Bambaiyya Cigarette

The only thing from her previous life Mrs Coutinho is unwilling to quit is the habit of smoking exactly one cigarette every night just before going to bed. 

It was easier in a city like Mumbai where she would walk to the paan shop right behind her residential society and smoke, relishing the anonymity of the big city, unaware of its privileges. Despite seeing this slightly older lady every day and serving her unusual request of gudaan garam clove cigarette, the panwalla never betrayed any signs of recognising her. 

Here in this small town in Uttar Pradesh, she must be careful. Even for a Christian woman it’s scandalous to be found smoking a month after her husband’s death. There is no question of going out to smoke. The open parts of her house are exposed to viewings from the first-floor terraces of her immediate neighbours. She doesn’t want to smoke inside her house because the smell would linger and her son, Kamal, might suspect that she smokes. Not that she is concerned about Kamal knowing. He has been behaving exactly the way a resigned late teen with an absentee father would. His father’s death has gone past him like those unpronounceable festival days in the calendar. For someone somewhere it might be important but for him it’s just a convenient excuse to take the day off from college. Kamal probably knows that his mother smokes. She just doesn’t want to be blatant about it. 

After assessing different pockets of the house, she has found a spot on the terrace out of the neighbours’ line of sight. The darkness at night also helps conceal the identity of the person sitting there. The mango tree lurking on the other side of the terrace sways with the mild breeze, giving an illusion of inching towards her. The susurrations of its leaves are interrupted by a dog barking, utensils clanking, or a drunkard rambling in an alien tongue. It’s so quiet that she feels the presence of the smallest of things. In Mumbai, it would take an accident, or a loud quarrel on the road to grab her attention. She slides down resting her back on the cement parapet and lights her gudaan garam. 

She takes a sumptuous drag and exhales with a sigh. Of all the years he chooses this one to die in. She tries hard finding the reasons for this year being the worst to die in but cannot. It was easier to blame him when he was alive. There is nothing special about this year or any of the last twenty years of her married life. Her move to this shithole of a town was inevitable. Her husband’s death merely made it happen. 

For almost the entire duration of their marriage they had been living separately — she in Mumbai, teaching in a fancy school; he in this small industrial town with dysfunctional factories, teaching children of out-of-work factory hands. He owned the school and was the self-appointed principal. He had named the school Sacred Heart Convent and except for the name it shared no other traits with an actual convent. Not that it mattered to people in this town. The Christian-sounding name of the principal was enough for people to think that the future of their children was in safe hands. Only the people who cared. The ones who didn’t, only cared about the fee being lower than other ‘convents’. This is the school Mrs Coutinho has inherited from her husband. 

This school is why she finds herself hiding in a corner of her own terrace, smoking her gudaan garam, wishing it to last longer than it already does. When it’s almost done, she takes another long drag until it pricks her throat and throws the stub off the terrace. She licks her lips for the sweet clove flavour and goes down to her room to sleep. 

Mrs Coutinho sees him from above the rim of her glasses. He has his first two buttons open and has shifted his collar back. His exposed neck is infested with a rash. Why would someone expose such a horrible thing for others to see? Especially sitting in a school principal’s office. It would probably have been worse if it stood out as the only visibly disgusting feature of his body. Among the unclipped blackened nails, dusty feet lurking out of the rexine chappal, residual pockmarks of chickenpox on the face, and his huge frame squeezed between the armrests, the rash seems to be a homely presence. There is a smile perpetually pasted on his face exposing his translucent-brown teeth. She is thankful he does not have a gutka in his mouth at the moment. The smell of dried sweat wafts across the room reinforcing the smallness of it. He can stretch his legs and touch hers with it from below the table if he wished. 

She is flustered by how comfortable the man has made himself in her office but manages to hide it behind her teacherly stare that unambiguously asks — so what? The man sitting in front of her, in a coarse voice, has just introduced himself as Bodhraj. He has stayed silent since, as if the name itself should ring a bell in her mind. 

‘I am Bodhraj’, he says again. 

‘Hello Bodhraj ji, how may I help you?’, she says in English, regretting immediately for sounding like a shop assistant. 

‘I’m your neighbour. I was at my daughter’s place when I heard about Santa Claus. Very sad.’ 

‘Santa Claus?’ 

‘We called him Santa Claus. David. Your husband. He was a very good friend.’ 

She loosens the tautness on her face hoping it would bring out a semblance of sorrow to it. Why does she find it necessary to do it in front of a disgusting fat man who has now slipped into a more comfortable position in his chair? A man she has never heard of, claiming to be her dead husband’s friend. 

