Two Women and the Girl

Two Women and the Girl

“They cannot expect me to carry them like toddlers now in their twenties!”

Prabha was walking beside the Ghantaghar, the Clock Tower, with her school-time friend and colleague Binita.  Binita couldn’t miss the sincere affectation in Prabha’s voice and did it justice with her seemingly assenting silence. The two women in their late thirties walked on the raised pavement instinctively skipping jagged pavestones and meager puddles, their polythene bags of vegetables dangling, hooked to their alert fingers.

Now as the rush-hour bulge in the day’s lower end was petering out, the sun sailing away unseen dimmed the not-so-far-off hills. Now that they had bought for their dining table whatever groceries they felt desirable at reasonable bargain. Now that they could let their slouching minds perching on their relaxed motions to be unhinged from the puncutalizing pull of the office. Now that it was easy to extrapolate to oneself on uneasiness. Now that they could really talk of caring with care.

“When will his final term be over, Alok’s?” Binita tried to engage herself seriously. She felt, it was required to be an active listener; she morphed forthwith and effectually into one.

Prabha brushed it aside. "Oh! It'll be over this Dashain early"—meaning Alok, her only child, 21, would take his exams before the month-long Dashain vacation and, possibly, get his results after the festival was over. "It’s the attitude . . . it's his demeaning disdainfulness . . . he's like it is all stand and take-off for him in the world. And I'm all idiocy and wimping with off-color obsolescence. He doesn't hate my . . . astuteness, he disdains it. And his father looks at him with silent towering admiration, towering continually, against his shortishness. In all our youth I never felt he'd be so fickle in his judgments. I wonder if a man can melt all his solidity and vitality and let it flower in his seed! It is all so stupid, always being old and not getting anything done right, and losing interest in how to."

Binita knew what this it's all so stupid meant. It was one of the codes the strict survival of which made their friendship subsist for nearly three decades. It meant not to intercept. It meant you had to believe that the spell of sentiment was not going to last for long. Wait and listen, it meant, for a while.

"Just yesterday, he said he'd have to travel. He had to take up on experiencing. Only then could he know what his real calling was. Then his choice would be a free and life-fulfilling one. Can you believe it? Life-fulfilling. Where from does he get so much confidence to churn out such phrases? 

"First he left engineering and joined journalism. Now he is almost a Master of English Literature. He has almost turned my and his father's collection of novels and poetry upside down. He won't take up reporting just yet. He'll travel in our expenses. And his father isn't fumed at all. Now it gets me to think I should have had more children. That could have made him think about forcing his prodigal alter-ego out, don't you think?"

Binita was amused and surprised. "By god", she said, "You say it so surely. I married almost five years after you. That was normal, I waited for my parents to strike a fair deal and you brokered your own and that too early. Anyway, your husband and you stuck at it well. Now I have three children. And you're already making me nervy to think about what I'm to look forward to now that Anita is almost out of school."

Prabha became really animated. "How I forget, have you decided to have Anita transferred to another school? I think you said Baghmati Academy, didn't you?"

Anita, Binita's eldest child, who was at the last year of school had been badgering her parents to transfer to the posh Baghmati Academy because her three best friends were to go there apparently. But Binita suspected it wasn't enough of her reasons to want that.

"Her father made a good use of his professional acumen. He did one of his real talks with his offspring. That conference insistently excluded me but once it was over and the two came out of her room, she was no more obstreperous and grumbling. When at mealtime the father said," Friends come and go but not family", Anita shook her head like a disciple in awe. They can be such actors in the house sometimes, you see. But may be for my readiness to receive their every frivolity with a serious face that allows them that. Even in school I would let you talkative guys to tower over me and most often it would be about whether or not it was stupid of a certain girl to have salad for Tiffin for a whole week." Binita's vexation was surprisingly clear. This made Prabha guffaw. Binita joined in too.

