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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 07/17/2015
Rahul
I sat watching Rahul sleeping, turned on his right side on the bed, his hair dishevelled and a small grimace on his lips. He must have come in very late last night, after I had fallen asleep. He had a handsome face, with a certain boyish charm that still lingered despite his thirty two years. And he still could be quite mischievous at times. As I sat watching him, his brows puckered, and I heard him say a soft “Oh, no!” He must be dreaming, I thought.
Rahul claimed that he had never dreamt till about a year back. Whenever someone recounted a vivid dream, he would get a sad, left behind look on his face and say wistfully, “But I never have dreams like the rest of you.”
Then, one day, he woke up in the morning with a grin on his face and told me, “You know, I had the most vivid dream last night!” It was about a man who had driven blindfold down a three kilometre stretch of public road in rush hour traffic without any accident happening. “You know, it was absolutely eerie, how he would slow down and stop as the traffic lights went red and start again when the lights turned green, without ever having a chance to see. Once, he swerved sharply left from his lane to avoid an overtaking bus coming from the opposite side. There was another car to his left, but he swerved just enough to avoid the incoming vehicle as well as the car running parallel to him. It was unnerving!” Rahul said he dreamt in black and white, almost like watching an old black and white movie.
About a week later, as I was reading the newspaper, a small photograph of a man and a news item caught my attention. It said that the man had driven blindfolded from Pedder Road to Chowpatty beach in evening rush hour traffic before the police stopped and arrested him for rash driving and endangering the lives of the public. I immediately recalled Rahul recounting his dream to me and called out to him, “Rahul, you remember the dream you told me about the other day, about the man driving blindfold down a road? Read this article. It says here that a man actually did that yesterday evening!”
We shared the tale with our friends. And that led to some good natured ribbing with them asking whether he had another dream that came true. And oddly enough, the same thing happened about a month later, when Rahul dreamt of a woman giving birth in the compartment of a crowded local train, where the delivery was done by a young, school going girl who played midwife, followed by an exact similar thing happening within a couple of days. This coincidence duly got circulated among our acquaintances. Rahul began to be hailed as something of a soothsayer. Some suggested that he start a website where he could narrate his dreams and people could check subsequently whether they came true. Sunil, his friend and fellow colleague in the software firm that he worked in, who always dreamt of having his own start up and selling a part of the business for a handsome profit, was particularly insistent about opening a website called “Dreams come True”, where Rahul’s dreams could be posted, followed up subsequently with the press coverage of the actual event happening some days later. “Look at the amount of curiosity and fan following that the site will generate if more of your dreams come true, yaar!” Sunil said and continued, “And once you build up a certain number of loyal visitors to the site and develop critical mass, we could seek to host ads along with the articles. We’ll cover the cost of hosting the site and maybe make some money also.”
Rahul smiled and shook his head, saying, “It’s early days yet. Let’s wait and see if the trend continues.”
And it did. Rahul could recount a dream at least once a week. Not all of them were newsworthy. Some of them had to do with a spouse cheating on his or her partner, which Rahul shared with me. In at least two cases we knew that what Rahul dreamt was true, since the marriages or live in arrangements broke up within a month or two. Two more incidents which made the newspapers was related to a rare type of sea creature caught in a fisherman’s net near Alibaug and of a shack catching fire with a young child trapped inside it escaping miraculously unscathed. We made it a point to share with our friends the dreams whose transition into reality we thought was likely to be publicized, so that Rahul’s premonitions could be corroborated independently.
Seeing the grimace on Rahul’s face, I could intuit that he must be having one of his dreams; a particularly vivid and ghastly one, going by the look on his sleeping face. I looked at the clock on the bedside table and noticed that it was going on to seven. “Rahul,” I said, giving him a shake, “Get up if you don’t want to be late to office.” I saw Rahul’s face relaxing, the frown disappear from his brows as he came awake. He stretched lazily and gave me a smile. “When did you get in last night?” I asked, “I left your food in the micro so that you could warm it up before eating and a post-it on the fridge door saying so. Did you have your dinner?”
