Story: An Evening in the city

One afternoon, a few days ago, I was sitting on the cemented-railings, used for sitting, in front of the Central Park near the metro-station, waiting for my love. The day was sultry from the morning. Perhaps the clouds were tired of previous day's work and appeared with a sulky face from the morning, reluctant to work again, making the environment claustrophobic. To add injury to the wound, the sun's increasing rage until the afternoon added to our misery. It was the second week of my third semester and I was exuberant not to miss any classes from the beginning despite the moody weather of this monsoon. After my college was over at 3.30pm, I had to go to the Central Park for her who was to return home together with me after her exam. 

Having nothing to do as such, I took out a book from my bag and began reading; the weather was becoming a bit pleasant from the afternoon as whiffs of soothing wind was balming over the tiredness of the weary day. I kept on reading until the light started to dim. With the sun moving westward, tired pedestrians halted their walk and came to sit on the railings and in the cemented-seats under the trees for some time to soothe their heart and limbs. A police van came to the place and few police men attired with white uniform descended from the van and then fanned out around the place patrolling. At first I thought, some procession was to pass the road in front of us, but after a few minutes, they got together in a group like other people around the place and started confabulating, laughing, joking, as if the stuffy day hadn't spared them too. I was looking at them the way I used to in my childhood - their serious disposition always awed me. But that day there was nothing like that - I had hardly seen them so out of their nature before. Still, I was not surprised at them. Their parched faces conjured up an image in my mind of the triffic-polices standing at every road-crossing in Kolkata in the scorching sunlight with a whistle in their hand and raging at the undisciplined cars.

As the day was slowly succumbing to night and the birds were leaving the trees for their home, the neglected place of the day became a suitable place for the humans to sigh away their exhaustion of the day's work. Much more people were coming to seat there; some were leaving too after they had finished their gossip, perhaps for home. Some passers-by seemed in hurry walking fast towards the metro-tunnel, some others were loitering away to the taxi-stand. Two teenage girls came out of the metro-tunnel and walked up to the vacant railing near the policemen. Both were carrying their bags on their back which implicated they might have come from their college. One of them wore a covid-mask to the resentment of the other people sitting there. As if she was reminding them of their responsibility of wearing mask at the time when covid had almost taken its flight. The girls sat on the railing and started talking to each other in an very soft voice that was overwhelmed by the patterings of the policemen. The masked girl, while conversing, was tapping her mobile-phone alight now and again as if she was waiting for something important to come over her phone. 

On the road in front of me an Uber taxi-cab stopped and got off a young boy with a middle-aged woman who seemed to be his mother. They walked slowly, hand in hand, up to me and sat on the empty railing beside me. The cabby took out two travel-baggages from the tank of his taxi and fetched them (the baggages) to them. Gratified the mother thanked him while the son sent the fare over online payment app. The taxi driver having left, the mother fished out a small jar of peanuts and started munching them while the son sat silently. The mother offered him some from the jar but the son denied with a dejected face. The mother said, "Don't worry babu. It's a matter of two years and we'll be visiting you twice a month, you know that. Besides, you'll come home for a week after your first sem in this December." The boy remained silent. "See babu, it was your choice; you chose this university in Bangalore for yourself and your father and I, even though quite unwilling to send you there so away from us, didn't stop you from choosing your dream college. Because we know that you are now mature enough to take your own decision and we also know that  you know what's good for you and for us as well.", said the mother to lighten up her son's bleak mood. The son now replied, "Yes, I know that ma. But I don't feel like going there." "Why?", asked the mother in surprise. "I don't know", replied the son in an almost indistinct voice. The mother, now seemingly a bit anxious but reassuring, said, "Come to me babu. Come here." She dragged her son towards her and began caressing him, striking her fingers through his hair affectionately and said, "Your are my babu. I know what you feel but you've also got to be strong now. You are not a kid anymore, son. You are a young man now and, you know, a man has to face such difficulties to achieve his goals in life. More than you, I don't want you to go there. But I still have to let you go because you'll have to secure your future first." The boy reverted, "Ma, I think I could've chosen a university here in Kolkata and made a good future from here too." The mother said, "You are being impulsive now, son. I think you have chosen what's best for you. Don't be so sad about it. Once you go there you will adapt to the place and start loving it, beleive me. And as I said, it's just a matter of two years and after that you can be living all your life here in Kolkata near your ma and baba." The son was still melancholy - after all, it takes herculean strength to leave a place called 'home'. However, while I was listening to the conversation between the mother and the son silently, to their incognizance, I noticed the masked-girl sneakily looking at the boy from behind the railing, her countenance, though half-visible because of the mask, was gloomier than the overcast evening sky.

