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sohamgpt · 2 years ago

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Laltu stood there in silence, his bloodshot eyes full of rage, his body stiff, only his jaws trembled. His mother sat cowering in silence at the corner of their slum hut, as his wife screamed at the top of her voice, telling him how worthless he was and how, like a lousy pussy, he had made his way back home for dinner, after spending an entire day drinking away with the bastards he called his friends. ‘Go back to your gutters in Garcha’, she told him, ‘Go back to where you belong, this place is no place for you, even if it is a lousy slum.’ His six year old daughter was deep in sleep; her brown-paper wrapped textbook was still open – if it was summer, the pages would have fluttered under the electric fan but now, it was winter. Laltu’s son, not even a year old, kept crying ceaselessly in the midst of all the commotion – perhaps it’s the cloth diaper, has he soiled it already? With his eyes, Laltu was almost eating up Shampa. She’s got fat as a pig after childbirth – he thought – and was throwing tantrums every day these days! She wouldn’t shut up, just wouldn’t, that cunt. Motionless, he stood there in silence facing her: only his jaws trembled. On a kerosene stove, a saucepan full of water was boiling – a few more minutes now. That bitch, Laltu was thinking, she needs hot water to take a bath at night, now that she’s going out, working, what guts – wasting kerosene to take a bath! Motionless, he stood facing his furious wife. She was still screaming, still screaming at him – How ugly, he thought, she looks when she screams! If only, if only he could just kick that ugly face so hard with his foot that it’d be deformed forever beyond recognition, if only he could do that, but – but that wouldn’t be too smart, he knew even in his state of drunkenness.

‘Janowar! Jontu kothakar, jah sala nordomay giye mwor! Khete esheche shurshur kore khankir chhele raat hotei! Eta tui hotel peyechish, hna? Hotel? Saradin mod kheye tal hoye pore achish, pet e khide jei legeche, bokachoda khete eshechish! Hobe na, ja bhag ekhan theke! Sala aya hoye ami khatbo, onyer pod ami chuchobo ar babu hoye tui saradin modh kheye pore thakbi, eta hoy? Bol, hoye? Ko mash holo bekar hoye boshe achish, bol toh! Bol komash holo!’ she was screaming, ‘Filthy beast, go rot in the gutter, creeping home to eat in the night, son of a bitch! Is this a hotel, huh, tell me, is this a hotel? The whole day you spend boozing away, the moment you are hungry, you come back home like a pussy! Can’t happen, just scram, get lost! I’ll work all day as an attendant, wiping other peoples’ butts and all you’ll do is booze away, can this happen, huh, tell me, can this go on? Tell, me, how many months have you been sitting on your ass, tell me, how many months? How many months?’ By now, tears were rolling down her eyes, her voice was starting to tremble. And then, before she knew it, it happened.

I had once heard a dog being run over by a motorcycle late into the night – it howled and howled in agony until it died, and the howls, believe me were unnerving even for the iron-hearted. Sampa’s howls were worse. She sprinted out of her one room home and through the maze of hutments all around, all the while trying to get off her nightie drenched in boiling water – the more she tried, the more agonizing it felt – the nightie seemed to be stuck onto her or something and she kept screaming until some neighbors ran over to the nearby tyre repairing garage and borrowed the iron tumbler full of water meant for testing punctured tubes and poured the water on her. It was not too late – not yet eleven, but then, the streets were unusually empty, because of tonight’s soccer finale – even the boys who play away carom on the pavement late into the night, under the naked yellow bulb were not to be found.

‘Meroni go, meroni amar cheletare! Ore chairya dao, meroni ore, bhul hoya geche, paye pori tomader! Baap nai, koto koshto koirya biya dichilam, ha kopal ki kando koirya boshlo, bou ta re mairyai phello bodh hoy! Meroni go, meroni orey, paye pori tomader! Koshte ache go, mon mejaj bhalo nai or, bouma rojkar korche baire giye, chhele ghore boisha ache, mone dukkho hoy, bedona hoy, bouma muk korle aro koshto hoy go or, purush manush er mon – meroni go, meroni ore! Chhaira dao, aha becharar bhaat o pore nai petey, chhairya dao go, chhaira dao ore, moirya jabe!’ Laltu’s mother pleadingly wailed, trying to shield her son from the punches and the blows with her frail hands. ‘Forgive him, I beg you, forgive my son, let him go, don’t beat him like that, it’s a mistake, it’s all a mistake, I beg you all, let him go – fatherless lad, how difficult it was for me to arrange for his wedding – and oh fate, look what he has done – almost killed his wife! Don’t hit him, hey, hey, don’t hit him, I beg you, the poor lad’s not even had any food – oh I beg you, don’t hit him like that, let him go, forgive him – jobless, wife going out, earning, how torturing it must be for him to bear it as a man – it’s been so many months without a job – and then being humiliated by her – such a shame it must be for him to feel so worthless – please, please let him go, don’t beat him like that, he’ll die, please stop, I beg you!’

