Shanty/ Raja (short story)

The story is published in Muse India, Sep-Oct, 2019 issue.

Clad in white kurta pajama, Gandhi caps and matching glasses, lest someone couldn’t tell they were identical twins, the septuagenarians grab their window seats. Trailing behind them, tired and annoyed, Ganesh takes the aisle seat – his aged plastic bag carefully placed to hide a speck of dried daal on his pant.

“This!”

The other twin looks over from top of the newspaper.

“This is what the shopkeeper was talking about,” looking at the bottom corner of an inconsequential page, while the surrounding eyes linger on the front-page splatter of a Bollywood couple’s pastel wedding.

Gayatri mantra chimes in full volume, competing with the tracks. A man who had settled into slumber, stops snoring; others shoot mixed looks of relief and inconvenience at Ganesh. In a sharp contrast to his apologetic demeanour, he whispers into the phone sternly, “I didn’t get time… The world isn’t coming to an end in two days, is it?” The phone disconnects. “Hello… hello…” Sensing all eyes on him, he pretends: “Ok…We’ll talk once I am home… Bye!” He puts the phone away and looks up at anyone who cared, “Bad network…” No one did.

“Charni Road, platform number two.”

Ganesh breaks his meditation on the blob of dried paint at the window rail and attempts to peep, but his eyes were too tired to strain on a page-twelve font after nine hours of pouring over bad handwritings. He worked during lunch hours to impress the boss for early confirmation, even though it wasn’t the boss’ call. Freshly absorbed into the Ration Card office outside which he sat for two years translating forms for the out-of-town lost souls, he was so giddy from landing a ‘secure’ job that three months were not enough to cultivate the confidence of a government servant. As the Computer-wala – an unnecessary post created to weed out bureaucratic redundancy – he fed the filled-in applications into the computer word by word, making him the third hand doing exactly the same job. The country had decided to digitise itself; neither illiteracy nor irony could come in its way.

“Haemorrhage?”

“Brain haemorrhage.”

“Says ‘internal haemorrhage.’”

“Yes, inside the brain.”

“It doesn’t say brain…”

“Brain haemorrhage can only happen in the brain! Must be a mistake.”

Everybody nods in agreement– three other passengers had joined the conversation.

“He was a pickpocket.”

Ganesh feels his chest pocket for the pounding heart. He had forgotten– his right leg had palpitated until he entered his house that night; he had to sit crossed legged at work all day; he had felt the ribs under the new Bata sandals and despaired that the sole was cheap. That a skeleton sits underneath our skin was too unsettling a thought for a Monday morning, thus lamenting the decline in quality of a shoe brand provided comfort. But his leg had felt what his brain was rejecting – the guy on the platform was a person.

Ganesh looks at his feet. His toes wiggled, and his fingers followed.

“Name? Maharashtrian or what?” said someone.

***

Bilal ran his fingers on the name – ‘Santosh Pede.’ Death had made him unfamiliar. Upon hearing someone’s footsteps, he threw away the newspaper quickly. It was his wedding day. Raja had been gone only a week.

***

In his toli, he was called Raja, mostly in hope; outside, he was Shanty. Everybody in the community was proud of his gift, which barely made him average. He must have inherited it through the nose, they would say, for his mother went into spontaneous labour the day Hawaldar Pede died. He had jumped off a running train on a dare, they said, or to escape an irate crowd, which no one said. Post-mortem’s heart-attack was talked in hushed tone. Since the only physical injury was to the nose, the whole community was convinced he had died of broken nose. Hawaldar Pede was a legend and his nose was as much a part of it as his skill. It was a long and bulky nose, of which Raja was reminded at least once daily. If it weren’t his neighbours, then it was the assistant directors. Their feelings about it, though, were opposite. He either had the wrong nose or the wrong face. What added to his father’s allure was an odd feature on his boxy face of small deep-set eyes. Yet, the nose made him look at the mirror too much, which Bilal chided him about, just as when Raja hung out with the Michael Jackson’s. Bilal thought it beneath Raja to be keeping company of the eunuchs – as he’d call them. They were background dancers with passports – their skills greater but fortune lesser than the men and women they danced behind.