"You remind me of the little us. But you're not telling me something, isn't it?" Prabha now turned Probing.

"Look Prabha, you were a smart girl and now you are smart too. You charted a course of life which is exemplary of a woman who has self-respect; you defied your oppressive family and justified your freedom by marrying out on your own. It looked scary and shocking but it turned out it wasn't. Given the times, it might have been the only thing one could do for oneself. But I remained sweet even when what I felt was very less so. I grinned and smiled and thought I gave the family a reason for grinning and smiling and that there was a final justification of it all. But marriage changed the norms and the game. My husband was in all respects a person one could boast of, he still is. And I had children. Not just one like you and others, but three. Three in a row. It was like I was born thrice over in those five or six years. 

"What I was or thought for myself to be before that became a distant memory. And when at some moments it was all clear, it seemed silly when mothering was so palpable. And then it would fell so terrible to think I was lapsing into the ancient mold of woman. Time to time when I saw you getting on with your university education, with a husband and a son, and even taking up a job, it was difficult to explain myself to me as simply as what life had meant at school — to study to be a success."

"But still you haven't told me where your anxiety lies. I think I can understand that. When you possibly saw my life as rosy as you just said, I was going through the hardest phase. But it will be unfair, though, to call it hardest. I owe much to that phase. Being a modern woman—if that makes you any better as a person— in Nepal was my explanation of myself to me as it were, so to speak." Prabha spoke with as much levity as she could lend to her voice.

"The thing is I had Anita first. A girl. Then boys, Prabal and Prakit. While I was still tendering over Prakit, Anita was already menstruating. She grew so much a Daddy's Girl while I've virtually never left the house. Now she worries me. She is constantly on the telephone. Her father shrugs it off with a laugh and an occasionally satirical jibe. And thinks he's done enough to notify her of his knowing. She might make friends with boys is nothing to worry about. But I couldn't let myself keep mum when something of a sort made her think of changing her school. Her self-assurance in realistically thinking it a possibility— it served as an eye-opener, I guess, that I've not known my daughter at all. But she has grown up so different, and so fast." Binita heaved a premature and so short a sigh that Prabha knew she wasn't over yet. "How can you talk so naïve ?"Prabha felt like saying but she knew better, knew that such an interposition could jeopardize the flow altogether and much that would better be said would be left unsaid. "People are always so unknowable, but you know that. Even you were deceptive towards your parents when you were young, you just said. Not a matter of conscious or unconscious effort. It is just that it has to be. That deception is no one's fault, if you ask me. The deceived are unable to get that you might be able to show or there will be so much to disapprove of. And what with the special situation of the Generation Gap. To talk of the ever lying rift between people, it is even stupid to mention. Who doesn't understand it? And still we live with self-deception. We try to believe we know, we understand and eventually, unconsciously keep a safety vaulve where we can feel wronged. Of course I'm not being very partivular about what you said you recently felt about Anita. She is good— nice girl! In many ways, I feel she doesn’t show a lumpy mind, amorphous, brooding, —and untamable, surely."

"She is polygonal. But her edges keep on sharpening and blunting with her moods. And the scale keeps on expanding. At least that much I find palpable presently." Both the women laughed now. They had come across the walk-over hub at Ratnapark. People walked loosely on the pavement but still jostling by them, for little clusters of them were sporadically let out by vehicles at the stop. Beside them the iron-bar fence that bordering the shabby and greenish public park ran along and soon curved in a rectangle with their motion. The tarmac and trees were now exuding coolness as the deepening evening accompanied them.

Occasionally they came across a pani-puri vendor surrounded by girls in very short shorts making much of the citric-infused crunch-balls. By the time they had walked over the length of Tundikhel and turned corner, it was dark. People were thinning down but the lights came out bulkily. Across, the New Road bazaar came glossily romping into their eyes that chose not to patronize it for all its glamour. They continued to walk on this side of the pavement where from one of the exits from the ground little boys were sauntering out with cricket bats and wickets, their play over with the sun. still it was time too early for the stars and the moon to be addressed their overdue. Vapor lights blazed too near and overhead. The road seemed to swoon with so much light.

