Mish' Fiction

Mukundo grinned as he read the note lying on his table.

“Can I invite you to a coffee this evening? -P” it said.

He turned around to see Piyali standing at the door.

“Well?” he said, still smiling, “You could just have asked.”

“It is easier now, because I see you are smiling.”

“Why would you expect otherwise?”

She shrugged. “I was just nervous.”

“So, what is this? A date?”

“You reached out, Mukundo Babu. This is me reaching out. And it can be a date, why not?”

—

Piyali stepped out of Mukundo’s room as a bundle of nervous excitement. She wasn’t as calm about a date as she had pretended in front of him. She quickly went home to pick up her purse and took a taxi to a beauty parlor slightly away from her home. All the extra services she was looking for today would have made the beautician in the familiar parlor inquisitive! Then she also needed to buy some cosmetics, since she owned practically nothing.

But once she came back home, she was confounded with a bigger problem. Her mother would definitely notice if she left the house all decked up. How would she explain it given that in past she had stubbornly refused to put any makeup even when her mother insisted on certain occasions like festivals or weddings? She donned the dress she had selected for the occasion – a baby pink salwar-kameez Mohima had gifted her for last poojo, dropped all her purchases in a large handbag along with a small mirror and slipped out of her house. She took refuge in the library. Mukundo was not at home yet; so she was sure nobody would disturb her there. It took her multiple attempts to get the lipstick right, since she had never put one before. The temptation to lick it off her lips was strong, but she resisted. Her hands trembled too much with the eyeliner; so, she ditched it in favor of her stick kajal – one piece of makeup that she had occasionally indulged in earlier too. Some other implements meant to put some color on various parts of her face also had to be abandoned after a few nervous and unsuccessful attempts. She looked at her watch and sighed. That was all she could achieve if she wanted to meet him in time. She called him to tell him that she would meet him at the gate of his house and he need not come to hers, then sneaked out of the library, carefully avoiding other living creatures present in the house, even Mohima’s pet dog!

—

“Wow!” Mukundo couldn’t help exclaiming when she opened the car door and took the passenger seat.

She pretended like she didn’t hear him and looked straight ahead. Mukundo noticed her clutching her handbag nervously and smiled. He didn’t say anything just then and drove on.

Piyali was relived and happy that on their date, Mukundo not only kept the conversation up, he also kept her talking throughout. Asking questions, encouraging and taking the conversation in directions where she felt comfortable voicing her opinions. On previous occasions, when they had stepped out to see a play or attend some event, they had talked a bit, but never before had they set aside so many hours just for that. It was almost seven in the evening when Piyali noticed time.

“It would be dinner time soon,” she exclaimed, “We need to leave.” She called for the bill and paid it despite Mukundo’s objections.

“This was my invitation,” she insisted.

“You aren’t yet earning, you know, Piyali,” he made one last attempt to dissuade her.

“It may be pittance, but Ph. D. pays you.”

He smiled and threw up his hands.

He didn’t start the car after they were seated inside. She looked at him after waiting for a while. He returned her gaze and then took her hands in his. “You always look beautiful, Piyali,” he said, “I don’t know if others have told you this, but to me, you always do. I love you the way you are – comfortable in your own skin.”

Piyali stopped breathing. Did he mean to say that her extra attempts at looking good had put him off.

He continued, “But today – I realized that your looks could kill, Piyali. Today you could totally give me a heart attack. Today you look out of the world and I am going to take some liberties.”

Piyali was too relieved to immediately realize that he was raising her hands, but once he kissed them, she felt a warmth envelope her. It was awkward, but she leaned across the gear box and hugged him as well as she could.

“I don’t want to go home right now,” Mukundo said, “Can I invite you to a dinner date right now?”

She smiled, then laughed. “Yes. And you can pay too. Dinner will be too expensive for my meagerly savings.”

“With pleasure,” he grinned.

Her original plan on coming back from the planned coffee date was to tell Mukundo that she needed to pick something up from the library so that he wouldn’t take her home. In the library she would have wiped her makeup before going home. But they came back too late after dinner.

As they approached home, she was left with no other option. Sheepishly she pulled out a tissue from her handbag and started wiping her face.

“What are you doing?” Mukundo asked, startled.

She sighed and explained her reasoning – haltingly, overcoming her embarrassment with difficult. He pulled over and turned towards her.

“We can’t tell anybody right now. Not until you are sure and have made a decision. In my favor, hopefully. Once you have decided, I will lose no time in telling everyone, and then you won’t have to worry about answering to anyone. Until then, you can come out with me without makeup, Piyali. Any time! You don’t have to impress me.”

“I don’t even like applying makeup,” she blurted.

He laughed, “Then don’t, you stupid genius. You don’t have to. Alright now. Finish wiping whatever you have to. I don’t want you to struggle in a moving car.”

She blushed hard and started wiping her face vigorously to hide it.

—

To be continued

“Please don’t blame yourself.”

“How did I not see it happening, Piyali? How did nobody see it happening? I can’t imagine–”

“I wasn’t here. In childhood I had never felt my isolation so badly. But college, and then– I started seeing the worst in people. And the more I learned about the world, the more I despaired. There was no meaning in it. There is no meaning in it–”

Mukundo shuddered as he realized that her questions about meaning of life were not mere intellectual curiosities. They had become a question of life and death for her. Her genius and wisdom had become the noose around her neck.

“Perhaps your conclusion is right, Piyali. Perhaps there indeed is no big meaning to our lives. Perhaps all the achievements we take so much pride in are nothing at all in the overall scheme of things. But we still live. And perhaps the only meaning we can find is in our relationship with people around us. It might be limited if you think of the whole wide world at the same time. But perhaps this is all we have some sort of control over. The meaning we find in each other. And I don’t mean that you have to decide on our conversation from this morning. Just that—if there is a connection you feel with me – howsoever slight or strong – that is a starting point. A good enough starting point. Do you understand?”

