...he woke up with a start. "I shouldn't have been sleeping in the first place", he thought. He looked at his watch. 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
He looked at the window behind the bed. It was menacingly cloudy and raining and thundering as if there is no tomorrow. It was the early August day that Calcutta is all too used to. He could smell that delicious khichuri being prepared in the neighbour's house, with an amount of butter that makes hearts stop. There, came that aroma of the hilsa being deep fried to be eaten with the khichuri, and that with extreme dexterity to avoid the fish bones. Mom knew how I liked it, he thought. And sighed. Somehow, he was surprised when he did not tear up at the thought of his parents. "An year is a long time, maybe", he said to himself, with a sad smile.
He could barely get up. Not getting to eat for a couple of days has its effects. Summoning all his strength, he let go of that thin sheet he had around him. He staggered to the refrigerator in the hall. Empty. All the shelves. Empty.
He could only look around. There lay that creaking table. And that cane chair. Where he would sit hours and hours and crumple up sheets of paper with his words he deemed inferior to his own standards. The books of those Russian authors that his father had parroted to him to gobble up- Dostoevsky and Gorky, Solzhenitsyn and Chekov- lay scattered all around. His umbrella, his only inheritance from his father, lay on the floor. That ashtray lay stuffed with the cigarette buts, tens and more of them. He remembers extinguishing each and every one of those dying embers. Only if those embers could strike a spark in his brain.
His wandering eyes over the table noticed the wallet. He grabbed it like a famine victim makes a dash for anything edible. The folds opened, and alas.
He made a search for all the compartments in the wallet. Albeit hopelessly. A visiting card came out of one of them. 'N.C. Kumar, Literary Agent'. He remembers meeting that man when chatting with a friend of his at a book shop. "Write something inspirational", he said that day, "tell me a story, and I'll see the rest".
He looked at that card, and then at the wallet. Instinctively, he tore up that card into a hundred little pieces, and stuffed it into that ash-tray, an addition to the thirty odd disappointments over the past two days.
Supporting himself on the door, he slumped to the floor. He cupped his face in his bruised and hardened hands. And all the memories came running back.
He looked at the window behind the bed. It was menacingly cloudy and raining and thundering as if there is no tomorrow. It was the early August day that Calcutta is all too used to. He could smell that delicious khichuri being prepared in the neighbour's house, with an amount of butter that makes hearts stop. There, came that aroma of the hilsa being deep fried to be eaten with the khichuri, and that with extreme dexterity to avoid the fish bones. Mom knew how I liked it, he thought. And sighed. Somehow, he was surprised when he did not tear up at the thought of his parents. "An year is a long time, maybe", he said to himself, with a sad smile.
He could barely get up. Not getting to eat for a couple of days has its effects. Summoning all his strength, he let go of that thin sheet he had around him. He staggered to the refrigerator in the hall. Empty. All the shelves. Empty.
He could only look around. There lay that creaking table. And that cane chair. Where he would sit hours and hours and crumple up sheets of paper with his words he deemed inferior to his own standards. The books of those Russian authors that his father had parroted to him to gobble up- Dostoevsky and Gorky, Solzhenitsyn and Chekov- lay scattered all around. His umbrella, his only inheritance from his father, lay on the floor. That ashtray lay stuffed with the cigarette buts, tens and more of them. He remembers extinguishing each and every one of those dying embers. Only if those embers could strike a spark in his brain.
His wandering eyes over the table noticed the wallet. He grabbed it like a famine victim makes a dash for anything edible. The folds opened, and alas.
He made a search for all the compartments in the wallet. Albeit hopelessly. A visiting card came out of one of them. 'N.C. Kumar, Literary Agent'. He remembers meeting that man when chatting with a friend of his at a book shop. "Write something inspirational", he said that day, "tell me a story, and I'll see the rest".
He looked at that card, and then at the wallet. Instinctively, he tore up that card into a hundred little pieces, and stuffed it into that ash-tray, an addition to the thirty odd disappointments over the past two days.
Supporting himself on the door, he slumped to the floor. He cupped his face in his bruised and hardened hands. And all the memories came running back.
