Ghanada had repeatedly gone up and down from his third-floor room to the lower floors for no apparent reason. He hovered in front of our meeting room for a while but couldn't muster the courage to come inside despite losing face multiple times.
Now suddenly, we heard him standing outside on the second-floor balcony, shouting in his booming voice.
We had burst into loud laughter inside just to irritate Ghanada, but suddenly we stopped and tried to understand the cause of his agitation and excitement.
Sisir, pretending to fetch a tin of cigarettes from his room, quickly peeked outside on the balcony. He acted as if he was engrossed in opening a new tin of cigarettes right in front of Ghanada's eyes.
“What’s going on?” We asked, smirking with curiosity.
“It's a pebble,” Sisir placed the cigarette tin on the table in the middle, further deepening the mystery with just a brief explanation.
“A pebble!?” We were baffled. Our intention was obviously to let our collective laughter be known.
“No, no, it’s worse than just throwing a pebble,” Sisir explained the matter, “There’s a broken glass paperweight in Ghanada’s room, you’ve seen it, right? Bonwari mistook it for a piece of rubble while sweeping and threw it away somewhere.”
“Is that so?”
Another burst of laughter erupted from us. Whatever the matter, it was clear that our intent had succeeded when Ghanada created a commotion over a mere broken glass pebble.
Now, Ghanada was in a state where he was just waiting for a call to come in, but we didn't call him. After all, we had to take a bit of revenge for the trouble he had given us over the past few days.
What a terrible few days we have had! Not just us, but the whole city. Our plight is a bit worse because, thanks to the municipality’s negligence, our boarding house becomes an island with even a slight increase in water levels.
On one side, the sky seems to have a hole, pouring incessant rain day after day, flooding the entire city. On the other side, a nationwide strike! There is no way to leave the boarding house, but inside, there is nothing to keep us occupied for the entire time.
We’ve grown tired of playing cards, and even carrom has become a monotonous grind. Time seems to drag on endlessly.
If only Ghanada would show us a bit of mercy, this captivity would turn into a blessing in disguise. But he has locked his mouth with a double lock, afraid that anything might slip out.
The most we got out of him were slight "hmm" or "eh," "yes," or "no." It seemed he had no more vocabulary than that.
We didn’t lack in our efforts to coax him. We bribed generously, but he remained unmoved.
We didn't show any lack of temptation either, trying every possible way to provoke him.
In the afternoon, seeing Ghanada’s room open, we entered one by one. Ghanada didn’t object, but he looked at the rain falling outside from the inner door with such attention, as if we were nothing more than annoying mosquitoes he had to endure.
Sisir still offered him a tin of cigarettes, and after Ghanada absentmindedly took a cigarette, he was encouraged and, while lighting it, asked, "Has it ever rained this continuously in Kolkata, Ghanada?"
Ghanada took a puff from the cigarette and let out a faint sound along with the smoke from his nose.
“These are all effects of atomic bombs, don’t you get it?” Gaur tried to provoke him, “The world’s weather will change entirely, you’ll see. It’ll snow in Bengal, and there will be heat waves in Alaska!”
Ghanada just gave Gaur a single glance but didn’t ignite the conversation.
Shibu raised the stakes a bit more, “If that’s the case, what’s so new about it? Do you know that this world once truly flipped over? Siberia was not like it is now. It had green plants, grass, everything. Then, in an instant, Siberia froze completely.”
Sisir agreed, “Yes, yes, that’s right. The dead mammoths found buried under Siberian snow prove that it happened in the blink of an eye. The mammoth bodies were found perfectly intact, not a single hair was damaged. The grass found in their stomachs shows that they are from hot and arid climate. The earth suddenly tripped upside down and Siberia froze just like that —”
Secretly we were all looking at Ghanada.
But he did not care to respond. Not a sound from him.
We had to leave, disheartened and frustrated. It’s not that we didn’t understand the reason behind Ghanada’s uncooperative behavior, but it was more than just a minor annoyance. Even after all our pampering, he showed no signs of forgiving us!
After two days of continuous rain, Ghanada had demanded khichuri with fried fish. To please Ghanada, Gaur went to market with Bonwari in the rain.
Then, as Ghanada sat down to eat, he frowned at the fried fish on his plate like Khrushchev at Eisenhower.
