DASSU AND THE THIRD FLUSH

DASSU AND THE THIRD FLUSH

(A sequel to Dassu & Mary and Dassu and The Second Coming)

AUTHORS NOTE 

This fictional story belongs to the series of short stories I wrote narrating the adventures of Dassu Mohan, which means Mohan the Bandit in Bengali. This is a name I selected at random and adopted shamelessly from a Bengali crime series for children that I had read while in school. Thing is, while writing in English I found the name Dassu more appropriate than Mohan which is a very ordinary Indian name otherwise. So I stuck with Dassu. Somehow it fitted the character I had in mind

This is the third of the three part series of stories involving Dassu and Mary, a story set in the beautiful hill station of Shillong, Meghalaya, which traces the tumultuous experiences of a college boy’s first love. In this third part , Dassu finally wins over his Little Red Riding Hood twenty seven years after they had first set eyes on each other.

                                                  Chapter One – Kolkata 

Dassu and Uma are having one of those rare fights.

– You think I am blind? That night when you came home late, your favourite blue shirt had a lipstick mark on the front and it was smelling of female perfume. For five years I was hoping you would come clean about it but you did not.

– So what? Anyone married to a block of ice like you would have divorced you twenty-five years ago. Considering how frustrating every night of my life with you has been, you should consider yourself lucky that I did not. 

And for your information, I have never, ever, slept with anyone else in my life, either before marriage or after, though heaven knows I had ample reasons to stray, given the quality of life you provided me.

– Who asked you to marry me?

– My bloody father did, who else? May he rot wherever he is. Your father too, when he approached my father with the marriage proposal. But why the hell did you agree to getting married in the first place if you had such an aversion to the marital bed, you frigid fish?

– I gave you a son.

– Big deal. Any woman can produce a son, given the right inputs.

– I looked after your house, brought up your kid, and turned your place into a home.

– So, your idea of being a wife is to be a governess, a maid, a housekeeper, and a cook? Just in case you have not noticed, I too have kept you in far better comfort and style than you were accustomed to before your marriage, living as you did in that pathetic little flat in Behala.

– I also earned money in my own right.

– Don’t show off your money. We would be living in a tiny house in Baruipur if we had to subsist on your piddly salary from that private college. I earned nearly ten times or more and kept you in style like a queen. Something you should have the grace to be thankful for.

– You never loved me.

– Love is a two-way process. You were so busy being a dutiful bloody housewife you forgot to be affectionate. You turned my life into an endless ‘To-Do’ List, more and more things to be done, just a wholetime list of chores, where there was no place for intimacy or romance. 

You righteously ignored one of your main duties, which is to provide physical intimacy to your husband. You defined your own role, and physical love for your husband was never any part of it. So don’t talk about love. You know nothing about it.

-And you do?

– Of course, I do. Or did, at any rate, before my bully of a father screwed it all up for me.

– Do you want me to leave? 

– No. Never. I have survived living with you and your attitude for twenty-five years. I will manage to survive the rest of the way. No issues. After all I am an Indian male, with rather conservative moral values.

– I can’t live with you anymore, knowing at last how you feel about me.

– That is your individual choice Uma. If you wish to seek your happiness elsewhere, I won’t stand in the way. That is for sure.

 But be assured I will not give you a penny if you walk out on me. You will simply have to learn to live within your measly own salary and superannuation benefits.

**********

Chapter Two – Shillong 

It is now six years after the boat ride on the Hooghly with Mary.

 **(**Ref: The Second Coming)

Uma left Dassu last year when she was no longer able to take the pressures of a loveless marriage, now that their son was all grown up and gone to the USA to pursue higher studies. 

In spite of the threat he made, he has given Uma a generous settlement, beyond all her expectations. 

But now that she is gone for good, Dassu is devastated. Partly because the loss of a life time companion can be quite shattering, partly because of the regret he feels for not appreciating Uma enough and taking her for granted all these years and, last but not least, because Uma has preempted him to the split. That really hurt his ego.

