Underwear
The Parvati’s roar, which I always found musical and therapeutic, was wafting through the cool night air. The four of us had attained a mellow state of comfort as we sipped on another round of Teacher’s, sitting in the verandah of our guest house overlooking the river from halfway up the hill. Prasun had been coming to the valley for a decade as a researcher of the hash economy. I got to know him through Saad, my friend and colleague at the university. For us three early-to-midcareer academics buried under the onslaught of the shapeshifting demands and wild expectations of the new commercial university, the open valley with its many freedoms was a welcome reprieve from the capital, its politics and pollution. Teshu was Prasun’s local friend and probably his dealer.
I had almost passed into a content stupor when Teshu’s excited interjections woke me up. I don’t know how the conversation had moved to fights, but Teshu was claiming that there couldn’t be another man on this earth who could take a beating like Gangtok.
‘Bhaijee, Gangtok was this stocky lad who descended on the valley a few years ago. Funny fellow, always smiling, especially when standing around parties. Not saying much. I think he was a little slow in the mind. You know what I mean?
‘Anyway, this was when we still had maximum foreign tourists. Israelis and others. Those were the days, Bhaijee. It was around that time that the Italian, Marco, had set up the furnace in the village and crafted that green ceramic chillum we used last night. But where was I?’
‘Gangtok used to stand around at parties,’ replied Saad.
‘Ah, yes. He was a funny fellow, working odd jobs at different dhabas and parties. All of us would get high together but Gangtok wouldn’t take more than a few puffs. He would just stand around, gawking, stupidly smiling, as we would all get stoned. But all that standing around ended on the day I caught him red-handed.’
‘Caught him doing what?’
‘Caught him stealing, Bhaijee. The guests’ belonging had been disappearing from parties for a while, and that’s not just bad for business, it is a blot against our name. How could we allow it? I had suspected him all along – that smiley-faced standing around, that slinking through parties and all that. Who travels so far from home anyway? But this Monu Bhai (whom we knew since yesterday to be the young village head) kept saying that you can’t suspect a man without due cause. He wanted proof.
‘Well, I had been keeping an eye out…
‘Eh, Shambhu, get another Coke. Achha, not chilled, ok, then give water with ice.
‘Anyway, so where was I?’
‘You had been keeping your eye out.’ It was Saad who responded again.
‘Yes, so this was during the high monsoon season. No new tourists were coming in anymore and only those who had stayed through the summer season were around. Still, this fool didn’t let up. Just the previous week a camera kit had been stolen from a party.
‘This time I decided to act as if I was stoned at the party and pretended I had passed out. But I kept squinting through nearly shut eyes at our man. The moment he picked up a bag, thinking himself in the clear I sidled up behind him, and, before he knew it, grabbed him by his collar with my left and gave him a tight whack across his face with my right as he turned around in shock, saala benchod.
‘But he barely flinched, the saala thick-skinned animal. Look at these hands, Bhaijee, these are tough farm hands, see.’ And Teshu brought both his hands up to eye level, fingers spread out, palms facing us.
All of three of us looked at his broad, spade-like hands, and murmured our assent. They sure did look tough.
‘My hands felt as if they were bruised by his rhino-like hide. And had I been alone he probably would have hit back and run away. But the commotion had woken up everyone and Jishnu and Monu Bhai were at my side in a jiffy. Then began the real fun.’
‘Wait, who is Jishnu now? Saad asked.
‘Arey, you met Jishnu at Kalra Bhai’s day before with me, remember? He works as a waiter there, lanky fellow, looks thin but agile like a deer and really hard, maane ek dum tough!’
‘No yaar, it was only me, Teshu, these guys hadn’t arrived by then,’ Prasun said.
‘Anyway, once Jishnu and Monu Bhai joined in, the real fun began. Gangtok couldn’t tell who was hitting him where, the blows came hard and fast. One whack on his cheek from the left and as he turned that way a punch in his ribs would land from the right. Before he could turn right a slap had cut across his left cheek. Yet, Gangtok shed not a tear.
‘The three of us had soon dragged him away from the tourists at the party to the Sonapani meadow. It was past midnight, and no one was there. We made him strip down to his underwear, and then had him do a hundred sit-ups as we sat around drinking chilled beer that we had brought with us.
‘Uth saale, baith, uth. Did you think we are chutiyas to take you in, you fatherless fuck, just so that you could fuck us over? We gave you work, gave you the best stuff in the world to smoke, but you weren’t satisfied.
‘The moment his hundred sit-ups were over, Jishnu started hitting him with a stick. Soon the bamboo broke on Gangtok’s naked back but he did not break. He had gone all red, Bhaijee, but was still smiling through his now teary eyes: “Ghalti ho gaya mere se, Bhayyajee, let me go,” he said in a matter-of-fact way, not even begging, forget grovelling.