Gaur hurriedly explained, “We couldn’t get good hilsa, so we brought parshe fish instead. Try it, it’s just like the real Canning hilsa, swimming in the same water with the similar aroma and texture.”
The whole fried parshe on Ghanada’s plate was a giant compared to our Lilliputian portions. But what did that matter! A frown descended on Ghanada’s face as he reluctantly dealt with the fried parshe. He made a comment to no one in particular, “Hmm, I bet East Bengal has won. You think hilsa would come today!”
We did a lot of coaxing and flattering afterward, even getting hilsa that very night. But Ghanada couldn’t be melted. The rainy days dragged on in frustration and failed attempts to make him happy.
We were desperate to get him back. A relative of Shibu, Mr. Raha is just back from Africa. No, he is neither a hunter, nor an explorer . But his looks are impressive. We invited him to share his stories
In the afternoon, he arrived dressed in a semi-military outfit. For now, we've seated him comfortably in Ghanada's usual armchair, having briefed and prepped him thoroughly. We posed as enraptured listeners, making the house lively with our frequent exclamations of excitement, wonder, and joy.
After his midday nap, as usual, Ghanada had settled down with his hookah. The occasional noise from downstairs had made him curious. We didn’t forget to inform him through Thakur Rambhuj. As instructed, Rambhuj brought tea a bit earlier than usual and, without waiting for Ghanada to ask, he complained, “Tea before three o’clock! Tell me, sir, how difficult it is for us!”
Ghanada seized the opportunity to ask about the commotion downstairs, and Rambhuj, with as much wonder as he could muster in his mixed Hindi-Bengali, said, “Oh, sir! A big hunter has come from across the sea! How many tigers, rhinos, elephants he has hunted! Everyone is listening to his stories!”
Ghanada could no longer stay put!
Rambhuj then took the tea downstairs, and almost immediately after, Ghanada followed.
His heart was itching to come to the lounge room, but his pride held him back! His restlessness came out as a scolding directed at Bonwari, but even that didn’t have the desired effect.
We were so engrossed in listening to the story that we didn’t even hear Ghanada’s loud calls echoing through the area.
So far, he had managed to hold back, but when Bonwari entered the lounge room with a tray full of eggplant fritters, lentil fritters, and papad, he could hold back no longer.
Before Bonwari had a chance to leave the room after placing the tray on the table, Ghanada walked in, almost as if he didn’t notice whether anyone was in the room or not, reaching for the newspaper on the table.
Ghanada stopped abruptly, seeing Shibu’s cousin in a semi-military outfit seated in his favorite armchair.
Yet we pretended to be engrossed in the story.
“And then, Mr. Raha,” Gaur asked with wide eyes, a voice trembling with fear and astonishment, “two Kifaru, 3 Faru and 4 Kibako are coming towards you from the bom. You were just holding a Panga. What did you do then?”
“He mowed the grass!”
Now, there was no way to avoid noticing Ghanada. Our faces all suddenly bore expressions of feigned irritation at this unwelcome disturbance, though our wonder was barely concealed.
Ghanada continued with an empathetic style “What else would you cut besides grass? Because in the Swahili language of Africa, a long sharp knife used for cutting grass is called a panga. Moreover, a boma is a wooden wall made of trees surrounding a village or a temporary camp. People live inside it, and animals don’t come out from there! While kiboko is the Swahili name for a hippopotamus, kifa and faru are not different animals. Kifaruk is simply shortened to faru, which means rhinoceros.”
Before we could respond, Ghanada pointed a finger at Raha and said, “So you haven’t corrected yourself, Kasim! You’re still Raha to them again, aren’t you? Remember my story about Brachandiri in Bodrum?”
Raha’s eyes widened, just like ours. Almost stuttering, he said, “ Hey….See, I was speaking of…….
“I understand! I understand!” Ghanada interrupted Raha before he could finish, saying, “You should feel a bit embarrassed remembering those days. That’s good. But it’s not really your fault! You just obeyed your master’s orders. I know you’re here today by his orders as well. You must have brought the price I asked for, but it’s very unfortunate. Tell your master Savage that I couldn’t give him the item he wanted so desperately! The item for which Savage is willing to give up everything except his life is no longer with me!”
