Waiting

The smell of dead sighs roams this room, ancient and circling. Only when Dipankar is alone does he sense it. A room means four walls and a roof. In the materialist’s philosophy, a space fenced by four walls means solitude and secrecy—individualism. A middle-class room means household; for saints it becomes a house of prayer. In this room, along the four walls, the idols of knowledge have risen in ranks—in the shape of books. Those books carry a faint sour-salty taste, like a tongue sliding along a brass plate— which, after a while, turns sweet upon the tongue. Thus this becomes a place where a person can rightly accuse himself. Beyond the tri-boundary of this room begins the indivisible world, and with that whole Dipankar keeps a single electric connection: upon the room’s only tea-table sits a pitch-black, ancient telephone. To dial even one digit on its wheel, you must spin it at least seven times.
 
Dipankar’s hair stands to the left, defying gravity. After an afternoon rice-sleep, a lazy man’s hair always looks like this.
 
The nap shattered before evening at the clang of the telephone. Like Pavlov’s dog, Dipankar sprang up. As if his life depended on that long-desired summons, he stood, hand stretching toward the phone. Before his fingers touched it, the sound went dark. A few moments. Suddenly it felt as if the room had been struck by an intense, cutting silence— as though the room were stationed on some desolate planet in outer space. The telephone had arrived as waves, carrying a message to him, then returned to the human world.
 
Among those who step onto the platform only to see the train pull out, the clever ones sit and wait for the next. The foolish go home, broken-hearted. Dipankar belongs with the clever. He regrets, yes, but at once he can return for the next round of waiting.
 
Evening light had fallen slantwise across Dipankar’s desk. Movement along the road by the window kept growing denser with people. In the dimming dusk Dipankar unfolded Sutapa’s letter. He had read it so many times it was nearly memorized. From first to last, every word’s position had become familiar as his own palm. The language of a final love letter from a woman resembles the language of resignation. In that sense, this was a resignation letter. It begins, as such letters do— praising the one being left: how good he was, how happy she had been here, and yet she must go in search of a larger world. No one is to blame. Official English runs through it like a template—“Due to unavoidable circumstances, I would better move on, I’m grateful to you,” etcetera, etcetera. Dipankar had hoped to learn some unknown facts about himself from Sutapa’s letter. But, seasoned professional that she was, Sutapa wrote nothing about him. And thus Dipankar fell into a sort of disappointment. Here was a chance to lay out the dark facets of his character; Sutapa did not use that chance.
 
In life, the seduction of a resignation letter is that one tries to find within it some seed—of hope or of despair. The seasoned players who submit such letters artfully hide that seed. Dipankar is hopeful; he is certain that even after a firm, well-phrased resignation, Sutapa will change her mind and, invoking college-days love, send a re-appointment letter. If not that, at least a telephone call. If she’s ashamed to speak, she can hold the receiver in silence at the other end. The hope of the hopeless is a terrible thing. Holding the letter in his hands, Dipankar stroked it for a while. He brought it to his nose and inhaled its smell—the same impulse by which people sniff the scent of stale flowers.
 
It was Sunday evening. The door opened and Auntie came in with tea. In the half-dark room, Dipankar hadn’t quite noticed her arrival— he was that lost in thought. Startled, he dropped the letter quickly on the table and slouched back into the chair. Even if privacy had been broken, he had no intention of letting anyone see the state inside him.
 
— “The girl has come again.” Setting the tea on the table, Auntie said.
— “A nuisance.” Dipankar grew irritated. He had no chance to savor his anxieties in calm. Better to sit somewhere on the pavement outside the house and think his thoughts in peace.
— “Shall I send her away?” Auntie asked with a little smile.
— “What else? If we drive her out, she’ll run around the whole neighborhood declaring that the Dattas are antisocial.” Dipankar’s brows drew together.
 
Auntie said, “One should have some shame. Such a big, so-called divorcée woman.”
— “Who will make her understand?” said Dipankar.
 
Dipankar tried to steady himself. That last line from Auntie had pricked him too. He lifted Sutapa’s final letter from the table and placed it in the drawer. The girl would step into the room any moment now. A shirt on the body was necessary. His health was gaunt, sick-ridden. Clothed, he looked better—at least intelligent.
 
He was pressing down the upright hair with his palm. Standing before a mirror equal to his height, he looked himself over once. From the corner of his eye he saw the girl—quite stiff—perch on the chair beside the telephone.
 
