Old Man

I first heard about the old man from a receptionist who seemed more embarrassed than I was.

She had been perfectly pleasant when I arrived, offered me water, asked about the traffic and told me Mr. Desai would be joining us shortly. But when I mentioned the position I'd applied for, her expression changed.

"Sir, didn't you receive our email?"

I checked my phone. There was nothing.

"I'm sorry," she said. "We were told you've decided not to proceed."

"By whom?"

She hesitated before answering. "An elderly gentleman came yesterday and told us that you won’t proceed and felt embarrassed to tell by yourself. I even asked for the gentleman's name but he left immediately without answering me.”

I had travelled from Ahmedabad to Mumbai for that interview. The company had approached me, the salary was nearly double what I earned, and I'd already spent two weeks imagining how I would resign.

On the train home, I went through every conversation I'd had about the job. My wife knew, naturally. Two colleagues knew. So did my friend Rakesh, who had helped prepare my presentation.

The next incident was harder to explain.

My wife, Kavya, had found a buyer for our apartment. We wanted a bigger place, preferably somewhere her parents could stay comfortably when they visited. The buyer had agreed to our price, and we were supposed to sign the agreement on Monday.

On Sunday evening, he called to withdraw. When I pressed him, he admitted that someone had visited his office with documents suggesting the building had structural problems. There were no structural problems.

"Who was he?"

"An older man. Very polite. I assumed he was from your society."

I asked whether he remembered anything else.

"He had difficulty hearing from his right ear. Kept turning his head when I spoke." Plenty of people had hearing problems. Still, the detail bothered me.

Over the following year, the old man became an unwelcome part of my life. He convinced a potential investor that my business proposal was financially unsound. He persuaded a publisher not to take my manuscript. Once, he even approached the principal of a school where I was trying to secure admission for my daughter. 

I asked and again same old man

"Ordinary fellow. Sixty-five, seventy perhaps. Why?"

I said nothing and that was it… I went to the police. The inspector listened patiently, although I could see his interest fading as I spoke. I had no photograph, no name and no evidence of a crime beyond conversations people claimed to have had with a stranger.

"Perhaps somebody in your family is concerned about your decisions," he suggested.

I asked whether he would feel the same if somebody kept interfering with his life. He told me to return when I had something more substantial. Kavya was less patient. "You've started treating everybody like a suspect," she said one night after I questioned her about a phone call she'd received.

"Because somebody is telling him things."

"Who is him? You don't even know whether it's the same person."

I had no answer.

One Sunday, she found me examining the call history on her phone.

"Are you checking whether I've spoken to your mysterious man?"

I said nothing.

"Do you seriously think I'm involved?"

"I don't know what to think anymore."

"Then find out. But stop punishing everybody until you do."

She left for her parents' house two weeks later. I didn't stop her. A month later, she took our daughter to her mother's house. She said she needed a few days. I told her to take as many as she wanted, which was a stupid thing to say, but I was tired of apologising for being angry.

My daughter, Tara called to remind me about her birthday on Saturday.

"You're coming, Papa?"

"Of course."

"Before we cut the cake?"

I promised.

But by the time I reached Kavya's parents' house, the cake was in the refrigerator. Tara was asleep.

Kavya didn't shout. She gave me a plate of food and said, "She kept asking whether we should wait another ten minutes."

I left without eating.

---

I was sitting outside a tea stall when an old man asked whether the chair opposite me was occupied. He wore an ordinary checked shirt. 

"I heard Tara got admission somewhere else."

I might not have noticed him at all if he hadn't mentioned my daughter's school. I looked up. For a moment, I couldn't move. The hair was white, the face thinner and deeply lined, but I knew those eyes. I knew the crooked nose, the uneven eyebrows and the small mark beside his mouth. Something about his face disturbed me. He had the tired appearance of a man who hadn't slept well for years, and his right hand trembled slightly when he lifted the glass.

