A Town In Love

1. A Snake & A Ghost

It was a place where people died eating Sulphas tablets. Not that there weren’t any slittings, or hangings or for that matter your good old burnings, but for the unmistakable drama and the raunchy rumours that ensued those tiny tablets made an absolute kill. The railway station board with all its droning monotony announced its careless name – Gadarwara, 342 metres above sea level. As a child I spent hours figuring out how they calculated that. There wasn’t a sea nearby. All we had was an almost seven inch deep river, named Shakkar, which was named so as a truck full of sugar fell in it.

There was an amusing story about a man who jumped from the bridge to drown. He fractured his legs instead.

Maansingh always contorted laughing while telling me the incident. “He was on his knees in the river!” He always had some story to tell and always, like in great stories, all didn’t end well.

Everyone in Gadarwara had a story they found most fascinating and told time and again for the benefit of others. Rehman, my father’s servant, and a good friend of Maansingh, told me of a poor gentleman named Shanker who ‘walked over’ an uncovered sever hole during a brisk rain spell. He was, naturally, never to be seen again. Rehman believed that the ghost of Shanker haunted the hole with utter tenacity. “The Municipality have tried a thousand times. But they can’t cover it. Shanker won’t let them.” There was also a theory of the hole usurping a child in sacrifice every year. We were forbidden to take that route.

Noora, the snake hunter and another friend of Maansingh, told me of his fairly exaggerated yet riveting adventures. I would not do as gross as an injustice to tell one of his most memorable incident myself. In his own words: “I was sleeping peacefully here at the station, when a small boy came running towards me saying that there is a snake in Mishra Ji’s house. I asked that little f**ker about the snake. He told me it was a big one. Now tell me how big can a snake get in Gadarwara? I took my standard forceps and box and went to their house in a hurry so I could come back at the station and sleep again. As I entered I saw Mishra Ji standing there like a statue with eyes wide open, the five daughter-in-laws wailing and their children screaming. I asked the boy who called me to find out where the snake was. He took me to Mishraji’s son’s bedroom. There, sleeping on the bed, I saw it. You won’t believe if I tell you that the motherf**ker was longer than my leg and broader than Mishraji’s new daughter-in-law’s thighs!”

There were also some who did not kill snakes for a living. Their stories didn’t involve snakes or wronged sewer ghosts. My father was one of them. He’d tell how the ‘emergency was the best thing that happened to this country.’ And how during those glorious time the reign of terror was such “that even Jharia came to Office on time.”

Then there were stories of my mother. She told me how once riding on the old Rajdoot with father she spotted a foot long lizard at the back of his collar, and how she was left speechless and how she jumped from the speeding motorcycle screaming, “Save us! Save us!” while the lizard was still on father’s collar, who by the way, was still speeding.

But the story I find most fascinating is not as riveting as Noora’s tales or as funny as my mother’s. It’s a story that I keep telling myself lest I forget it. Not that I will. In this story lost slippers are found and Maansingh vanishes.
…

2. First Lady

There was an Inspector named Pathak who ruled in Gadarwara (by that I mean he was posted there.) He was a regular in our household – always in his impressive khakees, complete with a pistol in a leather case – and was a major crowd gatherer. He once showed me a bullet and pinching it in my palms, told me in his heavy voice almost choking with tobacco, that it ‘loves flesh.’

His house was the safest place one could be in Gadarwara, apart from the public library, as no one in their senses ever went there, or for that matter, to his house. There were two guards to protect the place, which was a typical sh*t coloured government quarter. Not that there was a threat of some kind, but the sepoys seemed proportionate to the awe that his majesty inspired. In that fortress – sort of – lived the first lady of Gadarwara. She was. That was the biggest compliment that one could give her. She existed, that was enough.

