(1)
The strangest thing about this strange journey is that it began with a word. A word that’s got stuck on the top left corner inside my head for more than three decades now: Futchu! Google had to be born before I got the spelling of this word right.When I had heard it for the first time my mother saying it, I couldn’t even form the correct spelling of it in my mind.Alphabet was a newly acquired luxury then. Like most others, I also used to say: Poo Choo.
No, it isn’t thename of lake in Japan where people go for canoeing lessons. Futchu is my best friend’s pet name.
We — Futchu and I — as kids, believed, we could read each other’s minds. Despite galaxies coming in between us over the years in various disguises this belief remained stuck on the top left corner inside my head. Just like her pet name — the sound that required Google to be born to manifest as a word!
In school, teachers called her Diptirekha Baishya. The initials of her name Di and Ba, with a little alteration in the pronunciation, formed what she actually was for me: Dibba — a can — to stuff in all my good, bad and ugly thoughts.
I can faintly recall the beginnings of our friendship — a blurred collage of images from our kindergarten days. I would often accompany my mother to her house and playweird games with her. All things that we could imagine then,became games. She was good at naming those. It was simple — all she had to do, was repeat the name of the act we were going to do in a sequence. Like, cycling-cycling, teaching-teaching, dancing-dancing, reading-reading, boating-boating.
While we played boating-boating, clenching our hands and moving them back and forth as if we were rowing the boat, she would sing:
Lo, Lo, Loiya bou, genkly done da seem
Meoli, meoli, meoli,meoli
La feez budu deem…
…and as we rowed our boat, we could tell what images formed in our minds just by looking into each other’s eyes: hills, valleys, waterfalls, mud huts, other boats, fish and tadpoles, blue skies, clouds that looked like big, white bubbles and flocks of black birds flying up there — all birds looked either black or grey from below, and we quite didn’t know where their actual colours vanished when then flew up! We loved the landscapes we created and talked about then. And we knew we were playing two games together: boating-boating and travel-travel.
Sometimes, we only played the travel-travel game. We would wear our school bags, hang our water-bottles from our shoulders, pick up her grandfather’s walking sticks (fortunately, there were two, but they were taller than us!), tap them on the floor and went to places I had never heard of before. With grandpa’s walking sticks in my hand, school bag on my back and water-bottle hanging from my shoulders, I trekked to the edge of Laitlum Canyon, to the Seven Sister Falls, to the other side of Mawsmai Caves; walked the streets of Agra up to the gate of Taj Mahal; had lunch under the Eiffel Tower; played hide and seek at Stonehenge; saw the enthralling sunset view from the Sunset Point at Mount Abu.
Our mothers, engaged in hearty chats about everything that was of their common interest, knew about these games, and so, sometimes, one of them would ask,
“Have you packed your clothes and food properly,” and her answer would be an enthusiastic nod.
“Don’t leave him alone, okay? You know na, he doesn’t know the road to come back,” sometimes my mother would tease.
“Don’t worry, aunty, I’m holding his hand,” she would reply raising her pitch, as if she was talking from a distance. And then she would clasp my wrist and ask me to go along with her.
At every step we took during those journeys, she would keep the enthusiasm alive with her graphic narratives of places we passed or stopped by. When we reached the top of a hill, she would gasp for breath, with her lips gaped! I just followed her in those acts. Sometimes, when I didn’t get the images right, which she would decipher by looking into my eyes, she would sit down, take out her drawing exercise book and draw them — she was damn good at drawing! When we went to see the Eiffel Tower, I didn’t know what or where it was. As we had learnt reading alphabet by then, she said it was a very tall A with a lot of small Xs in it. I wondered why we needed to see a tall A with Xs in it!
“If you climb to the top of it, you can see the whole world, that’s why,” she had said. She had seen that question forming on my forehead.
“The whole world?” I couldn’t believe. My idea of the world, formed in those five years of existence, was a big place. But how big, I wasn’t sure.But then, those games were so real!
