The Ominous Signal

The whole city pulsed with dampness, as though the walls and pavements and sleeping bodies had been steeped overnight in fever. A rain of dawn had washed Calcutta, leaving her sweating and swollen, heavy with her own breath.

Sunil leapt across the water with three quick bounds, landing on the pavement like a man who feared the earth might swallow him whole. Winter rain perhaps, but in Calcutta every shower was the same: the streets turned treacherous, the stones dissolved, walking fast became a crime against gravity. Yet the girl—ah, the girl moved as if the city were her conspirator—darting like a kingfisher, skimming, leaping, her feet accustomed to Calcutta’s wounded body, the city that both betrayed and carried her.

 
Mud gripped Sunil’s soles. The potholes yawned at him like the mouths of beggars. Communists had promised to mend them, but the streets had not believed. His shoes were new, two and a half days old, bought at Dharmatala with a pride that already felt foolish. Their brief youth was ruined by this obstinate city. The weight of their soiled leather slowed him. But if he didn’t quicken, he would lose her.
 
“Sangeeta! Hey, Sangeeta!”
 
She turned once, briefly. A few drops of rain clung to her black hair like hidden jewels. Her lips were dark, carved as if out of stone, her eyes the color of almonds, her body long as a shadow. She looked. He looked.
 
And then the tram slid between them, iron and thunder, severing time.
 
When it passed, she was gone. Empty space. No trace. As if she had dissolved into air, evaporated like camphor. Even in a deserted street, human beings could vanish.
 
On the pavement, sleepers stirred, shaking off the weight of dreams. Hoardings leaned overhead like tired gods, shielding some from the drizzle. A few curled still under their plastic membranes, oblivious. Poverty oozed out of every crevice. Calcutta, swollen with people, poorest of the poor, yet unchanging.
 
There was a time this sight had set fire to Sunil’s blood. Revolution, like China—he had believed it. That was not long ago. But today it felt like another incarnation, another body he had once worn. The comrades’ faces were already ash in memory, dissolved in distance. Love and revolution, both had been wasted like water spilt in dust. Dreams had turned to sediment, gray and inert.
 
And yet he had called out to Sangeeta. Why? She had not recognized him. Twelve years, maybe more. Who remembers? Forgetting is not betrayal, only nature’s way of surviving. He had run after her in vain, at dawn, through puddles that swallowed shoes. Someone may have already looked at him with suspicion.
 
But it had to be her. The walk, that unstoppable walk. Once, too, he had tried to match it, panting in futility.
 
And now—a strange unease. Only three days had passed since he crept back into Calcutta. Quiet, unannounced, as a thief returns to the house he once burned. By now, a warrant should have awaited him. Strangely, there was none. Surely the captured had uttered his name. Not even his parents knew he was here. Yet he had chased her like a fool. Fortune, or fate, kept him hidden. But he knew—if she stopped, if he looked long enough into her eyes—his disguise would fall.
 
He had not thought to return this way.
 
Back in ’91, when Ashfaq and Sahabuddin had been taken, it hadn’t seemed disastrous. Money ran freely then, across borders, like invisible rivers. Even after arrests, Bombay’s garden of shadows had bloomed. But then came the bomb blasts. The city woke in terror. The underworld shrank, curled, collapsed. The dons fell like broken idols. Small men like Sunil scattered like sparks. Politicians, who once offered the shade of banyans, shook their skirts clean. And so the scented garden of Bombay was abandoned. He fled east, toward the river, toward the city of his birth.
 
Still he hoped. Politicians starved faster than smugglers. The hawala must return.
In the seventies, after failed revolutions, Sunil had drifted for years as a vagabond, jobless, beaten by poverty though not by lathis. Drugs had nearly carried him to death. He had stumbled into Bombay, into the trade, and for twelve years he had learned its secrets. That he would be forced to pack up and return—never had he dreamt it.
 
Yet he still had money. Enough for survival in Calcutta. Enough to keep hunger quiet. He smiled suddenly. Another tram, ringing and shining with rain, clanged into view.
 
They said Calcutta had changed. He saw only sameness. Pavements pocked, trams unchanged, a fan in its colonial cage above first-class heads, groaning like an old prisoner. This was the carriage of the poor, and thus broken. They said millionaires lived here now. He had seen only rags and eyes and hunger.
 
At Rashbehari, the old vision returned—knee-deep water. Just days ago, beautification had been praised in newspapers, investors promised. From Bombay he had followed it all. Yet one drizzle, and the city drowned. Taxi engines gurgled and died. Only the tram, blessed by its raised iron, crept on, slower than a snail.
 
By the park, vagabonds huddled. Not the same men as twelve years past, but their shadows unchanged. Faces altered daily; poverty stayed eternal. Bengal swarmed with new arrivals, Bangladeshis everywhere.
 
Sunil was to alight at Kalighat. Last night, he had thought—he would pray. So this morning he set out. The city still drowsed. Tram passengers dozed—some returning from night duty, some heading to toil. Vegetable sellers, mostly. Others, purposeless as he.
 
Everywhere, weary faces. The same scene, repeated across the world. Pale, faded, drained of radiance. The luminous, the truly vibrant, had become relics, like extinct birds. Was joy itself extinct? Soon, the air would ring with false words, false laughter. Masks of lies. Smiles like switches, turned on to show teeth, turned off to hide them. Someday, perhaps, teeth would be needed only for chewing meat.
 
Kalighat arrived. Morning meant fewer crowds at the temple. The tram halted. Sunil stepped down. And remembered—he had not paid. The tram was slipping into the shed already. He could run, pay. No—what foolishness.
 
“Sunil—”
 
A voice.
 
