by Bajwa, Rupa
‘Do something,’ moaned Mrs Gupta to her husband. ‘Oh, please do something. All the neighbours must be listening by now. Who is she? What does she want? Do something.’
Her husband went outside and shouted at the woman from a safe distance. ‘Hey, who are you? Go away. Go away.’ Then, seeing that many neighbours were out, on terraces and balconies, listening for all they were worth, he retreated.
Kamla continued to shout. ‘May God burn all of you up in that big house or that big car of yours. May you die thirsting for a sip of water.’
When he came in, his wife was on the phone, frantically dialling her son’s number at the factory, her face drained of colour. She found the number engaged.
‘Your son is also a villain. Will your grandson be also the devil? Do any of you have human blood in you?’
The woman continued to shout outside, her voice very unsteady and hysterical.
Shilpa’s bewilderment turned to fear. She shifted from one foot to another, looking at her in-laws. Mrs Gupta fumbled at the phone again, almost in tears. ‘Who is this woman?’ she asked her husband. ‘Saying such inauspicious things, that too today, when we have just heard the good news. We’ll have to get a havan conducted to counteract her evil eye. Shilpa, don’t you go near the door or the windows.’
Shilpa nodded, her face white with anxiety. Then she said to her mother-in-law, ‘If Tarun’s factory number is engaged, call him up on his mobile phone.’
‘Yes, yes, why didn’t I think of that,’ Mrs Gupta said, dialling quickly.
Mr Gupta saw his wife tearfully tell their son about everything. Then she paused and listened hard to what their son was saying at the other end, nodding all the time. Looking only slightly relieved, she put the phone down and turned to her husband. ‘Tarun says none of us are to go out,’ she said, her speech uneven and breathless. ‘He says the woman might turn violent. Maybe she is mad. He said to call the police. He knows somebody at the police station. He said he is coming home meanwhile.’
Their son’s instructions were carried out rapidly. The police were called and the family sat waiting inside quiet as mice.
Meanwhile, the woman outside ranted and raved, accusations mingled with swearing and abuse.
About ten minutes later, a police jeep drove up. Two men briskly handcuffed Kamla and hustled her into the jeep. Just as they were about to drive away with her, Tarun returned from his factory, speeding anxiously in his new white Opel Astra, looking worried though unruffled. He shook hands with the policemen, thanked them, and gave them five hundred rupees each to express his appreciation for their swift response. Finally, the jeep drove away and the family heaved a collective sigh of relief. They went inside and looked at their servant resentfully when he returned with a bag of vegetables, as if it was his fault for being away. However, they said nothing but ordered him to make tea for all of them.
‘Imagine!’ said Shilpa, looking nervous, already cradling her baby in her imagination. ‘How could she say such terrible things about you,’ she said to her husband. ‘You are the kindest, sweetest man in the world.’
Tarun gave her a gentle smile. Only when the tea came, and they sat in peace, sipping fragrant tea from beautiful china cups, did they finally calm down.
Then Tarun was told the good news, that he was going to become a father. He smiled and looked at Shilpa, and Shilpa blushed.
Tarun decided to take the rest of the day off, and when he was alone with Shilpa, he turned to her.
‘Don’t worry about anything,’ he said, feeling terrible at the look on her shocked face. She was so soft hearted, he thought tenderly. Why did that terrible woman, whoever she was, have to come here today? Tarun touched Shilpa’s face with one hand and lifted her chin up with the other. ‘I will never let anybody hurt you. You are safe with me. Any sort of stress is bad for you and the baby,’ he said with a smile. ‘Forget what happened today, okay?’
Shilpa nodded with a tearful smile. All her apprehension vanished and she smiled up at him tenderly. ‘I couldn’t have wished for a better husband,’ she said.
That night, he took her out to dinner to a new Chinese restaurant, whose Head Cook was a man from a village 50 kilometres away from Amritsar. She wore her blue sari with the intricate embroidered border, the first sari that her mother-in-law had given her.
