Distorted Mirror Read online

  The days that followed were filled with suspense and anxiety. Datta feared that the customer would surprise him at an unguarded moment making him bungle the entire, carefully-thought-out plot. But the man turned up promptly a couple of days later. At that moment Datta was bent over a piece of work and slightly stiffened as he heard the voice, shrill with expectation, ask, ‘Is it ready?’

  Datta’s heart began to race and to compose himself he let a whole minute pass without answering. Then he put aside the scissors in his hand with slow deliberation and reached out to take the neatly wrapped package in a corner.

  ‘Ah, it is ready!’ the customer exclaimed with childish delight, at the same time mumbling flattering tributes to Datta for his promptness and so on. He spread his arms widely with dramatic exuberance to receive the photograph as if it was actually a long-lost person he was greeting.

  But Datta took his time removing the wrapper from the frame. The customer waited impatiently, filling in the time showering more praises on his worshipful master who was to adorn the wall of his home.

  Datta finally revealed the glittering frame and held it towards him. The customer seemed visibly struck by its grandeur and fell silent like one who had entered the inner sanctum of a temple.

  Datta held his breath and watched the man’s expression. With every second that passed he was losing his nerve and thought that in another moment he would betray the big hoax he had played.

  Suddenly, he saw the customer straighten, the reverential look and benevolent expression vanished from his face.

  ‘What have you done?’ he demanded, indignantly. For Datta the moment seemed familiar for he had already gone through it a thousand times night and day since he splashed the white paint on the original photograph. He had rehearsed his piece several times precisely for this occasion. But before he could open his mouth the customer shouted with tremendous authority in his bearing, ‘Now, don’t deny it! I clearly remember asking for a cut mount with an oval shape. This is square, look!’

  TRAVELOGUES

  IDLE HOURS IN THE USA

  I ENTERED one of those mammoth department stores to buy a toothbrush. My eyes caught a giant flower vase kept in the centre for decoration with colourful cascading flowers, leaves and creepers. I moved automatically towards it to smell the flowers and touch the leaves to find out if they were real.

  This had indeed become a pastime with me wherever I went about in the United States. I would stop in the street and even scratch the avenue trees to test their genuineness. This habit started one day when I was leaning against a tree waiting for a friend outside an internationally well-known bank. It was a nice clear day; the sun was warm, the sky was blue and the tree was young and green. I casually reached for a little tender leaf which was fluttering in the cool breeze. What I touched was a lifeless piece of plastic! To my horror I discovered the whole tree was phony; it was made of wood and plastic.

  I had, of course, on other occasions tried to take apples or grapes from ornate silver bowls at dining tables and felt like a fool at the feel of the hard chilly surface of the succulent plastic fruit. But I did not imagine that the synthetic garden of this country had grown so big as to have plastic trees.

  And now, in this department store the flower vase held, as I had expected, dahlias, azaleas, roses and tulips, all fashioned out of plastic. But here something else startled me: hidden among these flowers I saw a camera-like contraption staring at me through its powerful lens and making a sickly whirring noise. I quickly withdrew, bewildered.

  Thousands of shoppers were rushing about hugging their parcels and shopping bags, going up and down the escalators and running all over the place indulging in another bout of frenzied buying of clothes, kitchen gadgets, lawnmowers, ties, Mother’s Day cards and rubber canoes. The staggering dimension of their buying capacity and the range of their needs would have continued to engage my thoughts had I not noticed another camera-like device staring at me from the ceiling from behind the electric lights. This one was majestically revolving, taking a sweep of the crowds below.

  I forgot the toothbrush which I had come to buy and enthusiastically set about looking for hidden cameras. I found several during my hunt, peeping out of various improbable places. Some revolved, some oscillated, and some kept a steady gaze at customers through holes in the wall and from behind curtains. I was still ignorant about the purpose and nature of these objects. The more I spotted the more mysterious they grew. But my curiosity ended abruptly as I came across a huge sign on the wall which said: ‘For the purpose of security the management has installed closed-circuit TV cameras at various places in this store . . .’ This announcement was obviously meant for shoplifters who, I was told, walked away with millions of dollars worth of goods every year from supermarkets and department stores all over the USA. If anyone was tempted by the atmosphere of freedom that the system of self-service created and pocketed even a pair of nylon stockings, he would be nabbed at the exit. And yet, I understood that despite Big Brother watching them unblinkingly, adventure-loving teenagers, kleptomaniacs and common thieves merrily filch all kinds of things— from tie-pins to tractors.

  ‘These are the afflictions and worries of affluence,’ a hippie despondently explained to me later when I happened to tell him about my visit to the department store. The man’s material needs did not seem to extend even to combs, blades and bath soaps.

  I was sitting in a quiet corner in a park, watching children play in a pond with their radio-controlled toy boats when this hippie came and sat next to me. This was unusual because I thought hippies seldom left their pack. There were quite a few of his ilk gambolling on the grass, looking like soiled gods and angels in a second-class paradise. Some of them wore no shoes or sandals. Dark sunglasses and miles of beads round their necks seemed to be a ritualistic must in their way of life. A grisly beard was the only index to sex; otherwise males and females looked alike in their appearance and behaviour.

