All the girls have vanished! Not one girl can be seen in the world now. How did this strange situation arise? I will tell you. It’s two am and Sarala – who lives in house no. 7, Gali no. 12, Pahadi Dhiraj, Sheetal Bazaar – is lying on a bed in the general ward of Safdarjung Hospital. Lit from above by naked bulbs, the ward is cram-full from one end to the other with women. Next to the patients’ beds, women attending to them sleep on floor mats. Besides them are jholas full of empty vessels; half-empty water bottles; intermittent sighs, sobs and groans.
Since gaining consciousness yesterday afternoon – when the nurse came to tell her that it was a girl – Sarala has been staring at the ceiling fan. Not knowing that this baby is the third girl born to Sarala, the nurse simply announces the fact and goes away. No one has come to see Sarala. Not mother-in-law, father-in-law. Not even husband, nor brother-in-law or sister in-law. Sarala too, does not want any of them to come. The last ten years have been like ten painful boils on her body – marked by the births, one after the other, of two girls; and now, a third one.
That night, the nurse fetches the baby to her for nursing.
The baby feels like hot lava in Sarala’s lap.
Sarala suckles the baby, and in those few minutes, sees her daughter living a life like the one she herself is leading.
At once she gets up, and takes the baby to the loo. There, she flings the baby in the pot, and pulls the chain. She does not even stop to see whether the baby has gone into the gutter or not. She does hear a tiny hiccup. Such an inconsequential sound. Had the baby been alive, it would have brought the sky down with its bawls.
Sarala then comes and lies down again on the bed.
When the nurse comes to take the baby, Sarala confesses her deed.
There is pandemonium.
Sarala’s testimony before the Court is to the point. She admits that she threw the baby in the pot. She accepts that she had to do this to ensure a bright future for the girl as it was her parental duty to improve her child’s future prospects.
The court headed by a woman releases Sarala, because it is proved that she was not in her senses when she took this step. Sarala comes back home.
At night, the baby emerges from the gutter to see her. The baby wears clean clothes and her hair is tied up with ribbons. She looks well. Sarala feels happy looking at her. The baby too, sees the deep wounds lacerating not just her mother’s body, but her psyche – scars of humiliation, violence, negligence, brutality.
Says the baby to the mother, ma, come with me to the gutter, it’s restful there.
But sadly, though the baby can escape into the gutter, the mother can’t. She can only watch the baby going. As she goes, the baby says, ‘Don’t worry ma, you will come…one day…you too will come.’
Such is God’s will, that a good proposal from within the community arrives for Sarala’s husband, Jagdeeshwar. The dowry too is fat. Sarala is the only hitch.
The kitchen stove overhears the heart’s desire of the husband.
Even though it has no kerosene, the stove bursts. It bursts so badly, that Sarala suffers 100% burns.
Sarala’s ashes are in the house.
Sarala’s father comes to bow before her ashes. Her two brothers also come and touch the feet of those ashes. Whatever happened was terrible, but now what can be done about it? Sarala’s fathers and brothers are full of sorrow. They give statement before the police that they harbour no doubts; that the incident was an accident. Sarala wasn’t murdered. She had been of unsound mind, her carelessness led to the stove’s bursting.
The only witnesses are the eyes of law. But the eyes of the law are blind. They cannot see a thing. The blind law seats itself in its cloister.
—What’s the point in cremating her? Already she’s just ashes.
—Yes
—Where can she be taken… who will take her?
—Yes.
—So let’s do one thing.
—Yes.
—Let’s disperse her in the gutter…where she had flung her daughter. She loves the place anyway.
—Yes
Who will fight a court case? Who will give witness? Who will spend money? The elder son runs a shop – goes at eight in the morning, comes back at eight. The younger one is a property dealer – leaves at seven, comes back at eleven in the night. I myself have high blood pressure and cataracts. My pension is meagre. One daughter still remains to be married. If the word goes out that the father likes to file cases, she won’t get a groom even.
At night after everyone goes to sleep, Sarala’s father weeps and weeps. His tears don’t stop. Then all at once, he goes quiet. Chants the Gayatri Mantra. This makes him feel at peace. The peace is lasting. That very night, in the drain – meaning the huge sewer pipe – Sarala finds her daughter. The girl has grown up so fast! She is thrilled to meet her mother. For the first time in life, the mother too, feels happy to meet her daughter.
There are only daughters in the drain. It’s a whole world – filled with just girls. Girls, flying like sweet-scented butterflies, flitting from branch to branch, singing like birds. Girls, making their own way, like streams. Making their own music, like musical instruments. Girls everywhere. In bazaars, in homes, cinema-halls, hotels and factories. Everywhere – only girls…. In the drain their world is alive and flourishing.
As time passes, the number of girls in the drain keeps rising. The girls who disappear from the world keep coming to the drain. Finally, one day the world is emptied of all the girls. Meaning, all of them find themselves in the drain. Left back, the men find they are in trouble then.
One day a man fortuitously opens the gutter and sees peerless beauties within. He feels elated, but also scared. He shuts the gutter and runs. But as they say, a man can never keep a secret. He ends up telling other men – incomparable beauties live in the gutter – prettier than celestial nymphs. But we know that the truly courageous are very few in number. Here too the same thing happens – even though all of them desire beautiful girls – no one can summon up the actual courage. Finally one day, the most courageous among them decides to go down into the gutter. All the other men hand over their manhoods to him, as they don’t dare descend into the gutter. The man goes in and is agog. He gapes and keeps gaping. He becomes mute. The beauty he encounters is beyond his imagination.
The man asks Sarala’s daughter to get betrothed to him. All the girls surround the man and inquire, exactly why he has come.
The man says, to find a girl.
The girls say, your punishment is, once you’ve come, you cannot leave.
But I want to marry her, the man says.
The girls start laughing.
She will be the queen of my heart.
The girls go on laughing.
I am a lover.
The girls cannot stop laughing.
The man loses nerve and asks the girls to let him go.
The girls ask, but haven’t you been deputed by the men who have given you all their manhoods?
Yes.
So leave those manhoods here, then go.
Whh…att?
Yes, leave the manhoods here.
The man refuses to agree.
But when he comes out of the drain, he has no manhood.
O! men living in the world these days, whatever else you may have, the truth is you don’t have your manhood.
Just the way the girls in the drain are girls; but they are not in this world.
Translated from the Hindi original by Varsha Tiwary, with permission from the author.
Asghar Wajahat is a Hindi scholar and writer.
Varsha Tiwary is a writer and translator based in Delhi.
