The Boy Who Never Returned

The gate was broken.
 
Rust had eaten deep into the iron and wild creepers had wrapped themselves around its bars like thin green snakes. Long grass swayed around its base, brushing softly against the lower half of the gate whenever the evening breeze passed through.
 
The fencing beside it had disappeared long ago. Someone had probably stolen it and sold it.
 
Beyond the gate, neglected bushes and thorny shrubs had spread wildly across the land.
 
There was a time when gardeners trimmed the hedges neatly every week. Now everything had surrendered to wilderness.
 
A narrow road stretched inward from the gate.
 
There was a time when the road had been smooth and paved, but now it was cracked, broken and nearly erased beneath thick layers of grass.
 
Until a few years ago, countless footsteps had passed this way.
 
Cars.
 
Cycles.
 
Workers returning from the tea garden.
 
Women carrying baskets on their backs.
 
Children chasing each other barefoot at dusk.
 
The gate had once opened and closed endlessly through the day.
 
And now?
 
Half-collapsed and leaning tiredly to one side, it stood there like an old watchman abandoned by the world, waiting quietly for its final fall.
 
******
 
One November evening, a white Ford Figo car arrived and stopped slowly before the broken gate.
 
A man stepped out.
 
For a few moments, he simply stood there without moving.
 
The faint smell of damp earth lingered in the air. Somewhere nearby, unseen crickets had already begun their evening chorus. The last golden light of the setting sun filtered softly through the tall trees surrounding the abandoned estate.
 
The man looked toward the nearly destroyed signboard beside the gate.
 
Moss and weather stains had almost erased the letters.
 
But he knew what was written there - Aparajita Tea Estate.
 
This was his tea estate, his world.
 
He was born here.
 
His first memories belonged to this place: rain falling softly over endless rows of tea bushes, factory sirens echoing through misty mornings, the smell of damp earth after overnight showers, women with bamboo baskets moving through the gardens at dawn - countless memories!!
 
He had learnt to ride a bicycle here.
 
Played hundreds of cricket matches here.
 
Spent hours sitting beneath the trees.
 
Walked aimlessly through the tea bushes.
 
And then one day, he had left.
 
That had been thirty-five years ago.
 
He was sixteen then.
 
Now, after crossing half a century of life, he had returned to the garden once again.
 
But the garden he had returned to no longer seemed alive.
 
It felt like a memory slowly decaying beneath the sky.
 
******
 
Leaving the car behind, he walked slowly through the gate.
 
His shoes crushed dry leaves beneath them with a soft crackling sound.
 
The evening light spread gently across the abandoned estate.
 
Though it was November, winter had not fully arrived yet in Assam. The air carried only a slight coolness. Somewhere nearby, the faint smell of tea leaves still lingered or perhaps it existed only inside his memory.
 
On both sides of the dilapidated road stood rows of old quarters.
 
Many had collapsed roofs. Broken windowpanes stared outward like blind eyes. Moss spread across damp walls. Creepers entered through cracks and doorways as though nature itself had quietly moved back inside.
 
For a strange moment, he imagined someone still lived there.
 
An old woman perhaps.
 
Waiting for a son who never returned.
 
Farther away stood the factory.
 
Silent.
 
Once, engines roared endlessly inside it. The factory machines worked late into the night during the plucking season.
 
Now the factory stood abandoned against the darkening sky like a monument belonging to another time.
 
A lonely wind breezed through with a sound almost like whispering.
 
He kept walking.
 
Slowly.
 
Quietly.
 
As if any sudden movement might disturb the ghosts of memory sleeping around him.
 
After some distance, the road opened toward a large field on the right.
 
He stopped immediately.
 
The field was overgrown now.
 
Tall weeds covered most of the ground.
 
The old Siris tree beside the field still stood there, though many of its branches had dried and twisted with age.
 
The man stood silently staring at the empty ground.
 
And suddenly, from somewhere deep within memory, voices drifted toward him through the evening air.
 
“Hey Raja! Hit a six!”
 
“Catch it!”
 
“We must win today!”
 
For a brief moment, the abandoned field became alive again.
 
He could almost see them.
 
Barefoot boys running wildly across the ground.
 
