Half a Rupee: Stories by Gulzar Page B

with tears that refused to stay within his eyes asked, “Really? You are from Chajra?”
    ‘I yelled at him, “Then what the hell were you doing here?”
    ‘Tears began to roll down his cheeks. “I had run away from school … to … to … see the ram fight.”’
    Captain Shaheen looked into my eyes and said earnestly, ‘Believe me, Sahib, the two of us, soldiers both, were standing before that seven–eight-year-old like two idiotic schoolmasters. And our faces looked like those of rams.’



IV
     
A legion of heads, a throng of limbs
Abandoned apparatus from a defunct factory
Spare parts all—

Hilsa
    Vibhuti dawdled through the house, rearranging the folds of his dhoti, and stopped at the kitchen door. ‘The newspaper hasn’t arrived yet, has it?’ he sighed. ‘Now it seems Bagbazaar Road too has been blockaded.’
    But his sigh was lost on Kanchan. She was too engrossed in the fish that she was dressing. ‘Look at its eyes—beautiful, aren’t they? Mesmerizing like a mermaid’s.’ She scooped up a mug of water, poured it into the fat-bottomed pan and began to bathe the fish in it.
    A hint of mischief stretched across Vibhuti’s lips, ‘Enamoured with these unseasonal showers, seems like Ramu found you some mangoes in December … eh?’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    An impish glee lit up Vibhuti’s eyes, ‘It’s summer now. You shouldn’t eat fish in the months that do not havethe letter R in them. It’s prohibited!’ Now that he had Kanchan’s undivided attention he elaborated, ‘Like in the months of May, June, July, August … come to think of it, all the other months, September through April, they all have the letter R in them.’
    Kanchan spelled out the months in her mind and looked at her husband, impressed. ‘Yes, it’s as you say … but why is it forbidden to eat fish in these months?’
    Like a typical Bengali husband, Vibhuti stuffed a pinch of snuff up each nostril, rearranged the folds of his dhoti once again and sat down on the threshold of the kitchen. ‘Those are the months in which the fish breed … they are pregnant … and just like when the wife is pregnant it is forbidden to have …’
    ‘Dhat! What are you saying …’ she blushed, ‘you have grown old but the devil still has you in his clutch … go, go … off you go!’ She pushed Vibhuti away from the kitchen.
    Laughing, Vibhuti sauntered into the living room and fidgeted with the TV controls. The television was rife with news of the riots. The rioters were on a rampage. The markets were all closed. The local administration had clamped a curfew in many places.
    ‘Perhaps this is why,’ Vibhuti muttered under his breath, ‘the fishermen could not bring their haul to the markets and Ramu found a cheap deal at the ghat.’
    He ambled over to the kitchen to impress his wife once again with his power of deduction, but Kanchan was not there. He heard the sound of gurgling water and deduced that the wife must have gone for her bath at thehand-pump. He crossed the kitchen and could see that Kanchan had spread her sari on the clothesline to carve herself a private bathing space.
    ‘Are you listening?’
    ‘Yes, tell me?’ her voice seemed wet, coming from behind sheets of falling water.
    ‘Our Ramu … you know … he must have gone to the ghat early in the morning …’ He lifted the improvised screen a little.
    ‘Dhat!’ A volley of water hit Vibhuti’s face. ‘Out … out you go … thank God, this shameless man has an office to go to on most days.’
    Vibhuti laughed and began to wipe his face on his wife’s sari. ‘It’s not my fault that the newspaper hasn’t arrived … what’s an idle man to do? Shall I dress the fish?’
    ‘No! Don’t you dare step into my kitchen!’
    Poor Vibhuti! He had too much time on his hands. Aimlessly he drifted through the house. There wasn’t much on the television to hold his attention:
Chitra-Geet
and then the news and then
Chitra-Geet
all over again. He couldn’t