Dishoom Dishoom

by Bhavika Govil

There’s a fat coat of caramel on my teeth. Not all my teeth, like the cracked one to the right which I’ve been meaning to get fixed for years. No. Only those at the back that help grind and push food into the throat. The ones that jam against your top teeth when you’re angry and clench your jaw, and the very first ones that people at the market notice when you talk too loudly, too openly for their liking and they say, ‘Heavens! You better get those teeth checked.’ Well, you try doing that with burnt sugar stuck on them, why don’t you?

Earlier today, I was going to a movie theatre in a part of South Bombay people don’t like to recognise. It’s near the railway station, and if you try to distract yourself, you can ignore the smells of fried fish and garbage and newspaper ink and the sea. It was that time of day when everyone rushes home from work. All the while on the train, I hoped that someone would get up and offer me their seat while I stood near the entrance of the jolting ride. But no one did. The children sitting at the edge of their seats looked ahead with determination as if they could blink me away. And the women who balance their travelling chopping boards tightly on their thighs and chop tomatoes and onions into smaller and smaller pieces until they almost slice the tips of their fingers off—they ignored me rather grandly as well. So, I held on to a quarter-inch of the railing that was available and travelled along.

My wife used to chop vegetables too, smaller and smaller until they dissolved completely into the food and you didn’t know whether the dish you’d just eaten was meant to be a soup or a stew. ‘It’s good for your teeth,’ she said.

At Liberty Cinema, I pushed my way through the crowd who had come for the film but hadn’t bothered to buy tickets in advance. When they dispersed, I shuffled to the food stall. I rapped my knuckles on the counter twice to get the attention of a young man who was laughing a little too loudly with his co-worker. ‘One popcorn,’ I said.

The boy scratched his head. He had styled his hair very carefully into the shape of an iceberg, and so had to search a while to find his scalp.

‘No, sir,’ he finally said. His voice was surprisingly deep. ‘Over.’

‘Over meaning what!’ I spat. ‘The movie hasn’t even begun.’

He shrugged, shifting his skinny weight from one leg to the other and peered down underneath the counter.

‘Only caramel flavour left, sir.’ Except he did not say caramel. He said carmel.

‘No tomato popcorn? Cheese? Butter? Normal?’  

He laughed roughly like there was sandpaper lodged in his throat. ‘Sir, no tomato flavour av-lable since years, sir. Only car-mel there right now.’

Everyone knows that caramel is the worst flavour they can give you, not only because it tastes fake sweet, but also because they get to fleece you by charging you a lot extra for it. But I had no choice. After all, you can’t show up to a date empty-handed, can you? And there was no way that I was going to buy the atrocities they sell in the name of sweets these days—sour candy strips that make the hair inside your nostrils stand up. Or bright, hard candy as big as bowling balls that crowd inside your mouth and stop you from saying, ‘Hello’, ‘How was your day?’ or even, ‘You look wonderful tonight, m’lady’. So, I took the bag of popcorn without a fuss.

But just before I walked inside the hall, I gestured the boy closer to me until I could smell his fruit-scented gel and told him as loudly as I could that his zip was open. He scrunched his nose from embarrassment as people turned to stare, but then again, that’s what happens when you pay more attention to your hair than your job.

***

“People were surprised to hear I have a lady friend.”

It was dark inside the hall, and people were thrumming with excitement as though they had never seen a film before in their life. The theatre was replaying a classic romantic film for its twenty-fifth anniversary. Another scam, I bet—but I like the movie. Besides, it was the only one playing tonight, the only night a week she’s free. I shuffled past people who watch the trailers more seriously than they’ll ever watch the movie. A couple of them went shh but I moved along at my own pace. The packet of popcorn crinkled and crunched in my hand as I held it tightly. When I tried to shimmy sideways to get to my seat, I almost dropped it to the floor. On sitting down, I placed the packet on the seat next to me to reserve it and to keep the seat folded down. But just as I was settled, the empty folded itself back up and swallowed the popcorn between its gap. I fished it from the floor and now placed my hand on the seat too. I sat like that for a while. Five minutes; ten; fifteen. My arm began to ache, but I didn’t want anyone else to sit there.  

People were surprised to hear I have a lady friend. When I ran into the group of old men that play cards inside the station on my way today, they called out to me and asked what the hell I was so dressed up for. I told them that I was going on a date, and they slapped their thighs and roared with laughter. ‘Good for you, old man,’ they said, their smiles stretching from one ear to the other like a bridge. But I know what they were really thinking:

‘Who the heck will love him?’

***

It took a while to convince Lucy to go on a date with me. She works very hard, that woman. We both shop for vegetables at the same market. I see her often with her jute shopper bag swinging from her shoulder like a little girl’s pigtail. Lucy shops for things by squinting her eyes narrowly and reading off a list. She takes her time, picking each fruit up, giving it a test by bringing it up to her nose. If it’s offensive to her, like a karela or a cauliflower or even a large aubergine, she wrinkles her nose. It’s quite a sight. And then, if the shopkeeper gets angry that she’s taking her time, she says, ‘Hey, customer is king, alright?’ and continues ticking things off her list with a tiny pencil in her hand.

One day, sweaty from the summer heat, I wrung up the courage and finally asked her near the stall with the fish, ‘Your husband here?’

She kept shopping, ignoring me like I was a fly hovering near the pomfret.

‘No, it’s okay,’ I said. ‘My wife is dead too.’

‘Who said my man is dead?’ Her eyes shot up at me and burned like coal, and suddenly I felt that she didn’t think of me as a fly at all. She added, ‘You better be careful. He’s right around the corner.’

Soon enough, a good-for-nothing fellow with very white teeth came and put his arm around Lucy’s waist and asked her how long it would take. When she gave him a look, he grunted and said that he would be waiting for her by the sweet shop for five more minutes. As soon as he was gone, I took the chance. If not now, then when?

