Gossip - 5

The boy was about eight years old, and it was obvious from his shiny bicycle and the way he zigzagged every two seconds that it was a new cycle and that he had not yet mastered it. The plastic cover had not been removed from the seat and every time he moved it made a crunchy sound, and he looked like he was about to fall off any second. But miraculously he hung on and even managed to cover a few meters. The old man watched, amazed by the boy's energy and determination. Had he ever been that young? His memory was getting all hazy now. It was very long ago, another lifetime actually. And things were so different then.

When Lalringa was twelve years old his father took him out of school to work in the fields. Had it not been for his mother he would have worked there all his life. He looked at his left wrist and saw the faint scar where his uncle had accidentally cut him with a sickle during the harvesting season. There was a lot of blood, and he had fainted. His mother then insisted he was too young to work and sent him back to school, much to the chagrin of his father. Bless her old heart, she didn’t deserve to die so young, she would have loved to see her grandchildren. But his father was an old man when he died. No wait, his father was only fifty-seven, not old at all. But he had looked very old then, with his sunburned face and gnarled hands, and everyone in the community respected him and sought out his advice on everything. It was 1962, and Lalringa was twenty-eight and working at the Agriculture office in Aizawl, when Mizoram was still a district in the Assam government. His father had aged drastically since his mother's death five years before; it was almost like he had given up on life, on living. Lalringa and his brothers did their best to cheer him up, but their father was insistent on mourning his dead wife, he probably thought he was disrespecting her by being happy after she was gone. He worked from dusk till dawn in the fields, under the hottest sun, in the cold winter days, in the pouring rain, and smoked like a man possessed. Little wonder then that he developed lung cancer and died within a few months.

Pu Lalringa shook himself awake, telling himself not to live in the past anymore. Lately he had got into this habit of reliving his youth, remembering the days when he was young and carefree and life was waiting for him. He would remember the oddest things, for instance the stainless steel pocket knife his brother had taken away from him in 1946. Then there was Zolawmi, the quiet girl who had captured his heart in 1952, and the bright green puan she always wore on Sundays. Her family moved to Aizawl in 1954, and she got married very soon afterwards. Her husband was killed during the MNF insurgency, and Lalringa went to the funeral. Was that really forty years ago? He still had a vivid picture of her in his mind, her eyes puffy from crying, her children swarming around her, lost and confused. She was too overcome with grief that she didn’t even speak to him, and he had left quietly. It was 1967, and he was married and had a son. He never saw her again, but she was always with him, perched on the edges of his mind, never far from his thoughts. How did the years go by so fast, and where did they go? He wondered how she was doing, and if green was still her favourite colour.

It was evident now that the boy was showing off to his audience of one. He pushed down hard on the seats so that the crinkling sound was more pronounced, and every minute or so he would press the shiny metallic horn, and an annoying sound bleated out that reminded the old man of the bell used to summon the peon in his old office. The boy had not yet learned how to turn the corners, and after covering a few meters he would put his feet down and turn the cycle around, and would then continue with the show, the one-man show he was staging. The old man laughed indulgently, and remembered that his daughter's ten year old son had also asked for a cycle. His daughter had promised to buy one for him if he stood in the top three in the class in the just concluded first term exams. Results were due to come out in a couple of weeks, and the old man hoped his grandson would do well. Would his boy take time to learn the corners like this boy here did, or would he master it at once? Would he keep falling off, bruised and hurt? And would he need help to climb up and ride again, or would he proudly shake off any helping hands and do everything his way, by himself? Life was so unpredictable, Pu Lalringa thought, you never know how things are going to turn out, and you certainly couldn’t say where the next surprise is coming from. He was always so sure he and Zolawmi would get married and that they would live at his father's house, but how wrong he was. Anyway, he was only eighteen then, what did he know about life and its strange twists and turns?

Here came his wife now, laden with her shopping bags, clutching an armful of flowers. He made his way to her, still wondering how on earth he’d ended up marrying Hranghnuni, chatty little Hrangi with her sooty face and dirty hands. She was always a pesky kid, tagging behind her older brother Lianhnuna who was Lalringa’s best friend. He remembered her singing that popular song “Tlang tin leh mual tin ka thlir vel vawiin chu…” and following them everywhere they went. He still remembered the song, and started humming it.

“Why are you singing that old song? Take this bag. My shoulders are about to fall off,” said his wife.

He took the bag and walked behind her, still humming the song under his breath and wondering what colour bicycle his grandson would like.