A table for one

Noirita read the message once again but was not at all convinced. She wiped her eyes impatiently and concentrated into Arko’s weird lines one more time.

It said: My ship was capsizing in the ocean of your eyes. My mates were constantly saying ‘abandon the ship’. But I was standing alone on the deck in bubbling confidence knowing very well you can’t sink me. You can actually do nothing to me being the most loyal daughter of your a*****e father.

She darted the mobile to the bed in sheer disgust.

‘How dare you call my father a*****e, you bloody Arko?’ Noirita’s head burst in sudden surge of anger.

Her father Satya carried deep repugnance at Arko. ‘That boy has nothing but a big mouth. He can never keep you happy. Don’t plunge in his trap. Just shun him. Concentrate to your work. You will soon find your soulmate.’

Soulmate!

Arko is the number three of her life. Very surprisingly he is still going steady with her irrespective of Satya’s repeated nasty interferences. ‘I am a hard nut to crack. I will soon liberate you from your pathologically possessive father.’

Five years back Satya lodged a complaint to the local police-station against Noirita’s first boy-friend Partho. He said to the police that Partho is constantly pestering his innocent daughter through phone-calls and dirty messages. He is a spoilt brat of a stinking rich family scheming to elope with his only daughter just for some short-lived fun. Police nabbed Partho but released him on Noirita’s timely plea. Satya was heavily cautioned by his despondent daughter. Partho didn’t turn up again in her life.

Satya rubbed her second boy-friend Mrigank even more harshly. He pinned him with the charge of molesting his daughter. Mrigank was about to drag Satya to the court. Noirita somehow managed to avert him but couldn’t dodge the split. ‘Take your father immediately to a good psychiatrist. That’s what he only requires now.’ Mrigank took no time to say good-bye to Noirita sparing those raspy words in an unexpected jarring tone that deranged every particle of her mind.

‘If you ever harass my friends with baseless complaints like this,’ Noirita threatened her father in fiery eyes, ‘I will demolish myself and leave you solely responsible for my untimely demise.’

But Satya didn’t change much since then. His snooping activities persisted even after she had finished her studies and got into the job. When Noirita started avoiding her father’s off and on phone-calls during the busy office hours he made it a point to receive his daughter almost every day after the office. Noirita soon became a laughing stock of her colleagues for her over-protective father.

‘Can’t you pour some peace to my life?’ Noirita’s revolting mind barged again. ‘Why the hell on earth you go to my office everyday to pick me up? Am I still a small kid that people will extort me from the middle of the road?’

‘Kolkata is no more a safe place Noiri. It is fast taking the shape of Delhi.’ Satya tried to consolidate his defence. ‘I am your father. Don’t I have the right to look after your safety when you are not at home?’

‘I don’t need your protection.’ A thoroughly pissed off Noirita almost howled at her father. ‘If I ever see your loitering near my office I will never return home.’

Satya was not visible near to her office. But that didn’t deter him from moving to that place. He used to keep a watchful eye on his daughter from a coveted place close to her office. He didn’t even baulk to trail her track time to time till she reached home after the office. Noirita soon came to know about the inconspicuous arrangement of her father.

She didn’t have a word this time of protest.

The mind was lost.

Noirita was totally worn out by her father’s morbid safeguarding attitude.

In between Arko sailed through her life.

The near-perfect craftsman of flowery words and witty comments didn’t take much time to sweep her away. She also liked his ardent grittiness.

One bright summer morning Arko gave a surprise visit to Noirita’s place.

Noirita didn’t disclose anything to him about her father’s idiosyncratic protectiveness so long. Arko was over-enthusiastic from the beginning to meet her father.

Trouble started chasing him since then.

When Satya discovered Arko is a writer by profession with no fixed income, time to time scribbles scripts for Bengali commercials and lives in a rented house since his childhood he took no time to change the tone of his voice. ‘Do you really consider yourself the right man for my daughter?’

