The Lost Fragrance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Book Title 1

  Title 2

  Copyright

  1

  1

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Author’s Afterword

  Back Cover

  the LOST

  FRAGRANCE

  AMIT DASGUPTA

  the LOST

  FRAGRANCE

  © Amit Dasgupta, 2013

  First published as In the Land of the Blue Jasmine

  Revised version 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without the prior permission of the author and the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction, and all the characters, places and events of the stories are the product of imagination, and any resemblance to any living or dead person or events or places will be entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-81-8328-353-3

  Published by

  Wisdom Tree

  4779/23, Ansari Road

  Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110 002

  Ph.: 23247966/67/68

  [email protected]

  Printed in India

  In memory of my parents

  For my daughter Diya

  and my nephew Varun

  This book is meant for those who have

  enjoyed cooking and learnt to converse

  with crows.

  One

  Once upon a time, there lived an old man who spent most of his time making balloons. Mind you, he wasn’t always a balloon-maker. Indeed, for almost thirty years, he was a teacher of geography in a quiet and little village school. The other teachers would say that he was the best geography teacher, for his eyes would light up every time he spoke of exotic and distant lands separated by mountains, deserts and oceans. If you asked him the location of a country, he would authoritatively point in a geographical direction and tell you where it exactly was. Everyone knew that he was very well read and thus, had to be right. His fellow teachers would nod in appreciation and the principal of the school was most proud to have such a fine teacher, especially of a subject as dry as geography. The children swore that he was their favourite teacher because he made learning geography such fun.

  But one night, a strange and mysterious dream changed everything for the old man and his dear wife, and it seemed as if the simple and quiet world that they lived in had been rudely turned inside out.

  The old man dreamt of a flute player sitting by the side of a mighty river. He spoke to the old man and said, ‘You have been chosen for a very special task. You have to help a girl child fly.’ The flute player spoke of the need for great haste, because in a strange and faraway land, many awaited, with great eagerness, her arrival. He said that some also awaited, with equal eagerness, her death. Indeed, those some others were—even at this very moment—conspiring on how they might kill her!

  ‘To fly? Oh dear, dear me. I know nothing of the subject and, I dare say, it is a highly technical one at that!’ the old man said, scratching his head and looking most distraught.

  The flute player sighed and gave the impression that, while he most certainly agreed that it was a difficult undertaking, he was hopeful that the old man would know how to go about his assignment. ‘I am confident that you will do what is expected. Don’t worry about what happens after that because I will guide the little girl. You need to believe that!’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said the old man, ‘but where does she need to fly off to?’

  The flute player smiled and then turned to play his flute. With soft and peaceful notes, his music spoke of the sea and of the sky, of the birds in full flight and the first yawn of a newborn child. The flute player put his flute down and then said, ‘Where does she need to fly to? Well, it is a secret place, tucked away somewhere between here and there and it may only be sighted from the sky, on a clear day, by those who are pure of heart.’

  He paused, for he knew this was difficult to assimilate, even for a very good geography teacher. He then said very gently, ‘It is known as the Land of the Blue Jasmine.’

  A moment of silence ensued. The old man did not know what to say.

  In a hushed voice, he uttered the words that he had never believed he would ever be called upon to say. These were words you never said, for it was believed in the all-knowing circles of the village that if uttered in public, they would only bring intolerable suffering to the family of the speaker and others around.

  The old man spoke, in his dream, ‘I have heard of such a place! We are not allowed to speak of it publicly, for it will cause us horrible death and untold misery.’

  He asked, ‘Why do you wish me to seek out this accursed place that we know only as fiction and as a nightmare? And why would you send an innocent little girl there?’

  The flute player responded, ‘You must help the girl child or the most unimaginably horrible things would happen.’ Then, the flute player spoke briefly and incomprehensibly about the world of the un-dead, the nights of the starless sky and about a fearsome double-headed serpent.

  ‘What are you talking about? The un-dead? The starless skies? Double-headed serpents?’ the old man asked in shocked surprise.

  ‘Yes, yes…’ the flute player said. ‘It’s all very complicated. But it is easier to start from the beginning and that, quite frankly, lies in finding the girl child.’

  ‘But how will I know where to find her, or that it is her?’ the old man asked.

  ‘She will be different from the others,’ the flute player smiled as he replied, ‘for she is The Awaited One.’

  Two

  The dream had such an engaging sense of magic that the old man thoroughly enjoyed it. He hoped that it would go on and on and on, traversing nights. Indeed, when he went to bed, or even when he had a shut-eye in the day time, in between classes, he was most disappointed if he had any other dream.

