A Persona Non Grata

 

20. A Persona Non Grata

W

hile heading for the hotel, Mayank reflected on what he had gained from the meeting with the trio: Chandrahas, Suryabhan, and Mallika. Armed with a fresh clue, he felt he could retrace the chain of events and piece together a crime story. Earlier, while examining a dead railway ticket, he had uncovered a crucial detail: on 26 January 2012, Aarohan had been travelling from Udagmandalam to Mettupalayam aboard the Nilgiri Mountain Rail. Now Chandrahas had all but disclosed that Suryabhan and his associates had scandalously abandoned their mentally challenged nephew in a tiger-infested jungle in Karnataka twelve years ago. Considering the geography, Mayank tried to sift through the information. It seemed Aarohan was lingering around the Nilgiris, possibly near the train tracks, without a clear purpose. The mystery remained: who had helped him board the train to Mettupalayam, and how? Mayank, optimistic, believed that, in due course, he would find the missing link.

When Mayank reached the hotel, Aarohan was wide awake. He had taken a bath and was waiting for his buddy. A certain eagerness was evident in his expression, which Mayank could not ignore.

‘You’re late,’ Aarohan grumbled. He sounded fussy for once. Mayank tried to read his friend’s concern: maybe he was careful not to forget his hard-earned dream. Yes, that’s it!

‘Sorry, Aarohan, I couldn’t make it any earlier. An old friend of mine… you know, I bumped into him after so many years,’ Mayank lied.

‘And here you are. I’m ready with a dream, and I can’t afford to forget it,’ said Aarohan.

‘Right then. Go on—I’m all ears,’ said Mayank. Aarohan recalled his dream.  

***      ***      ***      ***

The place was a neighbourhood in South West Kolkata, off a narrow, nameless alley near Behala Chowrasta. There, I came across a beggar entreating in a desperate tone, ‘Babu, give me a rupee. I’m so hungry.’ It was barely half past six, too early for a beggar to start his day. 

I embody small-town sensibilities, where everyone I encounter must have a distinct identity—even a beggar. Before offering a coin, I feel compelled to address them by name. That is the minimum. If his name is unknown, I get creative and invent one for him that sounds endearingly appropriate. A visually challenged person is ‘Surdas’, a singing mendicant ‘Tansen’, and the moniker ‘Maharaj’ goes to one whose well-groomed pigtail prompts me to guess his bank balance! I hate to take the easy course of equating beggary with laziness!

There was something oddly conspicuous about the beggar’s face—a mole-like growth on his nose, resembling an obstinate fly perched there. He also sported a moustache with a thin, bald streak at its centre, as though his upper lip were split. A swirl of hair just above his forehead resisted all attempts to be tamed, and his chin boasted an unkempt goatee, contrasting with his hairless cheeks. Finally, his snaggleteeth were such that his upper lip barely concealed them, and his eyes were radiant with eagerness. I felt an overwhelming urge to touch the texture of his mole.

Slowly, my memory began to serve me well. The fellow before me was Lamboo, my neighbour’s son, who had strayed away some fourteen years earlier. It all happened on a dusty afternoon in 1989, when the summer was reluctant to recede even in July. Lamboo had accompanied his uncles to the town to do some shopping. By 9 p.m., when the group returned, Lamboo was not with them.

Good grief, what a night! A cold shiver ran down my spine when I got the news. It threatened to suck the happiness out of my lovely little village. Some lamented the shoppers' carelessness, while others tut-tutted out of pity. However, I could not help but suspect that there was a lot of murkiness surrounding the event.

Lamboo was a seventeen-year-old boy then.

If being mentally infirm were a crime, Lamboo would have been labelled a criminal. Not to mention the unkind urchins in the neighbourhood who always had something up their sleeves to torment him; even his family bore a grudge against him. It was a titanic resentment against God, which, over time, hardened into animosity towards Lamboo. He was already fatherless, and the emotional neglect from his family made his situation unbearably ghastly. While other children received their nourishment and developed their muscular physiques, Lamboo remained ever so underfed. Yet—God only knew how—he grew in height. Being the tallest in the brood, he earned the nickname ‘Lamboo’, meaning the tall one. ‘Lamboo, Lamboo, as tall as a Bamboo,’ everybody would chant the anthem of sadism. Thus, growing tall and anaemic, the mentally handicapped chap became the butt of jokes. Even Lamboo, the tallest, frequently banged his head against the door beams. His peers—or the bullies—used to poke iron nails or bamboo spines into his back and rejoiced as Lamboo winced in pain.

