Krishnendu: Unfinished Tale Of An Unknown Person

[I had posted this story earlier as Purnendu -- An Unfinished Tale of an Unknown Person . However, the character I spoke of kept on bothering me and more recently I did further research on him. The enigma has not disappeared. If anything, I am even more mystified today. I thought I should put up here how far I proceeded from where I left you last time. I have deliberately changed the name of the protagonist.]

It took me almost a lifetime, but I am yet to figure out if Krishnendu Biswas was a genius or simply a mentally challenged person. And that does not speak too highly of my intelligence I have to admit.

I met him for the first time as a student of Class Seven in a school meant for boys whose unfortunate parents had given up on them. There was a small minority of good students in the school too, but I belonged to the majority without a doubt. The school I went to the previous year, as a student of Class Six I mean, found me wanting in basic human intelligence. Or so it would appear from the scary progress reports that were sent home to my unhappy parents, who were rapidly progressing towards a nervous breakdown.

By the time I completed the second term in that school, my report resembled a bloody battle field, smeared as it was with examination scores written in red ink. I suppose red was not a colour identified with revolutionary zeal in our part of the world as yet and both the teachers at school as well as the guardians at home began to worry about the quantum of grey matter my mind was endowed with. My parents realized that there was no hope at all of me being promoted to the next class and took me out of the school in the middle of the year. They tutored me at home and made me appear in the admission tests of a number of renowned schools, but to no avail at all. I was rejected everywhere and finally admitted to a school meant for the likes of me. There was no admission test there and the school’s doors were open for anyone willing to walk through them.

Something similar might have happened to Krishnendu as well, or else why should he and I be admitted simultaneously (at the Class Seven level and not Class One or lower) to this generally accepted institution for the mentally incompetent? Yet this is not the way I viewed things at that stage of life. Besides, there was a telltale difference between Krishnendu and me. He had a scholarly look about him whereas I clearly resembled a moron.

It was not his look alone that distinguished Krishnendu from the rest of the class. What stood him out was the erudition that marked his conversation. While the best students in the class were concerned with problems in arithmetic and elementary algebra at the peak of their scholarly inquisitiveness, Krishnendu remained miles ahead of us all and deliberated on esoteric knowledge reserved for the chosen few. Quite invariably, he was concerned with science, as in physics, chemistry and so on, and appeared to be familiar not only with breakthrough advances in these subjects but also the names of books and journals dealing with the issues. We were too ignorant to verify his statements and took them at face value.

He was a dark, tall person, always dressed simply in clothes bearing the stamp of austerity, his dark, sharp featured face wearing the haunted look of a scientist stuck with problems that, according to him, even Einstein would avoid like live wire. He smiled but rarely, and when he did, his face expressed unmistakable signs of pain at the sight of the mirthfully irresponsible teenagers, in whose midst he had been condemned to waste his talents, which were reserved exclusively for the advancement of science.

I liked Krishnendu. Partly because I believed him to be far ahead of the world he was born in. But I also liked him for his quiet simplicity, for his soft-spoken manners, and most importantly, for the distance he maintained from the merciless lampooning one can be subjected to in an all boys’ school. Yet we never turned into close friends, most likely on account of his reticence, but also probably because I never considered myself a match for his intellect. He had once written an article for the school magazine titled "Epistemology of Interacting Fields". I don't know how many of our teachers attempted to read it. I distinctly recall a shiver running down my spine when I read the title and might have felt like Bertie Wooster standing face to face with Jeeves' fascination for Spinoza's works. Our conversations had been few and, as far as I can recall now, bordered on the facile.

For example, I told him once, "Krishnendu, when it comes to physics, you can probably expose the profound ignorance of the most well-known scientists in the country, can’t you?"

Krishnendu didn’t turn to look at me. Instead, he had this far away lost look on his face as he replied, without the slightest trace of amour-propre, almost with humility as it were, "Oh yes, that I can …"

I felt satisfied to hear the reply of this teenager, my classmate at that, which probably indicates that the grey matter that I lacked was amply compensated by gullibility.

Krishnendu was not a noisy person as I said, so I was taken completely by surprise one day when the teacher in the class asked him to "stand up on the bench"! I don’t remember what the occasion was. It is not impossible though that he had submitted for a homework assignment in arithmetic a short essay on advances in quantum mechanics. I am sure of course that he had not been pulled up for disciplinary reasons. He accepted the punishment without demur and remained standing on the bench. I was deeply distressed by the sight and almost moved to tears, since I could not accept Krishnendu’s humiliation. But Krishnendu stood at his elevated post, his face expressing stoic indifference if anything at all. As I ponder over it now, he must have appeared to me like Hercules tricked into bearing the Heavens on his shoulders, only I was probably ignorant of Greek mythology at the time.