Shanty, too, was a dancer. He could slither snakelike on any beat and resembled a fading Bollywood hero. He went for auditions with more gusto than he picked pockets, and in between he practised with the Michael Jackson’s in parks. As they danced, their phones cued in and headphones on, unlike when people didn’t mind each other’s music, the trees and the dogs watched the mute bobbing heads and flying limbs.

Raja’s toli was embarrassed by his closeness to the dancers, but, out of respect for Bilal, they kept it to themselves, even if Bilal didn’t. Bilal and Raja’s families had been neighbours for generations. Mumbai was their home that their grandfathers had bought from the ‘Dam’ money. A few dozen families were displaced, and Raja and Bilal’s were amongst the ones who took this as an opportunity to move to the city. Between the two, even though Raja was one with the gift, born to the artiste pickpocket, it was Bilal who had the skill. Bilal never teased Raja about his nose; he never saw it the way others did.

***

Virar Fast was contesting its infamy – the compartment was sparse. The newly cautious Meteorological Department had overestimated the havoc, as the last year’s mayhem was still fresh. Although it had not rained since midnight, those who could, took the “rainy day.”  Shanty, half swooning from a pole, lost in his headphones, was imagining himself as the third lackey of the second villain. Following the same routine that he had for four years – his introduction along with his phone number, followed by the dance moves and then a mimicry of the ham actor whom he resembled – he was finally cast in a movie. This could be a start to his career in films, he thought. One moment he would think he’d have to give up pickpocketing once people began recognising him, then in a quick humble follow-up he thought there was time to that. Bilal would be upset, though. He would say it did not suit him. Bilal took Raja’s name too seriously, he thought and smiled to himself with a long yawn. Morning auditions always tested his passion, but today his mind was too racy for his body to fall asleep.

Making way to get off at his station, Raja bumped into a man in orange kurta and tilak whose wallet dropped on the floor. A man next to them glared at Raja and another accused him of stealing from His Piousness. Shanty smirked at the claim, as it was impossible to bungle such an opportunity. The wallet had been jutting out of the pocket for a while. On any other day, this would have made his day, but his days were set to change. Every time his maternal uncle had paused and looked beyond their faces and thrown “honest work is hard” at their family, even as a half-hearted pickpocket he didn’t think his was an easy job. But he found the pause most curious. Today, watching that wallet, he understood the meaning of that look – they were memories of longing.

He was about to explain his accusers their ridiculousness when the first slap landed on his ear. In shock, Shanty stared at his earphones on the floor – one of the noise-cancelling caps missing. He sprung up, indignant, and gave one back to the guy. Considering his small frame, the audacity was jarring. A couple of others joined in – with their umbrellas, purses, backpacks, polythene bags. Shanty had become Raja, and the crowd became a mob.

As the train came to a halt, he was pushed on the platform by a dedicated lot of which Ganesh was a part. The indifferent passengers squeezed in and out without a bother. Fifteen seconds later as the train started, most of the men who took precious time off their urgency to teach the parasite a lesson, jumped back into the train and left. Ganesh scooted as the crowd thinned. As though to make up for the loss in number, a few others awaiting the next train came together to give a hand – and a leg. Women on one side watched in horror, men who did not partake ignored, and curious children were dragged by parents. When they dispersed the leftover was strewn with pieces of wrist watches, caps of a cola bottles, two left-foot black sandals, couple of broken pens, back of a mobile phone, handle of an umbrella. A pickpocket was lynched on his day off; because the orange was saffron, and the men were hardworking.

Ganesh stood on another platform to catch the train he had abandoned. His face quivered and flushed. He wondered if anyone else had noticed the black bud stuck in the guy’s ear.

***

His wallet revealed very little and his phone too much. For ID, they found an expired Cine Artistes’ Association card which bore his address, and a phone filled with homosexual porn, for character. The constable who recognised him was embarrassed for Hawaldar Pede’s soul. Whispers spread everywhere. Bilal promptly agreed to marry his first cousin whom his family had chosen years ago.

Police delivered the body wrapped like a toffee. Raja’s mother sat with her daughter and grandson, and without the son-in-law. People were gathered as spectators, not mourners. Curiosity had replaced their sadness.

***

“FIR was lodged against ‘unknown persons’” – a new pair of hands was holding the newspaper.

