saratkanur

That day,when the rain let,I walked down to the corner bunk for cigarettes and some grass.The pusher who hung about the gate near the bus terminus, was not there and I scanned the place and felt my eyes lock in with another. I had a feeling that it had been watching me and there was no surprise in her's when we connected. I smiled.She arched her brow in inquiry and took a step forward and my heart went into over drive when she came closer and said

"hi I have some........want some?".. and surprisingly I found my voice and said

"Well yes....... I .I...will you join me?" and she flashed. Her smile. It was that smile ,easy and happy and one that went slightly beyond the end and stretched a little more that her cheeks drew deep, deep dimples and her languid water eyes suggested more than a smile .She was a pusher alright,but of another kind. She didn't deal in dope,but could give you a high with her eyes.She was Darren's girlfriend and I hadn't seen her since Darren left a month ago.

"and what else........"she asked and the sugestion that she might be available made me hot and blood rushed about my face.I sputtered and she giggled.Somehow that eased some tension and I felt easy and chivalrous and put my arms lightly around her waist we walked back the few yards back to the apartment.

We talked about Darren and she said she didn't hear from him. "Did he call or write you?" she alked lightly.

"No,he's illiterate and then he an only remember with his pecker".

Ah.. I had done it again. Saying the most inappropriate thing at the most inopportune moment.She didn't seem to particularly mind and there was no trace bitterness when she said..

"Do you mean me and him?"..." what I don't need now is a tight leash." Pretty deep, the kind of oblique talk I really preferred.Darren had left a month ago for Dubai and until then they had been laying each other almost daily .Some said she was a nympho but that turned out to be untrue.That was later,when we spend more time together

Darren was serious about his relationships but not in a way it would tie him down but in a more caring way, a commitment of companionship rather than a bondage and maybe she knew that and that's how she wanted it to be.No strings.He had made promises and said he'd be in touch but being Darren he was sure to have found some place to wet his beak and have probably over her her by now.

Anyway,she made it clear there was no residual flotsam and that I was free to do what I wished and that was my dream. I had always fantasised about her but what followed went beyond my wildest.

I have known Darren almost all my life. First as a bossy 12 year old, one class above me in school and then as my best friend. He wanted to be friends with me and that was a rare honour , even more so as the years went by.Everybody wanted to be Darren's friend and I got it without much asking.

He was my uncle's neighbour and I went there for lunch. He lived with his mother and an elder brother in a one room tenement adjacent to the General Hospital where his mother worked as a mid wife in the pregnancy ward . My uncle had moved his family out of our ancestral house and now lived in an rented mansion just behind the tenement.My aunt had asked me once to lunch and from then on I had walked in and she had a plate set for me on the table.

Darren and I took the same road,our school broke for an hour and half for the afternoon recess and I walked the short distance to her house.Darren had a cycle and he would whiz past me making animal noises and sometimes he would offer me a lift and dump me halfway in the other direction and laugh. But soon we started becoming friends.He worshiped my uncle and was fascinated by the things he had .My uncle was a compulsive shopper and bought whatever was there to buy and his house was strewn with latest electrical gadgets ,toys and puzzles and Darren wolfed down his lunch and came over the compound wall and then we spent an hour among these before rushing out and making it back to school just in time for the second bell.

Darren could not afford to be late: his mother would kill him. The church that ran our school offered free education to converts and his mother had converted so that her two boys could get a decent schooling.They were not rich. In fact,without his mother's job at prenatal ward and charity from the church ,they would have starved. His father had left for France when Darren was a little child . He had send some money for sometime after that but then money and the letters had stopped coming,leaving his mother to ponder their fate. She had a far away look in her eyes and I think she had dreamt of a life in France and had become bitter and angry and progressively that she lost her mind. I remember she had squeaky edge to her voice and sometimes her eyes looked bleary and it looked like she had been crying.Though I didn't really understand at that time, as I write this I'm convinced that deep inside her she bled and died of broken heart.That happened the month he passed his final exams and then I didn't see him for three years.

