I Won't Let You Go (26 page)

                 Her name’s Kamala:

    I’ve seen it written on her file.

She was on the tram-car, with her brother, on her way to college.

               I was on the seat behind.

    The clear outline of a side of her face I could see,

and the soft hair-wisps on her nape, under the hair-coil.

        On her lap were books and files.

    I couldn’t get off where I should have done.

From then on the time I left home was adjusted

    not so much to fit my own needs at work

        as to match with the time when these two left home.

                And often we met.

        I thought, unconnected as we were,

           at least she and I were travellers together.

        Her mind’s clarity

                    shone in her countenance.

    The hairs were combed away from the delicate forehead;

        the bright eyes were without a hint of embarrassment.

I wished a crisis would occur,

   so that I could help her and glorify myself:

        some sudden disturbance

                 or a ruffian’s insolence,

            not infrequent these days.

But my fate resembled a puddle of turbid waters

    which wouldn’t hold historical episodes,

         where the tame days croaked like monotonous frogs

and neither sharks nor crocodiles, nor swans came for a swim.

         One day the car was packed with jostling crowds.

    A Eurasian was sitting next to Kamala.

I wished I could just knock the hat off his head,

        grab him by the neck and shove him into the street.

    My hand itched to do it, but could find no excuse.

Then he got out a fat cheroot

                   and began to smoke.

    I came close to him and said, ‘Chuck that cheroot.’

            He pretended he hadn’t heard

        and puffed out even bigger whorls of smoke.

            I pulled the cheroot off his mouth

                                    and flung it to the street.

    He clenched his fist and glared at me for an instant,

but said nothing, just got off the car in a leap.

                    He might have recognised me,

               for in football I happen to be a name, –

                                  quite a big name, in fact.

    The girl’s face reddened.

        She opened a book, lowered her head,

                                   and pretended to read.

    Her hands shook, but she didn’t spare

        one sidelong glance at her heroic champion.

‘You did the right thing,’ said the office workers in the car.

    The girl soon got off, not at her usual stop,

        and hailed a taxi and went away in it.

               The next day I didn’t see her,

                   nor the next.

               On the third day I spied her

       going to college in a rickshaw.

I knew then how stupid I’d been.

    She was a girl who could look after herself.

                She didn’t need me.

    Once again I muttered to myself

       how my fate was just a puddle of muddy waters

    where the memory of a heroic act kept croaking

                    like a frog’s sick joke.

              I resolved to make amends.

    I found out that in summer they went to Darjeeling.

        I too felt keenly the need for a change of air.

            Their villa was small. They called it Motiya.

                It was in a nook, a bit below the road,

                    sheltered by trees

                           and facing snowy peaks.

    When I got there, I heard they weren’t coming that year.

I was thinking of coming back, when I ran into a fan of mine, –

                             Mohanlal,

                       tall, thin, and in specs, –

         whose weak digestion revived in Darjeeling.

    He said, ‘My sister Tonuka

won’t be happy until she’s introduced to you.’

                    She was a shadow of a girl

                  with a minimal body,

             more interested in books than in food.

         Hence her strange admiration of the football star.

My coming for a chat was taken as a rare kindness.

                       What an irony of fate!

    Two days before my scheduled descent from the hills

Tonuka said, ‘I would like to give you something

    by which you’ll remember us. A flowering shrub.’

        This was a nuisance. I kept quiet.

           Tonuka said, ‘It’s a rare, precious plant.

    Survives in this country only with masses of care.’

                   I asked her, ‘What’s it called?’

                       She replied, ‘Camellia.’

                   A shock pulsed in me, –

    another name rippled through my mind’s darkness.

                   I smiled and said, ‘Camellia?

                          Is her heart not easy to win?’

I don’t know what Tonuka thought. She blushed,

                               seemed pleased as well.

    I started my journey with the potted shrub

and found her, my fellow-traveller, not an easy neighbour.

    In a two-room carriage

        I hid the pot in the bathroom.

    But never mind that travel-story.

Let’s skip, too, the next few months’ triviality.

In the Puja holidays the curtain rose on the farce

           in the Santhal Parganas.

    It’s a small place. I don’t wish to mention its name.

Change-of-air fanatics haven’t heard of it yet.

    Kamala’s mother’s brother, a railway engineer,

                had built a house there

    in the shade of sal forests, the squirrels his neighbours.

There one could see the blue hills in the distance;

       nearer, a stream of water ran through sand.

