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Readers,
The following is an excerpt from my venture into novel-writing. LOST SOULS is more an unfulfilled dream, which requires all your good wishes and blessings in order to realize it into a reality.
LOST SOULS
Basundhara Sen was born during the turbulent seventies in the city of Calcutta. That was long before Calcutta became Kolkata. Her father Boddhisatwa Sen, and mother Paroma Sen, are doting parents. Having lost their son and Basundhara’s brother, Debabrata, named after the legendary Rabindrasangeet singer Debabrata Biswas, to encephalitis, she had become both their daughter and their son, all rolled up into one. Living in the southern side of the city now, in a locale called Deshapriya Park, the novel starts with her growing up years. Basundhara is the protagonist of the novel and the entire plot and sub plots revolve around her.
When still studying at her school, National High School, Basundhara develops strong signs of leadership and camaraderie amongst friends and classmates. She wants to study hard and in this her parents hardly ever compromised. She always stood first in their annual examinations and hence it was not at all surprising when she came out in flying colours at her Board Examinations. Her close friends at school included Anupama and Kathakali. Basundhara’s father is a staunch CPI (M) supporter. Karl Marx’s Das Capital stands in regal glory among other books in their book shelf. Anupama and Kathakali’s households are more liberal. So whereas on Basundhara ( lovingly called ‘Sudha’)’s birthday, her parents presented her with Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, her friends were presented with Barbie dolls and big chocolate cakes.
The marked differences in the girls’ upbringing do not pose a hurdle in the friendship that they gradually build up, while in school as well as after it. After finishing school, they go to separate colleges to complete their studies. Basundhara decides to study Electrical Engineering at the Jadavpur University, after having, again, topped the Joint Entrance Examination charts. Anupama Chakraborty studies English Literature at the Presidency College. After much persuasion, the parents of Kathakali Dutta relent to their daughter’s wishes of studying painting at the Kala Bhavan, Department of Fine Arts, at the Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. So the friends go different ways after school.
Kathakali had a cousin – Shiladitya- who had harboured a crush on Basundhara, when she was still in school and he was a year older than her. Infatuations die sudden and sorry deaths. But thing went into serious waters when Shiladitya decides to study Comparative Literature, also at the Jadavpur University. They bump into each other, on campus, and love blossoms between them. Despite studying at various institutions and at different places, the foursome made it a point to catch up with each other, whenever the time and the opportunity came knocking at their doors.
Time flies and Anupama’s wedding to Dr. Amaresh Hazra is slotted for a date, which coincided with the ultimate graduation of Anupama. She ( Anupama) had wanted to study further, but family pressures surmounting everything else, she decides to concede to her parents’ wishes.
Anupama’s friends, Basundhara, Kathakali and Shiladitya are jubilant that a rare occasion for real celebration and catching up, has come calling.
On the wedding day, Anupama’s would-be-husband gets convicted. Dr. Amaresh Hazra is arrested for running a doctors’ clinic which performs illegal abortions and is also involved in child-trafficking. Anupama’s parents are left distraught when police cordon off their house and the entire area. The initial assumptions of the police that Anupama might also have been a part of the nexus of which Dr. Hazra is the head, is proved baseless and false, after initial interrogation. In Bengali families, if such an incident occurs on the day of the wedding of a girl, it is considered inauspicious and the bride gets ostracised. So in order to prevent Anupama from sudden mental psychosis, Shiladitya steps in to pose as the groom.
Anupama’s parents are jubilant. But Anupama is well aware that Shiladitya loves Basundhara and he is doing this only to save her from social ostracism. Shiladitya, on the other hand, knows that ‘Anu’ is the rarest of gems and also considers it to be his duty as a good friend.
Kathakali’s paintings are in huge demand and by now, she has etched out a name for herself as an abstract artist in the national scene. She has participated in countless exhibitions and art competitions which have won her laurels as well as recognition. She has remained single. When Mr. Narendra Modi declared his sudden demonetisation policy, Kathakali had put up an installation called “Still Currencies” at her studio in the posh Chanakyapuri area of the capital. The exhibition had received rave reviews from the press. In it the artist had depicted the prevalent economic situation by hanging the currency notes by wires and somewhere the beeping sound of a swipe machine could be heard from a human figure attired in the garment of a robotic machine.