“CCTV cameras did not work because the lenses were covered in pigeon shit,” says one of the twins.

“This can only happen in India,” chuckles the other twin.

They all nod and laugh. No one asks anyone how many other countries had they lived in.

Ganesh takes a sigh of relief.

***

The train halts at the last station, Dahisar. Men and women with plastic bags, like Ganesh, are first to rush out, followed by the backpacks, and lastly the ones with earphones and newspapers. The twins stay on to say goodbye to the fellow passengers they had befriended. Having enjoyed their time, they make plans to match their timing so they could travel together, perhaps to enjoy another twelfth-page story. They leave the newspaper behind, face up. Ganesh still seated looks at the newspaper – a man killed by ordinary folks like him was now buried eleven pages under famous people. Rain pattered heavily; monsoon had come in late but overstayed. Two rats hop into the compartment taking a shortcut to switch platforms.

***

Sitting under the Exit awning at the station, Ganesh was tracking a trickle of leftover rain make its way under the sheet right above him, and the droplets land on his shoe. He quickly takes out a handkerchief but does not wipe; instead, he throws the cloth into a puddle in front of him. A dog hanging out by the garbage bin grabs it as though it recognised it. It wrestles with the cloth briefly and then drops it back into the muck. Ganesh stands up gingerly, holding on to the railing. Feeling confident of his legs, he slides out the newspaper from under his arm and tosses it in the bin furtively, missing his aim. It lands next to a sandwich, a condom, a laptop charger and a mound of mutilated marigold. The crumbling bin had more out than in. He takes out his wallet and puts it aside, and then reaches for the shaft on top and yanks out the debris. A gush of water comes pouring down on him. He stays still until the last drop. Gently, he removes his shoes on the last step, takes back his wallet and walks away. Drenched and barefoot, his mind wanders to the rubber bud in the ear: was it still there when they burned him? Is the smell of the rubber burning more acrid than burning flesh?

***

He steps out of a half-shuttered dairy shop with a litre pack of milk. They must have taken pity on him. Streets were water-logged and the breeze was unusually cold for September.

He makes a call. “Hel…” Before he can say anything, he has to listen. “Hey, it’s okay, really!” He nods a couple of times. “I’ve got milk.” After a couple of seconds of pause, he asks as casually as possible, “By the way, what was their son’s name, the Mr Pede who lived next to us in Aurangabad?” He gulps. “No, no reason… Just saw the same name on a form today, was wondering if I remembered correctly, that’s all…” He clears his throat.  “No, couldn’t have been him! This guy… was… older.” His voice trails off. “I’ll be home in ten minutes. Battery is dying,” he lies.

It had been a long day– of a longer night.

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Tomorrow (short story)

The story is published in Aainanagar https://aainanagar.com/2017/05/20/tomorrow/

Finally the old man moves out of the way so the Mercedes can pass.

He is rich in his taste of cars. Having educated himself in the more expensive cars, he spots well, waves his banner of Kaali at the windscreens, lays it beyond their hoods, and hopes they are Hindus. But it works even on the others; fearing communal riot at a red light they all comply. In India everybody knows everybody’s god. He was inspired by the curious appearance of Hindu gods on the street walls to deter men from urinating on them. If they don’t piss on gods, they won’t run over them, he understood. And the same week he found the banner- hanging desolately in a post-festive fete ground strewn with plastic cups and paper plates. They had forgotten the god behind and he claimed her.

Victorious, he bundles up the Kaali under his left (and only) arm and walks with a swagger, fanning himself with a crisp fifty rupee note. A constable who had been watching from a distance- too haggard to bother with an everyday nuisance- catches him after the car goes out of sight.

“One day you will get run over by some naastic”. Why don’t you just beg like the others?” the policeman taps his shoulder with his baton.

“Rich people hate to be inconvenienced, sir. They won’t kill me.”

“What’s your name?”

“Kamaal, sir”

“You are a Muslim!”

“They don’t know that!” he winks. “You should see some of the Muslims. They go pale with fright, and are far quicker and more generous than the Hindus,” he chuckles.

The policeman pats his back, chuckles along, and then with a poke of his baton in his arse, shoes him away. Kamaal escapes the prod, belying his age. But he isn’t really old; the un-burnt skin peeping from under his vest gives him away.

