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at last u updated.
And it was as usual great, awesome, fabulous etc. and etc.
Update the next soon..
The mispronunciation of the title was on purpose 😉
--
Telephoon
There are times when Onu feels as if the telephone is his only lifeline left. The only road that can lead him back to Calcutta (and Calcutta it will always remain for him, no matter how official Kolkata is), at least in spirit. From Orindam uncle's house, he can trace the changes in the voices of his mother and brother: how Ma's voice is now laced heavy with resignation and a touch of bitterness, and not a small bit of longing for the husky-voiced girl who used to run from room to room just a year ago. How Robi now makes his conversations on phone deliberately short because the changes in his voice embarrasses the life out of him. How Baba, when not right in front of him and with only his voice for company, seems a lot less scary.
And it isn't just their voices. In the background he can hear his jiju admonishing his sister for carrying something from the kitchen to the dining room, instructing her to take rest whenever possible because she is now pregnant. Onu is secretly glad that jiju rarely ever comes on the phone to talk. For some reason whenever he does Onu feels uneasy and awkward, and no amount of reassuring himself can brush off the feeling that Riteish jiju makes him feel terrifically queasy.
In the background he often hears Mashima murmuring in agreement whenever Ma tells her what they have to make for dinner tonight. Later, alone on his bed he'll let the words roll off his tongue like a sheet of water over a cliff: alor dum, luchi, ilish shorshe, shondesh...he says them with a slight American twang now, and just hearing himself saying something in Bengali these days drenches him in guilt.
And then there are those days when disembodied voices plague his thoughts and haunt his dreams...nights when he dreams that all he will see on his return to India are pairs of lips that open and close like Baba and Ma and Robi's would...days when he will want to reach out and touch them, but grasp nothing but air. Days he will plead with Baba to take him back, please please Baba, don't do this to me, I swear I'll do anything you want as long as I'm home...
Days when Baba will deliberately cut short their conversation because Onu belongs in America (no I don't) and will stay there because he is Shekhar Ganguly's son, and that son has a name to live up to.
Shekhar Ganguly believes in keeping his distance.
And Shekhar Ganguly's son, scion of his vast empire, can do nothing but curl up in his bed and fight his own tears.
It is a lifeline, that telephone in the living room. A terribly fragile link to a past that seems forever out of his reach; something that gave you a cut-up, incomplete version of what you really wanted to have.
--
There are times when Mikhael Cohen feels that he was better off not taking this trip to Kew Gardens at all. Since his return, his mother has been trying to convince him to settle down within another profession, to give up the idea of joining the army altogether.
There are talks already about a war in Iraq soon. Already the one for Afghanistan is underway and he knows he needs to prepare himself. It's his first time and he's sure he can bring home the laurels his brother could have had he lived.
His mother only chose to see the death, the blood, the grief of husbandless wives and fatherless children and childless mothers. She's never seen the rush of doing something you know will protect people back home, the pride you took in every victory. Surely that was how Motya had felt!
He has lost count of the number of times his mother had made subtle attempts to draw him away from that life, and eventually he'd almost succumbed.
"Mikitty?"
On his first few difficult days at the barracks, it was this name that he'd craved to hear, this name that he'd heard in his sleep. Now it was a long-lost part of him that he knew he would never get back, a name that seemed to belong to someone else. The last dregs of Mikitty had crumbled and crashed two months ago, and he wasn't sure that person would return.
It will be as Mikhael that he will fight. Mikhael will be what he always wanted to be: the man who won't return home until America has irrevocably won this war. He believes in this cause almost as much as his Maman refuses to.
"I've kept lunch for you," Leticia Cohen said, a muscle jumping beneath her jaw. Her voice sounds calm - as it always did - but her face tells him that she would have preferred him sharing the meal with her. How different that voice sounded when there was no face to see, when he could fool himself into believing that she wanted what he wanted, that she'd be happy no matter what path he took. Having been away so long, seeing her in the flesh makes him uncomfortable, reminded him of their differences.
It was that telephone that almost lured him out of his desire to fight, and it was a picture in his pocket that had dragged him back.
The Twin Towers are nestled in his shirt pocket, right next to his heart, and there they will forever remain.
Unable to see the tears his mother will shed in the blessed privacy of her bedroom - both for him and for the families he will be forced to rent apart - he will look forward to the next time he will hear his mother over the telephone, basking in the simplicity of a mere voice carried over phone lines.
--
There are times when Jeremy Newman can only look at the cell phone in his hands with a sense of guilt. He uses the bulky mobile to tell lies. Only his parents happen to be at the receiving end of these lies really, and as far as he is concerned they deserve it. If they intend to force what they believe down his throat without bothering to listen to him, this is all they'll get.
Jeremy's mother had never lied to him - all she had really committed was an omission of truth. He should have known about Jasmine, a long long time ago. He would have welcomed her memories, he would have spent his childhood years believing that in all those incredibly lonely years of being pushed around because he was the oddball, there was someone watching over him in spirit. It would have comforted him.
But Aurora Newman chose her emotional comfort over his own. When Jasmine had died the night she was born she had grieved, and then allowed herself to channel that grief into hate. Had Jasmine lived...even for a few years, she would have never been as bitter as she was now.
