Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. (28 page)

Arun Babu lived in the room behind the bank. Once finished with work,
he and Manoj would generally be the last to leave the branch. But today,
they both left a little early. Arun Babu departed first and Manoj swiftly
followed him.

Folding Lakshmi’s saree with care, Arun Babu said, “Lakshmi … make
sure the
ghoonghat
is long. The face shouldn’t be visible.”
A hoarse voice croaked from within the veil. “Sir, it’s already night. Even
if I open the
ghoonghat
a little, Lachumanwa won’t be able to recognize
me.”

“Okay, but do bite the
aanchal
with your teeth. Hope it doesn’t drop.”
Arun Babu passed a letter to Manoj and said, “Manoj, you are a
kalakaar
of the highest order. I cannot surpass you.”

Flattered, Manoj bent down to take blessings from Arun Babu when he
spotted a shadow behind him. Looking at Lachhuman, Manoj shrieked.
The
ghoonghat
detached from within his clenched teeth and fell flat on the
ground, wiping away the month old dust. Lachhuman stood as if he were
witnessing Draupadi’s
chir-haran
.

The sight paralysed Arun Babu. Despite wanting to run away, he remained
still, like a statue. Lachhuman’s head had drooped by now, holding back
tears. His wings of his imagination had been mercilessly slashed. He had
come to Arun Babu’s room after mustering a lot of courage to inquire
about Lachhi in private. But what he saw quelled his spirits. Her Lachhi
seemed to have been kidnapped and murdered by the two men standing
in front of him. Now having been caught red-handed, they were trying to
bury her within the floor. They came up with scores of excuses but none
of them made sense when served in front of the corpse made up of lies.
Sometimes, its hands were visible, sometimes its legs. “Your filthy sweets
gave Arun Babu cholera,” Manoj uttered as a last resort. Lachhuman’s
indifferent face was the answer.

There was darkness in front of Lachhuman’s eyes. The floor seemed
shaky, and his head felt as though there was no roof above. He turned
and disappeared into the night. Arun Babu got up and shouted, “Lach-
human…listen, Lachhuman. Wait for just a moment!” but his voice failed
to stop him.

He looked at Manoj and said, “People are betrayed by their lovers. Lach
-
human might be the first person to have been betrayed by the person
who made him fall in love. It’s time to show your real acting, Manoj. Go
and find him. There’s no greater act than consoling someone who’s an-
guished. Bring him to me, I will apologize to him.”

Manoj ran after Lachhuman but couldn’t find him. Neither at his shop,
nor at his house. Arun Babu joined in the search. They dropped in at each
and every house in the locality in vain. The entire night, both of them
continued to search for him but there was no hint of Lachhuman. His
wife wailed in worry, “What if he is kidnapped? After all, the business
had been running so smoothly. Someone evil eyed our
Lakshmi
.” Bholu
followed suit.

Somehow, restraining their tears, Bholu and Lachhuman’s wife ran
the shop the following day. Arun Babu and Manoj, despite weariness,
couldn’t fall asleep. Even Lachhuman couldn’t sleep the entire night. He
had wandered around, looking at the shimmering lanterns of faraway vil-
lages searching for his Lachhi who never existed. He rambled across the
funeral ghats by the riverside, spent some time below a large peepul tree
until he got scared and moved to a nearby temple, where he spent the
night reclined against one of its walls.

She shut her eyes and after praying for a whole minute, hugged Lachchu
-
man and cried, “Where did you disappear, leaving me stranded all alone?
Are you okay? Do you know how many people have asked about you? I
didn’t know people loved you so much. If you left because I erred, I’m
begging you for forgiveness. But don’t ever get angry with Lakshmi and
leave like this; because Lakshmi gets angry with you in turn and leaves
instead. Now take care of yourself and the shop.”

