His Father's Disease
Himangshu Dutta
That morning, when Ranjit walked into their room, his elder brother Junti, and his wife Dalimi, were still sleeping. It was quite early; dawn was yet to break. The newspaper vendor, who usually arrived at six, was late. Ranjit stopped beside Junti and touched the end of the blanket that covered his brother’s feet. For a few moments after, he kept looking at his brother, trying to memorise his face. His only consolation was that, perhaps one day, his brother would lead a happy married life. Perhaps someday, he would have a son too, who would make the family proud. Ranjit looked at Dalimi now. These last few months, she had been like a sister to him, confessing everything, even his brother’s inability to consummate their marriage all these months. Many late nights, he’d heard her taking cold lonely baths, from across his room. How radiant and full-of-life she had looked, that first time when he’d seen her alighting from an auto-rickshaw. How her shy bride’s eyes had greeted and accepted him as part of the family that day. And then that night last week, when she had caught her husband sneaking back from Ranjit’s room, how she had turned to him with disgust in her eyes. He wondered where he’d seen that look before?
Dalimi hadn’t spoken to either of them since. He wanted to wake her, to ask for forgiveness. But she would not understand this step he was taking. She might even call him a coward and try to stop him. He quietly slipped the note which read, ‘Paarile khyoma koriba’ (forgive me if you can), under her side of the mattress. Next, he went to his room and sat by the edge of the bed, putting on the slippers his father would wear on his morning walks before he’d disappeared. He recalled the evening when Deta had run away. He was ten at the time. That evening, his father had put on a clean blue shirt and black trousers to go to the nearby pan-shop to buy cigarettes. While leaving, he had summoned his sons close and planted a kiss on each of their cheeks. Ranjit had kissed him back. Junti, who was fifteen, and didn’t like displays of emotion, had flinched and pulled away, embarrassed. Then their father had left. Disappeared from their lives. For as long as Ranjit could remember, his father had been a lost presence in the house, as if he were searching for some happiness that was elsewhere. But his physical absence now haunted them like an obnoxious companion, wherever they went. By then the neighbours had already started gossiping behind the family’s back. Junti started bunking classes and smoking cigarettes outside seedy cinema halls, to escape the demands and disappointments of their mother. But, Ranjit knew, things were different for her. Now with her sons gone to the neighbourhood school, the days turned lonelier and the evenings stretched on and on.... Sometimes his mother would hold him tightly in her arms and weep. And when he’d ask why Deta had run away, she would smile through her tears, ‘Your father contracted a deadly disease. He ran away so he wouldn’t give it to you two.’ He never told his mother how, while attending the evening prayers in his school those days, some senior section boys would be standing next to him, murmuring amongst themselves, ‘You won’t believe what happened! Can you see that dark boy there, he is the son.’ Neither did he tell her how they teased him at school, embarrassing him with questions like, ‘Why is your mother not wearing any sindoor? Has your father died?’ The senior section girls who always bullied him, would play-act his mother’s role, ‘Uff my husband ran away with his boyfriend, what should I do now?’
He recalled the past now, with the disappointing clarity of a man for whom life had come full circle. As the first light of morning filtered through his bedroom curtains, he packed his belongings in a bag, tied it with a piece of rope, and slung it over his shoulder. He did not want his elder brother to go through any of his belongings after he’d gone. Presently, he unlocked the front door without making any noise, let himself out, and stopped to look at the home he was leaving behind. For a second time. But this time, forever. He turned and walked wearily along the pucca road, which ran in front of the house, went straight for a while, and then forked away to the right, ending abruptly by the banks of river Brahmaputra a couple of kilometres away. On the way he ran into the local milkman who was cycling his way into the neighbourhood, with two containers of milk hanging on both sides of his cycle-handle. He exchanged a few pleasantries with the milkman, before moving on. ‘I don’t know…. He just kept on going,’ was all the milkman could say, when questioned two days later after the police got involved. The neighbours had already declared him dead and were looking forward to the ceremony which marked the departure of the soul from earth and onwards to heaven. For weeks after, while strolling past the front gates of the house, Mrs Gogoi could be seen (if not heard) whispering into her husband’s ears, ‘Perhaps it was an affair gone wrong. He was particularly close to his elder brother’s wife. I’d seen them through the kitchen window, laughing over something silly. They were standing this close!’ She’d bring both her hands close.
A week later, the police found his slippers along the shores of Brahmaputra. But the body was never recovered. In a few days, many relatives and well-wishers started pouring in, appropriately dressed in sorrow. They offered the family their heartfelt condolences. Ranjit’s photo, handsome and smiling, was garlanded and kept on a tiny stool placed at the house’s entrance. The neighbours attended the funeral in hordes and sat in the open space by the front yard. Overcome with guilt, Dalimi was too dazed and tired to cry out, and went about her days mechanically. But she was constantly at hand, looking after the guests lest they needed anything. Junti looked distant, smoking his way through the entire day. Later, Mr Gogoi, the next-door neighbour (who had swigged two pegs in mourning behind the backyard Tamul tree with his friends, away from his wife’s prying eyes) rose and gave a eulogy, which turned out to be so long that he had to be hushed with claps of approval.
Soon, the days rolled into one another till it was difficult to separate time. Junti realised that he never really understood his younger brother.