He has spent the better part of two months lying to his mother because she will never understand the depth of what he shares with his friends at Kew Gardens...or the ones in his Sanskrit classes, or with Mrinal and Gigi in Manhattan, where he is now. She will never understand how he searches for Jasmine in every person he meets, and how grateful he is to her: without his search for Jasmine, would he have found Mrinalini?
It was Rags who had given him Mrinal's address. Jeremy hadn't asked; he'd hoped she would be with Rags and Nupur at Halloween, but now it looks like he'll have to talk to her himself. And it's just as well. Whenever he meets Onu and Nupur, he thinks of them for some reason as a unit forced together by the house that they share, both possessing characteristics that he likes to imagine Jasmine has. Onu's unconditional, unasked helpfulness, his ability to love easily and forgive instantly...Nupur's unintentional humour and the cleverness that not many really saw. Maybe the voice of that girl on the tape too. But when it came to Mrinalini, somehow he couldn't think of her and Jasmine on the same page. Mrinal was herself, and he couldn't bear her being anyone else.
It had been torture not to talk to her, but everytime he'd made a move he'd envisioned the names his mother would call her, and that would be enough. But today there will be no classmates, no one his mother knows, and he is free to approach Mrinal without the fear he has been holding in for the past five months.
Mrinal is sitting on a bench in the park, all alone. She seems to be watching a flock of ducks in a lake, and not seeing them at all. He knows the look on her face because he has seen it in the mirror.
He wonders briefly if the person who has the power to make Mrinal feel the way he does now, is someone he knows. Whoever it is, he thinks to himself with a pang, he must be very, very lucky.
She takes that moment to turn, and then turns away abruptly, making a move to leave.
"Mrinal -"
"No need to bother talking to me, Jerry, I'm sure you have better people to be with..."
Jeremy takes a deep breath. In for a penny in for a pound, he thinks as he makes a move towards her.
"Look...I'm here only for an hour, and it's all I can have before returning to Queens. In two days I have to go back to New Jersey and before I fall back into not talking to you again I have to let you know why without having anyone from my family insult the only friends I have."
She stops. She hesitates. That much is more than enough.
"You don't need to talk to me if you don't want to," he says, desperation echoing in his voice, "for this entire hour, you can talk to you and I can talk to me, but all I want is for us to walk together here, at least once. Like the old times."
Her back stiffens at the last sentence. She takes a minute but for Jerry it feels like a year.
"Alright," she replies, "Say what you need to say. But I'm not saying a word."
Jeremy wonders what he had done before to deserve a chance like this.
The cell phone chooses that moment to ring. It's his mother.
"Jeremy," she says, "is Tishia at home?"
"No she isn't, she'll be back in a bit," Jerry says. He's sworn his aunt to secrecy, and if he returns soon they'll be safe and his mother will be none the wiser.
"Alright. Where are you right now, by the way?"
"In the garden, Mom," the lie slips off his tongue quite easily, and he is relieved that a cell phone will hardly give away where he really is.
When he places the phone back in his pocket, Mrinal gives him an oddly penetrating look.
"It's my mom," he says, "She doesn't know I'm in Manhattan."
He wonders if the ensuing conversation will take more than an hour.
--
When Nupur Basu was a child, her mother would play a game with her to teach her numbers. She would get Nupur to learn them just by making her count the number of phones her dad used to buy. Practically every room has a phone and an extension, and Nupur could swear that she has heard her dad's voice more often than she has seen his face.
She can hear the extension in her dad's study ringing, and she can also hear him grumble as he picks up the phone. She fights back a giggle as she hears his voice twice: from the phone and from the room across.
"Yes, Orindam Basu speaking?"
"It's lunchtime," Nupur says, gloating to herself.
"Can you stop using that extension line for things like this? My room isn't that far away."
She smirks, and wishes her father could see how much she likes doing this. "Well, it's one way to get to know what your voice really sounds like!"
Orindam puts the phone down, swallowing his guilt as he does so. All he's ever done was for Nupur, yet he knows one day that if Nupur attempts to find attention elsewhere, he will have only himself to blame.
--
November 2, 2001.
Mishti,
Mere piya gaye Rangoon, kiya hain wahaan se telephoon;
tumhari yaad sataati hain, jiya mein aag lagaati hain...
Um, for some reason that song popped up in my head, so I just wrote it down. Don't mind.
I think it's all those dreams about phones ringing and people with no bodies and only voices. It's creepy, but...well, let's just say I'm getting used to it.
Things are settling down here. Mikhael's nice enough, but he keeps people at an arm's length. He's a good listener though. We've talked his ear off and not once has he complained.
Jerry's leaving tomorrow. He called to tell me how it went...he was kind of surprised that Mrinal took it all rather well. Of course she would, you idiot, I wanted to say, she's nuts over you. She was probably looking for an excuse to forgive him just so that they can get back to being friends even if it means not letting anyone know.
Ma is making alor dum today, I can feel it. For some reason I'm smelling spices even though there's no chance of getting it here.
Motu.
P.S. There's just one person my phone can't reach, and you know who that is.
P. P. S. Maybe that's a good thing. We'd never had a phone call that wasn't followed by us ACTUALLY meeting up.
P. P. P. S. Mere piya gayi Siliguri...
P.S. There's just one person my phone can't reach, and you know who that is.
P. P. S. Maybe that's a good thing. We'd never had a phone call that wasn't followed by us ACTUALLY meeting up.
For some reason, I simply loved this part a way too much...😳
Thanks for updating... 🤗 Waiting for next one..😍
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