Everything Distant Faintly Perceived

In his dreams, his wife still talks to him. Last night she was wearing her wedding sari. Her eyes were lined with kohl, lips painted, white dots outlined the edges of her small face. Lakhan looked at Pinki’s swollen belly. ‘With child? Already?’ he asked. She stuck her tongue out and hit him with her fists. Pinki held up a shirt for him to slide his arms into. ‘How many shirts do you want me to wear, my little bird? I am wearing three shirts already.’

‘Don’t you know how cold it gets at night?’ Pinki said.

Pinki hasn’t taken any of Lakhan’s calls since she left for her mother’s.

Lakhan takes the fried fish out of the hot kadhai and stacks the pieces on an oval rice plate that he has dressed with printed paper towels. He does everything he can to make the food look pretty. For Madam’s vlog. Lakhan looks out the kitchen window. The cars zipping across the Worli sea link look small from up here. ‘Are you done, Lakhan?’ Madam shouts from the living room. He jumps at the sound of her voice. He’s been working for Madam for seven years, but he can never get used to the shock of her voice. He opens the lid of the crockpot to check on the pulao. He stirs the kheer in the saucepan as it slowly comes to a boil.  ‘Five more minutes, Madam,’ Lakhan says.

Madam’s already on her way to the kitchen. He can feel Madam’s fat feet drumming vibrations up and down the hardwood floors. ‘Why is it taking so long today? Where’s your head?’ Madam asks. Lakhan urgently slides the rest of the fish into hot oil. ‘Say, no? Are you deaf-or-what?’ Madam thrusts the camera in Lakhan’s face.

‘Almost done, Madam,’ Lakhan says, looking at Madam’s front teeth that have been freshly polished.

‘Oh-my-god-guys, this man will be the end of me.’ Madam claps Lakhan on his back. ‘At this rate, we will only reach Rihaan Kapoor’s house next year,’ she says, letting go of the phone. It hangs around her neck on a bejewelled strap. She places her hands on her hips. ‘Do we have the boxes to take all the food with us?’ She covers her mouth and yawns. ‘Quick. Quick.’ Madam clicks her fingers. ‘What shirt are you going to wear?’ Madam puts on her glasses, then answers the question herself. ‘The Tommy shirt. The one I got you the other day.’

Madam started her vlog during lockdown. Every week, Madam invites famous people over and has Lakhan cook for them. She puts the videos online and gets millions of views within hours. More than Khesari Lal can in a week. Madam says she has never seen this kind of popularity or money. Not even when she played Ms Bindiya in Dhak Dhak. But Lakhan doesn’t believe that for a moment. Madam had already moved three houses before she started the vlog. And each house was bigger than the last.  As far as Lakhan can tell, she has not sold any of them. Just put them all up for rent. Thanks to Madam’s vlog, Lakhan, too, has made a little name for himself. People recognise him everywhere – the bus stop, the barber shop. The other cooks, whom he often runs into at the mandi, want to shake hands with him, take photos with him.

Lakhan left Khapia at the age of sixteen on Maa’s insistence. There was nothing for him to do there. He had failed seventh grade twice. And the little land that Baba owned was pledged to Shukla. Lakhan’s Mamaji had a poultry farm in Thane. So Maa thought it best for him to work there. Learn a trade while still young. Earn a living. She bought him a train ticket to Ranchi because that’s all she had the money for. Lakhan had to manage the rest of it. He climbed into passenger trains, goods trains, and rode in the back of lorries.

At first, Mamaji trusted him with the easy things like cleaning the coops once a day, gathering eggs, counting eggs. He learnt to raise chickens, feed them, sex them, snap their necks. Bansi taught him to cook them into spectacular gravies. He taught Lakhan to roll phulkas so round and thin that they puffed on the naked flame like the full moon. It earned him a few thousand rupees and a thin cotton mattress he could spread out in the store room at night.

