Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories (24 page)

For months we waited. Then the rejections started trickling in. ‘Thank you for your application. We are sorry to inform you…’

‘It’s fine,’ we told each other. We were sure one of them would work out.

They didn’t.

I guess the friction started after I told him my parents would pay for my studies in London anyway.

‘They said they’d manage it, since I’ve been accepted by the university,’ I added. ‘What about you?’

I had no idea it would turn quite so ugly. Something reared in Joshua that I’d never seen before—envy perhaps, or jealousy, a sudden, billowing anger. We argued about it for hours, and days, words flung around like sharp, jagged stones.

‘Don’t you get it?’ he shouted finally.

By this time, I was almost in tears. ‘Get what?’ I shouted back. ‘I won’t go if…’

‘We’re not the same class.’

I remember that word silenced me. Like he’d spat in my face.

Class was something we discussed as a grand theme in films and novels—Austenian characters who struggled to fit in and move up in the world, Renoir’s comédie de manières and Buñuel’s witty yet ruthless denouncement of the bourgeoisie. I hadn’t considered, and didn’t imagine it affecting my life in any way. Only after this did I begin to see the differences—between his address and mine, his house and the one I lived in, the jumble of bric-a-brac in their living room and what my mother carefully placed in ours, the way his parents spoke and the way mine articulated their sentences. It disgusted me, the fact that now I noticed.

As soon as it lets up a little, people break away from the group like loosed birds and disappear into the crowd. Joshua has long finished his cigarette. I watch a boy of about eight jump into a puddle. His mother scolds him. ‘Ale, Jason… don’t be naughty. Ale sha ne.’

‘Want some Chinese food?’ asks Joshua.

I take it I’ve been forgiven for dragging him out shopping on an afternoon such as this. About the other things, I could only hope.

‘My treat,’ I offer, just to be sure.

We walk towards the main road past a row of women selling baskets of soh phi, and stop to cross just before Babla’s Clothes Shoppe, where my birthday and school fête dresses were bought. My shiny custom-made patent leather shoes came from Three-In-One in Laitumkhrah, which closed a while ago; the Chinese family who owned it packed up and left when the ‘trouble’ began and extortion notes were handed out as generously as kwai.

‘Come on.’ Joshua grabs my elbow and shepherds me across the road. The rain has mellowed to a drizzle and the sky lightened to a pale evening blue. Suddenly, the air is crisp with an after-shower coolness. The streets are damp yet clean.

We descend a narrow flight of stairs lodged awkwardly between two shops, one selling stationery and the other a riot of children’s toys. To our left is Kimsang, a dimly lit bar we think is straight out of a gritty noir flick, like something by Melville. Its smoke-filled interiors are dotted with hunched, solitary figures. Faded rock stars, failed businessmen, ex-HNLC and KSU members. Since I’ve been back in Shillong, almost two months now, Joshua and I have come here a few times for a drink; we proudly place ourselves under those tags of struggling writer and disenchanted youth. Today, however, we turn right into Hong Kong, a lacklustre Chinese joint with thin walls painted a peculiar shade of blue. Unlike other restaurants, Hong Kong has little plywood cubicles to sit in, giving it a private yet slightly dubious air. Joshua heads towards a seat in a cubicle in a corner. I follow. There’s barely enough room for me to hang my bag on the chair, yet it’s warm, a welcome change from the chill outside.

‘What will you have?’ asks Joshua.

‘Let’s see…’

I run my eye down the menu, a laminated sheet of yellow paper framed by twirling red dragons, and choose pork soup chow. He settles for a plate of chicken momos, large.

We place our orders with a shy waiter hovering nearby. His brand new uniform—a silky aubergine-coloured shirt and smart black trousers—seems incongruous in these grubby surroundings.

‘No, you can’t smoke here,’ he says in reply to Joshua’s question, and points to a poster on a neighbouring cubicle wall which asks, acerbically, ‘Tobacco OR Family? Make your choice.’

