VII. Train Dreams #5
Ruhee sat in the car but I loitered. Ganesh came over.
He fished out his cigarettes and lit one as if to calm down.
He leaned against the driver side window.
So I told him what happened in the queue near the giant wheel.
I was sorry to have violated Ruhee’s confidence, but I didn’t want Ganesh to be mean to her on the way home.
His face was expressionless when I told him.
He finished his cigarette and stubbed it under his shoe.
With no explanation to Ruhee―he had the car keys, she was going to wait―he took me back into the grounds.
We searched near the giant wheel, and the length and breadth of the entertainment area.
Ganesh didn’t give up, didn’t care that Ruhee had been waiting for thirty minutes or so by herself, with no explanation.
Finally we found them near the eating area, jovially sharing a table and laughing over plates of pav bhaji or pani puri.
I said I didn’t know who exactly, but they were all laughing.
Ganesh did not care that I couldn’t pick out the person.
He grabbed one of them from the table at random.
They were only boys, around school age like us, but probably went to respectable schools like mine; I thought this because the rest of them did not come forward to defend the one that Ganesh picked to beat on.
Ganesh was strong and tall, and most of all, his face was frightening.
It is untranslatable, the things he said while he beat on the boy, kicking him in the gut.
Untranslatable not because there aren’t literal, English equivalents, but because I am ashamed to say them.
It was possible that the boy getting the beating at Ganesh’s hands was innocent of direct crime; just like the pickpocket who had the misfortune of crossing paths with my father might’ve been innocent.
The misfortune being visited upon them could be horribly scarring, lifelong experiences, and they might be unearned, might be unjust.
Ganesh used expletives that made the hair on my arms stand on end.
He called the boy’s mother something foul, said he’d pay a visit to his sister.
It was all of it so unseemly in a way my father’s beating of the pickpocket was not.
I didn’t know such language. Ganesh did, because that was who he was; that was his society, the society of servant boys who screamed ‘maar’ as they dove by Ruhee in an autorickshaw.
Yes, I recognized those boys as Ganesh’s friends from the gymkhana.
Ganesh, with his long gangly arms and fuzzy tattoo, who cared what language he used?
Whom he beat up, how he behaved? Who came asking after him? He wasn’t even in school.
Now it wasn’t just Sugunakar Rao, it was a whole lot of people who witnessed this sight of Ganesh claiming Ruhee.
And Ruhee, what would she say if I told her what Ganesh did?
She was waiting in the car for us. How would she prefer him to act?
What would she want? She was so unpredictable, she might even be okay with it. But she wasn’t asked.
We went back to the car, got in. Not even caring that I was in the back seat, Ganesh leaned over and drew Ruhee to him, he held her chin and kissed her on the mouth.
She made as if to draw away, but not completely.
He lingered, his face close to hers, he wiped her cheeks, ran his fingers over her lips and kissed her again.
It broke my heart.
Later that week, I went to watch Dil Se by myself.
The plot of the movie goes like this: A radio journalist meets a beautiful and mysterious woman at a train station in a remote hill station in Assam.
He buys her a cup of tea, then she disappears.
He is caught in an obsessive attraction to this woman, though his fiancée, vivacious and trusting and dimpled, is picking out the invitations and the wedding clothes and the jewelry.
Later, he runs into the mysterious woman unexpectedly―she shows up at his door and asks him for a job at the radio station and a place to stay.
She becomes the new tenant in a Portion in his palatial house.
They circle each other, clearly in the throes of a desperate awakening, while the nuptials are being organized.
And she is mysterious for a reason; she is an insurgent, a suicide bomber, part of a terrorist group with a plan to blow up the Red Fort on Independence Day.
What bad luck to fall in love with an engaged journalist. The movie pitches towards the ending with various dramatic roundabouts, and finally the journalist must decide whether he will let the love of his life die; kill innocents but protect himself, or betray her to the police; no one takes kindly to terrorists, even beautiful women, he knows what will happen to her.
Or find a way to be with her, but how? Everything in the movie, despite the dramatic plot, the exotic locations, folk dancers on top of the train singing chaiyya chaiyya reminded me of Ruhee and Ganesh and me.
As if I were watching this episode of my life from the outside. It was ridiculous.
That night I dreamt of trains, passing me by, on and on and on, always passing me by. Of course, I did not know that the train dreams would return to haunt me for many years afterwards.