Ghanada made a sound like a steam engine hissing from his nose. He probably thought he was sighing.
We were still staring in shock. Raha, stammering, said, “But my name is not Kasim. I am Shibu’s cousin. Anil Raha.”
“What?” Ghanada looked at Raha as if he had fallen from the sky. Then, slowly realizing his mistake and with an embarrassed expression, he said, “Oh dear, it’s my mistake. But the resemblance is uncanny! Well, at least I haven’t broken my word to Savage for now. Let’s see if I can still find that item.”
Ghanada started to move toward the door.
Needless to say, we had to get up and bring him back.
At Shibu’s signal, Raha got up from the comfortable armchair. We practically lifted Ghanada and put him into the armchair, and then sat wherever we could. We asked, “What are you looking for, Ghanada?”
“The item your esteemed Bonwari threw away!” Ghanada’s anger seemed to fall on the tray of eggplant fritters and snacks that had been brought in! Sisir stepped forward to offer him some smoke . But he did not care.
Ignoring the cigarette, he pounced on the fritters to devour them.
“Bonwari threw it away? That was just a broken glass paperweight!” I blurted out.
“A broken glass paperweight!”
After finishing nearly half of the tray in about ten minutes, Ghanada glared at me and said, “Do you know what that was? Do you know where it came from?”
“It was probably just lying around on the street somewhere!” Shibu speculated.
“Someone probably threw it away, thinking it was junk!” Sisir chimed in.
“Or maybe someone hurled it at someone else!” Gaur suggested.
A look of disdainful pity appeared on Ghanada’s face, “Yes, it was hurled. But that piece of rubble could have rewritten the history of India. Can you even imagine where it came from?”
Thinking it would be unwise to aggravate Ghanada further, we feigned ignorance and remained silent.
Ghanada answered his own question, “This piece of rubble came from not one or two, but at least ten thousand billion miles away!”
“Only that much?” Shibu responded with mock disappointment.
There were murmurs among us that might have been mistaken for stifled laughter.
“Yes, but it could also be from a hundred thousand times farther away.” Ghanada continued nonchalantly, as if the zeros in the numbers were mere ink blots.
“But the farthest planet in our solar system, Pluto, is only about 3.6 billion miles from the sun,” Gaur said, flaunting his knowledge from an article he had read a couple of days ago.
“Yeah, Pluto!” Ghanada dismissed Pluto with a scornful sniff. “Our solar system's sun is just an insignificant star in a galaxy, which itself spans twenty thousand billion miles from one end to the other. This piece of rubble didn’t come from Pluto; it came from beyond our galaxy.”
He continued, “No, it’s not an ordinary meteorite. It’s something entirely different. Scientists call it a tektite. Unlike meteorites, which come from our solar system or even from within our galaxy, tektites don’t contain iron or nickel. They look like colored glass pebbles and contain radioisotopes of aluminum and beryllium. Not all mysteries about tektites have been solved yet, but scholars believe these pieces of rubble are from outer space.”
Tektites are likely to have come from other star systems beyond our galaxy.”
“You had this tektite for so long, and you casually left it lying around wherever!” Sisir asked in astonishment.
“It didn’t suffer any damage until your expert Bonwari came along. To you, it was just a glass paperweight!” Ghanada retorted sarcastically.
Feigning as much embarrassment as possible, I asked, “But where did you get this glass pebble, I mean, tektite?”
We couldn’t handle Shibu. He suddenly blurted out, “Maybe it fell on your head!”
“You fool!” we scrambled to cover up, “If a pebble from ten thousand billion miles away, or even farther, fell on your head, no one would survive! Of course, with a head as thick as yours, that might be different.”
The cloud on Ghanada’s face was about to gather but then cleared up! With a cheerful face, he said, “No, it didn’t fall on my head. No one has ever heard of a tektite falling on someone’s head. Although tektites are found scattered on the ground in many countries. They don’t embed themselves in the ground like meteorites. Yes, you’re asking where I found it? I found that tektite in Bodrum.”
Ghanada paused.