It is ever fashionable to brand a thief, a tame animal, and a mentally deranged person.

The game of prick-the-innocent continued. One day, a new oppressor, a tattoo artist, arrived with a needle between his fingers. The sight of a pointed instrument was enough to make Lamboo shake nervously. He tried to escape, but a ready-to-torment older cousin overpowered him. ‘Be merciful, brother, and leave me alone,’ cried Lamboo, pleading with everyone around. He wept bitterly for only a few minutes, then stopped suddenly. ‘That’s like a good boy, Lamboo,’ the tattoo scratcher said, and went on viciously pricking the innocent as if invoking the collective malice of the community of Lamboo-haters! Fortunately, the poor sufferer soon felt the hold on him loosen, so he got to his feet in a flash. Then he ran desperately and vanished; nobody knew where. He did not return home that night or the following day; instead, he returned only a day later, ravenously hungry. Before the tattoo session was forced to a premature end, he had received the first three letters of his name on his right arm, ‘LAM.’ Yes, they were all capitals in English, as if his relatives had the presentiment that Lamboo would stray into English-speaking land one day! Thus, the half-done tattoo remained permanently etched into his skin, like the hairy mole on the tip of his nose.

Today, I recognised the beggar in my dream. He was Lamboo, my lovely little country cousin, and I found a three-letter ambigram on his right arm.

Days passed after that sultry afternoon in July 1989. None brought any news of Lamboo, the runaway—not even an all-knowing crow. In time, the family forgot him, and the village rascals turned to other forms of cruelty, such as tormenting a cat or drugging a bull. They, too, forgot Lamboo, the object of their persecution. Then twelve long years passed just like that. With education, the bullies mended their ways and became gentlemen in society. The saplings along the fence grew into trees and became village landmarks. The crows and vultures we saw in large numbers while attending school vanished. The community's moneylender sensed the accumulated anger of his harassed borrowers, so he left the village for a cosy life in the town.

Yet Lamboo did not return.

People urged the devastated mother to forget her son and focus on the welfare of twelve other bright children in the extended family. Some even advised her to try opium to alleviate her agony. How could she? Lamboo was alive, and he would surely come back one day in flesh and blood—the belief buttressed her psychic self; it was the raison d’être of her existence. The police could accept that Lamboo was dead without locating the body, but no mother would ever do so. It would constitute the most un-motherly version of reality. To her, motherhood was a vow to suffer for a lifetime, not to abdicate it on any pretext. The mother would shed tears for her runaway son when the family cooked a special festive mutton pulao. Sometimes silently, but mostly in bitter wails, she would recall her son’s beautiful features. He was fair and handsome, and his exploits were unforgettable, such as holding a poisonous snake with his bare hand or jumping onto a hedge of thorns, which he would do just for a ladoo. She would accuse others of being selfish and forgetting a sibling so quickly. She, however, had not accused anyone of knowingly dumping her son, for she could not imagine that such an act of cruelty was ever possible on earth.

Nevertheless, she had to mouth those words twelve years later!

The day seemed unusual, with a sudden flurry of activity in the family. The village barber followed the priest, and the duo accompanied the family to the pond, carrying earthen pots and sundry ritual paraphernalia. Lamboo’s mother, now reduced to a tiny bag of bones, could make nothing of it. Only in the afternoon did a loudmouthed boy in the brood disclose the secret: the bustle was for giving Lamboo a belated funeral, for it was mandatory to do so after twelve years of one’s going astray. The rituals would propitiate the supernumerary soul!

The disclosure caused the old woman’s fragile frame to collapse. She died of a silent heart attack. When she breathed her last, the sun had not yet set, but the heat had waned. The event left the house blissfully quiet, with no one grieving a lost soul.  