In Kolkata, a travel agency named ‘Random Travels’ has newly opened offices in posh Chowringhee area of the city. Its head is a husband-wife duo – Parag and Paula Sutradhar. Paula’s family belong to the old ‘Baniyas’ of Calcutta and hence are wealthy people. They are the ones who are the chief financiers behind ‘Random Travels’. Every year the agency offers holiday packages for those interested in travelling to near and far-off destinations. This year too they are offering Puja Packages, for Bengalis to whom the Durga Puja forms the major festival, awaited throughout the year. Usually the agency gives their advertisement way ahead of their scheduled departure dates in almost all major dailies of the city.
“LIVE THE EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME – TRAVEL WITH RANDOM TRAVELS.”
Parag usually sees to it that their copywriter delivers exactly what he desires. This time their response rate has reached about fifty calls per minute, which is a record by any standard.
Kathakali Dutta, Basundhara Sen, Shiladitya and Anupama Ghosh had booked their seats at Random Travels, by a sheer quirk of fate, for an Egyptian Experience.
It is at the travel agency’s office at Chowringhee that the foursome encounters each other after the long gap of a lifetime. Again by a sheer stroke of luck, they decide to book seats for the same holiday package. The Egyptian Experience includes a visit to the Pyramids at Giza, the Egyptian Museum, the temples at Luxor, Karnak and Abu Simbel, Valleys of the Kings and Queens, a cruise over the river Nile, culminating in a tour of the legendary city of Alexandria.
All went well. The four friends were catching up after long. Anupama has had a miscarriage and they are thinking about adoption, Basundhara runs her own consultancy firm, after having had a long stint at the Tata Consulting Services, Kathakali is going to Cairo because she has plans to organise a show of hers at a gallery there. ‘Random Travels’ is the fulcrum around which their lives, again, intersect with each other.
They are scheduled to depart on the twelfth of October, two thousand and sixteen. The group, arranged by the travel agency, has twenty four persons altogether, who would be travelling as a single unit through a period of twelve days. The Emirates flight to Cairo via Dubai, took off on scheduled time. At one a.m. sharp a distress call was heard by the Mumbai airport authority officials. The captain and pilot of their aircraft had sensed something amiss while they were flying over the Arabian Sea and that the plane was going off the radar area.
When all the passengers were either dozing or some insomniacs busy watching the in-flight movies, the Emirates aircraft crashed over the Arabian Sea, with a hundred and fifty people on board. The pilot had utilised all the options available at his arm’s length to prevent the disaster. But nothing could be done. The cabin crew had no time to notify or alert the passengers. The Emirates aircraft fell headlong into the oceanic waters.
Baasundhara, Anupama, Kathakali and Shiladitya were all in their forties. Death is the one intruder who takes everyone unawares. These four people were asleep when the plane was crashing. They hardly believed that their friendship would stand the ravages of time and that they would also die together. They left behind their parents, whose tears when they’d hear the fatal news would be unstoppable. They left behind dreams, unfulfilled. Leaving all kinds of hubris aside, death is the one and only leveller.
These lost souls who met with fatality, were akin to the fearless ones, one finds in Erich Maria Remarque’s epic novel, Three Comrades. The enduring spirit of selfless friendship and devotion to each other is there and exists between these friends till they meet their doom. We wonder as to who decides the chance meetings, the fatal encounters and our ultimate nemesis. Is it our deeds that catch up with us ultimately or is it that we are but flies to wanton gods, who kill us for their sport? Shakespeare in his play, King Lear, had portrayed desperation and the human need for care and sacrifice. These friends quite unconsciously encounter each other and have dreams ahead of them, only to see them squashed to smithereens, again, quite unconsciously.
HAIMANTI DUTTA RAY
AGE: 44 years.
OCCUPATION: Writer.
CITY OF RESIDENCE: Kolkata.
CONTACT NUMBER: 9831516577/ 033-24657132.
EMAIL ID: haimantidr400@gmail.com
I am a writer by passion and profession.
IN LOVING MEMORY- a memoir – was published by Rupali Publications of Kolkata, in October 2015.
Here’s the Facebook link to the cover image and blurb of the book.
The Statesman has published 3 stories of mine in their Sunday supplement, 8TH DAY. Here’re their links:
Another story has also been selected for publication in the Festival Issue of The Statesman, due to hit the stands just before the Durga Pujas in Kolkata.
My story, THE LOST RIVER, was published in Story Mirror, a few months ago. Here’s its link:
My own blog: www.haimantiduttaray.blogpsot.comrandom musings.
Thanks.
Hoping that my synopsis gets selected for the VOW- GET PUBLISHED venture jointly hosted by Story Mirror and Indiblogger.
