Menoka has hanged herself

by Sharmistha Gooptu

  One thing he had gathered. She had fallen in love, and a mad kind of love at that, like this ghater mora, this near-dead Shankho. A love that taken her over, gone to her head. Only she was keeping it tight against her chest. At first he had not understood, it had seemed so impossible, really. Raju, the fierce and fiery Rajbala… bound…and burning in love! But that was what it was, he had realised, when he thought back to how she had been that evening, when he had stopped her outside of Bharat Talkies.

  ‘Ki re didi, don’t you know me? You forgotten us, or what?’ He had smirked. She had been about to step into the waiting studio car.

  She had faltered a moment, as if not knowing what she should do. Then turned back with her smile, ‘Why, no…but I have to go, someone will be waiting.’

  ‘Who someone didi? Some borolok, somebody important? Rich?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Raju’s eyes had flashed anger.

  ‘Na didi, just asking. Why, even we have some boroloks in hand…me and Natabar Da…if you say. All waiting to fall at those feet of yours,’ Jhantu had grinned back.

  Raju had opened her mouth, for some gaali-galaj it seemed, but had then thought otherwise. She had gritted her teeth and smiled mirthlessly.

  ‘Those boroloks of yours, they would lick my feet… they were nothing. I would hold their reins, in these hands.’ She had glowered at her open palms. Then sneered and looked up at him, ‘What now, if someone holds my reins in his hands? Jhantu Da…then what good am I anymore…for such things?’ Like she was herself no more, like this stupid pagal in front of him.

  Jhantu sighed as he glanced back at Shankho. The Nepali would bleed him dry. Of his last char anna, what to do. Still, somewhere Shankho knew, that his love could not ever become a real thing. Wasn’t it why he drank like that? But Raju? Did she know it? And would she stop at nothing for it?

  VII

  Raju felt a shiver in her spine. Her body throbbed like she had a fever. Her hand moved slowly upward from her chest to where the knot rested, against the hollow of her neck. The knot of the rope. He had said to slide it over her head…and around her neck. His eyes had devoured her, neck and face…her lips…then slid back again to where the knot was.

  He still hadn’t touched her. But his eyes, they told her everything. That he had chosen her. For that which they could not give, none of them. They had not had it in them, to know him…his heart…what he said with his eyes. Saheb never spoke much but if you could read his eyes, you knew everything. What he wanted.

  He wanted her to be his. He was only testing her, to see if she was afraid. If she would say no…if her heart pounded so hard inside her that it made her heave. His eyes were on her breasts, she held her breath, so stop the gasps, so he wouldn’t know how her insides were turning, ready to burst. If only, if he would come close… hold her once.

  ‘Menoka did not trust…that I had wanted the best for her. She lost her faith…she lost me.’ Saheb had told her as he had played with the rope. ‘Rajbala, do you know it? That I want the very best…for you.’

  The jasmine was laid on the bed when she had come in, its perfume lingering beside her. He had laid the rope beside it. Coiled and knotted. She had looked at his eyes…and known his wish. Like he had said it aloud. But he hadn’t. Still, she had known.

  The rope had ever so many tiny bristly ends springing from it. Prickly and coarse against the smoothness of her fingers. When she had slid it down, over her head and across her face, it had gently scraped her forehead and the bridge of her nose. Then rested, where her neck joined with the rest of her body…from where it could squeeze the life out of her.

  Saheb was playing a game, to only see…if…if she could. Wouldn’t he stop her, if it started to squeeze the breath out of her? Making her gasp. If only she could wet her throat once…just a mouthful of cold water. But how could she ask him? Wouldn’t it make her small, in his eyes, if she was not able to match him, step for step? For after all, it was only a game. He could not ever bear to see her in pain. It was only his test of her.

  Menoka had done him wrong. Was her life only her own, to take if she wished? It was only her way, to hurt him, when he had wanted only the best for her. She had left him like this, with a heavy heart. Only someone…if they loved him…could make him well again. She would do it for him. She knew that he would stop her, take her, and then love her.