"O your kurta looks absolutely dazzling!" Binita smiled at the compliment. She had had it tailored just the earlier weekend. The gold plated entwines and emerald tasseled neckline was complemented by road-marker light-gold stripes running down in broad parallels to the lower hemline; and little crystal starlets made it look like an Olympian marathon track littered after the ceremony. The pattern was distinctly beautiful in the brocade-like green cloth. "You'll notice its shine ever more as we step inside." She cheerily caught Prabha's bare hand and led her across the moving autorickshas, scuttling the momentum into the dazzling mall. It was a new one, for them, Kathmandu Mall. While everyone from teenager to menopausal women talked of whatever trifle they'd bought there, they had been waiting for an occasion to buy something themselves too. To have had bought something was necessary, if not the something was really needed. On this they concurred in thought but it took a whole year for them to concur in going there. And now it was they were plunging into the thick of the to-be-special evening.

 White mercury lights glinted off the hard and slippery floor and the clacking of steps was muffled by a conundrum of feet, each pair producing its own voice. They moved from one store to the next not knowing what to do. Suddenly they found themselves making efforts at being ahold of their previous frame of mind. Prabha stepped into a shoes store where the price tags on the walled-over shelves made them cringe. Chic and untouchable. They felt their bags, now bulging with the vegetables they'd stuffed pell-mell into before entering the mall, deficient. Prabha remembered watching a news report, in CNN or BBC she couldn't be sure, showing severely malnourished children, their eyes sunken deep in their cranial sockets, their bellies bulging out like that of a distended belly of a woman well-matured in her pregnancy, looking at their white-skinned saviors with unfathomable countenances. Just as they were stepping out into the passage, she noticed a young girl in a sleek and tight-fitting top, which was yellow, assessing the kinds of goods the sight of which made her flush all over. Binita, unaware of her friend's stupefaction by her side, softly remarked," O there lies the sex-shop." The girl came over to the counter, paid the bill, clutched the plastic bag that seemed to contain something light and walked out into the passage. As she saw Prabha standing before her, she looked amazed, and said cheerily," Hi auntie! So nice to see you! How is Alok?" Binita couldn't help noticing the length of her shorts that barely came over her hips and were tantalizing exposed to intrigue a well-seated mind.

Prabha was at pains to match the girl's brisk felicity. "O he is fine. He is going to the north-western regions in Karnali this weekend. I think he'll work as community-based social worker for six months before the NGO assigns him with other responsibilities . . . here, of course." She was surprised at the quantity of information she gushed out. Was she nervous? A mere youngster, her son's age, was making her so? It was so disquieting and she tried to make it up as a normal conversation and giggled (it was her girlish one, that she always brought up whenever she had to handle an awkward conversation with a you-know-I'm-not-so-naïve-ish touch) and said with apparent self-reprobation," O I feel so guilty to feel sad for him. You know city-bred and insulated so much from country hardships! But all the year round I've nagging to myself and no less to him that he must get out. Er . . . what are you shopping then?" she wished she had not inquired thus. Unnecessarily, she realized later, she felt the need to emasculate it. "I mean you must be looking out for bags, or things you know, girls look for." The girl could have been surprised by her hitherto unseen articulateness but she remained leveled in her initial disposition.  "O yes, I was buying some toys and things, auntiee. Alok can alwayzz  do well anywhere. Just as I've always said." Prabha remembered distinctly when Alok had brought her home one day and in the kitchen where Ankita had rushed behind her to be of help she had said of him quite matter-of-factly to Prabha's wonder, "I'm confident Alok will be a high-achieving man." She had had to accede with a humble nod and try to inquire more about her. How she wondered at her frankness, how times were changed, how Alok could gush about his girlfriend so incessantly and how all of a sudden he'd declared it like declaring the onset of power outage that it was all over.

