Sharmila took her usual seat at her favourite drinking hole at Park Street and ordered rum and coke. The waiter, affectionately called “chacha” or uncle, knew what she wanted as she was a regular in the first floor of Oly. Nonetheless he asked her once – rum and coke? She said yes, rum and coke. She also ordered a plate of fish finger as she was feeling hungry. It was a bad day in office with her insufferable boss once again throwing tantrums at a rival television channel getting higher TRP. Ranajit, the creep, has recently come from Mumbai, and he is so supremely confident that he hardly bothers to listen to others. At 45, after twenty years in the industry, this is hardly what she needed in life. If she didn’t need to pay for her housing loan she probably would have resigned today.

Watching a group of young boys and girls, college kids, in front of her chatting away, she felt nostalgic. College days…there were so much to look forward to. She made the first terrible mistake not going to Oxford even though she was among the finest students of English literature. Sohini, her arch rival who also had rich parents, went to Cambridge and did not look back. She is now teaching somewhere in the US. She comes every winter before Christmas and spends a few days with an NGO working among tribal children. Selfie with Santhals before flying off to some critical theory conference. Arundhati, her other friend in college, but also rival in terms seduction games, chose the marriage line, got married to bright young kid from IIT and is now a CEO’s wife. Two kids, holidays abroad, diamond necklace for anniversary. Sharmila ended up neither here nor there, chose to enter the media world of Kolkata, which was never ever going to produce anything worthwhile. She was sexy and efficient, therefore she did well, but of late she increasingly felt bored, tired and old. And the new boss was just the prick she needed when life was already unambiguously meaningless.

It was so different then. She was nineteen, in college, her confidence bordering on the arrogant. Within a year or so she knew that she was the best in the class in the best English literature department in the country. Writing crisp, cogent essays came naturally to her while others were struggling to impress the formidable faculty of the department. But what came easily to her was not what she was after. She was looking for something other worldly, something pure, something transcendental. She was not convinced of the “do these in order to get that” approach to life. Life should have a higher meaning, she felt, otherwise why live?

So Sharmila Banerjee, daughter of Justice Pramodranjan Banerjee, resident of Ballygunj Place in posh south Kolkata, fell in love with Moloy, budding poet from suburban Kolkata. Technically a student of Mechanical Engineering. Moloy lived in the hostel, hardly ever took a bath, thought about revolution in the morning and dreamt of poetry in the evening. His dreamy eyes caught Sharmila’s fancy during a certain college agitation. He was different from most of the young men around Sharmila. It was almost as if he was from another generation, when sacrifice and idealism were considered normal, when poets somehow survived rather than prospered, when they drank country liquor to drown their angst and then created poems that were pure gold, as beautiful as a rainbow in the sky. Sharmila knew that Moloy would one day write great poems. But he was also a vulnerable little child, and it was her responsibility to protect him. The mundane issues of survival in a cruel world. She decided to look after all that, get a job, and be the lover and the mother for her idealist poet genius. By the time she was completing her Masters, Moloy was already beginning to make a mark with his poems, and she knew that it was time to get a job. The electronic media was expanding at that time and it was not very difficult for Sharmila to get into one of them that paid reasonably well. She was young, sexy and smart and hence it was not difficult to impress the middle-aged male recruiters.

Justice Pramodranjan Banerjee, Sharmila’s father, was a liberal man. But he was shocked by the choice of his daughter. “So you want to waste your life, do you?” he asked. Sharmila didn’t say anything at first. Then she said, “Do you think Dostoyevsky’s wife wasted herself?”

Justice Banerjee heard what her daughter said and could not say anything. He quietly poured himself a glass of scotch and took a sip. He understood that it was pointless to tell her to get real. After a couple of minutes he said, “It’s your life. We wanted to see you as a scholar. But you have chosen your life. Just remember that my bank balance is limited.”

Sharmila did not like the last sentence. She said, “I think I will never need it.”

Sharmila and Moloy got married in a marriage registrar’s office. No special ceremony. Justice Banerjee said that he would meet the son-in-law after he has published his first book of verse from a reputed publisher. Moloy’s parents understood that their son was not going to become an engineer and their daughter-in-law was too westernised for their liking. So beyond what needed to be done for the sake of social respectability they didn’t do anything.

