Akshit
ﷺWhen Akshit was around sixteen, his father had died, leaving him alone in life with his rickshaw. He had previously worked as the house help for a middle class couple in Shibpur, but his father lived for the sake of his rickshaw, and he wanted nothing but for his son to take his line of work once his time on Earth had ended, and so Akshit began to drive, around the fish vendors, around the Howrah bridge, around the Britannic hovels of the old town. Akshit was a rickshaw driver amongst many others, just like he was one amongst many people on these crowded streets. He was amongst the Muslim men with the long saffron coloured beards, the children who played as if the street they lived on was their only home, the middle class children on the way to school with their maids, the housewives in salwar kameez or Baluchari sari bargaining with the fisher women at the market. Despite his young age, a life of little material wealth had forced him to long make peace with being a nobody with next to nothing. He found peace in the simple pleasures of having a cheap mp3 player he could listen to Bollywood songs on, or the occasional gulab jamun he would treat himself to. He no longer had parents to tell him what he could or couldn’t eat or what he could or couldn’t enjoy. He was also a person who preferred living alone and enjoyed the sense of freedom, despite the emotional toll that his father’s death took on him.
♈What he did not care for was the unnecessarily competitive nature of life as a riskshaw driver in Kolkata. He found that the older rickshaw drivers thought mostly of finding customers and had little interest in interaction beyond that. They had their certain places where they socialised, but it was hard for him to talk to them. They would often squat outside of the chaiwallas, drinking the tea from the paper cups, though pouring it into their mouth out of habit, and tossing the cups into whichever which angle of the gully they could manage. Akshit had seen a row of three in conversation and squatted by their side, mimicked their body language and posture, spoke up. Not a single one answered him, nor even indicated his presence with eye contact. He would find in the coming days that some would open up to him, but largely to complain about their life, or to lend unwarranted advice. A particular uncle with a redding beard had told him, ‘You never know how you can trust. It doesn’t matter how friendly someone appears. They can later backstab you. Remember that.’
ꦏAkshit ultimately found it easy to find customers. Though private taxi companies were booming, a vast majority of people used rickshaws for their daily commutes, and because Akshit had the disposition of someone who was sensitive and polite, older aunties and uncles would often take one look into his eyes and decide they would want to ride with him. Some were quite demanding at bargaining with the auto fare, while others were educated and didn’t mind what was actually a fair price. Akshit came away once from talking to an uncle who had lived a good decade of his life in England and learned a lot about the commercial industries of Manchester, a city he had never heard of. It was these talks that eased the loneliness. He had some siblings in the village where he had come from whom he would try to call, but they were busy with their families, and they weren’t the kind to take the time to learn how to use a cell phone. His mother had died in that village long ago, it was him and his father in Kolkata for the last five years, though the lifestyle ultimately left him all alone. He would often go the temple to pray. Whether it was early in the morning, whether it was late after his rounds, he often found the calm gaze of the Durga murtis, the chanting of the devotees nearby, that sense of community that his life rarely gave him.
Apoorva
🍸On the first day of work, Apoorva liked the people of her company. In fact she found that she liked them a lot, particularly because she had started on the day after the company had decided to give women a holiday for their first period, and the men, the women, they were all so chill about it. People spoke to each other in the office as though they were family, they took the time to learn her name and figure out what had placed her in the world of pharmaceuticals. The only small mistake she made was during lunch when she had forgotten to take some chutney from home for her meal and took some out of the fridge, without looking to see whose it happened to be. She had only used a spoonful and had returned it to its original space, but some of the chutney oozed and leaked out of the container to make a pus over the fridge floor. She was confronted while she was eating by a woman named Linda, a Konkani Christian girl with wavy hair and a dusky complexion, a face akin to how depictions of Lakshmi were painted, who told her that was very much her food, and Apoorva had no right to take from her compartment without permission. Apoorva swiftly apologised, she explained this was her first time working away from home, and she had no idea what she had done was wrong. Linda said she understood, but nothing of her face appeared understanding at all.
ꦍFor the rest of the day, and the days shortly after, Apoorva would spend her time in front of her computer, writing emails to marketing, drawing up graphics of drugs, and talking on whatsapp to her parents or family. Her main interaction was with her boss, who was a man of forty-three years named Rajesh. He had the manic habit of circling around the cubicles for ten minutes and returning to his office. He also had the balding spot and the curved posture of a vulture. He made long stares at Apoorva which she ignored, though she felt the weight of his eyes on her. She simply tried to do her best to work as efficiently as possible, though she often got bored. She remembered the one thing he told her when she was caught watching something on her phone. ‘Don’t ever forget that I am watching you.’