Lachhuman didn’t utter a word. He remained indifferent. He chose to
immerse himself in work, resuming his routine. He looked at the sweets
meticulously wrapped in polythene. He had a sudden urge to take it off,
rip it and throw it on the road. Let flies, ants and rodents eat his milkcake for all he cared. People like Arun Babu and Manoj deserved cholera.
He grabbed one end of the polythene that covered the gigantic platter
containing the milk-cake, one jerk short of denuding it. His hands didn’t
move this time. Despite the boiling vengeance, he couldn’t bring himself
to part away with Lakshmi, the second time.

Munmun’s boyfriend Pradip had broken his leg. He was rendered im
-
mobile with his leg in a cast. Those were the days in the nineties when
there were no mobile phones and neither did people have laptops and
email ids. Letters and landline telephones were the only modes of com-
munication.

Pradip had to stay in the cast for six weeks. He could not move out of his
hostel room. Luckily, the students were on a break owing to preparation
for the exams and he had no classes to attend. He resigned himself to six
weeks of immobility and relaxation, of being a burden on his friends and
an object of sympathy, of being treated like an invalid and being waited
upon hand and feet. A sick person catalyzes a range of emotions from
pity to exasperation in a person who is saddled with being a caregiver.
One cannot help feel sorry for the person and at the same time, frus-
trated with the work that caring entails.

As far as Pradip was concerned, his hormones were raging but there was
no outlet for them; his girl friend was not near him to provide comfort,
for misery seeks company especially if that company is capable of ex-
travagant and undiluted sympathy.

There was no way the young couple could speak to each other, let alone
meet one another. The phone lines in her hostel were always dead or
busy. His hostel did not allow girls to come in. Even if she braved the
rules and got inside, she knew she would not come out in one piece.

Ravi, a day scholar, lived near her hostel. He would cycle to the boys’ hos
-
tel every morning to study with his friends there. He was a good friend of
Pradip’s and they would study together the entire day and he would come
back home by nightfall, without fail.

One evening, as Ravi left the hostel to go back home, Pradip handed over
to him a love letter for Munmun. In that piece of paper he poured out
all his love for her, replete with evocative verses he had composed for
her. Sealing that precious piece of paper with a loving kiss, he placed it in
Ravi’s reliable hands to be delivered to his precious Munmun.

Now Munmun was equally feeling the pangs of separation and strug
-
gling to control her tears. It has been three days since she had met Pradip.
Damn him. Why did he have to break his leg? This could have been
the six weeks of bliss that she had been waiting for, the entire year of
their affair. They could have met every day, studied together, sometimes
taken a break and gone for a drink outside campus and if nothing else,
just held hands or engaged in some heavy petting if chance permitted.
But this idiot
had
to go and break his leg and spoil it for the both of us,
she thought angrily. She could not focus on her books though she tried
hard to. She was the studious type after all and wanted to study but her
deprived mind would not allow her to concentrate on the words in her
book. No number of steamy romance paperbacks would do the trick.
She needed to hear from Pradip.

That evening, as she lay on her bed wallowing in self-pity, she heard the
shrill nasal tone of her matron calling her name. “Munmun madam, Mu-
nmum madam.” What a surprise! She had a visitor. Who could that be?
And at this hour? How did the matron even allow her a visitor at this
time of the night? With these thoughts in her head, Munmun tugged at
the belt of her short skirt and perfected it, slightly pulling it down to give
it a decent enough length. She smoothed her hair and knotted it into a
bun and ensured her top showed no hint of an errant cleavage or that no
buttons were undone. Slipping her dainty feet into her pink slippers, she
rushed out, lest the visitor changed his mind.

A call indicating the arrival of a visitor is the sweetest sound for the
hosteller’s soul. Forced confinement does no good to the otherwise free
birds of the hostel. At the sound of the visitor’s call, these birds flock
together, irrespective of who the visitor is or for whom. Even though
Munmun was sure that it could not be Pradip on the other side of the
hostel gate, at that point of time anyone would do. She was surprised to
see the tall frame of Ravi silhouetted at the hostel gate. She had a thing
for tall men. Too bad Pradip was on the shorter side. She often looked at
advertisements that claimed they could increase the height of a person
by a few inches and guaranteed results or else a money back guarantee.
Sometimes she would tell Pradip to try the products. Just a couple of
inches and he would be a six footer. At least buy shoes with heels two
inches high, then, she would pester. “Too tall men look down girls’ cleav-
age,” he would joke and she would smack him in mock anger, “As if I’d
let you do that.”

