Worlds apart

Ila banged into someone on the way and the yellow helmet that was nestled in the crook of her elbow pivoted onto the ground. The steaming sun of summer dripped onto her skin like molten wax. She dabbed the drops of perspiration lining up on the forehead, her eyes searching for him as far as they could reach. She bent down to pick the helmet, while balancing his tawny bag on her shoulder, which was cramped with heavy volumes. On gazing at her wristwatch, she realized that they were already an hour late for the next lecture.

 A woman pointed at a bunch of rote carrots from the cart, smiling pleadingly. A chaotic group of school kids who had lined up around an ice-cream stall chattered incessantly. An old Hindi song played from a rusted speaker that was tied to a pole above the street. She made her way through the crowd, watching out for the olive-green tee that he had been wearing that morning.

Ila finally spotted him two blocks down the street, behind the stained-glass window of an antique book shop. She walked towards him; with hand rolled up into a fist in anger. On stepping inside the fragile building, she was struck by the huge shelves that lined the walls. A few moths were circling around a single dim light on the roof. It appeared to be a place that was stranded in time amidst the bustling city outside the window.

He was flipping through a book from the shelf, his fingers moving swiftly, oblivious to time. A few wisps of hair fell onto his temple and he smoothed it away. Watching him belittled by the giant shelves in a spot where the time came to a standstill, she wondered whether she would ever be able to love anyone else more than him.

Striding towards him, she flicked the helmet on his back as he spun around in fright, dropping the book on the floor. His lips broke into a rueful smile on gazing into her vexed face.

 A quiver interrupted them abruptly. Both of them spun around in panic. The wobbly shelf behind him, that had been rocking all along, had started to shake violently.

‘Move’, he screamed, shoving her aside.

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The jeep jerked to a halt.

Ila swallowed hard, her heart thumping against the chest wall. The hens that had settled in the roof rack flapped their wings fiercely. Few brinjals that had spilled from the sack spun next to her feet. She peered through the hazy windscreen, trying to orient herself.

‘We’ve reached’, the man at the wheel announced, smiling at her through stained teeth.

Humans and animals crawled their way out of the densely packed jeep.

Ila caught her reflection in the side view mirror before the jeep took off. The spilled champagne from the party last night had left a trail on the peach-coloured cocktail dress that she was wearing. A chained sling bag lay limply on her shoulder. The specks of makeup that lined her face were still intact.

The jeep left with a trial of smoke behind, honking wildly, carrying a different set of people and animals quarrelling for space inside.

She gazed at the village against the backdrop of the sky at dawn, slumbering quietly. To her, the place felt like a painting from her attic which had suddenly livened. She thought about the nights on the terrace of his rented one room apartment, when he had made rough sketches of those narrow lanes in the dusty floor as she watched in awe.

Karan Jaat had always astonished her with the world he knew, the one he had to leave behind before boarding a train to one among the prestigious universities of Kolkata. He kept to himself most often, trying to figure out the dynamics of the city which he eventually failed at. He was the one who told Ila how buds transform into cotton balls, the way monsoon hits hard on the soil, about the scent of air in autumn. He roamed in weary clothes and eluded the crowdy streets. For him, life as he knew it, existed afar, in a house with a cracked roof amidst the green field.

It did not take long for her to realize that nothing had changed much in the village within a span of seven years. It appeared as if the village had defied the shackles of time. The heels she wore dug deep into the mud and she had to stop now and then to extract it from the ground. Tall branches formed mazes overhead, revealing slices of approaching sunlight. A white dog trailed behind her for some distance before being distracted by a squirrel enroute. The mixture of tones of birds that emanated from the trees clasped her.

Her mind fleeted back to the last time that she had travelled tapering lanes, with the wind howling loudly behind her. The dried leaves on the ground cracked beneath her feet and the sound of fluttering wings reverberated all around them. The trunks of trees had formed fleeting shadows on the floor and Karan had to reassure her multiple times to keep walking.

Ila felt her heart quicken as she approached the house. Settled amidst a green paddy field, it appeared to be a fragment of the sky at dawn, which was tinted with shades of saffron. The ground beneath her was brimming with sunlight, which fragmented as it touched the dewdrops on the tender leaves.

