Daily Fix

The Fly in the Ointment
Part IV
Prem Kahani

T. SHER SINGH

Continued from yesterday …

We needed time to digest the news and get our bearings again in a new, suddenly topsy turvy world.

We arrived at the conclusion that once she went home, she would not be allowed back to the big city again, certainly not before the scheduled wedding. Undoubtedly, she would argue against the marriage and invariably, her resistance would not be taken in good humour.

So she called home and said she had to finish her final exams which were already around the corner, and would be home forthwith upon her writing the last one.

In reality, her exams became the first casualty. She couldn’t study, she couldn’t focus on her books. She became resigned to leaving her degree incomplete. “What’s the point,” she said, “if I’m going to be herded off to a strange city to live with a strange man? The degree won’t save me!”

Once we accepted the inevitable, a calm settled over us. Inexplicably, the anger washed away.

One evening, after we’d been together all day, strolling along the river. We must have walked a couple of miles. We had stopped at a cluster of shacks. A mini village of boatmen who made their living taking passengers and goods across the river and back. We bought a couple of chai’s from a tea stall, and sat down on a mound of sand, deep in reverie.

“Odd isn’t it,“ she finally said, “I don’t feel any bitterness. None whatsoever. How about you?

I nodded. “Or regret,” I said. And we burst out laughing.

It was a turning point, I think, now that I have gone over those days a thousand times in my head. It was almost as if we’d made a conscious decision to revert to what we referred to as the “pre-Atom-Bomb days”. We knew we had but a few days left together. Would we ever see each other again?

I did a quick calculation. At the very best, if all went well, we’d get to see each other a maximum of a dozen times more, that’s it, given that she could stretch the exam excuse to no more than two weeks more.

I remember picking up a fistful of sand and letting it trickle out slowly from the bottom.

“We’re inside a huge hour-glass,” one of us said, I can’t recall who exactly.

That must’ve been the moment, I think.

From that point on, we were laughing and joking again, even as we began to dismantle our relationship, brick by brick.

The letters.

We talked about the stacks we had hidden in our desks, and decided that they had to be destroyed. We promised we’d do it that night, alone in our separate residences. “No exceptions,“ we ruled. “No keepsakes. Not one.“

We knew any one of them, falling into the wrong hands no matter when, could play havoc with her life.

Did we have any photos? Of each other? Or together? We scoured our brains. No, none. We’d been careful and had avoided that temptation.

The next day we confirmed we had done away with all tangible evidence of our time together: my clumsy missives in Hindi, and her loving Hindi/English patois of interminable endearments.

Now that she wasn’t attending classes, nor spending any time studying, we had all the time in the world. I assured my folks my lengthy absences were due to a study group I had joined. Which impressed them endlessly, and they left me on my own, my comings and goings unchecked.

I still had very limited access to the car. So, it called for some innovative measures, if we were to spend more time together in these last few days.

A close friend of mine who hailed from across the river had rented a flat near the university for the school year. I cornered him in the cafeteria and confided in him: simply, that I had an urgent need for his place for a week; could he move in with someone in the university hostel for the duration?

There is an unwritten code among friends in that age group, certainly in the milieu we lived in: the precursor of don’t-ask-don’t-tell, I suppose Or, we’ll do the explanations later … maybe!

That made things easy.

We’d bring food as the two of us met in the flat every day. It became our home. We‘d saunter down to the river, which was a few minutes down a crumbling path, and picnic by the water for most of our meals. Piping hot chai was available 24-hours a day just around the corner, from a road-side tea-peddlar who catered to rickshaw-wallahs … a private “Tim Horton’s’”of our very own.

It was a happy time. It’s difficult to explain, but probably the happiest in my life.

We were terribly loving and caring, attentive to and considerate of each other. It remained, right to the very end, to the very dregs, free of any dispute or conflict or argument or anger or finger-pointing or blame or recrimination.

There were moments of nostalgia, but they drew laughter, not tears.

There was wary talk of the future, but only to make sure -- on her part -- that I continued pursuing my studies in literature.

“You must teach and write some day,” she said, and I nodded.

“Write, Write, W-R-I-T-E !” she said. “Remember, you’re a writer!”

“Never, ever, in Hindi again, I assure you,” I said, and we rolled on the floor until our tummies ached.

Close to the end, one night, we got down to brass tacks.

“You know, all those promises we have made to each other,” I said. “Well, today we release each other of them all. There’s to be no guilt, ever, no expectation, no feeling of betrayal. From now, I want you to look ahead, never backwards.“

She knew it was going to be her big challenge, not mine. Within a few days, a sea change would hit her and plummet her into unknown waters.

A marriage. To a man she had yet to meet. Leave the cocoon of her family, on a one-way journey. Move to an alien city. Join a family she didn’t know. All of this while mourning the end of ‘us’.

It was going to be nothing short of standing at a cliff-edge in the middle of the night, closing your eyes, and being pushed into the beyond. While having no faith or trust in those who were pushing you forward, or those who may be waiting below.

“No matter what we think of where we’re at today,” I reminded her, “your future awaits you. Once you head home, there is no past. I do not exist from that point on.”

She searched my eyes, wondering where all of this was coming from.

