Indian Love Stories Read online

  After a year and half of this, Satadal heard of Madhuri’s marriage to Anadi Ray, an engineer, and Madhuri learnt from an announcement in the press of Satadal’s second marriage to Sudhakana, a teacher in a sewing school in Calcutta. Both marriages were no doubt what’s called a love-marriage. Whatever that might be, Madhuri was happy in her marriage. Satadal also believed, contrary to some rumours and remarks about their relationship, that he was happy with Sudha.

  And so any questions and speculations in the cold waiting room at Rajpur Junction about their past relationship were quite unnecessary – they had buried the past long ago.

  But the question was not of the past, but of the present; this sudden coming together so close to each other, at this unreasonable hour of night in the waiting room … why should such things happen when they had already taken calculated legal steps to be forever away from each other!

  This was like a cruel conspiracy – illegal and unbearable. They could neither quite ignore what was happening, nor was there any ground to object. Neither of them would have felt uneasy if they met someone else. In that situation it would have been natural to exchange a few words of little consequence. But Madhuri Ray and Satadal Datta, though they had no relationship now, felt as though they were helpless prisoners in the thick silence of the waiting room.

  Satadal Datta’s loaded mind had, he didn’t know when, sunk into deep silence. And then, his eyes closed into a soothing doze. As he opened his eyes, he realized he was in the waiting room and not far away, Madhuri was sitting on a bench, her face turned towards the wall, an empty look in her eyes.

  Satadal didn’t look away. His eyes became hungry with a desire to watch here stealthily. But what was there to watch? What was new about her? But wasn’t there anything new? She never wore that type of crepe sari, in that colour of clouds, he remembered, and her pallu was never left so long. When they went for a walk she invariably wore some handloom sari, and when she walked, the rubbing from the foldings of her sari produced a hissing sound. And she used just a drop of that perfume of hasnahana on her pallu. That scent and that sound were inseparably associated with Madhuri when she walked with Satadal – without which he would not be content. There was no trace of that scent and music anymore. There was Madhuri sitting there in an alien dress and colour, like a doll created by a new artist to his taste. Satadal had never before stared at her so lustily. As he saw her now, he realised, she was no more the same person – but was quite different and stern, engineer Anadi Ray’s wife.

  Satadal suddenly felt relieved from an uncalled for anxiety and turned his attention to his own needs. He opened a small leather case and took out a towel and a cake of soap. He untied his hold-all and pulled out a pillow and a sheet which he put on a chair.

  Madhuri had no reason to look at Satadal. She was however looking at his reflection in the mirror – not deliberately, but it so happened that she could see his reflection in the mirror. She just looked on. She didn’t feel any particular desire to look at him, but at the same time she couldn’t resist the temptation of watching him unobserved.

  She saw he was arranging his things quite naturally. He took off his wrist-watch, wound it and put it on the table. She noticed the watch was a new one, and the band was black which she never liked and so, to please her, he had never worn a black band. She also noticed a new ring on his finger. The pillow cover was not white but had a floral design on it. Satadal only liked soft, white covers for his pillows. In all this she saw the influence of the teacher of the sewing school.

  Satadal went to the bathroom, taking his towel and soap. Madhuri now turned her face from the mirror and looked straight at Satadal’s bric-a-brac left on the table. She got an opportunity now to examine his things. But what was she particularly looking for among his things? Perhaps she herself didn’t know. But she continued to look at everything. They were all new – nothing there to remind her of the old days. She should not have expected to see anything she had seen before. However, if she could look at her reflection in the mirror she would have noticed that her two fine eyebrows had become a line prominent with envy. But she wasn’t of course looking at herself in the mirror. She was absorbed in looking at Satadal’s things.

  There, his cases were open, his wrist-watch, his spectacles and his wallet were on the table. From the hook of a bracket a grey shirt was hanging, its golden buttons glistening in the light.

  How careless she thought, to leave all those things in front of a person with whom he had no relation. He seemed to have no fear of losing his things. His trust was no more unusual than Madhuri’s worry at the possibility of his losing anything. No one had made her responsible for his things.

  When Satadal came back from the bathroom, Madhuri looked away again into the mirror. She noticed, although she could see only the upper portion of his body, that he had become much thinner. The teacher of the sewing school wasn’t apparently paying much attention to that aspect of him. She, Madhuri, was seeing him after five years but she was quite sure, looking at him, that he was famished. She was quite right. Satadal opened a tiffin-carrier, from which he took out a few containers and put them down on the table. He was about to start eating, when something occurred to him and he got up. There was a sarai in the corner and he moved towards it with a glass in hand. This produced a sudden effect on Madhuri, for which she was utterly unprepared. It just happened. She looked straight at Satadal and appeared to be quite aggrieved. The way she looked at him, her frown and disapproval struck him as more natural than the gravity she had been hitherto maintaining.

  She called out, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  Startled, Satadal looked at her.

  Madhuri continued, ‘It will not be unseemly if you just asked me to give you a glass of water.’

