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Salad Days
(A Tale of Dispassion)
I happened to realize during
the twenty-ninth year of my life that, while I was busy planning and doing
absolutely nothing, I was also growing old.
So I rushed to Roopsa and asked her about my age and she just smiled.
There was a kind of silence about her laughter that made me uneasy and I
left her place to blunder into the night.
I was newspapering in Calcutta about that time and my boss started calling
me all sorts of names as I managed to land in the office a couple of hours
later. I did not actually react but went to my desk instead. There was a
pile of copy to be subbed. I checked the fax and there were so many other
stories waiting for my attention, a girl attacked by the big bad wolf
somewhere, and an old man lost in a crowd.
The next day I decided that my affairs could not possibly be allowed to go
on like this. Something had to be done to salvage whatever remained of my
life. So I stopped the first man on the streets and took him out for a cup
of tea somewhere in Calcutta.
This city of mine is famous for her teashops, and I finally arrived at an
old beloved establishment that boiled tears and tea leaves together to
manage a wholesome brew. The devil of a shopkeeper was there perched on
his chair, and I asked him for that special cuppa of the house.
The tea was duly served and this man I had run into that morning insisted
on paying and leaving even before I was ready to light up the first
cigarette of the day. I almost broke down and finally managed to convince
him that we should probably stick together for an hour or so, that we
should all try to follow some ceremony in our daily lives.
Roopsa rang me that evening for a concert. Some western classical
performance it turned out to be, and she was engaged nearly all the while
in explaining the finer points of music. The ins and the outs. I said such
an expression tended to remind me of women, and she was very angry and
showed me her white teeth. That was a danger sign.
So I had to shut my trap. We went out for dinner and, later, went to her
place. She was staying somewhere in Southern Avenue during that time. It
was a huge building and I promptly reminded myself that I was supposed to
write about something that was commonplace and cool. There was to be
nothing very expensive about my art and my poverty, I whispered to myself,
as Roopsa showered and prepared for our so very prosaic lovemaking.
I took her shrieks in both my hands and she started moaning like a cat in
season. A pussy, fussy cat. Her whiskers tingled the roots of my tongue
and all of her nine female lives began unfolding before the grumpy
evening.
My entire body felt raw and weak the next morning. There were bites and
tears all over the place. Claws and paws had haunted my dreams. So feline.
Terribly so. There was a journey in the offing and I called up my boss to
say I would not be available for some years now.
I next called Roopsa and the tea shop round the corner. I had to patiently
explain why I was going away for such a long while. Everyone appeared
quite incredulous but I believe you cannot always give indiscriminate
satisfaction.
I caught the afternoon flight to Mumbai, a city I had never visited, not
even in my nightmares. A cab saw me off to my hotel and I called her even
before I had lunch. She was working with some Embassy or the other and
promised to visit me that evening. I cat napped, went out to the terrace
to watch children flying kites and doing nothing else.
The kite festival was going on and people were suffering. The sun went
down on the Arabian Sea and the dusky sky finally helped me relax. It was
a long day. My telephone rang. She was calling from reception, urging me
to join her downstairs for a couple of highballs.
The bar was the usual sick type. Dimmed lights. Painted women and a fat
bartender to cheer up things a bit. I explained that I knew nothing about
cocktails, and that I ought to be so allowed to fall back upon the
straight-laced whisky-and-soda. The drinks arrived and I could see that
she was drinking a Bloody Mary even after sunset. I felt quite disgusted.
She was talking on and on like an idiot. I tried to run my fingers down
her sticky, shiny cleavage. People were staring all over the place, bored
and yet fascinated. Her skin felt just the same, like the summers we had
hardly managed to live down in Delhi.
She had an apartment at Vasant Kunj. I used to visit her during unabashed
weekends. One such Sunday evening I noticed a man selling balloons on her
doorstep. Green and blue and red. Like her lips. Her bloody, swollen lips.