‘Of course.’ Arko replied radiating a bright smile that was equally coated with a layer of solid confidence.

‘What made you think so?’ Satya’s next question came like rapid fire round.

‘Because I love her.’ Arko tried to bring strong emotion in his response.

‘If I say you love her just because she is a working girl who can afford to easily pay off your long pending home-rents, electricity and telephone bills without raising a bit objection?’

Arko all of sudden became speechless.

‘If I say you love her because she can freely feed you well during your unsalaried months.’ Satya’s sharp, snide comment hammered his face.

‘Baba, what are you saying to him? He is my guest. You have no right to humiliate my guest.’ Noirita’s protest didn’t make any impact on Satya’s next remark.

‘I pity those who without creating opportunities for self just look for some petty, parasitic means of survival through others. You will surely fall in that list.’

‘If I can prove you wrong…..’ Arko made the final attempt to keep his spirit alive.

Satya burst in loud laughter. ‘You will prove me wrong! What a joke! Can I call you a joker, now?’

‘Baba….are you gone out of your senses?’ Noirita’s sudden, disdainful screech couldn’t bring the full-stop to Satya’s stream of derision. ‘I pity you Noiri. You could find only this joker as your life-partner!’

Arko didn’t wait in her place for a second. She didn’t try to stop him. Hours later she called him up to ask for an apology. He didn’t answer. Her subsequent attempts to reach him remained fruitless. Finally she caught him online in the Facebook. Arko didn’t turn up either. Noirita was feeling desperate. She left a series of messages for him in all possible outlets that started with repeated heartfelt apologies and ended with the final caustic warning of a possible split on his non-response.

He replied to none of them.

Noirita was feeling terribly helpless. If her father had behaved rudely with him was it her fault?

His stupid message emerged after that, shattering her mind further.

‘I hate you all…..Baba, Arko, each one of you. I won’t stay with you anymore. I will go to a new place, to stay with the new people to start afresh in life. You made me absolutely sick.’

Noirita made up her mind.

She left behind a small note for her father. ‘I am going away to lead the life of my own. Also broke up with Arko that you had always wished for. So please, for God’s sake don’t trouble him anymore. And never ever try to dig out my whereabouts. I had tolerated enough of your nuisance after the death of Ma. I can’t bear it any longer.’

She travelled to Purulia then visited a local NGO which had offered her a job few months back in their computer training centre of the tribal girls. Luckily the job was still there for her.

Noirita smelt the freshness of a simple, hassle-free life in the new place. She had never spent her life in the village before. The open rural climate made her all of a sudden ecstatic.

The NGO had a hostel for their in-living employees. They allocated a room for her over there. Her salary was small. Food and accommodation was free. The meals were purely vegetarian and prepared from the stuff grown in kitchen garden created in the NGO premises. 24-hours electricity was not guaranteed. Luxury of pizza and burger was just a dream. Internet connectivity was too weak to access the social networks and emails.

Noirita had adjusted with them all.

She never knew teaching computer to a bunch of half-literate, down-to-earth tribal girls can be such a novel fun.

Gradually she cut herself off from her past life.

Her evenings were lonely but not lustreless. They constituted her exclusive reading hours of the day.

Noirita had discovered the charm of reading during her early school days. In course of time the habit was lost within the complex life-style of the past. The new place helped her to resume the lost habit.

Once while glancing over the daily Bengali newspaper a small piece of alert in the column of ‘Lost & Found’ put her head on a sudden reel. ‘Noiri, please come back. I just can’t stay a moment without you. I promise I will never interfere in your life. Please come back. Your father, Satyaban Chaudhury.’

She felt totally at a fix. Has her father changed? Should she go back home to give him another chance?

Noirita couldn’t close her eyes a bit that night.

She boarded the early morning train to Kolkata the very next day. She also left a small note for the project coordinator of the NGO saying she is moving to Kolkata for something terribly urgent and will be back soon.

When she touched the City of Joy it was already afternoon. She booked a cab from the Howrah station to reach home.

