A first Chapter for my latest, as yet unnamed, novel

The noisy steam engine of the Kathgodam Express puffed its way upward into its ascending journey, spitting coal dust particles into the eyes of passengers. Veerendra Dev kept telling Abhi to be careful lest he got something in his eye. At age seven, Abhi was hardly the one to sit quietly, not looking out of the window. There was so much for him to see in the greens that the train was fast leaving behind. The train’s movement was an invasion of space and a conquest of time. The speed was stitching time into space in the little boy’s mind. The fast passing objects had something of both. And Abhi’s anxiety of going into a new town, far away from home, made him see thoughts of various shapes in the landscape.
“Papa,” he said at length, “will you be coming to see me in Nainital, sometimes?”
“Of course I will! I’m not giving you up! I’ll not only come to see you, I’ll even bring Amma along with me sometimes. We’ll both be missing you very much Abhi, won’t we?”
“Yes. And will you bring Abha and Appie also with you?”
“Why not? How can we leave them behind? You know how small your younger sisters are!”
“But don’t bring them to my school. I don’t know how much the nuns and the fathers will like their coming. What if they got angry?”
“Why should they not like the girls? And why at all should they get angry with little children?”
“I don’t know!”
“Stop entertaining such thoughts about them. They are going to be your teachers and teachers are like guardians not offenders.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Now tell me what will you say, if they asked you how old you are?”
“I’ll say I’m seven years old!”
“And if they ask you, when you were born?”
“I’ll say, in 1943.”
“And which year are we living in presently?”
“We are into 1950.”
“If they ask you where you’ve come from, what will you say?”
“I’ll say I’ve come from Robertsgunj.”
“And what is your father?”
“He is a farmer.”
“No, say he’s an agriculturalist. That sounds more dignified.”
“He’s an agriculturist.”
“And what is your mother?”
“She’s a woman, what else?”
“A woman? But what is she?”
“What else can a woman be if not a woman?”
“Say she’s a housewife.”
“What kind of wife is that?”
“A house wife is a woman who does not go out to work.”
“O! Then you must be a househusband!”
“No,” said Veerendra, “a house husband, if at all there is such a thing, is quite different to what I am. He would take care of the house, the cooking, the cleaning and the children. You know I do none of those things.”
Abhi thought for some time and then he piped in again.
“Papa!”
“Yes.”
“Why can’t I go to the school in Roberstgunj instead of travelling all this distance?”
“No. That’s not good enough for my son. Abhi please do not raise that issue again!”
“All right Papa, tell me, why do you look upset whenever I say anything?”
“Do I? I never get to know that I do!’
“You even look angry with me, sometimes. You never look angry with Abha. Will you always remain like this with me? Or will you be different when I return home in the holidays?”
“I love you my son. My looks are misleading!”
“But Amma’s looks are not misleading?”
“Stop talking nonsense, and start thinking of how you’re going to greet Father Francis when you see him! We’ll be reaching Kathgodam shortly and then we’ll take a bus to Nainital from there.”
Abhi rested his back on the big backrest of his berth. He looked tiny with his back against the cushioned rest. His mind wandered to Roberstgunj where his mother and the two sisters would be gearing up for the day. They must be sad this morning he thought. How would Amma be able to cope without him, he wondered. This morning wouldn’t be like all other mornings for them. It must indeed be a black and silent morning. Could Abha have had her breakfast without her brother? Maybe the tiny Aparna hadn’t realised that Bhaiya had left them for sometime. Of course Amma wouldn’t have eaten anything at all. Only the other day he was riding his tricycle with Abha sitting in the little space at the back holding Appie in her arms. How they went down the slant at the edge of their veranda and how he had wheeled suddenly and how they had almost fallen off in the process. Veerendra had come running and slapped Abhi for putting the little girls through so much jeopardy. Little Appie could have landed in great trouble. The older child ought to have had the sense not to treat his sisters so carelessly.
The pangs of separation pierced his heart and made Abhi pensive. He allowed some tears to roll down his cheeks though in hiding from his father’s vision. When Abhi did not look normally, in front of him, of him for a while, his father wondered what the matter was. Veerendra was sharp enough to realise that the boy was pressing down the flood of emotions that were trying to well up. Veerendra decided that he would allow the boy to vent his feelings quietly without making him conscious of having been spied in his weak moment. The sting in the boy’s heart was already pulling him towards the growing process. Was pain directly related to growing up? He was passing through a moment of realization, his little mind translating some suspicions into beliefs. It was the growing conviction that life was made of suffering and for suffering and chance left to act, everything gravitated towards suffering.