Half a Rupee: Stories

by Gulzar

  Dada, we missed you a lot. Yang Sui is off to Calcutta today and she is flying out from Calcutta itself. The other day she kept waiting for you. Her train will leave this evening. Come by 4.30, if you can. We will wait for you outside the station.

  –P

  The handwriting looked feminine at first sight. But then he glanced over the initial again—the P was too bold, too firm to be either a Pushpa or a Preeti. Looked more like a P some man called Parthiv would sign off with. And it was then that he remembered the first letter he had forgotten in the pocket of his track pants. The track pants were now in the laundry. He pulled open the drawer of his writing table and dropped the letter into it.

  For the next few moments the letter occupied his thoughts. He thought about it while sipping his tea, dwelt on it while devouring his breakfast. A small little explanation found an expression: somebody’s having an affair … a romance maybe … with a girl from Vietnam … and he did not go to meet her … either the two lovers had had a spat or perhaps he was no longer interested in her and was simply bluffing. He kept nurturing the thought, embellishing it a little here, pruning it a little there, and by the time he reached the college for his classes, the small little explanation had sprung itself into a full-fledged story.

  No more letters arrived after that. Every few days, whenever Guru would remember he would pick the doormat up and look underneath it. It became a sort of a habit. No, not exactly a habit—a curiosity perhaps. Or maybe the search for an answer—who was that letter for? But the answer always eluded him. And he finally gave up on it. There were far too many things happening in the city. The Naxalite movement was picking up speed. There would be some incident of violence every day—a bomb going off somewhere, an explosion ripping out the innards of the city someplace else. The attendance of students began to thin. Now, even the professors were absenting themselves from the classes. Most of Guru’s time would now be spent either in the library or the canteen.

  Something was afoot in the canteen, brewing in the hushed silence of his friends. Guru let it be. But when their conspiratorial silence began to cause him discomfort, he asked a friend. The friend took him outside the canteen into the college maidan, leaned into his ears and said, ‘A meeting’s scheduled to take place in the city. In Rajpur … perhaps …’

  ‘What kind of a meeting?’

  ‘Cultural … but who knows,’ a surreptitious shrug of the shoulder, ‘it may turn a different shade … maybe political.’ He cast a furtive glance around and spoke again into Guru’s ears, ‘It is believed that Guru is coming for the meeting.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your namesake, Gorakh Pandey!’

  The other Gorakh Pandey was from Bihar as well, but during the Naxalite movement he had become really popular in Bengal. There was something about him, something about the way he wrote that could whip up a frenzy amongst the youth of his generation. The moment Gorakh Pandey wrote a new poem a current would ripple through the city, and boys and girls alike would regroup themselves and right under the nose of the vigilant police, would paste copies of his poems on every available surface. The youth would read his fiery poems in anti-establishment newspapers, off posters on trams and buses, and work themselves up into a hysteria. And yet, nobody knew what Gorakh Pandey looked like. Nobody had seen him. The police would forever be on a lookout for him and would publish his photographs in newspapers at regular intervals, but never ever would two photographs be the same, and of the same man. Because the police was on a lookout, Gorakh would forever keep changing his guise. Some believed that none of the published photographs were his.

  The Naxalbari movement was now spilling over the Bengal border into Bihar. Our Guru was an undergraduate student. He had nothing to do with any political movement, he had no affiliations whatsoever. No, not even by a far stretch. But being a student of literature he did peruse a few of his namesake’s poems and if truth be told, he did find a suppressed anger pulsate through his spine.

  Not so long ago, a friend of his had said while they were sitting in the canteen, ‘Guru, you have to listen to him once … his words will put your soul on fire.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘God … if I was fortunate enough to have heard him do you think I would have been sitting here in front of you? His words would have set me afire, burnt me to cinders; my ashes would have been here in my place … on that plate …’

  Guru left for the tryst with the infamous, incendiary Gorakh Pandey with that very friend. Nothing was ascertained though: Where would the meeting take place? How would it take place? Who all would be there? Nothing was certain. Not as yet.

