by Kunal
some with television antennas popping out of the ubiquitous blue plastic sheets covering holes in
their roofs. He had to carefully navigate the bustling street crowded with women in green and
orange saris, strings of jasmine flowers wrapped around their buns like soft clouds of scented
wonder; little girls in blue uniforms, their pigtails tied with bright red ribbons, walking home after
school; and two- and three-wheelers that honked intermittently at stray cows blocking their path.
A sudden spray of tiny pebbles made Bablu’s bicycle wobble. He looked around, trying to find the
mischief-maker, only to see some schoolboys, pebbles still in hand, looking straight at him and
laughing mockingly. He recognized one of the boys as the shopkeeper Ganjkaran’s son but decided
to ignore them.
A small, freshly painted house loomed ahead, his pride and joy, coated with Asian Paints’ White
Satin by Bablu himself just a few months ago. He parked his bicycle, unhooked the plastic bag
dangling from the handlebar, slung it over his shoulder and with a thick metal chain locked his
cycle to the pole outside his house.
As he was walking towards his door, he heard a familiar nasal voice call out, ‘Pervert!’ He looked
up – it was his neighbour’s wife Parul, standing at her kitchen window glaring at him, her gold
nose pin gleaming in the sun as she washed the dishes.
He stood still, looking back at her. If he could not call her names, he could at least show her that
she did not cow him. She, aside from being an expert gossip, was an expert at the art of
intimidation and did not back down.
Minutes passed with both refusing to lower their gaze. Bablu began to get bored with this ‘waiting
without blinking’ game, and invented a new one. Keeping his gaze fixed on her, he began to chant
dha dhin dhin dha – the simple, repetitive beat that he had learnt playing the tabla as a child – and
began fumbling through a series of vigorous dance movements, flinging his arms about, balancing
precariously on one leg. It was the most eccentric kind of ballet, a clumsy cross between Kathak
and the moves he had seen in Bollywood films.
Parul looked at him puzzled, but when he continued with his ungainly pirouettes and started
advancing towards her, she nervously shrieked, ‘Gowri, Gowri! Come out!’
Bablu’s wife, Gowri, rushed outside, with Choti, their dog, following closely at her heels. Seeing
her husband leaping around like a lunatic in the sun, she said, ‘Stop this! What are you doing?’ He
immediately came to an awkward halt, not wanting to tell her what Parul had called him.
It would set off yet another argument between the two of them – and these had been happening too
often for his liking. He muttered softly, ‘If she is going to stare at me each time I come home, I may
as well give her something to look at.’
Parul, sensing that she once again had the upper hand, her prodigious stomach pressing against the
windowsill, leaned out of her kitchen window, pointed at Bablu and, in a voice dripping with
scorn, said, ‘Gowri, why don’t you take your husband to some big doctor, he is stark raving mad, I
tell you!’
Gowri, her head lowered, silently tugged at her husband’s arm, pulling him towards the open front
door.
Bablu hung his shirt and grey pants on a hook behind the door and changed into an airy cotton vest
and a pair of worn-out pyjamas. He sat cross-legged on the cement floor waiting for Gowri to
place the steel plates filled with their lunch on the floor.
Gowri had not uttered a single word since they had walked inside. Her green glass bangles jingled
angrily as she went about her chores, the only sound that broke the stifling silence between the
husband and wife.
Bearing a single plate heaped with rice, cauliflower curry and some sliced onions, she placed it
with a sharp thud in front of him. Bablu looked at his wife searchingly.
A little more than a year ago Gowri had been a stranger and now here she was, his life partner, the
one person who was meant to stand by his side through the good and bad times.
Gowri was a small-built woman with a nondescript face, and deep-set brown eyes under her thick
eyebrows. Her most striking feature was a charming smile that revealed a tiny gap between her
two front teeth and softened her face to girlishness. It was the smile that he had noticed when they
first met at her mother’s house. A smile that he had not seen for many weeks now.
Bablu caught her hand and pulled her down to sit beside him. ‘Gowri, please stop this, come here.’
And when she did not respond, he asked, ‘Do you also believe what I am doing is wrong?’ Gowri
finally looked at him and said, ‘It does not matter if it is right or wrong, please just stop all this.
Everyone in the town is saying you have lost your mind. You want to know the truth? Even your
mother has gone to consult Goraksh Baba hoping he can suggest some remedy!’
Bablu sighed. ‘There is no point in explaining anything to you people.’ He finished his meal in
silence, feeling tired and heavy. And though he desperately wanted to lie down and rest, he
decided that this was the best time to finish his work. The roads would all be empty, the intense
afternoon heat driving everyone indoors.
Bablu stood up, opened the dented Godrej cupboard in one corner of the room, rummaged under
his shirts till he found the sanitary napkin and placed it inside the briefs that he had bought
especially for the occasion – it was a snug brown pair, very different from what he usually wore,
loose, striped boxers that dangled almost till his knees.