She saw him stepping out of the house, his right hand holding onto a knife, his tall frame moving swiftly. Dressed in a dark dhoti, he looked nothing like the man whom she had fell in love with seven years back. Looking up at the sky in anguish, he began chopping the harvests one after the other. The solitary figure amidst the wide field brought her back to the same question that she had faced seven years back in a shop with quivering shelves.

Ila stood still, processing the time the time that had drifted between them. The dazzling lights of last night and the futile conversations with her friends at the reunion party had steered her back to his thoughts. It had felt as if the tightened knot of his memories had been unfastened all of a sudden, and what spilled out of it was a moonlit night sheathed by guilt, which she had dragged around for years.  She had left the party on a whim, her head twirling like a giant cartwheel and boarded the first bus that she caught sight of on the street.

‘What was I thinking?’

‘How could he ever forgive me for what I had done to him?’

She steadied herself on the slithery ground as a voice screamed aloud in her head.

Ila prepared to turn around, trying to recollect the path. That’s when she felt his eyes on her.

She could see him walking towards her through the field, while shielding his face from the sun.

Only when he moved closer did she notice the lines that had formed in his tanned face, the white stubble on his cheeks that made him look much older.

A million images flashed before her.

There was him, lying beneath the gooseberry tree in the lawn of the college, waiting for her after the class.

Him, gazing at her through the fogged glass windows in the cafeteria.

There was him, asleep in a bed made of jute oblivious to what awaited him when the morning unfolded.

Karan dropped the plough to the ground between them as she tried to retract herself from the thoughts.

That’s when he noticed her muddy feet and the pair of broken shoes that were hanging from her hand.

‘Ran off from a party, didn’t you?’, he asked in the same husky voice, letting out a short laugh.

He took the heels from her hand and walked towards the house.

‘Come’, he muttered, turning behind on the way, only to find her standing still.

Ila made her way through the narrow space with grasses towering them on both sides. 

The place had the scent of fresh earth and ripened fruits. She gazed at his sturdy back as he walked ahead with the grain dusts speckling its surface. His bare feet moved swiftly in the mud beneath, clearing the tall grasses on the way to make space for her.

The walls with peeled off paint and a fragile roof came into view at the end of the path.

A shrill cry rose from within and a girl of about three years ran out of the house towards him, with a small pigtail bouncing behind her. He picked her up and as she laid her head on his shoulder, her cry came to a halt. Ila noticed that the girl had his eyes and lopsided smile.

A woman trailed behind, with her nose ring gleaming in the sun, a string of silver bangles twinkling in unison.

‘Give her any of your dress to wear’, Karan told her.

That’s when Ila noticed that her party dress was filled with strokes of mud that were tickling down to the ground.

She followed the woman into a small room with a single cot and a shaking fan above. After rummaging through the metallic shelf on the wall, she handed over a grey salwar with a smile. The woman’s high- arched eyebrows and the faded mehendi on her palm caught Ila’s eye.

She changed into the salwar, which hung loosely over her frame. The colour was faded after repeated use with the threads sticking out. She also couldn’t help noticing the mismatched patches of stitched cloth in-between.

Through the window, Ila could see Karan walking the child through the field, as she held on tight to his arm. She stopped now and then to pick up dropped flowers from the soil, gathering them one after another.

A framed wedding picture of Karan, that was taken amidst a green field hung on the wall. It would have been taken around five years back as she could guess from his face that was torn between youth and adulthood. The woman whom she had met a few minutes back stood beside him, her head covered in a veil, with her hands clasped together in front. There was another one which showed a child, seated on the floor, eyeing the camera with wonder as it was clicked.

Ila sat on the rough floor before a plate of parathas. Karan sat beside her with the child settled on his lap who mumbled consistently as he tried to feed her.

It was humid inside the room despite opening the windows.

‘You are beautiful’, the child said, leaning her head against Karan’s chest and eyeing her close.

Ila looked at the girl’s narrow face and eyes that were filled with looming sleep. She had her mother’s eyebrows.

‘And so are you’, Ila replied, touching the kid’s chin as she giggled.

‘Isn’t this yours?’, Karan’s wife interrupted them.

