Shock of Life Chooses Any Place

I was coming down the elevator after buying essentials from the supermarket. The sun was really raging across the mid-sky. I thought of leaving all these items inside my fridge in my nearby apartment and going out to paint the town red, as it was my day off. Window-shopping, dropping by a local bookstore or at a relative’s place, or going for a matinee show at a movie hall would not have been a bad idea. But I chose to take the tube rail to Rabindra Sarobar and spend the whole day reading Attia Hosain under the green shade of the trees there. I was so thrilled that I took a notebook along with Attia’s novel, Sunlight on a Broken Column. I had taken a vow to read all the books in my possession, one after another, before I breathed my last. And then, even if Death were to come stand near my head and ask for my hand, I would put my hand in his, asking for a thrilling journey to the Heavens (or Hell?)! Too daring a plan, wasn’t it?

            I was engrossed in the book; the flipping of crisp pages did not reach my ears. All of a sudden, someone seemed to call me out from my stone-deaf silence. She sat in the empty space beside me and said, “Can you recognise me, Ma’am?” I narrowed my eyes, concentrated my focus on her face, and the semblance of a familiar countenance lost over numerous years popped up in my memory—but I failed to place her exactly. I fumbled, “Yes, perhaps… your name, please?” Her face broke into a radiant smile, and she looked excited as she went on, “Aren’t you LR Ma’am? Do you remember, you helped me get back my confidence when I had a nervous breakdown in the exam hall? It was probably a Maths test—Maths being my minor—and it was the Final Exam. You were invigilating our room. You gave an instant fillip to my drooping spirits, and I scored fabulous marks, overcoming the initial hiccups and slowdowns. Do you remember?”

            How could I? She was a Science student after all! And I was perhaps on invigilation duty in the exam hall, as I could gather from her narration. But drawing a winsome smile on my face, I said reassuringly, “Yes, yes, I do. Wonderful to see you after so many years!”

            Indrani went on about her achievements as a Science teacher in a renowned school of the metropolis—her family, her husband, her kids—and I gave a patient hearing to all. She offered me a cup of tea, calling over a tea-seller. I paid, and she promised to catch up with me whenever she came here for a breather.

            The other day, she was overjoyed to meet me again, and this time the chance meeting kept us firmly seated on the bench for more than a couple of hours. We stopped our conversation only after exiting the gate, and it was just 7 p.m. by my watch. These days, the lake closes by 7 p.m. Earlier, it used to be 8 p.m., I think.

            Anyway, she prattled away, “You know, Ma’am, as my mother-in-law was dunning me for the money she lent for my treatment, I could not but hold her hands and let my tears course down my cheeks silently…”

I was struck by the word “treatment” and asked her, “Treatment? For what?”

She said, “I fall ill quite often—with cold and cough problems, Ma’am!”

            I was driven to silence, though doubts assailed me. An expectorant or a cough lozenge wouldn’t make her borrow money from her mother-in-law, I was sure! Her husband held a cushy job in a multinational company, as she had said. Then?

I kept wondering.

            But while talking her heart out, she blabbed one day that she had given up her job in a school. But why? She replied, “My kids were just born, in two successive years. Hence, I decided to give up the job, which was really strenuous—I couldn’t breathe properly after taking two classes in tandem.”

            Cold and cough problems might have been severe by then, I thought. Or childbirth might have left her debilitated.

            Her stories ranged from her bitter experiences at her in-laws’ place, her husband’s stubborn attitude in dealing with her resentment against his mother, her mother-in-law’s grunts and whimpers of grudge when she gave up her job at the school, her constant, irritating rebuttals to her rude remarks in front of her son, her kids’ growing impatience as she began lying down to allay her breathing discomfort—so on, so forth.

            I used to empathise, caress her, pat her back to encourage her, and share tales of inspiration to boost her drooping spirits. The soothing afternoon kept yielding to evening silently. The sky would turn from ochre to crimson to black-blue as the diurnal motion hurried the late hours of the afternoon to a close. Birds chirped in unison with her words; a girl and a boy embraced each other as we stayed immersed in our stories. Indrani would get up to leave, and I used to see her off to her car, which waited outside.

            When I met her there, the afternoons seemed to have wings! Time flitted by so soon. Coming home, I used to think about her, and the following day I would go to the lake in the hope of seeing her again. She had cast a mesmerising influence on me. A day without meeting her began to seem drab, dull, meaningless.

            We met two or three times, and each time my heart danced in joy at the warmth of uninterrupted, heartening, candid talk and the inimitable togetherness!

            Last week, Indrani’s husband came with their two grown-up kids to find me and deliver the shocking news that left me half-dead in despair.

Indrani was no more.

She used to come to the lake for a walk on her doctor’s advice.

It was the last stage of lung cancer.

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About the Author:

Ketaki Datta (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of English at a government college in Kolkata, India. She is a novelist, poet, translator, and book reviewer (Compulsive Reader, USA; Muse India, Hyderabad). Her works include two novels, A Bird Alone and One Year for Mourning, and poetry collections such as Across the Blue Horizon, The Music of Eternity, and Urban Reflections (with Prof. Wilfried Raussert). She has translated three novels, including The Last Salute (Sahitya Akademi), and authored several academic books. She has presented research at the University of Oxford, the University of California (Santa Barbara), and Universidade de Lisboa. Her research work, Oral Stories of the Totos was published by Sahitya Akademi. Her latest book is Unshared Secret and Other Stories.