Kamina (Rascal) (کمینہ)  

Just the sight of his face will piss you off. But we had to tolerate it every day because he was the building’s sanitation worker. It wasn’t a huge building, though it had sixteen flats, a parking space, and an especially big common area too. There was just one other helper with him, but he usually didn’t come upstairs.

His antics and fashion sense also played a big role in making the sight of his face so damn irritating. The face, well, that is God’s gift after all. And how can you be angry at God? They say that Emperor Sher Shah Suri laughed at seeing the poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s hideous face. Then Jayasi is said to have retorted: “are you laughing at me or the kumhar (craftsman) who made my face?” 

But looks aside, there are many things that are in your own hands. 

Other than during winters, he wore deep-cut sleeveless tops in shocking loud colours and a long and loose pair of knickers, usually the same shade as the floor. The top was not only speckless and bright, but every two-three days you could see him wearing a new one. He bought a bunch of them from the cheap stock sold at the Tuesday street-market and kept switching one by one. He also had an ear pierced. In it hung a silver ring studded with a ruby as a “style statement”. Just sixteen or seventeen years of age but already addicted to tobacco.

With that sorry excuse of a face, he rang the doorbell between ten and eleven every morning to collect the trash from each flat. Whoever opened the door found him standing there with both hands on his waist, chewing a paan dripping from the edges of his mouth. He had a large four-cornered drum with small wheels attached underneath. He heaved it down from his shoulders at every floor, collected the trash, then heaved it up again and climbed like a monkey onto the next floor. Because the building only had four floors, they hadn’t bothered making a lift especially for his use.

If there was some issue with him, his jobless father used to fill in his place. His father’s sorry face was a tad more digestible. And he didn’t chew any paan, nor wear anything on his ears, nor speak broken English like his son. Yes, his wife used to complain that he stole her and their son’s earnings and spent a fair chunk of them on drinking instead. She was aghast at how he managed to get hold of alcohol even after liquor was banned in the state. If she had bothered probing a little further, she would have found that the same police branch where all the confiscated alcohol gets stored was selling it off at two or four times the market rate.

The boy’s English used to annoy Mrs. Abassi a lot, but she usually avoided saying anything other than repeating one or two sophisticated cuss words under her breath. Nor did he give too much importance to Vidisha, the young daughter-in-law of the Tiwari family in the flat next door who rudely laughed directly in his face. One day she casually asked him, “Array, your father hasn’t come for so many days?”

He scratched his head. 

Sticking out his teeth, stained because of all the paan he was chewing, he responded “who?”

“Array, your father. Do you not understand what father means?”

“Oh, Daddy. Daddy not coming. Daddy going gaya.”

“Why not coming?” Vidisha’s sparkling eyes flickered with mischief.

“Going Gaya. Daddy’s daddy’s shraddha (rites for the dead).”

Now she got it. His father has gone to Gaya to perform a shraddha ceremony for his own departed father. She quickly emptied the kitchen waste into his drum and mumbled to herself, “now even these people have begun to perform shraddha. Trying to act like equals everywhere.”

“Bhabhi what saying?”

Now Vidisha looked like she had been stung by a scorpion. She was a brand-new addition to the Tiwari clan, and a sanitation worker, who until recently was called a Bhangi, was addressing her as his sister-in-law.

“I will bash you with a slipper if you call me Bhabhi again.”

“Yes, yes. I will not say Bhabhi. Bhauji. Do they say bhauji in your village? Bhauji ijj sweet, Bhabhi not sweet.”

The door slammed in his face with a thud. Kamina. Rascal. Will have to complain about him to Daddy. Just like her husband, she also called her father-in-law ‘Daddy’. And this donkey-faced, ass-brained idiot… not only he dares call his father ‘Daddy’ but also asks Vidisha about “her village”… when she’s in fact from a city like Calcutta… She was shaking with anger from head to toe.

Mrs. Abbasi came out with a beautiful basket filled with kitchen waste at the same time. She laughed and said, “now if he calls us ‘aunty’, what will he call the daughters-in-law of the house, if not ‘bhabhi’?”

He sprang into action seeing the lady of the house step outside her flat. “Array array, stay away. You stink even more than this trash.”

He cheered up. “Yes, yes, eating paan. Scented sweet paan of Baba brand tobacco!”

“Kamina,” Mrs. Abassi did not say this angrily but was amused at his foolery and whispered it to herself.

