Happy Birthday!: And Other Stories

by Meghna Pant

  Pramod was saying something and Meenu had to force herself to peel her eyes away from the liquid shimmer. ‘Chand, for so long I haven’t seen you in your finery. In all the things we so lovingly collected, that you cherished so much. From today, I want to see you in nothing else but this.’

  In the end all men wanted the same thing. To retain a starry residue of the sense of romance they had had before getting married.

  ‘You must have really loved her,’ Meenu dared to say, instantly regretting the forthrightness that had already been her misfortune.

  But Pramod said, ‘It was something like love.’

  Men like Pramod understood love only after they no longer had a chance at it.

  So while their wives pandered to and preened for them, they’d hold their love at bay, in the reservoir of their heart. And then—after the wives were gone, when their love could safely nestle in their grand idea of it—they’d bring it forth in gushes, like a burst dam.

  ‘I wasn’t always nice to her,’ he started, but then added, ‘God knows she was difficult. But that doesn’t justify my behaviour.’

  This was rare, this honest reflection. Men on a mission, to have sex, to cop a feel, to get a kiss, even if they’d paid for it, always lied.

  As he said this, his face remained unreadable. In his beige kurta with brass buttons, his skin looked the colour of a potato. His hair was combed back in furrows of white, thick despite his age. The only giveaway of his younger self was his black eyebrows, rising in surprise above the pink rims of his baggy eyes.

  ‘This will be your room during the day. You can put your things here, get dressed here,’ he said. ‘In fact, can you put on something nice and meet me in the living room?’

  ‘Of course,’ Meenu said.

  Pramod left.

  And Meenu was all alone in this beautiful room with its beautiful things.

  Oh the yielding fabrics! The sweet smell of opulence!

  So began the happiest moments of her deprived life. The closet had more things than her untrained eyes had initially spotted. There were shoes and perfumes, and belts and bags and makeup. Meenu ran her fingers delicately over the clothes, trying not to crush their unbelievable softness. Pressing each piece of cloth against her face, she inhaled deeply, enjoying the fragrance of luxury, the genteel life.

  Such shine, such elegance, how did people live without it?

  But the jewellery she watched from afar, as if she was a lioness prowling in the bushes. She must’ve stared at it for a long time, because outside the door came the sound of an impatient cough. Meenu grabbed a sequined chiffon sari lying on top of a rack and wrapped it quickly around herself, floating in its blouse.

  She looked again at the jewellery locker.

  It had to be done.

  ‘Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya,’ she chanted and grabbed a few pieces of jewellery; hooking an opal chain around her undeserving neck, clipping on topaz earrings, fastening a pearl bracelet on her hairy wrist.

  When she came out to the living room, bejewelled and bedecked, much like a highway truck, Pramod didn’t comment on her appearance but his eyes had a new shine to them. He told her to sit down on the sofa and placed a deck of cards between them. Grinning like a mischievous schoolboy he shuffled the cards and said, ‘Chand, did you know that I am also a magician?’ He asked her to pick one card. She did. ‘See it,’ he said. She saw it: a king of spades. He asked her to place the card back without showing it to him. She did. He went through the deck and picked up a card. It was the king of hearts.

  ‘It was this one, right?’ he asked, his lips already curved in a celebratory smile. Yes, she said without thought.

  The doorbell rang and before she could move, Pramod got up and ran, actually ran, to the door. A woman in a nurse’s stiff uniform entered and—without so much as a glance at Meenu—walked straight into the house, vanishing into one of the many rooms, probably Pramod’s bedroom. Pramod rushed after the nurse, but not before saying, ‘I’ll be out in an hour. Don’t disturb me. The TV remote is lying on the sofa, or you can take a walk on the terrace.’ Then he was gone and somewhere deep in the house a door shut firmly.