The day ended an hour or so later than was expected, and Apoorva rushed home to see her mother. She hadn’t left her city, she hadn’t left her mother for that long, but she had to hug her, and take the time to tell every single small story, every tiny tidbit of drama which had occurred to her in that one day. Apoorva’s youngster sister and brother came home. Apoorva hugged her sister, straightened out her brother’s wrinkled uniform and teased him for getting his shoes covered in mud. They changed out of their uniforms and hung out on the roof. They talked a lot and walked about and chortled about stupid things until the sunset. Her brother went out to play cricket ওwith his friends, her sister spent the rest of her evening on the phone with her friends, and Apoorva was on this rooftop, alone, but she felt the feelings of each and every one of her siblings inside of her, she knew there was a little bit of them in her as though their feelings were a belonging of her own. It was at dinnertime that her father had come home from the bank. Her mother often waited for him to come before eating, and so Apoorva would give them company as they ate and then watched soap operas. He was a stern man who talked little, so during this time, the room was mostly silent. She often went to bed thinking about him and his health, but as time at work progressed, she often found herself thinking about certain things related to Rajesh.
Where are you going?
6 Little Russel Street.
Okay.
Akshit
𒀰For a week, Akshit tried to speak to the other autowallas, but as always, most of them sipped tea to themselves and ignored him. Akshit began counting his losses, and decided he did not want to socialise with them. He gathered his energy from the people who took on his rides instead. One client of particular interest was a man of around ninety years, who was grey from his beard to the wizened scalp of his head, who needed a cane to walk into or out of anything, but was full of jokes and joy, had stories from the minute he had gotten into the auto until he had to leave, about the separation of West Bengal and Bangladesh, or the first time he had held his daughter against his chest. Akshit was a gentleman to him, helping him carry his things to his house, and it was ideally for this reason, and not because Akshit in the eyes of this man looked like a mixture of his nephew and actress Sharmila Tagore, that he gave Akshit around 200 bucks, twice the amount he had asked. Akshit clasped the money between his hands and held it up to the uncle, the uncle said a prayer to Shiva and blessed him. He couldn’t always believe in what people warned him of. People could in fact be good.
🥃His other clients of the day were not as interesting. There were some other business men, uncles and aunties who talked only to people on their phone, boys and girls who appeared to be around his age, or at least the age of his sisters. He had a certain corner in his hovel dedicated to his savings that the extra bucks went into. One of the aunties around the corner had grown used to him and often invited him to eat meals with her, and so he would often there for dinner.
ꦓHe spent the rest of the day washing his clothes, scraping toothpaste against his teeth with his finger, and praying to his private idol. In his bed, he thought about what it meant to be an adult, he imagined what life would be like if he could earn enough money to live in a more decent neighbourhood, to afford better clothes. He often stared at the dingy ceiling above him, listening to the neighbours graphically having sex, and sighed, for the sake of a life he wanted, but ultimately could never have.
Apoorva
▨Apoorva wasn’t like many of the other workers in the sense she almost always came on time, if not earlier, and yet whenever she passed him, Rajesh gave her the sternest of stares. Was it that she was turning in bad work? Was it that she was making mistakes she wasn’t aware of? She never had the courage to bring it up to her colleagues, let alone him, and so what they saw was this girl who was easily able to crack jokes, who was loud and gregarious, who was the perfect person to take for afternoon dinners and pose with for selfies; in other words, the ideal person to socialize with from work. She also made it a point to socialise with next to one while she was in fact working, except for one time when Linda had called her to look at some designs that their team was going to send a major French company in the coming weeks, and Linda spent a good ten or fifteen minutes telling a story about her daughter, which was enough for them to be called on by Rajesh. How he yelled at them, how abrasive he was being, and he said such words. Apoorva made the face as though she were about to retch while she was leaving his office, and she went to the bathroom, and her face vomited out tears.
💦She had to remind herself that she was a good girl, and this was something that was easily observed by her parents. In the last week or so, Apoorva had become less warm in the eyes, and was quicker to complain about the weather, the smells in her room, the taste of the food, about anything or anyone. She would never tell anyone what she was really thinking. If anyone asked her what was wrong, she would simply say nothing, or she would change the topic to something on the television. It was during that one night while she was eating that her father, who normally spoke little, asked if she were happy in life. Apoorva was never able to lie to her father, but she decided to tell him this, that she had found a good job, she had two parents who loved her, and this was what made her happy.
This was the sort of answer which ought to have pleased her father, but her father did not smile. Her mother smiled, but it was a certain knowing type of smile that women who are used to sacrificing their personal desires for the sake of family or convention give to each other. She brought food ꦛinto her mouth and winced away, knowing that her daughter was becoming one of these women who lived life as a lie to herself.
