No Presents Please

by Jayant Kaikini

  Madhubani froze. ‘No, Papa, I can’t do it.’

  ‘What!’ uttered Sohanlal.

  ‘What’s so great in giving them the answers I’ve learned by heart? Those people who ask questions or give prizes haven’t heard of Jyotsna Bhabhi and Sejal, have they? Fifteen thousand people died in Bhopal, not just four! Three lakh people are still suffering. What does that man know about all this? It’s merely a quiz question for him. I don’t want any of this…’ She started walking briskly away through the corridor.

  ‘Stop, stop!’ cried Sohanlal.

  They had to step aside so that a stretcher could be wheeled past into the ICU. A nurse, holding a glucose bottle and feeling the patient’s pulse, was saying, ‘Quick, quick.’

  Sohanlal caught Madhubani’s hand and made her sit down on the white bench outside the ICU. Several people were sitting around waiting to be sent on an errand by anyone coming out of the ICU. Madhubani felt bad that she couldn’t see the face of the man who was taken in, wondering miserably if it was Buddhooram. The bench they sat on was made of old wood, and had grown smooth with people sitting on it. Sohanlal took Madhubani’s hand, and said, ‘Don’t be stubborn. Come, make up your mind.’

  Madhubani’s mind was inside the ICU. Was it Buddhooram behind the frosted glass? If that was so, were his relatives here? She began to look around. It seemed as though the people were looking at her own father with concern. So she turned to him, and realized he was sobbing quietly, with his hands covering his face. She tried to pull his hands away, and shook him gently. Those next to them indicated to her soundlessly that she should let him be.

  After weeping for five minutes, Sohanlal muttered, ‘I’ll show them, I’ll show our townspeople … why I ran away fifty years ago … show them…’ He began to sob again.

  ‘Now what happened? Come, let’s go have lunch,’ said his daughter.

  ‘They said I had stolen something and run away. I was very young then, Madhu. Then they spread the rumour that I was a smuggler in Ankleshwar. Then they said I was in jail. Arre! Just because a person is not around anymore doesn’t mean that everyone can badmouth him. Destroy him in their minds. No one wanted anything good to happen to me. Do they know with what difficulty I’ve built a life? I’ll show them … Let them see my daughter on TV. I’ve led a respectable life. Let them see how I’ve brought up my daughter so that people can applaud her. Madhu, you have to answer the world’s questions in front of everyone. You have to win a prize. Then the whole world will look at you. The townspeople will see you too. They’ll see me too on TV, in the audience. Then everyone will know. Please … Madhu … please…’ said Sohanlal, holding her hand. Without hearing what he was saying, the expressions of the people around them seemed to only suggest that the patient would get well and he shouldn’t worry.

  Not knowing how to comfort her father, Madhubani merely said, ‘Theek Papa, sure.’ She made him get up and go towards the canteen with her. They ordered rice plates. Sohanlal took the puris, papad and gulab jamun from his plate and piled them onto Madhubani’s. How can I lessen his pain? How can I quieten his turmoil? wondered Madhubani. The father who had encouraged her to study day and night, who worked overtime in the factory to save money for this trip, who begged and pleaded with the production manager these last two hours, the bile that had aged him prematurely … how it had all come out while sitting on that bench outside the ICU. She realized it would be impossible to tell him that it was fifty years ago and no one cared anymore about anything in his hometown. That place was nowhere but in his own mind. That was what had provoked him to work so hard and brought him where he was now. How could she tell him that they needn’t live by other people’s standards? As though it was the only way she could make him happy, she asked him in a lively voice, ‘Papa, what was the amount first decided as compensation for the Bhopal victims?’

  Like a man with a new lease of life, Sohanlal pulled a small old blue diary from his pocket and started thumbing through the pages.

  ‘First finish your lunch, Papa, and then tell me,’ said Madhubani.

  ‘Here, the jamun’s really nice. You should eat half. After we finish eating, let’s go over all the questions again. Exactly at four p.m. we have to go inside,’ said Sohanlal seriously.

  Madhubani sat on the lawn and went through the diary. Her father’s helpless esteem for her had once again skewed her attitude towards the world of questions. Suddenly Sohanlal shouted ‘Buddhooram!’