  Meenu realized then that it was definitely not dementia that Pramod suffered from. Sheeba had told her about it, recounting how her neighbours in Solapur—a family of five—had all burnt to death because their demented grandmother had absent-mindedly left the stove on all night. Meenu had listened carefully, and jotted down some typical symptoms as Sheeba rattled them off. But when she asked for guidance on how to handle Pramod in his condition, Sheeba shrugged her shoulders. ‘You’re on your own.’ It was Meenu’s sheer luck that Pramod was very present, seemed not to be afflicted by any cognitive decline or seizures or fevers; he’d even remembered today’s date. And if he were actually mentally unfit, why would he be living alone in a big house with no full-time nurse or help?

  He’ll tell me the truth eventually, Meenu determined.

  With Pramod busy, this was a good opportunity to call her husband Birju. She wasn’t allowed to make personal calls while on duty, not even to her mother, but Pramod was in a locked room, Birju would be home since his girlfriend Pinky didn’t leave the shop till seven, and the terrace garden had big bushes behind which she could hide and talk. So she took a mobile phone out of her handbag and punched in Birju’s number, not having saved it in case Pramod went through her phone’s address book.

  Birju didn’t answer immediately. But he often did that. So she called again. And again. It was on the fifth attempt that he picked up.

  ‘What?’ he said irritably. ‘I thought you were on duty.’

  ‘It’s about … the baby. It’s turning a lot,’ she said.

  ‘What rubbish. It’s not even been a month.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Just make sure that your precious client doesn’t find out your dirty little secret. You need this job. That tharki Nandu has still not taken me back.’

  Birju had worked at Nandu’s Cloth House as a salesboy for only four months when Pinky joined as a cashier. Once their affair came to light, he was dismissed, but he solemnly declared that he’d work nowhere else but Nandu’s. When Meenu found out, Birju was unapologetic, saying that his wife slept with others on the job, so why couldn’t he? Meenu hadn’t pointed out that it was Birju’s idea—when he hadn’t been able to find a job for over a year—that Meenu join Second Ishq.

  Sensing movement near a curtain in the only lit room in the house, Meenu mumbled, ‘I have to go.’ She went back to the living room and turned on the TV.

  Night-time was falling and the first night was always unpredictable. Feelings had to be considered, expectations set, disappointments appeased and victories gained. In many ways it set the tone for the days that followed.

  Meenu had learnt that men revealed who they really were only in bed; the older ones were particularly predictable.

  Some of them would be upset at how swiftly life had passed them by. They’d be angry with their children for not visiting more often and their grandchildren who’d already forgotten about them. They’d resent their employer of thirty years for giving them a measly watch upon retirement, their friends for giving priority to their families and their wives for being dead. They’d ask Meenu about things she couldn’t know, had never thought about, and feel superior because of her ignorance. In bed they’d be ravenous, giddy with their own power, but become surly a few seconds later, with their lascivious but wasted manhood.

  Not as perturbed by life but equally self-absorbed were the ones who couldn’t believe that life hadn’t yet revealed its purpose to them. They’d become infatuated by their soul and examine their existence under a microscope. Such men wouldn’t debase their higher state of awareness with the plebeian act of sex.

  And then there were a few who took to incessant joking. They were done with the rigours of life, and responded to everything—including being asked what they’d like for dinner—with a ‘stop taking life so seriously’. In
bed they’d be equally undemanding, only wanting Meenu to look supportive.

  What kind of lover would Pramod be?

  For dinner Pramod ordered in rice and gur-infused tuvar dal, but he refused to eat. Meenu ate alone, trying not to look ravenous, though feeling like she was at the point of collapse. He watched her with that same halfsmile, the kind that she usually gave clients, involved but not committed. She imagined that he too was thinking about her case file, sent to him for pre-approval and ridden with easy lies: that her name was Meera (which according to Sheeba sounded sexier than Meenu); she was born in 1990 (1986); in Pune (not Raigad); had moved to Mumbai to study (she came here to work); and no, she had never been with a man before.

  After dinner, he tossed the remaining food in the bin and rinsed her plate, refusing her offers of help.

  Pramod then looked at Meenu and said, very softly, ‘I’d like you to come to my bedroom.’

