I deliberately took the lower berth so that I can feast my eyes on the picturesque Konkan. The winter season had just begun. The greenery covered with the mist fills the heart with such pleasantness! And the pleasure of sipping a hot tea in that ambience is at a different plane altogether. How happy Keerti and the children would have been if they were here now! We should definitely make another trip in the holidays.
All my co-passengers in the compartment were Keralites. One couple was from Karnataka. Everybody just settled down in their places. The Keralam girls who I helped in arranging the luggage wished me “Happy Journey” with a smile.
How come they have such black hair? I wondered.
I too wished them and looked away as it would not be proper to stare. Seeing their lockets, I thought they must be Christians.
The train stopped at the next station. I bought some magazine from the platform stall and was about to get into the train.
“Suji, take care, do call me as soon as you reach. The times are not so good, they are holding a grudge against us too…”
I could not hear the rest of the sentence due to the vendor’s shouts. The name Suji and the broken Telugu made me look back. A shudder passed through my body. Without a doubt it was Suji. She was speaking to someone standing on the platform. The train started. The person she was talking to went on walking along with the train on the platform for a long time, just like I did in those days. I was looking at him, standing at the door of the compartment. His face seemed familiar.
I briskly walked to the compartment in which Suji was. She was pushing her bags under the seat.
“Suji!” I said.
She lifted her head in surprise.
“Is this you or your specter?” she extended her hand with her trademark smile.
I caught hold of her hand ardently and said “After so many years!”
She waited for a second and said, “Exactly thirteen years eight months twenty days.”
I slowly let go of her hand. The fact that she remembered the days so exactly made me uneasy.
Hers is the last seat. She arranged her luggage and sat on the seat and moved a bit to make place for me to sit. I did not sit.
“Your destination?” I asked her. She told me.
“I am going to the same place too. Are we really going to be together for twenty hours?! Unbelievable!” I pinched myself.
Suji smiled and asked “Won’t you sit?”
“No, you come to my seat, it’s near the window,” I said as if that needed no further explanation.
“Ok, let’s go.”
She got up. She requested her co-passengers to look after her luggage and followed me. I introduced her to the Kerala girls as “My old friend”. They smiled and moved to make some place. Suji sat near the window. I sat beside her and kept looking at her. I still could not believe my eyes…more surprising was the fact that she was talking with me with a smile instead of turning off her face…
Both of us started to talk simultaneously and laughed.
“Okay, you first,” she said still laughing.
“Oh, you tell me everything. How are you? What are you doing now?”
“I am fine. I haven’t changed a bit. I worked as the same old English teacher for a long time. Then our organisation’s work load increased. So I resigned. Now I am working as a full-timer. I am based in Mumbai and roaming all around. Now, you tell me about you,” said she looking straight into my eye.
I just kept staring at her. There were some white hairs in the parting of her hair. She tied her hair in a small pony. Her hair is not as thick as it used to be but it is as black as it was when I used to like it so much. There were black circles around her eyes, so clearly visible even in her dark face. It’s really a wonder that she has not aged at all. She was looking as young as ever. She must not have borne children anyway. Or is it because her ‘thoughts’ were always young?
“Is it over?”
“No.”
“Okay then, after your perusal is complete, tell me about yourself.”
I sighed. “What to say, after you left I could not stay there and changed my school. However I continued working as the same old history teacher. Later carrying on papa’s legacy I shifted to business in medical equipment. I am now traveling on one of my business assignments. Hm…Zindagi se koi shikuwah to nahin….,” I hummed smiling at her, avoiding spelling out the words ‘Tere bina.’ The Keralam girls looked at us and smiled knowingly.
Suji also smiled and turned her head towards the window. She just loved the window seat! Whenever I went to book tickets for her when she traveled on her organisation works, she used to remind me umpteen times to book the ticket by requesting for the window seat. Now she must be traveling a lot more as she said she was a full-timer now…
I bought tea for both us when the vendor arrived with it.
“Didn’t you get the window seat this time?”
“How can I, when there is no one who would even go to the extent of fighting to get me one.”
Both of us silently finished sipping our tea while looking out of the window.
“The person who came to give you send-off….”
“Oh, so you have seen him, he is a member of our organisation, his name is Farooq.”
Don’t know why, but I shuddered. I felt she gave me a sharp look, just for a second. Or was it my illusion?
“In your organisation?!”
“Yeah, the organisation for which I am now working is the Anti-Communal Organisation. We launched this after the Babri incident even while I was working in the women’s organisation, remember?”
I nodded. How can I ever forget? Did she ask me deliberately?
But she continued talking in a normal tone.