Done with business for the day, he leaves the high-pitched road for the shady alleys that run alongside the train tracks. Relishing a delicious thought, he slips his money somewhere in his crotch.

.

Alternating between like he owns the city and as though he is a tourist, he walks purposeless and purposeful. Sun is merciful today. Clouds go in and out like they’ve lost their way. The dry air travels down his lungs, soothing his throat in cool irony. He spots bottled water in a mound of garbage that’s waiting to be picked up. He gulps it down. It tastes like metal. He tosses it back where it had been and walks on, some of the lost swagger back on.

The landscape has changed. The canopy of the high rises and its shadow are of same size. Time for the first meal of the day, and he veers towards a chai stall.

He hoists the note at the tea seller, “One cutting!” The chaiwala smirks, “How did you manage this?” “What manage motherfucker?” He takes out a creased and tattered plastic wrapped photo ID from his crotch and shoves it in his face. It is a driver’s license from a time when he looked much younger and had two arms. “You think of me a beggar or what?” “Yeah yeah… then why just chai, have some paav bhaji also?” “Eat and then shit it out? Not with this!” The tea seller takes the fifty rupee note from him and tells him to step away and wait. The stall is busiest at noon.

He sits on the pavement, at a distance, watching priority customers in slim pants being served during their cigarette break. One of the guys has shabby hair like his. Kamaal gives his twin a full gummy smile. The guy looks away incredulously. Kamaal digs out a beedi from a pocket in his grimy kurta. The beedi promptly slips out into the mini sewage running under him. Tea leaves, milk, sugar, it’s practically chai! Yum, he thinks and picks it up laughing. No sign of his tea yet, he runs his tongue over his lips and tastes the city. A pedestrian’s leg nudges his back. Their clean body gets uncomfortable and he says sorry, simply out of habit. He tucks the beedi in the wedge of his ear and waits.

Finally, a boy brings Kamaal his tea, some change, and a free vada paav wrapped in newspaper with some well-oiled green chillies thrown in. He waves at the chaiwala and pockets the vada paav as it is. He relishes the tea with eyes closed at the sun that has been threatening to set for hours. For a hungry man, he isn’t hungry enough.

.

He stands on the divider surveying the horizon- cars zipping past, competing with one another. As the light turns red, he steps into the standing sea of cars facing homewards. A garbage truck grabs his attention. He spots something hanging out of its hinged crevices- a slipper! He runs towards it. Cars stuck around the truck roll up their windows in disgust. It smells like a thousand dead rats, foul enough to kill a thousand more. He pulls out the slipper and tries it on. It fits, and is barely broken in. What a day! The signal turns green. He quickly sticks his old slipper in the truck, replacing what he had taken, and beats on the truck twice. The driver acknowledges Kamaal’s good luck, laughing in the rear view. Thrilled, Kamaal looks at his feet: sunny yellow and rugged brown. He pulls out the beedi from his ear and holds hit under his nose. It’s baked and smells of satisfaction. He hops, skips, and jumps on the divider as the traffic inches. Maybe on his next lucky day he can find a replacement for the other foot.

.

Sitting on the esplanade, he counts his money under a street lamp. Several coins and some notes- a total of 46 rupees. A dog perhaps bored of munching on fried peanuts closes in. It grunts and then sneezes. One of Kamaal’s notes almost flies off into the sea, but he is quick. Furious, he kicks the dog in its belly. The dog yelps and the polite people scowl at him. Some even gasp, but no one dares confront him. His dirty clothes, grey hair and unshaven beard give him an aura of a madman not to be messed with. He walks off, giving another kick to the dog, putting away his money back in the safety of his crotch.

.

The mother is shooting looks at Kamaal as he marvels at the cheaply made toy gun of shiny plastic and her son trapezes from her hand. It’s a crowded, crammed lane divided between vendors and pedestrians and an occasional pushy two wheeler. From fresh fish to fresh flowers, the market is full of things to buy. Judging by the pace of the commuters, one would think shopping would be the last thing on their minds, but the vendors were flourishing, enough to afford freebies for the men in khaki. The toy-seller is irritated by Kamaal’s presence affecting his clientele: “Boss, it costs money. Don’t waste time,” and lunges to take the gun back from him, but Kamaal pulls away and his elbow digs into something behind him. In the next moment the entire lane is drenched in water and shards of glass from what used to be a fish bowl, which a man, who now sat atop Kamaal, was moving for his client. In one corner, dying fish dance on dead fish; in another, pieces of glass shine through bouquets of flowers they’ve slashed; and all over, dust stains appear on garments on display. Settlers of the lane by now knew that bashing him up was the only compensation to be had, so they began. Pedestrians had already diverted themselves.

