Part 1 - Kalimpong
Motor Stand
Even in October, the tables at Narayan Das buzzed with flies. They were drawn to the sticky sweetness of the syrupy sugar that had been rubbed a million times on the tabletops by the waiters. These were mainly Bihari boys whose enthusiasm for wiping the tables clean with their rags was not exactly matched by their appreciation of the acceptable and safe standards of hygiene in public places. It was no wonder then that the place was empty for most of the hours that it was open for business. The only ones who frequented it were a few youngsters in dark glasses and colourful bandanas. These kids patronized the place to prolong their codeine-infused highs with frequently repeated cups of sweet black tea. They just sat there at the corner tables minding their own business and keeping the waiters on their toes by ordering their teas. The only other presence that seemed to matter in that sweet shop was that of Narayan Das himself, whose black and white countenance looked down disapprovingly at the emptiness from the confines of his freshly garlanded frame.
Sudhin often visited Narayan Das. It helped him relive his school days when it used to be the favorite hangout of his soccer team buddies. After every match at the Mela ground, their team manager would bring in his noisy group to give them a treat of the sugary tea and samosas. There between mouthfuls of their oily snack they would discuss strategy, curse the referee and hurl recriminations at their own teammates who had conspired to hasten their exit from the local league or worse still the Independence Day tournament. It was also at Narayan Das that he had met his first date, a shy mousy girl from Girls High School, whose classmates could never understand how she had managed to make the prefect of DGH fall for her. He could vividly see her dip the samosa in that red watery sauce and then chew it in slow, self-conscious fashion with her mouth closed. Chewing with the mouth closed was one of the first lessons that parents imparted to kids as a part of dining table etiquette and the girl was not going to put an early dent on her femininity by erring on this vital point. Sudhin of course could not care less but still thinking of her effort made him smile.
Later he had taken her to the movies. That was the standard thing you did then. Kanchan used to be crowded on Saturdays and the easiest way to manage the tickets was to go to the blackers. Here was a veritable gallery of characters. People like Telu, the terror of both Kanchan and Novelty. He was reputed to have killed his father over something as trivial as a kite. Later Telu had turned political and during the agitation sided with the communists. His life was in danger in the hills and hence was whisked away to Siliguri by the authorities. It was reported that as soon as the buses from Kalimpong entered the terminus there would be Telu waiting to pounce on individuals suspected of sympathizing with the agitation. Later of course, Telu's condition had become pathetic. Two incidents stand out for being particularly humiliating. In his heydays, Telu was the tormentor-in-chief of Thakpa, the one-eyed Tibetan who sold momos in a plastic bucket. The agitation however upset a few hierarchies. Poor Thakpa had had enough of going over that ritual of taking his steaming momos out from the folds of his blue plastic and offering them free to a hungry Telu. So one day in desperation he cut up Telu's face with his onion-cutting knife. Telu fell from his pedestal of invincibility. His self-esteem now lower than that of the Harijan Road pigs with which he had spent his childhood, he left Kalimpong. There were reports that he had become Catholic. But that may not be true because Telu's final act was a raid that he made on the FCI godown at Topkhana where they caught him with two sacks of rice. The thrashing only completed what Thakpa had started earlier and Telu died soon thereafter. His sins of having betrayed his community had been forgiven but the job that he did on the two sacks of rice proved the ultimate arbiter of Telu's terrestrial fate.
Sudhin however never patronized Telu. He always looked out for Habu the peace-loving, pot-smoking Harijan who sought an escape from a life of cleaning shitty drains and toilets by hawking tickets in black. He was some kind of an oddball in that tribe of mean-talking individuals who looked up to the fist or the knife to sort out any argument. Habu's approach was strictly non-violent but not in the usual Gandhian sense of the word. Anyone who picked a fight with Habu would be taken to the corner where he would be discreetly shown Habu's enormous appendage of the trouser and fed with a poser, "If you can show me something bigger than what you have just seen I will fight you." The adversary, his masculinity considerably undermined by that sight, would beat a hasty retreat and Habu's ahimsa would triumph. Sudhin of course felt a little queasy taking the tickets from Habu since there was no knowing to what places that hand dishing it out could have been. This unsavory suspicion of course was never communicated to his girlfriend who, being her usual matronly self, would instinctively want to assume charge of such nitty-gritty like tickets.