Due to the nature of his job, there was no fixed time for him returning home, particularly when he was in the final stages of an assignment and deadlines had to be met. Initially, I used to stay up without having dinner till he returned, eager to eat with him and share the day’s happenings with each other. But as he got promoted to team leader and the work volumes and pressures increased, his hours became increasingly erratic. Till he threw a tantrum one day and refused to have his food if I did not promise not to stay up for him without finishing my dinner in case he was late.
Some six months back, I switched jobs from a regular ten to five office to a publishing firm which allowed me to work from home. That way, I could schedule my work in a manner that enabled us to spend quality time with each other, whenever Rahul had free time. At his insistence, I would have my dinner by myself whenever he rang up to inform me that he would be late, though I would try to catch up on some sleep while he was away so that I could be awake and ready to welcome him home and sit with him as he had his food, whenever he returned. If he was likely to spend the major part of the night at office, he would sms “VVLate” to me, and I would set the table for him and put the casseroles of food in the micro, ready to be warmed up by him when he returned in case he found me asleep.
I smiled at Rahul as he lay stretched out on the bed and gave him a poke, saying, “Get up, lazy bones, if you want to reach office in time.” He grinned and shook his head, saying, “Don’t have to. Our team has a holiday today. Didn’t get home till three thirty. But we finished the assignment within time and can afford to take the day off since the client is unlikely to come up with any queries today without examining the data we have sent him.”
“In that case, you can get up and have a wash and have some breakfast before going back to bed to catch up on your sleep. Now hurry and get up while I make some breakfast. Did you have anything to eat last night at office?”
Rahul gave me a wry look and said, “What do you expect? Do you think we can starve the whole day merely because there is work? Of course I have had some food in the office. Soup, bread, chicken cutlets and fruits, if you must know.”
I gave him a push and urged, “Go, have your wash, the sooner you finish breakfast the sooner you can return to bed and make up on your sleep.” Rahul rose and went into the bathroom while I went to the kitchen and fried up some bacon and eggs – his favourite breakfast - and toasted some brown bread and put the coffee in the percolator.
Rahul came to the dining table some fifteen minutes later, clean shaven and freshly bathed, wearing his favourite sloppy and faded yellow T shirt, with holes under the armpits, where the stitches had given way and an equally sloppy Bahamas. I gave a groan. “You could have picked something a little less unsmart to attire yourself in”, I protested. But it was not to be. I had made futile attempts to make him discard these clothes. But he claimed that they were the most comfortable clothes that he had, and if one wanted to let ones hair down and relax it is was absolutely essential that one had ones comfort clothes on.
Rahul merely grinned at my protest and sat down with the newspaper. We sat opposite each other in convivial silence, reading the papers as we ate.
Breakfast finished and with his two cups of coffee ingested, Rahul rose from the table and said, “I think I’ll catch up on some shut eye while you decide on what to cook for lunch. I wouldn’t mind having some of that fantastic mutton rezala that you make. Some naans to go with it and you could order up two plates of mutton biriyani from Swafees and some phirni to end on a sweet note.” I shook my head exasperatedly. Rahul was a diehard carnivore, partial to red meat, and no matter how hard I tried to coax him to having some vegetables, it was next to impossible to have him do so. Lately, I had set my foot down and insisted that we would be having pure vegetarian food at least one day a week.
At first, I had decided that Tuesday would be the vegetarian day each week. But then, I discovered that every Tuesday, Rahul either had to stay late in office, so that he had to take dinner there before returning, or else, he had to take a client out to dinner, so that he did not need to have food at home. “But you can always opt for vegetarian fare at office or when you take the client out!” I protested. Rahul shook his head and said, “You don’t understand. If I don’t take what the client wants, he is likely to feel uncomfortable ordering what he feels like having, and that would spoil the fun and mar our hospitality.” It was futile trying to argue with his logic, so I gave up, But for the last two weeks, I had changed my strategy and varied the vegetarian day each week so that he would not be forewarned. Rahul was yet to come up with a counter strategy to my present move.
