‘Let’s call him after the operation,’ said Roopak.
‘No, no need to call him. He doesn’t know who I am. No point calling him. Only that … if something goes wrong during the operation … the remaining money and my belongings can be given to him.’ The green-gowned doctor asked the partner to take off his gold chain. When the nurse tried to remove it, it got stuck, and it was only with much effort from both the doctor and the nurse that they were able to take it off, and it was also handed over to Roopak. The stretcher was wheeled inside.
Since they had told him to wait outside until the operation was over, Roopak sat on a bench. The woman sitting next to him was holding a handbill reading ‘Sari Bumper Reduction Sale’ and staring fixedly at it. In front of Roopak’s eyes was the partner’s tortured face as the gold chain was being pulled over his head. He reached into his pocket, took the chain out and looked at it. It looked like a tiny pathetic thing. The woman next to him said, ‘My elder sister’s being operated on too. They took her in this morning. Her gold bangle couldn’t be removed, so they had to cut it off.’
What if the partner dies during the operation? But I’m not even his relative – only his roommate. I don’t know anything about it. He said he had a stomach ache, so I brought him here. He would say all this and leave. Was this easier? Or would it be easier to look for that bald relative in Borivali?
The woman said, ‘They’re calling you.’ A nurse was beckoning from the OT door.
When Roopak went to her, walking slowly, she asked if he was ‘the party’. A doctor who had removed his green mask showed him something in a small aluminium dish, something that looked like a finger covered with blood. ‘Look, this is the appendix. It had gone septic,’ he said. As if to alert Roopak, who was looking dully at the dish, the doctor said, ‘You’ve seen it, haven’t you?’ Roopak nodded. Immediately the doctor and nurse went inside again. The nurse came back saying, ‘We’ll keep him in the post-operative ward for a day. From tomorrow he can be given fruit juice.’ She handed Roopak another piece of paper with the names of some more medicines scrawled on it.
Roopak came out into the sunlight, and felt that the world around him had no connection with him. Again and again he seemed to see, as if on a white screen, the doctor showing him his partner’s appendix just like the barber holds up a mirror to show you the back of your head after a haircut. Again and again he saw himself nodding as though he was approving of the evidence. Roopak had no idea who his partner’s mother and father were, or where they were. He didn’t know a thing about him, but when he remembered seeing that piece of his intestine, a shiver went through him. He felt choked with emotion. He opened the plastic bag in his hand and looked at the clothes inside. They appeared like children hesitating to go to a stranger. Roopak took out the clothes that had been hastily thrust inside the bag and began to fold them one by one. A railway season pass, a comb, various scraps of paper. Feeling something hard inside the pocket of the pants, Roopak put his hand inside, and found a shining new watch. Did the partner forget that morning that he had the watch in his pocket, or had he actually hidden it on purpose? Roopak did not care. That tiny finger of the intestine sitting in the aluminium dish swaddled in cotton, like the supreme form of civil mistrust, had made a secret bond flower within him. The watch was like a toy that children had forgot they had hidden during play. Its ticking sound could be heard.
Roopak went to the public phone booth and called his factory to say that he wouldn’t be able to come for four days. He purchased the medicines, counted the money that was left, and came to the post-operative ward where they had just brought the partner. In his frock-like gown, on the green sheets. The partner lay in helpless slumber, with various kinds of tubes sticking out of him, for blood and saline, and the wires for the ECG. As Roopak looked at him unblinkingly, the nurse smiled and said using signs, ‘Everything’s fine. Go and have your lunch.’
‘Partner’, 2001
MOGRI’S WORLD
After walking from the Shivaji Nagar hutments in Mulund to the train station to catch the 11 a.m. local to Victoria Terminus, Mogri sprinkles some water on her face in the public toilet before squeezing past the tiny shops on the footpath selling toys, fruits and electronics, and reaches the Light of India Irani restaurant in an old Victorian building at Flora Fountain just as the clock strikes one.
