Chapter 12 of Stubs & Roses By Irene Dhar Malik, Mumbai, India

Posted by Team 4indianwoman at 24 November 2007, 4:54 AM and is filed under Serial Novel Stubs and Roses

RECAP

When Ila went away with Dipta, she hardly felt any regret about leaving Nihar behind. She had never acknowledged to herself about how much she missed Dipta, and now, as she listened to him talk about his life in Assam, she realized that she loved him and had missed him immensely. She was content to just look, to listen… She didn’t even tell him about her pregnancy. They got off the train at an unscheduled stop, and entered the jungle. 

CHAPTER 12

Nihar poured out large whiskey and promised himself that this was his last drink. He added ice and water with the great concentration of one who is conscious of being inebriated. He needn’t have bothered since he finally had the flat to himself. But it seemed almost blasphemous to be openly drunk in a place where his mother would have been around not so long ago. She had never approved of his drinking, especially not of the few drinking sessions he had had with his friends when everyone had one too many. The episodes of singing that had followed must have been tough on her, who had been a pretty good singer in her youth. He had never heard her sing anything except a lullaby, when he was very small. Maybe she would appear now to tell him exactly what he thought of this display – he smiled at the thought and fell asleep at the dining table, head slumped forward.

When he woke up, he was strangely enough in bed. There was no sign of the glass with his last drink on the dining table – in fact it was washed and kept next to the kitchen sink. Being a rational human being, he guessed he must have got up from the table last night, washed the glass and gone to bed – there was just a small problem of memory loss, not uncommonly associated with excessive drinking. Being also a slightly irrational human being, he briefly wished that his mother had actually paid him a visit. He would feel less alone if she would do that sometimes. He didn’t think about Ila, he didn’t want that empty helpless feeling.

They had walked on through the seemingly endless jungle, wet with recent rainfall. Once, Ila bent down to check an itching on her calf. A leech was clinging to her skin and she screamed. Dipta just smiled, held his lighter flame to it and the leech fell off, leaving a small red mark on her calf. 

“We must get the city slicker some shoes fit for this terrain”, said Dipta.

“Well, the country bumpkin forgot to warn me about what to expect”, she retorted, a little bugged. They had been walking non-stop for over an hour and she was beginning to feel tired, thirsty and hungry. Such concerns seemingly didn’t exist for any of her fellow travelers, and Ila didn’t want to seem the weakling of the group. Ila noticed for the first time how much Dipta had changed – his delicate build had thickened and he walked and talked so differently. He seemed so much at home in this jungle and she actually felt like a city slicker, out of place.

After walking for over two hours, they came across a village and there was the welcome sight of a tea shack with some wooden benches to sit on. Ila sat down and kicked off her sandals wearily. The cup of strong tea from a chipped cup and locally baked biscuits accompanying it felt so wonderful. She looked around and for the first time noticed how peaceful, how sylvan her surroundings were. Some people stared at her and a few children stared in a group. Feeling a little refreshed, she smiled at Dipta.

“I must look quite a sight, the way I’m attracting stares.”

“No, just different, and at the moment, very tired. Let me see if I can organize some transport for us.”

“Transport?”, she smiled incredulously.

He disappeared for a while and then came back on a bicycle. For the next two hours he cycled through narrow dirt tracks, with her perched on the back seat. It wasn’t comfortable but she knew she couldn’t have walked all the way. Finally they were in Mangaon where her new home awaited her, and a feast. She attempted a few smiles for she couldn’t speak their language, which Dipta seemed to be very fluent in. Then she unashamedly ate like the hungry person that she was and then promptly fell asleep on a straw mat in her new bedroom.  

She awoke when the night sky was softening and the birds were beginning to stir. As the light entered through her curtain-less bedroom window, she thought how wonderful it was to be sleeping next to Dipta, to know that she just had to turn on her side to see him. She turned, found him looking at her, and snuggled close to him. When they kissed, time seemed to stand still; in fact life itself seemed to come to a halt as love turned into longing and then fulfillment. 

 

                                                                                          To be continued ......

 

 

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