The Afternoon Girl

by Amrinder Bajaj

  Once again I haven’t received a reply to my previous letter, though I know for sure my postman is at fault. It’s just that the anecdotes, the jokes I have to tell you, keep piling till I am ready to burst at the seams. So I quell my disappointment and write to you again. Here are the latest:

  Wife to husband: Ji mujhe nayee bra leni hai.

  Husband: Bra ki kya zaroorat hai, itne chote chote to hain.

  Wife: Kal aapne underwear khareede, maine kuch kaha?

  Teacher: You know the importance of periods?

  Kid: Yes, once my sister said she missed hers; my mom fainted, dad got a heart attack and the driver ran away.

  Sardar asks a call girl, ‘How much?’

  She says, ‘$50 on bed, $20 on sofa and $10 on grass.’

  He gives her $50 and she says, ‘You are a man of class.’

  He says, ‘No. Five times on the grass.’

  Love

  Amrinder

  I received his reply to my previous letter on 23 March though he had written it on 3 March. I could strangle my postman! It read:

  3rd March 2005

  Dear Amrinder

  Following Shobhaa De’s discoveries it would appear that frequent fucking cements a marriage but cannot hold together a liaison, which though pleasurable has lost its emotional content and the driving force of lust. So be it. Shed no tears. Cast around for a new lover. He may not load you with solitaires but will not make excuses about being held up in traffic jams, which give him a headache. Let the dead past bury its dead. Look for glorious mornings to come.

  I sit snugly wrapped in my new green-and-red shawl. But the days have suddenly turned warm and I will have to store it in my cupboard, till the next winter – if there is one more for me.

  I lost a dear friend in Prem Kirpal (97) four days ago. He left a will stating that his departure should be celebrated with a party for all his friends and relatives. But his nephews and nieces are having an akhand paath organized by your uncle and kirtan at Chinmaya hall. I refused to make a speech, as I knew I would make an ass of myself. We are also arranging a cocktail party in his flat (F block, Sujan Singh Park) in a few days. He was a bachelor.

  Cheer up and drop in when in low spirits.

  Love

  Khushwant

  Khushwant Singh had got me all wrong. He thought that SP was malingering. SP did not make excuses for not coming; he came when he felt like it. Period. The traffic jam was an allegory I used and he gave me headaches with incessant, meaningless explanations for things that could not be explained away.

  Received on 24 March, the letter written on 18 March 2005 read:

  Dear Amrinder

  I did answer your last letter the day I received it – as I always do. I hope it did not get to the wrong person.

  Liked your verses on Shobhaa De’s Spouse, which I found unreadable junk. I will use two of them in my column taking good care that they do not describe your personal situation. I also loved your anecdotes, particularly the one about the bra and underwear.

  I often suspect you try out your seductive skills on me without meaning a thing. I don’t mind being used as a guinea pig.

  Love

  Khushwant

  ***

  25.3.05

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  Seductive skills!!! The reason why I open my heart to you is because I know that I do not have to open my legs for you! The expression ‘open my legs’ has been used umpteen number of time in a book I just read – Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho – hence the tentative assimilation in my word bank. As I have told you often before, we met too late. Though there is a hint of regret, I think it is better this way for I am compelled to be honest with you, which is more than can be said of couples who have spent a lifetime together.

  I have not yet got down to reading your latest book. You had signed it ‘with love and a little lust’ which has forced me to hide it like a secret lover. My son has come from America for a fortnight. Being an avid reader, he is bound to browse through it and I would not like to fall further in his esteem. I’ll savour it at leisure after he goes back.

  Finally, I did receive your last letter. You wrote it on the 3rd, in answer to the one I posted on the 1st. It was stamped on the 4th and I received it on the 21st. I think my postman has become lazy. With umpteen other methods of communication available – courier, email, SMS, cellphone – the letters a person receives via post have dwindled to such appalling numbers that he makes the effort to deliver them once a week.

  I received this longish bit of humour via email and found it quite hilarious.

  An elderly woman walked into the Bank of Canada one morning with a purse full of money. She wanted to open a savings account and insisted on talking to the president of the bank because, she said, she had a lot of money. After many lengthy discussions (after all, the client is always right) an employee took the elderly woman to the president’s office. The president of the bank asked her how much she wanted to deposit. She placed her purse on his desk and replied, ‘$1,65,000’. The president was curious and asked her how she had been able to save so much money. The elderly woman replied that she made bets. The president was surprised and asked, ‘What kind of bets?’ The elderly woman replied, ‘Well, I bet you $25,000 that your testicles are square.’ The president laughed and told the woman that it was impossible to win a bet like that. The woman never batted an eyelid. She just looked at the president and said, ‘Would you like to take my bet?’ ‘Certainly’, replied the president. ‘I bet you $25,000 that my testicles are not square.’

  ‘Done’, the elderly woman answered. ‘But given the amount of money involved, if you don’t mind I would like to come back at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning with my lawyer as a witness.’

