He had seen this girl grow. She frequently beat up neighborhood boys as a grisly overweight child, but she was now as thin as a bamboo stick. On days she was sick and absented herself from school, she’d puff into his store, dressed in just a shawl and pajamas with pictures of red hearts on them, asking for a pack of Good Day or Bourbon biscuits. “The Well-Mannered Terror” his father and he had nicknamed her. Munnu was still a little afraid of her. She has a mole on her upper lip, he reasoned, which means she will always have a sharp tongue. Always a sharp tongue, he thought with a gentle shudder.
“I don’t see your daughter anymore,” said Shraddanjali to his back as she opened the glass-topped rectangular box on the counter. In it were rows of chocolate bars—foreign imports along with Dairy Milk and Fruit & Nut—more expensive than the ones consigned to jars.
Munnu heard a thud and a clink behind him but didn’t turn. He’d have to find a way to move the stack of noodles near his seat at the counter. He continued chewing the last remains of his zardaa paan, which he had recently developed a preference for over the more innocent meetha one, and wrapped the Wai Wai and Maggi with page three of a three-week-old newspaper. Having finished his job, he let his eyes wander to the green lipstick a Bollywood actress wore, coughed three times, and, still with his back to Shraddanjali, asked her if she wanted anything else.
“I hope you have a plastic bag today,” Shraddanjali said.
“No.” Munnu turned around. “Environment. Remember?”
“Oooof, your concern for the environment has inconvenienced us. At least you should supply us with paper bags before you do away with all plastic.”
“Right, Bahini, right, other customers, too, keep complaining. Leezum’s mother has even threatened to go to the Munnu next door to do her shopping if I don’t keep a hidden supply of plastic bags. But what can I do? I promised myself and those students from Dr. Graham’s Homes.”
His reference to the other store owner as “Munnu” delighted Shraddanjali.
“You call him Munnu, too?” She laughed, gathering her package. “We call him Chunnu. What’s his real name anyway?”
Munnu didn’t know his neighbor’s name either.
“Munnu Two,” he said.
They laughed the laugh of two people who had known each other a long time but were still uncomfortable with the vast gulf separating one’s silver-spoon upbringing from another’s fast-improving but modest existence.
“Okay, I need to go boil these now,” Shraddanjali said. “I hate it when I have to work.”
Munnu was certain that Shraddanjali would whine some more, as she always did when she took from the store more than what she paid for. But when Dr. Pradhan, the building’s owner, appeared, Shraddanjali stopped talking.
“Shraddanjali, my naani, not so little anymore, huh?” Dr. Pradhan said as the teenager joined her hands in Namaste to her. “Ah, now you will stop growing, and now you can buy all these pretty clothes when you go to Delhi University. How excited you must be.”
“Yes, Auntie, very excited, but I still have my exams to study for before that,” Shraddanjali said. “And what if I don’t get into Delhi University?”
“You will, don’t worry,” Mrs. Pradhan said. “How’s your mother doing?”
“She’s fine, Auntie, very fine. But I have to leave now. The servant is out, and Aamaa isn’t even home.”
Shraddanjali again joined her hands in Namaste. Not many young people did that when taking leave.
“How big she’s grown, Munnu Bhaiya,” Dr. Pradhan said, and after confirming Shraddanjali was out of earshot, mumbled, “Very well-ironed skirt or belt. Or whatever.”
“She looks well mannered, but she isn’t, Memsaab,” Munnu complained.
“Has she been doing it again?” Dr. Pradhan asked.
“Every day she comes here—sometimes one chocolate, sometimes two. Today it was two.”
“Soon you’ll be operating at a loss, Munnu Bhaiya.”
“But what can I do, Memsaab? She’s a big person’s daughter. I can’t accuse her of anything.”
“Hire a helper, Munnu.”
“I can’t afford one, Memsaab,” Munnu said.
“Maybe you could just talk to the parents.”
“Yes, but she’s eighteen. Talking to the parents about an eight-year-old’s bad habits is reasonable, but this is a full-grown haathi we are talking about.”
