Poetry & Prose

Farewell

by Sagar | May 2006

"Drink it up, mujji!" Suman commanded. I hit upon the fact that "pubic hair" was not going to be a friendly curse where I was going, and I said, "All right," finishing what was left of Tuborg from the tumbler. As fast as a drunk could be Prabin filled it up right away. He spilled as much outside the white fuzz fizzled in the dry wood of the table. The air was settling to its evening cool and the foreigners who occupied the next table were all red. Thamel was a swinging place at night.

The waiter was wearing a black bowtie on white shirt. His white sneakers below the ironed black pants, as he brought out the chicken chili, seemed oddly out of place. There were times when I would ruminate on such trivia for unnecessarily long time. But now the saucy jalapeno steam beckoned, drowning the cloud of cigarette smoke. Subarna looked at the waiter and said, "We need some music, man!" He looked around, as if to point out for the waiter's benefit that all the surrounding rooftop bars had live-bands.

"Oh, our band is almost ready. They will start playing no later than seven," the waiter said. "Anything else?"

"Tuborg, eight bottles please," I said.

"It is whisky-time for me," Suman declared. "A quarter Challenger," he ordered. All the others were on the chicken. The huge platter lay in front of me. As I was going to grab a fork, Raghav swooped in, gathered all the forks and promptly laid them on the beer-wet table. "God gave us hands so we would not use forks." He licked his fingers and munched on the meat. When the beer arrived everyone poured more. Suman hit the bottom of his whisky bottle with his elbow and turned the cap open. He swigged a mouthful and swallowed with a grimace. The bottle remained on the table uncapped.

At my right, Maneesh had his head in his hands, his elbows resting on the table. I nudged him to see if he was all right. He looked up. His eyes were red like rhododendron in the hills. I again asked him how he was. He seemed not to notice my question at all. He just stuttered. "You are going away; everybody is going to go away," he finally said. "We are disintegrating."

I asked what he meant.

"Our group, we are dis-in-te-gra-ting," he explained. We all laughed at this. Traditionally, I was the first one in our group to get drunk. Sometimes uncontrollably drunk. Over the years there were many times when these guys had cleaned after me. Once they even begged mercy from a kukri-welding innkeeper in Manakamana who was intent on avenging my drunken flirtations with his daughter with my blood. But today I was taking it easy. I had a million schemes in my head. Maneesh seemed to be the one taking my place as the drunk of the group. I patted his back. "It is all right. I will be back in no time," I said. My words came out with much less conviction than what I had intended. Maneesh put his head back on his hands and spit on the floor between his knees. "But we are done, we are so done," he said.

Meanwhile, Raghav who was sitting at the other end of the table had finished eating. He produced a cigarette from his pocket and took a long drag. He flashed a sly smile at me. He and I had unfinished business and I could see that his eyes oozed with drunken, almost childish satisfaction. I knew he was boiling to report on his exploits but I was not going to take the bait. The flash on his face was removed just in time when Prabin who was trying to disentangle himself from the table hit his knee on the wood and screamed in pain. We found out that he just wanted to go to the toilet. Finally, he was able to get up and slowly dragged himself toward the structure made of bare bricks with corrugated metal roof on the far side of the tables. Suman got up and followed him; Chiran too sat his glass on the table and stumbled behind them. Prabin pulled open the door and looked at his right to Chiran and at his left to Suman who was clutching his pants. He said, "What the fuck!" and all three of them went inside together. As they were coming back to out table, they had their arms around each other and they were singing:

Give your daughter to us,
Mother-in-law,
We need no dowry!

Raghav stood up and led us all through the song. He held his tight-fisted right hand up in the air, to the beat, as if it were a war song. Occasionally he cut the song leading and sucked from his cigarette, trying to keep the rhythm with hums. The foreigners looked at us and one made silent beats with his hand at the table. Prabin came to me pulled me up to dance. I went along and others clapped. The lights of Thamel swirled in front of my eyes, and as I swayed in the cool night air the music from the adjoining rooftops cascaded as if it was a part of the chorus that my friends were singing. While everyone was singing, Prabin came to a slow stop and rested his head on my shoulders. "Fuck you man," he whispered. Amid all the noise, clapping hands and pounding tables and uncontrollable laughter, he said to me, "I know you won't ever come back." Then as if jolted back to consciousness he started to hum the lines and put his hands on my shoulders. He gave me a slight push and looked at me as if we had just met. His eyes in the light of the bare bulbs that barely lighted the night showed and emotion so complex, yet so genuine, a stranger may have read it as anger. But Prabin was never an emotional chap.

Finally when the band started playing and we all settled into a tired repose. It was some English song and the foreigners were the only ones singing along. Suman was almost done with his quarter bottle of Challenger whisky. He drank with ease now and his face did not even grimace when he swallowed the acrid drink. Maneesh still had his head down. He had created a pool of spittle on the floor between his feet.