The rest of the décor consists of faux Chinese fans and tasselled wall hangings, all garish in their cherry red and gold brightness. At the opposite end of the room, a row of plastic ferns hang, suspended from the ceiling. Heavily dusty, they look as though they’ve been there for years, untrimmed and inorganic. Above the strains of Roxette’s ‘Spending my Time’, I hear distant kitchen sounds: the sizzle of stir-fry, the clatter of cutlery, quickly barked out meal orders—‘Segwan chicken’ and ‘Singapur rice’. The smell of onions hangs in the air like stale, cheap perfume. A cubicle away sit a young couple in awkward silence. She’s in a blue salwar kameez and hasn’t noticed her chunni sweeping the floor. He picks it up for her and they smile at each other. Dimly, I remember Joshua and I on one of our first few outings together (we never called them ‘dates’, how uncool and juvenile): he took me to a tea shop in Bara Bazaar, a tiny place in a crowded alleyway I couldn’t hope to find on my own. That was what I liked about being with Joshua. He’d take me to joints that I’d never have visited with my other friends and family; it was new, exciting. I realized later that, in my strait-laced bourgeoisie bubble, they were considered unclean and grimy, or just plain dubious. Yet it was in those places—the roadside tea shops and liquor stores, the rumbling market streets and parking lots—where I grew to know my town and pick up its stories. We’d sit for hours and people-watch and he’d tell me, most earnestly, that he wanted to do something for Shillong, but he wasn’t quite sure what. On one of those evenings, when he dropped me home, I turned back from the gate, and kissed him, and said whatever he decided to do, I would be there to help him.

I play with the plastic flowers in the vase in front of me. Someone has considerately filled it with water.

In the cubicle behind us two men are discussing Meghalaya politics. I eavesdrop shamelessly.

‘You think KSU is against uranium mining? Nonsense. They make a fuss now so the government will pay them off. A few lakhs in their pockets, you see nobody will be protesting.’ I can’t hear his companion’s reply, but the speaker continues emphatically. ‘People? What people? Everyone only wants to make more money. Look at that Tasiang woman… made some nine or ten crore.’

I glance at Joshua, who is spinning the salt shaker on the table. The last public protest he’d tried to stage, along with a small group of vaguely interested youngsters, was against the recent Tasiang embezzlement scam: substandard CGI sheets given to the poor for housing that couldn’t survive the mad March winds.

‘Nothing to be done now,’ the voice floats out again, ‘this government has gone to the dogs.’

‘What did I tell you? This is all people do,’ Joshua mutters, as the salt shaker slithers across the table and crashes into the cubicle wall. ‘Sit and talk. Nobody gets off their asses to do anything.’

The conversation in the cubicle comes to an end, along with, I presume, their meal. One last apocalyptic proclamation—‘What has happened to the world?’ followed by a loud burp.

Soon, our food arrives. I’m thankful for the distraction. The chicken momos sit squat and plump on the orange melamine plate like fat, contented priests—while the soup chow is fresh and steaming, topped generously with spring onions. A plate of green chillies and a plastic bottle of virulent hot sauce accompanies the meal. We eat in silence. Joshua’s mood improves when I ask him to help me with my rather large helping of soup chow. I fork the vegetables, he picks at the pork. The soup is clear and deliciously wholesome.

‘Good, no?’ he asks.

I nod as an errant noodle slithers down my chin.

‘We can organize another protest,’ I offer, ‘gather more people. Maybe make a short video…’

‘Maybe,’ he mutters, non-committal. Yet I know he will. Behind the disenchantment, there was a streak of stubbornness that ran through him like a fault line. He would stick to his job as reporter for the small Khasi daily he worked for, and try and change, not the world, but a small portion of it that meant most to him. I’d help him, perhaps. If he wanted me to.

‘How’s your article going?’ he asks. ‘The one on traditional Khasi music.’

‘Not bad…but I might need your help with the interviews. My Khasi is a bit thlun…rusty now.’

He nods. ‘You should meet this guy who lives in my locality in Rynjah…he works as a banker but he also plays ksing and duitara.’

‘Where exactly is Rynjah?’ The sprawl of Shillong has blurred my geography of the town.

‘I’ll take you.’

‘Thanks,’ I say quietly, trying to catch his eye, but he’s intent on swiping the last bit of hot sauce off his plate with half a momo.

Finally, he asks the question I’ve been hoping he wouldn’t.

‘How long are you in Shillong?’

I tell him. I have a month left of my sabbatical; I hadn’t decided yet whether I wanted to go back to my job in a magazine in Delhi, or stay on. I can hear my parents’ voices:
Stay on and do what?

