One String Attached

by Pankaj Dubey

  ‘No point in lingering,’ he tells them snootily while dusting off an invisible spot from his shiny waistcoat.

  ‘Any discount?’ asks Shivam.

  ‘Would half a girl do for you?’ chucks back the detective.

  Babloo intervenes, seeing his friend’s anger shoot up at this derisive comment. ‘Forget the discount . . . tell me if you are up to the task.’

  ‘Mission possible ji,’ replies the sleuth, in a more amiable tone. Looking Babloo in the eye, he continues, ‘Hundred per cent guarantee comes only with 100 per cent advance.’

  ‘Done,’ replies Babloo, not batting an eyelid.

  Shivam is scandalized but before he can open his mouth, his friend restrains him with a hand.

  ‘Done deal,’ checks the investigator once again, his eyebrow lifted.

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Twenty thousand,’ repeats Khannaji.

  ‘But I only have . . . ’ Shivam blurts out.

  ‘Will be arranged,’ cuts in Babloo.

  The private eye looks at Shivam, seeking his confirmation. The tailor nods weakly.

  ‘Okay, you manage the fee,’ booms the man. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll make the calls.’

  * * *

  Mr Gupta is busy dialling a number. The line is busy. He dials again. But it’s still busy.

  Fifteen minutes later, he gets a call back.

  ‘How you doing, young man,’ says Mr Gupta.

  ‘Arrey, sir . . . am fine, sir. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve got a small assignment for you,’ Mr Gupta tells the person at the other end.

  ‘Order, sir.’

  ‘You’ve got to do this yourself.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He gives his instructions in a low voice.

  ‘Darzi . . . ’ is all the maid hears as she leaves the room after putting down the tray on the table beside the window.

  23

  Shivam stands in his boutique, waiting. Not for customers but for his friend, Babloo, who soon arrives in an auto-rickshaw. He is grinning.

  ‘Bhaiya, today will go too good.’

  Before Shivam can ask, Babloo elaborates. ‘Saw no evil today. Both the witches left before I got up.’

  Then, eyes twinkling, Shivam slaps his back. Babloo has seldom referred to his wife or her sister by their respective names. Opening the drawer, he takes out his wallet and counts twelve thousand rupees. ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ he says, handing over the cash to Babloo.

  ‘No tension. Eight, I’ll give.’

  ‘How?’ asks Shivam.

  ‘Arrey, this show I’m doing tomorrow. I’ll get ten.’

  Shivam runs out of words. How do you thank someone who stays by you more than your own shadow? He half-hugs him, embarrassing them both.

  * * *

  Munjal greets Babloo loudly across the road and invites him over. He likes this singer friend of the tailor. But Shivam restrains Babloo with a hand. They have important issues to discuss.

  ‘When will Khanna start our work?’ asks Shivam, more confident now that they have the money.

  ‘After payment.’

  ‘He won’t cheat us na?’ Shivam is so close to his goal and so financially frail that he doesn’t want to be disappointed or left without whatever little he has. ‘I have waited for long . . . ’

  ‘You’ll get what you want,’ says Kitty, who has suddenly appeared at the shop. ‘I’ve got this gut feeling. Whatever it is . . . you’ll get it.’

  Just the thing Shivam needs to hear. Shivam throws an arm around her, pulling her to himself, wanting to feel the warmth of her conviction. She moves in close with him, holding the man who has taken her completely by surprise, filling her with sudden happiness.

  Munjal whistles. He has seen such a display of affection mostly on cinema screens and on park benches.

  Babloo simply stands around smiling. He knows where this display is coming from. His friend is alive again and dreaming, brimming with hope. They are all dreaming of a bright future.

  But two customers enter the shop, requiring Kitty to vacate the space.

  ‘Babloo,’ Shivam calls out the minute he has finished serving his customers. He jumps right back to the Khanna topic.

  ‘What if he can’t deliver after payment?’

  ‘Don’t worry Bhaiya, I’ll settle things with him first.’

  As Babloo turns to leave, Shivam reconfirms with him, ‘I hope you are going straight to him?’

  ‘I’ll go in the evening. Got to prepare first . . . I have this show tomorrow.’

  ‘Abey,’ hits back Shivam, ‘stop calling your mata ki chowki a show!’

