Just give me something to hold on to

She had hung up on me again. The moment she heard I was in her city, she hung up on me. The city of joy they said, it had only given me heartache in the past two months. The yellow cabs whizzed by, the people walking on the pavement brushed me aside without bothering to notice me, muttering an occasional expletive.

I stood there staring at the phone, the left thumb circling the call button. I pressed it, put it on my ear.

Silence.

I checked the screen. The network towers had disappeared. I switched off the phone and switched it back on. Still no network. I looked around for a pay phone. I suddenly felt helpless, cut off from the whole world.

I remembered the days when all my friends had a cell phone and I didn’t have one. I simply didn’t need one. When I left my hometown, my mother forced me into buying one. Since then I have been dragged into this quicksand of staying within constant communicable reach of mankind at all times. Unknowingly I became addicted to this quicksand.

I knew what had happened to my phone. It had happened before. She had asked me to change my service provider, I had denied.

“Is there a payphone booth around here”, I asked a man walking straight at me, as if I didn’t exist.

“There are a few around the corner” the man said in Bengali, pointing his hand straight ahead, his index finger turned right.

I walked on the pavement trying not to bump into the oncoming crowd, turned around the corner. A few feet ahead hung on the wall, like urinals, was a row of five or six yellow pay phones, the kind which has slots on the top for putting in one rupee coins and the receiver hanging on the side. The wall below the phones was splattered with red marks.

Two of the phones in the row were engaged. I took the one in the middle and put the receiver on my ear. I could hear a dull beep at the other end. On the phone beside me was a man, standing patiently with the receiver on his ear. I could hear a low ringing sound coming at specific intervals from his receiver, as he stood facing me, looking at the pavement below his feet as if it was about to disappear soon.

The man’s head was full of grey hair, oiled and neatly combed. I could see the marks of the comb’s teeth on his hair. His skin would have been fair once upon a time, had grown a bit dark now. The skin on the fingers holding the receiver was folded, another mark that time had left on him. He looked at me for a moment with his black unseeing eyes, a thin layer of yellowing cataract had begun to form over the corneas. The white shirt he wore was clean but had become ragged at the cuffs and the collar.

I took out a one rupee coin and fumbled with it between my index finger and thumb, the phone receiver still on my left ear and the dull beep sounding unsure at the other end.

“Ke Rupa… Rupa aami bolchi…” the man spoke holding the lower end of the receiver close to his mouth.

There was a silence. I raised my hand and half inserted the coin into the slot at the top of the phone. The beeping sound continued in my ear.

“Rupa don’t hang up please. I am sorry for whatever happened between us. I know I am responsible for all of it and I am sorry about it. Please give me one last chance.” I heard the man’s soft voice again.

Silence.

I heard only the busses go by and the dull noise of the phone. My fingers gripped the half inserted coin with my hand resting on the phone. I looked at the ground below my feet.

“Tumi shuncho… Rupa?” The man said again, hope giving way to desperation in his voice. “The phone is beeping, I will have to insert another Rupee. I don’t have any left. Rupa, please be quick. I want to comeback. Please say something Rupa…. Don’t hang up on me I don’t have any money to spare.”

I pulled my coin out of the slot of the phone and stretched my hand towards the man.

“Here I have a spare coin”, I said. The man took it raised it to me, and inserted it into the phone slot.

“I got a coin now, Rupa… No, I found it on the ground… No don’t hang up… I am not lying… Rupa… please… No.. no.. no.. no… no…” He banged the receiver on to the hanging phone.

“Eta ki korcho tumi”, a man standing nearby shouted at the old man.

The old man looked at the street blankly, hung the receiver on the cradle, turned around and started walking away from me.

“Suno… “, I shouted, hung the receiver on the cradle and started behind him. He didn’t pay any attention to my shout.

He walked with his head hung over his shoulders, the big canvas shoes torn at their heels flopped under his feet. He stepped off the pavement on to the street. I saw the red lights turn green.

“Listen… I have more…”

I couldn’t complete my sentence.