Listen to Southern Avenue

1


Midst of July.

Evening.

And it was raining heavily outside.

The deadly dark evening was being pierced again and again by the sudden lightning, but again, there was the return of the same darkness. The whole sky roared spontaneously squeezing up all its water down to the earth giving it a soothing effect, and the smell of the earth was in the air giving people an unknown reasoned happiness, some sort of madness to the newly wet nature.

But everyone was not happy around. A boy sat in his room beside the roadside window gazing outside. The raindrops rode on the stormy air to be sprinkled to his face through the windows. His spectacles were clouded with small drops of water and the sight of outside was being hazier to him. But he did not care. It seemed he would not care for anything – he was thinking about something.

“I wonder, if it is possible to go Southern Avenue tonight...” the boy muttered.

Sudden flash in the sky. For a moment, it was daylight all around. One, two, three... a few seconds, and then the thunder stroke. It stroke hard, on the earth, on the boy’s mind.

The boy, with his glasses, looked much older compared to his eighteen – eyes always fixed to far-off things. He used to think much, but spoke a little. That’s the reason he had hardly got any friends. Lonely he was, as his room, as the colony was, in the evening.

There was a little retardation of raining outside, and as the boy watched, some places of the road were already drowned to some extent on which children, carrying umbrellas introduced boats made of paper. He liked it, because he did the same at his childhood. But he didn’t smile. Seldom he smiled, and when he did, a sad note would always attached to it for which people thought that he had suffered a lot. But only he knew, days of suffering were coming ahead.


Presently, he was working on something. On the table, pen and diary rested. So he was writing. Perhaps a story! And what it reminds that for the last three years from his age of sixteen, he was writing regularly for his school magazine – but for a fruitless effort. Because when he deposited those papers to the teachers’ table, they used to go straight to they waste box. It was not because they wouldn’t like his work, but it was for they didn’t like him. They used to call him a snob and laughed at him outside even inside the class. What was worse, his classmates gradually joined the party. As a result, he became pretty aloof from the world outside him and fantasised for one day when he would be able to give a perfect lessons to those lafungas.



It had stopped raining now. The sky too, didn’t look like the darkest. People on the road walked hurriedly hopping over muddy places. A man passed down the window with a troublesome umbrella. A cool breeze, blowing off the curtains of the room, tilting the branches of the trees nearby, vanished somewhere, and on the road, a bicycle jumped sharply into a ditch spraying water to a beggar’s face.

He got up with a start.

The light of the room was switched off. And as he entered the front room, his eyes met with his parents.

His parents, brought him up well in a hostel, but since he has passed out from that place, they didn’t take care much of him. Rather, they liked to send him again to a boarding school – which he didn’t want to. And as he believed, there was a certain distance building between him and his parents. A distance, - he knew, which could never be replenished by anything in the world.


“I’m going out, for some time.” He said, looking at the other way.

Silence. And as he looked at for a moment, he saw his parents’ eyes fixed to him. They had stopped their conversation, and what was certain, it was for him.

“To Southern Avenue?” his father demanded.

The boy remained silent. His parents had found him going to that place in a regular basis, and anyway had a doubt about the cause of his behaviour.

“To Southern Avenue?” this time it was a louder one.

And again he had to remain silent, for he was bored of saying the same ‘yes’ everyday.

The atmosphere was getting tense.

“You can have a walk around the parks nearby. Why all the time you have to go to that far place?” this time it was his mother, and in a relatively cold voice.

Silence. Again. As if it was destined in the room. The way the boy always behaved, sometimes left his parents embarrassed too. It was not totally his fault, but he didn’t want to go into arguments.

He hesitated, hesitated for a long time, and making his mind said, “If I find any reason, I will tell you.”

And he went past the doors leaving the wide open astonishing eyes of the two behind.


2



...Thirty, thirty one and thirty two, as he counted the last steps and came down to the footpath. Rain had left its signs all around - muddy footpaths, wet road, pools of water at some places on the road. He stepped on the road and began to walk. A cool breeze blowing softly, played with the boy’s hair. As usual, his hands were in his pockets, and head down, as he walked always. He had to hop over the watery places some time, and as he passed the small temple, the local basti – the slum area began.

It was someone’s birthday at the basti, as some of the balloons were seen tied at a place. Children of the slam had started running to and fro due to their natural joyous character, after the much wanted shower had been poured to the earth. Just where he saw the balloons were tied, a boy started creating bubbles from soap water. The crowd of children came running in, and kept trying to catch the bubbles, floating in the air. He looked at those things some time, then smiled a little, and then again kept walking. Now there was the wooden bridge, below which the old Ganges passed, connected all these to the rest of the world. As he came on the bridge, he became one of the crowd, mixing in the whole lot. As the evening breeze passed the colony, it took the scent of the rains, giving the scent of earth. As the wind went away, the still and motionless crowd on the road became unnoticed. And in a while, it seemed that the destiny of mankind was written in a same way, to a same fate.



