It was a clear sky, the stars eminently visible. The smoke rose, forming little ringlets as it merged into the already stuffed-to-death environs. Ghosh babu sat there, in his favourite place on the terrace, thinking. They say the pipe is the hallmark of thinkers, someone Ghosh babu understood and identified with. He had given a great thought to everything that had occurred in his life or was about to occur. Reason was supreme for him. He had always been a meticulous man, someone who was mortally afraid of impulsiveness.
But today, as Ghosh babu sat there with the pipe hanging from his lips, something was different. He couldn’t put a finger on the exact location. It was as if he had sensed it. The fact that such a thought could have ever pierced his brain only confirmed his belief—to which he had no solid proof or reason—that something was wrong. He hurried to his study. He had to make things return to normal, feel assured again. Such feelings neither had nor will ever have a place in his life.
He calculated everything he had done in the day. Paid his monthly grocery bills, check. Bought tobacco for his pipe, check. Given the cook’s monthly wages, check. Done his share of reading for the day (he was into magical realism these days, although the entire idea seemed preposterous to him for magic and reality can’t be spoken of in the same breath), check. Yes, everything marked for the day had been completed. Then why this uneasiness, Ghosh babu wondered, as if something was yet to be done or achieved or realised?
He went back to the terrace and began pacing at a furious speed. He didn’t even notice that he had exhausted the tobacco in the pipe. It was only after a while when the tobacco stopped kicking in that he realised it. He refilled the pipe and lighted it with the match he always kept in his right pocket. The first drought felt refreshing, so refreshing that Ghosh babu actually reached out to sniff the tobacco in the air. It was then that he noticed something that he had several years ago when he was a child. It was the sky, the star-spangled sky. Time became a fluid, maybe a gas too, but it didn’t bother Ghosh babu who had at last discovered what was wrong. He smiled in understanding.
