Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction.

by Gabbar Singh

  *** Mahi wanted to make sure she reached home before her Mom. She didn’t want her to see her in this outfit. The last thing she wanted was a lecture from her, yet again. Phew, how many girls can claim that their Mom is a bitch! The stereotypical absent parent; growing up Mahi had had seen more of her mother on the TV screen than at home. Sarla Maheshwari, women’s rights activist. As she ran towards the elevator of her building, she almost missed the sight of Gyaneshwar furiously cleaning the fender of their car.

  Dammit, she’s home! Mahi sighed in resignation as she unlockedthe door of the apartment. Her Mom was seated on the sofa. She ran her eyes up and down at her dress and spat, “Were you out looking for a husband or a customer? After all that I do for you and our future, is this how you repay me? By parading all over the town, dressed like a whore?”

  *** Mr. and Mrs. Bharatan were outside their daughter’s hospital room. They looked relieved after a talk with the doctor who assured them that her injuries were superficial and her fracture would take just a few weeks to heal. Mrs. Bharatan mumbled a silent prayer of thanks to that angel who had brought their bleeding daughter to the hospital. Had it not been for him, their only child, the light of their lives would have bled to death. They said his name was Munna. He couldn’t wait because he had to take his daughter to a hakim. Prince Dhaba hadn’t suited her either.

  25. On The Other Side

  Sakshi Nanda

  The wind was feeling cheated that night; there was no one to enjoy it. All it saw as it blew from the heavens above were scenes from the hell below. A few tyre tubes on a mound of burning furniture whispered suspiciously at Iqbal Chowk, that crossroad where people from all over the city came to eat Hareesaafter shopping in Gul Bazaar next door. The park at Raj Singh Avenue, once resounding with music, seemed ravaged. Diseased. With nothing but a broken tonga floating in the pond, and some clothes, must be just clothes, hanging haplessly from a tree under which many a maestro had practiced their notes.

  It was one of those nights in Lahore when you could hear the neigh - bour’s heartbeat from across the lane; so quiet the night, so loud the beat and so narrow the lane. The tiny, ornate windows which once reached out to each other like the fingertips of clandestine lovers seemed to close in on existence itself – shuttered, like armoured guards, keeping out and keeping in, at the same time.

  All one could hear in Dilshad lane was Shyam Pyari’s bangles hurriedly tying up a few belongings in a dupattawhich was used, only a little while back, to rock her six-week-old daughter to sleep. The infant slept on a pillow by the empty cupboard, one hand carelessly lying by her head and the other, the one with the ‘R’ from her name Rano tattooed on her tiny wrist, held by her brother’s. Raman, that four year old boy, sat by his sleeping sister as if made of stone. If it weren’t for his eyes, shuttling between his mother in the room and his father silently digging up a box of money from a nondescript corner of the courtyard, you would think he was dead. Already. It was 2:00 am, and they were getting ready to leave. Why can’t I carry my cycle? Why did papa lock the door from the outside? Ma is angry all the time. When will we come back home? Where are we going? I don’t want to go… and Rano stirred, interrupting his thoughts with a baby snore. He held on to her finger tighter, alarmed and confused.

  The many pairs of feet walking towards house number 57, Dilshad lane, were still some distance away. But nights so still can play tricks. The foot- steps beat like drums on Sohan Lal’s ears. How evil they sounded, those feet on the pot-holed tarmac that had once teemed with children and their games. I will not let them get... I will not! They dare not come …he mum- bled to himself as he slipped into the room where his family was and huddled along with them in the corner farthest from the main door in his two room house. Three trunks, one on top of the other, and a heavy table were the sentinels at the door. Shyam Pyari, as noiselessly as is possible when keys turn in locks, started to open the backdoor nervously, shaking more and more as the sound of footsteps came closer. I have to get this door open. Which key was it? One … I already tried that. How many people could they be? Six, this door was key number six … or was it three? The boy had turned ashen, and as fear of something he neither understood nor knew gripped his heart tight, he tightened his hold on his sister’s finger.