“By the way,” I asked, “you were frowning and grimacing quite a bit before you woke up. Did you have another of your dreams?”
Rahul paused on his way to the bedroom and his face became serious as he shuddered and said slowly, “Yea, it was a ghastly dream! I dreamt I saw a man standing on the pavement being bludgeoned to death by a hammer falling from an upper floor of a building he was standing in front of. He plonked down on the pavement, stone dead. It was a pretty gruesome sight, with his head and face crushed by the force, blood splattered all over. He was wearing a check shirt and looked vaguely familiar. Maybe I would have dreamt some more, but you woke me up. But anyway, it was so ghastly that I am glad that you woke me up when you did.”
Rahul disappeared into the bedroom with the newspaper and I got busy in the kitchen, making preparations for the rezala. For a moment, I was tempted to cut down on the red meat, prepare some butter naans to go with the mutton rezala and forget the mutton biriyani. After all, we were nearing that dangerous age where work pressure coupled with irregular working hours and high cholesterol food made one prone to strokes and heart attacks. But on second thought, I decided not to mar Rahul’s enjoyment of the rare holiday after a couple of months of atrocious work pressure and go along with his preferred lunch menu. Hopefully, he would be so full up after lunch that he would not mind a light dinner.
Having put the rezala to cook slowly on the gas with the burner on simmer and ordered the biriyani, naans and firni for delivery at one, I took a peek into the bedroom to see Rahul fast asleep on the bed, a pillow propped up behind him against the head rest and the paper still clutched in his hand. I removed the paper and tried to pull him down by the legs, so that he could lie down properly on the bed. But it was too much of a dead weight and I let him stay as he was, since his odd position did not appear to mar his sleep.
I sat down at the desktop, booted it up, inserted the floppy into the disk drive and commenced my work, editing a book on the customs of the Onge tribe of the Andamans. This was one of those rare, backward tribes which were on the verge of extinction and were so primitive and retiring that their contact with modern civilisation was minimal, inhabiting as they were the dense and impenetrable tropical forests of the island. The author of the book claimed to have spent two weeks in their midst, a claim strongly denied by the local authorities, who had asserted that they had apprehended him as he was about to make an illegal entry to the island, since any interaction with them was banned in order to help maintain their ethnicity and the tribe was known to use poisonous darts thrown through blow pipes to discourage any intrusions into their territory. However, the book promised to be a rare anthropological survey of this tribe, of which little or nothing was known to the modern world.
The food was delivered at 1 p.m., as requested, and the rezala too was ready by that time. I laid the table for lunch and went to wake up Rahul. He had been sleeping since nine in the morning and had got a good four hours of sleep by now.
Rahul could really gorge if there was food to his liking. The biriyani servings were really generous, so that I could have just about one third of it. Rahul not only finished his full portion of biriyani but also the rest of my share, which he topped with a large helping of rezala, two naans and three portions of firni. As we finished lunch, Rahul asked, “What say we take in a movie this afternoon? I am really eager to see the Smita Patel movie Arth, which also has Shabana Azmi. It will be a treat watching such two strong artistes working together.” Rahul was a big fan of Smita Patel and there was no doubt that she acted superbly in roles of spunky, lower middle class women, ready to take on life’s adversities. She was a very intense actor and so was Shabana. This was a re-release of the movie made in the 1990s. While Smita was no more, Shabana very rarely acted in movies these days. It was an emotional drama as the wife and the mistress fight it out for their rights over the errant husband.
We changed our clothes. Rahul put on the new plaid shirt I had bought him last week, with broad tartan checks on it, and his Wrangler jeans. Much as I wanted to avoid it, I could not help putting on the white chiffon sari with the pink cherry blossoms on it. I have this unfortunate habit of having a favourite sari or dress for some time, when I find myself almost automatically changing into it whenever we go out. But then, the cherry blossoms are such a beautiful shade of pink and it stands out so well in the dazzling white of the chiffon that anybody would fall in love with it.
