A Melancholic Melody
By: -
Vikas Haldar
This account I start from a period somewhere back in time, long back in time. I don’t know what stopped me before, its innocent as innocent can get.
It was a strain. The song still jingles in my ear. The sight, the sound intact, just as intact as the smell of wood after all these years, fresh, as if it were just yesterday.
I used to drive up here quite often in my early days of youth, trying to search for a new subject to write about. The lush green surroundings always managed to stir my imagination. As a young man, I climbed those hills, yonder and beyond, on and on and on.
But here, I always returned. Returned to the same table for four, with me sitting by myself at it.The same huge rafters overhead, they went as time slipped by. From candlelight’s to electrical arrangements, from crude wooden chair and tables to plastic molded ones. Everything changed except that one thing, the center of the restaurant.
In the center was a wooden dance floor, with one change alone, the voice and the face were missing from it. And of course with it the vigor of the place had run out. Where there used to be singing,dancing and merry making was now an empty vacuum, which sucked you back in time.
Remembering days past and gone, making love to a pint of beer or a little tonic and gin, some daysjust watching those eyes shining down on me, those light brown eyes it reflected you back just as one were,masking everything behind those eyes. The sensation light with the heavy after effects of making love.
The chandelier, which hung over the dance floor, with accompaniments on the sides, but her voice left everything else unheard, unseen. What mattered was her, just her.
I took time. Finally managed to go up to her one evening. The snow packed in. The crowd thin and my head light, I garbled something about her beautiful voice to someone, at this point I passed out. The next waking moment I found myself in the dark cold night with the snowing falling lightly from the night sky above. The effects of alcohol receding slowly, and thus I made my way home, trudging through the snow.
The young spirit does not sag easily. Evening after evening I was to be found with a glass of ale looking on with keen eyes the beautiful sight before me. The hair dark, her lips full, the nose tapered, the chin rounded, she was a soothing sight for healing hearts. A goddess, a simple girl elevated in my eyes.
The next set of events was quite out of my imagination. Considering my demeanor, I hardly had the courage to go and ask the girl for an evening out. To this girl, I bolstered my spirits high and walked up to.
I was waiting outside after hours. The door opened and there she came out in her astrakhan all wrapped up. It was the first look I had at her in dim sight without her makeup. She walked on the other side and I proceeded towards her.
‘Hi!’ I cried in a cheery note, all the cheer I could put into it despite the hour.
‘Hi?’ she walked on without glancing at me.
I guess she must have been used to monger looking chaps like me following her.
‘Nice night.’ I try making conversation walking by her side, keeping in step.
‘I can hardly call it that.’ She says in a resigned tone.
‘Hmmm….mm’ is all I can say.
She stops in her tracks, ‘Yes?’
I look at her, ‘Mind if I walk you home?’ I huddle in my coat, the cold on the rise.
The girl shrugs. Walks on now, with me by her side. The few minutes we walk down hill are silent moments ticking by, just ticking by! The clock tower, which now rings across town, announces the second hour past midnight. The mist thick and wet shrouds us with the visibility at its minimum.
‘You seem to spend a lot of time in the tavern.’ The girl asks nodding her head the way we were coming from.
I smile in a way of answer,
‘I have all the time in the world in my hands to while away?’
‘Jobless?’ she enquires.
‘No.’
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I write.’ I pause and add, ‘For a pittance.’
‘I sing for the same.’ The girl, I guess trying to make conversation. While to other ears it may have seemed a monologue rather than a dialogue.
I look at her. She looks at me looking at her. I her eyes, I notice, are stone dead.
I continue to make conversation, ‘You do this every night?’
The girl replies, ‘Every night.’
The after awhile I ask, ‘Sorry, but I don’t know your name.’
‘Neither do I know yours.’
‘Sorry. I am Nalin.’
‘I am Prakriti.’ She says in the same stone dead tone.
