Nilabhra had closed his eyes for a moment. A grip loosening on nonsense. And then there were the things on the floor in heaps and piles…waiting to be withdrawn, waiting for another re-cycling, one more at least. Who knows, the almost putrefied wonder book of his childhood with its yellowish damp pages might be resurrected as a picture drawing pad in the hands of his yet unborn daughter! Why daughter? Why not a son? The typical tryst with the other sex? Well, all that lay far ahead in future. If at all. There might also be nothing. He might not get married at all! Now, that would be an impotent thought! Could Nilabhra leave his mother? Could he bid adieu to that body which had been given its primal wound at his birth? Was it him? Who is he, now? No one knows! Not even Nilabhra! The only thing that he knew was a ghastly and yet attractively opened up series of wounds, which had punctuated her body since then. Debjani, his mother, had always been a Falling woman, not having anything to do with the past participle form of the verb however! As if, she alone was chosen to literalise the infinite recurrences patterning the human condition! What recurrences at that! Churches could have made a martyr out of her. But, they had slipped the knowledge that there existed someone like her, cut open to immortality by each fall and each dislocation. Bit by bit. Moment in moment.
A rusty, old-little tricycle in the middle of what used to be their bed-room, just a year back. This was the house where he learned his first vocables…syllables plucked out of thin air in course of his rides from one room to the other. Nilabhra had become too big and bulky for it, now. The three wheels were both the beginning & the end. The middle comprised of a brief failed attempt to cope with two! Nilabhra always lacked balance! A few crashes here and there & that was the end of that. He had seen fear in a handful of dust! Now, the legs! Now, the walking, which had taken him to this old house of theirs.
He had come in to close the windows kept open by his father in the morning. The house had breathed through them all day. Now, the end had come. There were heavy and roaring clouds covering the sky all over. So, Nilabhra too, had to come. His was the job of strangulation, of suffocation unto demise of breath. He had not entered this house, since having left it, almost ten months before. The formidable fetus! It had been repaired & coloured meanwhile. The old scratches of his nail, the oily impressions made by his oil-cloaked hair, the spirit of the dead Chorai which had come in one day about five years ago—all had been axed, removed from the palette itself. Nilabhra closed his eyes and the old creaking sound of the door, being locked out in darkness almost one year ago, returned to him with a vengeance. He had stayed away from this house, being apprehensive of the ejection that its half-forgotten objects will bring him. He had opened the lock after a long time. But, that pungent smell, which used to welcome him & his family after each longish trip once, was hardly there. The windows were the culprits. They gaped at Nilabhra. Trip! Oh! What a word! How obsolete now, in the immovability of the body, in which Nilabhra had initiated his very first movements. As he had feared, the house had hardly forgotten Nilabhra! Repairing had rectified its injuries. It had gained a new sharpness of sorts.
A pair of surgical gloves. Full of water. Kept under Debjani’s left toe. All for relief. This, her fifth fracture and eighth operation! Nilabhra had been filling them up afresh, each morning. He felt like a poet while doing it…making hands…water-hands of an aquatic Frankenstein. He had just washed her back before coming into this house. A scarred, singed skin which had grown rough and hard. It was much like the rain-hit streets of Kolkata…potholes darkening. In the old days, she used to frighten Nilabhra whenever he was unruly by making faces. Faces with peculiar contortions, which evoked his awe. Now, her face had become arrested in that expression permanently. As if those lines were screaming to him ‘I will not get well this time!’ It had become almost a habit for Nilabhra to start off his days with that. The body, which once used to be Nilabhra’s wonder-ridden playground, had been turned into a nightmare of beheaded familiarity. Peopled by fearful wounds, which sometimes made him wonder if his gaze had been the criminal! Was all this because of him? Like a sighting of the full moon, which made it wane!
Nilabhra, quite unawares, had flopped down on the empty corner of the floor, just behind the heap of things. Outside, it had become more overcast. It could all be seen from the one window that was still open. The mango tree with a promise of embrace, weaving into the house through it. This room had witnessed so many glimpses…lights coming in at the dawns…all too many…the tender touch of the curious mango tree, endeared in time…dismembered with time. Could he not see it again, that early morning sunlight in this room…all that glory…awakening. Now, the window only imposed a feeling of the dark. How new was the yellow distemper of the walls! They were sky blue earlier. Nilabhra recalled. Then the eyes opened. If he could change Debjani’s skin! Was India not anymore the land of magic, snake-charming? What about a new Kholosh or even a new body for that matter? The old turning new…becoming new. Closing eyes. Weather breaking in upon Nilabhra. Thunder. Lightning. The riddling drizzle becoming heavier, penetrating the back of his shirt from the side of the window--- the final space for a breath. He went further into the heap. It was a snug feeling of reclaiming the old dear objects—the childhood bathtub, the old play-mirror not without a crack, quite a few toy-cars, a broken mouth organ & so on. His head stooped. The legs folded into contraction…hands covered round his own back, almost like a self-embrace. Suddenly, there was a sound, breaking the oozing silence of his position…it was Nilabhra’s mobile phone. It was Debjani calling. Her mobile had been kept with her. Information’s sake. Bed-ridden beside her pillow…just like her. Nilabhra was sweating all over! He looked at its screen…a queer expression of recession on his face.
The bed. Two fans. One on the ceiling, the other a stand-alone. A couple of eyes in the middle, extending to form a body, nearing ruins. Fixators. Wounds. Screws inside. Debjani. This new house, which they had moved into, was her favourite. She looked at the mobile screen. Nilabhra had disconnected the line. She put the phone back in its place & picked up the book again. Nilabhra had been telling her to read some book or the other, for quite some time. But she had always said that she could not concentrate. Nilabhra had tried to read aloud some stories to her. Stories … they were like a slip-bridge opening upon life. Debjani had lifted it; Nilabhra was trying to get it down again…back into connectivity. The last couple of reading sessions, however, had started to make an impact. Debjani could feel the words enter her with little murmurs. She had finally taken the plunge today…an attempt of letting the stories reenter her afresh. It was The Collected Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. She was reading a story, which was called The fall of The House of Usher. That is what she wanted to tell Nilabhra. Perhaps that would give him a rare smile in this pervasive gloom. But, there was no response. Because he did not wish to turn again. No wish of turning back again…
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