Moments later, a policeman shows up, sniffing the ruckus. He pulls the men and women- all limbs engaged in thrashing Kamaal- away. He points out the blood to the irate crowd, hoping satisfied by the sight of blood, they’d stop. All the mud and gunk Kamaal had rolled in deepened his brown by a few shades. Now shielded by the policeman, he spits forcefully in anger. Livid, the crowd groans. The policeman slaps him to rein him in. Kamaal spots his banner under someone’s feet. The Kaali was visible. People begin touching it in reverence, mouthing apologetic mantras, and a few of them even whack Kamaal for being so careless. At this point policeman realizes Kamaal didn’t have a hand, and he promptly uses it to shame the crowd. Kamaal’s expressions change as though his missing limb was a revelation to him too. They all tone down and go back to salvage their spoilt merchandise, except the labourer, who was on the phone pleading with his client. To placate the labourer, the policeman promises he’d put Kamaal in a lockup for two days. Kamaal grabs policeman’s legs. The policeman reasons with the labourer- what could possibly a man like Kamaal compensate him with? At this Kamaal swiftly clutches his crotch. The labourer is quick to notice. The policeman manages to unclamp Kamaal’s hands, but is amazed by his strength. He grabs the 46 rupees and gives it to the labourer. It isn’t enough to cover for a fish eye, but enough for a pound of flesh. Kamaal watches the mother and the son carrying the toy gun pass them by. His fight gives in. Policeman pulls him by the kurta and drags him out of there. Two rights and a left later they were out on the main road. Having better things to do with his time than locking up invalids, the policeman gives him a tight slap, warns him to lie low for a week, and then walks off. Kamaal stands still, looking through his muggy eyes at the dusk of lights and sounds.

Suddenly his sides twitch. He holds his stomach and with a certain familiarity plops himself on the ground. From his pocket, he takes out a soggy mash of bread and potatoes and newspaper ink. He throws the green chilly at the pigeons nearby. And as one of them shudders, he almost chokes on his laughter. He moves his head tortoise-like, as the food travels in his body, and watches the blood on his elbow thicken.

.

A row of tarpaulin homes dwell on a pavement in a ubiquitous, god-forsaken part of the city- he watches men, women and children going about their open air lives. Kamaal is home; he doesn’t own one. He reorients himself and puts his one-arm swag back on. A boy of about seven runs to him and hangs by his neck, “Kamaal Chacha!” Kamaal looks at him apologetically and runs the back of his palm over his face, but the boy pulls himself from him and with a leftover enthusiasm joins his friends into devouring a flat tyre.

It’s quiet on the pavement, and on the street. Only dogs are up, scrounging through garbage. The air is cool and salty. While families are asleep in their plastic cocoons, Kamaal is lying awake, farther from the dwellings, but looking at them, alone. He turns away, on his side, his shoulder hurts. Finally the ache has set in. An involuntary tear travels to his nose and soaks into mud. He feels a presence behind him, but he doesn’t turn. He knows. He unrolls the banner from under his head and spreads it over them. The boy slips his hand in Kamaal’s pyjama and searches for him. Wrapped warmly in a child and a god, he thanks for the tender mercies. He shuts his eyes, and through his wounds, smiles at the tomorrow.

On not so literary English fiction in India

You may read the article here.

Of Prejudice

“The Shackle of Prejudice” published by kitaab.org.