“Though we had launched it as a front temporarily, the conditions took such a turn that it had to take a permanent shape, as you know. So work pressure increased and I am working as a full-timer in that. As the women’s organisation has developed well by then, they too agreed to relieve me seeing my interest in this. Even now I am going there on our organisation work, you must have seen in the papers, there was an attack on the Christians there. Farooq was also to come, but he had to stop due to our magazine work. Our organisation people there sent word that there are enough people for the fact-finding team. So I am traveling alone.”
She went on speaking about the activities of her organisation and some fact-finding experiences of theirs and I kept listening. When she halted, inadvertently a question jumped out of my mouth.
“Did you not go to Gujarat?”
“No, I could not, I had a severe asthmatic attack and I could not move. Everybody else went. Why are you asking so particularly about it?”
“No, for no particular reason, it was the severest, and you did not touch on it.”
Though I said so, I somehow felt she noticed my faltering.
Gradually the sunlight was turning brighter. Suji took off her muffler, sweater and shawl. I too took off my sweater and hung it on the hook above. It was then that I could observe her properly. She became very lean. Though she was always lean, now she looked frailer. Is there no one who could take care of her? I was very eager to ask about her life-partner, but I was feeling equally powerless. As she never wore ornaments, I could not guess her marital status by looking at them. So as a prelude to my query, I showed her the photos of Keerti and children stored in my cell phone.
“The children are so lovely, is she a working woman too?”
“Yeah, she is doing a part-time job. She resigned her full-time job a few months before her delivery as the children were twins. After we got hold of a crèche, she joined again.”
Don’t know why, Suji looked intently at me for a few moments.
Saying “Good,” she once again turned towards the window.
“It was an arranged marriage, I had to, due to the pressure before papa died…”
She went on looking out the window. I waited to see if she would ask me any questions. But she went on staring outside. Finally I picked up some courage.
“What about you…?”
“What about me?”
What can I say if she questions back like this? I too began staring out of the window. I was feeling so agitated inside myself. All those joyous moments we shared between us, the last tragic moments were all churning inside me in a haphazard chaotic manner. The last look that Suji gave me, silently accusing me, the hurt look in her eyes….how many times would I have woken up startled from my sleep exactly because of that look? In the prime of our youth, we lived as if we could never separate from each other, as close as to not let even the wind to enter between us. How much ever we talked, the hunger was never satiated. Now it felt as if silence sat between us like a third person.
I did not have my breakfast. As she also said she had not eaten, I bought some tiffin for both of us.
“The food on Konkan trains is good. That is why I never pack anything from home. Would Keerti have let me off otherwise!”
“I heard so too. That is why Farooq said he would not cook anything. Anyway we never had that much time. By the time we made all preparations for the fact-finding, time was up. We were glad that at least I got the reservation. We have to travel in unreserved most of the times.”
“Is that how you spoilt your health so much?”
“Am I looking ill? Oh, did Farooq lie to me then? He said that I was looking better after so many days.”
“Suji, please tell me the truth. Is there anybody to care for you or not?” I finally emboldened myself to ask.
“You haven’t changed at all,” she said licking her fingers.
“Oh, even you haven’t changed, the way you are licking…”
“Oh, Oh, then you have changed a lot I must say, you are getting a bald head, you are even growing a paunch. And that newly-got expression in your face as if you are carrying the entire world on your shoulders,” she said dramatically posing as if she was seriously observing me.
I became emboldened. Somehow right from the morning I was feeling she was not as angry with me as she was before.
“C’mon, you are not telling me what I asked.”
“What should I say, there is not any one person to take care of me, there are several of them, are you satisfied now?”
“It is not that….”
“Why are you so curious? Even you have understood that life doesn’t stop at thirteen years, eight months and twenty days. Why don’t you ask me something else?”
“I am not curious, the one thing that I surely know about you is that you should always have someone to care for you,” these words almost escaped my lips, but I did not say anything. After so many years, our relation did not remain as one that needed explanations to each other.
She took out some tablets from her hand bag and popped them in with some water. I extended my hand and she placed the sheet in that. The same old tablets. She did not seem to be following the new tablets that arrived in the market. I returned the sheet. She put them in her bag.
She was immersing herself in the nature outside her window. So I began talking about some of our old memories. Then she too began to share those memories enthusiastically. The days we worked together in a school, the students, our mothers and about what each one of them was doing now. This went on for a long time. We did not understand how fast the clock turned as we turned nostalgic talking about those old days, people and that atmosphere. We were still immersed in it when the vendors arrived with the lunch packets.
The Keralam girl smiled and asked, “Are old memories refusing to take leave?”
“Yes,” we both laughed. They had got their lunch boxes. We shared our lunch with the girls and ate together.
When we asked if the Keralam girls wanted to sleep, they said, “No, no, you carry on.” But I understood they were just being polite. Suji also must have felt it.
