By Gita Viswanath
‘Namaskaaaaar,’ he greeted throatily. Sumanben had just rested her head on a cushion on the divan. It was an everyday routine. Even though Bhima arrived daily to collect the trash exactly five minutes after Sumanben put her head on the pillow, she neither advanced nor delayed her siesta time.
As for Bhima, why should he consider Sumanben’s routine? He had his immutable schedule to keep. His factory job over at 4 pm, he took 23 minutes on his motorbike to reach Pride Exotica. Sumanben’s was the first villa in the complex and he got in through the kitchen door, left open for him, at 4.25 pm after parking his bike. He was employed by the residents to pick up the trash, wash the dust bin, and broom the compound. The Society also engaged him for sweeping the road and the Club House. Once a week, he washed the four bathrooms of the fourteen villas of Pride Exotica. On which day of the week, he washed whose bathrooms, was entirely his prerogative.
When the women met in the common plot for their evening gupshap, they often laughed indulgently about it. ‘Arre,’ said Kalpanaben, ‘today Bhima came to wash bathrooms. I told him; you have hisaab of once a week. But last week, you came on Friday, this week, you have arrived on Monday, within two days, that means, now, if you come next Saturday, for five days we will have unwashed bathrooms.’ Everybody nodded. Rupalben added her two-paisa worth, ‘He no, he doesn’t understand only.’ Lataben carried forward the crib, ‘If he could understand, he wouldn’t be a sweeper, bechaara. Whatever, my house he comes only on Sundays.’
Today, Ba, at 93, clearly, the oldest of them all, joined the group for the first time since her knee replacement surgery. She was greeted with joyous cries of Ahhh, Ba aavi gaya. Kem cho? Shifting her weight from one foot to another, she walked towards them with the help of a stick her doctor had advised her to use. Apart from her advanced age, Ba was loved and respected for the way she had lived her life. She had to flee Uganda in 1972 with her husband and two grownup sons and one pregnant daughter-in-law. She often told them of the exotic bird, whose name she didn’t remember, that they had brought back in a cage. The one regret, she would say repeatedly, that she would carry with her, was the fact that the bird was eaten up by a cat due to her negligence. She had left the door of the cage open after cleaning it.
Till the time he got off the bike and set foot on the ground of Pride Exotica, Bhima held himself with elan. He wore the dark glasses his father-in-law picked up from a street vendor and gifted him for Diwali along with the mandatory shirt and pant. On getting off the bike, he took off the goggles, put them in a case and then into a bag slung on the bike handle. He carried the bag daily to take back the residents’ largesse — overripe bananas, softened Glucose biscuits, a few slices of hardened bread, or a faded sari for his wife and the like. Once inside the complex of large four-bedroom villas with beautiful lawns, and flower beds in the front and neem trees in the backyard, Bhima’s back would acquire a slight hunch, shoulders an inward crunch and his voice, a tremor.
Unbeknownst to all, Bhima also devised a deadly plan. Each time he washed bathrooms, he would pee in one of them; occasionally, if circumstances permitted, even crap. His schedule was based on the opportunity he cleverly grabbed for his chosen activity. If he saw Sumanben’s son and daughter-in-law take the car out on a particular day, he would stroll in to wash the bathrooms. He knew Sumanben did not climb the stairs; so, he could pick from a choice of three on the upper floor! Sundays were reserved for Lataben’s house because her only son had cricket practice on Sunday afternoons and her husband slept soundly. Lataben would sit on the swing in her garden and make video calls. Bhima, thus, had a safe passage to pee.
On some days, his wife, Bhuri, would accompany him. Bhima had not disclosed his shenanigans to her. He believed women could not be trusted with secrets. He was given a cup of tea with two slices of toasted bread everyday by Sumanben. On days when Bhuri accompanied Bhima, Sumanben gave her two Marie biscuits as she was not a tea-drinker. Then she had her two scripted lines for Bhuri, ‘Children are okay? I’m closing the door.’ So saying, she would bolt the two doors; the grilled and the wooden ones. Bhima and Bhuri would have a leisurely chat with tea outside the kitchen, next to the tap where utensils were washed. When done, it was customary for Bhima to wash his mug and leave it on a window sill.
On certain days, he would inveigle an advance payment from Sumanben who would give it but not before telling him to ask the other women for a change. Bhima would smile and say, ‘Na ben, the others are not as kind as you.’ Sumanben, ever happy to be flattered, smiled back. She was the one who had raised his salary during her tenure as the Secretary of Pride Co-operative Housing Society. Another plan of hers, a bathroom for the workers in the common plot, was shot down by the majority who believed the beneficiaries would stink up the place.
One Sunday afternoon, Sumanben heard a commotion. Loud angry voices were heard but the words remained unclear. She hobbled out to the gate to check out this rather unusual situation. Ba was seen waving her walking stick at Bhima who was standing along with Bhuri on the paved street of Pride Exotica that he had just cleaned. Ba’s sons and daughters-in-law were all yelling at him simultaneously.
You gadhedo, how can you do this?
Who knows how long he’s been doing this, dirty fellow!
Who do you think you are?
These people are too much nowadays.
They need to be kept in their place.
Almost every resident of the grand villas was out; if one stood at the gate and watched the scene, another came out on to the street, yet another joined Ba’s family in abusing Bhima.
After a while, Bhima retorted.
Am I not human?
So what? Don’t I clean up?
You don’t even have one for us in this huge complex.
Emboldened by her husband’s words, Bhuri fumed for the first time in sixteen years:
You cut our pagaar even if we miss one day and that too due to bimaari.
We work on Sundays also.
Words kept flying to and fro. Tempers rose on both sides. Ba, who couldn’t stand for long, rested on the swing. A few children took after the adults in hurling abuses at Bhima. The dogs began to bark adding to the increasing decibel levels.
From somewhere up above, a stone, as big as an orange, took off on its flight, carrying with it the weight of a five-thousand-year-old history, traversed from a height of a four-storeyed building, and made a safe landing on its target — Bhima’s head. The hair and skin on the scalp parted, the blood rushed out, the eyes disappeared into the lids and he collapsed in a heap. Bhuri let out a loud, inhuman sound and fell on her husband.
Gita Viswanath is a Baroda-based writer. Her novel, Twice it Happened, was published in 2019 by Vishwakarma Publications, Pune. She is also the author of a non-fiction book, The ‘Nation’ in War: A Study of Military Literature and Hindi War Cinema, published by Cambridge Scholars, UK in 2014 as well as a children’s book, Chidiya. Her poems have been published in Kavyabharati No 28 and Coldnoon, an online journal. Her short story, “Paper Gods,” was published in Muse India, May 2020 and “The Return of the Dead” in Borderless Journal, August 2020. Her short films “Family Across the Atlantic” and “Safezonerz” are available on YouTube.