  And so she cried. Awake. Rano did not just cry. She howled. Louder than she ever had in the few weeks of her life. And the bored wind found something to do; it gave wings to her wails, carrying them to dogs that were feasting over some- thing rotting nearby. They barked back, and within seconds there was too much noise. Shyam Pyari shoved the keys into Sohan’s hands and grabbed Rano, as if her girl were a tiny kite about to break free from its thread only to tear itself in a tree. She pressed her palm over her mouth to silence the scream. Pressed it hard. The baby squirmed with discom- fort; the mother hoped she would read her eyes, eyes that were pleading with her to sleep my darling, sleep. The footsteps, sensing commotion, had quickened pace and were standing purposefully outside the neighbour’s door, with eyes peeping inside through a hole that a bullet had left there only yesterday, after leaving 80-year-old Hardeep Singh dead.

  While Rano looked tearfully at her mother’s face, her screams drowning down her throat, the others stared at the door as if expecting it to fly open. To end this dreadful night, their lives, together. What is ma doing? Ma, stop it, please. You are hurting me. Ma, ma … can you hear me … I ... I can’t breathe … ma …please…Rano must have pleaded, as she fought back her mother’s hand covering her mouth, her nose, her face, before she stopped struggling altogether.

  Went limp. Lifeless, as if. In her own mother’s arms.

  Shyam Pyari realized it much later, or maybe, she pretended to. She car- ried Rano carefully in one hand and a bundle of clothes in the other. They became one with the shadows in the by-lane, where the moon also appeared to have colluded with the enemy, ready to expose them in big pools of silver light, or even in tiny patches. Like rats leaving a sinking ship, the family of four sneaked out through the back door to a truck filling up about a kilometer away. A truck promising to carry people to safety across the shadow line we like to call the ‘Border’, to life in another lane called Freedom.

  “No dead bodies allowed in the truck, we need space for the living; no dead bodies allowed in the truck,” the truck driver walked around speak- ing in a harsh drone to the gathered crowd. It was only then that Shyam Pyari left one of the bundles at a doorstep a little away from the truck, one she seemed almost to choose intuitively. As if someone or something was guiding her. In the quietest of whispers, she insisted on leaving it outside that very door, locked with a big brass lock but shielded from the vagaries of the weather, as well as from all evil eyes. Sleep my darling, sleep was all she had time for to say to the girl.

  The journey lasted for many hours in a truck so full of people that one man’s head was at another’s feet and so on. Almost like a food chain of sorts, except, here there were no hunters. A mass of bodies, breathing and alive and just thankful to be so. When the heavy black tarpaulin was finally untied from the back of the truck, the rising sun and green fields on both sides of the straight road ahead seemed to have Life writ large all over them.

  Of course, Shyam Pyari could barely open her eyes to the bright light. For nearly a day, unmoved she had sat, staring at her empty hands. As if her baby girl lay asleep in them.

  As if.

  ***

  She was always fond of coming to Rajouri Market. Always. It had been so many years in Delhi, but this market – a long straight line with shops flanking it, held a strange charm for her. Was it the prices at which she could buy anything from locally made namkeens and biscuits to designer suits and saris? Or the chaat at Ashok Chaat Bhandaar that was unmatch- able in taste or the variety of shoes from Do Bhai that she loved to add to her burgeoning collection? It had been love at first sight for Raunak Kaur, when she came here accompanied by her husband to order trays of dry fruit for Gurpurab. After all, her husband’s was
one of the reputed Sikh families of West Delhi, and gifts needed to match in weight and value the solitaires her rings shone with.

  It was a chance event, them coming here all those years back. Their trust - ed Dayal Dry Fruit was closed that year for renovation. And good quality dry fruit, cashews and raisins and walnuts and almonds were urgently needed for distribution. And that is how Raunak had found this place as a much younger woman. However, she liked coming here alone. Of- ten, she would find herself looking for excuses to leave the comfort of plush malls behind just to walk down the narrow yet busy lane. When she could not understand the pull this place had for her, she stopped look- ing for explanations. If she felt like coming, she would cook up a little list of groceries or clothes, juttisor jewels, and ask her driver to take her there. Instantly. ‘But madam, there is barely any place to park there. The cops look at big cars and come looking for bigger tips. They see the four bangles on the car and come. Why don’t I take you to City Centre Mall and …’ he would always begin, and she would hand him a crisp note. That would settle it.

