The Frozen Cherries

Maya stepped out of the Four seasons hotel and realized that she had an evening and almost the next day to herself. This was the second time in two weeks her client, an automobile major had postponed the presentation.
‘Once yours, yours for a lifetime’ – she mumbled her punch line for the millionth time. And there flashed a winsome smile that she practiced every time she had looked in the mirror for the past one month.
She brushed her wind ruffled hair smooth and waved for a cab. Suddenly, her eyes fell on a humongous billboard that had the ruddiness of frozen cherries sprawled on the white expanse.
“We preserve spring for you. And almost anything”. – The neat scawl read. Her own words but from some other season some other time.
‘Amartya, somebody who never dies…’ Maya let out a whisper of despair and fell into that retro chute again.
Their worlds were quite different. Amartya was unbridled, unconventional, tempestuous and she was conservative, traditional, methodical. A life measured on proprieties.

Where did they meet? Well…generally musing and unawares, she walked into his exhibition where she saw his paintings. The paintings had the expression and meaning of her freedom.
The second time was, when Amartya came in to give her diary back that she had forgotten at the exhibition. He had read her thoughts scrawled in the diary:

If I could paint your name,
On that lonely piece of cloud
Then walk on the smoky trail,
Left by the jet plane.
And gave her a painting which had a pink blush cloudlet passing over a parched dune. Perhaps an expression of his own incompleteness.

And then she wrote:

A pink blush cloudlet
Empties its paint bucket
Sprinkling in the blue emptiness
Millions of gaily butterflies.

Inevitably, she got drawn into his world. A couple of bikers formed his gang and all of them looked doped all the time. Perhaps, the haze of smoke and the will to live the moment kept them together. Probably, they thought her to be an intrusion but Amartya was surely getting used to her.
‘Maya – an illusion that you can never catch.’ – He would whisper lying in her lap, locks of hair obscuring his face.
‘Why do you say that? I am yours- mind, body and soul’ – she would whisper reassuringly.
‘Maya’….
‘Hmmm. Bolo…’
‘Maya…when you are with me, it is as if my home and its warmth is nestled safely with me’ – he would muse aloud.
‘And you are my flying carpet straight from world of Arabian nights.’…she would say it with a huge hug meant to squeeze out all the emptiness from within him.

One day She asked him – ‘What is home to you Amartya?’
And there was a long silence and then he spoke in an uncertain timbre…

‘A house with wooden floors,… a large sunlit kitchen cum dining,… Sunday morning, smell of fresh newsprint and tea,… overridden by the aroma of freshly baked cookies….’ – he spoke looking dreamily at the sky.
‘And….?’ – She implored further.
‘Sound of spoon clatter on the china bowl,… a bunch of bamboo shoots in a crystal bowl….’
‘Hmmm….’
‘Me patting a golden retriever with my foot…a pair of goldfish….and………….’ – there was a long pause and Maya knew she had gone into the forbidden territory.

Hurt, fear of flight and a feeling of invasion was writ clearly on his face.
He suddenly sat up and said – ‘You will never get drunk.’
‘I won’t’ – she said quietly to preserve the moment.
At times as these he would mumble something which she remembered verbatim, and it would always be profound coming from a lost child she thought he was.
The mumble only had a wistful forlorn ‘Ma’audible…

Those days were crazy. A sort of spell was cast around them which scared her often. They would laze and idle on the terrace counting flying eagles when suddenly she would feel his grasp around her waist tighten as if to hold the time still. And when Maya looked right into his eyes he would smile after a failed attempt to hide his fears.

‘I am very unstable Maya. Eventually, you will get hurt.’ – He would plead and tell her stories of his past flames and fires which were dowsed unceremoniously suddenly by one high tide of the vagabond spirit. The stories about a Thai girl, who had come to get a Masters from Bombay University, but went back with an irreparable heart. It gave him a queer feeling for a long time that he was responsible for bringing floods in Thailand.

Even his hurricane romance with the daughter of his English professor which broke his heart and made her pregnant remained with him for a long time. Later he found out that the brave poor girl cried so much that her beautiful eyes got eclipses of dark circles which remained forever. He still had dreams that the foetus had the head of a full grown child with his mother’s dark eclipses and tributaries of tear stains. Julie, Sanskriti, Cherrie, Rita, Vaidehi …the list went on and so did their stories.

A few paintings he made for each season that he had spent with each one of them and people if they knew them, would know the distinctness that was exhibited in each.
Maya deplored him for his heartless philandering but always could justify it with his honest confessions. She saw an inevitable pattern and was amused to think about the fallibility of those women, in trying to hold a cloud in hearts that were empty. It was her greatest fear and her greatest challenge. She perhaps imagined even their voices of caution sometimes but somehow she knew that she would be the last feminine subject of his paintings. That was her hope and that was her resolution.