A bigger shock lay in store for me though. A classmate informed me one day that Krishnendu was particularly popular, not because of his monumental store of scientific knowledge, but for his staggering collection of pornographic literature! I was somewhat innocent I suppose and had not yet been exposed to these forbidden books, but not being above the curiosity that accompanies puberty, I forgot all about Krishnendu’s scholarship and felt an irresistible urge to lay my hands on his hidden treasure. On a holiday afternoon therefore, I pestered my informer to lead me to Krishnendu’s home in the hope of borrowing from his collection.

Krishnendu lived in a well-appointed house which indicated that he came from a well-to-do family, but there was something strange in the deserted look the house bore. It was shrouded in the mystery of an unkempt garden and an ill-maintained building, a personification of an unrevealed tragedy. It was mid-day and the street was quite empty. There might have been a door bell, but I remember that my companion preferred not to use it. Instead, he called out "Purnedu" in a full-throated voice that rang through the sunlit, empty afternoon street. The call had to be repeated several times before Punenedu appeared from behind the closed doors of a room in the front corner of the building. For the first time during our period of acquaintance did I notice signs of annoyance on Krishnendu’s usually composed face. He was clearly disturbed by the arrival of visitors. He did not speak to me at all and I do not have any idea about the exchange that took place between him and my chaperone. It was a short conversation, Krishnendu replying in monosyllables at best and his dark face growing visibly furious with every passing moment. Finally, it was clear that he wanted to have nothing to do with us and the question of letting us into his house did not arise at all.

The pornography question remained unsettled therefore, but the classmate who took me there told me that Krishnendu’s family did not wish him to bring anyone into the house. I was quite puzzled by all this, not so much by the disappointment associated with my failure to acquire my object of desire, something I had never seen before but had heard of, as by the obvious reluctance Krishnendu showed to admit us in. Why can’t we enter his house? I kept asking myself, since there was no restriction in my own family as far as bringing my friends into my home was concerned.

I didn’t continue in this school much longer and was shifted to a newly come up school soon after, a school to which I owe the rest of everything pleasant that has happened in my life. This is where I came across Utpal Dutt as my English teacher and a delightful real life story took off then onwards. I have written at length about this in a book in Bengali, but this is not what I want to speak about now.

It is Krishnendu who occupies me even today, a double agent connecting the worlds of learning and pornography. I never discovered whether he had indeed amassed the books they said he had, but his behaviour on that far away afternoon made me feel that the allegation was not entirely untrue. I soon forgot about him of course and did not remember him even once till I bumped into him on the street one morning almost twenty-five years later. The spot where we saw each other, the busy Gariahat crossing, was close to the residence I had visited in my teens.

It was I who began the conversation. He looked almost totally unchanged from his school days, dressed exactly the same way he used to be as a schoolboy. The only difference was that his hair displayed a few grey touches now and he wore glasses. He recognized me but he was his usual reticent self. I asked him what he was doing and he avoided answering the question. Instead, in an almost accusing tone, he inquired, "Have you married?" He wanted to know nothing else at all it seemed. What my profession was? No. Where I worked? No. Was I in touch with any old classmate? No. Married or not was the only issue that mattered.

I answered in the affirmative, somewhat taken aback, and even told him that we had a child. The expression on his face turned into total disgust and he didn’t wish to carry on the conversation any further. He simply walked off. That was the last time I spoke to him, but I did spot him in the same area on later occasions also. He was always preoccupied and never noticed me, or even if he did, he did not acknowledge the fact.

I could have ended Krishnendu’s story here, but then the reader would question me what the point of it all was. So, I need to add a last act to delineate my perplexity. I lost track of Krishnendu once again and travelled to different parts of India as well as the world. And then, of all places, I ran into Krishnendu one last time in Hong Kong during the first decade of this century. No, I did not see him physically anymore, but being a cyber enthusiast, I often form friendships with people I never get to see in flesh and blood. I came across one such in a site I visit no more and it turned out that he was Krishnendu’s neighbour in youth. The street is a walking distance from where I live today. And my curiosity knew no bounds. I kept pestering the person about Krishnendu’s whereabouts at that time, but the person was no longer living in Kolkata. His mother though still lived in the old locality .

Following upon his interactions with his mother, I was informed a few days later that Krishnendu was no more. This person was not too sure of course that it was really Krishnendu that we were discussing, but most of the details pointed in his direction. There was nothing unusual about Purnendu's passing away. But what did make his story somewhat poignant was the information that he hailed from a psychologically disoriented family. His elder brother was the worst affected and had even been admitted to a mental home where he was subjected to shock treatments.

Whether Krishnendu was himself a psychological patient was not clear. Particularly so, since he had apparently been employed by the Irrigation Department of the Government of West Bengal during his working life. What sort of professional qualification he had acquired I have no idea about. His interest in Einstein did not exactly match the clerical job he allegedly secured in the Irrigation Department. How he fared in his office I have no idea about.

At home though, his family did manage to find a wife for him. What’s more, the marriage brought a child into existence as well. As I learnt these details, I recalled the pain in his face the last time he spoke to me and I told him that I was married with a child. I do not know how Krishnendu died, but his wife, I think I was told, was professionally well-employed.