Now Lakhan has enough money to need a bank account. He’s paid some of Maa’s debts. He bought her gold bangles. Pinki, a diamond bracelet. He plans to build a house next. Break the old mud hut and build a proper three-storey house of bricks and concrete.  ‘You’ve made too much money,’ Madam said the other day. ‘More than any cook should.’

Lakhan hates the plastic dabbas Madam wants him to pack everything in. Their sides buckle as he pours kheer into them. If he had a say in the matter, he would urge Madam to buy good stainless steel dabbas to take the food over to people’s homes. But rich people, he has figured, are rich for a reason. He tosses the cooker and pots into the basin and fills them up with water. What does he care? Madam’s food, Madam’s guests. He asks Pushpa and Sunita to clean the kitchen. They start with the dishes, making faces, grumbling. ‘Leaves the kitchen so dirty and asks us to clean up after. Who does he think he is,’ Sunita mumbles. Lakhan doesn’t respond. He knows she’s upset because Madam won’t give her the spare room. She has to change two trains to get back to her one-room flat in a housing society near Dadar.

Lakhan takes his tired feet up the narrow staircase to the terrace. He walks into the room, the one that he shares with Madam’s driver, Roopen. Lakhan retrieves the new Tommy shirt from the bottom shelf of the shared cupboard and rips the packaging. He runs his fingers over the thick, rich fabric. He hangs the shirt up on the clothesline running diagonally across the room (on which Roopen drapes an old sheet as a curtain that he likes to pull for privacy every time he masturbates) and lies down on the lumpy mattress for a short nap. He looks at his phone. Maa has not called him yet. He cracks his knuckles, stares at the low ceiling, wonders if Maa has been able to bring Pinki back home. He turns to his side, flicks open the colourful quilt Pinki made for him, and wraps it around himself. He pulls it over his face, hoping to catch Pinki’s scent.  He traces the embroidery and bites into the stiff yarn with his teeth. He gives his cock a tug from over his pants.

Lakhan refused to get married at first. What was he going to do? Keep the new bride at Madam’s house? In that spare room that he shared with Roopen? Or live in a chawl with a toilet that’d been shat into by twenty other families? Maa swatted at his hands. ‘Sheh! Always thinking about yourself,’ she said. ‘Do you ever think of me? Do you know how lonely I get here, now that Baba’s no more?’ Maa said. ‘Don’t you think I need someone to help with the upkeep of this house? Someone to tend to the vegetable patch? Someone to play rummy with?’

Lakhan saw Pinki in her crisp red saree and was besotted by her thick hips, her slender waist, her face, her skin the shade of freshly made, golden malpua. He married Pinki in November in a mandap set up under the shade of a mango tree. The light from the bulbs hanging off the branches seeped colour and warmth into that cold winter night. The mare bit Lakhan’s drunk cousin, the caterer ran out of maalpuas, and the nearly-blind pandit charged Lakhan twice the regular fee.

Lakhan brought Pinki to the city for a week. Madam wanted to shoot a vlog with Pinki in it. Madam booked a clean, comfortable hotel for them on Marine Drive. Lakhan could not see the ocean from the room, but could hear it as he sat on the bed holding Pinki’s hand. ‘You can work here too,’ Madam told Pinki the next day. ‘There is so much to do around here. Do you know how to do make-up?’ Pinki kept looking at the impossibly high ceiling of Madam’s penthouse, and the low chandelier suspended from it. Lakhan smiled and shook his head. ‘No madam. She doesn’t.’ He scratched his head. ‘And who will look after Maa?’