  There were so many reasons behind this. For one, there were multiple questions that excited him! It seemed like a wonderful puzzle that explored how the little girl, if she did actually exist, would be identified. And then, how would someone actually discover this mysterious place that no one wanted to talk about, let alone travel to!

  Tough questions, but these were not all.

  Who, for instance, did the flute player speak of as being the un-dead? Why were the nights starless? What was all this nonsense about a double-headed serpent? Why did so many have to wait with such great eagerness for a little girl? What dark secrets did that place hold? Why was it known as the Land of the Blue Jasmine? Who on
earth was the little girl? And why was she called The Awaited One?

  One question led to the next, as is the case usually with questions of this type. And so, when the old man woke up in the morning, after his usual six hours of sleep, he was most disappointed because all the questions had remained unanswered. ‘Wheels within wheels. Clues left at random. You need to put them together to figure it all out,’ he muttered as he made his morning cup of tea.

  He dearly wished he knew how the story would end. ‘It’s like a complicated detective story,’ he grunted irritably to himself.

  Strangely though, he dreamt the same dream every night for seven nights in a row, always ending the same way, with the flute player asking him to hurry up or horrible things would happen in that faraway land. It did appear as though, with every passing night, the flute player was getting more and more insistent. ‘One day, when you are ready, you will receive a sign,’ said the flute player, ‘and you will know that the time has come! Remember to tell of this dream.’

  ‘It’s getting to be rather mysterious,’ he told himself one morning, as he walked to the school from his home. Night after night, the very same dream! Could it be that someone was trying to communicate with him through the world of dreams and tell him something important?

  When the old man could no longer hold himself back, he decided that he would consult his wife. So, he told her about his dream.

  Imagine his shock when he learnt that she too had the same dream every night for the last seven nights! And with the same questions, for which no answers appeared forthcoming in the dream!

  ‘This is no ordinary dream,’ the old couple told themselves, ‘there must be something to it and it would be wrong of us to ignore it, especially since both of us have had the same dream for the past one week!’

  Could it be that the Land of the Blue Jasmine truly existed, they wondered.

  ‘I have heard the place mentioned,’ said the old man, ‘but only in hushed voices. I have always considered it to be a mythical place, conjured up by people with great imagination. They say it is a hidden place swathed in shadows and in evil. And now, the dream speaks of such a place as actually existing!’

  ‘But it is also believed that even talking about it brings untold suffering!’ the old man’s wife said.

  Three

  But talk about it they did, and till late into the night, as they sat in front of the fireplace. Indeed, they decided finally that if they were to help the child to fly, the first thing they needed to do was to learn about flying. It sounded logical but since no one had heard about airplanes in those days, it really was a most challenging thought.

  ‘Birds fly and we need to learn how they do it,’ suggested the old man’s wife most helpfully.

  The old man nodded. ‘You are quite right but I teach geography,’ he replied with a sigh of disappointment, ‘and while that would be handy in finding out the precise location of the place, what I really need to know right now are the principles of flight.’

  ‘Perhaps the library is a good place to begin,’ said the old man’s wife. ‘Take leave. Tell the principal, who is your friend, that you need a break from teaching.’

  The old man had great faith in his wife’s wisdom and so, the very next day, he applied to the village school for a long leave. The principal was most upset and tried his best to dissuade the old man.

  ‘We shall still live in the village and, in any case, I would be in the library most of the time,’ the old man said. ‘It’s this mysterious dream,’ he added, ‘that I just cannot seem to be able to ignore.’

  ‘You can’t be serious!’ the principal exclaimed. ‘You’re planning on stopping geography lessons because of a dream? My dear friend, a dream is just a dream. No one has ever heard of anyone following a dream around. It’s like chasing a cloud, or like looking for a raindrop in the ocean.’

  ‘I would normally have agreed,’ the old man muttered, ‘but you see, for some reason that I am unable to explain, it’s actually the dream that’s following us around! Indeed, neither my wife nor I have been able to think of anything else these last few days.’

  ‘I find it most bizarre, if you ask me,’ the principal responded. But seeing that his friend was determined, he reluctantly agreed to sanction his leave. ‘On one condition,’ he added, ‘you must promise to come and teach the children if special classes need to be organised. You are the best geography teacher around and all this business about latitude and longitude is most confusing. I quite frankly don’t understand why we complicate matters. A country is either here or there. That’s how we studied it in my days.’