Dassu hates to return to the empty apartment after work every day, day after day. He switches on all the lights in his huge apartment in Tivoli Court and walks around from room to room like a ghost, a glass of vodka in hand.

He is not interested in watching TV or going to movies. He is not interested in listening to music or in reading a book.

 He hates to cook, even if it means that he would have to starve if he didn’t. He hates to dust and clean the furniture or the window panes. He just about manages to wash his clothes, bed sheets and towels in the washing machine and to get them ironed by the local laundry. In short, he hates his lonely existence.

In another life, Uma took care of all these nitty gritty without him ever realising or bothering about them.

Mary does not write to Dassu any more, since their boat ride in Kolkata six years ago. Neither does Dassu. Maybe both have achieved final closure after the inconclusive ending on the first occasion when Dassu had to leave Shillong in a great hurry soon after finishing college. 

At that point he had only just completed his final college exams and before he could meet Mary, he was suddenly and urgently called away by his bullying father, and thrown into a flurry of activities that ended in his forced marriage a year later to a total stranger at the instance of the said father. 

**(**Ref: Dassu and Mary).

Dassu and Mary could never meet for a proper goodbye until that day twenty years later when Dassu happened to be in Shillong with his wife Uma for a sightseeing tour and had walked into Mary’s house quite by chance. Even then it was not a goodbye but a rekindling of the old flames. 

Now that he is all alone in the apartment, doing pretty much nothing, he thinks of Mary all the time and how happy they were together in their teenage years.

Mary hasn’t written to him since that evening encounter in the country boat at Outram Ghat, Kolkata, over six years ago. 

**(**Ref The Second Coming) 

 He has no idea what she is doing with her life these days. Whether she has remarried or not, whether she’s got children, nothing at all. 

He has no phone number for her and in his state of agitation, can’t bring himself to sit still and write to her. 

At times he wonders whether she is even alive, and shudders at the thought. Yet in his hour of darkness, she is the one he thinks of all the time. 

Then, after weeks of deliberation and suffering, he takes the plunge. He takes a week’s leave from his office, packs a small bag and catches the next early morning Jet Airways flight from Kolkata to Guwahati. 

He books a cab from outside Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi airport and heads out to Shillong. The hundred and twenty kilometres journey up the climbing mountain road takes a little over four hours and he has ample time to reflect on his foolhardiness and curse himself many times over. But it is too late and he is more than halfway to his destination, anyway. 

He curses again, this time at the bumper-to-bumper traffic as the cab enters Shillong town and travels from Burrabazar to Laitumkhrah where he stops the cab near the entry to Nongrim Hills, pays up and alights.

 Holmes Cottage, the last address he has for Mary, is but a short walk.

 A very fine misty drizzle is falling, making the temperature drop substantially. Dassu shivers uncontrollably. It is winter in Shillong, and in his haste, he has forgotten to pack any warm clothing for the trip. He curses himself once again for his stupidity.

 At this rate, he feels, he is getting to be quite adept at cursing. 

The small wooden plaque reading Holmes Cottage is still there, even more faded than he remembers from his last visit over six years ago. 

Dassu halts, and once again hesitates. Will she be there? Is there going to be a husband in residence? Will there be children? Will she let him in? Will she? Won’t she? Will she? 

In the end he decides that there is only one way to find out and opens the wooden gate, passes through the impeccably maintained small piece of lawn, and rings the doorbell. 

The door opens. Mary is standing there wearing a blue and white chequered apron over her Khasi jainsem. 

 She looks the same as he remembers her from their last meeting six years ago. The same sharp Aryan features with a tinge of pink on the cheeks, the same medium short brown hair except for the thin streak of grey down the left side and the new round glasses on her nose. 

The years have been kind to her, they suit her, and she looks even more mature and attractive to him than ever before. 

“Well well, if it isn’t Mary Weber Holmes as I live and breathe” Dassu imitates, through chattering teeth, in a fake American accent, dredged out from the depths of his distant past. 

She looks at him for a long moment and says “And if it ain’t Mr Dassu’ Mohan hisself” in a similar fake American accent, without much warmth in her voice. 

