BASURI LAL CHOWDHRY FEELS cursed every time he has to introduce himself. With a name like that, who wouldn’t? Were either of his parents alive today he would certainly demand an explanation as to what had made them think—of all things—a flute, while selecting a name for him? Conjugated with his middle name it turned into a red flute, reducing whatever little was left of his manliness to ashes. Right from childhood, all his name had done was serve those who wanted to tease or humiliate him. His music teacher would often distort it to ‘Besura’ Lal—a not- so-subtle dig at the obvious lack of melody in his voice, and his neighborhood friends, cruel as they were to anyone podgy and unattractive, nicknamed him ‘Badsurat Lal’. Nowadays, fed up with these and other corruptions, Basuri Lal introduces himself simply as B. Lal Chowdhry. People often mistake his first name to be Bilal, a decidedly Muslim name, and Basuri Lal is quick to separate the B and the Lal for their benefit, hoping that no one will ask him to expand on the first initial.
He has often fantasized how things might have been different had his name been something dashing, something debonair, something as intrepid as … Bahadur Lal. Didn’t just mouthing that word “Bahadur” send a tingle down one’s spine? Didn’t it suddenly add to his height, reduce his paunch, re-grow his hair, whiten his smile and straighten his walk? Didn’t it shave away the years? Didn’t it right all the wrongs and banish a hundred humiliations? Didn’t it … didn’t it …
It doesn’t really matter because not many people line up to meet a short, unmarried, pot bellied, balding, forty-year old government clerk who lives in a shoddy, 200 year old tenement that has been condemned by the Mumbai municipality and slated for destruction before the rainy season begins later that year. In a city of 20 million, few, if any, are remotely interested if Basuri Lal is a Hindu or Muslim or a Buddhist or a Nudist. But when has reality ever managed to dissuade or dispel a personal inadequacy, especially one that is as intricately linked to oneself as one’s name?
Basuri Lal’s life is one monotonous act of existence that he replicates in quotidian cycles with the repetitiveness of a spinning wheel. His eyes open at quarter past six when the first light of the sun begins to seep through the cracks on the wooden panels of the window opposite his bed. He stretches and reaches for his glasses and, with vacant eyes, looks around with the pair perched at the tip of his nose. There isn’t much to look at in the moldy old room and so he lets out a few noisy farts and some growling burps that lend a measure of ceremony to his awakening. He then grabs his bucket and his bar of soap and heads for the common latrines outside.
The queues begin forming long before he has woken up. More than fifty families share the six latrines, divided equally between the sexes and separated by a wall in the center to ensure segregation along gender specific lines. They stand, patiently awaiting their turn, often cursing the person ahead should they be afflicted with the malady that calls for the luxury of time to evacuate their wares. Time is the one luxury that no one has. They are all working class men and women with jobs and rides and schedules that are mapped out on the dial of a watch like a school kid’s timetable. So they grunt and grumble and murmur and mumble as they glance at their watches and inch their way towards those all important dark-green doors, taming their quibbling bowels by clenching their jaws and puckering up their faces.
Not Basuri Lal. For, while everyone else understands the unpredictability of time and treats it as a commodity that can occasionally be subject to compromise, to Basuri Lal, time is everything.
It is under the dictates of one such timetable in his head that Basuri Lal has to ensure that he makes the 7.48 local to Victoria Terminus. At 8.51, when the train stops at its final destination, he spills out of the crowded bogie with a thousand other commuters, rushing towards Flora Fountain with quick, pendulous strides. He makes the journey in exactly eight minutes and is at his desk in the Telephone and Telegraph office precisely at nine. Sliding into the small chair that fits his plump posterior like a tight fitting glove, he reaches into the ancient wooden cupboard behind him. He pulls out the files that he has to work on that day, orders a cup of tea from the boy whose business he patronizes regularly and cracks his knuckles one after another till he is done with all ten. Then, with one cautious eye trained on the wall clock, he picks up a pen like a soldier picking up his gun, preparing to fire on cue. For Basuri Lal, the cue, everyday, is ten minutes past the nine o’clock hour.