  Today was such a day. The driver had been bribed generously, and here she was driven again, all the way from Punjabi Bagh, for one last time; for tomorrow Raunak was to fly away to Australia. Her children who had settled there convinced their mother to shift. While papa was there we did not insist, mummy. But it just makes sense to come over here now. Let’s be together! I know I know you’ll miss your Queen’s life of marble floors and chandeliers and liveried maids but …and her daughter had chuckled. Raunak had smiled; a smile that knew that this relocation made sense. That a change of country was imminent. That there was no choice left anymore, for some borders needed to be crossed to step into the future, and for the future.

  But can Reason stand its ground and stare down Love? Or attachment? Or that sense of belonging one comes to feel for a place, like an umbilical cord that can be cut but never severed? It shakes, ever so slightly, know- ing full well it can never stand taller than the Love for what one calls home, and the many-headed monster of turmoil that raises its head when one is leaving it. A dispossession right down to the soil, to the roots. In the wee hours of the morning a plane was to carry her to Brisbane. Raunak was done packing her suitcases, which now stood in a neat row near the door, quite like army jawans ordered to stand at attention. A guard was to occupy one room after she left and till the time the house was sold off. Most rooms of the houses had been locked already, with furniture covered in huge white sheets - a scene that reminded her of a morgue and made her feel an uneasy sense of déjà vu she knew not why. It was the first time this Sardarni’s hands shook while opening the car door outside Anjlika Bakery. Why am I here of all places?

  Rajouri Market was as it always is, in hail or in heat. With a fancy fruit shop on one side and an even fancier bakery on the other, it would have you believe it catered the very best and to the very best. But that wasn’t true. As one walked down the strip one noticed how all kinds of shops existed side by side, bound symbiotically, like lovers in hugs – clandestine, yet brave. She had enjoyed the togetherness the market seemed to sig- nify for her, cutting across man-made lines of economics, geography and class. That two-floors of Kamal Jewelers touched shoulders with a tiny tailoring-alteration shop that sold turban cloths too. How the cocktail dresses in the huge ‘Bangkok Bazaar’ stood next to a six-by-ten feet shop selling plastic ware. A man dressed as a clown welcomed you to a chil- dren’s store with comic gestures and just across the road, an arty looking woman sat daintily, showcasing her Indo-Western kurtis. And there were shoppers, all ages, all stages, all kinds, as full of life as the market was alive. Lights and sounds and colours in a pretty … what is the word? Um … a lovely riot, yes, riot, of Life and Living, she had said to her husband the first time.

  With no fixed agenda and no cooked up to-do lists, Raunak slowly walked on the uneven pavement now overflowing with shoppers. The corn on the left foot had started to hurt, what with the frantic packing done in the last few days, and Dr. Scholl’s was proving to be of no use. Sweat was struggling to make an appearance but her face was matted with the best foundation, her peppered hair conditioned to remain neatly tied in a bun grazing the onion pearls around her neck. Of course, the tiny embroi- dered paisley on the back of her Lucknawi chikan suit was getting wetter by the minute. But she walked along, looking inside shops and peeping into lanes, standing at crossroads and taking in all eight directions and eight hundred sounds. If one were to spy on her, one would think she was a spy. Or someone looking for something. Or for someone. But she wasn’t.

  Her heart was heavy, her back soaking wet, but her feet refused to stop. I must visit the shops I want to before I leave tomorrow,she resolved to herself as she elbowed her way through a group of teenagers buying lycra and lace tops in gaudy colours and animated voices.

  She smiled at the woman selling Chinese toys on a cart while entering the Titan showroom that Rajinder Singh ji had been running for many years now. On arthritic knees he stood up, hands shaky with age but joined to welcome her. On a revolving stool too tiny for her but enough to give her rest she sat, sipping juice and chatting with the owner about this and that, but mostly about her impending departure. There was nothing spectacular about the shop, but this is where all her instruments of time were bought or repaired since the beginning of time, when she had once stepped into its humble confines. Of course, her friends and family had found swankier places. But this was where she loved to sit, to catch her breath, exchange pleasantries and feel surrounded by ticking time and o’clock sirens. It usually made her feel honest, and very alive. Today, how- ever, the tick-tocks felt as if they were counting down more than keeping time. Raunak and Rajinder discussed the new government, the weather, the old employee who lost his job because he could barely see, the fire in the paper factory in Mayapuri, how maids were not to be trusted and …I feel so restless, or is it the heat? Feels as if I am losing time on something significant today … my last day in Delhi and here, right here, in Rajouri. Oh! I must be going senile … and she couldn’t sit for long.

