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As I was typing up my story of a cholera epidemic in the Matunga slum, the editor came and stood behind my chair.
"What is this alarmist nonsense you are writing?" he asked me.
"Cholera, sir," I told him, looking up into his hairy nostrils.
"What do you think we are? Some kind of rumor-mongering magazine? Putting out unsubstantiated nonsense?"
His newspaper, you see, has close ties with the present city administration and my report contradicted their boast that cholera had been eradicated in the city of Bombay. Although my frank impulse was to crack the editor's skull with the typewriter, or at least to fling a few curses in his face, I offered to redo the story. According to his requirements. My unemployed status and my limited means do not allow the luxury of high-minded gestures. These days, whatever vomit is provoked by people such as the editor, I swallow. All I want is to pocket my princely fee, so that I can return home to my tin box and curl up with the nice headache the adventures of the day have given me.
But crawling in our door, I see that Héma, my Héma, has other things in
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mind. She is in full form today. Sprawled over the floor in all her seductive charm. Her forty-two-inch breasts-of-a-Hindi-movie-vamp are crammed-to-the-bursting into a bright red choli. White underskirt is hitched up to expose heavy thighs. Oil that could have been used to fry a hundred chappatis has been rubbed into black hair, spread like a fan over the pillow. There's kohl around the eyes, so much of it that for a while I think Héma has been in another fight with Laxmi-the-neighbor. Lipstick the color of passion itself is smeared over Héma's lips, and pink powder is caked over the rest of her face and the twice-broken-by-mother-and-once-by-late-hubbie nose. Héma has named the entire get-up after Rekha, that blouse-bursting, sex-terror of the screen, whose ten-foot-diameter breasts and twenty-foot-wide hips have invaded the fantasy life of every male in the country. Héma, needless to say, is a poor version of the original.
Pretending there is nothing out of the ordinary, I step over Héma and stand facing the wall. Slowly, I start taking off my shirt. Héma is undeterred and enters the second phase of her seduction. She starts crooning her engleesh type love ditty.
"I love you, kiss, kiss, kiss; I love you, kiss, kiss, kiss," she sings, trying to inject ardor and a filmi tune into the six words.
I hang my shirt on a nail in the wall and start taking off my pants. I try to convey my disinterest by the rigidity of my back. But Héma, with a popping of knees, gets up from the mat and squeezes herself between me and the wall. She locks me in an embrace any wrestler would have been proud of. My nose is buried in oil-drenched hair.
"Hé, hé," I shout. "What are you doing? Nuisance! I can't even take off my pants in peace."
I reach up and try to unlock Héma's arms from around my neck.
"Don't be like that, baba," she pleads in my ear. "Please na, for my sake only, give some I love you, kiss, kiss, kiss."
Héma's arms release my neck and start doing something else. I realize it was a tactical mistake to take off my pants, because, now, Héma, she of the butterfly fingers, is rooting around in my knee-length, ration-cloth underwear.
"My skull is splitting open with a headache," I shout. "I spent the whole day standing in line with defecating cholera victims, and when I come home for some rest, there you are, waiting to eat me alive."
"Oh baba, I didn't know you had headache. I'll make you tea right now. I'll massage your forehead nicely. Oh baba, I didn't know."
Héma stands on tiptoe and starts kissing my forehead.
There's a certain desperation in Héma today that makes me suspect something is wrong.
"What happened?" I ask her.
Héma continues her kissing. Blindly. I have even less patience with her than usual. I shake her.
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"Aré, I asked you what happened."
Reluctantly, Héma's eyes open. Jaundice-yellow, kohl-edged eyes are swimming in tears. Two drops overflow the edge and clear a path through pink powder.
"Our leper died in the afternoon," Héma sobs.
So that's the reason. The leper who lived in the shack opposite ours is dead. Finally. The eating away that began at birth with tips-of-tiny-toes and end-of-baby-nose has been completed.
More streaks in the powder. Black streaks now, because the kohl has begun to run.
"Aré, what's the bad news here?" I shout. "You think it's fun being a leper? You think it's fun to wake up every morning and tie a piece of rubber to your rotting rump and go scraping on it all across the city, asking for ten paise? You think it's fun to have flies laying eggs in your sores? What's the matter with you? Are you mad?"
"But still, baba," Héma weeps, "who to talk to now? Who to joke with?"
I am defeated. I know that tonight, although it feels like rats are gnawing at my brain, I'll have to submit to Héma. The alternative would be to lie awake all night listening to her weeping.
Héma is covering my neck and chest with tear-wet kisses. I look down and see a trail of red butterflies descending toward my navel as she sinks to her knees. No, it's not sex that Héma wants. Not that thing she is so ardently kissing. What Héma wants is a story Not just any story either, but a particular kind of story, with a certain kind of ending. Without which Héma can't go to sleep, and for which she is willing to do anything.