  He was standing near the hospital’s main entrance, examining a statue that was there. Hearing Sohanlal’s voice, he signalled to both of them to come closer. Madhubani ran to him, and Sohanlal followed her.

  ‘Still haven’t finished your quiz? Look here … this is the statue of a man called Nanavati who set up this hospital. See how nice the stone is? See how well made it is? But here’s a quiz question for you. Are the spectacles on the statue real? Don’t you feel like putting a finger through it to see if there is glass or not? Isn’t it funny? A stone statue with real glasses!’ Buddhooram laughed heartily.

  Madhubani also found it odd. The glasses of this seemingly eternal statue seemed ephemeral.

  ‘There are people who steal such things too. The Gandhi statue in the town square also doesn’t escape the thieves. Maybe the really big statues don’t have to worry.’

  ‘Whatever you say, the glasses look quite funny, no?’ Then he went on, ‘Okay, ask your quizmaster this question. Are the spectacles on a statue real or fake? Four options: A. Fake; B. Real; C. Three-fourths fake; D. Three-fourths real.’ Buddhooram laughed.

  Both father and daughter found his laughter beautiful. Madhubani felt like stroking his cheek. As though fulfilling her wish, Sohanlal patted Buddhooram’s cheek. ‘For that last round, she needs your good wishes. We’ve come from far away,’ he said.

  ‘Even the moonlight comes from a distant town,’ said Buddhooram. ‘And once it gets here, tell me where she lives. Quick … Tick … tick … tick…’

  ‘I know the answer,’ said Madhubani.

  ‘Great,’ said Buddhooram. Then he observed the doctors coming on their rounds and said, ‘Baap re! I’m finished!’ He dashed into the lift, limping a bit as he ran. Until the lift doors closed on him, he kept laughing luminously. Because one leg of his hospital pyjamas seemed shorter than the other, it gave him a mischievous air.

  The father and daughter went down the steps into the basement and inside the studio. The rules were announced. The spot boys made way for Madhubani with compassion. The quizmaster was not to be seen. Sohanlal was made to sit in the audience next to a woman in a blue sari. He sat, smiling and waving a hand at his daughter. Just then the quizmaster came out from the make-up room wearing a new coat like a bridegroom. But his yellow tie had been swung onto his shoulder during the make-up session, and he had forgotten to re-position it. This made him look a little comic. The tie was on his back, funny – like the statue’s glasses. Who would tell him? How would he ever come to know?

  ‘Silence.’ Everyone sat quietly. Madhubani was made to stand on the side of the set, being told to go up to her place on the stage when called. In the darkness, standing in that strange silence, Madhubani took out the paper boat from her purse. Holding it in her palm, slowly closing her eyes, she prayed in earnest: ‘God, please let Kareena come.’ The small paper boat carrying all the weight of the world like a flower started moving forward slowly in the moonlight.

  ‘Tik Tik Geleya’, 2004

  NO PRESENTS PLEASE

  The half-finished Ghatkopar flyover looked like a bridge that had been bombed. The iron spikes of the columns between the unfinished stretches on either side seemed to be piercing the sky which could be seen trapped in between. Below, the vehicles crawled their way through the construction rubble and slowly disappeared. This was the fate of all roads. A man could stop wherever he wanted, but a road?

  By the side of such a road, holding a large album wrapped in plastic, twenty-two-year-old Popat stands, distraught. His fiancé As
avari Lokhande, who works in the ball pen factory on the opposite side of the road, is about to appear on a one-hour break. In the album are samples of wedding invitations. He has borrowed it from a friend who works in a printing press. Popat and Asavari have to choose one from these samples and give the card for printing today, in anticipation of their wedding. That is why Popat has gone on the night shift.

  Asavari was never late. As the cloud of cement dust from two passing trucks settled, she emerged from it as if in a dream sequence from a film, waving her hand. Her hair was so tightly tied in a bun that no truck’s slipstream could loosen it. Her eyes were sparkling, quite unaffected by the dust. Popat held up the album for her to see, looked to either side, and dashed across the road as though he were swimming, clutching the album to his chest.

