Once upon a Someone: Stories

By Ayon Banerjee

A mysterious fortune teller on a train across a timescape helps simplify the mysteries of life. Green leopards,
flying whales, marshmallow wars & a quirky origin story of everything from gender equality to global warming.
A cynical poet & an affluent socialite spend an evening together & empty each other’s hearts of all the unused
melancholy in them. An incoherent girl helps simplify the life of the most sorted boy of her class. A reluctant
purchase of a jar of peanut butter leads to a serendipitous discovery of a dead author. A fiction writer’s
characters rise in revolt & refuse to obey his pen. A deserted town that has only unmanned flower stalls left in it.
Two men from different generations cling on to each other with their last grip on a vanishing bloodline. Two
hyper-competitive professionals become friends for life under the unlikeliest of circumstances. A voyeur and an
exhibitionist discover one another, each unaware of the other’s version of reality. Two star-crossed lovers whose
orbits keep colliding & drifting away from each other. A man misses his regular commute & walks into an
alternate existence in a strange land. A queer old man shows up & intrudes young Kafka just as he is about to
propose to his girlfriend. A man falls back in love with his wife the day after their divorce. An age ends &
another begins when three destinies come together during a brief intermission for one violent collision before
disintegrating forever, taking all the music with them.
These are only a few of the routes by which Ayon Banerjee takes you on a roller-coaster ride of plots that cut
through genres & weaves together an unputdownable collection of stories which seamlessly drift from the
classical to modern style of telling short stories that narrate missed journeys & accidental destinations, archived
conversations & clandestine confessions, love & loss, destiny & time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Jun 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9789356106888

Ayon Banerjee

Ayon Banerjee, an Asia Pacific Leader for a Fortune 100 Organization is a keen observer of human behavior & someone who loves documenting his life and work as he goes along by collecting & connecting ideas. Over the years, Ayon’s articles have garnered a steady and diverse readership from around the world. This book is the third instalment of heterogeneous articles & blog entries, particularly written by him as the world was slowly recovering from the Covid 19 nightmare. Like most bloggers, Ayon’s inspirations are scattered – from his own life to the lives of people he observes, the books he reads and the dots he loves to join in his spare time. Though these are all different posts written at different times, the common theme that perhaps links them, is that they all sit on overlapping boundaries of work and life – a narration of events, relationships, successes, and failures which add up into the randomness of life that we all like to construct backwards into coherent stories. Ayon believes that at some point while you are reading this book, his story might intersect with yours, and make you reflect. And smile.

Book preview

ONE

THE FORTUNE TELLER

Are you seriously able to read faces?, I asked my somewhat weird looking companion.

We were standing near the door of the speeding train. The East Indian countryside sped in the reverse direction, bringing in brief glimpses of an occasional open cast coal mine, or a distant chimney of some small steel mill.

Arka cleared his throat and gave me a smile that defied any suggestion of pride or high handedness. He simply shrugged like a man who can’t help it if he possesses some quality that others don’t.

It was difficult to guess Arka’s age. Anything between fifty & sixty-five, I had assumed. Endowed with a generous touch of grey on his scalp and chin, Arka was a moderately built man of about my own height, and someone who spoke slowly and deliberately, like …, I struggled with the word…..

Storyteller? …… Not quite.

Yeah, a Fortune teller!.

We were smoking cigarettes. I noticed that Arka didn’t inhale the smoke, just like me. But he seemed to enjoy sending his smoke rings out of the open train door, where they would meet the tangential droplets of rain of the July morning and dissolve into the moist air.

In the past fifteen minutes Arka had told me things about myself that had stunned me. Some of the stuff that he whispered between puffs, were things that even I don’t like to think of anymore. Some deep secrets, unspoken desires, and unrealized dreams. Had it not been for the sceptic in me, I would have already become a crazy fan of his psychic powers. But somehow, I still thought that he knew tricks on guess work, and he was probably just bluffing to get his share of admiration to feed his fragile ego for the day.

Tossing my cigarette butt out of the train, I turned to Arka and asked, Does that mean that you can read anybody’s face? Anyone in this compartment?

Arka again gave me his patient smile.

