The great metropolis of Nalina was one of the
richest cities in the world, simultaneously playing host to the poorest slums
anywhere. It had every other shade of green in between. But what was truly unique
to this city was this tangible manifestation of division, reminiscent of bygone
monarchical eras: The Wall.
The Wall was a giant hulking construction of granite and stone,
encircling what was known as the inner city, separating it from the outer city or
port area; in effect separating the haves from the have-nots. It towered over
the city, reminding everyone that of all the delusional notions ever nurtured
by humanity, equality was the most pitiful.
**************
It had been especially bad that year. An unfortunate trio of youths from
the port area had been caught trying to scale the Wall and had been beaten
black & blue, much to the horror of folk their side. It had aroused great
resentment in them, for in this act of brutality they saw their own
humiliation, a punishment for even daring to think of crossing the great
divide.
Arrival of the monsoon helped calm down ruffled feathers or maybe it
just gave people a new injustice to fight against ‘cause even the rain knew
better than to fall equally.
While one side could enjoy the lush vibrancy it gave their wide roads
and the soft patter of it against their expensive windshields as they rushed
off to nearby hill-stations, the other side went about their daily business awash
in the murkiness of water-clogged roads and overflowing drains, with the worst
blow of all being jammed up local train lines which like blocked arteries
arrested the circulation of life-blood to a mere trickle, giving the city or at
least their side of it, a temporary coronary attack.
Into these troubled times, there arrived a love: a great love, a
brilliant but short-lived flame that died a painful death. They came from
opposing sides of this man-drawn border and their love was like a little oasis
of chaos struggling valiantly against the order of this arid class-defined
world.
She was
brought up on wealth, and entitlement. It wasn’t so much the absence of an
unmet desire as it was an astronomical unawareness of the very concept. She had
never known what it was to not have something, the littlest thing.
At the
other end, it wasn’t as if he had been born in poverty. He had had a normal
childhood, with more food on the table than he had wanted to eat, and the
occasional indulgence as well. But he wanted more. From an early age he had
looked around and noticed what others had and he didn’t; far from making him
feel inadequate, such observations had kindled in him an intense desire to
create a life for himself that would be successful not because of its riches
but because of the fact that he would have created those riches from his own limited
resources and unlimited resourcefulness. He nurtured these desires, planting
them lovingly into the fertile soil of his mind, patiently working towards the
day they would sprout fame and fortune for all the world to see.
So you see
that their very DNA was different and yet they had met, and fallen in love.
**********************
Always drawn towards trouble, he had spent months trying to uncover a
route to cross the border that did not involve going past the Wall. It was a
bit of a legend - this circuitous route, not many had heard about it and the
ones who had, believed it to be mythical. He was convinced it existed. Since
the time he had drawn his first breath seventeen years ago, he had only ever
heard about the inner city and the very nature of it being forbidden, encircling
what he imagined to be paradise on earth, had aroused in him his young life’s
most engulfing passion, of finding a way across. And when he had heard of this
other route, he had felt as if finding it was his raison d’etre. So the search
had begun for this chimera-like route. He had pored over material in the
library, like city maps, accounts & records from a time before the Wall, older
stories set in Nalina. None of them had been much help. Until the day he had stumbled
upon a slim tattered book titled, ‘Adventures of a taxi driver’. This book had
been written around fifty years back in the pre-Wall days. On a whim he had decided
to check if the author was still alive. Almost miraculously, he had found him.
The guy was well into his seventies and almost all his senses were failing him,
all except his memory.
From then
on, the route had taken on a more palpable though still skeletal form and he
had set off with renewed vigor to find it. His advance had been slow, he had
made mistakes and taken detours, escaped being caught twice, but eventually the
perseverance paid off as waking up one day from an uncomfortable and exhaustion
imbued sleep, he saw the first rays of the unadulterated sun hit the
fantastical shores of his coveted haven, not more than a hundred meters away. He
felt his tiredness turn into battle-scars to be brandished about with pride, but
not just yet.
He went back,
practicing patience and waiting for the opportune moment to cross. And one
moonless night, he decided to.
The journey
passed by without incident and the moment he set foot onto the sacred soil, he
felt relief mixed with fluttering anticipation. He was a keen believer in
destiny and as he walked onwards, he felt an almost magnetic pull drawing him
deeper inside the city.