She smelt of sandalwood and coconut oil. She had a somewhat plump demeanour – a filled neck, round shoulders, rosy elbows. She mostly wore a sleeveless blouse. She kissed my cheeks every time she came to my Mum’s parlour (the most successful in Gadarwara, formerly a bedroom.) I felt jealous of my mother as she had the privilege to touch her.
…

3. The Only Prostitute

I admired Maansingh. He had a great knowledge of things worth knowing. I’d sneak away with the pretence of a Maths tuition and come to him to sip on a tea and smoke a bidi. Cigarettes were too expensive for us. We discussed various issues concerning life, its meaning, and women. Mostly women.

“They get pregnant if we kiss them on mouth?” I’d curiously ask.

“No you fool! A lot more has to be done. You see…” he’d then explain all the ins and outs of the ever elusive art of producing children.

We’d also discuss some apparently mysterious happenings, of course, related to women,

“Why Ma doesn’t cook for three days every month, and doesn’t even sleep with us? She gives two reasons, first that a lizard fell on her, second that she stepped on cat sh*t and both of them seem false! What do you think?”

“They bleed those three days, aren’t good for anything. And fight a lot.” I was shocked to the core to hear it, and hugged my Mum when I got home.

And light was shed upon town’s history too.

“Surya told me we have a prostitute here in Gadarwara?”

“Talking about his mother, was he? There was a time when there was one though. My father visited her. Narmada was her name. And if I remember my father’s drunken rants right, she was the best in the whole tehsil.”

“She mustn’t be alive now, right?”

“No, she isn’t, died right on those tracks.”

“It was an accident?”

“No. My old man couldn’t stop crying. We all were laughing!”

I remember looking behind on those tracks where Maansingh pointed. The only prostitute we ever had died there. The fact was worthy of a detailed recess elaboration.

It came as a surprise when Maansingh told me he was married, for all I knew he hated woman. “The s**t was an accomplished w**ch,” he’d say. The lady bore him a child, which soon died. She went mad and left him. “That was good riddance,” Maansingh reflected.

There wasn’t a conversation with him, or for that matter any men in Gadarwara, which excluded someone’s mother or sisters. He betrayed his eagerness to be with women by overtly denouncing them. But this was all before he fell hopelessly in love.
…

4. The Fall

It wouldn’t have been something if he had not been a black skinned, bidi-smoking, cussphile – but he was all of that. It wouldn’t even have been a shred of a thing if his object of affection wasn’t a thirty six year old, extremely fair, English speaking wife of Mr. Pathak – but she was all of that. The falsity of the fact that Maansingh was the spare peon of Mr. Pathak would have helped too. But such facts stood as erect as boastful Inspectors.

At the empty college ground, drinking a notoriously odorous native liquor, he told me about his fall:

“It was like being struck by a train. A beautiful yellow train. She was in a yellow sari. A yellow sari and a green blouse. She was reading a big book. She caught me looking at her. I devised a lie about standing there for something I don’t even remember now. She smiled. I stood there staring at her. She kept reading. I had never seen anything like that.” He smiled baring all his teeth. I could also see a teardrop.
After a long and heavy silence, Maansingh questioned,

“Arey! Who’s that girl who dances in rain and wears a yellow Sari? The one with the small blouse? What’s her name?”

“Raveena Tandon!” I shrieked in conspicuous excitement.

“Yes she even looks better than Raveena Tandon,” said Maansingh triumphantly.

She surely did.
…

5. A Town In Love

In the next few days everybody knew that Maansingh was in love. I upbraided Maansingh on his carelessness, telling everybody a thing so personal. It was a recurring joke of every roadside gathering. Trees were sculpted with hearts that read ‘Maansingh loves Memsaab.’ If only it would have been that, but the situation was much more critical. There were some kids who were writing it almost everywhere. On the temple walls, mosque walls, urinary walls. On the walls of government hospitals, private hospitals, one man hospitals. On garden walls – our garden wall, our neighbour Mr Nema’s garden wall, the Municipality garden wall. The words were written with flair, and in some cases accompanied with fortuitous drawings of Maansingh and Mrs. Pathak in compromising postures.