“Now that we have spoken the code words you’d better come in quick. It’s freezing out there” she says. 

There is a small electric fireplace going on in one side of the drawing room and she makes him sit near it and thaw out, while she makes him a mug of strong black coffee, just the way he likes it.

 While he is sipping the coffee, she hands him a thick woollen shawl and says “Sorry, but this will have to do for now” 

 Then she starts without a preamble. “So Dassu, you don’t write to me for five-six years and you drop in on me out of the blue, in the middle of winter, without a jacket, dishevelled, unshaven, wearing only a half-sleeved shirt. What gives?” 

Dassu hesitates. He has no ready answer. In his all-consuming desire to somehow reach and meet Mary he had no other thought in his mind. He has not prepared himself for what to say to her for when they finally met. He digs deep into his vocabulary and finds no suitable response. 

“Are you in some kind of trouble then?” Mary asks, giving him an opening. 

“What? No. No. Not really. Well. Yes. But. No” Dassu stammers and trails off into silence, feeling miserable. 

“Are you married, Mary? Children?” He blurts out stupidly. 

“Huh? No. Once was enough. Ha ha! Who’ll marry a has-been hag like me anyway” she completes, with a semi nervous laugh. 

“You are not a has been. Neither are you a hag. Far from it. ” Dassu manages to say. “I still love you to distraction ” he shyly mumbles as an afterthought. 

Then the floodgates open, and Dassu pours his heart out recounting his life for the last twenty-six years. The ups and downs, the highs, and lows, ending with his divorce. He talks nonstop for an hour and a half. Then pauses for a breath. 

Mary is silent, her eyes downcast and thoughtful. Her hands are clasping and unclasping on her lap. 

Then she looks up at Dassu with flashing eyes and speaks. It is a torrent. Like a burst dam. She gives him a real mouthful without a pause. 

“Look here Dassu, first you ask me to marry you. But a few weeks later as soon as your final exams get over you ditch me and disappear from town without any information or explanation, save for that meaningless one line on a postcard. 

” Then you write all those mushy letters from Kolkata but in real terms you can’t find a day in your oh-so-very-busy schedule to come and explain yourself to me face to face. Instead, you just go and get married to a woman you have never seen before. Promptly beget a child and start living in blissful domesticity. 

In short, you have been a cad, irresponsible, insincere, unfaithful and a heartless coward from the word go. You have no defence really.

  **(** Ref Dassu and Mary)

“And then, twenty years later, after I finally recovered from all the hurt and managed to erase the wounds and the scars, you appear suddenly like a meteor, like a bolt of lightning, stay for an hour, rekindle the dead fire and make me feel alive once more. 

Then you disappear just as quickly, back to your domesticity, leaving me in the dark yet again. 

“You write to me for six months and stop. I would say that was a relief for me because there was no future for us in a fruitless, wishful mushy-mushy correspondence course. 

**(** Ref The Second Coming)

“Now you are back again. With what on your mind, exactly? Do you want to stay with me in Shillong? Is that what you want?

 What gives you the idea that I would allow you to stay on in my home?

 Even remotely assuming, hypothetically, that you can stay here, have you thought about my nosy neighbours and the local toughs who lay down the law in the streets these days? 

“To all of them you are a Dkhar, an outsider, an easy target for assault. Have you thought about that?

 Life in Shillong is not the way it used to be in your college days, Dassu. It was happy and cosmopolitan then. But no longer. 

 Outsiders, meaning non-tribals, now live in fear all the time. They don’t get jobs, can’t do business, can’t buy property and are targets for assault by local goons for every real or imagined infraction, or even without any apparent reason.

 And God forbid if they are seen in public with a tribal woman. 

Ethnic cleansing, it is known as. The idea is to force people from other communities to sell their properties and leave Meghalaya. They have been very successful in that, I may add. 

 “In any case, all that is hypothetical, assuming that you stay here. 

 But like I said, whatever gives you the notion that I would allow you to stay, in the first place?

 If you think I’m malleable like putty to be molded this way and that, you got another think coming. Forget it. I’m flattered that you came to me. Thank you very much. But ‘no, thanks,’ to your implied proposal. 