  I scrutinized the hippie sitting next to me without any fear that I would be misunderstood for staring at him with such open curiosity. I believed all hippies loved to be stared at, frowned upon and generally talked about; they would languish without public attention to sustain them. He was wearing a black turtleneck pullover, strings of coloured glass beads, bells and buttons, with slogans crying out for a better world. His trousers were sliced off, as if with a pair of blunt scissors, crudely just below the knee. His hair and beard looked like a raw stock of wool for making dirty-brown woollen carpets.

  He smiled at me with benign amusement as I looked for more items of interest on his person. I returned the smile, out of surprise at the unexpected human quality in the depth of all that fur. He appeared a trifle elderly for a hippie. He made enquiries about me and slowly began to talk.

  I learnt a great deal about his philosophy and ambitions. He told me that his sole desire was to be a poor man. He hated affluence and comfort. In his personal life he had done away with furniture and carpets in his apartment. Books, clothes, paintings and crockery were kept in grand disorder all over the floor. His children went to a very ordinary overcrowded school in the neighbourhood. His wife bought clothes only when needed, four times a year or so, and at bargain sales. His family ate its breakfast or dinner off the cooking range or refrigerator, standing, without bothering to sit at a table.

  ‘You see how free I am. A poor man is free and has no obligations and responsibilities . . .’

  He further declared that if an electric iron or a blender or any electric appliance went out of order he never threw it away; he repaired it himself and used it again. Finally he said, ‘I have not changed even my car though it is nearly five years old . . .’ and proudly thumped his chest; the bells jingled and the glass beads tinkled. I sat dumbfounded and amazed at the effort one has to put in that country to remain poor!

  When I came across a friend and his son in New York I realized how difficult it was to pursue poverty in that land of opportunities. If that hippie I met in
the park did not watch out, prosperity would sweep him off and he would end up as the vice-president of some industry or other and live forever suffering from affluence.

  I had known this friend in India some fifteen years ago when he was here as the sales manager of an American company. He beamed with delight and warmth at our encounter and drove me in his luxurious European car to his suburban home for dinner. On the way he told me that he had done very well in the years gone by and was now the head of a flourishing firm similar to the one in India.

  He had a cheerful-looking house with a lot of trees and extensive lawns. His fifteen-year-old son was mowing the lawn and had neatly piled up a large quantity of cut grass in a corner. He ought to be watching TV at that hour I thought and not mowing a boring patch of lawn.

  When we settled down in the sitting room the young fellow appeared with a tray carrying drinks. He offered us eatables, distributed cigarettes, pushed the side-tables nearer us, arranged the ashtrays and generally took care of us with great courtesy and attention.

  While we were discussing old times and remembering our common friends the boy lounged in a sofa at the far end of the room and kept an alert eye on us. At the slightest hint of our needs—whether drinks or cigarettes—he would jump up and bring them to us immediately.

  Later, he attended on us at the dining table, served us the dessert and when we finished and went back to the sitting room brought coffee and liqueur. Then, making sure there was nothing more we needed, he took leave of us politely and went in to help his mother clear the table.

  I was astonished at this young boy’s sense of duty and helpful nature. I expressed my admiration and complimented the father. My friend laughed and said, ‘Sure, Jim is helpful; but he is paid to do all this around the house, like tonight. He is a smart guy, though! He has made such a lot of money he has invested it all in stocks! If I don’t watch out maybe he will buy up my company one day!’

  DARJEELING

  MY DECISION to take the train all the way to Darjeeling from Bombay was applauded by everyone as the civilized way to travel when one is on holiday. The Department of Tourism said ‘Ah’ approvingly and pressed into my hands sheaves of glossy brochures on Ajanta, Varanasi, Darjeeling, Kerala, Mysore, etc. The travel agents who arranged our bookings expressed their delight and viewed me as if I was the first to undertake such a journey by train.

  At this point, the train fares were revised and air travel for my wife, son, and me appeared far less expensive. But it was too late to retrace my steps; after receiving a massive approval all round I could not bring myself to go and catch a plane like everybody else.

  At Calcutta, my travel agent delivered to me the tickets for our onward journey to Jalpaiguri and wished me bon voyage. ‘You will enjoy travelling by the tiny mountain railway from Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling,’ announced a friendly ticket collector. ‘I am thrilled,’ I remarked.

  My fellow passengers who seemed to be frequent travellers on that line debated and argued about the time I would have to change over to the mountain train at Jalpaiguri: five minutes, said one, another thought it was thirty minutes, someone else was sure it was only seven minutes.

  However, it was a coolie at the other end, half-starved, spindle-legged, looking like a piece of driftwood, who gave the correct information. There was no tiny mountain train going to Darjeeling at all. A disastrous landslide a couple of months earlier had ripped the tracks away! It is still a mystery to me why this vital piece of information was withheld from me, as if by a pact, by everyone concerned with our travel plans.

