“Remember, my Boy, you shouldn’t be too inquisitive for this nature of yours might land you in serious trouble, keeping you away from making friends, especially with the opposite sex.” The voice in my head told me this one bleak afternoon. But despite the warning of the Voice, I did make friends with the first stunner in my life when I was still more of a shy youth. It happened when my nephew and I were playing cricket on the terrace of our house one fading afternoon.
Ours was a big house with some twenty-six rooms, stretching in all directions from North to South and West to East. Though my Baba and his brothers had separate kitchens each, by the time we grew up, the remnants of the joint family system still prevailed in our household.
I was always the batter as I liked hitting out. My nephew Tapan whom I fondly called Tapu, on the other hand, didn’t mind bowling for hours. He wanted to be a first bowler like Denice Lilee.
We had stood a piri for the wickets and he was bowling real quick from a distance of some fifteen feet. I don’t remember if he was bowling underarm. The next ball came charging like a tornado at me. I swung my bat at it with all my might, more out of fear than anything else. The ball hit a nearby wall on the right before ricocheting off it into the narrow galli between our house and the next on the western side. Tapu immediately ran down the steps in the west wing of the house while I, the more lethargic of the two, climbed up the stiff wall on the left leading to the dried up water tank in a corner above the open staircase.
I must have gotten silently into the tank before looking down at the narrow, garbage-filled up, untraded galli. I wouldn’t deny that I was unaware of the bathroom down at the south-east end of the other house but what never came to my silly head was that when there was a bathroom, it was meant to be used by people. Real people of flesh and blood.
I had hardly turned my head from the heaps of rubbish that lay scattered all over the galli past the ghostly kitchen window of the other house, up the wall when a movement inside the bathroom below caught my attention. I must have been a little more than sixteen at that time.
There was a girl taking a shower in the bathroom, who couldn’t have been much older than me. She, I guessed, was the daughter of the house owner and had recently returned from the UK or somewhere else. Naturally, the skin of the lady was translucent, glowing in the fading sun.
With her shapely figure and black curly hair, she struck me as the most gorgeous thing on two legs I had seen till then in my life. Women are said to have the sixth instinct. Hypnotized, I crouched inside the tank, my eyes level with the edge of the wall of the triangular tank, unable to look away from her bathing act when, turning her head, she looked up straight at me. Though my eyes were not even an inch above the wall, she must have sensed my presence from my protruding head.
“Wai! You rascal. What are you doing up there sneak-peeking into my bathroom….?” She was livid. She had somehow covered the lower part of her body with an outstretched hand while, with her back to me, she was trying to turn the shower off with her other hand. She looked even more breathtaking with the water dripping off her body.
I had rarely been that scared! The voice was yelling in my head constantly to find out ways of saving myself. Turning towards the open end of the galli, I cried out :
“Tapu. The ball is down there, behind those fungus-covered bricks? Can’t you see it, you blockhead?”
The truth was Tapu was nowhere to be seen! I kept on talking to the imaginary Tapu for some more, praying all the while that no one came out of one of the adjacent buildings up to the galli, wondering who I thought I was talking to when there was not a soul to be seen in the vicinity!
“So, you’ve finally got it? No, no, don’t throw it up. I’m coming down instead. Time to stop our game, OK? You’ll be the one to bat first tomorrow, I promise.” I kept speaking to the imaginary nephew while it was an effort not to look behind to appraise the graceful beauty one last time. My entire being though was crying out all through to God to save me from the pathetic plight.
Surprisingly, she didn’t harangue me any more. Possibly, she had fallen for my ploy. But if I thought that that was the end of my woe, I was much mistaken. That evening, standing in the veranda of our house, located centrally above the entrance, I happened to see her again in the room on my left. The chink between the curtains let me have enough space to steal a look at her. She was practising, sitting like Goddess Saraswati behind a guitar. Her sweet voice mesmerized me and I stood there rooted, listening to her.
She couldn’t have noticed me. I would have continued standing there had her brother not turned up just then. Tiptoeing from behind, he blindfolded her with his hands to my utter dismay. To my dismay because I didn’t like his presence a wee bit as I wanted to be there in that room talking to her, teasing and praising her, trying to impress and make friends with her at the same time.
If you want something from the bottom of your heart, all elements in nature are believed to conspire together to fulfill your wishes. I read it somewhere. It was at around seven thirty in the evening when my cousin called me from her room on the second floor.
“Raj Da, are you coming up? All my friends are here, along with the relatives. It’s time to cut the cake, you know.” She said with the pang of discontent in her voice.
I remembered just then that it was her birthday. I had already bought a book for her as she was a bookworm.
“Yea, yea. I’ll be there in a minute..”
“Come fast. I want to introduce you to Mitadi, our next door neighbour, you know.” She blurted out hurriedly and got inside.
I got into a T-shirt over the faded jeans and scurried up to the spacious room of my uncle.
