Chapter 4 - Metamorphosis

[It's been lying dead for a while now and it kind of pains my heart to see it thus. I am starting off on this. Please read and add.]

K turned the key into the lock and walked in. He chose the corner that was the least dirty and carelessly dumped his single bag there. A thick layer of dust covered the single table and chair. The matteress on the cot was ancient and probably was home to various bugs and insects. He would have to get a new one. Sunlight filtered in throught the wooden slats on the window and dust motes danced in the beams. The noises from the streets below - of hawkers crying out wares, taxis honking and people shouting in general - seemed muted and far away. He carefully cleaned a corner of the table and perched on it and began to think. He had clean slate in front of him - well, almost. He would have to make it matter, and he would have to be careful not to screw up like he had in Delhi.

Delhi, he thought, was far away. Diwakar had pulled strings and somehow he had escaped a prison sentence. He still did not understand fully what had happened, but from what little he could understand, he was in awe of Diwakar. Diwakar had faked K's death in an accident. They found a body in the mangled car on the highway with the right things on it. The coroner and the police had said that the face was crushed beyond any recognition. K was declared dead. In the meanwhile, Diwakar had arranged for the plastic surgery and since K was pretty much penniless, it had been decided that K would work for Diwakar and pay it off.

K became one of Diwakar's fixers. His job was pretty simple - whenever there was a problem, he had to fix it. With whatever means necessary. Violence was completely acceptable - a broken leg or an arm here, a missing finger there. And K did it well. It pricked his conscience sometimes, but he justified it with his continued survival and freedom.

Then one day, after about three years, Diwakar gave him an assignment that required delicate handling and trip outside Delhi. He was handed a fat envelope with tickets, money and vague instructions. Further instructions would await him at his destination, he was told. And that was how K landed up in Calcutta in that dusty room tucked away in the bylanes of Chowringhee.

[Tarun]
The room had come cheap from the cash-strapped elderly Anglo-Indian who lived there. "The city of Palaces indeed", he murmured to himself. Chowringhee had come a long way from its colonial glory days. The mansions reeked of neglect, with every elegant facade in various states of dilapidation and disrepair. He got onto his feet, and with a forlorn look, he surveyed the room. In a very apt way, the state of this room rather resembled his life at the moment. The room was nothing but a liability to the landlord. He locked the door and made his way to Sealdah railway station. The newly constructed Metro station was gleaming in just the way that the rest of the city was not. He got on a train to Kalyani, hoping his contact there would find him. The instructions Diwakar had given hadn't bothered to go further than this.

[Vivek]
The train ride was long and he killed time drinking tea out of little earthen pots. The beggars on the train sang out in rattling voices shaking their tins under his nose for money. He dropped some coins in. His good deed for the day.

[Tarun]
The man sitting next to him hadn't spoken a word since he had bumped into him at Howrah. He had just wagged a finger as if to say follow me. To K, he was the picture of the stereotypical Calcutta intellect. With a neat starched kurta, and his nose buried deep in "Shatranj Ke Khiladi", he would not have been out of place at the coffee houses. The train trundled into a station called Ghoshpara. Starched-Kurta got up and made for the door. K followed him. After an eerily silent train journey, K was more welcoming of what lay ahead. Not that it weighed on his conscience anyway.

Kalyani was a small town. Till very recently it was just another one of those towns that spring up near big factories. It was only now that Kalyani had woken up to modernization. Starched-Kurta walked out of the station and got into a cycle-rickshaw. K sat down beside him and the the rickety contraption lurched into motion with various creaks and groans. A twenty minute ride later, they were dropped outside the gates to a fairly-large sized park which was called Central Park since it was at the centre of the town. It seemed to be the main town centre with shops along the road that ran around the park. Starched-Kurta walked in and K followed him. Yet again.