The Light of India restaurant is already more than seventy years old. Its companions have long since changed their appearance and become shops, showrooms or darkened permit rooms, but the restaurant with its large, square front door and its white windows, like those of a hospital, stays open to light and air. Since it is an old structure, the municipality has required that the building’s pillars be propped up by wooden beams – like walking sticks. Someone seeing it for the first time may well imagine the propped-up restaurant to be an old man with a supporting stick, saying that his life was nearly done.
The restaurant is run by three brothers who look alike, and as though they are of the same age. No one knows where they live, or whether they have families. They take turns at the cashier’s desk. They talk amongst themselves in a language only they understand. They have loud fights on the phone. The next second they talk with great courtesy to the customers, almost as though they would even pick up a cigarette that a customer might drop by mistake at a table. At night, when the outer shutters are pulled, the owner waits with a smile until the last customers decide to leave. As though charmed by these courtesies, customers occupy their regular tables and while away their time. Apart from the three brothers, there are, inside the small kitchen, Thambi and Badebhai, both past forty; three waiters all over fifty; and Mogri, who has just joined the staff, and is nearing thirty. Mogri is dark-complexioned, ordinarily attractive. When she writes the bill, she twists her lips slightly.
Mogri did not know where she was born or where she took her first steps. Ever since she could remember, she had lived in the Shivaji Nagar chawl. Her mother was a Kamati woman from Hyderabad, her father a Marathi man from Ratnagiri. They came together as construction labourers, and pulled the shards of their family life together in a hundred unfinished buildings. As the buildings they laboured on rose up, they raised Mogri too. Her mother remembered every under-construction building in which she had swung her daughter’s cloth cradle while she worked. In a marble-floored mansion in Chembur, Mogri spoke her first words. The parents spoke to each other only in Marathi, and her father named her Mogri after the Ratnagiri dialect word for the jasmine flower. After Mogri failed her tenth standard exams, she stopped going to school. Although she had spoken Marathi since childhood, while growing up she spoke a hybrid Hindi like everyone else. She called her mother ‘Maa’ and she could not remember calling her father anything, since there was no reason to address him. All her communication was with her mother, who had also told her that her father had a wife and family in his village in Ratnagiri, in addition to a third one in Jogeshwari. He managed all three families as though it was no big deal. The most he said to Mogri was: ‘Baby, get me some maawa.’ The little girl would run to the corner of the chawl and get a small packet of the masala-lime-tobacco mixture from the Shetty stall. This tiny stall displayed all kinds of new commodities: brightly coloured hair clips, bejewelled hairpins, rakhis when Raksha Bandhan drew near. At Navratri, on her way with her friends to a ras garba dance organized in the neighbouring building, Mogri stopped at the stall to buy two new hair clips. The owner’s son, just sprouting a moustache, gave her an extra one, and pinched her hand. Throughout the dancing, the Shetty boy’s eyes searched for Mogri as he moved from one vantage point to another. Mogri, wearing her new hair clips, stared for hours at the rich people in their shimmering clothes as they danced in a circle. Stroking his budding moustache, smoothing his hair down, the Shetty boy threw small smiles at Mogri. She would laugh as though she felt shy. As soon as Raksha Bandhan came around, the young people of the neighbourhood went wild. All kinds of young men got rakhis tied onto their hands by the girl
s. It became an occasion to touch hands and bodies. Mogri took her chance and tied a rakhi, bought from his own stall, onto the Shetty boy’s hand, calling him her ‘maanlela bhaavu’ or assumed brother. One afternoon, she went with him to see Ram Teri Ganga Maili in the cinema. Whenever the film star Mandakini appeared in a drenched thin white sari, the Shetty boy saw Mogri drenched too. In the darkness of the theatre, Mogri became aware of a heavenly freedom inside her. And she felt grateful to the boy who had helped create that awareness.
The boy who behaved so impassively in the shop became the object of competition between several girls who had all tied rakhis on him as maanlela bhaavu. One such girl stole two rupees from her house, bought batata vada in the market, and gave it to the Shetty boy. He ate one of them and gave the rest to another girl with a tickle. A new building was coming up near the chawls – all the bedrooms, all the kitchens in those apartments were half-finished. There were heaps of sand and cement everywhere. As though operating a rota, the Shetty boy used to take his ‘sisters’ to the half-finished building. ‘There’s a secret treasure there – let me show you,’ he told each one of them.