The girl couldn’t freely let her eyes roam around the room. To keep her from becoming comfortable, Dipankar avoided any form of address. He set his face as grave as possible and acted as if he were alone in the room.
 
Sitting by the telephone, the woman’s discomfort kept growing. This made the fourth Sunday. She had not yet given up.
 
With a book propped to his mouth, Dipankar kept thinking of the girl. Age thirty-two, thirty-three. A head of thick hair. Two big braids tied behind, one to each side. A pale parting, cleanly centered. Like younger girls, the habit remained—when she moved her head, the two plaits would swing on either side. Dipankar had been seeing the girl for nearly twenty-five years—one might say since childhood. Long ago their families had been friendly. Those memories are now gray. Dipankar can’t recall everything exactly. Next-door, after all. In this city-life, the news of this room doesn’t reach that one; next door is very far.
 
The girl’s name is Jhuki. Her father had a kerosene dealership. Every year they erected a pandal on their roof and held Kali-puja with great bustle. The whole neighborhood came for khichuri. Wearing half-pants, Dipankar loved to hang two feet from the bamboo pole of the pandal and swing. Jhuki then wore a frock. Very small. Dipankar was several years older than she. He had many other friends in the para— with them games, scuffles, quarrels, joy—everything. Once, in winter, while playing hide-and-seek, under a quilt with Jhuki… Dipankar was ten then. A suburban boyhood is entirely different— the golden time of life. Football, swimming, cycling—how many kinds of joy. How many friends. Not like today. Then there were many fields in the neighborhood. There were ponds. Now the promoters have swallowed all. One house’s adolescent doesn’t know the adolescent next door. Youth has no place beyond the room.
 
Jhuki sat by the telephone, almost cowering. She violated Dipankar’s privacy and provoked his annoyance.
 
— “I know you are very disturbed,” she said. “It’s been the same three Sundays. Bear with me just this once. Perhaps I won’t need to come next Sunday.” Jhuki looked straight at Dipankar, her tone tinged with a shy apology.
 
Though irritated within, Dipankar’s external manners were razor-polite. He said, “No, no, it’s okay. Nothing inconvenient.”
 
Jhuki was not satisfied with that emotionless voice. She smiled faintly. “You’re saying that out of courtesy. If a strange woman sits in a man’s room by force, his privacy is ruined.”
 
At that, heat flared along Dipankar’s ears. He is especially sensitive to feminine insinuation. So sensitive that even an innocent remark sometimes strikes him as insinuation. “Do you want me to leave the room?” Dipankar said, annoyed.
 
Jhuki seemed to dim at once. She didn’t know what to say. Or perhaps she searched to see what mistake she had made.
 
Dipankar said, “If you don’t want that, then please sit quietly and wait for the telephone.”
 
Jhuki stayed silent; the sight made Dipankar want to laugh. As a child, her manner of speaking had been comical. Not only did she talk too much, she spoke so fast that most of it felt unintelligible to others. In quarrels it became even worse.
 
That little girl is this woman—Dipankar marvels at the thought. As a boy he often heard from his mother that the girl’s father had a lot of money—earned by crooked trade, by cheating people. Now Dipankar understands: in their childhood, if anyone had money, that meant he was a businessman, and a businessman meant a contemptible person, an illegal trader—especially to the Bengali middle class scraping by on government jobs. To them, “businessman” was a class enemy. The Bengali’s long practice of Marxism is a prime reason, Dipankar sees today— and also why the Bengali has fallen behind in so many spheres.
 
Then, very young, Jhuki’s father died of a stroke. Dipankar was in college. The two families were no longer close as before. On the road in passing, or while pacing on the roof— a few words, that was all. Then even that ceased. As neighbors, they had no way to know exactly what changes her father’s death brought to their household. But everyone sensed a financial shift.
 
In this twenty-first-century global village, no one keeps news of those just beyond one’s own wall. Instead, people are more eager to know what’s happening in Manhattan, in the city of Iowa. So there was neither necessity nor urge to learn next door’s news. Only sometimes, from the roof, they glimpsed each other. Seldom, very seldom, one might overhear a loud quarrel. After the father’s death, many tales about her mother spread through the para. Various men visited their house. At odd hours, Jhuki and her mother would be seen with different men. A middle-class neighborhood could not digest such things. Dipankar’s mother and aunt both could not stand the woman. Now Dipankar understands— it was a mental blockage of this society, one that has still not fully gone.
 