She nodded and said, “And it is very precious to me, Mukundo Babu. I didn’t know who else I can reach out to.”

“And I–” Mukundo shuddered again as I recalled that he had laughed at her when she had come seeking his help. Thank God, he had gone back to her and gone back in time too.

“Let’s go back,” he said standing up, “Everybody is worried.”

“What will I tell them?”

“Tell them that you were just taking an online course about tying up different kinds of knots, including innocuous ones like tying a camping tent. It was a coincidence that your mother saw you with the noose. And tell them that you were so flustered because you had hoped to dissuade them from making you talk to this guy – whatever his name was. But the discovery of that noose made everything confused. Tell them that you are only twenty and do not need to decide on getting married now.”

She gulped hard, “I don’t know if I have the strength for all this.”

He extended his hands to her, “Come now. I will talk to Kaku, okay?”

—

Debendra Banerjee was not easily pacified. But Mukundo kept at it.

“She is no longer a child, Kaku. You have to let her make her decisions.”

“One moment she is too young to get married, the other moment she is so old that we can’t even ask her a few questions. Make up your mind, Mukundo.”

“And why do you think both can’t be correct. She has just had to manage too much at too early an age, Kaku. She was sent to deal with an independent life as an undergraduate student at an age when most kids are still being escorted to schools by their parents. She, being the way she is, has probably fought off much more than her share of jealousies and politics at college. She has to start a job now. Give her a breather. We owe her that much. And she is not running out of time. All her life lies ahead of her.”

“She is not running out of time, but I am.” The elderly man suddenly looked defeated.

“What?”

“I am dying. I don’t have even a year left.”

“Kaku! What has happened? Why does nobody know?”

“Your Baba knows, Mukundo. And he has been kind enough to hire that boy to help me with my job, instead of throwing me out of it. But I have so little time left. I have to settle things. Priyendra can’t take care of his sister. He barely manages his own job and life. If she is not settled before–”

“Kaku, please listen to me,” somehow Mukundo didn’t have the heart to tell the old man that his daughter didn’t need to be taken care of in the way he thought; so instead he said, “I promise you. Piyali is my responsibility. I mean it. Let her live her life at her pace, Kaku. She would be all right and I will always be there to ensure this. Please, Kaku. For her sake and for your own – don’t stress over her wedding. It’s pointless.”

Debendra Banerjee sighed, “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

—

“I want to ask you something,” Piyali said. They were in the library, reading a book each, and occasionally chatting.

“Shoot.”

“Why did you never get married?”

He sat up and looked at her searchingly.

“Please don’t’ try to think what answer I want,” she added, “Just tell me honestly, if you can. If not, it’s okay to not answer.”

He laughed. “No. I wouldn’t even dream of trying to mislead you. The fact is, that there has been no good reason; just that I could never make up my mind strongly enough about anyone. Never connected with anyone enough.”

“But you have so many friends. And you seem to connect fine with people.”

“Yes. I am not complaining about my social life. But that unequivocal feeling, where you think that you want to spend your life with this person, no matter what, never came.”

She sighed and threw her head back on the chair as she rocked the chair absentmindedly.

“Piyali,” Mukundo said softly, “There is perhaps an unasked part of the question there. I will answer it as well as I can. Yes – I feel that strong connect with you. For a long time, I was almost afraid of accepting it. Because you always seemed so out of reach. And now, after knowing what you have been going through, I fear that I could not maintain that connect over last few years. Partly because you were away. But largely also because of the same fear. I was afraid to reach out. Now, I am not. And that gives me a lot of hope.”

She nodded silently.

Mukundo asked, “Have you sent your acceptance to ISI Bangalore? And refusal to others?”

She shook her head, “But I have to do it this week.”

“Even if you decide to go away, Piyali, I promise that we will keep talking and you will not have to feel lonely and excluded ever again. But I would like you to stay here. And not just for my sake.”

She looked at him questioningly.

“There is something I have to tell you. About your Baba. His health.”

She grew agitated as he explained the fatal advanced-stage stomach-cancer her father was suffering from.

“You must keep your calm. You know that Priyendra will not be of much help in the coming days. Your parents will need you. Do you remember what I had said earlier? That the only meaning we can find in our life is in people around us. Seeing your parents through this difficult time would mean a lot to you. Trust me.”

“I will stay,” she said after a long pause.

“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

—

To be continued

“I will have to talk a lot to explain myself. So, please be patient and please listen to me fully before coming to a decision.”

He paused to see if she would say something. She didn’t; so he continued, “I don’t pity you, Piyali. Like most other people, I have always been in awe of you. And I have felt proud of you. Very irrationally, I must say. I have this dialog with myself sometimes, where one part of me asks the other part – why are you so proud of her achievements. What do those have to do with you. But the other part remains adamant in feeling the pride. And I have loved you for a long time. Not always romantically, of course. You were so young. But I suppose you can’t help loving someone about whom you think so much. All the time. I missed you so much during the years you spent away from Kolkata for your studies. I never told you any of this; in fact, I worked hard to not accidentally reveal any of this, because I didn’t think you would care and I was terrified of being snubbed by you. A fear that, I now think, you understand. But then, over last few days, you revealed yourself a bit more, Piyali. A connection that I had always felt finally seemed to be getting established. But when I realized last night that you might be thinking of going away again, and even getting married, I was… I don’t know what I felt. I didn’t know what I should have felt. Then you talked about a meaningful relationship. Between us. I think I subconsciously thought that you wouldn’t be averse to the idea of us being together. Perhaps vainly I even thought that I might be the only person– I shouldn’t have blurted out like that, Piyali. But it wasn’t thoughtless and it was definitely not, God forbid, me pitying you. I feel a lot of things for you, but that is not an emotion I know where it concerns you.”