  Raju pulled the end of the rope, and felt the little prickly threads close in. Her eyes were on Saheb, he did not meet them. His own were on the rope, red at the ends against the edges of his eyebrows, like someone had shot arrows into each of them. His eyeballs were big, like they were about to seep all into the whites. Saheb was telling her to do what she had to do. Her eyebrows cringed and lips wavered as she clutched harder at the length of coarseness between her fingers. Like in those Raju Darling acts, when she had to clutch a dagger to her chest, only to fool the bad men…make them believe that she was about to end her life. But it was never for real, always it was like a game. In the end she would save herself.

  The balls of Saheb’s eyes had started to spread, their blackness was making the room darker. The electric lamp flickered…like it was a mombatti, a candle. Raju wheezed but did not allow her clenched fist to lessen its grip on the noose. Saheb was watching. His eyes were on hers now. He leant his head forward, a signal…now she should not stop.

  Hadn’t Madam said to her, so many times, Raju do not overact, keep calm, let the scene lead you…let it take you over. Saheb had set this scene for her…he would take over, from her, when time came. She only had to do her part.

  He watched, like he had counted Ma’s every breath. Like how he had thought of Menoka…as the girl opened her eyes ever so wide over that gasping, gaping mouth of hers. Those eyes were not on him anymore…then as they started to swim, she came down, on the jasmine…just as he had wanted it. A perfect shot, he thought, as he sat watching her. Should he wait another few minutes, then see if she really had done herself in? They never could pin it on him, not a finger had he laid on her. Or…should he rouse the sleeping beauty, while she still had some breaths left in her? To give her yet another little game to play…and then another. To see how long she could keep on playing?

  For, in truth…Rajbala, it has been fun. More fun to play with you than I ever would have thought. You will be lovely when these breaths do leave you for good, more beautiful than you ever have been…only I think now that I will take my own time with this…this, my new heroine.

  VIII

  Avinash Mukherjee grinned. He was thinking of Ramola and her precious Rajbala. What an odd pair they made. Like him and Manimala, he grinned again. Ramola had taken the girl under her wing. Like he had taken in Mani. He wouldn’t have thought it of her, the high up Ramola Devi, now head of Bharat Talkies.

  How alike they were in this, their befriending of these unlikely creatures. Ramola would look out for that Rajbala, if even the girl left Bharat Talkies. Like he looked out for Manimala.

  He had seen Ramola again, that afternoon. She had called the office, asking if he would like to lunch again. He had said no, that he had a prior engagement, then called back to say it had sadly been called off, and that he had a free afternoon after all. Had she known? And smiled at his childishness? He wished he could be like her in her directness, it was something he admired in her. He never could be like that. To simply go with his heart and not think too much about it. Always, it was between his heart and his mind, a tug-of-war that sometimes left him rather spent.

  They had gone to Gay’s by the river. Not exactly the Grand, but she had not minded. He had proposed it, on the spur of the moment. They had found a table easily, it was a weekday afternoon, and past lunch time. The whole place had been on its toes. It wasn’t every day that a big star like her came there!

  She had laughed a lot. Telling him about Rajbala, how the girl had taken English lessons from some memsahib, and all because she wanted to be like her, like Ramola Devi. It had seemed to amuse her greatly, though i
t must be no surprise to her that girls everywhere wanted to be Ramola Devi. Even the commonest of things about this Rajbala seemed to strike her as rather remarkable. He sighed in resignation. He couldn’t very well hold it against her. Not with his own immersion in Mani’s antics.

  ‘She has seen the worst of life, you know, Mr Mukherjee, but she didn’t let it get her down,’ she had mused. ‘Mother died of pneumonia, I gathered, a weak sort…no father…as it is with these girls. Though of course…’ Ramola had hastened to add, ‘Raju is not one bit like other such girls. No pretence whatsoever. She’s rather straightforward really…and quite alone in the world…all on her own.’

  All on her own and near dead, curled under his steps… that was how he had found Manimala. Nengti’s mother, who came in to do the floors and the washing had said she’d seen the cook from next-door bundling the kittens in a gunny sack. To drown them in the Ganga, the pests, she had said. The mother had died birthing them, but somehow Manimala had escaped the fate of her brothers and sisters. He had almost crushed her under his feet on those stairs where she had lain rolled up, so little that she could make her home in the hollow of his palm…trying to hide from the world.