She said, “Hey, let them sleep comfortably, mine is the upper berth, let us go there.”
“Right.”
I told the girls, locked my luggage and went to Suji’s compartment and we made our way to the upper berth. Suji was listening to what I was saying but her eyes were closing. When I asked her if she wanted to sleep, she protested saying, “No, not at all.” But as always, I understood.
“Hey, why are you hesitating? We are going to be together for a long time. Just sleep.”
“Sorry, I thought I can anyway sleep during this travel and so I was doing magazine work the entire night with Farooq. I will get up within half an hour, okay?”
“If not half an hour, sleep for half a day,” I moved to the corner. She curled up in the remaining place and slept. How would that place be enough for such a tall person?
“Suji, get up, put your head in my lap, then the place would be sufficient for you to sleep.”
She did not move. She was already fast asleep. I slowly lifted her head and gently placed it my lap. “Ah,” she sighed in her sleep, turned and put her hand on my legs and slept. My heart brimmed with a deeply affectionate feeling when I looked at her. “Please forgive me Suji,” I said to myself, probably for the hundredth time. It was not just today that I realized that the mistake was mine. I knew then too. But a weakness of not accepting it, a fear that prevented me from getting rid of that weakness did not let me accept it. Don’t know how I could be such a coward at that time. Maybe Suji would not have loved me if she had known beforehand.
Did we ever imagine that the destruction of Babri Masjid would destroy our lives too to this extent? How angry we both were watching that on the TV screen! The attacks on the Muslims later, Suji’s organisation taking out pamphlets in Urdu and Gujarati and distributing them, the Sangh Parivar people coming to our school because we had Muslim students….the management asking for police protection…the policemen standing in front of the school gates…the teachers and children scared to death…everything turned so dreadful within a month…
But was it the Babri Masjid incident that separated us? If not that, something else might have cropped up. Given that was how I was, if not then, I would have got exposed at some other time. Did I even understand this for so many years? I went on blaming Suji, ‘how could she separate from me for such a small reason…’
What a small issue it was, but really how big an issue it is…in retrospect! The clashes were going on. As the Sangh Parivar had attacked the school, the school’s management decided not to stage the Urdu play that year on the occasion of the school anniversary celebrations. Suji argued that this would not give the correct indication to the children and that it should be staged. As even I sided with the management along with all the other teachers, how alone Suji had become….how she must have suffered! I went on thinking that she was unduly adamant, that she was insisting because she was directing the play, that she was not understanding the gravity of the situation. Nobody, including myself, understood or cared why she was fighting so much ‘for a play to be staged by no more than a dozen Muslim children, after all.’ Would I ever be able to forget the look of bewilderment and hurt in her eyes when I blurted out these words?
I shouted at her, “You are thinking that they would be disappointed, but what you are doing is pushing all the children into a risky situation.”
“It is all the children that I am concerned about re, what are we teaching them?” Tears ran down her cheeks…I can see all that so vividly in front of my eyes even now…
When finally Suji left not just that job but also me, could my ‘ego’ ever bear it! Till then I thought she just could not live without me…it took me a long time to understand that it was a weak person like me that needed her more! Whereas, she would get along with her values….
‘Suji, you should have beaten me, scolded me and made me realise by hook or crook.’
“Were you in a position to listen? Remind yourself,” I felt I could hear Suji replying. Yeah, it was true…it was because I had sunken to such lower depths that she….
By evening it was turning cold. Suji was trying to cuddle. I gently lifted her from my lap and laid her on the berth, went to my seat and brought our warm clothes lying there. I put together two shawls and covered her with them. I too wore my sweater. She was sleeping like a log. Do not know how many days of sleep she was compensating now. Even in those days she was like that. She used to work tirelessly in the women’s organisation. She never took care of herself. I used to look after everything. Though we lived in two separate houses, we were always together in any one place. Mama also doted on Suji. Even when I was present her condition was so, so. Now I do not know how she is managing. This girl did not even tell me properly! I lifted her head and tied her muffler below her chin.
“Just five more minutes re, I’ll get up,” she said as if speaking in sleep. Something touched the most secret corner in my heart. The tears just rolled down. I just put my hands around her head clasping her and sat like that for a long time….embracing my past that just refused to leave me…..
It turned dark. Suji moved.
“Just sleep for some more time, it’s okay,” I said softly stroking her head.
“Um,” she opened her eyes and closed them again. But she must have been really done with her sleep. Within minutes she got up.
“Oh, I seem to have slept for a long time.”
“Not much, just five hours.”
She laughed. She got down from the berth, washed her face and came back. Meanwhile I bought some tea and both of us enjoyed sipping it in that cold weather. We went on talking. We were conversing on all kinds of topics. But still I am not able to decide if I should tell her something that I had always wanted to tell her, sometime in my life. During some moments I felt that I should tell her and make up for my sins. But somehow I am not able to get those words out.
