Half a Rupee: Stories

by Gulzar

  For ten, continuous hours he maintained his balance on a boat rolling on the waves of the sea; by the time the boat anchored at the harbour, every single bone in his body would be aching. He would be left with hardly any energy to clean the boat.

  Narasingha Rao cussed at Maruti’s mother lewdly and swore at him: ‘Why don’t you clean the boat now itself … otherwise in the morning you will have to slog your own sorry ass!’

  Maruti did not even have the energy to answer him. He gestured to say, ‘In the morning … no breath left right now.’ His limbs felt lifeless.

  Pushed, shoved through the multitudes of crowds, scraping through somehow, he reached Churchgate Station and managed to board the local; his shoulders drooped, his eyes begun to close. At Jogeshwari, the crowds spat him out of the train. It was a daily ritual.

  Somehow, gathering every little bit of energy, he staggered on to the hillock near the highway into kholi number 109 of shanty-town Sawant Nagar. Tulsibai, like every other day, filled the shining bowl with water from the kalsi and thrust it into his hands, saying, ‘Tired? Here, have this.’

  He propped himself up on his elbows and drank the water in one swoop, washing it down his throat.

  Tulsi came and sat by him on the bed and, pressing his aching feet, narrated the happenings of the day.

  Laxmi had come from her sasural … her in-laws had gone to Nasik.

  Maruti closed his eyes. A moment passed. Tulsi said once again, ‘Chotti has become wicked … imagine, she called me Nani! And she was calling you by your name, asking you when you are going to come … lisping, stuttering and all, “When will Maluti come? When?”’

  A smile broke across Maruti’s careworn face, the tiredness on his features rearranged itself into a smile.

  ‘She speaks in Hindi!’

  ‘Oh yes!’

  ‘Hasn’t learnt Marathi!’

  ‘She will! There’s still time.’

  The tiredness of the day began to creep away. He rested his head on his folded arms.

  ‘How did she go back?’

  ‘She didn’t … they have gone to see a film.’

  ‘Chotti also?’

  ‘The little devil does not let go of her mother for even a moment. What was she to do? So they took her along.’

  Maruti grunted and took a deep breath.

  ‘And Karthik? Where’s he?’

  ‘Today he again fought with someone at school!’

  ‘Mother of …!’

  Maruti turned on his side and abruptly got up.

  ‘Bloody idiot, every day he gets beaten up at school and comes … bloody coward. Ghati. He is a disgrace to the Marathas!’

  Tulsi also got up.

  ‘Go … freshen up … I’ve made some poha … have a little.’

  Maruti pulled down a towel and lowered himself into a corner to have a bath. ‘Take out my dhoti-kurta,’ he said.

  The stove was lit. The lamp too was switched on. Maruti folded his hands in front of the idols kept there, murmured some words of prayer and put on his fresh dhoti-kurta.

  Karthik walked in. Maruti jumped on Karthik, put a hand between his legs and threw him against the bed and pressed him under himself.

  ‘Come, you idiot. Come wrestle with me!’

  It tickled Karthik.

  Maruti said, ‘From tomorrow get yourself massaged with mustard oil, go to the akhara and train yourself to wrestle. You will achieve nothing by reading books and being a Gyandev!’

  Karthik kept laughing. Despite the gushing noise of the kerosene stove, Tulsi could hear everything and said, ‘Why are you teaching him stupid stuff …?’

  ‘I’m teaching him the right stuff. A Maratha’s son has to be a brilliant Maratha!’

  Babu arrived now outside the door and called for him to come outside the kholi.

  ‘What say, Maruti? Want to come along for Patkar’s meeting?’

  Maruti said from inside the kholi, ‘Holy shit, do you have any idea why people go for that meeting? My wife says that all you do there is scratch your balls.’

  From inside the kitchen Tulsi cussed at the two. ‘Woe be upon you, bastards!’

  Maruti moved out.

  ‘You heard what my bai said?’

  After the meeting at the local brewery, they argued. From Baba Ambedkar to Medha Patkar, from Chavan to Pawar, they discussed everyone and analysed everything threadbare.