At noon, just after the famous dabbawalas of Mumbai have dropped off a cart full of tiffin-boxes for everyone, Basuri Lal steps out of the office to order his lunch from the roadside vendors outside the building. His lunch is the same everyday: two masala dosas, two batatawadas and a glass of lassi that he finishes in exactly twenty-two minutes. He then pops a paan into his mouth, chewing it contentedly for the next twelve minutes while he studies the crowds flitting past. Twice he spits the fiery red liquid into the trashcan outside and then saunters back to his seat in the three minutes that remain of his lunch break.
His fanatical timeliness is one of the many things that separate Basuri Lal from the others who work in a government department notorious for its inefficiency. While everyone else sits around talking about the Indian cricket team’s poor performance or joking about the latest affairs of the Bollywood film stars, Basuri Lal pores over the files for that day, often going over the numbers and letters again and again till his mind is in a tizzy and a black and white haze has settled in his eyes. When he has nothing else left to do, he pulls out old files and goes over them again and again, expanding his work to fill up his time slots. His chronological compulsiveness isn’t lost on his office mates who have often played tricks on him, setting the office watches an hour ahead and holding their mouths to suppress their laughter as they watch him panic and rage silently that his routine has been thrown out of sync.
Sundays, being holidays, are the only days that Basuri Lal doesn’t have to follow a schedule. Well, sort of. His morning routine remains intact, but he spends the rest of the day cleaning his room and buying his groceries. Then, after a heavy meal, the afternoon is spent in a nap, following which Basuri Lal puts on fresh clean clothes and spends the evening searching for love.
He boards the 19.36 fast local to Victoria Terminus, changes to the Western Railway in Dadar at exactly 20.06, and gets off at Grant Road station at 20.28. Just after the sun has set and the night sky is lit with the neon signs and street lights of downtown Mumbai, he walks out to navigate those narrow, noisy lanes, and heads towards Kamathipura, Mumbai’s love district.
The narrow, filthy roads of Kamathipura are lined on both sides by shoddy two or three story houses, placed one after another like a row of building blocks. The doors are dimly lit and the large windows have iron grills spanning their width. Women in gaudy makeup and revealing clothes sit at the windows or stand at the doors, shouting sexy suggestions or making lewd gestures to lure in the passersby. A few tough looking men loiter around, their shifty eyes watching out for the slightest hint of trouble from either police or public. Small children with runny noses play on the pavements amidst the crowds, running barefoot in and out of the houses like they would from any structure that is their home. Men walk those lanes gingerly, the aggressive sexual solicitation usually shocking the first time customers into silence. The regular ones are more adept at making a quick choice and disappearing into the building with the slinkiness of alley cats.
To melt into the crowd of pleasure seekers, Basuri Lal wears clothes that are desperately ordinary. It isn’t very different from the plain white shirt and trouser he wears to work every day: but, on Sundays, his banality is his camouflage not his compulsion. He doesn’t raise his head till he reaches the same garish red building and ducks into its entrance hurriedly. He pays fifty rupees—the costs of half an hour of loving—to the heavy set woman behind the door whom everyone calls Mai and begins to climb the cast iron staircase, heading towards room number thirty-seven on the first floor. He raps the green wooden door twice in quick succession and waits. It thrills him that the door opens after five precise seconds and every visit of his begins exactly at eight fifty-two in the evening.
The room is small and barely able to hold a bed. The mattress is thin and lumpy. The plaster on the walls is flaking off like sheets of paper and the ceiling is stained with cloud like blotches where water has seeped in from the tank overhead. There is an adjoining washroom that he has never bothered to visit in the two years he has been patronizing the place because it always smells of urine.
His consort for the half-hour is a young Nepali woman with a firm body and slender hips. Her face is round, moon-like, with a small, button-like nose and beautiful thick lips. Her hair, tied in a braid, usually touches her waist—but she leaves it open for him because he likes it that way. Her eyes are small and expressive, and although she isn’t the prettiest girl he has laid eyes on, she is the only girl he has made love to.