    Silkworms had woven their cocoons in the polash woods;

       a buffalo was grazing under a myrobalan,

               a naked Santhal boy astride its back.

A guesthouse was nowhere to be seen,

       so I camped right by the river.

                   Nor had I a companion

              save the potted camellia.
 

Kamala was visiting with her mother.

           In the dewy breeze

    before the sun was fierce

she went for walks in the sal woods, a parasol in her hand.

    The meadow-flowers beat their heads against her feet,

           but do you suppose she looked at them at all?

               She crossed the shallow stream

                  to the other side

           and sat and read a book under a shishu tree.

    And the way she steadily ignored me made it plain

               that she’d recognised me.

    One day they were picnicking on the sands by the river.

I wished I could go and ask, ‘Couldn’t I be useful in some way?’

            I could fetch water from the river,

    hew logs from the woods.

            Besides, wouldn’t the near-by jungles harbour

                at least a respectable bear?

Among the group I noticed a young man, –

           in shorts, and a silk shirt of foreign make, –

               sitting next to Kamala, his legs stretched out,

                   a Havana cigar in his mouth.

    Kamala was absent-mindedly tearing to pieces

           the petals of a white hibiscus flower.

               Beside her lay

                   a foreign magazine.

Instantly I knew that in that private spot

    of Santhal Parganas I was strictly superfluous:

                there was no room for me.

I would have left at once, but had one last thing to do.

            In a few days the camellia would flower.

                I’d send it to her. Then I’d be free to go.

    Gun on shoulder, I spent the days hunting in the woods,

            returned before dark to water my shrub in its pot

               and see how far its bud had developed.

The day arrived.

    I called the Santhal girl

       who fetched wood for my stove.

          I would send it in her hand

               on a platter made from sal leaves. 

    I was sitting inside my tent reading a detective story.

A sweet voice spoke outside, ‘Sir, why did you call me?’

    I came out and saw the camellia

       on the Santhal girl’s ear,

           lighting up her dark cheek.

She asked me again, ‘Why did you call me?’

    I said, ‘Precisely for this.’

        After that I came back to Calcutta.

    An oldish man from India’s north,

            skinny and tall.

White moustache, shaved chin,

               face like a shrivelled fruit.

Chintz shirt. Dhoti in wrestler-style.

    Umbrella on left shoulder. Short stick in right hand.

Shoes with turned up toes. He’s walking to town.

            Bhadra morning.

    Sun muted by thin clouds.

After a muffled, stifling night

           a fog-damp breeze

    vacillates through young amloki twigs.

             The wayfarer appeared

    on the outermost line of my universe,

where insubstantial shadow-pictures move.

             I just knew him to be a person.

    He had no name, no identity, no pain,

             no need whatsoever of anything.

                 On the road to market

             on a Bhadra morning

                 he was just a person.

            He saw me too

on the last limits of his world’s waste land,

                where, within a blue fog, 

    connections between men there were none,

                       where I was – just a person.

    At home he has a calf,

             a myna in a cage,

a wife, who grinds wheat between stones,

             fat brass bangles on her wrists.

He has his neighbours, – a washerman,

               a grocer with his shop.

    He has his debts, – to merchants from Kabul.

                   But nowhere in that world of his

                      is there me – a person.

You gave me a gold-capped fountain-pen

    and so many accessories to writing.

        The little desk

               made of walnut-wood.

    Notepaper with printed heads

        in different sizes.

A paper-cutter of enamelled silver.

    Scissors, pen-knife, sealing-wax, reel of red tape.

        Paper-weights of glass.

    Pencils – red, blue, and green.

You said I must write you a letter

               every other day.

Here I am, sitting down, ready to write you a letter.

    I’ve had my bath already, – earlier in the morning.

I can’t think of a subject to write about.

    There’s only one piece of news:

                you’ve gone away.

    That’s an item of news known to you too.

        Yet it seems

    you may not know it that well.

             Well then, what about letting you know

                 that you’ve gone away.

             But each time I begin to write

    I find that piece of news by no means easy to report.

               I am no poet:

I cannot give language a voice

            or put into it the way eyes look.

                The more I write, the more I tear up.

Past ten o’clock.

    Time for your nephew Boku to go to school.

        Let me go and give him his meal.

           Before I go, let me write this for the last time:

                  you’ve gone away.

           The rest are scribbles

        and doodles on the blotting-paper.