  In the middle of the night when a couple of drunks shattered the silence of the alley, Tulsi got up from the cot. She lit the stove and began to warm the food again. Her son-in-law was sleeping on a cot in the alley. Maruti’s cot too was laid next to him. Maruti stepped inside laughing. Karthik was sleeping on the wooden bed. Laxmi too was asleep, the little one cradled next to her. Maruti put his hand over the child’s head and pinched her cheeks and tried to mimic her lisp: ‘Maluti’s come.’

  Tulsi scolded him, ‘Let her be. Don’t you wake her up now.’

  Laxmi woke up. She hugged the father. Chotti also woke up. Karthik turned on his side and muttered: ‘Bapu!’ The son-in-law bent down to touch his feet.

  Now, Maruti wasn’t the lowliest of the low … not a mere mehtar; he was the captain of his family: the charioteer steering a seven-horse chariot!

  From the Footpath

  The same dog bit Dagroo once again—for the third time. He could not fathom what kind of scent his body gave off that made Shendy so mad. Shendy was the name of the dog.

  Behram said, ‘It’s a stench bey, not a scent that comes out of your body. The poor dog just can’t bear it.’

  ‘Why the hell does he sleep next to me every night then?’ Dagroo protested. ‘I keep chasing him away but sometime during the night the bastard comes and buries his head into me and goes off to sleep.’

  Something in the way he said it tickled Hira and she began to laugh. Uninhibitedly. She said, ‘Three times. That’s once too many. Next time, you bite him.’

  In this part of the neighborhood, on this footpath of Bandra, Hira was one of a kind. She would be up before the sun and within a couple of hours she would scavenge more than half the garbage cans in Khar and Bandra. Discarded cans, cast-off lids, whatever—she hauled them all into the gunny sack that she slung over her back. If she found a few empty bottles of beer, they would fetch her a decent sum. At times like these she would consider herself lucky. These days they were hard to come by—even the rich sold their empty bottles and old newspapers. But Hira would keep at it all day long, fashioning new ways of making a rupee. It was her discovery that even used disposable syringes had begun to be traded. When the traffic got stuck in a jam, she would hoist the scabby, mangy, motherless child of the drunkard on her waist and conjure up a few rupees in alms from the men and women in their cars. She would even pay the drunkard some rent for his child.

  When Balu used to live with her, every night she would fire up a kitchen under the tree—a makeshift stove of two red bricks, a sawed-off canister that served as her pot and a few dented aluminum utensils that she washed in the brackish water of the bay and hung up on the tree. She would warm up her alms, even buy a loaf of bread from the nearby bakery. But ever since Balu deserted her to live with another woman, she had given up cooking. Who was there to cook for? It was then that Bheeku caught her scent. And since then he was after her. His ‘own’ could hardly walk about—she was bedridden, cooped up in his hut.

  Bheeku was not a bad man at heart, but he was twisted—like Shendy’s tail. And scratching himself all over just like the dog, he would sidle up to her every other day. He lived on a footpath in Mahim. Once, when a heavy downpour washed away all the footpaths in Mumbai, everybody was looking for a shelter. Bheeku was of great help then. He found Hira a place under Tilak Bridge. It wasn’t far from his own hut in Mahim. It was during these rains that he bit her, twice. Fortunately, the pregnancy fell through on its own within eight weeks of conception, and she returned to her corner of the footpath in Bandra—back to Dagroo, Shendy and the drunkard. These men, they were al
l alike. He kept telling her that he needed an heir. All he had was a ramshackle hut and a frayed clothesline and he wanted an heir!

  Behram was unlike the others. He was different. He spoke very little but deep inside he was a devious and crafty man. He loved to ensnare car-wallahs. He would bump against cars negotiating a bend and fake such grievous bodily harm that people would gather. Tempers would fare and the car-wallahs would fold their hands and plead with him to accept a monetary compensation. He picked his victims mostly at night outside hotels and preferred those men who were either drunk or with a woman. ‘These men are quick to take out their wallets. And the thickness of their wallets betrays how much you can extort from them,’ he observed. And if he hit it big, Behram would not be seen on the footpath for days on end. He would make a beeline for the shanties in Sion—spend his days there, and his nights. He was a little flamboyant by nature. He had someone in those shanties for whom his heart ached. But he never ever disclosed her name. Just once he said, ‘I got her some ear studs made of silver. Maa kasam, did she look gorgeous in them!’