"Well, of course I can. I could read any face if I wanted to. But in the interest of time, let me keep the sample size to two. Will that make you happy? Come, let’s go in and look at two people. For the sake of parity, let me try and select two people who are amid a very important day in their lives. That would enable you to understand their journeys better. Let me choose my two people this way – one, who is just about to embark on a new journey, and the second, who is just concluding an old one.

A beginning, and an end of two relationships, of two strangers. Would that interest you?"

============================

He always makes it a point to help anyone (even strangers) who comes up and ask him for his help.

He is twenty-nine years old. He comes from a large and old-fashioned family of many brothers and a sister. He had run away from home at the age of eighteen. He started working in a faraway land, leaving them behind. Some called him ambitious. Others called him selfish. As a human being, he has many shortcomings of course, just like everyone else. But he never shirked his responsibilities. He cables money to his parents every month, though they don’t really need it. He cares for his younger siblings. He always makes it a point to help everyone (even strangers) who come up and ask him for his help. He is an honest man, and he works reasonably hard. He doesn’t like to read much, except newspapers maybe. He loves Hindi movies. Oh yes, he is a keen footballer too. …, went on Arka in his lowered voice, informing me about his first target – a handsome young man sitting at a window seat and staring out, a happy half smile on his face.

And what is so important about this particular day in his life?, I asked, slightly amused at Arka’s overconfident guesswork.

He has become a father this morning, whispered Arka. And he is now on his way to see his son. He cannot contain his own happiness. He feels successful today, and also fulfilled. Not only has he managed to find his own feet and is living a life of his own choice, but he has also succeeded in leaving his footprints on this universe now. He is now the creator of a healthy son, one who would carry forward his legacy – so he thinks. He can’t wait to hold him in his arms.

I was getting slightly uneasy at Arka’s voyeuristic, illogical, and intrusive banter.

But I still decided to hear it all out, before getting to know the young man, and to call Arka’s bluff, for once and for all.

So, tell me more Arka. Is this man going to be a happy father?, I asked.

Arka did not smile this time.

Well, yes – and no. He will give all he has to ensure that his son gets the best in life when he brings him up. His son too will grow up and do him proud on several occasions. That’s correct. But gradually as the years progress, both will start falling farther and farther out with each other. As his son starts coming out of his shadows, he will develop a personality that would clash with his. They will differ on ideology, faith, and other reasons. As he would grow old, he will see lesser and lesser of his son, and their conversations will get fewer and fewer – more like a formality between two strangers being forced into a co-existence, rather than a genuine father- son bonding. They will settle down in their own spaces – one too busy to bother, and the other too proud to ask. Then one day, he will grow old and die. His son will be too preoccupied to even hold his hands in his last days, and will sit impatiently through his funeral, because he would be worrying for his next meeting or assignment. Yes, it’s sad, but his son might not even remember to cry properly when he dies.

Hey Arka – Aren’t you taking this joke too far?, I asked, slightly disturbed at Arka’s heartless doom predictions.

Arka smiled again. Why don’t you try and verify from the man himself? Just be tactful. Please avoid talking of his future and spoiling his special day.

I thought for a while, and I decided that I should indeed do that. That would teach Arka a lesson.

I walked up to the man and introduced myself. We shook hands and I sat beside him and soon got chatting about the journey, our destinations, and about the cricket commentary that he was following on his portable transistor. There was something vaguely familiar about the man. But I couldn’t place it. Maybe he resembled some distant relative of mine.

It’s an interesting match indeed. But you know what? Cricket is not my game. I am more a football person, he said.

My skin crawled!

And then he proceeded with his cheerful conversation with me. Among other things, he did mention about his three brothers and a sister whom he misses a lot, and that he had left home eleven years back. Oh yes, he also shyly conveyed that he had become a proud father that morning, and was on his way to meet his new-born son.........

======================

And what important event is happening to this lady today?, I asked Arka, slowly and nervously.

I was shaken up after the incident involving the young man. Arka had said everything correct about him. And I had also verified that Arka didn’t know him from the past. I myself introduced Arka as my friend to him after our chat – and neither of them showed any signs of recognition.

She has lost her father today. And the funny thing is, she is not as sad as you would imagine, informed Arka with a grin.

