ALL THAT SCARE

( I )

Finally the sun came out and the room got its share of light. The night-lamp was still on. The sky had been overcast during the night but now it was fine. A few white clouds floated around in the unrelenting blue. The bad weather had disappeared. Aneek Chatterjee opened his eyes. It was eight. The alarm had not rung but the sunlight had done its job. It had pushed open his eyelids working through the inner dark. He looked at the night-lamp, pale and powerless in a patch of bright sunlight, as if begging to be switched off. He went to the switchboard and switched it off. The light inside died immediately. Aneek looked at it again, relieved?

Last night he had not been able to sleep properly. There were awkward sounds disturbing his sleep, sometimes inside, sometimes outside the room and sometimes as if in the middle of the two. Who knows? May be, he had been dreaming all of them! Whatever they were, they made his sleep rather broken, discontinuous. Quite a few times, he could hear a coin dropping somewhere in the room. There were whispers too, punctuated with other sounds, almost of a pornographic character. However, there was nothing to be seen anywhere. At least, Aneek didn’t manage to see anything.


--“Hello, is it Aneek Chatterjee at the far end?”
--“Yes. Who am I speaking to?”
--“Nobody.”
--“What?”
--“Yes. The‘what’. That is more important than the ‘who’.”
--“Is it so? Then, may I know what your ‘what’ is?”
--“Have you ever been to a fish-market?”
--“Fish market! Why?”
--“Not ‘why’. Say ‘which’?”
--“Which?”
--“Say, the Gariahat fish-market.”
--“No, not for a long time.”
--“Then go. Right now.”
-- “Why?”
--“Not ‘why’, ‘where’. That is the ‘where’ for my ‘what’.”
--“And what is the ‘what’ in that ‘where’?”
--“That is for you to find out. I can only say one thing—if you ignore it and do not go, it might just take lives. It is a deadly old thing.”
--“Enough is enough. Who are you?”
--“I told you, it does not matter. One last word—do not ignore what I have just said. Remember your position, your high office. You have a lot of responsibility towards the people. If a number of them die today, it might well be a result of your carelessness.”
--“What the…”
The telephone line was disconnected from the other end. What was left of the mysterious voice was just a tortuous and enraging engaged tone. Aneek looked at the receiver, angry and confused or both equally perhaps.

( II )


A peeling sound of thunder and Aneek’s sleep broke off. He looked at the clock. Four thirty in the morning. There was very little light outside. It was raining quite heavily. He sat up on his single bed and looked through the window. The sound of the rain was whisper-like secretive to Aneek. It told so many stories to the earth and all that was inaccessible to him. The little pores on the surface of the soil had swallowed all those words, all those impassioned stories. Aneek will never be able to grasp them. Sooner or later they will evaporate through those very pores promising yet another return. However, the rain made him feel good. He could clearly differentiate this morning from the one just before. He looked at the night-lamp in its last phase of power. Even if there was no sun there will soon be some light at least. The eastern horizon was brightening already. What a day it was, yesterday! He was still to understand its implications. He looked at the table, on the right. There lay the telephone, silent for the time being. It was the telephone call, which had started that bizarre game.

Aneek got up from the bed and moved towards the centre-table to open the second drawer on the left. There was a packet there. He had brought it home. He opened it and four packets of Moods condom came out, condoms with some dots for some extended pleasure. He pulled the chair and sat upon it, observing the packets carefully. The pictures on them were the same—a boy kissing the shoulders of a girl from the back while the girl is opening the left strap of her white bra. The background of the picture was a combination of the fire and the dark. Who could have done this? Not many had any knowledge beyond that of his single status. Aneek put three of them on the table and opened the fourth one. The contents came out—sticky and hollow. He held them in his hand, feeling through them one by one with his fingers. They were smooth and Aneek felt a curious comfort, running his fingers across them. He had never needed them. He had been left out. There was anguish in his eyes. It could still be seen despite the semi-dark interior of his room.

( III )

What should I do? It must have been a joke or may be, there is some conspiracy to do me in. What is the time? It is eight-thirty. Even if I do not take the car, it will take me just about ten minutes to reach the market. It might well be a blank gunshot, but I must verify things to assure myself. What if the voice turns out to be true? What if it is a bomb? Kolkata is still no Delhi or Bangalore, but still…. If I ignore it and then it explodes, killing innocent people, I will never be able to forgive myself. Last week, there were serial bomb blasts in Delhi. May be, now it is Kolkata’s turn! After all, I am not a common man. I am a state-secretary, a high-profile boss of the ever-assuring administration. I do have a public responsibility. Moreover, if it is a really powerful bomb, even my life is at risk. How far is Golpark from Gariahat Market? I better go and check it out.
All these thoughts ran through my mind as I put down the receiver. I picked up my mobile and made a call to the bomb squad at the police headquarters and told them to reach the place as soon as possible. I put on my black corduroy trousers and an off-white Peter England shirt to make myself sartorially presentable for the public moment and rushed to the door. The lift was right there on my floor. Someone had come upstairs just now. I got into it and pressed zero. It started moving down after an initial hustle.

