DEATH OF A LEFTIST: A STORY FROM A LEFTIST PUNE CAFE Here’s the memory of a man I knew from the mid-80’s who was introduced to me at a ‘Leftist’s Cafe in Pune . He always wore the same shirt and the same brown pair of trousers. He was a tall man with beard. Reluctant to open up himself. And looked studious with a good head on his shoulders .And liked to smoke . Let him not be named . Let’s just name him SS . He was a confirmed leftist and an intellectual. He was not a writer of books but did write features occasionally in the English newspapers. He had this air and aura of being a ‘brainy’chap. I got to chat with him over coffee - & smoke - occasionally on various social topics, trying to ‘understand’ events . He believed in what he said,argued forcefully ,punctuating his conversation with mild laughter as if to say ‘I can’t help if people don’t understand me’. One such was defacing the face of a ‘progressive’writer in Pune with black ink by some miscreants. It was a very sad day,confusing as well as difficult to swallow ! Anyway,I lost track of the man for a while. He went out of circulation, so to say. The next when I spotted him,he looked unkempt with thickly grown beard and unwashed clothes- and maybe stinking a bit. He was limping a bit like a dog wounded with a stone. He seemed lost in himself and hugely distracted. Maybe he had turned his eyes inward.He was in no mood to talk. Someone said his wife had left him and had filed for divorce. A few days later I spotted him one raininy evening across the street .He was emptying books from two huge cloth-bags at a raddiwala. Soon he accepted the money and moved on. I was shocked but did not attempt to say hullo,lest he felt embarrassed, caught selling books. That was the last. A few weeks later a word came that he committed suicide at his apartment . Tragedy perhaps struck its final blow. It was too shocking. The friends he was often seen with in the past were seen gaffawing and enjoying themselves at a ‘Leftist’cafe the next evening. His untimely death was a mystery and so was the reaction of the so called close friends of his.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 07:23:04 +0000
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