  He smiled down at those beautiful green eyes now. Mani was purring on his knees, rubbing him with her tail. She wasn’t always so good. He pretended to cuff her ear, taking up with some hulo or other. Still, she always came back. Once he had thought she had gone for good…but she had returned, a mother, carrying her two kittens, one by one, in her mouth. Had there been more, he had wondered. The kittens had gone, once they had learnt to find their own way, but Manimala had stayed. He would look out for Mani, it made him smile, how she would appear through the window calling out to him. Could he say he owned her? Would she allow it, Manimala?

  That girl Rajbala, she reminded him of his Mani. For how Ramola had spoken of her. ‘It’s not so easy to love her, you know Mr Mukherjee, she seems to not allow it…so often, with her imprudence…and yet she is lovely, our Raju.’

  Was it in them both, him and Ramola Devi…to find love in the most impossible of things? Love that could not ever be so fully known or fulfilled, like everybody always wanted love to be. Like Shankho did. That was why he had had to shut him out, the pleading…declarations… and surrender, it had started to disconcert him. What was love that left you with nothing to fight for? Nothing more to desire? When it became all so certain that it didn’t hurt you enough?

  Like how he loved Ramola, and how he had grown to treasure the pain of it. The belief and the doubt, the charms and wiles…the riddles and shadows that would cloud him over, thrust him to unreasonableness, within his outward calmness. And then the wavering and diffidence…the feeling of a void. He was flushed. Rarely did he admit such things, even to himself. But today he had let go of himself, as he had laughed with her. Forgotten that he should not let her close, lest she knew. He had looked in her eyes as she had laughed, and neglected to hide himself from her. Because, in truth, she seemed to have desired it…to be there and then…with him.

  PART 6

  I

  Natabar had had a bad dream. His nose and eyes were running. Like when his father would hit his mother for not wanting to sit with patrons, and then turn upon him. He had seen Raju in his sleep, Raju all bloated and red, eyes puffy, vomiting, and doing paekhana in her sari… foul, watery shit, like that Radha. He had seen her two or three days before she had disappeared…Radha. Gone to die somewhere, in some galli or nulla, everybody had said. They had found her in the morning…curled up like a dead dog, lying in her own paekhana, rotting.

  Natabar hadn’t known her, that last time that he had seen her alive…Radha…when he had spotted her, tin can in her hand, haranguing passers-by. Saheb had kicked her out, kept her younger sister instead, her very own flesh and blood. He turned her against me, my own sister… that saali bloodsucking little beiman, after everything I did for her, she had spewed poison. Then that poison had got her.

  Natabar had been sick like he would be as a child, eyes and nose running in his sleep, since that boy Kajol had told him what he had heard. Could it be true? Raju… of all the girls? Raju had seen the world, she could keep ten men under her feet, all at the same time. How in Ma Kali’s name could she be taken in? It didn’t ring true. Yet, Kajol had not lied, of that he was sure. Only thing was, that boy hadn’t been in his senses. Hardly ever seemed to be, these days. Had he heard right? ‘Saheb.’ Was that what the man had said, at some old house where they had taken Raju? But, anybody…any saala borolok, rich man, could be saheb. Why then had that name frightened him? Why had he thought of Radha? How she had first been, chulbule…so full of life, never able to sit still, and so very determined to make a better life for herself and her two sisters. And then Radha, after he was done with her. Her body, like it was ridden with such a great sickness. Her mouth foaming as she had rasped, clutching the two or three annas that people had thrown at her. ‘Saheb’ was what everyone in the studio para called him, the man that had kept her, and then her sister. And then…that girl that hanged herself…Menoka. In the studio para, ‘Saheb’ was not just any borolok. ‘Saheb’ was Him, if that stoned nesha-khor, that bakhate gone-to-the-dogs Kajol had heard what he said he had heard.