With a balanced sternness she says, ‘Thank you for your visit, Bodhraj ji, but this is school time. I am a bit busy.’ Managing to bring out a bland smile to her face she continues, ‘David never mentioned you.’  

‘What are you saying? He told me everything about you. How you liked Bambai and never wanted to come here. See, we are not that bad people, madam. We have a settled and slow life. He used to remember you a lot. He liked it here, you know.’ 

She stiffens hearing him utter the word zindagi. This word is a portal to amateur philosophising, which she hates. She has had enough experience of dealing with such people. Usually, they are the parents of students doing really well. They start by harping about life in general and end up giving some unsolicited advice. A recent widow who is new to the town is the perfect recipient of such sermons. She expects Bodhraj to tell her a thing or two about the so-called relaxed lifestyle of the town and what she should do to find her way around. Instead, he pulls out a cigarette stub from his shirt pocket and keeps it on the table. 

She had known that this town would someday peep into her private life and there would be none of it left. Anticipated tragedies are no better than sudden ones. Does he know that she smokes? Is it a tragedy? She remembers coming here as a young bride and going back to Mumbai in a month’s time. The stares and occasional barbs she used to get from people sitting idle near paan shops still prick her. The innocent excitement she used to show while meeting men still makes her squirm in embarrassment. How naive she was. She had hoped that once she was no longer the new hot thing in town, she could come back here. It has taken her twenty years and a dead husband. How bad can it be for a widow in her late forties with an adult son? But this man sitting in front of her, showing her the stub she stupidly threw out, brings back the familiar embarrassment. 

She hopes that her training as a teacher will come to her rescue and this embarrassment will not show on her face. 

‘What is this?’, she says. 

‘Cigarette butt, madam. I found it on my porch. You see, I don’t smoke anymore so it must have come from somewhere.’ 

She tries to delay the acknowledgement of what he is implying. Some weak-hearted people take it as a cue to buzz off. She slams a fake concern on her face and says, ‘This is very bad. You should go find who threw this Bodhraj ji. But I don’t know what I can do here.’ 

‘Madam, I am here because I think this is Kamal’s. I think he smokes.’ 

By now she is rummaging through different piles of paper lying on her table. She says without making any eye-contact, ‘Kamal doesn’t smoke.’

‘Madam I think he does. This can’t be yours for sure. You are a respected teacher madam, how can you smoke?’ 

She summons every ounce of poise in her voice and says, ‘Bodhraj ji, you found a cigarette butt in your lawn and came directly to me. Don’t you think someone else could have thrown it there? Of all the people you could think of, you come here in the middle of the school to tell lies on my face.’ 

He smiled the smile of a man about to land a sucker punch, ‘Madam ji please don’t get angry. You see, I showed it to the panwalla. He told me that this is a Bambaiyya cigarette. It is not available here. Now it can either be you or Kamal. How can you smoke, madam. You are a respected teacher.’ 

She had been teaching Julius Caesar her entire life but never imagined herself being called ‘respectable’ or ‘honourable’ in a snarky way. Him saying this in shudh Hindi makes it worse. Who uses aadarniya and guru in normal conversation? She is convinced that this is not a normal conversation. She has never had to face a situation like this before. 

He continues, ‘accha nahi lagta hai. It doesn’t look good madam. The principal’s son is doing such things. Right now, only I know. But these things don’t remain hidden. See, this is not Bambai. I came to you because David was a good friend, and I don’t want the school to have a bad name.’ 

David had a weakness for weirdos, but she cannot imagine David being anyone’s mitr. Let alone a man who can deliver such a nasty message in such a relaxed tone. She considers it a personal affront that in a room comprising her and a possibly illiterate man, she is the one being lectured. That it can be a fair criticism in the context of this town makes it worse. Could this man be genuinely concerned about the school’s reputation?  

She straightens her back and brings her hands together on her lap. The room further reinforces its smallness. She misses the vastness and crowdedness of the staff room in her Mumbai school where multiple strands of conversations could comfortably float in the air. She could hop on to any strand as per her convenience or leave the room when it came down to answering difficult questions. No brows would be raised. Here, even if she tried, she cannot leave the room without brushing past Bodhraj. 

‘So, you will talk to Kamal about this, madam?’, he says 

‘Kamal? Oh, yes yes. Kamal. I will speak to him Bodhraj ji. But let’s get this straight, many people could have this Bamabaiyya cigarette, Bodhraj ji. Any one of them could have thrown it in your lawn’, she herself sounded unconvinced while saying this. 

‘Not that I know of. But you may be right, madam. Please don’t take this otherwise. I came here out of concern for the school.’ 