People delight in gossip and rumor. Besides, Jhuki’s family was already somewhat isolated. No one knew when, where, how her marriage took place. Sometimes, returning from the market, Dipankar would see her— vermilion bright as blood in her parting—emerging from home with a middle-aged man.
 
— “Your tea’s gone cold,” Jhuki said. Dipankar knew she could not sit silently for long. Puffing a “hu” sound, he lifted the cup. Sitting in his chair, he pretended to be reading with great attention.
 
Cring cring cring. The phone’s receiver shivered with a violent clatter. At the same instant an odd radiance spread across Jhuki’s face and eyes. She said, “I’ll answer—perhaps it’s for me.”
 
At her naïve eagerness, Dipankar was astonished. For a moment it seemed the girl wasn’t right in the head. He said, “Go on, answer.”
 
Like a little child, Jhuki sprang up. Pavlov’s dog. Dipankar pricked up his ears. This could be Sutapa’s call too, he thought.
 
— “Hello! Who’s speaking?”
— “Four-one-six six-six-three zero.”
— “Sorry, wrong number.”
 
Dipankar almost exploded. “Why did you say wrong number?”
 
— “What he said was, ‘Is Balvinder Singh there?’ Does anyone named Balvinder Singh live here?” Jhuki smiled. Then a sharp shadow of sorrow fell over her face and eyes. To Dipankar it seemed this expression was somehow unnatural. Somehow tormented. Never before had he seen a wrong number disappoint a human being so deeply.
 
Jhuki sat back down on the chair. After a few moments it was as if she forgot Dipankar’s presence in the room. She whirled, directionless, in the eddy of some other bleak thought.
 
— “Is your call very urgent?” The question Dipankar hadn’t asked in three days slipped out today from sheer curiosity.
 
At first, Jhuki struggled to grasp the question. It must have felt intrusive, a nose poking into private space. Then, when she understood, she said very slowly, “Yes, very urgent.”
 
— “Do you know the number of the person who’s supposed to call you?”
— “Yes.”
— “Then instead of waiting for his call, you could place a call yourself—if it’s that urgent.”
 
With a vacant gaze, Jhuki looked at Dipankar. “No, I cannot do that. He told me to wait for his call. He did not tell me to call him.” She said it with the illogical fervor of a child.
 
— “I don’t quite follow. Who gave him this number?”
— “I did. We don’t have a phone.” Then, with a sudden little snort of laughter, Jhuki added, “But you needn’t trouble yourself to understand. The gist is: he is supposed to call. Not I. It’s a kind of stubbornness. You see, sir?”
 
— “Then the call isn’t as urgent as you pretend it is.”
 
— “I’ve been sitting in someone else’s home for four weeks, losing all face, waiting in anxious hunger for a single call— and still you think it isn’t urgent?”
 
Pain showed in Dipankar’s face and eyes at her words. Perhaps now he finally understood. Jhuki was not waiting for a call, nor for urgent news. She was waiting for her fate. A breath tried to escape Dipankar’s mouth; he held it down somehow. He said, “When will fate be kind? Will you sit forever like this, waiting for a telephone call?”
 
Jhuki set her face sternly. “I don’t understand these riddles. I’m not an intellectual like you. If the call comes, it will come within half an hour. Otherwise, it won’t come today.”
 
— “But suppose he calls at some other time. How do you know he will call now?” said Dipankar.
 
— “If he calls, he’ll call now—or not at all. That’s how it’s been arranged.” Jhuki smiled again.
 
— “And if he doesn’t? Then next week you’ll come again at this time—”
 
Cutting him off with a real scold, Jhuki said, “A person cannot wait forever. You should understand that. And I see you’re very inconvenienced by my coming.”
 
Mad, is she? Or has she come here just to toy with him? To provoke her further, Dipankar said in a tone of sarcasm, “Surely a single telephone call can’t be so valuable in a human life. As for my inconvenience—what does it matter? A month, or a year—just let me know.”
 
Swallowing the insult, Jhuki sat in silence. She made no reply.
 
When a person is deeply disturbed about his own life, another’s humiliation gives him a sadist’s pleasure. Knowing there exists someone more unfortunate than himself, he takes comfort. And his own life feels simpler. Dipankar’s mood gradually began to lighten. Sitting for five minutes in silence beside a half-acquaintance is no easy thing. Humans are made of a substance called ego; if another reads them like an open book, danger follows. Think of how, in the great novels, the self-respect of heroes and heroines is ground to dust on open pages. Better to step outside this closed room. Dipankar rose from his chair.
 
