Half a Rupee: Stories (12 page)

Superman comics and videocassettes had begun to pile up in my house. In the beginning these piles were to be seen only in the children’s room. But slowly they began to slide out of their rooms and encroach on my bookshelves too. If I pulled out a book, 2–3 Superman comics would topple down. For a few moments I would wonder what to do with them and then I would deliberately shove them behind my books. A few times I even told Umi, ‘Why don’t you sell them off to the kabadi-wallah?’

‘Mummy … no!’ Buchki, my little one, just sprang up from nowhere. Even now she had a Superman book in her hand. She looked at me and said in English, ‘Papa! How can you! Superman is Superman! Why don’t you sell a few of your own books? Now, even Superman needs a little space.’

Umi sauntered away laughing, ‘The videocassettes are yet to come. Her room is already overflowing.’

‘But where did all these come from?’

‘Gagi! She’s the one, the supplier.’

Gagi was the same age as my daughter and in the same grade too, but she went to a different school. About half her growing-up years had been spent in our house, and the rest in her own parents’—Vikas Desai’s and Aruna Raje’s.

She lived for only eleven years.

All day long all these kids ever did was watch Superman on TV and read Superman comics. If I said something they would straightaway put their marksheets in front of me—now you cannot reprimand children who got straight As in every subject. And these kids excelled not only in studies but in everything they did.

One day I really got fed up and scolded all of them roundly. Gagi was quick to retort, ‘Uncle, Superman is like God. He can do anything, just like God.’ Gagi was quick of wit.

She was only nine years old when she was diagnosed with cancer—bone cancer. Poor Puggi and Buchki. Puggi was Basu Bhattacharya’s daughter. Because all three of us—Vikas, Basu and I—were filmmakers, it was but natural for the kids to get together often at one of our places. And because my wife did not stay with me, they felt a little more free in my house, a little more independent. So my house had become their playground.

Once we all happened to be in Bangalore together. Vikas was very fond of swimming. He would spend most of his free time in the swimming pool. He would
teach the kids to swim too and generally horse around with them in the pool. He was a little on the heavier side. Gagi once said, ‘Papa, you are so fat … how come you don’t sink in the pool?’

‘Water is very strong, sweetie. It can carry huge ships.’

‘But how come my wristwatch sank then?’

Vikas was without an answer. He stole a look at Aruna and she burst out laughing. Vikas was visibly embarrassed, so we left the poolside and retired to our room. When a little later Vikas returned with Gagi, she was limping a little. The limp did not augur well. It was the first hint of the impending tragedy.

When Gagi found it increasingly difficult to walk, treatment for her leg started. A number of different kinds of shoes were made and tried on her. But the pain in her legs refused to subside. She was very fond of learning Kathak. That was the first thing that had to stop. But she would still vocalize the rhythm. She would dance with her mouth—while stumbling towards the car, while scrambling down the stairs: ‘Tar kut taa thaee … tar … kut taa thaee … thaee …’

Music was in her blood, in her genes. Her father’s uncle, Vasant Desai, was a famous music composer. When the pain in her legs became nagging and a constant occurrence, Gagi became irregular at school. But Kathak was one thing that she really missed and she expressed her desire to resume her dancing lessons. Aruna arranged for a dance master to give her private lessons at home. But though Gagi put on her dancing bells, her ghungroos,
she could never really dance again—she could only walk in them.

For the first time now, Dr Adhikari became suspicious—he began to suspect that the problem was not in her legs or her knees but in the marrow of her shin bones. When X-rays were inconclusive, other tests began to be performed. Vasant shifted into his uncle Vasant Desai’s house which was just opposite Jaslok Hospital, right on Peddar Road.

Dr Adhikari had reached a diagnosis but he kept hoping against hope, conducting test after test; but one day finally he had to place the medical reports in front of Vikas and Aruna. Gagi was sitting outside the doctor’s chambers. Vikas and Aruna sat inside in stunned silence. Gagi’s cancer was now confirmed without any doubt. Before Vikas and Aruna left the doctor’s chambers they swore that they would never shed a tear in front of Gagi. The two of them fought the calamity with great fortitude. We did not see either of them shed a single tear in Gagi’s lifetime—whatever was left of it—however often and however much they might have cried in the privacy of their own room.

Old friends and new playmates, uncles and aunties, games and videos, dancing monkeys and waltzing bears and what not were paraded through Gagi’s room. Gagi was not given a moment to think, to mull over her disease. Vikas and Aruna did not let the grimness of the hospital waft into their house. I would often marvel at their spirit. Gagi had become an expert in
antakshari
. When medicines stopped working the doctors began to
talk about operating on Gagi’s leg. Vikas and Aruna took her to America. Now Gagi knew that she had cancer.

