#298 The Games Boys Play- Sandip Roy
Sumit and Avinash were great friends as children. They grew
up and both moved to America. They haven’t seen each other in 8 years and are
both back in Calcutta, Sumit visiting and Avinash living with his wife and
child.
They were more than
friends before they split, they were lovers. Quietly, secretly,
passionately together. But Avinash had responsibilities to his family and took
a wife arranged for him by his mother. Sumit was confused and crushed, and
tried to write him. But Avinash’s wife, intercepted these letters and herself
crushed by the revelation, hid them and never spoke a word about what she knew,
it would have ruined her family.
So now, all these years later, they meet again, but with
others around, there is little space to speak of the past. “Sumit tensed up
realizing he had not just inadvertently wandered into well-worn battlefields,
but had also tripped over some mines.”
“He looked at Avinash, mystified that that was all they had
left between them. But Avinash’s eyes were opaque. He just kept talking as if
anything was better than silence.”
Two men living different lives but sharing the same pain,
never having the chance to speak about it, and probably never will.
Heartbreaking. Three stories in to this “Novel in Stories” I am hooked. The
stories themselves work both independently of each other, but also act as
snapshots of a larger whole that slowly comes into focus. Fantastic!
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