‘Wow! Apt. You born in the wild?’ I try passing a stupid joke to lighten up our dark and dreary mood.
Silence pervades all and then,
‘Yes.’
After that all is silence again.
I was intrigued. First her eyes reflected wilderness, then her mannerisms and now her name. What was this? A product of wilderness? A nature’s child maybe?
‘I need to explain, I guess.’ Prakriti says
‘We have been walking for quite some time. ‘ I remark.
‘Up ahead is my home.’ She points out a log hut, cold to the sight.
We enter in darkness. She moves to one end of the room and lights up the fire in the grate. In a few moments the room becomes cozy and makes one feel at home. With a small table, a couple of chairs and a crude bed to one side.
Prakriti moves off to another small room. The wooden hut was very organized,compartmentalized. She comes in with two cups of tea. Sets them on a boarded box, a substitute for a table.I crunch on some homemade crackers with the tea.
‘You were about to tell me something?’ I ask in between sips of tea.
‘Yes. It’s about me.’
‘Yes.’ I prompt her
‘I can’t.’ She turns her face away.
Hearing a faint sob, I get up. Walk up to her. Taking her by the shoulders, raise her. Through misted eyes she looks at me. Wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and turns away gazing at the fire.
'I was left, abandoned. It was in an insurgent state that I was born to, left to. The factions had arisen. Everywhere you turned your gaze; the smell of tepid blood followed you, innocent blood. I made
myself, nobody’s responsible for me!’
‘You are a child of freedom.’ I state
‘Yes. Maybe.’ The girls eyes were misty the voice sounding far away.
‘I was taken in by a kind hearted man in the midst of inhumanity. He brought me up till here. In later years of our acquaintance he fell prey to illness of first one kind then another, he fell prey eventually to his ills. And then it was just me, this shack and… and loneliness.’
‘Did he name you? Your name that is, was it he who named you?’
Prakriti continues as if I hadn’t interrupted her at all, ‘The man was old. He was kind. If it were my own breed I guess I wouldn’t have been any better off. Maybe he too was abandoned by his own, just like me. He gave me a name, my identity. He just didn’t live long enough for this child of his to repay him.’
‘He would have been happy to see today, like this, self dependent.’ I remark
‘Maybe.’ Her every breath seemed a whisper.
I moved closer. She huddled into a blanket, now seated on the bed. The cold outside raged with all its force. But within we were snug and safe from ravages of nature. The night was long, not lonely. The fire kindled into the night, whence it went out I am not aware.
I woke up early dawn in the cold. Wrapped Prakriti in the blanket, leaving behind a note, a blank nothing. I walked out. It was the last time I saw her, heard her breathe in her sleep, the last time I touched her.
And now I had returned to this place with all its changes. It was the next day after my arrival in the tavern. There was a lady at the reception signing in new guests and checking out old ones. I walked up. She engrossed in her work, startled and looked at me –
‘Yes?’
‘Nothing.’
She smiled at me. Then her eyes glinted at the edges.
‘Sir, you still are non-chalant.’
‘If that’s a compliment, I thank you, ma’am.’ Saying thus I move off to my room. I hear the young at the reception ask of the old,
‘Do you know him?’
The reply comes, ‘Yes. An old acquaintance, darling.’
In the evening as I sit in the modest reception. My girl walks up to me and sits besides.
‘It’s been a long time.’ She says as she sits down.
‘Yes. A very long time.’ I reply.
She looks on straight without any hint of any feelings at all, ‘ I didn’t think you would return.’
I reply, ‘I didn’t think I would be seeing you here after all these years, again. But cannot negate my hearts desire, my hearts plea, that maybe if I took a chance I would be rewarded.’
Prakriti asks, longing eyes misted over just like they had misted, all those years back,
‘Were you rewarded?’
Nalin looks in her eyes and whispers,
‘Yes.’
A tear glistens at the edge of Prakriti’s eyes and overflowing falls inevitably on her lap.