Over dinner, Tarun assured himself that his wife wasn’t overworked as a housewife and daughter-in-law. By now they had forgotten all about the unpleasant incident that afternoon.
While they were having dinner, Kamla was being raped by the two policemen who had brought her in. Then, one of the policemen, a married man, went home to his wife, while the other stayed back, drinking cheap rum and listening to film songs on the radio, hoping to have another go at Kamla in the morning before letting her leave.
Next morning, Kamla tottered out and went back home. Chander was waiting for her.
‘So, now you will do this too,’ he said angrily, hitting her hard across the face with tears swimming in his own bloodshot eyes. ‘Staying away all night, drunk, God knows where. You should just kill yourself, Kamla, if you have any shame left.’
He left after saying this. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his eyes looked weak and angry and resigned at the same time. There were dark circles under Kamla’s eyes too, but the eyes themselves were empty and hollow.
4
That morning the temperature in Amritsar rose higher than it had so far in the month of May. Ramchand went to the shop feeling drained of energy by the oppressive heat. He had grown his moustache back again. He had decided that he looked too jaunty without it. It lent a nice, humble air to his face.
The heat had taken his appetite away and he had grown even thinner since winter.
He began the day’s work feeling listless. At noon, Mahajan came up fuming. Chander still hadn’t turned up for work. Again! What was happening in this shop? Was this how a business was run? Anybody else would have sacked Chander a long time back! Ramchand was to immediately go to Chander’s house and drag him to the shop, whatever state he was in.
Ramchand stood listening to Mahajan’s tirade in a respectful silence, but he groaned inwardly at the idea of walking all the way to Chander’s house in the heat. He wondered if he could make some excuse, but seeing Mahajan’s present mood, he did not dare to. He shuffled down the stairs sulkily. When he stepped out, the sun hit him with full force.
He remembered the last time when he had gone to Chander’s house. He hoped he wouldn’t find Chander drunk again. Ramchand felt furious. Mahajan was such a fool! How could he expect Ramchand to drag a drunk Chander to the shop? But he couldn’t refuse Mahajan. Ramchand reluctantly dragged his feet towards the direction of Chander’s house.
The sun beat down on him, perspiration covered his face, his shirt got wet and stuck to his back and chest. Flies crawled on the floor outside the halwai’s shop. The little tea stalls he passed sent out fresh waves of heat at him from their little stoves.
He dragged his feet in the dust, his throat parched. He had started out the day tired to begin with. The landlord had bought a new washing machine a few weeks back, and Sudha washed clothes in it enthusiastically at all sorts of odd hours. The washing machine was noisy; it wasn’t one of the latest, sleekest, almost silent models. On many days it woke Ramchand up at six in the morning. Today had been such a morning.
As the areas he passed got poorer and filthier, the shops began to get smaller and less swanky than the ones in the main bazaar. However all the shops had signboards, and Ramchand began to read all of them out aloud, softly enunciating the words to himself, as he passed each one of them. ‘Pappu Automobile Works, Deepak Medical Store, Durga Electricals, Jhilmil Orchestra for Weddings…’ Ramchand read quite fluently now, without pausing and hesitating over each letter. In the past five months he had kept at his spelling and reading diligently. In his room his books, notebook and dictionary still lay on the table, looking even more battered than they had in the wint
er. The bottle of Camlin Royal Blue had broken and had been replaced with Chelpark Permanent Black. True, after the initial enthusiasm, the pace had slackened, but he hadn’t abandoned his project. Little by little, he had pieced together the mysteries of words. Even now, he did not know the meanings of many difficult words, but he kept hoping.
In the dictionary, he had finally finished all words beginning with ‘A’. It had taken him much longer than he had expected, a full five months, but he hadn’t given up. He had been both relieved and jubilant when he had come to the last word. Azure. It meant bright blue (colour) as in an azure sky. He had taken a three-day break then, and last night he had started on ‘B’, working on Babble, Babe and Baboon.
