Spring 2010, Calcutta

I first met Zap at the steps of his childhood home breathing the cleanest air of the decade. After months of polluted air clogging our breath, the stars were visible and the sky resembled the ceiling of a planetarium I had visited one summer when I was ten. The guide at the planetarium had told us if we were to squint our eyes well enough, we could see Venus on a clear day. The sky had wrinkled with age and decay since that visit to the planetarium. Chemicals from factories promising progress had smoked haze into the city. But that night was different.

We ring the bell that had ‘Zafar’ written below it in a childish scrawl. The night air is so crisp I want to fill my lungs with smoke. It was only later that the scientists told the reporters: those few days of spring were the decade’s only days of clean air. I think aloud about smoking a cigarette before entering. Nikhil objects—as he did to almost everything I said. I was wearing my black shirt with translucent buttons and blue denim. It was the first and last time I wore my green glass bead necklace.

Why does it say Zafar here? I ask Nikhil.

That was the name his parents gave him. He changed it to Zap before our Class X exams. Why would anyone do that?
Zafar sounds like a restaurant. At least that is what he said. Come to think of it, there were at least three restaurants back in Calcutta named Zafar-Zafar Biryani.
Zafar Rolls and Zafar Family Restaurant!

Zafar is the name of an emperor as well.

Tell him that!

The shrill calling bell that sounds more like an eager bird rings louder the second time. Zap opens the door with a jerk-as if he had been running for miles to reach it. He wanted to look at Nikhil and say something, but he saw me first. A noisy bike passed us rumbling like a thunderstorm.

Zap’s eyes pierced through my body, reaching the hollow centre of my stomach. I waited for his gaze to make its way out of my insides, but it seemed to have settled there.

Did you see the fucking sky tonight?

Thad forgotten these stars bloody existed, Nikhil replies.

We craned our necks to see past the wires and poles, a tangle of lives lived through telephone cables and electricity lines. The sound of the noisy bike trails behind refusing to leave the street. It gives us time before we plunge into conversations. Zap is almost skinny, yet if I had to describe him to someone else, I would use a word like ‘lean’. He is wearing a black ‘Who killed Democracy’ T-shirt and torn grey denim folded at the bottom. The folds had been made with precision and it stopped just at the point where his darkened ankles could be seen.

I don’t think I need to formally introduce you. Both of you have heard enough about each other, says Nikhil. That was the only sentence that began and ended. our introduction.

I say hello and touch the necklace which breaks for no apparent reason. Before I can save it, the glass beads scatter, running like tributaries, finding refuge in the chipped staircase of the old building. Nikhil and Zap step away from me, bothered by the untimely disruption of a broken necklace. I hear Zap say that he was going upstairs to fetch the torch. The glass beads settle in corners while I squat on the staircase, embarrassed of breaking the sanctity of the moment. The staircase was minimally lit by a trumpet-shaped lamp. I hear Nikhil’s impatient breathing behind me. He doesn’t bend; instead, he nudges my waist twice unsure if he should leave me and follow his friend.

Let’s go. You really cannot take so long over this thing.

Sorry!

How did you break it anyway? You really are quite clumsy!

I could feel the summer air on my spine between my shirt and my denim. I pull my shirt down and pick the last of the beads before Nikhil could say anything else.

When we reach Zap’s apartment door, a trapped cloud of dense coffee aroma envelops us. A machine I couldn’t see was making unusually loud grunting sounds. Zap peeps from the kitchen, his hands on the door. He is wearing two silver rings, one of them had scales of a snake and two glittering eyes. I catch the snake’s eye. It is green and looks at me like I were a mere prey.

Coffee for everyone?

I am the only one of us three who nods. Zap already knew Nikhil’s answer.

Milk and sugar?

No sugar. Only milk, I say.

Zap tries to smile at me in an ordinary kind of way, but the smile misses his face and he simply presses his lips. Both he and the green-eyed snake disappear.

The building that seemed aged from the exterior suddenly transforms itself inside. It is one of those unremarkable old houses that has been torn and split into apartments; Zap’s being a large, modern one. The main door opens into a hall where I am standing, and two rooms are on the left and right of a corridor. There are cans of red paint everywhere. Nikhil’s house back in Delhi had red walls in every room. I look around to imagine the past and future of the apartment. A chest of drawers and a table are covered with bedsheets. There is a rough grey linen couch close to where I am standing. The couch is the only thing uncovered. It looks brand new as if it arrived in the house after the paint job had started. At the window facing the street, there is a vase, petals sprayed with water to make them live longer. They are yellow, either orchids or tulips, but I can’t tell. There are cartons everywhere, boxes of all sizes kept a few inches away from the wall. Three guitars in leather cases stand against the bedsheet-covered chest. Even the disarray is well arranged like a film set.

