Short Story: ‘Left with Crimson’
‘Drive slowly’, she said. ‘You drive fast’.
He smiled as the traffic cleared ahead at the Rashbehari Avenue junction. ‘Wear your seatbelt. I will drive slow’. They were driving to their ‘baadi’.
She searched around for the elusive click of the seat belt. ‘Shantanu drives slow, my sister says. You drive fast. He is so careful’. Shantanu was her sister’s husband.
Her innocent words cut into him like a butter knife — he hated comparison. And he knew Shantanu, outside his home.
He slowed down, now distracted by her words that pierced into his heart.
Then… he saw a white flash. The car swerved left and crashed into the tamarind tree.
Something pinched his heart, pouring thoughts that flooded his mind. His senses were filled like a whirlpool; he lost in the vortex of comparison.
Shantanu? Shantanu Mukherjee was a wretch. Nice, reclusive, smiling. But he lived by his code. A code that is patriarchal.
His womenfolk complained, but they attributed it to his masculinity. They talked about him as a nice father and husband. He would not let them do this, or that. No television. No songs. No phone. No apps- no Instagram, no TikTok. Only hymns, studies and chores. That is how a good woman was made, he exhorted.
He hated patriarchy and the codes. But the women praised Shantanu. He wondered if women liked ‘tough’ guys.
‘Huh! What an irony. Freedom is for those who realize that to do with it.’ he smirked inside. ‘The women won’t realize it, ever. Instead, he was always chided for being liberal.’
He never questioned his kid.
‘ In this age of information, children should discover their own path. Unless they explore and experience, how would they know how to deal with a complex world and find themselves in the process? There are myriad avenues to choose, different lifestyles to pick from.’
‘Codified pedagogy does not work any more, especially as a parent. A parent is more a friend and an experienced counsellor than a tyrannical teacher, hegemonizing with the power of parenthood.’, he pondered.
But nobody understood him, especially the womenfolk. He tried to be the friend and the counsellor to his kid, and was proud of his efforts. But he was always chided at. He held his course.
The ‘Shantanu drives slow’ remark from her hit a raw nerve, like a sharp dart. It split his thoughts and focus. His eyes blurred, and the lights of the oncoming traffic added to his mental opera.
Then came the blinding white light, from a tanker lorry, closing in on him, filled the rear view mirrors - he was blinded by this visual assault. Unhinged and in panic, he turned the steering wheel of his car sharply to the left.
He wandered around in the salt desert- he could see the clear blue sky, endless white caked sand, and no water. He remembered a song from Ghajni, an Aamir Khan ( Bollywood star) movie — the scene was so serene on celluloid but scary in reality.
He could hear her voice, ‘ Drive slow. I am scared’. He panicked and searched for her.
Meanwhile the white sand started to turn crimson and the clear blue sky, dark. Small droplets of rain fell on his face, washing away the crimson onto the white sand.
He tried calling out her name. No sound came from his throat. He tried to feel her by his side, but she was not there near him. Her seat belt was unbuckled, and hung loosely.
He lifted his eyes and saw ahead. She was standing next to the tree smiling at him. Her skin was glowing in crimson. Her skirt matched her skin color.
She looked at him and laughed. ‘ I told you to drive slow’. He tried to reply, but again he could not hear his voice. ‘I did drive slow, but for Shantanu…’, he screamed in his silent voice. Nobody heard.
He closed his eyes. The crimson suddenly vanished. She wasn’t there. Only the tree, and him, in an eternal embrace now. No white sand or blue skies — only pitch black night drowning in the watery arrows from above.
The police recovered a man’s body from a car that had crashed into a tamarind tree near the Ballygunge-Kasba bridge, Kolkata, India, the next morning. The rain had washed the blood of the dead man onto the white cement mound nearby, which had soaked in crimson.
~Ashok Subramanian
