Holi 1994: I waited for him, and ditched him when he arrived!

My world appeared a grim portrait of despair against the bright canvas outside where a gauzy mist swirled around the strip of lawn and the sidewalk. Droves of men whirled along in merry, unbridled gait, smudging one another with mugs full of color. The flamboyant trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms mingled with the pleasant incense of gulal to create the dreamy, reposeful land of poetic imagination.

Inside, I lay on bed with a sombre face. This was the first Holi mumma had refused to take us to granny’s place. Apparently, she had had a falling-out with my mama that year.
My brother and I missed our cousin desperately. He was the hero of our little world. Eight years my senior, he would help us in our studies, buy us stuffs from his piggy bank, take us on long cycle-rides under the serene skies of early spring, and enliven us with his blithe antics if we ever incurred mom’s wrath. He once missed his train to Malda when he rushed in to our place to say goodbye. We believed he could jump off the cliff for us!

Lying on bed, I felt caught up in the reveries of years long past. I thought to myself: twelve kilometers away, in the duplex house at Bihar Ink’s Compound; Dada must be sad too. We knew he would miss us as much as we missed him.
In the apartment next to ours, however, Harsh had reasons to smile. He was the only son of our new neighbour, the Choubeys, who had shifted to this place a month ago. Awash with the excitement of festive gaieties, he told us this was the first time he would be having a company of his age to celebrate Holi with. Rahul Uncle, his dad and a bank executive, had been wandering throughout the states of Bihar and UP, sometimes down to Maharashtra, and at times, transferred off to south, and as such, Harsh had grown up isolated.
It was already eight. The morning sun streamed in through the open windows. Mom, soaking the malpuas with a practiced hand, reminded the two of us to get ready for the merry-making as Harsh would be coming anytime soon. We reluctantly obliged. But just as we were about to move, we heard, as if by a magnanimity of fate, the familiar, sharp, squeaking sound; the creak of the bicycle, unleashed by sudden exertion of the brakes.
“Could it be Dada?”
“But, how could he be?”
Holi, back in 1994 in the small city of Patna, was punctuated with unruly wilderness- drunken men strolling all along the streets, revelers silting mud on others, and inebriated youth drawing sinister pleasure with their foul-plays. No parents would ever let their 15 year old child ride alone in the city.
Mama, too, had not.
“I jumped off the fence in the backyard,” he announced; his eyes twinkling with triumphant joy, as if he were a sailor who had crossed oceans and the mountains to come back to the people he loved.
“Quick, pack few of your clothes; we have to leave immediately,” he finished his sentence in a single breath…

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Ten minutes later, dada was preparing to leave alone. A grim silence prevailed. Dada’s eyes were fixed to the ground as he took his cycle out, and there was an expression in them that we could not read or understand. It was not anger, not disapproval, not horror, not betrayal, not pangs, not any of the emotion that one would associate with this situation...

The discretion of mind had defeated the desires of heart. We had refused to go with our cousin who had jumped the fence for us, and jumped it with the cycle on his back.
But what could we do, how could we betray Harsh?

He got on the bicycle and rode away.... A sudden strong wind came in gusts.... It blew through the lanes with such force that the whole body of the cycle trembled, swaying at places like a drunken man.... Peeping from behind the curtain, we watched him. He peddled on and disappeared from view...
(Sep, 2009)