6 Little Russel Street. I remember.
How?
Madame. Look at my face. You will come to know.
Ah, yes. Did you grow a beard?
Yes, yes, a little.
It is nice.
Thank you, Madame. Your words make me very happy.
Akshit
🐻Akshit was always a skinny boy; this he knew, but never understood why. He ate well, at least three or four meals a day, and while he was a boy at the village, he worked next to nothing, he had the indolent lifestyle that should have led to at least some sort of belly pouch. He had the habit of sleeping badly, because as he saved more and more money, as he remembered he was living without a father, he was living completely alone, and he always felt that someone would come into his house at any moment, with a knife, with a gun, with a gunda, and it could
🌌have been anyone. It was for these reasons that if anyone saw him from the distance, they would have associated him with a certain social class. It didn’t matter if he dressed better, or took better care of his skin or care; there was something of the gait of his body and the withered look to his eyes that gave him the appearance of a man living on borrowed time, a man who was consigned to the life often lived by the world’s poor.
👍Was this something he liked about himself? No, and as he was growing in age, he also found himself less willing to accept it. He would find himself drinking alone, he cursed in a way to that sweet auntie that resulted in her forever closing her door. He no longer found himself wanting to sleep alone. He started using his money to hire prostitutes when he could, and the first one he had lost his virginity to, he masturbated to her image whenever he had free time in his auto. He would visit her once every few weeks, but stopped when he realized that shortly after, the visits were causing a pain when he would go to pee. It was a pain that lasted for longer than a few weeks, and it was a pain that caused his money to go less to the girls and more to the booze.
Apoorva
﷽What Apoorva did was never enough, no matter how much she studied, no matter how much she topped her exams, and no matter how much her foreign clients lauded her design talent, she had always been under his eyes, and it was under his eyes that she had to force herself to keep herself working, or she would simply fall apart. There was something about her interactions with Rajesh which always made her cry after. It wasn’t like her father was truly anyone better. She remembered how when she told her father that her kaka had touched her in the wrong place when she was ten, how her father took a whip and beat her, telling her to never disgrace their family with her stories once more. Rajesh hadn’t hit her, yet, Rajesh hadn’t said such horrible things about her, yet, but she was stuck in the cavern of his gaze, and without exit. It was for this reason that she had learned by the second week to work as she had never before. She next to never checked her phone messages, she finished her work earlier than anyone else, and she would spend the extra time not lounging about, but researching, in nothing wrong with this company’s products. The visits to Rajesh’s office persisted, and each and every time he was getting a tad too physically close. She dared not open up about these things at home. It became a science, to eat the exact portion of food allotted to her, to make it appear that she was spending the exact amount of time she would always spend with her siblings, never any little, never any less. Her act had worked too much in her favour. Her mother complained to her in private as to why she was acting like a robot, but Apoorva never answered, because she believed that as long as the other people in her life were happy, or at least content, she would be doing what was right for other people’s hearts.
Chalo.
Chalo.
Didi, why are you crying?
Akshit
🦄It was the birthday of his sister, and it was for this reason why he was calling home, to wish her, though it was something his sister never thought about, it was probably a date that she did not remember, and he only remembered it because of how much effort his father took to calling family members on his birthday, and it was something he wanted to do in his father’s place. She answered the phone but didn’t talk much. It was like any other day, a day for Akshit to remember he really had no one to call his home. It was for this reason that Akshit got drunk in the middle of the night and started speaking nonsense to the random autowallas sleeping in their rickshaws. He told them all of the horrible things he thought about them, he cursed their mothers and their childrens, and then due to the alcohol, he passed out. He certainly did not awaken in a good place. At least he had his chaddi, and his basic clothes, but his rickshaw had been battered and dented, his pockets had been trifled with, his keys for his home and auto had been thrown into the bushes, and he was missing his wallet, he was missing almost all of his money, and he was missing his shoes. He screamed at the men that he wanted to kill them, but no one was there, he was howling with the wild dogs which called the streets their home. He returned that day to his hovel, he cried into his pillow, he couldn’t lift himself from the cot, or eat, for not only one day, but two. He reminded himself he had to work, he reminded himself he had to eat, he reminded himself he had to live, but he began asking a question in response to his mind, What for? and with that question, his body refused to start up, his legs shook to themselves, but nothing moved.
🐻There was only one reason why he had gotten up, and that was because he had gotten close enough to some of the people who used his rickshaw on an almost daily basis, and he knew by falling apart, he was doing not a single one of them a favour. He had to be there to take them around.