We were lucky to get the last two tickets at the cinema hall for the matinee show. For Rahul, seeing a movie in a cinema hall was not complete without the obligatory tub of popcorn. So despite having come to the hall from an absolutely heavy lunch, where he just gorged himself, Rahul insisted on buying two tubs of popcorn as mouth comfort while watching the movie. When I absolutely refused to have even one, single, popcorn, he had no compunction in finishing both the tubs during the first half of the movie! During the interval, Rahul bought two packets of potato chips despite my glare and finished both of them after a token offering of a packet to me. Smita as the neurotic actress was superb, as was Sahbana as the wronged wife, whose self esteem and self confidence is shattered by the knowledge of the infidelity of her husband. Kulbhushan as the errant husband was his usual, competent self. The scene where Shabana pulls Smita aside at a party and pleads for the return of her husband to her was particularly poignant. And to top it all were the beautifully haunting ghazals sung by Jagjit and Chitra Singh.
It was nearing five thirty when the show finished and as we came out of the hall, I ran into my old college friend Sadhana, who I was seeing after ages. As we stood exchanging news about ourselves, our families and common friends, Rahul, who knew that this conversation was likely to continue for at least fifteen minutes, gestured to me that he was going across the road to the book store opposite.
The Regal Book Store had been there for ages and was one of the largest book stores of Bombay. Their stock of books was legendary and the show window at the front quite easily covered some eighty feet or so. Rahul was an avid book reader and buyer and when he had some time to kill, his favourite occupation was to go into a book shop and browse through the books for hours. The Regal Book Store occupied the whole ground floor of a multi-storied building, which was fairly old, with commodious residential flats on the upper floors. Previously, there had been a portico over the pavement, so that people interested in window shopping at the book store were sheltered from the rain and sun. But ever since the portico of one of the old houses had collapsed on to the pavement, injuring two passersby, as per the municipal corporation’s directive, all houses having porticos over the pavements had had to pull them down and the Regal Book Store was one of them.
As I talked to Sadhana, I saw Rahul standing in front of the show window, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, as he looked at the titles of the books displayed. Sadhana was telling me about Priti, who had gone to America to do her advanced studies in Chemistry and had subsequently settled there and married an American. Priti had been to Bombay recently and Sadhana had happened to meet her. “You remember how slim she was? You can’t believe how fat she has grown now! And the same for her husband, he is just huge!” exclaimed Sadhana.
Rahul was still window shopping, but had moved down further along the window. The setting sun illuminated his body, the vivid colours of his tartan shirt more vibrant in the sunlight. The evening traffic rush of home going office goers had started as the street busied up with the honk of buses and the horns of cars. From somewhere, the distant thump, thump, thump of someone banging something melded with the shouts of the street urchins trying to sell pirated editions of the latest best sellers to the stranded drivers and passengers at the traffic light at one third their list prices.
Sadhana and I were now exchanging telephone numbers and addresses and promising to stay in touch with each other, when a shout from somewhere up above drew our attention. Glancing up, I saw a man peering out of an upstairs window of the building opposite, as he looked down at an object hurtling downwards towards the pavement. I tried to make out what the object was as the man leaned out of the window and shouted out again, “Hutt jao! Move!” I looked down on the pavement at the place where the object was likely to fall and was horrified to see Rahul standing just underneath, gazing at the books on display, oblivious of the warning shout from above.
Snippets from Rahul’s description of his dream that morning flashed through my mind. Check shirt. Hammer. Bludgeoned. Blood splattered. I tried to scream at the top of my voice, “Raahool! Move awaaaay, Raahool look ooout!” but my voice choked and a mere strangled whisper came out. Then, there was a thud. Rahul’s final dream had come true.
