The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad

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.