“Now go back to your swanky flat and cushy job in Kolkata and if you need a shoulder to cry on, find someone else in your own adopted city. This shoulder is not available at your beck and call. And that is final. 

” Now let’s talk about something else, shall we?” 

 Dassu is crestfallen. This is not what he was hoping to hear. But what was he expecting to hear, anyway? 

He rises, still wearing Mary’s shawl, picks up his bag and makes to move towards the door. 

Mary says “Wait, where do you think you are going this late in the evening?” “It’s freezing outside, you have no jacket and you won’t find any transport at this hour, anyway “. 

“Stay the night and leave in the morning, if you wish”. 

Dassu complies. As always. Whatever Mary says is his command. 

She makes early dinner. Rice and a delicious curry of pork with bamboo shoots. For desserts she produces a caramel pudding, another favourite of Dassu. The meal tastes heavenly, aided, and abetted by a couple of shots of vodka which both are fond of. 

Around eight thirty, Dassu wants to call it a day, puts off the drawing room light and stretches out on the sofa. He cannot sleep, his head a maelstrom of turmoil and conflicting emotions. Even though he did not have too much of hope about the success of his mission, her rejection still hurt him immensely. 

She was the one woman he had wanted all his adult life and the said life had dealt him lemons time and again, due to circumstances beyond his control. 

He tosses and turns, trying to keep the fidgeting as quiet as possible. 

At some point he dozes off, and wakes up with a start when Mary tugs at his hand, somewhere around midnight or later. 

Startled, he jumps out of the sofa, just where Mary is standing with her arms open for him. She leads him by his hand to her bedroom, Dassu following meekly. 

“I have thought about it through half the night” she says. 

“Whatever was to fated to happen in my life has happened and there’s nothing at all that I can look forward to now. I am sick of being lonely and alone and at a loose end, keeping house and teaching in that wretched school all my life. You don’t know how terrible it feels to have to eat dinner sitting in front of that stupid black and white TV. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. 

 The only diversion is the visit to the church on Sundays. I’m truly sick, tired and bored to distraction in this small town. I desperately want to get out. 

“You have been the only man for me all my adult life, Dassu, even during my short-lived marriage. And that’s God’s own truth.” 

“Take me out of this hell hole Dassu, take me with you to Kolkata and be my man for good and forever.”

Dassu is speechless. But realises there is no more need for speeches. He reaches for Mary like she is his lifeline. 

And for the very first time ever since they had set eyes on each other twenty-seven long years ago, Dassu and Mary, really, truly, unconditionally, unequivocally, and absolutely become one and whole.

When Dassu opens his eyes the next morning Mary is lying on her side, facing him. Eyes closed. As he looks on, her eyes flicker open and she is fully awake in an instant. She looks as fresh as she did the evening before, without any sign of sleep. 

Dassu looks up to the wall clock and sees that it is eight-thirty already. He sits up and looks out of the window. There is a bright blue sky and sparkling sunshine outside and a thin crust of frozen dew on the lawn. In short, it is a glorious winters day. 

He is not sure now whether what he had heard Mary say in the middle of the previous night was true or just a figment of his imagination. There was only one way to find out. 

 He lies back down on the bed next to Mary, cups her face in both his hands, looks into those lovely limpid brown eyes and says “As it is a clear day and everything, shall I get going now? Or what?” 

“Or what !!” she says, giggling, with a mischievous gleam in her eyes, as she snuggles back into his arms once again. 

Dassu finally wins over his Little Red Riding Hood. 

*************

Post Script: Three days later Dassu and Mary pack five large suitcases and set off for Kolkata to start a new life, leaving behind the rest of her possessions to be collected later.

But that is another story. 

**************

Stories by the same author: 

1.Dassu and the Uncut Story                     2. Dassu and a Very Short affair 

3.Dassu and the first flush                         4. Dassu and the Red Riding Hood 

5.Dassu and Mary                                        6. The Second Coming 

7.Dassu and the Third Flush