It was like looking at myself that somebody had left out in the sun for thirty years. He watched me recognise him.

"You're……,” He didn't deny it.

I stood up so suddenly that my chair fell backwards. He asked me to sit down before we attracted more attention.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Seventy-three."

"How is this possible?"

"I don't know how to explain it. I was given a chance to come back."

"And this is what you decided to do? Ruin my life?"

He lowered his eyes.

I wanted to ask him a hundred things, but the anger I'd carried for nearly two years came rushing back.

"Why did you stop the Mumbai job?"

"Because I knew you'd accept it."

"Of course I would! They were offering me twice my salary."

"I know. I accepted it too." 

He told me how that job had changed everything. Within three years, he'd become a director. Five years later, he was running his own business. There were bigger offices, expensive cars and enough money to buy things we'd once only dreamed about.

"So what was wrong with that?"

"Nothing, in the beginning. Kavya was happy. We moved into a bigger apartment. Tara got into a good school. I thought I was doing everything a husband and father should."

"Then?"

"Then I started missing things and because I remember what came afterwards.""

He remembered Tara's first school performance. He'd promised to attend but stayed back for a client meeting. On Kavya's birthday, he'd flown to Delhi to close a deal. When his mother was admitted to hospital, he'd sent money and arranged the best doctor, but hadn't visited until three days later.

"Kavya eventually left," he said. "Tara was twenty-six when she stopped speaking to me."

"Every time, I had a reason," he said. "And every reason sounded important."

I listened, though I still couldn't understand why any of this justified what he'd done to me.

"And you think the Mumbai job caused all this?"

"No. I did. But that job was where it started. I kept telling myself I'd spend time with them once things settled down. Things never settled down because I kept finding something else to chase."

He reached for his tea, then realised it had gone cold.

"That's why I stopped the job. The apartment. The investment. I thought if I took away the things that kept you busy, you'd have time for them."

"And the publisher? Why stop my book?"

"Because in my life, you signed a contract that made you rewrite it for two years. You hated the finished book. You stopped writing afterwards."

I stared at him.

"So you decided I shouldn't even get the chance?"

"I thought I was saving you from another regret."

"Do you know what you've actually done?"

He said nothing.

"I lost that job. I couldn't sell the apartment. The business never started. I stopped writing because I couldn't concentrate on anything. For almost two years, I've been trying to find out who was doing this to me."

"I know."

"No, you don't. I stopped speaking to people who'd been my friends for years. I checked Kavya's phone. I questioned her parents. She cried in front of me, asking what she'd done wrong, and I still didn't believe her."

He looked away.

"And now she's gone. She's taken Tara with her."

For the first time, he seemed genuinely frightened.

"Has she filed for divorce?"

"Not yet."

He closed his eyes.

"You came back to save my marriage. You came back to give me a better life. And you've taken away almost everything I had."

For a while, neither of us spoke. Then he asked about Tara.

"She turned eight last Saturday," I said. "I promised I'd be there. But I heard someone had seen you near the station. I spent the evening looking for you."

"What?" I asked.

"I missed her eighth birthday too."

"Why?"

"A meeting in Mumbai. I thought I'd make it back."

I stared at him.

"Did she wait?"

He nodded.

"Kavya told me she kept asking for ten more minutes."

"When I was your age, I believed everything would be better once I became successful. When I grew old, I believed everything would be better if I could change the past."

After a while, he asked whether Tara still liked chocolate cake.

"Yes," I said. He smiled faintly.

"She used to save the corner pieces for me."

I remembered the cake Kavya had put away. I hadn't even asked whether Tara had saved me a piece. I got up to leave.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To see her."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Will she forgive us?"

I didn't know. As I walked away, I heard him call my name. I turned, but he said nothing. For thirty-one years, he had wanted another chance to be there when his daughter needed him. Now he had one.

And he was sitting at a tea stall, watching me go.

---