"Make sure to drop in sometimes." She erred again. She blushed, it seemed to her, for her son.

Ankita, privileged to be tactful, said," Erm . . . why not?" rapidly and smiled a perfect TV smile with her pinkish lips. As soon as she parted with the duo, Prabha hurried out of the corridor and to Binita's wonder looked intent to rush back home. When Binita was just about to reproach her friend, now at the bottom steps of the outer stoop, she saw an even perplexing Relief painted over her face that she held herself back. She didn't inquire and Prabha rightly understood it was waiting. Waiting to let her tranquilize and explain.

They hailed a taxi, hopped in and cozied themselves in the double seats. "I forgot to ask what happened of her going-abroad plans. She said she wished to study something like Commercial Psychology. . ." Binita tried to sound confused," What are you talking about?" This was an invitation to commence or to let go, either way.

Prabha began to recount the delicate progression of her son's love affair in all the you-knows and such zig-zags and now dated mortification, as people at such times are wont to use, as the cab speeded away in the pot-holed street like a careful ant locomoting through the grassy trails in its routine searching and rapid-sailing manner.

The Beggar

Leisure and love are oddly transfixed in a subtly entangled web of their making for town-dwellers. When I asked Smita if she was free on this fateful Saturday when I was relieved of my hosting duties (because my lingering kins from village had finished their this and that in the city and temporarily divested themselves of the need for a shelter in my one-room rented abode) and had no menacing office routine to attend to, I expected the day to be bright and burly. For one thing when I telephoned her, the aanar shrubs out in the neighbor's swayed in the wind exuding all lushness and the April sun tickled their skins. With all her chutney-ed intermingling of acceptance and hesitation I bided my part of coaxing and reasonable and yet tacit acknowledgment of her being a coy and humble girl. Of course, she wasn't the GIRLFRIEND, even as she was to be so outspoken! And she agreed to meet at the peddlers' pavement of New Baneshwor. At ten o'clock, 'sharp'. She knew well than anyone what a usual renegade on my own self-set appointments I was.

By the bus stand where there was no tarmac and freshly dried mud I stood smiling at her as she came in a whish of green kurta, the silver pattern of which hugged the neckline that plunged modestly, and a mass of shiny black hair waving softly, that backgrounded her smiling face. I had the knack of not being too cool to not compliment her on what a show she was and had the levity to be sufficiently conscious of my dusty shoes. Smile reciprocating smile and painting all that communicated we walked along the pavement. Now brushing hands, now dashing our sides. Thus she tick-tocked and thus I shuffled alongside on the pavement.

I was beginning to appreciate how smooth her curves were and rue over how less I had invested myself in knowing her fully for more than a year when I did something utterly out of the ordinary. On the pavement, right before our feet, lay a man sprawled on his back, his leper's cured but amputated stumps of limbs banging the air as flies courted his lips and nostrils from where a hoarse breath issued tentatively and faithfully. The two-rupee coin clanged and rattled with the entire furor it could manage on the wretch's bowl. Smita's expression was vague and unintelligible to my ardent eyes as I rose from my semi-stoop and insinuated my companion to walk along. But she discarded the reticent coquettishness all in a go and ran to the nearest store as fast as her feminine grace and exacting stilettos could allow. I tried not to look baffled or overtly surprised as I saw her come back , her forehead furrowed with strange concentration, with a tetrapack of apple juice cozily grasped in her hand. My first thought was if the pack wasn't cooled in the freezeer, as she penetrated the eager sucking pipe briskly into the pack; my second thought was what had come over me to drop an inconsequential two-rupee coin into the pitiable bowl when I was an avowed unbeliever on the virtues of miserly and egoist charity as she stooped comfortably on the stilettos extending the pack's now suck-able protrusion to the sickly lips of the man; and my third thought was I'd better not think and listen to what my companion , the reputed counselor for a law firm, was cooing to the man to get the metabolic deed done; and finally, I think I succeeded in not thinking anymore.