Then, scanning our faces, he said, “You probably don’t know where Bodrum is! Even if you haven’t heard of Bodrum, you must know about ancient Halicarnassus. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was a monument to King Mausolus. Not only that, but it was also the birthplace of Herodotus, the first historian of the Western world! Alexander the Great destroyed and looted Halicarnassus on his way to conquer Asia! A town called Petronium was built on those ruins. The name Petronium was distorted by the Turks into Bodrum.
Whatever its ancient history, Bodrum is now just a small port in the southwestern corner of Turkey. No large ships, just small sponging boats called brecandiri, gather there to harvest sponges from the bottom of the Aegean Sea.
Under the guise of running a sponging business, I rented a brecandiri boat and stayed in Bodrum. A brecandiri is quite a small boat. It can’t even be called a launch. It has an old diesel engine and can barely go more than six or seven miles per hour.
Of course, these boats don’t need to go fast. Their main job is to drop divers in specific spots to harvest sponges from the sea floor. For that, you need real expert divers.
"An expert diver. Uncle Kapkin, the best diver in Bodrum, works on my boat. I steer the boat. And there's a young lad named Sammy who handles the diving gear and performs other chores. Our brecandiri wanders between the islands of Bodrum and Karabakh, from the Chuka Strait to the Cape Kumali, up to the island of Symi. But we haven't been able to collect any sponges. For two months, Uncle Kapkin has been receiving a salary without work. One day, he finally stood up against it. Over these two months, a genuine bond of affection has developed between me and Uncle Kapkin. We were sitting on the deck of the brecandiri, drinking coffee, when he suddenly slapped me on the back, spilling my coffee cup, and said, ‘I won’t eat on your money anymore, Das. This is the end.’
‘Why, what happened, Uncle?’ I asked with a smile. ‘It's not money from deceit. Besides, you are eating with your own earnings!’"
“Am I eating with my own earnings?” Uncle snapped, “Tell me, how many times have I put on a diver’s suit in these past two months? It seems that you intend to keep me fooled with this fake business. If you don’t even need the sponge, then why are you paying me to just sit around?”
I laughed and said, “I’m not paying you for nothing. I’ll have you collect sponges. But I need the real Euspongia officinalis mollissima, not just any sponge.”
We just coughed. But Raha, being new, couldn’t help but ask, “What did you say?”
“The scientific name of the most expensive sponge,” Ghanada explained with a little smile, “Its common name, however, is the finest Turkish sponge. There’s nothing softer or more luxurious. Just collecting one ser (about a kilogram) can fetch a hundred rupees.”
As if pausing in anticipation of our objections, Ghanada began to speak again, “But whatever I said, I couldn’t convince Uncle Kapkin. After a moment of silence, he became serious and said, ‘I understand your intentions!’”
“‘What are my intentions?’ I pretended to be surprised.
“‘Alright, I’ll achieve your intentions,’ Uncle said and then went silent. After that, I couldn’t get a word out of him.
He finally spoke again nearly two weeks later. After leaving Bodrum, rounding the Cape Kumali, and passing north of Simi Island, we had anchored one evening inside Marmaris Bay.
Until then, apart from necessary conversations, we hadn’t discussed this unknown expedition at all. Uncle Kapkin had arranged everything for this journey on his own and told me to just watch silently. Besides the usual supplies, our brecandiri had diving suits, and instead of just the usual gear, there were also two aqualungs for us.
The aqualaung includes glass masks and air sacs that are strapped to the back, and with flippers or fins on the feet, one can swim like a fish on the seabed.
The place where we had anchored the boat was completely isolated, with a rocky, uninhabited shoreline on our left. To the north, across the narrow bay, a few blurry mountains were fading into the evening darkness.
As the darkness deepened, Uncle Kapkin, sitting on the deck and smoking Turkish tobacco from a hookah, brought up the true purpose of our journey for the first time.
He laughed and said, “Do you know what is here?”
Pretending to be naive, I said, “The matchless Turkish sponge, I suppose!”
