Half a Rupee: Stories

by Gulzar

  ‘Normally they keep scampering about in the traffic round the clock, but when you really need one, there is none!’

  He picked up pace and began to run towards the hospital. But he kept turning his head in search of an autorickshaw—and kept bumping into dozens of pedestrians.

  ‘Look where you are going!’

  ‘Do your feet point backwards?’

  Sultan knitted his brows at this turn of phrase. He was a collector of sorts of publicly expressed wisdom, but he hadn’t heard this one before. A smile escaped his lips.

  Suddenly he found an autorickshaw headed in his direction. When he waved his hand it swerved and sidled by his side as if it was his pet.

  ‘Government hospital’, he muttered, and got in. Had he just run he would have saved even these eight rupees—he had already covered half the distance. But when he slipped his hand into his pocket, it came through the other end. The wallet was missing; somebody had picked his pocket. He had not realized when. He put his hand over the rickshawallah’s shoulder and showed him the picked seams of his pocket. ‘Forgive me brother … somebody … on the way …’ his voice got choked. The rickshawallah paused and then carried on, ‘Not a problem … it happens sometimes.’ He seemed to believe Sultan.

  Sultan tried to remember when and where his pocket had got picked. And that was precisely what the rickshawallah asked him too, ‘When did it happen? Where?’

  ‘Right now! In the bazaar! I stay in Rewari Bazaar … just left the place … did not even realize when somebody—they stay unseen, friend, just like Bade Miyan, these pickpockets don’t have a face … you never realize when they perform the sleight of hand.’

  They reached the hospital. Sultan got off and wanted to tell the rickshawallah something but the man simply smiled and waved him off, took in another passenger and drove away.

  Sultan’s face fell. He entered the hospital with heavy steps and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He did not bother to take the lift. He stopped in front of Dr Chopra’s chamber. There was a long line of people waiting. The orderly told him that Zakia had suddenly gone into labour and had been rushed into the operation theatre. Dr Chopra was still inside.

  He found an empty bench outside the operation theatre and plonked down there. Time and again, his hand would slip into his picked pocket. And time and again the face of the rickshawallah would flash before him. Now he would have to narrate the entire pickpocketing incident to Dr Chopra too.

  He did not realize when he had dozed off, how much time had passed. He woke up when Dr Chopra put his hand on his shoulder and took him inside his chamber.

  ‘How’s Zakia, Doctor sahib?’

  ‘She’s all right!’

  ‘And the baby?’ There was a smile on his face and a question in his eyes. ‘Baby girl or baby boy?’

  But when the doctor lowered his head, both his smile and his question were snuffed out.

  ‘Sultan, the baby was stillborn.’

  A chill ran down his spine. He kept looking at the doctor.

  ‘Zakia’s all right though. We had to sedate her … but she will be coming back into consciousness any time now.’

  Sultan’s eyes suddenly became dry. His hand slipped into his picked pocket. God alone knows why but he smiled. A little.

  ‘What Bade Miyan! You turned out to be the biggest pickpocket of them all! You yourself blessed her womb, and then you yourself picked it! You pickpocket!’

  VIII

  A diamond may be cut by the petal of a flower

  But even a chainsaw fails to cut through

  The ties the umbilical cord binds—

  Dusk

  The fact that his missus had gone and got her long flowing tresses bobbed without so much as telling him irked Lalaji.

  Last month, when their daughter-in-law went to visit her parents, she had taken the old woman along. The mother of a young infant on an arduous, long train journey needs all the help she can get. And it was not that Maya Devi had not consulted Lalaji. She had asked him, ‘Bahu is asking me to accompany her to Delhi. Shall I?’

  ‘Yes, certainly!’ he had said. ‘You should and you must! How is poor Bahu going to manage the kid all by herself in the train otherwise?’

  Their daughter-in-law was named Mini. Her father was a colonel in the Indian Army—now retired. Both her brothers too were in the Army in high posts. Retirement had not affected the way Colonel sahib lived. His lifestyle remained the same. He still went to parties. His wife lived in style too. She was a modern woman—stylish to say the least. She had got her hair bobbed long ago; this time round she got Maya Devi’s hair cut too.

