Distorted Mirror Read online

  Bhasker took out a fat file from one of the drawers. It opened like the bellows of a camera, each fold like a compartment for papers. He held it upside down and emptied the contents on the green felt top of the table. The idea was to destroy the unwanted papers and arrange and classify the rest. This was not the first time that an attempt was being made towards this end. He’d tried it several times over the years, but each time had been lost in the contents of various papers and letters and after several hours had got up after putting all the papers back into the file again.

  Bhasker was a great one for preserving letters, which according to his definition meant every bit of paper that passed through his hands. There was a time when he would not throw away even handbills announcing drama shows. Weeks after a journey he would still feel a deep attachment to a railway ticket. Though this passion gradually tapered off as he grew old he was still in possession of a formidable collection of old letters, marriage invitation cards, doctors’ prescriptions, recipes for special kinds of pickles which cured stomach ailments and a heap of papers of an indefinite nature.

  When his obsession was at its peak, even the loss of a routine club circular had caused much tension at home—hot exchanges among members of the family— and ended quite often with the little ones being spanked for converting the circular into a paper boat. Bhasker firmly believed that all letters should be preserved for a week before their usefulness was scrutinized, and then destroyed or filed. But in practice only a very few were removed and the bulk survived for another week, another, and yet another, until he developed a sentimental attachment to them; then they acquired a status high enough to enter the protective folds of the big file and remained there, yellowing with age. He felt like a vandal damaging an antique if he were to destroy even a single bit of paper from the precious collection.

  But that morning Bhasker approached the file with a grim determination without letting the excuse of their age or his memories protect them.

  The first paper he came across was a telegram dated 16 March 1927, from Thalivanam, a gritty hot village whose architecture and temperature, Bhasker remembered, were like those of a mud oven. The message in the telegram said: ‘GOD’s GRACE. SHARADA GAVE BIRTH TO MALE CHILD. MOTHER AND CHILD WELL. LETTER FOLLOWS.’

  It was the announcement of the birth of his first son, who was now in Delhi conducting research into a new strain of rice which would solve the nation’s food problem in twenty years. He had even been invited to Geneva to read papers before some important world body.

  The thought of this son always warmed Bhasker’s heart as he was a contrast to the second son who, after marrying a rich girl, never did a stroke of work and made a fool of himself, letting her openly lead him by the nose. But he was a good sportsman in his day. The glass case in the hall was full of silver trophies of all sizes and shapes won by him. The thought of the trophies made Bhasker feel a little charitable—after all, the young fellow was not a bad sort; it was his mother who spoilt him.

  He kept the telegram aside and picked up a thick gilt-edged emblem-embossed card. It was an invitation addressed to his father to a civic reception arranged in honour of ‘. . . His Excellency Sir Maurice Baring, KCIE, Governor of . . .’

  Next was a letter from Bhasker’s mother written to him when he was studying in Madras. He ran his eyes over the letter: ‘ . . . and do not fail to take oil bath every week and drink plenty of milk before going to bed . . . I read somewhere that milk has the medicinal property of a hundred apples . . .’ It went on thus for nearly two pages.

  Then there were quite a few bills of 1920 vintage from the Southern Silk Emporium and the National Provision Stores, both of which had disappeared long ago under a road-broadening scheme launched by the local municipality. For a second the image of his daughter on the morning of her wedding day came to his mind: shy, bedecked in flowers, looking absurdly small, she was almost lost in the billowing brocade sari supplied by the Southern Silk Emporium. She herself had a daughter now of marriageable age and three brilliant sons poised to take off to various corners of the USA and Germany for higher technical training.

  As he was thinking of his daughter his eyes fell on a piece of paper on which was written: ‘Sandalwood powder, Claws of a cat, Camphor . . .’ It was a recipe for making incense sticks. He had copied it from a book as a boy with the hope of becoming financially independent of his father by manufacturing and selling his own brand of incense sticks. The project collapsed for want of raw materials; except camphor he could get no other ingredient.