  Even the dry afternoon breeze seemed refreshing to Asavari. ‘So you brought it,’ she said happily. There was a domesticity in her voice that appealed to Popat, it was as if she had said ‘Did you bring the rice and dal?’

  ‘We don’t have much time. Have to decide soon. Let’s sit somewhere here.’ Popat looked around for a seat, and led Asavari through the rows of huge stone slabs meant for use in the flyover. There was a bit of shade cast by one of the slabs. The silence of the hot afternoon included the sounds of the passing trucks, the mixers churning the pebbles and concrete, and the local trains passing every minute at the Kanjurmarg Station nearby.

  Sitting down on a pockmarked stone, Asavari took the album from Popat and began leafing through it. He saw the sweat on her slender neck and felt more intimate towards her. As she turned the pages, colourful mock-ups of invitations scrolled by. None of them had any text. Looking at them, Asavari was frightened. These empty wedding invitations without any writing looked like the empty municipal housing board flats that no one went to live in, like empty wedding halls. As she looked silently at the samples, Popat said, ‘Look at this one. The bouquets of flowers, the touch of haldi-kumkum – looks quite real. It’s done through screen-printing.’ He helped Asavari turn the heavy pages. ‘This sort of expensive thing is not for us,’ was the undercurrent of his words.

  For Asavari, the album seemed like a bundle of countless possibilities. All sorts of weddings and all sorts of families lay inside as did the sounds of all kinds of orchestras and brass bands. But it wasn’t difficult to find a few simple and inexpensive varieties – they were all in the last section of the album. Both of them liked a card in pale pink. On either side was a small fold, with a line drawing of a pair of birds. ‘This one is fine,’ said Popat with pride, shaking Asavari’s hand.

  Asavari slipped the card out of its plastic folder and held it in her hand.

  ‘Hey, it will get dirty. Put it back in. My friend at the press gave me the album. No customer gets such special treatment. Put it back, put it back!’ jabbered Popat.

  Asavari slapped his head lightly and said, ‘Chhup!’

  On the bridge above, a truck raised its rear and poured out a load of sand. Below, the two sat amidst the stones, gazing with concentration at the pale pink card. The card looked back at them, giving them a small fright, as though it hid a mysterious secret about their future wedded life. Scenes flashed past: drinking sugarcane juice together; walking through lonely parks talking loving nonsense; her wanting to travel in the ladies’ compartment and his insisting on her coming into the general, and putting his arm around her in that hostile crowd; her making a scene at the bus stop, saying that she wouldn’t marry him if he wore a safari suit; her walking out of the shop where a salesman had taunted him with earrings way beyond his budget, her saying they were not good enough for the price, and thus freeing him from a spell. These scattered images were now going to be tied together by a heavy rope, the pink card mirroring this merciless law of society. Like a closed fortress door, the card seemed to be telling them: ‘Look’, ‘Think.’

  If they counted all their friends on both sides, the number would probably be a hundred. But even if they printed only a hundred invitations, they would still have to pay for three hundred, which is why the friend at the press had told them that they might as well print the higher number. A serious problem faced them: what would they do with the remaining cards, who would they give them to? It was possible that they could increase their circle of friends and relatives by giving out the cards to the panwala, the istriwala, the guard in the park, the boys who stood at signals selling stale flowers they took from yesterday’s arrangements in the big hotels. All the people one knew over the years without knowing them, or knew but did not really know, those who smiled from beyond a Lakshman rekha. With the card, they might come wearing ironed clothes, cross the line, shake hands with the bride and groom, and go back across the line again. The working women might start leaving their small children in their rented rooms. They might get invited to other people’s weddings.

  Wearing new clothes, you might change buses and trains, sit yawning on metal folding chairs in a pandal somewhere amidst strangers, have other strangers ladling food onto your plate, take a mug of water from another stranger to wash your hands, chew your betel leaf and nut and leave quietly without saying goodbye to anyone. So who was kin and friend, and who was not?