You know, Roopsa, I wrote about your lips in one of my poems, and the
editor – a decent enough chap – kicked me severely and patiently requested
me to get lost. I asked him what the problem was all about. But he refused
to answer.
But you used to be such a successful writer! All your books were sold like
cold ham cuts, diamonds and women . . .
Yes, but this woman journalist interviewed me once. One thing led to
another and I soon featured in gossip magazines everywhere. You know how
it is: I’m supposed to be the heartless bloody Romeo, and how’d the little
lady fend for herself now that she’s no more a virgin?
The room had become insufferably hot. I needed some air, and so carried my
frozen tumbler outside. The sea was rumbling and some night flowers were
beginning to come alive somewhere.
Her nails dug into the small of my back. It was painful. I excused myself
and retired to my room to write. I fished out the laptop from under my
skin and dipped it in my rich, frothy blood. That’s how they write tales
in the East, I swore under my drunken breath. A night bird cried out
suddenly.
I had to make a long distance call. It was finally put through around
midnight. Her father was disturbed and not very pleased. He started
becoming quite offensive. And, finally, I was forced to disconnect.
It was late in the afternoon when I managed to walk into the College
Street campus of Calcutta University yet once again. Everything was
blazing as I approached the Darbhanga Building, what with the April sun
and her bright clothes. Her landscape was outlined against the fragrant
breeze.
I was meeting some absolutely impossible University official while she was
visiting the Women's Studies Department, sacrificing her love life to
write a rather seminal tale. She was both surprised and suspicious to find
me there and then, but I suavely mouthed an escape route.
I finally led her to the car park without any extravagant murmur. Shelving
my appointment for the nonce, we rambled into Park Street for some coffee
and ice cream.
The bistro was called Roopsa Junction. It was quite a snug joint where you
were allowed to let your hair down and relax. She said she was soon going
abroad, and that fairly caught me off guard. I never had access to any
such awful classified information.
Her Nina Ricci cologne was ever so reassuring as I skipped the milk and
sugar to dive headlong into my cup. The poison somehow made me come alive
once more. I felt so horny simply staring at her, my tongue hanging loose
like a dog’s, and my erection beginning to build up like the silly tower
they have at Pisa.
She coyly stirred the cherry topping of her sundae, her smile apologetic
and her black eyes heavy and wet like all those clouds that had threatened
us with the prospect of a rainy evening since we had escaped from the
University and from Mumbai.
All the above happened last summer. And now for some latest info: the last
time I had blundered into her place, I had been playacting and she was
rather silent, cold and furious. I was talking distantly, like Camus’
stranger, frisking a lot and airing cheap philosophies.
She was so aloof and bally distant that I didn’t even have heart enough to
fantasize about her peach and full lips. She was reclining like Henry
Moore’s sculpture against the lush upholstery that was like the softness
of her expensive body. So I had to return to my tiresome newspapering,
forlorn.
The nights came and went away mocking as I kept tossing without a merciful
wink or two. All my ripe moments now appeared from nowhere like a forlorn
comedy.
It was during this time that I was invited to attend a funeral of sorts.
An anniversary, to be more precise. The traditional kirtan was in full
swing as I stumbled in, dead drunk and abusive. The lady who was
performing center stage was decent to look at, and this calmed me down a
bit.
She was singing about the saga of Radha and Krishna in rather an involved
manner. Her breasts were noble and swinging. I had taken along one of my
Canadian friends, Sherry, and so had to translate every bloody detail for
her. She was fascinated.
Now here is Radha who is somebody else’s wife but she goes and gets stuck
on Krishna who actually happens to be her nephew! I felt sorry that
Radha’s hubby was impotent, but that really didn’t help straighten things
out one bit. This Krishna fellow next leaves for Vrindavan for Mathura to
claim his grandpa’s throne and accordingly leaves his girl in the lurch.
They never meet again.