On Sundays, or during the Saturday film on TV, or during Chhaaya Geet, or during the Ganesh festival week when programmes were conducted in the neighbourhood every evening, when people’s attention was elsewhere, the Shetty boy would tie his lungi and plunge into the unfinished building. The girl would climb in through a different door and the search for the hidden treasure would commence in the damp semi-bedroom with the sand and nails on the floor, piercing their bodies as they lay there. There was also the pervasive smell of the wood flakes shaved from the block. Especially when it was raining outside, Mogri felt there was excitement in the very air. The boy started the pleasure machine in her, and then disappeared in a trice. To Mogri he seemed generous to a fault.
But slowly Mogri got tired of the hidden treasure. Without saying anything, she stopped going to the unfinished building. At the same time, her friend Yamuna started experiencing severe stomach aches. When the doctor made sly remarks, Yamuna started weeping loudly. Without worrying about what people might think, she held onto the Shetty boy’s hand at the bus stop and said to him: ‘Anna, my elder brother, you are my only hope.’ The boy did not fail her. One evening he took Yamuna along with Mogri to the Pearl Centre and spent eighty rupees for the procedure. After making the payment, he rushed off on the pretext of work. Mogri somehow felt that Yamuna should have paid half the money. Then she told herself that Yamuna could not have been able to get the money together, and saluted the generous Shetty boy. It was quite a task for Mogri to bring the wilting Yamuna back in the women’s compartment of the local train. The compartment was full of women returning from work, many of them in sleeveless sari blouses with their necks and armpits powdered, some who picked up their sari pallu and fanned themselves with it, some that you thought looked rather nice, and would just then yawn widely and dig her nose. The two girls squeezed themselves into a small space between the women. At one point, someone got up from her seat as her station approached. Mogri tried to plonk Yamuna onto that seat, but a beauty with dark glasses pushed them aside and took the seat. Yamuna felt dizzy, and slumped as she stood. The compartment was plastered with abortion clinic posters, and the women commuters hung grimly onto the rod, clutching handbags to their bosoms. Their right hands looked as though they had been made strong by the daily hanging routine. What a life for a woman, thought Mogri. It was perhaps in that train compartment that Mogri outgrew the phase of the hidden treasure, and was catapulted into a different life.
Around that time, Mogri’s father received a postcard saying that his wife in Ratnagiri was sick, and he went off to see her. Because they didn’t have any money now, Amma started to work in a neighbourhood building, sweeping and washing dishes. She had helped to build it as a construction labourer, carrying sand and dirt. Now, there were hundreds of families there, mostly Gujaratis. Their cooking used a good deal of oil, making the utensils difficult to clean. She was shouted at if she used extra soap. Taking advances from the houses in which she worked, Amma sent money to the other wife in Ratnagiri. Sometimes Mogri would go with her mother to help with the chores, and since she dressed neatly the mistress of the house would cluck: ‘Cheh, cheh, what a nice girl. And she’s been to school. Why do you bring her to do this kind of work?’
When her mother had had her period, Mogri would take her place. And the girls of her age who sat painting their nails in the chawl looked down on her. The men of the houses where she worked would look at her with heightened interest. ‘Oho, hidden treasure,’ winked Mogri to herself, as she hummed a Hindi film song, playing a game of titillation with the paunchy or suit-booted or balding homeowner who ogled her armpit, or her hips moving in the tightly bound cotton sari as she scrubbed the floors. Defeated and diminished, they looked to her like loyal animals standing up on their hind legs. This gave Mogri the courage and attitude with which she faced this world. In the bazaar she walked upright. She fought unabashedly with the shopkeepers. She stood outside the municipal toilet waiting her turn, with a tin of water in her hand, holding the same upright stance. Once in a while she even wondered whether she should go to Ratnagiri to see the stepmother and step-siblings she had never seen.
Slowly, her friends scattered. Yamuna got a job as an ayah in a local hospital. When she left for the night shift, Mogri would walk with her to the bus stop. After dark, men would loiter around women who were alone at the bus stop. ‘Don’t be afraid, Yamuna. We can rule the world if we keep the magic of our treasures hidden,’ Mogri would say, laughing loudly.