  The shadow of the broken bridge moved eastward with the sun. Asavari and Popat stood up and walked towards the kala-khatta vendor who stood beyond a heap of construction pebbles. They asked for a ‘by-two’. Popat was of the firm belief that a ‘by-two’ yielded more of the beverage than one full glass. Asavari shrieked that she didn’t want ice. She believed that the more ice there was, the less juice the glass held. As they drained the last drops, the vendor looked at them mischievously, thinking they were secret lovers searching for privacy, and waved at a nearby junkyard filled with old cement mixers: ‘You can go there if you like. I’ll keep an eye out for anyone coming this way.’

  Asavari’s face burned, as though something in the atmosphere was mocking the pink wedding card. She drank up the juice, put down her glass and said, ‘Let’s go to the platform,’ and started walking briskly towards Kanjurmarg Station through a shortcut. Feeling that the card had the power to lift them from filth, Asavari sat down on the cement bench on platform three and started drafting the text of the invitation on a piece of paper she found in her purse.

  Popat had run after her, clutching the album to his chest. He now stood panting, watching her write out the words. Her pen shook in the breeze, and seemed to have stopped in embarrassment. It was customary for the elders, the parents, to invite the wedding guests. This was what they had seen on invitation cards. But these two, without a past, born from the city’s navel and raised by the city, did not know what to do now. They did not know who their parents were. They could not even think of anyone they could name as elders or well-wishers. Asavari cast her thoughts to the khaki-clad women in the remand home in Chembur. Popat thought of the old Parsi gentleman who gave him an extra four annas when he used to polish shoes opposite Churchgate Station. Asavari felt deflated. Popat looked into space.

  Popat had first seen her when he had got a ‘temp’ job for six months at the ball pen factory. She worked deftly in the department that separated bad ball pens from good. When the supervisor sometimes shouted at her, the other girls who giggled with her and shared their lunch boxes maintained their distance and acted more involved in their tasks, seemingly unconnected to her public humiliation. This had caused Popat a lot of pain. As she had seen this pain in his helpless eyes, their worlds had united.

  Looking unseeingly at a local train passing by, Popat said, ‘Just our names will do. Hurry up and write. And no Marathi or Hindi. My friends don’t know Marathi. Write in English. You know how to.’

  ‘No, I will get Varsha Madam to write it for me.’

  ‘No, no, it has to be ready in half an hour. Write it yourself. Then I’ll get the bookseller on the platform, Mr Tripathi, to check it for mistakes.’

  Placing the piece of paper on the album, Asavari started writing in English: ‘We invite you
to our wedding reception at Phanaswadi Chawl on…’ Then she shook her head and scratched through the sentence. Suddenly she wrote: ‘Popat marries Asavari Lokhande’, then scratched it out and wrote ‘Asavari Lokhande marries Popat’. Either way it sounded like one was doing the other a favour. She went back to writing ‘We are getting married, etc.…’ and then wrote their names below, hers to the right and Popat’s to the left. Seeing the names together for the first time on this little piece of paper in English letters, Asavari shivered, feeling as though they were submitting themselves to a sanctified social structure.

  Suddenly she placed both her hands on her ears, closed her eyes and sobbed, internalizing this moment. Having moved closer to her on the bench, Popat looked at her intently. A home, a kitchen with pots and pans, a toran on the door, feast days, toothbrush, soap, curtains – the lucky few who had all these and alongside whom he had walked on the street – a life he never thought they would have had suddenly been brought close to them by the scribbled text of an invitation card.

  Asavari continued to keep her eyes shut. Popat looked at the paper in her hand and read the words aloud. ‘Asavari Lokhande.’ Compared with this solid name, his own – Popat – looked trashy. Somehow this didn’t seem fair. Something was not in order. Two boys with a slender ladder were pasting cinema posters in separate pieces on the hoardings on the platform. Feeling cheated, Popat said, ‘Your name is so sturdy. And it has a surname too. Seems like the name of a posh family. Mine is nothing in front of yours. It’s not even a man’s name. In your Marathi, Popat means a parrot, doesn’t it? I’m an ordinary parrot…’

  ‘Cheh,’ said Asavari. ‘How stupid you are. It’s a name given to you lovingly, isn’t it?’

  He grabbed her hand. ‘Lovingly, my foot. It’s a useless name. Anyway, what caste is your name?’

  Asavari was shocked. This was not language he had ever used. This was language unrelated to them.