38. Broken Memories

We spent the next few hours in Girmint. As we left the moonscape that his house was now, we decided to ditch the car and walk across. It was decidedly not a tourist’s vacation plan, but we were anyways tired of being thrown around in this nonexistent road.

We knew the roads but the roads had all but vanished. It was a battleground. Rice fields where we would hide amongst the harvest, as they stocked the grains after threshing were now barren patches, unable to grow any more rice as the ground below sucks at even a drop of water.

Our lovely ground where I first dropped a simple catch and learnt the perils of peer pressure was now, unbelievably just a dumping ground for industrial waste. Huge trucks, some likely from our childhood were rotting under the relentless Bengal sun, the tires had crumpled onto themselves and looked like ancient grandmothers wrinkling till they can’t anymore. Heaps of unprocessed coal sat approximately at the same spot where Prahlad would bat with flourish. The ground itself seemed tiled at an angle. How could that be.

I asked Prahlad but he seemed distant. He was, at the throes of what we know as an emotional breakdown but it was worth getting depressed. Even Robert and Joshi were upset.

Robert and Joshi had been our total city friends in the early days. Born in Asansol, accustomed to its ways, playing their versions of wilderness survival but in the safety of their neighbourhood, they had been our window to the charms of the modern world. Not that charming it was though. There were two decent cinema halls showing new releases and a host of seedy single screens, which they discovered as early as in class 6. They knew the by lanes and the best pav bhaji stalls, they knew where to get lassi and where to get supercharged lassi that thrived amongst the migrant Bihari.

As colliery wallahs, we had infact admired their lifestyles. Seemingly cavalier, they could count on friends from the all-girls schools to go out on evening walks, they even had parties where boys and girls would mingle till late in the evening. In a way, just as they regarded us dirt bags as depraved specimens from the wilds, we adored them for their choice of dress and smartly parted hair.

All this jazz came at a cost though. Their parents, made to work smarter than our hard-working parents, striving to get ahead in this fast-paced life and provide children like Robert or Joshi with a good life, often took shortcuts. Juggling between many jobs, launching Ponzi schemes to lure buddhus like us from the collieries, lacing greed fueled offerings to officers working in the mines, the unfortunate parents of our friends were inestimably tired souls. Always dressed and always parting but tired of hustling around. Robert and Joshi gained many of these traits.

While our street-smart friends would often swipe an occasional ice cream or aloo chop from our plates, they left Prahlad and me alone as we grew increasingly enamoured with their lifestyles. They went on to have great careers and now, as we met after 20 years, my feelings are rather mixed about the duo.

For the duo was positively scared now. First the innumerable sink holes, then desolation all around. This is the not the India they have been living in. While they have enjoyed the fruits of the nation shining, now that they are in the other India, Robert blurted out, This is so dirty. Lets go back Prahlad. Look at the ground, it seems to be tilting in front of our eyes.

This may not have been true but I know enough of these mines to never discount the possibility of the land opening up suddenly or tilting at a moment’s notice. These are distinct possibilities and I had seen land vanish as a kid. I agreed with Robert, Prahlad, let’s turn back now. Don’t damage the remaining memories, my childhood is coming apart too. Lets go.

Prahlad was looking at the distance. I followed his gaze and came upon the old conveyor lines that used to transport coal back in the days. He seemed aloof. And then again, he started walking.

I knew Prahlad well enough to realise that much of what we counted as life’s lessons was taught here, at this very land. And he had just had the ill luck to witness his vivid imaginations go waste. I let him walk and turned to Joshi, “I will fall back and pick the car, you keep an eye out for him”. Robert was already as despondent as Prahlad and I couldn’t trust him presently. Joshi replied in the affirmative and ran up to Prahlad.

Our 20-year reunion party was taking an ominous melancholic turn.