  He reached for a pink letter on the heap and unfolded it. He realized with a start that it was a letter written by him in a juvenile hand nearly half a century ago. He remembered writing it sitting close to a railway track in a wide field under a burning sun.

  That was the morning the SSLC exam results were announced. For the second year running Bhasker did not find his number in the paper. His father had not only hired three high-powered private tutors to reinforce his son’s own efforts to understand biology, Sanskrit and algebra, but had promised to thrash him within an inch of his life if he failed to get a first class. Now he had not even got a class! He had failed totally!

  And his father was a man of his word. Bhasker saw his father advancing towards him, eyes burning with anger, nostrils dilated, bellowing, and finally pouncing on Bhasker! The picture sent him fleeing to the rail track in terror.

  The 11.15 Thindivanam passenger passed that way if it was punctual. Bhasker finished writing the note and surveyed the field. There was nothing in sight, except a lame donkey in search of grass. Far away the conical shapes of the important buildings of the town quivered in the simmering heat of the sun.

  He folded the letter carefully and put it in his pocket. He thought of the news item that would appear in the local paper: ‘ . . .a note found on the mutilated body indicated that the deceased took his own life . . .’

  He thought of his mother; she was the only one who would really suffer; the whole house would be plunged in gloom. A sudden surge of self-pity engulfed him for a moment. He could not imagine his father feeling sorry for Bhasker; on the other hand he would perhaps keep his appointment at the bridge table at the club. He would not miss that, not even when his son perished under the wheels of the Thindivanam passenger.

  If his father had been a little more sensible, Bhasker would have been home by now, had his lunch, and be lounging in the easychair, poring over the Sports Weekly, instead of waiting for the train to solve his educational problem. He wondered what they would do with his personal things. He felt relieved that he did not take his bicycle along to see the results that morning; he would have had to abandon it here on the field. Cycle thieves were doing a roaring business everywhere; but he had taken the precaution of scratching his initials in seven secret places all over his bicycle.

  A distant whistle pierced his thoughts. He was startled. His whole body throbbed like one big agitated heart. Beads of perspiration gathered over his brows and flowed down. The train had left the city station and would arrive here any moment.

  The sun was high in the sky, pouring down heat and light on the landscape with elemental fury, melting all colour and form to a mass of white heat. It became unbearable for Bhasker. He gazed steadily at the spot where the train would appear. His head ached; his eyes smarted with the glare. He turned away for a brief second of relief and the lame donkey caught his attention.

  The chugging of the approaching train came faintly from a distance. Bhasker saw it and involuntarily moved away a little. It grew menacingly bigger every second. Suddenly he was seized with panic and confusion; he did not know at what point one introduced one’s head to the wheels of the monstrously huge train. He was overwhelmed by its speed and noise as it thundered past him. Bhasker watched the carriages loyally clank past. And soon he saw the last carriage hurrying away with a gentle sway and disappearing around the bend.

  Sitting at the roll-top desk that morning, Bhasker glanced through the suicide note: �
�� . . . My dear father and mother . . . Cruel fate . . . I have no alternative . . . miserable existence . . . time will heal . . . worthless son . . . relief to all . . .’

  Bhasker chuckled to himself as he folded the letter and put it back in the file. He gathered all the other letters in one sweep, stuffed them back into it and rolled down the top of the desk.

  THE GOLD FRAME

  THE MODERN FRAME WORKS was actually an extra-largewooden packing case mounted on wobbly legs tucked in a gap between a drug store and a radio repair shop. Its owner, Datta, with his concave figure, silver-rimmed glasses and a complexion of seasoned timber, fitted into his shop with the harmony of a fixture.

  He was a silent, hard-working man. He gave only laconic answers to the questions his customers asked and strongly discouraged casual friends who tried to intrude on his zone of silence with their idle gossip. He was always seen sitting hunched up, surrounded by a confusion of cardboard pieces, bits of wood, glass sheets, boxes of nails, glue bottles, paint tins and other odds and ends that went into putting a picture in a frame. In this medley a glass-cutter or a pencil stub was often lost and that was when he would uncoil from his posture and grope impatiently for it. Many times he had to stand up and shake his dhoti vigorously to dislodge the lost object. This operation rocked the whole shop, setting the pictures on the walls gently swinging.

