In this cup, the ocean – short story

Another blast from the past, one of my older short stories – not the oldest, those date back to the early 1970s! Also one of my all-time faves. –Ashok

In this cup, the ocean

by Ashok Banker

She found it in on the topmost shelf of his book cupboard, behind a collection of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda novels. It was wrapped inside a brown paper envelope, the pages inside neither punched nor filed as he usually did with all his work.

On the title page it said simply, Screenplay for feature film, and below the address line he had written in his small patient hand: Show to Girish.

The sight of his handwriting made her blink and she swiped at her eyes unconsciously, forgetting the book-dust on her hands. Cobwebs caught in her hair and her cheeks turned grimy.

As she washed her hands at the basin, it occurred to her: This is his dust. Some part of Alok is in this dust too. She had read somewhere that matter does not get destroyed, it is recycled and it recirculates.

The writer had gone on to give an example. If we were to pour a cup of water into the ocean, then return after several years, the molecules of water we had poured would have mingled with the molecules of ocean water, would have exchanged what the writer called molecular memory. So in fact, there would be more molecules of our original cup of water than before.

It was a puzzling concept and she had put the book aside, uncomprehending. Alok had looked at her in irritation and said, “At least try to exercise your mind, no?”

But she had gone out of the room and started watching an Antakshari programme on television instead. Now, she pulled her hands out of the stream of water from the tap and looked at them closely, searching for scientific evidence of Alok.

All she saw were the hands of an aging woman. The hands of a widow.

She tried to read the screenplay later that night, when everything was quiet. She no longer watched television–had not switched on the set in seven months, since….since Alok.

But when she turned the title page, she was confronted with a blank page with only one sentence on it: To my wife, Revathi, for everything.

The line was typewritten on the old portable Remington he always used, the one with the broken r. So all the r’s were written in by hand. Just two in this sentence, evathi and eve ything.

But just those two little alphabets, written in his careful rounded hand, so small, so perfect, broke her heart.

The tears came and for the first time in months, she made no attempt to stop them, just let them flow. They flowed. Enough to fill a cup to pour into the ocean, she thought irrationally.

A few days later, she met Sunanda on Market Road, near the station. They proferred everyday pleasantries, exchanged information on people, the usual things.

Sunanda looked unlike her usual self, so Revathi asked: “Everything okay at home?”

She sighed, a long melodramatic sigh, adjusted her pallo, and said, “You know him.”

“Is he drinking again?”

“No, not that. The film.”

Revathi frowned. “Which one?”

Sunanda touched her arm gently. “You don’t know about this one. It’s the first one he’s doing without….”

She left the sentence unfinished.

Revathi finished it for her: “Without Alok.”

Sunanda nodded.

“Is he having some problem with it? Finance?”

“No. In fact, you won’t believe it, but this time they came to him, they called him, NFDC. They asked why he hadn’t approached them with a film this year.”

“So then what’s the problem?”

“He doesn’t have a good script.”

Revathi looked at her. Sunanda’s eyes were lined with kajal, she used too much of it, but it set off her light green eyes nicely. “He’s looking for a script?”

Sunanda sighed again. “He hired some writer, a novelist, to write a script. Worked on it for three months. But it turned out useless. He’s very frustrated now. He has the go-ahead, the budget sanction, the actors’ dates, everything. He’s afraid NFDC will change its mind, cancel the project. And,” she swallowed, adjusting her pallo again. “We need this film, Revathi. He hasn’t had any income for nearly one year. Rohit is going to start college next month, and…You know how it is.”

Revathi said: “I have a script.”

Sunanda looked at her. “You’ve been writing?”

“No, no, no,” she said impatiently. “It’s one of his. Alok’s. He must have written it before…Before he went to hospital for that last operation. He never told me about it. I found it yesterday.”

Sunanda’s eyes lit up. “Revathi, that’s wonderful. Wait till I tell Girish. He’ll be thrilled!”

Revathi was about to say something, then realized she didn’t need to say anything.

Girish called her the day after he read it.

“Didi,” he said. He had always called her didi, ever since he and Alok and she had met in college together. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Is it what you were looking for?”