“As a child, I used to think that America and England were the same. Later I learnt that America was a bigger and more relaxed version of England. Then one day I found out that Americans were in fact prudes – like Indians! I had to unlearn that wearing undergarments in public and holding sacrosanct views on sex and marriage were not mutually exclusive. (As a child, marriage as a concept had seemed so Indian to me that I thought it was invented by Indians.) Soon I knew I was saying America/ England and thinking France. Referring to a continent (Africa) as a country is ignorance, but calling a country America, which is not one but two continents combined, is exactly the same. USA became America when it became great. Now Trump wants to make it great again. But then Michelle Obama came out and said that it’s the greatest. So maybe Trump should rethink his words…”

IOF .32 (short story)

The story “IOF .32″ was published in The Madras Mag

He had parked his car in the basement and was walking towards the lift when he found it, naked, in a municipal bin. He stared, felt it on his fingertips, and hurriedly hid it at the base of the bin and took the lift up to the terrace restaurant. Someone pressed his shoulder with affection. He turned. Once he had wanted to be like him, he thought. Now he was more than him, but less like him. The dinner, as all recent ones, was a celebration of his achievements. Latest being the interview of a reclusive industrialist. At 32 this was a major feat for any journalist. Upswing had been his trend. The party was business as usual: the girlfriend moved around wife-like; the mentor sat in a corner mentoring someone else; colleagues kept their envy to themselves and shared inside jokes on seasonal office gossips; he grumbled his refrains on the lack of good beer in the country. Beer is what he drank these days. He had been off the “bottle” for two years. Oscillating between loathing and devouring for months, one day, he gave it up. Just like that. Nobody had noticed before and nobody noticed after. Everybody was happily drunk. He was so easily past it that he doubted if it was addiction at all. He was impressed with himself. But something familiar had returned that evening. His toes were wiggling in the shoes. His mind was in the parking lot.

Next day he skipped the juice corner for lunch and went to a cafe. He sat with his laptop. Every now and then, with each fresh cup of coffee, he pretended to be talking over the phone. He was faking it, for no particular reason. He did that for four hours.
In the morning he woke up with his usual 7’o clock news on TV. The breaking news from last night was still breaking– two more female translators had come forward, piggybacking, making the politician look like a serial molester of translators. Disinterested, he turned it off and stayed in. For four days he did just that, and ignored the calls of delicious scoops, the cries for righteous indignation, the need for important questions, etc. At last he submitted the obligatory medical leave. While barely convincing, no one protested because he “deserved” it. In the last two years, he had outperformed all. In fact, they offered him his annual leave. Now he had additional 21 days. To obsess over a thought that had clung to him like love’s first infatuation. He had it locked up in a box, and the key was under his mattress, right in the centre where he slept. Some nights he’d wake up thrice to check on it, only to open it and lock it back again. What was happening to him? Nothing reasoned.

His girlfriend had had enough. He had dodged her for one week. Next week she barged in. She screamed, and he dumped her. Shocked, she left. His stage had moved. He wanted to reset the drama, with a button. The most immediate being one that came on every morning.

At 7, it came on again. There was a fire raging in the mountains up North. Army had been called in. He looked at it blankly. “Fire on the mountain… run run run…,” he remembered and it took him to a rare family picnic. He had come back home for summer vacations. Father and mother were playing house-house amiably in a sharp contrast to the year before. This had filled him with hope. They promptly packed the basket on his suggestion. They were smiling and happy, but he was afraid the camera wouldn’t capture them as they were, and he kept taking pictures as backup- one after another. Same shot, 36 times. Irritated, his father boxed his ears. Mother intervened. And just like that the harmony band snapped. That’s all it took. The Yashica camera must be in the old pooja room/ store on the second floor. One of the photos was hung in the living room. Rest 35 were hiding behind other snapshots in a tattered album. Sometimes he laid out all 36 to compare, as though to catch a pretend expression. He never found any.
A fortnight had gone by and then came a night. Legs resting on the dashboard, a lifetime swaying in the autumn tree, the eeriness of a quiet urban river, and a windshield for a window- it all fills you with so much peace that it oozes out from your nose to the empty passenger seat. It sits next to you, like a person. It doesn’t talk or, most importantly, talk back. Anal in the certitude of your existence you sit another hour into dawn, challenging. Nothing happens, for a long time. Then, hint of a far sun spreads. It starts filling you with hope, which starts taking you over. First peace, now hope. You become air. You then go home and shoot the lightness out of you with the thing you had found naked in the bin by the elevator in the parking lot.