Basuri Lal has been frequenting her company consistently as part of his compulsiveness that cannot confront change. Their lovemaking follows the exact same routine with a lot of grunting and groaning on his part while she lay back and obliges his lust. Intermittently, she peeks at the wall-clock behind his back and has made the serendipitous discovery that if she flicks open one finger for each passing minute, she can even time his performance to seven precise minutes.
The next two minutes are spent on the demanding de rigueur of serving up a paan. He watches her contentedly as she rubs chalk on the dark-green betel leaves with her finger, places three areca nuts neatly in the center, sprinkles them with scented tobacco, rolls it into a cone and holds it out for him. He leans forward with a smile and opens his mouth for her to pop it in. He then sits back and chews on it, closing his eyes dreamily as the juices begin to fill his mouth. She gives him a shy smile before beginning to tidy up the bed, sacrificing that brief interlude of romance in their intimacy to the demands of business. Their conversations are few, if any, and all he knows is that her name is Gauri. She hasn’t ever asked him his name and neither would he divulge his if she did. Soon he is clothed and ready to head back. Before leaving he gives her a light kiss on the cheek and promises her he will be back at the same time next week.
And she knows he will.
She can set a watch by his arrival and departure.
It begins with Ms. Sen’s loud yelp in the office one Saturday afternoon. While reaching for a file deep inside her cupboard, she feels something small and furry scurrying across her hand. She shrieks and jerks her arm back. It sends a mouse flying across the room, only to land on Mr Mamunkar’s face. Mr Mamunkar jumps up in horror and starts tearing at his face reflexively. His chair travels backwards and crashes into Mr Iyengar’s bent over buttocks as he is retrieving some folders from the bottom of a shelf. Mr Iyengar rams into the shelf, toppling a collection of files upon himself. By the end of the commotion, Ms. Sen is feeling faint and breathing as if she were drowning from the experience while Mr Mamunkar has fine bleeding scratches all over his face. Mr Iyengar on the other hand has to be dug out from underneath a pile of paperwork and is subsequently taken to the hospital to have his neck supported in an orthopedic collar.
Basuri Lal has watched the episode with a smile on his face. He doesn’t like Ms Sen, their resident beauty and drama queen, whom young men like Mr Mamunkar and Mr Iyengar follow like dogs in heat. Besides, the manipulation of the clocks to irritate him was Mr Mamunkar’s handiwork and he had overheard Mr Iyengar boasting about it to Ms. Sen, claiming credit for coming up with the idea originally.
The office breaks up from whatever little work it was doing to search for the offending mouse. Men with broomsticks and big fat books begin lifting thick files and moving heavy cupboards that they haven’t touched in years. Their eyes are wide and their movements brisk—like hunters on a prowl—as they get ready to strike a creature a hundredth their size. Watching them Basuri Lal can only wonder how much more efficient their office would have been if they had expended the same amount of energy to do their assigned work. He sighs and prepares to return his files into the cupboard behind him.
That’s when he sees it. It is lying on its back, eyes closed, its legs in the air, its tail lying lifelessly on one side. Its furry chest flutters with its short rapid breaths and a small spot of blood is seeping out of its nostril.
‘B. Lal,’ calls out Mr Mamunkar in his best authoritative voice. ‘Check you area … the bloody thing could be anywhere.’
Basuri Lal immediately opens one of the doors of his cupboard to block him from seeing the mouse.
‘Do you want us to check your cupboard?’ volunteers Mr Mamunkar.
‘No,’ says Basuri Lal. ‘I keep mine clean and up to date. No mice here.’
That explanation seems to satisfy Mr Mamunkar who turns around and swears that if he finds the mouse he will turn it into chutney.
Basuri Lal picks up the mouse by its tail and places it gently inside his cupboard. He is fairly certain that it won’t survive the night. He studies the panels of the cupboard, wondering which part the mouse had crashed into and broken its back. That, or Ms. Sen’s scream must have done it, he jokes to himself.
As he begins to shut the closet doors he wonders whether the mouse will feel hungry should it somehow manage to survive.
