Keeping oneself busy is an uncomfortable burden. We see the day passing by and yet can’t do anything to save it. I can’t read any one book for long. For the past few days, I’ve been carrying a couple of books back and forth from the living room to the bedroom. Most of these books are old, books I’ve read. New stories seem to be getting lost somewhere inside me. It’s similar to when someone calls me for the first time; I’m unable to talk to them for long. I always wish they’d say whatever it is they wanted to, quickly, so that I can disconnect the phone. But every time I rebuke myself for not talking to them properly, I must admit it’s not like I have something more important to do. During these closed-off days, I want to take a leap of faith. I want to talk about the things that we keep away from our stories. Things which we edit out of our books just before printing them. Can we write about such things?
Today I started cleaning the house like crazy. I thought if everything was clean and vacant, only then would it be possible for something new to enter. Even if it’s just more dust. I don’t mind anything as long as it’s new. After cleaning the house, I went to my bookshelf. While I was cleaning, I found so many old books there, books I didn’t know I still owned. Stendhal, Turgenev, Mayakovsky . . . I had bought all these books in my early writing days from a Raduga Publishers stall. Russian literature was available for very low prices back then. I used to think it must not be any good since it’s so cheap. But I wanted to keep books in my house to make an impression on girls and other friends. I would put these Russian books at the back so that nobody could see them; in the front, I’d display the authors everyone knew about. In the early days of writing, Russian literature helped keep me sane, but I still hid it from others, as though it were a shameful friend. Only later did I learn the importance of these authors. The corrupt friend turned out to be a true one. I still feel guilty about that. That’s why I can’t get myself to give these books away, even though I’ve given away so many others. These were my mates when loneliness stalked me, and I didn’t know what to do. Gorky’s Mother, Pelageya Nilovna . . . the name still gives me shivers. I touched and held those books for a long time. Every old book has some association. Just then I saw Camus’ The Outsider, her last letter peeping out. A fine smell of cinnamon hit me the moment I opened that letter. In it, there’s a Jorge Luis Borges poem called “You Learn”. I got scared and shoved the letter back inside the book and hid it under a pile of thick books. A bead of sweat had rolled from my forehead to my cheek.
I turned on my laptop and sat down to write. “You Learn” kept running through my mind. I tried to gather all my memories and write something down on the blank screen: What time was it? What day? As time passed, the date and hour entered my memories too and started to mock me. I found myself standing in front of a dilapidated closed door! Should I open it? Should I enter? Just to know what time it was on that side of the door? What years of memories crouched there? The door creaked open, and I found Rohit from tenth standard sitting there.
He was reading a poem, “You Learn”. I took a deep breath and the door snapped shut. The story had opened its eyes when I fell asleep. When I woke up that night to go to the washroom, I felt as if somebody was standing behind me, but when I turned and switched the lights on, there was no one. I looked at the clock and it was ten past three . . . again? As I drank my coffee, I kept thinking about the figure I had seen just before I switched on the lights. It felt like it was her. When morning comes, you laugh at your fears of the night, but each one of them returns to your side when the night falls again. Turn to the wrong side and you’ll be face-to-face with them.
I read Antima’s messages on my phone again and again. I was happy when she came to Mumbai for a few days for her company’s work. We met over dinner. I had no idea that meeting her after all these years would make me so happy. She was in a relationship with some guy in Delhi, which I was happy about. After discussing the old days and much laughter and fun, I dropped her at her friend’s house, where she was staying. Just before parting ways I had clicked a picture of us which she asked me not to upload on social media: He wouldn’t like the fact that I met you. We were always better as friends than as a couple. Even today the amount of love between us comes from the time spent together. I looked at her for a long time and she apologised. I told her I understood, but actually I didn’t. Why lie? She texted me a few days later and I got to know that she was stuck in Mumbai because of the lockdown and the friend she was staying with had moved in with her boyfriend. After I had a friend of mine deliver some rations and necessary items to her place, she said that she wanted to meet me. She texted multiple times but something didn’t feel right to me, so I didn’t reply. I wanted to write to her and tell her that I didn’t want to meet her on the sly, but if we had talked about these things, we would have ended up ruining the memories of our time spent together, so I stayed away from my phone.
I had no idea when I fell asleep. When I woke up, I saw a lizard entering through the door. What time was it? What day? I shrugged the thought away. I was drenched in sweat. I got up and took a bath. A message alert pinged on my phone. I looked at it. It was Antima, writing that a friend of hers had brought her a bottle of scotch and she wished to have a drink with me that evening. She knew I could see the texts. The only thing I could do at this point was to block her, but the moment I did, our past would turn bitter. Every relationship is burdened by its most beautiful moments. We are willing to do anything to safeguard those moments. And so, we end up carrying the weight of that person on our shoulders, fearing they might step on our lived reality and walk away. Antima texted again: You don’t want to see me? The bitterness in her words was palpable. I couldn’t ignore her any longer. I replied: Not today, maybe tomorrow, not feeling good. She instantly sent a smiley back and said: Okay, take care, see you tomorrow.
I tossed the phone away.
Excerpted with permission from Under the Night Jasmine, Manav Kaul, translated from the Hindi by Vaibhav Sharma, Penguin India.