  ‘Why don’t you marry her?’ Hira said.

  ‘Marry her?’ His face registered a trace of a smile. ‘She has a different groom every night.’

  It was in those days that she heard that Balu had run away with the daughter of the ‘other one’. Where to, nobody knew. And the ‘other one’ came to her armed with a chopper: ‘Where’s that good-for-nothing husband of yours? The whoremongering bastard! Doesn’t he fear God? Has he no shame … how could he do it with both mother and daughter …’ What not she said! She bared her long, sharp teeth whenever she spoke. Her jaws would open wide, just like Shendy’s. Deep in the pit of her heart, Hira was glad, but she said nothing. Instead, in one quick move, she grabbed hold of the woman’s hair and threw her to the ground and put her own chopper on her neck, ‘Bloody bitch … I will roast you alive and feed you to Shendy if you ever dare come to this footpath again …’ That was then, but she never came over again, that whore of Balu’s … what was her name … yes, the ‘other one’.

  But Bheeku had come that day too. Hira did not throw any morsels at him. There was a sadness in her heart: Balu had not come back to her. Now he was two women away. Bheeku fanned the fire, ‘What’s new in this … the bastard was always like this … remember when that girl from Kerala came to live on this footpath … Balu had started to sleep with the workers.’ Hira did not say anything. Silently she kept listening and he kept talking, ‘Wherever he gets the scent of flesh and blood, he runs wagging his tail. What do you think, he is going to stay put up in that temple with that girl?’

  ‘Which temple?’

  ‘The one in Kalyan! Sai’s temple.’

  Something came over Hira and one day she set off for the temple. She took Bheeku with her. She climbed the 250 steps to the temple but did not find Balu. She searched the place, combed the entire foothills, camped there for nine whole days. But she found neither God nor Balu. And it was here that Bheeku bit her for the third time. This time he gnawed away her flesh. The midwife from Agripara scraped her womb clean. For over a month and a half, she neither begged nor did she do any other work. She was off Bheeku—a little hurt, a little disillusioned and a little tired of him. Whenever he tried to snuggle up to her, she would shoo him away—though she didn’t kick him in the groin. But he was not one to let go: every other day in the darkness of the night he would creep up on her and latch onto her the whole night. He had begun to stink. And the smell would fill up her nostrils, the same way Dagroo’s stink overwhelmed Shendy.

  And then, out of the blue, Bheeku’s ‘own’ died. After she died, he told Hira her name: Sita. Whatever she may have been like, Bheeku did right by her, did all that should be done—he paid in full and cremated her properly with all the due rites. Hira’s heart thawed. For a few days she shifted into his shanty in Mahim. For once, she thought of settling down with him. Whatever the present, her exit from the world at least would be dignified. But Bheeku was not the same man—Sita’s death had taken its toll on him, something inside him had broken. Earlier he would hover around her, snuggle against her all night long, whereas now he disappeared for nights on end without a trace. He had begun to chase the occult, seek refuge in the mystic and the magical. She had heard that he had found a group of tantric men—practitioners of black magic. She had no idea what he was looking for, all she knew was that he had started to remember Sita often.

  Twelve months later, Hira returned to her life on the footpath in Bandra. She did not say why. The wound on Dagroo’s leg had festered. His entire leg was one huge putrid infection.

  Behram said, ‘Abey go … get yourself treated at the municipal hospital. Get yourself pricked with some injection or whatever or else one day you will end up barking.’

  But Dagroo did not go.

  Hira too said, ‘Go man, go to the hospital or else one day you will have to get your leg sawed off.’

  And that’s what happened.

