Ludhiana Diaries by Ramit Gulati
As the party of the ghosts began to break up, Ankit found himself in a quandary over the poor results he had received; had all those puzzling cases of the couples played a part in them? Seeking some clarification, he approached the only person he thought he could consult on such a subject matter, the ghost of hope, Arjun.
“If only I knew this business of results would follow me even after my death, I would have never died in the first place,” Ankit started with a little joke, hoping to ease Arjun in to the conversation, especially since they were talking for the very first time.
“Don’t worry about it, you will get used to the whole burlesque soon enough,” Arjun replied, he cared little about these results, if at all any.
“Anyhow, there was something I needed your help with, I have been getting these distress signals and when I follow them, I just come across these couples, and they are just doing it,” Ankit tried to explain his situation the best he could.
“doing it..?” Arjun asked, looking perplexed.
“You know..doing it..I mean..doing it..” and with each of the ‘doing its’, he brought his hands together and interlocked his fingers, trying to convey the meaning of his words.
“Oh, doing it doing it,” Arjun said, his tone expressive of him now gathering an understanding of Ankit’s words.
“Yeah, and I don’t know what I am supposed to do, am I supposed to stop them or something?” Ankit inquired.
“No, you don’t need to stop them. You merely need to give them the wisdom of using protection while they are ‘doing it’,” Arjun explained.
“What!!” Ankit exclaimed, more than a little taken aback at Arjun’s revelation. “You are messing with me, right?”
“What do you think? The work of a ghost is not all high noble stuff. Welcome to the dirty side of business brother,” Arjun replied with a chuckle, enjoying the disquieted looking face of Ankit.
But before the ghost of wisdom could reflect too much upon the unsavory nature of the duty which had befallen him, he was disturbed in his broodings by the arrival of Neha on the scene.
“Hey, I have a new case, you want to come check it out with me?” she spoke rapidly, looking eager to fleet away to the spot already.
“y..yeah sure..” Ankit responded after a brief pause, taking a little time to gather his thoughts before he acquiesced to join Neha on her excursion.
“You want to join us?” Neha now asked Arjun, perhaps only out of common courtesy.
“Na, I am fine, don’t want to catch the disease of perfectionism,” Arjun replied in a dry sardonic voice, before taking a quick unceremonious leave.
“He does not seem too fond of you,” Ankit commented, once Arjun had left.
“Yeah, not everyone is infatuated with me,” Neha jested and winked at him, before she flew off after signaling for him to come with her.
Soon the two of them were floating over the rooftop of a Guest House, where they saw a man walking back and forth across the length of the roof, seemingly engrossed in his own thoughts. At intervals, he would pause in his steps, turn his gaze to the stars above, smile at them, before resuming his tread and going back in to his cerebrations.
“Doesn’t look like a lovelorn one to me,” Ankit commented, pointing to the warm and hearty smiles the man was intermittently exchanging with the stars.
“Don’t be so quick with your judgment my dear friend. It is these smiles that hide underneath them, some of the greatest tragedies of this world,” Neha said, and said so with a smile, but what pain did she hid behind her own, well that only time was to tell.
*******
3
Early next morning, Raghuvir was strolling in the front garden of the guest house, waiting for the arrival of Kamal, who was supposed to pick him up and take him to the college he was joining as a professor. At present his spirits were much improved as compared to last night, the sorrows that had seemed to him inexorable during the night were alleviated to an extent with the coming of the morning; the sleep like a crafty surgeon having stitched up his torn and despondent soul and anesthetized his grieves and cares to a state of abeyance.
And his disposition was being ameliorated further by the observance of the morning’s beauty. Be it the early morning sunshine gleaming across the verdurous grounds beneath his feet or the chirping of the birds in the Neem tree located in the far corner of the garden, his senses were exulting in one and all alike and taking delight in the whole unison of it.
By and by he came to stand under the dense foliage of the Neem tree and began to whistle in tune with the chirpings of the birds over head, the birds in return began to chirp louder and with more exuberance than before, as if trying to encourage the human to carry on with the Jugal Bandi.
“Be careful standing there professor, one of them might drop a shit on your head, which isn’t a very pleasant experience to have first thing in the morning.” It was Kamal’s jocular voice that addressed Raghuvir. He had just arrived and was standing a few yards behind him.
“Well at least it’s organic, so it won’t be harmful to my hair I think,” The professor quipped back as he turned and walked out from under the Neem tree’s shade, approaching Kamal and extending his hand towards him. “How are you this fine morning?” he asked.
In the turbulence of last night’s darkness, he never had a chance to get himself properly acquainted with Kamal, now in the tranquility of the morning light, he could see that he was quite an attractive young man, one having a tall and slender built with a healthy looking clean shaven face topped by slightly spiky black hair, possessing an overall appearance of a man in the prime of his youth. In addition, his shiny black spheres of eyes were hinting at the presence of a joyful personality behind them to go with his vernal physical features.