She walked up to the gate, preferring to meet him from there instead of
going out, since the curfew time to meet visitors was on. Ravi, however,
turned and handed her an envelope from the pocket of his full-sleeved
shirt. “From Pradip,” he said. “I will stop by tomorrow morning at 9 am
to collect a reply,” said Ravi and walked away, by the side of his bicycle.

Munmun went up to the terrace to read the letter, away from the eyes and
ears of her roommate. She read it many times and kissed it as many times.
It made her feel close to Pradip and she went back to the room to write a
reply. As ardently as Pradip had done, she poured out all her love on the
paper and wrote a painfully emotional letter. She spoke of her longing for
him and she wished he were there by her side. She wrote that she wished
she could be with him, taking care of him instead of being cloistered in
her hostel room and finally wished him a speedy recovery.

The next morning, she paced the balcony, waiting for Ravi. He arrived
precisely at 9 am, collected the letter and whizzed past the hostel gate. He
arrived at the boys’ hostel and handed it over to Pradip without delay.

This became a daily routine. The letters got steamier as the two poured
out their fantasies onto pieces of paper. Munmun started to look forward
to Ravi’s visits as they were the only two occasions that were a break from
the monotony of her day. Ravi started to come earlier than usual, just a
little bit each day. Munmun always made him wait outside the gates since
she could not come out during curfew. Exasperated, he asked her when
they would be open so that he could come then.

So Munmun told him that if he came well before 6 pm, she would be al
-
lowed to come out and meet him, and that would look less shady, too, be-
cause people had started questioning the daily arrival of a tall and hand-
some young man even if it were only for a few short minutes.

And so Ravi began to arrive half an hour before the gates closed. Mu
-
nmun waited all day to come out and sit peacefully in the park in front
of the hostel, under a tree with an extremely convenient culvert and chat
with Ravi. It was a distraction for her after all. She could catch up on the
gossip at the boys’ hostel, too, and talk about Pradip with him. Soon, in-
stead of her usual ratty hostel dungarees, Munmun began to prepare for
Ravi’s visits. She would dress a bit, yet take care to not look too dressedup, put on a bit of make up and watch out for Ravi from her terrace. The
moment she saw him and his bicycle, she would rush down and wait with
her letter for Pradip. She would come out and sit under the tree with Ravi
and chat up to closing time. Before he left, she would hand over the letter
to him, adding for good measure a warning to not read it, and then head
back, energized, to attack her books.

As time flew, Ravi started to arrive a lot earlier. One day he invited her
to walk up with him to the juice shop. She readily agreed, as she was
also immensely bored of being cooped up inside the hostel for so long
without a class or two to give her an excuse to get out of it. The two of
them spent a long time together in the juice shop that day. They chatted
continuously and had not just juice but sandwiches and French fries too.
It almost seemed like a date. He walked her back to the hostel and she
liked it very much.

This became the second regular routine. The exchange of letters was a
convenient excuse for both of them, but it got more and more perfunc-
tory, at least on Munmun’s behalf. Sometimes she would not even care
to write it beforehand but would sit with Ravi outside under the tree and
pen a few quick lines asking after Pradip’s health with a customary ‘miss
you’ in the end. Sometimes, Ravi would try to peep in and get smacked
playfully, “There is nothing in there; see for yourself. Don’t be so curi-
ous.”

“Ok, I must confess, I read one of your letters, and that was pretty hot,”
Ravi said, his eyes downcast. “Sorry I broke your trust, Munmun, I am
really very sorry. It never happened again and will never happen in fu-
ture too. I ended up feeling miserable for days. Both, because I saw the
contents of your letter without your permission, and also, because I had
seen for myself, the extent of your love for him. I felt terrible for days,
Munmun. I was insane with jealousy, and hated Pradip so much that I
could have strangled him.”