  She got up and went up to Satadal. The frozen spirit in the waiting room seemed to thaw. The sound of Satadal’s natural laugh melted her gravity. She took the glass from his grasp and said smiling, ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  This was a waiting room in a railway station. It wasn’t their house on Cornwallis Street in Calcutta where at her birthday party, when they were both very young, she had taken him to a secluded, unoccupied room and served him food and entreated him to eat.

  She poured some water into the glass, put it on the table and then started arranging the food for him on a plate. The frozen past of seven years ago seemed to come alive by the magic tinkle produced by her seven bangles when they touched the glass softly. At this moment they did not look like just two passengers waiting for their trains – rather like a couple sailing through life together, harmoniously without any hitch or friction. It didn’t escape Satadal’s notice that, although her fingers had become quite thin, she still handled the food as delicately as she did before. She stood very close to him, almost touching him, and he could clearly hear her breathing. The pallu of her sari had slipped from her shoulder on to his arms. She didn’t pay any heed to that. There was nothing unusual about that.

  ‘All this food appears to have been bought ready made from the market.’

  Satadal sensed a tone of reproach in what she said. He knew she never fancied cooked food from the market. So he said somewhat apologetically, ‘Yes, I bought all this at the Katihar market.’

  Then she asked ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To Calcutta.’

  ‘Do you now live in Calcutta?’

  ‘Yes, and you?’

  It would have been better if these questions were never raised. Madhuri’s hands shook a little. She appeared to have lost the ease of movements with her hands. Satadal’s questions seemed to make her aware of her present condition. She moved away a little, somewhat embarrassed, and said, ‘In Rajgir’.

  There was nothing more to talk about. There was nothing more to ask and know about. One lived in Calcutta and the other in Rajgir. They were just two passengers who would travel on two different trains. Even then, due to some mental confusion, they had come too close to each other. That was
of course not quite proper and right, but for a while that seemed to them quite proper and right.

  As there was nothing else to ask, Satadal said, ‘Perhaps you have to take the train to Patna, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, you had better finish your meal,’ she said in one breath and then moved away. It was true, she had to go away – for ever – by the Patna train. She hadn’t come here to stay for ever. She looked anxiously at her wrist-watch and went back to sit on her bench.

  The food was laid out in front of Satadal; light reflected from the glass which looked as if it contained some liquid fire. He appeared to be embarrassed again by the situation – mixed with much pain and a feeling of being mocked. Why did he allow himself to be mocked when he was fully aware of the illusion?

  Suddenly, he stood up and spread himself out on a long easy chair with a shawl drawn around him and lit a cigarette.

  He couldn’t bring himself to eat. But why? He didn’t even try to find an explanation to that.

  The waiting room again turned into a waiting room, in which two unrelated passengers waited for their trains to come. But the trains did not oblige nor did any other passenger come into the room. However, the attendant entered with a tray and tea things on it – one pot of tea, a jar of milk, a container of sugar and two cups and two saucers. He put the tray down on the table and went out. Satadal glanced at the tea invitingly but the next moment he seemed to feel some resistance and turned away. Two cups on the tray. What a cruel joke! The man had no sense. Satadal hadn’t asked him to get tea for two.

  So, it wasn’t possible to drink any tea either.

  Even though she didn’t quite look at Satadal to see if he was eating, she could sense that he was not eating, perhaps he was not going to drink the tea either. Such a foolish attendant – if he had even poured the tea for Satadal, he might not have been so embarrassed. But then why was he so embarrassed? He was not in my uncle’s house on that Christmas day in Madhupur!

  They had gone to spend the Christmas holiday at her uncle’s at Madhupur. The incident happened on the very first day. Satadal spent the whole morning sitting alone under a pine tree in the garden, and refused to drink any tea. And what was the reason for his refusal? There were many people in the house; above all there was Madhuri, but it was a servant who brought him tea. When the mystery became known, everyone felt embarrassed, and Madhuri was taken to task. Her aunt, two uncles, even the elder one who generally kept aloof – they all scolded her. The elder uncle said, ‘When you know Satadal feels unhappy unless you yourself serve the tea …’

  But this is a waiting room, not my uncle’s house. It is not for him to behave like a wounded husband anymore!

  What was surprising, however, was that the embarrassment seemed to touch even the depth of the waiting room. Even though the situation was as unreal as a scene on the stage, it appeared to be alive for the moment. There was no one here to rebuke Madhuri, to remind her of her responsibility, but she seemed to hear the clear voice of someone telling her, her duty.

  ‘What’s the matter, why aren’t you eating?’ There was a tone of gentle persuasion in her voice.

  ‘I don’t feel like eating all this now – at this time of the night,’ Satadal replied calmly.

  ‘Then drink the tea at least.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps I will. What about you?’

  ‘Did I ask for tea?’ she smiled.

  ‘No of course not. But now that the man has brought two cups by mistake …’ Satadal laughed a little.

  ‘So, you think I had better drink.’ There was no trace of any embarrassment in her voice. She was quite composed.

  ‘That’s really what I think. No use blaming the attendant.’

  ‘True, no use blaming him.’

  Both became as grave as before. Really why should one blame the attendant! There was a tone of regret in Madhuri’s voice. Perhaps what she meant was that it was sheer bad luck that on such an awful night they were dumped together in an unoccupied waiting room in a railway station.