Lakhan wakes up to his phone ringing. ‘Aye Lakhan, did you die or what?’ By the time Lakhan reaches the parking lot, Madam is already sitting in the car. Lakhan much prefers to sit next to Roopen in the front. But Madam wants to shoot some scenes for the vlog in the car, so he sits next to her. Lakhan is close enough to smell her perfume. He hopes that Madam cannot smell him. The deodorant Madam got leaves a sticky residue that gives him a rash. He sits with his arms crossed, back straight, and tries to not touch the expensive leather interiors. Madam turns on the camera. ‘Today is a special day, you guys. We are going to the Rihaan Kapoor’s house. Do you know who Rihaan Kapoor is, Lakhan?’ Lakhan shakes his head. ‘This man is going to be the death of me,’ Madam says, punching Lakhan in the arm. Madam watches the video and is pleased with how it has turned out. ‘Did you memorise your lines?’ Madam asks, putting on her dark glasses. Lakhan nods. ‘Good’. She turns the other way.

Lakhan looks at the skyline. Straight columns of steel and concrete rising from the sea, hanging from the sky. He can see the Ambani residence to his right. Twenty-seven storeys. The measure of a man is indeed the number of floors in his house. Like Maa says. When Lakhan’s done building his three-storey house in the village, he will be able to look beyond the trees, past the fields, at the state highway where there’s a bus stop. That’s where the kids would catch the bus to the English-medium school in Hazaribagh. Madam turns on the camera. ‘What are you looking at, you duffer? No one will let you anywhere near the Ambanis with that face of yours,’ she says.

Pinki gets furious when Madam makes fun of Lakhan. She says no one should be talking to well-to-do folks in such a manner. ‘Doesn’t she know that we come from a good family? And that my father is the village scribe? That everyone comes to him to get their birth certificate made?’ Pinki asked him as they lay on the cot. She didn’t turn to look at him; instead, she stared at the noisy swing fan mounted in the corner of the room.

‘How much money does your father make?’ What Pinki doesn’t realise is that it works for Lakhan and Madam. The act. The leg-pulling. They are like Akbar and Birbal. Munna and Circuit.

‘Or Vikram and Betal,’ Pinki said. ‘Madam being Betal, of course.’ She stretched her hands into the dark, curling her fingers, clawing the air like a ghost.

‘Listen, my bird,’ Lakhan whispered into Pinki’s ears, but she turned the other way. ‘Listen-no.’ He grabbed her waist. ‘It’s only a character that I am playing.’

‘But it’s your character.’

‘Do you know how much a cook earns in Bombay?’ Lakhan touched her cheeks, then took her hands into his. ‘Do you know how much I get for every video?’

Pinki retrieved her hands from his. ‘We can make videos too,’ she added. ‘You cook, and I will sing. And sometimes we will dance.’

Lakhan smiled. ‘And who is going to watch kalua and kalui dance in a house with a leaking roof?’

Rihaan Kapoor is as tall as a double-door fridge. He’s paler than he appears on tv.  His hair is blown out and big. He doesn’t look at Lakhan as much as he looks through him. But Lakhan is used to the feeling. Rihaan Kapoor walks up to Madam and kisses her somewhere in between her mouth and cheek. Madam’s blushing. ‘Here’s Birju,’ Rihaan motions a short man dressed in white livery standing at the kitchen door to step forward. ‘He’s our Lakhan,’ he says. ‘Birju just had his, what, third kid?’ He says, holding up three fingers in his hand. A giddy-looking Birju folds his hands and smiles at the camera. ‘What about you, Lakhan? Do you have any kids?’

Pinki found out she was with child earlier this year. Lakhan picked her up in his arms because that’s what he had seen heroes do in the movies. It was too soon for her to be showing. But he could swear he felt a tenderness in Pinki’s body. A slight slouch in her frame, out of caution?, he wasn’t sure. She listened to a sweet-sounding Krishna bhajan on her phone day and night. She asked him to set it as her ringtone, her caller tune. ‘Why caller tune?’ Lakhan asked.

‘It will play for you when you call me. You and I both will listen to it,’ she said.

Pinki wasn’t sick or throwing up, which was great, because that meant she was not going to cause Maa any trouble. She had a renewed sense of appetite. While she barely touched the lumpy rice and the watery curries Maa made, she ate everything Lakhan cooked for her. Fish curry. Chicken fry. Mutton kebabs. Lakhan felt sated at the sight of Pinki wiping milk off her lips after every meal. He stocked the kitchen up with fruits, seeds, and nuts so she could feed on them when he wasn’t around. He was happy he could afford it all.

