Maya's New Husband

by Neil D'Silva

  The hunter could almost hear the debate going on in the boy’s mind. This kind of a quickie wasn’t a new thing for him, he had guessed, and he had been correct. The boy was enticed for sure, but there was a small inner voice warning him of the horrid potential dangers that he could be inviting. However, as it happens usually in the face of temptation, penis won over brain, and the boy shrugged and followed the man into the bushes.

  ***

  When he opened his eyes next, it was the stink that hit him first.

  It was nothing like anything he had smelt before. The stench was overpowering; it permeated right into his nostrils and made him retch. That rising biological pressure within him made him fully conscious and he looked all around him.

  At first, he thought he was in some kind of factory that made large human-sized dolls. He could see a couple of them ahead of him, both pasty white in color, and immobile. His gaze fell upon the female doll’s breasts. One of them hung out, quite unnaturally. Maybe this was a broken sex doll or something like that. But then, he looked closely and realized this wasn’t merely a tear on rubber. It was a wound—a gaping wound—made by some sharp instrument, and that dark fluid caked under it was dried blood. More bile rose up in his esophagus, and his smooth muscles contrived to throw it up yet again.

  His reflex made him gasp, and it was then that he felt the piercing pain in his ankle. He looked down, and became aware of his nakedness. He didn’t have time to wonder about that though for he saw a large bandicoot fearlessly nibbling at the flesh of his ankle with his razor sharp teeth, looking up and almost smiling at him.

  The smile got him. Just a little while ago, he had seen a similar smile. Yes, he remembered—it was the smile that had landed him here.

  Another searing pain hit him, this time from his thigh. He looked. His fair, almost hairless thigh was now mutilated. It was a kind of a sign, a sign of four curved lines crossing four others. Like an eerie red spider that had emblazoned itself in his thigh.

  Something shone over his head. And, even though the pain in his leg was beyond compare, his curiosity made him look up.

  He hadn’t ever seen anything like that before.

  It was a weapon worn on the man’s hand—the same man he had followed into the thicket some time ago. Four rings adorned the four fingers of his right hand, all attached to form a knuckle contraption. And, despite his numbing pain, he could see the sharp pointed nails attached on the rings.

  It didn’t take him long to realize—this was the weapon that had carved the symbol on his thigh.

  “No, please don’t…” he pleaded. “Who are you?”

  But the man sat on the floor next to him, the knuckle pins pointing upwards, and reached his hand to hapless victim’s chest. He felt his nipple and squeezed it.

  “Please let me go,” said the boy in a muted whisper, which is all he could manage.

  “What a warm heart must be in there!” the man said. “A young, bright red, thumping heart!”

  The boy, though in absolute pain, knew he had to get away from there. This had gone horribly wrong. He was in the clutches of a maniac, who was probably a whole head taller than he was. He could not fight the man, but he could run. It is in such extreme moments that the fight or flight response takes over and dictates actions.

  So, in a trice, the boy shot up. Getting up was the easy part though; the difficult part came when he took his first step. The pain of his wounds shot through his limb like a bolt of electricity, almost paralyzing him, but he had to go on. He didn’t know where to run. He only knew he had to get away from the monster, as far away as he could.

  The monster hadn’t gotten up yet; he was still sitting on the floor like a toad, his feet flat pressed on the floor and his elbows propped on his thighs, and he was grinning from end to end.

  The boy didn’t want to look at him. He only wanted to get away from the infernal place.

  Then, still grinning, the man rose. Gliding like a pishacha, he came right up to where the boy was stumbling to get away, and mocked his desperate attempt to escape. He stepped up in front of his victim, making him freeze in his tracks. The monster then reached out his hand, aimed at his groin, and for a moment the boy thought he was trying to fondle him, but then he realized it was the hand with the knuckle pins. The hand lashed out in one swift stroke, and it was a moment too late when the boy realized what had happened.

  Four new parallel gashes ran deep, right across the abdomen, cutting clean through the navel.

  Blood flowed out in a torrent, gushing out on the floor, bathing the victim and the monster with its red ferocity.

  Then something from within pushed against the gash. The boy felt the terrible unbearable pain of something trying to spill out of him. His facial muscles contorted irreparably as he winced with the pain, and he tried to hold the sides of his slit abdomen.

  But he could do nothing.

  He was still alive when he saw his intestines spilling out of his abdomen.

  The boy’s gut hung out of him like some kind of bizarre festive ribbons, soaked in blood and heavy with his partly digested dinner, and he was shocked to see how he still stood upright. Then slowly the shock began to dumb him into unconsciousness. Only a shadowy sense remained that he should go somewhere away from the monster. With that sense, and with his intestines still hanging out of his abdomen, he took one step forward. Then another. Then he flopped onto the ground, squashing his intestines under his own weight.

  PART TWO

  Marriages Are Made

  ~ 6 ~

  The Disfigured Monkey

  This was quite different from Maya’s first wedding. This wedding was solemnized at the Borivali Family Court with fewer than twelve guests in attendance. Her mother Anuradha was present at the wedding, but she sat most of the time sulking in a corner, and didn’t spread much cheer. The only communication she had with her new son-in-law was a nod of greeting when she led her daughter in kanyadaan to him. Namrata spread some cheer though. She proudly flaunted her boyfriend, Hemant, who was duly introduced as a friend. Hemant turned out to be a gregarious fellow, who easily made Maya laugh with his bawdy wedding jokes.

