Abhijit Bhattacharya a.k.a OB - Born in Kolkata. Studied and romanced in Delhi. Living and surviving in Mumbai. Media marketeer by profession and writer by passion. You can reach the author at authorabhijit@gmail.com or log on to www.authorabhijit.com.
Papa don’t Preach
(Madonna)
The flight to Kolkata from New York was not an easy one. It was 17 hours long, including the stop-over time at Singapore. The stewards were not pleasant and the movies that they were playing were quite jaded. I had seen all of them, with my friends, in New York.
I was coming to India after a long time - so tried catching up on the news bulletins and newspapers. All that I could gather was cricket and Bollywood. Both, which I was quite aware of, while I was in NY.
And yes, some itsy-bitsy scraps and information on terrorism in India and how the network of terrorists is growing,
right under the nose of the authorities. The whole idea of a terrorist disturbed me – especially after the 9/11 incident. I have become, like any other American, quite panicky with such things.
I was almost jogging out of the terminal in anticipation to meet my father. I had put the iPod off. I wanted to hear out the familiar voice, as I walked out to the arrival lobby.
“You have put on weight, son!” my dad exclaimed as he hugged me tight, from behind.
“So have you, dad!” I returned the favour to my father, both with my retort and my tight squeeze.
My father I had always shared a special bond, especially after my mother died. I was seven years old when she died and since her death, my father had become my mother, my ayah, my hero and my friend.
“How was your flight, son? Good hostesses?”
“Flight was good dad but not the hostesses. The flight was a tad too tiring. Khoob time lagaye. By the way, how is everyone? How is the house?”
“Who is everyone? I just have you, son. Oh Amar, by the way, have put that extra room on rent. Finally, managed to get a tenant.”
“Nice. So, who’s the new tenant?” I questioned my father, who was attempting to put my weighty trolley-bag into the boot of his little, rusty but sturdy white Ambassador. The car was his pride. He had owned this baby for twenty-one long years now.
“No one fascinating, son. It is not a pretty, young girl, if that is what you are expecting” he chuckled.
I smiled back at him – my father really knew me well. No wonder he was my hero; my friend.
“Well, to be somewhat frank, I don’t really know much regarding him. He was the only person who replied to the advertisement that I placed in The Telegraph and I was getting impatient; I thought I’d rather give it to anyone who responded. He seems all right, though. Keeps to himself.
And you better keep off him. Just let him be, if he likes it that way, son.”
I nodded, thinking that a tenant who was not a ‘pretty young girl’ would not intrigue me much, anyway. Little did I know that I was to be proved wrong, soon enough.
We spoke at length about all that we could in our travel from the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose airport to our house in Kasba. I told him about my regular schedules and he advised me for the millionth time in his life on how health is more important than wealth and how I should exercise regularly.
The city had changed so much since my last visit, I wondered. There were lots of flyovers now. There were malls, every few kilometers. There were girls on the street, wearing razor-backs. And I felt that this is not the Kolkata that I grew up in. The city, in real, had changed. For the good or bad, I did not judge.
As we drove up to our house, I stared up at the tenant’s window. It did not look too welcoming. It looked like as if it was well-covered and well-guarded. Whoever the occupant was, he certainly didn’t want his privacy to be trespassed. I wondered that why would someone charter a room in another person’s house if they wanted to keep their life so secretive?
My father, who was still trying to haul my trolley into
the house, was clearly wondering why my case was so heavy to carry.
“What on this planet have you packed into this case? You’re only here for a few days!”
“Two months is not only a few days, dad” I insisted, and helped draw my bulging case into the house.
My eyes were droopy and I needed some serious sleep. We retired for the night as soon as we reached home. My first night in India, after a long, long time.
The next day was a Sunday and I woke up early. When I drew open my eyes, the intense sunlight blinded me and scorched my pale skin.
I was surprised at the glaring sun in Kolkata. This was the same city where I had grown up playing cricket early in the morning and trudging to school, in the afternoon with my heavy satchel looped on my back. The sun never troubled me then. Now, suddenly it seemed too sunny for me.
I was still very tired – the jet lag did not want to leave me at ease. Yawning, I crawled back on my bed and tried to relax, sinking into the soft mattress and staring up at the creaking ceiling-fan, thinking to myself that the fan was probably older than me in this household. I kept wondering how old things were in this house and yet had a charm and a sense of nostalgia attached to them. There was nothing that was new. Except the new man living in the “extra room”.
I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep. I wasn’t ready to get up yet but something was keeping me awake. I felt the spring breeze on my face and took in a breath of fresh air. Through the open-window, I could hear the vegetable vendors shrieking their lungs out; the rickshaw ting-tongs; the murmur of women below our house, probably discussing what fish was best to cook on that particular day.
But there was something else that kept me awake. Amongst the commotion of women, the rickshaws and the ramshackled buses rambling past, there was another sound that caught
my attention.
A whispering and mumbling voice.
I couldn’t deduce who the voice belonged to but it was coming from inside the house. I tried to ignore it but my curiosity just would not let me rest and led me out of my bed into the dark, dim-lit corridor.
Although the voice grew louder as I slowly tiptoed along the corridor, it still wasn’t clear whose voice it was.
When I reached my father’s bedroom door, I listened carefully, my ear up against the smooth old, wooden door. I could hear my father snoring; it sounded like a tiger’s roar. I reminisced the time when I was young and how I used to get scared when my father used to fall asleep and snore like a tiger. But the whispering voice which was disturbing me obviously wasn’t his.
The door into the tenant’s room loomed ahead. I noticed that I was breathing deeply and my hands were beginning to sweat. Strangely, I felt incredibly nervous as I approached the door and lent my ear against the wood, ashamed at my curiosity.
I shouldn’t be doing this, I thought. I really shouldn’t. It’s nothing to do with me, I kept reminding myself. What would happen if the door suddenly opened whilst I was leaning on it? How would the tenant react? Why was I being so brave? Normally I would never do this kind of thing. Normally I would be the one warning other people about such things.
But it was too late by then. Add to it, my father’s warning to stay away from him. I would hate to defy my father’s orders but I decided to make an exception this time around.
“That’s right, thirty grams of Ferrous Oxide. And three plastic compartments.”
I stopped dead. The clues were just adding up in my head. The article in the newspaper that I had read in my flight back about a terror nexus that has been forming in Kolkata for almost a decade; the “love for privacy” that the new tenant had applied unto himself and now the voice asking for Ferrous Oxide and plastic compartments.
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