  Kajol had not given up. That was something about that son-of-a-pig, when something got into his head, it really got into his head…nesha or no nesha. Natabar had tried to find out, too, about Raju’s comings and goings, but nothing. And at that time of night, didn’t he have his own little shop to run? As it was, Raju had left him high and dry, his prized little didi, but no matter, he hadn’t cursed her for it. And then there were those two other girls he had just put in the line. Though with Raju it hadn’t been only the business. They had loved each other, or so he had thought. She was like a goddess, to him and Jhantu, and the others like them…the nyakas of this world, them that were not proper men. They who never could have a fair chance, and forever taunted because they did not know how to fit…anywhere, except in a paradise of their own making where they could turn the tables on the world as it was. Like Raju had done… in real life. He or Jhantu…they had never made her sit in the bazaar, like a beshya…no…even the very thought made him red with anger. If anything, he had showed the world, and them that went by the name purush manush… and borolok, rich men…that they were nothing, really, in front of his little didi. It had made him jump inside sometimes with joy, when some borolok or other, instead of showing this Natabar his temper, had begged him, for his didi. And little Raju, she knew how to make them beg alright. Natabar grinned in the dark…what moans and groans he had heard from outside of those doors.

  He sighed. How they had sat sometimes together, him, Jhantu and their little didi, gossiping…swearing and laughing at those sons-of-bitches boroloks that came with their begging bowls in the dead of night. And now, that same didi of his, every other day whisked away in a car to what place who knew. It somehow did not sound right to him, his queen of a didi, her head always held high, that she had become like some kept girl. Sent for… commanded…ruled. She that was born to herself rule.

  Kajol had been fultu, up to his neck, as usual, but that night when the driver had left the car to go upstairs to fetch Raju, he had tried the lid of the back bonnet, and found it unlocked.

  ‘Got in there…and waited,’ Kajol had grinned through his rotting front teeth.

  When the car had jerked forward he had lain down to escape the bumps, and stoned son-of-a- pig that he was, had gone to sleep, again half-waking as the car had jerked to a halt. Kajol had heard the doors open, then slam shut. Then, silence.

  He had peeked out from below the lid.

  ‘Old crumbling house it was…your girl went inside, car stayed out,’ Kajol had proudly declared.

  ‘And then?’ Natabar had asked.

  ‘Then what…nothing…did I go inside, or what? To see, where the girl was giving it. I went back to sleep, in the car. Got up when it started again. Dropped me back…to where your darling
stays.’ Kajol was irritated.

  ‘Byas…nothing more?’ Natabar’s heart had sunk. If only this Kajol had been in his senses. To have gone all that way and found out nothing, the drunken son-of-apig.

  ‘Naaa…what else?’ Kajol had knitted his brows. ‘Only, that driver gupping with some fellow there, another man…’

  ‘Saying what?’ he had prodded.

  ‘What was it…wait, let me think?’ Kajol had scratched his grimy head. ‘Oh…haaa…wait…oh, yes, that other man, he was saying, what re, how you manage to get the girl, every time?’

  ‘And…what did he say, the driver?’

  ‘Said…what will I manage, I’m just a servant. In the studio para, these girls, they hear the name…Saheb, and they fall at his feet. You understood, you fool?’

  Saheb…that’s what the driver had said. Not just any saheb, but Saheb of the studio para. There was only one Saheb there…the one that everyone in the studios knew so well by that name. And everyone knew also what he could do to these girls. Was that why he had dreamt of Radha?

  Could it be? Was Saheb the one? Whose name she had not said to Jhantu? He that now owned her…the one that she was ready to give her everything to. Didi re… what have you got yourself into.

  II

  Was it a bad dream, or a good one? Raju couldn’t decide, not at once. Her throat hurt…a dull pain, and she stopped herself trying to swallow and clear the heaviness in her chest. Each gulp felt like she had a stone stuck inside her neck. She slipped her hand slowly upwards, towards her throat, did it feel different to touch? Then stopped. His smile was teasing her. Her heart jumped. He was there, his face right over her own, smiling in a way she had never before seen. Not known even that he could ever look like that, so very delighted…like he had just gotten his prize, like he had won some battle. She smiled back, and started to cough. A lump of hardened spittle was stuck inside her neck choking her. She had to cough it out, somehow, and then she would be alright.