Exile in Texas: And Other Stories

By S. Faisal Jalal

Three tales of exile and remorse - all waiting for your trust before the truth is revealed - which will leave you shocked.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491859308

S. Faisal Jalal

This story tries to tell the tale of the Darya-e-Noor.FAISAL JALAL is an IT professional by day but an aspiring filmmaker and writer by night. He is also a musician and plays guitar and ukulele. A recent inhabitant of the Bay area, he is always looking for co-collaborators and exciting story-tellers to bounce ideas off. His main joy in life is an ancient Bengali ritual that involves tea, snacks and endless conversations that lead everywhere and nowhere called the “adda.”

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© 2014 S. Faisal Jalal. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/30/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5932-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5931-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5930-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014901972

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Drawer

Incarnate

Partnership

THE POSTMASTER

Circuit House

Murder-Suicide

Info

Pori

Roopdia

Noose

Incarnate

EXILE IN TEXAS

Glenrose, TX

Retainer

Hood

John & Finis

Box

Brutus

Wedding

Registry

American Brutus

Epilogue

To my father Sheikh Ahmed Jalal—

Always striving to live by the lessons you taught me—it makes me a better person. Hope I am making you proud, Abbu.

—Tomar cheley, Faisal.

APISH

Bikash Haldar er Apish Kahini

(Bikash Haldar’s Office Story)

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DRAWER

T he rain poured vigorously outside the office window. A shabby room, with the usual fare—a desk, with two drawers on the right side. A myriad of bookshelves with files that are tied in red cloth like a belt. An umbrella tilted on its side allowing the rain from it to collect on the floor beside it. A creaky chair—extremely uncomfortable looking. On it sits a man, slightly more uncomfortable looking than the chair.

Bikash Haldar was the man in charge of accounts and general office up-keep. His employers were Messrs. Chowdhury and Rahman. They were a trading-buying house initially and had decided on a venture to grab a slice of the lucrative stock market pie. Illegally, of course.

The office consisted of two areas. There was the kitchen / managers office (which was where our story opened) and then there was a set of opulently (in comparison to Haldar’s room) furnished rooms with an adjoining door. This was their idea of a symbol of equal partnership. They would have access to each other at all times and besides, they had seen it in some movie and thought it would look impressive.

It was Friday night. Mr. Moin Chowdhury was sitting in this office downing his usual poison—Johnny Walker black label—procured through the greasing of the palms of the man who stood guard at the Canadian Club. The sale of liquor was forbidden but one could always line up a supply, if you knew where to look. Moin Chowdhury was married and unhappily at that. His second wife, the popular and glamorous Shahana Chowdhury, or Shahana Madam, as she liked to be called, enjoyed all the fine things in life that Moin could give, as long as he did not inhabit the same space in which she could enjoy them. Modern marriages, that’s how they all were, he liked to tell himself.

He was happy in the knowledge that his wife could boast to whoever was in her vicinity that they owned a luxury house (it was an apartment) in Banani, a luxury (reconditioned) car and of course the obligatory membership to the hottest social club in town—where she further expounded their material wedded bliss. They had one child—whose daily activities were administered by the servant assigned to the child—and this the Chowdhury’s thought was the extent of attention that needed to be paid to their offspring. One could fill volumes with the non-virtues of this approach to child rearing but this story is not about the misguided habits of the Chowdhury’s. This story is about the curious case of Bikash Haldar.

He was a man of regular habits, a widower and a man whose looks left no one in doubt that he was born to be downtrodden. He was an average man in all aspects, average height, average intelligence and below average ambition. He had worked here at this office for the past 15 years and never once complained of the late nights, especially ones like tonight.

He was exceedingly thin as he could not afford any decent meat and thus none ever got onto his lanky frame. He had a balding head with a droopy limp mustache. His spectacles were a spectacle as they were the kind that needed to be in a museum. He wore the same two shirts, both white and this was a great source of amusement to his employers who regularly placed bets on which color shirt he would wear!

What was disturbing about his employers is that not once in their jest did they think of giving him new clothes for any major holidays. They owned buying houses where the shirts were being shipped in the hundreds of thousands yet as he slaved away, they resorted to making wagers on his meager means instead of providing any assistance. They were that kind—disgusting human beings. What they wagered in drinks at the social club was probably worth much more than his monthly salary, which had not seen a rise in a decade. They had simply let him slowly fade from memory yet relied on his hard work, day in day out.

It was Friday night. He typically had the day off, like the entire country—but the partners were trying a new venture and they needed his expertise in locating all the files for the new business. Already, it had been a terrible month. The office was broken into two weeks ago and so the partners had seen it fit to keep a loaded pistol in the office. It was kept in Haldar’s table drawer. They had also made a wager that Haldar would perish before ever firing a shot—they were certain of his ineptitude. It had been a terrible day. He had misplaced a major contract and wasted all day trying to locate it in the archaic filing system. At the last moment, he had located it in the filing section that Chowdhury usually dumped his dictation notes. Clearly, Chowdhury had been inebriated enough to leave the papers there but of course, it was Haldar’s fault. He took the blame, as usual, without any word. Just assumed the global posture of the guilty, with his head hung low and his wringing his hands. As a thousand times before, he was verbally abused by Chowdhury for being a no-good useless excuse for a man and that he could look for a position elsewhere. These rants were frequent and they never meant it since they needed him to do all the grunt work.

It was Friday night, as mentioned before. It was late, around 11pm. Haldar had been trying to ask if he could go home but his boss Chowdhury has been arguing on the phone with his missus for the last two hours. He had heard his boss slam down the phone. He heard the clinking of an expensive glass. It was now or stay in the office again. He rose, opened his right top drawer, the shiny gun smiled at him. He closed the drawer. Trying to shake the pins and needles from his leg, he shook and walked over to the door on the right, Chowdhury’s office. He knocked and a moment later heard a grunt. The blast of fresh winter air from the latest model of the split air conditioner greeted him—his room had to make do with a creaky National fan that was about to give in to the laws of motion and gravity. He shivered and entered, closing the door behind him. Chowdhury grunted.

"Haldar,