Seahorse Read online

  In the stillness of the evening, I heard a distant echo of voices, the slap of footfall. It might have been students, gathering to drink or smoke weed. Perhaps a courting couple, looking for some privacy. Through the trees, I caught a glimpse of two figures. One in a long blue kurta. Peppery grey hair. The other in a pastel shirt. In his hand, an old-fashioned briefcase.

  I was caught in inexplicable panic.

  In that instant, I could have jumped into the shrubbery—but the noise might alert them. What would I say if I were seen? It was too late to flee down the path leading out of the forest to the main road.

  Perhaps it was better to stay where I was.

  Unless, it suddenly struck me, they’d come here to be on their own.

  They were getting closer; I could hear laughter, the sharp crack of undergrowth.

  On impulse, I jumped over the chain strung across the doorway and ducked inside, fumbling up the stairs that spiraled into darkness. Loose rubble scattered from under my feet, and a queer stench clung to the air, a mixture of urine and moldy dampness.

  Their footsteps grew louder, hitting stone. I could hear the art historian’s voice.

  I imagined them gazing at the tower.

  From here, his could be the only voice in the world.

  “Architecturally, there’s nothing quite like it in Delhi.” Adheer was speaking. “It’s built in a high Victorian Gothic style…”

  Did he really need to explain this to an art historian?

  “Why this particular place, though?”

  I didn’t know, but Adheer hazarded a guess. “It was the site of a British army camp, I think, during the rebellion… Of course, back then, this whole area was forest and marshland…”

  They were circling the tower slowly. The art historian pieced together the few still-visible names into a curious mantra—DelamainChesterNicholsonRussellBrooks. He pronounced them carefully, as though the chant would somehow keep their memory alive.

  Adheer went on to explain how in 1972, the twenty-fifth year of India’s independence, the monument was renamed Ajitgarh, Place of the Unvanquished, and the government had a plaque put up with corrections—“That the “enemy” mentioned on the memorial were immortal martyrs for freedom…”

  The art historian stopped by the doorway. Blocking the patch of light pooling on the floor. Would he hear me breathing? Or somehow sense I was there.

  “Does this go all the way to the top?”

  I was tempted to inch up further, but was afraid I’d dislodge some rubble, or worse, have a stair give way under my feet. For now, where I was, they couldn’t see me.

  “I don’t think so… it’s like at the Qutub Minar. They’ve closed the stairway for safety reasons.”

  In the silence that followed, I could hear the art historian deliberating. The stench around me grew stronger.

  “See…” I imagined Adheer pointing at the signboard. “It says it’s unsafe. Better not risk it…”

  I was thankful for his caution. The art historian stepped aside.

  The pool of light emerged whole, intact.

  I shifted imperceptibly, in relief, and wished they’d walk back into the forest, leave me with my ruin.

  “It doesn’t smell very inviting.” I could hear their laughter, then as though in obedience, their voices and footsteps faded.

  At first, I couldn’t move. My limbs caught in a grip, still tight and motionless. Above me rose a strange, secret rustling. Was it an owl? A squirrel? Perhaps I’d disturbed the creatures that inhabited the tower. Under my feet, a silver-green masala-flavoured chips packet glistened, long empty. I wondered who else had strayed there, and when, and dropped it at that spot. And why?

  I began descending. I should leave. It was getting late. I’d prefer to be out of the forest before dark. When I’d almost reached the bottom, Adheer and the art historian drifted back. They’d probably only moved to the edge of the platform. I stopped short, pressing myself against the curved stone wall.

  Even though they hadn’t been gone long, something had shifted, their voices oddly tense.

  “I know what it is,” the art historian was saying, his voice clear, ringing through the air. “I know why… that’s why we’re here… and it’s alright.”

  I was uncertain what Adheer said, if he said anything at all.

  “I don’t see how it could happen…”

  “Of course… I-I don’t know what… I mean… I didn’t mean…” It was the first time I’d heard Adheer stumble over his words.