But it’s jammed. Then you look closely- it’s rusted. You panic and try again, and again. You still try with all your might. It doesn’t. You plead, but it doesn’t budge. Now you laugh like a madman, hysterical, rolling on the bed. You laugh so much that you cough. You cough and you cry. Winter sunshine filters in. The timer on the TV you have lost to, comes on: somewhere an infant had fallen into a borehole and 26 hours later still surviving. You bathe, sling your work bag and step out into a perfect day.

And, here’s another version of the same story:IOF.32 II

60 Watts (short story)

The story “60 Watts” was published in Kindle Magazine

A small big-city window lights up at an ungodly hour. Part-drunk, part-bronchitic Mohan turns on a bulb in his one-room flat, illuminating mine. Separated by a fifteen-foot kitchen-smoke-filled alley our metropolitan windows open into each other. On some nights, his 3 am schedule draws the ire of the windows surrounding mine and I lie clinging on to sleep until the morning alarm.

The 60-watt nuisance hanging at his window refracts through the doubly curtained glass panes, and his nostalgic radio pierces their urgent lives. The wrath of one whose sleeping pills won’t work knows no mercy. The cacophony of foul-mouthed elites keeps me up on such chosen nights. Just some of the countless joys of living in a house too good for me!

Everybody at work and on Facebook knows. They mock me as honorary senior management. My wilfully oblivious parents bask in the glory deigned on me. Wrongly upgraded by the computer, I needed three human signatures to justly downgrade myself to my level of housing. Caught between a bad marriage of corporate bureaucracy and digital slavery, the task could take weeks, I am told.

As a lowly management trainee, my expected default was eternal thankfulness. Instead, I paraded to the HR every Monday morning. My plea against this serendipity rubbed them the wrong way—what torture it must be, they say, to live in a real-estate heaven! I have stopped complaining. It’s a fishbone caught in my throat, but public sympathy is with the bone.

A good part of my first salary went towards the upkeep of the flat, enough for me to realise I was in its service, not the other way around. The high of starting at the salary my father retired at soon dissipated. I could not afford the simple pleasures that newly employed men look forward to after years of student drudgery. Blue collars at the building look upon me with scorn. I have taken up their jobs to support the lifestyle of the place, lest I go bankrupt in the process. Albeit different ranks, in a stark corporate way, we are the same pay grade.

Aware of my cheapness, I use little from the house, and never dare allow any secondhand furniture to darken its posh doorstep. Expecting relocation, I have been living out of an old suitcase and barely occupy the corner panel of the massive wall cupboard in the bedroom. Management saw through my domestic austerity and issued a list of Dos and Don’ts to house train me further. The Dos mostly read as commands, and the Don’ts are rephrased Dos.

I had more or less resigned myself to my fate, except a light bulb challenged me every week. One of the rudest realisations of my youth was that screw-in bulbs cost five times more than the average twist locks. Weekly shopping of snooty light bulbs was an expensive affair. Unsure if I was qualified to complain about the faulty current, I gave up and learnt to live in the dark. I started spending lesser time at the flat. I left early and came back late. Soon, I was relying on Mohan’s bulb to deliver me from darkness.

One night, I had just returned from my boss’s promotion party, sore from five hours of standing straight and smiling spastically. My boss had become somebody else’s boss, and to show my enthusiasm I tended the bar for him. It was Mohan’s night off, and I knew I had to fend for myself. A faint sound of the radio meant he was in, perhaps asleep. I was cursing him under my breath, fumbling in the cupboard with one hand, holding my phone in the other.

Suddenly, I heard a loud banging on a door somewhere. Mohan’s bulb came on. I stood there, surprised at the odd timing. His nephew had come in charging and hurling abuses at him in his throaty voice, saving people in my building some breath. Mohan was now on the floor, being thrashed. When he got up, he was drenched in water. The nephew meant business.

Old Mohan had once again forgotten to turn off the kitchen tap, and water had quietly made its way to the lobby, from where it had entered the lift shaft. The lift had to be stopped for several hours. This had earned him the ten to fifteen slaps I counted, after which he promptly got back to the routine. He unclogged the kitchen sink, went to the end of the lobby, came back and drained the water from the cloth into the bucket at his doorstep. As always, half an hour later when the bucket had almost brimmed, I knew he was done. It was the same orange bucket and half-an-inch-shy water. After another inspection and a second thrashing for the sloppy job, the nephew, on his way out, took the main electric fuse with him, leaving Mohan in darkness. I heard windows surrounding mine congratulating one another. Tonight, Mohan couldn’t blind them with his 60 watts.

