Evening Before Midnight:

The bus was more stalling than it was running. It was well past noon and people were sitting with an apparent laziness in the shadows of the bus stand. They had come to sell turf-grown vegetable and homemade rice wine, in long necked one liter bottles. The older lady, who was standing there in the narrow patch of grassed soil between the concrete of the floor of the bus stand and the road, was holding the hand of the boy she was with. She was visibly avoiding sitting inside, although the afternoon heat was making her uncomfortable. She was sweating and her face had reddened. The boy complained at first but gave up after a few minutes; he clearly knew that it was almost impossible to budge his mother when she acted so stern. He knew that they were going someplace very important to see someone whom he had never seen before, and thought it will be better not to bother his already agitated mother.

When the bus came to the stand, it stopped almost automatically. The driver wiped his face with a small piece of cloth and gestured them to board. The bus was almost empty, with only a boy and a girl sitting on the bench to the rear end; they were whispering to each other and the girl sniggered almost continuously; evidently they were a couple, two young souls in love.

The mother and her son took a seat in around the middle of the bus. The seats had iron bars on top of them. The mother grabbed the iron bar in front of her seat when the bus revved to a start again. The boy was already looking outside, looking at the faces of the people still sitting in the shadows of the bus stand. The bus moved and passed one after another turn around the little hills. The boy shifted his gaze to the other side as his view was blocked by the hills, and then shifted again after another turn on another hill.

“When will we reach mother?” he asked. “Not so soon,” she replied.

They passed localities, where cows and stray dogs slept by the road, and they lifted their face to see the bus moving. There were not many people around the streets, almost all the shops are closed, baskets of the street vendors were accumulated in one corner, covered with blue and transparent plastic sheets; nobody was afraid that their goods might get stolen. The bus stopped in front of the bus stand, a customary stop as the boy could not see any passenger waiting there. The driver wiped his face again, took a water bottle from under his seat, drank from it and started the bus.

“Close the window,” the mother said, “the smoke irritates me.”

The boy tried to slide the glass window, but he could not fix his grip. He tried a few times, but his hands slipped and hit the seat in front after almost each and every attempt. The mother frowned at it, made a sound of disgust and leaned over him to close the window. She did slide the glass, but there was still a little opening which she could not cover.

The sky was dull and the shades grew darker. It almost seemed that the bus was approaching towards the darker sky. The mother was afraid that it might as well be a storm. The bus attained some speed, as if the driver now wanted to reach his destination quicker. The bus got to another stand, where busy street hawkers were taking their baskets from the pile and almost running towards a common destination. The whole locality was under a bigger shadow now, a calm and tranquil shadow, which felt that it was almost saturated; a drop more and everything will be disturbed. The boy got agitated; the stale air inside the bus had now started to smell like rotten fruits and shallow water. The boy looked at his mother; she was leaning in front, resting her head on her arms as she clutched the iron bar over the seat with both her hands. The boy tried to slide the glass again, this time to get an open space, and succeeded in his third attempt.

They passed a few more stands, almost alike to each other. The boy took off his shoes, placed them under the seat and climbed on his seat to have a better look at the sky. It looked as if they have driven past the storm. The dark blue of the sky above them was receding and it was getting bright once again.

The boy had started to feel dizzy by then. He got down to his seat and leaned against his mother. The lady woke up and nudged the boy, “Don’t sleep now, you should get something to eat.”

She took the bag from underneath the seat; a simple canvas bag with a few stitches to hold the handle together. She pulled the zip, which got stuck almost midway, pulled it a little harder, closing the seams of the bag and then finally opening it. There was a cotton sari, a half pant and a small collared ganjee inside. She pushed them aside to take a plastic packet from inside of the bag. The packet contained a tiffin box and a packet of biscuits. She tore off the packet very carefully, took out two or three biscuits and handed them to the boy. Then she took out the tiffin box, opened it, took out an already made paan and put that inside her mouth. The bus went by passing three more bus stops, two bazaars and a little wooden bridge as she chewed on the paan, drank the juice of it and finally threw whatever was left of it out of the window.

“Wear your shoes,” she said to the boy, “we are almost there.”

The boy was excited; he put on his shoes in a hurried manner and then started looking outside the window restlessly.

“How far are we mother?” he asked, his eyes still fixed at the moving scenes outside.

“Almost there,” she said, and this time the lady did not try to hide an apparent sigh.

The bus passed through the big concrete gate, welcoming them to the city and started finding its way in the busy city traffic. The older lady took out a handkerchief from her bag and wiped the dart and oil of her face. She then took out a portable mirror, not bigger than her palms and adjusted her hair. She was now entering the city which always eluded her, but now, finally she was stepping her feet in there. The city was bigger than she had imagined and louder than she would have liked.

The bus-stand was not secluded. The place where their bus parked was in one of the extreme corners. The old lady looked behind, the couple was now getting up, the girl straightening her skirt and the boy taking care of his hair, both giggling, both looking happy. She waited till they got down and then got up, asked the driver what the fair was, paid him in changes and got down of the bus, holding the hand of her son.

They came out of the stand and the lady asked a traffic police about the location of the hospital she wanted to visit. The police was kind enough; he helped them cross the road and then arranged an auto-rickshaw for them and wished them all the luck as the rickshaw pulled away. The heat in the city was almost unbearable; it was like the heat radiated from the road below, went up in a circle and then entered the rickshaw. The circled heat would then take the entirety of the rickshaw. The mother needed some water to drink and was cursing herself for not packing a bottle.

