Solapur

They headed out early in the morning, around six, locking the front door. They would be in time for the first bus to Solapur if they reached the main road by seven. They wanted to reach Pune by noon, at least. That’s what Gopal had insisted on too. Shobhi had packed some chapatis and sabzi, just in case. She had woken at four in the morning to make them. Shobhi was fated to be the victim of Chandamaayi’s cuss words — about being that woman who wouldn’t wake up even if the sunrays went right through her arse. Chandamaayi would hear nothing about her illness or her need for treatment. Lazy. Daughter of a street mutt! Her gaunt face would shrink even more when she muttered her curses, endlessly.

“You have your mobile with you?” Though she had already reminded him many times, Shobhi asked once again as they crossed the dried-up canal in the middle of the fields.

“Yes,” he felt his pocket and replied.

“Be careful, the bus is always full of pickpockets from Barsi. You know how expensive it is …” Shobhi said.

“Yes, I do. I’ll be careful … I won’t doze off,” Hanumantha promised her, clutching his pocket.

They had to wait for a brief while under the banyan tree, on which the bats performed yoga in their sleep. In the meantime, people started gathering around Ram Bapu’s dhaba across the street for their glasses of morning tea. They hoped and prayed that no one would recognise them, but Lakhu Bappa, the fortune-teller who told people’s futures from cards that a parrot chose, spotted them.

“Where are you two off to, so early in the morning?” he called to them.

“To Solapur. To get some clothes.” That was the first lie that sprang to Hanumantha’s mind.

“Buying clothes? In these hard times? … What is it, fellow? Did you win a lottery? Or someone slipped you some black money?”

Before Hanumantha could think of an answer, the bus arrived, raising a cloud of dust and blocking off the view from either side.

The bus was mostly empty that morning. Both of them found seats. Hanumantha turned toward the sights outside. The morning was a bit dewy. It threw a veil of fear upon the parched fields. These were fields in which wheat and lentils had thrived once. Fields on which Hanumantha and Shobhi worked all around the year. Fields that had brought them lightness, laughter and small joys. Hanumantha sighed at the sight of the drought that had left their lives cracked and shriveled.

“You’ll catch something … Here, cover yourself.” Shobhi held out her shawl to him.

“No, don’t worry, I’ve covered my ears.” Hanumantha adjusted the thin cotton cloth covering his head, pulling it tighter around his ears.

When the bus gathered speed, he held the mobile phone close to his chest, as though it were a piece of paper that might fly out of his pocket any moment.

“It’s switched off, isn’t it?” Shobhi asked again. Better not waste the charge. They had no electricity in the house. Neither did their neighbors. The phone had to be taken to Prahlad’s barber shop near the village market. He took ten rupees to charge a phone. Shobhi knew the cost of walking there too.

Gopal had given it to them on his last visit. “Pay in installments,” he had said. “It’s the sight of folks like you stepping into a new age that makes one feel that Digital India is not far away.”

“But I don’t know how to take photos with it, or other such things, Gopalji,” Hanumantha had confessed his helplessness.

“You know how to ride a bicycle, drive a tractor, switch on the pump to irrigate the field, work a thresher! A mobile phone is nothing compared to all this, Hanumantha! Look, I’ll make you a master of it in just two hours!”

It turned out to be true. Hanumantha was able to pick up all its tricks sooner than he had thought. The mobile phone now lay snug and quiet inside his pocket, like a baby bird, a chick that could not fly.

They had to wait for a long time at Solapur. All the buses to Pune were expensive, air-conditioned ones — they could not afford the fare. “I should have come alone,” Hanumantha said.

“But how? Didn’t the Patil want to see me too? Never mind! When we return, our pockets will be full of cash, instead of that mobile phone! We’ll lie back and relax in an AC bus on the way back,” Shobhi consoled him. They finally got a bus, an ordinary one. It stopped everywhere and crawled up the road.

“Wonder if Jani ate anything. Or… maybe the old crone ate her alive?” Shobhi worried as the bus plodded on.

“No, Amma’s angry only with you.” Hanumantha took her hand. “She’s fond of her.”

 Shobhi had not been happy at all with the idea of leaving her daughter with Chandamaayi. They did not know when they would return — it could be the next day, or midnight — and so Hanumantha had taken her to his mother’s house, four chawls away. They had not been on speaking terms ever since Hanumantha married Shobhi and brought her to the village as his bride. Shobhi was the daughter of a sweeper woman in Chapalgaon, where Hanumantha used to buy seeds and sell his crops. Shobhi used to help her mother. Hanumantha saw her, and took a liking to her instantly.