“Yes, the finest Turkish sponge,” Uncle laughed, “but enough of the jokes. Listen up—what I’m about to tell you is a secret I had decided to take to my grave. But today, I’m telling you because I’ve grown fond of you, whether it’s because of your character or your dark skin. Many wealthy persons have tried to bribe me with gold just to get this information. I’m getting old. One day, I might die from a ruptured lung or a stroke from diving. I could sell this information to them and spend my old age in luxury. But I haven’t given in to them and I never will. They think they can buy anything in the world with their money. They want to hoard everything from the bottom of this sea in their homes or at best, in a museum, just to show off. For the past two years, they’ve been tempting and even threatening me, but they have no reverence for these things. They just want to own everything rare in the world. They heard rumors about my discovery, but even with all their kingdom promises, they couldn’t get me to spill the secret.”
Listening to Uncle Kapkin, I felt dizzy. With a trembling voice, I said, “Is there really such a rare treasure here?”
“Yes, yes. You will see it with your own eyes when you dive tomorrow morning. Five years ago, while searching for sponges in this area, I stumbled upon it by chance. When I returned to Bodrum, I hinted about it to a few close friends without revealing the exact location. That’s when those vultures got a whiff of it. But even they can’t imagine the wealth hidden beneath this salty water. I may be an amateur diver, but I’m a king underwater. I know underwater treasures. Besides, I worked for two years as a diver for a museum in Germany. The sea route we followed to get here from Bodrum is thousands of years old.”
Before, ships sailing from Rhodes, Cyprus, Rome, and even Egypt used to pass through this area. This was the route for sailing merchant ships of those days. Many ships have sunk here after crashing into the underwater mountains. The seabed is scattered with the cargo of those ships, containing wondrous items from that era, made of brass, copper, and gold. In addition, there are an abundance of amphorae, exquisite Greco-Roman pottery with handles on both sides. Many teams from Europe and America have sent divers to retrieve these items, but the shipwrecks they’ve found are at most two thousand years old. However, what’s here is at least over three thousand years old. Not just brass, copper, and gold items, but the ship that sank here carried some strange statues made of brass and a kind of limestone. Despite being underwater for so long, they haven’t deteriorated at all. I haven’t touched anything else, but I picked up a small statue the size of a thumb. I cleaned it thoroughly and showed it to only one person—a French scholar who came in search of these underwater shipwrecks for a museum. He was astonished upon seeing the statue. He exclaimed, ‘Hey, this is something from India. He even mentioned some name after seeing the script-like markings on the statue. I can’t recall it now.’
Excitedly, I asked, ‘Mohenjo-Daro? Harappa?’
Uncle Kapkin, getting more enthusiastic, said, ‘Yes, yes, that’s the name. He was so eager to know where I found it. He said it was beyond imagination to find such an item on a merchant ship from this region! The man was good, but I didn’t tell him anything. Why should I let someone from another country take the credit for this discovery?’
Desperately, I asked, ‘Are you sure you remember the place, Uncle?’
‘Yes, yes, don’t worry. The shipwreck is on an underwater mountain just fifty yards from here. By luck, many of its items fell into a cave-like hollow in that submerged mountain. They haven’t been lost for three thousand years, and even three hours into the night… oh, what!’
Uncle suddenly shouted in the middle of his speech, startling me. But what? Everywhere was shrouded in darkness.
‘What, what did you see, Uncle?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘A light. Near that bend in the distant sea, it flickered and then disappeared.’
‘How could there be a light here? And if a boat or ship had come by mistake, why would the light flicker and then go out? It’s just your imagination.’
‘Maybe,’ Uncle agreed.
But I realized in a horrifying way the next morning that it wasn’t just his imagination.
I couldn’t sleep well at first due to excitement. Thinking of the Mohenjo-Daro statue—
It must be a goddess statue made of bronze or alabaster. If the French scholar recognized it as being from Mohenjo-Daro, then this statue must have that characteristic ancient Mohenjo-Daro style. Finding this statue here would rewrite history. There could be no clearer evidence of a connection between the ancient Indus Valley civilization and this region! If I could really recover this statue from here, who could stop me?
I spent half the night thinking about these things before finally falling asleep. At dawn, I was startled awake by Uncle Kapkin's shaking.
“It's a disaster, you fool!”
“What disaster, Uncle?” I rubbed my eyes and sat up.
“Someone has stolen both our aqualaungs!”
“Stolen? From our boat in this deserted place? Is this some kind of ghostly prank?”
“It's not a prank. I wasn't seeing things yesterday. There was a light in the distant sea all night. That light and the theft on our boat are connected, and I understand how. But let's go. We have no choice but to return now.”