  Meenu quickly excused herself and ran to Chand’s room. She opened her suitcase and spread out her things on Chand’s bed: a cold-cream bottle, her cotton saris, the green glass bangles she liked to wear with most of her clothes, and a few shells she’d collected on her one visit to Chowpatty beach. But they looked silly here, poor and out of place, so she put them back. She saw a pink lipstick on Chand’s dressing table and applied that across her dark lips. There was a queue of perfumes too, in shapely crystal bottles. She dabbed on perfume from the emptiest bottle—imagining that it must have been used most frequently by Chand. She put it under her armpits, on her cleavage, below her earlobes, but not too much, knowing how costly perfume was. That done, she sniffed her skin critically, hoping that the smell of the slums—which Sheeba said she had—was gone.

  Meenu walked to Pramod’s room and stood at its entrance. It was painted in dull green and almost bare, in sharp contrast to her—or rather Chand’s—room. He had a small wooden cupboard, and Meenu saw through its open door a few kurtas, in white and beige, some tan trousers, khaki shirts, a single grey safari suit, which she’d seen no one in this century wear, and mothballs in different states of sublimation, strewn carelessly around the cotton handkerchiefs.

  Pramod was already lying on the bed, looking small and lost in its expanse. The left side of the mattress was empty, waiting for her arrival. On the bedside table was a black-and-white photo of a severe-looking woman with a big mop of curly hair and thin unsmiling lips. Meenu crept into the bed, under Chandralikha’s disapproving gaze, feeling like a thief. Tucking herself under the blanket, she waited for Pramod to offer himself to her. It was wiser to wait.

  Pramod turned to face her.

  ‘Can I hold you?’ he asked, almost shyly.

  ‘Of course,’ she smiled, not too brightly, for her gestures had to be contained, devoid of carnal experience.

  He held her then, and she inhaled his smell of cigarettes and mothballs, which wasn’t wholly unpleasant. He lay like that for a few minutes, maybe ten, and then sighed. She wondered what he would do next and hoped he’d be gentle for the sake of the baby. Not knowing was the worst part of the job, as the cigarette burn on her wrist from a previous client reminded her. Pramod leaned over and … switched off the lamp. Soon, anchored with his arm on top of her, he was fast asleep.

  There was no desire in Pramod’s body.

  ‘Oof,’ Meenu pouted angrily for the second time that day.

  If Pramod wasn’t going to let Meenu impress him with her breasts or her cooking or her performance in bed, how would she ever win him over? All her tricks were wasted on this man.

  ‘Oh Chand,’ she heard him murmur. ‘How I’ve missed you.’

  Meenu took a long, deep breath. There were worse things, worse men, she mollified herself. And it had been a long day. Meenu put the blanket over her face and fell into a light snooze.

  ~

  This is the life, Meenu thought, slipping on a diamond bangle, admiring the fresh coat of blue nail polish she’d applied this morning, the only reason for which she lifted her fingers nowadays. She stared at her reflection in the mirror; her face was still hers but it had a new glory on it. Her eyes, larger than ever and rested, were bright things, shining like stars as she applied mascara to them. Her skin, pampered with those creams in tiny jars—that Chand must have used—was soft, making it easy for the foundation to mask her pimples and dark spots. Why, even her nose—which she’d always resented for its largeness—appeared smaller, almost petite, like those of rich ladies, after she clipped on the diamond stud that Pramod so liked on her.

  Whoever said that wealth couldn’t buy beauty obviously had neither.

  Swathed in a neeligunji paithani sari with a coral set, Meenu walked into the living room where Pramod was waiting for her. The curtains in the house were all drawn and she imagined that anyone looking in from the other Matru Ashish buildings, from the bus stop below and the pav-bhaji stand across the road, would think that she was the owner of this large house, its big empty rooms. She walked taller and straighter then, regally she hoped, like Chand probably had.

  Despite not being able to use any of her talents on him, Meenu had taken a liking to Pramod. Each day, after she woke up at leisure just before noon, he’d be waiting for her in the living room, tea kept warm in a kettle. Pouring it out, he’d share with her some news of the day, the BJP’s Gram-Chalo Ghar-Chalo Abhiyaan that he admired, or his mounting fear of potential chemical warfare in Syria. She’d pretend to listen, to understand. Then, once she was fully awake, they’d play cards, spending the most time on sath-aath and satte pe satta. Pramod taught her chess, checkers, scrabble and even his terrible card tricks.