As always, she was doing most of the talking. I was the listener. She took some books from her bag and showed them to me.
“Will you take these?”
Without speaking a word I just bought a copy of all those books. I did not tell her that I already have all those books with me.
We even had our meals. Maybe I should go back to my seat now. But these few hours that I would be spending with her are too precious for me. Maybe she doesn’t think so? Moreover she needs to sleep. I know she would be roaming day and night from tomorrow morning. But both of us did not say anything. Again some small talk.
Finally it was I who said, “Maybe you should complete your rest, let me take leave.”
“You haven’t learnt to lie, even to this day.”
I laughed and sat relaxed. Everybody put off the lights in the compartment and went to sleep. The light in the corridor was softly spreading its glow on us.
Once the sun rises, both of us would be going our own ways. So I thought I would ask her what was on my mind.
“Suji! I’ll ask you something. You should not refuse, please,” I said putting lots of hope in my voice.
“Ask,” she said softly.
“If you come and stay in our home for just one month I would take you to some good doctors. Just take one month off from your works that need going around. Bring with you any number of the jobs that you can complete staying put…please…I know so many good doctors now,” I took out some cards from my pocket and showed her.
She kept looking at the cards for a few minutes.
“Okay, but only for fifteen days.”
“Really?”
She nodded. I just took her hand and shook it vigorously.
“Thanks Suji! I understood you were not angry with me since morning itself but now I really believe it,” I said emotionally.
“Angry? Did you think I was angry?” The question sounded as if she was asking me – is this what you understood? Nothing more?
“You completely cut yourself off from me though I tried to contact you so many times. So I thought you were angry…or…disgusted…,” my voice became feeble.
“Chi, Chi. It was neither. It was harder for me than you, to lose you. It just became impossible for me to imagine my life with someone who could not stand up for a value. Though you looked so progressive on the outside, I could not bear to see the Hindutva fellow peeping out of you on that day. When you questioned, ‘Why are you feeling so upset though you are not a Muslim?’ I was just numbed out of my senses. Not just you re, I haven’t learnt to love anything or anybody half-heartedly, I remain unchanged to this day……”
It was something on which I was not qualified even to say anything. I just hung my head and stayed quiet. She was also silent. It became difficult to make conversation after this. I wrote Keerti’s mobile number too on my card and handed it over to her.
“I’ll see when it is convenient to make the trip and I myself would contact you,” she promised.
We would be arriving at our station early in the morning. The time for the first rays of sun to streak across the sky is approaching fast. Finally I just could not stop myself from asking what was eating me up, since I met her.
“Suji, please tell me this one thing before we depart. How come you showered your grace on me now?”
“Even I was waiting since morning to see if you yourself would reveal, will you first tell me how you have changed?”
“Did I change?”
“Yes.”
“Did you dream?”
Suji took my hands in hers.
“Did you think I really did not know why you asked me if I went to Gujarat or not?”
I gave her a surprised look.
“How naturally you said that they were twins, even to me! Keerti is really great re,” she said wholeheartedly.
I nodded to say yes.
“You did not recognize Farooq. As he was part of the big fact-finding team that visited there, you might not have recognised him. It was he who told me that there were two Telugu people named Keerti and Sivasankar who saved the Muslims in their neighbourhood. When I asked him the details I understood it was you. I guessed that Keerti was your partner. It was he who told me that when a Muslim couple was killed in those attacks, you had come forward to adopt their daughter. Though our people wanted to contact you later, they came to know that you had left the place.”
“Suji, I lost you by making a mistake once, I was not ready to lose Keerti by making a mistake again. No, to tell the truth I felt it would be like losing myself. I had told Keerti everything about you before our marriage itself. When I was hesitating to save them, she just reminded me about you and that was it, I did not look back.”
“I should meet Keerti re, that was half the reason why I agreed to come.”
“You know, Raghu was just eight months old. I feared for Keerti and him the most. The baby girl was also exactly of the same age. Keerti just could not tear herself away from the baby. That is why we decided to tell everybody and even the children that they were twins. That was the reason we shifted from Ahmedabad to Mumbai. That is why even with you I had….”
She waved her hand as if to say it doesn’t matter.
“So youl named the boy after Raghu Master as we wished. Did Keerti name the girl then?”
“No, she wanted to name the baby girl Sujata, after you. But it was I who said – what’s the need, the baby already has the name her parents had given her. We call her Ayesha.”
– Shaheeda
[Written in 2008 in Telugu. Published in ‘Arunatara (March-May 2009). The author’s name was given as ‘N.D.’]
