TRANSLATED FROM THE HINDI BY RITUPARNA MUKHERJEE
Part 2
The first steps inside the threshold of the school was like glancing into his past. It was a world where cycles were carelessly kept in a row, school bags carelessly strung on one shoulder, a world segmented into grey plaid skirts and full pants. Every movement reliant on the bell, the blades of examinations, and the line of punishments. Even a generation later, time inside the bubbling life within the confines of the school lay somewhat similar. He felt like catching hold of a corner of someone’s bag or slipping his fingers inside the right back pocket of someone’s full pants. But everything was at a slight distance from him.
A code word seemed hidden in their collective giggles. An obdurate desire to keep strangers out lay latent in their manner of speech. They seemed to draw a line the way they spoke, moving their fingers in circles, as if protecting themselves from others. Vikram Ahuja was suddenly conscious that even though time stood deceptively still here, his face had changed considerably.
Inside, the chairs were arranged in three neat rows. The chairs in the front two rows were for the teachers. An entire row for the students and another, the most densely packed, was for the parents. The light inside the room was distributed in such a manner that most of it centered in one specific spot, inside which each student had to move when the turn came. The circle of light yonder discussed each student’s performance and achievement statistics with comments for the members of that dense flock, who could have been the student’s parents or siblings.
When Eva Karnik’s turn came, she lazed out of her chair and rat-like walked to that circle. The first thing that came to her mind reaching that circle was a hunch that the sock on her right leg was slipping down, folded down to her shoes. This was a tragic imagination, that she, whose eyes were in shock at the sudden light, had her braids a little awry and her socks down to her feet. The fingers of her clammy fist opened. The room was really cold, so cold that gooseflesh stood out on her legs, from where the sock had fallen. Light invaded her eyes, her confused pupils tried to seek the colour blue within that light but the rest of the room was so dark that blue had mixed with the darkness of the rest and died out.
This was the third week of her application of the fairness cream. Was it because of that or was it merely the intense light of the circle that made the girl look so fair? She didn’t really look scared. If one translated her academic achievements to statistics, she had scored quite less. Her scores in different subjects seemed in a race to gobble each other up, her mathematics marks were in sociology, chemistry were in economics. Even though the average of these lay in totality, each of these numbers were weak on their own. And if one had to go by the teachers’ words, she could do far better with a little sincere effort.
This was an unrequited faith expressed by her teachers each year, something in which the girl never participated. Nothing eventful transpired in her body aside from one or two longer breaths heard from the mic placed four feet ahead of the student, a mic in which the students were supposed to make declarations to their teachers promising them better attempts at studies for the next session. Her noiseless throat generated the slightest tremor and followed this customary declaration.
Now it was the high-shouldered man’s turn to speak and his role was to provide some sort of assurance to the teachers or perhaps a clarification. But contrary to the custom, he moved in silence, what could he have said anyway! That he was against the weird habits of this wild-haired girl or could he have justified her considerable deficiencies, but what could he say about her fairness! Just a few moments back, he had stopped speaking owing to the ominous fluttering of his eyelids.
And his silence had such an impact on Eva Karnik, that even after her turn was up, she didn’t budge from the place. She didn’t budge a thread even when the next name was announced and the announcer approached her. The other student touched her and only then did she return to her senses, and she looked at the space that marked her exit. On her way back, her eyes fell on the maroon shirt, that seemed a little blue to her. Perhaps it would have looked blue in the evening light in her room.
In the afternoon, on getting back from school, Eva Karnik looked at her face in the mirror and felt that she had acquired the amount of fairness that her face needed. She now applied the cream on her neck and hands and went and lay down beside Ija. She told Ija that she had scored very low this time in her examinations. Vasundhara Karnik, who was aware of this child’s habit of lying since the latter was an infant, laughed putting across the vibe that Eva joked all the time.
And it was during these times that Eva Karnik’s faith in lying cemented in her being even further. Her belief strengthened that truth and lies were merely terms which depended on the speaker’s ability to execute and the listener’s capacity to perceive if a statement was cloaked in truth or lies. And then she lied about something that looked like a truth, which Ija could understand anyhow— ‘The history teacher was all praises, you know.’ Vasundhara Karnik was visibly happy. Stroking Eva’s feet gently with her sole, she asked— ‘And what did your own tutor have to say about it?’
“Oh, him! What could he have said? He just looked down politely.’ The two of them cloaked their statements with their own clever truth and lies and lay quietly.
At a specific moment in the evening, when it was almost time for the high-shouldered man to arrive and she would have opened the door just by the sound as always, there was a knock on the door. Trusting her instincts, she went and opened the door and then turned inside the room as usual but she felt slightly that there was no one at the door. She turned to check. There was really no one there. She had hardly come back and sat for two minutes when there was that same knock again. It was difficult for her to get up immediately after sitting down. Her knees. There was no one at the door again. But this time she waited by the door and didn’t get back to her seat immediately in hope of a third knock. A little later, back in her seat, she wondered if her ears were hearing the habitual knock at this hour, that the presence of the high-shouldered man at that hour regularly was merely a coincidence. His absence at the door today was perhaps proof of this fact!
The evening was quickly descending into darkness. Eva Karnik, with her wild hair free, had tired of staring at the door. Even though she knew that the person she waited for wouldn’t come. Placing her chair in the middle of the entrance and rocking it constantly, Eva would wait for him.
This was the third day. And at the exact moment when there used to be a knock at the door, the phone rattled its old tune. Vasundhara Karnik was one side and the high-shouldered man was the other. While Vasundhara wondered about him not coming for two days and not informing either, the other side was mostly quiet, and after a few moments, was the expression of his inability to come any further. And on this side, tearing through the silence was a keen anxiety. Why? What do you mean you won’t be able to come? From the other side could be heard the incoherent words— ‘Well, I…’. And again, on this side one could hear— ‘But how can you this way?’ The other side exclaimed, ‘I couldn’t teach her well.’ And on this side, ‘But how?’ and on the other side was silence and then the quiet that follows after putting the receiver down.
Also, read Something… A Little Like This (Part 1) by Neelakshi Singh, Translated From The Hindi By Rituparna Mukherjee And Published In The Antonym:
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