ISSUE 35

It’s a fine morning in September, eight months after Rosamma’s miracle Saturday, and time for me to go to work. My wife, Manjula, hands me my lunch bag and a two-litre plastic Cola bottle filled with water. She has never voiced it, but I see my failure mirrored in her eyes; she has unpinned her hopes off me and transferred them to that dreadful griddle.

I’m sixty years old, though office records declare a neat fifty, thanks to the employment agent who found me my first job. The tenth grade marks card he threw in for an extra fee proved worthless; my employers’ only demand so far has been I show up to work every day and stay awake.

I’ve no illusions about myself. But when the toddy hit its mark on Saturday nights, one of my buddies was sure to slap my back and shout, ‘Here’s the cobra who guards the treasure.’ I almost believed him, though all I do is guard an ATM during the day, perched on a red plastic chair.

After thirty years slogging as security guard at warehouses, marriage halls, apartment blocks, and parking lots, I landed this ‘sitting job.’ I’m no slacker. I will work forever if it ensures I escape the fate of my neighbour, Jacob. He sits jobless on the stone bench outside his house in all weather, his checked lungi hitched high, shirt unbuttoned, and eyes blank.

‘Take care, and remember to eat,’ I say, and wave to Manjula. I glimpse her strained smile before she shuts the door softly.

The security company’s outfit is fancy dress gear. The light blue shirt and navy pant are a size too small for me. The girth of my belly has expanded like this city. The various coloured bands stitched on my shirt sleeves signify nothing, and all I’m armed with to fend off an ATM heist is a red whistle fixed on a small cord. The company didn’t bother to get me a pair of shoes, so I use my rubber flip-flops. I also wear the silly cap they’ve provided, to hide my bald pate. My shift begins at 7.30 am, and it takes me a full hour to walk to work. Walk every day, but visit a heart hospital at the earliest, advised the young doctor at the free health camp, when I complained of ‘funny’ sensations in my chest last month.

I hurry down our lane to avoid greeting Rosamma. Jacob’s wife is a tiresome busybody, but Manjula, adores her. She had worked as an ayah in the hospital where Rosamma was nurse, and is forever going, ‘Rosamma this’ and ‘Rosamma that’.

I desperately wish I could move my family to someplace less depressing. Our house is one of the many low-roofed matchboxes that totter on narrow lanes in anonymous pockets of the city highlighted only by crime or disaster. It galls me to pay rent for a coop like this.

In fifteen minutes I leave my neighbourhood behind, and slacken my pace. There’s a sense of release when I step into the wide roads of this Garden City. God is an early riser. All temples, big and small, are open. I bow at the entrances. When I repeat my entreaties, the niggling worries swarm back. Imagine a tree around which monster creepers wind faster than you scythe them, and you’ll understand what I mean. In addition to mounting debts, tuition fees, bills, and house rent, Manjula’s obsession is doing its hungry python act.

It all began one evening this January after I got home from work. The children were hunched over their phones on the only two chairs in the house, while Manjula bustled in the kitchen during commercial breaks of her favourite tv serial. A gust of cold wind through the front door preceded Rosamma, who burst in with a moan, ‘Oh my Lord. Sweet Lord,’ and slumped to the floor. I was certain Jacob had died.

Manjula rushed to her friend’s aid, but Rosamma chuckled.  Manjula stroked her friend’s shoulders. ‘Calm down, Rosie. It’s the Almighty’s will. We’re helpless against it. Jacob was a good man.’

At this, Rosamma shook her head, and sprang to her feet. She inspected our ceiling with dreamy eyes before she hugged Manjula and marched out. We heard her on the street: ‘Thank you Lord. Thank you… ‘

Now, any commotion on our street draws people like flies to dung. Our neighbourhood soon emptied outdoors, and in the deepening shadows of the night we agreed that Jacob had been a decent fellow. Nobody mentioned that he’d hardly interacted with anyone after his son, Peter, disappeared ten years ago on his way home from college. It was only when somebody yelled that Jacob was still alive, that we made our way to his house.

‘Form a queue, and remove your footwear before you step inside,’ Rosamma ordered.