Stooping down myself I tried to make myself seem amused, and interested and appreciative, all at once. She smiled to me a perfect smile and I had to avert  my eyes—allow me to say all that I felt—from the excessive radiance and try employing my hands to comfort the man whose pain I could least detect, let alone feel. The helpless man was pliant, muttered a few things, and stirred his lips always showing his musty teeth-line as I raised him up on his lap with my hand pressing forth on his meager back. His yellowed garments were a funny smelling swaddle and his head was curiously shaved, it must be a couple of days back. I was synchronized to the movements of the man as if a shaman in tune with a fellow soul: he looked at the benefactress and I looked at her, he shuffled in a slight way easing himself on the cold seat and I eased on my crouched feet, he looked patronized and I felt led and cast into a role all of a sudden. He sucked hesitantly, gulped and his eyes bulged out. A fly adamantly inspected his brows failing to make him twitch in response. I was subtly informed of all inner tremulations and seismology of his physiognomy my palm being the detector placed over his back. Next gulp and he heaved up, a tumult arose, settled down tranquilly, erupted splashing out all the guts of his choked sinus into the solicitous hand of the benefactress. She must have been disgusted. I could only see the bulk of hair shaking like a carpet being dusted with a stick as she wiped with her kerchief the despoiled faculties, her head bent low in concentration. The wretch wore a deadpan expression except for the physical anguish, or it was an overwhelming projector of physical anguish sheer.

 He was upright and statuesque, my detector failing to record a single vibration that was distinct for a full minute. Then there was a buzz, a squeezed breath escaped like chiseled wood out of a sawmill as the nostrils flapped open and immediately I could detect distinct thuds but those were my nervous palpitations. Shaking Smita by the hand, I stammered out—" He needs a doctor!"

The storekeeper whose store Smita had recently patronized came over to see what the fuss was about. A few pedestrians and loiterers gathered about as I frantically rubbed on the beggar's back. Impatient that the crowd was getting bigger and encroaching on my space, I looked over for Smita who came with the shopkeeper directing a cab. The corpulent shopkeeper instinctively bent over to help me lift up the man and get him on the backseat. As I slapped the door shut I saw the alms bowl with the coin and the fallen tetra pack flowing out in a rivulet of yellowish fluid like the the blood of so much crushed insects. I put my shivery hand over Smita's shoulder next to her bare nape. It must have conveyed her something calming for she turned back from the front seat beside the driver and gave me a look that bespoke—" I'm okay".  The wheezing was horrendous as each breath of our patient overhauled a new wave of fright and assurance on us. I said to the driver after a ride of about five minutes," It's okay. Just get into the left driveway and drop us by the emergency entrance." I virtually ran carrying the man as his limbs sagged and swung. On the bed I found its neat blankness mirroring my own predicament. I felt pure horror, its sally rising up from my bowels like a flowing tide. As in a dream, I came to realize, I answered to the nurse, "I found him on the street. He choked . . . Will he be alright?" In sheer contrast, she was calmly taking the vital statistics. The doctor came and said after checking his chest— "It’s a temporary blockage of the windpipe. A case of exacerbating cough.  Not much to worry about."

It was surprising I had almost forgotten Smita was standing in the room too, watching meekly from the door. I saw an Eve just conscious of the sin she had committed in ignorance. I felt like Adam myself. And then I felt displeased with myself for having thought so. I went to her but didn't stop by, gave her to feel I meant to lead her out of the room. She followed. I clasped her hand tightly that swung tantalizingly subdued by my side. It calmed down as my confidence absorbed all the palpitations like a shock-absorber and flowed out into hers or it happened the other way around, and we were calm. I sat by her on the anteroom seat and smiled at her. She giggled, showing the perfectly leveled teeth released from braces a few months back. I remembered how crooked my fangs looked like. Her damp fingers slithered on my palms. I released them with a heavy heart.  Then I felt a subtle grip and my hand rose high and then a pair of lips brushed against the fingers and I heard a gentle smack and the limb went limp sensuously, for a while. I resented with the assurance of her solidarity the presence of people even on a Saturday, Why should anyone fall ill on a holiday?

