INDI A

SINGAPORE

M A L AY S I A

Copyright © Arnab Majumdar 2022 All Rights Reserved. ISBN 979-8-88606-692-0 This book has been published with all efforts taken to make the material error-free after the consent of the author. However, the author and the publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. While every effort has been made to avoid any mistake or omission, this publication is being sold on the condition and understanding that neither the author nor the publishers or printers would be liable in any manner to any person by reason of any mistake or omission in this publication or for any action taken or omitted to be taken or advice rendered or accepted on the basis of this work. For any defect in printing or binding the publishers will be liable only to replace the defective copy by another copy of this work then available.

For Thamma

Contents 1. Chapter 1

1

2. Chapter 2

14

3. Chapter 3

24

4. Chapter 4

42

5. Chapter 5

53

6. Chapter 6

68

7. Chapter 7

80

8. Chapter 8

94

9. Chapter 9

103

10. Chapter 10

115

11. Chapter 11

127

12. Chapter 12

139

13. Chapter 13

159

14. Chapter 14

170

Acknowledgements

195

CHAPTER ONE

They called the cottage ‘The Willow’. They were children, so for a long time, they didn’t bother with names. Once they grew up to understand the significance of calling something by a name, they decided it was time to christen the cottage. They stood in front of it one misty morning, their hands tucked tight in their pockets, their faces scrunched in thought until one of them turned to another and said, “The willow.” The other replied, “Like the bat?” to which the first said, “Yep.” So, the name stuck since. Having grown up together, their parents considered themselves lucky that their children got along so well. Back when they were children themselves, they had made numerous pacts about not falling out of touch, with a reckless abandon for real life. Somehow, the pacts came through. Spouses got added to the group, and yet they remained friends. When the time came, they gladly handed the keys of their friendship to the eager hands of the children, and the cottage as a bonus. Now, Sharmishtha had returned. Twenty years they had been away, although the Willow had always belonged to her family. But they all knew – the children, the parents – that no matter the scribbles on paper, the cottage had belonged to the children long before the parents had come to accept that it had been theirs to keep. So, the clearing where Sharmishtha parked her car had been theirs long 1

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before she signed the papers. The moist, springy, familiar path that held her hand and led her to the cottage had been theirs. The trees that whispered to her as she walked – they must have been saplings when they last saw each other, she thought – had always been theirs. The ghosts that haunted the cottage had always been theirs, always waiting for them to come back someday. In the back of her mind, she always knew that it was all theirs, but it took a long time before she knew that this was theirs. What spoilt an upbringing they had had, she thought looking over the valley beyond the trees. This had been their playground, and they had dared to take it for granted, that it would be theirs forever. That the ghosts of the valley could never, ever, drive them away. But they overlooked the ghosts of the cottage. They could drive them away. They did drive them away. As they looked back to their playground, backs hunched, eyes bleary from tears, feet shuffling, arms hanging limp at their sides too heavy to be swung with every step, it was then that they realized how little they had appreciated what they had when they had it. Their childhood was left behind on the riverbank as they walked away, trying not to turn back to what they were leaving behind. We grew up in luxury, she thought. Not knowing what a hard life meant. Not caring that it made us soft and entitled. Our parents owed us the luxuries we demanded of them. The car that became mine when I turned fifteen. The keys we stole every time we thought the parents weren’t looking. The fake licences that our parents – unknowingly – paid for when we turned sixteen. The delusion that we were untouchable and the parents had the answers to everything. That all problems – no matter how big – could go away if they threw enough money at it. It took her a long time 2

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to realize that some problems have a habit of hounding no matter if you’ve paid them off. They chase after ankles no matter how far you run away. They nip calves every time you dare slow down. But all the while their entitled innocence lasted, they were invincible. Soon, they started laying claim to the Willow as their own. The indulgent parents yielded. The children considered it yet another win. So, they drove down for the first time to their cottage one weekend to celebrate, all of them holding on to their fake drivers’ licenses that the parents ‘knew nothing about’. Now she had entered the grown-up world herself. The world of paperwork and signatures. Of heavy decisions and an absent safety net. Of the distant, lingering stench of a shameful past, and the knowledge that the solutions for the big problems that her parents had seemingly bought off weren’t really bought off – they were just leased out to them. Twenty years later, it demanded another payment, and this time it demanded that they be the ones to pay. When faced with that piece of paper, Sharmishtha found that her hands trembled ever so slightly, her mind seemed to forget how to spell her own name. She practised signing her name on a scrap of paper twice, thrice, before she was ready to commit. Twenty years later, with that final scribble of her identification, the cottage was finally theirs on paper. Twenty years later, with the papers tucked safely in her pocket in case the ghosts demanded proof, she returned. The company that rented it out to tourists had told her that there hadn’t been anyone in the cottage for the last year. After walking the trail that led off from the road into the woods and to the cottage, she was surprised to see it, still standing exactly where they had left it. Still much 3