He turned.
 
And there she was.
 
Not the girl of memory, but a woman now. Yellow sari. Sangeeta, his college friend.
 
“You were on that tram?”
“Yes. Second class.”
“So early? Where were you?”
“Night duty. Strange—so many years! I hardly recognized you. You’ve grown fat.”
 
Her walk, her words—still the same. She had always played with the body of language, as though words were flesh.
 
“You think so? Once you teased me for being thin.”
 
They both fell silent. Silence came like a third person, uninvited.
 
The road lay before them. Rain began again, a slow drizzle. Birds from foreign lands sang in cages. As the day grew, their bars would tighten.
 
“You look unslept,” he said.
 
She did not answer.
 
“So long. I had nearly forgotten you,” she murmured.
“Yes. Those pavements had no cement then. Lampposts carried no Pepsi ads. And you—you were far more beautiful.”
“Time changes people. The city too.”
“And you’ve adapted. I am already weary. Fever yesterday, rain today. Still, I thought—I must pray at Kalighat.”
“From outside it looks easy. Inside, you wouldn’t know. Where are you now? Still in India? I heard nothing, nor did I try. Why seek? Did you take medicine for fever?”
 
The “tui”—the intimate you—struck his ear. It stung now, but could not be changed.
 
“Who takes medicine for fever? Are you married?”
 
Her lips bent into a shy curve, as though the smile had been waiting in darkness for years. “Yes.”
 
“So am I. Was. Divorced now. Thinking again.” A lie.
 
“Where do you live?”
“Singapore. A month’s leave. Mother is ill.” A lie. In ten years, he had seen his parents only thrice. But money he sent faithfully.
 
“And you?”
“My husband, in a multinational. Nothing much. Marriage—because it must.”
 
Another lie. Once she had eloped with her landlord’s son. Then Gauranga Babu, middle-aged, who taught her to dance, made her a nightclub’s bird. Such things could not be confessed. A flush crept to her face.
 
She looked at the rain. “So many years since we had a winter rain like this. Not like Europe. Have you been?”
 
“No need for the lie,” Sunil thought. And yet he said: “Yes. Three times. London, Berlin, Amsterdam.”
 
“I never had such chances,” she said softly.
 
Liberalization had turned the world into a village. The city had changed. But lies were now its true tongue. Did men once lie with such grace?
 
“It was good to see you,” he said.
 
She smiled. Was it real? Who could tell.
 
“You must be going home.”
“Only tired. Worked all night.”
“Call center?”
“Hospital. Nurse. Not patriotism. Social service.”
 
The truth could not be told. Both professions—nurse or dancer—were service, of a kind.
 
“Government?”
“Half.”
“Salary?”
“Enough. Not like you, with your dollars.”
“And children?”
“One daughter. Class Five.”
 
Another lie. Her womb, gone after a botched abortion. Motherhood stolen forever. If only this lie were truth. Her chest clenched secretly.
 
He lit a cigarette. The smoke refused to rise. It clung to the air like damp cloth.
 
“What about you? I heard you were ruined by drugs.”
“Luck saved me. Delhi. Now a software firm.” Another lie.
 
In truth, he was a hawala courier, a shadow among shadows. He wrote drafts, ferried papers, and watched fortunes fly like ghosts to other lands.
 
“All that revolution, and here you are,” she teased.
“It was wild then. Now I know. There is no collective. Only the single man.”
 
She laughed. Her laugh still bright.
 
Rain thickened. Birds flapped, shaking their feathers. Winter birds suffered in rain.
 
Two kinds of people existed. Those who grew rich, endlessly. Those who grew poor, endlessly. This would never change. Computers, phones, towers, advertisements—progress. Yet no peace. Because the small fish drowned. The sharks were blessed.
 
“Let’s go. You’ll be late.”
“No. I liked seeing you.”
 
They stepped out. A raindrop slid down her lip. Another hissed on his cigarette. Smoke clung to the morning.
 
“You didn’t tell me of your wife. Children? Why divorce?”
“One day I’ll come to your house. Then I’ll tell you. Write your number.”
 
She scribbled, then asked for his.
“Bought a flat in Calcutta?”
“Yes, something like that.” He gave a false address.
 
“I had forgotten your face. But at Gariahat, I knew you at once. Remember in ’71, before you went to Medinipur? I stayed at your house. Your mother fed me spinach and rice. That taste lasted years. I must come again.”
 
Her eyes brimmed. Her mother dead five years, her brother vanished longer. Yet she showed nothing.
 
“Come one day,” she whispered. Checked her watch. Hurried toward the bus stand. Her eyes blurred. She had given him false address. Yet she had his number. There was hope.
 
But Sunil, walking toward the temple, thought the opposite. He had lied as well. Still, someday, he would go.
 
He was certain the nation was ruined. A land of jobless youth. And yet no revolt. Only liquor shops, blue films, astray youth. He too was astray. Else why had he lied?
 
At the temple, he asked the priest: was the auspicious time intact?
“Ten, fifteen minutes left.”
 
Truth. At last.
 
Sangeeta waited at the bus stand. A bus came, empty.
“Mominpur?” she asked.
“Yes, yes.”
 
But the bus turned to Exide.
“What’s this? You said Mominpur!”
“When did I?”
“Let me down.”
“Pay the fare.”
“Why? You lied.”
 
The quarrel continued.
 
In this city, no one spoke truth.
 
The “global village” sang its own praises. Civilization baptized its barbarism as progress.
 
And in days ahead, Sunil and Sangeeta would perhaps never meet again.
Even if they did, there would be no truth left.
 
Their lives were already bound in lies.
 
That, perhaps, was the final warning.