Rahul(A Chowdhuri)
Rahul
I sat watching Rahul sleeping, turned on his right side on the bed, his hair dishevelled and a small grimace on his lips. He must have come in very late last night, after I had fallen asleep. He had a handsome face, with a certain boyish charm that still lingered despite his thirty two years. And he still could be quite mischievous at times. As I sat watching him, his brows puckered, and I heard him say a soft “Oh, no!” He must be dreaming, I thought.
Rahul claimed that he had never dreamt till about a year back. Whenever someone recounted a vivid dream, he would get a sad, left behind look on his face and say wistfully, “But I never have dreams like the rest of you.”
Then, one day, he woke up in the morning with a grin on his face and told me, “You know, I had the most vivid dream last night!” It was about a man who had driven blindfold down a three kilometre stretch of public road in rush hour traffic without any accident happening. “You know, it was absolutely eerie, how he would slow down and stop as the traffic lights went red and start again when the lights turned green, without ever having a chance to see. Once, he swerved sharply left from his lane to avoid an overtaking bus coming from the opposite side. There was another car to his left, but he swerved just enough to avoid the incoming vehicle as well as the car running parallel to him. It was unnerving!” Rahul said he dreamt in black and white, almost like watching an old black and white movie.
About a week later, as I was reading the newspaper, a small photograph of a man and a news item caught my attention. It said that the man had driven blindfolded from Pedder Road to Chowpatty beach in evening rush hour traffic before the police stopped and arrested him for rash driving and endangering the lives of the public. I immediately recalled Rahul recounting his dream to me and called out to him, “Rahul, you remember the dream you told me about the other day, about the man driving blindfold down a road? Read this article. It says here that a man actually did that yesterday evening!”
We shared the tale with our friends. And that led to some good natured ribbing with them asking whether he had another dream that came true. And oddly enough, the same thing happened about a month later, when Rahul dreamt of a woman giving birth in the compartment of a crowded local train, where the delivery was done by a young, school going girl who played midwife, followed by an exact similar thing happening within a couple of days. This coincidence duly got circulated among our acquaintances. Rahul began to be hailed as something of a soothsayer. Some suggested that he start a website where he could narrate his dreams and people could check subsequently whether they came true. Sunil, his friend and fellow colleague in the software firm that he worked in, who always dreamt of having his own start up and selling a part of the business for a handsome profit, was particularly insistent about opening a website called “Dreams come True”, where Rahul’s dreams could be posted, followed up subsequently with the press coverage of the actual event happening some days later. “Look at the amount of curiosity and fan following that the site will generate if more of your dreams come true, yaar!” Sunil said and continued, “And once you build up a certain number of loyal visitors to the site and develop critical mass, we could seek to host ads along with the articles. We’ll cover the cost of hosting the site and maybe make some money also.”
Rahul smiled and shook his head, saying, “It’s early days yet. Let’s wait and see if the trend continues.”
And it did. Rahul could recount a dream at least once a week. Not all of them were newsworthy. Some of them had to do with a spouse cheating on his or her partner, which Rahul shared with me. In at least two cases we knew that what Rahul dreamt was true, since the marriages or live in arrangements broke up within a month or two. Two more incidents which made the newspapers was related to a rare type of sea creature caught in a fisherman’s net near Alibaug and of a shack catching fire with a young child trapped inside it escaping miraculously unscathed. We made it a point to share with our friends the dreams whose transition into reality we thought was likely to be publicized, so that Rahul’s premonitions could be corroborated independently.
Seeing the grimace on Rahul’s face, I could intuit that he must be having one of his dreams; a particularly vivid and ghastly one, going by the look on his sleeping face. I looked at the clock on the bedside table and noticed that it was going on to seven. “Rahul,” I said, giving him a shake, “Get up if you don’t want to be late to office.” I saw Rahul’s face relaxing, the frown disappear from his brows as he came awake. He stretched lazily and gave me a smile. “When did you get in last night?” I asked, “I left your food in the micro so that you could warm it up before eating and a post-it on the fridge door saying so. Did you have your dinner?”
