(Translated from Axamiyâ by Aruni Kashyap)

One Night for Arpita

Sitting near the window, in the corner of the bed created by joining two single seats, one hand on chin, eyes looking out with a lost look: it could perhaps be sorrow — however, the girl has no curiosity regarding who is doing what inside the compartment. Letting the superfluous part of the sari’s end fall from her shoulders, covering the upper half of her body in a miserly fashion — even her feet are under the darkness at the ends of the sari — upon her complete posture sits a sense of resigned magnanimity, a sense of surrender. After ensconcing myself in the compartment and looking at her with attention, the expression of utmost surrender on her face attracted me. I decided silently, someday if I would write story on this girl, I would name her Arpita. Arpita. Arpita what? Ganguli or Acharya, Ray or Mazumdar? Because by now the Bengali-mixed Hindi spoken by her father (in the course of a heated argument about the condition of the fish with the rice-serving khansama) has made me sure that the girl — I mean Arpita — is not a sari-clad Assamese in masquerade; she is actually Bengali. Let her be Bengali, or even Assamese; she is primarily: a girl, somewhat beautiful, and at present she is the wanderer of another world, unaware of her peripheries, quietly, looking out through the windows, busy concentrating at a point that can be named infinity quite easily. Her distracted beauty pulled at the curious part of my mind like a magnet. Smoking a Charminar, I kept looking at her, from the three-tier seat reserved under my name. Just then, Kiron entered and disrupted my concentration, “Ki ou, you have already spread yourself out? Are you going to sleep so early?”

This story is actually the saga of me and Arpita. I’m the hero, she is the heroine. Apart from that, there shouldn’t be anyone else in this story. But the problem lies here, that just to proceed with the narrative several unnecessary characters enter, characters that are not very important; but again, without talking about them, the story doesn’t proceed with precision. One of these unnecessary, unsolicited characters is Kiron Debnath, my friend. We work in the same office, and due to official work, now we are taking this train journey to another city. We had to start suddenly — and we didn’t have reservations — hence crops up the need for a second unnecessary character, I mean, Krishna. Krishna is from our colony only. A very young man. Recently he has joined N.F. Railway — T.T.E. The moment I spotted him at the station, my mind jumped with joy. Good, we don’t have to travel pushing and jostling among the crowd. Since Krishna is there, we will be able to manage at least two seats in the reserved category. Fortunately we noticed that day the train was sparsely occupied and Krishna roamed about here and there till he found two seats in the three-tier compartment, I mean, two places to sleep. Each seat actually costs five rupees fifty paise per night, but I offered him three five-rupee notes. He forgot to return the change. After the train left the station, a ticket-checker in a black uniform came and signed a reservation slip for us. After his heated protracted debate with the khansama, the fourth and last unnecessary character, Arpita’s father, asked Arpita who was still gazing outside, to sleep early, gave her some more advise on this and that, and getting only hu ha and other mono-syllables in reply, climbed up to the bunk above his daughter’s and soon signaled with his nose that he was in deep sleep. Apart from Kiron, the mention of the other unnecessary characters ends here, at this point.

I told Kiron that we have a lot of work to do tomorrow. We have to sort and clean all the documents, files and papers at our office branch in the city we were going to. It is uncertain whether we will be able to make some time for ourselves away from office work, so rather than gossiping and wasting almost half the night, it would be a clever idea to fall asleep since we were lucky enough to get a three-tier seat each. Following my advice, Kiron slept off immediately in the lower bunk like a good boy. To speak the truth, I was actually not feeling sleepy at all till that moment. If I wished, or if it were some other place, I would have comfortably gossiped for another hour or two. But exactly at that moment, in that ambience, the melancholy attractiveness of a beautiful girl turned me off the delicious prospect of gossiping with Kiron.

No exam results have been announced. Then why is Arpita in this still night, amidst the jhikjhik sound of the train, ignoring the silent sleepy presence of the other passengers, so resigned, melancholy, pained? Is her sorrow extremely personal? As if some wily lover has walked away from her life breaking a thousand colourful promises, proving vows of eternal love can break before paltry insensitivity; or as if some anomaly has been noticed in her marriage proposal, or her wedding to some groom that her parents chose for her has not taken place because of exorbitant dowry demands making her journey into a new life absolutely impossible? What is the mystery behind her actually? Where is the key to her chest of sorrows? The theorem of her lost faith in the concreteness of the present, in her sitting position, in the anger that emanates from her face against all the injustice meted out to her, its source, that deep kasturi of sorrows, reality, what is it like? The various alternatives kept whirling through my mind disrupting my thoughts, and I don’t remember when my eyes were gradually shut down by sleep. Even then, Arpita kept gazing out of the window, in the same posture. The compartment’s lights were switched of much earlier. The blue lights burnt here and there. The compartment had a blue luminosity. Blue is the colour of sorrow — a painter friend told me once. Smeared with blue in her cheeks and face, the girl sat in a slightly careless position. For that day, till I fell asleep, that was my last memory of Arpita. The blue colour and Arpita. Both of them together. I fell asleep.

That night, my sleep was disturbed twice. In the first instance, hearing a strange noice I sat up. It was the sound of someone wheezing. It came from the direction of Arpita’s bed. Opening my eyes, I could see Arpita sleeping facing the wall and crying with a wheezing sound. (The death of someone near? Failure in examination? Elopement of her unfaithful lover, or the friction over her marriage proposal?) Unable to decide how far it would seem logical and sensible to go ahead and console an unknown girl, I fell asleep once again. In some corner of my mind, a sort of irritation did remain since I could not do anything to stop her from weeping.