  ‘No problem’, said the president of the bank confidently. That night, the president became very nervous about the bet and spent a long time in front of the mirror examining his testicles, turning them this way and that, checking them again and again until he was positive that no one could consider his testicles square, and reassuring himself that there was no way he could lose the bet he finally went to bed. The next morning at exactly 10 o’clock the elderly woman arrived at the president’s office with her lawyer and acknowledged the $25,000 bet made the day before that the president’s testicles were square. The president confirmed that the bet was the same as the one made the day before. Then the elderly woman asked him to drop his pants, etc., so that she and her lawyer could see clearly. The president was happy to oblige. The elderly woman came closer so she could see better and asked the president if she could touch them. ‘Of course’, said the president. ‘Given the amount of money involved, you should be 100% sure.’

  The elderly woman did so with a little smile. Suddenly the president noticed that the lawyer was banging his head against the wall. He asked the elderly woman why he was doing that and she replied, ‘Oh, it’s probably because I bet him $1,65,000 that around 10 o’clock in the morning I would be holding the balls of the president of the Bank of Canada!’

  Love

  Amrinder

  60

  On 1 April 2005, I was pleasantly surprised when my mobile phone rang in the morning.

  ‘This is Khushwant Singh.’

  ‘Yes, I recognized your voice.’

  ‘You poems will appear in tomorrow’s Tribune.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

  ‘Can you get a copy?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask my cousin in Chandigarh to courier it to me.’

  ‘It is available in the newspaper stalls in Delhi.’

  ‘I’ll look for it.’

  ‘I have written the poems without disclosing the details.’

  ‘Thanks once again.’

  ‘If you do not get a copy, you can come over and take it from me. I get mine a day in advance.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  My heart was singing. It was the first time he had rung me up on my cellphone. I would preserve the call
as long as I could but would not boast. It would be a delicious secret I would hug to myself. It was also the first time he had published my poems without my having to ask him. Life was good.

  Early on the morning of 2 April 2005, I received five crisp copies of the Tribune. I eagerly scanned the smooth, glossy pages of ‘Saturday Extra’ and found what I was looking for. In his column, ‘This above All’, the part pertaining to my poems read as follows:

  PERFECT MISMARRIAGE

  Shobhaa De’s Spouse, emphasizing the need to make love in words and deed to keep a marriage going, has provoked Amrinder Bajaj, a gynaecologist who has seen many marriages end up on the rocks, to pen some verses highlighting the plight of women whose union did not turn out to be as blissful as Shobhaa De’s. The first spells out the woes of a sati savitri, whose suhaag is more of a compromise than a meeting of souls.

  We share a roof

  […]

  One of convenience?

  De prescribes lots of sex with adequate body cleansing to keep the marriage ticking. If your spouse does not deliver the goods, there is an alternative:

  So what if I hug a pillow at night

  […]

  Of a long-standing husband!

  I was delirious with joy. The fleck of grey that marred the blue of my skies was a glamorous blow-up of Shobhaa De alongside the article. I agreed with my cousin who said, ‘Your picture and not hers should have accompanied the piece.’

  2.4.05

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  I am behaving like a teenager in the throes of her first crush. This is the first call I received from you on my cellphone and I am delirious with joy! I would recognize your voice anywhere; it’s just that I was in the lift when you rang up and could not hear you clearly.

  Thanks a lot for liking my poems enough to mention them in your column. Besides the fact that it occasionally contains my poems, I relate to your column in the Tribune more than the HT because the latter elaborates on political issues and I am not much of a political person.

  A visit from my elder son – the brilliant doctor from the US – exposes raw nerves, flagellates emotions to shreds and makes a miserable wretch of a fairly stable woman. We were sitting together when in a fit of affection I hugged my little Lhasa apso hard. The poor fellow almost suffocated and growled in protest.

  ‘Put him down at once,’ said my son. ‘It’s little wonder that he treats you like crap.’

  ‘As some people do?’ I said, looking pointedly at him. It is a strange world where one cannot express one’s love freely for the fear of being trampled upon like a doormat? I haven’t the artifice to play hard to get. By the time I really stop caring for the people who have hurt me, be it my husband or SP, they bend backwards to make amends but by then it ceases to matter. It will take some time (if at all) for the mother to stop caring for her son, though he is doing his best to help me.

  I once made a mistake of sending him a poem provoked by the pain he inflicted and he replied that he had begun to dread my mails! Yours is the only shoulder I can cry upon – I might even do it literally once.

  I would not end the letter on such a note. Thank god for the sense of humour, undoubtedly the most valuable trait bestowed upon mankind – hence these silly jokes.

  Why was the sardar arrested in a political rally?

  Because he saw a female journalist with a badge on her chest, which said ‘PRESS’ and he did!

  Banta saw his wife sleeping with his friend. He took out his revolver and shot him.

  Wife said in anger, ‘Is tareh behave karoge to sab dost gava doge.’

  Banta: How did you get the new car?

  Santa: Girl drove me to the beach, took off her clothes and said, ‘Take what you want.’ So I took the car.

  Banta: Good. Waise bhi tu kapdon ka kya karta?