  Babloo pretends not to hear him.

  The tailor returns to work but doesn’t get much done that day. He tries. But he cannot focus. Aaina fills his head. Her eyes. How they’ll open wide when they see him again. After years. Ten years. Will she cry? Will she smile? Will she cling to him again . . . like she had done in the back alley of Masterji’s shop that day . . . the day they came together . . . then fell apart . . .

  He cuts the same cloth twice, ruining the piece completely. By evening, Shivam gives up. He can’t work. So he switches off the lights, takes his wallet and tiffin, pulls down the shutter, and leaves.

  In his head, he is having a conversation with her as he walks. He forgets to get on his scooter and continues walking.

  Blue, I was looking for you, he tells her. And the brown memsahib stared back at me. And what if she had blue eyes, asks his girl. Would you take her to be me? He shakes his head. My girl’s a bewitcher. None like her. Ever. She laughs. You’re sure she did not tempt you? she asks, teasing. He shakes his head furiously.

  Kitty’s face looms up in front of him, surprising him. No, shocking him. Kitty? No. Never. He did not give a damn.

  Still, she keeps coming closer. And closer. And suddenly, all goes still. Shivam lies on the footpath. Bleeding. Unconscious.

  * * *

  One melody after other swims into Babloo’s mind as he sits down to eat. He is confused about which one to try for his show the next day. But before he can take a bite from his roti, Rashmi ladles a big spoonful of ghee on his vegetables.

  ‘Are you trying to kill me?’ he exclaims.

  ‘How can I, till you don’t get my sister married!’ she retorts.

  ‘I married you . . . isn’t that enough!’

  ‘You agreed to settle her . . . that was our deal,’ she reminds her husband. ‘Don’t change now.’

  ‘Ya . . . ya . . . only I’ve changed. You stayed nineteen na.’

  Withering under his sarcasm, she switches topic.

  ‘This Shivam Bhaiya . . . what’s his scene these days?’

  Babloo stays quiet.

  ‘It is about a girl, is it?’

  His mobile phone rings just then, saving him, or so he thinks.

  It is Shivam’s number but some woman’s voice. Frown lines appear on his forehead. His wife grumbles that he never eats in peace. ‘Always singing . . . or talking . . . or . . . ’ she stops as she sees her husband break into a sweat, push back the plate, and rise.

  ‘Moolchand Hospital, casualty ward,’ she hears him repeat.

  Dinner forgotten, he pauses only to count the notes in his wallet and dole out a hurried explanation to his irritated other half.

  On his way to hospital, Babloo dials Shivam’s number again. It is busy. He sighs in relief. Shivam is up and talking. Things couldn’t be so bad then.

  He reaches the hospital, strides up to the casualty ward and scans the faces in the room. Shivam is missing. Did they discharge him? He calls Shivam again to check. His number is still busy. The lone doctor on duty is occupied with an emergency patient. So are the nurses.

  Babloo walks out and tries calling Shivam again. His friend is not such a talker. Why today then? He bumps into someone, who, like him, is on the phone.

  ‘Kitty!’

  It’s her. And that cell phone she is speaking into is his friend’s. A hundred doubts
arise in his head.

  What the hell is she doing with Shivam’s phone when she’s got her own? And where is Shivam?

  ‘Babloo!’ Kitty cries, taking his hand. ‘What took you so long? I’ve been waiting here.’

  It takes him a minute to process everything. Kitty was the one who called him from Shivam’s phone. And that she still had his phone meant only one thing. Shivam is not in good shape.

  ‘Where is he?’ barks Babloo, getting impatient.

  She takes him to another ward, to a far-off bed, where he lies bandaged and pale, wound up in pipes feeding him IV fluids. Babloo looks away.

  ‘They hit him on the head from behind and ran away.’

  Babloo is shocked. This was not an accident?

  ‘I came to discuss work but before I reached him . . . they did this.’

  He runs out of the ward and hails an auto to Paharganj. As he heads to Khannaji, he punches his number on the phone to tell him he is on the way.

  ‘Khanna is gone,’ says the boy selling cigarettes outside the locked office.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Yes, gone for good.’

  ‘How you know that?’ asks Babloo, patting a fifty-rupee note into the boy’s hand.