  I could hardly form any impression of the surroundings during the better part of the three hours that it took our taxi to reach Darjeeling. Throughout, the entire landscape was swathed in wads of mist. The driver seemed to depend upon some sense other than vision to keep the car from flying off a cliff or colliding with vehicles madly careering downhill on the narrow road which seemed to have been built for only one car but would, at a pinch, somehow miraculously expand a wee bit to let another coming from the opposite direction pass.

  I had watched the unrelieved soupy mist for a couple of hours dully when, all of a sudden, I saw ahead, bathed in the bright sunlight, a refreshing view of a whole mountainside with dark green fir trees and houses neatly stacked one over another. Ah, Darjeeling, at last. So sudden was its appearance it was like some blessed vision. But, alas, it really was: before I could get the full impact of it, it was gone—like a drawing erased by a giant indiarubber leaving the sheet white again. Very soon I could not even see our driver because of the mist between us.

  As we drove on, I began to learn that this was the way the eccentric mist behaved. It seemed to take on a personality all its own, quite apart from being just a condition of the general weather. It would let me have a glimpse of the face of a village boy totally abstracted from his surroundings and then reveal nothing for a long time. Then a bit of tree, a hut, goats, all in a blur like an underdeveloped photograph. Then, suddenly, a breathtaking flash of a distant mountain, blue sky, pretty women washing clothes in a waterfall cascading down a cool mountainside. But, again, before I could even realize it, the curtain would go down and the whole drama would cease abruptly.

  While I was thus engaged in watching the pranks of the mist, the driver slowed down the car and brought it to a stop. ‘This is Tenzing’s house, sir,’ he proudly pointed out. It was perched at a height, its lawn and flowerbeds sloping down towards the road. Wonderful surroundings to live in for a deserving hero of the mountains, I mused as I watched a man cutting grass in the garden.

  Our driver suddenly became all excited and in suppressed delight whispered to me in such a manner that it could have echoed in the valley below, ‘That is Mr Tenzing Norgay, sir!’

  The grass-cutter immediately turned to us, sharply balancing himself on the sloping patch of grass. His expression seemed uncertain just for a fraction of a second and then his face cracked into a thousand bits, revealing a smile that only Tenzing could flash with such universal warmth and sincerity.

  It began to drizzle and, when we reached the government tourist lodge, it was pouring.

  The lobby was full of people all dressed up and nowhere to go. They were lounging on the sofa sets looking bored. Our arrival provided a degree of diversion and they surveyed our luggage and stared at us, trying to figure out where we had come from. They all looked like people with names like Basu, Bose, Banerjee, Ghosh, Chatterjee and so on. Later, when I got acquainted with them they indeed had the very names I had guessed!

  It was Mr Bose who told me how treacherous the weather had proved; the rains had not ceased since the day he set foot in Darjeeling with his family for a holiday. The others told me they had come to the tourist lodge in driving rain a few days earlier and had remained huddled in their rooms and were returning home the following day, their holiday finished.

  ‘I have already spent a week here, but I have not yet seen Kanchenjunga. If it was not the mist, it was the rain,’ wailed Mr Chatterjee. They viewed us with pity as if we had committed an avoidable blunder.

  The rain did not stop the whole of that day or that night and sent the mercury hurtling down and our spirits along with it.

  But, surprisingly enough, the next morning we saw no trace of cloud, rain or mist. Birds chirruped outside our windows. Trees stood washed and fresh, filling the air with the fragrance of green leaves and wood. Kanchenjunga appeared in dazzling majesty against the blue sky like a cut-out, urging even the most unpoetic minds to respond to its beauty and make silly comparisons to sugar, butter and so forth. A battery of cameras aimed at the snow peaks clicked all round me with the urgency of capturing a fleeting prima donna.

  I went for a long walk gulping down the cool mountain air, flushing out the exhaust fumes of the city from my lungs. Everyone I passed on the way seemed to have the same idea. Clusters of families were dashing about in all directions swathed in colourful woollens with a lingering smell of mothballs.

  In Darjeeling, wherever
one went, the ultimate destination would be the Mall. The Mall is half an acre of flat surface rimmed with park benches on which local beggars and holidaying tycoons relaxed side by side and warmed themselves in the sun. I could sit here for hours on end, lost in observing the goings-on in the middle of the Mall. Young men, pretty girls, Buddhist monks counting the prayer beads while engaged in a lively chat with their companions, pink-cheeked children who were like the winged cherubs by the Old Masters, tired-looking newly-weds on their honeymoon, foreign tourists festooned with cameras, Marwari middle-aged couples grimly taking in their holiday, stout gentlemen having a ride on skinny, undersized ponies.

  Then there were pony touts who dressed and behaved like tough cowboys in a Western. The effect however always sadly failed because of their horses which were underfed, mangy and reluctant. The Mall was like a stage. I always went home from here with the sense of having witnessed a play which had a disjointed, fragmentary form, altogether fascinating.

  A couple of days later, early one morning, I saw a wisp of white patch tucked away in the valley down below. It began to grow in size rapidly right before my eyes. It was the good old mist returning after a few days of absence. I had almost forgotten its existence. Now, like a mischievous dervish covered with a white flowing beard, it was creeping up the valley to drive the tourists to despair. But luckily we were leaving for Sikkim that day and hoped the dervish would be gone by the time we got back.