  Namrata maintained that she needed to stand up for her sister, no matter what, and she even agreed to be the witness for the wedding. The other witness was Padma. A few other people attended. Principal Purohit was there as well and so were a few colleagues and neighbors, who would disappear from the bridal couple’s lives soon after the wedding.

  Everyone asked where the groom’s relatives were. Anuradha found the question uncomfortable after a while. This made her opt out of the reception at a private banquet hall that was to follow, where more guests were to join in, including a few old aunts from Dadar. She just didn’t have it in her to face their inevitable questioning, and she told Namrata to whip up an excuse concerning her menopausal problems if anyone asked. No one prodded further if menopause was alluded to.

  This put the entire burden of managing the banquet on Namrata’s shoulders. However, she had no complaints. She reveled in event management and was quite happy to undertake the responsibility as it kept her away from the bridal stage. She enjoyed the whole process, ably assisted by Hemant; and took care of her sister’s wedding reception.

  Maya, dressed in a wine-colored saree with a golden border and embroidery, looked like a dream. She had spent an hour getting made up at a salon, which was upon the insistence of Namrata and Padma. Bhaskar waited for her at the reception hall until then; and it had paid off, for when Maya returned, he could take his eyes off her. He was dressed in traditional wedding couture—a decorated kurta that flowed up to his knees, longer than the height of most men at the reception, a white loose trouser, and mojris with their pointed tips curved upwards.

  “So finally it is done,” said Padma when she came up to the dais to wish the bridal couple, a cash gift envelope firmly clutched in her hand. “Wish you all the best.”

  “Thank you,” said Maya. “Will you come to visit us?” />
  “Where will you be staying now?”

  “Bhaskar’s house. It is in Naigaon.”

  “Oh, Naigaon!” Padma said and thought—That’s way down in the boondocks. There’s no way I am visiting there. “Well, I’ll see,” she said with a smile. “When are you resuming school?”

  “Probably after the New Year now,” said Maya. “I cashed in on all my pending casual leaves.”

  “Good for you. I end up spending my casual leaves one way or the other. And what about the honeymoon?”

  “Oh, we shall see!” Maya winked and laughed heartily.

  ***

  It was late evening when the new bridal couple wended their way homewards. It was just the two of them in a taxicab. Maya had removed some of her more expensive jewelry and stuffed it in a suitcase with her clothes. She hadn’t gone to the reception dressed in all her finery, but the older women there had prevailed upon her to flaunt all she had, for it was her big day after all. But she wore it mostly to make Bhaskar feel comfortable; she did not want to shortchange him by not presenting herself in her finest.

  The time was around 10:00 p.m. and the sounds of television sets blaring their assorted sounds rent the atmosphere. Maya hadn’t been to this part of the city much; the areas beyond Borivali were quite an enigma to her. She was going to the extended part of Mumbai that had just begun to live over the last two decades. People who moved in to the city from rural areas in search of employment usually made their houses in these parts and they lived somewhat disparately from the main city-dwellers who had inhabited the place since several decades. She had heard people talk about how Naigaon wasn’t that far from the main city now because of the frequent train services, and Bhaskar himself was an example of the people who commuted every day from these fringes of the Mumbai city into the hinterland.

  As the cab whizzed by on the highway, Maya felt the city slipping away. The shining malls and swanky superstores were now replaced with murky petrol pumps and roadside dhabas and assorted single-stall shops with boards announcing their names in cheap ungrammatical ways. The population dwindled too, and for a particular stretch of the highway, it was almost as though they were making their way through a sparse forest.

  When the cab left the highway and entered into a by-lane, an unknown fear took root within her. She felt they were going into the wilderness; and it was at that moment that she became aware of the peculiarity of the situation. She had embarked on a new life’s journey with a new man. Everything she had known so far had changed with that one decision to marry this person. Reality began to bite her now, and the teeny-weeny fear refused to let go.

  Unbidden, the image of her mother sprang up from the recesses of her mind. She remembered her guarded words, always full of caution and worry. Her mother had been right to worry—yes, Maya admitted that now, at least to herself. All of a sudden, she missed her; and seeing that she wasn’t there to comfort her in that moment, panic welled up within her.

  Maya thought of calling her mother as soon as she reached home. She was midway in this thought when the cab screeched to a halt.

  “We’re here,” Bhaskar announced as the cab halted.

  Maya looked around. All she could see were shops with shutters. Most of the shops sold automobile parts and there were garages that serviced them. There were a couple of old furniture shops. There was a roadside butcher stall at the end of the street. The butcher was still hacking at and selling his last meats of the day. But what Maya really wanted to see were residential buildings. There were none.

  “Where?” she asked stupidly.

  He paid the cabdriver and escorted her out of the vehicle. He placed one hand around the small of her back and, with the other hand, carried her suitcase. Then, he pointed in the direction of a narrow alley that passed between two automobile part shops.