“Don’t speak about my friend’s daughter that way, Munnu Bhaiya,” Mrs. Pradhan said.
“See, that’s my point, Memsaab,” Munnu replied, unable to make out the seriousness of his landlady’s admonishment. “If I tell someone else about it, who will believe me? I am a Bihari Musalmaan paanwalla, and she’s the daughter of the biggest lawyer in Kalimpong.”
“It’s a disease—I forget what they call it in English,” said Dr. Pradhan. “How are your wife and daughter? I’ll see them in a little while now.”
Munnu was born in Kalimpong. He was brought up—motherless—in Kalimpong. His father, successful to the extent that a paan-shop owner could be, dragged his toddler to the store under the excuse that Munnu would have had no one to look after him at home. Munnu had grown up in his father’s store. Neighbors and customers often asked the senior paanwalla why he didn’t provide his son a formal education, to which the gruff man replied that there was no better school than the shop. And he might have been right. Munnu recognized his first letter at the store; he learned to add at the store. He also discovered how to make people like him (his father wasn’t a popular man, and his ruthlessness as a part-time moneylender was well known) with his ready smile, inquiries into their lives, and a compassionate ear.
Munnu didn’t let the truth of his family’s being wealthier than most of his middle-class customers get to his head. Despite knowing no home other than Kalimpong, he knew he would never totally belong here, that he’d always be considered an outsider, and listening to his customers’ problems without asserting his superiority would be the easiest way for him to be one of them—or come close to being one of them. He was so much of a Kalimpong man that he thought in Nepali and not in Bhojpuri or Urdu. Despite all that, assimilation had its limitations, and Munnu didn’t mind that. He was, after all, living in a region that was vocal—and sometimes violent—in its demand for a separate state based on ethnic differences, so it was normal for ethnic affinities to compound.
Only two years ago, after helping Munnu set up shop and leasing his own store to another Muslim businessman, his father took up the task of finding a bride for his son. The old man’s attempts at finding a decent girl in Kalimpong were futile. First, the number of Muslims in town was negligible. And second, the girls were either educated—an idea both Munnu and his father were wary of—or belonged to poor families, which meant a measly dowry.
Soon, father and son expanded their search to include Darjeeling, Siliguri, and Kurseong. Finding no one suitable even there, they stretched their territories farther and settled on a fifth cousin from Meerut, far away in Uttar Pradesh. Munnu would have preferred someone who spoke Nepali, but he had long ago reconciled himself to his narrow options. And Humera was really fair—white like the best-quality flour he sold. A color TV and furnishings came in the dowry.
Humera stood out in Kalimpong for one big reason. The color of her skin played no role in her attracting the town’s attention. In fact, her looks had nothing to do with it—it was what covered her fair face that piqued everyone’s interest. She was the only woman in the entire town to don a burqa. In Kalimpong, a few Muslim women veiled their faces, as did some Marwari wives, but no one wore a burqa. No amount of coercing on Munnu’s part persuaded his otherwise subservient wife to give up her favorite accessory. Munnu would have been happy if his wife had veiled herself, but a burqa—anachronistic and out of place—was taking it too far. He was afraid that everyone in town would assume that he made his wife wear it.
Humera had just given him a daughter, which had disturbed his father and resulted in the tr
ip to Mecca. Munnu would have preferred a son, but he wasn’t unhappy with the girl. He planned on sending her to school, at least up to Class Three. He had grown to like his wife, although many aspects of her personality baffled him. She was horrified when he cooed to the baby using Nepali words. She was unyielding about the burqa. She repeatedly reminded him when he forgot to offer Namaaz. She sometimes apologized for having given birth to a daughter. Besides these few quirks, she was everything Munnu had wanted in a wife—she was fair and beautiful (not that he could show that off), submitted to his needs (not that he demanded anything unreasonable), and cooked very well (not that he was a glutton). She also disliked traveling, so there had been no visits to her parents’ place since the marriage, which Munnu couldn’t complain about.