“Mukundo Babu–”

“No. Please let me complete. I may not be able to gather strength to speak again. There are a thousand reasons for you to say – No. You may not feel this way about me at all. And that is fine. Or as I had said earlier, you are twenty! You don’t need to take this decision now. Or that–” he paused here and took a deep breath, “You are twenty and I am thirty-two. Too old for you.” He didn’t notice her startled look here. “Or for no reason at all. You are not obliged to give a reason for refusing. But the one reason that isn’t valid is that I am pitying you.”

With that he stood up and stepped back.

“So much is at stake, Piyali. I don’t want to hope for more and lose what we have. So please don’t be upset with me if what I said is not acceptable. What we have right now is not something I want to lose. And I hope you don’t either.”

She stood up and came near him. “I am–” she started speaking, but soon looked lost for words. “I need time,” she finally blurted.

Mukundo sighed in relief. “Of course. Take as much time as you need. Don’t take any decisions in a hurry. And Piyali, please, keep talking to me.”

She nodded.

Mukundo left with both trepidation and hope weighing on his heart.

—

By later afternoon, Mukundo was restless. What was she thinking? What were her considerations? What was she doing right then? And, most importantly, how was she? Unable to wait for her to come back to him, he made his way towards her house. A tense sight awaited him there.

“For God’s sake, speak up, Pihu. What is wrong? What is going on?” her father was screaming.

She sat on a plastic chair, still like he had seen her go earlier in the day, when he had started speaking to her.

The door to her tiny room was open and her mother seemed to be busy turning everything there upside down.

Mukundo grew nervous. Did it have anything to do with their conversation earlier? Had she told anything to her parents? Was there reaction unfavorable?

“What is going on?” he croaked with difficulty.

Piyali jumped out of the chair on hearing his voice and gave a miserable look to him. His heart sank.

“Ask this wretched girl, Mukundo, what does she think she is. She wasn’t picking up Pronab’s phone this morning. So, Debangi went to her room and guess what she found her with.”

He displayed the rope he was holding in his hands. It was Mukundo’s turn to jump in shock.

“What is this?” He didn’t really need an answer. It was a noose, plain and simple.

“What is so wrong in her life, ask her, Mukundo? We are not rich, but you and your Baba have always taken care of her needs. The best schools, the best education – she is spoiled for choice in the jobs she can take, she is spoiled for choice in everything life has to offer. But this is the choice she opts for?”

Mukundo looked back at Piyali. She was no longer looking at either of them. Her mother came out of her room and slumped on the chair Piyali had vacated.

“Hold on, Kaku, Kaki. Piyali, come with me.” He took her hands in his and led her out of the house. He didn’t have the patience to go all the way back to his house and the library. So, instead he made for the shade of a tree nearby and stood facing her.

“It was some kind of a misunderstanding, wasn’t it?” he said, “You didn’t really have that noose for—Why didn’t you tell them that?”

“I need to explain a lot.”

“What? What does that mean? Were you really–” Mukundo panicked, but quickly reined himself in, “Sorry! Tell me, what do you need to explain?”

She sat down on the ground, resting her back against the tree trunk and started talking. It had been many month, perhaps over a year since she had found herself saddled with extreme depression. The situation must have been building up over the years but had become dangerous now.

“So that noose was indeed–” Mukundo started asking in a trembling voice.

“Not any longer,” she hastily interrupted him, “Not since you knocked at my door that day.”

Mukundo sat down in front of her and took her hands in his. “Thank God, I at least did that. I had been such a jerk earlier. I–”

—

To be continued

“Who is Pronab? And what about Bangalore?” Mukundo asked, confused.

“She did not tell you, Mukundo? This boy – Seema had brought the proposal. A very good job. Tell him about it, Pihu. He would understand much better than we would.”

“He is an IIT graduate. He works for Google.”

“And Bangalore? You are indeed going to Bangalore?”

“Kolkata is not good enough for her, Mukundo,” her father replied when she didn’t.

“I will get going, Kaku. It’s late.” With that he left. After he was out of their eyesight, he started running. Running away from there. Running away from her. He wanted to scream his lungs out.

Once back in his room he took deep breaths. As if his lungs had run out of air and he could not inhale enough of it. The feeling of betrayal was choking him. The day’s newspaper was lying on the table. He grabbed it and tore at its pages violently. After he had shredded those inanimate pages completely, he gained some semblance of control over himself. Then he sat down to think.

What was he feeling?

Betrayal.

Why?

Because he had come to expect that she cared about him, that she would stay in Kolkata for him – especially given that ISI Bangalore was in no way better than ISI Kolkata for her career. And that – perhaps once day – she would reciprocate the feelings he had for her. He definitely hadn’t expected that she would get married to some Tom, Dick, Harry at the first chance she got and run away to a distant city for no good reason. Her parents didn’t have that kind of influence on her.

What reason did he have for these expectations?

And this is where his anger turned to self-loathing. Because the answer was – he had no reasons whatsoever. It was his fantasy running wild. That too without his conscious knowledge. He didn’t realize he had started expecting all this. If he had, he would have known to crush those expectations before they ever become so potent. He would have known that if she were at all to be romantically inclined, it would be for a man ten-years his junior.

He needed to fix his head, and his expectations from her.

—

She came to meet him the next day and slumped into a chair in his room.

“So, big plans, eh?” he asked, faking cheerfulness.

She didn’t seem to notice his cheerfulness.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, rubbing her face against her hands, “What should I do?”