It was a weekday ,a dark sky shut the sun out and coulped with hissing winds and slashing rain, only a madman would venture out -it was a perfect day to jump lie back and draw deep on a reefer and let the music turn pictures in my brain.,which I did. It had been raining incessantly for a week and the entire neighbourhood was under knee deep water and life came to a stop,the slush and waterlogged street making a simple walk look a plod that tired one up to the thighs.There was little traffic,cars got bogged down in the mire, the public transport ground to halt, their rickety engines breaking down after sucking the water into the engine.

I watched from the balcony. Not many ventured out and those who did waded through the slush,their dress hiked to the waist, threading their way through our back yard , stepping on precariously placed stones to reach the bus stand behind our apartment. For long now, our back yard served as the approach road to the bus stand ,commuters prefered this short cut ,avoiding the long road around the development ,which ran along the outer wall and to the gate on the main road.

It was all so long ago.Darren had come to the city a year earlier.He had found a job and rented the apartment .This was just after college and I joined him there a year later. He supposedly had found a job for me too,which turned out to be a real disappointment. As a supervisor for a local contractor. I found it energy sucking for the sheer lack of any mental effort; the ennui drained me to the point of headache. I quit a week into the job and stayed back in the apartment ,cooking for that bastard.Meantime I also read,which was my passion.

By the time I joined Darren,the apartment had lost some of it's reputation .Till then it was a kind of super market for romance and girls and boys found love, made love, broke love and fought over love until the police raided the apartment.Somebody had complained,said it was a prostitution racket ther and since then the girls boys were more circumspect and discreet in their trysts.

When I saw Radha the first time,she made me notice her.She was older than the other girls who came to our apartment and more... pert..hope that's the word. She was neat and looked freshly scrubbed and washed,though it was already evening.Her stringy jet black hair was in place,combed back and tied behind in a neat tight bun. But then she was like that, clean and ironed ,her dresses and trinkets were matched,her feet was clean and she was always awake,her eyes expectant like something wonderful was about to happen to her.

I choked up when she tried to talk to me and I loathed those moments. There was another fucker who shared the apartment with us and they would jaw jaw to no end about books and movies- just superficial stuff while I sat nearby and burned to get in on the conversation with an insiders knowledee and deep meaningful interpretations of things they were discussing.Those remained unsaid.Slowly she deemed I was mentally retarded, or I felt so and that made me want her more.

What other name"...I don't have one.Still,I felt hair on my neck stand up and my groin tightened."What name" ..I whispered again and looked at the door, expecting his mother to emerge and catch me bare.

What mama calls you,........ "bolti".

Ahhhh......'bolti'.That bastard Darren! I had disliked it the day he foisted it on me .When young, on the way to school ,I had to cross a railway yard .An homosexual,a dirty old railway kalashee in flapping khaki shorts who stood guard to a gravel yard , lured young boys with promises of sweets and small change to behind a stack of tar barrels and had them jack him off. One day, at a corner sweet shop, he sidled up to me and thrust a few sweets in my hand and invited me over.

"Come..Bolti......I'll show you a rare bird".I ignored him and ran away.A few days later ,as I was crossing over the rail tracks , the old man came up from behind and draped his arms around my shoulder.I tried to shrug him off,but he held me close and whispered,

Boltiboy.....he said,his eyes gleaming and brought out a big bar of chocolate. "Here,a beeeg chocolate, take it". I brushed him off.

"What,don't want to see the bird.??..........come." he insisted,pressing me closer .

I squirmed and tried to free myself,but he tightened his grip and dragged me along. I was getting desperate but couldn't shout for help for fear of bringing shame on myself .Just then I felt him loosen grip and didn't wait to hear him out and ran a few feet and I turned back to see Darren facing up to the bastard.Even at that age,Darren was hard to scare and stood with both fists up, ready to throw a punch.The old man too raised an open palm and there was a standoff for a few
minutes .Then ,what happened, surprised me. Darren started negotiating.!!

"How much did you tell him ....?" Darren asked, pointing to me.."50paise?...NO..No...I want more... I want five rupees.".I saw the old man raise a clubbed hand and asked Darren to fuck off making a dirty geesture and walked away.