  They were only halfway to the venue when the traffic began to be diverted. And when they reached Badal Chowk it seemed as if the entire city had come to a standstill. Station Road was blockaded, off limits. A bomb had exploded at A.N. Chowk and the jeep of the police commissioner had been blown away. Fortunately the police commissioner had survived—a close shave. Guru and his friend got off the bus and walked back all the way to the hostel. It took them a few hours.

  That night Guru was about to roll off to sleep when his eyes came to rest on the doormat. He shot out of bed and picked the mat off the floor. A letter! Yes there was a letter. Similar to the ones that he had found earlier: a simple note in a simple envelope. But this one was scrawled in a hurry:

  You will find S behind St Agnes’ Church. The car will be ready to take you straight to Kohima. There’s not a moment to waste. Hurry!

  –P

  Guru kept looking at the letter, spinning off numerous threads to the story in his head. He entangled himself inextricably, and fell asleep, exhausted. In the wee hours of the morning, a hullaballoo woke him up. The police had cordoned the hostel off and everybody was being roused from their sleep and lined up outside. Every single room was being searched.

  Suddenly a constable came running, ‘Sir, we have found him, sir … he has swallowed cyanide.’

  He looked to be twenty-six, certainly not more than twenty-seven. There was a well-trimmed beard on his face, it looked freshly groomed. Rimless glasses were still perched atop the bridge of his nose.

  ‘In which room did you find him?’ somebody asked.

  ‘Room number fifty-one.’

  That was the room next to Guru’s.

  ‘But who is he?’ Guru asked.

  ‘Don’t you know him! The infamous Naxalite Gorakh Pandey!’

  Guru stood rooted to the spot, stunned into silence.

  ‘There were rumours that he was hiding somewhere in our city …’

  ‘Gawd! Think of it … hiding in our very hostel and we had absolutely no idea!’

  Guru’s hand was in the pocket of his trackpants, his fingers clutching at the remnants of that first letter which had now been laundered clean along with his trousers.

  While the investigating police officer tried to prepare a first listing of the evidence and findings at the scene of the crime, he showed the hostel warden a letter that he had found on the body of the deceased. A simple note without the simple envelope. Written in Bangla were the words:

  Ek baar biday de Ma, ghoorey aashi!

  Bid me farewell now, O Mother, I promise I will be back …*

  Swayamvar

  When she opened her eyes, it was morning—pretty early in the morning.

  She was a bit puzzled, a bit intrigued—how on earth had she fallen asleep in the first place? She had not taken the sleeping pills in spite of Swaran’s insistence. She was absolutely relaxed, watching a movie on TV late into the night. She was really into the movies, the pulpy kind that had a lot of fights and thrills thrown in. She saw a few too many of them. And they all appeared real to her—the movies opened her world to the possibilities of all that could happen and yet, nothing really did. That’s what life is about, she would often sigh. But the last night of her life she had wanted to spend fully awake. Then how did she fall asleep? How could sleep descend upon The Bomb? She was nothing but a ‘mission’, and how co
uld a mission shut its eyes?

  And then a thought found seed: maybe Swaran had slipped a sleeping pill or two into her coffee. Swaran was her custodian. If she were to fail her mission or if her resolve weakened, Swaran was to shoot her down, then and there.

  For a moment, anger pulsed through her veins. Her head buzzed in fury. How dare he? When she said no, she meant no—an absolute NO. She did not like anything being imposed on her. And trust was an absolute. She couldn’t tolerate anybody doubting her, even for a moment. She knew her own constitution pretty well. She never ever made any impulsive decisions.

  But the very next moment, her anger dissipated. She remembered last night—it was she herself who had made the coffee. She had in fact even asked Swaran if he wanted some. And Swaran had shaken his head in refusal.

  He had been sitting at the table engrossed in divining solutions to algebraic equations. Quite a strange way to relax—but then, to each his own.