  “It’s not like I don’t understand.”

  “I know… I didn’t mean…”

  “It’s alright.” There was a brief, tight pause, before he continued. “Why don’t you show me where the plaque is?”

  “Yes… yes, it’s here. This way…”

  Again, their voices, and footfall, died away. This time they didn’t return.

  In our time together, I thought this was one of few details hidden from me about Nicholas. The strangeness of love is it tempts you to feel you haven’t met a person at a particular moment in their life, a mere sliver of time, but that somehow you’ve embraced it all. Their laden pasts, their abundant present, and (you hope so much) their undiscovered future. I did try and enquire, occasionally, as elliptically as I could—whether he’d been for many walks in the Ridge, if he’d heard some of the stories about the place, the ghosts, the strange creatures, the couples and parties at the monument.

  He’d furrow his brow. “Yes… Myra and I explored it a few times too…”

  Myra was his step-sister, who’d visited him in Delhi over Christmas that year. I wasn’t keen to discuss her, bring her into our conversation; while she was around, I hardly stayed at the bungalow, and Nicholas and I were never alone.

  Had anything odd ever happened? In the Ridge.

  I had to leave it at that; I wouldn’t like to try his patience.

  I never confessed what I’d overheard, him and Adheer, and how.

  Once, though, I asked if he knew about the pond.

  “In the forest? Are you sure?”

  I was certain.

  When he asked me where, I couldn’t explain its exact location.

  I found it the afternoon I ducked into the tower.

  By the time I emerged, it was early evening, and in the twilight, the forest had thickened, hiding its paths under leafy shadow. Suddenly, it wasn’t a place to be alone. I tried to retrace my steps, but must’ve taken a wrong turn. The track disappeared and the ground hollowed into a pond. The water green and solid, clogged with lotus roots and leaves. I stood at the edge, the woods around me glistening with hidden light. I turned back, my breath heavy, a trace of fear on my tongue. Something struck at my shoulder, a dead, heavyweight branch. As panic rose like a dark thing from my chest, I caught a glimpse of the mud track leading out to the main road.

  When people leave unexpectedly… Nicholas, Lenny… you are left only with unanswered questions; they travel long with you, looping their way into your thoughts, becoming your intimate companions.

  “But where are you going?” I’d ask Lenny, and he’d offer no reply. On those afternoons he wouldn’t permit me to accompany him, on those evenings he didn’t return to his room. The mud, unexplained, splattered on his motorbike wheels.

  Maybe on one of those excursions he met Mihir.

  The stranger.

  The solitary backpacker who drifted into our hometown, winding his way from the northern tip of the country, down the wild mountains, across wide rivers and into our sloping streets. He had coal-dust eyes, and mercilessly sun-darkened skin. I remember he carried the scent of bonfires, of nights spent out in the open, of old wood-bone. He spoke softly, hesitant for you to hear what he had to say.

  While I was working on somehow getting through my final exams in my last year in school, Lenny took Mihir for bike rides out of town, to all the secret tea stalls he’d shown me. To the forest. The lady at the one-room tea shop called them her butterflies.

 
I met them infrequently—between tuition, extra classes, and paranoid parents, I had little time—yet when I did, I could sense Lenny was secretly, silently reanimated. They would travel together, it was planned.

  “Where?” I asked in wonder.

  And Mihir, in his twilight voice would tell us where he’d been. To Varanasi, sitting at Assi Ghat at dawn, to Sandakphu from where you could see the Himalayas, and four of the highest peaks in the world. To a hidden, abandoned fort along the Konkan coast.

  For a while, it was alive, the map hanging on the wall, glowing with promise.

  Yet living is all loss.

  And time, or rather the passage of time, doesn’t bring understanding. Only invention, appropriation. A wild attempt to prop up the past before it slides out of sight. Often, I feel I haven’t truly left the forest. That I’m still there, astray on an endless evening. Stumbling around in the darkness, looking for a clearing, where anything is possible.