“Hehehe”. He half-understood and laughed, turning her dustbin upside down into his big drum, hoisting it on his shoulders and leaping up the stairs onto the next floor. 

After he’s done collecting garbage from the very last flat in the building his drum becomes heavily loaded. But he easily carries it downstairs to the ground floor and empties the waste into the municipality van. Then he picks up the broom, and along with his helper, gets busy dusting off the whole building till it shines. The helper-boy is nearly the same age as him but addresses him as “Mama” (Uncle). Again, because he only worked downstairs, nobody really had to see his face often.

Recently, polyethene bags had been banned in the state. Whenever a new law was passed, it usually took a while for it to be implemented, so doing without plastic bags for some time was not a big deal. But not being able to use “bin bags” to cover up dustbins inside everyone’s house proved to be a nuisance. All sorts of wet and dry waste, kids’ diapers, or whatever you wanted could conveniently be thrown into the bin, after which the bag could simply be taken out and handed over to the garbage-picker, leaving the bin clean as a whistle. And by the time the current stock of bin bags inside their house got used up, the ban would have lifted anyway. This idea relieved everyone.

Salim Naqvi’s domestic servant came out to empty their bin bag-laced basket.

“Sir, you know this has been banned,” he replied bowing slightly in front of the household help. “Government order ijj there. We’ll take your bag today, but I can’t accept it if you get it tomorrow again.” (He used Sir or Ma’am while talking to the servants, guards, or caretakers in the building. But yes, addressed the residents of the building as if they were his own relatives!)

Salim Naqvi’s servant mockingly knocked him over with the empty dustbin. “Kiddo, you better read the law to your own father. Alcohol has been prohibited for days now but he was found drunk and senseless only a week after the ban. Teaching us what the law says, you bastard…”

“Uncle drinks. Daddy also drinks. Two drink!” he replied unperturbed and pushed his drum forward.

Salim Naqvi did sometimes indulge in a drink or two. He wasn’t an addict… but how did this idiot come to know anyway? Naqvi’s servant was taken aback by his retort and mumbled to himself, “acts as if he is equal to everyone… a Bhojpuri from Arrah but shows off his broken English everywhere, rascal…” He returned inside the flat and reported the exchange to the mistress of the house.

“Law-abiding fool. Let’s see how long he can spout the law,” the mistress shouted back. But she was deeply embarrassed. He dare put Mr. Naqvi in the same league as his father! In the old days, we wouldn’t even let their shadow fall on us. And now? They are shitting right on top of our heads!

*

All other laws aside, the havoc caused by the invisible virus ensured that a new law was followed to a stricter degree than necessary. Everyone was convinced in their hearts that adhering to this law was a fight against death. Complete lockdown!

Of course, essential services were to continue uninterrupted. Among them were also the services of these rascals—but this upstanding rule-follower vanished! No clue why. He never missed work otherwise. Never fell ill. Nor let a routine cough or fever become an excuse to take a leave. Nobody remembered the last time he took a day off. The boy who worked as his helper sometimes took a day or two off but on those occasions, he did the boy’s share of work as well.

During that time, the whole world was hidden indoors. Like rats returning to their burrows on seeing a falcon circling about. But was not sanitation, that too during a pandemic, included among essential services? The trouble was that everyone had ordered their part-time domestic workers not to come to work either. Only two or three families had in-house servants, meaning those who lived with them. In all the other households, the women were dead-tired, laboring away.

Disposing trash had become an even bigger headache. A member of the house would wear a mask and a pair of gloves and step outside the building two or three times in a week. If they ran into someone, they would leap away from each other and quickly toss the bag in the municipal dumpster at the corner of the building. Then, they would run back home and wash their hands thoroughly, as if trying to tear off and throw them away.

Cobwebs were forming in the common area. Below, the ground floor was covered with dust, and a foul smell was spreading in all four directions. There were a couple of restrooms made for the servants down there as well. Those, too, were in very bad shape. As things stood, the only ones using them were the two full-time servants and the security guard who was not allowed to go home and had been given space in the garage of one of the building’s residents. The building caretaker had managed to run away.

Then suddenly, one day, the whole complex breathed a sigh of relief. Three whole months after the lockdown, the rascal returned, though his helper was still missing. In the next three or four days, he cleaned the whole building all by himself. The floor in the common area was shining bright. The cobwebs were cleared away. And residents didn’t have to leave the building to get rid of their trash. Everyone’s dirt was swiped clean. He didn’t even tell where he had disappeared to, or why… kamina.