the kiss which purged...

Putting the phone on the cradle, Debarghya sat down on the recliner by his desk.
He did not sit down abruptly. The way he sat down showed a kind of being slow...sluggish...as if he was thinking something...as if he was not conscious of his act of sitting down.

The silent room mixed suitably with the silence that descended on him after the telephonic conversation he had with Ritika.

Outside it was raining continuously as if mother nature had got the hint of Ritika's wails and impassioned words...her strangest explanations...her improbable wishes and desires...her illogical ideas.

Even a few minutes back, before the call came, Debarghya was reading a book, sitting at the living room. Usually he spends Saturday evenings watching television or reading books. Sometimes he goes out to do groceries or to the local library. For middle aged professor who had not tied the knot so far, night life is supposed to be just like that. In his spare time, which is so luxuriously provided to people belonging to his profession, he writes. Apart from running an online literary magazine, he contributes at regular intervals to dailies and magazines. That is his way of life. He chose it.
In fact, he is quite pleased with it. His parents died several years ago and he being the only offspring of his parents , virtually has no one to visit. But sometimes his friends and colleagues come to his house and together they have adda sessions over tea and pakoras. But then again that is occassional.


Now after four years, this evening, out of the blue, Ritika called him. After four years of eerie hibernation, Ritika called.
At first Debarghya thought it was from the printers.A book...a printed edition of the magazine would be out this August as a special commemorative issue.
So he picked up the phone quickly...but after a momentary silence a female voice at the other end spoke hesitantly:
'Hello! Am I talking to Mr. Debargyha Sarkar?'
'Yes...'
Debarghya uttered curiosity taking over him.
'Who are you?'
He repeated getting no response from the other end.
'How are you?'
'I'm fine...but...'
Debarghya stopped realising suddenly whose voice it was and that realization really made him even more curious.
'Goodness me! Ritika! after a long time...really... where have you been?'
Debargyha tried to remain cheerful and joyous though there was always a gut feeling working hard deep down somewhere within him to hang the phone up...to snap the line then and there, but he also had curiosity working inside which was prodding him all the time to stay there...to hang on...to know certain things...why she stopped talking...why? Marriage? but then why she had got married so suddenly? or is it that the marriage was always there on cards...kind of predetermined thing...and he was just one of her close friends who never got close enough to be her life-partner... 
'Is it raining there?'
Ritika asked in a soft tone as if she had been conversing with him all these years and as if she was resuming a talk from a point from where she had left.
'Yeah...yes...'
Debarghya answered in brief, surprised again though.
'That's why could hear the rattling sound of something falling...those sounds are known to me...earlier heard the same sounds in the same manner...'
Ritika's voice had a peculiar kind of a drag, as if she was dreaming.
'How are you and your family?'
Debarghya asked, after keeping silent for sometime, searching for conversation starters.
'Do you still write?'
Ritika asked, as if she had not heard what Debarghya told her.
'Yes...I do...how is your husband? got children?'
Debargyha asked.
'Hmmm...he is fine...I am also good...what about writing a poem for me this evening...as it is raining at your place...and the moist evening air is entering you through your big glass windows...achcha...is that Kadam tree still there by your window? Does it still bear flowers?'
Ritika asked...the strange drag coming back to her again.
At once Debarghya remembered how in rainy evenings specially, Ritika used to call him and they would chat for long...breaking out into poetry often...how they spent several sleepless nights calling or receiving calls...talking... talking like two very intimate friends who had nothing to do other than talking their hearts out to each other...sharing poetry, writings, dreams...and how suddenly everything came to a halt...a stop...Ritika got married...sent him even an invitation card...and he sent her a letter expressing his inability to attend the wedding and also a book of poems...
'What's the use of knowing all those trivial details Ritika...the tree had died four years back...'
Debarghya sighed, feeling definitely uneasy to talk about the past which he wanted to be left buried into the dust and darkness of oblivion.
'No...it can't be! How can that beautiful tree die suddenly? no no...you must be lying...'
Ritika's voice trembled a bit.
'It had died...don't know how...it was growing pale and colorless...losing leaves...then it became a skeletal figure of a dead tree with its dead lifeless branches spread out pathetically...it was really a sorry sight...an eyesore...so oneday...I asked the woodcutters to chop it off and take it down...'