Again a car stopped before us, this time it seemed a private car. A man of about fifty in formal suit got out and came readily to the mother and the son sitting beside me. "What are you, ma-chele, plotting?" said the father wittily to them. The mother replied, "Nothing, babu was just feeling a bit sad. But he is now ready." "Well, that's normal. You will be okay soon, son.", said the father to the boy which seemed to me only a half-hearted consolation, "Let's go. It's about time. Your flight is at nine and we have to reach the airport at least one and half hour before." "You won't eat the tiffin now? Aren't you hungry? You can eat here while we are talking.", said the mother to the father. But the father said, "No, not here. I'll eat at the airport. Come. Let's go." Having said that he summoned the driver who was sitting in the car and asked him to carry the luggages into the car. The mother now packed her water-bottle and the peanut-jar in her bag as they were preparing to depart. Until now the evening grew exquisitely pleasant with the soothing winds blowing, the cars with their lighted eyes passing by through the drakness of the road like swarms of glow-worms and the lighted skyscrapers all around decorating the musky, starless night, towering above the yellowish light of the light-posts along the road-sides that dimly fell on the footpath where everyone was just minding their own business talking; but now I sensed a sudden premonition, a foreboding of a tremor that was about to disrupt the pleasantness of the evening. Soon as the parents and the boy was moving towards the car, the masked-girl got up from her seat hurriedly, with her friend beside her dragging her hand to sit her down, but she didn't. The boy lagged behind his parents, quite intentionally, I supposed, and turned around. The girl heaved a sigh of relief. They looked at each other; for the moment I felt as though everything around, the cars, the conversing group of people, the hasty pedestrians, the vendors selling snacks and dry foods, the soft cacophony of the place born out of the sounds of cars and the people's chatterings, ceased to exist: I looked at their eyes as if they were tied with an invisible thread to each other's. It was the charming stillness of everything around before the storm. A few seconds later, breaking the charm of this brief moment came the cracking sound of opening the car's doors which startled the boy to his conscience. And then in the dim light of the lamp-post, I saw sparkling drops of tears rolled down from his eyes, then a flood came breaking all his resistence. The girl was motionless, soundless and as if lifeless, looking stright at the boy. Barely accumulating his strength, the boy gestured at girl with his shaking hand to call him soon - then drooped his head and turned around, ready to leave. His parents were now getting into the car and he shuffled towards the car slowly, lackadaisically. From behind, it seemed as though the pavement was dragging his legs, requesting him not to go, not to leave. But he had to go. 

The car drew out of the scene with the girl still looking at the empty place the car stood on. Her friend now drew her down and she collapsed on her like a building whose foundation was shattered. Then she relieved all the suppressed turbulence of her heart and started sobbing on the neck of her friend, hugging her as if she was the very piece of her heart that the car took away. A small boy of about eight or nine years, with a plastic bag of lozenges in his hands, came to the girls shouting his trademark cry "Lozenges, lozenges, a pack of ten only for five rupees!" The friend of the sobbing girl waved him away in denial. The boy went to everyone around shouting his cry in a rather imploring tone now, but who wanted lozenges in the evening, when no children were around? He also came to me asking to buy a pack but deeply touched by the severity of the lovers' estrangement, I also ignored him. At last, with no lozenges sold, he was slowly moving away from the place with his plastic-bag full of lozenges and a heart full of despair. Quite unintentionally, I happened to look at him leaving and felt a tug in my heart just as I felt when the lover of the sobbing-girl was leaving. But this time, the pavement did not seem to be dragging the boy's legs, requesting him to stop, rather his small legs seemed so heavy due to all day's walking that he was virtually plodding forward, almost dragging his exhausted, small figure away from the place that had rejected to buy even a single pack of his lozenges. I ran towards him, shouting from behind to stop him. He stopped, turned around and with a pallid face he asked me, "Do you want some lozenges?" I said emphatically, "Yes! a pack." "Five Rupees only", he said. While I was fishing out my purse from my bag, I asked him, "Where do you come from?" He replied, "From Naktala" "How would you go home now? It's almost night", I asked, being concerned about him, given his age. He answered, "It's no problem. I come here everyday. I know the way." Then I asked, "Don't you study? Why are you selling these? What does your father do?" to which, drooping his head and looking at his feet, he replied in a low, rueful voice, "No, I don't. My father doesn't do anything. I earn the money for my family." I could not say anything and just kept looking at him for a moment. Pulling myself together, I blurted out inadvertently, "How's your business today? Did it go well?" which, I felt at once, kind of offending to the boy given his bag still full almost to the brink. He looked at me remorsefully and said, "I earned 250 rupees today but it all fell down somehow from the holes of my shabby bag! I didn't know when it had happened, but later I found that all my earnings was lost." I took out from my purse a hundred and a ten rupee note that I put aside from the amount my father gave me for my expenses that day and held them out to him. Looking at the notes, he counted his hand and then he said, "It's twenty-two packs for this amount!" I reassured him, "No, give me just one pack and keep this money. " To my surprise, he took the money readily from my hand without any of reluctance, and said "Thank you" in a tone that was enough to expose the truth of his story. Still, I felt no regret, nor was I angry at him. Sometimes it feels good to lose, to allow yourself to be tricked, just to bring smile in someone's face.

The boy left happily trotting away and I kept looking at him from behind before my phone rang up. No sooner had I picked up the phone than I saw the masked-girl was leaving the place with her friend; still she was sobbing incessantly that could be heard despite her red mask, upon which a crescent brown shape of soaked-water had been drawn by her tears, but, unlike her lover's, there was no glint of tears in her eyes in the dim light of the lamp-post, only two arid, bulging eyes - her eyes ran empty of tears perhaps but could she ever empty her heart of its burning pain?

From my phone came the sweetest voice in the world startling me up, 

"Hello! hello! Are you there?"

"Yes", replied I, recovering myself.

"Where are you? I'm commin'. Two mins away only."

I said in a breaking voice, "I love you darlin'...I..I love you so much!"

"I know. But what happen'd? You sound so sad. Are you okay?"

"Nothin'....Please hurry up, darlin'. I'm waitin' for you."

~Imran