The lady was really in a bad mood. Must be that time of the month. I wanted to joke back with: ‘They don’t call me “Madath” Singh Yadav for nothing,’ but one look at the thunderclouds under her eyebrows and my words froze mid thought.
In this surcharged atmosphere the last thing I needed was a visit from a worried looking Pinto. Nervously hopping first on one foot and then the other, he whispered, ‘Can I come in?’ Bablu ki Ma started to pick up the belan. But, miraculously, his next words brought on the smiles. ‘I have to take some advice from your wife. It’s one of those matters that ladies know best about.’
The little lady was delighted. ‘In fact just yesterday I was telling Bablu ke Papa to call you and your wife over. I wanted to send across some of that gajar ka halwa your son likes so much. Besides, Gurcharan Singh and his wife are already coming over. We’ll call Ramesh Babu as well and make it a real family evening.’
I tell you! Can we men ever figure out the minds of these women?
Pinto and his wife, Mary, arrived exactly on the dot of 7.30 p.m. In her hand Mary carried a jar of ‘kaazar ache lonche’ − translated into ‘wedding pickle’ from her native tongue of Konkani. It seems this pickle, a delicious combination of dried khajur, gajar and phool gobi in a chatpata, sweet-savoury sauce, is a must at all Mangalorean weddings.
The wife was delighted. Was there to be a wedding in the family? Was this what the visit was about? Pinto looked at his wife. She looked back. It seems they would like to have a wedding − but first they had to find a groom for Pinto’s niece, Mariam. Ever since her father, Pinto’s eldest brother, died 10 years ago, Mariam had been their ward. Now, at the age of 24, she was still unmarried. And it was getting more and more difficult to find a suitable boy.
Twenty-four! ‘Must be something wrong with her if she’s not married by now,’ Bablu ki Ma whispered to me when I went inside to help her bring out the chai. ‘Or perhaps she is too dark. Or too short. Or the family doesn’t have enough money for dowry.’
Our faces must have been transparent. Pinto took one look at us when we returned with the tea and smiled sadly. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘The problem is not what you are thinking. There is a problem. But it has nothing to do with frame or fortune. The problem is the girl is too educated.’
Too educated?!! Did that make any sense? Bablu, who had been standing by, grabbed that. He started to say something smart but his mother was not in a mood to be distracted from what Pinto was saying. It seems these modern Mangalorean Catholics, with their community interest in umpteen schools and colleges, believe that the best legacy to leave one’s children − girls or boys − is a good education. Unfortunately, the girl/boy ratio being what it is they are landed with a situation of more and more educated daughters and not enough educated sons to make the match.
‘Make the match? You mean arranged marriage? That’s terrible! My friend’s mother, who is president of one of these women’s movements, says arranged marriages are “licensed prostitution”,’ Bablu piped in.
‘Tauba! Tauba!’ exclaimed his mother. ‘What filth! What are you suggesting, you little badmash? There was nothing wrong in the way your father and I got married.’ I could tell Bablu’s suggestion had really upset her. Before I could stop her, she rounded on Bablu, caught him by the scruff of his neck and shouted, ‘Are you accusing my brother, your maama, of being a pimp? So what if your father and I saw each other for the first time only under the shade of the shaadi ka pandal? You would not have been around to make your smarty pants remarks if this marriage had not clicked.’
I didn’t want to disillusion the little lady on how many marriages actually don’t ‘click’ but produce children every year all the same. Or of that tragic time last year when Chachi and I had ferried to the hospital a woman who had actually been raped and beaten up by her own husband! At the same time, I was impressed by my little harami’s suddenly gained wisdom. ‘Your time was different, Ma,’ he said. ‘In this day and age of education and discovery it is criminal to still go along with this nonsense of dowry and arranged marriages.’
Surprisingly, Gurcharan was willing to go along with Bablu. Thanks to his youngest brother, Harcharan, who is now a prosperous travel agent in Southall, London, UK, Gurcharan’s daughter Pinky is also now a British passport holder. My friend has been spending a fortune on the Hindustan Times matrimonial section ads on several Sundays trying to get a good munda, the right groom. But he is never quite certain what the attraction is − the girl or her passport.
