions on that fateful morning were some factory workers dozing on one another homeward bound after a grueling night shift and four or five staid men going to work in plumber outfits. An orange-robed baul - an itinerant minstrel, was cradling his ektara, and a couple of gaudily made up paan chewing eunuchs with a stringy dholak made up the rest of the bus passengers. Arjun turned away from this motley assemblage and gazed out of the window to while away the time.

The bus halted at short intervals, passengers alighted and boarded, everything was as boring and banal as before, Arjun continued to look at the peeling movie posters and colorful graffiti stained walls from his window seat. His reverie was suddenly broken at one of the halts by animated chatter and soft giggles. He looked up and saw that a group of schoolgirls, smart and spruce in their white uniforms had boarded the bus. They were all efflorescent in the tender bloom of adolescence, vivacious and sparkling yet shy and gawky at the same time. Although the spectacle of such budding beauties was pleasing to the eye, our student tried to look away as it seemed lewd to ogle at leggy girls going to school.

Now the dreary view outside held no charm for Arjun. He forced himself to gaze intently at the rows and rows of passing gray houses. But his ears were ringing with the lilting laughter of the girls. His mind churning with agitation Arjun soon gave in to the temptation and began to steal covert glances at this bevy of winsome beauties taking full advantage of the jerking motions of the bus on the bumpy potholed road. Arjun avoided their looking at their faces kept his furtive glances low and was trying to pick up snatches of their conversation, when a small movement by a pair of fair feet caught his eye. It was quite involuntary and natural, the instep of one foot rubbing behind the ankle of the other feet.

Arjun fascinated by this action at once associated it with that of a little rabbit rubbing its face with its fluffy paws. With bated breath, he looked up at the owner of those feet and was flushed to see that the girl had noticed his riveted attention but continued to chat coolly with her chums. His throat became dry and Arjun stared blankly ahead, trying to appear impassive. It was useless as his whole being was being stretched out like a bungee rope plummeting earthbound in fervent anticipation of her next reaction when it happened again, the same movement, the same feet, and this time it was not involuntary - it was deliberate. Arjun searched her face for expression, but the teenage girl refused to acknowledge his look.

 At the next bus stop, she got off with her companions, but before going, she cast a sidelong glance at Arjun. He felt that he saw a wisp of a smile in those sparkling brown eyes, or was it only his fired-up imagination? Our pupil completed the rest of the journey in a daze and remained absentminded throughout the day.

The next tuition day our Romeo eagerly awaited his Juliet’s arrival, but when the flock of chatty schoolgirls came, he looked away. After a few moments, which passed like hours, he glanced at the rows of graceful feet. Then it happened, the same movement, the same feet, Ah! She had come and she had not forgotten. This continued for two or three weeks, but except for her eloquent feet, never a word passed between our besotted student and his silent seductress. It was enough for both to have their own secret way of communication without anyone ever guessing.

Christmas brought delicious cakes and gifts for many but for our Romeo, it had no joy because the schoolgirls had holidays. Now he brooded alone on his early morning bus rides waiting impatiently for this cold unfeeling vacation to end. When the school reopened in January, she had vanished. The rest of the girls were all there except her. He scanned the feet, then the faces, but she was not among them. What could he do? It seemed awkward to inquire about a girl who had waggled her feet at him. Yet how much did it mean to him. Anyway, poor Arjun didn’t have much time to mourn his loss, as the University exams loomed colossal upon his head. Now everything else had to be swept aside and the boy had to bury himself in books, photocopied notes and cramming sessions. 

 A decade has elapsed since those misty winter mornings, now in his late twenties, Arjun Sinha is slaving in a private firm, struggling to provide for his wife and a kid. When he is not drudging overtime in the office, you will find him standing in the local ration shop queue for kerosene oil. Like acne, the gossamer dreams and lofty ambitions of youth have passed. Arjun has now stoically adjusted himself to this clockwork grind of labor for his daily bread. He still takes a bus every morning, but not to some eccentric professor who would unravel the beauty of Shakespeare’s sonnets, but to a cramped office cubicle where a Scrooge-like boss is waiting to yell at him for being five minutes late.

A few days ago, one morning as Arjun was dozing in the bus on his way to work; his nap was disturbed by shrill cries. Opening his eyes he saw that two noisy young boys followed by their stocky father and a podgy mother who was clutching yet another wailing baby in her fat arms had boarded the bus. After silencing the two boys with a couple of clouts on their heads the hirsute patriarch propelled the frumpy woman into the seat reserved for women and himself stood towering over her. His slumber jarred, Arjun cursed sotto voce about people who keep on producing children without having the slightest notion of rearing them. He was about to resume his nap when a familiar movement caught his eye. The fat woman with the suckling baby under her printed synthetic sari was rubbing her feet together. Could it be possible after all these years? He looked up - her florid face was devoid of any emotion, but in her brown eyes there flickered a wisp of a smile.

Even after all these years she had recognized her juvenile admirer and was telling him so in the only way possible – a little rabbit rubbing its face with its fluffy paws.