Chandamaayi’s main objection was that the “street cur” who swept the market was of a caste lower than them. “But who could possibly be lower than us in this world, Amma?” Hanumantha had asked.

“What a dunce you are! Don’t you have inside that head of yours even a morsel of a potato? Is it completely empty? Listen! There are fifteen layers in our own caste! These vermin are the lowest of them!” Chandamaayi wept and pleaded with him: Marrying that girl would bring them endless shame. But Hanumantha had gone ahead and married her. It was in that woman’s house that they’d had to leave Jani. No wonder Shobhi was worried sick.

 “What’s up, man?” the stonemason Bheemsa, who was playing with the kids by the roadside, had called to him as they neared his mother’s house. “That’s unusual — taking your beti to her daadi? Why, are the two of you planning to kill yourselves?”

“Not yet, Bheemsa,” Hanumantha had replied. “When it’s time, make sure the TV people come,” Shobhi had retorted.

“If this weather persists, it’ll be time for all of us soon,” Bheemsa had muttered.

They could not reach Pune at the pre-agreed hour. Hanumantha switched on the mobile phone at the bus stand and called Gopal. Gopal sounded furious.

“What the hell,” he thundered. “Should Patil sa’ab wait all day for you bandicoots? No wonder Chandamaayi calls you arseholes who’d sleep even if the sun poked right through. No wonder you’ll never crawl out of your nasty holes…” Gopal let his mouth run. Hanumantha kept quiet. In the end, Gopal said he was going there to fetch them, and cut the call.

Some time later, he arrived in a rickshaw and took them to Patil’s shop. Patil was a young man, under thirty, but he had the arrogant swagger of a forty-year-old, the cunning of a fifty-year-old, and the canny judgment of a sixty-year-old.

“Patil sa’ab, these are the two I told you about,” Gopal said, introducing them.

“Okay, take them upstairs. I’ll be there soon.” Patil pointed unsmilingly to the terrace.

They were very hungry. Shobhi unwrapped the parcel she had been carrying in her bag; they shared the chapatis and sabzi.

“Let me take a look.” Gopal, who had brought them some water, held out his hand to Hanumantha. He was asking for the phone. But Hanumantha clutched his pocket hard and drew back.

Shobhi spoke up. “No, Bhaiya, we can’t have anyone from our village see this … it’s shameful! That’s why we came all the way here, to Pune. Or we could have just sold it somewhere near Solapur, couldn’t we?”

Her foolishness brought a smirk to Gopal’s lips, but he did not show it. “What’s there to be so bashful about with me, Hanumantha?” he asked. “Shouldn’t I see it beforehand so that I can bargain for a better price when Patil sa’ab takes a look?”

Hanumantha’s hand eased. He gave Gopal the phone. Shobhi looked down, head bowed, toward the chapatis.

It had all begun one evening three months ago. Hanumantha was having a smoke at Ram Bapu’s dhaba when Gopal came in and sat down next to him. He then opened his mobile phone and showed him some photos, secretly. Gopal was the son of the only policeman in the village, Chandulal. More educated than anyone else there. Running some big business in Pune. Always smelling of tambaku. He would visit his village occasionally and stay at home for a few days. This was one such spell. The pictures left Hanumantha stunned. He had heard of such images, but had never seen any. Gopal then showed him some videos.

“Where do you get such stuff, Gopalji?” Hanumantha asked, open-mouthed with surprise.

“Oh, aren’t these all over the internet? But now nobody wants these white-skinned females. They want people from here … village folk. Do you know how much you can make? For a single photo, you’d earn so much! As much as you’d make from slaving a lifetime in the fields… If you care to get rich, I’m here to help. You just need to have the drive,” Gopal said as though he was making a general remark. Hanumantha pretended not to hear. He drank up his tea and left.

But he could not sleep at all that night. Shobhi thought that it was because they had quarreled. There was no money in the house for vegetables, and she had complained about it. She knew that her man was easily worn down by small worries. So, she’d laid her head on his chest and kept murmuring apologies and consoling words. He then told her about the photos and the video he had seen in Gopal’s phone. And about the big money that villagers could get with such pictures. Now Shobhi too was sleepless.

That weekend, when Gopal was waiting for the bus to Pune, Hanumantha approached him. “Can you please get me a mobile phone with a camera?”

“Shobhi is a beauty!” Gopal turned to Hanumantha with a leer and looked straight into his eyes. Hanumantha lowered his face instantly. He dug into his pocket to pay him, but Gopal would not take the money. “Pay later,” he had said comfortingly.

“Wow … this is great! Patil sa’ab is going to be delighted!” Gopal burst out enthusiastically, casting a sly eye on Shobhi. She pulled the edge of her saree around her head and body even more tightly.

