Mokkapati Narasimha Shastri, 213

Of late, Raju had completely stopped showing up. I had no idea why. I wondered if he was angry with me for some reason. But I couldn’t think of anything that would have made him upset. I myself was so busy with my studies that I barely had time to breathe here, let alone go visiting. My lessons were going exceedingly well. The private tutor took a special liking to me and showed great attention, teaching me with care. There was a marked difference between his method and the way things were done back home. Every point he explained, he did so in such a way that, even with my limited grasp of the language, I could understand it easily. Realizing that I was making an effort to comprehend and retain what he taught, he was very pleased. My studies, and the progress I was making in them, gave me immense satisfaction.

One day, having nothing in particular to do, I went over to see Raju. He was just about to head out somewhere.

“Hey, what’s this? You’ve come at last! Where have you been all this time? Have you already forgotten me? Or have you found someone to help you forget?” he said, laughing.

“I haven’t had a moment to spare to go around collecting such people! My studies alone are more than enough for me. What about you? Why did you stop coming? I just came to see how you were, since I hadn’t heard from you in so long,” I replied.

He laughed and said, “Believe it or not, I was just about to set out to visit you myself. Wager as much as you like! I too had a few exams and such lately, so I couldn’t make it. Only yesterday did I finish everything. That’s why I was planning to come see you now. Well, since you’re here, let’s have a nice lunch somewhere and then wander about the town until evening. We’ll shake off our weariness and find some fresh enthusiasm. Have you been going out anywhere lately? Seen any pictures or anything?”

He asked as we stepped outside.

“Nothing at all. Haven’t gone anywhere. There’s only one thing of note that happened…”

“That’s a letter from my home,” I said.

“Oh, what’s the news? Are your mother and father keeping well?” he asked, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“They’re doing well,” I began, and proceeded to narrate the entire saga of the day the letter arrived—my wife’s display of affection, the words of consolation she spoke. “My father wrote sternly, asking me to come home. I was at a loss for what to do, so I thought I’d run to you for advice. But I managed to muster some courage from what our landlady said, and I’ve already written another letter home,” I finished.

“You did the right thing. After coming all this way, enduring so much hardship, showing such courage, and spending so much money, it wouldn’t be wise to return without seeing or learning anything. In fact, it would be quite laughable. Besides, we go around talking about lofty ideals and grand ambitions, things beyond our years, and then if you go running home in tears for your mother, all your ideals will be for nothing. You’ll just become one among hundreds of millions of ordinary Indians. Writing back that you’re not coming was the best thing you could do. I congratulate you. Now let’s forget all this. Let’s have lunch and go to a picture house,” said Raju.

“What’s this, man? A picture house now? Like Ankammasivam’s midnight rituals, you want to go to a cinema in broad daylight? What’s so great about that?” I protested.

“It’s perfectly fine! Why wouldn’t it be? I’ll make you see for yourself how enjoyable it is,” he said, brimming with the confidence of a man making a wager, and dragged me along.

“Have you forgotten, my friend, that in this country, picture shows run continuously from 2 in the afternoon till 10 at night? So we can watch a movie comfortably and enjoy ourselves,” he explained, steering us into a small restaurant across the street.

There, as per the usual custom, a waiter welcomed us...

Standing there, being seated at an empty table, having the dishes we wanted brought and arranged before us, and then making those dishes disappear as if by magic, all happened in a matter of moments. We rose, paid the bill, tipped the waiter as usual, and dashed off to the picture house nearby on the same street.

Well, the picture was amusing, lively, and quite good—why deny it! But if you ask whether there was anything particularly noteworthy, it was this: they showed scenes from various sports competitions happening somewhere—badminton (which, in this country, they call shuttlecock), then tennis, cricket, and so on. The images were truly rousing.

After we came out, I bombarded Raju with countless questions about the sports here. He answered everything with great patience, saying, “Why should I explain all this fuss to you? I’ll show you some of these sports in person right here. Anyway, it’s only four, four-thirty now, isn’t it? It doesn’t get dark until nine at night. I forgot to mention—you can watch these amusements till then. You must have figured it out by now: in the summers here, it doesn’t get dark until nine or ten at night. Until then, you can even sit outside and read. There’s that much daylight. And then, at three in the morning, dawn breaks again.

When the season changes, the sun’s influence gradually wanes, and he rises only at nine in the morning, then sets again by three in the afternoon. In winter, in northern Russia and Siberia, it’s even stranger. They have only two seasons in a year. In each of those seasons, for six months there’s twenty-four hours of daylight, and for the other six, twenty-four hours of darkness.”

At this point, I was dumbfounded