  There was not an inch of space that was not covered by a picture; gods, saints, hockey players, children, cheap prints of the Mona Lisa, national leaders, wedding couples, Urdu calligraphy, the snow-clad Fujiyama and many others coexisted with a cheerful incongruity like some fabulous world awaiting order and arrangement.

  A customer standing outside the shop on the pavement, obstructing the stream of jostling pedestrians, announced, ‘I want this picture framed.’ Datta, with his habitual indifference, ignored him and continued driving screws into the sides of a frame. ‘I want a really good job done, no matter how much it costs.’ The customer volunteered the information, unwrapping a faded newspaper and exposed a sepia-brown photograph of an old man. It was sharp and highly glazed in spite of its antiquity.

  ‘What sort of a frame would you like?’ Datta asked, still bent over his work.

  ‘The best, of course. Do you expect I would stint where this great soul is concerned?’

  Datta glanced sideways and caught a glimpse of the photograph: just another elderly person of those days, he told himself: a standard portrait of a grandfather, a philanthropist, a social worker, with the inevitable whiskers and top-heavy cascading turban—it could be any one of these. At least half a dozen people came to him every month bearing similar portraits, wanting to demonstrate their homage to the person in the picture in the shape of a glittering frame.

  The customer was describing the greatness of the old man: extravagant qualities of nobility, compassion, and charity were being generously attributed to him in a voice that came close to the chanting of a holy scripture ‘ . . . If this world had just a few more like him, believe me, it would certainly have been a different place. Of course, there are demons who may not agree with me. They are out to disgrace his name and destroy his memory. But he is God in my home!’

  ‘What sort of a frame do you want?’ Datta interrupted. ‘Plain, wooden, lacquer, gold, plastic or just enamel painted?’ He waved a casual hand towards the pictures on the wall. The customer silently surveyed the various frames. After some time Datta heard him mumble, ‘I want the best . . .’

  ‘I don’t have any second-rate stuff in my shop,’ Datta said.

  ‘How much will that gold frame cost?’ enquired the customer.

  He was shown a number of samples: plain, decorative, floral, geometrical, thin, hefty and so forth. The customer was baffled by the variety. He examined the selection before him for a long time and seemed afraid of enshrining his saviour for ever in some ugly cheap frame.

  Datta came to his rescue and recommended one with a profusion of gold leaves and winding creepers and, in order to clear any lingering doubt he might still harbour in regard to its quality, added: ‘It is German! Imported!’

  The customer at once seemed impressed and satisfied. Datta next asked, ‘You want a plain mount or a cut mount?’ and watched the puzzled look return. Again he helped the man out by showing his various mounts and suggested that a cut mount looked more elegant.

  ‘All right, let me have a cut mount then. Is that a cut mount?’ he asked, pointing to a framed picture on the wall of a soulful-looking lady in an oval cut mount. ‘I like that shape. Will it cost much?’

  ‘No. Frame, mount, glass—all will cost seventeen rupees.’

  The customer had expected it would be more. He pretended to be shocked all the same and tried to bargain. Datta withdrew to his corner without replying and began to cut a piece of plywood. The customer hung about uncertainly for some time and finally asked, ‘When will you have it ready?’ and barely heard the reply over the vibrating noise of the saw on the plywood, ‘Two weeks from today.’

  Datta had learnt by experience that his customers never came on the day of delivery. They came days in advance and went away disappointed or came months later, and some never turned up at all and their pictures lay unclaimed in a box, gathering dust and feeding cockroaches and silver fish. Therefore, he only made frames for those who visited him at least twice before he actually executed their orders.

  Ten days later the tall, rustic-looking man appeared and enquired, ‘Has the picture been framed? I was passing by and thought I could collect it if it was ready.’