So the new thing in my life is that I am not drinking these days. At least I haven’t had alcohol in the last fortnight, says Zap.

It is as if Nikhil asked him that question. Nikhil gives a knowing shake of his head as if he did ask him the question.

His eyes linger on the monster teeth-shaped ashtray on the table. It is overflowing with cigarette stubs, matches and marijuana seeds. He picks it up and goes inside the kitchen.

I can hear the tap running. He keeps the wet ashtray on the table granting me permission to smoke.

You may smoke your cigarette now. Nikhil says to me.

May. I repeat after him.

Nikhil always used ‘may’ in his sentences, not ‘could’ not ‘can’, like normal people but ‘may’—as if he was the one who had the right to decide for the rest. I want to say, thank you for your permission, but I am still unsure whether to start any conversation at all.

Zap comes out of the kitchen patting the wall like it were his old friend.

I am breaking this kitchen wall. he says.

Guess who I met on the way? Nikhil raises his voice slightly as if he wants it to reach Zap before Zap can find his next sentence.

I met your maths tutor. The one who had groped that white boy in high school? Nikhil replies.

Wasn’t that supposed to be a rumour?

Aren’t rumours supposed to be true?

Yes! No shit. So he is still alive? He was seventy when we were in school.

Well, he seemed fine to me. He asked me, ‘Where is Zap these days? He would ask my advice on everything related to his career. I introduced him to the stage manager of the theatre where he had his first show? Apparently, you owe him a favour, Zap.

Nikhil finishes his sentence with something that is between a question and an accusation.

I owe him a favour? That’s news to me.

Yes. Anyway, I cold him you are back in town.

Oh damn!

Did you really ask his advice about everything in school?

Zap smiles, not committing to an answer. It seemed like his demeanour, a person refusing to be pinned down by his past.

What was his name by the way? Zap asks.

Ram Sir?

Robi Sir?

White Rum! That was the name he was known by!

They speak in unison and laugh but it isn’t exactly a laugh. It is a continuous conversation. I don’t understand what they are saying but it doesn’t really matter. It is like sitting in a café and overhearing conversations that are not meant to be overheard. Except I know that this conversation is for me.

Nikhil and Zap were film directors. Zap directed stage plays and films. Nikhil was trained as a cinematographer and directed films. That spring, Zap had just moved back to Calcutta after a few years of trying to permanently live in Germany. Calcutta was also Nikhil’s home town.

Zap did not speak about his reason of moving back, but I remember Nikhil telling me that the art council which had promised funding for Zap’s long-term stay had backed off.

I heard them speak of everything except Germany and understood that both of them did not like to speak about their disappointments or betrayals.

Nikhil told me about Zap’s work when we were in a taxi on our way to Zap’s house. I was looking at the rear-view mirror and wearing my 307 orange organza lipstick. The orange was like the flame of the winter fire made by the security guards huddled during Delhi winters. I rolled it twice on my lips. The taxi driver looked underaged to drive. He was so thin he could barely fill the large bucket seat. He tried to get a conversation out of Nikhil, the kind of conversation that gave a semblance of class equality. But Nikhil did not relent in these situations. I tried to make up for Nikhil’s abruptness like I usually did. The driver had to drop us at the entrance of the lane where Zap lived, where a crowd of people stood waiting. He told us helpfully that it was for a temple that had a good rumour network of wish fulfilment. He said he knew of someone who got a job after years of unemployment, only when he had tied a thread at the temple. I had read in the (papers that for one peon’s post at a government office, eight thousand postgraduate candidates had applied. Merit seemed like an illusion that only belonged to the privileged. I remember reading somewhere that students had stood in the sun for eight hours to collect a form for a coaching centre. One of them died of a heat stroke, two fell very ill. Did the rest of them get through to the college?

They must have all prayed.

So I was telling you about Zap, Nikhil cleared his throat like he did when he said what he did not intend to actually say.

Zap started directing stage plays only when he was in college. He was invited to take over a big musical production of Alice in Wonderland by the British theatre company that wanted to bring the expensive theatre experience to India. Zap hated the idea, but he wanted to move out of Calcutta, Nikhil added.

Anyway, that was a decade back. Zap moved from theatre into films and is now back to Calcutta. He will probably work through both art forms. Can you believe he barely visited Calcutta the decade he was abroad!

Nikhil continued the conversation while we passed the queue of people waiting to make their wish. I had not seen any play or film made by Zap. But I had been told that he had been making films since he was fifteen.

Excerpted with permission from like Summer of Then by Rupleena Bose
Publishing/ Penguin Random House (2024)
You can buy your copy here.