On her way to the college Manasa sat
ruminating. A large fruit that was nourished by the delicate creeper must be a
weight on the earth. It had no strength of its own. No personality. And on top
of that it is hollow from the inside. The skin is thick. Why should anyone be
so mad about pumpkin growing surreptitiously in the backyard? It was not worth
gloating over. And yet Piku was so excited! From now on Piku would spend her
entire week observing the pumpkin.
She reached the college. There was a crowd
of students on the college green. Manasa saw Badal floating over everyone. He
and his associates had gathered to speak to the students about their recent
exploits, it seemed.
Like Manasa, Badal was a final year student.
He had campaigned for the elections to be president. Manasa recalled most of
his agenda. “We will establish a library in the hostel this year. We shall
install gym equipments at our personal expense if necessary but we shall never
rest in peace until it is done. We need a hall. We must get a hall. A hall must
be built if necessary. Within 3 months, by the end of summer, there will be a
gym ready for you all.”
He went on to say a few nasty things about
his opponents. All his words were etched in Manasa’s memory like a deep scar.
She loved Badal’s opponent Tridhaman. He had also campaigned for the elections.
In his agenda he had offered to get cleaned a large part of the pond in the
campus that was ruined by hyacinth and filth. He had urged the students to
volunteer for the cleaning. There was no mention of expenditure involved.
“These are risky mentions”, he had confided to Manasa.
Now Badal has won. It has been four months
since he was elected. He was now calling for another proposal. Manasa stood at
the edge of the swerving crowd to listen. Her tentacles alert to catch any
inconsistencies. And knowing Badal better now, she was prepared to hear some
more insults to her friend.
Badal began by singing a patriotic song. He
urged the students to join him. There was an uproar of discordant singing. Some
of the teachers rushed out of the staff room in panic. Then they waited
patiently for the singing to stop; for the whole meeting to come to an end.
Only then could they resume classes.
Badal stopped singing and raised his voice
above the din. “Last year, what happened? The principal’s car was upturned in
the middle of the night. We discovered it in the wee hours of the morning. It
lay with its four wheels facing the sky. The red paint was scratched all over.
The glasses were broken. Who did it? Let’s not ask. Everyone knows the facts.
And then the principal was asked to resign.
“We have never done anything wrong. Have we
ever said anything unfair? Have we ever asked for anything unfair?”
Manasa recalled nothing of the incident of
the principal’s car. She walked away from the crowd and Badal’s voice became
distant. In her mind his earlier claims rang clear: library, gym, at our own
expense if necessary. She was reminded of the insults. The way he had shut
himself up in a corner room of the hostel on the day Tridhaman and his party
boys went searching for him. It was the only room which had independent access
to the lavatory. Badal remained in hiding because he feared being killed. Or
could it be shame? And all this went
unrecorded by the students. He won because they liked the thought of a library
and a gym in the hostel. They overlooked his bad manners.
And now he was making up the story of the
principal’s car; the story of asking him to resign. Whoever sent him such
notices? Not possible. Manasa realized that Badal would never build a library
or a gym. ‘With our own expenditure’, he had promised. There was no truth in
it.
She had accosted him with ‘why are you
promising things that you cannot afford? Nor can the principal afford it.’ He
had winked and replied, “It’s my trump card”.
Tridhaman was right. The only way to clean
the dirty pond was to go knee deep into it with axe and shovel. He had asked
for voluntary action by the whole campus. No one paid heed to the honesty of
his claim. Everyone wanted miracles and Badal knew their psychology.
Manasa left the open and entered the college
canteen. There she found her group of friends. Tridhaman sat among them and
smoked a cigarette. Seeing her at the entrance, he waived to her. She growled
at him for smoking. He just laughed in his mouth. She said, “Badal is at it
again. He is explaining away his inability to conjure up the library and gym.”
Tridhaman retorted, “Whoever said he had
promised a library? He never said that. This is the era of doubt. You must
doubt your own ears. You must have heard it wrong.”
“I can reproduce him word by word. These are
facts that he denies. He promised an expenditure which was obviously
impossible.”
“Forget the truth, Manasa. This is called
post-truth politics. Let’s have some noodles.”
“Piku has discovered a large pumpkin in her
kitchen garden. She is all gaga over it. It is always in nature to bring forth
small fruits on large trees and large fruits on weaklings like the creeper. Is
it truly natural? It is as if the trees live for themselves while the creeper
is sucked out of its strength in affording to support the overgrown fruit, a
hollow one at that.”
“A pumpkin shouldn’t bother you, Manasa,”
said a friend.
After some time everything became quiet. The
teachers went to the classes and delivered their lectures to the docile batch
of students. Tridhaman and the friends were waiting for this signal. They would
also go to their classrooms. They stood up to go out of the canteen. One of
them went to the bill counter. Manasa also stood up.
Badal and a few of his closest friends had
won their bread again and they sauntered into the canteen patting each other’s
backs. Manasa looked at them with fascination. She could not see any sign of
worry. If they were sincerely interested in leading the college towards some
concrete goals, they would have worn worried expressions.
Her eyes fell on one of the boys wearing a
white shirt and a green sleeveless jacket over it. She blinked and was struck
by the resemblance.
She jerkily walked over to the group while
her friends looked at her open mouthed. There she took a deep breath while they
speechlessly observed her. She pointed a finger at Badal and declared
charmingly, “You are a pumpkin; you know? You are a pumpkin!”
ANURADHA
BHATTACHARYYA
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