He checks his watch and notes that it is time for him to leave. Should he get anything from the vendors outside he will surely miss his 5.17 local back home. Then he won’t know what time he will reach home … and what time he will have dinner … and what time he’ll go to sleep …
His eyes drift back to the half-dead creature and he gnashes his teeth with frustration. After a few moments of indecision, he runs out, buys a batatawada from the roadside vendors, and rushes back to his desk. He opens his cupboard door, breaks the batatawada into a dozen small pieces and places them close to the mouse’s mouth.
The broken up bits of boiled potatoes release their aroma, suddenly reminding him of how thirsty he feels after eating those spicy fritters. He lets out an irritated grunt before running to make arrangements for water.
By the time all this is over, he has missed his usual connection and is sweating with apprehension about the unpredictability of his journey home. There are local trains every few minutes that’ll take him where he wants to go … it’s precisely this abundance of choice that leaves him close to panic. Should he take the 5.29 to Kasara or wait for the 5.35 to Karjat. Or will the Harbor line be better for him if he changes at Kurla?
Finally, after much anguished wrangling with his own terrified mind, he closes his eyes and jumps into the 5.33 local to … where does it go?
Much to his surprise, it is a fast local that doesn’t stop at many stations before approaching his stop. He is pleased to note that this train doesn’t have the pack of amateur musicians who normally get into the compartment of his 5.17 train and sing tunelessly at the top of their voices. Also, since this train travels a much shorter distance, it is considerably less crowded. This in turn avoids the beggars, the pickpockets and the travelling salesmen who would much rather do business on jam-packed trains. When Basuri Lal arrives at his station, he is able to exit the bogie without having to fight his way out amongst the crush of bodies clambering in. On the platform, he doesn’t have to straighten out his crumpled clothes, he doesn’t have to level his tousled hair and he doesn’t even have to check his pockets to confirm the presence of his wallet. He suddenly realizes that he isn’t as weary as he has been on such similar journeys in the past. He finds himself relaxing and can’t help but feel good about the day.
That Sunday evening when he knocks on Gauri’s door, she opens it as usual but quickly shies away from his gaze. He begins to get undressed and this time she insists on wrapping her head with a light churni while making love. He is surprised, but agrees. When he is on top of her, she refuses to look at him and steadfastly fixes her gaze on the right wall. He can’t help but feel that something is wrong.
In much less than seven minutes, he stops, rolls over and asks her, ‘What is the matter? Are you okay? Did something happen?’
She remains silent.
‘Why are you hiding from me? What happened?’
She still doesn’t reply. He holds her chin and whips her head towards him.
The bruise on her right cheek and the swollen right ear tell their story without any words being exchanged. His mind immediately speculates about the list of possible suspects, and stops, when he remembers that the big burly guard downstairs is left-handed.
‘Are you angry?’ she asks, her eyes welling up with tears.
‘Angry? Why would I be angry?’
‘Because I look so horrible,’ she says and begins to cry.
He breaks into a smile. He takes her in his arms and strokes her head gently. She is still crying when he says, ‘do you know what happened at the office yesterday?’ and begins to narrate the incident about the mouse. By the end she is laughing and he is laughing and they only stop when a sharp knock on the door distracts them.
‘What is it?’ shouts Basuri Lal.
‘Half an hour is up! Fifty rupees for the next half hour.’
On Monday morning when Basuri Lal opens the cupboard, he is surprised to discover that most of the batatawada is gone and the water level in the container has dropped dramatically. He bends down to see that the mouse is staring back at him from one corner. It is crouching on its feet, its eyes twinkling and its whiskers twitching as it stares at its savior. It makes no attempt to move.
Basuri Lal reaches out gingerly. The mouse tries to scurry away but only manages to drag its stiff lower body a few inches with its front limbs.
Basuri Lal withdraws his hand. He closes the door and returns to his seat. He spends the next few minutes obsessing about his routine before suddenly dropping everything to run out and get some more batatawadas. He breaks them up and places them right next to the creature. The mouse sniffs at it uncertainly. Basuri Lal closes the cupboard door carefully behind himself and returns to his seat.
