Paaglu

I

‘What happened? You !! Again !!’, shouted the young lady.

The man smiled, and then he giggled, closed his eyes with extreme joy. His day was made, so he couldn’t say anything else.

‘Paagal, Paaglu! Pray that I don’t complain to my father’, said the girl angrily as she went away swearing at the fool.

For anyone else she would have complained to her father- the banker of the village or the Nagar Seth. But they all knew that Paaglu was harmless. He was just dumb and stupid for his age.

Once she was gone, Paaglu continued with his work, lifting the sacks of grains in the shop.

‘What did the girl say Paaglu?’ another of the workers asked him. They loved playing that game with Paaglu.

‘Hmmm….’ thought Paaglu, trying to remember what she said but he didn’t remember anything.

‘After some days’, he blushed as he replied and believed they would believe.

He knew it was a safe answer. On some occasions, he had been badly beaten for answering something else. But this one was safe.

‘Yes, in the meanwhile you must get your Haweli ready for her. You know she is the daughter of the Nagar Seth’

‘Yes, Yes, I will lift more sacks than anyone’, replied Paaglu with firm conviction. He was almost certain that he was on right course to make his late mother’s words come true.

‘If you can finish the complete meal, I will go to Seth ji  to inform him that now my son is a very good boy. He will marry his daughter to you’, she used to say.

Paaglu always complied. He had realized that it made his mother feel happy. He must have been 4 or 5 years old then.

He had those faint memories of his mother. And then they took her away one day tied on a cot. Some elders had taken him to the Haweli of the Seth where his mother worked, ‘Sarkaar, iski maa mar gayi aaj. Beemaar thi…… Kuchh daan karenge to antim samskaar ho jayega’

The Sethani was a kind lady. She knew one of her maids was very ill. She felt pity and mercy for the small chubby boy.

She gave a few ginnis for the last rites of the woman while the Seth grumbled, ‘Woman! When will you learn the value of one of those pieces? Do you want to perform the last rites of his mother or his whole family?

But what he was speaking was true. Paaglu’s mother was his whole family.

The little daughter of the Seth saw a wailing boy younger than her being dragged out by the village elders, towards the Shamshaan ghat. She started crying herself out of fear.

Paaglu checked who else was crying. She was the daughter of the Nagar Seth, his mother mentioned so many times a day. She had large dark eyes, the boy remembered amidst that traumatic moment.

When the villagers forcefully made a screaming Paaglu lit up his mother’s pyre, probably the boy lost the rest of his mental balance. He had those few memories for his only assets in life, the frail face of his mother which was full of pity and fear for her small boy. Her most often spoken words, ‘beta khana khaale …………. ’. Those large dark eyes of that small girl, who was the only one who had cried with him that awful day.

So Paaglu grew up with his 5 year olds’ brain.

 He would do odd errands at the shops, eat in front of the village temple on the weekly worship days- the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

Thank God, everyday had a God and some women or other worshipped them or else Paaglu would have starved to death. He helped people at the ghat and slept there during the night. It got scary after the little torches went off after their oil got burnt or the wind blew them off. He loved to help people at the Shamshan Ghat as he had a faint hope that his mother would be back there from wherever she had gone.

For all the work he did, someone would give him their leftovers to eat.

All grown up at 17, he was the cheapest labour in the village. He didn’t know how much his work valued, so he was always in demand.

He ate happily whatever they gave him as he knew that his mother was looking at him from the heavens.

Whatever he earned, someone advised that he could keep and register in one of the Bahis of the Seth for the odd day. He didn’t realize it was also one of their pranks, to get the Seth hear the grand plans of the idiot- to marry the Seth’s daughter.

The Seth seemed pleased to begin with when he learnt that Paaglu wanted to save with his bank. Paaglu was sent to one of the Munims.

That is when the problem began when the Munim casually asked, ‘what would you do with the money Paaglu’

‘I will marry the Nagar Seth’s daughter’, the reply came promptly.

That was the day Paaglu was beaten real badly. He had bled profusely and laid unconscious on the ghat for long hours. He never uttered those words again before the Seth, his family or his workers. He had tried his luck on a few more occasions before the girl; once she had smiled but the next time her guards had again chased him away.

But there were other villagers who asked him ‘Paaglu, the daughter of the Seth is all grown up. When are you going to ask for her hand?’

Scared but honest, he replied, ‘Soon, very soon. Just some more days’

‘See, your mother left you a Haweli on the top of that coconut tree. Just check if everything is fine there before your wife comes’

Paaglu had rushed to the top of the coconut tree, checked every leaf there, but there was no haweli there.

He didn’t mind those bruises but he was so convinced that he had checked every coconut tree in the village. When he realized that the people laughed at him like mad, he searched the other trees of the village at night but something went amiss.

Once every year, a circus came to their village with a lot of animals.

His friends had taken him to the circus. They showed him an animal that looked like a horse but had black and white stripes.

‘Paaglu, when a black man and a white woman or a white man and a black woman are married, their children are born like this- black and white. You will have children like that… Do you still want to marry the Seth’s daughter?’