(2)
The imagesfrom those games stayed back with me, years after we had outgrown them. On Futchu’s eleventh birthday, I made a painting from the memory of those images. I told her that I had a surprise for her. She came to meet me in our terracesharp at five o’clock in the afternoon.But then, as soon as she saw Sanjana,a girl of our age, who lived in the same apartment as ours, and had come to the terrace just for a stroll, standing besideme, and I, trying to hide a rolled up piece of paper in my hand, Futchu didn’t even bother to walk up to me!
“Ah okay! So this is the surprise you have for me, huh?” she said, measuring up Sanjana for a moment and then giving me a derisive look,she left.
Shejust left and why? Because Sanjana was there! Futchu hated Sanjana the most among my acquaintances even then! A few days later she’d told me, “Mark my words, you fool: someday this bitch’s gonna a drag you to hell!”
“Why would she?” I wondered. I was yet to feel the nudge of adolescence! But Futchu, as I’d read her mind through her eyes, thought she had, done her bit of reading my mind, way ahead of time.
Much to like my dislike, anyways, I went to Futchu’s birthday withan audio cassette of Michael Jackson’s Bad, andthe painting, inevitably, went to Sanjana on her birthday instead the following week!
Sanjana thanked me for the gift, saw it once, said that it was beautiful, rolled it up again and kept it on top on their five feet high refrigerator among bottles of cough syrups, steel glasses and a dust-worn, framed family photograph! I was indeed upset to realize that my artwork couldn’t find a better place to remain un-displayed! I felt like small lump of sadness building within. Inexpressible!
On my birthday the following year, Futchuscooped out that lump with a pleasant surprise. After a sumptuous birthday lunch, when I was taking a sound afternoon nap, shequietly sneaked into my room, stuck up a landscape painting on the wall adjacent to my study table — a painting that quite closely resembled mine, but displayed a better craft —decorated the entire room with red and blue balloons, and had placed a handmade greeting card and two Cadbury Chocolate Ecclairs on my study table.
Happy Birthday Merc!
— she had scribbled on the card in a perfect cursive hand. In the evening, when she came for the cake-cutting celebrations, along with all other friends, Iasked her why she’d written Merc instead of my name. For, Merc wasn’t even my pet name!
“Merc is the short form of Mercutio. You’re my Mercutio. That’s why,” she explained. I didn’t know who Mercutio was either!
“I’ll tell you…umm…let me think when. Eight years later!” shereplied and put that conversation off indefinitely. It was just about the meaning of a name! There was no need to set an unthinkably unrealistic timeline to reveal something trivial as this! What more could have been in a name?
Years later, while readingRomeo and Juliet, I wasn’t amused to know that Mercutio was Romeo’s friend who got killed by Tybalt in a duel!
Cadbury Chocolate Ecclairs, by the way, was Futchu’s favourite.
(3)
A year before the board exams, Futchu was sent to her aunt’s place in Tura, a distant small town amid the hills of Meghalaya. It happened overnight, following a rumoured affair she had with one of our common friends, Dushyant. That day I had cried like a four year old! I’ve never missed anyone as badly as I missed her on that day, and then for seven long years. During those seven years, among other things, I fell in and out of love with Sanjana. Well, it was the biggest shock of my life. Sanjana just left me one day without even letting me know why! Well, she just eloped with one of her maternal uncles! I was too much into her by then. It was difficult to reconcile. Futchu’s letters helped.
“Don’t cry too much over that fuss, Merc. There are worthier reasons to cry for,” she had written in one of her letters. And then she got me into books. She said with them, I could see the world better, if not the whole of it.
When I went to meet Futchu after those seven years, standing in front of me was a young woman, with big, brown, round eyes, with dimpled cheeks and a beautiful smile. Her hair falling over her shoulders and spectacles tucked over her forehead, gave her a geeky look! She was biting a black ball pen.
“Pray you let us not be laughing-stocks to other men’s humours; I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends— guess?” she almost came upon me in a quizzing spree right after opening the door.
“Umm…wait…don’t say it…wait,” I had read those lines, but I wasn’t prepared for a quiz the first moment of seeing my best friend after so many years.
“Tick-tick one, tick-tick two….” shestarted counting.
“Merry Wives of Windsor,” I made a rigorous effort to tickle my grey cellsto bring it back from the recollection of quotes from The Bard I had jotted down in a diary.
