Ten

On a particularly sweltering evening in May, when not a single leaf on the trees stirred – the standard method of gauging the degree of humidity in Bengali homes – off went the electricity supply. As it went to shed its load, we too were left haplessly sweating it out, drowning in pools of sticky salty perspiration.

To calm my frayed crankiness that rose in direct proportion with the mercury, my father, the victim-by-default of the tantrums of this four year old daughter of his, devised a plan. Count up to ten, he said. But not in any harmonic order, he specified; spacing each number randomly, instead. See what happens when you reach ten, he assured with a mischievous grin. Impatient, I began ranting one, two, three in quick succession, when he stopped me to show how to really go about it.

One, he said and went back to humming the Manna Dey song he was singing, staring out of the grilled window, billowing grey smokes from his cigarette.
Two was followed by ‘Did I know what instrument Ali Akbar Khan played’: Sitar, I said in half-confidence. Sarod, he corrected me – the same instrument that Amjad Ali Khan played. He knew I’d know Amjad from the video I had watched last week on Doordarshan. Sarod is the instrument that looks much like the one the Goddess Saraswati plays, he went on; only that hers is called a Veena.
Three, he reminded me and I realised I had to go to the loo. Even though the bathroom, with its broken planks for doors, its moist walls the haven for tiny ugly insects, the latch to which I couldn’t reach, was in the next room – I had to be taken there by Baba, especially when it was dark, either in the middle of the night or in situations of loadshedding like it was that day. As he stood waiting outside in the dingy red-floored veranda, still smoking away, I heard him go four, then slowly, five, in a bid, I realised to hurry me up!
I joined him and in spite of the unbearable heat, snuggled up to his six-feet lanky frame, waiting for number six, waiting for the fan to whiz back with a lazy clunky thud. Seeing he was lost somewhat, semi-hunched on the railing dotted with bird-droppings, “six”, I enterprised, tugging on his khadi panjabi, egging him on to take the game forward. He looked down at his two-and-a-half footer, gave a half-smile and said, almost to himself, “That’s how long ago I’d met Anasuya. Six years ago. You know Anasuya, don’t you?”
-“Hmm, Ma”, I replied in a staid sombre grown-up tone.
-“We met at college, you know right?”
-“Yes, Presidency College”
-“Which was originally called…?”
-“Hindustan College.”
-“Hindu College.”

Seven, he stood back ramrod straight – back in form, back in the game. “Do you want to go out for a walk and call your mother?” he asked casually. I went over the whole process in my mind. Changing into my frock from the soft white cotton penny I was wearing with red and yellow ducks run-stitched on them; walking up to the end of our alley, turning left from Mahakali Sweetshop to finally reach Arun Dada’s phone booth; dialling Ma’s number (which I knew by heart), have Aneesh pick it up, chat me up with saccharine inanities, before finally declaring that Ma was in the bathroom. The only good thing about the whole stroll could be a bottle of Coca-cola that I might coax Baba into buying me on our way back. But no, I decided, it wasn’t worth it. The heat, the changing, the walk, Aneesh, and the dicey bait of Coca-cola. Plus I didn’t want to miss this game. I was eager to see what happened at ten.
“No. Eight” I flashed a grin!
-“That’s the double of your age right now!” quipped Baba.
- “Double…?”
-“Yes, four plus four”
Realising we were getting into the dangerous terrain of arithmetic, even if playfully, I pleaded, nine! “Clementine’s shoes were number nine, remember?” Of course I did! We’d been taught ‘My Darling Clementine’ at school last week, and I’d been singing it ‘in the cavern, in the canyon’, and in every other conceivable place, NON-STOP!

My father laughed his throaty laughter at how readily I had launched into an instant rendition, forgetting to whine about the heat and the dust. “Ten”, he announced with confident finality, as he took his last long puff before flicking away the butt on to the terrace of the next house: And ‘clunk’ I heard, almost immediately in the next room, as the fan groaned back into action.

This was unbelievable! Stupefied, I had even forgotten to rejoice and dance like I did usually once the power was back. What I had just experienced was beyond reason, beyond rationale, beyond gimmick, beyond magic – the closest it came to, was divine miracle! And my father had performed it with the surety of God himself! How was I to convince my friends at school tomorrow, that this man – my father – was God himself? That when he pronounced, “Let there be fan”, there indeed it was! That too at the exact moment he wanted it! Oh what would I have not done to have Aneesh right then to show him what my father was capable of, and to see his white face, with green veins popping out visibly like onions in an omelette, go ashen!