  When Maya Devi returned to Mumbai after her sojourn in Delhi, Lalaji was shocked to see her. Gone were her long flowing tresses.

  ‘What have you done to your hair?’

  ‘Mini’s mother got them chopped.’

  Maya Devi tried to laugh it off but when she caught the glimpse of brooding darkness swim across Lalaji’s eyes, she could not help but shudder. She could read the tempest that brewed in the twin pools of his eyes. She had practiced the art of reading him to perfection over thirty-eight years of living together. A simper crawled out of her lips, trying to hide her embarrassment, ‘It will grow back … in a matter of months.’

  Lalaji did not utter a word. He quietly walked back into the house and plonked himself on the chair in the sitting room. He stayed in his cocoon at the dining table too—sat through his dinner enveloped in silence. Manoj tried to start a conversation but the wall was impenetrable. All he elicited from Lalaji was a nod or two. A worried Maya Devi asked, ‘Are you feeling all right?’

  His response had no bearing on her question. ‘You had such beautiful hair … they looked so pretty. Why did you get them cut?’

  When he did not get any response from Maya Devi, he added, ‘And that too without even asking me!’

  Manoj entered his room, scarcely able to contain his mirth. ‘Babuji still worries about mother’s braids. At his age! He must be touching what—seventy–seventy-two? And look at him, he is sulking like a teenaged lover.’

  Mini, who was combing her elder daughter’s hair, burst into laughter and asked, ‘Was Babuji’s a love marriage?’

  ‘No! I was there at their marriage. Her parents forced the marriage on him.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘They had eloped and got married in court. About four–five years after their court marriage I was born. And only after my birth did their parents forgive them. There was a patch-up of sorts. Then when Ma and Babuji went to meet Ma’s parents, they threw Babuji out of the house. They told him in no uncertain terms, only if he turned up formally at their door atop a wedding horse and with a wedding procession in tow would they think of giving him their daughter and grandson. That’s when they got married—again. Not that I remember anything. But I know. We still have the wedding pictures.’

  Lala Himraj always went out for a walk after dinner, every day without fail. It was an old habit of his. At the corner of the street was a paan shop where he would get his favourite condiments wrapped in a juicy betel-leaf. The betel nuts in his paan were getting fewer now, a kindness he showed to his ageing molars. But today he did not walk as far as the paan shop. He returned home much earlier, without his after-dinner paan. He just could not get over his wife’s short hair. The image of his wife’s barbered head eddied in his thoughts, pulling him deeper and deeper into a despondency from which he was unable to pull free. Was the sun setting on their love, were they at the dusk of their romance, hurtling towards a kind of darkness? Was it his right or his claim to demand that his wife conform to his vision? He could debate that endlessly; but the truth was that he felt as if he had been robbed of his most prized possession.

  When Manoj was born he knew that he had to abdicate some of his claim over his wife. He had tried to laugh at his surrender, ‘All right, all right! I will take out my own clothes. You look after your son. This pint-sized man has pushed me out of my own marital b
ed the moment he has been born.’

  ‘Don’t you go calling him pint-sized. A full eight pounds he weighs.’

  ‘Fine, fine! But just tell me what I should wear! I have to meet Hilton sahib.’

  ‘Just don’t wear a necktie. It looks like a noose around your neck. A scarf is better.’

  And then when Pinky was born there were further encroachments on his claim over his wife. The food laid on the table was now being cooked by a maidservant. But Maya Devi still seasoned the dal with her own hands. He would know if it wasn’t done by her: Maya Devi took great pride in this fact. Then one day when Lalaji found a long black hair floating in his dal, he fired the maid. He told Maya Devi, ‘If that hair was yours, I would have kept it in my wallet. But I will not tolerate this. If she wants to keep her job ask her to shave her head.’

  ‘Arre hai! Shave her head? Why should she? Her husband’s still alive!’

  ‘Then hire a manservant.’

  Ever since then, they had hired only manservants. And when the reins of the kitchen passed on to Bahu, Manoj’s newly married wife, Lalaji told her, ‘Don’t let your hair loose when you are in the kitchen, Bahu. It gets in your eyes.’ Mini immediately gathered her hair together in a tight bun. But the significance of Lalaji’s words were not lost on Maya Devi. She knew that Lalaji could never forget that single hair floating in his dal all those years ago.