All quiet, I saw his faint figure around the rickety aluminium chest, his single piece of furniture, which packs in everything else he owns apart from the pile of an eclectic collection of white clothes dumped on the yellow rope that ties his abode from one end to the other. For a while he came to the window, wearing his usual blank face, which I always suspect is a mask for something else. Mohan looks like a man who was born alone. His complexion borrows the grey from his uniform.

I had come to learn that the gate he guards stands on a plot he once owned—now property of his adopted son, the nephew. Children call him the coughing madman. When he blows into the whistle, it leaves him panting for a whole minute. Designated punching bag of the neighbourhood, every time he is slapped out of sleep on duty, he gives out a funny grunt, which tickles the joy out of people. He has, though, now learnt a trick, a bargain. With a little alertness he saves himself the beatings by grunting even before he is slapped, entertaining the boys around the corner.

For the first time his darkness had coincided with mine, but I could not return the favour. His oblivion to my powerlessness saved me from shame, but not from guilt. Tonight, he won’t dye his hair, sew his shirt, count his money, or collect the pigeon feathers sprayed all over his room—the chores of being Mohan. I couldn’t tell my pants from my shirt and went to bed naked. We lay in complete darkness. His panting slowly turned into snoring. I was still awake and tired.

The next morning, I woke up to Mohan’s incessant spitting. I looked at him and he looked at me with a smile. He stood at his window and spat away in our compound. Something he thinks of as a sport. I am proud of Mohan. His zest for life is mulish. His punishments and his revenges are ritualistic. He inspires me like no one else.

That night I bought a long cable with a bulb on one end and plugged it all the way from the living room. I hung it in my window and waited. At 3:05 am, I turned it on as Mohan entered the flat, Mohan the gatekeeper and an erstwhile owner of lands. I slept in light.

I resigned from my job the next morning. Now I spend my weekends looking for a house for my future secondhand furniture.

On how to be a woman

About the piece: For the most part it is about how some people are morally compelled to think that your business is their business.

“If you are a woman in Southasia, chances are that you’ve been told how to be one. If you don’t have well-meaning relatives to tell you how, the media does the job instead. Recently, on a flight from Varanasi to Mumbai, I found myself being coached on the subject by an elderly lady. The topic, under discussion, slightly modified, was how to be a ‘married’ woman.”

“On How to be a Woman ” published in Himal Southasian.

One Cold Night (short story)

“One Cold Night” appeared in Reading Hour.

“The car’s headlights worked in vain against the thickest fog the season had seen. Children of the pavements were cuddled all together in one corner, in a heap. The cars of the city’s rich zoomed past. I was not drunk enough, not as compared to the other nights, not like..”

 

Chitti (short story)

“Chitti” was published in Reading Hour.

“A lone bulb over Kisaan Ghar glows in hope of better times. The train leaves at 4am, when most of the village is still asleep. Chitti has packed her bindle- of a few clothes and a rich assortment of bindis.

“Dwarfs don’t need bindis. In fact, they don’t even need a face”, her best friend Binya shouted when Chitti mistakenly punched her over an innocuous fight about whose bindi was…”

 

On pornography

You can read this piece “The Public Secret of Savita Bhabhi” at kafila.org.

“In May 2013, makers of the erotic comic strip came out with the Savita Bhabhi movie, where apart from Savita Bhabhi doing what she is best at, she also helps the two nerds, who mistakenly teleport her into their Orwellian India of 2070, take their revenge upon the notorious I&B Minister who bans all online porn but engages in all offline porn. With this, Savita Bhabhi was back in our ever-so-fickle public memory after 4 years of ban, but yet not quite. Her resurfacing was not as resounding as her going away. One could ascribe this to the spoken language of the movie being Hindi instead of English, which is the original language of the strip and also the official language of all modern day revolutions of the middle class on social media. Perhaps they misjudged the ‘maximum reach’ bit, which rendered her an orphan. Nevertheless, that aside, why isn’t Savita Bhabhi missed enough anyway?…”