The Masterpiece

“Can you keep a secret?” asked the man leaning towards the little boy who barely came up to his waist.

“Yes” he answered without hesitation.

“I have already created the masterpiece”

The boy gave a little giggle as if not believing a word but he nodded anyways.

Malay Babu sat in his reclining arm chair in his small cramped verandah of his even more cramped apartment as he looked down on the bustling streets of VIP road. The street down below separated his apartment from the marketplace. Busy from morning till night, it was a combination of a plethora of images and sounds from a poorly performed orchestra. The vendors and hawkers bargained about “fixed prices” and cars and dogs blocked the street. Here and there, a half-clothed rickshaw driver would spit betel juice which had already tainted the bottom part of the government building beside the market a deep shade of red. He gave a forced chuckle as a rich passerby scrunched his nose at the pungent odor of cigarettes and humid air.

Malay Babu couldn’t believe he was gone. Sitting there in his over-sized white kurta, all he could imagine was his uncle’s face. When he looked out towards the marketplace from atop the rusty railings of his home, he could see his uncle traveling with his bazaar bag in his traditional dhoti. He could see his uncle turn towards him to wave a goodbye and then walk forwards till he disappeared in the throng of people, smell of sweat and betel juice and sounds of bargaining with prices. His reverie was broken by a pair of dogs fighting over a piece of chapatti. When his eyes shifted back, he could see his uncle no more. No sign of that pale yellow kurta or the purple bazaar bag or the warm smile gracing the face of an old yet sturdy man. He really was gone. He would never return to discuss politics or say “Kamala, Bring the tea!” early in the morning. Malay Babu’s uncle was a good man. A better man than most in this world of quickly shifting priorities. It was his funeral that day. A day on which many people would repeat their fake condolences the shock would never go away.

As he reminisced about the times he spent with his uncle, he couldn’t help the small tear that leaked out of the corner of his eyes and fell on the white kurta, staining it a light grey. The way he held little Malay’s hands when he jumped into the muddy puddles. The way he supported Malay’s cycle when he got rid of the balancing wheels. The way he taught the adult Malay to cook saying “A man needs to take care of his family”. Those tiny moments when both of them would share a hearty laugh over a stupid joke that no one else in the room would get made him think of his uncle’s laugh wrinkles etched at the corner of his twinkling eyes. Those happy days had now become bittersweet droplets of memories. Kamala, who had served this family for generations, sat at a corner of the kitchen sniffling softly as she waited for the tea to be served to the guests to finish boiling.

Malay Babu’s faltering smile at the guests was given a break when the last of his unknown family relatives moved out. He did not move. He sat there for what looked like an eternity in an unbelieving trance. Was he in denial? No. but that didn’t make accepting the emptiness an easy task.  

Within a few hours of the house being filled with the sound of silence again, when he was half asleep in that same armchair, he was shaken awake by his servant.

“Sahib. There is someone at the door.”

 Awoken suddenly from his self induced half asleep state, he pinched the bridge of his nose to clear the haze of watery curtains and picked up his spectacles. As he put them on, he slowly asked,

“Well? Who is it?”

“I have never seen him before Sahib. But the man is asking for you.”

Walking up to the old mahogany door he saw a man in his mid sixties staring at him. Clad in a white dhoti the stranger had a gruff looking face with a tiny mole at the corner of his right eye. A big coat covering his upper body hardly camouflaged the bulging belly but it complimented the polished black canvas bag which he had in his left hand. A few papers could be seen peeking through the half opened front pocket and his dhoti had a typical gentleman’s handkerchief tucked at a corner of his waist.

“Are you Mr. Malay Choudhury?”

“Yes. Who is asking?”

“I am Mr. Kapoor. I was your uncle’s lawyer. More than that, we were quite good friends. When I heard…”

“Come on in.”

He led Mr. Kapoor to the sitting room and both sat down on the settee that decorated a corner of the sitting room. “Kamala! Bring the tea!” He smiled a little at the irony and turned towards his new guest with that Mona Lisa smile that he had mastered by then.

The hours passed by as they bonded over their mutual love for a wonderful man turned memory. They laughed over his crazy antics and confident declarations and his radiant smile that lit up the room more than a diamond could. He believed in achieving dreams and was the type of optimistic person who could ignore the several obstacles life threw his way. Rejected by the industry, he went on to writing his secret drama script that no one had the chance to see in real life. He loved the theater and had wanted to be an actor. Whenever someone would try explaining him any form of logic to make him understand reality without crushing his hopes, he would reply “You people don’t know how to aspire.”

Then he would look into the eyes of the person and say “Wait and watch. I will write a masterpiece. When I become famous, then I will teach everyone how to dream.”

He would then give a boisterous laugh and continue sipping his tea from the dish he poured it into. He never got to finish the masterpiece but never lost hope either.

The two men stared into space as a somber silence filled the air in place of the laughter. Even when he was gone, his uncle was able to bring a smile to his face. Actor or not, he was a wonderful person. He had raised Malay from a small age after his mother passed away in an accident. He barely remembered her now. As for his father, he had never met the man. All he could recall of him was in the single family photo which had faded over the years but still containing the genuine smiles time couldn’t wash away. As he was thinking about these small and big, happy and bittersweet thoughts, a drop of pearly emotion slid down his cheeks and rolled down to the floor which he quickly swiped away with the stubbed toe of his left foot.

It had been several hours since the men had started talking. Mr. Kapoor quickly got up from his seat after looking at the time.

“Would you look at the time? I’m late already for my next client meeting. Before I leave, I should tell you the other reason behind this visit.”

He then proceeded to pull out an envelope from the breast pocket of his over-sized coat and held it forward.

“Your uncle had given this to me and he wanted to give it to you before his will is read out”

Then, with a tight-lipped smile, he picked up his canvas bag and walked out of the half-opened oak doors.

Malay Babu went into his bedroom and locked the doors. He faced the picture of his old man and leaning against the wall with a tired sigh, he opened the wax seal of the envelope. He gave a small chuckle. So typical of his uncle. A wax seal. Always with the theatrics. He pulled out a picture of his mother…with his uncle. “Strange”, he thought “why was this photo not in the family albums?” As he pulled out the photo from the envelope, a piece of folded paper slid out and fell to the floor. He bent down and picked it up. It was a letter.

“Dear son,

I am a coward. At the same time a great artist. If you are reading this….then I must not be there by your side anymore. Yes. You read it correct. It says ‘son’. Leaving you and your mother was not the best decision I had made. Scratch that. It was the worst decision I had ever made. My yearning for the stage should never have pulled me away from the very people who tied my being together. The days in Calcutta were not as easy as I had thought. My struggles ultimately led to no fruition but I was too scared to return home. The first time I had gathered enough courage to do so, she was already gone. The news had been sent to me as fast as it could have been and all I could do was imagine your face. That was enough for me to return. You have never had an uncle. It was always a version of your father I created. I guess I never told you because more than you, I was more scared to face your reaction. I never wanted you to think I was not as good the father as the uncle you thought I was. While I am writing this, my heart breaks to imagine your reaction. So I am running away from my problems. Again. I hope you find it in your heart to not replace the moments and memories we shared together with the hatred for this single cowardly letter I wrote. I have always loved you and I will keep watching you from up above in the sky.

~ Your Baba”

He folded back the piece of paper and held the photograph in his hand. Then, he fell down to his knees.

“So this was the masterpiece. Well performed father.”

Then his face contorted into an expression of anguish as he screamed his heart out so loud that no sound but simple streams of emotions rained down on his sleeve as he clutched the photograph to his chest.