  He didn’t ask why her belly was swelling right beneath him; thankfully he didn’t even call her agency about it. Instead he hired a maid to cook foods that she craved, even ordering in special treats for her and watching her wolf them down, as if she really was his Chandralikha.

  The only thing he kept from her was his illness, and if she asked him, he’d tell her not to worry about it. But she was worried. His arms were getting lighter around her every night, in fact they were becoming almost weightless, his face had become thin and doughy, like a badly made crêpe/dosa, his hands trembled all the time, and his already small appetite had become negligible. What do you have, she’d persist, and sometimes, when he was in the mood for frivolity he’d reply, ‘The guilt of a man who wronged a woman that loved him. But I’m making up for it now, am I not, my Chand?’

  ~

  A few nights later, Pramod did not come out of his room after the nurse had left. Meenu waited for him in the living room; he didn’t like her to enter his room until it was bedtime. But an hour passed and she grew concerned. She walked tentatively to his door and seeing that it was open, peeped inside. She saw then that the room had changed. There were bottles of pills lying around, nitrile examination gloves left behind by the nurse, tie-on face masks, transparent film dressings, Braun syringes, a large MP30 Philips monitor. There was a strong antiseptic smell. Pramod had converted his bedroom into a hospital room.

  What was this man dying of?

  He didn’t say anything when he saw her, but continued to lie in bed, his hand over his face. Trying to cheer him up, Meenu put a pretend stethoscope on his chest, and said in mock sternness, ‘Where does it hurt, beta?’

  But Pramod didn’t laugh, didn’t even respond.

  She saw then that there was an electrode strip stuck to his left leg. It was partially peeled off, a few strands of hair stuck to it. The nurse probably forgot to remove it and Pramod must have tried to pull it off.

  Some evenings, when his bedroom curtains were not completely drawn, Meenu would peek in through the terrace and see the nurse put grey wires on the electrodes plastered to his ankles, chest and wrists. She never dared to ask Pramod what they were for.

  Meenu told him to hold steady and gently pulled the strip away, watching his reaction. He didn’t flinch, but a tear rolled down his face.

  ‘Am I hurting you?’ she asked in a concerned voice.


  ‘You can never hurt me, Chand. It’s always me who hurts you.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Meenu said, genuinely. She couldn’t imagine Pramod hurting anyone, least of all his Chand.

  He sat up and took her face in his hands. ‘It was all my fault, Chand. My fault that we couldn’t have kids. The doctor told me I was impotent but I never let you know. No, I told you that it was your fault and let you live with that guilt.’

  Meenu looked at him, mystified. Then he was sobbing in her arms.

  ‘Even on your deathbed—’ he continued ‘—when you said I should’ve never married you … so I could have sons to take care of me … I didn’t tell you the truth. I let you leave in agony. Shame on me. Shame on me.’

  His voice was so heavy that it reminded Meenu of how old he actually was.

  Meenu cradled him against her chest as he cried, rocking him to and fro, stroking his hair, his face, and his arms. Every time he moaned ‘Chand!’ through the night she held him closer, willing his pain to go away. And in the early morning light, when all was still, Pramod was finally silent. Meenu still held him.

  All of a sudden his hand slid across her body. It rested on her right thigh, stroking it. His lips began planting wet kisses on her chest, her neck and the corner of her mouth.

  Her moment of glory had finally arrived.

  Meenu quickly unhooked her blouse, kneeled down and took him in her mouth.

  But there was nothing.

  It was as if someone had placed a deflated latex balloon on her tongue.

  Meenu stood up, feeling frustration to the point of anger. What good was this man?

  Then she saw the way that he was staring at her swollen belly. And it seemed to her that for the first time Pramod was taking her in: acutely, as if her image had just flashed before his eyes and been quickly swallowed. Finally, he was gazing at her the way other men did.