Smouldering Ashes by Aniruddha Banhatti (free novels TXT) 📕

SMOULDERING ASHES
Chitre opened the door, kept the lock on the shelf and started addressing the upper corner of the room as usual:
"Colons and semi-colons instead of sperms. Her long lips extended towards me. Like a pig, her mouth became conical. Then that long mouth became a kettle and as I poured out the tea, the kettle became an elephant which went flying -- a flying elephant of pink porcelain."
In the corner was a cobweb. The spider, hanging on the web, paid little attention to him. Calmly Chitre went on making his tea. A little while later, Gokhale walked in and sat down in the easy chair. Once again Chitre had to make tea. Then both of them started towards the Club. They walked in silence, at times to the very edge of the road, brushing past cashew trees, to make way for trucks loaded with iron-ore. They neared a squat square building with pitched roof. On it, a painted sign: Recreation Club. The usual crowd was there: playing carom, cards, and table tennis. The sound of volley-ball resounded from the ground behind the Club. At seven-thirty, getting bored, they started towards Bappa's Mess for their dinner.
***
Green-colored " rippers " looking like grass-hoppers were burrowing the half-chipped mountain blazing blue in the sun like a half-cut diamond. Pale-green trucks shuttled to and from the ripper loaded with crushed ore. Chitre, whistling happily, was filling the core logging box putting successive cylindrical pieces of stone, after marking each with white paint as regards depth, inclination of bore-hole, etc. At eleven-thirty when he had finished and started towards the next bore-hole, the mail-van arrived blowing its horn as if it had a cold in the head. From the office building, people flew out chatting like crows taking off from nearby trees. Gokhale spotted Chitre and they started together for the temporary Post Office shed.
“EF, YOU, EX,” puffed Gokhale,
"The longitudinal section drawn went wrong. Baldy has asked me to redraw it."
"You have always been a blundering idiot,"
said Chirre.
"I tell you Chitre, you won't get a letter today,”
cursed Gokhale. At the shed, everybody was waiting for the sorting to be over. A blabbering crowd had formed at the window of the van for buying postage. Chitre said,
"Come, let's have a fag."
When Gokhale mentioned Sudhir, Chitre recalled their college days.
"But he is a genius, you know, some day he will shine out."
When the crowd thinned away, they went towards the shed. Chitre got two letters, Gokhale none.
"Your curse has boomeranged,"
said Chitre. Gokhale, disappointed, went back to office. One letter was from Chitre's father, another from a friend. Father had written about the finalization of his sister's marriage, asking him to come home availing a leave of at least fifteen days. The friend had written about getting a job at last and given his new address. To arrange for reservation, he borrowed money from Gokhale and seeking permission from Ujgaonkar, his boss, went on a loaded tipper up to Pali. Waiting for about twenty minutes, he got a Mapuca-Madgaon bus. At the next stop, a lady got up from a seat for two, and he went and sat there. By his side was sitting a young girl. Sister's marriage fixed, Chitre was thinking, now father will heave a sigh of relief. Now I can start saving for myself instead of sending so much money home. Within two years, I may buy a record-player or tape-recorder. A moped or scooter. For a vehicle the company gives loan, it is said, that too interest-free. Slowly if everything settles like this ... Suddenly he came out of his reverie. The girl sitting on his side was leaning against him in her sleep. He looked at her. The conductor somehow made his way towards him through the jam-packed bus. She woke up and sat upright.
"Khain voita?"
he asked her in Konkani.
"Ponda,"
she replied.
Then he asked the conductor for her ticket to Ponda and his up to Madgao. But she had already bought her ticket. Was she leaning knowingly or unknowingly? By looking at her he found it difficult to tell. he kept on chatting with her up to Ponda in his broken Konkani. At Ponda she got down and he kept on thinking of her till he reached Madgaon. She was beautiful. Lived near Pali. Now as his sister was getting married, there was no hurdle for him to start thinking about his own marriage. Bur this girl was Christian. Anyway why not develop friendship with her and wait to see what happens?
***
Awakening at dawn, Chitre got down from the upper berth and sat looking out of the window at the surrounding greenery. He drank Doodhsagar Falls in with his eyes and he really felt happy returning to Goa. After a fortnight's leave, he was back after his sister's marriage which had finally taken place in a precarious condition. It was about to break up due to some argument concerning dowry. Like always, he was having a sort of coming-home- feeling as the train, stopping at every signal, approached Sanvordem through the thick cashew, jack-fruit and mango foliage. Every time he felt lost while leaving Goa. After boarding the "Koyna" at Miraj, quarrels announced that one was now entering Maharashtra with passengers occupying and reserving unwanted seats. Really it will be a good thing for Sudhir to come to Goa . Returning from his sister's marriage, he had stopped at Mumbai to meet Sudhir. All his family were very worried about Sudhir. After his M.Sc. in Chemistry he had changed four jobs in two years. He was not prepared to compromise on anything. Chitre had suggested that Sudhir come with him to Pali Mines, but Sudhir had just laughed. Nowadays, he had collected some youths to form a drama troupe performing street plays. Twice he had been arrested. His health had gone down very much compared to his Pune hostel days. His father was telling Chitre with tears in his eyes,
"It will be okay, even if he doesn't work, we can manage. My only son and fighting all this world."
