Broken Hug

The Smoky Beings

Rohan

“If you know someone close to you has passed away, that is something. But to know someone has left you and gone, and has not contacted you for the last nine years is something else. You don’t know whether that person is alive or not.” She blinked, and tears rolled down her eyes.

Rohan, overcome with emotion, put his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

“But my dad is a cool dad. You know what I mean. He’s so patient. He tells me,” and removing her head from his shoulder, she looked at him, “Charoen do what you think is correct. Use your rational sense. You are eighteen, and I’m sure you will take the correct step. When I told him about my staying in the condominium to save my time and energy, he simply told me to go ahead. Isn’t he a cool dad?” and she looked at him.

“Of course he is, without a shade of doubt.”

She smiled. She liked to see his loneliness etched in his deep black eyes. But since the time she had walked in, her mind couldn’t escape from the loneliness exuding from his eyes. She hadn’t seen this since her one month in college.

“You okay?”

He jolted out from his thoughts. “Sorry, you said something.” His mouth painted a forced smile.

“Is there anything you want to discuss?”

“No, I’m fine.” He shifted his eyes to the table. He looked up. “Actually you appeared in my dream.” He didn’t want to say anything about Fai.

“Ok, lemme guess. Good dream I think.”

He nodded and smiled.

The coffee, the drink and the brownie arrived with melted chocolate sauce dripping from the little brown mountain. The music and the snack eased the atmosphere as Rohan and Charoen dug in.

She looked up after helping herself two spoonfuls. She took the paper napkin and moved it at the corner of her lips. Her right leg crossed over the left and the right foot tapping the air. The muscles of the face were relaxed, her hands loose on her lap. All in all, her eyes radiated a warm glow of peace. 

“And what about you, Professor?” she asks, putting the spoon on the plate. “How many siblings?”

“I’m the only one in the family. I mean I stay on my own.” He related about his parents’ death. “The day I returned from Bangkok, my mom was already hospitalized. My father didn’t inform me when I was still holidaying. It was only after my return did my father tell me about mother. Then when Fai called and I gave her the news, she wanted to immediately come down here. But I told her to complete her exams first. After a few days after mom moved on, my father too passed away due to cardiac arrest.”

The long conversation made Rohan tired, Charoen observed. She gently squeezed his hand.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

“No, no. One day you would have. So that’s fine.” He sipped his coffee. “My mother was an excellent cook, you know. My favourite dish is vindaloo. Have you heard of this dish? No? It’s a Goan dish, prepared with meat. It’s the vinegar that gives it the forte it is famous for. What’s your favourite dish?”

“Mother is always a mother. I think I know it better than most people.” She looked out. “And yes, we Thai Sikhs have a variety of tastes. But personally, chicken bharta is my favourite. So also is makai di roti.” She pulled from the straw. “There’s also Kao Mun Kai, a Thai chicken dish. And your other favourite dish will be composing poems I’m sure. You must be planning on your fourth book.”

He smiled at the way she put it. “Sounds like family planning. Married to a woman named Writing. And now planning for the next child. Umm… In that case, the list of children will be endless. I suppose so.”   

She smiled at this man next to her. More of a friend than a professor. A young professor. Progressive. A special friend. He stirs in my heart a strange song with raw grammar in it.

As if he could understand her thoughts, as if the two smoky beings took charge in his head, he said, “There’s so much to live for, Charoen. Every day is a new day.”

He wanted to say You make a new day newer. But all of a sudden his eyes fell on the table across. The pair of shadowy beings he had been seeing off and on was playing a game of cards. The same accessories adorned their bodies.

Rohan’s eyes fell on Charoen’s. She was staring in front at the table too.

“Did you see?” She looked at him with a surprise catch in her voice. “I saw them…” No, don’t tell him, the wrinkled old lady whispered. 

He nodded. “You were saying something?

“No, that’s okay.” She smiled. “But… it’s us.” Charoen gaped. “Their faces.” She spoke out so loud that the man at the other table turned his head towards them. Charoen lifted her hand. “Sorry.” Turning her face to Rohan, she whispered, “Look at them.”

   The smoky twosome rested their cards on the table. The woman touched the man’s cheek. The man smiled and put his arms around the woman; and he touched her lips with his. She responded and wrapped her hands around him and very soon both were closed in a warm embrace, kissing each other, looking into each other’s eyes and kissing again. In a moment too soon, the smoke around them began fading. The figures, still holding each other in an amorous embrace and still kissing, became invisible. All that remained was the empty table and the empty cushions.

Rohan and Charoen looked at each other. Realizing her mouth open, she closed it but the language of surprise was still painted in her eyes.

Rohan rested his hand on hers. “Charoen, you know what we have discovered?” He whispered with excitement and waited for her face to fill with more surprise. “Charoen, I thought it was only me who had been seeing this. But now it’s you too.”

“What is it? Who are they… and we there?”

“Those two are the projection of our thoughts. Yes. And it simply means we can understand each other. We can read each other’s thoughts.” Seeing her leaning back but with the same surprise on her face he continued, “Not always, though.”