“Bingo! Act three, scene one, Sir Hugh Evans!” she had rejoiced,
That day, after lunch, we sat down browsing through the hand-crafted album she had madewith the mementos I had sent her over those years — mostly landscape pictures I had clicked during short travels to various places and captions describing the moments.On one occasion, I’d stuck up a poem I’d written after my break-up with Sanjana. Futchu had said she didn’t like the poem except for the first two lines:
On the other side of Luit,
I see you.
She said those lines brought back sunset images of the Brahmaputra. Futchu loved rivers.
The albumwas abeautiful piece of art in itself. The borders of the cover were made of blue and scarlet velvet paper wrapped over a hard board — our common favourite colours sincechildhood. The cover had one of my earliest landscape paintings. I was pleasantly surprised to see how she valued the small tokens of friendship.
Up Over the Blue Mountains
— that was the name she had given to the album. All I could do is look into her eyes and see what was coming next: Satyajit — the groom her family had chosen for her.
“Can I marry him, Merc?” Her question, kind of,intrigued me. Was she seeking permission from me? And why? She was going to get married to the most eligible bachelor in our locality. Satyajit was the first doctor to get a job in London among all human beings I had met so far.
I looked up into her eyes, trying to find out more about it, and she read that as well.
“No, I mean, should I marry him? Is it a hasty decision? Should I wait a little longer?” she was actually not asking me, but trying to seek answers for herself. Her big, brown, round eyes said it all.
“Why?” I could just think of this response. I meant why she doubted such a matured decision. It was a wrong thing to ask. I felt visibly upset when she put off that piece of talk as well for a time, I wasn’t sure we would ever see: “Seventeen years later.”
Two days before her wedding, Futchu came to our place to return a few books she had borrowed from me.
I was at my study reading Farewell to Arms for the second time.
“And you’ll always love me, won’t you?”I was, sort of, startled. Futhcu’s voice had broken the silence of the room, although I could instantly connect to what she was referring to:
And you’ll always love me won’t you?
Yes
And the rain won’t make any difference?
No
— the most touching conversation between Catherine and Fredericfrom Hemingway’s masterpiece.
“Who’s it?” she sounded irresistibly enthusiastic. Her dimples became deeper than ever, as she smiled. She’d read it in my eyes. Again!
I found love for the second timein Momi, one of my college juniors and an old acquaintance of Futchu, just about a couple of weeks ago. It was quite a discovery though, when Momitold me that she had liked me since the time we’d first met at Futchu’s place. I couldn’t say no — she was the most beautiful girl I’d seen till then. However,Momi and I chose to keep things discreet, until we made something of our respective careers. Telling Futchu about it was out of question. I didn’t want any of her this-girl’s-going-to-drag-you-to-hellprophecies.
“Seventeen years later,” I told her teasingly.
“Okay, as you wish,” her enthusiasm turned into a pale indifference.
“Futchu…please…not again! I’ll miss you, yaar,” I really didn’t want her to get into another fit of anger, disappointment and all other negative broodings, now that she was going away forever…almost.
“Then tell me, who she is,” she kind of insisted. But I was hell bent on not revealing this relationship to anybody…well, anybody for that matter, until I felt a thousand percent confident that it was going to work.
“Read it,” and I looked into her eyes. She took her eyes off in a jiffy, and shot back instantly: “I know her.”
“Are you confirming or telling?” I teased her again.
“Telling you, bugger,” she snapped back, pushing my forehead with the tip of her fingers, “now tell me her name.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you on your wedding day.” I tried to negotiate two days. Nothing compared to the number of years she often set as timelines.
“How does two days matter?” she was, kind of, not ready to give up.
“At least let me be sure that the girl actually loves me.” I was adamant.
(4)
“Guys, can you let him off for a moment, please?” Futchu came into the roomI was chatting with Momi and a few other common friends.Draped in a Persian blue Mekhela Saadormade of Assam Silk, with thick scarlet borders and diamond shaped embroidered designs strewn all over it, delicately done hair with a bridal bun,eye-lined with kohl with an artist’s perfection, with a tiara placed on her head made of white Rajanigandha flowers and red roses, adorned from head to toe ingold and diamond jewelry, there she was standing in front of me, no less than the Indianized version of Aphrodite. Momi’s charms just faded away in thin air for the rest of the evening! There were three photographers and a couple of videographers running helter-skelter to take the prefect shot of the bride-to-be!A sly thought whisked passed me: Why didn’t we ever play wedding-wedding — I wouldn’t mind her to be my bride, if I ever knew she would look as celestial as now!
