I’ve left something behind in Jamshedpur, and I cannot seem to find it. I keep going back to the town in search of what I lost, but I do not remember when it slipped out or where or how.
Did I lose it on the cab ride to Engineer’s Hall the very first night I landed here? No, the road that wound its way around the Burma Mines and Kalimali and took me to the employees’ hostel in the eastern part of town did not have a single streetlight, and one does not lose these things in places one cannot see or retrieve them from. Did I lose it on the illumined corridors of the Hall? The labyrinthine passages from the gates to my room took me a while to map out in my mind. But work took me up and down those wings several times a day and phone calls made phantoms out of me each night on those corridors. I would have found it if I had lost it here.
I am sure I did not lose it on the grassy paths that led up to the Management Training Centre, where retired General Managers taught me more in a week than I had learnt in years. Nor did I lose it in the Area Office where the accounts are handled. One does not lose such things in cabins or cubicles and report them as liabilities on balance sheets. Not in the precision of the engine manufacturing lines or the lines of 49-ton Prima trucks ready for dispatch or even in the truck graveyard where lorries that have lost their yearning to ply are stowed did I lose what I have lost. I only gained in experience with what I met here, and never did miss anything.
Where then? Did it drop into one of the pockets on the pool table at Telco Club or did it roll into one of the potholes in Sector Market when we went to get buckets and mugs? Did it fall off from one of those tumultuous tumtums that seat four but took ten of us to Sakchi for five rupees a head or to Bistupur for ten rupees a head? Or perhaps it dived into the Subornorekha river head-first while we were heading home from Mango after a night show of Rockstar? There is the chance it could have parted with me in the leafy locales of Circuit House with the ulterior intentions of getting into XLRI or staying at one of the serviced apartments near the campus.
It could have tumbled out while we were climbing the dam on Lake Dimna that afternoon, or while we were mounting the hundred steps up the Bhubaneshwari Temple to watch the Kathakali show that evening. I know I did not lay it among the flowers at Jamsetji Tata’s feet in the beautiful Jubilee Park nor at those of Birsa Munda in the bustling Sunday Market. But what about on Hudco hill and Sumant Moolgaokar’s plaster camera capturing the entire town of Jamshedpur? Did it go down here as the sun set behind the chimneys of Tata Steel or did it go up like the steam emanating from them and mingle with the crisp air of the East Indian company?
I’ve left something behind in Jamshedpur, but I haven’t found it yet. I retrace my steps to haunts I frequented with the hope that I might stumble upon it somewhere and reclaim it as my own. I go to the idli-vadai kadai where we had our morning meals and the jhalmuri stall in Golmuri where we had chaat and chai. I revisit the Sonari Gurdwara on Sundays for the langar and the Kerala Samajam for lunch. I even return to the terrace top of Little Italy some nights to see if the waiters there have found it and kept it aside for me, but they haven’t. So I go back to Engineer’s Hall and play a game of badminton, if that can help me recollect where it was I lost it.
My eyes travel to the induration on my right big toe that grew when I fell playing on these very courts and that prevented me from playing volleyball on the adjacent ones. It is possible that I had dropped it here and if I had, it must have been trampled upon by now by the many soles that have skittered on this turf since that day. And it is equally likely I lost it the night of the monthly party when those same soles went tipsy on vodka roshogollas and would have stamped it in the ensuing stampede, had I lost it there that night. Or maybe it was saved that fate and went away instead to the white grid-boxes of The Hindu’s cryptic crosswords that Sam and I used to solve?
Was it lost to me in Bairesh’s paruppu podis and pickles or in the samosas Milind brought after German classes or in the sweetmeats Shireesh brought from his sister’s wedding? Was it because Prashant went to the hospital every week or because Syed was late every morning for the creature with the head of a truck and the body of a bus? Was it drowned in Divisional Manager Jambunathan’s sonorous voice below his tiny moustache or entangled in Senior Manager Murthy’s bristling moustache above his meek mouth? Or did it pull the chain and abandon the train at Kharagpur when Naxalites entered my coach on the return journey to Calcutta on Christmas Eve?
I have left behind things in Jamshedpur: Murakami’s Norwegian Wood because I hated it, a bag because there was too much luggage to carry to Lucknow and a shirt marked 57/4 that the dhobi must be wearing these days. I left behind a few droplets of my blood on the badminton court in Engineer’s Hall, and a mug and a bucket I purchased one Sunday at Sector Market, but these are trivialities that can be replaced. It has been over two years since I lost a part of my heart in that town and it has not come back to me yet. But Jamshedpur has left so much behind in me. It is only fair that I leave what I left behind there and never go seeking it ever again.
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