A large number of market-hungry people, a lot of din and bustle, the typical pungent smell—the fish market was quite a busy, disgusting spectacle. It had been a long time since I visited one. As expected, a fish-market was hardly in my scheme of things. As I went into it, some looked up at my face with surprise. Most of the locals knew me. They must have been taken aback to find me at the fish-market. I wondered how designations had turned some of the places into an oddity for me. But, where could I find that ‘what’? It seemed almost impossible. The bomb squad would be coming within fifteen-twenty minutes. Should I look for it on my own without telling anyone or should I tell everyone to evacuate the place and conduct the search or should I do nothing and wait for the squad to come along with the police? All these thoughts kept rushing here and there from one side of my head to the other. Confusion also led to anger in me. It was directed at the situation as well the forces that were behind it. I knew I had to do something. Things could well run out of time. I called two or three known faces and told them everything. They, in turn, told some others. We went towards the centre of the market and started addressing the crowd. What we said sent ripples of panic across the people as they started running in different directions. I told them to calm down. The squad would be round the corner and there was nothing to worry. Within a few minutes, the entire market place was almost empty barring some utterly perplexed fish-sellers. They were extremely angry. Not only had they become customerless all of a sudden, a lot of their fishes were trampled also by the people running around. Some of them cried out, “What did u tell them? Why did they run like that? Look, what have they done!” As they started accusing me with all the rage of the world, I had to tell them the gravity of the whole situation. They took some time to understand but then some of them joined us in our search for any suspicious object. The squad was yet to arrive.

After about five minute’s search, we could locate a bundle at the northern corner of the market. It was kept just beside the dustbin, which we had upturned in course of our search. None of the fish-sellers claimed it to be his. So, there it was, perhaps—the ‘what’ in the ‘where’! It was a medium sized bundle, rather untidy. May be, it was made to look ordinary. The cloth had been tied up with some rope and did not have any tear. I looked at the thing fixedly. I desperately wanted to open the veil myself. The game had started with me and therefore I was the best person to take it to its finale. What could be there inside that bundle? One part of my mind kept providing possibilities while the other kept refuting them. The more I looked at it, the more I got the feeling that there was a pair of eyes inside the bundle and they were looking back at me with a blinding gaze, as it were. The gaze almost made me spellbound. My feet got stuck into an anxious immobility, curbing my angry and curious intent to uncover the object of mystery. For that one moment it was as if there was nothing in the world barring that little whore and me. All the rest had gone out of existence and all my nervous energy had found its pivot in that bundle. I was lost in these thoughts when the bomb squad arrived. They took positions and examined the object with a bomb-detector from a distance. The result was negative. It was confirmed now that it did not contain a bomb. The most probable was the first to be eliminated. Then, what could it have? The fact that there was no bomb inside could have relieved me, but it did not. All sorts of thoughts started to crowd in and almost suffocate me. Could it be something personal? Something disgraceful? Was some long-hidden truth of my life just about to be blown in the wind? I became very edgy. A great spell of helpless anger reddened my cheeks. The officers of the bomb squad formed a ring around the object and started to move towards it. The disclosure was now absolutely on the cards. I closed my eyes in anxiety.
( IV )

Aneek opened his eyes. It was almost five thirty. The rain had become light outside, the room, brighter. He looked at the night lamp. Its plight had begun. Aneek outstretched his hands and switched it off. It was a really dirty game. Who could have done it—some political enemy or some personal foe? He could still remember all those ringing laughters from the fish-sellers when the bundle had been unpacked. It was a moment of real humiliation for Aneek. The contents of the bundle had told a secret story, his story. The people might have laughed at the ludicrousness of the situation—the secretary of state along with the bomb squad in a petty fish market and that too only to find such a paltry thing! In their eyes, Aneek had been befooled. But he knew in his heart, the sadistic message contained in those packs of condom. They marked the limit for Aneek. It was a horrific reminder of his incapacity to participate in one of life’s most fundamental streams. It was a life in its own, all too forgotten, all too lost for him. He had been left out. He looked at the packets of condoms on the table. One of them had remained in his right hand. A deep-rooted anger burst out in Aneek and in that fit, he held the upper part of the condom between his upper and lower teeth. All of a sudden, the room became all white, turning Aneek into a speck in a white void. The light had come back all too quickly. The night lamp could only sigh in agony.