Finally, the play drew to a close and everyone pronounced it a grand success; the only regret we had was that as it was December, we could not carry on till dawn. Then it was time to go home. There was no transportation of any kind, people began to walk home in groups. For part of the way, everyone followed the same road. Everyone knew each other, so the noise emanating from the women continued non-stop, as though the play had not really ended and kept following them all. Suddenly the judge’s car roared by and then — or so it seemed to me — it was silent all around, bitterly cold, field after field stretching in every direction beneath the dead glow of the moon. You could not tell the tree apart from its shadow, and even the people trudging along seemed to be their own shadows. In a while there was no one else nearby, I was walking alone. I realized I had left my female companions behind; I must have been walking quickly because of the cold, and enjoying the walk. Just a few minutes earlier, I had been on the verge of sleep, but now I felt not a trace of it — in that enormous open field, on that foggy night, I felt every molecule in my body telling me I was awake, I was alive.
But had I pressed too far ahead? Was I neglecting my duty? Of course, having a boy who had only just acquired a baritone and a moustache beside them was not likely to be very helpful; on the contrary it would be inconvenient. But still, what if I was needed?
Pausing for breath, I looked behind me. The women’s group lay far behind, barely visible in the fog. But it seemed someone was walking swiftly toward me. Who was it? A girl. Definitely a rebuke from my mother, or an order from my sister-in-law.
When she came closer, I saw it was Pakhi.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Why should anything be the matter?” she replied.
“Well then?”
“What do you mean?”
“What brings you here?”
“They walk too slowly!”
I remember being surprised. What boldness! “Did you tell them?” I asked.
“I did.”
“What did they say?”
“What do you suppose?” Pakhi shook her head impatiently. I looked at her with new eyes in the faint moonlight.
“Which means. .”
Pakhi interrupted me and said, “Are we just going to stand here?”
It was my first conversation with her. Suddenly I felt fulfilled, as though something heavy and profound had made its home within me.
We walked on, now side by side. But no more words the rest of the way. I walked swiftly, and not once did Pakhi say “Slower”; she kept pace with me. She was fourteen then, quite grown-up by the standards of the times, rather placid too, by those same standards. But she appeared anything but gentle then; it felt as though her legs could carry her thus for ages, ages, alongside me, beyond the houses, beyond the town, possibly beyond our small, familiar world to somewhere unknown.
So many thoughts crowd your mind in your naïve youth. And why should they not? By then we had left the paved district road for the walking trail winding through the fields, slightly heavy of breath, thorns pricking our feet at every step — they felt like naughty caresses — and the smell of the grass, the dew, the earth all around. We walked thus for some time as in a dream, then the fields ended, the town narrowed into neighborhoods; by the sleep-laden homes suddenly a pond appeared that had stolen the moon. Another bend in the road and there was the single-story house Pakhi lived in. Our houses were next to each other, our families were close friends — everyone was friends back then, everyone was happy. That’s the worst thing about the age we are at now, where it seems all happiness lies in the past.
Glancing back, I saw no sign of our guardians. We stood there silently as though in the wee hours of a winter morning, just when it’s coldest; a spring breeze was blowing, breathing heavily, our bodies warm from the long walk.
A little later I said, “You’d better get home.”
“In a while.”
I liked this idea. But though all this while I hadn’t worried about a thing, here in this familiar neighborhood, before this familiar house, I remembered our guardians. Maybe I had erred, maybe I deserved to be admonished, I should wait here with Pakhi to accept their rebukes humbly.
Then Pakhi spoke.
“If only our homes had been even further. . mmm?”
I said, “But eventually the road would have ended.”
Pakhi glanced at me, her eyes glistening in the moonlight. Looking away, she said, “What were you thinking of all this while?”
“I don’t know.”
“I was thinking — I was thinking, this walk is lovely, but it’s because we’re walking on it that the road will end.”
Back then, I found this funny. But now it seems that fourteen-year-old girl had, without knowing it, spoken wisely. Our existence is like that: living eats into our life, all the roads we love end because we take them.
“I was thinking of other things too,” Pakhi spoke again, “but I won’t tell you, you’ll laugh.”
“Tell me,” I gave her permission, as it were, drawing on all the maturity of my college-going self.
“No, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“So soon?”
“That’s what happens to me. There are so many things I mean to tell you, but when it’s time, it all slips away.”
“It all slips away?”
“Yes. I love you, that’s why this happens. I forget it all.”
I trembled at her words. I looked away, so as not to have to look at her. The other womenfolk appeared at the head of the road. I was relieved. Who knew what else Pakhi might say?
Were we scolded for having walked on ahead? I cannot remember. The others said something, but I didn’t hear a word of it. My hearing had no room for anything other than Pakhi’s parting words to me.
I couldn’t sleep that night.
Gagan Baran paused. The other three were motionless. There was no way to tell whether they had been listening or not: the contractor had turned up his overcoat collar to cover his ears, the doctor was wrapped in his blanket from the waist downward, eyes heavy with sleep. The writer was leaning back in his chair, facing upwards, a cigarette burning away in his fingers; that he was awake became clear when he raised his hand to his lips. But this Delhi bureaucrat did not look at his listeners, studying the wall before him carefully, as though the rest of his story was written on it. The invisible writing of the past — which one cannot forget even when one thinks one has — swam up before his eyes, and he resumed in his smooth, slow cadence.
I remember another day. This time too, it was night, not day. This too was a moonlit night, but instead of winter’s fog-swept moonlight, it was a mad summer’s full moon night. I lived in Calcutta then, it was the second year of my M.S. My elder brother had moved to Calcutta the previous year, and I had left my hostel to move in with him at his Shyambazar home. It was there that Pakhi had come to stay the night, en route to her new husband in Kurseong.
Hers had been a big wedding. Devoting myself to mathematics had made me much less of a romantic, and I was struck less by novels than I’d been before, but I felt it wouldn’t be fitting not to have even a small feeling of heartbreak at Pakhi’s having gotten married. I even managed to snarl at her in my mind, picturing her as having betrayed me, but to tell the truth I felt no pain, no anger. Despite the stuff from the books, my heart remained intact. I was actually disappointed in myself, I went down in my own self-esteem, and, as far as I know, Pakhi hadn’t breathed a single sigh either as she married the freshly minted deputy magistrate.