Friday, April 28, 2006
The taxi rattled and stopped. The driver mindful the engine might not fire when the lights change, started it up again. It stood, it rattled.
Abeer settled in his seat, drifting in and out of sleep. He moved away from the window, the draft of rain came in gasps like a spray of cool nettles. The streetlights - spheres of distorted illumination hung like ghosts in the falling rain.
The last time, he had spent the whole trip back from the airport making an inventory of all that was new, and trying to recall all that had gone. He remembered some, while others escaped all attempts at recollection.
A new housing complex, where a paper had once stood. He had pointed it out to Deborah, and then the place had been left behind. Now, he didn't try and seek anything out. It was dark and the rain hung like a haze over the road, there was no Deborah to show anything to. No scraps of the past to be glued to a page marked 'now'.
Did Deborah think of the old mill? Or the other things he had shown her on the drive home? Maybe she did, maybe some house or office in downtown Houston, reminded her off their vacation in Calcutta. It was a romantic notion, but he doubted it. His eyes were heavy with sleep again.
He remembered the afternoon they had driven to Galveston, to meet her parents. He owned a pickup and was too drunk to drive. She had parked the pickup in the sun and he had had a terrible headache all afternoon. The glare of the sun on his face, his eyes in a squint...
The taxi rattled, heaved and tumbled through the rain.
As he opened his eyes, to peer through the murky windscreen, he knew that the taxi had left the wide avenues of the By-pass, and was now slithering its way through the narrow lanes of Lake Gardens. Abstruse lanes which suddenly opened into wide roads, when you half expected a dead end.
The taxi drew into the drive way. The luggage was duly heaped at the edge of the stairs, and he stood and looked around, the house seemed pretty much as he had left it. The garden looked de-weeded, and there was a new postbox under the soffit. A cream coloured box with the words 'Chatterjee', painted evenly in black letters. He paid the taxi driver, giving him a tip of thirty odd rupees, his Non Resident status making it almost incumbent upon him to do so.
He stood under the Portico awhile longer. The rain had become a trickle, the driveway was a map of muddy water pools. The sky seemed clear and the night wrapped him in a comforting coolness.
The many vacations here had merged seamlessly into one single memory, a memory of now. The rest of his life...a memory of everywhere else.
The Marigold beds were bare - it was the Monsoons. He paused for a moment longer, a smile passed his lips at the thought of Homecoming and all its romantic allusions. He picked up his bags and crossed the raised step into the house.
Labels: Fiction
3 Comments:
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You owe me one IBM lunch coupon, I think. :D
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Yes...you shall get one, as promised! But what of a day out on your campus (along with liberal supply of one of gods wonderous gifts)?
Cheers :-) -
That can be fixed up for whenever you want. :D
Teleute said... On Saturday, April 29, 2006 12:04:00 am
Rohan said... On Sunday, April 30, 2006 11:01:00 am
Teleute said... On Monday, May 01, 2006 10:40:00 am
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