‘But why in my leg Papa?’

‘It’s the cancer of the bones, beta. It’s in the bone of the leg. They are going to operate on your bone, scrape it out of your bone before it spreads.’

In America, Gagi’s treatment stretched over a few months. She lost all her hair to chemotherapy. She would dread running her hand over her hairless pate and look at her parents through eyes filled with fear. Aruna and Vikas would do their best to laugh it all off.

‘Baldy … don’t you be scared … your hair’s gonna grow back in a matter of months.’

‘I love you this way. This is the current trend. The in-thing. Haven’t you heard?’

‘Hi, Yul Brynner!’

I think Gagi had immense faith in her parents’ laughter and believed that she was going to get better soon. That was the hope the doctors in America had rekindled in her when they plastered up the leg they had operated upon and sent her back to India.

But soon after her return from America, a foul, putrid smell began to emanate from her leg. She was in great pain. This time instead of Dr Adhikari another doctor was consulted. He had the plaster on her leg cut open. Her leg was festering with pus. The doctors were of the opinion that it was not cancer, it could not be cancer, but nobody was able to treat her back to health. Doctors began to be changed like medicines on their prescriptions. Within three months they sawed her leg off in the fear that the
cancer might raise its ugly head again. The amputated limb was cremated in an electric crematorium with all the rites accorded to the dead.

When Gagi’s glance climbed off the ceiling, she asked in a very quiet voice, ‘Papa, why is God punishing me? I haven’t ever done anything bad.’

Aruna had placed an icon of Krishna in her room. She would light joss sticks and the fame in the lamp would be kept up all through the day and the night in front of it. They had given up eating meat or fish as penance. However, when Gagi asked for kebabs or tikkas they would never refuse her. They had even asked her doctor and taken his permission.

One day when a new doctor entered her room, Gagi asked, ‘You have changed the doctor again, Papa?’

‘Yes, beta … that doctor could not do anything.’

She looked at the Krishna idol in the room and said, ‘This god too can’t do anything … isn’t there another god, Papa?’

It wasn’t like Aruna to say this, but somehow she just blurted out, ‘He’s like Superman only, beta … in the books he can do everything.’

High up on the branches of the tall, leafy suru tree, Ghugu would stealthily perch himself and patiently lie in wait for a glimpse of his beloved, every day. She would fly in from the orchard side, strutting her colorful plumes, carelessly trolling his patch of the sky. He had fallen in love with the kite, fallen in love with its shimmer of yellow and purple. He would sit mesmerized, watching her soar and dive, now to this rhythm, now to that. He really thought her to be a bird.

A number of times, he would flap his wings and fly past her, tweeting sweet nothings into her ears: ‘The colours on your two wings are not the same … one’s a brilliant yellow and the other is just the shade of ripe jamun berries I so love! May I call you Jamuni? You are so pretty!’ And every time she would flutter her wings and fly away in one smooth move. He thought it to be her bashfulness. Once he had even invited her to his nest.
But she flounced away from him, soared away into the vast expanse of the sky—in silence, absolute silence. No chirp, no cheep, not even a tiny little tweet. Whenever he winged himself near her, she would prance away. Now he had learned to keep his distance, and whooped at her from a respectable distance: ‘You look lovely when you strut about like this!’ But even then she did not utter a single coo. And he yearned and longed to hear her voice—a trill, a tweet or a chirp—anything at all.

Her thoughts haunted him throughout the day and he kept hovering over the orchard. That was the direction she always flew in from. His eyes would scan the rooftops, the trees, the entire horizon—maybe he would get a glimpse of her, spot her roosting on the branch of some tree, or perhaps find her pecking on some rooftop. He would even forget to feed. He few for hours on end with a grain or two stashed in his beak—thinking he would feed them to her when he found her. He had begun to hoard tufts of grass, lengths of thread. He was thinking of building a nest, to bring her home. The male of the species always did so. He wanted his to be the best, better than anyone else’s.

And then, a few days later, he got to know that she wasn’t a free bird. She was someone else’s prisoner, tied at the back with a bright glistening string—thin as a thread, and pretty sharp. His wing had brushed against it, only once—and the thread had cut right through it. A few feathers had cut clean from his wing, and begun to sashay down to earth. It was then that it hit him—the realization—that she wasn’t a free bird. She came with
strings attached, a string that someone else pulled. That must be the reason she did not respond to his gestures, that must be the reason she did not make a single sound. Perhaps she was scared of her owner.

Her owner would let her fly for a while in the open but when a bird tried to come close to her, he would pull on her string and haul her back to his roof, take her by her ears and banish her into her cage. He had seen him holding her ears but where on earth did he keep her cage? If only he knew … if only he could find out … he could then at least try to free her.