  Either she had lost her strength to remain sitting quietly or she resolved to surrender to the demands of the accidental situation in the waiting room. She got up, went near the table and started preparing tea with her usual deliberation and finesse.

  Satadal also got up and brought a chair beside his in front of the table and asked her to sit down too. She accepted the offer, for she found no good excuse to decline. Although they were both aware that some illusion was working in the waiting room of Rajpur railway station to draw them closer and closer as if they were husband and wife, neither had the will to come out of what was happening. Madhuri sat down on the chair beside Satadal.

  Satadal took a sip of tea, exhaling with a sense of satisfaction. Surely that was not because of the mere taste of the tea – a touch of Madhuri’s hand no doubt had gone into it to generate the satisfaction.

  Satadal smiled and said, ‘I was so uneasy seeing you so grave.’

  ‘You felt uneasy – but what I felt I can’t explain.’

  ‘Were you nervous or what?’

  She looked down and said, ‘Yes, sort of …’

  ‘But why? What’s there to be nervous about?’

  The conversation started in a light tone but towards the end it sounded weighed down with sadness. What Madhuri said seemed to reflect painful memories, and there was an assurance of trust in Satadal’s words – the past was past and there shouldn’t be anything painful in that, there was nothing to be afraid of.

  They could now look back to their dead past caressingly in the same light as, after someone’s death, people find it natural to think of and discuss only his good qualities, forgetting his difficulties and the unpleasant aspects of his character. As if all the hatred, fear and doubt of the past were burnt out in the very heat they themselves had generated. The past now appeared like a seven-year-long night of a clear sky full of stars, big and small, sweet and soothing. That such a sky was lost for ever was a painful realization, hard to believe and one pines to get it back.

  ‘You’ve become so thin,’ said Madhuri looking at Satadal.

  ‘And you, what about you?’

  Madhuri was holding the cup of tea. He looked in her direction and observed, ‘What have you done to your fingers?’

  ‘What have I done?’

  ‘They look so thin and frail!’

  This made her feel so shy that she was going to cover her hands with her pallu, but an unsuppressable desire welled up in Satadal and he suddenly drew her hand and held it. Madhuri didn’t resist.

  This was indeed surprising. A patch of life’s garden seemed to have been definitely discarded seven years ago, but now it appeared as if what had been discarded were the thorns and not the shade in that garden.

  Satadal seemed to have suddenly discovered a hitherto unknown truth. He looked at Madhuri and said, ‘You haven’t changed a bit, you look exactly as before.’

  Her looks hadn’t changed but everything else had. Everything had been discarded but not the force of love. Is that possible? That was an illusion. Surely.

  A rush of embarrassment flowed through Madhuri and she became red, destroying the illusion. She didn’t exactly look like a young girl listening, for the first time, to a declaration of love; nor did she look like a bride meeting her husband in the bridal chamber for the first time; rather she looked like a woman who, after a long separation, was being lovingly received by her husband with flattering words.

  They were not in any lover’s chamber. There was no privacy in the waiting room but Satadal and Madhuri continued to sit side by side, as if they would continue to do so for the rest of their lives – as if they would never separate.

  When tea was drunk, Madhuri asked, ‘Where does uncle live nowadays?’

  ‘He is in Dehradun; he has built a house there.’

  ‘And where’s Puti?’

  ‘She’s married and lives with Ramesh. He has got a decent job in Delhi, at the Secretariat.’

  He was holding her h
and firmly – as if after a seven-year long fleeting illusion he had got it at last. Her hand was enclosed in his palms – lest he lose it again.

  ‘You believe, don’t you Madhuri?’

  ‘Believe what?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten you. I can’t.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I believe! I can see that now for myself.’

  ‘But you, what about you?’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Have you been able to forget me?’

  Madhuri closed her eyes. She appeared to be getting ready to reply, shutting out all the reality around her. Her head leaned a little towards Satadal’s chest, two drops of tears forming at the two corners of her eyes.

  Satadal embraced her and drew her towards him and entreatingly asked, ‘You must tell me, I won’t let you go till you have.’

  Then the loud gong announced that a train was about to arrive.

  Madhuri struggled to free herself from Satadal’s embrace. She felt as though she was held by two fiery hands. She stood up. The gong continued to sound, breaking the cold silence of the night outside. The mirror seemed to be shaking. It was as if the waiting room was screaming, unable to bear anymore the illicit intimacy that had taken place in it. The Dhulian Up-Passenger train had arrived and people were rushing about on the platform.

  Madhuri rushed towards the door and said, ‘He should be coming by this train.’

  A third passenger entered the waiting room. As soon as he saw Madhuri, his face lit up and he looked utterly happy. He was Madhuri’s husband, Anadi Ray.

  Madhuri also looked bright, but there was in that brightness a trace of sadness.

  But that trace was enough to disturb Anadi Ray. He approached her in quick steps and asked anxiously, ‘I hope you are well?’

  ‘Oh yes, I am well.’

  ‘I’m afraid you had to wait alone for a rather long time.’