Ramesh Babu had remained silent all throughout. Did he have anything to add? A tear rolled down his weather beaten cheek. Bablu ki Ma got alarmed. ‘Arre bhaiyya, kya hua? What happened?’ she anxiously enquired. It seemed that though Ramesh had found his son-in-law through the classifieds he, too, once believed that education and not money should be the main criterion. Today was exactly five months since his daughter’s death. She died under ‘mysterious circumstances’ − three years into marriage and eight months pregnant. ‘What is the use of education?’ he asked regretfully. His wife was still to get over the shock of discovering that their chartered accountant son-in-law had taken out an accident insurance policy on their daughter to the tune of Rs. 10 lakhs! And that now, barely five months after the death, the grapevine said he was thinking of marrying again ….
The tension in the room got so thick you could slice it with a chhuri. It was time to change the subject, or at least calm the emotions down. I told them that the law courts were not to be written off completely. I remember this black-coated savari (from Niti Bagh to the Supreme Court) who went into the court one morning with a frown on his face and came out simply beaming. It seems the court had passed a ruling in favour of his client by virtue of which it is now mandatory for police investigation in the case of a woman’s death within seven years of her marriage – even if the death certificate says: ‘atmahatya’. So Ramesh still had a chance to get justice in the memory of his daughter, if he wanted to pursue the point.
Pinto’s wife says even Mangalorean matchmakers are apprehensive. No, not because of this dowry death business. This is one good thing about education − dowry deaths are practically unheard of in the community. No, they have other apprehensions. One such match-maker, an amiable 70-year-old biddy who − the joke goes − has a black book full of vital statistics of young girls over 18, was herself complaining that marriageable males these days have changed their standards. Whereas the column marked ‘Preference’ used to get comments like ‘Home loving’ and ‘Good disposition’, it now read: ‘Should be a doctor’ or ‘Nurses preferred’ or ‘Green Card preferable’. When boys themselves are quite often only shopping arcade managers or bank clerks, what do you think this means?
‘Whatever happened to romance?’ Mary hesitatingly asked; the first sentence she had uttered all evening. ‘Whatever happened to boy meets girl, falls in love and lives happily ever after?’ Bablu ki Ma, to whom this question was directed, obviously had no clue what this ‘romance’ business was about so I hunted around for an answer. Gurcharan came to our rescue. He had just sent his daughter back to Southall − sindoor-less again. ‘My daughter tells me the equations have now changed,’ he said. ‘With all the pressures of modern day living it is no longer possible for a family to run successfully with only the husband working. So when a man is going in for an arranged marriage he is bound to give more priority to the lady’s earnability.’
I realize that zamana badal gaya. The times have changed. But surely not so much that pyar has completely gone out of the window? If so then how does one account for the box office popularity of sugar sweet film stars like Kareena Kapoor or Kajol or Hrithik Roshan or Aamir Khan and all those others from Bollywood?
Before I could say anything further Bablu, the little harami, glibly piped in that although his friend’s feminist mother disapproved of arranged marriages she also believed that romance was ‘strictly for the movies’. According to her, the new reality is: ‘Parents of girl pay fortune for the c
lassifieds. Boy is introduced to girl. His parents check out girl’s parents’ bank account, her janam patri, and her earnability qualifications. They have an expensive marriage ceremony at a five star hotel, for which the girl’s parents pay. And then, if they’re lucky, they’ll live happily ever after − with their car, their fridge, their bank account, their microwave, their compact disc, their camera and their annual holidays to Manali or Shimla ….’
Indeed, zamana badal gaya ….
19
GAMES POLITICIANS PLAY
WHEN I WAS A CHILD THE GAMES WE PLAYED REQUIRED little imagination. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ the chachas and chachis would ask. And we would say: village pradhan, or MLA, or sarkari babu or truck driver – whatever the fancy of the month.