  She remembered switching the TV off. And she remembered thinking about her mother when she had propped herself on the bed thereafter. It flicked on a switch inside and the scene of her mother being raped by the village headman in the coconut grove began to unspool before her eyes. The headman looked after the chief minister’s interests in the village. She flicked the switch off. She had by now begun to pity her mother. And she hated this emotion called pity. The sickle the villagers used to chop the husk of coconuts was lying next to her. Why hadn’t her mother simply picked it up and torn open the intestines of the man?

  The scene wasn’t complete. It was still floating in the salty water of her eyes. She got up and switched off the lights. She glanced at the watch strapped to her wrist. It appeared blurry but this much she could make out: the date was still the same. The day was yet to be over.

  When she awoke, dawn had not yet broken but the sky had now begun to turn grey at its edges. But there was enough light to read the dial of her watch: a new number had scrolled up in the date window—a new day, a new date. She had so badly wanted to see the dates change, but she had slept the opportunity away. She kept lying in her bed. Had she really fallen asleep that early last night? She must have been stressed. There must have been a lot of agitation in her subconscious. Little wonder she had drifted away into sleep after she killed the lights. She resented being ruled by her subconscious. She heard the whoosh of the kerosene stove. Swaran must be up. Had he slept at all? He was an insomniac anyway, whether he slept or lay awake all night, he was always the same, like the notations in algebra. Come to think of it, his face looked like an algebraic equation, ears bent outwards at both ends. If you were to pull them together it would become the X and the nose—as if somebody had hung the Y upside down, an upside-down catapult. And the eyes … the eyes … she could not think of a suitable parallel in algebra. She smiled at the little ruse she had invented to amuse herself. Algebra used to give her the jitters when she was in school. Thank God she had quit school early. Her taadi-addict uncle had pulled her out.

  The sound of rustling feet broke her thoughts. She looked up to find an entire equation of algebra standing at the door with a steaming cup of coffee. He looked as if he had stepped out of that photo that Najam Palli had framed on his wall: not a hair was out of place. Najam Palli was Swaran’s friend. The first time she had seen him, he was lying in a bloody heap outside his own house. She had gone there looking for her taadi-addict uncle. And Najam Palli had been dumped outside his own door by the headman’s cronies, beaten to a pulp. She had no idea Najam Palli was her uncle’s younger brother, her younger uncle. She had never seen this uncle before. She had heard it said that during high tide he would row his dinghy through the bay into the village and the fishermen would stealthily go and meet him. She had also heard that Najam Palli’s land had been bought by the chief minister. The village headman was the chief minister’s man. The chief minister was the prime minister’s man. She had heard that the prime minister, who lived in far-flung Delhi, was afraid of this Najam Palli of Sukha Puram, this country of parched earth, this place of droughts.

  She went for a bath after finishing her coffee. She kept sitting under the shower for quite a while. Nothing of much significance crossed her mind. Just plain, simple, ordinary things: like the shape of the bar of soap she was using. She did not take to it. She thought of changing it the next time she showered. Next time? There wasn’t going to be a next time. This was her last shower, her last bath, her last toilette. The shower dried up in the middle of her bath. An irritation crept in; bloody shit … tomorrow … tomorrow she would go and sort this thing out with the landlord. Tomorrow? Once again tomorrow? The shot of the film had to be cut in the middle. And slowly a feeling began to unspool, the feeling of the last day, her last day. And as the feeling began to slowly sink into her, she could detect an unfolding sense of drama—faint at the moment, the full impact of which she was yet to discover. The shower sputtered, coughed and then began to disgorge water all over again. Part of the soap lather that had dried on her skin had now begun to come off her body, like the discarded skin of a moulting snake.