He came to
a point where the road widened out, and as he crouched behind a tree, his eyes
widened in wonder at the sight in front of him. The famed Mahama bay spread out
in front of him, a beautiful creation of nature in sharp contrast to the
concrete paradise that arose from its farthest shore. As for those
architectural marvels that formed the beautiful Nalina skyline, it was as if
the stars themselves had descended onto earth and taken seat in them, twinkling
through their doors & windows like a million eyes. Tall buildings
surrounded by taller ones, fading into the distance for as far as the eye could
see, their silhouettes reaching high into the sky, waiting to pluck out any new
star that deigned to appear.
His eyes
had by now adjusted to the darkness and as he looked around, he noticed he was
standing at the edge of what looked like private grounds, surrounding a mansion,
which seemed to beckon at him invitingly through the thicket of trees.
He felt
that now-familiar tug of destiny and his feet led him on to the mansion.
The sound
grew louder as he approached; it seemed as if a party was on in full swing. He
stood some twenty feet away from the huge double doors, trying to devise an entry
strategy. But he soon figured that there was nobody guarding the entrance. A
couple of high-spirited groups half-ran past him, without paying him a moment’s
notice and entered without so much as a mild breeze blocking their way. He took
a deep breath and set off himself, taking care to saunter, wrapping his
awkwardness in a look of boredom & hauteur.
Once
inside, he didn’t dare to stop & stare, but with a frozen smile walked
casually to the furthest corner, plucking a drink from a tray enroute, and stood
leaning against the wall; only then daring to breathe out. He spent the next
few minutes marveling at the circumstance of his breath polluting this rarefied
air, while looking around to see if anyone had noticed his foreign presence. But
he soon realized that nobody was watching him, allowing him to let his vigil
down. He spent the next hour wandering around, drinking in hungrily of the
sights and snatches of conversation, trying to decode these strange set of
people. It was all alien - the glitter and unselfconscious glamour, the noise
and easy camaraderie among equals. He felt this society had at its very heart a
notion of heredity, where the baton of old fame kept lighting torches for
generations down-stream. It was a giant cobweb of people who all knew each
other through intricate connections. They didn’t seem to want fresh blood,
unless it came accompanied by wealth or a name to shame them out of their
elitism. It seemed like a strange and antiquated value system, and he found
himself feeling some pride at how things worked in his world - outsiders coming
together, each bringing something different to the table due their varied
experiences, and all accepted to the fold.
The next
step on his itinerary was to speak with someone. He hadn’t come all this way to
go back without making the slightest bit of impact. So he looked around for
someone who seemed faintly approachable, and that is when he noticed her. Her, the
cynosure of her group, reveling in her surety, smack-bang in the middle of her
comfort zone.
As soon as
he saw her, everything else around took on an air of blurriness. Something
about her riveted him. Maybe it was the total sense of adequacy she projected,
an emotion he had never been able to master, and probably never would. She was
unapproachable, by all parameters on every check-list in all the worlds, she
was unapproachable, for someone like him. Yet, yet, he found himself feeling from
the core of his being, that she was inextricably linked to his existence.
**********************************************************
She noticed him too, but had no reason to be struck; maybe a little
curious, especially when one of her friends whispered to her of his provenance – where he had come from.
Although she had seen the occasional immigrant,
trying to fit in and failing, she had never been at such close quarters with
one before and that too, one that was making no obvious jarring effort to blend
into her world. It seemed to say something about him. And then there was the
way she had caught him looking at her, she had never been looked at like that.
He went
back from this evening full of her, full of resolve to see her again. And he
did. He went back to her mansion again the very next day, and stood uncertainly
outside her house, hidden from view of the guards, but conscious that every
second he spent, he ran the risk of exposing himself.
Thankfully
she noticed him before that could happen, and in that moment of recognition, experienced
a powerful physical reaction – a pleasure like none she had ever known before mingled
with the fear that he would be discovered and sent back before she could speak
with him.
As he stood
helplessly outside her house, trying to muster up courage to do something,
anything, she came out again in her neon yellow Bentley Mulsanne, herself at
the wheel this time. In complete amazement he registered her window rolling
down and she beckoning him to join her. As if in a dream, he found himself seated
next to her, unable to do anything but stare, while she went round and round in
circles for some time before taking him to a desolate spot in a back alley, parking
next to a couple of overflowing garbage bins.