Before death could offer solace to the miserable old lady, she had murmured her last words: You all have banished my son, and Narayan, the Almighty, will not be kind to you. Those who heard her mention God as she departed this mortal world had only words of praise for her:

‘Aha! How piously did the saintly soul chant God’s name as she breathed her last in daylight! She’ll go straight to Vaikunth, where Lord Vishnu awaits her. She’ll be the darling of all in the intoxicating domain of Soma and nectar, spending blissful aeons beneath a champak tree in eternal bloom.’

I had witnessed the sham funeral some three years earlier, and when I saw Lamboo in my dream today, my first reaction was to take him back to the village. But I had other tasks on hand. A high-profile researcher had invited me to collaborate, and his action research, ‘Justice for the Differently Abled,’ closely aligned with my interests. Lamboo was one of them; it was impossible to look the other way. Rescuing him would be the real action research!

‘Hey, do you recognise me, Lamboo? I’m Karamveer, your old buddy,’ I addressed the beggar.

‘Babu, give me a rupee…I’m so hungry,’ he repeated the words he had spoken when I first made eye contact with him. Indeed, he did not recognise me.

I went up to him, touched his hairy mole, and examined his tattoo. No, they were real, not optical illusions. I called out, ‘Come, Lamboo; I’ll give you a ladoo—my treat.’ Just in time, it occurred to me how Lamboo used to relish sweetmeats of that name! It worked precisely.

People in the eatery gawped at us. It was rare for a lunatic street beggar to share a table with someone who looked suave! But before anyone could ask, I ordered a plate of ladoos and waited for Lamboo to finish them. Then we left the city and headed for our, nay, Lamboo’s village. He did not bother me en route, as if I were a guide to him, coming from nowhere in the forest to lead him the way! Perhaps he remembered his past, not to articulate it but to cherish it in silence.

Lamboo’s relations were basking in the sunshine of bliss after calming the lost soul with a belated funeral. Now, each assured of a larger share of the property, they sat dreaming big. No wonder, then, that when Lamboo arrived, they refused to welcome him.

‘What’s this drama all about, man?’ the eldest of the uncles led the campaign for abdication.

‘He’s your dear little Lamboo, Uncle. Can’t you see the mole on his nose?’ I pleaded piteously.

‘Tut-tut! You seem too concerned about the world, I say. And cleverly, you’re dumping an urchin on us,’ another uncle alleged, endorsing the eldest’s stance.

It was a moment of unbearable frustration. The family’s reluctance to accept Lamboo reminded me of Kipling’s story, ‘The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes’, in which the so-called dead, upon returning to life at the cremation ground, are not permitted to return to their homes. Instead, the pallbearers push them into a crater on the riverfront, where they live on crows and sleep on straw.

Then, before frustration could push me away, I saw a woman come out. ‘Namaste, Aunty ji. I badly need your help, please. Look here at what’s on this poor chap’s arm. It’s ‘LAM.’ Can’t you recall how the boy fled home to escape the tattoo scratcher?’ I appealed to her.

The woman did not know the English alphabet. Then again, in that moment of truth, it did not matter which language she knew; it was only a matter of listening to her conscience. She said ‘yes,’ much to the chagrin of the whole household.

They all agreed, albeit warily. But how could they welcome a soul back? Had the funeral not propitiated him? He was a ghost—as if Kipling's story were being enacted here!

Now, the unanimous decision was that Lamboo would live with me. They authorised me to rehabilitate him and, for that purpose, gave me three hundred rupees.

Lost, I was taunted by one of Lamboo’s uncles, ‘Man, is it a small amount? The truckers take only 200 rupees to drop a lunatic off in the Simlipal tiger reserve. But here you get an extra 100 rupees for all the hassle you’ve been through to track down this poor nut. So, why the fuss?’

***      ***      ***      ***

On finishing his dream recountal, Aarohan lapsed into abrupt silence. Soon, his face crumpled, and he buried it in the pillow to sob.

