by Sid Bahri
Only in the five minute break before the accounts class started that I made a few introductions; a short girl who sat next to me introduced herself as Shipra and the boy who sat behind me was Aditya. The accounts class started and that was all I could find out until the recess.
The bell rang to signal that it was recess and I opened the tiffin box that my mother had packed for me. Suddenly, the smell of paranthas and pickle pervaded the classroom and everyone’s attention turned towards me, as if I had committed a cardinal sin. It had been ordinary to do this in my school at Solan and I had expected it to be the same.
“Why don’t you go out of the class and eat this stuff?” an anonymous gruff voice from the back of the class shouted out. “Junglee girl from Solan,” said another anonymous girl’s voice.
It was obvious why Ms Kapoor had stressed on ‘settle in’. Fifty-nine of the sixty students had studied together for the last ten years, they had known each other, they were friends or foes or indifferent to each other, but I was a new entrant and I would need to settle in. I would need to make my place among the other fifty-nine.
“They’re crazy; don’t let them bother you,” Shipra said in a consolatory, sympathetic tone.
“I love paranthas. My mother can barely wake up in time to give me this boring butter toast,” said Aditya and lunged the three feet from his desk to grab the paranthas.
Within the first few weeks of knowing Aditya, I knew he would never become an accountant. Even after studying accountancy for over a year, he wasn’t getting any better at ledger entries and would often be confused between debit and credit entries. When you can’t master ledger entries, a balance sheet is a distant dream. It wasn’t short of a miracle that he had cleared the last exams, barely scraping through with a grace mark from the gracious teacher. And even though his parents had a private tutor coming home to teach him accounts, there was still little hope that he would succeed. Meanwhile, my grades in English remained poor. How could they be better when all along I had only spoken in Hindi? Ms Kapoor spoke to my parents and offered to coach me. I think people come into your life for a reason. Maybe Ms Kapoor was one of those people who leave an indelible mark on you. Under the pretext of tuitions, she moulded me. Not only did my grades in English improve, but she gave me confidence that I so severely lacked.
It was the early nineteen nineties, a time when India was metamorphosing; when fancy Coca Cola bottles in their bright red crates appeared on the pavements in front of shops. I was going through a transformation too, not unlike the caterpillar, which had never dreamt of becoming a butterfly, yet found itself in the middle of the chrysalis.
Back home, the situation was hardly getting any better. My biological parents were still cold. I wanted to go back to Solan. I wanted to speak to my parents but their visits had stopped and my phone calls went unattended. It was as if I had been estranged; my adopted parents took no interest in my well- being and my biological ones weren’t sure of the course they should take.
In the economics lecture about demand and supply, I had learnt that when the demand of a particular commodity drops, the importance or the price of the commodity comes down. In my context, I was the commodity. I had been wanted and cherished until my parents had had their own. And now, as a matter of convenience, when my importance was diminished, I had been sent back to the supplier, my biological parents.
I was still hopeful that it would be temporary but as the days turned to weeks, a fear gnawed me that the laws of economics were true and I was indeed that commodity.
Aditya
I don’t have a place to stay, so I check with the clerk at the front desk if I can extend my stay. He confirms in the affirmative. Like a caveman, who has found a cave to spend the night, I venture out for food. The warmth of the currency notes want me to go out and live my life as I once had. I leave the drear of the guest house and walk a couple of miles to go to Culinaire in Greater Kailash 2. I love the place, not only for its food but for the memories that I have from that place.
The waiters have changed; they don’t recognize me as a regular. I order a raw papaya salad that was my favourite. They refuse to change. They refuse to get an appetizer for thirty minutes. I seize the opportunity and call up Jasleen to tell her that I have cleared the first round of the interview. “I’ll just wait here a couple of days for the other rounds to get scheduled,” I say.
She doesn’t care. I wonder if she thinks of me as furniture. Who really misses a couch being away for a couple of days?
The food is still as good as I remember it to be. The flavourful Thai curry is still as sumptuous as I had known it. After dinner is over, I walk back to the guesthouse.
The clerk wants a deposit and ID. I hadn’t bothered to check the rental for the room. At a thousand rupees a night, it could be considered cheap but my circumstances are different. The place is accessible and that I am only going to be around for the next couple of days doesn’t make me move out.
I wake up the next morning to Divya’s call. “Are you available in the afternoon for a couple of hours?”
I reply in the affirmative.
Divya tells me that she has spoken to a friend about me. “She’ll be there this afternoon. Where are you staying?”
I am still lying on the bed and look at the key that lies on the bedside table. It helps me remember the room number.
“The same place. Room 241,” I say.
“The going rate is about five thousand an hour but you can easily charge six. However, we will wait to hike the rates,” she says.
I want to ask her if that is really the rate, why she paid me only five thousand for the entire day yesterday. A commodity, selling by the hour shouldn’t ask questions that can harm its chances of selling. I am reminded about a wise saying, ‘If you’re warm and happy in a pile of shit, keep your mouth shut’. I follow the wisdom.
“And my commission will be ten per cent,” she continues.