In the office, the events of Saturday and their fallout have reached higher levels. Apparently the Post Office has been plagued by an infestation of vermin and has recruited the services of an exterminating company to rid themselves of the menace. There is talk that their office might benefit from the same prescription.
Ms Sen is still smarting from the experience and claims post-traumatic stress. Predictably, she finds a lot of sympathy amongst the young men in the office. Mr Iyengar, in his bulky orthopedic collar, looks and moves like a neckless robot—his eyes roving constantly while his neck remains fixed. He tries his best to console Ms. Sen whenever she has one of her panic attacks, and twitches with bravado whenever she returns the favour. Mr Mamunkar declares he has spent his Sunday on the Internet, researching the most efficient ways to kill mice.
He visits Gauri that Saturday night, then next Friday evening, and then in the middle of the week when he heads towards her garish red building right after he finishes work. Most of the time he talks to her about the antics in his office and she laughs so hard that it makes her cry. He has forgotten his schedule, he has misplaced his routine and finds that it doesn’t hurt or leave him angry. They make love often; often they don’t. When they do, she realizes that she cannot predict his performance on the wall-clock anymore, and for that she hugs him closer to herself. He isn’t encumbered by time and she isn’t encumbered by the expectations of service. Every so often he gets her small presents; a lipstick, a second hand Walkman, a cotton sari. A couple of times he has seen her with more bruises on her face that he comforts with gentler kisses and funnier stories. He knows who is responsible and stiffens every time he passes by the huge, mean looking bodyguard sitting behind the front door. But neither Basuri Lal’s frame nor his will is strong enough to attempt a confrontation with that … thing.
The mouse is looking stronger, making steady progress under the watchful eyes of Basuri Lal and on a steady diet of batatawadas. Even though it is still unable to move its hind legs, it has lost its fear of humans. When Basuri Lal approaches it with a fresh supply of food, it doesn’t attempt to retreat: instead it twirls its tail with a weak, lopsided twitch while its beady black eyes begin to twinkle excitedly. More recently it has even begun to eat from Basuri Lal’s hands. Basuri Lal loves feeling the fine whiskers tickling his fingertips as he hands over tiny morsels of batatawada.
Others in the office notice the change in his demeanor. Of late, not only are his arrival and departure times unpredictable, his colourful clothes, his constant humming and his casual, unprovoked laughter challenge their perception of the staid, stodgy man they once knew. They wonder what has led him to become so much more relaxed. Recently, Ms Sen has even praised his shoes, leading Mr Mamunkar and Mr Iyengar to beg him to reveal the location of his shoe store.
One evening Gauri wants to make love in the dark. In the middle of their lovemaking, Basuri Lal notices something that makes him stop and turn on the lights. Gauri gasps and reaches for cover but not before he sees the black and blue belt marks on her body.
Basuri Lal leaps off the bed, and—in between struggling with his pants round his ankles—rushes towards the door. Gauri meanwhile leaps out of bed and overtakes him before he can reach for the bolt.
‘Move Gauri!’ he says, his face flush with anger.
‘No, no, no,’ cries Gauri, her voice conspiratorially low. ‘Please … please don’t go!’
‘Today, I will kill him! I will kill the bastard!’
‘No, please! He is too strong! Please!’
He stands there seething, uncertain, staring at the door, when she clutches his hands and says, ‘Please … I can take his beating, but I … I can’t afford to lose you.’
Basuri Lal’s eyes suddenly well up with tears. He reaches out and hugs her, feeling a warmth come over him like he has never experienced before. In his arms she begins to cry. He kisses her on the mouth, feeling the salt of her tears mix with his.
‘Why?’ he asks her. ‘Why does he hit you?’
‘Mai told him to. She says I’m spending too much time with you. They don’t like it.’
‘But I pay them for it!’
‘That is the problem … I’m still their property.’
The words strike Basuri Lal like a thunderbolt and, for a few minutes, he appears lost. Then his eyes begin to shine and his brains begin to deliberate with an intensity he didn’t know he was capable of.