I am not sure what makes me want to find out the whole story, or at least reconstruct a story based on these stray incidents. The pretentious scholar, the pornography specialist and a man desperate about a wife (or most probably physical intimacy with a woman), he continued to riddle to me.

To settle my doubts I finally decided to follow up the trail. The home he lived in still stands, though vastly renovated and used as an office by a hugely successful professional. I decided to approach him finally, given that we had a connection from the past. I called him up one evening and brought up the subject. He did not know Krishnendu at all, but he did tell me that he had purchased the property from an old man called Mr. Biswas with two sons. After selling off the property, they had moved over to a house that he gave me clear directions for.

In my excitement, I visited the house I had been directed to and rang the door bell, an act that was prohibited in Krishnendu's old habitat. The door was opened by a middle aged person and I asked him if I could see Mr. Biswas, carefully avoiding the first name of the person I sought to visit. The man was surprised to hear the name.

"Mr Biswas!" he said. "This is Mr. Roy's residence. There is no Biswas living here. You must have come to a wrong address."

Unwilling to give up, I told him that the Biswas' were supposed to have moved over to this building from their old residence, which is now used as an office by the renowned professional whom I had spoken to.

The man was even more amazed to hear me out.

"But it was Mr. Roy who used to live there and it was he who had sold the property to the gentleman you mention."

I was stupefied by the news.

"I had even visited a member of the Biswas family in that house," said I.

"That's impossible," replied the man. The house had been built by Mr. Roy's father and they were the only ones who ever lived there." He gave me a firm and final answer.

I realised that I had lost the trail. I had hoped to speak to Krishnendu's wife at least, or a son or a daughter if they lived there. But it appears that Krishnendu and his family have disappeared, leaving behind no clue at all of their footprints.

His craziness, his genius, his wife, his child, his pornography collection, or whatever else he might have been doing, have vanished forever.

Krishnendu will remain to me an enigmatic smile of eternal emptiness.

 

Thank you Satchi, thank you for your wonderful patience. You read the story. You are quite right. The story remains incomplete. I am still in hot pursuit. I have changed his name deliberately from Purnendu to Krishnendu, but I noticed that MS Word failed to pick out all the changes. As a result, the Krishnendu I spoke about turns into Purnendu in one of the paragraphs.

I am working on it still, as you rightly suspect. Indeed, the story still hangs. Or, should I say it hides? Inside an invisible crucible made up of intense darkness. However, let us assume that I manage to find out more. Will that mean that I will know all that needs to be known? Life, unlike Mathematics, continues to be a mystery. Put differently, interesting literature should remain open ended. There should be room for imagination. The reader must be given the right to question the author: Then what? What happened after Jill came tumbling down? Did they take her to a hospital? But how did they reach the hospital? What was the name of the doctor? Whom did Jill marry when she grew up into a pretty woman?

The author will not be able to answer every question about something that he did not really create. The ultimate creator is God himself. And to the best of my knowledge, even God is a bit of a mystery.

I am trying to solve a mystery created by yet another mystery. Consequently, I am struggling to figure out why 2 and 2 appear to add up to 5! I can see it's 5, even if my arithmetic lessons tell me otherwise.

oj-da

 

Ha! Only a few days ago you were wondering about Eyeless in Gaza! And now you call yourself Eyeless Sri. Eyeless temporarily. Not mindless fortunately. Not even temporarily. So, that mind continues to be curious. I am curious too. Only I am losing my way. But here is what the Bard had once said:

"And I,--like one lost in a thorny wood,
That rends the thorns and is rent with the thorns,
Seeking a way and straying from the way;
Not knowing how to find the open air,
But toiling desperately to find it out,--
Torment myself to catch ..."

To catch what? I wish I knew. But it is certainly not the English crown.

oj

 

No Satchi. No crowns for me!

oj-da

 

That's quite possible Srama. I was speaking to a classmate from those days. He knew Krishnendu a little better than me. Krishnendu used to keep us bemused with his knowledge of Physics. We didn't understand a syllable of what he said. However, this classmate verified many of Krishnendu's claims/pronouncements in later age when he had himself been introduced to these subjects. He was amazed to discover that Krishnendu's assertions were all scientifically correct.

In fact that's the part that puzzled me too. I had formed the impression that he wanted a woman in his life and was unable to find one. Perhaps he was upset when he discovered that even someone as worthless as I had a wife and even a child. He was livid to know the truth, though he did not react violently.

You will be surprised to know that I am indeed pretty close to the solution now. I located someone and had a longish conversation with her. She was Krishnendu's neighbour and she told me what she knew. She didn't know everything, but she knew enough for my purpose. I think I will now be able to write the tale the way I want to write it. I felt dissatisfied even with my second version, the one you commented on. I am writing a third one now, but I do not know if I should post it anymore. Perhaps, I can email it to a few of you who read my stories.

Krishnendu was himself a reasonably calm personality. I cannot capture him any other way.

oj-da