‘You’ve been crying?’ The girl who I had seen earlier with Prakriti walks up takes and a seat beside her.
‘Yes. We have been talking of old times. Nalin meet my grand-niece, Payal.’
‘Hello. Nalin…. That name sounds familiar.’ Payal thoughtful. Trying to place me.
Prakriti butts in, ‘I have told you so much about him.’
‘Oh! Yes, now I remember.’ Recognition dawns on Payal as if we were old acquaintances out of touch.
‘You have been telling tales about me?’
‘Not really, after all we have read so much of Nalin Bandopadhya’s works.’ Prakriti offers an explanation.
‘I will leave you two to chat.’ Payal gets up and walks into the office, behind the reception.
‘Do you know who she is?’ Prakriti asks with a conniving look.
‘Payal? No. Who is she?’
‘Our grand-daughter.’ The eyes with the far off distant look in them and Prakriti’s voice cold and hard as steel.
‘Wha…? I can hardly…’
‘You don’t have to think hard. I’ll explain everything –
It was a fateful night when you came in that one winters night, when we walked home, unknown. I was never to fall in love again. After all it was a teenage whim. Those few precious moments I never wanted forgotten. Never wanted them to fade away. I was a nature’s child. Payal is of the same breed, a nature’s child.
I did conceive but aborted the child, our child, it was painful, but what else could be done, what else could I do? At the same time my sister gave birth to boy, but as fate would have it, she succumbed to illness following the child’s delivery. In later years I lived my life with this family of mine, till the interceding war disrupted our lives. And he had to leave, leaving behind his wife and child, Payal. The son was missing in action. And then we three girls took care of each other. Payal’s mother due to ill health… it was a weak heart this time, she passed away just these few years back. Now, my memory fails me, I can’t remember the years. Leaving the two of us together, to take care of one another.
With one wish left in my heart, that, someday I would find my love again, I did have you back.’
‘You did. You did get your love back.’ Nalin holds her hand in his.
And then from the back,
‘Uh… hhh… hm.’
‘You don’t have to make weird sounds to enter. We aren’t shy of acts of love at our age. We hardly are bothered what the other thinks. Come in and sit down my child.’ Prakriti says without turning
her back to Payal.
‘So you are my grandfather? Nalin dadu?’ then a little more confidently Payal goes on, ‘Good to have you back.’ And she gives me a hug.
‘Child. I am happy I got you back. I got a family to return to.’ I acknowledge her holding her hand.
‘So tell me, dadu. Didn’t you marry once you left here?’
‘No. I didn’t get the time. And moreover I had my heart here. All these years I just longed to return here. Return to a memory, a fond memory.’
‘You won’t go back and leave us alone, Nalin?’ Prakriti asks crying on my shoulders.
‘Of course not, dadu will stay with us.’ Payal interposes.
‘Yes, sweetheart, we will live together, now and forever. After all I have to make up for the lost time with you two.’ Nalin says.
‘But tell me Nalin, why didn’t you marry?’ This comes from Prakriti.
‘I couldn’t. I loved somebody else. I loved you. I just couldn’t gather the courage to come back after I deserted you that night. I felt a complete loser at my end, a coward. All this while I kept myself busy with work as not to think of it, wanted to escape it. Deep down I knew I was just a coward, throughout my life.’
‘No you aren’t!’ Prakriti hushes me.
‘Yes. I have, otherwise I would have returned to you earlier, much earlier.’
‘Never mind. You have come back, now. And this time we shan’t let you go.’ The cherry Payal slips into the conversation again.
Nalin laughs out, ‘ Don’t worry this time I won’t abandon you. Never, ever will I abandon my own ever again.’
And the scene recedes into a happy family of three. This was the story of my grandfather and my grandmother from a long, long time ago. And now I have nothing left of them except memories,
one endless string of memories and a sense of melancholia.