‘Where’s your head, man? Tell Rihaan sir, no? He asked you a question,’ Madam says, cuffing Lakhan over the ear.

‘No, sir, I don’t have any children.’ Lakhan looks down and smiles.

‘Yet,’ Madam adds.

‘Oh, your opening is yet to happen at the box office.’ Rihan throws his head back and laughs. ‘You know what to do. No?’ He smirks. ‘Or I will ask Birju to tell it to you.’ Lakhan shakes his head and smiles. He can imagine Madam adding a laughter track in the background in the vlog, overlaying a clown face on his. ‘So, what are we cooking today? Rihaan says.

‘Baby corn curry,’ Birju chuckles.

Maa sent Pinki to her mother’s place as soon as she started to show. ‘This is how it is, Lakhan. The girl needs her mother,’ Maa said to Lakhan. ‘Are you going to come and rub her feet now? Or you want me to do that?’ Lakhan arranged for a taxi for Pinki’s comfort. ‘When will you come home?’ Pinki asked. ‘You will be here when the baby comes, no?’

‘I will come very, very soon, my bird.’ Lakhan couldn’t see her on the screen of his phone. The network back in the village was bad.

‘I am scared,’ Pinki said.

‘Just close your eyes, my love. And picture me. Now hold up your hand. Open your arms. Do you see? I am already there with you. I am with you, always.’

‘Are you getting paid for this?’ Birju asks Lakhan in the kitchen when the cameras are not recording. Lakhan nods. He wouldn’t lie. Lakhan can see that Birju wears a toupee. It shifts every time he bends over to get spices from the bottom rack too quickly. ‘How much will you get paid for this video?’ Birju asks. Lakhan smiles. Birju takes the ladle from Lakhan’s hand and gives the pot a definite stir. He slams the ladle on the rim of the pot twice. ‘Okay, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’ Madam comes into the kitchen with Rihaan Kapoor. They want the table to be set. ‘Should I set a place for you on the table too?’ Birju asks Lakhan with a smirk.

There’s to be a dance-off between Birju and Lakhan to decide who gets to keep the smartwatch Rihaan Kapoor bought as a gift. ‘You have to earn it, my friend.’ Birju takes his position in one corner of the room, and Lakhan stands in the other. They both must dance to a medley of Rehaan Kapoor’s popular songs. Lakhan doesn’t want to. What will he do with a smartwatch? But Madam gives him a stare when he refuses. Lakhan keeps one foot in front of the other and shakes his hip. Birju places his hands on his knees and swings his arms. Lakhan hops on one leg. Birju jerks his neck forward. Lakhan sticks his tongue out. Birju squats down on the floor and clucks like a chicken. Lakhan flies a kite. Birju rocks a baby. Birju locks his eyes with Lakhan, sticks his tongue out, and rocks the baby in his hand. Lakhan snatches Birju’s toupee and tosses it in the air.

‘How much will you get paid for that?’ Lakhan says.

Birju dives behind the sofa to catch the clump of hair. Rehaan Kapoor falls into the sofa chair in a fit of laughter. Madam covers her mouth and laughs. She then smacks Lakhan on the back. ‘Look, what have you done to that poor fellow?’ she says. Birju runs into the kitchen. ‘Go,’ Madam says, ‘apologise to him.’

When Maa called Lakhan to tell him that Pinki was not well. He didn’t understand what she was talking about at first.

‘Did she throw up again?’ he asked. He was chopping chillies, peeling garlic.

‘She’s okay. She will be fine. But the child…’ Maa’s voice trailed off.