That day too he sat high up in the branches of the tall suru tree. It was then that he saw the clouds, gathering ominously, rising together in a silent pact. He knew the clouds always belched out the wind in their bellies before they rained down. The wind would soon pick up speed, and no bird would dare fly with such a wind under its wings—not even someone as strong of feather as the crow. His Jamuni surely would not be able to withstand such a wind, such gusts. Her constitution was too delicate. And she had just spread her wings and flown off her roof. She was still finding her winghold, still seeking her balance in the sky. The winds were becoming increasingly strong, rattling the doors and windows. Ghugu few to warn the kite—all care for his own safety tossed to the winds; his only concern was for his Jamuni. And then a strong gust of wind slapped his wings, tossed him around. He was still far away from his Jamuni but he kept flapping his wings, kept propelling himself forward, steering himself in the direction, kept squawking at her, ‘Go
back Jamuni … head back home … Jamuni! A storm’s brewing … the clouds are soon going to burst … and the rain, you would—’ Something lodged itself in his throat—the wind began to push him backwards. He could hardly see in the gathering darkness but he could still steer himself in the general direction of her house. The clouds now began to swoop down on him and the gust became too strong. He suddenly lost his balance. All his flapping was of no use. He was falling freely, rapidly losing his altitude—and then the wind picked him up once again and dashed him against an electric pole. That was when he lost consciousness.

When he returned to his senses, he found himself inside a wooden almirah, enveloped in soft clothes. It was still raining. He could make that much out from the dampness in the air. The pitter-patter of the raindrops was distant but distinct. And a strange smell arose from his body—the kind that he found when he alighted on the skylight of that hospital across the road. He could also hear the voices of children. And then it all came back to him. He remembered colliding against the electric pole. Some kind child must have found him. It must have been the kid who was looking after him. He closed his eyes as the pain shot up his little body. This pain he could bear, but what about the other pain, the one that refused to be healed? The moment he closed his eyes, Jamuni’s face sprung to his mind. Was she alive? God forbid she had fallen in the storm. Did she manage to reach her home safely? He kept his eyes shut, kept nursing his pain—and the pain kept him alive.

After a few days in the almirah he was transferred to a wiry cage which was hung up in the balcony. He liked the feel of the sun on his feathers. He felt alive, felt life returning to his wings. He still couldn’t flap his wings as he could earlier but he was now able to spread them. The pain had not all gone away, not yet, a little still remained in his shoulders.

Within a couple of days, he identified the voices of the other birds, and felt good. He was still in the same old neighbourhood, still on the very same side of the orchard from where Jamuni would fly in. A new hope began to throb in his veins, renewing his zest for life.

Days passed in waiting. He had begun to tweet and prattle all to himself, intermittently calling out to Jamuni: ‘For a few days I will be here, staying with a few children … down here in the building, in Montu’s house … don’t look for me in the sky!’

‘How have you been, Jamuni?’

‘Where are you, Jamuni? Jamuni!’

And then, one day, finally he did spot the familiar half yellow-half purple figure, high up there in the sky. And what a knot he wound himself in! He frantically began to flap about in his cage, squealing, pleading, clamouring to be let out. But there was nobody in the house to hear his pleas. He kept banging against the bars of his prison. His cage kept swinging, but that was all. He squawked, he cawed, he whistled and hooted—but Jamuni did not even cast a glance downwards in his direction.

A few minutes later, Jamuni disappeared from his sight. And then when he spotted her again she was
frenziedly gliding down towards the bazaar. Her string was hanging down limply behind her. She must have broken free from her captivity. For him—to be with him! Slowly but surely, she had begun her descent. And below on the ground, a few kids had begun to run, jumping up now and then to try and catch her trailing string. Ghugu called out to her but his voice did not reach her. It got drowned in the cacophony of the bazaar and the shouts of the children. Then suddenly a big kid grabbed her string and ran into the narrow lane. He saw Jamuni straining to break away from him, trying to soar up, to fly away. But the kid’s grasp on the string was very strong. She just couldn’t break free, not this time.

And then …

Ghugu would not have been able to dream up what happened next, not ever. His heart skipped a beat. Montu ran into the house, brandishing Jamuni, his Jamuni.

‘Ma … Ma … look, look! A patang … I found a patang!’

It was then that he got to know—his Jamuni already had a name: Patang. Everybody looked at her affectionately. Montu put her up on the wall in the balcony—the same balcony where Ghugu’s cage was hung. All through the night, he kept calling out to her: ‘Jamuni … Patang … Jamuni!’ But she did not make a single sound, just swayed with the wind a couple of times. That was all.

Ghugu understood. She must have been born mute. That was why she never chirped, never cheeped, never tweeted, never said anything to him.