She is forty years old, married, with has two children. She has a loving husband and her own career in medicine. Not that she loves being a doctor. She wanted to become a wildlife conservationist. She loves animals. But she was forced by her father to study medicine because he wanted to be a proud dad of a neurosurgeon. He wanted her to fulfil his own unfulfilled ambition in life. So, she did what she was asked to. She does full justice to her profession. But not happily so. Today, she is reflecting on her childhood and her love-hate relationship with her father. As a 40-year-old successful mother of two kids, she now realizes the gaping holes in her father’s parenting style. He was a despot and would always insist that things go only his way in the house. Her voice was always snubbed and cut off. Her confidence suffered and her little dreams kept getting silently buried one by one. He was a bad listener and an impatient man who had no time for anyone else’s point of view. All he cared was about his own life, his own career, his own ambitions, and his own views, which were forced on everyone – including her. As she grew up, the channels of communication between her and her father became leaner and leaner – till finally they hardly spoke to each other. Yes, later in life, he did try to come closer to her, to ask her about her thoughts, aspirations, and desires. But it was too late then. He had lost her. In fact, she had lost herself. She had tossed away her own soul and embraced the forced identity of an imposter instead. She gave up her highest life for a compromised living because of that one man who gave her birth. She paid the price of birth with her life. Today, she is not sad at her loss. On the contrary, she feels re-born. She is no longer carrying any burden of debt. The shadows will finally stop following her. She is already planning a holiday at the Jim Corbett National Park this winter. Also idly contemplating the Amazon Forest next year.

I observed the lady, who sat quietly on her seat, reading from her kindle. She wore a stylish pair of spectacles and indeed didn’t display any signs of emotions for someone who has just lost a parent. She seemed at peace in her time and in her space.

I had neither the desire, nor the guts to test out the authenticity of Arka’s face reading once again. I knew it this time that he must be right. I looked at the lady once again. There was something about her that made me feel that I had probably met her somewhere before. I couldn’t say where. Or maybe Arka’s detailed storytelling made her look so familiar that I could almost read her whole life on her lowered and serious face, and she didn’t seem like a stranger anymore.

Another smoke, Arka?, I asked my new friend, now definitely spellbound by his magical powers.

=============================

I noticed that the landscape outside the train had changed drastically in the past thirty minutes. We had moved to the vestibule at the opposite end, and the view outside was very different from what had been whizzing past us during our previous smoke break. Modern structures frequently started peeping from outside as fleeting sights and disappearing before we could see any of them properly. It appeared that we had left the countryside behind and were about to approach some big city soon.

=============================

Would you like a diet Coke or a coffee, Arka?, I asked, starting to hop off at the station, intending to get something for both of us.

Can you please see if they are selling some tea instead? Preferably tea in a clay cup? Reminds me of my younger days, requested Arka apologetically.

Also, my friend, if you don’t mind, can you also check if the bookstore has this book with them?, he added, passing a slip of paper into my hands.

Of course, Arka, let me have a look, said I, stepping down into the swanky platform. Something told me that I might not get Arka’s clay cup tea in such a posh place. I decided to look for his tea first and then hunt for the book. I slipped the piece of paper into the left pocket of my jeans.

I systematically combed the platform, in vain. There was no stall that was selling tea in a clay cup.

After about ten minutes of searching, I suddenly realized that the train had started moving. And I had not even started looking for the book.

I attempted rushing back to my compartment, running beside the train. I could see Arka standing at the door, smiling at me.

Give me your hand Arka, fast!, I shouted, trying to catch up and hold his extended palms. But the accelerating train was too fast for my legs to match its pace. It zoomed out of the platform, leaving me staring behind it.

In frustration, and in dismay.

Instead of trying to help me, Arka waved me goodbye.

We will meet again my friend. Many times, over. This journey ends here. We have many more in store. To come together, and part again. It will go on., shouted Arka from where he stood, and disappeared into the horizon with the speeding train.

I turned back and began my trek to the main office of the station so that I could buy myself new tickets and resume my trip.

I passed in front of a large mirror at the door of a Pizza outlet and paused. I looked into it to check out my reflection.

And froze!

============================

A man who is happy and yet not to be,

A woman not happy, but about to be.

One’s in a birth and one’s in a death.

And one is a man who links them both.

Someone smiled when he was born,

and he smiled when someone else.