Now, a connection between Aarohan’s dream and reality became evident. Was it fictional? Did he cryptically refer to his own exile to the tiger reserve in Karnataka while speaking of Lamboo’s exile to the forests of Simlipal? In his lucid moments, had he begun to remember everything about himself?

Uncannily, though, Aarohan seemed to have acquired mind-reading skills. The other day, Irving advised Mayank to take Aarohan to Manasi Sundari, the Recluse, who lived atop Mt Harriet, for treatment. Soon, Aarohan dreamt of a Sundari Kumari hypnotically wooing him as her follower. Was the Sundari Kumari in his dream the same person as Manasi Sundari, the Recluse of Mt Harriet? If so, how could Aarohan dream like that? He had absolutely no idea what had transpired between Mayank and Irving! Similarly, in his dream he deduced that Mayank—represented by an Inspector Daulat Ram—belonged to the rare Bombay Oh blood group. How come? Possibly, the dream of his lost-and-found pet dog, Aibo, morphing into its original avatar was the visualisation of that psychic process.

There was a catch, though. Not all Aarohans encountered in dreams were carbon copies of what existed in reality; instead, there were subtle differences. Sometimes names differed, yielding anagram-like correspondences, whereas in others the sequence of events was a veritable hotchpotch. Yet enough matched, rhymed, coincided, and complemented the flow of events. Sometimes they gave hints of upcoming incidents, such as their trip to Port Blair, and at other times they unveiled past events unknown to the world at large. For example, Mayank had sold his kidney, but Aarohan dreamt that his dream companion, Daulat Ram, had donated the organ. Was Aarohan’s blood group as rare as Mayank’s? Aarohan, as Mayank knew, belonged to the O group if the grouping test done at Netarhat High School was accurate. Then again, who could state the correct position? 

The last-mentioned doubt begged to be resolved first. Mayank thought he should have Aarohan’s blood sample tested afresh while simultaneously verifying his kidney count. The other day, when the latter was changing into a fresh dress, Mayank had glanced furtively at his body. There were no surgical scars, so nobody had deceitfully taken advantage of Aarohan’s mental unsoundness to steal his organ. Then why did he dream that Daulat Ram had only one kidney if the latter was not a proxy for Mayank, the possessor of the rare Bombay Oh blood group and of a single kidney?

After narrating his dream, Aarohan sometimes felt a maudlin fluidity come over him. The other day, he let out a bitter cry as he finished recounting a dream about his childhood miseries and his unsuccessful attempt to secure a job in Tatanagar. Today, for the second time, he sobbed after telling his dream. Why? Had he unwittingly divulged his private griefs, which he did not want to share? Yet a common thread ran through all the events: he was always cheated, outwitted, deserted, accused, vilified, misunderstood, short-changed, misled... even a monkey did not hesitate to slap him. His dreams had always portrayed him as a loser. Why so?

Now that both friends were sober, they were no longer averse to daylight. So Mayank pulled back the curtains to let the soothing view of the Bay of Bengal ease the gloom inside. It was already 4 p.m., and he thought they could stroll outside. But before that, he had to console Aarohan, who was still lying down, his face buried in the pillow.

Presently, Mayank moved closer to Aarohan. He would console him without suggesting that crying over a character who had been harassed in the dream was plainly absurd.

God! Aarohan had a temperature. He was severely indisposed yet reluctant to drop a hint! While feeling his friend’s body temperature, the first thing that came to Mayank’s mind was that they should not have boozed so immoderately. He overcame his guilt the next moment, thinking that a fever would not spare even a teetotaller! Aarohan also stated that he had mild abdominal pain. Hence, there was a need for a quick check-up.

A doctor came. Even before that, his lab technician arrived to take blood samples from Aarohan, who cooperated while being pricked. Fortunately, the dream character Lamboo’s fear of needles did not affect Aarohan’s actual behaviour. However, according to the doctor, there was not much to worry about, but he advised additional tests to rule out other common causes, including a routine ultrasound.

As he left, he warned Aarohan with an anticipatory smile, ‘No nightcap, eh?’

And Aarohan returned the smile with one of his own.

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By

Ananta Narayan Nanda

Balasore, 23-8-2026

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