Indigo

I had no idea nature could set such a strange, horrific trap.

Ratan Babu felt the same thrill as he did as a small boy. ‘How strange!’ said Manilal Babu, ‘even at this age watching trains never fails to excite me.’

Once again he was on his own; and unique. He didn’t have a friend, and didn’t need one. He would spend the rest of his days in exactly the same way he had done so far. What could be better?

‘Can’t you see how much this show in Lucknow means to me? Do you really expect me to begin my new career with a lie? How could you even think of it?’

When the sound of the American’s car had faded away, Ashamanja Babu looked into Brownie’s eyes and said, ‘I was right about why you laughed, wasn’t I?’

Brownie chuckled in assent.

But all the labour and imagination he had put into this one shot—did these people appreciate that? He doubted it. [...] It was true that he needed money very badly, but what was twenty rupees when measured against the intense satisfaction of a small job done with perfection and dedication?

I had learnt a lesson, and lessons learnt the hard way are not forgotten easily.

So in spite of repeated attacks of malaria I couldn’t resist the lure of indigo. No, not only that. One mustn’t lie in one’s diary. My countrymen know me only too well. I didn’t lead a blameless life at home either; and they surely have not forgotten that. So I do not dare go back home. I know I will have to stay here and lay down my life on this alien soil. [...] I have treated the natives here so badly that there is no one to shed a tear at my passing away.

‘Bipin, have you taken drugs or something? As far as I know, you had a clean record where such things were concerned. I know that old friendships don’t mean much to you, but at least you had a good memory.’

He had got over the old compulsive urge to steal a long time ago. But this business of playing hide-and-seek, was this not a form of deception? All that tension, those uncertainties, the anxiety over should-I-do-it-or-shouldn’t-I [...]—all these things were signs of a malady, were they not?

‘Fairy tales or folklore, call it what you will, can mean only one thing—sowing the seed of superstition in a young mind. A child will accept whatever it’s told. Do you realize what an enormous responsibility we adults have? Should we be telling our children that the life of a man lies inside a fish and things like that, when the truth is that one’s life beats in one’s own heart? It cannot possibly exist anywhere else!’

Not everyone is endowed with the same sense of wonder, but there was good reason to doubt whether Tulsi Babu possessed any at all. There was only one thing that never ceased to surprise him, and that was the excellence of the mutton kebab at Mansur’s.

‘You may have heard about it, but have you seen it with your own eyes?’

I had to admit that I hadn’t.

‘You never will,’ said Dhurjati Babu. ‘This is the land of tall stories. You’ll hear of strange happenings all the time, but never see one yourself.’

‘You’re dying to know what happened, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I mean . . . yes, a little . . .’

‘All right. I will tell you everything. But let me just say this one thing right away—the whole expedition was highly successful!’

He might be no more than an ordinary clerk, but God had given him a lively imagination. He had thought of so many different stories sitting on that bench in Curzon Park. But there had never been the time to write them down.

‘And don’t be frightened of me. What is there to be frightened of, anyway? Do you think I’m a monster that’ll eat you alive? Ha, ha, ha, ha . . .’

When I was a child, I used to collect stamps; so I knew something about a collector’s passion. Sometimes, one’s passion could turn into an obsession.

In his uncle’s house in Jhargram, Mr. Shasmal had crushed a similar snake to death by throwing a brick at its head. The snake had been an old inmate of the house, well known to everyone. It had never done anyone any harm.

He believed in magic—but his kind of magic was something in which man was in full command. For Naveen, anything to do with the supernatural was not just unacceptable—it was evil. He could see signs of evil in the changes in Bhuto.