“How am I supposed to know, Piyali,” Mukundo chuckled, still preoccupied with his own misery, “You are the genius one here.”

She looked up startled. Her face blanched.

“You are angry at me!” she said, astonished.

Agitated, he stood up and started pacing the room.

“Why are you getting married?” he asked.

“I don’t know if I am getting married. But Baba is insisting.”

“So? Have you always done what your Baba insisted on?”

“No. Not when I knew what I wanted to do.”

“Huh?”

“I mean that I would have resisted Baba if I knew that I can live my life alone.”

“With due respect to your academic achievements, Piyali, and even to your maturity, you are twenty right now. Why do you have to take a decision like that now? You have your whole life ahead of you?”

“And that prospect is frightening.”

“What. Do. You. Mean?”

She buried her face in his hands, “Nothing.” Then she looked up, “But it doesn’t matter if I have to face the question now, when I am twenty, or I postpone it to when I am twenty-five or thirty. This question will remain. What do I do? Do I decide to remain alone? And I have to admit it Mukundo Babu, that unlike you, that prospect terrifies me. But it isn’t like there is a very good alternative. Marrying someone Baba chooses seems even more terrifying. Even my parents don’t understand me or find it difficult to cope with me. How well is a stranger chosen by them supposed to do? So then what option is left? That I find someone compatible with me? Well, the prospects are laughable. Forget romantic relationships, Mukundo Babu, I never had any meaningful relationship even with my family. Other than with you, I have had no meaningful relationships at all. Either I freak them out, or they bore the hell out of me. What do I do, then?”

As she spoke her heart out, the despair that had driven her to tie that noose for herself returned. Then the stunned look on Mukundo’s face drove her to further despair. She shouldn’t have brought this mess to him, her sinking heart seemed to scream. She stood up abruptly and made to leave.

“Wait, Piyali.”

“I’m sorry, Mukundo Babu. I shouldn’t–”

“Marry me, Piyali.” He blurted.

Her reaction came after a few seconds. It took her time to register what he had said. And then her face contorted as if in pain.

“No, no, no, no,” she cried out, “Don’t take pity on me, Mukundo Babu. Don’t do this. I can’t take your pity.”

Mukundo had surprised himself with his thoughtless proposal and he could not react in time. When he came to, she had already run away. He instinctively made his way towards her house but stopped midway. She had started crying, he recalled. How likely it was that she would go home in that condition. And then he knew where she would be.

—

In the reading corner of the library, she hadn’t fallen asleep this time. She had stopped crying, but was still sitting with her face buried in her hands.

She looked up when she heard his footsteps and immediately looked away.

“Don’t run away, Piyali. Please listen to me,” he said and knelt near her chair.

She remained seated with her head hung down. She spoke slowly, “I am ashamed of myself, Mukundo Babu. I shouldn’t have said all I said. Please let me be. I have humiliated myself sufficiently.”

“I spoke hastily, Piyali. But the thought was not hasty.”

She went still on hearing that.

—

To be continued

The play was about a sculptor, who had gone crazy towards the end, still at a young age, in trying to perfect the statue of a woman he loved. Piyali looked thoughtful after coming out of the theatre. Mukundo led her to coffee shop. After they had ordered, he asked her, “What are you thinking?”

“What is in a statue? Why go mad for a statue?”

“He was trying to find meaning in his art and his love, wasn’t he?”

“Meaning! Yes – why is it that some people have this impulse to find meaning in their lives – usually resulting in much unhappiness and misery, while most people just go about theirs happily, without bothering with such stuff.”

Mukundo thought for a moment before speaking, “It may not be much of an answer, but my conjecture is that everyone wants to find meaning. Those who go about their lives happily, as you put it, have perhaps managed to find it in simpler, even trivial, things. The restless souls yearn for more.”

She gave a slight start, then appeared to ruminate over it. After a while she said, “That makes sense. And I suppose when we stop finding meaning in simpler things, we become restless souls.”

“You are talking about something specific now. What is it?”

“Promise me you won’t freak out.”

“Depends on how scandalous the revelation is going to be. Come on, now. You can tell me.”

“I didn’t think about the question of meaning until a few years ago. Somehow learning more and more itself seemed to give meaning to life. But–”

“But?”

She sighed and leaned forward, supporting her forearms on the table and staring into her coffee cup, “But at some point of time I started realizing that all that learning had led me to extreme faithlessness. I don’t mean in religious sense. But in the sense of believing in something, believing in anything at all. A political system, a value system. Anything.”

“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Questioning the existing belief?”

“It is good when you expect to get to some higher truth at the end of it. In your faithless questioning, what you really aspire to achieve is something higher on which you can finally place your faith.”

“Like?”

“Like think of people who questioned the divine rights of kings, who questioned the feudal systems, who questioned the practice of slavery. What were they doing? Putting their faith in a republic or a democracy, putting their faith in a world where your birth doesn’t determine who you are, putting a faith in a world where human dignity is upheld for all. But what happens? Democracy becomes another tool in the hands of powerful to oppress the weak, capitalism leads to even more inequality and erases those mechanisms that could have supported the poor in a feudal society, and in the free societies we still have people living worse than slaves, with even lesser hope for their betterment because their slavery is not even acknowledged. And once you read enough history, you can’t help seeing that this is repeated again and again. The labels change, the actors change, the accepted principles change, but the society doesn’t change. It always has masters and slaves, oppressor and oppressed, bigots and victims–” she realized she had been talking for a while and chuckled in embarrassment, “Please tell me you are not freaked out.”

“Any person with an iota of thinking power should be asking these questions. I would freak out if you hadn’t been asking these. But what you have done is taken them to their logical conclusion.”