“Didi, it’s wonderful. His best yet.”

He talked to her for close to half an hour, telling her about how much he missed Alok, how these brash young scriptwriters–”telewriters” he called them derisively–weren’t a patch on the old guard.

He droned on about the excessive influence of Hollywood, how Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had ruined cinema, brought it down to the level of children’s entertainment, how Subhash Ghai in a recent interview had said that he made movies for 13-year-olds. They were familiar arguments, she had heard them all, argued hotly over drinks on the verandah of their flat or in the little garden behind Girish’s row house.

She could almost hear Alok’s gruff gravel pitching itself against Girish’s sharp, grating tenor. She felt something stir in her breast, a little sparrow of joy. It was fate, she thought. That she had decided to clean that book cupboard that day, and that Girish had been unable to find another scriptwriter all these months.

She swiped at her face, remembering the cobwebs, wishing they were still there, that she hadn’t washed them off.

The film commenced shooting in July. Ironically, the script was set in the monsoons. So the timing was perfect. It rained on the first day of shooting, and the scene called for rain. Girish told the unit to stay where they were, told the rain machines to shut down and move away, and shot the scene in natural rain.

Revathi was tempted to step out into the shower, to let it fall on her face, her arms, drench her from head to toe, the way she and Alok had always done on the first day of the rains. But there were too many people around, and she was too old for such behaviour. Widows must behave with dignity, her mother’s voice rang in her ears.

That night, she poured herself an inch of whisky from a half bottle that still remained of Alok’s stock. Two fingers actually. Just the way she had poured it for 27 years. She raised it in the air, to his photograph on the wall, garlanded and ash-smeared. “Salut!” she said. And drank it all down in one huge gulp. He had hated saying Cheers, had always preferred the more Russian toast.

She coughed violently, and thumped her own chest. “Revathi,” she scolded. “How many times have I told you? Sip it, savour it! But you never learn.”

When the film was completed, she was invited to several previews and screenings. For some reason, she didn’t go. She couldn’t explain it either to herself or to Girish, Sunanda, or even Ravi, the Chairman of NFDC, who called her personally to invite her for the official preview. She made excuses each time, citing her health, arthritis, anything. But deep within her, she knew it was too much.

It was the same thing that had prevented her from reading the script. Like those two r’s on the dedication page. There would be a hundred tiny details that she was certain would be there in the film, transmuted from the script to the screen with loving care by Girish. And each of those details, little moments, silences, bits of dialogue, characterizations, would speak of Alok, yell his name, and she would break down there in the preview theatre, in front of everyone, and go to pieces.

So she avoided the screenings.

The film released. She was in the library, searching for a good book to borrow. The choice was between a Loveswept romance and a new literary award-winning novel by an Indian author. Alok would have insisted she take the literary novel of course.

Finally she took the Loveswept. She needed to relax. Alok would have disapproved loudly.

When she reached home, Girish and Sunanda were waiting for her. With a large box of mithai in Sunanda’s hands. The moment she got out of the auto-rikshaw, they came running up and Sunanda put a huge ladoo in her mouth.

“Arre?” she said, laughing. “Kya hua? Rohit passed his C.A. entrance or what?”

Girish put an envelope in her hands. It was very thin. She looked at it. “What is this?” But she already knew what it was: a cheque. The final payment for the script.

“It’s a hit,” he said. And his eyes filled with tears. “It’s a very big hit, didi. My first hit. After 9 films!” And then he bent to touch her feet, catching her by surprise.

“No, don’t,” she said. And began to cry too. They all stood there in the lobby of her cooperative housing society and cried as the bhajiwallahs and building residents came and went, staring at them curiously.

She received many more cheques. Girish had ensured himself and Alok a portion of the profits of the film. Now that the film was a hit, the royalties came in.

Suddenly, she had more money than she had ever seen before in such a short span. Not rich, far from that. But comfortable.

But what would she do with all this money? What use could she possibly have for so much excess cash? “Don’t be silly,” her mother said, when she talked of giving it away to charity. “Charity begins at home. Go on a holiday. You need a vacation from yourself.”