That affair with the GHS girl lasted just a year, two dozen letters and five films. The break-up was precipitated by a visit to the park where she had betrayed her lack of class by insisting that he carve out their names on the bark of an unfortunate tree called the Love Tree. It was a gnarled chilauney on whose trunks and branches, aesthetically challenged lovers with limited imagination such as themselves would labor away, cutting what seemed a veritable algebra of romance. L+K, S+J, M+N or even S+D+P, a calligraphic hint of a ménage à trois! This was too much for Sudhin who had already started to have second opinions about their pairing when he had begun to notice and get irritated by simple things like her habit of clutching sweatily at her arts and crafts handkerchief whenever they went out on their dates. Or the manner in which she draped her dupatta around her head in the fashion of some coy sixties heroine. When he dropped the bombshell, the arts and crafts handkerchief had come in very handy. She cried copious tears, blew her nose and professed undying love while he tried to explain to her the number of reasons as to why their union would never work. Finally, he had left her at one of the cabins in Neera hotel with the two plates of momos that he had ordered for them untouched and cold. The girl of course did just fine and as was the custom of those times returned through her little sister all the letters and presents that he had given her. These included cassettes, cards and a slightly used bottle of Charlie perfume. Later in his room, he had taken out the letters that he had written to her and spent an entire evening reading them. His English he realized was not bad and the words that he had managed to put together in some of them gave him the impression that he had indeed fallen for her at one point of time. He was not very embarrassed about it since it was the done thing in those times. It had not cost him much either since being a girl from the Madhyamik board she had not been very demanding.
The kids who had all along been quite subdued in their trip started to get restless. One of them who sported a Tibetan tattoo on his left bicep played with his cigarette lighter, a cheap Chinese knock-off of a Zippo. "Let's go and play a game of pool," he said. Next door Ola ran a pool parlor. He had set it up long before the game had caught the fancy of the Kalimpong youngsters. Some of the players that frequented it were quite good. The bets made were substantial and the better ones were even borrowed by hucksters and taken to Gangtok where money was cheap and beer even cheaper. The kids seemed to have made up their minds. They paid at the counter and left. The last one to go he noticed had been rolling a joint and had spilled some of that stuff on the table. Sudhin had to fight that feeling hard. It was almost a year since he had come out clean and he knew situations like these were what he had to watch out for. He did not want to slip. That would be too bad. Time was running out and so were his options. He desperately needed to simplify his life.
Just then, two girls walked in and sat at the table next to Sudhin's. They must have been in their early twenties. Their jeans clung precariously at their hips and their tie-dyed tank tops hugged their flat chests in a desperate yet pointless bid to make some sexual point. Something told Sudhin these girls were shady. He had a special knack for recognizing this sort of shadiness. The girls ordered tea. One of them, perhaps the older of the two, looked directly into Sudhin's eyes. Sudhin slightly embarrassed shifted his gaze elsewhere but she teased him with her persistence. Finally he spoke, "So where are you sisters from?"
"Kafer," the younger one replied and before she could say anything further the other cut in, "But what is it to you?" She spoke in a singsong fashion with an attitude that was straight out of the Hindi movies.
"Just curious," he replied wishing that he had never started the conversation. But they were not going to let him off so easily.
"Actually we have come to do some shopping for the pujas. Some of it is still left but then we decided to go to the movies."
He knew they had this one coming. That was the standard Kalimpong sexual innuendo. Going to the movies opened up endless possibilities for intimacy. He knew that he had to get out of Narayan Das. The girls were now coming on to him like anything. One of them had even taken her cell phone out of the bag and was punching away at the keys—an effort towards sophistication that was effectively neutralized by her dirty fingernails. Sudhin got up suddenly acting as if he had forgotten something and coolly walked off after stopping briefly at the counter to pay.
It was bright and sunny outside. The main road was being dug up once again. It was very typical of Kalimpong to do a road up nicely with bitumen and tar and everything else and then have it all dug up again to either lay the telecom cables or the water pipes. He took the alleyway next to New Restaurant and walked towards the motor stand.
The motor stand for once was chaotic. The Tihar season always saw a considerable rise in the number of people travelling to Siliguri, Gangtok, Darjeeling and places like that. Of course, today it was possible to avail of jeep services to places as far-flung as Geyzing and Kumai. A broker approached him. "Want to go to Siliguri in a van? We also have an Indica," he said. Sudhin nodded his head in the negative and walked towards the public latrine.
Kalimpong motor stand has two pay toilets almost next to each other. Both are relatively cleaner than the one that Darjeeling has below the stables at Chowrasta. There is enough water too if you wanted to use them seriously. After relieving himself, he took out a rupee to pay the young girl at the door. She was trying to deal with a customer who was refusing to accept the change that she was handing over to him. He was saying, "But this money is all wet" to which she replied, "Sir, it's just the water." Sudhin just flung the money into her box and walked out. The smell of ammonia and bleaching powder was getting unbearable and he wasn't particularly interested in knowing how that conflict of the wet change would be resolved.