“Which is?”

“That there may be no meaning in life.”

“What does one do then?”

“One still lives, Piyali. We still live.”

She flushed on hearing that. It was just a coincidence that he should say something like that, wasn’t it? He couldn’t have known!

“Of course,” she said and took a big gulp of her now lukewarm coffee.

—

Mukundo had made a deliberate attempt to include her in his social life. A few of his friends had gathered in his house that evening and he had invited Piyali too. She wasn’t talking much, but he noticed contentedly that she was listening with interest and didn’t look bored or excluded.

He returned his attention to Subodh, a new convert to Vedic ideals, who had been going on and on for a while about how everything, every piece of knowledge know to humans today was already contained in the Vedas.

“There is a complete description of how aeroplanes are made in…”

“Subodh!” he interrupted, “People who make those claims really need to read Vedas. Vedas say nothing about these things.”

“And how do you know? Have you read Vedas yourself?”

“No. But I have read people who has read Vedas and…” suddenly he remembered Piyali’s presence. He looked at her expectantly.

She cleared her throat and spoke, “I have read Vedas. In translation, of course. It is good poetry. Not that I have a particular taste in poetry. But those who do say so. It definitely doesn’t talk about aeroplanes, quantum mechanics or relativity.”

“It is not literal. You have to go deep into it.”

“Aeroplanes, quantum mechanics and relativity are already difficult to understand concepts. Why would one make it even more obscure? What purpose does it serve?”

“This knowledge was to be transmitted orally. They couldn’t have done it if they created equations like our modern scientists. They had to put everything in memorable verses.”

Piyali sighed and leaned back. She wasn’t going to indulge in this foolishness any more. But Mukundo was bolstered by her support of his argument.

“That brings up an even more curious question, Subodh,” he said grinning, “Our divinely inspired ancestors had discovered aeroplanes, but not writing?”

Everybody burst out laughing at that. Subodh used the opportunity to make light of the situation and change the topic of conversation. He knew he was losing the ground.

After everybody left, Mukundo decided to walk with Piyali to her house. He was in a good mood.

“That was so much fun, Piyali,” he said, laughing, “You should have seen Subodh’s face when you said – I have read Vedas. It is good poetry.”

“I was afraid if people would take offense.”

“Oh, you need to stop being so self-conscious. I, for one, am very happy to have a walking and talking encyclopedia at hand.”

She chuckled. Then asked, “But do you think your friend has changed his opinion?”

He sighed. “No. I don’t think so. But hopefully he won’t spout them when I am around.”

“Why are people so blind? Information, knowledge, learning can be staring in their face, but they turn the other way.”

“I don’t know, Piyali. Perhaps they are also on a quest for meaning. But it has gone horribly wrong. They search for meaning has gotten stuck on a search for some golden identity, linked to a golden past that doesn’t exist.”

“What is one to do in face of such stubborn stupidity?”

“What is one to do? One continues living, Piyali. That’s what one does. One still lives. And sometimes laughs.”

They had reached her house. Her parents were sitting outside.

“There she is. Pihu! We got Pronab’s number. You put it in your phone. He has said he would call you tomorrow. You should talk to him to your heart’s content, okay? And then decide. His job is in Bangalore too and I see no problems at all.”

Beside him Piyali had gone completely still.

—

To be continued

Piyali hadn’t thought of her longing for Mukundo’s friendship in those terms. The sudden question had been like a kick in her guts. It made her look desperate. And the self-sufficiency Mukundo had so correctly recognized in her had become such a second nature to her that it didn’t let her admit to such a need. She hated herself for letting it become so obvious to Mukundo. And she was mad at Mukundo for… She didn’t know what she should be mad at him for. The very fact that he understood her better than anyone else made him so dear to her. Could she fault him for doing that once again? No! She had only herself to hate. How would she ever face him again?

—

Mukundo knocked at her door. He had thought long and hard. And he now knew that there was only one way to get through to her. He would have to expose his own vulnerabilities to her. It would be a huge gamble with his emotions. But the rot Piyali’s emotions seem to be heading towards was even more dangerous. He had to do something. He couldn’t have let her go on that destructive path. She had her entire life before her. The life of a brilliant achiever. He couldn’t just silently witness all of that crumble into pieces, just because he was too afraid of being snubbed by her.

Piyali looked startled to see him and stared at him agape.

“Can I come in?”

Wordlessly, she stepped aside. Her small room was neatly arranged. On the narrow bed were spread out a bunch of envelopes. Those were the different offer letters, he realized. Was she trying to make a decision?

He pushed a couple of envelopes aside to make space for himself and sat down.

“Have you decided what offer you are going to take up?”

She shrugged, “Don’t know. Perhaps Bangalore.”

“Why?”

She gave him an inscrutable look and asked, “Do you have a suggestion?”

“They are all good institutes and I would like it if you stayed in Kolkata.”

She drew in a sharp breath and looked away.

“Baba and Ma are after my life to get me married,” she looked back at him and said slowly, “I can’t stand it. I would rather stay away.”

He was startled. Married? Piyali?

“Who will they get you married to?” he spoke foolishly.

“Too much of a freak to get married, am I not?” she replied and smiled. A sad and self-deprecating smile.

“Super intelligent. So intelligent that you make people nervous.”

“Do I make you nervous too?”

‘Yes’ would have been his automatic answer. But by then Mukundo had recovered from his initial surprise the idea of her marriage had sprung on him. And he knew that if he really said that, he would push her away once again. She was trying to reach out, and he had to take a step towards her.

“What do you think?” he asked, hoping to get some clue of what will satisfy her.

“You shouldn’t be,” to his relief she obliged by answering him, “You are an intelligent man yourself.”