‘This infuriated me even more, Bhaijee, and I sent some ten or twenty more smacks whizzing across face. His lips were fully torn by now and his teeth had turned completely red, but they were still gleaming with that garish smile of his. I felt tired and even more frustrated with this indefatigable ox. So I sat down to have some more beer. Monu bhai went and got some more chicken curry and roti from his house while Jishnu kept beating this Gangtok some more. But Gangtok’s rhino skin seemed to be armorlike, and he still looked fresh with his blood-red-lipstick mouth.
‘The three of us sat down together to have the chicken curry while Gangtok did some three hundred more sit-ups. In between, he even had the balls to ask for some chicken so we threw him a few pieces, which he ate picking them up from the ground.’
At this point, I had completely stopped ‘enjoying’ this ‘story’, and was looking around at the others to see their reactions. Saad looked at me with amazement. Prasun may have been discomfited but seemed to be listening in rapt attention, so I started to think of excuses to make my way up to my room and escape this pornography of violence. What sort of a man had I been socialising with!
Teshu must have felt he was losing at least one among his listeners and clearly not ready to let go yet, he changed tack.
‘We kept beating up this Gangtok till dawn, Bhaijee, and, by God, we were spent, but he didn’t show a sign of being really bothered. It was as if we were hitting a rock. That’s when Jishnu said let’s throw the bastard into the Parvati. She will wash all his sins off him. Bhaijee, the river was not how it is now, this was high monsoon time, remember? That Gangtok was not only going to have his sins washed away, he was going meet his maker in the turbulence, the bhawandar of that river.’
I was nauseous now, had I been listening to a murderer all evening?
‘Monu Bhai was on board. He had felt cheated. I didn’t care either way. I had always known the bugger was a born thief.
‘At this point, finally, Gangtok started whimpering and soon began to wail like a baby, snot flying from his nose, his mouth the size of a gutter. This made us laugh out aloud. We guffawed as he pleaded, “Bhayyajee, main mar jaega, I will die.’ I guess death makes cry-babies of us all.
‘We dragged him to the nearest cliff, Bhaijee. It took all our strength to pull him up, since now he was as resistant as he could be, grabbing on to a branch here or a stone there. But we had our constant barrage of punches and kicks to aid us. Monu Bhai added, for dramatic effect, I think, “Bhagwaan ko yaad karle apne, you are going to meet Him soon. Do you even have a God to remember?” Another whimper. Jishnu was fed up of Gangtok’s cries – the man lacked patience. He took his handkerchief and tied Gangtok’s mouth shut.
‘Jishnu held Gangtok’s right upper-arm and shoulder and Monu Bhai had grabbed the left as they walked Gangtok to the edge of the precipice. I was behind the man with a guiding hand on his back. Jishnu said in exasperation, “Eh, bohot hua iska, enough is enough! Let’s throw him now, Monu Bhai.” And with a nod to each other both hurled him in.
‘I am still not fully sure what happened, but the moment Gangtok should have been flying into the Parvati, he was only tilting towards it, with his feet still on the cliff, his upper body flailing towards the river, almost keeling over but not quite, hanging at a sixty-degree angle but holding on by a few threads.
‘For almost unwittingly, my right hand had sprung into action and grabbed Gangtok’s underwear in a tight grip, Bhaijee, at the exact moment that the others had flung him. The others asked, “Oi, Teshu, what are you doing?’ I remained quiet for a few moments as even I was not sure what was happening. We had all been drinking and smoking and were up the whole night so the mind was barely lucid enough for coherent speech. But soon some words emerged. “Bhaijee, I don’t think we should kill him.”
‘Jishnu replied, “Eh, Teshu, don’t be scared now. Who will dare catch us? And anyway, we can’t be caught. The body will be washed at least ten miles down before it will be found, with no prints, no marks, nothing.”’
‘And Gangtok was still hanging on by his underwear?’ I asked with some incredulity.
‘Yes, Bhaijee, underwear are very strong, you see. And my hands, look at them, they are like spades.’ And he put his hand up yet again, to eye level, palms facing us, fingers spread out. We all looked at Teshu’s hands for the second time that evening, they were indeed massive, hardened tools, honed in hashish fields.’
But the tensile strength of underwear was not really my chief concern. Saad asked, ‘So were you scared of being caught?’
‘No, no Bhaijee, and that’s what I told Monu Bhai and Jishnu too. Who could catch us in the valley? But had Gangtok died, we would have had this thing in our hearts, forever, that we had killed a man, ke banda maara hai. Did we want a death on our conscience? Maybe, when Monu Bhai told that bull Gangtok to remember his god, I had remembered mine too.’
We all stared hard into Teshu’s foggy eyes, stunned into silence.
‘Both Monu Bhai and Jishnu went quiet. I pulled Gangtok back and stood him straight up, gave him a tight one on the nape of his neck and told him to bugger off. It was hilarious to see the bastard running away wearing only his kuccha, Bhaijee, and our laughter broke the silence of the night. Not once did that Gangtok turn to look back at us. Soon he was out of sight, and we have never seen him since.’
And so, Teshu, small-time weed farmer and hash peddler was a giver of life. An unlikely God?
‘Where did Gangtok go?’
‘Who knows Bhaijee, maybe back to Sikkim.’