Erratica

It was another windy afternoon and I was trying to make the baby sleep, humming a rather incoherent lullaby which can barely reach my three-month old. Motherhood leaves you enchanted. So much that I can spend an entire day feeling my baby’s little pink self, his curled fingers, swollen eyes and the innocent face engrossed in a blissful slumber. Yet the thought came with the gust of wind and hit my heart taking me back to another rainy day leaving my little one behind…..

I was riding my cycle on my way to college, post snow and drizzle. Most hilariously it was the first vehicle I could think of buying after coming overseas. It was only a week in college and I bumped into Navin for the first time. I have rather an impertinent demeanour when it comes to accepting my driving fallacies and driven by that I got engaged with him in a spat instead of a nice sweet apology. Following this were a few whimsical incidents that led us to speaking terms. No sooner did we become the best of pals dreaming to overwrite an already decided destiny….. We bonded over Beatles, Shubha Mughdal and imported wine, we fought over Tolstoy and Bourgeoisie and we stayed for sleepovers and elongated flight travels all the way back to home. Our talks became esoteric, our friendship ripened and love remained beneath its sheath, visible only behind a mist. We were in love only in philosophy, not in theory.

 New York indeed grows in dreams and talks of thousands of people, and the people here grow while weaving them. Indians were plenty here then, each having different destinations all of which were concurrent to the same alley. Hence friends were easily available even on foreign shores, friends whom you won’t take a second to remember and again not a second to forget. The days were running fine, the talks growing louder, the bond only strengthening day by day till graduation. Till then we had made epic advances in our growing chapters. We had spared Tolstoy and reached Marxism, we have wandered from Mussolini to Monroe, and Pinkfloyd has already grooved over the population I guess.  Only the wine could not grow any red, and thus we remained in love, not in theory only in philosophy.

Youth sweeps by rapidly and so does its years. After Oxford it was Boston who showed interest in me and Navin went to Sorbonne, by the only journey which he made secluding me, to pursue liberal arts and photography. Initially there were postcards and epistles, considering the poem which flowed through both of our pens, which flew between the continents. However priorities change with time and they soon make you realize the urge to get over an unspoken love blooming in daylight reveries at the face more crucial duties. Boston led me to Sid and Sid to marriage which gave the best creation of God, my son.

The Boston years were not a cakewalk like the times I spent in the New York attic with Navin. With amma’s faltering health and dad’s retirement, life left me few choices to remain like an elitist. I left my German and Latin courses to save pennies, started working at a consultancy to gather some more and even gave up weekly operas and Shakespearean sessions. The only non-curricular tutorial which I always managed to afford was brisk French, expecting an apparently uncalled letter form a distant Monsieur. My marriage also came hastily; though chopping the grandeur from it also took away the sense of ordeal which often comes handy with conjugal occasions.

It was my first post-nuptial vacation to 6^th Ballygunge Place, Calcutta during the autumn festivities. The city was dazzling in Durga Puja pomp with shimmering lights embellishing the rather sordid lanes, the crowded avenues giving your olfactory perception an aroma of the ethnic culinary delicacies. At these times I often feel as an erratic amidst all the surrounding hustle. And on Ashtami morning, when I was going for the customary anjali to the nearby pandal radiant in a yellow saree, that I bumped into Navin Banerjee, seven years fourteen weeks later. The rendezvous was brief indeed, lasted over a few minutes only enough to enquire each other’s well-being and bid adieu. That was exactly what we did then, though a million thoughts clustered and jostled through the memory lane later that night making the serenity outside more like an oppressive languor.

Soon after our Indian jaunt Sid and I became proud parents in the following year’s fall. It was indeed like a utopia in hand as I was coming out of the hospitals corridor to my way back home with my baby cradling in my arms and on that fateful hour I peeped into the neighbouring coup only to find my New York mate striving through his last days after combating valiantly for two long years in acute Leukaemia. It was the first snow of the season that night and long after my better half had slept in the dreams of our cherishing future which came with the new life, after receiving goodwill from friends and fosters, I wept silently amidst a shivering chill for a long-lost bond, the snow and the darkness being the only witnesses.

I often accuse myself for not being justly happy on the day my son was born. When I was a teenager, my mother often used to tell how complete a woman gets to be after motherhood and how unparallel is its essence. Amma herself was hell of a mother, friend, teacher and saviour. Thus idolizing her only adds to my guilt. I had not seen or tried to see my American cohort since that day. Only at times I have wished to hear from him or reach to him in a lone afternoon. We indeed had a lot of catching up to do. Today after three months, when I was erecting another heap of useless thoughts and futile wishes, a beneficiary of Navin Banerjee came all the way from New York to Maryland to hand me his few belongings dedicated to his dear friend on the sad event of his demise two weeks ago.

Life gives you ample reasons and moments to lament, lament about the past and for the present. With Navin I had no broken promises, no untold truths or unfulfilled duties. His friendship was more like a jest of lifetime, happy happy and happy I was with him. We enjoyed a carefree time together that were never to return. And life after that has also been kind enough to me. However even peace appears to be punishment at times as I tried to fight back the lump which suffocated my throat while opening the treasured collections of my dead amigo. They consisted of few antique French letters by Shakespeare, my twenty-something love and…… a bunch Sepian photographs of mine taken behind his lens at moments which went unnoticed even by me. I gaped at them as if the woman in the portraits was not me. As if it was a beautiful apparition of a girl who was lost ages ago in the cafes of New York. As if the girl there was waving at me and talking, telling the story of times which were vivacious, depicting someone more than me. I’m uncertain about the tenure for which that intoxicating trance was lasting till my baby rescued me from it while the twilight rays made my lap crimson. I looked at his face as he smiled and suddenly the wounds healed. I kissed him with all the love that was due on the day he was born and with that I also treasured my love story which existed only in philosophy not in theory.