He smiled. He could give her a truthful reply, “I am an intelligent man, yes. I am intelligent enough to know that you are a genius and that that there is nobody else I know, including myself, who is like you. You still make me nervous, sometimes, but not so much that we can’t have a meaningful conversation.”

She bit her lips and mumbled, “I am sorry for everything.”

“No!” he objected emphatically, “I am sorry. For not allowing that meaningful conversation to happen.”

“I don’t want to impose myself on you, Mukundo Babu.”

“What I am very truthfully trying to tell you, Piyali, is that I want those meaningful conversations to happen. And the reason I was not letting that happen is because I had the same fear as you. That of imposing myself on you. But if I don’t think that you are imposing on me, and you don’t think that I am doing that to you — am I right in that assumption, Piyali? You don’t find me an imposition, do you?”

She shook her head, biting her lips harder.

He stood up and went closer to her, “Then let’s end this unnecessary misery, Piyali. Know that I am not only available to talk, but I am happy to do so. I am eager to be a friend.”

When she did not respond, keeping her eyes glued to the floor, his confidence faltered again. He asked desperately, “Does that make you uncomfortable?”

She looked up, shook her head and then in a completely unexpected gesture, threw her arms around him for a hug. He was startled into inaction at first. But only for a few moments. Then he wrapped his arms back around her. “Everything will be all right,” he murmured to her, even as he inwardly cursed himself for his own feelings that the hug had made clear as daylight to him. He had gotten himself into trouble!

—

Mukundo had said he had an appointment just then. But he had asked her repeatedly before leaving if she was okay. And then hesitantly he had asked if she would like to go to a play with him that evening. He thought she would enjoy it. She had agreed.

Presently she opened her cupboard and picked out a rope that was knotted into a noose. She hid it in a far corner, under her clothes. If he had been late by a day, she would have taken the extreme step. When he had knocked, she had been looking at all her job offer letters. She had been wondering if it was possible to find any meaning in them at all. Any meaning for life, for the life that lay ahead of her. A meaning that would keep her away from the noose she had made for herself! She was failing to find it, like she had so often over last few months. But then, he had knocked.

—

To be continued

At first, he thought that the library was empty. But he decided to look in anyway. In the part designated by his father as the reading corner, she lay motionless. She seemed to have fallen asleep. When he went close to her, he found that the tears had barely dried on her cheeks. She had cried herself to sleep. Her anger earlier had only left him dumbstruck. But this sight tugged hard at his heart. The melancholy that he had briefly witnessed in her countenance earlier now started to engulf him. She was unhappy! That was a possibility he had never entertained. Not because she had a particularly cheerful disposition. But because she seemed to be above petty expressions of joy or distress. A dry acceptance of it was her way of dealing with the world. ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she seemed to say, ‘But it is what it is.’ They had always had a camaraderie of sort and she told him about people around her. But he didn’t remember her ever complaining. Had he been missing something all through? Or had something drastic happened now? He made to wake her up and ask her, but hesitated. Then almost in a trance, he gently caressed her hair and then left abruptly.

—

Piyali opened her eyes in confusion. Had she been dreaming or was Mukundo there a moment ago? And did he… She ran her fingers through her hair retracing his touch, but felt unsure. She fell back on the chair with a sigh. She had been stupid to yell at him. For something so unreasonable too. He might not even have realized that she was upset. And even if he had, he wasn’t obliged to acknowledge it or to fix it. The amount of time and attention he had given to her all these years should have been more than enough for her. But despite herself, she kept wishing for a little something more. He was friendly. They talked. He understood her. He helped her. That’s all there was to their relationship. A great deal, but not enough. She wanted more. Perhaps she wanted friendship. But that wasn’t possible. Why would he want to have friendship with her? He didn’t lack friends. And she was too much of a freak for anybody to seek her as a friend. Why would Mukundo? He was gracious, so he was kind to her. But asking for anything more would have been a stretch on even his generosity.

—

Mukundo visited her house the next morning, hoping to catch her there and hopefully start a conversation afresh. She had stepped out of the house, but he sat down with her father to have a cup of tea.

“Which job is she finally taking up, Kaku?” he asked her father in the course of small talk.

“I don’t know, Mukundo. You know how difficult it is to figure out what is going on in her mind,” Debendra Banerjee replied. They really struggled with a genius daughter at home. They had never known how to deal with her and it being difficult was an old complaint Debendra had.

Mukundo laughed and responded as ever, “She is alright, Kaku.”

He was still laughing when he turned towards the door to find her standing here. There was an inscrutable expression on her face. Then without a word she made to go to her room.

“Piyali,” Mukundo called her, “I was going for a walk. Would you care to accompany me?”

For a moment, it looked like she would refuse. But then she said, “Okay. I will meet you outside in five minutes.”

—

“I am sorry,” she said before he could begin the conversation.

“What for?”

“For yesterday. I yelled at you. Obviously, I shouldn’t have.”

Mukund wasn’t feeling half as calm as he was pretending. But he was emboldened by the thought that she cared for what he thought. So, he managed to hide his nerves.

“The outburst was a little odd coming from you, but you are not supposed to apologize for it. I apologize that I caused it by not listening to you. Tell me what was troubling you.”

She shook her head, “Nothing. It was an irrational outburst.”

At her outright refusal, the confidence he had worked up disappeared. “I am sorry,” he said, hiding his embarrassment behind a tight smile, “For assuming you needed help. I should have known better. See you later.”

Piyali felt a panic rise within her seeing him leave, “Wait, Mukundo Babu!”

He stopped and looked at her with the most neutral expression he could manage.

She ran up to him, “What did you mean by that?”

“By what?”

“That you should have known better. Known better about what?”