“I am doing fine professor, ready to go?” Kamal asked, momentarily relishing the fresh scent of the garden’s morning air himself.
“Indeed, the present is as good a time as any,” replied the professor, and then was led by Kamal to his car, parked outside the premises of the guest house.
The car which Kamal had brought today to fetch Raghuvir was an ancient Ambassador, whose white paint was peeling off to give rise to many patches of metallic discoloration, whose doors when opened did so with painful squeaks, whose engine growled and grumbled for several minutes and took many turnings of the keys in the ignition before it finally came to some semblance of a life, after which the dilapidated contraption somehow began to make its way forth on the pot holed Ludhiana roads, its undulated motion threatening to break at once all the rusted bolts and nuts of the mechanical hag, while causing the springs of the seats underneath the driver’s and passenger’s posterior to screech and groan most sorely.
“Quite a transformation your car has undergone overnight,” remarked the professor, lurching back and forth in his seat in rhythm with the bumpy motions of the car.
“Different cars professor, that one was Mr. Rai’s, this one is mine,” Kamal replied, surprisingly there was a hint of pride in his voice as he announced his possession of the rundown machine. “Rosa is its name, it belonged to my Uncle, and he named it after his wife and my sweet Aunt Rosa, after his death my Aunt gave it to me,” he recounted, before he tilted himself to the left in his seat in order to give the heavy steering wheel some forceful rotations which were required to get Rosa to take a turn to the road coming up on their left.
“Ah! A car with a history then,” the professor mumbled, wondering why not this sweet Aunt Rosa, whoever she was, donated her namesake to a museum rather than gifting it to her nephew. A museum seemed the right place for it, where it could be observed and appreciated from a safe distance afar, rather than be allowed to carry passengers within it still and churn their insides apart.
“Indeed professor, a car with a rich history,” Kamal agreed, drumming the top of the wheel with his fingers, and humming that famous journey song. “Suhana Safar aur ye mausam haseen, humein dar hai hum kho na
‘par humein to dar hai hum mar na jayein kahin..’ the professor thought to himself parodically, wondering how much of this jolting journey was left before they would reach the college.
“Say professor, you are new in our city, how about me and Rosa give you a little tour of it sometime?” Kamal proposed, he had stopped humming the song and was now just playing its beats with the rhythmic clicks of his tongue.
“A tour! “ The professor gulped, his mouth going dry at the proposition. “We could, but it’s a new job, and I believe things are going to be hectic for me with the whole settling in and all,“ he said with a false pout, trying to excuse himself out of the situation before making an attempt to change the subject of the conversation. “Speaking of jobs, you never told me what you do?”
“Oh, I am the IT guy of our college. I maintain the college’s website along with its various databases. A pretty cool gig,” Kamal replied and precariously reached back for his tab that was doing small jumping jacks in resonance with the vibrations of the back seat, before flicking open the mentioned website on it and handing it over to the professor.
Raghuvir, who was glad for having successfully wriggled his way out of any future city tours in Rosa, began to glance through the website and saw on its homepage, a picture showing the elated faces of the college debate team as they were being awarded the winner’s trophy for a recently held national level competition.
“National debate champions, that is impressive,” he commented and began to explore the other parts of the website, glad for any distractions that would help take his mind off this perilous ride of the Ambassador.
“Yes, a talented bunch they are. I had the opportunity to travel with them to the competition, and was thereby able to record the debate. It is on my YouTube channel, if you want to see?” Kamal offered, and on getting the professor’s accord, he reached once again for the screen of the tab and flicked at it a couple of times, so that the professor was now looking at the video of the debate. “I have a variety of videos on my channel. It’s a sort of a hobby of mine,” he added, but seeing that the professor’s attentions were getting fixated on to the debate, he said no more and went back to drumming his fingers on top of the quivering wheel.
The main subject of the debate was ‘whether or not the present day media was able to carry out its responsibility of educating the electorate about the various issues faced by our country’. As things proceeded, points were raised both in favor of the media and against it, mentions were made about the handicaps which were hampering the media such as commercial interests and ratings, as is the ilk of any good debate both problems and their possible solutions were expounded upon in detail, all in all it was quite a didactic and engrossing affair and the professor was a little more than half way through it, when old Rosa suddenly came to a creaking halt. As he looked up from the screen, he saw that they had reached the parking lot of the college premises.
Raghuvir handed back the tab to Kamal, resolving to watch the rest of the debate later, after which he and Kamal made their way to the administration building, where Principal Barkat Rai was waiting for them in the main reception area. A man in his early sixties with a grizzly head and a wrinkling face, at first gander his aging features would make one perceive him as some kind of a calm pensive individual, but only a few moments spent in his company and that perception would prove to be nothing but a gross misrepresentation of his actual deportment. For in reality, he was a man who fostered within himself a real lively spirit, a joie de vivre, which would quickly become evident to Raghuvir in the warmth that effused from his countenance as he approached him and in the ebullient way in which he proffered his hand to greet him, all of it pointing to the fact that here was a man that was not at all wearied by his travels on the road of life.