Darren ran after him."How much do you have in hand now" ?,I heard him ask and then after a few words.

"Okay..okey.."

The man dipped into his trouser pocket and fished out a handful of coins and dropped it in Darren's palms.Darren came over, gave me the coins and asked me to go ahead and wait beyond the yard and went along with the impatient man and disappeared behind behind the stack of tar barrels.A minute later, I heard a triumphant whoop and saw Darren heading down my way full blast with the old man's khaki shorts clutched to the chest.

"Run man run,we'll teach that sonofabitch a lesson"... he said and ran ahead,waving the drab trousers over his head as a victory flag and as we crested an embankment,I looked back and caught the old fucker emerge from behind the tar barrels, bare-assed,desperately yelling to get his trousers back.

We ran and Daren threw it down the slope. It was a thirty feet drop and a gang stood on the other side and booed the old bastard as he got down to retrieve his trousers.Two things happened then, one, he was blown to the world and it cured the oldman of his sickness and two, I was forever stuck with that name.Bolti......Darren had heard him call me that and had gone to town with a different story and pretty soon the whole school was calling me by that name.Bolti!!!.

I was forever fighting those who called me that but as we grew and over the next few years ,it was forgotten and except for a few ,nobody remembered that name. Not Darren. He always told this story and called me Bolti when he needed to get my goat. He had told the story to Radha, and I had to tell her the real one, but she had her cunning fun ,calling me Bolti. But I had liked it, she had a way of saying it, especially when we attained climax together. "Bolti..bolti..ummm .I can feel you coming like a tiger".

It was all so long ago.How does she know me now...Bolti? .That bolti? I wondered

"So, and what does your friend's mother do during the day ?" I asked,eager to know,but I didn't let it show.

After a half eaten dinner,he didn't like the food and I didn't want the thread to fade,so I had followed him to his room and hoped to get him talking.I was curious to know if Radha had shown any particular interest and asked him about me or whether I was mentioned in a passing conversation.Any specific reference regarding me would be a pointer.It was I who had concluded that I was her daughter's biological father though Radha had not even shown a fleeting moment of recognition when we had crossed each other on the road.

My son was the clue to the answer, I could subtly probe deeper and find out whether after all these years she really remembered me, but my son wouldn't even look at me.

"mr rockkkk,.......want to wrestle on the terrace".I asked as if I was in a great mood for monkey business, like prancing .

He was busy...."go away,I'm busy".he said ,looking intently at the computer screen and furiously toggling the joy stick.At his age he had to be busy,pushing buttons on his play station and killing his own dad.I was getting a little too nervous and angry,but I held.

"Well,if you don't feel like wrestling, why don't we go upstairs and catch up on the stars." I wanted him to be an astronaut and thought a gentle introduction to the mysteries of the universe would kindle in him a desire for larger missions and had a telescope installed on the roof.It had remained largely untouched..

He didn't care and twisted his ears by reaching it from behind his back."What stars..........the sky is full of clouds" and screwed his face.I tried again while he adeptly sidestepped a six pointed atomic weapon and launched his vajraastra."boom..boom " "look dad,I've been waiting for three days to get this bastard".

I cuffed him.."what kind of language is that" ...I yanked off the controls and hauled him to the terrace.

"First....never use that kind of language in my presence....and two, if you want to play again, you better explain yourself."

"Dad, everybody says that....if they miss" I cut him off .

"I said ....what you meant about that lady knowing my name."

I had no inkling Radha had recognized me when she saw me.Today when my son said she knew my name,it set me thinking. If she did,she should have some reason to remember,because our relationship was so brief to so remember unless she had a reason to do so or so I thought.Now, did she ever reveal to her daughter the truth? Did she tell her child that I was her father?I was in deep thought when my son interrupted me ...

"She knows your other name too.........

"I don't have any other name."

"What mama calls you somtimes"......and that dropped like a bombshell and I cringed.If Radha could recollect that, I should have been in her mind all along.Why?