A thick misty blanket over the hills of Mokokchung. A lush pasture turned into a playground. A little agile swarm of kids aged eight to twenty. A rugged football being restlessly rolled and tossed across the field. Young forearms wiping humid beads off their foreheads. The sounds of thud-thud, panting, gasping, cursing. Then the green turf starts to fade, the sounds become thinner, the haze blurs the vision completely.
A dream.
A persistent dream.
***
“ What day is it, Indu? Is it Sunday? Didn’t hear any school bus honking since morning…” Keswani struggles to fix his front dentures as the bowl of milk-porridge awaits him that has sat on the bedside table for the last fifteen minutes.
Wati helps him hold the bowl while his wife Indu starts her morning routine of complaining. About the porridge getting cold, her stubborn back pain, his dirtying the commode and her double flushing it after him, every single time.
Keswani slurps the meal with lips and tongue that are no longer interested, either in its taste or texture, whatsoever.
The affinity between couples that have seen sixty five springs together becomes more like that of siblings.
Ever since his hernia surgery, age seems to have caught up with him.
Days seem to be longer and unbearable when all that remains to do is to eat, sleep, cough, nag, take small walks with the help of your caretaker, and repeat it until the nights fall and the world around slows down.
While walking on the road outside with a stick in his right hand and the left hand being held by Wati, Keswani likes to sit outside the beige house at its elongated pedestal near its ramp.
Just the two of them, and a kaleidoscope of Bhopal unfurling its multiple slides of kids boarding their school buses and vans, their hurrying moms, their kitchens rolling out aromas of curry leaves, fried onions, asafoetida, garlic. The sounds of horns, the newspaper vendor, the milkman, the garbage truck, the vegetables vendor.. he knows them all, and their routines by heart.
Sundays, therefore, bring respite to others, but a sense of nothingness to him.
The neighbours are affable but they all seem to be seeing through him on most days. As if he weren’t there. As if he existed merely as some lamppost. The other day Mehta nodded his head in courtesy on seeing him, the next day he moved past him as if he never knew him.
The vegetable seller that comes around 4 pm everyday shines his tobacco stained teeth at him when Indu buys papayas and raw coconuts from him. Keswani replies with a wave of his right hand.
Among them all, Keswani enjoys the local grocer’s company the most. In fact, he looks forward to having a daily chitchat with him. The chatterbox that he is, he religiously performs his duty of keeping Keswani updated with every little bite of neighbourhood gossip. Indu, on the other hand, abhors this man’s disposition.
But these encounters are just too short- spanned. They make him feel revitalised and alive. And then they return to their everyday businesses, and Keswani retires back to his home. The home that welcomes him in its arms like some stubborn lover; refusing to leave, promising to be there constantly, even if it doesn’t have to offer any joy or hope.
“Wati, don’t forget to give him his laxatives before he goes to sleep. Don’t want to get up tomorrow to his cribbing about his bloated belly,” Indu instructs Wati while making a video call to their son on the phone.
“This Diwali, maa, we’ll be in Bhopal, I promise,” the young couple and their handsome little boy in Dubai talk to her about Keswani and everything back in India.
The call ends, Indu shuts the door of her room and the house goes completely silent. The tick-tick of Keswani’s room clock tries to fill the sudden void.
Wati hands over the tablets to him and just when he makes sure that Keswani has finally fallen asleep, he drags his feet to his cramped room. The ticking continues from outside the closed door. He slumps in his single bed with his phone in his hands. The whole day whizzes past before his eyes again. People who see him everyday yet see through him, as if he were some lamppost. The familiar neighbourhood sounds and aromas that he knows by heart now after having spent two years with Keswani.
He decides to call his mom. It’s been many days since he talked to her. “Maa, next Diwali, I’ll be in Mokokchung, I promise. Make axone and galho when I come. I’ll teach you how Indu aunty makes pakoda kadhi here.” He gets to know from her that their debt has been paid off and that hens and swine are thriving well. “Come and I’ll show you the photos of three girls I have shortlisted for you. No more excuses this time, haan Wati,” Wati smiles and thinks of Pema, his girlfriend in Mokokchung. He is yet to tell mom about her. “Maa who won the tournament this time?” Wati goes on listening to how their team played exceptional football this year and won the long coveted trophy. Without him.
***
Glossary:
Mokokchung: a town in Nagaland
Axone and galho: the local Nagaland cu
isines
Pakoda kadhi: a north Indian dish