Lakhan went into the room. He called Pinki. But she didn’t pick up any of his calls. The Krishna bhajan playing over and over again made him want to weep. Lakhan decided to pack his bags and leave for Khapia the same day. He called Maa. And told her so. ‘What for?’ Maa said. ‘You will bring her home, and then? Who is going to take care of her?’ Lakhan would. He told Maa. ‘What’s done is done,’ Maa said. ‘And for how long do you plan to stay? What about your job? What about the videos? What if Madam gets someone else, that Roopen?’ Lakhan didn’t say anything to that. ‘You’ve got a good thing going, Lakhu. Don’t let it go to waste. Make something of it,’ she said. And don’t worry about your wife. She’s sturdy like a horse. Let her stay with her mother for a few more weeks. I will bring her back,’ she said. Lakhan didn’t say a word. ‘Give it some time, Lakhu. Give her some time.’

Madam tells Lakhan off the entire way. She is upset with how Lakhan behaved. How he went off script. But Lakhan knows she’s in fact pleased with how the video has turned out. She just won’t admit it.  She says she would dock his pay. Because she had to tip Birju before she left.

Madam’s not hungry. Which is great because Lakhan doesn’t want to cook anything. The rest of the staff can manage their own meals if they want to. Or not. He doesn’t care. He is too tired to do anything at this hour. He goes into his room and checks his phone again. He stares at the photo of Pinki he has set as his wallpaper. He can’t see her face very clearly, only her eyes, because there is a naked bulb in the background that obscures most of her face. But it captures a quality in his Pinki that only he can see. The way she leans towards the camera every time Lakhan is holding it. He retrieves the plastic bag in which he stores murhi. He takes a handful and drops it in hot milk. He sprinkles a pinch of sugar in it and stirs it with his fingers. He shovels the gluey mixture into his mouth and closes his eyes. That’s when his phone begins to ring.

‘Don’t be a child, talk to your man.’ He can hear Maa’s voice. ‘Talk, woman,’ Maa says. Lakhan waits for Pinki to say something. He can only hear the sound of her tired breath.

‘How are you, my love?’ Lakhan asks. He thinks of the child they have lost. Her loss, more than his, now that he has had the time to think about it. He feels the sweetness turn sour in his mouth. ‘How are you?’ He asks Pinki. ‘You are upset with me, na? That such a big thing happened and I wasn’t there?’ Lakhan waits for a response. A sound. Any sound. ‘The next time I come home, I will bring you something. Tell me what you want.’ Lakhan sits on the bed with his legs crossed. ‘Anything. Just say it,’ he asks. Pinki doesn’t say a word. ‘We can even go somewhere. Tell me where you want to go, love. I will take you wherever you want to go. You just name it.’

‘Don’t ever talk to me like I am a child.’ Pinki hangs up.

Lakhan walks up to the beach. He remembers coming here with Pinki. She flung her dupatta in the air and ran towards the waves. She looked like a kite. She saw the boy selling plastic buckets and shovels for making sand castles. She ran up to him and asked him how much. When the boy told her, she laughed in his face. She knelt on the ground as if to prove a point. She pulled up the sleeves of her satin kurti and dug into the sand with her bare hands. ‘See? There!’ Then, she reached into Lakhan’s pocket and fished out a hundred-rupee note and pressed it into the boy’s palms anyway.

Lakhan shakes his head. He buries the tips of his chappals in the wet sand and flicks them. Where does Pinki think money comes from?

A group of boys, not much older than him, approach him. ‘Lakhan Bhai,’ they say in the chorus. They tell him how much they enjoyed watching his new video. The way he tossed the toupee of the other household help. So funny. The star of the video, really. They open a can of beer and thrust it in his hands. Lakhan takes a sip. They start taking pictures with him. They place a hand across his shoulder and ask him to look into the camera. Lakhan’s phone rings again. His heart might jump out of his chest. He takes it out of his pocket and picks it up, but he cannot hear anything over the crashing waves and the boys’ ruckus. The boys ask Lakhan to look into the camera and smile. The flash from the camera is blinding. It makes the moon, the stars, and all other faraway things invisible to the naked eye.