He read the essays regularly, the Complete Letter Writer he read more rarely, as it made less and less sense to him. He had bought two more books, and read them regularly too, even though these days the heat had sapped his brain so much that he could hardly think straight. After Mahajan’s chack chack all day, he rarely had the strength to go through the books after the shop closed. Neither had he painted his room yet. But he was glad, as he read another signboard, Mahesh Kiryana Store. At least he had stuck to something.
*
The two new books that Ramchand had bought over the course of the past five months had kept him very busy.
One day after reading ‘Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’ (or ‘Our Favourite Leader’) in Radiant Essays, he had realized that the Complete Letter Writer and the Radiant Essays were getting a little stale and boring now. He had made another foray to the second-hand bookstalls to see if he could buy something new. The first book he had spotted in one of the bookstalls seemed promising, and he almost bought it the same instant. It was called Improve Your English, written by a Dr Ajay Rai.
On the jacket, there was a note about the book. Ramchand read it hopefully. It said:
The importance of English is well accepted. Importance of good English only more so.
• Ability to use and know effective English is the correct and proper prelude to your successful professional career as well as a dominant, commanding place in society.
• Success in the use of computers is very closely connected to the success in the use of English, since almost 90 per cent of all the information that is stored in a computer is in English.
Ramchand stopped reading right there. For one, he found the language a little too elaborate. And also the sudden introduction of computers into his already complicated efforts to study alarmed him.
When he leafed through the book, his suspicions were confirmed. The book was too difficult for him, at least at this stage. It had passages in it that one was supposed to read carefully. Then there were two sections following each passage – Answer the following, and Correct and punctuate the following.
Ramchand put the book back on the counter, a little dispirited. He found the passages very difficult to understand at first glance, and he didn’t even know what ‘punctuate’ meant. He still hadn’t reached the letter ‘p’ in the dictionary. Maybe one day, when he was more proficient, he could buy a book like this…
Ramchand turned his attention to other books.
There was a faded book that he was sure he could get cheap – a book called Quotations for all Occasions. Ramchand had always thought that quotations were something to do with fixing the price of wholesale fabric, but the book jacket explained that quotations were things of wit and wisdom said by great people. He didn’t know what wit meant, but he knew he could do with some wisdom. Another thing that was in favour of the book was that the quotations were short. He needn’t have a Sunday or a whole evening free before working on the book. It could be dipped into during empty pockets of time, and he could read at least one quotation while waiting for the rice to be done, or while warming water for a bath. Ramchand bought the book, haggling till he got it for twenty rupees, sure that it would help fill in empty moments with wisdom and with wit, which he was sure was a desirable thing.
The quotations were classified in alphabetical order. There were quotations in the beginning of the book about Ability. A few pages later, there were some about Adversity. The book went on to report the ideas and opinions of great men on everything from Flattery to Literature to Tact, ending with Youth, Yukon and finally Zeal.
The quotations evoked mixed, but passionate reactions from Ramchand. Some quotations he just didn’t understand, and he skipped over them. Sometimes he skipped whole subjects that he either didn’t understand at all or found uninteresting.
Some quotations he wholeheartedly agreed with, and others he vehemently and angrily opposed. While reading through ‘Ability’, he was impressed by this:
Ability is of little account without opportunity – Napoleon
How true that was, Ramchand thought sadly, wondering who Napoleon was. Maybe a foreign poet. How right he was! He, Ramchand, would have gone to an English-medium school if his parents had not died.
He read with some scepticism an idea attributed to somebody called Aughey.
Aughey, whoever he was, had commented on Adversity. Ramchand looked up Adversity in the dictionary. It meant misfortune. Ramchand shook his head and looked up misfortune. It meant bad luck. Ramchand sighed and read the quotation:
God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.
Ramchand snorted at this. ‘Yes,’ he thought scornfully, ‘and sometimes He just leaves them in deep waters till they are wrinkled and shrivelled like a washerwoman’s hands and are no good to themselves or to anyone else.’