Humera’s mother was too sick to travel to Kalimpong, so when Munnu disclosed to Dr. Pradhan that his wife was pregnant, the landlady played surrogate.
“She hasn’t seen a doctor since she fell pregnant?” Dr. Pradhan had shouted at Munnu. “What age are you Muslims living in?”
“She doesn’t like seeing doctors.”
“Who does? It’s going to a doctor, not a Dashain celebration, not an Eid celebration.”
“She doesn’t like Eid celebrations either.”
“Now is not the time to joke, Munnu. Tomorrow, after my shift at the hospital, I shall come see her. Please see to it that your apartment is clean for that.”
“I don’t know if she’d be willing.” Munnu gave her an apologetic look.
“Then have a deformed baby and be happy with it,” Dr. Pradhan said with uncharacteristic anger.
At home, he asked Humera to be prepared for a visit. He had never seen her so livid.
“Think of it,” he reasoned. “If she’s not happy with me, she could throw us out of her building. What will the baby eat if we have no shop? She has lost her own child, so she just wants to make sure ours is okay.”
Humera had finally relented, but only on the condition that the landlady be allowed just one visit. Dr. Pradhan criticized Munnu for considering a midwife. When Munnu remarked it wasn’t his idea but his wife’s and that he’d definitely be more comfortable with a doctor involved, Dr. Pradhan scolded Humera. One visit turned to two, three, and four. How someone in his landlady’s position mingled so freely with an illiterate, orthodox Muslim like his wife confused Munnu. Maybe it had something to do with the loss of her daughter; perhaps she had found an excellent listener in Humera. Initially, he was happy about it.
Then things began to change. Little by little, his wife started talking back to him. Again, he was pleasantly surprised that she had grown a spine, but when the retorts became snarkier and more common, he knew he’d have to put a stop to it. He threatened to beat her if she continued misbehaving. Humera retaliated that she’d tell Dr. Pradhan about it, which would jeopardize his relationship with the landlords.
Humera had now been talking about making her own money by helping in Dr. Pradhan’s pediatric clinic. It would be only babies and women, she argued. That, he wasn’t going to allow. Thankfully, she still wore her burqa. He regretted ever having pestered her to give it up for a veil.
Dr. Pradhan was close to both Munnu and his wife, but she never saw them together. She only interacted with Munnu at the store, and she and Humera visited at home. With Humera, Munnu wondered if she discussed how to be a modern woman. With Munnu, she discussed business and the store. And Shraddanjali.
Six months ago, when both Shraddanjali and she were at the store, Dr. Pradhan noticed her pilfer a cigarette from behind the counter. Shraddanjali must have thought she was being cautious, but the landlady was wearing her sunglasses, a pair too large for her face, and that made it difficult to tell exactly where she was looking. The moment Shraddanjali left, Dr. Pradhan’s eyes met Munnu’s, and Munnu Bhaiya, her tenant, broke down and told her everything.
It had gone on for ten years, even when he ran his father’s store, he said. When she was a child, she stole the occasional cheap toffee. Sometimes, she bought two toffees for a rupee and returned minutes later to exchange one for a different type. She’d then open the bottle in which the candy belonged, throw it in and fish a different sweet from another jar. Munnu soon discovered—when a taxi-stand regular broke his tooth on it—that the returned toffee was actually a pebble in a sweet wrapper. In the beginning, Munnu had found the petty stealing endearing.
But the thefts increased in frequency and intensity over time. Shraddanjali no longer stole fifty-paise toffees these days but went after cigarettes—entire packs of them—or chocolate bars, the expensive ones that cost more than twenty rupees. And it happened almost every time she came to the store, which was almost every day.
Dr. Pradhan had listened with exaggerated clucking and concern. Since then, Munnu shared everything about Shraddanjali’s thefts with her. Theirs was a special bond, a relationship that had grown with Shraddanjali’s escalating bravado—Munnu went over what Shraddanjali had stolen that day or the day before, and Dr. Pradhan would estimate the losses he incurred. On a particularly expensive day, Dr. Pradhan insisted that Munnu talk to Shraddanjali’s parents, but the paanwalla was unconvinced it would do him any good.