“I won’t follow your path, nor you mine. No phone calls. No letters. No inquiries. No questions. No messages. You must concentrate on making it work, in being happy, and allow nothing to sabotage your marriage.”

“Once a year? In code?” she asked, half mischievously.

“Never,” I said. “Not once in fifty years!”

“And when we die?” she said, as she pushed me and I keeled over.

All I could do was smile. She did too.

*   *   *   *   *

For the second time that month, she called me at home.

“My father is coming tomorrow to take me home,” she said.

When I didn’t respond, she said, “You know that the wedding is next Monday, remember?“

I was still trying to digest what she was saying. Couldn’t utter a word.

“Come. Now. Please.”

I said I would and hung up.

My Dad was out, so no car. I took a rickshaw.

She was in her hostel room, packing.

“Let’s go to the tomb,” she said.

“I don’t have a car today,” I said.

So we scratched our heads, wondering how we could solve the problem. The concept of rent-a-car hadn’t reached India yet.

“Let me call my aunt and see if she can help,” she said.

Her aunt said, come over, I’ll see what I can do.

We went there in separate rickshaws … we couldn’t take risks any more.

By the time we got there, her uncle had left. With their only car.

But her aunt knew how important it was to us. She phoned around.

There was one possibility: their auto mechanic had an old car sitting in his yard. Hadn’t been driven for ages, a discard. But he would try to put in a newly-charged battery and see if he could get it going.

The phone rang an hour later.

It would do, he said, though it was going to be rough. How far are you going, he wanted to know. Well, about an hour’s drive, I said. Drive carefully, he said, and you’ll be fine.

I walked over a couple of streets to his garage. It was an ancient Ambassador, rusted and dented, and very, very dusty.

But, hey, it was a car! And it was ours for the day.

He had put in enough gas to take us to Khush Pir’s tomb and back. I could’ve kissed him. Instead, I tipped him well.

Got into the car. I turned the ignition key. It grumbled, reluctantly came alive, but coughed like a TB patient. Not a problem, I said, and inched her forward.

She was waiting for me at the street corner, and hopped in. 

We laughed our heads off as she surveyed the interior: our last hurrah was not going to be amidst opulence.

We left the busyness of the city within a few minutes. But suddenly, as I turned a corner, a child shot across the road, a mere ten feet in front of us. I hit my fist on the horn button, and slammed on the brake, all at once.

The horn did not respond.

The brake-pedal seemed to work for a brief second, slowed the car ever so slightly, and then surrendered completely to my foot, collapsing all the way to the floor.      
 
I glanced at the child as he fled safely to the other side. I hit the horn again and again. Still no sound. By this time I realized the brakes weren’t working either.

By then the car was veering to the left. It had slowed down but not enough. Before I could steer it back on the road, it was halted in its tracks by a large milestone.

My right arm shot out to stop her from hitting the dashboard.

I needn’t have worried. The jolt of the sudden halt snapped a rusty bolt somewhere under me. It must’ve been holding the front-seat upright, because suddenly the entire seat lifted in the air and fell backwards, taking both of us with us.

We looked at each other, horizontal but our legs in the air, the base of the seat standing vertical, and assessed the situation.

I leaned forward but couldn’t make any headway. So we did it together in tandem, and the seat fell back in its original position. I grabbed the steering wheel, and asked her to shift her weight forward to keep the seat in position.

I stepped out of the car. The kid was fine, having joined his family. They were admiring the scene. The stone had made a serious dent into the front-grill, but the crawling speed of the car had saved the radiator.

I realized the engine was still running.

I quickly got back behind the steering wheel, backed up the car, and after a few complaints from the cranky gear lever, we were merrily on our way, again.

We sat at the edge of the seat to ensure its upright position, and I hung on to the steering wheel tightly as the seat rocked as we went over potholes.

“We’d better stay at 20 kmph,“ I muttered, remembering that the brakes weren’t working either. Nor the horn.

It is then that we started laughing, which further endangered the driving.

So I pulled into the first lane I saw running into the fields. It led to a mango orchard, deserted but for a couple of cows tethered to a tree. I turned the car around until it was facing the road we had left behind, lifted my feet off both the clutch and the accelerator, and let the law of inertia do its job. The car came to a halt. I turned off the ignition.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it to the tomb,” I said.

It was a befitting evening to end it all. We joked and giggled until our tear-ducts were dry and our stomachs couldn’t take it any more.

It was dark when we began to head back. The car started with minimal complain, but we had another surprise in store: the lights weren’t working.

We bounced our way back to the road and headed for the city, with the finesse of a Stealth, a dark, silent, invisible shadow weaving through the traffic at a walking pace.

Bless the country, no one noticed. No one cared.

The windows, neither mine nor hers, would come down. So we kept our doors ajar and yelled out to pedestrians to stay clear.

“Use the bloody horn,” they yelled back.

It took us an hour and more to negotiate that mile, and it was taken up completely by our valiant efforts, both of us, in staying upright and keeping the local populace alive.

I swung into her aunt’s street and let the car slide to a stop a hundred feet past their house. Her fingers slipped out of my hand as she opened the car and hopped out.

I immediately revved the car and rolled away.

*   *   *   *   *

We’ve kept our promise. There’s been no contact between us ever since.

CONCLUDED

February 20, 2013

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