We stared at her. Nobody obeyed. Then Jacob keened, ‘The… L-o-r-d… has… c-o-m-e.’ It was a cry amplified by years of silence, and we promptly filed indoors. Every time somebody ahead gasped or exclaimed, the crowd behind me surged and threatened a stampede.

When my turn came, I felt like I’d been hit by a sandbag. On a shiny brass plate on the kitchen counter rested a single teardrop-shaped chapati. Two candles on either side of the plate threw sinuous shadows on the wall. The dark brown spots on the chapati’s surface had combined to create a strong likeness of Rosamma’s god. Right from the long hair, beard and moustache, to the partially closed eyes, there was no mistaking who it was. I ogled till the men behind me asked if I preferred being booted out.

Rosamma’s face glowed when she announced like a high priestess, ‘Move on, move on. There are others behind you. And please don’t touch anything.’

I brought my palms together and bowed. I visited Jacob’s house again the next night. But this time the chapati only stoked an old remorse I’d experienced years ago after I’d thrashed my son, Mohan for splurging on a T-shirt with the face of a cricketer printed on it.

Thanks to the efforts of the local tv channel which interviewed Rosamma the next day, the crowds continued to swell. All the petty shops in our area began to stock candles, and the flower sellers exchanged their usual strands of jasmine for roses and lilies. Expensive cars dropped off their occupants near the open drain at the entrance to our locality. People covered their noses, and picked their way down our lane like it was paved with bombs. When they hurried back to their air-conditioned cars, the neighbourhood remained scented in the wake of their expensive perfumes.

Jacob wore pressed clothes and collected donations people voluntarily left beside him. Rosamma didn’t cook those two weeks; neighbours hosted them by turn. Dasappa’s cow feasted ponderously on the bouquets that spilled from Rosamma’s house. And every night we basked in the daylight of hundreds of candles.

It was probably an overwhelming desire to show off that prompted Rosamma to pack the remaining wheat flour from the bag that birthed the miracle in tiny squares of newspaper, and gift one to each visitor. Students, businessmen, politicians, out-of-work movie stars, daily wage labourers, and innumerable strangers touched a pinch of the flour to their eyes before swallowing it. So there was Rosamma, an obscure retired nurse, raised to a pedestal on the whim of an iron griddle.

Winter delayed the decay of the miracle chapati. After two weeks, Rosamma dug up the soil around her marigold plant, and buried the cracked and curly-edged chapati. The crowds receded.

In the ensuing weeks, an unsmiling Rosamma spent hours scraping stubborn candle wax inside and outside her house with used razor blades. It was rumoured she refused offers from devout visitors to install a permanent altar outside her house to commemorate the holy appearance.

Frankly, I’d expected a lot more to follow: Jacob to talk and walk like he used to; Peter to show up; the postman to cycle down with tidings of unexpected wealth.

Rosamma, to her credit, displayed no disappointment, but I didn’t miss the ice that had crept into her eyes and words. Jacob resumed his vigil on the bench. It was as if their life, disrupted by an earthquake, had rearranged itself to disguise any lasting damage.

A bigger transformation went unnoticed. Many women in our neighbourhood were fired by a desire to invoke a god on their griddles. Though they didn’t discuss or disclose it amongst themselves, the men mentioned it sometimes. That Saturday signalled the end of our toddy shop revels; the women wouldn’t have us upsetting their gods.

Manjula waited for the uproar to die down before she changed our dinner menu. First we ate chapatis with vegetable curry, and when the prices of vegetables skyrocketed in summer, angry, red pickles helped make the disappointment palatable. When all initial attempts to invoke a god failed, Rosamma was consulted on the make of the griddle, the shop from where she bought the wheat flour, the oil, the salt, and the recipe. But she soon wearied of Manjula’s adoration. ‘You’ve too many gods. It may take them a while to decide who should appear. Keep trying,’ Rosamma snapped. She then sighed and added softly, ‘As for us, Manju, we’ve gone back to eating rice.’

Manjula’s life, and as a consequence ours, has become a series of days that resemble the jagged teeth of a hacksaw shaped by hope and disappointment. Apart from a desire that our fortunes change, Manjula craves to give an interview to the tv channel in her best sari.  These days, when I get home from work, I find her struggling to read prayer books in small print – one for each god – in a silent house. So I wait outside till dinnertime.