And so we returned.
A week later, as our brecandiri reached the dock in Bodrum, Uncle Kapkin jumped onto the jetty.
“Where are you going, Uncle?” I asked, shouting in surprise.
He pointed to a shiny, elegant small ship moored at the distant jetty.
“That's the yacht of Mr. Savage, who has practically bought the whole town of Bodrum,” I said, joining Uncle Kapkin on the jetty.
Uncle Kapkin looked at me strangely for a moment and said, “You still don’t understand, do you? My dealings are with that Mr. Savage. What he couldn’t achieve through bribery or threats, he managed through trickery. That light from the yacht I saw for a moment that night. They secretly followed us to find out the exact location. They waited with the lights off, hoping to catch any slip-up. I was a fool not to be cautious. Taking advantage of our sleep in the darkness, someone swam over to our brecandiri. Then they stole our aqualaungs and left us helpless. By the time we got back, they had certainly looted everything from that place and returned. What takes us seven days by boat, takes them one day by yacht. Don’t try to stop me. No matter how powerful and wealthy Mr. Savage is, I will get my revenge for this treachery here on Turkish soil.”
Uncle Kapkin left. Though he looked like a hulking wrestler, I had seen his simple, smiling face. But in reality, he was more like a fearsome giant.
I waited the entire morning for Uncle Kapkin in vain. In the afternoon, I got news from the hospital. Uncle Kapkin had apparently fallen from the jetty and was severely injured. I needed to go immediately.
What I saw there made my blood boil with rage. Uncle Kapkin was almost completely bandaged. Looking at me with sorrowful eyes, he said, "I couldn't do it, my boy, Das, I couldn't do it. How could I know that even death itself was guarding that place?"
"Alright then, let me go see the face of Death himself,” I said, standing up.
In his injured state, Uncle Kapkin moaned, "No, no, don’t go, Das. You have no idea how terrifying that giant is. He’ll crush you to death."
Without responding, I left.
From there, I went straight to the jetty where Mr. Savage's yacht was docked.
As soon as I stepped onto the ship from the jetty, a man emerged from a nearby cabin and greeted me with an exceedingly polite smile, saying, "Come, come, have you come to see the ship? May I know your name?"
“Is it particularly necessary to know my name?”
“Yes, sir,” he said in a syrupy sweet voice, “We’d like to know whose feet are gracing our ship.”
“Fine. Memorize it well. My name is Das, Ghanashyam Das. And yours?”
“My humble name is Kasim.” The man seemed to melt with humility. I scrutinized him a bit more. It was hard to tell if he was Turkish, Greek, Egyptian, or Syrian. He could even pass as Bengali. He looked almost exactly like Raha.
“Now that you know my name,” I said sternly, “may I take a look around the ship?”
“Of course, of course. Do you just want to look around?” he asked, still dripping with politeness.
“No, not just to look around. I have a debt to settle with Mr. Savage on behalf of Uncle Kapkin.”
“Then you can settle that debt with me, fool!”
Turning around at the sound of a thunderous, spine-chilling voice, I was genuinely pleased. There stood a figure that matched the voice—a massive giant made of solid black iron! He wore short pants and a sweater. His steel muscles seemed ready to burst through the sweater with the slightest flex.
I said respectfully, "Oh, it's you! But wouldn't it be better to hand it directly to Mr. Savage himself?"
"Then I'd have to lift you up to reach Mr. Savage." With a grip as strong as a vice, he grabbed my collar with one hand and lifted me into the air.
"What are you doing! What are you doing! You're scaring me!" I said, pleadingly.
With a devilish grin, revealing his gold-capped teeth, he let go and dropped me to the ground, saying, "What! Had enough fun? Still want to reach Mr. Savage?"
"Of course, I do! If I can't reach him, then you or someone like you should be able to reach me on his behalf!"
As I collapsed onto the deck, the giant's eyes, burning like the furnaces of Tata Steel, narrowed as he stood towering above me.
"Then take this, you filthy louse!" he shouted, leaping up and throwing a punch as powerful as a hammer.
The ship's railings were strong; they didn't break but just bent slightly. Picking him up slowly, I said, "Did it hurt you? Poor Uncle Kapkin was hurt too. But this shouldn't hurt as much, right?"