‘Aur kya.. Aur Kya.. My mother said that kids are the face of God.. They may look like anything’, he knew that Ganesh Ji also looked like some large animal …

Come the month of Shravan, the girls in the village worshipped lord Shiva to seek husband of their choice. They prayed the God, the banyon tree, sang bhajans on the banks of the flooded river.

Paaglu was sure that he had saved enough coins with the Seth to impress him.

That was a Monday of the month of Shravan. The daughter of the Nagar Seth was certain to be there that morning. He mustered all the courage to get close to her; he pushed someone aside to get closer to her and said those words, “Meri Maa kehti thi….”

The girl was fed up of his stupidity. She was all over 17 now and had been praying for 3-4 years during the Shravan.

The priest had told her parents that Paaglu was the bad omen that defeated the good results of her prayers and that delayed her marriage while all the girls in her age were long married and gone.

She had a plan that day.

‘Paaglu, at night wait for me 10 stairs under the river water on the ghat. I will also come under the water and we will run away so that no one can catch us’, she murmured in his ears.

She just hoped that would do and the menace would be gone.

The next day, the river seemed to be too calm. They discovered Paaglu’s body floating on the bank of the neighbouring village.

He seemed smiling and hopeful even in his death.

‘We shouldn’t have let Paaglu sleep on the bank of the flooded river. He may have slipped’, villagers talked.

They didn’t need to bother for the wood for his pyre. He had money with the Seth by then. He may have repaid the coins that the Sethani had given for his mother’s funeral. The surplus belonged to the Seth. He was happy for so many reasons.

 II

Barely 2-3 days after Paaglu died, another sad event happened in the village. The eldest daughter of the village carpenter died after falling in one of the village wells.

She had once fallen from the roof of her hut, while helping her father replace the broken red tiles. She had badly split both her lips in front, broken her front teeth, and the nose too. She looked atrociously ugly after that and had ‘earned’ that name ever since- Bhaddi. She even stammered and no one liked her, including her poor parents who always worried who would marry her and why?

She hardly mattered to anyone, even for a small village like theirs where everyone knew everyone else. All sighed with relief that she did not live after 19 to embarrass them more.

Their village was a conservative village. Winds from the west and the city had not caught on them. They still married their children around 14-15 years. ‘Bhaddi’ and Paaglu, the two exceptions were snatched by the all merciful God. Nagar Seth was a God of his own and could handle his family affairs.

But unlike Paaglu, Bhaddi had brain and she could think. She had feelings too, though no one to share those with.

She exactly knew what Paaglu went through every time the daughter of Seth snubbed him and the whole village laughed. She knew that he went through something worse than death. He couldn’t sleep for weeks, cried and tossed night after night on the sands of the ghat.

She herself had just managed to ask Paaglu once.

‘Why can’t you think of marrying some other girl? Why just ‘her’?’

‘How can I? My mother will be so angry. And there is no girl like ‘her’. She had once smiled to me’, he proudly told.

She felt that had been rejected by the man whom she loved so madly.

That night she could not blink her eyelids once. Her heart was overburdened with grief. Breadth was not reaching her lungs and she was all numb and shocked. She felt that huge dry mountains were crashing upon her, and she laid buried under them- willing to die but unable to.

She had become so disappointed with that that she had seriously planned killing herself. How could he not love her when she loved him so much? Why could he not look into her heart and beyond the wretched smile of that woman?

‘She’ knew love sees no reason for love. It is a divine grace endowed upon some. So she was not angry with him as it was her fault and her parents fault that they didn’t tell him everything.

Ever after, Paaglu’s rejection by the Seth’s daughter would be her rejection. She empathized with him. She connected with him. She remembered what she had gone through once when same had happened. She could feel what Paaglu went through. There was some invisible bond between them. When he wept in the darkness, she too passed every such night with a sinking heart, apprehending the worst to happen.

True to her love from the depth of her heart, she did her bit as much she could.

Paaglu didn’t know that she was the one who lit that last Deepak on the dehri of the village temple. The one that was meant to give him hope amidst all hopelessness, the one that guarded him from all dark evils on those dark nights.

Bhaddi had observed him since years, growing up. He too was her last hope. She lived in hope that one day Paaglu will notice her and realize that ‘they’ were made for each other.

Paaglu was her hero because he had indomitable courage. While she could not muster courage once to tell him her heart, Paaglu never shied. Though later, she realized, he actually had fallen in love with his infatuation.

That is what love is- falling for the wrong person.

She often thanked God that Paaglu was blessed with less brain. A person with full senses would either become violent or would lose all hope, unlike Paaglu who was infinitely patient with the Seth’s daughter. 

‘Does he have no feelings or less feelings or does he hide his pain behind his dumbness. Thanks God that men had fewer emotions as compared to women or he would have died of grief. Or was it otherwise or why would the Seth’s daughter be so evil to Paaglu?

In her turn Bhaddi had lived in his love, every moment of her life once she realized how mean the world was to her and to him.

She felt that her breadth spelt his name, they came out calling him.

The dress she wore, the way she braided her hair, the food she cooked was all discussed with Paaglu. She could not even tell it to him or to anyone how she had lived a life with Paaglu, in stark isolation.