“That you are not a person who needs anybody’s help with anything.”

Piyali flinched, “Why would you say that, Mukundo Babu? Am I arrogant?”

“When did I say anything about being arrogant?”

“What other kind of person doesn’t need anybody’s help with anything?”

“An arrogant person may not take anybody’s help, but they do need help every once in a while. It is a self-sufficient person who doesn’t need help. And that’s what you are.”

“Sounds like a fancy way of saying arrogant. Or difficult, as Baba keeps saying. And you tend to agree.”

That gave Mukundo pause. Was she acting out? Why? He pushed aside all his confused, embarrassed feelings about her and tried to engage with her so that he could get to the bottom of things.

“No. That’s not true. And you know it, don’t you?”

“How am I supposed to know it one way or the other?”

“Because you are not only a Mathematics genius, Piyali. You are also an extremely wise person. You can read people. Including me. And this makes you so unique–” he stopped abruptly. It was as if he had been stumbling through an unfamiliar terrain in darkness and suddenly a lightning had illuminated a path ahead. He took a deep breath before speaking again, “Are you lonely, Piyali?” For someone so unique, that would be an obvious problem, won’t it? Why had he not thought of it before.

Piyali, who had been listening to him with rapt attention, started at the question. If he had slapped her publicly she couldn’t have looked more mortified. Pursing her lips, she replied, “No.” And then she left.

Mukundo cursed himself silently. He was pretty sure he had hit the nail on the head. Except that he shouldn’t have. He should have probed gently. In that sudden moment of the cursed enlightenment, he didn’t think through his words.

—

To be continued

She had put her early ability of reading to full use. She had run out of school books pretty quickly. She was ready to write her tenth exam two years before she actually did. But fudging her age by five years would have been a bit too much; so they had waited. Aurobindo had given her a free hand in the use of their library. In all the spare time that was left to her, she had ravaged the books there. Then she had run out of them and had started requesting specific ones from Aurobindo. The elderly book-loving gentleman – delighted to find a youngster so hungry for books – had fulfilled all her requests. Before long Mukundo was getting her photocopies of journal articles from myriad disciplines from his university library.  Her Ph. D. was in Mathematics, but she could have held forth on her own against the scholars of humanities, history, economics and other disciplines of sciences too. In school, her teacher had been scandalized and had appealed to her guardians to talk to her when in one of the mock exams, in an essay on Gandhi, she had included Ambedkar’s criticism of the Mahatma! ‘She will fail if she writes such nonsense. Please make her understand’ she had beseeched. Aurobindo had spoken to her, “You are not wrong in what you have written, dear child, but your teacher is right in saying that examiners don’t want to read this. For the purpose of examinations, stick to the textbooks, would you?”

She had nodded. Given that she had done well, Mukundo assumed that she hadn’t pulled any such stunts while writing the exams. That’s what was even more astonishing about her than her brilliant mind. That she was also wise – much beyond her years. She had an uncanny understanding of human nature which Mukundo thought was quite unlike the stereotypical mathematical genius of novels and movies. Those people seem to understand nothing beyond the narrow sphere of their talent. Piyali, on the other hand, could read people inside out.

Once there was a mean teacher at her school, who was perhaps aware that his pupil knew more than him, and had been nasty to her. Some cooked up incident of her indiscipline had reached principal’s office. The guardians had been dutifully summoned by the school. Aurobindo, who usually played that role, was out of town. So, Mukundo had accompanied Debendra Banerjee, who by himself, would have been too nervous to meet the principal of the fancy school. The principal, Mukundo was sure, understood the situation, but she was more concerned with not undermining the authority of a teacher than with anything resembling the truth. There was no other choice. Piyali had to apologize and promise not to interrupt the teacher again in the class. Mukundo was furious with himself. He felt like he had failed Piyali by not being able to convince the principal. That evening he had talked to her, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t fix it for you, Piyali. You and I know that you were right. The teacher is no good and–” But Piyali’s reply had left him speechless, “He is insecure, Mukundo Babu. It is understandable. His job depends on his authority. He doesn’t like it being challenged.” A grandma couldn’t have sounded more like a grandma!

With this rare combination of intelligence and wisdom, she was frighteningly self-sufficient. She didn’t need anybody’s help. Not in her studies, obviously. But not even in coping with school, teachers and her friends, or the lack of them. She eschewed praise. She didn’t need anybody’s approval. Sometimes nobody at home would know of her achievements in school until several days later, when they would hear of it from someone else. She didn’t want congratulations and reassurances of how great she was. She was a world unto herself. That’s why Mukundo didn’t tell her a lot of things. She seemed beyond reach. His and anybody else’s. What could he tell her apart from expressing his own awe over her awesomeness? She didn’t need that. And deep down, he was afraid of how she evaluated him. Despite her outward politeness and a tolerance of what must seem to her the brainlessness of other people, her self-sufficiency seemed to make her dismiss other people and their petty concerns. He didn’t want to risk knowing how she felt about him.

Presently, he stirred himself and tried to think about her accusation. “Why don’t you ever take me seriously, Mukundo Babu?” Unbidden, an almost forgotten memory nudged its way back into his mind. Piyali would have been around ten-years old back then. Mohima had brought the girl to him.

“Mukundo! Piyali wants your help with her lessons. Can’t you spare an hour for her now?”

Mukundo had laughed, “I didn’t know this girl has such dark sense of humor! She can help me with my lessons any day, not the other way around. And she knows that. Don’t you, little girl? What are you up to then?”

Piyali had run away at that. Mukundo had assumed she was disappointed because her plan of playing mischief with him had been preempted. Now he wondered. She wasn’t a mischievous sort of child, was she? Had she indeed needed his help? Was she disappointed because he had not taken her seriously?