Three kilometres away, Southern Avenue lay. Still, motionless, freshened by the evening shower. The long avenue remained lonely and deserted. The most beautiful part of the city, as people believed it to be. The branches of the trees were tired of bearing raindrops and bent their branches to the corner of the road. The roads were wet, everywhere, and the dampness in the air was giving the feeling to people of another shower. The newly wet Southern Avenue was looking beautiful, as a lady after shower, freshened by her natural beauties, for which not only the residents of her, but also people from other parts of the city came to visit the place, more often than anything else.




Those stretched fingers he drew away now, as the late evening gust ceased to break out in a stormy way, with which the drizzle was starting to be sprinkled to his face. The atmosphere was starting to cool down, as the mid July nature reflected the onset of a winter night. The Neems and Eucalyptuses were mystic, standing alone beside the nearby lake, in the darkness, as if reflecting the very mindset of the boy. The deserted winding road had its only visitor tonight, and the person was taking account of every detail of the night.

It was a shortcut to the place. The road lied beside the local railway station. The train lines passed through the bridge, and the station was just behind the lake place, called Rabindra Sarobar. The roads, as said earlier, was isolated, there were hardly any vehicle seen on the road. No one had the urge to get out of their house tonight, in an unpleasant weather like this, save only the boy, mystified in his own character, in the middle of a road towards Southern Avenue, with an unknown reason.

Several theories were put forward…about the reason of his behavior, by his parents. They believed that it was a girl; a dominating one – who calls him every evening to meet with her, at a place three kilometres away from his house. And the boy was so madly in love with her, that he was ready to quarrel or silence away his parents for the girl. Also it could be this, the boy was in love with someone, but in the course of time he is unable to forget her, and was lonely enough not to share those things with his parents, and wander away. There was another prediction of his depression; he was probably much dejected, with his personal life, and also with his academic, so he wanted to stay away from his family fights, and this was his way to show the outcome.


So was it for a love he is here tonight? Or was it just because he hated his familiar cold fights – from which he had always wanted to stay away from his childhood, or was it because he liked the place so much that he could not control himself from visiting the place from time to time, watching the scenic beauty of the lake place to the farthest fraction of Southern Avenue. There was perfectly no one in the world who could answer the question, not even the boy himself. Because, for him, each of the answers remained correct. His love, searching for happiness, and his destiny of life, all three had come to an end in Southern Avenue. And in a way, he had found the answers of all the questions in his life by the journey from his house to Southern Avenue through the roads of Lake Place.



3


What is truth? As one of my friends asked me a few days ago. Truth is not what I know. Truth is not what you know. Truth is what we feel. Truth is what we want to believe, what happens with us, in our lives, that is truth.

You have probably guessed the reason why do I come here, three kilometers away from my house every evening. At primitive, it was my search for love, the love I had lost years ago. Then it became the search of consolation of my despair, my loneliness. And in the meantime I had passed a few years visiting Southern Avenue, and I was in love with the scenic beauty of the place. I kept discovering life, happiness, and also the very life of my love, only by visiting the place, where I had lost it.

I had reached the place which indicated my time to turn back. I had not discovered the place, where she lived, but probably, some day… I will be able to know.

It was the same road I was walking half an hour ago. The wind was blowing in a much harder way, and what was worse, I was on my way home.

On the way back home, I stopped. I stopped, looked at the sky and thought for a while. I was like the shepherd boy, searching for his destiny, searching for the reason of our lives set alone for a journey. But where was the Alchemist, who could show my path? Where was the Alchemist who could have shown me the meaning of omens and signs…?

The whole world was going in its own way. No one did care to answer me. The nearby station suddenly got busier because of a train entering into it. The wind had started blowing. The lake was not still now, creating small ripples around. And then a small branch of leaves fell from the topmost branch of the tree. The same tree I see everyday beside the lake, and at the Southern Avenue.

Everything is not a sign, but signs are hidden in everything. I remembered the first lesson of a nomad. The power I have, that I can use a pen, is my strength. But at the time of dejection, it’s my curse too. And the curse will remain forever in my life. With the wind far gone, and the time that will follow, I will be ready to go anywhere in the world…
I looked up at the sky. It was the same dark night I had seen three years back. The moon was there, but to the other side.

“Is there God?” I asked.

The evening train came running out of the platform now. And as it passed by the lake, its reflection on the water kept my eyes fixed on it. Seconds were passing. A cool breeze started blowing, and the Chhatim tree bent its branches so as to say something.

“Then tell her to help this atheist.” I muttered.



The lonely Southern Avenue remained silent, as the only visitor of tonight headed towards his own colony, as the lake remained rippleless, stagnant till its deep, as the heavy wind blew through the curtains of the window of a nearby house, and a girl of eighteen kept on staring through the railings to the deserted long road so as to say something, whispering in the ears of the wind, listen to Southern Avenue.

-written from Feb '07 to Feb '09