After a while, Patil sa’ab came up the stairs. Hanumantha and Shobhi got up and greeted him with folded palms. “Are you the actors?” he asked.

Hanumantha could not make sense of that question, but he nodded, to mean yes. Sa’ab turned toward Shobhi, pulled off her saree and peered closely at her. “Hmm…  her features are not bad. Deserves pass marks, right?” he whispered to Gopal like a judge in some beauty contest. Gopal agreed.

They had been asked to come in person to make sure that they were the people directly involved. “There are villains who hide cameras in some random person’s bedroom! If it ends up in a case, we who upload the stuff get into trouble,” Patil sa’ab said, sounding quite impersonal.  “All right, now let’s take a look at your piece.”

Hanumantha handed him the phone meekly.

“So, you filmed it in this one? The clarity is likely to be poor. They now want it in HD. It must be at least 10 MB, or they won’t take it.”

Hanumantha did not understand a word; he just felt a flash of fear … Something had gone wrong. Sa’ab opened the photo gallery and started viewing the photos and videos.

“Didn’t I tell you, Gopal, these photos have poor clarity. Like they were taken in some dark cave! And look, Gopal, this guy is panting hard on top like the old bicycle-riding bear in a circus! The comedy fellows might like it! … And it looks like it was taken by someone shivering with fear… Look how the camera’s shaking!” Sa’ab went on making comments and remarks as he swiped. “Look, Gopal, the woman is staring right at the camera … Yes, it’s done with consent, but shouldn’t it look like a hidden camera? Ugh! What’s that blotchy scar on the woman’s belly? Did someone chop her up?” Sa’ab glared at Hanumantha.

“What the fuck did you think, you stupid coot, did you think this stuff was fit for respectable men? You thought they’d enjoy it?”

Hanumantha’s head bowed with shame.

“That’s from the surgery I had when we sold a kidney, sa’ab,” said Shobhi. “Three years ago. An agent promised to get us three lakhs, but we got only thirty thousand. Our son Shambhu had cancer. We tried to save him with that money. But it was no use. We lost everything — my kidney, the money and our son. Only this ugly scar remained!” She pressed her face into her palms and wept aloud.

“The debts have been piling up from that time! These are hard times, sa’ab, the drought has ruined us! How will we repay? These pictures … it isn’t because we want to make them, sa’ab … ” Hanumantha began to cry.

But Patil sa’ab was unmoved. “Useless! Take them away! It’s easy these days to get bathroom selfies from pretty city girls!” Patil turned away in disgust and strode off down the stairs.

“Gopalji, please help us!” Hanumantha ran to Gopal and fell at his feet.

“Patil sa’ab is right,” Gopal said. “Who took these? You should’ve asked me. I’d have helped to shoot it much better. These are terrible! Anyway, let me try to talk to him.”

Gopal hurried after Patil. “At least pay them something. They’ve come all this way.”

Patil winked at him. “This stuff is hot! It’ll sell. You get that mobile from them quietly and give them nakkappicha, some petty cash. I’ll meet you later, don’t worry.” He smiled. Gopal smiled back.

“Patil didn’t like the photos or videos. He doesn’t want them. Give me the phone back. You don’t have to pay for it. But you’ve come all the way here, so I’ll give you the bus fare.” Gopal took the phone and stepped out.

Hanumantha and Shobhi wiped their faces and followed him. “Gopalji … but what about the pictures and video … in the phone?” Hanumantha asked, his voice weighed down with worry.

“Don’t worry, I’ll delete them,” Gopal said. They believed him.

When they went downstairs, Patil sa’ab came up and handed Hanumantha five crumpled notes.

“Only because Gopal insisted. Here, take this mobile. It has a much better camera. Remember, we’re not interested in pictures of you donkeys. You look like dried-up fields! There must be juicy little chicks in that place … near your hut, next door? Catch them on hidden camera! Then I’ll give you enough to pay off your debts!”

Hanumantha said nothing. He just took the mobile and slipped it into his pocket.

They did not wait long for the bus. On the way home, Hanumantha’s eyes fell on the darkened fields outside. From time to time, Jani’s face rose up in his mind. Each time it happened, his eyes clouded with tears. Shobhi’s eyes welled up too.

Translated from Malayalam by J. Devika
J Devika is a feminist researcher, translator, social commentator, and a children's writer based in Thiruvananthapuram. She translates fiction from Malayalam to English and non-fiction from English to Malayalam.

Photo Credit: Surendranath Kar, Chromolithograph on paper, c. 1940s.
Source - www.theheritagelab.in