The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad

by Kunal

  menstrual cycles.

  But the damage was already done. Uma ji quickly spread the news about Bablu being a pervert

  who carried sanitary napkins in his pocket and soon the whole town was talking about him and

  treating him as the local pariah.

  They did not spare the rest of the family either, entangling them in a mesh of coarse whispers and

  contemptuous glances.

  A few days later when Bablu was cycling back home from the workshop, he spotted Akram

  standing at Madhukar’s tea stall. Akram called out to him and Bablu stopped his cycle and joined

  his friend. Akram had just returned from Lucknow the previous evening and began to regale his

  friend with his adventures there.

  In the middle of his stories, he realized that his friend seemed rather gloomy. ‘What is the matter,

  Bablu?’ he asked, seeing his friend staring vacantly at his tea. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Akram Bhai, what is the point of telling you? You can’t help me with this. I desperately need to

  find some women now.’

  Akram smirked. ‘Bablu, you are a married man and if you feel like this, what do you think must be

  happening to bachelors like us?’

  Bablu just smiled, shook his head and explained his dilemma to Akram. Now that his family was

  not cooperating, where would he find any women who would openly discuss menstruation, let

  alone give him details about leakages, odours and soaking properties after using his sanitary pads?

  Akram patted him on the back. Though he sympathized with his friend, he could not resist making a

  joke at his expense: ‘Arrey Bablu, God should have made you a woman, then it would have been

  so much easier to just test the pads yourself.’

  But his little joke sparked an idea in Bablu’s mind. He roped a reluctant Akram into his project,

  asking him to give him some fresh goat’s blood for testing. When the blood clotted almost instantly,

  Bablu went back to the compounder at the doctor’s clinic in Dewas, who suggested the use of an

  anticoagulant.

  They then added this to the next batch and Bablu was finally ready. He had managed to assemble as

  realistic a uterus as he could with his rubber bladder filled with blood and a plastic tube.

  It was this that had led to the unfortunate incident at the well, and the ensuing infamy. Gowri,

  unable to bear the humiliation, finally left him – saying she would only return when he had given

  up his madness.

  Bablu Kewat had reached a point in his life where he had lost his wife, his friends, money that he

  could ill afford to waste and, as the world believed, his mind, all in pursuit of the sanitary pad

  project.

  But all these losses seemed only to strengthen his resolve. He was now on a path where his

  salvation lay in succeeding. If he stopped midway he would forever be branded a lunatic at best, if

  not a bloodthirsty vampire with sexual perversions.

  8

  It was a pleasant Sunday morning and Bhairavi Kewat had come with Shalu to Rachna’s house in a

  disturbed state. She was at her wits’ end about how to deal with Bablu. It had been three months

  since Gowri had left for her parents’ home. Bablu had got paler and thinner and quieter in these

  months but hadn’t stopped working on his project.

  She had tried cajoling him, screaming at him and had even put on a mighty good show of having

  chest pains. But Bablu had promptly called Vaidya ji, the Ayurvedic doctor, from the market, who

  after checking her pulse had declared, ‘Behan ji, you have a lot of gas in your system,’ and had

  prescribed pills for indigestion.

  Rachna too had her own complaints about Bablu. She had gone across to talk to him but he refused

  to listen to her and said, ‘Rachna, since you are so interested in my well-being, tell me, are your

  periods due soon? Try my new pads and fill out all the details on this feedback sheet, please.’

  Leaving Shalu behind to help Rachna with a few chores, Bhairavi Kewat left her daughter’s house

  in a confused state of mind.

  She had always ruled her little household decisively and firmly, leaving very little rope for her

  children to trip over. But now she felt like she was in the middle of a whirlwind she couldn’t

  control. Gowri’s absence, the neighbours and their taunts, her son who seemed to have lost his

  mind, it all seemed too much for her.

  Bablu had not just been her favourite child, but had also been her strongest support all through the

  years when both mother and son had worked endless hours to ensure the survival of their small

  family.

  He had always been such a good child and, unlike Rachna and Shalu, had never demanded

  anything. She recalled the joy on his face when on rare occasions she made kheer for him, the way

  he would nestle up next to her even as a twenty-year-old, his head on her lap, telling her amusing

  anecdotes about his customers at the workshop. She did not understand how things had suddenly

  shifted, what had led to the utter wreckage of their happy world.

  She wearily pushed open the creaky gate to her house and walked inside. The door to the backyard

  was open and she saw Bablu sitting on the floor, a handkerchief tied around his nose.

  At first glance, she thought he was chopping chicken for their Sunday lunch but as she came closer

  the smell sent her reeling. Her beloved son was sitting on the grass with dozens and dozens of used

  sanitary napkins that he had picked out of the bins from a girls’ hostel spread out around him. She

  watched in disbelief as he picked one up, peered at it and then dropped it only to pick up another.