  A few days passed in harmless banter. Maya Devi was thrilled in the furrows of her heart. She interpreted Lalaji’s sulking as nothing but the signs of a robust love. But when a few more days passed, it began to sink in: Lalaji had stopped talking to her. Now she became totally restless, lovelorn. She found his sulking in his dotage more exacting, more punishing than their squabbles when they were young. The entire family would gather together at the dinner table. They began to eat their meals in oppressive silence. After dinner Lalaji would immediately go out for his walk; but now the walks were becoming shorter and shorter. When Maya Devi asked him why, he said, ‘Now I tire pretty easily.’

  A kind of desolation began to hang in the air, and along with it a sort of tension that was felt in the bones but never voiced—muted and yet there.

  Once at the dinner table, Manoj said, ‘Babuji, why don’t you get yourself a new pair of spectacles? There are so many new designs available these days.’

  ‘The ones that I am wearing were approved by your mother.’

  ‘Ma chose this for you?’ Mini looked a little surprised.

  ‘Yes! She did not like the round frames so I began to wear these rectangle-shaped ones. And then when she objected to the black frames I bought the brown ones.’

  At the dinner table another day, he suddenly shot a glance at Maya Devi and asked, ‘Did you season the dal yourself today?’

  Maya Devi looked at him with a tenderness that welled up in her eyes. She was touched that he could still discern her touch.

  Mini asked, ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Bahu, I can smell your mother-in-law’s hands in the dal’s seasoning.’

  But the silence remained unbroken. And when all indirect efforts to placate Lalaji failed, Mini broke down before him and offered her unconditional apologies. ‘Forgive me, Babuji, it was my mistake. I should have stopped Mummy. I should have been more firm with her when she took Mummy to the parlour. I couldn’t say no to Mummy, but Mummy also agreed.’ Mini called them both Mummy, her mother as well as her mother-in-law.

  ‘The world does not come to an end when somebody gets their hair shorn,’ Lalaji said with a muted smile. ‘It’s a small little thing. But then it is always the small little things that season life … the things that make life worth living. She and I have become old … but have we also become strangers to each other now?’

  The next day, Lalaji announced, ‘I am going to visit Pinky. I will stay with her for a few days. I need a change of air.’

  Pinky lived in Jabalpur. After a little deliberation they all agreed. Manoj even tried to joke, ‘Yes, that’s good … by the time you are back I am sure Ma’s hair will have grown a bit longer.’

  Maya Devi said, ‘Come back soon. It is not considered good to stay long at one’s daughter’s.’

  Lalaji left the following day.

  A few days passed, and then a few more. A week went by. Lalaji had failed to arrive at Pinky’s. Everyone began to worry. They began to look for him at his friends’, at his relatives’. What if he had met with some accident? But if that was the case, then they would have been informed, wouldn’t they? They could not think of any plausible reason for his disappearance. When their search and queries did not return any results, they informed the police, published his photograph in newspapers. But there was no trace of Lalaji. Now they began to imagine the worst. All kinds of thoughts began to criss-cross through their minds.

  Two and a half months passed. And then they got a letter—from an ashram in Badrinath. Lala Himraj was terribly ill. His condition was deteriorating every day. A pundit from the ashram had found their address from his diary and written to them.

  They immediately left for Badrinath. But when they reached, they found that they were a bit too late. Lala Badrinath had passed away that very morning. He now had a beard, overgrown, unkempt. His ungroomed, uncut hair was matted. Lying on the mat, he looked like a sanyasi.

  Maya Devi broke every single one of the bangles that adorned her wrists. Then she walked up to him and whispered into his ears, ‘Shall I cut my hair? Now I have to get it completely shorn. I am a widow after all.’

  And this time round, she cut her hair with her husband’s permission.

  Dadaji

  Dadaji sauntered towards the settee, tapping across the courtyard with his walking stick, and sank into it.

  Pulling Jaswant’s son down from the tree and thrashing him was the cause of Dadaji’s grief. And you could hardly call it a thrashing—a few slaps on his buttocks, a scolding, that was all.