Due to the nature of his job, there was no fixed time for him returning home, particularly when he was in the final stages of an assignment and deadlines had to be met. Initially, I used to stay up without having dinner till he returned, eager to eat with him and share the day’s happenings with each other. But as he got promoted to team leader and the work volumes and pressures increased, his hours became increasingly erratic. Till he threw a tantrum one day and refused to have his food if I did not promise not to stay up for him without finishing my dinner in case he was late.
Some six months back, I switched jobs from a regular ten to five office to a publishing firm which allowed me to work from home. That way, I could schedule my work in a manner that enabled us to spend quality time with each other, whenever Rahul had free time. At his insistence, I would have my dinner by myself whenever he rang up to inform me that he would be late, though I would try to catch up on some sleep while he was away so that I could be awake and ready to welcome him home and sit with him as he had his food, whenever he returned. If he was likely to spend the major part of the night at office, he would sms “VVLate” to me, and I would set the table for him and put the casseroles of food in the micro, ready to be warmed up by him when he returned in case he found me asleep.
I smiled at Rahul as he lay stretched out on the bed and gave him a poke, saying, “Get up, lazy bones, if you want to reach office in time.” He grinned and shook his head, saying, “Don’t have to. Our team has a holiday today. Didn’t get home till three thirty. But we finished the assignment within time and can afford to take the day off since the client is unlikely to come up with any queries today without examining the data we have sent him.”
“In that case, you can get up and have a wash and have some breakfast before going back to bed to catch up on your sleep. Now hurry and get up while I make some breakfast. Did you have anything to eat last night at office?”
Rahul gave me a wry look and said, “What do you expect? Do you think we can starve the whole day merely because there is work? Of course I have had some food in the office. Soup, bread, chicken cutlets and fruits, if you must know.”
I gave him a push and urged, “Go, have your wash, the sooner you finish breakfast the sooner you can return to bed and make up on your sleep.” Rahul rose and went into the bathroom while I went to the kitchen and fried up some bacon and eggs – his favourite breakfast - and toasted some brown bread and put the coffee in the percolator.
Rahul came to the dining table some fifteen minutes later, clean shaven and freshly bathed, wearing his favourite sloppy and faded yellow T shirt, with holes under the armpits, where the stitches had given way and an equally sloppy Bahamas. I gave a groan. “You could have picked something a little less unsmart to attire yourself in”, I protested. But it was not to be. I had made futile attempts to make him discard these clothes. But he claimed that they were the most comfortable clothes that he had, and if one wanted to let ones hair down and relax it is was absolutely essential that one had ones comfort clothes on.
Rahul merely grinned at my protest and sat down with the newspaper. We sat opposite each other in convivial silence, reading the papers as we ate.
Breakfast finished and with his two cups of coffee ingested, Rahul rose from the table and said, “I think I’ll catch up on some shut eye while you decide on what to cook for lunch. I wouldn’t mind having some of that fantastic mutton rezala that you make. Some naans to go with it and you could order up two plates of mutton biriyani from Swafees and some phirni to end on a sweet note.” I shook my head exasperatedly. Rahul was a diehard carnivore, partial to red meat, and no matter how hard I tried to coax him to having some vegetables, it was next to impossible to have him do so. Lately, I had set my foot down and insisted that we would be having pure vegetarian food at least one day a week.
At first, I had decided that Tuesday would be the vegetarian day each week. But then, I discovered that every Tuesday, Rahul either had to stay late in office, so that he had to take dinner there before returning, or else, he had to take a client out to dinner, so that he did not need to have food at home. “But you can always opt for vegetarian fare at office or when you take the client out!” I protested. Rahul shook his head and said, “You don’t understand. If I don’t take what the client wants, he is likely to feel uncomfortable ordering what he feels like having, and that would spoil the fun and mar our hospitality.” It was futile trying to argue with his logic, so I gave up, But for the last two weeks, I had changed my strategy and varied the vegetarian day each week so that he would not be forewarned. Rahul was yet to come up with a counter strategy to my present move.