She held out a stone-studded ring towards Ila.

‘So careless of me’, Ila exclaimed, slipping the ring back into her slender finger.

The studded ring glistened in the dimness of the room, like an unwelcomed guest.

Ila felt Karan’s eyes on her like the trails of a comet that had fled past long back. She grew conscious of the narrow beam of light from outside which had spread out as a filter between them. As she met his eyes this time, they were pounding with unanswered questions.

The moonlit night from seven years back materialized in her mind, his words reverberating in her ears.

‘This is my world. I cannot be anywhere else’, he had told her, as they lay next to each other in a jute cot beneath the sky. He had pointed at the constellations in the sky, drawing them out with his index finger like recollecting lessons from an old page.

Frogs were croaking incessantly from the field and grasses swayed wildly all around them. The news regarding his mother’s declining health had reached him amidst the sociology lecture and he left the class on a whim, with Ila trailing behind. At the backseat of the jeep, she watched over his anxious face that came into view in the beam of light of vehicles that sped past them.

He kept an ear on his mother’s ragged breath from inside the house, where she lay crumpled beneath a worn blanket. Ila stroked his hair as he fell asleep.

She woke up when the time was close to four. Roosters where wildly screaming somewhere around, and a group of mosquitoes were buzzing incessantly. She looked at the silhouette that the house formed in the dark, with the frail frames and shaking roof. Karan lay beside her, sucked up into sleep like never before, his lips forming a thin line as if in a happy dream.

She felt like an intruder into this part of the world. A yearning for the city trampled her suddenly.  She pulled the blanket away and pressed her feet on the soil beneath. Ila listened to Karan’s breath and looked for a while at the way his chest moving back and forth in unison. A few fireflies settled on her shoulder, burning with delight. Her mind, on one hand was fleeting back to the music that played incessantly on the streets of the city, the comfort of crowded streets and everything that had defined her life till then.

That was the moment she realised that she had to choose between the world that she knew and the one in which she presently found herself in, a world which belonged more to him than her.

Ila passed across the room that was filled with his mother’s rough breaths and grabbed her bag from the corner. Before walking away into the darkness of the field, she turned back to look at Karan, his face still stained with the remnants of a happy dream.

Sitting on the cot, the kid pulled out things one after another from Ila’s bag, laying them out on the floor. She examined the silver earing, flashing it across the room, as it formed a linear gleam on the dull walls of the house. She applied the lipstick as Ila watched over, laughing at her reflection in the mirror. Leaning her head against the wall, she spotted traces of him in the child, in her incessant laughter which sometimes stopped abruptly.

Karan stepped into the room and looked down at his child for a while before moving his gaze towards Ila.

Dark clouds were lining up in the sky outside the window.

‘We were so different, Ila’, he said in a distinct voice, trying to shield the pain.

The sound of thunder rang through the sky, shaking the house a little. The child ran towards him in fright. He picked her up as she started to cry.

‘It was so foolish of us to think that we were not.’, he continued, stepping close to her.

Ila shifted her eyes towards the window, in search of words. His mother’s photograph on the wall trembled as the wind gained momentum.

Behind him, Ila noticed his wife trying to seal a break in the roof.

Ila grew conscious of the world within those four walls.

‘I’ve got to get back’, she said anxiously, reaching for the bag.

Karan nodded as he tried to console the child.

It had already started to drizzle as they stepped out. Small drops of rain plummeted into her feet silently as she walked with Karan trailing behind. He held out an umbrella for her from behind, which fluttered in the wind now and then.

As they reached the end of the narrow road, a jeep that was going downhill halted midway. He helped Ila to the backseat. The drizzle had increased in intensity by then.

They gazed at each other through the strings of raindrops for a while.

Ila removed the studded ring from her finger and placed it on his palm. Karan looked at the gleaming structure.

‘Get her to a good school, will you?’ , Ila said, her voice shaking slightly.

He nodded, while dropping the ring onto his breast pocket.

A firefly that was fluttering around nestled in her palm. The jeep started to move, and she leaned back on the sturdy seat, looking at the blinking light emanating from the creature, like a fragment of his world pulsating on her skin.