‘Look, I wanted to—ask you—if you want to,’ I stuttered. I hadn’t had practice in thirty-two years.

‘Not here,’ she said. Looking around, she patted her jute bag which was now bursting at its fraying seams from a kingfish inside it. ‘Later.’

***

“There were many people she wanted to beat up. She read out a list from her notebook, and I prayed that she wouldn’t take my name.”

My wife had a sweet tooth. She got up in the middle of the night sometimes, early in our marriage, ransacking the house and looking for a sweet or some gur to jam into her mouth. I joined her too. When my teeth started rotting, she didn’t want me to eat the things she did. So, she ate them in secret. Sometimes I found a lemon candy—the ones twisted in plastic, like goldfish—under her side of the mattress. Or I would find leftover halwa at the deep end of the fridge. Sometimes, there was jalebi too, bought from the vendor near our place. It was thick, bright orange and glistening with oil. If she felt like splurging, she even bought a chocolate pastry from the expensive sweet shop near the school. I ate her sweets sometimes when she wasn’t looking and left crumpled foiled wrappers and crumbs around so she could find them and tick me off.

***

The next time I caught her, Lucy told me she loved films where the people beat each other up till their noses become all red and bloody. There were many people she wanted to beat up, she said, and read out a list from her notebook, while I prayed that she wouldn’t take my name: her father, the crook of a milkman, the grocer when he taps his feet while taking her order—she paused.

‘—and?’

‘Nevermind.’ Although we had started chatting often, we never could for too long because her fellow always came riding his motorcycle, making loud vroom sounds in front of me. Let me tell you, if I wanted to get my face hurt, I would rather trip myself on purpose than go and buy myself a flimsy motorcycle. Still, I liked talking to her, so I made do with the little time that I got.

A few days later though, I decided that enough was enough. I wrote Lucy a note asking her to a movie, a bloody action one with lots of dishoom dishoom. She would meet me there, just as soon as she could get away from her good-for-nothing man, and I’d have bought my tickets and popcorn for her. Easy.

I shouted out to the noisy kids that play near the house all the time and usually end up throwing a ball through my window. They looked surprised to see me ask them for a favour, but they quickly straightened their faces when I fished out a five-rupee coin and an old sweet that I’d found inside the couch. I gave it to them with simple instructions.

The kids came back from Lucy’s surprisingly quickly, grinning from ear to ear. As I stretched my hand out, they looked at each other slowly before handing it to me.

There was a response in a single, untidy word scrawled childishly in the middle of a page:

Yes

***

When my wife started working, she bought me an expensive toothbrush from her salary that cost much more than it should have. She would lean against the bathroom door, hovering over me, and make sure that I brushed properly for five whole minutes, up and down, round and round, like I was five.

These days, when I know I’m meeting no one, sometimes I don’t brush my teeth at all. I walk around all day feeling a sour fuzz in my mouth. I eat white bread and let my previous-night teeth sink into the milkiness of my breakfast until my teeth become the taste of bread and the bread becomes the taste of my teeth. But some days when I see the toothbrush with its expensive bristles standing upright on the counter, I feel guilty. So, I brush and I brush. Even twice sometimes, to make up for the bread-teeth days.

Today, I brushed thrice.

***

The advertisements and trailers are almost over, which is a relief. I never cared to know how many earwax removal products they’re selling to people these days. Lucy, however, still isn’t here. Her fellow may have turned lazy and asked her to cook something for him at the last minute. Mashed baingan ka bharta, perhaps, even though she hates the smell of aubergines. He’s inconsiderate like that. Malvani fish curry, maybe, with heaps of coconut milk and less spice, because he can’t handle it. Maybe he’d even lift up his legs and rest them on the couch, then ask her to make him a dessert, ‘Just because.’ Maybe she lost track of time. Or perhaps Lucy couldn’t understand my handwriting at all. I can imagine her peering at my note, like she does her shopping list, straining the lines around her eyes to understand what I wrote, stuffing the note into her blouse before he came and tried to read it, and later losing it in the wash, my words spinning round and round and round until they all turned into a big, black mess.

 ***

I had never meant to kill her. My wife had woken up early one morning breathing raggedly. She had been complaining of something or the other for a while by then, mostly only when I was in deep sleep and having a good dream. I touched her forehead, found it cold and shushed her back to sleep. A couple of hours later, when I woke up again, she was on the floor, shivering. I pulled her back to bed and got her a couple of old blankets, wrapping one around her head. Before I knew it, she was shaking, furiously from her bones that I thought she would collapse. I should have done something—anything—but the more she moved, the more I stayed frozen.

It was only later that they told me that she had low blood sugar.

Even so, right now, the caramel is stuck. A fat coat. Stuck to my teeth. Soon, the ads will end and the people behind the projector room will turn off the light. Everyone around me will sit up and cuddle with their wives and husbands and children. They will get lost in the world of the movie. They’ll eat candy without any ache. They’ll pretend to laugh at some jokes they probably don’t even understand. The young ones will kiss each other and go home. They’ll go to sleep, satisfied they wasted their money on a film. Then they’ll wake up and do it all again the next weekend. And the next and the next.

I put my hands on the bony armrest and push myself up. I walk in front of the people seated down. They shush and shout. Whisper, then whimper. When I reach the end of the stairs, I look behind me. On the screen, I see my body has made a large shadow. My hair is bigger than cotton candy and I’m tall like a giant. I look like a fighter, one that goes dishoom dishoom, with a golden tooth of caramel that glints in the dark. With my hands outstretched, the bag of popcorn is my boxing glove. I stare and stare, and think of all the people I would hit.

If I could.

© 2022 Bhavika Govil

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