In the months that unfolded it was a subterranean strife between the creator and his subject; the form and the matter; the imagery and imagination; the intellect and instinct; the wantonness and satiation; the primordial and civilization and it bred twelve paintings of her alone. There were more. He was delighted at how prolific he had been and acknowledged that Maya was a Godsend.
‘Maya it is not your body, it is your intellect and your spirit that drives me crazy.’ – He would remark, steeped in juvenile wonderment as if concentrating hard to sustain that spell.
‘When I close my eyes there is no place that feels unexplored and yet you amaze me with a new perspective a new experience. I feel each and every hue of your palette and each and every stroke of your brush colour my imagination and caress my body.’ – She would whisper and the ebb of her voice in a blend with spirals of giggling air surely drove him crazy. Bodily this time.
After several bouts of endless lovemaking when Amartya lay stroking her, he mused out loud – ‘Maya. I would rather let the memory of us like this be, than face the humdrum of reality claiming it gradually.’
She rolled over on top of him and held his face and looking into his eyes whispered – ‘My Honeypot…We will be forever young.’
His face would light up with the inanity of her reassurance and would chuckle…’So in the name of our youth can I have those cherries again’.- and they would roll together in the mirth and laughter of the moment.

A couple of months and several paintings later, after one such intoxicated night Maya woke up to find a note saying –

To The girl I paint for…

Dearest Maya,
You are an illusion that one can never chase and if caught you won’t remain you.
I would rather let the memory of us like this be than face the reality of having something so sublime sink in the quagmire of ordinariness.
I’ll never forget a single hue and every single stroke that you made possible.
Forgive me if you can…A cloud has no home.

With love
Amartya

Maya clutched at the sheet and wrapping it around her and ran towards the window. Peeping through the windowpane saw that his bike wasn’t there.
She read once, twice, times over and just couldn’t believe it.

Was something really amiss that I couldn’t figure out? Was he going to commit suicide? He did speak about the meaninglessness of life off late…Will he come back after a few months? Did he lose interest in her? – Several thoughts good and bad crept up but none had an answer.
Suddenly, it struck her in the fuzzy realm of possibility that she might have talked in sleep. More she thought more she got convinced. She had let out the secret of stealthy creep of civilization which a woman brings in.
‘Amartya. Will you let me make your home?’ – That is what she had said. God knows what fears where unleashed by the pent up flawed child. It precipitated in the dark alleys of his psychic impressions.
She saw hell for eighteen months, her eclipsed eyes resembled the Australian Panda and at night almost always slept by muffling her cries in the pillow .
She could see him on the sidewalks, in the café’ they frequented, on the park benches where they lazed in the sun reading a book, in the card shop corners where they had kissed, in the book shops where they sat pretending to read but sat only to smell the newness of books and seep in the hushed quietude and unison of spirits. The orange Gerberas, the purple of orchids, the sweetness of moon white rajnigandha all lost there meaning. Suddenly, the mélange of colours that had filled her senses brought revulsion.

She wore more of whites and lighter shades as if enforcing widowhood on herself, less for convention but perhaps more to soothe her maimed spirit. Her faintly religious self was attracted more towards God and religion these days. So many times she had seen the sun set and the moon rise sitting quietly on the premises of a nearby temple hearing the bells toll and tinkle. Maya was getting into the habit of keeping her hand over the flames of evening Arti several moments longer than usual, perhaps a shade of masochism; perhaps an attempt to purge her spirit. The flight of heady drunkenness was surely a thing of the past.

Several months passed by…and still no sign of Amartya…no letter no phone call. Maya had already called his gang of bikers, his gang of dopeys, and the art gallery which bought his paintings, a distant cousin who not even recognized his name in the first go and also the spiritual cult he had talked about very obliquely sometime ago. Nothing bore results.
After a lot of bickering by her parents and relatives and also the fears of loneliness she complied to get married. Very few don’t get scared with the solo march of youth into the sunset. So did she.
Maya expected to find her soul burnished in the pure flames of the wedding havan kunda.
Nothing of that sort happened. Her soul remained frozen with the cherries of those bygone springs which no flame could thaw. Mechanically,she went through all the rituals.
She was so frigid that she stoked and admiration among the old ladies of the community… that the girl was so woebegone at the prospect of leaving her home forever that she was under extreme shock. Otherwise the girls these days have no shame left in them…they giggle and look straight at their husbands unabashedly these days.

Months passed by and two years expired. Maya had learned to love her benign caring husband who brought coziness of a hearth and routine stability of a mill to their marriage. She practiced and tamed her self, the self that had resonated with wild frenzy and romantic high while with Amartya. Maya’s greatest moulding effort was to turn her mother’s recipes as a pillar of her domesticity. She could make spinach soup and force it on Govind for better eyesight and preserve ginger-garlic paste ground on Sunday mornings to last the full next week. Maya also attempted pappads and mango pickle scribbled on the back of a colleagues wedding card while on phone with her maasi.

