Free The Fifth Man by Bani Basu Page A

afternoon. Now she wanted to share her puri, subzi and pickles with Esha, but because Esha couldn’t stomach this sort of food, she turned the lady down courteously and ate the white roti and alu-chochhori that Piku had packed for her in polythene. Piku was unparalleled in these matters. It was difficult to tell whether she was a friend or a mother. For the second day too she had packed fine flattened rice, sweets, and wedges of lime with the seeds removed. Esha glanced sideways at her fellow passengers all evening. Who knew when they would sleep? Maybe they chatted till midnight or watched TV, some of them might even be used to having their dinner after midnight. Eventually, the gentleman in the middle rose to his feet and the man next to him went to the bathroom. Esha rose, stretching herself delicately. Night-long comfort, finally. There could be no one as wise and compassionate as the inventor of sleep. Lying on her bunk, Esha could see the sky with countless stars over open fields, beneath it tiny boxes filled with human drops. The stars were so bright, but they did not wander off, circling and eventually dying in their prescribed orbits, but the droplets of people moved about with irresistible life-force. According to their own wishes. I am one of them. I shall never be still. I shall keep moving and die this way. Is death like the sky? Monochrome, grim? But the application of free will that brings me comfort is not predestined, is it? The world’s movement on an orbit is not visible with the naked eye either.
    The train raced across the earth like a heated shell. The windows were tightly shut. First only the glass panes had been closed. Now the wooden slats too. A hot wind blew outside. In the darkness of the carriage a compartment full of people panted like dogs with their tongues hanging out. The young Agarwal boy was off to his uncle’s house in Bombay after his school examinations. He had put a wet handkerchief on his face. Now he peeped at Esha, smiling. You could do this too, it’ll bring you some relief. She had no objection to learning from people, older or younger. Taking a tiny towel out of her bag, she soaked it in cold water and covered her own face, too. See how I can go one better than my teacher. If yours is a hanky, mine’s a towel, it won’t dry quickly.
    The young man consumed nothing but cold drinks. Esha had bought a vegetarian meal wrapped in aluminium foil. She simply could not eat it. The pulau, daal, potatoes and pickles had all been mashed up together. It would have been best to have been on a diet of fruits and cold drinks like the young man. She had her own food with her too. Piku had said, ‘Fine Patna flattened rice, soak it in water and eat with lime juice and sugar. It will cool you.’ She had told her, and she had told her again. But Esha wasn’t up to such effort in a moving train just to eat. Now, as she transferred the hot mass served on the train from one hand to the other and back, feeling like a fool, she realized that Piku had more experience and practical sense. She should have relied on them. When the two of them had considered building a house in the suburbs, Piku had said with a smile, ‘I’ll manage your home, you manage my world. But what if you marry?’
    Esha had said without a smile, ‘Once is enough. But you might marry too.’
    Piku was worse than she was, saying seriously, ‘Once is enough.’
    Both of them had laughed. Putting her arms around Esha, Piku had said,
    ‘Tumi niye chalo amaake lokottore. Tomake bondhu aami lokayete bandhi.’
    [‘Take me away from people, let me bind you amidst them.’]
    At Nagpur Agarwal bought large oranges, cheap. Finally abandoning his silence, he said, ‘The oranges are delicious, taste one, Jiji.’ He made Esha buy a dozen. They sat munching on their oranges as the train moved ahead. These Nagpur oranges were far superior to the ones from Darjeeling. And yet Calcutta considered Nagpur oranges inferior. It felt that