  Bhairavi Kewat had a sobbing fit and within the hour she too had packed Shalu’s bags along with

  her own and left to go live with Durga Masi.

  9

  The days passed with a pensive Bablu cycling to the workshop and coming back to an empty

  house. His heart was filled with bleakness but his work continued. His first priority was to find out

  the exact specifications of the material used by the big corporations for their pads. On a cotton

  trader’s recommendation, he had sent the multinational company’s pads to a lab for testing. They

  sent him a letter stating: Material found to be cellulose. But none of the cotton traders he asked

  knew anything about this material.

  Desperate for information, he impulsively decided to call a college professor living in Indore.

  Bhaskar Sharma was a relative so distant that he was tied to the family tree only by the frayed

  rakhis that Bablu’s long-departed chachi had tied on to his wrist annually on Raksha Bandhan

  during their childhood years in Mohana.

  Professor Sharma, an elderly gentleman who had managed to retain his thick hair except for a

  small balding spot at the back that he carefully covered each morning, worked in the sociology

  department at the Indian Institute of Technology.

  He picked up the insistently ringing phone and at first had trouble trying to figure out exactly how

  Bablu claimed to be related to him. But there is a mysterious part of every Indian’s heart that

  regards anyone from his home town as a member of his extended family. So the good professor

  decided to hear out this nervous-sounding man.

  Bablu poured his heart out to the sympathetic voice on the other end of the line. The professor

  found himself deeply moved by his story. Impressed with Bablu’s perseverance and his own

  curi
osity stimulated, he spent days scouring the Internet and finally managed to get hold of a few

  details of a factory that supplied cellulose to Procter & Gamble. He then sent them an email on

  Bablu’s behalf and also gave him the factory’s telephone number.

  Bablu was not well versed in English, though he could read a little and communicate in broken

  bits. Unable to contain his eagerness at finally making some progress, he hurriedly called the

  number, pretending to be a wealthy textile mill owner in Indore.

  ‘Hello, I myself Mr Prabhash Kewat, textile mill owner this side, I wrote mail also, request kindly

  for sample of raw material.’

  A high-pitched voice replied, ‘Hello sir, this is Miranda Davis from the business development

  department. I have been through your email, sir. If I may ask, how large is your plant?’

  Bablu wondered about the relevance of this question and replied, ‘Madam, I have many plants tulsi

  plant, champa plant, ashoka plant, katkal plant, you want size of which one?’

  There was a long pause and Bablu, wondering if he had given himself away, waited anxiously for

  her reply.

  Fortunately, these bizarre answers only strengthened Ms Davis’s impression that he was indeed a

  prosperous businessman who just had some language issues. She promptly dispatched the samples

  to the address he had given her. A few weeks later they reached Mohana.

  10

  The brown cardboard box lay forlornly near the kitchen stove. Bablu, standing beside it, was

  carefully chopping onions for some poha. He was puzzled. The samples he had received were not

  cotton at all, but some mysterious strips of hardboard. He looked despondently at the boards lying

  on the tiled floor, not quite knowing what to make of them.

  Choti was barking incessantly in the backyard and Bablu went to check on her. The dog had

  spotted Parul picking up dry clothes from the washing line in her backyard and was now trying to

  leap over the wall to get at her. Parul sneered triumphantly at the sight of Bablu, rotating her index

  finger in slow circles next to her right temple. ‘Bablu and his dog, both mental!’ She laughed

  mockingly as she walked back into her house.

  Bablu sat down gloomily on the steps leading to the backyard. Choti bounded up to him and, after

  nuzzling his arm and wagging her tail around her master for a few moments, bounded inside the

  house but Bablu didn’t move. He felt a heaviness in his chest. After all this time and after so many

  sacrifices, he had still not discovered what was used to make sanitary pads.

  He glanced in the direction of Parul’s backyard, now empty aside from a fluttering peacock-blue

  sari. Perhaps she was right in calling him mental, for his pursuits had only brought catastrophe to

  his door. He had been certain that he would finally succeed this time and then with his head held

  high he would bring his family back home.

  He sighed heavily and, placing his hands on his pyjama-clad legs for support, as if he had aged

  decades while sitting on the steps, he slowly pushed himself up and shuffled inside the house to

  finish preparing his meal.

  He sliced the green chillies inexpertly into uneven pieces and, looking out of the kitchen window,

  saw the first raindrops splattering on the grass outside.

  The monsoons had been late this year but were finally here. Not that all the rain in the world could

  wash away his troubles.

  He glanced once again at the worthless boards, but he saw only one. That Choti, the rascal, must

  have carried the other away. Bablu went out to the front porch and, sure enough, Choti had the

  mangled board in front of her, one end chewed, and with her long nails she had scratched the board

  all over.

  Bablu picked up the board and looked at it carefully. The scratches had ripped the top layer of the

  board and he could see a white downy material that had been compressed into the form of the

  board. They had sent him the raw material pressed into sheets.