“By the way,” I asked, “you were frowning and grimacing quite a bit before you woke up. Did you have another of your dreams?”
Rahul paused on his way to the bedroom and his face became serious as he shuddered and said slowly, “Yea, it was a ghastly dream! I dreamt I saw a man standing on the pavement being bludgeoned to death by a hammer falling from an upper floor of a building he was standing in front of. He plonked down on the pavement, stone dead. It was a pretty gruesome sight, with his head and face crushed by the force, blood splattered all over. He was wearing a check shirt and looked vaguely familiar. Maybe I would have dreamt some more, but you woke me up. But anyway, it was so ghastly that I am glad that you woke me up when you did.”
Rahul disappeared into the bedroom with the newspaper and I got busy in the kitchen, making preparations for the rezala. For a moment, I was tempted to cut down on the red meat, prepare some butter naans to go with the mutton rezala and forget the mutton biriyani. After all, we were nearing that dangerous age where work pressure coupled with irregular working hours and high cholesterol food made one prone to strokes and heart attacks. But on second thought, I decided not to mar Rahul’s enjoyment of the rare holiday after a couple of months of atrocious work pressure and go along with his preferred lunch menu. Hopefully, he would be so full up after lunch that he would not mind a light dinner.
Having put the rezala to cook slowly on the gas with the burner on simmer and ordered the biriyani, naans and firni for delivery at one, I took a peek into the bedroom to see Rahul fast asleep on the bed, a pillow propped up behind him against the head rest and the paper still clutched in his hand. I removed the paper and tried to pull him down by the legs, so that he could lie down properly on the bed. But it was too much of a dead weight and I let him stay as he was, since his odd position did not appear to mar his sleep.
I sat down at the desktop, booted it up, inserted the floppy into the disk drive and commenced my work, editing a book on the customs of the Onge tribe of the Andamans. This was one of those rare, backward tribes which were on the verge of extinction and were so primitive and retiring that their contact with modern civilisation was minimal, inhabiting as they were the dense and impenetrable tropical forests of the island. The author of the book claimed to have spent two weeks in their midst, a claim strongly denied by the local authorities, who had asserted that they had apprehended him as he was about to make an illegal entry to the island, since any interaction with them was banned in order to help maintain their ethnicity and the tribe was known to use poisonous darts thrown through blow pipes to discourage any intrusions into their territory. However, the book promised to be a rare anthropological survey of this tribe, of which little or nothing was known to the modern world.
The food was delivered at 1 p.m., as requested, and the rezala too was ready by that time. I laid the table for lunch and went to wake up Rahul. He had been sleeping since nine in the morning and had got a good four hours of sleep by now.
Rahul could really gorge if there was food to his liking. The biriyani servings were really generous, so that I could have just about one third of it. Rahul not only finished his full portion of biriyani but also the rest of my share, which he topped with a large helping of rezala, two naans and three portions of firni. As we finished lunch, Rahul asked, “What say we take in a movie this afternoon? I am really eager to see the Smita Patel movie Arth, which also has Shabana Azmi. It will be a treat watching such two strong artistes working together.” Rahul was a big fan of Smita Patel and there was no doubt that she acted superbly in roles of spunky, lower middle class women, ready to take on life’s adversities. She was a very intense actor and so was Shabana. This was a re-release of the movie made in the 1990s. While Smita was no more, Shabana very rarely acted in movies these days. It was an emotional drama as the wife and the mistress fight it out for their rights over the errant husband.
We changed our clothes. Rahul put on the new plaid shirt I had bought him last week, with broad tartan checks on it, and his Wrangler jeans. Much as I wanted to avoid it, I could not help putting on the white chiffon sari with the pink cherry blossoms on it. I have this unfortunate habit of having a favourite sari or dress for some time, when I find myself almost automatically changing into it whenever we go out. But then, the cherry blossoms are such a beautiful shade of pink and it stands out so well in the dazzling white of the chiffon that anybody would fall in love with it.