The first person that caught my attention as soon as I stepped into the room was that stunning lady. She had a dark green, cashmere pullover on, open at the neck that showed her collar bones prominently with the gold chain around the V of her neck. In the tight-fitting, black jeans, she looked fabulous and for reasons not clear to me at that time, I found it hard to take my eyes off her.
“Raj da, come here. Let me introduce Mita Di to you. She’s just back from the USA…” Then turning to my tormentor on her right, she exclaimed,” Mita Di, this is Raj, my cousin I was talking to you about. Isn’t he the most handsome bloke around?”
I had my head down until I heard her chuckling. “So, you’re the monarch of everything you survey here? ( Raj, roughly translated in Bengali, would mean something like that!) Look at you blushing, Boy,” she spoke with a cutting edge in her voice.
I looked into her eyes then. God! Her emerald eyes kept taunting and tormenting me. I would have kept looking at that hypnotic pair of eyes even then, oblivious of everything else around me if someone had not come rushing in our direction just then.
“There you’re, Mitu! Transformed into a glam doll. I’ll have to get you hooked on to someone before you leave the party tonight.” It was Gita Aunty, the sole purpose of whose life was match-making, I mean, finding grooms for unmarried daughters of marriageable age.
“Mitu, I was told that you are a very adept singer. Why don’t you sing a few English numbers for us? Anything of your choice, just to keep us entertained.” As Gita Aunty kept pestering her for a song, I slowly retreated to the door.
“I’ll if there are no lecherous eyes feasting on me here as well.” To me, she sounded far from kidding.
Before anyone could make out what she was speaking about, I was out of the room. Feeling very lonely then, I climbed up the wooden staircase to the roof of the house.
There were not too many skyscrapers in our locality in Central Calcutta in those days.The shadowy Howrah Bridge looked downcast unlike the silver ball up in the sky. Though my mind was in a turmoil, everything around me looked serene and subdued.
I must have been sitting there for some time when I heard someone coming up the stairs. Next moment, she was there standing in front of me. There was something about this full moon night that made you a lunatic. Soon, we were chatting like long-lost friends. I asked her how long she intended to stay in Calcutta, whether she liked Calcutta more or New Jersey, if she missed India, and all that, while she asked me what I was planning to do after High school.
Soon, she was asking me if I had a girlfriend, and when I shook my head, she sighed stating that things in India were quite different from what they were in the USA. That’s why the boys here looked famished.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when she asked me if I had ever kissed a girl in my life and if not, how unfortunate I was. Now, if I am projecting the picture of a very cheap lady in your eyes, dear reader, please forgive me my writing skills. For she was anything but cheap. She was a very friendly, frank lady that I had the pleasure of setting my eyes early on in life.
I don’t know when or how we came quite close to one another but when we did, I could smell her refreshing perfume that started wreaking havoc in me, stirring something long asleep up in me.
“You know, Raj, I was mad at you this afternoon. I wanted to come and complain to Dev Uncle straight away about your prying nature. But then, luckily for us, I realised my mistake. Residing in The States, I have forgotten most of what constitutes Indian culture and customs. Later, when I saw you again, standing in the veranda, you looked so lost and love-lorn that I felt sorry for you. The idea of coming and attending the birthday bash materialised in my head then. You know, you look even more dashing from close quarters.” She stopped then with her mouth curved into a Monalisa-like smile, inches away from mine.
“I know, you’ll forget me with the passage of time taking it as a fling. But you’ll always remember me as the girl ….” her voice sounded far off and husky at that time.“ I’ll make sure that you remember me as the girl who kissed you first in your life.” She sighed dreamily.
The next moment was surreal. She touched my lips with hers lightly at first as I could feel her eyes on me. Then the fairies started spreading their wings as I could taste the sweetness on the tip of my tongue and lip. I pulled her towards me, desperate to take her in my arms. She must have sensed my hunger as she, looking divine, came willingly into mine, as if ready to surrender herself to the demands of a sixteen-year-old.
That was the night the man took hold of me, having replaced the sixteen-year-old for good. That was also the night when, under the spent moon, Mita, with tears welling up in her eyes and the most heavenly smile on her lips, asked me to always call her by her first name, Mita, meaning friend.//
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rathin Bhattacharjee from Kolkata, India, graduated from C.U.
He joined BCSC as an English Teacher in 1990.
Awarded His Majesty’s Gold Medal (2018) for Lifetime Achievement in Teaching, he has been published and anthologised in a host of Indian and international magazines.
His novel, “The Damon in Doctor’s Disguise” on Web Novel and 4 more books, all published by Zorbabooks, have won critical acclaim. His latest book entitled “‘I Love You’ in the ICU & 20 Other Stories” was released recently.
He loves writing, blogging, translating, podcasting, critiquing and editing. https://www.facebook.com/rathin.bhattacharjee.1
About the Author