Debargyha informed, trying hard to remain calm and dispassionate.
'Oh...no...please please...save me from all those sordid details... but you know...I have something to tell you...in fact for that I called you...remember how on a rainy evening like this you for the first time kissed me...standing under that tree and then quite childishly ran indoors...as if you had done something wrong...ashamed...and how I followed you...and...'
'Stop Ritika...stop!'
Debarghya cried out.
'There is no meaning in recalling all those events now...after four years of your marriage...which you secretly planned all the time...I fear...There is no need to go back to the past...you are married...you must have got kids even...be blessed with your family...and...I am sorry but...I need to hang up now...need some important works to do...'
Debarghya added in a voice, which grew sterner as he progressed, as if a dormant volcano had risen within him...as if his all pent up emotions would burst into open, burning everything with rage fused with terrible agony.
'Okay...hang up if you so wish...but before you do...just want to tell you a few things...it might please you...it might agonize you...but...I think I need to tell you all...first of all, I had to marry that person...out of a compulsion...a compulsion which was thrust upon me by my family...I had to repay certain debts made to my husband's family by my father by marrying him...since then...I have been slaving like an ox at my in-laws...slaving..really...working day and night...taking care of all the members...but I don't know whether you believe it or not...I was reminded of you every moment of these years...every moment...from morn till night...in my wakefulness...in my dreams...in my cries...in my silent prayers...and...and ...I don't know how you will take it...but...even when I made love with my husband...I thought only of you...and that was really a very puzzling thing for me...a too complicated mental state to grasp fully...initially I felt guilty of myself being a cheater by mind...thinking of you...imagining you while sleeping with my legitimate bed partner...I felt sorry for myself...but then it became a habit for me...a secret which I cherished...but God must have been the real judge...He knew it all...so He punished me for being an adulteress...He provided us with no kids...in between two miscarriages  happened...But...but now...I need your blessings...Yes your blessings...please please tell me you have forgiven me! please!'
Saying all these in a heightened emotionally charged tone, Ritika broke off...she started crying...crying profusely...inconsolably...
'Why? what happened?....look Ritika...listen to me! I'm fine....I've forgiven you...and believe me...I have no grudge on you now as I heard your story...believe me...don't cry like that...please...tell me...why you are so charged tonight? what happened?'
Debarghya asked, feeling really anxious, for the first time about someone, really, after leading four or five years of self-centred, isolated, selfish kind of life with nothing else to care for.
'For...for...I'm pregnant again....and tomorrow I would be taken to hospital...the expected date is at the end of next week...the doctors are saying the pregnancy is a bit complicated...and...who knows I might die of child birth or...the worst...give birth to another still-born? If I die...it would cause no pain to anyone...but if I stay on to live and give birth to a still-born...then...then...I would be surely ostracized...'
Ritika uttered, still sobbing and whistling through nose, as she usually does after crying.
'Come'n! Don't be so primitive in your thinking...we belong to the modern age of internet and nuclear missiles... of women's lib...of feminist writings...of media consciousness...don't be so morbid and prejudiced...I think you are getting too much premonitory...Just give me a kiss...give me...quick!'
Debarghya said smartly, like he used to do, in a commanding tone, earlier, in his younger days, feeling young again quite superciliously.
'O Debargyha! How can I repay you? your debts?'
Ritika said, her voice getting wet again, as if she would start crying.
Sensing that, Debargyha took the mouthpiece to the closest possible position to his mouth and planted a kiss, a long drawn one, on the cold, lifeless, dotted circular ring at the end of the receiver...trying hard to imagine his love's blurry face, closing his eyes.He knew that the kiss would surely travel through ether of that wet evening, thousand miles across, to reach its destination...and surely it would purge everything...purge two souls, the rain filled evening, the womb of a mother and more importantly the child to be born...he kissed wishing the child all the strength of the world...he kissed wishing the child to be born with all the goodness of the world as if he was the progenitor...an unreal one...but soulful...









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