  ‘He got badly beaten last night. Some big officer’s wife he was investigating . . . and they came after him. Very, very powerful people . . . so he fled.’

  ‘And he told you all this?’ Babloo finds this hard to believe.

  ‘I did odd jobs for him. I know everything . . . ’

  Babloo dials the detective again. His phone is switched off.

  24

  ‘I can do what Khannaji couldn’t.’

  What is this claim this Gujju girl is making?

  He eyes her with suspicion and growing irritation. After a worried night spent on the visitor chairs lined outside the hospital ward, all he wants is his chai and to get Shivam out of there. Not Kitty and her over-the-top ways.

  But she stomps in there again, wearing fresh make-up and butting her nose into what is clearly not her business.

  ‘What’s this Aaina business?’ Kitty asks Babloo the minute she steps into the hospital. ‘Aaina . . . Aaina . . . Aaina,’ she cries, flailing her arms up and down theatrically. ‘When he fell, when he laid half-conscious in the ambulance, he went on and on, Aaina . . . Aaina, like a chant.’

  Babloo keeps quiet.

  ‘Who is this Aaina?’ she asks again.

  He says nothing again.

  She puts both her hands on his shoulders as she turns him around and looks straight into his eyes, demanding an answer. Soon, he tells her everything, spilling all the beans about the girl in the burqa who stole Shivam’s heart, her kurti returning in a car ten years later, their search for her, going from Mrs Gupta’s apartment to Khannaji’s, to landing in the hospital with a broken head.

  The story knocked the wind out of her. He sees her face deflate. She is soon pacing the hospital corridor, thinking about what to do next. And she comes back to Babloo declaring, ‘Forget Khannaji.’ Slouched in his hospital chair, Babloo stares at her.

  ‘You just give me this Gupta madam’s number,’ Kitty says. ‘I can do what Khannaji couldn’t. I’m a girl. She’ll talk to me.’

  ‘What will you talk about?’

  ‘If she knows Aaina, I’ll get it out of her. Simple!’

  Babloo does not feel comfortable involving Kitty. But the Gujju girl is too feisty for him to resist. She marches out of the hospital after securing the number.

  His phone rings insistently. Babloo ignores it. He knows his wife is calling him to find out when he’ll be home. But even he does not know the answer. So, there is no point in taking her call.

  The sun has set. Inside the hospital corridors though, it is tough to tell when noon turns into evening. Babloo has been counting the hours because he was told, ‘Next twenty-four hours are crucial.’ Twenty have passed. There is no change in Shivam’s condition.

  When he sees the junior doctor from the ward heading towards the canteen, he follows him. As they queue up to order food, Babloo chats with him.

  ‘Your friend is lucky,’ says the doctor. ‘A few inches to the left . . . and he wouldn’t have made it.’

  Babloo nods. That rod had meant to kill. That Shivam was still breathing must surprise the hands that attacked him. That rod had come down hard on his friend, Kitty had told him.

  ‘His vitals are all okay,’ the doctor reassures him. ‘The MRI is also okay. We have to see how this night goes . . . ’

  Babloo breathes easier. The doctor has painted a more cheerful picture than he expected.

  Someone grabs him by the elbow and whisks him to a corner.

  ‘Kitty!’

  She looks grim. Has she come from Shivam’s ward? Was he . . . was he . . .

  ‘It’s all over,’ she says, her voice flat.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, I . . . ’

  He can’t hear any more because his head has begun to spin. He turns and runs. Into people, objects, and everything that comes in the way. He goes into the ward, past the guard standing outside.

  Shivam! Shivam! Shivam!

  He veers to a halt by his bed and finds him still hooked to the IV line. Eyes shut, face masked, a sheet over him. And a machine beeping near him.

  Babloo grips the bedrail to steady himself. He moves closer, steeling himself to check on his friend. He puts a hand on his forehead. It’s neither hot nor cold. He looks hard at him. But Shivam looks the same. The same as he did last night and this morning. And noon.

  Then why did Kitty . . .

  The guard comes in to expel him. As Babloo is led out, protesting, he bumps into Kitty again.

  ‘You again!’ he screams.

  Her presence irritates him now, when everything looks bleak.

  A bad omen she is!

