Good for Nothing-12

“Hey pawwa! What are you doing there with that Firangi (the Foreigner) ?”
            I shouted at him, in our mother tongue Oriya obviously. We were on our way to Calcutta to buy Medical Books at a concessional price from College Street. It was an overnight train journey and we both were thoroughly enjoying each others company till this tall, muscular, white, blonde foreigner lodged himself adjacent to our berth and suddenly Pawwa lost interest in me and took no time in getting befriended with him. 2 hrs passed by, I tried to sleep but their loud conversation and even louder laugh was too disturbing for me. I don’t know how the other commuters could bear with them at that time.

            “Nothing Yaar!...do you think I am a gay”, he excused himself from the foreigner disapprovingly and dragged his body beside me and whispered, “This German is no match to me…”

            “I don’t know, but you jumped at him as if he is an alien. What were you talking and laughing about since long?”

            “I was teaching him Hindi. He is quite a movie buff and has seen more than 30 Hindi movies since his arrival in India 10 days ago”

            “Well!...that’s surprising. And what did you taught him?”

            “He has already picked a lot of things. What made me laugh was his typical way of learning the Hindi language. For him ‘close the door’ in Hindi is ‘there was a ban crow’. And open the door in Hindi is ‘there was a cool day’”

            “How come?”

            “you say it your self- ‘There was a ban crow’….a bit faster, again and again…’there was a ban crow’….DARWAJA BAND KARO- CLOSE THE DOOR…yes… yes…similarly, ‘there was a cool day’, ‘there was a cool day’…’DARWAJA KHOL DEY – OPEN THE DOOR…ha…ha…ha…isn’t this funny? That’s why I was laughing”

I tried to recite the phrases. Indeed it was funny yet plausible. People find their own way to suit their causes.

We passed the next whole day wandering in the busy College Street looking for the books we wanted. Every book on our list was available in every shop yet there was remarkable price difference and bargaining was a key point!!! Bargaining with a book shopkeeper was a new experience for me. ....sometimes if you are lucky enough you can stumble upon a book of current edition at less than half price!!!

“The local colleges are full of drug addicts…they come with their parents to buy books and soon after the innocent parents leave, the books find their way back to the selves at 1/4^th of the price. We add our profit and resale it”, the shopkeeper explained proudly.

There were hundreds of book shops in the whole area, both sides of a street called college street. Some specializing in particular field like engineering, Medical, Economics etc and others maintaining variety. The size of most of the shops were not more than an average Paan shop- a cubicle of 6X6 foot. Two to three attendants were present to cater to customer and a shop representative standing on the street itself to virtually drag you to his counter the moment you utter the kind of book you want. How they able to keep all the books you wanted in such a small shop, I wondered. But you pop the name and they will get the book, without fail. Maybe all of them had their godowns somewhere nearby to feed the counters.

We both received ‘grand’ treatment from the shopkeeper where we were eventually dragged to, in shape of multiple earthen miniature cups filled with tea accompanied with dry Rusk, for we were looking for not a single book but the whole lot - in two sets.

I devised a nice plan to get our books at the best price. What I did was that I picked a book from my list say worth 1375/- and bargained it to the nearest round figure, say Rs1300/-. Suppose there were 10 books in my list and collectively, after bargaining separately, they made a sum of Rs 10,700/-. Then I added a couple of other books out of my list so as to raise the sum total to, say11600/- and then again brought it down to the nearest round figure 11000/-. Similarly, the trick was followed with pawwa’s list too. At the end, while doing the final payment, I again added the values from the bills of both of us and brought it down to the nearest round figure. By rounding off the values multiple times, I could easily bargain the value equivalent to the expenses of our total Calcutta trip.!!!

 It took us a total of six hours to complete the exercise and it was about 7 pm when our heavy cartons were loaded into the trunk of a cab. Pleasantries were exchanged after bill was settled and at my instance we both grabbed the latest pocket edition of Davidson’s Practice Clinical Medicines, worth 450/- each at that time, without paying-

“Ki Dada!...pochees  hazaar taakar book nilaam, kichhu gift to chai na?... ami aar student pathabo… (we took books worth 25000/- and hence we deserve a gift, we will recommend more students to your shop)”. Our offer was too lucrative to decline. The shopkeeper grinned sheepishly and slipped few visiting cards into my palm.

“Where did you learned all this fine art of bargaining Pepsi?...Never knew you know Bengali and so talented in conversation and dealing”, Pawwa was seemingly too impressed with my skills. We could collectively save more than half of the actual price of the books and after meeting all expenses our total savings were a whooping Rs 10000/-. And in student life that is hell of money!

“So…what did you thought earlier, I am Good for Nothing?”

“O never Pepsi….you are jack of all trades”

“And master of none…” I frowned.

“No …no… I never meant to say that...you are master of all’

“Then say it properly…in proper gender…Jill of All Trades and Mistress of all”

“Yes …yes…that’s better, if it suits you” Pawwa agreed.

“You mean to say I am ‘mistress’ of all and sundry?”, I pulled his leg again. This was rarest of occasion when Pawwa was a subject to leg-pulling.

“Na baba…when did I said that?…I never meant that way…”

“So finally- Namrata harichandan- Jill of All Trades, Mistress of none”, I shouted loudly while pumping my both hands into air. “Cheer up three times-Hip Hip Hurray”

After those hours of grueling bargaining spree, our hour long evening taxi ride was quite soothing to the nerve. We stopped twice midway to feast on whatever available on the roadside eateries. Roads were too crowded with the evening traffic and the surrounding architecture was a kind of mixture of ancient, British and modern culture.