  Since Bunty had come to the village, he was always up to something—he was always pulling a prank, or picking a fight. He just couldn’t keep still. Just the other day, he was skipping stones across the pond with that village kid, Beru. Now he could not have learnt this in the city. The stones can only skip in a village pond, you can’t make them skip on the waters of the sea. To pick up a light, fat stone—or a broken pot rim ground into a round fat shape—and throw it across the pond so that it bounces off the surface of the water 3-4 times before sinking, is an art. Beru proudly proclaimed that he could make the stone bounce at least five times before it sank, sometimes six, even seven. Bunty had a brainwave; he broke some porcelain plates and brought the shards to contest with Beru. Because they were so smooth, he thought they would skip far across the pond.

  Beru was the washerman’s son. He would come every day to the house to pick up laundry. He was the one who helped Dadaji solve the mystery of the broken plates. Dadaji tried to drill a lesson into Bunty, ‘Son, you don’t break your china for a skipping-stones game!’ It was not difficult for Bunty to guess the name of his betrayer. He pushed Beru into the lake. Beru was a village kid—he swam right back to the shore. But Bunty hadn’t learnt to swim—he couldn’t even paddle in shallow water. In the fracas he had fallen in the water himself; he barely managed to keep himself afloat, and somehow managed to avoid drowning.

  But Bunty was angry at Dadaji over this morning’s thrashing.

  Nobody these days stayed in touch through letters. Jaswant had installed a phone for his father’s use. Bunty rang up his father and asked him to come and pick him up immediately. He had had enough of the village. He would rather spend the rest of the holidays in the city itself.

  Dadaji was worried, and a little heartbroken too. It is true that when you have children of your own, your attachment with your parents grows a little less. You become more attached to your kids. Jaswant would certainly not be able to remember the time when he had wanted to step out barefoot in the rain and had got scolded, ‘Go! Wear your boots first!’ Mother couldn’t bear to
see Jaswant being yelled at. She would scoop him up in her arms and run out.

  Anything could have happened … How was he to tell Jaswant that his younger sister had run barefoot in the rain and had been stricken with polio? Her right leg had just dried up. Dadaji had witnessed how difficult it was for his parents to marry his polio-stricken sister off. Over the years Dadaji had collected so many memories that every incident would unravel yet another story. Now if you did not share your experiences, if you did not talk about them, then what were they for? Wasn’t this what growing old and wise was all about?

  It was his growing old that Jaswant was worried about. When he had retired from the Bank of Baroda, he had thought of the old family house in the village. Jaswant was the one who had said that they had kept going to the old house when he was in school, to visit his grandfather. But now, nobody lived in the house.

  ‘Why don’t you go and have a look at it?’ Jaswant had said. ‘Do whatever you deem ft—renovate it, sell it, whatever. Anyway it will not be easy for you to live on your pension in the city. And now that Bunty has started school, the expenditures are mounting.’

  Dadaji had understood what his son had left unsaid. But he had grown pretty attached to Bunty. Since the time his wife had died he had been spending more and more time with his grandson. Grandfather and grandson made an excellent pair of raconteurs—they would regale each other with their stories; Bunty would tell his tales of cricket and Dadaji would talk of his adventures with gilli-danda.

  When Jaswant’s wife became pregnant for the second time, Dadaji had left for the village. His heart had sort of wilted. But once he was in the village, it sprouted new greens, as if a plant plucked out of the earth had struck new roots. The floodgates of memories opened. He began to think about his own days with his grandfather. If truth be told, the love and affection he had got from his elders while growing up, his own children could never get. His father used to walk four kos to the madrasa. He himself used to cycle to high school. And even when he had begun to stay in the college hostel, every month his grandfather would arrive with a fresh supply of homemade ghee and pinni. This old house had been built by his grandfather. He had seen the house grow—some room or veranda constantly being added to it, by his grandfather, by his father. The concrete roof was laid while he was in college. It was in the newly built barsati that he had puffed his first cigarette and it was there that he had been caught. It was on that very roof that he had been caned, with a supple branch freshly snapped off the tamarind tree. It was on the roof that he had fallen in love. And it was the drainpipe off the roof that he had climbed down to elope.