Amartya only figured out in the creativity of her words for ad campaigns or the imagery that she projected during discussions which impressed most of her colleagues and seniors. Several times she could relate his exact words with so many products that if Amartya saw it , would recognize her thought of him behind it. It was a very satisfying feeling to know that in some esoteric and telepathic sense she could be in cognizance with Amartya. That too through his own words, his own thoughts… rather their thoughts. It was all suspended in the mist of waning past and a new hope of life which they were planning for…soon. Until …

Flipping through the Sunday magazine the restless fate made her glance fall on a feature about an exhibition by some impressionist painter. The name was enough to leave her numb.
Amartya.
The rationale and the denial of her failed search refused to believe her eyes. September 19 – September 20. The dates coincided with her business trip to Bombay. After a lot of conflict, she arranged to send a message through the organizers to Amartya. The reply was almost immediate which was brief in his characteristic style – ‘Sure. Would be delighted to see you again’.
Even the hint of first love that is lost, breathes magic in the air. The frozen cherries had come to life in full brilliance of their ruddiness. The sad face of moon seemed to be smiling and the twinkling stars assumed meaning again. The evening Bangalore mist and the cool breeze at night seemed to embalm and heal her wounded maimed spirit. Maya often found her fingers caress Amartya’s name printed on the paper cutting.The finger tips tracing A M AR T Y A…followed by a smile that made her look like a lovestruck teenager. She carried it in her diary as a clue to the eternal goldmine of colours and love.

On nights she snuggled in her blanket , feigning sleep to Govind and wondering where all had Amartya been to.Frozen river in Leh…or the monasteries of Tibet…or to some obscure abode where even her love couldn’t find him.
She often rehearsed the first anticipated instance of their meeting.
‘What did he look like now?’ – she often thought.
Maya took her old photographs and kept comparing her face in the mirror to them and decided to wane the accent of vermillion and gave the mangalsutra she had, for a long pending repair.
Her body longed for the magic Amartya used to weave which still touched her spirits.
‘Perhaps, he might want to paint her again when they met. May be, in sculpture form like once when he sculpted her with mud before painting her.’ – She often wondered and blushed at the idea. Even today she could let her imagination loose and feel his careful confident fingers literally sculpting each and every form of her body with the smooth wetness of mud. It wasn’t the base animal but the love of the creator for his yet unborn creation. Although it had some carnal shades for Maya it was by far their best creation – the most sensuous and the most spiritual.
Govind let her be alone as he had understood her inconsistent phases of mood. Perhaps, it was one of those.
It was 4:43 P.M precisely as she waived at the passing taxi. It stopped and shoving her bag inside she slipped in the rear seat.
‘West Parel.’
The propriety tugged at the conscience and conscience brewed the guilt. The freedom of spirit in tussle with the warmth of the hearth. The flame of the body was being tested by the flames of the Yajna. In all of this perhaps the former held a sway over the latter.

The taxi went in through the maze of people, cars, rushing across lamp posts, shops, roadside pheriwallahs, hungry cows, red BEST buses and myriad forms of cacophony.

The billboards rushed past her. One series of billboards specifically disturbed her. It popped out at almost every turn. A young man with an intriguing expression on his face, vocal eyes but lips muted with a wide scotch tape. At the next turn there was a young woman. Then an old man, an old woman, a very young girl, a young woman. All of them spoke volumes with eyes and were muted by a wide strip of scotch tape. Maya had never seen such vocal eyes and intriguing expressions. Nothing was written on the billboards just the silence that heightened her guilt. At the roundabout suddenly she said take a left.
‘That road would go towards santa cruz memsahib ‘ – the taxi driver asked perplexed by her sudden change of plans.
‘That is where I should be going. Santa Cruz airport.’ – she mumbled.

Sitting by the window seat she watched the planes take off and land. There was this faint voice of a young crazy girl which still urged her to get back and reclaim the past but was too feeble to act upon. The child eyes of Amartya, moist with tears and void with confusion prodded her to get back.
Maya lipped Amartya’s idea of home in silence and as usual word by word. The plane took off leaving the central yellow line of the tarmac behind like the moulding tail of a flying snake.
Maya hid her face in the towel and wept uncontrollably much to the embarrassment of the person sitting in the seat next to hers.
Clouds flew past like islands of candy floss in a sea of mist and the terra firma below looked like a gigantic mass of algae green plankton .The golden shimmer of Arabian sea met seamlessly with the calm azure.
She disembarked and messaged Govind…
Heat dinner for me too. I’ll be home in 20 mins.
At home, Govind opened the door , kissed her and said…
‘There is a huge parcel delivered for you. Did you order for something?’
Intrigued she went towards the parcel, turned it around but there was no clue.
Maya opened it carefully, and after seeing it sat on the floor agape and numb.
‘A house with wooden floors, a large sunlit kitchen, Sunday morning, smell of fresh newsprint and tea, overridden by the aroma of freshly baked cookies….
Sound of spoon clatter on the china bowl, a bunch of bamboo shoots in a crystal bowl….Me patting a golden retriever with my foot…a pair of goldfish….’ – the words rang out loud and clear still hanging in the air as if it was said minutes ago.
There was a woman in the painting who resembled Maya.

There was a note saying….


Dearest Maya,
I had to leave…Didn’t want to spoil it for you…
Homes are not made on clouds but on trees.
It is not in the fate of clouds to find home. They are born vagabond and that’s their destiny.
One moment of warmth with you was enough to fill a thousand solitary years.

With affection
Amartya

That was the last she heard from Amartya. Spring came again and the frozen cherries thawed in all their ruddiness to welcome a new life.