A Scar

I wish I could transport myself back to the past and halt the tick tock of the clock to a stop.

The reminiscence of that juncture of my life seems to me as if it were yesterday.

It was in the year 2004. I used to go to Kolkata, early in the morning by the 6:15 a.m. Krishnanagar local train, for my professional training classes at a company in Sector-V.

I, Rishi Mukherjee was in my early twenties, an energetic and very enthusiastic Computer Science graduate. Then in those days, I was desperately trying to create a niche for myself in this mortal and materialistic world. I had bagged the job through my campus interviews at Jadavpur University.

As expected, the Krishnanagar local train would be more crowded than any other Indian local trains, packed up with people and hawkers of different kinds and shapes hustling and bustling in it like an inferno. In India, the local trains are mobile markets. There are hundreds of hawkers selling all sorts of households and fashions, tiffin and time passes, pleasure and entertainments. Amidst that hullabaloo and cacophony; I met Nilu, co-incidentally she would also travel by the same train and in the same compartment.

It was my first job where I was a trainee in my company for the first six months; for me, it was my maiden step into the professional world with thousands of dreams and mixed feelings; there were a lot of excitements and as well as confusions in my poor mind; but those six months had changed my life. I came across many unexpected things; the unseen part of the world and a portrait of the ugly reality which I had not seen in the previous twenty-one years of my life. I met some frenemies. I saw many unscrupulous men back-stabbing one another for insignificant things. They were all imposters who masqueraded themselves in the world. I was passing through a transitional period; and with the passage of each and every moment, my utopian world became smaller; with the cynicism of life and the hard core realities of the worldly affairs creeping into it; where the realities of the world were contrasting to the thoughts which I had nurtured all my life; everything seemed to be an illusion.

I always felt suffocated due to the gloomy cloud that had enveloped my house.

I almost came from a broken family, where since my childhood I have always seen my parents quarrelling and blaming each other, for each and everything in their lives. For a child it was an excruciating pain to see his parents living unhappily with each other like strangers. I was the only broken bridge that loosely anchored them together. Both of them had their own egos which kept them apart from each other all their lives. So for my betterment, at the age of nine, I was sent to a boarding school. All my life, I had stayed in hostels hankering for the love and care of my parents. And when I grew up I realized much later that both of them loved me a lot but they were not at all expressive about it, I was the only burning lamp in their lives; the light which lit their gloomy world. And after I had completed my graduation I was back to my parental home, but just to spend the nights as I used to leave for work early in the morning; we only met at the dinner table and behaved like taciturn people who replied to one another in monosyllables and after one or two words with one another we were back in our own rooms.

When I first noticed her initially, I would just stare at her beautiful face, uncomprehendingly. She used to always smear vermilion or a bright red coloured ‘Kumkum bindi’ between her dark black prominent eyebrows and looked as if she was in her mid-twenties. She seemed to be about five feet two inches tall, an upright rural woman with the possession of two big attractive black eyes and long black hair and the last but not the least she had a dark complexion which perfectly complemented her charming personality. For me, Nilu was like a breath of fresh air in my monotonous life; she was like a cool breeze on a hot blazing day; her presence reinvigorated and imbued my heart with vitality. As soon as I would notice her in the train compartment, my soul would float with much glee as if unchained after ages; my heart would be immediately out of the churning and pressing crowds which had made me feel claustrophobic; and slowly and steadily I would slide into a reverie for the next one and a half an hour of my journey.

One day, by sheer co-incidence, I sat beside her and could not resist myself from talking to her. It was very unlike me; an inane act.

‘What is your name and what do you do?’

‘Nilu, sell flowers’, she said it with a smile.

‘Interesting’, I said.

She smiled again but did not say anything.

‘So, where do you go?’ I asked.

‘At first I go to Diamond Harbour to buy the flowers from the wholesale market and then sell those at Sealdah Market’, she answered.

‘Then that’s a pretty tough job!’ I commented.

‘No, I have become habituated with it and have many friends who join me at Diamond Harbour’, she answered again.

‘And in anyway, I’m an inept woman; I have no other options, since I am not literate enough to do a better one, I studied till standard- VI’, she added.