Then something happened in the middle,

that no one cried when that someone died?

============================

I crumpled Arka’s note and threw it away, knowing that it wouldn’t litter the neat platform.

In fact, no one would even see the piece of paper that I threw.

Just like no one could see Arka’s face in the mirror that I was staring into.

And just like no one could see me standing in front of the mirror either.

I no longer needed any new tickets to get anywhere.

I had finally read the last page of my story. Understood the last explanation.

Unravelled the last mystery. Why didn’t I cry when he died? Why didn’t she cry when I died?

TWO

MAGIC

There is this thing about magic – It is swift and is gone before you can touch it or claim to understand it. Well, touch, yes maybe – but just when you start owning the sensation, it vanishes. The other thing about it is that it never repeats itself. As (disappointingly) in this case, it didn’t. But still, it makes for a cool story. Read on!

It was 2009 and already a year of Mr. Obama’s impressive speeches. Still grappling with and trying to come in terms with its economic abyss, the world had changed. The ‘rest of the world’, I mean. For me, it was life bumbling around as usual. Unknowingly to me though, the unusual was just lurking around the next bend. Okay, let me begin by telling you about myself.

Have you ever, in a moment of idle mental loafing, wondered about plural artiste bodies? Say for example – two musicians, or co-authors, or maybe, popular duet singers? Have you also noticed that among these folks, one always hogs the limelight, gives the interviews, gets the women, lands the knighthood (well, occasionally), and breaks the pairing after hijacking the last few collaborative efforts, staking claim to them and lives off the stolen credits for the rest of his life? I am sure you know this guy.

Well, I was not him. I was the OTHER guy – the ‘behind the scenes’ man, if you get a drift of what I mean. In simple words, I was that invisible boy in your high school who sat unnoticed in the last bench, who was too shy to stake claim to any talent he possessed, too reclusive to assert himself and too self-conscious to ask a girl out on a date. Growing up had not changed me much. I had just been deserted for credit in a creative endeavour by my ‘best friend’, who ‘claimed’ a shared idea of ours, turned it into a commercially successful book (without even bothering to change most of the parts written by me - let alone, giving me any share of the applause, or the moolah). In fact, he had almost failed to recognize the week before when I called his cell phone number to congratulate him. So yes, I was back in my parents’ flat in Delhi, licking my wounds in private and having about a year’s worth of livelihood left in my bank, besides this apartment which my parents left for me and which was badly in need of a clean-up, fresh paint on the walls and polish on the furniture. By the way, I was also fiercely holding on to my last seven (unpublished) short stories and twenty-one unshared poems in my brown diary, saving them for a rainy day when some publisher might have nothing better to do and look at them.

That evening, it rained.

I was on my second rum at Jimmy’s when she walked in, making forty heads turn - in awe, or in lust, or in envy, sometimes all three together.

Ameera Sehgal.

Ameera ‘befuckwitchingly devastating heartbreaker’ Sehgal from Delhi Public School. Section C, my batch. Eleven intermediate years seemed to have only made her sexier and more convinced about her invincibility in matters of making appearances and at her amazing coolness quotient on display as she walked uninhibited to the bar counter and asked for a Smirnoff, the two open buttons on her white shirt causing violent ripples in the male (and occasionally, female) universes around her.

Maybe it was my angst at myself for qualifying as the loser of the year yet again, or maybe it was the Old Monk burning inside my chest – I felt suddenly bold. I waited for her to down her drink before getting up and tapping her on her slender shoulder from behind.

Oh-My-Gosh, Adi! What a pleasant surprise!, she said, surprisingly warm and tipsy, getting up to give me a tight hug, much to the annoyance of twenty-five odd pair of male eyes in the audience. I was telling you about magic, remember? This was how it began. For the first time in my life, I found my tongue and held my composure, not showing any signs of shock at having not just being recognized by the school stunner, but also being hugged by her in public.

Somewhere over the next two hours, time lost its math.