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the same as she remembered it. The wood looked a little more aged, a little mossier, but time does that to things, she thought. The creepers that grew along the walls were new. Green covered brown, wood peeked through leaves. She touched the coarse walls, taking some of the wall’s moss away with her fingertips. She ran her fingers along the grooves, pressed a palm against it. As if trying to find a pulse on a cottage shaped elephant, feel the thumping through the thick wooden elephant skin. Her hand was moist when she took it away. Hoisting the bag on her back, she paced the last few steps hurriedly, up the porch and to the front door. The key slid into the lock, but she was seized with a terror for a moment as she turned it. She knew all that was lurking within, had always known them. Yet, signing the papers for the cottage had come a lot easier than unlocking their childhood. The terror passed, her fingers found themselves again and she turned the key. Two steps in, and she was inside the familiar living room. The air inside was musty. Dust lay thick on the wooden floor, muffling her steps like a secret. She had a strange urge to be quiet, even though she knew this place so well. This was not a museum where their past was to be put on display, neatly labelled with placards, and arrows that pointed out what happened where. This was the same cottage where they grew up. She owned this place now, she reminded herself. And yet she felt that the cottage had been more hers during their childhood than it was now. The memories were threatening to spill over, but it wasn’t time for them yet. She paced through the room once, quickly. Nostalgia had to wait. She walked cautiously towards the hallway that led to the rest of the rooms, to the staircase that ran up to the 4

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attic where no one ever went. Even after so many years, that suffix seemed to fit perfectly. The door to the stairway had remained locked for twenty years, and she had the only key. It still stood there, guarding all the secrets that the grownups had wanted to keep from them, and the kids were too scared to find out. Was that where she had hidden her own secrets too? Just like her parents, was it she who had conjured up the stories that had kept the others away from the attic, from finding what she had hidden? Instinctively, she slid the key into the keyhole and turned it. She heard the bolt springing back. The lock opened far too easily, she thought, as though it had been waiting here for all these years. Had someone been up there during this time? One of the tourists who had come passing through? She had the only key, she reminded herself. She turned the key once more to lock the door, satisfied to hear the bolt sliding back into place and keeping the secrets safe again. She looked up and down the corridor and realized something wasn’t quite right. Had the cottage shrunk over the years? The walls seemed to press in on her from all sides, and she could swear that the rooms and the corridor had been larger. Or, maybe, she had grown up in these years. She tiptoed back to the living room, careful that her footsteps didn’t make too much noise. The furniture was covered with sheets, she noticed. She had been told about the problem of dust in recent months, how it billowed over from the other bank of the river and settled everywhere, white-grey and fine, like ash. How it got everywhere, how hard it had been for them to keep it out. She could see it first-hand now. The dust had managed to get under the sheets as well, she saw as she lifted the sheets off one by one. The chairs, the sofa, the dining table 5

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with the solitary salt shaker still sitting at the centre, even the cabinet that held the knickknacks and figurines from their childhood – trinkets that they had collected, like scheming magpies learning how to steal. Inside the cabinet, she saw, was dirtier than the rest of the room. The dust had covered it up too, hiding things that she could have seen. She wanted to see and not see. She wanted to find and not find. She wanted to hold close and throw away. She wanted to seek but was held back. She wanted what was lost to stay lost, but didn’t have enough belief to believe in that want. She was curious, but didn’t really want to give in just yet. She made a note to come back to the cabinet and clean it, but was secretly terrified of doing so, of what it might reveal. She turned away to focus on the rest of the room. She remembered the company telling her about the problem of the construction. Since it wasn’t happening on her land, they couldn’t do anything about it except to make sure that they dusted down the whole cottage before every visit. This time, since Sharmishtha had planned the visit so impulsively, there hadn’t been enough time to do any of that. Seeing the rather large bunch of keys in her hands, the manager had assured her that the cabinet and the cupboards that she had locked when their family had leased out the cottage to the company had remained locked all in all these years. She could trust them about it, and she had. She found it easier to hand over the custody of her past to someone else. ‘Their past’, she reminded herself, lest she feel too much guilt much too soon. Now, having gotten here, she was equal parts curious and scared of what she may find in those cupboards that had remained locked for twenty years. Still, she was looking forward to opening them and seeing for herself with the 6

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others – to see if there were any more secrets that the cottage had kept hidden for all this time which might help them understand what happened better. To see that what she had hidden was not there, could not be there, because she wouldn’t have hidden it in such an obvious place as there. After all, when everything had rolled by, such childishness had rolled away with it. To find some relief, she quickly went into the kitchen and switched on the lights and saw they worked, turned on the stove to see the gas supply was still functional, turned the faucet and found the water gushing out with ease. She could hear the dull hum of the refrigerator, and opening it found all the food and supplies they would need over the weekend – bread, butter, a preservative-free jar of jam that smelled of their childhood, a freezer full of meats and sausages for them to grill, a small sack of jet-black charcoal kept leaning against the fridge. The company sure knew how to take care of their tourists, she thought. She was relieved to know that everything still worked, no matter how old it all may look. In the hallway, she lit a cigarette – her first in the last two years – and found herself glad for that impulse purchase. Walking back into the living room, she realized that she had not anticipated she would need one this early, but things had a habit of not turning out how you planned out in this cottage. She hadn’t kept in touch with any of her friends for the last twenty years. Apart from the few emails that were exchanged over the last few weeks, the only information she got about her friends were things that her parents told her. She knew Tilottama had stayed in academics, and Arundhati had started the company that she always wanted. She didn’t know what Mainaak was up to, she suddenly realized. She found herself thinking 7

