Half a Rupee: Stories (14 page)

Sultan was running towards the hospital. He had just got the news: his wife Zakia had gone into labour, her water had broken. She would give birth to the baby at any moment. The neighbour who had taken her to the hospital was the one who had told him.

‘The doctors expected her to go into labour eight days later … but Bade Miyan, he …’ Sultan nearly blasphemed. He bit his tongue, tugged at his own ears and slapped his own cheeks in quick repentance. He often called the Almighty Bade Miyan, the Big Man—more out of love and affection than anything else. It seemed to bring him closer to his maker.

When he heard the news, he had shot up from his seat and pulled his shirt over his head in such a great hurry that the seams had come a little more undone at the sides. He looked at the gaping hole at the armpit. Zakia often teased him, ‘What have you left that hole
for—to ventilate yourself? Come on, take it off, let me sew it up.’

But once he had put the shirt on, he felt too lazy to take it off. ‘Oye, let it be, no problem … I will keep my arms stitched to my sides,’ he would say. And then he would quip in an afterthought, ‘But don’t worry … when the little one comes I will get a new one stitched—I will then have to lift my arms to cradle him.’

Zakia would burst into laughter, ‘Lo! You talk as if the baby’s coming tomorrow or the day after … there’s six more months to go … it’s been only three months.’

‘Three? This is the beginning of the fourth … why are you pushing it back further?’

His wife had conceived with great difficulty. They had pleaded with the Almighty, bowed their heads at numerous shrines. Their prayers were answered in the fourth year of their marriage. Six months seemed like years away to Sultan, and he broke down the months into weeks and the weeks into days—and counted the minutes and hours away.

He scrambled down the stairs and then remembered that he had left his wallet upstairs. He ran up the stairs again. He felt a little out of breath. He unlocked the door, walked in, and found the wallet where he had changed his shirt. It would have been pretty embarrassing to tell the doctor that he had forgotten his wallet at home. But Dr Chopra was a large-hearted man. He would have understood. He had been looking after Zakia’s pregnancy ever since the conception.

‘But the baby was to come eight days later. Now who hastened it up? Zakia? Or Bade Miyan?’ he said to himself. He put his wallet in his pocket and headed back down the stairs. This time he negotiated one stair at a time. When he reached the ground floor he realized that he had forgotten to lock the door. And then he said to himself, ‘No problem, Bade Miyan will look after the house.’ He bit his tongue, tugged at his ears and slapped his cheeks.

Bade Miyan would look after the house—but what if he got late in reaching the hospital? By the time he scraped through the narrow lane to Rewari Bazaar, he was overwhelmed by the stench from the gutter. He reached the main road and started looking for an autorickshaw. A few of them careened off without stopping. A few were already occupied. Sultan was now becoming restless, panicky.

‘Normally they keep scampering about in the traffic round the clock, but when you really need one, there is none!’

He picked up pace and began to run towards the hospital. But he kept turning his head in search of an autorickshaw—and kept bumping into dozens of pedestrians.

‘Look where you are going!’

‘Do your feet point backwards?’

Sultan knitted his brows at this turn of phrase. He was a collector of sorts of publicly expressed wisdom, but he hadn’t heard this one before. A smile escaped his lips.

Suddenly he found an autorickshaw headed in his direction. When he waved his hand it swerved and sidled by his side as if it was his pet.

‘Government hospital’, he muttered, and got in. Had he just run he would have saved even these eight rupees—he had already covered half the distance. But when he slipped his hand into his pocket, it came through the other end. The wallet was missing; somebody had picked his pocket. He had not realized when. He put his hand over the rickshawallah’s shoulder and showed him the picked seams of his pocket. ‘Forgive me brother … somebody … on the way …’ his voice got choked. The rickshawallah paused and then carried on, ‘Not a problem … it happens sometimes.’ He seemed to believe Sultan.

Sultan tried to remember when and where his pocket had got picked. And that was precisely what the rickshawallah asked him too, ‘When did it happen? Where?’

‘Right now! In the bazaar! I stay in Rewari Bazaar … just left the place … did not even realize when somebody—they stay unseen, friend, just like Bade Miyan, these pickpockets don’t have a face … you never realize when they perform the sleight of hand.’

They reached the hospital. Sultan got off and wanted to tell the rickshawallah something but the man simply smiled and waved him off, took in another passenger and drove away.

Sultan’s face fell. He entered the hospital with heavy steps and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He
did not bother to take the lift. He stopped in front of Dr Chopra’s chamber. There was a long line of people waiting. The orderly told him that Zakia had suddenly gone into labour and had been rushed into the operation theatre. Dr Chopra was still inside.

He found an empty bench outside the operation theatre and plonked down there. Time and again, his hand would slip into his picked pocket. And time and again the face of the rickshawallah would flash before him. Now he would have to narrate the entire pickpocketing incident to Dr Chopra too.

