The Missing Man: Part 4

There are so many strange things in life. Like the noise that you hear occasionally in your head. Or the fact that the only thing you forget in the pocket of your trousers, most of the times, is movie tickets. Or that very few people use the first urinal in a public toilet. Or that some people sleep so much in a bus that you almost think that they have passed away.


In the street where Srikant lived, there would come, every Thursday, a man whose face was painted to make him look like a monkey. He wore tiny bells in his ankles and carried a whip in his hand. He would be accompanied by a woman, probably his wife, who carried a small drum around her neck. On the beats of the drum, the monkey-man would contrive dance steps and at the same time whip himself. After every whip, he sought alms from people who passed by. Srikant watched this spectacle secretly from behind the muslin curtains of his room.

After he would have gone, Srikant often equated life with the monkey-man’s act. Every moment was a whip, he thought, for which one got one breath in charity. The trick for living life was to remain oblivious to moments, or at least pretend to. When you began to feel every moment, the pain would surface, like the mark of a whiplash, making it difficult to live. The thing with Srikant was that he felt every moment intensely. As a result, he would get flogged with existence.

The bus had been moving for more than six hours and Srikant did not know where it was going. It didn’t matter as long as he could maintain his flight. He knew that somewhere Sneha would be in a similar flight, the wings of which were shaped in mind.

There was some movement beside him and Srikant found that the old man had woken up. He was taking out something from his bag.

‘Where is this bus going?’ Srikant asked him.

The old man turned his head slowly towards Srikant as if he could not believe what he had heard just now.

‘Where are you going, Sir?’, the man asked back.

Srikant let a weak smile and replied, ‘Nowhere in particular. So where is this bus going?’

The old man sighed and said, ‘I am going to Rudraprayag, where the mighty rivers of our land meet, Sir. The bus is also going there. That would be the last stop.’

‘What takes you to Rudraprayag?’, Srikant asked.

The man waited for a moment or two. He felt something in his bag and then replied, ‘Actually, Sir, it was at Rudraprayag, fifty years ago, that I met a girl who would later become my wife. She is no more now and I can feel that my body has also set itself in the mode of an invisible transition. Before the transition is complete, I want to visit those places where my wife and I spent some time together. Before dying she had expressed a desire that her bangles be thrown at the spot where the rivers met. So I have brought them along.’

He took the bangles partially out of the bag and put them back.

Srikant thought of the first instance when he had met Sneha. That meeting was also strange. Strange like the noise in his head.

The Missing Man (Parts 2 & 3)

Part 1
He woke up from his alcohol-induced sleep. He looked at the watch. It was 7.39 am. A straight line of sunlight sieved through two folds of curtains. On the floor lay a heap of books. A book mark peeped from a Bulgarian novel. He suddenly had this urge to disappear.

When he was a child, Srikant would lay hiding amid the bushes behind his house, deriving pleasure from controlling his bowels. He would imagine to have in his possession an invisible space ship that would carry him wherever he wanted. The ship could even enter a room through its keyhole.

When he grew up he wished he were an orphan. He wished that he were brought up by an old man who would have died later, leaving him alone in this world, bereft of any relation. Then he would live life as he wanted to. Imagine what fun it would be to live a life where you had no duty towards anyone including yourself. One day, you would just not want to go back to where you lived. You would not have to call anyone and offer an explanation. You could aimlessly sit in a bus that took you anywhere. You could come back after a week or a month or a year and decide to make love to a young prostitute. You could choose to stay naked inside your house and not venture out for, say, ten days. You could just shut yourself up in your bathroom and not come out till evening. You could decide to eat nothing for two days. Then eat only a banana for two days. And then eat platefuls of rice and chicken curry for two days. And then lift a flower vase and break it against a wall. And then dance over the glass shreds, leaving blood imprints all over the house. And then go and watch a burning pyre on the banks of the river Yamuna. And then put a Nirgun Bhajan sung by Kumar Gandharva on your player and lie on the cold marble floor. And sing aloud with him. And then cry like he did once, in the middle of a busy street, while thinking about the despondency of art. And futility of life.

There was a loud thud. The newspaper had landed in the balcony. But Srikant had no desire to get up. He wanted to disappear. This was a week before he went missing.

***
The diesel fumes of the bus woke him up. His head had been banging subtly with the glass pane of the window but he had managed to keep his eyes shut. A folk song played, probably on a radio set, in the rear of the bus. Srikant looked at his watch. He was a few hundred miles away from his home now. They must be looking for him – his family members – Srikant thought. But inside the State Roadways bus, no one recognised him.

The bus negotiated a curve and Srikant imagined it to skid off the narrow road into the overwhelming river below. All the passengers would die and their bloated corpses would be found miles down, playing footsie with the iron gates of a dam built over the river. No one would come to claim his body and it would lay, for roughly a week, in the freezing drawer of a mortuary. Then he would be cremated (cremated because they would see that his penis was not circumcised and they always assumed such unclaimed body, as per their convenience, to be of a Hindu). Moreover, they would find no identification papers on his body.