Calling everyone's attention Chiran picked up his backpack from the floor and produced a white envelope from it. He handed it over to me, over the beer bottles and the empty plates. "Congratulations," he said. On its cover the farewell card had a big chimp with a beer mug on one hand and a cigar hanging from its wobbly lips. A thought-bubble above his head said "Live Life King Size." On the inside flap Chiran had added his own note. "Five years is a long time. But we will miss you all the same." All the other fellows had signed their names amid an embellishment of a large ying-yang in black and white—a sign that used to be our group's logo during high school when such things were cool. There was something else inside the envelope—a box of condoms, which made me laugh. When I passed the card to Suman, he peered at the chimp and muttered, "Perfect."

It took me a moment to notice that Raghav had walked around the table and was at my side. He was quite tall and he had long silent strides like an elephant. He glanced at the card without much interest. Then he said to me, "I have something you will find more amusing." The foreigners at the other table were taking pictures and the flash lit Raghav's face for a brief moment. He had an uncanny way of getting attention and everyone at the table was looking at him with interest. He pulled out his wallet, winked at the fellows, and he handed the wallet to me. The inside flap had a picture of Priya and Raghav, their lips locked together; they seemed to be at a dance party and in the background there were other couples dancing. It must have been at the University. I handed the wallet back and reached for my glass of beer. Raghav placed his hands gently on my shoulders. He said, "I am also going places, don't you think?"

I could have picked up a fight with him; I could have accused him of crossing a boundary. This was the last night before I left and I did not want to leave with too bitter a memory. The picture was enough. He knew it too. But no one likes to dump smaller desires simply because grander are in sight. I should have punched him. The night had grown silent. I went back to my drink. The froth had settled to a thin film over the brown liquid and it had grown warmer. All the eyes were on me. I let them be.

Raghav walked back to his chair. He sat down with ease, looked around at the faces in a distant amusement and lit another cigarette. He dragged a long one with such prolonged attention as if all the satisfaction in the world were contained in that mouthful of smoke.

"I told you not to fuck with him tonight." Prabin scowled at Raghav.

"We are dis-in-te-gra-ting," Maneesh mumbled. Chiran blew at the beer fuzz on his freshly filled tumbler. It flew as if it was a composite whole across the table and broke apart as it landed at the centre of the table.

"Hard feelings drown better in beer," Subarna said. He motioned to the waiter. "Another round of beer, here. Tuborg. He won't get that where he is going."

"Sure," said the waiter, collecting the empty bottles from the table.

"It's Bud in America, you know?"

"America? Then he better be twenty-one or he can't drink," the waiter said. He looked as if he was gauzing.

"Really? It's a pity," Subarna said. He turned toward me and did a bad imitation of Tuborg beer's slogan from ads run in local TV networks. "So, tonight's the night?"

I smiled and nodded.

Chiran played the host and poured for everybody this time. Then he stood up and with an empty bottle in front of his mouth as if it were a microphone, he announced, "Some love one ship, some love two ships, but I love one ship, that is friendship." As Chiran was sitting down, Suman grabbed my arms, rose up, and commenced on what looked like a long, mumbling, belching shame of a farewell speech:

"Everybody is happy and our dead friend is embarking in a dream journey‚ ugh‚ but there are those who would be‚ ah‚ sad and some who would be jealous. But we have been friends forever,"—here he looked and grinned sheepishly at me —"And so‚ as I was saying "bitches don't ruin brotherhood‚ uh...," he was still saying when his belching lengthened to a bawling noise. He stopped his neck long as a swan's and out splattered half-chewed chicken, jalapeno greenly chewed to mingle with onion, which when hitting the table and my hands, floated fluidly in a mixture of white fuzz of beer and whisky. A wild vapor rose—pungent smell, like rotten egg-plants —and everyone screamed. The foreigners did not seem much amused by our lively crowd now. Maneesh coughed out all the mucus he could and spat it hard between his knees.

I dragged Suman to the toilet. He tried cleaning up while I held him steady. When he was done, I took him back to the table. He chuckled. "That was something for the ages. I hope you take that memory to America."

The stench was unbearable. The guys were beginning to try to clean up. My left hand was still sticky and I walked back to the toilet. Turning the faucet on, I put my hand under the pouring water and I looked in the mirror. The night had been all right and tomorrow was my big day: the family would gather at the airport to say goodbye, they would want to take pictures with me. Some would cry. And those documents that I would have to fill out for the customs. I could even call Priya from the airport, and tell her to fuck off. Well, maybe I would not even have the time.

When I went back, the table was mostly cleaned. Maneesh had finally pulled himself up. He had a long mark on his forehead where he had rested it on the table. He looked as if he had just woken up. Suman was drowsing; his head lay back on the chair. Others were lazily listening to the band play. I sat down beside Suman. It was late in the ngiht and having nothing more to say, I said to Suman, "Do not drink anymore, tonight, you hear?"

He nudged, moved his head sideways and blinked his eyes open. "But tonight's the night," he said.

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