I have found my pimp. I am really and truly on my way. In the thirty hours since I alighted the train, I have a rate, a pimp and a new client. What else can a gigolo ask for?
The dinner yesterday was a little extravagant and I choose to have cheaper Aloo paranthas at a Dhaba. I know these places. I lived long enough in Delhi during those salad days to know where and how to save money. When my job ended and Jasleen got a transfer to Chandigarh, I was unhappy to leave Delhi. There is so much character that this city possesses.
I am back in the hotel room and flipping through random channels on TV to fill my time. I stop at Bloomberg and find that Citibank has quoted another quarterly loss. Sometimes, I can’t stop feeling happy when I hear this about them. It tells me that the Karma theory is true.
I am still burping from the Aloo paranthas when my cell phone rings. The lady on the line introduces herself as Ratna.
“Just calling to confirm. I’ll be there by three,” she says.
I think it is wise to brush my teeth before she makes it over. I don’t usually brush after every meal but then, it’s not often that I have a meeting with a client after lunch.
At the stroke of three, Ratna knocks on the door. It is as if she was waiting outside for it to strike three.
“Hi, you must be Aditya,” she says in a funny drawl. Something about her reminds me of a school teacher that I once had.
“Yes ma’am, I am,” I say, exactly as I would’ve addressed the geography teacher.
“Ratna’s the name, darling,” she says. I am not sure how some people can inspire hate. She is such an impostor. Every word she says is shallow and superficial.
Ratna is in her early forties. She must have been a looker in her heydays. The wrinkles and blemishes that her age has given her aren’t able to take the beauty away. Her body is plump. I am sure that beneath the blue sari, the thighs and calves have cellulite deposits. I am so used to pineapple jelly by now that it doesn’t make me cringe. The enormous cleavage that she is using to draw attention to herself, gives away tell- tale stretch mark
s.
“Divya tells me great things about you,” she winks at me as she says that. She is false as hell. I detest her from that moment on. My conscience says something to me about not having to do this. I tell it to shut up.
“Really? And how do you know her?” I ask her. Two can play this game.
“She works in the same office as my husband,” she says. Interesting fact, but how can I make her get rid of this irritating drawl?
In a move that startles her, I pull her towards me and smother her lips with my mouth. It can be construed as a kiss. It is a tool to get rid of this nasal drawl that makes me nauseous. It is like kissing a sponge, so I withdraw. Maybe, the drawl is better.
“And what else did she tell you?” I ask.
“That you are quite charming both in bed and outside,” she wants another kiss, so she moves her face at an angle. I ignore her. I am not going to do this again. Even gigolos have preferences.
“And you’ve come here to verify that she isn’t wrong?” I carry on.
“Yes, so should we get started?” she says.
In paying for sex, time is money. She again cocks her face wanting me to kiss her. NO, I am not doing it.
“Sure,” I say. I stand here and wait for her to make the next move.
She still has her face at that awkward angle that can give her a crick in the neck. To distract her, I reach out for her sari and let the pallu drop to the ground. I am a little more comfortable in being with a strange woman. I’ll be honest – there is pleasure in it for me too, but every gyration, every move is meant to give the client more pleasure than it gives me. I finally come and roll over, exhausted.
She looks up at the watch; it is only four. She sits up in bed and asks me, “How long have you been doing this?”
“Just about starting out,” I say
“I think you have a bright career ahead of you,” she says. For the first time in the past hour, I don’t smell pretence.
Even then, the enormity of the situation hits me. This is now my career. I am a professional.
“Thanks,” I say with great humility. “Are you from Delhi?” she asks. “No, from Chandigarh,” I reply.
“Do you have family there?” she probes on.
“Yes.”
I reply in monosyllables hoping this conversation ends.
“Your wife?” she asks.
She isn’t very bright. She doesn’t take the hint
“Yes,” I reply.
I feel like I am being interrogated
“Children?” she asks.
“No, don’t have any. What about you?” I ask her.
“Yes, they are both studying abroad,” she replies.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Don’t ask personal questions,” she says. She is offended. This is lesson number two in my short career. Do not ask personal questions, just answer them.
Ratna takes great offence to my last question and starts getting dressed. I apologize to her and she softens a little.
“Please walk me down to my car,” she says.
Her pretentious nasal drawl is back with a vengeance.
“It was a pleasure having you over,” I say in my closing speech
“You are a darling, I’ll recommend you,” she says.
I am happy to see her drive out in her white Audi. I know the answer to my question: Loads of money, no family and utter boredom. I can’t care less if it is any other reason because before she left, she handed me some cash that makes her feel tolerable.
My sojourn in Delhi ends two days later.
I am no accountant but I know that net of expenses and commissions, I have made a good amount of money.
When Divya offers to drop me to the train station, I accept. I still have to pay my broker and pimp her commission. She counts the currency that I give her. She beams and says, “You’ll have to move to Delhi, Adi.”
Radhika
Shipra and I would take turns trying to get Aditya to understand the basic concepts of accounting but he refused to learn. I wondered if he was a little slow or dyslexic when it came to accounts; he had such a huge mental block. He didn’t seem dumb when you saw the scores on the other subjects.