  At the first crossroad in the market, just large enough for one rickshaw to cycle across at a time, she turned left, away from the din and bustle to an even narrower lane lined with photo framers, beauty parlours and dyers. Kuku Dupatta House was just a few shops away and a rudderless Raunak suddenly felt herself quickening pace towards it. Again, she had no idea what had come over her. Wahey Guruji, why am I so nervous? Please guide me. Calm me. Are you behind this wandering today? Must be travel anxiety. Anyway, hopefully Murari Lal Ji will be at the shop and not his son. I can say goodbye to him, why not! She had lost count of the number of times the dyer had been kind to her family, with express orders, colours like no other and blessings on his lips. There he sat under a slow-moving fan, forgotten amongst bigger establishments on both sides who had modernized their dying techniques. Here and there were still painted hands dipping cloth pieces in and out of the vats on the other side of the shop. Today, due to an unexpected spill the dyers had moved right next to where she stood. With nowhere to sit, Raunak rested her chubby elbows on the glass top and spoke to him over books with sample colour threads, a mish-mash of scraps and some newspapers inside the showcase. However, there was barely anything to talk about. She thanked him for his services and he blessed her with even better times in foreign lands. When she broke the news that she was relocating permanently, with a movement so hasty that his workers had never seen his frail frame make before, Murari Lal got out from a small cupboard behind him a beautifully dyed stole. For her. Draping it around her neck, she looked at herself in a mirror that had been leaned against the counter today due to the vat spillage.

  An old man was staring at her in the mirror, making her so self-conscious she could not stare at herself anymore. He stood there, with a sari drip- ping wet in both hands that were crying red over the vat, frozen as if in time and unable to take his eyes away. My hands…is he staring at my hands? Why? Must be the rings. The watch �
� I must be mistaken. I shouldn’t stare back. Looks like a harmless poor old man. He’s looking at the street ahead I’m sure…silly me.She undid the stole and teary-eyed, thanked Murari Lal for his kind- ness, all the while aware of the man’s gaze on her. Within minutes, she had hurriedly called her driver and vanished into the traffic. One, because she had to leave Rajouri Market forever sometime today and it was get- ting so late, and two, there was something about the man that made her want to look at him, talk to him, cry with him.

  The old man still stood transfixed, as if he were made of clockwork that was unwound. I must be mistaken. It cannot be. …it cannot be. How can it be? The Titan watch Sahab was right, my eyes are indeed playing tricks on me. So many years, so much time gone by there and here … it cannot be. It must have been a different tattoo. Not an ‘R’ on her wrist with two dots under it. She had died … cannot be … or could it …?

  “Bhaisahab, all okay?” asked a co-worker, concerned. But Raman could no longer hear him. Or anything. He was sitting in his house in Lahore and had turned ashen, and as fear gripped his heart tight he tightened his hold on his sister’s finger, who had cried awake.

  26. Prem ki chashni 2

  Sudhanshu Shekhar Pathak

  Translated from Hindi by Harsh Snehanshu Much like everyday, the crimson ball sprang to life at exactly 5.45 a.m. from the far-eastern corner of the sky. As if somebody had splashed water over its sleeping eyes, making it jump out of bed.

  The darkness of the night starts to retreat as early as five o’ clock in Bikramganj, a sleepy rural town in Northern Bihar. Just when the first light of morning gives into the unrestrained chirping of birds, Lachhu- man wakes up. After finishing his early morning ritual of bathing and praying, he goes on to open his little shop situated a hundred meters away from his house. The shutters are opened at the first sight of the sun. He stays there for the entire day, returning only after serving the passengers of the 9 p.m. bus, the last one, with litti-chokha, milk-cakes, samosas, and chai-biscuit. Once at home, he hands over the earnings of the day to the eager palms of his wife, eats the tasteless dinner she would have cooked for him and lets his weary body drift into sleep. Even when the clouds hide his only friends–the moon at night and the sun in the morning, there is no discernible change in Lachhuman’s daily routine. He has been fol- lowing it for years.