Yamuna did not quite understand this, but she laughed all the same, feeling a little afraid. But once the animals on their hind legs saw a woman laughing out loud, they retreated in despair.
The Shetty boy had already gone to Dubai, entrusting his shop to a man who had come from his home village. Occasionally, Mogri remembered those moments of pleasure she had with the Shetty boy in the unfinished building. But she would become indifferent, as though she could create those moments in herself at any time. There were no signs of Baba returning from Ratnagiri. Mogri decided to look for a job. In an alley next to the vegetable market, she saw the newly-opened Sundar Bar with a board outside saying ‘Ladies Wanted’, and went straight inside. It was a dingy room, like a matchbox, with lamps that seemed to throw darkness rather than light. There were longish seats, the smell of agarbattis mixed with cigarette smoke and a ceiling so low that you could hit your head on it. Mogri felt like she had stepped into a luxury bus. In the bar, leaning against each seat, stood women like decorated dolls.
It took only a few minutes for Mogri to learn the work. One had to dress nicely and as fashionably as possible. When the women workers came inside, the manager made them all stand in a line and sprayed perfume on their necks and saris. Laughing, they would smear it on their arms and bodies before going to their positions. When a customer came in, they had to smile. They had to bring the customer his drink from the counter. If it was beer, it had to be poured without spilling over. When Mogri poured beer for the first time without spilling a drop, the manager and the waiters were all impressed. These were the prescribed rules. After these, everything depended on individual talent. How to flirt with customers, how to pretend to be angry and say ‘Naughty, naughty’. How to bend while pouring out the beer so that the jasmine flowers in her hair tickled the customer’s nose. How to touch even while not touching, and move swiftly away. No limits to the games of the secret treasure. Very soon, Mogri became the queen of that game. Her skill left the other girls jealous. She began to get large tips. The manager who sat at the counter played umpire from a distance. He would indicate who was out, who was caught leg-before-wicket, who should be avoided, who should be left alone and how the lords of the underworld should be treated. It took just a week for Mogri to master all this.
The men who bought vegetables at the market with serious faces. The men who dropped their uniformed children to s
chool in their cars. The men who dressed up to go with their wives to weddings. All of them came into this bar surreptitiously, and came to get drunk. Mogri began to feel sorry for them. They waited in agony for her slightest touch. But if they saw her on the street, they would ignore her. If she smiled familiarly at them, they behaved as though they had stepped on a snake. Slowly, Mogri became the leader of the girls in the bar. She fought to have an autorickshaw to drop the girls – who went out with notes stuffed into their blouses – to their homes at night or at least to the nearest station. She began to learn the many facets of the game. There were married women there too, and ones with children. One of their husbands used to come to pick up his wife himself. They used to put their mangalsutras away and come to the bar with assumed names – Mona, Reena, Rekha – so that they wouldn’t be recognized. Girls from the western suburbs went to work in the eastern suburbs and the other way around. No one let on at home that they were working in a bar. The same women who walked upright on the street would shrink into themselves and perhaps use an umbrella for cover when they slipped into the bar, or they would come through the back door even if it meant walking through slush. This used to upset Mogri. ‘Let the customers slink in if they like,’ she argued, ‘but why should we come in like thieves?’ The other women were irritated by her ideas. She told everyone she worked in the bar, and swaggered down the street before entering through the main door. If customers asked her name, she would jokingly say ‘Why do you want to know my name?’ but never lied to them. In her chawl, the girls who were waiting to get married began to avoid her. But all the uncles and kakas and mamas began to look at her in a new way. When her father came back from his Ratnagiri exile, he brought mangoes with him. When he heard that Baby was working in a bar, he was upset, but couldn’t open his mouth in front of her. He took some of the mangoes to his other family in Jogeshwari. Only Mogri’s mother knew that he had small children there. Mogri felt angry. Although she had accepted the woman in Ratnagiri as her father’s first wife, it seemed far more difficult to accept the third one in Jogeshwari.
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