  Datta cast a sideways look at him and continued with his work. ‘I know I have come four days early,’ the customer grinned nervously. ‘Will it be ready by Tuesday?’

  Datta merely nodded without shifting attention from a tiny nail which he, with precise rhythmic strokes, was driving into a frame. He, however, sensed the man’s obsessive attachment to the photograph. He told himself there would be trouble if he did not deliver the order on the promised date.

  Next morning he made that his first job, keeping aside all the others.

  The photograph was lying on a shelf among many others. He took it and carefully kept it on a wooden plank on the floor. Then he looked for the pencil stub for marking the measurements. As usual it was missing. He swept his hand all round him impatiently, scattering fragments of glass and wood.

  False shapes that he mistook for the pencil harassed him no end and stoked his anger. Frustrated in all his attempts to find it, he finally stood up to shake the folds of his dhoti—an ultimate move which generally yielded results. But he shook the folds so violently that he upset a tin containing white enamel paint and it fell right on the sacred photograph of the old man, emptying its thick, slimy contents on it.

  Datta stood transfixed and stared at the disaster at his feet as if he had suddenly lost all faculty of movement. He could not bring himself even to avert his eyes from the horror which he seemed to be cruelly forced to view. Then his spectacles clouded with perspiration and helpfully screened his vision.

  When at last he fully recovered his senses he set about rescuing the picture in such desperate hurry that he made a worse mess of it. He rubbed the picture so hard with a cloth that he peeled off thin strips of filmy coating from its surface. Before he realized what he had done half the old man’s face and nearly all of his turban were gone. Datta helplessly looked at the venerable elder transformed into thick black specks sticking to the enamel smeared on the rag in his hand.

  He sat, clutching his head with both hands; every vein in his head throbbed, and his head felt like it would burst if he did not hold it down with his hands. What answer was he going to offer to the customer who had a fanatic devotion to the photograph he had just mutilated beyond recovery? His imagination ran wild, conjuring nightmarish consequences to his own dear self and to the fragile inflammable shop.

  He racked his brain for a long while till sheer exhaustion calmed his agitated nerves and made him accept the situation with hopeless resign
ation. Meanwhile the plethora of gods, saints and sages gazed down at him from the walls with transcendental smiles and seemed to offer themselves to him to pray to. With a fervent appeal in his heart he stared at them.

  In his muddled state of mind he did not realize for quite a while that a particular photograph of a person on the wall had held his attention more than it was qualified to do. It was an ordinary portrait of a middle-aged man in a dark suit and striped tie, resting his right arm jauntily on a studio prop made to look like a fluted Roman pillar. Datta was amazed to see that he had a faint likeness to the late lamented old man. The more he gazed at the face the more convincing it appeared to him. But he dismissed the odd resemblance he saw as one of those tricks of a thoroughly fagged-out mind. All the same, at the back of his mind an idea began to take shape: he saw the possibility of finding an acceptable substitute!

  He brought down the old wooden box in which he had kept all the photographs unclaimed over the years. As he rummaged in it, panicky cockroaches and spiders scurried helter-skelter all over the floor. Unmindful of them, Datta anxiously searched for the brownish photographs of the old man’s vintage. Soon there was a pile before him: he was surprised he could pick up so many which qualified to take the old man’s place. But he had to reject a lot of them. In most of the portraits the subjects sported a very conspicuous flower vase next to them, or over-dressed grandchildren sat on their laps and therefore had to be rejected. Luckily, there was one with which Datta felt he could take a fair risk; the print had yellowed a bit noticeably but he calculated that the total effect when put in a dazzling gold frame would render it safe.

  After a couple of hours’ concentrated work he sat back and proudly surveyed the old man’s double, looking resplendent in his gold frame. He was so pleased with his achievement that he forgot he was perhaps taking one of the greatest risks any frame maker ever took! He even became bold enough to challenge the customer if his faking was discovered. ‘Look, my dear man,’ he would say, ‘I don’t know who has been fooling you! That’s the picture you brought here for framing. Take it or throw it away!’