Apoorva
ꦐIt was inevitable that Rajesh was going to try to kiss Apoorva, and Apoorva knew it from the moment that Rajesh had seen her on her first day at work. She was simply not expecting it to happen so suddenly because she had grown used to Rajesh forcing her to come into his office, calling her useless because women weren’t meant to work, shouting insults about his wife, showing her pictures of his toddler, and threatening her. Rajesh had grabbed her and was forcing his tongue into her mouth. She tried to push him away, she tried to punch him off, but she was weak, and the clasp of Rajesh’s hands on Apoorva’s breasts were strong. How she wanted to kick him in the private parts, or take the stapler by her and ram it into his eyes, but she needed this job. Rajesh didn’t get far simply because he was being called into a meeting. He told Apoorva to click her bra together and get out. He hadn’t meant out of the office, but Apoorva ran as quick as she could into the toilet, and into the elevator, and then she took the elevator back to the office, and thought whether she could work again. As she went up and down, she imagined her father reminding her not to shame the family, she thought about the concerned look her mother often gave her and how she was letting this woman down, she thought about how much further Rajesh would progress sexually at the office, she thought about how much she wanted a job, and she wasn’t sure if she were honest, she would be able to get work anymore. She was hyperventilating, she was crying, and it was for this reason that Linda came out and asked what was wrong. Apoorva didn’t say a single thing, but Linda unfolded a handkerchief and wiped her face as though she knew. She told Apoorva a story about how Rajesh did something similar to her, and how he has probably done this in some way to each and every one of the girls. Apoorva complained asking how he gets away with it, but Linda shrugged, and said, This is India, what can be done? Apoorva didn’t know what to say to that response, but she told Linda she had to go home, and Linda said she would find a way to let it be allowed.
♕Apoorva didn’t go home, but she happened to have the number of her auto driver whom she talked because she felt like there was no one else she could open up to. She rang his number and asked if he could pick her up. He asked if she wanted to go home, and though she did not, that was what she confirmed.
Good evening.
Good evening. 6 Little Russel Street?
We will figure it out. We will go somewhere close. Didi, are you crying again?
…
You do not have to respond, Didi, I understand. I also had something horrible happen to me a few days ago, but Durga Devi granted me with life, we must be grateful we have that much.
Speak the words of a child. I come to you because you are a child, not because you are a growing bhakt.
Sorry, Didi. I did not to mean to make you upset. You are beautiful, Didi. I am sure you must know.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Sorry, Didi. I thought girls liked it when they are called beautiful. I thought… no, I thought nothing. I know nothing about girls, nothing at all.
Haan. Good. I am glad there is at least one Bong bhaiyya who knows enough to know that he does not know girls. You wouldn’t know how many men think they own girls. I wish I could beat them, I wish I could beat each and everyone.
I know that feeling, I know that feeling, of course. There are men who treat me badly, but I never know what to do. I did the wrong thing a few days ago, and now I am going to be poor. I can’t show my face to them, either. I am even afraid, what they will do, if they see me outside of my house.
Because, you are like me. You want to do things, you want to live your life, but you want to make others happy, you want to feel like you are living like everyone else, because that is what keeps you calm.
Haan, didi. That is very true.
But, we can’t live that way, at least anymore. I can’t work this job, I just can’t do it. I got into pharmaceuticals in the first place because Daddy wanted me to. He is going to kill me if I quit. But, I can’t go back to that boss. I can’t go back to that lifestyle.
So, what will you do, Didi?
I don’t know. I don’t know the first damn thing about myself. In that sense, I am no better than you.
Haan, didi, right again. But, I know some things. I know there is this woman I like, who is nearly thirty years old, who I would like to marry, but she makes me feel wrong in the wrong ways. I want to have a house the kind you have, I want to live the way I see the people who come into my rickshaws live, doing something interesting, having enough to help others. I want to do good for my temple as well, give more donations. I think I want money, but I don’t want too much money, either. I have seen too much how money makes me think badly. I just want enough. Didi, are you crying again?
It is all too sad. We are just too sad. You are a little boy. Talk as though you are my brother. That is what I like you for.
I’m sorry, didi. I do not think today I can make any jokes.
…
ꩵA silence permeates the auto, and then Apoorva steps out. She pays Akshit two hundred rupees, and then walks towards the bus stop. She will never talk to him again, and Akshit knows it. Akshit stares at her silhouette as the back of his head is beaten by the bursting Bengal sun. An auntie asks if he can take her to the train station. He affirms with her head, and tries to make eye contact with Apoorva one last time. She stares back, but is unable to smile. He drives off.
