Tanmoy
da never had the space between his index and middle fingers empty. We used to
joke that he would probably do a drowning man’s hand on his marriage night. The
day I met him last was a Saturday afternoon in a dingy, cramped shared corridor
of the TATA cancer research facility in Khargar, Navi Mumbai. For a majestic
being like Tanmoy da, who liked to live life king size, this was like a Cuban
cigar being stubbed in horse piss.
Tanmoy
da’s father was a small-scale businessman who had a couple of metalwork
factories in Garia. Compared to an average middle class family, he was obviously
richer and made sure that his son never had to ask anyone for anything. With an
abundance of funds and an unbelievably good nature, Tanmoy da was the cigarette
sponsor for a lot of us in our university days. I remember he had told us once
that he picked up smoking after his elder sister introduced him to Gold Flake.
He quipped, “I am just passing on the torch to the next generation.” He always
got pissed if we lingered with one in our hands, not taking a puff every now
and then.
Tanmoy
da was diagnosed with cancer when he was thirty four years old. His wife
informed us that what started as a persistent cough in the initial stages had
become bloody coagulated mucous within a month. The first reports had shown
massive damage to the larynx and had demanded a rigorous chemotherapy treatment
within the next forty eight hours. After six months of blood turning into acid
and breath changing into tear gas, Tanmoy da emerged, battle scarred, yet
alive. There were the obvious complications that come with a second chance.
Trudging through a plethora of antibiotics, kidney medications and
anti-allergens, a man who weighed well over ninety kilos, eventually dried up
into a twig of sixty kilos or so. But he lived, survived, joined office within
the year and lived to see another birthday. “Only one regret,” he murmured on
his birthday at the dinner table, “I had to give her up.” “Who,” I asked,
amused. He had wandered off somewhere else, as he blankly stared at the city
outside, from his fifth floor French window. I figured that the answer was not
intentionally cryptic. I fumbled in my pocket for a smoke and then remembered
that we had decided not to do that anywhere close to Tanmoy da, even on the way
to his home.
There
was a time when we used to hang out on weekends at his place: curtains closed,
a bright computer monitor, the CRT seventeen-inch, and some movie from the
likes of Mission Impossible or Die Hard running in high volume. The hero would
somehow manage to pull off a Houdini and defeat an entire army of goons and
criminals. As he finished his fictional Jihad against everything evil, he would
stand lopsided, tired, victorious, big guns smoking hot. As the strings of
smoke from the cigarettes defied gravity, slithered up and moved towards the
screen, we would imagine the smoke from the guns to merge with the wisp from
our cigarettes, and feel like a bruised and battered Bruce Willis, grinning
away with a cigar in his mouth. His sheets reeking of medical antiseptic, with
a drip stuck to his arm and several patches over his exposed body, these
memories seemed to make him relaxed, prepared for what was ahead. He greeted
these stories with a chuckle like a long lost friend, but did not spend enough
time dwelling on the past in a practiced manner. “Nothing lasts forever,” he
hummed, “not money, not life, not even cancer.”
Tanmoy
da and I had always shared an interest in horror films. He was an avid
collector and I was a horror junkie. So when the dust settled down and the
action heroes went back home, and the light dimmed away like an LCD screen
pressed sharply at random places, it was time for us to watch and be afraid.
Once, we had watched a Korean horror flick and could not go to the kitchen for
a drink for an entire night. We sat there, motionless, eyes peeled at the
corridor, and waited for dawn, counting seconds, one at a time. The longest
four hours of our lives, the funniest too! After that, Tanmoy da always ensured
a bottle of water in the room and we closed the corridor doors when it was
movie time.
Tanmoy
da’s cancer returned within one year. This time, it was lesions on his skin – round,
pixelated edges, a very rare pattern. Doctors suspected a relapse, and all
organs including blood being affected by the disease. To everyone’s surprise
though, it was just his skin being burnt away by cancer. Doctors figured that
the chances were better than average since it was not a progressive relapse.
Tanmoy da croaked, “So can I smoke now? I won’t survive without her, you know,
she’ll kill me for sure.” After much coaxing, however, he was convinced about
smoking being the worst possible idea right then, and decided to go ahead with
further sessions of systemic therapy. The treatments failed miserably. As a
man’s skin became dotted with scars like a toad, all the horrific pictures from
cigarette packets and biology chronicles looked like nightmares coming true.
His health trickled away and his wealth trickled faster. Very soon, he was
enclosed to a shared dorm of cancer patients, undergoing experimental
treatments, otherwise known as the poor man’s morgue.
We
used to hang out every weekend for a good reason or lack of it. But after my
transfer the frequency dwindled down to once every three, maybe four months.