My brother, Mazboot Singh Yadav, once had this burning desire to be a pujari. I think this was because he associated being a priest with lots of asli ghee prasad and silk offerings and a constant supply of donations. I must say that was very clever of Mazboot. My grandmother, who little knew his real motivation, was so impressed with his desire that she started each day with a special aarti for him and a box on the ear for me, the heathen. Our mother, who is even more religious, would make me wash the harami’s feet and would place him on a higher takht when we sat down to eat. I only got my back on him when Dadu came storming in one night, yelling about how Mazboot and three friends had smuggled out his muzzle loader to shoot neel gai along the Ganga terrai. ‘Neel gai! Hai Ram! Dharam bhrasht ho gaya! Hai! Hai!’ Dadi and Ma lamented in unison. And, from that day on, Mazboot was back with us mere mortals.
Mazboot was only beaten by our childhood friend, Robert Atmaram, whose family had converted to Christianity two generations before. It was actually good fun playing with Robert when he pretended to be a Roman Catholic padre. He would make us kneel down and offer us slices of carrot and cucumber, which were the closest to the ‘Communion wafer’, which the community padre offered each morning at their puja – something called ‘Mass’. The problem was that he would then insist on hearing our confessions – which would invariably be broadcast when we friends all got together to play marbles!
My sister, Pushpa, had her own fantasy. She would become the first lady doctor in the district, run her own clinic and educate women about the advantages of birth control. ‘This business of having many children so that the bread earners will increase in the family is all nonsense,’ she would say. Should I remind her of those days? I often wonder. But how would she take it – now a tired mother of six? I didn’t want to take the risk.
Sarkari babu, truck driver, doctor, nurse. That’s as much as our village imagination would stretch.
‘Oh, Papa,’ exclaimed Bablu, who overheard his mother and I going down memory lane the other day. ‘You guys played so safe.’ He said the word ‘safe’ as though it was a bad word. I thought that was rather cheeky of him. But then, what can an indulgent father do?
So what do our city slick neighbourhood children dream about today?
Perhaps as a fallout of the recent elections – when they got to put up a lot of colourful posters (at 50 paise a piece), the majority sapna − would you believe it − is to become a politician! But only a successful one, of course!! The girls are not to be left behind. Their ambition, which is to be social workers, lends itself to some very interesting make-belief.
I remember the time, a few years ago, when they were at their enthusiastic best. One week they played ‘Blood Donation Drive’. And my friend Gurcharan’s neighbour, Tejbir Singh Randhawa, ‘Tiplu’, managed to wrangle the top job − that of the doctor.
The morning of the event Chachi stubbornly refused to start. I gather Bablu had graciously offered her services as an ambulance. The prospect of the sticky-fingered, snot-nosed bachcha party dripping tomato sauce on her well-padded interior, to simulate blood, had got her gears in a twist. It took a lot of persuasion and a threat of a jump-start by Gurcharan’s cab (Bhabhi) to get her engines fired up.
The event started off with a flourish. With furniture mismatched from various houses in the neighbourhood, the bachcha party had put together an improvised stage. It didn’t take long to locate the chamelis that Bablu ki Ma missed from her garden. They formed part of the grubby garland, which was used and re-used on us.
It’s incredible how well children imitate their elders. Though the make-belief donation drive turned chaotic later, it started off with a flourish that would have done any political tamasha proud. I was invited to play chief guest and given a stalkless rose churaoed, stolen shamelessly from my own garden. Speeches were made and it was suggested that if I donated some money for orange flavoured Rasna I could keep all my blood!
The actual drive ended up in a tomato sauce battle, with the younger kids squealing and screaming and desperately hiding from Tiplu who, sewing needle in hand seemed to draw inspiration from Amrish Puri at his psychopathic best.
The next week they had decided to hold an ‘Eye Donation Camp’. Tiplu was again trying to be boss but Bablu beat him to it, saying he would set all the rules because his father (yours truly) had a major political clientele. I felt compelled to interfere when I found out what he had in mind. Apparently he had only heard of such camps but was clueless about what actually went on. So there he was, with some instrument, which looked like a twisted spoon, ready to ‘pretend’ scoop out the left eye of each camp follower! ‘That’s not how it’s done!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’re supposed to donate your eyes after you are dead.’
