People continued to crowd into the large drawing room. More chairs had to be brought in to accommodate the continuous flow of visitors. Most of them had come more out of sheer curiosity than real concern.

Antara sat in silence deliberately hiding her eyes from the probing stares. No one dared to question her today. She was fed up of having to answer the same questions over and over again, each day, for the past month.

“From where did they abduct him?”

“Did you receive any phone calls?”

“Did they tell you what they wanted from him?”

“Did they ask you to pay any amount?”

“Have you spoken to Nijan?”

The only question that had hovered round everyone’s lips yet couldn’t be uttered was: “Is Nijan really alive?”

She herself had suppressed that question a thousand times. All she could ask herself was why should any terrorist wish to kidnap her husband. He had done no harm to anyone. He hadn’t made money by unfair means like, perhaps, many of the terrorists who pretended to offer the people a new land of prosperity. Prosperity indeed! How would prosperity come? By looting, killing and abducting innocents? Whatever money he had was from the tea gardens. They were not newly bought, but handed down by the generations before him. Of course, it wasn’t easy running tea gardens in Assam anymore. The labourers were no longer a submissive lot. Moreover, the terrorists who were on a lookout for easy money seemed to find it easier to kidnap tea-planters.

Again and again she had asked herself and anyone who had visited her at this time of crisis – Why Nijan? What had he done? But now she had stopped questioning altogether. She had also stopped answering queries. She felt drained of all energy.

*

“Let’s go on a holiday, Nijan,” she had said to him the night before he had left for Tezpur.

He was always so busy. He had to work, take important decisions, attend meetings and tour extensively. She loved him for what he was – a successful man. But she also longed for his company. He pampered her with a lot of expensive gifts, no doubt. She had just to say, “You know, I have seen a beautiful blue chiffon sari,” or “There’s a beautiful cut-glass piece in the AC Market,” or anything that had caught her eye for that matter. And he would at once say, “Go and get it.” He would take her to all the parties. But what she enjoyed most were the occasional vacations they took – just the two of them.

So that night she had asked if he would go on a vacation. Usually, he asked, “Where would you like to go?” But that night he was silent, as if something was on his mind. She could sense it. Must be some problem at work. He never discussed his problems with her. Perhaps, he felt that she wouldn’t understand or couldn’t cope with it. After all she was fifteen years younger to him. He was quite protective over her. Even after twenty years of marriage and after having two grown-up children, he still treated her like a child who must be protected from the bad, bad world and showered with gifts to keep her happy. He hardly said “no” to her wishes. So, when he did not say anything in reply to her wish to go on a holiday, she had remained quiet. What he perhaps didn’t realise in all these years was that she too could be very tactful and understanding.

That morning she had prepared the breakfast that he always enjoyed. Bacon and sausage were not good for him. He was no longer young. At fifty-five, one had to be careful about what one ate. But she had prepared bacon and sausages for him that morning, perhaps to see the tension wiped off from his forehead. The sight of the beautifully laid breakfast table did bring a smile to his lips. Her heart lightened.

“Come back soon,” she said as she followed him around the house.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just four days.”

“Give me a phone call from Tezpur.”

He always did. But every time he got ready to leave on a tour she would make the request. He always called her as soon as he reached his destination.

But this time there was no call.

That worried her. Even if he was extremely busy, he always found some time to call her. What could have happened to him? All sorts of accidents flashed in and out of her mind. Was he lying inside the car with broken ribs? Did the car run into a tree or fall into a ditch? Did a truck hit the car?

At such times, she wished that her son were with them. But he was far away, in Ooty. Noina too was away in Pune doing her B.A. Their presence would have been a comfort in this big house.

She had called up one of his cousins in Tezpur. Nijan had said that he would visit him late in the evening. But he hadn’t.

She spent a restless night. What could have happened to him? Could it be that…? No, it couldn’t. Why should any militant kidnap him? There wasn’t any reason. Was he robbed and manhandled by dacoits? Did he carry a lot of money with him? Sometimes he did carry bundles of money for business purposes, or for payment. Could it be that someone knew about it and had snatched his money at gunpoint? But then, he should at least come back.

The very next morning she tried once more. Perhaps he was there in the morning. No, he wasn’t. She panicked. There was no call from him till late evening. Every time the phone rang she jumped to snatch the receiver from the cradle. But it wasn’t him.

It was past ten o’clock at night when the phone rang.

“Are you Mrs. Choudhury?”

“Yes.”

“Your husband Nijan Choudhury is with us.”

For a second she couldn’t speak. Then, “Who are you? Why is my husband with you? Where is he now?”

The line went dead. No answers came. She kept on repeating her questions to a dead line. She couldn’t think clearly.

The news spread. Friends, relatives, well-wishers, people from the Press, all began to swarm into the house. She repeated the story to everyone who came to see her. As if she could talk out the tension from her system.

Someone told her that a sadhu could tell everything a person wanted to know. Under normal circumstances, she would have laughed at the very idea of seeking advice from a sadhu. “Sadhus are frauds,” she would have said. But now a sadhu seemed like God himself.

A friend took her up the hill past a big temple. Under the shade of a banyan tree sat a dusky man with long hair piled up at the top of his head and a long beard that reached his chest. He sat in deep meditation.

Antara felt a lightening of her heart as she watched this man. She felt as if he would, in a flash, bring Nijan to her, right there on the hill slope.

When she narrated the whole incident, the sadhu said in a very calm voice, “Don’t worry. Your husband is safe. He will come back to you. Every morning wear a yellow sari and offer puja uttering a mantra that I will teach you. He will come back. But it will take some time.”

The sadhu recited the mantra and asked her to memorize it. In her eagerness to learn the mantra and reassured by his words, she didn’t mind when he refused to say who had abducted Nijan and for what reason.

Every morning, for the past month, she put on a yellow sari and offered puja, chanting the mantra. The days were fear-filled – the carefully hidden fear in the eyes of the visitors, and her own suppressed fear of someone bringing news of her husband’s murder.

For the others, it would merely be sensational news for a week or so. Then, they would continue their normal life. Nothing would change for them. But for her, it would be a violent jolt that would change the course of her life.

*

This morning, she received a call from one of her so-called well-wishers. The call came from Nagaon.

“What clothes was he wearing?” he asked.

“Olive green pants and a green striped shirt,” she said recalling Nijan talking with someone over the phone the morning he had left, standing right where she was now. Then, fearfully, “Why?”

“A decomposed body has been recovered from a ditch on the way to Tezpur.”

“And?” she prompted almost in a whisper.

As silence greeted her from the other end she almost screamed, “What coloured clothes are on the body?”

A short silence. Then, “Olive green pant and a green striped shirt.”

She was in bed the rest of the day. Her sister sat near her, trying to console her. The body might not be Nijan’s. Someone else could have been wearing similar clothes. The police would be bringing the clothes. She should not break down. The clothes might not belong to Nijan.

Antara held on to the thin hope of “might not.”

The police was taking a long time. She kept looking at the wall clock every minute.

It was late in the evening when the police arrived with the clothes. She had been waiting for that very moment. But when that moment did arrive, she found that she did not want to look at the clothes.

Her sister coaxed her, “Come on, Antara. Come and identify the clothes. They might not belong to Nijan.”

She remained silent, pale as a ghost.

“Shall I call in the police? They could bring the clothes here.”

“No! No! No!” she screamed like one possessed, “I will not look at those clothes.”

Antara ran into the bathroom and locked herself in. “I will not look at those clothes. They do not belong to Nijan. The abductors have not killed him. He will come back to me someday. I will wait for him.” She said to herself again and again behind the locked door.