“Debit what comes in, credit what goes out,” I tried one last time
“Comes in where?” Aditya said
“As an asset,” I replied
“Isn’t the bank account an asset?” he asked
“Yes, it appears on the asset side of the balance sheet.”
“Then don’t you credit an account?” he asked.
“Yes, in a non-accounting sense. In accounts, you will debit the bank account.” I said
“This is fuck-all. I don’t want to understand this dumb shit,” he said faced with his familiar mental block.
“How will you pass?” I asked.
“Fuck knows. I’m going to play soccer. You coming?” he asked unilaterally ending the free class.
Aditya was a great friend, unlike most other boys in the class. He was loyal and always willing to help. So many times, he would be at fisticuffs with the other boys when they would tease me. I wanted to reciprocate his gesture by helping him in his studies but it seemed like a futile exercise.
We were about three months short of the board exams and he was still struggling with debit and credit entries. The entire class had moved ahead to cash flow statements and analysis of financial statements. I really did want to help him not only because he was a friend, but because of a certain fondness that I had developed for him. A feeling, that girls my age would best describe as a crush. I wasn’t sure if he felt the same and I didn’t have the courage to ask lest he take offence. After all, he was precious; the only male amongst the thirty-five who would even speak to me.
On the face of it we were just two very different people – he was hot blooded and aggressive while I was passive and calm; he was indifferent and unattached while I was emotional and grounded; he was strong and athletic and I couldn’t run a hundred metres. We were poles apart and yet, opposites attract. It looked like it was always going to be a one-sided affair.
I could be best described as a social misfit in school. I didn’t belong amongst the crowd of students who came from rich backgrounds. Maybe, that was that reason why Shipra, Aditya and I made a trio. I still wonder why I never spoke to him about it. It had to be the fear of rejection. I would have, probably, been broken if he had rejected me. Maybe, if my adopted parents hadn’t abandoned me, I’d have had the courage to tell him my feelings. By now, I was convinced that I had been abandoned. I knew that I had been a commodity that was past its shelf life. It left me shattered and if it hadn’t been for Ms Kapoor, I might not have survived. When I had walked into the doors of YPS two years ago, I had been little more than a village girl. She had changed me. I wasn’t the same Radhika who wore her oiled hair in braids with red ribbons for company. I wasn’t the same Radhika who had worn a skirt two inches below the knees, leaving four inches of unwaxed legs on display. I wasn’t the same girl of fifteen who wore a men’s vest under her uniform blouse.
I didn’t even know when those two years passed. I didn’t even know when my friendship with Aditya changed to love. I walked away from school on the day of the farewell – happy for what I had become but sad that I would be separated from Aditya. A little melancholic because I had never been able to tell him what I had felt for him. I think first loves are always like that.
Aditya
On the train back from Delhi, I can’t stop thinking about my situation. I question myself to gain a few answers.
Yet, I am no closer to an answer. My upbringing doesn’t allow me to be what I am. At times, when I’m weak, I remember my grandfather. He had fought the odds and here I am succumbing to them.
My grandfather, Sardar Iqbal Singh, had moved away from a tiny village outside Lahore in Pakistani Punjab. At the time of the Partition, he left behind an ancestral home and large tracts of land. With my father, his only son and his wife in tow, he
had braved the refugee camps and the perils until he had reached Delhi. When I was young, he would often sit me on his lap and talk to me of the times that he had seen. The times of distrust, looting and rioting, but the Punjabis are a tough race. They fall down and they rebuild. They lose and they reconstruct. And Sardar Iqbal Singh did too.
He reached Delhi and claimed five acres of land as compensation for all that he had left behind. The land allotted to him was in Uttar Pradesh. A piece that was fertile and well- irrigated. A part of him wanted to remain the farmer that he was, but then sometimes life sends opportunities and one seizes them. He chose to remain in Delhi, sold off the land allotted to him and took a risk by investing every last penny that he owned into a garment-manufacturing business.
The hordes of refugees that had poured into Delhi needed clothes. A small shop in Karol Bagh which housed three tailors and one seamstress was able to fulfil that need. The risk had paid off until he was able to not only provide enough for the family but had enough surpluses to reinvest into the business. It took time, it took long sleepless nights, and it took trips to Surat and Ludhiana. The refugees couldn’t afford much and he was forced to procure raw material that was cheap enough to leave him with a margin. He expanded the business to have five shops in the new colonies that were coming up on the outskirts of Delhi and a workshop that could house over twenty tailors. As an outcome, my father, Surjeet Singh was able to receive his education at St. Lawrence School in Sanawar and St. Stephens College in Delhi.
His education helped an already flourishing business take bigger shape. His first contribution in expanding the footprint of the business was to procure an export license. Through some of the contacts that he had established at school, the father and son duo were now not only running eight shops in Delhi, but also exporting readymade garments to the United Kingdom and the United States. It was in 1974 that they had consolidated and bought land in Faridabad to set up a factory. A factory, sophisticated enough to house state of the art machinery and large enough to house enough tailors and seamstresses to be able to fulfil the huge bulk orders that were coming in.