Then he had paused before continuing,
"But not entirely his fault. Blood will tell. We three brothers also fought for freedom. After independence, we realized that we were fighting blindly. The British imposed the Indian Penal Code shortly after the 1857 freedom-fight, with the aim of suppressing the masses, and that law still exists. It was the first thing they should have changed after getting freedom. Extravagant powers and chicken-feed as salary to police still remain as they were. The police, even today, is only a tool in the hands of government, so that the populace can be treated as slaves, controlled under fear."
After another pause, in a voice trembling a little,
"But ... what do we see around us today? Many of my freedom fighter friends went and secured minister’s posts. Made vast estates. Everybody's daughters and sons married and settled down, adjusting themselves to the poisonous atmosphere in the country, joining in in the corruption as if it was this for which they had fought the British. And my only son should continue his lonely fight? All the beliefs then start crumbling. Sudhir should marry, settle down and earn money, the wish to see grand-children .... This world is not so bad. Freedom is just a myth. Thoughts like these become more prominent in the end."
Chitre remembered Sudhir's father talking as the train moved slowly. But he was not prepared to delve deeper. Like Sudhir's father, he was also in two minds. The train reached Sanvordem and he started folding the bed sheets and packing his suitcase.
***
Chitre was whistling happily as he entered his quarters. When he had got down from the Sanvordem bus at Ponda, he had seen the girl he had met previously. She had smiled back at him and they had taken coffee together at Sanman. Her name was Maria. Whistling, he opened the door, took the suitcase in and to free the mind from the burden of happiness, started telling the upper comer:
Weather forecast tells the beginning of madness. Love in springtime like a Wodehouse novel. On seeing her the whirring of the bus became melodious and the sun came wearing blue goggles to see her. And then the clouds lowered and her face vanished in the rising vapors from the empty coffee cups –
The spider left its web and jumped down. Happily hanging on its thread , it went back to its web. Chitre spent the next three days as if in a dream. Everyday going to Pali in the morning, drinking tea in the hut there, chatting with Maria and in the evening, catching her returning from work, going with her to a secluded spot, telling each other the doings of that day. On the second day he put his hand around her shoulders and pulled het closer. She did not object, in fact nestled closer to him. He savored the taste of his first kiss. But it was nor a "first" for her. She was used to kissing at the dances. Then he would leave her near her cute little house of red tiled roof situated in the surrounding green. Then coming back to Bappa's mess sighing, he would meet Gokhale there and would tell him about the evening. Her thoughts, her likes-dislikes. She as a person. On The Third day, Chitre returned to the mess in a somber mood. The day after, Maria would be on leave going for her girlfriend's marriage at Aldona and wouldn't meet him for two days. And however he tried, he could not get rid of the picture rising before his eyes: Some Goan, Christian youth in a dark suit, dancing with her, kissing her. In The evening Gokhale dragged Chitre out to the Recreation Club. Shanmukh and Giridhari were at the carom board. Thin fragile Doshi and his sexy wife were at the tennis table with Baldy Ahmed and Fatty Waghmare. Mrs Waghmare was stretched out on the coach, thumbing magazines, like a yawn personified. Volley-ball resounded from the ground behind. Gokhale picked the Indian Express, which was of course a day stale. Chitre fell to watching intently Mrs. Doshi's movements as she played: Wet patches had started on her blouse at her armpits. Suddenly she would press her lower lip with her teeth and come up with a good shot. Her shapely behind would bounce up as she bent forward and the shape of her thigh become visible through the sari. Her mangal sutra would swing forward followed by her breasts and ---
"Chitre, look here!"
Chitre turned, startled by Gokhale's hoarse voice. Gokhale's face had paled, his eyes reflected fear. He handed the paper to Chitre who saw the page and froze. A photograph showed Sudhir lying injured on the road and the caption:
"Cruel drama instead of street drama."
Somehow he read it completely:
Police had been inhumanly cruel to a street drama troupe, while they were performing in Mumbai. It appears on the evidence of a large crowd, that the police beat up the girls and boys acting in the troupe, undressed and marched the girls to the police station. The angry mob already inflamed by the subject o{ the street drama, namely police cruelty, gheraoed the police station and rescued the girls, after which they set the police station on fire and prevented the escape of any police personnel by stoning them. In the subsequent firing, four were killed, and in the