He turns around and, holding her close to himself, says, ‘listen, I’ll take the day off from work tomorrow. I’ll withdraw all the money I have in the bank. Here is what I want you to do. Tomorrow in the morning …’
Then he proceeds to whisper the rest of the plan into her ears.
Later that evening, Basuri Lal goes to the market and buys a white cotton shirt, matching white half-pants and a bright red sari. He stops by at the jeweller’s store and picks up a bunch of gaudy imitation jewellery. He then begins packing the belongings in his house into a large trunk and leaves it with his neighbours, explaining that he is going on a pilgrimage and will be back in two or three months to collect it. He spends the rest of the night poring over the timetables of local and long distance trains, crosschecking their arrival and departure times, finding one final use for his earlier malady.
Early the following morning, he sets out with a bag of clothes and jewellery to the nearest train station and buys two long distance tickets to Kolkata. Next he visits the branches of the three banks where he has been saving all his money meticulously over the last fifteen years. By the time he empties his accounts it is close to noon and his bag is stuffed with cash. His mind flits over to what Gauri is doing.
Gauri has doubled over with pain. She is writhing in agony in her room and there are small, dark blotches of blood near her foot. Mai, the heavy-set lady, lifts her legs and finds the clothes around her groin stained red. She sighs, admonishes the bodyguard for having hit her so hard and then decides to send her to the hospital under his watchful eyes. She tells him that this is probably a miscarriage waiting to happen and that they should complete the process if it isn’t out altogether.
Basuri Lal takes the 12.26 local to Victoria Terminus. He rushes towards the emergency room of the government hospital that women from Kamathipura visit regularly. It is a short walk from Victoria Terminus. From the gate he spots the bodyguard standing outside the emergency room entrance and smiles to himself knowing that Gauri has been successful in the first part of their plan. He goes around the building and into one of the public toilets where he changes into the white cotton shirt and half-pants he had bought. He emerges looking just like one of the ward-boys who push patients on stretchers all over the hospital.
He walks into the emergency room right under the bodyguard’s nose.
His eyes scan the area and he can see two ladies in white lab coats with stethoscopes around their necks hunched over Gauri. He looks at his watch and realizes that he doesn’t have any time to waste.
He approaches them and says, ‘they have called her for testing.’
The two women look surprised. ‘What testing?’ says one. ‘I didn’t order any tests, did you?’
‘What do I know, doctor madam? They called for her and told me to get her. The head doctor is waiting for her.’
The two doctors look confused. Gauri has inadvertently stopped groaning but returns to her cries as soon as she notices Basuri Lal glaring at her.
‘Is she going for the ultrasound?’ asks one of the doctors.
Basuri Lal nods.
‘Huh, that was quick! Fine … but get her back right after you are done, understand?’
Basuri Lal nods again. He tells them, ‘madam, her husband is waiting outside and wants to speak to you about her condition. Could you talk to him? He is that big, burly man.’
The two doctors nod and walk away. Basuri Lal begins to push the stretcher outside. He wheels it along the corridors, past where the bodyguard is talking to the two doctors. Then, as soon as they turn the corner, she jumps out of the stretcher and hand in hand they flee towards Victoria Terminus.
He gives her the bright red sari. He instructs her to put a thick coat of vermillion on her hair and cover her hands with bangles to look like a new bride. They disappear into their respective bathrooms and emerge in five minutes looking like a newly married couple. They rush towards their train parked at the platform and clamber on hurriedly. They still have thirty minutes to kill before the train will begin its onward journey, carrying them far, far away to freedom.
Basuri Lal’s meticulousness has overestimated the margin of error. He is nervous and jumpy and keeps blaming himself for miscalculating this part of their escape that has left them with more time on their hands than he would have liked. He keeps peeking out of the train window, looking out for the bodyguard and praying for the train to somehow start before its scheduled departure time.
As he is doing this, his eyes fall on a man selling batatawadas on the platform. And staring at the batatawadas Basuri Lal is suddenly reminded of his mouse in the cupboard. He is horrified that he hasn’t included the little animal in his plans. He knows that in a few days someone will open the cupboard and discover the disabled mouse.