“It’s isn’t just about her looks, she’s also the only one who can read your mind, and you, hers!”While my mind played those tricky unstoppable tracks within, I tried keeping my eyes off Futchu’s. But I couldn’t. I was stoned.
“Come now! Take a hug. Stop staring, won’t you? Haven’t you seen me before?” she spread her arms with a chuckle. Everybody else in the room joined her. Momi as well.
As I went closer to her, she put her arms around me, hugged me so tight that I could feel her heart beat. And mine too! They beat in a rhythm complementing hers.
“Keep Momi happy. She loves you very much.” She whispered into my ears.
“I will.” I said, softly releasing her.
“Merc, am I actually looking like Aphrodite?” she asked, looking playfully into my eyes, smiling.
All I could was nod my head. Good God!She might have read everything!
(5)
By the river Thames, I’m going to meet Futchu after seventeen years.
The canoeing competition going on in the river reminds me of our boating-boating game:
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream…
Life’sindeed a dream come true to meet Futchu again.
(6)
By the river Thames, Futchu is sitting across the table. The sunset view of west London from the outer lounge of restaurant is breathtaking.
In the scarlet evening gown, with her tresses falling over her shoulders, and the few curled streaks on each side fluttering along with the breeze, with her big, brown, round eyes eye-lined to perfection, with a smile that makes the dimples in her cheeks look cuter than ever, Futchu’s looking exactly like she was seventeen years ago — Aphrodite.
Long timeless conversation over beer and fries — that’s what we are indulgedin. We are talkingabout almost everything that has happened to us over the last seventeen years. We are exchanging gifts for our respective spouses and children, smoking cigarettes, clicking selfies with different back drops. I have brought a collage of images of the changing city-scape of our hometown, Guwahati, as a memento for her. She mentioned during one of our chats before my trip to London that she hasn’t been to Guwahati for over nine years and that she missed the city a lot. She’s looking through the images. At the bottom right corner of the collage, I had inscribed: For our Futchu.
“Ef you tee see aitch you: finally…you’ve got it right. Googled it?” she says, lifting her eyes from the collage. Doesn’t she expect her best friend to get that spelling right ever?
I nod my head in agreement. I had to. The sound has remained stuck up there on the top left corner inside my head for far too long.
(7)
It’s nine thirty and we are leaving the bankside restaurant with promises to meet again soon. By some river maybe.
Shegives me a small box wrapped up in scarlet velvet paper.
“Alright then, I’ve got to go now. Talk soon, bye.” Shesmiles andcomes closer to me. What? Are we going to kiss?
No, she spreads her arms. Time for a hug. It’s a quick one as her black Uber has already arrived.It isn’t a tight hug, like the one she gave on her wedding day,I think, as I see her cab disappear in one of the turns. Ihave a strange feeling — have I missed the rhythmof our heart beats?
“Won’t you ever stop chasing my heart, Merc?” a text message blinks on my mobile, as I board a DLR at Greenwich. It’s just a couple of stations to Canary Wharf. Through the glass window the city lights look stunning at the backdrop of late evening darkness.
“But I couldn’t feel it this time,” I respond.
“Because, I held my breath for a while, bugger!” now there’s one more.
I feel like asking why. I don’t. She will perhaps put it off for another twenty years.
Back in my hotel room, I unwrap the box Futchu has given me:
Thirty fourCadbury’s Chocolate Eclairs and a neatly folded piece of paper, with a few lines scribbled in a perfect cursive handwriting.
So? Met your Aphrodite? Bad, that you kept her waiting for so long — seventeen years! Well, no! 34 years 7 months and3 days! Yes, she has been counting the days sinceshe met you first as a toddler! So that she could see you again soon! And then again! Every time hoping that someday you would come up with a game she always wanted to play with you — Walking-walking. Together.Until eternity ends! — Futchu.
***