A heart-rending tale if there ever was one, but I don’t really see the
point in Indians going gaga over such a mundane affair. After all, this is
no great shakes when compared to the yarns of some other lands. Roopsa
often describes me as a sentimental fool, but even I’m not the kind of a
certified sissy to cry buckets – like nearly all the others in the room –
after the show was over.
The next day I had a splitting hangover but had to go down the Russel
Street way to convince some Australians about funding some absolutely
stupid postcolonial literary workshop we were about to organize in the
city.
I ran into a student of mine there, a girl who had large and expressive
eyes and who was rather exciting. She was silent throughout the
proceedings, although I had a distinctly uncomfortable feeling that she
was giving me the eye now and then!
My cousin called me a year later and said the girl was called pretty and
that she had coyly asked around about me. One of her discreet inquiries
had been whether I was a virgin or not. I could hardly manage myself, and
blurted out in sick desperation: "What did you say in reply? Did she sound
interested? How are her breasts? Full? Young and tender?"
She rebuked me and said she couldn’t possibly answer such rustic
questions. After all, Bengali bhadralok girls don’t often come across such
remarkable stuff as I had just dished out.
I was still holding my cheap whisky in clammy hands when she came up to
the terrace and joined me to watch the death of yet another day.
I asked her why I couldn’t write simple narratives. She just shrugged and
said nothing. Later we went out for dinner somewhere. The food was hot.
The steak was sizzling. She looked ravishing. I squeezed her breasts one
by one as if I was handling religion or something. She was almost like a
fascinating prayer wheel suspended suddenly in motion in midair:
Om manipadme hum! Om manipadme hum!
The waiter was hanging nearby like the precious fool that he was. I tipped
him and asked him decently to go get lost. He returned almost immediately,
carrying some absolutely ghastly cigars that I happened to abhor. Still, I
accepted those with lustful tears in my bloody eyes and lit up. The smoke
was acrid and sweet.
Her lips were acrid and sweet. I laid the flat of my wet palm to rest on
her wet tongue. Her teeth were so ambitious. They tore down my trees and
skies.
A lonely female was walking in my dreams all by herself to a nearby
watering hole when suddenly she came alive and we had the following
conversation:
"Don’t you know that it’s strictly against rules to have sex in the
Savannah?"
"So? Who cares?"
"Do you always have to act bitchy? Or is it just a knack? A what not?"
"God only knows, if at all . . .”
And so it happened that I finally managed to return from Switzerland, the
land of fondue and not-so-fond memories. I almost missed the Zurich-Moscow
flight, and tried to strike one of those famous friendships you read about
in tales with a Bengali family flying to Calcutta, economy class, with a
sardonic, pretty daughter. I failed, as usual and spent the long hours of
this night flight chatting up an old Bengali couple returning to Mother
India after a stint (sentimental perhaps) with their son in London.
The next day Dumdum was very decent and I found Ru waiting for me with
forlorn eyes. She was not well and to be honest I was concerned like hell.
I tried to make superficial love to her after lunch that afternoon, but
she said nothing doing, and exposed her great epic-like breasts.
I was so lost I didn’t really know what to do, how really to cope with the
situation. For perhaps the first time in my infamous life I was feeling
guilty. I shed some crocodile tears and said 'look honey I’m sorry', but
all she did was to weep in a manner that brought back memories of
Foucault’s knowledge-power discourse.
I thought I’d be sailing on cloud nine after my return from Fribourg,
Switzerland but all that ever happened to me was a closing of doors and a
clash of cymbals. I was aghast. All my beautiful dreams of richness and
what not had turned to ashes and I was humiliated like never before in my
life.
I planned to leave everything behind and get lost in the obscurity of the
Himalayas and meditation, watching young, nubile Brahmin girls in their
see-through saris fetch water from the rivers of the gods. But all that
ever happened was Calcutta and Burdwan, the University drab and the city
without any appeal whatsoever. And of late, let me confess in this tale of
mine that my dreams are being laced with a certain kind of helplessness
I’d not experienced before.
©
Prasenjit Maiti
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