The Fifth Man Read Free Page B

wedding invitation the other day, why didn’t you go? Not in the mood. I like it this way, I really do. Then, at mid-morning, a potter’s wheel began to whirl in her head suddenly. A bird flapped its wings in her breast, pecking on her lymph nodes with its restless beak. Fluids began to drain out of the cage of her body, the currents seeking release. Esha felt like dying if she couldn’t go away somewhere at these times. She realized clearly that she had already been reborn and re-reborn. It wasn’t only cowards who died many times before their death. Even those who live on intense hope and experiences died and were reborn in the same lifetime. On these occasions Esha realized that here present existence had died. Until she was born again, she would live like a floating spirit.
    Everyone had warned her not to take the Geetanjali Express. Although a shorter journey, it meant being on the train during the daylight hours of two whole days. Summer had just arrived. A hot wind usually sprang up as soon as the train left Bengal. But there was not an inch of space on the Bombay Mail. Not even the VIP quota worked. A taxi from the booking counters at Fairley Place to Esplanade. Esha was too excited to lean back in her seat. Only after she had got a ticket on the Geetanjali Express did the potter’s wheel in her head stop. Crossing space would mean traversing time, the inability to do which had always made humans sad. This urge within her to go away was a fundamental one. When it came, an image kept playing in her head, telling her where she should go. A dream on a full-moon night of a eucalyptus-lined avenue and a pair of siris trees arched over the road had led her to Rikhia. A vision of an expanse of cracked red earth fading in the distance under the sun had taken her to Daltonganj. The view through a glass window of unrestricted, unending blue Himalayan ranges had brought her to Ranikhet. Images seen in daydreams did not have shadows like night-time dreams. Sometimes these images were a blinding Van Gogh painting under a real sun, yellow fireworks on real mustard fields, or Jatin Sengupta canvases of real rivers tilting around one sharp curve after another. They made her twist in intense pain. Esha would take the image out of her heart and put it in her lap, hold it in her arms again, and finally hear a little boy crying like the high-pitched whistle of a train. Trembling with a fever in her passion for distant places, she kept saying, what do I do, I have no leave from the office, I have spent all my money building my house, and yet I’m drawn irresistibly to a Bhutia tea picker with a sweet, scrubbed face and a wicker basket on her back, working on a harsh but beautiful mountain plateau while the golden dust from cows’ hooves rises in the air, drawing me like a mother does, like the breeze on a spring night does, like a lover. I must go. Or else I will ignore Piku when she conjures up a new glow with fragrant golden tea in brand-new pink cups and saucers. I shall walk in the garden reluctantly, perhaps the flowers will say good morning, I shall be distracted and ignore them. The December dahlias bent over with pain, the first flowers of monsoon, the gentle melody of the jasmine vines on the lintel—I won’t allow them near me, I shall go deep into my pyre, deeper, while the beads of khoi are scattered on the road with cruel indifference during the final journey. I shan’t care for their pain. It’s not as though anyone has cared for mine. I shall spend hours in the shower, Piku will be fed up of calling me. I will take my clothes from the hangars arranged by Piku in my wardrobe and put them on mechanically. I shan’t remember whether I’m going out or have just come in. Piku will say, ‘Aren’t you eating?’ It’s not as if it will make any difference whether I eat or not. There were no elaborate meals anymore, no one threw away the leftovers in the back lane after a night of celebration. Now a meal was only a