Once he fell ill however, I started visiting him more and more, and if not for
the ailment, I would feel rejuvenated every time. Every single time, I used to
carry my laptop and we watched a horror film together, leaning on limping
chairs and rusty beds. The effect was just not the same with the laptop
speakers, but seeing a dying man feel life while being scared made me question
my sanity more than once. “This is just not it you know,” he said, “I am
spinning the best horror story ever.” “I will tell you another day,” he said
meekly. “What if you kick it tonight?” I asked with an awkward grin. He looked
at me with a stone cold gaze and smiled, “She won’t let me go, not until she
takes me.” So, on a scorching Saturday afternoon, when Tanmoy da said he would
tell me his horror story, I melted away into a blue gray abyss, hope coma if
something like that would exist, to see a man give up the fight and prepare
himself for the inevitable.
Contrary to popular belief
that my sister had baptized me to the sinful faith, I had actually started
smoking at the age of fifteen, stealing a pack of cigarettes from my father. My
mother had already passed away by then, so my sister was the only one who knew
of this habit. We used to go to the roof on tiptoes and engage in this ‘grown-up’
activity. She tried to blackmail me once about it but I managed to dodge it by
offering her a counter drag. She picked up the habit just for the ‘cool’ factor
in it; she used to fake it, for sure.
“You
are going to tell me a horror story, right?” I interrupted.
“Stop
irking a dying fool, listen good, listen close!” he whispered.
I moved to this city as
soon as I landed a job and had a lot of headaches to take care of in the first
few days. I was already smoking a packet a day and soon it went up to two.
Thankfully, with a good-paying job, I was able to maintain the habit. The
wrought iron bed and the Monel metal ashtray I bought during one such shopping
sprees are the crown jewels at my home. So one fine afternoon, Mumbai rains
bathing the city, still not in the drowning mode, you know what I mean, I am
sitting on the edge, one leg folded, the other stretched over it. I am watching
a paused screen on my laptop from an old university video, a cigarette hanging
clumsily in my mouth. As ash towered at the end of the cigarette, I stretched
my hands around the edge for the ashtray beneath the bed, fingers stretched,
searching for a familiar grooved rim.
Tanmoy
da stopped for a drink. He looked paler or … was it the dimming of the day. His
actions were sharper though, more energetic, at least for a man with advanced
cancer. I opened my shoes and stretched my legs on his bed which squeaked in
anguish. The family from the adjacent bed frowned and said something in
Marathi.
That’s when our hands
touched for the first time.
“Whose
hand? We were at the ashtray-picking part where you stretched your hands and …”
You are not listening
closely. That is when our hands touched for the first time. Nothing unnatural,
very real, yet impossible. I jumped up on the bed, the cigarette flew to the
ground and the ashtray ended on the floor with a loud clang. I slumped back to
the corner of the wall on my bed and looked intensely at the ashtray lying
toppled on the ground. I rubbed my eyes, shook my head and as soon as I looked
again, it was gone. I was sweating worse than a prisoner on death row. I inched
closer to the edge of the bed, my muscles taut and paining from the tension and
strain of moving at a microscopic pace. I peeped over the edge and finally in
one swift motion I looked underneath.
“And
you saw something, didn’t you?”
Yes
“Was
it gross? Was it just your mind playing tricks on you? You are making this up
as we go, aren’t you?”
Just shut up and
listen, I don’t have much time to explain everything to you, you retard.
“Huh,
I bet I can predict the end,” I said, drawing my feet back on the chair.
I saw an inverted
floor, inverted boxes, inverted cobwebs and an inverted ashtray, neatly placed,
just in reach with a stub and a pile of ash in it. What was intended as a
desperate quick look lasted a good three seconds. I got off the bed, slumped on
the floor and looked again, this time with a torch and a stick to poke the
cardboard boxes. Still nothing. Then I explained to myself that it was just my
mind playing tricks on me. I took a deep breath, and treated myself to a cup of
hot chocolate.
“Did
this happen again?”
Yes.
“How
the hell? Why would you not take any precaution?”
It happened again on
the same night. I was scared beyond wits but decided that I would not pull my
hand back, no matter what. I reached for the ashtray under the bed, pinched its
edge and then waited for three seconds to pick it up. At the end of the first,
I felt a strange sense of calm, at the end of the second a warm feeling of
acquaintance flooded the scenario, and at the end of the third, she touched my
hand again. I say hands because it is the most comprehensible version; I could
never confirm the same by sight. But the touch was unmistakably affectionate
and feminine.
“You
horny bastard.”
I wish.
“And
then what happened?”
It became a habit, the
last cigarette of the day, by the edge of the bed, ashtray under the bed, the
stretch to fetch it and the intentional contact. There is no logic or sanity
when you delve into the unknown. You keep doing it hoping that the riddle would
solve itself. Ever took a Rubik’s Cube in your hand without even knowing how to
solve it?
“Ummm,
yeah.”
Anyway, so I continue
with this habit for more time than I would like to admit. Eventually, the
ritual becomes casual, less cautious, but equally gratifying. I was sure I
would feel her every time I went for the ashtray under the bed. Then one night,
things changed.