My ATM is nestled between a silk sari emporium and a stationery store. It overlooks the bazaar that opens out on either side of the road. My side has flower sellers. Fruit and vegetable sellers occupy the opposite pavement.

I climb five steps and reach the landing in front of the glass doors of the ATM. When I push the door open, I find many crumpled balance receipts outside the dustbin. Ghanshyam, the night guard, has practiced his signature on them. He has filled seven-digit numbers in some blank pay-in slips. I take the broom from a small closet behind the ATM and sweep the floor. The broom pushes out a scrap of paper on which he has drawn a smiling face. When I hold it upside down, the face scowls. I’ll have to warn him. There’ll be trouble if the bank manager sees any of this.

I dampen a rag and wipe my red plastic chair. I place it outside the glass door and set my water bottle beside it. I hang my lunch bag on a nail that someone has skewered to the trunk of the Gulmohar tree.

I linger over my breakfast of tomato rice that I eat from a round steel box. After I finish, I walk to the tap fixed to a waterline to rinse the box. The flower sellers pay a little something to the authorities for the tap to stay in place. When I return, I position my chair to face the road, and sit down.

Today is an uneventful day. The ATM machine doesn’t eat up anybody’s card, nor does it run out of cash. I don’t do much else than smile or salute. I amuse myself counting the jerks of people’s elbows when they count money. The best days are when bank officials come to replenish the ATM, and the armed guards stand outside with me. That’s the only time I feel like a ‘serpent guarding treasure’.

A stray dog runs off with a dried chapati in his mouth, and the insidious griddle starts to gnaw at my brain again. I check my wristwatch. Manjula will be at her daily chores now, working like a wind-up toy. Then she’ll pace the house till it’s time for her ritual.

Once exciting, it is now an ordeal to watch her ritual. At 6 pm, the exact time Rosamma had mixed the dough, Manjula will reverently take a steel bowl, the same shape that Rosamma had used that evening, and mix the wheat flour in it with warm water and a teaspoon of salt. The dough is kneaded gently. Never is it punched into submissive softness. The dough is covered and allowed to rest. At 7 pm the griddle, the same brand as Rosamma’s, is set to heat on the stove. Manjula pulls out a medium-sized portion of dough, rolls it to a ball between her palms, and flattens it. She dusts it with flour, and uses a rolling pin to roll it into a small circle on the circular aluminium chakla. One teaspoon of refined sunflower oil is spread on the circle before it is folded twice over and rolled out again. The chakla’s uneven legs click rhythmically on the countertop. It is the only sound in the house. The expanding teardrop stops at the size of Rosamma’s chapati. Manjula tests the heat with her palm held high over the griddle before she eases the chapati on it. She cooks it, two teaspoons of oil for each side. The chapati balloons and sighs. Each time, she mutters a count under her breath before flipping it over with a wooden spatula.

Every night, ten chapatis, twenty teardrop surfaces, are examined carefully. I once suggested that this effort be restricted to Saturdays since that was the day of the original miracle, but Manjula says she needs the practice, and also there’s no way of knowing if our god prefers Saturdays too. But so far the brown spots have refused to resemble any god we know.

Our immediate neighbour and retired schoolteacher, Devraj, who is also our interpreter of life’s mysteries, is gifted two chapatis every night. He identifies maps of countries, and various objects, the names of which he never seems to know in our mother tongue.

‘Keep at it, Manju. Patience never goes unrewarded,’ Devraj said the last time Manjula was in tears.

One evening, Mohan sketched an outline of a god on the chapati with a blunt knife before Manjula cooked it on the griddle. That was cheating, she had protested. One wasn’t supposed to force a particular god to appear. None appeared anyway. He asked her if she wasn’t fed up with the nonsense. She calmly wrestled the knife from his hand when he threatened to engrave a god on the griddle.

Every night, we sink into restless sleep, hungry on full stomachs, while the remorseless griddle scrubbed with the Rosamma-recommended brand of dish soap, reclines royally on a shelf. Two shiny brass lamps, wicks in place, await oil, and a strike of the match.