Kolkata doesn’t change much in the last six months. When she left it was staunch summer of May. The climate is soothing now with tinge of winter in the air.

Noirita felt a sudden strong urge to reunite with her father. Her mind was slowly being filled with a queer sense of guilt. ‘Sorry Baba. I will never leave you again.’ Her eyes were blurring with tears as the taxi was nearing Jodhpur Park, their residence.

Noirita knocked the door of their fourth floor apartment with a thumping heart. How Baba will react to see her after six long months? What will be her own reaction?  

It was opened after almost a minute. The frame of a tall, heavily built man across the door stopped her heart for a second.

She got the shock of her life.

It was not her father, Satya.

The frozen emotion that had slowly been evaporating for a warm reunion with her father all of a sudden saw an abrupt spike of anger.

‘What the hell are you doing in our house?’ Noirita literally blasted at him.

‘Please come inside. I have been waiting here for only you.’ Arko said in an unusually low voice. He was looking down and wearied, not the same vibrant and vehement man she had met before.

She stepped inside the house like a perplexed stranger, ‘Where is Baba?’

‘Please have a seat.’ Arko’s unfamiliar formal tone didn’t bypass her ear.

‘Where is Baba?’ She almost screamed this time at him.

Arko didn’t answer.

‘Arko,’ Noirita grasped the collar of his shirt, ‘why don’t you speak? Where is Baba?’

‘It is actually me who put the notice in the Lost & Found column,’ Arko spoke very slowly, ‘sorry for the trouble. Believe me, I had no other way to bring you back to Kolkata.’

Noirita couldn’t keep herself anymore under control. She did what she had never done to anyone in her life before.

She slapped Arko.

Arko was probably prepared for her strike. He continued with a faint, dry smile, ‘Your father had followed your instruction till the last moment. He never attempted to dig out your whereabouts.’

That’s what she wrote to her father in her last letter to him. ‘Don’t try to dig out my whereabouts.’

Arko read her letter?

‘Where is my father, Arko? Please tell me. Don’t keep me in the dark. I am dying. I am dying.’ Noirita felt the split in her soul.

‘Heart attacks are sometimes so much unpredictable.’ Arko’s crestfallen, broken voice engulfed and paralyzed every fragment of her existence. ‘We couldn’t survive him. He didn’t give us the chance. He died even before transporting to the hospital.’

Arko let his flow on. ‘Your father came to my place after you had left. God knows wherefrom he collected my contact details. You know why?’

Noirita had no answer.

‘To beg apology. Believe me, I never imagined in my wildest dream that a man can be so much changed overnight. He then invited me to his house. I obliged. We had dinner together. Since then we became friends.’

Noirita yearned to break in heavy tears. She couldn’t.

Something choked her voice.

‘I saw him closely when he had already lost you in his life. How deeply he was missing you with his swollen guilt-feeling that was equally massacring his mind!’ Arko didn’t show the mind to stop for a while. ‘Soon I started sharing my evenings with him. He looked rather happy in my company. But your serial absence was killing every bit of him from inside.’

Noirita’s sights were soon obscured in deluge of tears. She was dying to speak a word but couldn’t produce a pinch of sound.

‘His death left me helpless. I couldn’t contact you. I neither had the contact particulars of any of your relatives. So I had to cremate him. Since then I had been looking after your house. Now you are here. Time for me to go.’

Arko kept his consoling hand on her shoulder for a moment and then left without saying a word.

 

Noirita didn’t call him back.

She can’t actually call any of them back.

 

 

Her table has been already booked, but for just one.

Reviews

[Leslie Philibert]

India has a long tradition of fine story-tellers ; this is excellent !

[Coyote Poetry]

A sad and powerful story. The story line brought me in and held my attention. I liked how you led to the strong ending. We do learn too late what we had and lost. Thank you for sharing the excellent story.
Coyote

[Dayran]

A great story telling style that draws the attention to the personality of the characters. Creates a focus on issues. Nice job.