  Kitty retorts caustically, ‘Sorry . . . do you know that word?’

  Ignoring her jibe, Babloo lines up to talk to the senior doctor who has come out to address the family of another patient. But he doesn’t get a chance. Hell! These doctors don’t even have time to tell you if your patient is dead or alive!

  He is fast losing control and is about to accost the guard outside the ward, when Kitty beats him to it.

  ‘Bhaiya, I want to check on patient bed number seven. Shivam. Just a peek,’ she bargains. ‘Will just smile at him and come back.’

  The guard melts and motions her in. But Babloo stops her. Smile at him? He catches her by the arm. ‘What you told me back there . . . in the canteen . . . that . . . that . . . it’s over . . . all over?’

  Kitty shakes her arm free and gives him an angry look. ‘All that later. Let me meet Shivam first.’

  ‘Wait,’ Babloo tries to process this, and fails. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ says Kitty, seething. ‘You and your obsession with Aaina can wait. She’s dead anyway. Shivam is alive.’ And she marches in, leaving Babloo in a daze. Slowly, the clouds clear.

  It was Aaina she had referred to in the canteen and not Shivam.

  Babloo sighs with relief but winces the next minute. Aaina is dead? This will kill his friend. Kill him just when he was smiling again. Babloo bites his nails.

  Kitty’s mood is sunny now. She clearly doesn’t care about Aaina. She drags Babloo to a seat outside the ward. ‘He’s fine,’ she reassures him. ‘I tried waking him up . . . and he stirred . . . slightly.’

  Babloo sits like a statue, letting her words slide off him.

  His friend was waking up, she said. But if he was, it was for Aaina. Only her. Aaina couldn’t be gone. Shivam would be gone too then.

  ‘I’ll make him so busy that he won’t think of her. Ever!’

  Babloo lets it pass. He knows that is impossible.

  Kitty wanting to offload what is on her mind and starts talking again. ‘She . . . Aaina . . . Aaina died giving birth, it seems.’

  Babloo is startled.

  ‘Yes. Mrs Gupta told me. She
died. And so did the baby. Some infection.’

  Babloo’s eyes are glazed.

  ‘This happened around four years back, she said.’

  Babloo becomes agitated. He needs to see Shivam immediately.

  The guard’s missing. God is on his side this time.

  Babloo slides to Shivam’s bed. His eyes are still shut. Mask, machine, are all still there. He grips his friend’s hand and cries silent tears.

  A nurse comes in and asks him to leave. He turns to leave . . . but someone holds him back.

  He stops and looks down. His friend’s fingers are wrapped round his. His eyes . . . remain closed . . . but he sees a tear sneaking down his right cheek.

  * * *

  The driver has to brake abruptly. The Honda jerks to a stop, mere inches from the man who has run out to the middle of the road, out of nowhere . . .

  ‘What the . . . !’ Thrown off-balance, Mr Gupta holds on to the seat before him to steady himself. His wife slides over to clutch him. Frowning, he looks on.

  A banner flashes before their eyes:

  Save My Friend.

  The rascal blocking their way is holding it across his chest.

  As the driver swings out of the car door to push him away, Babloo scampers over to Mrs Gupta. Hands folded, he pleads with her across her husband’s rolled down window. ‘Ma’am, Ma’am, you . . . only you can save Shivam. You know . . . you know his girl, his life . . . Ma’am . . . ’

  The driver catches him by his neck even as Mr Gupta is dialling the police. But Mrs Gupta stops him. ‘Wait.’ She is curious about what power she holds over this Shivam. The man in front of them looks too weak and traumatized to be dangerous. Neither the driver nor Mr Gupta dare disobey her. So they park to the side and give Babloo two minutes to vomit out his trashy story.

  The story takes them to the hospital.

  ‘This way, Ma’am,’ Babloo leads a curious Mrs Gupta and her increasingly irritated husband into Shivam’s ward. Bandaged and masked, Shivam struggles to sit up, his hands folded. Even in his sedated, half-conscious state, he recognizes Mrs Gupta at once. And begs for answers. The scene is too melodramatic for Mr Gupta but he keeps quiet.

  Mrs Gupta melts at once. The boy’s love story pulls all the right strings in her heart. His burqa-girl search beats all the soaps she watches on TV.