Spring had just arrived. The trees that had been denuded in winter were covering themselves up with the new leaves once again. Sometimes I could hear a lone Indian cuckoo calling ‘kuhu…kuhu’ in the garden beside our house. Maybe it was trying to find its lost companion.

The winter seemed to be in a dilemma to leave the city completely as sometimes it showed its presence in the cold breeze coming from the North. But spring was overpowering it slowly. Like a defeated emperor, the winter would come once again after a three quarters to regain its empire. Until then, the poor people would get a relief from cold, biting nights on the pavements.

Although spring is a comfortable season, it generates anxiety in the minds of school children and their parents. Most of them can’t even enjoy Holi, the festival of colours properly due to the annual exams knocking on their doors. Their childhood gets killed slowly by the rat-race to ensure bright careers.

I was very lucky that I was in college then. I still had two months to study for the exams. During Holi, I had great fun with my pals. I could besmear Shatabdi with various shades of colours and she made me look like a ghost. That day it was tough for even me to recognize myself in the mirror.

After two days, my natural skin tone replaced those hues and I looked almost normal. Still there were faint traces of red and blue here and there but I considered them negligible imagining my previous look. Now I can’t remember the date but it was obviously a Sunday. I had taken Shatabdi to the Sealdah Railway Station. Indian Railways had inaugurated a special train named ‘Gitanjali Express’ to celebrate the renowned poet Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. The train was scheduled to rest on a specific platform for a whole day. It was studded with rare photographs of the bard and several other memoirs for the public.

The platform was crowded. As it was a holiday, many people from different walks of life had come to visit it. There was a festive atmosphere around us. I visited the compartments of Gitanjali Express holding Shatabdi’s hand and pushing the crowd ahead. I was mesmerized by its decoration and the historic value attached with the displayed artefacts.

We got down from the train and prepared ourselves to reach our respective destinations. The traces of red in the afternoon sky were getting pale to welcome the evening. A gust of cold wind filled my mind with serenity. I could see the crescent moon disclosing its presence slowly.

There was a lot of nuisance in the environment. The crows were competing against the humans with their shrill cawing while returning to the nests. It seemed that they were bidding adieu to one another respecting their social norms.

I was walking fast holding Shatabdi’s hand and heading towards the exit. Suddenly she freed her hand and stopped.

‘What happened?’ I asked her curiously.

‘Nothing. Let’s go,’ she said.

‘Okay.’

We began to walk again. Shatabdi again stopped.

‘Why are you stopping every now and then?’ I could not help asking her.

Shatabdi signalled me with her eyes to look at a specific direction. I looked. There was a food store selling delicious snacks.

‘Oh…you are hungry. Let’s go eat something. Come...’ I could not complete the sentence seeing her disappointed eyes.

Shatabdi whispered to me, ‘Idiot! Look at the beggar beside the food store. I think I know him.’

I looked there once again. There was an old beggar sitting near the store. His clothes were extremely dirty but his bag was dirtier. His unkempt beard almost covered his whole face. It seemed that he had never shaved them in his lifetime.

‘Is he your relative?’ I asked. Shatabdi pinched in my shoulders affectionately and said, ‘Don’t try to be funny. Look at him properly. Doesn’t his face look familiar to you?’

No, it didn’t. I said, ‘Go near him and explore by yourself. Please let me know if you recognize him.’

‘I’m going,’ she said expressing a fake exasperation and quietly went near him. The beggar had hung his head drowsily. Shatabdi looked at him carefully. Then she put a coin in his bowl and slowly returned to me.

‘Did you recognize him?’ I asked.

‘No, let’s go.’ Shatabdi resumed walking ahead holding my hand.

The next morning, Shatabdi’s phone call woke me up.

‘Have you seen today’s newspaper?’ Shatabdi’s voice was quivering in excitement.

‘No. What’s there?’ I asked her in a sleepy voice.

‘Look at the Calcutta Times.’

‘We don’t keep English dailies in our house,’ I said yawning.

‘I am coming to your house in half an hour,’ she said and put the phone down.

Shatabdi came to our house in less than fifteen minutes. She also had the Calcutta Times folded in her hand.

I was astonished to see her photograph in the first page. In the photo, she was putting a coin in the beggar’s bowl. The caption beneath it read, ‘Shahid Khan in disguise in Sealdah Rail Station to promote his next film Springfest’.

Reading only this, everything became clear to me. The superstars of Bollywood were engaging in awkward publicity stunts to generate curiosity about their upcoming films. Shahid Khan was playing a beggar in Springfest and that’s why he thought of taking a beggar’s guise in a big city would be a cool way to promote his movie.

‘I told you that I felt I knew him,’ Shatabdi said with a beautiful smile. I didn’t say anything. I just tried to feel her tremendous joy that was sparkling in her pretty eyes.

But still I repented to myself, ‘Oh God! If I had gone with her to look at the man closely, my face also would have appeared in the newspaper’.