Things seemed to fall into place. “Your dream of the pair of jeans. And my dream of bits and pieces of your jeans falling in my palm.” Charoen was in a daze.

“Yes. That’s the common connection.” Bruce’s words came out in a trance. “But I don’t know what is right and what is wrong. All I can say is now you too have seen the smoky beings.” He placed his elbow on the table. “Only the other day I saw these two beings in the cafe of the Race Course. It only shows that our minds are somehow connected.”     

“You saw them earlier?” Her eyes widened, and her mouth opened. “What did you see?”

“They were playing cards, dressed in the same way.” He paused. “The upper portion of their bodies bare, but with only a pattern tattooed on their chests. They simply looked at me. And of course continued playing a game of cards.” Bruce didn’t desire to leak out their predictions. If she had to, she might hear them talking to her.

In the quietness that descended between them, the only sound was the thump of the octo-pad from the speakers. The horoscope forecast in the television was filled with so much loud colour that it seemed to audibly hit out and fill the café with cacophony. Charoen too was glued to the screen. Then she smiled at him.

He is conscious of something, she thought.

She is conscious of something, he thought.

And both smiled.

“You are thinking of me?” she asked.

He nodded. “And you of me?”

She nodded.

“Conscious of something?” Both said the words together. And they smiled.

“I can’t seem to get over this,” Charoen was still in a daze, her eyes fixed at nowhere, her mouth partly open. “What are we to do now?”

“Well, I think we should continue with our normal work. I mean not do anything challenging as in run up to the Gariahat flyover and jump down as if to grow wings.”

Rachnee nodded, adding after a while, “What do you think I thought a moment ago?”

“Umm… you first of all said everything will be okay; then what to do next?”

“Right.” A big smile of triumph lighted up her face.

“And what did I think we should do now?” Rohan smiled a little.

“Go for a walk to the Dhakuria Lakes.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

They left the cafe and soon crossed the side streets and turned right at the next crossing.  

 “It beats me why the weather is so cool today,” Rohan said to Charoen and also to himself, but still looking at the ripples sparkling.

“I think,” Charoen turned her face towards him, “it’s because we were destined to meet the God and Goddess of Love… I mean the smoky pair… called… do you know what I intend to name them?”

“Um… Rohan and Charoen, that’s what you thought of right now, didn’t you?”

“Yes. And yes. And yes.” The last expression was controlled, meant not for anyone but for the two of them.

“We are the thought readers.” He smiled at her reaction. Pure. Simple. And spontaneous.

A boat came sailing by. And they stopped to watch it. Two rowers moved their oars in unison, their bodies arching forward, their hands in a firm grip on the oars. When they pulled at the oars, they pushed their bodies back with all strength.

“It’s concentration, and unity. These are the twin factors married in this case,” he said. “See how the legs are bent at the knees, but they loosen up when the punters bend forward, and they tighten when the oars are pushed backwards.”

Another one came a little behind. It was a group of four ladies. They too moved with expertise, the concentration on their faces appearing on their firm jaws as their minds listened to the caller calling out the numbers to heave and push the oars.

“See there.” Charoen’s eyes were at the water. “Concentrate at one ripple from the bank. See how it goes all the way up and touches the greenery beyond.”

Rohan watched her eyes. They had caught one ripple, and as the ripple moved, so do the pair of eyes, following it. The eyelids raised themselves with the ripple moving further away.

“It has gone all the way to the trees ahead.” She gave a running commentary in her South-East Asian accent. “It reached further ahead, moving close to the trees standing all alone as they waited for their friend – the lonely ripple – to take itself to them.” Charoen paused. “The trees can’t wait for their friend any longer. And now the excitement builds further. The ripple mingles with the other ripples and they move along in unity towards the trees. And, yes the trees, arms stretched towards the water, hold the ripple and wrap it to themselves.” She looked at Rohan with triumph on her face, similar to a mountaineer reaching the summit. 

They didn’t realize how two and a half hours had passed.

She was looking at the island ahead. “I think it’s time I proceeded homewards.”

He nodded at her.

They cut through the grass and out of the gate close to the Rabindra Sarobar Stadium crossing from where Lake Gardens neighbourhood fell to the left. At the bus stop, her phone rang.

“It’s dad,” she looked at him. “Yes dad… Hmm, mm… Should be home in an hour at the max… Okay.”

She turned to him. “Dad is an expert cook. I mean for us, so he’s making Rogan Josh and prawn fried rice. He hardly gets me at home, you know with his night shift. He returns after dusk. I leave in the morning. And by that time he already leaves for work.”

“But once you’ll shift to the condo, he won’t get to see his daughter much.”

“Yes, I know.” She stretched her neck and looked towards the oncoming vehicles but none of them was her bus. “I’ll have to go back on Saturday evening, or Sunday early in the morning, I guess. Sunday is his off day. So I’ll leave for school on Monday straight from home.”

The air-con bus arrived by then. “See you soon,” and she smiled.

She was in the bus in no time, waving at Rohan from her seat, her teeth a sparkle, her beautiful eyes watching him standing as she continued waving and craning her neck when the vehicle moved further away from him.