An Enigmatic Poseur -- Part 3

3. Reappearance

Till thirty years or so later. I bumped into him in Delhi, where I was Professor at a research institution. I was living alone in an employer provided apartment and waiting for my wife and son to join me after the latter's exams were over in Kolkata and he was ready to seek admission in a Delhi college. And it was in the institute campus itself that I saw him.

I was coming out of my office and he was strolling by himself on the path leading to the Guest House for visiting faculty. That he recognized me as much as I recognized him, I read immediately from the way he looked at me. But he didn't smile. Instead, he waited I think to find out how I would greet him. I too felt uncomfortable on my part and finally decided to call out to him.

"Isn't that you Arnab," said I. "Who would have imagined meeting you here?" I deliberately refrained from using the "after all these years" reference.

It wasn't clear if he felt embarrassed or not. But he smiled somewhat formally, even hesitatingly I suppose, perhaps to rule out our past friendship from constituting a part of the conversation. I hesitated too, wondering where to begin.

We managed to carry out a short and somewhat vague tête-à-tête nonetheless. I learnt that he was visiting the institute for a fortnight or so and that he was teaching somewhere in the US. As the days passed by, we maintained a distance from each other, though I found that some of my younger colleagues knew him reasonably well. But I didn't think that they knew what I did.

I overheard their exchanges once in a while. One afternoon, for example, a younger person, one of my erstwhile students, inquired in Bengali. "What car do you drive in the US Arnab-da?" I imagine they were discussing cars and at that point of time, I too was fishing around for a new car, though the choice set in India was somewhat limited in the early nineties.

Arnab came out with the strangest of replies. "Yes, I own a decent car, " said he. Nothing more.

But his interlocutor was insistent. He was on the verge of giggling. "Arnab-da, we have no doubt that you drive a nice car, but I wanted to know the brand name."

"A BMW," was Arnab's reticent reply and his manner of speech brought out a peal of laughter from the youngsters surrounding him. "Good Lord," one of them said. "Decent car is a bit of an understatement to describe a BMW, isn't it?" Arnab took no part in the amusement. He stood quietly, a ruminating look on his face. I asked myself how amazingly he had changed. He hardly spoke. Besides, I kept on wondering what the course of events was that had finally landed him in a US university. I didn't solicit him for the story of his life, nor did he appear too eager to divulge the details surrounding his activities thirty years ago.

I attended a seminar he gave, as all academic guests would have to. It was a boring talk, as boring as the look on his face. I stopped paying much attention to him thereafter. We left each other alone till one morning, when he came up to me in the canteen holding his cup of tea and asked politely, "I understand your family is yet to arrive and that you are living alone in your flat." I confirmed that his information was correct, upon which he requested that I let him bring along a few other visitors and faculty members to my living room to share a bottle he had brought from the US.

I didn't feel too enthusiastic, but I agreed seeing that it would be rude to decline. He invited his guests and they arrived one evening. They were engaged in hobnobbing mostly and I didn't enjoy the party at all, but had to put up with it till their bottle was empty. Much to my relief, they left soon after and Arnab too departed for the US as far as I could tell a day or two later.

And then I forgot about Arnab one more time.

 

Good observation. Let's wait and watch.

 

Dear Sri,

To an extent, I have been a successful story teller, at least as far as this one goes. Or else, how could you be so involved in the occurrences? You are almost living the story, not just a casual bystander. I think I agree with you that a small alteration in a score-sheet in the interest of the bigger cause of LOVE would have been the right course of action for me. But try and imagine my situation. It was not as though Arnab had ever told me anything about his affairs outside college life. I was a total outsider. Would it have been wise of me to intrude when the protagonist had himself kept me in the dark? I did not know this girl's family too well, though I did know her elder brother. But this person too never revealed anything to me at all. How could I stand up to defend without ensuring that the defendant wished me to fight his cause?

You got me wrong here. Arnab was working in a well-known university in the US and I don't doubt that he drove a BMW. As for the way we interacted, I am not too sure that he wished to renew our bondage. Compared to me, he was then far more successful, going by the way he chose people to confabulate with. They were all well-known in their respective disciplines. In fact, when he asked me to lend him my living room, he invited people none of whom would care to associate with me. Worse, he didn't even ask me if I wished to invite anyone too. As the party was in progress, I sat there as a total outsider in my own home. As far as I can recall, when he left, he didn't even offer to help me clean up the place. He used my home as a restaurant space for which he wouldn't have to pay. Yes, he did go through a tragedy. But he was no angel when I saw him three decades later. What struck me most was that as students in Presidency College, we addressed each other using the "tu" form. He carefully refrained from using such language this time. It became "tum". Yet, he did take advantage of our past association to use my home to entertain people he considered important.

oj