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she would have found it easier to believe that Mickey had started his own company, not Anu. She walked around the room again, picking up one of the sheets and dusting whatever she could, still smoking the cigarette but careful not to spill any ash onto the floor. The frog-shaped ashtray hadn’t been used in a long time, she realized. She flicked the ash into the open mouth of the frog. Tilottama had been really fond of that ashtray. It had to be because it was in the shape of a frog, she thought with a soft laugh that was quickly swallowed up by the silence. This inconsequential detail made her realize that when they were children, their parents used to tell them stories from their childhood, stories without a point or a purpose. Stories that are made to stand on their own merit, which to the outside world they do on frail legs. They would listen to those stories half-heartedly while playing secret games with one another as they lay on the soft grass of the courtyard under the sky. Now, as grown-ups, she suddenly understood the value of those stories, because she now had some of her own – half-forgotten, part embellished, polished with the sheen of nostalgia, but all of them built upon their shared existence. Those stories were their childhood, and along with the cottage, it was all they had left. Their parents had long known that after everything, they couldn’t have any of it back. Yet she was here, in defiance to her parent’s beliefs, desperate to grasp something that had once belonged to her, even if it was as inconsequential as Tilo’s fondness for the frog-shaped ashtray. Tilottama’s frogs, her fishes, her pack of dogs, her woods and the river that belonged to her more than anyone else – that’s how Sharmishtha had always looked at the woods surrounding the cottage. After all, she did spend 8

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more of her time outdoors than she did in. She taught Sharmishtha how to play chess after watching her hovering over the board game after game. Sharmishtha never got to win any of the games they played. Things changed too drastically for her to get good enough to win. She wondered if somewhere, in some corner of the cottage, there lay a spare chess set that they could play this time. When she wasn’t outdoors or playing chess, or outdoors playing chess, she was bound to be found, book in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. She read voraciously, fitting for a professor. She wondered where she worked now that her PhD was done with. The answers are coming, she told herself. Tilottama hadn’t replied, but she chose to be optimistic. Maybe she’ll get to know more about Vibhu along with the others as well, she thought naively. Like her, Vibhu too used to be buried in books when he wasn’t busy playing chess with Tilottama. It was because of this habit of his that none of them quite knew him too well, least of all Sharmishtha. She didn’t have too many memories of him she could dwell on safely, so instead redirected her thoughts back towards familiar territories. She remembered the many chess championships Tilottama had won in college. In certain circles, she was a god. And Sharmishtha got to be her friend, and brag about stories of knowing her way back when! As much as she enjoyed that, there was that longing in her heart to be this good at something. She had wanted to break free of her mediocrity for a long time, straining to find that one thing that she was good at. In the end though, she never quite found it. All she had to show from her childhood that lasted their way into the world of adults were the nicknames that she came up with – Anu, Tilo and Mickey. Of them all, she 9

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n the foothills of Northern India, four friends decide to meet after two decades of absolute silence. The hurried plan to meet and come to terms with their past is fraught with risks, but they persevere. For Sharmishtha, Tilottama, Mainaak and Arundhati, things have changed a lot. After all, twenty years is undeniably a long time. The woods that were their playground have eroded, the river that was their cradle is dying, the friendships they held so close to their hearts are floundering. Even the cottage that had been rightfully theirs long before the grown-ups signed it away to them is groaning under its own weight. They come to the sullen realization that what was theirs is slowly, irrevocably, slipping away from them. But the longer they stay in the cottage, the longer they come to realize that twenty years is not nearly enough. They are at a crossroad where together, they must decide if the past that they shared, if the memories they made, and the stories they wrote and cherished within the confines of the cottage and the woods under the stress of imminent destruction, is worth saving. Arnab fell in love with stories at the age of eleven when he discovered the roots of writing in his family. His grandfather, a writer himself, encouraged him to write his first poem, and the spark was lit. Arnab was educated in Delhi and has worked as a researcher in Delhi and Mumbai, before following his passion to pursue photography and writing. He is a poet, writer and photographer, and he likes telling stories across all mediums. Arnab has been featured in the debut poetry publication titled ‘Recipes for Hemlock’, produced by the DVerse Poets Pub in partnership with Boston Poetry Magazine. He has also written short stories and poems on his blog. His blog is a sandbox for honing and experimenting with his writing. In his writing, Arnab explores human interactions and connections. He loves to unravel the many knots of human relationships and tell their stories. His craft expresses itself in many mediums – visuals or the written word. His stories are a vivid testimony to the strengths, frailties and many colours of the human soul. Price 219