Dust rising beneath their feet.
 
Someone arguing loudly over whether the batsman was out.
 
A bicycle lying carelessly near the boundary.
 
The smell of sweat, grass and fading sunlight.
 
He closed his eyes briefly.
 
How many years had passed since then?
 
He no longer remembered the last time he had played cricket.
 
But he remembered very clearly the last day he had played on this field.
 
The day before he left the tea garden forever.
 
******
 
That evening, they all had gathered there.
 
Raja.
 
Babon.
 
Babu.
 
Little Abhijit, who they used to keep as wicketkeeper and gave batting last.
 
And Raju.
 
Raju with his untidy hair, loud laugh and impossible dreams.
 
That day they played till darkness slowly covered the field and they could no longer see the ball.
 
Nobody wanted the game to end.
 
Because everyone knew he was leaving the next morning.
 
His father had found work in another town far away.
 
At sixteen, he had not fully understood what leaving meant.
 
But he understood enough to know this: People who left tea gardens rarely returned.
 
After the game ended, he and Raju had sat beneath the Siris tree while the others slowly walked home.
 
Above them, the sky was slowly turning black.
 
“You will forget us after going away,” Raju had said quietly.
 
“I won’t,” he replied immediately.
 
“We will work here together someday,” Raju had said dreamily. “You will work in the estate office and I will manage the factory.”
 
They had laughed after saying that.
 
At sixteen, the future always feels simple.
 
Before leaving, Raju had handed him the neon Cosco ball they used to play with.
 
“Keep it,” he had said. “So that you don’t forget this field.”
 
For many years, he had carefully kept that ball inside a drawer.
 
Then life happened.
 
College.
 
Work.
 
Marriage.
 
Children.
 
Illness.
 
Funerals.
 
Responsibilities.
 
And somewhere along the way, the ball disappeared.
 
Just as Raju disappeared too.
 
At first, they exchanged letters.
 
Then the letters became fewer.
 
Then they stopped altogether.
 
A few years later, he heard from someone that Raju had passed college but tragedy had struck the family soon afterward. Raju’s father had died unexpectedly, and not long after that, the family left the tea garden altogether.
 
Some said they had moved to another city in Assam.
 
Others believed they had gone away to another state in search of work.
 
Nobody seemed entirely certain.
 
At that time, he himself was in Germany, pursuing his post-doctoral research.
 
Life there had felt very far removed from the tea garden. Yet sometimes, on quiet winter nights in a foreign land, memories of Raju returned to him unexpectedly.
 
Years later, during a visit to Assam, he tried gathering Raju’s phone number.
 
He spoke to a few elderly garden workers who still remembered the family. One old man handed him a faded piece of paper with a number written in blue ink.
 
He dialled it several times over the next few days. But each time, a recorded voice informed him that the number no longer existed.
 
Few years ago, he had searched for Raju on Facebook too.
 
But there were too many faces.
 
Too many Rajus scattered across the world.
 
And somehow, he could never truly imagine his childhood friend inside the cold, glowing world of social media.
 
And, then came news of the tea garden’s decline.
 
Losses.
 
Strikes.
 
The factory shutting down for months.
 
Workers leaving one after another.
 
Families scattering across towns and cities in search of survival.
 
And after that, nobody seemed to know what had become of Raju.
 
******
 
 
The man stood alone beside the abandoned field while evening slowly deepened around him.
 
The breeze moved softly through the tall grass.
 
Somewhere nearby, a night bird called.
 
Then, bending slowly, he picked something from the ground.
 
An old faded tennis ball.
 
Half-buried beneath weeds.
 
He stared at it for a long moment.
 
Then very gently, he tossed it once into the air and caught it again.
 
And for one brief, impossible moment, standing there beneath the darkening November sky, he was sixteen years old once more.
 
He could almost hear the laughter of boys drifting through the fading light.
 
Almost see Raju running barefoot across the field, shouting for the ball.
 
The abandoned tea garden no longer seemed entirely empty.
 
It was filled with memories that still refused to die.
 
The man slipped the old tennis ball quietly into his pocket.
 
Then, with one last look at the field, he began walking slowly back toward the broken gate while the November evening settled gently over Aparajita Tea Estate.
 
******