Tanmoy
da almost coughed his lungs out. His skinny ribcage beneath the patient robes
heaved for air. He almost choked on the water I passed him. He couldn’t speak
for a minute and only cooed when asked if he was fine.
See how it ends. I
would be smothered to death. She would be the one to take me.
“Nonsense,
you are switching to fiction from reality just like that? You just coughed
yourself to oblivion you fool.”
Don’t smoke for a day,
you’ll see.
“So
what happened that night?”
She held on to my
hands, two seconds, four seconds … I panicked at five, tried to pull my hand
back, she yanked at it and gave me a wrist sprain. I sat in the corner in a
lump of bed sheets and pillows, looking at the edge of the bed. My hand felt
numb, yet warm with the pain from the sprain. In between unsure moments of
sleep and wakefulness, I could bet that she was scratching the bed under where
I sat. I decide to stop indulging in this foolishness the next morning. I
freaked out. Decided to change house. Stuck with Dubey from office for the next
couple of days. I had shifted to a new locality by the end of that week. I did
not tell this to anyone. I did not quit smoking, I just stopped smoking inside
the bedroom.
A year later I was
married to Sucharita and had shifted to a swanky new flat in the uptown section
of the city. She was a keeper. She organized everything like a pro. I returned
that day to find her in inviting attires, addressing me into the bedroom. She
was the man in our relationship. I was the shy goofball. Half an hour later I
was lying on by back, out of breath, sharing a smoke with Sucharita. I don’t
remember the lust, the ecstasy, the joy, the stroking of my man ego et al. I
asked her where to dust the ash, she pointed me below the bed. As I only
stretched my arms for an ashtray below the bed, she added that she had found it
in one of my older boxes and thought it was relatively new and shiny in
comparison to the rest of the relics in there.
The same touch greeted
me, only this time it was cold. I yelped fearing hostility. Sucharita leaned
over me, picked it up on the bed and lit a new one. I felt a tight knot in my
throat and soon it spread across by neck like a thousand balls of fire burning
my insides. I could not scream, I was so high in pain. I passed out.
I made it a habit not to
smoke on the bed and stopped Sucharita from doing it too. It was not easy to
kick the habit, considering she loved to smoke. The choice was however enforced
the same year, when I got diagnosed.
“Throat
cancer!”
Yes.
“But
what does that mean? I do not understand this. This is too close for comfort
you bastard. I think it is enough for today. I am going to leave.”
You don’t want to.
His
brisk tone surprised me, I froze in my chair.
You have been through
my ailment, you know the details. Who the hell gets a throat cancer and then
gets cured and then follows through with a skin cancer? Tell me.
“You
mean the skin cancer is also … that thing ….. Her?”
I quit. I quit smoking
for good. No smoking, no nicotine patch, no electronic jabberwocky. I had to
quit to live. But that was my assumption. The entire house was cigarette
proofed. Lighters trashed, ashtrays packed and stored away. It seemed hope
would dawn eventually. Then one night, while getting back to bed from the
bathroom, well, I practically gave up then and there. Whatever fight you see in
me is basically her attempts to save me for herself. A clean polished ashtray
and a lit cigarette, a hand rolled one, placed in the single groove invited me
right under the edge of the bed. I walked to the bed like a zombie, my eyes
were open and my hand was hanging by the bed when I eased on my back. I could
feel the skin secrete and contract as the cigarette burned holes on my arm. I
did not dare look as I passed into a fear and pain coma.
The skin cancer
diagnosis was after a month or more of this torture. The burns through the
night left no scars, well not until the stage was advanced and lesions started
to pop out like firecrackers in Diwali. Anyway, I was sure that this eternity
of pain would push me to the depths of insanity, if not now, then at least a
year from now. I was sure this was an infinite loop. I was desperate. So one
night I grew bolder than a dead man and snatched this from under the bed.
He
reached into his bedside table drawer and pulled out the medication box, picked
up a cotton roll and from the central shaft dragged out an almost full length
stubbed cigarette that was lit once and was stubbed with considerable force
instantaneously. The crumpled lines on it looked like dried veins and the burnt
top edge looked like a crown of pain.
If I smoke this I would
meet her and she will own me forever. I know, I know for sure. I don’t want to
be a pet or a toy. So I am giving this to you, set me free. Let me go. I need
to die. I am so tired, so tired, so tired ………
His
words turned into sobs, then heavy breathing and finally, silence. I was
standing up without even knowing, my right hand clutching on to a cigarette and
my left the bed railing. I went blank; a nurse came from somewhere and pushed
me out of the room, told me that the patient was too tired to breathe by
himself and would need a machine or contraption of some sort. I sat on the
visitor’s bench as chaos ensued inside the dorm. Across the glass door, it was
like watching an overtly animated mime show. The flailing arms and facial
expressions skewed out of focus whenever I looked away and the colour melted
away at breakneck pace.
I
sat there with the cigarette and my lighter, no ashtrays around.
