Of Words and Silences

He felt impelled to talk. His thoughts followed a labyrinthine path, confusion marring even the crystal clear parts of his mind. He was bad at articulating although people told him all the time that he was a great speaker. He wondered why.

Outside the room, in one corner where the lighter rays of the evening sun filtered in, a twenty- something man sat eating his food, facing a blank wall against which an almost empty bottle of water stood supported.

He felt oddly privileged- not something he experienced very often. The injustices of life were being dug up involuntarily with the urgency of having to ebb smarting tears. He knew he could not do anything to help.

He stepped out of the room, carefully squeezing through the gap between the satin sofa and the man eating his food. At a sub-conscious level, it suddenly occurred to him that he was supposed to meet Rana at the club. He hated to admit it but gradually even Rana was becoming an excuse for a frosty glass of Kingfisher beer.

Could he go up to the man and talk perhaps?

The man having finished his food was fiddling with his yellowing lungi as he irritatedly wiped beads of sweat off his temples. Not just while doing household chores but also when eating, he was never sweat-free. Sometimes the overwhelming saltiness reminded of the sea. Only the sea was so much more welcoming.

He felt thankful that at least his Malyalam could not be interpreted in the house. He clung to the language with a sense of fervor while at the same time being thrilled by a sense of voyeurism at being able to decode the language in the house. He made his long distance calls once a week to his wife and daughter back in Kolaadi when often the tearful goodbyes would leave him momentarily angered, in angst and yearning. He loved words. He missed them too.

But he was a man and he let it die. The vegetable vendor who came over once a week but talked on the phone thrice a week was in worse plight. His wife at home was ill.

He felt a fleeting sense of sadistic pleasure. Ignorance is bliss.

However, the weekly not-so-clandestine phone calls and the weekly clandestine meetings with the vegetable vendor did aggravate the desire to talk.

The Thakur Po at home seemed fairly kind. Often he could locate in him a sense of sympathy or even empathy perhaps. But they did not talk.

Down the street was the betel shop run by Mahato. The man went there to buy beedis. He went there to buy Marlboro Lights. At different times. Sometimes the man was allowed to buy the cigarettes and at times allowed to keep the change.

The religiosity of smoking took on an all-new sanctity for both men who though on the surface led dissimilar lives, deposited their ashes in the same river.

Mahato and his betel shop had acquired an all-new meaning.