  And as he would soon realize from the contents of an email that had been sent to Professor Sharma

  asking for confirmation of delivery, it was not cotton at all, which is why his pads had never

  worked efficiently – it was wood pulp cellulose from the bark of the pine tree.

  Bablu had found the magic ingredient but as Professor Sharma said to him over the phone that

  evening, ‘Kewat, I think you should let it go now. The machines that the large corporations use to

  break down this material and turn it into sanitary napkins cost crores of rupees. Some trees are

  impossible to climb no matter what ambrosial fruit hangs from their branches.’

  But Bablu wasn’t going to give up when he had just made a small victory. Full of optimism, he

  replied, ‘Professor saab, sometimes you have to carve your own footholds in the trunk as you go

  along.’ So Bablu decided he would just have to try to make the machine himself.

  11

  It was a muggy night and the heat and the swarms of pests that thronged the stifling shanty located

  in the by-lanes of Indore made a restless Bablu toss and turn on the mattress that he shared with

  Choti.

  The headman, along with the rest of the panchayat of Mohana, had, despite Bhairavi Kewat’s

  pleas, eventually given him an ultimatum. He had to accept either their stringent exorcism rites or

  banishment from the town.

  Bablu knew that the chances of surviving hanging upside down from a tree for an indefinite number

  of days, while bearing lashings and being doused with boiling water, and the swallowing of

  obscure potions, all in order to drive the devil out of his body, would be rather dim, especially

  since he was certain that the only thing that seemed to be rattling inside him was a sense of purpose

  and some common sense. But he knew it was no good trying to convince the town council.

  He immediately vacated his house in Mohana and sold his workshop, sending a significant part of

  the money to his mother, who was still staying with Durga Masi. He then moved to Indore and with

  the leftover money rented a shed with a tin roof that multitasked as a workshop during the day and

  a gloomy bedroom at night.

  He had tried calling his mother a few times, but all the telephone calls ended with her weeping,

  which would disturb him for days on end. Finally, the day before he was leaving for Indore, he

  called her again, but Durga Masi picked up the phone and she firmly told her nephew that he had

  done enough damage and he should now spare the family from any further humiliation. That was

  the day Bablu realized that he had been totally cast aside by his loved ones.

  He had not heard from Gowri in all this time and under these circumstances where he possessed

  nothing to offer her, not even a home, he had tried to push her out of his mind. But ever so often

  when he thought about her and his mother and sisters, the loneliness and hurt sometimes gnawed at

  him so furiously that he could feel it rattling inside his chest, clawing to get out with each breath.

  He sat up, scratching his armpit which seemed to be a rare and delicious delicacy as far as the

  mosquitoes were concerned, and looked at the four small machines on the table in front of him.

  It had taken him almost two years from the day he had first held the wood pulp boards in his hands.

  Two years that he had spent largely at this workshop, taking up odd welding jobs during the day to

  eke ou
t a living and weary nights building his machines.

  Undeterred by the size and complexities of the machines in the mammoth factories that produced

  sanitary napkins, Bablu had tried to unravel the process to its bare bones. He needed to begin with

  finding a way to break down the hardboard of the wood pulp.

  He had tried to first make an electric machine attaching four table forks to the tip, forks that moved

  horizontally back and forth, trying to mechanically replicate Choti’s actions. After spending three

  fruitless months which resulted in ruining one board as well as rewarding Bablu with a tear on his

  right arm that required five stitches, he abandoned that line of pursuit.

  A few weeks later, Bablu was installing grills in a small flat. The lady of the house was hovering

  between supervising him and getting lunch ready. During a short break, he sat on the tiled kitchen

  floor, gratefully sipping on the hot sugary tea that she had given him, watching her tossing coconut,

  roasted chana dal, chopped ginger, green chilli and oil into a blender jar, the kitchen brimming

  with the intermittent whistles from her pressure cooker and the whirring noise of the electric

  mixer-grinder.

  Taking the bus back to his workshop that evening, the image of the swivelling blades of the mixer

  filled his head and he started working on a simple machine with modified parts of a high-powered

  blender.

  After months of trial and error, he finally succeeded in making a small machine that could break

  down the cellulose board, safely and effectively.

  His next task lay in taking the fibrous mass and flattening and assembling it into a rectangular cake,

  the shape of a sanitary pad.

  This turned out to be the simplest process. Taking inspiration from soap moulds and watching the

  rotund, vest-clad dhobi across the street ironing and pressing disobediently creased bed sheets into

  neat flattened piles, he made his second machine.

  Then he devised a third apparatus that worked like a mechanical rotating toilet paper holder that

  wrapped his pads. Now he faced one last hurdle – the hardest of all. How would he ensure that the

  sanitary pads he made were not actually unsanitary?

  That week, sitting on the rattan chair across Professor Sharma, who had turned out to be his only