“Have you shown this to an astrologer?” Anjali said, genuinely astonished.
“Yes,” Rahul answered. “He said that according to the book of palmistry, a man with these lines becomes either a dictator, a fakir, he goes crazy or. . it doesn’t matter.” Rahul stopped short.
“Oh, come on, tell us! Pleeeeeeease,” she said, like a stubborn child.
“C’mon, yaar, let’s have it. He’ll go crazy or. .?” Hemant was excited.
Rahul thought about it for a second and then said, “. . or he’ll kill himself.” His voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. Then, slowly and hoarsely, he added, “Like Sapam.”
“Hey!” Anjali reproached, saying it so loudly that she felt embarrassed. Anima and Hemant both started laughing.
“Do you really believe in palmistry?” Hemant asked Rahul.
“No, I don’t. They say Nehru had the same lines. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He wasn’t crazy, or a fakir, and he didn’t commit suicide,” Rahul said.
“But a dictator, perhaps?’ Hemant countered. “Otherwise how did his family rule India for so long?”
“In my opinion he did commit suicide — after the war with China,” Rahul said.
“Look! Over there, here comes a camel,” Anima pointed toward the hostel. Everyone looked. Coming toward them was a six-foot-three-inch-tall skeleton, skinny like a bamboo rod, bobbing at the neck with every step.
“Over here, skeleton boy! We were waiting for you,” Rahul shouted.
O.P stopped halfway. “I’m going to go scrounge some snacks, yaar. I’m dying of hunger,” he shouted from the road.
Both Rahul and Hemant were also hungry. The night before no food was served, in mourning for Sapam. Nothing today for breakfast, either. Their stomachs grumbled loudly.
“But the canteen’s closed today. Where are you going to find food?” Anjali asked.
Hemant stood up. “Jang Bahadur lives in the yard behind the canteen. He’ll hook us up.”
Hemant walked off toward O.P., and Anima began to follow. “Chalo, I’ll go with you. Maybe we’ll get our hands on something. .”
“Should I come along?” Anjali said, getting up.
“You two stay here. Discuss your Hindi literature. We’ll be right back. See you, Anjali!” Anima smiled and winked. Anima, Hemant, and O.P. left for the canteen.
EIGHTEEN
Rahul and Anjali sat in the shadow of the neem tree. The yellow parasol that lay nearby trembled intermittently in the tiny gusts of wind. It seemed that if the wind blew just right, the parasol would spread its yellow wings with a start and take flight in the form of a butterfly.
A real butterfly, which had somewhere lost its way, fluttered by and landed for an instant on Anjali’s shoulder.
“Shoo! Shoo!” Anjali leapt up, startled.
“What happened?” Rahul asked, concerned. The butterfly flew from Anjali’s shoulder and hovered around the parasol before landing on its tip. What was amazing was that the butterfly shared the same yellow color as the parasol. A living, breathing, yellow, capable of flight, both alive and afraid. Fear made it fly from Anjali’s shoulder.
“It’s just a butterfly. What’s there to be afraid of?” Rahul said, smiling at Anjali’s alarm.
She sat down again in the grass. “What if it stings?” Anjali said.
“Butterflies don’t sting.”
“How do you know butterflies don’t sting? What if this one did? Then what?”
“Butterflies don’t sting,” Rahul argued. “Bees do.”
Anjali tried to put an end to the discussion, either to conceal her embarrassment or to avoid admitting she was wrong. “They’re all the same, butterflies and bees.”
“The same? What are you talking about? Butterflies never sting. Bees do — sometimes, anyway.” Rahul clearly wasn’t in the mood to quickly put the matter to rest.
“Have you ever been stung by a bee?” Anjali asked.
“Sure, a couple of times,” Rahul said. “Back in the village, Papa built a big open tank next to the tube well in the field. We called it the hamam, and it was a lot of fun bathing in it during the summer.”
“Did you ever go in?” Anjali asked.
“Of course. During summer vacation I’d run down there at night with a bar of soap and a towel and jump in. It was great fun. Even the soap had a strong scent there that it doesn’t have here.”
“How’s that possible? Soap’s the same everywhere.”
“No, it’s not. In the forest, near the fields, and at night, soap smells sweeter. It’s true,” Rahul said. “There were jasmine bushes growing next to the tank, and at night the blossoms smelled even more fragrant.”
“What are you talking about?” Anjali was getting a bit irritated. “First you were talking about the sweet smell of soap, and now jasmine?”
“Oh! Well, if you ever go there, you’ll see. When I swim there at night, the soap and jasmine both smell sweet. Sometimes I feel like I’m washing myself with jasmine instead of soap. And sometimes I could swear soap bushes are growing next to the tank. But since you’ve never swum there at night, how could you have any idea?” Rahul was also getting a bit irritated.
“But you were talking about bees. What do they have to do with all this?” Anjali looked at Rahul with slight displeasure.
“The bees are during the daytime. In the afternoon they hover around the water flowing near the tank — swarms of them. One afternoon when I went swimming, I hung my clothes and towel on the pipe of the tube well. A bee stung me when I started to dry myself off after I got out. They’d hidden in the towel.”
Anjali started laughing hysterically.
“So you think that’s funny? Wait till you get stung one day,” Rahul said angrily.
“No, I don’t. But I do wonder what would’ve happened if they’d hidden in your pants instead of the towel?”
Anjali started laughing again. Rahul watched. She was laughing so hard tears streamed from her eyes. How much laughter did this girl have inside her? As she laughed, her eyes remained fixed on Rahul. Suddenly he felt the same way he did gazing out the window of Room 252 in Tagore Hostel and watching the yellow spot bobbing along on the winding road from the field below.
Her laughing eyes floated into his insides, and Rahul felt them swim through the blood of his veins like two tiny shining fish. And in that red bloodstream, flowing in the darkness of his body’s blue veins, they arrived at the place where all arteries and veins in the body join together. The place where the fragile and mysterious clock of life beats a continuous tick-tick, tick-tick. And the moment the ticking ceases, no more life! It’s that place where the heart is.
A mild, pleasant fever crept over Rahul, the kind of feeling music can dissolve into. Rahul’s ears heard the music within the fever and sank into it. What a melody — so faint he could hardly hear it, try as hard as he might. The two shining fish laughed and swam continuously inside his body, and back and forth across to the sweet fever.
“What happened?” Anjali said, waking Rahul from his reverie. “It’s like you turned into a statue.”
Rahul was silent. Sheepishly, he regarded Anjali. As if he were still seized by his fever, she still seemed to be laughing.
“Alright, alright. So, when was the second time you were stung by a bee?” Anjali asked.
“I was riding my motorcycle. I have no idea how but it got inside my helmet.”
“My god! That’s horrifying. A helmet strapped to your head with a bee trapped inside it,” Anjali said, truly frightened.
“So then it stung me. I was so scared. I couldn’t let go of the handlebars, and I couldn’t take off my helmet. .”