He did not realize when he had dozed off, how much time had passed. He woke up when Dr Chopra put his hand on his shoulder and took him inside his chamber.

‘How’s Zakia, Doctor sahib?’

‘She’s all right!’

‘And the baby?’ There was a smile on his face and a question in his eyes. ‘Baby girl or baby boy?’

But when the doctor lowered his head, both his smile and his question were snuffed out.

‘Sultan, the baby was stillborn.’

A chill ran down his spine. He kept looking at the doctor.

‘Zakia’s all right though. We had to sedate her … but she will be coming back into consciousness any time now.’

Sultan’s eyes suddenly became dry. His hand slipped into his picked pocket. God alone knows why but he smiled. A little.

‘What Bade Miyan! You turned out to be the biggest pickpocket of them all! You yourself blessed her womb, and then you yourself picked it! You pickpocket!’

The fact that his missus had gone and got her long flowing tresses bobbed without so much as telling him irked Lalaji.

Last month, when their daughter-in-law went to visit her parents, she had taken the old woman along. The mother of a young infant on an arduous, long train journey needs all the help she can get. And it was not that Maya Devi had not consulted Lalaji. She had asked him, ‘Bahu is asking me to accompany her to Delhi. Shall I?’

‘Yes, certainly!’ he had said. ‘You should and you must! How is poor Bahu going to manage the kid all by herself in the train otherwise?’

Their daughter-in-law was named Mini. Her father was a colonel in the Indian Army—now retired. Both her brothers too were in the Army in high posts. Retirement had not affected the way Colonel sahib lived. His lifestyle remained the same. He still went to parties. His wife lived
in style too. She was a modern woman—stylish to say the least. She had got her hair bobbed long ago; this time round she got Maya Devi’s hair cut too.

When Maya Devi returned to Mumbai after her sojourn in Delhi, Lalaji was shocked to see her. Gone were her long flowing tresses.

‘What have you done to your hair?’

‘Mini’s mother got them chopped.’

Maya Devi tried to laugh it off but when she caught the glimpse of brooding darkness swim across Lalaji’s eyes, she could not help but shudder. She could read the tempest that brewed in the twin pools of his eyes. She had practiced the art of reading him to perfection over thirty-eight years of living together. A simper crawled out of her lips, trying to hide her embarrassment, ‘It will grow back … in a matter of months.’

Lalaji did not utter a word. He quietly walked back into the house and plonked himself on the chair in the sitting room. He stayed in his cocoon at the dining table too—sat through his dinner enveloped in silence. Manoj tried to start a conversation but the wall was impenetrable. All he elicited from Lalaji was a nod or two. A worried Maya Devi asked, ‘Are you feeling all right?’

His response had no bearing on her question. ‘You had such beautiful hair … they looked so pretty. Why did you get them cut?’

When he did not get any response from Maya Devi, he added, ‘And that too without even asking me!’

Manoj entered his room, scarcely able to contain his mirth. ‘Babuji still worries about mother’s braids. At his
age! He must be touching what—seventy–seventy-two? And look at him, he is sulking like a teenaged lover.’

Mini, who was combing her elder daughter’s hair, burst into laughter and asked, ‘Was Babuji’s a love marriage?’

‘No! I was there at their marriage. Her parents forced the marriage on him.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘They had eloped and got married in court. About four–five years after their court marriage I was born. And only after my birth did their parents forgive them. There was a patch-up of sorts. Then when Ma and Babuji went to meet Ma’s parents, they threw Babuji out of the house. They told him in no uncertain terms, only if he turned up formally at their door atop a wedding horse and with a wedding procession in tow would they think of giving him their daughter and grandson. That’s when they got married—again. Not that I remember anything. But I know. We still have the wedding pictures.’

Lala Himraj always went out for a walk after dinner, every day without fail. It was an old habit of his. At the corner of the street was a paan shop where he would get his favourite condiments wrapped in a juicy betel-leaf. The betel nuts in his paan were getting fewer now, a kindness he showed to his ageing molars. But today he did not walk as far as the paan shop. He returned home much earlier, without his after-dinner paan. He just could not get over his wife’s short hair. The image of his wife’s barbered head eddied in his thoughts, pulling him deeper and deeper into a despondency from which
he was unable to pull free. Was the sun setting on their love, were they at the dusk of their romance, hurtling towards a kind of darkness? Was it his right or his claim to demand that his wife conform to his vision? He could debate that endlessly; but the truth was that he felt as if he had been robbed of his most prized possession.

When Manoj was born he knew that he had to abdicate some of his claim over his wife. He had tried to laugh at his surrender, ‘All right, all right! I will take out my own clothes. You look after your son. This pint-sized man has pushed me out of my own marital bed the moment he has been born.’

‘Don’t you go calling him pint-sized. A full eight pounds he weighs.’

