phallus god
fiction by hemlata verma
“God damn me!” and “God damn him!” she thought as she sat besides her husband who lay on that wretched old hospital bed. For four years now she had watched him keep his life, and hers too, a hostage to his endurance. He simply wouldn't die. And after this morning doctor's visit she had repeated echoes of a thought in her mind—he wouldn't die without her. “Take me before you take him,” she had so loved him. It seems Lord Shiva Almighty just heard that one. Yes He is there and He listens to us once in a while, but how He grants is His business. So there it was before her, all neat and clear—like the freshly washed and dried white linen that she had laid on her bed, just an hour before rushing him to the hospital thirteen days back—she shouldn't have made an unqualified plea.
It would be better if she had said “Lord! Let him have a long life.”
The Merciful would grant that and the sick body continues to live for another ten years. She would nurse him twenty hours a day hoping he died.
What about… “Lord!! Make him better and make us happyσ” She pondered.
That will be two prayers. What if he granted only one at a time? “Lord! Make him better so that we are happy.”
So he gets better but I may get ill. We may be happy because we don't know about it. And one day suddenly I die. Or his getting better but may cost us all our wealth. Could we be happy then?
“Lord! Let us both and our son be healthy and happy for a long time together.”
Too many demands again.
“Qualifications are so tedious. But why should I? He knows what I want, even if I can't phrase it. That's why He is He. Please lord, do what is best for me, for all of us.”
Lying there, with his mouth agape, head turned a little towards Channi, and eyes fixed on the still ceiling fan, Chota Lala looked creepy. The brown of his skin had deepened a shade every day for the last three years, and now it was black. Blood oozed from the cracks that appeared on his skin each daybreak—fingertips, toes, lips. His body looked bloated. Because he hadn't urinated for three days his urine was getting into his blood, the nurse had explained to Channi. For the past two days he hadn't been able to get up from his bed. He had kept her up the last night wanting her to rub with her fingers on the left side of his neck, the right side too, the fore head, and his scalp and his back, when she wasn't helping him turn to his left, or sit up and lie down again, and then again walk him to the toilet, untie his pyjamas and pull down his shorts. He passed his bowels eleven times last night, twice without even stirring in the bed.
“For four years now she had watched him keep his life, and hers too, a hostage to his endurance. ”
Now he lay there, his eyes flitting across the ceiling, from left to the right and then to the left, again and again and again. This, Channi realized, is her demigod. Since her puberty till the last moments of her maidenhood, her mother's words of wisdom to her hadn't changed in essence and in form. This had been a part of her education at college, and before that, school. A maternal or a paternal aunt or else a maternal or a paternal grandma had always made themselves available for her tuitions—an indoctrination to be faithful to, to love, be devoted to her future husband. This god, whom she now nursed like a child! She couldn't help notice a smile escape her as her thoughts wavered to the sultry afternoon five summers back. Chota Lala had just got an air conditioner for their bedroom. The window of their bedroom overlooked the terrace of the adjacent house where an old brahmin widow lived with her dog. In fact on all four sides Chota Lala's house was surrounded&3151their former maid Bholi's terrace on the front, Bittu the kite-maker's workshop that doubled-up as his bedroom to the left, the old widow to the right and a deserted old haveli to the back overlooking their courtyard.
Until that day, since Channi had been married to Chota Lala nineteen years ago, this widow, whom everybody fondly called Bhabho, came every morning for the previous night's leftovers and seven fresh chapattis. Rather than a religious act of kindness, for Channi making seven chapattis for Bhabho happened in a mechanical routine every morning. But this afternoon, thought Channi, the summer heat had gotten into the old widow's head. Bhabho had insisted that the machine would suck the coolness from her side and blow it into Chota Lala's bedroom. The machine that was some twenty feet above her terrace even encroached upon her airspace she had shouted. She had threatened to move the court for damages, and had even accused Chotta Lala of exploiting a lonely poor old widow. Then she had hurled a stone at Chota Lala's window that narrowly missed the mechanic who was fixing the AC.