Just then Auntie entered the room. She turned to Jhuki and said, “Would you like something to eat? Puffed rice, chanachur?”
 
Jhuki smiled. “I just had rice a little while ago. I’m not hungry now.”
 
Auntie looked toward Dipankar. He said, “I’ll step out for a bit of air.” From the table he took the cigarette pack and put it in his pocket. Then, looking at Jhuki, he said, “Suppose your call does come today—you’ll want a little privacy, won’t you?”
 
Dipankar laughed. Not a complete simpleton—the girl had wits. She did not seem to know embarrassment. With an enigmatic smile, she turned toward Auntie. “He’s cursing me in his mind,” she said. Then she burst into tinkling laughter.
 
Auntie said, “You’re the one who needs it, so bear a little cursing.”
 
Nothing in life is valuable. Everything is necessary. The sentence rang like an aphorism.
 
Under this roadside banyan tree, the neighborhood’s idle youths, useful brokers, and retired pensioners usually gather all day. From a neutral point of view, this tree and its environs form a mini-India. All kinds of people arrive beneath this mofussil banyan for all kinds of errands. One can sit here and, watching the world’s busyness, let a whole day vanish in an instant.
 
Evening thickened in such a way, and a wind from far off brushed the skin in such a way, that a thrill ran through him. Ordering a tea, cigarette in mouth, Dipankar settled in. This city, the life-mode of this city’s people—one day, history will call it post-modern civilization. Its features, its faults and virtues—judged by the measure of vast time. The people of the Indus civilization used to wait for rain. The people of the information age sit and wait for a telephone call. History changes, and with it changes the character of civilization.
 
The sense of security that had once operated within Dipankar and Sutapa’s relationship kept pulling him backward again and again. Dipankar wondered what it would be like to stand under this banyan, clear his throat, and read Sutapa’s resignation letter aloud in public. Had the envelope been addressed not to “Dipankar Dutta” but to Debashish or Dibakar, Dipankar might have read it and laughed coarsely. The difference is merely this—he cannot laugh at himself. The weakness of one human being becomes fodder for another human’s mirth—closing your eyes, you could measure today’s civilization with that single truth.
 
A specific person’s relationship with another specific person—what is it but the relationship of one name with another name, one definition with another definition? Anyone—X, Y, Z—can be inserted. If X were Z, how much would really change? The end might be the same. Indeed, how often it is so. Countless examples lie all around. The shapes of pain and of joy are almost identical. At each stage of love, every woman speaks the same kind of words. At various times in love, every man performs the same kind of acts. Men desire women by a fixed rule. Women love men by a fixed rule. It has never been otherwise; it never will be—no matter the era of civilization.
 
Again the evening wind touched Dipankar’s body.
 
— “Doing well, Dipankar?” someone said from the side. Bubai. A school friend. Lives in the same neighborhood, yet they haven’t met in ages. When someone asks if you’re well, you must lie. So Dipankar dodged the question: “Do you live here now? I heard you were in Canada.”
 
— “I was. Quit the job and came back. Father’s ill. Found a job here. I’ll be in Kolkata for some time,” Bubai said, sitting beside him. Dipankar added another order of tea at Bahadur’s banyan-stall. He kept talking. “Your wife and child? Are they here?”
 
— “That’s long divorced in Canada. About four years ago. She lives in Montreal with our daughter.”
 
— “Bravo—fine work,” Dipankar said with a wooden smile. This is how he speaks— the way a person speaks against his own will, keeping his true mind covered and sealed.
 
— “What else was there to do? That’s life, friend. And you—what’s your news? English Honours?”
 
— “I teach at a government college—and remain unwed,” Dipankar said, lightly joking.
 
— “Good! Escaped a lot of rotten hassles. A government post is still great,” said Bubai. Then, after a pause, “Then come over one day. I’ve got a few bottles of Crown Royal Reserve from Canada. We’ll drink together. You do drink whisky, don’t you?”
 
— “Now and then. We’re teachers, after all.” Dipankar gave a crooked smile.
 
As they spoke, Jhuki’s face kept floating before his eyes. The woman sat in wait to receive a miraculous phone call. Poor thing—she didn’t know there is nothing miraculous in this world. To human knowing, all is ordinary.
 
