“It is a total solar eclipse of literature, culture, and language here in this country!”
No one actually uttered this sentence, but any number of varieties, framed with different words, but all with the same meaning, echoed in the heads of Shailendra George, Shaligaram, and Rahul.
Rahul’s financial situation was going downhill. Every couple of days someone would show up and inform Rahul that they’d been forbidden to continue private tutoring with him. He hadn’t been able to pay his dining hall bill for two months. Even his toothpaste was running low, and he borrowed detergent from O.P. to wash his clothes.
Yesterday had been Thursday, and in spite of everything turned upside down, the organic timepiece in Rahul’s heart had been beating through every second in wait: tick-tick, tick-tick.
And at such a moment this love had chosen to come into his life! In his whole life, it was the first such wondrous, magical sensation! Time and again the yellow butterfly disappeared into the darkness and fog that crept through those days.
Two days earlier, Hemant Barua had treated everyone in the dining hall. He’d accepted an offer from IBM, dropping out of the PhD program in mathematics. “What can I do? And besides, what kind of scholar was I really going to make?” He was very pleased. He was offered a yearly salary of 900,000 rupees, after first being sent on a three-month training course.
“I’ll write emails from California, and you guys had better write back,” Hemant said with a touch of sadness in his otherwise shining eyes. “Let’s see if Americans have any free time to play chess.”
Then he took Rahul aside and said, “I’m leaving in ten days, so take what I have to say very seriously. Get yourself out of this gutter. I’ve warned you from the beginning, and I’ve given you all the data. You will neither get a job in this Hindi business, nor will you become an author. You are a neoromantic idealistic simpleton.”
Hemant thought a bit more and continued. “You’re not going to like this, and I couldn’t decide whether or not it was best to spell it out for you. But I’m your friend and really love you. So here it is. The truth is that you’re never going to get this girl you’re chasing after and, by the way, also gambling your life with. You’ll end up on the losing end. Mark my words: when it comes time for her to make a choice, she won’t choose you, she’ll choose someone from her own caste. Get yourself out of here, Rahul. You’ve become their walking target,” Hemant said. He began to get choked up, and his eyes filled with tears.
THIRTY-TWO
O.P. had already dozed off, but that night, in Tagore Hostel Room 252, where Madhuri Dixit once resided in the window, turning her neck to gaze at Rahul with her mad, intoxicated, dumb doe-like eyes and her hit-by-a-slingshot wounded, fleshy back — sleep wouldn’t come to Rahul.
A patch of yellow had been inhabiting the same window for several months, which bobbed its way on the winding road up from the valley, first as a tiny, fluttering butterfly and later transforming itself into a yellow parasol. Now on the other side of that window lay a darkness filled with fear, tension, despair, defeat — and silence.
A couple of dim stars tried to twinkle somewhere far off in the distance. The drowsy chirp of a restless bird tossed and turned over the uneasy sound of a cricket symphony.
Rahul was passing through a period of torment filled with deep hostility. Why can’t I change how I see things? Why is my heart causing me so much grief, biting me like a cobra again and again? Why do I even bother with this impossible, idiotic, and bloody attempt to discover what might still be alive in something fossilized thousands of years ago in a rough, ugly time? Why am I the one sabotaging my own destiny?
Rahul sat up in bed, reached for the table lamp, and angled it so he could read a few pages of “How Rama Worshipped Shakti” in the dim fifteen-watt light.
A curse on this life that’s brought me nothing but frustration!
A curse on this discipline for which I’ve sacrificed!
Janaki! Beloved, alas, I could not rescue you.”
But Rama’s spirit, tireless, was of another sort,
that knew not meekness, knew not how to beg. .
Rahul’s eyes were moist as he turned the pages.
And Ravana, Ravana, vile wretch, committing atrocities. .
The tears in his eyes blurred his vision. Why had the person who’d written these lines been so seething? The words cast their spell over Rahul. The reader of these poems was none other than Rahul’s very essence, opening the meaning of each word with a small explosion.
I’m not sure whether this thing inside of me is love or hate for you, Miss Joshi! Whatever the case, I shall be waiting for you tomorrow morning.
Please, do come.
THIRTY-THREE
Rahul had filled O.P. in on everything. He was so excited it was as if his own long-awaited dusky she-elf were coming to visit. “I’ll padlock the door from the outside and come back at four thirty. Don’t worry about anything, yaar!” said the six-foot-three ostrich, wiggling his camel-like neck back and forth.
And it was the camel who had bought, with his own money, a little plastic “packet.” For the last six days, Rahul had stood in front of the chemist’s, hand in pocket. But in the end, out of embarrassment, he couldn’t go through with it, and had returned empty handed.
Rahul playfully hopped onto the back of the camel and swung from his neck, exclaiming, “My dear bony fellow, I can’t quite figure out who I love more, you or her!”
“Mogambo khush hua! Mogambo happy man! Heh heh heh heh,” gushed the camel.
Anjali was going to set off from the department as soon as Padmashree Tiwari’s Vidyapati class ended. Rahul didn’t have to go to the department today. Anjali, however, had to first take the road surrounding the sports field, go between the two rocky overhangs behind the equipment storeroom, get through the bushes, and then very carefully climb up the hill to make sure no one saw her.
The back door of Tagore Hostel, always locked, had been left open by O.P. Anjali was to use the back stairs to get to the second floor, then keep by the side wall of the hallway and make her way to Room 252. At that hour all of the students were in class, and the doors to their rooms were padlocked. But if, by chance, someone appeared, Anjali could boldly put on an act, carefree, fully self-confident, since O.P. would simply tell the boy that Anjali was his sister.
Padmashree Rajendra Tiwari’s class ended at eleven thirty, so Anjali could be expected by noon.
Rahul was in a state of nervous excitement. As if a top were spinning inside of him. Or a toy jumping dog were leaping around, ceaselessly, since its coil was perpetually wound. Rahul’s heart was racing with the same speed as when he watched from his window for the yellow parasol bobbing its way up from the valley. And now, too, the sound of his heartbeat reached right to his ears. Tick-tick, tick-tick.
But was it love or malice thumping in his heart for Anjali? He himself didn’t know.
And exactly at five minutes past twelve, she arrived. Her face looked dipped in copper from the sun and fatigue and she was out of breath and exhausted.
O.P. had filled up the thermos with chai and placed a packet of sugar biscuits next to it. In one fluid motion he scooped up the padlock from the table, flashed Rahul a quick smile, left the room, and closed the door behind him. Then came the sounds of O.P. fastening the bolt from the outside, and his footsteps trailing down the hallway.
As he left, the dear camel bellowed a tune in a frightfully off-key voice.