  “My house is quite modest,” Bhaskar said. “I know it’s not worth you at all. But we will make it together, won’t we? Quite soon, we will be out of this place.”

  Maya remained quiet. She did not know what to say. She knew that her new husband was a poor man, but she had no idea how poor. Growing up, she had always thought that her own family was the poorest of all, but what lay now in front of her made her family seem like aristocrats. Adversity, just like prosperity, is relative.

  It was night, and the underbelly of the city was on full display. Several men, probably the workers employed in these matchbox shops, lay shirtless on roughly-erected platforms in front of their shops and even on the dividers of the roads, preparing to retire for the night. These were the ubiquitous homeless men for whom the whole city was a large home; wherever they squat is their living room. Stray dogs were all over the area, some of them even sleeping right next to the men. On one side of the road was an unintended garbage dump that had probably built itself over time. The stink of piss permeated across the road, even right up to where Maya stood. Dogs and rodents rummaged through the garbage, and Maya even saw a rag-picker, looking not much different from the dogs that surrounded him, foraging for whatever he could find through the garbage.

  Bhaskar held her hand and took her into the narrow alley that separated the two shops. A few men sat on a charpoy near one of those shops, smoking cheap beedis and sharing a bottle of country booze. When they saw the woman in bridal gear walking past them, they began to hoot. One of them stood up and tugged at the front of his lungi in the most obscene way while another sang a vulgar song from a Hindi movie made for vulgar people like him. “See what the disfigured monkey has brought home today,” another one cackled.

  It was said lightly and in the stupor of a copious volume of country liquor, but Bhaskar could not let that pass in front of his new wife. He looked back sharply and balled up his fist, but Maya held his hand and beseeched him to let it be. Slowly, Bhaskar retreated from what could have turned into a melee.

  There were stairs going up alongside one of the shops, and Bhaskar guided her on them. “The house is at the end of the stairs,” he said. “It is right above this shop. This was all I could afford when I came to Mumbai. It’s a rental place, you should know that. I pay two thousand rupees per month for this dump, but it has been adequate for me so far.”

  She held his hand. “We will make it,” she said. That brought a smile on his lips, the same pearly-white smile she had fallen for just a few months ago. But within her chest, her heart was beating like a drum.

  He made her wait at the door and went inside to prepare the room for her. “I’d set it up in the morning,” he said, “but let me check.” She waited outside and felt increasingly restless as the hooligans still stared at her, but they didn’t make a move. Maya got the feeling that it wasn’t their decency that prevented them. The reason was the man they would have to deal with, her Bhaskar. The fire in his eyes when he had stood up to them a few moments ago wasn’t lost on her.

  Bhaskar was back in a minute. “The palace is all set for my queen,” he said.

  Maya took the first step into the house.

  And, standing there, barely inside the house, she got a clearer picture of what she had gotten into.

  The whole house could be seen from the doorstep. This house—if one could call it that—was smaller than the kitchen in her mother’s house. One of the walls was covered with wallpaper having a design of oversized dogs, but the other three walls left nothing to the imagination about the penury of the occupant. The floor was rough; it wasn’t lined with tiles but with wooden boards, and she was appalled to see a cockroach as large as a plum trying to emerge from a crack in them. The bulb had been evidently changed quite recently, for the light was quite bright, and the shining orb was the only clean thing in the entire place.

  The kitchen area was along one of the walls itself, and it had one of those cheap electric burners. She could count three vessels—one small, one medium and one large as in the Goldilocks story—and four cheap cut chai glasses.

  At the other end, right opposite to the kitchen, was a door that probably opened into
a bathroom. She thanked her pithy destiny for that at least, for she had no intention of going to the municipal toilet she had seen just outside the house every time nature called.

  But, the only thing that had been made up for the day was now neatly lined up alongside the wall with the sole window. It was a bed that could not be classified into any size, king or queen. It was arguably smaller than a queen-sized bed but was meant for two people, because she saw two pillows on it. The covers on the bed were new, and there were stringy chaplets of rose petals running across the edge of the bed, as if in apology to the overall sadness pervading over the rest of the house.

  “This is it,” he said, and proceeded to lock the door.

  He took her on the bed and made her sit. Her heart was beating fast, and he placed his hand over it. “Are you nervous?” he asked. She indeed was, but not for the reasons he thought.

  Slowly, as is the tradition among newly-married Indian couples on their first wedding night, the suhaag raat, Bhaskar began to remove each piece of jewelry that his bride still had on her body. He started with the head ornaments; and as he attempted to remove each of the dozens of pins that had fastened the adornments to her hair, she winced in pain.

  A husband revels in this task, as he gradually brings his wife back from her bridal artificialness to the way nature made her, so that he can truly savor her beauty; but Bhaskar probably did not understand the significance of this ritual. He set about the task with a great sense of urgency, defeating its entire purpose.

  Maya felt no romance in the act. Instead, she was consumed with her husband’s need to strip her of those intervening ornaments to get to the flesh beneath. She removed the bangles herself. She did not want him bruising her knuckles with his lustful impatience.