He had got onto the train at some station after the train had entered Bengal and once, in front of the old man’s eyes, when the asthmatic old lady had begun to writhe up in pain and was unable to breathe, he had put down his basket on the floor and had got very agitated in trying to get help for the old lady. “Hot muri… fresh muri… hot muri….,” he called out. … ‘We should be rather optimistic….’ But suddenly a kind of disgust spread over Phukan’s face…the dry, harsh and broken voice of the by-now-already-familiar old muriwallah was heard – he was slowly progressing through the corridor. Phukan suddenly remembered…gosh, wasn’t that a famous line from one of the Chaplin movies…? In any case he got ready to read the article.
On the other hand another expert named Luis Kramer wrote with great hope that ‘Humanity will not be beaten’. Alan Hayward had already declared that ‘Humanity is in doldrums’. In this issue there was a detailed analysis and discussion of a very serious topic – the future of humanity, by many scholars and experts. To get away from that thought Phukan opened the Time magazine which he had been holding in his hand. The two of them hardly talked to each other, all communication between them being conducted through gestures of their eyes and faces… and even in the midst of their problems, at some moments their faces would light up with radiant smiles … and … and …seeing all that Phukan would begin to wonder seriously about the incredibly intimate bond that could exist between people… their affections, their camaraderie… how was it possible… how? Not just that, he had even begun to enjoy the actions of the old couple. Of course Phukan has got quite used to the process by now. Slowly the body of the lady would calm down, she would fall asleep without another word or gesture, and with exhausted worn out movements, the old man would put her withered face into the brisk stream of breeze flowing in through the window. Then her white-haired husband would hastily put the ‘inhaler’ into her mouth and spray in a dose of salbutamol compound. Stifling heat, the ugly surrounding, the smoke of biri and cigarettes, the chattering of the passengers, the loud exhortations of the ferry-wallahs, the singing and the music,… in the middle of all of that in the seat in front of him an asthmatic old woman… who from time to time, like a fish that had been picked out of water, would convulse up in agony, caused by severe difficulty in breathing, her terrifying screams shaking up the whole compartment. But he had not been able to find a moment of peace there.
He had deliberately boarded the second class compartment of the Brahmaputra Express in Delhi. But how was that going to be possible? The loud, harsh and incessant rhythmic sound of the moving train – nothing could be heard at present, over that din. But he tried to hold it back and listen attentively to the ticking of the clock. Just as he finished taking stock of time from the dial of his clock, his mind raced away somewhere, flapping like a butterfly. Darkness had already melted in with the light breeze into the rail compartment. …Nijan Phukan was reminded of the clock on Marilyn Towers when he looked at the green dial of his ‘indiglo’ wrist watch. Every morning Nijan Phukan awoke looking at the clock, as it lay right across his bedroom window. The clock of Marylyn Towers in New York shows 6 o’clock.
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