Ramchand skipped all the quotations under the heading of America.
He solemnly admitted the wisdom of most of the quotations under Borrowing.
Debt is a bottomless sea, somebody called Carlyle had said. And hadn’t his father always said that to his mother, whenever they had been short of money, ‘Never mind,’ he’d tell his anxious wife. ‘We’ll manage on whatever we have. But I am not borrowing money from anyone. There is no end to it once you start. It can make life hell.’
And Gokul also echoed the same sentiments about borrowing money. ‘It is a whirlpool, Ramchand. Don’t you ever get sucked into it. Make do with whatever you have. Limit your needs according to the money you have in your pocket. Once you get in the hand of moneylenders…’ Gokul had shaken his head. ‘And even if you borrow money from friends and acquaintances and relatives, some sort of pressure is always there. It is better to wear old clothes and have one meal a day and have some peace of mind than to live on borrowed money.’
By February Ramchand had reached Darkness, after skipping Capital and Labour and wondering at the sort of nonsense there was under Cats.
There is not room to swing a cat – Smollett, Humphrey Clinker.
A cat may look at a king – John Heywood.
The things supposedly great men had said about cats didn’t impress Ramchand much.
In April Ramchand bought another book.
He hadn’t meant to, he had been just browsing through the books at a bookstall, but he had fallen in love with this book as he hadn’t with any other. It was called Pocket Science for Children. It was a small book, made of very glossy paper. It contained colour pictures, beautiful illustrations and so much knowledge that Ramchand was overwhelmed.
Ramchand asked the price. It was for 150 rupees. He was dismayed. It was a huge amount to pay for just one book, but the shopkeeper said it was a foreign book and he wouldn’t budge from the price. Even after bargaining his best, Ramchand only managed to bring it down to 120 rupees. But he couldn’t go back without it, he knew that. Besides, he had bought Quotations for all Occasions about two months back. Surely it was all right to buy this now. He didn’t think any more about it and bought it.
It was so absorbing and delightful that Ramchand had to tear himself away from it in the mornings to leave for the shop. And his first thought on getting back every evening was to start reading it again. Even Sudha was a little neglected in favour of Pocket Science for Children.<
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Inside its pages there were pictures of stars and planets, machines, plants and the inside of the human body. It explained, in words that Ramchand could understand now, how electricity was generated, how car brakes worked, why hot air balloons rose up in the air, why guitars had holes in them and why rainbows were formed in the sky. It explained how penguins, birds that Ramchand had never seen or heard of before, used wave movements to swim. Ramchand gazed at the accompanying picture of penguins with wonder. They looked like the solemn waiters in bow ties and black suits who had been serving food at Rina Kapoor’s wedding.
The book also explained why diamonds sparkled and said, to Ramchand’s surprise, that there were 640 muscles in the human body, and that human beings were fast using everything on earth and if they went on at this rate, there would soon be nothing left.
Ramchand loved this book above all the others that he possessed, even though he didn’t like to admit it to himself.
After reading it, when he placed it on top of the fast-increasing book pile that now had five books, he began to feel the first stirrings of a book-collector’s possessive pride.
He had his eye on A Short History of the World for Youngsters now, but it was for a hundred rupees, and he thought it would be better to wait till August before he bought it. He hoped no one else would buy it meanwhile.
*
Now, while Ramchand walked towards Chander’s place, he felt satisfaction welling up inside himself as he read one signboard after another without faltering once. Sunder Ram Brass Band, Sukhvinder Hardware Store, Shiv Shankar General Store…
The signboards petered out a long way before he reached Chander’s neighbourhood, though. Instead, there were just small houses, more like shanties, and dark, poky, miserable little shops. The neighbourhood had seemed bad enough when he had come here last time, but that had been in the winter. The summer somehow made it seem much worse. The whole place stank, the drains were festering with filth, the heat made the dirt even more unbearable.