Letting go

"Lokhora! Lokhora!" shouted a lean fellow, announcing the destination, in a sleeveless banyan that has become a dirty grey from its earlier white colour. Like a ballet dancer he flung open the back door, leapt on to the foothold at the same time, and balanced himself gracefully as he stood there keeping the door ajar with one hand. Three people got off, stooping to avoid hitting their heads on the ceiling of the Tracker, and another three standing on the pavement stepped in. There were already four passengers sitting in the row behind the driver. And three were squeezed in the front seat alongside the driver such that when he changed gears, he roughly brushed his fist against the knee of the passenger sitting next to him. Women, therefore, generally avoided sitting in the front row. ."Oi! Move from there!" cried out Brojen Barua agitatedly from the netted verandah of the house. "How many times should I tell you guys not to park yourselves here!".The people in the Tracker didn't see him, but the driver started the engine and sped away. Brojen Barua was getting tired of these Trackers that had converted the spot right outside his gates into a stop. This had happened in the last two years or so with these vehicles almost taking over public transport in Guwahati. They were now seen in every nook and cranny, covering parts of the city where no buses go. "Who gave you the permission to make this a stop?" he often barked at them. And they ignored him, looking at him as if to say, do you own the road?.After the Tracker left, it was not even ten minutes when another showed up. Brojen Barua, nursing a perpetual strain because of his stiff neck, thought better not to waste his voice. It was nine in the morning and it was not just the Trackers that were disturbing him but the grunts and growls of the vehicles that plied by incessantly. There seemed not a moment of respite from the cacophony. And Brojen Barua wistfully rolled his eyes, as he always did when the irony of changing times flitted through his thoughts. This lane had been named after Bishnu Rabha, kala guru, a much beloved cultural icon of the Assamese people, who left behind a legacy of musical compositions decades ago. But with the rise of apartments over the years, the lane had come to be home to many migrants from outside Assam. Especially for those from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab who have been lured into Guwahati by the coal trade in Basistha. And for them, Bishnu Rabha held no meaning. It was just a name on the signboard at the mouth of the lane in Beltola Tiniali. And with time, as the density of these high rise apartments and population increased, this lane came to be known simply as Bhetapara Road because it led to the newly developed Bhetapara area and beyond. As people forgot it as the kala guru Bishnu Rabha lane, it began to generate a different kind of music night and day. This was created by the continuous rush of vehicles, robbing the peace of the people in the neighbourhood. And residents like Brojen Barua, who had been here for more than 20 years, longed for the old days when this side of the city was the outskirts and when quietude still defined its character..Brojen Barua hated these Trackers but he couldn't stop his daughter Majoni, who taught at the university, from taking it to Jalukbari, from where she walked up to the wing that housed the Political Science department. Majoni had finished her MPhil from Delhi School of Economics and joined Gauhati University as a guest lecturer to start the centre for Sociology, under the head of the political science department. Next year, in 2011, it would become a full fledged department she was told, where she would definitely find a permanent position. Brojen Baruah was extremely proud that his daughter taught at the university, but the fact that she took a Tracker to work unnerved him. Every now and then, the newspapers and news channels flashed gory images of accidents involving Trackers, and it made him break into cold sweat. He shared his concern with his daughter, but she brushed it aside saying, "It is all luck, Deuta, accidents happen even inside the house. Besides, I am paid just eight thousand rupees per month, until I become permanent, which means I cannot afford a driver to take me in the car, wait for me there till I finish, and then bring me home." How often her mother had chided her for not learning to drive. "The car sits there while you travel by Trackers!" she would say. But Majoni never developed an interest in driving. She never felt the need too; she found public transport quite convenient..But that day, sitting in the verandah, it was not the Trackers or Majoni travelling by these vehicles that disturbed Brojen Barua. Something else was gnawing at him. All of 70 years old, he sat there in his knee-length Bermuda pants and a white sleeveless ganjee, uncomfortable with the pain in his neck, looking at the row of fireballs, the red fiery flowers, sprouting out of the ground amidst tall green leaves, skirting his garden which had turned a bit unruly this monsoon season. He thought of calling Biju the next day, the unemployed 25-year-old graduate from Haflong, who was earning his livelihood clearing gardens and painting people's houses these days. Brojen Barua's wife always gave him lemon juice in such weather whenever he came. Her heart went out to him, educated but reduced to such menial work. She told him that she would pray for him so that he got a good respectable job someday..But trying to focus his thoughts on the garden was like trying to distract himself from a nagging ache. A former additional chief engineer with the irrigation department of the state, and known for his honest dealings, Brojen Barua now ran his household on his pension, which was decent enough, supplemented by the rent he received from a family who lived in a two-room accommodation behind his four-bedroom two-storey house. While in service, he managed some savings through investments in LIC, NSC and the like. But most of it was spent in later years on funding his two sons' masters in business administration in Delhi, where they eventually settled down; Majoni's wedding to an engineer with OIL India, who now live together in the OIL campus at Noonmati; and the knee replacement surgery of his wife last year. The doctors said that his wife should rest as much as possible after the surgery but the problems of finding a regular domestic help meant that she had to mop the floor of the house every once in a while. She did this by standing in a way such that she did not have to bend or squat.