Soon we were chatting like old friends, never for once conscious that we had hardly spoken while in school where she was hopping from boyfriend to boyfriend – the Khanna, the Chaddha and the Kapoor brats of South Delhi. For some queer reason, she remembered my editorial posts in the school magazine, also calling me a ‘nerd’ who used tough vocabulary to appear grown up. She summarized her own life in a six-minute capsule – DU, London (LSE), Lehman Brothers, Pink slip, broken engagement(s) and back to Delhi, temporarily holed up with her mother, explaining that this was the most productive thing that a laid off strategy consultant could do while waiting for her next compromised contract. She quickly dragged me back to my own boring life story, digging out details as if I was the next Jeffery Archer waiting to be discovered. I noticed that she was a keen and empathetic listener and not just a polite one. It felt like a shame now that I had never dared to speak to her during our school days.

Failure (rejection, actually) had mellowed her. She was unsure, insecure, vulnerable, and almost superstitiously nice, as if trying to fill in a moral checklist to get back into the good books of God once again. She blushed slightly when I paid her a compliment, surprising her own self more than me. She was furious when she heard about how my partner has duped me.

Let’s self-publish!, she declared with an air of finality that made me nervous. Suddenly she was on familiar ground, in control of the situation because she had a plan and a mission to execute. The next minute, she was on the phone, calling some guy called Murthy in Bangalore.

Three weeks later, I was holding the hard bound copy of my book in my hands, trying not to break into sobs at the ‘launch’ she had pushed me into. A leading bookstore had given me a non-committal shelf space and allotted me a modest reading session on a weekday. I suspect she had pulled a lot of strings within her circles to get so many people to come and listen to me recite three of my poems that Wednesday afternoon at Select City Walk, Saket.

Oh yes, three days before this, she had come over to my ‘pad’, and identified her next mission. She helped me clean up the place, bringing in the much-needed feminine touch to it.

It was while painting my wall-to-wall bookshelf that we had a clumsy moment, colliding into each other with my forehand landing on her breasts and staying there for a moment longer than what an accident permits. The kiss lasted for five full minutes. We made love on the spread newspapers on the floor like two teenagers who suddenly stumble upon sex while playing in an empty house. She was even more gorgeous under her white vest and denim shorts, and I lay happily drained beside her after an hour. She simply said that she needed a nap after all the calisthenics.

The week after my book launch, she moved in with me. She would go over to see her (agitated) mum only on Sunday afternoons.

In a way, each of us was trying to chase the extraordinary through the other. I was trying to discover it and she was trying to reclaim it. The writer in me understood her mind and why, making me successful, was so important for her. My success was a significant steppingstone for her to find herself back. She was looking for her lost self- worth by helping me find mine.

Curiously, she never actually even read my book (I am too impatient to read fiction, she confessed sheepishly and honestly). We were poles apart in most ways possible. Maybe that’s what drew us to each other like magnets, each holding forth an enigma that the other was in awe of. Soon, one fine morning, turning the page of the kitchen calendar, I realized that three months had passed.

She went for her job interview on a Tuesday. The same Friday, she left for Singapore. In six months, the frequency of our calls had dropped from thrice a day to thrice a week, and finally settled down to twice a month by the turn of the year. I think she started seeing the Iranian guy in December. She had called twice that Sunday, as if almost silently apologizing for getting off my life. We unfriended and re-friended each other on Facebook for a few times over the next few months before having a laugh over our childishness during our (now) monthly call in July. It was my birthday that day.

So you would henceforth stop acting like my possessive boyfriend, Adi baby?, She asked jokingly. I laughed just because she was laughing, unable to find any humour in what she said. She stopped calling me after that. After a few months, so did I. Well, not stopped totally. We stayed in touch, on special occasions. The next fall, she moved to New Jersey.

She texted me when As you life it (my first book) sold its first 50000 copies, and later, she sent me a congratulatory email when it made it to the national top ten books for the year. Even today, hers is the first among the Like s that I see on my daily blogpost, though she never leaves a comment. Maybe she is too busy for words, or maybe she is too self- conscious about them. Last month, I read an interview of hers in the Fortune (Asia edition). I felt incredibly proud of her and wrote her a long emotion-laden email. She replied within an hour. One word – Thanks! and a smiley after that. Unlike me, she did not need too many words to communicate or unleash unrest in someone’s heart. Or maybe she was conscious of exposing her core and hence her frugal policy about words. Like for example, the day when we spoke in 2013 after her quick-fire divorce (Didn’t work out, bud!, she said simply. ‘Bud’ meanwhile,