We were lucky to get the last two tickets at the cinema hall for the matinee show. For Rahul, seeing a movie in a cinema hall was not complete without the obligatory tub of popcorn. So despite having come to the hall from an absolutely heavy lunch, where he just gorged himself, Rahul insisted on buying two tubs of popcorn as mouth comfort while watching the movie. When I absolutely refused to have even one, single, popcorn, he had no compunction in finishing both the tubs during the first half of the movie! During the interval, Rahul bought two packets of potato chips despite my glare and finished both of them after a token offering of a packet to me. Smita as the neurotic actress was superb, as was Sahbana as the wronged wife, whose self esteem and self confidence is shattered by the knowledge of the infidelity of her husband. Kulbhushan as the errant husband was his usual, competent self. The scene where Shabana pulls Smita aside at a party and pleads for the return of her husband to her was particularly poignant. And to top it all were the beautifully haunting ghazals sung by Jagjit and Chitra Singh.
It was nearing five thirty when the show finished and as we came out of the hall, I ran into my old college friend Sadhana, who I was seeing after ages. As we stood exchanging news about ourselves, our families and common friends, Rahul, who knew that this conversation was likely to continue for at least fifteen minutes, gestured to me that he was going across the road to the book store opposite.
The Regal Book Store had been there for ages and was one of the largest book stores of Bombay. Their stock of books was legendary and the show window at the front quite easily covered some eighty feet or so. Rahul was an avid book reader and buyer and when he had some time to kill, his favourite occupation was to go into a book shop and browse through the books for hours. The Regal Book Store occupied the whole ground floor of a multi-storied building, which was fairly old, with commodious residential flats on the upper floors. Previously, there had been a portico over the pavement, so that people interested in window shopping at the book store were sheltered from the rain and sun. But ever since the portico of one of the old houses had collapsed on to the pavement, injuring two passersby, as per the municipal corporation’s directive, all houses having porticos over the pavements had had to pull them down and the Regal Book Store was one of them.
As I talked to Sadhana, I saw Rahul standing in front of the show window, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, as he looked at the titles of the books displayed. Sadhana was telling me about Priti, who had gone to America to do her advanced studies in Chemistry and had subsequently settled there and married an American. Priti had been to Bombay recently and Sadhana had happened to meet her. “You remember how slim she was? You can’t believe how fat she has grown now! And the same for her husband, he is just huge!” exclaimed Sadhana.
Rahul was still window shopping, but had moved down further along the window. The setting sun illuminated his body, the vivid colours of his tartan shirt more vibrant in the sunlight. The evening traffic rush of home going office goers had started as the street busied up with the honk of buses and the horns of cars. From somewhere, the distant thump, thump, thump of someone banging something melded with the shouts of the street urchins trying to sell pirated editions of the latest best sellers to the stranded drivers and passengers at the traffic light at one third their list prices.
Sadhana and I were now exchanging telephone numbers and addresses and promising to stay in touch with each other, when a shout from somewhere up above drew our attention. Glancing up, I saw a man peering out of an upstairs window of the building opposite, as he looked down at an object hurtling downwards towards the pavement. I tried to make out what the object was as the man leaned out of the window and shouted out again, “Hutt jao! Move!” I looked down on the pavement at the place where the object was likely to fall and was horrified to see Rahul standing just underneath, gazing at the books on display, oblivious of the warning shout from above.
Snippets from Rahul’s description of his dream that morning flashed through my mind. Check shirt. Hammer. Bludgeoned. Blood splattered. I tried to scream at the top of my voice, “Raahool! Move awaaaay, Raahool look ooout!” but my voice choked and a mere strangled whisper came out. Then, there was a thud. Rahul’s final dream had come true.
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