Redemption train

The wait comes to an end as the train slowly pulls into the station. Pushed along with the relentless tide of people struggling to get in, getting into the local train doesn’t take much effort. A quick check of pockets for wallet and ticket and soon a place near the window seat is found.
There are people, places, lives and events unfolding in front of you between the two rusted iron rods on the window-frame. There is a sense of hurry, of frantic pace, similar to a movie viewed in the fast forward mode. That is the moment, confronted by this pace that your mind slows down and begins to reminisce.
You remember the essay you had once written in school, an amateur attempt at philosophy. ‘Human beings are like stars dotting the night-sky; a night-sky that is the sum of life-experiences. Each star has its own story to tell. Occasionally, you get one which burns brighter than the other and sometimes you get a fallen star. A star which burns away, but not without the everlasting promise of hope, manifested in a wish made upon a shooting star.’
“Bullshit!” you say to yourself. And then you remember the event that sent your life into a downward spiral.
A summer afternoon it had been, characterised by friends, cigarettes and weed. The concoction of weed, nicotine and the beer had, along with the scorching heat had blurred your perceptions and judgment considerably. So when your heard your friend scheme for help, you just ran headlong in that direction. So what if your friend was about to be stabbed by the ‘gunda’ he had been trying to avoid for quite some time. It was none of your business, for as a matter of policy these days, a person’s troubles are his own.
Your lawyer tried to construe the event as self-defense. You yourself aren’t too sure if it was that. For eventually as the media portrayed it you were a typical example of the junky college student who committed murder for the weed and got a jail term. Deservedly so they said, as it would serve as a befitting example to others.
Did your friend come forward to save you? No, he was just a leech for a weed and he of course didn’t want to get involved, he had a career to save.
What really happened you don’t know. You just remember him and the gunda struggling on the floor. You remember yourself getting in the way, the sharp pain as the knife entered the palm of your hand. You don’t remember anything between the grip on the knife and the accidental taste of someone else’s blood on your tongue. You remember the court case, the 14 year term, parole after eight years, the odd jobs here and there for three years and then the familiar stench of dried sweat as you sit on this local train to your ancestral house in the suburb of Calcutta.
The train rolls into the station, your train of thought stops too and rolls into the station of harsh reality. ‘Konnoghor’ the station board reads. If your family, which had evidently abandoned you is anywhere it is here. As you walk in the markets you see the changes too, between ‘pre-liberalisation’ India and now. Dutta Tailors with Raymond’s suiting posters earlier now sports a Reebok G-Unit poster saying ‘I am what I am’.
You find the famous ‘Madras Coffee House’ in the middle of a Calcutta Suburb. You go in to grab a cup of coffee and gather strength so that you can finally banish your demons. The coffee shop remains a witness to the antiquity of the market for innumerable coats of paint cannot hide the fact that the furniture is still the same as it was fifteen years ago.
The man at the counter hasn’t changed either. He will not recognize you with your cropped hair and beard and a face aged beyond the actual years it has been around.
You have your coffee and out of a strange impulse you ask the man at the counter a question; he always kept a tab on everyone who resided in the small community.
“Dada, do you know the Ghosh family who live in the 7th house near the lake?”
“Abhijit Ghosh you ask of?” he inquires back.
“Yes him, is he still there with his family?”
“No! The Ghosh’s moved out long time back. Four years back once their daughter finally managed to get married,” he replied.
“Their daughter is married?”
“Yes! They couldn’t find a suitor for her initially, for all of them would refuse once they would find out about the brother. Then when Mr. Ghosh passed away, God bless his soul, she got married a year after. It was a love marriage, but given the circumstances what could the mother do.”
You try and gather yourself, the succession of breaking news gets tough to handle.
“Okay! Do you know where they are now or know anyone who knows where they are?”
“No Dada, no one has heard from them since they left. They didn’t even sell the house, it lies empty and discarded,” he replies with a tinge of regret.
The coffee starts tasting sour in your mouth and after so many years you feel the urge for a cigarette. You leave the money on the table and start walking away.
“You know Dada, you seem familiar, have we met before?” he asks as you exit the shop.
You give the clichéd reply, “In another lifetime maybe.”
It is that period when twilight merges into the darkness of the night. You are seated on the steps of you house, overlooking the garden and the lake. The Marlboro Lights in your hand burns itself onto your fingers.
In that moment an epiphany occurs, you take off your slippers and run across the dusty path in your garden and dive into the lake. You float on your back, just below the surface of the lake. It begins to rain. As the raindrops fall across the surface the sight and the natural rhythm of the raindrops soothes your senses. You hear your mother from across the garden on a hot summer afternoon, telling you to stop playing in the lake and come home for lunch. You hear the whisper of the girl you thought you would love forever as she confided her secrets to you. You hear the sounds of the Sarod blend into the gentle pluckings at the Cello in Pachebel’s Canon. You hear the voice of your favorite English teacher as he read you favorite Yeat’s poem.
“
Then you wish that you could no more. There is star falling across the sky; yours. But you make a wish upon that star, a wish for another life, another chance, a wish that you could burn brighter. And then you stop yourself from doing the inevitable. For the first time you feel a strange control over your fate.
You walk out of the lake; cleansed.