He then took out a rubber bladder filled with blood from the plastic bag he had brought home. He
inserted a tube at one end and strapped the contraption to his hip gingerly with duct tape, already
anticipating the pain when he would have to rip it off.
The other end of the tube he tucked inside his new briefs. He pulled on his pants and put his
maroon shirt back on. Calling out, ‘Gowri, I left something unfinished at the workshop; I will be
back in an hour or so,’ he left the house.
Bablu walked around the neighbourhood, pressing the rubber bladder every now and then and
feeling the damp, sticky blood accumulate on the sanitary napkin. Within half an hour there was a
noxious odour surrounding him.
To his dismay he discovered that the lower end of the tube had slipped away from the sanitary
napkin, out of his underwear, and there was blood all over his crotch. He wanted to rush home
immediately before anyone saw him but if Gowri spotted him with bloodstained pants it would
lead to a war worse than the Mahabharata. He hurried to a nearby well, hoping to swiftly scrub his
pants and then go home.
The well was deserted aside from three stray dogs fighting over a dead mouse and a sickly looking
goat lying down near it. He took off his pants, and as he sat scrubbing at the bloodstains, he saw
Parul’s younger sister Lata walking towards the well.
She looked at Bablu quizzically as she came closer. He tried to stand up and pull his wet pants on,
but accidentally pressed the bladder instead and a large squirt of blood sprinkled over the well,
the goat and the muddy ground.
Lata stood still for a minute, shocked at this spectacle. Then she started screaming and made a
noisy getaway, sta
rtling several cows and four half-naked boys who were all defecating on the
side of the road one kilometre to the north.
The next day myriad rumours spread all over the small town. Bablu had turned into a demon, he
was a vampire who wanted to suck the blood of virgins, he was involved in perverse sexual
activities with female goats. Parul paraded Lata in front of the entire neighbourhood as the lucky
victim who all thanks to God’s kindness had escaped from Bablu’s diabolical intentions.
Gowri, who burst into hysterical tears on hearing about the incident, finally called her brother to
fetch her and went to stay at her mother’s house for an indefinite period of time.
2
Bablu was not a vampire or a demon and aside from looking on in alarm when he accidentally
sprayed blood all over the goat he had no interest in it either, sexual or otherwise. He was a
simple welder whose life had been ripped apart all because he had wanted to give Gowri a gift.
Bablu and Gowri had had an arranged marriage, after meeting just once, briefly, in the presence of
both their families.
Gowri in a blue-and-gold sari with pink lipstick inexpertly applied over her lips entered the small
living room and sat across the tall, thin stranger who was about to be her prospective groom.
Bablu did not quite know what to make of this creature with her head bowed and her eyes
lowered, but as he kept looking at her, Gowri’s little nephew sitting beside her whispered
something in her ear and she smiled, a radiant, toothy grin that lingered in her eyes for a few
moments even after she quickly schooled her features.
Kanchan Bua, Gowri’s aunt, pointed at the potato-filled kachoris and the jalebis on the table and
addressed Bablu’s mother, Bhairavi Kewat, ‘Bhairavi ji, like I told you Gowri is a wonderful
cook, she has made the kachoris, do try one.’
Bablu’s mother leisurely sipped her tea and then had a small bite of the piping-hot delicacy. She
was examining Gowri as she would a basket of tomatoes in Patri market, like she wanted to pick
her up and turn her around, fingers jabbing against the skin, looking for defects.
After a few minutes of silent deliberation over Gowri’s possible virtues against her probable
imperfections, Bhairavi Kewat finally said, ‘Kanchan ji, you were right, the kachoris are indeed
marvellous.’ And the matter was settled.
A letter was sent shortly afterwards with Bablu’s and, more importantly, his mother’s consent. And
after a small wedding on an auspicious day in March, Gowri became Mrs Prabhash Ram Kewat,
Bablu’s official name that was never used anywhere except on government documents like his
ration card.
3
In the first few months of their life together, Bablu would make it a point to surprise Gowri with
small gifts, telling her to close her eyes and then placing little objects in her hand, four bangles, a
packet of orange bindis, a 5 Star chocolate. These tiny gifts would be elaborately packed,
sometimes in large green leaves, sometimes with the glossy sections of old newspapers.
An arranged marriage is a peculiar situation where you marry a complete stranger and then go
about determinedly trying to fall in love with them. It is also crucial in the early stages of this
strange experiment that both parties try to put their best foot forward, husbands often by simply
refraining from publicly scratching their groins, and wives by trying to please their mothers-in-
law, formerly easy-going women who almost instantly turn into eagle-eyed perfectionists with the
arrival of a daughter-in-law.
Bablu Ram Kewat’s whimsically wrapped gifts were his way of weaving tenderness into a
marriage that only had the hardened bricks of shared caste and economic backgrounds as its
foundations. His attempts seemed to work – because Gowri always had her childlike smile to offer
him as a gift of her own when he came home, weary from the workshop.
