I slept dead that night; dead from all the walks,
calm from all the anticipation satisfied.
The next day was special for two reasons;
My quirk has come back, with all the weirdness I was
looking forward to get entertained with.
And also, one of my favorite actor’s movie’s first
trailer was releasing by 11am.
Here in Bolpur, you don’t have much to look forward to;
hence you resort to things like your dog’s video call, your actor’s trailer
launch, someone to do something stupid so the whole neighborhood can gossip
about it for a week.
All
of this typical not-asked-for lifestyle was happening to me for the first time,
and needless to say, I didn’t like.
Anyway, I woke up around 10 in the morning with a
phone call from the quirk, about going for lunch together.
After lunch, we sat under a shade in Kala Bhavan for
a smoke.
Wintry afternoon and a tourist-crowded Kala Bhavan
is an eternal love saga you’d know if you are a regular in Santiniketan.
We sat, smoked in counters, and gossiped about the
tourists that believed everything the guide said, was ecstatic touching a leaf
that the guide linked something with Rabindranath Tagore, but we all knew they
were cleverly made lies to fool them.
Anyway, the afternoon was going smooth, in smokes,
and in conversations, mostly laughing at people.
And suddenly he said, “Can you sing for me?”
“You need a song to digest the bad lunch?” I laughed
and tried to shrug that off.
“Just sing, please?”
“Two lines only, Okay? I don’t want to wake up all
the dogs here from their siesta.”
I sang the first two lines of a Dylan song, and in
the middle of that, he held my hand.
Few minutes from then, he kept holding my hand, and
that started getting a little uncomfortable, after a kid from the tourist
family started staring at us.
I removed my hand, and we started walking towards
the canteen of Kala Bhavan.
And just then, just when he was about to pass a
tree, a thin line of waterfall happened from the leaves above.
Apparently,
he missed a monkey piss by a fraction of inch.
That gave us our dull life to laugh upon for the
next two days, and occasional embarrassment from his side.
Days started going on, more meals started getting
done together with him, and life in Santiniketan started being a little less
boring.
One afternoon I wanted to show him the place, which
has been my evening regular for the last two months. So my Malayalam beat partner and me, we took
him to that stretch of outgrown forest behind the theatre house.
Golden hour and that place, with all the silence
offered, it catalyzed more conversations.
I don’t really remember what we three talked about,
but I thoroughly remember the eyes being filled to brim with passion, and
happiness.
The
night closed on us, like the days here usually do.
Three drunken pairs of legs, drunk from all the
golden hour engulped, we came back for a cup of tea to the marketplace.
Life
started getting better here, but well, it was just all about the beginning.
To be continued...