  If Kalsang’s parents would have “killed him” if they discovered he was sleeping with his cousin, mine would have done the same if they suspected the slightest deviance. So I was careful, making sure I was in my room every second Sunday when they called on the common telephone in the corridor. It rang loudly and often, when it worked, that is, or hadn’t been set on fire for fun, or stolen by someone looking to make some quick, easy money.

  On any given day, it was difficult to carry on a conversation with my father.

  I remember once, when I was still in school, he brought home a sapling from the market, a delicate green thing wrapped in plastic and soil. He planted it in our garden thinking it was a flowering hydrangea, but it grew into something else. A great tangling creeper with dark leaves and rare orange blossoms. And he’d stand in front of it bewildered.

  What is this?

  Sometimes, he looked at me the same way.

  It didn’t help that, more often than not, the corridor erupted in riotous distraction. At the far end, boys played “indoor cricket” with a tennis ball, someone else danced around in a towel and little else. Music blared from many rooms, spanning various eras and genres. Kishore Kumar from one, Black Sabbath from the other.

  Our conversations proceeded the same way each time, as though we were working meticulously through a checklist.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello… can you hear me?” My father always asked.

  “Yes… hello pa.”

  I can still imagine him now, walking out the house, down the sloping road to the market, to a PCO round the corner, a small shop with a telephone booth attached to it like an afterthought. A black and yellow signboard dangling over its door. Nine o’clock was late for my hometown. Its streets would be empty, filled only with a flimsy mist and nippy breeze. My father would be tired, after a day’s work at the hospital, but he’d wait until the crowds were gone to escape the queue at the PCO.

  “Howwwzzzaaaaatttttt!” the cricketers would shout.

  “What’s that?” My father’s voice would ripple, like he was speaking underwater.

  “Nothing, pa.”

  “What was that noise?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay. How’s everything?”

  “Fine.”

  Conversations were a staccato recital—short, abrupt, awkward.

  “How’s ma?”

  “She’s here… she wants to speak to you.”

  “And Joyce? How is she?”

  “She’s fine… busy with her work.”

  My elder sister was a nurse in Calcutta. We wrote each other occasional letters, but moved in different worlds, which barely touched apart from when we both happened to be home.

  At times, with my father, I’d feel more expansive.

  “I’m writing an article for the college magazine.”

  “Is it part of your course work?”

  “No… I’m just writing it…”

  “When are your next holidays?”

  And I’d tell him. Pujas. Diwali. Christmas.

  “For how long?”

  “About two weeks… I think.”

  “It’s better you stay in Delhi then… it’s too short…”

  “Yes.” There were other reasons my father preferred that I stay away from my hometown.

  “Here, speak to your mother…”

  This would be a relief. My mother was easier, more affectionate.

  She’d run through all her concerns—food, cleanliness and the heat.

  “I’m fine, ma, don’t worry.”

  “Your sister is thin as a stick; I told her how can she nurse other people if she won’t look after herself.”

  I could imagine Joyce’s face, the way she’d click her tongue in exasperation.

  I smiled. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  I’d allow my mother to chatter on—a cousin having a baby, a grand-uncle in hospital, an aunt visiting over the weekend. The news was as distant as I felt about my hometown, standing in the corridor, cradling the receiver against my cheek.

  “Alright, dear… we’ll speak to you again soon…”

  Sometimes, I’d slip it in. “Ma, what news of Lenny?”

  A sharp breath, the beep of the machine. Beep. And then a few seconds more.

  “Nothing, as yet. He’s still there…”

  “For how long, ma?”

  “Until he’s cured.”

  And there was nothing left for me to say but good night.

  Sometimes, I tried to imagine Lenny.