He groans. His old obsessive-compulsiveness argues against leaving his spot. After all it is only a mouse … a crippled one at that.
He looks at his watch. Twenty-four minutes remain for their train to depart. He remembers that it takes him eight minutes to make the journey to his office by foot, which leaves him eight minutes to retrieve his mouse and re-board their train. He likes his odds.
He gets up with a start and tells Gauri, ‘whatever you do, do not leave this spot.’
‘What … where are you going?’ she asks, surprised.
‘I’ll be right back.’
‘Are you leaving me?’ she asks, her nervous eyes welling up with tears.
He smiles. ‘How can I leave you, Gauri … I cannot even leave a mouse behind!’
She lowers her head and begins to cry. He sits down next to her and says, ‘haven’t I always returned when I said I will?’
She looks up at him. ‘I … I am so scared,’ she says, her voice barely a whisper.
He smiles and gives her a light hug. ‘Don’t be. I’ll go and come back soon. If anyone comes, tell them that this seat is taken.’
‘But who will I say is with me? I… I don’t even know your name.’
Suddenly, an old predicament returns to haunt him. Basuri Lal’s heart begins to race, his throat feels dry, and he spends an eternity in the few seconds it takes him to make a decision. ‘B-Lal,’ he tells her, somehow swallowing a gulp of uncertainty. ‘I am B-Lal Chowdhry.’
He gets of the train and runs as fast as he can. Soon he is panting and has to slow down to catch his breath. His plump frame dodges pedestrians and traffic as he makes it into his office in exactly six minutes.
Rushing into the building, he is surprised to see most of his office mates huddled around his desk. His cupboard is open and Mr Mamunkar is standing with a broom in one hand and a packet in another, staring inside along with the others.
‘Ah … B-Lal. See what we found in your cupboard,’ says Ms. Sen when she notices him. ‘There is a mouse hiding inside. Mamunkar is trying to kill it with that stick.’
Too short winded to muster a sentence, Basuri Lal can only hold up his hand in protest.
Meanwhile Ms Sen continues. ‘I think the stick is going to be messy. Why don’t we just put that packet of sweets with rat poison inside? Once it dies, we can just sweep it out of the cupboard.’
Mr Mamunkar turns around to face Basuri Lal. ‘Here, you deal with your problem,’ he says, shoving the stick and the packet of poisonous sweets into Basuri Lal’s hands. ‘Why should I carry the responsibility of doing everything in this office?’
Basuri Lal drops the stick and says, ‘don’t worry. I will kill it with my bare hands.’
Then, much to everyone’s surprise, he reaches into the cupboard and pulls out the mouse by its tail. As everyone shrinks back with revulsion, Basuri Lal gently places the mouse in one pocket and the packet of sweets in another. He smiles at those present, waves goodbye, before beginning the mad dash back to the station.
It takes him another six minutes to reach the compartment where he had left Gauri. Only now, she isn’t there. One of the other passengers says that he did see a young Nepali bride walk out with a big burly man.
On the overhead loudspeakers Basuri Lal hears of the impending departure of his train within the next few minutes along with the suggestion that all passengers board it as soon as possible.
Seething and sobbing, Basuri Lal clambers out of the compartment. He begins running towards the main station. He wanders helter-skelter till he suddenly spots the huge bodyguard in the distance dragging a reluctant Gauri by her arm.
Basuri Lal feels a wave of anger crest in his heart. He shouts above the din for the man to halt. The bodyguard stops and turns around to face him. A cruel smile appears on his face. Basuri Lal roars and dashes towards him, charging at the bodyguard like a mad bull. The bodyguard sees him coming and curls his left hand into a fist. He waits till Basuri Lal is an arm length away and then swings his arm like a sledgehammer.
The blow catches Basuri Lal at the angle of his jaw and sends him spinning like a top. He crashes into a telephone booth and falls on the ground in a heap. His cheek splits open and blood gushes out. Gauri screams.
Basuri Lal tries to get up but is too exhausted to even raise his head. He can taste the odd mix of blood and sweat in his mouth and his ears are ringing like something has exploded in his head.