At that moment I just stretched my lips and said nothing.

After a few minutes, the rumbling of the wheels screeched with a jerk and suggested that it was time for us to get off the train, and thus, our conversation ended there for that day and within seconds we were separated and became a part of the homogeneous crowd at Sealdah railway station where a swamp of black heads of men and women were visible from a distance till the horizon.

But we met again in the same 6:15 a.m. Krishnanagar local on the very next day. Seeing me, she came up to me and said, ‘Namaskar’.

I just looked at her face and smiled.

‘How are you?’ I asked her after a few seconds.

‘I am fine’, she said.

And observing me seated quietly, she started telling me everything about her life– her income, husband and two children. I, like an obedient listener, could do nothing but just heard her. She narrated how her parents were very poor and could not manage to feed her anymore. So they got her married at the age of 15 to a labourer who worked in a tobacco factory. Her father could not find a better match for her as he did not have any money for the dowry. She further said that her husband initially had no problem to feed both their stomachs, but at times after their children were born, he found it difficult to run the family. One day, she noticed that her neighbours Sheela and Nandini used to go somewhere at the break of dawn; being asked, she learnt that they would go to Kolkata to sell flowers. They earned about one hundred and fifty rupees per day and this helped them to run their households smoothly. And finally she took permission from her husband and joined them. She told me all this in a breath and then stopped for a few seconds. I did not know exactly what to say at that moment, so I just asked her, ‘what are the names of your children and how old are they?’

‘Arjun and Ram, they are eight and six years old, she said this taking a breath.

‘Do they go to school?’ I asked her again.

‘Yes, Arjun Studies in class three and Ram in class one.

The teachers say Arjun has a good brain’, she said it with a lot of hope and excitement in her eyes. Our one and a half an hour train journey ended and we both went back to our own world.

We met frequently and I always enquired about her well–being. This is how, I got acquainted with Nilu.

One day, after a fortnight I came across Nilu in the same train and I found her very upset. On being asked, she said the sky broke down on her, her husband was suffering from cancer; her earnings were not enough for the treatment and she had to look for a better earning job.

At that moment, I felt very helpless like a handicapped who could do nothing except watched the scene like a bystander.  I wished I had a magic wand to relieve her from all the sorrows and sufferings.

Unfortunately, it was for the last time in my life that I saw Nilu.

Several queries hammered into my head; whether her husband was okay or not? What was she doing to earn more money?

I just wished I could meet Nilu somehow and help her in some way or the other.

I don’t know what was that unnamed relation which we shared between us? Was it a crush? Which might have developed due to the attraction towards her rustic beauty and innocence since she was unlike the girls of my world; out of sympathy; or the respect for her spirit which she portrayed to face life. I don’t know exactly but I know that there was definitely something between our souls.

It has been many summers since that day; manage to survive the lashes of several hot waves and grow a few grey hairs. I am at a stable position in my life: father of six-year old Ridhima, the most beautiful rhythm of my life and the apple of my eyes; and at a position to support my family with all their basic requirements and the little luxuries.

In spite of it, till today, Nilu, left a long-lasting impression in my heart; I do not know why? I can still visualize her face clearly whenever I close my eyes; her face has not become a vague memory like thousands of other faces which I have crossed in my life’s journey. It is an indelible incident of my life which remained like a silhouette in my mind and the heart filled with self-accusation. I feel guilty that at that time I did not have the courage enough to stand by her side and help her during her crisis; and now I feel I have to bear this burden of guilt all my life; till my last breath. I realized the importance of her in my life only after I had lost her; when I felt that I might not see her any more.

It is a non-erasable episode. Its scar quite often takes me to those bygone days. And now I feel its memories will dwell in my heart till I take a dip into the Lethe.

Whenever, I travel by any local train; I am often transported to the memory lane; and everything around me seems to come alive; my eyes always search for her face. I don’t know why it happens? Somewhere deep in my subconscious mind; Nilu and local train journeys have become associated images. It’s a kind of déjà vu; whenever I board into a local train, I long for her presence to satisfy my unbound soul….

There is nothing but disappointment and disappointment everywhere and everyday….

Our lives are like the paths of the railway tracks which always run parallel to each other but never meet.

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