The nurse came by and asked me to come in. "The patient has coughed and it's alright." The Patient was seated propped on by two pillows and it was hard to judge his expression. More now than ever I felt poor at reading faces. He grunted and I took it for his gratitude.

"The patient is alright. It wasn't even necessary to bring him here in the first place. It is natural with street folks. They overcome dust and damp. We can't keep him here for long."

Smita paid at the counter despite my remonstrance. Between us, she was always the first to go making short work of bills. While I was looking at the prescription of a cough expectorant matching it with the name my father had been administered to last winter, it dawned on me that the man might be a deaf-mute. Lo! My job was done! What was I to do with him?

I tickled Smita and rushed her out to the passage and dispensed of the notion. Her reaction was one that intends to buy time, explanatory.

"You mean he can't talk and we won't be able to take him home?"

"You don't have to be so loud. What do you think we ought to do?"

I pleaded her to think a way out of this mess.

"There could be a police involvement. It doesn't bode well to get stuck up so." This was a caveat we couldn't ignore.

I thought hard and furtively and restlessly. Not so, I only exacerbated my anxiety. Smita lumbered to the toilet and I remembered what my late grandmother always said," If you don’t know what lies ahead, don’t let go, but wait and watch. The problem might dissipate on its own accord." I could give it a try. I felt a smile coming to my parched lips and suppressed it, but it resurfaced and poured purposefully down Smita's ears making her smirk shrugging, with a little dismay. That incredulity brought forth an urge to say," It's you with your c h a r i t y and s n o b b e r y that we are in such a fix. Appreciate my plan or get lost." But I thought better than to forget my own former assiduity at gallantry. I was the one to initiate an apostasy and dispense of the coin. What had gone over my head then? Was it an act of such consequence? Charity couldn't just be so manageable, coming down to be merely a paltry pecuniary dispensation. But it was no use brooding and self-sermonizing. In a way having her constantly at my side made me feel it would all go well. She should have felt that way too. "Let's do it," she said at last. The nurse passed by us eyeing us just meaningfully.

 "I'll bring a taxi at the entrance. You see through that the man is ready." Then, I ran towards the exit.

The taxi driver was a mere boy barely over his teens and his eyes darted funnily below the wooly mass of his straw-streaked hair as he took stock of the trio he was to dispose off. We had a deal agreed on and paid on advance he naturally wouldn't make any inane remarks. The Chabahil junction was choking with traffic just as we left the Heritage Hospital. "To Baneshwor, just by the bus stand," I repeated, half mumbling, half making sure the driver understood clearly. Now and then the boy darted off a glance or two at Smita, by his side, and it irritated me. To keep me involved in more serious matters the Beggar at my side sneezed for the umpteenth time letting go of all that had bothered him for so long. I took out my kerchief and wiped first his nose, then my hand where there had befallen intermittent drizzles. I looked at Smita who was watching me wipe my sleeve and said," And you were serving him juice right out of the icebox!" She giggled. My hand kept on holding the swaying guest firmly by the shoulder. His face was a veritable landscape as varied as Nepal, the complexion rustic like dung-spattered paddy farm soil in the monsoon, the ears protruding like listless jut-outs of forlorn hillsides carved out by brutal landslides, open to sight and yet inaccessible to comprehension, the runny nose a sore city river. When I laid him down on the pavement, he stirred a little adjusting himself, shutting himself out to the world. I felt a pang of guilt. His eyes were facing the sky and were unaffected by the bright bluish dazzle. He seemed to be at home there, somewhere high and above, and with his breath now normal and limbs slowly rising up again, he seemed to be nullifying all that had happened in the past one and  a half hour. We didn't exist for him. It seemed no one and nothing did. I couldn't dare to look into his zenith. I was getting paranoid of these sentiments. It made me feel so low and vacant. The gathering crowd didn't help either. The shopkeeper had taken care of the bowl and brought it back to its proper place.  "He was choking on cough," I said to him and no one. He nodded absent-mindedly. Smita handled me away and it all felt so unreal that I wrung my hand free from her clutch wondering if it would really come off. "Hey, one can only do so much!" she said. "Yes, Yes", I replied.