This time, I had to pull him up from inside the cabin. The door had broken.
"Sorry," I said politely, lifting him up, "I mistakenly hit your right side. Uncle Kapkin's left jaw was broken."
As I lifted him from the deck again, I heard a loud laugh from behind me, "Hey! Hey! What are you doing? Fighting like thugs when you're a gentleman!"
Leaving the giant sprawled on the deck, I turned around.
Yes, Mr. Savage himself had arrived. Despite his name, Savage, he looked like a round, cheerful, friendly man. He smiled at me as if we were old friends.
Smiling back, I said, "What can I do? I don't have enough money to hire goons, so I have to do the dirty work myself."
"It seems like you're very angry," Mr. Savage laughed again.
"Yes, I think so too. But maybe after a little chat with you, all my anger will melt away."
"Then there's no need to worry! Come, come, let's have a chat to your heart's content." Mr. Savage led me to his private cabin.
As we walked, I said, "Couldn't you send your pet thug to the hospital? There might still be an empty bed next to Uncle Kapkin's!"
Mr. Savage laughed and said, “You're right. It’s best if they stay together side by side.”
By then, we had reached Mr. Savage’s private cabin.
“Sit down, sit down. Let’s have a chat.” Mr. Savage gestured towards a sofa for me.
“No, there’s no need to sit. We don’t need to chat much. I just want to know what you brought back from the sunken ship in Marmaris Bay.”
“What are you talking about?” Mr. Savage laughed heartily again. “Is there a sunken ship there? And even if there is, what could be in it?”
“Whatever might be there, I only need a few bronze and alabaster statues. I’ve come to you just for those.”
“Of course! Why would you be a bother? But where would I get statues from? I do have a hobby of collecting various things. But here, I’ve come just for a pleasure trip. There’s nothing more on this ship than what you see here.”
Glancing around at the various items decorating the cabin, I said, “So, there’s nothing else you can remember? Your memory seems quite poor. Perhaps you need a remedy for that. Well, how about I take something from here? Thinking about what’s not here might help you remember what is.”
Savage laughed generously, “Sure, take whatever you like. Feel free to choose anything.”
I picked up a cheap paperweight from the table, which was covering some papers, and said, “Then I’ll take this.”
For a moment, Savage’s face turned pale. Then he smiled and said, “Oh, with so many fine items around, you’re taking this cheap, broken paperweight!”
“If it’s cheap, then why do you mind? It’s not like it’s something for which you’re willing to go bankrupt, or a rare item that nobody else in the world has—a tektite! Don’t move towards that drawer, Mr. Savage! Who knows, there might be a pistol in there. With the way your face looks now, if you had a pistol, you might just throw it for the sake of this simple paperweight!”
With a leap, I reached the table, opened the drawer, and took out the pistol. Then, I threw it over the railing into the sea and said, “I’m just a poor farmer, what do I know about tektites? You must carry this with you, not daring to leave it even in your own house. I’m taking this, thinking it’s the most valuable tektite in the world. If you ever remember about those statues, you can bring them to me, and I’ll return this tektite—uh, paperweight.”
“You will get your paperweight back. Kasim knows my name, and I’ll leave an address before I go.”
I returned with that tektite. I hoped that one day, with better judgment, Savage would return those statues.
Ghanada paused. Sisir let out a long sigh.
“Oh, what a loss to the world! Even if Savage gains some wisdom now, without the tektite, he won’t return those statues! The missing pages of India’s history will never be mended.”
“It’s all Bonwari’s fault!”
As Gaur lamented, the dramatic entrance of the esteemed Bonwari occurred at the door.
“I searched everywhere on the streets and found it, sir. I cleaned it well!” With a sheepish face, Bonwari entered and placed an item on the table that left us all stunned.
“Hurray!” Shibu shouted, “Here’s the treasure of seven kings, the jewel from beyond the galaxy! The magnet to pull back the lost threads of history!”
“This? This is my tektite.” With disdain, Ghanada threw the glass pebble from the table and almost snatched Sisir’s tin of cigarettes before stomping out of the room.
The paperweight, Ghanada’s precious tektite, lay shattered on the floor.
Original Story : 'Dhil' by Premendra Mitra
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