Fiction: How a middle-class man lives a regular life (before getting a credit card that ruins it)

Morning struck me like a slap of sunlight. I shuffled onto the balcony, the sun already high and blazing in the sky. My body burned partly from oversleeping, partly from the four showers I’d taken in the span of four hours during the night. The stink just wouldn’t go away. I sniffed at my body. It didn’t reek – no, the pure unfiltered stench of sweat was wafting from my armpits, where it had concentrated overnight, thickening and intensifying. I didn’t even want to think of the smell that had already ruined my night and was now seeping into my day. How was I supposed to go to the office after waking up this late? To be honest, I didn’t even feel the slightest urge to work. Such sheer listlessness was rare for me. From inside the house came the morning clatter of dishes being scoured and rinsed.

I went in and asked, “How did you sleep?”

“It was alright,” she said, dumping the wet tea leaves from the pot onto a piece of foil.

I lit my first cigarette of the morning.

“It got damn hot last night, didn’t it?”

“That’s why I tell you, take a shower before bed. All that exhaustion, dust and grime from the day. If you lie down like that, naturally you’ll feel the heat.”

She had no idea that I’d showered four times during the night, trying to cleanse myself. Mouth open, she had been sleeping like a log. Even if a bunch of bugs had crawled in, she wouldn’t have had a clue.

“Why didn’t you go today?”

“I’m not feeling too good.” I named my body heat fever.

She told me to see a doctor. She was busy scrubbing the oil stains off the pan – that was the most important thing for her right now. The suggestion to see a doctor was just another oil stain she washed away.

Taking half a bucket of water, I headed out to the balcony. Just as I lifted the mug, her voice came from inside—

“Pour the water slowly! The downstairs people keep complaining that their laundry gets wet. Amma came by yesterday to grumble about it, you know?”

Watering the plants was my new hobby. I had three plants in my house: neem, rose and dahlia. I loved roses and dahlias. Before planting a dahlia, I’d never actually seen one. My plant hadn’t bloomed yet, so I still hadn’t seen its flower – only read about it. There was so much beauty in the name itself. Tribal beauty. Like the Inca women. Although I hadn’t seen Inca women either.

As for the neem, I had read in the paper that if you planted a neem tree outside your house and watered it daily, all your debts would get paid off.

After a couple of days of hesitation, contemplation and procrastination, I had bought these plants and three pots from a street vendor while on my way to the local market. Every morning, I watered them. But before that, I hydrated myself with three glasses of water. A friend of mine, who was into breath control – pulling off all sorts of tricks with it – and also into yoga, had put me onto this. He claimed it would relieve my constipation, which he insisted was the main cause of my persistent headaches. But the fact remained that even after chugging three glasses of water, I still had to push hard to get my wretched bowels moving.

I gently stroked the neem after watering it. It bore seven leaves, all old. Not a single new sprout. One by one, I cleaned all seven leaves with my fingers, wiping off the dust they had gathered over the past twenty-four hours. I chatted with the plant silently, in my mind. Neem didn’t respond but swayed whenever a breeze rolled by. I wasn’t after its leaves or its fruit. I had no use for its wood. I just wanted it to grow, to flourish in my house and pay off all my debts. During these solitary rambles, I unknowingly drifted into a dreamworld.

There are fans hanging from the sky, and people dangling from them like pendulums, the noose tight around their necks. They’re everywhere – so many of them. I’m told they’re farmers who couldn’t pay back their debts.

Then people arrive with neem plants in their hands. I watch as they place a neem plant in each dead farmer’s hand. That will pay off their debts. The farmers remove the nooses from their necks and head back home, wearing big smiles on their faces. Applause.

Suddenly ashamed of myself, I turned to the rose and the dahlia. I couldn’t make eye contact with them. With all possible haste, I sprinkled water on them. In the process, some drops splattered over and ran down towards the hanging laundry. I stuck my hand out through the railing to catch them, but they slipped away.

My dishwasher-woman had done the dishes. Now my tea-woman was making tea.

“I don’t want sugar in my tea.”

She stood there, not saying a word. I felt a surge of love. “Your hand’s too sweet as it is!”

She stepped away from the kitchen counter. “Come, you make tea. And one cup for me too.”

I started pleading. “Come on, sweetheart, you make it. Pretty please. Can’t I even joke with you?”

After cracking a joke, I had to make it clear that I was joking.

From a tea-woman, she was transforming into a lover. I started tickling her hips. She dusted black pepper over the tea, said it soothed my cough. Then she poured milk into a glass. She leaned in, blew into the boiling tea. My fingers drifted, teasing. She tilted the glass, letting the milk stream into the brew. My fingers played on, relentless.

Nothing stirred in her. Nothing stirred in me either.

I went into the hall and waited for my tea.

As we sipped our tea together, she told me about her dream. She often saw Goddess Durga riding a lion, leading her up into the mountains – onto summits, across cliffs, along ridges. She found herself in a dense forest with snakes all around her. Dodging one snake after another, she reached a small temple. She tried to walk but couldn’t. She could only scoot forward a little. She couldn’t even scream for help. Like everyone else’s dream, her sleep too broke somewhere here.

Her dream narrative was more or less the same every day but I had to listen carefully lest she throw a sudden question at me and, if my answer wasn’t satisfactory, accuse me of not paying attention. Her every dream shattered upon a failure. No – her every dream was a journey through failure. It only broke when she couldn’t speak out against that failure.

“Why doesn’t Shah Rukh Khan come in your dreams?”

She looked at me, unsmiling. I had hoped for a smile, a playful reproach, a sassy hmmm, a sweet nudge, a spicy look, maybe some juicy gossip about the prospects of Shah Rukh showing up, or even a simple shut up, sweet as sugar.

But none of that happened.

She cleared the teacups and left.

I watched her go. Her face was heavier than the cups. Her mind, heavier still.

My woman.

Millions of women. Not a hint of a smile. Empty eyes fixed ahead. Heavy faces set in stone – impassive, unyielding. Sometimes dishwashers. Sometimes laundresses. Sometimes moppers. Sometimes naked lovers. They changed form from moment to moment, yet the blankness of their faces never changed. In this age of comedy clubs and laughter challenges, the wait for a smile to flicker across these faces stretched on forever.

Excerpted with permission from Scent of the Nameless, Geet Chaturvedi, translated from the Hindi by Anita Gopalan, Penguin India.

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