You see, every now and then, Héma sinks into a swamp. A sentimental bog, if you will. When this happens, it is my job to go in and pull her out. At first, I had tried to attack the bog itself. When Héma came home from blockbuster tragediesthe kind where Prakash Khanna is dying of cancer and devotes his last days to bringing happiness to his fellow patientsand cried for weeks, nonstop, I tried to din it into her head that the actor was alive and well in his Juhu Beach mansion, surrounded by a harem of eighteen-year-olds. I showed her pictures of the star in his lotus-filled, olympic-size swimming pool. I read her gossip about gold-plated faucets and dinner parties that degenerated into orgies of food throwing. To no avail. The swamp was too vast.
When the weeping continued into a second week and our tin box began filling up with a foul miasma, I began to consider drastic remedies.
Héma's weeping was often accompanied by questions to God. "Why no last-minute miracle, Lord?" she would ask. "Why no last-reel discovery that X-rays had been switched by accident and it was someone else who had the cancer? Why no twelve-hour operation with big, big doctors and ten bottles of blood?"
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Héma could conceive of happy endings only in filmi terms.
"But there were ten bottles of blood," I told her on the eighth day of wailing.
Héma lifted her swollen face from the soggy pillow and looked at me in puzzlement.
"There were ten bottles of blood," I repeated. "There was a big, big operation, with London-returned doctors and made-in-U.S.A, machines . . ."
"But which film are you talking about now?"
". . . while outside the operating room people prayed. Street vendors with cracked feet and baskets of mangoes sat next to gold-chain-and-perfume-wearing college wallahs. Hindus with holy thread and tilak mark on forehead sat next to bearded mullahs and turbaned Sikhs. All in brother-brother, Indians-first-religions-next attitude. On the altar before which they prayed was a Koran, a garlanded picture of Guru Nanak, and a statue of Sree Krishna. Blue-skinned, playful Sree Krishna. With peacock feathers in his hair and a flute held to his lips.
" 'Bhagavan, Sree Bhagavan,' they prayed, 'Ocean of Mercy, Sea of Love. Save your servant's life.'
"Tears escaped from shut eyes and rolled down devout faces. Prayerful voices rose in unison, singing kirtans and bhajans. Bells were rung and coconuts broken, divisions forgotten and hearts united. The crippled girl of ten, Prakash Khanna's favorite, sat at the foot of the idol and sang the songs of Mira Behn. Songs of adoration, songs of love. While inside, doctors struggled with a tumor whose tentacles were wrapped around kidney and intestine. So many tentacles that the d
octors were ready to give up."
"Nahi! Nahi!" Héma screamed.
She sank to her knees and joined the other devotees. "Sree Bhagavan, Sree Krishna," she prayed, "Sea of Love, I kiss your feet."
Prayers were heard. The rapt adoration of the crippled girl bore fruit. Gradually, while needles on American-made machines flickered and swayed, while ten bottles of blood dripped into barely alive body, blue-skinned fingers guided doctors' hands. So that at the end of half a day, an octopus lay fingerless in a metal pan.
To tell you the truth, it made me quite nauseous to lie there beside Héma, ladling this sentimental syrup into her mouth. This sweet lyric that is the stock-in-trade of our film industry and the staple food of the masses.
When I got to the end of my story, Héma burst into a fresh bout of tears. Tears of happiness, mind you. Which did mitigate my disgust, somewhat, and encourage me to persist with the cure. The cessation of Héma's wailing was more important than anything else.
The story needed repeated and detailed telling, of course, but by the end of a week it had begun to stick. Brick by brick, and as adeptly as any Hindi film maker, I constructed a house of illusion for Héma to occupy. Sobs and snuffles
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gradually ceased. Héma's face lost puffiness. The fog grew wispy and blew away. Her faith restored by lies, God's love and dharma rescued by fiction, Héma washed her face and returned to life. No, she bounced back to life in true filmi fashion. Soggy-with-sweat-of-labor rupee notes were extracted from her waist pouch and spent on colored paper. The inside of our house was transformed into a dizzy kaleidoscope. There were yellow sunbursts of happiness and red triangles of harmony, pea-green hexagons and purple dots, perfect pink squares and orange cones. An explosion of kindergarten cheerfulness on the walls. While on the floor, in barely available space, Héma drew a white circle of love. In it she put multi-colored chalk-powder representations of the flora and fauna of the universe. Sticks-and-circle dogs and cats, flowers and coconut trees, other squiggles and commas of creation. Tadpoles all, Héma wanted to say, swimming in a sea of love.
For Héma everything comes in threes. So before I had recovered from the wild geometry and the primal soup, Héma made me shut my eyes and lie on the mat. When I opened my eyes! Bapré bap! Hémaji! Eighth wonder of the world! Across the ceiling, on a dark blue background, a silver moon and a constellation of tinsel stars!
Alas! The enthusiasm of rebirth did not last forever. Not even the mighty fortress that I had built could withstand the daily onslaught of the slum. The stench of excreta rose above the ramparts. The day-and-night wailing of Laxmi's son, as gangrene crept up-and-up his leg, fell like a steady pickaxe on the walls. Whole sections collapsed when Héma accidentally witnessed the scraping off the road of a ten-year-old, run over by a bus. Slowly but surely, the fortress sank back into the bog. And I was forced to run out with blueprint and fresh cement.