The auto-rickshaw crossed a bridge, moved through a few blocks, all adorned with big buildings, buildings that they have never seen before. The boy stuck his head just outside, to have a better look, but his mother pulled him in. She held him close to her and the boy did not try to look outside; resting his head over his mother’s bosom, he closed his eyes.

When the auto reached the hospital they were looking for, they got out; the mother paid the driver his due and started walking towards the big gate that bore the name of the hospital. The hospital building was huge; the left side was still bearing traces from the first construction that went under almost a hundred years back. The older portion had staircase made of stone, but the newer one had decorated stairs; even steeper, colorful and shiny with all the new reflective tiles. The mother went to one of the security guards standing there. Among five or six guards, the old lady chose to speak to the only female guard who was evidently of the same age as hers. She asked her about something which the boy could not hear; his attention was diverted already, towards the heavy swarm of people moving in and out, he was mesmerized by the sheer number, by the variety and by everything which still seemed merely a dream to him.

The lady took the hand of the boy and started climbing up the stairs. She was not sure what she was doing, but something inside her was forcing her to keep moving forward, at least that is what she chose to believe. The air inside the old building was heavy and smelled like stale grass. The lady remembered the days from around her puberty. The sun would stick out in the horizon as a red dot and she would run around with her siblings, some of them would tackle her and she would fall on the ground, face rubbing against fresh grass and a sudden and unbearable pain originating from her stomach and spreading, slowly but distinctly. She could still feel the pain, and the smell of the grass.

The male ward was in the fourth floor. They headed towards the room which resembled an office room. There was a man in his late forties, sitting there, with a huge log book open in front of him. “What is the name?” he asked, with visible disgust.

“My?” the response of the lady was short and confused.

The man looked up now, squeezed his eyes to curve his lips to show his repugnance, “No, the one you are looking for.”

She told him the name of the man, signed in the log with an uncontrollable haste and put the time beside her signature.

“Sit here, I will call a nurse to take you to him,” said the man and went inside.

The old lady and the boy took their seat in a wooden bench. She looked around the room; it was small, tidy. There was only this bench, an age old steel almirah and the desk and chair that the man was using. The table was overflowing with files stacked in one side; there was a pen stand on the other side of the table, the pen had long lost its original color, but was still standing there like some long forgotten soldier, whom nobody felt the need to inform that the battle had already been lost.

When the man came out of the ward into the room, he brought an elderly nurse with him. “Follow me,” she said.

They went past several beds, too many to count and remember. The boy was perplexed and he grabbed his mother’s hand with an added urgency. He still did not know whom they came to see, but he could sense by now that the person must have been someone very close to his mother.

The nurse stopped in front of the bed numbered forty three. There was a man lying on the bed; he was aged and the skin of his face was all wrinkled up, like the face of a sailor who had spent too many years in the sea. The man was sleeping; at least his eyes were closed. His mouth was open, and the head tilted a little towards the back. His shrunken ribcage was covered by a pale blue round-necked t-shirt. The mother could see the chest of the man heaving, desperate for another clean breath. A lady, not older than the mother of the boy was sitting in a red stool by the head of the bed. She was still wearing her night dress, kind of an elongated frock, with patterns of grey and brown leaves printed on it. The bed was untidy, with a small pile of clothes carelessly kept at the foot and a bunch of long stemmed flowers put in a half-cut plastic bottle over the grey drawer on the other side of the bed. The flowers had lost their fragrance long back, just like the lady sitting on the stool lost her will to smile.

“I don’t think I recognize you,” she said politely with a voice that drifted around her before settling like dust, “forgive me for that, I hope you understand my situation here.” Her lips curled to give the impression of a distant and vague smile.

“We have never met,” the mother said, still holding the boy’s hand and clutching her bag tightly against her chest. She moved a little towards the other lady, took a plastic stool from the other side of the bed, sat on it, gestured to the boy to stand there and gently put her bag on the ground, between her feet.

She licked her dry upper lip before saying, “I am his first wife.” The words seemed heavier than she had expected. Both the ladies did not speak anything for a while. The mother of the boy shifted her gaze towards the sleeping man, “I just wanted my boy to see his father, at least once.”

The other lady did not say anything, she put her head on the pillow, against her husband’s head, and closed her eyes; a few drops of tear trickled down her cheek and rested on the pale yellow pillow cover, staining it a little bit.

“Come near,” she whispered to her boy, “see your father.” She had always imagined these words to form a glorious combination, but was upset to see that they failed to do that. The boy was perplexed; it was hard to believe that the man lying there was his father. He did not feel like looking at him, the old man seemed ugly, and not fit to be called his father anyway. The boy moved his gaze and the mother could say that he was now more interested in the flowers in the plastic bottle.

“I think we should leave now,” the mother said, hanging the words in the void between the wife and hers.

The wife opened her eyes, wiped them with the back of her palm, “sorry,” she said, “Will you come tomorrow?”

“I will,” said the mother. She had to find a place to stay for the night; she was more concerned about it now.

“You can stay till the visiting hours are over,” the wife suggested.

The mother got up from the stool, placed it from where she took it and looked out of the big window at the rear end of the room; the sun was getting down, sitting almost still on the horizon. “We will come tomorrow,” she said.

The boy looked at his mother as she took her bag from the floor, checked the money-bag inside it, pulled the zip again and took his hands. She did not look back when they got out of the entrance door, she had to find a place to stay; it was already getting dark.

23/07/2016

Agartala.