The bodyguard snickers. He bends over to lift Basuri Lal by his collar while his other hand curls into a fist that he intends to sink into Basuri Lal’s mouth.
Basuri Lal watches through half shut eyes the pleasure on the man’s face as he extends his left hand behind his head, drawing it back like pulling on a bowstring. Basuri Lal closes his eyes and waits for the pain.
Then, he hears the man scream.
Basuri Lal opens his eyes and sees the bodyguard jumping around like a lunatic, trying to shake off the little mouse that has escaped Basuri Lal’s pocket and scurried onto the back of the bodyguard’s hand. Before he can get rid of it, the mouse crawls up and disappears into his sleeves. The bodyguard falls on the ground thrashing about like he is going to die.
‘Get it off!’ he screams. ‘Get it off!’
The absurdity of the giant of a man being terrified of a furry little creature is too funny for Basuri Lal. He begins to laugh, scattering flecks of bloody spit on the ground. His messed-up face and blood-lined teeth appear to hideously misrepresent his sentiments to the onlookers who stare at him with their mouths open, unsure of whether to laugh or cry at the spectacle.
Basuri Lal approaches the bodyguard, spits a mouthful of blood next to him and says, ‘promise me that you’ll leave us alone if I get it out?’
The bodyguard is hyperventilating and can only nod stupidly. Then, as he looks on in astonishment, Basuri Lal reaches into the man’s sleeve and gently coaxes the mouse on to his palm. He pockets the mouse and begins to walk away with Gauri.
The commotion has attracted a crowd, amongst whom is a police officer. He holds out his arm and asks them to stop. The bodyguard meanwhile has recovered his senses and rushes towards them.
‘What is going on?’ asks the police officer.
‘We have gotten married recently, officer,’ says Basuri Lal. ‘Her family is against it so they keep sending her brother to harass us.’
‘Married, my ass!’ shouts the bodyguard. ‘She is a whore and he is running away with her!’
‘See officer, what a dirty mouth her brother has. See how much he hits me. You should contain him. My wife and I have to catch a train in a few minutes.’
‘She cannot go with him! She isn’t married.’
Basuri Lal reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his Telephone and Telegraph identification card. ‘See Mr Officer, I am a respectable government employee. Will you believe me or will you believe him? Ask him for his identification … he has nothing! My wife will tell you what a bad brother he is.’
‘She is no one’s wife!’ shouts the bodyguard. ‘He is her regular client.’
‘Shut up! Don’t you feel ashamed to talk about your sister like that?’
‘She is as much my sister as she is your wife! Arre, she doesn’t even know what his name is. Ask her … ask her if she knows what her “husband’s” name is!’
Basuri Lal suddenly feels a twinge of fear haunt his entire being.
The police officer draws up Basuri Lal’s identification card close to his face and looks at Gauri questioningly.
‘B-Lal Chowdhry,’ says Gauri.
‘What does the B stand for?’ asks the officer.
Basuri Lal’s mouth turns dry. His legs feel weak and his heart begins to race in his chest like a runaway train. He feels all his strength drain from his body as he stares at her helplessly.
Gauri is lost. She looks around desperately, searching for some kind of clue to the answer. Her eyes train on Basuri Lal: the short, fat, balding figure standing there sweating and bleeding in a torn, mangled shirt, looking like his world is about to collapse around him.
She takes in a deep breath and says, ‘you can call him anything you want, but to me he is the bravest man I’ve ever met. To me he is always going to be Bahadur Lal.’
Basuri Lal’s head flops on his chest.
The policeman inhales sharply and says, ‘right answer!’ Then, handing over the identification card to Basuri Lal, he says, ‘you better rush, your train is almost leaving.’
Basuri Lal jumps for joy and hugs Gauri in the middle of the crowd. He is laughing and crying at the same time. He is about to run towards the train when he turns around, reaches into his other pocket, and handing over the packet of poisoned sweets to the bodyguard, says, ‘this is the prasad from the temple for the celebration of our marriage. Please, save some for Mai.’
Then, hand in hand, he and Gauri run towards their train.