**********************
And then there was no looking back. He made several such trips to meet
her. They found a few places to spend time at, closer to the border to minimize
the risk of discovery and more importantly to snatch more time to be together. Very
soon they were spending all their free time together, swapping stories, ideas,
dreams. Her fall was steeper than his. She had never met anybody with such a
thirst. He represented questions that had never occurred to her but were now looming
large and urgent, demanding immediate answers. She felt drawn into his world,
she could construct through his words intricate details of a physical universe
different from hers, through his past a history she had never known, through
his dreams a future she had never imagined could exist. She knew she had been
taken whole & soul by this love animal with no hope of return. He remained
struck by her confidence – her whole world was at her beck and call. It didn’t
seem odd to her that people materialized from thin air around her all the time.
He felt a little drunk on her confidence and allowed himself to bask in it like
a newly-created moon in the splendiferous light of the sun; but underneath it
he knew better than to forget that it was all borrowed. In fact he lived in some
sort of fear that this entire phase of his life was a bubble waiting to burst.
Well, it
didn’t. Their intense attraction developed into what can only be called love. They
knew their lives had changed and there was no question of existing without the other.
For any normal couple the next step would be to come out in the open, introduce
the other to friends and perhaps parents, but for them this wasn’t an option.
He was optimistic about the reception she would get at his home, but regarding
her parents - they were both completely certain that her family would not
approve. And if they decided to report him, he would not be treated any better
than the three youth communists (as she called them) who had almost been beaten
to death for their class-crime.
There was
only one solution. It was really very simple. They had perhaps known it all
along, their love could not survive in this atmosphere of institutionalized division.
And so they finally said to each other one day what had been building inside
for long, that they needed to run away.
It was not
an ideal solution, but it was the only one.
They knew their
relationship couldn’t remain a secret for much longer, and so decided they had
to act quickly. A few things had to be done – some money arranged for and
secreted to a new account, logistics of the actual elopement chalked out, and
most importantly a safe haven chosen – a place where they could stay without their
folks finding them.
Days
quickly flew by and finally everything was ready. She was to set out for home
from her university as usual, then go over to one of their regular haunts and
wait for him to come. Then they were both to drive up to a town around four
hundred kilometers north of Nalina, and take a train from there to another part
of the country.
It was a journey
of many days, but the most difficult part of it was going to be the first step.
They were both leaving behind everything they had known and loved so far in their
lives.
The day
came and he woke up happy and hopeful. No more stealing around after that day,
no more staying apart. Everything was arranged, from the car they would drive
up in, to the family photographs he wanted to take along. He spent the morning
with his mother, helping her around the house. In his mind, he was saying his
good-byes. But inside his heart, he was convinced that he would come back, with
her, and would always find a home here.
Later that
day when his mother was pottering around elsewhere in the house, he packed his
few belongings into the car, and set-off. Driving carefully along the
marsh-lands, which the rains had left more swampy & treacherous than ever, it
was evening by the time he reached the border, and the birds had long returned
to their nests by the time he reached Café Ideal – the restaurant she was waiting
at. She was sitting on the porch, sipping coffee anxiously, with a lone suitcase
by her side.
She started
at the still-distant sound of the engine and was relieved to see him stuttering
to a stop in that dilapidated vehicle he had borrowed. It had been getting very
dark since the past one hour or so that she had been waiting, getting
increasingly worried that he may have come to some harm.
They
realized they had not accounted for the darkness to be so very..dark. Driving
on alongside the swamp in this light was asking for trouble. So they decided to
spend the night at the motel next door, even though it was dangerous to do so.
They both would have been found missing by their families by this time and
enquiries would be on in full force in another hour or so.
But they
didn’t have a choice. So they rented one room, one and not two, telling
themselves it was prudent to do so for financial reasons but knowing all the
while that they were longing to spend some time alone, just by their twosome,
as they had never been able to in their brief relationship. They entered the room
somewhat awkwardly and tried to mask their trepidation-cum-joy at the sight of the
only one narrow bed. She went to change her clothes in the attached bathroom,
and after completing her toilette came out .. to a sight she continued to
describe till her last breath as the most horrendous one she had ever seen.
He was
standing there in his Dollar Club banyan and what she could in a hurried and
horrific glance make out to be Dixcy underwear.
She – born
and bred in South Nalina, he – born in Katihar, brought up in Kandivili. That
was the exact moment she realized that never the ‘twain could meet.