Hero – God, actually – in the eyes of his daughter, Baba gave a smug smile and ordered, “Go finish your homework now!” Homework? I could have jumped from the veranda if he’d asked me to that day, knowing my ‘Godfather’ would have me safe! What’s more, I could have touched the dreaded lizard behind the mirror, in the assured knowledge that Baba would turn it into Puff-the-magic-dragon - all pink, furry and playful!

Every time there was a loadshedding after that day, there was an unsaid code between us to go back to this game. Not that he agreed to indulge always, saying miracles are to be used sparingly and in extreme cases only, every time Baba did actually concede, the power would be back at the stroke of ten. Sometimes, when I tried to imitate Baba’s method on my own – perhaps to enthral friends - spacing the numbers out as randomly as I could, reaching ten at a long sweet pace, the power didn’t come back. My belief in my father’s sole powers to make it work therefore, deepened further and further. Gradually, my faith and reverence for what he said, what he believed, what he thought, what he did, began to percolate to other – almost all – spheres of life. My father could do no wrong; there could be no plan B for Baba’s plan A, I was convinced.

This is how it went for several years. Each number would bring with it, its share of trivia; its own peculiar memories – dates, addresses, numbers of letters, years piled on, years to come, years to wait for; and with each day of growing up, I would deliberately prolong the time-space between the numbers, so that newer stories could be sewn in between them, stories that would fill in sultry evenings of loadshedding. But for all these interruptions, these fillers, my fascination with the magical game –whenever Baba obliged, that is - never ebbed.


********



It was the final set: the score read thirty-forty. As Steffi bounced the ball up and down, looking up to fix her stare on Monica Seles in between, her lips pursing in visible anxiety, beads of sweat making a transparent moustache over her upper lip, off went the television tube. Roars of disappointment rang out in unison throughout the locality. Loadshedding.
And I was ten.

In a fit of urgency, I implored Baba to start the game; I was in no mood, moreover for uneven arbitrary languorous intervals, peppered with stories, reminiscences or lessons. It had to be fast, and it had to yield results. If this wasn’t a state of emergency, nothing would ever be!!!

Baba, however, such an ardent tennis enthusiast, had been a little aloof the whole day; and beyond an occasional “Advantage Seles”, or “Tch! clumsy shot, Steffi”, he had been more or less quiet throughout the game; not even commenting on the pretty ball-fetcher girls or Peter Graf’s stylish shades through which he kept a hawk eye on his daughter’s every move.

I can’t place a finger at which point exactly I’d stopped praying to the elusive, illusive, invisible God to rescue me in times of utter despondence that fluctuated in degrees of intensity; and prayed instead – pleaded, rather, with all my heart – to the unerring, unfailing miracle-man closer home; at home in fact, to rescue me and salvage the situation, no matter how impossible. In a way, I’d learnt to scoff in the face of difficulties – and when they remained unmitigated, I learnt to come to terms with the fact that there must have been some loophole in the earnestness of my praying. My godfather or his powers were not to blame; could not be blamed.

And though I understood that miracle-workers had moods that might not necessarily be in sync with my demands or tantrums, on that particular day, I wasn’t ready for reason. Much against his wishes therefore Baba started his counting: absent-mindedly and looking downwards at his own shadow on the red stone wall, made by the moonlight that trickled in through the grills of the green windows.
…Seven, eight, nine tumbled out quicker than they ever had, as did “ten” in a similarly careless, disinterested and perfunctory tone.
And there we sat, in the same darkness, in the same humidity. Nothing changed.
Elevens and Twelves made their silent, unuttered entrances and exits while the darkness and the humidity clung on just as obstinately.
The debut of this ineffectiveness numbed me. The match, Steffi Graf, the heat, the promised coca-cola…nothing seemed to matter anymore.
Something snapped inside and I can’t recall today if I’d imagined it, aurally hallucinated or had actually heard the sound of that snap. But I’ve never gone back to counting till ten for light to come back. I like loadsheddings now.