Archives: Short Stories

The boy grimaced as the boorish bus screeched to another halt. Two unkempt ruffians leaped out from the two door-less gateways and started begging for passengers. For the boy, nothing else registered. He was trapped in a world years severed from the present. Could not have been too many years, for he now was barely into his teens. He was not dreaming. He was disturbed. If it showed on his face, he was not conscious of it. No co-passenger gave a damn about it either, if it did, of course. He was disturbed. Upset. He had been so since he had rushed to the breakfast table not so long ago. His father, a grim-faced arguably unfeeling man, had as usual beaten him to the first meal of the day and was absorbed in a newspaper. Other editions lay beside his plate, bowl and glass. No matter how late he returned or worked through the night, the father would always join his son for breakfast. It was not a mundane ritual; it was a solemn promise that the stoic man had never failed to keep.

It was one of those ominous evenings when he had that frenzied impulse to go out for a walk — a stroll around the complex that they lived in. He would pace till his weary legs would want to take him back home. The home he would dread to set foot in at such nightfalls. For she would be there, all charged up, containing herself to go hammer and tongs at him. She never joined him for these planned-out-of-the-blue saunters. She favoured the quiet of the home to the incessant bombardings of inane pleasantries that neighbours would subject them to during these jaunts. It would never be a quiet time together. These evening walks had forever been a bone of bitter contention between them since they had married. Not that long ago either, he thought. Knowing what fate awaited him, Neelanjan Sengupta cautiously inserted the key into the hole, turned it ever so furtively, and pushed open the door. And there she was. Sharmistha at her cantankerous worst. At her bellicose best.

"I'm quitting politics." Such a commonplace utterance would not have otherwise evoked any response from me. But I gave a start — the cup of coffee almost slipping out of my hand. "What on earth?" Words failed me, for the statement came from no one else but my political mentor – Ruhi. Ruhi was my best friend and five years my senior. We had met at a seminar on the validity of Marxism today. I represented my college as an apolitical student. She was a political activist. "I said what I said." Confidence. What had impressed me most about Ruhi was her belief in her self and thought. The authority, command with which she spoke that evening had grown forth only from self-confidence. And that too about an ideology which, at that point, was on the verge of being buried in Marx's birthplace. "But why?" "Forget the why. Even you are quitting."