  Love

  Amrinder

  ***

  5 April 2005

  Dear Amrinder

  My Tribune column has a much larger circulation than the HT. It appears in over 10 English papers across the country – also language papers. I’ve kept a copy of the Telegraph for you. Nagpur Times, Deccan, etc, which also reproduce it, don’t send me copies, only small cheques. I’ll keep whatever I get for your next visit.

  Love

  K

  ***

  28.4.05

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  I had a wonderful trip to Bangalore, where my nanad’s sons were getting married.

  We were put up in a lovely resort on the outskirts of the city – cosy cottages, swimming pool, discotheque, lush lawns, lotus ponds, coconut, mango and fig trees laden with fruit. On seeing the size of a fig leaf I realized why it was used to cover female genitalia in old paintings, though how it was kept in place is beyond me. I would have loved to remain in the soothing quietude, so conducive to creativity, and pour my heart out in a novel, but the lovely lines by Robert Frost made famous by Nehru seemed apt:

  ‘The woods are lovely dark and deep

  But I have promises to keep

  And miles to go before I sleep.’

  Even so I enjoyed the revelry, rituals, the vigour and vitality of the robust Sikh community that has a capacity to live life to the hilt.

  The Bangalore I knew as a child – I did part of my schooling there – lies buried under the metropolis. It has lost its uniqueness to the common flavour of any metro across the country. The traffic was in a state of perpetual chaos and the air virtually unbreathable during peak hours. Thanks to the CNG and metro rail, the atmosphere in Delhi is almost pure in comparison!

  How are you doing? When can I look you up? The weather is in a frolicsome mood – rain, storm, heat and humidity. I am enjoying the uncertainty, the squalls, the brisk breeze and my morning swim.

  Love

  Amrinder

  The jokes:

  Santa: Aaj te mai ghar jande hi biwi di panty utaar danga.

  Banta: Bade mood mein lag rahe ho yaar?

  Santa: Kya bataun, subah se bahut chubh rahi hai.

  First lady: How come your husband always comes home in time. Second lady: I have made a simple rule. Sex will be sharp at 9 p.m. whether he comes home or not.

  61

  Kasauli, 5 May 2005

  Dear Amrinder

  You are welcome any day till mid-June after which I will be back in Delhi for two months. It is chilly enough for me to stay indoors with the electric heater full on. I was hoping to be in T-shirt and shorts but am wearing two woollen sweaters.

  I am glad you had a good time in Bangalore.

  Yours

  K

  ***

  17.5.05

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  I was pleasantly surprised to read a joke of mine in your column in the HT. When I wrote about visiting you, I meant in Delhi and not to that bit of heaven on earth, double-blessed on account of your presence. I do wish I could come to Kasauli but even at this age your reputation precedes you. I have half a mind to do my best to prove ‘them’ right. We could experiment – if successful, it would be a medical achievement for a doctor and a triumph of manhood for you!

  It was my birthday on the fifteenth; received quite a few gifts for a 55-year-old woman – ranging from diamonds (from you know whom), cash from my husband who started remembering my birthday after I decided not to have anything to do with him, gift coupons from my sons and a whole lot of knick-knacks from friends and well-wishers. Makes me sit back and ponder at how little I have accomplished as a writer. If only the One up there gifted me recognition in this sphere, while my faculties and I are both alive! Of what use would fame be to me if I attained it posthumously, if at all? I know you will suggest that I give up the exacting/exciting profession I excel in for the tyranny of the written word. Sometimes I am tempted, for the words will live on after I am gone while my reputation as a doctor will die with me.

  I once heard a journalist interviewing Madhav Rao Scindia ask him: ‘You have everything – name, fame, wealth, lineage, look
s, the love and respect of your constituency. Is there anything that you regret not having?’ He replied, ‘I will never know the satisfaction of saving a life.’ That is what medicine is all about; so, as before, I sail in 2 boats.

  As usual I end with a few jokes, hoping that you haven’t heard them before.

  Life of a man is a struggle.

  At birth he struggles to get out of the vagina.

  For the rest of his life he struggles to get in.

  A lady on her first visit to Lucknow is busy shopping when she feels the urge to empty her bladder. She searches the marketplace for a toilet but fails to find one. In desperation she accosts a mianji and says: ‘Zara peshaab wali jagah dikhaenge?’

  Nonplussed for a moment, the man regains his composure and says, ‘Yeh Lucknow hai, bibi. Pehle aap!’

  Love

  Amrinder

  ***

  25 May 2005

  Dear Amrinder

  Too late in the day; not even a ton of Viagra will persuade my fellow to get up. Besides, from your birthday year I notice that you are six years younger than my daughter. However, none of that prevents an old man fantasizing that he is the Muhammad Ali of sex.

  I’ve got through a lot, translating Urdu poetry. Still stymied over the concept of jigar or kaleja (liver) as a literary concept. Seat of passion, valour or lust as opposed to dil as the seat of love is the closest I can get to.

  A very good collection of short stories is Lavanya Savik’s The Red Carpet. You will enjoy them – all Bangalore-based.

  Mala left a few days ago. Rahul comes on the 30th – we return to Delhi 12th June. Thereafter drop in on the excuse of seeing your uncle.

  Lay your hands on the latest Reader’s Digest. There is a profile of me in it.

  Love

  Khushwant