I reposition my chair when the sun is overhead. The van of a local tv news channel is parked across the road. The reporter, a feisty girl, and the cameraman, a bearded fellow, have been trying all week to interview the proprietor of a famous ready-wear shop on this road where a hysterical customer discovered a spy camera in the ladies’ trial room. While the two wait, they befriend vendors, and eat complimentary fruits.

An orange-turbaned man, with ashy tracks on his forehead, approaches me. A deep metal box customised as an altar hangs from a stout chain around his neck. A garlanded picture of a god or goddess I don’t recognise is fixed inside. Two incense sticks emit smoke of indeterminate fragrance. Devotees can help themselves to a pinch of vermillion or ash from two small cups. The tall collection bowl has only two coins. When I enquire, he names the deity. It’s a powerful god installed in a village temple in the northern tip of the state, he adds helpfully, when I shake my head. I never give alms, but he doesn’t know that. For the next half hour I quiz him about his village and the crops he grew before the rains failed. I begin to ask him about his family, when his smile disappears, and he walks away.

An unexpected shower of rain cools the streets. After a lunch of the now stale tomato rice, I go to the tap to wash my lunch box. The tap falls off and my feet are wet. That does it. It’s impossible for me to control the urge any longer. I fit the tap back clumsily, beat my lunch box with the spoon and catch Nagesh’s attention. His job at the sari emporium requires him to sit outside and lure customers. I raise my right fist with the little finger extended upwards. He laughs, nods his head, and moves to stand near the ATM. I leave my lunch box with a flower seller, and cross the road to the area behind the fruit and vegetable shops.

By force of habit, I hold my breath, skirt puddles of water amid the fruit, flower, and vegetable refuse, and head toward the graffiti ridden wall that also proclaims: ‘Humans Do Not Urinate Here.’ I unbutton my pant and look up at the sky through a trellis of electricity cables. A school has let its hooligans out. A boy readies to piddle near me so I move to the end of the broken wall. I can see over it to where the Electricity Board guys on a ladder are busy with their perpetual repairs. I squat and train the stream of urine as far as I can.

A bolt of lightning skewers me between my thighs, and hurls me away. The air whooshes out of my lungs. The blue sky blurs and then darkens. A mad tusker rides my chest. I try to part heavy curtains to answer when someone sprinkles water on my face. Strong arms support me, but I can’t find my feet.

It’s a relief to lie down at last. Hands rifle through my pant pockets. I’m grateful for the sips of tender coconut water and the cold rag on my forehead. I hear the words ‘ambulance’ and ‘electric shock’ repeated over traffic snarls. The fog begins to lift.

A girl’s clear voice pierces the bedlam. ‘Why have Indian men altered Shakespeare’s quote to, ‘All the world’s a toilet’? Today, a man known around here as Security Gundappa, received the shock of his life when he was urinating behind the fruit and vegetable stalls. As you can see, he’s still incoherent, and we’re waiting for the ambulance. Luckily, the schoolboys, who sadly follow the example of their elders, were saved. Workers from the Electricity Board claim they disconnected the mains supply when they saw the schoolboys. This is Suja Raman with camera person, Vedant, reporting to you from the famous M T Market for the News Views Channel.‘

*

A monster wails, and the grogginess lifts a little. It’s strange, but I hear Manjula’s and Mohan’s voices near me. They use the word ‘operation’ often. I hear the girl’s shrill voice again. She announces the name of a hospital and introduces Manjula. She asks if we have a toilet at home. I cannot hear Manjula’s reply. I’m floating again.

There’s a strong odour of disinfectant. I flail my arms, and a man’s authoritative voice commands the ceiling fan to be switched on. A familiar clicking sound quickens as the breeze strengthens. Warm swathes of air drop over me like heavy blankets.

A chakla dances on the countertop. An angry face on a chapati skims past my eyes. I’m jubilant. I want to sit up and shout, ‘Wait! I know this god!’

Have they tied me up, or has the tusker on my chest gone to sleep? Who glued my eyelids together? I assemble words that slither down my throat. I swallow hard and try again.

I wish I’d asked the orange-turbaned man in the bazaar to repeat the name of his god. Now Manjula will ignore the chapati because there’s no way she, or that sly Devraj will know the name of this god.

Manjula, your prayers have been answered. Listen, turn the chapati upside down, and the angry god will smile. It’s a powerful deity called…