  Hira was with him the day they sawed his leg off. They sedated him first and then it took him an entire day to come back to consciousness. When he came to his senses he cried a lot. They kept him in the hospital for twenty-five full days. Hira told him, ‘Believe it or not, but Shendy sat outside the hospital the entire length of those twenty-five days.’

  When Dagroo came back from the hospital, Hira settled down with him and Shendy. Once again, Hira had got a few blackened and dented aluminum pots and pans and had put together a few bricks to fire up a kitchen in a corner. And she had begun to cook for Dagroo. She had once again begun to get up before the sun. And once again she had begun to scavenge more than half the garbage cans in Khar and Bandra.

  And then, one day, Shendy somehow managed to get run over by a speeding car. It pained them both. Hira cried her heart out. Then she said, ‘Bheeku too … he too died the same way.’

  Dagroo asked, ‘What happened?’

  ‘He had got up to pee in the middle of the night. He was crossing the road, towards the railway lines. And then suddenly from the other side a car came. Very fast … it knocked him down … and ran over him as he fell … the bastard did not even stop … just sped away … the municipality van came in the morning … inquired around … but I did not say anything … what was I to do … who would want to get involved with the police … and then who would go and cremate his body … the municipality van dragged him away … the same way they dragged Shendy away … this is how damned life is on the footpath!’

  III

  Dreams heed no borders, the eyes need no visas

  With eyes shut I walk across the line in time

  All the time—

  LoC

  The army had more or less encamped permanently at the border in the wake of the 1948 skirmish. Camps gave way to barracks and even the floors of the bunkers got cemented. In less than fifteen years it had become a ritual—the arrivals, settling-downs and departures of army troops. By 1965, life at the border had its own regime, developed its own rhythm. Political harangues, caustic diatribes and cross-border firing had become routine. It was normal for soldiers to open fire across the Line of Control whenever a minister was visiting a border outpost. At times they would sally into the villages across the border and grab a few lambs or goats. Those nights they would feast their guest on purloined loins. Nobody would be censured. None of it would raise any eyebrows.

  But God forbid if civilians got caught in their crossfire—now that would certainly make news. The newspapers would scream out in provocative headlines, and politicians would find fodder for their inflammatory speeches. The LoC would smoulder like a live wire.

  But there would be times when all would be quiet on all fronts—a long interval when the guns would fall silent. An eerie silence would fall on the border and it would seem as if all ties between the two countries had been snapped, as if all relationships had gone cold. And then to resume their old ties, there would be an incendiary display of fireworks over a few days. Warmth would return to
their veins all over again. A count of fatalities would creep into the headlines: five dead on this side and seven killed on the other. Just a statistical log of debit and credit across the LoC in a ledger.

  The distance between the bunkers on either side was not much. Sometimes even this distance would disappear: some lissom, lovelorn soldier tucked in a hillock on the other side would belt out a mahiya in a plaintive note—

  Do pattar anara de

  O my beloved

  For once come into my lane

  For once inquire

  How this sick man is faring …

  And the soldiers on this side would sing a retort—

  Do pattar anara de

  How to reach you

  O my beloved,

  There are guards all around you

  Of your wicked suitors.

  The hillocks that faced each other across the border were just a shoulder apart, so close together that if they stooped they would be hugging each other. The azan from that side could be heard on this side, and from this side on the other. Once Major Kulwant Singh had even asked his junior captain, ‘Oye, the azan was heard just a little while ago, wasn’t it? Why is there an azan again after half an hour?’

  Majeed had begun to laugh, This time it is from the other side, sir. The Pakistani time is thirty minutes behind us, you see.’

  ‘So, whose azan do you follow to the prayers?’

  ‘Whichever one suits me on that particular day, sir.’ Captain Majeed had clicked his heels together, saluted the major and walked off.

  Kulwant thought that there must be something about young Majeed that he had become so pally with him so soon. His smile seemed to suggest he had grown up holding his hand.

  One night, Majeed sought his permission to enter his tent and placed a tiffin carrier on the teapoy.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Mutton, sir. Homemade.’

  Kulwant kept the glass on the table and stood up.

  ‘Great! How come? What’s the occasion?’