This is a story I've been writing for a few months now.Haven't been able to 'finish' it yet.Hope the ending comes along soon...
P.S. As everything amateurish,its nameless.
Aslam, like a lot of boys his age in the area, was employed in one of the innumerable scrap iron stores that littered the serpentining gali of Mcleod Street. Like all the rest of them, his was a hard life. Waking up early, in all weathers and all seasons, jostling for bathing space at the nearby municipality tap to get his head under the heavy river water and rushing back across the pavement to get into his working overalls-this painful routine spread itself out day after weary day.
Chomping on oily dalpuris and bhuna gosht from the adjacent Noor Hotel, he had to set at his task of beating into shape all kinds and species of iron parts. These scraps generated from an eclectic range of sources; from trucks to small lorries, luxury car fittings to colossal trailers that plied on the highway. When he had first appeared in Kolkata, taking up hi present job, he had been proudly informed that this area was the biggest auto-parts market in Asia. This comparison had hitherto stayed with him, so that each time he got tired of sitting on his haunches, beating inanimate iron into a mechanical shape, he would stand up and stretch himself, looking leisurely all around him, taking in all the other ‘tonk-tonk-tonk’ of the neighbouring stores and remember that remark. The memory of it never failed to bring a smirk on his grease besmeared countenance, so that his employer who sat at the front counter reading a very crumpled Urdu newspaper would bark at him to stop day dreaming and get back to his bloody business.
Evenings would come as a slight relief from the back breaking toil of the entire day. As tube lights and bulbs lit up the nearby shops, Noor Hotel began to gear up to its most looked forward to delicacy-the kabaab paratha. The smell of garnished beef, deliciously being allowed to sizzle on the charcoal furnace would make its way to his greedy nostrils, and inevitably lead him to ask Kashif Bhai, his employer for a break to attend a call of nature. In reality he would slip outside and stealthily make his way to the roll counter. Biting into that five rupees roll, with its freshly chopped onion garnish, was worth every lie and trouble he would daily take to get there.
That excuse would signal the end of the day’s work although formally Aslam’s store closed its doors at half past eight. What started as one boy’s excuse to relieve himself would inevitably affect the rest of the staff, pervading like a slow plague to engulf the entire mohallah. Soon enough Dr.Ansari, the area’s own physician and Karim Chacha, of the next door ‘STD-ISD-PCO’ booth would make their way inevitably for their evening cup of tea. This diurnal practice was an unofficial call to put the heavy haggling of the day away and to ease into informal chat on family, scandal and politics. This was the hour when a languid air of calm descended on Mcleod Street. The tonk-tonk of the sultry afternoon was replaced by an increase of the radio’s volume, so that filmi songs interspersed with advertising rhetoric eulogizing the pleasant view and scenery guaranteed while purchasing housing space in the greens beyond the city.
On some days, Aslam would take this opportunity to slip into the STD booth next door and call up the residence of the Mohammeds in his village in Chamli, Bihar. The Mohammeds were a buthcher’s family and easily the most well to do in his village. More often then not, Shere Bano , the elderly mother of the household would receive the call, dismiss the preliminary niceties of enquiring about health and family affairs and shout to Ali ,their domestic help of 11 years to summon Aslam’s mother and sisters from the adjacent house. While the phone stood on hold, Aslam would practice the ‘right’ tone to speak to his ammi. He was in Calcutta after all. The city. He had had to sound happy. Successful. Aslam deemed , that he was their only hope. After all he did send back 700 rupees each month. He had two elder brothers as well ,who had jointly opened a hair cutting saloon and were making do quite comfortably. But they had moved out right after their nikaah and had refused to be responsible for their mother and sisters. Aslam had been twelve or thirteen then. Had to move out too. To the big city. All that he had known of Calcutta then was Howrah Bridge, a picture of which he had seen printed on a matchbox.
But today he wasn’t going to call up his ammi. He just wasn’t feeling up to it. A lazy melancholy had taken toll of him. His mind kept racing back to the last night’s conversation he had had with the boys after dinner on the footsteps of the bank facing E______ Road. One of the guys – Hassan- had just bought an expensive mobile phone. He had brought it over straight from the store on Park Street. Hassan’s father had a thriving meat business. The only shop selling goat’s meat on E_____ Road, it saw brisk business. The rest all sold beef, which did well enough for the week, but on weekends and on special occasions, a steaming plate of mutton biriyani and rezala was the order of the day. And thus, all the crowd gathers outside Haji’s meat shop. Not that this was the legendary butcher’s outlet. Hassan’s father had been employed in ‘the’ Haji’s meat shop for 13 years until deciding to move out and garner monopoly for the entire stretch of E_____ Road. There was an anxiety and anticipation when all the boys gathered aroung Hassan as he prepared to unwrap his new colour screened, radio-MP3, video camera inclusive mobile phone. The maker’s name shone wickedly at the top of the cover. It looked set to unravel exciting thrills. Hassan played to the gallery and turned and re-turned the cover before breaking open the seal and retrieving from the cover’s folds, the symbol of desire, the scepter of true status- asli aukaat.
When the shining piece of metal emerged, it was the most beauteous piece of silver Aslam had ever set eyes on. He stared at it and then had to move his eyes away; his tension mounting to such intolerable heights. It was better than he had been expcting. Even Kashif Bhai’s mobile phone seemed like one of the iron scraps that he beat daily when compared to this slice of the moon. Not only he, but all and sundry of the group had their eyes glued in awe to the object. Hassan found out the on/off button and eased the thing into life. What a phone, Aslam was thinking. That lucky son of a pig . When the phone purred into colourful light with a sweet little jingle, Noor-ul who just couldn’t resist the temptation to feel , lurched his hand out only for Hassan to sway his hand out of the way and “ dog, son-of-a-whore” to accompany his gesture. Everybody else too let out their pangs of envy and wounded malice on Noor-ul so that for a while a commotion occurred to outdo the effects of that enchanted piece of machinery. However, as soon as the boy’s kitty of juvenile abuses and puberty fuelled jokes had abated, everybody wanted to know more about the phone.