The procession of students protesters that had caused a traffic congestion at Chabahil had arrived with all its gusto into the New Baneshwor square. From across the wide street I watched pedestrians flood into the pavement as the traffic was squeezed away by the oncoming tide of demonstrators. There was a clearing in the stream of passers-by where the man lay like a glade in a forest, a calm oasis in the desert of conundrum. The clearing disobeyed, wouldn't care if it were to be encroached upon or trampled, but as long as it was there, there was to be a recognition of being there. In the square in no time speeches began to  be delivered and victimizations gushed out amok. The sun beat the air to bear hot sentiments and render discordant rumblings momentous. I felt dizzy.

"Let's to to some place peaceful," I said.

"I know this restaurant just nearby where they have acoustics. Come with me."

We asked for two glasses of lassi. We made no use of sucking pipes at first, then laughed at the stupidity and slurped up the frothy white content to the lees.

"What a day! But I wonder where he comes from everyday. Who he stays with." Smita prodded my now recovered calm and hers too, surely.

"Wait and watch. Things will straighten themselves out. Remember? It's not over yet." I reminded her.

"Yes, I know." She smiled mischievously and shyly and turned to the big glass window. We could see right down to the pavement.

"You thought out in advance," I clarified my edification like a schoolboy.

We sat there chatting of odd things, cracked jokes about our colleagues, made snickering digs at he neighboring table occupants, made constant services to our gluttony palates and matched it with the proportionate occasions for restroom. The city lights began to show. The demonstrators pilfered away and the square was swept clean with the routine of diurnal cycle. The Beggar still lay there on his back, an overturned creature, amidst the fading music of humanity. We walked down the stairs, lazed out onto the street, gravitated to the opposite pavement and there we saw, like a shadow, like a moving shroud a nondescript figure emerge out of nowhere, lift up the vessel, pouch its contents, lug over the pacific seeker into a van and drive him away. But I felt I was mistaken. While the van drove away, there still had been a mass of dark opacity inversely prostrate in a form that could well be compared to a silent prayer, there, right there, on the now cool pavement. I couldn't see the end. There could be so many endings that weren’t endings. There was a crevice if an alley just beside. It could have been a small den there or elsewhere or nowhere. But I could always run across the street and find out with a close view. But I couldn't do that. Why should a man do that essentially, sensibly?

"What did you see?" Smita questioned.

"I'm not sure. Did you see him lugged off on the van?"

"You didn't pay attention to details, did you? To what really happened? You watched and watched and forgot, didn't you? That you did."

"Yes, I think so. But  . . . how do you say that, I mean, how do you know?"

"I was watching you all the time. It was no use watching across. We would never see much in such darkness. I love to study the man I love."

"Oh!"

The air was pleasantly cool, the leaves of ashoka trees rustled with the breeze and it was nice to have a girlfriend who said she loved her man before he did.  But this boy was momentarily perplexed and spoke out to her as if memorizing for an examination," I love you too. I've got to marry you. That I've got to do." And believing in it, all of a sudden, hugged her, there on the pavement feeling all the calm of the sky pour down on him, on every palpitation throbbing by in his veins and hers, declared in tremulous release," Oh! I could take on all lies with it."