After cursing Chota Lala and Channi for what seemed to be an eternity she had vanished into the quiet of her dark, dilapidated house. She didn't come for her morning chapattis next morning. On his way to his shop, Chota Lala knocked at her door and gave her a packet wrapped in old muslin that Channi had thrust in his hands. Not a word was exchanged. Next morning, Bhabho banged at Chota Lala's door as usual and as she clambered up the stairs, cursed the sarkar for not minding to lower the rising temperatures. Channi had kept the chapattis ready. Ever so nonchalantly Bhobho packed her stuff all this while tattering about the barber's wife and the baniya's daughter-in-law and anybody else who she had decided to slander that morning. Channi quietly but politely went through the drill. Bhabho and Channi it seems had reached a tacit understanding to forget the episode for good. And Channi did, until this afternoon.
Looking into the balance sheet of the past years, she was almost willfully letting herself into that melancholic quicksand. Ever so often, whenever her mind was left to herself, she took to weaving herself into a web of self-pity and satisfying despair. Self-decadence had started to give her some sort of sardonic pleasure. Her sufferance became more complete, and she, her own hero. For close to two hours she had indulged herself when Rakesh, the masseuse, walked in. His buttocks squeezed in, thighs pressed to his crotch and a slightest possible bend in his knees, his gait defied the fighter he was.
“Lala ji, you won't get better till you have my kidney!” He shot as soon as he stepped in with a punctuated half laugh. He always enjoyed his own wit. Channi noticed herself smiling and Chota Lala struggled not to. Here was a person who would now offer a short massage and a little backrub. Chota Lala couldn't let his smile lessen any sympathy. Rather he would now accrue more with his moans, rising and falling with the attention of the visitor. “Until a child howls even its own mother doesn't feed,” he would say when he was better. Rakesh was still enjoying his own clever little remark as he came and seated himself on Chota Lala's bed. Chota Lala moved his feet a little to his left to make more space, but Rakesh held his position—clinging to the edge of the bed with his right hipbone. And, almost instantly started working his hand, up and down, up and down on Chota Lala's leg. As the sickly man lay there getting a rub, Channi slipped back to the quicksand of time.
That entire summer, Channi cooled their bedroom every afternoon for half an hour, before Chota Lala came home for lunch. He would lie down on their bed while she served him his lunch. Not moving an inch from the bed Chota Lala would later cajole Channi to massage his head. With her fingertips Channi would gently start working her fingers in small spirals, almost at times playing with his tiny curly locks, all this while knowing that she would be left with another bed sheet to wash when Chota Lala left at three. But never even for a moment did she let down her business like pretensions around her chores, not before, not after. Even as Chota Lala lay there spent, she would get up, change into a fresh pair of salwar-kameez and set about making lassi for Chota Lala. Minutes later he would get up, straighten his shirt and trousers, down the glass of lassi and as he scampered down, call out loud from stairs—“I'll be late in the evening!” After he left, Channi would catch herself in the mirror as she moved around the house. Once or twice she would halt to look closely at the black mole on the hairline on her left temple almost hidden by her black hair. How would it look, she often thought, when the hair got white? But she could always dye her hair. Then almost avoiding herself in the mirror she would get back to her kitchen fighting back any thought of the pleasure she had received. Would the dye suit her? Would Chota Lala agree to it? Her thoughts would dally again.
“What even if he did?” She almost spoke out loud unmindful of Chota Lala lying there in the hospital bed. She had lost interest in her mirror. Lately, Chota Lala had struggled to last and she hadn't needed to wash the bed sheets as often. In sickness, more than before, their bed, for Chota Lala, was a sanctuary where none could challenge the assertion of his manhood. Even before Channi realized, Chota Lala would spit and dismount. “Phlegm!” Channi had once joked. “And that's your destiny!” Chota Lala had felt miserable, as he said that, for himself and for her as well.
“And for that little prasad from my phallus god, am bound to him in his sickness, till death does us apart,” pondered Channi, “and because am faithful and devoted, he's to be the only one. One sick phallus-demigod!” “Who got me into this?” she almost shouted as she just became aware of those glassy eyes still scraping the ceiling. May be, he too was thinking about the traditional conspiracy that tied Channi to his withering body.
return to archive >