They bundled Shampa up into a taxi and drove her to the nearest hospital. The courtyard which is usually so crowded, full of people and cars all the time, was empty now, a strange silence seemed to have swallowed up the whole of the ugly campus. The old taxi drove into the courtyard noisily; they carried her into the sleepy ED illuminated by depressing fluorescent tubes – the stinging smell of phenyl everywhere and the coldness of oil cloth spread on examination tables, the grimness of the blue-clad staff and the scowling old matrons in starched white uniforms, the swift footsteps and the rumblings of wheelchairs and the sudden screams of an agonized patient being stitched up somewhere nearby, there seemed to be no place more depressing than the emergency department of this hospital at this hour of the night. But then, compared to police stations or crematoriums or morgues, or even the EDs of some of the other hospitals in the city, this place was quite heavenly, actually. Ashoke Rajak and Montu Biswal were outside, smoking – others were inside taking care of the formalities, so it made no sense all of them crowding together causing chaos. They were smoking silently, feeling a bit sleepy now that it was quite late, when a familiar taxi drove into the hospital; ‘Jah sala, eta toh Mahesh da’r taxi re, ki holo eta? Baliya, Potla dekhlam bhetore boshe, bepar ki, chol chol bhetore chol, dekhe ashi!’ Rajak said, stubbing his cigarette, ‘Damn, that’s Mahesh-da’s taxi, what’s going on? Saw Baliya, Potla inside, let’s go, let’s go see what’s the matter.’ Swiftly, they walked inside – they were not close, but they could see Baliya alighting from the taxi at the entrance of the ED. His yellow sweater was drenched in blood, his hands were bloodied as well – he darted out of the taxi and went inside, screamed for a stretcher or a wheelchair or anything – an empty wheelchair was right next to the counter at the corner, he grabbed it and ran back to the taxi, then, along with Potla, carried out Putu’s limp body, then wheeled him inside. The pink towel with which they covered Putu’s enormous head was blood red now. As they wheeled him inside, Putu left behind a trail of blood on the gray concrete.

I’ve seen kids freaking out at the sight of Putu – but since I grew up around him, he was very much a part of my life – his eyes were big, really big, his head was enormous, and his body, frail as a pole, almost skeletal. When I’d go to playschool in the early nineties, he’d run find a taxi for me and my mother during rainy days; once in a while, someone in the neighborhood would send him with a list and some money to go grab some groceries. If he was born in a privileged family, they’d have diagnosed him as autistic or something, but since he was the youngest son of an impoverished electrician, they just labeled him as mad; he grew up on the streets, roaming around in the neighborhood doing odd jobs – at times, he helped the neighborhood shopkeepers deliver their goods to the various apartments of the buyers; the elderly doctor who runs a little clinic in the neighborhood, Putu would help him unlock the rusted collapsible gate, turn on the various switches, receive the odd patient who visited Dr. Bakshi. During political processions, you’d have found Putu marching with the countless heads of party members, he’d get some bread and some chai and he’d make a few bucks and that’d be enough to make him happy for the day. When he was younger, when his parents were alive, he used to help his family by making grocery bags made out of newspapers – but with them long dead now, he no longer made grocery bags. Sometime back, there was this young widow in the neighborhood, who started this business of supplying home cooked meals to the various offices in our locality during lunch time. She employed Putu to go about deliver the lunch boxes – it was a big hit in the neighborhood but alas, business isn’t so easy, her funds dried up soon after and like countless similar ventures, it came to an end; early one morning in September, heaps of cheap leaflets were thrown away in the neighborhood garbage vat, the neighbors were all kind of sad that she couldn’t be in business any longer, people usually join you in grief when you’re going down and chances of you climbing up again are bleak; so, everyone was sad, only the rag-picker kids had a blast making countless paper jets that day.

When you’re vulnerable, when you are lonely and when you have no one to look after you, when there is every chance that you’re going to rot, there is always this possibility that somehow, somewhere, someone is there making sure you are looked after, making sure you don’t perish and rot away. In the case of Putu, the whole neighborhood was behind him. Everyone loved him here, everyone – all of them made sure he was looked after, made sure he wasn’t ever in harm’s way. Of course there were those brats who’d always tease him, but brats had been teasing him for the last forty five years or so, and hence, Putu knew how to deal with them. But then again, for a while, they didn’t bother him so much, especially since the demise of his mother – there was always some elder chasing away the bastards, making sure no one messed with him. Things have been going good for Putu – but just when everyone thought he was managing quite well without his parents, things got a little messed up. For the last six months or so, he’d been acting strangely, going about telling the whole neighborhood about the woman who’s fallen for him – who lavished him with all the love in the world, in whose home he watched cinema during lazy afternoons, the woman who gave him money whenever Putu needed some; his Rani, whom he said, he had finally decided to marry, the sweetheart, who was his everything. No one quite believed him of course, they thought she was just a figment of his imagination, but still, they were somewhat worried, for he would never stop, he would just go on telling everyone about this girlfriend of his. And so, naturally, this created opportunity for the neighborhood brats to tease and taunt him – in Calcutta, when you have nothing except frustrations within you, life makes a master of caustic humor out of you; in bars, in restaurants, at the marketplace, in buses and trams and metros, in the midst of chaotic traffic jams and stuffy cubicles in countless offices, in schools and colleges and playing fields, in the confines of homes and amidst nighttime gatherings over guitar and Old Monk on the roof, everyone has mastered the art of caustic humor. But to tease Putu, you never needed to master anything – to see him flare up, you just had to tell him Rani’s asked him to see her no more; with a roar, he’d start chasing you, chasing you with madness and anger in his eyes; if you ran away giggling, out of his sight, he’d be calm in a while and all would be okay soon after; but if you taunted him a little more, he’d leap and bound towards you, picking up a stone or something from the roadside and all hell would break loose. But then, when you are young, when your blood is hot, you don’t give a fuck, you just do it for the kick, for the rush; in our youth, we all pretend to be some sort of adrenalin-junkie or something, and sometimes, when we take our pretensions a little too seriously, we end up being utterly foolish, messing it all up.

#short fiction #sohamgupta

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