“This is what you call a wallpaper”, Hassan was saying. “Crowd around now, I want to show you guys something garam. While checking the phone at the store I had the chap enter the stuff into my phone. You can do that with my phone. Just two phones and nothing else in between. Its called Bluetooth.” Aslam couldn’t make much out of this. All the same he arched his head to gaze at the figures that were now flickering on the screen. First one, then two ,then another in a series. It took a while for Aslam to accustom his gaze to the outlines and size forming on the screen as Hassan kept changing the pictures with a squeeze of his thumb. “You’re going too fast. Slow down.” “Okay you strand of pubic hair, take a good long look” Hassan retorted and held up his palm just a bit enabling Aslam a clearer view of the image. His temperature immediately shot up, making his armpits and cheeks hot and glowing. On the screen, a girl, white with wavy golden hair sat against a sparkling white background on a shocking red chair with her legs spread towards Aslam so that what revealed in the ‘V’ of her parting was a neat triangle of fine pubic hair above a semi-opened vagina simmering in pink. The lady was in pleasure-that Hassan somehow instantaneously gathered from her open mouth looking upwards and her eyes not closed but open and lost amidst the folds of an overpowering flood. She might have been screaming when this photo was taken. Aslam wanted to witness more. His mouth went dry. Hassan changed the picture. The next picture showed the face of a girl close beside a muscularly erect penis-dark against the fair face of the girl whose eyes were looking up at him, the man whose penis it was, expectantly as if she too seemed like Aslam to want more more. Aslam felt his member bulging in his underpants. He had changed into a lungi after dinner. He knew that unlike his pants, the lungi wouldn’t be able to contain his aroused organ. He had to move away. To tear away his gaze from those pictures. He took a step back.
Now as he again waited for the boys on the steps of the bank, the fleeting memory of those images, contorted pleasures, crept into him like a plume of purple, warming his loins upto his crotch, rising to a bulge in his underpants. He noticed again that the roof of his mouth had gone dry. The spell broke as an auto screamed through the half-empty street blaring its audio system on full throttle. Aslam looked up at he night sky. A pale full moon, the size of a fifty-paise coin stared down at him, cooled in the gusts of mist that floated across its face. His mind unable to sustain the hiatus flew back to yesterday’s incident. After leaving all the guys stunned and hungry for more, Hassan had pocketed the cell-phone and proposed that they all celebrate the buy by drinking beer-“C’mon yaar, let’s have beer. Chilled.”
Although everybody had consented with outright conviction and bravado to Hassan’s proposal at the time it was proposed, when the time came to walk towards the brightly lit wine shop ‘Queen’s’-situated diagonally across the street, besides the Bengali eatery run only by women who were either orphans or destiutes- quite a few of the bravehearts had begun to hesitate and mutter their pleas, apologies and excuses as to why they couldn’t be seen entering the precincts of a shop that sold liquor. Most of the boys lived with their elder cousins or uncles in the various khola-baris cramped into Mcleod Street and would dare not risk being caught with a bottle of beer in hand. A few still wanted to go ahead with the plan only to be cudgeled into their senses by the rest who were pulling out-“Abey , its haraam. If only somebody sees you, your dead , you whore’s son.” Sensing the mutiny in his ranks, Hassan renewed his tirade of chaste abuses on them. He knew, however, that this was inevitable. That none of these hijras had any guts to flout and defy rules openly. Maybe, he thought, I know something that they don’t. That even if you were caught, old bearded men at gatherings would just shake their heads in sober discontent before passing onto the next plate of paraantha-chaap.
So it came about that the swarming group faded away leaving behind only three. Aslam was the only one who did not have any family here. The others who left reminisced in their minds that Aslam’s position was an envious one, that it would be good that if they too had gone to cities to work without the baggage of relatives to interrupt their lives. The other soul that remained there was Shams-ul who was now rubbing his palms grown soft with nervous perspiration.
They crossed over to Queen’s on the opposite sidewalk. The oldest and the lone liquor store on E______ Road, the conspicuous glitter of bottles reflecting bright hot lights fitted uneasily into the austere architecture of the place. Adverts depicting narrow slices of another life, other existences, with svelte figures swooning to drugged tunes, the flow of luxury, adorned the walls of Queen’s. As soon as affairs slowed down on the street, hushed and harried figures made their frantic ways to its counter, to pay and smuggle out carefully concealed potions hidden within fold of crumpled newspaper. Acquaintances who happened to meet each other at the counter, smiled, looked away, commented on the weather, on a the health of a member of a family nobody knew about, paid and parted ways to scurry back into faceless tenements with unlit corridors.
Hassan barged his way in amidst surprised shouts from the others lined up quietly before the counter. Before the fellow selling the booze had time to raise his voice, Hassan held out his closed fist and unclasped them to reveal a couple of hundreds, limp and folded, yet lurid in its faint blue. “Three KingFishers….and, very chilled”. The man, suppressed his unease, asked his boss to cut the cost and return the change, and himself made his way to the freeze chest to unearth , dark brown bottles frosted with a thin layer of ice. He returned and was customarily about to cover them with newspaper, when Hassan held out a hand-“No…we’ll have them here. Open them.”