When we finish, we ask our well-dressed waiter for the bill. It comes on a saucer of stale supari and sugar that looks like miniature cubes of ice. No one collects it for a long while, so we decide to pay at the counter near the entrance instead. There’s a middle-aged gentleman in a mustard brown shirt manning the place. His head of thick black hair, done up in a stylish ’80s pouf, is oddly mismatched with his tired, wrinkle-lined face. He also has a lazy eye, which adds to his weariness. Behind him, in stark cheerful contrast, are glass shelves lined with pink-rimmed prawn wafers and custard yellow crisps.

‘140,’ he says, taking the money from me.

I notice he has long, slim fingers. Maybe he, too, is a musician.

‘Are you the owner?’ asks Joshua.

‘Yes,’ he replies, counting out the change.

‘Do you also own Kimsang?’ Joshua points outside.

He shakes his head. ‘No, some Marwari man owns it now.’

‘And you? Where are you from?’

He seems amused and stops what he’s doing. ‘China.’

‘Which part?’

‘Hong Kong.’

‘How did you land up all the way here?’

I frown, unsure how Joshua’s candidness will be received.

Yet the man laughs as though no one has asked in a long time. ‘My family fled during the communist revolution, to Calcutta. My grandparents moved to Shillong in the late ’60s.’

‘Do you keep in touch with them? Your relatives in China?’

‘There’s no one left now…everyone’s gone. To Singapore, Philippines, Canada.’

There’s an awkward pause.

He looks as though he’d like to see us leave.

I pick up my change. ‘Thank you… bye.’

Outside, the day has creased into evening, clear but darkened. The sky is a deep, dying blue. A pale sun has set and left behind streaks of silver clouds. We emerge into a busy main road and are jostled by the crowd. Joshua offers me a cigarette. I refuse. He lights one for himself. Puddles of water reflect lights that quiver with every passing step. I feel the weight of everyone’s history press down on me like relentless rain.

The Keeper of Souls

I
t almost knocks us over. We jump aside just in time and avoid it by a hair’s breadth. A battered red Fiat travelling much too fast for these quiet residential roads, and, judging by the cacophonic death-rattle, also for its carburettor. We gaze, speechless, at its retreating tail-lights, speechless, our behinds pressed uncomfortably against a damp, moss-covered wall. We had narrowly missed falling into an uncovered drain swollen with that morning’s rain and yesterday’s garbage.

‘Maniac,’ I mutter grimly. I’d never learnt how to drive, but I’m certain somewhere in the handbook is a rule not to kill pedestrians. And their pets.

I must admit I seem more perturbed than Seth, our beagle, who swiftly reconvenes his mission to generously mark the neighbourhood with his scent. Apart from this, Seth has few dogged ambitions—to gnaw on our shoes even though he’s long past teething, and to hump my mother-in-law’s leg whenever she visits. I have him to thank for seeing her less than five times a month.

‘Come on, buddy. That’s enough.’

I pull Seth away from Bah Norman’s car. He is the colony’s rangbah shnong or chief, and it wouldn’t do to have our dog spray his tyres. Seth gives me a mournful look, as though to say ‘you’re ruining my imperialistic plans’, and grudgingly follows. Perhaps I can ask Bah Norman who the red Fiat belongs to—my wife and I moved back here from Delhi less than a year ago, and hadn’t yet familiarized ourselves with these crucial neighbourly details. The next time I bumped into Bah Norman, which was easy enough in a colony this compact, I’d make enquiries. For now, with the autumn chill sharp and crisp in the air, I decide to head home.

Our house was once a large, dilapidated godown that my wife, Vera, a very able architect, redesigned, renovated and refurbished, all within the space of a few months. Now, it sits squat and cosy at the end of a sloping gravelly drive, with enough open space for a small garden that I’m tending and bringing to life. It’s a project that keeps me pleasantly occupied—bougainvillea along the length of the wall, a bamboo thicket in one corner of the square grassy lawn, a stepping stone path flanked by low yellow-flowered purslane and a cluster of large, glossy ferns and wild wood rose by the gate. Perhaps, near the door, I’d place a row of orchids. My wife, who wasn’t what you might call horticulturally inclined, said she’d have chosen only cacti, particularly those that needed watering once in a hundred years.