“How do I spend the winter, without the scarf!” is what he said to himself before he looked up to find a man looking down at him with bewildered eyes. The man had already asked him to pull the shutter of the window down twice, to no avail. Generally in the buses, passengers doze off, but here, this man of not for than 20 had his eyes wide open. Not sure how to wake him up from his already awake trance, the man could only stare at him and hope that something would wake him up. The wind outside was freezing to the bones and he was standing right in front of the window seat. He was grateful now. He asked him to shut the window again, and he did. Little did the man know why the young man in front of him was absent-minded.
It was a late Sunday afternoon in December. Winters in Calcutta were never known to be very harsh if one ignores the occasional windy days. But how would he spend even the occasional days now? He lost his scarf. A week before, he had boarded a crowded 240 from Gariahat wearing it and had to stand upto Amherst Street which is more than half of the distance he travelled everyday. He got a seat there and took his scarf off and kept it on the seat next to him. He generally, was a very cautious person but that day he got off the bus without the scarf.
A week later, once again he was there in the same bus cursing himself as the icy cold wind outside wrecked havoc. What happened that day which essentially caused him to lose the scarf was something he could not afford to let happen ever again. He kept chiding himself, all the while recalling the incident repeatedly. This perhaps is what they called ‘indecisiveness’ in his first year’s English honours classroom while teaching Hamlet, at the Scottish Church College. But was he really undecided in thinking what had caused him the distraction to forget his scarf, that day?
That day, just as the bus reached Baghbazar, its stand, and the conductors asked the handful of passengers to get down, he saw another 240 leaving for Golfgreen. A two-hour long journey he thought. By one of the windows, he saw the familiar blue identity card of the Scottish Church College. Anything remotely related to Scottish Church excited him and at the same time made him nostalgic. His heart started beating faster as he slowly looked upwards to find the possessor of the identity card. In that one moment a thousand thoughts flashed in his mind. What if he sees a familiar face? What if he/she recognises him? How would he explain why he disappeared suddenly? And once again, the whole tragedy of his life came back to him.
He had just been in college for six months when his father passed away due to cardiac arrest. Immediately after, his mother and he were isolated to one room in the corner of their grand house in Baghbazar. They were not given their share of the money from the family business. All their ‘well wishers’ said he should drop out of college and try to find a job to support his mother and himself. An aunt had said “What good will you do anyway? Having a degree in literature is equal to having no degree. Had you been studying medical, we would have considered.” This remark made him laugh every time he thought of it. And hence started his regular journey to and from Baghbazar. With his English medium education he had managed to find the job of a typist in one of the numerous offices in Gariahat.
He raised his eyes very slowly, and did not find a familiar face. He was relieved. Instead, he found there sitting by the window, a girl, whom he had never seen. She wore a beige coloured kurta with dangling ear tops. Her dusky skin-tone was accentuated by the hint of kohl in her eyes. One would not call her pretty by the conventional standards of beauty but something about her, touched his very soul. Their eyes met and that moment felt like eternity. Her face as a whole, was inscrutable but her eyes were expressive, he thought. And at that very moment, a conductor asked him to get down once again, this time yelling that they have to clean the seats.
He cursed himself now. How would he spend the winter? His stipulated monthly salary could hardly bear all the expenses and on top of that, his mother needed asthma medicines in winters. Buying a scarf now, was a luxury he could not afford. “Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are”, he recalled O. Henry’s quote from “The Gift of the Magi”. Never did he think, that the exact same words would apply to his own life.
This is what he was thinking when he saw another 240 going in the opposite direction. He thought of the day he lost his scarf and also realised, love was something he could not afford at the moment. And just then, he saw her, once again. There she was, sitting by another window in that 240, wearing the scarf he had lost. He felt the warmth of the scarf around him. And that is when he felt eternity for the second time. And after the bus passed, he thought how very wrong people are, about love and eternity. He found both, in a moment.
–END–