  Sighing deeply, the principal continued, ‘Anyway, since you understand such matters, I would need to know that I can rely on your presence when the children need you before their final examinations. If you ask me frankly though, my friend,’ he then said, ‘I simply do not understand what you want to follow up on.’

  ‘I guess,’ responded the old man, shaking his friend’s hand, ‘it’s all settled then.’ He then sighed, wondering what the future held.

  Four

  The school was particularly proud of its library. Years ago, the first principal had willed his entire collection to the school, and lined the walls with fine leather-bound tomes. A faded, dusty plaque acknowledged his contribution.

  A new life began for the old man. He stepped into the library and stood quietly, looking at the books, contemplating the immense challenge that lay before him. Then, he closed his eyes, almost meditatively, and determinedly strode to a desk near the window where he sat down and opened the first book.

  Every day, the librarian would place a whole set of large tomes before the old man—geometry to learn about sizes and shapes, and physics to learn about gravity and trajectory. The old man studied about birds and how they flapped their wings, and how cranes craned their necks to improve their flight. He studied about air and wind movements, and learnt about the inertia of motion too. He read about the human anatomy and searched for similarities with the albatross. He scribbled copious notes on small scraps of paper that he carefully numbered. In the evening, he would close the book he was reading and gaze out of the window at the birds flying in the blue sky. ‘Apples can’t fly,’ he would sadly say, ‘and people differ from the albatross in far too many ways!’ Then, the old man would slowly walk home, muttering to himself, lost in thought.

  ‘It appears that I would need something large that displaces air,’ he told his wife one evening.

  ‘You mean like a balloon?’ his wife had responded from the kitchen, where she was cooking dinner.

  The old man stared at her incredulously. ‘You are absolutely right,’ he said, ‘why didn’t I think of that?’

  And so, from the next day onwards, the old man’s study became more and more focussed. ‘I need to know every single thing about balloons,’ he told the librarian, who nodded in satisfaction and returned with an armful of dusty books. The old man started looking more and more hopeful and soon his scraps of paper were filled with the most extraordinary drawings.

  A year passed since the old man first had his strange and mysterious dream, and he remembered that the flute player had told him that time was short. He spent more and more time at home, learning the fine art of balloon-making, and mastering the complex principles of flight.

  And then, one bright summer morning, the old man tried his hand at his first balloon. And then, his next. And before long, he built quite an impressive repertoire of the most amazing balloons.

  Some were round and yellow, with red polka dots, and looked most colourful. Others had numbers written on them to help children with mathematics, for instance, 9 + 2 = 11 or 14 x 2 = 28. Then there were some in complicated geometrical shapes like triangles, parallelograms, quadrilaterals, rectangles, octagons and so on, and were part of the maths collection.

  There were fruit balloons—bananas, mangoes, oranges and even the exotic coconuts! They were part of the fruit collection and were placed alongside bitter gourds
and cauliflowers, aubergines and tomatoes, cabbages and broccoli, which were part of the vegetable collection.

  And, some even taught a bit of geography. A balloon in the shape of a teardrop was called Sri Lanka (actually Ceylon, because that is what it was called at that time), one that looked like a boot was called Italy, and a cluster of little balloons was called Lakshadweep.

  Then, there were the ‘family’ balloons, which were meant to teach the importance of family ties and kinship. Grandfather Balloon was delightfully pot-bellied, and swayed from side to side as he floated in the air. ‘Needs to lose weight,’ many would say. Grandfather Balloon swayed cuddly close to Grandmother Balloon. The two of them would smile benignly at a brood of small and frisky balloons that noisily bounced all over the place and got in everyone’s way. These were the Baby Balloons. Mother Balloon had a frown and looked as though she were having an argument with her husband. Father Balloon did not appear to have heard a single word of what was being said by his wife, for he morosely floated up and down, looking most harassed.

  The school children began missing the old man, for he rarely visited the library nowadays. So, one evening, they decided to troop into his home after school and see what he was doing.

  Imagine the looks on their faces when they saw the amazing splash of shapes, sizes and colours of the balloons that the old man had been making!

  After that first evening, it became a sort of set routine. The children would run to the old man’s house straight from school and excitedly call out, ‘Balloon Uncle! Balloon Uncle!’ The old man’s wife would come out of the cottage with a big smile and ask the children to put away their school bags in a neat row and offer them water and then, whatever there was to eat in the house. Meanwhile, the old man would come out of his room, his arms full with the balloons he had made that day.

  There would be such excitement amongst the children as they jostled one another. A lot of huffing and puffing would goon as they filled the balloons with air.