Moloy and Sharmila began their married life in a small one-bed room flat at Bijoygarh, a lower middle-class neighbourhood of South Kolkata. Sharmila loved the purity of the struggle.

II

“Can I take this seat?” Sharmila was surprised to hear the voice. Moloy. She nodded. “What a surprise, I was actually thinking about you.” She was however feeling a little embarrassed to sit with him in as public a place as Olypub.

– “Are you waiting for somebody?” Moloy asked.

– “Yes, a colleague, fellow alcoholic.”

– “Oh”.

Sharmila was meeting Moloy after a long time, although every now and then she heard about him. After all he was leading poet of the city, bit of a celebrity. He has put on a little bit of weight, well, it may be better to say that he was no more a thin guy who hardly ever took a shower. There was a certain glow of maturity and success in his appearance. The beard was still there but it was carefully trimmed. The old funny looking glasses were replaced by new stylish ones. The Santiniketan jhola had given way to a leather bag.

– “Are you all right Sharmila?” Moloy asked while pouring his whiskey.

– “Usual office shit. Bad day.” Sharmila said, trying to keep it short. Moloy smiled.

– “Why don’t you quit this job? You can go back to your studies, your PhD, no? Or is it too late?”

– “I don’t think it is feasible any more. Anyway what’s happening in your life?”

– “I am going to US for, you know, the usual Bengali Non Resident cultural festival”. Moloy smiled. “Another book coming out in a few months time. I am also writing a television serial. Couldn’t say no to the producer who is a friend of mine.”

– “Good.” Sharmila said, trying to hide her disappointment.

– “I know you didn’t like that one. But I needed to buy a place for myself. Not getting younger you know.”

– “True.”

– “Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you take leave and come with me for a holiday to the US? You have some friends there, no? San Francisco will be great during this time of the year.”

– “What do you mean?” Sharmila was a little surprised by the offer from her ex-husband.

– “You know, nothing really. Just a break for you. If you do not detest my company that much of course.”

– “Thanks for the offer. I don’t think my boss will allow that. And since I have a housing loan to repay…”

– “Think about it. And listen, call me if you need something. OK?”, Moloy said, before leaving the table to join his friends.

Sharmila called Dibyendu and told him that she was leaving. Not feeling well. She paid the bill and left. Got into the car and told her driver to head towards home. In a way she was happy to see Moloy successful, a celebrity poet. That’s what she had always dreamt of ever since she met her. When they got married Moloy used to wake up with Neruda and go to sleep with Ghalib. She used to work hard and at night after dinner she lovingly ordered him to show his work. It didn’t matter if they didn’t get published. Sharmila wanted to hear the purity of a revolution in every sentence written by Moloy. She heard his lines, and then they made love and went to sleep.

After a couple of years however Moloy began to mature. He understood the reality of the world that the most important quality of a poet is not the ability to write poems but the ability to sell them to the influential literary circles. Once he understood this he began to succeed and doors began to open for him. He understood that he needed to change himself as well. So he changed, slowly, but surely. He became more disciplined, more careful about his public relations, and poems spoke less of revolution and more of sentimental middle-class nostalgia. He began to write beautiful lines with rich imagery, which sounded good but did not offend.

One day he came home with the first proof of his first book. He told Sharmila, “Now may be your father will meet me.” Sharmila felt a deep sense of loss looking at the poems. This was not Moloy. This was someone else. This was not the stupid, otherworldly, dreamy eyed, silly revolutionary poet she fell in love with. This was a hungry animal that had tasted blood and was willing to bend before authorities to have more success.

Sharmila broke up with him after that. Was she harsh? May be. But she could not be dishonest. She didn’t love him anymore.

But why was he proposing to take her to US for a holiday? Sharmila opened the shower. Was he trying to get back to her? Should she become a little more pragmatic? After all, she was not getting younger, and as one grows older one needs company, someone to rely upon, someone to have a cup of tea with.

But then, she thought, would that be love?