Today, again, she had come to him and said that she needed his help. And he had laughed. He had laughed from habit. Almost as soon as he had done it, he had realized that she might not be asking for an academic help. But before he could right the situation, she had taken offence, shot him that question and left.

He cursed himself for being such a jerk.

“Where is Piyali?” he asked Debangi. He had run to the outhouse that the family occupied. The outhouse was owned by the Thakurs and was in the same compound at their house, but at some distance.

“I don’t know, Mukundo. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Where can she go?” he panicked.

“Why are you so upset? Where could she be? Most likely in your library. Where else does she ever wish to be?”

He hoped Debangi was right.

—

To be continued

“Why don’t you ever take me seriously, Mukundo Babu?” She had started the question angrily, but in the tiny span of time it took her to utter all those words, only a heavy cloud of melancholy remained to envelope her mellifluous voice and large, round eyes.

It wasn’t an extraordinary question. A lot of people could have asked that to Mukundo and it would have made sense to him. But it was Piyali asking that question. Piyali? Piyali wanted him to take her seriously? What for? Why would she care for him? She was —

He was so dumbstruck that Piyali quickly lost hope of any answer from him and turned on her heels. She walked away. Not quickly, rather listlessly. But Mukundo’s feet seemed glued to the ground and it didn’t occur to him to go after her. His mouth also seemed to have forgotten how to make sounds. He didn’t even call her; didn’t ask her to stop.

It was only after he found himself staring at nothing, because Piyali was out of sight, that he came to.

Piyali had always been a precocious child. She was speaking clear and complete sentences by the time she was two. In an extraordinary feat she had started reading both Bengali and English when she was three, to the surprise – almost shock – of the adults around her. They had worried if the child was meeting someone they didn’t know, because nobody around her remembered ever trying to teach her to read. She was too young for that. Children her age had only started going to playschool, that too only if their parents were too busy. But this mousy girl was already reading fluently. Otherwise extraordinarily communicative, she had no clear answer to how she had learned to read. After keeping an eye on her for a few days, everyone had satisfied themselves that there was no dark stranger lurking around meeting her unsupervised; it was only then that they had relaxed, patted her back and congratulated themselves for knowing such a brilliant child.

The moment of realization for Mukundo had come a couple of years later. Piyali was five-years old then, Mukundo seventeen. He was practicing solving some mathematical reasoning questions for the entrance exams he had to write that year. Piyali had come to his room as she often did. She had peered into the questions he was working with.

“Answer for the first one is option D,” she had said in a quiet voice.

Mukundo had grinned. Reading was already an easy task for her. She must have seen his answer in the notebook he was writing in.

“For the second one also D.”

And then she had gone on to give answers to all the ten questions on that page. An increasingly astonished Mukundo had written down her answers after the fifth question, because he hadn’t yet solved those himself. Then he solved those and found that she was right about all of them.

“How on earth—Piyali. Have you seen the answers at the back of the book?”

“No, I haven’t,” she had replied matter-of-factly, already used to occasional accusations like those in school.

“Okay. Let’s see,” Mukundo had taken another book out of his bag. He had bought it that morning only and there was no way Piyali could have read it earlier. He opened a page at random and asked her to solve the first question on that page.

“It’s B. The answer is B.”

Mukundo didn’t have the patience to solve it himself to verify. He looked at the answer key to find that she was right once again. He made her solve twenty more questions at random. Towards the end of the exercise he would no longer be surprised when her answer turned out to be right once again.

Mukundo himself was an intelligent student, he was doing well in his studies and was even a bit vain about it. He wouldn’t miss any opportunity of mocking his cousins who struggled at school. But that teenage-vanity didn’t come in the way of him recognizing that this little friend of his was a genius. Her father Debendra Banerjee was an accomplished gardener who worked in Mukundo’s house. Her mother Debangi had worked as his nanny when he was younger, and now helped around the house, supervising other staff on Mukundo’s mother’s behalf. She was good at her job too. Neither of them, however, could be credited with passing down that extraordinary brain to Piyali.

Mukundo spoke to his mother, Mohima Thakur, “She is a prodigy, Ma. Trust me, this girl is super bright. She could crack this paper right now. Most of my classmates struggle with those questions. I saw her reading Priyendra’s older books today.” Priyendra was Piyali’s elder brother, three-years her senior. “What would she do in those nursery classes. Talk to her teachers. Let them allow her to skip classes.”

She did jump classes, though not fast enough for Mukundo’s estimation of her skills. Still the problem of minimum age for writing class tenth exam sprang up. One could try to get an exemption. But a workaround was deemed suitable by everyone. She was born a year before birth certificates became compulsory. So, her date of birth could easily be manipulated while registering for the exam so long as the school looked the other way. The school did, because it was pretty common for kids to register a date of birth later than their real one. A practice driven by the mindset that put a premium on government jobs, which often had a maximum age limit. If the child was technically younger, he would have more time to land such a coveted job. In Piyali’s case it was used in the other direction. She was shown to be three years older than she really was. So, she finished class tenth at the age of twelve and class twelfth at the age of fourteen. Her undergraduate education, which Mukundo’s father – Aurobindo Thakur – had sponsored, was in one of the best Science institutes of the country. It had flexible policies. She amassed enough credits to get a degree within two years and they allowed her to have it. By her real age of twenty she had a Ph. D. from the same institute. Now she was armed with multiple job offers from a number academic and research institutes and would pick up one of them in next month or so. Mukundo fervently hoped that she would choose to stay in Kolkata, but he hadn’t told her that. Just like he had never told her how much he had missed her when she was away for her higher studies and how he looked forward to her vacations that she spent in Kolkata. He had not told her a lot of things.

—

To be continued