I’d have never wanted the Inspector to know about the whole affair. But for how long?

One day I was returning from the station after my meeting with Maansingh. We had discussed the blackness of my father and how it was never a major issue with my mother. We also had discussed the ways in which he could become a tad more presentable. I suggested he burn his age old Khakee shirt, which fitted him more than the Shirt of Nessus fitted Hercules. The road to home carried the Inspector’s palace in between. Outside the iron gates was his prized possession, his Royal Enfield. I would have gone past his house, as I did every day, but seeing his Enfield I had to change my acquired habit. The matter that brought the change was a disturbing one.

Someone had engraved the Inspector’s bike with a stone. And on it was written the same thing that was written, it seemed, on every possible blank space in Gadarwara. I was shocked and scared within the length of a second. With a deer’esque alacrity I picked up a stone and started scratching the marvellous machine. I would have never forgiven myself for the heinous sin if it wasn’t for such a critical cause. I was also in a dilemma regarding the name to strike over first – Maansingh or Memsaab. I chose Maansingh’s. Halfway through the name I shivered from a boisterous yell:

“Who’s there!?” The stone slipped from my hand, and I heard footsteps coming towards the garden gate. I ran. I thought what Mr. Pathak would do to me besides killing me. The images that formed to answer the question weren’t pleasant, and I ran harder. Halfway through to my home, with the receding echoes of ‘Motherf**ker, Wh**e-son’ and extreme lack of air to breathe, I figured out I was running barefoot. My slippers could have been anywhere. Even besides the Enfield.
…

6. Lost & Found

Maansingh was up next morning with a catastrophic intent. He was to tell the lady that he loved her. I know about that day from others, as my cricket practice, school and fate decided, I never saw him that day. I was also too scared from the previous night’s escapade to be anywhere near him, or for that matter, anybody. This was the first time in my dull career called life I longed for the dreary monotony of a weekday – without the strain of realizing love affairs that could never be.

Maansingh sat with Noora in the morning, as always. Wherever on the remote length of the tracks he sat, Noora always found him. “The sister-f**ker didn’t even talk to me that day. Not a single word,” Noora told me.

He then visited the barber for a five rupee hair cut that included a fortuitous massage that left the cheeks begging for mercy. He then went to the Mian Mohalla, where Rehman spotted him buying some flowers.

“I asked him the reason for buying flowers. He said he’d do a puja today. I asked him which new-fangled God required roses for puja. He cursed me for a minute or so and left.”

He spent most of the day in front of the Inspector’s house in scorching May heat, dripping sweat, and shirking off ashes from his bidi. He was anxious, distressed, exhausted, and even ran after a kid who was teasing him. Yes there were kids – and adults, employed and unemployed – waiting for Maansingh to do something silly. A few metres away from the Inspector’s house was my father’s office. He every now and then sent Rehman to see what was happening. In his fifth visit in two hours Rehman saw the Inspector come out. The crowd went silent and behaved as they had to be there for their own important affairs regardless of Maansingh’s. In a flash, files started shuffling hands, the postponed time of court hearings was loudly discussed, and newspapers were being frantically read. The kids still stared.

Mr Pathak quickly understood what the spectacle was for. He came out and looked at Maansingh coolly. He had been reading the walls. He had even urinated on them. He looked back at his home and yelled, “Savita!”

The files wrung out of hands, the newspapers shivered, and the kids were nowhere to be seen. The comely lady came out. She had an ugly bruise on her left eye. The Inspector delicately held her hand and led her Maansingh. In her frail voice, looking at Maansingh, she asked, “What?”

Maansingh could said nothing. It wasn’t that simple as he thought it to be. The lady went inside, followed by the Inspector. It was over. People were disappointed. It was a nothing show compared to the build-up. They had better dealt with their much important affairs than stand in May heat to witness a failed proceeding.

In between such heartfelt disappointment for the sheer lack of drama no one noticed where Maansingh had disappeared. When I came home, I found my slippers in the garden.

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