The Saree Shop :Part 3 Pg 22 20/06 - Page 14

"Who do you buy these sarees for anyway?" Arnav mumbled, sliding out a shimmery russet tussar, concurrently rubbing his eyes to shrug off the sleep clouding his mind. It had been a routine of sorts for the fellow sareewaalas of the shop, nowadays to witness a sleepy Arnav slog his feet into the shop, his hair bedraggled, face more or less always yawning and the otherwise sheepish smile, absent.

"Well son, it's a long, lacklustre story!" Ganguly Saab chuckled, but his laugh not so much as happy as it was wistful. And his story was peculiar of sorts not so long as he might have summarised it-its details embedded in Sujoy Ganguly's mind, the kind at the end of which Arnav's eyes misted over and left him dreary. "Have you met the shop owner's wife Arnav?" He asked heavily to which Arnav gawked at the man sitting behind the counter, his fingers bedazzling with a cluster of gems, as he twiddled with the phone receiver. "Who? Aseem Da?" Ganguly Saab nodded and continued, his voice treading the paths of remembrances of a relationship that was over even before it began. He had realised it soon when he felt more in love with her memories than the woman herself. A young Sujoy Ganguly had a longing for the prettiest girl in the Namchi Public School, the one who always used to sit alone in class, him sitting right behind her of course. This girl, Indrani with two neat braids on her small head, developed a silent camaraderie with the boy behind her, which begun by the galling yet later on, exceedingly comical act of his pulling her plaits whenever he was bored stiff. "School was rather uninteresting for me, the subjects tedious. But oh, the we came and sat next to me Arnav, it all changed. I think I even managed a sixty per cent in our final exam!" Even Arnav chuckled at that. The now old Sujoy knew every tilt of Indrani's voice, the sashay of her hips to the way she pursed her lips. But like almost half of the incomplete stories in India, she too had been married off to the son of the man who owned textile shops worth of lakhs. "I sit here every day hoping she'll come around once in a while. The days she walks into this blessed shop, I feel clammy with that rush I felt for her when we were in school. The days when she sits next to Aseem, talking and discussing sales, those singular moments when she looks up and smiles at me, the smile which was reserved only for me, unbridled and gleeful, I feel the same too. Happy."

Arnav breathed out a heavy sigh before repeating his initial question. "The sarees?" Ganguly Saab smiled. "I'll gift them to the woman I marry, or one day, to Indrani only." The last line left Arnav left sad, tumultuously thoughtful also. He wondered if he could give a name to this unusual ache that had settled in his heart ever since he had last seen Khushi Gupta's face. Because no word could seemingly encompass this prickly twinge he throughout the day, in the nights he wondered if it was even possible to miss a person after interacting with them over a span of two days. It felt strange to be yearning for something that never happened. Long for a nothing, that could have been something.

*

The Gangtok skies were transient from a pleasant blue to being painted over by a cloudy disconsolate film and then a chilling grey haze. And when the powder blue skies, clear as water appeared, a year had already passed Gangtok by. Whilst the dwellers of the Saree Shop munched over samosas packed munificently by Mani with a spicy concoction of aloo muttar and roasted peanuts as they looked contentedly at their salaries, Arnav hastily reckoned the crisp hundred rupee notes and shoved them into his pant pocket.

Right in front of the Mishtaan Bhandaar's glass panelled display of a multitude of sweets, ranging from flame orange to shocking pink, he found Urmi sitting on one of the wooden benches meant for the customers. He had found her few weeks ago at the same spot devouring a silver paper plate piled with sticky jalebies. Arnav had made a friend that moment she had offered the thin, tired man with a battered down expression clouding over his face, her plate jalebies. They had fallen into an easy banter then on. The young girl merely listened; with admirable curiosity, patience to this strange man she had befriended who spoke of nothing but a girl, all the time. But Urmi loved to listen to him speak. She loved to see him at work, his fingers latched to the black thread as his eyes scrunched up, beholding shades similar to the maroon of the sill. And hence she swung by every evening to watch him at work, evening, a tiffin packed with whatever she made for her father for dinner. That night, it was a bunch of crisp golden puris and fried eggplant.

Only there was a tiny problem. Trifling and miniscule as it was but its consequences remained till then, unfathomable. Urmi cared too much for her own good. Her staccato heartbeats didn't listen to her mind constantly reminding her that this relationship she shared with Arnav veiled so beautifully in the name of friendship would burn out slowly, like a glorious star that burns bright and brilliant at the beginning, eventually burning out.

*

Like every other afternoon, since the past few months he cycled back to his flat. Heating himself some milk and dropping in a handful of tealeaves and a pinch of sugar, he returned from the stove counter with a steaming cup of tea in hand. And as the tattered curtains blew away, flapping over his head, his fingers continued painstakingly without pausing even for a moment weaving away paisley patters against the maroon silk. The black rayon thread would continue blistering across his now calloused hands till the wake of dawn. But the next day being a Saturday, Arnav woke up an hour early to prepare for the side job he had taken up. It was rather artless, he thought selling the local Chamko detergent packets which promised silver coins, at every doorstep of the Gangtok locality he had been consigned to. So months after he had met Khushi, he unwrapped the Lux soap bar, which he had so meticulously dried and covered with old newspaper and scrubbed his face with it. After generously dipping his fingers into the hair gel, he gaped at himself on his way towards his first house. There were a couple of broken glass pieces strewn on the patio. He stared back at a man with flared black pants, a squeaky clean face standing out against a striped white shirt, a small shoulder bag slung across his left shoulder.

*

He stood in front of another door, painted richly in cobalt blue, a bronze handle latched against the wood. It had been over three hours and he had not managed to sell a single detergent packet. It had been more than two minutes and he had yet to ring to bell. He hadn't done so because he was afraid. Afraid that the next person to open to door would shut it on his face before he had a chance to speak, cast him off, yet again. The inch thick block of wood was all that lay between him and the world behind that door, but it was more than any gap he had to bridge. Behind this blue door was another world he could either belong to or not, all contingent on the caprices of the person opening the door and how his greeting would fare with them. He heard a splash of water somewhere near him, and he felt himself licking his parched lips. He pictured the glass of cold water inside the house, as he wiped away the sweat pouring down over his face with a sodden handkerchief. As he shifted the strap of the shoulder bag cutting down over his skin, eyeing the midday sun beating down upon the street, he knew he wasn't ready to ring the bell just yet. But with shaky hands, he rang the bell.

And waited.

The face behind the blue door was the last person he had expected to see and smile down upon him.

*