  From the hints in his letters, the tiny details he slipped in without noticing, or assuming them to be of importance. In the room next to his, a young boy drew picture after picture of a black sun. Over and over, in infinite, untiring circles. “Why don’t you draw something else?” they’d tell the boy. And he would. A forest, a house, a line of mountains. Then he’d finish with a black circle, coloring it in until the crayon broke. On the other side, the room to his right, a girl would silently play with stones—five pebbles that she’d toss in the air and scatter on the ground. Picking up each one carefully as though they were jewels.

  Nem, I am wedged between the earth and sky.

  In the evenings, if he looked out the window, through the patterned grill, he’d see the silvery gleam of pine trees, and far away, the uneven shape of hills, the brittle disc of the moon, precariously balanced. From where I am, the town lights are too distant to be visible. Night after night sleep would not come. For sleep, he said, was pressed into small white pellets, chipped away from the moon. Arranged neatly, like his night clothes, in a row, washed with clear, spring water, in which it dissolved like star dust, and swam to the tips of his fingers, his toes, somewhere to the crown of his head.

  I wondered when he started gathering sleep—the pellets dispensed after dinner. The lady in white was meant to watch him swallow, but she was careless, a little impatient. She had many sleeps to give away. He stored them in a pen he’d hollowed, throwing away the cartridge. He’d have collected enough when it was full. Enough sleep, so he wouldn’t need to wake up to the brightness of this room. This square cell. The world that was too green and hurt his eyes. So he wouldn’t need to see the way they looked at him. Wracked with this sickness. Under his breath, he murmured lines from memory. He’d read somewhere that when an earthquake buried an entire city, people underground kept themselves alive reciting poetry.

  But now all these heavy books are no use to me any more, for

  Where I go, words carry no weight: it is best

  Then, I surrender their fascinating counsel

  to the silent dissolution of the sea

  which misuses nothing because it values nothing.

  He too would do the same. Recite from memory, each syllable marking the passage of time.

  But for how long? And why?

  How slowly time passed in the dark.

  See, barely a minute.

  Here we are, still waiting.

  For something to drop.

  In his hand, I imagined, sleep lay in neat
clusters, in the centre of his palm. He unscrewed the pen cap and filled it up, a boy collecting treasure.

  Did he remember dark skin, how it quivered below him? Hair a thousand shades of dusk and light. It was a thing of shame.

  Out the window, the moon would be wakeful. The trees hushed in the breeze. How he longed to be beneath them, to curl his hand into the earth. He said he often thought of all the times we’d done that, him and I, his young friend. Going to the forest behind his house, smoking cheap cigarettes, lost among the trees.

  Once, in the deepest part of night, when darkness had unfurled to its full, long length, he stepped out of bed, and moved to his desk. A small table by the window. In the light of a milky pre-dawn, mingled with the last sprinklings of the stars, he drew faces. His mother, when she was most vulnerable, when she checked on him at night in his room and thought he was asleep and couldn’t see her face as she looked into his and tried to fathom what she had brought into the world. His father, always twisted with rage. Such a deep and secret anger. The stranger. But this one he crumpled. Then he smoothed it out and filed it away.

  Me. His friend, with a face that looked to him with love.

  He sketched each portrait with care and precision. Emptying his memory of them on to paper. Marking his name at the edge of the page, over and again—Lenny, Lenny, Lenny. He would send them away, his memories. So he was lighter. So sleep would take him easily and lay him down with her in a dark and hollow place where he could rest for all time.

  Of all the parties I attended in my years in university, there’s one I remember in particular.

  For many reasons.

  The venue was in Hudson Lines, a neighborhood of tottering multi-story houses, packed tightly together, close to a wide, sluggish canal choked with garbage. On still evenings, the air was ripe with the sickly-sweet stench of decay. No one seemed to mind. The kids playing badminton on the sidewalk, the aunties wedged around the vegetable cart, prodding papayas-cucumbers-tomatoes, the pot-bellied men lounging in their vests and lungis, demurely dressed young ladies walking home from tuition. Living with the perpetual smell of decay. Perhaps it is possible to get used to anything.