This has become a pattern. I construct solid walls of untruth and the slum destroys them with cannon balls of truth. It has become a game between usa game into which I am pushed, each time, by Héma's merciless weeping. However, to boast a little, I'm getting better at the game, more and more adept at masonry. I'm learning to bake harder bricks and lay deeper foundations. More importantly, in recent months, I've made a certain discovery. I've realized that 70 mm tragedies and neighborhood happenings are merely an external stimuli. The real cause for Héma's distress lies elsewhere. Yes, the true invaders of Héma's fortress come disguised. It's not the harshness of the slum that pulls Héma down. What brings her down is her own past. Her own memoriesbearing spears and dragging cannons.
You see, Héma had a bad childhood. One that has left behind stubborn remembrances; against which there is no permanent defense. Nevertheless, it's more effective to engage the real enemy. So tonight, when Héma and I are spooned up on our mat and I put my lips to an oily ear, I avoid the shallowness of "once upon a time, there was a leper who died and went to heaven." Instead, I begin:
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"Once there was a cruel mother of the slums . . ."
Héma flinches.
"Once upon a time," I repeat, "there was a cruel mother who gave birth to a baby girl. When the baby was placed beside her, she put a hand between the new born's still slick legs and searched for something. 'Haré Ram, Haré Krishna, let it be there,' she prayed. But between the legsa shocking absence. Not even the slightest sign of a divine blessing. Despite a nine-month bribery of God, no wrinkly little sack with two marbles in it. No tiny trunk of elephant-God. No prospect of a dowry. No old age insurance. Only a bitter wound, like a knife slit.
"The mother screamed and beat her breasts. Her blouse became soaked with milk. 'Aré, aré,' Mumbai, the midwife, tried to placate her, 'what is wrong with you? Instead of thanking God. . . .'
"The cruel mother picked up the framed picture of the blue-skinned God sitting next to her mat, and spat on his smiling face. Then she leaned over the baby girl, over her newborn face, and repeated the act.
"Mumbai had to attend to another birthing and left the baby girl in the grasp of her mother. When she returned ten hours later, she found the mother fast asleep on her mat. The baby lay on the bare floor, in a pool of urine and shit, surrounded by flies. Her hands were clenched into little fists of helplessness, her sparrow chest heaved with sobs.
"Mumbai took the baby away and circulated her among the recent mothers of the slum. After their own babies were fed and if any milk was left, they would suckle the baby girl for a while. But, by and by, they became reluctant to do this. They looked at the baby girl lying patiently on their floor and saw a parasite. A beggar whose silent, beseeching eyes pestered them for the milk they needed for their own children. Sometimes, they gave her a wet rag to suck. At other times, irritated by the imploring eyes, they put the baby girl outside, on the slum path. Mumbai had no choice but to return her to the cruel mother's house."
Héma is curled up tight as a shrimp now. The pillow is getting soggy.
"But then," I continue, "something happened. The white car of a childless couple, the white car of a rich couple, stopped. A woman in a blue silk saree and a man in fresh white clothes got out. They asked the urchins who crowded around them where the shack of the midwife was. Clean feet descended into the slum soup. Waded through rubbish, stepped over rotting things whose guts had spilled out, and over stinking, yellow blossoms, crawling with flies. The edge of a blue silk saree became dirty and the white clothes of a man were splashed. But still they went, deeper and deeper into the slum, led by a midwife. Until they came to the shack of a cruel mother and her baby daughter. A sack curtain was pulled aside, two visitors entered a tin box. A baby was seen lying on the bare floor. The woman in the saree saw the fists of helplessness and could not stop the tears from springing to her eyes. The man in white clothes saw a spar-
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row chest and pulled bundles of rupee notes from his pocket and offered them to the cruel mother. A baby was wrapped in the end of a blue silk saree and carried out of the slum. Into a white car. Which stopped outside a white house on the beach. A big house with broad windows, lace curtains and breeze. Whose best room had already been readied. Hung with silk drapes and wind chimes. Under whose canopy of music, a baby girl was settled. By a couple who had, till then, ached with childlessness."
At the end of an hour, after spoonfeedings by a kind mother while a father watched; after the blowing out of candles on birthday cakes while pictures were taken; after nights of fever when every light in the big house blazed and a mother and father kept anxious vigil beside a bed; after red balloons and a bicycle with a shiny bell; after the pigtails and yellow bag of school days; the combing of a daughter's silky hair by a mother while a proud father watched; after all this and more, Héma was pacified. Sobs died down. Forty-two-inch-breasts-of-a-hindi-movie-vamp began heaving peacefully in sleep.
Tomorrow the story will be repeated in greater detail. It will take time and careful telling on my part,
but in a week or so the fortress will be rebuilt. For a while at least, the fallacy of a white car that came will take hold. Denying the reality of a baby who remained on the bare floor and a cruel mother who looked at her with a sudden excitement. Because there, right under her nose, was a means for taking revenge on the blue-skinned God, for all the miseries He had heaped on her. Because there, in the corner, was something over which the scalding waters of hatred could be poured.