He recalled one night from his childhood when they had been caught by their mother It had been four years after their father had left. That night, in their excitement, they had forgotten that hushed giggles and bed creaks travelled far and loud, especially when everyone else slept in the dead of night. And by the time they’d realised, light footsteps had already moved down the corridor and halted by the door of their room. Terrified, they had waited with bated breaths and pulled the bed sheet up to their necks. In the silence that ensued, Junti had imagined their mother breaking open the door, switching on all the lights, and throwing him out. He would cry and shout and bang at the front door, but to no avail.
The footsteps had halted outside the door, and they heard their mother’s laboured breathing.
‘Junti? Ranjit?’ Their mother had finally called out, ‘Are you sleeping there?’
‘Umff,’ Junti had mock-yawned, ‘What happened, Ma?’
For a few seconds, the footsteps stood undecided. The doorknob creaked once. Then, miraculously, the footsteps had retreated and the bathroom light had gone off again. The next morning, Junti had woken to find Ranjit’s bed empty. His younger brother was already seated at the breakfast table. Their mother eyeing him with disgust from across the table. Did the idiot confess everything? Junti had wondered, bracing himself to face his mother’s wrath. But their mother never confronted Junti about that night ever again. In a month’s time, Ranjit had been sent off to live with their mother’s brother’s family. Junti now wondered, why he hadn’t stood up for his brother then and had preferred to remain quiet? Why didn’t he protect him from those bullies at school? Ranjit never told him about them but he knew.
So many times, his younger brother had tried to talk to him out of their relationship and pushed him away, at times avoiding him for months. But then they had again ended up together. He tried to catch his wife’s eyes now, but she avoided his gaze for the next few days.
One night, Junti could not sleep. Around midnight, once his wife was fast asleep, he sneaked into Ranjit’s room. He had remembered an old album, stashed inside Ranjit’s cupboard. He rummaged through the cupboard, and took out the album. He took it back to his own bed and started flipping through the pages. One particular photo caught his attention. It was from the evening their father had disappeared. In it, a smiling Ranjit stood at the centre, with their mother’s almirah, where she kept her sarees, in the background. Their father had just gone out to buy cigarettes, and they, Ranjit and Junti, had started playing some silly game inside the almirah. While fighting, as they had hugged and kissed each other, they had felt an attraction far beyond brotherly love. With a flushed face, Junti had felt funny butterflies tingling inside his stomach. And when their mother had called out ‘Where are you both?’ From the kitchen, they had hurried out of the almirah and giggled uncontrollably. Junti had picked up the camera lying inside the almirah and pointed at Ranjit. After all these years, he could still hear his heart beating fast, as his younger brother had whispered to him, ‘I will always love you, bhai, no matter what.’
‘But what if mother finds out.’ He had added.
‘She won’t.’ Junti had giggled. ‘We will hide inside the almirah.’
Junti turned to look at his sleeping wife now. He had never wanted to marry. But his mother had been persistent. Finally, he had relented. It was as if his mother had been waiting all these years just to see him settled, for she had died soon after. He remembered their marriage day now. It had been a low-key affair, with only the necessary people present. After the ceremony got over, Junti’s friends had stopped an auto-rickshaw and shoved them inside, with Raja, one of his friends, shouting over the din of traffic to Junti, ‘Everyone must be waiting. So, take nobou straight to her new home.’ Sitting on the rickshaw seat, Junti had suddenly panicked, will he be able to keep her happy? But a shy Dalimi, with her head wrapped in the bride’s stole, had placed her warm hand on his. Finally, when the rickshaw had stopped by the front gate of the house, they were greeted by a smiling Ranjit who had been standing in the sun since the morning to greet the newly-weds. There was a hurried shout of ‘They have come’ from inside the house, followed by a frenzied shuffling of feet till their mother had appeared carrying a bevy of steel utensils. They were laid in a single line before the bride, who had then pushed them over with her right foot as per the custom. All this while, Junti recalled, Dalimi’s hand had been locked into his.
He looked at his sleeping wife again, and promised himself that things would be different from now. She had suffered a lot.
Meanwhile, as Junti sat looking at his sleeping wife, a dream, that had been tormenting her for days now, was troubling Dalimi again. In the dream, Ranjit is standing beside her bed, with a note held in his hands. He hesitates there for the longest time, and then slips the note under her mattress. She realises he is going away and will never come back. But she keeps her eyes shut and pretends to sleep. After some time, he walks away, and her hand instinctively reaches out for her husband. But he is not there. She jumps up and starts searching frantically in every room. But her husband and Ranjit are nowhere to be found. She reads the note and realises that, finally, they both have run away with each other. Now what will happen to her? Will the same story from her husband’s childhood repeat itself?
She wakes from the dream with a start, and holds her husband tightly. Junti looks into her watery eyes, surprised, and notices how they resemble the Brahmaputra in monsoons, at places where the rising water hits the cliff, the dark brown of the soil mixes with the blue overflowing water. He sighs and wonders, where to even begin? what now?
*
Himangshu Dutta currently lives in Chennai, where he works as an auditor in a multinational company. He is a member of The Bangalore Writers Workshop. Originally hailing from Guwahati, Assam, he was born at a time when a language revolution (called the Assam Movement of the 1980s) was brewing across the state. Through his prose, he hopes to capture the smell and feel of those times, and relive his childhood. He loves going out on long walks, mountain treks, or simply cruising along aimlessly on his motorbike.
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