Perhaps the hardest thing in the world is to bow oneself and ask forgiveness. In banyan-tree language, it takes talent to do this. Does forgiveness solve anything in this age? This is Dipankar’s realization—on behalf of the mass of people.
 
— “I think there’s no meaning in running life as a slave to a system like this.” At first Dipankar didn’t grasp what Bubai was saying. “It tortures the body. And the mind is raped daily. We don’t even realize it. The brain is built that way.” It seemed Bubai wasn’t speaking personally but of the general condition.
 
— “Then why keep running it? Who’s stopping you from becoming a saint?” Dipankar said.
 
— “That’s the big thing, guru. What you want to be is actually not to be. The fear of crisis in present existence.” Slapping Dipankar’s back, Bubai laughed. “Why haven’t you married yet?”
 
— “Haven’t found the right match. And besides, is it so necessary?”
 
— “Not at all! A free man lives like a king and dies like a beggar. But in a city as big as Kolkata, not finding a match—that’s mysterious.” Both of them laughed now.
 
Sipping hot tea, Dipankar felt a discomfort rising steadily within. He would have to take a decision quickly. The trivial subject-matter of his own life-story seemed unreal today. A middle-aged divorcée. A prior acquaintance. Unlucky and, by economic measure, weak. For whom he had felt no interest until today. Who had given his phone number to someone without informing him, someone who might call her someday— on that excuse she had entered Dipankar’s privacy. And, to receive that call, had sat four Sundays in Dipankar’s study.
 
How an expectant person affects another “normal” person—who knows. Or better to say: the expectant are never normal. To weaken someone, another person leaves him sitting in wait and goes away. What human being on earth is not waiting for something? It is because people wait for the future that they live at all. This is an invisible yoke. In the end, all the waiters will look upon the elusive Banalata Sen and cry out, Where have you been all this time?
 
After a while, Bubai got up and left. All evening, Dipankar had been fighting to unshackle himself. He remembers neither what he thought so long, nor what he said aloud. He has forgotten what else he and Bubai discussed.
 
Unconsciously, he had already taken a major decision. Yet he himself did not know it had been taken. The fact is: instead of waiting for one phone call, it is more intelligent to place another call to a familiar number. From any waiting, in the end, a person seeks release.
 
Beside the banyan stood a telephone booth. Dipankar must place a call at once.
 
On Jhuki’s face, in her eyes, there flickered less normality than curiosity. Sitting alone in a strange room, she was restless. Though in truth, no more restless than any ordinary person would be. Evening darkness had seeped, drip by drip, into Dipankar’s study. Jhuki hadn’t noticed that the room’s light remained unlit. After Dipankar left, no one else had entered. In this masculine-scented room she couldn’t regain her composure. She always forgot her age. Inside a middle-aged body still lived a fifteen-year-old girl’s mind. The notion of her own body she could never tolerate.
 
She gazed about the room in darkness as though seeing everything clearly, like daylight. Jhuki, of course, had little fear of modesty. She could play at shame whenever she wished, act it all the way through if she liked. Or, if she wanted to harden herself inside, she could manage that too. But here, in this unfamiliar place, she couldn’t fathom its nature. She had to hide herself, adjust herself in secret.
 
In the almost-dark room she stared at the telephone and laughed like a ghost. From the next room her mother’s voice drifted in: “Why is the room dark? Switch on the tube-light.”
 
At that very instant the telephone shrieked, violently. A shudder ran through Jhuki’s body. She forgot to light the tube. In a flash she grabbed the receiver.
 
— “Hello.” She pressed her voice calm though excitement trembled inside.
 
No reply from the other end.
 
— “Hello, who’s speaking?” she tried again.
 
The far side remained silent.
 
— “Hello, this is four-one-six six-six three-zero. Is this the number you wanted?”
 
No response. Only Jhuki’s thin breathing could be heard.
 
She fell quiet. Then, after a moment’s silence, she whispered:
— “I knew you would call.”
 
Dipankar slipped a one-rupee coin into the public booth and dialed. The phone rang nearly a full minute. Then a woman picked up.
 
— “Who’s speaking?”
 
At first Dipankar was silent.
 
Again: “Who’s speaking?”
 
Now he understood. “Mother, it’s me.”
 
— “What’s the matter? Do you know what time it is?” His mother scolded; Dipankar said nothing. Then he asked, “Has the girl gone?”
 
— “Were you asleep under the banyan tree? It’s ten o’clock at night. Jhuki left long ago.”