“I am a Musalmaan who enjoys a very good place here,” he repeatedly reasoned. “I make more money than any other storekeeper, and everyone trusts me. I wouldn’t think of doing anything that might disrupt that. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Soon, she’ll be stealing these scents here.” Dr. Pradhan pointed at the little unlocked shelf of mysteriously spelled Calvin Klein and Dolce & Gabbana cologne bottles, all neatly set with more reverence than they received at the cosmetic stores on Main Road.
Soon enough, that’s what happened. Every time her friend had a birthday, Shraddanjali was at the store, greeting Munnu with a Namaste and asking for packs of Maggi before she opened the sliding glass door and pretended to peruse the new arrivals while still making small talk. All she had to do, after this, was to deposit the cologne bottles in her purse—she had begun carrying a purse—while Munnu reached out for her noodles.
Munnu didn’t keep an inventory of everything in the store, but he knew how many cologne bottles there were. The margin of profit might be the highest in colognes, but they also cost a lot to begin with. Twenty bottles would trickle down to nineteen—sometimes eighteen—with Shraddanjali’s departure. This was costlier than five chocolate bars put together. The profits were getting scantier every month.
“Today there were three bottles of scent gone,” he said to Dr. Pradhan one evening.
“Yes, it’s her mother’s birthday tomorrow,” Dr. Pradhan remarked. “I assume that will be the gift.”
“Oh, you all celebrate birthdays at this age, Memsaab?”
“At this age? What do you mean, Paanwalla? Of course, we don’t. We just get together for lunch or something.”
“But that is celebrating, right?” He laughed.
“Maybe you should have a big birthday for your daughter when she turns one soon.”
“We are Muslims, you see. We don’t celebrate girls’ birthdays.”
“You live in Kalimpong now, Munnu, you need to adapt to the ways here. Forget Bihar, forget Islam.”
“I wonder if I should talk to her mother now.” Munnu had become adept at changing the course of a conversation. “It’s just gone on for too long.”
“I’d do that. I’d really do that if I were you.”
“You know I can’t, Memsaab, you know how it is. Her father is powerful. What if he puts me in jail?”
“I would like it if you came to me if my daughter were stealing.” His landlady was stoic.
“It’s risky.”
“If you can’t, then don’t complain, Paanwalla. As it is, you’re making lakhs. Hire a runner—a starving boy from your hometown.”
“No, Memsaab, the storekeeper next door is stealing a lot of my customers. I want to talk to you and Saab about taking his space, too. The profits aren’t what they used to be.
That’s why I can’t hire anyone.”
“Don’t complain to me. Saab likes that two stores complete the look of the building. He thinks they make for a twisted visual harmony—if only I knew what that means. You don’t have cards here, do you? Birthday cards, anniversary cards? Maybe I will buy Mrs. Gurung a card for her birthday. It’ll be a nice gesture.”
“For the mother of a thief, yes, a very nice gesture,” said Munnu bitterly.
“Don’t speak that way, Munnu, don’t forget they are rich, powerful people. Just because I talk to you like you’re not a paanwalla, like you’re one of us, doesn’t mean you can talk ill of my friends. Try to stay in your place. I’d talk politely to her parents. I admit no one wants to know her daughter is a thief, but you need to stay afloat. And poor Mrs. Gurung, I wonder how many people you share her daughter’s stories with. I am sure I am not the only one.”
“No, Memsaab, you’re the only one,” Munnu said. “No one really knows about it.”
“Oh, then, boy, do I feel special, a paanwalla reveals the secrets of his trade to me.”
She laughed a high-pitched laughter, spiteful and loud, so passersby looked at her and their eyes locked in unison against the stupidity of this Musalmaan, this paanwalla.
“Sorry, Memsaab, if I offended you,” Munnu said. “It’s just that you talk so nicely to us small people that I feel I can share anything with you, even if it involves your friend’s daughter.”
The Gurkha's Daughter Page 4