Abhishek sat behind the counter of the dilapidated bookstore on College Street, surrounded by dusty piles of forgotten literature. The narrow lanes outside hummed with the chaotic symphony of honking rickshaws, hawkers, and the distant clang of tram bells. The air in North Kolkata was thick with humidity and history, an undercurrent of unspoken tension that never quite left the streets.
He had been working there for over a year now, disinterested, passing his days without much purpose. The bookstore, a relic of better days, just like the city itself, was run by a man too old to care if Abhi sold books or sat flipping through a newspaper all day. Abhi had once dreamed of making a mark—an aspiring poet with a deep reverence for the leftist ideals he grew up reading—but reality had whittled his dreams down to cynical musings over cups of black tea in the neighborhood cabins.
And that’s when she first walked in.
Aloka, with her disheveled bun and oversized glasses, her hazel eyes scanning the shelves with intense focus. She picked up Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, a book Abhi loathed with every fibre of his ideological being. He couldn’t help but scoff. She noticed and raised an eyebrow.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. It’s just… that book,” he said, leaning against the counter, “It’s the Bible of Capitalism, isn’t it?”
Aloka smiled coolly. “And what’s wrong with that?”
Abhi straightened up, sensing a challenge. “Everything.”
From that moment onwards, their relationship would become a constant tug-of-war. Aloka, a fiercely independent feminist, often dived into the works of Ayn Rand and Simone de Beauvoir, while Abhi remained loyal to Marx, Tagore, Zola and Gorky. She frequented the bookstore, often just to argue with him. They would meet after at the small, dimly lit Moonlight Cabin, nestled between old theatres and crumbling libraries, where the musty smell of old books blended perfectly with the earthy aroma of tea and chicken cutlets.
Over endless cups of black tea and filter coffee, they dissected literature, politics, art, and cinema. Their conversations were never easy; they were more like verbal duels, each trying to outwit the other, proving their point. But underneath the incessant sparring was an undeniable chemistry. They disagreed on everything yet felt compelled to keep talking. Aloka loved to provoke him, while Abhi couldn’t resist the intellectual excitement she brought into his otherwise dull, drab, monotonous life.
“Tell me again how you justify capitalism while living in this city?” Abhi would taunt, pointing out the poverty and chaos around them.
“And you tell me how your socialism will work when it is a given fact that human beings are inherently selfish,” Aloka would counter, her eyes gleaming with mischief. She loved to rattle him.
They grew closer in spite of themselves, their guards slowly coming down over time. Abhi began to see Aloka as more than just the woman who read Rand; she was passionate, brilliant, and maddeningly independent. Aloka, for her part, found in Abhi a stubborn idealist, someone who could hold his ground but wasn’t afraid to change his mind. Their debates became softer, their jabs less biting.
But the city outside was changing. A heinous tragedy rocked Kolkata, igniting protests and violence. There were whispers of corruption, of police brutality. The streets became battlegrounds for ideologies clashing—left and right, liberal and conservative. The same lanes they walked through together were now simmering with tension. Rallies and protest marches filled College Street, once home to peaceful discussions, now a site of clashes.
Abhi, ever the idealist, joined the protests, his blood boiling with the injustice of it all. Aloka, though sympathetic, believed that the movement was misguided, that it wouldn’t lead to any real change.
“You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgment,” she told him one evening at the cabin, the hum of the city outside louder than usual.
He sipped on his black tea a little louder than usual, irking her.
“And you’re standing on the sidelines, doing nothing!” Abhi snapped back, frustrated by her indifference.
Their arguments, once playful, became more bitter. The city’s turmoil seeped into their relationship. Abhi felt betrayed by Aloka’s unwillingness to take a stand, while she resented his insistence that there was only one right way to fight for change.
One evening, as the protests reached a fever pitch, curfew was declared. The once vibrant streets of Kolkata were now eerily silent, save for the occasional crackle of police radios and the distant sounds of protest marches. Abhi tried calling Aloka, but she didn’t answer. She was supposed to be at a poetry reading downtown, an area that had become dangerous. Panic kept gnawing at him.
When he finally found her at the bookstore the next day, she was shaken. “I’m leaving,” she said abruptly, her voice tinged with a finality he wasn’t prepared for.
“What do you mean?” His heart sank.
“I’m going to Delhi. I can’t stay here… not with everything that’s happening. This city—” she gestured around helplessly, “It’s suffocating.”
“But Aloka, you belong here,” Abhi pleaded, but deep down, he knew she was right. The Kolkata they had known was changing. The lines had been drawn too sharply. People had chosen sides, and the middle ground they had once occupied together was rapidly shrinking.
She stepped closer to him, her eyes softening for the first time in weeks. “We’ve always disagreed, Abhi. Maybe this is just another disagreement we can’t get past.”
He reached out, but she stepped back. The city’s heartbeat thudded in the distance—a mixture of unrest and resignation.
Aloka left Kolkata the next morning. Abhi stayed behind, working at the bookstore, watching the world he once understood crumble around him.
And yet, every time he picked up a cup of black tea at the Moonlight Cabin or argued with someone over politics, he thought of her. The woman who, despite everything, had made him question his own beliefs and had left behind not just disagreement, but an undeniable mark on his soul. And he would always leave behind an untouched cup of filter coffee on his table.
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