For once, she realized, her mother was right. She needed a vacation from herself, from Revathi.
It was a year and a half since Alok’s death. It was time. She went to Kodaikanal. For no other reason than the fact that it was one place she and Alok had never gone together. She needed to make a fresh start, to avoid bumping into memories at every corner.

It rained a lot while she was there, and she could hardly move out of the little hotel.

But the view was lovely and she had carried a lot of books. She kept a diary during the trip and enjoyed it so much, it made her remember how she had wanted to write short stories for magazines, once upon a time, a long long time ago.

In Mysore, she began a short story. It wasn’t very good, in her opinion. But it gave her a sense of satisfaction, of pleasure.

In Kerala she rode an elephant, something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. A group of children ran alongside the elephant, shouting to her, teasing the mahout, singing songs that seemed to make perfect sense even though she knew not a word of Malayalam.

She laughed and enjoyed the warmth of the sunlight on her back and arms. She realized she no longer regretted not having had children. She had come to terms with it at last. She wrote long letters to her mother, surprising herself with her effusiveness and confidence. She realized that her father had always been afraid of her mother, that was why he had kept away from her, spending more time with her brothers instead.

She realized also that for all her crustiness her mother was brittle on the outside, soft on the inside, like a sweet kachori. She wondered why she had never seen all these things before. She took up the short story again, and suddenly she saw its weaknesses–and how to correct them. She resolved to type it out when she went back to Bombay, and to send it out to a woman’s magazine.
When she returned home, the flat seemed strange. It had changed somehow. She walked through the rooms several times, looking around quizically, trying to understand. Had someone shifted the furniture around? Had the architecture itself changed–impossible! Then she understood. The house hadn’t changed at all. It was she who had changed.

She sent the short story. It came back a month later with a warm letter from the magazine’s editor. They couldn’t publish this one, but if she had other stories, they would be happy to see them. She wrote very well, they said.

In fact, she had written two more.

She sent them off the very same day. And got an acceptance for one a few weeks later. When the issue with her story in it was published, she stood there at the magazine stall, staring at her name printed in small bold italics and felt a shiver of excitement. She was a writer!

She made changes around the flat. She invited her mother over and fussed over her like a daughter-in-law over a mother-in-law.

Her mother was grouchy but pleased. “In your old age, you’re getting new josh,” she said wryly. “What are you putting in your tea these days?”

They went out for lunch together to a restaurant. Something she had never done with her mother in her entire life, not just the two of them alone.

She read out her short stories to her mother–who didn’t approve of the modern relationships she described of course, but admitted gruffly: “Theek hai, for the modern zamaana, it’s not bad.”

One day in late August, three years after Alok’s death, she filled a cup with water from the washbasin and took it down to the sea. It was difficult walking all the way with the cup in her hands, trying not to spill any, but she managed. She kept a hand over the top to prevent it from spilling.

When she reached the sea, the tide was out. She walked far out on the cold wet sand until she reached the foamy lip. She stood for a moment, looking out at the storm-swept sea, the monsoon-fogged sky.

Then she walked out into the waves, just a little way, enough to wet the bottom of her saree but it didn’t matter. She felt like she was putting Ganpathi out to sea, although it was years since she had kept a Ganpathi at home. Alok had never approved. Perhaps this year she would keep one. Yes. She would.

She stopped when the water was knee-deep. She raised the cup to the sky for a moment, unsure of what to do.

Then she upended it, letting the water flow out. It glimmered against the luminescent monsoon light, like mercury. Quicksilver. Shining. Diamond-bright.

“Goodbye, Alok,” she said. But the words never came out. They danced in her mind, like fireflies, then darted away.

It rained on the way home. She enjoyed the water on her face, her arms, her breasts. It was cool, refreshing, invigorating.

She went home and bathed and changed.

When she had finished dinner, she took out the brown paper envelope. The same one in which she had found it originally.

She took out the script, now neatly typed out and filed. And she began to read it. This time, she didn’t cry when she turned to the dedication page. She went past it and read on all the way to the end.

(c) Ashok Banker 1989-2010. All rights reserved.