In a Better Place by Bornali Datta

Author:Bornali Datta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

In Eastham, London, Jatin had just returned to his living quarters. His senses were so numbed by the two years of slumming it out that the squalor in the apartment no longer registered. He went to the table in the lobby and noticed a letter with English postage. That’s unusual, he thought. The handwriting was unfamiliar. He cut the top and fished out the contents. There was a white sheet of paper which he opened and from where another piece of paper fell out and on to the floor. The white paper was blank.

What?

He bent down to pick up the piece of paper that had fluttered down to the floor. It was a cheque for 500 pounds. He looked at it with disbelief, turning it around slowly. He scanned it carefully. It read: ‘Pay Jatin Das a sum of five hundred pounds.’

It was from Jai.

All these years of being numb, of deliberately numbing himself as a defence mechanism so nothing could touch him, bother him, hurt him or provoke any reaction in him. It was time to react again. His initial reaction was of anger, furious anger. The bastard had got a job while he was still drifting two years down the line. The injustice of the world! His anger was welling up like blood from a wound. What the hell did Jai think? He did not want a friend’s charity. Why had he not written anything? Then he thought, What is there to write anyway? What could he have written? ‘Hey, I have got a job and am sending you some alms’? He toyed with the idea of tearing up the cheque. These difficult years had made everything harder; even his thought processes were twisted.

In a flash, he remembered his parents and his wife seeing him off at the airport. He was happy and confident of the new beginnings ahead of him. He had a red streak on his forehead applied by his mother after she prayed for his success. His confidence and ambition only considered success as a possibility. The world was at his feet. Then he thought of landing in the UK. Meeting with a few fellow Indians in the same situation as him. Working hard for his PLAB exams and passing them after two attempts. Doing a clinical attachment for two weeks. Then job applications, none of which he was shortlisted in. Two years had passed.

Then the slow realization of rapidly depleting resources. Then jobs at the local diner. The murderous feeling which came over him when he thought he was a trained doctor working as a waiter. His confidence, his ambition, his aspirations, crushed by the circumstances. Just about enough money for day-to-day living. No extra money. No job, or even the remote prospect of one. Lies to his family to save them the devastation that he felt. No money to even go home. Trapped. Numb. In a cold prison with metal cages with no way to break the locks. A sense of utter failure and shame.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.