It takes her a second to register the word otherwise, which he said in English. His odd pronunciation gives her a momentary relief. In her head, she has regained some of the lost ground to a man claiming moral superiority. The fool can’t even pronounce the word he is using. She nods with a bland smile and expects him to start assembling parts of his body he has thrown around the chair, to leave. He does no such thing. He keeps sitting there about to begin another conversation. 

‘Rani’, before he can say anything she cries out to call the school dai who doubles up as her personal assistant for menial tasks. 

She gets up as soon as Rani comes into her line of sight, brushes past Bodhraj, storms out, and stands near the corridor wall that is freshly repainted. She scolds Rani saying that the rabbit’s ears are not properly painted. Rani has never seen a rabbit in her entire life. She is confused about what she is being accused of, but it does not show on her face. It appears, as it always does, blank. This indifference pricks Mrs Coutinho. She takes her time to deliver an elaborate lecture before going into her office again. She makes a mental note to explain to Rani later that she was playacting, hoping that her bad mood would make Bodhraj leave. This will be her first step into making Rani her confidant. It helps that she is an imbecile. Or pretends to be one. She is hoping that Bodhraj will register her foul mood and show some sign of leaving. 

Mrs Coutinho enters the room and finds him sitting motionless, the smile still pasted on his face. Her cleverest trick has failed. Rani follows her into the office to ask what she should do about the rabbit’s ear. She stops short as she realises that the man sitting in the chair is Bodhraj. She breaks into a smile. Her bent brown teeth jump out of her upper lip, about to drop on Bodhraj’s feet. She touches his feet. Mrs Coutinho had never seen her showing any emotion and is a bit taken aback by this sudden expression of joy. How will she tell her now that the rabbit thing was a facade to get rid of the man Rani so reveres? Bodhraj enquires about Rani’s children and blesses her. As if to explain her beaming self, Rani tells Mrs Coutinho that Bodhraj helped her husband get rid of alcohol and even employed him in his friend’s microfactory. 

‘I thought your husband died last year,’ said Mrs Coutinho, and immediately bit her lip.

‘Yes madam but my son got his job after he died. I live with him now’, Rani said. 

Before she could ask about the rabbit, Mrs Coutinho asks her to leave and come back some time later. Rani walks out, leaving behind a silence Mrs Coutinho has no option but to fill. After hearing about his past heroics, can she directly ask him to leave? She regrets what slips out of her mouth, ‘So is Rani related to you?’

He roars into a fit of laughter. When it starts to wear off it is replaced by a fit of coughing. Coming back to normal he says, ‘No madam. I am not related to Rani. You see, I was the union leader of the factory workers. Rani’s husband was one of the workers. That’s how I know him and many others in the town. There was a big strike twenty years ago and after that the factories could not re-open. Wherever I can, I help them. Rest is on Ganga maiyya.’ 

She remembers the strike. It happened the year Kamal was born. David could not come to Mumbai because he ‘wanted to be there for his people’. She recalls who Bodhraj is. David would get impressed with anyone and Bodhraj was one of them, though she did not know him by this name. He used to call him bhaiyya ji. They even went to jail together on false charges. Every time David told this story, she would puncture his excitement with a ‘whatever’. As years went past she stopped responding and he stopped telling it. The man sitting in front of her is the reason her son grew up practically fatherless. Or is he the reason? Would David have been any different if there was no bhaiyya ji? It’s too late for these questions. Without moving her head, she takes another look at the man. How can this man have the charisma of moving thousands of people? Is he indeed bhaiyya ji? She wants to ask but decides against it. 

She responds to the factory story with a hmmm hoping he won’t start talking again. He doesn’t. After a short pause she summarizes their discussion in a terse sentence and asks more tersely if there is anything else she can help him with. Her tone could be called rude but it isn’t any different from the way she spoke to Rani or the way she responded to his accusation. He says he has nothing else to discuss and informs her unnecessarily that he is going straight to Ganga ji for a holy dip. He’ll see her around. He tries getting up. It takes him a couple of attempts to get himself out of the chair. Once out, he smiles at Mrs Coutinho and says namaste. 

For the first time she notices how old he is. When he had walked in she had not noticed his limp. Now, seeing him turn sideways and hold the wall to descend a step makes her feel pity for him. The cigarette butt is still lying on the table. She stands up to hand it out to Bodhraj. ‘Bhaiyya ji, your Bambaiyya Cigarette’, she says and throws it towards him. The cigarette butt is much lighter than she thought. It falls on the floor just short of Bodhraj.