  Thoughts are like traffic on a busy street. A thought comes honking from behind and overtakes another. She had not brought a towel. She had stepped into the bathroom without one. She had never forgotten it before. Was she stressed? Subconsciously? Once again she felt irritated by her subconscious. She was not willing to believe that there was any kind of stress within her. In the sudden absence of the sound of gushing water another thought ushered itself in. She felt like doing something that she had never ever done before. Something that would satiate her desires, fulfil her dreams, something that would make her life worth having lived. Something that would be a befitting climax, a beautiful ‘The End’ to the film of her life. A fleeting desire took root—to get her photograph clicked. And by the time she stepped out of the bathroom, the desire had bloomed. She was all set, decided. She went to tell Swaran but he had gone for his bath.

  On the way to the photographer they passed the Shiva temple. Swaran looked in her direction. Should he ask the driver to stop the taxi or should he not? He knew that she came to this temple, not often, just once in a while. She too looked in his direction and with the slight shake of her head told him not to. She thought the idea meaningless, or perhaps God alone knew why she did not feel up to it. Perhaps she was scared—she knew she could not gather the courage to face her God. Or perhaps the thought of grovelling before her God to grant her the courage to execute her mission made her an object of pity. Pity, that same creepy feeling.

  By the time they reached the photographer’s studio, she had made one more decision—to write Raj Kumari a letter. Raj Kumari, her friend from the village. The last time she saw her was over a year ago, grinding her life away in marital unhappiness, eking out a stifling, miserable existence. She had slapped her when she saw the tears in her eyes. Bloody bitch! She had cursed at her a little more. Raj Kumari’s jaws had dropped, ‘O Ma! Look at you cussing! Such a foul tongue … you are cussing the way my husband does!’

  ‘He cusses at you?

  ‘Yes … the headman cusses at him … he cusses at me!’

  She rolled down the window and spat outside. The taste on her tongue was turning bitter; she had no idea why. She guzzled down two tall glasses of water the moment she reached the studio of Babulal photographer. Babulal’s son was a recent convert to the ways of the city; he had just returned from one. He was looking dashing in a body-hugging jersey. He sprinkled a lot of English words in his conversation. She liked him. He had brought a newfangled camera with him. It was he who made her sit on the stool. It was he who made her pose for the camera. He took a long time doing so, and told her his mile-long-tongue-twister of a name only to quip in English, ‘You can just call me AK; that’s what people call me!’

  She realized that today Swaran was smoking more than he normally did. This was the second consecutive cigarette that he had pulled out of his pocket. Suddenly he spoke, ‘AK, there’s a political gathering in Sukham
pur this evening. The PM is coming with the CM. Want to come along?’

  ‘Will I be allowed in?’ AK asked.

  ‘I will be the reporter with the copy-pencil in my hand, all you need to do is hang the camera around your neck. I will tell them that you are with me.’

  ‘You got a pass?’

  ‘I’m your pass!’ She laughed for the first time in twenty-four hours. She liked the informality with which she could treat him.

  That evening at the political gathering, the turnout was massive—a sea of people. Her heart began to pound in her chest. She could hear it pounding loudly, distinctly, as if she were listening to a walkman. Her jaws began to ache. If there was something in her subconscious … she held on to it with her teeth, trying to crush it between her molars with all her might. Whenever Swaran looked at her, he found her jaws moving. Something was being ground. Was it her anger? Her fear, perhaps? Or was it her scream that she held on to, not letting it escape her mouth?

  A sudden uproar: the PM had arrived. The huge floodlights sprung to life. A cavalcade, about eight or ten cars long, screeched to a halt. Plumes of dust could be seen eddying up in the backlight. The cars could not be seen but a horde of heads could be seen rolling towards the main gate. The volume of the walkman inside her head began to turn up. AK was in the lead.

  Swaran took the garland out of the bag slung across his shoulder and thrust it toward her. But she did not see it. Her hands and feet were turning to stone. Her blood circulation was beginning to grind to a halt. Swaran was concerned. He was her keeper, her steward. He had to steer her back on the right path, keep her on the right track. He shuffled closer to her. She was juggling numerous problems of algebra in her mind. Now things began to gather pace.