‘Fine, fine! But just tell me what I should wear! I have to meet Hilton sahib.’

‘Just don’t wear a necktie. It looks like a noose around your neck. A scarf is better.’

And then when Pinky was born there were further encroachments on his claim over his wife. The food laid on the table was now being cooked by a maidservant. But Maya Devi still seasoned the dal with her own hands. He would know if it wasn’t done by her: Maya Devi took great pride in this fact. Then one day when Lalaji found a long black hair floating in his dal, he fired the maid. He told Maya Devi, ‘If that hair was yours, I would have kept it in my wallet. But I will not tolerate this. If she wants to keep her job ask her to shave her head.’

‘Arre hai! Shave her head? Why should she? Her husband’s still alive!’

‘Then hire a manservant.’

Ever since then, they had hired only manservants. And when the reins of the kitchen passed on to Bahu, Manoj’s newly married wife, Lalaji told her, ‘Don’t let your hair loose when you are in the kitchen, Bahu. It gets in your eyes.’ Mini immediately gathered her hair together in a tight bun. But the significance of Lalaji’s words were not lost on Maya Devi. She knew that Lalaji could never forget that single hair floating in his dal all those years ago.

A few days passed in harmless banter. Maya Devi was thrilled in the furrows of her heart. She interpreted Lalaji’s sulking as nothing but the signs of a robust love. But when a few more days passed, it began to sink in: Lalaji had stopped talking to her. Now she became totally restless, lovelorn. She found his sulking in his dotage more exacting, more punishing than their squabbles when they were young. The entire family would gather together at the dinner table. They began to eat their meals in oppressive silence. After dinner Lalaji would immediately go out for his walk; but now the walks were becoming shorter and shorter. When Maya Devi asked him why, he said, ‘Now I tire pretty easily.’

A kind of desolation began to hang in the air, and along with it a sort of tension that was felt in the bones but never voiced—muted and yet there.

Once at the dinner table, Manoj said, ‘Babuji, why don’t you get yourself a new pair of spectacles? There are so many new designs available these days.’

‘The ones that I am wearing were approved by your mother.’

‘Ma chose this for you?’ Mini looked a little surprised.

‘Yes! She did not like the round frames so I began to wear these rectangle-shaped ones. And then when she objected to the black frames I bought the brown ones.’

At the dinner table another day, he suddenly shot a glance at Maya Devi and asked, ‘Did you season the dal yourself today?’

Maya Devi looked at him with a tenderness that welled up in her eyes. She was touched that he could still discern her touch.

Mini asked, ‘How did you know?’

‘Bahu, I can smell your mother-in-law’s hands in the dal’s seasoning.’

But the silence remained unbroken. And when all indirect efforts to placate Lalaji failed, Mini broke down before him and offered her unconditional apologies. ‘Forgive me, Babuji, it was my mistake. I should have stopped Mummy. I should have been more firm with her when she took Mummy to the parlour. I couldn’t say no to Mummy, but Mummy also agreed.’ Mini called them both Mummy, her mother as well as her mother-in-law.

‘The world does not come to an end when somebody gets their hair shorn,’ Lalaji said with a muted smile. ‘It’s a small little thing. But then it is always the small little things that season life … the things that make life worth living. She and I have become old … but have we also become strangers to each other now?’

The next day, Lalaji announced, ‘I am going to visit Pinky. I will stay with her for a few days. I need a change of air.’

Pinky lived in Jabalpur. After a little deliberation they all agreed. Manoj even tried to joke, ‘Yes, that’s good … by the time you are back I am sure Ma’s hair will have grown a bit longer.’

Maya Devi said, ‘Come back soon. It is not considered good to stay long at one’s daughter’s.’

Lalaji left the following day.

A few days passed, and then a few more. A week went by. Lalaji had failed to arrive at Pinky’s. Everyone began to worry. They began to look for him at his friends’, at his relatives’. What if he had met with some accident? But if that was the case, then they would have been informed, wouldn’t they? They could not think of any plausible reason for his disappearance. When their search and queries did not return any results, they informed the police, published his photograph in newspapers. But there was no trace of Lalaji. Now they began to imagine the worst. All kinds of thoughts began to criss-cross through their minds.

Two and a half months passed. And then they got a letter—from an ashram in Badrinath. Lala Himraj was terribly ill. His condition was deteriorating every day. A pundit from the ashram had found their address from his diary and written to them.

They immediately left for Badrinath. But when they reached, they found that they were a bit too late. Lala Badrinath had passed away that very morning. He now
had a beard, overgrown, unkempt. His ungroomed, uncut hair was matted. Lying on the mat, he looked like a sanyasi.

Maya Devi broke every single one of the bangles that adorned her wrists. Then she walked up to him and whispered into his ears, ‘Shall I cut my hair? Now I have to get it completely shorn. I am a widow after all.’

And this time round, she cut her hair with her husband’s permission.