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.‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ She went off to the kitchen without answering—avoiding the question, in other words.She would take the dessert out of the fridge now.Put it in a bowl of warm water to thaw it.Meanwhile Ari would indeed keep eating, but the food on Neelam’s plate would turn dry.This was her usual way.Aritra wondered whether Neelam wanted to keep him under watch.One of the biggest flaws of their home was the lack of a guest room.It was essential for those who lived away from their hometown to have one.The arrival of a guest turned the regular routine upside down, which Aritra did not like at all.He found it difficult to locate the things he needed.Not being able to occupy his usual spots in the house disturbed him constantly.But this was inevitable when they had a guest.The three of them had become used to it.This time too he could have given his room to Esha for a few days and occupied the living room, sleeping on the sofa-cum-bed.Laying out his possessions on the table on which the stereo was kept and in the drawers would not have violated his principles.But under Neelam’s arrangements Esha wouldn’t have a room to herself, as any guest should if possible.It was different for close friends and regular visitors, but Esha was quite new.She did not know this Aritra, this Neelam, their joint household and, especially, Pupu.Asking her to stay in Pupu’s room.Who knew what Esha’s own habits were like? And yet proposing anything else would lead to misunderstanding and domestic strife—there had never been such conflicts in Aritra’s home since Bikram and his wife had left Pune.It was best to accept the suggestions without the slightest protest.Let Esha come, no matter how, no matter what the sleeping arrangements were.Let Esha come close to him.Once the air in the house had touched Esha, it was certain to touch him too, even if it passed into every room.Ari’s home would acquire the boquet of Esha’s presence.His marriage would finally be stamped with the seal of acknowledgement.Because Esha would visit, because Esha would touch, because Esha would stay.Aritra suddenly felt a jolt.What was his relationship with Esha? Was there any justification for considering Esha’s acknowledgement the most important and the most absolute? Their earlier relationship certainly did not exist anymore.It had actually acquired a rather complicated form.Whichever city Aritra lived in or had moved to, he had always written to Esha at her old address once or twice a year.And on New Year and Durga Puja, of course.None of them had been answered.Not one.Every time he had posted a letter to her, it had been like leaving flowers on her doorstep.One day after another had passed in the grip of meaninglessness.And then had come the forgetting, amidst work-duty-domesticitytreatment-routine.Forgetting that he was supposed to have got something, but had not.But something within what has been forgotten stirs the currents of blood unknowingly.Someone’s blue sari draped itself over the spring sky now.The faint scent of a particular woman wafted in from the leaves on either side of the tree-lined avenues of Priyalkarnagar, making him melancholy.The Sahyadri remained sullen throughout July.Under the buffeting monsoon winds, light and shade glittered— dusty but radiant, as though the sun shone behind it.Not remembering the luminous delicateness of Esha’s skin in the moist rainy season did not mean forgetting it entirely.But eighteen years afterwards! How was Esha now after eighteen years? What was she like? Two more years and it would have been Jibanananda Das’s famous twenty years.The dew had hunted her down.But what if I found you in the mist twenty years later.After all this time, having ignored an average of two letters a year and therefore thirty-six in all, why had she remembered Aritra? There was a time when Esha would turn to Aritra whenever she was in trouble.These difficult periods were very important to Esha.And a matter of amusement for Aritra.He still found it funny when he thought of it.Esha had left her diary on the tram.All her secrets were in it.Suddenly there was a telephone call for her at home— Esha’s sister-in-law handed the phone to her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]