Outside there were rows of boot polishers shining shoes and porters with liver patches on their puffed-up cheeks unloading stuff from the buses. He knew most of these coolies by name. Kalimpong porters are very territorial. Local-bred ones had almost complete monopoly over the motor stand business. It was a strict no-entry zone for the healthier men from Nepal who had to seek employment in hardware stores and groceries. Working at motor stand was lucrative. The loads weren't too heavy and a porter who led a tourist to say Crown Lodge was rewarded with a fine commission. The eating joints known as Number One, Number Two hotels served good food and raksi too was readily available at ten rupees a glass.
From below the Gandhi gate, he cast a glance at the Mela Ground where a bunch of kids were playing barefoot football in front of the Nehru Manch. In the middle smartly attired boys, probably from some club, were having a game of cricket. On top of the gate Gandhi reclined in his typical pose facing the motor stand; his back turned towards the ground. This gave rise to the standard Kalimpong gag that the Mahatma did not like football. Football today suddenly reminded him of another Habu, the MRC goalkeeper. Habu was cross-eyed and as the joke went saw three balls out of which he caught the one at the center.
There in front of the Darjeeling Jeep booking syndicate office he met Sonam. He had a large rucksack on his back, two white girls who too bore similar loads on their backs walked behind him. They shook hands.
"I am off to Darjeeling. We are going to trek up to Sandakphu. So how are things with you brother?" he asked.
"Not too bad," replied Sudhin.
"By the way did you know that Tashi died, last evening?" asked Sonam matter-of-factly as if expecting Sudhin to have already come across that piece of news.
Sudhin was stunned and could only manage "What? He was all right when I met him a couple of days ago. Wasn't he in rehab at Namchi?"
"Yes, but he was out in a fortnight. He wanted his folks to give him some time to gather himself. He had gone to Siliguri to his mother. He slept after lunch and never woke up. Must have OD-ed on SP. What a waste!"
Just then, the jeep blew its horn and the white girls called out. Sudhin slowly let the news of Tashi's death sink in. It seemed so unreal. His mind shut out the noise of the cars honking and people shouting. Tashi his good friend was no more—that was a fact that he had to start getting used to. Initially he felt like rushing to their house but then decided against it instantly. It would not be prudent at all. The two had started on it together. In fact, Sudhin had led Tashi into it—a fact that was not lost on his parents. In their endeavor to rescue their son from his addiction, they had taken him to all sorts of places and had become very close to him. He in turn opened out his heart to them telling them everything. That kind of openness had its own problems though. When an addict realizes that everybody close knows about his addiction, he becomes bolder and in his moments of weakness does it in the open. Once the threshold of fear of being found out is crossed, the situation becomes worse almost beyond repair. Sudhin knew perfectly well what impact his presence would have on Tashi's mother. The best thing he felt was to avoid that unpleasant situation altogether. Grieving people, mothers specially, assumed some sort of a sovereign monopoly over sadness and his own sorrow would be of no consequence when confronted with the magnitude of her maternal anguish.
The only other thing that Sudhin could think of then was to go over to NET HUT, the cyber-café on Ongden Road, and check his inbox. There was much of Tashi in it that he wanted to erase. Net Hut was as small as a real hut. It was ironic that one had to squeeze into its tiny cubbyholes to be able to surf something as vast as the World Wide Web. The connection was agonizingly slow. His Hotmail account did not open at all. The other one that he had with Sify opened after what seemed like eternity in digital time. His inbox was populated mostly with mails from Tashi. He checked the boxes next to them and then in one hassle-free stroke deleted them all. His inbox now entirely purged of Tashi's mail shrunk to just a couple of commercial emails from companies that advertised their body building supplements. Even these brought memories of Tashi, as it was with him that he had decided to start lifting weights as a means of rediscovering his self-discipline. He realized how pointless all that seemed now. Tashi's parents bought him a home gym hoping that their son would not run into his drug-dealing friends in town. They also equipped him with a PC and enrolled him in an undergraduate course with IGNOU. The gym equipment, the PC, the iPod, the IGNOU course—these were signposts of the numerous resolutions that Tashi made to himself and his parents to come out clean. It was not as if they had not tried.
Without bothering to wait for the girl at Net Hut to check her register he handed her a ten rupee note and walked out. It was almost evening now and Sudhin had very few places to go to except home.
Come again for the next chapter…