4
The morning sun crept stealthily into the room through the cracks in the wooden window, sweeping
away shadows in the dusty corners, alighting over Bablu’s eyelids. He opened his eyes reluctantly
and stretched himself with a sigh of contentment, exposing the two holes in his vest under the left
armpit.
His mother and younger sister, Shalu, were both drinking tea in the kitchen and handed him a cup.
Looking for his wife, he sauntered out to the back porch and saw Gowri walking hurriedly towards
the bathroom, holding a bloodstained rag in her hand.
Concerned, he asked, ‘Gowri, what happened? Did you cut your hand, show me!’
He caught her hand, taking the rag from her before she could react. Flushing with embarrassment,
his wife snatched her arm away. Bablu looked at her with surprise and at the bloodstained cloth in
his hand. Understanding dawned in his eyes.
Gowri silently took the rag from him and went inside the bathroom. Later when she found him still
in their room, she immediately busied herself, combing her wet hair in front of the small mirror on
the wall, opening an orange plastic box filled with cream from the shelf next to it and rubbing it on
her face.
He asked her, ‘Gowri, can I ask you a question, that grubby cloth you had in your hand, is that what
you use, you know, for that uh…ladies’ problem?’
She nodded hesitantly and before he could ask her any more questions, his mother called out from
the front porch, ‘Bablu, I am going to Rachna’s house, I might stay there tonight. Her husband has
still not come back from Ahmedabad and Pintu has got chickenpox. Haan, listen, she was also
asking if you can come there after you finish with the workshop, and fix her boiler?’
Bablu replied, ‘Yes Ma, I will be there at six o’clock.’ And then Bhairavi Kewat added, ‘Arrey,
Bablu, this dog of yours has made a big mess near the steps, ask Gowri to clean it!’
He good-naturedly muttered ‘Yes Ma’ before taking an old newspaper and heading out to clean up
himself.
Cycling towards Dewas, where his workshop was located, he had to wait fifteen minutes at the
traffic lights. The dented red bus ahead of him refused to move as the driver was involved in a
screaming match with a rickshaw driver causing yet another traffic jam.
An old beggar woman, her hair dishevelled, skin covered in dust and wearing threadbare clothes,
walked up to him. Feeling sorry for her, Bablu took out a one-rupee coin from his pocket and
dropped it into the metal tin in her hand.
He watched her go to the autorickshaw standing next to him and engage in a long, hushed
conversation with the driver. Just as she moved away, he heard the driver say, ‘Yes Ma ji.’
Curious, he asked the autorickshaw driver, ‘You know her?’
The driver replied, ‘Yes, she is the owner of this rickshaw and has two more, she was telling me
to park it under the shed tonight because it looks like it is going to rain.’
Bablu laughed. ‘Bhaiya, what can I say except I think I am in the wrong business!’
Late for work, he quickly unlocked the shutters for the three employees waiting outside. He had
joined the workshop six years ago, first as a busboy, getting tea and tobacco for the owner,
Shantaram Seth, and then had slowly worked his way up to becoming a welder himself.
When Shantaram Seth had started drinking heavily, Bablu had not only ensured that Shantaram
was
safe in bed each night, even carrying him on his back after finding him lying inebriated on the side
of the road, but had also gradually taken over the mortgage of the workshop. Over the last two
years he had run the business himself, growing it steadily.
He enjoyed working with machines and though he had been an indifferent student at best he still
remembered his science teacher’s name, Mrs B. Sharma, and the egg incubator that he had made
under her supervision.
But when Bablu’s father died leaving his mother struggling to support her small family, he had
dropped out of school to get a job and help her out.
Inherently a cheerful, optimistic man, he had no bitterness, reasoning with himself that, despite not
finishing high school, he had not done badly for himself. He just had a few more payments to make
to the moneylenders towards the mortgage and then he could save up and buy a brand-new scooter.
That evening on his way back from the workshop, Bablu decided to surprise Gowri with yet
another gift. He stopped his cycle outside a small store with a lopsided signboard that proudly said
G.K. Pundit and Sons. Walking up to the counter, he asked the store owner, ‘Ganjkaran Bhaiya, I
want to buy a packet of…of…that thing they use, that...’ Trailing off, unsure of the exact words to
use though he had seen the advertisements often enough on television.
A perspiring Ganjkaran put away the blue plastic flyswatter that he had been fanning himself with
and sniggered, ‘Bablu, just say condoms, wasting so much time stammering!’ And he pulled out a
small black packet labelled ‘Kamasutra LongLast’ depicting a man and a woman in the throes of
passion. ‘No Ganjkaran Bhaiya, that other packet, which ladies use, you know, that time of the
month.’ Ganjkaran smirked. ‘Achha, sanitary pads! Wah, your wife has already made you her
puppy and taught you to fetch and carry?’
Seeing Bablu’s narrowed eyes and realizing that he had forgotten the most important rule of
business, to be deferential to the customer, he added, ‘Just a joke only! Tell me which brand you
want?’
Bablu was confused. It had never occurred to him that there were brands to choose from and he
asked Ganjkaran to give him whichever one the shopkeeper thought was the best.