“The vagabond, the wandering professor, the nomadic poet, oh you are finally here, finally here in our city, in our college, it is such a pleasure to meet you,” As he spoke, exuberance was dripping from his voice. “How do I know about your poetry you ask? Oh, of course I researched about you when you sent in your application, and it was there that I came across the book of poems that you recently published. Ah, what a masterful way you have weaved your words in there and how simply it arouses in the reader’s heart the most complex and poignant of emotions. ‘Love read or love written is never the same as love felt, that I know from writing about you on many a silent nights.’ Pure, wonderful, majestic.”
“You are too kind Sir to bestow upon me such plentiful praise,” the professor replied, feeling more than a little overwhelmed under the current torrent of compliments.
“No, no, you deserve each and every word of it and more, I am not being kind, I am just being honest,” The principal opined. “And when it comes to praising something that has gained my affections, I am never the one who practices miserliness in his words, having never acquired the taste for the trait. Anyhow, how do you like our campus so far? Oh, on second thought it is a silly question, of course you are yet to see most of our campus, so let me give you a little tour of it, will you?” he cordially offered, and on getting Raghuvir’s assent, began to lead him around the college.
Kamal accompanied them during the early part of this excursion before he excused himself for some work, after which it was just Raghuvir and Mr. Rai, with the latter leading the former through various sections of the premises, while he gave a detailed exposition of many things related to the history and geography of the place.
“The patch of grass you see there Mr. Dixit, yes, the one underneath the Apple tree, it is the place where Vivek Govinka, that famous Bollywood Director, sat and wrote the script of his first movie when he used to be a student here,” he revealed with much pride.
“And this amphitheater here has seen many a great performances over the years, including the performance of the great tabla master Zahangir Khan last year,” he recounted with much enthusiasm.
“And then, this is our library, state of the art collections, from Shakespeare to Byron, from Munshi Premchand to Allamah Shibli Nomani, from Marx to Ayn Rand, you will find a wide range of works to study and ponder upon in its hallowed chambers,” he said with much reverence, and then began to lead Raghuvir towards the entry of the standalone two storey grey stone edifice.
It was here that Raghuvir saw her for the first time, a studious looking woman coming out of that library with a heap of books supported upon one of her forearms, dressed in black trousers and a grey shirt with her brown hair tied in a loose bun above her head and her thin framed spectacles acting as a temporary tiara around it, she clumsily descended the couple of steps that were outside the library’s entry door, her face showing a serene kind of weariness, the sort one acquires in the morning for having spent the hours of the preceding night in the analysis and contemplation of the written text.
Raghuvir immediately found himself drawn towards her, but before he could have a chance to wonder at all about her identity, that little suspense was taken care of by Principal Rai, who ushered him towards the lady and readily introduced the two of them to each other.
“Here is our hard working professor of history, who by great fortune also happens to be my sweet daughter, Miss Anoothi Rai,” he stated. “And this here is Mr. Raghuvir Dixit, our new professor of English literature, the one I told you about.” And thus the initial round of formal introductions commenced and subsequently finished, after which the three of them began to make their way towards the college canteen with the idea of having some tea, bringing the college tour for the new professor to bit of an abrupt end.
“Let me and Mr. Dixit here share some of this load,” Mr. Barkat Rai decreed when they were halfway to the canteen, before lifting much of the books that were being carried by Anoothi and dividing them between himself and the professor.
“My chivalrous father, in his previous births he surely must have belonged to some bygone era of nobility,” Anoothi joked with a modest smile, her burden
“The nobility my dear daughter is not established by birth, nor by blood, nor by the era in which one is born, nor is it sanctioned by any monarchy or clergy, for to be noble is to exercise virtue in one’s actions, and in that regard, all of us in doing any kind deed can call ourselves noble,” Mr. Rai declared with his eyes looking up at the sky in a solemn manner, as if he was saying these words to the Gods themselves.
“I am afraid that though your notion is quite beautiful in its spirit father, it is historically inaccurate. The status of nobility has always been gained through wealth or influence, not through kind actions,” Anoothi rejoined. As a professor of the subject, to protect history’s integrity was always her first and foremost duty.
“Ah, when will you shun this pedantic point of view and replace it with a more romantic one my dear daughter?” Mr. Rai exclaimed with a sigh.
“When will you start acting like a proper Principal, when will you start coming to the college dressed up as a Principal should be, when will you cast off these white kurta pajamas, oh father, my father,” Anoothi exclaimed back with an even more dramatic sigh.