Someone snored beside him. Srikant looked at the old man. His head dangled as if he was replying in affirmation to a question. But even in his sleep, the old man was clutching hard a gunny bag. After some time, his head came sideways to rest over Srikant’s shoulder. Srikant could feel the man’s breath making a warm contact with his neck. He looked outside from the window.

The night had taken over from the evening and countless bulbs shone like fireflies in the valley below. Srikant concentrated on one bulb and imagined what could be happening inside the house in its light. May be a young couple was copulating. Or may be a drunkard was beating his wife. Or may be a mother was singing a lullaby to her sleepy child. Or may be a restless man was writing poetry. Or may be someone cried behind that light.

Srikant didn’t know why, but he remembered a few verses of an Urdu poet:

Ghar ki tameer chahe jaisi ho
Isme rone ki kucch jagah rakhna
Jism mein phelne laga hai shehr
Apni tanhaiyan bacha rakhna

(No matter how you construct a home
Make sure you leave some space for crying
The city is spreading in the body
Make sure you save your solitude)

What did a man seek ultimately, Srikant thought. Was it not that some unknown happiness remained, like residue, while one was unhappy? And what of the unhappiness, that invisible ounce, pervading like the smell of damp moisture, during moments of joy? And what about the point when a man felt neither joy nor sorrow? Did he seek something beyond that point? If yes, what?

If Sneha was around, Srikant thought, she would have loved to gather answers for these questions as one gathered berries. But was she not doing that already? May be, one of those lights in the valley below was actually shining over her, as she lay on a bed, feeling the cut on her arm. And may be she had found some answers.

TV says: Et tu Rahul?

I am working on a mini Graphic novel, titled - Byte Soldiers: The life and times of a Metro TV Reporter, for Sarai (CSDS). You can read some of my postings here:

The BJP Correspondent
The Sissy Proletariat
His shoulders and Dodee
The Ninnies of Television
Skull and Cotton Candy

The Missing Man

A week after his disappearance, Srikant’s family received an envelope. His father Bhagirath, responding to a knock on the door, collected it from a postman, whose nose was like an eagle’s beak.

Srikant’s name, with his address beneath, was typed neatly on the envelope and on the other side the sender’s name read as: The Marketing Manager, The Times of India. Bhagirath tore it from one corner, with the help of his silver paper cutter, lying on a table. It was a gift in lieu of annual subscription of a weekly magazine. Inside the envelope, Bhagirath found a note and a newspaper cutting. He read the note first.

Dear Mr. Srikant

Kindly find attached a cutting of the advertisement booked by you under the ‘Missing Persons’ column of The Times of India. Your ad appeared in the Delhi and Mumbai edition of the newspaper on March 22. In case of any error in the ad, please contact the Marketing Manager.

Bhagirath looked at the cutting. There was a photograph of a woman, quite clear, despite the cheap newspaper print. The woman smiled in the photograph. She wore a sleeveless T-shirt and trousers and looked very happy posing for this picture. There were details given below. Sneha, aged 34, fair complexion, tall. A small cut on her left arm. Missing from her residence since two months. In case of any information, please contact immediately: Srikant. There was Srikant’s e-mail and his mobile number provided along with his name. The same mobile number which went off that night. The night, when Srikant did not come back home.

Bhagirath felt his head spinning. He caught hold of a corner of the table and sat on the chair, as his legs wobbled. He had no clue about this woman. And he did not know how Srikant knew her and why he had given an ad in the newspaper. And where had he disappeared himself?

That night, the family waited for Srikant’s arrival. If he got late beyond 9 pm, he would always call and inform his father. Or his wife Kavita. Otherwise, they would always have dinner together by 9.30 pm. But that night, when Kavita tried to reach her husband on his mobile, she could not reach him. It was switched off.

By midnight, they were quite worried. Had he met with an accident? They tried calling few friends, with whom he usually spent his evenings. Nobody seemed to have any clue about his whereabouts.

Bhagirath handed over the newspaper cutting to Kavita. ‘Do you know this woman?’ She held it with trembling hands. She looked at it and then read the note. She did not know her. She had never heard her name. She had never seen her.

When he did not come back till the next evening, Bhagirath went to the Police. An hour after he had returned from the Police Station, a Sub-Inspector and a constable came to their house. They wanted to go through Srikant’s belongings. Bhagirath gave a nod.

‘Your son was very fond of books,’ the Police officer said as he looked at the huge rack of books in Srikant’s bedroom. Bhagirath did not know whether the officer was telling him or asking him. He kept silent.

After taking few more pictures of Srikant, they left. Kavita found a book which Srikant was reading the night before he went missing. It lay on his table, over a sheaf of papers. He had drawn some sketches here and there and scribbled in his usual indecipherable writing. The book was a novel by Herman Hesse. Narcissus and Goldmund. She opened it. On one page, Srikant had highlighted a passage from the novel with a fluorescent green highlighter:

A man’s wishes may not always determine his destiny, his mission; perhaps there are other, predetermining, factors.

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