She knew Paaglu was living his dream too. Love is worst when it is true but one sided. You can only explain its correctness and rightfulness to yourself. Or you can only blame yourself.

She got mortified, if she ever saw her idiot stalk that Seth’s daughter. Her heartbeats would stop at the thought, what if she said ‘yes’.

Fears and apprehensions engulfed her. She would sweat in winters and could only breathe properly when her father returned with the ‘joyful talk of the village’ of the ‘fun’ created by the fool.

Did they ever feel what she or Paaglu went through in their worlds?

But for some reason she feared losing Paaglu. First, she knew she would never be able to tell him about her feelings. Second, he would never understand. Third, her family members already treated her as an object in the house; they would not care to find a ‘solution’. Fourth, the Seth’s daughter or any other girl would take Paaglu, one day or other. The inevitable could befall sooner than later.

Paaglu was the strongest and fairest young man in the village. The daughter of the Seth was dark. Stupid idiot, he loved her for her dark eyes. The same ones, which would not look upon him.

Even the Seth wouldn’t deny that Paaglu earned more than any wise man of the village, only if they didn’t cheat him.

And there was Bhaddi, the most educated girl in the village. She was 4^th class passed and wouldn’t let anyone cheat Paaglu, only if he allowed her by his side.

But wishful thinking cannot replace the reality. She felt the stress that was building in. There is a limit of the emotional stress one could take. Behind the calmness of the surface of the sea, there could be a storm hidden. She didn’t know who would cave in first- she or Paaglu. She wanted him to fight as long as he could. His fall would be her fall.

Her haunting was to come to end with Paaglu’s. For one last time, her father had brought the spicy news of the village. For a change, Paaglu had learnt to keep secrets. He didn’t tell what transpired between the Seth’s girl and him. But the part of the secret was out that he was planning something really stupid. He had bought a pink bridal saree, with golden border and stars stitched on to it.

Bhaddi had cried that whole night. She knew that her worst fears were to come true. Her Paaglu was to leave her for someone else. Leave her forever. She always knew that Paaglu was the best. Why didn’t she die before he left her for someone else? She had no need to go and lit up that deepak on the temple at the ghat. She knew that the darkness of night would help her Paaglu fly away with his lady love. She wanted the very best for him in his life.

The morning brought no surprise; Paaglu was missing from his abode at the ghat, though the Seth’s daughter was still there in the village and ‘very happy’. Then, was it some other girl?

But if the night was devastating, the afternoon was heart wrenching when the body of Paaglu was brought back from the river bank of the neighbouring village.

They said that he was still gripping that pink bridal saree close to his heart, as if it were the woman herself who never loved him.

Bhaddi’s whole world crashed with that news. With Paaglu, all his dreams must have died. The haweli that was built somewhere on the tree was washed away in rain. The children with black and white stripes may have drowned too. Whatever was to be bought from Paaglu’s savings was in the depth of the river now…..

Bhaddi knew every desire of Paaglu, better than he knew himself. She wished that she had just gone once to that damned ghat to light up that Deepak. May be she would have noted the Seth’s men throwing Paaglu into the river. Or maybe he slipped and needed a hand to pull him out of the swollen river. Did he call her name while he struggled in the water?

How did it matter what she did all her life, when she was not there when he needed her the most. It must have been the most painful death. Yet they said that he was smiling.

In what hope was he smiling? Did he believe that bad fate and events will change by his death?

Bhaddi felt it was all her own fault for the fate of Paaglu. His fate was tied to her fate for 7 lives, if not more.

That was her opportunity. She could still catch hold of him before any other girl. She just needed to drown herself too. He would surely see her going through every bit of pain that he had gone through. May be he will realize that his pains were never his alone. Someone had lived a part of his life as her own.

Paaglu could not prove the truth in his love to anyone; atleast she could prove it to him.

That night she jumped into the deepest well of the village.

III

Wherever Paaglu may have been after his death, maybe he had noticed the girl dying. May be he felt honoured to see being loved so much by someone. One thing he never knew in his life. One thing, that prettiest girl in the village, the daughter of the carpenter, never told him.

May be they met in the afterlives. Atleast their fates had met.

But the daughter of the Nagar Seth would never know.

She had been told that for a successful marriage, a girl has to break a heart full of love. She had to sacrifice the man who loved her the most. There was no doubt that Paaglu loved everything about her so madly. So he was sacrificed. She really wanted Paaglu to die. 

She feared that the secret could be out one day that every time her guards scared Paaglu away, she lured him back with her smile. She loved his desperation, all that attention and the talks around the village. Poor idiot believed that she actually loved him though she just prompted him for fun.

But she knew that Paaglu was stubborn alive. She feared if his soul was equally strong. So she wanted to ensure that after his body, his soul should also die. She bought a small doll from the Shravan fair and a sharp knife. At home she stabbed the doll with the knife till the time every piece of cotton wool was spread around.

Having asked Paaglu to wait for her- 10 steps under water on the village ghat, the girl with the beautiful dark eyes awaited for the prince of her dreams to come and take her.