While passing thru a similar crowded road suddenly something caught my eyes. I was not sure of what it was, but it was definitely something unusual to me. After few seconds, the similar thing passed again in front of my eyes and this time I got a clearer view of it. There were gathering of 15 to 20 young girls, standing along side the road, forming different groups, all attired in bright, colorful dresses, and their faces with a heavy coat of make up. The group started growing in numbers along the road as we advanced and so did the traffic which made our progress slow. The girls by no mean appeared college students to me for they were carrying nothing in their hands. Also the surrounding area lacked the feel of academic atmosphere which was there in College Street where we had spent half of the day. And also this particular area was peculiarly predominantly crowded with girls. Some thing very unusual, I thought and looked at Pawwa. He smiled. He knew what was going into my mind exactly.

“Probably this area is Shona Gachchi”, he mumbled with a hush-hush tone and confirmed with the driver. “Yes, this is Shona Gachchi, the red light area of Calcutta and there is one more nearby called “Bou Bazaar”. What I have read in magazines, together they are probably the largest Red Light area of India”.

And I could feel the pounding of my heart. So we were passing thru a Red Light area - first time in my life. I looked out again. The scene was roughly similar to what I had seen so many times in movies. They were actors but these were real life characters. Within ten minutes, which we took to cross that stretch, I must have seen 1000 girls, rather ‘prostitutes’- the word itself appeared to distressing. A kind of sinking feel surrounded me. The tight knot in my stomach surfaced again. Eye to eye with real life prostitutes. They appeared a differed kind of species to me at that time, not normal human beings. How can people make love to someone without having that feeling of love within and how come sex be ‘traded’ and ‘treated’ like a commodity??? The questions were too intriguing. Seriousness filled the air inside the cab making it too thick for me to breathe and suddenly I felt suffocated. Few droplets of perspiration appeared on my forehead and I had to roll down the glass to let the cool air gush inside. The rest part of our journey was too silent. Pawwa tried a couple of times to distract me with his jokes but I remained unaffected and he chose to sit tight after all his efforts were futile.

“Pawan, I want to see Shona Gachchi – inside out- with you”. I sounded more like tossing decision at him than asking for his view. The cab had already left after dropping us inside the campus of NIH, Salt Lake, where we were to spend our last night in respective hostels arranged by his friend who was pursuing a course of Homeopathy at that time. The guard pocketed the tip offered and quickly and thankfully carried all the heavy cartons inside.

“But that is not at all necessary”, Pawwa sounded perplexed in his voice. “It is the last place you can expect me to accompany you”

“But you can’t let me go to a place like that all by myself, would you”. I tried to make my words rather heavy.

“Look this is too much. Even I haven’t stepped into a place like that in my life. And you expect that we can roam there hand in hand like tourists? You have gone mad and this time for sure”. He was visibly angry. “This is not the kind of adventure tours which you frequently go with strangers whom you meet for the first time at the base camp, be friendly with them and forget them after each trip. That place will be filled with goons, antisocial elements, rowdies, thieves and all of them with single common intention- sex, sex and sex. That is not a place for sight seeing”. He was obviously trying to make the picture dreadful.

“But you can’t let me go to a place like that all by myself, would you”. I simply repeated what I had already put.

“Please spare me…just for this time”. He was literally on his knees with folded hands.

“Pawwa…but we’ll go there in broad daylight. I promise we will get out of the place before dark. The road was a public thoroughfare and do you expect people with wrong intentions can simply jump on me publicly? I don’t think so.” I pleaded.

“And what do you expect to see there or learn from there???”

“I want to see the real picture of the most primitive trades of all times – the FLESH TRADE, the human flesh trade. I want to see how people behave where they are least expected to be at their best of behavior. I want to see cruelty at its fullest. I want to breathe that air which claims to absorb the filthiest of thoughts and acts a person can think of and thereby protecting the society from the ill effects of it. I want to know why the soil of that area is considered sacred despite such inhibitions. I want to understand why the idol of Maa Durga is incomplete without a pinch of mud added to the clay with which it is crafted out. I want to learn that face of womanhood which is hated and revered at the same time. Won’t you help me learn this dark area of human aspect which women seldom get to know until and unless she is a prostitute herself?” I rested my case breathlessly.

“Well, I am not sure what should I do. Let me go back and catch some sleep and I’ll let you know my decision tomorrow morning. And…” suddenly he turned to me. “Please don’t discuss about these things with anybody. Please…”

 I saw him slowly proceeding towards Men’s Hostel. I knew I had won. I always win. “This trip to Shona Gachchi will be memory of a lifetime” I thought. “And that fellow Pawwa – the Good for Nothing guy- is simply a coward”.

I had a disturbed sleep that night for the excitement I had gathered inside. At mid night I woke up and called Pawwa, “Hey Man, decided anything?...please don’t let me down for this last time. I promise I’ll follow whatever you say for rest of my life…but don’t break my heart….please….my sweet friend….mmmmmuuuuaaaaahhh”

“Okey Beta, now go back to sleep. I wish the poor fellow, whoever is he, may not fall in your trap. Or else he will suffer throughout his life like me….”- the chuckling  voice on the other side made me jump on my bed. It was my Papa. In the dark room and because of excitement and drowsiness I had dialed “PAPA” instead of “PAWWA” from the contacts list of my cell - a Good for Nothing girl indeed.

I cut the phone abruptly and in embarrassment hid my face with pillow. Slowly I drifted into deep sleep and woke up in the morning with the thrill of a very different kind of adventure tour to Shona Gachchi in mind….