Our hero looked me up and down with disdain, as though I was aadha pagal; half mad. ‘Once you’re dead, you’re dead,’ he said. ‘How will you then donate your eyes?’
‘But that’s how the scheme is supposed to work,’ I said. ‘You pledge your eyes in your lifetime, to be surgically removed after you die.’
The little harami actually laughed at me. ‘That’s surely all an eyewash,’ he smirked. ‘Have you actually seen it work? Have you followed up to check if the eyes of all those famous pledgers have actually been donated after his or her death?’
I was stumped. Had I actually seen it work? Not really.
Have you?
20
SEEING RED
EYE DONATION CAMP OVER, BABLU RECKONED HE WAS A veteran of the game. Now his political ambition started taking interesting shape. One day I found him and his friends writing complaint letters to the local sanitary inspector about the state of our drains. One week later they got more ambitious and started a mass signature campaign, covering the entire neighbourhood, protesting loud announcements by religious places of worship. And yet the next week they had another project in mind – this time in true politician style they talked off hartals and bunds and bringing the city to a standstill to teach the government a lesson.
‘Since when did these bunds and hartals inconvenience the government? They only harass us common folk,’ I started to say. But that wasn’t the talk he wanted to hear. So I diplomatically shut up.
‘Arre kya hua?’ the little lady asked. ‘Kya Tiplu ne mara? Kya test mein fail ho gaya?’ Apparently it wasn’t a red line under a test score that had upset him. It seems his school bus had had a very narrow escape from the latest killers on the Delhi streets – the Redline buses. (Since this incident the Delhi Transport bigwigs have had the dubious privilege of introducing many other lethal killers on the road − Bluelines, Whitelines etc. − but at the time of this incident it was the Redlines that made the headlines every day.)
‘This Delhi government should be collectively shot. No one is safe on the streets anymore,’ Bablu said, with all the passion of youth.
I thought that was a bit extreme. Though my natural inclination was against those khaki knicker wallahs, even I had to acknowledge that the Redline brigade was the ‘gift’ of the central transport authority (headed then by the Congress government at the Centre) and not the hapless local BJP chief minister. Besides, Bablu is apt to exaggerate and so I tried to reason with him. Surely he wasn’t suggestin
g that the earlier Delhi Transport System had been better? Had he not cried buckets when our late dog, Raja, had been spread all over the pavement and on the back tyre of that killer DTC bus? Bablu didn’t seem satisfied and so we mutually agreed to defer the argument till we both had some authentic facts.
Imagine, then, the coincidence when my very next savari was this babu from the central transport ministry. How did I find out? Well, I’m a very curious man and when he kept remarking that Chachi had a serious exhaust pollution problem I asked him what business it was of his. When I mentioned Bablu’s agitation the man carefully placed this battered, babu-type briefcase on his lap and drew out some well-worn papers. Out came facts to bolster up my case marvelously. The ministry, it seems, prided itself on being far ahead of others in the progress of something called ‘liberalization’. It seems before they had this brainwave to expand the Delhi transport system, there were supposed to be around 8,000 buses on Delhi roads. ‘Supposed to be’ because half the time the buses were either in the garage or their drivers were on strike. There were hundreds of Bablus who had argued that more buses on the streets would increase the accident levels, this babu said. But he was smug in his boast that instead of the 30 per cent projected accident increase the figure had actually come down!
This was intriguing. Actually come down? Then why was the Indian Express daily tally of Redline bus deaths steadily mounting? His logic went somewhat like this: It seems that 80 per cent of the vehicles on the roads are two-wheelers and it is these vehicles that are involved in the second largest amount of accidents on Delhi roads. With the expansion of the transport service − especially the availability of better and newer buses − it had become both convenient and economical for these passengers to leave their scooters and motorcycles at home and take the bus to school, college or work. ‘That, QED,’ he said, ‘accounts for the fall in accident rate.’
Travails with Chachi Page 10