I woke up the second time for no specific reason. When I raised my left hand to check the time, my eyes went to Arpita’s bed — heavens! the bed was empty. Where did the girl go at this time of the night? Washroom? Yes, she must have gone to the washroom. When my anxiety abated, I started looking here and there in the compartment. Arpita’s father was fast asleep. I waited for two-three minutes. After that, when Arpita didn’t come back, I got off the bed and started walking towards the toilet.

My heart was in my mouth when I witnessed the scene. The door of the compartment next to the washroom was open. Clutching the rod attached to the door was Arpita, hanging precariously. If her grip loosened even slightly she would immediately fall of from the train running at forty-fifty kilometers per hour. Seeing Arpita’s body hanging between life and death, the first thought that struck me was — suicide! The girl is about to commit suicide. Even then, between her and me was the insurmountable distance of a corridor. That I would run ahead and stop her, there was no such possibility. Furthermore to witness such an unusual sight having just woken from sleep robbed me of any impulse to action. I was unable to comprehend that I should immediately run and drag her inside the compartment. Then, just when my eyes were almost about to turn into silent, helpless audience, a sudden change took place. Arpita who was hanging outside the door clutching its rod, now came inside and held the rod once again with both her hands. She pressed her head to her folded palms and started weeping again. Perhaps because she lacked the adequate the amount of gloomy courage required for committing suicide? She kept weeping. The accident didn’t happen. I started breathing again.

Stupefied till then, I now started walking ahead. I kept my hands on her shoulders. She looked at me with her eyes wet with tears. I tried to bring expressions of pity, sympathy, compassion as much as I could to my eyes. She looked at me and immediately started crying, embracing me with her arms. My shoulders were the refuge for her body then. My heart, for all her sorrows. I tried to perform the role of the benefactor as appropriately as possible. I slid my hands again and again over her head with all my being. Sometimes even over her shoulders, my hands moved slowly. And she continued crying, surrendering all the weight of her body and all her sorrow to a kind stranger’s protection, repentant for all her failures. By then, I was transformed into a great soul. As if I had absorbed all the sorrows of the world within my broad heart. As if in this way, all the oppressed and dejected have received solace in my protection and found the path to salvation in an alternative to suicide, preparing for the struggle of a new life. I tightened my embrace around her body in a forceful outburst of emotions. Nothing was exchanged between the two of us — no explanation, no assurances. In the company of each other, we remained quiet. As if the soundless presence was enough for us.

Embracing each other, we stood speechless in the corridor near the washroom. It was enough for her that in this cruel world, she at least had one sympathetic person, and for the hypocritical me, it was enough that even if I couldn’t provide anything else, I could at least can help a sad soul acquire some peace. Strange that such an incident took place, and nobody in the compartment knew. Tomorrow when I narrate this incident to Kiron, he will be speechless, surprised. He will crib about his deep sleep and for not noticing the girl properly. Gradually, he will also perhaps forget the incident.

I looked at her again from my bed. Like a peaceful landscape after the storm, she had fallen asleep, a peculiar satisfaction on her face. I couldn’t sleep. I felt warm. I took of my kurta and lay down again, leaving it under the pillow. Arpita’s lipstick marks on my kurta, the smell of the powder she smeared on herself and her sweat started to disturb me. My eyes reached Arpita once again — like a child, even on her sleep-weary body was smeared an innocent beauty, there were no more traces of grief. Her silent face bore a deep sense of comfort.

We reached our destination very early the next morning. We collected our bedding and got off the train. Arpita was still fast asleep, at ease. Sitting by her legs, her father sat smoking a mixer with indifference. Kiron and I walked behind the coolie towards the exit. Suddenly — I don’t know what abrupt thought prompted me — I looked back towards the compartment. In the frame of the window, there was Arpita’s face. She was awake now. She was looking at me from the window. Our eyes met. Her face had a peculiar expression. I was caught red-handed. What’s there in her eyes? Gratitude for me or mockery since I had walked away stealthily, silently, without telling her — a scoff? I was unable to decipher the language of her eyes. In this way, at this point, the hero of my story departs.

What remains is the small problem regarding the plausibility of the narrative. Even if it will sound plausible to everyone else, Kiron will read the story and say with his characteristic laughter revealing his skepticism: “What a joke — I was with you only — so much happened — I didn’t even get a hint of it. Good joke, good joke!” I will immediately protest: “No, no, it is not a slice of my imagination. The incident
actually … ” He will interrupt and say again: “At least, don’t crack such poor jokes in front of me, ok? If it would have been true you would have at least told me right after the incident the next morning. It’s only a product of your fertile imagination.” I will flash a clever smile and reply then: “O dost, sometimes in life such rare and significant episodes take place that their appeal lies only with the self; even with your best friend you can not share the warmth of those instances.”

Once upon a time, in my student days, I used to participate in a lot of activities to remove from this world, from this country, pain and poverty — I roamed around amidst tea gardens, and in the industries. I reached the poor farmers of Kamrup, Lakshimpur, furrowing flooded spaces and sought the source of their sorrows. Now I am a government servant, spending the days of my life in great comfort having sold my soul. But maybe to see if I can do something, help the sorrowful and the soiled, I created this story — I tried to fashion myself as the benefactor of a pained helpless girl? Doesn’t matter if Kiron and others find it plausible or not; if such an incident did happen in real life, I would be extremely elated to console an Arpita. But again, suddenly in the middle of the night, with a whole compartment full of sleeping people, amidst the presence and absence of so many people, I don’t know whether I would be able to behave like that with a young woman. Maybe I would raise my voice and wake up people without any attempt to quietly hide her embarrassment at contemplating suicide, her embarrassment at her mistake. And caught in that situation, without further thought, Arpita would actually jump off the running train.

[Das, Debabrata. 2007. The Collected Works of Debrabrata Das.]